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Crime Beneath the Midnight Sun: Scandinavian Mysteries
Way back in the late 1960’s-early 1970’s, I was an ardent fan of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo and their ten Martin Beck mysteries – the first Scandinavian mystery authors to be popular in the United...
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Crime Beneath the Midnight Sun: Scandinavian Mysteries – Addendum
As promised, here are my final thoughts about Jo Nesbo’s Nemesis: Like most of the members of my book group, I found the storyline of this book too complicated to be truly satisfying. It certainly was...
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The Knowledge (2018) – Martha Grimes
I’ve been reading Martha Grimes’s Richard Jury books since the 1980s. I remember, early on, loving her precocious child characters, like ten-year-old Lady Jessica of Help the Poor Struggler (1985)....
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The Real Cool Killers (1958) – Chester Himes
Chester Himes was an angry man – and his mysteries are full of rage. Expelled from Ohio State University as a sophomore in 1928 for a fraternity prank that ended in a bar brawl, and sentenced to 25...
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Barbara Neely: A Tribute
BarbaraNeely (her legal name had no spaces) died in March, 2020. She had recently (December 2019) been named a “Grandmaster” by the Mystery Writers of America, an honor usually given to those who have...
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Singing in the Shrouds – Ngaio Marsh (1958)
Ngaio Marsh spent much of her life on ships, travelling from New Zealand to England and back, so she knew a lot about long sea voyages. (Maybe she’s even showing off a little in this book when she...
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A Salute to Peter Lovesey
I’ve mentioned before that I compose a “Top Ten” list of mysteries each year to post on Dorothy-L. When I look over the last twenty years of these lists, one name stands out: Peter Lovesey. I read my...
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Hand in Glove (1962) – Ngaio Marsh
Looking back at my last Ngaio Marsh review, Scales of Justice, I am struck by how similar that book is to this one. In both books, we are first introduced to families with connections to nobility, and...
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Last Ditch (1977) – Ngaio Marsh
This is one of Marsh’s last mysteries – and one of her weakest. There is the usual start with a family of gentry – the Pharamonds – and an early death, soon suspected to be a murder. Ricky Alleyn, the...
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Dead Water (1963) – Ngaio Marsh
Continuing my reading of Ngaio Marsh, I found Dead Water to be more engaging than several I’ve recently reviewed. It’s unusual in that Roderick Alleyn actually has a personal interest in this case – he...
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