#1231: “These are booming times for crime.” – A Study in Crimson: Sherlock Holmes 1942 (2020) by Robert J. Harris

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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#1172: “Sometimes you almost persuade me that you have reasoning powers.” – The Triumphs of Eugène Valmont [ss] (1906) by Robert Barr

I first encountered the work of Robert Barr in the superb Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime [ss] (2009), and when Countdown John offered to lend me The Triumphs of Eugène Valmont (1906) — one of the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstones, no less — to continue my education, I leapt at the chance.

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