Enjoyable enough comedy crime caper. Set around a Sci-fi convention it makes some nice little in-jokes for anybody who has ever attended such an event. Pretty light and breezy and I whizzed through it in just a couple of days. Not one that I imagine will stay with me for long, but a pleasant reading experience.

Despite seeing various different TV and film adaptations I‘d never read the novel. As good as some of those are the novel outflanks them all. I can see why it‘s regarded as one of the great sci-fi novels. Where Wyndham is so good is in creating a very real sense of a global disaster and building that world, but at the same time keeping it personal and making you care about the individuals. A superb piece of work simultaneously bleak and hopeful.

The fourth in the Louie Knight series from Malcom Pryce this is darker than what has gone before while still being genuinely very funny at times. There‘s an awful lot of threads thrown at the plot and I wouldn‘t say everything pays off, but the world of Aberystwyth noir and the little cast of regular characters led by Louie and his assistant Calamity are good fun to be around. Very enjoyable.

The first Steinbeck novel I‘ve read for some time and a reminder of why he made such an impact on me as a young reader. His final novel is a tale of morality and what a man is prepared to sacrifice in order to enjoy money and success. There‘s a clear moral message that in a lesser writer‘s hands could feel forced. With Steinbeck it builds in a taut, tense developing story around characters who feel painfully real.