(no subject)

[darchildre]

Friends, I come to you requesting recommendations. I am in the market for a new series of mystery/detective novels, because I am in that kind of mood and none of the ones I have are crying out for a reread. Thus, I ask for your assistance.

Mystery series I have read and enjoyed:
- Sherlock Holmes (including many and various ridiculous pastiches)
- Lord Peter Wimsey
- Nero Wolfe
- Albert Campion

There are probably others that I am forgetting, but those are the main ones. Once upon a time in middle school I read a hell of a lot of Agatha Christie but I have apparently erased all of the from my memory, except for the solutions to And Then There Were None and Murder on the Orient Express.

Things I like in a mystery/detective novel/series:
- For the detective to be more interesting than the mystery. He/she is is, after all, a person I'm going to have to spend a good bit of time with.
- If it's historical, I like it to be recent enough that I have at least a general knowledge of what the laws are. (So, y'know, I do not care terribly much for mysteries set in ancient Rome or whatever.) I am not married to this, though.
- If it's a series, I like to have an interesting recurring supporting cast. Again, people I'm going to be spending time with.
- If there's fanfic, so much the better.
- The same goes for audiobooks. Double for audiobooks, even.

Things I do not like:
- Mysteries solved in any way by the detective's pets
- The kind of mystery novel that has recipes in the back
- Novels where the mystery doesn't get solved.
- Most (but not all) hardboiled noir-ish detective novels. I mean, recommend them if you've got them but they tend not to be my thing.


Any recommendations? (Thank you in advance.)

Comments

[liviapenn]

You might like the Hilary Tamar books by Sarah Caudwell-- there are only four of them, though. Some people don't like them because Hilary is super arrogant and pretentious and kind of an upper-class twit, but in small doses s/he is very charming. (I say "s/he" because don't get to find out Hilary's actual gender in the books; it can be read either way.)

Actually looking in the comments of the article I just linked to, someone mentions Robert B. Parker's "Spencer & Hawk" series as the perfect antidote to an overdose of Hilary Tamar, and you *might* like those as well.

[silveradept]

There's always Fforde's Thursday Next series, although I'm not sure how much of that is mystery and how much of that is just making a lot of fun of literary characters, settings, and their interactions.

[toft]

I have been massively enjoying a set of mystery novels lately, but I have just realized that they a) have mysteries, if not solved BY the detective's pets, certainly helped by them? b) recipes in the back. But I'm mystified by the idea that there is a kind of mystery novel with recipes in the back, because I have never seen this before! Is this a thing?

[darchildre]

The Hilary Tamar books look really interesting - thanks very much. Alas, my library does not have them, but paperbackswap does!

[darchildre]

I bounced really hard off the first Thursday Next book, but people keep saying good things about them, so perhaps I should go back and try again. Thank you for the suggestion.

[darchildre]

Out of curiosity, what series is it?

Culinary mysteries seem to be a large sub-subgenre of the cozy mystery subgenre. Diane Mott Davidson and Joanne Fluke are pretty prolific, and there are a lot of other titles in the mystery section at the library that seem to imply heavy food content, if not actual recipes. Cozy mysteries often appeal to older women (the large-type fiction section: home of cozy mysteries and westerns) who, I guess, also like to do a lot of cooking and baking, or at least thinking about food. It's much like you occasionally, though not nearly so often, find mystery novels that are also about knitting.

[toft]

The Corinna Chapman mysteries by Kerry Greenwood. They're about an ex-accountant baker in Melbourne. I love them because they have a fun cast of characters, are fat-positive, feminist and openly left-wing in a comfortable sort of way. There's also a very cool pagan main character.

(I also highly recommend her Phryne Fisher series, which is set in the 20's in Melbourne and is about an awesome lady aristocrat detective who spends most of her time being FUCKING FABULOUS, flying planes, wearing amazing clothes and drinking cocktails, saving women in distress and making love to beautiful, awestruck men - they're my #1 comfort read).