More of wot I have read…

No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay

This book had an intriguing premise that was well played out through the story and even managed to keep a few secrets until the end. It had a good degree of suspense and the characters and storyline were well written.

‘One night, when Cynthia Archer was 14 years old, her family disappeared. Now, 25 years later, she’s about to learn what happened to her mother, father brother, and she might be better off never finding out.’


Remembrance Day by Henry Porter

This book is a little ‘boys-own’ in style and suffers from dated technology (it is interesting how much things have changed in such a short time that we take for granted now). It also plays heavily on stereotypes and preconceptions such that some elements of the story become predictable.

‘Constantine Lindow is waiting for his brother Eamonn outside a central London tube station when a bus turns into the street and explodes. The next day Con is arrested as the prime suspect for the bombing.

Con is determined to prove his innocence, but the only way he can do that is to find the real bomber. As he digs deeper, he finds himself confronted by his own brother's secret life - and the cold-blooded killers from his past.The trail leads Lindow halfway across the world and back to London, where he tracks down a killer with a genius for encryption codes. Only Lindow can crack the code. Only Lindow can stop that telephone ringing... ‘


Half a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This a story based on real events of which I knew nothing about and for that reason alone it would have been an interesting read. But the author also manages to bring a real sense of humanities worst and best extremes that can be exposed in times of trouble. Well worth a read to educate your self about a little known struggle.

‘A masterly, haunting new novel from a writer heralded by The Washington Post Book World as "the 21st-century daughter of Chinua Achebe," Half of a Yellow Sun recreates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra's impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria, and the chilling violence that followed.

With astonishing empathy and the effortless grace of a natural storyteller, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie weaves together the lives of three characters swept up in the turbulence of the decade. Thirteen-year-old Ugwu is employed as a houseboy for a university professor full of revolutionary zeal. Olanna is the professor's beautiful mistress, who has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos for a dusty university town and the charisma of her new lover. And Richard is a shy young Englishman in thrall to Olanna's twin sister, an enigmatic figure who refuses to belong to anyone. As Nigerian troops advance and they must run for their lives, their ideals are severely tested, as are their loyalties to one another
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Epic, ambitious, and triumphantly realized, Half of a Yellow Sun is a remarkable novel about moral responsibility, about the end of colonialism, about ethnic allegiances, about class and race—and the ways in which love can complicate them all.’