Thrillfilter is back! Coming up in the next few days and weeks: Rankin, Myers, Mitchell, Gardner, Colfer, Proulx and more

It’s not that I stopped reading after the heart business, the stent, the relapse, the heavy duty medication and the sense of imminent demise. I read like a crazy man. I read as if each book was going to be my last. I just couldn’t be bothered writing about the writing I was reading. There was always another Amazon Prime two quid deal (including postage), a heap of back catalogues to catch up with, the occasional full-price quagmire to squelch through (thank you, Annie Proulx). Dearie me, Barkskins is absolutely terrible.

So Thrillfilter has taken a back seat. A seat in the bleachers. A perch on a faraway tree, overlooking a deserted motorway interchange. Until now.

I’m at a point where the medication has eased, the stent has presumably bedded in and there’s a distinct possibility I could go on living, reading and even writing for a time yet. I’ve started cycling again. Given up the medicinal red wine (when my cardiologist said ‘one drink a day’ he meant one bottle, right?’). And I’m suddenly busy with stuff like 60 North Radio, serving as a non-exec on the local health board, one or two wee magazine columns, and most recently being a (surprisingly busy) funeral celebrant.

What have I been reading over the past year? Deluges, veritable cataracts of ‘genre’ fiction - much of which is going to have to remain uncelebrated in these colyooms. And re-reading, a comfort thing. A third (or it may be fourth) trip through the entire Len Deighton/Bernard Sampson saga - 10 books, in order, starting with A Berlin Family. Lumps of Ian and Ian M Banks. PG Wodehouse (overrated). The wonderful, ignored and now mostly out of print Anthony Price. Alexei Sayle (those short stories are stunning, especially Barcelona Plates, still). And much more, as those DJs say.

Anyway, I’m going to revive Thrillfilter, and imminently there will be reviews appearing of the amazing and harrowing Turning Blue by Benjamin Myers, Screwed by Eoin Colfer, Ian Rankin’s Even Dogs in the Wild, The awful Barkskins, the lost spy novels of John Gardner and a look at the work of the aforementioned Anthony Price. Oh, and David Mitchell’s mind bending, rip-roaring take on sci-fi fantasy, The Bone Clocks and Slade House.

All coming up...very soon