J.K. Rowling’s pseudonymous The Cuckoo’s Calling is satisfyingly twisty and complicated, with everyone having someone to hide… and then falls apart at the end when you realize that everything hinged on the killer having done something incredibly stupid and unjustified.

Robert Goddard’s Into the Blue was similarly complicated, and I’m happy to say it holds together.

Mark Waid’s The Unknown and The Unknown: Devil Made Flesh feature the good old hyper-rational supernatural investigator who disbelieves in the supernatural and they’re a decent read, but are somewhat undermined by the setting being so chock full of the supernatural as to render disbelief hyper-irrational.

I finally read the Angel: After the Fall books that precede Buffy Season 8 (but you need Spike: the Complete Series if you want to understand why Spike shows up in Buffy Season 8 in a spaceship crewed by giant cockroaches.) Then I caught up on the Buffy Season 9 collections. Willow’s quest to restore magic to the world is the most interesting plotline.