My friend Don died a week ago today. We only met a handful of times, but were cyber-buddies for more than a decade. Internet friendships tend to involve carefully edited versions of ourselves that wouldn’t fit so firmly in real life, but, had we not lived 4,600 miles away from each other, I suspect that we’d have been good friends. He was very supportive of my fiction, sometimes posting rave reviews on Amazon under quirky aliases (ie Joey Kludge). Three years ago, when I dedicated the second Bone and Cane novel to Don and his crime loving wife, Jo-Anne, he was touchingly flattered and at first convinced I’d just sent them some sort of specially personalised proof copy. I met Don through a Usenet newsgroup…

Here’s where I indulge myself in listing my thirty-two favourite albums of the last year. Usual provisos. Has to have come out in 2014 and be primarily new material (Bruce Springsteen, therefore, is allowed in. Richard Thompson isn’t). Some highly placed albums didn’t feature on the best of year CD below because either they came out too late (D’Angelo, a soul classic, with strong strains of Sly & The Family Stone), I couldn’t make them fit (Natalie Merchant) or I just damn forgot to put them on (Rosanne Cash). 1.  The War On Drugs – Lost In The Dream 2=  Sleaford Mods – Divide and Exit 2=  D’Angelo – Black Messiah 4.  Young Fathers – Dead 5.  Beck – Morning Phase 6.  Rosanne Cash –…