Reading this Sherlock Holmes pastiche has perhaps inevitably made me reflect on my history with Sherlock Holmes pastiches.
Continue reading#714: Adventures in Self-Publishing – Death at the Diogenes Club (2017) by Anna Elliott and Charles Veley
Spoiler Warning – The Murder at the Vicarage (1930) by Agatha Christie
No, Christmas isn’t for another two months, but it’s been a tough year and so here’s a gift to get you through the darkening days (yes, thank-you, the Southern Hemisphere…): Brad and Moira discussing The Murder at the Vicarage (1930) by Agatha Christie. And I’m there, too, of course. You can’t win ’em all.
Continue reading#712: The Thursday Murder Club (2020) by Richard Osman
I really should not have enjoyed The Thursday Murder Club (2020) as much as I did. I’m an avowed devotee of the rigour of Freeman Wills Crofts and I have a nerdy podcast where we get far too serious about the minutiae of classic era detective fiction, for pity’s sake — a lightly comedic crime novel in which a group of septuagenarians inveigle their way into a murder investigation while worrying about the quality of supermarket own-brand biscuits should not raise from me even a curious eyebrow. And yet, honestly, I loved it. I don’t think I’ve been this charmed in years, and I haven’t laughed so much and so helplessly since reading Catch-22 (1961) when I was about 17.
#711: Adventures in Self-Publishing – Concern for the Nervous Disposition of Whippets (2019) by Adrian Bentley
#710: “And what would you call the right surroundings for reading a ghost story?” – The Dead Sleep Lightly (1983) by John Dickson Carr [ed. Douglas G. Greene] Part 2 of 2
Two weeks ago I looked at the first four plays in this collection, so let’s get on the with final five.
Continue reading#709: The African Poison Murders, a.k.a. Death of an Aryan (1939) by Elspeth Huxley
Elspeth Huxley’s Murder on Safari (1938) used its uncommon milieu and the author’s own experiences of life in Kenya as a young girl to enrich what might have otherwise been a ham-handed attempt to introduce some ‘variety’ into the annals of detective fiction. Its reliance on the trappings of safari life, and on the general ignorance of her policeman Superintendent Vachell to introduce the unfamiliar aspects to the reader, worked well with some unusual clues to mark it out as a very accomplished piece of detective fiction…right up until the reveal of the killer, when it all sort of fell apart. And lightning, it seems, has struck twice…
#708: Adventures in Self-Publishing – Ill Wind (2020) by Jean Heller
Recently, while recording an episode of the rightly-popular Shedunnit podcast, I was moved to lament the decline in quality represented by most modern attempts at the impossible crime in fiction (and, for all I know, in reality, too). Today’s self-published crime novel, Ill Wind (2020) by Jean Heller, perhaps demonstrates the reasons for that decline better than I’ve previously managed myself.
Continue readingIn GAD We Trust – Episode 11: The Tropes of Detective Fiction [w’ James Scott Byrnside]
The time has come again for some nerdy Golden Age Detection podcasting, and James Scott Byrnside is here to oblige with a discussion about some of the tropes we know and love from GAD fiction
Continue reading#706: The Case of the April Fools (1933) by Christopher Bush
Three years. That’s how long ago TomCat’s review of The Case of the April Fools (1933) typified Christopher Bush’s writing as falling “halfway between Freeman Wills Crofts and John Dickson Carr”. So I read the oft-celebrated Cut-Throat (1932) and didn’t really get on with it and then, to be honest, other books intruded and I simply never got back to Bush. I wasn’t avoiding him, per se, and Dean Street Press had gamely recommended Bush’s twentieth novel The Case of the Green Felt Hat (1939) as possibly more to my liking…but, in these reprint-rich times, it can be difficult to keep up, y’know?
#705: Adventures in Self-Publishing – Harte (2019) by Robert Innes
In 2019 the Marvel Cinematic Universe reached its culmination in Avengers: Endgame, somewhat overshadowing the fact that Rob Innes’ 10-book Blake Harte series was also about to pay off in this, the first novel-length entry.
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