The Detective's Daughter, book review. (Lesley Thomson)

Crime, it isn't my preferred genre, but I managed to acquire this one for one pound on my Kindle, so gave it a go. 

It was in the most part, quite good, but this book does have its problems. 

Convincing the reader, that a grown man can live entirely undetected in a stranger's (host's) house, for weeks, sometimes months on end, was just too much. In fact, I almost gave up at that point, and with a few to many coincidences stretching the boundaries of belief, you might wonder why I kept going. 

The answer to that is in the strength of the writing. 
Talking of coincidences: The main character, Stella Darnell, happens to run a cleaning company, who cleans for a woman, who lived next door to the woman who was murdered in the early eighties, that her deceased father investigated, (when he was a detective in the Met police) but never solved, that Stella subsequently finds out he was still investigating, when he mysteriously dies.
Then we discover, that her latest employee, is the dead woman's son, and has an intolerance for the colour she has just chosen for her new uniforms, to the point where he vomits. 
Then, Stella starts to date her (spoiler alert) dentist, who turns out to be our murderer! 
Suffice to say, I won't be reading any more of this Lesley Thomson series, but based on her ability to set a scene, to create believable dialogue and plonk the reader smack bang in the middle of a very believable, cold and depressing London during a miserable winter, means that I will endeavour to read something else by the author. 

The finale was both creepy, fast paced and revealing in equal measure.

Her sense of place and description of the capital, had me thinking of another crime novel I read recently, (J.K.Rowling's, The Cuckoo's Calling), which I think, is praise indeed. 

Only three stars for this one then, but just enough for me to remember the name, Lesley Thomson.

Oh, and congratulation to Emily May, fellow blogger from 'The Book Geek', on the birth of her first child. I wait with baited breath, for her book review of 'The Hungry Caterpillar' 

The Cuckoo's Calling, book review. (Robert Galbraith) J.K. Rowling.

I don't read much in the way of crime novels, but, like a million others I suspect, I was gifted this on

the strength of the author's previous books.

Good characters, good story, good setting, (Although a friend of mine tells me there are some accuracy errors here, but as a writer myself, I tell him 'poetic licence'.) and there's a good twist at the end.

So all good than! Here endeth the review!
Well, not quite.

If I could, I would have knocked half a star off of this and gone for three and a half. Why? Stupid names!

I know our influences come from a hundred, a thousand different places, my characters haven't always got standard or English names, I have a Dumonbreville in my latest book and a Mai-Ling in my first, but these are names I have come across, people I have met, and in the case of Dumonbreville, I use it very little in the book because I feel it might interrupt flow.

And that is my main issue, flow.

When I read I want the book to flow, I don't read fast, so it isn't a speed thing, but when the book is encumbered with names like Cormoran Strike and Lula Landry, things start slow down a bit. Throw in a Bryony, Tansy, Deeby, Cyprian and a Ciara and I start thinking about putting the book down.

I'm glad I didn't because the story was good, but next time I'll think twice before reading a Robert Galbraith novel. Maybe the next one could be about the Bristow family. They all had nice, normal names.