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FFB: Death Sends a Cable - Margaret Tayler Yates
THE STORY: Dr. Hugh McNeal, Navy physician and his wife Navy nurse Anne Davenport McNeal have been stationed in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba where the Navy runs a telegraph station in cooperation with the...
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FFB: The Silent Murders - Neil Gordon
THE STORY: Inspector Dewar and Superintendent Bone are faced with the enigma of a series of murders where at each crime scene the body has been tagged with a numbered piece of cardboard. When the book...
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FFB: The Doctor's First Murder - Robert Hare
THE STORY: Dr. Amos Truppen meticulously plans the death of Henry Updike in order to steal his formula for a medicine that supposedly can cure cancer. Truppen feels that if he can get that formula...
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NEW STUFF: The Wolf & the Watchman - Niklas Natt och Dag
The Wolf and the Watchmanby Niklas Natt och Dagorig published as 1793translated from Swedish by Ebba SegerbergAtria/Simon & SchusterISBN: 978-1-5011-9677-5373 pp. $28Publication date: March 5,...
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FFB: They Walk in Darkness - Gerald Verner
They Walk in Darkness (1947) opens with a dinner party held on Halloween night. The main topic of conversation is hardly palatable for any dinner party no matter what the date. In the village on...
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Death of a Doll - Hilda Lawrence
Death of a Doll, 1st edition DJSimon & Schuster, 1947Hilda Lawrence was not a prolific mystery writer. However, in her small output of only five books, she gave us a fascinating type of crime novel...
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FFB: The Flight of the Doves - Walter Macken
In celebration of the upcoming St. Patrick's Day weekend activities out here in Chicago here's a perfect book that embodies of the idea of the Luck of the Irish.THE STORY: Fed up with the abuse of...
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FFB: Death at 7:10 - H.F.S. Moore
THE STORY: An insatiably curious writer is compelled to investigate the poisoning death of a fellow passenger who died while on board a train en route to Philadelphia. His manner of investigation is...
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FFB: The Case of the Gold Coins - Anthony Wynne
THE STORY: It's another detective opera from the pen of prolific impossible crime maven Anthony Wynne. Madness, stabbing, cudgelling, strangling, suicide attempts, and melodrama galore! This time we...
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ODDITIES: The Hand of the Chimpanzee - Robert Hare
Imagine a mystery novel that is an extravagant conglomeration of Planet of the Apes,The Island of Dr. Moreau and that creepy cult classic 1973 TV movie A Cold Night's Death. Is such a melange possible?...
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FFB: The Crowing Hen - Reginald Davis
THE STORY:"Whistling women and crowing hen/Are neither good for God nor men."This rhyme serves as epigraph to this intensely Gothic, very creepy story of a village plagued by fears and superstition and...
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FFB: Murder Draws a Line - Willetta Ann Barber & R. F. Schabelitz
THE STORY: Christopher "Kit" Storm has a moderately successful career as a commercial artist in his Manhattan studio. On occasion he serves as an artistic consultant to police drawing sketches of crime...
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NEW STUFF: The Return of Mr. Campion - Margery Allingham
A few years back someone invited the vintage crime bloggers on both sides of the Atlantic to contribute to a post on Writers Who We Think We’ll Never Read. These were the writers who for one reason or...
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FFB: Dangerous to Me - Rae Foley
THE STORY: Answering a personal ad for an unusual job leads Paula Savage to discover the ugly past of Coxbury, Connecticut. What should have been a simple research job for a local historian instead...
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NEW STUFF: The Stranger Diaries - Elly Griffiths
Finally, I can pay back a frequent plugger of my posts. Having read a review of The Stranger Diaries (2018) on the highly entertaining and often eye-opening blog Clothes in Books by blogosphere pal,...
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FFB: Devil by the Sea - Nina Bawden
THE STORY: Shortly after she wins a talent contest Poppet is paid attention to by a lonely misfit man. Nine year-old Hilary Bray watches both of them jealously and sees the man take Poppet by the hand...
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FFB: Nine Days' Panic - Reginald Davis
THE STORY: Nine Days’ Panic (1937) is an absurdist black comedy that is also a send-up of all manner of detective novel conventions. The madcap plot incorporates mysterious disappearances, vanishing...
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IN BRIEF: The 3-13 Murders - Thomas Black
It isn't often that I am so entranced by another person's review that I find I have to read the book immediately. When I came across a post on an author I was hardly familiar with on TomCat's blog...
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FFB: Death Croons the Blues - James Ronald
THE STORY: Ex-con burglar Bill Cuffy cannot resist what he thinks is an easy theft. He'll break in and steal as much as he can from night club singer Adele Valée while she is out performing. In the...
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FFB: The Perfect Alibi - C. St. John Sprigg
THE STORY: Cruel and vicious Antony Mullins who promised misery upon his wife and her various lovers is found dead in his blazing garage. At first thought to be a strange suicide or an accident it is...
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