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IN BRIEF: Witchwater - G. M. Wilson
Witchwater, 1st UK paperback (Digit, 1963)"It's easy to scoff at devil worship, and blood pacts, broomstick riding and other sorceries when you're safe at home in broad daylight, within easy reach of...
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FFB: The Shop Window Murders - Vernon Loder
Tobias Mander is the founder and owner of Mander Department Store, his brainchild for an innovative place that will combine "cheapness with luxury." He also is an airplane fanatic and has an...
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Things I Learned While Reading Detective Fiction, part 2
Cartoon ©2014 by Nina PaleyAlexander Pope wrote "A little learning is a dang'rous thing/Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring" Oh, I like a very deep drink from that mythical fount of knowledge....
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Advent Ghosts 2014: Eyes Full of Tinsel and Fire
Another holiday season, another Advent Ghosts Day. Loren Eaton who blogs at I Saw Lightning Fall invites writers to dabble in a yuletide drabble each year at this time. It's his way to help honor the...
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FFB: Give Me Back Myself - L. P. Davies
Stephen Dusack has a bit of a problem. After suffering major injuries in a train derailment he is under the care of both doctors and psychiatrists. He has been interviewed multiple times about his life...
View ArticleStar of Wonder, Star of Night
MerryChristmas, HappyHolidays, BlessedSolstice ...and all the rest of it, gang!Through sheer serendipity this turned up on YouTube and I had to post here it here. Loads of twinkling lights, Christmas...
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Vintage Mystery Bingo Card Reading Challenges - COMPLETED!
Last year I dared myself to cover both the Golden and Silver Age Bingo cards in Bev Hankins' double-edged Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge for 2014. Well, what with my attraction to and immersion in...
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FFB: The Mysterious Mr. Badman - William Fryer Harvey
The opening sentence to The Mysterious Mr. Badman (1934) is a corker:When at two o'clock on a sultry July afternoon Athelstan Digby undertook to keep an eye on the contents of the old bookshop in...
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The Way Some People Read
Periodically, I get very interesting email from readers of this blog. Some like to discuss their latest find in a rare or used book shop. Some ask me questions on where they can find books outside of...
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FFB: Groaning Spinney - Gladys Mitchell
Beatrice Lestrange Bradley is at her most frustratingly oracular and infuriatingly intuitive mode in Groaning Spinney (1950). I hesitate to call this a detective novel because frankly it isn't though...
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Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge 2015
Once again I am daring myself to cover both the Golden Age and Silver Age Bingo cards in Bev Hankins' Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge. I throw down the gauntlet at myself. Do better this year!This...
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Samuel Boyd of Catchpole Square - B.L. Farjeon
Here’s another pop trivia quiz for all you detective fiction mavens out there. Earliest girl detective in the genre? Don’t even think Nancy Drew, gang. Go back further. Violet Strange -- did I hear...
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FFB: The Official Chaperon - Natalie Sumner Lincoln
Chances are if you are asked to name one woman mystery writer from the early twentieth century you wouldn't immediately think of Natalie Sumner Lincoln. I'd wager that you are probably reading her name...
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FFB: The Comlyn Alibi - Headon Hill
Sir Anthony West is an addicted gambler. He is in debt to the tune of £1000 and he hasn't a clue how to dig himself out. As luck (and abounding coincidence we will soon learn) would have it Jasper...
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JACKET REQUIRED: If I Were A Rich Man
Not only do I collect books in DJs sometimes I collect photos of DJs that I encounter in book catalogs and on the net. Here are a few attractive rarities I wish I could buy. I own a few of these...
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Blondes Are My Trouble - Martin Brett
The residents on the lower floors of the Cressingham Apartments have no idea what's going on above them. Catering to the needs of the exclusive, the reclusive and the unobtrusive this tower of an...
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FFB: Darkest Death - Ralph Stephenson
An unusual setting of West Africa in the 1950s, a locked room murder involving death by bow and arrow, evidence of tribal witchcraft rituals in the surrounding village, and a cast of characters whose...
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IN BRIEF: The Case of the Busy Bees
Clifford Witting tries his hand at a master criminal style thriller in The Case of the Busy Bees (1952). This mystery is not a Holmesian adventure with apiaries and beekeeping as its background. The...
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FFB: Let's Kill Uncle - Rohan O'Grady
I've known about Let's Kill Uncle (1963) for a long time. But I only knew the movie version as adapted and directed by William Castle. For a teenager growing up in the 1970s that movie was pretty wild...
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FFB: The Tall Dark Man - Anne Chamberlain
Anne Chamberlain's debut novel The Tall Dark Man (1955) can barely be called a crime novel. Why this book was marketed as a cat and mouse thriller is beyond me. It's not. Yes, there is a crime. But the...
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