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 and/or realistic was the author in depicting the life, personality, and times of the investigating luminary. Not to mention the methods that are used to solve the puzzle.

If you’re looking for some historical mysteries featuring real characters try one of these titles, a scant few considering how many more are out there.

The Pale Blue Eye by Louis Bayard features a young Edgar Allan Poe, assisting a retired New York City detective who takes a fatherly interest in the moody young alcoholic with poetic tendencies. The two men are investigating the murder and dismemberment of a cadet at West Point.

The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl features a cadre of American scholars, Henry W. Longfellow, James Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and J.T. Fields, all of them Dante scholars. The young band of intellectuals are investigating a serial killer who is using Dante’s Inferno as inspiration for his murders.

The Escape Artist by Ed Ifkovic features a young Edna Ferber before she became a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Edna is a girl reporter with the lucky break to interview Harry Houdini during a visit to his small home town. After the body of a young woman is discovered, Edna and Harry team up to solve the crime.

Capote in Kansas: A Ghost Story by Kim Powers features the death bed confession of Truman Capote as he telephones his long-time friend Harper Lee and they discuss their shared experience involving the Clutter family and their estrangement over Lee’s classic novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. A literary mystery.

Midnight Fires: A Mystery with Mary Wollstonecraft by Nancy Means Wright. This isn’t the Mary of Frankenstein fame, but her mother, a staunch defender of the oppressed and advocate for women’s rights. Before she became notorious for her outspoken views, Mary was a governess. In this fictionalized account, she investigates the murder of an illegitimate member of the local aristocracy.

There are also series featuring Jane Austen, Louisa May Alcott, Beatrix Potter, Charles Dickens, and Charlotte Bronte, just to name a very few. Be sure to bring along a biography of the “investigator” for fun fact checking during discussion.

Sometimes suggestions are artful. When a match is made, lights going off in the potential reader’s eyes: “I like books about that subject. And in that setting! And those kind of characters!” When it’s done right, the potential reader latches onto the book without anyone saying directly, “I think that you should read this book.”

But sadly, many recommendations are made badly. Like the gift giver picking presents that he or she wants, not what recipients might like, an overenthusiastic reader can push a book on someone who’s clearly uncomfortable with what’s being offered. The victim of such white elephants is placed in the awkward position of being perceived as rude in rejecting the unwanted gift or having to read and report on a book that there’s not much hope he or she will ever appreciate. Neither scenario is pretty.

When the urge comes to recommend your newest favorite, take a step back. As generously motivated as the thought is, you won’t make friends by trying to force the book into the hands of the first reader who says hello. There are more reasons why this will go wrong than space to explore them in this post. Here’s the better way:

First, talk about the book to the full group, instead of cornering an individual. If your group doesn’t include time to talk about side reading, consider adding it to at least some of your meetings. It’s fun, and it makes a better forum than forcing readers to corner each other before, after, or during a refreshment break when they’d rather be socializing. If a book is worth promoting, sing its praises to everyone at once. This avoids the awkward overstep–all of the unknowable reasons that a particular reader might have for not wanting to take on a “gift” at the moment it’s offered.

The most important thing to remember when recommending (and the same idea is worth keeping in mind as we review books in groups, too) is that reading is a subjective experience. Even the greatest books will not please every reader or make a good fit with their current reading needs. Instead of thinking about quality as an absolute and single measure, as a thumbs-up-or-down review, it’s better to  divide focus, identifying all of the aspects of a book (in librarianship, we call them appeal factors) that might make a particular reader like it.

By all means sell the book, but not with generics: “It’s the best book ever,” “The writing is fantastic,” or “It’s a real page-turner.” Just as good discussion gets into specifics, so should your suggestion. Don’t spend much time recounting plot details either, keep that to a bare minimum. Think instead in terms of “readers who like _______ will really love this book.” That blank can be filled in many ways: particular subject matters; the different ways in which writers use language; settings in place or time that particular readers find fascinating; characters who are like themselves or of a type that they find intriguing; books paced in a certain way; books that resemble other popular titles… the list of potential appeals is almost endless, and identifying the important ones for the book that you think others should try is the core of the art of recommendation.

Finally, remember that there is a flip side: qualities or content that will make it difficult for certain readers to enjoy the book. Don’t put as much energy into this part of the review or recommendation as you give to the positives, and don’t be too prudish, but include a gentle warning if the book takes strong political or religious positions, includes strong language, violence or sexuality, or uses a style that some readers find difficult to enjoy, such as a plethora of big words, strongly colloquial speech, non-linear plotting or frequent switches in narrators, unlikable or untrustworthy protagonists, black humor, or minimalism that requires extensive reading between the lines. In identifying these elements, don’t judge. Many people like books with each of the qualities just mentioned, so just mention that they are there, don’t apologize for their presence.

With a little practice, you can become a great matchmaker between books and readers, a master of the art of recommendation. Next week, I’ll look at how libraries, online booksellers, and book social media sites have approached the practice of recommendation.

To begin with, the narrator for a large share of the book is beyond unreliable — she’s mentally unbalanced!  She sees dead people, although she doesn’t realize that’s what is happening.   After a while, one asks — is she dreaming or hallucinating?  Some of the story isn’t told from her point of view, but follows a police officer that she’s attracted to.  Turns out he’s a recovering alcoholic, as is her former boyfriend, who keeps popping up at inconvenient times to cause problems.  More unreliable folks.

In addition to switching abruptly from a first-person narrator and a third-person account, the book moves back and forth in time; most of it is set in Salem, Massachusetts (there’s a witchcraft theme), but some scenes take place in California.  All of this adds to the mystery, as one is reading along, and then there’s the issue of character names: the heroine is named Sophya but goes by Towner, and she has a twin sister (raised by her aunt and uncle instead of her mother) called Lyndley, but who we later find out is really named Lyndsey.  On top of this, we have characters named Eva and Emma, as well as Ann, Anya, and Angela.  Are you confused yet?

The primary mystery seems to be the disappearance of Towner’s beloved great-aunt Eva (who may be dead), but there’s also a second disappearance — of a troubled teenager named Angela, who may be having an illicit relationship with Towner’s uncle, a religious fanatic named Cal.  Rafferty, the policeman Towner is dating, is trying to solve the mystery of the two disappearing women, but he doesn’t go about it in the typical manner of an investigator;  he’d rather watch the sun go down while eating chop suey sandwiches.

Also puzzling are the quotes from something called The Lace Reader’s Guide that start off each section of the book as well as many of the 33 individual chapters.  Quotes such as “The Reader must be certain, as she asks the question, that the Seeker is prepared to receive the answer.”   I presume these are presented to provide a certain texture to the story, but although there are “lace readers” in the tale, “lace reading” doesn’t really figure in the development of the plot or the solution to any mystery.

Fellow authors call The Lace Reader “astonishing” and “evocative” in quotes that appear on the back cover, and Publishers Weekly claims the book will “keep readers captivated all the way through.”  Well, I’m not sure I agree.  I did finish the book, but I’m uncertain that all the mysteries were cleared up by the time I turned the last page.  Maybe I need to attend a discussion of the book, to ask all the questions that came to mind as I was reading and find out what other readers thought.

In this case, however, the background framing device makes all the difference. The trade that lures tough guy Janeway away from policework is bookselling. He opens a shop, highlights many aspects of book collecting, notes the behaviors of bookish people, and opines on several authors. The first victim is a book scout, a ne’er-do-well type whom Janeway is convinced was killed because of some motive related to his occupation.

This frame makes this mystery prime material for a book group, either on its own, or as part of a meeting focused on bookshops and book collectors. It would pair well with nonfiction titles like the works of Nicholas Basbanes, Lewis Goldstone or Alberto Manguel, Lewis Buzbee’s The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop, Allison Hoover Bartlett’s The Man Who Loved Books Too Much, Helene Hanff’s 84 Charing Cross Road or Larry McMurtry’s Books: a Memoir. Some groups might even have a book seller or an amateur collector among their numbers who would like to talk a bit about some of their own book adventures.

Dunning’s biography also has several hooks on which to hang discussion. The first is that Dunning has made himself an advocate for ADD, a condition that in his case wasn’t diagnosed until adulthood and made his early years difficult.

Reality also mirrors fiction in this case, as at one point he gave up writing to open his own bookshop, the Old Algonquin in East Denver. Dunning closed that shortly after starting the Janeway series, moving his bookselling practice online as many dealers have.

Finally, fans of the series may have wondered what happened to Dunning and his hero Janeway, who hasn’t been featured since the series’ 5th entry, 2006′s The Bookwoman’s Last Fling. Dunning was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor that year, and its removal cost him an eye and has left him in a long recovery. Readers should wish him well as he works toward returning to writing.

Bean first came to the attention of film buffs as the villain in the adaptation of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan thriller, Patriot Games.

Historical fiction fans perhaps knew him first as Sharpe, the hero of films from fourteen well-loved Bernard Cornwell novels set in the era of the Napoleonic Wars in Spain.

Less known in the U.S. are several adaptations of classics. Try him in 1990′s Lorna Doone, 1993′s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, or his turn as Count Vronsky in the 1997 version of Anna Karenina. These aren’t marvelous, but they’re serviceable, and will make you want to read the great books that inspired them.

Those who like works for young readers might check out Bean as Farmer Grey in 1994′s Black Beauty, as Zeus in the adaptation of Rick Riordan’s The Lightning Thief, or wait for his turn as Smee in the forthcoming Pan which will drastically re-imagine the J. M. Barrie classic.

Of course Bean’s fame was truly cemented by turns in two fantasy masterworks. He was a memorable Boromir in the film of The Fellowship of the Ring and recently raised cries of distress among those who loved him in HBO’s Game of Thrones and hadn’t read George R. R. Martin’s book.

If romance is your thing, you could even catch him in the miniseries based on Alexandra Ripley’s Gone with the Wind sequel, Scarlett, although in this case you’d be better served by re-reading or re-watching the works that inspired them.

Now you can add crime fiction to Bean’s list. Bean has signed to play South African Detective Benny Griessel in a film based on Deon Meyer’s Devil’s Peak trilogy. If you love the books, which have received starred reviews in Booklist, you’ll be happy that they’re about to get much better known. If you love Sean Bean, starting reading now to finish the trilogy before the film. The three books are Devil’s Peak, Thirteen Hours, and the forthcoming 7 Days.

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 people may have come to believe that the death of an individual might not have any meaning when so many are killed in senseless battles in trenches.  I would like to think that the creation of detectives who did care about the death of an individual, such as the great thinking detectives in the classic puzzle novels of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, may have restored people’s faith.

After the use of atomic weapons in WWII, my theory is that people again began to have doubts about the deaths of individuals.  When so may can be killed so quickly and so impersonally, does the death of an individual matter at all?  A second layer of doubt points back at the persons causing the death:  how could this happen.? In relationship to crime fiction, the question is simply one of why rather than how.

Although arguments could certainly be made for works of fiction by James M. Cain (and I even like to point to The Grapes of Wrath occasionally), I like to use Patricia Highsmith as the benchmark author of psychological suspense.  Her first novel, Strangers on a Train (1950) was the book we read and it fulfills all the requirements of setting the stage for future writers, establishing a crime with psychological underpinnings as the motive, and developing characters who are disturbingly engaging.  The discussion on this title was lively and thorough, taking almost too much time because we had a contemporary novel to discuss this night as well.  (Do not forget to encourage readers to watch the excellent Alfred Hitchcock movie with the same title, even if Hitchcock changed a few things for cinematic reasons).

The basic plot of Strangers on a Train is that an architect named Guy Haines, who is having relationship issues, is traveling by train to confront his wife Miriam in Metcalf, Texas, when he encounters a man named Charles Bruno.  Bruno initiates a conversation that eventually leads to the suggestion that if Charles kills Miriam for Guy, Guy should kill Charles’ father for him.  Sensible people would run.  People in a psychological suspense novel are not sensible.

Our contemporary novel was The Chameleon’s Shadow (2008)by Minette Walters.  Walters has been dazzling our crime book discussion for years as we have been reading one of her novels each semester, including one of my “sure bet” book discussion selections, the totally creepy The Sculptress (1993).

This novel features Lt. Charles Acland, a severely damaged Iraq war veteran who through a series of Jungian synchronicity ends up the focus of a police investigation into the murders of street people.  In discussion these two titles together, it was interesting to see how issues of self-image, sexual relations, sexual orientation, physical illness and overbearing mothers were present in both books.

Minette Walters has twelve novels that are the best psychological suspense written since Cain and Highsmith.  Any of her titles will engage and enrage any book discussion that attempts to discuss them, and The Chameleon’s Shadow was no exception.  Our group stayed overtime to allow all aspects of the two books to be discussed and everyone went home with a better understanding of why the characters behaved the way they did.

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 by Anne Holt (Simon & Schuster – Scribner);  Field Gray by Philip Kerr (Penguin Group USA – G.P. Putnam’s Sons – Marion Wood Books)

BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR:  Bent Road by Lori Roy (Penguin Group USA – Dutton)

Nominees:  Red on Red by Edward Conlon (Random House Publishing Group – Spiegel & Grau);  Last to Fold by David Duffy (Thomas Dunne Books);  All Cry Chaos by Leonard Rosen (The Permanent Press);  Purgatory Chasm by Steve Ulfelder (Minotaur Books – Thomas Dunne Books)

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL:  The Company Man by Robert Jackson Bennett (Hachette Book Group – Orbit Books)

Nominees:  The Faces of Angels by Lucretia Grindle (Felony & Mayhem Press);  The Dog Sox by Russell Hill (Pleasure Boat Studio – Caravel Mystery Books);  Death of the Mantis by Michael Stanley (HarperCollins Publishers – Harper Paperbacks);  Vienna Twilight by Frank Tallis (Random House Trade Paperbacks)

BEST FACT CRIME:

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard (Random House – Doubleday)

Nominees:  The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City and Sparked the Tabloid Wars by Paul Collins (Crown Publishing); The Savage City: Race, Murder, and a Generation on the Edge by T.J. English (HarperCollins – William Morrow);  Girl, Wanted: The Chase for Sarah Pender by Steve Miller (Penguin Group USA – Berkley);  The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Imposter by Mark Seal (Penguin Group USA – Viking)

BEST JUVENILE:  Icefall by Matthew J. Kirby (Scholastic Press)

Nominees:  Horton Halfpott by Tom Angleberger (Abrams – Amulet Books);  It Happened on a Train by Mac Barnett (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers);  Vanished by Sheela Chari (Disney Book Group – Disney Hyperion);  The Wizard of Dark Street by Shawn Thomas Odyssey (Egmont USA)

BEST YOUNG ADULT:  The Silence of Murder by Dandi Daley Mackall (Random House Children’s Books – Knopf BFYR)

Nominees:  Shelter by Harlan Coben (Penguin Young Readers Group – G.P. Putnam’s Sons);  The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson (Penguin Young Readers Group – G.P. Putnam’s Sons);  The Girl is Murder by Kathryn Miller Haines (Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group – Roaring Creek Press);  Kill You Last by Todd Strasser (Egmont USA)

THE SIMON & SCHUSTER – MARY HIGGINS CLARK AWARD:  Learning to Swim by Sara J. Henry (Crown Publishing Group)

Nominees:  Now You See Me by S.J. Bolton (Minotaur Books);  Come and Find Me by Hallie Ephron (HarperCollins Publishers – William Morrow);  Death on Tour by Janice Hamrick (Minotaur Books);  Murder Most Persuasive by Tracy Kiely (Minotaur Books – Thomas Dunne Books)

Booklist’s own Bill Ott attended the Edgars, and blogged about it for Likely Stories.

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 that you might find intriguing.

The second time I though of the many stories that can be generated by a city (or a country, state, or other locale) was when our staff book group at Williamsburg Regional Library took on Paris as its theme for this month’s reading. I won’t recap the meeting as I often do. I wrote about Paris books in a post about A Moveable Feast at Blogging for a Good Book, and the nature of the books we  chose for this meeting–out-of-print histories, children’s books, and various kinds of light reading–made them enjoyable, but perhaps not prime focus for typical book groups.

But then that’s the joy of thematic book grouping. As Gary noted here earlier this week, a strong setting doesn’t necessarily create much to talk about in a single-book meeting. But when that setting becomes the theme for the meeting, and readers highlight several books, it creates a kind of mosaic that can begin to replicate the many aspects of any given locale. The variety of books that come to thematic meetings ensures that nobody goes home without jotting down a few titles they would like to try later.

Since we’re neck deep in Mystery Month coverage for May, I’ll also note that the thematic approach works well for genre fiction. Genre books are often heavy on plot, short on the kind of everyday human conflict that makes books easy to discuss. It doesn’t mean they aren’t great books, but you can’t follow the model of a literary seminar: you’ll run out of things to analyze too quickly. Still, people love to read these books, and they’re very well suited to five-minute “teaser” talks, which makes the thematic approach the ideal way to feature them.

You probably won’t get through eight million stories in your thematic meeting. But getting through eight is a good start.

Here are some of the posts that David has written about his A-Z affair with the mystery stacks:

Margarey Allingham

Killer B’s

E. C. Bentley

G. K. Chesterton

Sherlock Holmes  (Doyle)

Loren Estleman and James Ellroy

Four Felonious Frasers

William Faulkner

Stay tuned for the rest of this fun series!

I once asked Sue Grafton what were the themes in her books.  She had to think a minute and then replied, “People should not kill each other.”

For a crime fiction book discussion group, “people should not kill each other” is not sufficient textual content to handle a ninety minute discussion on a title.  The reason is the same for this genre as it is for any:  the main ingredient of the genre is a foregone conclusion when approaching the topic so it has minimal impact on the reader.  In most crime fiction (with rare exceptions), the central core of the novel is going to be a death or a crime and someone is going to be tasked with dealing with that disruption in society.  Readers know this and book discussion participants are going to need more to discuss.

Arguments can be made that if plot is not a major player in the discussion, certainly characters and setting can be.  While that is true, in genre fiction the danger for characters and setting is that they can be used as entertainment devices but not as thematic enhancements.  You can drop into any of the thirty nine Hercule Poirot novels by Agatha Christie and understand the character because he is essentially the same man in each book.  Once you are done discussion Poirot’s cute little peculiarities, there is not much left to discuss about the character.

The same can be said for the use of setting by some authors.  If the setting is a cruise ship, a hat shop or an Amish farm in Pennsylvania and those settings are used to entertain but not to educate, then setting will fail to enhance a book discussion as well.

Entertain vs. educate.  When I wrote the book Read ‘Em Their Writes in 2006, I did a duck and cover because I was upfront about my opinions on this topic and nothing has really changed over time.  My intent is not to disrespect entertaining works of fiction (or to be accused of being a cozy hater!!!) because there is no greater joy that spending a few hours inside an entertaining book of fiction.

I still believe that there are two types of genre writing:  those titles written to provide a wonderfully entertaining reading experience and those that are written to provide a wonderfully entertaining reading experience and send a message. 

For book discussion leaders, I believe you need to use those that are written to provide a wonderfully entertaining reading experience and send a message.  The exception is when your group is reading an entertainment-only effort because you are doing a genre study of that author or character.  I belong to a local crime fiction book discussion whose montly topic is the author and their character with members reading multiple titles in the series.  The multiplicity of our attack on this author’s works can easily fill the time required even if the books are entertaining only and lack strong thematic content..

In the main, a crime fiction title with a strong theme is going to work best.  My sure bet recommendation and my personal all-time best crime fiction novel is Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River.  This novel is set in a working class neighborhood in Boston and the setting is integral to the story because the fascinating characters are steeped in the traditions of their environment.  But more important to this discussion today, the multiple themes of the novel are significant and compelling.

Ironically, one of the core themes in Mystic River is people should not kill each other.  Sue Grafton might have been put on the spot when I asked her that question because a number of her books have themes that extend far beyond the worry over murder.  She deserves more credit than she gave herself.

The good news is that I believe that this is true of a vast majority of contemporary crime and mystery novels.  Read ‘Em Their Writes lists discussion questions for 100 novels I believe would work and since that publication I have accumulated another 100.  If I can find them, so can you.  Watch Book Group Buzz this month for many helpful suggestions for a crime and mystery book discussion titles that work.