DARK ACADEMIA

Somehow, British universities and public schools seem to provide a particularly fertile ground for this sort of story:

* Dorothy L. Sayers: Gaudy Night (Oxford University)
* Agatha Christie: Cat Among the Pigeons (private girls' school)
* Nicholas Blake: A Question of Proof (public school)
* Edmund Crispin: The Moving Toyshop (Oxford University)
* James Hilton: Murder at School (public school)
* Michael Innes: Death at the President's Lodging (fictional college)
* P.D. James: Death in Holy Orders (priests' seminary)
* P.D. James: Shroud for a Nightingale (nursing school)
* Elizabeth George: Well-Schooled in Murder (public school)
* Elizabeth George: For the Sake of Elena (Cambridge University)
* Colin Dexter: Inspector Morse series (Oxford University)
* Susanna Gregory: Matthew Bartholomew series (Cambridge University, 14h century)
* Ian Morson: William Falconer series (Oxford University, 13th century)
* Shirley Mckay: Hue and Cry (St. Andrews University, 16th century)

DYSTOPIAN HELLSCAPE

My quartet of must-read dystopian novels has so far consisted of:

* George Orwell: 1984
* Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451
* Aldous Huxley: Brave New World
* Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale

Obviously, with the impending release of Atwood's The Testaments, there might now be a fifth book to add to that group -- for the moment it's on my TBR.

INTERNATIONAL WOMAN OF MYSTERY

Based on the definition of this square, all U.S. authors are "international for UK readers and vice versa, and both of them are "international" for me.  We all have plenty of favorite women writers from both of these countries -- so here are a few from elsewhere (based on MR's definition of this square as an outrcrop of "Terrifying Women"; i.e., writers whose books fit any of the Halloween Bingo categories):

* Zen Cho (Malaysia, UK)

* Donna Leon (Italy, U.S.)

* Dolores Redondo (Spain)

* Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Mexico, Canada)

* Isabel Allende (Chile; now also U.S.)

* Edwidge Danticat (Haiti)

* George Sand (France): novel La mare au diable (The Devil's Pool)

* Emmuska Orczy (Hungary, France, UK)

* Nina Blazon (Germany, Slovenia)

* Juli Zeh (Germany): novel Schilf (Dark Matter)

* Helene Tungsten (Sweden)

* Karin Fossum (Norway)
* Isak Dinesen (aka Karen / Tania Blixen) (Denmark, Kenya)

* Sofi Oksanen (Estonia): novel The Purge (Fegefeuer)

* Tana French (Ireland; going by nationality also U.S.)

PSYCH

Hoo boy.  Sooo many great books -- there is a seriously immense amount of f*cked up people walking around in in literatureland.  (Including authors messing with their readers' minds.)

* Agatha Christie: By the Pricking of My Thumbs, Endless Night, And Then There Were None, Crooked House, Murder Is Easy, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
* John Dickson Carr: The Hollow Man
* Edgar Allan Poe: Pretty much anything he ever wrote -- to begin with The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Feather, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Cask of Amontillado, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Oval Portrait, and Annabelle Lee
* Charles Dickens: The Signalman
* Robert Louis Stevenson: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
* Washington Irving: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
* Henry James: The Turn of the Screw
* E.T.A. Hoffmann: Der Sandmann (The Sandman)
* Shirley Jackson: The Lottery and We Have Always Lived in the Castle
* Cornell Woolrich: The Bride Wore Black
* Raymond Chandler: The Big Sleep
* Dashiell Hammett: The Maltese Falcon
* Michael Connelly: The Concrete Blonde, The Poet, Blood Work, A Darkness More Than Night, The Narrows
* George Pelecanos: Shame the Devil
* Dennis Lehane: Mystic River
* Ann Leckie: The Raven Tower
* Elizabeth George: A Suitable Vengeance and A Great Deliverance
* Joy Ellis: Jackman and Evans series
* Peter May: The Blackhouse and Coffin Road
* Ian Rankin: Knots and Crosses, Tooth and Nail, Black and Blue, Dead Souls
* Val McDermid: Carol Jordan and Tony Hill series, A Place of Execution
* Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling): The Silkworm, Career of Evil
* P.D. James: Devices and Desires
* Barbara Vine: A Dark-Adapted Eye
* Minette Walters: The Ice House
* Margery Allingham: Death of a Ghost and The Case of the Late Pig
* Kazuo Ishiguro: Never Let Me Go
* Anthony Horowitz: The House of Silk
* Iain Pears: An Instance of the Fingerpost, Stone's Fall, The Portrait
* C.J. Sansom: Revelation
* Ellis Peters: A Morbid Taste for Bones, The Hermit of Eyton Forest, The Devil's Novice

* Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose

* Tana French: In the Woods
* Karin Fossum: He Who Fears the Wolf
* Joe Nesbø: The Snowman

TRULY TERRIFYING
* John Berendt: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
* Truman Capote: In Cold Blood
* Norman Mailer: The Executioner's Song
* Joseph D. Pistone: Donnie Brasco
* David Simon: Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets
* Miles Corwin: The Killing Season : A Summer Inside an LAPD Homicide Division
* Barry Scheck, Jim Dwyer, Peter Neufeld: Actual Innocence
* Sr. Helen Prejean: Dead Man Walking
* Steve Bogira: Courtroom 302: A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse
* Jonathan Harr: A Civil Action

* Joseph Wambaugh: The Onion Field

* Edward Humes: Mississippi Mud
* Joe McGinniss: Blind Faith
* Lowell Cauffiel: Eye of the Beholder
* Nicholas Pileggi: Casino
* Michael Connelly: Crime Beat: Stories of Cops and Killers, and Murder in Vegas
* Harold Schecter: True Crime: An American Anthology
* Christiane F.: Wir Kinder Vom Bahnhof Zoo (Autobiography of a Girl of the Streets)
* Eric Jager: Blood Royal: A True Tale of Crime and Detection in Medieval Paris
* Kate Summerscale: The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher
* P.D. James: The Maul and the Pear Tree: The Ratcliffe Highway Murders, 1811
* Victoria Blake: Mrs. Maybrick
* Angus McLaren: A Prescription for Murder: The Victorian Serial Killings of Dr. Thomas Neill Cream
* Judith Flanders: The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime
* William Roughead: Classic Crimes
* Members of the Detection Club: Anatomy of Murder, and More Anatomy of Murder
* Kathryn Harkup: A Is For Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie

* David Suchet: Poirot and Me

* William S. Baring-Gould: Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street: A Life of the World's First Consulting Detective

* Vincent Starrett: The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes

* Martin Fido: The World of Sherlock Holmes

* Michael Cox: The Baker Street File: A Guide to the Appearance and Habits of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson

* David Stuart Davies: Bending the Willow: Jeremy Brett As Sherlock Holmes

* David L. Hammer: The Travelers' Companion to the London of Sherlock Holmes

* Scene of the Crime: A Guide to the Landscapes of British Detective Fiction
* Richard Lindberg: Return to the Scene of the Crime: A Guide to Infamous Places in Chicago
* Alain Silver, Elizabeth Ward: Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles
* Eddie Muller: Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir
* Jim Garrison: On the Trail of the Assassins
* Hannah Arendt: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
* Louise Arbour: War Crimes and the Culture of Peace
* Richard J. Goldstone: For Humanity: Reflections of a War Crimes Investigator
* Clea Koff: The Bone Woman: A Forensic Anthropologist's Search for Truth in the Mass Graves of Rwanda, Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo
* Michael P. Scharf, Paul R. Williams: Peace with Justice?: War Crimes and Accountability in the Former Yugoslavia
* Gary Jonathan Bass: Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals
* Judith Armatta: Twilight of Impunity: The War Crimes Trial of Slobodan Milošević

KING OF FEAR

Stephen King's own works:

* Carrie
* Misery
* Pet Semetary

* The Shining
* The Long Walk

* Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption

* On Writing

From King's recommendations in On Writing, as listed HERE, HERE and HERE:

* Michael Connelly: The Poet and The Narrows
* Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness
* Gabriel García Márquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude
* Elizabeth George: Deception on His Mind
* Peter Høeg: Smilla’s Sense of Snow
* Stieg Larsson: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
* Harper Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird
* Dennis Lehane: The Given Day
* George Pelecanos: Hard Revolution
* J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s (Philosopher's) Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

FILM AT 11

I guess most people here know my likes when it comes to movie and TV adaptations, but anyway ...

Stand-alone books adapted as stand-alone movies:

* Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None, Crooked House, Witness for the Prosecution, Why Didn't They Ask Evans?
* Jane Austen: Northanger Abbey
* Charlotte Brontë: Jane Eyre
* Anne Brontë: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
* Emily Brontë: Wuthering Heights
* Daphne Du Maurier: Rebecca
* Charles Dickens: Bleak House and A Christmas Carol
* Bram Stoker: Dracula
* Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
* Anne Rice: Interview with the Vampire
* John Fowles: The French Lieutenant's Woman
* Isabel Allende: The House of the Spirits
* John Berendt: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
* Sr. Helen Prejean: Dead Man Walking
* Stephen King: (Rita Hayworth and) the Shawshank Redemption, Carrie, Misery, The Shining

* S.S. Van Dine: The Kennel Murder Case

* Graham Greene: The Third Man

* Cornell Woolrich: Rear Window
* John Dudley Ball: In the Heat of the Night
* John Gregory Dunne: True Confessions
* Dashiell Hammett: The Maltese Falcon
* James M. Cain: Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice
* Elmore Leonard: Get Shorty
* John Grisham: The Firm, The Client, A Time to Kill, The Pelican Brief
* Frederick Forsyth: The Day of the Jackal
* Barbara Vine: A Dark-Adapted Eye, Gallowglass, A Fatal Inversion
* Minette Walters: The Ice House

* Ethel Lina White: The Lady Vanishes

* Barry Unsworth: Morality Play

* Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose

* Peter Høeg: Smilla's Sense of Snow

* George Orwell: 1984

* Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451

Book series installments made into stand-alone movies or vice versa:

* Agatha Christie: Poirot: Murder on the Orient Express (Albert Finney); as well as Death on the Nile and Appointment with Death (Peter Ustinov)

* Agatha Christie: Bundle Brent / Superintendent Battle: The Seven Dials Mystery (Cheryl Campbell, James Warwick)

* Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale

* Walter Mosley: Devil in a Blue Dress

* James Ellroy: L.A. Confidential

* Raymond Chandler: Marlowe: The Big Sleep, Farewell My Lovely, The Lady in the Lake, The Long Goodbye (with different actors starring as Marlowe)
* Dashiell Hammett: The Thin Man (original movie and 5 sequels)

* Mario Puzo: The Godfather (3 movies)

* Tony Hillerman: The Dark Wind (Fred Ward, Lou Diamond Phillips)

Book series adapted as TV series or sequential movies:

* J.R.R. Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings

* C.S. Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia

* J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter

* Arthur Conan Doyle: Sherlock Holmes (Jeremy Brett, David Burke / Edward Hardwicke)
* Dorothy L. Sayers: Lord Peter Wimsey (two series: Wimsey / Vane: Harriet Walter & Edward Petherbridge; Wimsey solo: Ian Carmichael)
* Agatha Christie: Poirot (David Suchet, Hugh Fraser), Miss Marple (Joan Hickson), Tommy & Tuppence (Francesca Annis & James Warwick)
* E.G. Hornung: Raffles
* Ngaio Marsh: Inspector Alleyn (Patrick Malahide)
* Margery Allingham: Campion (Peter Davidson)
* P.D. James: Inspector Dalgliesh (Roy Marsden; 2 episodes: Martin Shaw)

* Ruth Rendell: Inspector Wexford (George Baker, Christopher Ravenscroft)
* Ellis Peters: Brother Cadfael (Derek Jacobi)
* Colin Dexter: Morse (John Thaw, Kevin Whately; including TV spin-offs: Endeavour (Shaun Evans) and Lewis (Kevin Whately, Laurence Fox))
* Elizabeth George: Inspector Lynley (Nathaniel Parker, Sharon Small)
* Ian Rankin: Rebus (2 series; John Hannah and later Ken Stott)
* John Morimer: Rumpole of the Bailey (Leo McKern)
* Caroline Graham: Midsomer Murders (John Nettles, later Neil Dudgeon)

* Henning Mankell: Wallander (2 adaptations: 1 series starring Kenneth Branagh; 1 series co-produced in Sweden and Germany)

* Stieg Larsson: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and sequels

* Michael Connelly: Bosch (Titus Weilliver)

* Tony Hillerman: Skinwalkers, Coyote Waits, and A Thief of Time (Wes Studi, Adam Beach)

* Craig Johnson: Longmire (Robert Taylor, Lou Diamond Phillips)

* Rex Stout: Nero Wolfe (Maury Chaykin, Timothy Hutton)

Honorary mention: Murder by Death; novelized by H.R.F. Keating and Neil Simon.  Its not a book-to-movie adaptation (rather the reverse), so going by the definition for the square it probably doesn't count, but this list just wouldn't be complete without it.

Today's prompt is for favorite horror reads; that not being much of my thing (outside, perhaps, the gothic classics and anything more edifying or funny rather than scary), I think I'm going to leave that prompt to Char, Bark's Books (aka Bark at the Ghouls), and the site's other horror fans.  Instead, I'm going to catch up on the prompt from the day before yesterday -- I'm really, really excited about the new squares.

This is going to be another multiple-post reply ... because come on, these covers are just too beautiful not to give them a space of their own!

Oh man.  So many! 

Biggest new discoveries:

* Fredric Brown: The Fabulous Clipjoint -- huge thank you to Tigus, who gifted his Ed & Am Hunter omnibus to me.  Where had Brown been all my life until then?

* James D. Doss: Charlie Moon series (via books 6 & 7, White Shell Woman and Grandmother Spider) -- tremendously atmospheric, centers on a Ute policeman (and his best friend, the [white] sheriff of the nearby town, as well as Charlie Moon's aunt, a shaman).

* Joy Ellis: Jackman & Evans series (via book 2, Their Lost Daughters) -- writing so intense it literally took my breath away; set in a suitably wild and lonely corner of Norfolk (and great characters to boot).  Just ... wow!

* Gabriel García Márquez: Crónica de una muerte anunciada (Chronicle of a Death Foretold) -- the deconstruction of an honor killing; an utter and total gut punch in 100 pages.  It had been years since I last read García Márquez, and I am so glad I finally picked this one up.

* Shirley Jackson -- yeah, I know, late to the party and all that, but what can I say ...?

* Peter May -- wonderful writing, really brings the Outer Hebrides (Harris and Lewis Islands) to life; and great crime page turners to boot.

* Sharyn McCrumb: Ballad series ( via books 3 & 5, She Walks These Hills and The Ballad of Frankie Silver) -- these had been sitting on my TBR forever, and I'm so glad I finally got to them.  Man, but that woman can write.

* Terry Pratchett: Night Watch series -- Angua rules!

* Andrew Taylor: The American Boy -- great historical fiction that definitely also made me curious about Taylor's books set in the 17th century (this one is set in the 19th -- the eponymous boy is Edgar Allan Poe).

* Cornell Woolrich: The Bride Wore Black -- not so much a discovery of the author but of this novel (that ending!!), and I'm definitely planning to read more books by him.

All favorites by year, including rereads:

2016

Isabel Allende: La casa de los espíritus (The House of the Spirits)

Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None

Agatha Christie: Halloween Party

Arthur Conan Doyle: The Adventure of the Speckled Band

Arthur Conan Doyle: The Hound of the Baskervilles

Arthur Conan Doyle: The Sussex Vampyre

James D. Doss: White Shell Woman

E.T.A. Hoffmann: Der Sandmann (The Sandman)

E.T.A. Hoffmann: Das Fräulein von Scuderi (Mademoiselle de Scuderi)

Washington Irving: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Shirley Jackson: The Lottery

Henry James: The Turn of the Screw

Peter May: The Blackhouse

Edgar Allan Poe: Selected Tales

Terry Pratchett: Feet of Clay

Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman: Good Omens

Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (Kenneth Branagh audio)

Oscar Wilde: The Canterville Ghost

2017

Jane Austen: Northanger Abbey (Anna Massey audio)

Emily Brontë: Wuthering Heights (Prunella Scales / Samuel West audio)

Raymond Chandler: Farewell, My Lovely (Elliot Gould audio)

Agatha Christie: Mrs. McGinty's Dead (Hugh Fraser audio)

James D. Doss: Grandmother Spider

C.S. Forester: The African Queen (Michael Kitchen audio)

Gabriel García Márquez: Crónica de una muerte anunciada (Chronicle of a Death Foretold)

Shirley Jackson: We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Bernadette Dunne audio)

Ngaio Marsh: A Surfeit of Lampreys (Anton Lesser audio)

Ngaio Marsh: Death and the Dancing Footman

Ngaio Marsh: Night at the Vulcan

Ngaio Marsh: Opening Night (Anton Lesser audio)

Ngaio Marsh: Overture to Death (Anton Lesser audio)

Peter May: Coffin Road

Sharyn McCrumb: She Walks These Hills

Ovid: Metamorphoses (David Horovitch audio)

Plutarch: Theseus

Edgar Allan Poe: The Purloined Letter

Terry Pratchett: Men at Arms

Robert Louis Stevenson: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Christopher Lee audio)

Cornell Woolrich: The Bride Wore Black

2018

Fredric Brown: The Fabulous Clipjoint

Daphne Du Maurier: Rebecca (Anna Massey audio)

Joy Ellis: Their Lost Daughters (Richard Armitage audio)

Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling): Lethal White (Robert Glenister audio)

Sharyn McCrumb: The Ballad of Frankie Silver (audio narrated by the author)

Walter Mosley: White Butterfly (Michael Boatman audio)

Terry Pratchett: The Colour of Magic (Nigel Planer audio)

Terry Pratchett: Wyrd Sisters

Mary Roberts Rinehart: Locked Doors (Anne Hancock audio)

Andrew Taylor: The American Boy (Alex Jennings audio)

Bookshelves: Classics, Women Writers, International (resp. various country / language shelves), Mysteries, Historical Fiction

I'm not a romance reader at all, but I've found ladies holding flowers (actually more than I could attach to this post) in unexpected places ...

My Square Markers and "Virgin" Bingo Card:

"Virgin" card posted for ease of tracking and comparison, as called and read squares will, bit by bit, vanish behind my markers and everybody's cards are different.

Black Kitty:
Read but not called

Black Vignette:
Called but not read

Black Kitty in Black Vignette:
Read and Called

Current Status of Spreadsheet:

(Note: Physical print editions unless stated otherwise)

Books Read / Listened to - Update 2:

 Donna Andrews: Lord of the Wings

A Halloween entry in Donna Andrews's long-running series featuring Caerphilly, VA artisan blacksmith and volunteer town events organizer Meg Langslow -- what could possibly be more fitting for this bingo square?

Caerphilly (that's CaerPHILLY to you reporters if you don't want to have the locals screaming at their TVs at the top of their voices) has decided to join the Halloween festival craze and is going at it hammer and tongs.  Mayor Shiffley is supposed to have an assistant organizing the festivities, but she's more bossy than efficient (and vanishes halfway through the event, to boot), so unsurprisingly the whole thing lands in Meg's lap all over again.  Unfortunately, some evilminded soul has decided to hijack the festivities for their own purposes, so soon enough Meg, the Mayor and Chief Burke have two real corpses on their hands, the local would-be vampire (formerly: the police department's forensic pathologist) is carted off to hospital with a near-fatal head wound administered with a blunt object, the town is beset by scavenger hunters who seem to stop at very little in pursuit of a computer game called "Vampire Colonies II" created by the software company of Meg's brother Rob, Mutant Wizards; and a group of live action role playing vampires have converged on the town with who knows what agenda of their own. -- Meanwhile, Meg's grandfather has added a bat cave to the local zoo (which is run by him), has managed to tame a bunch of ravens to stick to him more or less like sown to his wizard cloak with fine thread and croak "Nevermore" and similar Halloween'ish things, realistic-looking body parts show up in the zoo's lion's den and Florida alligator swamp areas (they are soon revealed as part of the scavenger hunt pranks, however) -- and in the middle of the festivities, a former heavy metal drummer of Scandinavian origin comes into his own again, which promises great things for the subsequent year's Halloween.

As an installment in the series that is set against the backdrop of a major holiday I didn't love this quite as much as Andrews's recent Meg Langslow Christmas books (Duck the Halls and The Nightingale Before Christmas) -- perhaps because unlike Christmas, Halloween is the sort of holiday where you more or less expect a certain amount of craziness anyway; so oddly, it didn't offer quite as much opportunity for Andrews's comic genius to shine as the Christmas setting, where the contrast between the expectation of a supremely peaceful holiday (certainly in a small town setting at least!), and the chaos engendered by the intrusion of violent crime and various pranks seems to work a bit better -- at least for me -- than in a setting that, like Halloween, must have had Andrews walking a fine tightrope practically all the time in order not to have things going over the top.  But this is ultimately nit-picking ... first and foremost, at now over 20 entries (of which this is no. 19), I'm happy to see that the series is still going so strong at all!

Ruth Rendell:

The Babes in the Wood

& Not in the Flesh

For the "In the Dark, Dark Woods" square, I decided on a Ruth Rendell double dip.  The Babes in the Wood and Not in the Flesh are books no. 19 and 21 in Rendell's Chief Inspector Wexford series, and now that Rendell is no longer around to add to the series, I'm getting ever more nostalgic about revisiting Wexford's Kingsmarkham (notwithstanding that IMHO Wexford did, probably, retire just about when it was really time).

Both books feature classic Rendell territory: the victimization of women (physical abuse in The Babes in the Wood, female circumcision in Not in the Flesh), child abuse, xenophobia, racism, the marginalization of immigrants and minorities (also including, in Not in the Flesh, "travelers", aka gypsies) and, oh yes, all that amidst the investigation of a murder or two.

The title of The Babes in the Wood is largely symbolic, referring as it does to the title of a traditional children's tale dealing with -- you guessed it -- two kids all alone in the woods, after their parents have unwittingly left them to the care of their evil uncle, who in short order proceeds to deliver them into the hands of murderers.  The tale was first published as a ballad by Thomas Millington in Norwich in 1595 -- the late 19th century Caldecott version is available for free on the Project Gutenberg site -- and has given rise to a proverb indicating essentially the same as someone being "in over their head"; i.e., being overwhelmed by situation requiring decidedly more experience than one really possesses. Rendell's novel does in fact trace the eponymous children's story to a certain extent, however, in that it concerns the disappearance of two kids and their caretaker during their parents' brief absence from home -- and I guess both the fact that there's a wood on the cover (of the CD I listened to, as well as on that of the paperback edition) and the fact that the one corpse showing up some time after the kids' and their caretaker's disappearance is found in a quarry near a patch of woodland makes it qualify for the "In the Dark, Dark Woods" bingo square.

Not in the Flesh begins with the discovery of a corpse in a forest near Kingsmarkham, and a while later, a second corpse is found in a locked and abandoned basement nearby (besides, here, too, both the CD and the paperback edition have a wood on their respective cover).  As both murders have occurred quite a while ago, Wexford and Burden get to be their own cold case investigators, or rather, criminal archeologists.

Of the two novels, I slightly preferred the later one (Not in the Flesh): The subplot of The Babes in the Wood, which brings a case of domestic violence to Wexford's family, is not quite convincing (

), whereas that of Not in the Flesh -- which was written at the height of the public outrage over female genital mutilation -- left room both to explore the horrors involved in the practice as such and the cultural complexities involved, and it also served as an uncomfortable reminder that a human rights issue making headlines one day will just as easily drop from public consciousness as soon as more pressing concerns emerge.  Female circumcision is still as much of an issue in many parts of the world as it was ten years ago when this book was written, but at a time when the Western world is buffetted by everything from the Trump presidency to ISIS, Brexit and the aftermath of the 2009-2009 financial crisis, it hardly seems to impinge anymore. -- As a side note, I very much enjoyed briefly meeting again Dr. Akande, Wexford's doctor and one of the protagonists of the series's 16th novel, Simisola.

For both novels, I listened to the audio narration by Christopher Ravenscroft, the Inspector Burden of the long-running TV series starring George Baker as Wexford.  (I do also own a paperback copy of Not in the Flesh, however, and consulted it for reference and plot tracking purposes.)  Ravenscroft gives Wexford a bit more of a country man's accent than he has in the TV dramatizations -- and, I have to say, in my head when I read the books -- but he is a pleasure to listen to, and his obvious familiarity with the source material only adds to that pleasure, as does his classical stage training.

Robert Louis Stevenson: Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

One of the great classics of the horror genre -- which I'd read before, but when I heard that there was a recording of the story by Sir Christopher Lee, I just had to have it.  And Lee more than delivers on the promise associated with his name alone.  No wide-eyed, flamboyantly-gestured horror movie antics here (or their audio equivalent), just great empathy for all of the characters involved -- and for none more so than for the unfortunate, tragically overreaching Dr. Jekyll.

Never mind the story's one minor logical inconsistency -- by which I'm not referring to its central premise, the notion of (even physically) splitting apart a man's personality into its "good" and its "evil" components (reject that, and the story falls apart entirely, obviously), but

-- this is rightfully a classic of the genre, and a cautionary moral tale to boot; and in an age that has made the manipulation of human genetic material easier than ever, also eerily timely ... not to mention that it brilliantly shows that "horror" does not have to involve bucketfuls of blood oozing from the pages in order to achieve a truly terrifying effect; psychology and atmosphere, if as brilliantly executed as here, really does it all.  (Oh, yes, of course there is the one brutal murder committed by Hyde, but let's be honest, that doesn't even come close to the real life horror that would be spread, barely two years later, by Jack the Ripper; and it certainly hasn't got a dime's worth on our latter days' slasher yarns.)

Having lucked out with the two most recent bingo calls, in that one of them (Genre: Horror) isn't on my card and the other one (Locked-Room Mysteries) is one I'd already read a book for, I decided to indulge in a bit of a mini-binge for one of the squares I had been particularly looking forward to -- and had also had a disproportionately hard time making up my mind what book(s) to read for it.  I ended up settling for a print edition of Cornell Woolrich's The Bride Wore Black and an audio threesome of Chandlers: an unabridged reading by Elliott Gould (who better?!) of Chandler's second Philip Marlowe novel, Farewell, My Lovely, and full cast audio dramatizations of Marlowe books nos. 3 and 6, The High Window and The Long Goodbye.

Cornell Woolrich: The Bride Wore Black

Woolrich was one of the classic noir era's masters of psychological suspense; few of his contemporaries were capable of making nightmare scenarios come alive within a few short pages the way that Cornell Woolrich could.  Many of his stories have a downright evil twist at the end, and as far as such endings go, The Bride Wore Black certainly shows Woolrich at the top of his game.  (Be warned, however: Woolrich doesn't always play fair.  His final twists may come out of left field not only for his characters but also for the reader; and this, too, is certainly true for this particular novel.  While certain clues are provided throughout the story hinting at yet another narrative level, they in themselves are not sufficient to allow a deduction what precisely that level might coonsist of.)

There is very little that can be said about the plot without spoiling at least significant parts of it, so let's just stick with what the title implies -- this is a twist (and a fairly major one) on the "black widow" trope, in that over the course of 2 1/2 years, several men are murdered ... though not by a woman whom they themselves have married.  It's a thrilling tale that I greatly enjoyed, even if not all of the background details provided over the course of the book and in the final reveal do, IMHO, fully resolve the things that had nagged at me while I was reading the book.

(Note: If you don't know the book and are seriously planning to read it, DO NOT read the below spoiler.)

So, a bit of suspension of disbelief is required on the part of the jaded modern reader who's read one or two mysteries too many.  But the quality of the writing, the clever build-up of suspense, and the wicked twist in the final reveal more than make up for that.

And just as a side note now, take a look at that cover: Isn't it simply fabulous?  It alone almost tells you everything you need to know about the story going in -- and in the actual physical copy I own, the red and deep black almost have a lacquer glow.  So gorgeous!  Hats off to the artist whoever came up with it.

Raymond Chandler:

Farewell, My Lovely

Farewell, My Lovely is supposed to have been Raymond Chandler's own favorite novel, and although it didn't quite manage to elbow The Big Sleep out of the top spot of my personal affections for Chandler's writing, it came darned close and is also, along with the Christopher Lee / Robert Louis Stevenson "co-production" (of sorts) on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, easily the stand-out experience of this particular batch of bingo books.  It certainly helped to have it read to me by Elliott Gould, whose dark, slightly husky voice and laconic intonation is a perfect match for Chandler's language -- and for Marlowe's character --, but even narration aside, this book has everything you can possibly ask for in a Raymond Chandler novel: razor sharp language and observation, perfect pitch, a 1940s Los Angeles leaping off the pages in every conceivable shade of gray, dodgy characters (both male and female) aplenty, and a Philip Marlowe in deep trouble after successive run-ins with representatives of both sides of the law (with both sides of the law sometimes being represented by the very same persons, of course).

Structurally, the book follows a similar pattern as The Big Sleep and virtually every other Marlowe novel: After having made an acquaintance with every potential to land him in the deepest of muck -- and not before the first specks of said muck have indeed begun to materialize -- Marlowe is hired by a(nother) client, as a result of which his attention is temporarily deflected from the muck already accumulating elsewhere, until it dawns on him that the two piles of manure are actually -- or at least very likely -- products of the same stable.  He digs deeper (or is dragged deeper in), whereupon the manure acquires Augean proportions.  Further complications ensue, until at the end Marlowe emerges from it all: yet a bit more cynical and disillusioned by his recent experience, minus a client or two, and feeling that, once again, in a city where not even the police can be trusted to do their job, he has done their job for them very much at his own cost.

In this instance, the trouble begins with a variation of the "two men enter a bar" joke, except when a private dick (Marlowe) and a black six-foot heavyweight boxer-material ex-con appropriately named Moose Malloy enter this particular bar, the punch line is, in quick succession, a dead body in a back room, Marlowe's first of several run-ins with the cops, and a phone call from an equally rich and shady character seeking to hire him, at the very last minute, as a bodyguard for a nightly rare-jade-necklace-for-a-suitcase-of-ransom-money-exchange in the hills above the city.

Plot serpentines the size of Mulholland Drive aside, however, the true feast in any Raymond Chandler novel is the language and imagery.  Oh, it's cynical beyond belief (this is a noir novel, remember), and female sensibilities in particular aren't catered for; much less so than even in the writings of Chandler's contemporary Dashiell Hammett.  But there's a rapid-fire gut-punch quality to it that just hasn't got any equals anywhere -- just take these few examples, all within just a few pages of each other (if that) fairly early on:

"I said: 'Mrs. Florian? Mrs. Jessie Florian?'

'Uh-huh,' the voice dragged itself out of her throat like a sick man getting out of bed."

 

"A couple of frayed lamps with once gaudy shades that were now as gay as superannuated streetwalkers."

 

"The woman's eyes became fixed in an incredulous stare.  Then suspicion climbed all over her face like a kitten, but not so playfully."

 

"[T]heir faces were as threadbare as a bookkeeper's office coat."

 

"I wouldn't say the face was lovely and unspoiled, I'm not that good at faces.  But it was pretty.  People had been nice to that face, or nice enough for their circle.  Yet it was a very ordinary face and its prettiness was strictly assembly line."

 

"'Huh?  Oh yeah, funny.  Remind me to laugh on my day off.'"

 

"They had Rembrandt on the calendar that year, a rather smeary self-portrait due to imperfectly registered color plates.  It showed him holding a smeared palette with a dirty thumb and wearing a tam-o'-shanter which wasn't any too clean either.  His other hand held a brush poised in the air, as if he might be going to do a little work after a while, if somebody made a down payment.  His face was aging, saggy, full of the disgust of life and the thickening effects of liquor.  But it had a hard cheerfulness that I liked, and the eyes were as bright as drops of dew."

 

"Montemar Vista was a few dozen houses of various sizes and shapes hanging by their teeth and eyebrows to a spur of mountain and looking as if a good sneeze would drip them down among the box lunches on the beach."

"I walked back through the arch and started up the steps.  It was a nice walk if you liked grunting.  There were two hundred and eighty steps up to Cabrillo Street.  They were drifted over with windblown sand and the handrail ws as cold and wet as a toad's belly."

Let me tell you, after you've been through a whole novel's length of that sort of stuff, you feel like you're fresh out of the wringer, too; right down there with Marlowe!

The Long Goodbye

The High Window

Compared to an unabridged reading of Chandler's own words, any radio adaptation of his novels must necessarily fall a bit short, even if it's got the BBc's stellar production quality and the cast -- lead by a very credible Toby Stephens as Marlowe; accent, cynicism and all -- do their level best to convey the essence of Chandler's works.  Still, I wasn't disappointed, and quite frankly, another two servings on the same level asthe Elliot Gould reading of Farewell, My Lovely would have been more than I'd have been able to stomach in this rapid succession.

The Long Goodbye was Chandler's penultimate Marlowe novel complete and published during his lifetime.  It begins when Marlowe makes the acquaintance of a drunk ex-soldier in a sort of on-again-off-again-marriage/relationship with a rich tycoon's daughter, who after several months on-again-off-again friendship with Marlowe asks the detective to help him to make it to Tijuana airport ... only to be reported to have died in Mexico a short while later; not however before dispatching two farewell notes to his late pal -- a short letter accompanied by a larger banknote than Marlowe has ever seen.

The High Window, Chandler's third Marlowe novel, sees the detective hired by a rich bully of a widow (magnificently portrayed by Judy Parfitt) to recover a "Brasher Doubloon", a valuable antique coin (see left) that she has inherited from her late husband.  Like The Big Sleep, this story has an extremely jaded "it's all in the family" subtext, and while its storyline is not quite as tangled and knotted as that of Chandler's most famous novel (where reportedly not even the author himself was ultimately able to unravel all of the plot strings), there are noir joys aplenty along the way ... and Marlowe even gets to go on a cross country trip to rescue a Mid-Western damsel in distress from her toxic big city environment and restore her to her parents' porch.

 Los Angeles in the 1940s:

Ansel Adams (YouTube: here)

1940s' Downtown L.A. at night (YouTube: here)

A map of Raymond Chandler's / Philip Marlowe's Los Angeles:

Source: Huffington Post

... and finally, a couple of my own photos: View from Mulholland Drive: Hollywood Bowl, 405 Freeway, Westwood;
on the horizon, downtown Los Angeles

Left: Westwood, Beverly Hills and Century City;
Right: Bel Air and Hollywood Hills

Hollywood Hills and Hollywood Sign

Beverly Hills: Sunset Blvd. and Rodeo Drive

Santa Monica

Rancho Palos Verdes

Next Read:

  TBD!

Books Read / Listened to - Update 1:

Terry Pratchett: Equal Rites

Wilkie Collins: Mrs. Zant and the Ghost
(Gillian Anderson audio)

 

Martin Edwards / British Library:
Miraculous Mysteries - Locked-Room Murders and Impossible Crimes

Agatha Christie: Mrs. McGinty's Dead
(Hugh Fraser audio)

The Book Pool:

Most likely: Donna Andrews: Lord of the Wings

Alternatively:

* Diane Mott Davidson: Catering to Nobody
* One or more stories from Martin Greenberg's and Ed Gorman's (eds.) Cat Crimes
* ... or something by Lilian Jackson Braun

Most likely: Emily Brontë: Wuthering Heights
(audio return visit courtesy of either Michael Kitchen or Prunella Scales and Samuel West)

Alternatively:

* Wilkie Collins: The Woman In White
(audio version read by Nigel Anthony and Susan Jameson)

* Jane Austen: Northanger Abbey
(audio return visit courtesy of Anna Massey)
* Isak Dinesen: Seven Gothic Tales
* Carol Goodman: The Lake of Dead Languages
* ... or something by Daphne du Maurier

Candace Robb: The Apothecary Rose

Most likely: Simon Brett: A book from a four-novel omibus edition including An Amateur Corpse, Star Trap, So Much Blood, and Cast, in Order of Disappearance

Alternatively:

* Georgette Heyer: Why Shoot a Butler?
* Margery Allingham: The Crime at Black Dudley
(audio version read by David Thorpe)
* Carol Goodman: The Lake of Dead Languages
* Minette Walters: The Shape of Snakes

Most likely: Something from James D. Doss's Charlie Moon series (one of my great discoveries from last year's bingo)

Or one of Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins mysteries

Alternatively:

Sherman Alexie: Indian Killer

Terry Pratchett: Carpe Jugulum

One or more stories from Martin Edwards's (ed.) and the British Library's Miraculous Mysteries: Locked-Room Murders and Impossible Crimes

Most likely: Agatha Christie: Mrs. McGinty's Dead
(audio return visit courtesy of Hugh Fraser)
Or one or more stories from Martin Edwards's (ed.) and the British Library's Serpents in Eden: Countryside Crimes

Alternatively:

* Carol Goodman: The Lake of Dead Languages
* Josephine Tey: Brat Farrar, To Love and Be Wise, or The Singing Sands
* Georgette Heyer: Why Shoot a Butler?
* Peter May: The Lewis Man
* S.D. Sykes: Plague Land
* Arthur Conan Doyle: The Mystery of Cloomber
* Michael Jecks: The Devil's Acolyte
* Stephen Booth: Dancing with the Virgins
* Karen Maitland: The Owl Killers
* Martha Grimes: The End of the Pier
* Minette Walters: The Breaker

One of two "Joker" Squares:

To be filled in as my whimsy takes me (with apologies to Dorothy L. Sayers), either with one of the other mystery squares' alternate books, or with a murder mystery that doesn't meet any of the more specific squares' requirements.  In going through my shelves, I found to my shame that I own several bingo cards' worth of books that would fill this square alone, some of them bought years ago ... clearly something needs to be done about that, even if it's one book at a time!

Isabel Allende: Cuentos de Eva Luna (The Stories of Eva Luna) or
Gabriel García Márquez: Crónica de una muerte anunciada (Chronicle of a Death Foretold)

Most likely: One or more stories from Charles Dickens: Complete Ghost Stories or
Sharyn McCrumb: She Walks These Hills

Alternatively:

* Wilkie Collins: Mrs. Zant and the Ghost
(Gillian Anderson audio)

* Stephen King: Bag of Bones

Terry Pratchett: Men at Arms

Obviously and as per definition in the rules, the second "Joker" Square.

Equally as per definition, the possibles for this square also include my alternate reads for the non-mystery squares.

Most likely: Cornell Woolrich: The Bride Wore Black

Alternatively:

* Raymond Chandler: Farewell My Lovely or The Long Goodbye / The High Window

* James M. Cain: Mildred Pierce
* Horace McCoy: They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
* David Goodis: Shoot the Piano Player or Dark Passage
* ... or something else by Cornell Woolrich, e.g., Phantom Lady or I Married a Dead Man

Most likely: Ruth Rendell: Not in the Flesh or The Babes in the Wood (audio versions read by Christopher Ravenscroft, aka Inspector Burden in the TV series)

Alternatively:

* Carol Goodman: The Lake of Dead Languages
* Sharyn McCrumb: She Walks These Hills

Most likely: Peter May: Coffin Road

Alternatively:

* Stephen King: Bag of Bones or Hearts in Atlantis
* Denise Mina: Field of Blood
* Carol Goodman: The Lake of Dead Languages
* Minette Walters: The Breaker
* Jonathan Kellerman: When The Bough Breaks, Time Bomb, Blood Test, or Billy Straight

* Greg Iles: 24 Hours

Most likely: Sharyn McCrumb: She Walks These Hills

Alternatively:

* Karen Maitland: The Owl Killers
* Greg Iles: Sleep No More

Most likely: Margery Allingham: The Crime at Black Dudley
(audio version read by David Thorpe)

Alternatively:

* One or more stories from Martin Edwards's (ed.) and the British Library's Murder at the Manor: Country House Mysteries
* Georgette Heyer: They Found Him Dead
* Ellis Peters: Black is the Colour of My True-Love's Heart

Most likely: Something from Terry Pratchett's Discworld / Witches subseries -- either Equal Rites or Maskerade

Alternatively:

* Karen Maitland: The Owl Killers

* Shirley Jackson: The Witchcraft of Salem Village

Most likely: Antonia Hodgson: The Devil in the Marshalsea

Alternatively:

* Rory Clements: Martyr
* Philip Gooden: Sleep of Death 
* Minette Walters: The Shape of Snakes
* Ngaio Marsh: Death in Ecstasy

* One or more stories from Martin Edwards's (ed.) and the British Library's Capital Crimes: London Mysteries

Most likely: Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
(audio return visit courtesy of Sir Christopher Lee)

Alternatively:

* H.G. Wells: The Island of Dr. Moreau 

* ... or something by Edgar Allan Poe

Most likely: Something from Ovid's Metamorphoses

Alternatively:

* Robert Louis Stevenson: The Bottle Imp
* Christina Rossetti: Goblin Market
* H.G. Wells: The Island of Dr. Moreau

Most likely: Jo Nesbø: The Snowman

Alternatively:

* Val McDermid: The Retribution
* Denise Mina: Sanctum 
* Mo Hayder: Birdman
* Caleb Carr: The Alienist
* Jonathan Kellerman: The Butcher's Theater
* Greg Iles: Mortal Fear

Most likely: The Medieval Murderers: House of Shadows
or Hill of Bones

Alternatively:

* Sharyn McCrumb: She Walks These Hills
* Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House
* Stephen King: Bag of Bones
* Carol Goodman: The Lake of Dead Languages
* Michael Jecks: The Devil's Acolyte

Ooohhh, you know -- something by Shirley Jackson ... if I don't wimp out in the end; otherwise something by Daphne du Maurier.