February’s reading was less deliberately murderous than January’s, although people still managed to die with reasonable regularity. I didn’t set out to read crime this month, but it kept appearing anyway, which suggests either my reading habits are predictable or authors simply enjoy killing people.
Again, it was six books, which seems to be becoming the monthly benchmark. If that continues I might actually keep the reading habit going for a whole year, assuming I don’t get distracted by work, radio shows, quizzes, websites or the general business of doing things for other people.
The month began with The Twitter Crush, a thriller built around the curious modern profession of ghostwriting books for social media influencers. Jackson Reed has made a fortune writing empowerment manifestos for personalities whose main qualification seems to be having a ring light and an alarming amount of confidence.
Despite creating several bestselling brands for other people, Reed can’t get his own work published, which feels like a fairly accurate summary of the publishing world.
Things start going wrong when critics of one particular client begin disappearing. Podcasters, YouTubers and general online sceptics quietly vanish, which tends to raise a few questions. Reed starts digging through tweets, livestreams and old messages and slowly realises he may not know much about the woman whose voice he helped create.
It’s a clever premise and works well as both a thriller and a gentle dig at influencer culture.
Next came The Accidental Woman by Jonathan Coe, which is about as far away from a thriller as you can get. Instead of bodies and conspiracies, it follows Maria, a woman whose entire life seems to happen by accident.
She drifts through university, jobs, relationships and motherhood as if she’s wandered into someone else’s story and is politely waiting to see how it ends. Meanwhile poor Ronny keeps proposing marriage with the persistence of a man who clearly hasn’t grasped the situation.
It’s quiet, observant and very British in its humour. Not much explodes, but the character work carries it along nicely.
After that I returned to The Unlikely Murder Club series with the final two books, An Unlikely Revelation and An Unlikely Exposure.
By this point the series knows exactly what it is and doesn’t pretend otherwise. Agatha Shadewell, former criminal and occasional amateur detective, begins the fourth book by faking her own death and attending her funeral in disguise. Which is already more effort than most people put into their social lives.
A community theatre renovation quickly uncovers a skeleton in the basement, which inevitably pulls the town into another mystery involving long buried secrets and the usual assortment of suspicious locals.
The fifth book brings the series to a close when a Hollywood production arrives in town to film a true crime story based on Agatha’s past. Suddenly the quiet town of Unlikely fills with camera crews, actors and people who probably think normal towns exist purely as filming locations.
A videographer digging into the town’s history turns up dead, which rather disrupts the production schedule. The mystery pulls the characters together for one final investigation, helped and occasionally hindered by the arrival of Agatha’s eighty five year old mother.
It’s a satisfying end to a series that never tried to be anything other than entertaining small town crime with a slightly eccentric edge.
Things turned darker with Lost Lambs, which centres on the spectacularly dysfunctional Flynn family. Their parents decided to open up their marriage, which is usually a warning sign in fiction that things are about to get complicated.
The three daughters deal with life in very different ways. One is dating a man known locally as War Crimes Wes, another is secretly corresponding with an online terrorist, and the youngest believes someone in town is quietly monitoring everyone.
Hovering over all of it is a powerful billionaire surrounded by rumours and shady dealings. When the youngest daughter starts digging into what he’s really up to, the story slowly unfolds into something much bigger than family drama.
It’s darker than most of the month’s reading and keeps things tense throughout.
The final book of February was Old Guy Music, which begins with a dead guitarist from an ageing pop group called The Cougars. Cougar Bill is found hanging in his country home, and while the official verdict is suicide, Detective Chief Inspector Max Bellamy isn’t convinced.
As he digs into the band’s history he uncovers old secrets, suspicious drownings and several people who would quite like the investigation to stop. Things escalate when threats begin targeting Bellamy’s wife, who happens to be an MP.
It’s a solid, traditional detective story with a music industry backdrop and plenty of suspects to keep things moving.
All told, another decent reading month. Not quite the homicide festival that January turned into, but there were still enough fictional bodies to keep the theme running.
Six more books down, a mixture of small town murders, suspicious influencers and deeply questionable family dynamics. If the year continues like this, the page count will keep climbing and the fictional death toll will probably follow along nicely.
