Short stories
#678: Minor Felonies – Alfred Hitchcock’s Solve-Them-Yourself Mysteries [ss] (1963): ‘The Mystery of the Five Sinister Thefts’ by Robert Arthur and Morris Hershman
Five short mysteries from the pen of Robert Arthur in the year before he launched The Three Investigators on the world? What’s not to love? And this first story even comes with a supplementary mystery all of its own.
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#677: “You must forgive me if I repeat that which you know already…” – The Old Man in the Corner [ss] (1908) by Baroness Orczy
You are three weeks away from, but I have just recorded, an episode of In GAD We Trust with a focus on short stories, part of the preparation for which got me reflecting on the works by Baroness Emmuska Orczy about the old man found in the corner of the A.B.C Teashop holding forth on unsolved crimes. And the more I thought about them, the more I wanted to write about them. So here we are.
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In GAD We Trust – Episode 4: Magic, Mummery, and Misdirection [w’ John @ Pretty Sinister Books]
Lockdown rolls on, and so does my GAD-focussed podcast, which this time around sees me picking the brains of John Norris who blogs at Pretty Sinister Books and is surely one of the most widely-read members of our GAD coterie.
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#666: Adventures in Self-Publishing – The Thirteenth Apostle (2020) + ‘The Episode of the Nine Monets’ (2020) by Jamie Probin
There’s a quote attributed to Michaelangelo essentially stating that a statue already exists inside a block of stone and it’s merely the sculptor’s job to chip away the stone that isn’t part of the resulting artwork. This came to mind a lot whilst reading The Thirteenth Apostle (2020) by Jamie Probin, because if you remove the excess of nervous repetition and tedious tone setting there’s probably a great book in here somewhere.
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In GAD We Trust – Episode 2: Inverted Mysteries [w’ Aidan @ Mysteries Ahoy!]
Another week in lockdown, another episode of my new “hopefully this will distract you” Golden Age Detection podcast, In GAD We Trust.
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#654: Minor Felonies – Encyclopedia Brown Solves Them All [ss] (1968) by Donald J. Sobol
Ten more cases for America’s Sherlock Holmes in Sneakers, Leroy ‘Encyclopedia’ Brown — how many do you think he’ll solve? What’s that? Oh, I suppose the title is something of a giveaway, hey? Well, moving on, then…
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In GAD We Trust – Episode 1: Female Sleuths [w’ Kate @ CrossExaminingCrime]
You’re stuck at home, you’re bored, you could really do with a new, Golden Age Detection-focussed podcast to help pass the time, eh?
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#650: Puzzles for Players – The Baffle Book (1930) by Lassiter Wren and Randle McKay [ed. F. Tennyson Jesse] Problems 8 to 14
As in life, this blog has a few untrimmed threads hanging — one of these days I really must return to The Knox Decalogue and The Criminous Alphabet — but for today it’s back to The Baffle Book (1930). The first seven problems in F. Tennyson Jesse’s edit of Lassiter Wren and Randle McKay’s famous puzzle series failed to excite my reason or my enthusiasm, so how does this second quarter of puzzles stand up?
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#636: Justice It Was That Moved My Great Creator – It’s About Crime [ss] (1960) by MacKinlay Kantor
