Archives
Death by Bequest by Mary McMullen
Mary McMullen (1920-1986) was a pseudonym of Mary Reilly Wilson, mystery and suspense writer of some 20 books. She was the daughter of mystery writer Helen Reilly, known for books about Inspector Christopher McKee of the Manhattan Homicide Squad, and sister of...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Columnist Murder by Lawrence Saunders
Again, this week’s forgotten book serves two purposes. The Columnist Murder by Lawrence Saunders was originally published in 1931 by Farrar & Rhinehart, making it a Golden Age mystery. It was reprinted in January 2025 by Coachwhip Publications, adding it to the...
Dolly and the Singing Bird by Dorothy Dunnett
Dorothy Halliday Dunnett (1923-2001) was a Scottish author and portrait painter, known to readers mostly for her historical sagas about a 16th century Scottish lord and a 15th century European financier. A website about her run by a former chair of the Dorothy...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Mystery of the Cape Cod Tavern by Phoebe Atwood Taylor
So, this week’s forgotten book serves two purposes. The Mystery of the Cape Cod Tavern is indeed an older classic mystery originally published in 1934 by W. W. Norton and largely unfamiliar to most contemporary mystery readers. It was also re-issued by American...
The Knavish Crows by Sara Woods
The Knavish Crows (Collins, 1971) by Sara Woods may be the only Antony Maitland title I have not managed to read and collect over a long period of acquiring worn ex-library and tattered paperback copies of the series. It seems not to have been published in the...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Alarum and Excursion by Virginia Perdue
Another book this week from The Fifty Classics of Crime Fiction 1900-1950 series, edited by Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor. (See the entire list here: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/84989.50_Classics_of_Crime_Fiction_1900_1950) In the series preface...
Death of a Darling by E. X. Giroux
I have been looking into mysteries that I missed one way or another when they were new. One series that sailed past me when it was published in the 1980s features London barrister Robert Forsythe and his highly competent secretary Abigail Sanderson in 10...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Blood on the Bosom Devine by Thomas Kyd
Thomas Kyd (1558-1594) was an English playwright, a contemporary of Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. The name was also the pseudonym of Alfred Bennett Harbage (1901-1976), a U.S. Shakespearean scholar. Harbage was born in Philadelphia and educated at...
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...
