Game of Thrones - SPOILER ALERT

SPOILER ALERT

This post will speculate about the last two episodes of Game of Thrones, so stop reading if you don't want to know what will possibly happen.

There are only two episodes left of Game of Thrones.  This season has seen many major things happen, but nothing will compare to the last two episodes when two key deaths will most likely occur.

First up is the episode called "The Rains of Castamere"  Normally this title refers to the song written about Tywin Lannister's victory over the House Reyne of Castamere.  In this case, however, it is likely referring to the Red Wedding, where Robb meets his untimely end.  It has been hinted, and sometimes even stated openly by Catelyn, that Robb's decision to marry Talisa instead of Rosalyn Frey will have disastrous consequences.  Robb tried to mitigate that decision by offering his uncle, Edmure, as the substitute groom, but as the book readers know, the Freys do not take kindly to take decision and Robb will pay dearly.

Now the question is whether Talisa will survive.  She doesn't exist as a character in the book, where Robb is married to Jeyne Westerling.  Jeyne stayed behind at Riverrun while Robb went to negotiate with the Freys, so she survived the Red Wedding.  However, in the show Talisa reveals herself to be pregnant in the episode "Second Sons."  George R. R. Martin himself penned this episode, and it's a guessing game as to whether he threw this tidbit in just to confuse fans, or if this will actually matter. 

The last episode is called "Mhysa."  Mhysa means "mother", and it is what the Yunkai people called Dany when she enters the city.  However, this episode will also most likely feature Joffrey's death.  In the book, he was poisoned during the feast after his wedding to Margaery Tyrell.  No one will particularly mourn Joffrey, who has become one of the most hated characters on television (poor Jack Gleeson, the actor who plays Joffrey, who seems to be a very nice guy in real life).  The worst consequence of Joffrey's death is the fall of Tyrion, who would be blamed for the death, but it was actually arranged by Littlefinger and Olenna Tyrell.   If Joffrey doesn't die in this episode, then he will most likely die in the beginning of season 4. 

Hogwarts Out of Legos

Harry Potter superfan Alice Finch built a 170-square-foot replica of Hogwarts Castle out of 400,000 pieces of Legos.  As she stated in the interview with The Brothers Brick, the central staircase alone needed 10,000 bricks.  Alice spent twelve months over an 18-month period building, and the end result is mind-boggling.  It is designed to be architecturally correct and completely playable, and it breaks into sections that pack into 40 large flat boxes or shelves.

At the 2012 BrickCon, Alice's Hogwarts took home both the People's Choice and the Best in Show awards, which is apparently a rare combination.

Check out the entire Flickr album with 79 pictures.  The level of details is just amazing.  My favorites are Dumbledore's office, complete with a cabinet of memories and a pensieve, and the Great Hall feast welcoming Beauxbaton students just like in Goblet of Fire.

Sports Illustrated and Game of Thrones

Sports Illustrated uses Game of Thrones as the theme of its latest Power Issue, which features an illustration of Roger Goodell sitting on the Iron Throne as the cover.  SI named Roger Goodell the most powerful person in sports this year.  SI also did a sports map based on the Game of Thrones landscape, including Selig's Landing (King's Landing), Stern's End (Storm's End), Vale of Anschutz (Vale of Arryn), and the NHL as wildlings to the North in the Land of Always Hockey (the Land of Always Winter).  The last part will be controversial to Mr. Y. 

SI also did a podcast with Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin.  My favorite part of the excerpt was Martin comparing the two teams I hate, the Dallas Cowboys and the New England Patriots, to the evil Lannisters, and the revelation that Martin called Patriots coach Bill Belichick "Evil Little Bill" on his blog, as well as Martin speculating that Belichick might be worse than a Lannister - perhaps a Grejoy. 

Little House on the Prairie

I was a big fan of Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Slate today published the homestead claim filed by Almanzo Wilder, Laura's husband.  A very interesting piece of history. 

Richard III - Skeleton Possibly Found

The archaeologists who had been excavating a parking lot in Leicester, England thought to be the site of Richard III's grave, found a skeleton that may be the remains of Richard III.  The testing will take awhile, and it is unclear whether they can get DNA from the skeleton, but it is still very exciting.

The article mentioned that the archaeologists found two skeletons "a female skeleton that was broken apart at the joints was discovered in what is believed to be the Presbytery of the lost Church; the other skeleton, which appears to be an adult male, was found in the church choir and shows signs of trauma to the skull and back before death, which would be consistent with a battle injury, the researchers said."  The male skeleton also showed signs of scoliosis, which would explain why contemporary accounts of Richard described him as having one shoulder higher than the other, and which later led to the  mistaken description of him as being a hunchbank. 

There is also an updated picture gallery, which showed some of the findings, like a medieval penny and the stone frieze. 

Going for It on Fourth Down

I've mentioned before the book Scorecasting, which challenges conventional wisdom and assumptions about sports by applying economic analysis to sports situations. 

One of the stories mentioned in the book is about Kevin Kelley, the football coach at Pulaski Academy in Little Rock, Arkansas.  Kelley has also been featured in Sports Illustrated - here's one article about him.  Kelley's approach is unusual because he doesn't follow a lot of the typical football wisdom.  His team doesn't punt - always going for it on fourth down.  His team almost always attempts an onside kick after scoring, and his playbook has a lot of tricks and gimmicks.  Kelley has done a lot of research on football matters, and the numbers and analyses convince him that a lot of conventional football wisdom is just wrong.  For example, as the SI article mentioned, "according to Kelley's statistics, when a team punts from near its end zone, the opponent will take possession inside the 40-yard line and will then score a touchdown 77 percent of the time. If it recovers on downs inside the 10, it will score a touchdown 92 percent of the time.  'So [forsaking] a punt, you give your offense a chance to stay on the field," he said. "And if you miss, the odds of the other team scoring only increase 15 percent. It's like someone said, '[Punting] is what you do on fourth down,' and everyone did it without asking why.'"

It's hard to argue with the results - over the past ten years Pulaski Academy has the record of 105-20 over the past 10 seasons, including an undefeated season in 2011, and it has also won won three state championships. 

Kelley's name recently surfaced again as the inspiration behind Louisiana-Monroe's stunning 34-31 overtime defeat of Arkansas this past Saturday.  Louisiana-Monroe has not had a winning season since 1993, and has never been to a bowl game, while Arkansas is a perennial national powerhouse who was ranked #8 in the Associated Press bowl heading into the game.  Kelley had befriended Louisiana-Monroe's offensive coordinator and head coach, and shared his research and philosophy with them.  Although the Warhawks didn't fully buy into the system, when they were behind 28-7 in the second half, they started playing Kelley's way.  The result is that they went 6-for-7 on fourth downs and converted a fourth down on each of the five touchdown drives, including the last one that gave them the win. 

Richard III

Archaeologists recently uncovered a medieval church, Greyfriars, under a parking lot in Leicester, England (pictures here), which is said to be the final resting place of Richard III.  Richard III is believed to be buried in Greyfriars in 1485, after he died at the Battle of Bosworth Field during the War of the Roses.  He is the last King of England to died in battle. 

Richard III is a fascinating figure in history, made especially famous by the play of the same name written by William Shakespeare over 100 years after Richard's death.  Richard III is most noted as being the alleged killer of the two young princes under his care, sons of Richard's brother, King Edward IV.  The princes Edward and Richard were said to have been imprisoned and killed in the Tower of London on Richard III's orders, and led to the legend of the Princes in the Tower.  Richard III was the last king of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenet Dynasty, which ruled England from 1154 until 1485 - a reign of 14 kings lasting 331 years.

In Shakespeare' play, Richard III is most decidedly an amoral and Machiavellian villain.  However, there are plenty of novelists and historians who argued that the real Richard is not the evil villain he became known to be.  During his short two-year reign, according to Wikipedia, he "instituted what later became known as the Court of Requests, a court which poor people who could not afford legal representation could apply to for their grievances to be heard, introduced bail in to protect suspected felons from imprisonment before trial and protect their property from seizure during that time, founded the College of Arms, banned restrictions on the printing and sale of books, and ordered the translation of the written Laws and Statutes from the traditional French into English."

One of my favorite books ever is Josephine Tey's "The Daughter of Time," which presents an alternate view of Richard III and the Princes in the Tower.  The title of the book, "The Daughter of Time," is from a quote by Sir Francis Bacon: "Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority," which indicated Tey's view that the evil Richard was a constructed myth, not reality. 

In that book, Alan Grant, a Scotland Yard inspector and a regular character in Tey's books, was in the hospital with a broken leg.  He was really bored and restless, and decided to investigate the case of Richard III after being intrigued by a portrait of Richard III that showed him as being gentle and wise, instead of monstrous and cruel.  With the help of an American researcher who was working at the British Museum, Grant investigated the case like a modern detective without leaving his bed, and concluded that the story of Richard III being a callous murderer and a monster was constructed by the Tudor dynasty that came after him, partly to assert the Tudor claim to the throne. 

The book pointed out the fact that Richard III was never accused or convicted of any murder against the Princes during his time, and that the most famous source of the evil Richard III story came from Sir Thomas More, who was an advisor to Tudor King Henry VIII, and was only eight years old when Richard III died.  This fact led credence to the theory that the evil Richard was simply a creation of the Tudor kings who wanted to establish the legitimacy of their claim to the throne, which they wrested from Richard III during the War of the Roses.  Shakespeare used More's Richard III book heavily in writing his play, so it made sense that his Richard III is also a villain. 

I did not research Tey's sources or evidence, but I did come away convinced that Richard III is not as evil as More and Shakespeare had made him out to be.  It is a very well-written book and has an interesting narrative structure - definitely worth reading for mystery fans. 

Shadow of Night

"Shadow of Night" is the second book in the All Souls trilogy written by Deborah Harkness.  I've written about the first book, "A Discovery of Witches." 

SPOILER ALERT

The second book picks up right where the first book left off - Diana and Matthew landing in Elizabethan England.  A lot of the book is about Diana getting adjusted to living in that time period, as well as adjusting to being Matthew's wife.  In this era, Matthew is a spy for Queen Elizabeth I and a member of the Congregation.  He is also known as Matthew Roydon, the leader of the "School of Night," a group of men who are known for heretical thoughts.  The other members are playwright Christopher "Kit" Marlowe, mathematician and astronomer Thomas Harriot, explorer Sir Walter Raleigh (famous for being the founder of the Lost Colony at Roanoke), aristocrat Henry Percy (the 9th Earl of Northumberland), and poet George Chapman (who wrote the poem "Shadow of Night"). 

In Harkness's world, Marlowe and Harriot are daemons, while the others are humans.  Marlowe is also in love with Matthew, and is immediately adversarial towards Diana.  Diana meets Matthew's vampire father, Philippe, who ends up having a great influence on her, and runs into her own father, Stephen Proctor.  Diana and Matthew also interacts with other historical figures such as Queen Elizabeth I, Emperor Rudolf II, astronomer John Dee, alchemist Edward Kelley, and poet and author Mary Sidney (Countess of Pembroke), who becomes a friend of Diana's.  They travel from England to France to Prague, and Diana eventually finds the training that she needs from witches in London.  Diana finds out that like her father, she is a weaver, a special kind of witch who can create spells instead of just reciting existing ones.  They also track down Ashmole 782 while it is intact, and discover something monstrous about the book, but in the end they cannot take the book back to the present. 

There are brief glimpses of the present time.  A lot of the other members of the Conventicle, such as Matthew's vampire mother Ysabeau and Diana's witchy aunts Sarah and Emily, have gathered at Sept-Tours, the de Clermont family's castle, in order to prepare for battle with the Congregation.  There are hints at terrible things happening, but no detail.  I hope Harkness will go into further detail in the next book about what happens in the present while Diana and Matthew are back in time.

This book is more stuffed than the last one.  Harkness clearly knows her Elizabethan era and delights in including a lot of details.  Sometimes it gets to be a little too much, but overall the book is still enjoyable.  Diana's struggle in adjusting to the Elizabethan era and in becoming a wife to a very possessive vampire is actually relatable, and Harkness has a very clear sense of who Matthew and Diana are as characters.  Their love story is still intact despite all the challenges, even though there is more danger ahead.  I look forward to the next installment. 

A Discovery of Witches

I recently discovered the book "A Discovery of Witches" by Deborah Harkness, the first book in the All Souls trilogy.  I saw it in the bookstore while waiting at the Austin airport, and it was intriguing enough that I bought a copy when I was back home.  I'm normally not into books that involve supernatural creatures like vampires or witches (never got into Anne Rice or the Twilight series), but the historical bent of the novel intrigued me, as well as the credentials of the author.  Harkness is a professor of history at University of Southern California, who specializes in history of science and medicine during the Elizabethan era.  She also writes a wine blog. 

SPOILER ALERT

The main character in "Witches" is Diana Bishop, a witch and a Yale professor whose main scholarly interest is researching alchemical manuscripts.  In this world, there are three types of supernatural creatures: vampires, witches, and daemons.  After her parents died when she was seven years old, Diana turned her back on her magical powers.  While doing research at Bodleian Library at Oxford, she recalls a mysterious alchemical manuscript called Ashmole 782, but the magical manuscript was missing three pages.  Although she only spends a few minutes with the text, other supernatural creatures who also want the manuscript start finding her, and most of them are not the friendly type.  A 1,500-year-old vampire and scientist, Matthew Clairmont, appoints himself her protector, and the two of them fall in love.  This is a problem because there is an ancient covenant that forbids the union of different creatures.  The Congregation (the ruling group consisting of 3 witches, 3 vampires, and 3 daemons) are after Diana and Matthew for both this breach of the covenant and Ashmole 782.  In the meantime, Diana's powers start reasserting themselves, but she could not control them.  In the end, Matthew and Diana decide to use her timewalking ability to travel back to Elizabethan England to escape the Congregation and the other creatures searching for Diana, to get Diana the tutoring she needs for her powers, and to find Ashmole 782 while it is still intact.

I enjoyed the book immensely.  Harkness is a very intelligent writer who does not dumb down the materials for her readers.  The love story between Diana and Matthew is also compelling, and the other characters (such as Matthew's vampire mother Ysabeau and Diana's aunts Sarah and Emily) are believable.  Harkness is also very adept at using conventional lores about vampires, witches, and daemons, and using them for her story.  For example, vampires have their own family structure made up of parents who make their children vampires, and brothers and sisters are made by the same parents.  Vampires are also usually involved in professions that take full advantage of their immortality - scientists and financiers.  Daemons are creative types who gravitate toward the arts or fashion design, and can be a bit unstable.  Witches live in haunted houses who can expand if expecting guests, and in typical fashion can brew potions and recite spells.

Harkness stuffs a lot of details into this book, and the pace can be leisurely at times (especially in the beginning), but overall it's a fun read. 

Maze Made From 250,000 Books

Brazilian artists Marcos Saboya and Gualter Pupo used 250,000 books to create a maze called "aMAZEme" at the Royal Festival Hall in London as part of the Southbank Centre's Festival of the World.  It will be on display until August 25, 2012. 

It's a pretty cool maze, and I wonder how long it took them to install the maze.  The only other information I found was that the maze was inspired by Argentinian writer and educator J.L. Borges, and was created in the shape of Borges fingerprint.  The maze covers an area of 500 square metres, or approximately 5382 square feet, and sections stand up as high as 2.5 meters, or approximately 8 feet.  Quotes from book sare projected onto the maze walls, and there is also accompanying audio. 

War and Peace and the Nook

The Nook version of Tolstoy's War and Peace included an embarrasing error.  Apparently a lazy editor did a search and replace of the word "kindle" with "nook," to get rid of any references to Nook's competitor the Kindle, but didn't realize the translation used the word "kindled" several times.  So there was a bunch of references to "Nookd" in the text.

Sherlock is Back!

Mr. Y and I love the PBS series Sherlock, which originally airs in the UK on BBC.  I've written about its star, Benedict Cumberbatch, before.  Every time Mr. Y and I see him on screen, one of us always comments, "His eyes are so blue!"  I also like Martin Freeman from the original British The Office, and he's Bilbo Baggins in the new adaptation of The Hobbit.

The first episode of Sherlock is titled "A Scandal in Belgravia," a play on the famous Sherlock Holmes short story, "A Scandal in Bohemia."  Although the story of the show is completely original, there are several nods to the original short story.  Irene Adler makes her only appearance in "A Scandal in Bohemia," and she shows up on the show as a dominatrix who gets entangled with Sherlock.  Lara Pulver does a great job playing Adler - sexy and in control while also showing hints of vulnerability (side note: Lara was married to Joshua Dallas, who plays the Prince Charming on Once Upon a Time, and who is now dating his costar and love interest from that show, Ginnifer Goodwin). 

Part of the story involves a member of the royal family being blackmailed by Adler with compromising pictures, this time a female member of the British Royal Family (Belgravia is the district that houses Buckingham Palace), instead of the King of Bohemia.  As usual, the show does a great job of modernizing the stories while keeping the integral part of Sherlock Holmes intact.  It is great to see more of Mycroft as well - Mark Gatiss plays him as a great foil to Sherlock.

I find it fascinating that although Irene Adler appears only once in the stories, she has become such an integral part of the Sherlock Holmes canon.  Perhaps the fascination is because she is the only woman who has ever outwitted Sherlock, but I also think romanticism plays a large part.  Sherlock Holmes is such an analytical, non-emotional character, so when he shows any hints of feelings, it is magnified.  The show and the latest Robert Downey, Jr.-led Sherlock Holmes movies (where Adler is played by Rachel McAdams) are more overt about casting Adler as a romantic interest for Sherlock.  However, Arthur Conan Doyle (through Dr. Watson) describes Sherlock's feelings on Irene Adler in the beginning of "A Scandal in Bohemia" as being more like admiration than love:

"To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer — excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory."

The Princess Bride

The Princess Bride is easily one of my favorite movies ever.  I love how unabashedly romantic it is, but it's also an adventure and a fantasy film.

Jason Reitman, director of Juno and Up In The Air, is staging the Princess Bride as a live reading.  He just announced the cast, and I think it's perfect.  Mindy Kaling is Princess Buttercup and Paul Rudd is Westley.  I think those two have a great chemistry, and they will their own brand of humor and quirkiness to the roles.

http://popwatch.ew.com/2011/12/14/jason-reitman-princess-bride-live-read-cast-announcement/#more-172399

I wish I can actually watch this reading.  Too bad it's one-night-only event.

The Great Gatsby

EW.com had a couple of pictures from Baz Luhrmann's upcoming adaptation of the Great Gatsby.

http://insidemovies.ew.com/2011/12/13/great-gatsby-leonardo-dicaprio-carey-mulligan/

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Gatsby, Carey Mulligan is Daisy, Joel Edgerton is Tom Buchanan, and Tobey Maguire is Nick Carraway.

I first read the Great Gatsby in high school, as part of the required reading.  I didn't like it that much back then, but when I re-read it again years later as an adult, it left a much better impression.  It's a very unsettling book, which I believe is the point, and any good adaptation of it has to capture that uneasiness and underlying tension.  I have high hopes for this cast, although with Baz Luhrmann, there's always the danger that the environment will overpower the acting.  Let's hope that it's more like Strictly Ballroom than Moulin Rouge (Mr. Y's least favorite movie ever).

Harry Potter Theme Park Coming to LA

I read about this today on EW.com, and was totally excited.  Harry Potter theme park is coming to LA!  Universal Studios Hollywood, to be exact.  Universal Studios already has the Harry Potter theme park in Orlando, and now they're doing one on the west coast.  I'm very excited about this.  Mr. Y and I are big Harry Potter fans, but we don't know if we'll ever make it to the Orlando one.  If we go to Orlando we'll be going to Disney World.  But we do go to LA quite a bit to see family, so it will be easier to go to the LA Harry Potter.

I know kdipity will be excited about this news, too.  She has been plotting to go to the Orlando one for awhile.  Now that she lives in CA as well, she can make the shorter trip to LA.

More news about it:

http://popwatch.ew.com/2011/12/06/harry-potter-theme-park-los-angeles/

Tom Clancy

I've been re-reading the Hunt for Red October and Patriot Games by Tom Clancy, which were the first two Clancy novels.  I stopped reading Clancy after Executive Orders because his books were getting longer and longer, and more and more boring.  Re-reading the Hunt for Red October and Patriot Games reminds me of how good he was in the beginning.  These first two novels are chock full of details, but they move at a great pace.  Plus the characters were more engaging and I actually end up caring about what happens to them.  I feel like his later novels were more him showing off all his research and knowledge, and moving from one action piece to another.

If you've never read Tom Clancy, it's worth reading the Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Red Storm Rising, and the Cardinal of the Kremlin.  But stop there if you don't want to get frustrated.

One for the Money

The trailer for the movie version of One for the Money is out.

http://insidemovies.ew.com/2011/09/26/one-for-the-money-trailer/

For the uninitiated, One for the Money is based on the first book in the Stephanie Plum series written by Janet Evanovich.  Stephanie Plum is a down-on-her-luck divorcee who ended up working as a bail bondsman for her sleazy cousin Vinny.  She has two love interests in her life: the cop Joe Morelli and the mysterious bondsman Ranger.  She also has a crazy family, especially her Grandma Mazur, and she became friends with hookers, especially Lulu.

The books themselves are pretty fun, but I stopped reading after the first few because they became really repetitive.  I did remember enjoying the first one, though, so I hope I will like this movie.  So far the cast doesn't really match my expectations.  Katherine Heigl seems miscast as Stephanie, and Jason O'Mara doesn't look Italian enough to be Joe Morelli.  I like Debbie Reynolds, but I always imagine Grandma Mazur to be more like Grandma Yetta from the Nanny.  I definitely won't see it in the theaters, but perhaps it'll be worth a look on DVD depending on the reviews when it comes out.

Scorecasting

Mr. Y and I just read the book Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports are Played and Games are Won.  It's an interesting mix of Freakonomics and sports, and also similar to the books written by Malcolm Gladwell, such as Outliers or Blink.  Scorecasting basically looks at various sports-related situations and applied economic analysis to them.  It's written by a couple of childhood friends, Tobias J. Moskowitz, a Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago and L. Jon Wertheim, senior writer for Sports Illustrated.  

The book is pretty interesting, and it debunks some of the common myths surrounding sports.  One of the most interesting discussions is about home field advantage.  I, like many other fans, tend to believe that we have a great effect on the players.  It turns out that although there is a quantifiable home field advantage, it's not due to the fans, the stadiums, the climates, or the schedules, but due to referee bias.  The data shows that referees are more inclined to be biased towards the home team because of crowd support or displeasure.  The bias is most likely unconscious, but it does account for most of the home field advantage in every sport they investigated, including basketball, soccer, football, and baseball.  So next time you're watching a sports game, direct your screaming to the refs, not the players.  :)

Ready Player One

I just finished this great book called Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.  It's set in a dystopian future, starting in year 2044.  In this world a genius named James Halliday had created a virtual world called OASIS, where most of the citizens of the world spent their time to escape the bleak reality.  Before Halliday died, he decided to hide three keys in OASIS that would unlock three gates.  Whoever solved the game first would win Halliday's entire fortune.  The protagonist of the book is an overweight high school senior from a trailer park, Wade Watts, who was the first to get the first key, and set off on an adventure.  Along the way he met friends and had to dodge real villains who would commit murder to get what they wanted.

Halliday loved the 1980s, so all of his clues were related to the pop culture of the 1980s, including role-playing games, video games, music, and movies.  The novel is definitely chock-full of 80s nostalgia, from War Games to Dungeons and Dragons to Rush.

I highly recommend the book to anyone, not just those who grew up in the 80s.  It's a great mix of mystery, romance, thriller, and sci-fi.  The writing is very accessible and the book will move quickly.  It has gotten great reviews from everyone, so definitely check it out.

The Railway Detective

I've been reading the Railway Detective series by Edward Marston.  I found three of the books at a used bookstore in Fredericksburg, Virginia.  They looked pretty interesting and were inexpensive, so I thought I would give them a try.  I'm a big fan of Agatha Christie and that type of British mysteries, and I'm always looking for new authors with similar styles.  I was surprised to see that Edward Marston was a contemporary author.  Usually these types of series are written by authors who lived around the same time as Agatha Christie, so they have since passed away.  Edward Marston is the pseudonym of Keith Miles, a Welsh author who has written books, plays, radio, etc.  Under the Edward Marston name, he writes four different series of novels, set in different time periods.

I've tried all of his series, and my favorite remains the Railway Detective series.  The books are set in the 1850s.  The main protagonist is Inspector Robert Colbeck from the Detective Department of the Metropolitan Police, now more famously known as Scotland Yard.  At the time, Scotland Yard was still in its infancy.  The mysteries are usually centered around the railways, which became really popular during Victorian England.  I found the mysteries interesting, and the characters pretty well-rounded.  Marston has a gift for describing the details so well that you really feel like you're in Victorian England.  In addition, due to my son's current obsession with Thomas the Tank Engine, I am well-versed in the vocabulary of the railways, so I actually understand a lot of the references Marston puts in his books.