Archives
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Deadman’s Bay by Leonard A. Knight
Leonard Alfred Knight (1895-1977) is another of those crime fiction authors who was popular for awhile and then disappeared as reading tastes changed. Knight was born in Burpham, Sussex, on 3 January 1895. His parents were Arthur and Harriett Knight, and he had a...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Impact of Evidence by Carol Carnac
Perhaps of all the obscure authors brought back into the public’s eye by the British Library in its Crime Classics series, I enjoy the work of Edith Caroline Rivett (1894–1958) the most. Her 70 plus mysteries, originally published between 1931 and 1959, are...
Classic Crime Fiction: A Starting Point
Kate Jackson, otherwise known as the Armchair Reviewer, is celebrating 10 years as a blogger this month with an intriguing competition. She asks those of us who read classic crime to recommend 10 titles for someone unfamiliar with the subgenre. See the details...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Murders at Scandal House by Peter Hunt
Peter Hunt is a Hubin-listed author of three books published in the early 1930s. Hunt is the joint pseudonym of George Worthing Yates (1901-1975) and Charles Hunt Marshall (1901-1986). Yates was an American screenwriter and author. His early work was on...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: They Tell No Tales by Manning Coles
Manning Coles was the joint pen name used by British writers and neighbors Cyril Henry Coles (1899-1965) and Adelaide Frances Oke Manning (1891-1959). Between 1940 and 1958 they produced more than 20 lively spy stories featuring Thomas Elphinstone (Tommy)...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Go Down, Death by Sue Brown Hays
Sue Brown Hays (1905-?) was the descendant of several generations of Mississippi and Louisiana cotton planters. Go Down, Death, which appears to be her only book, was published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1946 and by Hammond, Hammond & Company in 1948....
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Casual Slaughters by James Quince
James Quince was the pseudonym used by James Reginald Spittal (1876-1951), an English clergyman who wrote three novels in the 1930s and then went on to other pursuits. As has been noted, it is a loss for crime fiction readers that he didn’t continue writing. Based...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Error of the Moon by Sara Woods
Sara Woods took her barrister protagonist Antony Maitland out of the courtroom for his fourth adventure, Error of the Moon (Collins Crime Club, 1963; Dean Street Press, 2024). Considering the state of geopolitics in the early 1960s, when the Cuban Missile Crisis...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Farmhouse by Helen Reilly
Helen Reilly (1891-1962) was an American novelist. She was born Helen Kieran and grew up in New York City in a literary family. Her brother, James Kieran, also wrote a mystery, and two of her daughters, Ursula Curtiss and Mary McMullen, were mystery...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Root of Evil by Eaton K. Goldthwaite
Eaton Kenneth Goldthwaite was an American author (1907-1994) whose series character was police Lieutenant Joseph Dickerson. His papers are held at Boston University, https://archivesspace.bu.edu/repositories/9/resources/1269. The description of the repository on...
