Archives
Friday’s Forgotten Books: Edwin of the Iron Shoes by Marcia Muller
Marcia Muller released her 35th book about Sharon McCone in 2018. Sharon is one of the earliest contemporary female private investigators I could find. Of course there was Miss Silver who first appeared in the late 1920s and Honey West, who was a caricature of...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Murders in Volume 2 by Elizabeth Daly
Elizabeth Daly (1879-1967) published her first mystery in 1940 and released 15 more in quick succession, the last one in 1951. Mystery Writers of America referred to her as "the grande dame of women mystery writers" when awarding her a "Special Edgar" in...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Number Seventeen by Louis Tracy
Louis Tracy (1863-1928) was an inventive and versatile English author. From the Golden Age Detection Wiki: “….journalist and author of science fiction, adventure, crime and some supernatural fiction. His best-known detectives are the Scotland Yard team of...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Lullaby of Murder by Dorothy Salisbury Davis
Dorothy Salisbury Davis (1916-2014) was known for her deeply human characters and the sensitivity and compassion with which she portrayed them in her suspense fiction. She was nominated for an Edgar Award six times, served as President of...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Her Death of Cold by Ralph McInerny
Recently I was checking my shelves for books I could spare in response to a frantic call from a relative who ran out of things to read when I noticed my books by Ralph M. McInerny (1929-2010). I have not thought about his mysteries for years and decided to look at...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Detection Unlimited by Georgette Heyer
How I love Georgette Heyer! Her historical romances have an honored place on my bookshelves. I read some of them so often I can quote entire sections from memory. While Heyer wrote more than 40 romances, she only wrote about a dozen mysteries, although some of her...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Dread Journey by Dorothy B. Hughes
The crime fiction output of Dorothy B. Hughes (1904-1993) was only 14 novels but their influence was profound. Her work continues to be read, reprinted, and analyzed nearly 60 years after the publication of the last book in 1963, when she turned to...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Case of the Leaning Man by Christopher Bush
Christopher Bush (1885-1973) is another prolific writer of the Golden Age who faded from view in the past 50 years. Why his books have not been reprinted while his contemporaries have been is a mystery in itself. Through the assiduous efforts of Dean Street Press,...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Murder of Lydia by Joan A. Cowdroy
Joan A. Cowdroy (1884-1946) was an early 20th century English author who started writing general fiction and then discovered her talents for developing mysteries. Her first series detective was Chief Inspector John Gorham of Scotland Yard and then she created Li...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Minute for Murder by Nicholas Blake
First, I have to say this is not really a forgotten book. It’s been in print one way or another ever since it was published more than 70 years ago. I read Minute for Murder by Nicholas Blake (Collins, 1947) over the weekend. It is the eighth Nigel Strangeways and...