Last few Hills

( Reginald Hill, Death’s Jest Book. )

( Reginald Hill, Good Morning, Midnight. )

( Reginald Hill, Killing the Lawyers. )

I like detective stories for many reasons, but not the least of them is that a good detective story must of necessity have a good plot, and I'm very fond of plot. My definition of a good plot includes good characters, and respect for how the characters would act, and, taking this all together, a good detective story is most of the way towards being what I consider a good book. Having said this I've read a lot of detective stories I haven't liked, where the plot grinds down the characters and everyone is forced to act in a most unlikely fashion (a particularly scarring Ngaio Marsh involving a man in a suit of armour sliding backwards down the bannisters to set up a perfect murder/alibi springs to mind), but if I can clutch Dorothy Sayers, Josephine Tey and, now, Reginald Hill, to my breast in a defensive fashion I'll be perfectly happy.

Neither bought nor borrowed

One of the refinements of my reading habit is the tendency to read whole books in bookshops, which started back when I couldn’t afford all the books I wanted to read (I remember spending a happy afternoon wandering between three bookshops reading Stephen King’s Misery), and which also inculcated in me the ability to read paperbacks without breaking the spine. Additional variations include reading books in libraries (I can’t join, I’ve left my card behind, I’ve exceeded the ridiculously small borrowing limit or I’m blacklisted for overdue fines, this last being obviously purely hypothetical) and the particularly dubious reading books at book sales to reduce my pile to something I can actually carry.

Three of these are bookshop reads, one a library, I’m not counting an Australian thriller because I skipped a couple of chapters, and I’m also only about four chapters from the end of Ruth Reichl’s Garlic and Sapphires, which I just note here to avoid forgetting about it and am also not counting (I bought the first two, but for some reason I am untempted by owing the third).

( Peter Lindsay, Darkly Dreaming Dexter. )

( Eleanor Spence, A Candle for St Anthony. )

( Kathy Helidoniotis, Horse-Mad Academy. )

( JC Burke, Faking Sweet. )

Last time I updated I had six books pending, and now I've added seven reviews and I still have six books pending. Some sort of librarian version of Zeno's paradox, I expect. I shall ponder it over at least one of my current books...