Quote:
Originally Posted by Patricia
Thrones, Dominations was a bit wooden. Hoever Jill Paton Walsh's next outing with Lord Peter Wimsey, A Presumption of Death, is an improvement, with some nice descriptions of wartime Oxfordshire.
But I think her Imogen Quy series is rather better than her Wimsey books (--they are about a college nurse in Oxford, who turns detective).
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i gave up after Thrones (i found it too big a disappointment) but maybe i'll try a Presumption of Death, if you say it's better. i'll also look into the Imogen Quy series, which i had never heard of before. thanks for the recommendation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nekokami
I've read all of them, and I thought they were quite well written. The advantage here is that the main characters in these books are NOT Holmes and Watson (though they do occasionally appear), but characters who were relatively incidental to the story in "A Scandal in Bohemia", so it's easier for the author to avoid messing up the characterization of well-established existing characters.
They are not additional Holmes stories, but they are period mysteries, the characters are engaging, the plots hang together, and there's quite a bit of humor. I'd recommend the first one with no reservations to anyone who likes Victorian-era mysteries. After that, it would depend on whether you like the characters. I've re-read all but the last one, I think (only because I don't have it yet-- I read hardcovers from the library, usually).
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ok, i'll definitely check them out, they sound good (i do like period mysteries
aside from the authentic ones we've mentioned so far i also quite like the Anne Perry books for example). as you say, it's probably a lot easier to use an existing but little-shown character as a "jumping off point" than to try your hand at a sacred monster like Holmes (or Wimsey), and really all i ask of a book is that it be well-written and intelligently plotted in its own right. after that of course if you don't like the characters there's nothing to do but that's purely subjective... i hope they have (at least one) at my library ; that's where i get a lot of my books as well, especially if it's an author i don't know yet.