We are only a couple weeks shy of the seventh anniversary of the first time I posted about shin honkaku on this site. Since then, those of us who are extremely grateful for the Japanese obsession with the Golden Age of Detection have reveled in one release after another of both classic honkaku novels from the likes of Soji … Continue reading MANSION W/7BD, 6B, 4CORPSES, & VIEW: The Mill House Murders
shin honkaku
AIM (NOT SO) STRAIGHT AND TRUE: My Resolutions for 2023
A few weeks ago, my pal (and Book Club Arch Nemesis!) the Puzzle Doctor reached his 2000th post on In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel. Not bad for a man who’s only been blogging since 1954. I hit my 500th post last August (it was a dreary review of a dreary book, Dorothy L. Sayers’ The Documents in … Continue reading AIM (NOT SO) STRAIGHT AND TRUE: My Resolutions for 2023
CRIME SOLVING WITH CANAPES: The Adventures of the Puzzle Club
If you have had the good fortune to dive into honkaku and shin honkaku mysteries, you will be thrilled to learn that, in Japan, high schools and universities have murder societies, whose members are all devotees of the Golden Age of Detection. They meet regularly to wallow in every aspect of classic crime, and then some of them grow … Continue reading CRIME SOLVING WITH CANAPES: The Adventures of the Puzzle Club
読書クラブ DOES HONKAKU: Death on Gokumon Island
Westerners’ love for Japanese mysteries is gaining a lot of momentum, shown by the increasing release of new honkaku and shin honkaku titles. In terms of shin honkaku, I’m most excited to learn that The Mill House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji will be coming out next spring. The publication by Locked Room International of Ayatsuji’s The Decagon House Murders is what got me started on … Continue reading 読書クラブ DOES HONKAKU: Death on Gokumon Island
BOOK CLUB FROM HELL!!! The Five False Suicides
I hate to start the new year with a sad fact, but reading, and the enjoyment thereof, has become a rare commodity. When I taught high school, I was disheartened by how few of my students carried around a book for pleasure. Maybe it’s the solitary nature of reading, or the lack of bells-and-whistles flummery … Continue reading BOOK CLUB FROM HELL!!! The Five False Suicides
BITING OFF MORE . . . (My 2022 Resolutions)
Here it comes – the moment when all the bloggers you visit try and entice you to keep coming back with our promises of things to come. Some of my plans are rather amorphous: I hope to do some spiffing up of the site itself so that Ah Sweet Mystery will be better organized, sport … Continue reading BITING OFF MORE . . . (My 2022 Resolutions)
BRAD’S BEST READS OF 2021
As book bloggers go, in sheer number of reads I’m a dismal failure. Don’t even try and compare me, say, to my friend Kate over at Cross Examining Crime who, even in a bad month (May, when she had to tend to the birth of five baby goats), reviewed thirteen books, ten more than my monthly average … Continue reading BRAD’S BEST READS OF 2021
IT’S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS: Death Among the Undead
Like the holiday displays at Hallmark Cards, Locked Room International has delivered the perfect Halloween murder mystery two months early. Publisher John Pugmire and translator Ho-Ling Wong have teamed up to unleash the latest example of shin honkaku mystery fiction on the English-speaking world. And this one is something extra special. It’s another debut novel along the lines of … Continue reading IT’S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS: Death Among the Undead
TOO MUCH META IN MY DIET: Lending the Key to the Locked Room
Here we are at the start of 2021, and the Western world is facing an existential crisis of enormous proportions while the Eastern world seems to have things pretty much under control. I’m speaking, of course, of the efforts of thirty or so bloggers to transform public opinion in America and Europe as to the … Continue reading TOO MUCH META IN MY DIET: Lending the Key to the Locked Room
FAST FORWARDING INTO ‘21
“Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.” (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes) Does anybody want to hear me vent about 2020? Because, you know, I can do it, and I will . . . that is, if anyone wants to listen. To be honest, however, … Continue reading FAST FORWARDING INTO ‘21
Ah Sweet Mystery! 