For the restraint alone in not calling this dog-as-detective story an ‘im-paw-sible crime’, this 14th entry in the Sebastian (Super Sleuth) series by Mary Blount Christian deserves checking out.
Continue reading
While I wasn’t entirely sure what the focus of this blog would be when I started it — I knew there would be impossible crimes, but had no idea otherwise — I’d have been surprised if you told me I’d end up doing so much reading of and writing about mysteries for 9 to 12 year-olds.
Continue reading
I’ll level with you: I’d been kind of dreading having to reread Case without a Corpse (1937), Leo Bruce’s second novel to feature the blunt-but-far-from-dense Sergeant William Beef. Memory told me that the novel was over-long, with a large proportion of it spent on an almost entirely pointless amount of investigation that any sensible reader would know is wasted effort because (rot13 for spoilers, if you’ve never read a book before) boivbhfyl Orrs unf gb or gur bar gb cebivqr gur pbeerpg fbyhgvba ng gur raq. And in rereading it for the first time in about 15 years I’ve discovered that, once again, my memory has been a little unkind, and the book holds up far better than anticipated.
Having fared wonderfully with Enid Blyton’s Five Find-Outers (and Dog), and faring as I am less well with the first three so-called ‘R’ Mysteries I’ve read so far, I was intrigued to see mentioned online that one of the Secret Seven novels was more of a clue-based mystery than its brethren…and so to the appropriately(?)-named Secret Seven Mystery (1957) does my attention turn.
Continue reading
Once again, now for a third time, I have been misled by these House of Stratus editions about the nature of a book by R. Austin Freeman. The cover of When Rogue’s Fall Out, a.k.a. Dr. Thorndyke’s Discovery (1932) promises “Three Books in One, starring Dr. Thorndyke”, leading me to surmise that these were three novellas. Not so. As it happens, Book 1 – The Three Rogues, Book 2 – Inspector Badger Deceased, and Book 3 – The Missing Collector are simply parts of one novel-length story, and I approached the end of The Three Rogues very confused about the apparent lack of impending conclusion and the distinct absence of Thorndyke from its pages.
Randall Garrett’s Lord Darcy stories, where murder and magic mingle in an alternate-history Europe, being a closed set, I had never really thought to consider the gaps between them before now.
Continue reading
I recently lamented that I don’t really do much in the way of think-pieces on The Invisible Event any more, and some of you in the comments were like ‘Yeah, so do them again, then, idiot’. So here goes.
Continue reading
With the British Library having cracked the decades-old problem of getting Christianna Brand republished — they’ve now put out six of her novels, with a seventh, her debut Death in High Heels (1941), to follow in November — it’s wonderful to dive into Cat and Mouse (1950) and find something decidedly uncommon that speaks of an author wanting to challenge herself after penning some of the best small-cast, twist-ending novels in the genre. The focus on an almost Gothic level of mood and suspense here puts one in mind of a similar attempt in Telefair, a.k.a. Yesterday’s Murder (1942) by Craig Rice; but Brand wins, because she also remembered to include a plot.
A gap of six years followed Randall Garrett’s sole Lord Darcy novel Too Many Magicians (1967) before he returned to the universe. Was that time well-spent in creating another strong fusion of mystery, magic, and murder?
Continue reading
The Invisible Event 