This time last week, I was out of books.

By the end of Friday, I had copies of Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks (Brookmyre) and Crooked Little Vein (Ellis).

By Monday, I’d read them both. I’ve heard of this “delayed gratification” thing, but it sounds like a stupid idea to me.

Both of them I think come under the heading “flawed but enjoyable page turners”. Neither of them is going to shock the pants off you if you’ve read either writer’s work before (although Crooked Little Vein might horrify a few of the more sheltered of you, I suppose), and neither has topped the list of my favourite works by that author, but they both passed a few hours in a pleasant manner, and they both made me laugh out loud.

Wow, that was faint praise, wasn’t it? The reason I sound so lukewarm is that I don’t want to go into more depth, because I can’t talk about what I liked and disliked in each without spoiling key plot points in each of them.