Every month on Past Offences I gather together blog posts about crime fiction written or filmed in a particular year. This July the chosen year is 1987 – selected by regular contributor Col from his Criminal Library. You just know he’s found something good in one of the 37+ boxes of books in his attic…
1987 really pushes the Past Offences date envelope – you can see how cool and modern it was in the Robocop poster.
If you want to take part, you can! When you’ve written your post, just let me know below. I’ll gather them all together at the end of the month.
Small print:
- Don’t be shy!
- Just comment below to link to your blog post.
- If you want to play but you haven’t got a blog, I’m happy to have you as a guest poster, or to link to Goodreads or Amazon.
- Books, comics, films, plays and TV also welcome.
- Sorry in advance if I miss you in the round-up, although I am getting better at that bit.
Past Offences: Classic crime, thrillers and mystery book reviews 
I was planning to read Ellroy’s L.A. Quartet, this summer, therefore this year suit me just fine since The Black Dahlia, the first book in the quartet, was first published in 1987-
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One of my favourite books.
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I won’t have any excuses this month to finish my review in time
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1987? I feel old if that counts as the past… Should be able to find something…
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I have a fairly frantic month coming up but, if I get to it, I’ll probably tackle that great classic Hollywood Cop (1987). One for the ages.
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I was just checking here to see if anyone is doing The Black Dahlia. Glad to see Jose Ignacio is. I will have to check and see what I have in my piles that I haven’t already read.
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Rich cheers – I doubt my year book will be amazing, but I’m cautiously optimistic it will be slightly more to my own individual tastes – but hey I’m happy to participate whatever the year.
I’m also pleased that at least with 1987 selected, it has slightly widened the range of the meme!
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Lots of writers from the 1980s who I’ve never read and always wanted to. I was hoping for a Morse novel by Colin Dexter. No book in 1987. Darn! I’m going for Monkey’s Raincoat the first book by Robert Crais.
Here’s a baker’s dozen in case people are having difficulty coming up with writers or titles:
The Skeleton in the Grass by Robert Barnard
Death in Purple Prose (aka The Cherry Blossom Corpse) by Robert Barnard
Trouble by Michael Gilbert
The Killings at Badger’s Drift by Caroline Graham (another debut and a truly fantastic book)
The Five Bells and Bladebone by Martha Grimes
Death on Demand by Carolyn Hart (yet another debut!)
Child’s Play by Reginald Hill
The Corpse in Oozak’s Pond by Charlotte MacLeod
The Right Jack by Margaret Maron
Pale Kings and Princes by Robert B. Parker
Talking to Strange Men by Ruth Rendell
Huckleberry Fiend by Julie Smith
What I Tell You Three Times Is False by Samuel Holt (aka Donald E Westlake)
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Thanks John. I think I possibly read The Monkey’s Raincoat back in ’87, certainly around that time. Echo your recommendation of Badger’s Drift – definitely a pretty sinister book.
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Oddly enough, I read The Killings at Badger’s Drift a few weeks ago and on balance really quite disliked it.
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I would like to add the following four, all of which appear in CWA Top 100 list.
Presumed Innocent by Scot Turow
A Fatal Inversion by Barbara Vine
Bertie And The Tin Man by Peter Lovesey
What Bloody Man Is That ? by Simon Brett
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Rich, does The New York Trilogy by Paul Aster, collected into a single volume and published in 1987 count?
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Hi, that sounds good.
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Thanks but on second thoughts I have decided to forego that in favour of The Killings at Badger’s Drift since it was recommended by both you and John.
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Here are some suggestions. http://eurocrime.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/some-1987-titles-for-past-offences.html
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I plan to read Sue Grafton’s A is for Alibi – must be at least 20 years since I read it
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Oh dear, now I have read A IS FOR ALIBI I have discovered that it was first published in the USA in 1982. I got my date from the Euro Crime list which gave it the date of 1987: http://eurocrime.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/some-1987-titles-for-past-offences.html.
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My post is at http://paradise-mysteries.blogspot.com.au/2015/07/review-is-for-alibi-sue-grafton.html
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Oh no! I’ll give you a mention in despatches even if the year’s wrong 🙂
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Hmmm…my high school graduation year counts as “old”? 😉 I’m off to see what I’ve got lurking on the TBR piles.
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I’m leaning towards Young Mrs. Cavendish & the Kaiser’s Men by K. K. Beck, but there are a few other candidates on the stacks as well.
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Forgot to link it up after I finished it (but I saw that you stopped by and commented). Here it is: Young Mrs. Cavendish & the Kaiser’s Men.
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I find it kinda hard to make the suggestion myself (full disclosure: I’m the translator of the English edition. And a big fan of the book), but I think that Yukito Ayatsuji’s “The Decagon House Murders” might be an interesting read for some of you, as it’s about a group of students with nicknames like “Ellery”, “Carr” and “Agatha” in an And Then Were None homage and also the book that caused a genuine boom in puzzle-plot mysteries in Japan that is still going strong.
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Thanks Ho-Ling. It would be cool if you wanted to write something about it too – for the full expert opinion.
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Just to let you know that I have bagged Ruth Rendell’s TV series (started in 1987). Aka The Ruth Rendell Mysteries.
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I am going to read John Cleary’s Dragons at the Party. I’m not really looking forward to it but I have always thought I should read something by Cleary (he is Australian) and I definitely need something like this challenge to prompt me
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Lots of new-to-me authors this time around…
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Have now read Jon Cleary’s Dragons at the Party and feel guilt-ridden that I had developed such a dislike for an author/character without basis – it was a great read and a reminder why this challenge is a good one for me to participate in http://fairdinkumcrime.com/2015/07/19/review-dragons-at-the-party-by-jon-cleary/
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I have decided to review Yukito Ayatsuji’s “The Decagon House Murders” at either Goodreads or Amazon.
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Cool, looking forward to it.
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I have since submitted the review of The Decagon House Murders at Goodreads. The link is https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1338850612
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Pingback: What Bloody Man Is That? by Simon Brett | In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel
My review of What Bloody Man Is That? by Simon Brett is up on my blog now. Should be a second entry by the end of the month, with luck…
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And my review of Reginald Hill’s Child’s Play is up as well – https://classicmystery.wordpress.com/2015/07/30/childs-play-by-reginald-hill/. Here’s the link to the Brett review as well – https://classicmystery.wordpress.com/2015/07/05/what-bloody-man-is-that-by-simon-brett/
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I just picked up A FATAL INVERSION, my first Vine. I’ve read one or two Rendells but never a Vine.
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Great book to read in a hot summer.
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I’m going to do Joan Smith’s A Masculine Ending.
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And here it is http://clothesinbooks.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/book-of-1987-masculine-ending-by-joan.html – could it BE more 1987?
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For this month’s challenge I’ve decided to do H. R. Keating’s The Body in the Billiard Room.
The link to the review is below:
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I have posted a review of The Skeleton in the Grass by Robert Barnard at Bitter Tea and Mystery. I loved the book and I was surprised that there are so many great books to read from that year. If I had time I would do a second one.
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I volunteered for the Ruth Rendell mysteries but couldn’t even get thru ep 1 of series 1. Burden (young) and Wexford (older) are established as conservative (She’s 28! Why isn’t she married! And the place is a tip!) and liberal. The missing woman’s hopeless, myopic brother is far too much in evidence, looming at the camera in bottle-bottom specs. The tone is drab (may have been terrible youtube copy). May try some later eps – but I recall they’re full of winched-in feminism (why are fictional feminists stroppy the entire time?) and plodding “relevance” with some very unconvincing road protesters.
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I cobbled together some thoughts in the end. And I’ve got the box set for the long winter evenings. http://wordcount-richmonde.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/i-promised-to-review-ruth-rendell.html
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John Lantigua’s Edgar nominated Heat Lightning for me! http://col2910.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/john-lantigua-heat-lightning-1987.html
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Well, now I know why I prefer to read old crime novels and not so much the newer ones. My post is up for my 1987 book and it was a mixed bag for me.
The Monkey’s Raincoat by Robert Crais
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I haven’t been able to do anything at all, alas — pressure of work, alas. I did get a 1987 crime novel out of the library but within the first couple of dozen pages I realized that I’d rather rip my own head off than carry on with it.
I could reblog a piece on a 1987 movie that I posted a couple of years ago. Would that count?
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It would usually, but I’ve had to schedule the round-up piece because of another commitment. I was hoping I’d caught everyone 🙂
Was it Throw Momma from the Train?
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Was it Throw Momma from the Train?
No. The one I had in mind was Desyat Negrityat, the Russian adaptation of Christie’s And Then There Were None.
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Things have been hectic. So a very brief review of Killings at Badger’s Drift:
http://inkquilletc.blogspot.in/2015/07/short-notes-killings-at-badgers-drift.html
Thanks.
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