What are you reading the week of Sunday, August 2, 2015?

[ananda]

8. I just finished Traitor's Purse ...

... a 1941 Albert Campion thriller by Margery Allingham.

By pure chance, I had started reading a review of it by AS Byatt in The Guardian online and
decided to read the book before I finished the review so it wouldn't be spoiled for me.
It sold for a couple of dollars for the Kindle version, so I got it and it was a very good read.

So I decided to get the next book in the series, Coroner's Pidgin which came out in 1945.
I think that one will be fun too.

Then I went back to Byatt's review and finished it. Wow! It was a great rundown not only
of the book but the whole milieu in which it was written and why Allingham should be
considered a master of the genre.

You might be surprised about the level of writing that came out in those days. Even the
escapist mystery books were quite literate and socially acute. I especially like Dorothy
Sayers for the depth of her minute knowledge in so many areas. She always begins each
chapter with a short epigraph, and I enjoy looking each snippet up to find a whole new
piece of a world to discover or rediscover in a new light.