I feel the same way about the guy who writes new Nero Wolfe stories. They're fine? But the heart isn't there.

There are some pretty good Nero Wolfe pastiches/homages I have come across, although I am not super familiar with the originals. I don't know why whoever makes these decisions thinks continuations are necessary.

I think the last Dick Francis novel I liked was To The Hilt.

I bounced off the next two. I think I tried one of his son's novels, but bounced off that too. That was a long time ago.

That's helpful, thanks

Trying to remember what Nero Wolfe ish things I am thinking of, because there was something quite recent. There are the short stories that have been running in Ellery Queen for a while where the Archie character is an AI that inhabits a tie pin. I like those but I think they are transitioning into being spy stories rather than mysteries. And there's the one Libby Cudmore that was not in Ellery Queen, what's it called, Alibi in Ice. But there was something else, I am almost certain, that somebody described as Sherlockian that someone else corrected to Nero Wolfe and I was like, oh, right, I get that now but I can't remember what it was. This is gonna bug me.

I read a couple of the books Dick Francis wrote with his son, and they seemed off. Something in the tone felt wrong, so I stopped reading them.

I read something where the author completed a Chandler ms and I thought it was pretty good. I think it was called something like "Poodle Springs".

Robert B. Parker (of the Spencer mysteries) finished "Poodle Springs".

Oh, noting that on my detective fiction spreadsheet. I’m a little stalled out in early John Dickson Carr but I’ll get to Chandler eventually.

I’m reading The Left-handed Book Sellers of London and really enjoying it.

Thanks for mentioning, Calli! I bounced off the first Nix I sampled so I wasn’t going to read this despite the intriguing titkle, but I checked my library when you posted about it and they had it as an audiobook so I am listening to it now and quite into it

I am reading (listening) Katabasis for my work book club and it is...a slog. I'm about a third of the way in and as far as I'm concerned both of these people can stay in Hell forever, I really don't care if they ever make it to the end of their quest.

(It doesn't help that the overriding metaphor here is "graduate school is Hell" and so me being also in the middle of a BtVS rewatch means I'm getting two "school is Hell" metaphors at once, only one of them is way way more fun. )