Book 73: "The Locked Room" by Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö

From the window he had a view out over an immense hole in the ground - out of which the gigantic showy building of the National Police Board would in due course rise up and obscure the view. From this ultramodern colossus in the heart of Stockholm the police would extend their tentacles in every direction and hold the dispirited citizens of Sweden in an iron grip. At least some of them. They couldn't all emigrate or commit suicide.

On his return to work 15 months after being shot, Martin Beck is broken in gently by being assigned the case of a man found dead of a gunshot wound in a locked room with no gun anywhere to be found. Beck's colleagues Kollberg and Larsson have been assigned to a special bank robberies squad under district attourney Bulldozer Olsson.

The police are demoralised, undermanned and riven by politics, and they make some big errors in their investigations, but it is rather amusing how characters come in pairs with matching names. As well as the police patrolmen Kristiansson and Kvastmo, there are the Swedish bank robbers Malmström and Mauser and the German bank robbers Hoff and Hauser.

Book 74: "Capricorn Colony" by Irene Heath

The story is set on an imaginary Caribbean island during the second world war, and I would assume from the dated attitudes that it was written in the forties or fifties. The characters include locals and visitors, aristocrats, colonial diplomats, entrepreneurs, refugees, a soldiers, and torpedoed sailors, and there are parties, love affairs and war work, a hurricane, a riot and a surprise visit by dignitaries from London.

But best of all is the map of Capricorn Island inside the front covers; I liked being able to follow the routes of the characters as they moved around the island.

Book 75: "Ares Express" by Ian McDonald

We're in big trouble, Sweetness thought, face lit by the heat-death of falling angels. What's happening, why, who's doing it? The questions answered themselves the moment she shaped them. That man, up there, just a fistful of metres above your head. but was this the big one, the Angels and Devastation Harx, duking it out, mano a mano, or was he merely testing the limits of his powers.

On a terraformed Mars, trains powered by nuclear fusion carry goods and passengers around the world. The families that work the trains spend their whole lives on the trains, and train looks down on track, platform and and even more so on passenger. Eight-year-old Sweetness Octave Glorious-Honeybun Asiim Engineer 12th of the great train Catherine of Tharsis resents the fact that Engineer girls don't get to drive trains, and runs away rather than submit to an arranged marriage to a Stuard and spend the rest of her life working in a train kitchen. Grandmother Taal goes in search of her wayward granddaughter and both women end up involved in a battle to save the planet, as one man tries to bring an end to the Angels, the machines that terraformed the planet and are keep it stable.

This is set in the same reality as "Desolation Road", which I loved and could really do with re-reading, and a couple of characters from the earlier book turn up in "Ares Express".

NB: Google helped me to find a site that let me translate the ages of the Martian characters into Earth years.