Reading in Reykjavík

Genre : Thriller, cosy Series and no. : Homer Kelly, # 8 Type of detective : Professor of literature, lawyer and former policeman Year of publication : 1991 Setting & time : Florence, Italy, contemporary. Harvard Professor Homer Kelly is invited to teach for one school year at a new school for American students in Florence, Italy. One of the teachers has been in prison in the USA for murder, another one is a boring creep, the students are the usual mixed bunch, including one socially-inept stalker type and a ravishingly beautiful female student with issues, and the school secretary really works for the city’s top drug baron, who is planning to use a religious fanatic to assassinate the pope, whose anti-drug campaign is affecting business. I picked up this book mostly because of the title. I haven’t read The Divine Comedy , mostly because I couldn’t decide which of the many English translations to choose, but I did wish I had the one quoted in the book on hand – I believe i...

Here is the seventh book I read for the Bibliophilic Books Challenge , which puts me just past the halfway point of the Bibliomaniac level. This book fits into the challenge in several ways: The main sleuth is a journalist, and her writing course is featured and the classes described several times; the other teachers are writing or have written books (one is a world-famous author) - two even have motives for murder related to their books; and the students are writing assignments that are part of what drives a section of the story. Genre: Mystery Year of publication: 2003 No. in series: 1 Series detective: McLeod Dulane Type of mystery: Murder, cosy Type of investigator: A, journalist and lecturer in non-fiction writing at Princeton University Setting & time: Princeton University campus, New Jersey, USA Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist McLeod Dulane is thrilled to be given a chance to teach journalistic writing at Princeton University, but her enthusiasm wanes so...

Year of publication: 1936 Series and no.: Lord Peter Wimsey, no. 11. Genre: Mystery Type of mystery: Sabotage, poison pen letters, attempted murder Type of investigator: Amateur, aided by a semi-professional Setting & time: Oxford, England; 1930s Story: While visiting her old college in Oxford, Harriet Vane finds an anonymous poison-pen message seemingly directed at herself. She thinks no more of it until she is invited back and taken into the confidence of the Dean and asked, due to being a mystery writer and therefore a sort of expert on criminal behaviour, to help discreetly find out who has been sending these nasty little messages to students and various members of the teaching staff and committing acts of nasty but apparently senseless sabotage around campus. Harriet feels out of her depth, but agrees to the task and, over the period of almost 2 academic semesters, diligently gathers clues, but is unable to draw any significant conclusions from them. However, once she g...

Year published: 2005 Genre: Supernatural mystery thriller Setting & time: The USA, Europe and Turkey, 15th to 21st century Warning: minor SPOILERS ahead The Story: The story is narrated by a historian who tells the story of a desperate hunt for Dracula. Mysterious books have been delivered to several people, mostly librarians and historians, that suggest that someone wants them to know that Dracula lives. But once they begin searching for clues as to his whereabouts, they are warned off (or are they? - I suspect they are being tested rather than warned) by a mysterious force that they suspect is Dracula himself. The hunt covers several centuries, through the research the searchers have to do to uncover the truth, but the main story begins in the 1930s and spans the middle decades of the 20th century and tells of three generations of historians who race against time to discover the secret location of Dracula's tomb and just what it is he wants with them. Technique and plot:...

Title: In the last analysis No. in series: 1 Year of publication: 1964 Type of mystery: murder, whodunnit Type of investigator: amateurs Setting & time: New York, 1960’s Some themes: Psychoanalysis, murder, literature, university life Story: New York literature Professor Kate Fansler is shocked when a former student of hers is murdered on the couch of the psychoanalyst Kate recommended to her. What’s worse, the psychoanalyst, an old friend of Kate’s, is the police’s favourite suspect. Not trusting in the intelligence and experience of the police, Kate begins an investigation of her own, assisted by her nephew-in-law to-be who does the sleuthing, and a friend who is an assistant district attorney and has access to inside information about the investigation. Kate herself mostly does the thinking and the mental arithmetic involved in putting together the clues and finding a likely suspect and motive. This she does and arrives at a theory. Unfortunately she is, at first, unable ...

Well, finally I have had time to sit down and write a book review, which is pretty good considering I have only been able to read a handful of books this month. Authors: Ian Caldwell & Justin Thomasson Year published: 2004 Two undergraduate students at Princeton University, Tom and Paul, get sucked into a mystery when another student who has been helping Paul with his thesis research is murdered, and it appears that his death has a link to the thesis, which is about an obscure and strange novel from the Renaissance period, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (a real book, BTW). Prior to Paul’s taking on this assistant, Tom had been helping him solve the riddle of the book, which (in the novel) is one big cryptogram. Tom had become nearly as obsessed with it as his father, a Hypnerotomachia scholar, had been, but pulled out in time before his obsession could ruin his relationship with his girlfriend. What follows is an investigation into the dead man’s connection to the Hypnerotomachia...