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🔎 If you like mysteries with dapper gentlemen sleuths, vintage CSI, and Golden Age fiction with themes that still resonate today, you’ll enjoy The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy L. Sayers.🎩 Lord Peter Wimsey is the epitome of the dapper gentleman sleuth. He hides his sharp intellect under a foppish and sometimes silly manner. In many ways, he’s a 1920s update to The Scarlet Pimpernel, a mystery-solving Sir Percy Blakeney.☠️ When a veteran of the Great War dies, Wimsey is asked to look into the time of death, a simple matter that turns complex as a murder is revealed. ⚡️ From shell shock (what we’d call PTSD) to the shifting cultural mores, impacts of the Great War reverberate throughout the book. There is also a look at crime scene forensics, 1920s style.🕵️‍♂️ Read-alike recommendations include more books with gentlemen sleuths as well as my own book with that explores shell shock, Murder in Black Tie. ❓Have you read any Dorothy L. Sayers? 

🏛Take “Downton Abbey,” add a lady interested in science who becomes involved in a murder mystery, and you’d have “Poison at Pemberton Hall” by Fran Smith. 🧪As Vita Carew pursues the murderer, the book considers some serious questions about education (and obstacles women encountered in 1903), the perceptions of beauty, and beauty versus brains. Thanks to Vita’s dry wit, the story has a light, fun tone. I was rooting for Vita to catch the culprit and pursue her dreams.📖Read-alike recommendations include mysteries with female scientists/sleuths and more Edwardian mysteries.❓What are your favorite Edwardian mysteries?

🧐If you every wished for a mashup of Jane Austen’s Catherine Moreland from Northanger Abbey and a Christie-type shipboard murder, you’ll want to check out “Death in a Deck Chair” by K.K. Beck.🕯While “Death in a Deck Chair” doesn’t have gothic overtones or take place at an abbey, it does feature Iris Cooper, a plain-Jane kind of heroine similar to Catherine Moreland.🚢It’s the 1920s and Catherine is on an Atlantic crossing when one of the passengers is murdered. Class, generational, and cultural conflicts abound among the diverse passengers on the ship, which is a perfect closed circle mystery setting. 📖Read-alike recommendations include more ship-board mysteries (historical and contemporary settings) as well as another “plain Jane” mystery protagonist.❓What is your favorite “average Jane” mystery?

Who wouldn’t want to visit a library made up of first editions from Golden Age authors? That’s the premise of The First Edition Library series by Marty Wingate. Haley is a curator at the unique private library in Bath. The third book in the series, “The Librarian Always Rings Twice” delves into the fun Books About Books trope. It’s a story rich in layers with mysteries in the main storyline as well as in the story within the story.Read-alike recommendations include contemporary cozies by Martie Wingate, books set in Bath UK, and books about books.What’s your favorite book or series about books?

🗝 Locked rooms, secret staircases, and a family curse–-three things a mystery reader can’t resist! 🔎Join me as I delve into Gigi Pandian’s modern day locked room mystery, "Under Lock and Skeleton Key." With plenty of nods to Golden Age mysteries, this book will appeal to fans of classic crime as well as contemporary traditional mysteries.📚Read-alike suggestions include more locked room mysteries as well as multi-cultural protagonists.❓Have you read any other books featuring magicians?

Do you have a fondness for lady scientists of the early 20th century who encounter mysteries? Then you'll want to read “A Botanist's Guide to Parties and Poisons” by Kate Khavari. 🔬Research assistant Saffron Everleigh wants to follow in her father's footsteps and teach botany at University College London, but a poisoning threatens to upset her plans. Besides the gorgeous cover, the exploration of the impacts of The Great War along with the academic setting made this book irresistible. And did I mention the characters are planning for a research trip to the Amazon? 🦜Read-alike suggestions include other academic mysteries as well as gardening mysteries. 🔎

Do you enjoy enjoy the “Upstairs, Downstairs” contrasts of Downton Abbey, but wish it had the added element of a murder mystery? Then you’ll want to check out "Murder at Mallowan Hall" by Colleen Cambridge, which features a mashup of fiction and real life as it considers the the question, "What if Agatha Christie’s housekeeper had to solve a murder?" My read-a-like book recommendations include lists of country home mysteries, “Upstairs, Downstairs” mysteries, and historical figures as sleuths.

If you’d like a fresh take on 1920s historical mysteries, check out “The Bangalore Detectives Club” by Harini Nagendra, which takes readers to India. Newly married to a doctor, Kaveri is juggling her own ambitions to get a degree in mathematics with society’s pressure to be a good wife. When a murder occurs, Kaveri is compelled to investiagate. Besides catching the culprit, she also creates a unique position for herself in her new world.

If you enjoy eccentric sleuths of a certain age, crosswords, and ensemble cast mysteries, you'll want to check out The Marlow Murder Club. Seventy-seven year old Judith Potts is just fine on her own, thank you very much. That is, until she overhears a murder. Her questions bring her into contact with two women who are quite different from her. The three ladies set out to discover the truth and find friendship along the way. If you're a fan of The Thursday Murder Club, The Marlow Murder Club is a read-alike. 

Mystery Books Podcast is back with a new season of spoiler-free discussions of mystery fiction along with “read-alike” book recommendations to keep your TBR (to be read) pile stocked. 🔎📚✨ 

We return to Singapore for “Revenge in Rubies” by A. M. Stuart, but this time we're seeing things through the British Colonial perspective. The 1910s are a bit of an underserved time period for historical readers, so if you're fond of books set during the Edwardian era you'll want to check this novel with a sleuthing couple. However, this time the pairing is more platonic than romantic (at least for now).

Travel to romantic Hawaii in the 1920s for Charlie Chan's first case in The House Without a Key by Earl Derr Biggers. Chan’s "Watson" is a stuffy Bostonian who thaws out in the tropics. We have another exotic locale for a murder plus a black sheep victim trope along with something a bit different from the usual love triangle subplot— a love rectangle. 

If you want a look at a little-known aspect of World War II, check out the historical mystery "Olive Bright, Pigeoneer" by Stephanie Graves. It's got an English village full of quirky characters, a romantic subplot with a pretend relationship, and the classic trope of a name spoken as the victim dies. Poirot references also abound! 

If you like to experience other cultures through reading, you'll enjoy The Mimosa Tree Mystery. Ovidia Yu gives us a look at Singapore in the 1930s during the Japanese occupation. Her brainy young female protagonist must figure out not only codes and ciphers but also her place in society.

Murder, Mystery, and . . . Subtitles! I've discovered two foregin language TV shows, Crimes of Passion and The Art of Crime. Find out how the shows work in hints of Agatha Christie, Jurassic Park Syndrome, tension triangles, lost Old Masters, and the always popular tropes of crime in beautiful locations. One is a mid-century modern mystery (think Mad Men, but with murder). The other is art history and mystery.

Mix together a World War II setting and a heist story, and you’ve got the very entertaining novel, A Peculiar Combination by Ashley Weaver. This book has so many twists on tropes--cat burglars, Cinderella, and opposites attract, to name just a few. Plus, a safecracker protagonist torn between loyalty and revenge. So much to unlock! See what I did there? :) 

If you have a soft spot for rather dense sidekicks and you miss detectives from the 1920s, you'll enjoy The Sloane Square Mystery, a novel from one of Golden Age fiction's prolific writers, Herbert Adams. Published in 1925, The Sloane Square Mystery gives us a look at how the Bright Young People lived in High Society and how they handled the stress of the Great War. Plus we get a look at a well-rounded female secondary character who embodies the Plucky Young Woman trope.

The Thursday Murder Club was the feel-good hit of 2020—and we certainly needed that in 2020! I think the novel is also an example of a new type of subgenre, upscale mystery book club fiction. Join me for a look at this new subgenre, plus an exploration of the Gang of Misfits trope and what it all has to do with yet another possible new trope, retirement club fiction. #SoManyTropes

Mystery Books Podcast is back (finally!) with Season Two. 😀🔎📚

Are you fond of a jolly little Christmas mystery? I certainly am. Join me for a look at the inspiration and research behind Murder on a Midnight Clear, a 1920s Christmas mystery.I can’t pass up a mystery set at a snowbound country estate, so that’s exactly the situation I put my characters in for the sixth book in the High Society Lady Detective series. In this episode I delve into the wonderful world of vintage luggage, American slang from the 1920s, and my research trip to London and what it has to do with a world-wide lockdown.