I am the American who needs literary education

I have joined this group and realized that I have never in a zillion years paid attention to the nationality of the author when it comes to my books. Ergo, I have read Anne Perry, Reginald Hill and Laurie King just because they have Victorian Era England, contemporary England, and Sherlock Holmes' England. I have read a few posts here and all of you do pay attention. So, please, could you name your favorite British or Irish writer? Thanks!

My favourite Irish writer is Ruth Dudley Edwards and her best book is The Anglo-Irish Murders. Her latest book is called Murdering Americans so we are covering all aspects of your post here.

Editing note: the touchstones seem to have problems with Dudley Edwards for some reason. Just checked to make sure that the right brackets are there; they are ...

Ruth Dudley Edwards

The Anglo-Irish Murders

*touchstone fairy*

Thank you - how did you do that?

It's a method of forcing touchstones that usually (but not always) works.

For the work touchstone, you put the work number followed by two colons and the name all inside single brackets. Like so, {1232146::The Anglo-Irish Murders} (only use brackets instead of braces). You get the work number from the worl page URL : http://www.librarything.com/work/1232146

For the author, you use the name part of the author page URL, http://www.librarything.com/author/edwardsruthdudley
{{edwardsruthdudley::Ruth Dudley Edwards}} (only you use brackets not braces).

Basically the same as you normally touchstone, but you also put the page identifier within the brackets followed by two colons and the usual name/title.

(hope this made sense, it's past my bedtime :-))

In case my message 5 is too incoherent, here's the link to the Help page that mentions sticky touchstones : http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/HelpThing:Topic#Using_Touchstones

Ah - yes. When I have edited posts where the touchstones are working I can see what happens but it never occurred to me that I could do it manually.

I'll shortcut the link. :)

I recently enjoyed When will there be good news? by Kate Atkinson and will be looking out for others. Authors that I've found to be always entertaining are P.D. James, Colin Dexter and Bartholomew Gill. Brat Farrar and The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey are among my favourites.

Thanks to sqdancer's message I was able to fix one of the touchstones.

I think my role model is "Jack" Troutbeck!

And, for American writers publishing british crime/procedural novels, there are no one like Elizabeth George and Martha Grimes!

If I could write like E George, I'd be a writer ...

If I could write like E George, I'd be ...

...a fabricator of quasi-Dickensian romantic slush that pretends to be set in modern England.

Lynda La Plante

Thorold, you made me laugh. E George is too verbose and her characters are too self-absorbed. I particularly dislike Depressed Deborah.

>15 pamelad:
I'm probably being unfair to her - I've never actually read one of her books all the way through.