One final dive into the crystal-clear waters of talking about a mystery novel without having to carefully avoid the details — here are Brad, Moira, and myself discussing Mrs. McGinty’s Dead (1952) by Agatha Christie.
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I don’t normally read two books by the same author within at least a few months of each other, but I so enjoyed J.J. Connington’s criminous debut Death at Swaythling Court (1926) back in September that I was honestly champing at the bit to get back to more of his work. The Dangerfield Talisman, then, (1926) is Connington’s follow-up to Swaythling, with a completely new setting, cast, and conundrum. And Connington himself appears to have been equally keen to get to this one, possibly writing it in a mere seven weeks…and, if that was the case, it’s difficult not to wish that he’d spent a little longer over it.
This week, nine tales of criminous and/or eerie happenings written by Hirai Tarō who, under the name Edogawa Rampo, is widely acknowledged as the godfather of Japanese mystery writing.
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And then there were 32 — the first round of this vote to find the most popular sleuth of detective fiction’s Golden Age having whittled the original 64 names down to half that number, and the votes available for one week from today due to halve it again. So, who survived and who is out of the running?
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Both versions of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934/1956) contain excellent scenes in which a killer takes aim at their target in the Royal Albert Hall while the music builds ominously. Sebastian Farr’s Death on the Down Beat (1941) utilises the same idea, but transfers it to an orchestral performance of Richard Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben in the fictional northern city of Maningpool and picks up after the killing, asking what would happen if the murder of an unpopular conductor in such circumstances was investigated a weary detective who just wants to get home to his wife and young children and finds himself frustrated at almost every turn by the intrusion by self-important local types.
Another author exploring the spOooOOoOky side, with rational solutions just as likely as ghosts and spectres. WooOOoOooOoo, etc.
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You may remember — and I won’t blame you if you don’t — that back in October 2019 I was lucky enough to get cover designer Abi Salvesen to explain her process in researching and creating the covers for two John Dickson Carr reprints put out by Polygon Books.
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Accompanying an architect in an examination of the faded ancestral pile of Cranbury Hall, prim solicitor Arthur Gilroy happens upon his wastrel half brother Oliver, with whom he has an interview later that evening, who is rather elliptical about the reason for his presence. The two part on not unfriendly terms and, soon after, a shot rings out that is attributed to poachers taking liberties on the ownerless land. But when Oliver fails to show up for their meeting, Arthur begins to suspect that “some mysterious tragedy had occurred”…and he might be right, since that shot turns out to have been merely the first attempt on Oliver’s life.
With the annual Bodies from the Library collections, which have brought long out-of-print stories of crime and detection back to public awareness, proving rightly popular, editor Tony Medawar turns his attention to another facet of genre fiction with the Ghosts from the Library (2022) collection, in which authors (mostly) better known for their stories of crime and detection have a go at generating some supernatural chills instead.
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Two Paul Halter books remain from my pre-blog my life, meaning I’ve read them but not put my thoughts down anywhere. Let us use this month of phantoms and superstition, then, to return to The Demon of Dartmoor (1993, tr. 2012).
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