English Mysteries Club discussion

American authors.

This is the thread to discuss authors from the USA, who also write mysteries in the English style.

Charles Todd. Two excellent series.

Jean wrote: "Charles Todd. Two excellent series."

Hi Jean,
Is that Charles Todd? I hadn't heard of that author so looked, to find it's a mother-and-son writing team, Caroline Todd and Charles Todd. How unusual!

Can your recommend one from the "Ian Rutledge" and "Bess Crawford" Series, or should we start at the beginning?

Yes, by all means start at the beginning and read in order. You can read them as stand-alones but you'd be missing a lot. They're not only wonderful writers/plotters but also nice people, real animal lovers so truly My Kind.

They sound lovely - both the books and the authors! Thanks for the heads-up, Jean.

I hope more will give recommendations in this thread as I rarely read American mystery writers. The ones that I have read seem to me to stress the violence of the act than the cerebral solving of the crime. And some of their characters seem shallow, not well-fleshed out. Though I do have an open mind and will look into any suggestions seen here.

I have the same problem, Shannon. Enjoyed a couple by Sara Paretsky, also Jonathan Kellerman and Patricia Cornwell, but the latter two seemed quite dark.

What about Stephanie Plum? People seem to like those - and there's a series about pizzas I think. Do these hold up as mystery stories?

I just stumbled across Renee Pawlish's Reed Furguson series. It's described as a 'comic murder mystery with a film noir feel' and the MC is 'obsessed with being Bogart.' Should be fun. I will give it a try.

ShanDizzy wrote: "I just stumbled across Renee Pawlish's Reed Furguson series ..."

LOL that does sound intriguing!

Any more details about your favourites, Rita? Or anyone?

Thank you Rita! I remember now that my brother liked the Donna Leon books, but I disliked all the endemic corruption. A GR Italian friend said they were authentic - and especially that.

Bionic Jean wrote: "I have the same problem, Shannon. Enjoyed a couple by Sara Paretsky, also Jonathan Kellerman and Patricia Cornwell, but the latter two seemed quite da..."

Have you looked into Tony Hillerman's books set among the Navajo in the U. S. southwest?

I highly recommend Tony Hillerman!!! The sense of place and culture in his books is wonderful.

Sara Paretsky's books as distinguished, IMO, by the fact that she is always pursuing a worthwhile cause, representing the underdog in some way. I always come away from her books knowing more about some socio-political topic.

Personally, I don't care for Kellerman or Cornwell. You're right, Bionic Jean, they are dark, and just not sufficiently interesting to me.

I too am a fan of Tony Hillerman! I have been rereading the Leaphorn/Chee series via audiobook.

American mystery series that I like - so many! But Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe is one I have been enjoying a lot recently. I also had fun reading Lawrence Block's Bernie Rhodenbarr books.

Barbara wrote: "I highly recommend Tony Hillerman!!! The sense of place and culture in his books is wonderful.

Sara Paretsky's books as distinguished, IMO, by the fact that she is always pursuing a worthwhile cau..."

Cornwell jumped the shark (as they say) partway through the Scarpetta series.

I love Tony Hillerman. I took my mom to a convention he had in New Mexico (his daughter who now writes his books did all the work) and he was so delightful. He was one of the nicest people I have ever met and his talks on Navajo culture were amazing. He even brought in some pumpkin soup he made and gave my mom the recipe. A real gentleman.

Jonathan and Faith Kellerman (both mystery novelists) were there. She was quite sweet and interesting. He has such a creep that I never picked up another one of his books again even though I had read all the previous ones. He was so incredibly rude to my 85 year old mother that I will never read him again.

Susan wrote: "I love Tony Hillerman. I took my mom to a convention he had in New Mexico (his daughter who now writes his books did all the work) and he was so delightful. He was one of the nicest people I have e..."

You might be interested in his non-fiction called "Seldom Disappointed" in which he talks about himself.

Barbara wrote: "I highly recommend Tony Hillerman!!! The sense of place and culture in his books is wonderful.

I agree. Recently I have gone back in time and read Dashiell Hammet which has been interesting.

John wrote: "Cornwell jumped the shark (as they say) ..."

Er, I don't, but it puts a thrilling image in my mind! What does it actually mean, please?

I have a lot of favorite American mystery authors, but I don't want to run on, so I'll just give three:

Phoebe Atwood Taylor (PAT) - probably best known for her Asey Mayo mysteries set in or around Cape Cod. Very atmospheric and humorous with excellent mysteries. They can get downright creepy at times in a fun Halloween sort of way. Her very first book, The Cape Cod Mystery, is a good place to start. It's a classic.

PAT also wrote the Leonidas Witherall series (under Alice Tilton). Witherall looks like Shakespeare, but is actually a former teacher who lost all his money in the depression. He now writes books and a radio show about Lt Hazeltine. See Beginning with a Bash.

Also see my favorite book by PAT (under Freeman Dana): Murder at the New York World's Fair. Reprints include her real name instead of her pen name. This is a hilarious mystery with a wonderfully feisty and independent old lady as the amateur detective. PAT was great at depicting older women, even when she was still in her 20s. Note: I believe all of her books are available as ebooks.

Jane Haddam (real name: Orania Papazoglou) - Gregor Demarkian is a famous FBI profiler, who retires after the death of his beloved wife, but gets drawn into various murder investigations. The supporting cast is delightful with Bennis Hannaford (writer of saccharine fantasy romances), and Father Tibor Kasparian. The early books were based around holidays. I recommend Not a Creature was Stirring.

Helen McCloy - best known for her Basil Willing series. Dr Willing is a psychiatric who works extensively with the police. McCloy has a gift for the creepy and eerie. Two of my favorite books are Mr. Splitfoot and Through a Glass, Darkly. She also wrote non-series books such as Do Not Disturb. Most, if not all of her books are available as ebooks.

Bionic Jean wrote: "John wrote: "Cornwell jumped the shark (as they say) ..."

Er, I don't, but it puts a thrilling image in my mind! What does it actually mean, please?"

Jean, the TV show "Happy Days" had a scene with Fonzi in his leather motorcycle jacket water skiing and actually jumping a shark. This has come to mean when something has run its course and it's over. They are no longer fresh or relevant. When something has jumped the shark it means put a stick in it, it's done. I quite agree with Cornwell. She jumped the shark awhile ago.

Susan wrote: "Bionic Jean wrote: "John wrote: "Cornwell jumped the shark (as they say) ..."

Er, I don't, but it puts a thrilling image in my mind! What does it actually mean, please?"

Jean, the TV show "Happy ..."

Thanks, Susan

I thought Cornwell had a terrific series, until Loup-Garou appeared, which took things in more of a sensationalist, fantasy direction for me than well-done police procedurals.

Me too. I also used to read Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series for fun but it kept rehashing the same book. None of the characters showed any kind of growth and nothing ever changed. It jumped the shark to me.

Stephanie Plum was funny at first, then she morphed into just plain schtick.

I had the same reaction to the fabled Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone series. When they first came out I loved them - there were so few female detectives around. But over time they paled, and I recently picked up Q is for Quarry and struggled to finish it. So much seemed recycled.

The early books were entirely from Kinsey's point of view; the series became less interesting when we started going into other characters' heads making Kinsey herself less a focus of the story.

I read the entire Kinsey Milhone series and they went down hill at the end. To be fair, she was deadly ill and did die so to write at all was a miracle. And a so-so Kinsey book was better than a lot of the garbage out there.

Barbara wrote: "I had the same reaction to the fabled Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone series. When they first came out I loved them - there were so few female detectives around. But over time they paled, and I recen..."

Yeah - I gave up around M or N. But I picked them up again at U and enjoyed the last few. I keep meaning on going back and reading those in between. Like Susan said, a so-so Kinsey is better than a lot of other books!

John wrote: "Susan wrote: "Bionic Jean wrote: "John wrote: "Cornwell jumped the shark (as they say) ..."

Er, I don't, but it puts a thrilling image in my mind! What does it actually mean, please?"

Jean, the T..."
I agree. I bought her books before the Loup Garou thing which she just could not let go of; after that I did check out 3 or 4 to see if it was just a momentary aberration, but it wasn't. An excellent series ruined . . . and she seems to be paid by the word too. Long, inane, boring.

Jean wrote: "This is the thread to discuss authors from the USA, who also write mysteries in the English style."

ShanDizzy wrote: "I rarely read American mystery writers. The ones that I have read seem to me to stress the violence of the act than the cerebral solving of the crime. And some of their characters seem shallow, not well-fleshed out."

Interestingly (considering our group's focus), we don't actually have a thread dedicated to describing and analyzing the difference between English and American mystery styles. But ShanDizzy's comment suggests an avenue of inquiry. Within the mystery/crime fiction genre, there is a continuum between two polar opposites: at the one end, very cerebral mysteries which de-emphasize violence and stress the intellectual solving of a puzzle, and at the other end, tales that stress gore and violence and where the hero/heroine has to do a lot of fighting --sometimes more, or at least as much, fighting as actual detecting.

Personally, I wouldn't strictly identify the two ends of the spectrum as belonging particularly to one nationality or the other. (And it is a spectrum, not a totally polarized binary.) But it is a fact that the great masters and mistresses of the late 19th and early 20th century cerebral mystery --Doyle, Chesterton, Christie, Sayers, Allingham, etc.-- were all British, while the pioneers of the more gritty, violent noir style in the first part of the 20th century (such as Hammett, Chandler, and Spillane) were all Americans; and that's probably related to national character traits.

As this thread recognizes, though, the influence of the great English writers of the genre on American writers and readers was very strong right from the beginning, and continues to be, so that a lot of American mystery writing falls toward the cerebral and more mannered end of the spectrum. So I see this thread as the place to talk about those authors, whose work doesn't feature grisly descriptions of extreme violence, isn't particularly "dark," is set in milieus that are essentially civilized (rather than in urban jungles where law and order is broken down), and doesn't routinely involve their sleuths in gun or karate battles. :-)

On another thread, I recently mentioned two contemporary American mystery authors that I really like, Suzanne Arruda and Heather Day Gilbert. Since they hadn't been mentioned on this thread so far, Bionic Jean suggested I post something about them here; so my musing about the English/American style distinction is partly me thinking aloud about whether they qualify to be here. I'd say that they do; the flavor and ethos of their work, and the detecting styles of their sleuths, is vastly more similar to Christie than to Hammett.

Arruda is the author of the Jade del Cameron series, begun with Mark Of The Lion (2006), and concluded with Devil Dance (2015). All seven of the books got high star ratings from me. They're set in colonial Africa in the years just after World War I, mostly in Kenya (which was then under British rule, and several characters are Brits, though Jade's an American). Besides creating vivid characters and original plots, the author brings her African settings to life very well and bases the books on copious historical research, deftly incorporated.

Goodreads author Gilbert happens to be a Goodreads friend of mine, though I like her work on its merits. She actually has four mystery series currently running (and also wrote two excellent historical novels about the Viking expeditions to the New World), but the only one of these four I'm familiar with is A Murder in the Mountains, set in her native West Virginia and featuring amateur sleuth Tess Spencer. The series opener is Miranda Warning (2014); there are three books so far, which all got high ratings from me, and at least one more expected.

Both ladies write very clean fiction, with no graphic sexual content or references and little or no bad language. (Gilbert is an evangelical Christian whose work conforms to ECPA standards, though it's self-published.) Jade, who's a former WWI ambulance driver, can handle a gun and on rare occasions has to, and Tess packs a Glock (English mystery fans will recall that Holmes, too, often wanted Watson to bring along his Army revolver!); but violence isn't central to the series, crime scenes aren't depicted in grisly detail, and both women solve crimes with their brains (not their fists).

I've come across a new (for me, at least) American mystery writer named Todd Downing. He was part-Choctaw and grew up in Oklahoma. In addition to writing mysteries, he also wrote over 300 book reviews. He was a fan of Ellery Queen and Agatha Christie. One of his detectives is US Customs Agent Hugh Rennert. I have two of his books in paperback: Murder on Tour and The Cat Screams: A Hugh Rennert Mystery. I also have several more in ebook format. I'll probably try one of these next.

Several older series don't rely on violence or brutality: Rex Stout, Erle Stanley Gardner, Ellery Queen, Elizabeth Daly, Helen Reilly, Helen McCloy, Frances Lockridge and Richard Lockridge, and Phoebe Atwood Taylor.

I wouldn't flatly categorize all American mysteries as violent. There's plenty that are not. I don't read most modern authors because I'm not interested in them for the most part, so my list is based on the ones that I've read mostly from the Golden Age of Mysteries.

Werner wrote: "... Personally, I wouldn't strictly identify the two ends of the spectrum as belonging particularly to one nationality or the other. (And it is a spectrum, not a totally polarized binary.) But it is a fact that the great masters and mistresses of the late 19th and early 20th century cerebral mystery --Doyle, Chesterton, Christie, Sayers, Allingham, etc.-- were all British, while the pioneers of the more gritty, violent noir style in the first part of the 20th century (such as Hammett, Chandler, and Spillane) were all Americans; and that's probably related to national character traits..."

If you want to talk about early gritty, violent noir, how about Graham Greene's Brighton Rock (1938) or A Gun for Sale (1936)? As you said, there is a spectrum and it existed on both sides of the Atlantic.

I will add one more Golden Age, cerebral mystery author from the U.S. -- S.S. Van Dine who wrote the Philo Vance mysteries.

Thank you for explaining the shark reference, Susan. I could never have guessed that!

Werner - the idea of having a comparison "English or American" thread does worry me a little, I must confess. I've never found discussion of such differences to be particularly helpful, in this type of forum, and sadly, quite often become argumentative. Although it may be interesting to analyse factors, and perhaps we can identify broad tendencies, there are going to be many exceptions (as others have started to point out). Also would we have discussion threads for comparisons between English/Swedish, or Canadian, or Italian etc.? It might turn into a tangle of threads, whereas comparisons and similarities with other authors, within each thread by nationality, might actually be useful.

But this is early days yet, so let's bear it in mind for now :) Nothing is ever set in stone.

I'm learning a lot of new authors from this thread, thanks all!

I agree with Rita. If you are a Sue Grafton fan, you should read Kinsey and Me: Stories My review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Jean wrote: "...the idea of having a comparison "English or American" thread does worry me a little, I must confess. I've never found discussion of such differences to be particularly helpful, in this type of forum, and sadly, quite often become argumentative."

Jean, as always, you make excellent points; and as usual, I find myself agreeing with you! :-) Actually, I wasn't even necessarily suggesting the idea of creating that kind of thread (I mentioned its absence just as a good excuse for why I was posting my musings about the subject here rather than someplace else :-) ). Most long-time genre fans in this group have a basic picture of the differences that the two designations imply, anyway, without having to nail them down in formal definitions; and where people feel a need to share their own working definitions informally, they don't need a special thread for it.

I finished Murder is Not an Odd Job
I highly recommend it to Raymond Chandler fans. My review
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I just finished Chaser by J. A. Konrath
I enjoyed it, but it is not for cozy fans.
My review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I am working my way through the Hardman series by Ralph Dennis
My review of Working For The Man
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

My 4 star review of The One Dollar Rip-Off
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Another thriller in the gritty Hardman series The Last of the Armageddon Wars
My review. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Since this is an English mystery group, I would compare this series to David Mark. Original Skin

Tony Hillerman has been mentioned already on this thread; I've only read one book in his Leaphorn and Chee series, set on the Navajo Reservation in the American Southwest (Coyote Waits, the 10th book --I read it out of series order; long story!) and have never reviewed it, but I liked it. Superficially, his setting is far removed from anything English, with its textured portrayal of Native American culture; but his literary vision is actually very much in line with the ethos of the traditional English mystery. (An FBI colleague calls Lt. Joe Leaphorn "the Sherlock Holmes of the Navajo Tribal Police Force." :-) )

Another American mystery writer who belongs on this thread is Elizabeth Peters (whose real name is Barbara Mertz; she also writes "romantic suspense" as Barbara Michaels). While she's not English, her series amateur sleuth, Amelia Peabody, is; the books are historical mysteries set in the milieu of Egyptian archaeology in the late 1800s-early 1900s. (Mertz is a serious Egyptologist and writer of nonfiction on ancient Egypt, with a PhD. in the subject.) I've only read the first two books, Crocodile on the Sandbank and The Curse of the Pharaohs, and didn't continue with the series (I decided that reading more books wouldn't add to the experience, and there are so many other books I want to read!); but both of them got five stars from me.

I have enjoyed most of Tony Hillerman books. Now, thanks to GR, I am reading the ones that I missed. Here is my review of book 1The Blessing Wayway
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I finished The Buy Back Blues
I enjoyed it, 5 stars. My review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

An American writer who hasn't been mentioned here yet, but who IMO deserves some attention, is Laurie R. King, the author of The Beekeeper's Apprentice. This is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche which is (at least, in this series opener) faithful to Doyle's vision of the continuing characters of the original series, and basically faithful to the tone and literary vision of the Holmes canon as well. (Though I found King's style more character-driven than Doyle's, and consequently actually liked it better.)

Doyle's story "His Last Bow" presents the aging Holmes as retired and keeping bees on the Sussex Downs. But did anybody believe Holmes would really retire...? :-) King's protagonist, smart and observant teen Mary Russell, meets the great detective at this stage in his career, and the book title clues us to its premise. I never read any of the subsequent novels in the Mary Russell series (view spoiler)[(I learned that she and Holmes marry in the second book, and a married Holmes is just too much of a stretch for me to accept!) (hide spoiler)], but this one got five stars from me.

Would anyone else liked to tell us about an American author you've read, who you think writes in the English style?

I do like the sound of The Beekeeper's Apprentice, Werner! It's an excellent title for anyone who knows the Sherlock Holmes stories :)

I finished Outsider
I enjoyed it. My review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
She may not write in the English style, but I enjoy this series and recommend it.

What about John Dickson Carr? He was american but his stories and characters were very english. Sir Henry Merrivale and Dr Gideon Fell. These are mysteries with rooms locked and very creative resolutions.

Bionic Jean wrote: "I do like the sound of The Beekeeper's Apprentice, Werner! It's an excellent title for anyone who knows the Sherlock Holmes stories :) "

If you read it sometime, Jean, I hope you like it!

carolina wrote: "What about John Dickson Carr? He was american but his stories and characters were very english. Sir Henry Merrivale and Dr Gideon Fell. These are mysteries with rooms locked and very creative resol..."

Definitely! I have always enjoyed his tales.

There's also Jacques Futrelle. I haven't read his work but I recently purchased the Great Cases of the Thinking Machine and the title does stress that celebral thinking in solutions.

Yay! I'd mentioned before (on a different thread) that here on Goodreads, I've never shelved any of the Nero Wolfe mysteries by Rex Stout that I read as a kid, because I couldn't recall the titles. But I've finally identified one of them: Die Like a Dog (1954).

Unfortunately, I still can't shelve it. It doesn't have a Goodreads record; it was first published in a magazine, and then as part of the collection Three Witnesses (1956). Apparently, it was never published as a stand-alone. I can't remember what venue I read it in; but the other novellas in the collection don't ring a bell, so it probably wasn't there. :-(

Well, I'm on a roll --I tracked down the other Nero Wolfe series entry that I could vaguely remember bits and pieces of! It was "Murder Is No Joke," a story that appears in the excellent anthology edited by Jacques Barzun, The Delights of Detection. Those are probably the only two that I've read, since I don't have any memories of any others.