I first read a Josephine Tey book in 1962 and it changed my life. I became a huge fan of British history especially in the period from King Arthur to Richard III. I took a tour of the Tower of London castle/prison in August 1962. It was just before I began my junior year in …
Non-fiction for the cold, hard facts, fiction for flights of fancy. One grounds you while the other sets you spinning. Most of the time, maybe, but my experience this week perfectly inverts that paradigm. I’ve been reading a brand-new book from Oscar-winning documentarian Errol Morris, who is best known as the filmmaker behind such projects …
I met James Ziskin at another writer’s bookstore event. I now have Book #1 (Styx & Stone) and Book #4 (Heart of Stone) in the Ellie Stone mysteries. Even if I know an author, I try very hard to be objective when reviewing a book. I am very glad to have met this author. I cannot …
Trouble in Rooster Paradise is a fun mystery set in 1950 Seattle and in 2003 in a Seattle area injury rehab center. 83 year old retired shamus (private detective) Gunnar Nilson is laid up in 2003 in a nursing home with a busted gam (leg). Josephine Tey used a similar gambit in The Daughter of Time, which …
A good friend introduced me to Charles Todd, a mother and son writing team. They live on the East Coast of the United States. I cannot imagine how difficult a task that might be but they pull it off in the final product. I just finished reading A Test of Wills (published in 1996), which is …
A close friend recommended this book, Murder on the Eiffel Tower by Claude Izner*. She knew that I like books set in different times in history and in different places. Even better, there are several books in this series. Victor Legris owns a bookstore in Paris (a good start) in the year 1889. There is a World’s …
James Benn, a former librarian, continues his series of WWII mysteries featuring Billy Boyle, a former Boston police detective. A Mortal Terror finds Billy and his team in Italy around the time of the Anzio landings. A lieutenant and a captain are found murdered, the former holding a 10 of hearts (playing card) and the latter …
Judging a book by its cover, I picked up a copy of The Smoke, by Tony Broadbent and found myself transported to London, 1947 and immersed in the life of a creeper, London slang for a cat burglar. Our narrator, Jethro, is witty– a bit of a rogue, he is –and makes no excuses for …
The Wollstonecraft Detective Agency #1 “Imagine the future Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer, as an 11-year-old Sherlock Holmes, with the future Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, as her 14-year-old Watson (and the young Charles Dickens as a helpful sidekick). The new Wollstonecraft Detective Agency series plays merrily loose with historical details, but with a …
“Thanks to the Pacific NW Writers Association, I recently discovered books by Bernadette Pajer. Her protagonist in the historical/scientific mysteries set in Seattle around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries is Professor Benjamin Bradshaw. Bradshaw is a professor of electrical engineering at the fledgling Department of Engineering at the University of Washington. The first …
