Mystery is apparently my favorite genre for 2017. Next up for me is Tana French’s third Dublin Murder Squad book, Faithful Place. In this installment we are allowed into the mind of Frank Mackey – the lead detective on the Undercover Squad whom we met in The Likeness, and frankly (ha!) didn’t like. Back when Frank was a young man from the wrong side of the river living with his parents and four siblings, he fell in love with a feisty young girl down the […]
Missing a Title
Susie Steiner’s Missing, Presumed is the first in a new series of mystery novels about Manon Bradshaw, a British detective with wild curls, laser focus and a complete lack of a personal life. I mention the curls not because I think it’s a particularly important character trait, but because it seems to be referenced more than any other identifying characteristic. Manon has trouble sleeping; to soothe herself to sleep she listens to a ‘borrowed’ police radio – not the lullaby of a normal well-adjusted adult. […]
Guys and Dolls
Fiona Davis’ The Dollhouse is both a mystery and a female-led coming-of-age summer read. The eponymous dollhouse is the famed Barbizon Hotel for Women, a place where young unmarried women in the early parts of the 20th century stayed while making their way in New York City. Whether they were models or attending secretarial schools for girls, for the most part the dollhouse was a temporary stop on the way to an advantageous marriage; Darby McLaughlin, however, was not interested in such a fate. In […]
Say Yes to the Marquess
I like romance novels, specifically historical ones, but I wouldn’t say I am well-versed in what authors are worth reading, aside from a handful. So the way I usually discover a new romance novel is by going to my local library for a different book, noticing the hot pink sticker on the label indicative of the romance genre and the fact that there is a buxom woman either lounging in a gown on a chaise or similar pose. If I have even the vaguest memory […]