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The new buzzy suspense book of the summer comes out on June 5th: Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. Flynn’s latest suspense novel is a dark, twisted psychological thriller that will have everybody talking. Gone Girl will keep readers guessing every step of the way. EarlyWord announced Gone Girl as one to watch, with rave reviews in [...]

Looking for a summertime mystery for your book group? Here’s the easiest book-sell I’ve ever done in a booktalk presentation, in the stacks, or to a teen. The Persian Pickle Club by Sandra Dallas,”I defy you to figure out who did it before the last page.” This homey and warm Depression-era mystery will appeal to [...]

Most book groups prefer to choose titles available in paperback in an effort to protect the budgets of their members. It’s a good policy, not only because it’s economical, but because sometimes brand new titles aren’t quite as good as the hype that surrounds them. The IndieNext list of book group choices recently available in [...]

For the last genre study that my Crime Fiction Book Discussion Group completed this cycle, I selected noir as the subgenre. For me, noir can be cut down to these essential elements:  the character screws up and dies. My benchmark book for noir was They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? by Horace McCoy, first published by [...]

Emily St. John Mandel writes literary stories with quiet mysteries at their core. Her books are perfect for readers who don’t consider themselves mystery readers or for readers you enjoy language and character. Mandel is so good at writing these lovely, fluid, melancholy stories about disaffected people adrift in life. Gavin Sasaki left Sebastian, Florida  [...]

A week ago I explored the best techniques for recommending books to others in a book group setting. Today I’d like to look at how well various institutions do in making suggestions, particularly recommendations based on a reader’s expressed preferences. At Williamsburg Regional Library, we’ve made our “Looking for a Good Book” service a point [...]

The statement I am about to make may be as reliable as Wikipedia to most librarians but I believe there is some confusion in the world of crime fiction as to what constitutes a work of Scandinavian fiction.  What is the definition of Scandinavia?  I believe it is the peninsula that includes the present countries [...]

Kevin Wilson’s The Family Fang is the story of two parents, Caleb and Camille Fang, who create performance art pieces that force people in malls or other public places to participate in chaotic situations that feel real and twist their concept of reality. When children Annie and Buster come along, they give them parts in [...]

If you’re wondering where all the publishers of Scandinavian mysteries are getting their scoop on the best novels to translate and ship across the pond, perhaps they’re looking here. Here’s a listing of five of the top awards given to Scandinavian writers of mysteries. Quite a few haven’t been translated, but as long as the [...]

Now in its second decade and with 12 books, C. J. Box’s Joe Pickett series has proven to be one of the mystery genre’s most dependable. Joe is a game warden (when he’s not on the outs with other government officials) working from little Saddlestring, Wyoming, where he has access to some of the wildest [...]

Edgar Allan Poe, the creator of the modern detective novel, has always been worthy of book discussions and it might be interesting for book groups to pair Poe’s “The Mystery of Marie Roget” with a nonfiction account of the actual crime, The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Invention of Murder [...]

I just finished Alison Bechdel’s new comic memoir, Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama, and can’t stop thinking about it. My book group discussed her previous comic (graphic novel) memoir, Fun Home, several years ago now and we found it rich for discussion, full of lush, complex themes and images. Nick DiMartino, a former [...]

Today is National Biography Day. On this day in 1763, Samuel Johnson had a meeting with John Boswell and a beautiful biography was born. Mystery writers have given the biography a bloody twist. Historical figures investigating crimes make for entertaining reading and hopefully even more entertaining discussion. There’s the built in topic of how accurate [...]

An important part of the book club experience is using what we learn from our fellow readers to find books that will suit us. But as book clubs succeed and fail in selecting or reviewing books collectively, individual members succeed and fail at the art of recommendation. It’s a subject worth exploration, and in this [...]

Have any of you BG Buzzers out there read The Lace Reader, by Brunonia Barry?  At my library, it’s classed as a “mystery,” although I noticed that on the cover, the publisher calls it a “novel.”  I’ve been puzzling over it, for a number of reasons, so I guess in that sense it is a [...]

I’ve just finished my first dip into John Dunning’s Cliff Janeway series with the opener Booked to Die. It’s a brisk, entertaining mystery with a sympathetic cop who doesn’t like the way his job is tapping into the dark side of his character.  He turns to work in the private sector, rubs elbows with well [...]

Fiction has been kind to the career of Sean Bean, who has perhaps appeared in more films adapted from novels than any other contemporary actor. You could easily theme an entire book group meeting around the great novels that have been made into films and series in which Bean figures prominently. Now he’s about to [...]

As our local crime fiction book discussion group continues its genre study of crime and mystery fiction, we find ourselves reaching the category of psychological suspense. In writing Make Mine a Mystery, I proposed the idea that the after effects of war has changed how readers approach death in fiction.  After WWI, my idea is that [...]

The Mystery Writers of America have announced their Edgar Awards for 2012 for the best writing from 2011.  They are: BEST NOVEL:  Gone by Mo Hayder (Grove/Atlantic – Atlantic Monthly Press) Nominees:  The Ranger by Ace Atkins (Penguin Group USA – G.P. Putnam’s Sons);  The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino (Minotaur Books);  1222 [...]

“…This has been one of them.” That’s the famous line that concludes the narration of the noir classic, The Naked City, and it came to mind twice recently. The first was when I came across a recent post on Flavorwire that identified ten books that star cities. It’s a list with mostly unexpected, recent choices [...]