#1238: A Little Help for My Friends – Finding a Modern Locked Room Mystery for TomCat Attempt #25: Murder at the Castle (2021) by David Safier [trans. Jamie Bulloch 2024]

Perhaps there’s a charm imbued here by being slightly separated from too direct an experience of the career of former Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel; the porcine indiscretions of David Cameron, for example, don’t exactly compel him as a kooky amateur sleuth.

Continue reading

#1035: “Our guest has a problem and I direct him to favour us with it.” – Tales of the Black Widowers [ss] (1974) by Isaac Asimov

“Twelve mystery masterpieces by the maestro” promises the back cover of Tales of the Black Widowers (1974), the first collection featuring Isaac Asimov’s puzzle-solving dining club, and given that Asimov says in the introduction that his “detective ideal is Hercule Poirot and his little gray cells” it seems like it might not be an empty promise…

Continue reading

#865: There Is Nothing Either Good or Bad, But Thinking Makes It So – Examining the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstones List

If you’ve met me, firstly I apologise, and secondly it’ll come as no surprise that I have a tendency to ruminate on that which many others pass over without so much as a backward glance. Previously this resulted in me writing something in the region of 25,000 words on the Knox Decalogue, and today I’m going to turn my eye upon the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstones list. Prepare thyself…

Continue reading