
Juvenile Mysteries
#507: Minor Felonies – The Mystery of the Haunted Skyscraper (1964) by Mel Lyle

After March was filled with more social engagements than a debutante’s coming out Season, I’m back with a series that sounds like — though thankfully is not — some sort of Alt-Right recruitment pamphlet.
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#482: A Sea-Change Into Something Rich and Strange for The Secret of Skeleton Island (1966) by Robert Arthur

Quite a week it’s been: a humdinger of a self-published impossible crime novel, then a low-key classic from John Dickson Carr…if the best things come in threes, it seems only sensible to finish with another case — the sixth, as I continue my way through this series chronologically — for Jupe, Pete, and Bob, a.k.a. The Three Investigators.
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#477: Minor Felonies – Who Stole Uncle Sam? (2008) by Martha Freeman

Sometimes you like a book more for the way it’s written than the actual content, an attitude that would generally sum up my feelings on the works of Josephine Tey. This third entry in Martha Freeman’s Chickadee Court mystery series is one such book.
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#474: Minor Felonies – The Last Chance Hotel (2018) by Nicki Thornton

Welcome to the Last Chance Hotel, standing alone in seemingly endless woodland, where a coterie of oddballs are about to descend and usher in an impossible murder over dinner.
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#472: The Pit-Prop Syndicate (1922) by Freeman Wills Crofts






Back in 2015, before I’d ever opened any of Freeman Wills Crofts’ works, Puzzle Doctor reviewed The Pit-Prop Syndicate (1922) at his place and ended by saying “I could go on, but I’ll just keep writing euphemisms for BORING BOOK over and over again. Absolutely, 100%, NOT RECOMMENDED. I’d go so far as Actively Avoid”. Shortly after reading that I broke my first bread with Crofts and, almost exactly three years later, I’ve read and loved seven Crofts novels and — in a move some might consider hasty — have tracked down all but four of his oeuvre. Still, I picked this one up with the Doc’s warning echoing in the back of my skull. Gulp.
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#471: Minor Felonies – Jolly Foul Play (2016) by Robin Stevens

The fourth entry in Robin Stevens’ Murder Most Unladylike series finds us returning to a very different Deepdean School for Girls to the one we last saw at the end of the opening of this series. And this time around Christian, who blogs over at Mysteries, Short and Sweet when he’s not translating Carter Dickson novels into Swedish, has stepped in to help me tackle this one as a fellow fan of Robin Stevens’ work.
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#468: Minor Felonies – The Mystery of the Disappearing Cat (1944) by Enid Blyton


