Adventures in the Mouse House

52. Blacklist by Sara Paretsky

After the Big Bag o'Disappointment that was my encounters with Patricia Cornwell and Jed Rubenfeld, this is more like it!

Private Detective VI Warshawski is hired to check out reports of lights in a deserted mansion, and ends up knee-deep in a murder that is connected to the super-rich of Chicago and how they manipulated their way through the McCarthyite witch-hunts of the 1950s, and the hunt for a young "terrorist" in the post 9/11 wave a panic.

I was afraid that this book might be too long for what it is, but it didn't drag at all.

I'll definitely be getting more of these from the library when I get the pile here down to a more manageable level.

38. Full Dark House by Christopher Fowler

Further expanding my horizons in crime novels.

I love Fowler's Psychoville so I was pretty intrigued when I found out he does mystery novels as well. At least one of you has been really impressed with at least one of the Bryant and May novels.

The story starts with Arthur Bryant of the Metropolitan Police's Peculiar Crimes Unit being blown up in the Unit's offices. In order to solve his killing, his partner John May has to revisit their first ever case together, which happened during World War II, investigating bizarre deaths in a theatre doing a very-nearly obscene version of Offenbach's Orphée aux enfers.

This didn't immediately grab me, but I'm not sure why. It has elements I usually find fascinating and the writing doesn't suck. Maybe it's because it is, at least in parts, too self-consciously quirky and eccentric for me.

Having said that, I stayed up far too late last night because I couldn't wait to find out Who Dun It, so obviously I got sucked in at some point. I'd probably grab another one from the library if it's there.