Karin Slaughter is an author I used to really enjoy but now don’t even start to read. I read all of her Grant County series as soon as it was released years ago but have pulled away from her books because of the violence also. I am not sure if those early books were less descriptive in their violence or if my tolerance was higher.🤷‍♀️ I just looked at GR to get the Grant County name and noticed I seem to have abandoned all of her books I have started in recent years.......

Thank you, Robin! So Rebellion and my favorite rebellious character? I just did a lot of scolling thru your lists. My favorites for the title at this point would be either Jane Eyre or Scarlett. I need to think of one of my own! I read two mysteries by Golden Age authors last week. The Body in the Dumb River by George Bellairs https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51821676-the-body-in-the-dumb-river The murder was solved by the use of stomach contents to tell the time of the last meal. Early forensics……this week I plan to read a Dr. Thorndyke who was the first forensic dectective. George Bellairs could become almost a comfort read for me as once again I found him to be an easy author to read……his Death of a Busybody was also a good mystery. My second Golden Age author was Francis Duncan, who I have also read before. Murder has Motive was set set around a village’s desire to raise money for charity by preforming in a play. Murders start happening and Mordecai Tremaine is on hand to solve them. Mordecai is rather like Miss Marple in the sense that a elderly man who spent his life selling tobacco should not be solving murders as they travel England visiting friends! It was enjoyable and I will be reading more because my Overdrive owns them. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29228522-murder-has-a-motive

@Laurel-in-CA You were such a sweet big sister to buy Trixie Belden’s with you first paychecks! I think I have seen Happy Hollisters on one of the open source lists. Several of the Stratemeyer’s are out there for free. Bobbsey Twins definately because I downloaded those in a failed attempt to interest my kids. Try looking at the kindle store first. I have started my Ruth Fielding and am enjoying the similarities to Nancy Drew. There are many because the ghost writer is the same! 😉. So far they saved a boy from a train wreck and an escaped black panther has been shot.

I haven’t been having a great book week. I keep trying to finish my book by Elizabeth Daly because I should like it. Golden Age American author that my library owns a stack of but it’s boring. It’s also very much a book of its time and I am not liking it with this character. I am still not willing to mark it as abandoned but read a palette cleanser last night. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18900245-murders-in-volume-2 So that palette cleanser was a book by Irene Hannon who I know as a somewhat uneven author of Christian Romantic Suspense. I picked the first book in an older series of hers and discovered she used to write Christian Contemporary Romance and was very good at that genre. I have marked the series and will probably read the rest https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6303258-tides-of-hope Last week I made plans on how to get my bookchains moving again. I started two that are each supposed to be long and managed to stall them both at two books completed. So this week I have listened to both Marie Force’s Fatal Frenzy and Jennifer Ashley’s Death Below Stairs. Both were totally enjoyable and the bookchains have movement. I need to checkout the next planned books.

The more ideas the better!

Goodreads was down all morning and I didn’t want to post without my links. My M and N are both done. I read Seanan McGuire’s 11th book in her Incryptid series and am a bit underwhelmed. If it hadn’t been a book in a favorite series it likely would have been abandoned because the first 40% of Spelunking Through Hell was boring. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57187851-spelunking-through-hell I wish I could say Nine Lives by Peter Swanson was vastly better https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58385688-nine-lives and it actually had a great start but it sort of fizzled once it became obvious who the murderer was and why. Only the epilogue saved its rating on GR for me. It was a very obvious copycat of Christie’s And Then There Were None with the book being discussed frequently. The nine characters were done well and easy to keep track of which was awesome. Both books received 3* on GR from me which is low for me! 😂 I listened to a good one by Jesse Milhalik who is a space opera author I have enjoyed in the past. Hunt for the Stars is the first in a new series which I will definately be reading more of. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56754734-hunt-the-starsFrom GR...... Octavia Zarola would do anything to keep her tiny, close-knit bounty hunting crew together—even if it means accepting a job from Torran Fletcher, a ruthless former general and her sworn enemy. When Torran offers her enough credits to not only keep her crew afloat but also hire someone to fix her ship, Tavi knows that she can’t refuse—no matter how much she’d like to.With so much money on the line, Torran and his crew insist on joining the hunt. Tavi reluctantly agrees because while the handsome, stoic leader pushes all of her buttons—for both anger and desire—she’s endured worse, and the massive bonus payment he’s promised for a completed job is reason enough to shut up and deal.But when they uncover a deeper plot that threatens the delicate peace between humans and Valoffs, Tavi suspects that Torran has been using her as the impetus for a new war. With the fate of her crew balanced on a knife’s edge, Tavi must decide where her loyalties lie—with the quiet Valoff who’s been lying to her, or with the human leaders who left her squad to die on the battlefield. And this time, she’s put her heart on the line

Thank you, Robin! I love mysteries and started my life of crime with Nancy Drew and Encyclopedia Brown and never stopped. Dd and I read all the children’s mysteries I could find and we had a blast. So the decision of what to read this month is a bit daunting. I have my box of books ready from my childhood which has a great collection of favorites. I may be reading Cherry Ames as Dd finished those and left me scrambling to catch up……I haven’t. Mainly because she launched into Agatha Christie at that point and pre reading was required! So the what to read this month in honor of Statemeyer’s brilliance in creating mysteries for children is a tough one for me! Lol I have never even opened one of the Ruth Fielding series but during my research learned that before Stratemeyer had Nancy Drew he had a main character called Ruth Fielding. She intrigues me. The series started in 1914 with a 12 yo orphan called Ruth and ended publication in the 1930’s with Ruth all grown up and married. When Ruth’s series ended Nancy Drew (my fav) started………Nancy never grew up because the aging of Ruth had been a mistake! Ruth Fielding books can be found for free in Kindle format and I rather randomly picked a couple that I thought looked “best” and plan to give them a try this month. I just discovered this goldmine of a website for children’s mystery book series last night when looking for something to link Ruth Fielding to today https://forgottenstoriesweb.wordpress.com/mystery-series/ruth-fielding-series/. Have fun!

The Library of the Unwritten sounds really good @Robin M I finished The Dead Letter yesterday and have to say that it was much more of a page turner in the sense that it moved quickly compared to Wilkie Collins serialized books from the same era. I liked it quite a bit…….it had intrigue but to some degree most readers had to know from close to the beginning who the villain likely was. It was just a question of if he would be exposed. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54221456-the-dead-letter

I forgot to mention my Golden Age book from last week. My personal plan for the crime spree is to read at least one of these gems most weeks and last week was a new to me author, Anthony Berkeley. The Wintringham Mystery is a repackaged and recently re released from it's original title of Cicely Disappears which is a book my research popped up a few times.😉. It was originally serialized in a British publication with prize money going to whoever solved it first. Even Agatha had a go! 😂. His May aim was to make sure no one guessed the villain and it was a surprise. This one had a strong romantic twist which naturally I enjoyed. Here is an interesting blog post https://theinvisibleevent.com/2022/01/06/the-wintringham-mystery-anthony-berkeley/ and thanks to it being a new release I was able to listen to it via my library.

Thank you for the thread, Robin. I saw the featured author, Dana Stabenow, and remembered how much I used to love those books. I read the first dozen or so as they hit the shelves and loved them. I will be interested to hear what you think of the first in the series. Speaking of series I have read for decades I read Jonathan Kellerman’s 37th book in his Alex Delaware series last week. I always enjoy these and have to say City of the Dead was entertaining. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58081924-city-of-the-dead Yesterday I spent my afternoon finishing Neil Lancaster’s The Blood Tide. It’s the second in a new series set in Scotland. I enjoyed it and am looking forward to more in the series. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58778863-the-blood-tide. If anyone else is interested in this series make sure you start with the first book Dead Man’s Grave as the background is needed. Last night I sort of accidentally started a book by a Grandmother of crime I had not heard of in my research, Seeley Regester. I literally stumbled over this book in Overdrive while hunting for something else. Seeley was one of the pen names of Metta Victoria Fuller Victor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metta_Victoria_Fuller_Victor who wrote the first American Detective novels starting in the 1860’s. The Library of Congress is reprinting crime novels from its collection and her bookThe Dead Letter is one of them. https://www.loc.gov/publish/general/catalog/crimeclassics.html I glanced at a page and was hooked which rarely happens in terms of my stack….I go through it quite methodically! The Dead Letter…….blurb from LoC When Henry Moreland is found dead, Richard Redfield, an old family friend, vows to bring Henry’s killer to justice. Together with a legendary detective named Mr. Burton, he embarks on a mission to find the murderer. When suspicion turns to Richard himself, he leaves to work in the Dead Letter Office in Washington, DC. Then a mysterious letter from the past turns up, and a new hunt begins. This 1860s twisting tale is the first full-length American detective novel.

I have apparently been busy reading L books. 😂 My chosen L book was The Last Express by Baynard Kendrick. He is an American Golden Age author that I first tried about a year ago and have been accumulating his work via cheap kindle books every since. I am close to owning them all so decided to start reading and The Last Express is the first in the Duncan McClain series which features a blind detective with his two trained german shepherds. They are well done but not so fabulous that I would expect anyone other me to love them. They hit a sweet spot between classic mystery and the dogs for me.😉 I also happened to listen to a Rex Stout (Champagne for One) this week and realized how similar the two series are. Champagne for One was quite good btw, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/77597.Champagne_for_One https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57215045-the-last-express In other accidental L reading I read two Christian Romatic suppence books that are part of series that I plan to continue. The first is by Lisa Harris and was called The Escape https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51272974-the-escape. Honestly, there was quite a bit of need to suspend realistic police procedure but I liked the characters and the book was easy to page turn. So a win for light reading. The second was Labyrinth of Lies by Irene Hannon and I listened to this one. It was far better than the first in the series and I enjoyed the setting at a boarding school. I always like boarding school settings! My current book also has an L.........more on that later.

I hope you end up enjoying it. I just looked at GR and I must have been reading these years ago......I enjoyed the one I just read but no idea if the enjoyment might just be stemming from happy memories.

My Golden Age author of the week (I seem to be trying a new one each week which wasn’t really planned ) was a bit of a disappointment which I already reviewed……John Dickson Carr. I seem to have moved on to America’s Golden Age author’s because of the Josephine Tey spelling challenge and the need for an O and a Y. I found a Rex Stout with an O (Champagne for One) and a Charlotte Armstrong with a Y (The Better to Eat You). Rex Stout will be listened to next week but Charlotte Armstrong was literally a one sitting book. Charlotte Armstrong was known for her psychological thrillers and The Better to Eat You With was definately that! Gaslighting at it’s finest might be the way to describe this book. It was obvious……she was a rather weak 50’s girl…….I still loved it!One of the Goodreads reviews mentions how different this book is from most of Armstrong’s others which means I will need to read more just to find out! https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22078216-the-better-to-eat-you From GR: Grandfather, What Evil Eyes You Have! “we have never known whether these things happened or whether Sarah wants them to happen…” Disaster seemed to floow Sarah in the form of grisly and often fatal accidents. And it seemed to stop when she took refuge in her grandfather’s house – – Until she found out that Grandfather wasn’t Grandfather, her mysterious accidents were really his malicious crimes, and the final bit of “bad luck” he had planned for Sarah was her own brutal death… I also listened to the first book in what appears to be a new cozy series by Peggy Rothschild. A Deadly Bone to Pick is essentially a cozy about dogs so @Pen might enjoy this one. A former canine cop moves accross the country with her dog to forget her husband’s murder and suddenly finds herself being billed as the local canine wrangler. One of her pupil’s digs up a severed hand during a training session and she finds herself in the center of a case. This book was fun and the murderer was rather unexpected. I really liked this one! https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58082240-a-deadly-bone-to-pick

@Kareni and @Storygirl I am looking forward to hearing what you both think of the series by Kate Ellis. I have spent my day sewing and listening to one of The Expanse books so I need to pick a new book the is not Sci Fi! I finished my first and likely only book by John Dickson Carr this morning. Scandal at High Chimneys was boring but did improve towards the end. He was the only American in the original Detection Club so is Golden Age but set this book in 1865. I think that is a lot of my disappointment if I am honest with myself as I have been enjoying the 1930’s setting for many of these mysteries. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24108118-scandal-at-high-chimneys From Goodreads: In 1865, novelist Clive Strickland is relaxing at his club when his friend Victor Damon comes to him in a panic, begging Clive to help him marry off his sister to a cash-poor marquis whose affections reek of gold-digging. Victor doesn’t care. Something sinister lurks at High Chimneys and he wants his sisters out of the house before their lives are put in danger.Old Matthew Damon, their father, has long been dogged by scandalous rumors of solitary visits to the cells of women about to be hanged for murder. But when murder is done at High Chimneys, Strickland and private investigator Jonathan Whicher will have to sort out the rumors and look behind the discreetly drawn curtains of High Chimneys for a killer.

I finished this weeks letter K by reading a book by Kate Ellis https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/894245.The_Plague_Maiden. She is actually an author that I met many years ago at a library function in England. At that time we couldn’t keep her books on the shelf because the whole village wanted to read them so I only managed to read the first 3 or 4 before forgetting to keep putting my hold’s on to read the rest of the series in order. I remember her saying that her publisher was trying to get her books on kindle and now they are. Her books are really enjoyable as they are written in a duel timeline format with a current day police case and a historical storyline that normally involves an archeological dig. Her main character started his career as a archeological student and switched to being a police detective. I love archeology in mysteries! From Goodreads: When a letter arrives at Tradmouth police station, addressed to a DCI Norbert it causes quite a stir. For though DCI Norbert has long since moved on, the letter claims to have evidence that the man convicted of murdering the Rev. Shipbourne, Vicar of Belsham, during the course of a robbery in 1991, is innocent. Despite having a full case load, including investigating a series of vicious attacks on a local supermarket chain, DI Wesley Peterson is forced to at least follow up on the letter writer’s claims. Meanwhile archaelologist Neil Watson is excavating as site in Pest Field near Belsham church. He discovers a mass grave that leads him to conclude that the site – earmarked for development – is one of an ancient medieval plague pit. But, more disturbing, is the discovery that the grave is home to a more recent resident

Thank you! I have this now marked for the next time I need a Y. I have already solved this months Y issue by checking out a Charlotte Armstrong mystery......one of my authors that I have on my list to make sure I try this year. I finished How Lucky earlier today and enjoyed it. Did you like it? GR is all over the place! I listened to it and the narration was done by Malcolm Kershaw who I have enjoyed listening to in the past. I am not sure I would have finished it in traditional book form because the narration really made the book imo and actually hearing him speak was a big part of it. This book is the thoughts of a young man with SMA (basically a type ALS children are born with)who is trying to live the fullest life possible for the longest time possible. He thinks he has witnessed a kidnapping of a young Chinese student and the thriller plot moves quickly from there with a reliable narrator. 😉 I like reliable narrators. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54870216-how-lucky

What a great gift! @TravelingChris Someplace I have the French dvd for Harlan Coben’s Tell No One......not sure if that’s what they used on Netflix or not but it was great!

In other reading last week I finished the first in a new forensic mystery series (cozy type) set in New Zealand. Molten Mud Murder by Sarah E. Johnson https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40082786-molten-mud-murder. I enjoyed the Kiwi parts but they perhaps delivered with too many explanations, no need to google with this book! My library owns more, maybe someday......... From Goodreads: When a body is found half-submerged in a Waiariki Thermal Land of Enchantment molten mud pot, forensics expert Alexa Glock, her specialty odontology, spots a way to prolong her stay in New Zealand. Her fellowship has ended and no one is waiting for her to return to the States. Men have never been her expertise, but teeth are. Other ways of identifying the body may have... melted away. I just started listening to a book that I am seeing on popular lists, How Lucky by Will Leitch. It’s definately engaging. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54870216-how-lucky From GR: The story of a fiercely resilient young man grappling with a physical disability, and his efforts to solve a mystery unfolding right outside his door. Daniel leads a rich life in the university town of Athens, Georgia. He’s got a couple close friends, a steady paycheck working for a regional airline, and of course, for a few glorious days each Fall, college football tailgates. He considers himself to be a mostly lucky guy—despite the fact that he’s suffered from a debilitating disease since he was a small child, one that has left him unable to speak or to move without a wheelchair. Largely confined to his home, Daniel spends the hours he’s not online communicating with irate air travelers observing his neighborhood from his front porch. One young woman passes by so frequently that spotting her out the window has almost become part of his daily routine. Until the day he’s almost sure he sees her being kidnapped.

Death of a Busybody by George Bellairs https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29967414-death-of-a-busybody was last weeks Golden Age outing. George Bellairs appears to be a bit more accessible in terms of available in the republished world more widely than some of the other authors I have recently enjoyed. This book wasn’t as technical as either Miles Burton or Freeman Willis Crofts who were both engineers by profession and Bellairs was a bank manager. He must of been a keen people watcher as his characters were all quite entertaining. He was known for his humor and wrote about 60 mysteries for fun.....he was apparently very poorly paid for his books, perhaps because he enjoyed being published. This was very much a mystery centered around the village busybody’s gossip. She was found dead in a cistern, which in this case was part of the vicarage’s septic system. Entertaining and I have a few more by Bellairs to enjoy thanks to my library.

Last night I went on to check a couple more authors and eventually got around to a couple modern (even though they write historical😉) authors. Both C.S. harris and C.J. Sansom are set up on my BookBub alerts so I didn’t expect to find any discounted but both authors had one that I do not own for $1.99 that I wasn’t notified about. So those will go on my list of authors to check myself for sale books for my kindle collection.

Several kindle books by Baynard Kendrick and Dorothy B. Hughes are on sale for 99 cents today. Both are solid American Golden Age authors that I happen to really like. I think a there must be a greater sale so if you have any authors you are watching sale wise it might be worth a check.

Lucky you to get it early! I appear to have really liked Still Glides the Stream but have to admit I don’t really remember it. I just remember really liking the Ayrton series. I need to read a DE Stevenson book soon..... I haven’t tried Crispin yet so I will be looking forward to the review. I started listening to The Exiled Fleet today which is the second in the Sci Fi series I listed to a week ago. It’s good.... @LaughingCatif you haven’t tried this series yet I think you might enjoy it. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55077639-the-exiled-fleet

Robin, once again thank you for the great thread! I love the Daughter of Time! I just did a reread……last year perhaps? Inspector Alan Grant is a favorite of mine. Has anyone else tried reading Nicola Upson’s Tey series? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2444787.An_Expert_in_Murder?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=Fu33rWOvLl&rank=1 It is a fictional series in which Tey is traveling around the UK writing her books and stumbling into mysteries. I love the parts where the books are being written but the cases all have an ick factor that is just a step beyond what I enjoy every time I give them another go. I really want to make myself enjoy this series…..but I don’t. Lol Someone told my their favorite Victoria Holt book was Pride of the Peacock which I had never read at the start of February. I probably should say pretty sure I have never read because I think would have remembered the opals (my birthstone). The cursed opal part were especially entertaining. Imo I totally enjoyed this book so thank you for the recommendation! https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20416154-the-pride-of-the-peacock I finished my “I” book on audio yesterday. Irene Hanson is a popular Christian Romantic Suspense author that I have never tried so I combined my themes. I listened to the first book in her Triple Threat series and enjoyed the characters enough to put the second on hold. She will be a handy author for spelling challenges because of the I. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51273067-point-of-danger I am off to plot my March spelling challenge……Josephine Tey…….I suspect a Golden Age author with an E is going to be read this month! ECR Lorac’s Bats in the Belfry has been in my kindle stack for a couple of years. I now know he was a prolific Golden Age author who also writes as George Bellairs. I have George’s Death of a Busybody in the stack too thanks to my library. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29967414-death-of-a-busybody https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13553342-bats-in-the-belfry?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=nLbXchJ8Ob&rank=2

Doyle is a bit earlier I believe and was never a part of the Detection Club so is generally considered a Grandparent of Crime which were highlighted back in January. According to Martin Edwards book The Story of Classic Crime in 100 books mentions that Doyle doesn’t quite make the Golden Age cut in part because of mainly shorter works and serialization if I understood properly. He also mentions the ability to identify the villain easily in the Holmes stories. It’s been a long time since I read one so......... Golden age fiction generally has much tighter plotting and is much more of a who did it. As I delve more and venture into the authors like Freeman Willis Croft’s I have to say it is very noticeable compared to Wilkie Collins for instance. I just ran into this rule list for the detection club https://murder-mayhem.com/the-detection-club-rules

Mystery on the Channel by Freeman Willis Croft’s has taken me a couple of days to digest. The author was an engineer and his main detective Inspector French of Scotland yards goes about solving crime in the 1930’s using every tool his engineer’s brain had available. Other words this book is the math version of a CSI case. I loved his experiments……some GR readers apparently found that part boring but I really liked the order and logic of his investigation. Another winner……..I have bought a couple more of his on Kindle and am really excited about this Golden Age author. The Goodreads description……. Mystery in the Channel is a classic crime novel with a strikingly modern sub-text. The story begins with a shocking discovery. The captain of the Newhaven to Dieppe steamer spots a small pleasure yacht lying motionless in the water, and on closer inspection, sees a body lying on the deck. When members of his crew go aboard the yacht, they find not one male corpse but two. Both men have been shot, but there is no sign of either the murderer or the pistol. The dead men, it quickly emerges, were called Moxon and Deeping, and they were chairman and vice-chairman respectively of the firm of Moxon General Securities, one of the largest financial houses in the country. Inspector Joseph French of Scotland Yard is called in, reporting directly to the Assistant Commissioner, Sir Mortimer Ellison. French soon discovers that Moxon’s is on the brink of collapse. One and a half million pounds have gone missing, and so has one of the partners in the business. Moxon and Deeping seem to have been fleeing the country with their ill-gotten gains, but who killed them, and how? French faces one of the toughest challenges of his career, and in a dramatic climax, risks his life in a desperate attempt to ensure that justice is done. (less)