The thing about Hap and Leonard is they aren't detectives in any real sense, neither professionally or as amateurs. They're troublemakers and troubleshooters. The closest they come to investigating is to find some likely looking people and throw attitude at them until they crack and try to kill them. It has its drawbacks, of course, as you can never be sure the people trying to kill you are doing it because you've cracked the case or just because. Other things try to kill them, too, such as, in this case, a mean Texas winter, and the mean Texas winter isn't even a suspect.

Asked by a friend to go looking for his girlfriend, Florida Grange, who also happens to be Hap's ex, the dynamic duo stumble into a viper's nest of a town where even the nicest of people are a little bit virulently racist. Leonard goes down a storm and people are trying, or at least threatening, to kill them in no time flat, but no amount of being nearly killed with savage brutality seems to get them nearer to finding Florida. Doesn't make them give up, either.

Between the stunning vulgarity of the dialogue and the heart wrenching pain of Hap's lonely heart, lies a lot of violence and meanness, but also loyalty and honour in a dirty old world. As Leonard might say: 'Shut up and pass the vanilla cookies.'

Short stories, some old some relatively new, some of the old ones haven't been in collections before, so that's nice. I always enjoy Newman's sharp clever tales, and this is a nice selection.

Another dazzlingly wild and complex crossover, seven mini-series bookended with a zero issue and a one issue to wrap it all up. This is the first half, with Zatanna, Klarion, Shining Knight and the Guardian, heroes recruited unbeknownst to themselves in a war against a powerful race from the far future that feeds off flourishing civilisations. From a doomed mission to track down a giant spider in an Arizona Mesa, to a tabloid vigilante - literally a vigilante funded by a tabloid - to a support group for traumatised superheroes to a community of witchy puritans living under Manhattan and an Arthurian knight who has fallen through time, the nightmarish Sheeda are creeping back ready to devour the world.

Okay, look, Mister Miracle is great and the Bulleteer is great and the finale is a fantastic exercise in technical virtusoity with amazing art, but Frankenstein just steals the whole show, the big lumbering monster chasing gothic horrors with his unforgiving unflinching unstoppable angsty melodramatic poetry and it's brilliant.

This is my third time reading The Chelsea Murders, and this time I actually remembered which of them was the killer about halfway through. I don't think there's a murder mystery out there that I've ever enjoyed quite as much, certainly not of the classic English variety which this both is and sends up.

We are, as it were, led by the nose through a series of murders terrorising London's bohemian Chelsea area. The killer, who enjoys sending cryptic literary notes to warn of his coming exploits, is one of three students making a film. The police are all over them and the press are sniffing round like bloodhounds and everyone's trying to work it out, but the killer always seems one step ahead.

By all accounts this is packed to the rafters with London arty/publishing/whatever in-jokes of which I can fairly confidently say I got bugger all. That doesn't matter. It's clever, sharp, witty, full of characters that are mostly unlikeable but who are all doing interesting things and the whodunnit aspect is utterly, deliciously maddening in a way that most whodunnits just aren't.

Davidson didn't write another one like this. Like DCS Warton he'd had enough of the murder game, which was almost a pity. Luckily he wrote some other great stuff instead, and we can always go to Chelsea.

The naval scenes and the military scenes are nothing short of superb, the politics are well defined and the world-building solid. There's stuff in it I'm not completely mad about. A lot of rape. There are four female characters with significant roles, and I'm boosting Mrs Hawkwood for the sake of numbers, and two of them get raped a lot. I'll try one more book because I'm interested, but I hope this pattern doesn't persist.

Excellent little history of the great pirate queen of Irish myth and legend. Even in grubby old reality she is a formidable and exciting figure, cutting an impressive swathe through the turmoil of the decline of the old Irish and the rise of the new order, fighting and scheming and maneuvering to protect her rights and her family while carrying on a bit of plundering and piracy up and down the coasts.

The TV show might be canceled but the books go on, raucous and vulgar and violent but also tenderhearted and foerce in their anger at injustice and blind hatred.

Hired, despite the unmissable presence of a homicidally disgusted Leonard, by a pair of white supremacists to find a missing young woman, PI boss, and now Hap's wife, Brett dispatch the pair to their old hometown to track her down, inevitable disturbing the usual ant's nests of unpleasant types. Drama unfolds, as you might expect.

With an elegaic opening that has you worrying slightly that Lansdale is turning into James Lee Burke, fears are quickly dispelled. Hap may be getting wistful in his old age, but Leonard is only getting more obdurate and unforgiving despite - or who knows, perhaps even because of - a happy ongoing love affair. Lansdale's usual sure touch carries us through the twists and turns and outsize personalities with flair.

Ewen Young finds his uncle shot dead on the floor of his uncle's Kung Fu school, and then promptly gets shot himself. Despite dying, Ewen comes back with a new and unwelcome ability to move between life and death, though it does prove useful in protecting his family from the gangster who killed his uncle. He meets Susan Sundown and her dog Rez and go off hunting a malign Indian spirit murdering holy men, and has a few other adventures while he's at it. This feels like four novellas strung together, though the stringing is smooth, and the adventures are fun and extremely enjoyable, mixing up martial arts and meditation various types of mysticism.

I seem to have skipped what could be anything between one and ten books between this one and the last one I read. The Illuminati are on the run, the Cabal are wreaking havoc, heroes are running around, making preparations, studying stuff and pronouncing the inevitability of doom and the intolerable vastness of the... problem, whatever it is. I mean, I know what it is, I'm just not going to try to explain it to you. I should probably have found this more confusing than I did, but it was fine.