#608: Ghost House (1940) by Norman Berrow

December 19, 2019December 18, 2019 / JJ / 5 Comments

Norman Berrow seems to flourish under the eye of the eldritch. Impossible hoof-marks in the snow mystery The Footprints of Satan (1950) is widely seen — correctly, in my opinion and experience to date — as his strongest work, and Ghost House (1940) is another atmosphere-drenched invocation of supernatural terror. Evidently Berrow himself was either extremely taken with the book or extremely disappointed in it, since he rewrote some of the plot, changed the names of the characters, and reissued the book in 1979. I’ll get to v2.0 last of all, since I’m now reading Berrow chronologically, but for now let’s look at the original.

Continue reading →

#607: Little Fictions/Going Home – The Crime Stories of Edgar Allan Poe: ‘The Purloined Letter’ (1844)

December 17, 2019June 3, 2020 / JJ / 3 Comments

For this, the third week of examining the hugely influential crime stories of Edgar Allan Poe, we come to the last of the tales to feature his genius amateur detective C. Auguste Dupin.

Continue reading →

#606: Ooh-Ma, Ooh-Pa – Obvious Creative Divergence in Monk Season 2, Episodes 1-8 (2003)

December 14, 2019May 22, 2024 / JJ / 5 Comments

Thank heavens that the Andy Breckman-created TV series Monk is now finished, because at this rate I’ll probably never finish watching it myself. One and a half seasons down, six and a half to go…how are things shaping up?

Continue reading →

#603: I’ll Do My Loving in the Winter – Kaiki Tantei Sharaku Homura: ‘The Hagoromo Witch’ (2019) by Nemoto Shou [trans. Osakanon 2019]

December 7, 2019December 7, 2019 / JJ / 21 Comments

Earlier this year, Ho-Ling reviewed the sixteenth volume of the Kaiki Tantei Sharaku Homura manga by Nemoto Shou, an essentially self-published manga that has received raves for its detective plots and was picked up by a mainstream digital publisher.

Continue reading →

#601: Little Fictions/Going Home – The Crime Stories of Edgar Allan Poe: ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ (1841)

December 3, 2019December 31, 2019 / JJ / 12 Comments

Sometimes my Tuesday posts are themed as Little Fictions, wherein I look at short stories; back in May I did a month themed around the origins of my detective fiction obsession called Going Home. This month it’s a Megazord comprised of both, looking at short stories that formed the origins of detective fiction…and there’s only one place to go for that.

Continue reading →

#597: A Little Help for My Friends – Finding a Modern Locked Room Mystery for TomCat Attempt #13: Impolitic Corpses (2019) by Paul Johnston

November 23, 2019January 30, 2025 / JJ / 13 Comments

Cast triskaidekaphobia aside! Sure, these modern impossible crime novels haven’t always shown the subgenre at its best, but Paul Johnston was one of the many contemporary crime fiction authors I read back in the early 2000s, and a chance to reconnect with him and the series that made his name can only be a good thing…right?

Continue reading →

#595: Reflections on Detection – The Knox Decalogue 2: The Supernatural

November 19, 2019July 27, 2021 / JJ / 15 Comments

Sometimes I regret saying I’ll do stuff; this week, I regret saying I’ll explore each of the rules of Ronald Knox’s Detective Fiction Decalogue in depth. Mainly because I’m busy, and so I’m not going to do this as well as I otherwise might. And that frustrates me doubly, because Rule 2 is the one that got me thinking about this in the first place.

Continue reading →

#586: Minor Felonies – Encyclopedia Brown Strikes Again, a.k.a. The Case of the Secret Pitch [ss] (1965) by Donald J. Sobol

October 29, 2019August 10, 2021 / JJ / 26 Comments

Since starting this blog, I have made the acquaintance of The Three Investigators, the Five Find-Outers, and several other juvenile sleuths, the majority of who have been an absolute delight to encounter; today, I add Leroy ‘Encyclopedia’ Brown to that list.

Continue reading →

#585: Brother Mine, That Entertain’d Ambition – Mycroft and Sherlock: The Empty Birdcage (2019) by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse

October 26, 2019March 16, 2026 / JJ / Leave a comment

It was with tremendous excitement that I greeted the news of a third Mycroft Holmes novel from Kareem Adbul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse, as the continuation of this series brings joy to my old and weary heart.

Continue reading →

#581: The Wrong Letter (1926) by Walter S. Masterman

October 17, 2019September 22, 2022 / JJ / 12 Comments

I very nearly paid a king’s ransom for a secondhand copy of Walter S. Masterman’s debut The Wrong Letter (1926) a couple of years ago, since it was rare as rocking-horse teeth (wait, those are not rare…) and featured on Roland Lacourbe’s “100 Books for a Locked Room Library” list (or, well, the supplemental list of fourteen supposedly excellent impossible crime novels for which there were no French translations, at least). Then, in 2018, Ramble House made it easily available for much more sensible money, and here we are. More power to their elbow, frankly, as this is the strongest Masterman I’ve read, and has encouraged me to not write him off just yet.

Continue reading →