JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Nancy Drew was the first detective I’d ever met, not counting Charlie’s Angels who were on TV at the time. In the fifth grade I read all the Nancy Drew mysteries by Carolyn Keene—there were 51 at the time—and the occasional Hardy Boys mystery. I borrowed half of them from classmates and the STC library; the rest my mother bought me at Alemar’s on Quezon Avenue, Rustan’s supermarket in Cubao, and Makati Supermart. They cost about P11 each.

When I took my ancient hardcover Nancy Drews out of the box last year I was pleased to find them in pristine condition, pages still white—they must’ve used acid-free paper. My Star Trek books (the adaptations by James Blish) from that period, as well as the John Carter of Mars series by Edgar Rice Burroughs from the following year are all brown now.

Book series are very comforting: you get more and more familiar with the habits and quirks of the main character until she or he feels like an old friend. You’re developing a personal relationship with a fictional creation. Detective series are particularly compelling because you want to make sure your old friend survives his/her dangerous investigations.

If you like detective fiction and food, you need to get to know Inspector Montalbano, star of the series by Andrea Camilleri. His stomping ground is Sicily, where he deals with ruthless mobsters and bureacrats, constantly finds excuses not to marry his longtime girlfriend, and rhapsodizes about food. “The smell of fresh fish mingled with that of tangerines, boiled lamb entrails sprinkled with caciocavallo cheese, a dish called meusa, and fritters, all of them fusing into a unique, almost magical whole.”

(If you’re planning a trip to Italy, read the detective novels of Michael Dibdin and Donna Leon to get familiar with the city layouts.)

I read John Burdett’s Bangkok Haunts on the plane to Bangkok, and it made that city even more exciting for me—even if it describes grisly, horrific crimes. On the very first page of Bangkok 8, an American soldier is killed by a snake bite. On his eyeball. When they get to the crime scene the snake is still there. Dangling from his eyeball. And that’s just the opening, wait till the third book with the elephants and the very angry ghost. Detective Jitpleecheep, the half-Thai, half-American son of a former prostitute who now owns a bar, is the one honest cop on the force. A former monk, his Buddhist beliefs give a fresh and unexpected perspective on his investigations. “Sometimes our sins are a compulsion of karma: the Buddha rubs our face in it until we are so sick of our error we would rather die than go that way again.”

Here’s a ready-made true-to-life plot for a detective novel: In Peru, Gang ‘killed victims to extract their fat’.

The Smiley books by John le Carré are the top of the genre, but Alan Furst’s espionage thrillers set in World War II have their own charm. The period detail is stunning: Furst lingers over the architecture, curtains, tableware, and sometimes I hear myself yelling, “Where’s the body?” The atmosphere thick with romance and intrigue is reminiscent of Casablanca or Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious—Why have these novels not been filmed?

The first two books are the best in the series. Night Soldiers has an indelible beginning: the would-be spy watches as his brother is kicked to death by Nazis. They will pay. The middle books are still good, especially the two novels featuring the French movie producer trying to survive in Occupied Paris. From Blood of Victory onwards they start feeling like remakes. The Foreign Correspondent reads like an inferior Dark Star, whose main protagonist is also a journalist. But even when he’s repeating himself Furst is riveting. I just got the tenth novel, The Spies of Warsaw, at National Bookstore.

Friends recommend Colin Cotterill’s Dr. Siri Paiboun series featuring the septuagenarian chief coroner of the Pathet Lao. It opens with The Coroner’s Lunch. After Spies of Warsaw I’m starting on Boris Akunin’s Erast Fandorin series set in 19th century Moscow. Maybe if I read enough novels set in Russia I will get to Russia.