Mysteries: Cosy, Cats, Capers, Historical, Medical, Procedural and everything in between

[A wilding]

I have just finished a reread of James McClure's Kramer and Zondi series. I had forgotten how good they are, so I thought I would post a recommendation.

The books are decidedly uncosy police procedurals set in apartheid era South Africa. While being a good read just for the stories, they also have the added bonus of their setting. The books are superb examples of "show not tell", showing the horrors and wrongs of apartheid in clinical detail without any authorial comment at all (indeed I have seen a review that seemed to think McClure actually supported apartheid). It works all the more in that Lieutenant Kramer is an unthinking supporter of the system, except that he is humanised by constantly surreptitiously breaking the rules in favour of his very able black sidekick Sergeant Zondi, with whom he has a close working relationship based on mutual trust and respect.

 

[Jo498]

I re-read about 7 or 8 of Van Gulik's Judge Dee mysteries and I still love them and highly recommend them. Sure, they are not all on the same level, some have fairly contrived plots and a few plot elements repeat regularly. But they are very well done and medieval China was an absolutely fascinating civilization (with both amazing and admirable as well as rather horrifying elements). My only recommendation is to skip the one that Van Gulik translated from Chinese (and only slightly streamlined) and leave it for later. Start with either the chronologically first one (Chinese Gold mystery) or the first one published (Chinese Maze).

[Quinze]

A Better Man by Louise Penny. I can't believe that book 15 in a series is still giving me joy. Especially a mystery series. But than again these books are about a group of people more so than a whodonit. I'm drawn to the friendship and kindness.

[Zorral]

I have attempted to enter the very well received universe of Mick Herron's slow joes (British intelligence agents who have been convicted of behavior unbecoming, screwing up, incapacitated, etc.), of Slough House, with two different titles, the first one -- Slow Horses -- and the most recent one -- Joe Country.  Slough House is where these unfortunate and unattractive agents get posted, and they all hate each other, though probably never as much as they hate themselves. Despite their entire effed up lives and work, from top to bottom, somehow they stumble into situations that often feature figures from their past -- figures they hate as much as themselves.  The thing is, these people really are total eff-ups, and truly that unattractive in every way, inside and out -- and their manners are gross.  I've gotten nowhere with either book, as the characters are so offensive, so I'm quitting.

In the meantime CrimeReads is an interesting site (part of Literary Hub) for people who like various of the crime genres:

https://crimereads.com/

 

 

[AncalagonTheBlack]

As a big fan of Lindsey Davis's Roman mystery series, this news makes me very happy!

Quote

Deadline reports that ITV is in advanced development on a sweeping adaptation of Lindsey Davis’ Falco Roman private detective novels after the project was originally in with the BBC.

Deadline can reveal that Mammoth Screen will make the series, and the World On Fire and War Of The Worlds producer is in negotiations with ITV over the number episodes, casting and the production budget.

The series was originally pitched to the BBC and was in development with the public broadcaster for some time. It has now moved over to the BBC’s biggest commercial rival where it is being overseen by ITV head of drama Polly Hill.

Mammoth, which makes Victoria for ITV, optioned the Falco books back in 2013 and has worked with Lost In Austen writer Guy Andrews to adapt them for television, with author Davis consulting on the series.

She has published 20 Falco novels, starting with The Silver Pigs in 1989. Each tells a self-contained story about Marcus Didius Falco, a fictional Roman private detective who investigates crimes and acts as an often reluctant imperial agent.

Falco is described by Davis as a “laid-back” operator whose adventures take place across the Roman Empire in 70AD and beyond.

 

[Zorral]

I wouldn't call myself a big fan of the Falco books, but they're reliable.  The latest one I read featured Falco's daughter, as he seems to have aged out.  I liked her and the story quite a bit.

[Zorral]

The Samaritan’s Secret (2009) by Matt Rees.

Its plot is concerned with stolen IMF money intended for Palestinian humanitarian aid. This is the third title in the Welsh author’s Palestine Quartet, featuring the Palestinian detective, from Bethlehem, Omar Yussef. I had been unaware of these books until stumbling upon this one yesterday.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Rees

 

[Zorral]

The Long Call, first title (2019) in Ann Cleeves new series, with new location, North Devon, introducing Detective Matthew Venn, who emerged from a rigidly religious background, and now has found satisfaction in his work, stability and happiness with his husband.  Well written, paced and constructed.

Treachery, fifth title in the Elizabethan thriller series featuring Giordano Bruno, by S. J. Parris.  This is the best one so far, it seems.  But then it includes Sir Francis Drake in 1585, three years prior to the the Spanish armada invasion.

 

[Zorral]

   .... Last night I read the first few pages of Robert Harris's future medieval dystopian Britain mystery novel, The Second Sleep (2019).  Look how many genres right there encompassed within this single novel!  SF; mystery, historical. Woo.

Harris precedes the narrative with a pull quote from Thomas Hardy's 1886 novel, The Mayor of Casterbridge, which is a descriptive passage of meditation upon the excavated skeleton of someone who belonged to much earlier time.

Quote

"They had lived so long ago, their time was so unlike the present, their hopes and motives were so widely removed from ours, that between them and the living there seemed to stretch a gulf too wide even for a spirit to pass."  

1886, three years before the state I was born in became a state. So we are aware how deep into our consciousness of time, of what is past, present and future Harris is going to take us.

Harris, writing in the present, looks to the past, which looks even further past, then writes a novel of the future, which is like the past. I admit I am smitten by this.

Then, even better, but proceeding purrfectly from the Hardy quotation, his opening passages could come directly from a Hardy or George Eliot -- or even Daphne du Maurier, who like Harris here, evokes the past through describing a chronologically labeled landscape excavated by the author, matched by language, pace and rhythm. Here is the first sentence of Harris's The Second Sleep:

Quote

"Late on the afternoon of Tuesday the ninth of April in the Year of Our Risen Lord 1468, a solitary traveller was to be observed picking his way on horseback across the wild moorland of that ancient region of southwestern England known since Saxon times as Wessex...."

It's elegant, pitch perfect to Harris's subject and place within the time evoked out of the reader's present -- a reader, who, if the world is fortunate, may transmute into a reader of the future -- through one time after another, beginning with Hardy, like nested Russian tea dolls, then turning around again to the present via the reader.  No longer just smitten, I'm in love.  It's been a long time since a novel's opening has done this to me.

Edited February 12, 2020 by Zorral

[Eric Cartman]

Have you all read Lost Horizon by James Hilton. 

A airplane crash lands a bunch of people at mysterious Shangri-La where they get extra long life...if they stay there. And that their arrival may not be a accident. 

One of my first and still best remembered books. 

[Wall Flower]

3 hours ago, Zorral said:

   .... Last night I read the first few pages of Robert Harris's future medieval dystopian Britain mystery novel, The Second Sleep (2019).  Look how many genres right there encompassed within this single novel!  SF; mystery, historical. Woo.

Harris precedes the narrative with a pull quote from Thomas Hardy's 1886 novel, The Mayor of Casterbridge, which is a descriptive passage of meditation upon the excavated skeleton of someone who belonged to much earlier time.

1886, three years before the state I was born in became a state. So we are aware how deep into our consciousness of time, of what is past, present and future Harris is going to take us.

Harris, writing in the present, looks to the past, which looks even further past, then writes a novel of the future, which is like the past. I admit I am smitten by this.

Then, even better, but proceeding purrfectly from the Hardy quotation, his opening passages could come directly from a Hardy or George Eliot -- or even Daphne du Maurier, who like Harris here, evokes the past through describing a chronologically labeled landscape excavated by the author, matched by language, pace and rhythm. Here is the first sentence of Harris's The Second Sleep:

It's elegant, pitch perfect to Harris's subject and place within the time evoked out of the reader's present -- a reader, who, if the world is fortunate, may transmute into a reader of the future -- through one time after another, beginning with Hardy, like nested Russian tea dolls, then turning around again to the present via the reader.  No longer just smitten, I'm in love.  It's been a long time since a novel's opening has done this to me.

This sounds like everything I would enjoy. I hope you report back once you've finished to let us know if the love lasts.

[Zorral]

16 hours ago, Eric Cartman said:

Have you all read Lost Horizon by James Hilton. 

It's been a few decades since I last read it.

15 hours ago, Wall Flower said:

This sounds like everything I would enjoy. I hope you report back once you've finished to let us know if the love lasts.

I've progressed now to over a quarter through.  Surprises came quick and constant.  Now we're entering into the murder mystery part, which is clearly related, though we can't imagine how, to the mystery of the missing parish church ledgers, and the mystery of what the ledgers are talking about.

Harris's sense for just the right detail is impressive, particularly since we, the reader of the present, have all the information that the protagonist doesn't.  Nevertheless, though (at least so far!) we know what protagonist becomes enthralled with trying to find out what we know, we know no more than he, without the information, what to make of it or do with it.

 

[Zorral]

OK -- I'm 2/3 through The Second Sleep. Woo, it is a mystery, a real mystery.  Just because we know about some thing the protagonist and his world don't know doesn't mean we know any more about who did what in his time than he does.  I'm so good a guessing ends of narratives, but I have no idea with this book.  So yah, here we have a mystery that pulls the reader along in by the desire to know who did it. 

[Zorral]

British Library Crime Classics is a series published by Poisoned Pen Press - Source Books. The titles generally are by writers I have never heard of or read; most of the titles were published originally in the between wars era, and WWII.

A while back I picked up one of them, for the first time, Fell Murder: A Lancaster Mystery by E.C.R. Lorac. I really enjoyed it. Beautifully local and atmospheric.  I get the impression that these elements are close to the top of the criteria by which the titles are chosen.  It was also very well written, a perfect length to read on a long plane ride, or a few couple of before-lights-out in a hotel room.

 

[dog-days]

I have a feeling I'm going to be told off for putting this in the wrong thread - anyway...

My mum and I are going a bit mad trying to find stuff for my elderly housebound father to read. 

He likes crime. He's read all of: Lindsey Davies (Falco/Flavia Albia), Donna Leon (Brunetti), C. J. Sansom (Shardlake), Lexie Conyngham (Murray of Letho and Hippolyta), Susan Hill (Serailler), Andrew Taylor and many other authors that I've forgotten. He sits and reads all day. 

He's especially fond of historical crime. For some reason, he hates Agatha Christie. Could you help us out with recommendations for fairly recent (i.e. published post millennium) crime fiction? Ideally, for a crime fiction series. 

Edited May 12, 2020 by dog-days

[A wilding]

Steven Saylor's Roma Sub Rosa series? Set in late Republic Rome with most of the key figures of the period turning up at some point. He started publishing them in the 1990's though so they may not count.

 

[dog-days]

35 minutes ago, A wilding said:

Steven Saylor's Roma Sub Rosa series? Set in late Republic Rome with most of the key figures of the period turning up at some point. He started publishing them in the 1990's though so they may not count.

 

I think he may have read them since I can certainly remember seeing them round the house, but I'll check with my mother. If he's still writing them, then we may not be up to date with the most recent ones. Thank you. : )

[Jaxom 1974]

Not really delved deeply into this topic in the past, though I've read some Saylor. I like the historical crime fiction, so the Davis info above is something I've made note of. 

Also I got an Ellery Queen Magazine subscription for Christmas, and that started coming finally. 

[Zorral]

There are many web sites dedicated to crime and mystery novels that are organized by subcategories -- historical mysteries and crimes and series.

There are stand alone sites too, devoted only to historical mysteries like this one:

https://crimereads.com/10-historical-mysteries-that-balance-story-with-history/

Which might be easier to browse than to wait for people to recommend what he's already read.

[lady narcissa]

On 2/4/2020 at 12:16 PM, Zorral said:

The Long Call, first title (2019) in Ann Cleeves new series, with new location, North Devon, introducing Detective Matthew Venn, who emerged from a rigidly religious background, and now has found satisfaction in his work, stability and happiness with his husband.  Well written, paced and constructed.

I just finally got around to reading this.  I loved the location of the new series.  I actually hiked the coast of North Devon on summer and have been to quite a few of the places mentioned in the book so that really brought it to life for me.  I am a bit on the fence about this detective and the supporting characters.  I didn't take to him as instantly as I did Vera or Jimmy.  But I sometimes think sense of place is more important to me than characters so I will probably continue when she writes more.

I've just started the first Donna Leon.  I am enjoying Venice in it and seeing it through a local's eyes with all the buildings and politics.  I hope I end up enjoying it as it would be nice to have a backlog to go through.

I read the first three Louise Penny's but got wind of what was ahead in the series with the detective and his job and I just did not want to read through that so I stopped reading.  I did enjoy the food, however!

I read the first two Tana French when the ebooks were promoted at $1.99 around the time the tv series came out but then I was off put on the $11.99 ebook pricing for the rest so held off on continuing.

Anyone who has similarly been put off by the ebook prices of C.J. Sansom's Matthew Shardlake series - the 5th one Heartstone is currently on sale on amazon.com for $1.99.  That is probably my favorite of the series.

And a big thanks to those with recommendations in this thread.  I have picked up so many books based on recommendations here.  I have a huge stack to read my way through from Jane Harper to P.F. Chisholm with many in between.