June, 2023 ~ What are you reading?

New month. New thread. Enjoy!

The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett. I'm halfway through. It's a bit different, but I'm enjoying it so far.

An oldie, but a goodie — and at least my fifth trip through Fer-de-lance by Rex Stout! Long love Nero Wolfe!!

>3 jhicks62: Nero and Archie are definitely comfort reads for me. I'm currently on another chronologic re-read of the whole series, which I do periodically. But sometimes I just jump in and read a favorite out of order.

>4 rosalita: I just finished a chronological read a few months ago and am starting over. I learned something interesting when I did it — I found out I had never read Before Midnight before. It was a very pleasant surprise!

>5 jhicks62: Oh, how fun to find a "new" one!

This week I'm reading Stephen King's Billy Summers. It's been a while since I've read King (2017, it seems) and I'm enjoying it.

>7 Copperskye: I liked that one, Joanne! Hope you do, too.

Just finished Memory Man by David Baldacci

>8 rosalita: I loved it, Julia! I stayed up way too late finishing it.

I'm about to start Elly Griffiths' latest/last Ruth Galloway book, The Last Remains.

>10 Copperskye: The ending of Billy Summers broke my brain, in a good way.

And now the last Ruth Galloway? You are on a real reading roll!

>11 rosalita: I loved the ending! :) :(

>12 Copperskye: Exactly! I could never have predicted it in a million years but it was perfect.

>13 rosalita: Really, the only way. Pretty perfect. I have a lot of King books to get to. I've missed out on the more recent ones.

Just started Penhallow, circa 1942, by one of my mom's favorite romance novelists Georgette Heyer. She switches hats quite well. The large and largely disagreeable cast of spoiled-brat characters reminds me of an eras-older version of Knives Out.

>15 gmathis: Or, as some might put it, look! Knives Out source material!

I'm in 1960s California with Lucy and Bee, and Dracula's remains, and now Jane and Renfield too, in Reluctant immortals. Good and a bit creepy.

>16 karenb: Precisely! Several chapters in now---there's still not a likeable character in the bunch, but it keeps me chuckling as I read.

I'm reading Les Imposteurs by John Grisham (the Rooster Bar in English). The premise is pretty outlandish, but it's got a good pace and I'm enjoying the characters.

I just finished a book set in Utah To Die In Kanab. It is subtitled The Everett Ruess Affair. I picked up this book a number of years ago when we spent quite a bit of time in the red rock country of Utah and I wanted to buy a local book. It's not the best written book but it does a great job of evoking that landscape. It also brings up some controversial topics like cattle grazing on the nearby National Monument lands and extreme cancer rates in the area after nuclear weapon testing in nearby Nevada. It could have used better editing but I don't regret reading it.

Now in southern California for Fixit, the latest IQ novel from Joe Ide. Skip the dog guy is out of prison after five years and kidnaps Grace, Isaiah's former girlfriend. Meanwhile, there's also a bounty on Isaiah's from the head of a local gang. Isaiah's friends and community support him, individually and collectively, as he sorts through these problems.

Just finished The Twyford Code, by Janice Hallett.

Time to catch up on the Slow Horses, so just starting Slough House (sorry not linking correctly) by Mick Herron - Slough House no 7. One to be savoured.

>9 nrmay: That series is terrific!

I'm reading Le Guerrier solitaire by Hennig Mankell, a Kurt Wallander murder-mystery

Am coming to the end of Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane. Normally I devour his books, but this one is tough. Set in 1974 during the first enforced bussing across school districts, mixing races, there is a lot of hatred, racism and fear which culminates in violence as it usually does. I was only 6 when this was happening and so it didn't touch me, but I imagine the Irish communities were this full of vitriol and casual hate even though sometimes they were on the receiving end of it. Very strange how humans are. But the mystery itself is decent and the writing great so I'll get to the end and try to find a way to bear the human misery which all rings true to me.

In 1953 Helsinki with private investigator and former cop Hella Mauzer. The book starts off with a flashback to the day in 1942 when her family was killed by someone driving a truck. Apparently the third in a series, but this is the first one I've read. I think that some of the previous books must have occurred when she was a policewoman, because in this book she encounters former coworkers and a coroner.

I doubt that Hella Mauzer would have called herself a feminist in 1953, but she has little patience for the casual sexism she receives from some of the men. Said sexism certainly rings true for the time.

Picked up Lavender Blue Murder from Laura Childs' Tea Shop Series. I figure it will be worth the quarter I paid for it on the library sale shelf, even though I was getting a little fed up with the series the last time I read one.

>27 gmathis: I read the first few in that series before running into a snag when the library didn't have the rest. I enjoyed it but it was hard for me to imagine being able to sustain the premise over a long series.

Just finished Isle of Joy by Don Winslow - great book, by a great writer. About to start Slow Horses by Mick Herron

I’m reading A Stolen Child, the 4th book in Sarah Stewart Taylor’s Maggie D’Arcy series. This is an excellent series!

>26 karenb: what was the title?

>31 dianeham: Whoops! Sorry. Trouble by Katja Ivar.

>32 karenb: thanks. I never heard of this series and can’t wait to start reading it.

>32 karenb: You might be interested in Inishowen series by Andrea Carter. They take place in Donegal.

>28 rosalita: I'm a tea junkie, so that part of the series tickled my fancy, but after I got to a certain point, I kept thinking, "How many times can somebody go off by herself without telling anyone and not expecting to be kidnapped, assaulted, and/or held at gunpoint?" We'll see how this one goes. It's a good season for no-brain reading.

Started Pretty Baby by Mary Kubica yesterday.

>34 dianeham: Thanks for the rec! I'll have to check it out.

>35 gmathis: I'm also a tea junkie, and that was the main attraction for me, as well as the setting in Charleston. I agree that the problem with amateur sleuths is that too often the things they do, while providing "exciting" plot points, are just unbelievable to the point of silliness. But I think spacing them often helps me overlook that sort of thing, and as you say they are great when you're in the mood for something uncomplicated.

Was excited to find a copy of Three Day Town by Margaret Maron on the library surplus sale shelf. I still have a few gaps to fill in the Deborah Knott storyline, and I think this is a crossover where Sigrid Harald, from her other series, appears as well.

>30 Copperskye: I just tried the first one and quit. Maybe I should try again?

>40 margaretmcneely: Obviously, I'd say yes since I liked them all, but I'm a firm believer in moving on if something doesn't click. Maybe the old "Pearl Rule" trick?

This week I'm reading Michael Connelly's Blood Work. It's the first appearance of Terry McCaleb who I've run into a couple Bosch books.

Recent reads include:

Sepulchre Street by Martin Edwards
A Shred of Evidence by Jill McGown
The Scroll by Anne Perry - the weakest in the list
A Chateau Under Siege by Martin Walker
Kate Shackleton's First Case by Frances Brody
Standing in the Shadows by Peter Robinson

Currently reading St Peter's Finger by Gladys Mitchell - really enjoying it on several levels.

I'm in the middle of Remain silent by Robyn Gigl, the third in the series. Protagonist is Erin McCabe, a lawyer who is an out trans woman, so in addition to the usual routine clients she also ends up helping out LGBTQIA+ folks too. Alas, some of her clients end up murdered.

In this book, her clients include another older trans woman, her good friend who was in the closet, and a ten-year-old whose absent parent objects to a legal name change. The setting is 2009, when the Tea Party is getting going and starting to move the Republican party further to the right. All the issues (murder, gender, queerness, etc.) remain highly relevant today.

The antagonists center around politicians in New Jersey, some of whom McCabe dealt with in the first book (By way of sorrow).

Now reading Viviana Valentine goes up the river, the second Girl Friday mystery featuring Viv, private investigator in New York City. In this one, Viv and Tommy (her former boss/partner in the business) are in Tarrytown, investigating odd noises being heard in the house of one of Tally's friends. It's supposed to be an otherwise relaxing weekend with some wealthy folks in a fancy house, but the homeowner is actually an engineer with a couple of laboratories upstairs. Secretive stuff working with radio waves, in 1950, with three pals from MIT and at least one private investor in their tech. But late on Friday night, they find that someone has been poisoned, and the investigation becomes more serious.

Currently in crime: The Murder Room, by P.D. James.

New here. Pocket bio: Retired humanities teacher, residing in Tlaxcala, Mexico, with two dogs and six indoor cats. Passionate about literature, history, philosophy, classical music and opera, jazz, cinema, and similar subjects. Nostalgic guy. Politically centrist. BA in American Studies from Yale; MAs in English and Education from Boston University. Born in northern New Jersey. Have lived and worked in San Francisco, Chicago, northern Nevada, northeast Wisconsin, South Korea.

Just finished Hugh Munro’s Who Told Clutha (1958), the first in his series about a Glasgow shipyard detective. From “Glasgow” and “shipyard”, you know it will be flavorful, and it is! I look forward to spending more time with Clutha, who is tough-savvy.

Hugh Munro is not to be confused with Hector Hugh Munro (Saki) or Neil Munro (author of the Para Handy tales). More info here:

https://bearalley.blogspot.com/2010/10/hugh-munro.html

The Murder Room was OK, although I found it took too long to get to the first murder and didn’t really pick up steam until the second.

Continuing a small theme of “crime novels set in England by women writers who use initials” with Fell Murder, by E. C. R. Lorac.

^ I loved Lorac’s Shroud of Darkness, set in a brutal London fog of the early Fifties.

I've picked up Sur la dalle by Fred Vargas with her iconic Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg. Vargas usually delves into local myths to support her mysteries: this time we are in Brittany with a ghost haunting Chateaubriand's castle and a murder inextricably linked to the old tale.

>48 PatrickMurtha: So far my favourite Lorac has been Murder by Matchlight. Will be on the hunt for Shroud of Darkness!

>50 rabbitprincess:

I need to read more. Shroud of Darkness was my first.

The one I came across was Murder in the Millrace set in the beautiful English county of Devon with some great descriptions of the countryside.

Yes indeed, police procedurals but not dry or lacking in atmosphere.

Finished A Season for the Dead - Hewson (3/5) and The Missing Piece - Lescroart (3.5/5).

i recently very much enjoyedAqua Alta by Donna Leon a particularly atmospheric title in her Brunetti series. I was so impressed that I wrote a review and i do not often do that.

I honestly cannot remember any series of detective novels where the PI gets roughed up so much as the Mike Shayne novels. Concussions, sprains, broken bones, swollen eyes, nothing stops the guy.

Why fictional private detectives don’t work in duos to protect each other’s asses, I’ll never understand. Working solo leads to so many problems, like getting waylaid and beat up. I mean, it’s a wonder that Shayne survived even one book, he was conked on the head so much…

The bibliography of Davis Dresser (1904-1977), the creator of Mike Shayne, is intensely complicated. Like most pulp writers, he wrote under multiple names (including his own), famously as “Brett Halliday” for the Shayne series. But from at least 1958 on, the Shayne novels and stories were ghostwritten by others (prominently but not exclusively Robert Terrall). Figuring out who actually wrote what can take a little work.

Just listened to Who is Maud Dixon which is in the thriller camp rather than the mystery camp. An aspiring writer takes a job as a personal assistant to a writer (Helen) who authored a blockbuster under a pen name a few years ago. The PA, Florence, is thrilled to be one of only two people who know who Maud Dixon really is. Then Helen decides she has to go to Morocco for research on her new novel and takes Florence along. A few days after they get there Florence drives off the coast road into the ocean. She is rescued by a local fisherman who just happens to be out at that exact time. When Florence wakes up everyone is calling her by Helen's name and Helen has disappeared. Did she die in the car crash? When Florence thinks about the possibility of reporting Helen's disappearance she realizes she could actually become Helen with all her wealth and acclaim and so she continues to be "Helen". Except Helen has some problems back in the USA and Florence gets drawn into them.

It's a pretty compulsive read/listen but the ending was unsettling.

I finished Sur la dalle by Fred Vargas, part of her Commissaire Adamsberg series. It was a good read but lacked her usual finesse.

“I don’t arouse passions like that. It’s my intellect women like. I inspire them to read good books, but I doubt if I could inspire even Lizzie Borden to murder.” - Archie Goodwin

Archie Goodwin is unquestionably the fictional character I most identify with and would fantasize myself as. Timothy Hutton was peerless in the role, and that wardrobe, be still my beating heart. *

I’m reading the Nero Wolfe corpus in order, currently on The Silent Speaker. A thought that always comes to me is that an actual Archie wouldn’t put up with an actual Wolfe for more than a week. Archie could have a thriving PI business on his own, maybe contracting for Wolfe as the ‘teers do, but Wolfe without Archie would need another Archie. Archie enables Wolfe to be MOBILE by acting as his projection into the real world. Wolfe seldom expresses any appreciation for this essentiality, which is one reason why he frequently annoys me. But hey, it’s fiction.

* Wolfe to Goodwin: “Because you are young and vain you spend too much for your clothes.” Yeah, baby! 🙂

>59 PatrickMurtha: Archie has been my literary boyfriend since I first read If Death Ever Slept when I was 12. :-) I agree that Hutton in the A&E series is the very embodiment of the Archie of my imagination.

I am also currently doing a chronological re-read of the corpus, in conjunction with a couple of other LTers. We are up to Where There's a Will.

^ That’s excellent!

Sadly hard to get these books in the UK without paying relatively large sums on kindle or equivilent. I have acquired a few and love them. I truly lust over that brownstone NY house.

>59 PatrickMurtha: I'm also a big Nero Wolf fan, and agree on Timothy Goodwin as being the perfect Archie. That whole series was pretty outstandingly well cast and produced. Mind you, there's an old pilot kicking around YouTube with William Shatner as Archie, and he's really very good.

Must be something in the air - I know someone else (not on LT) who is doing a complete Nero Wolfe re-read.

I'm still missing a handful of titles in the series. Someday I'll find them and do a complete re-read myself :)

^ I agree about the Shatner pilot. The Shat is a classically trained actor and he was working all over the place in the early Sixties for good reason.

Archie Goodwin is one of the great narrating voices in all of fiction. And the brownstone, well, it’s a world unto itself.

How lovely to have a Nero/Archie conversation here! I may be preaching to the choir here, but are all of you aware of The Wolfe Pack , which bills itself as "the official Nero Wolfe Literary Society"? I've known about it for years, but since I don't live anywhere near New York City, where their in-person events are held, I never paid much attention. But during the pandemic they began holding their bi-monthly book discussions via Zoom and the response was enthusiastic enough that they plan to continue those, even as they have also resumed their in-person events in NYC. There is a nominal (for me, although individual circumstances vary) membership fee to access the in-person and online events and the semi-annual print publication.

>65 rosalita: Great info! I am aware of The Wolfe Pack’s existence, but not much more than that (although I have glanced at their website to clear up Wolfean details). I used to occasionally attend Sherlock Holmes society dinners in Chicago as a guest. Those were great fun although those fans can be a little…intense.

>66 PatrickMurtha: I'd love to attend an in-person event of The Wolfe Pack someday but I'm not sure if that's in the cards anytime soon. Meanwhile, the next online book discussion will be Murder by the Book in September. Peggy Potter is one of my favorite single-book characters in the whole corpus, so I'm looking forward to it.

>64 PatrickMurtha: Nero Wolfe's brownstone is one of a small number of fictional houses that I covet. I'm sure the greenhouse on the roof would make up for the lack of a garden, and my few orchids would live in style there :)

>68 tardis: I have always been intrigued by Theodore Horstmann’s shadowy existence in that rooftop world. I enjoyed it when the orchids came to the fore in the two-novella collection Black Orchids.

Finished: Murder in Chianti (Williams) - 4/5, The Black House (May) - 3/5, and Firewall (Mankell) - 3.5/5).

I just reread The Night Gate by Peter May, the last of the Enzo Files series. I read it a few years ago when it first came out but at that point I hadn't read all of the preceding books. It wasn't really necessary to read the series in order but it does help to figure out Enzo Macleod's rather convoluted personal life. So, after I read #6, Cast Iron, I just felt I wanted to remind myself of how Enzo's life continued. It's interesting also because it is set during the lockdown phases of the pandemic. I am one who is still being cautious about public gatherings, wearing masks, and getting vaccinations but I'm glad that we are no longer facing those restrictions.

Putting The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars, by Anthony Boucher, in my bag to read on the bus tomorrow.

I'm reading an old Peter Robinson Detective Banks mystery, Wednesday's Child. I have a number of his back list that I have never read and now that he won't be writing any more I'm eking them out.

Just noticed that the crime / noir novelist Russell H. Greenan passed away on July 22 at the age of 97. He is something of a cult writer, especially for his first novel, It Happened in Boston? (1968). He published about a dozen novels altogether, including a couple that appeared initially in French translation. He has been on my to-read list forever, so I just ordered a copy of It Happened in Boston?

This was a crime fiction morning at Chez Murtha. I read in the second of Jack O’Connell’s Quinsigamond Quintet, Wireless. These novels, set in a somewhat warped fictional version of Worcester, Massachusetts, are difficult to describe, but have a noir / borderline horror atmosphere and abound in eccentric characters. Although each volume is technically freestanding, I would start with the first, Box Nine.

As you can tell by looking by his reviews, O’Connell is a love him or hate him kind of author. He hasn’t published in a while, but I hear through the grapevine that he might get back to it, and I hope he does. I sent him word through a mutual acquaintance that he has still has plenty of fans out here.

Then I continued with some chapters in Simenon’s Pietr the Latvian, having decided to start the Maigrets at the beginning. (I had previously read one of the romans durs, Dirty Snow.) Great stuff, of course.

The Dr. Johnson-as-detective stories of Lillian de la Torre (1902-1993) were widely admired, and she served as President of the Mystery Writers of America. Her non-fiction true crime books are wrongly listed as novels in her Wikipedia entry, no doubt because they are presented novelistically. The Heir of Douglas is available in my Scribd subscription, so I started in on it this morning. A handful of reviews that made the book sound arcane were naturally enticing for me. 😏

Actually, the story is not that arcane at all. The “Douglas Cause” was a major scandal and media sensation in 18th Century Britain, about which everyone had an opinion; comparable to the case of the Tichborne Claimant in the next century.

No new thread? I don't want to overstep and start one. I'd happily have it be June again. Maybe with less rain... :)

I'm finishing up IQ by Joe Ide. It's been unexpectedly fun.

>77 Copperskye: Thanks for the nudge, Joanne. :-)

>77 Copperskye: The IQ books are good, all of them.

>79 karenb: I’m glad to hear that! I just finished IQ and immediately checked to see if my library had the next one (it does!). :)