Teaser Tuesdays: The Nursing Home Murder

This week, I'm taking my teaser lines from The Nursing Home Murder, one of Ngaio Marsh's Inspector Alleyn mysteries. However, the Inspector isn't present in this scene. Instead, we have his faithful sidekick, Detective Sergeant Fox, meeting with the victim's wife:

"I asked you to come and see me," she began very quietly, "because I believe my husband to have been murdered."
Fox did not speak for a moment. He sat stockily, very still, looking gravely before him.
"I'm sorry to hear that, Lady O'Callaghan," he said at last. "It sounds rather serious."
Apparently she had met her match in understatement. (p.48)

Ah, but obviously no one can match her in the use of the passive voice!

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by mizB at Should Be Reading. If you'd like to read more teasers, or take part yourself, just head on over to her blog.

And please feel free to leave me a link to your Teaser Tuesday post in your comment here.

Teaser Tuesdays: Read Something Wilde!

Oscar Wilde was born October 16th, 1854.

Oscar Wilde
1854-1900
(Image from Wikipedia)

So this week, I'm taking my teaser lines from his classic novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray.

James Vane stood on the pavement in horror. He was trembling from head to foot. After a little while a black shadow that had been creeping along the dripping wall, moved out into the light and came close to him with stealthy footsteps. He felt a hand laid on his arm and looked round with a start. (p.212)

I hadn't really intended to re-read this one, but now that I'm looking through it, I'm not sure I can resist it. And it's perfect for this time of year.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by mizB at Should Be Reading. If you'd like to read more teasers, or take part yourself, just head on over to her blog.

And please feel free to leave me a link to your Teaser Tuesday post in your comment here.

Teaser Tuesdays: The Haunted Looking Glass

This week, I'm taking my teaser lines from one of my all-time favorites: The Haunted Looking Glass, from 1959.  It's a book of horror stories written by various authors, gathered and illustrated by Edward Gorey.  I read it for the first time when I was about eleven or twelve, and it's still a book I go back to over and over again for wonderful, scary reads.  This snippet comes from the first story in the book -- Algernon Blackwood's classic tale, "The Empty House":

There was manifestly nothing in the external appearance of this particular house to bear out the tales of the horror that was said to reign within. It was neither lonely nor unkempt. It stood, crowded into a corner of the square, and looked exactly like the houses on either side of it....
And yet this house in the square, that seemed precisely similar to its fifty ugly neighbors, was as a matter of fact entirely different -- horribly different. (p.6)

I do love me some haunted house stories around this time of year!

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by mizB at Should Be Reading. If you'd like to read more teasers, or take part yourself, just head on over to her blog.

And please feel free to leave me a link to your Teaser Tuesday post in your comment here.

Teaser Tuesdays: Mrs. Malory and No Cure For Death

This week my teaser lines come from one of Hazel Holt's Mrs. Malory mysteries, No Cure For Death. I really love this series of cozies, and I'm trying to finish it up this year.  Don't know what I'll do with no more Mrs. Malories to read -- start over from the beginning, I guess!

Anyway, this snippet is from page 109 of the American paperback edition:

Was John Morrison a good man? I wondered as I made myself a cup of tea when I got home. He was brilliant -- everyone agreed about that -- but good?... I wished I'd known him, properly as a person, not just casually as a doctor, so that I could know what he was really like and understand why someone hated him enough to kill him.

I know that sounds like a bit of a spoiler, but (as in all the Mrs. Malory tales) we know pretty much from the beginning who the victim is going to be. And all the violence happens off-stage in these books, which is one of the things I love about them.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by mizB at Should Be Reading. If you'd like to read more teasers, or take part yourself, just head on over to her blog.

And please feel free to leave me a link to your Teaser Tuesday post in your comment here.