It’s the dog days of summer, and I’ve started writing a new Travelers crime thriller. Hoping for it to be the best one yet. But more on that later. Here’re two mystery I read in the last month. One from the time capsule and one contemporary.

A Knife for Harry Dodd by George Bellairs (Inspector Littlejohn, book 20, 1953). In a small town in England, Harry Dodd, a happy-go-lucky ne’er do well, is stabbed outside a pub on his way home and dies before he can get help. As Inspector Littlejohn of Scotland Yard digs into the case, he discovers that Dodd isn’t at all the man he appears to be and that his girlfriend and his estranged family all have motives to want him dead.

This is a classic, old-fashioned police procedural loaded up with convincing red herrings and false trails. An easy, fun read.

Also read Dark Angel (Letty Davenport Book 2) by John Sandford. Sandford is probably best known for the Lucas Davenport Prey series. I’ve read a number of those books, so I thought I’d give this one a try. This is a “ripped from the headlines” kind of book.

Letty Davenport is Lucas Davenport’s adopted daughter, and she does investigations with the Department of Homeland Security. On this outing, she’s on the trail of a hacker collective that’s disrupted railroad trains in Russia. In the usual John Sanford fashion, circumstance quickly go out of control at Davenport tries to home in on the hackers and discover the real reason that the NSA has sent her after them. A quick read with lots of exciting twists and turns and a great introduction to a cast of fresh characters that I imagine will be appearing in later books.

Happy reading!