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She Never Reached the Top - Elma K. Lobaugh
Elma K. Lobaugh's first mystery She Never Reached the Top (1945) was lauded by the editorial team at Doubleday Doran's "Crime Club" as "unusually competent." But that, my friends, is an understatement...
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Reprints Looming on the Horizon
I was hoping that I would be able to give you some wonderful news about a few reprints, but alas there are delays with one exciting reprint that was supposed to be out this fall. Some of you may have...
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Death Walks Softly - Neal Shepherd (Nigel Morland)
THE STORY: Inspector Michael Tandy makes his debut in Death Walks Softly (1938) an excellent example of three subgenres: police procedural, scientific detective novel and impossible crime mystery....
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The Ghost of Thomas Penry – Kenneth O’Hara
Howard Stavey is tasked with creating a treatment for a TV program the subject of which will be Thomas Penry, a Welsh man known for his research into the occult and psychic phenomenon. If it meets with...
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IN BRIEF - A Shroud for Unlac - S. H. Courtier
In Courtier's fourth detective novel once again this Australian writer explores an aspect of the culture in the land Down Under. This time it's sheep ranchers, and specifically sheep ranchers who are...
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FIRST BOOKS: The Templeton Case - Victor L. Whitechurch
Victor Whitechurch is best known for his short story collection Thrilling Stories of the Railway with his vegetarian detective Thorpe Hazell and for being one of the founding members of the Detection...
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Best Mystery VIntage Reprint of 2022, part one
"It's that time of year"When the world falls in love"Every song you hear seems to say"Merry Christmas, may your "New Year dreams come true"There's some idealized seasonal wishing, right? It's also a...
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Advent Ghosts 2022: A Star, A Star Dancing in the Night
The houses, apartment buildings and yard are ablaze with Chistmas lights and absurd holiday inflatables. It's the dawn of the holiday season and that means it's Advent Ghosts time. Loren Eaton who...
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Best Vintage Mystery Reprint 2022, part two
The nomination process continues across the vintage mystery blogosphere this weekend. Others have theirs posted. I was away the entire day yesterday, up in Milwaukee to see their version of A...
View ArticleIt's Christmas/ Why Can't We All Just Get Along?
Here's some swinging holiday flavored jazz from the past and the present. First, the great Ella Fitzgerald swings on an old standard accompanied by a birds-eye view (reindeer's eye view?) animated...
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The Empty Bed - Herbert Adams
I read three books that were set around or on Christmas Day during December and have managed to finish only one in time for the end of 2022. One I stopped because it was so dull in its 33 pages of...
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Psst... Over Here!
Hello, there! Remember me? I think eight month’s hiatus is a little too long to have taken for what I thought was going to be “a little break”. What have I been up to? Oh, this and that…I came to...
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Nice People Don’t Kill – F. W. Bronson
First mystery novels can be fascinating. What does the writer want to try out as an entry point into the world of the whodunit? Will it be a locked room murder? A noirish private eye novel? An inverted...
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Night's Candles - Anne Hocking
I must give credit where credit is due. One of my frequent readers who also often buys books from me (yes, I still do that on the side. Feel free to email me!) got me interested in the work of Anne...
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Let X Be the Murderer - Clifford Witting
Lookee here-- It's a book that was recently reprinted and one that you can actually purchase without having to take out a second mortgage! I did promise a few books that were much easier (and...
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Celia Dale -- Mistress of Menace
Readers of this blog know the term domestic suspense as a subgenre that encompasses crime novels usually set in sinister suburbs populated with secretive close knit families and dozens of housewives...
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Murder without Clues - Joseph L Bonney
A dead body in a locked room, a house surrounded by undisturbed snow, all suspects have an alibi but one and yet it seems that one person could not have committed the crime. Another ingenious John...
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The Glass Heart - Marty Holland
Down on his luck Curt Blair is waiting out a rainstorm in a “ritzy hash joint” just outside of Hollywood, USA when he steals a fancy camel hair overcoat then flees intending to sell the coat. It’s how...
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A Year in Review (part 1)
Sometimes a sudden change in one's life is all one needs to reevaluate what gives life purpose, meaning and most importantly joy.I am now retired. It was planned for this year, but came six months...
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A Year in Review (part 2)
Here is the continuation of my 2024 reading summation. In looking over my reading log I see a predominance of newly translated Japanese detective novels, a small pile of contemporary ghost and horror...
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