An Agatha Christie mystery

Not written by Agatha Christie--but using Agatha Christie as a character.Not only is this a GREAT cover, but the sales pitch makes it sound really fun:

Hoping to make a clean break from a fractured marriage, Agatha Christie boards the Orient Express in disguise. But unlike her famous detective Hercule Poirot, she can’t neatly unravel the mysteries she encounters on this fateful journey.
Agatha isn’t the only passenger on board with secrets. Her cabinmate Katharine Keeling’s first marriage ended in tragedy, propelling her toward a second relationship mired in deceit. Nancy Nelson—newly married but carrying another man’s child—is desperate to conceal the pregnancy and teeters on the brink of utter despair. Each woman hides her past from the others, ferociously guarding her secrets. But as the train bound for the Middle East speeds down the track, the parallel courses of their lives shift to intersect—with lasting repercussions.
Filled with evocative imagery, suspense, and emotional complexity, The Woman on the Orient Express explores the bonds of sisterhood forged by shared pain and the power of secrets.

Mysteries with Senior Sleuths

My mystery book club is meeting today and our subject is Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg's "International Bestseller" The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules. One of the club members suggested it, and it's a fun book but it is not super mysterious.  Here's the sales copy:

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel meets The Italian Job in internationally-bestselling author Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg’s witty and insightful comedy of errors about a group of delinquent seniors whose desire for a better quality of life leads them to rob and ransom priceless artwork.
Martha Andersson may be seventy-nine-years-old and live in a retirement home, but that doesn’t mean she’s ready to stop enjoying life. So when the new management of Diamond House starts cutting corners to save money, Martha and her four closest friends—Brains, The Rake, Christina and Anna-Gretta (a.k.a. The League of Pensioners)—won’t stand for it. Fed up with early bedtimes and overcooked veggies, this group of feisty seniors sets about to regain their independence, improve their lot, and stand up for seniors everywhere.
Their solution? White collar crime. What begins as a relatively straightforward robbery of a nearby luxury hotel quickly escalates into an unsolvable heist at the National Museum. With police baffled and the Mafia hot on their trail, the League of Pensioners has to stay one walker’s length ahead if it’s going to succeed….
Told with all the insight and humor of A Man Called Ove or Where’d You Go Bernadette?, The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules is a delightful and heartwarming novel that goes to prove the adage that it’s not the years in your life that count, it’s the life in your years.

Reading the book made me think--where are all the books featuring older sleuths? Yes, yes, there's Agatha Christie's "Miss Marple" series and Dorothy Gilman's wonderful Emily Pollifax novels. But the only books that came to mind were Daniel Friedman's terrific Buck Schatz novels, Don't Ever Get Old and Don't Ever Look Back.  I reviewed Don't Ever Look Back for Criminal Element nearly three years ago and I've been waiting for another book in the series ever since.

I decided to go Googling around to see what else is on offer and the answer is, not a whole lot. Rita Lakin and Madison Johns and Lorena McCourtney all write cozy mysteries staring LOL (Little Old Lady) detectives. And the books sound like fun reads. But where are the books that feature senior citizens who aren't cozy and cuddly. I have a strong dislike for all the euphemisms used to describe old people. I grew up in a three-generation household and believe me when I tell you, I learned early that being old is not fun and it's not for the weak-willed. But I also learned that old people could be fearless and tough and wily and smart and funny and inventive. I learned to value them.  Every time I see movie ticket prices broken out into "child/adult/senior" I think--is a senior a defective adult? Why not just do the age group thing? Under 12/Over 50? And if I ever hear the phrase "Ninety years young" applied to me, I might vomit all over the person who says it.
But I digress--a habit I have that will likely only get worse as I age but I tell you now, it's been with me since I was a child, so you won't be able to attribute it to my advancing years. Where are the mystery books with protagonists who are no longer young? If you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them.


 

Feminist Fiction Friday: The Romance Novelist Edition

One summer, when I was visiting my Great-Aunt Jinsey (is that not the greatest name ever?) I discovered her stash of Harlequin romance novels. She belonged to a the publisher's book club and they sent her, I think, 12 books a month. She devoured them like chocolates. Aunt Jinsey had had a very hard life. My Uncle Bill had been a hard-rock miner in Appalachia and things haven't really changed much in mining since the 19th century. It's still men hacking coal out of the living earth, back-breaking labor that leaves you old before your time. My Uncle died of black lung (or "the black lung," which is how everyone always refers to it).  Black lung is the common name for a nasty disease known medically as "Coal workers pneumoconiosis."   It's not a pretty way to die.
Aunt Jinsey was not one to complain--her generation didn't--but that summer she sat in her rocking chair and rubbed her arthritic hands together and told me, "Honey, I'm just plumb wore out." She was living in sunny Pleasanton, California by then, where she never had to face another harsh winter ever again. And she had time to read.  And what she wanted to read were ... romance novels.
I was already reading crime fiction by then--devouring Ellery Queen and Nero Wolfe and Agatha Christie's Miss Marple mysteries (although, I have to be honest, I didn't really love her). I wasn't really interested in romance novels.
Then one afternoon as my great-aunt napped, I picked up one of the books with their distinctive white covers and read it. It was all right--an easy, undemanding read. I picked up another and read it too.  It was okay.
And then I picked up a book by a writer named Sara Craven. I read the book in something like two hours. And I LOVED it.  I went through the shelves picking out all the other books by Sara Craven (there were quite a few). I read them too and loved them. 
What was different about Sara Craven's books was that she had interesting and exotic backdrops for her stories and the characters seemed more real and less ... wimpy...than the usual romance heroines.  I probably read 40 or 50 romance novels during my visit (seriously, they're short with big margins) and the only writer's name I remember is Sara Craven.
Romance novels have changed a lot since Sara Craven (real name Anne Ashurst) began writing them back in 1975. I spent a year reviewing books for Rachel Smith's wonderful bittenbybooks site, and I was shocked (SHOCKED!!) at how clinical a lot of romance novels had gotten.
And I am not easily shocked. And the thing that's weird is that I have a number of romance writers and romance readers among my friends and not a one will cop to enjoying the more ... anatomical books. And I wonder, who's reading them?
But I digress.
Sara Craven began publishing her novels when she was 37. She has written dozens of different series, both her own and those with multi-authors.  She has written more than 61 stand-alones (the latest, Wife in the Shadows, was published this year). She has two new books coming out in January and February.
Her books always have Happy Endings and here's an interview where she explains why.
If you read only one romance novel, read one by Sara Craven.