This did not disappoint. Although I was surprised at the similarities between this plot and its resolution and that of Sayers’s first novel Whose Body? I suspect that once you’ve…
crime fiction
Strong Poison
May 13, 2020The most surprising thing happens on page 47 of this edition: Lord Peter proposes marriage to Harriet Vane who’s in prison for poisoning her former lover. This is just after…
The Turn of the Key
April 20, 2020In the vein of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, this new novel by Ruth Ware seeks to revise and update Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw…
A Rule Against Murder
January 24, 2020I love mysteries, but many of the readers in my church book club apparently do not, as they were largely dismayed to have to read this one. Thus I spared…
Things I have not finished and may never: Summer 2019 edition
July 11, 2019I started reading Helen Oyeyemi’s White is for Witching, but lost interest. The writing seems overwrought in a juvenile way. I wanted to like this, and I wanted to teach it,…
A Murder is Announced
May 29, 2019The first Miss Marple mystery I’ve ever read and I liked it a lot. I just finished writing a book review of Andrew Hobbs’ A Fleet Street in Every Town: The…
Magpie Murders
December 29, 2018About fifteen pages into this book, I started thinking about one of my favorite TV shows, Midsomer Murders. The book starts out exactly that way, introducing a network of characters, all…
Camino Island
February 17, 2018Camino Island, by John Grisham, definitely felt like a guilty pleasure. I listened to it, for the neighborhood book club, while driving around town for a few weeks. It’s the…