Today’s Post by Joe Farace
…not my miserable existence. I know it’s not been up to much, but it’s all mine and I’m rather proud of having made it this far.—Denzil Meyrivk, Murder at Holly House
Recent statistics show a decline in reading for pleasure, with about 54% of Americans having read a book in 2023. The average American reads 12 books per year and spends about 15 minutes a day reading. For those who do read, print books remain the most popular format, with 65% of Americans preferring them over E-books. I have read a few E-books, notably early sci-fi from Edgar Rice Burroughs but was ultimately unsatisfied with the process, preferring to read physical books but that’s just me. If you love your e-readers I think that’s great.
Years ago, when I was still on Twitter, someone posted a challenge to read 50 books in a year. At the time, I had no idea of how many books I actually read during a year, so beginning the following New Year’s Day, I began a log in my journal writing down the titles of each book I read, I also established a set of rules, because I’m nothing if not a product of my engineering background, that would guide how I listed those books. Here they are:
- First, I had to actually finish the whole book. If I gave up after “x” number of pages—it happens—the book did not count toward my total.
- Second, I only count books i never read before. If I pulled a book from my own library to re-read, it did not count, as much as I might have enjoy re-reading it.
- Third, books from the county library and books I bought for myself count equally. The same goes for paperbacks and hard cover books; they count equally. I haven’t dealt with audio books in a long time, so I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.
During that first year I started logging my books, I read a few more than 50 books .How many did I read in 2025? Although I hit a snag around the time of my surgery, the final total and one that might be a record for me is 79.
Some Quick Reviews
The cover of Down Cemetery Road by Mick Herron says it’s a “Zoë Boehm Thriller” and is a deft combination of mystery and thriller combined with the inventive prose that Heron brings to all his books. Yet this is hardly a “Zoë Boehm thriller” since she appears only three times—admittedly at critical points—during the book. The real protagonist is Sarah Tucker whose curiosity about the fate of a young girl whose her home explodes killing her mother and father drives the plot. While the child may be a MacGuffin, Tucker’s search for the missing girl moves like a freight train driving the book to a point where Ms. Boehm plays a critical part.
Herron evidently loved the character of Zoë Boehm so much he brought her back to star in a few subsequent novels as ell as an Apple TV series starring Emma Thompson as Ms. Boehm.
Down Cemetery Road is a roller coaster ride that’s filed with interesting characters including two evil spies who are brothers and have echoes of the twin brothers portrayed by Christian Bale in The Prestige. (If you haven’t seen this film about magicians in Victorian England, you must.) Heron packs the book with genuine surprise combined with palpable suspense and his everywoman—Ms. Tucker, who changes her name from time to time—rides the tide of this saga to a satisfying conclusion. Highly recommended.
As the year was wrapping up, I just finished reading Herron’s Dead Lions, a book in his Slough House series of spy thrillers and it was simply amazing and highly recommended. If you haven’t read Mick Herron before you simply must!
Denzil Meyrivk’s book, Murder at Holly House, has a sad subtext. While this is a delightful, often funny and bizarre cozy yet genre bending mystery, Mr Meyrivk passed away in 2025 at age 59 after having written two other holiday-themed books in this series.
The book is set in 1950’s England, and features Inspector Frank Grasby as a policeman who is a WWII veteran and well as equal parts Poirot and Clouseau. He’s sent by his superiors to a small village to investigate thefts occurring on some of the local farms and tumbles headlong into what is international Cold War intrigue. The titled murder at Holly House is uncovered while Grasby is visiting the Lord’s manor—the selfsame Holly House—and noting how the fireplace is not drawing properly putting out ash and smoke throughout the living room until he clears out a blockage that tends to be a dead body falling out!
This apparent murder is not the only one that occurs in the story and while the second one is more or less solved by the end, the perpetrator of the “murder at Holly House” is handled in the most offhand way. But you will not care. The story is so deftly written and so unselfconsciously humorous that you just don’t care. The real mystery lies in the Cold War aspects of the story. No Spoilers. I loved the book and look forward to reading the other two books in Meyrivk’s holiday-themed series.
Another holiday themed mystery I read was Charles Todd’s novella A Christmas Witness, the latest book in the Inspector Rutledge series and the first, I believe, written without the collaboration of his late mother who had co-authored all the other books in this series. This book has more than a hint of A Christmas Carol, minus the ghosts, in the ending and, far from being a whodunit, was pretty much what I expected. That did not interfere in no way of my enjoyment of the story and I was glad to see Rutledge back on the case.
Books for Christmas?
Mary gave me two books for Christmas: The first one was a special signed Collector’s Edition of Mick Herron’ Slow Horses. That’s me looking through the hole in the cover—yes, there’s a hole in the cover—above left. The other book was Mike Lupica’s Showdown, the latest book in the late Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series of mystery novels. Look for reviews of these books real soon now.