response 31 of 53:

Jul 17 17:15 UTC 1998

I share some of Jan's interest in world-building mysteries, so 
I'll pass along a list of some I have enjoyed.
You may have to dig in the used shops for some of these:
 
Peter Dickinson:  his earliest novels all featured the same detective, 
      whose name escapes me; a man of decidedly average talents who
      stumbles into a series of murder cases in bizarre, closed mini-
      societies.  THE GLASS SIDED ANT'S NEST is set in a tribe of 
      aboriginal people who have been uprooted and relocated to a 
      group of London row houses.  SLEEP AND HIS BROTHER is set in an 
      asylum for children suffering from a strange neurological disorder.
      The last in the series, ONE FOOT IN THE GRAVE, begins with the 
      detective, confined in a nursing home and suffering from dementia, 
      deciding to end his life; on the way to implement his decision 
      he stumbles over a corpse...
 
      Dickinson stopped writing series but continues working in odd 
      worlds.  KING & JOKER is set among the British Monarchy in an 
      alternate history.
 
James McClure:  novels mostly written in the 1970s and set in South 
      Africa, pairing a white policeman and a black policeman.
      Exceptionally high paranoia content.
 
William Marshall:  best known for a series of police procedurals 
      written in the 70s and 80s (and some in the 90s) set in colonial 
      Hong Kong, in the fictitious run-down neighborhood of Yellowthread
      Street.  Marshall's stock story structure intercuts one pretty grim 
      mystery with a pair of sillier ones; the sillier stories come to 
      happy endings and the grim story proceeds to its ending in a 
      cinematic explosion of violence.

Lindsay Davis:  has a series featuring a "private investigator" which 
      is set in Rome, 70 A.D.

Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo:  In a series of ten novels they set out to draw 
      portraits of contemporary Swedish society.  I consider the 
      "Martin Beck" series to be the most artful mystery series I have read.
      These should probably be read in order due to the slow-moving changes 
      in the detectives' lives which stretch through the series.
      If you're looking for cheerfulness, the Martin Beck stories may not 
      be your cup of hemlock; I love the characters but most of the stories
      are grim.

response 33 of 53:

Jul 17 23:01 UTC 1998

I recommend Kate Ross's Regency mysteries. Alas, she died earlier this year,
with only four written, but they are the BEST mysteries I've read in a long
time. Ken, can I borrow that alternate history mystery?
/

response 35 of 53:

Jul 19 01:19 UTC 1998

I've been reading mysteries off and on for most of my adult life.
In fact, I've gone through periods of extreme addiction, although
nowadays I just read an occasional one.

In regards to mysteries with an exotic setting, don't think anybody's
mentioned Robert Van Gulik's "Judge Dee" series, in which the
protagonist is a provincial magistrate in medieval China. The
depiction of life and society at that time and place is fascinating.

Judge Dee was an actual historical character, and the first of
Gulik's Judge Dee books is a translation of an old Chinese stories
about him. The rest are Gulik's own creations.

response 37 of 53:

Jul 20 13:13 UTC 1998

I haven't actually read them... So has anyone here read anything
by the woman that took my name <grumbles> Anne Perry?

response 39 of 53:

Jul 20 19:30 UTC 1998

Anne Perry has two series out there -- one is the Monk series, with 
a protagonist who starts out by being in a cariage accident and then
losing his memory, and who has to reinvent himself along the way. There
are about eight books in that series, and I like them, although she
seems to be running out of things to say, but I will continue to read.
The other series, which I don't like as well is about Inspector Inspector
                     Thomas Pitt, the low-born London copper with a
better-born
                     wife, Charlotte. Set during the Victorian era, Perry's
mysteries
                     usually examine the dark underbelly of aristocratic life.
                     Homosexuality, adultery, and pedophilia have all been
subjects of
                     her previous books; in Ashworth Hall she injects a new
                     ingredient: politics.  (Yes, this last was stolen
from a blurb I had handy.)

Anne Perry is interesting as well for her involvement in a real-life
murder -- you know that movie that came out a few years ago about
the Australian girls who murdered one of them's mother? (That sounds
really icky, but I'm not cleaning up my grammar right now.) she was
the girl who actually did the head-bashing. So I think that it's 
fascinating that she knows the criminal mind so well....

response 41 of 53:

Jul 23 11:50 UTC 1998

I've seen "Heavenly Creatures". It's an early Kate Winslet film.
Did Winslet play Hulme or the other girl?

response 43 of 53:

Aug 24 19:37 UTC 1998

After janc's resp:30 and my resp:31 , I got interested enough to 
dig my Peter Dickinson books out of storage.  I reread the first of the 
six Jimmy Pibble stories, THE GLASS SIDED ANTS' NEST; the setting 
of the story is fascinating, the resolution of the mystery somewhat
less so.  But it was Dickinson's first novel.  I'm currently 
trying to figure out how to simultaneously read these books and 
loan them to Twila.  :)
 
Just started this weekend: Greg Egan's PERMUTATION CITY, a science 
fiction novel which seems to have a pretty promising start.  We'll 
see how it goes; I haven't been able to complete reading an SF novel
in maybe five years.

response 45 of 53:

Sep 1 02:49 UTC 1998

        Ken, why not just read them to Twila?

response 47 of 53:

Sep 1 10:37 UTC 1998

Browsing the poetry section at Borders I noticed a slim volume
by someone named Billy Collins with the title "Picnic, Lightning."
The title is a celebrated quote from Nabokov's "Lolita": "My very
photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning)
when I was three."  Collins uses the quote as an epigraph to the
title poem, which is about how thinking about the various ways
people can die suddenly tends to heighten one's perceptions of
reality.  A couple of the individual poem titles also caught my
eye: "Lines Composed Over Three Thousand Miles from Tintern Abbey";
and "Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes," which concludes:

"What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage passing the house,
a fly buzzing in the windowpane.

So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corset

and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that reason is a plank,
that life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye."

Readers of Emily Dickinson will hear a pleasant series of bells
going off in their heads when they read that.  Anyway, I bought
the book.  Highly recommended.

response 49 of 53:

Sep 2 00:23 UTC 1998

I think it's your kind of poetry, John.  In fact, some of it sounds 
like something you might have written, only this Collins guy got 
there first:

"We have listened to their dismay,
the kind that issues from poems
the way water issues forth from hoses,
the way the match always gives its little speech on fire."

response 51 of 53:

Sep 2 22:47 UTC 1998

Question for discussion: Why does Humbert describe his
mother as "very photogenic"?

response 53 of 53:

Sep 8 23:04 UTC 1998

I saw Joyce Maynard on TV this morning plugging her new
book, "At Home in the World," which just hit the bookstores.
So I went to Borders Farmington Hills and bought a copy.
I've been a fan of Maynard's ever since I read her cover
essay in the NY Times Magazine 30 years ago, and then the
book it turned into, called "Looking Back."  (She was 17 at
the time.)  Her most famous book is "To Die For," which was
made into a movie starring Nicole Kidman a few years ago.
"At Home in the World" is an autobiographical work which 
is making news because it tells about the affair Maynard
had with J.D. Salinger that everyone was buzzing about but
no one ever was able to confirm.  The early reviews are
mixed -- the good news is it isn't a tell-all sleaze bio;
the bad news is it isn't a tell-all sleaze bio.  We'll see.