capsule reviews

dorothy simpson, fiona mcfarlane, + eric rohmer mini squall

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The Inspector Thanet Series (Dorothy Simpson, 1981–1999)

• The Night She Died (1981)

• Six Feet Under (1982)

• Puppet For A Corpse (1983)

• Close Her Eyes (1984)

Long time readers may remember my case for “the guest room book,” i.e., a book one keeps in the guest room (a room I have never actually had in any of my adult homes). To quote myself on the parameters (nb, it is also very important only to put books in your guest room that you yourself have read):

The primary quality of a guest room book is being “a good read,” and a secondary quality is probably “being of sufficient length that a guest could probably finish it in a visit” (that is, it’s under five hundred pages long). Barbara Pym, Shirley Jackson, Mary Stewart, Agatha Christie, Robertson Davies—all the twentieth century B-listers and genre greats, more or less, fit in here. You get the idea.

To this list I think we could add: local histories and nature guides, any interesting local literature if it exists, narrative non-fictio…