A To Z Blogging Challenge 2025. Mysteries. S Is For Dorothy L. Sayers and Mary Stewart

 

My first encounter with Dorothy L Sayers was her translation of The Song Of Roland, which I read for English at university. I didn’t even know she wrote mystery stories at the time! She also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy, though she only got as far as the first two volumes of three before dying suddenly in her sixties.

Later, I discovered her amateur sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey, for whom she is best known. 

She was a founding member of the Detection Club, which I believe is still around. Another member was Agatha Christie. I mentioned the club’s “fair play” rules, also known as Knox’s Ten Commandments, which, among other things, said that readers should be able to work out whodunnit. Here is a Wikipedia article with the details.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age_of_Detective_Fiction

I have read her first novel, Whose Body?  which introduced Lord Peter Wimsey, and some of her short stories. She also wrote religious plays. 

Lord Peter Wimsey is an aristocrat, son of the Duke of Denver. He has a valet called Bunter, who was his batman during the Great War. Bunter assists him. He also knows what Peter went through while fighting in that war. Early in the first novel, he has a bout of PTSD when hearing a loud noise from the street that reminds him of the explosions during the fighting, and Bunter comforts him. I don’t recall any of the books I’ve read at the time that did this. We never really get into Poirot’s head, although Miss Marple does share her thoughts with the reader about how things have changed. Hastings, Poirot’s sidekick, mostly shares his annoyance when Poirot corrects him. We know Hastings has been in the war, as The Mysterious Affair At Styles has him recovering from his wounds at the beginning, but it never turns up again, as far as I recall. 

The killer in Whose Body? was an interesting twist, but not something you couldn’t work out, and made sense when you thought about it.

There was a TV series starring Ian Carmichael, adapting five of the novels, made in 1972. He also played the role in a series of radio plays. I haven’t seen or listened to any of them, but it might be possible to find them online. 

Just briefly here, another S writer was Mary Stewart, who is best known for her Merlin novels, but who also wrote quite a few romantic mysteries, some of them adapted for film, such as The Moon-Spinners, which was adapted for a Disney film. I have read some of her mysteries, though I admit I prefer her Merlin books, which I think are classics. My sister is the Stewart mystery fan in my family. But the mysteries are very enjoyable too. 

These books, from both authors, are classics, so you shouldn’t have any trouble finding them. 

Tomorrow we’ll talk a bit about Josephine Tey. 

A to Z Blogging Challenge 2025: Mysteries: R Is For Agatha Raisin

 

The Agatha Raisin cosy mystery series is by M. C.  Beaton, who also wrote the Hamish Macbeth police procedural novels. Both series were turned into TV series. Penelope Keith starred in some Agatha Raisin radio plays as well as reading the novels for audiobook.

Agatha Raisin is a former public relations manager who has taken early retirement and moved to the Cotswolds, where she has wanted to live since she spent a family holiday there as a child. The village of Carsely, where she moves, is full of colourful characters and she makes friends with locals such as the vicar’s wife, Mrs Bloxby, young policeman Bill Wong and James Lacey, her good-looking neighbour and romantic interest. 

Agatha chain smokes and absolutely can’t cook or bake; her breakfast is a coffee and two cigarettes. She buys ready meals and goes to the pub to eat.

In the first novel, The Quiche Of Death, she decides to cheat in the village baking competition, thinking it will impress her new neighbours. She buys a spinach quiche at a specialty London bakery and enters it for the competition. Unfortunately for her, though she doesn’t win - the judge gives the prize to his girlfriend - he eats the quiche for supper and drops dead. The police pick up quickly that there is no way she could have made that quiche, but she wants to know who did commit the murder. 

She solves several mysteries as an amateur sleuth before setting up a detective agency of her own. The agency mostly solves simple problems, such as finding missing dogs, but Agatha continues to solve murders. 

The stories are delightfully funny and the characters are likeable, though sometimes irritating. James Lacey, her neighbour, often has to be dragged kicking and screaming into her adventures. Roy Silver, one of her former employees, often drops in to Carsely and ends up helping out with her adventures. 

The murders can be bizarre. For example, the third novel, The Potted Gardener, features a murder victim stuck upside down in a plant pot. Agatha has cheated yet again, this time in a garden competition. 

Agatha is kind hearted and generous, cheating or not. 

I have only seen a few episodes of the TV series, which isn’t quite faithful to the books, but is still enjoyable to watch. 

There are about 35 books in the series, though Agatha and her friends don’t seem to age much. It doesn’t seem to matter much. 

Highly recommended!

I was wondering why I seem to be ahead of everyone in the challenge, till I realised I’d posted last weekend, which you aren’t supposed to do, so I will skip this weekend and write my next post on Monday. See you then! 

A To Z Blogging Challenge 2025: Mysteries: Q Is For Queen of Crime

 Q is for Queen of crime! Who else but Agatha Christie? But my C post was C is for Cosies. So, here she is.

My sister has read all of her books. I have still plenty more to read, but I seem to have read some of the best known. 

Her books have sold two billion copies! She is the third bestseller of all time, only outsold by the Bible and Shakespeare. There have been films and TV shows based on her books and several actors who have played her main characters Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. There are even Poirot novels written by Sophie Hannah, daughter of children’s writer Adele Geras. 

Agatha Christie is an entire industry. Is she over hyped? 

I don’t think so. There are books of hers I prefer to others, but they are generally worth reading. Even if you have read them often enough to know whodunnit, you don’t care. I have certainly read and reread some of them. 

Murder On The Orient Express is one novel where everyone knows how it ends, but people will reread it and go and see any dramatisation anyway. There have been only four dramatisations so far, the most recent with Kenneth Branagh - a wonderful actor, but not, in my opinion, Poirot. Too tall and thin, with an overdone moustache. But the novel does give film makers an excuse to cast many big name actors. 

It’s briefly mentioned in the British SF comedy series Red Dwarf, when Holly the ship’s computer asks to have the novels of a Agatha Christie deleted so he can read them again, and mentions he is reading that one.

I have a wonderful audiobook of the novel read by David Suchet, the best Poirot of them all. 

Although her best known characters are Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, she does have others, such as Tommy and Tuppence, a married couple who work together. There are also standalone novels, such as Murder Is Easy and The Man In The Brown Suit.

Her first novel was The Mysterious Affair At Styles, which introduced Poirot and his “Watson” Captain Arthur Hastings. She had in it a character who worked in a hospital pharmacy during the Great War, as Agatha herself did, something that helped her in her writing.

Agatha Christie didn’t mess around with mysterious non-existent poisons from South America. She used real ones. She was also part of a group of writers who agreed not to cheat readers. If you read one of her novels, you can generally work out whodunnit because it’s going to be one of a group of characters you have met already. No last-minute additions. Furthermore, it could be anyone - the Colonel, the doctor, even the sweet young thing. Nobody is out of the running. And yet, though she seems to have created the house party story, I can’t remember it ever being the butler, except one novel - not telling you which one because spoilers - in which the butler was actually an actor pretending to be a butler.

Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher novel Urn Burial was a tribute to Christie and her house party stories. It even had a character called Mary Mead after the home of Miss Marple. She did a lot of knitting and listening and was obviously inspired by Jane Marple. 

If you are interested, Project Gutenberg has several Christie books for free, as they go out of copyright. Or you can buy them. They may go out of copyright, but will be very unlikely to go out of print! 

A To Z Blogging Challenge 2025: Mysteries: P Is For Amelia Peabody

 The Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters(the pen name of Egyptologist Barbara Mertz) is 20 books set mainly in Egypt in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Amelia and her husband Radcliffe Emerson are archaeologists who travel to Egypt every season to dig, and have adventures, usually including a dead body or two and a mystery to solve. They meet in the first novel, The Crocodile On The Sandbank, when Amelia and her companion Evelyn, whom she had rescued in Italy, arrive in Egypt. Amelia, after years spent looking after her father, inherits his money, something her siblings don’t like. She decides to finally travel abroad and enjoy life.  Amelia marries Radcliffe(whom she calls Emerson) and Evelyn marries his brother Walter. Amelia and Emerson have a bright son, Walter, who is nicknamed Ramses for his arrogant personality. He is very precocious, knowing about languages and Egypt from early childhood onwards.  

One of the novels, The Last Camel Died At Noon, is a tribute to H. Rider Haggard and features the Emersons and their son stumbling across an ancient Egyptian colony somewhere in Nubia. There, they meet Nefret, daughter of friends who had arrived there earlier. As she is an orphan, they take her home and adopt her. Nefret doesn’t have Victorian ideas and shocks some people at home. She is a strong young woman. 

The series is very elaborate and detailed, with new characters turning up throughout the series, which goes as far as the early 1920s. During that time, the children of both couples grow up and have their own adventure. The Great War happens and an adult Ramses is involved, working for British Intelligence. There are historical characters such as Flinders Petrie and Howard Carter. There is a mysterious character known as Sethos or the Master Criminal who pops up  every so often. Their dig supervisor, Abdullah, has a large family who also take part in the adventures. 

The stories are set over 39 years, during which genuine historical events happen. It’s not like other series I’ve read, where you get about 25 novels which seem to happen over a year or two. 

They are in the form of Amelia’s journals, supposedly found and edited after being found in an attic. 

I haven’t read the entire series yet - and the last novel was published after the author’s death - but I intend to reread and finish it. The books are great fun, especially if you are interested in archaeology, which is much more than a background. The author was an Egyptologist and knew what she was doing. She also wrote another series, about a character called Vicky Bliss, but I think the Amelia Peabody books are more interesting, and better-known.

They are in print and ebook, both Kindle and Apple Books,  and should be easily available in your library, bookshop or web site.

A To Z Blogging Challenge 2025: Mysteries: O Is For Richard Osman

 

I have only recently discovered Richard Osman, so only read his first novel in the Thursday Murder Club series. I have the second book all ready to read. There are four books in the series so far, with a fifth announced.

The Thursday Murder Club series is set in a retirement village, Coopers Chase, with four friends who get together on Thursdays for fun, to see if they can solve cold cases. They aren’t just any retirees. Elizabeth is a former spy. Ron was a union leader. Ibrahim is a retired psychiatrist. Joyce  a retired nurse. 

When there is a murder more or less on their doorstep they find themselves investigating, along with two police officers, who aren’t crazy about it, but eventually accept. 

There is a sleazy developer and a plan to bulldoze a nuns’ cemetery on the retirement estate, which was formerly a convent. The developer is the murder victim. There are also some past murders which are important in solving this one. 

This is a cosy mystery, of course, and among all the investigations there is the beautiful countryside, which I thought I’d enjoy exploring if it was a real place. But there are also some deaths that are rather sad, unexpected in this sort of mystery.

I see that there is a forthcoming film, directed by Chris Columbus, of Harry Potter fame, with an amazing cast. Our four heroes are being played by Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley and Celia Imrie. Other roles are played by the likes of Jonathan Pryce, Richard E. Grant and David Tennant. There must have been a big budget, but then the rights were acquired by Stephen Spielberg. There should be a lot of money here. 

According to the web site, there are plans to show it first at the cinema, then on Netflix. One way or another, it should be well worth a watch.

The books are new enough and should be available at either your local bookshop or online. I bought my copies of the first two as ebooks. 

A To Z Blogging Challenge 2025: Mysteries: N Is For Non-Fiction

 Non-fiction crime writing is usually called “true crime”. I’ve written some myself(see below). But I also read quite a lot of it while researching for my own book. 

True crime is very popular. People do want to know what really happened. Kids love it too; I had five copies of my book on my library shelves and it was borrowed so much that all of them were falling apart by the end of the year. 

One of the books I used in my research was Underbelly: The Gangland War by John Silvester and Andrew Rule. The two authors are both crime journalists. John Silvester is still writing a crime column for the Melbourne newspaper The Age. In fact, the book is based on a series of newspaper articles they wrote about Melbourne’s gangland wars, which were big news at the time. Everybody was talking about them, and the criminal families who were fighting and killing each other. One of them, drug trafficker Tony Mokbel, escaped to Greece by boat, but was caught in Greece and brought back. He has, at this writing, been in prison for 18 years, but is appealing and has been let out on bail. 

The book was fictionalised into a TV series, though that wasn’t shown in Victoria when it came out because the subjects were on trial at the time and showing it might have led to bias. A bit silly, really, as it was easy enough for Sydney people, for example, to record it for family and friends in Melbourne, but I suppose they didn’t want to take a chance. 

If interested, you can buy it in ebook, and I’m guessing you can still find it in print.

As I said above, I used it as part of my research for my children’s book Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly. Yes, I wrote a book about crime for kids, about 9 to 12. One of my Year 7 students told me that it had been withdrawn from the shelves at his primary school because kids in  Year 2, including himself, wanted to read it! I gave him a copy, signed to him with “You are now old enough to read this.” He read it in a weekend, bless him.

It includes the gangland wars, but historical stories from the Batavia incident (17th century mutiny off the coast of Western Australia) onwards. I made sure that there were the sort of gruesome stories kids love, but not written to create any nightmares for the young readers. Some, like the April Fool’s Day robbery, were written for fun. That was the story of two idiots who went to rob the Dandenongs restaurant the Cuckoo on April Fool’s Day and left with nothing but a bag of stale bread rolls the manager was taking home to feed his chickens.  

Here is the trailer made for YouTube. It was created by a teenager on work experience, but I thought he did a very good job. 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aT12MtGyxoA&pp=ygUbQ3JpbWUgVGltZSBTdWUgQnVyc3p0eW5za2kg

I am still proud of this book, which was shortlisted for the Scarlet Stiletto Award. 

If you are interested, the publisher still has a few copies for  Australian readers, but I have some copies I can sell you if you want print. Or you can get it easily in ebook, both Apple Books and Kindle.

A To Z Blogging Challenge 2025: Mysteries: M Is For Shane Maloney

 Shane Maloney is an Aussie author who lives in Melbourne. At one stage he was writing a column for the Age newspaper  but he has done other jobs, from director of the Melbourne Comedy Festival to a lifeguard.

His six-novel Murray Whelan series is set very distinctly in Melbourne. If you live there as I do, you recognise the places mentioned in the books. I’ve only read four of the series, I didn’t even know there were more till recently. 

Murray Whelan works for a Victorian Labor government, starting in the 1980s, when there was a Labor government in power. His politicians are fictional, though. 

His job isn’t investigating murders, but somehow he always ends up finding a dead body and finding out whodunnit. 

In Stiff, the first novel, a dead body is found in a freezer at a meat packing workshop. Murray is ordered to investigate, because there may be some embarrassment for the Labor party. Murray has no idea how to do it, but does his best. 

The second novel, The Brush-Off, has a dead body found in the pool of the National Gallery(the gallery is real, the victim isn’t). This novel won the prestigious Ned Kelly Award and was short listed for the Premier’s Literary award. 

In one novel, somebody is hit over the head with a mobile phone, in the days when not everyone had one and they were much heavier than they are now,

Murray is a klutz. He is, in fact, very lucky not to be killed in the course of the series. 

Eventually he becomes a politician himself. 

Only two of the books were filmed, the first two, Stiff and The Brush-Off, but in them the role of Murray was played by David Wenham, whom you have probably seen at least once, in Lord Of The Rings, as Faramir. If you live in Australia you may well have seen him in Sea Change, in which he played the very sexy Diver Dan. The films are worth chasing up, if you can. 

The books and TV show alike are great fun and the books are still available, both in print and ebook, Amazon, Dymocks and Apple Books.