Mike Ripley - Just Another Angel

Fitzroy Maclean Angel is a streetwise, trumpet-playing, cab-driving guy with a penchant for good beer and women, but has mostly stayed out of trouble.  Then he meets Jo Scamp, and it isn't until after his brief, early morning encounter with her that he discovers that not only is she married, but married to a serious villain who breaks bones for a living.  And she needs him to run an errand, which means infiltrating that most dangerous of groups: an all woman CND camp.

My rating: 8/10

Actually, Angel Hunt is more Christmassy than Just Another Angel, and I did pick it up first.  But Just Another had a stronger draw than the other, mostly because I like it more.  Of course, bias doesn't come into at all, oh no.  But in attempting to be subjective, I have read a few debut novels and I have to admit that this one is very good, but unfortunately I had read 10 others in the series before this one and this ended up low on the personal list and why do I feel guilty about it?

But I do, because every time I read it I giggle, annoying the heck out of my better half, and I think it about time I revised the personal list.  Well, I'm the only one hung up about it, the author thinks I'm "discerning", I think I may be just plain crazy.

Have to say, if you're going to start anywhere with this series, start here.  Failing that, Angel's Share.  But you may just wave your free time bye-bye.

Next: Keith Floyd's posthumously published (auto)biography, Stirred but not Shaken.

Graham Phillips - Act of God

Non Fiction - Whilst looking for the tomb of Tutankhamen, a group of archaeologists uncover a tomb with a mummy interred in a bizarre fashion and with no obvious identity.  Who was he, and what was his link to Tut and the presumed heretic Akhenaten?

My rating: 8/10

Hardly surprising really, that a favourite work of non fiction is really a detective story.  I think this book has been in my "library" the third longest (the other two, incidentally, are The Compleet Works of molesworth and Watership Down, discounting a very old King James Bible) - books have come and gone prior to this but this has never hit the bin or Amazon Marketplace.  It's not that I agree with everything that Phillips has to say about the whole Akenaten/Nefertiti/Smenkhare/Tut era, in fact there's bits in there which don't quite gel.  Loads has been written about the era, and in more detail - and I must get hold of Aldred's Akhenhaten at some point which I have only read once -  it's the fact he delivers his theories believably and succinctly, and leaves you room for thought.  If you are interested in the era, give it a go, with an open mind, and you will find it enjoyable.

Next: Library tomorrow, watch this space, cos I really don't know.