Reading in Reykjavík

Originally published in May 2005, on my original 52 Books blog. This is the first of Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, written during the Golden Era of crime fiction, an era that produced many authors who are still in print and considered to be classics. They include Sayers, Agatha Christie, S.S. Van Dine, Ellery Queen and John Dickson Carr, to name a few of the biggest. The story tells of how Lord Peter Wimsey gets involved in two criminal cases. The first is the mysterious appearance of a naked corpse in the bathtub of a respectable architect, and the second the disappearance of a rich businessman who had a strong resemblance to the dead man. Aided by his valet, Bunter, and his detective friend, Parker, Wimsey uncovers a clever and diabolical revenge scheme and a very ingenious method of corpse disposal, with a few red herrings thrown in to confuse both Wimsey and the reader. Wimsey has, when the story begins, solved at least one case of theft, and other criminal inv...

Originally published in April 2005, on my original 52 Books blog. The Flanders Panel by Arturo Pérez-Reverte is a murder mystery tied up in a chess-game in a painting and in reality. The painting is a 15th century panel by a Flemish master, which the heroine, an art restorer, must clean and restore before it can to be auctioned off. She discovers a hidden inscription in the painting, and when her ex-lover is murdered and a mysterious person starts leaving cards with chess moves on them where she can find them, it looks as if the two events are connected. She receives assistance in solving the mystery from a chess-player, and from her two best friends, an art gallery owner and a slippery antiques dealer. This is a good, spooky, twisty mystery with a chess game at its heart. Even if you know nothing about chess, you can still enjoy it - I only know how the chessmen move around the board, and I liked it. 3 stars. --- The Man on the Balcony by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö is a tota...

Two interesting facts about the author: Nicholas Blake was the pseudonym of Cecil Day Lewis who was Britain’s poet laureate from 1968 to 1972, and he was actor Daniel Day-Lewis’s father. Neither fact has any bearing on the following review – I just happen to like trivia. Year of publication: 1938 Genre: Mystery Type of investigator: Amateur sleuth Setting & time: Gloucestershire, UK; 1930s contemporary Story: Full of grief for his son, killed by a hit-and-run driver, mystery writer Frank Cairnes hatches a plan to track down the driver and murder him, writing his plan down in his diary. A coincidence gives him a clue to the identity of the driver and under the pseudonym he uses for his detective writing he manages to get an introduction to the man, but he can not be sure he is the driver. When the man is murdered, Cairnes seeks the help of amateur sleuth Nigel Strangeways to prove his innocence, the incriminating diary having fallen into the hands of the police. Review: This...