The Price of Love
Peter Robinson
 
I've just finished this collection of short stories by the author of the DCI Alan Banks series of detective novels set in North Yorkshire. There are a couple of Banks shorts and one novella which has the young DI Banks investigating the murders of prostitutes in Soho, while the other stories have a variety of themes and situations. They are all very different and some don't involve any detection at all, but all are interesting and enjoyable, neat puzzles which fall into place at the end, which is what you would expect from Peter  Robinson.

I also finished reading the newest Alex Delaware novel:
Motive  
Jonathan Kellerman

This is a cracking page-turner featuring Psychologist Alex Delaware as the narrator and his best friend and LA Homicide Detective Lieutenant Milo Sturgis. I've read every one from When The Bough Breaks, including the spin-offs – I do wish he would write another Petra Kelly story , she's sassy and cool.
Motive is quite a corkscrew, with numerous plot turns and twists – just when you think you have it sussed, thanks to Delaware and Sturgis, the whole House of cards is thrown up in the air and the cards all land differently, and the case takes on a new purpose and direction.
I love the little descriptive details Kellerman gives – of suspects and witnesses, locations and scenes-of-crime – for me they lift the writing from simple whodunnit to why and how. But then, Kellerman is a psychologist, like his protagonist, and he brings insights to the task of solving and detecting which add to my pleasure in his books.

And what have I started:

The Marrying of Chani Kaufman 
Eve Harris
 
A novel which was Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2013. It's set among the Orthodox Jews of North London and my memories of Golders Green and Forest Hill flooded back – I used to spend a lot of time there, had dear friends, ate gefilte fish and matzos, learned to make my own bagels and though I was obviously a Goy, and something of a Yenta, I think I was accepted as a distant relative.  Ashkenazi, and Reform at that, mind. My Great-Grandmother on my Mother's side was Jewish, so, technically am I, as descent is maternal. I wonder where they all are now? We didn't have mobiles and email and Twitter and Facebook and I've lost address books, letters and cards with every move. But some things are inborn and relations and practices which have survived the diaspora and The Holocaust have an even greater strength – and my Hebridean Cousins whose religion has withstood its fair number of assaults over two thousand years, and it's own share of plagues and pestilences which abound in The Old Testament as it's Jewish Ancestry, has it's own claim to Martyrdom. But as well as rewakening memories which have lain dormant within me, Chani Kaufman is also a story of growing pains – of a 19-year-old Bride and her equally young Groom, not to mention the Rebbitzin who is going through her own crisis. This is a world of arranged marriages between strangers, whose limited contact before the wedding is strictly chaperoned. Secular Jews whose Parents and even Grandparents may have distanced themselves from the Religious Laws and Rituals, even if never from the History of their People, who here would be called "their ain folk", may learn a thing or two here - though this isn't a "How To" Book, it is a lively and utterly compelling story of real people in their real lives and one that - even if our experiences have been different - we can all learn something from. A powerful book which will repay it's readers amply for their time. 
 
Thank you, Eve Harris.
 
A Great Deliverance 
Elizabeth George
 
This is the first of the Inspector Lynley series – but I don't feel I have the stomach or the strength to stick with this. I never watched the TV Series with Nathaniel Parker and Sharon Small, and I must stress that it had nothing to do with the casting, butI certainly am aware of my resistance to those, usually American, writers who seem to be smitten by the British (or in this case, English) Class System, portraying their aristocratic heroes as handsome, strong, athletically virile, at whose feet all beautiful women will inevitably throw themselves, while making working class characters – in this case Detective Sergeant Barbar Havers – unattractive, even ugly, boorish, jealous and carrying a huge chip of granite on their shoulders; I actually felt it was mean-spirited for a woman writer to depict the female lead so crassly. And those dreadful Scotland Yard references to 'The North' – in this case Yorkshire – as being almost beyond the Pale and a place where men are Dour, women Malevolent and village Priest's  quasi-Father Brown caricatures. No, the first few chapters have put me off for life – and that is really saying something, as I have a reputation for sticking with almost everything, but the key word is 'almost' and this is one of the few exceptions to that rule.
I actually feel quite bad about this. My mother brought me up on the basis of "if you haven't got something nice to say about someone, don't say anything" and theough I've become kind of relaxed about not sticking quite so strictly to that Rule as I used to, I still feel a bit uncomfortable about putting Pen to Paper (metaphorically). But lots of readers do enjoy them and my life experiences have taught me that we all have different likes and dislikes and what a boring old world it would be if we all felt the same about everything - except, of course, if veryone agreed with Me, because of course I am Right - that would be just fine and dandy and I'd have no objections to that! And if certain people are reading this - it is a Joke, and I admit to being Wrong almost as much as I am Right, and sometimes even more so - Okay?