Update

In a lull here (that's another story), but in this low-energy limbo the reading continues...

Latest is a novel As Husbands Go by Susan Isaacs, a mystery about the death of a Manhattan plastic surgeon.  This book, like many of Issac's, features a smart-alecky woman protagenist, so I enjoyed it.  My favorite of her books has to be Shining Through, where a smart-alecky and brave Brooklyn secretary out-spies the Nazis, with a side dish of cookery.  (But that story, alas, was made into a truly terrible movie; watch her Compromising Positions with Susan Sarandon and Raul Julia instead.)

Reading a good mystery has to be one of the kindest inventions ever for biding time - whether you're waiting on a dentist, a train journey, or healing.  Enough plot and puzzle to distract the surface of the mind happily, while not demanding serious concentration the situation does not allow.  A good a mystery provides amusement and charm and even, sometimes, enough human truth not to waste the time spent.  And a really well written mystery becomes comfort brain-food... You can revisit a favorite sleuth's adventures - Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple - even though you know how the puzzle will be solved.

That it will be solved satisfactorily is one of this genre's charms.

Sherlock Holmes public domain image messed with.

Favorites?

Josephine Tey's Bratt Farrar, Miss Pym Disposes, and The Franchise Affair (Earlier POST) (Squidoo page I found HERE)
Dorothy Sayer's Lord Peter Whimsey series, especially Murder Must Advertise and Busman's Honeymoon  (Earlier POST quoting her on writing)
Lindsey Davis' Falco series, starting with Silver Pigs

Classic Mysteries

I've been rereading the golden-age British mysteries of Josephine Tey.  Much better written novels than Agatha Christie's and less high-falutin' than Dorothy Sayers's can get, though I love her Lord Peter Whimsey.  Tey wrote beautiful books - with the cleverest slip-in-the-backstory I've seen in Bratt Farrar.

My all-time top favorite - Bratt Farrar.  A tale of impersonation and mystery...  Is there a murder?  Which is the evil twin?  Very English.  With horses.  A wonderful novel.  Next in my affections come the other stand-alones: Miss Pym Disposes, The Franchise Affair, then any with her regular detective.  Her theory was that real evil-doers (not the exasperated spouse who bops their beloved with a bottle, but real evil) are motivated - or freed perhaps? unchained? - by a grossly swollen vanity, a no-one-matters-but-me ego.  The definition of a sociopath.  Having read the horrifying real-crime detection book The Murder Room, I suspect she has a point.

Readers interested in the controversy of Richard III will find The Daughter of Time fascinating.