Thirty stories from the pen of Cyril Hare, an author whose legal-themed novels leave me rather cold, but whose scattered short fiction I have encountered is typically very positive. So a chance to dig deeper into that his miniature plots is to be seized.
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Having researched and written a book in which a woman poisons several people, Victoria Hime inevitably ends up as the prime suspect when someone close to her is poisoned by the same means. The fact that several people came and went from the Himes’ house on the day of the poisoning is the only light offered to Los Angeles detective Lieutenant Richard Tuck, but while the method remains clear there’s the small matter of opportunity and motive…all of which keeps swinging back to Victoria, the case against her “signed, sealed, and delivered” at almost every turn. Except we, the reader, know she didn’t do it…so what really happened?
Another month, another Sherlock Holmes pastiche, this time from the very enjoyable US TV series Elementary (2012-19). My belated discovery of two novelisations in that universe was a source of immediate interest, and so The Ghost Line (2015) by Adam Christopher found its way onto my TBR.
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Following the revelation at the end of my recent review of Case for Three Detectives (1936) by Leo Bruce that I had not read three of sometime-Sergeant William Beef’s later cases, a friend has staged an intervention and leant me Case with Ropes and Rings (1940), Neck and Neck (1951), and Cold Blood (1952). So let’s mop these three up, and then I can turn my eye upon rereading the earlier titles which have not yet made it onto The Invisible Event. Today, the death by hanging of a popular boy at Penshurt public school raises Beef’s suspicion of murder and, figuring that the boy’s wealthy father might be remuneratively grateful, Beef and his chronicler Lionel Townsend descend on Penshurt and begin to investigate.
On the day when the United States of America celebrates its independence, let’s turn our eye upon American author Erle Stanley Gardner, here publishing the ninth novel to feature Bertha Cool and (the triumphant return of) Donald Lam, Give ‘Em the Ax, a.k.a. An Axe to Grind (1944). Having been invalided out of the Navy with tropical fever, Donald is back in America and straight back to work: initially asked to rustle up some dirt on the suspected gold-digging new wife of a businessman, it’s not long before things become unsurprisingly more complex, and the small matter of murder rears its head. How, though, does a car accident which Bertha witnesses play into proceedings?
Comments were made in the, er, comments of my previous Three Investigators review, The Secret of Phantom Lake (1973) regarding an apparently love-it-or-hate-it element to the next title in the series, The Mystery of Monster Mountain (1973) by M.V. Carey. So, well, let’s get into it.
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Shirley Ballas. Richard Coles. Susie Dent. Richard Osman. Robert Rinder. These days, if you want to publish a crime novel, it clearly helps to be a UK media personality. And why not? Publishing’s an uncertain business, and an existing following should hopefully convert into sales — good luck to them, I say. Add to the above journalist, podcaster, TV-version-of-his-podcaster Andrew Hunter Murray, whose third novel, A Beginner’s Guide to Breaking and Entering (2024), finds him crossing into the sort of genre territory that captures my attention. And while not perhaps leaning as hard into logical reasoning as I’d prefer, there’s much here to enjoy.
It is a truth universally accepted that an author with a sizeable output will probably vary their approach from time to time. And so, in his twelfth mystery novel to be published under his J.J. Connington nom de plume, Alfred Walter Stewart clearly decided that what his increasingly accomplished criminous schemes needed was more character — a little more personality on the part of the people affected. And thus The Castleford Conundrum (1932) positively overflows with delightful character beats which really bring the situation to life…except that they come at the expense of the criminous element, which feels lucky to come in second place where the book’s priorities are concerned.
Serendipity brought the superb Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime [ss] (2009) edited by Michael Sims to my awareness, and highlighted Sims’ erudition and excellent coverage of Victorian crime fiction, an era of the genre which is holding an increasing fascination for me. And so the opportunity to read another Sims-edited collection was to be seized with alacrity.
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I’d previously read just one book by Cecil M. Wills, the Ramble House edition of Fatal Accident (1936), about which I remember nothing — though the fact that I didn’t review it might be telling. So when Galileo Publishers sent me an advance copy of Midsummer Murder (1956), I was intrigued to see how it stacked up: one (possibly) poor book does not a bad author make, and Galileo have shown some good taste in their unusual selections to date. And, well, I don’t know quite what to make of this, to be honest — Wills writes charmingly, and the enjoyable plot is communicated in easily-digested prose that flies by…but, equally, there’s a massive flaw at the core of this which can’t have passed by everyone else who’s read it…right?
