Yes, you’re right: the title is a portmanteau. It’s not a concatenation of “dead mistress” but a portmanteau of “dead” plus “headmistress.” Get it? This 2011 mystery by Carole Shmurak wasn’t so easy to find. CommCat couldn’t locate it for… Read More ›
It’s not part of the Harry Potter franchise. I’m talking about The Ink Black Heart, the sixth novel ostensibly written by Robert Galbraith, the well-known pseudonym that J.K. Rowling uses for her outstanding Cormoran Strike series. Unlike Harry Potter, the… Read More ›
It’s obvious that author S.J. Watson had seen the movie Memento before writing his first novel, Before I Go to Sleep. What isn’t obvious (at least to me) was that a mediocre movie of the same title was made from… Read More ›
I mean Venice, Italy, of course. Not Florida or California or Las Vegas or any other inauthentic place. Not that I visited Italy during the pandemic—at least not IRL—but I did manage a virtual visit by reading Give unto Others,… Read More ›
This book reminds me of the caller who asked the Magliozzi brothers a question about his Volkswagen Quantum: he couldn’t get it repaired because he didn’t know any Quantum mechanics. What’s the connection? Well, first you need to know what… Read More ›
You can believe actual data. We’ll call that Door #1. Or you can believe your general “impression.” We’ll call that Door #2. Or you can believe what other people tell you—the “common knowledge” that everyone “knows.” We’ll call that Door… Read More ›
Agatha Christie died in 1976. So how could she be publishing a collection of new Miss Marple stories in 2022? Did she leave them behind, only to be discovered four decades later and published posthumously? That’s certainly what a glance… Read More ›
“At least half of what Sagan says about history is outright false, but his authority is still seemingly unimpeachable today, forty-two years after the programme first aired.” So says the distinguished “Kiwi Hellenist”, Peter Gainsford, who is a classicist from New… Read More ›
Yes, the definite article makes a difference…not because we’re being pedantic, but because we’re being attentive to anagrams and acrostics. Here’s the problem: I’m talking, of course, about the recent PBS Masterpiece series by Anthony Horowitz, titled Magpie Murders, as… Read More ›
Speaking of women in libraries…this seems to be the time of year to read and review books about women in libraries, especially mysteries about them. After The Woman in the Library, my next example is The Department of Rare Books… Read More ›
“Everyone should marry a gay man at least once,” says Mary Rodgers (better known as the daughter of Richard Rodgers, but an important figure in her own right, and not just for Once Upon a Mattress) on page 128 of… Read More ›
According to Wikipedia, film noir comprises “stylish crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and motivations.” So, what then is Jewish Noir? Moving the medium from film to short stories, we get a series (two books so far) edited by… Read More ›
Yet another entertaining Jersey Girl mystery by E.J. Copperman. This is the fourth. Although we’re firmly out in SoCal at this point, there are still enough reminders of her Jersey origins that you won’t forget where Sandy Moss, the protagonist,… Read More ›
Ordinarily you would never expect me to want to read a book with that title. Ordinarily I would never expect to want to read a book with that title. But it had been recommended to me by a reader I… Read More ›
This is the second time in less than a month that I’ve had to use typography to disambiguate the title of a post. This is the better of the two examples, both because it contains the very same phrase twice… Read More ›
No, not revisiting her in person: she died four years ago, and I had never met her. The title of this post means that I have just finished rereading two of her Homer Kelly novels. If you know the first… Read More ›
No, no. The typography is wrong in that title: it should be “The library had Something to Hide,” not “The library had something to hide.” Something to Hide is the latest novel by Elizabeth George; I had to wait for… Read More ›
Those two titles may remind you slightly of a couple of books by some guy named Hemingway, who was famous mostly for his many six-toed cats. Actually, however, I cheated slightly: the first title is really For Whom the Minivan… Read More ›
Just over three months ago I wrote a post about the pros and cons of my high-school experience. One paragraph, in the list of cons, focused on what my classmates and I read in my English classes: When I asked… Read More ›
Not only before he became president, but even before he had won the Republican nomination, in fact. Nevertheless, the explanation still holds today. The philosopher in question is Professor Aaron James, head of the philosophy department at UC Irvine. The… Read More ›
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