Reading matters

Given the longer-than-usual weekend I must permit myself not one but two paperbacks in order to deal with all the free time to fill. I reported last week with regard to my reservations about the style David Baldacci has adopted in his latest novel. I must now admit that I haven't yet finished the book.

Partly this is due to a simple miscalculation. Normally I try to make an average paperback suffice for three reading sessions... a couple of evenings at home... Friday afternoon at the beach. But for some reason... tired eyes, perhaps... I set Baldacci aside at a point where reading it to the end will only occupy me for about an hour, which hardly constitutes a satisfactory session. And I am confident that hero and heroine will emerge from the labyrinthine caverns... that their injuries will be described in graphic detail... that the villain will have a gory comeuppance. Not really much point in actually reading it, then.

But yesterday's purchase in the Macgrudy's section of the supermarket is an entirely different case. The first session yesterday evening kept me reading beyond the half-way point in the book... and I'll likely finish it in one more go. 

After only a few pages I had a total recall of the very engaging dramatis personae Mo Hyder has previously featured in one or two earlier titles. And she is a writer who knows well how to use the structure of a police procedural while also introducing very original and believable characters in a West Country setting the reader comes to know intimately.

A most satisfactory read... and probably finished tonight.

And for Friday on the beach I think that Robert Crais "The First Rule" will not disappoint.