mysteries on the beach (October)
- Brother Cadfael (3 mysteries) - Ellis Peters
Medieval monk who grows medicinal herbs in the monastery, used to be part of the Crusades, and now solves mysteries. You know, if you read 3 of these in a row, you can start kind of predicting what’s going to happen. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of Brother Cadfael, but in the future I will take my time in between reading them.

- Farewell, My Lovely - Raymond Chandler
I was going to highlight this one, but I just can’t because the beginning is So Disturbingly Racist it’s hard to stomach. After the first 20 pages or so, there aren’t any more black people in it, and it turns into a really interesting and complex hardboiled detective story. Really excellent plot construction and I totally get into the writing even though a lot of it seems quite ridiculous on its own. The man likes his metaphors. But the beginning...it is not a pretty thing.

- Burglars Can’t Be Choosers - Lawrence Block
Used bookstore! There’s a fairly good used bookstore here in Nairobi, at one of the ex-pat malls that make me fairly nauseous. Anyways, I was worried I wouldn’t have enough books from the guesthouse library to take on vacation, so I hit up the used bookstore. I had read some of these burglar books before - the main character is a burglar who is a likeable chap, and in the later books is an ex-burglar who runs a used bookstore. Well, this is the first of the books, and it’s just not quite as good. Burglar isn’t quite as entirely likeable. But still, not bad.