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

Judy’s comments from the Reading the Detectives group.

I've just listened to The Sunningdale Mystery - the one where Tommy is being the Old Man in the Corner and there's a mysterious stabbing on a golf course. I've read a couple of the Old Man in the Corner short stories in British Library collections, so I vaguely remember the character, although I'd forgotten about him playing with string and eating cheesecake!

Must say I really enjoyed this one and thought the solution was very clever. Amazing how Christie could come up with such good twists even for short stories.

Sandy wrote: "Judy wrote: "I ... am not really enjoying The Secret Place by Tana French. I'm about halfway but think I will just skim through to the end. I feel it's too slow and repetitive wi..." Maybe my list of 'authors to try' has gotten shorter or at least rearranged. "

I know a lot of people really like her, and this book won awards, so you might think differently. But I have to say there are a lot of repetitive conversations involving teenage slang, swearing etc - I also don't think all teenagers talk in this same way, saying things like "Totes amazeballs". Oh well, I'll stop moaning now! Good to have given a different author a try, anyway.

Also, just to let people know, we've decided that our next poll will be a "bridesmaid poll", i.e. a second chance for runners-up that got a good number of votes over the last year.

There are some great books that were nominated but missed out, so I think it will be a good poll. I'll put it up at the start of December. :)

The poll has now finished and the winner is The Wintringham Mystery by Anthony Berkeley, which will be our group read in January.

Full results:
The Wintringham Mystery 11 votes, 61.1%
The Man Who Knew 3 votes, 16.7%
Fire in the Thatch (Robert MacDonald #27) 3 votes, 16.7%
Bloody Instructions: An Antony Maitland Mystery (The Antony Maitland Mysteries Book 1) 1 vote, 5.6%

I really liked Impact of Evidence but am not really enjoying The Secret Place by Tana French. I'm about halfway but think I will just skim through to the end. I feel it's too slow and repetitive with unbelievable characters, a shame as I liked the start.

After reading the first Wimsey book, Whose Body?, a couple of years ago and the second one, Clouds of Witness, this month, the mods have decided we'll carry on with the series as buddy reads, since we have so many fans of Dorothy L. Sayers in the group.

Book three, Unnatural Death, is scheduled for April so that anyone who wants to read the first two books first has time to catch up :)

Susan wrote: "I am really enjoying The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning. I know the first book had mixed opinions, but I like this series."

That's good to hear, Susan - I wasn't too keen on the first book, so this makes me hopeful about the second one.

As there's so much enthusiasm for Wimsey among members, the mods have decided that we're going to carry on with the series as buddy reads!

The next one, Unnatural Death, is scheduled for April so that anyone who wants to read the first two books first has time to catch up :)

I've started our next group read, Impact of Evidence and am enjoying it so far. Just a reminder that there are editions of this available under both the ECR Lorac and Carol Carnac names.

Yes, indeed, thank you Susan and all our members!

I agree it's nice to plan, Susan and Susan! I'm also planning to read lots of books that I may not get to! It definitely looks like Berkeley (unless loads of people vote for another book before tomorrow night!)

A bit of housekeeping... the Maigret book discussions now have their own folder:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/group...

Just to let people know, our buddy read of Something The Cat Dragged In, next in the Peter Shandy series by Charlotte MacLeod, has been moved back a month to start in mid-January. This is to even things up slightly as we have a lot of buddy reads due to start in December. :)

P.S. I just noticed some of the short stories have been published as The New Investigations of Inspector Maigret. Via Amazon, I had a quick look at the first one, 'The Hanged Couple', which was written in 1936, and there doesn't seem to be any explanation of Maigret going back to work - he's just back on the job as though the previous two books had never happened.

Sandy wrote: "I realize the Maigret sequence is a bit fluid and I see our next read, supposedly #21, was published, per Goodreads, two years earlier than this one. So maybe we will find out what happened in January..."

Interesting, Sandy! The sequence definitely is confusing... from looking at the Maigret website, Trussel.com, our previous book, Maigret Returns, was published in French in 1934. Then there was a big gap before any more Maigret novels, but a lot of short stories were published in magazines from 1936 to 1939, so maybe one of those explains what happened next?!

Looks like the novels should be in the right order on Goodreads, because Trussel site says The Cellars of the Majestic was written in December 1939 and the following book, The Judge's House, was written straight afterwards in January 1940, and they were both published in 1942. So I think 1940 publication date for The Judge's House on Goodreads is probably a mistake.

This is the Trussel site's checklist for the novels:
https://www.trussel.com/maig/cheklist...

And this is the one including the short stories, which is a bit confusing as it gives the date when they were first published in book form and then the original publication date in brackets later on:
https://www.trussel.com/maig/maig.htm

Thanks, Susan. I think there is more to discuss in the Tommy and Tuppence short stories, but in general short stories are difficult to discuss compared to full-length novels.

I've started reading The Secret Place by Tana French, which is a book club choice for the Shedunnit podcast and sounded interesting - I think a boarding school setting often works well in crime fiction.

But although I like the writing style, I've realised that it is very long, more than 500 pages in paperback! (I'm reading on Kindle so hadn't immediately spotted the length.) It's also number 5 in the Dublin Murder Squad series but I'm trying not to worry about that too much, especially as there is a different lead detective in each book.

I liked the fact that the male young lover was a bit more of a colourful character in this one than the lovers in some of the earlier books. Also, it's an interesting question as to whether his "crime" is any worse than Cadfael's past moving of the bones - as he also claims he thought he was doing what the saint wanted!

I'm wondering if there will be some kind of conclusion to the Anarchy in the last book, or whether we will be left with the Stephen/Empress Maud conflict continuing... I'm not sure what happened in real life, but everyone seems to be getting fed up with it in this book, as I'm sure many people were in reality.

I've just made a tweak to our buddy reads list to cut out the second book of Michael Innes short stories, Appleby Talks Again and replace it with a full-length novel.

A few of us are currently reading Appleby Talks and it turns out that most of the stories in it are very short, often only 3 or 4 pages long, with not much to discuss! So, after some chat in the book's thread, I've taken the follow-up off the buddy read list. This means we will now read Death on a Quiet Day (book 16 in the series) as our next Appleby title in March/April. Looking forward to that one. :)

Mbuye wrote: "Actually I too am reading Appleby Walking, but that shouldn't stop you skipping the short stories. ..."

Good to hear you are reading these too, Mbuye - I hope you are enjoying the stories.

It doesn't sound as if anyone is desperate to discuss the second book, so I will take it off the list of buddy reads and move up the next full-length Innes mystery. :)