Just back from a wild weekend in the Cairngorms! More to follow when we've recovered from quite an epic!

The Three Evangelists by Fred Vargas

Don’t be fooled by the title. This books has nothing to do with religion!

To explain, the three evangelists of the title are four guys who end up sharing a large, run down house in Paris. They are called Mathias, Lucien and Marc and his uncle/godfather, Vandoosler. Hence their nickname St Matthew, St Luke and St Mark as dubbed by Vandoosler.

The story concerns the disappearance and death of their next door neighbour, Sophia Simonidis, a retired opera singer of some renown.

Vandoosler is a retired police commisaire and becomes involved in the investigation through an old contact in the ‘flics’. The three evangelists’ help is enlisted in varying ways. The story is very literate and humorous as well as being a well plotted crime thriller. The characters of the ‘evangelists’ are interesting in that they are all historians who specialize in different historical periods.

Matthias’ interest is in prehistoric times, hence his predilection for wearing little or no clothes throughout the story!, Marc is into the Middle Ages, but seems more interested in the niece of the missing opera singer, and Lucien is a World War I specialist, who dubs the neighbours on either side the Western Front or the Eastern Front!

Although the books is by no means long, it does keep you engrossed and totally unsure of where it might be going and went a long way to making me a fan of Fred Vargas, who by the way is a female writer!

Review of Promise Me by Harlan Coben

Promise Me is the much anticipated return of the character of Myron Bolitar,the wise cractking Sports Agent created by Coben as an accidental private investigator who gets involved with his clients problems, helped alond the way by his psycho pal, Win and his wrestling secretary, Esperenza.
It’s been over 6 years since Coben has written a Bolitar mystery, he’s been busy writing stand alone novels which have managed to build up a very large fan base for him.
Most of these books have been very good and have been of the ‘twist in the tale’ type thriller which keeps most of us guessing until the end.
The new Bolitar mystery is more of the same, I suppose, although I thought it didn’t have quite enough meat to flesh the story out. Plus there wasn’t enough of psycho Win in it.
Interestingly, there is a crossover of a character from Coben’s previous book, the Innocent. The character of Loren Muse appears to investigate the disappearance of the daughter of one of Bolitar’s friends which provides the crux of the whole story. Bolitar becomes involved because he was apparently the last person to see her before she disappeared.
What follows is a neat tale of twists and turns, a small amount of violence and a whole lot of wisecracks from Bolitar.
On the whole, I would say that I wasn’t disappointed with Promise Me and that I would read any further instalments should they appear in time. 4/5.

Review of The Devil’s Star by Jo Nesbo

After several years of reading various Scandinavian crime writers viz Henning Mankell, Arnaldur Indridason, Karin Fossum and Ade Edwardsson with their own particular style and feel, it was nice to come across another new writer who could grab your attention and keep it glued to the written page for over 500 (admittedly small) pages without much pause for breath.

The book introduces the character of Harry Hole, a police detective from Oslo. To say he’s an anti-hero is a bit of an understatement! From the outset, this guy is a deadbeat. He seems to be on a permanent drinking binge from the start. He’s just lost a colleague at work on his previous case and relationship with Rake has just crumbled around him. Indeed, he’s about to get his notice to terminate employment just before he gets his teeth in the current case.

It’s the middle of a tropical summer in Oslo and there seems to be a ritual serial killer stalking the streets. A killer is striking at random and leaving behing bizarre clues – a blood red diamond, a pentagram and a missing finger!

Since half the police department is on holiday, there’s nothing for it but Hole must work the case with his arch nemesis Detective Tom Waaler, who he has suspected as being corrupt for some time now.
Hole manages to clean up his act and get to grips with the case which does give him the chance to expose Waaler and deal with this creep once and for all.

All in all the book is very well paced and contains enough twist and turns to keep you guessing until the end.
My only complaint is that although this is the first Harry Hole mystery to be translated into English, the second one to be published The Redbreast should be read before it, not after!

My challenge for this week was to post a piccy. This was Fergus (one of the few non work photos on my pc). It worked!!! -J