June Wrap Up and P.O.M. Award

Once again in 2014 I will be combining my monthly wrap-up post with Kerrie's Crime Fiction Pick of the Month over at Mysteries in Paradise.  And...I'm falling behind on my GoodReads progress. Instead of being ahead, as I had been for several months, I am now running "on track."  If I'm not careful, I'm going to get behind.... Here are the stats:

Total Books Read: 16
Total Pages: 3458 Average Rating: 3.23 stars Top Rating: 4 stars 
Percentage by Female Authors: 35%
Percentage by US Authors: 31%
Percentage by non-US/non-British Authors: 19%
Percentage Mystery: 81% 
Percentage Fiction: 94%
Percentage written 2000+: 31%
Percentage of Rereads: 6%
Percentage Read for Challenges: 100% {It's easy to have every book count for a challenge when you sign up for as many as I do.}   Number of Challenges fulfilled so far: 16 (39%)




AND, as mentioned above, Kerrie has started us up for another of Crime Fiction Favorites. What she's looking for is our Top Mystery Read for each month. In June, I read 13 books that qualify as mysteries.  




Invisible Green by John Sladek (3.5 stars)
Thus Was Adonis Murdered by Sarah Caudwell (4 stars)
12.21 by Dustin Thomason (3.5 stars)
The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo (4 stars)
Plain Sailing by Douglas Clark (3.75 stars)
The Corsican Caper by Peter Mayle (3 stars)
A Hearse on May-Day by Gladys Mitchell (3 stars)
The Godwulf Manuscript by Robert B. Parker (3.5 stars)
No. 9 Belmont Square by Margaret Erskine (3.5 stars)
The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie (4 stars)
This Private Plot by Alan Beechey (3 stars)
DeKok & Murder in Ecstasy by A. C. Baantjer (3.5 stars)
The 7 Professors of the Far North by John Fardell (3 stars)


As you can see, I handed out 4 stars to three of the mysteries for the month: Thus Was Adonis Murdered, an academic-themed mystery with barristers accused of murder in Italy; The Laughing Policeman, a more serious police procedural from Sweden; and The Pale Horse, a classic mystery from the pen of Dame Agatha Christie. When I have a tie, I like to give the P.O.M. Award to an author I haven't featured before. That's not going to work this time because I've given an award to each of these authors in months past. So...that means I've got to make a decision. And the winner is......

 

The writing is spare and clean, yet very gripping. Even though there is a lot of waiting and sifting through false leads in this story, the reader is never bored. It is easy to see why this novel was an award-winner. I thoroughly enjoyed another visit with Martin Beck's crime team.