Tag Archives: The Siege of Mr Khan’s Curry Shop

Who’s Got the Biscuits – Book Review

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I turned on today with a mission in mind. I have just read Charlie Robinson’s latest novel and thought I’d do a review. I don’t do many book reviews because I find it hard to strike the right note. I don’t read that many novels, and lack points of reference, for one thing. For another, if a book’s rubbish, I hesitate to say so because the worst book in the world is still a better book than any of the books I have thought of but never written.

The first book, The Siege of Mr Khan’s Curry Shop took a while for me to read and review as Covid intervened and gave me an excuse for procrastinating. It then took me a while to buy and start the next one – Who’s Got The Biscuits. I can’t help thinking there’s a question mark missing there, and speaking as a poet, it would scan better as Who’s Got All the Biscuits?

Anyway, I finished it. Then I reviewed it on Goodreads, then I turned WP on. There I found that in 2023 I had written News of an Old Blogger, which turned out to be quite appropriate.

I suppose I’d better write the review now.

The first book, as I may have noted at the time, was a bit rough around the edges and showed signs of being a first novel. The plot, whilst it was well-constructed, felt a bit too tidy as it ended.

However, it did have a good cast and a good old-fashioned story where bad things happen to bad people.

The new novel opens four years after the events of the first one. Good intentions go awry, proving that favours often go wrong. The past returns. New problems arise and a lot of sorting out has to be done. It’s well plotted, moves along nicely and features an engaging group of characters.

It’s a bit difficult to place it in a genre. It’s not crime, my normal reading habitat. It’s placed in historical, action/adventure and romance by Amazon, but the 1970s are well within living memory and the romance is there, but not as a major driving force. It is, I would say, action/adventure in the tradition of Bulldog Drummond, Richard Hannay and the Saint (the TV one – the few Saint books I have read were not pleasant things).

f you like your books to feature serial killers with cellars and power tools this is not to book for you. And if you prefer books where willowy heroines find love in New England whilst running their Grandmother’s old bakery, you will be equally disappointed.

All in all, a good read and highly recommended. Don’t be put off by the quality of the review – I’m struggling to sound academic and not give any of the best bits away. It genuinely is a good read.

 

Book Review – The Siege of Mr Khan’s Curry Shop

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I did mention this book briefly about a year ago. It’s by Charlie Robinson, blogger, runner and Yorkshireman. To quote Meatloaf, “two out of three ain’t bad”

I’ll be honest, it didn’t start well. I opened it, the binding cracked and a page fell out. The opening didn’t feel good and the proofreading wasn’t great. Then, still suffering from the after effects of Covid, I put it down and didn’t pick it up again, though I kept meaning to. I bought the paperback last year. started it but became ill and never finished it.

It was the first book I bought for my new Kindle after Christmas and the first thing I noticed as I started it again, was that the proofreading seems to have been tightened up. Unfortunately the first section doesn’t really give an accurate impression of the rest of the book.

The other criticism I’d make is that the plotting is a bit complex for my tastes in certain respects (I’m trying to avoid giving anything away here) and it’s a bit too tidy at the end, though I’d still like to see what happens to the characters in a later book..

However, once it gets going it’s brilliant. Characterisation, storytelling, dialogue – all spot on. Great sense of time and place. He says his next book is going to be a romance, which is a shame as his writing style would be perfectly suited to crime. I really feel this paragraph should be longer to balance the length of the criticism I made earlier, because it’s quite clearly a great book. Buy it. Read it. You won’t regret it.

Day 2

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I think I may have hit on a new labour-saving idea for titling my posts. It saves a lot of thinking, though it probably won’t seem such a brilliant solution by the time we get to the far end of January.

I have now also reached Number 2 in my reading target, having just completed Death of Yesterday ,a  Hamish Macbeth mystery by M. C. Beaton. It was formulaic, dull, and badly produced – the blurb on the jacket was so inaccurate that it could have belonged to another book. I’ve actually read it before, but didn’t realise after reading the summary. I did say, a couple of years ago, I wouldn’t be reading more of these, as the editing was so bad. What I didn’t tell you was that I’d read it the week we were away, just before lockdown, and I threw it away in the hotel bin. So badly edited.  I may be being unfair on M. C. Beaton, and am still quite fond of Agatha Raisin, but the books did go off at the end.

I’ve also finished The Haibun Journal (Issue 3.2). It has 61 pages of haibun, so it’s as long as some poetry books and I’m claiming it as an allowable book. I’m in it, so this is a biased view.

I started both of them on 31st December, but I’m counting them for this year. At the end of the year I won’t count anything that I haven’t finished. Just a word of warning – don’t look for any good books in my list, I tend to gravitate to murder mysteries and a variety of oddments. You will see what I mean as time goes on.

At the moment I am reading The Siege of Mr Khan’s Curry Shop by charliecountryboy. It’s a bit more heavyweight than my average reading and is going slowly. It is my downstairs book that I keep by my chair and dip into in a reflective manner, so it could take some time. So far I’m enjoying it, though nobody has been murdered and Scotland Yard  hasn’t been called in. Each to his own . . .

(The  link to the book is the Kindle edition – I have the paperback, but can’t find the link on Amazon).