Thirty stories from the pen of Cyril Hare, an author whose legal-themed novels leave me rather cold, but whose scattered short fiction I have encountered is typically very positive. So a chance to dig deeper into that his miniature plots is to be seized.
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Having researched and written a book in which a woman poisons several people, Victoria Hime inevitably ends up as the prime suspect when someone close to her is poisoned by the same means. The fact that several people came and went from the Himes’ house on the day of the poisoning is the only light offered to Los Angeles detective Lieutenant Richard Tuck, but while the method remains clear there’s the small matter of opportunity and motive…all of which keeps swinging back to Victoria, the case against her “signed, sealed, and delivered” at almost every turn. Except we, the reader, know she didn’t do it…so what really happened?
Many authors and film-makers would seek to overturn this in the years ahead, but as far as the canon goes we find ourselves visiting Sherlock Holmes’ first ever case.
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Another month, another Sherlock Holmes pastiche, this time from the very enjoyable US TV series Elementary (2012-19). My belated discovery of two novelisations in that universe was a source of immediate interest, and so The Ghost Line (2015) by Adam Christopher found its way onto my TBR.
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Following the revelation at the end of my recent review of Case for Three Detectives (1936) by Leo Bruce that I had not read three of sometime-Sergeant William Beef’s later cases, a friend has staged an intervention and leant me Case with Ropes and Rings (1940), Neck and Neck (1951), and Cold Blood (1952). So let’s mop these three up, and then I can turn my eye upon rereading the earlier titles which have not yet made it onto The Invisible Event. Today, the death by hanging of a popular boy at Penshurt public school raises Beef’s suspicion of murder and, figuring that the boy’s wealthy father might be remuneratively grateful, Beef and his chronicler Lionel Townsend descend on Penshurt and begin to investigate.
Arthur Conan Doyle wrote 56 short stories about Sherlock Holmes, solidly 15 of which must be among the most prized creations in the genre. The other 41, then, vary somewhat.
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Having recently read the twentieth novel in the Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators series, and the tenth to be written by someone other than series creator Robert Arthur, my mind turns to how Jupe, Pete, and Bob have fared with multiple hands now directing their fates.
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On the day when the United States of America celebrates its independence, let’s turn our eye upon American author Erle Stanley Gardner, here publishing the ninth novel to feature Bertha Cool and (the triumphant return of) Donald Lam, Give ‘Em the Ax, a.k.a. An Axe to Grind (1944). Having been invalided out of the Navy with tropical fever, Donald is back in America and straight back to work: initially asked to rustle up some dirt on the suspected gold-digging new wife of a businessman, it’s not long before things become unsurprisingly more complex, and the small matter of murder rears its head. How, though, does a car accident which Bertha witnesses play into proceedings?
Tuesdays in July will see a return to the Sherlock Holmes canon, with second collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894) providing the material under consideration.
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Comments were made in the, er, comments of my previous Three Investigators review, The Secret of Phantom Lake (1973) regarding an apparently love-it-or-hate-it element to the next title in the series, The Mystery of Monster Mountain (1973) by M.V. Carey. So, well, let’s get into it.
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The Invisible Event 