Is That a Gat or …

I confessed recently that I have an uncontrollable urge to read a mess of detective fiction. I recognize several strong influences, any one of which might boost Mickey Spillane ahead of Henry James on my short-term reading lists. But there are two facts that I need to recognize before I go full-out Peter Whimsey: first, I never have abandoned the fun of mystery stories like I have the tedium of science fiction (look at my reading lists: there’s a mystery or two almost every month), and second, there is so many examples of mystery or detective fiction available and being written every day — so many that no one, let alone I, would ever hope to read them all.

I imagine sitting on the steps of the library with piles of books all around me, a pile of V. I. Warshawski, another of Spenser (with an “S”), maybe a  teetering stack of Maigret or a more pious pile of Cadfael. I adjust the glasses that are slipping down my nose and suddenly …

So I am planning to jam a significant number of hardboiled detectives, competent and principled law enforcement officers,, and smarter-than-me women detectives, into my next few monthly reading lists. I have three goals: first to read Connelly’s Harry Bosch series because I have massively enjoyed the Amazon series, and second, to catch up on all those post-death Robert B. Parker novels that are growing like topsy. And third, of course, to start piling books on the library steps.

Here is the June reading pool:

1. Monsieur Pamplemousse On Location — Michael Bond
2. Monsieur Pamplemousse Stands Firm — Michael Bond
3. The Brief History of the Dead — Kevin Brockmeier
4. The Woman In White — Wilkie Collins
5. The Black Echo — Michael Connelly
6. The Black Ice — Michael Connelly
7. Zero Cool — Michael Crichton
8. Sputnik Caledonia – Andrew Crumey
9. Alan Quatermain — H. Rider Haggard
10. Bodies are Where You Find Them — Brett Halliday
11. Murder and the Married Virgin — Brett Halliday
12. Growth of the Soil — Knut Hamsun
13. Newcomer — Keigo Higashino
14. Maestra — L. S. Hilton
15. The Ghost in the Machine — Arthur Koestler
16. The Exile — William Kotzwinkle
17. Bend Sinister — Vladimir Nabokov
18. The Famished Road — Ben Okri
19. Charlotte Temple — Susanna Rowson
20. Throwaway Daughter — Ting-xing Ye