This month, I’m leading a book discussion on DorothyL. Jan Burke came up with the idea to do this a few months back, and I quickly volunteered to join in. Since I love to write about authors from the 1940s and 1950s, this type of discussion appealed to me.

I selected The Doorbell Rang by Rex Stout, a somewhat political Nero Wolfe novel, in that it complained about domestic surveillance by the FBI and the general behavior of J. Edgar Hoover. Of course now, we’ve been subjected to images of Hoover in a dress with his associate director watching. However, at the time, Stout was both relevant and controversial with his fiction. That’s one of the things I love about mystery. Every subject is fair game.

I often am asked why I do so much with the 1940s and 1950s when I wasn’t alive then. Growing up, I got only a few dollars a week to spend on books (minimum wage was $2.10) and I could buy a new paperback for $2.99 or several used paperbacks for $.25 each. Of course, I went with quantity, and most of those used paperbacks were from the 1940s and 1950s. So my introduction to mystery, my comfort reads, and my fondest childhood memories are books from that time period. When I have to spend years working on a biography, what better place to be than in one of my happiest places.

I hope you get a chance to read The Doorbell Rang; it’s one of Stout’s best. Speaking of reading, I broke the 400 mark on reading novels, and I still have more on the way. I nearly wept when I saw a top 10 list last week, and realized 7 of the 10 had not been sent to me — yet..