Archives
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Metropolitan Opera Murders by Helen Traubel
Helen Francesca Traubel (1899 – 1972) was an American opera and concert singer. A dramatic soprano, she was best known for her Wagnerian roles, especially those of Brünnhilde and Isolde. She began her career as a...
Perfect Opportunity by Steven Havill
I was fortunate enough to be approved to see an advance review copy of the 26th title in the Posadas County mystery series. Perfect Opportunity by Steven F. Havill will be released by Severn House on 5 March 2024. This is the first in the series to be issued by...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Prime Minister’s Pencil by Cecil Waye
Cecil John Charles Street (1884-1964) was an impressively productive author of Golden Age crime fiction. As John Rhode, he created a series of about 70 books with Dr. Lancelot Priestley, published between 1925 and 1961. He also wrote short stories, stand-alone...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Keep It Quiet by Richard Hull
Richard Hull was the pseudonym of Richard Henry Sampson (1896-1973), a British accountant who became a crime novelist, publishing 16 books beginning in 1934. During World War II he revived his accounting skills and became an auditor for the Admiralty. His first...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The McCone Files & McCone and Friends by Marcia Muller
This week Happiness Is a Book is observing the 30th year of Crippen & Landru, a well-known small press that specializes in single author collections of short crime fiction. Founded in 1994 by Edgar nominee Doug Greene, C&L continues today with Jeff Marks in...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Clue in the Clay by Dolores Hitchens
Dolores Hitchens (1907-1973) wrote dozens of mysteries beginning in 1938, publishing them under her own name and under the pseudonyms D. B. Olsen, Dolan Birkley, and Noel Burke. Her series characters include Jim Sader, a PI; John Farrel, a railroad detective; and...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Crime, the Place, and the Girl by Douglas & Dorothy Stapleton
Douglas Stapleton (1907-1972) and his wife Dorothy Tucker Aden Stapleton (1917-1970) collaborated on radio shows, short stories, a Broadway play, and mysteries. I have been unable to locate a bibliography but The Corpse Is Indignant (Five-Star Mysteries, New York,...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Without a Trace by Malcolm Forsythe
Malcolm Hutton (1921-??) was an English career civil servant, working for the Department of Civil Defence and running the Joint Computer Organisation of the Home Office and the London Metropolitan Police. He served in the Royal Air Force from 1941 to 1946 and...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Here Comes the Toff by John Creasey
John Creasey MBE (1908–1973) was an English author of crime, romance, and western novels, who wrote more than six hundred books using some twenty-eight different pseudonyms. Of his many series characters, the Toff, the sobriquet of the Honorable Richard Rollison,...
Best Reads of 2023
I read right on through to the very end of 2023 and one of my final reads of the year made it onto my best of list, showing that compiling those lists before the end of December is not a good idea for me. Herewith are 20 books that stood out of all the books I...
