In GAD We Trust – Bonus Episode! The Highs and Lows of Jonathan Creek [w’ Nick Cardillo]

Last week, Nick Cardillo and I discussed the impossible crime on screen, at the end of which he casually asked about Jonathan Creek like I’d be able to condense my thoughts into a pithy bon mot and not obsess about what I’d missed out for the next 30 or 40 years. Instead, we’re back to discuss the series as a whole today.

Continue reading

#790: On the Morals of Golden Age Detective Fiction, via Crime and Detection [ss] (1926) ed. E.M. Wrong

That title is doing a lot of work, isn’t it? Fair warning: this goes on a bit.

At the online Bodies from the Library conference last weekend, I gave a talk inspired in part by E.M. Wrong’s introduction to the 1926 anthology Crime and Detection. And, in addition to coining the term “Wellington of detection” that inspired the thinking I laid out last weekend, there is plenty of material in that piece of prose to get the cogs turning.

Continue reading

#613: Little Fictions/Going Home – The Crime Stories of Edgar Allan Poe: ‘The Man of the Crowd’ (1840), ‘Into the Maelstrom’ (1841), and ‘The Oblong Box’ (1844)

Poe header

The accepted wisdom is that Edgar Allan Poe wrote five stories which formed the basis of the nascent detective fiction genre, and the plan for this month had originally been to look at one story each week.  But that’s what you plan when you fail to account for the rigour and research of Christian, who blogs at Mysteries, Short and Sweet.

Continue reading

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

Poe header

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.

Continue reading