The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2022, pt. 14: Sheila Finch

 

 2022 Pleasures 

by Sheila Finch

 

 

 

I’m an addicted  reader; I carry books everywhere. I can’t go to sleep at night until I’ve read something. And since I write science fiction, you can guess I love to read that genre too. But not when I’m writing! That’s the time I avoid anything that might creep unnoticed into my own work. So what do I read if not SF? Mysteries, detective novels, police procedurals. Plot and characters are important to me, but so is excellent writing. Here are some of my favorite authors and the series they write in no particular order:

 

James Lee Burke – anything at all that he writes! I think he’s America’s best writer today.

 

Daniel Silva – marvelous thrillers about an Israeli spy chief, Gabriel Allon.

 

Patricia Cornwell – gripping stories about medical examiner Kay Scarpetta.

 

Ruth Rendell – her Chief Inspector Wexford series is absorbing, but there are stand-alones that’re just as satisfying.

 

Michael Connelly – Nobody does contemporary LA noir as well as he does. Chilling!

 

Louise Penny – An almost magical, forest setting for her series and a hard-hitting crime to be solved.

 

Louise Erdrich – Love and death and myth with heart-breaking characters growing up between cultures.

 

And if you’re in the mood for a lighter touch in a mystery series:

Alexander McCall Smith – Mma Ramotswe and her “No. I Ladies’ Detective Agency” in Botswana.

 

[If you prefer to see your detectives on screen, these two British series are well worth searching out: “Shetland,” starring Douglas Henshall , and “Unforgotten,” starring Nicola Walker.]

 

 

Sheila Finch is the author of eight science fiction novels; the first published, Infinity’s Web, won the Compton Crook Award, and a Young Adult novel, Tiger in the Sky, earned the San Diego Book Award. Numerous short stories have appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Amazing, Asimov’s, Fantasy Book, and many anthologies. A collection of the “lingster” stories about the young men and women trained as translators and interpreters to aliens appeared as The Guild of Xenolinguists; one of them, “Reading The Bones,” won a Nebula. She has also published non-fiction about writing and science fiction. Aqueduct released her collection of short fiction, Forkpoints, earlier this year.