I've been cataloging my books online for a few years now, but looking back it's odd that some of the writers for whom I have the greatest love barely rate a mention, due to my possibly arbitrary decision to just add books as I read them. I could explain why I do this except I can't remember and I'm sure it was a dreadfully boring reason and why the heck should anyone care? Various editions of the novels of Dorothy Dunnett take up about two whole bookshelves all by themselves, and yet this is the first of her novels to turn up on my Goodreads! This is both uninteresting and insignificant! Yet I'm noting it anyway. Anything to avoid company.

Joanna Emerson is one of Johnson Johnson's dolly birds, young women who, whatever their other qualities, tend to score high on intelligence and resourcefulness, be single and have a well-defined trade which they are rather good at, all in contrast to the casual sexism of the oh-so-seventies titles. This is Dunnett: ironies abound. Back to Joanna, highly trained nanny who, after a difficult adventure on a train in the middle of a freezing Canadian tundra, ends up employed by a rich New York couple to mind their new-born baby. Deeper agendas have conspired to bring this about, aided by the machinations of yachtman and portrait painter and freelance troubleshooter for British Intelligence, Johnson Johnson. Dodging kidnap attempts ostensibly aimed at the bawling heir, negotiating the marital difficulties of her employers and the social climbing of the family next door, Joanna provides an excellent service, provided she can survive.

These are rather light, fast, fun books, though not without their darker, sharper, sadder moments. The hero - enigmatic, surpassingly clever, deeply manipulative but hiding nasty emotional and physical scars - is cast from the same mould as Lymond, Niccolo and Thorfinn, as are the supporting characters who provide us with our not entirely reliable view of them. The Dolly books, nevertheless, can be a bit of a mixed bag, and though not the best, this is certainly one of the better ones.

Joseph and Lewis search for missing immortals and ponder the mystery of the returning mortal. Mendoza has vanished after an incident in Hollywood and Joseph's own father has been on the run for centuries. Why they have vanished and where they've vanished to and what it says about the all-encompassing Company and the coming deadline when the Silence descend on the future are only some of the questions troubling our heroes and mostly they just end up with a lot more questions. This is the first Company novel that breaks into the future, though there are plenty of incidents in the past, particularly the massacre of the Ninth Roman Legion, and the investigation takes place over hundreds of years, across societal and cultural upheaval and technological breakthrough and the odd pandemic that may not have been entirely natural. We've already glimpsed the future though, and seen hints that it's a strange, almost sad place where the lively, curious, hungry immortals could never be at home. The problem is, the future seems to know that, too.
Baker's style and story are eminently readable, funny and thoughtful and occasionally horrific. It's funny to see the powerful, knowing immortals who have operated in history's shadow become lost and uncertain and begin looking for answers that affect them directly. They are about to step out of the shadow and into history itself, and they well know how fraught and bloody and messy that is. Excellent book in an excellent series.

These Company books are addictive reading. Our broken-hearted, misanthropic, immortal heroine finds herself collecting samples for preservation in Hollywood long before it becomes Hollywood. The Civil War is raging and in California people live in shacks and shoot at strangers just to say hello. With other Company operatives, Mendoza lives in a stagecoach waystation and passes the time with work and thinking about what this place is going to be like in a few decades' time. They even have a film festival, screening Von Stroheim's original nine hour cut of Greed and DW Griffith's Intolerance. Mendoza dreams nightly of her dead mortal lover, Nicholas and contemplates her lot and her future and the pain of being alive.
Okay, that might make it sound a bit of a drag, but Baker excels at character and setting, as well as well as the brain-tickling high concept of the time-traveling Company and its immortal operatives, so she creates a vivid and often very funny picture of life lived at the primitive edge of the American West by a bunch of highly educated people who know what HAS happened and what is going to happen, but who don't necessarily know how to deal with it. The older ones are a bit mad, and the younger ones have harsh lessons to learn about love and loss.
Excellent, fun read; historical science fiction with a strong romantic streak, reminiscent in terms of style of Lois McMaster Bujold and Connie Willis.

Having just finished One Hundred Years Of Solitude, it proved difficult to just go off and pick up another book, but Jack Staff proved to be an ideal palate cleanser. From the sublime to the sublimely ridiculous, Echoes Of Tomorrow is another delightful British superhero action adventure, twisting time and reality in a tangled narrative that jumps back to the second world war, then back tot he present day and into the land of dreams, with side-trips to a murder mystery and a jewelry shop robbery. Paul Grist's assured storytelling makes sure the reader is never lost, but is always guessing and more often that not taken by surprise. I love Grist's work with a passion, and never get tired of it. Brilliant.

A deliciously witty and devious tale of murder and tax law featuring a group of good natured young lawyers and their mentor, Hilary Tamar, and Oxford scholar of unspecified gender. I was captivated years ago by an adaptation of one of her books on Radio 4. Wonderful, precise, captivating language. Delightful and funny

One of my favourite thriller writers, Ross Thomas delivers a sly, slick, satirical tale around an old union president facing an election against a young challenger and the corruption, machinations, power plays and dirty tricks that unfold, all the while an assassin moves in for the kill. An absolute classic.