Readers' Guilty Pleasures: Mysteries

[whollygoats]

Yes, in the way of junk food for the mind, I do, on occasion, partake of pleasure reading in the 'mystery' genre.

My latest favorite has been the corpus of Carl Hiaasen's work, both adult and young adult. The last I got my hands on was Bad Monkey and I understand he has a new one out since....with Skink as his main character.

Other than that, I've ploughed through a lot of them. I just picked up one of Spencer Quinn's 'Chet' series, with a PIs mutt as the narrator of the story lines. I enjoyed the light read of Dog On It, so I picked up a copy of And Thereby Hangs a Tail and Paw and Order. I'll tell you if I think it serializes well...

I consider that Tony Hillerman, Sharon McCrumb, and C.J. Box usually produce a worthwhile waste of time when they publish.

Any other favorites I should know about?

 

[James Brown]

If I may be so obnoxious as to steer the thread back toward the OP...

I also enjoy the Carl Hiaasen crime fiction. Lucky You being my favorite.

I'm also a huge fan of Lawrence Block. He writes in several styles so as to appeal to a wide swath of readers. The Matthew Scudder novels are hard-boiled, the Bernie Rhodenbarr novels are lite-n-cozy, the Keller novels are in-between, stories about a mild-mannered hit man.

I've been slowly working through the Lawrence Sanders' Deadly Sins mysteries.

As a nod toward Underseer, John Scalzi wrote the excellent Lock In which is a SciFi-Mystery novel. Don't miss the scene where two protocol droids wail on each other with frying pans.

 

[whollygoats]

Dude, you just ruined this thread with agenothree. Is that what it was called? I read those books about 3.8 million years ago.

Heh...I created a 'RGP: Fantasy/Sci Fi' thread and asked the mods to shuffle some posts.

 

[Ruth Harris]

I've been slowly working through the Lawrence Sanders' Deadly Sins mysteries.

Ooh....love the Deadly Sins series. Have read all of them, and own about half. I keep trying to catch good buys on the rest of them.

And as an aside, whollygoats apparently you and I share reading tastes from the threads you started. My guilty pleasures are exactly those three things; mysteries, thrillers, and science fiction (the hard scifi, not so much fantasy).

Ruth

 

[whollygoats]

I've been slowly working through the Lawrence Sanders' Deadly Sins mysteries.

Ooh....love the Deadly Sins series. Have read all of them, and own about half. I keep trying to catch good buys on the rest of them.

And as an aside, whollygoats apparently you and I share reading tastes from the threads you started. My guilty pleasures are exactly those three things; mysteries, thrillers, and science fiction (the hard scifi, not so much fantasy).

Ruth

Well...I started with 'guilty pleasures' and tried to prompt mysteries genre readers. I got inundated with fantasy readers. Pent up demand, I guess. These days, I read mostly mysteries as my junk food for the mind. I read a lot of sci fi as a young adult and will read it on rare occasion, usually with lots of prompting. Thrillers, for me, are usually last resort when inviting options in the other two genre are just not there; 'airplane books'. The fantasy I read is very limited and it took years of noodging and nagging from friends to get me to read the first Discworld novel. But I was quickly hooked.

Mostly, I read non-fiction.

 

[Ruth Harris]

Just remembered another author/series that I really enjoy - the Reed Ferguson Mystery Series by Renee Pawlish. Good storylines with a lot of humor to keep things fun.

Ruth

 

[whollygoats]

Just remembered another author/series that I really enjoy - the Reed Ferguson Mystery Series by Renee Pawlish. Good storylines with a lot of humor to keep things fun.

Ruth

Oooo...that has hints of Sharon McCrumb's Susan MacPherson series. Missing Susan is a hidden gem, but it one of those things where it is way funnier if you know the Susan stories which preceeded, probably all a lot more amusing to me because of my Scots Irish heritage.

 

[dendrast]

I've started working my way through Louise Penny's "Three Pines" series of mysteries, featuring Inspector Gamache of the Surete de Quebec.
They are set in a small town in the Eastern Townships, so small it isn't even on any maps.
They feature a cast of regular small town oddballs, including a lesbian poet fire chief and the obligatory gay couple running the cafe/antique store.
Very fine language, ingenious murders, and excellent jokes.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Yes, in the way of junk food for the mind, I do, on occasion, partake of pleasure reading in the 'mystery' genre.

My latest favorite has been the corpus of Carl Hiaasen's work, both adult and young adult. The last I got my hands on was Bad Monkey and I understand he has a new one out since....with Skink as his main character.

Other than that, I've ploughed through a lot of them. I just picked up one of Spencer Quinn's 'Chet' series, with a PIs mutt as the narrator of the story lines. I enjoyed the light read of Dog On It, so I picked up a copy of And Thereby Hangs a Tail and Paw and Order. I'll tell you if I think it serializes well...

I consider that Tony Hillerman, Sharon McCrumb, and C.J. Box usually produce a worthwhile waste of time when they publish.

Any other favorites I should know about?

Everyone would probably be shocked to know that my favorite mystery writer is Michael Connelly who wrote the great series featuring Harry Bosch!

 

[dendrast]

Is that actually your name or are you trying to remain Hieronymus?