Archives
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Coffin, Scarcely Used by Colin Watson
Colin Watson (1920–1983) was an English journalist and author of a successful detective series set in the prosperous market and port town of Flaxborough in East Anglia. Flaxborough is a fictionalized version of the town of Boston in Lincolnshire where Watson was a...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: It’s Her Own Funeral by Carol Carnac
Perhaps of all the obscure authors brought back into the public’s eye by the British Library in its Crime Classics series, I enjoy the work of Edith Caroline Rivett (1894–1958) the most. Her 70 plus mysteries, originally published between 1931 and 1959, are...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Swan Song by Edmund Crispin
Robert Bruce Montgomery (1921-1978) who wrote crime fiction under the name Edmund Crispin and composed music for films under his real name is hardly a forgotten author. His literary output was small compared to some of his contemporaries, only nine novels and two...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Clock That Wouldn’t Stop by E. X. Ferrars
Morna Doris MacTaggart Brown (1907-1995) wrote several novels under that name before adopting the pseudonym Elizabeth Ferrars, which became E. X. Ferrars in the United States. Her first mystery was published in 1940, the initial appearance of Toby Dyke, a...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: About the Murder of a Startled Lady by Anthony Abbot
Charles Fulton Oursler (1893-1952) was an American journalist, playwright, and author. He started out in the newspaper and magazine business and became senior editor of Reader's Digest in 1944. He wrote for a number of publications including The Black...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Death Lights a Candle by Phoebe Atwood Taylor
Phoebe Atwood Taylor (1909–1976) was born in Boston and used her extensive knowledge of the area and its residents to add realistic local color to her books. She began publishing in 1931 with the first mystery featuring Asey Mayo, a Cape Cod native and jack of...
Favorite Books of 2024
Reading time was hard to come by this year but I still managed to find a few hours here and there every week. November and December were much quieter and I raced through more than two dozen books, all of them good to very good. I will be reviewing some of them in...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Flair for Murder by Frances & Richard Lockridge
Frances Davis Lockridge (1896-1963) and Richard Lockridge (1899-1982) were journalists known mostly for their Mr. and Mrs. North mysteries. The 26 novels about the Norths spun off a Broadway play, a motion picture, and several radio and television series. The...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Crime in Lepers’ Hollow by George Bellairs
George Bellairs was the pseudonym of Harold Blundell (1902-1982), a Manchester bank manager as well as a freelance journalist. He published 57 popular classic police procedurals featuring Inspector Thomas Littlejohn of Scotland Yard between 1941 and 1980. He also...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Witness on the Roof by Annie Haynes
Annie Haynes (1864-1929) was born in the Midlands of England. By the early 1900s she lived in London and moved in literary and feminist circles. Her early stories were serialized in newspapers, some were later revised and published in book form. Her first novel The...
