Reading the Detectives discussion

It's time to nominate for our December 2021 group read.

Please nominate mystery/detective books written in/set in the GA period, or slightly earlier or later. It can be something Christmassy if you like but this is not a requirement. :)

As usual, just one nomination per group member, and only one book by any individual writer can be nominated per month

I'll give this novel another try!

I'll nominate The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett.

Sam Spade is hired by the fragrant Miss Wonderley to track down her sister, who has eloped with a louse called Floyd Thursby. But Miss Wonderley is in fact the beautiful and treacherous Brigid O'Shaughnessy...

I will nominate The King is Dead: a cozy 1930s English murder mystery set in a country house

Christmas, 1930. An exiled Balkan king, living incognito in rural Suffolk, is shot dead in his secluded mansion following a meeting with the local vicar, Reverend Lucian Shaw.

Special Branch detectives are soon on the trail of sinister agents of a foreign power that they think are responsible, but Shaw begins to realise that the culprit could be much closer to home.

Observation, cogitation, meditation and prayer lead him down a dangerous road towards a desperate killer who will stop at nothing to evade capture.

I would like to nominate The Christmas Egg. By Mary Kelly if that is ok. It was first published in 1958 which doesn’t fit the time limit, but it is a British Library Crime Classic.

In a gloomy flat off Islington High Street, Chief Inspector Brett Nightingale and Sergeant Beddoes find an old woman dead. The Princess Olga Karukhin, who fled from Russia at the time of the Revolution, has lived in terror of being discovered ever since.

Olga's grandson, Ivan, appears to have run from the scene, but is later seen returning to the flat as though oblivious to the terrible crime. Taking place between 22nd and 24th December, Nightingale's enquiry takes him across London, culminating in the wrapping of the mystery on Christmas Eve.

This never-before-republished novel from 1958 has a noticeably different feel to the neat puzzles and country house mysteries of crime fiction's golden age, revealing the darker side of police detection in an evocative urban setting.

If not acceptable please disregard.

Sounds great, Jill. Nominations can be set slightly outside the era and many of series we have read have gone on until the Sixties, so I think it's fine.

It's fine to nominate The Christmas Egg, Jill - it sounds as if it would be a really good seasonal read. Thank you.

Snap - Susan and I cross-posted :)

In fact, I think I nominated it last year, or someone did?

I think someone did nominate The Christmas Egg previously, Susan - it rings a bell.

I'll nominate The Night of Fear by Moray Dalton, one of the Dean Street Press reprints. It is set around the Christmas period and was first published in 1931.



Together they looked down at the inert sprawling figure of a man fantastically dressed in red-and-white-striped pyjama trousers, with a red sash belt and a white silk shirt open at the neck.

A Christmas gathering of young and old in a great country house in England—a masquerade—and the lights are turned off for a game of hide and seek. Silence—then a man’s cry for “Lights!” The lights come on, revealing Hugh Darrow, blind since the War, standing in the main hall, fresh blood dripping from his hands and covering his white Pierrot costume. He tells the story of having discovered a dead man, stabbed through the heart...

This is listed as the second book in two different series by this author, featuring Inspector Hugh Collier and private detective Hermann Glide, but apparently Collier only comes in briefly anyway, so it doesn't sound as if this will be a problem.

Thanks to all who have nominated so far - our nominations are:

Carol: The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

Susan: The King is Dead: a cozy 1930s English murder mystery set in a country house by Hugh Morrison

Jill: The Christmas Egg by Mary Kelly

Judy The Night of Fear by Moray Dalton

Does anyone want to add any more? I'd like to get the poll up in the next couple of days.

Great to see some Christmas books - always nice to have a murder at the festive season!

I nominate The Disappearance at Pere-Lachaise: A Victor Legris Mystery by Claude Izner.

The second book (and stand-alone) with the book salesman and private investigator Victor Legris, solving mystical murders in Paris around 1890.

Thank you for the nomination, Nike - sounds interesting, set in France during the Sherlock Holmes era! Slightly early for the Golden Age but I think that's fine, as with books which are a bit later than our main period. It all helps to ensure varied nominations.

I've just checked and an edition with a slightly different title The Père-Lachaise Mystery: 2nd Victor Legris Mystery: A Victor Legris Mystery is available on Kindle in the UK.

Judy wrote: "Thank you for the nomination, Nike - sounds interesting, set in France during the Sherlock Holmes era! Slightly early for the Golden Age but I think that's fine, as with books which are a bit later..."

Thank you for accepting my nomination, Judy =)

Some great choices already and we love nominations, Nike.

The poll is now open - please vote for the book you want to read in December.
https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/2...

Very close at the moment - if you haven't voted, please do!

https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/2...

The poll has now closed and the winner is The Night of Fear by Moray Dalton, which will be our December group read.

Full results:

The Night of Fear 9 votes, 33.3%
The Maltese Falcon 7 votes, 25.9%
The King is Dead: a cozy 1930s English murder mystery set in a country house 4 votes, 14.8%
The Christmas Egg (Inspector Brett Nightingale, #3) 4 votes, 14.8%
The Disappearance at Pere-Lachaise (Victor Legris, #2) 3 votes, 11.1%

Thanks to everyone who nominated and voted.

I'm excited that The Night of Fear has won - I nominated it because Moray Dalton is an author I've heard good things about. Now I will finally get to her.

Yes, looking forward to that one, Judy :)

The Dalton books have nice covers and I own the first in the series, One by One They Disappeared so have hopes of reading that before December.

I also have hopes of reading a couple of other nominees: The Christmas Egg and The King is Dead: a cozy 1930s English murder mystery set in a country house so we'll see how many I actually read.

Thanks, Judy, looking forward to reading her as well.

Sandy, I also picked up The Christmas Egg from the library today - spotted it on the shelf and couldn't resist although that means I'm probably going to end up reading it rather early for Christmas!

Well, that worked out well! I missed the poll, but I already have The Night of Fear on my kindle. So - yay for serendipity!

Judy wrote: "Sandy, I also picked up The Christmas Egg from the library today - spotted it on the shelf and couldn't resist although that means I'm probably going to end up reading it rather early for Christmas!"

I also visited the library today and came home with 2 - 3 books, all new and due in two weeks with no renewals. (2 or 3 because one is for my boyfriend but looks interesting.)

One is Exit, a "darkly comic thriller".

Oh, Exit is brilliant, Sandy! I love Belinda Bauer.