I know what you’ve been thinking: “For such an apparently avowed fan of Freeman Wills Crofts, that Invisible Event guy hasn’t exactly jumped on the recent collection from Crippen & Landru…”. Well checkmate, my friend. Check. Mate.
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The final Tuesday of June brings us the final two stories from Mystery and More Mystery (1966) by Robert Arthur. And with one of them comes some excitement…
Continue readingHerewith, my thoughts on the last two stories in Robert Arthur’s Mystery and More Mystery (1966) collection that I’ve not previously read. Not “the last two stories”, you understand, because there are two more in the book after these. But those actual last two stories, coming next week, I’ve encountered previously. Grammar’s a bastard, isn’t it?
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There is an argument to be made that genre fiction and sitcoms share a huge amount of DNA: we want them to be the same sort of thing from episode-to-episode or book-to-book, and yet within the repetition of ingredients that define the form we also want something new.
Continue readingAnother week, another brace of stories from Mystery and More Mystery (1966) by Robert Arthur.
Continue readingThis week, as we dive into two more stories by Robert Arthur from Mystery and More Mystery (1966), I meet the two earliest works of his I’ve yet encountered.
Continue readingIt would be difficult to overstate the respect I have for the work done by Robert Arthur in the mystery genre. From creating The Three Investigators to turning out highly enjoyable fair-play mysteries for younger (and older) readers, the man displayed a brilliant creativity and a talent for diversity that makes every encounter with him a joy.
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With the death of series creator Robert Arthur after the eleventh book in the series, The Mystery of the Talking Skull (1969), the Three Investigators were passed into the hands of Dennis Lynds, under the William Arden nom de plume he had used for the tenth book in the series, The Mystery of the Moaning Cave (1968).
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A few years ago, I got the Night Riviera sleeper train from London Paddington to Penzance. When we reached our destination, after a good night’s sleep, I was disappointed to discover that no-one had been bafflingly murdered while en route and that my skills as an amateur detective were not required.
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Sometimes I plan ahead — c.f. a review of a novel by R. Austin Freeman in the same week as a podcast episode about R. Austin Freeman — and sometimes I really should. Rest assured, it will haunt me for years that I didn’t review this updating of the Holmes/Watson dynamic in the same week as Anthony Boucher’s The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars (1940).
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