Time to Get Your Spook On

We have a week and a half yet before vampires, goblins, and Taylor Swift wannabes descend upon our homes and offices. Yes, that’s right: Halloween is just ahead. And it is time to prepare—time to buy a pumpkin for carving, time to purchase just enough but not too much candy for trick-or-treaters, and time to decide whether some Halloween-related reading material might be called for.

Mystery Fanfare can help with that last need. Editor Janet Rudolph has updated her lengthy catalogue of “mysteries that take place on or around Halloween.” Seriously, who knew there we so many? Everything from Joyce Tremel’s A Room with a Brew, Leo Bruce’s Death on All Hallowe’en, and Maya Corrigan’s Crypt Suzette to Addison Moore’s Bobbing for Bodies, E.J. Copperman’s Night of the Living Deed, Summer Prescott’s Pumpkin Spice Murder, Loren D. Estleman’s The Witchfinder, and Daryl Wood Gerber’s Stirring the Plot. Let us not forget, either, Agatha Christie’s Hallowe’en Party (adapted most recently into the 2023 film A Haunting in Venice).

Reading while also listening for the insistent knocks of children on your front door might be difficult, but surely you can handle the task.