Robb, J.D.:  Judgment in Death

In an uptown high class strip joint, a cop is found bludgeoned to death. Roarke owns the place and it looks like this cop who was working a part time job off duty was a dirty cop.  But things aren’t always what they seem. This is another Robb where you end up having sympathy for the perpetrator and some of the victims seem to get what they deserve-but of course vigilante justice is not something Eve would condone.  These books are still holding my interest. I usually lose interest in a series after six or seven, but even though I know these aren’t books I’ll ever reread I certainly enjoying them as a light fast read.

Skom, Edith:  The Mark Twain Murders

I’d better write this review fast-before I forget this book that I finished this afternoon.   I was very excited about this book because I usually really enjoy “literary” mysteries that somehow connect to classic authors I love.  The story takes place at “Midwestern University” in Illinois and concerns thefts of rare or somewhat rare books from the university library and murders that take place in the library.  The FBI is called in and of course the agent is attracted to the young female professor of literature who is trying to find out about a plagiarized essay.  The first murder victim submitted it to a contest which she won.  We get lots of information about the professors in the English department and views of the rivalries that are going on.  It should have been right up my alley.  I kept thinking I had read this before, but I hadn’t-only others like it. It’s an “okay but run of the mill” mystery.   There are at least 2 others in the series (this is the first) and I own the second one.  I can’t decide if I want to read it-maybe someday when I have to flu and can’t concentrate.  It’s possible that this author will improve with practice but right now my verdict is that this book makes J.D. Robb look like literature!  If you want a really great literary mystery try The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl.

Pearl, Matthew:  The Dante Club

I read this in 2007 and highly recommend it for those who like “literary” mysteries.

This was an immensely satisfying, if at times gruesome, read.  Pearl gives us a good look at historical Boston, Harvard, and some great literary figures of the day while also providing a mystery that also gives a fair “romp” through Dante’s Inferno.  The Dante Club, centered on Longfellow when he was translating Dante as a way to cope with his wife’s death, was a fact and Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, and J.T. Fields, the publisher, were members of the club that met every Wednesday night to discuss the translation.  The murders are fictional but the author says, “…they reflect a very real, new sense of violence that had to be confronted at all levels of American Culture [immediately following the Civil War, which is when the novel is set].   Nicholas Rey, as the first Afro-American policeman in Boston, is also fictional, but Pearl states that Rey’s situation comes from Pearl’s research into the historical circumstances of non-white police in the 19^th century.   This is a wonderful historical novel and may become a “classic.”  Therefore, I listed it in “fiction” rather than “mysteries.”

Greene, Douglas G. & Robert C.S. Adey, editors:  Death Locked In (An Anthology of Locked Room Stories

This is a wonderful collection of 24 locked room mysteries from the 19th and 20th centuries including stories by Ngaio Marsh, Conan Doyle (not a Sherlock Holmes story), Wilkie Collins, Le Fanu and of course John Dickson Carr–to mention just a few of the “greats” in this genre. The last story even involves a “time machine!”  My favorite stories were a pair written by May Futrelle and her husband Jaques Futrelle in which the stories are connected.  This tome is a real treat for classic mystery buffs.

James, P.D.:  An Unsuitable Job for a Woman

I really liked this story and the detective, Cordelia Gray.  A famous scientist, a peer of the realm, hires Gray to find out why his son quit college and then committed suicide.  The characters are interesting and the story compelling.  Of course it was murder and I figured out much of the mystery before the end but it was fun to read.  I want to read the other Cordelia Gray mystery, The Skull Beneath the Skin, now.   If it is as good as this one I will be sorry James only used this protagonist twice.  Cordelia reminds me a little of Maisie Dobbs