Crossposted to Dreamwidth as usual.

What I've Finished Reading

Aunt Dimity's Death develops into a very mild mystery with the help of a ghost - Dimity's spirit carefully preserves plausible deniability by communicating through written messages that only specific people can hear. She also subtly alters reality to make Lori a good cook for the ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

If I say that Murder on the Orient Express doesn't hold up as well on re-reading as Roger Ackroyd or Death on the Nile, I hope you all know I don't mean it in a bad way. Orient Express is an extremely efficient machine for producing a couple of very impressive experiences in the reader, and once that result has been ( Read more... )

Cross-posted to Dreamwidth

What I've Finished Reading

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky! Raskolnikov, who used to be a law student in Saint Petersburg but now just lies around on his couch all day not drinking tea and wondering if he should kill this old pawnbroker he knows, finally decides to take decisive action! I don't think it's too ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

I wanted to like Blood Red Turns Dollar Green a lot better than I did, in the end. The author's method of withholding information was confusing about as often as it was suspenseful, but the real problem is that I never got why Lenny was so invested in being a wrestling insider that he kept screwing over his family and ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

No More Dying by David Roberts: Lord Peter Wimsey fanfic with the serial numbers lightly scribbled over, plus mostly irrelevant historical hindsight in enormous quantities. Half the characters are real people, and the made-up people are constantly elbowing each other in the ribs and saying things like, "Poor little Jack ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

In The Secret of Chimneys, not for the first time, everything gets a lot more entertaining once the bodies start piling up. There's a diamond theft and a bunch of highly important blackmail material in addition to plenty of posh people distractedly eating breakfast, and it all gets a little convoluted at times. Partly ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

Maisie Dobbs is an interesting book. Maisie's client's allegedly unfaithful wife turns out to be going to the graveyard to put flowers on the grave of her childhood sweetheart, rather than meeting a living person. The dead man, Maisie learns, was severely disfigured in the war and later killed himself at a home for ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

The rest of Poirot Investigates was much the same as the beginning - short stories with tricky twists and plenty of Poirotisms. I got a little defensive of Poirot during the Egyptian Curse story (ripped from the headlines!) because the story went out of its way to make him comically uncomfortable -- first the sea, then ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

Could I possibly have enjoyed The Man in the Brown Suit more? Maybe we could all have done with a little less colonial condescension along the African tourist route, but that's in character for Anne “the Adventuress” Beddingfeld, whom I suspect has more than a few things in common with Agatha Christie. This book includes ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

I've just finished Murder on the Links for the second time, and it's just as bafflingly dull as it was the first time. I'm not at all sure why: it's got plenty of twists; there's an unofficial Detective Competition, Poirot is Poirot and Hastings is an idiot. There's no shortage of alarming discrepancies, dark secrets, ( Read more... )