What a Damned Mess

I've been working for two hours on a post featuring my favorite detective series of all time, eleven of them. I wrote up a summary of each of the series and included pictures of all the authors. 

The Blogger Software system started acting up in the middle of my work by failing to save all of what I had written, so I started saving repeatedly and checking over and over to make sure it was all there. Then, when I finally had it all together, proof-read, and ready to post, I did a "preview screen" only to see that everything has been lost but the mess shown below. 

I don't have the heart to do this again because Blogger is obviously not permanently saving everything right now. I surrender, Blogger, you win.

Extra credit to the first person who can even name all eleven series based just on this mess:

A fellow book-blogger (thank you, Lark) posted a couple of days ago about the various book series that she is following and how far behind in some of them she has fallen. That got me curious enough about my own love of detective series to do a little recap of my own. I’ve been reading some of these series for a long time and I’m reluctant to take on new ones because they still account for a substantial portion of my annual reading hours.

 

1. The

2. The

3. The

4. The

5. The

6. The

7. The

8. The

9. The Poke Rafferty series by Timothy Hallinan - This is one of three series I read that are no longer being added to by author choice or author death. The series began in 2007 with A Nail Through the Heart and ended just this year with Street Music. All of the books are set in Bangkok and feature some of my favorite fictional characters of any crime series I've ever read. I've read all nine of these and wish there were another dozen or so coming but Tim says this is it.

10. The

11. The

That's "officially" it for the number of series I'm currently reading or, in one case, have completed. I say "officially" because I've probably already accidentally started new series, or two, that I don't recognize as such yet. That's the way it usually happens; the right book comes along and grabs you. Then if you are very, very lucky you find yourself at the very beginning of a new series or, maybe even better, you discover a wonderful backlisted series that will keep you reading for years.