Genius detective
#372: The Tuesday Night Bloggers – The Great Detectives – Week 2
Another week, another set of posts from our GAD blogging collective, running down their own personal favourites of the great detectives of fiction.
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#369: The Tuesday Night Bloggers – The Great Detectives – Week 1
The Tuesday Night Bloggers — an autonomous collective of GAD bloggers who unite around a common theme — have returned! To tie in with the release of The 100 Greatest Literary Detectives in a few weeks, a compendium to which our very own Kate Jackson has contributed an entry, everyone is picking and writing about their own favourite sleuths this month.
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#347: The Men Who Explain Miracles – Episode 4.1: The Edward D. Hoch ‘Best Impossible Crime Novels’ List of 1981 (Books 15 to 11)
Let the tucket sound! Dan and I are back with our occasional podcast The Men Who Explain Miracles, and we’re taking on something rather special this month.
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#338: Spoiler Warning 5 – The Problem of the Wire Cage (1939) by John Dickson Carr
Okay, here we go — do not read any further unless you are happy to be spoiled on the details of John Dickson Carr’s 1939 novel featuring the impossible “no footprints” problem of a man strangled in the middle of a clay tennis court.
#303: Spoiler Warning 4 – And Be a Villain (1948) by Rex Stout
I am immensely chuffed to be able to bring to you today the results of the spoiler-heavy discussion between myself and the erudite and phenomenally knowledgeable Noah Stewart of Noah’s Archives on the topic of Rex Stout’s thirteenth Nero Wolfe novel, And Be a Villain (1948). Hefty spoilers follow, so read on only if you are a) prepared or b) a daredevil badass who takes no truck with your “rules”, man.
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#295: Fell/Murder – Ranking the First Ten Gideon Fell Novels (1933-39) by John Dickson Carr
Having recently read The Arabian Nights Murder (1936) by John Dickson Carr, the time seems ripe to rank the first ten of Carr’s novels featuring the gargantuan Dr. Gideon Fell. Why the first 10? Well, we’re a decimal-obsessed society, and I’ve not read the eleventh, so this seems a natural jumping-off point. It’s not technically a top ten, right? It’s a little more interesting than that…right?
And so, in reverse order, I give you…
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#281: “Twelve different solutions to everything, most of them not very probable…” – in Partial Defence of Hallowe’en Party (1969) by Agatha Christie
If you came to me at this precise moment in time and expressed both an ignorance of and an interest in the work of Agatha Christie, these are the ten books I’d recommend picking one to start from (presented chronologically, let’s not play Favourites):
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#275: A Little Help for My Friends – Finding a Modern Locked Room Mystery for TomCat Attempt #3: The Secrets of Gaslight Lane (2016) by M.R.C. Kasasian
A late-Victorian private detective living in London who exhibits such traits as brilliant deductive skills (highlighted especially in his observations about strangers), a brusque and pompous manner, the application of reason and logic in all his encounters with crime, and a singular lack of personal relationships with anyone beyond his household, the members of the police he encounters, and his chronicler. Sound familiar?
And, of course, he has that glass eye, too. Wait, what?
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#274: Spoiler Warning – Coming in October: And Be a Villain (1948) by Rex Stout
The Invisible Event 