Laurie R King
What’s the first mystery you remember reading?
Other than Encyclopedia Brown, you mean? Oh heavens, too long ago. I do remember, however, the first Dorothy L. Sayers novel I read, and I didn’t much care for. Which seems odd, considering how I came to love her later on, but Unnatural Death is one of her weaker stories, and rather laden with her more judgmental attitudes.
What is the latest mystery you’ve read?
A re-issue of Anabel Donald’s An Uncommon Murder. It’s a new edition of her 1992 story, which is interesting considering that I’ve also been re-reading my own Martinelli novels and thinking that I ought at least to put the dates in them, since they feel anachronistic without that signpost, I love Donald’s Englishness—like Judith Flanders, whom I’ve also been reading lately, though Flanders is more laugh-out-loud funny.
What are you reading now?
A couple of books recommended by people at a recent Sisters in Crime workshop in British Columbia, including Son of a Trickster by Eden Robinson and The Lost Ones by Sheena Kamal. Not exactly cheerful reads, either of them.
If you were designing a course on mystery fiction, what would be on your reading list?
It would be interesting to do a compare and contrast: Conan Doyle and Dashiell Hammett; Josephine Tey and PD James; EA Poe and John Connolly…