Book 62: "Dark Covenant" by Peter Luther

Solicitor Lewis Coin works for a failing law firm in Cardiff, hates his boss and is heavily in debt. He is planning to pack it all in and move to Spain, but the weekend before he intends to hand in his notice he hires a prostitute for the first time, which turns out to be a pivotal moment in his life. The following morning she leaves a magazine in his flat, having first filled in Lewis' name as the answer to one of the clues in the crossword (1 across - Who do you bring?).

His financial situation begins to improve immediately, as he starts to receive share tips that seem to be linked to the crossword clues, and he gets a potentially huge new contract for his firm, with the new client insisting that Lewis should be their only contact. But the pictures in the magazine keep changing, subtly at first and then more obviously, and the magazine itself is starting to smell really bad. Lewis starts to wonder if things are too good to be true, and realises that he needs to track down the woman who left him the magazine.

( spoilers )

I picked this book up at random from a table in the murder mystery department of Waterstones, and I'm glad I did. The idea of a magazine that was customised to lure a victim in made for a really original horror story.

Book 63: "The Devil in Amber" by Mark Gatiss

Twenty years after the events of "The Vesuvius Club", portrait painter and spy Lucifer Box is as witty, self-centred and vain as ever, but age is catching up with him. Changes in artistic fashions mean that his portraits are no longer in demand, younger spies are snapping at his heels and the Great War has taken its toll.

In this book he gets involved in investigating Olympus Mons, the leader of F.A.U.S.T (the Fascist Anglo-United States Tribune), an American fascist organisation whose members are known as Amber Shirts. This leads him from New York to a Norfolk convent and on to a castle on the French/Swiss border, following Olympus Mons, who turns out to have a rather unorthodox plan for gaining power.

Very funny.