Mystery at Olympia (John Rhode)

Murderous manna for motor enthusiasts.

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Heir to Murder (Miles Burton)

By Miles Burton First published: UK, Collins, 1953 On a wet November night, Dr. Murford drives his car off a pier into Carmouth harbour. A week or so later, Nurse Penruddock is found at the bottom of a cliff. Both had been named principal heir by Lady Violet Vernham of Dragonscourt (a friendly dragon). More outrages …

The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond (G.K. Chesterton)

The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond (1937), posthumously published, may not hit the heights of The Man Who Was Thursday or the Father Brown stories (say, the Insolence or the Incorrigibility) – but one sees great things from the valley; even lesser GKC towers over almost anyone else. In Borges' favourite story, "The Three Horsemen of …

Dull British drownings

Murder Jigsaw (E. & M.A. Radford, 1944) An obnoxious fly-fishing colonel is drowned, apparently accidentally; "remarkably painstaking and meticulous examinations" prove that it was murder. The setting is a small fishing hotel in Cornwall.  I know nothing about fishing; wet flies or dry, it's simply dry. This is very much in the Austin Freeman line.  Dr. …

The Night of Fear (Moray Dalton)

By Moray Dalton First published: UK, 1931 Edgar Stallard, who combined writing about true crime with blackmailing practitioners, is stabbed during a Yuletide  game of hide-and-seek in the dark.  Suspicion falls on Hugh Darrow, a blind war veteran. Both Curtis Evans, in his introduction for the Dean Street Press reprint, and Barzun & Taylor call The …

The Case of the Three-Ring Puzzle (Christopher Bush)

By Christopher Bush, 1962 Macdonald Labelled "a Ludovic Travers Mystery Novel", this has no mystery, no puzzle plot, and no real reason to exist. Travers ties together three seemingly unrelated cases.  Prelude: A photographer thinks his aunt is being swindled.  Five years later, an American impostor hires Travers to find one Harry Wale, and a …

L’affaire du Collier: Moray Dalton

This week, Dean Street Press reprinted five novels by half-Canadian writer Moray Dalton: One By One They Disappeared (1929); The Body in the Road (1930); The Night of Fear (1931); Death in the Cup (1932); and The Strange Case of Harriet Hall (1936), with introductions by crime historian Curtis Evans. Evans considers Dalton "one of …

What Dread Hand? (Christianna Brand)

Fifteen short stories by one of the Queens of Crime - enough to pass an entertaining couple of hours. There are three notable stories. "The Hornets' Nest" is a tight, clever poisoning at a wedding breakfast.  The reader, Brand tells him, should know whodunnit the page after the murder.  "After the Event" is a theatrical …

With apologies to the poet Burns

 

Ring for a Noose (Anthony Gilbert)

Gilbert is unpredictable and uneven; one never knows what one's going to get, or even if it will be any good.  At first glance, this looks like a detective story: impostor Hungarian refugee (really a small-time crook) brained with brick in telephone kiosk, apparently by an idealistic young Police Brigadier.  Turns into a procedural: Crook …