This is the time of year that the wind gets cooler, the sky gets dark earlier, the trees start to look bare and the cobwebs and creepy crawlers come out, literally, as houses everywhere begin decorating for Halloween.  Just this weekend I accidentally put my arm in a fake cobweb while putting on my jacket!  It puts you in the mood for a good suspense story or mystery series, doesn’t it?  I love mystery novels.  I’ve recently learned that it is Mystery Series Week so when better to share my love of the genre?

A little history for you: This genre has been alive and well for more than 100 years, which is pretty impressive.  Edgar Allen Poe is arguably the father of all mystery writing and we can thank him for igniting this category into the “mainstream” — I use quotations because I don’t know the early 1800s equivalent!

If Poe is the father, perhaps Agatha Christie is the mother. Born in 1890, she wrote 66 crime novels. In more recent history, following detectives through many stories has become a beloved pasttime and influenced our popular culture.  Do you know anyone that wouldn’t recognize the phrase “Elementary, my dear Watson”? What started with books has led to hundreds of TV episodes and countless films.  Without this genre’s popularity among books, would we have had Law & Order?  It is a curious thought, isn’t it?

This is just an estimate, but there are more than 20,000 adult mysteries featuring well over 4,000 continuing characters in mysteries.  And if those aren’t enough choices, they pretty much cover every time period and tons of locations.  I started out with Nancy Drew myself.

What are your favorite type of mysteries?  Are you like me and like the the strong, independent-thinking detective?  Or maybe you like the mysterious agent, like 007 or Bourne.  Or is it the intellectual like Robert Langdon? Tell us!