Author: JJ

#298: Five to…Try? – Books on My TBR That I Will Probably Never Read

/ JJ / 65 Comments

Books waiting

We’ve all done it — in the excitement of finally stumbling across a novel by an author we’ve heard a lot about (or maybe heard nothing about, if you’re feeling adventurous) you snap up a book, take it home…and it lingers and lingers on your TBR, staring at you every time you go near your bookshelves to pick something out.  The guilt of its unread-ness builds inside of you, but the inclination to actually open it and read it never quite matches the initial rush of blood to the head that saw you buy it in the first place.

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#297: Murder in the Museum (1938) by John Rowland

/ JJ / 18 Comments

26077477It is understandable that we, as readers, hope for everything we read to be good.  However, it is also unlikely that this will be the case, and so sometimes we have to make do with what a book actually offers us.  It may not be good, so is it interesting?  Does it tell us something new about the era in which it is set or was written?  Failing that, is it at least enjoyable?  Murder in the Museum (1938), the first of two John Rowland books published as part of the British Library Crime Classics series, is not especially good, but it is a lot of fun.  And I’ll take fun.  Fun is underrated.  I could broadside this for its many flaws and failings, but the truth is I ripped through it, didn’t take it too seriously, and had a great time.

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#295: Fell/Murder – Ranking the First Ten Gideon Fell Novels (1933-39) by John Dickson Carr

/ JJ / 67 Comments

Fell Ten

Having recently read The Arabian Nights Murder (1936) by John Dickson Carr, the time seems ripe to rank the first ten of Carr’s novels featuring the gargantuan Dr. Gideon Fell.  Why the first 10?  Well, we’re a decimal-obsessed society, and I’ve not read the eleventh, so this seems a natural jumping-off point.  It’s not technically a top ten, right?  It’s a little more interesting than that…right?

And so, in reverse order, I give you…

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#294: The Arabian Nights Murder (1936) by John Dickson Carr

/ JJ / 37 Comments

Arabian NightsIn the orchestra of John Dickson Carr’s detective fiction, his early years from It Walks by Night (1930) up to arguably The Arabian Nights Murder (1936) are very much the accordion section.  Events occur in concentrated bursts, with clues and characters squeezed together to make the notes of the plot emerge, only to then be drawn apart before inexorably squeezing together again for another dense exposit you must pore over in order to follow the necessary developments.  From The Punch and Judy Murders (1936) until the 1940s he wrote in the fine, clean, overlapping lines of the harp, and then the violins took over… but enough of this analogy, back to this book and the wheeze of a bellows working overtime.

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#293: On Narrowness in Impossible Crimes, via ‘Locked In’ (1939) by E. Charles Vivian

/ JJ / 19 Comments

Miraculous Mysteries

I recently read, with no large amount of pleasure, Evidence in Blue (1938) by E. Charles Vivian.  However, I’m not a man to write someone off after one bad book.  So the presence of a locked room story by Vivian in the Martin Edwards-edited collection of such impossibilities Miraculous Mysteries (2017) from the British Library Crime Classics series was a chance to give him another go.

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#292: Character v Plot 3 – Purpose and Artificiality

/ JJ / 8 Comments

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The second trailer for Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express was released a few days ago.  People are probably furious or something.   Me, I’ve already said everything I intend to about the movie until I actually see it and shall not be discussing it here beyond a few brief mentions, but it got me thinking some about character and plot and so this is a sort of Part Three to follow up on parts One and Two on this topic before.

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#291: Evidence in Blue (1938) by E. Charles Vivian

/ JJ / 12 Comments

Evidence in BlueFinding new authors to read is a curious mix of recommendations and speculation.  I started reading Rupert Penny because he appeared on this list, but then the joy of Max Afford and Norman Berrow followed purely because they were reprinted by the same publisher, Fender Tucker’s Ramble House.  Such an approach has typically gone well, and while the care of my choosing could be a factor here, I prefer to think that it’s because RH generally publish very good — and if not very good then at least interesting — books.  Thus, picking up this book by Vivian at the end of last year was pure “Well, it’s a Ramble House reprint” speculation, and a simple hope to continue my generally good run from them.

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#290: 2 Tuesday Night 2 Bloggers – This Time It’s Personal…

/ JJ / 25 Comments

vector-calendar-tuesday-m-1311

Guys, I miss The Tuesday Night Bloggers; the passing of Agatha Christie’s 127th birthday last week really brought this home to me.  For the uninitiated, the TNBs was essentially an autonomous collective of bloggers who would pick a topic each month and put up a blog post on that topic on, well, the relevant Tuesdays.  It came out of the celebration of Christie’s 125th birthday — I was but a wee nascent glint in the internet’s eye at the time — and continued in various forms up until possibly March or so of this year, since when it seems to’ve been on indefinite hiatus.

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