Reading in Reykjavík

Apparently, Edgar Wallace was a very famous writer in his day, but I must admit to never having heard of him before starting this challenge. Genre: Thriller, crime story Year of publication: 1905 No. in series: 1/3 Type of investigator: Police Setting & time: London, contemporary The British foreign secretary is trying to pass through parliament a bill enabling the government to send back to their home countries people who, for one reason or another, have fled to Britain. A group of men, three conspirators and one recruit, calling themselves the Four Just Men, threaten to assassinate him unless he withdraws the Bill, which they see as unjust, as it would enable the extradition not only of escaped criminals, but also of political dissidents who would face certain death upon their return home. The four have already carried out several other assassinations/murders of people who they judged to be worthy of death on grounds moral, criminal, or both, but were beyond the reac...

My thoughts about this book are rather scattered and what I have written below might sound more like notes for an essay, but I want to say something about it, so please excuse the rambling. Genre: Psychological/gothic horror Year of publication: 1962 Setting & time: New England, USA, mid-20th century While I have labelled this a psychological/gothic horror novel, it is not entirely true, but this is a book that is hard to label. It is psychological and it is gothic, but a psychological and gothic What? It’s hardly a thriller because most of the action is internal (although there are some thrilling moments, especially during the climax), and it’s hardly a horror, although after a certain point in the story one is constantly expecting something of the kind, and it isn’t melodramatic enough to be called a sensational novel, although it draws on all of those genres. It is, in a way, a crime novel, and in fact I wouldn’t hesitate to put it on a list of some of the best of that ...

I decided to review these two Christmas themed crime novels together, as they were written by the same author team and belong to the same series, or actually two series, one by each author. I think Mary started writing her Christmas novels with Silent Night (which I haven’t read), but the first one I read was All Through the Night , which I think is her first Christmas novel to feature lottery winner and amateur sleuth Alvirah Meehan. The subsequent Christmas novels have been written in co-operation with her daughter Carol, who is a writer in her own right. Deck the Halls appears to be their first collaboration, but since then they have written a number of Christmas novels together, featuring Alvirah together with Carol’s series sleuth, Regan Reilly and her boyfriend (later husband) Jack. These two (and All Through the Night ) are not mysteries, but rather suspense novels with caper elements. The reader knows the whole time who the criminals are and the viewpoint swings between the s...

Year published: 2006 Genre: Novel Setting & time: Britain; modern timeless Margaret Lea, a young woman who works in her father’s antiquarian bookshop and occasionally writes short biographical essays about dead authors, gets an unexpected invitation from bestselling author Vida Winter to write her biography. Winter is well known for never telling the truth about her past, so Margaret is a bit suspicious, but Winter seems sincere and provides enough evidence of her real identity to satisfy Margaret. What unfolds is an incredible story about a childhood lived in a house full of madness, framed by Margaret’s own narrative about herself and her attempts to verify that Vida has been telling her the truth. It would perhaps be repetitive to say that this is a brilliant piece of storytelling, since it is what most reviewers say about it. But it is undeniably a brilliantly told story, or perhaps I should say collection of stories, because Vida tells Margaret about her childhood in a seri...

Title: Maigret in Exile Original French title: La Maison du juge . Translator: Eileen Ellenbogen Series detective: Inspector Maigret No. in series: 21 (of the novels. If the short stories are included: 42) Year of publication: 1942 Type of mystery: Murder, whodunnit Type of investigator: Police Setting & time: Rural France, 1930’s? (The story was written during WW2, but since there is no mention of the German occupation of France, I’m guessing pre-war) Some themes: Love, sexual abuse, adultery, hate Story: Maigret has done something to displease his superiors and has been sent into a kind of exile in a small town on the northern coast of France where nothing ever happens. He has fallen into a boring routine which is broken when a woman from the next town arrives to tell him that a corpse can be seen through her neighbour’s upstairs window. Maigret goes to investigate, and finds the neighbour, a retired judge, trying to dispose of the corpse, apparently not to hide the cri...