Recent Reading

 

While traveling earlier this month, and since I returned, I read three highly enjoyable mystery stories. During this time, I was busy documenting my experiences, so I did not write reviews of these books although I liked them very much. Here is a very brief summary of my impressions.

• Kiego Higashino, The Final Curtain (published December, 2023) — a very long book that ties up the details of the life of Tokyo Police Detective Kyoichiro Kaga. The plot is very very involved and the number of characters and subplots is huge, but I still found it readable. 
• Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning, The Gutenberg Murders (published 1931) — set in New Orleans, this is very much a mystery in the classic who-done-it tradition of Hammett and Chandler. Other than the fact that all the characters smoke cigarettes nonstop, it could just about be modern.
• Jason Goodwin, The Baklava Club (published 2014) — this series features the mystery-solving Yashim, who works for the Ottoman Emperor in Istanbul in the mid-19th century. While I very much like the well-researched details of Yashim’s life, especially when he shops in the market and cooks for his friends, I also appreciate the increasing suspense around the murder he had to solve in this, the final volume of the series so far. Goodwin’s characters are always very intriguing.

Reviews © 2024 mae sander for maefood.blogspot.com