Archives
Friday’s Forgotten Book: X v. REX by Philip Macdonald
Philip Macdonald (1900-1980) was a British writer of more than 30 novels, dozens of short stories, and radio, television, and film scripts, nearly all of them in the crime fiction genre. He wrote under his name and as Oliver Fleming, Anthony Lawless, Martin...
The Big Thaw by Donald Harstad
Someone was looking for an older series to binge and I started listing my favorites. This one surfaced the second time I dredged my memory. These rural police procedurals are excellent and I do not understand why more readers aren't familiar with them. The Big Thaw...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: While the Patient Slept by Mignon G. Eberhart
Mignon G. Eberhart (1899-1996) was a creative author of mysteries and romantic suspense. Her long career began in 1929 with a mystery featuring Sarah/Sally Keate, a nurse in New York, who was Eberhart’s only series character. Keate featured in seven books. The rest...
Notice of Death by John Penn
John Penn is a joint pseudonym of Palma Harcourt (1917 - 1999) when she wrote with husband Jack H. Trotman. Harcourt wrote espionage thrillers under her own name. Under the Penn pseudonym she wrote more traditional detective stories. George Thorne, a...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Case of the Baited Hook by Erle Stanley Gardner
The Case of the Baited Hook (Morrow, 1940) is the last appearance of Sergeant Holcomb in the Perry Mason series by Erle Stanley Gardner (1889–1970). Holcomb is the typical bullying cop of the 1930s pulps, more brawn than brains, and Mason ran circles around...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Death Takes a Flat by Miles Burton
Death Takes a Flat (Collins Crime Club, 1940) by Miles Burton, one of the pen names of Cecil John Charles Street (1884-1964), is the 21st case of former military intelligence officer Desmond Merrion and Inspector Henry Arnold of Scotland Yard. Major Pontefract’s...
The Dust and the Heat by Michael Gilbert
The Dust and the Heat is one of Michael Gilbert’s stand-alone novels published by Hodder & Stoughton in 1967 and published by Harper in 1968 as Overdrive in the U.S. It was shortlisted for the Gold Dagger Award in 1968, which I am delighted to learn because I...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Eames-Erskine Case by A. Fielding / Dorothy Fielding
Some two dozen mysteries were published under the name Archibald Fielding or A. Fielding or A. E. Fielding between 1924 and 1944. They are attributed to Dorothy Feilding (sic) about whom little is known, not even her year of birth apparently, which is given as 1884...
Murder in High Provence by George Bellairs
Murder in High Provence (John Giffords, 1957) by George Bellairs, the 27th case of Inspector Thomas Littlejohn, opens with a visit to the Littlejohn home by the Minister of Commerce, Spencer Lovell. Lovell’s only brother Christopher and his wife Elise were killed...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: My Late Wives by Carter Dickson
One of the later Sir Henry Merrivale mysteries by Carter Dickson, My Late Wives (Morrow Mystery, 1946; Heinemann, 1947) starts in 1934 when a serial killer known under various names meets and marries young women who disappear after signing over their modest bank...
