A bookish day...

The rain bypassed Spain today and is coming down in stair rods in Devon instead:



So I'm having a bookish day here today with a visit to the library and Waterstones inbetween the torrential showers.

The aim at Waterstones was to get a copy of Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer as I'm halfway through New Moon and absolutely loving it. But it was on offer as a three for two so I picked up a couple of other things too:



Palace Council by Stephen L. Carter is for my husband so I don't really know what that is but the other one, Indian Takeaway by Hardeep Singh Kohli, the comedian and TV presenter, is an investigation into his Indian and Scottish roots. I'm a bit of a fan so this sounded rather good.

And then I found that Waterstone's new edition of their most excellent book magazine, Books Quarterly, is out. After the last one came out I had to go and buy The Gruffalo for my grandson because the picture of the book on the front made him think it was his current favourite book! Heheheh. Anyway, here's this quarter's with its pic from Sarah Waters's new book on the front:



And then it was off to the library:



Three books from there - Another book by P.J. Tracy (see review below), the first in the series this time (I think...) A Georgette Heyer crime yarn, Envious Casca, and a short story collection by E.W. Hornung, Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman.

And this is the library pile as it stands at the moment:



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And last but not least a quick book review - Snow Blind by P.J. Tracy.



This one is set in Minnesota, partly in the city of Minneapolis and partly out in the nearby countryside. The bodies of two dead policemen are discovered, disguised as snowmen, in a park where a lot of children are having a snowman building competition. A day later another body is discovered, also disguised as a snowman, on a frozen lake, north of the city. Detectives Magozzi and Rolseth are sent north to liaise with rookie sheriff, Iris Rikker, to try and discover if this is a copy-cat killing or the same killer at work. They quickly discover that the dead man in this case is a probation officer and that his killer is probably a wife beater he was interviewing who is now on the run. The detectives can't see the connection but unusual facts keep coming to light that connect the two cases in what seem like trivial ways *at first*...

Well, the first thing to say here is that this is the 4th. book in this series. This is typical of me. I had no idea - Hubby just passed it on to me from his library pile, telling me that he quite enjoyed it, which is unusual enough in itself! It seems the first three books are not about these two detectives but more about a team of computer geeks who help the police - 'Monkeywrench' or something. They do appear in this 4th. book but not in any major way.

Anyway, like my husband, I actually quite liked the book too. I liked the two detectives, found the plot pacey and interesting, and absolutely adored the snowy Minneapolis and Minnesota setting (blame Mary Tyler Moore!) I had some idea fairly early on of what was going on but it didn't spoil my enjoyment at all. I suppose if I have a complaint it would be that there does seem to be a slight implication in it that most men are wife beaters and that did get a bit wearing by the end of the book. The 'author' is actually two women, a mother and daughter team, which has got to be slightly unusual? Anyway, not a bad read... and I've just picked up the first in the series from the library.

And now it's stopped raining at long last and the sun's out.