Eight books in which characters solve crimes while on holiday

Sarah Stewart Taylor is the author of the Sweeney St. George series and the Maggie D'arcy series. She grew up on Long Island, and was educated at Middlebury College in Vermont and Trinity College, Dublin, where she studied Irish Literature. She has worked as a journalist and writing teacher and now lives with her family on a farm in Vermont where they raise sheep and grow blueberries.

Taylor's latest Maggie D'arcy mystery is The Drowning Sea.

[The Page 69 Test: The Mountains Wild; The Page 69 Test: A Distant Grave; Q&A with Sarah Stewart Taylor; The Page 69 Test: The Drowning Sea]

At CrimeReads Taylor tagged eight "classic and contemporary crime novels and stories that feature professional detectives trying their best to relax, but who keep getting pulled back into the detection game." One title on the list:

A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny

Penny’s famously decent Montreal police detective, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, is looking forward to his regular week of recharging and relaxing with his wife Reine-Marie at Manoir Bellechasse in Quebec’s eastern townships.

The tensions between members of the Finney family, also vacationing at Manoir Bellechasse, match the rising heat that culminates in a summer thunderstorm. At the end of it, a murder victim is discovered on the grounds and Gamache has to put his romantic break on hold to investigate. I love the atmosphere of this Gamache mystery, the fourth in Penny’s wildly popular series, and the way she deftly characterizes the overburdened, exhausted detective:

“But when he started looking at people in the street and noticing the skull beneath the skin it was time for a break.”

Read about the other entries on the list at CrimeReads.

--Marshal Zeringue