Books read in 2019 - Fiction - Part 1

I'm going to do this is multiple posts, as it would get crazy long if I didn't!

One of my goals has been to lighten my overladen bookshelves by reading heretofore unread books that I doubt I'll want to keep.  As a result, there are a fair number of older works of fiction on this list, including many detective/mystery books.  But, of course, a lot of newer books as well.

1.  The Piccadilly Murder, by Anthony Berkeley.  A "Golden Age" mystery, with the usual convoluted plot.  A great deal of fun.

2.  The Lawyer's Secret, by M.E. Braddon.  Braddon is best known for Lady Audley's Secret, but wrote absolutely TONS of "sensational" fiction.  My copy of this novella also included a shorter work, "The Mystery at Fernwood".  I must say that the "secret" was pretty obvious (at least to me) early on, but I nevertheless do enjoy these Victorian sensation novels, even when they aren't triple-deckers.

3.  The Lake on Fire, by Rosellen Brown.   I had so looked forward to this book.  It's Brown's first novel in many years, and is set in Chicago at the time of the World's Columbian Exposition.   It follows a young Jewish immigrant, who leaves rural Wisconsin for Chicago, accompanied by her prodigy of a young brother.  So it sounded pretty interesting.  Unfortunately, it's surprisingly poorly written.  The characters never came to life, and the ending is very weak. 

4.  The Pyramid of Mud, by Andrea Camilleri.   What can I say?  If you enjoy the Montalbano series (which I do), you'll enjoy this book.   Gosh, I'm going to miss Camilleri.

5.  The Lady in the Lake, by Raymond Chandler.  An excellent bit of noir.

6.   La ragazza nella nebbia, by Donato Carrisi.   Read for my Italian book club.  A murder mystery set in the small town of Avechot, it is also a commentary on the media and police work.  A complex plot well worked out.

7.  The Cunning Man, by Robertson Davies.   I enjoy Davies work a lot, and, as usual, his characterizations are very well done.  His last, and, though perhaps not his best (I think I'll always like The Salterton Trilogy the most, perhaps because that's where I first encountered him), worth reading.

8.  Cold for the Bastards of Pizzofalcone, by Maurizio de Giovanni.   This series features a group of police officers, all of whom have not-so-stellar reputations, who have been sent to the Pizzofalcone station to replace a bunch of corrupt cops.  The powers-that-be are always looking for a reason to disband the squad, but good police work stops that from happening.   Here, a double murder provides the basis for the plot, but I always think that de Giovanni's strength is in creating the Neapolitan atmosphere, and creating fully-fleshed-out, interesting characters.   (I also recommend his Comissario Ricciardi series, also set in Naples, but during the Fascist period, which is a character in itself.)

9.  Optic Nerve, by Maria Gainza.  Not so much a novel as a series of connected chapters, in each of which a work of art becomes the trigger for memories and meditations.  

10.  Time for Frankie Coolin, by Bill Granger.   Set in Chicago in the '70s.   Coolin is a white, blue-collar guy, who owns a couple of rundown apartment buildings in black neighborhoods. He's doing okay, working in the trades has got him and his family out to the 'burbs.   Then favor for a relative lands him in hot water with the feds.   This is such a great book!   Really captures the flavor of the people and neighborhoods and culture of Chicago at the time, and will help you understand the impact that had on where we are now.

11.  Goodbye, Piccadilly, by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles.  This is the first of a series of the author's "War at Home" series, following a family before and during World War I.  I read it on the recommendation of a friend.  It's not a bad read, but I guess I'm not really a "family saga" sort of person, as I am not inspired to continue the series.

12.  The Tale Teller, by Anne Hillerman.   Tony Hillerman's daughter has continued his Chee/Leaphorn series, and in the more recent contributions she has started to make the series her own, by giving more prominence to Officer Bernie Manuelito, who is married to Chee.  Leaphorn has been asked to track down a missing Navajo artifact, Manuelito stumbles on a body, while Chee and Manuelito are also looking into a series of burglaries.  You'll not be surprised to learn that some of these things are connected.

13.  Was it Murder?, by James Hilton.  Of course it was!  This was rather a fun book to read, despite the fact that I had the culprit's identity figured out very early on, and also despite the fact that the author never grapples with the legal impossibility of the supposed motive (the culprit may not have been aware of the issue, but the detectives certainly would have been).

But I really liked this quotation: "Someone had actually tried to murder him, to shoot him in cold blood as he sat at his typewriter; it was a monstrous thing, and he experienced, though a hundred times more intensely, the feeling that constrains so many Englishmen to write to the Times." Ha!

14.  Pictures at an Exhibition, by Sarah Houghteling.  A novel about a young man's attempt to recover his family's art collection, stolen by the Nazis.  Because it's long, I'm linking to My review at LibraryThing

15.  Keep it Quiet, by Richard Hull.  Another "Golden Age" mystery.  Murder and blackmail at a staid London men's club. First published in 1935, it's quite amusing (intentionally so).

16.  No!  I Don't Want to Join a Book Club: Diary of a 60th Year, by Virginia Ironside.  An amusing account of just what the title says - a woman's 60th year.  She's a bit of a curmudgeon, to which I can relate.  Not great literature, but an enjoyable light read.

17.  The Game is afoot!  Parodies, pastiches, and ponderings of Sherlock Holmes, edited by Marvin Kaye.  Like all anthologies, some of the offerings are great, some are terrible, and most are somewhere in between.  If you are a fan of Holmes, it's worth dipping into.

18.  Unto Us a Son is Give, by Donna Leon.   A Comissario Brunetti mystery.   Brunetti's father-in-law, Count Falier, is concerned about an old friend who wishes to adopt his much younger lover (basically to get around Italian inheritance laws).   When the friend drops dead in the street, is it murder?   A second death definitely is.  Leon's are always enjoyable, if only because they take me back to Venice.  And the food! 

19.  The House Sitter, by Peter Lovesey.  Nobody notices when a woman is strangled on a crowded beach.  There's also a serial killer on the loose, and it turns out the dead woman was a profiler who worked with the police.  Any connection?   An okay book, but good enough to make me hunt up others in the series.

20.  Under Cover: Death Stalks the Book Dealer, by F. J. Manasek.  Linked short stories of crime and murder in the antiquarian book world.