English Mysteries Club discussion

There seem to be several ways of writing a crime novel, with extremes varying between "whodunnits" and those where you begin with a murder, and the novel goes into the psychology of the killer. Mysteries, procedurals, true crime - where do you fit?

That's an easy one. Both.

Jean wrote: "That's an easy one. Both."

LOL! So if you're in a library (or a bookshop), where does your hand go, Jean? To someone you know writes psychological crimes? True crimes? Cosies? To a new author who is writing stories about an Inspector X? And why?

My preference is for a true puzzle mystery, with clues that aren't obvious, so I can keep my brain sharp. Some police procedurals do provide that, though not as overtly as Ellery Queen and Agatha Christie, for example, used to do - writers like Peter Robinson , Ruth Rendell, and a few others. I don't like the mysteries to be too unlikely, so I don't like most cozies. I do like Donna Andrews, Alyssa Maxwell, and a few others where there is a legitimate reason for non-police officers to be involved in so many mysteries. I seldom read non-series books, because I don't like too much character development; I want a mystery, not a soap opera. One exception and one of my favorites is The Name of the Rose/Umberto Eco. I don't like true crime or psychological crime or "thrillers" because there's too much soap opera and not enough puzzle. I go first to authors I know, but I'm a speed reader and though I have many reliable authors I still run out and have to try new people. I've made lots of discoveries who are now among my favorites but I've also found a lot of boring and badly written sludge. I mostly buy for my kindle because I live in a small town with an underfunded library, no bookstores, and no more suitable space in my big house for bookshelves. Also, that way I get new stuff the day it comes out without having to drive 50 miles.

Back in the 80s there was a series of books which presented crime scene photos, police reports, forensic reports, lab results, interview transcriptions, etc. with absolutely no narrative or character development. I loved those! Not enough people did, unfortunately, but I bought all of the few published. I have never understood why I should care about the personal lives of the detectives unless they have a direct bearing on the solution. And even then . . . I gave up on Hawaii 5 0 because it seemed if the detectives had no relatives or friends there would be almost no crime in Hawaii.

Jean wrote: "Back in the 80s there was a series of books which presented crime scene photos, police reports, forensic reports, lab results, interview transcriptions, etc. with absolutely no narrative or charact..."

I'm not sure we had those in the UK. They sound quite cerebral, as if they would appeal to a committed mystery-reader :)

"I have never understood why I should care about the personal lives of the detectives unless they have a direct bearing on the solution"

Yes, some writers almost "lose the plot" - literally! I think Elizabeth George is writing longer and longer books with more about the personal lives of the detectives. And I know these are no longer books, but the "Midsomer Murders" TV episodes, based on Caroline Graham's books, have sometimes involved Barnaby's wife to a ridiculous extent. She's always present when the murder happens, or reading a book which cracks the case, or belongs to a hobby group where the murderer is also a member, or ...

But yes I think a bit of personal background is interesting, and I like how we can follow this in P.D. James's Chief Inspector Dalgleish or the early novels featuring Elizabeth George's Chief Inspector Lynley. And Susan Hill's Chief Inspector Simon Serrailler books seem to break all the rules - especially the first one!

The only police procedurals I can think of from Ruth Rendell are the Inspector Wexford ones, so I don't think of that as her primary interest. Like Susan Hill, who writes literary fiction and ghost stories too, she was one of those rare authors who could turn her hand to a variety of styles.

Apart from the novels she wrote as Barbara Vine, there are a lot of standalone novels, and some of these have a huge amount of psychological content. Some read rather like true crime books - but they vary a lot!

"one of my favorites is The Name of the Rose/Umberto Eco" I admire that a lot, but found his writing style difficult. Mind you I read it while I was commuting - strap-hanging on the tube - which wasn't very conducive to reading :(

"I don't like the mysteries to be too unlikely, so I don't like most cozies." That's an interesting observation. I've never thought of that! But there seem to be series about pizza murders, or cupcake murders, so I guess that must be true - I've never read any of those. I do know that when I lived in Oxford there were never as many murders as there are in Colin Dexter's "Inspector Morse" books! And who in their right mind would ever go to live in the (fictitious) Midsomer villages? ;)

I only read Rendell's Wexford series. If it's not a mystery or science fact I'm not interested. I tried one Susan Hill but didn't even finish - and that's rare for me. I bought all the Elizabeth George ones until the one in which Helen is killed which was psychological garbage, then I tried the most recent one and thought it was still garbage. I am not amused when supposedly intelligent people do stupid things. Yes, I am rather cerebral since science has been my true love from earliest childhood. I've read several of James's books but only when I could find nothing else - too much angst. I emphatically do not care about his feelings unless they're mystery-related. Oh, I can put up with some of it - no choice really - especially if it's humorous as in Donna Andrews or Cassandra Chan. The attraction of a series is that you get a bit of character development spread out over many books without getting bogged down in any one. I like your comment on the Midsomer villages - so true - and surely those pizza/cupcake/coffeeshop people would be out of business very soon.

Jean wrote: "The attraction of a series is that you get a bit of character development spread out over many books without getting bogged down in any one...."

Yes, true and your last observation made me laugh :D

I don't know "Donna Andrews or Cassandra Chan".

There are plenty of other mysteries by Ruth Rendell apart from the Inspector Wexford ones. I don't know whether you ever got the TV series, "The Ruth Rendell Mysteries". It was a British television crime drama series, but made for ITV. There were twelve series altogether, with varying numbers of episodes, between between 1987 and 2000. Some of these were dramatised novels, and some were from short stories. They varied a lot - you can't really expand a short story into a whole hour.

We got one season of one of them. Naturally, I prefer the books. My own casting is so much better than theirs. Have you seen the Agatha Raisin series? She's clearly described as a brunet, so who plays the part? A blonde! NoNoNo! The Alan Banks character in that series was all wrong too, as was the Lovejoy character if you remember that far back. The only one they got right was Phryne Fisher - perfectly cast!

I haven't seen the Agatha Raisin series. I do remember "Lovejoy", but never watched it. We didn't have a TV for a while (unimaginable now!)

Jean wrote: "Back in the 80s there was a series of books which presented crime scene photos, police reports, forensic reports, lab results, interview transcriptions, etc. with absolutely no narrative or charact..."

This was a feature of the Ed McBain 87th Precinct series which started in the 1950s. His books did have narrative & some character development but there were photostats of those sort of documents you mention.

Yes, I've read a lot of the 87th. Precinct books, back in the day. Those have characters, narration, setting, conversation, description. Not at all what I'm talking about. They were like the folder a police dept. keeps on a particular crime. They didn't even explain the lab results. If you didn't know some science, they weren't for you.

I love Denise Mina and Tana French..their Police procedurals.

Sonali - Denise Mina is completely new to me! Scottish :) Tana French is very popular, I think.

Do the two authors ever cross over into psychology, do you think? I think Ed McBain sometimes wrote with completely different styles - I remember a short story which blew me away, and was not crime! But then it was a pseudonym anyway so maybe that's why :)

Jean - you cast it better in your mind? We do that, I guess, unless we see a dramatisation first, and like it.

I'm also interested when the authors write their characters differently after having watched a the TV interpretation of them. Examples include Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse, and P.D. James's Inspector Dalgleish.

Perhaps you enjoy books which are a combination of both, Rita? I think I do ...

Yes, though it's easy to be tempted :)

Both!! Why narrow it down You can never have too many good mysteries!!

I prefer mysteries. I'll read procedurals, but for me there has to be a balance between too much procedure and not enough character on the one hand, and too much focus on the detective's messy personal life on the other.

Also, while some writers are meticulous about getting the procedure right, others aren't, and it does make the book difficult to read if it's totally unrealistic.

Rita wrote: "As you know Jean, I have more than enough series in my Rita Sweep the Series Challenge ..."

I certainly do! I'm in awe.

Victoria - those are excellent points :)

Bionic Jean wrote: "Jean wrote: "That's an easy one. Both."

LOL! So if you're in a library (or a bookshop), where does your hand go, Jean? To someone you know writes psychological crimes? True crimes? Cosies? To a ne..."

I go first for the mysteries but I have tremendously enjoyed some police procedurals - the Martin Beck series by Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo & the Inspector Gamache series by Louise Penny for example.

I do agree with Victoria's comment about "too much focus on the detective's messy personal life" in a surprising number of police procedurals. I don't care for that (plus it tends to make the books longer). I like my mystery books to be on the 'short & snappy' side rather than 500+ page chunksters.

Leslie wrote: "I like my mystery books to be on the 'short & snappy' side rather than 500+ page chunksters ..."

This seems to be more of a modern trend to me - with more stress on the psychology too. I wonder ... is it the public's preferences, or the publishers trying to sell summer beach reads?

Bionic Jean wrote: "Jean wrote: "Back in the 80s there was a series of books which presented crime scene photos, police reports, forensic reports, lab results, interview transcriptions, etc. with absolutely no narrati..."

I agree with you on this. I think the mystery gets lost along the way. This occurred to me one night as my brother L and I were watching TV. We watch vintage 60s to 80s shows. Right now, we're on the first season of Ironside with Raymond Burr. It occurred to me that while there is some detail about the characters' personal lives, they aren't a focal point of the story. This is quite different from current shows, which tend to be rather like soap operas. A lot of "modern" mysteries are the same way. I think it tends to bog things down. I don't want the characters to be ciphers, but I also don't want 500+ page tomes with about 20 pages of actual mystery. I've became very leery of lengthy mysteries.

Jean wrote: "I think Ed McBain sometimes wrote with completely different styles - I remember a short story which blew me away, and was not crime! But then it was a pseudonym anyway so maybe that's why :) "

Ed McBain's real name was Salvatore Albert Lombino, but he legally changed his name to Evan Hunter in 1952. For his "serious" fiction, he wrote under that name, and used the McBain pen name for his police procedurals; but he also employed at least a half dozen other pseudonyms for different types of writing. (Because Library of Congress cataloging rules call for books to be alphabetized under the author's real name, no matter what name it was published under, he gives LC catalogers a lot more fits than most writers do! :-) )

I've always viewed police procedurals as a particular type of mystery, rather than as a distinctly different thing: a mystery in which the detective is a professional police officer, and where the crime solving techniques and procedures employed are the ones a police investigation would realistically use. But then, I've never really been drawn to mysteries of that type, and haven't actually read any --unless John Sandford's Lucas Davenport series would qualify (I've read a couple of those), but he isn't English.

Bionic Jean wrote: "Sonali - Denise Mina is completely new to me! Scottish :) Tana French is very popular, I think.

Do the two authors ever cross over into psychology, do you think? I t..."

Jean, I believe that you know only half the story about Ed McBain! One of my favorite writers and just about as prolific as Agatha Christie. He was born Salvatore Albert Lombino, legally adopted the name Evan Hunter under which he wrote the non mystery book The Blackboard Jungle about the New York City public school system, but is most famous for those he wrote as Ed McBain. But those aren't the only pen names he used.

As McBain, he wrote the 87th Precinct crime series, as well as the Matthew Hope detective series (I preferred the 87th but enjoyed both). He even wrote a novel that was credited to both Evan Hunter and Ed McBain, Candyland !

He also wrote under Richard Marsten, Hunt Collins and Ezra Hannon. He was also successful as a screenwriter for film and television, writing the screenplay for the Alfred Hitchcock film "The Birds" from the Daphne du Maurier 1952 novel.

Sorry Werner, I just spotted your item about McBain — two minds thinking alike!

Pamela wrote: "Sorry Werner, I just spotted your item about McBain — two minds thinking alike!"

No need to be sorry, Pamela; I appreciate the additional information you provided, and I'm sure others do too!

Excellent question Jean. I am new to reading mysteries and feel rather rudderless. Questions like the one you pose here as subject let me start to peg and box so I can have solid beginning place.

I recently read a book of short stories, Great Cases of the Thinking Machine, that doesn't seem to fit into any of those genres. The protagonist — S.F.X. Van Dusen or the Thinking Machine — solves problems but everything seems to be 'behind the scenes.' It was tough for this reader to even think about trying to solve the crimes. Clever mysteries but the solutions are so esoteric, I doubt anyone would be able to guess. Except, maybe, for the last of the 13 stories and while the solution was logical, there was a final twist.

Have been reading a Jill McGown book — Plots and Errors — and am amazed by the tale. Loads of twists.

I guess if I had to say, this is a straight mystery — not a procedural, although there is a bit because the sleuths are detectives, and not a cozy. There is a bit of backgreound but not too much that it detracts from the story ... it actually keeps the characters real.

I've been reading the books by Marcia Muller and slowly coming to enjoy it more. She started with a character, Sharon McCone, that she saddled with a lot of back story, including all her previous boyfriends, current and rapidly changing boyfriends, very quirky family members, changing work situation and her Native American ethnicity. It drove me crazy and I found very irritating (especially the Native American bit and that's because I appreciate strong Native American detectives like those created by Tony Hillerman0. She's pulled it back quite a bit as she has gone along in the series.

Pamela wrote: "I've been reading the books by Marcia Muller...."

We have the second Sharon McCone novel, Ask the Cards a Question, at the Bluefield College library (it was donated). I've never marked it as to-read, but it's been on my radar. On the one hand, I'm intrigued by tough, gun-packing female sleuths (though I haven't read about very many), and the idea of a non-white protagonist is appealing, since I think they're under-represented in the genre. On the other hand, I'm 68 years old, and cautious about being pulled into another long mystery series (I'm already reading one, and another shorter one!).

My impression is that Muller writes more in the "American" style than in the traditional British mode. But I don't have any actual reading experience with her work to judge that by.

Werner wrote: "Pamela wrote: "I've been reading the books by Marcia Muller...."

We have the second Sharon McCone novel, Ask the Cards a Question, at the Bluefield College library (it was donated). ..."

She is definitely more American but it took a while for me to like her. There are better series, I think. Like you, Warner, I'm a little leery of these multibook series when they get into 25-30 books.

Werner wrote: "Pamela wrote: "I've been reading the books by Marcia Muller...."

We have the second Sharon McCone novel, Ask the Cards a Question, at the Bluefield College library (it was donated). ..."

You might try Kate Shugak series, 22 books, by Dana Stabenow. Kate is a Aleut PI in Alaska. My wife and I started reading this series 25 years ago. Here is a review of book 20
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I read British police procedurals and British historical mysteries. I like them both equally. I like the Brit procedurals because they are very character-driven, and when the bad guy is found out it's not usually a big shoot-em-up that ends the book, although to be fair "my" detectives do call out the armed response teams on an ever increasing basis, it does seem. I guess that's just the way things are these days, I would assume. Books mirror life.

Thomas wrote: "You might try Kate Shugak series...."

Thanks for the tip, Thomas! I was aware of that series, having seen reviews of it in the library profession's trade journals over the years, but feedback from a fan is always useful.

In your review, you mentioned Nevada Barr. My wife has some of her Anna Pigeon series books, and has read and liked them. Right now, I'm actually more drawn to that series than to Stabenow's (based partly on easy accessibility, of course!).

Werner wrote: "Thomas wrote: "You might try Kate Shugak series...."

Thanks for the tip, Thomas! I was aware of that series, having seen reviews of it in the library profession's trade journals over the years, bu..."

You are Welcome. We also enjoy Nevada Barr. Another traveler on 1 of our trips had met Barr. Her husband(not on the trip) was a Park ranger and had worked with Barr. He told her that Barr was an unpleasant person to work with.

Thomas wrote: "He told her that Barr was an unpleasant person to work with."

Hmmm! That makes you wonder what Barr would have said about that --and whether the impression was mutual. :-)

Werner wrote: "Thomas wrote: "He told her that Barr was an unpleasant person to work with."

Hmmm! That makes you wonder what Barr would have said about that --and whether the impression was mutual. :-)"

😂 😂 😂

Icewineanne wrote: "Werner wrote: "Thomas wrote: "He told her that Barr was an unpleasant person to work with."

Hmmm! That makes you wonder what Barr would have said about that --and whether the impression was mutual..."

HaHa! I believe that a mystery is a book where the killer is not identified until the end. A thriller is a book where the reader knows who the killer is from the beginning. I read both.
I read book 1 in the Lucas Davenport Prey series. I rated it 4 stars. My review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
This book falls into the thriller category, because the killer is disclosed at the beginning.
Contrast that book with The Brutal Telling where the killer is not revealed until the end. My review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Most of the Shugak/Barr books are mysteries, rather than Thrillers. I recommend reading them in order, especially Shugak, because of plot developments in the personal lives of Shugak/Barr.

This is such an interesting question! It never occurred to me, but I think I enjoy reading mysteries more (because they tend to be more character-driven and atmospheric), but I enjoy watching procedurals more.

Although I'm very much a "read the book first" type of person, I've occasionally watched an adaptation of a procedural that blew me away, and found the book to be rather flat. I've never found that to be the case with a mystery.

Graphic gore and horror.
Why is the newish wave of police procedurals are so extremely graphic in nature. Whole chapters are spent Detailing how the perpetrator tortures victims. They are extremely popular. I despair, but to each his own. I’m not into cozies, but anything with intelligent police work would be wonderful. I have read all the well know authors. Truely can anyone help. Any lists I look up always contains gory, horror, thrillers which just disgust me.