The Tin Princess by Philip Pullman

It is 1882 Sally Goldberg is away to America with her new husband leaving young Jim Taylor, consulting detective, to take the helm in the fourth Sally Lockhart mystery.

In pursuit of a lost girl Jim finds a princess: Adelaide was last seen escaping from the fire that killed Sally's love Frederick.  Now she's engaged to be married to Prince Rudolf, Crown Prince of the tiny kingdom of Razkavia and there are plenty of forces arraigned against her.  Jim finds himself assigned as her protector as they travel with Razkavian exile and interpreter Becky Winter to the country, bordered and threatened by Austria and Germany who both have their eyes on the prize of Razkavia's tin mines.  Murder, skulduggery, high politics and the transformation of a cockney prostitute to a Crown Princess makes for a hell of a ride of a story, entertaining and ultimately heart warming.

The Capture of Cerberus and The Incident of the Dog's Ball by Agatha Christie (AUDIO)

Two Poirot stories found by Agatha Christie's family in 2004 among her private notebooks, they are intriguing and well plotted as her other works, similarly evoking an era that is past whilst also unearthing the universal reasons for murder and hiding.

To me, The Capture of Cerberus is the least successful.  The father of a son torn apart by a mob for the killing of a Nazi dictator is convinced of his son's innocence and comes to Poirot looking for his help.  I felt this one was a little hampered by the slightly heavy handed references to the oncoming Second World War and the allegories with Hitler.

The Incident of the Dog's Ball is classic Christie, a letter posted long after being written leads Poirot to the death of a rich old lady in a Kent village, a change of will seems to imply some skullduggery but as usual all is not as it seems.  A really great story.

Both are read evocatively by David Suchet, the actor best known to us in the present day for playing Poirot himself, which adds real richness to the audio book.

Vienna Blood by Frank Tallis (AUDIO)

In 1902 a serial killer is stalking Vienna, pursued by Detective Inspector Oskar Reinhardt with the help of Freudian psychologist Dr Max Liebermann. On one level this is a great murder mystery and balancing of Reinhardt's old style detection and Libermann's radical theories, an early form of forensic profiling. Tallis has created an excellent story, with lots of clever twists that keep you guessing, secret societies, early fascism, nationalism and racial hatred.

What shone for me, however, was Tallis' evocation of turn of the century Vienna, a city poised between ancient traditions and the new world of Freud and Klimt. Liebermann's following of Freud and his treatment of a patient convinced he is having an affair with a member of the royal family bring to life the new wave of thinking breaking across Europe at the time. This is also brought to light by Tallis' backstory of Liebermann's sweet but shallow finacee, obsessed with social niceties, and Amelia Lydgate, a new kind of woman asserting her right to an education and equality with men. I particularly loved the descriptions of Vienna, especially their endless visits to tea houses for the kind of cakes Austria is still world first for today.

So a great read but enjoyably more than that, recommended