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Against the Grain (2025) – Peter Lovesey
Sadly, Peter Lovesey died last spring (2025). But he finished one last Peter Diamond novel: Against the Grain. The phrase ‘against the grain’ means ‘contrary to custom, one’s inclination, or good...
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Ruth Rendell’s Inspector Wexford series
I’ve done it! I’ve read all of Ruth Rendell’s Inspector Wexford series. Ruth Rendell wrote her Inspector Wexford series from 1964 to 2013 – that’s an amazing time span. (By comparison, Ed McBain’s...
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Hand in Glove (1962) – Ngaio Marsh
Looking back at my last Ngaio Marsh review, Scales of Justice, I am struck by how similar that book is to this one. In both books, we are first introduced to families with connections to nobility, and...
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Scales of Justice (1955) – Ngaio Marsh
Continuing my journey through the works of Ngaio Marsh, I’ve just completed Scales of Justice (1955). On the back cover, there was a quote from the legendary Anthony Boucher (of Bouchercon fame) that...
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Singing in the Shrouds – Ngaio Marsh (1958)
Ngaio Marsh spent much of her life on ships, travelling from New Zealand to England and back, so she knew a lot about long sea voyages. (Maybe she’s even showing off a little in this book when she...
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When in Rome (1970) – Ngaio Marsh
Ngaio Marsh (1895-1982) began writing Golden Age mysteries in 1934 and continued writing them right up to her death. Some of the later ones are excellent (see my reviews of Clutch of Constables and...
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Barbara Neely: A Tribute
BarbaraNeely (her legal name had no spaces) died in March, 2020. She had recently (December 2019) been named a “Grandmaster” by the Mystery Writers of America, an honor usually given to those who have...
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The Real Cool Killers (1958) – Chester Himes
Chester Himes was an angry man – and his mysteries are full of rage. Expelled from Ohio State University as a sophomore in 1928 for a fraternity prank that ended in a bar brawl, and sentenced to 25...
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The Knowledge (2018) – Martha Grimes
I’ve been reading Martha Grimes’s Richard Jury books since the 1980s. I remember, early on, loving her precocious child characters, like ten-year-old Lady Jessica of Help the Poor Struggler (1985)....
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Gaudy Night (1935) – Dorothy L. Sayers
In 2000, Anthony Award voters selected the best mysteries of the 20th Century; the 5 finalists were The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Rebecca, and Gaudy Night, with...
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The Father Dowling mysteries (1977-2011) – Ralph McInerny
The Father Dowling mysteries by Ralph McInerny must have been quite popular because McInerny’s publisher (St. Martin’s from the ’80s on) kept them in print for so many years. Yet the only major...
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Friday the Rabbi Slept Late (1964) – Harry Kemelman
Friday the Rabbi Slept Late is a traditional mystery with an untraditional detective. The protagonist, Rabbi David Small, is a young, somewhat unkempt, scholar and rabbi, who is new to his congregation...
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Photo Finish (1980) – Ngaio Marsh
I’m still making my way through unread books of Ngaio Marsh; Photo Finish, a book late in the Roderick Alleyn series, is not one of her best, I’m sad to say. As in many of her books, there is a...
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Dance Hall of the Dead (1973) – Tony Hillerman
This is the second book in Tony Hillerman’s Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee series set in the Four Corners area of Arizona/New Mexico. The series almost didn’t happen: Hillerman’s agent, on reading the first...
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A Sleeping Life (1978) – Ruth Rendell
Unlike many fictional detectives, who are often eccentric loners, Reginald Wexford is a family man: happily married, with an adoring wife and two grown daughters. In A Sleeping Life, one of his...
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The Way Through the Woods (1992) – Colin Dexter
This is the tenth Inspector Morse mystery and one of the best. (It was awarded the Gold Dagger by the British Crime Writers Association.) When Morse and Lewis investigate the case of a Swedish student...
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Golden Age Mysteries: My Favorites
The Golden Age of Mystery is usually defined as the period between World War I and World War II, or roughly 1920-1940; some people would extend it into the early 1950s. As for me, I like to think of...
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Robert Barnard – A Tribute
I recently finished reading A Charitable Body, the last published book of Robert Barnard, one of the best of our contemporary British mystery writers. Robert Barnard (1936-2013) was in many ways a...
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The Five Red Herrings (1931) – Dorothy L. Sayers
The Five Red Herrings is usually considered one of Sayers’s least successful books, and I have to agree. It lacks the wit and colorful characters of most of the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries. And yet...
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Whose Body (1923) – Dorothy L. Sayers
This is the the book that introduced Lord Peter Wimsey to the world. It’s fascinating to see how most of the characters who would become a fictional repertory company are here at the start: Bunter,...
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