August 2023 - What are you reading?

New month. New thread. Enjoy!

I just realized I fell behind on the Rhys Bowen series Her Royal Spyness so I’m reading God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. I’m also listening to Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

>2 raidergirl3: I think that second one belongs on this month's List of the Month for most memorable titles!

This might be stretching the genre just a bit, particularly since it's a YA novel, but at the behest of one of my favorite middle schoolers, I'm reading The Mysterious Benedict Society. Very enjoyable!

>2 raidergirl3: >3 rosalita: That is definitely a great and memorable title!

Ben Benson (1913-1959) was a police procedural writer of the 1950s who died young but not before completing 19 volumes. (He had spent THREE YEARS in the hospital as the result of a World War II injury, and apparently began his writing as a therapeutic activity.)

I have read Beware the Pale Horse in Benson’s Wade Paris series (Massachusetts State Police Inspector), and enjoyed it very much. He also has another series about a Massachusetts State Trooper, Ralph Lindsey.

Crime fiction aficionados and bloggers have done excellent work on researching semi-forgotten writers such as Benson. I often obtain and read books like his because of a blog post that alerts me to or reminds me of a writer.

Stewart Sterling (1895-1976) was “The King of the Specialty Detectives”! - hotel detective, department store detective, fire marshal, harbor policeman. I like this kind of thing (I recently finished the Scottish writer Hugh Munro’s Who Told Clutha, about a shipyard detective). I very much enjoyed Sterling’s Alibi Baby in the Gil Vine hotel detective series, and have got two more titles on my iPad, The Body in the Bed (another Gil Vine) and Where There's Smoke (Fire Marshal Pedley, natch).

More info here:

https://mysteryfile.com/Sterling/Detectives.html

In the middle of William Kotzwinkle's second book in the Felonius Monk series, Bloody Martini. It's a modern noir, with the protagonist being a member of a local crime family who moved to a Benedictine monastery after he accidentally killed someone. His best friend got shot and killed -- but called and left a voice mail just beforehand, so it's back home to sort things out.

I finished Bain de sang by Jean-Jacques Pelletier. I usually associate Pelletier with horror and while this thriller has unsavoury descriptions, it sticks to the genre of detective fiction while flirting with espionnage.
While I enjoyed the characters and the setting, the plot was overly complex only to come to a banal ending. Luckily the writing is vivid and overall I enjoyed the book as a light read.

Just finished Fell Murder, by E.C.R. Lorac.

I really enjoyed St Peter's Finger by Gladys Mitchell (4/5), then read
The Dogs Do Bark by Jonathan Stagge (3.5/5)
Before the Poison by Peter Robinson (4/5)
Murder by Prescription by Jonathan Stagge (3.5/5)
Murder in Time by Elizabeth Ferrars (3/5)

Currently reading Back to the Garden by Laurie R. King - good so far :)

Listening to Knock Out by Catherine Coulter in the car. Not sure if I will finish. Since I go somewhere less than once a week, it will take time to finish.

I finished Monday Mourning by Kathy Reichs, one of her earlier thrillers from the Tempe Brennan series - a bit gory for my taste, but I loved walking in the streets of Montreal.

I've picked up The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware. It's a fun read but definitely one that reflects the "gas-lighting" theme that seems very popular these days.

Finished Like Love, by Ed McBain. Working my way through the last of the series that I have on the shelf and then calling it quits.

More psychological chicanery with Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward. I'm hit or miss with her, but so far this one hasn't been a struggle although I am reading with a heavy dose of skepticism - I know nothing is as it seems.

Reading The mess you leave behind by Carlos Montero. A psychological thriller about a young substitute teacher whose predecessor was driven to suicide by her pupils - and now they start mobbing her, too.
Quite an unusual writing style - after all, I haven't read many Spanish writers, let alone Galician, before - very fast-paced and gripping so far.

While I enjoyed Standing in the Shadows by Peter Robinson, I was so sad to finish it. I've been reading this series for decades now, and am very sorry that Peter Robinson died so young and so there will be no more Inspector Banks novels.

Just finished a tense time in Auckland, Aoteraoa New Zealand, reading Better the blood by Michael Bennett. Excellent book. Māori detective Hana Westerman receives an email that leads her to the body of a murdered man who, it turns out, is only the beginning of the events covered by this book.

Just started Trial and Error by Robert Whitlow--my second foray into his legal novels.

I'm reading The Cat Saw Murder by Dolores Hitchens. It's a reprint and part of Otto Penzler's American Mysteries Classics Series and so far, it's been excellent.

I am reading for the second time, Inspector French & The Sea Mystery by, Freeman Wills Crofts, an excellent read first and second time around,

I'm reading The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fjorde... not sure if it would be considered a thriller. It's a sequel to books I have not read which is probably why it's a bit tough to get situated. Basically the protagonist is a special ops agent and trying to get her husband revived. It a bit like a 400-page Alice in Wonderland. I'm not sure how I feel about it but so far I'm not convinced it's for me.

Now reading Charlotte Illes is not a detective by Katie Siegel, which is fun and also a decent puzzle. Former Encyclopedia Brown type, now grown up, dusts off her skills to investigate puzzles at her sibling's sweetie's place of work. Female protagonist, but with two bestie compatriots, one of whom has known her since she solved her first mystery at age six. Nicely diverse cast, takes place in New Jersey and New York City, in the present.

Just finished a new book, The Quiet Tenant.
Ominous, suspenseful. I had to stop reading and catch my breath a couple times.

>23 Cecilturtle: I can see how The Well of Lost Plots would be confusing and/or off-putting if one hadn't read the first two Thursday Next books. The Well of Lost Plots really doesn't have much of a plot (a self-referential joke in and.of itself) but merely explores some of the concepts of Fforde's invented Book World. I highly recommend going back and reading the first book in the series, The Eyre Affair, in which Thursday Next has to propel herself into Jane Eyre in order to catch an arch-villain who's embedded himself there, much to the dismay of everyone trying to read the book. If that book strikes a chord with you, then, I'm guessing, you'll fly through the rest of the series.

I've just read Three Thirds of a Ghost by Timothy Fuller. This is the third book in Fuller's Jupiter Jones mystery series, a now obscure set that was evidently relatively popular when the books were first published in the early 1940s. In the series' first book, Jupiter Jones, a wise-cracking, over-confident know-it-all, had just graduated from Harvard and got involved in a Thin Man sort of way in helping the police (who of course didn't want his help) solve the murder of a Harvard professor. Jones' saving grace is his ability to laugh at himself and his pretensions. In this third book, Jones by by now is himself teaching literature at his alma mater. So, the plot:

At the 150th anniversary celebration of a revered Boston bookstore, author George Newbury is the featured speaker. Newbury has gained fame as a mystery writer but whose last book and, evidently his soon-to-be-published next book, are satires lampooning Boston's elite class, with portrayals close enough to real life figures that it's easy to figure out who he's talking about. While speaking in front of the crowded room, Newbury is shot. Everyone agrees that the gunshot came from the back of the room but, puzzlingly, nobody can say that they saw the shooter. In the room are Newbury's agent, publisher, secretary and four members of the wealthy Still family, whom Newbury had been known to be lampooning in his upcoming novel, plus a celebrated medium who is also thought to be in that book. And, of course, Jupiter Jones. This mystery is fun, but not quite as fun as the first two in the series.

>27 rocketjk: I love 40's mysteries--this Jupiter Jones sounds like a series to hunt down.

Finished Back to the Garden by Laurie R. King - 4/5

Also finished Under Lock & Skeleton Key by Gigi Pandian (3/5) and The One Who Was Taken by Kerry Wilkinson - 4/5, and, for once, deduced the culprit :)

Will start The Ones Who Are Buried by Kerry Wilkinson this evening.

>28 gmathis: Yes, particularly the first two in the set are fun, with lots of self-referential and self-deprecating humor. There's a bit of the "casual" racism you'd expect from a Harvard alum (which Fuller had recently become when he started the series) writing circa 1940, but Fuller was aware enough to occasionally turn that on its head as well.

>27 rocketjk: Thanks for putting this series on my radar, Jerry! And now I'm curious if the creator of the 1960s middle-grade mystery series, The Three Investigators, named one of the protagonists Jupiter Jones as an homage to this series.

Yesterday I finished The Cat Saw Murder by Dolores Hitchens, a Golden Age mystery, first published in 1939 and reprinted by Otto Penzler's American Crime Classics series. It was a fun read and my first "cat" mystery. Also the first in a series that I think I'll continue.

Now I've started Righteous by Joe Ide and it promises to be as good as IQ.

>31 rosalita: You're welcome. And that's an interesting question, too. I'd love to know if you ever find out the answer. Cheers!

>26 rocketjk: Ah! Thanks - I guessed I was missing some serious context. I'll have a look and see if my library has The Eyre Affair.