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

April 2, 2019March 26, 2019 / JJ / 4 Comments

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.

Continue reading →

#502: The Door Between (1937) by Ellery Queen

February 21, 2019February 14, 2019 / JJ / 51 Comments

Brad has threatened to drum me out of the GAD Club Members’ Bar for my lack of kow-towing to the work of Ellery Queen. In fairness, I really rather enjoyed Halfway House (1936), but here I am fighting for my rights. And I think he’s timed this deliberately, being well aware that The Door Between (1937) was up next for me, because Gordon’s beer is Eva MacClure, the heroine who finds herself at the centre of an impossible murder plot, one of the most frustrating perspective characters I’ve yet encountered. Goodness, she makes one positively ache for the company of Noel Wells from The Saltmarsh Murders (1932) by Gladys Mitchell.

Continue reading →

#497: Plus ça Change, Plus c’est la Même Chose dans L’onzieme Petit Negre (1977) de Jacquemard-Sénécal [trans. Gordon Latta 1979]

February 9, 2019February 8, 2019 / JJ / 18 Comments

For a book set against the backdrop of a play based on one of Agatha Christie’s most famous works, and featuring a detective the front flap tells us is “unparalleled even by Hercule Poirot”, there’s more than a passing whiff of Ngaio Marsh about this one.

Continue reading →

#491: Spoiler Warning 9 – Mr. Priestley’s Problem, a.k.a. The Amateur Crime (1927) by Anthony Berkeley [a.p.a. by A.B. Cox]

January 26, 2019March 21, 2020 / JJ / 2 Comments

Here we go again, with the usual warnings: this post discusses in spoiler-heavy detail elements of the plot of Mr. Priestley’s Problem, a.k.a. The Amateur Crime (1927) by Anthony Berkeley, also published under the name of A.B. Cox.

Continue reading →

#487: The Polferry Riddle, a.k.a. The Choice (1931) by Philip MacDonald

January 17, 2019January 16, 2019 / JJ / 17 Comments

For now, like, the fourth time in my experience — and the second involving a book by Philip MacDonald — the Roland Lacourbe-curated list of 100 excellent impossible crime novels has disgorged a title which is not in any way an impossible crime. I’m still fully capab- (hang on, carry the one…then minus…yup, you’re good) fully capable of enjoying a book which is sans-impossibility, but I find it weird that a list compiled by such eminent heads includes so many books that don’t qualify. The simplicity of MacDonald’s own narratives should be a giveaway anyway, since he’s really not about the complexities or misdirection, sticking more to a simpler, thriller-tinged path.

Continue reading →

#484: The D.A. Calls a Turn (1944) by Erle Stanley Gardner

January 10, 2019April 30, 2020 / JJ / 6 Comments

Thanksgiving evening, Sheriff Rex Brandon receives a call from a contrite drunk claiming to have stolen a car, and heads over to pick him up along with D.A. Doug Selby. Arriving too late to prevent an accident in which the man is killed, a chance observation by Selby leads to an identity different to one the man had claimed This in turn brings Brandon and Selby to Carmen Freelman, who had been called away from dinner with her new husband’s family that evening by her boss…who just happens to be the man killed in the crash. So run the first twenty-four pages of The D.A. Calls a Turn (1944) by Erle Stanley Gardner. Strap in for a wild ride…

Continue reading →

#482: A Sea-Change Into Something Rich and Strange for The Secret of Skeleton Island (1966) by Robert Arthur

January 5, 2019January 3, 2019 / JJ / 37 Comments

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.

Continue reading →

#470: Remembering Noah Stewart

December 8, 2018December 7, 2018 / JJ / 8 Comments

Today I am due to suggest a book for the Reprint of the Year awards organised by Kate at CrossExaminingCrime. However, the sudden death of fellow blogger Noah Stewart earlier this week is somewhat forefront in my mind and I wish to remember him.

Continue reading →

#448: The Hanging Captain (1933) by Henry Wade

October 18, 2018November 23, 2019 / JJ / 25 Comments

When The Murder Room, the ebook-only arm of publishing house Orion, announced a couple of years ago that they’d be releasing a bunch of Henry Wade’s novels I got quite excited and then proceeded to buy none of them. Instead, I eventually acquired three hard-to-find Wade novels in paperback — The Duke of York’s Steps (1929), The Hanging Captain (1933), and the apparent classic Heir Presumptive (1935) — and proceeded to read none of them, too. So, as I v-e-r-y-s-l-o-w-l-y make my way through these, I’m pleased to report that here it certainly seems Wade has learned a lot from that earlier book and grown significantly as an author in four short years.

Continue reading →

#439: Nine – and Death Makes Ten, a.k.a. Murder in the Atlantic, a.k.a. Murder in the Submarine Zone (1940) by Carter Dickson

September 27, 2018January 21, 2024 / JJ / 91 Comments

Yes, this was supposed to be The Spanish Cape Mystery (1935) by Ellery Queen in preparation for the forthcoming spoiler-filled look at Halfway House (1936). Yes, you all warned me that book was awful, and you were correct. Let’s instead board a cruise ship stuffed with munitions at the outset of the Second World War and watch the eight — or is it nine? — passengers slowly get to know each other until one of them is found murdered in their cabin, the corpse peppered with fingerprints which do not match those of anyone on board. Aaah, I feel better already — man, I love the work of John Dickson Carr; the idea of having never discovered it makes me feel a little unwell.

Continue reading →