Kim Cantley is the facilitator of the “Mysterious Mondays Book Club” in Myrtle Beach, SC. The group, supported by the Friends of the Socastee Library organization, has been thriving since 2003. In this interview, Kim discusses the types of mystery and suspense novels her group enjoys --- and doesn’t enjoy. She stresses the importance of everyone participating in the discussion, especially the less vocal members, describes how her book club occasionally incorporates a screening of a film adaptation into their meetings and highlights some of their favorite book-into-movie discussions.

Q: Does your group have a name and/or a theme? How long has your group been in existence?

A: My name is Kim Cantley, and I am the circulation supervisor of Socastee Library as well as the facilitator for our “Mysterious Mondays Book Club." We are a library-sponsored book club that has been meeting since January 2003.

Q: How many members do you have? How many men, how many women? What age are most of your members?

A: We have about 12-16 members. We have one man and about 15 women. I am the youngest member, 33 years old, and most of our members fall in the 40-65+ age range.

Q: How often do you meet? Where do you meet?

A: We meet the second Monday of every month in our library meeting room for about 60-90 minutes.

Q: Do you eat at your meetings? What do you eat? Who brings the food?

A: Yes, we definitely eat at our meetings! I bring the food, and most of the time I serve cheese, crackers, fruit, chips, dip, soda, coffee and sometimes party platters. In the past, I have tried to match the food I serve with the theme of the book. For example, when we were discussing Jody Shields's The Fig Eater, I served figs and Vienna cream cookies. For the tea shop mystery Chamomile Mourning, I served several different types of tea, finger sandwiches and scones.

Q: Who leads the discussion? Do you use reading group guides?

A: I generally lead the discussion with a prepared list of questions and at times have selected books since I was able to find a reading group guide for it.

Q: What kind of books do you read?

A: All types of mysteries: cozy, police procedural, hardboiled mysteries, historical, contemporary and romantic suspense.

Q: How do you choose your books? Do you choose one new book at each meeting, or do you choose the books for a number of meetings ahead of time?

A: We choose the books for a number of meetings ahead of time. Each member will try to have 2-3 suggestions and we'll go through the list and pick out about six months worth.

Q: What were some of the best discussions or favorite books the group read?

A: Some books that our group really enjoyed discussing were Everybody Kills Somebody Sometime, The Canterbury Papers, The Skull Mantra, Death of a Red Heroine and our book and movie talks of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot series.

Q: How do you keep things fun?

A: By respecting each others' opinions and by picking out favorite and least favorite scenes. Actually, some of the best discussions have been about books that we have not enjoyed. Other fun discussions involve showing the movie and discussing the book. We really enjoyed Rebecca and And Then There Were None.

Q: What advice would you give to other reading groups?

A: Have fun, keep it light and ask open-ended questions. Also, try to involve the quieter members into the discussion. I have a list of questions as backup. Most of the time the members start off by asking each others' opinions of the books.

Q: Do you have any horror stories, amusing anecdotes, or other special tales to tell?

A: Women-in-peril mysteries do not sit well with our members. Neither do outrageous, life-threatening impossible scenarios. We laugh about taking "field trips" to many of the exotic locales where the stories take place. Perhaps an anonymous benefactor would be willing to sponsor trips for us to Vienna, Lochdubh, Siberia (yes, Siberia), and Africa?!

Q: Is there anything else unique or noteworthy about your group that you would like to share?

A: We love reading a wide variety of mysteries, especially books whose stories are set against a different culture. We enjoy being served red herrings! Also, the more eccentric the main character the juicier the discussion.

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