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Sjöwall and Wahlöö, The Terrorists
I’ve just finished reading three more of the Martin Beck books by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö: The Abominable Man, Cop Killer, and The Terrorists, which are, respectively, numbers 7, 9, and 10 in the...
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Robert B. Parker, The Godwulf Manuscript
It seemed appropriate to come back from Boston with a copy of Robert B. Parker’s first Spenser mystery, The Godwulf Manuscript. Though I’m sure I’ve read it before, it wasn’t in my own Spenser...
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Decided! Books for ‘Mystery and Detective Fiction’
As you know, I’ve been tinkering for some time with the book list for this fall’s version of ‘Mystery and Detective Fiction.’ This course presents a special set of challenges for me because the range...
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Summer Reading Update: Some Hits, More Misses
I’m up to six books in my quest to reach thirty this summer. I can’t say I’m off to a very good start. Of these, two were awful, two mediocre, and two were very good. I’ll quickly survey them all here,...
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Not Quite Cricket: Dorothy Sayers, Murder Must Advertise
Murder Must Advertise is my fourth favourite Dorothy Sayers novel, after Gaudy Night (first, of course!), Busman’s Honeymoon, and Strong Poison and Have His Carcase (tied at third, because though...
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This Week in My Classes: Amidst the Mess, Three Mysterious Morsels
The past week or so has just felt crazy with tasks and details to keep on top of. When we’re planning courses, we (or maybe it’s just me?) tend to focus on big picture issues, like which books to...
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From the Archives: Who Cares Who Killed … Whoever It Was?
I’m reading Elizabeth George’s Believing the Lie, and I find I still feel pretty much as I did when I wrote this post in 2009: I’m more interested in the continuing characters than in the mystery plot...
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Elizabeth Speller, The Return of Captain John Emmett
I picked The Return of Captain John Emmett for my ‘light reading’ over the last couple of weeks because it seemed such a perfect fit: here I am reading and teaching both literature of the First World...
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Rebus is Back: Ian Rankin, Standing in Another Man’s Grave
Yes, Rebus is back, and it’s good to see him again, the sodden old crank. The Malcolm Fox novels have been fine, but I don’t find Fox as interesting a character as Rebus–though that could be because...
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Binge Reading vs. Close Reading
I’ve undertaken to write an essay on Dick Francis this summer, in preparation for which I am reading through all of his 40+ novels. His first, Dead Cert, was published in 1962, and he basically...
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What P. D. James Talks About When She Talks About Detective Fiction*
I finally picked up P. D. James’s Talking About Detective Fiction, which I’ve been mildly interested in reading ever since it came out in 2009. I say ‘mildly’ because I’ve read all of James’s novels...
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Holiday Reading
Happy Canadian Thanksgiving! It is a beautifully crisp sunny fall weekend here: I treated myself to an amble through the Public Gardens on Saturday, where the gold-tinged foliage provided a lovely...
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Josephine Tey, Brat Farrar: ‘Who are you?’‘Retribution.’
I’ve been rereading The Daughter of Time for decades, so it’s odd that until now I had never read another novel by Josephine Tey. Mind you, in some respects The Daughter of Time is sui generis. And...
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This Week In My Classes: Canons and Complications
My classes aren’t meeting at all today, thanks to the “weather bomb” we are currently enjoying. It is uncanny how many storms have come through on Wednesdays this winter! And it’s an unpleasant...
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A ‘Dark Love Letter to Iceland’: Hannah Kent, Burial Rites
I’ve gotten pretty cynical about book blurbs, but when I see a cover adorned with high praise from not one but two of the smartest readers I know, how can I resist the temptation to read it for myself?...
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Elizabeth George, Just One Evil Act
The last time I wrote about Elizabeth George here, after reading 2008′s Careless in Red, I said that “I turned to these latest instalments [in her series] motivated far less by curiosity about the...
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Zoë Ferraris, Finding Nouf
Finding Nouf was one of my choices at Hager Books on my recent trip to Vancouver. I didn’t have any specific recollection of having heard about it before, but it turns out that a couple of people I...
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“Aim at making everybody happy”: Ellis Peters, A Morbid Taste for Bones
“Aim, he thought, at making everybody happy, and if that’s within reach, why stir up any kind of unpleasantness?” Thanks to the generosity of a retired colleague who is pruning her book collection, I...
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Sue Grafton: W is for Wasted [Time]
It’s actually a bit harsh to imply that reading W is for Wasted is a waste of time. Grafton is too good at her craft for that: the story is multifaceted and the elements unravel and then knit up...
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“Passion, plus craft”: Donald E. Westlake, The Getaway Car
I’m glad I didn’t take Levi Stahl’s advice. If I had, I would have walked away from The Getaway Car, which is “the first book by Donald E. Westlake [I've] ever held in [my] hands.” Not that it seems...
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