Amateur Detective

#617: The Black Honeymoon (1944) by Constance and Gwenyth Little [a.p.a by Conyth Little]

/ JJ / 21 Comments

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Sisters Constance and Gwenyth Little occupy an unusual place in the firmament of GAD.  Together they wrote 21 novels and, thanks to the Rue Morgue Press reissuing them in the early 2000s, there’s sufficient awareness around them for the term “forgotten” to be thoroughly inappropriate…but you’d have to be a genre nerd to name more than a handful of their books.  Their lack of a series character and the fact that they wrote no short stories (and a single novella, presumably harder to anthologise) doubtless play a part, but I think more telling is the fact that they’re remarkably difficult to pigeonhole.  You’re never quite sure what you’re getting, and that cuts both ways.

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#610: Little Fictions/Going Home – The Crime Stories of Edgar Allan Poe: ‘The Gold Bug’ (1843) and ‘Thou Art the Man’ (1844)

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It’s Christmas Eve, you’re keenly watching for snow and listening for reindeer hooves on your roof, and Christian and I are moving onto the lesser crime stories of Edgar Allan Poe — the weaklings which nevertheless still hold some sway where the development of detective fiction is concerned.

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#596: The Dartmouth Murders (1929) by Clifford Orr

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The name Clifford Orr first came to my attention on account of the Roland Lacourbe-curated ‘100 Books for a Locked Room Library’ list featuring Orr’s second and final novel, The Wailing Rock Murders (1932).  So when that title cropped up in this twofer of Orr’s complete output, I snapped it up and just had to wait for sufficient snow to clear from the peak of Mount TBR.  And, as it happens, I’m posting this review of his debut novel The Dartmouth Murders (1929) a mere two days after what would have been Orr’s 120th birthday — entirely by accident, as anyone who has met me in real life will be able to attest.  Such organisation is not one of my strong points.

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#593: Home Sweet Homicide (1944) by Craig Rice

/ JJ / 18 Comments

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As a rule, I start getting a bit nervous if it takes me more than three days to finish a book.  I read Home Sweet Homicide (1944), the first of Georgiana Ann Randolph Craig’s novels I’ve ever attempted, over one week and one day and, quite honestly, would have happily kept reading it for another month or two.  I’ve never gotten a sense of her as an author from her short stories — largely, I’d imagine, because of the need to cram in character and plot in less space — and, if I’m honest, didn’t relish the screwball antics her reputation seemed to promise.  Well, no fear.  This isn’t screwball, it’s not especially tightly plotted, and it’s possibly the best book I’ve read in a long ol’ time.

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