Book of the Month: May 2017

Only a smidge late with my roundup of last’s month mystery fiction reading – hopefully somewhere in the world it is still the 31st May. I managed to read 13 novels this time, as well as Sam Naidu’s collection of essays on Sherlock Holmes. As ever I am still taking part in Bev’s Follow the Clues challenge, which she hosts amongst many others at her blog My Reader’s Block. In this challenge I have find links between the novels I read and my original goal was for 12 books. However in January I surpassed that figure and decided to keep on going, so by adding May’s reads to my overall total, my chain is now 66 books long! Below is a reminder of the books I read in May, with their all important links shown:

But which was my favourite? Whilst there were quite a number of solid reads, the two which stood out for were Agatha Christie’s Sleeping Murder (1976) (always an old favourite) and Richard Hull’s Keep It Quiet (1935). After a lot umming and humming and generally being indecisive I eventually decided to make Hull’s novel, the winner of my Book of the Month title. I loved his wonderfully executed humour and it is now one of my favourite comic crime novels. It has plenty of twists and surprises and is an all round entertaining read.