It may not look like it, but November has been another slow month for reading. By November 18th or so, I had only read two books – and both of them had been started in October. But then matters improved. It occured to me that I have been all over the world this month. Here are the books I read: with some brief thoughts and/or links to reviews. The first three have been reviewed (or are about to be reviewed) by me on Crime Fiction Lover.
Bogdan Hrib: Kill the General – a Romanian conspiracy thriller
Sergios Gakas: Ashes – set in Athens just before the Olympic Games 2004
Alan Glynn: Bloodland – set partly in Congo, Ireland and US
Mari Hannah: The Murder Wall – set in party capital of the UK, Newcastle – the first in what promises to be a gripping police procedural series
Lemony Snicket: The Austere Academy – set in the world’s grimmest boarding-school
W. Szymborska: View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems – set in Poland and the world; deceptively simple, yet always profound and troubling
Henning Mankell: The Shadow Girls – set in Sweden and illegal immigrant camps; not a crime novel, an odd combination of tongue-in-cheek description of a writer’s life, and a much more serious description of immigrant life in Sweden
Gillian Flynn: Gone Girl – set in Missouri.
Finally I got to read Gillian Flynn’s much praised book and (unlike last month) I felt the hype was justified. I will write more about it in a later post, but this was most assuredly my Crime Fiction Pick of the Month (see lovely Kerrie from Mysteries in Paradise about this meme). Not sure about the ending, rather nasty characters, but so cleverly written – I stayed up all night to finish it.
Related articles
- The Shadow Girls – Henning Mankell (gcbooks.wordpress.com)
- The Best of 2012 (meandmybigmouth.typepad.com)
- Lose Yourself in Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn: A Book Review (paulineprobynblog.wordpress.com)
findingtimetowrite 
Marina Sofia – I’m impressed with the different kinds of books you’ve read. And thanks for putting these together in one post; I like learning about what other people read.
It was nice that Gone Girl lived up to its hype; I enjoyed it very much as well. One of these days I’ll read her novel Sharp Objects as well. I’ve heard it’s also very good.