“Corridors of the Night”

I have a guilty little secret.

And I feel especially embarrassed by it after hearing a very productive scholar, for whose output I have great respect, share the fact that he very seldom reads fiction.

My guilty little secret is that I like murder mysteries.

Very often, my wife and I will unwind late at night by watching a British mystery, or, lately, a Spanish or Australian one.

And we read mysteries, too.

We like to read them on long flights, when we’re tired and really serious historical or philosophical books are a bridge too far.  And we get them on Kindle, which means that they weigh very little and take up almost no space.

And we read them just before retiring, when we’re trying to calm our minds down  after busy days.

Sherlock Holmes and G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown are favorites, of course.  (Perhaps rather weirdly, I’ve read all of the Father Brown stories in German, along with several of Dorothy Sayers’s “Lord Peter Wimsey” tales.)  And Agatha Christie’s novels are high on the list.  (I’ve even read one of them in Arabic.)

One writer from whom we’ve read a great deal is Anne Perry, who lives and writes in the Scottish Highlands, though she doesn’t set her stories there.  Last night, I finished her newest William Monk mystery, Corridors of the Night.

She’s an adult convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but that, umm, isn’t why Peter Jackson made his 1994 film Heavenly Creatures partially about her.  (The role of “Anne Perry” was played by a then-new actress named Kate Winslet.)

It’s a startling story, and she writes very good mysteries.  If you’re so inclined, I recommend them.