“One night in midsummer, at Cheltenham in Gloucestershire, Arthur Fane murdered a nineteen-year-old girl named Polly Allen. That was the admitted fact.” Earlier this year, I crossed the halfway point in my spasmodic celebration of John Dickson Carr’s alter ego, Carter Dickson. Nine – And Death Makes Ten was definitely a highlight of my journey so far, but it carried with it a warning – although not one of my own making: “Unfortunately, you’ve hit the end of peak Merrivale with this one. That first run of 11 novels is unsurpassed in Carr’s career. The books going forward are perfectly readable ..read more

Recently, I had the opportunity to rewatch the 1997 film Agatha when it appeared on Turner Classic Movies as part of a mini-festival of films about people who have disappeared. Directed by Michael Apted and based on a novel by the film’s screenwriter, Kathleen Tynan, Agatha provides a wholly fictional account of what happened to Agatha Christie on those eleven days in 1926 when she disappeared. Vanessa Redgrave as Agatha Christie I can’t double down enough on the word “fictional” here! Never mind the basic plot, (SPOILERS HERE in ROT-13, if you really want to know: Puevfgvr qvgpurf ure pne naq ..read more

“Crime? Can’t we talk about anything else? Don’t we get enough of it in books and films? I’m sick to death of this crime, crime, crime, wherever you turn.” If this sounds like an odd complaint coming from  a member of a Classic Crime Book Club– well, you’re right. While we have tended to have more strike-outs than home runs in our title selection, it’s not for lack of trying. Despite our incredibly varied tastes, the one fact upon which we’re all agreed is our (here comes the pun!) undying love for murder mysteries. No complaints from me his month, for we picked a beaut called Case for T ..read more

“’Remember now, Mrs. Shelby, if I’m going to represent you, I want you to have just one formula. For the press, there will be only two words, “no comment”. For the officers you will simply say, “I am not guilty. I have done nothing and the charge is unfounded, but I do not care to discuss it in the absence of my attorney. And, when my attorney is here, he will do the talking for me.”’ “’I see,’ Sergeant Dorset sneered, ‘the old formula.’ “’The old formula,’ Mason told him. ‘And, whenever I have a client who is being framed, I revert to that formula.’” Right from the start, The Case of the Half ..read more

Sergio . . . . . Nick . . . . . . . . . . . and Bradley Oh, the chutzpah of these guys! Attempting to conceive a list of the thirty-nine best Golden Age Mysteries of all time!! That may explain why we want to enlist all of you as accomplices!! Curious? Read on . . . When my mystery-loving brothers Sergio Angelini, Nick Cardillo and I first got together to mimic the dudes over at Screen Drafts, one of our favorite podcasts, and create a draft of the Twenty Best Alfred Hitchcock Films, the internet blew up like one of those test tubes in the chemistry set you had when you were eight! Okay, it di ..read more

Like me, some of you might remember how back in the 1980’s and 90’s, the dairy industry would put the pictures of missing children on their cartons. This was the time – blissfully free of the internet – when wanted posters dotted the bulletin boards in every post office. It seems like a natural fit for publicizing lost kids: after all, everybody likes milk! It turns out that this idea was conceived out of a general frustration with the police force for the low priority they gave to children who ended up with non-custodial parents.  The things you learn on Wikipedia! In 1990, prolific YA ..read more

Stupid head cold! It came on me on Tuesday, and so far it has made me miss a haircut, a massage, a night at the theatre, and forty bucks for COVID tests. (Fortunately, I have tested negative – twice!) I hate being sick! I hate NyQuil, and daily bowls of chicken soup, and drowning my sorrows in herbal tea. I . . . am . . . GROUCHY! So I’m sitting here in my bathrobe, drinking herbal tea and trying to come up with simple grifts to coax a few dollars out of some poor sap. The easiest one that comes to mind is to go up to a poor sucker, hand him a folded piece of paper, and say: “I’ve written down ..read more

If you ever go wandering through this blog and find some of my early posts about film adaptations of Agatha Christie’s work, you find yourself in the presence of a staunch purist. I mean, when your favorite author’s greatest strength is her plotting, why tamper with perfection? Why indeed? My relationship with adaptation has changed drastically since I erected this monument to classic crime eight and a half years ago. Through dint of experience and maturity, I have allowed my mind to open up to new forms of expression. Part of this has to do with the reactions I have come across on social medi ..read more

My recent sampling of the work of Herbert Brean left me with a hankering for more Gotham-centered mystery. And when you want a taste of New York, what better place to stop than West 35th Street, home of that orchid-loving, gargantuan grumpy genius, Nero Wolfe, and his girl-magnet sidekick and everybody’s favorite Watson, Archie Goodwin. These days, however, Archie’s senses are more attuned to middle-aged women. Maybe it’s because Rex Stout’s immortal duo premiered in 1934 (Fer-de-Lance) and today’s pick, The Doorbell Rang, was published in 1965. But no, Archie is ever youthful ..read more

My pal JJ has been extolling the talents of Herbert Brean over at The Invisible Event since 2017 . . . but I didn’t listen. Two years after that, our buddy Ben at The Green Capsule joined in the chorus . . . and I didn’t take up the tune. And then in 2020 our friend the Puzzle Doctor took a different tack by being pretty unimpressed with Brean! I must have been distracted by other things in 2020, but when PD talks, I listen: we tend to have opposite views on the most interesting things (koff*Jumping Jenny*koff)! After reading the first two books by Brean (the second one in disgust), ol’ PD dec ..read more