Episode 73: 2025 Mystery Fiction Books

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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
mystery fiction books, book club, queens of crime, Depression-era mysteries, psychological thrillers, Raymond Chandler, noir thriller, Rocky Mountain Mystery Writers of America, Graham Greene, historical mysteries, Craig Rice, Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham, Edmund Crispin, Cornell Woolrich, Ngaio Marsh, Alfred Hitchcock, Rear Window, detective fiction, spy thrillers, crime fiction, hardboiled mysteries, 1930-1939, 1940-1949

SPEAKERS
Sarah Harrison, Carolyn Daughters

Sarah Harrison  00:24
Welcome to Tea, Tonic, and Toxin, a book club and podcast for anyone who wants to explore the best mysteries and thrillers ever written. I’m your host, Sarah Harrison.

Carolyn Daughters  00:35
And I’m your host, Carolyn Daughters. Pour yourself, a cup of tea, a gin and tonic … but not a toxin … and join us on a journey through 19th and 20th century mysteries and thrillers, all of them game changers.

Sarah Harrison  00:54
I am really excited about our episode today. But before we jump in, we have an even more exciting sponsor. It’s Carolyn Daughters. Carolyn runs game changing corporate brand therapy workshops, teaches Online Marketing Boot Camp courses, and leads persuasive writing workshops, Carolyn empowers startups, small businesses, enterprise organizations and government agencies to win hearts, minds, deals and dollars. You can learn more at carolyndaughters.com. Happy New Year. We have a lot going on in 2025. Oh, man, we’re starting our fourth year. I can’t believe it. It’s so cool. We’re gonna talk a little bit about what’s coming up in 2025. We want to talk through which books we picked out for this year.

Carolyn Daughters  02:07
Before we dive into the mystery fiction books we’ll be reading and discussing in 2025, we have a listener of the episode that we want to give a shout out to the wonderful John Feula from Mesa, Arizona. Thank you, John, for being a fan of Tea, Tonic, and Toxin. We’re gonna send you an amazing sticker.

Sarah Harrison  02:24
It is. It’s a gorgeous sticker. Although I think it’s time to re-up our stickers. I want to make a bunch of new ones. I don’t know if we want to tweak anything I made so for paid subscribers, for show supporters, they do get a special edition sticker. I took the book covers all the black and white, like drawings from our first season, and I made a special edition set.

Carolyn Daughters  03:00
I’ve never even seen these.

Sarah Harrison  03:01
I’ll bring them. I’ll give you one.

Carolyn Daughters  03:08
I’m gonna subscribe. Honestly, we’re gonna get off this episode, and I am subscribing because I’m gonna get what Sarah calls a flat pack.

Sarah Harrison  03:19
The flat swag pack for paid subscribers. We got some new, cool stuff to put in that. So Ann Claire gave us some of her flat swag that I’m gonna be putting in those packets. If you like all of our Spotify episodes or all of our YouTube clips, you may even see this limited edition sticker set.

Carolyn Daughters  03:48
What we’re seeing is that I’m not currently qualified to even really know about the sticker set.

Sarah Harrison  03:58
You know, when you have two people doing the whole show. A lot is happening. Carolyn’s doing a bunch of stuff. And she’s like, “Here’s the stuff I’m doing.”

Carolyn Daughters  04:12
I’m like, “Look, the website’s been updated to include all the mystery fiction books for 2025.” And she’s like, “I’ve created new stickers.” I’m like, “Cool.” She’s like, “Right on.”

Sarah Harrison  04:19
You’ve got to trust each other. Gotta have some independence.

Carolyn Daughters  04:27
Exactly. Thanks to everybody who comments, who follows us on their podcast platform of choice, or sponsors us. We adore you.

Sarah Harrison  04:46
Thank you so much. We love what we do, and you make it possible. So thank you so much, and we love to hear from you all the time. We have so much cool stuff we did in 2024, and we’ve got lots of new ideas we want to talk about. Maybe we should talk about these books, right? We’re covering 1939 to 1946, so we’re touching on both the 1930-1939 timeframe and the 1940-1949 timeframe.

Carolyn Daughters  05:23
It would be crazy for us to cover 10 solid years. No, we’re focused on the history of mystery. We’ve just finished 1934 to 1939 we have one more 1939 book to do, and then we’re gonna go all the way to 1946.

Sarah Harrison  05:39
It’s a breakneck pace. Is there a theme to this? Because I feel like in 2024 that was like the bubbling up of so many directions, so many genres, there’s so much variation. Do you feel like this year is the same, or is there some like, how would you categorize what we’re going to read this year?

Carolyn Daughters  06:05
I feel like there’s a lot of Depression era, post-Depression era, right before the Second World War and during the Second World War. So Depression-era mystery, folks, and wartime mystery, so darker.

What we were talking about before this episode is a lot of the book covers, not the brand new ones, but some of the old mystery fiction books have covers that are really dark.

Sarah Harrison  06:37
Visually darker. The colors are darker. Colors. That was very interesting.

Carolyn Daughters  06:43
So interesting. And I think the books, generally speaking, are thematically a little a little darker. There are maybe a couple of exceptions, but we start with Raymond Chandler, and, boy, LA is a seedy, dark place.

Sarah Harrison  07:01
I mean, maybe it still is.

Carolyn Daughters  07:05
I’ve been to LA a bunch of times, and I actually love LA. First time I went to LA, I went with a friend. My friend said, Let’s go to LA. And I thought of all the places, and so I was super against it, and then I had the best time. And we got same brand, and I went back a second time to LA. That’s how much fun we had. So I did live there for a little while. It’s not a surprise. Sarah has lived everywhere.

Sarah Harrison  07:36
Carolyn and I were just talking about, I did live there. I was working out there at the Aerospace Corporation.

Carolyn Daughters  07:46
I’m just gonna share a little secret. Sarah is 198 years old.

Sarah Harrison  07:51
It’s collagen, folks, that’s the secret. Lot of vitamins, a lot of collagen. It’s an interesting place, and it’s very cool that we’re starting there, and we’re starting our 2025 mystery fiction books with Raymond Chandler, who I’ve heard so much about. There are so many Raymond Chandler fans out there.

Carolyn Daughters  08:10

He’s a stunner, and The Big Sleep is a classic hardboiled detective novel introducing Philip Marlowe, a private investigator in LA. He’s hired to resolve a blackmail scheme, and along the way, uncovers a web of corruption and murder. It’s a noir thriller at its best. And there’s a great movie of The Big Sleep. It’s starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall and quite a few changes from the book. From what I understand. We’re gonna try to watch that fairly soon. As we see with a lot of these books, the film doesn’t always stick with all the crime fiction details of the hardboiled mysteries from beginning to end. The film version does its own thing.

Sarah Harrison  08:59
That was one of the cool things we introduced in 2024. You asked, and we started making special edition movie episodes or screen versions. It’s almost always part of a discussion, because so many of these great ones have been adapted for screens, large and small. In 2024 we recorded our first two exclusive movie discussions, available on the Patreon. You don’t have to be a subscriber to get the special movie episodes. So that’s exciting, and I think we’ll try and do a similar thing. For selected books, including The Big Sleep going forward in 2025 tell us what you think. We really want to hear your feedback on your ideas, the things you want, the things you’re looking for.

Carolyn Daughters  10:12
Farewell, My Lovely is also a film, and I think almost all of the Raymond Chandler crime fiction books have been made into fairly well known films. That’s 1940. This noir thriller is our second book of 2025.

Sarah Harrison  10:32
Because we don’t have enough to do. We read the mystery fiction books, and then we have to schedule a movie night significant others and be like, where’s this even available? Is this on the YouTube, etc., so that’s a lot of fun. I always enjoy the movies and then chit chatting about them afterwards.

Carolyn Daughters  10:53
Farewell, My Lovely is another of the hardboiled mysteries. It features Philip Marlowe, he’s investigating the disappearance of an ex-cons girlfriend, and it celebrated for its atmospheric prose and moral complexity, and solidifies Chandler’s legacy as the noir master.

Sarah Harrison  11:09
We hear a lot about noir as an important genre, and there’s a lot of noir fans both of the books. Was I okay? So one thing we haven’t talked about is we went to the Rocky Mountain Mystery Writers Association Christmas party again this year we did that was another fun thing, this impromptu writing contest, and I can’t remember which category I entered. Was it Noir? He was thriller. Oh, was it noir thriller? I tried to enter one nobody was in. And then everyone joined it, and it became the most popular category. Which one was it? I think it was thriller. Anyway, folks, I just say that to say I won. I was the winner.

Carolyn Daughters  12:02
Yes, she did. Folks, she won.

Sarah Harrison  12:03
It’s real. My story won. That was a lot of fun. If you’re in the Denver area, check out the Rocky Mountain Mystery Writers Association. A lot of fun, folks, fun stories. I like this little activities they come up with.

Carolyn Daughters  12:23
It’s awesome. The members of the Rocky Mountain Mystery Writers of America group are a phenomenal group of published writers of mystery fiction books throughout the Rocky Mountain West.

Sarah Harrison  12:37
That’s where a lot of our interviews came from in 2024 and I think 2025 coming up, we have a January interview scheduled.

Carolyn Daughters  12:46
We are interviewing Puja Guha. We’re super excited to meet with her.

Sarah Harrison  12:50
Next week, actually. Although, when you’re listening to stuff, it is not real time, folks.

Carolyn Daughters  13:00
That’s weird.

Sarah Harrison  13:04
So you may hear it a month after this episode. We’re very excited about that great group of people and great books upcoming. We have one I had not heard of. Traitor’s Purse comes after the two Raymond Chandlers. Tell us why that one got included.

Carolyn Daughters  13:24
This is one of our first wartime books published in 1940 I mean directly, war time suffering from amnesia, amateur sleuth, Albert Campion, racist to stop a wartime national security threat known for its psychological depth that showcases Margery Allingham skill at blending espionage with a classic. Who done it? So we’re going to see this spy thriller, mystery combination here and this dark wartime story, which we’re going to see various threads throughout 2025, and she is extremely well known in the decade of the 1940s and well known by certain circles now. But whatever small thing we can do to bring a light on some of these authors, and in particular, some female authors like Margery Allingham and Vera Caspary, who published Laura in 1942.

Sarah Harrison  14:26
So that’s really cool. I’m excited about all of these. Laura fits into the psychological thrillers genre. is a sophisticated mystery novel blending romance and intrigue told through shifting perspective. So that’s interesting. It follows a detective investigating the apparent murder of a glamorous ad Exec. It remains a cornerstone of noir fiction. Interesting.

Carolyn Daughters  14:53
I think there’s a Laura movie also.

Sarah Harrison  14:55
I think there is, I’m gonna check it out. And I’ve been finding all these mystery fiction books, ordering them ahead of time. So that’s one that had a lot of fun covers.

Carolyn Daughters  15:08
And this next one, there’s also a movie.

Sarah Harrison  15:11
Oh, yeah, we’ve got to watch Rear Window.

Carolyn Daughters  15:14
Our next book is Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich.

Sarah Harrison  15:17
Isn’t Rear Window a Jimmy Stewart movie? It’s Alfred Hitchcock. Jimmy Stewart. You gotta love Alfred Hitchcock. I love how he keeps making these into movies.

Carolyn Daughters  15:28
He knows how to pick them. And this one’s pretty cool. Rear Window a suspenseful story about a man confined to his apartment who suspects his neighbor of murder after observing strange, strange events through his window. Inspired by and this is what helped me choose it. H.G. Wells’ Through a Window. So I was thinking sci-fi, H. G. Wells.

Sarah Harrison  15:53
We talked about wanting to do more crossovers this year. I’d love to see more mystery, sci fi crossovers, and it was so cool that HG Wells inspired this book inspired an Alfred Hitchcock movie. There are so many layers to like here.

Carolyn Daughters  16:15
We’re just gonna have to not work that month. We got to take that month off. We have a lot to do, because this influenced that, which influenced that. So we’ve, we just got to, that’s got to be our focus, all right?

Sarah Harrison  16:27
So this is one I just was trying to buy. So let me throw this out for you. If you’re looking for, it’s a short story, and so you need to buy the collection of short stories. It’s always part of a collection.

Carolyn Daughters  16:39
You can buy it as just a story on Kindle.

Sarah Harrison  16:44
If you read Kindles, which I don’t – I’m a physical book person. But that’s good to know. So I got the collection, and now I’m just like, Oh, I’m gonna want to read all those mystery fiction books.

Carolyn Daughters  16:54
It’s Sarah “tactile” Harrison.

Sarah Harrison  16:59
I’ve got a highlighter in my hand at all times.

Carolyn Daughters  17:02
Which really just screws up the Kindle.

Sarah Harrison  17:06
I’m always writing in my books, dropping them in the bathtub. They’re a mess. But 1110, Kindles a year.

Carolyn Daughters  17:13
By the 11th Kindle, you’re like, I’m done.

Sarah Harrison  17:14
I’m just buying I’d be dead by then. I drop all those things in a bathtub with me.

Carolyn Daughters  17:19
They’re not plugged into something like, I don’t know they’re not magic. Do not, I will say, do not. Take from this podcast that we are suggesting that you should bathe with your Kindle, or drop it in the water.

Sarah Harrison  17:36
Or your book, even it’s hard on books. But I’m gonna do what I do. Let’s continue with the mystery fiction books. After that, we have Graham Greene. That’s another one. I’ve heard a lot.

Carolyn Daughters  17:47

The Ministry of Fear, 1943, by Graham Greene blends espionage and psychological mystery, set in wartime London. I love spy thrillers and psychological thrillers. The story follows Arthur Rowe, an ordinary man caught up in Nazi intrigue. The story’s moral complexity redefined the boundaries of the mystery genre, and we will end up over the years. We’ll read a few more Graham Greene’s, but this is our first one, and he is, of course, a superstar.

Sarah Harrison  18:13
It’s really fun. I feel like when these authors span decades, we’ve been reading this in order. But we will have another Agatha Christie, because she is so prolific.

Carolyn Daughters  18:25
We have two more in the future as well.

Sarah Harrison  18:29
Awesome, good we should and it sounds like we’re gonna have more Graham greens. These are it’s a lot of fun to keep revisiting these authors. The next one to me had a funny title. It’s a long title. The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope by C. W. Grafton. Tell me about that one. Have the skin on the list

Carolyn Daughters  18:52
So this is interesting. This won a writing contest, and the guy who submitted the story for the right that the novel for the writing contest is C. W. Grafton, and he’s the father. He was the father of Sue Grafton who wrote the alphabet series. So I thought this would be fun to get a sense of Sue Grafton, by way of her father, who entered a writing contest and won much like myself, much like Sarah at the Rocky Mountain Mystery Writers of America. What was his, like, 50 word max? It was, I think, 50 words. So this book is slightly longer than 50 words, but so I don’t know that. So I don’t know that this would be included on everybody’s list, but I’m really excited that it’s included on ours. It’s supposed to be quite funny. I’ve not read it yet.

Sarah Harrison  19:51
I love that we can it says blending humor with hardboiled mysteries. It’s already reminding me of Archie Goodwin from Nero Wolfe.

Carolyn Daughters  20:00
I thought that would be just a fun tip of the hat to Sue Grafton, because it will be, I don’t know, approximately 30 or 40 years before we make it to Sue Grafton.

Sarah Harrison  20:10
Carolyn has recommended it. And then I found some extra Sue Grafton books. Well, you lent me the first one, but my neighborhood has so many of those little free libraries, I found the B and the C.

Carolyn Daughters  20:26
I’m ready. They’re fast reads, And Sue Grafton is good for an airplane, a beach or a cozy. We just need to get away from the bath.

Sarah Harrison  20:40
We will never get away from the bathtub. Home Sweet Homicide by Craig Rice is next of our mystery fiction books. That’s a funny name for a book. Is it a funny book?

Carolyn Daughters  20:52
I don’t know, but here’s what I know. First of all, Craig Rice is a woman. It’s the pen name of a female writer. Home Sweet Homicide reminds me a little bit of Midnight at the Barclay Hotel by Fleur Bradley in the sense that there are these three siblings who solve a murder. There’s three siblings, I believe their mother is a mystery writer, and these three siblings set out to solve a murder in their neighborhood. So Craig Rice, this author, was a big deal in 1944 when she published Home Sweet Homicide, and she was actually on the cover of Time magazine. So, yeah, big deal. Do we know much about Craig Rice now, probably not, but we’re going to shine the spotlight. What’s her real name, you ask? She definitely, definitely has a real name. I will say that it would be crazy if she did not have a real name.

Sarah Harrison  22:04
Death Comes as the End is an Agatha Christie selection. I actually so a lot of the books I get are on eBay. I don’t know if I have this one yet, because I have so many of her books come as a collection. So it’s like, here’s this one, this one, this one, this one. And I absolutely hate when I read by a book I already has another collection, so I’m gonna go through and see if it’s part of any of the collection.

Carolyn Daughters  22:30
One of our giveaways that I have extra if I have an extra one.

Sarah Harrison  22:35
It could be. It might be if I read the rest of the collection, but I’m a hoarder of books. And maybe jars.

Carolyn Daughters  22:45
I would say jars and books, yes.

Sarah Harrison  22:48
And nothing else. I always look forward to an Agatha Christie. I will try to guess the end, and I know I will fail. Well, the next of our mystery fiction books is a groundbreaking historical mystery set in ancient Egypt. Didn’t she do archeological work with her second husband? When a wealthy Patriarch’s death sparks a series of murders with his family, suspicion and secrets abound. It’s the first full-length historical whodunit. What do we mean by historical mysteries?

Carolyn Daughters  23:25
I guess there have been short story historical mysteries prior to this.

Sarah Harrison  23:29
Well, what about, what about A Coffin for Dimitrios? Is that not one of the historical mysteries?

Carolyn Daughters  23:34
I don’t think it’s historical because it’s set in the present day in which it’s written. It goes back to Dimitrios’ childhood. This book goes back to ancient Egypt. So it’s historical for the time. A Coffin for Dimitrios, which we read in 2024, feels historical to us because it’s a book published in the 1930s about a guy who was born, probably at the turn of the century. But at the time, it would been a contemporary book.

Sarah Harrison  24:09
Same with The Nine Tailors, feels very historical to me, but I guess wasn’t, for instance, that makes sense.

Carolyn Daughters  24:15
This is “slightly earlier,” because it’s Ancient Egypt. I’m just drawing upon my historical knowledge. Slightly earlier.

Sarah Harrison  24:25
All right, for those of you who are unfamiliar with your history, Green for Danger. That’s another funny title. It’s not D for danger. It’s not green for go. It’s Green for Danger by Christianna Brand, which feels like it doesn’t make sense.

Carolyn Daughters  24:43

Christianna Brand, 1944. Green for Danger is set in a British hospital during the Blitz. So we have more war time here when a patient dies under suspicious circumstances. It’s inspector Cockrill investing. It’s a web of secrets among the medical stuff. It’s considered a standout among Golden Age detective fiction.

Sarah Harrison  25:06
Okay, so this one is Golden Age.

Carolyn Daughters  25:09
Golden Age is this weird mystery fiction books period that started sometime in the 20s or the 30s, or ended in the 30s or ended in the 40s. This is 1944.

Sarah Harrison  25:21
Green for Danger. We’ve used Golden Age, especially, I think the second year, we heavily used the phrase Golden Age. Um, didn’t so much the third year, and I’ve, I love the idea of these periods. I think that was my first question. But, um, I don’t understand how they are used.

Carolyn Daughters  25:44
So of the period, I will say it’s considered a standout, but probably lesser known today than it would have been at its time of publication.

Sarah Harrison  25:54
And our next author I’ve actually heard a lot about. Ngaio Marsh. She’s one of the Queens of Crime. There’s Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. We’ll be covering our third and fourth Queens of Crime fiction this year, Ngaio Marsh and Margery Allingham. Tell us how Died in the Wool by Ngaio Marsh made the list.

Carolyn Daughters  26:36
We wanted to include Ngaio Marsh because she was one of the Queens of Crime. This book is considered among her best set in a remote New Zealand sheep farm. As most books should be awesome. When a politician is found murdered in a bale of wool, Inspector Allen uncovers political intrigue and secrets.

Sarah Harrison  27:00
It’s probably not funny and whenever it happened.

Carolyn Daughters  27:03
We definitely wanted to represent Ngaio Marsh. We wanted to get her in our list, one way or the other. We wanted. Basically, I had a couple candidates and picked this book.

Sarah Harrison  27:17
I’m looking forward to it. I have not lived in New Zealand, but I did visit. One of my highlights was called Sheep World. I’m not joking, if you’re on the North Island, go to Sheep World. You won’t regret it. And I got to pet all the sheep and watch the sheep dog round up the sheep.

Carolyn Daughters  27:40
I was gonna ask, what happens at Sheep World? I mean, what doesn’t happen at sheep world?

Sarah Harrison  27:46
I don’t know if I volunteered or if they just selected me, or Nate volunteered me, but they had us herd the sheep. They sent him down a chute, and then you had to push these doors down based on what color they spray painted the sheep. They don’t brand them, but they’ll just spray, like, hot pink on their butts. So they just go right or left. So I’m shutting and opening the door to let the sheep through. And I’m very competitive, just about me. I did win. I heard in my sheep perfectly, but maybe a couple of sheep got real smashed.

Carolyn Daughters  28:32
I think that they’re getting free labor. I think they won.

Sarah Harrison  28:35
They won, but I had a lot of fun, and then I got to feed a baby sheep. So I’m particularly excited for this book of all our mystery fiction books.

Carolyn Daughters  28:45
And Ngaio Marsh was from New Zealand.

Sarah Harrison  28:48
When you said, “died in a bale of wool,” I just, I don’t know. I just was picturing Sheep World. And our last book, The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin. That sounds amazing. It sounds like it should be a movie. Is it a movie?

Carolyn Daughters  29:04
I actually don’t know. Edmund Crispin, 1946 a poet discovers a murdered woman in a toy shop that later vanishes when that happens except an eccentric Oxford professor, Gervais Fen investigates the surreal case. It’s celebrated for its wit and inventive plot. It’s a crime fiction classic, and I will say about the moving toy shop and about many of these books won, like, every single award. Like, if I listed all the awards for these books, we would just be here for two hours and be like, I won this award and that award, and it’s in the SO and SO top 100 list, in that top 100 list, and so just suffice it to say, the books were chosen with great intention to move us forward through the history of mystery and really help all of us, Sarah and myself included, build a strong foundation in detective fiction thrillers.

Sarah Harrison  30:00
So this really exciting year. I’m looking forward to it. I’m looking forward to doing some more of the movie centric episodes. It does take some self-discipline on our part to, like, not start blabbing about the movie during the regular episode

Carolyn Daughters  30:18
Or complaining, like, that’s not what happened, and then our spouses are sitting there during the movie too, just like, Okay, guys, we’re watching …

Sarah Harrison  30:26
Our wonderful spouses who watch films of these mystery fiction books with us while we do the podcast. And watch the kids to the podcast. We couldn’t do it without them. They really do. Yes, they have won stickers. I don’t think Michaels ever want to stick. Michael’s want a sticker, like, give that man a sticker. I don’t know. I mean, has he earned a stick? Has he earned it? Well, he’s a sponsor. I’m a sponsor. I don’t have this. Oh, that’s right. You don’t have this. You don’t have the special edition.

Carolyn Daughters  30:59
That flat pack you’ve been talking about. I mean, honestly, we’re gonna finish recording, and like, 60 seconds later, I’m sponsoring us formally on the website. I mean, I need to get the flat pack.

Sarah Harrison  31:13
You need your flat swag. We all need some flat so I have a lot of fun. I um, I bought like, a wax and a wax seal for it, and I draw with like, silver markers on it and stuff. I enjoy sending those out, so let me do it. Folks, go ahead and sponsor the show. What exciting plans do we have for 2025 I know each year we build on the prior year. What do you have in mind, Carolyn, for 2025?

Carolyn Daughters  31:45
I want to continue interviewing just incredible contemporary authors, which for us sort of a bridge. We’re in the periods of 1930-1939 and 1940-1949, but we’re interviewing people who are publishing now, and I think that’s really fun, because it keeps us in both worlds, going back and forth a little bit. And then we want to keep bringing on our episodes about these history of mystery books, people who are just really passionate about or expert in the books, the authors, the genres it could be. It could be somebody who, for example, has studied Craig Rice or written about Craig Rice. It could be somebody who loves Sue Grafton and has written about her father, C. W. Grafton. It could be somebody who’s an Alfred Hitchcock expert. And so we approach Rear Window from that other direction, from the film. So it could be somebody who’s maybe an expert in wartime literature, or European war time literature in in particular. So we will continue to bring these amazing people into our conversations, and I think it really adds a whole new dynamic. And like we’re you and I are constant and forever learners like we, we love reading, discussing, learning, reflecting, and so this podcast gives us the opportunity to do that when we bring these experts on it really ups my game. I have to work harder and better, and I feel like we produce even better podcast episodes for it.

Sarah Harrison  33:35
It’s a lot of fun. I think you’ve described us in the past, Carolyn, as close readers, and I think that’s true. But it’s also, like, not comprehensive, right? So maybe I’ll read a book, and I’ll read every sentence, and I’ll think about it, but that doesn’t mean I read the full canon of some of these authors, or that I know the historical context, like so many of our guests do, and so it’s really fun, especially when I’m reading mystery fiction books, sometimes it’s very clear that I’m lacking context to make to myself, like there’s something I’m missing in this I love this book, but there’s clearly things that are supposed to be landing that aren’t. Talking to some of our guests sometimes and getting to ask them those things I truly love.

Carolyn Daughters  34:27
Last year, we brought on Julie Rivett to talk about Dashiell Hammett and The Thin Man. She is his granddaughter and has edited several books, including her mother’s, I think autobiography and I think The Book of the Continental Op, and she’s one of the foremost, if not the foremost, expert on her grandfather, Dashiell Hammett. So bringing her into the conversation, we’re obviously going to be learning things we would not have known. Any other way, and that, that was true also when we were reading The Mask of Dimitrios, which is also A Coffin for Dimitrios, Neil Nyren joined us to talk about that book, and he had written extensively about the book, and had read it many times. Well, my history of my knowledge of the history of the Balkans is, I mean, it wasn’t just limited. It was like on a scale of one to 100 it was like a three. So bringing him into the conversation and getting a more well-rounded understanding of this book and its place in the mystery can and I think was really helpful.

Sarah Harrison  35:39
Some of these authors, as fabulous as they are, have fallen into obscurity. Both of us loved the Ethel Lina White book The Wheel Spins. There’s really just one expert in the whole world on Ethel Lina White, and finding him and having Alex Csurko on the podcast, those are some of the delights of being able to have these guests.

Carolyn Daughters  36:08
He is writing his thesis on it. He has been interviewed by BBC Online.

Sarah Harrison  36:14
And he edited a book of her story that will be published at some point. It’s very exciting.

Carolyn Daughters  36:21
Bringing these people on who have insights that are far and beyond what we would have just on our own, I think is so fun.

Sarah Harrison  36:30
And I’m always looking. Carolyn and I were chatting before this, and we want to have a subscription drive. I don’t know how to do it, but, folks, if you haven’t subscribed, if you don’t download the episodes of the mystery fiction books regularly, how do we ask for that?

Carolyn Daughters  36:51
We ask by asking. So a lot of people don’t know how podcasts work. I can’t wait to learn myself.

Sarah Harrison  37:00
I’ve learned so much because I do a lot on the production side, right? And I’m like, oh, Carolyn, say if I never downloaded an episode.

Carolyn Daughters  37:09
I didn’t automatically download them before. And Sarah said, you need to do this. I said, Okay, I don’t know. I don’t that’s even when I’m listening to podcasts, I’m not always downloading them. I’m like, Oh, just play this episode well, so it helps expand our listenership and our depth and breadth of who we reach by downloading each of the episodes on your platform of choice, by reviewing the podcast, just All the stuff and subscribing to Spotify or Apple or whatever. We’re everywhere.

Sarah Harrison  37:49
Of course you can be a supporter of the show, but there’s so many ways to support the show that costs nothing. And I’ve been learning a lot about how they actually measure how long someone listens to a stream. Or the download counts for more stream. Or because tracking across all these different platforms is really tricky, will regularly be asked by guests like so, what’s your listenership?

Carolyn Daughters  38:20
Somewhere between 1 and 2 million.

Sarah Harrison  38:25
Actually, it’s a little bit tricky to sometimes add up across platforms. And some platforms we get no numbers at all. So right, so they don’t provide us with data. We have listeners, there’s Spotify, and there’s apple, and they’ll give you the data. But other ones.

Carolyn Daughters  38:41
It’s really amorphous. It’s like you have listeners. You push out.

Sarah Harrison  38:45
They don’t give data feedback to you. That’s one of our goals for 2025. Is to encourage you guys, if you, if you are lurking, do something like subscribe, rate, share, comment. It really helps spread the word about the mystery fiction books we’re discussing and our podcast and our Patreon. We have created a Patreon this year. I’m excited to do more on it. This coming year, we put out our first few special bonus content episodes. We will never like make the book episodes, pay episodes, but you have asked for bonus content. You’ve asked for movie discussions, film discussions. So we’ve put some of those out, and I think we’re going to keep doing that. And then you’ve asked for swag. And so we are experimenting with, what are the Tea Tonic and Toxin products that would entice you? What would you like to see to show your podcast love? I’ll probably be sending out a survey. Please let us know. We love hearing from you.

Carolyn Daughters  40:05
We do, and we reply to all the emails we receive. Except for the weird spam. We don’t reply to that.

Sarah Harrison  40:13
I assume, if you’re sending out spam, you’re not actually listening right now.

Carolyn Daughters  40:21
If you sound like a human being in your message, we will reply to you.

Sarah Harrison  40:30
Actually, sometimes we reach out to you, and maybe you think we’re robots, but we are not.

Carolyn Daughters  40:36
Every once in a while, I get an email that asks, “Are you for real? You emailed me and I’m replying to you.” We’re real. It’s Carolyn and Sarah.

Sarah Harrison  40:47
We’re out there looking for ways I again, like to find Alex Csurko. He was a funny one because he has zero social media presence, like, literally zero. I think he said he sometimes likes to take a typewriter out and type on the typewriter, which is great, which I love, but he was really hard to find. I had to track him down. I tried tracking him through his professor on X, but that didn’t work. So then I tried track I ended up tracking him through the company that was going to publish the Ethel Lina White Collection, and they gave me his email address. It’s tricky sometimes finding the people we want to discuss these mystery fiction books.

Carolyn Daughters  41:29
Well, I have to say, I’m blown away by the people who graced us with time and their intellect and their energy in 2024 and just people who are like, hey, sure, we’ll do a second episode. Oh, you want to do a bonus episode? Let’s do a third thing. Like, and people, as you were mentioning, I think, in an earlier episode, that we stop the recording and they’re just still chatting with us, and it’s like, I can’t believe this amazing person is still just hanging out.

Sarah Harrison  42:01
That’s what the book club is about, right? Finding people, finding ways to connect with other people who just want to talk about books. So talk about ideas. We love to hear your comments. We read them all. We don’t have anyone handling our social media for us, it is either Carolyn or Sarah. You don’t know always which one, because Carolyn gave me the keys to the social media.

Carolyn Daughters  42:27
It could be Sarah or Carolyn. Could be either one of them.

Sarah Harrison  42:31
It’s a surprise. You can guess.

Carolyn Daughters  42:33
I will say teatonicandtoxin.com is chock full of content, so visit the site for information about all of the books that we’re reading in 2025. And, as we get closer to doings episodes about each book, we include all the questions that we’re going to be talking about and the ideas we’re going to be discussing.

Sarah Harrison  42:57
Some of that information ends up in the show notes, but not all of it, because our show notes have a word count limit whereas our website doesn’t. So that’s the other new thing we launched this year – we launched our Amazon storefront.

Carolyn Daughters  43:11
People can buy their mystery fiction books from the SHOP on our website. You don’t pay any extra for it.

Sarah Harrison  43:16
We get, like, five cents. So by all means, if you’re gonna buy a book off of Amazon, that list will be up shortly. Buy it through a storefront. We appreciate the support. It means a lot to us, and helps, again, helps us spread the word and dedicate more time to bringing you this content.

Carolyn Daughters  43:38
This history of mystery project is a labor of love, and we’re enjoying it immensely. We really appreciate you, our listeners.

Sarah Harrison  43:48
We love it, and we love to hear from you. We hope you enjoyed this episode about our 2025 mystery fiction books. 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 and Toxin. That way, likeminded folks can also find us or on all platforms.

Carolyn Daughters  44:14
Please also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. If you like comment, follow, share, rate, or review us on any of these platforms, we may just give you an on-air shoutout and send you the world’s greatest sticker. Finally, 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  44:38
We want to thank you for joining us on our journey through the history of mystery. We absolutely adore you. Until next time, stay mysterious.

Get Excited: Check out the 2025 book list.