My book group have been selecting a genre of books for discussion rather than a single title recently. Having just pulled a few romances apart last week*, we chose "crime fiction" for next month.

Here was my dilemma. I can't bear crime fiction. Colleagues expressed surprise and swiftly took up the challenge to convince me that I was missing out on some great reading and that I should investigate Donna Leon, Nikki French and other names I've heard of but never read.

I got myself a copy of Death at La Fenice in Waterstones yesterday and came home, prepared to give it a go. But before I started it, I shuffled a few papers and found this, which seems the perfect answer. Good friend Mary had come across it and given it to me to read some time ago, but it had been buried under a pile of paper. Interesting that it should reappear at such an opportune moment.

Report to follow!

* books discussed included: Sue Gee's Letters from Prague, Small Island by Andrea Levy, Waiting by Ha Jin, Pride and Prejudice, The Cairo House by Samia Serageldin, Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Travellers Wife , My Lover's Lover by Maggie O'Farrell and Alan Titchmarsh's Rosie !