My first two books this month both dealt with hugely important issues.  I Do Not Sleep by Judy Finnigan   focuses on grief and in particular coming to terms with the death of a child, while the main theme of Love You Better by Natalie K Martin is domestic violence.  Both were interesting reads, but neither wowed me.  The storyline in I Do Not Sleep struck me as unrealistic and contrived, and I didn’t feel any real empathy with the main character.  The book was somewhat redeemed by its ending, so it’s worth persevering.  Love You  Better felt like a missed opportunity and the ending was obvious throughout which detracted from my involvement with the progress of the story.

Next I turned to another of the books on my Agatha Christie pile – on my mind no doubt because of visiting Agatha Christie’s former holiday home, Greenway, in Devon last month.  This one The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was one I picked up at last year’s Cheltenham Literary Festival and  I was swiftly transported back to Agatha Christie world with all its preconceptions and prejudices.  You always get what you expect with an Agatha Christie – and there are times when nothing else will do.  This one didn’t disappoint.

All of which reminded me of a new Agatha Christie story.  Sophie Hannah (whose psychological thrillers I also enjoy) has with the approval of the Agatha Christie family written The Monogram Murders featuring Hercule Poirot, arguably Christie’s most famous character.  I wondered if anyone else could effectively recreate Poirot and his world – and my answer having read and enjoyed The Monogram Murders is a slightly confused yes and no.  Hercule Poirot is well recreated and the storyline is as intriguing and enjoyable as any other Poirot mystery.  And yet I would never mistake this for an original Agatha Christie.  Perhaps it wasn’t meant to be.  Perhaps Sophie Hannah intended all along for this to be an updated, twenty-first century version. To me it did indeed feel more like one of her own psychological thrillers with a cast of Agatha Christie characters rather than a mystery of the type Christie herself wrote.  The confusing thing is that I don’t mind that at all.  As I’ve said before I enjoy reading both books by Sophie Hannah and books by Agatha Christie.  So a fusion of the two was always going to work for me.

Rosanna Ley is the author of The Saffron Trail which is partly set in my local town of Bridport and the neighbouring town of Lyme Regis –  a fact which added to my enjoyment as I ticked off all the places I recognise and love.  The story also takes us to Cornwall, Morocco and the US and the descriptions of all these places is done very well.  It’s a good story too with believable and likeable characters.  This is the first  book by this author I have read, but I will certainly look out for another.

So it turns out (by chance rather than design) that all the books I’ve read this month have been books telling stories – and I’ve enjoyed them all to a greater or lesser extent.  They have provided relaxing and pleasant entertainment.  But entertainment isn’t the only reason I read; I also want to be educated, stimulated and challenged.  So now I find myself wanting a book which meets at least one, and preferably more of those criteria.  The only question is: what will it be?

October 2015