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Thursday, November 1, 2012

Mysteries in October and Pick of the Month

I upped my reading total to six books in October. As usual, all of them were mysteries.

The mysteries I read this month were:
  1. The House Without a Key by Earl Derr Biggers
  2. The Greene Murder Case by S. S. Van Dine
  3. A Touch of Frost by R. D. Wingfield
  4. Bimbos of the Death Sun by Sharyn McCrumb
  5. Zombies of the Gene Pool by Sharyn McCrumb
  6. XPD by Len Deighton
The Crime Fiction Pick of the Month meme is hosted at Mysteries in Paradise. Bloggers link to summary posts for the month, and identify a crime fiction best read of the month.

Two were vintage mysteries and I was reading those authors (Biggers and Van Dine) for the first time.  The other four were published between 1979 and 1992.


It is difficult to pick a favorite. The top three were, without a doubt, The House Without a Key,  A Touch of Frost and XPD.

I guess my pick for best book this month would be... the first Charlie Chan mystery, The House Without a Key. I have seen many of the Charlie Chan films, and I have always enjoyed them, but I had not read any of the books. I was pleasantly surprised that I found this first book very enjoyable. The plot was more complex than I expected. Charlie was less front and center in this book than he is in the movies. He did not show up until later in the book, and in some ways he seemed to be in the background during the investigation. But it is clearly his intellect and detection that solves the crime.
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3 comments:

  1. SarahNovember 3, 2012 at 9:53 AM

    I have some Len Deighton's on my book to read. I do enjoy them now and then. I still fancy reading a Charlie Chan book.

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  2. Prashant C. TrikannadNovember 4, 2012 at 12:13 AM

    I read a lot of Len Deighton's racy novels including XPD along with everything by Jack Higgins, my own favourite from that era. I'm surprised to see Deighton is still in demand.

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    Replies
    1. TracyKNovember 4, 2012 at 7:50 AM

      His books are being reprinted in the US so I guess there must be some demand. I don't know why I did not discover them when they were written. Maybe the covers looked too thrillerish for me at the time. And at that point I was mostly getting books from libraries so maybe they did not show up in the areas I was visiting.

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