<p>Thanks, everyone, for all the new titles and series…</p>
<p>We’ve also enjoyed Donna Leon’s series about Commissario Brunetti - set in Venice. There are 20+ titles, I think, and they’re very quick reads.</p>
<p>Ooh, Donna Leon is great. Iaian Pears’s art theft mysteries are great too. Sarah Caudwell wrote some good mysteries; alas, she died much too young. I used to like Martha Grimes’s mysteries set in Britain–the first seven or so are really fun, but then she started messing with the backstory of one of her main characters and I couldn’t continue.</p>
<p>If you haven’t read the original developers of the mystery genre back in the 1930s, Dorothy Sayers, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh are musts. Infinitely better writers than Agatha Christie.</p>
<p>Since a lot of you clearly like mysteries, let me plug those written by a friend, Michael Nava. He hasn’t published anything new in more than a decade, but before that he produced seven excellent “hardboiled” detective novels. His protagonist was, like him, a gay, Hispanic lawyer in Los Angeles, and the books fall into the identity-politics subgenre of hardboiled detective novels, where part of the mystery is how the detective negotiates the back-and-forth path among his unique personality, his culture, and the mainstream. The books dealt extensively with issues affecting the gay community, like AIDS, discrimination, and sexual abuse; they got increasingly complex (and beautiful, and less frequent) as the series progressed. The last three – The Hidden Law, The Burning Plain, and Rag and Bone – are really stunning.</p>
<p>Based on a recommendation here, I just got Big Stone Gap and am enjoying immensely! Exactly what the doctor ordered, so thank you!</p>
<p>Thanks for all the suggestions!</p>
<p>Another shout-out for Sarah Caudwell, my favorite mystery writer:</p>
<p>
<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/06/nyregion/sarah-caudwell-60-lawyer-and-author-of-mystery-novels.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/06/nyregion/sarah-caudwell-60-lawyer-and-author-of-mystery-novels.html</a></p>
<p>I find most of Anthony Trollope pretty relaxing and escapist, especially the Palliser novels. Not the Irish novels so much, though. I think early Anne Rice, especially the witch novels, are pretty escapist and entertaining. I like the descriptions of antique houses in the Garden District and the country… which reminds me, she wrote a Sleeping Beauty erotica series under a pseudonym which might be of interest to those enjoying the Grey series.</p>
<p>alh, thank you for suggesting Sarah Caudwell - she sounds wonderful! Somehow I’ve missed her. </p>
<p>Another suggestion for erudite mysteries: the series by Amanda Cross, a pen name of Carolyn Heilbrun, who was an eminent academic at Columbia. The earlier books in the series are great. The “detective” is a middle-aged female professor of literature who lives in NY.</p>
<p>I also like the Linda Fairstein mysteries. The protagonist is a NYC prosecutor who specializes in sex crimes. The books all take place in NYC, and they contain much information about the city and its history.</p>
<p>I always enjoyed Amanda Cross too. I liked the academic settings.</p>
<p>Trollope really is fun - you can see why he was a best seller in his day. I somehow got bogged down at the end of the Palliser series, but I really liked the Barchester Tower books.</p>
<p>:) …bogged down when that madcap society hostess, Lady Glencora, (who earlier in life nearly left her husband to run off with that gorgeous bounder & fortune hunter Burgo who may or may not have really loved her) unexpectedly dies and leaves her husband, the Duke, to deal with the kids marrying all the wrong sorts of people? Including maybe even Americans? At least I can always return to the Pallisers as all my soaps get cancelled.</p>
<p>I used to just skip all the political parts. When I finally read them I was surprised how integral to the story they were.</p>