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Favorite Books of 2020
As of today I read 162 books during 2020, the large number partly because of the enforced seclusion brought on by the pandemic. A few were re-reads but most crossed my path for the first time. Following are the titles of the books I initially read during 2020 and...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Redemption by Jill McGown
Jill McGown (1947-2007) is most remembered for her tightly plotted and nuanced books about Chief Inspector Lloyd, whose first name is a running gag throughout the series, and Detective Sergeant Judy Hill, co-workers and lovers in East Anglia. In addition to the...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Twelve Deaths of Christmas by Marian Babson
Marian Babson was the pseudonym of American mystery writer Ruth Marian Stenstreem (1929-2017). She lived most her life in London, England, where she held a variety of jobs including librarian and editor of a knitting magazine. She received the Crime Writers'...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Death for Dear Clara by Q. Patrick
Q. Patrick was the pseudonym of Hugh Callingham Wheeler (1912-1987) and Richard Wilson Webb (1901-1966), who also published under the names Patrick Quentin and Jonathan Stagge. Webb wrote with Martha Mott Kelly under the name Q. Patrick for a few years before Webb...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Canary Murder Case by S. S. van Dine
S. S. Van Dine is the pseudonym used by Willard Huntington Wright (1888 – 1939) when he wrote detective fiction. Originally a literary and art critic, Wright read dozens of mysteries and crime novels during a lengthy illness, after which he...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Jacob Street Mystery by R. Austin Freeman
Richard Austin Freeman (1862-1943) was an English doctor who created the fictional forensic scientist Dr John Thorndyke. Freeman was born in London and received a medical degree from Middlesex Hospital Medical College. He moved to the Gold Coast of Africa to...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Mrs. McGinty’s Dead by Agatha Christie
Mrs. McGinty’s Dead (Collins, 1952) is one of my favorite mysteries from Agatha Christie (1890-1976). Not forgotten exactly, more like overlooked in the prodigious output from this peerless author, it is the 28th volume in which Hercule Poirot, the retired Belgian...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: To Wake the Dead by John Dickson Carr
John Dickson Carr (1906-1977) is one of the most well-known Golden Age mystery writers. He also wrote under the names Carter Dickson, Carr Dickson, and Roger Fairbairn. He is celebrated for his beautifully complicated plots, often considered locked room crimes or...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Mark of the Crescent by John Creasey
John Creasey MBE (1908–1973) was an English author of crime, romance, and western novels, who wrote more than six hundred novels using twenty-eight different pseudonyms. Mostly he’s known for his crime fiction, though, of which there are over 400 books. He was...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Harassed Hero by Ernest Dudley
Vivian Ernest Coltman-Allen (1908 – 2006), known as Ernest Dudley, was an author, a screenwriter, an actor, and a journalist. He created the popular BBC radio crime series Dr Morelle that ran from 1942 to 1948 and the television series The Armchair Detective that...