Wednesday reading — it's a mystery

[mayhap]

What I've been reading

I read The Man in the Queue, the first Alan Grant book. (I don't usually read books out of order, but I had to wait a long time for copies of these two.) It reminded me a bit of that errors commonly made by inexperienced murder-mystery novelists cartoon—the mystery is, in fact, too clever to be solved!—but hey, I'd much rather have too clever than insuffiicently clever.

I read To Love and Be Wise, which was utterly delightful in every way and made me very sad to be out of Inspector Grant books.

I wonder what would happen if Inspector Grant and Inspector Alleyn met each other? They're far from identical, and yet similar enough that I think they might put each other's hackles up.

I read The Child's Child, one of Ruth Rendell's books published under the name Barbara Vine. I was drawn to it for the promise of the novel within the novel, and I thought it was really well done, but the frame story is all set-up and distressingly little resolution. It feels very lopsided.

I read The Monster of Florence, because apparently we're doing that on Hannibal this season. Not having been familiar with Il Mostro when I read the novel Hannibal, I had caught the overt references but missed all the Monster-adjacent material that Thomas Harris shamelessly stole repurposed in that book. I now feel better apprised, if not prepared, for the rest of season three. (I'm not sure it's entirely possible to be truly prepared.)

What I'm reading now

Finally got my copy of Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography in!