Earlier this year, I stumbled over The Beanstalk Murder (2024) by P.G Bell, a superb crossover mystery which imports the tenets of a well-clued mystery into the world of Jack and the Beanstalk. Bell’s second novel along this line, The Big Bad Wolf Murder (2025), followed in due course, and a few weeks ago he was kind enough to sit down with me and talk about the writing of these two excellent books.
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Seven university friends go in search of a mysterious underground facility in the hills and, arriving late in the evening, encounter a family of three who have become lost walking in the same isolated region. The ten of them see no choice but to stay underground until morning, only for an earthquake to trap everyone inside. A means of escape exists, but requires that one person stays behind, trapping themselves underground where they might be lucky and not starve to death: instead, they may drown in the rising water filling the building from below. And so, naturally, one of the group is murdered. But why now? And, of course, whodunnit?
P.G. Bell’s first Fairy Tale Murder Mystery, The Beanstalk Murder (2024), was so damn entertaining and so well-plotted that you bet I was going to jump on the follow-up, The Big Bad Wolf Murder (2025), as soon as I could. Indeed, as a glimpse behind the blogging curtain: I read this second book before the review of that first one had even appeared on the blog. Hairy Aaron!
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When I first started looking into the work of Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace beyond The Four Just Men (1905) I was a little overwhelmed by the possibilities. This is a man who, we’re told, wrote over 170 books, so where does one begin to explore such a corpus?
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Having recently looked at the debut from one legend in the annals of mystery fiction, let’s turn our attention to another: Death in High Heels (1941), the first novel from Christianna Brand, recently republished in the excellent British Library Crime Classics Range, so that, incredibly, fully seven of her novels are now readily available. And, once again, we find a genre great on apprentice form, with this story of murder in a fashionable dressmakers running too long and rather lacking in incident. Brand would have to learn her trade somewhere, however, and there are encouraging signs here of the force she would become.
One final visit for this month to the reading of my past, as I revisit the crime and thriller novels which paved the way into the Golden Age obsession that fills my every waking moment.
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There are certain characters that it seems impossible were once not a part of popular culture: Superman, say, or James Bond, or Miss Marple. With a mystery bias to my reading, it seems incredible that most of Queen Victoria’s reign passed sans Sherlock Holmes, and, with over 80 books and countless hours of television devoted to him, how could there something so prosaic as a beginning for Perry Mason?
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It’s often the case that a line can be drawn in an author’s body of work, past which they notably change, usually for the better: John Dickson Carr after Poison in Jest (1932), say. It is, however, rare that such a line passes through one of their works, as it does for Anthony Berkeley in Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery (1927). Prior to this Berkeley had written The Layton Court Mystery (1925) and The Wychford Poisoning Case (1926), which innovated in this newfangled GADisphere but seemed interesting if minor, and are not readily discussed a century later. And after it came the likes of The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929) and Not to be Taken (1938), reprints of which were greeted with no small delight in recent years.
I was quite excited to return to this week’s Going Home book, since it feeds into a key part of what I’ve come to enjoy about classic mystery and detective fiction.
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Another modern novel which sounds like it might have an impossible crime at its core, sufficient reason for me to grab a copy — from the library, dear boy, I’m not made of money — and see if it’s worthy of TomCat‘s attention. I get no enjoyment from this whatsoever, you understand. And I do it for free!
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The Invisible Event 