London
Ngaio Marsh: Swing, Brother, Swing (aka A Wreath for Rivera)
Blurb: Lord Pastern and Baggot is a classic English eccentric, given to passionate, peculiar enthusiasms. His latest: drumming in a jazz band. His wife is not amused, and even less so when her daughter falls hard for Carlos Rivera, the band’s sleazy accordion player. Aside from the young woman, nobody likes Rivera very much, so […]
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Ngaio Marsh: Artists in Crime
Blurb: One of Ngaio Marsh’s most famous murder mysteries, which introduces Inspector Alleyn to his future wife, the irrepressible Agatha Troy. It started as a student exercise, the knife under the drape, the model’s pose chalked in place. But before Agatha Troy, artist and instructor, returns to the class, the pose has been reenacted in […]
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Q1 / 2022 Reading Recap
Well, as it turned out 2022 began as 2021 had ended — all work and no play, albeit with the addition of a hospital detour to boot. (Nothing serious, just way more painful and, all told, protracted, than it had any right to be.) So I’m back to posting one summary post for the first […]
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Virginia Woolf: Orlando
As I said elsewhere, given the fact that Virginia Woolf was a 2021 (M)DWS author in residence, too, as part of my exploration of the life and work of Vita Sackville-West’s life and work I decided to circle back to Woolf; or rather, to the link between the two writers, which far exceeds their almost […]
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Vita Sackville-West: All Passion Spent
The lovely, understated and gently ironic story of a woman who has had to lead a life opposite to the one that she wanted to live — that of an artist — for over 60 years, and who is at last liberated from the forces of social and family convention by the death of her […]
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Agatha Christie: A Deadly Affair
Shout-out to WhiskeyintheJar for getting here first! So, HarperCollins’s latest ploy in cashing in on Christie’s undying fame seems to be to repackage her short stories roughly along seasonal lines: to date, we’ve had summer / vacations, Halloween / supernatural, Christmas / winter … and now Valentine’s Day / love and romance as a subtext. […]
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Nancy Spain: Death Goes on Skis
Blurb: Miriam Birdseye is daring, brilliant – and a long way from The Ivy. Our dashing heroine, a famous revue artist, takes to the slopes with her coterie of admirers. Champagne flows and wherever Miriam goes she leaves a trail of gossip in her wake. Fellow ski-resort guests include the celebrated Russian ex-ballerina, Natasha Nevkorina, […]
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Dorothy L. Sayers & Jill Paton Walsh: Thrones, Dominations
Blurb: It is 1936, and Lord Peter Wimsey has returned from his honeymoon to set up home with his cherished new wife, the novelist Harriet Vane. As they become part of fashionable London society, they encounter the glamorous socialite Rosamund Harwell and her wealthy impresario husband, Laurence. Unlike the Wimseys they are not in love […]
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J. Jefferson Farjeon: The Z Murders
Blurb: Richard Temperley arrives at Euston station early on a fogbound London morning. He takes refuge in a nearby hotel, along with a disagreeable fellow passenger who had snored his way through the train journey. But within minutes the other man has snored for the last time – he has been shot dead while sleeping […]
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Agatha Christie: Death in the Clouds
Blurb: From seat No. 9, Hercule Poirot was ideally placed to observe his fellow air passengers on the short flight from Paris to London. Over to his right sat a pretty young woman, clearly infatuated with the man opposite; ahead, in seat No. 13, sat a countess with a poorly concealed cocaine habit; across the […]
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Two Christmas Mystery Short Story Anthologies
Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE Festive Tasks, Door 21 — Good Luck Charms and Traditions: Read a book from the fantasy genre, or one with something on the cover that refers to “luck”. Festive Tasks, Door 24 — Cherished Memories: Read a book with a split timeline, one that takes place in the present […]
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Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol
Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE Festive Tasks, Door 16 — Charity: Read “A Christmas Carol,” or read a book in which poverty or hardship are significant plot elements. This is one of my annual Christmas rereads; one of the books I’ll never get tired of — in addition to listening to the audiobook […]
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Beryl Bainbridge: According to Queeney
Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE Festive Tasks, Door 7 — Gift Giving & Wrapping: Read a book with a cover that would make beautiful wrapping paper; or read a book that you would have enjoyed giving or receiving as a gift: This is less a fictional biography than a portrait of manners and […]
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Martin Edwards: Gallows Court
Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE Festive Tasks, Door 9 – Cycles: Read a book that has something lucky on the cover or in the title; or that has a cover that is more than 50% red, yellow and or green, which are considered lucky colors in China. Gallows Court was a book I’d been […]
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June 2021 and Mid-Year Reading Recap
Sigh. Well, I think posting a monthly (and even half-year) reading recap a full three weeks into the next month has to be some sort of record, even for me, but here we are. And I admit that at this point I’d even been contemplating holding off another week so as to combine this with […]
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Molly Thynne: He Dies and Makes No Sign
One of the standout books of last year’s holiday reading was Molly Thynne’s The Crime at the ‘Noah’s Ark’, the first of her three Dr. Constantine books, and I instantly resolved to read more books by her. It turns out, though, that POV may be important to my enjoyment of a book (who knew?!), and […]
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Agatha Christie: The Seven Dials Mystery
The Seven Dials Mystery marks our second (and in Bundle’s case, alas, final) meeting with Lady Eileen “Bundle” Brent and Scotland Yard Superintendent Battle, both of whom we first encountered in The Secret of Chimneys. While they both were (key) supporting characters there, here Bundle gets star billing, and that’s a very good thing, because […]
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Georgette Heyer: Duplicate Death
This is the penultimate of Georgette Heyer’s Inspector Hemingway mysteries, and while in other books Hemingway and his former boss, D.I. Hannasyde — as whose sergeant Hemingway appears in the first four novels of the eight-book arc — occasionally make reference to previous cases they’ve been involved in, outside of the fact that the four […]
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Dorothy L. Sayers: Clouds of Witness
June being Dorothy L. Sayers’s birthday, a revisit of her books was in the cards anyway — and speaking of which, the topic of this year’s summer reading project pretty quickly also determined which books I would be picking: Clouds of Witness, where card sharping is a key plot element, and The Five Red Herrings, […]
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Leonard Gribble: The Arsenal Stadium Mystery
I’d set this as my book to accompany the England vs. Germany match during this year’s European football / soccer championships but I should probably make it clear that it wasn’t the fact that Germany lost (deservedly) in a major tournament match against England for the first time in decades that made me lose my […]
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