Some Monday Readings - March 9, 2026

AI Doesn’t Reduce Work – It Intensifies It – Aruna Ranganathan and Xingqi Maggie Ye at Harvard Business Review. 

Grief Goes Hand in Hand with Gratitude: A Book Review of Marce Catlett by Wendell Berry  – Matt Wheeler at The Rabbit Room.

 

The Passage in The Lord of the Rings Tolkien Couldn’t Read Without Weeping – Trevin Wax at The Gospel Coalition.

 

Speaking Through the Ages: John Aubrey at four hundred – Peter Davidson at Literary Review.

 

Don’t Know Jack About the Other C.S. Lewis? – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

The Nature of Nostos – K.S. Bernstein at Apple Blossoms in a Mournful Wood.

 

Murders for March – Jeremy Black at The Critic Magazine.

 

“A Spiral Spiritual Climb into God” and Other Poems – Katie Andraskie at Katie’s Ground.

 

Willing If Asked – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

Illustration: John Aubrey (1626-1697). 

Some Thursday Readings

Murders for September – Jeremy Black at The Critic Magazine. 

On the name ‘Hamlet’ – Adam Roberts at Adam’s Notebook.

 

Podcast: The Inland Campaign for Vicksburg – Tim Smith and Chris Mackowski.

 

Poet Laura: Poems for Liminal Times – Michelle Rinaldi Ortega at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Alexandre de Moraes is no hero – Elijah Grant at The Critic Magazine.

 

Why Thrillers Matter – Mike Maden at CrimeReads.

 

New Titanic photos show major decay to legendary wreck – Amarachi Orie at CNN.

 

Allan Pinkerton’s Civil War Legacy: Justified or Overblown? – Michael Stroud at The Historians Magazine.

 

Who is the best British novelist? – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

“A History,” poem by Tom Hood – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Photograph: The Titanic leaving Queenstown, Ireland, one of the last photographs taken of the ship.

Some Thursday Readings

The new edition of An Unexpected Journal is now online, and its 15 essays focus on modernity. Writers include Annie Nardone, Seth Myers, Jasmin Biggs, and many others. 

Murders for June – Jeremy Black at The Critic Magazine.

 

Poet Laura: The Tapestry of Poetry – Michelle Rinaldi Ortega at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

“Bed in Summer,” poem by Robert Louis Stevenson – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Pentecost and AI: Being Human in a World of Disabling Algorithms – Charles Cotherman at Front Porch Republic.

 

Not Taken – poem by David Whyte.

 

D-Day & the Battle for Normandy: A History & a Reflection – Mark Malvasi at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

“To a Cicada” and “Fiona” – poems by Matin Rizley at Society of Classical Poets. 

 

Photograph: The first edition of A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson. 

Mysteries: Disappointment Happen

On Thursdays in this space, I usually post a review of a mystery or crime story. Today, I post my periodic lament, this time about mystery stories. 

I began reading one by a British author, highly recommended, promoted by various book services, and enjoying almost 5,000 reviews on Amazon (all authors should all be so fortunate). I start to read. It begins well, if slightly gruesomely (the discovery of a body). The writing style is okay, if slightly stilted. But by the time I reach page 45, (15 percent of the ebook), there have been two graphic sex scenes, discussions of several more, and a horrifyingly graphic description of a child’s murder. I’d had enough. End of story.

 

For relief, I turned to a cozy mystery. At one time, the author was a newspaper columnist that I followed, who had left the newspaper business (like so many other journalists) and started writing mysteries. I hadn’t read any of the stories – they seemed aimed exclusively at a women’s reading audience. But I saw one and decided to try it. It’s part of a series with a rather original premise.

 

The writing was certainly better than the first one I tried, if a bit on the sarcastic side (the author was a former journalist, so the sarcasm is somewhat understandable). I made it through about the same 15 percent as the earlier one. No character was even remotely sympathetic, including the heroine. We’re not talking people with flaws; this is more about people completely comprised of flaws with no redeeming characteristics, like many of the characters in Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities (same kind of shallow rich people). 

When I hit a discussion between four women characters about the virtues of a tongue piercing tied to graphic sex, I powered off my Kindle. (The character with the piercing also brightly said it would heal in a day or two. I looked it up. It’s more like four to six weeks in real life.)

 

Publishers know better than this: something billed as a cozy mystery doesn’t get into graphic sex discussions. Nor do cozy mysteries slip into recurring use of four-letter profanities.

 

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised by either book. But to hit two in a row, by two different authors, was something of a bizarre coincidence. I also shouldn’t have been surprised when even national magazines for teenaged girls feature how-to articles on various sexual practices.

 

The regret here is that both books didn’t need the gratuitous sex and serial profanity. The first book didn’t need the horrible description of a child’s body. But I’m arguing here with almost 5,000 mostly five- and four-star reviews on Amazon, and with the second book more than 100 four- and five-star reviews. If numbers are the measure, then I lose the argument. But I know I won’t be reading anything by either author again.

 

Coincidentally, I received a book service promo for one of the authors, offering the entire multi-book series for free. Seven books at no cost.

 

Nope.

 

Disappointment happens. And once it does, it’s not easily overcome. It’s not the end of the world, but it creates a sadness at what we’re writing, what the world applauds, and what it means.

 

Top photograph by Johnny Cohen and middle photograph by Damir Spanic, both via Unsplash. Used with permission.

2 Annabelle Dixon Mysteries by Alison Golden

The Rev. Annabelle Dixon of the village of Upton St. Mary in Cornwall has a particular knack or gift. Wherever she goes, or wherever she happens to be, murder and crime rear their heads. And he position as reverend allows her access to places and minds that would otherwise be closed. People says things to a vicar they might not say to police.

Author Alison Golden has six books in the Annabelle Dixon cozy mystery series. Body the Woods is the third in the series, and Annabelle continues to find herself at odds with Detective Inspector Mike Nicholls, who has to deal with Annabelle’s way of ferreting out information from people that he and police officers can only marvel out. Not that she’s right all the time, mind you, but right often enough to make a difference in murder cases.

A young boy trips in the woods near Upton St. Mary, and what he trips over is a partially emerged skeleton, buried at least 20 years before. The body turns out to be a young woman who had gone missing and was presumed to have run off from both her sister and her boyfriend. The Rev. Annabelle is naturally nosy, and always intrigued, and she talks to people who knew the young woman.

The vicar comes across a number of unrelated mysteries in the process. Why has her housekeeper suddenly become afraid of everything? Why is Inspector Nicholls constantly in a bad mood? And why is the visiting forensic specialist from London so sad?

In Horror in the Highlands, the fifth in the series, Annabelle is off to the “northernmost islands of Scotland” to visit her brother Roger and her niece Bonnie. Roger is a widower and IT consultant, operating from this quiet, small island where he’s raising his daughter. Annabelle’s visit includes a short stint as temporary vicar of the local church, while the permanent vicar is on holiday. She’s thrilled to see her family, but, well, this is Annabelle, and things are going to happen. 

A young friend of Bonnie brings a box of valuable jewelry to Annabelle for safekeeping. The box was found under a loose floorboard in an abandoned house. Then someone breaks into the church safe and steals the box. And then the body of the owner of the local pub is found murdered on the beach. The island is so small that it doesn’t even have a police officer, which allows Annabelle to investigate, under Inspector Mike Nicholls lands in a helicopter. If you haven’t read Grave in the Garage, the fourth in the series, you wouldn’t know that something has fundamentally changed in the relationship between the vicar and the policeman. They’re now holding hands and blushing. A lot.

Alison Golden

It may be a small island that she’s visiting, but it has more crime that you can shake a stick at. And Anabelle will find herself in the thick of all of it.

Golden has three mystery and suspense series involving signature detectives. The Diana Hunter series is set in Vancouver; the series includes Hunted, Snatched, Stolen, Chopped, and Exposed. The Rev. Annabelle Dixon series is set in Cornwall. And the Inspector David Graham series is set on Jersey, one of the Channel Islands. The last two are officially “cozy mysteries,” which translates as minimal violence and any romantic interest will not involve graphic sex. Golden also includes recipes mentioned in the books at the end of the Anabelle Dixon stories.

Body in the Woods is a solid mystery, a bit more serious than its predecessors. Horror in the Highlands comes to its conclusion a bit abruptly, but it’s still a fun story.

Related:

Hunted and Chopped by Alison Golden.

Three Cozy Mysteries by Alison Golden.

Grave in the Garage by Alison Golden.

Photo of St. Clement, Truro, Cornwall, by Adverse Camber via Unsplash. Used with permission.

A journalist and crime – stories and a novella by Peter Bartram

It’s the early 1960s. Colin Crampton is the crime correspondent for the Brighton Evening Chronicle. He’s relatively new to the job, and he has the twin pressures of constant daily deadlines and a competitor who’s been doing the job for decades and is wired into every police and criminal source in the region. So Colin does what he does best – he keeps stumbling into crimes, and when he does, he’s sharp enough to figure out what’s going on, and what to do next (after he phones in his story).

Crampton is the fictional journalist of author Peter Bartram. In addition to several novels, he’s the star of a novella and a collection of short stories that are fun to read.

In Murder in Capital Letters, Crampton agrees to help a friend (a pub owner; Crampton knows a lot of pubs) get his money back. The pub owner bought what he thought was an early 19^th-century love letter from the Prince Regent to his mistress. Crampton spots the numerous errors of the forgery, and then says he’ll go visit the forger himself, an antiques dealer named Frederick Hollingsbourne-Smith. Perhaps there’s a story here; at the least it will be a few free pints.

What he walks in on is the body of Mr. Hollingbourne-Smith, with two bullet holes in it. And Crampton does what any self-respecting reporter would do – and it’s not calling the police. He spends a few minutes investigating the crime scene (for “local color” for the story). And he spots several metal letters used in linotype printing on the dead man’s desk. Then he calls the police.

The problem for the police is there are a multitude of possible suspects – a former wife, a mistress, a former partner, not to mention all the various people the man has cheated and defrauded over the years. But Crampton is on the job – and he desperately needs a follow-up story.

Equally great fun are the seven short stories that comprise Murder from the Newsdesk. In “The Mystery of the African Charity,” a recent widow is being bothered by her nephew, who’s storing used clothes at her house for an African charity. The nephew is not the type to be involved in philanthropy, and a friend of the widow asks Crampton to look into it. “The Mystery of the Two Suitcases” involves suitcases being left and exchanged at the local railway station. And there’s a mink coat inside one of them.

“The Mystery of the Single Red Sock” begins with Crampton buying gin at the off-license when a would-be robber arrives, wielding a baseball bat. Crampton thwarts the robber, but is drawn into a larger story. In “The Mystery at the Beauregard Hotel,” Crampton receives a tip (from his landlady) that there’s been a double murder at establishment, and he looks into it only to find something else entirely. “The Mystery of the Precious Princess” involves a greyhound, and who may be fixing races at the local dog racing track.

“The Mystery of the Note on the Beach” is about an apparent suicide, except Crampton sees something being staged instead of an actual suicide. And in “The Mystery of the Phantom Santa,” a little boy happens to mention to Crampton that he’s been seeing Santa Claus arriving each night at the garage attached to the boy’s house.

Peter Bartram

Bartram has even more fun with his characters’ names. And the Evening Chronicle’s editor, Frank Figgis, is a character drawn straight from life (I knew people just like him when I worked for a newspaper in Texas).

Author Peter Bartram has had a long career in journalism, including being a reporter on a weekly newspaper, an editor for newspapers and magazines in London, and freelance journalism – all of which have been utilized in creating the character of Colin Crampton. Bartram is also a member of the Society of Authors and the Crime Writers’ Association.

Both Murder in Capital Letters and Murder from the Newsdesk are light, easy-to-read, and entertaining mysteries.

Related:

My review of Murder in the Morning Edition by Peter Bartram.

Top photograph by Darren Coleshill via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Two by Allingham: an almost Gothic and a Campion

Two recent republications of mystery novels by Margery Allingham (1904-1966) show the broad range of writing she was capable of.

In addition to the 30 Albert Campion novels and more than 10 other works, Allingham also published three novels under the pseudonym of Maxwell March. One of those was The Shadows in the House (1936), which was published in the United States under the title of The Devil and Her Son. The U.S. title is a much better fit for the story than the original British title.

Mary Coleridge is a young woman working as a teacher. She has no family; her only relative had died, and through the kindness of her aunt’s friend was she able to eventually procure a position as a teacher. She lives in a boarding house in London, where she meets and goes out with a young man she’s growing more and more fond of. But one morning he explains he must leave and not see her again, and she loses her job on the same day.

She’s saved by a rather brash newcomer to the boarding house, a young Australian woman named Marie-Elisabeth Mason, who’s come to England to visit relatives she’s never seen and to make a career for herself on the stage. She has absolutely no interest in meeting the relatives; they’ve never even exchanged pictures. She talks Mary into taking her place for the visit, and with no other possibilities, Mary agrees. And off she travels by train to meet the family matriarch, Eva de Liane; her husband, Ted; and her two sons, Bertram and Richard. Richard is in a bad way and is dying, Mrs. De Liane tells Mary, and unless he gets married, and married to Marie-Elizabeth, the family will lose the estate.

If it sounds wildly improbable, it’s because it is, this almost-Gothic novel sets in the 1930s. A naïve damsel-in-distress, tricked into marriage, her well-being and increasingly her life threatened; an evil old woman with servants to do her bidding; and what becomes an impossible love story. In Allingham’s hands, this wild, almost unbelievable story becomes virtually impossible to put down.

Coroner’s Pidgin, first published in 1945, is one of Allingham’s Albert Campion novels and, in fact, one of her best Campion novels, which is saying quite a bit, since she didn’t write a bad one.

Campion is on home leave during World War II, and in fact it’s his first home leave in several years. While his activities remain undefined, he’s been working as something like a spy behind enemy lines on the continent. But he’s home, taking a quick bath before he changes and takes a train to see his family. As he sits in the tub, he hears people coming up the stairs of his London flat on Bottle Street off Piccadilly. When he dons a bathrobe to find out what’s going on, he finds his old butler Magersfontein Lugg, a dowager duchess, a young woman, a young American soldier – and the body of a dead woman deposited on his bed.

Margery Allingham

He greets his guests, if that’s the right term, and the group is joined by the dowager’s son, an old friend of Campion’s and something of a war hero. As it turns out, the body was actually found at the son’s residence, and his mother grabbed Lugg to help move it. No one expected Campion to be home.

Superintendent Oates of Scotland Yard soon joins the story, along with several other police investigators. Campion is prevented time and again from catching his train, and becomes a most reluctant investigator of the death. But as with everything else, this isn’t an ordinary murder (as if murder is ever ordinary). This murder has connections to a nefarious plot involving art treasures and the Nazis.

And it is just like Allingham to add a romance and keep the reading guessing to the very end.

Two very different stories – an almost Gothic and a classic Campion – show how well Allingham could capture a reading audience and keep it.

Related:

More Work for the Undertaker by Margery Allingham.

The Mind Readers by Margery Allingham.
The China Governess by Margery Allingham.

The Beckoning Lady by Margery Allingham.

The Allingham Casebook by Margery Allingham.

Margery Allingham’s The Case of the Late Pig.

Margery Allingham’s Flowers for the Judge.

Margery Allingham’s Death of a Ghost.

Margery Allingham’s Black Plumes.

Margery Allingham’s Look to the Lady.

Margery Allingham’s Police at the Funeral.

The Essential Margery Allingham Collection.

Margery Allingham Box Set #2.

Margery Allingham’s The Fashion in Shrouds.

The Margery Allingham Society.

Top photograph of Forde Abbey in the United Kingdom by Annie Spratt via Unsplash. Used with permission. The house is similar to the one described in The Devil and Her Son.