I don’t read thrillers or detective novels that much, but I recently finished Elizabeth George’s In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner and I really enjoyed it. Well-drawn characters, winding and rejoining plot-paths, interesting backstory and setting.
→ Elizabeth George - Wikipedia
Once in a while, when I draw a blank as to which book to read next, I let my son pick one off the bookshelf. He chose perhaps the most boring-looking specimen of them all: worn black cloth-wrapped hardcover with no discerning features except the title and the authors’ names in plain font. No pictures, no colours, no blurb on the back. A second-hand book that most probably had a shiny-paper cover wrapped around it with the blurb and title/picture, which got lost.
The content, however, is fascinating: 1000 pages of intrigue at the Emperor’s Court in 8th century China. Allegedly based in historical fact, but I can only imagine how much fictionalisation it must have taken to squeeze a novel for a western audience out of 1200 year-old Chinese court-documents.
Eleanor Cooney & Daniel Altieri: The Court of the Lion
(first part of a trilogy about the T’ang dynasty)