Obviously I read the Sherlock Holmes canon before I had started this blog, but — or, perhaps, so — it’s interesting how vague my recollections about so many of the stories are.
Continue readingWe know that Holmes was inspired by C. Auguste Dupin, of course, but it’s surprising how much the canon continues to owe to the vagaries of Edgar Allan Poe even when it was already a well-established phenomenon in its own right.
Continue readingSherlock Holmes is back, baby, back! And I bet the first proper case following his return is an absolute belter.
Continue reading
Comprising fifteen stories of murder and malfeasance linked to that most Golden Age of associations — the romance of travel as provided by the early 20th century train — Blood on the Tracks [ss] (2018) is an early example of the British library Crime Classics anthology, brought together for your delectation by President of the Detection Club Martin Edwards.
Continue readingI’ve looked at this before, but I took life much more seriously back then. Let’s all just relax, shall we?
Continue reading
Sixteen salty seadogs sallying seaward in search of scurrilous…stuff, that’s what you’ll more or less find in Deep Waters [ss] (2019), another anthology of short fiction in the British Library Crime Classic series edited by the some-might-say-too-knowledgeable Martin Edwards.
Continue reading
The idea of a collection of Golden Age short stories based around a theme of animals seemed like an unusual one, until I remembered that one of the genre’s foundational short stories and one of its most famous novels both have animals in fairly central roles. So that’s all right, then.
Continue reading
Featuring fifteen felonious fables from phrontistery factions, Lessons in Crime [ss] (2024) is another collection in the British Library Crime Classics range edited by the acme of appreciation of this era, Martin Edwards.
Continue reading
Fifteen tales of murder and mystery centring around various athletic pastimes would, you imagine, be a fairly difficult undertaking to assemble, and so Martin Edwards is to be commended for finding enough to fill the pages of Settling Scores [ss] (2017) for the British Library Crime Classics series.
Continue reading
Christmas is done for another year, and so my mind turns to the summer holidays and the possibilities of Europe. Yeah, it’s early to be planning this sort of thing, but I like to be prepared. And so naturally it is the British Library’s collection Continental Crimes [ss] (2017) that I crack open for research
Continue reading
