1950’s

Anthony Horowitz: Marble Hall Murders

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Susan Ryeland #3

If traditional, golden age style mystery is your jam, these books are absolute perfection.  Though it’s a series, and the main character, Susan Ryland, has her life change drastically between the volumes, you could definitely read each one as a standalone and not be lost.  Of course, if you like golden age style traditional mysteries, you’re going to read them in the order the author intended regardless, right?

As Anthony Horowitz has proven himself to me to be some kind of genius, I always find that it’s a good idea when opening one of his books to just relax and trust that he will reliably serve up a great story.  In this instalment former editor Ryeland has returned from her idyll in Crete after abandoning both the hotel business and her boyfriend.  She decides to take on freelance editing work (the reason why it’s freelance is explained in the earlier books), and the first assignment that comes her way is the continuation of the Atticus Pund series.  Pund, a detective working in the 1950s, was the creation of her former client, the late Alan Conway, who grew to hate his detective and decided to give him a fatal illness. The title of the new book, then, is Pund’s Last Case. read more

Vicki Delany: Deadly Director’s Cut

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This is the second book in Delany’s series set in the Catskills in the 50’s.  While the Catskill resorts that served so many families back in the 50’s and beyond are now gone – even the great Grossinger’s is a ghostly version of itself – Delany nevertheless manages to make the area come alive for the reader.  She doesn’t dip into the pure historical novel category.  Instead, she provides period details that set the reader where she wants them to be, and she somehow manages to invoke the feel and atmosphere of a very specific place and time.  The fact that a Canadian writer who, I am thinking, did not spend her childhood summers in the Catskills, is able to do this with such virtuosity is one of those mysteries of the writer’s art.  The time period is close enough that with a little bit of yearning and nostalgia you are right back there with her. read more