Peckerwood Manor

Welcome, fellow book hors, to another edition of The Peckerwood Book Club, where we all share what we're reading, what we like, and yes, what you eat when we read. Lately, I've been noshing on baby carrot sticks while I read, which is certainly an improvement from my usual potato chips (my hands get greasy, making it hard to turn the page without making nasty greasy pages). Do you nibble any snicky-snacks when you're reading? What are your favorites? And let's talk about mysteries, or more specifically, trends in mystery novels. In classical terms, a mystery, for example, starts like this: a young couple are eating at a nice restaurant when a bomb suddenly explodes beneath the table, killing them both. "Who planted the bomb and why?" becomes the mystery. Mystery is different from suspense, because in suspense, we're explicitly told that a bomb is ticking beneath the couple's table, sometimes even by who, the suspense arising from whether or not they...