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“[H]ow stressful can this game really be? A few nights in a peaceful hamlet at Christmas, trying to make sense of a puzzle? What could possibly go wrong?”. Well, an unseasonally heavy snowfall could maroon everyone, and then a murderer could start picking off the isolated denizens of the peaceful hamlet of Midwinter. But, if they can survive the slaughter, the six people who have been invited by the Midwinter Trust to take part in the competition, called Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife, are unlikely to want to leave because the prize they can win is…well it’s fabulous, isn’t it? It must be. Although, now you come to mention it, what is the prize?
Author: JJ
#1340: Little Fictions – ‘The Eyes Have It’ (1964) by Randall Garrett
Perhaps two decades a go, I read some, but not all, of the Lord Darcy series of stories by Randall Garrett, in which detection is augmented with magic. And I’ve been telling people they’re good ever since. So for Tuesdays this, and another as-yet-undetermined future, month let’s take this Fantasy Masterworks volume of the complete stories — 10 shorts, and the novel Too Many Magicians (1967) — and see how they stand up.
Continue reading#1339: “With method and logic one can accomplish anything!” – Poirot Investigates [ss] (1924) by Agatha Christie
Eleven cases from the early career of the World’s Favourite Golden Age Sleuth, Poirot Investigates (1923) offers a chance to revisit a collection I’ve not read in, oh, twenty years. Lovely stuff.
Continue reading#1338: The Black Angel (1943) by Cornell Woolrich
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It’s been over two years since I reviewed any Cornell Woolrich, which seems incredible when you consider how completely I loved his work when he first started appearing on The Invisible Event. But, well, behind the scenes I’ve struggled through some of his stuff — the doom-drenched but ooooooverlong The Black Alibi (1942) and the somewhat tedious, Francis Nevins-edited Night and Fear [ss] (2004) collection — and lost the name of action, so to speak. But you can’t keep a good fan down, and so it’s back to the novels and The Black Angel (1943), which interestingly finds a new way to explore themes and approaches that would seem to recur throughout Woolrich’s oeuvre.
#1337: The Tenniversary – Ten Things That Are Definitely, Definitely, Definitely Going to Happen
As we draw these “Yay, My Blog Has Lasted Ten Years!” celebrations to a close, the only sensible thing to do is to look ahead to the next decade, I guess.
Continue reading#1336: “This doesn’t happen to be a detective story, you see…” – Sorcerer’s House (1956) by Gerald Verner
#1335: The Man Who Slept All Day (1942) by Craig Rice [a.p.a. by Michael Venning]
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Reading her novels chronologically, I’m moved to declare that 1942 was a big year for Craig Rice. Prior to then, she had written five fast-moving, wildly inventive mysteries featuring wisecracking lawyer John J. Malone and Jake and Helene Justus, but 1942 saw Rice diversify with (not necessarily in this order) a Malone novel in The Big Midget Murders (1942) that ramped up plot complexity, The Sunday Pigeon Murders (1942) taking on a new setting with a more dim-bulb presence at its core, atmosphere overwhelming the slow-moving Telefair (1942) and now, with The Man Who Slept All Day (1942), long character-work taking over from plot mechanics so that you really do care about the people involved. That noise you hear is the stretching of some wings.
#1334: The Tenniversary – Ten Positive Side-Effects of Blogging
The Invisible Event has, as of yesterday, officially been online for ten years. Where does the time go? And when does the money start pouring in?
Continue reading#1333: “Why shouldn’t I know? I know how people act, don’t I?” – My Mother, the Detective [ss] (2016) by James Yaffe
I first encountered James Yaffe via his story ‘The Problem of the Emperor’s Mushrooms’ (1945), but have heard much about his ‘Mom’ stories, in which a police officer’s mother “is usually able to solve over the dinner table crimes that keep the police running around in circles for weeks”. So I was delighted to acquire the complete collection of those tales.
Continue reading#1332: Pontifex, Son and Thorndyke (1931) by R. Austin Freeman
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One sympathises with Martin Edwards when he says that he found the style of the opening pages of Pontifex, Son and Thorndyke (1931), the nineteenth book and thirteenth novel by R. Austin Freeman to feature medical jurist Dr. John Evelyn Thorndyke, “off-putting”. I am an avowed Freeman fan, this being the 19th book by him I have read, and I nearly quit on page 2. But if you persevere, dear reader, you’ll find an interesting story with some very, very good detection indeed that definitely improves once Freeman curbs his initial pomposity…though the book as a whole does suffer slightly from an absence of content to fill out the closing few chapters








