I like Simon Brett’s work and hadn’t indulged in the Charles Paris series before. I want to listen to some of the dramatisations but thought I should check out the original novels first. I listened to the audiobook of this, read by the author, and annoyingly it’s the second in the series as the first one isn’t available. But it was good. A murder takes place during the Edinburgh festival, and Paris, an actor/detective, starts investigating. It’s an interesting mystery, with a handful of good characters, and I’m interested to read more.

I loved the way this was written, I’ve always liked Ken Follett books but there were too many characters to keep track of in this, and all of them doing similar things. Dashing around trying to find a painting that may or may not exist whilst also making forgeries of paintings that may not exist. It’s short, so there wasn’t a huge amount of room for character development and so even though I usually love a good heist, this really didn’t do it for me.

I mean, I think it’s fair to say that if I hadn’t bought the complete Dune series within one book, I wouldn’t have gotten to book three, let alone finish it. I find them a really weird series - on the one hand, I kinda like the writing, the dynastic nature of the characters, and the way they are always plotting something. But I wish there was more about the planet itself, the people, who are we actually leading, what is the whole point? There seems to be less and less of that as we go on. Still half of the six originals are complete, so I may as well keep going at this point!