One of the most delightful decisions I made this year was to declare a “summer of snob.” For a few gloriously hot and sunny months, my fiction (and sometimes nonfiction) reading was loosely organized around the theme of snobbery. Loopy heiresses, high-society murders and class anxiety galore populated my reading list, giving just enough of a thematic through line to provide interesting comparisons without becoming repetitive or boring.
So I’m going to do something similar this winter, and pick up a murder-mystery theme for the next month or two. It’s a genre that I find psychologically comforting, because murder mysteries exist in ordered, if violent universes: Bad people do bad things in them, but they don’t get away with it. That makes for a pleasant departure from our far-less-tidy reality.
I suppose I really embarked upon this theme a few weeks ago. I’ve been watching “A Murder At the End of the World,” a miniseries from Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij that seems like what you’d get if you cross-pollinated “Glass Onion” with “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.” It’s essentially a country-house murder mystery updated for the A.I. era, but so far it’s not quite cozy enough for me. (Too many glossy billionaires, too few goofy eccentrics.) Still, I’ll watch the final two installments to see where it’s all going — the foreshadowing that All Is Not As It Seems has been so heavy that I will be amused if the big twist turns out to be that it was petty, low-tech human jealousy all along.
On the other hand, “The Appeal,” by Janice Hallett, which is set in an English village’s amateur theater troupe, is as cozy as they come. And its Christmas-themed sequel, described as a “festive murder mystery,” sounds like it dials the cozy factor up to 11. It’s on my list.
Of course, it is possible to take coziness — mystery or otherwise — a bit too far. Dorothy Parker, famously, objected to A.A. Milne’s saccharine prose in “The House At Pooh Corner,” writing in her review that “Tonstant Weader Fwowed up.” But “The Red House Mystery,” Milne’s take on the country-estate murder genre, is much lighter on the bumbling anthropomorphized bears, and also a lot of fun. It should tell you something that Raymond Chandler, who presumably abjured cuddliness in all its forms, was a fan of the book.
Reader responses: Books that you recommend
George Fleming, a reader in Mount Vernon, Ohio, recommends “The Earl of Louisiana” by A.J. Liebling:
A tremendously entertaining book and a complete explanation of human nature. One for the ages.
Jill Berke, a reader in Miami Beach, Fla., recommends “Do No Harm” by Henry Marsh:
The author, a British neurosurgeon, takes us inside his mind and hands as chapter by chapter he explains specific conditions affecting the brain. How he decides to operate and what occurs each time he parts a skull to see the brain is a compassionate, honest lesson in finding the balance between reality and hope for his patients. It’s a place we all inhabit when we are medically responsible for a loved one or prepare for our own death. Reading this beautifully written book made me less fearful to explore that balance and more conscious of the lure of denial.
What are you reading?
Thank you to everyone who wrote in to tell me about what you’re reading. Please keep the submissions coming!
I want to hear about things you have read (or watched or listened to) that you recommend to Interpreter readers. That could be a particular favorite from this year, a book that changed your mind about something, or a favorite mystery that you think should be on my list.
