I mentioned yesterday that I’ve been struggling with a severe reaction to a shingles vaccination I had three days ago. However grotty I feel (and I’m much better today and hope to be even better tomorrow) it is nowhere near as bad as actually having shingles. Shingles is awful and dangerous, and I urge you to have the jab even if you have a similar reaction to me because the actual disease can affect and damage you for life and leave you with excruciating pain for years. I was very poorly when I had shingles, I lost a couple of weeks of ordinary life and was very very fortunate to have recovered completely.
I also mentioned yesterday that reading had really helped while I was so ill:
In between dozing, sleeping and floating in a shingle-haze, I’ve read a lot. I was extremely lucky that just as I was up to focusing on anything, the excellent Damien Boyd published his latest book. It is set in Bridgwater and Burnham, two favourite towns just down the coast, and as you might guess from the title the events happen during the famous Somerset Carnival season. So here is my shingle-list:
- Carnival Blues – Damien Boyd
- Hideous Kinky – Esther Freud
- Amongst our Weapons – Ben Aaronovitch
- The Constant Rabbit – Jonathan FForde
- The 39 Steps – John Buchan
- The Idea of Perfection – Kate Grenville
Top of my list was the then most recent Damien Boyd book, and coincidentally I am now reading his latest book, which of course, I strongly recommend. It is a new venture for Damien, not his popular Nick Dixon series although it is still a police procedural. This first in a new series is ‘Deceived by the Light’, and this is the blurb:
It is 1985. Detective Inspector Mungo ‘Bob’ Willis is being forced out of Avon and Somerset Police on medical grounds. His career is in tatters, his body broken, his mind shattered, and his partner—DS Lizzie Harper—dead in a sting operation gone wrong.
Their last case is closed, but Bob is convinced an innocent man has been framed, leaving a serial killer cruising the A303 with impunity, free to target lone women who have broken down by the roadside late at night. The killer knows the police aren’t looking for anyone else in connection with the murders. What they don’t know is what Bob will do next.
And when another woman is killed in horrifyingly similar circumstances, Bob launches his own—unofficial—investigation. Can he stop a sadistic killer before they kill again? And again…
I’m only a few chapters in but completely gripped. It has a very different tone from Damien’s previous series, and Bob is a very different character from Nick. The previous series is set in the present, the new series is set in the 1980’s which makes it interesting in a different way as the investigations are conducted without the modern technology we take for granted.
No doubt I will review when finished!
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deceived-Light-1-Bob-Willis/dp/1662524706/ref=asc_df_1662524706
Lois Elsden 