The Vile Village by Lemony Snicket

In the seventh book in the series, Lemony Snicket heightens tension by introducing his own brother, if only briefly. The Quagmire triplets are rescued, but still don't get to share their information about VFD, and the Baudelaire Orphans are framed for a murder by the end of the novel. This series gets more and more sophisticated as it continues.

Sad Cypress by Agatha Christie

I thought that this mystery was one of Agatha Christie's particularly good ones. I like the premise of what if you did everything that made you look like a murderer, and indeed wished for the death of the person murdered, and yet, were not guilty. Poirot is marvelous, and just the right number of clues were sprinkled through the story. Top notch.

The Ersatz Elevator by Lemony Snicket

The sixth installment of this series continues to develop the suspense and to create a coherent plot. The Baudelaire orphans are sent to stay with Jerome and Esmé Squalor, and they discover that Esmé is in cahoots with Olaf, knew (and resented) Snicket's Beatrice, and lives across from an elevator shaft that connects to a tunnel that opens under the now-burnt-down Baudelaire mansion. Although the Quagmire triplets have discovered something about Count Olaf with the initials VFD, they don't get the chance to tell the Baudelaire orphans what that something is. These novels get curiouser and curiouser.

Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie

I liked this mystery, although I would not class it as one of my favorite Christie mysteries (although the ones I like the best are usually Hercule Poirot, so maybe I'm being unfair to Miss Marple). At moments I half-expected a Murder of Roger Ackroyd-type denouement. I would have liked to have seen more of the phony architect.

The Austere Academy by Lemony Snicket

The fifth entry in the Series of Unfortunate Events finds the Baudelaire orphans stranded at a boarding school. In this book, they actually make some friends, and a plot begins to develop (with Snicket's involvement) beyond "bad things happen to good children."

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

I found this gothic novel to be a very quick read. Indeed, as the first gothic novel, it sets up some of the classic tropes including a creepy, haunted castle with subterranean passages, mistaken identities, revelations of noble birth, Italian settings, religious figures, and lots of violence. Particularly interesting to me was Walpole's dropped attempt to frame the manuscript as found.

The Apostate's Tale by Margaret Frazer

I probably shouldn't have started Margaret Frazer's series of mysteries with the latest story. I felt like I was missing a lot of backstory that is probably fleshed out in the beginning of the series. I think the concept of setting murder mysteries in the Middle Ages is quite neat, and I think Ms. Frazer does a fairly good job of bridging the time gap. In this particular mystery, I felt like the text itself was conflicted about Sister Cecely (whose name was not even consistently spelled) and I was having a hard time reconciling myself to the fact that she was "stupid" and a bad mother; the story opens from her perspective, and I felt it hard to shake that sympathy.