The Scarlet Letters by Ellery Queen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I love the Queen series. i just picked up another clump of them. This is one of them. However, this is not an example of the reason i picked up so many.

This Queen tale is waaaaaaay too prolonged with an involved MaGuffin that seems orderly enough, but gets monotonous quickly as little else happens involving, what appears to be, a domestic dispute. The story doesn’t make sense unless Queen jumps to too many assumptions. which is something he warns not to do in many of the Queen novels. This is a repeated inconsistency that is the only way the writers could link events, but a flimsy one and one that had me find the entire tale ridiculous.

Due to the prolonged trip through the alphabet, the few characters are very well identified. Odd that the few settings, that are repeated many times, did not have the detail they could have.

The ending is very unsatisfying considering all it took to get to the point. All proving this would have been a far better short story.

Bottom line: I don’t recommend this book. 5 out of 5 points.

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A Study in Terror by Ellery Queen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a great deal of fun! I love Ellery Queen and having this unorthodox way of presenting a Sherlock Holmes story within a Queen tale made a Queen book all the more fun! There is a bit of awkwardness about it all, but quite a change of pace for a Queen novel.

Apparently there were three authors involved. The two cousins who masquerade as Queen and the another who wrote the Holmes part of the book. The styles are obviously very different, but also well reflect the change of time period and location, as it should.

Seems to me the representation of the Holmes character gallery is extremely well done. The Queen characters are handled as the Queen characters are always.

Setting is far better rendered on the Holmes side. You can well feel the foggy, dreary setting.

I have not seen the film the book is based on, thought that is neither here nor there. The book story stand on it’s own without outside influence of other depictions.

Bottom line: i recommend this book. 7 of 10 points.

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Morse’s Greatest Mystery and Other Stories by Colin Dexter

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’m not usually a fan of a short story collection, but this one is outstanding. I also don’t give five stars lightly. I feel the overall book deserves them. I’ll add that not all may love this set of stories. Those who love real mysteries will love these. Those who love James Patterson or Sandra Brown are likely not to like them.

Dexter really has a flair for crafting a short mystery. No easy task. Sorry there is only one collection of short stories. Still hope for more from Dexter.

The tales in the book are all mysteries with great characters, stories and terrific writing.

Bottom line: I recommend the book!

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The Case of the Sleepwalker’s Niece by Erle Stanley Gardner

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This was the first of the Gardner books that I wasn’t crazy about. Seems to me that Gardner had the ending more in focus than building the rest of the book in a coherent manner. A lot of stretches of the imagination, especially involving plane flight schedules (recognizing this was written in the 1930s).

Also the characters weren’t as sharp as in other Gardner books. There are a number of twists that could leave a reader confused as to who is who.

The idea of the conclusion is sharp, but wonder if it could’ve been better presented for a dramatic touch.

Still this book is better than most and certainly better than the bulk of books written today. Though, I’d point to other Mason stories than this.

Bottom line: I don’t recommend this book.

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The Red House Mystery by A.A. Milne
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I an see why a.A. Milne didn’t see another mystery published. This one is a mighty stretch of reality that is poorly written and seems to have been written as the writer was thin king it all out.

The story opens well and i settled in with what I suspected a mystery in an English setting. Instead, I find myself, after the evil is done, slogging through, what seems, endless patter about what-might-have-happened, what-could-have-have-happened, who-did-it, who-didn’t, etc. All of this barely moving the story along at all for decades of pages.

Worse, the characters are never defined except for the beginning. Making this all worse involves two main characters who pretend to be Holmes and Watson. Seems Milne knew he had troubles defining characters, so he uses others to do it for him.

The solution is intellectually dishonest. Today would be impossible, but pretty hard to believe that such a mistake could have been made even in the 1920s.

Bottom line: I do not recommend this book.

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The Toff and the Deadly Parson by John Creasey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Am excellent mystery that will keep you guessing throughout. The writing is good, but for a contemporary American crowd, probably over their heads. Also, the contemporary American crowd are used to having a book written with someone connected to a church being the natural bad guy which will throw them as the book weaves around so many curves. Creasey crafted this well and it’s smartly written for an audience who is willing to pay attention to all that goes on. Too bad writers like Patterson can’t reach these heights.

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Encyclopedia Brown’s author, Donald J. Sobol, has died at 87. Wow, did his books become a must read for me from elementary school to adulthood. I graduated from Leroy Brown to Dr. Haledjian in Sobol’s ‘Two Minute Mysteries’. Loved how he baffled me in each story. It’s one reason why I get so frustrated with today’s “Mysteries” that are so very easy to figure out.

Here’s a mystery I never did figure out and i always found ironic: Just how do you pronounce ‘Haledjian’? I always took it in as Hal-dee-an. What do you all think?

Involving Encyclopedia Brown, I also enjoyed the illustrations of Leonard Shortall. Shortall did the cover to the left and all of the interior illustrations of the early part of the series. I believe his illustrations are still being used inside a recent publication I saw of one of the early books. Here’s a list I found of books he illustrated.

I was constantly checking the Encyclopedia Brown series out of Princeton Elementary School library in Orlando. When the Scholastic van started coming to the school, ‘Two Minute Mysteries’ was one of the first I bought for 75 cents. I still have it and the rest I have since purchased.

These books, I think, really had me looking a bit deeper into what was going on in life and greatly contributed to my love of philosophy. They also helped in getting me to be a bit difficult in just buying into anything that’s tossed at me. What was the ‘Rest of the Story’?

I’ll have to go through these mysteries again and see how they hold up to today’s mystery writers, like Patterson, Brown and the like.

Click here for more about Donald J. Sobol and his books.

Hit Man by Lawrence Block

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Block’s book is nearly a travel journal as the main character roams about doing his job and trying to figure out his place in life. As each trip is logged in another story starts within the book. The stories aren’t broken into specific named chapters. The overall book contains probably a dozen tales of the adventures of the character. I wonder if that was the original thought. To have a series of short stories for a magazine or some such. Overall it is very good. Well written. Well defined characters. The interaction of the main character and the main contact for his work is nearly magic. The writing there is simply superb.

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The Howard Hughes Affair by Stuart M. Kaminsky
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Nice to return to a solidly written story, after another bout with a current author that was left alone by a good editor. Kaminsky does move this one very, very fast. The plot is very good, the mystery great and the characters very well done. As usual, Kaminsky nails the dialogue of the separate characters. Also, if you are a nostalgia nut like me, you’ll love the appearances of the well-known during this 1940s setting. To some, I’m guessing, this all appears way too old fashioned. Cynics of this day might say it isn’t realistic to what was really happening at the time, as if they knew what was realistic at the time (We sure have a weird view of “realism” today). These Toby Peters novels are just very good mysteries that are also much fun to read. With the 500 page tombs drowning in excess being produced today, I think some have forgotten what a good book is.

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Always Say Goodbye by Stuart M. Kaminsky

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the first I’ve read of the Stuart Kaminsky series involving Lew Fonesca that otherwise takes place in Sarasota. This entry in the series, though, mostly takes place in Chicago as the main character looks for the murderer of his wife. The writing is well done. Especially in getting the Chicago dialogue to read true. There are a number of twists. One twist involving one character is especially well done. Also, this is not an overwritten novel as so many others are today.

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A rather varied collection read through the past few weeks. Ronald Kessler’s The Bureau is a follow-up to his earlier book ‘Inside the FBI’. It’s a very good history of this government department.

‘She Woke to Darkness’ is a Mike Shayne entry with Mike making a trip to New York. The difference is that most of the story is told through the eyes of Brett Halliday, A.K.A. David Dresser in real life. Not one of the best stories Cresser assembled. The bad guy is a bit too obvious.

Former Mayor Carl T. Langford’s 1976 book, ‘Hizzoner the Mayor is probably the best book I read this year and certainly is one of my favorites. Full of wit and wisdom, I’ve not read a book that has better to lay out the needs to be a politician and a leader. Langofrd, as is his style, doesn’t mess around and tells it like is it. It’s sad that it’s so hard to find that today.