If the genre’s Golden Age had one commendable attribute, it’s that there was no pressure to outdo previous entries in a series by going bigger, louder, or more preposterous with each successive entry.
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This second entry in Marthe Jocelyn’s Aggie Morton series — featuring juvenile sleuths inspired by both Agatha Christie and her arguably most famous creation Hercule Poirot — contains much of the charm that made the series opener stand out, but also falls down in ways that leave me a little underwhelmed.
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I was very much looking forward to celebrating this review as my one hundredth post tagged as a juvenile mystery, making a full century of detective fiction for younger readers on this blog. But then it turns out that this is, like, the 104th and the one hundredth was Peak Peril (2022) by Sharna Jackson back in July. So. Onwards and upwards.
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The Four Corners stories by Theodore Roscoe, concerning mysterious and suspenseful happenings in the so-named town in northern NY, are legitimate masterpieces in setting and tone — and ‘There Are Smiles That Make You Happy’ (1939) is another beautiful example of the storyteller’s craft.
Continue readingRelatively late in his career, Theodore Roscoe wrote a book about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, The Web of Conspiracy (1959), and it’s difficult not to wonder if the seed for that might have been planted in this visit to the fictional town of Four Corners, NY.
Continue readingBack in August, I read the first volume of Theodore Roscoe’s stories set in the fictional town of Four Corners, and enjoyed them so much that I’m back this month for the five tales that comprise Volume 2.
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This first volume of The Complete tales of Jules de Grandin, French detective of the occult, contains 23 stories published between 1925 and 1928. Seabury Quinn was brought to my attention on the GAD Facebook group as an author who, like William Hope Hodgson, would mix in rational solutions to apparently supernatural problems so that you’re never sure what you’re getting. Sounds like fun? Let’s see how these stories stand up to scrutiny.
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The Invisible Event 