Book of the Month: May 2019

I feel like I have spent most of this year apologising for the reduced number of reviews on the blog, but this month will be different; in that I won’t be apologising. But yes, I only made 8 reviews this month and it was a rather mixed bag of books to boot as well!

Nevertheless, I decided to have two separate categories this month: a favourite re-read and a favourite new read.

For the first category the accolade goes to Cyril Hare’s Suicide Excepted (1939), without a shadow of a doubt. I wasn’t sure how much I would enjoy this book, as although I was blown away by the solution when I first read the story, I did wonder whether some of the awe would be lost on a second read. Is this a book whose merits are based on more than its’ ending? On the whole I say it does have such merits, with brilliant flicks of humour and Hare has a good flare for misdirection.

Moving on to my favourite new read the winner is an author who has surprised me a great deal, as whilst I didn’t get wowed by This is the House (1945), I really enjoyed Shelley Smith’s An Afternoon to Kill (1953). This is a great example of a novel using the story within a story device, well and I love how Smith cleverly plays with the reader through familiar tropes. It goes without saying that I would strongly recommend reading both of these books.

Finally, I am going to end my book of the month with a few new acquisitions…