The mystery for younger readers I reviewed last week was big on world and short on plot; this week, we redress that balance.
Continue reading#772: Minor Felonies – Vanished! (2017) by James Ponti
The Tuesday Night Bloggers
#769: Minor Felonies – Truly Devious (2018) by Maureen Johnson
It has long been a belief of mine that science fiction invented the interlinked trilogy — rarely seen better on the page than in Isaac Asimov’s first Foundation troika (1951-53) and on the screen in Episodes IV-VI (1977-83) of the Star Wars movie universe.
Continue reading#766: Little Fictions – Darkness at Dawn [ss] (1988) by Cornell Woolrich
Don’t be put off by the publication date — we’re deep in the Golden Age here, with the twelve stories in this collection originally published in 1934 and 1935. And, oh my, what a collection it is.
Continue reading#763: Little Fictions – Death and the Professor [ss] (1961) by E. & M.A. Radford
A surgeon, a policeman, a psychiatrist, a mathematician, and a pathologist walk into a club — the foundation not of some esoteric wit but instead the Dilettante’s Club, a dinner-and-discussion group who meet fortnightly for their own entertainment. And when Professor Marcus Stubbs joins their number, those discussions take a frequent turn into the realm of the impossible crime.
Continue reading#760: Little Fictions – The Mind of Mr. J.G. Reeder, a.k.a. The Murder Book of J.G. Reeder [ss] (1925) by Edgar Wallace
This week, eight stories featuring the unprepossessing Mr. John G. Reeder from the restlessly creative mind of Edgar Wallace.
Continue reading#757: Little Fictions – The Nine Mile Walk and Other Stories [ss] (1968) by Harry Kemelman
A little while back, I decided that short story collections don’t really merit an overall star rating since the stories should be considered individually. Thus, I stopped reviewing them on Thursdays and moved them to weekends. The upshot of this is that I now have a lot of unreviewed short story collections, so I’m going to pick out four single-author bundles to look at on Tuesdays in February. And first up is this collection recommended to me by Christian of Mysteries, Short and Sweet.
Continue reading#754: Mining Mount TBR – The King and the Corpse (1949) by Max Murray
This month of Tuesday posts picking through the more neglected corners of my TBR has now become the GAD equivalent of a bride’s wedding outfit: something dull, something shitty, something loopy, and finally something witty.
Continue reading#751: Mining Mount TBR – A Corpse Without a Clue (1944) by R.A.J. Walling
#748: Mining Mount TBR – The Curse of Khatra (1947) by T.C.H. Jacobs
Picture the scene: it is 1946 and T.C.H. Jacobs is discussing his next novel with his agent, lamenting “So many types of detective story have successful during this Golden Age, in what style should I write? Some scientific detection? A police procedural? A pulpy shocker? Should I have an amateur detective? A gentleman detective? A criminal gang?” and his agent leans forwards slowly, steeples his fingers, and says simply, “Yes”.
Continue reading#745: Mining Mount TBR – Menace for Doctor Morelle (1947) by Ernest Dudley
The joy of running this blog comes not from the screaming fans that hound my every step, nor the piles of untaxable cash that seemed to just appear from day one, but from the discussions it and others allow me to have with like-, and sometimes unlike-, minded enthusiasts of Golden Age detective fiction. What to do, then, when I have a book that probably no-one is going to want to talk about?
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The Invisible Event 