Recent Posts
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...
Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who still reads at every opportunity and loves to talk about what she is reading.