Five years ago, the Greatcoats were the lawgivers of Tristia. And then the good king was deposed by the dukes and the Greatcoats were broken up. Now despised, only a few are left, taking work as caravan guards and sellswords. Falcio, the former First Cantor, finally starts to care again, as he is sucked into the dukes' intrigues.

Traitor's Blade starts out light-hearted and joky, growing darker and more passionate as Falcio opens himself up and re­dis­cov­ers his honor. De Castell is a fine sto­ry­teller and the …continue.

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.

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.

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.

The first volume of John Cleese's au­to­bi­og­ra­phy takes us through the first 30 years of his life, from his birth in Weston-super-Mare in 1939 to the creation of Monty Python's Flying Circus in 1969. I learned along the way that his mother was im­pos­si­ble; that the Pythons consider themselves writers first, performers second; that he greatly enjoyed his school years; quite a lot about the various TV and radio shows he worked on before Python; not much about his first marriage to Connie Booth; and that his speech in A …continue.