Ten Mysteries I’ve Read in 2012

I love reading mysteries, which is probably why I write them. Here’s are ten mini-reviews of books I’ve read this past year. Some were published this year, others almost a century ago. They run the gamut from cozy to thriller, and are in no particular order.

1. LAST ONE TO DIE by Tess Gerritsen
I’m a huge fan of the Rizzoli & Isles TV series, which was why I was surprised to find the characters are so very different in the novels. Though LAST ONE TO DIE was the first of the series I read, I never felt lost—only had the urge to read all the previous novels. Fast-paced and intriguing, LAST ONE TO DIE is a great read by a skilled writer.

2. THE BODY IN THE GAZEBO by Katherine Hall Page
I’ve read every one of the Faith Fairchild mysteries, and this book’s a winner. One aspect I like about this series is that some of the novels are set far from the small Massachusetts town where Faith and her family reside. An out-of-town wedding is the setting of THE BODY IN THE GAZEBO.

3. BROKEN HARBOR by Tana French
I was awed by Tana French’s three earlier novels, but found myself wishing BROKEN HARBOR had been considerably shortened. A family is set upon in their home. Three members die and one survives. The question is: who savagely attacked them and why?

4. THE BIG SLEEP by Raymond Chandler
I led a book club discussion of THE BIG SLEEP, remembering how much I’d loved reading this novel forty years ago. To my dismay, this time I was disappointed. The characters struck me as two-dimensional, and I found it almost laughable how people kept pointing guns at Philip Marlowe. But THE BIG SLEEP is a must read for every serious mystery lover because of its importance to the genre.

5. THE AFFAIR by Lee Child
This Jack Reacher novel takes place in 1997, when Reacher is still an army MP. He and a woman sheriff investigate a murder with close ties to the nearby army fort. THE AFFAIR is exciting and a page-turner, as is every Lee Child novel. I’ve discovered  many women are Jack Reacher fans, despite the body count in every book. He’s one of our  modern day heroes.

6. THE SECRET SERVANT by Daniel Silva
I suppose the Gabriel Allon series are spy thrillers, but I’m including THE SECRET SERVANT on this list. Allon is an Israeli intelligence agent involved in intrigues around the globe. In this novel, he has to rescue the daughter of an American diplomat before she is murdered. Like every Silva novel, this adventure captures your attention from beginning to end.

7. AUNT DIMITY AND THE VILLAGE WITCH by Nancy Atherton
I adore this cozy series that takes place in a Cotswold English village. In AUNT DIMITY AND THE VILLAGE WITCH, a famous artist comes to Fitch in search of information about an ancestor who might have been a witch. Soon the whole village is helping her unravel the mystery.

8. BELIEVING THE LIE by Elizabeth George
In this, the latest Inspector Thomas Lynley novel, Lynley investigates the death of a man, and discovers all sorts of sordid activities going on among the various people connected to the victim. While I’ve enjoyed reading almost all of her earlier Lynley novels, this one is overly-long and too complex.

9. DEAD CASE IN DEADWOOD by Ann Charles
The Deadwood books are pure delight. Violet Parker--single mother of twins, novice real estate broker, and sleuth--juggles the many aspects of her life. Her zany  relationship with the sexy Doc is the funniest romance going. Then there’s the paranormal element. Charles blends them all together with a deft hand.

10. THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD by Agatha Christie
One of Christie’s most famous and certainly most controversial novel takes place in a small English village. Poirot is asked to solve the murder of Roger Ackroyd. We meet the usual array of Christie characters, learn their secrets and past misdeeds. The ending is most unusual. I loved rereading this book. It holds up as the true classic it is.

Please leave a comment and name a mystery or two you’ve read in 2012.

Aging Series Characters by Chester Campbell

The age of your character could become a problem if you’re writing a series. The best known current series character is Robert B. Parker’s Spenser. Since I don’t have the early Spenser books, I’m not too sure how old he was when he started out, but it was at least mid-twenties. The Godwulf Manuscript was published in 1974 and the 2009 model, The Professional, will appear later this year.

With thirty-seven books in as many years, that would make the wisecracking, rough-and-tumble private detective almost sixty years old. He’s pretty agile for that age, but I’ll go along with it. My new protagonist, Sid Chance, is fifty-nine in the first book, The Surest Poison. He’s physically big and tosses a couple of guys off the porch.

Lee Child’s rugged Jack Reacher should be mid-forties in the thirteenth book, Gone Tomorrow. He would have been around thirty when he got out of the Army six months before Killing Floor chronicled his first brush with the law and the world of bad guys. Who knows how long he’ll be able to continue his superhuman escapades in wiping out a host of nasties in each book.

Sue Grafton took a different tack in dealing with her smart and headstrong PI, Kinsey Milhone. Since A Is for Alibi came out in 1983, there have been twenty-one books, including U Is for Undertow, due for publication later this year. As far as I know, Kinsey is still in her thirties. I believe the books are set in the seventies, before cell phones and DNA and a lot of other forensic stuff. It works well for Kinsey as she ages slowly.

When I wrote Secret of the Scroll, published in 2002, I didn’t have writing a series in mind. I liked the characters, though, and decided to keep them around. But age was a problem. Greg McKenzie was sixty-five. I didn’t plan on him tackling the villains like a football player, but I wanted him to be a physical challenge. The Sue Grafton method seemed like a good solution.

Designed to Kill took place a year later. Since then, the stories have been separated by three or four-month intervals. Book two was set in November, Deadly Illusions the following March, The Marathon Murders in August. The fifth book, now underway, takes place in December of the same year. So in Greg and Jill McKenzie time, it’s still 2004.

How do you feel about aging characters? Should they follow the calendar, or take their own sweet time?

Too Many Killings? by Chester Campbell

How much killin’ is enough? You expect to find murders in a murder mystery, but do some authors go overboard?

Lee Child is one who knows how to knock ‘em off with abandon. Jack Reacher and his antagonists can be counted on to dispatch up to a dozen or more in every book. Reacher does it with a bit of flair, killing in just about every way imaginable.

Robert B. Parker’s Spenser has been known to knock off a few bad guys, though he usually keeps it to a fairly low number. I seem to recall in Potshot, however, that Spenser and his crew stirred things up out in Arizona on a level that outdid the O.K. Corral guys by far.

Of course, when the good guys are pulling the trigger, it isn’t murder, it’s self-defense. But sometimes, it seems, they can get pretty self-indulgent.

When the mystery involves a serial killer, it’s a given that there will be a string of bodies laid out all through the book. Some authors delight in giving us all the gory details of how it happens. But are we any more enlightened than when we only learn the basics of the slaughter from a detective’s perspective or an autopsy report?

I have described a few deaths in my books, but I keep the gory details to a minimum. How do you feel about killings in mysteries? Are there too many? Are they too graphic?

Chester Campbell
Mystery Mania

A Mysterious Setting

There is a real talent to getting the setting right in a mystery. And really, there’s no single “right” way. But a setting can help define your characters and how they relate to what’s going on around them. It helps your reader “see” where the story is taking place.

I love Stephanie Plum, out and about in Trenton, NJ, having messy adventures, solving the whodunit as she goes along, and losing a car most times around. I’ve been known to laugh out loud, even as my brain cells are trying to process the clues so well laid down by Ms. Evanovich.

But I’m just as intrigued by the stripped-down lifestyle of Jack Reacher in a Lee Child’s novel. A stark farmhouse set in the midst of fields, a NYC apartment – it’s gritty, it’s tough, and the laughs are few and far between. But it suits Reacher to a tee – Mr. Child knows his hero understands the underbelly of man’s (and woman’s) motivations, and his settings reflect that.

However, I also love to wander the early twenty-century English villages and countryside of Agatha Christie mysteries – as great on a re-read as they were the first time around years ago. The details of life, the struggles, the joys and the search for the truth – for me, all surround the central mystery and add to the enjoyment of trying to figure it out. And it doesn’t matter if it’s Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple or Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, the mysteries are fun to try to unravel.

Like horses? Carolyn Banks’ novels with Robin and Jeet Vaughan are surrounded by equines as Robin solves the mysteries of who did the killing…and there’s always a smile or two as you canter along on the wonderful rhythm of Ms. Banks’ writing.

Want more horses? Tami Hoag gives readers some ugly crimes in the “beautiful people” and moneyed set of the Wellington winter horse circuit. From lonely canals with predatory alligators to private clubs with predatory men.

So…what’s your favorite mystery setting – the big city, a lonely farm setting, a Victorian mansion, a dressage barn or a childhood neighborhood? Whatever it is, enjoy the mysterious mood set by your favorite mystery author.


Libby McKinmer
Romance with an edge
www.libbymckinmer.com
libby@libbymckinmer.com