Classic

Celia Fremlin: The Trouble Makers

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Classic

Publication date: 1963

Of all the mystery variations, “Domestic Suspense,” like many things domestic, is the most undervalued, considered practically disposable. Regardless of their excellence or popularity, writers of the past who didn’t write detective series are seldom remembered or celebrated today. One of my favorites, Celia Fremlin, who the New York Times of the time quite aptly called a mistress of insight and suspense, is fortunately not completely lost. Dover Books, sovereign of the uncopyrighted, has three of her titles in print and I had the pleasure of writing an entry about one of them, The Hours Before Dawn in the epochal Crum Creek classic 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century. read more

Book Club Read: The Moonstone

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For our March book club, we’ll read Wilkie Collin’s 1871 classic, The Moonstone.  We are meeting on Thursday, March 26, 6 p.m. at Seva, which is at Westgate shopping center.  This book is Victorian so the writing is more flowery and detailed than you might be used to but the story it fantastic and the basis for so many other detective stories throughout history.  From a review on NPR by Chitra Divakaruni in 2013:

“I was struck by how masterfully Collins pulls together the different strands of a complicated plot. T.S. Eliot called The Moonstone “the first, the longest, and the best of the modern English detective novel.” I could see why. Reading the book was a little like seeing the Wright brothers maneuvering their first aircraft, except there was no awkward bucking, no crashes. read more