Lady of the Shades by Darren Shan

Book 49 Lady of the Shades is a deceptive book which constantly switches and evolves from one theme to another. It starts fairly innocuously with the story of a journeyman horror writer who embarks on an affair with the wife of a gangster, the eponymous Lady.

It's a fairly humdrum story for the first 50 pages or so then suddenly comes to live. It then switches between ghost story and thriller with a vast number of twists and turns. I don't normally guess the plot line at the heart of the mystery but for once I did, but even so it's a captivating story which shifts and turns in many different directions.

Regular readers of this blog will know I hate hackneyed storylines and this certainly isn't, so I applaud it as  a work which strives for originality. I award Lady of the Shades a respectable 7 out of 10.

My third attempt at a fiction book since my sojourn to non-fiction will be the 50th bookcase I have read a book from (although I am aware that bookcase 48 has yet to yield anything worth reading).

The 50th bookcase (and the 49th book) will be Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, by Jamie Ford. Apparently this is an international bestseller, although I have neither heard of it not the writer. All I know is it's a historical novel with some very complimentary quotes on the front cover. Let's see what it's like!