First brought to my attention when one of its escapades was included in the Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime [ss] (2009), Four Square Jane (1929) by Edgar Wallace is a novel in reality comprising a series of separate adventures of our eponymous thief as she seeks to relieve the wealthy of their property in the interests of charitable endeavours.
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Having looked at Silent Nights [ss] (2015), the first collection of Christmas-themed short stories in the British Library Crime Classic collection a fortnight ago, I move on to Crimson Snow [ss] (2016), the second such collection, edited once again by Martin Edwards.
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Since I don’t post about books in the order that I read them, I must start this review by informing you that, behind the scenes, I gave up on five books by five different authors before settling on The Canary Murder Case (1927), the second novel by S.S. van Dine. Try, then, to imagine my delight at picking it up with fond memories of his debut The Benson Murder Case (1926) still fairly fresh and finding it not just readable but frankly compelling. I carry over the exact same reservations from that debut, but the simple fact is that I loved practically every minute of this and am now very eager to read Van Dine further.
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.
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I’ve been planning this for over a year, since reviewing the British Library’s fifth collection of Christmas short stories last November. Finally, then, December will see me reviewing Christmas-themed books for perhaps the first time since starting this blog in 2015, with a second BL collection coming in the weeks ahead.
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It’s easy to dismiss James Patterson for not writing his own books or being too prolific or being a hack or [insert insult of choice here], but I’m a fan of giving someone a chance before condemning them, and when Holmes, Margaret and Poe (2024) — featuring three detectives with classical names “solving a series of seemingly impossible crimes” — came to my attention, well, why not check it out?
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“My New Year’s resolution is to murder a man I’ve never met” — thus does Basil Palmer lay out his intentions at the very start of his journal in Hemlock Bay (2024) by Martin Edwards, bringing to mind the openings of classic-era touchstones Malice Aforethought (1931) by Francis Iles and The Beast Must Die (1938) by Nicholas Blake. Louis Carson, the man Palmer seeks to avenge himself on, appears to have entered into a business partnership in the Northern resort of Hemlock Bay, and so, assuming a false identity, it is there that Palmer heads. Little does he know, various other parties are also descending upon Hemlock Bay, and some of them also have murder in their hearts.
A second mystery for Roger, Diana, Snubby, Loony, Barney, and Miranda — and one with a hint of the impossible, about it, to boot.
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I’m not quite the target audience for a Sherlock Holmes pastiche taking its motivation not from Arthur Conan Doyle’s original canon but instead the 20th Century Fox films and subsequent radio serial starring Basil Rathbone — being as I’ve neither seen nor heard them — but the notion intrigued me enough to give A Study in Crimson (2020) by Robert J. Harris a go.
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I had hoped to diversify these Minor Felonies posts this month, and to bring in some new authors who might produce well-structured juvenile detective fiction. But, well, that didn’t work out, and so instead I guess I’ll just have to return to Stuart Gibbs’ FunJungle, perhaps the best series of detective novels for 8 to 12 year-olds currently on the market.
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The Invisible Event 