John Dickson Carr
Two Christmas Mystery Short Story Anthologies
Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE Festive Tasks, Door 21 — Good Luck Charms and Traditions: Read a book from the fantasy genre, or one with something on the cover that refers to “luck”. Festive Tasks, Door 24 — Cherished Memories: Read a book with a split timeline, one that takes place in the present […]
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May 2021 Reading Recap
Still a lot of work on the back end of the blog, including on my “featured authors” pages (see the right column on the main Literature page and the introduction of my April 2021 recap post). So, contrary to plans, still no new posts in my alphabet blogging series in May. However, the time-consuming back end […]
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Martin Edwards (ed.), Various Authors: Vintage Crime
Given this book’s title, I’d originally been considering it for my Detection Club (= Golden Age mysteries) reading project, but as it turns out, the number of Silver Age and, even more so, contemporary entries is somewhat too high to justify that. However, this survey of short stories by members of the Crime Writers’ Association […]
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Favorite Rainy Day Reads
24 Festive Tasks: Door 5 – Bon Om Touk, Bonus Task: List / tell us about your favorite rainy day reads. I suppose it only takes one look at my list of read books this year to determine my favorite rainy day books, as 2020 was essentially one extended rainy day: Golden Age mysteries and […]
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My Rainy Day Reads
24 Festive Tasks: Door 5 – Bon Om Touk, Task 1: List / tell us about your favorite rainy day reads. Any- and everything that — with or without a mug of hot tea and some chocolate or other snacks — makes me feel all warm and comfortable (while still engaging my brain cells, […]
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John Dickson Carr: The Hollow Man – Re-Reading Progress Update: 30% (approximately)
This is a reread, but I’m in sore need of a palate cleanser. Nothing better to turn to than the most celebrated and tricky locked room mystery ever — which definitely is a book that calls for being read a couple of times in order to yield all of its secrets. And what really stands […]
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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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John Dickson Carr: The Hollow Man
THE Locked Room Mystery to End All Locked Room Mysteries Seriously, this is the book where John Dickson Carr, the master of locked room mysteries, pulls out all the stops. And he tells us as much right from the start: “To the murder of Professor Grimaud, and later the equally incredible crime in Cagliostro Street, […]
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A Cornucopia of Holiday Stories
Turns out I already knew five of the ten stories in this anthology: Ellis Peters’s The Trinity Cat Julian Symons’s The Santa Claus Club Ian Rankin’s No Sanity Clause G.K. Chesterton’s The Dagger With Wings and Marjorie Bowen’s Cambric Tea. So I skipped those (though I do really like the stories by Ellis Peters, Julian […]
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