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Dec 6, 2024 | 
thesomervilletimes.com | Dennis Fischman |Jenn McKinlay
By Dennis FischmanCan you separate what you feel about the author from what you think about the book? That’s a question that comes up throughout literary history. Can you read Ezra Pound’s poetry knowing about his fascist sympathies? What about classic mystery writers like Dorothy Sayers and her casual slurs aimed at Jews, Blacks, and Italians?
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Oct 19, 2024 | 
thesomervilletimes.com | Dennis Fischman
By Dennis FischmanIf you’ve read any detective fiction at all, you’ve heard of Sherlock Holmes. You’ve probably made the acquaintance of Hercule Poirot. But do you know Lord Peter Wimsey? If not, you are in for a treat. Picture a foppish looking British aristocrat, sporting a monocle.
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Sep 27, 2024 | 
thesomervilletimes.com | Dennis Fischman
By Dennis FischmanYou might think that murder is a purely adult subject, but you’d be mistaken. An increasing number of mysteries books are featuring high school students (like the five held in detention in One of Us is Lying, teenagers (Ingrid Levin-Hill in Down the Rabbit Hole, or even tweens (like the title character in Drew Leclair Gets a Clue, in which it’s character assassination, not literal murder—but when you’re twelve, the stakes seem just as high!).
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Sep 6, 2024 | 
thesomervilletimes.com | Dennis Fischman
By Dennis FischmanIt’s quite a feat to write a historically accurate novel set in ancient times and make it as much fun as this one. Marcus Didius Falco is an “informant,” or private investigator, working in first century Rome. He’s been described as “Roman Emperor Vespasian’s smart-aleck PI.” To keep body and soul together, Falco moves around Rome’s empire, working for hire, even in savage places like Roman Britain.
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Aug 23, 2024 | 
thesomervilletimes.com | Dennis Fischman
By Dennis FischmanThe epistolary novel is a story that’s told mostly or entirely in correspondence between two people or more. It’s a classic genre, with examples as old as Pamela (1740) and Frankenstein (1818) and much more recently, The Color Purple (1982) and The White Tiger (2008). There have even been murder mysteries in this format: think The Documents in the Case by the classic mystery writer Dorothy Sayers (better known for her series starring Lord Peter Wimsey).
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Aug 9, 2024 | 
thesomervilletimes.com | Dennis Fischman |Jacqueline Winspear
By Dennis FischmanIf you picked up this book and haven’t read any Maisie Dobbs novels before, do not worry: Jacqueline Winspear makes a point of explaining the characters, their relationships, and some of their past history each time. In some cases, it comes up in dialogue; in others, in narration; in yet others, by implication, but it’s easy to follow.
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Jul 26, 2024 | 
thesomervilletimes.com | Dennis Fischman |Tana French
By Dennis FischmanIn her Dublin Murder Squad books, Tana French did the literary equivalent of lighting a candle from a candle: a minor character in Book 1 would turn up as the central figure of Book 2, and so on. The Somerville Public Library Mystery Book Club liked her writing so much, we unofficially dubbed ourselves the Boston Murder Squad!Toward the end of the series, French took a new tack, following Detective Antoinette Conway for the last two entries.
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Jul 5, 2024 | 
thesomervilletimes.com | Dennis Fischman
By Dennis FischmanAre you going on vacation this summer? Why not do what I do, and read a murder mystery set in that location before heading out? Back in 2017, my wife and I were planning to meet some old friends of hers in the wonderful island of Key West, Florida. To get the feel of the place, I did read some serious fiction – Hemingway not only wrote about Key West, he had a house there which is now run for the benefit of the descendants of his pet cats! – and some travel books.
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Jun 14, 2024 | 
thesomervilletimes.com | Dennis Fischman
By Dennis FischmanIn 2019, Laura Beretsky (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/46712004.Laura_Beretsky) was filling out a job application, and she had to decide whether to check the box for people with disabilities. Laura had had epilepsy for years, and in 2014, she had undergone two brain surgeries to put her seizures in the rearview mirror. She could have left that disability box unchecked: to avoid explanations and escape the stigma that her new employer might attach to people like her.
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May 31, 2024 | 
thesomervilletimes.com | Dennis Fischman
By Dennis FischmanIt’s strange that there’s a whole genre of mystery we call the “Nordic noir.” Scandinavia consists of six or eight different countries, after all, and we wouldn’t lump Miss Marple, Sherlock Holmes, Guido Brunetti, and Jimmy Perez together and call them “European detectives.”Yet authors from Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland have carved out their own swathe in the mystery landscape in the last few decades.
