"Three" winners

Here are the winners of the Sept. 21 “Sign of the Three” competition, which asked readers to name books in which the number three figures prominently in the title or the story:

1) Fred, because a title like Wycliffe and the Three-Toed Pussy (W.J. Burley) cannot go unrecognized.

2) Kerrie, for the clever choice of Karen Slaughter's Triptych and for the sheer profusion of her suggestions.

3) Simona, for her nomination of Il mistero delle tre orchidee (The Mystery of the Three Orchids) and L'albergo delle tre rose (The Three Roses Hotel) by Augusto De Angelis. All I need now is for those novels by that intriguing Italian author to be translated into English.

4) Oh, what the hell. Elisabeth is the fourth winner for seeking the ancient Chinese roots of Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee mysteries and their narrative structure, in which the judge often works on three cases at a time.

Some miscellaneous facts about the competition:

1) At least three titles were nominated by more than one reader: Der Tee der drei alten Damen by Friedrich Glauser; Agatha Christie’s Three Act Tragedy; and Thirty-three Teeth by Colin Cotterill.

2) Nobody mentioned James Ellroy. Indeed, he never would have occurred to me had not an audience member at his Sept. 24 reading in Philadelphia asked Ellroy why so many of his novels revolve around groups of three men. But there it is, right on the back cover of The Cold Six Thousand, which I was reading at the time: "On November 22, 1963, three men converge in Dallas."

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Thanks to all who entered for your thought-provoking and reading-list-enlarging suggestions. If the winners will send a postal address to detectivesbeyondborders (at) earthlink (dot) net, I'll sent them their books. Indicate a preference of author, genre, country — anything you can think of — and I'll try to send something close to what you want.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009