I'm currently engrossed in 'Marriage of Souls'. From the opening chapter you are aware that this Hampshire setting is crucial, it provides a backdrop but also plays a significant character. The landscape is described in detail; shoreline, views out across the busy Solent, the marshes, forest, high street and market, the choking salt furnaces and local population involved in these various industries of land and sea. The novel brilliantly captures late eighteenth century society through its language and characterisation. It explores the period's problems, politics and class system. I'm learning about Lymington, a part of it's social and economic history about which I had no clue. I'm wanting to learn more about this pivotal point when the salt industry was under threat by cheaper manufacture elsewhere. Against this setting Warwick Collins has written a brilliant book exploring issues as wide ranging as religion, medicine, relationships and psychology. The friendship between the central characters, a young Lymington Doctor and his older mentor, with totally different personalities and opinions, is superbly drawn. I'm remembering a great line "Speaking as a Tory, I believe I am impervious to irony."

It's a great read that I might not have discovered had it not been for Reading Detectives.