Blog fun

#250: The Verdict of Us All 5: A Book You Love by An Author You Don’t…

/ JJ / 23 Comments

Verdict of Us All

Last year, Kate at CrossExaminingCrime had the grand idea of putting the same question to several GAD bloggers and collecting their responses into one post under the title The Verdict of Us All.  This became a semi-occasional thing that a few different blogs hosted and, given a recent reading experience, I thought I’d mark my quarter-millennial by resurrecting it here to ask the following: Is there an author whose work you generally can’t stand but who has nevertheless written one book you absolutely love?

It turns out the answer is “yes” for some other people, too…

Continue reading →

#249: Is This the Real Life, Is This Just Fantasy? — GAD and ‘Reality’

/ JJ / 21 Comments

GAD Fantasy

A number of different factors — among them Brad’s recent discourse on the dying message, my reading of Tour de Force (1955) by Christianna Brand, and Noah’s previous post on intertextuality in detective fiction — have brought me to the point where I want to ask the question “What is reality in relation to Golden Age Detective (GAD) fiction?”.  Yes, yes, I am a very nerdy man.  You should have guessed this by now.

So, let’s get into it…

Continue reading →

#235: Fair-Play Detective Fiction 101 – What Are the Essential Texts?

/ JJ / 128 Comments

Fair play

Of late, I have done a moderate amount of pontificating here on The Invisible Event about topics related to fair-play detective fiction: first talking about rules, and then trying to explain how I see the idea of disclosure.  Partly this was because it’s the sort of thing I’m happy to do for fun — hello, I’m a nerd — but, in truth, there was a larger intention behind it providing no-one could see any massive flaws in my thinking.

Continue reading →

#229: Carr vs. Christie…the Follow-Up

/ JJ / Leave a comment

carr-vs-christie

Last week we discussed the merits of what all y’all voted the two finest books by John Dickson Carr and Agatha Christie in full spoiler style.  This week, Brad — who magnanimously locked horns with me — is hosting a follow-up where we air yet more of our favourite napery regarding these two and…well, go to his site and check it out…

Come back here next week for another follow-up where we’ll be…nah, I’m kidding.  We’re not going to flog this horse any more.

Are we, Brad?

#213: On Audacity and How to Prepare for It, via John Russell Fearn’s Thy Arm Alone (1947)

/ JJ / 27 Comments

thy-arm-alone

Sometimes someone is so taken with a book that you can’t help but stop and take notice yourself.  So when TomCat was full of praise for this impossible crime, it hopped up my TBR pile with the effortlessness of a mountain goat on an escalator.  I was promised audacity, and I love a bit of authorly audaciousness where an impossible crime is concerned — indeed, the boldness of such schemes as employed in John Dickson Carr’s The Man Who Could not Shudder (1940) or John Saldek’s Invisible Green (1977) make them firm favourites of mine, and if a book of this ilk has chutzpah enough to make TomCat and John Norris sit up and pay attention, then surely you must be onto a good thing.

Continue reading →