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1st In A Series Challenge
The Crime at Black Dudley
by Margery Allingham
first UK printing in 1929



Reading has never been a problem for me. Writing has. I have always wanted to be a diarist, a journalist but have never been successful. This spring I have had trouble with both! But I redeemed myself over the Memorial Day weekend by reading 6 titles! Now I just have to force myself to blog about them. I am being spurred on by watching the French Open this week, by watching players match point down coming back to win their matches. Their never give up attitude has inspired me to just write. My entries may not be inspiring, but I hope to persevere!

Though my favorite genre is the Mystery and my favorite authors of that genre are those of the Golden Age, Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie, I was not familiar with Margery Allingham. What a delightful find! The Crime at Black Dudley is technically the first in a series featuring Albert Campion. However, Campion in my opinion plays a very minor, very mysterious part in this country house mystery. Physician George Abbershaw takes center stage as the amateur sleuth. During a weekend house party at the remote, stark, ominous mansion named Black Dudley, a ritual supposedly dating from medieval times, is reenacted. A dagger is passed from hand to hand - in total darkness, without knowing whose hand passes the blade, for a designated time limit. When the ending gong sounds, the person left holding the bag, so to speak, forfeits the game and pays the price - kisses! The medieval origin of the ritual, however, was played to identify a murderer! The person whose hand was covered with blood at the end of the time limit, was identified as the murderer and paid the forfeit - life for a life! The currently played ritual turned the tables. The person left with the dagger was literally holding the dagger - in his back. Murder was committed in the darkness of Black Dudley!

The blade of the Black Dudley Dagger was its most remarkable feature. Under a foot long, it was very slender and exquisitely graceful, fashioned from steel that had in it a curious greenish tinge which lent the whole weapon an unmistakably sinister appearance. It seemed to shine out of the dark background like a living and malignant thing.

There are many elements of the gothic used to great advantage by Allingham. A secluded, brooding, primitive mansion; hidden passageways; physically strange, totally evil villains; a helpless maiden; a mentally unstable crone. The setting is dark and isolated. There are references to the great Sherlock! The description of the villain is very Moriartyish who is in charge of a well organized multi national crime syndicate. I loved it!. There is nothing like a well written early 20th century mystery! Early motorcars. Early airplanes landing on isolated coastal grass strips. Upper class characters with the leisure to play.

Allingham to her credit meets one of my requirements for a great read - she includes a female character who shows spunk and independence.

Meggie glanced at him sharply, and again the faint smile appeared on her lips and the brightness in her dark eyes. For all his psychology, his theorizing, and the seriousness with which he took himself, there was very little of George Abbershaw's mind that was not apparent to her, but for all that the light in here eyes was a happy one and the smile on her lips unusually tender.

One of the characteristics of these early mysteries I find very amusing. There is a tendency for characters to fall in love literally at first sight - to agree to marriage on the basis of this first sight love without knowing a single thing about the other person. This characteristic plays a crucial part in the motive for the murder.

The ending is well worth the read!. Anything that I say about it will give it away! Though not - in my opinion - on the same level as the great Sayers and Christie, Allingham is a fascinating author. I plan to read as many Campion mysteries that I can find.



3 delights with 2 dollups of whipped cream!!!^^

Tracker 6 - 1st To Read Challenge

Second 1st To Read completed!

Evans Above
By Rhys Bowen

I learned of Rhys Bowen from The Lady Killers Blog - highly recommended! Last summer I devoured Bowen's Her Royal Spyness, 1st in the new series featuring Georgie, Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie, cousin of King George V of England. Had I not already read this book, I would have listed it first for this challenge. Honesty - perhaps learned from my mystery obsession, the criminal is always found out - prevented my cheating with it. But it certainly inspired me to try the Evan Evans series, and am I glad I did!

As noted in my O'Artful Death post, The Arthurian Legend is one of my passions. Arthur has many Welsh ties. The Constable Evans series is set in Wales so that in itself is one of my delights with Evans Above. The mountains of Wales are associated with mystery and play a major role in this book:

Up on the mountain the sun sank, plunging the cliffs into deep shadow so that it was hard to discern what it was that lay among the rocks. a chill wind sprang up, howling through the crevices and drowning a cry that nobody heard.

The mountain watched as two climbers fell or were pushed to their deaths. Were they murdered? And were their deaths associated with a long ago death of a young soldier who froze during training exercises? How were they connected to a missing apple pie and trampled tomato plants? And then a third body is found, at the back of a cave. What if any is the connection? What is happening to the peaceful Welsh village of Llanfair? Would Evan Evans succumb to the charms of the buxom barmaid, Betsy; or would the ethereal Bronwyn win his heart? Join Constable Evan Evans as he defies the order of his DI and solves the mystery of death on the mountain by looking to the past for answers to present day questions.



Four delights with a dollop of whipped cream!!!!^

Tracker 5 - 1st to Read Challenge

First 1st To Read completed!

O’Artful Death
by Sarah Stewart Taylor
An 2003 Agatha Award Finalist for Best First Novel

What a great find! After accepting this challenge, I searched Amazon for new series, and this is one of my discoveries. My postlady bravely delivered my package from Amazon on a snowy day. Yes, my south Mississippi town had an actual snow day, and I snuggled up and read Death in one sitting as the beautiful flakes slowly drifted down turning my yard into work of art itself. What a great memory!

Possession by A. S. Byatt is one of my favorite novels, and the movie based on this work is one of my favorite films - one that I rewatch from time to time. O’Artful Death is reminiscent of Possession - there is a love from a past century with a mysterious allusion to that long past relationship. Sweeney St. George, the protagonist of Death, is a professor in the Art Department whose specialty is funerary art - gravestones.

Shortly before Christmas break, Sweeney finds a photo of an intriguing gravestone/monument left on her desk. In her words, it was “weirdly anomalous”. It did not fit in with the accepted grave art of its time. It featured a death figure, a death figure with the hint of a real man’s face gazing lovingly at the figure of a beautiful young girl. According to Sweeney, by the late Victorian period grave art featured more innocent figures such as sweet cherubim not death figures. She couldn’t resist an invitation to spend Christmas in the town where this monument stood, to spend time searching for an answer to this mystery.

Death had me almost from hello. There are references to my favorite things - Edgar Allan Poe, the Arthurian Legend, even Nancy Drew and secret codes! Tennyson’s “Lady of Shalott” is quoted liberally which could be a reference to Christie’s The Mirror Crack'd, another favorite.

I am going to call Death a modern gothic complex cozy mystery. Its setting is a genteel rural domestic with an amateur detective. But it has elements of the gothic - darkness, isolation, hints of past sins being visited on the present. And it is complex. It made me think and sent me to researching gravestone art. I have to admit I have always been fascinated by the idea of gravestone rubbings even though I have not actually tried this craft.

But here was this strange reaper, his figure so much more accomplished than those of his brethren on other stones. This death was a man, with a man's face somehow suggested in the familiar skull. He gazed down at the girl lying beneath him, his eyes soft, a dreamy smile playing at his bony lips. There was something familiar about the way he looked down at his prey, Sweeney realized, something loving.

Suddenly, she was afraid.. The wind had come up and the woods surrounding the house seemed sinister, full of evil. The night was so dark she could barely see the path her boots had stamped in the snow. As she turned and started for the house it was all she could do not to break into a run, and when she was finally inside, she closed the back door and locked it before it struck her that the person who'd been watching her was inside, and not outside.

4 big Delights !!!!
I just ordered the next three Sweeney St. George mysteries!

Following My Path

- * - My first entry for a new blog and the first time I have written 2008 - * -

It is such a cliché to say that I still had trouble writing 2007, but it is sadly true. I have always said that the hardest thing to accept about growing up is to accept that what your mother always told you is true. Time does go faster the older you get!

At any rate, in keeping with the first stated purpose of this blog, I record my first finished book of 2008:

All The Crazy Winters
by Deborah Adams
A Jesus Creek Mystery

This was a thoroughly enjoyable read - light, entertaining, but with some very interesting points. Two of the characters are very eccentric librarians; and since I am a librarian, I thoroughly enjoyed them - even though one of them was already dead when the book began. I might become an eccentric librarian as well!

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

The second stated purpose of this blog is to track the reading challenges that I accept. My first challenge of this year is

Who: hosted by Joy
What: read 12 books that are the 1st in any series
When: between January and December 2008

I am very picky about my reading choices. My genre of choice is the mystery; I prefer women authors and a female protagonist; and I am compulsive about reading all entries in a series starting with the first if possible. Therefore, it was difficult to locate and then pick choices for this challenge. I spent a very long time researching which titles to select - many, many pages of Amazon’s “those who bought this book might also like . . . ”. I reserve the right to change my mind if I don’t like the title I am reading and to pick my alternates at a later date.

With that said, listed below are my initial choices for the 1st In a Series Challenge:

1. Evans Above by Rhys Bowen
(The Constable Evans Series)
2. Death at Wentwater Court by Carola Dunn
(The Daisy Dalrymple Mysteries)
3. A Share in Death by Deborah Crombie
(The Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James Series)
4. O’ Artful Death by Sarah Stewart Taylor
(The Sweeney St. George Series)
5. Blood Ties by Lori G. Armstrong
(The Julie Collins Series)
6. Consigned to Death by Jane K. Cleland
(The Josie Prescott Antiques Mysteries Series)
7. The Xibalban Mystery by Lyn Hamilton
(The Lara McClintoch Series)
8. Generous Death by Nancy Pickard
(The Jenny Cain Series)
9. The Whole Truth by Nancy Pickard
(The Marie Lightfoot Series)
10. Death at Black Dudley by Margery Allingham
(The Albert Campion Series)
11. Haunted Ground by Erin Hart
(The Nora Gavin, Pathologist, Series)
12. Miss Zukas and the Library Murders by Jo Dereske
(The Helma Zukas Series)

Let the reading begin!