I enjoyed the 2023 biography of Agatha Christie.

A surprising life story for such a successful author.

Enter historian Lucy Worsley, whose declared intention is to rescue Christie, who died in 1976 at the age of 85, from the misperceptions that cling to her life and her works of fiction. …

… she revisits the most notorious episode of Christie’s life: her disappearance for 11 days in December 1926 …

Her gift for dialogue and for manipulating social stereotypes, as Worsley demonstrates, was formidable, keenly attuned to the proliferating class anxieties of the 20th century; numerous characters are, interestingly, transitional or dispossessed in some way …

Guardian Review

Over the past few years I’ve been reading her 70+ books. Many are very good.

Despite the books, magazines, TV adaptations, movies — Agatha had money troubles most of her life.

When asked “occupation“, Agatha stated “House Wife” her entire life.

She loved buying and maintaining homes. Loved shopping. Did have a social life.

Yet she was incredibly prolific and productive as a writer. Her plots she jotted down in notebooks.

One of the things I like best about Agatha are her books in exotic settings. She loved to travel. And her second husband was an archeologist. Agatha spent a lot of time with him on his digs in the Middle East.

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Very good. This is the first Meltzer book I’ve read.

The Escape Artist (2018)

A TV adaptation is planned.

Who is Nola Brown?

Nola is a mystery
Nola is trouble.
And Nola is supposed to be dead.

Her body was found on a plane that mysteriously fell from the sky as it left a secret military base in the Alaskan wilderness. Her commanding officer verifies she’s dead. The US government confirms it. But Jim “Zig” Zigarowski has just found out the truth: Nola is still alive. And on the run.

Zig works at Dover Air Force Base, helping put to rest the bodies of those who die on top-secret missions. Nola was a childhood friend of Zig’s daughter and someone who once saved his daughter’s life. So when Zig realizes Nola is still alive, he’s determined to find her. Yet as Zig digs into Nola’s past, he learns that trouble follows Nola everywhere she goes.

Nola is the US Army’s artist-in-residence-a painter and trained soldier who rushes into battle, making art from war’s aftermath and sharing observations about today’s wars that would otherwise go overlooked. On her last mission, Nola saw something nobody was supposed to see, earning her an enemy unlike any other, one who will do whatever it takes to keep Nola quiet.

Together, Nola and Zig will either reveal a sleight of hand being played at the highest levels of power or die trying to uncover the US Army’s most mysterious secret-a centuries-old conspiracy that traces back through history to the greatest escape artist of all: Harry Houdini.

bradmeltzer.com

Nola has been compared to Lisbeth Salander. NOT a good comparison. Nola is a bad ass ➙ but she’s no Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

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Slough House is the 2021 book in the Slough House series of books by Mick Herron.

That’s a bit confusing.

The latest instalment again features the drunken flatulent Cold War burn out Lamb leading a motley crew of secret service failures from their shabby base near the Barbican – the Slough House of the title – and begins with a brief and brutal assassination abroad before the offended foreign power comes looking for revenge. …

Evening Standard – Slough House by Mick Herron review: Jackson Lamb – a secret agent like no other

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Every once in a while, I read a PD James book.

British culture. Sophistication.

I feel smarter after a PD James book.

Her career overlapped Agatha Christie, so I have to assume she was influenced.

This is not one of her best, in my opinion. The plot a little too farfetched.

Shroud for a Nightingale is a 1971 detective novel written by PD James in her Adam Dalgliesh series.

Chief Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard is called in to investigate the death of two student nurses at the hospital nursing school of Nightingale House. …

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Pines (2012) is the first book in the Wayward Pines Trilogy.

I’ve got mixed feelings.

It follows U.S. Secret Service agent Ethan Burke as he unravels the mystery surrounding his unanticipated arrival in the small town of Wayward Pines, Idaho, following a devastating car accident.  …

The residents of this picturesque town don’t know how they got there and are forbidden to talk about their prior lives. An electric fence surrounds the town, and the residents are under 24-hour surveillance. The mysteries and horrors of the town build until Ethan discovers its secret. Then he must do his part to keep Wayward Pines protected from threats both within and beyond the fence.

The series covers themes of isolation, bucolic Americana, time-displacement, man vs nature, human evolution, and cryonics. …

The novels are the basis for the television series Wayward Pines, produced by M. Night Shyamalan. 

I haven’t seen the 2015 TV series.

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Silo is a series of post-apocalyptic science fiction books by American writer Hugh Howey.

The series started in 2011 with the short story “Wool”, which was later published together with four sequel novellas as a novel with the same name.

Along with Wool, the series consists of Shift, Dust, three short stories, and Wool: The Graphic Novel.

I read the books. OK … but not great.

The TV adaptation is much better.

I recommend it.

Hugh was self-publishing on Amazon until finally getting a print deal with Simon & Schuster.

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London Rules is 6th in the Slough House series — where the washed-up MI5 spies go to while away what’s left of their failed careers.

The “slow horses,” as they’re called, have all disgraced themselves in some way to get relegated here. If they can’t be fired for any reason, they are reassigned to work under Jackson Lamb.

Herron is a very funny writer. Most of the best lines are from Lamb who’s a bigoted, philistine, obese, spectacularly flatulent, alcoholic chain-smoker.

But smart. And loyal to his misfits.

Oscar-winning actor Gary Oldman plays Lamb in the TV series.

In this book — the weakest in the series, so far — the head of MI5 is trying to protect the prime minister.

Politicians are corrupt and much mocked.

Over at Slough House, somebody wants to kill their tech geek, Roddy Ho. Nobody can imagine why.

The new book is also set specifically after the EU referendum.

Its antagonist, Dennis Gimball, is the UK’s leading Eurosceptic MP, with a wife who writes a tabloid column.

As in earlier books, which featured a floppy-fringed bicycling Westminster populist, Herron adeptly negotiates the rules of satire and the laws of libel to create fictional public figures who simultaneously hit more than one real-life bullseye.

During a series of terrorist attacks on Britain, Slough House detects a threat to Gimball, making the reader wonder whether the espionage rejects are capable of saving the politician and, frankly, whether we want them to. …

Guardian

London Rule #1 = cover your arse.

Spook Street (2017) is the 5th book in the Slough House series — and the best so far.

Herron is an entertaining writer. Most of the best lines are from boss Jackson Lamb who’s a bigoted, philistine, obese, spectacularly flatulent, alcoholic chain-smoker.

Oscar-winning actor Gary Oldman plays Lamb in the TV series.

What happens when an old spook loses his mind? Does the Service have a retirement home for those who know too many secrets but don’t remember they’re secret? Or does someone take care of the senile spy for good?

These are the paranoid concerns of David Cartwright, a Cold War–era operative and one-time head of MI5 who is sliding into dementia, and questions his grandson, River, must figure out answers to now that the spy who raised him has started to forget to wear pants. But River, himself an agent at Slough House, MI5’s outpost for disgraced spies, has other things to worry about. A bomb has detonated in the middle of a busy shopping center and killed forty innocent civilians. The “slow horses” of Slough House must figure out who is behind this act of terror before the situation escalates.

Amazon