Books read in May / June

10) The Lost Ones by Ace Atkins (Edgars nominee, Best Novel)
 11) Never Come Back by John Mair

From the blurb for The Lost Ones : "Fresh from ten years as a U.S. Army Ranger, Quinn Colson finds his hands full as the newly elected sheriff of Tibbehah County, Mississippi.  An old buddy running a local gun shop may be in over his head when stolen army rifles start showing up in the hands of a Mexican drug gang.

At the same time, an abused-child case leads Quinn and his tough-as-nails deputy, Lillie Virgil, deep into the heart of a bootleg baby racket and a trail of darkness and death. And when the two cases collide, Quinn and his allies are forced to realize that, though they may be home from the war, they are now in the fight of their lives."

Ace Atkins' satisfying modern day Western has fun with some of the classic tropes of the genre (soldier returning to his hometown to clean the place up ; corrupt big businessman thinks he can buy and sell the law ; a deputised posse taking on the bad guys in a pitched gun battle), told with an enjoyable, not-a-word-wasted, laconic turn of phrase.  Myself and Mrs Fen are thoroughly enjoying the A&E series Longmire, and this has a lot of similarities (the Lille Virgil analog in the TV series, Vic Moretti, is played by Katee Sackhoff.)  This is the second book in the series - book one has just come out in the UK, and being marketed (quite correctly I think) at fans of Lee Child.

I tracked down a copy of Never Come Back (not difficult) after reading this endorsement of it by a Penguin Green Crime enthusiast. (My copy is the OUP 1986 re-issue.)  This is an enjoyable man-on-the-run thriller, but the difference between this and The Thirty Nine Steps or Rogue Male is that Desmond Thane,  the man in question is, in Dilys Powell's words,  "cynical, heartless, an intellectual smart alec".  He's also supercilious, glib, cowardly... and a murderer -  Yet despite this we still root for him.  There's an entertainingly inept committee of conspirators (John Mair has great fun providing the minutes of their meetings), an antiquarian secret code, a fascinating wartime New Grub Street / literary London backdrop, and the terrific, enigmatic, figure of Anna Raven, using Thane for sex.  I have no memory at all of the David Pirie's 1990 adaptation of this for the BBC, but can easily imagine Nathaniel Parker and Suzanna Hamilton as ideal in their roles.

'E-Shorts' read in March / April / May / June

Marcus Sedgwick's The Spear of Destiny is a fun read, getting the characters spot on and with some nice jokes gently woven into the story for hardcore fans. If the author got hit by a time storm and had been able to pitch this to Terrance and Barry, then it might well have been made - and if it hadn't Big Finish would have adapted it from the draft scripts in the last couple of years.

Philip Reeve's note perfect pastiche of season 15 Doctor Who, The Roots of Evil, is pacy, witty, confident and engaging - I particularly liked the description of "one of those twenty-fourth-century computers with the big dials and buttons" which describes any number of pieces of high tech kit on view in 1970s SF TV. It's "The Face of Evil" re-worked with touches of Brian Aldiss' "Hothouse" and Robert Heinlein's "Orphans of the Sky",  executed with an enviable lightness of touch.

Patrick Ness' Tip of the Tongue is a departure for this series - a Doctor Who story which barely features the character.  It works on its own merits as a 1940s set tale of adolescence / of being an outsider. It reminded me a lot of Philip K Dick's early short SF, with dash of Stephen King's small town settings for characters being evilly vindictive to each other ("Needful Things" particularly.) Includes the glorious line "The sheepfish looked sheepish".

Richelle Mead's Something Borrowed is a notch down from the previous three entries - still perfectly acceptable, and having Peri as narrator lifts a slightly predictable story.  Not one to return to though.