Tag Archives: mystery

Reading Recommendations from Just Desserts members – October 2017

At the October 26th, 2017 meeting of the Just Desserts mystery fiction discussion group, following the discussion of the assigned topic of the month (Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot), we had just enough time to do a round robin in which all 12 attendees were able to share just a single recommendation of what other books they’ve been reading recently.

Here is a list of the Hercule Poirot novels and short-story collections by Agatha Christie that were discussed at the October 2017 meeting of Just Desserts. Numbers in parentheses indicates the number of readers of this particular title for this month’s meeting:

• The Big Four (2)
• Black Coffee: The Play (libraries only own the novelization of this play, by Charles Osborne)
• Cards on the Table
• Death on the Nile
• Dumb Witness
• Elephants Can Remember
• Evil Under the Sun (both the book and the film) (2)
• Five Little Pigs
• Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories
• Hercule Poirot’s Christmas
• Little Grey Cells: The Quotable Poirot (not currently in libraries’ collection, though suggested for purchase)
• Mrs. McGinty’s Dead
• The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (4)
• Murder on the Orient Express (both the book and the 1974 film) (2)
• The Mysterious Affair at Styles
• One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (a.k.a. Overdose of Death, a.k.a. The Patriotic Murders)
• The six films that featured Peter Ustinov as Poirot, in general

Other Christie works mentioned during this meeting:

• Ten Little Indians (a.k.a. And Then There Were None) (the film – not a Poirot story – and the libraries don’t own the film, although we DO own the novel that it was based upon) (2)
• The Mousetrap (the legendarily long-running play in London, not a Poirot story)

Here’s the list of mystery books recommended by Just Desserts members in October 2017:

• The Black Box by Michael Connelly – past author selection for Just Desserts
• Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (based on the works of Kerry Greenwood) on Netflix – but the libraries have all 3 seasons on DVD as well – past author selection for Just Desserts
• And Then There Were None and Witness for the Prosecution by Agatha Christie – past author selection for Just Desserts
• Death Takes Up a Collection by Sister Carol Ann O’Marie
• Bad Little Falls (and others in the “Mike Bowditch” series) by Paul Doiron – past author selection for Just Desserts
• Glass Houses by Louise Penny – past author selection for Just Desserts
• The Burning Room by Michael Connelly – past author selection for Just Desserts
• Western Star by Craig Johnson – past author selection for Just Desserts

And here were some non-mystery titles some group members also recommended in October 2017:

• The Christmas Pearl by Dorothea Benton Frank
• Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann (true crime)
• My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman
• The Spire by James Patterson
• Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi [a 2017 One Book – One Lincoln finalist] (many readers)

What mysteries have you been reading lately that you’d recommend?