Top mysteries: changes and ranking

I’ve found a more reliable source for both the lists I am using and have discovered that the lists I was using weren't entirely correct, so I am changing the combination list accordingly. Out go 10 books and in go 9.
Interestingly, a book I read and reviewed as a Wednesday Reading Experience earlier in the year gets added to the list: The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad.

The lists I am now working from give the ranking of the books, and I think it would be useful to include this information with the reviews. However, I don’t want to repost the reviews I have already posted because it plays hell with the feed readers and annoys real readers, so here is an list of rankings for the books I have already reviewed, alphabetised by author. CWA stands for the British Crime Writer’s Association and MWA stands for the Mystery Writers of America.

Anthony Berkeley: The Poisoned Chocolate Case; CWA # 41
Christianna Brand: Green for Danger; CWA #84
Truman Capote: In Cold Blood; MWA # 54
Vera Caspary: Laura; MWA #44
Sarah Caudwell: The Shortest Way to Hades; CWA # 76
Joseph Conrad: The Secret Agent; MWA #86
Edmund Crispin: The Moving Toyshop; CWA # 25, MWA #72
Lionel Davidson: The Sun Chemist; CWA # 88
Colin Dexter: The Dead of Jericho; CWA # 37
Fyodor Dostoevski: Crime and Punishment; MWA # 24
Caroline Graham: The Killings at Badger's Drift; CWA # 80
Dashiell Hammett: The Maltese Falcon; CWA # 10; MWA # 2
Dashiell Hammett: The Thin Man; MWA # 31
Thomas Harris: Red Dragon; MWA # 27
Patricia Highsmith: Strangers on a Train; CWA # 38
Patricia Highsmith: The Talented Mr. Ripley; CWA # 45, MWA # 71
Michael Innes: The Journeying Boy; CWA # 52
Peter Lovesey: The False Inspector Dew; CWA # 27
Ed McBain: Cop Hater); CWA # 36
Ed McBain: Sadie When She Died; CWA # 96
James McClure: The Steam Pig; MWA # 98
Nicholas Meyer: The Seven Per-Cent Solution; MWA # 65
Susan Moody: Penny Black; CWA # 57
Ruth Rendell: Judgement in Stone; CWA # 39, MWA # 89
Hillary Waugh: Last Seen Wearing; CWA # 12, MWA # 74

And just for fun, the listed books I had read before I started the challenge:
Desmond Bagley: Running Blind; CWA # 77
James M Cain: Double Indemnity; MWA # 34
James M Cain: The Postman Always Rings Twice; CWA # 30
John Dickson Carr: The Hollow Man/The Three Coffins; CWA # 40, MWA # 44
G.K. Chesterton: The Innocence of Father Brown; MWA # 57
Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None; CWA # 19, MWA # 10
Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express; MWA # 41
Agatha Christie: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd; CWA # 5, MWA # 12
Wilkie Collins: The Moonstone; CWA # 8, MWA # 7
Arthur Conan Doyle: The Collected Sherlock Holmes Short Stories; CWA # 21
Arthur Conan Doyle: The Complete Sherlock Holmes; MWA # 11
Arthur Conan Doyle: The Hound of the Baskervilles; CWA # 32
Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose; CWA # 13, MWA # 23
Ian Fleming: From Russia with Love; CWA # 35, MWA # 78
Ken Follett: Eye of the Needle; MWA # 25
Ken Follett: The Key to Rebecca; CWA # 95
Sue Grafton: "A" is for Alibi; MWA # 51
John Grisham: A Time to Kill; MWA # 73
Thomas Harris: The Silence of the Lambs; MWA # 16
Jack Higgins: The Eagle Has Landed; CWA # 54
Tony Hillerman: A Thief of Time; CWA #69, MWA # 53
Tony Hillerman: Dance Hall of the Dead; MWA # 37
P.D. James: Shroud for a Nightingale; MWA # 83
Alistair MacLean: The Guns of Navarone; CWA #89
J.J. Marric: Gideon's Day; CWA # 87
John Mortimer: Rumpole of the Bailey; MWA # 26
Elizabeth Peters: Crocodile on the Sandbank; MWA # 82
Ellis Peters: A Morbid Taste for Bones; CWA # 42, MWA # 100 (tie w. Rosemary’s Baby)
Edgar Allan Poe: Tales of Mystery and Imagination; CWA # 23, MWA # 32
Mario Puzo: The Godfather; MWA # 15
Mary Roberts Rinehart: The Circular Staircase; MWA # 40
Maj & Per Wahlöö Sjöwall: The Laughing Policeman; MWA # 46
Mary Stewart: My Brother Michael; CWA # 55
Mary Stewart: Nine Coaches Waiting; CWA # 62
Bram Stoker: Dracula; MWA # 70
Josephine Tey: The Daughter of Time; CWA # 1, MWA # 4

I had posted reviews of some of these books online before I started the challenge and will be working on reposting them under the appropriate label.

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down

Icelandic folk-tale: The Devil Takes a Wife

Stories of people who have made a deal with and then beaten the devil exist all over Christendom and even in literature. Here is a typical one: O nce upon a time there were a mother and daughter who lived together. They were rich and the daughter was considered a great catch and had many suitors, but she accepted no-one and it was the opinion of many that she intended to stay celebrate and serve God, being a very devout woman. The devil didn’t like this at all and took on the form of a young man and proposed to the girl, intending to seduce her over to his side little by little. He insinuated himself into her good graces and charmed her so thoroughly that she accepted his suit and they were betrothed and eventually married. But when the time came for him to enter the marriage bed the girl was so pure and innocent that he couldn’t go near her. He excused himself by saying that he couldn’t sleep and needed a bath in order to go to sleep. A bath was prepared for him and in he went and

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove

Dorte H said…

What a varied list! I like that.

I have just tried my first Josephine Tey and my first Mary Steward because I found them on the shelves in our holiday cottage. A great opportunity to try something new!

July 20, 2009 8:32 pm

Bibliophile said…

I like Tey very much. At her best she rivals or even surpasses Agatha Christie, and she only wrote a fraction of the number of mysteries Christie did.

When I was a teenager I devoured every Mary Stewart book that was published in Iceland. I found her combination of suspense and romance irresistible, but the book I really loved was The Crystal Cave. Imagine my delight when I found out it was the first in a series of four!

July 20, 2009 9:22 pm

I enjoyed all the new authors I found during my holiday, but Mary Stewart was the best, and the one I plan to read more by first!

July 21, 2009 1:49 pm

Reading in Reykjavík

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