Archives
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Murder After Christmas by Rupert Latimer
Algernon Vernon Mills (1905-1953) only wrote a few books, using the name Rupert Latimer. Murder After Christmas (MacDonald & Co., 1944; Poisoned Pen Press, 2022), a look at Christmas in England midpoint through the second World War, seems to be his last. Crime...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Christmas Tree Murders by Joel Y. Dane
Joel Y. Dane was the pseudonym of Joseph Francis Delany (1905-1957) who seems to have lived his entire life in New York. He wrote five mysteries about Sergeant Cass Harty; the fourth one is The Christmas Tree Murders (Doubleday Doran for Crime Club, 1938;...
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...
