The Official 2018 TBR Pile Challenge

I am joining the The Official 2018 TBR Pile Challenge!

I participated in 2013, 2014, and 2015, then Adam at Roof Beam Reader put the challenge on hiatus for two years while he was writing his doctoral dissertation. Now it is back.

The idea is:
1) Read 12 books that have been sitting on your TBR shelf for at least a year.
2) The books must be listed in advance and the post up by January 15, 2018. Two extra alternate titles are allowed in case you run into a title that you cannot read or finish for any reason.

I had sworn off challenges for 2018 because of doing so poorly at them in 2017, but the endless and growing TBR pile is my focus for this year. And I love to make lists.

So here is my list and we will see how well I do with it.

• Death of a Red Heroine by Qiu Xiaolong [published 2000, on my shelf since 2012]
• Black Orchid Blues by Persia Walker [published 2011, on my shelf since 2014]
• The Known Dead by Donald Harstadt [published 1999, on my shelf since 2014]
• The Diggers Rest Hotel by Geoffrey McGeachin [published 2010, acquired 2014]
• Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis [published 1955, on my shelf since 2014]
• The Quiller Memorandum by Adam Hall [published 1965, on my shelf since 2014]
• Brewing up a Storm by Emma Lathen [published 1996, on my shelf for a long time.]
• The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester [published 1951, on my shelf since 2013]
• Cutter and Bone by Newton Thornburg  [published 1976, on my shelf since 2013]
• Starting Out in the Evening  by Brian Morton [published 1998, on my shelf since 2015]
• Night Rounds by Helene Tursten [published 1999, on my shelf since 2013]
• A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [published 1887, on my shelf since 2010]

Alternates:

• Perfect Gallows by Peter Dickinson [published 1988, on my shelf since 2012.]
• Love and Rubles by Stuart Kaminsky [published 1996, on my shelf for a long time.]

Favorite Reads of 2014

I read lots of books this year, mainly mystery novels as usual. I wish I could read twice as many books in a year. I neglected Agatha Christie and Ed McBain totally this year, and I had wanted to start reading Elmore Leonard and read much more of Len Deighton's books than I did.

I did read many great books by wonderful authors this year. I enjoyed almost all of them and it is hard to narrow it down to the ones that really resonated with me. But here is my stab at a list. I did go over 10 books but not by much.

The Danger Within by Michael Gilbert. 
Published in 1952, it is an exceptional story of men incarcerated in a prison camp in Italy toward the end of World War II. The book also includes a mystery, featuring an amateur detective, a prisoner in the camp who is asked to look into the circumstances of the death of a fellow prisoner.

The Little Shadows by Marina Endicott 
This is a historical novel set in the years preceding and during World War I (and the only non-mystery fiction on this list). It is the story of three sisters, teenagers as the story begins, who travel with their mother to support the family as a vaudeville act. I am very interested in vaudeville, and I don't know as much as I would like about the history of vaudeville. I found this book very readable, entertaining, with interesting characters.

Touchstone by Laurie R. King
This historical novel is set in the UK in 1926 and the story centers around the weeks leading up to the general strike. Harris Stuyvesant is an agent of the United States Justice Department's Bureau of Investigation, and he has arrived in England to track down the man responsible for terrorist bombings in the US.

The Cairo Affair by Olen Steinhauer
A spy thriller, which takes place during the activities of the Arab Spring, in February 2011. Sophie Kohl's husband Emmett is currently working at the American embassy in Hungary, but his previous assignment was in Cairo. Both of them have friends still in Cairo, and when Emmett is killed, Sophie seeks the reasons for his death there. 

Time's Witness by Michael Malone
This is the second book in a police procedural series. Cuddy Mangum is the narrator and the Chief of Police in Hillston, North Carolina. Cuddy is educated, but he is not refined, and to the powerful and rich inner circle of Hillston residents, he is a redneck. The book was published in 1989 and set around the same time period. The story in this book centers on George Hall, a black man arrested seven years earlier for killing a white cop. He is now on death row and supporters are seeking a reprieve or pardon. 

Eleven Days by Donald Harstad
Carl Houseman is a deputy sheriff working the night shift in the small town of Maitland, Iowa. He is sent to the scene of a crime after a 911 call comes in. At the scene, he finds a dead man but the woman who made the call is not found. By the next morning, a second crime scene has been found with three more bodies, and the two crimes seem to be related. The small department, with the help of state investigative agencies, works for the next eleven days to solve the crime.

9tail Fox by Jon Courtenay Grimwood 
This novel is fantasy blended with mystery, and the mystery elements were stronger in this novel than in many cross-genre novels. In addition to the noir thriller elements, this is the story of a journey of a man to understanding himself and his isolation from others. I enjoyed the book as much for the personal story of Bobby Zha as for the mystery.

I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes
I am very fond of espionage fiction, so it is no surprise that I liked this. The central character, the spy who has run an elite espionage unit in the past, has had many identities and many code names. Of those who even know of him, he is a legend. But he has reached a point in his life when he has left spying behind and is in a new untraceable identity.  Then several events come together to force him back into the spy game.

World of Trouble by Ben H. Winters 
Book III in the The Last Policeman trilogy, following the activities of policeman Hank Palace in a pre-apocalyptic world. An asteroid is headed for earth, and from the beginning of the series we know that it will be devastating. I also read Countdown City, Book II in the series, this year, and I rated it as highly as this one. In this final book, Hank goes on an odyssey to try to locate his sister before the asteroid hits.

Enigma by Robert Harris
Set in 1943, this book uses Bletchley Park and the code breaking efforts there as a background for a mystery. Tom Jericho had left Bletchley to recuperate in Cambridge after a nervous breakdown resulting from the stress of his work. Now he is asked to return to help in a new effort to break Enigma codes.

Garnethill by Denise Mina
Set in the city of Glasgow, this novel deals with tough topics: incest, patient abuse, drugs, unemployment, dysfunctional families. It is a very dark story. There is an optimistic resolution, but many of the characters in the book are not very pleasant people. Nor is there the possibility for a truly happy ending.

Kerrie of Mysteries in Paradise is collecting lists of  top crime fiction reads for 2014. Check them out HERE.

New (to me) Authors, Second Quarter 2014

At the end of every quarter, Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise hosts a meme for the best new-to-me crime fiction authors. Check out other posts for this quarter.




This quarter I was going to just feature my favorites, but there were too many and I thought every one of these books was interesting and a very good read.

The Burning by Jane Casey
The Night the Gods Smiled by Eric Wright
Eleven Days by Donald Harstad
A Few Right Thinking Men by Sulari Gentill
In the Shadow of the Glacier by Vicki Delany
Skeleton in Search of a Cupboard by Elizabeth Farrars
9tail Fox by Jon Courtenay Grimwood
I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes
The Collini Case by Ferdinand von Schirach

Mr. Campion's Farewell by Mike Ripley
The Sea Detective by Mark Douglas-Home
Slow Horses by Mick Herron
A Hearse on May-Day by Gladys Mitchell

My top pick from this group is...

Eleven Days by Donald Harstad is a police procedural set in Iowa. The first person narrative by Carl is a very matter-of-fact, no frills delivery. The subject is grim, but there are some funny moments. The characterization is very good.

Eleven Days: Donald Harstad

The protagonist of Donald Harstad's novel, Carl Houseman, is a deputy sheriff working the night shift in the small town of Maitland, Iowa. He is sent to the scene of a crime after a 911 call comes in. At the scene, he finds a dead man but the woman who made the call is not found. By the next morning, a second crime scene has been found with three more bodies, and the two crimes seem to be related. The small department, with the help of state investigative agencies, works for the next eleven days to solve the crime.

It is made clear from the beginning that murder doesn't occur that often in this rural area.

This is what Publisher's Weekly had to say:

The first half of Harstad's good-natured debut may read like Fargo meets Dragnet, but this police procedural turns downright explosive once deputy sheriff Carl Houseman gets to the heart of the strange murders that are tearing apart his small Iowa farming town.

The comparison to Dragnet is apt; the first person narrative by Carl is a very matter-of-fact, no frills delivery. There are some funny moments. I would compare it to the humor of Reginald Hill. You laugh because you sympathize or have been there, but the situation itself is not laugh out loud funny.

The characterization is very good. Although we don't get to know each person working on the case, the descriptions and interactions make them feel like real people with real foibles and biases. This may be due to Harstad's background. He was a policeman in the Clayton County Sheriff's Department in northeastern Iowa for many years and draws on his own experiences.

I also liked that there were interesting female characters. The protagonist is male, but very open-minded. Many of the men he works with have difficulty working with women, and express it. There is a female dispatcher who takes the initial call on the crime in progress, and ends up working with the police throughout the story. State special investigator Hester Gorse is called in to work with the local force; she is professional and competent and she has no problem dealing with any harassment.

Just a warning: There are some extremely mutilated bodies and gruesome descriptions of them. This was not overdone, in my opinion. The crimes are possibly linked to Satanism and the subject matter is at times distasteful.

At the publisher's site, there is a link to an excerpt from the beginning of the novel.

Please see these reviews:

• Keishon has an in-depth review at Yet Another Crime Fiction Blog. (Thanks to Keishon for recommending this book to me.)
• Yvette at In So Many Words includes this book in her list of 5 Best Books Based On A True Story. 
• A brief review by Val McDermid at Tangled Web UK.

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Publisher: Bantam, 1999; originally pub. in hardback by Doubleday, 1998
Length:  337 pages
Format: mass market paperback
Series:  Carl Houseman
Setting:  Iowa, USA
Genre:  Mystery, Police Procedural