Archives
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Bland Beginning by Julian Symons
Cruising through eBay last fall, always a dangerous pastime, I found a group of books in the short-lived Unicorn Mystery Book Club. The subscription service published four crime fiction novels in a single volume, beginning in 1945 and ending in late 1952. The 83...
The Scavengers by Bill Knox
William Knox (1928–1999) was a Scottish author, journalist and broadcaster, known for his more than 50 crime novels and for presenting the long-running STV series Crimedesk. In the 1970s, he presented a 15-minute segment asking...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Mouse Who Wouldn’t Play Ball by Anthony Gilbert
The 12th case of Arthur G. Crook is the intriguingly named The Mouse Who Wouldn’t Play Ball (Collins, 1943), a wartime story with some classic characters. The mouse in question is Miss Dorothea Capper, an unmarried lady of 38 who seems much older, living on a...
Friday the Rabbi Slept Late by Harry Kemelman
Harry Kemelman (1908-1996) was a schoolteacher before World War II, worked in multiple government positions during the war and launched a freelance writing career afterwards. He began publishing in 1947 with the first of his short stories about New England college...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Murder of a Nymph by Margot Neville
The works of Australian sisters Margot Goyder (1896–1975) and Anne Neville Goyder Joske (1887–1966) have been on my reading list for awhile. Writing under the name Margot Neville, the pair wrote short stories, plays, and humorous novels before creating Detective...
The Mordida Man by Ross Thomas
I discovered Mike Lawson’s political thriller series about Congressional fixer Joe DeMarco a few years ago and have followed it ever since. His work is often compared to that of Ross Thomas (1926-1995), and I finally got around to finding a couple of books by...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: A Matter of Iodine by David Keith
Francis Steegmuller (1906–1994) was an American author of biographies, fiction, travel, and short articles for periodicals. He also translated a number of Gustave Flaubert’s writings, for which he is chiefly known. He won two National Book Awards—one in 1971...
Treasure Up in Smoke by David Williams
I am enamored of the Mark Treasure series by David Williams (1926-2003), 17 mysteries published between 1976 and 1993. Mark Treasure is Vice-Chairman of Grenwood Phipps & Co., merchant bankers of London. His actress wife Molly often accompanies him on his...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Crime in Kensington by Christopher St John Sprigg
Christopher St John Sprigg (1907-1937) was a versatile English writer of poetry, plays, short stories, detective novels, and aeronautics textbooks. In his mid-20s he became fascinated by Marxism and his writing from then on reflected this new interest. When the...
Carnaby and the Hijackers by Peter N. Walker
Peter Norman Walker (1936-2017) was a lifelong resident of North Yorkshire. He served as a police officer in the North Riding force for 30 years, upon which he based his crime fiction writing. In addition to publishing under his name, he also released books under...
