Whodunnits: readers’ choice of beach books

Which crime or mystery thriller should we pack to take on holiday?

Carolyn Moynihan | Jun 7 2016 | comment

It’s that time of year when folks in the northern hemisphere look forward to summer holidays and time off from reading about climate change, Brexit and Donald Trump. Crime, thriller and mystery fiction offer refreshment to the harried mind in the way that a crossword does at the end of the day: at least something can be solved, even if it’s not the world’s problems, or one’s own.

Indeed, even those of us Down Under can take advantage of the long winter nights and inclement weather to get a little extra reading in. So here’s the idea: use the form below to nominate yarns that you found engrossing, decent and enjoyable. You can submit more than one – that is, use the form more than once. Just tell us briefly why each one is a good read, and this time next week we will publish our selection of your recommendations.

Margaret Somerville, an ethicist writing from Montreal, is the third contributor in our mini-symposium on the emergence of transgenderism. She gives an excellent account of the the social trends which laid the groundwork for human rights which no one had even heard of a few years ago. And Karl D. Stephan asks whether scientists have seriously considered the ethics of writing a human genome from scratch. There's lots more great reading in the newsletter below.

But we'd also like to ask your help to create a reading list for the upcoming summer (in the northern hemisphere) holidays. What are your favourite crime and thriller novels? Fill in our form -- and we'll publish the results in time for you to stock up.