I have never been a trendy guy. It isn’t like I haven’t tried, but I’ve always been slow on the uptake. Just before I started high school, I demanded that my mom, who had forever dressed me in dark pants, white socks, and black loafers, buy me a pair of trendy bell bottoms and platform shoes. The pair she got me were brown plaid. The shoes matched. I wore them to school every day for six weeks until some kid came up to me and asked, “Are you poor?” 

When I became a blogger ten years ago, blogs were in!! Well, they might have been on their way out with the advent of podcasts, but I had no clue how to start a podcast! I didn’t know how to start a blog either, until Curtis Evans, of the long-running site, The Passing Tramp, showed me how. And before you could say WordPress, I was writing about the stuff I loved for people who loved it right back! I also received advice and encouragement from two much much older and more experienced bloggers: Kate from Cross-Examining Crime, who started blogging three months before me, and JJ, whose The Invisible Event debuted the month before Ah Sweet Mystery. 

To all of you who read their fabulous blogs, this is going to seem old hat, but this month I, too, am celebrating ten years as the proprietor of this hodgepodge of book, film, TV and play reviews that I call home. Times have changed a lot since I hung up my cyber shingle. Bloggers have come and gone (and come back again!), and lots of people have moved on to brighter, shinier things. But I wouldn’t trade the last ten years for the world! 

It will come as a relief to all of you when I say that this month, my tenth anniversary (oh, did I mention that?) will be business as usual. I’ve got a new classic author to write about, thanks to Book Club, a new Perry Mason review on the 17^th and the fourth from last entry in my Poirot Project on the 21^st. That the Mason book isn’t one of ES Gardner’s best and the Poirot is Elephants Can Remember should not feel foreboding in the least. I figure you guys will be fine. And I’m not – I repeat, not! – going to force you to eat cake or set off firecrackers or send me gifts (write ahsweetmysteryblog@gmail.com for my address) just because I’ve been around the block for a decade. No cake . . . no hoopla . . . and no special posts!!

Well . . . except for three. 

Obviously, this is the first one! It’s a chance for me to belabor the point ruminate thoughtfully on what I’ve accomplished over the past ten years. But rather than yak yak yak, as I’m wont to do, you’ll find this post jam-packed with games and activities for you to play! And for Post #2, I’m reserving the biggest game for September 13, to coincide with the first day of the 2025 International Agatha Christie Festival. That’s when I’ll post THE GREAT BIG GIGANTIC AGATHA CHRISTIE QUIZ for all of you to take. (Hey, around here the Queen of Crime deserves a celebration all her own!) You might think the quiz is going to be fun, but I’m grading them and if you don’t make the cut-off point, there will be detention! Then, for my final celebratory post, I will give you the answers to the quiz on September 24, which is my actual anniversary date. (Oh, did I mention . . .???)

And that’s it! Then we’re moving on to Year Eleven . . .

And now, to get things going, here are, in ascending order of importance, The Ten Things I Might Not Have Done Had I Not Become a Blogger!*

*With accompanying BONUS READER ACTIVITIES  for you to enjoy!

Number Ten: I Might Not Have Discovered Brian Flynn

That’s sort of a joke at the expense of PD, alias the Puzzle Doctor, aka Steve Barge, my fellow blogger (In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel) and Book Club buddy, who was responsible for guiding Dean Street Press to republish this long forgotten author. I have read exactly one and a third of Flynn’s novels, and he has yet to find his way into my heart. But let him stand in for the multitude of authors I might not have discovered had I not set my sights in search of new blogging content. If you pinned me down and forced me to name, off the top of my head, ten favorites (gee, I wonder why!), they would be, in order of alphabet, not preference: 

• Yukito Ayatsuji
• Francis Beeding
• Paul Halter
• Bernard Kendrick
• M.G. Leonard and Sam Sedgman
• Lange Lewis
• Helen McCloy
• James Ronald
• Harriet Rutland
• Seishi Yokomizo

READER ACTIVITY: Click on any one of these names and find a new favorite for yourself!

Number Nine: I Might Not Have Created a TBR Crisis

Speaking of all these new authors – as well as the writers of old that I enjoyed in my youth – soon after I started blogging and buying books to blog about, I discovered that I was something of a completist. If I liked Perry Mason, I needed to own EVERY Perry Mason. Ditto John Dickson Carr/Carter Dickson, Rex Stout, and Ellery Queen. I became obsessed with owning more Dell Map backs or Rue Morgue Press editions or LRI titles. Soon, I found myself filling in closets with shelving, buying new standing shelves, considering whether to purchase that new Janice Hallett or new pants. The result?

I am currently on a self-imposed buying moratorium, with the intention of focusing only on what I already own before I expand further. I’ve only broken it eight times. Hurray!

READER ACTIVITY: Browse through my collection and argue for what I MUST read next!

Number Eight: I Might Not Have Strung So Many Words Together

I have always dreamed of being a writer. I just never thought this was what I would write. This is my 752^nd post, and with an average length of 1,500 words – conservative, as this post is pushing 3,000! –  I have written 1,128,000 words about classic mysteries. 

If the average length of a classic-style mystery is 80,000 words, then I could have had fourteen novels featuring my master detective, society reporter Gideon Kane, on the shelves by now. That’s six more novels than Alan Conway wrote about Atticus Pünd before being tossed off a roof! It boggles the mind, and causes a slight pain in my heart. 

READER ACTIVITY: Post a response in which you tell me how I could have made better choices with my time. All responses must be 1,128,000 words in length.

Number Seven: I Might Not Have Written Half of a Serialized Pastiche of a Classic Murder Mystery

See, it’s not like I didn’t try to write a mystery. Once the pandemic set in and I felt my sanity begin to leave my body, I decided to entertain the masses (all seven of you) with an original mystery that I called Murder at Dungarees. It started as a spoof (get a load of the characters’ names!), but as I explained to a reader after the ninth installment): ”A funny thing happened: this was intended at the start to be pure parody, but almost immediately I unfortunately started to get ideas, so it veered into pastiche territory. And now it’s . . . just a mystery.” 

Sadly, that ninth chapter coincided with my sudden decision that I would retire from teaching (you try teaching drama on Zoom!), and life got the better of me. That, and someone posted a lovely comment that basically revealed the entire solution I had had in mind. Anyway, it was fun . . . and I hope I can – how would Poirot put it? – get my merde together someday and either finish it or write something halfway decent. 

READER ACTIVITY: Start Murder at Dungarees here.

Number Six: I Might Not Have Rekindled My Passion for Erle Stanley Gardner

As a child, Perry Mason was one of my favorite TV shows. In my late teens/early twenties, I read some of the novels, which caused a great bond with one college roommate’s mother and the other roommate’s dad, both of whom were voracious The Case of . . . readers. And then, I guess I just lost interest . . . 

. . . until my pal JJ named Gardner one of his four Kings of Crime and started talking about the D.A. series. I tracked down all eleven of those titles (no easy feat these days) and read three of them. I also bought most of the A.A. Fair titles, although I’ve only read one, and time has prevented me from giving Cool and Lam more of a deep dive. 

But my heart still belongs to Perry, Della and Paul. Now I have all the Mason books and intend to read and review as many as possible. It has been both a pleasure and a true respite from the cares of the world. In order to help YOU achieve nirvana, last week I posted my ERLE STANLEY GARDNER INDEX, which I will add links to as my intake of Gardner and Fair books increases. Huzzah for the prolific authors we love!!

READER ACTIVITY: Click on the Erle Stanley Gardner Index and start reading your Perry Mason from the beginning! (Don’t tell me if you overtake me!!)

Number Five: I Might Not Have Made So Many Lists

Who knew how many of you like lists? Lists of Favorites. Lists of the Best. The Worst. I’ve made a lot of them, including my Top Ten Agatha Christie titles, a list I feel is due for some slight amendments one of these days. My favorite lists are the one I haven’t made alone . . . but I’ll get to that in a minute. 

READER ACTIVITY: Check out my Top Ten Christie Titles – let me know how much you agree or disagree with my choices! And if you’re thinking of creating your OWN Christie list, be sure and check out MY AGATHA CHRISTIE INDEX.

Number Four: I Might Not Have Become Really Good at Titling Things

People have been asking Kate and JJ on the eve of their respective anniversaries, “How long does it take you to write a post?” JJ answered around fifty minutes. It takes me longer because I work very hard at finding a good title. This comes from my successful career in advertising (I temped at a large San Francisco agency for three weeks) but mostly from my love of punning. It’s my sense of humor that sets me apart from the others . . . and made my dad roll his eyes at me for fifty-something years.

READER ACTIVITY: For each title you see below, try and come up with the novel that was discussed. (If you give up, click on the title for the answer.)

1. Della in the Lion’s Den
2. Lay Off, MacDuff
3. Millar’s Crossing
4. Wedding Belle Blues
5. The Tracks of My Terrors
6. Death and Delight on the High C’s
7. Fangs for the Manorys
8. Bain of My Existence
9. It’s Clouds’ Illusions I Recall
10. You Always Remember Your First Carr

ALTERNATIVE READER ACTIVITY: You have been asked to write a guest post for Ah Sweet Mystery about your favorite Dorothy L. Sayers mystery. Please submit a title for your post that you feel will pass muster with the editors. 

Number Three: I Might Not Have Shared a Bit of My Life with Strangers

I’m aware that the smartest thing would be to stay on topic. Here’s the book I read, here’s what I thought about it. But I like to make things a little personal. I guess that’s the mini-memoirist in me. Believe me, I have edited out a great deal of text about my life, but I have shared with you good things – directing a play, for instance, or speaking at the IACF – and hard things, like the passing of my father. I appreciate you bearing with me when things move beyond the genre. There are many reasons why we write this stuff.

READER ACTIVITY: In the comments below, feel free to share an interesting personal tidbit about yourself. You could start with your name – I know many of you by handles such as Globalresearchstatistics.org. (If you wish to share something that is blackmail-able, please e-mail me at ahsweetmysteryblog@gmail.com.)

Number Two: I Might Not Have Found My People

I don’t know about the rest of you, but for most of my life, my love of mysteries was an isolating factor. The last time I got to talk to others about this stuff was in high school, when I belonged to The Sherlock Holmes Society. (See the yearbook picture below? I was sick when it was taken, but they didn’t forget me and scrawled my name on the blackboard! Despite that, the journalism staff still managed to misspell my name!!

I decided to be a blogger after discovering the Golden Age of Detection page on Facebook, which is where I virtually met Curtis Evans and discovered that other people really love this stuff and some of them write about it. I can’t help but add my voice to JJ’s, who last month talked about how much he missed the interaction in the comments section of his blog. I love sharing my opinions and experiences in the world of crime fiction, but more than that I love the back and forth with other fans and students of the genre. It is due to my blog that I have become a member of Book Club, comprised chiefly of fellow bloggers (Kate, JJ, Steve, Aidan, John, and Carol, our queen), that I have formed the Three Amigos with Nick Cardillo and Sergio Angelini, that I have become friends with fellow Agathologists like Kemper Donovan, Dr. John Curran, Dr. Mark Aldridge, and Gray Robert Brown, that I have had a running commentary for A YEAR with my buddies Chris Diehl and Jeff Rock who I met at last year’s Festival, that I have conversed with brilliant authors like Martin Edwards, Margot Kinberg, Christine Coulson, Dolores Gordon-Smith, Scott Byrnside, and James Aloysius Noy!

As a mystery nerd, I could not feel less alone!

READER ACTIVITY: Find a blog you enjoy (it needn’t be mine), read any one of the posts that interest you, and put a comment on the bottom. I guarantee you will have made a writer’s day, but you will probably also get a response and maybe even start a delightful conversation!

Number One: I Might Not Have Found My Voice

Maybe I haven’t written fourteen Gideon Kane mysteries. Maybe I’m not the foremost authority on anything. But I have had the greatest luck to be involved in conversations about the mystery genre and the people who dabble in it. I cherish my talks on the podcasts All About Agatha, Death to the Reader, In GAD We Trust and Tipping My Fedora. I have never felt so honored as when I was asked to speak at the Agatha Christie Festival. I love trading emails, texts and Zoom chats with other mystery lovers and finding that I not only have something to say but that there is an audience for it. 

Is that audience small? Comparatively so, I guess. But it’s quality. And as long as I get to hang out with quality people like all of you, I’ll keep this thing on for as long as this mind and body keep on ticking. Now, don’t forget to come back for THE GREAT BIG GIGANTIC AGATHA CHRISTIE QUIZ on the 13th!

READER ACTIVITY: Start a blog or podcast of your own. Find your voice. Send me a link. I will follow you.