Category: mystery

Mysteries I love tend to have one thing in common- great characters. Flavia di Stefano of Rome's Art Theft Squad and Jonathon Argyll, art dealer/historian fit the bill. I have a fondness for couples in mysteries, and even though these two are not actually together yet, you know they will be. She's beautiful, smart, decisive, blunt. He's bumbling and endearing. While she sticks with the case, he tends to get lost in the art. I like how they interact with each other, how their differences fit together so well. The Titian Committee is actually a reread for me. I read all of Pears' Art History Mysteries years ago, but when I decided to join the Venice in February challenge, I though it would be a great excuse to revisit the series. I didn't remember the plot at all. I just remembered that I enjoyed it, and I did this time too. In The Titian Committee, Flavia is sent to Venice to investigate...

Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon is an engaging mystery, where setting and plot fit hand in hand. This is not the first I've read in this series, although it is the one that began it all, so I fully expected to enjoy it, as I did. Internationally renowned German conductor Helmut Wellauer was performing La Traviata at Teatro La Fenice when he failed to come out for the second act. After being asked if there is a doctor in the house, Dr. Rizzardi enters the maestro’s dressing room to find Helmut dead. Since this is Venice, the police arrive by boat rather quickly.  Police Vice-Commissario Guido Brunetti leads the  investigation into the cyanide poisoning of the conductor.  Suspects abound from the victim’s much younger wife to musical peers and rivals.  Soon Brunetti learns that  Helmut has destroyed several singers' careers through the years, including a trio of young women.  With no help from his boss or assistants, Brunetti still manages, with calmness, tact and persistence...

In Singing in the Shrouds, Ngaoi Marsh gives us another mystery with a group of individuals, the killer and potential victims, trapped together., in this case on a boat. When the police found a corpse on a wharf in the Pool of London, her body covered with flower petals and pearls, they know she is the latest victim of the Flower Murder. Once again, the killer walked away, singing. Within the hour he was safe at sea, aboard the Carpe Farewll, a cargo ship bound for South Africa, one of nine passengers. Inspector Roderick Alleyn joins the voyage undercover, to both discover the murderer's identity and protect the women on board. The passengers include a TV talk show star, a middle-aged femme fatale, a crotchety, retired schoolmaster, and a sad spinster. There's also a young couple who get to fall in love and a priest who I was unsure of through the whole story. The characters are rather two-dimensional, but I enjoy Marsh's...

In A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is once again called to the small village of Three Pines to investigate a murder. The deceased is Lillian Dyson, killed in Clara Morrow's garden during a party. The celebration is in honor of Clara's solo show at the famed Museé in Montreal and the art world has descended on the town, a world full of jealousies and hidden agendas. As secrets are exposed, Gamache and his team have to sift through the evidence, lies and suspects to find the truth. Reason I chose this book: This is the 7th of Penny's Inspector Gamache mysteries, a series I love, so I had no choice but to read it. Listen to it actually, read by Ralph Cosham. Reasons I liked and/or disliked this book: While this is not my favorite in the series, I had a hard time putting it down. I kept looking for more chores to do around the house,...

I finished listening to Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny a few days ago, but I've been finding it difficult to review. It's the sixth in a series I love and really is more of a follow-up to the last, The Brutal Telling, so much so that I doubt this would work as a stand-alone. I try not to use the publisher's synopsis, but in this case I'm going to. There's a lot going on in the book, three plots interwoven together. It is Winter Carnival in Quebec City, bitterly cold and surpassingly beautiful. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache has come not to join the revels but to recover from an investigation gone hauntingly wrong. But violent death is inescapable, even in the apparent sanctuary of the Literary and Historical Society— where an obsessive historian’s quest for the remains of the founder of Quebec, Samuel de Champlain, ends in murder. Could a secret buried with Champlain for nearly 400 years be so dreadful...