Author: JJ
#188: Five to Try – Debunked Séances in Detective Fiction
Flying lute? Check. Ghostly disembodied hand? Check. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, let’s call this meeting to order…
Following a recent post on John Dickson Carr’s The Lost Gallows over at The Green Capsule, I was reminded of just how much I love a séance in fiction. Now, to be clear, I’m with Charlie Brooker on psychics and other such manipulative awfulness, but have a real love of sleight of hand and up-close magic (as perhaps evinced in my enthusiasm for fair play detective fiction and impossible crimes therein) and a debunked séance is often a great way to explore the little ways a set of circumstances can be misrepresented, and often some fascinating insights come out of it.
So, here are five great séances from detective fiction, alpabetically by author.
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#187: Policeman in Armour (1937) by Rupert Penny
I am swiftly approaching the point where I will be reluctant to read any more Rupert Penny; he published a mere nine books, of which Policeman in Armour is the fifth I’ve read, and I don’t want to find myself in a situation where there’s no new Rupert Penny to pick up and lose myself in. I still have plenty to be getting on with — half of Carr, 10 Christies, 17 Berrows, countless undiscovered gems — but Penny holds a special significance for me because he is such a superb classicist and produced detective plots that walk the fine line between several stools without tripping and getting trapped between any of them (I apologise for any pain that mixed metaphor may have caused you).
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#186: On Daemons’ Roost (2016) and the Sad Decline of Jonathan Creek
Aware of my fondness for the programme itself and an impossible crime in general, people keep asking me what I thought of the recent Jonathan Creek Christmas special ‘Daemons’ Roost’. And I keep having to relive it by telling them. The only sane response is therefore to write it all down here and direct all future enquiries to this post on my blog (which might at least get me some readers…). I apologise in advance. This is not going to be pretty.
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#185: Twisting and Turning Worms Aplenty in The Witness for the Prosecution (2016)
For the second year running, the BBC gave us a Christmastime Agatha Christie adaptation via the pen of Sarah Phelps who — much as with last year’s And Then There Were None — had the common sense to keep the Christie bits that make it so clever and added only where addition was required. So, how was it?
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#184: Vintage Cover Bingo Scavenger Hunt 2016 Round-Up
Having participated in the Vintage Cover Scavenger Bingo run by Bev Hankin over at My Reader’s Block this year, I’m not delighted with the account I’ve given of myself, but it at least sets a bar to improve on in 2017 (and I did have two months off, after all…).
Since Christmas has played havoc with my reading, I’m not done with Rupert Penny’s Policeman in Armour yet (sorry about that) and since I’m therefore not going to review anything else in 2016 I can do my round-up of the 48 (out of 75) objects I found for the Bingo instead…
#183: Merry Christmas!
Whether Christmas is your thing or not, I hope everyone has a relaxed, happy, restful, and caring period of calm at the heart of this festive season. It’s great fun discussing books here (and elsewhere) with all y’all, and I wish for you all a solicitous few days to ensure you’re taking care of yourselves out there.
And then get back reading, dudes. There’s still so much to talk about…
Merry Christmas, everybody; see you soon.
#182: The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929) by Anthony Berkeley
The setup of The Poisoned Chocolates Case is rightly very famous: a lady is killed when a box of chocolates given to her husband by another member of his gentlemen’s club — who himself received them unsolicited through the mail — turns out to have been laced with poison. The police, with no culprit in sight, allow six amateurs with a fascination for real life crimes to theorise and present their own solutions, each one appearing watertight until someone finds a flaw that brings the edifice down. For this conceit alone, and the genius way Berkeley uses his different sleuths to unpick the sparse and simple known facts, this book has passed into near-legend in detective fiction circles.
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#181: The Tuesday Night Bloggers – Strangers in Strange Lands: When East Comes West…
