I just started a Marian Babson book from over thirty years ago…. Murder Sails at Midnight, from 1975. I went to my trusty book shelf which now holds over 300 books for me to read at some point in the future (I really should count those books some time soon!) and decided that it was time for me to read this particular book. I have read several of Babson’s books before, but since they didn’t belong to a series, I just hopped around picking books as they suited my moods.
Murder Sails at Midnight is not disappointing me. I have finished about half of the book and cannot wait to find out … not whodunit, but who whodunit to! For those of you who haven’t yet read the book, we are "introduced" to the murderer at the very beginning of the book. Babson then introduces us to four people, one of whom will be the recipient of the murderer’s handiwork… This is a book with a neat twist… Babson lets us in on the "secret" of the murder, and fills us in on some of the facts we will need to know in order to (hopefully) solve the crime.
And, since the reader knows who the whodunit is, and that he will be ending one of the four people’s lives, we are able to go along with Babson and try to pick up the hints… sifting through the red herrings that she tosses out to us. I have to admit, I have no idea which of the four people is the most likely to get the undeserved ax. I am having to fight off the urge to take a peak at the end of the book… that’s how much I want to know!
Wow! There sure are a lot of detectives of “a certain age” out there in the world of mystery books! When I started going through all of my authors and trying to categorize them, I divided them into more obvious themes… I had sleuths who cooked and cleaned, amateur detectives who gardened and golfed, accounting sleuths, amateur detectives who skated and golfed, sleuths who owned book stores or worked at libraries, ETC. However, I think that the “senior” sleuth was the most ambiguous of all of the categories. When I was in my twenties, I probably would have said that 60s would be considered senior. Now, however, I don’t think of 60s as anywhere near “retirement time.” (Note that I don’t say just “retirement”…. since I am truly looking forward to the day when my husband can retire and we can really start living… it up, I mean! Travelling during the time when other people are locked into the school schedules, taking off when we feel like it, going where we want to go, ETC… and that’s a BIG “ETC” of all the things that are available once you retire from work… but by no means from life! (Enough philosophizing for the day!)