Amateur Detective

#511: The Stingaree Murders (1932) by W. Shepard Pleasants

/ JJ / 31 Comments

Stingaree Murders, Thestar filledstar filledstar filledstarsstars
Thirteen people — a publisher and his two grown children, a newspaper editor, a retired General and his wife, a career politician and his bodyguard, a scientist, a lawyer, two servants, and our Everyman narrator — on a houseboat in the Louisiana bayou, intent on a few days of fishing, swimming, and relaxation. Though, naturally, the worries of everyday life never really vanish: a threat against the state Governor hangs over his head, as does his professional association with the scientist, which seems a little strained. With just enough time to get complacent, tragedy strikes, and then there were twelve. And then there were eleven…

Continue reading →

#500: Making an Entrance to Remember via The Fourth Door (1987) by Paul Halter [trans. John Pugmire 1999]

/ JJ / 31 Comments

Fourth Door, The

I am reliably informed by the product page on Amazon that I purchased the Kindle edition of The Fourth Door (1987, tr. 1999) — the first Paul Halter novel I ever read — on 19th May 2013.  After nearly 6 years, 14 novels, 19 short stories, and 30 blog posts that included a celebration of his 60th birthday I’m going back to the beginning to see where it all began.

Continue reading →

#496: The Beast Must Die (1938) by Nicholas Blake

/ JJ / 55 Comments

beast must die, thestar filledstar filledstar filledstarsstars
“I am going to kill a man” — it must surely be the most famous opening line in the whole firmament of Golden Age detective fiction, and but for Sherlock Holmes and “the” woman I’d suggest the famousest opening line in all detection ever.  When Aidan at Mysteries Ahoy! and I realised we were reading this near-contemporaneously, he kindly agreed to delay his review by a week that we might publish our thoughts as simultaneously as possible — I’ve not read his review as I write this, but I will by the time you’re reading it, and I am fascinated to find out how successfully he feels the game is played after that wonderful opening serve.

Continue reading →

#490: It Howls at Night (1937) by Norman Berrow

/ JJ / 9 Comments

It Howls at Nightstar filledstar filledstar filledstarsstars
The detective novel often requests that you, the reader, swallow some fairly difficult concepts in order to fully engage with it — that someone can organically devise the methods of murder and misdirection depicted within, for instance, or that the mechanical solutions sometimes put froward do actually work in the manner described.  However, the delightfully creative Norman Berrow, in his werewolf-on-the-prowl novel It Howls at Night (1937), demands of you the greatest degree of forbearance I’ve yet encountered, a hurdle some may struggle to overcome, in requiring you to believe that a man would actually go by the name of ‘Pongo Slazenger’.

Continue reading →