The Nature of Things

I love a good mystery. That's why I read so many of them. What I don't like is gimmicky mysteries. I especially don't like mystery writers who don't play fair; who use tricks, games, wordplay like anagrams, etc., to mislead and misdirect their readers.  I'm looking at you, Anthony Horowitz. I am most seriously displeased. I had had Magpie Murders in my reading queue for months, but decided to read it now because of a television show.  We had just finished watching the third and final season of Mackenzie Crook's wonderful gentle comedy about metal detecting, Detectorists, in   which magpies play a major part in the plot. Can you say "serendipity"? It seemed the universe was sending me a message so I decided to get on with it and read the book.  I had read mostly glowing reviews and my expectations were high. At the beginning of the book, we meet book editor Susan Ryeland who has a new book from her publishing house's most popular author to read. T...

I've written before about how Sherlock Holmes was my first literary love. I fell in love with him when I was twelve years old and I've never fallen out. Obviously, then, I am a sucker for any story featuring the great consulting detective. It's not just me. There is still an extensive audience for Sherlock Holmes stories, and so the Arthur Conan Doyle Estate, for the first time in its long history, authorized a new Holmes novel.  To complete the task, they chose Anthony Horowitz, who I knew chiefly from his excellent work as screenwriter for the television series  Midsomer Mysteries , certainly one of my all-time favorite television mystery series.  Horowitz channeled Conan Doyle very successfully, I thought. He wrote very much in the style of the master and remained true to the spirit of the originals, particularly in the relationship between Holmes and Watson. The story, of course, is told in the voice of Watson who is writing it twenty-five years after the events. He i...