Jan 18 2026
Shortly after the end of the events in A Surfeit of Guns, Sir Robert Carey receives a letter from his father, commanding him to come to London post-haste. More than filial piety is at stake, for Lord Hunsdon, as Henry Carey is called throughout the novel, is also Lord Chamberlain to the Queen herself. Sir …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/01/18/a-plague-of-angels-by-p-f-chisholm/
Dec 13 2025
The thing about The Incandescent by Emily Tesh as a novel about a magic boarding school in England is that it’s told from the adults’ point of view, adults who take their responsibilities seriously, and who have real lives that are separate from what is happening to the students. Boarding-school stories often assign the teachers …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/12/13/an-unrelated-pair-of-books-by-emily-tesh-and-lois-mcmaster-bujold/
Oct 12 2025
In deepest, darkest Kent, Coopers Chase is a retirement community built from what was once a convent. As part of its sale to private investors, the development has kept its original chapel and the burial ground where the sisters were laid to rest from the 1870s until the late twentieth century. Coopers Chase is bucolic, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/10/12/the-thursday-murder-club-by-richard-osman/
Sep 14 2025
Peter Grant and Beverly Brook have survived the first two years as parents of twins, and unsurprisingly they are in need of a vacation. Peter’s family being what it is, and his job being what it is, the trip up to Scotland more closely resembled a circus caravan than a cozy family outing. To be …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/09/14/stone-sky-by-ben-aaronovitch/
Apr 21 2025
A Surfeit of Guns picks up the afternoon of the day after the end of A Season of Knives; P.F. Chisholm gives her protagonist Sir Robert Carey no time to rest. In fact, she sends him off on a night patrol that of course turns out to be eventful, though not in the ways that …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/04/21/a-surfeit-of-guns-by-p-f-chisholm/
Feb 22 2025
Since Rivers of London was first published in 2011, the series has grown to nine novels, five novellas, and 12 graphic novels. Along the way, Aaronovitch wrote a fair number of shorter stories that were set in the world of the series; sometimes he was asked to write them, as when Waterstone’s published special editions …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/02/22/tales-from-the-folly-by-ben-aaronovitch/
Dec 28 2024
I have more than a sneaking suspicion that Ben Aaronovitch wrote Amongst Our Weapons to deliver one particular joke. People who recognize the source of the book’s title will expect that some variation on the joke is coming, but they will have to wait until page 287. Nightingale delivers the setup in Latin, though he …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/12/28/three-in-the-rivers-of-london-series-by-ben-aaronovitch/
Dec 14 2024
For most of my time reading Mrs Dalloway, I wrestled with the eight deadly words: I don’t care what happens to those people. The novel begins with a relatively famous opening line, “Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” It tells stories of numerous people on one day in midsummer London of 1923, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/12/14/mrs-dalloway-by-virginia-woolf/
Nov 16 2024
Sir Robert Carey is the very model of an Elizabethan courtier; he has skills equestrian, pedestrian and deductional. He’s met the Queen of England and he’s won the fights he chronicles, in England and in Scotland, and some in Lands Debatable. He’s well acquainted, too, with matters barely ethical; he understands corruption, both the venal …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/11/16/a-season-of-knives-by-p-f-chisholm/
Nov 03 2024
The same friend who, ages ago, recommended I read Dorothy Dunnett suggested I pick up books by P.F. Chisholm, and this is how bookish friendships are sustained over decades. We don’t always like the same things — Little, Big left her cold — but she seldom goes astray when she says she thinks I will like …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/11/03/a-famine-of-horses-by-p-f-chisholm/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire