Monday, September 1, 2014
Mailbox Labor Day Monday: Elizabeth George
Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event. Mailbox Monday has now returned to its permanent home where you can link to your MM post.
Below is the list of Elizabeth George books that have come into my house in the last couple of weeks. I've been collecting her Inspector Linley books from garage and library sales this summer, based on nothing more than watching one Linley BBC episode and hearing good things.
I get like this about mystery series. If I hear about one that sounds good, I want to read them all, but in order. So I start collecting them but don't start reading them until I get the first one. Luckily, last week I found the first book of the series at Booktique in Lake Oswego, my favorite Library Friends store. I now have eight of the books in the series and look forward to starting it!
A Great Deliverance (#1)
Playing for the Ashes (#7)
In the Presence of the Enemy (#8)
Deception on His Mind (#9)
In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (#10)
A Traitor to Memory (#11)
What Came Before He Shot Her (#14)
This Body of Death (#16)
I better keep collecting because I still need many of the early books.
Favorite Author: P. D. James
P. D. James was an English novelist, best known for her mystery series featuring policeman and poet Adam Dalgliesh. Those I've read are all set in some kind of closed society -- an adaptation of the "closed room" mystery. She also has two mysteries starring Cordelia Gray, stand-alone novels, and non-fiction books.
She passed away in 2014, at age 94, still writing books and serving as a Life Peer in the House of Lords.
I've now read 12 of James's books. Unusual for me, all but one with my ears. The audiobook editions are particularly good and readily available from my library.
Those I have read are in red; those currently on my TBR shelf are in blue.
ADAM DALGLIESH MYSTERIES
Cover Her Face (1962) (country house)
A Mind to Murder (1963) (private mental hospital)
Unnatural Causes (1967) (writers' colony)
Shroud for a Nightingale (1971) (nursing school)
The Black Tower (1975) (reviewed here) (adult care home)
Death of an Expert Witness (1977) (forensic lab)
A Taste for Death (1986) (parish church)
Devices and Desires (1989) (community with a nuclear power plant)
Original Sin (1994) (publishing house)
A Certain Justice (1997) (inns of court)
Death in Holy Orders (2001)
The Murder Room (2003)
The Lighthouse (2005)
The Private Patient (2008)
CORDELIA GRAY MYSTERIES
An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972)
The Skull Beneath the Skin (1982)
MISCELLANEOUS NOVELS
Innocent Blood (1980)
The Children of Men (1992)
Death Comes to Pemberley (2011)
SHORT STORIES
The Mistletoe Murder and Other Stories (2016)
NON-FICTION
The Maul and the Pear Tree: The Ratcliffe Highway Murders, 1811 (1971), with Thomas A. Critchley
Time to Be in Earnest: A Fragment of Autobiography (1999)
Talking About Detective Fiction (2009)
NOTES