Wasted journey

A freind has recommended L J Ross, who writes crime stories set in our local area. So I tried the first, Holy Island, and enjoyed it.  As luck would have it, the day I finished reading, an e-mail from my local bookshop informed me that the author would be speaking in Corbridge on 27th April.  I drove into Corbridge yesterday morning to get tickets only to be told they were sold out.

Wasted journey, but we did have a lovely walk with a super-excited dog through the east woods along the river bank. Everything is so green it is amazing. The hawthorn is in flower, little white star flowers against the black branches, cowslips poking up through the grass. The river is running fast, but not in flood. If I walk in the other direction, I walk around fields where rapeseed is coming into flower and the ripe musky smell is faint as yet.

I also finished a Jack Reacher novel yesterday night. One Shot, about a Russian gang setting up a sniper. A good, nicely-paced thriller, and of course Reacher wins and walks off alone into the sunset. That makes three good books in a row if I count  Rankin's Even the dogs in the Wild in the trio. Long may it continue, Seems ages since I read a really good historical.