Nicholas Blake
February and March 2021: Reading Recap
Well, go figure. The first quarter of 2021 is already behind us, never mind that I’m still having to remind myself on occasion to write “2021” instead of “2020” … (and we’re even a week into April already, but let that go). Anyway, since I never got around to doing a “February in review” post, […]
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Nicholas Blake: Minute for Murder
If I’ve counted correctly, this is the fifth Nigel Strangeways mystery that I’ve read, and — like the sheer inexplicable segue from the stellar Murder of Roger Ackroyd to the beyond-lamentable Big Four at a similar point in the trajectory of Agatha Christie’s career — it is proof positive that there is no such thing […]
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Nicholas Blake: The Beast Must Die
Wow. What a stunner. Blake (aka Cecil Day Lewis) messes with the reader’s mind literally from page 1, and being fully aware of the fact still doesn’t mean you’ll be up to what he is doing — or at least not all of it. Even to begin talking about the plot would mean giving away […]
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Halloween Bingo 2020: The First Week (+1 Day)
This year’s Halloween Bingo started a lot more promising than last year’s with a strong joint entry in Michael Connelly’s Bosch and Ballard series, and in fact, not one of the books I read earned less than a four-star rating — with the standout being Nicholas Blake’s The Beast Must Die, which turned out to […]
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Nicholas Blake: Thou Shell of Death
24 Festive Tasks: Door 18 – Hanukkah, Book: Read a book about light, miracles, featuring Jewish characters, set in Israel, that is the second book in a series, with the word “two” in the title, or with a light on the cover. This is a Christmas book, but I’ll be reading plenty more of […]
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Golden Age Mysteries: Further Reading
With my Detection Club Bingo card now blacked out, I’m going to track my reading here. (Note: for purposes of completeness, this includes books by the below authors already read prior to the creation of this list.) My priorities are going to be: Arthur Conan Doyle’s / Sherlock Holmes’s adventures, biographies, contemporaries and rivals, as […]
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Detection Club Bingo: My Progress So Far
Whee — only two squres to go for blackout! The Squares / Chapters: 1. A New Era Dawns: Ernest Bramah – The Tales of Max Carrados; Emmuska Orczy – The Old Man in the Corner 2. The Birth of the Golden Age: A.A. Milne – The Red House Mystery 3. The Great Detectives: Margery […]
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Nicholas Blake: A Question of Proof – Reading Progress Update: 15%
I think I’ve found a new series to binge on. And I hope all the audio versions are read by Kris Dyer. After Lispector, this is just what the doctor ordered! And hooray, this is mentioned in Chapter 24 of “The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books”, so I get to check off […]
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Martin Edwards (ed.) & Various Authors: Silent Nights (BLCC)
16 Tasks of the Festive Season: Square 5 – Advent Golden Age Christmas Vignettes Book themes for Advent: Read a book with a wreath or with pines or fir trees on the cover. Silent Nights is the first of (at this point) two Christmas mystery short story anthologies in the British Library’s “Crime Classics” series, […]
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