JULY 2015 - READING LIST AND PICK OF THE MONTH

Another decent month's reading but the blogging and reviewing proved to be a bit of a struggle.

I still have about 4 books to post a few semi-coherent thoughts on from last month.

The full list of reads is as follows:

Larry D. Sweazy - See Also Murder (2015) (4)

Max Allan Collins - Hush Money (1981) (4)

Nik Frobenius - Dark Branches (2015) (4)

John Lantigua - Heat Lightning (1987) (4)

Chelsea Cain - Heartsick (2007) (4)

Bill Pronzini - Labyrinth (1981) (5)

Ken Bruen - Merrick (2014) (3)

Sam Abbott - A Cold Goodbye (2015) (4)

Charles Bukowski - The Bell Tolls For No One (2015) (4)

Jonathan Craig - Junkie (1952) (4)

Pick of the month and the only title meriting an arbitrary 5 stars - Bill Pronzini's Labyrinth from 1981 - the 6th entry in his still running series.

Second most enjoyable book was Max Allan Collins - 4th Nolan entry Hush Money from the same year.

One disappointment - Ken Bruen's Merrick - more on that to follow soon.

A bit of useless data..........

10 reads from 10 different authors.

6 of the 10 were new-to-me authors.

1 of the 10 was a 5 star read and 8 of the other 10 were 4's – with only one 3 star.



8 of the 10 authors read were male. 2 were female.

Cover of the month! The Bell Tolls For No One

6 of the 10 authors hail from the US. 1 from England - now domiciled in the US, 1 from Ireland, 1 from Norway, 1 from Germany - though his prose have more of a grounding in the US - Charles Bukowski! (Birthplace is my arbitrary identifier.)

One book from the 50s, three from the 80s, one from the 2000s and 5 from this decade.

9 were definitely fiction - Bukowski's book was a selection of his pieces that were originally put out under his Notes of a Dirty Old Man underground newspaper column. There were a few short stories as well in there - so we'll call it 50/50. Fiction-non fiction.

3 books were sent to me by the authors (or publicists/publishers on their behalf) – cheers!.

2 were accessed via Edelweiss review site (similar to Net Galley), 1 was a Munsey's freebie

4 were pre-owned/bought!

4 were paperbacks, 1 was a hardback, 4 were Kindle reads and 1 was a PDF file.

Total page count - 2260