#1458: Beware the Curves (1956) by A.A. Fair

/ JJ / Leave a comment


Given that A.A. Fair was a nom de plume adopted by Erle Stanley Gardner, a trained lawyer who would write over 80 legal thrillers featuring Perry Mason, it was inevitable that the Cool and lam books Fair wrote would veer into legalistic territory at times. The first in the series, The Bigger They Come (1939), relied on an obscure state law loophole, after all, and got things off to an ingenious start. What’s perhaps surprising is that it wasn’t until fifteenth title Beware the Curves (1956) that Gardner would venture once more into the courtroom with his L.A. P.I.s…though, I suppose he had written 36 Masons and nine novels featuring D.A. Doug Selby in the meantime…so I guess he was getting his fix elsewhere.

Continue reading →

#1457: Minor Felonies – The World’s Greatest Detective (2017) by Caroline Carlson

/ JJ / 2 Comments

I find my books by various means, but this might be the first time I’ve taken advice from YouTube: this video recommending 15 Criminally Underrated Mystery Books was shared in the Facebook GAD group, and mentioned The World’s Greatest Detective (2017) by Caroline Carlson, with the promise of some impossible crimes amidst the youthful crime-solving…how could I resist?

Continue reading →

#1456: “Perhaps They Did Not Hear,” I Said – My Ten Favourite In GAD We Trust Episodes

/ JJ / 8 Comments

I thought I would have done a few more episodes of my increasingly-occasional podcast In GAD We Trust by now, but a couple fell through and I didn’t want to rush out something to replace them that didn’t have my heart in it. Instead, to ward off the dark nights, let’s cast our minds back over a few favourites already available to you, in case you missed them first time around.

Continue reading →

#1455: Enemy Unseen (1945) by Freeman Wills Crofts

/ JJ / 4 Comments


The twenty-fifth long form case for Inspector Joseph French, Enemy Unseen (1945) does not cover its detective or its author Freeman Wills Crofts in glory. While, given the era in which it was written and published, there’s an understandable desire to provide a positive impression of the work of the Home Guard, and for the workings of the country as a whole to appear reassuringly competent, the book seems to have no purpose beyond this, feeling to this FWC fan as if, for only the second time in the author’s long and storied career, he was perhaps putting something out to fulfil an obligation. And yet, its inexorable, dull plodding towards the finish line would be comforting to many — E.C.R. Lorac fans would lap this up, I feel.

Continue reading →

#1452: Furious Old Women (1960) by Leo Bruce

/ JJ / 2 Comments


“Milly may have been mean and sanctimonious but she was my sister. To club her to death on her way to church was quite damnable.” So speaks Mrs. Bobbin, the elderly widow who has approached History master Carolus Deene to investigate the murder of her elder sister, Millicent Griggs having been found beaten over the head and hidden in an open grave in the churchyard in the small village of Gladhurst. Since all the police have done in the intervening week is ask “a series of questions even more moronic than [Deene’s],” Mrs. Bobbin wants something more achieved: “I’m livid. So don’t take too long in solving the thing.”

Continue reading →

#1451: Minor Felonies – Young Sherlock: Red Leech, a.k.a. Rebel Fire (2010) by Andrew Lane

/ JJ / 4 Comments

In a pure coincidence of timing, I read the first of Andrew Lane’s Young Sherlock Holmes novels, Death Cloud (2010), at about the time a series based on the books was announced by Amazon. The trailer, however, seemed to share ‘teenage Sherlock Holmes’ with the books — “teenage” in Hollywood meaning “played by someone who’s nearly 30 years old” — and nothing more, so let’s get onto the second volume today instead.

Continue reading →

In GAD We Trust – Episode 37: Universe Building with a Light Touch via The Beanstalk Murder (2024) and The Big Bad Wolf Murder (2025) by P.G. Bell [w’ P.G. Bell]

/ JJ / 2 Comments

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.

Continue reading →

#1449: The Ark (2022) by Haruo Yuki [trans. Jim Rion 2026]

/ JJ / 6 Comments


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?

Continue reading →