Reading & Listening
May. 31st, 2021 01:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stonepicnicking_okapiAlmost all of these are Golden Age of Crime Mysteries.
Castle Skull by John Dickson Carr. I am reading all the Henri Bencolin series. This involves a scary German castle, a genius magician, and a brilliant actor. Melodramatic. The French Bencolin and his American sidekick Jeff.
The Lost Gallows by John Dickson Carr. Another Henri Bencolin mystery. He and Jeff are back in London at a residential club. This involves vengeance for an old crime. A touch of Egyptian macabre. And a dead man driving a car through London in the fog. Sharon, from It Walks by Night is back, too.
Death Has Deep Roots by Michael Gilbert. One of the most satisfying court room mysteries I've ever read. Half trial, half current murder investigation set just after WWII with investigators in different parts of Europe feeding information back to the barristers. Inspector Hazelrigg mysteries.
Bats in the Belfry by ECR Lorac. A man vanishes completely until his suitcase and passport are found in a sinister artist's studio, the Belfry, in a crumbling house in Notting Hill. Of course, the victim had Secrets. An Inspector MacDonald mystery. I have checked out, but not started, another Inspector MacDonald mystery, Murder in the Mill-Race.
The Tremor of Forgery by Patricia Highsmith [audiobook, narrated by Steve Marvel, who did a great job]. Sometimes Miss Marple teases her nephew Raymond West that he writes are about unpleasant people. This is kind of book Raymond West would write. Everyone is sort of unlikable. An American writer goes to Tunisia to write a script. He's supposed to meet a producer, who never shows up. The producer ends up committing suicide in the first guy's apartment in New York after having a fling with the man's girlfriend (who shows up in Tunisia later). There's a typical Rah, Rah, Our Way of Life American and a gay Dane and the American ends up killing a Tunisian who breaks into his bungalow by throwing his typewriter on him, but he's never held accountable for the crime. He breaks up with his girlfriend and goes back to his first wife and leaves Tunisia. I listened to it for a sense of Tunisia (because Marwan Kenzari, the actor who plays Joe in The Old Guard is part Tunisian), but I lived abroad long enough and enough places to know what shit Americans can be overseas and that's all it was.
Castle Skull by John Dickson Carr. I am reading all the Henri Bencolin series. This involves a scary German castle, a genius magician, and a brilliant actor. Melodramatic. The French Bencolin and his American sidekick Jeff.
The Lost Gallows by John Dickson Carr. Another Henri Bencolin mystery. He and Jeff are back in London at a residential club. This involves vengeance for an old crime. A touch of Egyptian macabre. And a dead man driving a car through London in the fog. Sharon, from It Walks by Night is back, too.
Death Has Deep Roots by Michael Gilbert. One of the most satisfying court room mysteries I've ever read. Half trial, half current murder investigation set just after WWII with investigators in different parts of Europe feeding information back to the barristers. Inspector Hazelrigg mysteries.
Bats in the Belfry by ECR Lorac. A man vanishes completely until his suitcase and passport are found in a sinister artist's studio, the Belfry, in a crumbling house in Notting Hill. Of course, the victim had Secrets. An Inspector MacDonald mystery. I have checked out, but not started, another Inspector MacDonald mystery, Murder in the Mill-Race.
The Tremor of Forgery by Patricia Highsmith [audiobook, narrated by Steve Marvel, who did a great job]. Sometimes Miss Marple teases her nephew Raymond West that he writes are about unpleasant people. This is kind of book Raymond West would write. Everyone is sort of unlikable. An American writer goes to Tunisia to write a script. He's supposed to meet a producer, who never shows up. The producer ends up committing suicide in the first guy's apartment in New York after having a fling with the man's girlfriend (who shows up in Tunisia later). There's a typical Rah, Rah, Our Way of Life American and a gay Dane and the American ends up killing a Tunisian who breaks into his bungalow by throwing his typewriter on him, but he's never held accountable for the crime. He breaks up with his girlfriend and goes back to his first wife and leaves Tunisia. I listened to it for a sense of Tunisia (because Marwan Kenzari, the actor who plays Joe in The Old Guard is part Tunisian), but I lived abroad long enough and enough places to know what shit Americans can be overseas and that's all it was.
no subject
Date: 2021-05-31 07:01 pm (UTC)What murder victim doesn't Have Secrets?
no subject
Date: 2021-05-31 08:31 pm (UTC)True. This one has his share.