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Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Crooked Lane by Frances Noyes Hart
Frances Newbold Noyes Hart (1890-1943) mostly wrote short stories for Scribner's magazine, the Saturday Evening Post, and the Ladies' Home Journal, although sometimes she branched out into longer fiction. The Bellamy Trial (1927) was so popular that Howard...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Last Best Hope by Ed McBain
The Last Best Hope by Ed McBain (Warner Books, 1998) is the concluding book in the Matthew Hope series of 13 titles. One of the noteworthy aspects of this story is that the author clearly ends the narrative arc of Hope’s adventures with it. That option isn’t...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Secret of High Eldersham by Miles Burton
Cecil John Charles Street (1884-1964) was a pillar of Golden Age crime fiction, writing under multiple names. As John Rhode, he created a series of about 70 books with Dr. Lancelot Priestley, Inspector Hanslet, and Inspector Jimmy Waghorn, published between 1925...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Death at the Medical Board by Josephine Bell
Josephine Bell was the pseudonym of Doris Bell Collier Ball (1897-1987), a British author who also studied and practiced medicine. Bell began to write detective novels beginning in 1936 under her pen name. Many of her works made good use of her medical...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: A Deceptive Clarity by Aaron Elkins
Aaron Elkins is an Edgar award winning author, mostly known for his books about Gideon Oliver, a forensic anthropology expert in Washington State. Another early series which I rarely hear mentioned is about an art historian and only has three books. The first is A...
Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Country-House Burglar by Michael Gilbert
This week’s review is a fine English village mystery by Michael Gilbert, set in the 1950s when the memories of the war had receded but not gone, and the country had recovered economic stability. The stand-alone story was published in the United States as The...
Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who still reads at every opportunity and loves to talk about what she is reading.