Travel miscellany

Airport/plane/train reading: Rachel Vincent's Pride (have not read first installments in series, but backstory is well handled, and I can never resist a good were-animal story); Laura Lippman's What the Dead Know; Charles de Lint's Memory and Dream; Mark Billingham's Buried; Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger (very good); Linwood Barclay's Too Close to Home.

The last was the only one that irked me - I thought it was not up to the standard of his previous one. The plot is very transparent (I am not a plot-driven reader, but it was extremely obvious as soon as the real murderer appeared on the scene who he must be and what his motive was - this is very clunkily handled), and more importantly I felt that the couple main characters are fundamentally wildly implausible. At times they seem like thinnish, almost satirical Elmore Leonard-style creations, so that one cannot really take them seriously at the other points when the author seems to expect the reader to consider them as fully motivated and thoughtful human beings...