Mystery fans, I just stumbled across a WAY cool website! [View all]

Stop, You're Killing Me!

Have you ever tried to remember a book you read long ago? You can't remember the title or the author, but you're pretty sure the author was a man/woman/African American/Scottish, and you're pretty sure the action took place in Arizona/Ireland/New Zealand, that the protagonist was a police detective/PI/bookstore owner, and the time period was ancient/Victorian/modern, and you know it was a cozy/police procedural/gothic.

Well, this site is absolutely AMAZING! It has books sorted and listed by all kinds of categories: the country or state or province or city in which the story is set, the nationality or ethnic origin of the author, the time period in which the story takes place, the professions of the protagonists, and all the sub-genres that comprise the broad category of "mystery".

I had been feeling obsessed for a couple of days, trying to remember the author of a book I had read some years ago - all I could remember was a small bit about one of the characters in the story, and I was pretty sure that the action of the book had taken place in Arizona, and that both the author and protagonist were female.

In the midst of all my googling, trying one set of search terms after another, this site showed up in one set of search results. I went to take a look - and, WOW!

Not only did I find the author I was originally trying to remember, I found several others whose books I had read years ago and liked, but had long forgotten their names. A quick trip over to the ever-indispensible Fantastic Fiction site, and I could see if they had any more books out since I had last read them.

Anyway, I just had to share this discovery - what a fabulous resource for mystery fans!