Nolan Can Read

mystery

November 02, 2023

The Name Of The Rose

By Umberto Eco

I’ve been keeping a little inventory of books that misuse and abuse the word palimpsest. It is, in my opinion, a bit of a trap of a word - arcane yet evocative, strange sounding with a compelling meaning that is...

September 02, 2023

The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd

By Agatha Christie

Upon the completion of And Then There Were None, I was a mere 20 minutes into my walk and eager for more, so I fired up the old Libby app, tried to borrow this book, failed, fired up Hoopla, borrowed...

September 02, 2023

And Then There Were None

By Agatha Christie

Reading Christie I am frequently struck with the thought: why isn’t Christie more popular? And then I remember that she is the best selling novelist of all time - Wikipedia currently has her tied with the bard, but he was...

July 28, 2023

The Honjin Murders

By Seishi Yokomizo

I was curious what a classic Japanese murder mystery would be and I think actually it is not entirely my cup of tea. There is a sparsity of prose that I recognize and value in other contexts as somewhat emblematic...

June 25, 2023

Inherent Vice

By Thomas Pynchon

When it comes down to it, this is basically just Bleeding Edge but with more Genre. Enjoyable enough as a detective mystery, and the counterculture voice is kind of fun - and, as I listened to the audiobook, Ron McLarty’s...

May 20, 2023

The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

By Stuart Turton

Fun & funky pursuit of a killer and pursuite of the killt, whodunnit and also just whatdunandwen, little bit of Christie and a little bit of Groundhog day, and a little bit of (frankly, somewhat cumbersome) sci-fi oddity. That frame...

January 27, 2023

Murder on the Orient Express

By Agatha Christie

It’s got mystery, it’s got murder, it’s got train travel, it’s got the line “Hercule Poirot addressed himself to the task of keeping his moustaches out of the soup.”