Detective Fiction

Reading detective fiction is indeed a disease. It makes one do weird things. I probably have 50 or 60 authors whose books I enjoy. And these have probably written four or five hundred books. That should keep me happy for a long long time. But I am constantly finding new authors that intrigue and beckon me to enter their world. When I first heard that Laurie R. King had paired a young Mary Russell with Sherlock Holmes I was a little perturbed. Enough people have screwed around with Holmes to make me doubt that any good could come of this. Then a good friend said he had read a couple and that they were pretty good. OK, I thought, I’ll give them a try but I don’t have to like them. I’ve read two of them now and they were very good. Laurie King writes very well. Another author to add to an already long list.

Christopher Fowler is another one. Reviews were so highly receptive of his Bryant and May mysteries working in the Peculiar Crimes Unit of the London Metropolitan Police that I’ve picked up a couple in paperback. The list becomes longer. I was going to write about another book when I sat down to write this blog. You can see how easily I’m sidetracked. So I’ll leave it for tomorrow.