#1398: “It’s goin’ to take a bit o’ thinkin’ out…” – As If by Magic: Locked Room Mysteries and Other Miraculous Crimes [ss] (2025) ed. Martin Edwards

A second anthology of impossible crimes from the British Library Crime Classics range, As If by Magic [ss] (2025) is another genre-spanning collection from editor and Detection Club President Martin Edwards that does much to highlight the depth and breadth of classic crime and detective fiction.

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#1135: “Don’t be so infernally bloodthirsty!” – Who Killed Father Christmas? and Other Seasonal Mysteries [ss] (2023) ed. Martin Edwards

Astoundingly, Who Killed Father Christmas? (2023) is the fifth collection of seasonal mysteries collated by Martin Edwards for the British Library Crime Classics range. And, with the BL kind enough to provide me with a review copy, it seemed like the perfect excuse to start some Christmas reading a little earlier than planned.

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#527: Plotting the Perfect Crime – Potential and Pay-Off via The House of Haunts, a.k.a. The Lamp of God (1935) by Ellery Queen

Black Lizard Locked Room

Slowly, slowly I work my way through the Otto Penzler-edited Woo Whatta Lotta Locked Room Mysteries (2014) — it’s not really a convenient size to dip into — and, since my chronological reading of Ellery Queen is going so well, it seemed time to take on this impossible disappearance story.  Or so I thought…

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