I am now listening, for lack of better, to a very recent detective novel by an author whose earlier works I have read over and over with great pleasure. This one is awful! Cardboard amateur detectives in a preposterous story.
Which leads me to wonder. I can think of three mystery writers whose one series has deserved the many awards it’s won while a second or third series is really unpleasant to read. (To me, that is – they must sell or they would not have been continued.) Two are still living and I respect them too much to throw their names around but Edith Pargeter has gone beyond any concern with criticism.
As Ellis Peters she wrote the Brother Cadfael series which is not only delightful to read but was adapted to an excellent television series. In the very first book, A Morbid Taste for Bones, the absolute darkness of the medieval night became real to me in a way that this Brooklyn girl had never before been able to imagine.
So why does any book I try in the George Felse series give me the untitivated pip?
And here is a pip of a piece: My first try at felting, done on the fly by using the knowledge of curving I’d gotten from making so many hats.
fulled (felted) bowl
