Board 8 > looking for a good standalone mystery novel

(+) Yeah! (+)

minimal romance (like no drama over love. but the main character can have someone he loves as a background)

i enjoyed the seven and a half deaths of evelyn hardcastle as a recent read, if thats any barometer.

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A lot of Agatha Christie novels, but I suppose I'll go with And Then There Were None.

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Came to this topic to recommend 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

so

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Yeah, Agatha Christie is good for this. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is my personal favorite.

My favorite Sherlock Holmes novel is Hound of the Baskervilles.

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Came to say the murder of roger ackroyd but its already been mentioned! Its a fantastic book

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Raka_Putra posted...

A lot of Agatha Christie novels, but I suppose I'll go with And Then There Were None.

Ryokles posted...

Came to say the murder of roger ackroyd but its already been mentioned! Its a fantastic book

These are both amazing. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd might be on another level though.

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Johnbobb posted...

Came to this topic to recommend 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

so

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Johnbobb posted...

Came to this topic to recommend 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

so

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The Westing Game

seconding The Murder of Roger Ackroyd / anything by agatha christie.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote is also great if you're willing to step into true crime instead of your typical detective novel / whodunnit

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guess I'm checking out this Evelyn Hardcastle book

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LeonhartFour posted...

guess I'm checking out this Evelyn Hardcastle book

While I definitely have some issues with it, I literally started it at 10pm one night just thinking I would read for an hour, and then proceeded to finish it in a single sitting. It's something like 500 pages.

It grips you very, very quickly.

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Downloaded the audiobook and listened to the first few chapters at work today.

Yeah, pretty intriguing.

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Been looking for some books to read. Normally don't care much for mystery, but damn, this Evelyn Hardcastle book sounds pretty amusing...but then, I am a sucker for time loops. The added twist with the guests already has me conjuring up conversations in my brain.

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SovietOmega posted...

Been looking for some books to read. Normally don't care much for mystery, but damn, this Evelyn Hardcastle book sounds pretty amusing...but then, I am a sucker for time loops. The added twist with the guests already has me conjuring up conversations in my brain.

It's unfortunate you already know so much. I went in blind because my friend pushed it on me and refused to tell me anything and the first loop/perspective change is crazy if you're not ready for it

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I didn't know so many people had read Evelyn Hardcastle. Picked it up at a bookstore cause it sounded interesting. But yeah it's a fun ride!

I'll recommend The Devil's Detective. While it does have a 2nd book (which I have not read) out it can be read as a standalone.

So I did want to read a Christie novel, and my library doesn't have Roger Ackroyd, so I settled for The ABC Murders instead.

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ABC Murders is a very solid choice.

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Evelyn Harcastle is present-tense narration, isn't it? Think I remember seeing it a few times and thinking it sounded brilliant, but being put off by my intense loathing of stories written in present tense.

Sounds like I might have to make the effort to put up with it for this one.
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greengravy294 posted...

minimal romance (like no drama over love. but the main character can have someone he loves as a background)

As others have suggested, Agatha Christie's novels are all great, although keep in mind she's also a romance writer and some of her mystery novels like Murder on the Links feels like a romance novel at times. Also Death on the Nile kinda.

greengravy294 posted...

So I did want to read a Christie novel, and my library doesn't have Roger Ackroyd, so I settled for The ABC Murders instead.

ABC is solid. One of my personal favorites along with A Murder is Announced and Murder on the Orient Express.

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Eh, the romance is pretty unimportant to the plot and isn't really emphasized most of the time in Christie books.

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Was going to get Murder on the orient express but my library didn't have it somehow

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finished ABC murders

i thought it was okay. it was very obviously not alexander bonaparte cust so i kinda just turned my brain off and didnt try to solve it. i thought it was fairly clever. i really didnt like how much french poirot spoke. like the interjections were fine but there were full sentences that i was like ???

murder on the train now

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The French Poirot speaks doesn't really matter. It's mostly to make the people around him underestimate him by making them think he's just a dumb foreigner.

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BlackMageJawa posted...

Evelyn Harcastle is present-tense narration, isn't it? Think I remember seeing it a few times and thinking it sounded brilliant, but being put off by my intense loathing of stories written in present tense.

Sounds like I might have to make the effort to put up with it for this one.

yeah i'm not smart enough to respond to this

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Tell No One was pretty good

In general I like Harlan Coben's standalone books, never really got into his Myron Bolitar series

I'm on day 3 of Evelyn Hardcastle and the basic premise of the plot has been explained now. I'm honestly a bit skeptical at this point, but at the very least, I'm engaged enough to see how it plays out.

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Finished Evelyn Hardcastle earlier today after reading it basically straight for 5 hours.

major spoilers for the novel below:

as is par for the course for me, i correctly predicted the murderer, not because I had any inclination as to their true identity or motive, but because they were conspicuously "absent" for practically the entire novel. despite several scenes where evelyn and madeline are present, she basically never speaks to aidan in any of his hosts. we're constantly told of her actions and are aware of her physical presence, which seem to play a large role in the mysteries surrounding evelyn and also Bell, but we never interact with her directly until day 8. i didn't have a shred of in-universe evidence to suggest why it was her, though, or how any of the murders occurred. outside of being able to predict the culprit with some IRL "metagaming" i thought it was a thoroughly enjoyable mystery to discover the character's motivations and secrets and i bought into the universe with no real qualms about the structure or setup.

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I'm on day 4 now. It feels like we're just now getting to the main plot.

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Hey i just finished Evelyn hardcastle

pretty entertaining but I feel kinda unsatisfied

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this book is honestly reminding me a lot of Higurashi and Umineko

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I can get Umineko.

My library finally got in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd so I'll start it today, maybe!

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I also read murder on the orient express and honestly was not impressed at all

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I don't think this is what you are asking for but I'm gonna post about it here because I think it's a funny note in the literature world and it is mystery related

Are you familiar with the procedural crime show called Castle? It's about Nathan Fillion playing a best selling author who tags along with detectives as they solve their case of the week, to research for his novels. I love that show and I love Richard Castle himself.

The premise of the show was that he wrote a series of novels about Derrick Storm, a ruggedly handsome secret agent that was quite obviously a self insert of Castle himself. He decides to reinvent his writing by killing of Storm and follows Detective Beckett around on cases for inspiration, and starts a new line of novels about Nikki Heat, a detective.... quite obviously based on Beckett. She's followed around by a magazine reporter named Jameson Rook.... quite obviously another Castle insert. Throughout the show, they mention new books Castle has written and are releasing like Heat Wave, Naked Heat, etc

Anyways, the producers of the show hired ghost writers to actually write these books, and they are written from the premise that Castle wrote them. And they actually 100% feel that way. They are schlocky dumb tropes and antics but man it really captures the feeling of Castle, like this fictional character somehow actually wrote a book for me to read.

I don't remember anything about the books that I read but what I do remember is thoroughly giggling to myself and enjoying it as I read them. So if you are a fan of Castle, I think this is a fun thing to consider. If not, then eh probably ignore. 100% disposable content here

https://www.goodreads.com/series/52515-nikki-heat
https://www.goodreads.com/series/149241-derrick-storm

I don't know if doing this is ever common when there's a writer in a show or movie or something but this existing at all cracks me up whenever I think about it.

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Just finished up day 4 in Evelyn Hardcastle. I like how they switch back and forth between the current day and the butler to provide exposition.

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Calling it now: the plague doctor is the "real" Aiden Bishop

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Night Film by Marisha Pessl,

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On day 7 now. There are elements of the story I'm not a fan of, but I'm still digging it.

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Made it to day 8.

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