November Reads

Elizabeth's Women by Tracy Borman
2011
http://www.elizabethfiles.com/elizabeths-women/2994/
Not a mystery, but a well researched history of the women in the life of Queen Elizabeth I, this reads like a novel and I couldn't put it down even thoough I am well familiar with the life and times of the queen. If you like Elizabethan mysteries like those of Fiona Buckley or Karen Harper, both of which feature QEI as a character,it's fascinating to read some of the real history.

Queen's Cure
Karen Harper
2003

Speaking of. Very good mystery and the facts are pretty solid. They have a fairly light tone, which does seem a bit at odds with the material but still good. them Plan to read the rest of the series. Fiona Buckley's Ursula Blanchard mysteries are also very good with a gritty edge to them. She has a new one coming in January.


Sup with the Devil
Barbara Hamilton
2011

Latest Abigail Adams mystery. The plot was intricate and a bit confusing. But the background is really well done, although I keep seeing Laura Linney and Paul Giametti as John and Abigail. Set at Harvard where Abigail's nephew is studying, the story takes you on a claustrophobic romp through the dark woods in search of pirate gold or early pornography just
as the king is declaring martial law in Boston due to the recent tea party.

Three-Day Town
Margaret Maron
Forthcoming

For those who like Deborah Knott, you'll like it. I like her better in Colleton County with her terrific family. She seems a little out of her depth in NYC. This also features Maron's other detective, annoyingly stoic police detective Sigrid Harald.

Air time
Hank Phillipi Ryan
2009

This time Charlie McNally is investigating counterfeit designer purses while trying not to wreck her first real love in ages. I felt like I learned a lot. About designer purses that is. Thoroughly enjoyable.

Cipher Garden
Martin Edwards
2006

Another favorite. So well written and enjoyable.

Sub-genres

I try to talk about the sub-genres of crime fiction in my reviews. I  never thought about the definitions of these  before I started this blog (although I had heard the terms bandied about). I only knew if I liked it or not. this blog has really changed my thought process about what I read and why I like it and I never really thought about that before.  It's  niche, sub genre, a tiny part of the reading public we fit within (and can be marketed to!)

With that in mind I did a little research into the sub-genre category and found these handy and neat definitions in the for mystery addict listserve:

Fred Runk's definitions on 4MA. All of these have substantial followings.

I present this here and add  a little (see italics):

1. Police procedurals: police officers, sheriffs, FBI, law enforcement officers in general. PD James' Dalgleish for example, King's Kate Martinelli.  
Martha Grimes' Richard Jury, J.D. Robb's Eve Dallas, Deborah Crombie's Gemma James and Duncan Kincaid, Louise Penny's Armande Gamache, J.A. Jance's Joanna Brady. This is one of the most popular types - some are set in the past, future, or an exotic locale.


2. Talented Amateurs: Like Emma Peel! Agatha Christie's "Miss Marple," Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael, Sayer's Lord Peter Wimsey, or anyone who ends up stumbling over an inordinate number of dead bodies. This also includes non-human detectives.   
I hate dog and cat mysteries; let me say that again! There are lots of these like Diane Mott Davidson's caterer Goldy Schultz, Hank Phillippi Ryan's Charlotte McNally, Sarah Graham's Jacobia Tiptree, Earlene Fowler's Benni Harper, Carolyn Hart's Annie Darling, Susan Wittig Albert's China Bayles, David Skebbins' Warren Ritter, C.S. Harris' Sebastian St. Cyr. Some of these are cosies if they feature minimal violence, cute settings, bunch of friends, and warm community. Some have a recipe or craft component. Historical mysteries often have these kind of detectives.

3. P. I.: private investigators who are professionals (they get paid, or are supposed to, anyway), and not connected to police--Philip Marlowe; Sam Spade; Kinsey Millhone; or Steven Saylor's Roman PI, Gordianus the Finder; or Precious Ramotswe of the Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency.
Sharon McCone, Sherlock Holmes, V.I. Warshawski, Spenser, Tess Monaghan...

4. The Accidental Detective: one who accidentally comes across a murder or goes to the funeral of a deceased friend or relative and inds out there are some strange elements connected to that death.
Agatha Christie's Anne Beddingfeld (about my favorite of her books), Dick Francis one-time heroes, BTW), gosh, it's really hard to think of these...
Note: accidental detectives are one time only. Either they solve the mystery and are never seen again, or they end up in the "Talented Amateur" category when they show up in book 2.

5. Judicial Detectives: anybody connected with the legal system who spends more time doing the cops' job than their own. This includes various judges, lawyers, DA's, bailiffs, bounty hunters.  
Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum, Linda Fairstein's Alexandra Cooper.

6. Technical professionals: medical examiners, pathologists, coroners, CSI types, SOCO's, etc. Many of these also spend an inordinate amount of time doing police work, interviewing suspects, etc.  
Lisa Black's Theresa McClean, Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta, Ariana Franklin's Adelia Aguilar.

7. the historical detective--Brother Cadfael, Crowner John, Gordianus the Finder, etc.  
Fred thinks this fit in the above categories - and they do - either as police procedurals (Anne Perry's Charlotte and Thomas Pitt), professional PIs (Anne Perry's Thomas Monk), amateur detectives (Sebastian St. Cyr, Tasha Alexander's Lady Emily, Rhys Bowen's Lady Georgiana, Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody, Adelia Aguilar) but I think it's a significant sub-category.

8. the "real person" detective--Jane Austen, Queen Elizabeth, Charles Dickens, etc. (Stephanie Barron's Jane Austen series, Queen Victoria, and Virginia Woolf mysteries were terrific, I've read ones that featured Bertie the Prince of Wales, Charlotte Bronte, Abigail Adams, Ed Ifkovic's Edna Ferber; I'm waiting for novels with Lord Byron, Eleanor Roosevelt, Al Gore, Elizabeth Taylor... I don't know... Winston Churchill, Bismarck, Abraham Lincoln, Mary Lincoln...


9. the retired "detective": retired cop, judge, lawyer, FBI profiler.....(see above...)

Any other categories I've missed?

10. Spy novels mysteries (like recently reviewed Sally Sin)
11. Others? Zombie Hunters, Supernatural (Vampire) - Anita Blake

A sampler of mystery reads

This mixed bag includes some books I've read over the last year and have been meaning to blog about...An assortment of historical, cozy, contemporary, and atypical detective novels. All are worth reading and well written.

Abigail Adams Mysteries: Barbara Hamilton Ninth Daughter, Marked Man

Abigail Adams

The Adamses are taking over  our house! We have been watching John Adams the HBO bio-pic based on the David McCullough biography and starring Paul Giamatti as Adams and Laura Linney as Abigail. Never would have thought Adams was such a whiner! Laura Linney's Abigail is almost exactly what you might guess: a steely New England beauty who was John Adams best supporter, critic, and dear friend - a very intelligent woman and perfect housekeeper at a time when people used sand for cleaning, shopped everyday, and had to boil their laundry in lye in giant washtubs. The early episodes are better, well more lively.  Anyway by coincidence, also just finished Ninth Daughter, the first of the series, having first read Marked Man. A fun series set in  pre-revolutionary Boston when the Boston Tea Party, Massacre and all kinds of mayhem leaving to the Rev. are taking place. They are well researched and characters well-drawn; Abigail is an interesting heroine.

Hank Phillippi Ryan Prime Time

I wanted to like this - HPR sent me a nice note and said she would read my blog when I signed up for the 4mysteryreaders listserv, which was really nice.  I read HPR's  prize winning short story On the House and it was excellent. Just not buying Charlotte McNalley, her on camera news reporter for a big city TV station - the plot was taut and the dialogue not un-witty but it didn't grab me. I may read some of the others though, just to see if it gets better.  

http://www.hankphillippiryan.com/

Randall Peffer Listen to the Dead 

Set in New Bedford and the cape islands, this is an interesting mix of contemporary and 1960s Carribean drug smuggling. It has a kind of haunting background full of the resonance of the past including the 1980s New Bedford serial killings and other violence. The interaction between quiet low-key harbormaster Corby Church who finds bones on a lighthouse island and Puerto Rican detective Yemanjá Colón, who channels the dead and whose grandmother is a Santeria priestess, is fun and interesting. I have to admit the scenes with the grandmother were not very convincing and seemed an odd kind of comic relief. The mood did swing back forth from kind of haunting to a sort of out of control comedy. It's pretty good. Even so despite all these positive qualities I kind of lost interest half way through and  did not finish but it was so full of good things I may read more of the series. Peffer's a talented writer. http://www.randallpeffer.com/

 

Elly Griffiths The Crossing Places: A Ruth Galloway Mystery  

Set in the UK in a Norfolk salt marsh full of stone circles and bog bodies and with its main character an overweight archaeologist loner, this would seem so perfect for me that  I had to read it but once I started reading it I found it hard-going. It has a fabulous atmosphere and the characters, notably Ruth Galloway,  are human and flawed, and therefore kind of  interesting but the human interactions, institutional settings, don't ring true.  In one part because it focuses on the  kidnapping and murder of young girls and that is very hard for me to read (I can get past it at times like the recent Nevada Barr but it has to be very well done). Another problem was summed up on another blog, a commenter said that it is very hard for non-archaeologists to write about archaeology  in a way that seems credible and that is true here. Although Elly's husband is an archaeologist, she makes too many mistakes (archaeology done by one person, no description of archaeological techniques that make sense, instant C14 dating, no continuity on the descriptions of bodies and artifacts) to be able to buy it. http://www.ellygriffiths.co.uk/crossingplaces.htm

Jean-François Parot The Nicholas le Floch Affair A Nicolas Le Floch Investigation  

Set in pre-revolutionary France (sense a theme?), this was really, really good.  Gallic books sent me a copy and my husband and I both read it and loved it. A popular TV series in France, this really well researched novel has some interesting and rather eccentric characters, and pre-revolutionary jitters.

 http://www.gallicbooks.co.uk/

 

 Betty Kerr Orlemann Mission: Murder 

Set in horrifying murder central Bucks County ;-), this geriatric cozy is pretty sweet.I liked the main character 80-year old Hattie Farwell. My main problem with it is the made up political candidate that involves some ridiculously unbelievable dialogue and situations. Dialogue and interior monologues are not too believable in general but it was still an enjoyable read. 

http://www.bettyorlemann.com/books.html