Lurking Mother

Okay, my mother is one of the lurkers who won't comment. But she caught the ? after Gail Bowen - I'll fix that - she is definitely Canadian. Not only Canadian - she's from Saskatchewan and her detective votes NDP. Gotta love it. Mom suggested Shirley Rousseau Murphy whose detective is a cat. Not my thing but then I like the really dark, dark mysteries. But for those of you who like fey... Thanks for the suggestion Mom!

Speaking of dark I have a few more to add to my list:
Laura Lippman (American, hardboiled PI)
Laurie R. King (American, some police procedural - one with a religious studies prof as the detective - she does Sherlock Holmes ones too but I don't read those)
Tess Gerritsen (American forensic)

Now to a movie recommendation. I just got home from seeing The Lives of Others. What a film! I was blown away by it. It is a German film set in East Berlin in 1985. The main characters are a playwright and his actress girlfriend and a Stasi officer assigned to watch them. There are so many twists you can't believe it but they don't feel contrived. And then when you think the movie is over it keeps going and some more of the threads are brought together for an even bigger punch. It is a really interesting film about what it is to be good and about the choices people make.

I was living in Germany when the wall came down and went to Prague a few months later. This film and another great German film, Good-bye Lenin, bring back a lot of memories of what it was like living in Europe during those years. This is really worth seeing.