Traditional Mystery

Catherine Mack: Every Time I Go on Vacation, Some One Dies

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Vacation Mysteries #1

This book takes the form of a very traditional mystery, and turns it on it’s head, standing back a bit to look with fondness at the genre.  There are other writers looking at mysteries in the same way – Elle Cosimano, Anthony Horowitz, Kat Ailes, Benjamin Stevenson and to and extent, Kemper Donovan – but like Cosimano, Ailes and Stevenson, Mack’s take is humorous.  These are not stories written by dumb people.  The stories are smart and the mysteries are clever and tricky, with fairly laid out turns of the plot.  Mack invites the reader to join her somewhat hapless main character in detection, and honestly, as a reader, you might do a better job than Eleanor Dash. read more

Kemper Donovan: The Busy Body

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This yummy book is centered on a ghostwriter (never named) who gets a dream assignment: she’s to collaborate with Dorothy Gibson, a Hilary Clinton-esque figure who has just lost a presidential election and has retreated to her home in Maine.  The ghostwriter informs the reader that meeting a subject has to involve some chemistry or it just won’t work, but she means to accept this assignment before she steps foot in the door, and the two women in fact hit it off.

This is a plot driven book that’s governed by character.  The author obviously has a love for golden age mysteries and makes frequent references to Poirot, Marple, and Inspector Alleyn, but it’s the budding friendship between the two women that powers the novel.  As the ghostwriter accompanies Dorothy around town, Dorothy is frequently met by voters/fans who don’t quite know how to react but want to make sure she knows they voted for her.  It’s poignant. The way Dorothy reacts is matter of fact and friendly, and you only see the cracks when she’s alone with the ghostwriter or her assistant. She also works nonstop, to the exhaustion of the writer, who cannot believe her energy. read more

Carlene O’Connor: Some of Us Are Looking

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County Kerry #2

The follow up to O’Connor’s County Kerry series debut, No Strangers Here, avoids any tinge of sophomore slump. Her thoughtful, well plotted, richly charactered series is set in tiny Dingle, Ireland.  The series heroine, Dimpna Wilde, is a vet whose work insinuates itself into the plots in the best possible way.  Not only does her work temper some of the gruesomeness O’Connor writes about, it also grounds Dimpna in the community.  As the book opens she’s been called to the scene of a hit and run – there’s a baby fox trapped under the body, and the mother fox is giving all the emergency workers on the scene a death stare. read more

Nilima Rao: A Disappearance in Fiji

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This book is such a fun read, which is odd as the subject matter is difficult.  Set in 1914 Fiji, at the time a British colony, the rollback of slavery in Britain made it difficult for colonies to obtain workers for their sugar cane and other plantations.  The solution (a fairly short lived one) was to import Indians as indentured servants.  The workers signed up for a set time – five years – and then were free.  Ultimately, about half returned to India; about half stayed in Fiji.  That’s the setting. read more

Hannah Dennison: Danger at the Cove

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This is the second installment in the charming Island Sisters series, set in Britain’s Scilly Isles.  Sisters Evie and Margot have taken over an old hotel and are managing it for the owner, though they are on the hook for repairs, which are turning out to be massive.  As the book opens, they are a few days out from their grand re-opening, and they are working full tilt to get everything ready in time.

Because the books are set on the tiny island of Treggarick Rock, accessible only by boat and at certain times because of high or low tide, every story is going to be essentially a locked room mystery.  Because the décor of the hotel calls back to the 30’s, this adds a decidedly golden age feel to the proceedings. read more

Sophie Hannah: The Killings at Kingfisher Hill

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Golden age detectives are the perfect characters to provide a continuation of a series.  Nero Wolfe, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot – all have such well established character traits, and yet do not especially develop or change  – that they can be taken by another writer and made fresh.  Sophie Hannah is obviously familiar with Poirot and obviously loves him, as every reader does, despite his quirks.

Hannah also manages the feat of showing, not telling, Poirot’s cleverness and intelligence as he unravels a tricky case.  Like the great queen of crime herself, Hannah’s unraveling is only tricky from a certain angle, from another (Poirot’s) it’s more straightforward.  The telling is all in the angles.  This is a feat of sheer storytelling power. read more

Sarah Stewart Taylor: The Mountains Wild

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This novel will be released on June 23, 2020.

I was a huge fan of Sarah Stewart Taylor’s Sweeney St. George series, published in the early 2000’s.  Sweeney was an expert on gravestone iconography, and the books were beautifully written, thoughtful mysteries.  Stewart Taylor has been away from mystery fiction since 2006, and this return feels more polished, more pointed in its narrative drive – it’s a step up.  I’ll say up front it’s one of the best books I’ve read this year.

It’s not a total departure from the Sweeney books – the passion is there, the love of history is there, but it’s more focused.  It follows the story of Maggie D’Arcy, who, as an adult, is a homicide detective on Long Island, but who, as a 20 something, lost the cousin who was like a sister to her.  The cousin, Erin, had left the states for Ireland, and hasn’t been heard from since 1993.  There are other young women who were killed (and discovered) in the same area, and Maggie and the rest of her family are pretty sure Erin is dead, but they’d like to know. read more

An Appreciation of Jane Langton by Nancy Shaw

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Jane Langton

Jane Langton died last month, just short of her 96th birthday. Through 18 mysteries, her characters Homer and Mary Kelly studied transcendentalism while solving crimes. Langton wrote about the power of nature, art, and kindness. Her protagonists were often besotted with the natural world, or with art, while her villains and comically-awful annoyers were out of harmony with those worlds.

Though Langton hid clues and unveiled solutions, as the genre requires, her voice and presentations were utterly distinctive. She stitched plots together with quirky observations. A World War II-era University of Michigan alumna who studied astronomy and art history, Langton had prodigious powers of invention and spun plot complications from nuggets such as soil chemistry, the water table under a Boston church, and a flooded town under a reservoir. Her line drawings of the settings accompany most of the series, and the settings are integral to the stories. read more