#1253: Neck and Neck (1951) by Leo Bruce

February 6, 2025December 18, 2025 / JJ / 4 Comments

I should have loved Neck and Neck (1951), chronologically the seventh of eight Sergeant Beef novel by Leo Bruce: after all, Kate at Cross-Examining Crime placed it as the sixth-best overall, and we’re nothing if not contrary in our opinions: she has the excellent Case for Sergeant Beef (1947) in seventh place, worse than this — a sure sign this is in fact a superb and under-appreciated gem. Alas, apart from the occasionally adept turn of phrase and a few ideas, this is pretty torpid stuff, in no way justifying the four-year gap between titles in this series…unless it took Bruce that long to write because he kept getting so bored with it himself.

Continue reading →

#1252: A Little Help for My Friends – Finding a Modern Locked Room Mystery for TomCat Attempt #26: Death on the Lusitania (2024) by R.L. Graham

February 1, 2025January 28, 2025 / JJ / 2 Comments

And so we start the second quarter-century of modern impossible crime novels which we’re no longer pretending I read solely for TomCat‘s benefit. Spoilers: I’m something of a fan of the impossible crime, so I actually read these because I’m hoping to find good modern examples of the form for myself — gasp!

Continue reading →

#1251: The Case of the Gilded Fly, a.k.a. Obsequies at Oxford (1944) by Edmund Crispin

January 30, 2025January 29, 2025 / JJ / 4 Comments

Among the five books I have reread for Thursday reviews this January, The Case of the Gilded Fly (1944), the debut of the composer Bruce Montgomery under the name Edmund Crispin, is unique in that I wasn’t completely sure I could remember the guilty party. The method by which our corpse finds itself shot in a room to which there was no access and no open windows through which a bullet could be fired was dimly in my brain somewhere, but I had the very enjoyable experience of rereading something and being able to treat it as a genuine problem…trying to work out if my suspicions came from dim remembrance of the solution or were merely smelly fish. So that was fun.

Continue reading →

#1250: “The mere facts are obvious enough; it is their interpretation that yields the knowledge.” – The Puzzle Lock [ss] (1925) by R. Austin Freeman

January 25, 2025January 10, 2025 / JJ / 2 Comments

The last time I read a book by Richard Austin Freeman, my House of Stratus edition told me it was a collection of short stories only for it to turn out to be a novel. So it’s fitting that my next encounter with Dr. John Thorndyke should reverse the situation and what is pitched on the back cover as a novel turn out to be a collection of short stories.

Continue reading →

#1249: Nine Times Nine (1940) by Anthony Boucher [a.p.a. by H.H. Holmes]

January 23, 2025January 14, 2025 / JJ / 11 Comments

“A man is shot in a room from which, apparently, no one could have made an exit. Now what’s the first rational possibility that strikes you?”. It is the shooting of Wolfe Harrigan which Detective Lieutenant Terrence Marshall must solve: rationalist and exposure of religious chicanery Harrigan having apparently been shot by Ahasver, the yellow robe-wearing, centuries-old Wandering Jew who leads the Children of Light church in Los Angeles…and was on stage at the time of said shooting. And when the “rankly fantastic notion of a secret passageway” in Harrigan’s study is dismissed, what possible explanation can there be? Men don’t just vanish into thin air…

Continue reading →

#1247: The Frightened Stiff (1942) by Kelley Roos

January 16, 2025December 28, 2024 / JJ / 5 Comments

“I stood staring about the room, and the first disadvantage of living in a basement apartment occurred to me. Jumping from a window would bring no release”. The much-missed Rue Morgue Press reprinted only four Jeff and Haila Troy novels from husband-and-wife team Kelley Roos. The Frightened Stiff (1942), the third, opens magnificently and wastes barely a word right up to THE END, so let me say this now: someone needs to reprint this series. Not a few selected titles as we’d likely get from the (excellent) American Mystery Classics range, but the whole kit and caboodle. Sure, some will be better than others, but I refuse to believe that they don’t deserve rediscovery.

Continue reading →

#1246: There’s Somethin’ Strange in the Neighborhood in The Secret of the Haunted Mirror (1974) by M.V. Carey

January 11, 2025January 10, 2025 / JJ / Leave a comment

A twenty-first outing for Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw, and Bob Andrews, and the fourth to be written by Mary Virginia Carey, The Secret of the Haunted Mirror (1974) is another fast-paced and engaging turn for The Three Investigators, even if it doesn’t quite hit the highs that this series or this author have achieved before now.

Continue reading →

#1245: Peril at End House (1932) by Agatha Christie

January 9, 2025December 10, 2024 / JJ / 22 Comments

Thursdays in January, I have decided — to get me through the start of year meh — are going to be books I loved before blogging and now want to revisit to get some thoughts on record. Which brings us to Peril at End House (1932) by Agatha Christie, which I picked as one of my 10 Favourite Mysteries of the 1930s before thinking ‘Hmmm, I should probably reread that to see if it stands up’. So, 20+ years later, here I am again. And, y’know what? While it has a few flaws that I would have been less awake to on first reading, I had a great time with this second visit: it’s fast, crammed with incident, and holds up in all the ways I remembered. Man, this project is off to a strong start.

Continue reading →

#1243: The Judas Window, a.k.a. The Crossbow Murder (1938) by Carter Dickson

January 2, 2025April 11, 2025 / JJ / 10 Comments

One of many classic detection titles I read before I started this blog, The Judas Window (1938) is arguably among the most popular books John Dickson Carr ever wrote, under his nom de plume Carter Dickson or otherwise. The seventh book to feature his barrister-detective Sir Henry ‘H.M.’ Merrivale, and the only time H.M. enters the courtroom in all his cases, this was actually the first Merrivale book I read, way back when, and so a revisit seemed on the cards, especially with the British Library Crime Classics adding Dickson’s The Ten Teacups, a.k.a. The Peacock Feather Murders (1937) to their stable next month. Might this one follow suit? Lord knows it deserves to.

Continue reading →

#1242: “Nothing appals me more than the criminal mind.” – Four Square Jane (1929) by Edgar Wallace

December 28, 2024December 10, 2024 / JJ / 1 Comment

First brought to my attention when one of its escapades was included in the Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime [ss] (2009), Four Square Jane (1929) by Edgar Wallace is a novel in reality comprising a series of separate adventures of our eponymous thief as she seeks to relieve the wealthy of their property in the interests of charitable endeavours.

Continue reading →