#1497: You Can Die Laughing (1957) by A.A. Fair

/ JJ / Leave a comment


Hired by Texan businessman Lawson C. Corning to find the whereabouts of Mrs. Yvonne Wells, the Cool and Lam Detective Agency has reason to believe that there might be more in back of the request than they’re told. Finding the woman’s house doesn’t prove too difficult, but her surly, uncommunicative husband is unwilling to help Donald Lam in his enquiries, and so Lam has to cast his net a little wider. Which is how he ends up at the next door neighbour’s house where Mrs. Raleigh tells him that she heard an argument in the Wells house a couple of nights before, and that Drury Wells then exited the house carrying a body.

Continue reading →

#1496: Little Fictions – Curiosities from Adey: ‘About the Disappearance of Agatha King’ (1939) by Anthony Abbot

/ JJ / 3 Comments

Neither of the two novels I’ve read by Anthony Abbot have exactly thrilled me, but the guy clearly has some good ideas — ideas that, I can’t help but feel, get a little diluted in the need to expand them up to novel length. So the opportunity to read the short story ‘About the Disappearance of Agatha King’ (1939) — listed in Adey — was too tempting to pass up.

Continue reading →

#1495: “It’s going to be a long, hard haul, you know…” – When the Old Man Died (1991) by Roger Ormerod

/ JJ / 8 Comments

It’s been a while since I read anything by Roger Ormerod, and that’s in part because I can’t quite decide how I feel about his work. Yes, he puts forwards some intriguing ideas and has resolved a few impossibilities very neatly, but at the same time there’s no real detection and the books always seem to sag heavily in the middle…so can the much-recommended When the Old Man Died (1991) reverse those impressions?

Continue reading →

#1494: The Five Matchboxes (1948) by John Russell Fearn

/ JJ / 11 Comments


I may not yet share TomCat’s love of John Russell Fearn, but I also won’t deny that in the little I’ve read by the man he’s shown enough spirit to warrant further investigation. Blame, then, my never-ending TBR for the multiple years it’s taken me to get back to him, with The Five Matchboxes (1948) patiently waiting on my Kindle with nary a word of complaint. Much to my surprise and delight, it was an impossible crime, too, with stockbroker Granville Collins shot in his office when there was no-one around and no way to shoot him from outside. Can Chief Superintendent Mortimer Garth get to the bottom of this without his dyspepsia distracting him too greatly?

Continue reading →

#1493: Little Fictions – Curiosities from Adey: ‘The Locked Room’ (1972) by John Sladek

/ JJ / 2 Comments

It’s true that, with a self-imposed target of three posts a week all year long, I can sometimes lose a little perspective on the playfulness of this genre I love so dearly. And sometimes it’s good to be reminded that these sorts of things are supposed to be fun, y’know? Which rather neatly brings us to ‘The Locked Room’ (1972) by John Sladek.

Continue reading →

#1492: “You got trouble, haven’t you, honey?” – Do You Know Me? & Other Aberrations [ss] (2025) by Bruce Elliott

/ JJ / 4 Comments

As a fan of the impossible crime novel You’ll Die Laughing (1945) by Bruce Elliott, I was delighted when I accidentally discovered that Stark House Press had put out a collection of Elliott’s short fiction, Do You Know Me? & Other Aberrations (2025). I was aware that You’ll Die Laughing is atypical of his output, but curiosity reigned nonetheless and here we are.

Continue reading →

#1491: To Catch a Thief (1943) by Craig Rice [a.p.a. by Daphne Sanders]

/ JJ / Leave a comment


All I really knew about To Catch a Thief (1943), published by Craig Rice under the nom de plume Daphne Sanders, was that it represented something of a change from the work she’d done to that point in her career. And having read most of the work she’d done to that point in her career I can reaffirm that position. Not only is the focus of this rather more stern than we’ve seen elsewhere, it’s also less-tightly constructed and decidedly more in the Pulp-y vein than anything I’ve seen from this wonderfully talented writer, and in that regard it came as something as a disappointment. It scores some good points along the way, but overall the Rice non-completist can dodge this one.

Continue reading →

#1490: Little Fictions – Curiosities from Adey: ‘The Bizarre Case Expert’ (1970) by William Arden

/ JJ / 5 Comments

Having thoroughly enjoyed some of the entries Dennis Lynds wrote as William Arden in the Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators series, I was surprised and curious when I discovered that he had written an impossible crime story listed in Adey, ‘The Bizarre Case Expert’ (1970). Rigour isn’t always Arden’s jam, so how did he apply himself here?

Continue reading →

#1489: Following in the Footsteps of Giants – ‘Chapter 17: Perroquet Explains’ (2026) by Jamie Probin

/ JJ / 5 Comments

Back in 2020, as part of my occasional Adventures in Self-Publishing undertaking, I read two stories by Jamie Probin — the novel The Thirteenth Apostle (2020) and the much shorter ‘The Adventure of the Nine Monets’ (2020) — and followed this up a few years later with two of Probin’s further short stories, ‘The Heir Affair’ (2022) and ‘Body of Matter’ (2022).

Continue reading →

#1488: Top Storey Murder (1931) by Anthony Berkeley

/ JJ / 7 Comments


When Adelaide Barnett is found strangled to death in her fourth-floor flat in Monmouth Mansions, Platt Street — that’s a clue to the sort of time you’re in for here — author and amateur sleuth Roger Sheringham, trying to take Inspector Moresby out to lunch, is invited along to the scene of the crime. “I don’t think you’d find it much to interest you,” he’s told. “Just an ordinary case of burglary and murder. No fancy fandangos like you get in storybooks”. And yet for all the sensible detection and astute policing on display — for pure Humdrummery it’s an absolute delight — Sheringham becomes convinced that more is going on than meets the eye.

Continue reading →