Over at Mysteries In Paradise, Kerrie has been running a meme entitled Crime Fiction Pick of the Month. If you pop over there, you can see some of my fellow bloggers’ choices for the best book they’ve read this month, and I figured, why not? I’m not the world’s greatest when it comes to blogging challenges, due to my magpie-like attention span, but I’m pretty sure I can remember to produce a list every month. So, here goes.

In March, I managed twelve novels – namely

• The Affair of the Bloodstained Egg Cosy by James Anderson
• The Hanover Square Affair by Ashley Gardner
• The Grail Murders by Michael Clynes aka Paul Doherty
• Waterloo Sunset by Martin Edwards
• Seeking The Dead by Kate Ellis
• The Apothecary Rose by Candace Robb
• Endless Night by Agatha Christie
• Cat of Many Tails by Ellery Queen
• All The Lonely People by Martin Edwards
• Ghostly Murders by Paul Doherty
• Taken At The Flood aka There Is A Tide by Agatha Christie
• The Probability of Murder by Ada Madison

To be honest, I’d say that the quality of my choices was a little lower than usual. There’s at least one there that I actively disliked, enough for me to seriously reconsider another book by the same author and at least three more that I thought were iffy – but in those cases, having already read more from the same authors, I’ll consider them blips. Which is a bit of a double standard, if I think about it too carefully. Maybe I need to give Candace Robb another try.

Anyway, time to announce the In Search Of The Classic Mystery Book Of The Month. The recipient of this month’s… hmm, need a name for the award. A Puzzly? That’ll do until I think of something better. The recipient of this month’s Puzzly is Martin Edwards for All The Lonely People – an outstanding mystery novel, with human characters, a vibrant setting and a proper mystery as well. An honourable mention must go to the biggest surprise of the month, The Hanover Square Affair by Ashley Gardner, a Kindle cheapie that I starting reading expecting to loathe it – based on the cover alone – but turned out to be a great read, with a genuinely surprising killer.

OK, same time next month? And if someone can think of a better name for the Puzzly award, I’d love to hear it…

ADDENDUM: Just for fun, I’ve put together a retroactive post for January and February.