Reading matters

Yesterday evening I started reading the 25th and possibly final novel in the Bob Skinner series by the Edinburgh author Quintin Jardine. Years ago, when I was still buying 'booky books', I enjoyed the writer's early works. Then my indulgence in 'Tartan Noir' broadened to focus more on stories told by Christopher Brookmyre and Ian Rankin.

At the beginning of May I downloaded Grievous Angel, a story set in Bob Skinner's past and the 21st book in the series first published in 2011. I was hooked, not so much by the detective himself but by all of the supporting characters... on both sides of the law!

But what a lot of them there are in the subsequent books, with many dramatis personae added to the crowd but without Jardine abandoning the continuing stories of figures long established. It's been a taxing but most enjoyable task keeping them and their complex inter-relationships clear in my mind.