MORE THOUGHTS ON TANA FRENCH: AND CORMAC MCCARTHY

I have to admit that I found in In The Woods very disturbing, and really should move on to something new. I felt throughout Tana French's fine debut novel that I wanted to scream at Ryan to get his brain in order.

She informed me, matter-of-factly, that she was old enough to know the difference between intriguing and fucked up. "You should go for younger women," she advised me. "They can't always tell."

Perhaps good crime fiction can be so much like real life that it actually hurts to read it.

Life frequently doesn't do neat happy endings. Which brings me on to the film All The Pretty Horses [starring a very young Matt Damon and Penelope Cruz] which I recorded a few weeks ago and watched the other night, as preparation for a visit to the cinema to see No Country for Old Men.

I also had a look at the book which my son had studied for his English A level, along with William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. His copy is full of underlinings and notations, which shows he actually did a lot of work!

His last note is "No neat ending....yet another journey.... Grady's journey is not over....Life is a journey."

Perhaps I will read the book in a few months, when I have forgotten the film.

No Country for Old Men, is based on another Cormac McCarthy novel, and is released here today so I will see that sometime in the next week.

I will start reading A Vengeful Longing by R.N.Morris later today, and immerse myself in St Petersburg during the hot summer of 1868.