Tea or Books? #119: Amateur Sleuths or Professional Detectives? and Women Talking vs Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead

Miriam Toews, Olga Tokarczuk and detective fiction – welcome to episode 119!

In the first half of this episode, we discuss detective fiction – do we prefer the mystery-solver to be a professional or an amateur? And in the second half we compare two fairly recent novels – Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, and Women Talking by Miriam Toews.

Do get in touch if you have any questions or suggestions for the podcast – at teaorbooks[at]gmail.com – and you can listen wherever you listen to podcasts! You can support the podcast at Patreon, should you so wish, with various available rewards.

The books and authors we mention in this episode are:

Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau by Sheena Wilkinson
Day by Michael Cunningham
No Leading Lady by R.C. Sherriff
Journey’s End by R.C. Sherriff
Marghanita Laski
The Dark Fantastic by Margaret Echard
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Love-Child by Edith Olivier
The Venetian Glass Nephew by Elinor Wylie
Sherlock Holmes novels by Arthur Conan Doyle
Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple novels by Agatha Christie
Lord Peter Wimsey novels by Dorothy L. Sayers
Jackson Brodie novels by Kate Atkinson
The Thursday Club Murders by Richard Osman
Murder Before Evensong by Richard Coles
The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
Sergeant Cluff series by Gil North
Mrs Bradley series by Gladys Mitchell
Quick Curtain by Alan Melville
Maigret series by Georges Simenon
Illyrian Spring by Ann Bridge
A Favourite of the Gods by Sybille Bedford
A Compass Error by Sybille Bedford
Travels With My Aunt by Graham Greene
Balkan Trilogy and Levant Trilogy by Olivia Manning
Flights by Olga Tokarczuk
William Blake
The Book of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk
The English Air by D.E. Stevenson
The Morning Gift by Eva Ibbotson