Tag: Mystery

The Album Of Dr. Moreau by Daryl Gregory

This novella combines three of my favorite things: murder mysteries, sci-fi (and I don’t care if calling it that is “vulgar”, Matt) and boy bands! Add a police detective with a fascinating history, literary snarkiness and huge doses of humor, and you’ve got a book that hits all of my reading sweet spots. Las Vegas …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/05/19/the-album-of-dr-moreau-by-daryl-gregory/

Beatrice Bly’s Rules For Spies: The Missing Hamster by Sue Fliess & Beth Mills

This absolutely charming picture book series debut follows young Beatrice Bly as she applies herself to the business of being an investigative spy. Armed with her notebook and, more importantly, her keen powers of observation, she’s solved many a household mystery, tho no one save her best friend knows her true vocation. When the class …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/04/29/beatrice-blys-rules-for-spies-the-missing-hamster-by-sue-fliess-beth-mills/

Murder At Wedgefield Manor (A Jane Wunderly Mystery #2) by Erica Ruth Neubauer

After the events at Mena House, Egypt, in the first novel of this 1920s-set historical mystery series, our heroine, the widowed American Jane Wunderly, and her (obnoxious) Aunt Millie decide to take up residence at Wedgefield Manor, an estate in the English countryside owned by Lord Hughes, a former and possibly future paramour of Aunt …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/04/02/murder-at-wedgefield-manor-a-jane-wunderly-mystery-2-by-erica-ruth-neubauer/

Forget Me Not by Alexandra Oliva

A genre-bending novel, when done right, can really reshape the way we think about what’s possible both in fiction and in real life. Much like Sara Faring’s The Tenth Girl, this layered blend of literary genres has the reader reconsidering the processes of our everyday existence, what it takes to live in (or buck) the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/03/05/forget-me-not-by-alexandra-oliva/

Drive Your Plows Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Nobel laureate, Polish literature, what’s not to like? It turns out that for me the more relevant question was what’s to like? Tokarczuk’s first-person narrator and protagonist, Janina Duszejko lives alone in a small group of houses on a plateau in southern Poland, hard up against the border with the Czech Republic. Most of the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/02/07/drive-your-plows-over-the-bones-of-the-dead-by-olga-tokarczuk/

Closed Casket (New Hercule Poirot Mysteries #2) by Sophie Hannah

Given how prominently the name Agatha Christie is displayed on the cover, I wonder why they don’t just call this Agatha Christie’s… oh actually, I can see why now, nvm. But yes, this is the second novel in Sophie Hannah’s take on the beloved Belgian detective, and I found I liked it less than the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/01/14/closed-casket-new-hercule-poirot-mysteries-2-by-sophie-hannah/

Death Of A Messenger (Koa Kāne Hawaiian Mystery #1) by Robert B. McCaw

It genuinely felt like this book was written by one person for the first 60% and another for the last 40%. Maybe this has something to do with the book being a reissue from 2015, telling the first chronological story of the Koa Kane Hawaiian Mystery series, and perhaps being updated for 2021. What I …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/01/11/death-of-a-messenger-koa-kane-hawaiian-mystery-1-by-robert-b-mccaw/

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

How would a sword-and-sorcery author who basically wanted to have a hell of a lot of fun write in the twenty-first century? They’d write like Tamsyn Muir does in Gideon the Ninth, I think. “In the myriadic year of our Lord—the ten thousandth year of the King Undying, the kindly Prince of Death!—Gideon Nav packed …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/12/31/gideon-the-ninth-by-tamsyn-muir/

She Lies Close by Sharon Doering

Y’aaaaall. I’ve read plenty of books with unsympathetic narrators but this is one of the perishing few where I could sympathize with our protagonist even as I lacked any empathy for her. Grace Wright is, in temperament, my exact opposite. She has a fixed idea of how things should be, and reacts poorly when things …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/11/10/she-lies-close-by-sharon-doering/

An Interview with Sharon Doering, author of She Lies Close

Q. Every book has its own story about how it came to be conceived and written as it did. How did She Lies Close evolve? The inspiration for She Lies Close came from my family’s move to a new neighborhood years ago and finding out that a guy down the street was being prosecuted for …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/08/an-interview-with-sharon-doering-author-of-she-lies-close/