October Books

Before You Leap by Keith Houghton

Started 4 October
Finished 6 October

A quick read, and entertaining. Slightly clichéd in places, but a rollercoaster ride with a couple of twists I really didn't expect. I like a thriller that surprises me, and this did. The book starts near the denouement (or at least what you think might be) and then leads up to that point. Except that what you expect to happen, doesn't, followed by a final twist at the end. A better book then I expected, to be honest.

A Taste For War by Jack McDevitt

Started 6 October
Finished 27 October

I picked up this book on the recommendation of some friends on social media. It's the first in a series about Alex Benedict, an antiquities dealer who, in this case, gets involved in the mystery surrounding an historic battle, missing people and a missing spaceship. The story is based in the future, with the main characters investigating events a few hundred years earlier, but still very much in our future. This is the kind of science fiction I enjoy. Nothing too fantasy-based, rather, it's a good story based in a different time. Having grown up on a diet of Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein, this book was very much to my taste. It started slowly and I had some doubts, but I was gradually drawn deeper into the story and the central mystery. I have a couple of other books in the series and I look forward to reading them. This is an author that is very definitely on my watch list.

The Girl In The Ice by Robert Bryndza

Started 28 October
Finished 30 October

I hadn't expected too much from this, although some of my friends on Facebook had "liked" the author's page. I picked this one up for £0.99 on Amazon, deciding to give it a go. There were a few proofing errors in the kindle version - "discrete" when it should have been "discreet", but not as many as in some books.
I found this a quick read, although it did entail a few late nights, as I wanted to find out what happened in the next chapter. So, in my opinion, suitably paced for a thriller. Set in London, the locations were familiar to me and the plot had enough twists and turns to hold my interest, but not so many that it felt forced or implausible. Yes, it's the first in a series about a detective and, yes, it's a variation on the maverick cop theme, but the central character was sympathetically written and there was enough meat to the back story to make sense of her attitude. I enjoyed the book and another author goes on my "read more" list.