Mon 30 Mar 2026
Archived Mystery Review: P. M. CARLSON – Murder Unrenovated.
Posted by Steve under Uncategorized[2] Comments
P. M. CARLSON – Murder Unrenovated, Maggie Ryan #4. Bantam, paperback original; 1st printing, January 1988.
This novel takes Maggie Ryan back to 1972, and her fourth mystery adventure. She and her actor-husband Nick O’Connor are searching for a brownstone to buy and renovate in Brooklyn, but the one they find has both a rent-control tenant in the basement, and a body upstairs.
Maggie and her husband have a cheerful lust for living and a love of people that is strictly contagious and romantic, more perfect than life, but the reading is fine. Only the ending is disappointing, as the killer, literally, is someone just brought in off the street.
— Reprinted from Mystery.File.5, May 1988.
April 2nd, 2026 at 11:12 pm
Relative brevity and a kind of contagious zest were notable qualities of Carlson titles.
April 5th, 2026 at 8:27 pm
Sums the books up very nicely, I would to say. I was trying to remember what kind of job(s) Maggie had, but I haven’t been able to come up with anything other than just maybe she and her husband were academics.
Here’s a list of the novels she wrote, in two different series:
Maggie Ryan and Nick O’Connor
1. Audition for Murder (1985)
2. Murder Is Academic (1985)
3. Murder Is Pathological (1986)
4. Murder Unrenovated (1987)
5. Rehearsal for Murder (1988)
6. Murder in the Dog Days (1990)
7. Murder Misread (1990)
8. Bad Blood (1991)
Marty Hopkins
1. Gravestone (1993)
2. Bloodstream (1995)
3. Deathwind (2004)
4. Crossfire (2006)
I don’t reading any in this second set of books.