And so, a new-to-me story from Randall Garrett’s Lord Darcy oeuvre, since I definitely didn’t read these last three in this collection at first encounter (no, I’m not sure why).
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#1463: Little Fictions – ‘The Ipswich Phial’ (1976) by Randall Garrett
Upon first encounter, some 15 years ago, I left four of Randall Garrett’s Lord Darcy stories unread for reasons which now elude me; and those reasons seem even more elusive when you realise that the last one I did read was possibly the strongest of the lot.
Continue reading#1460: Little Fictions – ‘The Bitter End’ (1978) by Randall Garrett
Five Tuesdays in June means that I have sufficient time and space to read and write about the five remaining Lord Darcy short stories by Randall Garrett which, given that I reviewed the novel Too Many Magicians (1967) back in January, means the full canon will then be covered on The Invisible Event.
Continue reading#1457: Minor Felonies – The World’s Greatest Detective (2017) by Caroline Carlson
I find my books by various means, but this might be the first time I’ve taken advice from YouTube: this video recommending 15 Criminally Underrated Mystery Books was shared in the Facebook GAD group, and mentioned The World’s Greatest Detective (2017) by Caroline Carlson, with the promise of some impossible crimes amidst the youthful crime-solving…how could I resist?
Continue reading#1454: Minor Felonies – Attack on the Tower of London (2004) by Roy MacGregor
Post-2001, doesn’t a title like Attack on the Tower of London (2004), with the associated implications of terrorism, sound a little beyond the calling of a juvenile ice hockey team?
Continue reading#1451: Minor Felonies – Young Sherlock: Red Leech, a.k.a. Rebel Fire (2010) by Andrew Lane
In a pure coincidence of timing, I read the first of Andrew Lane’s Young Sherlock Holmes novels, Death Cloud (2010), at about the time a series based on the books was announced by Amazon. The trailer, however, seemed to share ‘teenage Sherlock Holmes’ with the books — “teenage” in Hollywood meaning “played by someone who’s nearly 30 years old” — and nothing more, so let’s get onto the second volume today instead.
Continue reading#1448: Minor Felonies – The Big Bad Wolf Murder (2025) by P.G. Bell
P.G. Bell’s first Fairy Tale Murder Mystery, The Beanstalk Murder (2024), was so damn entertaining and so well-plotted that you bet I was going to jump on the follow-up, The Big Bad Wolf Murder (2025), as soon as I could. Indeed, as a glimpse behind the blogging curtain: I read this second book before the review of that first one had even appeared on the blog. Hairy Aaron!
Continue reading#1445: Going Home – The Vanished Man (2003) by Jeffery Deaver
One final visit for this month to the reading of my past, as I revisit the crime and thriller novels which paved the way into the Golden Age obsession that fills my every waking moment.
Continue reading#1442: Going Home – False Memory (1999) by Dean Koontz
I was quite excited to return to this week’s Going Home book, since it feeds into a key part of what I’ve come to enjoy about classic mystery and detective fiction.
Continue reading#1439: Going Home – The Concrete Blonde (1994) by Michael Connelly
Another crime novel from my early-2000s reading that put me on the path to classic detection and hence this blog.
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