Customer Reviews

Mystery!: A Celebration

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Mystery : A Celebration is the ideal book to have by your armchair while you watch mysteries like Inspector Morse, Prime Suspect, the P.D. James mysteries, and many others that appear on the PBS MYSTERY series. Don't watch any of these mysteries without MYSTERY : A Celebration. Mystery readers will also enjoy this book. It provides the reader with a listing of titles by mystery authors like Colin Dexter, P.D. James, and others.It provides the reader with biographical information about the mystery authors and actors who are well known for portraying the popular detectives as well.

I enjoyed this book on many levels, which I'll discuss below, but the best part about it, is I've now added about 20 books to my wish list (I'm sure amazon appreciates it!). This book is fabulous as a jumping off point. It describes books well enough to pique your interest--or turn you away,if it's not your style. Plots are discussed only in the minimum; there's never any spoilers. It also discusses actors, writers, and production work of the wonderful series Mystery! The pictures from the shows are beautiful. If you have any interest in the show Mystery, or in adding new authors to your stack to read, take a look at this book. You won't be disappointed.

Once in a while something does come along to rival sliced bread. This book is it. I have had many questions about different mystery series. The latest is when the BBC produced The Dorothy L. Sayers series with Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, why did they stop short and not produce "Busman's Honeymoon"? And the answer is:

"Sadly, Mystery! Viewers never got to see the payoff to this classic romance. Sayers wrote about the marriage in `Busman's Honeymoon', which couldn't be filmed for Mystery! Because Sayers had sold the film rights to Hollywood in the 1930's; it was turned into the 1940 film `Haunted Honeymoon', but efforts to secure the rights for the new BBC-TV version weren't successful."

This book is packed with such information and many great stills form many Mystery! programs. Now I need to see the ones I missed.

This is a great guide for entertainment as well as researching and completing your Public Television mystery collection. The current edition covers the Mystery! by Seasons dating 1980-1997. That's 17 seasons. That's a lot of shows!

I discovered series I knew nothing of until I looked at this book by Ron Miller. I've since had the pleasure to track down and view complete episodes of Ngaio Marsh's Inspector Alleyn, Dorothy L. Sayer's Lord Peter Wimsey (both Ian Carmichael and Edward Petheridge versions), Margery Allingham's Campion series and the like. Big Tip: buy yourself a region free player and purchase your episodes or better yet complete box sets for huge savings from Amazon UK.

This fabulous guide, plus Terrence O'Flaherty's Masterpiece Theatre: A Celebration of 25 Years of Outstanding Television is sorely due for an update. I urge the Publishers to consider this; public television is still the best source of entertainment and quality programming available to the public!