Book of the Month: April 2018

It’s been quite a hectic and not wholly easy month, so I was surprised I had managed to fit in 17 reads, though only 12 were mystery ones. Amongst all of that I also managed to take part in the Tuesday Night Bloggers which were looking at some of the best detectives, (in our own opinion of course), as well as celebrate my 700^th blog post by looking at animals in mystery fiction.

This month’s reads saw me return to some familiar authors including the Black Express (1945) aka Great Black Kanba by Constance and Gwenyth Little, Beginning with a Bash (1937) by Alice Tilton and The Whispering Wall (1969) by Patricia Carlon. I also tried out some authors new to me such as Anthony Boucher, Anna Mary Wells, Margaret Millar, Ursula Curtiss and Francis Symonds.

One problem which did crop up for me a couple of times was reading great books which were marred by rushed and therefore poor endings. Both the books by the Littles and Wells would have been strong contenders for the BOM but alas this oversight knocked them out the running.

Up until yesterday there were two novels in the running for the accolade of BOM, which were The Case of the Crumpled Knave (1939) by Anthony Boucher Carlon’s The Whispering Wall (1969). Yet readers of my last review yesterday will know that the BOM prize was pulled out of their hands, into those of Fredric Brown, with his superb Night of the Jabberwock (1950). An absolute page turner, which justifies the coining of the term double irony. Do check out my review if you haven’t already had the chance to do so, as this is definitely a book you are going to want to grab a copy of quickly.

So what’s coming up in May?

Aside from generally wanting to catch up on some more mystery reads, I am also planning on tackling the books in my TBR pile, which are in digital formats, as I am quite bad at remembering them. It’s much harder to overlook a physical pile. Whilst tackling these digital texts I will also be using NetGallery for the first time, so expect much technical confusion to ensue. Finally one book I am definitely keen to review this month is the 100 Greatest Literary Detectives (2018), a book which was the basis for the theme the Tuesday Night Bloggers looked at in April.

Better get cracking…