SLOW HORSES by Mick Herron John Murray, £7.99 The first of his series about MI5 and a character called Jackson Lamb, one of the great monsters of modern fiction. He’s a wonderfully cynical writer and there’s a lot of dark humour in it. I’m not clever enough to write this sort of thing.
DISSOLUTION by CJ Sansom Pan, £8.99 On the whole I don’t read historical novels because I’ve spent 35 years writing them but I love Sansom’s which are about a hunchbacked lawyer called Shardlake in the reign of Henry VIII. He’s a beguiling character, the sort of lawyer we’d all like to have.
INSIDE OF A DOG by Alexandra Horowitz Scribner, £8.99 I have a dog called Whisky and I read this to find out what was going on inside his brain. What I found most interesting was the idea that family is incredibly important to dogs. It’s based on lots of observation and is a terrific read.
THE FACE OF BATTLE by John Keegan Bodley Head, £16.99 A book that changed the way military history was written and had a huge influence on the way I write novels. John was a lecturer at Sandhurst and he dissects Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme from the point of view of the men who were there. He humanises military history and makes it alive.
SUMMER LIGHTNING by PG Wodehouse Arrow, £8.99 I’m a huge Wodehouse fan. Like me he was an exile. His books are more British than the British but they were written in Long Island and California. They’re just funny. If you’re ever feeling depressed get hold of everything he wrote and cheer yourself up.
DARK OF THE MOON by John Sandford Simon & Schuster, £7.99 I like a police procedural. This is the first in a series set in Minnesota about a policemen called Virgil Flowers. John can construct a plot, he writes like an angel and it’s full of humour.
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