Mystery Corner ~ 2

[FlaJean]

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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
Our Favorite Old Mystery Writers
Fantastic Fiction
Stop You're Killing Me

Discussion Leaders:    BillH and JoanK   

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Just finished Fell Purpose, A Detective Inspector Slider Mystery by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles.  It is a typical British police procedural but I particularly like the main characters.  Now I've started a non mystery Roses which is a humongous book.  That should keep me busy for awhile.

[mrssherlock]

Each time i finish a Susan Kandel book I am impressed anew with her talent.  She writes mysteries that satisfy on many levels.  First she writes a nice cozy with a good-hearted female who detects only when necessary - when she is involved with the circumstances which lead to a murder.  She has a tough-guy BF who is  cop and provides love and conflict in almost equal measures.  Susan's gal is Cece Caruso and she has an ex-husband, a grown daughter and son-in-law.  here is where it gets more interesting - Cece's day job is writing;  she writes biographies of the giants of crime fiction - authors who created Perry Mason, Nancy Drew, Nero Wolf, Agatha Christie. The biography becomes a character in the story as she recounts material she has researched; the Nancy Drew book, Not a Girl Detective, product of a book-writing factory, reveals much about the production of the books, very tasty inside stories about who and what.  On another level each story is written in the style of the subject of the bio though this is less obvious to me  since I get all caught up in the story as it unfolds.  Lastly, and most satisfying, is Kandel's intelligence with this brief quote from the third in the series, Christietown.  She has been interspersing the narrative with brief chapters describing Agatha's emotional stress around the famous eleven days of her disappearance and amnesia (which Kandel  ascribes to intentional forgetting on Christie's part.)

Of course, all mysteries are about  forgetting.  Clues, suspects, opportunities: the author lays them out before you, then tricks you into forgetting what you know.  By the end of the book, with the revelation of the guilty party, your memories suddenly come flooding back. How could I have missed that?  How did I not notice her?  The answer is simple:  you knew there'd be no pleasure in remembering too soon.

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/k/susan-kandel/

[Babi]

 That's quite an endorsement, JACKIE.  I'll have to look up Ms. Kandel. 

[mrssherlock]

Hope you like here, Babi.

[Steph]

Read the Nancy Drew and one other by Kandel.. But the Christie sounds promising.

[JoanK]

Jackie: I've read the Kendall book aboout Earle Stanley Gardner, but not the Christietown. I have to get it. And the two African writers.

For Jill Churchill writers: her later books (like "House of the Seven Mabels") are not nearly as good as her early ones IMO: "grime and Punishment", "Silence of the Hams" etc. I think she starts to go downhill with "War and Peas".

I haven't been here for awhile: I'm buying a condo, and I spend everyday tied up in red tape. The last time I bought a house, 40 years ago, it was nothing like this!!

[mrssherlock]

Joan:  How exciting!  You must tell us all about it.  I remember when Golden State Poppy bought  hers she uploaded pictures so we could see how lovely it is. hint hint BTW did I mention that I'm an avid viewer of HGTVs House Hunter shows?

[JoanK]

I will, when I have pictures to upload.

One problem: now I'm looking at my old, comfortable furniture, and it's looking awfully shabby! But after paying for the condo, I'm awfully broke!

Do you think it's time to abandon the computer desk my 40-year-old daughter made in Junior High School? Or at least paint it?

[maryz]

Of course not, JoanK.   

[mrssherlock]

Joank:  Isn't that what they call eclectic?  Some bright cushions displayed over a carefully draped throw and, voila! a new look.

[Steph]

Hey, we are getting older, why not the furniture.. I sort of like the blended look myself.

[salan]

Joan K., By all means, paint the desk if it is looking too "weather-beaten", but definitely keep it as a family treasure!  Maybe you can post your photos when you move in & ask for suggestions to spruce up economically.  Sort of like HGTV's rate my space (Jackie, I also am a fan of House Hunters, Sell this House, & Rate My Space).
Sally

[Golden State Poppy]

I just finished the David Baldacci book last night.  It is very good as always.  He writes about the government agencies a great deal.  He lives in his native Virginia.  I lived there for two years when my husband worked for the CIA.

[Steph]

Western Virginia is lovely.. But oh me, the taxes in that state.
Finished Fatally Flaky by Davidson.. ARch was almost non existant in the book.. Thank heaven.. But Goldie would be in jail in most places for all of the promises and then interfering with the police. Her poor husband.

[Babi]

 That's one thing I like about the Patricia Sprinkle books.  The crime-solving heroine is at least a magistrate/judge with a right to be involved.
You know no police dept. is going to put up with some amateur mucking
about in their investigation.

[winsummm]

I have a new favorite author. my son read his most recent book but I wanted an older one since it is the beginning of a series.  the BOB LEE SWAGGER series. the author is Stephen Hunter also a good non fiction pulitzer prize writer and the book I am finishing is POInT OF IMPACT.  the writing is great the story moves right  along and all the characters make sense to me and and and and and .  having fun.

is foleys war on Kindle? will have to look

[Steph]

Dont I remember that the earliest
Sprinkle books had a diplomats daughter or wife as the heroine?? or is that another Patricia?

[Babi]

 No idea, STEPH.  The only one I know is the 'Southern style' series that I learned about here.
The 'Southern' is very true; Sprinkle didn't hit a wrong note once, there.  Bless her heart!   

[pedln]

When Did We Lose Harriet.  I think that’s the only Patricia Sprinkle I’ve read, and it was years ago,  and I still remember parts of it.  And I want to read more, if I can find them.  In Harriet, MacLaren travels to see her brother who is recuperating from a heart attack  And she reflects how he and his wife were financially able to do anything, but elected to stay in their small house and continue their conservative lifestyle, thinking that only their mailman knew how many people and groups benefitted from Jake’s financial well-being.  That has nothing to do with the mystery, but it’s something that always stuck.

And although I’ve been pitching magazines right and left, there is still one in the stack from Presbyterians Today, Oct. 2004, open to  – What Did You Learn Today by Patricia Sprinkle.  And in the first paragraph she tells of the 91-year-old farmer who learned to roll his hay instead of baling it. Subtitled -You're Never Too Old to Learn Something New.

and this from Sprinkle’s Website

ABOUT MACLAREN YARBROUGH  --
 Several years ago I was going to Waynesboro, Georgia, to give a seminar for the Chamber of Commerce Women in Business. My sister got wind of the trip and said, "You have to visit my college roommate’s mother while you’re there. She owns the hardware store."
 Being southern, I was well aware of the importance of keeping in touch with one’s sister’s college roommate’s mother. When I dropped by the hardware store, I discovered a delightful energetic woman in the back office. As we chatted, a policeman came into the room.
 "Excuse me a minute," she told me. "What do you have?" she asked him.
 He mumbled something, she looked over a sheet of paper, and said, "Raise your right hand." She put him through what looked like some sort of initiation, then signed his paper and he left.
 "What was that?" I asked.
 "Oh, I’m a magistrate. He had a warrant for arrest I had to sign."
 "Are you a lawyer?"
 She laughed. "No, in Georgia you don’t have to be a lawyer to be a magistrate. The chief magistrate is elected, but the others are appointed. My husband used to be a magistrate, and when he died, they asked me to serve. I had to go for training, of course, but after all those years of going with him, I knew most of it anyway."

[Steph]

I f ound the Sprinkle books or at least some of them on my swap club and have ordered one.. I read an earlier book of hers that was about the diplomats daughter or wife.
Am reading Wicked Prey and enjoying it.. Letty is turning out to be a female image of her adopted Dad.

[Babi]

 I love that quote, PEDLN, esp. about 'keeping in touch'. (I'm so bad about
that myself; it's a disgrace. But then, Texas isn't deep South.)

[mrssherlock]

Oh, I loved the Sprinkle series but had forgotten the details.  Dang!  Another author to put on my list.  Just what I needed.

[Steph]

Oh Jackie, me too.. I am getting one of the Sprinkiles and the author who someone bought in a dollar store from the swap club.. Because I only have maybe 30-40 books in  my
tbr file.

[Babi]

 Gee, STEPH, is that all?   

[Steph]

The swap club brings out the worst in me.. I see new names to me or ones I have forgotten and immediately head to the swap club and boom.. another book.. No stopping me. I have maybe 15 books on the wish list in the swap club and pretty much everything hits the club eventually.

[FlaJean]

Just finished Donna Leon's latest book A Question of Belief, A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery.  Justice rarely prevails in Leon's books but I love them for the Brunetti character and that of his family.

[pedln]

I've only read a few of Leon's -- but really enjoyed them.  One about High Water and the other dealing with environmental issues -- can't remember the names.  A Noble Radiance is on my shelf -- TBR sometime.

[mrssherlock]

A new-to-me author, Joan Smith, introduces a feisty feminist English professor (Loretta Lawson)in a London university who is attending the editorial board meeting of their feminist publication.  A friend has given her to keys to an apartment he owns with some others for the occasional need to stay in Paris.Loretta's train is late, the address an obscure street only reached by stairs, so it is nearly midnight when she lets herself in.  She is befuddled on sighting a sleeping man in the main bedroom - she had been promised exclusive occupancy.  She oversleeps the next morning, the man is still present in bed asleep, and rushes off to her meetings.  Upon her return she is appalled to discover the man is gone and in his place is a pile of extremely bloodied bed linens.  what she does next and what follows is a decidedly novel treatment of the genre.  PS:  The title:  A Masculine Ending is a wry pun. 

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/s/joan-smith-2/masculine-ending.htm

[joangrimes]

I have read A Masculine Ending by Joan Smith...along time ago.  I have read several books by Joan Smith and I enjoyed all fo them but I had forgotten about her when looking for books on Kindle.  will have see if she has any that I have not read..Thanks for bringing her here and reminding me of her, Jackie..Joan Grimes

[jeriron]

I love Donna Leon's books. I started reading them after we were in Venice.for a couple of days. I started with the first one "a Death at the La Fenice" and have worked my way through all of them. Reading them is almost like being there.

[Frybabe]

I've started reading Dan Brown's first novel, Digital Fortress. I am somewhat disappointed in it. It is not a can't put down page turner, but I have to keep in mind that it was his first novel.

After reading about him and his wife on Wikipedia, I think she deserves a lot of the credit for the books - maybe even her name on the cover. She seems to have been the chief researcher, idea person, promoter/agent (early one anyway), and general all round helper. If she had that much influence, I begin to wonder why she didn't write the books herself or at least insist on co-author credit.

[pedln]

My lucky day today -- Concierge duty (volunteer) at the library.  We Friends have a cart with gently used (translate, practically new) books for sale so cheap it's unbelievable.  Today the cart was loaded, and I came home with Dead Wrong by J.A. Jance, Fire Sale by Sara Paretsky, and Murder Inside the Beltway by Margaret Truman. The publication date of the latter is 2008, and inside it says, "Dedicated, with love, to our mother.  For more than thirty years she liked nothing better than to sit at home in New York, murdering people in Washington, D.C., one at a time."

Of course, I need three more "boughten" books like I need calories.  I guess I'll read them and put them back on the cart.

[JoanK]

I thought my family was the only one that used "boughten" as in "these are just store-boughten cookies." Amazon is too easy: when I read about a good book here, it's just a few clicks away to get another "boughten" book.

[pedln]

JoanK, how I wished for "boughten" cookies when I was a kid.  But we never had them, only the homemade peanut butter, the oatmeal, the sugar cookies and the spritz at Christmastime. How I would beg, to no avail, for those rounded pillows of chocolate with the marshmallow filling. "Cardboard," my mother would say.

Re: Dan Brown.  You know what say, Frybabe.  Behind every great man .   .  .   .

[Steph]

Dick Francis wife Mary( I think was her name).. She did all of his research and they both admitted it.

[salan]

Speaking of "boughten", when I was little I longed for a real bakery birthday cake; but instead only had home-made.  Then, one day, when my daughter was little, I was behind a woman in the grocery store who had a bakery cake in her cart.  I heard her little girl say, "I'm going to tell my friends that you made it."  When I questioned my daughter, she said, "Oh, mommy, everyone has those cakes.  I want you to make me a special one."  The times they are a changin', aren't they?
Sally

[Babi]

 Another version of 'the grass is greener...',  Sally.  Every kid wants what the other kids seem to
be enjoying most.  Hmmm....maybe that doesn't stop with kids. 

[mrssherlock]

Dana Stabenow is on my list of favs.  Her new one, A Night too Dark, while not disappointing, is not stay-up-all-night quality.  The premise, greedy corporation raping the wilderness, is tired and she brings nothing new to the age-old struggle of man vs Nature.  The usual supporting cast is present (Kate, Mutt, Jim Coffin, Johnny, the Aunties) going through their usual paces, but there's no spark here.  Is Stabenow writing from a script these days?

[Golden State Poppy]

I want to thank those who said that books by Stuart Woods about Stone Barrington are not worth reading.  It permitted me to stop reading "Hot Mahogony" half way through.  It was dull and not worth the time spent reading it.  I took it to our senior center library.  It is a man's book, but I wonder if men will find it as dull as I did.

[maryz]

GSP, John stopped reading them about one book before I did.