We started back in August, with readers of this blog nominating sleuths of their choosing to be put into a series of gladiatorial head-to-heads that would result in an overall favourite from detective fiction’s Golden Age, and finally, in January, we have our winner.
Continue readingSpinster Detective
#1007: The World’s Favourite Golden Age Sleuth – The Final!
#1001: The World’s Favourite Golden Age Sleuth – The Semi-Finals
#994: The World’s Favourite Golden Age Sleuth – The Quarter-Finals
We approach the sharp end of things now, with 64 names reduced now to a mere eight, and only three rounds of voting before the legally-binding World’s Favourite Golden Age Sleuth is crowned.
Continue reading#967: The World’s Favourite Golden Age Sleuth – Round 1, Bottom Half
Right, you probably know the drill by now: 100+ sleuths nominated, top 64 chosen, the top half of 32 already voted on…today you’re voting on the bottom half of the first round.
Continue reading#961: The World’s Favourite Golden Age Sleuth – Round 1, Top Half
Over one hundred names were nominated. The top 64 have been sifted. Today we begin the process of finding the favourite sleuth of detective fiction’s Golden Age (precise dates pending, but we’re saying 1920-45).
Continue reading#955: Rank and File – Finding The World’s (!) Favourite Golden Age Sleuth
Here’s something I’ve been curious about, and probably only now have the time and energy to think about organising: who is the most popular detective character of the genre’s Golden Age?
Continue reading#918: The Life of Crime (2022) by Martin Edwards

To me falls the honour of rounding off the blog tour for The Life of Crime (2022) by Martin Edwards, adding to the deserved praise it has already garnered elsewhere. This “personal journey through the genre’s past, with all the limitations and idiosyncrasies that implies” is a monumental achievement, encompassing the breadth and depth of a genre that is now a good couple of centuries old, and finding many nuggets to share about it along the way. And, since any study of a genre must inherently be about that genre to some extent, Edwards’ trump card here is to tell a story of crime writing that also sheds light on the need for such stories to exist in the first place.
#861: The Man Who Died Twice (2021) by Richard Osman

Anyone who didn’t buy Richard Osman’s second novel The Man Who Died Twice (2021) when it came out last year probably got it for Christmas, and you’ve doubtless read it by now. I actually read it just before Christmas, but it’s taken me a long time to order my thoughts regarding this second visit to the septuagenarian denizens of Cooper’s Chase retirement village. On one hand, I can see how millions of people around the world will be completely charmed by Osman’s whimsy; on the other, the plot here only really occupies the last 70 pages, with the rest of the book filled out by padding of the most egregious hue and stripe.