50 Book Challenge

#44 Kate O'Keeffe: Styling Wellywood: A fashionable romantic comedy.
I am not normally one for chick-lit. The heroines are often shallow simpering self-obsessed idiots, who somehow, through a sequence of cringe-worthy blunders find Mr. Right and stay out of debt jail... or something. But this one was taking place in New Zealand, where I have lived for a while, and I was curious. And I absolutely loved it. It is chick-lit with the requisite blunders and Mr. Right, but it is also about friendship and growing up and facing up to your problems. It's about the veneer of glamour vs. real happiness. And it is about realizing that you don't need to live in a busting metropolis like London to be happy. And about love for Wellington.

#45 I. J. Parker Akitada's First Case.
It's hard to make big judgements about a short story. The plot was OK, but I had no feeling that it was happening in medieval Japan. Might as well have been modern New York. Not sure I want more.

#46 Sarah Woodbury: The Good Knight (A Gareth and Gwen Medieval Mystery).
Same as above. I could not feel the atmosphere. Everybody was so modern.

Book 143: The Telling Error (Spilling CID #9).
Author: Sophie Hannah, 2014.
Genre: Crime Fiction. Police Procedural. Psychological Thriller.
Other Details: Hardback. 374 pages.

Stuck in a traffic jam, Nicki Clements sees a face she hoped never to see again. It's definitely him, the same police officer, stopping each car on Elmhirst Road. Keen to avoid him, Nicki does a U-turn and makes a panicky escape. Or so she thinks. The next day, Nicki is pulled in for questioning in connection with the murder of Damon Blundy, controversial newspaper columnist and resident of Elmhirst Road.

Nicki can't answer any of the questions detectives fire at her. She has no idea why the killer used a knife in such a peculiar way, or why 'HE IS NO LESS DEAD' was painted on Blundy's study wall. And she can't explain why she avoided Elmhirst Road that day without revealing the secret that could ruin her life. Because although Nicki is not guilty of murder, she is far from innocent . . . - synopsis from UK publisher's website website.

I always look forward to Sophie Hannah's latest in this series, which combines a taunt psychological thriller with a police procedural featuring odd couple Simon Waterhouse and Charlie Zailer. I did note that the series has been re-branded from Spilling CID to Culver Valley Crime though for continuity's sake I shall stick with the original series title.

The Telling Error carries Hannah's signature style of providing an intriguing and complex mystery with another of her deeply troubled female protagonists. As a result I was happily glued to my armchair for a couple of days as the story enfolded and as usual I could not keep up with the many twists and turns before the final reveal. I also partly listened to this via my Audible copy but read all of the print edition borrowed from the library.