It's a Mystery

Colleen Mondor wonders why there aren't more YA mysteries. And now, so do I. After reading her post, I did a quick search of hornbookguide.com, querying for mystery and detective stories for YA (grades 7 and up)published in 2007. I got twenty hits, but most were, as Colleen suggested, for either general realistic or fantasy fiction with a mystery element rather than some kind of straight-up detective procedural. Years ago I looked at teen reading-interest surveys which consistently showed that kids named "mysteries" as their favorite genre, but their definition of such was broad--Flowers in the Attic, for example. But it seems to me there have been better eras for teen mysteries as traditionally defined: writers such as Jay Bennett, Lois Duncan and Joan Lowery Nixon used to turn them out regularly. (That was, however, back when YA was mostly thought of as junior high.) I dunno--maybe teen mystery fans are so used to crossing over to adult (the way adult fantasy fans cross over to juvenile) that they fail to constitute an imperative market? Or are the exigencies of the murder mystery, particularly, and those of teen life too incompatible to seem credible? Great, now I'm picturing Encyclopedia Brown chasing Hannibal Lecter . . . .

Are you out there, Nancy Werlin? What do you think?

My new Mac is making me do it.

All kinds of ways to avoid work right here, but I suppose you could tell yourself that it's continuing education. I'm really enjoying Charles Cumming's "The 21 Steps." Maps! Thanks to Leila for the link.

Off till next week

Thank you all for the great discussion about adults and children reading. Richard and I are going to New York today to see Elizabeth and other assorted friends and two shows: the revival of Sunday in the Park with George, which was the first show I ever saw on Broadway, and Come Back, Little Sheba starring my favorite cop, Lieutenant Anita Van Buren.

For the Limoliner trip down and back I have the new Denise Mina, Natsuo Kirino's Grotesque, and, on Miss Pod, Ha Jin's A Free Life. Should be a sweet ride.

Going down a dark hall

I'd like to second Elizabeth's hopes (see comments in Monday's post) for a Gothic revival. I've just finished listening to Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier, narrated by Tony Britton. When I told friends I was reading it, to a woman they started talking about their adolescent (around 10 up, I think) mania for Du Maurier. I vividly remember reading her short-story collection Kiss Me Again, Stranger (could be a Mary Downing Hahn title) and then the collection Don't Look Now, with the title story providing the story for an astoundingly sexual movie in 1967. Then Rebecca, in college, and that's all.

I can see how Jamaica Inn could be kind of pulse-pounding for a young teen: there's the exciting melodrama involving the drunken, dangerous uncle (the heroine, Mary Yellan, thinks he's a smuggler, but it's worse) and then there's Mary's rather anachronistically saucy badinage with the brooding love interest, and lots of semi-veiled musings on "instinct," which Mary keeps trying to tell herself is "love" but Du Maurier, semi-misogynistically, won't let her. The atmosphere and scene-painting are as good as Rebecca--it's the same landscape (Cornwall) a century earlier.

Is Du Maurier still doing things for teens?

Merry Christmas Darlings

Hey, I finally made it.

I hope everyone gets some nice uninterrupted recreational reading time over the holidays. I've started my own off with The Exception by Christian Jungersen (Talese/Doubleday), a hugely engrossing mystery/thriller/black comedy (I think) about the employees of a Danish genocide documentation center. The women who work there have been receiving threatening emails and they're all a little bit crazy already, especially Anne-Lise, the center's librarian who thinks the others are Out to Get Her. And they May Be.

To follow up I have some Sarah Waters, Denise Mina, James Lee Burke . . . it's going to be good times in P-town this week.

How many do YOU bring?

I will be out of the office the rest of this week, giving a speech in Vermont and then taking a few days to enjoy the Green Mountain State ( a visit to Beau Ties, I hope, and any recommendations for food and ice cream would be much appreciated). And I'm bringing a prodigious number of books whose pages I cannot hope to get through and whose ISBNs I reproduce below in the spirit of reckless theft of intellectual property:

978-0385516297
978-0399154300
978-0670038664
978-0061231728
978-0871139603
978-0452288522
978-1400043958

Richard, on the other hand, is only bringing 978-0385721790 and 978-1400032914, which is far more sensible (and they're both excellent) but I always worry that if I bring only two, it will be the wrong two. And then where are you?

Miss Pod is coming with us too, and she's fully loaded with Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising series, which I'm rereading-hearing in preparation for our chat in November. It's always good to have a book along you already know you love.

Get a Clue,

Nancy Drew. Chris Heppermann's review of the new movie is up.

Ice-cold killers

I'm really enjoying Booklist's May 1 Mystery Showcase issue, especially editor Bill Ott's "A Hard-Boiled Gazetteer to Scandinavia," which surveys the major Nordic crime novels that have made their way to our shores, a great summer-reading list. We already know about Norway's penchant for this kind of thing.