Right – absolutely last mention of the move. It’s been a hectic month for me, relocating myself, my wife and twelve paws-worth of cats two-and-a-half hours due south – not an experience that I’d care to repeat in the near future. But we all survived, the cats have settled in and it’s time to get back into the swing of things. It’s the last day of the month so that can only mean one thing – it’s time for the ISOTCMN Book of the Month, aka the Puzzly!

It’s been a weird month for reading, but I managed to get through nine books – some didn’t get the focus that they deserved, and two of them are actually novellas, but that’s not bad going. But which of them was the best?

So, in order, the books were:

• The Natural Victim by Peter Reynard
• The House Of Shadows by Paul Doherty
• Thirteenth Night by Alan Gordon
• If Snow Hadn’t Fallen by S J Bolton
• The Haunted Abbot by Peter Tremayne
• A Cursed Inheritance by Kate Ellis
• A Moorland Hanging by Michael Jecks
• XO by Jeffery Deaver
• I. Claudia by Marilyn Todd

Not a classic crop this month – the Doherty book was a little disappointing, compared at least to the best books in that series, the Tremayne was the first disappointment in that series and the Kate Ellis book had the misfortune to be read in the middle of the worst of the move, so I can’t judge it fairly. It comes down to two books, really. A Moorland Hanging is a great historical mystery, well plotted and making full use of the setting, but the winner is the outstanding Thirteenth Night – a joyful romp with a clever twisting plot and some genuine surprises. It’s available as an ebook, so why don’t you go and check it out – and the Michael Jecks book too, while you’re at it.

Don’t forget to check out what my fellow bloggers read this month over at Mysteries In Paradise. In the meantime, fingers crossed for a bumper crop of reading – including (and this is for real, as I’m already a third through it) a return to the Ellery Queen bibliography. It’s only been nine months since the last one…