A big game hunter, an explorer, and a master sharpshooter attend a magic show while on a cruise…not the setup of a disappointing joke, but rather the core idea at the centre of ‘The Hand is Quicker than the Eye’, a.k.a. ‘Lester Leith, Magician’ (1939), the fifth and final story collected in The Amazing Adventures of Lester Leith (1980).
Continue readingAnother tale of professional thief Lester Leith (hey, that rhymes…!), and another impossible crime. Who knew that Erle Stanley Gardner dabbled in the best subgenre in the world so frequently?
Continue readingI’m very much enjoying the company of Lester Leith, Erle Stanley Gardner’s gentleman scoundrel who, having extracted from criminals their ill-gotten gains, takes a small cut and passes the balance onto worthy causes.
Continue readingSend a thief to catch a thief, eh? And then try to catch that second thief and frame him for the theft done by the original thief? Sir, you’re not playing very fairly with Lester Leith.
Continue readingFive Tuesdays in August, five stories about gentleman scoundrel Lester Leith from the pen of Erle Stanley Gardner — synergy.
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We’ve all wanted to solve a ‘footprints in the sand/snow/dust’ mystery, right? Well, here’s your chance…
Continue readingA shorter mystery from The Book of Clues (1984) from the excellent John Sladek, and pay attention to the picture this week…
Continue readingAnother week, another mini-mystery from the pen of one of the genre’s great lost names.
Continue readingI’ve said before that detective fiction lost a fine proponent of the form when John Sladek, after two novels and a handful of stories, abandoned the genre in favour of SF. Except, well, he didn’t quite abandon it altogether…
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I’ve been in denial about this moment for a long time. M.G. Leonard and Sam Sedgman have been clear for a while now that their excellent Adventures on Trains series had an endgame in mind and…this is it. With The Arctic Railway Assassin (2022) we reach the (ahem) end of the line.
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The Invisible Event 