Top Ten Tuesday: Books or Covers that Feel/Look Like Summer

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.  Click on the link for more info and to find out about future topics.

This week’s theme is:  Books or Covers that Feel/Look Like Summer

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This week I’m going with covers that feel like summer based on their colours – yellow and/or blue, sand and/or sea, or, if your prefer, sun and sky.
I have only read two of these so far, Killing Jericho by William Hussey and Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie (which I’ve linked to my review).  All the rest are books I would like to read at some point.  On to the books…

Killing Jericho by William Hussey
She Who Became The Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
Children of Earth and Sky by Guy Gavriel Kay
Death on the Nile (Hercule Poirot #18) by Agatha Christie
The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn
The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley
Evil Under the Sun (Hercule Poirot #24) by Agatha Christie
Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney
Murder Under the Tuscan Sun by Rachel Rhys
Bonny & Read by Julie Walker

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So, which books made your list this week?
See you again next time for another Top Ten Tuesday.

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Monthly Summary: May 2023

Welcome to another Monthly Summary on Pages and Tea.

May has been a month of reading recent releases so I haven’t had chance to add to my Beat the Backlist reading challenge, but it was nice to check out some new books too, and by chance I picked out some good ones.

Looking Glass Sound is the first book I’ve read by Catriona Ward. What a story. I don’t even know where to start. I couldn’t put the book down, thinking I had an idea what was going on, then wondering if that could possibly be right, before being completely surprised by certain things to the point that I found myself going back to reread certain parts (if you’ve read it you might guess) out of curiosity. Such a complex, well-constructed tale, I was thinking about the ins and outs of it long after I finished.

Next I ventured back into cosy mystery territory with the first of the Hopgood Hall Murder Mysteries. I know you shouldn’t judge a book by the cover, but in this case it doesn’t hurt to draw attention to that cover. So striking. I was surprised how much I enjoyed the contemporary setting and theme for this story. Most of the cosy crime I’ve read so far has been set in the past, which I do enjoy but this felt like a nice change. The next book, A Contest to Kill For, has just been released, and I’d definitely like to read the further adventures of Alexi, Jack, and Cosmo the cat.

My final reading adventure of this month took me to what I am starting to think of a mix of an Agatha Christie murder mystery and a Chris Carter Robert Hunter book. Killing Jericho was an unexpected reading enjoyment. With a compelling central character in Scott Jericho, former policeman and Traveller with his family’s fairground, and a gruesome crime spree inspired by an historical tragedy involving members of the Jericho group I couldn’t put this down. I’m glad there are more books planned in this series.

I think that’s about all for this month. So, here’s a summary of May on Pages and Tea…

Book Reviews

The Unexpected Return of Josephine Fox (Josephine Fox #1) by Claire Gradidge

Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward

A Date to Die For (The Hopgood Hall Murder Mysteries #1) by E. V. Hunter

Reading Review

Reading Resolutions 2023

May Progress

Beat the Backlist Challenge Progress

Reading Review: May 2023

Welcome to my Monthly Reading Review.
This post is my attempt to keep track of how I’m doing with my reading challenges and resolutions.

BOOKS I’VE READ

Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward

A Date to Die For (The Hopgood Hall Murder Mysteries #1) by E. V. Hunter

Killing Jericho by William Hussey

Total Loaned Books Read This Month: 3
Total Own Books Read This Month: 0
Overall Total Books Read This Month: 3

Total Loaned Books Read 2023: 7
Total Own Books Read 2023: 3
Overall Total Books Read 2023: 10

MY READ OF THE MONTH

It’s an almost impossible choice this month and I’ve gone back and forth over it before deciding to choose Killing Jericho by William Hussey but I liked the uniqueness of Looking Glass Sound and the fresh contemporary air of A Date to Die For so I’d recommend them too.
Killing Jericho has a compelling central character in Scott Jericho, former policeman and Traveller with his family’s fairground, and a gruesome crime spree linked to a tragedy in his family’s past. It read like a blend of Agatha Christie and Chris Carter, a combination that left me not wanting to put it down.

BEAT THE BACKLIST

My total for this challenge is currently 7 books read.  So far I’ve read:

The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings #1) by J. R. R. Tolkien
Fairy Tale by Stephen King
The Jigsaw Man (Inspector Anjelica Henley #1) by Nadine Matheson
The Six Deaths of the Saint (Into Shadow #3) by Alix E. Harrow
Cards on the Table (Hercule Poirot #15) by Agatha Christie
The Unexpected Return of Josephine Fox (Josephine Fox #1) by Claire Gradidge
The Highway (The Highway Quartet #2) by C. J. Box

Beat The Backlist Bingo Progress

This year Bingo is back with a great collection of prompts.  There are two cards available, 24 prompts and 52 prompts, and you can view both cards here. I’m working from both cards this year. I have no idea how many categories I’ll manage to complete but it’s a little extra to add to my challenge.  Here is a collection of covers that fulfil a prompt on either of the cards featured:

The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings #1) by J. R. R. Tolkien – First in a trilogy
Fairy Tale by Stephen King – Protagonist has a pet
The Jigsaw Man (Inspector Anjelica Henley #1) by Nadine Matheson – Point-of-view character is an adult
The Six Deaths of the Saint (Into Shadow #3) by Alix E. Harrow – Less than 170 pages
Cards on the Table (Hercule Poirot #15) by Agatha Christie – Meant to read it last year
The Unexpected Return of Josephine Fox (Josephine Fox #1) by Claire Gradidge – Name in the title
The Highway (The Highway Quartet #2) by C. J. Box – No romance

And here’s an updated version of my progress (Jan – Mar) on the 52 prompt card.

PICTURE PROMPT BOOK BINGO

You can find out more about the Picture Prompts Book Bingo over at Bookforager.
I like that this is so open to interpretation based on the pictures provided. I managed to find spaces for two of the books I’ve read this month, and I have posted an updated card at my first Challenge Check In. I’ve managed to fill the picture prompts so far with:

The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings #1) by J. R. R. Tolkien  |  Fairy Tale by Stephen King  |  The Six Deaths of the Saint (Into Shadow #3) by Alix E. Harrow  |  Cards on the Table (Hercule Poirot #15) by Agatha Christie  |  Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward  |  A Date to Die For (The Hopgood Hall Murder Mysteries #1) by E. V. Hunter  |  Killing Jericho by William Hussey

Below is my January to March progress:

GOODREADS

I’ve read 10 books so far this year.

GOALS

• All of the books I finished this month counted towards my Book Bingo challenge, so my current total for that is now 6 books read.
• I’m continuing my monthly update posts to record my reading and any challenge progress I’ve made.

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So concludes May’s Reading Review. See you again next month.

Book Review: A Date to Die For (The Hopgood Hall Murder Mysteries #1) by E. V. Hunter

Name: A Date to Die For (The Hopgood Hall Murder Mysteries #1)
Author:  E. V. Hunter
Number of Pages:  268 (Kindle)
Published:  February 3, 2023 by Boldwood Books
Genre:  Cosy Mystery, Mystery

The start of brand-new Cozy Crime series! Welcome to Hopgood Hall.
An unlikely duo…
When investigative journalist, Alexi Ellis, falls victim to cutbacks, she and Cosmo, her anti-social feral cat, head for beautiful Hopgood Hall, where they plan to lick their wounds in the boutique hotel run by her old friends, Cheryl and Drew Hopgood.
A missing woman…
But when she arrives Alexi discovers Cheryl and Drew both distraught. Their close friend, Natalie Parker, who recently settled in the area, has gone missing. Alexi’s sure the woman has just taken a trip somewhere, but she still has a nose for a story and agrees to look into it.
A case to solve!
So too does ex-Met Police detective turned private eye, Jack Maddox. Natalie Parker had been using his sister’s online dating agency and Jack needs to find her before his sister’s business is ruined.
Reluctantly, Alexi, Jack – and Cosmo! – join forces to find out what happened to Natalie. But soon they discover secrets that someone desperately wants to make sure are never revealed!

My Rating:

My Thoughts:

A Date to Die For is the first in a new cosy crime series and one that I enjoyed.

Cosy crime is something I’ve been enjoying recently but most of what I’ve read has been set in historical periods. This has a contemporary setting which I really liked. It made a refreshing change to read something set in modern times. The setting in question is a luxurious boutique hotel, Hopgood Hall, in an idyllic countryside location. Think a grand old hotel made into a luxury venue, surrounded by picturesque cottages and grand homes, horse trainers and stables, and you’re there. Like I said, totally different from my usual reading choices.

Into this setting comes Alexi. She is a journalist taking time out from the city after losing her job and feeling betrayed by someone she thought she could trust. So, without further ado, she and her marvellous once-feral black cat Cosmo find themselves at Hopgood Hall at the invitation of Alexi’s friends Cheryl and Drew.

The mystery begins as Cheryl confides about the disappearance of her other friend, Natalie. It’s totally out of character for her to abandon a work commitment and vanish without trace, so Alexi agrees to use her investigative skills to try and find out what has happened to Natalie.

Also interested in the disappearance, private investigator Jack Maddox. It’s his trade, but he also has a vested interest in finding out the truth about Natalie’s disappearance in case it has links to a dating agency run by his sister.

And so our duo, ably assisted by Cosmo the cat, quite a character in his own right, and always a scene-stealer, delve into the rather murky goings-on that are hidden by the polished façade of such a lovely setting. This got a little darker than I initially imagined it might, as discoveries about Natalie and her life and past dealings come to light, but I enjoyed each twist and reveal as each piece of the puzzle came together to create a tangled picture of betrayal and revenge.

With a well-paced plot, a lovely modern day setting, a mystery just waiting to be solved and some likeable characters to discover the truth, I had great fun reading the first in the Hopgood Hall mystery series. The next book in the series, A Contest to Kill For, has just been published and this is definitely a series I’d consider returning to when I want another cosy mystery to enjoy.

Book Review: Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward

Name:  Looking Glass Sound
Author:  Catriona Ward
Number of Pages:  351 (Kindle)
Published:  April 20, 2023 by Viper
Genre:  Thriller, Mystery, Horror

In a windswept cottage overlooking the sea, Wilder Harlow begins the last book he will ever write. It is the story of his childhood companions and the killer that stalked their small New England town. Of the body they found, the horror of that discovery echoing down the decades. And of Sky, Wilder’s one-time friend, who stole his unfinished memoir and turned it into a lurid bestselling novel, Looking Glass Sound.
This book will be Wilder’s revenge on Sky, a man who betrayed his trust and died without ever telling him why. But as he writes, Wilder begins to find notes written in Sky’s signature green ink and events in his manuscript start to chime eerily with the present. Is Sky haunting him? Did Wilder have more to do with Sky’s death than he admits? And who is the woman drowning in the cove, whom no-one else can see?
No longer able to trust his own eyes, Wilder begins to wonder: is he writing the book, or is the book writing him?

My Rating:

My Thoughts:

Looking Glass Sound is a book I went into knowing only what I’d read from the summary above, and I don’t want to give too much away regarding the plot because going in knowing as little as possible made this an intriguing, at times unsettling and intentionally secretive tale. The book yields up its secrets very gradually, and the mystery drives the whole story onwards. So, what to say?

There’s a wonderful sense of place. Whistler Bay came alive so vividly from the outset that it was very easy to imagine the whistling of the wind through stones on the beach that gave the place its name.
Whistler Cottage was the same, with the porthole window and marvellous views, and the great tree in the garden.
There’s a sense that the place is idyllic and beautiful, with so much atmosphere, but there’s something uneasy about it too. It’s beautiful, but eerie, safe in daylight when the sun is shining, but something plays on the mind once darkness falls, especially when the wind is in the right direction to make the stones whistle.

There’s a story of a perfect youthful summer, reflected in the unpublished memoir Wilder writes as he spends time at Whistler Cottage. He finds the love of friends and believes that he finds love of a place too.
Nat and Harper, the pair Wilder meets and befriends, are both enigmatic and strange in their own various ways.
Add to this a definite sense of menace in the air, from stories of the sea and people lost to it’s endless depths, to supposed play-acting involving a cave and what may or may not reside within. There’s also the possibly more real Dagger Man, an unknown presence, or possibly just a rumour, but is there more to the threat?

After a devastating revelation the story moves on to Wilder’s time at college, where he meets Sky. The two become good friends initially, and share an interest in writing. Wilder opens up to Sky about the past. From this point on things start becoming more complex and tangled, and I found myself trying to really pay attention as the various threads wove together. I found myself guessing and second-guessing as things became more strange, and that kept me turning the pages in search of answers.

It’s an intriguing tale, a story about stories, and writing, and capturing the past in words. It’s also a story of hurt and betrayal and making sense of traumatic events through writing and fiction. It’s clever in the twists and reveals and the way the whole thing pulls together eventually after giving you a sense of ‘what on earth is going on’ for a while. I don’t usually like books that give an unsettling feeling of ‘where is this going?’, but this really retained my attention and I read on, hoping that everything would become clear as the story progressed.

I thought it was the kind of story where there was something I was missing, that I couldn’t quite work out even though I was looking for clues. A sense that there was something not quite right but not being able to work out what it was. I kept thinking it would be the kind of story I’d want to go straight back to the beginning and read again, just to pick up on what I’d missed.  I had ideas, and one of them was in the right area, sort of, and I did end up wanting to go back to the beginning, just to experience the whole story again with a little more context, especially certain parts.

Looking Glass Sound is a book best experienced without spoilers, so although there’s more I could write I think I’ll stop now, because otherwise I’m going to risk entering spoiler territory and I don’t want to do that. This is the first book I’ve read by Catriona Ward and I enjoyed it so much that I’m curious about her other works and would like to read more.

Book Review: The Unexpected Return of Josephine Fox (Josephine Fox #1) by Claire Gradidge

Name:  The Unexpected Return of Josephine Fox (Josephine Fox #1)
Author:  Claire Gradidge
Number of Pages:  256 (Kindle)
Published:  August 8, 2019 by Zaffre
Genre: Mystery, Historical, Crime

Josephine ‘Jo’ Fox hasn’t set foot in Romsey in over twenty years. As an illegitimate child, her family – headed by her controlling grandfather – found her an embarrassment. Now, she wants to return to what was once her home and uncover the secret of her parentage. Who was her father and why would her mother never talk about him?
Jo arrives the day after the Luftwaffe have bombed the town. The local pub has been completely destroyed and rescue teams are searching for the remains of the seven people known to have been in the pub at the time the bomb hit. They are shocked, however, to uncover eight bodies instead. The eighth, unidentified, body is that of a teenage girl, who no one in the town claims to know. Who is she, how did she get there, but most importantly – who killed her?
Teaming up with local coroner and old friend, Bram Nash, Jo sets out to establish the identity of the girl and solve the riddle of her death. In doing so, she also uncovers her own personal mystery.
Everyone has secrets – some are just more deadly than others . . .

My Rating:

My Thoughts:

The Unexpected Return of Josephine Fox is a tale of two mysteries, woven together in a close-knit community during wartime.

Josephine Fox left Romsey amid controversy when, after her grandmother’s death, her grandfather disowned her and practically forced her out. There’s scandal (in his eyes) around the event of her birth as her parents weren’t married, and Jo assumes her father is dead, although she never knew who he was.
When it turns out her father may still be alive, and living in Romsey, Jo feels compelled to return and find out all she can. To support herself she takes a job as assistant to the local coroner, Bram Nash, and the two of them become involved in the case of a girl pulled from a ruined building. Was she inside when the place was hit, or did someone place her there afterwards to disguise a crime?

Jo is an independent character, and strong-willed. She’ll happily venture off on her own in search of clues and following leads, not always conscious about keeping her employer informed of her discoveries as she goes where the leads take her.
She also faces down some awful rebukes from her grandfather, who comes across as quite a vile character in the few appearances he makes throughout. He blames Jo being born at all for his life being ruined by the loss of his daughter, and he can’t seem to overcome that prejudice even years later. Undeterred, Jo remains steadfast in wanting to discover her own history, whatever resentments it may stir up.

Bram is interesting too, and the shared past he has with Jo makes their relationship interesting. They were childhood friends, running in the same group, and then, years later, a chance and brief encounter between the two of them, with an agreement not to meet again, sets the scene for an awkward reunion when Jo returns to Romsey, yet once they settle into their routine and overcome the initial awkwardness they make a good team. In his official position as coroner Bram has certain rules and procedures to observe, whereas Jo can get to valuable sources and information in slightly different ways.

I don’t want to say too much about the mysteries in the story and risk giving anything away, only to say that the outward projection of certain characters belies what’s really going on under the surface. There’s also a sense that not everyone would willingly get involved to help solve these mysteries even if they did know something. Jo’s grandfather tells her outright he knows who her father is and will never reveal his identity.

The Unexpected Return of Josephine Fox was an entertaining beginning to a series and I’ve already found out that the next title in the series is Treachery at Hursley Park House, which I’ll probably read when I’m next in the mood for a historical murder mystery.

Monthly Summary: April 2023

Welcome to another Monthly Summary on Pages and Tea.

It’s time for another update, although it’s been another month of reading slowly for me so there’s not a great deal of progress. I read The Unexpected Return of Josephine Fox, the first book featuring this character. A wartime tale of two mysteries in which Jo returns to her hometown in search of information about her father and becomes involved with helping the local coroner determine whether a young woman’s death was actually murder.

Next up, The Highway. I read this after watching Big Sky, a series that I really enjoyed, and I preferred the show to the book.

I managed to catch up on a couple of reviews this month, including my latest venture into the Poirot series with Cards on the Table, and also the latest from Stephen King, Fairy Tale. I really enjoyed both of these books.

Here’s a summary of April on Pages and Tea…

Book Reviews

Cards on the Table (Hercule Poirot #15) by Agatha Christie

Fairy Tale by Stephen King

Reading Review

Reading Resolutions 2023

April Progress

Beat the Backlist Challenge Progress

Reading Review: April 2023

Welcome to my Monthly Reading Review.
This post is my attempt to keep track of how I’m doing with my reading challenges and resolutions.

BOOKS I’VE READ

The Unexpected Return of Josephine Fox (Josephine Fox #1) by Claire Gradidge

The Highway (The Highway Quartet #2) by C. J. Box

Total Loaned Books Read This Month: 2
Total Own Books Read This Month: 0
Overall Total Books Read This Month: 2

Total Loaned Books Read 2023: 4
Total Own Books Read 2023: 3
Overall Total Books Read 2023: 7

MY READ OF THE MONTH

The Unexpected Return of Josephine Fox (Josephine Fox #1) by Claire Gradidge was the book I preferred out of the two that I managed to finish this month.

BEAT THE BACKLIST

My total for this challenge is currently 7 books read.  So far I’ve read:

The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings #1) by J. R. R. Tolkien
Fairy Tale by Stephen King
The Jigsaw Man (Inspector Anjelica Henley #1) by Nadine Matheson
The Six Deaths of the Saint (Into Shadow #3) by Alix E. Harrow
Cards on the Table (Hercule Poirot #15) by Agatha Christie
The Unexpected Return of Josephine Fox (Josephine Fox #1) by Claire Gradidge
The Highway (The Highway Quartet #2) by C. J. Box

Beat The Backlist Bingo Progress

This year Bingo is back with a great collection of prompts.  There are two cards available, 24 prompts and 52 prompts, and you can view both cards here. I’m working from both cards this year. I have no idea how many categories I’ll manage to complete but it’s a little extra to add to my challenge.  Here is a collection of covers that fulfil a prompt on either of the cards featured:

The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings #1) by J. R. R. Tolkien – First in a trilogy
Fairy Tale by Stephen King – Protagonist has a pet
The Jigsaw Man (Inspector Anjelica Henley #1) by Nadine Matheson – Point-of-view character is an adult
The Six Deaths of the Saint (Into Shadow #3) by Alix E. Harrow – Less than 170 pages
Cards on the Table (Hercule Poirot #15) by Agatha Christie – Meant to read it last year
The Unexpected Return of Josephine Fox (Josephine Fox #1) by Claire Gradidge – Name in the title
The Highway (The Highway Quartet #2) by C. J. Box – No romance

And here’s an updated version of my progress (Jan – Mar) on the 52 prompt card.

PICTURE PROMPT BOOK BINGO

You can find out more about the Picture Prompts Book Bingo over at Bookforager.
I like that this is so open to interpretation based on the pictures provided. I managed to find spaces for two of the books I’ve read this month, and I have posted an updated card at my first Challenge Check In. I’ve managed to fill the picture prompts so far with:

The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings #1) by J. R. R. Tolkien  |  Fairy Tale by Stephen King  |  The Six Deaths of the Saint (Into Shadow #3) by Alix E. Harrow  |  Cards on the Table (Hercule Poirot #15) by Agatha Christie

GOODREADS

I’ve read 7 books so far this year.

GOALS

• Both of the books I finished this month have been included in my Beat the Backlist challenge, so my current total for the challenge is now 7 books read. I also managed to find places on my bingo cards for each book.
• I’m continuing my monthly update posts to record my reading and any challenge progress I’ve made.

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So concludes April’s Reading Review. See you again next month.

Book Review: Fairy Tale by Stephen King

Name:  Fairy Tale
Author:  Stephen King
Number of Pages:  579 (Hardback)
Published:  September 6th 2022 by Hodder & Stoughton
Genre: Fantasy

Legendary storyteller Stephen King goes into the deepest well of his imagination in this spellbinding novel about a seventeen-year-old boy who inherits the keys to a parallel world where good and evil are at war, and the stakes could not be higher—for their world or ours.
Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was ten, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself—and his dad. Then, when Charlie is seventeen, he meets a dog named Radar and his ageing master, Howard Bowditch, a recluse in a big house at the top of a big hill, with a locked shed in the backyard. Sometimes strange sounds emerge from it.
Charlie starts doing jobs for Mr. Bowditch and loses his heart to Radar. Then, when Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie a cassette tape telling a story no one would believe. What Bowditch knows, and has kept secret all his long life, is that inside the shed is a portal to another world.
King’s storytelling in Fairy Tale soars. This is a magnificent and terrifying tale about another world than ours, in which good is pitted against overwhelming evil, and a heroic boy—and his dog—must lead the battle.

My Rating:

My Thoughts:

Fairy Tale has everything, from the real world everyday to the utterly fantastic and surreal in the hidden world at the bottom of 185 stone steps. There is friendship, adventure and horror, mystery and intrigue.

It’s a story of a boy and his dog, and the lengths he will go to to try and save the life of his canine companion. Radar, the German Shepherd dog, is such a character throughout the whole story, and her decline made for some sad reading at times. I confess I had to risk small spoilers because I wanted to know if she would be okay. I won’t say any more and give spoilers myself. It’s a sign how invested I became in these characters from quite early on in the story.

Charlie is an interesting character. Tragic circumstances forced Charlie to grow up quickly, taking responsibility for himself and his father when, after Charlie’s mother is killed in an accident, his father starts drinking. There’s also a lot of anger in Charlie, which makes him indulge in what he calls his darker side, aided by his ‘friend’ Bertie Bird. By the time the action in this story takes place Bertie Bird is long gone, but Charlie cannot forget the bad things they got up to and when he finds himself venturing into the strange and magical world of Empis and unwittingly cast in the role of fairy tale prince, he admits to himself that he’s not the stereotypical prince at all, and that this really isn’t that kind of story.
There’s also some very good in Charlie. He cares for his father, and takes on the role of caregiver to Mr. Bowditch, the elderly reclusive man living in what the locals call the Psycho House alone with only his dog for company. He makes new friends in Empis and goes to great lengths to ensure their safety and survival.

The friendship between Charlie and Mr. Bowditch takes up the first part of the story, and watching the two become firm friends after Bowditch grudgingly admits that his recent fall and ongoing health issues have left him in need of some help and support.
Charlie willingly does this as in his own mind it’s payback for his father managing to kick the drink and become sober, little realising the consequences and what he will discover as a result of his kindness.
I enjoyed the way the reveal of exactly what was hidden away in the garden shed was quite drawn out; you know there’s something otherworldly going on, just not what exactly what it is straight away. By the time the truth is revealed Mr. Bowditch is no longer there is answer Charlie’s questions, and I thought this was quite sad and I would have enjoyed to see Charlie and Mr. Bowditch go to Empis together.

Something Wicked This Way Comes plays a small role within this tale, and I was really glad that by coincidence I’d read that book recently.
I smiled as Charlie borrowed Mr. Bowditch’s copy of the book, knowing what Charlie was about to discover, about the carousel of Something Wicked… and how this might relate to a certain sundial said to exist somewhere in the world of Empis.

At times Fairy Tale reminded me very much of books from the Dark Tower series. Charlie’s journey into the city of Lilimar called to mind scenes from both The Waste Lands and Wizard and Glass.
Character-wise too, there was something that reminded me of the Tower. Mr. Bowditch certainly had a moment or two worthy of a member of Roland’s ka-tet, and Charlie and Jake had similarities too. Later on there’s the observation that ‘there are other worlds than these’ which definitely made me think of the Tower series.

Fairy tale really did live up to it’s title. With magic, adventure, fantasy, a little bit of horror, some memorable characters and a vivid fantasy world in Empis, it really did read like a fairy tale with a modern twist as our lead character was influenced by his past life experience and only to willing to admit that he had a darker side which at times he was willing to embrace.
The book works as a standalone but I can’t help but wish there would be another expedition to this marvellous fantasy world.

Book Review: Cards on the Table (Hercule Poirot #15) by Agatha Christie

Name:  Cards on the Table (Hercule Poirot #15)
Author:  Agatha Christie
Number of Pages:  336 (Kindle)
Published:  December 15, 2003 by William Morrow Paperbacks (First published November 2, 1936)
Genre: Mystery, Crime

A flamboyant party host is murdered in full view of a roomful of bridge players… Mr Shaitana was famous as a flamboyant party host. Nevertheless, he was a man of whom everybody was a little afraid. So, when he boasted to Poirot that he considered murder an art form, the detective had some reservations about accepting a party invitation to view Shaitana’s private collection. Indeed, what began as an absorbing evening of bridge was to turn into a more dangerous game altogether…

My Rating:

My Thoughts:

Cards on the Table proved to be another enjoyable instalment in my reading of the Poirot stories. It has a great premise – four ‘law’ people are invited to an evening with the self-styled Mephistopheles-type Mr. Shaitana. Accompanying them? Four people Shaitana has assured Poirot are murderers who got away with their crime and remain undetected. What a set up!

Inevitably the evening ends in murder.
The man who took great delight in bragging about his ‘collection’ of murderers finds himself the victim in the end. Poirot did warn him about the dangers, but Shaintana wasn’t the sort of man to be deterred.
A good job then that that four who remain to solve the case are Poirot, Superintendent Battle (police detective), Colonel Race (secret service) and Ariadne Oliver (mystery writer).
The four under suspicion are a varied group drawn from a variety of situations and, on the surface, they’re all very normal, which raises the question as to whether Shaitana was indeed correct in his assertions. It’s also a good job there are four very different methods of investigation all working together to solve the case.

The four on the ‘law’ side of the issue are a great bunch, and this is the first time I’ve really come across other main characters from Christie’s series.
Battle made a very brief appearance at the end of Murder is Easy, but here he takes centre stage as he tries to find out who murdered Mr. Shaitana.
Mrs. Adriadne Oliver is a delight of a character. I loved her speculations, her elaborately-wallpapered home, her sometimes untidy appearance and her penchant for bagfuls of apples. She’s witty and observational, and having troubles of her own in writing her latest detective series featuring a Finnish detective called Sven Hjerson. She’s also best placed to find out at least one piece of information that eludes all the other great minds on the case.
Colonel Race is quite enigmatic, as you’d expect for a man possibly in the secret service, and then of course there’s Monsieur Poirot and his little grey cells.

As always there are twists and revelations along the way, people not always being what they seem on the surface, and watching it all unfold was interesting. As the murder occurred during an evening of bridge there’s some mention of the game play which I admit I had no clue about at all. When Poirot took great interest in the scoring cards I did wonder whether I’d have more idea as to where his line of thought was going if I had any idea what he was talking about, but that didn’t take away and enjoyment from my reading as there was so much going on outside of the bridge game.

Cards on the Table was another great mystery, and one I really enjoyed reading even though I had no idea until the reveal who had committed the murder, or whether indeed all of the alleged past murderers had indeed ‘done it’. I’m already looking forward to choosing another book from the Poirot series.