Judy’s Comments (group member since Oct 01, 2015)

Judy’s comments from the Reading the Detectives group.

Ah, thank you, Rosina, I was just thinking I hadn't noticed a huge amount of racial stereotyping in this one, although there was some. Perhaps I will give The Yellow Bungalow mystery a miss though - thanks for the warning.

I will delete your earlier comment as requested.

Thank you Susan. I had quickly added it to the list

We've now added a couple of the Martin Beck books by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö to the buddy reads - we were going to start with book 2, but a few people wanted to read the first one, Roseanna, so that one has been added for November and then book 2, The Man Who Went Up in Smoke, in January as previously discussed. :)

Good idea, Susan - looking back at the discussion in the "What mysteries are you reading" thread, a couple of other people said they would read Roseanna. Let's add it in for November as we already have 5 books in October! I'll put it on the list and post in the other thread as well. :)

I've just finished this book - it was second time around for me.
I remember really enjoying it first time - this time around, I remembered the killer's identity fairly early on and I also maybe wasn't so much in the mood for it, but I still enjoyed John Christmas, who is an appealing detective. A pity Jarrold only wrote two books about him.

This book actually inspired the setting up of this group - a few of us read it together in a previous group, Bright Young Things, and that discussion (and the republication of lots of books by British Library and Dean Street Press) led to the founding of Reading the Detectives!

Time for the next book in our Detection Club challenge. Who is reading this one?

The spoiler thread is linked below:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Thanks as always for the threads, Susan.

September is here, so just opening up our new group read. Thank you for setting up the threads, Susan.

Who is reading this one? I've started it and am really enjoying it so far - Michael Gilbert has such a great writing style and it is an intriguing story.

The spoiler thread is linked below:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I've added The Man Who Went Up in Smoke, the second Martin Beck book by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, to our buddy read list for January as requested by Carolien and other members - if anyone wants to read the first book, Roseanna, first, you have a few months to do so. :)

Enjoyed your review, Sid, thanks for posting the link. Very like a Bond villain's lair, great comparison.

I felt it became increasingly silly as the book went on and wondered if the author would have done better with a purely comic novel without the crime element.

I've just started The Studio Crime as well - some of us previously read it in BYTs.

Thanks Emma, no worries

Just reposting Emma's comment with a spoiler tag as it mentioned something which happens in a Heyer novel - sorry, I'm not certain if this is a spoiler, so this is just to be on the safe side.

This is Emma's comment:
Rosina wrote: "Fingerprints - Bunter looks at them, but there's no suggestion that the police have used them to try to identify the body. I haven't been able to find out (by simple googling) when..." and Keith replied: "The Metropolitan police started using fingerprints in 1900. There are many independent police forces in the Britain, based on counties and cities although they cooperate."
But before the advent of computers, fingerprints had to be stored manually, and police forces would only store fingerprints of convicted criminals (in Georgette Heyer's A Blunt Instrument, for example, (view spoiler)[Charlie Carpenter's presence at the murder scene is identified from his fingerprints). (hide spoiler)] It would have been a real effort to identify someone from their fingerprints, even had the police assumed he might be a criminal. Sayers tends to have people identified by their dental records (as in her short story In The Teeth of the Evidence, for example).

The whole idea of "the butler did it" seemed like a bit of a spoof on the genre, didn't it? But I agree with Frances's comment that the fake paintings belonging to his previous employer were a clever clue, which I never spotted at the time!

I agree about the pin control - it seemed a bizarre idea but the office atmosphere was so realistic that I just accepted it.

Have to say, I also thought there were more than four strange women, Sandy! Maybe the publisher liked this type of title after Suspects - Nine?

I've just finished this - I enjoyed it a lot although I think the culprit seemed likely quite early on, given his romantic rivalry with Pettigrew and the suspicions over the life insurance.

I find it a bit hard to believe that it would ever have been possible to prove a will without having to produce a death certificate, but, as a lawyer, I take it Cyril Hare knew his stuff!

Thanks Susan, that's good to know. I was quite tempted after our recent cruise ship reads and may give it a try.

I've just had a newsletter from Waterstone's bookshops with details of their "thriller of the month", which sounds interesting - a homage to Golden Age detective stories set aboard a 1920s cruise ship, A Fatal Crossing by Tom Hindle. Has anyone read this one or anything by the author?

I've started this now and am enjoying the atmosphere of the civil service office moved to a new location. This feels very real, and I see from Cyril Hare's Wikipedia page that " At the beginning of the war, he served a short time at the Ministry of Economic Warfare, and the wartime civil service with many temporary members appears in With a Bare Bodkin."

I've just finished this and really liked it, as with the others in the series. A shame there are no more.

Do you think Daphne's death counts as murder? I would say yes, or at least manslaughter, as the poisoned chocolates had been marked with her name - although everyone thinks that if Maurice had lived he would have changed his mind.