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A-Haunting We Will Go: Supernatural Elements in G. M. Wilson's Detective Novels
I have ghosts on my mind lately, as many of you probably can guess, so I thought I'd take the time to write up two effective examples of the use of ghosts and the supernatural in murder mysteries. G....
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FFB: Death Goes to School - Q. Patrick
It's parents' weekend at Craiglea, an English boarding school for boys, at the start of Death Goes to School (1936). Several events have been specifically scheduled to show off the students' skills in...
View ArticleChristmas Is A-Comin'
I love this! It's just the right combination of weird and old fashioned, unusual music and quirky-sorta-creepy Christmas imagery to put me in the right kind of holiday spirit. Music and singing...
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I'll Respect Your Opinion If You Don't Steal Mine
Source Look! I cited the URL where I found this photo. Not hard at all.What a nice birthday present I discovered today. On December 15 (my birthday) a series of "reviews" on the works of Harriet...
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FFB: The Coordinator - Andrew York (a holiday rerun)
We were Christmas shopping last weekend and I saw this new holiday item being shoved onto the consumers. It's a special copper mug intended to serve a Moscow Mule. Amazing how some alcoholic beverages...
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Advent Ghosts 2015: Two Short Short Ghost Tales
Each year at this time Loren Eaton who writes at his blog I Saw Lightning Fall invites creative writers to challenge themselves with the micro short story called a drabble. One hundred words -- no...
View ArticleIf Only In My Dreams
MerryChristmas, HappyHolidays, BlessedSolstice ...and all the rest of it, gang!In sympathy for all of you who will be traveling and may experience weather delays I offer this upbeat holiday tune from...
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The Case of the Phantom Fingerprints - Ken Crossen
Detective Jason Jones and his tagalong partner Necessary Smith, a private eye, are confronted with the puzzling disappearance of the prime suspect who has left behind incriminating fingerprints on a...
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Write? Of Course Write!
...or, The Mystery of the Vanishing Posts Explained in FullHere's a brief list of my proud accomplishments outside of the blog in 2015. It was the busiest year for research and writing projects and I...
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FFB: The Survivor - Dennis Parry
It's paradoxical that The Survivor (1940) is considered a ghost story. True, there is a malevolent spirit at work here exploiting the body of a naive young woman to continue a relentless assault of...
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FFB: An Air That Kills - Margaret Millar
In an effort to crank out more posts on the books I read this year I have come up with a formula that will highlight the aspects that I think make the books worth reading and I'll conclude with a...
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FFB: The Stones of Muncaster Cathedral - Robert Westall
THE STORY: Joe Clark is a steeplejack and stone mason who has been tasked with repairing the crumbling stonework and damaged weather vane atop the towers of Muncaster Cathedral. The southwest tower...
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FFB: So Bad A Death - June Wright
THE STORY: Maggie Byrnes who made her debut in Murder at the Telephone Exchange as a phone operator turned amateur sleuth, is on the case again in So Bad A Death (1949). This time she's married to...
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The Death of Nevill Norway - John Rowland
In the coming months I suspect you will be hearing a lot about John Rowland on the many vintage mystery blogs. Two of his detective novels will soon be reissued by British Library Crime Classics. I've...
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NEW STUFF: The Murdered Banker - Augusto DeAngelis
The Murdered Bankerby Augusto DeAngelisTranslated from Italian by Jill FoulstonPushkin VertigoISBN: 978-1-78227-170-3190 pp. $13.95February 23, 2016There is a tendency to pigeonhole English language...
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NEW STUFF: The Rabbit Back Literature Society - Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen
Quick! Give me the name of a Finnish novelist. Or any writer from Finland. Aha! I thought so. Somehow Finland gets overlooked in the world of letters. I certainly couldn’t come up with someone. Not...
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O Rare Arthur Bray!
I maintain a list of wants of extremely obscure books and rare titles on several bookselling websites. Periodically, I get an exciting email that one of those books is being offered for sale. I usually...
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FFB: Three Green Bottles - Dominic Devine
THE STORY: A teenage girl is found strangled at the edge of the golf course in a quiet village. Suspicion turns to the last men seen with her. When the prime suspect is found dead a few days later of...
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FFB: She Who Was No More - Boileau & Narcejac
The crime novel plot motif of losing a corpse is often the basis for a black comedy romp. Craig Rice used this gimmick repeatedly in her novels featuring Jake & Helene Justus and John J. Malone,...
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FFB: The Empty House - Irina Karlova
The last time I wrote about a book by Irina Karlova (Dreadful Hollow, reviewed here) I talked about its preposterous vampire plot and the unintentional self-parody that resulted from her overly serious...
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