I like Jan Burke's Irene Kelly series -- they're pretty easy. And am obsessed with Lee Child, but they are thrillers, not mysteries.
Did anyone mention Dorothy Sayers yet?
Right. Sir. Honey.
Zoe ,'The Train Job'
Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
Jesse - Apr 30, 2008 2:16:44 pm PDT #5585 of 28344
Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be.
Pix - Apr 30, 2008 2:22:41 pm PDT #5586 of 28344
The status is NOT quo.
I love you all to pieces. I've read some of what you've listed (the J.D. Robb series and Anne Perry husband/wife series are two of my favorites) , but there are lots up there I've never even heard of. Rock! I will have to send ND to the library or book store tomorrow.
-t - Apr 30, 2008 3:11:54 pm PDT #5587 of 28344
I am a woman of various inclinations and only some of the time are they to burn everything down in frustration
I really like Margaret Maron, both the Judge Knott series and the Sigrid Harald series (which is, I believe, complete so you could conceivably read it all and not have to go looking for more) though her stand-alones might be the best.
And I love me some M. Didius Falco. I was just thinking yesterday that one of the things I like about that series is that the cases can be wildly different kinds of mysteries.
DavidS - Apr 30, 2008 3:22:30 pm PDT #5588 of 28344
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."
Awww, Flannery O'Conner could've been a Buffista:
O'Connor described herself as a "pigeon-toed only child with a receding chin and a you-leave-me-alone-or-I'll-bite-you complex." When O'Connor was five she taught a chicken to walk backwards, and it was this that led to her first experience of being a celebrity. The Pathé News people filmed "Little Mary O'Connor" with her trained chicken, and showed the film around the country. She said, "That was the most exciting thing that ever happened to me. It's all been downhill from there."
§ ita § - Apr 30, 2008 3:23:58 pm PDT #5589 of 28344
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.
Flannery O'Conner could've been a Buffista
Take that back. I was never that miserable.
amych - Apr 30, 2008 3:25:13 pm PDT #5590 of 28344
Now let us crush something soft and watch it fountain blood. That is a girlish thing to want to do, yes?
you-leave-me-alone-or-I'll-bite-you
New tag! And she's dead, so she can't say no.
sarameg - Apr 30, 2008 3:31:41 pm PDT #5591 of 28344
Nevada Barr's mysteries. Murder and mayhem in the national parks, featuring park ranger Anna Pigeon. She does a good job of capturing the atmosphere of the locations.
meara - Apr 30, 2008 3:36:30 pm PDT #5592 of 28344
I definitely second Nevada Barr's, though I warn you that several of them will really make you want to VISIT the national parks!!
amych - Apr 30, 2008 3:37:23 pm PDT #5593 of 28344
Now let us crush something soft and watch it fountain blood. That is a girlish thing to want to do, yes?
... and this is a problem, why?
(I mean, in the immediate, in-the-hospital time frame, yes, but...)
JZ - Apr 30, 2008 3:43:35 pm PDT #5594 of 28344
See? I gave everybody here an opportunity to tell me what a bad person I am and nobody did, because I fuckin' rule.
Take that back. I was never that miserable.
She managed to write some memorably, spectacularly miserable characters, but Flannery herself wasn't miserable. I read all 700-some odd pages of her collected letters, and she really does come across as a Buffista before Buffistas were: snarky, sly, occasionally outright goofy, and equally capable of being mockingly delighted by the awfulness of kitsch and moved by the emotion behind it; full of geeky passions and delights; interested in the world outside her town and the universe inside her own mind. Sometimes a little terse when the lupus was excruciating, but often darkly witty even then.
Eloquent as Nutty and ita combined in her cold dissection of lousy writing and lazy logic; as simultaneously passionate and wry as Cindy writing about her faith; as irritated by, occasionally resentful of her dependency on, and kindred-spirit snarkily proud and loving of her mother as erika; tender in her notation of the green and growing and fruiting products of her land as Betsy; fiendish as MM in her elaborate scorn of hypocrites and monstrous fools; loyal to her friends as any Buffista, willing to sprint around the world for them when she couldn't walk to her own front door. And able to deliver a biting, delicious quip while she was at it.
For someone with one fuck of a lot to be miserable about, O'Connor was somehow really not so miserable at all.
t /just a teeny bit defensive of my biggest literary girlcrush