Read-A-Thon!

Have also signed up for Pure Imagination's Once Upon a Read-a-Thon (click for details). Will be reading as much as possible on July 12, 13 & 14 to participate. Starting off with John Dickson Carr's The Crooked Hinge, and will update what I've read as it happens.

Just finished The Crooked Hinge (10:36 pm; 7/12/10). Another great "impossible" crime by the master. I keep reading Carr not only because I enjoy watching a master illusionist at work, but also because I'm just sure he'll have to repeat a trick. So far, he's left me wanting--every time he comes up with a different method and, like a good magician, he displays the whole trick right before your eyes and you never see the workings. Great stuff!

Have now started on What Men Say by Joan Smith (10:48 pm). Next update coming soon.

Finished What Men Say at 8:50 pm tonight (7/13/10). This was an interesting story of the discovery of a woman's decomposed body in the unused barn located on an Oxford don's estate. Smith, of course, had me from the moment I knew this was an academic mystery (my big weakness). And she tells an excellent tale in a solid and entertaining mystery. I liked this one better than the first Loretta Lawson story I read (A Masculine Ending). Loretta's motives regarding her involvement (or, rather, her lack of involvement) with the police are much more believable.

Onward to the next conquest for the Read-a-Thon: Mrs. Malory & the Fatal Legacy by Hazel Holt. Another mystery with academic tendencies. Sheila Malory writes literary criticism and this one involves the death of her fellow writer and old college friend. Sheila finds herself appointed as her friend's literary executor and as she sorts papers and letters, she begins to wonder if the death really was suicide.

Now finished with Mrs. Malory (11:00 pm; 7/13/10). Very enjoyable, even though this one is a bit darker in tone than the rest of the series that I've read so far. Still has a lot of the cozy, English village feel...but this story has been dipped a little more thoroughly into the well of despair. Might as well go on and tackle Mrs. Malory & Death in Practice while I'm at it. The Mrs. Malory books have been sitting in my TBR stack much too long.

Just finished Death in Practice (3:15 pm; 7/14/10). This one is all about the demise of the new veterninarian. He has no kennel-side manner and has managed to put up the backs of patients, owners, and his fellow townspeople right and left. Was it the owner of one of the dogs who mysteriously died under his care? Was it a relative hoping to inherit or one of the employees at the veterinary clinic who had had enough of his bossy take-over? Mrs. Malory collects tidbits from various members of the community and puts it all together to solve the mystery before the police. No academic leanings to this one, but a good British cozy.