Short stories
#625: Adventures in Self-Publishing – The Matter of the Duct Tape Tuxedo [ss] (2019) by Steve Levi
A lot of impossible crime novels published these days have, let’s face it, about enough impossible crime content for a short story. So a short story collection seems like a sensible thing to try, right? Even one that does put ‘short stories’ on its cover and then call itself “a novel” on the back. Right?
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#624: Bob’s Yer Uncle – Locked Room Murders Supplement (2019) ed. Brian Skupin
The reprinting of Robert Adey’s Locked Room Murders (2nd ed., 1991) at the end of 2018 was a delightful turn-up for those of us who had been dreaming of owning that reference bible. And once the excitement settled, I’m sure more than a few people started thinking “Hey, they should really do another one of these…”.
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#613: Little Fictions/Going Home – The Crime Stories of Edgar Allan Poe: ‘The Man of the Crowd’ (1840), ‘Into the Maelstrom’ (1841), and ‘The Oblong Box’ (1844)
The accepted wisdom is that Edgar Allan Poe wrote five stories which formed the basis of the nascent detective fiction genre, and the plan for this month had originally been to look at one story each week. But that’s what you plan when you fail to account for the rigour and research of Christian, who blogs at Mysteries, Short and Sweet.
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#610: Little Fictions/Going Home – The Crime Stories of Edgar Allan Poe: ‘The Gold Bug’ (1843) and ‘Thou Art the Man’ (1844)
It’s Christmas Eve, you’re keenly watching for snow and listening for reindeer hooves on your roof, and Christian and I are moving onto the lesser crime stories of Edgar Allan Poe — the weaklings which nevertheless still hold some sway where the development of detective fiction is concerned.
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#607: Little Fictions/Going Home – The Crime Stories of Edgar Allan Poe: ‘The Purloined Letter’ (1844)
For this, the third week of examining the hugely influential crime stories of Edgar Allan Poe, we come to the last of the tales to feature his genius amateur detective C. Auguste Dupin.
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#604: Little Fictions/Going Home – The Crime Stories of Edgar Allan Poe: ‘The Mystery of Marie Rogêt’ (1842)
Another week, another cornerstone of the detection genre as laid by Mr. Edgar Allan Poe.
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#601: Little Fictions/Going Home – The Crime Stories of Edgar Allan Poe: ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ (1841)
Sometimes my Tuesday posts are themed as Little Fictions, wherein I look at short stories; back in May I did a month themed around the origins of my detective fiction obsession called Going Home. This month it’s a Megazord comprised of both, looking at short stories that formed the origins of detective fiction…and there’s only one place to go for that.
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#600: Murderers Make Mistakes – Poirot’s Early Cases [ss] (1974) by Agatha Christie
The majority of Agatha Christie referred to on this blog has been from her later, less popular phase while I work through her canon chronologically. So it’s lovely to be able to refer to some of her early work with this collection of 18 stories originally published between 1923 and 1936.
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#586: Minor Felonies – Encyclopedia Brown Strikes Again, a.k.a. The Case of the Secret Pitch [ss] (1965) by Donald J. Sobol
The Invisible Event 