Finished The Killings at Badger's Drift by Caroline Graham, the book that inspired Midsomer Murders, one of my favorite series. The book was well-written, and it was interesting to see how Anthony Horowitz, a favorite writer of mine, who wrote the screenplay works with Graham's story and characters. ( )

Inspector Barnaby is a popular TV series in Germany, too, but I first encountered it on a trip to the UK when I was watching TV in my hotel room. I quite liked it and started buying the DVD sets, and it has since been one of my favourite TV series. Of course it is not great art, but it is a real comfort watch to me, and I watched it together with my husband for several months when we went through a difficult time at work and did not have any energy to read or do anything else. During that time I also bought the first three books of the original book series, but it took me until now to start reading them.

This 2016 edition contains an introduction by John Nettles, who played Barnaby in the TV series, in which he stresses the cuts and changes that need to be made in order to adapt a novel to the screen. Therefore I was prepared for the book to differ from the TV series. I was surprised, though, that the plot has been kept very faithfully. The characters have not, though - Sergeant Troy, whom I really like in the TV series despite his obvious flaws, is thoroughly loathsome in the novel. Barnaby's daughter Cully is quite different, too, and Barnaby himself is not really a contrast to his TV personality, but a deeper character, with more background and, coming with that, more difficulties. I must admit that I did have some problems with that because while on the one hand it was interesting to learn more about him, not all of it matched the fatherly and calm figure I am used to on the screen.

Now to the story itself: I have watched the first episode four times and thus reading it was not that exciting. I knew all the twists and turns, and it might be unfair to really rate this novel. Still I must say that I found it rather slow in the beginning, the characters felt exaggerated, and I just wished the plot to progress. However, it still became a page turner towards the end of the book, and then completely drew me in. It is well written, Barnaby is a sharp and funny character, and I appreciated the crafting of the case maybe even more than when watching it. ( )

Midsomer Murders 1

The Killings at Badger's Drift is the first book of the Inspector Barnaby mysteries which are the basis of the tv show, Midsomer Murders. This first book introduces Tom Barnaby, a police detective who is investigating the death of an elderly woman whose best friend believes she was murdered.

I'm not sure why this took me so long to get through - it's not particularly long with 263 pages but it felt like I kept whittling and whittling and got nowhere. I would read and read and still end up with very few pages gone.

I just didn't like it. The show is kind of hit and miss and from reading the book I can see it clearly is true to form. The murder is dragged out but there's no excitement or intrigue or anything to actually give a mystery - it's just a crime that's happened. It was just boring. I didn't care about any of the characters. Frankly half of them freaked me out. They were creepy AF. I didn't have any strong feelings for Barnaby. Sergeant Troy was just a horrible person. The woman that was murdered and her friend were the only I sort of liked and neither of them make too much of an appearance.

I'm not sure if this just hasn't aged well or it's just bad. But it was a no from me. 2 stars. ( )

I found it a chore to finish this audiobook. Mainly, I think, because of the deeply unpleasant nature of some of the characters, including, to my surprise, Sergeant Troy.

This one is not to my taste at all. ( )