Author Topic: Mystery Corner ~ 2 (Read 906144 times)

Steph · « **Reply #7360 on:** May 16, 2015, 08:37:10 AM »

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Pull up a comfortable chair and join us here to talk about mysteries and their authors.
We love hearing what YOU enjoy and recommend!

Links:
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Fantastic Fiction
Stop You're Killing Me

Discussion Leader: JoanK

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I truly did not like #1 Ladies.. Isabel is more fun to me.

JoanK · « **Reply #7361 on:** May 16, 2015, 04:32:24 PM »

That's the Sunday Philosophy Club series. I like all of McCall Smith's. (adult books. I didn't even know he wrote children's books til I read Fantastic Fiction above).

nlhome · « **Reply #7362 on:** May 16, 2015, 06:48:39 PM »

I just picked up Falling in Love, Flajean. It was on the new book shelf at the library. Now I look forward to reading it even more.

Steph · « **Reply #7363 on:** May 17, 2015, 09:09:38 AM »

Finished off another Flavia De Luce.. The characters are so beautifully drawn and Flavia is so oblivious to normal activities.

JoanK · « **Reply #7364 on:** May 17, 2015, 03:00:47 PM »

I love the Flavia DeLuce stories by Alan Bradley, too

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/b/alan-bradley/

Just finished "As chimney sweepers come to dust." Flavia is in Canada at a girls school, which manages to be just as creepy as her house.

FlaJean · « **Reply #7365 on:** May 17, 2015, 05:45:34 PM »

I also got tired of Carolyn Hart's Death on Demand series. I think the best book she has written is a "stand alone" titled Letter from Home. From the fly leaf "World-renowned journalist G. G. Gilman does her best not to think of the past. But one day she gets a letter--sent from the small Oklahoma town where she grew up-- that brings it all back. Memories of people she had once known and loved dearly--and of the sultry summer when her life changed forever...." I found the book Several years ago when browsing in B&N and saw the hardback on sale for a couple of dollars. Have read it twice and the second reading was just as good as the first.

JoanK · « **Reply #7366 on:** May 17, 2015, 09:16:37 PM »

That sounds good. The ghost book was good too.

Picked up a book, drawn by the title: "the girl Who Saved the King of Sweden". it's as wacky as the title, but I couldn't get through it.

Steph · « **Reply #7367 on:** May 18, 2015, 07:33:00 AM »

Yes, that is the new Flavia, Do not have it yet, but at the end of the last one, her father told her she was off to a boarding school in Canada. She was not a happy camper at that point.

MaryPage · « **Reply #7368 on:** May 18, 2015, 10:23:52 AM »

Hmm. I went searching through my stacks and piles and heaps and shelves, and pulled out The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and put it on the READ SOONEST pile beside my bed. I had read or heard about these books and invested in the first one, received it in the mail, and relegated it to a distant position for my attention. Just now promoted it in line.

JoanK · « **Reply #7369 on:** May 18, 2015, 05:39:31 PM »

MARYPAGE: interesting to see if you like them. the narrator is not your sweet little girl.

Read a really good mystery. "A Fine Summer Day" by Charles Todd.

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/t/charles-todd/fine-summers-day.htm

I've read some of the Bess Crawford books, but not the Ian Rutledge. This is a prequel, about Rutledge before he fights in WWI. A nice balance between good police procedure and detection, setting the background of the atmosphere as the war develops, and the reality of murder and how it effects those around the victim. Todd does a nice job of drawing you in deeper and deeper.

Steph · « **Reply #7370 on:** May 19, 2015, 07:31:34 AM »

Flavia is an acquired taste, but worth every moment.

MaryPage · « **Reply #7371 on:** May 25, 2015, 09:52:43 AM »

Started my first Flavia today. Fun so far.

Steph · « **Reply #7372 on:** May 26, 2015, 07:34:55 AM »

Flavia does some truly weird things. I thought I was a strange child, but she is way beyond strange.
By the way, MaryPage,, Confederate memorial day was in the winter.. I think January, but not positive.

MaryPage · « **Reply #7373 on:** May 28, 2015, 05:27:39 PM »

Am about halfway through the book now, and am enjoying it, but not nearly as much as many of the other series I have on hand yet to read, so I doubt I'll buy more. She is a bit too precious, if you know what I mean. And the whole set up seems similar to so very many frameworks for books I've read these many years.

Steph · « **Reply #7374 on:** May 29, 2015, 08:30:07 AM »

Yes and No. Flavia goes over the top, but I have read other books with the same premise. I would not read her back to back , but I do like most of hers.

mabel1015j · « **Reply #7375 on:** May 30, 2015, 01:22:07 PM »

I just finished a fun, free, ebook from Amazon - The Sleuth Sisters by Maggie Pill. Two, then three, sisters start a private investigator agency. One sister is a retired prosecutor and doesn't need the money, but needs something to do. Another sister knows everybody in the county and has connections that can be important. The third sister has business experience and is good at empathy and getting people to talk. I liked the characters and the story. It takes place in Michigan.

I've gotten a second one of the series, also for free.

Jean

JoanK · « **Reply #7376 on:** May 30, 2015, 05:43:25 PM »

JEAN: that sounds like just the kind of book I'm in the mood for. It's $2.99 for me, since I don't belong to kindle unlimited (maybe I should) but even my somewhat creaking at the seams budget can stretch to that.
My library haul this week was miserable. Their buyer seems to like noir, and I feel life is noir enough already. I did pick up a couple of British police procedurals that were ok. It's a relief to see some actual detection going on.

One of them, "Star Fall" deals with the death of a star on the thinly disguised British Antiques road show.

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/h/cynthia-harrod-eagles/

Steph · « **Reply #7377 on:** May 31, 2015, 09:04:23 AM »

I am finishing up a Maeve Binchy short story collections and then will go back to Sandford.

marjifay · « **Reply #7378 on:** June 01, 2015, 02:41:31 PM »

I'm reading A BEAUTIFUL BLUE DEATH, the first Charles Lennox mystery by Charles Finch, and really enjoying it. I love Finch's description of Victorian London where his Lennox mysteries are set. He talks about the parliament house and what a beautiful building it is. Says the buildings burned down in 1834, and the huge clock, Big Ben, was added when the place was rebuilt. He says it (or rather that buildings that make up "it" lie on 8 acres. Wikipedia says that it was probably first used as a royal residence by Canute the Great during his reign from 1016 to 1035. How fortunate it was not bombed during WW2. Finch also has Lennox thinking it was time to put on his nightcap and retire to his bedroom. Why on earth did they need a nightcap?

I'm so thankful that I was able to visit London before I became too old to travel that
far. Finch's book makes me want to read more of the history of England.

Marj

JoanK · « **Reply #7379 on:** June 01, 2015, 04:03:27 PM »

" Why on earth did they need a nightcap?"

because they let the fires (their only heating) go out at night, and it was COLD! I wonder if Eskimos use nightcaps?

marjifay · « **Reply #7380 on:** June 02, 2015, 02:13:00 AM »

Thanks, Joan K, for your explanation of why men wore nightcaps in Victorian London. Because the rooms were cold when they let the fires go out at night - makes perfect sense, altho they look pretty silly in them. It would seem sensible for Eskimos to do likewise.

Marj

Steph · « **Reply #7381 on:** June 02, 2015, 08:08:24 AM »

I love the Finch novels and have read most of them.. Makes you wish you were born then.. The manners were so exquisite.

MaryPage · « **Reply #7382 on:** June 02, 2015, 11:00:06 AM »

I have read and enjoyed every single one so far, with the exception of The Laws of Murder, which is number 8 in the series and which I plan to purchase from Barnes & Noble this very month. I do so love DECENCY, and Lennox is pure decency.
Marjifay, it sounds to me as though you would ALSO enjoy all the C.J. SANSOM books with Matthew Shardlake as the lawyer/detective. I think I own them all, but the one on my Soon To Be Read stack is SOVEREIGN, who happens to be Henry of the Many Wives.

JoanK · « **Reply #7383 on:** June 02, 2015, 03:54:58 PM »

I like the Sansom books. He really gives a sense of what it's like to be an ordinary person in the time of Henry VIII. Including all the bad smells (I guess if you lived then, you got so you didn't smell them. In one book, henry is traveling with his whole court, and Sansom goes into the questions faced by his host cities of how to provide toilet facilities for hundreds of guests.

JoanK · « **Reply #7384 on:** June 02, 2015, 03:57:53 PM »

Jean, I read your three sisters book and liked it. Will definitely read more, but my e-mail informs me that two books I preordered have arrived on my kindle. I love it when that happens.

One is the latest "The Advocate" book by Theresa burrell

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/b/teresa-burrell/

The vauthor is a lawyer who advocates for children caught in the legal system, and her books are based on actual cases.

Steph · « **Reply #7385 on:** June 03, 2015, 08:26:28 AM »

Reading an interesting Laura Lippman "I'd know you anywhere. It is a stand alone of her and they are considerably darker than her Tess stuff. This one is spooky in so many different ways.

FlaJean · « **Reply #7386 on:** June 03, 2015, 11:22:46 AM »

There is a new China Bayles mystery out (Bittersweet) by Susan Wittig Albert. Unfortunately, I am #10 on the library list so it will be a while before I get to read it. I do like China Bayles and it is worth waiting for (I hope).

mabel1015j · « **Reply #7387 on:** June 03, 2015, 01:23:26 PM »

I like the China Bayles books a lot also. I'll have to check my library for the new one. I think i've read all of the others that the library has.

Jean

Steph · « **Reply #7388 on:** June 04, 2015, 08:40:42 AM »

I like China very much,but her other series are a bit sweet for me. Finished the Laura Lippman. An interesting book.. What would you be like if you had been abducted as a young teen and was the only girl who was not killed by the abductor.. Hmm..

marjifay · « **Reply #7389 on:** June 04, 2015, 02:08:19 PM »

Thanks so much, MaryPage, for your recommendation of C.J. Sansom's Matthew Shardlake series. They sound really interesting, and I've put his first book in the series, Dissolution, on my library's hold list.

Marj

Steph · « **Reply #7390 on:** June 05, 2015, 08:35:54 AM »

Thrift books had the first Sansom and I have it coming. Sounds neat.

mabel1015j · « **Reply #7391 on:** June 07, 2015, 01:36:21 AM »

I have just discovered that Maggie Pill, author of the Sleuth Sisters series, is also Peg Herring and has a slew of books under that name. One series is about Elizabeth I as a detective. Reminds me of the Elliot Roosevelt mysteries where Eleanor is the sleuth.

Jean

JoanK · « **Reply #7392 on:** June 07, 2015, 01:37:06 AM »

Let us now how you like him.

Frybabe · « **Reply #7393 on:** June 07, 2015, 05:48:29 AM »

I gave up on The Dante Club. Pearl's writing is excellent, but I am just not interested in reading what looks to be a gory thriller type story, not right now anyway. The book, although relatively normal in size, is packed with small print. I can read the small print, but I get the sensation that it is taking me forever to get through several pages. How impatient of me.

Steph · « **Reply #7394 on:** June 07, 2015, 10:40:05 AM »

I am reading a first mystery.. Maggie King... Murder at the book group. Too long.. too draggy.. and the premise is good, but oh my she needs an editor.

JoanK · « **Reply #7395 on:** June 07, 2015, 03:11:24 PM »

I couldn't read "the Dante Club" either, FRY, although I've loved Pearl's other books. Do you remember the discussions where Pearl joined us?

Too bad, STEPH. It sounded promising.

MaryPage · « **Reply #7396 on:** June 07, 2015, 04:29:17 PM »

Just finished reading my very first Flavia de Luce, The Sweetness At The Bottom Of The Pie. Had it around the house for simply ages, and like so many books I buy because someone in here recommends them, I let it dry out in my bookshelves among many other gems kept by for another day. Am a tetch paranoid about running out of books, which I used to do back in Elementary School days, causing me to run about the neighborhood knocking on doors and begging to borrow anything they could spare. I even, in my desperation, read a whole encyclopedia of World War I which had been my grandfathers; I swear. In those days, I could read (and retain) faster than I could run, and that was pretty fast. Nowadays, I seem to have slowed down to a crawl in both departments. I find myself reading a paragraph over several times to make sure I am taking it all in, and that is time consuming. Then the old eyes water up and start itching to beat the band, and am forced to put the book aside for a bit of shuteye, which quickly turns into an old crone nap. Scheesch, but I really do not like Old Age.
Anyway, I won't crave any Flavia de Luce for a while yet, but I did enjoy her escapades enough that I ordered the next three in the series from Thriftbooks.

Frybabe · « **Reply #7397 on:** June 07, 2015, 05:49:27 PM »

PatH, I remember The Mystery of Edwin Droodwhich I looked in on occasionally, but didn't participate. I don't remember the title, but wasn't there another one?

"Dante" was a little too gruesome for my taste right now. The library has manyof Pearl's books but not Edwin Drood. The Technologists and The Last Bookaneer are on my library wish list. Did you know that Pearl also published a novel called The Last Dickens which is separate from Drood, and that he edited Longfellow's translation of The Inferno? I didn't.

salan · « **Reply #7398 on:** June 08, 2015, 03:40:14 AM »

I just finished the Flavia De Luce book, The Dead in their Vaulted Arches. I enjoyed it. I had read Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie sometime back and this was the second book about Flavia that I have read. I enjoy her escapades, but need a break between reading them.
Sally

Steph · « **Reply #7399 on:** June 08, 2015, 08:52:46 AM »

I agree about Flavia.. Finished that first mystery and will be careful not to buy or get any more of hers. She needs to do something elsse. Not a good mystery.. It just goes on and on.. making the heroine into a woman for all seasons. Oh well.

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Author Topic: Mystery Corner ~ 2 (Read 906144 times)