Signing up for 20 Books of Summer 2026

This is my eleventh year of participating in the 20 Books of Summer reading challenge. The event was originally hosted by Cathy at 746Books. This year, Annabel from AnnaBookbel is hosting the event.

The challenge is very flexible. You don't have to aim for the full 20 books; instead, you can opt for 15 or 10. 

Here are some of the rules...

• The #20BooksofSummer2026 challenge runs from Monday June 1st to Monday August 31st
• The first rule of 20 Books is that there are no real rules, other than signing up for 10, 15 or 20 books and trying to read from your TBR.
• You can pick your list in advance, or nominate a bookcase to read from, or pick at whim from your TBR.

For more information and the place to sign up, check out this post at AnnaBookBel. There is also a book bingo card if that appeals to you.

I love to make lists of books to read, so I would start with a list whether I plan to stick with it or not. However, I do plan to stick with my list, and here it is, in no particular order.

The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and his Mother) by Rabih Alameddine. Won the National Book Award for Fiction (2025).

The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz. Mystery. 2018. 2nd book in the Hawthorne and Horowitz series.

Mortmain Hall by Martin Edwards. Mystery. 2019. 2nd book in the Rachel Savernake series. 

The Customer is Always Wrong by Mimi Pond. Graphic Novel. 2017.

Wednesday's Child by Yiyun Li. Short Stories. 2023.

Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li. Won the Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography 2025.

Count Them One by One: Black Mississippians Fighting for the Right to Vote by Gordon A. Martin, Jr. Nonfiction. 2010.

Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-reum, translated by Shanna Tan. Fiction. 2022.

Floating Hotel by Grace Curtis. Cozy Science Fiction novel, 2024. Read and recommended by my son.

Middlemarch by George Eliot. Classic novel. 1872.

Find a Victim by Ross Macdonald. Mystery. 1954. Book 5 in the Lew Archer series.

The Birds and the Beasts Were There by Margaret Millar. Nonfiction, Nature, Memoir. 1971.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Classic Novel. 1847.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Classic Novel. 1818.

Murder on the Yellow Brick Road by Stuart Kaminsky. Mystery. 1971. Book 2 in the Toby Peters series

Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Katherine Rooney. Historical Fiction. 2017. 

The Sisters by Robert Littell. Spy Fiction. 1985.

A Graveyard for Lunatics by Ray Bradbury. Mystery. 1990. Book 2 in the Crumley Mysteries series.

Glass Houses by Louise Penny. Mystery. 2017. Book 13 in the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series. Set in Canada.

Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper. Mystery. 2015. Set in Canada.

Bleeders by Bill Pronzini. Mystery. 2001. Book 27 in the Nameless series.

Trophies and Dead Things by Marcia Muller. Mystery. 1990. Book 10 in the Sharon McCone series.

The Cyclist by Tim Sullivan. Mystery. 2020. Book 2 in the DS George Cross series.

My Mystery Books from the 2023 Book Sale

 

From September 15th through September 24th this year, we visited the Planned Parenthood Book Sale five times. Here I have listed ten of the crime fiction books that I purchased at the sale. There were some older books, some newish books.

The House on the Strand (1969) by Daphne de Maurier

I had been looking for books by Daphne de Maurier at the book sale, and my son volunteered to help. He did not have any luck either until he found one in the Science Fiction and Fantasy area. We were both surprised. It turns out this is a time travel book of sorts, so of course I had to try it. Almost 300 pages; I think it will be a good read.

The English Teacher (2013) by Yiftach Reicher Atir

I bought this book because it is spy fiction and the protagonist is a female Mossad agent. Otherwise, I know nothing more about it. The author drew on his own experiences to write the book. It was translated from the Hebrew by Philip Simpson.

Tangerine (2018) by Christine Mangan

I bought this because it is set in Morocco and it is a mystery / thriller. I don't know much about Morocco at all. BookerTalk has reviewed this book. Based on her thoughts on the book I may be disappointed, but it won't hurt to give it a try.

A World of Curiosities (2022) by Louise Penny

I bought this book because I plan to read all the books in this series. And because it was a very good price for a newer hardback, although I usually don't pay $6.00 for books at the book sale. I have read 11 of the books, and this is the 18th. It will take me a while to get to this one.

The Outcast Dead (2014) by Elly Griffiths

This is another series I am working my way through. This is the 6th book of a 15 book series, so it is up in the air whether I will read all of the books in the series or not.

Bitter Wash Road (2013) by Garry Disher

Garry Disher is a prolific Australian author; I think most of his novels are mysteries. I have read one book from his Peninsula Crimes police procedural series, The Dragon Man. His first series stars a thief, Wyatt; two years ago I was lucky to find the first four in that series at the 2021 book sale. I still haven't tried any of those. And this year I found the first book in his most recent series starring Paul Hirschhausen, Bitter Wash Road. 

Brighton Rock (1938) by Graham Greene

I haven't read much by Graham Greene so I was happy to find this old hardback edition of Brighton Rock with the dust jacket mostly intact. The protagonist is Pinkie, a gang leader who has murdered a journalist and thinks he can get away with it. The book goes beyond a thriller to explore moral issues. 

Anatomy of a Murder (1958) by Robert Traver

I have a paperback copy of this book and had wanted to read it for years, but it has the tiniest print I have ever seen. So I was thrilled to find this copy at the book sale. 

This is from the prologue:

"This is the story of a murder, of a murder trial, and of some of the people who engaged or became enmeshed in the proceedings. Enmeshed is a good word, for murder, of all crimes, seems to posses to a greater degree than any other that compelling magnetic quality that draws people helplessly into its outspreading net, frequently to their surprise, and occasionally to their horror."

Missionary Stew (1983) by Ross Thomas

I have enjoyed the Ross Thomas books I have read, which were espionage books. Not all of his books are in that genre, but I think this one has at least a tinge of it.

This is part of a review in the October 16, 1983 Washington Post by Stephen King:

"In a country that chooses to canonize a few of its many fine comic novelists and ignore the rest, Ross Thomas is something of a secret. Missionary Stew is Thomas's 19th novel (five of them were issued under the pseudonym Oliver Bleeck), but the people who know and relish the work of Ishmael Reed, Don DeLillo, and Peter DeVries do not know the work of Ross Thomas, and that seems a great shame. Perhaps Missionary Stew, certainly the best of the Thomas novels I've read, will help to rectify that situation. It is funny, cynical, and altogether delicious. If buying a novel is, as a friend of mine once said, always a speculative investment for the reader, then take it from me--this one is a blue-chip stock. Baby, you can't go wrong."

Strangers in Town: Three Newly Discovered Mysteries by Ross Macdonald, edited by Tom Nolan

From the dust jacket of the book: 

"In an important literary discovery, Macdonald biographer, Tom Nolan, unearthed three previously unpublished private-eye stories by Ross Macdonald. 'Death by Water,' written in 1945, features Macdonald's first detective Joe Rogers, and two novelettes from 1950 and 1955, 'Strangers in Town' and 'The Angry Man,' are detailed cases of Lew Archer."

This was my most expensive purchase at the book sale. The book was published by Crippen & Landru in 2001. It is in excellent condition and includes an additional small booklet with a piece written by Macdonald titled 'Winnipeg, 1929.' Ross Macdonald is a pseudonym of Kenneth Millar; he was brought up in Canada and met his wife Margaret Millar there.

Six Degrees of Separation from Redhead at the Side of the Road to The Iron Gates

 

The Six Degrees of Separation meme is hosted by Kate at booksaremyfavoriteandbest. The idea behind the meme is to start with a book and use common points between two books to end up with links to six other books, forming a chain. Every month she provides the title of a book as the starting point.

This month the book is Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler. This book was published in 2020 and I know nothing about it, so I am starting with the word "redhead" in the title for my first link.

Thus my first link in the chain is The Case of the Restless Redhead by Erle Stanley Gardner. In this book, Perry Mason helps out a young lawyer, Frank Neely, who is defending a redheaded waitress, Evelyn Bagby. She was arrested for theft while stranded in Corona, California, waiting for her car to be repaired. 

That book leads me to Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, another book about a lawyer. This book is an inverted mystery set in a small town in Kentucky. It was one of three mysteries written by C. W. Grafton, father of Sue Grafton.

And the next book in my chain is one of Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone mysteries... G is for Gumshoe. Kinsey lives in Santa Teresa, and the author chose that name for the city to honor Ross Macdonald, who used that city in some of his books also. In both cases, Santa Teresa is a fictionalized version of Santa Barbara, California.

The first book in Macdonald's Lew Archer series, The Moving Target, is set in Santa Teresa. 

I have only read the first four of the Lew Archer books so far, but I have become so enamored of Ross Macdonald's books that I recently read his biography, written by Tom Nolan. It was also especially interesting to me because Macdonald, whose real name was Ken Millar, lived in Santa Barbara with his wife Margaret Millar for several decades.

Margaret Millar is also an author of mystery novels, although her books were mostly psychological suspense. The final book in my chain, The Iron Gates, is set in Toronto, Canada.

So my chain takes me to California, with a detour to Kentucky, then back to California, and ends up in Canada.

Next month's Six Degrees will start with Phosphorescence by Julia Baird.

Nonfiction November 2020 – Week 1

 

This week begins Nonfiction November, an event that celebrates reading nonfiction. The event is hosted by Katie of Doing Dewey, Julz of Julz Reads, Rennie of What’s Nonfiction, and Leann of Shelf Aware. The main post for this week (with links to other blogs) is at Shelf Aware.

My year in nonfiction:

I decided to join in on this event for the first time because I thought I had read more nonfiction than in previous years. That is true but only by a couple of books, although there are two more months in 2020 and I am currently reading two nonfiction books. So maybe it is that I am getting more out of the nonfiction I am reading.

To this point in the year I have read three historical nonfiction books: two books about the influenza pandemic of 1918 and one about the life of servants in Victorian and Edwardian times.  I read four books of mystery reference. Plus, one travel journal, one biography, and one book about books. For a total of 10 nonfiction books. In previous years I have read eight or less nonfiction books.

Favorite nonfiction read of the year:

This is easy. Ross Macdonald: A Biography (1999) by Tom Nolan is not only my favorite nonfiction read, it is one of my favorite books of the year.

Ross Macdonald, pseudonym of Ken Millar, was the author of the highly regarded Lew Archer detective series. Ken Millar was born in northern California, spent his childhood in Ontario, Canada, and met his wife Margaret Millar while going to college in Canada. The couple moved to Santa Barbara in 1946 and were living there when Ken died in 1983. He was a very interesting man, and this biography was very well done. The emphasis is on his personal life although that naturally includes his development as an author of crime fiction.

I admire Ross Macdonald as a writer, but for years I have been interested in his life in Santa Barbara, where I have lived for four decades. 

A particular topic that I’ve been attracted to more this year:

Like most people, my reading has been a bit different this year. I always read a lot of mystery fiction of all types, but this year I read more comfort reads. I think I have read a bit less than before, and my concentration has definitely suffered, but all in all I had a good reading year, and that was true of my nonfiction reads also.

My husband has read three books about the influenza pandemic of 1918 but I have never had an interest in that topic. Until now. This year I wanted to know what people experienced in that pandemic and what we could learn from it. 

Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It (1999) by Gina Kolata

It is clear from all the books I read on this subject that doctors and scientists had no idea what the disease was that was killing so many people or what was causing it. This book focuses on research efforts to identify the virus after the 1918 pandemic ended.

The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History (2004)

by John M. Barry

This book did go more into the events of the spread of the flu from 1918 through 1920 than Gina Kolata's book. It is also much longer with about 460 pages of text and another 100 of notes and references. There is an emphasis on the state of medicine, science, and research in the US in the 19th century, leading up to the outbreak of the flu, at the same time that the US was getting involved in World War I.

---

And I am now reading Pandemic 1918 by Catharine Arnold. That book is more focused on first person accounts of the pandemic.

What do I hope to get out of participating in Nonfiction November? 

Two things. I hope that reading posts by people who are enthused about nonfiction will inspire me to read more in that area myself, and I hope to see suggestions for types of nonfiction that I have not considered. 

#NonficNov

Reading Summary for September 2020

I am having a hard time believing that we are already into October and I am summarizing my reads for September. My reading changed a lot this year. It was partially due to Covid-19, I am sure but not only because of that. I think some of my challenges that I started the year with are not going to be completed and I doubt if I will push myself in the last three months to catch up. 

This month I read seven books. Four of the books were vintage mysteries, published in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. Two of them were spy fiction, although they were very different books. And one of the books was science fiction. All of them were very good reads.

Science Fiction

The Last Emperox (2020) by John Scalzi

This is the last book in the Interdependency trilogy. The first book was The Collapsing Empire, which I reviewed here. I liked the 2nd and 3rd books in the trilogy even more than the first one.

Crime Fiction

The Way Some People Die (1951) by Ross Macdonald

This is the third Lew Archer book, and Lew is trying to find a missing woman for her mother. He tells the mother that this type of case is for the police; she doesn't want the police involved. The plot is very convoluted and the characters are great. My review here.

The Arms Maker of Berlin (2009) by Dan Fesperman

I could not decide whether this was spy fiction or just a thriller. Certainly intelligence agents are involved, and the thrills are low key. A history professor who specializes in German resistance during World War II gets mixed up with the FBI when his former mentor is arrested for stealing important documents. His work leads to exposure of wartime secrets and deceit, and includes visits to Bern, Switzerland and Berlin, Germany. I loved this book; it did have a slow start, but there is lots of action towards the end.

The Beast Must Die (1938) by Nicholas Blake

This is the 4th book in the Nigel Strangeways series. Frank Cairnes is a writer of detective fiction, a widower, and cannot accept that his only son is dead and the hit-and-run driver has never been found. The book starts with a journal where Cairnes describes his plans to find and kill the person who killed his son. Strangeways doesn't show up until about halfway through the book. My review here.

Laurels Are Poison (1942) by Gladys Mitchell

This is the 14th book in the Mrs. Bradley series, a series which totals 66 books. In this one, Mrs. Bradley is serving as Warden of Athelstan Hall at Cartaret Training College. She is there to investigate the disappearance of Miss Murchan, the previous Warden. I read this as part of a group read, hosted at Jason Half's blog. I enjoyed the book and will be reading more in this series.

American Spy (2019) by Lauren Wilkinson

This is a debut novel. It can be classified as spy fiction, but it is not only focused on espionage. The protagonist, Marie Mitchell, is black and female, and has been working for the FBI in the New York office. The story is set partially in New York, and partially in Burkina Faso, and it has an unusual structure, told in the style of a journal written for her young sons. It is an exploration of family dynamics and influences, and how the past shapes us. There are many flashbacks to Marie's childhood, her motivation for being a spy, and why she fits in that job so well. 

Voyage into Violence (1956) by Frances and Richard Lockridge

This is the 21st of 26 mysteries featuring Mr. and Mrs. North. I consider these mysteries to be light, fun reads. I don't want a steady diet of them, but they are great for mixing in with more gritty or serious reading. Over the course of the series, Pam and Jerry North have become good friends with Bill Weigand, New York City homicide detective, and his wife Dorian. In this book the two couples are taking a Caribbean cruise to Havana. A man is murdered and Bill is called on to investigate.

The Way Some People Die: Ross Macdonald

This is the third Lew Archer book by Ross Macdonald. The private detective is trying to find a missing woman for her mother. The daughter, Galatea (or "Galley" to friends) is twenty five and very beautiful; the mother hasn't heard from her in about three months. Archer tells the mother that this type of case is for the police; she doesn't want the police involved.  For $50, he starts looking in Pacific Point.

Lew Archer travels over a good bit of California in this novel, starting in Los Angeles, then to Pacific Point (a fictionalized version of La Jolla), Palm Springs and San Francisco. I could hardly keep up. He meets a lot of questionable people, mobsters and swindlers. The characters are great, and people are seldom what they seem to be initially. 

The plot is very convoluted; I don't remember having so much trouble following the story in the first two novels in the series. However, I have no trouble at all following Lew Archer through the twists and turns of the plot as long as the writing is well done, with lovely descriptions and interesting dialog.

Archer goes to the place where Galley used to live:

The court consisted of ten small stucco bungalows ranged five on each side of a gravel driveway that led to the garages at the rear. The first bungalow had a wooden office sign over the door, with a cardboard NO VACANCY sign attached to it. There were two acacia trees in the front yard, blanketed with yellow chenille-like blossoms.

When I got out of the car a mockingbird swooped from one of the trees and dived for my head. I gave him a hard look and he flew up to a telephone wire and sat there swinging back and forth and laughing at me. The laughter actually came from a red-faced man in dungarees who was sitting in a deck-chair under the tree. His mirth brought on some sort of an attack, probably asthmatic. He coughed and choked and wheezed, and the chair creaked under his weight and his face got redder. When it was over he removed a dirty straw hat and wiped his bare red pate with a handkerchief.

This introduces Mr. Raisch, Galley's former landlord. He and Archer have an entertaining conversation about Galley and the many people who have visited Raisch trying to find her.

I am aiming to read all the books by Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald. Macdonald wrote over twice as many books as Chandler. There are 18 Lew Archer novels and Chandler wrote only 7 Philip Marlowe mysteries.  Right now they are running neck and neck as far as my opinion of their books and writing. Chandler's books are more confusing, less focused on plotting. Macdonald's plots are more logical and coherent, although this one was challenging. And they both write very well and are a pleasure to read.

When I reviewed Shooting at Loons by Margaret Maron in August, I noted that I really liked the cover by Gary Kelley. He was a new illustrator to me, and I had not noticed other book covers by him. Shortly after that, I found that my copy of The Way Some People Die has a cover by Gary Kelley also. Not as striking as the one for Shooting at Loons, but still very nice.

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Publisher: Warner Books, 1990 (first publ. 1951)
Length:    195 pages
Format:    Paperback
Series:     Lew Archer #3
Setting:    California 
Genre:     Mystery

Source:    I purchased my copy at the 2016 Planned Parenthood book sale.

20 Books of Summer 2020

This is my fifth year of joining in the 20 Books of Summer reading challenge. It is very flexible. You can go for 15 Books of Summer or 10 Books of Summer if 20 is too much to commit to. Books can be substituted along the way. And that is fine.

The event is hosted by Cathy at 746 Books. The description is here. This is her list. And the links for those joining in are HERE.

This year, for this event, summer starts June 1st and ends September 1st. I finished my list last summer so I will go into this optimistically. Of course, part of the intent is to review the books read and that is never going to happen with me, but still, I enjoy reading them all.

Here is my list:

Crashed (2010) by Timothy Hallinan
#1 in the Junior Bender series. Set in Los Angeles.

The Grand Sophy (1950) by Georgette Heyer
Regency romance.

Tripwire (1999) by Lee Child
#3 in the Jack Reacher series.

A Trick of the Light (2011) by Louise Penny
#7 in the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series

The Way Some People Die (1951) by Ross Macdonald
#3 in the Lew Archer series

The High Window (1942) by Raymond Chandler
#3 in the Philip Marlowe series.

Marking Time (1991) by Elizabeth Jane Howard
#2 in the Cazalet series


The Provincial Lady in Wartime (1940) by E.M. Delafield
#4 in the Provincial Lady series

Buddha's Money (1998) by Martin Limón 
#3 in the George Sueño and Ernie Bascom series, set in South Korea in the 1970s

Fall of a Cosmonaut (2000) by Stuart Kaminsky
#13 out of 16 books in the Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov series, set in Moscow, Russia (usually)

Shooting at Loons (1994) by Margaret Maron
#3 in the Judge Deborah Knott series, set in North Carolina

Other Paths to Glory (1974) by Anthony Price 
#5 in the David Audley series (spy fiction)

The Women in Black (1993) by Madeleine St John 
Historical fiction set in 1950s Australia

The Absent One (2012) by Jussi Adler-Olsen
#2 in the Department Q series, set in Copenhagen, Denmark

Woman with a Blue Pencil (2015) by Gordon McAlpine
A standalone historical mystery with a unique structure.

An Air That Kills (2019) by Christine Poulson
#3 in the Katie Flanagan series. Katie is a medical researcher.

American Spy (2019) by Lauren Wilkinson
Espionage fiction.

Young Bess (1944) by Margaret Irwin
#1 in the Elizabeth I trilogy

The Consuming Fire (2018) by John Scalzi
#2 in the Interdepency Trilogy (science fiction)

Dragonsdawn (1988) by Anne McCaffrey
A book in the Pern series (science fiction / fantasy).

Book Sale 2018, Part 1: Forgotten Books

The 44th Annual Planned Parenthood Book Sale ran from September 20th -30th this year, over two weekends. We went on 4 of the days. I bought way too many books, as usual, but a lot of them were small paperback editions of vintage mysteries, which don't take up too much space.

So here are a few "forgotten" books that I got at the sale.

I just finished reading this book, the 8th book in the Miss Marple series. The wrap around cover illustration is by Tom Adams.

The Sound of Murder is a Rex Stout mystery that does not feature Nero Wolfe. I reviewed it earlier under the original title: Alphabet Hicks. This copy is a new addition to my collection of Pyramid Green Door mysteries.

The Unfinished Clue is one of Georgette Heyer's mystery novels.

I have heard good things about the short stories of Dorothy Salisbury Davis but haven't tried any. And this is is very interesting cover.

Ross Macdonald (pseud. of Kenneth Millar) was married to Margaret Millar. They lived in Santa Barbara, California for many years and both wrote mystery novels. Macdonald's books were primarily hardboiled detective novels; Millar's books were mostly psychological suspense.

The Case of the Lucky Legs was the third Perry Mason mystery (out of over 80 books in the series). The book was published in 1934 but this Cardinal edition, with cover illustration by John Fernie, was published in 1959.

Reading Summary, September 2018

September was another good reading month. The eight books I read were divided equally between vintage crime fiction and more contemporary fiction. I read a children's book, unusual for me, but I maintain that a good children's book will be equally enjoyed by adults.

NON-MYSTERY FICTION

Saffy's Angel by (2001) Hilary McKay

Winner of the 2002 Whitbread Children's Book of the Year award. I read about this book at Clothes in Books (and here) but I actually decided to read it when I read the first three or four pages in a preview. I loved the story because personally (even in my old age) I can identify with Saffron and her quest, but also because the author makes each of her brothers and sisters interesting, caring people. 

CRIME FICTION reads in September:

The Drowning Pool (1950) by Ross Macdonald

This is the second Lew Archer novel, published in 1950 and set on the southern California coast (Ventura, although the name is changed), in an area where oil is the prime source of money. Archer is dealing with an extremely dysfunctional family. My full review is here.

The Demolished Man (1953) by Alfred Bester

This book is a cross between mystery and science fiction and was the winner of the first Hugo for best novel. Set in 2301, the police are aided by humans with advanced ESP (called "espers") and it is impossible to get away with murder. Nevertheless, business mogul Ben Reich is plotting to murder his rival, Craye D’Courtney. I think I missed a lot in this book. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed reading it. But when I read other reviews or articles on the book, there was a lot of symbolism, etc., that I just missed. This is one of those books I will reread.  

Brewing Up a Storm (1996) by Emma Lathen

This is the next to the last book in the Emma Lathen series about John Thatcher, Wall Street banker. This one focuses on a group that is against the selling of non-alcoholic beer in grocery stores, seeing it as a mechanism to encourage young people to move up to real beer.  As usual it is the characters and their interactions that really shine.

Real Tigers (2016) by Mick Herron

The third book in one of my favorite espionage series, set in the UK. The basic setup is that agents who have messed up in some major way are put out  to pasture at Slough House, and thus are called the Slow Horses. Their leader is Jackson Lamb; everyone in the group has their problems, but none of them give up hope that someday they will get back to a "real job" in the secret service. A great series and this one was my favorite so far. 

Outrage at Blanco (1998) by Bill Crider

This is a Western, set in 1887, with a strong female protagonist, Ellie Taine. It does start out with several crimes, and we know exactly who the bad guys are. A  very good and unpredictable revenge story, with interesting characters. The book is described as "True Grit meets Grand Torino" and I can see the comparisons there.

The Asphalt Jungle (1949) by W.R. Burnett

This is a noir heist novel, set in an unnamed city in the midwestern US. It has a large cast of characters and the focus is on the team setting up and carrying out the heist. My first novel by W.R. Burnett, who also wrote Little Caesar and High Sierra. We watched the film adaptation, and it was very true to the book, with a marvelous cast.

The Murder of My Aunt (1934) by Richard Hull

This story is an inverted mystery, in which the reader knows who commits the crime. In this case, the narrator, Edward, is planning to murder his aunt  and that takes up a large part of the book. He is an unlikable character but still entertaining. A very interesting story, just different from most crime fiction. See my thoughts here.

The Drowning Pool: Ross Macdonald

In this second Lew Archer novel by Ross Macdonald, the plot is complicated, with a large cast of characters. Archer's client is a woman who has intercepted a letter intended for her husband that reveals that she has been dallying with another man. She is concerned that her husband will see the letter, but even more than that, she does not want her mother-in-law to hear about it. Her husband's family was very well-to-do but at this point in time is living on a lovely estate on a relatively small fixed income and the mother-in-law controls the purse strings. The job she wants Archer to do is find out who sent the letter, and possibly prevent any future occurrences. When Archer visits the family home where they all live, the mother-in-law is drowned in a pool during a party.

The other characters include the client's teenage daughter; the chauffeur who is attracted to the daughter; the husband's friend, a playwright; and the sheriff who is a close friend of the family. Immediately the chauffeur comes under suspicion as the killer, but Archer is not convinced that he committed the crime. In his mind, just about anyone could be a suspect.

That is more of the set up and the story than I like to reveal about a novel, but there is plenty more to follow. The family is extremely dysfunctional, and there are various criminal elements involved. The initial setting is the southern California coast, in an area where oil is the prime source of money. Archer travels as far afield as Las Vegas looking for clues and evidence, and gets beaten up along the way.

Archer is one of those private eyes who won't give up, and gives the case his all. He goes above and beyond. The ending surprised me, and the book was a pleasure to read.

An example of the writing... which also demonstrates Macdonald's concern for the environment.

I was still chilly a half-hour later, crossing the pass to Nopal Valley. Even at its summit the highway was wide and new, rebuilt with somebody's money. I could smell the source of the money when I slid down into the valley on the other side. It stank like rotten eggs. 

The oil wells from which the sulphur gas rose crowded the slopes on both sides of the town. I could see them from the highway as I drove in: the latticed triangles of the derricks where the trees had grown, the oil-pumps nodding and clanking where cattle had grazed. Since 'thirty-nine or 'forty, when I had seen it last, the town had grown enormously, like a tumor. It had thrust out shoots in all directions: blocks of match-box houses in raw new housing developments and the real estate shacks to go with them, a half-mile gauntlet of one-story buildings along the highway: veterinarians, chiropractors, beauty shops, marketerias, restaurants, bars, liquor stores....

More had changed than the face of the buildings, or the number and make of the cars. The people were different and there were too many of them. Crowds of men whose faces were marked by sun and work and boredom walked in the streets and in and out of the bars, looking for fun or trouble. Very few women showed on the main street. The blue-shirted cop on the main corner wore his holster on the front of his hip, with the flap unbuttoned and the gun-butt showing.

After reading the book, my husband and I watched the film version with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. I was very surprised that the story had been relocated to New Orleans and surrounding areas. The setting was lovely and the decadent culture of the rich and the dysfunctional family fit in perfectly there. The story was not identical; some relationships had been changed. But for the most part the basic structure remained and the acting was very good. Melanie Griffith plays the extremely flirtatious daughter. As usual, the book is better, but the film is very entertaining.

Other reviews:

• At Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine
• At Tipping My Fedora; Sergio also reviewed the film adaptation.
• At the crime segments.
• At Mystery*File.
• At JASON HALF : writer.

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Publisher:  Vintage Crime / Black Lizard, 1996 (orig. pub. 1950)
Length:   244 pages
Format:   Trade paperback
Series:    Lew Archer, #2
Setting:   Southern California
Genre:    Mystery
Source:   I purchased my copy

The Moving Target: Ross Macdonald

The Moving Target is the first book in the Lew Archer series. Archer is called to the home of  millionaire Ralph Sampson, in Santa Teresa. Sampson is missing. Although he has been gone for less than a day, the circumstances of his disappearance are suspicious.

Sampson is described as a very eccentric millionaire, who has given away a mountain retreat to a "holy man" and dabbles in astrology. The main characters in this book, other than Archer, are Sampson's wife, his daughter, and his pilot. Sampson's lawyer, Bert Graves, is an old friend of Archer's. Once Archer starts his investigation, a lot of seamy characters that were associated with Sampson are unearthed. There are very few appealing characters in this book, but they were interesting.

I enjoyed this book more than the Ross Macdonald book I read last month, The Ivory Grin. I think that is because the plot was less convoluted and I could understand Archer's motivation throughout. It might also help a bit that Santa Teresa is a fictionalized version of Santa Barbara, California. Santa Barbara in 1949, but still recognizably Santa Barbara.

Archer started out as a policeman and became disenchanted.

When I went into police work in 1935, I believed that evil was a quality some people were born with, like a harelip. A cop's job was to find those people and put them away. But evil isn't so simple. Everybody has it in him, and whether it comes out in his actions depends on a number of things. Environment, opportunity, economic pressure, a piece of bad luck, a wrong friend.

Ross Macdonald is well known for his imagery. Sometimes he goes overboard in my opinion, but most readers love it.

A cab driver offers to drop him at The Wild Piano in West Hollywood:

“Why not?” I said. “The night is young.” I was lying. The night was old and chilly, with a slow heartbeat. The tires whined like starved cats on the fog-sprinkled black-top. The neon along the strip glared with insomnia.

And Archer aims a lot of criticism at women in this book. An example:

It seemed to me then that evil was a female quality, a poison that women secreted and transmitted to men like disease.

It will be interesting as I read later books in the series to see if his opinion of women softens.

Other resources:

• A review at The Game's Afoot
• This article at detnovel.com describes both Macdonald’s life and the books he wrote.

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Publisher: Vintage Books, 1998 (orig. pub. 1949)
Length:  245 pages
Format: trade paperback
Series:  Lew Archer novels, #1
Setting: Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, California and surrounding areas
Genre:  Mystery
Source: purchased my copy

Books of 1952: The Ivory Grin by Ross Macdonald

Rich Westwood at his blog Past Offences (classic crime reviews and news) has challenged readers to blog about a book or movie from 1952 during the month of August. This review of The Ivory Grin by Ross Macdonald is my submission for the 1952 book challenge.

Short summary from this review at armchairinterviews.com.:

Archer is hired by the archetypal mystery client who won’t tell him anything about herself, to find a young woman she won’t tell him much about either. Archer knows from the first moments that he is being conned, but he’s both a little short on cash and a romantic at heart, and he just can’t resist the challenge that goes with the $100.

The book starts with a scene in Lew Archer's office, introducing the client:

I found her waiting at the door of my office. She was a stocky woman of less than medium height, wearing a blue slack suit over a blue turtleneck sweater, and a blue mink stole that failed to soften her outlines. Her face was squarish and deeply tanned, its boyish quality confirmed by dark hair cut short at the nape. She wasn't the type you'd expect to be up and about at eight thirty in the morning, unless she'd been up all night. As I unlocked the door she stood back and looked up at me with the air of an early bird surveying an outsize worm.

Archer finds her behavior very irritating very quickly but finds the $100 for two days' work that she is offering hard to pass up.

Her hard dry glance went over me almost tangibly and rested on my mouth. "You look all right. But you sound kind of Hollywood to me."

I was in no mood to swap compliments. The ragged edge on her voice, and her alternation of fair and bad manners bothered me. It was like talking to several persons at once, none of them quite complete.

As with Raymond Chandler, it is the style of writing that I enjoyed the most. The plot was very complex, and I got lost more than once. The characters are well-drawn, but I did get confused occasionally. I did not guess the resolution to the story, and I thought it was handled well. I don't expect to be able to figure out the plots, but I usually do try, without really meaning to.

The young woman who Lew Archer is seeking is a black woman, but light-skinned enough to have passed for white at times. It was good to read a vintage mystery which handles race relations evenhandedly. There are several black characters, their story is followed throughout the novel, and the characters are portrayed compassionately. This story also contrasts between those who have wealth (or want it badly) and those who are closer to poverty.

I recently read Hardboiled America by Geoffrey O'Brien. That book points out that...

With Lew Archer himself, Macdonald pulls off the neat trick of creating a character largely by negative means. Try to imagine him apart from the structure of the book and he becomes a cipher. We see through Archer's eyes, and react with him, but in the end he is little more than a window through which we perceive the real figures of interest — the people who Archer is investigating. He is the interviewer, the neutral voice that calmly elicits anguished testimony. On one level, he is a brilliant dramatic device, a device that works because of Macdonald's mastery of dialogue.

Possibly this is why I was uncomfortable with the story. I wasn't sure why Archer was continuing his investigation against all odds and with little obvious motivation, other than he felt he had to do the right thing for the people he was now involved with.

A reviewer at Goodreads starts his review of this book thusly:

This, the fourth novel in the Lew Archer series, is very good but not exceptional (at least not according to the standards of this exceptional series).

I hope this is true because I did like this book but was not overwhelmed by his skills, and I want to like his other books. I like the reviewer's comments so I recommend that you go read the whole review.

I have a problem when first reading the icons of mystery; my expectations are too high. I want to be bowled over with brilliance, and if that does not happen, I am disappointed. Often, when I come back to another book by the same author, I enjoy it much more because I now know what to expect.  This book is a fine book, but I was expecting more.

I think I will read The Moving Target next, which is the first book in the series and has been adapted into a film starring Paul Newman, titled Harper. I will re-watch that movie after reading the book.

The author's real name was Kenneth Millar and he was married to crime novelist Margaret Millar. They lived for a while in Santa Barbara, California, although both also lived in Canada when younger.

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Publisher: Bantam Books, 1984 (orig. pub. by Alfred A. Knopf, 1952)
Length:  249 pages
Format: paperback
Series:  Lew Archer novels, #4
Setting: Los Angeles, California and surrounding areas
Genre:  Mystery
Source: purchased my copy