The Puzzly – The ISOTCMN Book of the Month – February 2013

February 2013 looked for a while as if it was going to be a lean month for reviews. A bout of mildly bad health, a couple of books that were a bit of a struggle to get through and too much playing of Assassin’s Creed III combined to cut down my reading. So I tactically picked a couple of short books and a bunch of old favourites and I ended up with a respectable nine books for the month. Well, it was a respectable number – not convinced that all of the books were that respectable.

Three more books were notched up under the “Original Sins” strand – mysteries set in the Ancient World (and not quite as ancient Ireland) and there were two new authors, one of which will certainly be getting more attention from me soon. But who will get to walk off with the Puzzly for February 2013?

As ever, the Puzzly is part of the Mysteries In Paradise Book of the Month meme, so be sure to pop over there to see what my fellow bloggers have been reading?

My books were:

• The Slayers of Seth by Paul Doherty
• The Gray Ghost Murders by Keith McCafferty
• Act of Mercy by Peter Tremayne
• Locked In by Kerry Wilkinson
• The Plague Maiden by Kate Ellis
• Death Of A Gossip by M C Beaton
• Yesterday’s Papers by Martin Edwards
• Roman Blood by Steven Saylor
• From Doon With Death by Ruth Rendell

Honorable mentions first. Locked In was an impressive attempt at a modern day locked room murder, suffering only from being a bit too easy to work out (for me), making the detectives look rather dim for not spotting what was going on. And then there’s the authors who always deliver a quality read – Kate Ellis, Martin Edwards, Peter Tremayne and Paul Doherty. None of the rest made much of an impression – the Rendell book was fine but a bit too obvious in this day and age.

At the end of the day, it comes down to one of the old favourites – I narrowed it down to two, but Paul Doherty has already won the Puzzly twice – this month, the Puzzly goes to The Plague Maiden by Kate Ellis. Her series of Wesley Peterson books never fails to deliver a great read and this one in particular, seemlessly weaving and dovetailing four separate plot strands and providing not one but two gut-punching “epilogues”, is one of the best of the lot. The series improves from book to book and I’m already looking forward to the next one. Her latest, The Shadow Collector, is out now so you might see that one reviewed here soon.