We Love Detectives Blogathon: The Tag

This week, Hamlette’s Soliloquy is hosting We Love Detectives Week, a blog party celebrating fictional detectives—a subject right up my alley! I hope to contribute a post on a favorite mystery series of mine later in the week, but for today, here’s my answers to the introductory tag:

What’s your favorite mystery with…

…a historical setting?
One Corpse Too Many by Ellis Peters, which weaves together a murder mystery with historical events surrounding the 12th-century siege of Shrewsbury Castle more brilliantly than I could have expected.

…a modern setting?
I’ve got to be honest: I don’t think I’ve ever read a mystery set in the present day! But if you interpret “modern setting” as a book set at the time it was published, I’m going with The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey. It’s also a novel whose insights into human nature remain stunningly relevant today.

…a lone detective?
Well, there’s endless options here, but I’ll say Unexpected Night by Elizabeth Daly, which introduces her sleuth Henry Gamadge—always an independent sort who holds his cards close until the end of a case, even when he has help investigating.

…a pair of sleuths?
There’s lots of candidates for this slot if you count any detective who travels with a sidekick, but I’m going to give a shout-out to Cards on the Table by Agatha Christie, which I think is the best of her books to feature both Hercule Poirot and Mrs. Oliver, the talkative lady writer with an overactive imagination who assists him in a few stories.

…a professional/police detective?
Inspector Alan Grant is my favorite literary police detective, so I’m going to say The Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey. While The Daughter of Time is probably the finest Grant novel, his first outing in The Man in the Queue is the best showcase for the process of a police inspector at work.

…an amateur detective?
Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy Sayers. Lord Peter Wimsey is strictly an amateur, after all, no matter how experienced, and this novel, which sees him going undercover as an employee at an advertising agency, has one of the most brilliant combinations of complex mystery plot and keen social commentary that Sayers ever wrote.

…a young sleuth?
Death and the Joyful Woman by Ellis Peters. The Felse Investigations series features the entire family of Inspector George Felse, each of them taking the spotlight to varying degrees in different books, and this second in the series is one of the best and also the one where George’s teenage son Dominic is the central character.

…an aging detective?
Had to think about this for a bit, but I believe That Affair Next Door by Anna Katharine Green fits the bill. Miss Amelia Butterworth, the book’s narrator and amateur detective, is middle-aged, and Mr. Gryce, the professional detective with whom she matches wits, is in his seventies.

…a cozy feel?
A Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie. Always my favorite of the Miss Marple books, I think it’s the one that uses its village setting to the greatest advantage, and what’s cozier than an English village?

…a shocking reveal?
The Bellamy Trial by Frances Noyes Hart. Its unique structure of telling the entire story through courtroom testimony is the standout thing about it, but I had no guesses at all before the revelation in the epilogue.