A MYSTERY

Betty Tonks was an inveterate reader and buyer of detective novels. And for years (before my income started shrinking) so was I. We even spent money posting our favourite new discoveries to each other. 

Her taste was reasonably eclectic although she did tend to prefer English writers such as PD James (Inspector Dalgleish), Reginald Hill (Dalzeil & Pascoe), Peter Robinson (DCI Banks), Ian Rankin (DI Rebus). But occasionally she'd go venturing to foreign climes with writers like Barbara Nadel (Istanbul) and Donna Leon (Venice). 

I built on those foreign adventures with all the Scandi Noir writers such as Henning Mankel, Stefan Larsson, Anne Holt, Camilla Lackberg, Arnaldur Indridasson etc but also found stories set in Saudi Arabia (Zoe Ferraris), South Africa (Malla Nunn), Cuba (Leonardo Padura), (Ireland (Benjamin Black), Netherlands (Nicholas Freeling), France (Georget Phillippe), Parker Bilal (Egypt)....and so the list goes on.


Occasionally I’d visit the world of USA crime but after the pleasure of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler I eventually found that the novels of writers such as James Lee Burke and RJ Ellory were too violent for my taste. I prefer the softer style of Canadian writers such as Howard Engel and Louise Penny. And then of course there were the great Australian writers such as Peter Temple, Peter Corris and Garry Disher even before the current rich crop of rural noir authors.

As I’ve mentioned before, Susan and I were disciplined and did a 50% cull of our books before packing up the Pink House. It was probably harder for Susan because she re-reads books all the time whereas I keep books because I think I might just re-read them, one day. But with shelves full of books that I haven’t read yet and endless lists of books I must get out of the library, the tragedy that has unfolded this weel shouldn’t hurt as much. 

We are getting to the end of the boxes to unpack and it seems that I’m missing most of my detective books (and some of my history/politics books). All I can think of is that I accidentally included them with the books we sold to the Book Grocer during our cull. I have small section of L to P (Le Carre, Leon, Maloney, McKinty, Mitchell, Padura, Pawel and then oddly, some by Jason Webster set in Valencia, Spain but that's it.

Of course, over the years I’ve kept lists of the books I’ve read through apps such as Goodreads and Libib so it would be easy enough to find second hand copies to replace them. But do I want to when I probably won’t re-read them? I’m just going to miss having these companions in my shelves, to remind me of past pleasures and to be able to say to a friend “here, you must read this one”. It feels like a hole that will never be properly refilled.


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