Reference Books

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective

Kate Summerscale

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Walker & Company Amazon Marketplace: 81 new & used starting at $6.49

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General AAS
Subjects -> History -> Europe -> England -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 50 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The dramatic story of the real-life murder that inspired the birth of modern detective fiction.

In June of 1860 three-year-old Saville Kent was found at the bottom of an outdoor privy with his throat slit. The crime horrified all England and led to a national obsession with detection, ironically destroying, in the process, the career of perhaps the greatest detective in the land.

At the time, the detective was a relatively new invention; there were only eight detectives in all of England and rarely were they called out of London, but this crime was so shocking, as Kate Summerscale relates in her scintillating new book, that Scotland Yard sent its best man to investigate, Inspector Jonathan Whicher.

Whicher quickly believed the unbelievable—that someone within the family was responsible for the murder of young Saville Kent. Without sufficient evidence or a confession, though, his case was circumstantial and he returned to London a broken man. Though he would be vindicated five years later, the real legacy of Jonathan Whicher lives on in fiction: the tough, quirky, knowing, and all-seeing detective that we know and love today…from the cryptic Sgt. Cuff in Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone to Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade.

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher is a provocative work of nonfiction that reads like a Victorian thriller, and in it Kate Summerscale has fashioned a brilliant, multilayered narrative that is as cleverly constructed as it is beautifully written.

Seldom Disappointed: A Memoir

Tony Hillerman

Amazon Price: $11.16 List Price: $13.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Harper Paperbacks Amazon Marketplace: 72 new & used starting at $3.00

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Authors
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 22 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Autobiography - not a murder mystery 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, much as I have liked all of his novels. His gift with words comes through, and his life is interesting. Many things are revealed which I did not know; such as his winning the Silver Star during WW2. If you are looking for a southwestern murder mystery however, you are out of luck. But if you are looking for an interesting insight into the life of a writer, then this is a good one to choose.

A Well-lived Life 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Tony Hillerman writes Navajo and Zuni detective stories and does quite well at it. I've read several and enjoyed them for both the plots and the Indian culture that the reader is taught as he reads the books. I naturally thought that Hillerman was Navajo - he's not. He's a white man. But, he is a Sooner, graduated from the University of Oklahoma (Go Sooners!!!) and he's a veteran of combat during WWII, injured, and was a journalist for many years. His life is fascinating and he tells it well.

Editorial Review:

In this affectionate and unvarnished recollection of his past, Tony Hillerman looks at seventy-six years spent getting from hard-times farm boy to bestselling author. Using the gifts of a talented novelist and reporter, Hillerman draws brilliant portrait not just of his life, but of the world around him.

Tony Hillerman's Navajoland: Hideouts, Haunts, and Havens in the Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee Mysteries

Laurance Linford

Amazon Price: $13.57 List Price: $19.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: University of Utah Press Amazon Marketplace: 24 new & used starting at $11.00

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> History & Criticism -> Criticism & Theory -> General
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> History & Criticism -> Criticism & Theory -> General AAS
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> World Literature -> United States -> Native American -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Atmosphere 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 8 people found this review helpful.

This book gives a wonderful, alive, feeling about the Hillerman stories. It puts the reader inside the scenes , and makes one understand the characters even better. It also makes you long to be there and visit those special places, and preserve them for all future readers.

Completes the set for Hillerman readers. 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

A great gift for Tony Hillerman fans. Gives rereading the older books a new meaning.

Catalog of Hillerman places 2 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I was disappointed in this book. I expected a map of the 4-corners area or several maps with details. This would have been fun to use as a reference as you read the Hillerman books to follow detectives Leaphorn & Chee travels thru Navajoland. Also, the few pictures that were in the book, were in black & white. That would have been OK if they had been sharper and crisper.

A Tribute to Tony, not a Review 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Tony Hillerman's novels swept through their readership every few years like a flash flood in the Four Corners. They weren't great literature. They weren't even very well written sentence by sentence, but they expressed a kind of warm integrity and humanity that many people preferred to the hard-nosed cynicism and sadism of much popular fiction. Tony seemed to respect and cherish his two imaginary Navajo detectives, Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn, as if they were living human beings. For that reason, they seemed "real" to readers also.

Tony Hillerman died a few days ago, at age 83. Let's hope he was buried in the sands of Monument Valley!

Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong: Reopening the Case of the Hound of the Baskervilles

Pierre Bayard

Amazon Price: $13.60 List Price: $20.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Bloomsbury USA Amazon Marketplace: 34 new & used starting at $10.00

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> History & Criticism -> Criticism & Theory -> General
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> History & Criticism -> Criticism & Theory -> General AAS
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> World Literature -> British -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A playfully brilliant re-creation of one of the most-loved detective stories of all time; the companion book no Holmes fan should be without.

Eliminate the impossible, Holmes said, and whatever is left must be the solution. But as Pierre Bayard finds in this dazzling reinvestigation of The Hound of the Baskervilles, sometimes the master missed his mark. Using the last thoughts of the murder victim as his key, Bayard unravels the case, leading the reader to the astonishing conclusion that Holmes – and, in fact, Arthur Conan Doyle – got things all wrong: The killer is not at all who they said it was.

Part intellectual entertainment, part love letter to crime novels, and part crime novel in itself, Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong turns one of our most beloved stories delightfully on its head. Examining the many facets of the case and illuminating the bizarre interstices between Doyle’s fiction and the real world, Bayard demonstrates a whole new way of reading mysteries: a kind of “detective criticism” that allows readers to outsmart not only the criminals in the stories we love, but also the heroes — and sometimes even the writers.

Perfectly Plum: An Unauthorized Celebration of the Life, Loves and Other Disasters of Stephanie Plum, Trenton Bounty Hunter (Smart Pop series)

Amazon Price: $12.21 List Price: $17.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Benbella Books Amazon Marketplace: 46 new & used starting at $6.99

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Books & Reading -> Women Writers & Feminist Theory
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> History & Criticism -> Criticism & Theory -> General
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> History & Criticism -> Criticism & Theory -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

** COMPLETELY UNAUTHORIZED **

Speculating about the cultural metaphors in Janet Evanovich's wildly popular mystery series (which includes 11 books, from One for the Money to Eleven on Top), this anthology takes a look at lingerie-buyer-turned-bounty-hunter Stephanie Plum and catalogs her bad luck with cars (she's blown up quite a few), her good luck with men, her unorthodox approach to weapon storage, and the rich tapestry of her milieu: Trenton, New Jersey, also known as The Burg. The contributors praise the way the series smartly spoofs that familiar chick-lit epiphany—I have a bad job and what I really want is a good man!—in "Bounty Hunting as a Metaphor for Dating," "Why Stephanie Should Quit Her Job . . . but Never Will," and "Nothing Better than a Bad Boy Gone Good." Several essays veer from the chick-lit perspective and focus instead on the comic theme of luck and chance that ties Stephanie to the barroom gamblers and gangster meanies of her home town in "Luck of the Italian?: Skill Versus Chance."

Amelia Peabody's Egypt: A Compendium

Kristen Whitbread

Amazon Price: $23.07 List Price: $34.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: William Morrow Amazon Marketplace: 51 new & used starting at $14.14

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> History & Criticism -> Criticism & Theory -> General
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> History & Criticism -> Criticism & Theory -> General AAS
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> World Literature -> United States -> Classics -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Egypt that so enticed and enchanted intrepid archaeologist-sleuth Amelia Peabody in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries was a place of wonder, mystery, danger, and the lure of antiquity. Now, with this monumental volume of Egyptian culture, history, and arcania, readers will be able to immerse themselves in the great lady's world more completely than ever before.

Journey through the bustling streets and markets of Cairo a hundred years ago. Surround yourself with the customs and color of a bygone time. Explore ancient tombs and temples and marvel at the history of this remarkable land -- from the age of the pharaohs through the Napoleonic era to the First World War. Also included in Amelia Peabody's Egypt are a hitherto unpublished journal entry and intimate biographies of the Emersons and their friends, which provide a uniquely personal view of the lives, relationships, opinions, politics, and delightful eccentricities of mystery's first family, as well as unforgettable pearls of wit and wisdom from everyone's favorite fictional Egyptologist herself.

Containing nearly 600 black-and-white photographs and illustrations, and articles by numerous experts, Amelia Peabody's Egypt sparkles with unforgettable glimpses of the exotic and the bizarre, the unusual and the unfamiliar -- a treasure trove that overflows with Egyptological riches, along with wonderful insights into the culture and mores of the Victorian era, including the prevalent attitudes on empire, fashion, feminism, tourists, servants, and much more.

A one-of-a-kind collection that offers endless hours of pleasure for Peabodyphiles and Egypt aficionados alike, here is a tome to cherish; a grand and glorious celebration of the life, the work, and the world of the incomparable Amelia Peabody.

Nancy Drew's Guide to Life

Jennifer Worick

Amazon Price: $4.95 List Price: $4.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Running Press Miniature Editions Amazon Marketplace: 47 new & used starting at $0.08

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Children's Books -> Literature -> Children's Literature Guides
Subjects -> Children's Books -> General AAS
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Humor -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

We All Love This Book At My House 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

I got this book for my birthday, and then found out that I am not the only woman who has read 50 odd Nancy Drew books. . .my daughter, my students, my neighbors all confess . . . everyone loves Nancy Drew, and consequently, loves this book.

We've set up a "Detective Cabinet" with spy-glasses and flashlights so that we can solve such common dilemmas as "The Mystery of the Missing House Keys" and "The Secret of the Laundry Room", now that we've been reminded of how problems are solved in River Heights.

This book is sheer inspiration . . . a MUST read.

Editorial Review:

You couldn't have known it then, but all those hours spent reading about Nancy's adventures served you well. Nancy Drew's Guide to Life is a loving tribute to the young sleuth and the wisdom she imparted.This book is filled with practical tips, as well as seemingly whimsical (but surprisingly sound) advice. Her sage counsel is accompanied by the classic covers and artwork from her yellow-spined books.

Kennedy's Brain

Henning Mankell

Amazon Price: $19.95 List Price: $19.95 Usually ships in 1 to 3 months By: Vintage Canada

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> History & Criticism -> Criticism & Theory -> General
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> History & Criticism -> Criticism & Theory -> General AAS
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> World Literature -> Canadian -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

An original and breathtaking thriller surrounding one of the most important issues of our time, from internationally acclaimed and bestselling author Henning Mankell.

When archaeologist Louise Cantor’s son Henrik is found dead in his flat, she refuses to believe it was suicide. Despite traces of sleeping tablets in his system, several clues that only a mother knows lead her to believe something more sinister took place.

However Louise soon realizes that Henrik had kept many things from her and is shocked to learn he had contracted HIV. While looking through his papers, she discovers he was obsessed with the conspiracy theory that JFK’s brain disappeared prior to the autopsy—along with the vital evidence regarding bullet exit wounds. The only lead is a letter and photograph from Henrik’s girlfriend in Mozambique.

Louise’s quest to unravel the mystery surrounding her son’s death takes her to Africa, a continent rife with disease, poverty and corruption. Struggling to cope with the oppressive heat and sickness, Louise sees fear in every face, even unexpectedly in the clinics set up by an American businessman. In Kennedy’s Brain Mankell confirms his status as a master of suspense, and delivers a timely and riveting thriller that will have readers on the edge their seats until the very end.


From the Hardcover edition.

The Science of Sherlock Holmes: From Baskerville Hall to the Valley of Fear, the Real Forensics Behind the Great Detective's Greatest Cases

E. J. Wagner

Amazon Price: $11.53 List Price: $16.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Wiley Amazon Marketplace: 62 new & used starting at $3.39

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Law -> General
Subjects -> Law -> General AAS
Subjects -> Mystery & Thrillers -> Mystery -> Reference

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Praise for The Science of Sherlock Holmes

"Holmes is, first, a great detective, but he has also proven to be a great scientist, whether dabbling with poisons, tobacco ash, or tire marks. Wagner explores this fascinating aspect of his career by showing how his investigations were grounded in the cutting-edge science of his day, especially the emerging field of forensics.... Utterly compelling."
—Otto Penzler, member of the Baker Street Irregulars and proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop

"E. J. Wagner demonstrates that without the work of Sherlock Holmes and his contemporaries, the CSI teams would be twiddling their collective thumbs. Her accounts of Victorian crimes make Watson's tales pale! Highly recommended for students of the Master Detective."
—Leslie S. Klinger, Editor, The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes

"In this thrilling book, E. J. Wagner has combined her considerable strengths in three disciplines to produce a work as compelling and blood-curdling as the best commercial fiction. This is CSI in foggy old London Town. Chilling, grim fun."
—John Westermann, author of Exit Wounds and Sweet Deal

"I am recommending this delightful work to all of my fellow forensic scientists.... Bravo, Ms. Wagner!"
—John Houde, author of Crime Lab: A Guide for Nonscientists

"A fabulously interesting read. The book traces the birth of the forensic sciences to the ingenuity of Sherlock Holmes. A wonderful blend of history, mystery, and whodunit."
—Andre Moenssens, Douglas Stripp Professor of Law Emeritus, University of Missouri at Kansas City, and coauthor of Scientific Evidence in Civil and Criminal Cases

Hard-Boiled Sentimentality: The Secret History of American Crime Fiction

Leonard Cassuto

Amazon Price: $20.77 List Price: $27.50 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Columbia University Press Amazon Marketplace: 14 new & used starting at $19.73

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Movies -> General
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Movies -> General AAS
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> World Literature -> United States -> Classics -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Review of HARD-BOILED SENTIMENTALITY 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

In Hard-Boiled Sentimentality The Secret History of American Crime Stories, Leonard Cassuto tells us that "The serial killer and the domestic detective have evolved out of the history of hard-boiled fiction, and hard-boiled fiction has evolved out of its twentieth-century U.S. surroundings" (270), and his book covers that history through an examination of the very books themselves. Whether he discusses Sam Spade of The Maltese Falcon or the effects of the Cold War on the American psyche, Leonard Cassuto manages to cross effectively and with aplomb the (false) divide between scholarly writing and mainstream writing to craft a book that will appeal to both audiences and particularly to those drawn to the crime novel. As the reader closes this text, he has the urge to run to the nearest bookstore to buy at least - and probably more than -- a few of the novels Cassuto explores.

Leonard Cassuto begins his exploration with Dreiser's An American Tragedy, an apt bookend for a text that concludes with a discussion of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones and Truman Capote's In Cold Blood as the other bookends. While Hard-Boiled Sentimentality traces the crime novel genre from 1900 to the present, it never examines these books in isolation. Rather, it incorporates not only the minor texts surrounding the big books but also the author biography, the history, the politics, the economics, the sociology, and the literary criticism that contribute to the fabric of each book - and all without making the reader feel he's sitting in a classroom lecture. He unifies these varied strands with the chronology of a genre, of course, but primarily, he ties them together with a single driving premise: that the hard-boiled crime novel and its various incarnations "draw consistently on literary sentimentalism for their imagery and symbolism", their ambivalence, and their violence (81). In general, he concludes - and proves soundly - that these novels deal in the anxieties of the home and family, in the kind of indifference some characters feel toward the human plight, and in the contrast and conflict of the detective heroes (often public servants who have taken over the caretaking role of families no longer performing the Nineteenth-Century's ideal of family work) who strive mightily not to convey or give into their emotions while simultaneously acting with devotion toward and as guardians of the homes destroyed by violence. Whether Cassuto enlightens the reader about particular scenes, dialogue, and action that supports his premise and clarifies the varying reactions to, against, or in support of sentimental sensibilities or provides the period's context, he never strays far from the texts themselves and never ceases to convey his admiration for the multi-functioning levels of depth in the "simplest" of these books, many of them overlooked for far too long by the literary canon. In a mere two hundred and seventy-two pages, Cassuto includes analysis of the work of no fewer than thirty-five authors, all of whom he believes in one way or another in dialogue with each other.

It is this very dialogue that most intrigues the reader of Hard-Boiled Sentimentality; the reader cannot escape his own memory of these classic and contemporary novels, particularly because Cassuto reminds of us their rich texture as he quotes from them. As the reader reaches the end of the book, he cannot help but think that the title could just have easily have read, Hard-Boiled Books and Their Common Thread: The Effects of the Loss of Sentimentality. He can also barely contain an impulse to reread these books from a brand new perspective.

Editorial Review:

Leonard Cassuto's cultural history links the testosterone-saturated heroes of American crime stories to the sensitive women of the nineteenth-century sentimental novel. From classics like The Big Sleep and The Talented Mr. Ripley to neglected paperback gems, Cassuto chronicles the dialogue& mdash;centered on the power of sympathy& mdash;between these popular genres and the sweeping social changes of the twentieth century, ending with a surprising connection between today's serial killers and the domestic fictions of long ago.