THE STORIES OF TOBIAS WOLFF - Tobias Wolff

This is a wonderful collection of short stories, written by one of the modern masters of the genre.

Just don't expect to feel comfortable after reading many of them. Wolff has the knack of identifying all our little vanities and foibles and making the reader examine himself, hence you can feel very uncomfortable.

Great writing.  His memoirs are well worth reading as well.

APPLEBY ON ARARAT - Michael Innes

Detective Appleby is shipwrecked on an island after his shop is torpedoed.  There are several other passengers stranded with him.  Then people start dying.

Innes is the most inconsistent of all detective fiction writers, when he is good its fantastic , when he is bad you get this.  This is truly terrible, absolute tripe.

The only reason I'm not actually throwing the book out is the edition is 58 years old and deserves better, the writing doesn't.

DREAM STREET - Damon Runyon

The Dream Street of the title is Broadway.  This collection of short stories is told by an anonymous narrator totally in the first person.  It is so totally in the first person , a student of Runyon has found he only used 'was' a half dozen times in all his fiction. 

Here we have tales of hitmen, gamblers , pimps and  dance hall girls all trying to make a dollar and find success.

The characters are not nice people but Runyon gives them humanity in their own pathetic way.   The stand out is is the humour, fantastically funny throughout

The musical Guys & Dolls was based on characters from these stories.  A brilliant read.

COLLECTED SHORT STORIES - Robert Graves

A magnificent collection of Graves's work.

The book is broken up into - English Stories- Roman Stories-Majorcan Stories.

Wonderful humour throughout. This is a collection to be read and re-read

THE FOLIO TREASURY OF SHORTER CRIME FICTION: POLICE PROCEDURES.

A solid selection, Simenon is always worth a read.  Wallace is terribly hit and miss but this is a good tale & seeing as he wrote several hundred books its understandable. 

Theres a Rebus thrown in as well and Rankin writes quality. 

THE FOLIO TREASURY OF SHORTER CRIME FICTION: SUPERIOR SLEUTHS

A good selection, the picks for me are le Carre with this being Smileys first outing and the Rex Stout  always worth reading.

THE FOLIO TREASURY OF SHORTER CRIME FICTION: EARLY ESCAPADES

400 hundred pages of mid 19th to early 20th century crime writing.  The pick of this selection are the stories by Doyle and Anna Katherine Green .

Green was one of the earliest female crime writers, evidently she was second to be published.  She is very good and worth tracking down

BRIDESHEAD REVISITED - Evelyn Waugh

This is close to the 12th time I've read this book.

Its all been said before.  Its my favourite read of all time and I'll read it many more times.  Fantastic

THE RATLINE - Philippe Sands

The story of a senior Nazi responsible for thousands of deaths and his escape after the war hiding for three years before his eventual death in an Italian hospital.

The first half of the book is reconstructed from the diaries of his wife , who was even a more radical Nazi than von Wachter himself.

A truly disgusting couple and she held her views until her death many years after the war.

The second half of the book is the author trying to get the couples youngest son, Horst, 80 years old at the time , to acknowledge the enormity of his fathers crimes.  In the end its a sledge hammer against a fly and got tedious.

The first half up until Otto's death is interesting but  the remainder can be flagged