Deborah Crombie- Can't believe she lives in Texas....

Just finished Necessary as Blood (2009), the highly praised Dreaming of the Bones, and her first novel, A Share in Death. In my last blog I mentioned reading And Justice There is None in February while the snow was falling. So I've really jumped around in the series! but now I plan to read the rest.

Her London and UK - Dreaming is set in Cambridge-seem so believable I was surprised that she was not a Brit but a Texan. However, one of the book jackets says she's married to a Scot and spends a lot of time in the UK. And Justice There is None's Notting Hill setting made me want to call British Airways on the spot and spend some time at the Portobello Market. I think she may be creating a montage of different parts of London in different books. It is not just the tourist London but a London of slums, yuppies, immigrants, and secret treasures down back streets.

They are really good. The plots are tight and quick moving, the setting is detailed and rings totally true, and unlike many series, her books get better with each one. True, they are following a serialized story of the growing romance and the careers of Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James but at the same time can be read as stand alone novels as I have done far.

The relationship between the protagonists Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James is pretty believable and supporting characters like their kids Toby and Kit, Gemma's friends Hazel and Tim, Betty, Wesley, the families, their police associates Melody and Doug - they are interesting and far from one-dimensional. The dialogue also rings true.

The police procedural part- both Gemma and Duncan are with Scotland Yard- does seem well researched but is actually very familiar to all of us anglophile imbibers of Prime Suspect and other shows and movies.

Highly recommended. Can't wait to read the next one!

http://www.deborahcrombie.com/

The Classics

Even though I've been talking about contemporary mystery fiction, I've read a lot of the classics too. In my first blog I said I liked historical fiction, I've read a lot of the woman hard-boiled detective sub-genre: Paretsky, Muller, Grafton, as well as Cornwall, Skye Kathleen Moody (Venus Diamond series), Maron, and a bunch I can't think of at the moment. Really my mystery reading began long ago with Nancy Drew and the formation of our Nancy Drew reading boy-bashing club in elementary school, "The Pennsauken Little Spies". I've also read a lot in other sub-genres although not every one by any means.

Now the classics: I've read some of the earlier twentieth century classics such as Christie, Sayers, Ellery Queen, Rex Stout, Raymond Chandler, Hammett, Dick Francis, P.D. James, Mary Stewart as well as earlier formative stuff like Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841),The Mystery of Marie Roget (1842), and The Purloined Letter (1844); The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone (1868) by Wilkie Collins, Sherlock Holmes (of course!), Henry James (Turn of the Screw) in addition to lots of spy novels like Fleming, Le Carre, Deighton, and so on.

Reading an essay in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_fiction), this is much bigger subject than I had thought and there is a good deal already written about the historic of the genre, with many lists, guides, interpretations, and discussions. see for example: http://mikegrost.com/classics.htm

The history of mystery, crime, or detective fiction can be seen to start with one of Scheherazade's tales in the One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights).


Classic detective fiction like many other kinds of fiction can be traced to innovative geniuses of the 19th century. Crime fiction, whodunnits, mysteries, what ever you call them are divided into a lot of subgenres and these are increasing every day. Subgenres include "cozy," "historical," "detective," "police procedural," "crafts," "art," famous historical figures as detectives, "pets," "chick lit," and more, and many of these have further subdivisions. This is a much bigger topic than I realized and it will be really interesting to delve into it some more...