It's always exciting to make a fresh new stack of books--potential reads--to peruse and choose from. This month's prompt, Crime and Punishment, is all about choosing a new crime novel or mystery. I am thoroughly enjoying Kinsey Millhone's adventures and should be finishing G is for Gumshoe in the next couple of days (she is currently being stalked by a habitual criminal who has been hired to kill her--and several other people who put away another criminal . . .). She gets herself into so many scrapes. I have H is for Homicide at the ready and I plan on continuing my reading of the alphabet mysteries. But I do like variety and so, yes, it is likely going to be a year of reading more than one mystery at a time.
I follow so many different mystery series it is hard to choose from even this size stack of books. And as you can see I dropped in a couple of nonfiction reads as well. This month's choices:
The Hours Before Dawn, Celia Fremlin -- "In this Edgar Award–winning thriller, young housewife Louise Henderson is saddled with an unsympathetic husband, two rambunctious daughters, and an endlessly crying baby—as well as growing suspicions of the household's new lodger, Vera Brandon. Are Louise's fears the simple product of sleep deprivation, or is there really something sinister about the respectable-seeming schoolmistress? "
England Expects, Sara Sheridan -- "“Adventurous and tough, the heroine must fight the perception that women are useless as sleuths, and her sidekick has an even tougher time battling prejudice against both women and black people as they unravel a puzzling mystery.” —Kirkus Reviews
Princess Elizabeth's Spy, Susan Elia MacNeal -- "As World War II sweeps the continent and England steels itself against German attack, Maggie Hope, former secretary to Prime Minister Winston Churchill, completes her training to become a spy for MI-5. Spirited, strong-willed, and possessing one of the sharpest minds in government for mathematics and code-breaking, she fully expects to be sent abroad to gather intelligence for the British front. Instead, to her great disappointment, she is dispatched to go undercover at Windsor Castle, where she will tutor the young Princess Elizabeth in math. Yet castle life quickly proves more dangerous—and deadly—than Maggie ever expected. The upstairs-downstairs world at Windsor is thrown into disarray by a shocking murder, which draws Maggie into a vast conspiracy that places the entire royal family in peril. And as she races to save England from a most disturbing fate, Maggie realizes that a quick wit is her best defense, and that the smallest clues can unravel the biggest secrets, even within her own family."
Force of Nature, Jane Harper -- "When five colleagues are forced to go on a corporate retreat in the wilderness, they reluctantly pick up their backpacks and start walking down the muddy path. But one of the women doesn’t come out of the woods. And each of her companions tells a slightly different story about what happened. Federal Police Agent Aaron Falk has a keen interest in the whereabouts of the missing hiker. In an investigation that takes him deep into isolated forest, Falk discovers secrets lurking in the mountains, and a tangled web of personal and professional friendship, suspicion, and betrayal among the hikers. But did that lead to murder?"
Maigret's Mistake, Georges Simenon -- "A young woman named Lulu, who has a history of brushes with the law and once lived on the streets of the 18th arrondissement, is found murdered in Paris. Maigret is called to the scene and soon learns that her boyfriend, a musician, has gone into hiding upon reading the news of her death. And when the Inspector learns that the young victim was pregnant, he begins to suspect the case might be more sinister than he imagined."
Death in the Air: The True Story of a Serial Killer, the Great London Smog, and the Strangling of a City, Kate Winkler Dawson -- "In winter 1952, London automobiles and thousands of coal-burning hearths belched particulate matter into the air. But the smog that descended on December 5th of 1952 was different; it was a type that held the city hostage for five long days. Mass transit ground to a halt, criminals roamed the streets, and 12,000 people died. That same month, there was another killer at large in London: John Reginald Christie, who murdered at least six women. In a braided narrative that draws on extensive interviews, never-before-published material, and archival research, Dawson captivatingly recounts the intersecting stories of the these two killers and their longstanding impact on modern history."
A Tale of Two Murders: Guilt, Innocence, and the Execution of Edith Thompson, Laura Thompson -- "A Tale of Two Murders is an engrossing examination of the Ilford murder, which became a legal cause ce´le`bre in the 1920s, and led to the hanging of Edith Thompson and her lover, Freddy Bywaters. On the night of October 3, 1922, as Edith and her husband, Percy, were walking home from the theatre, a man sprang out of the darkness and stabbed Percy to death. The assailant was none other than Bywaters. When the police discovered his relationship with Edith, she―who had denied knowledge of the attack―was arrested as his accomplice. Her passionate love letters to Bywaters, read out at the ensuing trial, sealed her fate, even though Bywaters insisted Edith had no part in planning the murder. They were both hanged. Freddy was demonstrably guilty; but was Edith truly so?"
Part of the pleasure of my monthly prompts is thinking about the stack of books, then perusing them and sampling and then selecting and finally reading. So tonight I shall be sampling a bit. I'll let you know what I choose, but how do I choose only one?!