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May 15, 2018SkokieStaff_Steven rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
Peter Lovesey has been writing mysteries since the 1970s and was even awarded the 2018 Grand Master Award by Mystery Writers of America, but I’ve never read him before now. “Bloodhounds” (1996), the book I chose to read first, is a successful hybrid of a modern police procedural with a traditional puzzle mystery. Lovesey’s British police detectives investigate a murder aboard a locked boat in which the suspects are all members of a club of mystery readers. Not surprisingly, the book’s characters frequently invoke the name of John Dickson Carr, the Golden Age master of the locked room mystery. I’m not a fan of police procedurals and frankly found Lovesey’s police officers to be less vividly written or humorous than Reginald Hill’s. However, the puzzle aspect of the mystery was satisfying, especially the unexpectedly simple explanation of the seemingly impossible murder. I think John Dickson Carr would have approved, and that’s enough for me.