The best Sherlock Holmes stories take unusual events and spin them into an interesting and unexpected pattern. And then there are the…less than best.
Continue reading#1139: Little Fictions – ‘The Beryl Coronet’ (1892) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Tuesday Night Bloggers
#1136: Little Fictions – ‘The Noble Bachelor’ (1892) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
For Tuesdays in November we return to the Sherlock Holmes canon, as I continue my self-appointed task of revisiting all the stories featuring the character written by his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle.
Continue reading#1131: Minor Felonies – The Detention Detectives (2023) by Lis Jardine
On one hand, the artwork promoting The Detention Detectives (2023) by Lis Jardine is excessively twee, even by the standards of juvenile fiction; on the other, the author bio mentions that her life has “been shaped by a fierce passion for…Golden Age crime”. Thus, recalling that adage about books and covers, I ventured forth.
Continue reading#1129: Minor Felonies – Lying in the Deep (2023) by Diana Urban
Lying in the Deep (2023) by Diana Urban was brought to my attention by a piece the author wrote on CrimeReads in which she said that she had taken the setup and some “iconic plot beats” from Death on the Nile (1938) by Agatha Christie in order to inform the structure of her own book. Holy lawsuit, Batman, colour me intrigued.
Continue reading#1126: Minor Felonies – The Mystery of the Missing Man (1956) by Enid Blyton
#1123: Minor Felonies – Montgomery Bonbon: Death at the Lighthouse (2023) by Alasdair Beckett-King [ill. Claire Powell]
Everyone enjoys a break from work, but when your job is to turn up somewhere and have a baffling crime occur, how can you guarantee you’re taking time off until after you’ve left? Hercule Poirot, Inspector Cockrill, Sir Henry Merrivale, Nigel Strangeways, and swathes of other classic era detectives have had their holidays interrupted by murder, and to this pantheon we can now add Montgomery Bonbon, he of the indefinable foreign accent and curious physical similarity to a ten year-old girl.
Continue reading#1120: Mining Mount TBR – Murder Points a Finger (1953) by David Alexander
It was probably TomCat’s review of Murder Points a Finger (1953) by David Alexander which first put the book on my radar, but chances of finding it were slim and I’d forgotten any details by the time I did, much to my surprise, run a copy to earth last year.
Continue reading#1117: Mining Mount TBR – Death Knocks Three Times (1949) by Anthony Gilbert
I’ve heard great things about the novels Lucy Beatrice Malleson wrote under the name Anthony Gilbert but, apart from one title in the British Library Crime Classics range, they seem pretty hard to come by. Fortuitously stumbling over an old, musty, collapsing copy of Death Knocks Three Times (1949), I’ve been reluctant to pick it up precisely because of its musty, dilapidated condition…but here goes nothing.
Continue reading#1114: Mining Mount TBR – The Widow’s Cruise (1959) by Nicholas Blake
Nicholas Blake is hardly a dusty and forgotten member of detective fiction’s past, but my experiences with him to date have been so lacking in high spots that the only way I’m going to read The Widow’s Cruise (1959) is by screwing my courage to the sticking place as part of this Mining Mount TBR endeavour. And so here we are.
Continue reading#1111: Mining Mount TBR – Death on the Double (1957) by Henry Kane
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.
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The Invisible Event 