The Tuesday Night Bloggers
#359: Minor Felonies – The Secret of the Old Clock (1930) by Carolyn Keene [rev. Harriet Adams 1959]
Well, well, well, even at my time in life there’s still much to be learned. For instance, I did not know that Carolyn Keene, author of the Nancy Drew mysteries, wasn’t an actual person but instead a syndicate a la the Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators authors (the key difference being that they never put any author name on the cover).
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#356: Minor Felonies – Young Robin Brand, Detective (1947) by Freeman Wills Crofts
Image via Facsimile Dust Jackets
The thirty-first novel Freeman Wills Crofts published in his career was this novel for younger readers. Let that sink in a moment. Captain Dryasdust encroaching on Enid Blyton’s territory seems about as likely as Blyton herself trying her hand at Raymond Chandler’s metaphor-laden hard-edged novels of moral decay…the difference being that Crofts actually tried it.
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#351: Golden Age Detection 101 – The Clues
Given their importance to the understanding of the historical impact of the genre, I share here another section of ‘Everythyne I Know About Detectyve Fiction’ (1925) by Admiral Lord Sir Hugh J. Lee Boryng-Payne E.S.P Cantab.
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#348: Golden Age Detection 101 – The Setting
Following on from last week’s unveiling of the previously-unknown ‘Everythyne I Know About Detectyve Fiction’ (1925) by Captain Sir Hugh J. Lee Boryng-Payne Q.C. A.B.V. and his perspectives on the writing of an amateur sleuth, I thought I’d share the second section of this pamphlet on the perks and perils of the setting of a typical GAD novel of detection.
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#345: Golden Age Detection 101 – The Amateur Detective
Recently, scouting the periodicals of the British Library for stories lest I undertake a second Ye Olde Book of Locked Room Conundrums, I found a small pamphlet entitled ‘Everythynge I Know About Detectyve Fiction’ which appears to have been self-published in a single volume around 1925 in an act of vanity by the author Captain Sir Hugh J. Lee Boryng-Payne Q.C. A.B.V. (certainly, on taking it to the desk, it didn’t appear to be on the library’s catalogue, so you may search for it online in vain…).
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#342: Highs & Lows – Tremendous Tricks and Terrible Tropes
I don’t know about you, but I read detective fiction mainly because I find the game-playing fun. If we accept certain components like fair declaration of clues, the killer being someone with whom we are familiar, and the freedom of a genius amateur to wander round crime scenes as a given, there are aspects within this that cause me no end of delight when they occur. Indeed, the fact that I see them present so frequently is part of what keeps me coming back.
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#339: Highs & Lows – Tall Tales and Subterranean Shenanigans
Okay, after three weeks of opinion, and with Tyline Perry’s murder-in-a-coalmine-centred The Owner Lies Dead (1930) up for review this Thursday, let’s have some much-needed objectivity: here is a selection of crimes where altitude plays a part.
Disclaimer: All heights are approximate. And fictional.
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#336: Highs & Lows – Agatha Christie from The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) to Hallowe’en Party (1969)
The Invisible Event 