I have long been a fan of the works of Simon R Green having first stumbled across Blue Moon Rising in the late 90s. As a fantasy novel it was something completely different with some risqué humour and really interesting characters. Over the years whenever I have seen any of Green’s works on the book shelves in Australia I have grabbed them. So I was really excited when offered the opportunity to read Green’s latest work.
Two investigators Ishmael Jones and his partner Penny are attending the re-opening of Tyrone Castle and are hoping for a nice normal weekend. However, when you are staying at a castle that has a history of being a smugglers den and scene for a mass poisoning things quickly go astray. As something sinister is abducting the guests the question is supernatural or human at work.
Green never fails to create characters that are imperfect, funny and annoying. Ishmael and Penny have an easy rapport and are an engaging couple. The supporting characters being a mixture of the victims and villains are suitably messed up to have you guessing as to whom or what is responsible.
Into the Thinnest of Air is compelling reading, as Green really draws you into the mystery and you keep turning pages as you need to know.
This is not the first book in the series and I was not aware of that. It did not matter as I was able to quickly pick up what was happening. More importantly those titbits have made want to go back and read the rest of the series.
If you have never read any of Green’s work then do so, he is a wonderful fantasy writer with a vivid imagination, who creates wonderful characters and has unique worlds. For me, Green is one the most consistent fantasy writers out there and I am never disappointed when I read his works.

When invited to an exclusive dinner in the country, many of us would expect to enjoy a quiet, relaxing weekend while enjoying a delicious meal. When Penny receives such an invitation to Tyrone’s Castle she is aware that by inviting Ishmael along, the weekend will probably end up being the opposite. The other guests are anything but warm and delightful company, but the dinner is good. Soon members begin to disappear from rooms without exits and it is up to Ishmael to figure out what is happening and how to save the remaining guests.

Green’s alien protagonist finds himself smack in the middle of a real locked room mystery and feels true human frustration. Many who are familiar with Green’s Paranormal Country House Mysteries will begin to see a pattern in his novels. Even with the ability to figure out what is going on before the full disclosure, all true fans will enjoy this installment.

Thank you Netgalley and Severn House for the eARC.
This was my first Simon R. Green book and I was pleasantly surprised. A good story, claustrophobic and creepy, with some unpleasant characters and a bit of humor, I tore through it in a day. Didn't want to put it down.
Ishmael Jones (an alien turned into a human) and his girlfriend Penny are looking forward to a quiet, normal weekend in Cornwall. They're going to a pre-opening dinner at The Castle, owned by friends of Penny's late father. The Castle has an ominous history; people have died there as well as disappeared into thin air. The owners hope to cash in by attracting curious tourists who are fascinated by the stories and myths of this ancient inn.
The dinner is delicious, but the atmosphere at the table is fraught with tension. There are underlying tensions amongst the group, there is obviously an unpleasant history between them. Ishmael and Penny try to lighten the mood by asking questions about the inn's dark past. Time passes more pleasantly until the hostess repairs to the kitchen to get dessert. She doesn't return... When her husband looks for her she's nowhere to be found. There is only one exit and she couldn't have left without anyone noticing. They scour the inn from top to bottom, but she's gone...
Panic ensues when one after the other of the group disappears without a trace. Who or what demonic creature is behind this?
This is a deliciously scary book with a twisty ending, a great locked room mystery that will keep you glued to the pages.

Just like always this closed room murder mystery was brilliant. Simon R Green has a way of making you second guess yourself- even if in the end it turns out you're first instinct was right. Creepy and well written

Ishmael Jones is back in this latest installment of the Country House Mysteries. Though definitely a niche genre, these stories of whodunit mixed with the paranormal are an easy and enjoyable read for sci fi fans.

Ishmael Jones and his partner Penny are back in their 5th adventure, Into the Thinnest of Air. Penny wants a relaxing weekend with her love....a nice, relaxing break at a country inn run by friends of her father. She hasn't seen Albert & Olivia Calvert for 20 years. They wanted to invite Penny's father to the grand opening of their restored period inn in Cornwall. When they discover her father has died, they invite Penny to join in the pre-opening private dinner. The Calverts are banking on the rather sordid history of the inn as a smuggler's den and the site of strange disappearances and multiple murders. They know tourists will love the dark history of the building, so they've put all their savings into restoring it. Strange things start happening almost immediately though.....it appears the inn's deadly past isn't going to let Ishmael and Penny have their relaxing weekend. One by one, the dinner guests start disappearing into thin air...even from locked rooms with no apparent other exits. Are the stories of an unleashed demon, a gate to hell and evil voices true??

The Nightside series made me a huge Simon R. Green fan. When I first heard about this strange supernatural investigator series, I jumped right on the Ishmael Jones bandwagon. After five great creepy tales so far, I'm so glad I did. The stories are always creepy-cool reads with weird twists, gruesome legends and frightening creatures. This story is a dark, scary locked room mystery. There's not a lot of fluff here.....the action moves relatively quickly, twisting this way and that, until the awesome conclusion. I find it funny that the one person in the room adamantly against believing in the supernatural is the one who is almost supernatural himself. Ishmael Jones is actually an alien being. He crashed onto the earth decades before. His ship changed his physical makeup to appear human in order for him to be safe on the planet until he could be found and rescued. He doesn't know much about his prior life -- where he is from, where the ship is, who might be coming to get him.....he can't remember. But he does have some cool skills that come with being an alien. That's why The Organization retains him as an investigator. Mad, mad skills. But his true nature has to remain secret. It's a bit like the X-Files might be if Fox Mulder were an alien and Dana Scully his human girlfriend. If there's something slightly weird going on.....it's a good bet that Ishmael and Penny will be sent to check it out. I felt a bit sorry for Penny this time.....she just wanted a weekend of peace. And they ended up chin-deep in weirdness anyway. I guess it comes with the territory.

Another winning story in the creepy-cool Ishmael Jones series. It's a quick read with lots of dark goings on....a secluded inn, tales of smugglers and demons, and disappearing guests. Poof....gone. Wicked! Loved it!

For more information on the author and his books, check out his website: http://simonrgreen.co.uk/

**I voluntarily read an advanced readers copy of this book from Severn House via NetGalley. All opinions expressed are entirely my own....like this one....~Simon R. Green Rocks!~**

Ishmael and Penny are at the grand reopening of Tyrone’s Castle, a Cornish inn with a dark smuggling history. The guests at the inn are having a wonderful recounting tales, legends and ghost stories. It’s all fun and games, until one of them disappears. Is there really a curse on the inn? Has a ghost snatched one of the guests? Or is there something more logical, and more deadly to blame? I love Green’s books, they always have such an atmosphere, a miasma of doom, retribution and dark secrets forced into the daylight

Well, here’s something different. And for reasons that I’ll go into in a bit, here’s the official blurb:

“It’s just a nice weekend, in a nice country inn. Nothing bad is going to happen …”

Ishmael Jones and his partner Penny are attending the re-opening of Tyrone’s Castle, an ancient Cornish inn originally built by smugglers. Over dinner that night, the guests entertain one another with ghost stories inspired by local legends and superstitions. But it would appear that the curse of Tyrone’s Castle has struck for real when one of their number disappears into thin air. And then another . . .

Is the inn really subject to an ancient curse? Sceptical of ghost stories, Ishmael believes the key to the mystery lies in the present rather than the past. But with no bodies, no evidence and no clues to go on, how can he prove it?

So far, so normal for the blog, yes? Which is why I picked this book from Netgalley. So where is the confusion?

Well, first of all, Ishmael Jones is an alien. You know, from outer space…


It’s very hard to categorise the genre that this book – no, this series – fits into. It’s a very hard genre to make work. Create a mystery novel in a genre where the solution “it’s just ghosts” is a valid solution. It’s not even the X-Files, as there it was always something unexplainable. If anything, it’s Scooby Doo after it went downhill and started having real ghosts sometimes.

The alien sleuth thing is odd. The set-up is that Jones and his partner/girlfriend Penny work for a government special agency, where they know of his special background. To summarise, he was the survivor of a spaceship crash, whose DNA was re-written to be human at the last moment so he could survive. So he’s ageless, stronger than the average human, has golden blood and a superior sense of smell. Which of course, doesn’t seem to work when needed…

Ah, got it, just in time for this review, I know what this reminds me of. Edward D Hoch’s Simon Ark stories, the tale of an ageless Coptic Priest on the hunt for Satan. Hoch tones down the immortal bit after a while, but the set-up is basically similar. But the question is – why isn’t the alien-and-possible-supernatural-solution on the blurb? And to be honest, the alien thing seems utterly irrelevant to the plot…

Anyway, putting all that to one side, what about this one? Well, it’s an entertaining enough read if you can get past the premise, although it seemed to whizz by pretty quickly. Not sure if it’s a lowish page count – hard to tell on an ebook – but it probably would have worked better as a novella or a YA novel. As people at the hotel, apart from our heroes, start disappearing one by one while speculating on the ghosts or demons that might be taking them, it became pretty clear to me quickly what was going on. And the motive… well, it’s almost inevitable once you see which direction – human or supernatural killer – that the author has chosen.

Still, as I said, it’s a fun quick read, but probably more for fans of supernatural shenanigans than classic mysteries. But it certainly passed the time nicely enough. Worth A Look. But the blurb (and indeed those of any in the series) really should have been a bit clearer…

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read "Into The Thinnest Of Air" by Simon R. Green.

I have read many of Mr. Green's other series: The Nightside, Secret Histories, etc. I have to admit that I had previously only read the first book of this series, but I decided that I could fill in the backstory to this one at a later date.

Into The Thinnest Of Air is, basically, a locked-room mystery in the vein of the best Agatha Christie novels. A group of friends and two outsiders (Ishmael Jones and his girlfriend Penny - who has a backstory of sorts with the other characters through her family) gather to celebrate the re-opening of Tyrone's Castle, an ancient Cornish inn originally built by smugglers, that has a sordid history of murder and disappearances. The couple who have brought it back to life were previously involved with the Castle, but their efforts went bust and a lot of people lost everything (and they had to leave).

During the course of the dinner, people begin to vanish - one from the kitchen where she is all alone, one from the bathroom where again.... Ishmael is stumped. Various scenarios are presented - demonic kidnapping, alien abduction - but in the end the simplest explanation turns out to be the one.

The plot held me throughout the book, even though there was some repetition of storyline. I would definitely recommend to fans of Mr. Green's other novels or anyone looking for an entertaining mystery.

An eye catching synopsis that drew me in even though I haven't ready the additional books along the way, I do enjoy the author's writing style.and this book was no disappointment. and a fantastic read that will have me checking out the rest of the books.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and Simon R Green for my ARC of Into the Thinnest of Air which is Book 5 in the Ishmael Jones series.
Penny and Ishmael are off to a fancy dinner with some of Penny's father's friends in Cornwall. Having just acquired The Castle, an inn fraught with rumour of the supernatural, Albert & Olivia are hosting a dinner party to be staged exactly like the one where hundreds of years ago, the innkeeper killed all his diners because of voices he was hearing in his head.
But things start to go wrong when one by one, the guests are picked off and disappear, but only when left alone. Most of them think the explanation lies within the supernatural world of ghosts and bogeymen, but Ishmael just isn't convinced...

What I absolutely adore about the Ishmael Jones series is something I can't really put my finger on. But since reading book 3 last year I've been hooked. I've tried to describe them to my partner but I get as far as 'well it's about an alien who has become a sort of detective in the human world' and then realise I'm not doing it justice.
So all I can suggest is reading them for yourselves to really get the feel of why they're so great, they're such easy reads, designed to be devoured in one sitting. They're funny, I love the relationship between Penny and Ishmael, I love that Ishmael can do loads of cool stuff because he's an alien, but I also love that Penny, a human woman can also kick ass! I really need to get the 1st and 2nd Books read now.

Review: INTO THE THINNEST AIR by Simon R. Green
(An Ishmael Jones Mystery)

Anytime I start a story which begins "Call me Ishmael. Ishmael Jones." I am over the moon because I am about to embark on a science fiction-paranormal adventure guaranteed to carry me away, in delighted absorption. Mr. Green has a magical talent, immediately suspending disbelief. I love every novel in this series. This time, Ishmael and Penny visit a really isolated inn in Cornwall, situated at the cliff's edge, site of ugly historic murders and many divergent spooky tales. As the evening continues, events transpire apparently proving the tales to be true. Ishmael and Penny persevere to the end, finding opportunities to deliver poetic justice.