Do You Love A Good Mystery?

I’ve been reading mystery books for as long as I can remember. Back at home, in Transylvania (Dracula’s country) we used to have two huge bookshelves in the living room wall to wall and while one of them was full of her specialty books (she was a maths and physics teacher), the other shelf was full of mystery novels. Back in the day all the mystery books had one name on the cover (as publisher): Enigma. I guess it was quite fitting too.

Before I knew it,  I read all my mom’s ‘Enigma’ books, including Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen, Rex Stout, Dashiell Hammet, Raymond Chandler and Erle Stanley Gardner, to name just a few. Soon I was a regular visitor at the local library. Of course we didn’t have internet (we didn’t even have computers) at the time, so going to the local library was one of my favorite past times.

Often the librarian would ask me (as if she didn’t know): “Do you love a good mystery? I have something new for you today.”

I always knew that she would find something new, intriguing and suspenseful for me to read, and I was never disappointed.

Over the years I’ve read books by mystery authors such as Sue Grafton, James Patterson, Donna Andrews, Jonathan Kellerman, Tess Gerritsen, Faye Kellerman, John Sandford, Stephen White, Dean Koontz, Kathy Reichs, Michael Connelly, the popular duo Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child and many, many others.

mystery books from my shelf
mystery books from my shelf

I’ve been reading mystery novels for the last 35+ years and the love for a good mystery has never left me. Granted, I might have switched from one sub-genre to another over the years. For example from classic mysteries  I went on to political thrillers, romantic suspense and  cozy mysteries, and then on to paranormal mystery novel and back again to a good British mystery.

Of course I also love urban fantasy, Young Adult dystopia, a good sci-fi novel, and you will find me also reading various non-fiction books, but the love for crime, murder and suspense novels has never left me.

Trying to guess the killer by following the clues while reading the book  – finding out the murderer before the author has disclosed it for us it’s one of those past times that I’m sure many mystery lovers know first hand. Learning the reasons why people do what they do – why serial killers kill and why cheaters cheat is, I guess, a way of learning more about the human mind, as quirky as it is.

At the same time I love to read about the detectives, private investigators, journalists or whoever is the case solver in the book, to learn about how they got involved and what their actual life is. Getting that heart beating rush when those edge-of-your seat moments happen in the book; learning about new things, about other time periods (in the case of historical mysteries), about other countries and learning about the various fields of criminology. These are all various reasons why I love a good mystery.

But when I put my rational mind aside, I just love mystery books for their sheer entertainment value, for their giving me those few hours of escape to another world in order to relieve daily stress, for the emotions that they invoke in me and the constant love of books that they keep burning in me.

Do you love a good mystery? And if yes, what are some of your favorite authors?

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4 Comments

  1. “Getting that heart beating rush when those edge-of-your seat moments happen in the book” – I 100% agree and this is one of my favorite things about a good thriller or crime fiction. I just finished a novel that I have to recommend (I can promise a lot of edge-of-your seat moments!). It’s called “Human Source Code” by author Lubo Borik. It really blew me away! It follows Detective Klapman on a hunt to expose an international organization who has been manipulating peoples very DNA, but to what end? (don’t want to spoil it!). It explores the subjects of DNA manipulation and how much of our very nature could be changed by it in a very interesting way. I love novels that leave me with questions and new ideas and this one definitely did and then some. The writing and character development is top notch and it’s an extremely unique storyline. This one will leave you with many questions and could be a frightening real prediction for the future!

    1. Thanks for the recommendation, I’ll definitely check it out. From your description it very much looks like a book that I’ll enjoy reading, especially with DNA stuff. I’ve just read and reviewed another similar one with DNA and predictions and political stuff, called The New Reality by Stephen Martino. If you get a chance to check it out, I bet you’d love it as well!

  2. If you haven’t yet read any of John Benedicts work then I would highly recommend getting your hands on ‘Adrenaline’ and the sequel ‘On The Edge Of Death’.
    Both are medical thrillers and beautifully written. Totally unpredictable and full of marvelous twists. I have become a big fan of John Benedict’s writing since reading these and have found myself recommending them to everyone.

    1. Thanks Boris for the recommendation. I love medical mysteries so I’ll check out this author soon.

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