May News for A Cozy Death Book Club

Happy Mother’s Day!

This is National Mystery Month! In honor of this we’re reading Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder by Shamani Flint. Inspector Singh is long suffering and yet takes his attire seriously. You all should enjoy the novel and the end is a bit of a surprise with a bit of a twist. We’re meeting May 25th to discuss the book on Zoom and then play Geography. Take out your world maps and get ready! All of this starts at 2:00 p.m. Pacific.

Last month we had a fun meeting discussing Poison in Paddington by Samantha Silver. It was a cute book, not deep, not long, a bit of a suspended belief novel, but good for escaping into another world. We played Hangman for the second half of the meeting and had two winners. We used 20 words from a list taken directly from the novel. It was attended by 21 members.

I am caught in the inevitable difficulty of deciding which book on my Kindle Unlimited list I want to return in order to get a newer book or one I’d never encountered before. Invariably I click on Kindle whenever I see something that looks like I MUST read this book, but then have a zillion waiting in line for me to attack. Now I’ve realized that I did the same with Book Funnel  and Audio books. I don’t know if any of you are more disciplined but I think I’d have to spend a year on a desert island reading constantly each day simply to catch up. Oh woe is me! 

What I’m Reading Now

I’ve dipped into Rick Bleiweiss’s Pignon Scorbion books. They must have been inspired by the Agatha Christie Poirot books and Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Watson stories, but I don’t know that as a fact. Pignon Scorbion is a French detective in the beginning of the 1900’s. The novel, Pigeon Scorbion and the Barbersharp Detectives, is amusing and is a collection of several short stories that are connected by similarities in village life or work or deductive reasoning. The group of mostly men who work at or frequent the barbershop help to solve each of the crimes. It’s very satisfying and is wel- researched. Try it.

I also have Misty Simon’s book Put another Crime in the Jukebox on my rollator tray (the tray can be dangerous -- I roll around with books that I place on the tray as I travel from room to room. The tray begins to get too full and I get reminded that the tray is not to be used as a moving van. Oh well!). It’s a small town diner mystery with characters who are relatable and includes good dialogue. As an aside, Misty Simon’s writing is always grammatically correct. I love that.

I read the Sherlock Holmes stories “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton” and “The Six Napoleons.” I think the latter story is often included in literature books for middle school students. It’s a perfect example of deductive reasoning. Ebay has a comic book version of The Six Napoleons with great graphics. Watson did not write the comic book, although he did relate the stories.

I hope to see you at our meetings. Also, please join our blog at www.acozydeath.com. It will come to you automatically each time we post.

Keep reading and with best regards,

Karin Diskin