#593: Home Sweet Homicide (1944) by Craig Rice
As a rule, I start getting a bit nervous if it takes me more than three days to finish a book. I read Home Sweet Homicide (1944), the first of Georgiana Ann Randolph Craig’s novels I’ve ever attempted, over one week and one day and, quite honestly, would have happily kept reading it for another month or two. I’ve never gotten a sense of her as an author from her short stories — largely, I’d imagine, because of the need to cram in character and plot in less space — and, if I’m honest, didn’t relish the screwball antics her reputation seemed to promise. Well, no fear. This isn’t screwball, it’s not especially tightly plotted, and it’s possibly the best book I’ve read in a long ol’ time.
Continue reading
#592: Reflections on Detection – The Knox Decalogue 1: The Criminal
So, here we go with an in-depth look at the principles espoused in the Ten Commandments for Detective Fiction as outlined by Ronald Arbuthnott Knox.
Continue reading
#591: Spoiler Warning – Coming in January: The Box Office Murders, a.k.a. The Purple Sickle Murders (1929) by Freeman Wills Crofts
Brad and I are done dissecting Agatha Christie’s final work Postern of Fate (1973), so it’s time to make spoiler-filled plans for another piece of detective fiction and, well, can you guess which one it will be…?
Continue reading
#590: Mystery at Olympia, a.k.a. Murder at the Motor Show (1935) by John Rhode
While Freeman Wills Crofts’ work has caused me much delight over the last few years, that of his fellow ‘Humdrum’ John Rhode/Miles Burton doesn’t inspire in me quite the same raptures. Rhode (as I’ll call him here) writes swift, events-focussed novels, and constructs plots with the same deliberation and consideration from multiple sides…so maybe it’s that his plots always feel like a single idea with some people bolted onto it. Here as in Death Leaves No Card (1944) or Invisible Weapons (1938) I come away with the impression that he read about a single obscure murder method and thought “Yeah, I can get 60,000 words out of that”.
Continue reading
#589: Reflections on Detection – The Knox Decalogue: An Introduction
It may surprise you to learn that I think about the Knox Decalogue a lot. But, like, a lot a lot, “maybe I should write a lecture on the Knox Decalogue and tout it round the various crime conventions” a lot. Instead, because I work full time and am nowhere near famous enough for that to be an option, I’m going to go through the rules one at a time and share some thoughts on here.
Continue reading
#588: Spoiler Warning 12 – Postern of Fate (1973) by Agatha Christie
