Late-night

light reading, Nora Roberts/J. D. Robb's Visions in Death; Michael Robotham's Suspect (both from the New Books shelf at my local public library branch, and displaying both the strengths and weaknesses of that place as a conduit for reading matter). The former is less pretentious, on the whole more satisfying, but also less interesting and individual (it's really quite good but not the best in the series). The latter has some really striking aspects but is MADDENINGLY annoying in other ways (I think I must take a break from thrillers narrated by psychologists, they are just not the men of action they seem to think9 themselves; rather, monstrous narcissists!); the present-tense voice is annoying (I say this having myself written a present-tense novel; so sue me); and I also HATE novels with privileged wealthy well-educated white male narrators who, oh, somehow decide NOT to tell the police about their perfectly good alibi and NOT to turn themselves in when there's a national manhunt for them and NOT.... you get the idea. However, despite my irritation at various points with this novel, I did in the end think it was quite good. I will also say that it reminded me in various ways of Denise Mina's novel Deception, which I found flawed (and not nearly as satisfactory as her fantastic Garnethill trilogy) but is certainly better than Robotham's.