Short stories
In GAD We Trust – Episode 10: Genre and Detective Fiction [w’ Ryan O’Neill]
A final (for now) podcast episode before I head off on hiatus, this time discussing the idea of genre with author Ryan O’Neill.
Continue reading
In GAD We Trust – Episode 9: Japanese-English Translation + The Honjin Murders (1946) by Seishi Yokomizo [w’ Louise Heal Kawai]
A seam of superb Japanese detective novels and short stories have crossed the language barrier in recent years, teaching even the most culturally ignorant of us to tell our honkaku from our shin honkaku. And here to give us a sense of the work involved in making that happen is literary translator Louise Heal Kawai.
Continue reading
#694: “It was a small matter but very conclusive.” – The Singing Bone, a.k.a. The Adventures of Dr. Thorndyke [ss] (1912) by R. Austin Freeman
It was my understanding that William Shakespeare invented the word “eyeball”. The noun eye was extant at the time, as was the concept of a ball being something round, but that Shakespeare was the one to take the two principles and conflate them. It turns out he didn’t [see the comments below this post], but presumably someone did, and that’s all I really need to be the case for this opening paragraph.
Continue reading
In GAD We Trust – Episode 8: Uncovering Long-Forgotten Short Stories + Bodies from the Library 3 (2020) ed. Tony Medawar [w’ Tony Medawar]
Today was due to have been the sixth (sixth!) Bodies from the Library conference at the British Library but, for obvious reasons, it’s not. I can’t, alas, give you a whole day of GAD-based discussion, but I can at least fill an hour with someone from that line-up of exceptionally knowledgable people, Tony Medawar.
Continue reading
#690: Minor Felonies – Alfred Hitchcock’s Solve-Them-Yourself Mysteries [ss] (1963): ‘The Mystery of the Four Quarters’ by Robert Arthur
For the fifth and final Tuesday in June — holy hell, that means the year is practically half over — the fifth and final story in this collection.
Continue reading
#687: Minor Felonies – Alfred Hitchcock’s Solve-Them-Yourself Mysteries [ss] (1963): ‘The Mystery of the Man Who Evaporated’ by Robert Arthur
Having previously read two fabulous impossible crime stories by Robert Arthur, I was especially eager to see what he’d cooked up for this week’s tale.
Continue reading
In GAD We Trust – Episode 7: The Father Brown Stories of G.K. Chesterton [w’ John @ Countdown John’s Christie Journal]
This week on my Lockdown Podcast In GAD We Trust, the cream of G.K. Chesterton’s stories about his crime-solving Roman Catholic priest as selected by John who blogs at Countdown John’s Christie Journal.
Continue reading
#684: Minor Felonies – Alfred Hitchcock’s Solve-Them-Yourself Mysteries [ss] (1963): ‘The Mystery of the Three Blind Mice’ by Robert Arthur
Last week we had the shortest mystery in this collection, this week it’s the longest.
Continue reading
#681: Minor Felonies – Alfred Hitchcock’s Solve-Them-Yourself Mysteries [ss] (1963): ‘The Mystery of the Seven Wrong Clocks’ by Robert Arthur
