Pirates! Sunken ships! Mysterious treasure! A race to unscramble a message from beyond the grave! I promise you that The Secret of Phantom Lake (1973) by William Arden, the nineteenth title in the Three Investigators series, contains all these things. So why the hell is there a cowboy on the front cover?
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#1131: Minor Felonies – The Detention Detectives (2023) by Lis Jardine
On one hand, the artwork promoting The Detention Detectives (2023) by Lis Jardine is excessively twee, even by the standards of juvenile fiction; on the other, the author bio mentions that her life has “been shaped by a fierce passion for…Golden Age crime”. Thus, recalling that adage about books and covers, I ventured forth.
Continue reading#1129: Minor Felonies – Lying in the Deep (2023) by Diana Urban
Lying in the Deep (2023) by Diana Urban was brought to my attention by a piece the author wrote on CrimeReads in which she said that she had taken the setup and some “iconic plot beats” from Death on the Nile (1938) by Agatha Christie in order to inform the structure of her own book. Holy lawsuit, Batman, colour me intrigued.
Continue reading#1126: Minor Felonies – The Mystery of the Missing Man (1956) by Enid Blyton
In GAD We Trust – Episode 30: The Joys of Detective Fiction + Montgomery Bonbon: Death at the Lighthouse (2023) by Alasdair Beckett-King [w’ Alasdair Beckett-King]

The return of my In GAD We Trust podcast, and a welcome return for Alasdair Beckett-King, comedian and now children’s author.
Continue reading#1123: Minor Felonies – Montgomery Bonbon: Death at the Lighthouse (2023) by Alasdair Beckett-King [ill. Claire Powell]
Everyone enjoys a break from work, but when your job is to turn up somewhere and have a baffling crime occur, how can you guarantee you’re taking time off until after you’ve left? Hercule Poirot, Inspector Cockrill, Sir Henry Merrivale, Nigel Strangeways, and swathes of other classic era detectives have had their holidays interrupted by murder, and to this pantheon we can now add Montgomery Bonbon, he of the indefinable foreign accent and curious physical similarity to a ten year-old girl.
Continue reading#1086: Art Gives Life a Shape in The Mystery of the Shrinking House (1972) by William Arden
It feels fair to say that the work done thus far by Dennis Lynds in the Three Investigators series, under the nom de plume William Arden, represents the solid and unspectacular middle ground while those around him — Nick West, M.V. Carey — plumb both the highs and the lows.
Continue reading#1081: Minor Felonies – The Arctic Railway Assassin (2022) by M.G. Leonard and Sam Sedgman [ill. Elisa Paganelli]
I’ve been in denial about this moment for a long time. M.G. Leonard and Sam Sedgman have been clear for a while now that their excellent Adventures on Trains series had an endgame in mind and…this is it. With The Arctic Railway Assassin (2022) we reach the (ahem) end of the line.
Continue reading#1078: Minor Felonies – Trapped! (2018) by James Ponti
A final outing for James Ponti’s very entertaining trilogy in which two junior sleuths help the FBI solve baffling cases, it is perhaps unsurprising that Trapped! (2018) follows the age-old tradition of having this case cut Very Close To Home.
Continue reading#1075: Minor Felonies – Lion Down (2019) by Stuart Gibbs
Lion Down (2019) is the fifth book in Stuart Gibbs’ FunJungle series and, with previous entry Panda-Monium (2017) being one of the best juvenile mysteries I’ve yet read in this Minor Felonies undertaking, expectations were high.
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