For the past few months Kerrie from Mysteries in Paradise has hosted the Crime Fiction Alphabet meme which has been contributed to by a varied group of dedicated crime fiction fans. I’ve mentioned before that most memes don’t do a lot for me but I have enjoyed this one for a couple of reasons.
Selfishly it has made me trawl through my reading past and remember some delights (and a couple of clunkers). Having a giant TBR pile I tend to always be thinking about the next book so it has been pleasant to reflect on books past and to share with others some of the great books (and a couple of clunkers) that I read before I started blogging.
Secondly, reading other people’s contributions has added countless titles to my own reading list. Happily this hasn’t led to my complete financial ruin because other contributors have also shared their thoughts about older books and many of these have been available cheaply or at the library. For someone with poor impulse control it’s essential not to always be reading about great books that are (costly) new releases. Of the alphabet-inspired books that I’ve already read some have become new ‘keepers’ (Ariana Franklin’s Mistress of the Art of Death and Gene Kerrigan’s The Midnight Choir for example), others have entertained (Lindy Kelly’s Bold Blood) and challenged me (George Pelecanos‘ The Way Home) and many more glimmer at me from my TBR Shelves (including a couple of books by Simon Brett, Leif Davidsen’s The Serbian Dane, two books by Willian Deverell, The Ghostway by Tony Hillerman, The Irish Village Murder by Dicey Deere and Last Light by Alex Scarrow).
In homage to one of my favourite crime fiction authors, Sue Grafton, my contributions all discuss books with one word titles (with a couple of liberties taken for the pesky last letters of the alphabet):
Thanks for hosting the meme Kerrie.
And I was very pleased to have your contributions Bernadette. Maybe next week I’ll run Mr Linky for one last time and people can link their summary pages in.
Bernadette – Thanks for this summary. I hadn’t planned to do one, but you’ve inspired me….
Kerrie, I think it might be a great idea to put up another Mr. Linky. That way we can all use it as a good reference page. Thanks for the idea : ).
A very impressive list, Bernadette. Well done for sticking to your self-appointed task on the titles, even for those pesky ones!
Very impressive Bernadette. You are so discipline. Also sticking with suggested titles is such a hard thing to do, but you did it!