I switched up my markers a bit. The owl is the marker for “read” squares, and the moon/cat is the marker for “called + read.” There is also a marker for “called but not read,” but I don’t have any of those yet. The only call that has been on my card so far is Ghost Stories.
I have finished three books so far:
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik: I read this for the Dark Academia. It came pretty close to a DNF, because I wasn’t crazy about it at the beginning. I didn’t find any of the characters very engaging until about 40%, when it hooked me. I ended up really liking it, and I will definitely continue with the series.
Peril at End House by Agatha Christie: I read this for Country House Mystery. This is a beloved Christie, and it will get the full review treatment sometime this month.
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo: This is another take on Dark Academia, although I read it for Ghost Stories. It was another slow starter, but I really loved the second half. It’s a twisty tale set at Yale, in New Haven. It is pretty much begging for a television adaptation.
I started a fourth book, The Quincunx by Charles Palliser, but I’m just not feeling it right now, so I’m going to set it aside. It’s definitely the sort of thing that I like, so I’ll come back to it eventually.
I am not particularly a fan of romantic suspense, except for Mary Stewart, but I do love old-fashioned gothic romance, which fits this square as well.
Vintage gothic romance has been a stable of my Halloween bingo games since the very beginning, in 2016, when we started HB with a group read of Ammie Come Home by Barbara Michaels. This was great fun, a ghost story set in Georgetown, of all places, and first published in 1968. It was just the right amount of creepy.
In addition to Ammie Comes Home, I have read:
Falonridge by Jennifer Wilde
The Looking Glass Portrait by my friend, Linda Hilton, who also plays Halloween Bingo with me on Goodreads
Greygallows by Barbara Michaels
Listen for the Whisperer by Phyllis Whitney
Columbella by Phyllis Whitney
The Walker in the Shadows by Barbara Michaels
The Lost Island by Phyllis Whitney
The Sea King’s Daughter by Barbara Michaels
The Singing Stones by Phyllis Whitney
Last year, in 2020, was the first and only year that I didn’t read anything by Michaels or Whitney. I’m surprised to see that there aren’t any Victoria Holt gothics, and also that there isn’t any Mary Stewart in past bingo games. The large number of Phyllis Whitney books makes sense to me, though – Open Road has reissued her entire backlist, and I’ve ended up buying most of them as they have gone on sale for $1.99 to $2.99. And my library has a bunch of the Barbara Michaels ebooks, so that also makes sense. This is one of the great things about ebooks – many of these old fashioned gothics that are long out of print are newly available through small publishers (same is true of vintage mysteries).
Last year I was browsing my UBS and someone had just dropped off a stack of old paperback gothics. I grabbed some of them and have been kicking myself ever since for just not buying them all – this is a lesson to me. There have been a few times that I have let books that I wanted go unbought, and I’ve always regretted it. I have never regretted buying the book. I love old paperbacks and used copies are difficult to acquire. A lot of them are pretty battered, but they were quite a find nonetheless.
So, this year I am planning on something by one of my big 4: Holt, Whitney, Michaels or Stewart. I have many that I am considering, including:
I own unread copies of Emerald and Airs Above the Ground and they are waiting for me on my kindle. I also checked out Into the Darkness by Barbara Michaels. If I end up not reading it for this round of bingo, I am sure I will check it out again at some point.
Yesterday we visited all of the Londons of my imagination – and today I’ll talk about a place that couldn’t be more different if it tried – the swampy, violent, and often murderous, version of the American South that is found in Southern Gothic books. Books set in this region get their own square. In my mind, it all looks like the bayou and, well, there are ghosts.
Is this why William Faulkner wrote “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
I’ve had this square on my card twice:
In 2020, I read Amy Engel’s The Familiar Dark, a murder mystery set in the Ozarks of Missouri. I wrote “I’m not sure how much I actually liked this book. It was set in a small meth-devastated town full of awful people in the Missouri Ozarks, though, so it was perfect for this square,” and, as well, I’ll admit that I barely remember this book a year later. As such, I can’t recommend it.
Southern Gothic didn’t appear on my card in 2019, but in 2018 I read Sharyn McCrumb’s The Ballad of Frankie Silver, which is part of her Ballad series set in Appalachia. Most of them are set in Dark Hollow, Tennessee, but this one takes place in North Carolina. I’ve read at least three of these books and they are universally good.
There are other books that I’ve read for other squares that I can also recommend, most especially Blackwater: the Complete Caskey Family Saga by Michael McDowell which is an incredibly atmospheric piece of southern gothic horror, with a really unique voice. I am not a horror fan. I absolutely loved this book. In fact, I loved it so much that another book by McDowell is on my short list for this category this year. I also read Be Buried in the Rain, by Barbara Michael, a gothic romance set at a Virginia plantation called Maidenwood, where terrible family secrets are about to be uncovered.
So, for 2021, I am choosing from:
The Elementals is set on the Gulf Coast, and concerns two families from Mobile, Alabama, the McCrays and the Savages, who have been spending their summers in a pair of Victorian homes on a spit of land called Beldame, on the Gulf Coast, for years. There is a third, abandoned, summer home that is slowly disappearing into the encroaching sand, which houses a “vicious horror which is shaping nightmares from the nothingness that hangs in the dank, fetid air.” Yikes.
The other possibility that I’m considering is a piece of magical realism, Wildwood Whispers by Willa Reece, set in Morgan’s Gap, in Appalachia. I really want to read this book, but my library says that it won’t be available to check out as an ebook for 16 weeks, which is well-past my Halloween Bingo cut off. On the other hand, I did place a hold for the print version, which should show up at my branch in the next few days.
I have only been to London in the real world once – I had just graduated from high school and, as a reward, my parents sent me on one of those two week, whirlwind European tours, where we raced through several of the major cities: London, Paris, Amsterdam, Munich, Lucerne, Rome, Venice, Barcelona, Madrid. I loved London (loved every place, honestly) and always intended to return. I never have.
Except as an armchair traveler. If we count the number of days I have spent in Piccadilly and Mayfair, lurking in a Tube station, dancing at Almack’s, or solving mysteries in a mansion flat in Whitehaven Manor or Mrs. Hudson’s rooms at 221B Baker Street, I’ve spent months there. Maybe years. Some of those mental trips have been to the London that is real; many of them have been to a fictional London that exists only in the imagination of the author who conjured them up. I love all of the Londons – real and unreal, fact and fiction. The Londons of the past, present and, probably even future.
I think it’s probably my love of Victorian literature that is at the bottom of this London obsession. I can’t get enough of gaslit London – Sherlock Holmes, Dickens musing on the pea-soupers, A Christmas Carol and Scrooge and the Cratchits. Or, possibly, the Regency London of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer (and their progeny), with its strolls along the Serpentine, marriageable Dukes and curricle races. And then, the interwar London and London of the Blitz, the London of Bloomsbury and Peter Wimsey and Hercule Poirot. These are the Londons that I think of – places that are barely even real because they have been idealized and fictionalized across a century or more, and yet have more depth and resonance to me than Phoenix, Arizona and other brand-new cities scattered across the United States, like infections of urban blight, places I have been and can barely even remember because they all look the same.
2020: I read The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King. This is the first in the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series, and takes place partially in 1920’s London.
2019: The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson. I’ve mentioned this one a few times in prior posts. Anything involving Jack the Ripper is pretty much catnip to me.
And so far in this post, I haven’t even mentioned the magical Londons – the red London of V.E. Schwab’s ADarker Shadeof Magic, the underground London of Gaiman’s Neverwhere, the steam-punk London of Gail Carriger’s ParasolProtectorate, and the ghost-infested Shades of London series by Paul Cornell. And that brings me to this year’s books.
So, for this year, I’m thinking that I will go with the third book in the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch, Whispers Underground. I recently reread the first, and read the second, in the series and really enjoyed them both, and Whispers Underground is sitting in my library loans. I also have Stalking Jack the Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco (see above Ripper = catnip comment) checked out, and I am behind on the Alex Verus series by Benedict Jacka, which is sort of a British version of Harry Dresden.
It wasn’t until I came up with the Dark Academia square (Any mystery, horror, suspense or supernatural book that occurs at a school – boarding school, high school, university, college, etc.) for Halloween Bingo that it occurred to me how much I love books with academic settings. I must not be alone here – given how many of them there are, this must be a fairly beloved literary trope.
I read Death in Holy Orders by P.D. James last year, and really enjoyed it. It is set in a rather unusual theological seminary on the East Anglian Coast. The book combined the “academic” setting with another element that I love – the isolated, windswept coastal setting. I can’t get enough of books with these themes!
In 2019, I read The Cat Among The Pigeons by Agatha Christie. This book is set at a very traditionally untraditional English girl’s school – Meadowbank – and combines murder mystery and political thriller elements. It features some of my favorite side-characters, including Julia Upjohn, the very clever student who solves the mystery and outwits the killer, and Miss Bulstrode, the headmistress. As an aside, the adaptation of this novel for the BBC Poirot series is outstanding, with the always incredible Harriet Walters playing Miss Bulstrode.
And speaking of Harriet Walters, Ms. Walters previously performed the role of Harriet Vane in Dorothy Sayer’s Lord Peter Wimsey series. I have never (re)read Gaudy Night, the 10th Wimsey mystery, specifically for this square but that book may be the quintessence of the perfect academic mystery, and I recommend it to absolutely everyone.
This square debuted in either the 2018 or the 2019 game, and I’ve only had it on my card twice previously. I have read additional books set in schools for other squares, including: Some of Us Are Lying (Karen McManus); several of the Harry Potter books (J.K. Rowling), Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (Ransom Riggs), Down a Dark Hall (Lois Duncan), Truly Devious and The Name of the Star (both by Maureen Johnson), and Etiquette and Espionage (Gail Carriger).
This year, my Dark Academia and Paint It Black squares are, coincidentally, side-by-side on my card. In addition, the two books that I have selected for Dark Academia happen to also qualify for Paint It Black, which includes any book with a cover that is predominantly black.
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novick: I already have this checked out of the library and am holding off on reading it until the game begins! I’m a fan of Novick’s fairy tale retelling, The Uprooted, and also enjoyed several books in her alternative-history-with-dragons series set during the Napoleonic Wars, starting with His Majesty’s Dragon. This one is set at Scholomance, a school for the magically gifted.
The Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo: This has been on my TBR since it was published. It’s set at Yale and with a main character who is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. I have several friends who have loved this book.
If neither of these end up working for me during the game, I can always go back to a Gaudy Night reread – that book is so wonderful I can’t get enough of it. And, fortuitously, several of the Margery Allingham Albert Campion mysteries have covers that would qualify for Paint It Black. Lots of options!.
Rather than go in some sort of order, I have just decided to write up topics as they appeal to me – I’ll end up at the end with the posts that I am least interested in, but that’s okay. So, I have this square Row 3, Column 4 of my square. For 2021, the Trick or Treat square focuses on Young Adult and Middle Grade books that are mystery, suspense, horror or supernatural.
I like to fill this square with a vintage-y YA horror selection, along the lines of Lois Duncan or Richie Tankersley Cusick. In past years, some of my YA/MG Halloween Bingo selections have included:
Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger
Trick or Treat and Help Wanted by Richie Tankerley Cusick
All the Bad Apples by Moira Fowley-Doyle
The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson
One of Us is Lying by Karen McManus
I Know What You Did Last Summer and Down a Dark Hall by Lois Duncan
I have read much less YA/MG in the last couple of years, but this is still a small sample of some of the juvenile books I’ve read for Halloween Bingo. Etiquette and Espionage is fun and steampunky, and set in a finishing school for Victorian girls with special talents in mayhem, assassination and espionage. All The Bad Apples is magical realism, and was one of my favorite books of 2019 – Fowley-Doyle’s perspective on the brutal history of misogyny and abuse in Catholic Ireland was very timely and completely absorbing. As an aside, I’ve read all three of her books, and have enjoyed each more than the prior.
The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson, is set in London, at a boarding school. The main character, Rory, arrives from Louisiana, just in time for someone to begin re-enacting the Ripper murders from the 1880s. One of Us Is Lying by Karen McManus is basically a modernized version of The Breakfast Club, with murder. And it’s as much fun as that would imply, although I was underwhelmed by the ending.
Of the two Richie Tankersley Cusick books, Trick or Treat was definitely better than Help Wanted. They were both very 1980’s/1990’s tween horror. This isn’t my nostalgia – I am too old for them, and my kids are too young, but they are still fun. Lois Duncan, on the hand, is absolutely a nostalgia bomb for me. I still remember checking Down A Dark Hall out of my Junior High School library – it scared the bejeezus out of me. I Know What You Did Last Summer was another favorite of my tween years, and the 1997 adaptation, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze, Jr. (who met on set and married 4 years later) is entertaining and has plenty of jump scares.
This year, I’m strongly leaning towards Mary Downing Hahn’s Deep and Dark and Dangerous . In the alternative, I might read a Point Horror or a Fear Street – Funhouse by Diane Hoh is particularly appealing.
Part of the fun of Halloween bingo is a set of six “spell cards” that can be used to change the game. I am not feeling inclined to read a serial killer or other very violent book at this point, which is what the Splatter squares involves, so I am transfiguring my Splatter square to Halloween. Halloween includes “any book set on halloween or has halloween in the title or that has a pumpkin on the cover, or in the title, etc.” It also includes a “fancy dress” or costuming element that was previously part of a different square, because it fits here better.
What could be better, then, then a murder set in a theater or among actors, whose jobs involve costuming? The October side-read for Appointment with Agatha is a selection of Ngaio Marsh theatrical mysteries. We have voted on four books to choose from, including Enter a Murderer, which I read this January and do not plan to reread. The remaining three, however, are new to me.
I’m planning on reading all three of them, if I can manage it. I’m not entirely sure that Final Curtain actually involves costumes, but I can surely wedge into another square if not. I’ve enjoyed all of the Inspector Alleyn mysteries that I’ve read, so I’m looking forward to it!
I’ve completed my discussion of the first row, and have realized that I am going to run out of time before Bingo begins. No worries, though. I’ll just keep going until I lose interest!
This is a really easy square for me to fill – it’s mystery, first of all, which is my favorite, and most read, genre, and then it’s also a sub-genre that I read a lot of, in any case. I’m not actually a huge cozy mystery fan, which works well for “Amateur Sleuth,” but a lot of my favorite Golden Age series, and even some of my modern series, do have P.I. or other amateur protagonists.
Which brings me to the definition – I take a “broad” approach to amateur, allowing any sleuth who isn’t actively employed by a police department or other government sanctioned agency (FBI, sheriffs, prosecutors, etc). So, with my definition, P.I.’s and retired police officers fit, and even Sherlock Holmes is an “amateur sleuth,” notwithstanding the fact that he would be deeply, deeply offended by the characterization!
I’m not going to list all of the books I’ve read in past bingo games that would have fit this square because the list would be long, indeed. Looking back over past cards, I’m surprised to note that I have never actually played this specific square before. In any case, I’m just going to mention a few books/series that are on my radar for this HB season!
I will definitely be reading both of these books, as they are my Appointment With Agatha reads for September and October. They are also both Poirot books, and much to his irritation, he is also an “amateur sleuth” under this square’s definition.
If I decide to apply both of those books to alternative squares, however, I have some other ongoing vintage mystery series that I could dip into for this one: Brian Flynn’s Anthony Bathurst series, currently being republished by one of my favorite small, independent publishers, Dean Street Press, Gladys Mitchell’s Mrs. Bradley series, most of which are available through the Kindle Unlimited Library, the Miss Silver series by Patricia Wentworth, which I mostly own for kindle, or Ellis Peter’s delightful Brother Cadfael books, which I have also collected over the years.
The last of my top row squares is Noir, an updated square that combines Classic & Modern Noir into a single category: mystery with noir elements, including authors like Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James Ellroy, Ian Rankin, Michael Connelly, Henning Mankell, and anything that is described as Nordic Noir, Tartan Noir, Granite Noir, etc. Noir itself is defined by Wikipedia as “a subgenre of crime fiction. In this subgenre, right and wrong are not clearly defined, while the protagonists are seriously and often tragically flawed.”
I myself am rather a fan of noir crime fiction. In one of my favorites modern noir series, the protagonist of Michael Connelly’s long-running series, Hieronymus (Harry) Bosch, provides an example of the use of a flawed protagonist. Harry is a veteran detective with the LAPD, insubordinate, aggressive, and a brilliant investigator. He is passionate about justice – everybody counts or nobody counts is his motto – but doesn’t mind cutting a few corners on the way there. He is also deeply damaged, the son of a prostitute who grew up in foster care after his mother was murdered – a murder that went unsolved for decades. While he sees murder in black and white, there are a lot of shades of gray in these books.
Connelly uses Los Angeles as another character in the novels, and something about Southern California seems to lend itself to the noir sensibility. Los Angeles is the birthplace of the classic noir crime novel, which features hardboiled P.I.s like Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade, operating in the shadowy confluence between the glitter and glamour of wealthy L.A. and the dark and sometimes grim underworld of drug dealers, prostitutes and violence operating just under the surface.
In past Halloween Bingo games, I’ve filled various spaces, including Classic Noir, Modern Noir, and other mystery squares with this type of book:
The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo
The Bride Wore Black by Cornell Woolrich
Fallen by Karin Slaughter
Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
I recall being underwhelmed by the Nesbo book – so much so that I’ve never gone back to try another. The Bride Wore Black, by Cornell Woolrich, was a highlight of the year that I read it. I still remember how atmospheric it was and the twist, while not quite as shocking to today’s sensibilities as it was when this book was published, was still startling. I’ve read a lot of Karin Slaughter over the years, and while I do enjoy her plots, sometimes the violence, and especially the sexual violence, that permeates her books can be too much. Fallen is the fifth book in her Will Trent series, set in Atlanta, Georgia. Dark Places and Sharp Objects may or may not truly qualify as noir, being more consistent with psychological thrillers. But Gillian Flynn’s imagination is a dark place, indeed.
This year, I will be choosing from
I recently started reading Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe books. This year so far, I’ve read The High Window and The Lady in the Lake. I’m pretty sure that I will fill this square with one of my remaining installments in the series, possibly the first, The Big Sleep. Alternatively, I am considering one of the Lew Archer mysteries, by Ross Macdonald, or, if I decide on a more modern selection, I have the fifth Dublin Murder Squad book, The Secret Place by Tana French, available.
It’s important to me to make an effort to include diverse voices in my reading. Because I read so much older fiction, this can sometimes take extra effort – publishing has been largely under the control of the white establishment, and while writers of color have made significant inroads, ensuring that I experience diverse perspectives still takes some attention.
This is why there are, actually, two ways to encourage the bingo players to look for diversity in their reading – the Diverse Voices square and the Amplification spell card, which allows any player to substitute in a book written by an author from a historically marginalized group to fill any square on their card.
Over the years, I’ve had Diverse Voices on my card several times. For people who are interested in genre fiction written by authors of color, the following is a list of possibilities:
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. I read this one for In the Dark, Dark Woods, using the Amplification Spell. In addition to having a glorious cover, it was an interesting Lovecraftian gothic tale. It was also everywhere last year, and was Moreno-Garcia’s breakout book.
The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle. Victor Lavalle is an author I am not familiar with and, interestingly, this novella also had Lovecraftian themes, as a retelling of the Lovecraft short story The Horror at Red Hook. After I read the novella, I found and read the source material. I am not a Lovecraft fan, and can say unequivocally that, in my opinion, Lavalle’s rendering blew the doors off the original. Sorry not sorry.
Black Water Rising by Attica Locke. I recently got into Attica Locke – a black author who is also an accomplished screenwriter. She is best known for her Highway 59 series, featuring Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger. This was her first novel, and was really enjoyable – an interesting environmental mystery. I have read everything she has published, and am waiting, excitedly, for her next Highway 59 novel. Word is that the series may be adapted for television.
Half-Resurrection Blues by Daniel Jose Older. Somewhat oddly, there isn’t nearly as much urban fantasy set in New York as there is in London. Nonetheless, this intriguing offering about an “inbetweener,” a partially resurrected from a life he doesn’t remember, is worth reading. There are two other books in the series. So many books, so little time.
Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho. This was such a fun read – a magical farce set in Regency England. I really need to reread it, and then get my hands on the second book in the series.
Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse. I remember that I read this one, but it must have been after I blacked out my card, because I can’t find it in my records. Anyway, this is a piece of urban fantasy written by a Native American author, with Native American mythology at the center. Really good.
This year, I’m planning to read at least a couple from this list:
The Master of Djinn by P. Djeli Clark. I have this on hold at my library and I am hopeful that it will be available before Halloween. If I don’t get to read it this year, I’m sure I’ll be able to get my hands on it next year.
Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse. Also on hold, although I may actually buy this one since I bought the first in the series.
Dread Nation by Justina Ireland. Alternate history set during the Civil War with a young black woman as protagonist taking out zombies with her weaponry? Yes. Right now.
Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley. This has been on my TBR for at least a decade. I have a paperback copy stuffed in a bookshelf somewhere.
The Fire Keeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley. This is a YA thriller that takes place in Sault Ste Marie, Michigan, in the Upper Peninsula, at Lake Superior State University.
Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby. I recently read S.A. Cosby’s second book, Razorblade Tears, and was riveted by his characters. I’ve heard good things about this one, too.
