Archives
Sapphires on Wednesday by Malcolm Gair
Malcolm Gair was the pseudonym of Scottish author and historian John Dick Scott (1917-1980). He became Assistant Principal at the Ministry of Aircraft Production in London during the war, and joined the Cabinet Office as an official war historian in 1944. He...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: A Bullet in the Ballet by Caryl Brahms and S. J. Simon
Caryl Brahms was the name used by Doris Caroline Abrahams (1901-1982), an English critic, novelist, and journalist specializing in the theatre and ballet. She also wrote film, radio and television scripts. She collaborated with a Russian friend, S....
Dupe by Liza Cody
Liza Cody introduced Anna Lee, an early female private investigator in the book Dupe (Collins, 1980), which won the CWA John Creasey Memorial Dagger for best debut crime novel of the year in 1981 and was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 1982....
Friday’s Forgotten Book: An Oxford Tragedy by J. C. Masterman
Sir John Cecil Masterman, OBE (1891-1977) was a versatile gentleman. He was a Modern History don at Christ Church, Oxford during the 1920s, while he also played cricket, tennis, and hockey, participating in international competitions. He is best...
A Dead Liberty by Catherine Aird
I really miss Catherine Aird (1930-2024), the creator of the wonderful Christopher Dennis Sloan, otherwise known as CD, the long-suffering inspector of the fictional Beresbury CID in West Calleshire, England. West Calleshire was largely drawn from the county of...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Blueprint for Murder by Roger Bax
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. In 1952 he joined the Detection Club. He...
The Handle by Richard Stark
I found The Handle (Pocket Books, 1966) by Richard Stark, i.e., Donald Westlake, on my Kindle a couple of weeks ago. I did not remember reading it, or perhaps my reading was too long ago to recall, but I promptly moved it up on my metaphoric stack. The Handle is...
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...
