#booklook — Public Fediverse posts

#MurderEveryMonday Maps, Maps here, there and everywhere

When I saw today’s #MurderEveryMonday theme, created by the wonderful Kate Jackson from Cross Examining Crime, was crime fiction with a map on the cover or in the inside, my first thought went to this collection of short stories, Manhattan Mayhem, edited by Mary Higgins Clark and published in 2015 to celebrate the 70th of the Mystery Writers of America.

Not only the cover has a map of Manhattan, but each story starts with a street map: for this anthology, Mary Higgins Clark invited authors to choose a Manhattan neighbourhood and set a story there.

I read it many years ago, probably when it came out, and while I can’t remember all the stories (I still have a recollection of some of them), I really liked it. Maybe it’s time to re-read it. It’s also a beautiful edition with the slip cover and all the iconic photos inside.

And if you like classic or golden age crime fiction, there is no shortage of maps, so (yes, you’re right) I turned to Agatha Christie. First, with the map on the facsimile edition of The Mysterious Affair at Styles, and then with the same map in a Portuguese edition.

Then I remembered there was a map of the plane in Death in the Clouds:

This is an edition from a Portuguese collection called The Golden Scarab and the previous owner inscribed it with the year 1952. The book also indicates it was translated from the original – sometimes Portuguese translations would be made from other translations – and the final pages have ads about flying insurance and an airway company.

Miss Marple is back! Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel by Lucy Foley #BookReview

Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel is a new murder mystery with Miss Marple as detective, written by Lucy Foley.

Miss Marple and Mrs. Bantry (Dolly) go on an holiday to a luxury hotel in the Swiss Alps. And, of course, murder happens!

There were many things I liked about the book. If you read Agatha Christie, you are in for a treat: you will spot many references to other Christie books. I think these references combined with descriptions and dialogues of Miss Marple give Christie’s readers a sense of familiarity and known territory. If you are new to Miss Marple, these references will help you by giving you context to the characters.

I think the choice of the setting is really impressive, not (only) because a more or less isolated place can turn into a closed circle with the possibility of snowstorms, that we recognise from other Christie’s books, but more so because Lucy Foley decided to put Miss Marple in a setting that feels much more like James Bond, which give us something new to the character: we know this frail, old lady is much tougher than she looks, but how will she navigate a so different setting?

I did guess some things about some of the characters, but did not guess the murderer (bonus points to Foley!). I must confess that I probably got too invested in the story because at some point I was rooting for one of the characters to be the murderer, thinking it could be (another) wonderful homage to Christie. Still, I appreciated more the twists and turns.

I noticed Foley was careful in tying the loose ends, which is something important for me in this type of story. During the reading, there will be information that can be clues or not and at the end it is important to go back and explain them, it does not need to be “Poirot revealing the murderer in a room with all the suspects”, a Christie trademark, but it needs to be done and it is something that adds up to the comfort of reading.

The book starts in a slower pace, but will get quicker and with more action towards the end, so don’t let that put you off.

Except for the short story in “Marple, Twelve New Stories“, titled “Evil in Small Places” and one of my favourites, I didn’t read other books by Lucy Foley, but I did like her writing style. The only thing that didn’t work as well for me was the structure: each chapter is narrated by a different character in the present tense, which makes you feel like the scene is developing in front of your eyes, almost like a film. Maybe this could bring younger generations of readers to the Miss Marple world (that would be awesome), but for old Christie re-readers like me it felt a little bit too different.

The book will be out on the 8th of September and we can already pre-order it. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance reading copy.

It’s Weekend, Let’s Read: 100 years of The Blue Castle

Today I’m bringing you a suggestion I have on my TBR, The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery, the same author of Anne of Green Gables. Contrary to Anne, this book was written for adults, so check its trigger warnings.

The Blue Castle was first published in 1926, so it’s a good excuse to read it this year and celebrate its centenary. You can get the book through Project Gutenberg or, if you have a Kobo, through the specific format at Standard Ebooks.

What are you reading?

#MurderEveryMonday Weather affects the plot

After several heat waves, we finally got some rain yesterday’s evening that hopefully will last for the next days. So, for today’s #MurderEveryMonday I went full Winter and chose stories that are impacted by snow and all by Agatha Christie. These were the three titles my brain picked as soon as I read the theme. Love and recommend them all.

The first is the Murder on the Orient Express, one of the best known books by Christie, where the snow stops the train that allows the closed circle of the story.

For the second, I went for The Mousetrap, the longest run of any play in the world, where the snow traps the characters in a manor house.

And finally, I also chose a not so well known title, The Sittaford Mystery, where the snow also impacts the murder investigation. I really like this one and feel it deserves more attention and more readers. And I do like the young Miss Emily Trefusis as an amateur sleuth. And now I want to re-read it again!

Thanks to Kate Jackson for creating this hashtag and check her blog for the next themes here.

#MurderEveryMonday corpse on the floor/ground

Let me tell you that for crime fiction genre books, I was expecting covers with corpses on the ground right, left, and centre, but for some reason I didn’t have as many as I was hoping for. Still, I had enough to choose from, so for today’s #MurderEveryMonday I went with The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie, a book I can recommend and a dive of Christie into serial murders.

Check Kate Jackson’s blog for more info about the hashtag here.

I’m also adding to the pile this The Problem of the Wire Cage, translated as The mystery of the Park, that I didn’t read yet, but it’s one that I want to. It was published in 1944, in Portugal, and belongs to a collection called Mystery & Action (Mistério & Acção, in Portuguese), with around 80 volumes. You can see the list of the titles at Crimes de Bolso blog (in Portuguese).

#MurderEveryMonday Nationality in the title

For today’s #MurderEveryMonday created by Kate Jackson, I decided to share L’Ombre Chinoise translated into Portuguese as The Chinese Shadow. This is number 71 from Colecção Vampiro, a book collection that started in 1949. It was a difficult to find book because it is sought after by different people: those that want to complete the collection, those that want to get George Simenon books (this is an Inspector Maigret), those that are mainly interested in the art covers by the surrealist Cândido Costa Pinto, but also those that collect Alexandre O’Neill works since this title was translated by him.

I do like Simenon’s books and writing. There is a conversation between Simenon and Ian Fleming from 1967 about the writing process, where Simenon says his publisher “has not the right to change a comma—not even to suggest to change a comma” and I think this craftsmanship he puts into the writing, the care he puts into a sentence or a word, shows in the final result. If you want to check the conversation, you can do so here.

#MurderEveryMonday Spectacles/glasses on the cover or in the title

For today’s #MurderEveryMonday, created by Kate Jackson from Cross Examining Crime, I decided to go with The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side by Agatha Christie.

The book was translated to Portuguese as “Broken Mirror” and it is one which first reading I remember well. Miss Marple is getting old and she can’t do as much in her garden as she used to, her nephew got a person to live in the house as a companion, and we get to know what Miss Marple thinks of this!

St. Mary Mead is also changing, so we get a picture of new services and products, and, of course, the inhabitants’ reaction to those, which I love because it gives us more context about characters’ lives. The village is also expanding and new houses are being built in what is described as “The Development”. In the Portuguese edition, this is translated as “The Progress”, with a strong idea of “this is the future”, which means we get sentences like “people that live in the progress” or “Miss Marple decided to take a walk in the Progress”, which is funny. Probably the meaning is the same in the original with the “the Development” expression.

When Miss Marple goes to “The Progress” :-), she falls (don’t panic, she seems frail, but she’s tough), and after being seen by Dr. Haydock, he prescribes her a good, juicy murder.

One of the things I like about this one is that it starts with the idea of the armchair detective. Christie has used this idea in other stories. Poirot’s comes to mind with his defence of problems being solved by “the little grey cells” instead of running around, as Captain Hastings suggests.

So, many reasons to like this one.

#MurderEveryMonday Crime fiction title with the word sleeping

Without surprise, my choice for todays’s #MurderEveryMonday is Miss Marple’s last case, Sleeping Murder. The book was written during the Second World War and given as a gift (its copyright) to her husband Max. Curtain, the last case of Poirot, was also written around the same time and given to her Daughter, Rosalind. in her autobiography, Christie adds the manuscripts were put into a bank vault. Sleeping Murder was published in 1976, after Christie’s death.

#MurderEveryMonday Crime fiction title with a word associated with funerals

For today’s #MurderEveryMonday I’m sharing Nice Day for a Funeral by Hartley Howard and His Burial Too by Catherine Aird. I have read other books from both authors and like them, although I preferred Aird books, which I want to read more of.

Check Kate Jackson’s blog to know more about the hashtag and give her a follow.

#MurderEveryMonday Christie, Stout, & Wentworth

For #MurderEveryMonday crime fiction originally published in 1955, I’m choosing Hickory Dickory Dock by Agatha Christie, translated to Portuguese as Poirot and the mistakes of the typist. The title is from a nursery rhyme, and the story sees Poirot investigate a series of strange stolen items in a student’s hostel. We also know in this book that Miss Lemon has a sister.

I’m also adding to the pile, Before Midnight by Next Stout, and The Gazebo by Patricia Wentworth. I’ve read many Nero Wolfe books a long time ago and like them in general. I never read anything by Wentworth, but I’ve told you before that I want to go through her Miss Silver series, so this is one on my TBR.

#MurderEveryMonday Cover with a Zoo animal Elephants can Remember: Is it good?

I know, I know: my choice to this #MurderEveryMonday is probably again too obvious, but it also gives me the opportunity to talk about this book. Check Kate’s blog to know more about the hashtag.

Agatha Christie was 82 years old when she wrote Elephants Can Remember. This is the last novel she wrote with Poirot as the detective and it was published in November of 1972. Poirot’s Early Cases (1974) and Curtain (1975), both published afterwords, were written in the 1920s and 1930s, for the short stories, and for the last case of Poirot in the 1940s, the book being kept unpublished in a bank vault.

Even at the time of publication, the book received some less kind reviews, with some pointing out inconsistencies about times and ages, which quite frankly could (and should) have been avoided by the editors and publisher of the book. Still, many today consider this a lesser work, but I find several reasons to like it.

The book starts with Mrs. Ariadne Oliver going to a literary luncheon. Oliver is the alter-ego of Agatha Christie: she likes apples, she is always trying hair styles, writes crime fiction, and complains about her Finn detective, lamenting inventing him, since she doesn’t know anything about Finland. It’s always a delight to have her as a character in a book. In the first chapter, Mrs. Oliver tell us about her problems with making speeches, the questions people always ask her, the letters she receives from her readers, and how she tries to deal with all of this. And I found this a delight because it seems clear we’re given a glimpse of something Christie also struggled with and knew first hand.

At that lunch, a woman asks Mrs. Oliver if she is the godmother of Celia Ravenscroft and after corroboration, the woman continues: “Did her mother kill her father or was it the father who killed the mother?”.

And I still remember, when I first read this book (which is more than I can say for so many other books), I was as puzzled as Mrs. Oliver. I mean, why would it matter if it was the father or the mother? Why would it be so important to know? But this also tell us something about the beliefs and obsessions of the people in the past (in this case, in the 1970s). I think Agatha Christie was more observant than a talkative person, and because of that she noticed things more. And I love her books have these snippets she took from her observations: it can be something she heard someone saying, or it can be something being discussed in a newspaper, some new advance in science, something she remembers her family doing when she was a child, etc.

This is also a book about a murder in the past and deals with the people’s memory (the elephants), sometimes people remember certain things, but not others, or they remember things differently. And it’s Poirot job to make sense of all this.

I didn’t re-read this one for some time now, but I remember liking it. And now that I’ve talked about what I liked about it, I’ll be re-reading it again shortly. So, tell me, did you read Elephants Can Remember? Did you like it or not? And why?

#MurderEveryMonday Cover with a series sleuth

For today’s #MurderEvryMonday I decided to start with Miss Marple, here with The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side and A Crime is Announced (a favorite).

Then, we continue with Lord Peter Wimsey (also a favorite). The Portuguese edition being the short story collection Lord Peter Views the Body.

And finally a depiction of Father Brown.

It’s quite interesting to see how characters are depicted in book covers and how/if they differ from our own imagination.

If you want to know more about #MurderEveryMonday check Kate Jackson’s blog, see the next themes, and share your covers using the hashtag.

#MurderEveryMonday Crime fiction title with an evaluative adjective

When Kate reminded us of this week’s #MurderEveryMonday theme, my first thought was for H. R. F. Keating because I had noticed a pattern in some of his books:

• The Bad Detective
• The Good Detective
• The Soft Detective
• The Rich Detective

These are standalone’s and I never read anything by Keating, but I’m curious about his writing. He was president of the Detection Club between 1985 and 2000. I do have two related books in my immediate TBR: Agatha Christie: First Lady of Crime, essays edited by him, and The Verdict of Us All – edited by Peter Lovesey, a collection of short stories by The Detection Club’s members in honour of Keating’s 80th birthday, which include before each work a memory or contact these writers had of H.R.F. Keating.

#MurderEveryMonday A special edition

Today’s #MurderEveryMonday is a title with a word that starts with the letter Q. I’m hoping I can use the title in Portuguese for this one, because it is the perfect excuse to tell you about a special edition, that is not much known.

The book chosen is The Floating Admiral, which title was translated to Portuguese as Quem Matou o Almirante?

The story was written by the members of The Detection Club and in a round-robin format, meaning each author would write a chapter to continue the story without knowing how it would go. The publishers of the Colecção Vampiro, a book collection I’ve been talking about in this blog, decided to published this book when the collection reached 500 volumes in March of 1989. But besides the regular edition that follows the design of the other volumes in the collection, they also decided to publish a special limited and numbered edition in a totally different design. This is bigger book, it’s a paperback, but has a dust jacket with the title and the logo (the bat) of the collection embossed in. It is also printed in a much better and thicker paper. Both volumes have a list of all the titles published in the collection up to number 500 and their date of publication (I’m always forgetting this resource!).

#BookLook #books #ColecçãoVampiro #CrimeFiction #readings #TheDetectionClub

#MurderEveryMonday Crime Fiction Novel made into a film

For today’s #MurderEveryMonday I’m choosing two of my favourite book adaptations into a film:

• Witness for the Prosecution by Billy Wilder (with Marlene Dietrich) from 1957
• And Then There Were None by Rene Clair from 1945

Check Kate’s blog to know more about the hashtag and share your covers.

#BookLook #books #ColecçãoVampiro #CrimeFiction #livros #MurderEveryMonday #Policiais #readings

#MurderEveryMonday title hints to something not visible

Today’s #MurderEveryMonday is a “crime fiction title which hints that something has disappeared or is not visible”.

I went through my shelves and the majority of books I could find were about someone disappearing, instead of something, but I decided to go with it.

My first thought went to The Invisible Host by Gwen Bristol and Bruce Manning, published in 1930, with a close setting where people start dying. Later, Agatha Christie worked the same idea for And Then There Were None. Loved both books, and I thank Dean Street Press (check the link to see their crime fiction titles) to republished the Host so we could read it today. Do you know other books with a similar idea? Let me know in the comments, I would love to read them.

My second thought was The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin because while maybe “moving” doesn’t hint to a disappearance, the blurb at the back is very clear: this toyshop vanishes during the night. How and why would a toyshop vanish? Read the book, it’s a good one and the Oxford Professor Gervase Fen is on the case. It’s also the only book that hints at something instead of someone.

Then, I thought of “Poirot loses a Client” (the book in the middle, same title both in Portuguese and American English). Mainly because this Christie Portuguese publisher used already made translations from Brazil, back in the 1950/60s, probably cheaper than to get a translation from scratch, and I also have this idea that Brazil would use the American editions to translate, maybe because they were closer and was easier to negotiate with the American publishers than with the UK ones. But this one is the UK’s Dumb’s Witness. And it reminded me that John Curran published in his Secret Notebooks, for the first time, a similar short story that was later found in Agatha Christie papers, called The Incident of the Dog’s Ball (albeit the culprit is different).

You know I love Poirot, but it does seem he’s a little bit careless sometimes with this thing of loosing clients. And while the titles don’t hint at it, it also happens in the short stories A Cornish Mystery and How does Your Garden Grow?, both from the Poirot’s Early Cases (first book in the photo) and also in the novel Murder on the Links.

Someone engages Poirot to look into or do something and then, they’re gone. Where did his clients go or why? I’m not spilling it. Read the books :-)

Finally, I found The Phantom Lady by William Irish that starts with a man talking to a woman in a bar, without catching her name. When he returns home something happens and then he needs to find the woman of the bar to do something, but she vanished.

The Raymond Chandler one is translated as A Woman was Lost, and is in fact Farewell, My Lovely. With Chandler, I’m never sure if I know Philip Marlowe (the detective) from the movies, the old time radio shows, or the books. This is the melancholic, cynic, private eye, whiskey, guns, and the femme fatale. If you like the sub-genre hardboiled, Chandler is always a good option.

#BookLook #books #ColecçãoVampiro #CrimeFiction #livros #MurderEveryMonday #Policiais

#MurderEveryMonday Crime fiction with a clock on the cover

For today’s #MurderEveryMonday I found many clocks on the cover. The Verdict of Us All was a recent second hand find. These are short stories by members of The Detection Club in honour of HRF Keating. I have a list of The Detection Club works here and I’m determined to read them all. The problem is it is quite difficult to find some of the older titles so I was really happy to find this one. I’m saving it to read at the end of the year.

Thrones, Dominations is one of the books Jill Patton Walsh wrote to continue the Lord Peter Wimsey books by Dorothy L. Sayers. I’ve read these books a long time ago, but I think I liked them. I’m re-reading Sayers books by publication order and will get to these again.

The only thing I know about Joel Townsley Rogers (The stopped Clock in the photo) is that he is an American writer.

The Case of the Buried Clock by Erle Stanley Gardner is a Perry Mason one. Can’t remember if I read this one, but I always liked his books.

Finally, in this series with clock on the cover and clock on the title (both in English and in Portuguese), I found The Talking Clock by Frank Gruber. I associate Gruber with the American hard-boiled crime fiction., so not very curious to read it.

I had to add some Agatha Christie’s. The Clocks (in an English and Portuguese edition) is not very well known, but it’s an example of Hercule Point being challenged to solve a murder from his armchair, as he sometimes claims it is possible.

I also add The Seven Dials Mystery (The Mystery of the Seven Clocks in Portuguese) because clocks play a role in the story and with The Mystery of Chimneys, from which it gets some characters, including Superintendent Battle, have a special space in my favourite shelves.

From these, I can recommend Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, probably and rightly one of the most known Christie’s Poirot books. I also like Ellery Queen (Sherlock Holmes against Jack the Ripper, Portuguese title of A Study in Terror) and Edgar Wallace (Room 13).

Never read Magdalen Nabb. The book, Some Bitter Taste, occurs in Florence, Italy, and I could give it a go.

One of the things I like more about this hashtag is that not only I find books by others sharing their covers, but sometimes I find authors I didn’t know I had in my collections. Anders Bodelsen was a Danish writer and since I usually tend to read British writers, I’m putting this Think of a Number on my TBR.

If you want to share your covers, go to Kate Jackson’s blog to know the themes for each Monday here. Share them on your blog or social media of your choice and don’t forget to put the hashtag #MurderEveryMonday.

#BookLook #books #ColecçãoVampiro #CrimeFiction #livros #Policiais

#MurderEveryMonday “the man” or “the woman” in the title

Today’s #MurderEveryMonday theme is “the men” or “the woman” in the title. I went through the Portuguese collection Vampiro to find all the titles. We have more men than women. I’m considering the titles in Portuguese, and when different I will write the original title. Also all the titles in Portuguese have “the man” (o homem) or “the woman” (a mulher) as you can see from the photos, but when translating the Portuguese titles into English we must change the order of the words, so it makes sense.

• The powerful man – Michael Spillane (original title: The Deep)
• The man in the bed number 10 – Mary R. Rinehart (original title: The man in lower 10) – read it and liked it
• The sinister man – Edgar Wallace – read and liked it
• Maigret and the man from the bench – Georges Simenon (Maigret et L’Homme du banc) – favourite cover by the artist Lima de Freitas, not sure if I read this one, but usually like Simenon and recommend
• The shadow man – Dashiell Hammett (original title: The thin man)
• Maigret and the man with two women – Georges Simenon (original title: Liberty Bar)
• Maigret and the solitary men – Georges Simenon (original title: Maigret et L’Homme tout seul)

The man in the brown suit and The man in lower 10 were the first titles I remember could do for today’s hashtag. This book by Agatha Christie is not her usually murder mystery, but it is more on the side of adventure novels and I also like she borrowed from her trip with the British Empire Expedition.

There is less “the woman” in the collection.

• Maigret and the vanished woman – Georges Simenon (original title: Chez les flamands)
• The quiet woman – Harry Carmichael (I have read this author as Hartley Howard and liked it, I’m curious about this one. Real name: Leopold Ognall)
• The phantom woman – William Irish (original title: The phantom lady. Read this one a long time ago and liked it)
• The woman that was not missed – Dorothy Simpson (original title: Dead and gone. Can’t remember if I ever read Simpson, although the name rings a bell).

Back to your covers. If you want to participate in #MurderEveryMonday check Kate’s post here.

#AgathaChristie #BookLook #books #classicCrime #ColecçãoVampiro #CrimeFiction #GeorgesSimenon #MurderEveryMonday #readings

#MurderEveryMonday Cover with a bus

For today’s #MurderEveryMonday cover of a crime fiction book with a bus, I didn’t have many covers, but thought London would never disappoint and it didn’t!

The Portuguese edition is At Betram’s Hotel, a Miss Marple book by Agatha Christie, which I love and have been re-reading over the years. The title is translated to Portuguese as “Mystery in Luxury Hotel” and in this one Miss Marple goes to Bertram’s, an hotel she stayed in when she was 14 years old with her aunt and uncle. Bertram’s seems to have stopped in time. Again, Miss Marple gathers her down to earth wisdom and acute observation to solve the mystery.

Janet Morgan, the official biographer of Christie, uses correspondence between Agatha Christie and her literary agent, Edmund Cork, to argue Bertram’s seems to have been modelled after the Flemings Mayfair Hotel.

I also loved Gilbert’s book, with its writing and its setting in a law firm and an original way of hiding a corpse, that would never have crossed my mind.

#MurderEveryMonday is an hashtag created by Kate Jackson from Cross Examining Crime and anyone can participate via their social networks. Kate in on Twitter and Instagram, and you can find the themes of each Monday in her blog here. She recently opened up a Patreon, so if you can support her, you can go here and see the extras you can get.

Besides Twitter and Instagram, I also have been participating on my Mastodon and Bluesky, but I find those types of social are more ephemerous, so I thought I would try using this blog.

#AgathaChristie #BookLook #books #ColecçãoVampiro #CrimeFiction #MichaelGilbert #MurderEveryMonday #Policiais #readings