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

The Return of the Continental Op is five short stories by Dashiell Hammett , told by and about a nameless operative for the Continental Detective Agency. I really like Hammett’s first person here: short punchy similes, sardonically understated re-statements, “I lied” as dialogue tag. The Op is at his best when he’s ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

Mourned on Sunday by Helen Reilly. If you really want to get away with murder (not recommended by this blog), one way to do it is to come up with a scheme so elaborate that no one in their right mind would believe it. The scheme to commit multiple murders and pin them all on Nora Dalrymple is like this: it requires ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

Vanity Dies Hard by Ruth Rendell. Why did Alice's friend Nesta disappear, and why is everyone in Alice's life trying to keep her from finding out? Can she trust anyone? Wonderfully creepy, atmospheric and economical, with a genuinely surprising ending about which I have mixed feelings. I'm not going to spoil it here, ( 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

I was a little surprised that I had no osmosis going into The Sittaford Mystery, because it's an ideal mystery in a lot of ways. It's not one of Christie's breathtaking feats of plotting, like Murder on the Orient Express, but it's very clever and brisk, and thoroughly enjoyable by all the standards of Country House ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

The Seven Dials Mystery was pure fluff and even sillier than I remembered. Bundle gets an embarrassing Mr. Collins-style proposal from some dude she's been trying to wheedle information from, and it's great. That's what you get for pretending to be interested in politics, Bundle! I like Superintendent Battle so it was a ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

I'm still not sure if The Mysterious Mr. Quin is a novel or a collection of linked short stories. It could go either way! Mr. Satterthwaite is a mild-mannered elderly socialite who resists the goading of his mysterious detective genius, but not very energetically, and always manages to get mixed up in matters of life and ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

I had a terrific time reading Nicholas Meyer's The Seven Per Cent Solution, in which John H. Watson, M.D. tells the true story of what happened to Holmes on the Continent that one time when everyone pretended he was dead. Alarmed by Holmes' increasingly erratic behavior and persecution of a harmless math tutor, Watson, ( Read more... )

No Murder Monday today; I'm still adjusting to my new schedule.

You can rest assured that The Murder at the Vicarage is a near-perfect Christie, and a near-perfect Christie is one of life's great gifts ( Read more... )