Val McDermid, "The Grave Tattoo"

Don't ever ask me to tell you anything about William Wordsworth. What with this and 'Fair Exchange', my history is hopelessly confused.

In short: Fletcher Christian died shortly after the mutiny on the Bounty (or did he?); Jane Gresham is a respectable post-doc (or is she?); Tenille Cole is going nowhere fast (or is she?); there is more to William Wordsworth than you thought (or is there?)

'The Grave Tattoo' is a valiant attempt to incorporate Lake District legend, scholarly research and police procedural into the same novel, and I'm not entirely convinced by the result. Some of that may be down to the use of Lucida Handwriting or similar for Wordsworth's narrative; it adds a depressingly school-project touch. There were some irritating loose ends (what was the point of the TV crew?). Wise decision not to write Wordsworth's missing epic; there's quite enough Wordsworth in the world already.

All that is not to say that I did not enjoy this book. Certainly it was suspenseful, if not entirely credible. And it's quite fun to see some of the more esoteric areas of Eng Lit dissected. Overall, though, not a keeper.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/9896869

Dick Francis, "Come to Grief"

Sid Halley is an ex-jockey, turned PI following the loss of his hand in a racing accident, and in this book investigating the mutilation of horses. We know from the get-go who the villain is: one of Sid's friends (though I was never really able to believe this; the two of them seemed to do very little together); the book is mainly about the unravelling of the mystery and the psychological consequences for Sid, and others.

On the whole, though, this is a very run-of-the-mill Francis (so much so that I caught myself thinking, here we are three quarters of the way through, and nobody's tied him up yet? and then they did) and none the worse for that. I liked the ending, the refusal to take the easy way out and make everybody happy, to leave some things hanging.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/10020289

Tess Gerritsen, "The Mephisto Club"

A silly book. Or perhaps not silly so much as trying to encompass two genres, where in the one certain things are assumed to be true and in the other they are assumed to be false, and falling between the two stools. Sometimes it is appropriate to leave questions unanswered; at other times it just looks as if the author is trying to have her cake and eat it. All her characters choose one way or the other. She doesn't.

Unimpressed by nobody being able to work out mirror writing until actually seeing it in a mirror. I like to have my detectives be cleverer than me.

Also, lots of people thinking in italics, and that always annoys me. I've worked out why, now: it's because it enforces too sharp a demarcation between the character's thoughts and the author's. It's almost like a point of view shift mid-paragraph; it's something that would flow past me if the typeface remained the same, but marking it out like that makes a nasty, sudden jolt.

And once one has Susan Howatch's psychic clerics in one's head, they never leave. I had Frs Darrow and Hall tut-tutting all the way through about Messing Around with the paranormal, Being Too Sceptical, Being Too Gullible, and Breaking One's Vows And Then Celebrating Mass Without Having First Made Confession. But that's my problem rather than Tess Gerritsen's.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/10020326