One name that appears several times on my 2018 list is Mick Herron. He has created a bunch of misfit characters working on the very periphery of the secret service. They are quite unlovely and yet addictive. I rooted for them in Slow Horses, cheered them on in Real Tigers and worried about them in Spook Street. There's more to come in 2019 so hurrah for that.
The scariest read of the year had to be Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Not having seen even a minute of the highly popular TV adaption, I threw myself into the book and was rewarded with a vision of chilling bleakness. It's a grim story and unnervingly believable. Equally downbeat was Charles Bukowski's tale of a man dragging himself around dead-end jobs in the USA, Factotum. You could almost smell the poverty and stale beer.
It's good to laugh though and there were giggles aplenty courtesy of two Joesph Connolly novels, Summer Things and Winter Breaks. The characters are Ayckbourn-esque and the petty snobbery of suburban life lends itself well to these stories. There were also unintentional chuckles in Georgette Heyer's hoary 1940s murder mystery A Christmas Party. This ticked all the required boxes of a mansion house killing - sour owner, flighty niece, scheming nephew and an acidic butler. He didn't do it by the way.
A slow burn of a read is also appreciated so thanks to Jon McGregor and Reservoir 13. The story follows the reactions of villagers over several years following the disappearance of a young girl. Everyone has their own take on the mystery. Many have secrets that need to be protected.
Agatha Christie featured on my list several times and one of the novels I read during the summer, The ABC Murders, was dramatised by the BBC over Christmas. The latter was a little more earthy than Christie's novel though. She didn't really 'do' sex. Death on the Nile and The Mystery of the Blue Train were also entertaining despite being the best part of eighty years old.
Other honourable mentions this year go to:
The Dark Circle by Linda Grant - tales of a post-war TB clinic
Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch - what happens when the Met Police has to deal with the supernatural
Christadora by Tim Murphy - sex and drugs in Manhattan over a thirty year period
A Boy in Winter by Rachel Seiffert - a tale of hope from Nazi-occupied Ukraine
Theft by Finding by David Sedaris - collected ramblings from the master diarist
The Shelf go the Unread still takes pride of place in one of the spare bedrooms. A wealth of loveliness waiting to be explored in 2019.
