I recently stumbled upon a new novel – the first of a projected series – starring Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins. Solving murders. Here are some other upcoming releases featuring famous literary heroes and heroines.
1. The Hunny Killer, featuring Rabbit (from A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh novels.) A.A. Milne’s Hundred Acre wood may be a symbol for enduring childlike innocence, but we all knew it had to have a darker side. When Owl is found strangled in his tree, Rabbit discovers that what he thought was his peaceful, close-knit community is actually a hotbed of crime and perversion. We’ve always known Tigger was a speed addict, but have we ever asked ourselves who his dealer is? The answer may shock you. But Rabbit’s own demons may get in the way of his quest to bring Owl’s killer to justice when Kanga starts to blackmail him about their illicit affair.
2. Charlotte Bartlett and the Mystery of the Slightly but Unacceptably Delayed Train, featuring Charlotte Bartlett (from E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View.) This demure, rather sour Edwardian lady finds crime in the unlikeliest of places! In between glowering disapproval at all and sundry and cockblocking Lucy Honeychurch, Miss Bartlett finds plenty of time to solve mysteries. Perfect for Downton Abbey aficionados, the Charlotte Bartlett mysteries will explore the seedier side of genteel British life – the indomitable Charlotte can investigate bamboozled dowagers, jilted parlormaids, and the appalling crime of crumpet theft, with her unmatched censorious flair.
3. Stranger Danger, featuring Meursault (from Albert Camus’s L’Étranger.) Imprisoned after committing a senseless murder, Camus’s disaffected hero grasps the meaningless of a random universe – and his unemotional outlook gives him a unique insight into murder. After his execution is stayed when Meursault successfully solves the unexplained death of a fellow inmate, he becomes a highly sought-after consultant to the colonial police force in Algeria.
4. The Hell Jar, featuring Esther Greenwood (from Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.) Who, in their difficult teenage years, didn’t relate to Plath’s angst-ridden, tortured heroine? But maybe all Esther needs is a little purpose and mental stimulation, and what is more purposeful and stimulating than solving a juicy murder? Esther’s first adventure happens during her stay in the mental hospital, when a fellow patient is drowned in his bath. Esther’s keen mind zeroes in on the most likely suspects. Her brassy friend Doreen proves a worthy Watson, and soon Esther’s blues are dispelled in the thrill of hunting a ruthless killer.
5. Get Death to a Nunnery, featuring Hamlet (from Shakespare’s Hamlet.) What if Hamlet didn’t die? That’s the question this edgy historical series poses. Revived moments after curtain fall, Hamlet suddenly finds himself king. Yet, ennui sets in as he ponders endlessly which nation to enter into an alliance with and which advisor to promote. When the ghost of his father returns with new revelations, Hamlet finds himself drawn into yet another murder, this one in a convent. He doesn’t want to get involved, yet when a troubled young novice asks him for help, he is irresistibly reminded of his lost love Ophelia.
6. Bump the Hostess, featuring George and Martha (from Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) Albee’s famous couple is set to join the ranks of our most memorable crime-solving spouses, from Tommy and Tuppence to Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. When a fellow professor is strangled after being invited to one of their drinks parties, George and Martha find themselves prime suspects in a murder investigation. Could they have killed to conceal their terrible secret? Eager to clear their names, George and Martha find themselves embroiled in a web of deceit and hate.
Tags: books, humor, Kacper Nedza, mysteries
“… George and Martha find themselves embroiled in a web of deceit and hate.”
That ought to be a refreshing break from their daily routine.
I’ve always wanted to see the Muppets do Woolf with Kermit and Miss Piggy.* A murder mystery would be even better.
*I also hold out hope for A Zoo Story starring Elmo.
Instant classic!
Heh. Now I’ve been thinking about it for the last 15 min instead of working on an actual deadlined thing, and giggling the while time. HMMM.
Would Elmo play Peter or Jerry?
Jerry! Flip that tickle.
“Charlotte Bartlett and the Mystery of the Slightly but Unacceptably Delayed Train”
Relatable fiction is the best kind.
The second in the series is “Charlotte Bartlett and the Clue of the Missing Change for Half a Crown”
I think of Charlotte and her making change dilemma whenever I’m out to eat and it’s time to settle the bill.
The Critique of Criminal Reason. This actually exists. Immanuel Kant solves crimes: http://www.amazon.com/Critique-Criminal-Reason-A-…
When I was still a bookseller, I used to dread the newest “Famous person SOLVES CRIME” series. The absolute nadir of this awfulness was a short-lived series about Oscar Wilde investigating murders. Perfectly horrid.
That sounds like it would be the BEST though. Nothing but refined snark and perfectly-tailored uniforms.
Alas, it was the writer trying to shoe-horn famous Wilde quotes in between regrettable bits of prose.
As bad as “The Way of War” with its incoherent plot punctuated with Cuba Gooding Jr. rattling off deadpan Sun Tzu quotes? It’s like, “Oh. You’ve read Sun Tzu, huh. Wow. That must have taken quite a lot out of you.”
I haven’t seen The Way Of War, so I don’t know how it compares. But I do have less tolerance for bad books – bad movies entertain me for some strange reason!
Not this one. I can enjoy bad movies, too, but this is the kind of movie you hope gets bad enough to laugh at. Your hopes would be dashed, I tell you, dashed.
Imagine the horror of Oscar Wilde written by someone who thinks they can write like Wilde, but cannot
Why is this so mesmerizing?
They’re not even terrible in a fun way. And written by a conservative MP which is weird.
Just googled it and GYLES BRANDRETH?? I’m simultaneously surprised and completely unsurprised, my eyebrows just don’t know what to make of it. He’s one of those (ex) MPs that part of me thinks they invent just for Have I Got News For You in the same way they always have an obscure publication for the missing words round. I refuse to believe anyone would actually vote for him.
See also: Jacob Rees-Mogg and Michael Fabricant. I would say Boris Johnson but sadly I know only too well how otherwise rational people end up voting for that travesty of a human being.
I found the Jane Austen mystery series especially vomitous. And people kept recommending them to me, nay, FOISTING them on me, because I was known to enjoy mystery novels. And Jane Austen. “It’s like they were written for you!” the alto at choir practice said cheerfully. “They’re just so nice to curl up with on a gray day while drinking tea!” said my college BFF.
Quotes strung together. A voice that tries very, very hard to sound like JA’s and instead sounds like an American trying to sound like JA. Average-to-mediocre plots. Lots of Mysterious Gentlemen for our sleuth to flirt with–because clearly the woman who dumped her fiancé overnight because she’d rather be a spinster and write books than spend the rest of her life with that loser REALLY needs a dude to flirt with more than anything. A rakish foil/counterpoint/whatever. Bah. I have FEELS about those books.
Can I send you all of the copies of them that people keep surreptitiously placing on my bookshelves? I know i didn’t put them there, so clearly there’s a “but you love Austen!” thing happening that well-meaning but so, so misguided folk are doing.
Then you can have FEELS about even more of them, and save me the trouble.
Is this the “Elizabeth Darcy solves mysteries” series, or is this another different travesty of literature?
Different, although the Elizabeth Darcy set sounds at least as dreadful. This series is about Actual Jane Austen, not one of her characters. The frame story is that the author found a stash of JA’s Super Sekrit Journals (containing stories about how she fought crime and flirted with dudes!) in an old house and published them. The authorial voice is very pleased with itself for coming up with this marvelous idea, which adds insult to injury.
Link: http://www.goodreads.com/series/40959-jane-austen…
Are you talking about the Gyles Brandreth books because if so, I must challenge you to PISTOLS AT DAWN. (Although the vampire one was slightly regrettable.)
“[A] new novel – the first of a projected series – starring Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins.” The only way I’d read this is if it’s the Mystery of Who Put That Slipper On The Stairs That Caused Professor Higgins To Fall Down The Stairs and Break His Insufferable Neck, Allowing Eliza To Inherit Everything and Have Freddie Eynsford-Hill (Jeremy Brett version) To Move In. I’d read THAT book.
“The clues of shoes stay mainly in the OH HELP” [smash]
I was with you until Freddie Eynsford-Hill. Clearly Eliza and Henry’s mom should have a Boston marriage. Crime solving is optional.
I once plotted out a novel in which Michel de Montaigne is summoned from the seclusion of his library tower to investigate rumors of a werewolf in the high Pyrenees. I may yet write it, if I can figure out a way to pull it off without trivializing Montaigne and the French Wars of Religion.
I also came up with Detective Jesus Investigates in high school, but I never got beyond the the title.
Misread your last sentence and now I totally want a teen Jesus detective series. “It’s hard to be a teen at Nazareth High. It’s even harder when you find out that your dad isn’t your dad… and that you just might be the Only Hope of Israel.” And then his Chemistry partner ODs… or was it murder?!
Can anything good come out of Nazareth High?
I simply cannot live in a world where crumpet theft goes unpunished.
I kinda want to read all of these, even though I remember disliking The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, and that at least featured an actual detective. Man, I really need to find a decent mystery novel to read.
Toasties, any recommendations? (I’ve exhausted Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Poe, if that helps- though I’m willing to read more modern stuff. I just don’t know where to start!)
Try The Woman in White and Moonstone by Wilkie Collins.
Unfortunately (or fortunately?), I’ve already read and loved those books. But excellent recommendation in general!
Most are shamefully out of print, but Craig Rice (who was a lady) wrote hilarious, Thin Man-esque detective novels that were crazy popular in the forties.
I love the Thin Man! I’ll have to check that out, thanks.
I like Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone series. During her divorce, she fantasized so much about murdering her husband in different ways that she made a franchise of it.
If you like the more traditional Christie-style stories, I’d recommend Simon Brett (who is modern but in the traditional vein) and for more contemporary, darker stuff, Ruth Rendell, Elly Griffiths, and Louise Penny are all excellent.
Thank you!
LOUISE PENNY. She is amazing. But read those only when you’re ready for some really dark, intense, sad stuff.
For further Golden Era mystery goodness, try Margery Allingham (with detective Albert Campion) and Ngaio Marsh (with Roderick Alleyn). Allingham is a terrific writer with a flair for the strange, and Marsh’s mysteries are sort of like Christie’s only more sophisticated.
The other bonus is that between the two of them they wrote over 60 novels, so you’ll be busy for a while.
Definitely Ngaio Marsh – my fiction-crush on Alleyn comes close to my crush on Lord Peter. I can’t really get on with Campion though.
I’ve also recently discovered the Phryne Fisher novels by Kerry Greenwood – set in the 20s but written nowish, they’re mysteries in that similar vein but with the more modern sensibilities.
Excellent, more Campion for me. 😉 I agree that he is an acquired taste.
I read the first Phryne Fisher novel, and I really loved the character, but the writing was so mediocre that it got in the way of my enjoyment. Does it get better in the ensuing books?
Not so you’d notice! But I like the characters and the plots took me along so I wasn’t particularly bothered by the writing. It didn’t jump out at me in an annoying way.
Thanks to everyone for the recommendations! I’m so happy to have new mysteries to read.
The Echo by Minette Walters kicked off my love of mysteries back in university – my first foray into genre fiction. Walters’ first 5 or so books are really excellent (or so my early 20’s self thought).
Peter Robinson’s Inspector Banks series is good, and all of Raymond Chandler’s novels (except the last one) too. Man, I need to get back into mystery novels.
Wilkie Collins
A tentative suggestion, Anne Perry. She writes Victorian mysteries, specifically her William and Charlotte Pitt novels are the ones I’d recommend. Tentative because of Perry’s history (she was one of the girls of the Parker-Hulme murder).
Mardi Oakley Medawar has a historical series with a Kiowa healer as the sleuth, which are very good. She also an unrelated mystery set in modern day, on a Chippewa reservation.
Madeleine Robins has a Regency series with a Fallen Woman lady detective, who lives in a house behind her aunt’s brothel. She is a swordswoman, often wears men’s clothes, and generally goes about being awesome.
I loved “The Big Sleep” if you haven’t read that already.
Is this the place to say I once read a Sherlock Holmes pastiche where he was actually a Buddhist lama that could shoot lasers out of his eyes, and Moriarty was also a Buddhist lama but a surprisingly buff one?
I have also totally read that. I basically collect wacky Holmes pastiche. I was addicted at the age of 12 after reading a book in which Holmes and Moriarty were SECRETLY THE SAME PERSON BUT DIFFERENT PERSONALITIES.
I never before considered a world in which Charlotte Bartlett solves mysteries and I am afraid I can no longer live in world where this does not exist. Charlotte Bartlett and the Mystery of the Mackintosh Squares! Charlotte Bartlett and the Case of the Bothersome Boiler! Charlotte Bartlett and the Suspicious Seating Arrangements! The possibilities are endless!
Rabbit’s own demons may get in the way of his quest to bring Owl’s killer to justice when Kanga starts to blackmail him about their illicit affair
ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I always thought Rabbit was gay. Wow. Some people can really surprise you.
No, silly. He’s bi. I thought everyone knew that.
GOOD. POINT.
When I was little, I insisted that Rabbit was a girl.
Special love to the Russian version of Rabbit. He’s exquisitely polite during Winnie’s home invasion. Russian Winnie is MOAR HUNNY! RARGH! and Rabbit keeps dishing more honey out with increasingly martyred expressions.
I love how different cultures give different nuances to things like this.
Did I ever tell you guys about how I played Rabbit in a middle school production of Winnie the Pooh? I didn’t? Okay. Good. Glad I checked. Let’s just keep it that way.
I played Goldilocks in Spanish in middle school. My stage luck is such that everyone thought that I slipped on baby bear’s blanket and was horizontally airborne before landing on my back on purpose. It wowed.
For some reason both of my Spanish teachers seemed to have a crush on me. Too bad we never got beyond ordering from menus and shopping for shoes.
crushin’ on a middle schooler, keepin’ it classy
In our fifth grade “Lewis and Clark” musical, I played York, a black slave. I followed that up next year with the title role in the school’s all-caucasian production of “The Wiz.”
I’m not trying to brag or anything but I had starring roles as both The Little Red Hen and Lady Macbeth because Jewish girls are bossy.
My fifth-grade music teacher adapted “Carmen” for the elementary musical. Yes, that Carmen, the one with the promiscuous Roma cigar girls and the love triangle and the suicide. I had to wrap aluminum foil around a cardboard knife shape for the murder weapon because prop knives were against code.
Excellent, more Campion for me. 😉 I agree that he is an acquired taste.
I read the first Phryne Fisher novel, and I really loved the character, but the writing was so mediocre that it got in the way of my enjoyment. Does it get better in the ensuing books?
LOUISE PENNY. She is amazing. But read those only when you're ready for some really dark, intense, sad stuff.