Summer time reading is mysteries

I don't know about you, Gentle Reader, but this is a very warm summer where we are in Ottawa. Certainly the warmest for at least 3 years. We had a heat wave at the beginning of the month, which is over now. The temperatures have to reach 90F for three days in a row to be declared a heat wave. We have been hitting the mid-80's for the past several days. Today it's 88F and all the fans are running. What's a girl to do in the heat but......READ. It's bliss, pure bliss, to be so hot that all I can do is read.

I have discovered that this summer, I want to read mysteries. In January, I had set my goal of reading 50 mysteries this year, and after my abysmal reading in May (one book!!) I've been more determined to get reading. I've read 7 mysteries since May 30, 15 books in total since May 30. 20 mysteries in total this year. Almost half-way there! I have two shelves full of mysteries waiting to be read, series I want to catch up in, new series to start. There are so many mystery series out there, the field has exploded in the past twenty years. My local Chapters store has 5 long shelves devoted solely to mysteries - the middle of the floor shelves, that pack a lot of books in them. So I thought I'd ask you, my dear readers, and try to answer myself, this question: what makes a mystery worth reading? How do you find the series that you love?

Things I Look For in Mysteries

- layered plot
-intelligent hero/heroine, cast of characters
-well-written
-clues sprinkled throughout
- sense of morality
- asks why
- the crimes have repercussions experienced through following the victims too. so we see the cost in human terms, and we see the ripple effects in the community.

How do I find mysteries to read?
I mostly find my books through browsing in stores, reading reviews from various sources, and you, my dear book bloggers. You have brought me Susan Hill (I wasn't aware really of this series before), Martin Edwards, Elly Griffiths (still to be reviewed, very good first mystery), Jo Nesbo, Peter Lovesey, Christopher Fowler........My mother is a big source, as are my friends who read mysteries. I'm always looking for a new series to read, new detectives to bond with.

The five series I'm going to talk about are ones I've been reading this summer.

Susan Hill's Simon Serrailler series, Graham Hurley's DI Joe Faraday series, Jo Nesbo's Harry Hole series, Louise Penny's Chief Inspector Gamache series, and Martin Edward's DCI Hannah Scarlett series. These are all police procedurals. I've realized that I am attracted to the search for justice within the police services. In real life, men and women who join the police do so usually because they want to protect, to defend, and to solve mysteries. The detectives in mysteries represent the same ideals, I think. Each author brings something different to the their detectives and to the themes or issues they are interested in exploring.

Susan Hill: Like PD James' Adam Dalgleish, Simon Serrailler has a secret other life: he is a painter. He goes away on breaks to his hideaways and sketches, that he develops later into paintings. It sounds faintly ludicrous, that a DCI could be an artist as well as chief Inspector, but in Susan Hill's hands, it more than works. It is thrilling and like with Dalgleish's poetry, I really wish I could see Serrailer's art! I think that because Simon is at some remove from his detective work - he enjoys it, is passionate about finding the killers and bringing closure to cases - that, also like Adam, neither are defined solely by their police work. They bring a detachment that allows them to view colleagues and the crimes with intelligence unmarred by political ambition. It is also a way for them to hang on to their souls when faced with the hideous crimes and actions they witness every day.

I really like the Simon Serrailler mysteries. They are quite addictive. I have to know more about Simon and his twin sister Cat Deerborn, who is a GP and happily married to another GP. Their house is another sanctuary for Simon, who is single. They are actually part of a set of triplets, but the third child, Ivo, is in Australia and so far (end of book three) we haven't met him yet. There is a deep sense of humanity in the Simon Serrailer mysteries. The crimes, when they occur, are sometimes terrible. Hill is good at depicting all the characters involved in each mystery, all the secondary characters and their inner lives, and how the crimes affect them. I find this fascinating. The killer in books 2 and 3 is an amazing portrait of a psychopath. I can't recommend this series enough. The first three books I've read so far - and if you note, Book 2 and Book Three do follow on one another, so this series should be read in order.
The Various Haunts of Men (read and reviewed last year **can't find it, still looking)
The Pure in Heart - 5/5
The Risks of Darkness - 5/5

Graham Hurley - DI Joe Faraday is a widower raising a deaf son. He is also a bird-watcher, and the first book in the series, Turnstone, takes its name from one of the many birds that live on the shores of the beaches around Portsmouth, where this series takes place. It's how he gets away from it all, when he needs to. It's interesting that in today's crime novel, detectives need to have some interest away from work, in order to keep their sanity. Something to balance the horror.

Faraday is set up against DC Paul Winter, who is a lone wolf in the detective force. Winter sets his own rules, and has directly wrecked one of Faraday's investigations in revenge for trying to reel him in. In the Portsmouth police force, there is as much betrayal within the police department as without. Most of all though, is Joe Faraday, who still makes the effort to connect to the people affected by the crimes, and through whose eyes Portsmouth the ancient port, once proud Naval bastion of England, comes to grips with grim, modern life. It's not a pretty city, but it does have its places of charm and beauty, despite the rampant crime the police face. This is a nitty-gritty police series, where every step of the investigation is detailed, and it's fascinating and gripping. There are 10 books in the series now, I've read three:
Turnstone
The Take
Angels Passing 4.5/5

Louise Penny: Inspector Gamache is from the Surete Du Quebec, the provincial police force called out on major crimes. The first three books are centered around Three Pines, which for a tiny village has alot of serious crime! Three Pines is so beautiful and cosy that everyone who reads about it wants to move there, myself included. It's not a real place, but is set in the real countryside of Quebec.

Inspector Gamache himself is unusual - quiet, charming, intelligent, and very, very observant. He also has a team of detectives under him, and pulled from nearby forces for local knowledge and help, that come with him when he goes out on cases. Over the three books I've read so far in the series, we've seen Gamache fight for his life with both the criminals and from betrayal within his force. He is so good at his job that he has incurred much jealousy, and in the third book, The Cruellest Month, it comes to a head. How Gamache escapes, and how a seance features, makes for a very creepy ending. The Cruellest Month was very good. Gamache's team are interesting because they vary from novices to experienced detectives, so we get a range of what working on an investigation - and the mistakes made - as well as the leaps of intuition that Penny has so skillfully written that we feel brilliant too, reading these books. Very, very entertaining. Penny is my personal favourite of our Canadian mystery writers.
All three of her books that I read, are linked in the post I did on Louise Penny last fall:
Still Life
Dead Cold
The Cruellest Month

Martin Edwards: DCI Hannah Scarlett heads up the newly formed Cold Case Review Team in England's beautiful Lake District. Aiding her is Daniel Kind, son of Scarlett's former detective partner, Ben Kind. When the series opens, Daniel comes to the Lake District in an effort to understand a little bit about his recently dead father, and ends up buying a cottage and staying with his girlfriend. As he gets to know the locals, he often investigates on his own initiative, though by The Cipher Gardens, the second book, both Hannah and Daniel are beginning to be aware they are attracted to one another. DCI Scarlett views her position on the Cold Case team as a setback, a punishment for failing on a big case before the series opens. She wants to get back to the real work, in the serious crimes division, but has realized that Cold Cases have their own satisfaction when they are solved.

Hannah Scarlett is interesting and I almost wish we could have more of her. I like her personal struggles as well as her professional ones. She is not a detective who has it all together, but because of this, we get to see her learn about herself as well as her team and the part of the Lake District she lives in. Daniel Kind is a fun character. He is a historian, which in the books they make comparisons to being a detective. Because these are cold cases, of course Daniel is used to questioning and looking for clues in historical facts and stories, and he easily slides into finding local knowledge, though not without some personal risk to himself. It's going to be interesting to see how this relationship develops. There is danger of course, as secrets long held are finally exposed. I'm really enjoying watching the Cold Case team decide if they should follow anonymous tips or letters received about old unsolved crimes or not. I've read two out of the existing 5 books in the series so far.
They are:
The Coffin Trail (read and reviewed earlier)
The Cipher Garden 5/5

The others are on my shelf, waiting their turn to be read this hot summer!

Jo Nesbo: You all know from my previous reviews (see links just below) how much I love Harry Hole. He's the detective I've fallen in love with. He is the loner here, the wild card, the one who goes off on his own, protected by his immediate boss when he would be thrown out of the force - mostly for insubordination, and not always telling his bosses exactly what he's doing until he's done it. But he gets results, almost always because Harry is persistent. Dogged. Determined. Heroic in the best sense of the word. Certainly not angelic and brings about his own problems. I love how he wants the truth, no matter how much it costs.
The Redbreast
Nemesis

All the above detectives wonder at times what they are doing in the police force, and that the job isn't what it used to be. There is a melancholy about these detectives as they fight their often lonely battle against crime, against criminals who don't care they are breaking the law, and often battle elements within the police force itself - pointless paperwork and staying within the law.

Mostly, these characters have become characters I care about, revealing the world we live in, often standing between us and the darkness that crime threatens to pull us all into. All of these books are very well-written, gripping adventures, heart-breaking in places, with excellent characters and interesting stories to tell. I have the next books in all the series lined up on my shelves to be read shortly. It seems to be a mystery reading summer for me.

What are you reading this summer? Is it unusual for you to be reading what you're reading, or do you have a normal summer fling - beach read - that you reach for when the temperature is hot and all you can do is read? Where you are, have you found you've been doing more reading or less, in our above-average hot summer?

Are translated mysteries really better than English ones, and forgotten treasures

From The Guardian internet site, here is a link to an article about the Nordic authors who won the mystery awards at Bouchercon this past weekend. The reason I am linking you is not just because of who won, but because of what the translator of one of the books says:

"The awareness of Scandinavian crime fiction has certainly been building, with Henning Mankell and others softening readers up for Stieg," he said. "Then he came along and was so much better than all the others."

Larsson's British publisher Christopher MacLehose at Quercus agreed. "The crime writers in translation are for perfectly obvious statistical reasons better than English ones, because they are all chosen by serious publishers in their countries of origin and filtered down and down before they get translated into English," he said. "We're translating a tiny proportion so we should be getting the best of the best."

Now, I don't know about you, but this raised my hackles. Excuse me, but just because a mystery has been translated, does not make it a higher quality of writing than a mystery written in English!! And I do not think that Stieg Larsson is so much better than all the other Scandinavian writers! No, no, I think he is a much worse writer than most; he has a fast journalistic style that makes for entertaining reading, and he does write well; but his plot did have holes, his story did have problems. I would take Arnaldur Indridason over him any day, and Henning Mankell. They are far and away better Scandinavian mystery writers than Stieg Larsson. So, Gentle Reader, let me know what you think: do you agree with the speakers in the article? Or with me? I am, by the way, delighted that both won, and delighted that they were good mysteries (at least in my humble opinion!) and that even better, I've read them before they won the awards! As for English writers, Ian Rankin, Kate Atkinson, Ariana Franklin, Sara Paretsky, James Lee Burke, to name a few, are all better mystery writers than Stieg Larsson, in English. I will say that Larsson tells a good story, and it's gripping and his characters are good. But better than Gorky Park? Mallory's Oracle? No.

The other article from The Guardian is one about forgotten classics, link here. I'm curious to know if you have any forgotten classics that you think people should read, Gentle Reader. The Guardian wants to know, too! It's also about forgotten favourites of time gone past. I think I've read the book the author mentions, Mary Stewart's Touch Not The Cat. Eons ago. Now I want to read it again, just because it was mentioned in the article! It's fun to see what people treasured once, that they have forgotten about and rediscover. Has that happened to you? Do you find yourself discovering an old favourite, or wish that more people would read an older book that you really love? I like this article too because it says that even with all the new books being published every year, one of the joys of books is that we can turn to books from yesterday, last year, 100 years ago, and read them again. A forgotten classic can always be discovered again. And there is nothing like treasuring a book, at least for this bookaholic! So what do you treasure that you think has been forgotten? For tonight, I choose Woman in Black by Susan Hill, and On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers. Just in time for Hallowe'en!!

The Woman in Black I reviewed here last year.

On Stranger Tides I read first 20 years ago. I loved it then. It's one of Tim Power's first books, not as early as The Anubis Gates, but with the same sense of energy and fun. It has pirates, zombies, true love, voodoo, The Fountain of Youth, the Caribbean.....it's so much fun to read, very enjoyable, and a solid mix of fantasy and horror with doses of humour. It's a forgotten classic that I think is well worth discovering.

Time for tonight's ghost story from Bluenose Ghosts:

Occasionally a single ghost turns up on a ship. This story from Glen Haven is one of my favourites. I would like to think it really happened, and perhaps it did. Ben Smeltzer was a West Dover man and one of the crew of a vessel fishing off Georges in winter. It was snowing and there were no fish, and they were getting all iced up and the captain had decided to take the ship to Boston. At this time Mr Smeltzer went down below and, when he went into the cabin, there was a strange man sitting at the chart table writing on a slate - a large, healthy looking sea-faring man.

For readers who are not accustomed to the sea and its ways, I might mention that it would be impossible in the limited space of a sailing vessel for a person to stow away for any length of time, if at all, and this vessel had been at sea for some weeks.

"Who can this be?" Mr Smeltzer thought. "What does it mean?" He had heard of strange events at sea, and he scratched his head as he went up the companionway to talk it over with his captain.

"There's a strange man below," he said. "Never seen him before."

"You're crazy," said the captain. Then observing that Mr Smeltzer was serious about it he decided to humour him and added in a voice that had in it more than a hint of sarcasm, "What did you say to him?"

"I didn't say anything," Mr Smeltzer declared. "He can't be human."

"Well," said the captain, who began to have misgivings himself, "you come down with me and show me your man." So down they went and there was no one there. However the captain was a thorough man and Mr Smeltzer had stated specifically that the stranger had been sitting at the chart table writing on a slate. He therefore strode over to the table and picked up the slate. The top side was clean, just as he had left it. Without really thinking what he was doing he turned the slate over and there he was amazed to see a message. It read: "Change your course to nor'nor'west and steer so many hours and you'll come to a vessel turned on its side and the crew hanging on it."

He put the slate down and snorted.

"Tricks. Sailors must always be at their tricks," but Mr Smeltzer insisted it was not a trick and he grew even more serious as he too read the message. More to satisfy him than anything, the captain called his crew down one by one and had each one write something on the slate. No script resembled the mysterious handwriting. By this time the crew all knew the story and they were as one in concluding that they should follow the slate's directions. Against his own wishes and judgement the captain changed his course. And sure enough, they had not gone far on their way when they came upon an upturned vessel. Men were still clinging to the hull, and they were in time to save them. They supposed then that the stranger who had appeared in the cabin had been one of the first to succumb and that he had taken this means of saving his fellow seamen.