At some point the decline and fall of my marriage so preoccupied my mind that I failed to keep up with Andrew Cartmel's The Vinyl Detective series. Forsooth!
Once I became conscious of the situation I set out to rectify it by putting in an order for the 2 latest entries in the series. Many thanks to Mystery to Me.
They arrived in time for my UK trip and I brought them with me.
I managed to finish Noise Floor while across The Pond. As always, it was a very fun read. It sees TVD and his partner Nevada being hired to find Lambert Ramkin, a.k.a. Imperium Dart, an EDM god from the 90s who has gone missing and his wives are very concerned. As always, Tinkler is ably assisting his friends when not making lewd comments.
The dialogue is fast-paced and witty as usual. Plus the retro-faux-rave scene gave me 90s flashbacks.
Underscore was no less fun. Here, TVD & Nevada are hired to find a rare soundtrack album to a giallo classic called Murder in London and Bikini of Blood and The Black Dog Murders, et al. The seeker is the granddaughter of composer Loretto Loconsole.
Plenty of banter about wine and coffee, Tinkler is in fine form, and the Swingin' Sixties sounds like it was a hoot. Not a whole lot of Agatha here as she is busy elsewhere much of the time, though her driving skills are utilized in a life or death situation as usual. As with Noise Floor, Nevada takes the lead more often than in previous books. I think. It's been a while since I've read the predecessors.
In addition to The Vinyl Detective, I also enlisted Mystery To Me to help me catch up on the Rivers of London series by Andrew Cartmel's pal, Ben Aaronovitch. I have so far received the latest entry in that series, the novel, Stone and Sky, which came out this summer, but I am still waiting on the novella from last year, The Masquerades of Spring.
While in Birmingham I had my first visit to a Waterstones, which I gather is a bit like their Barnes & Noble. I found exactly what I was looking for, a history of the city.
