Technical difficulties have precluded an episode of In GAD We Trust this week — apologies — and so instead we return to the occasional series in which I pretend that it is for TomCat‘s benefit that I track down and read modern impossible crime novels.
Continue reading
This week, as we dive into two more stories by Robert Arthur from Mystery and More Mystery (1966), I meet the two earliest works of his I’ve yet encountered.
Continue reading
A couple of weeks ago, a clue turned up in my cryptic crossword — Fictional detective satisfied about a vandalised rig [7] — and, once I’d solved it, got me thinking. Again.
Continue reading
The detective fiction genre is built around the essential structure of a crime, an investigation of that crime, and the revelation of the guilty party who committed the crime, and good heavens didn’t the Golden Age map out a lot of different ways to walk that path. And there are few people better placed to discuss this than President of the Detection Club and recent recipient of the CWA Diamond Dagger Martin Edwards, who celebrates three decades as a published author this year.
Continue reading
That title is doing a lot of work, isn’t it? Fair warning: this goes on a bit.
At the online Bodies from the Library conference last weekend, I gave a talk inspired in part by E.M. Wrong’s introduction to the 1926 anthology Crime and Detection. And, in addition to coining the term “Wellington of detection” that inspired the thinking I laid out last weekend, there is plenty of material in that piece of prose to get the cogs turning.
Continue reading
If it bothers you that you were not among the lucky souls able to attend last weekend’s online Bodies from the Library conference — and bother you it should, Bodies is always a great day out — some good news!
Continue reading
Earlier this year, when I spoke with Steve about modern authors writing in the Golden Age tradition, he reminded me that I’d not read any of Martin Edwards’ series of Liverpool-set novels featuring solicitor Harry Devlin. Back when modern crime fiction commanded more of my attention, Robert Crais had led me to Michael Connelly, who led me to Ian Rankin, who led me to John Harvey, who then led me to Edwards’ Lake District novels The Coffin Trail (2004) and The Arsenic Labyrinth (2007), but his earlier series eluded me. So, at long last, here we are at All the Lonely People (1991) — the debut for author and character both, which turns 30 this year.
To Miss Gilda Gorham, Chief Cataloguer of an unnamed American university’s library — a building oft-expanded, and now an “architectural emetic” — the death of one colleague amongst the stacks may be regarded as a misfortune; the death of two, however, added to the disappearance of a staggeringly rare and expensive mansucript, has the air of carelessness about it. Who among the amicable staff of the university could have perpetrated such acts? And why? So, for ill-defined reasons, she puts any discomfiture aside and launches an investigation of her own. Naturally, it is not too long before all manner of clandestine activites begin to creep out…
Slightly later than promised — or not, depending on your time zone — here’s the long-anticipated spoiler-heavy discussion betwixt Brad, Moira, and myself about Agatha Christie’s bridge-centric mystery Cards on the Table (1936). And, just for added drama, one of us thinks this book doesn’t quite deserve its reputation as a classic…
Continue reading
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
