Marilyn's Mystery Reads

This month marks fifteen years since I started my weekly mystery blog.  I’ve reviewed over 700 books and have written pieces about current releases, Past Masters, Golden Oldies, and my opinions of various aspects of mysteries under the title About Marilyn, which you are reading right now.  I’ve enjoyed every minute of writing.

One of the things I like to do is to let readers know about another interest of mine.  I’ve been attending wonderful classes on topics including music, art, and history for more than twenty years at BOLLI (Brandeis Osher Lifelong Learning Institute) and have been teaching courses on mystery fiction there for more than a dozen years on topics including “Murder in Massachusetts,” “Murder She Wrote,” and “Historical Mysteries.”

My spring semester course, which starts next month, is entitled WHODUNIT?:  A STUDY IN SIDEKICKS.  Anyone who has read the Sherlock Holmes stories certainly understands the importance of sidekicks.  But what exactly is their role?  Since not every thriller or detective novel has a sidekick, why do some authors incorporate them into the plot and others don’t?

Is the sidekick there to provide assistance to the detective, to give the reader a look into the investigative process, to add humor to the narrative, and/or to have someone in the novel who is willing to do what the protagonist can’t or won’t do?  Finally, what is the importance of the sidekick in each mystery that we’ll be reading, and how would be story be different without him/her?

Here is the booklist for this term:  The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, I Know a Secret by Tess Gerritsen, The Wanted by Robert Crais, A Drink Before the War by Dennis Lehane, Daughter of the Morning Star by Craig Johnson, Smoke and Ashes by Abir Mukherjee, Heart of the Nile by Will Thomas, and Ghost Hero by S. J. Rozan.  We’ll start in the Victorian period and end in today’s era, and we’ll be moving from England to India to the United States.

I invite you to read along with us and think about the questions I posed above.  I promise you truly excellent reading.

Best,

Marilyn

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