Archives
Helga’s Web by Jon Cleary
Jon Cleary (1917-2010) was an Australian writer, publishing about 50 novels in a range of genres. A number of them were adapted for film and television. His most famous book is The Sundowners (Werner Laurie, 1952 UK; Scribners, 1952 US), which describes a year in...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The D. A. Breaks a Seal by Erle Stanley Gardner
Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970)was a California attorney who started writing pulp fiction in the 1920s so that he could leave his law career. The general public knows him best as the creator of Perry Mason courtroom dramas but under the name of A. A. Fair he wrote...
Too Late to Die by Bill Crider
Bill Crider (1941-2018) lived in Texas all of his life. He taught college English to earn a living but mostly he read and wrote crime fiction. His most well-known work featured Sheriff Dan Rhodes who served and protected the citizens of Blacklin County, Texas, in...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Death by Two Hands by Peter Drax
Eric Elrington Addis (1899-1941) served in the Royal Navy until 1928. He studied law, practicing as a barrister to the Admiralty bar until he was recalled to the Navy at the start of World War II. He was killed in action in August 1941, leaving six novels of crime...
Death of a Gay Dog by Anne Morice
Felicity Worthington Shaw (1916-1989) published some two dozen mysteries under the pseudonym Anne Morice between 1970 and 1988. Felicity came from the show business world and used the “write what you know” maxim when she created actress Teresa Crichton, the...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Death and Taxes by David Dodge
David Francis Dodge (1910-1974) was a versatile U.S. author of crime fiction and amusing travel books. He published multiple travel articles on assignment for magazines and then incorporated the settings into his fiction. To Catch a Thief is his most famous novel....
Dead in the Morning by Margaret Yorke
Margaret Yorke (1924-2012) was born Margaret Beda Larminie Nicholson in Surrey, lived in Dublin for many years and moved back to England. She was a ferocious champion of libraries, for which she won the CWA Golden Handcuffs award, given in recognition of the...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Black Stage by Anthony Gilbert
The Black Stage by Anthony Gilbert (Collins, 1945) is the 16th book about the redoubtable solicitor turned detective Arthur Crook. Published as Murder Cheats the Bride in the U.S., it is set immediately after the end of World War II with all of the characters...
A Clowder of Cat Mysteries
Originally published in Mystery Readers Journal, Volume 39, Number 4, Animals in Mysteries II, Winter 2023. That cats and mysteries go together like peanut butter and jelly or shoes and socks is evident by the number of mysteries written about cats and the number...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Case of the Missing Sandals by Nancy Barr Mavity
Nancy Barr Mavity (1890-1959) was a U.S. journalist, author, and critic. Born Nann Clark Barr in Illinois, she was a reporter, feature writer, and book reviewer for the Oakland Tribune for more than 20 years. She also wrote about her solo trips to Japan,...
