Reviews

#1064: The Case of the Late Pig (1937) by Margery Allingham

/ JJ / 25 Comments
Case of the Late Pig

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I’m in a confusing place with Margery Allingham.  I definitely read three of her books when I started getting into Golden Age detective fiction, one of which, I’m almost certain, was The Beckoning Lady (1955) and very hard work indeed.  A few years passed, and I next thoroughly enjoyed the amoral ingenuity of Police at the Funeral (1931) before stumbling badly over Flowers for the Judge (1936) and sort of abandoning her, faintly dissatisfied. So when The Case of the Late Pig (1937) passed into my hands, the mere 132 pages of this Penguin edition commended themselves as an opportunity to reacquaint myself with the author and see how things go.

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#1061: Death and the Conjuror (2022) by Tom Mead

/ JJ / 34 Comments
Death and the Conjuror

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Tom Mead is that rare thing these days: an author writing detective fiction in the classic tradition with some actual interest in the classic tradition of detective fiction. When he peppers the text of Death and the Conjuror (2022), his very entertaining and easy-to-read debut novel, with references to the work of R. Austin Freeman, G.K. Chesterton, Melville Davisson Post and others, you know it’s the result of time spent reading the genre rather than a few quick Google searches to give him credibility. And when he plays the games of identity and location as well as he does here, you also know he’s having a joyous time playing in his favourite sandbox…and wonderful it is to see.

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#1058: The Cat Saw Murder (1939) by Dolores Hitchens [a.p.a. by D.B. Olsen]

/ JJ / 7 Comments
Cat Saw Murder

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If, like me, you were dissuaded from reading The Cat Saw Murder (1939) by Dolores Hitchens because the titles brings on the hives of a cozy Cat Catches Criminals caper, rest assured that this is very much not that type of book. The cat does indeed see murder — the surprisingly violent hacking to death of Lily Stickleman in the shabby beachside boarding house where she resides while waiting for an inheritance — but the sleuthing is done by a combination of Lieutenant Stephen Mayhew and the elderly Miss Rachel Murdock. Samantha, the eponymous moggy, provides a clue and a little intrigue of her own, but she’s much more dragged in rather than an essential catalyst (Ithankyou).

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#1055: Owls Don’t Blink (1942) by A.A. Fair

/ JJ / 10 Comments
Owls Don't Blink

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If I remember correctly — and, let’s face it, I probably don’t, since I read them years ago and all out of order — Owls Don’t Blink (1942), the sixth title to feature Erle Stanley Gardner’s irrepressible P.I. duo of Donald Lam and Bertha Cool, starts something of a hot streak for the series. Hired by New York lawyer Emory Hale on behalf of an unknown client to find an ex-model who was last heard of in New Orleans some three years ago, you know Gardner has something special up his sleeve when the resourceful Donald is able to produce the woman within twenty pages. From here, it’s a criss-cross of obscured motives and identities, and enough skulduggery for Yorrick’s remains.

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#1052: The Mysterious Mr. Badman (1934) by W.F. Harvey

/ JJ / 4 Comments
Mysterious Mr Badman

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The expertly-curated British Library Crime Classics series continues to diversify with crowd-pleasing reissues of Anthony Berkeley, Christianna Brand, and John Dickson Carr, never-heard-of-em delights like Family Matters (1933) by Anthony Rolls and Death of Anton (1936) by Alan Melville, and stirring in a Freeman Wills Crofts or a few E.C.R. Loracs along the way.  And The Mysterious Mr. Badman (1934) by W.F. Harvey definitely falls into the middle category, because ask 100 people if they’d heard of it before this reissue and maybe three would say they had, two of whom would be lying to look cool. But a delight it is, and welcome it most certainly is.

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#1050: Teacher Knows Best in A Gun is a Nervous Thing, a.k.a. Ride with the Executioner (1955) by Charlotte Armstrong

/ JJ / 2 Comments

Quite some time ago, I was made a very generous gift of a random selection of old Ellery Queen Mystery Magazines and anthologies and, aside from the odd story, they’ve sat largely unread on my shelves since. Well, no more. From today, they will (probably) make regular appearances on The Invisible Event where longer or notable entries are concerned.

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#1049: The End of Andrew Harrison, a.k.a. The Futile Alibi (1938) by Freeman Wills Crofts

/ JJ / 29 Comments
End of Andrew Harrison

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It’s been a long road to The End of Andrew Harrison, a.k.a. The Futile Alibi (1938) by Freeman Wills Crofts.  Back when I was fairly new to classic era detective fiction in general, and impossible crimes in particular, I heard rumours of this book — the first I’d ever heard of Crofts — but it turned out to be rather unavailable.  I also heard that Crofts was dull, dull, dull, however, and so spent a long time avoiding him before finally taking the plunge, falling in love with his writing and reading 22 of his novels in broad chronology, in which time Andrew Harrison was reprinted by Harper Collins.  And…that just about brings us up to date.

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