Mary Kelly, The Spoilt Kill

This is a tremendous crime thriller from 1961, that won the Crime Writers' Association Critics' Award for that year. Mary Kelly went on to write more detective novels, but somehow her name has disappeared from sight. Crime fiction historian Martin Edwards says that she stopped writing fiction in her forties, because she chose when and what … Continue reading Mary Kelly, The Spoilt Kill →

Jennifer Morag Henderson, Josephine Tey: A Life

I’ve been waiting for a biography of Josephine Tey for years, and was so pleased when I saw that Sandstone Press were to publish this one. Henderson’s book gives a vast amount of new information (new to the casual but devoted Tey re-reader, but possibly not new to a proper detective fiction scholar), and depicts … Continue reading Jennifer Morag Henderson, Josephine Tey: A Life →

Ngaio Marsh’s Death in a White Tie

This week's classic detective fiction podcast scripts catch-up from Why I Really Like This Book is on the tremendous New Zealand author Ngaio Marsh (pronounced NYE-oh). Death In A White Tie (1938) is from the same period as Sayers’ Murder Must Advertise, and shares a theme of a high society drugs racket with Murder Must Advertise and with Darkness … Continue reading Ngaio Marsh’s Death in a White Tie →

Greer Gilman’s Jonsonian fantasies

Greer Gilman’s Exit, Pursued by a Bear was published in 2014, preceded by Cry Murder! In A Small Voice in 2013. These are historical novels published by the estimable and alluring Small Beer Press, in saddle-stitched chapbooks of high quality and good design (e-book versions are also possible). They share a protagonist, the English playwright … Continue reading Greer Gilman’s Jonsonian fantasies →

Bad drugs and fast cars: Dorothy L Sayers’ Murder Must Advertise

Getting our knees wet in the sea of this mini-series on great detective classics, this podcast scripts catch-up from Why I Really Like This Book is about that perceptive novel about the advertising industry by Dorothy L Sayers, Murder Must Advertise (1933). This is a novel about office lives and 1930s high society, with a darkness underneath that comes from … Continue reading Bad drugs and fast cars: Dorothy L Sayers’ Murder Must Advertise →

Now posting on Vulpes Libris: Ernest Bramah’s Max Carrados stories

Over on Vulpes Libris I've posted a brief but heartfelt paean to the Max Carrados stories by Ernest Bramah. These are mildly addictive, in the 'just one more before I turn the light out' sense, and thoroughly ingenious detective stories, dating from 1913 right through to the 1930s. But I enjoy them most as a record … Continue reading Now posting on Vulpes Libris: Ernest Bramah’s Max Carrados stories →

The performances of Roderick Alleyn: Ngaio Marsh at her best

I accidentally began rereading Ngaio Marsh’s Roderick Alleyn detective novels before Christmas, and have now, a month later, read them all, bar the four that I didn't have which have yet to arrive via Abebooks. These novels are Marsh’s most well-known works, superb Golden Age detective novels in the classic whodunit style, published from the 1930s … Continue reading The performances of Roderick Alleyn: Ngaio Marsh at her best →

The Golden Age of Murder

Martin Edwards' The Golden Age of Murder is a fat and heavy hardback (the paperback is due out in 2016) endorsed by Len Deighton, as a study of the British writers who created the Golden Age of detective fiction in the 1920s and 1930s. It’s an absolute treasure chest of writers’ names and novels that have … Continue reading The Golden Age of Murder →

Lindsey Davis, Ancient Rome and Marcus Didius Falco

In 1990 I bought a book to read on the way home on the train, and when I got there I wasn’t in London, but in Londinium, for such was the power of Lindsey Davis’s first Falco novel, The Silver Pigs. I read her novels addictively for years. My favourite is not one of the 20 … Continue reading Lindsey Davis, Ancient Rome and Marcus Didius Falco →

E R Punshon’s Crossword Mystery

In E R Punshon's Crossword Mystery, Mr George Winterton, a stockbroker and monomaniac on the subject of the gold standard, is in fear of his life. His brother has recently drowned, all his comfort in the peace of the English coastal bay which they own has been ruined, and he has demanded personal protection from … Continue reading E R Punshon’s Crossword Mystery →