The second detective novel by Ngaio Marsh featuring the almost imperturbable Roderick Alleyn does not disappoint. This one develops the friendship between Detective Alleyn and the journalist Nigel Bathgate. I…
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A Man Lay Dead
December 29, 2021This is the first Roderick Alleyn mystery novel by Ngaio (“Nigh-O”) Marsh, published in 1934. Marsh is considered one of the great “Queens of Crime” from the Golden Age of…
The Vanishing Half
August 3, 2021This makes an interesting companion piece to the last novel I read, Homegoing, as it, too, is about two sisters who grow up in completely different worlds. Here, we have…
Homegoing
June 20, 2021Phenomenal storytelling–I was mesmerized by the very balanced structure of the text. There’s an elaborate family tree at the front of the book that I kept returning to, as I…
Sleeping on Jupiter
June 2, 2021I liked this book, and I read it rapidly. I did think that Manil Suri’s review in the NYT was unfair. Roy did not leave as many loose ends in…
The Mother-in-Law
May 20, 2021Another neighborhood book club pick that provided a pleasant escape from reality while also reminding me to be grateful for my reality. My mother-in-law is the best, and I’m pretty…
A Gentleman in Moscow
May 14, 2021Initially, I thought: how could a book about a man confined to a hotel for life have enough plot or character development for 450 pages? Yet this turned out to…
Leave the World Behind
April 19, 2021I took this novel’s advice and left my world behind one recent weekend. My family and I enjoyed a long weekend at a friend’s beach house. The long drive there…
Books I Did Not Finish
September 5, 2020For the Summer 2020 edition of Things I Started and Stopped, I’ve got three books. First up is Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. When this book first came out…
Last Bus to Woodstock
August 18, 2020[spoiler alert!] A little surprising, a little disappointing. We’re fans of the British TV series, here, so I thought I’d better see how Colin Dexter originally depicted Inspector Morse and…