Over one hundred names were nominated. The top 64 have been sifted. Today we begin the process of finding the favourite sleuth of detective fiction’s Golden Age (precise dates pending, but we’re saying 1920-45).
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Here’s something I’ve been curious about, and probably only now have the time and energy to think about organising: who is the most popular detective character of the genre’s Golden Age?
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With the sixteenth to twenty-fourth novels by Freeman Wills Crofts to feature his series detective Chief Inspector Joseph French due to be republished between now and January 2023 (well, #18, Antidote to Venom (1938), is already available from the British Library) it occurred to me that people might be looking for advice about the first fifteen — all, incredibly, in print.
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When I took a bit of a blogging break at the end of 2021, I finally found time to watch some TV and caught up with the first two seasons of Castle, the US mystery show starring Nathan Fillion as hyper-successful crime writer Richard Castle and Stana Katic as Kate Beckett, the NYPD detective he ends up shadowing for ‘research’ (which swiftly develops into a ‘will they/won’t they’ thing — spoilers: they definitely will, probably in season 5).
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I promise this blog isn’t going to devolve into me pushing my debut novel — The Red Death Murders (2022) by Jim Noy, now available at your local Amazon site — every weekend, but please bear with me while I talk about it from time to time. And given that it leans heavily into many of the tropes that betoken the Golden Age, I thought I’d discuss a few of them today — no spoilers, obvs.
Continue readingHello, everyone. I’ve written a novel. It’s called The Red Death Murders (2022), and should appear on your local Amazon franchise at any minute if it hasn’t already.
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If you’ve met me, firstly I apologise, and secondly it’ll come as no surprise that I have a tendency to ruminate on that which many others pass over without so much as a backward glance. Previously this resulted in me writing something in the region of 25,000 words on the Knox Decalogue, and today I’m going to turn my eye upon the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstones list. Prepare thyself…
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The final week of the Death of the Reader boys picking their way through Murder on the Way! (1935) by Theodore Roscoe, and the reckoning is upon us: how close were they with the solution they proposed in last week’s show?
Continue readingAnother Monday, another chance to listen to Felix ‘Flex’ Flexerton and Herman ‘Herds’ Herdley as they read Murder on the Way! (1935) by Theodore Roscoe in sections and I attempt to entice them away from the confident groove they settled into last week.
Continue readingYou may remember that I recently reviewed Murder on the Way! (1935) by Theodore Roscoe — but what you won’t know until now is that I was rereading it in part because I’d been invited onto Death of the Reader to talk about it.
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The Invisible Event 