#booklook — Public Fediverse posts

#MurderEveryMonday Crime fiction cover with a village on

For today’s #MurderEveryMonday I’m sharing a cover of a book I want to read, Murder before Evensong, the first in the Canon Clement series, and a book I’ve read before (one of my 2023 favorite reads). Serpents in Eden is a short story collection with both known crime fiction authors and others less known, with extra points for the introduction by Martin Edwards. By the way, if you want to read the 1948 article The Guilty Vicarage – Notes on the detective story, by an addict by W. H. Auden, you can do so here.

#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.