MARCH MYSTERY MADNESS WRAP-UP

I managed to read the requisite six books for this challenge but I had to switch out one of the originally planned reads for another title. But let’s face it, the prompts are just an excuse to read whatever I want! 

1. For my Josephine Tey book, I randomly picked To Love and Be Wise from the three titles I had left to read. I liked it. It reminded me a little of Brat Farrar. And for fans of Inspector Grant, he is very present in this one. 

2. The Elizabeth George book, A Banquet of Consequences, was not as terrible as I had feared. It was, in any case, better than the last two in the series and I will probably read the next book.

3. For the "New" category, I switched Out by Natsuo Kirino for The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing.  I first heard about The Big Clock from blogger Thomas at Hogglestock.  It is very much in the classic mid-century hard boiled/noir vein and was very entertaining.

4. I also really enjoyed Lion in the Valley by Elizabeth Peters. The Amelia Peabody series, from which this title is the forth installment, has really grown on me. The characters and mysteries are cartoonish, but fun.  I also listened to this on audio which is particularly entertaining because the narrator, Barbara Rosenblat, is superb.

5. Similar to the Amelia Peabody series, the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series is also pure comfort reading. It is impossible not to love Mma Ramotswe and her gentle ways of solving people's problems. I also listened to almost all of The Kalahari Typing School for Men as narrated by Lisette Lecat who was very good. 

6. Lastly, I liked Life Sentences by Laura Lippman but don't think it is her strongest work, though I think she is a good writer.  It felt like she wanted to break out of the mystery/thriller genre and write literary fiction but felt obligated to keep the crime fiction format.  I wish she had dumped the mystery aspect of the book and just written a novel about childhood secrets and adult regrets set in a racially diverse but also divisive Baltimore. 

It entirely possible that these will be the only crime fiction I read for the rest of 2019 but I hope not!  I do have the last Flavia de Luce novel on my TBR (just waiting for the audio to be available from the library) and I really want to tackle The Witch Elm by Tana French which I have checked it out twice and returned unread both times!