#524: Spoiler Warning – Coming in July: The Moving Toyshop (1946) by Edmund Crispin
So, with the most recent Spoiler Warning on Tantei Gakuen Q/Detective School Q done, here’s news of the next one…
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#523: Death in a Million Living Rooms, a.k.a. Die Laughing (1951) by Patricia McGerr
Quite apart from having the best damn title ever, Death in a Million Living Rooms (1951) by Patricia McGerr employs one of my favourite conceits of classic-era detection: the Live On Air Murder. With The Dead Are Blind (1937) by Max Afford, Murder in the Melody (1940) by Norman Berrow, and And Be a Villain (1948) by Rex Stout giving us death on the radio, McGerr turns to the television studio to kill her poor victim live in front of the several million who tune in to Podge and Scottie’s weekly comedy show, with — as in Stout’s take — poison in the sponsor’s drink responsible. That you know it’s coming makes it no less horrible, so whodunnit?
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#522: Going Home – Airframe (1996) by Michael Crichton
Three things in life you can’t do: hurry love, touch this, and go home. For all the nostalgia the third provokes, it’s never the same; and yet of late I’ve found myself pondering the fact that my journey to 1930s detective fiction must’ve started somewhere. And so, for my Tuesday posts this month, I am going to attempt to go home.
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#521: Spoiler Warning 10 – Tantei Gakuen Q/Detective School Q: ‘The Kamikakushi Village Murder Case’ (2003)
Apologies, we’re a bit late — there were some hold-ups on my end of things — but here at last are the thoughts of the blogosphere’s resident impossible crime expert TomCat and myself on ‘The Kamikakushi Village Murder Case’, part of the Tantei Gakuen Q (Detective Academy Q) anime based on the manga of the same name.
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#520: Seeing is Believing, a.k.a. Cross of Murder (1941) by Carter Dickson
Socialising is difficult, isn’t it? One minute you’re making polite dinner party conversation about jobs with someone you’ve only just met, the next a hypnotist performs a few mesmeric passes and goads a wife into stabbing her husband with a knife everyone knows is fake but which — awks — actually turns out to be real and, oh my god, she’s killed him. We’ve all been there, and we all know how tricky it can be to factor this sort of thing into one’s TripAdvisor rating. An unexpected, impossible murder can dampen the mood somewhat — especially when so many people seem to be operating at cross-purposes — but remember you did say the canapés were lovely…
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#519: Minor Felonies – The Mystery of the Secret Room (1945) by Enid Blyton
My discovery of Enid Blyton’s Five Find-Outers books simply adds to the problem that is my TBR, because every time I read one of them I want to sit down and read them all. Sure, First World Problems, but it’s crazy to think how excited I am — and my fourth decade, too — about a bunch of books written by the Faraway Tree Lady.
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#518: The Providential Op – Offbeat Criminal Detection in Monk Season 1 (2002)
Running for 125 episodes over eight seasons from 2002 to 2009, the TV series Monk — created by Andy Breckman and starring Tony Shalhoub as the eponymous OCD-afflicted detective — was something that had drifted into my awareness without me ever really seeing that much of it. Until now… [cue dramatic music]
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#517: Murder in the Family, a.k.a. The Murder in Gay Ladies (1936) by James Ronald
I’m nowhere near Puzzle Doctor/Brian Flynn levels of adoration yet, but there’s a good chance James Ronald could turn out to be one of my very favourite unheralded authors. Sure, he wrote in quite a range of genres — from ‘a family’s struggles in an unfamiliar environment’ to incident-packed impossible crime novels and, presumably, just about anything in between — and the frank unavailability of so many of his books is going to make tracking him down long and, given the spread of genres, at times possibly unrewarding work, but when he’s good, boy is he good. As in the case of the Osborne Family Murder — with ‘family’ being very much the key word here.
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#516: Minor Felonies – The Clue of the Marked Claw (1950) by Bruce Campbell
