Reviews

#1121: Follow As the Night, a.k.a. Your Loving Victim (1950) by Pat McGerr [a.p.a. by Patricia McGerr]

/ JJ / 7 Comments
Follow as the Night

star filledstar filledstarsstarsstars
Having finally achieved all he has so long dreamed of, Larry Rock has just one lingering problem: one of the women from his chequered past must die in order to not stand in the way of his continued success. Realising that the balcony of his swank new apartment represents the perfect opportunity to kill someone and make it look like an accident, Larry throws a dinner party and invites his ex-wife, his soon-to-be ex-wife, his mistress, and his fiancée…and the whole city sits back and waits for the fur to fly while we, the reader, wait to find out whose body it was that dropped out of the sky in the prologue. As set-ups go, Follow As the Night (1950) by Pat McGerr takes some beating.

Continue reading →

#1118: Through the Walls (1937) by Noël Vindry [trans. John Pugmire 2021]

/ JJ / 8 Comments
Through the Walls

star filledstar filledstar filledstarsstars
Full disclosure, this is the second time I’ve read Through the Walls (1937, tr. 2021) by Noel Vindry, but I was on blog hiatus at first encounter, so here’s a chance to get my thoughts on record. Similar to The Howling Beast (1934, tr. 2016), this sees Vindry’s series examining magistrate M. Allou consulted by someone who has lived through baffling events, only for Allou to give some meaning to the apparent impossibilities at the end. The setup here is slightly less enticing — someone in apparently breaking into Pierre Sertat’s house at night and searching it carelessly enough to leave things just out of place enough for Sertat to notice — but the patterns that Vindry spins are wonderful, even if not all the answers are as convincing as we’d like.

Continue reading →

#1116: “People don’t just disappear into thin air.” – Wheels Within Wheels in The Lady Vanishes (1938) [Scr. Sidney Gilliatt & Frank Launder; Dir. Alfred Hitchcock]

/ JJ / 5 Comments

Like a lot of people, I’m sure, I got on a classic movie kick in my teenage years and watched many of the greats, including much of Alfred Hitchcock’s work. It is only recently reading The Wheel Spins (1936) by Ethel Lina White, however, that brings me back to Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes (1938) for the first time in over two decades.

Continue reading →

#1115: The Wheel Spins, a.k.a. The Lady Vanishes (1936) by Ethel Lina White

/ JJ / 8 Comments
Wheel Spins

star filledstar filledstar filledstar filledstars
Young Iris Carr is travelling back to England alone when she is befriended by governess Winifred Froy; taking tea in the dining car of their train, they return to their carriage, where Iris falls asleep. Upon awakening, she finds Miss Froy has disappeared and, more confusingly, that all the forriners sharing the compartment insist there never was such a lady to begin with. Might the attack of sunstroke Iris suffered on the platform before boarding be to blame, or might there be a more sinister explanation? Thus The Wheel Spins (1936) walks in the same furrow as a good many suspense stories, not least Phantom Lady (1942) by Cornell Woolrich and the Jodie Foster-starring Flightplan (2005).

Continue reading →

#1112: Fatal Venture, a.k.a. Tragedy in the Hollow (1939) by Freeman Wills Crofts

/ JJ / 4 Comments
Fatal Venture

star filledstar filledstar filledstar filledstars
Fatal Venture (1939) represents, by my count, the ninth time in twenty-three books that Freeman Wills Crofts has devised a criminal scheme which contains a significant strain of maritime malfeasance. Compared to the mere brace involving railway timetables, you have to wonder why he’s seen as the Timbletable King rather than the Wizard of the Waterways — hell, even these excellent Harper Collins reissues make a point of highlighting his use of railway timetables, so you have to wonder if that myth will ever die. Never mind, this is still superb; highlighting why Crofts has fallen by the wayside compared to some of his peers, perhaps, but enjoyable, clever, and surprising along with it.

Continue reading →

#1111: Mining Mount TBR – Death on the Double (1957) by Henry Kane

/ JJ / 5 Comments

I often find myself in possession books with no idea why I bought them — there was a good reason at the time, or a recommendation from a reliable source, but damned if I can remember it now. And thus, with my motivation to read them forgotten, they linger on my TBR making me feel guilty…so for Tuesdays this month I’m again plucking four from obscurity and hoping for the best.

Continue reading →

#1109: The Alarm of the Black Cat (1942) by Dolores Hitchens [a.p.a. by D.B. Olsen]

/ JJ / 12 Comments
Alarm Black Cat

star filledstar filledstar filledstarsstars
The Cat Saw Murder (1939), Dolores Hitchens’ first book featuring septuagenarian spinster sleuth Rachel Murdock, saw Miss Rachel move into some vacant accommodation following a vague suspicion only for murder to occur and our protagonist to slowly put together the pieces based on her observation of the sundry types living around her, achieved with the help of her black cat Samantha. The Alarm of the Black Cat (1941), the second Miss Rachel novel, also does this, and exposes what I feel might be a recurrent flaw in this series going forward: namely that Hitchens is superb at suspense, but sorely lacks when it comes to plot construction and detection.

Continue reading →