Right now I’m in the process of outlining the third King Harald mystery. And it presents me with a challenge: The story takes place over three or four days in a blizzard-isolated resort hotel. I’ve never tried to write a novel with such a compact time frame. My stories usually play out over weeks or longer. So I went looking for a model of how to do it and came up with Sharyn McCrumb’s Bimbos of the Death Sun.

This slick, quick read is a very funny sendup of 1980s sci-fi/fantasy conventions and takes place over the course of a weekend. The character you figure is going to get it gets it. But, alas, there are no bimbos. Or death sun. That’s just the title of a book by the story’s amateur sleuth—a title foisted on him by his publisher. If you’re looking for a light beach read, you can’t go wrong with Bimbos.