mystery

A Kiss Before Dying by Ira Levin

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Started: 4/27/20
Finished: 5/2/20

Having just finished a couple of very pleasant adventure stories with likeable protagonists, I almost physically recoiled at the main character’s attitude in the first few pages.  It’s an adjustment.  It’s also about a murder, so maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised.  Pretty much all of the male characters came across as arrogant chauvinists, including (especially) the good guys, so the book was a bit much to take.  I enjoyed it, but I can’t say I liked it.

Caught Dead Handed by Carol J. Perry

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Started: 11/11/19
Gave up: 11/12/19

I found this mystery series in one of those library/book publisher magazines, too, but I couldn’t get into this one at all.  It’s set in Salem, so I assume magic will come into it, but it’s starting with astrology and a dead fake astrologer’s cat named Orion (dead astrologer, live cat), except they change it to O’Ryan because I don’t know why and I quit.

Books Can Be Deceiving by Jenn McKinlay

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Started: 11/10/19
Finished: 11/11/19

I found this mystery series in one of those library/book publisher magazines.  Small town librarian, all the book titles are cute puns, so I figured it was worth trying.  And it was…okay.  I’m not in a hurry to continue the series, but I did enjoy it, and there was a breakup scene in chapter 3 that was so very satisfying.

Lock In by John Scalzi

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Started: 10/2/19
Finished: 10/9/19

I like John Scalzi’s books.  I haven’t read them all, but I’ve read most of them, and I’ve really liked the vast majority.  They’re not perfect – the problem I run into is that all of the characters sound the same way.  The dialogue, while on the one hand can be pretty realistic, is basically the same book to book.  It feels like every character is a stand-in for the author – smart, an essentially good person, heavy on the snark.  HEAVY on the snark.  It’s amusing, and his stories are all good, entertaining, fast-paced.  I like that his characters tend to have healthy and happy family relationships (it’s a nice change from all the death and orphans and drama I get in nearly everything else I read), but they all talk the same.

So I get stuck on that sometimes.

Dressed for Death by Donna Leon

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Started: 5/25/19
Finished: 6/1/19

Commissario Brunetti series book 3.  I think I see what Jo Walton meant when she said this series was about integrity.  Brunetti solves the mystery, but the ultimate bad guy doesn’t get punished (or not for the right thing).  If there’s a larger character arc, I wonder if Brunetti will go through a depression.

Tragedy at Law by Cyril Hare

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Started: 4/30/19
Finished: 5/4/19

I went back and read the first of the Francis Pettigrew mysteries.  If I had read this one first, I wouldn’t be interested in reading any more.  First of all, Pettigrew is barely in it.  Certainly not a main character.  Second, the murder happens in the last 10% of the book.  No exaggeration.  And one of the suspects only got introduced a chapter ahead of it.  I MIGHT try the third one before I decide about the series, but I’m not in a hurry.

With a Bare Bodkin by Cyril Hare

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Started: 4/26/19
Finished: 4/29/19

Because Jo Walton liked it, I gave it a try.  This is the second of the Francis Pettigrew mysteries, set in England in early WWII.  Pettigrew is a lawyer, everyone is pretty isolated, and the murder doesn’t actually occur until the second half of the book.  Entertaining, but odd.

Winter Tide by Ruthanna Emrys

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Started: 4/19/19
Finished: 4/24/19

I was hesitant to start this one because I kept getting hung up on the Lovecraftian parts of the book reviews, and the whole unknowable-horror-tentacled-monster thing is what keeps me away from Lovecraft.  The other parts of the book reviews (the solid writing, flipping Lovecraft’s whole bigotry thing, the found family theme) are why I read it anyway.  Final thoughts: good story, good characters, hardly any tentacles.

Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon

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Started: 4/14/19
Finished: 4/17/19

The first in a series of mysteries set in Venice that I picked up because Jo Walton says they’re wonderful and I trust her.  For some reason she recommends starting with book 2 (she’s on book 22 (!) and the author is still alive), but I started with book 1 because what kind of monster do you take me for?

I enjoyed it, even though this was one of the more disturbing motives – definitely not a cozy mystery.  Maybe Jo Walton’s recommendation about starting with book 2 was a typo.

The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss

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Started: 3/17/19
Finished: 3/21/19

First in the Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club series, we have Dr. Jeckyll’s daughter teaming up with Holmes and Watson in 1890s London to find the murderous Mr. Hyde and get the monetary reward because poor Miss Jeckyll is dead broke.  The book is being written by a character we don’t meet (in the narrative, anyway) until much later in the book, but we know she’s writing it right away because the other characters have conversations with her about the narrative, within the narrative.  It’s loads of fun.

Update: NOPE. It started out fun and interesting, but the writing style got really irritating (although not the interruptions from characters – that was still mostly fun).  It’s full of exposition, all tell and no show, and it’s all happening in the dialogue, which makes the dialogue really clunky and painful to read.  It’s a pity.  I really wanted to like this book.

Baking Bad by Kim M. Watt

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Started: 2/22/19
Finished: 3/1/19

A cozy mystery set in present-day England with dragons.  It’s cute, it’s lightly humorous, it set up a lot of background stuff so I’m hoping for a full series (there’s one sequel, Christmas-related), and even though the whodunit part wasn’t that hard to figure out, I still very much enjoyed it.

The Problem of the Missing Miss by Roberta Rogow

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Started: 1/31/19
Finished: 2/3/19

I’m not sure what this book is expecting of me.  Sometimes the tone is light and comic, with a gruff old man harrumphing about his companions, and then the plot will get into sex trafficking and the abuse of young girls and it’s serious and disturbing, but in a light, comic tone…?  It’s the first in a series about Charles Dodgson and Arthur Conan Doyle teaming up to solve crimes.  I wanted to like it more than I did.