Welcome to 2022

Thank you to all the Euro Crime visitors - to the blog, the FaceBook page and/or the website - for your comments and emails, I do so appreciate them. I hope to post more regularly this year.

I'm still working on January's releases but it'll be up soon and I'll have news on the Petrona 2022 in due course as well. 

I haven't been reading lots during the pandemic so I haven't got a top ten of 2021 as such. I would point you at the Petrona 2021 shortlist and I also enjoyed The Mist by Ragnar Jonasson tr. Victoria Cribb. Other favourites from last year were The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman and Crossed Skis by Carol Carnac as part of my belated discovery of E C R Lorac.

I'm currently reading Murder on the Lusitania by Edward Marston - I own a twenty-year-old paperback copy of it from when it first came out as 'by Conrad Allen' - but am reading the just released kindle version. I also own a print version of the second book, Murder on the Mauretania, and am pleased to see that Allison & Busby are releasing all eight books in the series (at least on kindle) by June 2022.

I'm also listening to The Joy and Light Bus Company by Alexander McCall Smith narrated by Adjoa Andoh, the twenty-second in the Mma Ramotswe series, one of the few series I'm up to date with. I'm relieved to see that volume twenty-three, A Song of Comfortable Chairs, is scheduled for September.

Highlights from 2020

As we're back in a Lockdown in the UK, here are a few things I enjoyed watching and reading in the previous year's main Lockdown.

I've unfortunately lost my reading mojo, it probably went before Lockdown ie when my Dad died. 

Some people are reading like never before and demolishing their stacks of unread books. Me - I've turned to 'Star Trek' and children's books. A few reading highlights from 2020 though included my belated discovery of Raymond Chandler. I read and reviewed The Big Sleep back in May as part of my working from home - trying something new and also available as an ebook on the library's catalogue  - and it has stayed with me.  

My favourite children's book of last year's reads was Orion Lost by Alastair Chisholm, which I reviewed here. This is a thriller/mystery set in space.  

TV-wise, my partner and I devoured the Shakespeare and Hathaway series. The first episode didn't start very promisingly but then we were hooked. Equally as belated as my reading of Chandler was our tackling of The Bridge. Absolutely gripping, and now we've gone back to the early series of Line of Duty as we started with series 3 which meant somethings were more of a surprise to us than they should have been! [I believe all these programmes are still on iPlayer.]

Coming up on the blog soon, will be January's new releases, a list of the Petrona Award 2021 eligibles, and hopefully my partner and I can devise a workaround to get my website updated.

Stay Safe and Thanks for Reading

Happy New Year's Reading

A big thank you to everyone one who contributes to and finds some use from Euro Crime. I hope Euro Crime continues to help readers find new authors and new books.

The book I'm possibly most excited about reading in 2014 is... Dog Will Have His Day by Fred Vargas tr. Sian Reynolds which is the follow-up to my all time favourite Vargas, The Three Evangelists.

What's your most looked forward to book? Here are some of the titles released in 2014.