I have always been a writer—and hence—a reader. I was an American historian and published eight books on twentieth-century American history. But, dissatisfied with the rigidity of historical research and composition, I became a novelist and have, since retirement, published eight novels, several of them in the Amanda Pennyworth Mystery Series.
Many of the books I read are mystery stories, a genre which I believe often gives the writer an opportunity to explore subjects and characters who are beyond the scope of ordinary literature. The books I have chosen are all classics, each in its own way a wonderful example of the variety and depth of mystery literature. My passion begins with such books.
This story by Poe is one of the first modern mystery stories written and creates a template for almost everything that follows.
This story by Poe is one of the first modern mystery stories written and creates a template for almost everything that follows. It is a brilliant, short, but perfect example of detection. Poe set the standard for a whole genre of mysteries that have followed, featuring a detective who, by reason, logic, and intuition, solves a puzzle.
What I like about this particular story is that the detective figures out the mystery without some sort of mystical intellect (as Sherlock Holmes). It is just his intelligence.
The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allan Poe. The Purloined Letter is a short story by American author Edgar Allan Poe. It is the third of his three detective stories featuring the fictional C. Auguste Dupin, the other two being "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Mystery of Marie Roget". These stories are considered to be important early forerunners of the modern detective story. It first appeared in the literary annual The Gift for 1845 (1844) and was soon reprinted in numerous journals and newspapers. The unnamed narrator is discussing with the famous Parisian amateur detective C. Auguste Dupin…
Elmore Leonard has a pitch-perfect literary style combined with an uncanny understanding of the underworld of crime.
Obviously, the author is influenced by Hemingway’s stylistic approaches, but with none of the self-consciousness and pretense that sometimes mars that author’s work.
I also admire his picture of a modern American city and the low-life denizens that most people ignore or shun, but whom he makes quite believable.
A thriller filled with Leonard's signatures - scathing wit, crackling dialogue, twisted plot, mad scams - and set in the drug sodden world of Hollywood.
Winner of Indies Today’s 2021 Best Contemporary Novel
“A flawless literary gem."
Can anyone have both fame and love? Andrew O’Connell is Hollywood’s next big leading man, and the rakish Irishman is basking in his newfound celebrity while thirsting for both greater fame and for someone to love.
The great novelist, Henry James, created a mystery story that has been enormously influential in a genre of novels that followed, such as the works of Agatha Christie.
I have always been a fan of Henry James’s style. It’s not for everyone, of course, but for those who love complex, interesting sentences loaded with lots of insights into human behavior, this is a perfect example. And a great ghost story too.
'A most wonderful, lurid, poisonous little tale' Oscar Wilde
The Turn of the Screw, James's great masterpiece of haunting atmosphere and unbearable tension, tells of a young governess sent to a country house to take charge of two orphans, Miles and Flora. Unsettled by a dark foreboding of menace within the house, she soon comes to believe that something, or someone, malevolent is stalking the children in her care. Is the threat to her young charges really a malign and ghostly presence, or a manifestation of something else entirely?
Edited and with an Introduction and Notes by David Bromwich Series…
Dashiell Hammett is one of the great stylists in American literature.
His characters are absolutely real, and the plot is a wonderful tour of the seamy side of 20th-century America. What I absolutely love about this story is that it ends, not with the apprehension of a killer, but with the sense that the pursuit of mystery in the first place was not worth it.
To pull this off—to undercut the idea of a mystery at all, is a great achievement. The book, then, is stunning for its characters, descriptions, and serpentine plot.
One of the greatest crime novels of the 20th century.
'His name remains one of the most important and recognisable in the crime fiction genre. Hammett set the standard for much of the work that would follow' Independent
Sam Spade is hired by the fragrant Miss Wonderley to track down her sister, who has eloped with a louse called Floyd Thursby. But Miss Wonderley is in fact the beautiful and treacherous Brigid O'Shaughnessy, and when Spade's partner Miles Archer is shot while on Thursby's trail, Spade finds himself both hunter and hunted: can he track down the jewel-encrusted bird, a…
Jose Castillo is a cynical, wise-cracking Cuban-American who restores classic cars. He’s also a private eye whose sarcastic ways sometimes get him into trouble.
One day, in the process of installing a four-barrel carburetor on a 1965 Mustang, into his shop walks trouble—in the shape of a mysterious, beautiful woman…
I recommend this book because of its evident understanding of the psychology of fear.
From the very first, there is an ominous atmosphere—evil characters, and above all, misunderstanding. Everything in this novel is pointed toward a ambience of fright. The characters are, aside from Rebecca, who is quite innocent, mysterious and dark.
Everything in the novel, the house, the furnishings therein, the weather, everything is portrayed as sinister. This is a tour de force of maintaining a consistent and frightening atmosphere.
* 'The greatest psychological thriller of all time' ERIN KELLY * 'One of the most influential novels of the twentieth century' SARAH WATERS * 'It's the book every writer wishes they'd written' CLARE MACKINTOSH
'Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again . . .'
Working as a lady's companion, our heroine's outlook is bleak until, on a trip to the south of France, she meets a handsome widower whose proposal takes her by surprise. She accepts but, whisked from glamorous Monte Carlo to brooding Manderley, the new Mrs de Winter finds Max a changed man. And the memory…
Part mystery and part romance. The Legacy is a commentary on the legal profession as well as a vivid picture of a city divided between an elite upper class and waves of aspiring immigrants. While unraveling the puzzle of an oddly worded Last Will, Adam Chauncey and Salley Warren seek to uncover the secrets of a legacy left by an enigmatic Chicago financier. Their search takes them from the elite mansions North of the city to the Latino neighborhoods of the South Side.
What they discover is a dysfunctional family troubled by a strange adoption and a second family related to the deceased. As they explore one lead after another, they realize the complicity of the senior partners of their law firm in a cynical cover-up.
If you’re intrigued by the psychology of relationships this is the novel for you.
Described as a modern-day Rebecca, this is a story of a bereaved man’s obsession with his deceased married lover, Michelle. Determined to find out all he can about Michelle’s life when she wasn’t with him,…
Nate Champion might be the most heroic figure of America’s Old West ... and yet one of popular history’s best-kept secrets. Now he finally gets his due in this historical novel duology. His humble beginnings in Texas prepare him for a life with horses and cattle. Though a well-known horse…
