Crime-solving couples
I was quite excited #204: “I’m afraid, you know, one does enjoy a bit of malice now and then…” – Yearning for the Golden Age in Agatha Christie’s By the Pricking of My Thumbs (1968)
And so I enter the final decalogue of Agatha Christie’s works — from here to Miss Marple’s Final Cases (1979) — with a return visit to Thomas ‘Tommy’ Beresford and his wife Prudence, known (for reasons I genuinely cannot recall; someone will doubtless enlighten me in the comments) as Tuppence. The Beresfords are unique in Christie canon in that they are the only repeating characters who seem to age in real time, and in doing so they provide an overview of Dame Agatha’s writing career in just a handful of books.
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#193: Sailor, Take Warning! (1944) by Kelley Roos
Sometimes you just have to bite a bullet: following the exceptionally sad loss of the Rue Morgue Press, this is the final Jeff and Haila Troy novel currently available, but, well, let’s enjoy it, eh? Audrey and William Roos did such a great job with so many aspects of the writing in these first four books — the dialogue is genuinely funny, the plots mostly move at a great pace, the mysteries are intriguing, and third book The Frightened Stiff is a genuine genre classic for all time — that we shouldn’t get too weighed down with lamenting their unavailability. Common sense will prevail, they’re too good to let go out of print for any length of time, and this won’t be the last we see of the Troys. Right?
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#190: A Smell of Smoke (1959) by Miles Burton
Over the summer, I read certain sections of Masters of the Humdrum Mystery by the blogosphere’s very own Passing Tramp, Curtis Evans. Certain sections because, to be perfectly honest, Curtis has done an amazing job in analysing so much of the work of J.J. Connington, Freeman Wills Crofts, and John Rhode/Miles Burton that it’s clear I need to do a lot more reading to get the most out of what he has written. Upon (in fact, while) reading A Smell of Smoke I went back to see what insight Curtis could offer to explore Street’s motivations or intentions, but there is no mention of it at all; no fault of his, as Street published over 130 novels under his two most famous pseudonyms, but I suspect I know why it doesn’t get a mention: it isn’t very good at all.
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#181: The Tuesday Night Bloggers – Strangers in Strange Lands: When East Comes West…
Alongside classic detective fiction and locked room/impossible crime mysteries of every date, stripe, and hue, I read a moderate amount of both classic and modern SF. And as much as I rejoice in the closedness of the ‘rules’ of detective fiction, I take equal delight in the free-form craziness that can open up in front of you in excellent SF.
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#161: Hawk & Fisher (1990) by Simon R. Green
As a parody of the detective novel, the maverick cop genre, and the low Fantasy genre, Simon R. Green’s Hawk & Fisher takes quite some beating — it is an honestly hilarious take on the tropes of three. I don’t think I’ve laughed so much since reading…well, possibly anything; almost every page contains some wonderful joke or savage undercutting of the false sincerity of the situations encountered, not unlike William Goldman’s timeless The Princess Bride. For instance, Hawk is supposedly an expert in hand-to-hand combat with an axe, but he has only one functioning eye and therefore must lack any depth perception; it’s an absolutely genius piece of subversion, and such examples are rife. The only problem is that I have a sneaking suspicion — only a sneaking one, mind — that this book is in fact supposed to be taken seriously. Very Seriously Indeed.
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#139: Hard Case Crime Publishing ‘Lost’ Erle Staney Gardner Novel!
Well, well, well, how’s this for a turn up: one of Erle Stanley Gardner’s early books from his A.A. Fair days is due to be published this December for the first time ever.
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#123: Not With a Bang by Matt Ingwalson
So, following Matt Ingwalson’s writing of the first ever guest post here on The Invisible Event, I’m now duty-bound to recommend his third Owl and Raccoon story, right? I mean, sheesh, it’d be awkward if I lay into this. Let’s get that out of the way, then: is this good? No, it’s not good. It’s wonderful.
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#122: Broken Bottles and Bloodspots: A guest post by Matt Ingwalson
Author photo: Chris Sessions
The Owl and Raccoon novellas of Matt Ingwalson update the impossible crime to a modern setting and, as I have said previously, are hugely recommended reading for anyone with an interest in a good story convincingly told. Ahead of the publication of the third story, Not With a Bang, I asked Matt if he would be willing to oblige us with an insight into his writing and he very kindly offered the following.
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#117: The Tuesday Night Bloggers – The Underwhelming Origins of Ellery Queen in The Roman Hat Mystery (1929)
The Invisible Event 