Mystery Book # 7 - The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins, is one of the first real "mystery" novels of its time. It has a bunch of the things that show up in the mystery genre -  someone playing detective, a bunch of suspects, and an explanation at the end of how the crime was committed. The mystery here is the disappearance of a giant diamond that a young English woman receives as an inheritance on her 18th birthday. Is it one of her two possible suitors? A maid? A visiting doctor? Or even a group of Indians that worship the stone?

The story is told from different points of view, so having different narrators as the story went along kept it interesting. Overall I really enjoyed it and was surprised how modern of a book it felt for something over 160 years old. My only minor quibble is that it is a bit longer than it really needs to be. I highly recommend it for anyone that likes nineteenth century English literature or a good mystery. A.

Silver Screen Fiend: Learning About Life from an Addiction to Film by Patton Oswalt

So I think I'm going to try something slightly different with the entries for this blog.... I'm going to keep myself to a five minute time limit for the first draft and then maybe three minutes to clean it up and add a picture. When I first started the blog I could spend almost an hour on an entry and eventually I took less and less time... And it isn't like anyone is really even reading this, I'm just finding it a useful tool to keep track of the books I've read and what I briefly thought of them at the time. So, that now leaves me with two minutes on the clock to say something about Silver Screen Fiend.... I thought it was okay. I wanted to read it because the author talks about how he became addicted to seeing movies at the New Beverly Cinema... which is a pretty cool place to see movies. His stories were funny but the book also had a lot about his early career as a comedian which really wasn't all that interesting and I'd have liked more thoughts about the movies themselves. Anyway, time's up, I'll give it a B-.

Horror Book # 22 Books of Blood Clive Barker Volume 1 of 6

When I was a kid I vaguely remember someone having a volume of Books of Blood and saying that it was super scary and they couldn't even sleep with the book in the same room. I'm thinking it was this book but maybe not... anyway that was what I went into thinking before reading the first volume. And for the most part it is a scary book... even more so than the Stephen King I've read. I really enjoyed the stories... they were all pretty varied and had different types of scares. Three of the stories stick out as being the best... one was about a serial killer on the subway, another about a demon that tries to destroy a normal guy (it is actually played for laughs and is comedic) and one that ended up being about a possessed pig that does horrible stuff. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the volumes, this one gets an A-.

Book # 148 & Mystery Book # 8 - The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

Ahhh.... The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler  - one of my favorite books. Rereading it was so much fun. This is the first book in the Phillip Marlowe series and it is the defining classic of the hard boiled detective genre. Chandler describes things like no one else... here's a link to some of the best lines from the book https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1222673-the-big-sleep.  There are some classic lines in there...

The plot involves Marlowe investigating a blackmail case which quickly escalates to multiple murder cases involving a whole bunch of criminals all around Los Angeles. What I hadn't noticed the first time I had read it is that one of the murders is actually never solved and Marlowe seems to forget all about it by the end. Apparently Chandler was asked about this when they were preparing the script for the movie and Chandler hadn't realized his mistake! So who killed the chauffeur? We'll never know.  It is the kind of book where the details of the plot aren't the most important thing to keep track of...

This book stays in my top 50 of all time... I highly recommend it even if you really aren't all that into mystery books. A+.

Mystery Book # 30 -Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré

For a spy novel, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was a bit boring but overall okay. Maybe having seen the movie ruined it a bit for me since I knew how it ended. It is basically about a former spy having to return to duty to investigate his former division to see which of the head members is actually a Russian mole. There really isn't that much action... most of the book is the main guy Smiley reading through old papers and interviewing people. He's described as an old short fat guy too... so this isn't a James Bond type of adventure. I'll give it a B.

Mystery Book # 98 - The Steam Pig by James McClure

The Steam Pig starts out promisingly. The book is set in South Africa and was written during the 1970's so it has a pretty unique setting for a mystery book. The main characters are a white cop, Kramer, and his African assistant, Zondi. Together they solve crimes and have to deal with apartheid in every aspect of their lives. But besides the initial premise of the series, the book doesn't have much else going for it. The crime they have to solve is pretty routine (the murder of a young woman) and most of the secondary characters are fairly uninteresting. Even the eventually revealed motive for the murder isn't that unique. It wasn't a bad book though... just average. C+

Mystery Book # 87 - The Dreadful Lemon Sky by John D. MacDonald

The Dreadful Lemon Sky is the 16th book in the Travis McGee series which is about a guy that lives on a boat and solves mysteries. My main question is how does a guy that lives on a boat have so many adventures to have at least 16 books? This time an old friend of Travis' dies in a suspicious accident and he sails his boat to the area where his friend lived and proceeds to investigate. And of course the mystery ends up involving other people that also live on boats. I'm sure in a months time I'll remember almost none of the plot, but at least it was mildly diverting. C+