Seasonal Reading

This past Sunday, my husband and I were looking forward to watching the Inspector Lynley Mysteries on PBS, but they were not carried on our local station. My husband surmised that it was because they were reruns of the season last year--just two episodes from last year to set the viewers up for the new season. It is a good strategy on the station's part, but not for us, because we did not watch it last year. And, the reason, we did not watch it last year is that they were shown early in the summer.

The Inspector Lynley Mysteries are not summer watching--they are complicated mysteries, with dark crimes and struggling characters. And the landscape they depict is a rainly, dark one not a land filled with sunlight and warmth. In other words, they are perfect for that end of summer season when you are moving on to the fall and its cooler weather and increasingly shorter days.

I change my reading during the seasons--in the summer you may want something lighter or a book that is set in a warmer climate, in the fall I want to enjoy the season so I pick books that complement the weather. Scandinavian mysteries are particularly good for the fall and the winter. There is such a strong sense of place and nature in these books. I was struck when I read my very first Henning Mankell book how much the landscape adds to characterizations and the atmosphere. That book was set during the Midsummer festival and it seemed so fascinating to be celebrating a holiday because of the placement of the sun, coming from a country where all of our holidays seem to relate to our history or religious festivals. There is simply a sense of differentness in celebrating the arrival of the longest day of the year, that sense of being let into a strange and different world hooked me right into Mankell's writing. This is a great contributor to why I love international mysteries.