Janice

This is a very small book that tells the story of a puppy following its mum out into the wide, wide world.

The puppy loses sight of his mum as she can run much faster and keep up with her owner.  But the puppy finds shelter under a large spruce tree and survives in the most remarkable way through the winter. When the spring comes he slowly comes to accept the food from a very patient man by a cabin near the lake, but not until after some really frightening things happen to him.  

The Slaughter Pavilion is an amazing book set in Beijing. Author Catherine Sampson worked as a Beijing correspondant for the Times and started her career life by working for the BBC.

Bright Splinters of the Mind is a book that explains how the mind of an Autistic  'Savant' works in a very different way to anyone else on the planet.

The title for this book is 'The Lemur' which is the nick name that Big Bill Mulholland's son-in-law gives the researcher who he engages for help with the book he has been commissioned to write on Big Bill.

The book is just 184 pages long but what a great deal goes into those pages. We have murder, we have John Glass's mistress and we have his wifes' affairs so what else could you want? The Lemur goes at such a fast pace it is hard at times to keep up with whom is with who?  

Anthony McGowan has tackle a subject that I think is the bain of many cities around the world but also on the streets of London and the whole of the UK.

Reading this book was not easy and it does have a warning on the back cover- 'stating not suitable for younger readers' - and I must ask parents to be aware of the theme that this book plays out and the destruction that destroys communities when gangs build up around schools and towns.

This book is based around the disappearance of a child named Josy with her father, a recognised psychiatrist who is very well respected in his field, giving up his practice to try and recapture what happened to his daughter. He decides to withdraw from the world to a quiet Island and go over what has happened in the four years since her disappearance!  But is that what is really happening?

Michael Connelly is one of the most brilliant crime writers I know. His latest book The Brass Verdict, will have you guessing from the start until the outcome at the end.

I must quote from the back of the cover of the book,  a comment by Harlan Coben, and I have to agree with it - " Its hard to believe just how good Gerritsen is. This is crime-writing at its most unputdownable, and nerve-tingling best." 

Nerve tingling, disarming, very unusual and brilliant is this latest crime book by Tess Gerritsen.  The story unravels and you keep thinking what's going to happen next?  Where is this leading to? 

This is an unusual novel because it is written around a convention for Sherlock Holmes based in a small town in Switzerland: the events that occur are also very bizarre to say the least!

To read about other authors doing Sherlock Holmes seems very strange!  All the authors brought together have either plagiarized some of Holmes's work or twisted it into a re-write of the great man, and also many other men and women's crime fiction.