Appointment With Agatha discussion

I think I'd like to do some bulk planning - let's pick the reads for May, June and July with our next round of nominations!

Since we are going to be choosing three, everyone can nominate two.

Nominations will remain open until mid-March to give everyone a chance to weigh in. I'll figure out some sort of selection process when we get the slate chosen - I'd like to get up to 20 nominations for the 3 month period.

Remember: only American authors and books published prior to 1970!

Since we are doing a Margaret Millar for April, maybe we should consider her husband, Ross Macdonald, for May.

Peregrina651 wrote: "Since we are doing a Margaret Millar for April, maybe we should consider her husband, Ross Macdonald, for May."

Oh, that's fun! I didn't know they were married.

I was actually just thinking this morning that picking authors for each month and then selecting a book from their backlist might be fun! A few other ideas I had:

Mary Roberts Rinehart
Anna Katherine Greene
Rex Stout (Nero Wolfe)
Erle Stanley Gardner (Perry Mason)

I had nominated an Earl Stanley Gardner book before, but have to look it up... Ed.: It was The Case of the Fiery Fingers. :)

All the writers that spring to mind for American noir in this period are male. I knew there had to have been a lot of women writing good stuff back then so I went looking. I found that the Library of America had produced a book called 'Women Crime Writers of the 1940s & 50s.' There's a good website with a profile of each author and a list of their books here: http://womencrime.loa.org

I've picked two from the book. My nominations are:

'Fools Gold' by Dolores Hitchens Fools' Gold

'False Face' by Vera Caspary False Face

Mike wrote: "All the writers that spring to mind for American noir in this period are male. I knew there had to have been a lot of women writing good stuff back then so I went looking. I found that the Library ..."

There's no requirement to select authors in the "noir" style - although you are right that those tend to be male dominated, and that is also a very "American" style of crime writing during this time period.

Also, oh, my gosh, that anthology looks like the bee's knees, Mike. I'm on a quest.

edited: the hardcover is $88.00, so I'm setting that aside to ask for it for a birthday/Christmas or something.

BUT...the kindle edition of the 1940's volume is on sale for $2.99 for a limited time. I grabbed it with the grabbiest of grabby hands.

https://www.amazon.com/Women-Crime-Wr...

The books:

Laura
The Horizontal Man
In a Lonely Place
The Blank Wall

Thanks for the link Christine! I grabbed it too. ;)
There´s always the problem of getting the books we´re reading. Christies are easily available, but others... My library seldom has those.

I just learned about Death of a Doxy by Nero Wolfe from another book club and it sounded like fun, so that's my nomination.

Michaela wrote: "Thanks for the link Christine! I grabbed it too. ;)
There always the problem of getting the books we´re reading. Christies are easily available, but others... My library seldom has those."

I know just what you mean - between my two library systems, I am usually able to source the selections, but not always. And, I will also acknowledge how lucky I am that my local library systems are incredible.

I would like to nominate The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett as he is another main author in the American classic mystery cannon.

It's already mid-April, and I completely neglected to finish this process. In light of the fact that we are on a really short time frame, I'm going to go with the titles that were directly nominated for the May poll:

The Case of the Fiery Fingers by Erle Stanley Gardner
Fools' Gold by Dolores Hitchens
False Face by Vera Caspary
Death of a Doxy by Rex Stout
The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett

Link to the poll