Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

Actually it was Friday night to Sunday morning, but that wasn't a book title.

I finished The Poisonwood Bible and can really recommend it. If you like the dense, literary style of Snow Falling on Cedars, you will probably like this one. My only complaint is that I think the book is too long - and not just because it took me three days to read! I would like to have seen the story concluded after the family has to leave Kingala. Instead it continues for several decades as the girls grow up - material which would have been more suited to a sequel, I felt.

Mr F had kindly bought me a book which he spotted in the village shop, Panic by Jeff Abbott (which had a rave review from Harlan Coben). It plunges right into the non-stop action, gradually reveals secrets from the past and has a surprising ending - but too much of it was about espionage to suit me.

I went back to crime with Indemnity Only by Sara Paretsky. This is the first of the V I Warshawski detective series. The story was good with the mystery gradually revealed but it seemed a little dated to me. It was written in 1982 and the poor woman had to do her detecting without even a mobile phone or a computer, but it was more the self-consciously feminist style which seemed from another age. A woman private eye wouldn't be such a big deal these days (which of course shows how much things must have moved on) but V I Warshawski seems to have to act deliberately macho to keep her foothold in a man's world.

Day 138; Book 136