Two years after crafting Green for Danger, a classic wartime puzzle, Christianna Brand wrote Suddenly at His Residence, (a.k.a. The Crooked Wreath, a.k.a. x 2 One of the Family, its U.S. serialized title), her only extended family mystery and her first impossible crime novel. Inspector Cockrill appears for his third case, which means that, for as many times in a row, … Continue reading RE-BRANDING #4: The Housing Crisis – Suddenly at His Residence
Impossible Crimes
ABRA-CADAVER: Death and the Conjuror
Let’s face it: life these days has not been just a bowl of cherries. You might wonder, then, why I seem to only read books about violent death. The answer, for any fan of classic crime stories at least, is obvious: we read mysteries for the same reason that millions of souls gobbled them up between 1920 … Continue reading ABRA-CADAVER: Death and the Conjuror
RE-BRANDING #2: Heads Will Roll in Heads You Lose
“Life doesn’t stand still, even when murders and mysteries force themselves into the lives of ordinary people like ourselves. Things seem to go on much as usual, and you talk and eat and get on with your everyday life, because there’s nothing else to be done about it; but it’s all in your mind, and … Continue reading RE-BRANDING #2: Heads Will Roll in Heads You Lose
ACDC PART TEN: In Which The Reader Is Warned . . . about The Reader Is Warned
After a notable pause, we return to my Carter Dickson celebration with The Reader Is Warned (1939), the tenth book John Dickson Carr wrote under this pseudonym and the ninth Sir Henry Merrivale mystery. Frankly, this is a difficult one for me to write about because, for the first 168 pages, it is so wonderful that it … Continue reading ACDC PART TEN: In Which The Reader Is Warned . . . about The Reader Is Warned
PODCAST MANIA, PART II: The Crooked Hinge (with Flex and Herds)
“This thing was wrong. Terrors should not be domestic terrors. It was like being told that in your own home you may completely disappear for four hours. It was like being told that in your own home you may open a familiar door, and enter not your own room, but a room you have never … Continue reading PODCAST MANIA, PART II: The Crooked Hinge (with Flex and Herds)
DEATH AND DELIGHT ON THE HIGH C’S: Edmund Crispin’s Swan Song
Picture, if you dare, last month’s meeting of Book Club: We gathered on Zoom with grave faces, struggling to figure out how to fill the two hours with talk about a very dull book. As it turned out, we made short shrift of a desultory conversation about The Gutenberg Murders and devoted the bulk of our time in a group … Continue reading DEATH AND DELIGHT ON THE HIGH C’S: Edmund Crispin’s Swan Song
A HALTER WITH BITE: The Mask of the Vampire
Let us consider the vampire. What other monster is simultaneously so alluring and so repellent? Immortal, eternally youthful, a creature whose method of attack has been compared in centuries of fiction as something akin to kinky sex! And yet it dwells in darkness, sleeps in a coffin, subsists on human blood, and is a close friend … Continue reading A HALTER WITH BITE: The Mask of the Vampire
” . . . there are matters of which no jest can be made:” THE RED DEATH MURDERS
Well, it was bound to happen! A pandemic comes along, and you stop teaching. There’s nothing to do but stare at the walls, studiously avoid that mountain of books comprising your TBR pile, and desultorily post in your blog about this or that mediocre novel that you read in Book Club. And then – inspiration! You … Continue reading ” . . . there are matters of which no jest can be made:” THE RED DEATH MURDERS
PAUL HALTER AND THE LITTLE GREEN MEN
As so often happens in times of great stress, we have turned for relief to outer space. A slew of recent stories suggested that unidentified flying objects were more than likely alien and nature and more frequently spotted by lucid folks than one might imagine. And of course, the BRTS (Billionaire Race to Space) continues … Continue reading PAUL HALTER AND THE LITTLE GREEN MEN
BOOK CLUB REPORT #9: So Pretty a Problem
My Book Club has been playing games with me again. Last month, if you’ll recall, someone selected a novel about a man who hosts a party where he invites several acquaintances whom he knows to be criminals, and during the evening, after having hinted broadly at his knowledge, he is stabbed to death while his … Continue reading BOOK CLUB REPORT #9: So Pretty a Problem
Ah Sweet Mystery! 