Quick Book Reviews with Philippa Hall

It's the Quick Book Reviews summer special, and Philippa is joined by the wonderful Elly Griffiths — bestselling author of the Ruth Galloway series — to talk holidays, her latest novel The Killing Time, and what's coming next in the world of time-travelling detective Ali Dawson.
☀️ Holiday Chat
Elly is a self-confessed good traveller — half Italian, born in August, and happiest in the heat. She and Philippa cover:
Dream holiday: a pale pink villa on the Amalfi Coast, a little boat, one evening a week with a local chef, and a carefully curated stack of books
Nightmare holiday: Las Vegas — fake light, fake skies, rows of slot machines, and a pool you're not actually allowed to swim in
The art of the airport — checkers vs loungers, and why Elly is slowly becoming her husband
Buying your own book in an airport duty-free shop and having to pretend you didn't know it was there
The Jodi Picoult book she left behind in a holiday rental with one chapter to go (it still haunts her)
The worst possible holiday book: saccharine sweet, no darkness underneath, and the last chapter ripped out
🎙️ The Killing Time — Elly Griffiths
The second book in the Ali Dawson series finds time travel strictly forbidden — until Ali's cat goes missing and she decides the rules don't quite apply to that. What follows takes her to 1851, the Great Exhibition, a sinister mesmerist called Barry Power, and a chance encounter with Italian physicist Serafina Pellegrini — all with her cat Terry somehow along for the ride.
Elly and Philippa discuss:
Why time travel in these books is really just "where Allie goes" — no sci-fi knowledge required
How Ali arrived fully-formed, red-haired and nose-ringed, walking down an East End street
Her nod to Chaucer's Wife of Bath in Allie's character
The Ruth Galloway update — a short story set on a Nile cruise, and a tantalising hint about Ruth's daughter Kate turning 18 this November...
The Case of the Christmas Card (out October): a novella in which Charles Dickens travels to 2024, falls in love with M&S sandwiches, and helps Ali solve a case
The Night Watchman (out February): Ali goes back to the London Blitz — and Elly goes deep on 1940s rabbit keeping
What expression she hopes readers will have at the end: satisfaction, with a little curl of curiosity
Ice cream order: Coffee, classic, in a little cup — the odd coffee bean acceptable, squirty cream absolutely not.
The Killing Time is out now in hardback. Paperback out 10th September.
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Quick Book Reviews: author interviews and book reviews with no spoilers.
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Recorded live at Capital Crime Book Festival, Philippa talks to C.J. Merritt about his whiplash international spy thriller Octagon — but first, a public service announcement: three brilliant books you should absolutely not read on an actual flight.
3 Books You Should NOT Take on Holiday (If You're Flying)
Hostage – Clare Mackintosh
A flight attendant receives a note threatening her daughter's life mid-flight from London to Sydney. Gripping, claustrophobic, and definitely not in-flight reading.
Drowning – T.J. Newman
A plane crashes into the Pacific, trapping passengers underwater on a sinking fuselage. Written by a former flight attendant who knows exactly how to make this terrifyingly real.
Airframe – Michael Crichton
A catastrophic mid-air disaster sparks a tense investigation into what really went wrong. Brilliant, realistic, and best read firmly on the ground.
Philippa talks to C.J. Merritt about Octagon
A former MI6 officer and an ex-SAS soldier, both out in the cold, are pulled back in when a coded warning leads to a trail of danger across Europe. Described as a page-turning action thriller in the vein of I Am Pilgrim.
Chris and Philippa discuss:
His dream holiday: New Zealand, or a few days alone on a writing retreat (a luxury when you have a small child)
Travelling solo through Central Asia, Africa, and the Middle East in his twenties — and the cardigan with zip pockets built for smuggling books through customs
His nightmare holiday: a 25-mile jungle trek through 35°C heat in Central Africa, hired porters who got drunk on the money he paid them, and arriving to find the gorillas they'd come to see had all died of Ebola a year earlier
Why he wanted to write a spy thriller with a huge geographic canvas after several more localised books
Writing 500–1,000 words a day in a café, fuelled by multiple coffees, and losing track of time during action sequences
The two-book deal already underway, plus a slower, more psychological spy thriller drawing on his past life as a psychologist
Why the title Octagon came early and never changed
Ice cream order: Salted caramel, pistachio, and chocolate cookie dough — in a dish, with a cone on the side just in case.
Get in touch
Quick Book Reviews Facebook Group | Instagram | Email: quickbookreviews@outlook.com
Quick Book Reviews: author interviews and book reviews with no spoilers.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Philippa is joined by the legendary Lee Child — creator of Jack Reacher, published in over 120 countries with more than 40 million books sold — for this summer special. They cover holidays, the Reacher handover to brother Andrew Child, artificial intelligence, and why literacy in prisons matters more than you might think.
☀️ Holiday Chat
Lee hasn't had a proper holiday in 10 years — when you've been on 70 planes in a single year, home starts to look like a very good option. He and Philippa discuss:
Why 40% writing and 60% promotion means travel has lost its appeal
Dream holiday: two weeks in Antigua with a book a day plus a 25% margin for ones he doesn't get on with
The accidental best holiday of his life — a British Airways voucher, a paper ticket, a pilot who said "you're here, let's go," and a tiny Cessna to an almost uninhabited Bahamian island
The villa in Tobago that promised a cook and delivered disappointment
The Soviet Union trip he always wanted but never took — and why a Russian jail would be his true holiday nightmare
Reading on the beach with the "commentary track" switched on — and the moment in Seven that made him think "they wouldn't dare" and then they did
🎙️ Jack Reacher: Exit Strategy & Chain Reaction
Lee explains the creative handover to his brother Andrew Child, why it was never really a handover at all, and how the two of them have always been on the same wavelength — sometimes literally finishing each other's sentences about Russian oligarchs falling from windows.
They discuss:
How Andrew is now doing "all the hard work" while Lee does "the fun work" — which is just talking
Why Lee stopped writing when he felt he was running out of gas, and why he'd rather stop than phone it in
The brilliant passive opening of Exit Strategy — a note slipped into Reacher's pocket in a coffee shop
Why Reacher works as a proxy for every reader who's ever wanted to help but couldn't
Chain Reaction (out 20th October): a tech town, solar farms, data centres, and Reacher's feelings about the world's first trillionaires
Andrew's two contributions to the reset: more Reacher dialogue, and dragging him slightly further into the modern world
📚 Literacy, Prisons & Why Reading Saves Lives
Lee talks about his prison literacy work and his involvement with The Queen's Reading Room — and the research showing that just five minutes of reading reduces stress hormones by 20%. Plus why Quick Reads matter, why TV adaptations are a brilliant way in for reluctant readers, and why some women end up in prison simply because they couldn't read an official letter.
🍦 Ice Cream Order
Vanilla, in a bowl, with hot fudge sauce — slightly melty — and yes, a 99 Flake if one's going.
💬 Get in touch
Quick Book Reviews Facebook Group | Instagram | quickbookreviews@outlook.com
Quick Book Reviews: author interviews and book reviews with no spoilers.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Recorded live at Capital Crime Book Festival, Philippa talks to Ellie Levenson about her brilliantly genre-defying novel Room 706 — described by her own agent as "thrilling but not a thriller."
But first, the results are in! After asking listeners for their top three holiday book recommendations, here are the three that came out on top:
Your Top 3 Holiday Reads
The End of Summer – Charlotte Philby
A woman's carefully constructed past unravels when journalists turn up on her daughter's doorstep. A story of reinvention, secrets, and a mother who might never have been who she claimed.
Dead Heat – Sabine Durrant
A struggling journalist joins old friends at their house in Greece for the summer — until a wealthy newcomer's lavish parties stir up envy, resentment, and an accident that may not have been an accident at all.
Still Life – Sarah Winman
A wartime encounter in a ruined Tuscan wine cellar changes the course of two strangers' lives forever. (Philippa admits this is the one book club pick almost everyone loves except her — and she suspects a reread is overdue.)
Ellie Levenson on Room 706
Inspired by a very relatable fantasy — booking a hotel room alone, with no one needing anything from her — Ellie's novel asks: what if a tired mother checked into a hotel just to be alone, and then couldn't leave?
Ellie and Philippa discuss:
The "women who are clever but tired" genre Ellie has unofficially invented
Why her agent suggested splitting the book into three timelines — Kate meeting her husband, meeting her lover, and the real-time hotel room scenes
Why complicated, morally grey characters make for the best book club arguments
The brilliant audiobook adaptation that surprised even Ellie with how "acted" it felt
The original title, Hotel Sonder, and why it had to change after she kept seeing the word everywhere
Her next book — another "middle-aged woman stepping outside her lane," and her fascination with hotels, parks, and other places where strangers' lives briefly intersect
Ice cream order: Chocolate, coffee, and nut — multiples of three, naturally, with a cone for garnish.
Get in touch
Quick Book Reviews Facebook Group | Instagram | quickbookreviews@outlook.com
Quick Book Reviews: author interviews and book reviews with no spoilers.

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Bestselling crime writer Karin Slaughter joins Philippa for a very special summer edition of Quick Book Reviews to talk about her new thriller, The Secrets We Hide.
Karin talks about why she is not a natural holiday person, her dream trip to New Zealand, long-haul flights, travel delays, e-books, audiobooks, fish allergies, sorbet, swimming with sharks, climbing Sydney Harbour Bridge, and why she prefers working to sitting on a beach.
Philippa and Karin also discuss The Secrets We Hide, the North Falls series, We Are All Guilty Here, Emmy Clifton, Jude Archer, writing violence against women, libraries, book bans, women’s voices, writing for different kinds of readers, and the huge success of the Will Trent TV series.
The Secrets We Hide is the second book in Karin Slaughter’s North Falls series. Set in a small Georgia town full of secrets, it follows Sheriff Emmy Clifton and her sister, ex-federal agent Jude Archer, as they investigate the murder of Allison Vickery and the brutal attack on her teenage daughter. Everyone thinks they know what happened — but the truth is far more shocking.
Perfect for fans of Karin Slaughter, crime fiction, psychological thrillers, murder mysteries, small-town crime, Will Trent, North Falls, summer reading, author interviews, and gripping thrillers with big twists.
Books and authors mentioned:
The Secrets We Hide by Karin Slaughter
We Are All Guilty Here by Karin Slaughter
The Will Trent series by Karin Slaughter
Pieces of Her by Karin Slaughter
The Good Daughter by Karin Slaughter
Mary Higgins Clark
Mo Hayder
James Patterson
Bernard Cornwell
Jane Austen
This episode is packed with sharp insight, dark humour, book chat, travel disasters, thriller-writing secrets, and the very important question of whether cherry sorbet counts as healthy.
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