Reading right now:

            “Night Broken” by Patricia Briggs. This eighth book in the Mercedes Thompson series could not have come soon enough for me. If you don’t think you’ll enjoy paranormal mysteries or a paranormal series, you should try Patricia Briggs and/or Jim Butcher. Both are terrific authors. “Moon Called” started the Mercedes Thompson series. Mercy is married to a werewolf, can change into a coyote, her friend is vampire, and her co-worker is a fae. Her life is full of challenges unknown to most people which her clever coyote brain usually manages to outsmart.

On hold right now:

            “Don’t Ever Look Back” by Daniel Friedman. This is the second in Friedman’s Buck Schatz series (“Don’t Ever Get Old” was the first). Friedman’s unusual hero is an 88-year-old retired Memphis cop with a unique voice. Not sure how long Schatz can continue to solve crimes, but no matter how long that is I feel sure I’ll want to read about them. It’s interesting that Friedman’s Memphis lawyer father (Robert Friedman) was murdered and now Friedman writes mystery novels.

Can't read all the time! Sometimes the beach calls.

Other Mysterious Things Available:

There are some very famous mystery authors who started out as journalists and quite a few mystery sleuths are journalists. Some more (see last week when I started this listing) of the authors who use a reporter as the center of their mystery novels include:

            Mary Daheim’s 25 book series has reporter Emma Lord at their center. Her latest in the series “The Alpine Yeoman” just came out in March. Ellen Hart’s series with food critic Sophie Greenway includes eight books with “This Little Piggy Went to Murder” being the first in that series. Penny Warner writes a series about Connor Westphal a reporter who moves to a town in the Sierras to start her own newspaper. There are seven books in this series which started with “Dead Body Language.” Sue Ownes Wright’s Beanie and Cruiser mystery series features Tahoe Tattler reporter Elsie Beanie MacBean and her basset hound Cruiser. There are four books so far in the series with “Howling Bloody Murder” as the first in the series. It’s probably not necessary, but I am going to mention Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series which took off with “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” A great series with movies based on all the books. Marisha Pessl has written two fantastic books starting with “Special Topics in Calamity Physics.” Her second book “Night Film” revolves around investigative journalist Scott McGrath.  Finally, Martyn Waites wrote the Joe Donovan series which started with “The Mercy Seat” and to date there have been four books in the series.