Once more unto the breach of Ellery Queen’s 1964 Anthology, with a visit to the famous brownstone on West 35th Street, home of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.
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If I remember correctly — and, let’s face it, I probably don’t, since I read them years ago and all out of order — Owls Don’t Blink (1942), the sixth title to feature Erle Stanley Gardner’s irrepressible P.I. duo of Donald Lam and Bertha Cool, starts something of a hot streak for the series. Hired by New York lawyer Emory Hale on behalf of an unknown client to find an ex-model who was last heard of in New Orleans some three years ago, you know Gardner has something special up his sleeve when the resourceful Donald is able to produce the woman within twenty pages. From here, it’s a criss-cross of obscured motives and identities, and enough skulduggery for Yorrick’s remains.
Mary Virginia Carey would, in time, write more books in the Three Investigators series than any of the four other writers so employed, but got off to a slightly wobbly start with The Mystery of the Flaming Footprints (1971). So will her second title, The Mystery of the Singing Serpent (1972), find her on better form?
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The expertly-curated British Library Crime Classics series continues to diversify with crowd-pleasing reissues of Anthony Berkeley, Christianna Brand, and John Dickson Carr, never-heard-of-em delights like Family Matters (1933) by Anthony Rolls and Death of Anton (1936) by Alan Melville, and stirring in a Freeman Wills Crofts or a few E.C.R. Loracs along the way. And The Mysterious Mr. Badman (1934) by W.F. Harvey definitely falls into the middle category, because ask 100 people if they’d heard of it before this reissue and maybe three would say they had, two of whom would be lying to look cool. But a delight it is, and welcome it most certainly is.
Quite some time ago, I was made a very generous gift of a random selection of old Ellery Queen Mystery Magazines and anthologies and, aside from the odd story, they’ve sat largely unread on my shelves since. Well, no more. From today, they will (probably) make regular appearances on The Invisible Event where longer or notable entries are concerned.
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It’s been a long road to The End of Andrew Harrison, a.k.a. The Futile Alibi (1938) by Freeman Wills Crofts. Back when I was fairly new to classic era detective fiction in general, and impossible crimes in particular, I heard rumours of this book — the first I’d ever heard of Crofts — but it turned out to be rather unavailable. I also heard that Crofts was dull, dull, dull, however, and so spent a long time avoiding him before finally taking the plunge, falling in love with his writing and reading 22 of his novels in broad chronology, in which time Andrew Harrison was reprinted by Harper Collins. And…that just about brings us up to date.
Another week, another reworked tale from Dame Agatha Christie, and another borderline impossibility.
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Eking out these recommended episodes of Elementary, having found a lot of joy in Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) and Dr. Joan Watson (Lucy Liu) solving mysteries in modern day New York, I’m amazed and mildly distressed to have reached the penultimate season already. What am I going to watch when I’m done?
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The Invisible Event 