The top four vote getters from last week's poll:
- Whodunnits - Cozies, Locked Room: Louise Penny, Charlotte MacLeod, Aaron Elkins, Lillian Jackson Braun, Laurie R. King, Jeffrey Deaver, Laura Lippman, Julie Smith
17% 7 votes
- Foreign Settings: Scandinavia, U.K., Italy, France, Egypt, China, Canada, South America, East Asia
15% 6 votes
- Noir - Police - Anti-Hero: James Ellroy, George Pelecanos, Dennis Lehane, Carol O'Connell, Ian Rankin, James Lee Burke, Thomas Perry, Lee Child
12% 5 votes
- Psychological Thrillers: Thomas Harris, John Sanford, Ruth Rendell, P.D. James, Jonathan Kellerman, James Patterson, Val McDermid, Thomas Cook
10% 4 votes
There was no overwhelming favorite as a result of last week's poll, so I am going to try something different.
I'll pick a bunch of books.
You can decide which we read.
Since I am picking the books, and this being Women's Mystery Month, the books will all be written by women. Michele and I have written about some of these writers, and even a few of the books, for Monday Night Mystery, and I have included links to those diaries. Admittedly I wasn't able to include all of the sub-genres in this collection, but future months can be dedicated to each in turn.
All of these books were available in paper, audio, or electronic formats through my local library, which is part of the county system. Hopefully this will allow greater participation. Depending upon the book chosen, we can either read it all in one two week span or read parts of it each week.
Let's start with one of the classics from Agatha Christie. Not only does 4:50 From Paddington feature Miss Marple, but it also includes her young protégée, Lucy Eylesbarrow.
4:50 From Paddington
Agatha Christie
Published by HarperCollins
November
1957
288 pages
For an instant the two trains ran together, side by side. In that frozen moment, Elspeth witnesseda murder. Helplessly, she stared out of her carriage window as a man remorselessly tightened his grip around a woman’s throat. The body crumpled.Then the other train drew away.
But who, apart from Miss Marple, would take herstory seriously? After all, there were no suspects, no other witnesses . . . and no corpse.
Originally published as What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!
Barnes & Noble
Published after affirmative action was amended to include women, but before Roe vs Wade, this P.D. James novel was one of the first of that era to portray a woman as a detective. Which was, as so many jobs at that time were,
An Unsuitable Job for a Woman
by P.D. James
Published by Faber and Faber (Now part of Macmillan)
1972
287 pages
Monday Murder Mystery
Handsome Cambridge dropout Mark Callender died hanging by the neck with a faint trace of lipstick on his mouth. When the official verdict is suicide, his wealthy father hires fledgling private investigator Cordelia Gray to find out what led him to self-destruction. What she discovers instead is a twisting trail of secrets and sins, and the strong scent of murder.
An Unsuitable Job for a Woman introduces P. D. James's courageous but vulnerable young detective, Cordelia Gray, in a "top-rated puzzle of peril that holds you all the way" (The New York Times).
Edgar Award Nominee for Best Novel (1974)
Touchstone: A Stuyvesant & Grey Novel
By Laurie R King
Published by Bantam
January 1st 2007
548 pages
Hailed for her rich and powerful works of psychological suspense as well as her New York Times bestselling mysteries, Laurie R. King now takes us to a remote cottage in Cornwall where a gripping tale of intrigue, terrorism, and explosive passions begins with a visit to a recluse upon whom the fate of an entire nation may rest—a man code-named ... Touchstone.
It’s eight years after the Great War shattered Bennett Grey’s life, leaving him with an excruciating sensitivity to the potential of human violence, and making social contact all but impossible. Once studied by British intelligence for his unique abilities, Grey has withdrawn from a rapidly changing world—until an American Bureau of Investigation agent comes to investigate for himself Grey’s potential as a weapon in a vicious new kind of warfare. Agent Harris Stuyvesant desperately needs Grey’s help entering a world where the rich and the radical exist side by side—a heady mix of the powerful and the celebrated, among whom lurks an enemy ready to strike a deadly blow at democracy on both sides of the Atlantic.
Here, among a titled family whose servants dress in whimsical costumes and whose daughter conducts an open affair with a man who wants to bring down the government, Stuyvesant finds himself dangerously seduced by one woman and—even more dangerously—falling in love with another. And as he sifts through secrets divulged and kept, he uncovers the target of a horrifying conspiracy, and wonders if he can trust his touchstone, Grey, to reveal the most dangerous player of all ….
Building to an astounding climax on an ancient English estate, Touchstone is both a harrowing thriller by a master of the genre and a thought-provoking exploration of the forces that drive history—and human destinies.
What the Dead Know
Laura Lippman
Published by William Morrow
January 1st 2007
384 pages
Barry Award for Best Novel (2008)
Macavity Award for Best Mystery Novel (2008)
Anthony Award for Best Novel (2008)
Monday Murder Mystery
This stand-alone thriller from Laura Lippman (To the Power of Three, Every Secret Thing, et al.) revolves around the mysterious disappearance of two young sisters in a Baltimore County shopping mall on Easter weekend in 1975. Still unsolved after more than three decades, the cold case suddenly becomes red hot when a middle-aged woman involved in a car accident informs police that she is one of the Bethany sisters who went missing 30 years earlier. But her disjointed story, while factually accurate, raises concerns with Baltimore County cop Kevin Infante, who intuitively knows something isn't quite right.
The investigation is complicated further by the fact that many key players are either dead or suffering from degenerative illnesses. The mysterious woman's horrific account -- an abduction involving a police officer, years of sexual abuse, and the murder of her sister -- sounds plausible enough, but when the elderly mother of the missing girls, now living in Mexico, is asked to meet with her alleged daughter, a terrible truth is finally revealed
Reminiscent of 2005's To the Power of Three, this mystery/thriller features young, outwardly uncorrupted, and surprisingly savvy female protagonists -- and a bombshell of a conclusion that, interestingly enough, ties in with the peripheral theme of the spiritual discipline of the Fivefold Path: liberation through self-knowledge. Sharing similarities with an actual unsolved case that involved the disappearance of two Baltimore-area sisters in 1975, What the Dead Know is vintage Lippman -- emotionally charged, powerfully poignant, and hauntingly sublime. Highly recommended. Paul Goat Allen
Barnes & Noble Review
Still Life (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #1)
Louise Penny
Published by Minotaur Books
January 1st 2005
312 pages
Barry Award for Best First Novel (2007)
Anthony Award for Best First Novel (2007)
Dilys Award (2007)
Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel (2006)
The Crime Writers' Association New Blood Dagger (2006)
Monday Murder Mystery
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec and his team of investigators are called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montréal and yet a world away. Jane Neal, a long-time resident of Three Pines, has been found dead in the woods. The locals are certain it’s a tragic hunting accident and nothing more but Gamache smells something foul this holiday season…and is soon certain that Jane died at the hands of someone much more sinister than a careless bowhunter.
With this award-winning first novel, Louise Penny introduces an engaging hero in Inspector Gamache, who commands his forces—and this series—with power, ingenuity, and charm.(less)
I read one of her earlier books, enjoyed it and thought this one looked intriguing. It has been nominated for this years' Mary Higgins Clark Award.
There Was an Old Woman
by Hallie Ephron
Published by William Morrow
April 2nd 2013
304 pages
"Don't let him in until I'm gone," Mina's neighbor says from the gurney as the EMTs load her into the ambulance. Though Mina doesn't know who he is, she dutifully calls Sandra's daughter to relay the message.
Evie Ferrante is dismayed when she gets the call: once again, her mother's drinking has landed her in the hospital. But when Evie arrives at her mother’s home, she’s shocked by the terrible state of the house. As Evie cleans and organizes, she finds things that don’t make sense: expensive liquor in the garage, pricier than her mother’s usual brand, and tins of cat food when her mother doesn’t even like cats. Where is her mother getting all this money, and is she losing her mind?
Suspicious and concerned, Evie rekindles a relationship with her mother's elderly next door neighbor, Mina, who has herself been having episodes she can’t explain lately. But the more the two women investigate, a more menacing scheme begins to unfold.
THERE WAS AN OLD WOMAN is Ephron’s most gripping and evocative novel yet; a twisting, page- turning tale that shows how secrets from the past fester if they remain buried and how the seduction of greed can lead to desperate measures.
William Morrow (pdf)
Bimbos of the Death Sun
Sharon McCrumb
Published by Ballantine Books
December 28th 1996 (first published 1987)
212 pages
Anthony Award Nominee for Best Paperback Original (1988)
Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original (1988)
Monday Murder Mystery
For one fateful weekend, the annual science fiction and fantasy convention, Rubicon, has all but taken over a usually ordinary hotel. Now the halls are alive with Trekkies, tech nerds, and fantasy gamers in their Viking finery *all of them eager to hail their hero, bestselling fantasy author Appin Dungannon: a diminutive despot whose towering ego more than compensates for his 5' 1" height . . . and whose gleeful disdain for his fawning fans is legendary.
Hurling insults and furniture with equal abandon, the terrible, tiny author proceeds to alienate ersatz aliens and make-believe warriors at warp speed. But somewhere between the costume contest and the exhibition Dungeons & Dragons game, Dungannon gets done in. While die-hard fans of Dungannon's seemingly endless sword-and-sorcery series wonder how they'll go on and hucksters wonder how much they can get for the dead man's autograph, a hapless cop wonders, Who would want to kill Appin Dungannon? But the real question, as the harried convention organizers know, is Who wouldn't ?
In the Woods
Tana French
Published by Viking Adult
May 17th 2007 (first published January 1st 2007)
429 pages
Barry Award for Best First Novel (2008)
Macavity Award for Best First Mystery Novel (2008)
Anthony Award for Best First Novel (2008)
Edgar Award for Best First Novel by an American Author (2008)
Monday Murder Mystery
As dusk approaches a small Dublin suburb in the summer of 1984, mothers begin to call their children home. But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood-filled sneakers, and unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours.
Twenty years later, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a twelve-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and Detective Cassie Maddox—his partner and closest friend—find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him and that of his own shadowy past.
Richly atmospheric, stunning in its complexity, and utterly convincing and surprising to the end, In the Woods is sure to enthrall fans of Mystic River and The Lovely Bones. And look for French's new mystery, Broken Harbor, for more of the Dublin Murder Squad.
Okay, your ballots are below, you know what you need to do.