NinieB Soars to New Heights in 2020

I'm Ninie (rhymes with shiny) and I'm an avid reader in beautiful upstate New York.

When I was a kid living in California, we had a copy of Above Los Angeles, a collection of photographs of LA from the air, both historic and contemporary. I was fascinated with how the landscape had changed over the 20th century. Aerial photographs still have a strong allure for me, even in an era when satellite photos of anywhere in the US are only a click away. So, I've decorated my categories below with some aerial views I hope you'll all enjoy.

My aerial theme reflects my reading ambition for 2020—to continue soaring to new heights. Participating in the 2019 Category Challenge has introduced me to so many new books and reading adventures; I can't wait to see where the group takes me in 2020!

Jump to my categories:
A Century of Books
H.R.F. Keating's 100 Best Crime & Mystery Books
Other Mysteries
Women Authors
Book Bullets
Pre-1920 Reads
CATS and KITS
BingoDOG
Everything Else

December planner

A Century of Books

In 2019 I tracked all the books I read by the year in which they were published, starting in 1920 (the year this photo of the Lachine Canal was taken). In 2020 I hope to read the years I didn’t read in 2019. Some of the books in the list below were read in 2019.

See the full list.

H.R.F. Keating's 100 Best Crime & Mystery Books

I love lists of “best books,” particularly lists of mysteries. I’ve been very gradually reading the books honored in H.R.F. Keating's Crime and Mystery: The 100 Best Books for a number of years now, and I’d like to continue to make progress in 2020. The aerial view is of London, setting of many great mysteries.

1. The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes
2. RSVP Murder by Mignon G. Eberhart
3. The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers
4. The Sands of Windee by Arthur W. Upfield

Other Mysteries
I read many mysteries! This category is a catch-all for the ones that aren’t on the Keating list. To balance the picture of London, I include a picture of Baltimore, home of Edgar Allan Poe.

1. Frozen Tracks by Åke Edwardson.
2. Inspector Ghote Goes by Train by H. R. F. Keating
3. The Desert Moon Mystery by Kay Cleaver Strahan
4. A Chorus of Detectives by Barbara Paul
5. The Lure of the Bush by Arthur W. Upfield
6. Blood on Her Shoe by Medora Field
7. No Cure for Love by Peter Robinson
8. The Black Piano by Constance & Gwenyth Little
9. The Janus Stone by Elly Griffiths
10. Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L. Sayers
11. Unnatural Death by Dorothy L. Sayers
12. The Red House Mystery by A. A. Milne
13. Footprints by Kay Cleaver Strahan
14. The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie
15. Lamb to the Slaughter by Jennifer Rowe
16. The Hymn Tune Mystery by George A. Birmingham
17. Sheiks and Adders by Michael Innes
18. The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy L. Sayers
19. Above Suspicion by Helen MacInnes
20. Phantom Lady by Cornell Woolrich
21. Inspector Ghote Trusts the Heart by H. R. F. Keating
22. Bats Fly Up for Inspector Ghote by H. R. F. Keating
23. The Mysterious Commission by Michael Innes
24. Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers
25. The Roman Hat Mystery by Ellery Queen
26. The French Powder Mystery by Ellery Queen
27. The Greek Coffin Mystery by Ellery Queen
28. The Egyptian Cross Mystery by Ellery Queen
29. Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
30. Dearly Devoted Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
31. The Tragedy of X by Barnaby Ross
32. Trust No One by Debra Webb
33. Five Red Herrings by Dorothy L. Sayers
34. The Perfect Guests by Emma Rous
35. The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz
36. Have His Carcase by Dorothy L. Sayers
37. Maigret and the Enigmatic Lett by Georges Simenon
38. Death Takes an Option by Neil MacNeil
39. Dexter in the Dark by Jeff Lindsay
40. The Governess by Evelyn Hervey
41. Blood upon the Snow by Hilda Lawrence
42. Pattern for Murder by Ione Sandberg Shriber
43. The Tragedy of Y by Barnaby Ross
44. The Man of Gold by H. R. F. Keating writing as Evelyn Hervey
45. Cop Hater by Ed McBain
46. Because of the Cats by Nicolas Freeling
47. Ice Station Zebra by Alistair MacLean
48. The Year of the Monkey by Carole Berry
49. The Dutch Shoe Mystery by Ellery Queen
50. The Arrow Points to Murder by Frederica de Laguna
51. Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers
52. The Transatlantic Ghost by Dorothy Gardiner
53. Hallowe'en Party by Agatha Christie
54. The American Gun Mystery by Ellery Queen
55. Dead Clever by Roderic Jeffries
56. Working Murder by Eleanor Boylan
57. Death Haunts the Dark Lane by A. B. Cunningham
58. The Corpse at the Haworth Tandoori by Robert Barnard
59. The Siamese Twin Mystery by Ellery Queen
60. Y Is for Yesterday by Sue Grafton
61. The Chinese Orange Mystery by Ellery Queen
62. The Tragedy of Z by Ellery Queen
63. Death's Bright Dart by V. C. Clinton-Baddeley
64. The Worst Thing by Aaron Elkins
65. The Crimson Madness of Little Doom by Mark McShane
66. Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers
67. Hire a Hangman by Collin Wilcox
68. Diamond Head by Charles Knief
69. Death of a Glutton by M. C. Beaton
70. Drury Lane's Last Case by Barnaby Ross (Ellery Queen)

Women Authors

I’ve built up a considerable backlog of books published by Virago and Persephone (and some other female-focused publisher imprints). It’s time to read some! I’ll include women authors generally in this category. The photo is of Los Angeles, named after a very famous woman, “Our Lady Queen of the Angels”.

1. Rose in Bloom by Louisa May Alcott
2. Jane of Lantern Hill by L.M. Montgomery
3. Zaidee: A Romance by Mrs. Oliphant
4. The Good Girl by Mary Kubica
5. Doctor Zay by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
6. Miss Buncle's Book by D. E. Stevenson
7. The Heir: A Love Story by Vita Sackville-West
8. Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
9. Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer
10. Miss Lulu Bett by Zona Gale
11. The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes
12. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
13. Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives edited by Sarah Weinman
14. Wild Strawberries by Angela Thirkell
15. The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington
16. The Demon in the House by Angela Thirkell
17. Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys
18. Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
19. The Axe by Sigrid Undset
20. Miss Anna by Edith Patton Oliver
21. August Folly by Angela Thirkell
22. Weeds by Edith Summers Kelley
23. The Uninvited by Dorothy Macardle

Book Bullets

Keeping track of book bullets has been difficult. This category is a place to keep track of what I want to read based on others’ reviews. The photograph is of a Chinese bullet train from the air.

a. The Trespass by Barbara Ewing. New Zealand historical fiction recommended by DeltaQueen50.
b. Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann. MysteryKIT Furry Sleuths thread (sheep detective Miss Maple)
c. The Good Girl by Mary Kubica. Psychological thriller READ
d. Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. Time travel to medieval plague-ridden England. March KITastrophe thread. READ
e. Dominicana by Angie Cruz. Recommended by ridgewaygirl.
f. The Iron King by Maurice Druon. Recommended by rabbitprincess & Tess_W. READ
g. Clayhanger by Arnold Bennett. Recommended by leslie.98. We can read next-in-series Hilda Lessways together thereafter.
h. Assignment in Brittany by Helen Macinnes. Recommended by christina_reads
i. Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer. Recommended by @jaynecm READ
j. Murderbot novellas, starting with All Systems Red (READ) by Martha Wells. SFF-Kit Sentient Beings thread. Got them free from Tor.com.
k. The Edwardians by Vita Sackville-West. Recommended by VivienneR.
l. The Spymistress by Jennifer Chiaverini. From April MysteryKIT Espionage thread.
m. A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley. Recommended by @jaynecm.
n. Crimson Lake by Candice Fox. Recommended by pamelad
o. The Mermaid's Daughter by Ann Claycomb. Recommended by @jaynecm
p. Death of a Clone by Alex Thomson. Recommended by Dejah_Thoris
q. Tamar by Deborah Challinor. First in a New Zealand trilogy. Recommended by pamelad
r. Why Learn History (When It's Already on Your Phone) by Sam Wineburg. Recommended by antqueen
s. The Last Hours by Minette Walters. Recommended by Tess_W.
t. An African in Greenland by Tété-Michel Kpomassie. Recommended by ridgewaygirl.
u. The Pearler's Wife by Roxane Dhand. JayneCM
v. The Dressmaker by Rosalie Ham JayneCM
w. A Phantom Lover by Vernon Lee lkernagh
x. Only Killers and Thieves by Paul Howarth DeltaQueen50

Pre-1920 Reads

I love reading old stuff. While the century of books is about reading 1920-2019, this category is for tracking pre-1920. The 1867 “bird’s eye view” is of Madison, Wisconsin.

Authors: Anthony Trollope, Anne Isabella Thackeray

1856: Zaidee: A Romance by Mrs. Oliphant
1861: Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
1876: Rose in Bloom by Louisa May Alcott
1881: The Song of Triumphant Love by Ivan Turgenev
1882: Doctor Zay by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
1918: Ruth Fielding at the War Front by Alice B. Emerson

CATS and KITS

Keeping up with the CATS and KITS is essential to reaching new heights. The (not really aerial) photo is of Taughannock Falls, the USA’s highest single-drop waterfall east of the Rocky Mountains. It's pronounced tuh-GAN-uck.

GeoCAT
January (Asia I, central & southern): Inspector Ghote Goes by Train by H. R. F. Keating
February (Continental Europe): Frozen Tracks by Åke Edwardson (read in January)
March (Northern Africa & The Mideast)
April (ANZ, Oceania): Lamb to the Slaughter by Jennifer Rowe
May (Any place you would like to visit): The Hymn Tune Mystery by George A. Birmingham
June (Space): Artificial Condition by Martha Wells
July (Latin America and the Caribbean): The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
August (Asia, eastern): The White-Haired Girl by Ho Ching-chih & Ting Yi
September (Polar & Tundra): Ice Station Zebra by Alistair MacLean
October (Great Britain, Canada, US): Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers
November (rest of Africa): The Prophet's Camel Bell
December (Catch up month)

Non-FictionCAT
January (Journalism and News)
February (Travel)
March (Biography)
April (Law and Order): Studies in Murder by Edmund Pearson (finished in May)
May (Science)
June (Society)
July (Human Science)
August (History): A History of Modern France. Vol. 1, 1715-1799 by Alfred Cobban
September (Philosophy & Religion)
October (The Arts): My Life as Laura by Kelly Kathleen Ferguson; Son of Gun in Cheek by Bill Pronzini
November (Food, Home and Recreation): Mason-Dixon Knitting
December (Adventures by Land, Sea or Air)

RandomCAT
February (leap year): The Black Piano by Constance & Gwenyth Little (1948)
March (seasons)
April (showers and flowers): Rose in Bloom by Louisa May Alcott (read in January)
May (believe in your shelf): Sheiks and Adders by Michael Innes
June (take to the sea): Have His Carcase by Dorothy L. Sayers (read in August)
July (picture this)
August (get your groove on): The White-Haired Girl by Ho Ching-chih & Ting Yi
September (LT recommendations/book bullets): The Iron King by Maurice Druon
October (Healthcare heroes): Prison Nurse by William Neubauer
November (Lest We Forget): Ruth Fielding at the War Front by Alice B. Emerson
December: Diamond Head by Charles Knief

AlphaKIT
January (AU): The Lure of the Bush by Arthur W. Upfield
February (FB): Blood on Her Shoe by Medora Field
March (GC): Footprints by Kay Cleaver Strahan; The Black Piano by Constance & Gwenyth Little (read in February)
April (ST): Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon; The Hymn Tune Mystery by George A. Birmingham (started in April, finished in May)
May (LP): Phantom Lady by Cornell Woolrich
June (KY): The Tragedy of Y by Barnaby Ross
July (JR): The Tragedy of X by Barnaby Ross
August (OH): Have His Carcase by Dorothy L. Sayers / Death Takes an Option by Neil MacNeil
September (ME): Cop Hater by Ed McBain
October (DV): Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys
November (IQ): Imagined London by Anna Quindlen
December (WN)
Year (XZ): Zaidee: A Romance by Mrs. Oliphant; The Tragedy of X by Barnaby Ross

SFF-KIT
January (Read an SFF you meant to read last year . . .): The Compleat Werewolf and Other Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction by Anthony Boucher
February (Transformation)
March (Series)
April (Time Travel): Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer
May (Sentient Things): All Systems Red by Martha Wells
June (Aliens)
July (Space Opera): Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells
August (Female Authors): Exit Strategy by Martha Wells
September (International SFF): The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington
October (Classics): Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
November (Dystopia): The Maze Runner by James Dashner
December (Short Fiction): Robots Have No Tails by Henry Kuttner

MysteryKIT
January (Historical): A Chorus of Detectives by Barbara Paul
February (Furry Sleuths)
March (Golden Age): Unnatural Death by Dorothy L. Sayers
April (Espionage): Above Suspicion by Helen MacInnes (read in May)
May (Novel to screen): The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy L. Sayers / Phantom Lady by Cornell Woolrich
June (Police/PI): Bats Fly Up for Inspector Ghote by H. R. F. Keating
July (Cross genre/mashup): The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz
August (International): Maigret and the Enigmatic Lett by Georges Simenon
September (Series): Because of the Cats by Nicolas Freeling
October (New to You): The Transatlantic Ghost by Dorothy Gardiner
November (Noir/Gumshoe): Y Is for Yesterday by Sue Grafton
December (Cozies): Death of a Glutton by M. C. Beaton

ScaredyKIT
January (1970s-1980s Horror): Carrie by Stephen King
February (Psychological Thrillers): The Good Girl by Mary Kubica
March (Haunted Places)
April (Paranormal)
May (Occult)
June (Cryptids and Legendary Creatures)
July (Femmes Fatales): Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives edited by Sarah Weinman
August (Serial Killers): Dexter in the Dark by Jeff Lindsay
September (International)
October (Halloween): Hallowe'en Party by Agatha Christie
November (Stephen King and family)
December (Classics): The Uninvited by Dorothy Macardle

TravelKIT
January (City vs. countryside): Jane of Lantern Hill by L. M. Montgomery
February (In translation)
March (Tourist meccas)
April (Related to a place where you do not live): Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
May (Modes of transportation): Americans on the Road: From Autocamp to Motel, 1910-1945 by Warren James Belasco
June (Legendary places)
July (Myths or legends from a specific region/country/location)
August (Travel Narratives): The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron
September (Festival or event)
October (Food or drink from a specific location): The Corpse at the Haworth Tandoori by Robert Barnard
November (Living in a New Country): Miss Anna by Edith Patton Oliver; The Prophet's Camel Bell by Margaret Laurence
December (Related to a Place You Would Like to Visit) Norway

BingoDOG

I love BingoDOG! Of course it has to have its own category. The photo is of Mount Everest from the south.

BingoDOG card

Everything Else

I’m not sure where this category will end up! The photograph shows the Colorado River winding between Arizona and Nevada.

1. Geeky Pedagogy by Jessamyn Neuhaus
2. Studies in Murder by Edmund Pearson
3. The Compleat Werewolf and Other Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction by Anthony Boucher
4. Artificial Condition by Martha Wells
5. A History of Modern France. Vol. 1, 1715-1799 by Alfred Cobban
6. Bear's Fantasies by Greg Bear
7. Exit Strategy by Martha Wells
8. My Life as Laura by Kelly Kathleen Ferguson
9. Son of Gun in Cheek by Bill Pronzini
10. The Little Book of the Icelanders in the Old Days by Alda Sigmundsdóttir
11. The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë by Daphne du Maurier

Wonderful images. Wishing you a great reading year!

have a wonderful reading year!

Have a great 2020. The pictures are interesting and quite creative.

Great to see you all set up and ready for 2020!

Keeping an eye on your Mystery and Pre-1920 categories in particular. And a century of books is a great idea.

I love this theme! Have a great reading year!

>11 MissWatson: >12 majkia: >13 LadyoftheLodge: >14 DeltaQueen50: >15 pamelad: >16 rabbitprincess: Thank you all for your good wishes. I hope to enjoy some good books with you in 2020! And I had fun selecting the images.

>15 pamelad: I took the century of books idea from Simon at Stuck in a Book, who has read a century in one year more than once. I'm not that disciplined!

Very interesting photos and themes.

Sounds like 2020 wil be a great year.
I love Virago and Persephone.
And I love the way you have reading by year categories - my brain likes lists like that!
Great idea to have a book bullet category. I end up writing them on bits of paper everywhere and by the time I read the book, I can never find who I took the bullet from. I am hoping to be more organised next year - I have a notebook!

>18 hailelib: Thanks! I tried not to think too hard about it, but it was quite fun.

>19 JayneCM: After I set up the Century of Books in mid-2019, I felt like I had such a better grasp on what I was reading, even though I had been noting it by month in my thread and marking books finished in my catalog. My brain works that way too!

The book bullets were a frustration this year because I didn't set up a place to store them. I now have a few tucked away in my November 2019 planner (I do monthly planner entries) and in 2020 I'll store them in message 6. I am hopeless with physical notebooks and pieces of paper--I need it where I can find it by full-text searching.

So far I'm an aspirational Virago/Persephone reader. I love the idea and I've read (and liked) a few; now I need to read more of the many I have collected!

>20 NinieB: I also have little bits of paper with book bullet titles. I need to add a page to my reading list notebook, just for the book bullets.

>21 LadyoftheLodge: That should work well!

Very creative set up. Good luck with your reading.

>23 LittleTaiko: Thank you! I'm excited about the reading!

I love the aerial geography theme! LA has certainly changed a lot throughout the years. Happy reading to you in 2020.

>25 This-n-That: Oh, yeah, LA keeps changing. I visit once or twice a year and it's more unfamiliar each time. Thank you for the good wishes!

Your theme and pictures are so interesting. Great set up. I'll look forward to seeing how you fill them.

Thanks, Vivienne. I expect you'll see some familiar books in the Book Bullet category!

I love the pictures! How cities change over time has always fascinated me. I've read a book about my hometown where they selected a bunch of historic photos from around town and retook the same photos from the same angles in the modern day. It was so interesting!

>29 casvelyn: I love those books too! They really bring the past to life.

Happy reading in 2020!

>31 Tess_W: Thanks Tess! Hope we find ourselves reading the same book at some point!

1. The Hymn Tune Mystery by George A. Birmingham
2. Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
3. Rose in Bloom by Louisa May Alcott
4. Sheiks and Adders by Michael Innes
5. All Systems Red by Martha Wells
6. Footprints by Kay Cleaver Strahan
7. Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer
8. Bear's Fantasies by Greg Bear
10. Miss Lulu Bett by Zona Gale
11. Artificial Condition by Martha Wells
12. Houses of Stone by Barbara Michaels
13. The Black Piano by Constance & Gwenyth Little
14. The White-Haired Girl by Ho Ching-chih & Ting Yi
15. The Worst Thing by Aaron Elkins
16. Jane of Lantern Hill by L. M. Montgomery
17. Inspector Ghote Goes by Train by H. R. F. Keating
18. Frozen Tracks by Åke Edwardson
19. Unnatural Death by Dorothy L. Sayers
20. Blood on Her Shoe by Medora Field
21. The Crimson Madness of Little Doom by Mark McShane
22. The Man of Gold by H. R. F. Keating writing as Evelyn Hervey
23. Carrie by Stephen King
24. Trust No One by Debra Webb
25. A Chorus of Detectives by Barbara Paul Paul

Hope you have a great year of reading!

>34 thornton37814: Thanks, Lori! Hope you'll be stopping by!

>34 thornton37814: Thanks, Lori! Hope you'll be stopping by!

Dropping by to say hello.

>29 casvelyn: My library has historical pictures of local landmarks hanging on the wall, including a school with a horse and buggy parked out front. I jokingly told one group of students it was the school bus, then had to explain that people really did get around like that, but the kids most likely had to walk to school.

>37 BookLizard: Hello! Thanks for stopping by!

JANUARY

Queued up

The Village on the Cliff by Anne Thackeray
Cecilia; or, Memoirs of an Heiress by Fanny Burney
The Daisy Chain by Charlotte Yonge

Currently reading
Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac
The Australian Collection: Australia's Greatest Books by Geoffrey Dutton
Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen
Studies in Murder by Edmund Lester Pearson
Queen's Park by Garry Ryan
Death in Breslau by Marek Krajewski
The Widow Lerouge by Emile Gaboriau

Keating 100 Best

Women Authors
Rose in Bloom by Louisa May Alcott
The Desert Moon Mystery by Kay Cleaver Strahan

GeoCAT Central and Southern Asia
Inspector Ghote Goes by Train by H. R. F. Keating

NonfictionCAT Journalists and Journalism

RandomCAT Book that is challenging or intimidating

AlphaKIT A, U
Frozen Tracks by Åke Edwardson

MysteryKIT Historical
A Chorus of Detectives by Barbara Paul

ScaredyKIT 1970s-1980s Horror
Carrie by Stephen King

TravelKIT City and Country
Jane of Lantern Hill by L.M. Montgomery

SFFKIT meant to read last year

KITastrophe Fire

BingoDOG
Rose in Bloom by Louisa May Alcott (proper name in title)
Frozen Tracks by Åke Edwardson (mystery)
Inspector Ghote Goes by Train by H. R. F. Keating (Asia)
Houses of Stone by Barbara Michaels (books about books)
Carrie by Stephen King (Legacy Library)
Jane of Lantern Hill by L.M. Montgomery (non-US/UK woman author)
A Chorus of Detectives by Barbara Paul (real historical event: Caruso's last performance)

>39 NinieB: Listed like that it looks like a very ambitious programme!

>40 MissWatson: Yes, it's more than I actually plan to complete. In 2019 I found it really helpful to list all the kits and cats together by month, but I may do some judicious pruning to keep the reading plans attractive and functional!

Ha! - found you.

Love your categories, Ninie! - I'm very much looking forward to following your 2020 reading. :)

>42 lyzard: Thanks for following along, Liz! Looking forward to your reading as well!

I love the photographs you chose! It's fun to see things from a new perspective. Looking forward to seeing what you read this year!

>44 jennyifer24: It was really fun picking them and connecting them to categories! Thanks for stopping by.

Happy New Year! Love the picture.

>47 JayneCM: Happy New Year to you too!

Happy New Year to you!

>49 MissWatson: Happy New Year, Birgit!

Book 1 for 2020! I started Frozen Tracks by Åke Edwardson in 2019 but had trouble getting into it initially. I brought it on vacation and finished it yesterday and today. It's a Swedish police procedural, the lead character being Chief Inspector Erik Winter. He and his team are facing two worrisome cases, one in which young men are being attacked on the head with some sort of tool, and another in which small children are reporting that they sat in a car with a "mister". Overall it's not a bad book, but it's slow getting going. I also found it a little difficult to follow the thread of the story because the author has a habit of not telling you directly what has happened--instead you have to figure it out from some quite naturalistic dialogue. A propos of nothing in particular, it was the second police procedural in a row in which the main character is seriously into jazz.

It's a Bingo square (mystery) and January AlphaKIT (A).

Great photographs you have chosen for your categories. I started to have a separate book billet category a few years ago and it helps me a lot. I can always go back to the posts and will easily find the books. I also try to tag them "book bullet" when adding the books to my LT wishlist, but with that I am not really consistent... Happy New Year and enjoy your reading!

>52 Chrischi_HH: I have trouble getting all the tags I want on books! Thanks for stopping by.

Love the aerial theme for your challenge!

>54 lkernagh: Thanks for stopping by, Lori! This theme just came together for me.

>46 NinieB:

Love the picture!

>56 hailelib: Isn't it fun? Happy New Year!

Just a few days ago--in 2019--I finished Eight Cousins. christina_reads mentioned that she loved Rose in Bloom and I decided it was a good time to read it.

Six years have passed since the end of Eight Cousins. Rose, Phebe, and Uncle Alec have been in Europe for the last two, but now they have returned home. Both Rose and Phebe are trying to find their place in the world. Rose's cousins have mostly grown up (Jamie is still a kid); Archie falls in love with Phebe, and Charlie with Rose. But Charlie encounters problems in his life, and Rose is unwilling to marry him. She does try to help him overcome his difficulties. Meanwhile, Mac is studying medicine under Uncle Alec's tutelage, but also dreaming of greatness in other endeavors. He introduces Rose to Emerson's essays.

While Eight Cousins is a children's book, Rose in Bloom is more young adult in its themes. While Rose expresses her concerns about marriage to the wrong person in 19th century moralizing fashion, she does have a point.

It's my year for children's books so far. On my cross-country trip Monday, I read Jane of Lantern Hill by L. M. Montgomery. Jane, 11, lives with her mother, grandmother, and aunt, and some servants, in an old "dead" house in Toronto. Jane's life is pretty miserable: While her mother is kind, Jane sees little of her because she is constantly eating out and going to parties. Jane's wealthy grandmother is usually unkind, finding fault with Jane more often than not. Things change when Jane's father, whom she does not know, requests that Jane spend the summer with him on Prince Edward Island. For the first time Jane is allowed to be herself and loved for who she is.

As always Montgomery paints PEI in glowing prose. Jane's changing relationship with her grandmother is interesting. On the minus side, the development of Jane is too quick and easy, and at least one event on PEI feels like padding. Overall, a good book.

>59 NinieB: I couldn't resist buying this last year as the Virago cover is so pretty and I love L.M. Montgomery. I really need to actually read it!

>60 JayneCM: Oh, that is a pretty cover (I have an old Bantam TV tie-in, purely functional!). I hope you enjoy it!

You are off to a good start for the year! I look forward to following along this year. Between mysteries and pre-1920s books, I expect I'll pick up a few BBs along the way.

I have Frozen Tracks in my TBR stash. I'll get around to it one of these days!

>62 cbl_tn: Thanks, Carrie! As you can see, I do enjoy both mysteries and pre-1920! Hope you find some things to enjoy.

I think Inspector Ghote Goes by Train is my favorite so far of this series. Ghote has been assigned to bring con man A. K. Bhattacharya back to Bombay from Calcutta. He convinces his superior to allow him to go by train, 40 hours in each direction. While he is looking forward to the pleasure of simply traveling, to his dismay a talkative Bengali is sitting in his compartment. And so begins a complex battle of wits.

This mystery satisfies this month's GeoCAT (Asia) and the Bingo square for Asia as well.

>64 NinieB: a BB for me!

>65 Tess_W: Hope you enjoy it!

I still have several Inspector Ghote books that I read years ago. Apparently they were keepers.

>67 hailelib: I'm veerry slowly reading through the series. While I've quickly forgotten some of the earlier ones, the unusual structure in this one definitely stands out.

A long while back I read through most of the books authored by Barbara Michaels (you may know her as Elizabeth Peters). Michaels wrote very good contemporary romantic suspense, usually with some amount of supernatural or paranormal horror. When I ran across a copy of Houses of Stone recently, I had to do a reread as I had very fond memories of it. Fortunately, I enjoyed it once again.

Karen Holloway, the protagonist of Houses of Stone, is a typical Michaels heroine--feisty, feminist, but not immune to the charms of men. Karen is also an English professor who studies Gothic novels and women authors of the 18th and 19th centuries. Having previously rescued from oblivion poetry by an unknown 19th century American woman writing under the pseudonym Ismene, Karen is thrilled to get the opportunity to study and publish an unknown and unpublished Gothic novel by Ismene. Even better, the source of the manuscript is known, so Karen has the possibility of identifying Ismene. The spooky old Virginia house where the manuscript was found provides the requisite frissons of horror promised by a Michaels book.

Michaels includes plenty about the history of the Gothic genre and women's writing, with some great quotations at the head of each chapter. The romance part is pretty muted, with more of suspense and, as mentioned, frissons.

>69 NinieB: I hope I can find this one in my library or secondhand - sounds great. I am reading a non-fiction at the moment, Monster, She Wrote which is about female horror writers. So this fits in perfectly!

>70 JayneCM: I hope you can find it and enjoy it!

>69 NinieB: I enjoyed Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody series, and keep an eye out for the reappearance of her Vicki Bliss books, which seem to pop up at random.

>72 pamelad: I enjoy most of Elizabeth Peters/Barbara Michaels but for some reason I did not take to Amelia Peabody when I read The Crocodile on the Sandbank some 20+ years ago. I've been thinking of trying again as so many like the series--I must be missing something!--but who knows when I will find time.

Doubleday published mysteries for many years under the "Crime Club" imprint (not to be confused with the imprint of the same name from British publisher Collins). The very first, in 1928, was The Desert Moon Mystery by Kay Cleaver Strahan. The book also offers a professional woman detective, Lynn MacDonald, who went on to star in several more mysteries by Strahan. I had never heard of Strahan or MacDonald until I started reading mystery reviews of the 1920s. Will Cuppy, mystery reviewer for the New York Herald Tribune, gave The Desert Moon Mystery a rave review.

My first thought when I started reading was that Strahan was derivative of Mary Roberts Rinehart, since the first page has not one but two classic had-I-but-known (HIBK) sentences. I'll just quote one to give you the flavor: "More than likely the shivery, creepy sensation I felt, when Sam said that, was due to the cold he had brought in with him, and was not due to the fact that those words of his were the forerunners for all of the grim mysteries and the tragedies that made the Desert Moon Ranch, before the end of July, a place of horror." The narrator, an older woman with a dim view of the capabilities of men, also reminded me of Rinehart characters, specifically the narrator of The Circular Staircase. Fortunately I always enjoyed Rinehart so I kept reading. And I came to the conclusion that Strahan was much more careful with plotting than Rinehart, and not dependent upon people foolishly keeping secrets, as Rinehart usually was.

The mystery is set on a ranch in northeastern Nevada, 25 miles from the train station and further from anywhere else. Sam Stanley is the rancher; Mary Magin is his housekeeper and the narrator. His two adopted adult children, John and Martha, Hubert Hand the assistant ranch manager, Martha's nurse Ollie Ricker, and John's friend Chad Caufield are the ranch inhabitants. Sam's words at the start of the story are that Gabrielle and Danielle Canneziano, twin sisters whose mother was at one time Sam's wife, are coming to visit. When Gaby and Danny arrive, they bring quite a bit of turmoil with them. Gaby and Danny have very different personalities, and while John and Danny promptly fall in love, Gaby creates havoc by causing both Chad and Hubert to fall in love with her. At the same time it's obvious that Gaby and Danny have some kind of hidden agenda at Desert Moon ranch. Disaster strikes on the 4th of July.

Plotting is quite complicated, with secrets from the past being revealed. It's a talky novel, with lots of reviewing of clues. And sorry to say I did get the idea of what the solution was, perhaps because Strahan really does give the reader fair play--no clues were concealed. The unusual ranch setting was interesting. I'll be seeking out the next in the series.

>74 NinieB:

I am currently stalled in the Lynn MacDonald series by the expense and rarity of the fourth book, October House. If you get access to that, please let me know!

As far as I am aware, MacDonald was first female private investigator, that is, the first professional. Strahan's novels are also remarkable for each having a different regional setting.

On the other hand---poor old MRR! Almost everyone in the early days was writing in the "had I but known" style, but some reason she got hit with the permanent blame for it! In fact I find the male authors of that period far more likely to sin in that respect. :)

>75 lyzard: Re men writing HIBK, you have read enough mysteries from this era to know! I enjoy Rinehart so (unlike some influential male critics) I don't consider HIBK necessarily a strike against. And it does look like I'll be able to get October House . . .

>76 NinieB:

I don't mind it, either; but the idea that MRR invented it - let alone cornered the market in it! - is just wrong. It was really a hangover from the sensation fiction of the 19th century, which used promising all sorts of mystery and melodrama as a standard technique, and was both widespread and common well into the 20th century.

By "get", do you mean borrow or buy?? :)

>77 lyzard: I will take your word for it! I always learn so much from your posts.

Borrow! :) I have easy access to major US academic libraries, and it looks like Columbia has a copy in offsite storage.

>78 NinieB:

Rats! I was hoping to negotiate for a hand-over. :)

Time to catch up on my reading . . .

A Chorus of Detectives by Barbara Paul is a historical mystery (January's MysteryKIT theme), set in post-World War I New York City, specifically at the Metropolitan Opera. A killer is loose at the Met. What's apparent is that he or she has a real hatred for members of the chorus. Determined to solve the mystery are Enrico Caruso, Rosa Ponselle, Geraldine Farrar, and other stars from the Met's Golden Age. I don't think this is Paul's best book; it's a little too long. I do appreciate, though, that Paul avoided obvious anachronisms, which usually spoil my enjoyment of historical mystery. A real historical event, Caruso's last performance, earned this one a square on my Bingo card.

I decided to participate in January's ScaredyKIT with a reading of Stephen King's Carrie, certainly a famous example of 70s-80s horror. I enjoyed it enough to read it in basically an afternoon. I read another King novel, Christine, many, many years ago, but was a little too scared by it to read any more! Carrie didn't really have that quality, probably just as well. I would certainly consider reading another King novel, maybe in ScaredyKIT's King month.

Finally, only a day late I finished a "U" for January's AlphaKIT--The Lure of the Bush (aka The Barrakee Mystery), the first in Arthur W. Upfield's long-running series of Australian mysteries featuring Bony, full name Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte. While I agree with other LT reviewers that one needs to keep in mind that the book was written in 1929, the level at which the racism of the times permeates the book makes it difficult to recommend.

I just finished a charming story from 1856—Zaidee: A Romance by Mrs. Oliphant. The author was a prolific British writer who published over 120 works, including many novels. Today she is probably best remembered as the author of some frequently anthologized supernatural short fiction, and the series Chronicles of Carlingford, which Virago reissued.

Zaidee Vivian is a 14-year-old orphan cousin who lives with her cousins, the Vivian family of the Grange, a comfortable estate in Cheshire. Her cousin Philip is about to turn 21 and come into his inheritance of the Grange. Zaidee discovers a hidden will left by their grandfather, in which he bequeathed the Grange to Zaidee's father rather than Philip's father. Horrified, Zaidee tries to conceal the will, but Philip discovers it and refuses to conceal it. Unable to face the impoverishment of the Vivian family which her inheritance would cause, Zaidee runs away.

This is one of those Victorian novels in which the plot strains credulity for a number of reasons. Also, Mrs Oliphant has a rather elaborate writing style which requires some concentration, with frequent lapses into the present tense. Nonetheless I am now eager to read more by Mrs Oliphant. She paints lovely portraits of the wild Cheshire coast and the Thames by Twickenham; her characters are living, breathing, people. The story, despite its improbabilities, is delightful.

>81 NinieB: I have the entire series Chronicles of Carlingford. I have never read an Oliphant. Will try to move these up the TBR

>82 Tess_W: I have some as well—I'm looking forward to reading them!

FEBRUARY

Queued up
The Village on the Cliff by Anne Thackeray
Cecilia; or, Memoirs of an Heiress by Fanny Burney
The Daisy Chain by Charlotte Yonge

Currently reading
Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac
The Australian Collection: Australia's Greatest Books by Geoffrey Dutton
Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen
Studies in Murder by Edmund Lester Pearson
Queen's Park by Garry Ryan
The Widow Lerouge by Emile Gaboriau

Keating 100 Best

Other Mysteries
Blood on Her Shoe by Medora Field
No Cure for Love by Peter Robinson
The Janus Stone by Elly Griffiths
Clouds of Witness by Dorothy Sayers

Women Authors
Zaidee: A Romance by Mrs. Oliphant
Doctor Zay by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

GeoCAT Europe (Excluding Great Britain)

NonfictionCAT Travel

RandomCAT Leap Year
The Black Piano by Constance & Gwenyth Little

AlphaKIT F & B
Zaidee: A Romance by Mrs. Oliphant (Z)
Blood on Her Shoe by Medora Field

MysteryKIT Furry Sleuths

ScaredyKITPsychological Thrillers
The Good Girl by Mary Kubica

TravelKIT In translation

SFFKIT Transformation

KITastrophe Invasion

BingoDOG
Blood on Her Shoe by Medora Field (by a journalist)
The Black Piano by Constance & Gwenyth Little (read a CAT)

I started at the end of the Carlingford series with Miss Marjoribanks, and liked it so much that I went back and read the rest of the series.

I see that you have The Daisy Chain on your to read list. It's also on mine because I came across Charlotte M. Yonge in E. M. Delafield's Diary of a Provincial Lady series.

>80 NinieB:

I don't argue with the impact but I would suggest that the racism is a conscious depiction of the times, rather than the unthinking variety more common in British novels of the period.

The second in the series is written almost entirely from Bony's point of view, so while the reality of racism is still there, we get a different perspective upon it.

>84 NinieB:

Good luck with Cecilia! There is a group read thread around, if you care to access it. :)

>85 pamelad: Glad to hear you enjoyed Carlingford! I was considering reading The Daisy Chain at the end of last year as a children's book for Bingo, so I downloaded it. I've been curious about Yonge for awhile now.

>86 lyzard: Yes, I certainly agree about the conscious choice. Actually I was not bothered so much by the portrayal of racism as by Upfield's genetics. Ralph Thornton's attraction to an aboriginal woman, his wearing a bright blue cummerbund, and lounging in his dinner chair—all because his father was native?? I'm not sure if that is a more subtle form of racism but I don't think any of those behaviors would be hardwired.

Interesting about The Sands of Windee. I'm eager to read it as it's one of the Keating 100.

I have had Cecilia checked out of the library ever since I read Evelina last year, I think just after I joined your group read of Belinda! I admit, I'm daunted by what a chunkster it is.

>87 NinieB: Thanks for pointing out that The Daisy Chain is children's literature. I'll choose a different Yonge, more carefully this time, not just the shortest.

>88 pamelad: Well, I think it's what we might call young adult. The Heir of Redclyffe was also a very popular Yonge work.

Medora Field's Blood on Her Shoe was the right book at the right time, for AlphaKIT at least, and I liked it quite a bit. It's a 1942 mystery set on St Simons Island, one of the Sea Islands of Georgia. The local color is mostly of the old plantations of Georgia variety. First-person narrator Ann Carroll heads out to her cousins' mansion for a summer getaway with her brother and her friend. On arrival brother Josh starts acting weird especially when he finds his current love affair, Sylvia, and her twin sister Cynthia, already in residence. Ann's casual boyfriend Homer shows up as well.

Hostess Chattie insists that the house party go to the local cemetery to see a ghost. They don't see a ghost, but in the dark Georgia night Sylvia is murdered. Ann finds both she and Josh are under suspicion. Fortunately handsome stranger Rufus keeps showing up to save Ann from peril.

There's a lot more action, but you get the idea. Author Medira Fueld was a journalist, so I'm claiming a Bingo square as well.

>84 NinieB: You have some interesting books in the queue for February. Out of Africa is the only book I have read by Dinesen so I'll check back to see what you thought of Seven Gothic Tales.

>91 This-n-That: I read the first two stories in Seven Gothic Tales in 2019. They were quite good. While I've been meaning to keep reading, it hasn't happened.

No Cure for Love is a stand-alone by Peter Robinson from 1995. It's an interesting take on the celebrity stalker phenomenon. Sarah Broughton, an English actress, has hit the big time playing a police detective in an American cop show. When she starts getting letters from an unknown admirer, the LAPD Threat Management Unit figures the odds are low she is in danger. Soon, though, it becomes apparent that the stalker wants to remove what he sees as the human barriers between him and Sarah. The lead cop, Arvo Hughes, is quite congenial—it's a shame Robinson never revived him.

Another light-hearted 1940s mystery, The Black Piano by Constance & Gwenyth Little is perhaps best read while imagining the story being told in a 1940s film comedy. Gloria Rouston is a wealthy heiress married to a sponging man who doesn't love her and his relatives. When Gloria nearly dies from being pushed off a bridge, she decides to disappear and try to find out which of her family tried to off her. To carry out her plan, she fixes her nose and teeth and changes her hair style and color, marries a lawyer and moves back to her hometown. There, she finds out that a body has been identified as hers and her ex-husband is engaged to marry a beautiful young blonde. Yeah, it's improbable, but it's also written to be funny. I wasn't laughing out loud but the plot is better than some of those old B movies you can stream.

Since it was published in 1948, it's a leap year book for RandomCAT.

Several here in the Category Challenge have read and praised The Good Girl by Mary Kubica. It was free in Prime Reading and a fit for this month's ScaredyKIT (psychological thrillers). I found it not as suspenseful as I would have liked, and (probably for me more important) a rather grim tale. On the up side, I certainly didn't see the twist at the end coming.

The Janus Stone by Elly Griffiths is the second Ruth Galloway mystery. Griffiths seems more interested in the characters than the mystery plot but I'm actually OK with that.

Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L. Sayers was, in my mind, a book I had read. Well, I read it to join the Lord Peter group read and discovered I had no memory of it at all. Some scenes reminded me of the 1970s Ian Carmichael series, but otherwise, it was like new for me.

>97 NinieB: That's good news. I hope the rest of the series is just as unfamiliar!

I've enjoyed catching up on your thread. I don't read that many mysteries and I really should make more room for them, having enjoyed reading your summaries. I like that you have a women authors category - I have a VMC authors category, and maybe I should've expanded that to VMCs and Persephones, but I do track how many books I read by female authors every month, just to make sure I'm not getting stuck in a rut! I did not realize that Mrs Oliphant was so prolific, and I'll take a BB for Zaidee.

I also like your BB category; I take tons of BBs from reading all the threads, and while I used to keep them in a journal, at one point I entered them all in LT in my wishlist, with the tag 'rec by' and the LTer from who I got the book bullet from; I also include recommendations I get from book reviews in the paper, RL friends and coworkers. I find that they stay on my wishlist a long time though - with my preference of making a dent in the books I already have on the shelves!

>98 pamelad: I just read The Dawson Pedigree and it was if anything more unfamiliar!

>99 LisaMorr: Hey Lisa, thanks for stopping by! I have been putting mysteries by woman authors just in the mystery category, so the woman authors category is everything else. I'm not entirely satisfied with the BB category as I haven't read these books, and that doesn't make much sense . . . .! Still fine-tuning.

The Dawson Pedigree was the American name of Unnatural Death, the third Lord Peter Wimsey novel. Reading other LT reviews, some people love and others hate the discussion of English inheritance law. I was really geeking out over it! There's also the prominence of women choosing not to marry but to live with other women, and a reference to Clemence Dane's Regiment of Women. And then there's Miss Climpson, whom everyone seems to love (count me in).

When I needed an ebook for bus reading I made a point of picking something from the early 1920s that was republished by Virago.

Edith Wharton's novella The Old Maid, from her tetralogy Old New York, studies two women, Delia Ralston and her cousin Charlotte Lovell, in the 19th century. Delia is content in her marriage, if not wildly in love, despite lingering regrets about a young man who did not have the money to marry her or the desire for a staid profession in New York City. Charlotte is about to be married, after an illness that took her away for awhile and left her somewhat changed. Then Charlotte comes to Delia and confesses that one of the poor children to whom she has been providing assistance is in fact her own daughter; she is doubting her ability to marry because her fiance wants her to give up the children. Delia's handling of the situation then and twenty years later reveals her character and the nature of her society, with some pointed commentary on how women enforced the double standard.

While it's not as good as Ethan Frome, The Old Maid is of a similar length, probably even shorter, and really EF is an extremely hard act to follow. Edith Wharton tells the simple story beautifully. I didn't feel like the story was predictable, and I'm looking forward to reading more of Wharton's tetralogy.

In the later 1920s, Kay Cleaver Strahan was a hot mystery author. Doubleday published her first mystery as the first Crime Club book, Will Cuppy had praised it extravagantly, and her second, Footprints, won a valuable book prize. Footprints is about the death in 1900 of Richard Quilter, eastern Oregon rancher, one of a large clan trying to hang onto the family property. The story of the mysterious death by gunshot, and the events leading up to it, is almost entirely told by letters written to Richard's absent daughter Judy by his other two children, Lucy and Neal. We have all the elements of a 1929s Golden Age detective story, including an apparently impossible crime. Impossible, that is, unless the perpetrator still is in the large ranch house, because the newfallen snow surrounding the house is trackless.

I should have liked this book, but it was way too long. In Neal's letters, he minutely dissects the crime, and everything puzzling about it. It's not that I figured it out—but somehow I just didn't care.

I finished Miss Buncle's Book the other day. I had splurged on the Persephone Books edition, new and ordered from the shop. Yeah, it was great—I can see why Stevenson is a comfort read for many. I'm looking forward to the next in the series.

Borrowed to read:

Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
The Hymn Tune Mystery by George Birmingham
Escape by Ethel Vance (aka Grace Zaring Stone)

Vita Sackville-West's writing is so smooth and beautiful! I have just finished reading a collection of longish and shortish stories, The Heir: A Love Story. Hesperus reprinted the title novella as a stand-alone, but the 1922 publication included several other stories as well. Virago reprinted the title novella with a story from another collection. I was happy to read the original collection. I found her writing compulsively readable.

I like the subtitle of the title novella because it sends a clear signal where the story is going, and no, a woman does not figure in the plot. Nope, the object of the heir's love is a 16th century English manor.

"The Christmas Present" about an older woman's, uhm, abnormal psychology had an abrupt ending after increasing tension throughout.

"Her Son" is also about an older woman; she welcomes her son after his five year absence in the Argentine. A vague disappointment descends; can it be that Henry does not want the things that Mrs Martin wants?

"Patience" and "The Parrot" were short and a bit puzzling (or, what just happened here?).

I will be seeking out more books by Sackville-West.

>104 NinieB: Love Miss Buncle's Book! D.E. Stevenson truly is a great author for comfort reads.

>107 christina_reads: Thanks for stopping by, Christina!

Having watched the new Amazon version of The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie, I borrowed the book from Internet Archive and reread it. The new TV version had not really rung any bells for me. Turns out a lot is changed in the new version, with some fairly major plot lines deleted and others added. But the underlying plot device is the same. Another LT book reviewer said that the Amazon version has a murky ending, which is true, but the book's ending is not murky (thank heavens).

In the book, there's some pontificating on what appears to be witchcraft; I read those sections pretty quickly. One thing I find interesting is that the fictional worlds of Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple overlap: Mrs Oliver is usually in Poirot books (she actually alludes to the events in Dead Man's Folly), and the Dane Calthrops were characters in The Moving Finger. Here the Mrs Oliver sequences are quite funny, with some playful commentary on the hard work of mystery writing.

>109 NinieB: I've always liked The Pale Horse and was curious to see the Amazon adaptation, but based on your comments (and a couple reviews I've read), I think I'll pass. I understand why adaptations like to change things from the original source, but I prefer the ones that remain fairly close to the source material.

>110 christina_reads: It's a 2020 take on 1961! I liked it all right since I didn't remember the novel, but it certainly didn't have the Christie ambience.

This year I haven't really soared at all, reading-wise, let alone to new heights. I did however manage to finish a reread, Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. It's one of the two sensation novels of the early 1860s that have achieved enduring fame, the other being Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White. Robert Audley is intrigued by his Uncle Michael's beautiful young wife. Then, when his good friend George Talboys disappears, Robert's investigation reveals that Lady Audley has a past.

I'm a fan of Vita Sackville-West too. I'll read anything she writes. I really enjoyed Knole and the Sackvilles. And her gardening books are wonderful.

>113 VivienneR: Excellent, Vivienne! Do you have any special recommendations in her fiction?

In one of the threads this month, jaynecm mentioned she had reread Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer, a favorite childhood book about time travel. Based on her description I knew I would enjoy it and I did. While it is a children's book, it is somewhat dark. Had I encountered this book when I was 9 or so, I'm not sure how I would have reacted. As an adult, I could appreciate both the story and the more mature themes.

GeoCAT this month is Australia, New Zealand, and Oceania, so I read one of the many Australia books in my TBR. Lamb to the Slaughter is a mystery by Jennifer Rowe, better known as the YA author Emily Rodda. Verity Birdwood, who appeared in five other books, is a researcher for the ABC. Her old friend from her days at the University of Sydney is Jude, a passionate lawyer who has just successfully gotten a pardon for Trevor Lamb, who was convicted of killing his wife Daphne five years previously. The ABC asks Verity, who goes by Birdie, to use her connection with Jude to get an exclusive interview with Trevor. So Birdie heads out to the little bush hamlet, Hope's End, where Trevor is returning to his family. The Lambs are an unlikable lot; Trevor's mother is an alcoholic, his brothers regularly steal lambs from neighbors' paddocks, and Trevor's twin sister Rosalie is a worn-out frump at 29 with 2 illegitimate children. And it turns out that the small community in Hope's End is less than convinced that Trevor should have been pardoned. Birdie and Jude are worried that Trevor should not have gone home, and they are right to be worried.

Rowe is an excellent mystery writer. It's a shame she was so successful as a YA author, because she has not published a mystery in many years. I was happy when I ran across this one, which I had not been able to find before. Birdie's an interesting detective, and she does a beautiful job of untangling the timing around the murder that takes place in the present.

>114 NinieB: My favourite by Vita Sackville-West is The Edwardians. I still have a few on the shelves that I haven't read yet. I'm keeping them for those times when nothing will satisfy and then I'll be delighted to "find" them.

>115 NinieB: Glad you enjoyed t!

>116 NinieB: I did not know that - I have only read her childrens' books under Emily Rodda.

>117 VivienneR: Noted.Thanks!

>118 JayneCM: Please do let me know about any other time travel books you like: I will probably like them too!!

I read a book in one day (today). Here's the thing: it was work-related. Usually I would not mention it here. But if you are a teacher in higher education and care at all about your teaching, it is a quick read, and you can decide whether to proceed with implementing some of the ideas. I plan to spend much more time with it.

Geeky Pedagogy by Jessamyn Neuhaus approaches college-level teaching from the perspective of the geek, introvert, and nerd. The introvert part resonates for me, and much of this book did as well. She does not try to cover everything about teaching in higher education; instead what she focuses on is the stuff that tends to challenge the geek/introvert/nerd. Some things she emphasizes:
- The classroom is a social setting, and effective teaching requires functioning in that setting.
- Instructors in higher education frequently have an expert blindspot, in which the expert (the college professor) has forgotten the difficulty of being a novice.
- The expert also (usually) loves the subject and has difficulty remembering that many of the students in the class do not and maybe never will.

The icing on the cake here is that Neuhaus is an entertaining writer with a very contemporary style. While the book is chock-full of notes (and she has about 50 pages of supplementary bibliographic essays for the book on the book's website), the text itself is like sitting down with a mentor for a long and satisfying chat.

>119 NinieB: The other kids' one I like is A Traveller In Time by Alison Uttley. And have you read Playing Beatie Bow by Ruth Park? I know we have talked about it before in this group somewhere!

The Hymn Tune Mystery by George A. Birmingham is light humorous English fiction from 1931 about a crime in a cathedral. While a murder occurs, those hoping to find a lost Golden Age detective story will be disappointed. Those of us who want more Barchester in our lives, however, can enjoy this visit to Carminster, a small cathedral city where Lady Carminster's emeralds were stolen five years ago and now the organist (who drank too much) has been found dead in the organ loft.

Note that it is much lighter than Trollope, and doesn't bear much resemblance to Thirkell either. I think I would consider it a 1930 equivalent of a modern light cozy mystery.

>121 JayneCM: Yes! I loved Playing Beatie Bow. I will add A Traveller in Time to my list. Thanks, Jayne!

>122 NinieB: I'm taking a BB for that one!

>124 Tess_W: I hope you enjoy it!

Edmund Pearson was a librarian who took to journalism about crime and especially murder. I read a Modern Library collection of his pieces, Studies in Murder, which includes his famous essay on the Lizzie Borden case.

I read this collection gradually; overall, I liked the short pieces the best. The longer ones, including the Borden piece, had too much detail for my taste. I will admit that I'm a bit mystified why in 1937 Modern Library thought this was worth printing, as overall I found the essays a bit dull; maybe the lack of sensationalism was a novelty?

Americans on the Road: From Autocamp to Motel, 1910-1945 by Warren James Belasco focuses on birth of the motel but more broadly examines the development of the American driving vacation in the early 20th century. It is a good fit for this month's TravelKIT, Modes of Transportation, since it has an entire chapter devoted to why leisure travel by car was preferred by many Americans over leisure travel by railroad. Hotels in the early 20th century were also pretty unpleasant, which further spurred car camping. By the early 1920s it was a full-on thing. Interestingly, car camping up to this point was pretty routinely done by the side of the road. This of course caused its own problems, which led to municipalities opening free tourist camps in the center of town. The free part didn't work out so well, leading to fee-based camping. From there the private sector got involved. By this point many realized that they didn't care so much for the fad of camping, so they quickly took advantage of cabins. From primitive shelters, cabins gradually developed to the full-blown motel.

When I was a kid in the 70s, my family always took a driving vacation in the summer, and we camped. So reading the early history of this from of family recreation was very interesting for me. While the book is academic, in that it's fully sourced and has a bibliographic essay, the writer keeps the theorizing to a minimum and includes many interesting quotations, some of which are from 1910s accounts of cross-country motor trips. I would love to read one of these. A couple that seemed promising are By Motor to the Golden Gate by Emily Post (yes, *that* Emily Post) and Across the Continent by the Lincoln Highway by Effie Price Gladding.

>126 NinieB:

True-crime writing, particularly re-examinations of famous Victorian crimes from a modern perspective, were very popular in the 20s and 30s. John Rhode (of the Dr Priestley books) also published a number of such studies; I've read his The Case Of Constance Kent. (Turns out we came to the same conclusions about the case!)

Thank you for the heads-up on The Hymn Tune Mystery, that's one I should have been aware of.

>128 lyzard: John Rhode was astonishingly prolific. Maybe The Case of Constance Kent is more exciting than Pearson's studies?

I have another Birmingham book, The Search Party, from 1909; I'm really looking forward to it.

>127 NinieB: You might be interested in Free Air, a minor work by Sinclair Lewis about a young woman's road trip across America. A brave undertaking in those early days of motoring.

>130 pamelad: Ooh, yes, thank you! From the descriptions I read, transcontinental travel by car was dirty, exhausting work.

I had previously read only mysteries by Anthony Boucher. The stories in The Compleat Werewolf and Other Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction are some fantasy, some horror, some science fiction, all from the early 1940s. Quite unusually there are a couple of appearances by Boucher's series detective Fergus O'Breen, but in stories of fantasy/horror. My favorites of the stories were the two long ones, The Compleat Werewolf and We Print the Truth, and the short-short, Mr Lupescu, is quite good of its kind.

>129 NinieB:

I think they were all more intent on being factual and analytic than exciting. :)

Reading John Rhode has been very difficult until recently, when they finally sorted out the copyright issues and were allowed to start putting some of the Dr Priestley books out in Kindle. However, I'm stalled on a earlier one that is only available (to me) as a library Rare Book, and can only be read on-site.

>133 lyzard: I have an aversion to buying Kindle books, although The Paddington Mystery is quite tempting.

>134 NinieB:

I held off on a Kindle for ages, but there are now so many old mysteries available inexpensively, and many not available in any other format, that one has now become indispensable for me (and, I have to say, has paid for itself many times over).

>135 lyzard: I like reading free public domain books using Kindle software on my iPad. I've read a number of temporarily free books through Amazon Prime. Every once in a while there will be a more functional book that I can buy on Kindle for less than I can buy it elsewhere, so I'll do it. But . . . I dunno, there's just something about buying an electronic file of a book that I don't like. It doesn't feel real somehow.

>136 NinieB:

I understand that completely and always read a 'real' book when I can, with public domain ebooks as a second choice; but too much of what I want to read is not available that way, so it's literally Kindle or nothing.

>136 NinieB:
>137 lyzard:

I thought I would never like ebooks; I like the smell and the covers of real books. However, I am now an ebook fan for multiple reasons: I can adjust the font and read easily, I can carry 300+ books with me at all times, I can find older cheaper books easily, I can buy from home, and since we are both of retirement age--we downsized and I needed to get rid of some physical books (after I read them, of course!). When I started LT in 2012, I had 1000+ tree books. That number is about 265 now and most most of those are classics and/or books I read as a child. So ebooks are now my friends. I am at the point now, that I really do prefer ebooks or audiobooks over tree books.

>138 Tess_W: I may well be just in the denial phase of switching to ebooks. If I can get an ebook for free, I am happy with it. For the last year or so, it has been difficult to find the books I own because they are mostly in boxes or in disorder on shelves. Also, when I get a strong desire to read a specific book, I enjoy hunting around for a free ebook option. Archive.org has been increasingly useful that way.

A few days ago, I said I would have trouble with the pun square in BingoDOG. I had forgotten about Sheiks and Adders by Michael Innes. It was my next in series for this long-running series--begun in 1936, as the detective himself reminds us part way through the book. In his 32nd outing, Sir John Appleby attends a charity fete masquerade, after meeting the daughter of the house sobbing in the woods because her father won't let her boyfriend come as a sheik. Sir John becomes more suspicious when he finds many sheiks and pseudo-sheiks wandering the grounds. It's all good fun, in typical Innes-ian style.

I finished this month's Lord Peter Wimsey, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, in which time of death affects who gets half a million pounds.

I had a productive reading weekend . . .

Phantom Lady was the first book that Cornell Woolrich published under his pseudonym, William Irish. This 1942 novel is now a classic of noir fiction. We meet Scott Henderson sitting in a bar in New York City. He becomes aware that a woman is seated next to him. She herself is not memorable, but her hat--described as the color and shape of a pumpkin--is truly memorable. Out of the blue Scott invites her to dinner and a show. He never learns her name. When he returns to his apartment around midnight, three police detectives greet him: his wife is dead, murdered.

The book is structured around Scott's impending doom (the first chapter is entitled "The Hundred and Fiftieth Day before the Execution"). Most of it takes place in the 21 days preceding the execution, when Scott's friend John Lombard is combing New York for the phantom lady, Scott's last hope of avoiding execution.

The mystery plot is preposterous, but Woolrich creates a dark, desperate mood that carries the story forward relentlessly. Recommended enthusiastically.

Miss Lulu Bett by Zona Gale is something else entirely. Lulu is 34 and unmarried; penniless, she lives in the home of her sister Ina and brother-in-law Dwight, where she does most of the housework and cooking. Dwight is a petty tyrant, Ina is clueless and annoying, Dwight's daughter Di is a typical 18-year-old. Dwight and Ina also have a young daughter named Monona. Lulu leads a pathetic existence in which no one has ever paid any attention to her. Lulu's life changes when Dwight's brother Ninian pays a visit after 20 years away.

This short novel (my copy had 245 pages with very large type; I read it in about 2 hours) did not go where I expected it to go. I liked Lulu very much and recommend the book for those interested in literature about a woman's development.

>142 NinieB: I've downloaded Miss Lulu Bett. You can't go wrong with a free ebook.

>143 pamelad: I'll be interested to know what you think.

The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes offers an illuminating contrast to Phantom Lady. Written in 1963, 21 years after Woolrich's classic, The Expendable Man takes place in Phoenix, Arizona. Dr. Hugh Densmore, intern at UCLA, is driving across the California desert to Phoenix to attend his niece's wedding. He sees a hitchhiker--a teenage girl. Worried about her safety, he gives her a ride . . . one of the biggest mistakes he'll ever make.

I read some Hughes novels from the 40s a number of years ago, and I remember them being closer to Woolrich's feverish-nightmare style than this one is. This novel is completely grounded in reality. But in this instance, reality effectively creates an equally nightmarish scenario for Hugh.

This book squarely fits two of my categories, the Keating 100 (finally, I read one), and the woman authors (Persephone reprinted this novel in 2006). Highly recommended.

I'm so mired in the 20s and 30s that I never get to these later crime / psychological thrillers. This is one of the reasons I introduced a 'random reading' challenge for myself, but that keeps stalling on the need for interlibrary loans.

Still! - one of these days, right? :D

>145 NinieB: The opening of The Expendable Man was so tense that I had to put it down temporarily after the first couple of chapters to get my breath back! So good.

>146 lyzard: These are not part of a series, so you *can* read just one! ;)

>147 rabbitprincess: That tension keeps me turning the pages! And Hughes maintains that tension through most of the book, don't you think?

>148 NinieB: Yes! It is probably my favourite Hughes novel.

>149 rabbitprincess: I liked In a Lonely Place. The So Blue Marble and Ride the Pink Horse were almost hallucinatory. Although it would be interesting to read Ride the Pink Horse again since I have now been to Indian Market in Santa Fe.

>149 rabbitprincess:, >150 NinieB: My favourites would be In A Lonely Place, then The Expendable Man. I thought The So Blue Marble was too contrived. I've started Ride the Pink Horse a few times, but have never managed to finish it. Somehow it seems even more doom-laden than the others, so I can't bear to know what happens.

Just checked. Gave 4 stars to the first three mentioned. Must try to use the whole range of 5 stars instead of giving almost everything between 3 and 4. I've also read The Blackbirder, which is entertaining but has a heroine who is an idiot.

>151 pamelad: I give way too many books 3.5 or 4 stars. I was thinking just the other day that I needed to stop thinking of 3 as a diss.

Apparently I ranked Expendable Man 4.5 out of 5 stars, and gave both In a Lonely Place and The So Blue Marble 4 stars. Haven't read The Blackbirder yet, but I have it on the shelves ready to go.

>153 rabbitprincess: Yep, 4.5/5 for Expendable Man.

The end of May has come and gone, and I've been mostly absent from LT as real life took over. I moved the last week of May, only a few miles as the crow flies, but it was a lot of work!

I will be able to find my books much more easily now--the new house has more space for bookshelves, so I'll be able to have much more out on shelves.

During the move, I did very little reading, mostly at bedtime. As a result, I finished only two books--the next two in the Inspector Ghote series.

I really enjoyed Inspector Ghote Trusts the Heart, in which he finds himself trying to rescue a small boy who has been kidnapped. A complicating factor is that the kidnappers intended to take the son of a wealthy pill manufacturer, but they mistakenly take his playmate, the son of a poor tailor. When they discover their mistake, though, they demand that the manufacturer nonetheless pay the demanded ransom, 20 lakhs of rupees. (I used an inflation calculator and a currency converter to determine that this amount equals in current American dollars about $1 million.) Another complicating factor is that the superintendent in charge of the case is convinced that the only way to deal with kidnappers is to refuse to give them any money. Ghote's heart tells him, though, that the life of the boy is worth the risk of paying some money.

Bats Fly Up for Inspector Ghote was not as much to my liking. Ghote's reputation in the police force has been diminished by the actions he took in Inspector Ghote Trusts the Heart. As a result, he's on pickpocket patrol. But his outsider status results in a superior embedding Ghote in an elite squad (called the Bats) to find the detective who is warning miscreants of impending arrest. It's a good scenario but I didn't care for the way it played out. The explanation at the end was rather hurried and incomplete.

Both books are set in urban Mumbai (called Bombay in the books). Those familiar with Mumbai should recognize many landmarks.

Moving house must have been a real challenge in these times. I hope you're settling in comfortably and enjoy the new shelves!

>155 NinieB: Enjoy your new house! That must have been especially tricky to navigate under current circumstances.

>157 MissWatson: >158 rabbitprincess: Thank you! We're enjoying the new place. We still need to buy some and some other more urgent unpacking has to take place before existing shelves can be filled.

We (my husband and I) did the move all on our own, spread out over 11 days. Since we don't have a lot of furniture, as the previous house was furnished, it was doable, but the only way to manage the physical aspect was spread out in this fashion. This was long planned because our landlord was selling the previous house, which we didn't want to buy, so we moved instead. Now we need to buy more furniture--including more shelves!

I just finished another short '70s mystery novel, this one from Michael Innes. The Mysterious Commission is the first of four mysteries featuring Charles Honeybath, R.A., a successful portrait painter who gets mixed up in funny business when he accepts a commission to paint, secretly, the portrait of an old man who believes himself to be Napoleon.

>159 NinieB: When my husband and I got married in 2016 (both of us were previously married and widowed), he sold his place and we had to combine two households. We did most of the moving of his stuff ourselves, in about 2-3 weeks. There were some really large pieces of furniture that we could not manage and had to hire movers. They were very quick and efficient though. I am still amazed at how we accomplished that move. (We donated a lot of things to local charities before we moved, so that helped.)

>161 LadyoftheLodge: Doesn't it help to spread it out??

It was the big heavy stuff where we really needed help. An additional problem was that when I rented a truck I didn't think about ramp or lack thereof. Next time I need to hire a truck I will consider paying extra for the larger truck with the ramp!

>162 NinieB: We moved as much as we could during that time using only his pick-up truck and my Jeep or Subaru, then the movers did the big stuff. I have moved a couple times in the past and I am pretty good at packing and at eyeballing how things can fit together in a vehicle, unlike my dearest spouse. It really did help to spread it out and do a bit at a time, although we had some very long days of it. We were moving his stuff from Kentucky to Indiana, about 100 mile trip.

>163 LadyoftheLodge: That's a long way to drive each time! Not sure if I mentioned but we only moved a couple of miles away. Lots of trips!

I was eagerly anticipating this month's book in the Lord Peter Wimsey group read--Strong Poison. I last read it close to 30 years ago, when I liked it immensely. I still like it immensely after rereading. And while I knew that this was the first Lord Peter with Harriet Vane, and I remembered the setup, otherwise it was new to me. When the story opens, Harriet is being tried for the murder of her former lover, Philip Boyes. Peter attends the trial and immediately concludes that (a) Harriet didn't do it and (b) he will marry Harriet. Fortunately for Peter's happiness the jury is hung, so Peter has a little over a month before the retrial to find the murderer. Of course, it won't be enough to convince a jury to acquit, as Peter does not want anyone to have any doubt that Harriet is innocent.

Aaahh. I can't wait till next month, for the next Lord Peter.

Just got sidetracked into your Australia's Greatest Books List. I've added all those I've read. Arrived there via a discussion on children's books on DeltaQueen's thread which reminded me of Seven Little Australians, which is on your list!

Oh cool! I have had The Australian Collection: Australia's Greatest Books in my Currently Reading collection for months now; not sure why I have not picked it up again after reading through about half of it. Thanks for reminding me I need to do this!

Do you have a favorite among the ones you have read? As I have said a number of times in various places, I think both The Timeless Land and The Harp in the South are outstanding.

My husband and I binge-watched the mid-1970s Ellery Queen TV show on DVD as moving relief, which had the effect of making me want to (re)read the original. (The TV show isn't bad, if you are interested in a sort of kitchy 1970s take on the 1940s, with a challenge to the viewer before EQ reveals all.) I dug up a copy of The Roman Hat Mystery and enjoyed it quite a bit. Some might find it dated, as important aspects are of the time with the motive being one of those things. I have a copy of the next in the series, so I'll try to dig it out.

>167 NinieB: My favourite is A Fortunate Life, the autobiography of A. B. Facey who had a very hard life but didn't see it that way. It's uplifting. Another book, actually a trilogy, that made a bit impression on me is The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney, which is so tragic I could barely keep reading.

I was going to read A Fortunate Life last year but couldn't find my copy. I saw it in a box tonight, coincidentally, so maybe I will try to pick it up soon!

The Ellery Queen comfort reading festival continues. I have read The French Powder Mystery and The Greek Coffin Mystery in the last week or so, numbers 2 and 4 in the series. Apologies for skipping over number 3; I should be able to get a copy in the next couple of weeks to plug the gap.

I am also doing a bit of comfort reading, where the bad are punished, the good are rewarded, all loose ends are tied up neatly, and there's no gore. I started with E. Phillips Oppenheim, a British author who was first published in the 1890s. Like Ellery Queen he's prolific, which is useful for comfort reads. It's good to know that they're not going to run out too soon.

>172 pamelad: It has been reassuring to see that others are engaged in the same kind of reading. I think with Oppenheim you are pretty much guaranteed they will not run out!

Ellery Queen is in my top 10 of all-time favorite mystery authors. Some find him unreadable; not me. It's like a spectator sport for me, watching the crimes being solved logically, and as you say all the loose ends tied up neatly.

My public library has opened for pick-up (curbside and in-lobby). I really like that they are offering "binge bundles"--selections of books, audiobooks, or movies based on a theme. They have a number of suggested themes, or the patron can ask for another theme.

>174 NinieB: The binge bundles sound delightful!

>175 rabbitprincess: I thought it was a really clever idea to introduce readers and viewers to something new and different.

Two more mysteries read . . .

The next Ellery Queen mystery, The Egyptian Cross Mystery, was easily available from Internet Archive, so I plunged right in. This is the first that has what I believe became something of a specialty for Queen, more than a touch of the bizarre. The bizarre touches include gruesome bodies arranged like T-shaped crucifixes (the heads are removed), as well as a deranged Egyptologist who has taken to saying prayers to the sun in Ancient Egyptian. It's also the first that takes place outside of New York City, partly in West Virginia and partly on Long Island, in Nassau County.

It was time for another mystery from H. R. F. Keating's list. I picked RSVP Murder by Mignon G. Eberhart. This title also plugged a gap in my century of reading as it was the first I've read in the last 18 months that was published in 1965. I'm not sure why Keating picked this particular Eberhart, as it didn't strike me as especially noteworthy, but it's certainly worth a read if you enjoy romantic suspense of the kind made popular by Mary Roberts Rinehart and, of course, Eberhart herself. One thing I did notice was some humor, which I don't recall being present in Eberhart's books of the 1930s.

>177 NinieB: I see that RSVP Murder is also available from the Internet Archive, which is a very good thing because I've probably read it but can't be sure. The orphan heroines merge into one another after a while, but that doesn't stop me enjoying Eberhart's books.

>178 pamelad: Yeah I read the Internet Archive copy. In this one Fran Hilliard is with her father on the French Riviera when he dies, leaving her broke. But then an old New York City acquaintance shows up at her hotel room door waving a very strange letter Fran's dad wrote a few days before he died . . . and Fran realizes four more similar letters are out there, leading criminals to think she is blackmailing them.

I finally moved out of my mystery comfort zone into another genre, science fiction. Last month Tor offered the 4 Murderbot novellas free so I picked them up having seen that so many of you liked them. I like them pretty well, too, given that I don't read much sci-fi. This month I read the second one, Artificial Condition. It moved along well, perhaps with better pacing than the first one. I'll read the third next month for space opera in SFF-KIT.

I'm counting this novella for this month's GeoCAT (space), and I picked up the LT author square as well.

Once again television influences my reading choices. We tried out watching Dexter, the television series, and are now binge-watching through it. Naturally (for me at least) I became curious about the book Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay, which I had picked up used a few years ago but never read. I had started to read it awhile back but was turned off by the first chapter. This time, knowing how things develop, I was able to push past. I now know that considerable additional material was written into the first season, with a somewhat different ending. I don't think I would have been very interested in this book or continuing with the series but for watching the television show.

While this gets me nowhere on any of the CATs or KITs, I did pick up a Bingo square for the "ing".

>181 NinieB: Dexter was one of the first shows that my husband and I binged watched. We loved it and I decided that I wouldn't read the series because I wanted my memories of Dexter to be the visual ones.

>182 DeltaQueen50: Not sure how I missed your message, Judy. I think you made a reasonable decision on not reading the books. I binged on through number two in the book series, Dearly Devoted Dexter, but stopped there because my conclusion is the TV show is more to my taste. As a number of LT reviewers have commented, this second book is more gory than the first and I suspect this trend continues. And the character on the TV show develops. I'm not seeing any sign of that in the books.

>183 NinieB: It's not often that I prefer the film version to the book - but in this case, it sounds like the TV show took the book and improved upon it.

*Peeking at the calendar . . .*

Just how is it we are half way through the year? Readingwise, it's been one of those years . . . I have very little patience. I spend too much time reading the news online. I spend too much time making lists of books rather than reading a few . . .

Finished The Tragedy of X by "Barnaby Ross" last night. I rather like that my copy is the second printing, with The Tragedy of Y and The Tragedy of Z "in preparation"--and of course there is no mention that the book is written by the authors of the Ellery Queen series.

Our detective is Drury Lane, a world-famous Shakespearian actor who has retired (due to deafness) to his mock-Elizabethan home above the Hudson in Westchester County, New York. Having solved another murder for the New York police and DA through some armchair detection, Lane welcomes Inspector Thumm and DA Bruno when they bring him another difficult case, the poisoning death of broker Harley Longstreet on a 42nd Street streetcar in New York City. Then an anonymous letter comes to the police from someone who claims to know who the murderer is. When the police and Lane try to meet the letter-writer in New Jersey at the ferry terminal, streetcar conductor Charles Wood turns out to be the writer--but he is dead on arrival. Before the end of the novel, another death has occurred, but Drury Lane has successfully solved the problem.

This 1932 novel offers an abundance of detection, mainly by Lane. One can't help wondering how the police and DA miss as much as they do in their investigation of the murders. It's rather long, but if you enjoy virtuosic displays of ratiocination, this (like the other books by Ellery Queen/Barnaby Ross of this period), this book is for you.

>185 NinieB: I'll also just mention that the true art displayed here is how it seems so obvious when it is all explained--but this reader, at least, missed the clues being offered more than once.

>185 NinieB: I get that. I also spend way too much time reading the news online. I cannot seem to settle on much of anything I am reading. Sometimes I get halfway through a book and lose interest. I have had little to no luck reading anything other than short or frothy novels, mainly for NetGalley.

>187 LadyoftheLodge: Frothy is definitely good right now. I'm reading some Literature at the moment--but I'm also reading a freebie Kindle suspense story!

>185 NinieB: This sounds like it would probably be up my alley...can't decide if I love or hate the name Drury Lane, though! :)

>189 christina_reads: He says he was named for the theatre in London.

I'll just mention again that it's on the long side, I think about 350 pages. But don't let me talk you out of reading it!

It's been a slow reading month, but I've finally finished another book, Five Red Herrings by Dorothy L. Sayers. I have been reading a bit more most nights, and it is longish.

The Scottish accent is difficult to read, and all the bicycle shenanigans are bewildering. But Lord Peter's explanation makes so much sense; why wasn't it obvious to this reader? Because of the smoke and mirrors, of course!

I'm also working on a lengthy novel from South America which I hope to finish before the end of the month.

I see I never made a note of Trust No One by Debra Webb, which I picked up as an ebook from Amazon Prime Reads. It is the only book I've read this year that is published this year., so it fills the 2020 square for BingoDOG.

How was the book? Readable, not great. It stars police detective Kerri Devlin, of Birmingham, Alabama. She has been assigned a new partner, Falco, at the beginning, and she's not sure about him; her teen daughter is in a nasty phase; and then there's the murder of a politically connected tech millionaire and the disappearance of his pregnant wife. As events unfold, coincidences start to multiply and I had to suspend disbelief more than once.

It's taken me a couple--three?--weeks to read, but tonight I finished The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende. I selected it because Allende is Chilean and the story is set in a country that strongly resembles Chile, which fits this month's GeoCAT. It turns out to have been especially good choice because the location matters. The novel is in some ways the history of Latin America in the 20th century, with the power of landowners giving way to socialism, giving way to right-wing dictatorships.

More specifically, it is the story of four generations of women, starting with Nívea, then her daughter Clara, granddaughter Blanca, and great-granddaughter Alba. Many characters intertwine with their lives, the most important being Esteban Trueba, landowner and senator, husband of Clara, father and grandfather of Blanca and Alba.

The story starts in what seems like an almost mythical time, the turn of the 20th century. The rest of the world is very far away, but becomes closer as the century progresses. Clara's magical powers make the house of the Truebas the house of the spirits of the title. The last quarter of the book is overwhelmed by the political circumstances of Chile, which makes for some very painful reading.

This novel is overwhelming and alive, and I can't do it justice. I hope to read more by Allende soon.

>193 NinieB: I read this in high school... I want to say my senior year. Definitely a lot to think about in it!

>193 NinieB: After your review, I'm putting this on the wish list. It's hard to come by in Australia - not available as an ebook, not in stock at local bookshops - so it could sit there a while.

>194 rabbitprincess: *So much* to think about! I found the texture of everyday life especially richly described as well; I always like that in a book.

>195 pamelad: Used copies are easily come by here—I think it was a bestseller. I hope it crosses your path soon!

For bedtime reading (as it's on my iPad) I read an uncorrected proof for a 2021 publication from Berkley, which I received through NetGalley. Apparently the book, The Perfect Guests by Emma Rous, was published in England in 2020. I hardly ever bother with NetGalley but the plug from the publisher sounded intriguing:

"1988. Beth Soames is fourteen years old when her aunt takes her to stay at Raven Hall, a rambling manor in the isolated East Anglian fens. The Averells, the family who lives there, are warm and welcoming, and Beth becomes fast friends with their daughter, Nina. At times, Beth even feels like she's truly part of the family...until they ask her to help them with a harmless game—and nothing is ever the same.

"2019. Sadie Langton is an actress struggling to make ends meet when she lands a well-paying gig to pretend to be a guest at a weekend party. She is sent a suitcase of clothing, a dossier outlining the role she is to play, and instructions. It's strange, but she needs the money, and when she sees the stunning manor she'll be staying at, she figures she’s got nothing to lose."

There's more, but you get the idea. Initially it was good reading. We have Beth's story, told in the first person past tense, and Sadie's story, told in the third person present tense, and an unknown woman's story, all being told in turn. It's clearly indicated each time that the voice is shifting, so there's no confusion (although the identity of the unknown woman is mysterious, in a good way).

While we continue to feel suspense because we're told that *something happened* at the end of Beth's story, of course we're not told what it is. The telling itself, however, doesn't lend much to the suspense. And then the way the present-day story develops is . . . disappointing, to say the least.

I hardly ever give less than 3 stars to a book, but this one got 2.5.

Having read some lengthy good books and a not-so-good new book, I read the short story anthology Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives over the last few days for ScaredyKIT's femme fatale category. Probably the women in Vera Caspary's "Sugar and Spice" were the closest to my idea of a femme fatale, basically a siren. I found the Dorothy Salisbury Davis a bit odd, as it barely has a woman in it. Another LT reviewer comments that the story introductions contain spoilers, so I'm glad I read them after the stories. These are good stories that have fully held up in the 40-80 years since they were first published.

I read Anthony Horowitz's first Sherlockian novel, The House of Silk (so, a historical mystery for July MysteryKIT). I mostly agree with the reviews saying he did a good job writing as Conan Doyle did. But Watson seems to have developed a social conscience which I don't remember from the original stories. Some clever work by Holmes and Watson makes the book enjoyable.

>185 NinieB:

A very belated visit, and there is no end of things on this thread I should be commenting upon, but just for now I will confine myself to the observation that the one constant of early American mysteries is that the police are astonishingly stupid. :)

That ties to a question that occurred to me recently and I thought you might be able to help with: it seems to me that there are no American series with policemen-heroes; they seem to have gone from cosy mysteries that copy the British model to hardboiled private eye stories to realistic police procedurals like Ed McBain's 87th Precinct books without ever having a police detective as a series detective.

And while in terms of British mysteries we do tend to think of amateurs like Peter Wimsey and private investigators like Hercule Poirot, at the same time there are literally dozens of series featuring smart, competent police detectives.

I suppose this speaks to the other great constant of early American mysteries, that political and legal corruption is rife, everyone is one the take, and no-one in authority can be trusted; but I keep thinking there must be at least one exception. Can you think of any?

>200 lyzard: Why yes, I can!

A couple I've actually read:
* Helen Reilly was very popular in the 1930s and continued writing into the 1960s. She usually wrote about Inspector Christopher McKee of the NYPD. The couple I read weren't very memorable.

* The detective heroes of The Eye of Lucifer by Frederic Van de Water are police in upstate New York (away from New York City). I understand that Van de Water wrote other mysteries about New York state police, but sadly Lucifer did not make me want to seek them out.

A couple of American police detectives that the critics of the 20s and 30s loved, but that I haven't read:

* Rufus King's Lieutenant Valcour started detecting in 1929 in Murder by the Clock.
* Anthony Abbot's Thatcher Colt began detecting in 1931. In reviewing the first book, About the Murder of Geraldine Foster, the New York Times critic said: "This book plainly is written by one who knows the New York Police Department thoroughly and who has admiration for the rank and file."
* George Bagby wrote numerous Inspector Schmidt mysteries starting in 1935 (Murder at the Piano).

And finally, while Ellery Queen is an amateur detective, his father is Inspector Richard Queen of the NYPD, and Ellery works very closely with his father at least in the first period of his books. Inspector Queen is both smart and competent . . . but Ellery is smarter.

I would say the political and legal corruption is the American hardboiled constant, rather than the American mystery constant.

I highly recommend Murder for Pleasure by Howard Haycraft for its picture of American mystery writing up to 1942, even though he brushes off the Mary Roberts Rinehart school.

>200 lyzard: The John Ceepak mysteries (by Chris Grabenstein) is a series featuring a military MP who becomes a policeman at a seaside resort in NJ. The stories are told from his junior partner's POV and are entertaining with quotes from Bruce Springsteen songs and a light touch of humor here and there. The first couple of books feel like great Summer reads, but Danny Boyle (the junior partner) does get a little overly sarcastic/slightly cynical over the course of the 8-book series. They also get a bit dark. I wouldn't call them gritty, but they are a far cry from cozies! But the main point here is that John Ceepak is a good cop, one who holds to a strict code of honor and, who holds those close to him into account as well.

>200 lyzard: Michael Connolly's Harry Bosch is a contemporary series cop, flawed but not corrupt.

An earlier intelligent policeman is Detective Lance O'Leary, in Mignon G. Eberhart's Sarah Keate series, which starts in 1929 with The Patient in Room 18. I much prefer the capable and practical Sarah Keate to the distressed orphans of Eberhart's later books.

>201 NinieB:, >202 Tanya-dogearedcopy:, >203 pamelad:

Thanks, that's very helpful!

It still seems, though, that in the "Golden Age" American police-detectives are the exception rather than the rule. I could rattle off a couple of dozen British coppers but here there seems to be a reluctance to position a policeman as a hero.

It's interesting and a little bizarre reading the American cosies of the 20s, which are so obviously copied from the British model, and yet are dealing with such a vastly different milieu and political / legal system. The police are called in when a murder occurs but in so many of these mysteries its assumed (or demonstrated) that the police will never solve the crime, which is the cue for the "real" detective to appear.

From my reading so far it seems that the detective is more likely to be "attached" to the police than a policeman outright, as in some of the examples given here: a special investigator of some kind (often with the DA's office, not the police per se), or someone who collaborates with the police, rather than being wholly "of" the police.

Even when you get a competent, helpful policeman, he's more likely to be a supporting character than the main detective (as in the Queen and Eberhart examples given).

And while corruption is a major element in the hardboiled genre, I find it unnervingly pervasive in the earlier cosy mysteries too, something that is just taken for granted in the background---as are police violence and the third degree.

I guess if that was the conception of the police and legal system at the time, the absence of police heroes isn't altogether surprising!

>203 pamelad:

I'm still trying to wrap up the Sarah Keate books; I haven't made it to the distressed orphans phase---eep! :D

>204 lyzard: Have you read any of the King, Abbot, or Bagby series? I'm quite curious about all of them, but since they are so scarce (at least the early books) I have never read them.

My second book finished in August (finally) is Have His Carcase. The Lord Peter group read continues to be a highlight of my reading year. I had never read this one before--always scared off, I think, by its length. It being so lengthy, it's only fitting that here one gets two classic detective-story techniques: the unbreakable alibi and the message in cipher. I took particular pleasure also in the running commentary from Harriet Vane's perspective on how a detective-story writer would approach the various problems that Peter and Harriet encounter in trying to solve the mystery of Paul Alexis's death, including how certain writers had actually approached the problems.

Hi, Ninie! As I was scrolling down my eyes caught you are from upstate NY. About 5 years ago I won a scholarship to study the Shakers and we spent time in Loudonville, Watervliet, and Saratoga. Very pretty areas.

>205 NinieB:

I have started Abbot's Thatcher Colt series but stalled when (at that time) the books became impossible to get. They've since been reissued so I expect to pick it up again---though since that time I have become more aware of the fact they draw upon famous real-life cases so I may start over with that in mind.

Colt is the Police Commissioner, but while the books discuss "real police work" there is still an amateur-detective vibe with Colt doing his own thing rather than being a "real" policeman.

I haven't gotten to the King books yet, though they're on my lists (and probably awaiting the appropriate TIOLI challenge to get started!); the Bagby books I was unaware of, so thank you for that! :)

>206 NinieB:

I read John Rhode's Peril At Cranbury Hall - which is where Sayers borrowed the Playfair cipher from - after I read Have His Carcase, and I must say I found Rhode's explanation of it a lot easier to follow! :D

Last month I was inspired to work on some lists of titles that would help me participate in more CATS and KITS, as well as satisfy my own challenges. After finishing this month's Lord Peter, I spent some time reviewing those lists and decided to read something out of the ordinary for me--the libretto of a Chinese revolutionary opera, The White-Haired Girl by Ho Ching-chih & Ting Yi. You may be familiar with the title, because the story has ballet and film versions (in film in 1950 and again in 2014). The story is said to be a modern folk tale arising out of bad peasant conditions, especially for women, in China immediately prior to the Revolution. At under 100 pages, the libretto is a quick read.

>208 lyzard: There are some others that I have seen mentions of from a bit later in the 30s. Way less than the British, though! Hugh Austin's Peter Quint is a policeman (location unknown). And there's a Hawaiian cop, Komako Koa, written by a Max Long.

>209 lyzard: Rhode probably described it more concisely.

>211 NinieB:

Great, thanks! I don't think I've heard of either of those before.

BTW I've just finished writing up Octavus Roy Cohen's Six Seconds Of Darkness, from 1918, which is a perfect example of the kind of thing I'm talking about: a civic reformer gets murdered and the Commissioner appoints a private investigator to lead the investigation because he can't trust his own police.

Just clearer, from memory. But perhaps Sayers was assuming that her readers were also reading Rhode? :D

>212 lyzard: Yes I saw that review and it sounded quite interesting. Also very American!

>213 NinieB:

Very, right down to the Irish accents of most of the cops! :D

I read one of the early Maigrets by Georges Simenon sometime last year, and since then I've bought a few more. I decided to try to read them in publication order. Internet Archive helpfully provided me with a copy of Maigret and the Enigmatic Lett, one of the many English titles of the first. This first Maigret, while it seemingly is a police procedural, nonetheless emphasizes the psychological approach that Maigret is famous for. Indeed, he learns much about the psychological relationship between two of the characters by examining photographs of them together in childhood and young adulthood.

The fundamental puzzle is presented in the first chapter: The story opens with Maigret reviewing telegrams from Interpol describing a suspected criminal who is heading to France. He sees someone matching this description leaving the train station. But he also finds a body on the train that matches the description . . . .

I'm looking forward to number 2, known in the original French as Le Charretier de "la Providence".

I am waffling between 3 and 3.5 stars for Death Takes an Option by Neil MacNeil, a pen name of pulp writer Willis Todhunter Ballard. In this Gold Medal from 1958, our heroes are Tony Costaine and Bert McCall in their first of five outings. Their back story, only briefly alluded to, is time together in the OSS (predecessor to the CIA) and the FBI, with Costaine also having a law degree, but now they own a high-price detective agency. Marcus Cadby, CEO of a mining equipment company that has moved into mining itself, hires the agency to investigate why his long-time auditor has committed suicide, after abruptly selling his large stake in the publicly held company. The shortish novel moves quickly, with the scene shifting quickly from New York to Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Quite a bit of time is spent in a rough mining camp in New Mexico as well. Beautiful blondes and shady businessmen populate the gambling tables and boardroom. On the plus side, the pacing is excellent and the ambience of business and Las Vegas in the '50s is ever-present. On the minus side, the solution is predictable.

I've mostly not participated in Non-FictionCAT this year, but as a fan of history I was eager to read one of the many books on my shelf for this month's theme. I selected A History of Modern France. Vol. 1, 1715-1799 to get a better understanding of the French Revolution. This volume also had its plusses and minusses.

Certainly I know more about the French Revolution and the ancien régime that preceded it, as well as the Revolution's underlying causes, than I did before. The writing was quite good with some striking one-sentence characterizations of a few of (what seemed like hundreds of) the historical figures. For example, from the beginning of chapter 3 of part 1: "The duc de Bourbon was ugly, blind in one eye, bandy-legged and stupid . . . ."

I knew very little about the period, though, and while I recognized many names, the roles of these figures were previously unknown to me. As the book was apparently written for someone who knows much more than I do, I had difficulty following some of the points the author made in part because his casual references to many events and personalities went right over my head. Since this book was one of the Pelican series I had hoped it would be pitched at readers with less knowledge.

I don't read many serial-killer stories, but since I had enjoyed a couple in the Dexter series earlier this summer, I plunged forward with number 3, Dexter in the Dark, for ScaredyKIT. (That's another KIT I haven't spent much time in this year.) Three things stood out. First, this story has a supernatural aspect, unlike the previous two in the series. Second, it's become clearer that the book Dexter and the TV show Dexter have diverged quite a bit in personality. Third, while just like the first two in the series this story features serial-killer slayings, they were a bit less graphic or gory than in the previous volume.

Bear's Fantasies by Greg Bear includes six stories of fantasy/horror. I read the first four in May and the last two tonight. The last one is set in a future Notre Dame Cathedral, after the Mortdieu (death of God) when (among many other things) all the gargoyles, statutes, and so forth at the cathedral have come alive, had children with nuns, and the world is in something of a dark age. Quite interesting and intriguing fantasy.

Rogue Protocol is, I think, the best of Martha Wells's Murderbot series so far. I read a few of the LT reviews and reviewers were split. I felt like the pacing was better than in previous entries, and the ending was suitably brief but with a huge impact.

>217 NinieB: Hm, good to know. I am on the hunt for a history of France but that one might not fit the bill.

>218 NinieB: I often find the TV series start off faithfully following a series but then head off in a different direction. I actually like this as then I can still read the series and be surprised, and enjoy the TV show and not know what is about to happen. Most recently I watched the Longmire series and loved it, and I am still reading the series and being surprised. I loved the filmed version of the Dexter series but I haven't had the urge to read the series.

>221 rabbitprincess: It's hard to explain just how disoriented I was through most of this book. In fact it says something about the quality of the writing that I nevertheless kept plugging away. I suppose I could have supplemented by looking up people online, but I didn't want to go off on a tangent.

>222 DeltaQueen50: What I didn't explain, Judy, was that the plots in Dexter the TV series, after the first season, don't just differ in how his personality is a bit different. The plots are totally, completely, not the plots in the books. While the first season takes its plot from the book, it diverges pretty significantly. So Dexter is a character you can enjoy both in a tv show and in a book series and you will not encounter much overlap.

When I read Rogue Protocol I counted it for July's Space Opera SFF-KIT. So, of course, I had to go ahead and read Exit Strategy for August SFF-KIT (women authors). I liked it quite a bit but (for me) it didn't reach the heights of Rogue Protocol.

I have been on a reading binge, apparently--I finished five books in the last week of August and have not yet reported and categorized here. Time for a little catch-up!

The LT reviews and ratings for The Governess by H. R. F. Keating writing as Evelyn Hervey are overall terrible (not that it's widely read). (Random thought: It seems odd to me that books from the '80s are now frequently viewed as dated; showing my age I guess.) While I won't pretend that the book is anything special, I don't think it deserves some of the hate it's received. In this historical detective story, our heroine is Miss Harriet Unwin, who has clawed her way up from a childhood as an orphan in a parish workhouse to respectability as a governess. Miss Unwin (as she is called throughout the book) is motivated to solve the mystery of who murdered her employer first by her own desperation to avoid sliding back out of respectability, and only second by the unfortunate fact that police and public suspicions have settled on herself.

I will emphasize that this is a light mystery of especial interest to those interested in how life was lived in Victorian London. Don't expect any noirish overtones. The tone is somewhat ironic throughout.

Hilda Lawrence, an American, wrote several well-regarded mysteries in the 1940s. Unlike most of the era's mysteries, they have been reprinted over the years. Nonetheless I read Blood upon the Snow in a Detective Book Club edition (bound three books to one volume) from shortly after the book's original publication in 1944. The story takes place in a large house in or near, most likely, the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. Snow is on the ground throughout (although curiously I don't recall any actual blood being noticed on the snow). Mark East, detective of New York City, has been hired by mail as a secretary by old Mr. Stone, guest in the household of the Morey family. When East arrives at the house, Stone claims he made a mistake and thought East was a secretary--but East suspects Stone really wants a bodyguard. A dismal gloom seems to hang over the household. The sudden death of the cook in a fire at the house only increases East's suspicions that something is very wrong.

I thought this was a very good story. Certainly I never guessed what, exactly, was wrong in the Morey household. On the downside, I'm not sure how Mark East figured it out either!

In the same DBC edition I found--and read--Pattern for Murder by Ione Sandberg Shriber. Unlike Lawrence, Shriber has fallen into a black hole in the last 75 years.

When the story opens, Katy Sturtevant is on a train arriving in Cleveland, Ohio, summoned to be the maid of honor at the wedding of her college roommate, Shannon Meade. What Katy finds out when she arrives in Cleveland is that Shannon, a beautiful 24-year-old, is marrying her former guardian, Dr. David Hunt, who is in his 50s. Even more surprising to Katy is that the marriage will make Shannon the stepmother-in-law of her former sweetheart, Mark Frost, husband of Dr. Hunt's daughter Maria. But the surprises keep coming: Mark and Maria have just lost a baby son, even though Maria seems too young to have had and lost a child. What Katy sees over the next couple of days, leading up to the rehearsal the night before the wedding, makes her very worried about Shannon's future happiness. Disaster strikes shortly before the rehearsal.

I have to say that I thought Pattern for Murder was just as good as Blood upon the Snow, and quite possibly--when judged on the classic detective story's requirements of clues and fair play--better. Both involve a beautiful large house in a scenic location (the house in Pattern for Murder is situated on the shore of Lake Erie), both have mysterious emotional currents that the lead character is puzzled by, both are well written.

When the power went out on Saturday night I had to read something on my laptop computer, since we don't seem to have any emergency lighting available. (Yes, I'm adding that to the shopping list.) A few months ago I discovered a PDF of The Tragedy of Y by Barnaby Ross on archive.org and had downloaded it for reading, so I was set. By the time the power came back on, I was hooked on the story of the Hatter family of New York City. Although they are wealthy, several of the "mad Hatters" seem to show signs of a taint in the blood. Mother Emily is as nasty and domineering as they come, son Conrad is an alcoholic, daughter Jill is a "hedonist" who routinely stays out all night partying, daughter Louisa is deaf, dumb, and blind, grandson Jackie is an undisciplined juvenile delinquent. With such an unpleasant family, no wonder henpecked father York's body is found floating in New York harbor at the beginning of the tale. But worse is yet to come--someone, apparently in the family, puts poison in Louisa's daily eggnog (she survives), and then Emily is killed in the middle of the night. Louisa despite her lack of two senses is able to provide clues using two other senses. But the police, baffled by the poison in Louisa's eggnog, have already called in brilliant former actor Drury Lane to apply flawless logic to the problem.

This one had really good pacing. The previous in the series, The Tragedy of X, felt long. This one was just as long, but it moved better. I am a little dubious about some of the logic, but no doubt for lovers of a pure detective story this is a must-read.

I'm now at the point in the year where I'm carefully trying to fill holes in my reading. Remember, I'm trying to finish up my >2 NinieB: Century of Reading by the end of the year, and I still have several Bingo squares to fill. The Governess (>227 NinieB:) filled the 1983 slot in the Century, and the next in the series, The Man of Gold, both fills the 1985 slot and lets me mark off the Bingo square for a periodical element in the title. (I would have loved to do something more obscure for this square, but I really am trying to read more of my own books! Plus I doubt I can find a book with an obscure element in the title that I want to read.)

In The Man of Gold, Miss Unswin needs a new job after the unfortunate events in The Governess. When she interviews for a governess position with Richard Partington, she accepts, even though the salary is more suitable for a housemaid than a governess. The pitiful neglect of the twin daughters, Maria and Louisa, reminds her of her own workhouse days. And there's something about Richard himself. Her first days in the job are disheartening, because Richard's father, who is the head of the household and who pays her salary, is an unpleasant, obsessively penurious old man who freezes and starves his family. She stays, though, as her attraction to Richard, and his attraction to her, increase. Old Mr Partington is suffering from ill health, which terminates in his sudden death. Miss Unswin finds herself once again detecting.

Fundamentally, another very light read, enjoyable enough as a quick entertainment but not something I'd go out of my way to read. Many of those pesky "But why didn't s/he do that before . . . ?" questions kept floating through my mind.

>228 NinieB: Back in 2008 I gave Hilda Lawrence's Death of a Doll 4.5 stars, so I'll definitely look out for Blood upon the Snow.

>232 pamelad: I read that one a long time ago, and her The Pavilion much more recently. The Pavilion is Gothic. Blood upon the Snow is much more in the style of Death of a Doll.

Looks like a great batch of reading!

>234 rabbitprincess: Yes, they all sucked me in. Much pleasurable reading!

I continued the pleasure reading trend with Wild Strawberries by Angela Thirkell. It was very funny and quite sweet too. I did find myself wondering--were young women of Mary's class really as naïve as she seemed to be?

Cop Hater by Ed McBain was one of the best mystery books of 1956, according to the New York Times. Funny thing is that it was a 25 cent paperback. The author, Ed McBain, had conceived a new idea in mystery fiction--an entire squad room of detectives as the series character. McBain (aka Evan Hunter) went on to write more than 50 mysteries starring the 87th Precinct in the new subgenre of the police procedural.

This book was a re-read, although I admit I didn't really remember the plot at all. I couldn't resist the temptation of reading the first Ed McBain for AlphaKIT's ME month. At 165 pages, it was another one-evening read for me.

>228 NinieB: I've never heard of Hilda Lawrence, but Blood Upon the Snow looks like something I'd like. Onto the wishlist it goes...

>238 antqueen: Great! It really is quite good.

I was browsing in an old "Guide to Reading" last night and came across a recommendation for a short story by Turgenev. Never having read any Turgenev, I found it online and started reading. The Song of Triumphant Love by Ivan Turgenev is set in Ferrara, Italy in the 16th century. A love triangle is initially resolved by the girl choosing her preferred suitor and the other going traveling. When he returns he has changed. With more than a touch of the supernatural, this story is fast reading at 20 pages and I expect that, like me, you will want to keep reading to find out what happens.

Because of the Cats was Nicolas Freeling's second crime story featuring Inspector Van der Valk, an Amsterdam cop. Assigned to the "children and morals" department, he investigates a series of incidents in which a gang of teenage boys break into Amsterdam apartments and vandalize, and in one instance attack the couple who come home early from their evening out. Van der Valk becomes suspicious of a group of young men in the new seaside town of Bloemandaal in the province of North Holland.

My feelings about the book changed for the better as I read. The major flaw in the story is how Van der Valk comes to focus on the young people in Bloemandaal. The major strength is Freeling's novelistic portrayal of modern family life in a prosperous Dutch town. Modern, I should say, as of the early 1960s.

On impulse I grabbed a beat-up old copy of Ice Station Zebra out of a recycling bin this weekend and gobbled it down for September GeoCAT, Polar and tundra. Most of the novel takes place on a nuclear submarine under and on the polar icecap. The narrator, Dr. Carpenter, is a last-minute passenger on the USS Dolphin when it is about to leave Scotland for the Arctic to rescue the survivors of a terrible fire at an Arctic meteorological station. Dr. Carpenter tells us what he tells the ship's captain, and drops hints to us that he's not telling the full story, but this being a suspense novel he doesn't tell us what's really going on. He's really just carrying on the long tradition of detectives who don't reveal their deductions until the end because--this has a real murder mystery, and detection, in it!

I thought I was getting an exciting suspense/adventure story, which it most definitely was. It's also a predecessor of Tom Clancy, with lots of science and technology to wow the reader. I kind of skimmed when the science was being explained, or at least I didn't really try to understand it. That would have slowed me down. But the detection was like a lovely bonus that led me to give Ice Station Zebra 4.5 stars--a very high mark for me.

>242 NinieB: This was one of my favourite MacLeans, right up there with The Guns of Navarone :)

>243 rabbitprincess: MacLean is not an author I've read before. I'm glad I went with the impulse!

>233 NinieB: I just read Blood Upon the Snow and enjoyed it. Thank you.

I'm about to start John and Emery Bonnett's The Private Face of Murder. Have you read any of theirs?

>245 pamelad: Is Blood upon the Snow your RandomCAT recommendation? Glad you liked it!

I read A Banner for Pegasus a few years ago and have wanted to read more by them ever since! but they are a bit scarce. It was humorous; a film company shoots on location in a small village.

Update: I saw on your thread that you encountered anti-Semitism in The Private Face of Murder. I don't remember anything like that in Pegasus . . .

>246 NinieB: I've been having a break from the CATs, with the exception of the Non-fiction CAT, but Blood Upon the Snow would definitely work for the RandomCAT this month. At the moment I'm happy to find anything that engages my attention enough to finish it.

I also liked A Banner for Pegasus. It was just a throw-away anti-Semitic line in The Private Face of Murder, but it was too early in the book. If I'm already well into a vintage mystery, I'll put the snobbery, racism, xenophobia and religious prejudice down to different times, different views, and keep reading. Talking of snobbery, I see you've recently read an Angela Thirkell! I find her very amusing in small doses.

>247 pamelad: Sorry your attention has been so unengaged! I've had trouble reading this year too. In fact, the last few weeks are the most engaged I've been and I can't figure out why. How is the lockdown in Melbourne? Any sign it will let up?

I am with you on the vintage mysteries and fiction--I can read past it but it can be a real turn-off up front.

I enjoyed Wild Strawberries and gave it 4 stars, and I'm planning to read the next one (The Demon in the House) soon. It has to come via library transfer which will be slow because of book quarantining. But . . . in Strawberries one of the main characters, Lady Emily, creates so much work for everyone with her ditzy-ness, yet everyone loves her, servants included. While realism is obviously not the point, this running joke got a bit worn when I thought about how annoying it can be to work for someone who needs constant tidying-up, so to speak.

The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron is frequently named as one of the best travel narratives. Published in 1937, it is the story of Byron's travels in Iran and Afghanistan in the mid '30s. Both Iran (then called Persia) and Afghanistan were attempting to modernize but the roads were unreliable, to say the least, and in Afghanistan the political situation with the Soviet Union on the north and British India on the south was unstable. Byron was on the hunt for the magnificent religious architecture of the past millennium in both countries. He also had a desire to see the country around the Oxus river, aka Amu Darya, in Afghanistan, once known as Oxiana. He succeeded in both quests, although he never actually saw the Amu Darya itself, as Afghanistan would not allow an Englishman to go near the Soviet Union. To see one of the monuments in Persia he had to disguise himself as a Persian.

Byron is a highly amusing traveling companion with a strong personality. As a reader, I was amused that he apparently carried a large number of books with him; late in the journey, he bemoans the fact that he has finished all the detective stories and is down to the classics (he is reading Thucydides).

I wish I had taken more time to read the book by looking for pictures online to match his detailed descriptions of the architecture. No pictures were necessary for the landscapes he saw, as his word-paintings were amazing.

Just stopping by to say hi and check out your progress with BingoDog. You are really close to finishing! :-)

Updated on October 21

I keep obsessing over how I'm going to finish up some of my challenges for this year. Here are some notes of books I might read to plug the gaps:

Century challenge:
1921: The Borough Treasurer or Joanna Godden
1923: The Conquered, Weeds
1925: The Monster by Harrington Hext, Cold Harbour, Herbs and Apples, The Axe
1935: Gaudy Night
1960: The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte, The Waste Makers, The Man in the Cage
1967: Skeleton Island, Tell Morning This
1968: Miss Anna, The Pacific Book of Australian SF, The Quest for Arthur's Britain
1989: Thornyhold, A Wicked Slice
1991: A Midwife's Tale, The Secret Life of Wilkie Collins, Candyfloss Coast
1996: A History of Reading, The Bad Detective, Diamond Head, The Sunken Road
1998: Live Bodies, Duo, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
2006: Historic Houses of Virginia, Historic New York, James Archambeault's Historic Kentucky, The Janissary Tree, Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way, Mason-Dixon Knitting

BingoDOG:
weird title: Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way, The Fair Garden and the Swarm of Beasts, Weird Heroes. Vol. 1, Rivals of Weird Tales
library or thing: The Fair Garden and the Swarm of Beasts, The Manley Art of Librarianship, The Worst Thing, In Small Things Forgotten

SFFKIT
International: The Pacific Book of Australian SF, Aurora, The Hearing Trumpet, Sylva
Classics (October): Doomsday Book
Dystopia (November): The Maze Runner
Short Fiction: The Pacific Book of Australian SF, Flowers from the Moon and Other Lunacies, Robots Have No Tails, The Best of Cemetery Dance vol. 2, Billenium, Bug-Eyed Monsters, When the World Screamed and Other Stories, Weird Heroes vol. 1

NonfictionCAT
Philosophy and religion (September): The Last Days of Socrates
The Arts (October): Pre-Raphaelites at Home, Provenance, Two Temple Place, Harem, New Worlds from Old, Pleasure of Ruins, Five Decades of the Burin, Bernard Maybeck, Skeletons from the Opera Closet, Bach, Beethoven, and the Boys, German Song, Son of Gun in Cheek
Food, home, and recreation: The Subversive Stitch, An Illustrated History of Needlework Tools, Barbarian Days
Adventures by land, sea, or air

GeoCAT
North Africa: The Golden Ass, Wind, Sand and Stars, Description of Egypt
Middle East: Harem, The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan, The Desert and the Sown
Other Africa (November): The Flame Trees of Thika, Segu, To the Heart of the Nile, The Steam Pig, Splendid Outcast, The Prophet's Camel Bell, The Barboza Credentials

RandomCAT
Recommendations: The Iron King, Arctic Dreams
Healthcare heroes (October): Wolf in Man's Clothing, Prison Nurse, Doctor on Trial
Lest We Forget (November): Ruth Fielding at the War Front, The 39 Steps, D'Ri and I, Drums along the Mohawk, Sergeant Lamb's America, The Spanish Bride, Barometer Rising, The Raft, A European Education, Murder by Matchlight, Grey Mistress, Great Escape Stories, The Revolution Remembered, Liberty's Daughters, Obasan, Season of the Jew, Igniting King Philip's War, Unbroken, The Rest Is Silence

ScaredyKIT
International (September): Revenge, Apparitions
Halloween (October): Hallowe'en Party
Classics (November): Tales of the Uncanny and Supernatural, Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder, The Dunwich Horror and Others, The Dark Beasts and Eight Other Stories from The Hounds of Tindalos, The Uninvited

TravelKIT
Festivals and events (September): Mardi Gras Murder, Death of a Voodoo Doll
Related to food or drink from a specific location/country/region (October): Christmas Pudding, Ill Met by a Fish Shop on George Street, The Corpse at the Haworth Tandoori
Living in a New Country (November): At Home in India, The Prophet's Camel Bell, Mary of Maranoa, Harry Heathcote of Gangoil, Distant Land, Colonial Voices, Roughing It in the Bush, The Innocent Traveller, The Winter Queen, Station Life in New Zealand
Related to a Place You Would Like to Visit: Treacherous Ground, Death in a Cold Climate, Alberta and Jacob, The Snake

AlphaKIT
DV (October): Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys, The Caveman's Valentine, The Vet's Daughter, The House of Dies Drear, The Devil Drives, Into the Valley of Death, The Vinyl Detective, Lawrence Vane,
QI (November): A Question of Identity, A Question of Inheritance, Imagined London by Anna Quindlen

>250 This-n-That: Thanks for stopping by! Yes, I just have a few left to read. As you can see in >251 NinieB: I'm thinking about how to fill them.

The Year of the Monkey is a light mystery set in New York's business district near Chinatown. Bonnie Indermill lost her last job after some unfortunate events at the law firm she worked at. Now she being trained to do . . . something with purchase-leaseback transactions. The problem is no one's actuallty training her. Boss Eddie is too busy flirting with his boss, Carol, while at the same time romancing Amanda, secretary to the CEO. Bonnie is catching up on her detective story reading while keeping her ear to the gossip grapevine, and getting very friendly with a handsome Dane in the graphics department.

All around fun read that doesn't tax the brain cells too much.

I can certainly recommend The Iron King by Maurice Druon. All the books in that series I have found really interesting.

>255 Tess_W: Now two recommendations for The Iron King! I am going to have trouble getting my September reading done . . .

Finally got the Ellery Queen I skipped from the library. The Dutch Shoe Mystery takes place in a New York City hospital. The pace is brisk and the book about about the right length. All the reasoning is actually rather straightforward. I would rate it higher but for one logical failure: How did the nurse put the men's pants on over her skirt?

I am not really making progress on any of my specific goals this year, but I'm having fun reading old mysteries. The Arrow Points to Murder by Frederica de Laguna is a Golden Age amateur detective story about murders in the fictional New York Academy of Natural Sciences, a cross between the American Museum of Natural History and the University of Pennsylvania's natural history museum. Dr. Richard Barton, an archaeologist, is shocked when his museum's director is killed by the curare on the tip of a South American arrow. He realizes it was murder when his colleague Dr. Marshall dies as well.

Author Frederica de Laguna wrote two detective stories in the late 1930s, both drawing on her professional experience as an anthropologist, and both receiving high praise from mystery reviewers of the time. This first one was well worth reading. I now want to read the second as well!

I've been enjoying reading your reviews of old mysteries! :)

>259 rabbitprincess: I'm so glad! Anything you love is worth talking about, old mysteries included--nice to have appreciative listeners.

Hi there! Sorry to have been away so long, just catching up with you. I loved reading about your selections, especially the old mysteries. Definitely invest in the emergency lighting for when the power goes off. I have never regretted spending money on my generator.

>261 LadyoftheLodge: Hi Cheryl, thanks for stopping by! Maybe an old mystery will show up on your booklist one of these days!

The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington is an unusual blend of humor, myth, and fantasy. I suppose I'm calling it "unusual" because I didn't really understand it. The introduction by Helen Byatt convinced me I was out of my depth (fortunately I read it after reading the book).

Narrated by 92-year-old Marian Leatherby, it's the story of how Marian is sent to a home for old ladies where she encounters 9 other old ladies, a leering nun in a painting, the door to the underworld . . . Marian is a hoot with a devastatingly straightforward view of the world.

I stretched the "international SFF" theme in this month's SFF-KIT to include this book.

>263 NinieB: I loved The Hearing Trumpet. The friendship between Marian and Carmella made me very happy. That nun deserved what she got!

>264 pamelad: According to the introduction, the friendship with Carmella was based on Carrington's friendship with the sculptor Remedios Varo.

Last night I read The Iron King by Maurice Druon. This historical novel is my RandomCAT selection for the month as a recommendation by both rabbitprincess and Tess_W. I'm quite familiar with the history of English royalty--I read lots of Jean Plaidy historicals, among other things, when I was a teenager--but I know very little about medieval French royalty. Druon chose an exciting year in French history to begin his series about The Accursed Kings.

In 1314, Philip IV "The Fair" has a strong, powerful kingdom in France. He's apparently assured the succession, too, with his three sons married to three princesses from Burgundy. While they haven't produced any grandsons yet, it's just a matter of time. He's also made a powerful alliance by marrying his daughter Isabella to King Edward II of England. While Isabella is personally unhappy--Edward has a thing for young men--at least she's managed to have a son, Prince Edward.

In political arenas, Philip has spent the last seven years prosecuting the Knights Templar for heresy. When the story opens, the four leading Templars are about to have sentence pronounced upon them. This prosecution leads to a curse upon Philip, his right-hand man Nogaret, and the pope.

The rest of the novel concerns that eventful year and the playing out of the curse.

I am thinking of getting back to my Nero Wolfe books, so I guess those are oldies! I also recently found some Phyllis Whitney books are now in e-book version and acquired two of them that I had not read. I was an avid reader of Mary Stewart, Phyllis Whitney and Victoria Holt for years. Some of my hardback print books are the "book club" versions, still in good shape, but in some the print is really small. I have had some of them for almost 50 years, as I started to read them when I was in high school or college. They seem to have survived quite a few moves from one home or apartment to another.

>266 LadyoftheLodge: I'd like to read more Victoria Holt myself. I'd read a couple of Holt books way back in the 80's but loads more that she'd written as Jean Plaidy.

>266 LadyoftheLodge: >267 mathgirl40: I read both "Jean Plaidy" and "Victoria Holt" in the 80s!

>267 mathgirl40: >268 NinieB: I also read some Jean Plaidy. I think a few used copies are lurking about my shelves and crates, probably acquired at a library sale! It is good to find some kindred spirits here!

I have an opportunity to buy a number of Anthony Trollope Folio Society editions for an extremely reasonable price. I've never thought of myself as a book collector. I keep telling myself I can read these online, but they really are so pretty. Does any one else struggle with whether to buy books as objects?

>270 NinieB: I wanted to join the group read of The Magic Mountain and was mightily annoyed to find that there were no used copies available at my usual bookstores, and even abebooks was asking quite a lot for a decent copy. So I stood in a major bookstore chain and longingly eyed a pretty hardcover with a 1920-style cover image. What can I say? I bought it.

Technically my first book for October since I finished it in the wee hours of the morning of October 1 . . . . The Demon in the House, in which we return to the Morland household of High Rising. While the adults are mostly sane, several of them have a blind spot, Tony Morland, the titular demon. Tony is 13 but reminds me more of a 10-year-old. In at least the first part of the book I was wondering if my rating would be in the 2s because of his annoyance factor, compounded by the willingness of the adults to allow him to continue in this vein. Fortunately the second half was better (the chapter "Stokey Hole" having some really classic bits) and it's smooth sailing for the three.

In one of those unexplainable coincidences, while I was reading this Angela Thirkell tale, a friend gave me an old book, Goodbye Melbourne Town, otherwise bound for the recycling. She knows I look out for Australian things. It turned out to be a memoir by Graham McInnes, Angela Thirkell's son. Who knows? maybe even a model for Tony.

>265 NinieB: I just finished book 4 in this series, and still as good as the first one, to me!

>273 Tess_W: I am toying with the idea of just binge-reading through the series to get it out of my system!

As has become my habit, I turned to Lord Peter to start off the month of October. Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers presents Peter as a working man, assuming the alter ego of Death Bredon (his two middle names). While his copywriting for the firm of Pym Publicity comes along nicely, he also investigates the case of Victor Dean, who fell down an iron stairway at Pym's to his death. Victor seems to have been running with the notorious crowd of Dian de Momerie, so "Bredon" manages to get an introduction.

My favorite part of the book is that Sayers captures the gossipy world of an office with its shifting alliances to a T. I was less enthusiastic about the criminal plot. Even though Sayers no doubt wrote a much more intelligent dope-smuggling story than most of her competitors of the time, it still seemed artificial. I probably could have done without the play-by-play coverage of the cricket match, as well.

>275 NinieB: I totally agree about the dope-smuggling plot. It was very ingenious, and in fact a much more tightly plotted mystery than the murder. I liked it all the way up until the final reveal that the mastermind was Random Tobacconist Guy who appeared in only one scene.

>276 christina_reads: I like that--Random Tobacconist Guy! Yeah, he had no mastermind charisma, and your point in the other thread about the postal carrier continuing to deliver was a good one too!

The Transatlantic Ghost is the second mystery I read this month that was published in 1933 by an author named Dorothy. Unlike the first Dorothy (Sayers), I had never heard of Dorothy Gardiner until I bought this book a couple of months ago.

Retired New York police detective Mr. Watson is on his way around the world, heading for England, after inheriting 20,000 pounds. In California, he is invited to stay at the home of millionaire Gilson Hibbs. The home is unusual: it's a castle that Hibbs bought in Scotland and moved piece by piece to the southern California coast. Indeed, rumor has it that a ghost came with it from Scotland. Other house guests are Sir John Bleasdale, former owner of the castle; his nephew Larry; movie stars Lorena Lorton and Monty Monkhouse; Dr. Wilmot; and Mr. and Mrs. Ross. Hibbs' niece Kirstie and aunt Albertina live with him. The tension is high between Sir John and Hibbs, with Sir John accusing Hibbs of stealing an old trunk when he bought the castle and of lying about the ghost. Sir John, denying any ghost exists, agrees to spend 10 minutes in the room that the ghost frequents. No one will be surprised to learn that Sir John doesn't make it out of the room alive. Mr. Watson pledges to himself to find the true killer when Larry is arrested for the murder.

I liked Mr. Watson quite a bit, even though it's hard to believe from his reactions to some events that he was ever a police detective.

This month's AlphaKIT of letters D and V led me to Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys. This short novel is powerful—I think it will stay with me for a while.

Jane Spence Southron in the NY Times was very enthusiastic; I'm quoting her review as it expresses my own thoughts so well:

"The men who meet her {i.e., the protagonist} in the company of {prostitutes} regard her—and, eventually, treat her—as deserving of no better consideratlon. In reality she is a bewildered child, infinitely pitiable, made for love and human happiness; the sport of circumstances and the victim of hypocrites. * * * {B}rilliant, exotic pictures, {are} evoked ever and again in the midst of the sordid grayness of the scenes through which the girl ls moving * * * Aside altogether from its undeniable artistic excellence the book displays unusually broad sympathy and quite exceptional insight."

Another short novel, read in the wee hours: Prison Nurse by William Neubauer. The title sounds like some kind of cheesy erotica or romance but it's actually a Young Adult novel from 1962 in which the nurse in question works at a facility for female juvenile delinquents. The state facility, located in a fictional city in Washington state (probably based on Vancouver, Washington), has become a source of controversy in the city of Clairmount because it is in the heart of the city. Mayor Burke wants to attract a business from the east to the city to create jobs, and the facility's property would be perfect. When a gang of girls try to break out and beat up nurse Vivian Hartwell on their way, the city seizes upon the incident to try to drum up public support for ousting the facility. Vivian, however, wants the facility to stay. She also wants it to become truly a place of rehabilitation and not one of punishment and strict discipline.

Nursing is portrayed here as a glamorous profession, with a plug for social work as well. While Vivian is mostly an admirable role model for teenage girls, I didn't like her plans for the future: Getting married to her lawyer fiancé and quitting work.

>275 NinieB: - "I probably could have done without the play-by-play coverage of the cricket match, as well."

I had the same feelings about that part of the story!

>281 lkernagh: Yeah . . . It was one of those experiences where all the words made sense but the way they were used didn't.

That cricket match! And its only importance to the plot was to show that Tallboy had excellent aim, and to reveal Lord Peter's true identity. But I suppose some would say that's the beauty of the chapter!

While the ScaredyKIT this month encompassed Halloween or October, I decided the theme was a good excuse to reread Agatha Christie's Hallowe'en Party, one of the late period Hercule Poirot stories. It had been many, many years since I had read this book.

Mrs Ariadne Oliver is visiting a friend in Woodfield Common, a village about 40 miles from London. There she attends a children's Halloween Party. Present during the party's setting-up, she hears one of the children, Joyce, say that she saw a murder, apparently in an attempt to impress the famous mystery writer in their midst. After the party, Joyce is found dead, drowned in the apple-bobbing bucket. It's obviously murder. Mrs Oliver asks Poirot to investigate in Woodfield Common.

On the plus side, this story includes Mrs Oliver, with her funny musings on the art of and travails of mystery-writing. These are insights into Christie's own writing process and I treasure them. We have some well-drawn characters and some attractive passages of meditation on the power of beautiful gardens. We even learn about a trip Poirot took to Ireland and his sightseeing tour to an island garden there. The basic mystery plot is quite good, as well.

On the minus side, we hear repeatedly about the ills of modern-day life in 1969, especially the apparent rise in crime, the failure to bring up children right, and the approach to mental health care of leaving dangerous people in the community. It's the "repeatedly part" that's troublesome--did Christie not realize she was placing the same litany of complaint in the mouths of so many of the characters? Also, some complications of the basic mystery plot are never worked out clearly, with only half-realized ideas. We never see the police investigating, even though no one doubts that Joyce's death is murder.

Although I had the idea last month to read Hallowe'en Party, I was encouraged as well by its inclusion in "Top 10 Underrated Agatha Christie Novels", published this week in The Guardian.

>284 NinieB: I enjoyed that list from the Guardian, I still have a few Agatha Christie books to read for the first time and a couple of them appear on this list which makes me very happy.

>285 DeltaQueen50: How nice to have some new Christie to look forward to!

This past weekend I read Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. I learned about the book on the March KITastrophe thread. Warning: It's only for those who want to read about an epidemic/pandemic. That warning given, I really enjoyed this novel.

The "present day" in the novel is Oxford University in 2054. History faculties routinely send historians into the past for onsite work. The Middle Ages has always been closed to time travel as too dangerous, but an acting head manages to open it up, and a young woman undergraduate (Kivrin) eagerly volunteers. Many precautions are taken to ensure she doesn't get sick, because by 2054, at least one disastrous Pandemic has killed 65 million people. After she is sent back to 1320, though, another epidemic strikes Oxford: most crucially, the tech running the onsite becomes delirious with fever, and while he seems to be saying that something is wrong with the onsite work, he can't articulate what it is.

Meanwhile, back in the Middle Ages, Kivrin has herself been struck with a terrible fever soon after her arrival. When her fever reduces, she finds herself in a manor in the Oxfordshire countryside. She quickly becomes close to the family she is with. The problem is she does not know where to go to return to the present day.

Anyone who enjoys reading about the past should enjoy this book--Kivrin's experiences in the 14th century are unforgettable. The story of the present day epidemic is fascinating as well. And the suspense aspects of the story are dynamite.

If I'm going to complain about anything with this story, it's that Willis's vision of 2054 feels very much like 1992, the book's original publication date. What's missing? the internet and cell phones. I acknowledge that it's somewhat unfair to knock Willis for not anticipating how technology developed, but the absence of these technologies creates a weird kind of alt-history effect.

I will certainly read more by Connie Willis.

>287 NinieB: Hooray for Connie Willis! If you want to try something lighter and more fun, I highly recommend To Say Nothing of the Dog. Something else in the more somber vein is the duology Blackout and All Clear, set during World War II. She also has a lovely collection of Christmas-themed stories, if you're into that sort of thing -- A Lot Like Christmas. Basically, you can't go wrong! :)

I was able to move forward with reading Ellery Queen's mysteries by buying the next in series, The American Gun Mystery. I've noticed there's a lot of negativity towards Queen's mysteries in reviews. The writing style is definitely old-school, and the development of the realistic police procedural makes the unrealistic police stuff in Queen's 1930s books obvious (although I think that police procedure has changed a lot in the last 90 years, as well). But . . . I don't quite get the hostility.

Over the course of the novel we have a Wild West show (think Wild Bill Hickok and Annie Oakley) at a New York City sports arena, with a murder taking place twice in the same way. The weapon cannot be found, even thought the New York police search 20,000 spectators. And as always detective Ellery Queen performs feats of logic that were the hallmark of the Golden Age detective story.

I think you do need to really like the puzzle aspects, and I can see where those who don't care too much about the puzzle would get irritated with Ellery Queen's quirks.

One final thing: some reviewers read the description of prizefighter Tommy Black as saying that he is African-American. I think they are wrong--his "closely shaved cheeks are blue-black" because he is very hairy. His eyebrows are blue-black as well, and as stated elsewhere in the book he has a hairy torso and hairy hands.

>284 NinieB: Thanks for your thoughts about Hallowe'en Party. The book has been on my October reading list for years but I never seem to feel compelled to read it.

>290 This-n-That: If you wanted to read it at some other time of year, it would work just as well. "Halloween" doesn't play a big role in the story.

Last year I set myself a two-year Century Challenge to read one book published each year between 1920 and 2019. I was well over halfway done by the end of 2019, but my progress has been slower in 2020 than I've liked. As of mid-September I had 12 years to go, and until yesterday, when I finished The Axe, I hadn't made any further progress.

Norwegian Nobelist Sigrid Undset is most famous for her medieval trilogy Kristin Lavransdatter. The Master of Hestviken is her other large-scale medieval work, published in two volumes in Norway in 1925 and 1928, and as a tetralogy in the USA between 1928 and 1930. The Axe is the first volume in the tetralogy.

Olav Audunsson has been raised in the home of Steinfinn Toresson, with Steinfinn's daughter Ingunn his playmate. Olav and Ingunn expect to marry, as their fathers betrothed them at the age of 7 and 6. The summer they are 16 and 15, adolescence adds a new dimension to the bond between them. Tragedy in Steinfinn's household leads them to take an irrevocable step. The first part of The Axe is about this year in Olav's and Ingunn's lives. The second part is about the next nine years.

I loved this book. My quick summary makes it sound like a melodrama, but Undset writes a much deeper, beautiful book. I'll be heading on to the next in the tetralogy (although finishing up this year may slow me down a bit). My one regret is that the translation shows every one of its 90 years, and there is no newer translation (see my next post for an update). In keeping with the fashion of the times, the translator built in some archaic English; the dialogue is full of "I trow" and "I ween." My understanding is that the Norwegian original is not self-consciously archaic; I wish I could say the same about the English translation.

>292 NinieB: I said there is no newer translation. In one of those strange coincidences, I just learned that the University of Minnesota will publish a new translation of The Axe as "Vows" on November 10. It's available on NetGalley.

1989 in my Century Challenge led me to two mysteries in a Detective Book Club volume from that year. (DBC mysteries are not abridged. I rescued a box of them earlier this year on their way to a recycling bin.)

Dead Clever is one of a number of mysteries featuring Inspector Enrique Alvarez, a Spanish police detective on the island of Mallorca. Inspector Alvarez is a little lazy and enjoys his brandy. He lives with a sharp-tongued cousin, Dolores, and her family. In this book, at least, Alvarez frequently compares the Mallorca as it is (overdeveloped) with Mallorca as it was (a Mediterranean paradise with a strong traditional culture). The plot involves the mystery of a small plane that crashes shortly after taking off from the Mallorca airport into the Mediterranean.

Working Murder is the first in a series by Eleanor Boylan about Clara Gamadge, the widow of Henry Gamadge, Elizabeth Daly's detective from the 1940s. Clara is on an extended stay with her cousin Sadd in Florida when old Aunt May Dawson calls and asks her to come back to New York City for the funeral of a cousin, Lloyd Cavanaugh. While Clara's about to say no, to her surprise her son Henry Junior comes on the phone and uses a family code to tell her she really needs to come. This is a cozy, through and through.

I'm probably being a bit kind giving both of them 3.5 stars, but I enjoyed how they reminded me of many, many mysteries that I read in the 1980s and 1990s: About 200 pages, a series character with well-defined peculiarities/quirks, not dark but not silly or farcical, adequately written. I ate them up, especially in the 1980s, and today I can still enjoy this kind of mystery.

>294 NinieB: Sounds like a nice, nostalgic read.

>295 Tess_W: Yes--how I spent my Saturday night!

Hi, Ninie! - belatedly catching up with your thread and remembering to actually comment this time. :D

You've got a fabulous mix of reading there, though many of your mysteries are from a date beyond the point at which I'm mired. I've read the Drury Lane books though, and I keep meaning to get to Ellery Queen but those just haven't cropped up with the necessary urgency yet.

This year has completely wrecked my challenge reading by cutting off my academic library, so I'm jealous even of your ability to asses where you're up to. :)

>227 NinieB:

This caught my eye on the way down: it is absolutely true that things closer to us seem more "dated" than things further away, and I think that's something exacerbated by the way technology moves now. I had the same reaction to Maeve Binchy's Tara Road which makes a big deal out of its main character learning to send email: it's suppose to illustrate that she's brighter than people think but her struggle with it makes her seem a bit thick instead. :D

>275 NinieB:

And of course I have to stick up for the cricket match in Murder Must Advertise: it you have the right mindset and vocabulary it is hilarious!

>284 NinieB:

Yes, true enough that Christie's fixation on "the world today" began to take over her writing at that point; in fact I think Endless Night is the last novel that she managed to keep pure. Of course we need to remember that, sadly, her illness began to take over at about that point, and because her publishers hesitated to intervene via an editor, touches like that only become more frequent and intrusive. :(

Though with respect to Hallowe'en Party, it is important to remember that "the world today" with its crime and juvenile delinquents doesn't have anything to do with it, it's an old-fashioned middle-aged murder for purely selfish reasons; so perhaps at that point Christie still had more perspective than it now seems.

>289 NinieB:

Uh, yes: "blue-black chins" are extremely common in novels of that time and are indeed a reference to the need for a shave; and in fact they mean the opposite of how that seems to have been read, in that they show because of the man's pale skin.

(If they mean anything overall, it's how seriously being "clean-shaven" was taken at the time.)

>297 lyzard: Hi Liz! I think I do tend to read a little later in time than you do, at least this year. I have read very few 19th century books this year compared to last year, as well.

I am an Ellery Queen fan from way back, but I never read them all and many I have entirely forgotten the plots, so it's like reading for the first time.

I think I mentioned that the absence of internet and cell phones in the future of Doomsday Book gave it a weird alt-history feel; more of that odd dated feeling in a relatively recent book!

I'm not sure I will ever understand cricket. Perhaps with the opportunity to watch it more regularly I would get it but let's face it--there's only so much time!

At some point I read that an examination of Christie's vocabulary shows that she was suffering from some cognitive impairment as early as the mid-60s. I should try to read Elephants Can Remember again--I vaguely remember liking it more than Hallowe'en Party, but it's been so long I don't really know if that was the case.

Yes! also, the man with the blue-black cheeks is a prizefighter, which certainly was not a respectable profession.

I'm spreading out my finish-the-year planning because my single post above had too many touchstones in it.

Century challenge:
1921: The Borough Treasurer, Joanna Godden, Mr. Pim
1923: The Conquered, Weeds
1935: Gaudy Night
1960: The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte, The Waste Makers, The Man in the Cage
1967: Skeleton Island, Tell Morning This, Death's Bright Dart by V. C. Clinton-Baddeley
1968: Miss Anna, The Quest for Arthur's Britain
1991: A Midwife's Tale, The Secret Life of Wilkie Collins, Candyfloss Coast
1996: A History of Reading, The Bad Detective, Diamond Head, The Sunken Road
1998: Live Bodies, Duo, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
2006: The Janissary Tree, Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way, Mason-Dixon Knitting

BingoDOG:
DONE
weird title: Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way, The Fair Garden and the Swarm of Beasts, Weird Heroes. Vol. 1, Rivals of Weird Tales, The Crimson Madness of Little Doom by Mark McShane
library or thing: The Fair Garden and the Swarm of Beasts, The Manley Art of Librarianship, The Worst Thing, In Small Things Forgotten

SFFKIT
Dystopia (November): The Maze Runner

Short Fiction (December):
The Pacific Book of Australian SF
Flowers from the Moon and Other Lunacies
Robots Have No Tails
The Best of Cemetery Dance vol. 2
Billenium
Bug-Eyed Monsters
When the World Screamed and Other Stories
Weird Heroes vol. 1

NonfictionCAT
Philosophy and religion (September): The Last Days of Socrates
The Arts (October): Son of Gun in Cheek
Food, home, and recreation (November): The Subversive Stitch, An Illustrated History of Needlework Tools, Barbarian Days, Mason-Dixon Knitting
Adventures by land, sea, or air (December): The Wake of the Prairie Schooner

GeoCAT
North Africa (March):
The Golden Ass
Wind, Sand and Stars
Description of Egypt

Middle East (March):
Harem
The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan
The Desert and the Sown

Other Africa (November):
The Flame Trees of Thika
Segu
To the Heart of the Nile
The Steam Pig
Splendid Outcast
The Prophet's Camel Bell
The Barboza Credentials

RandomCAT
Lest We Forget (November):
Ruth Fielding at the War Front
D'Ri and I
Drums along the Mohawk
Sergeant Lamb's America
The Spanish Bride
The Raft
A European Education
Grey Mistress
Great Escape Stories
The Revolution Remembered
Season of the Jew
Igniting King Philip's War
Unbroken
The Rest Is Silence

December (title starts with "D")

ScaredyKIT
International (September):
Revenge
Apparitions: Ghosts of Old Edo

Classics (December):
Tales of the Uncanny and Supernatural
Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder
The Dunwich Horror and Others
The Dark Beasts and Eight Other Stories from The Hounds of Tindalos
The Uninvited

TravelKIT/s
Festivals and events (September):
Mardi Gras Murder
Death of a Voodoo Doll

Related to food or drink from a specific location/country/region (October):
Christmas Pudding,
Ill Met by a Fish Shop on George Street
The Corpse at the Haworth Tandoori

Living in a New Country (November):
At Home in India
The Prophet's Camel Bell
Mary of Maranoa
Harry Heathcote of Gangoil
Distant Land
Colonial Voices
Roughing It in the Bush
The Innocent Traveller
The Winter Queen
Station Life in New Zealand
Miss Anna

Related to a Place You Would Like to Visit (December):
Treacherous Ground
Death in a Cold Climate
Alberta and Jacob
The Snake Pit

Looks like you will have no shortage of great choices to round out the year! I quite liked Barometer Rising :)

>307 rabbitprincess: I can always come up with something in my TBR, since it's an overgrown, bloated TBR. It's whether I'll get around to reading it! Thanks for the recommendation on Barometer Rising!

I've set up housekeeping in the 2021 Category Challenge. Hope you'll stop by to say hello!

>306 NinieB: Alberta and Jacob, while well worth reading, is no recommendation for living in Norway, at least in the 1920s. But a visit would be interesting, particularly in mid-summer when it's light all night.

>310 pamelad: I'm a quarter Norwegian and while I've always been a bit afraid of the cost, my desire to visit Norway has been growing steadily. Some day!

And I'm glad to hear Alberta and Jacob is worth reading!

I have a new niece! Her name is Leia.

>312 NinieB: Congratulations!

How sweet - it's always wonderful to welcome a new little one to the family!

>313 rabbitprincess: Thank you!

>314 DeltaQueen50: It was just a year ago her parents got married! The family is growing quickly!

Congrats! Beautiful name (and baby).

Congratulations!

>316 Tess_W: >317 MissWatson: Thanks!

>312 NinieB: Aww, what a sweetheart! Nieces and nephews are the best!

>319 christina_reads: Aren't they? And she really is a little sweetheart, from the pictures. She lives over 2000 miles from me, so it will be awhile before I meet her in person.

I'm behind on my posts . . .

My Life as Laura: How I Searched for Laura Ingalls Wilder and Found Myself by Kelly Kathleen Ferguson is not the kind of book I usually read. My mother-in-law, who knows I'm a Laurafan (as the author of this book calls us), gave it to me. The basic premise is pretty much as described in the subtitle. To try to overcome some deep-rooted personal fears, the author spent a two-week vacation driving to the sites of many of the Little House: The Laura Years books, wearing a 19th-century style dress and apron. She's pictured in the dress on the cover. Fortunately, Ferguson is a pretty decent writer (if you enjoy a slangy contemporary style, which I did at least in this instance).

I had wanted to read one of A. B. Cunningham's Kentucky-set mystery stories for a while, so I was happy that I found a Dell mapback of Death Haunts the Dark Lane. The map was quite helpful in following the action of the story. This series starring Sheriff Jess Roden was published in the 1940s and 1950s. It's set in a very rural Kentucky, along Green River. Very little modern life appears--houses seem to not have electricity, and indoor bathrooms are not universal; horses are more common than cars. The plotting was traditional detective story. I wouldn't call this a lost classic by any means but it was quite readable; I would read more by Cunningham.

Robert Barnard is a rather uneven mystery writer. His first book, way back in 1973, was Death of an Old Goat, which I found achingly funny back when I read it in the 1990s. His second book, Death on the High Cs, was dreadful by comparison. It had been a while since I read any Barnard when I picked up The Corpse at the Haworth Tandoori, mainly because it was on my shelf and had a title connection to this month's TravelKIT, food from a specific place. It also marks off another year on the century challenge (1998) A poor rating here on LT (below 3.0) was cause for concern, but I plunged forward. What did I discover? The detective, DC Charlie Peace is based in Leeds but we learn almost nothing about his personal life or character. The tandoori's parking lot is where the body is found, but most of the book is about a rural community dominated by Ranulph Byatt, an unpleasant elderly man who is a famous artist; the other residents are groupies who feel honored to live near him. The book is well plotted but the people and subject matter are nasty. I suspect that between this and the nonentity detective, readers just don't enjoy this book much.

I read Son of Gun in Cheek partly because I had fond memories of reading its predecessor, Gun in Cheek, and because it counts for the October NonfictionCAT, The Arts. I'm a little bit embarrassed that it does count for the category because it's a humorous look at bad crime fiction; bad because of the writing, plotting, questionable social attitudes, etc. The best parts, I think, are the quotes of grammatically or metaphorically mixed-up prose, as well as metaphors that are astoundingly tone-deaf. Pronzini is so well read in pulp and mystery fiction that he had no trouble completing not one but two books of this nature. He also appears to enjoy bad writing immensely. As my husband said, it's great that someone else is willing to do the reading and then tell the rest of us about it. Sometimes the humor is strained, but sometimes I couldn't keep myself from laughing out loud (well, really, snickering).

Congratulations on your new niece.

I've put Gun in Cheek on the wishlist. You're not alone in reading a book about crime fiction for the Non-fiction CAT!

>323 pamelad: Thanks! Good choice with GIC. It's really the cream of the crop.

A few years ago at a library book sale I picked up Miss Anna by Edith Patton Oliver, for maybe 10¢. The author explains in the preface that it's based on the stories her mother told about growing up in the American west in the 1870s. The story is told in the third person as fiction and from the writing style may have been intended as a young adult story. While the writing occasionally cried out for an editor, I became quite engrossed in Anna May Casey's girlhood.

Born in Canada, Anna immigrated to the USA with her parents at the age of 5. Her father was a lawyer with a restlessness and a desire to succeed on the frontier. Over the next 13 years, the Caseys lived in Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, and New Mexico. Anna's father, J. P. Casey, did become quite successful, variously farming, keeping a store, practicing law, and cattle ranching. Notable episodes in the story include a bison stampede coming perilously close to the family's Nebraska homestead, Anna trying to save her father from men who want him dead in a lawless mining town, and Anna fighting off Apaches on the family's New Mexico cattle ranch. Some of the less savory aspects of frontier living, most notably death, are not sugar-coated.

The handling of relations with the tribes of the west is disappointing (for example, the dialogue given to some native characters is cringe-worthy), but that's not surprising for the era. I'm not giving this book a wholesale recommendation for this reason. If you can read past this issue and the lack of a firm editorial hand, it's a fascinating story.

August Folly by Angela Thirkell is so much better than her previous Barsetshire book. I'm holding off on giving a star rating in LT for fear of overrating it on that ground alone.

We are introduced to inhabitants of the village of Worsted. (It's near the locales of Winter Underclose and Skeynes.) Local gentry are the childless Palmers. Mrs Palmer has decided to put on an amateur staging of Hippolytus. Mr. Palmer's sister Rachel Dean and her family (six of *nine* children and one husband) are spending the summer in Worsted. The other main characters, Mr and Mrs Tebben and their two adult children, live on a much more modest scale. All the characters come in for their share of mockery from Thirkell, with the possible exception of ultra-nice (in a good way) Margaret Tebben. As with Wild Strawberries romance is in the air, but much else is happening as well, some of it on the serious side such as the relations between the Tebben parents and the Tebben children. In particular the son, Richard, and his mother Winifred have a subtle, complex relationship, which Thirkell handles extremely well.

None of the characters annoyed me, unlike the previous two books, although I wished to give Mrs Tebben the gift of seeing where she was unnecessarily creating difficulties for her family.

>326 NinieB: So far my favourite is Wild Strawberries and least favourite Love Among the Ruins. I've learned not to read two in a row because the snobbery reaches critical mass.

>327 pamelad: Are you reading them in order?

Fortunately I have too many reading projects going to read them back-to-back!

For 1923 in my Century Challenge, I read Weeds by Edith Summers Kelley. This novel is a realistic or naturalistic story of farm life in early 20th-century Scott County, Kentucky, which is in the Bluegrass region. Unlike many novels set in this region, though, the characters are not wealthy planters or horse breeders. Instead, they are poor white farmers, either owners of small acreages or tenant farmers. The poverty is grinding and ever-present for Judith Pippinger, whose life we follow from childhood to her mid-20s. Judy's story exemplifies the soul-crushing limitations especially, but not only, on women, in this tobacco- and corn-growing region.

While the novel was bleak, it was also beautifully written, and the social history was fascinating--I couldn't put it down and read it in 2 evenings. Kelley never published another novel in her lifetime, but after her death another novel found among her papers was published. I will most definitely be seeking it out.

The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers is frequently cited as the best or one of the best of Sayers' mysteries. The pacing is excellent. The things that are redolent of specialist knowledge are not too drawn out. I saw the Ian Carmichael series in the last 8 years, so I remembered the ultimate solution, if not the details between the beginning and the end. Gaudy Night is next!

Continuing with Ellery Queen . . . The Siamese Twin Mystery offers an excellent puzzle plot. Ellery is becoming much more human compared to the earliest in the series. Otto Penzler's introduction in the new edition I read has a good summary of the setup:

Ellery and his father are driving home from their vacation in Canada when they are caught on the side of a mountain as a forest fire roars through the trees, devouring everything in its path. Unable to get down, they have no choice but drive to the top, where they find a house occupied by a retired doctor and his odd family. He welcomes them as they attempt to wait out the blaze, hoping it will consume itself, but it soon becomes evident that they are doomed when the flames come closer and closer.

The setting creates great tension, more than the previous Queen novels. This one was at one point published in an omnibus volume called The Bizarre Murders. It's a fitting description.

>329 NinieB: Going on my wish list!

>326 NinieB: I'm happy to see this review. I'd read the first two books of Thirkell's Barsetshire books and have been meaning to return to them.

>332 Tess_W: I hope you value it as much as I do.

>333 mathgirl40: Out of the first four (this is the 4th) I could see rereading 1, 2, and 4. Not 3!

>334 NinieB: Hmm ... I wonder if I should just skip 3 and go directly to 4!

>335 mathgirl40: The thing is that 3, The Demon in the House, returns to the Morland family from High Rising, who apparently will appear in future installments. So, I'm glad I read it once for the character continuity. But I'm hoping that the 13-year-old boy who is mentioned in the title matures some before I encounter him again.

>328 NinieB: I've been reading them as they turn up, which means that I forget who the characters are. I haven't come across 3, which might be good luck, and was unable to finish Summer Half and Love Among the Ruins. Might have been in the wrong mood at the time.

>337 pamelad: I had bought a few randomly. Then I lucked into an old paperback set for 25 cents each. It wasn't complete but enough that I now have something like 3/4 of the entire set. So, I'm making an effort to read them in order.

>336 NinieB: That's good to know, thanks!

Earlier this year, I added a scruffy collection of Stratemeyer Syndicate books from the early 20th century to my library. Having read every Nancy Drew I could get my hands on as a kid, I thought it would be fun to read about some of her predecessors. This month's RandomCAT is Lest We Forget, in honor of Remembrance Day. So, I read Ruth Fielding at the War Front. Ruth Fielding was an orphan predecessor to Nancy, who similarly ran into mysteries. Unlike Nancy, though, Ruth apparently grew up in the series. This was the second of at least two books set in Europe during World War I, and it was actually published during that war. Ruth thus encounters some truly deadly situations--at the beginning of this book, working as a supply clerk for the Red Cross, she is sent to a hospital only a few miles from the front because the female supply clerk has been killed by a German shell. Ruth also is confronted with the possibility that her good friend Tom has gone over to the German side.

The writing is exactly what one would expect from the Stratemeyer Syndicate--readable and no more. And of course it's for girls, so many unsavory details of life on the war front are omitted. That's OK with me.

Coincidentally, two other books I've read this month are partially set during the same war: The Nine Tailors and Weeds.

This month's Dystopia theme in SFFKIT led me to the best-selling YA novel The Maze Runner. Since I don't read much at all in this area I can't really compare the world-building and so forth with that in other dystopian novels. As adventure fiction, though, it was pretty good. The action was easy to follow, Thomas (the protagonist) was likable, and of course there was ample plot. One of the blurbs on my copy described it as a combination of Lost (the TV series), The Hunger Games, and Lord of the Flies. That's probably all you need to know, really, but in a nutshell, Thomas finds himself in a strange settlement of teenage boys in an unknown location. He doesn't remember anything about his past, except his name. The group of 50 or so teens is trying to escape from the Glade, so each day 8 boys run through the impenetrable maze surrounding the Glade to try to find a way out. But Thomas's arrival, itself normal in the odd routine of the place, is quickly followed by highly abnormal events that signal Everything is Going to Change.

Sue Grafton's last book, published before her death, was Y Is for Yesterday. It's too bad we'll never have a Z, but I admit wondering how much I would have enjoyed it. Y was written in the same style as the last few of her books I read--chapters alternate between Kinsey Millhone's first-person narration and a third-person narrative of the events in the past leading to the events in the present that Kinsey is investigating. This technique gives the book more of a novelistic flavor, which isn't what I'm necessarily looking for in a Kinsey Millhone story. Also as with the more recent Millhone books, this lengthy book (almost 500 pages) spends lots of time on the Kinsey world, with her neighbors, relations, and the guy who's trying to kill her.

Yes, I grumble, and I prefer the slimmer, earlier part of the alphabet, but Grafton spun a good tale that kept me reading, nonetheless. So yes, I'm sorry there won't be a Z.

Imagined London by Anna Quindlen is a well-written love letter to literary London, focusing on the locations associated with a few favorite authors and their books. It worked really well for me because I have read and enjoyed many of the books she mentions and I, like Quindlen, was in love with London long before I first visited. It's now been a number of years, but I've had enough time there both to see established tourist destinations like Westminster Abbey and the Tower and to enjoy the streetscape, parks, and shopping. This book allowed me to enjoy both my memories and hers for a completely pleasurable two-plus hours of reading.

My thanks to AlphaKIT for picking I and Q!

The Little Book of the Icelanders in the Old Days is an interesting work in fifty short chapters about how ordinary Icelanders lived their lives before the 20th century. It's written by an Icelander, Alda Sigmundsdóttir, in a contemporary style. It's amazing that the Icelanders stayed in Iceland, really, when you consider what a struggle mere survival was. Recommended for anyone who has ever wondered about how people got by before modern life was invented.

I really need to read more than just Ellery Queen and Angela Thirkell before the end of the year . . .

The Chinese Orange Mystery by EQ sees Ellery *just happen* to be on the spot when a most bizarre murder scene is discovered: Everything in the room is turned around backwards, and the dead man's clothes have been put on him backwards. Not only that, but no one has a clue about the identity of the deceased. The location of the murder is on the 22nd floor of the Hotel Chancellor, where Ellery's acquaintance Donald Kirk, a book publisher and stamp collector, lives with his unpleasant father and his sister, Marcella. Other characters (and suspects) include Donald's secretary, Osborne, whose romance with Miss Diversey, the old guy's nurse, is just taking off; Donald's nasty publishing partner, Felix; Jo Temple, who grew up in China, and is now about to have her first book published by Donald's firm; Marcella's fiancé, Glen; and Miss Irene Llewes, who lives on the 21st floor. The solution is really out there.

Thirkell's Summer Half was pretty delightful. Maybe the secret is to read them in one sitting, which I did. Talk about escapist reading: It's gray and rainy where I am, but for 3 hours I was in an enchanted sunny spot in England, where the worst trouble anyone has is the prospect of the beautiful but inane Rose Birkett hogging the limelight at that evening's dance.

>34 thornton37814: You can binge on whatever you want!

I am intrigued by the Angela Thirkell discussion. Can you list them in order? I think a few reside on my shelves and on my Kindle.

>346 Tess_W: Well, yes, and books aren't unhealthy! I have a few challenges I want to finish this year. I'm looking forward to that feeling of accomplishment!

>347 LadyoftheLodge: They are listed in publication order in their series Barsetshire Books. Even if you don't have the first in the series, you could try one out to see what you think, and then aim for order if you like what you read!

>348 NinieB: Thanks! I found them.

>349 LadyoftheLodge: I hope you enjoy them!

I am pretty good with geography. But I didn't know exactly where, or what, British Somaliland was until I looked it up when I began reading Margaret Laurence's The Prophet's Camel Bell. In 1950-1952, when Laurence lived there, British Somaliland was a protectorate of the UK. It's now part of Somalia (while Somaliland today considers itself a country, it's not recognized by most other countries). Geographically, it's on the south side of the Gulf of Aden, east of Djibouti.

Laurence lived in Somaliland with her husband, a civil engineer hired by the Public Works Department to build reservoirs (ballehs) in the desert. They moved around as the job took them. Laurence came to know several Somalis, who worked on her husband's project or for the couple; learned Somali; and ultimately published translations of the oral poetry and folktales of the region (based on literal translations of others). As a Canadian, Laurence did not identify with the small colony of British colonial administrators, and considered herself anti-imperialist. Later experience led her to recognize her lack of understanding of the Somali worldview and experience of colonialism and the effect that lack had on her relationships with the Somalis.

Beautifully written and highly recommended. (Note, though, that in a couple of places Laurence describes awful situations and events involving children and animals.)

The Tragedy of Z is the third of Drury Lane's adventures. Ellery Queen (writing as Barnaby Ross) took an unusual approach for them: the story is told in the first person by a female character, the daughter of Inspector Thumm of the New York Police Department, who has retired and gone into private practice. Ten years have passed since the previous story, The Tragedy of Y (in fact the two books were published about six months apart).

Inspector Thumm is hired by the upright owner of an upstate New York marble quarry to investigate Dr. Fawcett, his shady business partner, brother of state senator Fawcett. Thumm and his daughter Patience go north but before they can do much investigation Senator Fawcett is murdered. Suspicion quickly falls on a newly released prisoner at the nearby state prison; it appears the prisoner was trying to blackmail the senator. The Thumms call in Drury Lane, whose health is considerably poorer, but whose mind is as sharp as ever.

Also unusual in this story is the focus on the death penalty. I can think of only one other mystery from this era that actually takes us into the death chamber, Craig Rice's The Lucky Stiff.

The plotting is like that in all the Ellery Queens of this era, complex but logical.

Death's Bright Dart could be mistaken for a Golden Age mystery in that it has a map at the front, it's set in a fictional Cambridge college, and the detective is a don, Dr. Davie. In fact, though, it's from 1967.

The college is hosting a conference during the summer vacation, attended by academics from around the world. (It seems quite small and yet broadly interdisciplinary, but that's OK--we're in traditional mystery land here.) Davie's colleague, Brauer, is giving the final presentation on the dais of the Hall when he collapses. Within minutes, he's dead. Circumstances that only Davie knows arouse his suspicions. A longtime detective-story addict, Davie investigates.

The map mentioned above is completely necessary both for following the action and understanding Davie's analysis. While this isn't the liveliest mystery I've read, I'm planning to read the next in the series.

Also: one of the characters has written a book about British Somaliland. What are the odds?

A. A. Milne wrote more than children's literature. His first novel, Mr. Pim, was an adaptation of his play Mr. Pim Passes By. It retains a certain staginess, but I do find Milne's brand of light English comedy quite funny.

George Marden is the conservative country gentleman to a T. (He could be a direct parody of Edward Clinton in The Squire's Daughter.) His niece and ward, Dinah, is 19 and in love with struggling artist Brian. George's wife, Olivia, supports Dinah and Brian's plans to marry; George doesn't. George is feeling somewhat grumbly about the day. Then--Mr. Pim passes by.

I haven't been doing much reading for the past week, but tonight I finally picked up the book I was halfway through and finished it. Aaron Elkins is best known for his Gideon Oliver series, but he also has written some stand-alones. The Worst Thing is more suspense than mystery. The narrator, Bryan Bennett, has organized his life around his panic attacks and memories of being abducted and held hostage in childhood. Nonetheless, he's a successful researcher in corporate responses to kidnapping. His institute convinces him to conduct a seminar for a company despite his fear of travel. That's where the "worst thing" he can imagine--being kidnapped again--happens.

Elkins is a good and clever writer. Quite a bit of research must have gone into this book, and it's very readable. However, the entire picture and story of one of the characters didn't make sense, and this flaw unfortunately undermined the whole story.

I have finished my Bingo card with a "weird title": The Crimson Madness of Little Doom by Mark McShane is a 1966 novel about poison pen letters in a tiny English village in Cornwall. To quote the dust jacket:

"Little Doom was a village with fifteen inhabitants. Nothing ever happened here . . . until, one day, Ellie Barlow killed herself. With her suicide note, she left the ten anonymous letters that had driven her over the cliff. They all began "Dear Scum," and their postmarks read 'Little Doom.'"

By 1966, the poison pen letter had been used in any number of English mysteries. It's fair to say that this one is a black comedy, but not fair to say any more.

At 186 pages the book is a quick read. I was dissatisfied with the ending but I enjoyed getting there.

December Planner

My *tentative* plans for the month:
Century challenge:
* Gaudy Night (1935) Read!
* The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë (1960) Read!
* Hire a Hangman (1991) Read!
* Diamond Head (1996) Read!

RandomCAT:
* Diamond Head (1996) Read!

NonfictionCAT (Adventures by Land, Sea, etc.)
TBD

GeoCAT (making up March: North Africa & Middle East)
* Wind, Sand and Stars

MysteryKIT (cozy)
* Death of a Glutton Read!

SFFKIT (short stories)
* Robots Have No Tails Read!

ScaredyKIT (classic)
* The Uninvited Read!

And I think that's a plenty ambitious program. Since I'll be on vacation the last week of the month, though, and not traveling this year, I should have the time.

A Century of Books

In 2019 I tracked all the books I read by the year in which they were published, starting in 1920 (the year this photo of the Lachine Canal was taken). In 2020 I hope to read the years I didn’t read in 2019. Some of the books in the list below were read in 2019.

1920: Call Mr Fortune / Miss Lulu Bett
1921: Mr. Pim
1922: The Red House Mystery / The Heir: A Love Story
1923: Weeds
1924: The Old Maid
1925: The Axe
1926: Seven Alone / Topper / Clouds of Witness
1927: The Eye of Lucifer / Unnatural Death
1928: Enter Sir John / The Desert Moon Mystery / The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club
1929: Jack o' Lantern / The Lure of the Bush / Footprints / The Roman Hat Mystery
1930: The Maltese Falcon / The Strangler Fig / Printer's Devil / Strong Poison / The French Powder Mystery / Maigret and the Enigmatic Lett
1931: "Found Drowned" / The Hymn Tune Mystery / Five Red Herrings / The Dutch Shoe Mystery / The Sands of Windee
1932: Cold Comfort Farm / Re-Enter Sir John / The Greek Coffin Mystery / The Egyptian Cross Mystery / The Tragedy of X / Have His Carcase / The Tragedy of Y
1933: Mystery of the Dead Police / High Rising / Murder Must Advertise / The Transatlantic Ghost / The American Gun Mystery / The Tragedy of Z / Drury Lane's Last Case
1934: Miss Buncle's Book / Wild Strawberries / The Demon in the House / Voyage in the Dark / The Nine Tailors / The Chinese Orange Mystery
1935: Gaudy Night
1936: Thumbprint / August Folly
1937: Fingers of Fear / Under Capricorn / Jane of Lantern Hill / The Road to Oxiana / The Arrow Points to Murder
1938: Studies in Murder
1939: They Rang up the Police
1940: The Whispering Cup
1941: Above Suspicion
1942: Death in the Blue Lake / Blood on Her Shoe / Phantom Lady / The Uninvited
1943: Victoria Grandolet
1944: No Bones About It / Blood upon the Snow / Pattern for Murder
1945: The Case of the Golddigger's Purse
1946: Hannah Says Foul Play / The Egg and I
1947: The Fifth Dagger
1948: The Harp in the South / Tory Heaven / The Black Piano / Death Haunts the Dark Lane
1949: The Case of the Famished Parson
1950: The 31st of February
1951: Son of the Tree / The Daughter of Ti
1952: Death on the Riviera / Robots Have No Tails
1953: The Tudor Rose / No Barrier / The Golden Apples of the Sun
1954: The White-Haired Girl
1955: Beast in View / Pink Flannel / A World of Love / The Iron King
1956: The Second Man / Cop Hater
1957: A History of Modern France. Vol. 1, 1715-1799
1958: One for the Road / The Obituary Club / Death Takes an Option
1959: Lantana Lane
1960: The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë
1961: The Computer Kill / The Pale Horse
1962: Death in Amsterdam / We Have Always Lived in the Castle
1963: The Expendable Man / Because of the Cats / Ice Station Zebra / The Prophet's Camel Bell
1964: The Houses of Iszm
1965: RSVP Murder
1966: The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka / The Crimson Madness of Little Doom
1967: Death's Bright Dart
1968: Miss Anna
1969: The Andromeda Strain / Charlotte Sometimes / The Compleat Werewolf and Other Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction / Hallowe'en Party
1970: Inspector Ghote Breaks an Egg
1971: The Other / Inspector Ghote Goes by Train
1972: What Did I Do Tomorrow? / Inspector Ghote Trusts the Heart
1973: Appleby's Answer
1974: Appleby's Other Story / Carrie / Bats Fly Up for Inspector Ghote / The Mysterious Commission / The Hearing Trumpet
1975: The Appleby File
1976: The Gay Phoenix
1977: Quartet in Autumn
1978: Woman's Fiction / The Ampersand Papers
1979: The Old Gods Waken / Americans on the Road: From Autocamp to Motel, 1910-1945
1980: Playing Beatie Bow
1981: Your Eyelids Are Growing Heavy
1982: Sheiks and Adders / The House of the Spirits
1983: The Governess
1984: The Godwin Sideboard / A Cadenza for Caruso
1985: The Man of Gold
1986: Shards of Honor
1987: A Chorus of Detectives / Son of Gun in Cheek
1988: The Year of the Monkey
1989: Dead Clever / Working Murder
1990: Digging Through Darkness / The Grub-and-Stakers Spin a Yarn
1991: Hire a Hangman
1992: Quarry: A Nameless Detective Mystery / Bear's Fantasies / Doomsday Book
1993: Houses of Stone / Death of a Glutton
1994: Casino
1995: No Cure for Love / Lamb to the Slaughter
1996: Diamond Head
1997: The Washington Club
1998: The Corpse at the Haworth Tandoori
1999: Adastra in Africa
2000: Skeleton Dance
2001: The Eyre Affair / Frozen Tracks
2002: Living Dead in Dallas
2003: Club Dead
2004: Please Do Feed the Cat / The Sunburnt Queen / Dead to the World / A Hard Winter Rain / Darkly Dreaming Dexter / Imagined London
2005: Dead as a Doornail / Peculia and the Groon Grove Vampires / The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo / Dearly Devoted Dexter
2006: Mason-Dixon Knitting
2007: Dexter in the Dark
2008: The Boy in the Suitcase
2009: The Crossing Places / The Maze Runner
2010: Invisible Murder / Wolf Hall / The Janus Stone
2011: Daggers and Men's Smiles / The House of Silk / My Life as Laura / The Worst Thing
2012: The Black Box
2013: Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives
2014: The Good Girl / The Little Book of the Icelanders in the Old Days
2015: Kentucky by Design
2016: Fool Me Once / Murder at the House of Rooster Happiness / Magpie Murders
2017: Under the Cold Bright Lights / The Missing Guests of the Magic Grove Hotel / All Systems Red / Y Is for Yesterday
2018: The Library Book / Artificial Condition / Rogue Protocol / Exit Strategy
2019: Here to Stay / Blood for Blood / What You Did / Forgotten Bones / Geeky Pedagogy
2020: Trust No One / The Perfect Guests

>358 NinieB: Only 4 years to fill! Will you read them this month?

I see that 1935 Gaudy Night is the December Wimsey read.

>359 pamelad: I am prioritizing those 4 years, since I've been planning to finish now for over a year!! I have been saving 1935 for Gaudy Night since I knew I would be reading it this month.

With The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë, Daphne du Maurier ventured into the literary biography field, with (in my opinion) a fair success. Du Maurier was disappointed that her book was relatively overlooked compared to her fiction, according to the introduction to the Virago edition.

The extraordinary Brontë family comes to life here; Branwell in particular takes on three full dimensions. Du Maurier's story-telling powers are as always phenomenal. I did find myself wondering what the book would have been like had du Maurier written it as historical fiction rather than biography. As it is, she has offered plausible circumstantial evidence for Branwell's motives and conduct where no direct evidence is available, but the appropriate caveats tend to throw a veil between the reader and the story.

I've read most of the Brontë novels with enthusiasm, but I've never read about the family. Du Maurier has sufficiently whetted my appetite that now I want to know more. I'm eager to read Juliette Barker's The Brontës, and--hurray!--my public library has it as an ebook.

It's been a long time since I read a book in the Lt. Frank Hastings series by Collin Wilcox. I may have missed a few along the way, but I went forward with Hire a Hangman, number 17, because it was published in 1991. The series is set in San Francisco, where Hastings runs Homicide with his colleague Peter Friedman. This entry is similar to preceding episodes--a police procedural set in recognizable San Francisco locations. Although the narrative alternates between police activities and the interior thoughts of the bad person, I was kept guessing through a good part of the story.

While Wilcox is a decent writer, one thing was bugging me a lot that I don't remember noticing before--the cops spend a lot of time noticing women's bodies under their clothes. I could have done without that.

The good news is . . . I finished my Century of Reading. The bad news is . . . the last book, Diamond Head by Charles Knief, had some really nasty plot elements. It's noir, Hawaiian style, with the lone-wolf private eye surviving bad-guy violence against incredible odds not once but something like three or four times. Competently written, but nothing new, and as already stated plenty to dislike. And when adding it to my list of mysteries I read this year I managed to break the ever so touchy touchstones for the post.

Thinking of indulging in Juliet Barker's The Brontës.

Congrats on finishing your century!

>363 NinieB: Hurray for finishing your century! I'm sorry the last book wasn't a great one, though.

>364 MissWatson: Thank you! I thought I would get here faster but it shows that everything expands to fill the time available!

>365 rabbitprincess: Thank you! It wasn't all bad. Nonetheless I wish I had chosen more carefully, knowing it was the last one.

Congratulations on completing your book century.

Congratulations on completing your Century of Reading.

>367 pamelad: >368 DeltaQueen50: Thank you! This was my last big goal for the year.

Congratulations on finishing your Century challenge. It's always interesting to find other ways to track books.

>370 dudes22: Thank you! This tracking system was indeed enlightening!

Congrats on reading through the century!

>372 Tess_W: Thanks, Tess!

Cozy month in MysteryKIT led me to Death of a Glutton by M. C. Beaton. I enjoyed her books back in the '90s, but I don't think I had read one in a very long time. Very light, very amusing. The basic plot is a high-end matchmaking outfit, Checkmate, brings 8 clients to Hamish Macbeth's little Highlands village, where they plan to stay at Priscilla's hotel for a week. Unfortunately, Checkmate's silent partner, Peta Gore, finds out about the event and shows up. The problem? Peta is the glutton of the title, and it's highly unpleasant to watch her eat. Enough so that both the active partner and most of the clients are ready to kill Peta. Not that they would, of course, but someone does.

You're a theatre and book critic, but sick of London after a bad break-up. Your younger sister, Pamela, is worn out from caring for your father during the last six difficult years of his life. Amazingly, the two of you find the perfect house overlooking the sea in North Devon--for only 1,000 pounds (this is before World War II). The seller seems uncomfortable with the transaction but nonetheless eager to sell. His granddaughter is beautiful and peculiarly fascinated with the house, Cliff End. So you buy it and move in. Then Pamela confesses that the moaning in the house at night is keeping her awake. You're . . . . The Uninvited.

A full-blown ghosts-in-a-haunted-house novel. Highly enjoyable and very pre-War.

Forties sci-fi pulp can be very amusing, as is the case with the short-story collection Robots Have No Tails by Henry Kuttner. These comic stories feature inventor Galloway Gallegher, who is at his best, idea-wise, when he is drunk. Problem is, the morning after Gallegher doesn't remember what he did or why he did it. This leads to problems in each of the five stories. Good light-hearted fun.

The last of the four Barnaby Ross stories (by the same authors of the Ellery Queen stories) is Drury Lane's Last Case. The tale begins with a mysterious visit to Inspector Thumm by a man wearing a fake, blue-green beard. He leaves a large envelope with instructions for Thumm to open it, in Drury Lane's presence, if he doesn't call Thumm on a certain day once a month. The next apparently unrelated event, is a policeman asking Thumm to investigate the disappearance of Donoghue, security guard at the Britannic Museum in New York City. From there . . . much happens. The story has lots of action.

Patience Thumm once again is one of the leading characters; this time, though, the narration is third-person.

All four of the Ross stories are excellent Golden Age mysteries.

Just stopping by to catch up on your year end posts. Congratulations on completing your Centuries challenge. It looks like you did a good job of keeping up with the KITs and CATs too. Well done!

>378 This-n-That: Thanks so much! See you in 2021!

My last book of 2020 (finished with almost three hours to spare!) was The Sands of Windee by Arthur W. Upfield. Bony sees evidence of murder in the photograph of an abandoned car. Thus he spends three months at remote sheep station Windee in western New South Wales, tracking down the mystery of what happened to Luke Green. Upfield tells the story with much about the ways of life in remote Central Australia, throwing in a corroboree and a bush fire. Better than the first in the series, for me. This book is one of the 100 best books on H. R. F. Keating's list.

I'm now closing the books on 2020. I read 124 books, 74 of them mysteries.

Please join me in 2021!

Congrats on your 2020 reading! Why am I not surprised to see such a predominance of mysteries? :)

>382 christina_reads: Ha ha, I'm not surprised either! Thanks for the good wishes and I hope you have a lovely year!