Books read in June

 So, here we are, halfway through the year. Incredible. Wherever you are I hope the summer heat is not too intense - those in the northern hemisphere of course. (I have no idea whether anyone in the southern hemisphere, Oz or NZ etc., reads my blog.) We've had a couple of short heatwaves but our 'heatwave' temps are not comparable to places where the heat is serious. It doesn't get to 40C (104f) here, for instance, which it frequently does in other countries. So it's all relative. I personally hate anything over 30C (86f) and am really not a summer fan at all! Give me autumn or winter, and I'm mostly happy with spring too, but not summer. 

Anyway, enough of the weather report. Books. I read 6 in June, with not a dud among them, so for me, it was a good reading month.

26. A Book of Bones - John Connolly 

27. Death Rites - Sarah Ward 

28. Children of Ruin - Adrian Tchaikovsky 

29. Pandora - Susan Stokes 

30. Lessons in Crime - edited by Martin Edwards (to be reviewed)

31. Death Sentence - Damien Boyd.

This is book six in Damien Boyd's 'Nick Dixon' series. It starts with a frightening death, underwater in a cave. And that's left hanging until a long way into the book. The real start is the discovery of a dead body in a WW2 pillbox on the side of of a canal in Somerset. It turns out to be a man named Alan Fletcher, and someone has killed him and  made him inhale brick dust before he died. It's bewildering and Nick Dixon and his team get nowhere until they discover that the dead man was a decorated Falklands war veteran and begin to investigate what happened to him in that war. This series is one of the best police procedural series you will find anywhere. It's painstaking in its attention to little details and I find it fascinating. The main characters have lives and partners, Nick lives with one of his former junior officers so she has had to be placed elsewhere within the Somerset police force. But none of this overwhelms the plot of each story and neither are there sob stories and angst and alcoholics and God knows what else. It's ordinary life as we know it, late home from work, both tired, so grabbing takeaways or nipping to the pub to sit by the fire with pie and chips. It does help of course that I know most of the settings of each book because I live in the next county to Somerset and have lived there in the past. It all feels so real. Another terrific instalment of this excellent series. I'm waaay behind, this one was written in 2016, so this year I want to read more and catch up a bit as there are now fifteen books!

So there you go, I couldn't choose a favourite as I enjoyed them all - all were four or five star reads... that's a good reading month.

I hope you're all keeping well. I say this as several of my blogging pals are not having a good time at the moment with health issues of spouses and bereavements. And I don't know if anyone remembers the lovely Pat from the blog, Here, There and Everywhere. We became good friends almost from the moment I started my blog in 2007, sharing a love of books and Star Trek and chatting on the phone occasionally. Very sadly, she passed away a couple of weeks ago, her health had not been good for years but it was still a real shock. She will be sadly missed. So please take of yourselves.