What Mystery Do I Read Next?: A Reader's Guide to Recent Mystery Fiction

This readers guide provides recommendations to some of the best mystery and crime fiction of the 1990s. It consists of more than 1800 individual entries furnishing such details as title; author; publisher name and publication date; mystery type; names of major characters; and locale.

Stilwell, who is the proprietor of the Once Upon a Crime mystery bookstore in Minneapolis, has put together a list of 1800 recommended mystery novels published between 1989 and 1996 and indexed in a variety of useful ways. Each entry includes author, title, publisher, date of publication, series (if appropriate), story type (e.g., private detective, police procedural), major characters, time period, locale, brief summary, and a list of other books readers might enjoy. Books are indexed by series, time period, geography, story type, character names, character descriptions (e.g., librarian, amateur detective), author, and title. Finally, winners of the Edgar, Shamus, Agatha, and Macavity awards are listed for the years 1990-96. This work would be useful for public library reader's advisory collections. Plot summaries are brief but adequate, instructions are clearly written, the layout is pleasant,p and the binding will withstand library use. The one drawback is the limited scope regarding both number of titles included and the time frame; classic mysteries are eliminated, as are earlier books in the series for which later books are listed. If your library already owns Diana Herald's Genreflecting (Libraries Unltd., 1995. 4th ed.) or Allen J. Hubin's Crime Fiction II (LJ 6/15/94), you may not want this title. If, however, you need a guide to very recent mysteries, this book is for you.?Denise Johnson, Bradley Univ. Lib., Peoria, Ill.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Mystery readers and librarians who serve them will be happy to see this new publication. A spin-off of Gale's What Do I Read Next? series, it compiles entries from the parent set for more than 1,800 mystery titles published between 1989 and 1996. The form of the entries is familiar: bibliographic information, series, story type (espionage, serial killer, etc.), major characters, locale, time period, plot summary, and "Other Books You Might Like,"a list of five similar titles. Each entry gives a nice snapshot of the book. For the most part, the content of the entries is identical to that for the same titles found in What Do I Read Next? except that this volume does not include the "Where It's Reviewed"section. Also, some story types have been expanded. "Amateur Detective"and "Police Procedural," for example, have been divided into "Male Lead" and "Female Lead."Access to the entries is enhanced by eight separate indexes (author, title, locale, story type, time period, character name, character description, and series). All books appear in the index, including "Other Books You Might Like."Introductory material offers a key to story types and a list of award winners going back to 1990.

What Mystery Do I Read Next? makes a good supplement to What Do I Read Next? Since the parent volume is updated every year, information about books by a single author tends to be scattered throughout several volumes. Here that information is pulled together. For example, the 1996 edition of What Do I Read Next? contains one entry each for Patricia Cornwell and Anne Perry, but What Mystery Do I Read Next? has six for Cornwell and five for Perry. Bringing the titles together reveals some repetition in the "Other Books You Might Like"lists. For example, Ray Harrison's Deathwatch and John Buxton Hilton's Quiet Stranger occur in the entries for four of the five Anne Perry titles; and Julian Symons' Waxwork and The Blackheath Poisonings occur in four as well.

What Mystery Do I Read Next? will be welcomed by librarians working with mystery fans and is recommended for all public libraries. It fills a gap in mystery collection-development and reader's-advisory aids by providing information on newer titles in a convenient, accessible form.