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In GAD We Trust – Episode 13: Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Greatest...
This year’s celebrations of the centenary of Hercule Poirot’s debut and, arguably, the dawn of the Golden Age of Detection have obviously been overshadowed by wider events, but there’s still much to...
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#755: Mystery on Southampton Water, a.k.a. Crime on the Solent (1934) by...
For evidence of the restless enthusiasm Freeman Wills Crofts brought to the writing of detective fiction, look no further than the two books he published in 1934. The first — The 12.30 from Croydon,...
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In GAD We Trust – Episode 19: Reissue! Repackage! Repackage! [w’ Various People]
On the back of the Reprint of the Year Award run by Kate at CrossExaminingCrime, I thought it might be interesting to see what those of us who submit titles for that undertaking would choose to bring...
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#7: Five to Try – Golden Age crime fiction
So I love my classic crime, we’ve established that, but where does this leave you? After all, having someone go on about themselves all the time gets a bit boring. You’re always saying that, aren’t...
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#11: Five to Try – Non-Carr impossible murders
Simple criteria: novels only, readily available, not conceived in the fertile ground of John Dickson Carr’s imagination. I’ve also restricted the impossible crime to being the comission of the murder...
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#12: The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side (1962) by Agatha Christie
“Write what you know” is the kind of aphorism doled out to aspiring authors like public money at a bank’s board meeting, and aged 72 Agatha Christie – world’s biggest-selling author of crime fiction,...
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#13: Five to Try – Non-series Christie
With 80 crime novels and story collections to her name, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Agatha Christie had quite a few repeating characters to call upon: Hercule Poirot, Jane Marple, Tommy and Tuppence...
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#83: “One gets to remembering things in a place like this…”– a meta-analysis...
It is a truth universally acknowledged that as Agatha Christie approached the twilight years of her career the quality of her output dipped somewhat. And yet, as I’ve said elsewhere, what these novels...
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#125: A Sudden Flush of Youth (or Two) in Agatha Christie’s Endless Night (1967)
Although Agatha Christie’s later works put her out of era for this blog, I’m still keen to look at these books on account of the level of impact she had on the genre. So The Mirror Crack’d from Side...
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#151: Harper Collins’ The Detective Club Republishing The Conjure-Man Dies...
Well, well, well, more good news: following the emergence of Erle Stanley Gardner’s missing Cool and Lam novel, it transpires that another classic — and one I’ve personally been trying to find for a...
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#173: Murder Gone Mad (1931) by Philip MacDonald
Well, this seems an odd choice of book to review the day after John Dickson Carr’s 110th birthday, right? The sensible thing would be to pick one of his novels, in keeping with the occasional...
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#212: The Conjure-Man Dies (1932) by Rudolph Fisher
I was quite excited when I discovered that this sole mystery novel from Rudolph Fisher was to be republished under the revived Detective Club imprint. To my understanding it had impossible crime...
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#285: The Sea Mystery (1928) by Freeman Wills Crofts
First thing first: yes, I’m aware that the 2017 Collins Crime Club edition of this novel — for which I am eternally grateful, since it has enabled me to read it in the first place — has been reissued...
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#321: The Maze, a.k.a. Persons Unknown (1932) by Philip MacDonald
Much like in one of those hilarious romantic comedies from the early 2000s starring Ben Stiller or Jennifer Lopez, Philip MacDonald and I got off to a rocky start that seemed to be improving, on the...
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#328: Sir John Magill’s Last Journey (1930) by Freeman Wills Crofts
This 2017 HarperCollins reprint — under the title Inspector French and Sir John Magill’s Last Journey — is 309 pages long and took me, almost to the hour, two full weeks to read. Ordinarily this would...
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#344: Spoiler Warning – Coming in April: Invisible Weapons (1938) by John Rhode
Right, the dust has settled on The Problem of the Wire Cage, so it’s time to pick another book to get all spoilerful over. There’s no mystery here, that book has been picked and its title is in the...
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#374: Spoiler Warning 6 – Invisible Weapons (1938) by John Rhode
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to talk about the 1938 impossible crime novel Invisible Weapons by John Rhode, one of the many noms de plume of Cecil John Charles Street. We — and by “we”...
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#388: Inspector French and the Cheyne Mystery (1926) by Freeman Wills Crofts
I wasn’t sure I wanted to dive into another complex alibi problem so soon after Cut Throat (1932) by Christopher Bush. But if anyone can convince me of the joys of alibi-breaking it’s Freeman Wills...
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#400: The Rynox Mystery (1930) by Philip MacDonald
Well, who’d’ve thought it, eh? Philip MacDonald first featured in my reading life in 1-star ignominy, and here he is not just beating all-comers to feature my 400th blog post, but doing so with a...
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#417: The Ponson Case (1921) by Freeman Wills Crofts
Freeman Wills Crofts’ second novel The Ponson Case (1921) recently enjoyed a reissue thanks to the superlative efforts of HarperCollins and their revived Detective Club imprint. Nevertheless, I’m not...
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