Author: JJ

#1368: The Bishop Murder Case (1929) by S.S. van Dine

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Few people are as surprised as me at how much I’ve enjoyed the opening novels of S.S. van Dine’s career. They’re not fair play detection of the sort I’d like, but as an example of rigorous police work alongside an amateur dilettante they’re swiftly-plotted, lightly-written, and a very pleasing way to pass a few hours. And the fourth in the series, The Bishop Murder Case (1929), improves on the previous three in the matter of the killer not being frankly bloody obvious well before the halfway stage. Sure, you have to swallow a few coincidences, but, meh, where would classic detection be without that? Did anyone ever complain that Hercule Poirot or Perry Mason always happened to be on the scene of a murder? Think of what we’d have missed! Kick back and enjoy, that’s what I say.

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#1367: Adventures in Self-Publishing – It’s About Impossible Crime [ss] (2025) by James Scott Byrnside

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After five novels of seemingly impossible crimes explained away with seemingly inexhaustible ingenuity, James Scott Byrnside tackles the far harder shorter form in his latest book, It’s About Impossible Crime (2025), which gives us five stories featuring his most frequent protagonists, Chicago P.I.s Rowan Manory and Walter Williams.

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#1366: “If six people were to die…!” – Kind Hearts and Coronets, a.k.a. Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal (1907) by Roy Horniman

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I was probably 12 or 13 years old when I discovered the seam of (sometimes blackly-) comic movies that came out of London’s Ealing Studios, with Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) and The Ladykillers (1955) being among the most notable as far as Young Jim was concerned. I can’t remember when I found out that Kind Hearts was based on a novel, Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal (1907) by Roy Horniman, but it’s to that book we turn our attentions today.

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#1365: The Killer Question (2025) by Janice Hallett

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You must, at the very least, admire Janice Hallett’s industry, The Killer Question (2025) being her seventh book since she burst onto the crime fiction scene with her debut, The Appeal (2021). It’s difficult not to feel that some of those books could have used a bit of extra time in the writing, but Hallett deserves to be lauded for the way her sort-of-epistolary approach to storytelling and — especially — character-building has shown such great variety in such a short time. And this latest novel, her fifth for older readers, continues to evince much of what makes her successful…and some of the habits she’s picking up which, for this reader at least, stymie her somewhat.

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#1362: The Jealous One (1965) by Celia Fremlin

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Waking from a dream in which she was strangling her attractive new neighbour Lindy, Rosamund Fielding is suddenly confronted by her husband Geoffrey bearing the breathless news that Lindy has disappeared. Is there, then, anything in the all-too-vivid nightmare Rosamund was just having? And exactly how, given their long devotion and many shared perspectives, could someone like Lindy come between the Fieldings in so short a time and thus inspire such jealousy and hatred in the normally placid Rosamund? It is to the book’s credit that Celia Fremlin chooses to devote the first half of The Jealous One (1965) to that second question.

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#1360: “Didn’t we have enough excitement four years ago?” – The Seven Dials Mystery (1929) by Agatha Christie

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In my online book club, discussion turns from time to time to our favourite GAD novels of a particular decade. Having done the 1930s and the 1940s, we turned to the 1920s. And, since there’s an expectation of Agatha Christie being in the mix when discussing favourite GAD titles, I thought I’d return to what I remember to be my favourite from her first decade, The Seven Dials Mystery (1929).

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#1359: Top of the Heap (1952) by A.A. Fair

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Official Case #13 for the Cool & Lam Detective Agency, Top of the Heap (1952) finds A.A. Fair, nom de plume of Erle Stanley Gardner, on slick-but-unmemorable form — mixing ingredients in a way that is at once comfortably familiar for this series yet tries to ring a few changes at the same time. And while it’s certainly not a bad book, for this reader — an avowed fan of Gardner and Fair both — it all sort of fell apart in the closing stages in which so much surmise is piled up that it’s to be wondered whether some sort of meta-textual commentary on the concept of ‘solving’ a case is being offered. It’s not, but, wow, is Donald Lam ever out on a limb or five here, and it shows.

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