Archives
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Thou Shell of Death by Nicholas Blake
Nothing says Christmas like a country house party with snow and a murder or two, so to get into the spirit of the season I turned to Thou Shell of Death by Nicholas Blake (Collins, 1936), the second title in the Nigel Strangeways series. Nicholas Blake is the...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Suicide Murders by Howard Engel
Howard Engel (1931-2019) wrote 14 books about Benny Cooperman, an unconventional private investigator in Grantham, Ontario, Canada. Nine of them were published between 1980 and 1996 during the late 20th century flood of PI novels. Three more were published in the...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Last Escape by E. C. R. Lorac
By now anyone who is paying attention to the explosive revival of vintage detective fiction is familiar with the name E. C. R. Lorac, the pen name of Edith Caroline Rivett (1894–1958). Rivett published more than 70 mysteries under the names E. C. R. Lorac...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Something Wicked 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 outing of Toby Dyke, a journalist in...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Murder in the Basement by Anthony Berkeley
Anthony Berkeley Cox (1893-1971) was an eminent member of the British Golden Age, writing primarily under the names Anthony Berkeley and Francis Iles as well as A. Monmouth Platts and A. B. Cox. He wrote about two amateur detectives using the Berkeley name, Roger...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Killed by Scandal by Simon Nash
Simon Nash was the pseudonym used by Raymond Chapman (1924-2013), Professor of English at London University and an Anglican priest. He published five mysteries with Adam Ludlow, also a Professor of English at London University, as an amateur detective who works...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Bellamy Trial by Frances Noyes Hart
Frances Newbold Noyes Hart (1890-1943) mostly wrote short stories for Scribner's magazine, the Saturday Evening Post, and the Ladies' Home Journal, although sometimes she branched out into longer fiction. Her first book The Bellamy Trial (Doubleday, Doran, 1927)...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Our Second Murder by Torrey Chanslor
Torrey Chanslor was the pen name of Marjorie Torrey (1899-195?), a well-known illustrator of children’s books in the mid-1900s. Torrey received two Caldecott Honors for her work in 1946 and 1947. She also wrote a few books for children and two adult mysteries, the...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Five-Ring Circus by Jon Cleary
Jon Cleary (1917-2010) was an Australian writer, publishing about 50 novels in a range of genres. A number of them were adapted for film and television. His first book about Scobie Malone, a Sydney homicide inspector, appeared in 1966 and evolved into a series of...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Incredible Crime by Lois Austen Leigh
The Incredible Crime (Herbert Jenkins, 1931; Poisoned Pen Press, 2017) by Lois Austen Leigh (1883-1968) was the first of four mysteries written by the great-great niece of Jane Austen. All four were published during the 1930s in what seems to have been small print...
