2025 52 Book Challenge

2. A character with red hair.

After she's gone / Camilla Grebe.

Enjoyed The ice beneath her, but After she's gone is in a different league. Gripping  crine novel with some great twists and brilliant characterisation. I loved Jake!

6. Genre 1. Set in Spring - The long divorce / Edmund Crispin.

Novel opens on June 2nd and ends a few days later. As challenge is quite specific about summer running from the summer solstice have placed it in the Spring challenge rather than summer.

I love Edmund Crispin. He is an absolute joy to read. Often very funny, his plots can be whackily implausible, yet he pulls it all together beautifully. Other reason I love him? His main job was as a musician. I just wish he had written more. Long divorce is one of his best.

10. Author's last name is also a first name - The city of God / Michael Russell.

War time thriller set in Rome. The latest in a long series featuring Irish detecive, Stefan Gilespie, I really enjoyed it and can't wait to read the rest. Historical detail is wonderful (and rather disturbing), but it's also an excellent thriller. Highly recommended.

12. Has a moon on the cover - Eight hours to England / Anthony Quayle.

During the Second World War distinguished actor Anthony Quayle served with SOE in Albania. He was reluctant to speak about his wartime service, but he did publish this novel, which is largely based on his own experience.

Quayle really can write. In fact it's one of the best wartime novels I've ever read. He's very honest about the complexities of working within difficult political situations, and Albania was particularly tricky, with a civil war threatening to break out on top of the German invasion. It also struck me reading it how very young so many of the characters are. Their courage, adaptability, and intelligence in such a difficult situation is awe inspiring.

Eight hours from England is one of a series of wartime novels newly re-published by the Imperial War Museum. I'm looking forward to reading more of them.

13. Title is 10 letters or less - Blackouts / Justin Torres.

As two former lovers recall their past lives, the book with its odd mixture of fiction and non-fiction provides a glimpse of historical erasures and oppresion.

Interesting and powerful, often uncomfortable reading.

15. Includes Latin American history - The motorcycle diaries / Ernesto Che Guevara. The young Guevara goes on a road trip through South America, which provides the inspiration that will turn him into a revolutionary. Fascinating short read.

21. Character's name in the title - Barnaby Rudge / Charles Dickens.

Many years ago an elderly landlady told me that she had been obsessed by Barnaby Rudge as a teenager. Have no idea why it took me 30 years to get round to reading it, but I have been completely captivated. I've nearly missed appointments because of it, have muttered and gasped at the goings on, and cared so much for Barnaby, the raven and the multitude of characters.

It has one of the nastiest villains in the whole of Dickens, but also some of the nicest people. And Dickens can write, there's little of the sentimentality here that can get in the way of the plot in some of his other novels. The descriptions of the Gordon riots are almost journalistic, and all the more terrifying for that. It really is an extraordinary book, and I am already missing it!

24. Title is a spoiler - The spy who came in from the cold / John Le Carre.

The spoiler in this case really doesn't matter as it is the process of how the spy comes in from the cold is what is important. I've re-read this book several times, and it's one of those which really repays re-reading. It's a wonderful book. Not just a great spy novel, but a great novel.

30. In the public domain - A study in scarlet / Arthur Conan Doyle.

Holmes meets Watson in the first of the Sherlock Holmes canon. Great fun.

31. Audiobook has multiple narrators.

The ice beneath her / Camilla Grebe.

Decent Scandi Noir with a clever twist. With three unreliable narrators, it was perfect for this challenge.

32. Includes a diary entry.

A parson in wartime / the Boston diary of the Reverend Arthur Hopkins, 1943-1945.

Utterly charming diary produced for Mass Observation by a vicar based in rural Lincolnshire, in the midst of many major Second World War airfields. Sometimes funny and often surprising, I loved this. 

33. A standalone novel.

Whistle in the dark / Emma Healey.

Both the story of a family in crisis, and a mystery. Whistle in the dark is well written with good characters, and a great sense of humour. Not normally my sort of read but thoroughly enjoyed it.

35. Written in the third person.

Gigi, and The cat / Colette

A short story and a novella both told in the third person. I do find The cat hard going, it's a very odd story. But I've always loved Gigi. I had forgotten how short it is (just 50 odd pages) that Lerner and Loewe managed to manufacture a full length musical from it is rather miraculous.

36. Final sentence is less than six words long.

Call for the dead / John Le Carre.

How could I have forgotten how good Le Carre's first novel is? Short, but a real gem.

38. An adventure story - Hope under fire / Caroline Dunford.

Enjoyable wartime adventure. The latest in a long series about Hope and her mother, both of whom work in intelligence. Hugely enjoyable. It was the first. Am looking forward to going back and reading the others.

39. Has an epigram.

Death keeps his court / Anselm Audley

41. Cover font is in a primary colour - The bone road / N.E. Solomons.

Excellent thriller set in Bosnia where a disappearance leads to memories of old crimes. Decent characters, especially the lead detective, who I loved, and a great sense of place.

42. Non-human antagonist - Flush / Virginia Woolf.

I adored this book. The life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning told through the eyes of her beloved cocker spaniel. Such a beautiful story, whether you''re a dog or poetry lover.

44. A celebrity on the cover.

Tommasino / Tony Scotland.

Two for the price of one - Georgian composer Thomas Linley Junior, and his sister, Elizabeth, a singing superstar of the day.

Charming biography, with a fascinating mystery at its heart. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

47. I think it was blue

Saints of New York / R.J. Ellory.

Lots of blue references. A bluey / green cover, set in the New York Police Department (NYPD Blue!), and a depressed detective with a liking for the Blues.

48. Related to the word "puzzle"

The gathering storm / Winston Churchill

This may seem like a bit of an odd one to use for this challenge but Winston Churchill's first book in the series about the Second World War, and events leading up to it contains a classic quote that is undoubtedly puzzle related. The mystery of the nature of Russia, which he memorably describes as "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma" - I don't think you can get more puzzle like than that.

Gathering storm is an astonishing read. Very readable, an extraordinary account of events told from the inside. With the way the world currently is, it is also rather terrifying.

49. Set in a country with an active volcano. A matter of latitude / Isobel Blackthorn.

One of those frustrating novels where you spend most of the time shouting at the characters in the hope that they will stop being so stupid. It didn't work...but at least it fitted the challenge :-D

50. Set in the 1940s

Stettin Station / David Downing

51. 300-400 pages long.

Silesian Station / David Downing