My wife tells me the Internet needs a place to find short reviews of the kinds of books she likes, so this blog will be dedicated to exactly that: brief reviews of mystery novels in all their forms (detectives and police procedurals, thrillers, whodunnits, etc). I aim to tell the reader about pace & characterization (be warned – I think the whole angst-ridden, alcoholic (or other addictive type), moody, detective is overdone, and don't expect me to review two of those by the same author), and most particularly: plot.
To my mind, a mystery needs three things: a crime; a protagonist who will try to solve the crime; and an orderly sequence of events and discoveries by which our hero derives the solution (or doesn't! Occasionally, I've read a good mystery that is never solved – at least by the protagonist). I can't abide mysteries where the detective muddles along for 300 pages, only to have the solution delivered by a whopping coincidence.
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