Not your average mermaid tale.

Our story begins in March 1976 in St Constance, a tiny Caribbean village on the island of Black Conch. David, a fisherman who likes to sing on his boat while at sea, attracts the attention of Aycayia, a beautiful young woman cursed to live as a mermaid. One day, Aycayia mistakes another fishing boat for David’s and is captured by fishermen with less good intentions.

However this is not The Little Mermaid or Splash. Aycayia’s capture scene is incredibly uncomfortable to read and after she’s captured and subsequently tied up on a shipping dock, the descriptions of

Reading this was an odd experience. On the one hand I found the exhaustive description, lack of propulsion and proliferation of characters (and red herrings) irksome, but on the other I couldn’t put the daft thing down.

The problem is Rowling starts off well and has a knack of establishing characters and atmosphere that quickly suck you in, but seems to feel obliged to give her fans ever more of a good thing as her series progress - Harry Potter, anyone? The result is, in the case of this 5th book in the Cormoran Strike series, a ridiculously overlong book which would have benefitted from the

On my recent trip to visit my sister in the USA, she recommended a book to me called "The Light Pirate" by Lily Brooks-Dalton. My sister had discovered the book by attending an author event in Books & Books of Key West. Books & Books store founder Judy Blume (yes!!) was in attendance and gave glowing praise for the book, saying she doesn't normally read post apocalyptical novels but that she really enjoyed this book.

So that brings me to the subject matter of the book, which is, in essence, what happens when the power goes out. Specifically in Florida where the central character is based. The

This novel is the second in the Perveen Mistry detective series, set in 1920s pre-independence India. Perveen is a female solicitor, still a rare thing in the early days of the twentieth century. Having obtained her law degree at Oxford she works for Mistry Law, her family’s legal practice in Bombay (now Mumbai) with her father and grandfather.

Her latest assignment comes about because of her involvement in a previous case where a family of ladies in purdah required legal advice (The Widows of Malabar Hill). In Perveen’s latest case she is again asked to act for purdah ladies, this time for the

Right from the first page you know this is no run-of-the-mill murder mystery and, having finished it, I’m still not quite sure what it is. Influenced not so much by Agatha Christie as by Dan Brown with a sprinkling of Le Carre, there are shades of Lynda La Plante in the scenes set in London’s gangsterland. More surprisingly Enid Blyton features big, her oeuvre hilariously sent up by Hallett. Also in the mix is Kit Williams’s Masquerade, a fantasy book that sparked a quest for a golden hare buried somewhere in the British countryside in the 70s (this really happened, I kid you not). But what