Finished The Night Hawks, a hugely enjoyable read. Elly Griffiths is Master of the Farcical Plot Twist, self loves her dry wit and of course her characters: DCI Harry Nelson; Cathbad the Druid; DI Judy Johnson; DCI David Clough; Nelson’s wife Michelle; DI Tanya Fuller; Nelson’s daughter with Ruth, Kate; Nelson’s oldest daughter Laura; Nelson’s boss Super Jo; Dr. Ruth Galloway and even the newest member of Nelson’s team, Tony Zhang. There are two more books left in the series, Elly Griffiths announced it will end with Book # 15, The Last Remains, coming next year.
Self’s next read is Katherine Addison’s The Witness for the Dead, not quite a sequel to her fabulous The Goblin Emperor, but still in the same universe. Exciting! Self read The Goblin Emperor in 2020 (It was published in 2014, she’s a latecomer to the Katherine Addison party). Though she would have loved to have a sequel to the story of Emperor Edrehasivar VII, a story set in the same universe is close enough.
Addison’s writing is as immersive as Adrian Tchaikovsky’s. Here’s the opening paragraph of The Witness for the Dead:
- In the jumbled darkness of the catacombs beneath the city of Amalo, there was a shrine to Ulis in his aspect as god of the moon. It was thousands of years old, and the carving of the four phases of the moon on the plinth had become almost undetectable, worn smooth by generations of reverent fingertips. Whatever the plinth had supported was long gone, but the shrine remained.
Kanlaon 