#207: Five GAD Collaborations That Would Have Been Awesome

collaboration

I’ve read a lot of comics in my time, I spend many hours online enthusiastically contributing to discussions about a moderately obscure area of popular culture — hell, I even wear glasses.  I must, therefore, be a nerd.  I mean, sure, I don’t own a single t-shirt emblazoned with some hilarious-but-obscure quote or image, but that’s mainly because the kinds of things I’d put on a t-shirt — “Hairy Aaron!” or, say, a decal of Gideon Fell above the legend Don’t irritate a man who knows 142 ways to kill you without being the same room — no-one else wants on a t-shirt and so they’re not available to buy.

Continue reading

#201: For Carr vs. Christie – Start Your Engines…

carr-vs-christie

Okay, the results of the vote for your collective choice of the best individual novel by John Dickson Carr and Agatha Christie are in, and it’s now fixed which two need to be read for the head-to-head comparison that Brad and I have planned for April.  So, after over 100 votes in each poll (though not a multiple of three in either case, despite having three votes per author…) counting down the top five, we have…

Continue reading

#184: Vintage Cover Bingo Scavenger Hunt 2016 Round-Up

Having participated in the Vintage Cover Scavenger Bingo run by Bev Hankin over at My Reader’s Block this year, I’m not delighted with the account I’ve given of myself, but it at least sets a bar to improve on in 2017 (and I did have two months off, after all…).

Since Christmas has played havoc with my reading, I’m not done with Rupert Penny’s Policeman in Armour yet (sorry about that) and since I’m therefore not going to review anything else in 2016 I can do my round-up of the 48 (out of 75) objects I found for the Bingo instead…

Continue reading

#177: Spoiler Warning – Coming in January: The Ten Teacups, a.k.a. The Peacock Feather Murders (1937) by Carter Dickson

ten-teacups-peacock-feather

Given that so much time spent discussing mystery fiction is devoted to edging carefully around the precise plot points on which such enterprises are founded, I thought I’d give you fair warning that Puzzle Doctor and I are going to be abandoning this approach next month in looking at the 1937 impossible crime novel The Ten Teacups/The Peacock Feather Murders by John Dickson Carr, published under his Carter Dickson secret identity.

Continue reading

#170: Dark of the Mood – Atmosphere in the Work of John Dickson Carr

carr-covers

Half a lifetime ago, I put up this post looking at the consistency of language across the Sherlock Holmes canon, and for my first post today in celebration of John Dickson Carr’s 110th birthday — a second post will be going up later today, then a round-up of the posts I’m kinda just trusting that other people are doing will go up this evening — I thought I’d utilise a similar approach to analyse an aspect of Carr’s writing that is often much-discussed: his use of atmosphere.

Continue reading

#166: One Week Until #Carr110 – Some Links to Help You…

carr-covers

The time is nearly upon us!  Banish next week’s post-Thanksgiving blues by getting involved in the celebration of John Dickson Carr’s 110th birthday on 30th November.  Post an article, review, discussion piece, poem, comparison, or anything you damn well please about Carr, put the link in the comments here, and I’ll collect everything together for  summing-up post at the end of the day.

Continue reading