December 2019 ~ What are you reading?

Still reading What Have You Done by Matthew Farrell.

Added Maggody and the Moonbeams by Joan Hess to my reading rotations.

A fun, but clever read today: The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz

My lunch break book (a.k.a. "just something to lay my eyeballs on") is Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder by Catriona McPherson. It's always a risk jumping in mid-series, but it's fair enough to keep plodding on. Also working on The Doublet Affair by Fiona Buckley, good quality in an Elizabethan setting.

I finished the 2nd book in the Bobby Owens series by E.R. Punshon - Death Among the Sunbathers. Pretty good though I had guessed the big twist at the end long before it was revealed.

And I listened to the audiobook of Rex Stout's Homocide Trinity in my continuing quest to read all the Nero Wolfe books in order. Stout really shines in the novella format (about every 3rd book in the series is a collection of 3 novellas or long short stories).

Just finished Home Sweet Homicide, by Craig Rice, which has been reprinted as part of the American Mystery Classics series.

>6 rabbitprincess: I thought that was great! Off to check out your review...

Enjoying this OverDrive audiobook ~

Song of the Lion by Anne Hillerman

(a Navajo nation series/present-day bombing mystery)

Death Trap by John D. MacDonald. This one doesn’t show up on Touchstones, but is not that obscure. Not in the Travis McGee series. Well written.

>7 leslie.98: Haven't written it yet, but an easy four stars :)

I have finished the 21st book in the Golden Age Dr. Thorndyke series - For the Defense: Dr. Thorndyke. Not one of the better efforts in my opinion but Thorndyke himself was still entertaining.

I recently finished Ghost Hero, one of SJ Rozan's Lydia Chin/Bill Smith series. This was one of my favorites in this excellent series.

Finished Dead Lions another entertaining Slough House novel. If he keeps killing off the regulars, though, the series could have a finite end. Of course Lamb says there's always screw-ups to replace them.

I am reading The Twelve Crimes of Christmas & surprisingly, only the short story by Rex Stout ("Christmas Party") is a reread so far.

In audiobook, I started a ROOT called Merry, Merry Ghost by Carolyn Hart - I'm not sure that it is a mystery now that I have started it. I just assumed that it was because I had read a bunch of Hart's Death on Demand series.

Finished What Have You Done by Matthew Farrell. Enjoyed it even though I did figure out the whos, whats, and hows.

Finished Gideon's Power, by J.J. Marric (aka John Creasey), and started The Twenty-Three, by Linwood Barclay.

Just starting Sorrow's Anthem. The second in Michael Koryta's Lincoln Perry series. The first one was good.

Just finished listening to Reversal by Michael Connelly. It's billed as a Lincoln Lawyer novel so it does follow Mickey Haller through a court case. This time Mickey is acting for the prosecution which is quite a change. Harry Bosch is working as an investigator for the prosecution so we get quite a few details about Bosch's work and family life as well. I enjoyed it and really did not see the ending coming.

Enjoying this OverDrive Kindle eBook Alexa is reading to me ~

Holly Blues (a China Bayles Mystery) by Susan Wittig Albert

I have finished a good Golden Age Xmas mystery (though it really is written much later - 1971, I believe - but in that GA style): Tied Up in Tinsel by Ngaio Marsh.

Enjoying this OverDrive audiobook ~

Ali Cross by James Patterson (4 stars)
(son of Alex Cross/YA mystery/missing friend)

I started Careful What You Wish For last night. 100 pages and nobody has died. Seems counter to recent trends.

I started reading A Divided Loyalty by Charles Todd. this is the 22nd book in the series, and I have not read any previously, but I received this from Early reviewers. About 100 pages in and so far I really like it. I have my reading so many thrillers lately, its nice to slow down and just read a mystery!

The only books I've read previously by Peter May were his Lewis trilogy, which I really liked. Not so enthused about one of his stand alone novels that he recently republished and that I finished today- The Man with No Face. So, so -not bad, but not great.

More Work for the Undertaker by Margery Allingham. A lucky find at the laundry. My first for this author.

I finished Death of a Mystery Writer by Robert Barnard. This is a fun oldish (1978) English murder mystery. The book was published as Unruly Son in England. Well known whodunit author Oliver Fairleigh-Stubbs is a tyrant and a bully to his wife, his three grown children and everyone else he has dealings with and runs into. Given the title of the book, we are not surprised when he gets bumped off. The only problem for inspector Idwal Meredith is that the most likely suspect couldn't have done it. Or could he? This book is a load of fun for fans of the genre, well paced and plotted with mostly believable characters and a good dash of humor thrown in. Barnard wrote one additional mystery with Meredith on the case, At Death's Door, which I think I'll read sooner rather than later.

From The Lanier, the love of my lifetime brought me Martha Grimes' The Old Success. With a boat and a map on the cover figured I'd like it. Never read Martha Grimes before. Started out very well with a most interesting locale, the Scilly Islands off Cornwall. New place to me. But by chapter seven I'm getting bogged down with a proliferation of characters seemingly lacking for any reason to be in the dramatis personae.

Well 120 pages in and getting no traction among the too-many characters, I' ve put it for return to library and stared on Roberta Wohlstetter's Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision, even though it, too, has myriad characters and, additionally, I know how this story ends.

I'm in the middle of Paper Son, one of SJ Rozan's Lydia-and-Bill series. It started slowly but is getting better.

Enjoying this library MP3 audiobook disc ~

Murphy's Law (Molly Murphy Mysteries, book 1) by Rhys Bowen

(around 1900, NYC/Irish immigrant/woman detective)

>29 Molly3028: I read that a few years ago after getting it as a freebie at Malice. It seemed to me like a YA story. Does it have that feel to you?

I would categorize it as a cozy. I listened to Away in a Manger a
few years ago. I recently decided it was time to dive into the series.

Preparing to start A Taste for Death, by P. D. James.

Recently finished two great reads - Home Sweet Homicide by Craig Rice, and The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides. Just started The Other Wife by Claire McGowan.

Oooh A Taste for Death is a good one.

I’m reading The Suspect by Fiona Barton. Not bad, but I don’t like her chapter system.

>25 Roycrofter: Allingham wrote lots of Campion books so you have a lot of fun before you!

>33 mvo62: Home Sweet Homicide is great, isn't it? I'm glad to see it is coming back into popularity...

I have been reading the Rhys Bowen 'Royal Spyness' series - Royal Flush, Royal Blood, Naughty in Nice and most recently, The Twelve Clues of Christmas. The holiday one is actually the best mystery of those named but these books are mostly fun because of the 1930s setting and the personal life of the main character, Lady Georgiana Rannoch, the King's cousin.

Re-reading and re-enjoying Trial by Clifford Irving.

>34 Bookmarque: A Taste for Death is good so far! I like how the writing style makes you think of a traditional Golden Age mystery, but the murder is satisfyingly gory.

I'm about 100 pages in, and my edition is about 500 pages total, so I have a couple of days' worth of reading.

>33 mvo62: >35 leslie.98: I really enjoyed Home Sweet Homicide! Very glad that American Mystery Classics reprinted it. So much fun.

Finished A Taste for Death. Now planning to read Kingdom of the Blind, by Louise Penny -- we just gave my mum the latest Gamache, A Better Man, for Christmas, so now I have to catch up!

I recently read Hard Truth by Nevada Barr. I thought it was quite good although maybe part of the attraction for me was that is was set in Rocky Mountain National Park, one of America's parks that I've been to several times. So I could sort of visualize the terrain that Anna Pigeon, Barr's ranger sleuth, was moving around in. That filled in a gap in the series for me but now I have to see if I can get my hands on the last three books in the series. I hope she is still planning on writing more but she hasn't published anything since 2016 so far as I can see online.

Recently finished Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear. Pretty good, though a tad predictable-I'll try some more in this series.

>40 ted74ca: Maisie is one of my favorite series, ever! The American Agent was under the Christmas tree at our house; just started it.

>41 gmathis: Mine too!

Finished Maggody and the Moonbeams by Joan Hess. Meh.

Just started The So Blue Marble, by Dorothy B. Hughes.

Final 2019 audiobook ~

Lady Osbaldestone And The Missing Christmas Carols (Lady Osbaldestone's Christmas Chronicles, book 2) by Stephanie Laurens

(1800's/village in England/historical fiction)

Just started reading Cat to the Dogs by Shirley Rousseau Murphy. First book I've read by this author and I'm enjoying it. I'm a sucker for cats - having previously enjoyed Rita Mae Brown's Mrs. Murphy series co-authored with her cat Sneaky Pie.

I finished the 7th Zen book - Blood Rain. After being disappointed by the previous book, I was glad to find that this one was back to Dibdin's earlier standard. And what an exciting ending!!

My new year's wish for you:

May the worst thing that happens in the new year be the best thing that happened in the old.

Happy New Year !!

The new thread for the new year: https://www.librarything.com/topic/314918