"Autumn Chills" by Agatha Christie

Over the past few years, HarperCollins has put out four seasonal collections of Agatha Christie short stories.  I've collected them all up, and I decided to try to read them all over the coming months, each during the season where they take place.  I began with Autumn Chills because I wanted to read it for the #AMonthOfMystery challenge on Instagram.  I didn't finish it before November, so it didn't count for that challenge, but that's okay!  I had a lot of fun reading one of these short mysteries every couple of days.

And then this review sat in my drafts for a month.  Because my life has just been so blasted busy!  That means I don't actually remember which stories were my favorites anymore, except that I wholeheartedly loved "The Case of the Rich Woman."

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for murder, mild innuendo here and there, and I think maybe a couple instances of mild cussing?

This was my 28th book read from my TBR shelves for the 2024 Mount TBR Challenge and my 33rd book read and reviewed for my fourth Classics Club list.

"One Must Die" by Candice Pedraza Yamnitz, Amber Lambda, Sarah Everest, Claire Kohler, Lydia Mae, and C. C. Urie

I'm not sure I've ever read a novel co-written by six people before.  Not an anthology, but a single novel!  It's quite the ambitious endeavor, but I think it worked really well.

It's hard to describe One Must Die succinctly.  As the cover says, it's a steampunk murder mystery.  Set in a mansion floating above earth that's filled with robots.  And hidden keys.  And secret passageways.  And, somewhere, a treasure vault.

A whole bunch of strangers are invited to try solving a mystery and finding the treasure in the mansion... and then it turns out they're not all strangers after all.  Someone must die before anyone can claim the treasure, and there's a time limit, too.  You have to find the correct key to open the vault, and you have to find the vault.  Lots of treachery and trickery ensues.

This book is kind of like if you put The Westing Game and Clue and Murder on the Orient Express and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow in a blender.  It's a fast-paced ride, but never gets too scary or too bloody or too intense.  I'll be handing this off to my tween and teens to read now that I've finished it.

Particularly Good Bits: Dread seemed to settle over the large dining room like spider threads, wrapping us too tightly for any chance of escape (p. 50).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-10 for violence, some romantic interludes (all tasteful), and talk about illegitimate children.

"The Woman in White" by Wilkie Collins

I have put off writing this review for almost two weeks now.  Which, I suppose, tells you a lot right there, doesn't it.

I really enjoyed The Moonstone when I read that a couple years ago.  And I've read some short stories by Wilkie Collins that were fun, so I expected to enjoy The Woman in White too.  I wanted to enjoy it.  I tried to enjoy it.

But oh my goodness, did I ever have to push my way through this book.  I did want to know how it all ended, so I kept with it, but it was a struggle.  Mostly because I did not particularly like any of the characters.  They weren't people I'd want to hang out with in real life, so I didn't want to hang out with them in their fictional world.

I am glad I finished the book, but it's not one I'll reread.  Too much slogging for too little payoff.

The basic plot is that a young man encounters a strange woman dressed all in white one night on the outskirts of London.  She is on the run from someone, she gives him some dire warnings, and she disappears.  The young man takes a new job as a private art tutor for a young lady at her family's country estate, and it turns out that the woman in white was someone this young lady used to know.  And then people fall in love, and there's an arranged marriage to mess everything up, and everyone is super unhappy for most of the book.  And, by the end, they are only kinda sorta on the way to maybe one day being less unhappy, which was just not fun, y'all.

Particularly Good Bits:  

The days passed on, the weeks passed on; and the track of the golden autumn wound its bright way visibly through the green summer of the trees (p. 54).

If only I had the privileges of a man, I would order out Sir Percival's best horse instantly, and tear away on a night-gallop, eastward, to meet the rising sun -- a long, hard, heavy, ceaseless gallop of hours and hours, like the famous highwayman's ride to York.  Being, however, nothing but a woman, condemned to patience, propriety, and petticoats, for life, I must respect the housekeeper's opinions, and try to compose myself in some feeble and feminine way (p. 164).

Any woman who is sure of her own wits, is a match, at any time, for a man who is not sure of his own temper (p. 256).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG for spousal abuse, both verbal and emotional.  

This is my 21st book read and reviewed for my fourth Classics Club list, my 53rd for #TheUnreadShelfProjec2023, and my third read and reviewed for #AMonthOfMystery this year.

"And Then There Were None" by Agatha Christie

Oh. My.

I picked this up in an airport bookstore on the way home from visiting my parents earlier this month.  I really was in the mood for a mystery, but hadn't brought any with me, and this seemed like a perfect read for October, especially since I have been participating in the #AMonthOfMystery challenge on Instagram again this year.

What a wild ride this book is!  I almost don't want to say too much about it because I didn't really know anything about the plot before reading it, and that was a perfect way to go into this book.  All I knew was that it was a group of strangers who are on an island together, and then people start dying.  Which sounded kind of like the movie Clue (1985), and I am pretty sure the makers of that movie were referencing this book in several places -- I will have to rewatch it to be sure, though.

Anyway!  This book is thoroughly shocking, in the sense of making me think, "Holy cow, THAT happened?!?" over and over and over.  I read it in a day and a half.  Brilliant stuff -- I can see why it is generally considered one of Christie's absolute best.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-16 for some pretty violent and gruesome murders.

This has been my 20th book read and reviewed for my fourth Classics Club list, my 52nd book read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023, and my second read and reviewed for #AMonthOfMystery this year.

"Death of a Christmas Tree Salesman" by Patricia Meredith

Yes, I know it's not even Halloween yet.  But, as someone who keeps Christmas in her heart the whole year 'round like Ebenezer Scrooge, I snuggled right up to read this book even though it's not the Christmas season yet!  In fact, I had such a great time immersing myself in all things Christmas while reading this book, that coming back to the real world and having to think about things like Halloween costumes for my kids was always a bit disorienting whenever I stopped reading.

Anyway, Death of a Christmas Tree Salesman is a pretty jolly book, even though it does involve murders.  The main character is a snowman named Sam Shovel, and if that fact combined with the cheeky book title doesn't clue you in to the kind of festive, referential fun this book contains, probably nothing will.  References to classic mystery books and characters abound, from Sam Shovel (think of Sam Spade) to Nick and Nora Claus (instead of Nick and Nora Charles).  And references to Christmas carols and poems pop up everywhere, as well as innumerable iterations of Santa Claus from around the world.

I absolutely loved how Meredith created a Santa network, with international Santas like Egypt's Baba Noel, Germany's Der Weihnachtsmann, Russia's Ded Moroz, Italy's Babbo Natale, and China's Sheng Dan Lao Ren all being distinct people who work together with Nick Claus to spread Christmas presents and joy around the world.  That was so clever, and it created a natural way to include all kinds of different Christmas traditions and treats in the story.

The mystery revolves around the mysterious death of Mr. O. Tannenbaum, owner of the North Pole's Christmas tree farm.  Sam Shovel and an Icelandic "Yule Lad" named Kertasnikir (secretary to the now deceased Tannenbaum) set out to find the culprit, which is a bit difficult since Kertas spends most of his time trying to quell his urge to eat candles and Sam Shovel's memory is pretty bad since he's a snowman.  But they persevere and eventually do find the killer.

I am not ordinarily a big fan of cozy mysteries, as they can often be too cutesy for my taste.  I prefer hard-boiled mysteries where murder is shown to be the abomination it is.  BUT I make an exception for Christmas mysteries, which can be as cozy and cute as they please, and still not annoy me.  This particular book was such a delicious confection of Christmas-y elements that there was no way I wouldn't enjoy it!  In fact, I suspect it's a book I'll reread in Christmastimes to come.

By the way, if you're starting to think of books you want to read during the Christmas season, I have a page called Christmas Reads where I link to all my reviews of Christmas books on this blog.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.  I was not required to provide a review of it, positive or otherwise. 

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for dealing with poison and murder.  No cussing or smut or on-page scenes of violence except someone throwing things at a snowman from time to time.

This is the 51st book read from my TBR collection for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023 and my first read and reviewed for #AMonthOfMystery this year.

"The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" by Agatha Christie

My favorite part of this book was figuring out that Hercule Poirot was in it before he was actually mentioned by name.

My least-favorite part of this book was figuring out who the killer was about two-thirds of the way through the book, and being right.  I really hate that.  I pretty much demand that the detective and the villain in a mystery book or show or movie should be smarter than I am.  If I figure things out before the big reveal, I feel cheated.  I don't try to figure them out -- I even actively try NOT to.  But sometimes, it happens, and then I'm kinda bummed.  Especially since several people told me to avoid spoilage on this, and that I was going to really enjoy the reveal.  Oh well, it was still a fun Hercule Poirot mystery :-)

This one is kind of a locked-room mystery and kind of a house-party mystery, and also a cozy-village mystery.  A rich guy gets murdered, lots of people who were at his big estate for a party are suspects, and so are lots of people in the village.  There are some obvious suspects and some not-so-obvious ones, and Poirot's little grey cells get quite a workout before the end.

Particularly Good Bits:

It is odd, when you have a secret belief of your own which you do not wish to acknowledge, the voicing of it by someone else will rouse you to a fury of denial (p. 225).

"It is completely unimportant," said Poirot.  "That is why it is so interesting," he added softly (p. 288).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for murder, some innuendo and talk about unwed mothers, and a smattering of mild bad language.

This has been my fifth book read from my fourth Classics Club list, and also my 53rd book read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2022.

"Bloodlines" by Jan Burke (again)

Did it take me two weeks to read this book?  Yes, it did.  But not because I wasn't enjoying it or couldn't get into it.  I spent two weeks on Bloodlines because I was savoring it.  I didn't want to rush through it, I wanted to soak in it.  And I did, and it was wonderful.

This is the first Irene Kelly book I ever read, back in 2012, and the one that made me want to read the whole series.  Now, ten years later, I'm finally able to fulfill that desire.  I had started reading the rest of the series, beginning with the first book, after I first read Bloodlines (which is book 9), but the library rudely ditched the series before I'd gotten past book 3.  So, I've slowly been collecting up the series whenever I would find copies at used book stores and thrift stores, etc.  I got the last couple on AbeBooks at the end of last year and set off on my quest to read the whole series in 2022, which I'm calling My Year with Irene Kelly.

A big part of why I love this book is that it starts in 1958, picks up in 1978, then concludes in 2000.  Murders and crimes from the past keep spawning trouble over the decades, and the plotting here is breathtaking.  

But the real reason that I loved it even more this second time through than I did the first time... was that I know who these characters are, now.  And getting to see Irene Kelly's mentor O'Connor active and on the page, both as a kid and an adult... it's so amazing.  You see, O'Connor dies at the very beginning of the first Irene Kelly book.  Like, in the first chapter, IIRC.  And Irene is always referring to him, missing him, thinking about him, and so on.  Which makes the first two-thirds of this book extra, extra good this time.  

None of this rambling tells you what the book is about, though, does it?  Well, it involves kidnapping, murder, long-buried secrets, family, friendship, mentorship, and grave robbing.  It sprawls.  It weaves.  It surprises.  I love it.  I keep trying to sum up the mystery without spoiling it, but I can't seem to manage it, sorry.

I have two books left in the series to read.  And I'm a little worried they won't live up to Bloodlines because I love it so, so much.  But, then again, they might be just as wonderful!  Won't know until I try them.

Particularly Good Bits:

Missing, he thought, meant exactly that -- gone like a piece of you, carved right out of you, missing from you (p. 145).

There is a distance between "should forgive" and "have forgiven" that is sometimes hard to cross (p. 462).

I stared out the window of the Lucky Dragon, watching a steady stream of downtown workers, panhandlers, shoppers, and others walk by.  Each one a little bundle of troubles on legs, determined to make it through the day (p. 569).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: R for violence, language, and off-page sex.

"Hallowe'en Party" by Agatha Christie

I have discovered that I like Agatha Christie's books about Hercule Poirot, just not so much her Miss Marple books.  This is a Poirot book, so I gave it a go after seeing it around on Bookstagram early in October.  My library had it, so that was a win!

I enjoyed this book pretty well, though it could have been considerably shorter if we hadn't had to read the same information repeatedly.  Whole conversations and experiences were repeated in full instead of summarized, which I found tedious.  Also I was annoyed by the constant harping on "obviously this murder was done by a crazy person."  Way too many characters said exactly the same thing.  And Poirot never believed them, so it was obviously a red herring meant to mislead us, except it was too obvious, so it didn't work.

Sooooooo... this was a fun one-time read, but not a Poirot I'll be buying a copy of so I can reread it.  And that's okay.  My bookshelves are glad of this, hee.

The plot revolves around a girl getting murdered at a Halloween party after boasting that she had once seen someone get murdered.  Semi-retired Hercule Poirot is called in to help investigate, and mystery-solving ensues.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for murder, lots of people assuming the murderer's motive was sexual, and discussion of unwed pregnancy.  It's fairly tame, but not for kids.

This is the sixth mystery book I read for #AMonthOfMystery.  It was such a fun challenge!

"Trouble is What I Do" by Walter Mosley

I read Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley a while back, and it left a bad taste in my mouth because it involved child exploitation and trafficking, and that issue both revolts and terrifies me.  Even though Mosley's writing was cool and his main character was trying to stop that exploitation and trafficking, I just had a hard time with that book.  Looking back, I'm surprised I didn't just DNF it, which is what usually ends up happening when that subject crops up in a book.  Maybe I didn't because it was a very small part of the story.  Or because it didn't turn up until deep into the story.  Hmm.

ANYWAY, I'm super happy that I tried another of his books, because I liked this so, so much better.  Trouble is What I Do is a novella set in modern-day NYC and revolving around private investigator Leonid McGill.  Like some of the classic hardboiled PIs from the 1930s and '40s, McGill has a tendency to bend rules and stick to his own moral code.  I haven't read any of Mosley's previous books featuring McGill, but I would like to because he is a cool, nuanced character, and I loved his narrative voice.

Leonid McGill takes on the job of delivering a personal note to the daughter of an uber-rich socialite family that will enlighten her as to the truth of her heritage.  That main plot gets sidetracked a few times as McGill tells us about other cases he worked that involve people who also become tangled up in this plot.  After a while, those began to feel just a little like filler, but I was enjoying the writing so much that I didn't mind.

Random note: I picked this one off the shelf because the title reminded me of Trouble is My Business by Raymond Chandler, which I read recently.  

Particularly Good Bits:

"To paraphrase the great Sugar Ray Robinson," I said, "trouble is what I do" (p. 62).

At one time, I blamed my father's abandonment for these sins, but I had learned that in the end, wrong is wrong and every man has to carry his own water (p. 83).

Some days, when you're sitting alone with the truth, you question whether or not there'll be a tomorrow.  That was one of those days for me (p. 152).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: R for a LOT of bad language, violence, and suggestive/adult dialog/narration.  No sex scenes, though.

This is the fifth book I've read for #AMonthOfMystery.

"The Thin Man" by Dashiell Hammett

When I said I was going on a Dashiell Hammett kick, I meant it.  My goodness, I am enjoying his books!  

I feel like, when I read this for the first time, fifteenish years ago, I just didn't get its humor.  In fact, I recall being rather disappointed by it, for whatever reason.  Not sure if I'd seen the Myrna Loy/William Powell movie version already and thought this didn't measure up, or what.

Well, I found it really funny this time around.  As in, it made me laugh aloud, in public, repeatedly.  The wit is as sharp and acidic as a Jane Austen novel, and the plot trots briskly along.  Not as briskly as in the movie, but I enjoyed that the book has more time to develop some of the characters a bit more.  If you don't like sarcasm, you probably won't dig the humor here, but since I do, boy did it ever please me.

The movie version is a little more bubbly and cute than the book, but that's because the movie is a comedy with a mystery in it, and the book is a mystery with humor in it.  Different focuses, different vibes, same story.  Which, if you don't know, features Nick Charles, a retired detective, and his wealthy wife Nora.  They're visiting New York City for Christmas during Prohibition, and people Nick used to know keep ending up dead.  I had forgotten that this is narrated by Nick Charles in first person, which lends a nice, noir-y voice-over feel to the whole proceeding.

Particularly Good Bits: 

Nora said, "I love you, Nicky, because you smell nice and know such fascinating people" (p. 129).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-16 for rather a lot of cussing, some violence, lots of alcohol, and some innuendo in dialog.

This is my 31st book read and reviewed for my third Classics Club list and my fourth for #ANovelMonthOfMystery.

"A Spy on the Home Front" by Alison Hart

My kids love the American Girl books, just like I did as a kid.  I've bought them a lot of the tie-in mysteries over the years, mostly at the second-hand bookstore, but I've never read any of them myself, until now.

A Spy on the Home Front is a fast read with a pretty serious topic: anti-American spying during WWII.  Molly McIntire spends every summer with her grandparents, and she's good friends with Anna Schulz, a girl her age who lives on a nearby farm.  Anna's parents immigrated to America before Anna was ever born, but now the FBI is investigating the family because they came from Germany.  They suspect Anna's older brother is trying to distribute anti-American propaganda, and Molly and Anna uncover evidence that points to someone else entirely.

Mysteries where kids find things adults can't are often kind of contrived, but this one does a good job of showing that kids sometimes are more observant than adults, but not necessarily smarter.  I had fun reading it, even if the ending was more melancholy than I had anticipated.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for discussions of American concentration/containment camps for Japanese-Americans and German-Americans.

This is the third book I read for the #AMonthOfMystery challenge on Instagram.

"The Glass Key" by Dashiell Hammett

The first time I read this book, fifteenish years ago, I had no real idea who Alan Ladd was.  I definitely had not seen the 1942 version of The Glass Key that starred him opposite Veronica Lake and Brian Donlevy.  Not even once.  Cut to 2021, when I've seen it probably five or six times, and that makes this reading experience totally different from that first one.

One of the best parts of this reread was how it cleared up a few things about Ladd's performance in the movie version for me!  I've always been a little bugged by certain expressions Ladd uses as Ned Beaumont because they don't seem natural to him.  In particular, he does these weird smiles where his lips are pulled tight against his teeth so he looks more like he's grimacing that smiling.  I had always chalked this up to Ladd being nervous because this was his first big hero role after he gained fame playing the sympathetic villain in This Gun for Hire (1942).  But now, I don't think that was it at all!

I think Alan Ladd read this book when he got cast in the movie version.  Because Hammett is very explicit about exactly what sort of smile Beaumont is doing at any given moment, whether it's a friendly smile, a genuine and boyish smile, or a controlled and fake smile... with his lips pulled tightly against his teeth.  I think Ladd was trying to draw on the source material and, if you have read the book, you'll realize that's what he's doing.  But, if you haven't, it just looks like he is really uncomfortable in a lot of scenes.  Which, actually, his character does tend to be, so it does kinda work.  But it works better now that I've read the book and then rewatched the movie right after.

ANYWAY, this book focuses on Ned Beaumont (renamed Ed for the movie because whyyyy?), right-hand-man of a political fixer who falls in love with a senator's daughter and decides to put all his political power behind this senator.  The senator's daughter can't stand him, but plays nice so he'll keep helping her dad.  And then her brother gets murdered.  Everyone assumes the fixer did it, but his power keeps him from getting arrested for it because he's in control of the District Attorney and so on.  Ned Beaumont tries to figure out who did kill the senator's son, if his boss didn't, and a lot of violence and excitement ensue.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for violence, including a pretty extreme beating, and contemplations of suicide.  Also some bad language, lots of alcohol use, smoking, etc.  I did mention this is hardboiled detective fiction, right?

This is the 30th book I've read and reviewed for my third Classics Club list and the second book I read for the #AMonthOfMystery challenge on Instagram.

"Woman in the Dark" by Dashiell Hammett

After rereading Trouble is My Business by Raymond Chandler last month, I began to crave more hardboiled detective stories of that same era.  But I have a strict rule about only reading one Chandler book a year that I only fudge on in the must extreme circumstances.  And this didn't feel extreme.  So I had the happy thought of rereading Dashiell Hammett's books.  I read all his novels and short stories in one fell swoop almost 20 years ago, with the result that I can only remember the ones that I've also seen movie versions of, namely The Thin Man, The Maltese Falcon, and The Glass Key.  And even those, I know, are somewhat different from the movies, though I can't remember how.

So, I'm rereading a bunch of Dashiell Hammett.  Some friends on Instagram are hosting #AMonthOfMystery for October, challenging participants to read a lot of mysteries in October because why not?  So I'm joining that because I never need any excuse to read more mysteries and talk about them with bookish friends.  And Woman in the Dark is my first book read for that event.

It's not quite even a novel, really -- it's a slim novella.  But whatever.  It was really enjoyable.  I found myself rooting so hard for Brazil, an ex-con with a temper and dangerous fists, and Luise Fischer, a kept woman trying to get away from the brute who thinks he should be allowed to keep her.  Everything goes sideways and down for a long time, but there's a surprisingly hopeful ending that I absolutely loved.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-16 for oblique references to sex, considerable violence, and some bad language.