RITES OF PASSAGE - William Golding

A story of an ancient ship taking passengers and cargo to Australia at the end of the Napoleonic era.

It starts out very funny, almost Waugh like, but has a tragic ending.  Humans are not very nice creatures a lot of the time .

This won the Booker  in 1980 beating out Anthony Burgess's " Earthly Powers" which puts it on the back foot for me anyway as "Powers" is a favourite.

Its not a fun read after the first 50 pages.

ROB ROY - Walter Scott

Made into numerous films and TV series but this is a hard read, mostly because a big portion of it is written in Scotts vernacular  which I found very hard to understand.

Like Ivanhoe, Rob Roy doesn't make much of an appearance until the second half of the novel.

Its a book I've now read but won't be revisiting.

SHROUD FOR A NIGHTINGALE - P D James

An early Dalgliesh and a yawn .  James got much better