It is my understanding that more than one collection of Roy Vickers’ inverted mystery stories have been put out under the title The Department of Dead Ends, but also that this The Department of Dead Ends (1949) is the first time it was done, with ten stories telling of ingenious murderers and the miniscule oversights that eventually caught them, thanks to the elephantine memory of that eponymous division.
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Sometimes the Holmes canon surprises me; I have very fond memories of certain stories, while others are almost a complete blank.
Continue readingIs this the the best title in the Sherlock Holmes canon? I don’t mean the best story, but rather the most intriguing combination of words put together to entice you in.
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Thirty stories from the pen of Cyril Hare, an author whose legal-themed novels leave me rather cold, but whose scattered short fiction I have encountered is typically very positive. So a chance to dig deeper into that his miniature plots is to be seized.
Continue readingMany authors and film-makers would seek to overturn this in the years ahead, but as far as the canon goes we find ourselves visiting Sherlock Holmes’ first ever case.
Continue readingArthur Conan Doyle wrote 56 short stories about Sherlock Holmes, solidly 15 of which must be among the most prized creations in the genre. The other 41, then, vary somewhat.
Continue readingTuesdays in July will see a return to the Sherlock Holmes canon, with second collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894) providing the material under consideration.
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Serendipity brought the superb Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime [ss] (2009) edited by Michael Sims to my awareness, and highlighted Sims’ erudition and excellent coverage of Victorian crime fiction, an era of the genre which is holding an increasing fascination for me. And so the opportunity to read another Sims-edited collection was to be seized with alacrity.
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Years ago, as a younger and callower man, I swore that the only Sherlock Holmes stories I would read were those written by Arthur Conan Doyle. Then I became a John Dickson Carr fan, and it’s been a slippery slope ever since.
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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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The Invisible Event 