May 2022

First of all, some of you might be pleased to hear that this post is not about a Scottish author! Don’t get too excited, though, because I’ve got another couple coming up shortly! The books and the character I’m writing about here are the creation of a former London solicitor called Damien Boyd and they […]

I wrote this post some time ago, at just about the same time as I was launching the blog and it covers a bit of ground which I have subsequently written about in more specific posts since then. However, I was looking at it again and I think there is perhaps enough new material in

Now, I’ll say right from the start that Quintin Jardine’s Bob Skinner books will not be to everyone’s taste! I like them because the author is a good story teller and the books are, for the most part, set in Edinburgh. Bob Skinner is a tough senior policeman and the author introduced him in 1993

I don’t do too many book reviews and, in fact, I wrote this one quite a few months ago, just after I had finished the book. At the time, I felt it was such a good example of all the things I like in a book that it was worth a post! That is a

I set a lot of store by the characters in the books I read and that’s why I like reading series of books about characters I’ve grown to like. However, I do read a lot of stand-alone stories as well, usually written by my favourite authors, but also on the back of a recommendation. Sometimes

I’ve already posted about Christopher Brookmyre and my favourite character of his, the journalist, Jack Parlabane, and I think he is a top-class Scottish writer despite some of his books possibly being for a younger audience than me. However, he also writes, along with his wife, Marisa Haetzman, under the pseudonym of Ambrose Parry. My