AD Swanston, Incendium, (London: Bantam Press, 2017)
This is the first in a new series, and much as I love this period (and am increasingly interested in historical fiction) I’m not convinced I’ll follow Christopher Radcliff’s adventures. Not, at least, at full price.
“A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot.” Alan Bennett
This year my book buying AND reading have grown exponentially.
PF Chisholm, A Famine of Horses (London: Head of Zeus, 2016)
This was a promising start to a series by Chisholm, who also writes as Patricia Finney. Although our hero is a historical figure, and some of his exploits are based on actual events, there was something refreshing and interesting about setting the novel so far from the usual world of court intrigue and plots to kill Elizabeth. Neither is our hero conventionally heroic, or handsome, or some kind of Elizabethan übermensch, as we see too often in historical fiction.
There’s a tang of salt in the air as Giordano Bruno and Sir Philip Sidney head to Plymouth in this fourth instalment of his adventures. Drake is about to set out on another quest for fame, glory, and riches, plus of course the opportunity to pull a few Spanish beards … until one of his crew is murdered.
This second Hew Cullan mystery begins two years after the events of the first.It is 1581: Hew has returned to St Andrews on the death of his father, a man rendered a stranger to him through time and distance.
Too many books? I think you mean ‘not enough shelves‘ …
It’s become a habit, when visiting a second-hand and/or independent bookshop, never to leave empty-handed.
I think that’s all the more worth thinking about this week, when the Guardian reports that two ‘iconic’ British bookshops are closing. Like our libraries, it’s so obviously ‘use them or lose them‘ …
So, my travels taking me a little further afield than normal, I wanted to give a bit of free publicity to the excellent two bookshops I came across:
Although this novel (published 2011) begins the Hew Cullan mysteries, I arrived having read the latest, ‘1588: A Calendar of Crime‘ (2016) – whose review you can read here – first.
In many ways, therefore, this felt like a prequel, assembling the cast and creating several relationships I’d already become familiar with.
Think a far superior version of Star Wars episodes I-III …
As we hit mid-March, and I hit 25 books (about half of which have, unusually, been historical fiction set in the Tudor period), this is my favourite read of 2019 so far.
PF Chisholm, A Famine of Horses (London: Head of Zeus, 2016)
Rory Clements, Revenger, (London: John Murray, 2010)
Although this novel (published 2011) begins the Hew Cullan mysteries, I arrived having read the latest, ‘1588: A Calendar of Crime‘ (2016) – whose review you can read here – first.
I came to this novel via Finney’s nom-de-plume, PF Chisholm, and her entertaining Sir John Carey novel, A Famine of Horses.
The Boar's Head, Eastcheap 