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A Reader’s Guide to the Classic British Mystery by Susan Oleksiw
I found a mention of this book while I was looking for something else and thought it was worth investigating. A Reader’s Guide to the Classic British Mystery by Susan Oleksiw was first published in 1988 by Mysterious Press. It is available only in hard cover and...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Code-Letter Mystery by David Sharp
David Sharp, dates unknown, was an English author who published 11 mysteries featuring Professor Henry Arthur Fielding and his friend Sheridan Orford between 1930 and 1940. None of my usual sources offered biographical information about Sharp. Both the New York...
And One Cried Murder by Lee Thayer
Emma Redington Lee Thayer (1874-1973) was an American author who published 61 mystery novels under the name Lee Thayer between 1919 and 1966. All but one feature the wealthy private investigator Peter Clancy and his valet Wiggar, who bears a striking resemblance to...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Fog Comes by Mary Collins
Earlier this year when I attended Left Coast Crime in San Francisco, I was fortunate enough to visit the Bancroft Library, the special collections library of the University of California at Berkeley, where Randal S. Brandt, Curator of the California Detective...
What Should You Know of Dying? by Tobias Wells
Deloris Florine Stanton Forbes (1923-2013) was an American crime writer. She wrote more than 40 mysteries and many stories under the names Stanton Forbes, Tobias Wells, and DeLoris S. Forbes. She also wrote four books with Helen B. Rydell under the name Forbes...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Murder at Bridge by Anne Austin
Anne Austin (1895-?) was a journalist turned novelist. Her books were originally serialized in newspapers and then published as books. Newspaper articles of the time report publication of romance novels before she took up writing crime fiction. Her bibliography...
The Galloway Case by Andrew Garve
Paul Winterton (1908–2001) was an English journalist and crime novelist better known under the pseudonym Andrew Garve. He also published under the name Paul Somers and his first books were attributed to Roger Bax, releasing more than 40 novels between 1938 and...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Till Death Do Us Part by John Dickson Carr
I thought it was time to visit the prolific John Dickson Carr and Dr. Gideon Fell again. I found a shining example of Carr’s locked room puzzle expertise in Till Death Do Us Part (Harper & Brothers, 1944; British Library Crime Classics, 2021), the 15th case of...
Mourning Raga by Ellis Peters
Edith Mary Pargeter (1913-1995), better known as Ellis Peters, wrote a series about Inspector George Felse in Shropshire, England, before she launched the wildly successful Brother Cadfael into the world. Beginning in the early 1950s, the books mostly featured...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Murder in Piccadilly by Charles Kingston
Charles Kingston O'Mahony (c. 1884-1944) was born in Ireland and worked as a journalist and author in England during the 1920s and 1930s. Under the name Charles Kingston, he wrote crime fiction, including seven books about Detective Chief Inspector Wake of Scotland...
