S01E11: My favourite mystery reads of 2024
Resolution for 2025: Read other genres too. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Sometimes, I feel that I wake up each morning, having forgotten how to live.
My default states are ‘anxious about the future’ and ‘trying to remember the past’. The latter because I think I might find clues there that will help me navigate what comes next. My brain thinks if I can remember how I did this and how I solved that and how I handled that other thing, I might be able to do it again. And again. For as long as necessary.
This behaviour peaks in December, that time of endings and beginnings.
I have traditions that I assiduously keep up—on December 1st, my Christmas tree goes up. Before the week ends, I make my way to Sapna Book House on 80 Feet Road, walk straight up to the first floor, and spend the next couple of hours checking every single diary they have for sale. I check how each feels in my hand, whether Sunday is given its own full page, that the pages aren’t too thin, that the little aphorisms (a surprising number of diary makers continue to print these at the bottom of every page) aren’t too ridiculous… When I find The One, I get it wrapped and carry it on the metro-ride back home, feeling very much like Mrs.Miniver with her green lizard-skin engagement book.
An engagement book is the most important of all those small adjuncts to life, that tribe of humble familiars which jog along beside one from year’s end to year’s end, apparently trivial, but momentous by reason of their terrible intimacy…
In the train she pulled out the little green shining book and entered in it, from memory, the few and simple appointments which the year had so far contained. “Meet Clem, 2.27.” “Pike-fishing with Vin.” “Lunch Bucklands.” “Bridget for week-end.” Bare and laconic; yet those first days had been crammed, like all other days, with feelings, ideas and discoveries. And so it would go on until the book was complete—a skeleton map of her year, which to anybody else’s eye would convey no picture whatever of her mental landscape. But she, glancing through it twelve months hence, would be able to fill in many, though not all, of the details; how, on the way out from the station, Clem had told her about the new Gloucestershire job; how she and Vin had seen a heron; how the Bucklands had given them home-cured gammon with pickled peaches; and Bridget’s fascinating story about her cousin, the three-penny-bit, and the deaf chimney-sweep.
Source: Mrs.Miniver by Jan Struther (one of my favourite books and which I re-read every year)
I also spend December looking through my diary entries and Morning Pages from the year and often, from previous years. Like Mrs.Miniver, I try to fill in the details. In 2023, I got prints of photos from my phone, a couple from every month, and pasted them into my diary so that I could have visual cues too. In mid-2024, I began to use the 1 Second Everyday video diary.
It’s not that I am obsessed with recording how I live. It’s that I need this trail of bread crumbs to see myself clearly. How did I spend my time? When did I struggle? What brought me joy? Who am I becoming?
When it comes to books and reading, my snail trail is on Goodreads. For every book I read, I try to write at least a couple of lines summarising what I liked and didn’t. I set myself a reading goal every year and look back at the year-end summary GR gives me.
Some highlights from 2024
For the first time in a very long time, I did not meet the reading goal I had set. My goal was to read 60 books but I’ve actually finished 49.
I mind a little bit—mainly because I have spent far too much time doomscrolling and struggling with digital fatigue this year. I wish I’d been able to read books instead. I’m actively working on this though and hope most of 2025 is spent with my nose in a book (or inches from my Kindle).
A whopping 63% of my reads this year has been detective fiction. I’m astounded because while I am a lifelong fan of the genre, I also consider myself a reader with wide-ranging taste. Certainly a little wider than this. To make sure I wasn’t kidding myself, I checked my GR history—detective fiction formed 33% of my reads in 2023, 51% in 2022, and 48% in 2021. I wonder if writing this newsletter has encouraged me to go deeper into this genre. I’ve enjoyed myself tremendously, for sure.
So, having read 31 mystery novels/anthologies this year and being a fan of lookbacks in general, I thought I’d use episode1 11 of About Murder, She Wrote to share with you my favourite mystery reads from the year. Here we go, in no particular order.
Death of a Doll (1947) by Hilda Lawrence
Hilda Lawrence is a little-known American mystery writer who wrote just five books. This one is widely considered her best work. It has a unique setting—a hostel for working women in Manhattan, New York—and the author captures the energy, routines, and complicated interpersonal drama really well. The book is briskly paced and feels like an Alfred Hitchcock movie: scene—scene—scene—scream! One scene features a party where dozens of young women in identical doll costumes and masks dance the night away. What could be more Hitchcockian? Apart from the suspense, there’s a fantastic bit of clueing that’s as clever as an Agatha Christie trick. If you know me, you know that this is the highest praise I can bestow.
A Will To Kill (1984) by John Penn
I found an ancient copy of this book in the dusty annals of Bookworm on Church Street for the princely sum of ₹90. The jacket blurb was fairly standard for classic detective fiction, but I was hooked:
When Peter Derwent takes the shortcut through the woods toward his family's ancestral home, all he has on his mind is a desperate need for money. Certainly the shot that kills him comes as a complete surprise. Who would want to kill the penniless family man?
I was surprised to note that this wasn’t written during the Golden Age of Detection (roughly 1920s-40s)—because it has that classic tone and style. Well-written, well-clued, and with interesting characters, it reminded me of some of Agatha Christie’s mid-tier works like Dead Man’s Folly.
Interestingly, ‘John Penn’ is a joint pen name of writer Palma Harcourt and her husband Jack H. Trotman; the couple have travelled and lived all over the world and Harcourt has written a number of spy thrillers inspired by her experiences. The John Penn books are only a handful and notoriously hard to find in India; so I consider myself lucky to have found this one. What a delight to have the name ‘John Penn’ to look out for in every secondhand bookstore I go into!
Two-Way Murder (2021) by E.C.R. Lorac
This novel was written sometime in the 1950s by the prolific but reclusive author Edith Caroline Rivett, who wrote under numerous pen names. She was all but forgotten for nearly sixty years until her works got a revival and were reprinted under the British Library Crime Classics series. This particular book, though, had never been published before and existed only as a typed manuscript. Perhaps it fell through the cracks when Lorac passed away suddenly in 1958. In any case, it was discovered and published for the first ever time in 2021, almost 65 years after it was written.
The story begins on a dark and misty night and two men are driving to a ball, which is the highlight of their local social calendar. As the mist shifts, they spot a body in the middle of the road and swerve to avoid hitting it. But whose body is it and what is it doing here? This is an amazingly atmospheric read that feels surprisingly modern. It wouldn’t be out of place as the plot for an episode of Midsomer Murders or even Vera.
The Bones in the Attic (2001) by Robert Barnard
If I had to pick a writer as my ‘Find of the Year’, that would be Robert Barnard. He is most renowned as a British critic and academician but he was also a prolific writer of mysteries and crime novels. And he’s really very good! This one is not a classic puzzle mystery but a darker ‘death in retrospect’ story. It begins when ex-soccer player and now a radio presenter Matt Harper buys an upmarket home for his growing family—only to discover the grisly remains of a child in the attic. What happened in the house decades ago? Who remembers correctly—and who is lying? That forms the rest of the story.
The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929) by Anthony Berkeley
Sir Eustace Pennefather walks into his club one morning and finds that a brand has sent him a complimentary box of chocolates. He’s not a fan of such marketing tactics and passes it on to a fellow member, who takes it home. The man’s unfortunate wife eats one too many of the chocolates and dies a few hours later. Was Sir Eustace the intended victim or is there something more insidious at play?
This is a stellar puzzle mystery with not one or two but six self-confessed (and strictly amateur) crime enthusiasts attempt to solve a murder that seems to have stumped the police. All the solutions are logical and clever and I love how Anthony Berkeley makes fun of the tropes of detective fiction. Fun to know that as early as 1929, these tropes were already recognised as such! I loved this so much that I recommended it in the very first episode of About Murder, She Wrote.
Game Without Rules (1988) by Michael Gilbert
Strictly speaking, this isn’t detective fiction. But I’m letting my caution down and throwing my hair to the wind to include this wonderful anthology of espionage stories in my year-end list. The stories feature Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens—mild, unremarkable gentlemen who live in Kent, one with a golden deerhound named Rasselas and the other with an elderly aunt and many beehives. They’re also ruthless MI6 spies who go out on deadly missions and don’t balk at a necessary murder or two. All in service of the nation, of course. While the stories seem elegant and crisp on the surface, there’s a vein of darkness that runs through them, which makes you shift uneasily in your seat. Wonderful fun.
The Great Merlini (1979) by Clayton Rawson
Clayton Rawson was an American mystery writer and amateur magician. Little surprise that he wrote a number of stories featuring The Great Merlini, a professional magician who also runs a magic supplies shop and assists the police with solving seemingly impossible crimes. If you like locked room mysteries that encourage you to stretch your imagination to the limits of plausibility, you'll enjoy this collection of short stories. I’m pleased that The Great Merlini talks about the psychological manipulation involved in magic tricks, not just sleight of hand (although that’s vital too).
I am stopping here because Substack tells me I’m nearing the email length limit. Do check out these books—who knows, perhaps one of them might turn out to be your Find Of The Year!
Sending you all the good wishes I can think of for 2025—thank you so much for reading this newsletter. It’s lovely to have someone reading this on the other side.
( っ˶´ ˘ `)っ
I should probably call this an issue but I like the idea of naming my newsletters the way TV shows are named—with series and episode numbers. So, episode it is.
Bookmarking these for my 'to find and read' list, including Mrs. Miniver :)
stellar list from across decades! going to give your entire collection a read this year!