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Whodunnits

Foolmewunz

Grammar Resistance Leader, TLA Dictator
Foolmewunz
Joined
Aug 11, 2006
Messages
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Location
Pattaya, Thailand
We seem to have a thread for every other kind of pop lit.

I have a weakness for Whodunnits.

I think I've read every book ever written by Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy Sayers, P.D. James, Martha Grimes, and Elizabeth George.

Oh, and a tip of the hat to Conan Doyle - I'm looking for a good Complete Sherlock Holmes as I think I last read them about twenty years ago and it's time to revisit.

Currently, my two favorite active writers are Martha Grimes (the characters and the side trips to humor with Melrose Plante are great) and Elizabeth George.... especially Elizabeth George, for the fullness of her characters and their inter-relationships.

Anyone share this "addiction"?

Any new / undiscovered writers out there in the genre?
 
I really enjoy mysteries set in ancient Rome such as those by Lindsey Davis, Steven Saylor and John Maddox Roberts.
 
I am on a Nordic kick- Stieg Larsson, Arnaldur Indridason, Mari Jungstedt, Håkan Nesser, Asa Larsson.

All highly recommended


 
I have read Saylor, and found it to be enjoyable but not great.

I would also recomend Ian Rankin.
 
Great - new names for my further exploration. It gets rather tiring waiting for the new James/George/Grimes to come out.

Are any of these "series"?

I really enjoyed, when I was younger, discovering Ngaio Marsh, for instance. And to find that there were a couple of dozen of the works available meant that I could devour. I did the same thing with John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee series. A bit of a throwback to Hammett, but they were still all essentially Whodunnits.

The essence of a good mystery is that you should be able to polish it off on a round trip flight - say two/three hours in each direction, or in a week of thirty minute bites of reading at home before bedtime. It's getting harder with George and James, as they are enjoying their successes and now seem to put out 600/700 page tomes, probably actually disqualifying them from the old Whodunnit category.
 
Both authors I have mentioned have written a series of books. Indeed, each series seems to conform to your observation. Later books are considerably larger. The early one may fit your round trips, the later ones, not so much.
 
Doctor Evil said:
Both authors I have mentioned have written a series of books. Indeed, each series seems to conform to your observation. Later books are considerably larger. The early one may fit your round trips, the later ones, not so much.
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Well, that's okay, actually. If the stories are good and the writing up to standard, I don't mind the longer books (although P.D. James could cut back on some of her verbage, IMHO). It's just that I enjoy reading a series of a particular cop or detective, but it makes it a challenge to try to get them in order. In many series (Hercule Poirot or Sherlock Holmes, for example) you can read them in any old order. But if you read (say) Elizabeth George out of sequence, you'll be spoiling the plot lines of great earlier stories.
 
I think I know all Agatha Christie's books by heart. I grew up reading her books and wanting to move to England, and I eventually got a scholarship to study in the UK, met my husband and eventually moved to England - I honestly think Christie's books are part of the reason. :)

(I also live in a 30's block of flats, like Poirot, and I actually know a woman who lives in Poirot's block of flats - as I like to call it - the 30's block of flats used as Poirot's residence in the TV series starring David Suchet).

Nova Land from this forum kindly introduced me to some American authors from the golden age of whodunnits - Ellery Queen, Carter Dickson (or John Dickson Carr, same person), Anthony Boucher.

I tried reading Ngaio Marsh, but I didn't enjoy the style and couldn't finish a book. I enjoyed Margery Allingham's Albert Campion books, and I remember the BBC series based on them, which I very much enjoyed. And then there is Josephine Tey's book Daughter of Time, which introduced me to the readings about Richard III, and I thought it was a brilliant book. I haven't read other Tey's mysteries.
 
I second Ian Rankine - he is a really good writer imo

On a rather different tack you might like to try Christopher Brookmyre: he writes a sort of cross between whodunnits and comedy and I think they are a very good read

For older work I do not think you can beat Patricia Highsmith
 
The TV versions of the Poirot stories, with David Suchet, are pretty good. Can't wait for the adaptation of Curtain. Suchet will earn his fee as an actor for that one.
 
Thanks, guys.... I actually made a trip over to the local bookseller this afternoon. Depressing. I've usually been shopping there for business books or specific non-fiction. I hadn't realized how crap their fiction selection was.

Unlike American bookstores, where there will be a few hundred titles in Mystery/Adventure, and another few hundred in SciFi/Fantasy, here they're all jumbled in with "Fiction". Not a Rankin in the midst.

Nor, for that matter, anything interesting. Seems that we just love Patricia Cornwelll, here, though. I outgrew my taste for her a while back when the stories seemed to get repetitive.

I guess I'll have to order if I want to get into more mysteries. ( I realized that I usually get them nowadays in other cities or at airports. I'll ask around in Hong Kong, maybe there's a Mystery Book Club or something.)
 
oh one I forgot. If you can find them Kyril Bonfiglioli's Charlie Mordecai series is wonderful: the series seems to be out of print here but I cannot recommend them too highly
 
I love Robert B. Parker's Spenser novels, although they are more hard-boiled detective novels along the lines of Hammett or Chandler rather than whodunnits. Janet Evanovich does a series of novels (all with numbers in the titles) that are hilarious, but not everyone's cup of tea.
 
Lisa Simpson said:
I love Robert B. Parker's Spenser novels, although they are more hard-boiled detective novels along the lines of Hammett or Chandler rather than whodunnits. Janet Evanovich does a series of novels (all with numbers in the titles) that are hilarious, but not everyone's cup of tea.
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Yeah, I've read most of Parker/Spenser - at least up to the time that Urich stepped in. The TV series killed it for me, I s'pose I could go back and check where I left off. I'm sure it's possible to get pretty-boy out of my mind when reading them, now.
 
I admit, I never got into the genre. When I was a teen back in the 60s, The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd was for some reason very popular. "See if you can figure it out!" was always the challenge. I couldn't, the last page resulted in a big self-inflicted dope-slap....

I always preferred the more "action"-oriented authors; hard-boiled Mike Hammer, Travis McGee, Matt Helm..
 
Foolmewunz said:
Yeah, I've read most of Parker/Spenser - at least up to the time that Urich stepped in. The TV series killed it for me, I s'pose I could go back and check where I left off. I'm sure it's possible to get pretty-boy out of my mind when reading them, now.
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I'm not sure I'd bother if I were you - he's getting a tad repetitive; too much of the Spenser/Silverman relationship as well. He's also recycling similar ideas in the Jesse Stone and Sunny Randell novels. I still read them; but, these days, I wait till they're available at my local library - cheaper that way. ;)

Just checked Amazon - good grief - he's doing "young Spenser" novels now. Time he retired, I think.
 
Fiona said:
I second Ian Rankine - he is a really good writer imo

On a rather different tack you might like to try Christopher Brookmyre: he writes a sort of cross between whodunnits and comedy and I think they are a very good read

For older work I do not think you can beat Patricia Highsmith
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I've just got a couple of Christopher Brookmyre books to try - and with an investment of 20p each they had better be good! I also like Rankin and P.D. James, as well as Colin Dexter and Ruth Rendell.
 
I agree that the Spenser theme is about worked out. And my wife likes Stephanie Plum Crazy.
Anyone else like Pronzoni's "Nameless Detective" series?
 
Another nice series of whodunnits is the Cadfael series. The protagonist is a monk in medieval England (during the struggle between Stephen and Mathilda for the throne of England). The books have also been turned into a TV series, starring Derek Jacobi.
 
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