June MysteryKit: Vintage Mysteries

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This month the MysteryKit is all about vintage mysteries. So what exactly is “vintage”? Apparently vintage simply means “of age”. Antique dealers consider an item vintage if it is at least 40 years old. So for our purposes, we could consider anything published in 1983 or earlier as vintage. But I would like to take this one step further and include mysteries that have been written more recently but have a vintage feel and are set in an earlier time.

So we have all the usual suspects eligible for this month’s MysteryKit – Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Ed McBain, Raymond Chandler, John D. MacDonald, James M. Cain, Rex Stout, etc. To this list of “most wanted” I would add books like the following – stories that were published more recently, but are set 40 years or earlier.

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
Queenpin by Megan Abbott
Girl Waits with Gun by Amy Stewart
Darktown by Thomas Mullen
Curious Toys by Elizabeth Hand
The Tilted World by Tom Franklin

Whatever you choose to read for this month’s vintage mysteries, enjoy the read, let us know about it and, please remember to add the book to the Wiki list which can be found here: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/2023_MysteryKIT

I have set aside a couple of vintage mysteries that I am planning on reading in June:

There’s Trouble Brewing by Nicholas Blake
The Man Who Loved Lions by Ethel Lina White.

I have one from 1979:
The Luck Runs Out / Charlotte MacLeod

I will probably read an Agatha Christie, but your revised definition really works too. Checking out my shelves!

Another excuse to continue with my Miss Marple reading - or should I branch out?! I will see.
I do really love the reissues of Judy Bolton by Margaret Sutton - so happy they kept the original covers.

Girl Waits with Gun is one written more recently but set in 1910-1920's. Hoping that works!

>6 Tess_W: Yes! Girl Waits With Gun is a great book and gives the reader a real feel for the early 1900s.

I think I'll probably go with The Nursing Home Murders by Ngaio . It's the next up in the series for me.

I'm probably going with Chandler.

Either They Came to Baghdad by Agatha Christie (1951) or Death at the Chase by Michael Innes (1970) or maybe even both

I am planning a CATtrick with this month's SeriesCAT and hope to read an Agatha Christie novel.

>11 MissBrangwen: That sounds like a good plan and I will most likely follow suit.

I finished mine early. The High Window by Raymond Chandler was published in 1942. It has Marlowe chasing after a stolen, very rare gold coin from a famous coin collection. He finds dead bodies all over L.A. in a short amount of time. It's a good one.

I have chosen Les mémoires de Maigret where Maigret speaks for himself and reflects on his long career.

I have completed my read of The Man Who Loved Lions by Ethel Lina White. This 1943 mystery is quite probably the strangest book I have read this year.

I've finished The Nursing Home Murder by Ngaio Marsh published in 1935. It's #3 in the Roderick Alleyn series.

The Luck Runs Out / Charlotte MacLeod
3 stars

Helen is kidnapped (temporarily) when she and her husband Peter are shopping and the kidnappers come in to rob the place. Luckily, she is soon found and brought back no worse for wear. Meantime, the agricultural college’s (where both Peter and Helen work) pregnant pig is also kidnapped. And the local farrier turns up murdered. What happened here? Was it all the same person, or are these unrelated crimes?

This was ok. I liked the first in the series better. This was pretty slow-moving. Some of the terminology felt… pretentious? (Trying to come up with a good word.) Maybe it was supposed to be, since there are so many academics in the book? I did lose interest periodically, so I missed how they figured out “who dun it”, though at least I did catch the “who”. I will read the next book in the series before deciding if I want to continue further.

I read Halloween Party by Agatha Christie but it was not one of my faves.

Read the last two books in the Miss Marple series: Nemesis and Sleeping Murder, 4* for both of them.

I read Ngaio Marsh's first Alleyn story A Man Lay Dead. I thought it was a bit more muddled than the other one I've read Died in the Wool.

July's thread has been posted: https://www.librarything.com/topic/351526

I read Dumb Witness by Agatha Christie, a Hercule Poirot mystery. Not my favorite of hers, but still enjoyable, and Bob the dog was great.

I read A Mind to Murder by P.D. James.
The second Adam Dalgleish novel, published in 1963. The administrator of the Steen Phychiatric Clinic was found murdered with a a chisel in her heart. The investigation is filled with psychiatric analyses of patients and staff as well as their treatments. James' elegant writing can occasionally come across as a tad monotonous but it will always pay off in the end, and the ending of this one was gripping.

I have completed There's Trouble Brewing by Nicholas Blake, this 1937 mystery features Nigel Strangeways and I enjoyed it for it's cleverness and fine writing.

I read two books from 1951 by Agatha Christie, one standalone They Came To Baghdad and one Poirot Mrs McGinty's Dead.

I read Hercule Poirot's Christmas by Agatha Christie.

I read The Odor of Violets by Baynard Kendrick, a mystery/spy thriller originally published in 1941. It was OK overall -- I liked the mystery parts more than the spy parts.