Given the state of limerence in which I exist when it comes to the impossible crime in fiction, it was with great excitement that I received a copy About the Murder of the Circus Queen (1932) by Anthony Abbot, which has not one but two entries in Adey.
Continue reading
In principle, the core concept of Murder by the Clock (1929), the debut novel for both author Rufus King and character Lieutenant Valcour, is a good one: the youthful Mrs. Endicott calls the police because she fears her husband has gone out that evening to pay off a blackmailer, only for Valcour, the policeman who responds to the call, to find Mr. Endiciott dead in his closet at the close of the first chapter. Thus, the focus of the mystery becomes the Endicott ménage itself, as the questions of who would have killed the master of the house, and why, take understandable prominence. And some fun ideas remain, but the book containing them doesn’t quite compel as it might.
Having given up on no fewer than three Sherlock Holmes pastiches in this final entry for my Tuesday undertakings this month, I return to the source: what was for me the book that got me reading stories about Holmes not written by people called A. Conan Doyle or J.D. Carr, The House of Silk (2011) by Anthony Horowitz.
Continue reading
Something a little different today: knowing that I’m a fan of the Australian dramatist and novelist Malcolm ‘Max’ Afford, Tony Medawar — the closest thing the GAD firmament has to Indiana Jones — sent me a selection of Afford’s thus-far-uncollected short fiction, as found in a variety of Australian publications from the Golden Age, and I’ve read them and am going to write a little about each one.
Continue reading
I have, since encountering the work of Charlotte Armstrong, developed a newfound appreciation for the novel of suspense. And so when Kate at Cross-Examining Crime mentioned that The Hours Before Dawn (1958) by Celia Fremlin was among her favourite debuts in the genre, I was willing to put my scepticism aside — Kate and I so rarely agree, y’see — and dive into this lovely Faber & Faber reprint. And, y’know, while it doesn’t completely work for me, this story of a new mother trying to fathom whether she’s being driven slightly mad by the sleeplessness induced by her new son, or whether there’s something more sinister behind the oddnesses she keeps encountering, has a lot to recommend it.
A second Sherlock Holmes pastiche from the pen of Robert J. Harris, The Devil’s Blaze (2022) sees him once again take his cue from the Second World War setting of the Basil Rathbone films rather than Arthur Conan Doyle’s original Victorian milieu.
Continue reading
I have been known to be something of an impatient reader. In the first half of this decade, I read 713 books — an average of 2.74 a week — all while maintaining the physique of a Greek god, fighting crime at night dressed as a badger, holding down a full time job as a lawyer for the downtrodden, and winning the last six series of Mastermind in a raft of ingenious disguises.
Continue reading
One of my favourite discoveries of recent years has been the character of Captain Duncan Maclain, the blind protagonist of a baker’s dozen of books by Baynard Kendrick. Having enjoyed The Odor of Violets (1941) and Blind Man’s Bluff (1943) as part of the American Mystery Classics range, I’ve been keeping an eye out for other books in the series, and got very lucky stumbling into a copy of The Whistling Hangman (1937) that was so severely beaten it must have owed money to six different loan sharks. And this was an especially exciting find as the novel has been praised by TomCat, apparently featuring some more ingenious impossible deaths in a large New York hotel…and, yeah, largely lives up to its billing.
I’ll level with you: I have never understood the obsession Sherlockians have with the Giant Rat of Sumatra.
Continue reading
In my very first post on this blog I shared the belief that G.K. Chesterton’s writing is “too verbose”, and I’ll confess that I’ve found him hard to enjoy in the past. But reading some stories with Countdown John got me thinking that maybe I could suffer to give him another go, and so here, eventually, we are.
Continue reading
The Invisible Event 