Today on The Point we talked about mysteries! If you missed the show, you can listen online. By the way, the great photo that WCAI used to illustrate the radio show was taken from the back cover of Killer Verse: poems of murder and mayhem. Jennifer Gaines of the Woods Hole Library (and enthusiastic mystery reader) joined Mindy Todd and Jill Erickson for a lively discussion on what a mystery is and why one kind of mystery appeals to one person and not another, not to mention the plight of a library cataloger trying to decide where to SHELVE a novel that might be a mystery and might not.

Jennifer asked if we could post our mystery lists, and they are now posted! The lists include Stand-Alone Mysteries, Mystery Series Set in Foreign Cultures, and Mysteries Set in the United States.

I mentioned the Twitter conversation with Neil Gaiman‘s twitter followers, which began here, and then continued over here. And thus began a cataloging conversation for the ages between an international world of public and academic librarians, and just readers who love Neil Gaiman. As Susan Wyndham commented: “Great question, great discussion. Can we have librarians unleash Dewey knowledge every week? Are there other tricky books?” To which Mr. Gaiman wrote: “probably another question for the librarians.” The conversation itself surrounded Gaiman’s newest book Norse Mythology,  and you will see in the link that we have decided to put one copy in fiction and one copy in non-fiction.

But I digress! The real discussion was about how deeply librarians care about where to put mysteries, and thus what IS a mystery, and also some great books about mysteries. The list of books discussed are below. We hope you enjoyed the show! We did!

Jennifer’s Picks

MYSTERIES, American in which winter weather figures heavily:

William Kent  Krueger:  character Cork O’Connor in Minnesota;

Julia Spencer-Fleming:    “novels of faith, murder, and suspense” Characters Rev’d Clare Ferguson & police Chief  Russ Van Alstyne, upstate New York, town in the farm and factory land nestled against the Adirondacks, In the Bleak Mid-Winter, etc.

MYSTERIES, Canadian:

Louise Penny: province of Quebec, village of Three Pines

MYSTERIES/Thrillers, Scandinavian Noir

(Sweden) Hennig Mankell, Kurt Wallender series; Steig Larsson, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, etc.

(Norway) Jo Nesbo;  Karin Fossum

(Iceland) Arnaldur Indridason

(Denmark) Peter Høeg , Smilla’s Sense of Snow

MYSTERIES, Travel Destinations

Cara Black: Paris

Martin Walker: South of France, the Dordogne with his Bruno, Chief of Police

Donna Leon: Venice

Janwillem Van de Wetering: Amsterdam

MYSTERIES, crossed with historical fiction

Jacqueline Winspear: Maisie Dobbs, mostly WW1, English nurse

Todd, Charles: Bess Crawford, WW1 battlefield English nurse (also Inspector Rutledge) “vivid period mystery series” (New York Times Book Review)

Kuhns, Eleanor: Will Rees, weaver, Shaker communities, 1790’s

King, Laurie R.: Mary Russell/ Sherlock Holmes

MYSTERIES, Cape Cod and the Islands  There are lots, but these are the ones we talked about:

Craig, Philip:  The Vineyard, fishing derby, Z

Phoebe Atwood Taylor, Cape Cod in the 1920’s, sleuth Asey Mayo charges along the sandy back roads of the Cape in his roadster

MYSTERY, LIBRARIES (who knew?)

Jenn McKinlay: Due or Die

Jill’s Picks

The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Mystery by John Charles, Candace Clark, Joanne Hamilton-Selway, and Joanna Morrison. (See how many people it takes to describe what a mystery is!)

The Encyclopedia of Murder and Mystery by Bruce F. Murphy

Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes by Michael Sims

On Conan Doyle or, The Whole Art of Storytelling by Michael Dirda

Buried Angels by Camilla Lackberg (And the Wellfleet copy is back! And copy should be available very soon!)

Killer Verse: poems of murder and mayhem edited by Harold Schechter and Kurt Brown

Pistols and Petticoats: 175 years of lady detectives in fact and fiction by Erika Janik

Women Crime Writers. Four Suspense Novels of the 1940s edited by Sarah Weinman

Women Crime Writers. Four Suspense Novels of the 1950s edited by Sarah Weinman

The Arvon Book of Crime and Thriller Writing by Michelle Spring and Laurie R. King

The Strand Magazine (Feb.-May 2016 issue has interview with Mark Gatiss, co-creator of Sherlock.)

Listener Picks

Louise Penny mysteries. The first one in the series is Still Life.

Michael Connelly mysteries. The first one in the series is The Black Echo.

Mindy Todd and I were delighted to have author Jacquelyn Mitchard join us on WCAI this morning to talk about books having to do with money. Thanks for all our listener suggestions as well!

Jackie’s Picks

Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty by Ramonda Ausubel

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Commonwealth by Ann Patchett

Hillbilly Elegy: a memoir of a family and culture in crisis by J. D. Vance

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

The Swans of Fifth Avenue by Melanie Benjamin

Negroland: a memoir by Margo Jefferson

Minimalism: how to de-clutter, de-stress and simplify your life with simple living by Simeon Lindstrom

Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (also suggested by listener)

Jill’s Picks

The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis by Lydia Davis Try Finances, Money, For Sixty Cents. There is also a story called Cape Cod Diary.

Shapinsky’s Karma, Boggs’s Bills, and other true-life tales by Lawrence Weschler

Wampum and the origins of American Money by Marc Shell

Payback: debt and the shadow side of wealth by Margaret Atwood

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, translated by Lydia Davis

The Diary of Virginia Woolf by Virginia Woolf, edited by Anne Olivier Bell

Daniel Deronda by George Eliot

Mind Over Money: the psychology of money and how to use it better by Claudia Hammond

Origami with Dollar Bills & Paper Airplanes with Dollar Bills by Duy Nguyen

Plotto: the master book of all plots by William Wallace Cook

Listener Suggestions

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Father Struck it Rich by Evalyn Walsh McLean. Available in the Internet Archive!

Travis McGee series by John D. MacDonald. The first book in the series is The Deep Blue Good-By.