I love a round-up post, a chance to reflect on what’s gone in the year before and to look ahead to what the future holds. So, following on from last year’s, here’s my review of bookish things for 2023.
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#1156: We Barred the Windows and the Doors – My Ten Favourite Impossible Crimes
I’ve been moved of late to give some thought as to what my favourite examples of my favourite subgenre of detective fiction could possibly be. And I’m finally willing to commit — so here are, for today at least, my ten favourite impossible crimes in fiction.
Continue reading#1119: Here a Star, and There a Star – My Ten Favourite Ramble House Novels
It looks like I might be making these ‘Ten Favourite…’ lists a thing, having previously done fictional detectives and British Library reissues; today, we turn our attention to the great work done by Ramble House, publishers of an unusual mix of crime and weird fiction.
Continue reading#1083: Five to Try – Elementary, Season 7 (2019)
One final go around for US TV’s modern take on Sherlock Holmes, with Jonny Lee Miller filling the detective’s shoes and Lucy Liu giving us a Watson who’s on something approaching an equal footing with our resident genius.
Continue reading#1080: Our Splendours Are Menagerie – My Ten Favourite ‘New to Me’ British Library Crime Classics
I looked at my ten favourite fictional sleuths a little while ago, and so, in honour of today’s Bodies from the Library conference at the British Library, here are my ten favourite novels that the excellent British Library Crime Classics range introduced me to.
Continue reading#1044: To Foe of Theirs I’m Deadly Foe… – My Ten Favourite Literary Detectives
Perhaps April Fool’s Day isn’t the best scheduling of this post, but the recent experience of dragging my way through Helen Vardon’s Confession (1922) by R. Austin Freeman got me thinking about the literary detectives I’d follow to hell and back, and I figured that it might be worth expanding upon.
Continue reading#1012: The World’s Favourite Golden Age Sleuth – The Result
We started back in August, with readers of this blog nominating sleuths of their choosing to be put into a series of gladiatorial head-to-heads that would result in an overall favourite from detective fiction’s Golden Age, and finally, in January, we have our winner.
Continue reading#1010: A Reading Round-Up for 2022
I last did one of these posts at the end of 2017, and have been rather too busy talking about books to concentrate on such details since, but thought it might be interesting to unpack my reading over 2022 as a way of seeing the year out.
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