What I've Given Up on For Now

I gave up on The Fifth Law of Hawkins by Charles Durden, the last book in my Mystery Bundle, about thirty pages in. Maybe if the back cover hadn't promised me a narrator full of "undeniable charm," I would have lasted longer. Hawkins' "charm" seems to consist entirely in rude remarks followed by the announcement that ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

I'm sorry to report that HARDMAN #6, Murder's Not an Odd Job left very little impression on me in the end. There's a guy some people are trying to kill and some women and HARDMAN worries about his weight and eventually he and HUMP DAVIS hole up in a shack in the mountains to shoot some people for reasons that weren't ( Read more... )

What I've Given Up on For Now

A Forest of Eyes. Nothing was sticking together in my mind. Sorry, Victor Canning. I'll try again some other time.

What I've Finished Reading

It should probably come as no surprise that in Last Ditch, [this is a spoiler]Ricky Alleyn gets kidnapped, AGAIN. That's what you get for trying to be in a book, Ricky! Look how worried your ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

The Crooknose Mystery doesn't make much use of its setting (the author doesn't seem interested in or capable of the kind of self-indulgent writer-culture satire I was hoping for) and is a pretty boilerplate mystery with forgettable characters. Gin functioned perfectly well as corpse magnet and amateur sleuth, but I didn' ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

The Dead Man's Knock was perfectly satisfying, and just as pulpy as its cover promised. Dr. Gideon Fell is a good old-fashioned eccentric amateur - an enormous, rumpled, and billowing English expert on something or other who walks with (and/or brandishes) two canes, likes baffling his American hosts with cryptic jokes ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

Tied Up in Tinsel was all right! You can sort of tell who the killer is going to be all along, just by the relative strength of the misdirection, but finding out how it was managed is still enjoyable ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

( Clutch of Constables and When in Rome )

What I've Finished Reading

"He books it into that little playground there. I mean the guy is zooming like the Road Runner, skidding through the gravel and the slush and everything. I'm yelling, 'Police, police! Stop, motherfucker ( Read more... )

The time has come. . .


( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

Behold, Here's Poison by Georgette Heyer. The twist here (which is not really a spoiler) was that it looks like the case is going to be solved by a bland professional, but then an Obnoxious Amateur swoops in and steals the show. Here it's one of the Mitchell family's ultra-arch young cousins, Randall. Competition for ( Read more... )