The Men Who Explain Miracles was a podcast with a focus on impossible crimes in fiction, staffed by myself and Dan from The Reader is Warned, which I have a feeling has run its course now.

This page will serve as a record the episodes, with a brief introduction and the relevant audio link(s); if you wish to read any more about each episode, click on the title to be taken to the original post on this blog (where it exists — the first few episodes were posted on SoundCloud before we started to run out of space and hosting them on WordPress turned out more financially viable).

Apologies for the occasional changes in appearance; WordPress, for reasons known only to itself, has a habit of deleting my HTML tags and ruining the formatting.

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Episode 10: The Impossible Crimes of Agatha Christie

A two-part discussion with Brad of AhSweetMysteryBlog to pick through the work of Dame Agatha Christie: episode two doesn’t even focus on impossible crimes, so you know we’re taking this seriously…

Episode 10.1: The Impossible Crime Novels of Agatha Christie

Episode 10.2: Some Personal Discussion on Christie and Her Works

Episode 9: Laying Down the Laws

In which we examine the lists of rules put forward by S.S. van Dine and Ronald Knox as they attempt to get a handle on the rules of Golden Age detective fiction.

Episode 9.1: S.S. van Dine’s 20 Rules for Writing Detective Stories

Episode 9.2: The Knox Decalogue

Episode 8: The Impossible Crimes of Paul Halter

Wherein I first attempt an overview of the modern French maestro of impossible crimes, and then pick out five works that should commend him to fans of the subgenre.

Episode 8.1: Who Is Paul Halter?

Episode 8.2: Five Paul Halter Books to Try

Episode 7: The Ages of John Dickson Carr

Dan and I sit down with Ben of The Green Capsule in an increasingly-busy British Library to talk through the career of the doyen of locked room mysteries and impossible crimes.

Episode 7.1: In-roads and Innovation — the 1930s and 40s

Episode 7.2: The Historicals and Later Works — the 1950s to 70s

Episode 6: An Interview with Martin Edwards

Current President of the Detection Club Martin Edwards discusses classic detective fiction, the appeal of the Golden Age, and his new novel Gallows Court.  Dan and I try not to geek out too much in the process.

Episode 6: Interview with Martin Edwards

Episode 5: Our Fifteen Favourite Impossible Crime Novels

Dan and I each present a list of our fifteen favourite impossible crime novels. His list is ordered, mine is picked at random from a hat.

Episode 5.1: Jim’s List

Episode 5.2: Dan’s List

Bonus Content

Episode 4: The Edward D. Hoch 1981 Best Impossible Crime Novels List

A look through the merits and pitfalls of the oft-cited list of the 15 best impossible crime novels of all time as curated by the mystery writer Edward D. Hoch in 1981.

Episode 4.1: Books 15 to 11

Episode 4.2: Books 10 to 6

Episode 4.3: Books 5 to 1

Episode 3: Republishing Murder on the Way! (1935) by Theodore Roscoe

Working with the wonderful people at Bold Venture Press, I was involved in the republishing of two out of print impossible crime novels by Theodore Roscoe: Murder on the Way! (1935) and I’ll Grind Their Bones (1936). Here I talk through the process, and we look at the first of these in a bit more depth.

Episode 3: Murder on the Way!

Episode 2: An Interview with Robin Stevens

Robin Stevens — bestselling author of the Murder Most Unladylike series — joined us to discuss classic detective fiction, impossible crimes in her own books, and continuing the work of Siobhan Dowd with The Guggenheim Mystery (2017)

Episode 2: Robin Stevens Interview

Episode 1: Rim of the Pit (1944) by Hake Talbot

Our very first episode, part of the quarterly Spoiler Warning series, in which we discuss the classic impossible crime novel Rim of the Pit (1944) by Hake Talbot.

Episode 1: A Spoiler-Heavy Discussion About Rim of the Pit (1944)