Crime Fiction Recommendations

[amward]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I don't normally go around correcting people, but this particular one, as I said, really bugs me, because it's not normally a typo - people are genuinely not aware that it should be "whet", perhaps because it's not a terribly common word.

Like "one foul swoop" instead of "one fell swoop". Our AFL footy commentators are fond of that one.

[rschauer]

Originally Posted by amward

Like "one foul swoop" instead of "one fell swoop". Our AFL footy commentators are fond of that one.

"All the sudden" drives me insane. I've seen it so many times that at one point, I started to doubt myself. As far as I can tell, it's one of those regional things, but still a degeneration of "all of a sudden" (which is how I've known it to be said since I was 5).

...but I digress. </OT>

[AnneT]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I don't normally go around correcting people, but this particular one, as I said, really bugs me, because it's not normally a typo - people are genuinely not aware that it should be "whet", perhaps because it's not a terribly common word.

It's always funny to see, that some mistakes in a particular language are typical 'foreigners' mistakes', while others are 'native speaker's mistakes'...

In Dutch, 'to whet' is translated as 'wetten', and 'to wet' is 'nat maken'.
So, because those words are totally different to us, once we know the English translation of these verbs, we will never use 'whet' for 'wet' and vice versa...
I must say, that I often noticed that in the case of homonyms, native speakers tend to make more mistakes than people who don't have English for their primary language. ('there primary language'... I see that more often in texts written by native speakers.)
(I hope you don't find too many spelling mistakes in this post!)

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Forgive the interjection, but I think you meant "whet" my appetite, not "wet" it. You are sharpening your appetite, not dampening it . This is one of those homonyms that really bugs me .

I'd send you some more K, but I have to spread it around first. None the less, thanks for that!

[poohbear_nc]

The first ten Miss Silver mysteries (Patricia Wentworth) are now available from Amazon - at 9.99 - from Open Road publishers. Bought the first one and will read this weekend - let you know how well it's edited/formatted.

Open Road also offers Kindle editions of Anne Perry's Charolette & Thomas Pitt series.

[SensualPoet]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Forgive the interjection, but I think you meant "whet" my appetite, not "wet" it. You are sharpening your appetite, not dampening it . This is one of those homonyms that really bugs me .

I noticed that later but left it in to see if anyone would notice. I might have known it would be you, HarryT!

[SensualPoet]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

The first ten Miss Silver mysteries (Patricia Wentworth) are now available from Amazon - at 9.99 - from Open Road publishers.

The availability of back catalogue items continues to improve and unfortunately that $10 price point seems to becoming commonplace.

[NightBird]

Originally Posted by benham

Cyprus Grove, the first in the Turner series so you would get all 3 books in the series. Sounds like a good deal!

Oh good. After reading all the descriptions and samples, I liked his writing style and ended up getting this.

[poohbear_nc]

The first ten Miss Silver mysteries (Patricia Wentworth) are now available from Amazon - at 9.99 - from Open Road publishers. Bought the first one and will read this weekend - let you know how well it's edited/formatted.

Bad news for your ebook buying budgets!

Just started reading "Grey Mask" - book one of the Miss Silver mysteries -
1. It's still as well written as I had remembered.
2. 10 chapters in - it is very cleanly formatted - haven't spotted any typos yet - active TOC.

[nigel p bird]

The Good Son by Russel D McLean

US http://www.amazon.com/Good-Son-McNee-novels-ebook/dp/B004V05Q9A/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1309684031&sr=1-3

McNee. That’s his name, don’t wear it out. The name used by his wife, her family and his police colleagues. At least that’s what his wife called him before she died in an accident as she was driving him home, McNee riding shotgun, her father in the back. And it’s what the police still call him even though he left the force under a cloud of depression, a weight of guilt following said wife’s death and san incident where he smacked one of his superiors in the nose.

Since the accident, he’s not been able to talk to his father-in-law who blames him for it all and he’s had a bad leg which doctors think might be psychosomatic rather than physical. Great name for a Scot with a gammy leg then, McNee, like some joke from fifty years ago.

The man’s been carrying that weight of guilt around with him since the accident. It fuels him. Gives him a reason to get up in the morning. Helps him in his work as a Private Investigator.

As we get to know him, we’ll realise that his wife’s accident has little to do with the way he is, that he’s always been burdened, always been socially inept and difficult to get to know. A hard man in respectable clothing.

The more I got to know this guy, the more I liked him.

We met in the first pages. Everything was kicking off.

McKnee has a gun pointed at someone’s head. He’s already killed someone, he tells us that, so one more might not make any difference.

Those opening pages are full of madness and rage, confusion and adrenalin. It’s a great way to get to know a bloke and had me hooked from the off.

Backtrack to the beginning of the story.

Farmer James Robertson comes to McNee, asks him to find out why his brother Daniel (not been home for 30 years) has returned to Dundee and hung himself from a tree.
As McNee digs, he’ll find that Daniel Robertson was not a nice guy. Was the right hand man of a London gangster (Egg, and definitely one of the bad variety) and was sleeping with the gangster’s wife.

Gangster’s wife heads north and is soon brutally dispatched by person or person’s unknown.

Dundee, unsexy place for a PI, bursts into action and adventure as the local hard-men try to see off the London mob invasion.

McNee’s colleagues on the force get on to his back and resurrect ghosts from his time on the job and his wife’s sister and an ex-one-night-stand try and patch things together.
He’s like a leaky boat our protagonist. It’s why I liked him so much.

There’s never a dull moment as he bails like hell to get rid of all the water even as it’s rising above his neck.

It’s like McLean started to write the character and McKnee decided to go it his own way, ignoring his creator and doing what he pleased. What fun.

This is a first novel, which is hard to believe.

The plot, characters and dialogue are superb. The Dundee setting works surprisingly well and the author shows of an intimate knowledge of the type of city it is. The twists and turns are unpredictable and that’s the way I like it.

Each chapter ends with a sentence that uses the first person narrative to good effect and owes something to the classic PIs of our American brothers and sisters. You feel an uneasy resolution and a need to move on quickly.

McLean’s touch is interesting. Mostly I found it easy and flowing, one of those page-turners that brings a constant source of pleasure. He almost fooled me with that, for he also has a range of weapons at his disposal. He has blunt which he uses now and then to stun as he throws in a cold, hard phrase to unsettle. There are the sharp objects in there, descriptions and force that cut as the phrase turns. There are guns and fists lurking too. And there’s a little wry-smile that jumps out when you’re least expecting it as if Harry Lime’s lurking in the shadows and having a bloody good time.

I read this before my summer break, but I reckon this is the perfect book for a holiday- you don’t have to put in much effort to get an awful lot of satisfaction.

If the character’s name amuses, get this. The author, McLean has written a story that’s anything but.

And something else that made me chuckle, it only cost me 99p for the Kindle.

Fantastic.



nigel

[removed self-promotion - moderator]

[SensualPoet]

In 1923, Dorothy L Sayers decided to try her hand at writing detective fiction, inspired by Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and the early stories of Agatha Christie. She created one of detective fiction's most memorable characters, Lord Peter Wimsey who, in the early 1920s is almost a man of another age. Flush with cash and prestige, he is the consummate dilettante amateur detective, butting into police investigations, lending them hand with his keen sense of observation and his family's access to the upper crust. In Whose Body?, the body's in the bathtub, not the library.

When a naked middle-aged man's body is found in the bath of an architect -- sporting only a golden pair of pince-nez -- Lord Peter Wimsey's mother, the Dowager Duchess of Denver, alerts her son; the architect Thipps, who has been doing some work for the Duchess, is all in a tizzy. Scotland Yard Inspector Suggs is on the case and soon arrests Thipps and his housekeeper, leaving Thipps aging, deaf mother, alone in the flat. A quick survey of the scene convinces Wimsey there is more to the story than Suggs will ever bother to uncover and so ... the game's afoot! Before long, a second body goes missing, and some shady trading of Peruvian oil shares slips into the mix, as does surgeon Sir Julian Freke, who just happens to live next door, with a teaching hospital beside them. With Bunter, Wimsey's manservant to assist, and working alongside the very competent Inspector Parker who is on another case that might be related, it's not long before the pieces begin to fall into place. So whose body was it in the bath?

Happily, this work is in the public domain and, in Canada and other countries following the "author's death + 50 year" rule, so are all of Sayer's books, as she passed away in 1957 at just 64 years old. While Wimsey is a likeable character, the class privileges he enjoys are less easy to identify with. Helpfully, anyone who has enjoyed Ian Carmichael's BBC/PBS television creation of Wimsey will easily have his voice and dapper appearance in mind while enjoying the short journey through the novel. Light, engaging, and stylish, Sayer's delivers as good as her word: Wimsey really is a cross between Fred Astaire and Bertie Wooster!

A very handsome edition can be found here at Mobileread in mobi or epub; commercial editions also available from Amazon and other vendors.

[NightBird]

I just recently finished listening to the two audiobooks in this delightful series by Tarquin Hall set in India - The Vish Puri mysteries:

The Case of the Missing Servant

Product Description
Meet Vish Puri, India's most private investigator. Portly, persistent, and unmistakably Punjabi, he cuts a determined swath through modern India's swindlers, cheats, and murderers.

In hot and dusty Delhi, where call centers and malls are changing the ancient fabric of Indian life, Puri's main work comes from screening prospective marriage partners, a job once the preserve of aunties and family priests.

But when an honest public litigator is accused of murdering his maidservant, it takes all of Puri's resources to investigate. How will he trace the fate of the girl, known only as Mary, in a population of more than one billion? Who is taking potshots at him and his prize chili plants? And why is his widowed "Mummy-ji" attempting to play sleuth when everyone knows mummies are not detectives?

With his team of undercover operatives -- Tubelight, Flush, and Facecream -- Puri ingeniously combines modern techniques with principles of detection established in India more than two thousand years ago -- long before "that Johnny-come-lately" Sherlock Holmes donned his deerstalker.

The search for Mary takes him to the desert oasis of Jaipur and the remote mines of Jharkhand. From Puri's well-heeled Gymkhana Club to the slums where the servant classes live, his adventures reveal modern India in all its seething complexity.

About the Author
Tarquin Hall is a British author and journalist who has lived and worked throughout South Asia, the Middle East and Africa. He is the author of The Case of the Missing Servant, dozens of articles, and three works of non-fiction, including the highly acclaimed Salaam Brick Lane, an account of a year spent above a Bangladeshi sweat shop in London’s notorious East End. He is married to Indian-born journalist, Anu Anand. They divide their time between London and Delhi.

The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing

Product Description
Murder is no laughing matter.

Yet a prominent Indian scientist dies in a fit of giggles when a Hindu goddess appears from a mist and plunges a sword into his chest.

The only one laughing now is the main suspect, a powerful guru named Maharaj Swami, who seems to have done away with his most vocal critic.

Vish Puri, India’s Most Private Investigator, master of disguise and lover of all things fried and spicy, doesn’t believe the murder is a supernatural occurrence, and proving who really killed Dr. Suresh Jha will require all the detective’s earthly faculties. To get at the truth, he and his team of undercover operatives—Facecream, Tubelight, and Flush—travel from the slum where India’s hereditary magicians must be persuaded to reveal their secrets to the holy city of Haridwar on the Ganges.

How did the murder weapon miraculously crumble into ash? Will Maharaj Swami have the last laugh? And perhaps more important, why is Puri’s wife, Rumpi, chasing petty criminals with his Mummy-ji when she should be at home making his rotis?

Stopping only to indulge his ample Punjabi appetite, Puri uncovers a web of spirituality, science, and sin unique in the annals of crime.

These are complex stories which, besides the mysteries, include Indian culture, food, politics; many characters; and humor. Undercover operatives and disguises. A bank of phones with written instructions as to how the phone is to be answered (for credit checks, references, etc. for the undercover operatives), manned by a secretary who spends most of her time knitting.

These are unfortunately published by Simon & Schuster and a little pricey right now, at $10.99 and $9.99 each. I was lucky enough to get the first one at Audible with a free $10.00 credit and the 2nd one at my library. Also unfortunately the third one isn't due out until 3/2012.

[SensualPoet]

The Tarquin Hall books are even more expensive in Canada -- annoying, since he's a Canadian-based writer. The Kindle editions are currently $9.99 but the epubs from Kobo are $13 (however, they are eligible for coupons). Happily, they recently turned up at my local public library and I have one currently ready to read.

They sound a little bit like updated H R F Keating and his Inspector Ghose.

[NightBird]

they recently turned up at my local public library and I have one currently ready to read.

Oh good.

They sound a little bit like updated H R F Keating and his Inspector Ghose.

I will have to check that out.

[NightBird]

All right! I found his first one, The Perfect Murder, as an audiobook at my library and Audible has several of his. I got on the wait list for the one at my library and no one is ahead of me.