A young woman from a prominent family is missing and the Edinburgh police are looking for her. In time, they find her body. A small wooden coffin is found near her home, and DI John Rebus links that to some cold cases, while DC Siobhan Clarke tracks down the mysterious Quizmaster on the Internet.

Another enjoyable and competent police procedural from Ian Rankin.

Willie Dunne is the innocent 18-year-old son of a senior Dublin policeman, who promptly joins the Royal Dublin Fusiliers when the First World War breaks out, along with thousands of other Irishmen. Their early optimism that the war will be over by Christmas 1914 is soon crushed as both sides get bogged down in the trench warfare of the Western Front. Four long, brutal years of stalemate in the killing fields of Flanders follow, and much of Willie's regiment die during …continue.

When I buy a book, I want to be able to read it how and where I like, not where the bookseller dictates. With printed books, the very idea of the bookseller having any say is ridiculous. The book is now my property, to read where and how I like, to give away or to lend or even to sell. I've bought thousands of new books and thousands more secondhand books from bookstores.

Most electronic books are crippled with DRM. DRM stands for Digital Rights Management, although Defective By Design prefers to expand DRM as Digital Re­stric­tions Management. DRM is technology that controls digital content after it has been sold. In …continue.

As I mentioned last week, we've been listening to some audiobooks. We finished listening to The Bee­keep­er's Apprentice last night. I read the book many years ago and I've read most of the subsequent books in the Mary Russell series.

Fifteen-year-old Mary Russell is walking on the Sussex Downs with her head in a book one spring day in 1915, when she literally trips over Sherlock Holmes. Although Holmes is almost four decades her senior, the two brilliant, lonely people become friends and Holmes tutors Russell in the …continue.

I mentioned last week that a few months ago we had listened to the audiobook of The Hot Rock, the first of the Dortmunder novels. I just finished reading it as an ebook on my phone. I enjoyed it a lot but I think I found it funnier when I heard it as an audiobook. Partly, the first time around, I didn't know what was coming next; partly, the narrator's skillful delivery gave me time to savor the humor. I read so fast that …continue.

Jack Whyte's Camulod Chronicles is a series of novels about King Arthur and Camelot in a post-Roman Britain. This book tells how Lancelot (Clothar the Frank) came to Camulod and met Arthur—and it takes the entire book to get to that point. Only after several hundred pages of Clothar's childhood and early manhood and fighting a civil war in his uncle's small kingdom in Gaul, do we proceed to Britain.

As with Uther and other books in the series, I found Whyte to be …continue.

I've always been an avid—nay, avari­cious—read­er of books. But I have not been a listener of audiobooks.

I read quickly, much more quickly than anyone can speak, and I enjoy burying my head in a book. I've seen little reason, therefore, to listen to audiobooks. Lately, however, we've listened to some audiobooks on long car trips, as Emma, unlike me, has an Audible sub­scrip­tion. We enjoyed The Hot Rock, the first of the comic crime-caper Dortmunder books. Before that, I had read another Dortmunder novel, Bank Shot, aloud to Emma, while she drove us back from Portland, which both of us had enjoyed.

On our trip to Vancouver earlier this week, we …continue.

Detective Inspector Tony McLean of the Edinburgh Police has multiple deaths to deal with: an elderly rich man, murdered horribly; the newly discovered corpse of a girl killed in some ghoulish ritual sixty years ago; and the death of the grand­moth­er who raised him. Then more elderly men start being murdered.

I enjoyed this police procedural and I liked the character of Tony McLean. The two cases start dove­tail­ing together (one of my pet peeves) and I was surprised when the author introduced su­per­nat­ur­al elements, since I had thought it …continue.

Danny Boyle is growing up in Dublin in the 1960s and 1970s, watched over by his grand­moth­er. First as she raises him, then from beyond the grave. Danny, as his parents did before him, is making a mess of his life, and he's a small-time drug dealer with some big problems.

I grew up in Dublin, about a decade behind Danny Boyle, so I enjoyed Murphy's evocation of Dublin in the 1970s. However, I disliked his constant changing of viewpoint and frequent hopping back and forth …continue.

Marsh Tanner is a San Francisco private in­ves­ti­ga­tor. His secretary Peggy is starting to unravel, as she's been getting sexually harassing phone calls for months, which she's hidden from Marsh. Thing is, she's also started to develop a case of Stockholm syndrome with her stalker. Marsh discovers more about Peggy—and him­self—than he really wants to.

Moderately enjoyable. I found the plot and the characters plausible, unlike so many modern stories.