Carola Dunn

Carola Dunn is the author of the Daisy Dalrymple mystery series, set in England in the 1920s. The nineteenth in the series, Anthem for Doomed Youth, is just out.

However, she is now writing her third Cornish Mystery, following A Colourful Death.

As this series is set in the 1960s and one of the protagonists is a woman police detective, she's been reading books relevant to that period and subject, including:

A Different Shade of Blue is a fascinating book about the difficulties encountered by women joining the male-dominated environment of the police, by Adam Eisenberg, Commissioner of the Municipal Court in Seattle. He interviewed women police officers who had joined the Seattle force from the 1940s onward. Reading their stories has helped me understand what my character, DI Megan Pencarrow, would have faced.

I've just finished reading a couple of mysteries I picked up at a thrift shop. For Old Crime's Sake (aka Lucky Jane), by Delano Ames, was published in 1959. It's one of his series starring Jane and Dagobert Brown—lots of fun and I'll be looking for others in the series. The second find was The Spy with a Cold Nose (1966), by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. It's apparently a novelization of the movie, not the best of recommendations, but it's funny, if shallow.

The Wolf in the Parlor: the eternal connection between humans and dogs, by Jon Franklin, is an interesting development of a theory that the mutual adoption of early humans and wolves is responsible for our evolution into modern man, as well as wolves into dogs. As a dog person I'm happy to believe it!

And as a dog person, I also adore Spencer Quinn's Chet and Bernie mysteries. Chet, the dog, is the first person protagonist, and usually that would put me off altogether. I can't stand most books with animals thinking like people. But Chet is so well depicted as a canine with canine instincts, who loses track of his thoughts when an interesting smell comes along, that the books are a delight. The one I've read most recently is To Fetch a Thief.

Visit Carola Dunn's website.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Carola Dunn & Trillian.

The Page 69 Test: A Colourful Death.

The Page 69 Test: Anthem for Doomed Youth.

--Marshal Zeringue