Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Week Six - Assignment 1

"Stop, You're Killing Me!" is like one-stop shopping for mysteries; the site's near-exhaustive grasp on the genre makes it a staggering thing to explore for a novice mystery-reader like me, but even if you don't recognize most of the names on their lists of authors and titles, exploring all the crevices of this site is still vastly entertaining. And while perusing the site itself can occasionally feel like drinking from a fire hose, their free bi-weekly newsletter breaks up all the information into more manageable chunks.

The site's biggest strength is, without a doubt, its indices. They provide lists of mystery authors and their series sorted by location, historical period, genre, and the protagonist's profession and background. I had already pegged the mystery genre as one prone to extreme niche-ification, but the variety of those niches was made clear to me as I discovered that I could, if I wanted, find mysteries featuring a one-armed counselor to King Arthur (series by Tony Hays), a 60-something widowed Quaker meeting clerk (series by Irene Allen), several series featuring ex-jockeys turned sleuths (by Dick Francis, Sassacer Hill, John Francome, and Bill Shoemaker), and even a reluctant witch librarian (series by Shirley Damsgaard)! What these indices taught me most evidently was the breadth of the mystery genre, which I had suspected but never really seen before. It seems like this site might have a few suggestions to add to the sub-genres Prezi!

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