The case for Jamie (2018)

The Beautiful

Renée Ahdieh

2019 · 432 pages · 4 reviews

Others: Mostly negative

Magpie Murders

Anthony Horowitz

2016 · 283 pages · 2 reviews

Others: Overwhelmingly positive

From the New York Times bestselling author of Moriarty and Trigger Mortis, this fiendishly brilliant, riveting thriller weaves a classic whodunit worthy of Agatha Christie into a chilling, ingeniously original modern-day mystery. When editor Susan Ryeland is given the manuscript of Alan Conway's latest novel, she has no reason to think it will be much different from any of his others. After working with the bestselling crime writer for years, she's intimately familiar with his detective, Atticus Pund, who solves mysteries disturbing sleepy English villages. An homage to queens of classic British crime such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, Alan's traditional formula has proved hugely successful. So successful that Susan must continue to put up with his troubling behavior if she wants to keep her job. Conway's latest tale has Atticus Pund investigating a murder at Pye Hall, a local manor house. Yes, there are dead bodies and a host of intriguing suspects, but the more Susan reads, the more she's convinced that there is another story hidden in the pages of the manuscript: one of real-life jealousy, greed, ruthless ambition, and murder. Masterful, clever, and relentlessly suspenseful, Magpie Murders is a deviously dark take on vintage English crime fiction in which the reader becomes the detective.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Marisha Pessl

2006 · 514 pages · 3 reviews

Others: Mixed

A darkly funny coming-of-age novel and a richly plotted suspense tale told through the distinctive voice of its heroine, Blue van Meer. After a childhood moving from one academic outpost to another with her father (a man prone to aphorisms and meteoric affairs), Blue is clever, deadpan, and possessed of a vast lexicon of literary, political, philosophical, and scientific knowledge--and is quite the cinéaste to boot. In her final year of high school at the élite (and unusual) St. Gallway School in Stockton, North Carolina, Blue falls in with a charismatic group of friends and their captivating teacher, Hannah Schneider. But when the drowning of one of Hannah's friends and the shocking death of Hannah herself lead to a confluence of mysteries, Blue is left to make sense of it all with only her gimlet-eyed instincts and cultural references to guide--or misguide--her.--From publisher description.

The Game Is Afoot

Marvin Kaye

1994 · 512 pages · 1 review

Others: Positive

Summary (From the publisher): This long awaited volume finally brings to light several cases of the world's most renowned detective originally suppressed to avoid causing scandal and embarrassment to the Crown, to public figures, or to Sherlock Holmes himself. Now, finally, the truth is revealed about Holmes' exploits involving such figures as Ida Tarbell, Consuelo Vanderbilt, P.G. Wodehouse, and James McNeil Whistler. Related by diverse hands, including Watson, Inspector Lestrade, and Holmes himself, detailing untold incidents involving the Titanic, Holmes' rematch with Irene Adler, the childhoods of both Holmes and Watson, and one unfortunate result of Holmes' facility with disguise, this cornucopia of Sherlockiana will delight fans young and not-so-young. Contents: Acknowledgments Introduction Preliminary Ponderings Sherlock Holmes by Frederic Dorr Steele The Recollections of Captain Wilkie by Arthur Conan Doyle The Original of Sherlock Holmes by Dr. Harold Emery Jones Mr. Sherlock Holmes by Dr. Joseph Bell Early Parodies – Con Amore The Singular Adventure of the Unexpected Doorscraper by Kenneth Grahame The Adventure of the Two Collaborators by James M. Barrie The Mystery of Pinkham’s Diamond Stud by John Kendrick Bangs The Umbrosa Burglary by R.C. Lehmann A La Sherlock Holmes by Charles Loomis The Sign of the “400" by R.K. Munkittrick The Adventure of the Clothes-line by Carolyn Wells Sherlock Holmes Umpires Baseball Anonymous Six Classic Pastiches The Adventure of the Circular Room by August Derleth The Adventure of the Marked Man by Stuart Palmer The Strange Case of the Megatherium Thefts by S.C. Roberts The Adventure of the Unique Hamlet by Vincent Starrett The Enchanted Garden by H.F. Heard But Our Hero Was Not Dead by Manly Wade Wellman Scholarly Ponderings Sherlock Holmes and the Drood Mystery by Edmund Pearson In the Island of Uffa by Poul Anderson The Tibetan Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Amanda Russell The Histrionic Holmes by Marvin Kaye How Holmes Came to Play the Violin by Jacques Barzun Parodies Absurdes et Cruelles The Really Final Solution by Nick Pollotta The Unmasking of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Chapman The Succored Beauty by William B. Kahn The Adventure of the Second Swag by Luke Sharp An Irreducible Detective Story by Stephen Leacock The Adventures of Shamrock Jolnes by O. Henry The Stolen Cigar Case by Bret Harte A Letter from Mycroft Holmes by Jon White The Murder of Conan Doyle by Ray Russell The Adventure of the Conk-Singleton Papers by John Dickson Carr Journal of a Ghurka Physician by Capt. Daniel M. Pinkwater The Struldbrugg Reaction by John Sutherland New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes The Moriarty Gambit by Fritz Lieber The Adventure of the Missing Countess by Jon Koons The Gibraltar Letter by Sam Benady The Strange Case of the Tongue-Tied Tenor by Carole Buggé The Problem of the Purple Maculas by James C. Iraldi Our American Cousins by Roberta Rogow Pieces Problematical The Field Bazaar by Arthur Conan Doyle Sussex Interview by P.M. Stone From the Diary of Sherlock Holmes by Maurice Baring Mrs. Hudson Speaks by ZaSu Pitts The Adventure of the Bogle-Wolf by Anthony Boucher Sherlock Holmes in Oz by Ruth Berman The Sinister Cheesecake by Craig Shaw Gardner The Dilemma of the Distressed Savoyard by Crighton Sellars The Adventure of the Death-Fetch by Darrell Schweitzer The Theft of the Persian Slipper by Edward D. Hoch The Dynamics of an Asteroid by Robert Bloch ”Daydream” by Basil Rathbone Appendix I: Miscellaneous Notes Appendix II: Holmesiography Original title: The Game Is Afoot: Parodies, Pastiches and Ponderings of Sherlock Holmes

Murders in the Rue Morgue and Other Stories (Descent Into the Maelstrom / Mask of the Red Death / Murders in the Rue Morgue / Purloined Letter / Raven / Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade)

Edgar Allan Poe

1992 · 1 review

Others: Positive

Descent into the Maelstrom Mask of the Red Death Murders in the Rue Morgue Purloined Letter Raven Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade

The Unquiet Dead

Ausma Zehanat Khan

2015 · 352 pages · 1 review

Others: Positive

"Detective Esa Khattak is in the midst of his evening prayers when he receives a phone call asking that he and his partner, Detective Rachel Getty, look into the death of a local man who has fallen off a cliff. At first Christopher Drayton's death--which looks like an accident--doesn't seem to warrant a police investigation, especially not from Khattak and Rachel's team, which handles minority-sensitive cases. But it soon comes to light that Drayton might have been living under an assumed name, and he may not have been the upstanding Canadian citizen he appeared to be. In fact, he may have been a Bosnian war criminal with ties to the Srebrenica massacre of 1995. And if that's true, any number of people could have had reason to help him to his death. As Rachel and Khattak dig deeper into the life and death of Christopher Drayton, every question seems to lead only to more questions, and there are no easy answers. Did the specters of Srebrenica return to haunt Drayton at last, or had he been keeping secrets of an entirely different nature? Or, after all, did a man just fall to his death in a tragic accident? In her spellbinding debut, Ausma Zehanat Khan has written a complex and provocative story of loss, redemption, and the cost of justice that will linger with readers long after turning the final page"--