Episode 83: 2024 Retrospective (Mysteries, Thrillers & Detective Fiction)

SPEAKERS
Sarah Harrison, Carolyn Daughters, Ann Claire

Sarah Harrison: Welcome to Tea Tonic & Toxin, a book club and podcast for anyone who wants to explore the best mysteries, thrillers, and detective fiction ever written. I’m your host, Sarah Harrison.

Carolyn Daughters: And I’m your host Carolyn Daughters. Pour yourself a cup of tea, a gin and tonic …

Sarah Harrison: … but not a toxin …

Carolyn Daughters: And join us on a journey through 19th and 20th century mysteries and thrillers, every one of them a game changer.

OUR SPONSOR

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Carolyn Daughters  01:44

Today we’re gonna review what I think was a pretty amazing year.

Sarah Harrison  01:49

It was phenomenal. I feel like, even though it’s our third year as our launch.

Carolyn Daughters  01:56

Because it felt different, it felt new. We had amazing guests on many of our episodes. And when I call these guests amazing, I mean that we had some superstars. We’re going to talk about some of the mysteries, thrillers, and detective fiction we read and discussed and some of these amazing people who joined us in studio and on video,

Sarah Harrison  02:19

It was super cool. But before we do that, I think we have a shout out to give.

Carolyn Daughters  02:24

Our shout out today is for Ally Davis. She lives in Chicago, Illinois, but she was listening to us on her road trip to Washington, DC.

Sarah Harrison  02:34

Awesome. I used to live in Chicago.

Carolyn Daughters  02:38

What neighborhood? I grew up outside Chicago. Well, part of my childhood, I grew up outside Chicago in a suburb called Streamwood.

Sarah Harrison  02:51

I lived in the Lincoln Square neighborhood, right off the Brown Line.

Sarah Harrison  02:56

To be fair, Sarah lived everywhere.

Sarah Harrison  02:58

Yes, that’s one of my frequent comments, “oh, I used to live there.”

Carolyn Daughters  03:05

Name any random place you like, throw a dart at the U.S. map, and Sarah says, “Oh, I used to live there.”

Sarah Harrison  03:10

When I lived in Alaska, it was like this.

Carolyn Daughters  03:14

So thank you, Ally for listening in your car while you’re driving. It’s a pretty good idea. I listen to podcasts sometimes when I’m on a road trip. Most of the podcasts I listen to are from Tea, Tonic & Toxin or are focused in some way on detective fiction.

Sarah Harrison  03:26

Thank you, Ally. And if you want to be like Ally and win a beautiful sticker, there’s a lot of ways to do so. We had somebody text us, which I love. It goes to our fan mail if you text us, and it’s so cool. So if you want to say something anonymously, hit the “text us” button in the show notes. But we unfortunately can’t get your name off that. But if you want to chat with us on the Facebook, if you want to subscribe on our Patreon, even you can do paid or unpaid, we can get your email and reach out and get you a sticker.

Carolyn Daughters  04:18

And then also, we have a YouTube channel, and you can actually see video clips of us discussing our books. In particular, these amazing guests who are weighing in are often in our video clips. And it’s pretty cool.

Sarah Harrison  04:38

No matter what, I will try and reach out to you and get you a sticker.

Carolyn Daughters  04:43

Also, when we’re reaching out to you, it’s actually us. Every once in a while, we throw someone and they’re like, hey, is this really Tea Tonic and Toxin? Yep, it’s us. It’s really, actually us.

Sarah Harrison  05:08

There’s a Sarah or Carolyn behind all of those contacts. We are self-produced. We are self-everything. If you’re a paid subscriber, there are two ways to become a paid subscriber, which is cool. We can talk about that in this episode, but we’ll send you as much swag as we can. I call it the flat swag envelope, so anything flat fits in an envelope, be it bookmarks, stickers, special edition stickers. I send out to paid subscribers. We’ll send you that.

Carolyn Daughters  05:46

I haven’t even seen these stickers.

Sarah Harrison  05:48

No, Carolyn is not a paid subscriber.

Carolyn Daughters  05:51

No, I am not. I’ve not doing enough for Tea, Tonic & Toxin. So when I subscribe, I’m gonna get it and then I’m gonna weigh in on the next episode about what they look like and how amazing they are. Things have turned a corner when I’m the shout out for the episode for our own podcast. It’ll be the one episode I sponsor, too.

Carolyn Daughters  06:21

In 2024, we read and discussed 12 books as part of our history of mystery and detective fiction, ranging from 1934 to 1939. We also read tons of other books by amazing contemporary authors. We read a lot this past year.

Carolyn Daughters  06:47

Yes, so many amazing authors.

Carolyn Daughters  07:01

We started with The Thin Man, published in 1934. It was our third Dashiell Hammett book. We know it’s pronounced Dashiell (“dash-eel”) because Dashiell Hammett’s granddaughter, Julie Rivett, told us so.

Sarah Harrison  07:17

Dashiell (“dash-eel”) Hammett and Julie Rivett (“riv-ett”).

Carolyn Daughters  07:21

And we have a couple amazing episodes with her about The Thin Man, where she talks about the book. She also talks about the film, and she talks about her grandfather. If you haven’t listened to those episodes, it’s a great starting point for the podcast,

Sarah Harrison  07:34

And I would say, if you have actually read the title of this podcast before you started playing it, then this is going to be our retrospective, folks. We are looking back at 2024 on the year and how much fun we had. One of the things I love about Carolyn is she puts together questions for us to answer about these things. So Carolyn, your first question was, which books were favorites.

Carolyn Daughters  08:01

It’s hard to pick because these are now my 12 children from 2024. But three stood out as really feeling different to me. Now, let me preface this by saying, I’ve read a lot of Agatha Christie. So we had a lot of Agatha Christie in the air. We had exceptional detective fiction with The ABC Murders, and we had And Then There Were None, with no formal detective at all. I’ve read a lot of Agatha Christie, so they are still amazing, but maybe less new to me. Three books stood out for me as I read them. I thought, I’ve never read a book like this before. The Wheel Spins, Rogue Male, and the Mask of Dimitrios, also called A Coffin for Dimitrios.

Sarah Harrison  08:51

Depending on which country you are trying to buy it from. For me, that’s a tough one. Now, the question of which books felt different versus which books were favorites, those would have had two different answers. If you can say which book felt different, I would say the book that threw me for a loop right off the bat was our February selection: The Postman Always Rings Twice. That, to me, felt like I just walked into a different era accidentally. That’s like, whoa, whoa. What is happening here? We’ve turned some different corner here. It was so gritty compared to the timeline we’ve been following. But if you say which were favorite, I liked all our books. There’s a reason, folks, that these books have stood the test of time and are considered classics in the genre. I mean, I’m a person that always likes to read classics anyway, because they have real staying power. But talk about favorites. I think I really loved Death in the Stocks. I felt like I discovered someone with Georgette Heyer (“hair”). Also, I discovered how to say her name properly. I liked it so much. I asked our guest that month, who is like the world expert on Georgette Heyer, Jennifer Kloester, what she would recommend for my niece. So my niece got a Christmas present this year of — I think it was Arabella. It’s what Jennifer Kloester recommended for Georgette Heyer.

Carolyn Daughters  10:40

Death in the Stocks by Georgette Heyer. A man is found dead in a quaint English village, and Inspector Hannasyde and Giles Carrington unravel an eccentric family’s secrets. Our guest, Jennifer Kloester, has written extensively about Georgette Heyer, and she has a book out called Georgette Heyer’s Regency World. She also has several other books, and she’s working on an upcoming documentary, Who the Hell Is Georgette Heyer?

Sarah Harrison  11:12

I feel like that’s so relevant because I didn’t actually realize so the Regency genre, Regency romance, then that was all spawned by Georgette Heyer, and it still looks so popular. What was it Bridgerton, that show right now that was super popular is directly a result of her work, and yet people like myself are just unaware of her. So I thought she was really cool. And then you and I probably align on the next two. The Wheel Spins and Rogue Male were definitely two of my favorites there. They were both thrillers more than detective fiction.

Carolyn Daughters  11:52

The Wheel Spins, tell us about that.

Sarah Harrison  11:55

The Lady Vanishes was the movie based on that, and everyone’s heard of The Lady Vanishes, even if you haven’t seen it. A lot of Hitchcock movies are names we’ve heard and are familiar with. But the actual book, to me, was so interesting, so refreshing. I felt like I was watching a Hitchcock movie, and the movie didn’t actually, for me, live up to the book at all.

Carolyn Daughters  12:24

I felt that too. I felt like the book was the better version. So there’s this woman, Iris Carr. She’s a super engaging protagonist. She takes a train journey that takes a sinister turn when a passenger, Miss Froy, disappears on the train. So first of all, Murder on the Orient Express and The Wheel Spins and several other books — I’m learning there’s actually a subgenre of mystery on train.

Sarah Harrison  12:53

Is that an official subgenre? That one we’re coming up with.

Carolyn Daughters  12:57

I think it’s possible it exists. If not, it should exist, because the train is this amazing, a captive audience of people on the train. So who committed the murder? It’s someone on the train. And as is the case in Murder on the Orient Express, which we read last year, and also this book, The Wheel Spins, and it’s just this amazing setting. Also, there’s an adventure in this sense of exploration, and they’re traveling somewhere, and so it raises the stakes, I think, in a lot of interesting ways.

Sarah Harrison  13:35

I would say, if the future of Tea, Tonic and Toxin does not contain an on train episode at some point that’s a huge mess.

Carolyn Daughters  13:47

Yes. I think that that would be so much fun to do one or more mystery or detective fiction episodes on a train.

Sarah Harrison  13:57

One of my favorite surveys that I put up … so Spotify folks, if you listen on Spotify, we occasionally create custom surveys that you can take. And one of the favorite ones that I created was, which train trip would you want to take? And there are lists. We’ve all heard of the Orient Express. Obviously, I worked on the Alaska railroad one year. So I’m familiar with that one, but there are so many cool train journeys, so I listed a bunch globally that we could take and let people say which one. If you want to check out those train journeys, if you’re a train head like us, it’s the Orient Express episode, which is among the best detective fiction out there. The more exotic, the better, from my perspective. Oh, they’re all so cool. There were trains I was realizing that I didn’t know existed. I’ve heard, of course, of the Trans-Siberian railroad, I’d taken a couple trains in Russia that were a very crazy experience, but not that one. There was a Japanese train. There’s so many trains. Oh, well, my list just got longer.

Carolyn Daughters  15:11

What was your third book? Did you say it was Rogue Male? Oh my gosh, I loved Rogue Male.

Sarah Harrison  15:18

Okay, tell me why you loved it.

Carolyn Daughters  15:22

It’s written beautifully. The character is learning about himself as he goes, and there’s this epiphany that happens about three quarters of the way through that just, it’s nothing shocking, and yet it’s shocking. It’s shocking from a human perspective. You see this guy emerge who is deeper and bigger and more interesting and just more everything than that, all the good things you thought about him prior. This book, Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household, is so amazing that it actually inspired our guest, David Morrell.

Sarah Harrison  16:10

Our super cool guest, such a great guy.

Carolyn Daughters  16:12

David Morrell wrote First Blood, which is the first book in the Rambo series. David Morrell joined us for two episodes and talked about Geoffrey Household, who he adores and we adore.

Sarah Harrison  16:27

David Morrell was pen pals with Geoffrey Household. He sent Geoffrey Household a copy of Rambo. Uncovering that connection was one of my favorite moments of the podcast. David Morrell sent Geoffrey Household First Blood. A lot of our modern authors say we love them, and they’re on to talk about their books. But it’s so cool when you also run into an author who’s a big, super fan of one of these classical authors, and the fact that they actually knew each other in real life was really neat to me.

Carolyn Daughters  17:02

We were so happy to have David Morrell on. We talked to him about Rogue Male and also about First Blood. It’s amazing to be able to read and discuss mysteries, thrillers, and detective fiction with these experts. We had lots of really interesting conversation with this extremely smart, fascinating guy.

Sarah Harrison  17:03

And it was also really interesting to me that First Blood as written has some really significant deviations from First Blood as a film. Even though I do like First Blood as a film.

Carolyn Daughters  17:31

And David Morrell does, too. He says it’s extremely different, and it’s also extremely well done. So there are reasons for the changes. Listen to the episode, and you can hear him dissect some of the reasons why the two are different. And it makes sense, once you start understanding why the decisions were made. For me, it was surprising when I got to the end of the book and I thought, wait a minute — it doesn’t end this way.

Sarah Harrison  17:58

It doesn’t even begin this way. Begin this way the middle is different. Everything is a lot more complicated. I would say the book is. And learning about his perspective of being a Canadian when he wrote it was also super interesting. I agree with you. It was almost like the mystery is tied up in the man’s mystery to himself, which really resonated, of course, it was crafted and written that way, but also kind of closer to reality, I think, and how we are a little bit of a mystery to ourselves, maybe more than we would like to think. He’s journaling at these different periods in time, and he is having more truthful insights about himself and his motivations and uncovering that. I loved it. It was great.

Carolyn Daughters  18:53

You mentioned The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M Cain. It’s 1934. It does feel really different. It’s probably a candidate for darkest book.

Sarah Harrison  19:07

But we didn’t have darkest on our list.

Carolyn Daughters  19:09

I did not. I need to add that.

Sarah Harrison  19:11

I almost added it, but I only filled out my questionnaire in my head. Well, I’m not sure what I was gonna call it, but this book stands out as different.

Carolyn Daughters  19:27

It was so good, and it’s a page turner. And every page I’m thinking, oh my goodness, I can’t believe this is happening. And yet I wouldn’t say it’s a book to read before you’re going to bed. It is not a hopeful book. It’s not a cozy mystery. It’s not cozy. This one was another thriller (vs. a mystery or detective fiction).

Sarah Harrison  19:49

No, I say something that’s like, totally, I think, out of all timelines. But because I grew up in the 90s, a movie that I saw at the time that was pretty Natural Born Killers, to me, it. Like the Natural Born Killers of sort of these early mysteries. I don’t even know. It’s not the Victorian Age, it’s not the Golden Age. It’s basically the 1930s, and what was it? What was going on there? Hardboiled, I guess. I mean, it was hard boiled. But the time period is a lot of different things. I feel like this is where all the rivers kind of start to diverge. All the different genres are being sprouted in this time period. It’s really pivotal.

Carolyn Daughters  20:35

And we had Rebecca Heisler on our podcast. She has a Substack called when Hallmark Met Sally, and she joined us to talk about The Postman Always Rings Twice.

Sarah Harrison  20:48

This woman reads 100 books a year. Incredible. There’s no way. I’m struggling at 24 books.

Carolyn Daughters  20:56

And we made this poor woman read The Postman Always Rings Twice, which we loved, and I think she enjoyed as well. But it’s certainly not a Hallmark special. Or if it is, that’s one Hallmark movie I would sign up for.

Sarah Harrison  21:10

Definitely a couple psychopaths in that one. Really divergent, really interesting, completely deserves its place on this list.

Carolyn Daughters  21:20

One of the books that I found the most fun to read was The League of Frightened Men, 1935, by Rex Stout. There’s this guy, Paul Chapin, and he seems to be murdering classmates who hazed him years earlier. Nero Wolfe and his wise cracking sidekick, Archie Goodwin, are out to catch the killer. It’s this really interesting mix of cozy, because Nero Wolfe is really like, Hey, I’m in my office, and I don’t like to leave this office. And Archie, he’s a tough guy, like, you don’t want to cross this guy. And yet, he has a good heart. And so funny. And then we had Ira Brad Matetsky, who is the Werowance of the Wolfe Pack, which is the Nero Wolfe Literary Society.

Sarah Harrison  22:08

I’m so glad, too, that we went in this order, because our last book of the year was And Then There Were None. We had Ann Claire as our guest. She writes cozy cozies. They are so cozy. But in her book, Dead and Gondola, she mentioned the Rex Stout fan club. I love this reference to Nero Wolfe and detective fiction. My goodness! She mentioned the Wolfe Pack.  I mean, we spoke to their leader!

Carolyn Daughters  22:36

Ira Brad Matetsky is a font of knowledge, like most of our guests. We wish we could have captured them and held them captive for like, five hours. They just were just so knowledgeable and so interesting, and that is, to me, one of the coolest future opportunities for Tea, Tonic & Toxin … capturing people and holding them against their will.

Sarah Harrison  23:01

That, and they still have such a really active fan club. I am dying to go to their Black Orchid banquet that they have every year. Ira gave us an invitation. We just have to get up there, and then they do this thing that is like straight out of my heart, which is not every year, but every so often. Every few years, they go to the Greenbrier Inn, which was the inspiration for another Nero Wolfe book, and they have a Nero Wolfe menu. The chef actually makes the food. Because if you’re into food and mysteries, Nero Wolfe is your jam. So I really want to get that cookbook. They have a Nero Wolfe cookbook. Nero Wolfe is one of the original foodies. He’s particular about what he eats, and he loves eating. I love eating. They kind of talk about the recipes. So I’m marking stuff down for future parties where we want to have food inspired by books.

Carolyn Daughters  24:03

The League of Frightened Men was our first Nero Wolfe book. And I loved Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. I just thought, really fun, interesting characters, both of them.

Sarah Harrison  24:14

I would have put that probably Nero Wolfe and, again, back to Death in the Stocks. I did find the conversation so humorous. Like, I love Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. Archie is such a hardboiled guy, but he’s always cracking these jokes.

Carolyn Daughters  24:38

I laughed out loud. This guy is hysterical.

Sarah Harrison  24:44

It’s like, if Red Harvest came and worked for Sherlock Holmes.

Carolyn Daughters  24:51

It is that really interesting combination.

Sarah Harrison  24:55

If you like either of those folks, you may like Nero Wolfe, but that was a lot of fun, and I just loved the clueless goofballs populating Death in the Stocks. They were arrogant, they were out of touch, they were talented, they didn’t care. They were dry witted. I liked them. It was a fun read, and it really made me want to read more.

Carolyn Daughters  25:23

It was like Oscar Wilde wrote detective fiction.

Sarah Harrison  25:29

Did you know Oscar Wilde wrote a bunch of children’s fairy tales?

Carolyn Daughters  25:35

I did not know this.

Sarah Harrison  25:36

It’s on my eBay watch list. I’m getting is that, if you’ve listened to this very much, you know I’m a huge children’s literature fan as well. I know that’s gonna become something one day podcast or otherwise, because I’m obsessed. Oscar Wilde wrote a whole fairy tale book. Wow, gotta get that.

Carolyn Daughters  25:58

Very cool. And then Dorothy Sayers. We had already read two books from Dorothy Sayers. We had read Whose Body and The Nine Tailors. This year, we read Gaudy Night.

Carolyn Daughters  26:11

Oh, you ranked Gaudy Night as frustrating to read. Talk about that.

Carolyn Daughters  26:15

Okay, so we read Strong Poison and then read Gaudy Night, published in 1935, and Strong Poison was not on our formal list. But it was one of my favorites, actually.

Sarah Harrison  26:32

Mine too.

Carolyn Daughters  26:33

It feels so different from Gaudy Night. They’re both great books. They’re both beautifully written, because they’re both written by Dorothy Sayers. You and I had read Gaudy Night before.

Sarah Harrison  26:48

Yes, we read it in the original in person book club, People obsessed with reading novels (PORN).

Carolyn Daughters  27:00

So we had read Gaudy Night before, and it was frustrating for me then too. In this book, Harriet Vane, who I didn’t like as well as I wanted to, returns her alma mater, Oxford. She finds the campus disturbed by unsettling incidents. Some people say, Okay, this is the first feminist mystery novel. The unsettling incidents are truly unsettling. But I kept waiting for a crime to happen. And so when nobody’s murdered, I just kept waiting for something, something bigger. It’s a big book, and you really get into a dissection of what it is to teach and work at a university on this campus and the different sorts of people who work there, and the women and the different ways they approach their professions. It’s really interesting, and it’s an interesting character study, but if you’re looking for just more conventional detective fiction, this may not be the book for you. If you’re looking for something really introspective and thoughtful, and you want to dive into Dorothy Sayers, which is fair and totally legit. This is the book for you well.

Sarah Harrison  28:28

And I would say if you’re gonna dive into Dorothy Sayers, dive into her work in order, because that was a big difference for me. Like you said, we read Gaudy Night years ago, and my first Dorothy Sayers was Gaudy Night. Don’t do that, folks. It frustrated me no end at that time, I would say this time around, much less, I probably put it number three on frustrating books.

Carolyn Daughters  28:58

Last year, we read The Nine Tailors, and I thought that was a good representative of Lord Peter Wimsey.

Sarah Harrison  29:06

It makes me want to read them all in order. Easter eggs are a big deal now in, like, common movie parlance, but Dorothy Sayers, I think, is the original Easter egger. She is always referring back to these little things from previous books. If I hadn’t read Strong Poison, some of the references just would have blown past me. But since I adored Strong Poison, when she referred to them, the richer context of Dorothy Sayers made a lot more sense. Gaudy Night made a lot more sense. I liked Harriet Vane a lot more. The development of Peter Wimsey made a lot more sense. By the time all the Dorothy Sayers we’ve read now, I think we started out maybe a little uncertain about Peter Wimsey. I can’t speak for Carolyn, but I now love the man and I can see why Dorothy Sayers also fell in love with the man. Knowing a little bit more about her personal life, all of it together made it not the most frustrating experience for me. I think for that one, I would rank The Postman Always Rings Twice. And Rebecca.

Carolyn Daughters  29:08

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. This book is suspenseful with some elements of mystery – it’s not detective fiction. Talk about why Rebecca was frustrating for you.

Sarah Harrison  29:20

In all of these the frustrating rankings comes down to I get frustrated with a person.

Carolyn Daughters  29:34

So you got frustrated with the narrator. In our podcast episodes, we called her Rebecca Two.

Sarah Harrison  29:49

The nameless heroine who replaces Rebecca falls into a pit of neuroticism. Which, again, that was the second read. In the first one, I felt a lot more sympathy with Rebecca Two. And in the second one, I don’t know if I’m just at a different point in my life, or when you read something a second time, you just have a different perspective, but I just feel like she was completely unreasonable and very childish. It’s just like, grow up. I know Mr. De Winter married you because he loves your childishness, but I don’t.

Carolyn Daughters  30:04

I didn’t love Mr. De Winter on second reading, either.

Sarah Harrison  30:04

I liked him more. I liked him less on the first one, I liked him more on the second one. I felt like he was just being normal and clueless at a normal level. She was like, forgot all day at work.

Carolyn Daughters  31:22

She has some issues to work through. The book isn’t detective fiction, and Rebecca Two is a terrible detective. So Rebecca, 1938, by Daphne du Maurier. A young bride is haunted by the shadow of her husband’s first wife at the eerie Manderley estate. And our guest for those podcast episodes was Shana Kelly.

Sarah Harrison  31:50

It was so cool, folks. I think she’s our first Emmy winning guest. We had so many really neat firsts. Shana, being our first Emmy winner, had brilliant insights.

Carolyn Daughters  32:09

She wrote a documentary called The Towering Task: The Story of the Peace Corps, for which she won an Emmy. And I believe now she’s working on writing a documentary on the League of Women Voters.

Sarah Harrison  32:23

That’s gonna be cool, too.

Carolyn Daughters  32:24

So Rebecca is a little frustrating, I would give you that. And then, what about A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler? How did you feel about that book?

Sarah Harrison  32:36

You ranked it as one of your favorites. Thrilling and adventurous. Tell us about that.

Carolyn Daughters  32:51

It did feel new to me, in the sense it felt very much like a John le Carre, Robert Ludlum, like an early version of those books to me. I thought that was really fun. In learning about this book, we found an expert, Neil Nyren. He’s a former Executive Vice President and editor in chief of GP Putnam Sons. He won the 2017 Ellery Queen Award from the Mystery Writers of America. And he won the 2025 Thriller Legend Award from International Thriller Writers.

Carolyn Daughters  33:18

Neil Nyren’s excitement about the book, and his writings about A Coffin for Dimitrios, also known as The Mask of Dimitrios, really helped amp up my interest in the book. The story takes place in the Balkans, so it feels foreign and interesting and fresh, and you get the sense of this guy, Dimitrios, and this entire people just sort of foraging, fending for themselves, essentially making their way in the world. Dimitrios is super sharp and sly, and he actually is thriving in a way that a lot of people weren’t or couldn’t. And it doesn’t make him the most likable guy, but it makes him a really interesting guy. The book might not be classified as detective fiction, but Charles Latimer does a bang-up job as an amateur detective hunting down the life story of Dimitrios.

Sarah Harrison  34:30

If I was going to give that one a ranking, I probably wouldn’t make it the most thrilling, but I might call it something. The thing that struck me about that one was the most historical. I do really enjoy when books humble me in a way, if that makes sense, like when I read Edgar Allan Poe, right? I feel like, oh, I don’t know nearly enough words. Vocabulary is lacking, right? When I read A Coffin for Dimitrios, I was like, oh my goodness, we just unlocked the next level of history that we’re never going to be taught in the U.S., unless you have some kind of Balkans history major in college.

Carolyn Daughters  35:25

I pulled a map up. The main character, Charles Latimer is this mystery writer, and he is following the path of Dimitrios, and I’m following it as well. It was brand new to me, the history, and also just even some of these cities and locations.

Sarah Harrison  35:46

The only other author, I think, that has really come close is probably Dorothy Sayers. If you go back to The Nine Tailors, she just uses everything from civil engineering to bell ringing as plot devices in her book, just a lot of history. For this year, I would say A Coffin for Dimitrios (The Mask of Dimitrios) really opened up a whole historical box. For me, that was fascinating.

Carolyn Daughters  36:14

And then for me, ingenious or surprising, we come to Agatha Christie. Maybe that’s not a shock. The first one being The ABC Murders, 1936. There’s this guy striking in alphabetical order. A serial killer challenges Hercule Poirot to a battle of wits. This was your first read of The ABC Murders, right?

Sarah Harrison  36:40

I’m just not well read in mystery, folks.

Carolyn Daughters  36:42

You’re getting well read in mysteries and detective fiction because you’ve done this for years now.

Sarah Harrison  36:47

I am now for the past, but for the future, I’m still going to be fresh. So Agatha Christie, just talking about the historical aspect, she is not one where you’re like, Oh, I’m opening this gift of history. She might touch on some historical aspects, she might touch on some food, some cultural things. But for me, it’s always the twist with her. She can pull it off so perfectly. And I have never once seen it coming on a first read. I have never known the answer before arriving there and having her explain it to me, especially in And Then There Were None.

Carolyn Daughters  37:28

I was like, what? She’s the master of the ingenious plot twist. I will say, in 2025 we are reading, and will have episodes on Death Comes as the End, a groundbreaking historical mystery set in ancient Egypt. So we’re going to see if that challenges this sort of historical bent that we see largely missing in place of just this plot twist, red herring. Agatha Christie guides you in one direction, only to shock you and you realize, aha, this is who the killer is.

Sarah Harrison  38:06

I think that’s one of the things that makes her so timeless. It just kind of hovers on the surface of the water or above time or what have you. Release wise, folks, you may have already listened to our episode on what’s coming up for 2025.

Carolyn Daughters  38:35

And then the final book of 2024 is And Then There Were None. What did you think, Sarah? You hadn’t read that one.

Sarah Harrison  38:43

It totally shocked me like all of hers. I’m just like, What? What? No way. I just thought it was impossible. But she pulled it out of the hat, folks, as she always does. That’s why she’s one of the best there is. We had such a fun guest for The ABC Murderers. We had Kemper Donovan, who is such an expert on Agatha Christie. He has a whole rubric for each and every one of her books.

Carolyn Daughters  39:14

He’s the host of the All About Agatha podcast. And also the author of The Busy Body, which is  a book of detective fiction and the first book in his Ghostwriter series.

Sarah Harrison  39:23

And like I said, we had such a cool guest for And Then There Were None, Ann Claire. She kind of takes her inspiration from Agatha Christie writing cozy cozies. And even the main characters are called the Christie sisters.

Carolyn Daughters  39:38

These are the Christie Bookshop Mysteries, and we interviewed Ann Claire as well and talked about Dead and Gondola, her first book in the Christie Bookshop Mystery series. But she also talked with us about And Then There Were None, which is probably one of the least cozy of Agatha Christie’s books.

Sarah Harrison  39:58

I feel like cozy is a thing we apply retrospectively, right? Because we look back and we’re like the time period in England when you had beautiful countryside, and tea time.

Carolyn Daughters  40:14

I like that you changed your voice.

Sarah Harrison  40:18

And a breakfast buffet, right? To come out, and there’s cold breakfast, hot breakfast. We find that cozy, so we call it a cozy. But she wasn’t particularly aiming for that in her writing.

Carolyn Daughters  40:30

No, I don’t think so. And yet, you read Ann Claire, you read Dead and Gondola, and the protagonist, Ellie Christie, is running a bookshop at the top of a mountain in a mountain town, and it’s about as cozy as it gets. That character constantly when she’s out and about, thinks, where would I rather be? I’d rather be back at home. I’m sipping a cup of cocoa by the fire or reading a book.

Sarah Harrison  41:01

It really plays on a reader’s fantasy, right? And it’s always, like, hot chocolate on the house.

Carolyn Daughters  41:07

I know. And I’m like, Oh my gosh, I don’t know where this place is, but I want to be there. It’s a made up town called Last Word.

Sarah Harrison  41:15

It’s definitely Telluride, Colorado. I think there’s only one town where you take a gondola to the top of the town, the bottom is in a box canyon. And that’s Telluride.

Carolyn Daughters  41:28

Super fun. Which then brings me to the fact that we had a ton of amazing authors of mysteries, thrillers, and detective fiction that we interviewed. We had guests on a lot of our episodes, and then we also interviewed authors, sometimes in concert with the book. So we had Ann Claire talking about And Then There Were None and also about her book, Dead and Gondola. Kemper Donovan is another example. We talked about his book, The Busy Body, and Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders and other books of detective fiction. Some guests joined us here in studio, and some joined us online by video and talked about their books. Barbara Nickless, for example, joined us here in studio to talk about her book Play of Shadows.

Sarah Harrison  42:12

That was great. She was really into research. I could just do research with her forever.

Carolyn Daughters  42:13

Barbara Nickless researches the heck out of her books.

Sarah Harrison  42:16

She’s like, Oh, I was in some training camp. We had to evacuate. She was fascinating. If I was gonna rank maybe one of our most beautifully written books by a modern author, that would probably be Bearskin.

Carolyn Daughters  42:33

Oh my gosh, I still think about Bearskin, actually. James McLaughlin.

Sarah Harrison  42:38

That was really neat. It was really violent, and also kind of like a love story to the Appalachians.

Carolyn Daughters  42:47

Bearskin is an Edgar Award winner, and it’s not a surprise. Beautifully written. And I just loved interviewing James McLaughlin. Another book that I just could not put down was Phantom Orbit by David Ignatius.

Sarah Harrison  43:03

That was really interesting.

Carolyn Daughters  43:06

It just opened my eyes.

Sarah Harrison  43:10

I’ve brought Phantom Orbit up probably the most and just outside conversations, because it was so politically interesting, and our author just had so much firsthand insight into these real sorts of CIA operations that, to me, is like the stuff of conspiracy theory.

Carolyn Daughters  43:38

David Ignatius is a long-term reporter with a global bent, and did a phenomenal job on the idea of space warfare. It’s a thriller more than a mystery or detective fiction, and it’s amazing. And we highly, highly recommend that you read Phantom Orbit. He’s really prescient, and he’s known for this. A lot of people mention this, that he will publish a book, and then the headlines, literally, a month after his books are published, are covering the topics he’s talking about in his books. He really just has a very long range, big picture understanding of global events,

Sarah Harrison  44:22

As I’m reading these books, was like, which parts were real, which were fictional, and with David Ignatius, the parts that were real to me were always my part was real. Like the movie that Ridley Scott directed of one of David Ignatius’ books. The one with Leonardo DiCaprio.

Carolyn Daughters  44:46

Body of Lies?

Sarah Harrison  44:47

Yes. Body of Lies. The parts that were real, that was the most kind of next level part of the book. It was so cool that way, that it’s probably come up in conversation the most.

Carolyn Daughters  45:06

I’ve talked about it a lot. I’m like, Oh my gosh, this guy was just so hands down smart. We could have interviewed him all day. And just like, it would have been like a master class.

Sarah Harrison  45:15

And it fed my spirit a little bit, which is really a sci-fi spirit in its heart that I got to read about physicists and satellites and research institutions and conferences that I’m like, I’ve been to conferences like this — were they actually CIA operation covers?

Carolyn Daughters  45:37

It makes you rethink every conference you’ve ever been to. You’re like, that conference maybe wasn’t as dull as I thought it was.

Sarah Harrison  45:42

Like the whole conference’s premise was just to debrief some guy, and I’m up there presenting papers now.

Carolyn Daughters  45:50

Fleur Bradley also joined us in studio.

Sarah Harrison  45:53

She was so much fun, and her book was really, really different from a lot of the books we’ve read.

Carolyn Daughters  45:58

I really enjoy her books, in particular because they’re aimed for children, but also adults can enjoy them. And I love a book that sort of crosses over in that way. We read Midnight at the Barclay Hotel.

Sarah Harrison  46:14

I think I already just mentioned my obsession with children. And the great ones can do that. And I enjoyed her book, but I really enjoyed her stories about her fans and how she answers all her emails from kids who are building this bridge into reading. And I was one of those kids. I hated reading until I found the right book. And it’s so cool that she gets to write that book for certain kids.

Carolyn Daughters  46:41

Kids who’ve read her books will write her, and she will always email back. But also, kids who have not read her books, which are children’s detective fiction, will sometimes email her and she’s like, we’re starting the conversation. It’s all good. Like, these are my future readers. Or they’re not her future readers. She’s less concerned with that. She wants future readers, period. And so kids will say, I have not read your book yet, but I wanted to email you. And she’ll say, well, thank you so much for the email. And she’s communicating with them. I think it’s just such a great thing.

Sarah Harrison  47:13

It seems so fun, so genuine. We got to have her in studio. And that was one of the cool things about this year, is how many western and Colorado authors we got to meet in person. We love, of course, folks that we interview remotely, but having someone in the studio is fun. So much fun, especially when you’re with Ann Claire and she brings us cookies.

Carolyn Daughters  47:39

Oh my gosh, she did, and Ann Claire brought us ginger deadman cookies.

Sarah Harrison  47:44

Leave it to the cozy writer to bring cookies, and they were delicious. Just so you know, listeners — Carolyn makes a snack plate for all our in studio guests and me. But it’s great to have those in person conversations. And there are so many great authors.

Carolyn Daughters  48:08

Ann Claire joined us in studio. And then Erika Krouse joined us in studio.

Sarah Harrison  48:14

Fleur Bradley came in studio, as did ZJ Czupor. We went to the home of Carter Wilson. We got to see his home, which is actually pretty fun.

Carolyn Daughters  48:35

Yeah, he has a beautiful home inspired by the Addams Family, I think. It’s a really cool home. We got to see his setup, because he also podcast.

Sarah Harrison  48:47

Check out Carter’s podcast.

Carolyn Daughters  48:50

We interviewed him about his book, The Father She Went to Find. And then Shana Kelly joined us here to talk about Rebecca. So cool. And then Erika Krouse came in studio to talk about Tell Me Everything.

Sarah Harrison  49:05

Yes, that was really, really, really interesting.

Carolyn Daughters  49:07

Tell Me Everything is also an Edgar Award winner. I’ve known Erika Krouse for a number of years. I know her through Lighthouse Writers Workshop here in Denver, and I had wanted to read this book. It’s a book that’s lingering with me. It’s not an easy read, but I found it a powerful read and an important read. It’s detective fiction in the sense that the investigator, Erika Krouse, pieces together complex events that happen.

Sarah Harrison  49:28

Definitely. Check out Erika Krouse.

Carolyn Daughters  49:40

Look out for Erika Krouse. We’ll include links to all of these authors and all of these books, because you’re going to want to check out a lot of this literature.

Sarah Harrison  49:50

You can find links in our show notes. You can find links on our website, teatonicandtoxin.com that also contains links to the books and book buying lists on Amazon. There’s lots of things we launched this year.

Carolyn Daughters  50:06

I will say, we did this really cool interview where we got to talk about Tempe Brennan and the latest book in the Bones series, which was so cool. We talked with Kathy Reichs about Fire and Bones.

Sarah Harrison  50:27

There’s Kathy Reichs. There was Craig Johnson, who recently published First Frost in the Walt Longmire series. That was a road trip to Buffalo, Wyoming. And our episode with Craig Johnson also won the Spotify “most listened to” episode this year. So we were just thrilled to have some of these authors on there.

Carolyn Daughters  50:28

Craig Johnson was the most kind and generous person. When we were at his cabin interviewing him about First Frost, Walt Longmire, and detective fiction. And the power went out. We drove all the way to Wyoming and the power went out. And he’s in the middle of Longmire Days, and so he is booked from morning to noon tonight, and he’s like, Well, we’ll just reschedule tomorrow. You ladies let me know what time works for you. He was just the most generous person with his time.

Sarah Harrison  50:28

And his schedule was back to back events. It was crazy. He had a handler for the whole weekend who was also a lot of fun. We have videos from him on the website. What were some general highlights from the year, Carolyn? We did so many new things.

Carolyn Daughters  50:46

Oh gosh, I loved the diversity of the authors that we met with, and how every time I read one of their books, like if I read Christine Carbo’s The Wild Inside, for example, I’m thinking like Glacier National Park, which we both love, and I can picture being in the park. These books brought me to the places where these books are set. I just loved that. I fan girled with Georgia Jeffries, who was a writer on Cagney and Lacey, which is a show I loved. I fan girled with several of these people, to be honest, David Morrell, Craig Johnson, I mean, the list goes on. Just for me, I’m meeting a lot of my literary idols here. That’s so cool. The fact that they let us in the door, or, like, we knock on the door and they open it. To me, that is still shocking. I don’t know why, but I just expect the door to slam. But then we knock on the door, and they’re like, I’d love to talk. And then we say, hey, so our episodes go for like an hour, is that okay?

Sarah Harrison  52:47

And they’re like, sure. Sometimes two hours, if you’re David Morrell.

Carolyn Daughters  52:50

With David Morrell, we’re like, so we’re just gonna keep talking to you. Is that good? And he’s like, “Sure, that sounds great.”

Sarah Harrison  52:56

He stayed on afterwards and just chit chatted. Man, if you haven’t read David Morrell, you need to. I love that ZJ Czupor had attended one of David Morrell’s classes.

Carolyn Daughters  53:09

I love that, too, because ZJ Czupor had mentioned David Morrell when we were talking about, I think, The ABC Murders, which is exceptional detective fiction. And then we know he was our guest for Gaudy Night. And then later on, you had determined that David Morrell was a really great guest for Rogue Male.

Sarah Harrison  53:25

It totally went over my head, which I don’t know why, because we had this whole conversation, how I like Rambo, and then it flew out of my brain, like so much information does. And then we got to talk to the guy and just sometimes how generous folks are and how happy they are to have book conversations.

Carolyn Daughters  53:46

We have in-depth conversations, because what we’ve heard from a lot of people is, okay, you put a book out, or you have a book that has been out for a couple years, and interviewers just ask you, like, 10-15, minutes of super generic questions about their mystery, thriller, or detective fiction. And so authors get used to answering the same questions. When they’re asked something a little bit different in a different way, or when the follow up is more in depth, they’re like, Oh, thank God. They’re so excited to actually talk about the ideas in their books.

Sarah Harrison  54:15

I have loved that feedback from our guests because so many of them are so cool, but they’ll be on even if it’s like something huge, like Good Morning America for 15 minutes, right? That’s 15 minutes, and nobody’s read your book. I guarantee it. Whereas we’ve read it and come up with all these questions, and I’m like, tell us about your characterization, or what was your inspiration for this particular detail. I think I had written down, like, all the crazy names of spiders and birds used in Bearskin. What do you do PhD in this? Having guests like these was a highlight from this year going on the road to Longmire Days, like, opened the box. Well, what other road trips can we take? How about the Black Orchid Banquet? And can we get there by train? What kind of onsite episodes can we do? It just was so fun. There’s so many highlights. We tried a lot of things. We started a YouTube channel for clips this year. If you haven’t checked that out, please tell us what you think. Of course, we have not gone full video. I think some lighting would have to be in place. We can talk about that.

Sarah Harrison  55:55

We also started a Patreon this year. We’ve started so many kind of avenues trying to get the word out, and you guys have been amazing. Every time we hear from a fan, it makes our week or month.

Carolyn Daughters  56:16

And we particularly love when you tell other people about us, when you review our podcast on your podcast platform of choice, because it helps us get found by people who would also really love to learn about the history of mystery.

Sarah Harrison  56:32

I think the Spotify numbers were like on Spotify. So it’s a little bit tough, right? Because all these platforms don’t talk to each other. We depend on a particular platform to give us information. But Spotify wrapped for 2024, and I think our listenership on Spotify went up over 80%. I think was like 82%.On our hosting platform, they measure downloads across the board, and our downloads doubled, maybe even tripled this year. So that’s amazing. And thank you all for what do you do in sharing us out there.

Carolyn Daughters  57:19

Thanks for following us on this journey through the history of mystery, thrillers, and detective fiction. It’s a passion of ours, and we love it, and we’re just thrilled to have you along with us.

Sarah Harrison  57:31

Before we wrap up this episode, my favorite question of yours, Carolyn, was: What was the hardest part and the best part? I think maybe we’ve glowed about the best part a little bit. But what was the hardest part for you of doing the podcast this year?

Carolyn Daughters  57:53

We’re two people, and we’re wearing 10 hats each, for those like myself who are mathematically challenged, that’s 20 hats, and it’s hard. It’s hard to keep up with it, especially when you want to do a high quality podcast. We have a lot of valuable content on our website. We’re trying to keep up with social media. We’re trying to keep up with video. We’re trying to launch the episodes on a reasonable schedule. It’s a lot of work. If you don’t love the work, it would fall apart real fast. And you can see why a lot of podcasts stop after the first year. People realize, like, this is no joke. Like this was the real deal. So I’m thrilled that we’re still in this I’m thrilled that we recommit to this thing.

Sarah Harrison  58:48

Because three years is a big turning point, from what I’ve read. Three years is like, if you do that, then you’re a real podcast.

Carolyn Daughters  58:59

Congratulations!

Sarah Harrison  59:03

We just completed our third year of reading and discussions mysteries, thrillers, and detective fiction. It’s incredible, but, yeah, the timing for me is definitely the hardest part in in several ways, right? So the first half of the year I was working for myself on contract. My contracts are fluctuating up and down, and when they’re down, it’s stressful. But then I could use that extra time as an opportunity to start a YouTube channel and things like that. But then, going back full time, it’s hard to keep up with the YouTube channel and so that kind of fluctuation. Listeners, if you want your episodes to come out in a more timely fashion, consider supporting Tea, Tonic & Toxin. That’s for real folks. And the other thing I think the time is with the reading of the books. I’m no Rebecca Heisler reading 100 books a year. I think the heart of the podcast is a book club, and we read the books, right? So that we can ask the questions and think about ideas because that’s what we love. We love reading the books and talking about books. And time for reading is just really at a premium. So I’d love to read more books. We actually are approached by a number of publicists and authors that might sound interesting and experts that seem cool, and ideas that we have, but, man, like we need to be able to devote the time to doing the reading. And so that definitely puts an upper limit on what we can do.

Carolyn Daughters  1:00:40

Picking 12 or so mysteries, thrillers, and books of detective fiction each year is so hard because we have a lot of really cool options in front of us. We really want to talk to this particular person, but we just don’t have endless time. So we wish we had more time, but we’re excited that we have our 2025 prospective episode on our next set of books as we cover the history of mystery. We’re got a lot going on.

Sarah Harrison  1:01:25

But I would say, listeners, if you have some favorite authors that you would like us to reach out to, please let us know, send us a message, put it in a chat and a comment. We literally read everything that you send, because we love it so much, and we love doing this. So thank you for a wonderful 2024.

Carolyn Daughters  1:01:55

Yes. Thank you very much.

Sarah Harrison 
We hope you enjoyed this episode on the mysteries, thrillers, and detective fiction we read in 2024. If you did, it would mean the world to us if you would subscribe and then you’ll never miss an episode. Be sure to leave us a rating or review on Apple podcasts Spotify, or wherever you listen to Tea, Tonic & Toxin. That way, likeminded folks can also find us on all platforms.

Carolyn Daughters
You can learn more about all our book selections at teatonicandtoxin.com. You can also comment, weigh in, and follow along with what we’re reading and discussing @teatonicandtoxin on Instagram and Facebook. And you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Finally, please visit our website, teatonicandtoxin.com to check out current and past reading lists and support our labor of love, starting at only $3 a month.

Sarah Harrison
We want to thank you for listening to our podcast on mysteries, thrillers, and detective fiction and for joining us on our journey through the history of mystery. We absolutely adore you. Until next time, stay mysterious.