David Guest (Author of A Pressure of The Hand)

David Guest liked Kim Broadbent's review of Murder on Lake Garda: "Have you ever read Agatha Christie's Elephants Can Remember? She wrote this book later in her career and many people now believe she was suffering from dementia as her vocabulary is limited and the prose rambling and repetitive. Therefore if Tom Hind" Read more of this review »
Sep 17, 2026 03:41AM · see review
David Guest and 1 other person liked Sue's review of Murder on Lake Garda: "I had high hopes. A quote on the front said it was worthy of Agatha Christie or words to that effect. It was nowhere near her beautiful prose and elegant plots. This book was lacking somehow. It had a plot, but it wasn't very interesting. It had a mu" Read more of this review »
Sep 17, 2026 03:38AM · see review
David Guest rated a book did not like it Murder on Lake Garda by Tom Hindle (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
“It would almost have been comical...” And that’s the discovery of the second body. But Murder on Lake Garda has been softening you up for unintended humour for many, many pages by then. In the fourth paragraph you’ll read that “On the flight to Veron ...more
Sep 17, 2026 03:33AM · like · see review
David Guest liked BySpoke's review of Gabriel's Moon: "Mr Boyd can write – there’s ‘A Good Man in Africa’ to attest to that and, in case you haven’t read anything of his, it is apparent in his prose here: clear, brisk, straight into the story. The trouble is the story isn’t that interesting - despite amp" Read more of this review »
Sep 04, 2026 01:46PM · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Gabriel's Moon by William Boyd. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Gabriel's Moon by William Boyd <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
David Guest liked Brian Wilcox's review of Gabriel's Moon: "I expected better, having loved some of his earlier books. But the prose was wooden, the plot dragged and had huge holes, and the main character was a bumbling fool used by "real spies" to achieve their ends."
Sep 04, 2026 01:44PM · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Gabriel's Moon by William Boyd. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Gabriel's Moon by William Boyd <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
David Guest rated a book it was ok Gabriel's Moon by William Boyd	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
The effusive tributes from other authors on the cover of Gabriel’s Moon are mystifying. Have these people never read anything else by William Boyd? Are they unaware of how exceptionally good some of his earlier books have been? Surely, if they knew Bo ...more
Sep 04, 2026 03:23AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Gabriel's Moon by William Boyd. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Gabriel's Moon by William Boyd <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
David Guest rated a book liked it Middlemarch by George Eliot	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
With a long book, you’ll often approach the end with regret, knowing that you must soon say goodbye to an old and faithful friend. And then there’s Middlemarch. Or, as dogged readers may begin to think of it, Middledecember at the Earliest. This tale o ...more
Sep 02, 2026 01:02AM · like · see review
David Guest rated a book really liked it Lord Peter: A Collection of All the Lord Peter Wimsey Stories by Dorothy L. Sayers	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Midway through this fine collection of short stories, one of the drawbacks of the form may begin to dawn on you. The rapid succession of Lord Peter's triumphs highlights the limitations of the criminal classes. If you found yourself at a party with Lo ...more
Jun 02, 2026 04:09AM · like · see review
David Guest is currently reading The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris by Evie Woods (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Feb 28, 2026 02:24PM · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris by Evie Woods. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris by Evie Woods <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
David Guest rated a book really liked it Shame by Salman Rushdie	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I am too Western to offer a proper review of this extraordinary book. Much of its intricacy passes over my head. I know it's there, because occasionally I recognise a reference: Rushdie is playful with names of people and places throughout, and resid ...more
Jan 06, 2026 03:03AM · like · see review

David Guest liked Kim Broadbent's review of Murder on Lake Garda:

"Have you ever read Agatha Christie's Elephants Can Remember? She wrote this book later in her career and many people now believe she was suffering from dementia as her vocabulary is limited and the prose rambling and repetitive.

Therefore if Tom Hind" Read more of this review »

David Guest and 1 other person liked Sue's review of Murder on Lake Garda:

"I had high hopes. A quote on the front said it was worthy of Agatha Christie or words to that effect. It was nowhere near her beautiful prose and elegant plots.

This book was lacking somehow. It had a plot, but it wasn't very interesting. It had a mu" Read more of this review »

David Guest rated a book did not like it

Murder on Lake Garda
by Tom Hindle (Goodreads Author)

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“It would almost have been comical...” And that’s the discovery of the second body. But Murder on Lake Garda has been softening you up for unintended humour for many, many pages by then.
In the fourth paragraph you’ll read that “On the flight to Veron “It would almost have been comical...” And that’s the discovery of the second body. But Murder on Lake Garda has been softening you up for unintended humour for many, many pages by then.
In the fourth paragraph you’ll read that “On the flight to Verona, he had read that Lake Garda was thirty-four miles from top to bottom.” The Mariana Trench is a little under seven miles at its deepest. Yes, ‘top to bottom’ could mean ‘across’, or ‘from north to south’, or ‘wide’, or ‘long’. But from above, from an aeroplane? Doesn’t ‘top to bottom’ imply depth?
The ambiguity begins in the very first sentence, when a scream rings out where no scream should be expected. In the second, nobody seems to have noticed. Soon it’s apparent that the scream was merely a hook. We’ll have to plough through events leading up to it, and meet all the potential murderers. Several of them can be discounted immediately because we have access to the thoughts of half a dozen, as if this were by Virginia Woolf. A further two candidates are disqualified since they are only ever referred to jointly, like Marks and Spencer, and two more are simply too obvious. The victims further reduce the number of possibilities. But by the time the scream enters the narrative again, on page 155, it has become piercing and blood-curdling. So, worth waiting for, then.
Not entirely. The novel is about twice as long as it could have been. Was it really necessary to insert summaries at regular intervals, to remind inattentive readers of the latest clues and conversations?
The writing style is more an absence of style. Sentences tend to be short. Questions are used as a means of raising the tension. Words are misused: ‘painstaking’, repeatedly, ‘cracking’ for ‘cranking’, and others; in a news-room scene “reporters typed furiously at keyboards” as if manual typewriters were still in use, and hardly 100 words later “Laurence and Margot were furiously preparing for the trial”. Many glances are swept, cast or shot.
In short I liked it only enough to finish it, but if I’m honest it was doomed from the first. On the Penguin cover, at least five typefaces are used. That’s two too many, and not to be taken seriously. ...more

David Guest liked BySpoke's review of Gabriel's Moon:

"Mr Boyd can write – there’s ‘A Good Man in Africa’ to attest to that and, in case you haven’t read anything of his, it is apparent in his prose here: clear, brisk, straight into the story. The trouble is the story isn’t that interesting - despite amp" Read more of this review »

David Guest liked Brian Wilcox's review of Gabriel's Moon:

"I expected better, having loved some of his earlier books. But the prose was wooden, the plot dragged and had huge holes, and the main character was a bumbling fool used by "real spies" to achieve their ends."

David Guest rated a book it was ok

Gabriel's Moon
by William Boyd

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The effusive tributes from other authors on the cover of Gabriel’s Moon are mystifying.
Have these people never read anything else by William Boyd? Are they unaware of how exceptionally good some of his earlier books have been? Surely, if they knew Bo ...more

David Guest rated a book liked it

Middlemarch
by George Eliot

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With a long book, you’ll often approach the end with regret, knowing that you must soon say goodbye to an old and faithful friend.
And then there’s Middlemarch.
Or, as dogged readers may begin to think of it, Middledecember at the Earliest. This tale o With a long book, you’ll often approach the end with regret, knowing that you must soon say goodbye to an old and faithful friend.
And then there’s Middlemarch.
Or, as dogged readers may begin to think of it, Middledecember at the Earliest. This tale of two couples stutters towards its predictable conclusion across several hundred pages. The story is easily summarised: Marry in haste, repent at leisure. But that’s 316,053 words short of an acceptable novel, apparently.
Both couples find the same impediment standing in the way of marital bliss: neither man is capable of keeping the woman in the manner to which she is accustomed. In one case, the man doesn’t even try. In the other, he ploughs on despite knowing he is doomed to fail.
Other characters perform roles familiar from soap operas. Some are useful for pre-Enlightenment views, some provide amusing rustic accents, some seem promising but are lost from sight for protracted periods.
The writing is maddeningly inconsistent. It is often funny, perceptive or simply magnificent. The chapters on the gradual decay of the Lydgates’ marriage are sublime. On the other hand, much of the prose is too convoluted to be easily understood.
Chapter 20, charting Dorothea’s unhappiness on her honeymoon, is a striking example. How simple it would have been to observe that Dorothea is confused and unsettled by travel and marriage alike, while Mr Casaubon is, as we already suspected, too old for her and too odd. Instead the reader gets 4,500 words packed into many tortuous subordinate clauses. At no point is the question of their sex-life broached and this, surely, cannot be irrelevant. But even so, Eliot produces an occasional unforgettable phrase: “If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.”
That chapter, incidentally, brings Will Ladislaw into focus. He becomes one of the main four characters. And that’s a pity, because he undermines much of the value of the book.
Will is a dilettante. Initially we find him dabbling with art. Later, it seems he may take up literature. Eventually he becomes a journalist and speech-writer. He is a prototypical spin-doctor, and eventually he becomes an MP. The great achievement of Middlemarch is supposed to be its psychological authenticity. The idea that Dorothea, attracted to Casaubon’s spiritual depth, should then fall for an individual of such superficiality, is inconceivable; and yet it is not only conceived but grows to fill up hundreds of pages.
Two other wills are worth mentioning. Two wealthy men leave very unusual wills on which the prosperity of several of Middlemarch’s most idle residents depends. The wills introduce tension but their peculiarities hardly serve any sense of reality, psychological or otherwise.
In short, Middlemarch is the best novel in the history of the world, according to The Guardian’s international panel of authors, critics and academics. It wouldn’t be in my top 10. ...more

David Guest rated a book really liked it

Lord Peter: A Collection of All the Lord Peter Wimsey Stories
by Dorothy L. Sayers

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Midway through this fine collection of short stories, one of the drawbacks of the form may begin to dawn on you. The rapid succession of Lord Peter's triumphs highlights the limitations of the criminal classes.
If you found yourself at a party with Lo ...more

David Guest is currently reading

The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris
by Evie Woods (Goodreads Author)

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David Guest rated a book really liked it

Shame
by Salman Rushdie

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I am too Western to offer a proper review of this extraordinary book. Much of its intricacy passes over my head. I know it's there, because occasionally I recognise a reference: Rushdie is playful with names of people and places throughout, and resid ...more

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	A Pressure of The Hand 4.33 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 2017 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Towns of Two Halves 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
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