How a book presents itself in the shop means a lot to me as far as books go, which is perhaps wrong but there you go.

Something could be the best written story in the world but if I don’t like how it looks then it’s going to be left on the shelf.

I have a few different criteria on how to choose a book when in a shop - this changes slightly if I’m buying from Amazon or somewhere else online - but in a shop, the size of the book matters, the price, the font and also the cover.

Okay, just four more needed before the end of June to keep me on track for the thirty books this year - it may be possible after all.

I think was by far my favourite Spook’s Apprentice book yet. The story takes him out of his usual setting in the County which makes things a bit more interesting as it also means he has to contend with new friends and also new enemies.

His new friend is a different Spook, Bill Arkwright, and his new enemies are mainly water-based as opposed to the land-dwellers he has had to deal with in the past.

Okay, things are trundling along at a better pace now. The end of next month sees me half way through the year (where has it gone?) so to be totally on track for reading 30 books by the end of the year, my total come the 30th June should really be 15.

Which means the rest of May and the whole of June have to be good reading months - I need to get through 5 books!

Unsurprisingly, given the title, this book follows on the tale of the Spook’s Apprentice, Tom Ward, from the last book I read.

A few years ago, the books of Harry Potter made reading childrens books as an adult almost an acceptable pastime.

I duly read the books and must admit I really enjoyed them.  It must be quite a hard thing to write for people younger than yourself, how do you know what they want to read?  How scary can you make them, how much detail to put in?

Most would agree that J K Rowling knows the answers to these questions as the Harry Potter stories were widely read around the globe - and by people of all ages.