Posted January 22, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments
Till Death Do Us Part
Genres: Crime,
Mystery Pages: 245
Series: British Library Crime Classics Rating: 
Synopsis: "Who can I trust?"
Love-sick Dick Markham is reeling. He's set to marry Lesley Grant -- a woman whom he learns is not who she appears to be. She seems to have been associated with three poisonings, all of which were in locked rooms. Another crime has been committed and we will watch the great Dr. Fell investigate through Markham's watchful eyes.
That night the enigmatic fortune teller-and chief accuser-is found dead in an impossible locked-room setup, casting suspicion onto Grant and striking doubt into the heart of her lover. Lured by the scent of the impossible case, Dr. Gideon Fell arrives from London to examine the perplexing evidence and match wits with a meticulous killer at large.
I should preface this by saying (for anyone just tuning into my reviews now) that I really didn’t like the first couple of books by John Dickson Carr that I tried. After I read He Who Whispers, though, something clicked, and I determined to give him a little more time. Now that I’ve finished this one, I’m feeling a bit more complicated about it.
First, his female characters often leave something to be desired. There’s a certain almost femme fatale character type that he uses a few times (including here and in He Who Whispers) that I really don’t enjoy, though it can be difficult to explain exactly why not. Something about the overwrought helplessness of them, I think: the highly emotionally charged scenes where I favour a practical character who just steps up and takes control for herself. Which… not everyone or every character has to be like that, but when an author leans into the overwrought female stereotype multiple times, you really start to notice.
And of course, there’s his locked room mysteries, and his detectives. He tries so hard to come up with ingenious mysteries where you need to notice the tiniest clues and draw inferences from them if you want to treat it as a fair-play mystery — and to me, it feels sometimes like a rabbit just gets pulled out of the hat.
This one does get explained well, but there was a while where it was just too frustrating for words (I made a lot of cranky noises at it; my wife was definitely laughing at me). I don’t know quite what I’d want to make it hang together better for me: maybe just a bit more sense of the detective (and those around him) as humans. I’m not sure what drives Gideon Fell, beyond the love of a puzzle, yet on several occasions he shows a very human and humane side. I think a little more of that would do wonders for me.
Anyway, my newfound faith in John Dickson Carr isn’t quite shaken, but I hope the next book of his that I read takes a slightly different tack.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, John Dickson Carr, mystery
Posted January 8, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Twilight Falls
Genres: Crime,
Fantasy,
Mystery Pages: 240
Series: Shady Hollow #4 Rating: 
Synopsis: It’s spring in Shady Hollow, and romance is in the air. Even reporter Vera Vixen is caught up in the season as her relationship with new police chief Orville Braun blossoms. But true love is not always smooth sailing, as two of the hollow’s young residents come to find. Jonah Atwater and Stasia von Beaverpelt find themselves battling their families in order to be together. And when Jonah’s father, Shelby, goes over the top of Twilight Falls, all signs point to Stasia being the murderer.
The evidence against Stasia appears overwhelming, and Orville arrests her. It looks like the case is closed, but Vera isn’t so sure. There are almost too many clues indicating Stasia is the killer, leading her to suspect someone is setting Stasia up. Besides, what about the mysterious ghostly creature skulking around town at night? Maybe he or she was involved? As Vera investigates further, her sleuthing puts her in direct opposition to Orville, and soon she’s stirred up a hornet’s nest of trouble.
Twilight Falls is the last of the Shady Hollow books by Juneau Black — for now. I’m sad, because it turned out to be exactly what I needed right now: quick reads that are light and sweet at heart, with characters that come alive just enough to carry the stories. Sometimes the characters or their relationships feel a little shallow, but sometimes it’s just a relief that the differences between Orville and Vera don’t lead to big schisms, and that there’s something gently forming between them, something that might last.
Once more, I found the resolution of the mystery really obvious: the hints come thick and fast, and it’s really the only thing that makes good sense of the evidence. There’s an attempt at a red herring, but it doesn’t work out too well (at least for my tastes).
It’s been nice to follow these books and realise that the characters are slowly changing, rather than it being a cosy little snowglobe where everything settles down a while after being shaken up. Esme and Stasia von Beaverpelt both grow and change in their own time, and even Orville’s learning that the Big Book of Policing may not contain all the answers (even if sometimes he finds it hard to accept Vera’s input).
As with the others, highly enjoyable — and I’ll get the new one when it comes out, like a shot.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, crime, Juneau Black, mystery, SF/F
Posted January 2, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
A Surprise for Christmas and Other Seasonal Mysteries
Genres: Crime,
Mystery,
Short Stories Pages: 304
Series: British Library Crime Classics Rating: Synopsis: A Postman murdered while delivering cards on Christmas morning. A Christmas pine growing over a forgotten homicide. A Yuletide heist gone horribly wrong. When there's as much murder as magic in the air and the facts seem to point to the impossible, it's up to the detective’s trained eye to unwrap the clues and neatly tie together an explanation (preferably with a bow on top).
Martin Edwards has once again gathered the best of these seasonal stories into a stellar anthology brimming with rare tales, fresh as fallen snow, and classics from the likes of Julian Symons, Margery Allingham, Anthony Gilbert and Cyril Hare. A most welcome surprise indeed, and perfect to be shared between super-sleuths by the fire on a cold winter's night.
A Surprise for Christmas is the 2020 collection of short crime/mystery stories based around Christmas-time from the British Library Crime Classics series, edited as always by Martin Edwards. It’s a surprisingly star-studded volume, including stories from Ngaio Marsh and Margery Allingham, along with other standbys that appear more often in the anthologies of this series (like Carter Dickson, AKA John Dickson Carr).
It’s a strong enough collection, much in the same vein as the others, without being surprising — after all, that’s somewhat part of the point in crime/mystery fiction of this general period. It usually isn’t too surprising, though here and there an author like Julian Symons is included (as in this one), someone who tends more toward a psychological story.
Oddly enough, the Symons story included here is a repeat with a different title, previously included in The Christmas Card Crime, from 2018. Weird that no one realised that. The other stories are all new to the series so far as I can tell, though I haven’t read Crimson Snow.
“The Turn-Again Bell”, the final story, has quite the atmosphere, and would’ve been my favourite of the book, except that it seems a little trite in how it all wraps up. It doesn’t feel quite at home with the other stories in this volume, to be honest, being less a crime/mystery, and more definitively a Christmas story. Maybe that’s just me.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, Martin Edwards, mystery, short stories
Posted January 1, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments
Who Killed The Curate?
Genres: Crime,
Mystery Pages: 228
Rating: 
Synopsis: Meet Lady Lupin Lorimer Hastings, the young, lovely, scatterbrained and kind-hearted newlywed wife to Andrew, the vicar of St Marks parish in Glanville, Sussex. When it comes to matters clerical, she is rather at sea. Nevertheless, she is determined to make her husband proud of her.... or at least not to embarrass him too badly.
When, on Christmas Eve, Andrew's unpopular, blackmailing curate gets himself murdered, things all get a bit (hilariously) overwhelming for poor out-of-her-depth Lady Lupin:
"Who was in your sitting room during that interval? Say four-thirty on Tuesday, and ten or eleven yesterday morning?"
"If you had ever lived in a vicarage you wouldn't ask questions like that; people just walk in and out all day long. When Andrew asked me to marry him, he said he was afraid I should find it very quiet here, and what he meant I can't imagine! If I wanted quiet I'd rather retire to the Tower of Babel with a saxophone."
Lupin enlists old society pals Duds and Tommy Lethbridge, as well as Andrew's nephew, a British secret service agent, to get at the truth. Lupin refuses to believe that Diana Lloyd, 38-year-old author of the children's detective stories, could've done the deed and casts her net over the other parishioners. But all the suspects seem so nice - very much more so than the victim.
I was hoping to enjoy Who Killed The Curate?, which is a Christmas mystery by Joan Coggin reissued by Galileo Publishers. I’d hoped to find some more fun classic crime fiction by checking out the books reissued by them, but in this one at least I was pretty disappointed.
It starts out hopefully, with a witty playfulness about it, but it quickly becomes apparent that it’s all going to be that way — and that in part it’s going to be that way at the expense of the characters, particularly Lupin, the female lead. She’s quite silly, gets herself in ridiculous and unlikely tangles, and for someone with second-hand embarrassment issues, it was absolutely excruciating. Would you really get godfather and grandfather mixed up, so totally you don’t actually know the difference between them? And not just that, but also guys and guides? And just making totally inappropriate conversation everywhere —
Aaargh!
All of that made it decidedly unenjoyable to me, unfortunately. If you have a bit of a thicker skin you might make more of it, but I just couldn’t get myself past Lupin in order to enjoy anything else.
Rating: 1/5
Tags: book reviews, books, crime, Joan Coggin, mystery
Posted December 30, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Silent Nights: Christmas Mysteries
Genres: Crime,
Mystery,
Short Stories Pages: 287
Series: British Library Crime Classics Rating: Synopsis: Christmas is a mysterious, as well as magical, time of year. Strange things can happen, and this helps to explain the hallowed tradition of telling ghost stories around the fireside as the year draws to a close. Christmas tales of crime and detection have a similar appeal. When television becomes tiresome, and party games pall, the prospect of curling up in the warm with a good mystery is enticing – and much better for the digestion than yet another helping of plum pudding.
Crime writers are just as susceptible as readers to the countless attractions of Christmas. Over the years, many distinguished practitioners of the genre have given one or more of their stories a Yuletide setting. The most memorable Christmas mysteries blend a lively storyline with an atmospheric evocation of the season. Getting the mixture right is much harder than it looks.
This book introduces of readers to some of the finest Christmas detective stories of the past. Martin Edwards’ selection blends festive pieces from much-loved authors with one or two stories which are likely to be unfamiliar even to diehard mystery fans. The result is a collection of crime fiction to savour, whatever the season.
Silent Nights is another anthology of crime/mystery stories in the British Library Crime Classics series — edited as always by Martin Edwards. I think this may even have been the first one in the series, which means it contains an Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock story (Conan Doyle being conspicuous by his absence from the more recent anthologies, presumably owing to running out of Holmes stories that fit the theme) and even a Dorothy L. Sayers story.
It’s a fun collection, with a couple of authors I’d be curious to read more books from (such as Marjorie Bowen). I raised my eyebrows a bit about including back-to-back stories by the same author, one under a pseudonym… but they’re somewhat different in tone, so it didn’t feel too samey.
As ever, it’s a collection greater than the sum of its parts, which is a phrase I’ve typed about these anthologies so often that perhaps I should just assume people will take it as read. Each individual story is mildly entertaining, some more questionable than others, but as a group they’re an interesting cross-section. Or archaeological dig through time, really, since they’re in chronological order…
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, Martin Edwards, mystery
Posted December 29, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Murder at Maybridge Castle
Genres: Crime,
Mystery Pages: 304
Rating: Synopsis: It's Christmas 1937 and an eclectic list of guests and staff have gathered for the grand re-opening of Maybridge castle, a newly renovated yet still crumbling hotel deep in the Cumbrian countryside. They are:
The ex-socialite owner
The Doctor and his new wife
The stylish journalist
The know-all housekeepers
The still-grieving widower and his son
The tarot readers
The passionate academic
The persistent investigative reporter
The elder amateur sleuth, and her cat
An innocent game of murder-in-the-dark will turn into a real game of life and death. And by the time the first sherries have been drunk, one of these people will be dead - and one of them the killer. Someone has changed the rules, but who?
I really liked Ada Moncrieff’s past Christmas mysteries, because they were fun, a little bit classic (a country house mystery, no less, for the first one!) and easy to read. They weren’t too surprising in terms of methods and motives, but it’s sometimes enjoyable to just settle into a story where you know the rough shape of it, and let it unfold.
Along much the same lines, I enjoyed Murder at Maybridge Castle, though I feel like there was maybe a little something that didn’t work for me here. Maybe it’s just comparison with how quickly I read her other books, or maybe it’s the particular cast of characters — I don’t quite know. This one does also feature a repeat character, unlike before: Daphne King returns, with a wealth of references to characters we don’t see on the page, leaving me grasping to try and remember the details. I found that a bit offputting, to be honest.
The mystery itself unfolded more or less as I predicted, but I did enjoy the character of Mrs Threwley, and there were nice little moments of characterisation and dialogue that made things feel a bit more alive (such as the interaction between the father and son duo, and Mrs Threwley’s genuine care for her cat, Duke).
So in the end, it was fun, but I’m not quite as enthused as with previous years’ mysteries from Moncrieff. Which will in no way stop me trying out another, should she continue in this vein.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: Ada Moncrieff, book reviews, books, crime, mystery
Posted December 22, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments
The Christmas Card Crime And Other Stories
Genres: Crime,
Mystery,
Short Stories Pages: 252
Series: British Library Crime Classics Rating: Synopsis: A Christmas party is punctuated by a gunshot under a policeman’s watchful eye. A jewel heist is planned amidst the glitz and glamour of Oxford Street’s Christmas shopping. Lost in a snowstorm, a man finds a motive for murder.
This collection of mysteries explores the darker side of the festive season – from unexplained disturbances in the fresh snow, to the darkness that lurks beneath the sparkling decorations.
With neglected stories by John Bude and E.C.R. Lorac, as well as tales by little-known writers of crime fiction, Martin Edwards blends the cosy atmosphere of the fireside story with a chill to match the temperature outside. This is a gripping seasonal collection sure to delight mystery fans.
As ever, this collection of short stories from the British Library Crime Classics imprint is edited by Martin Edwards. It’s one of the older Christmas collections (I think the third, if I remember rightly), and includes stories by John Dickson Carr (under the Carter Dickson name) and E.C.R. Lorac — big names! There are some lesser known ones as well.
I think the story I’ll remember most is Julian Symons’; I don’t entirely love his work, it always seems a little too cerebral (which I’m sure he would’ve prided himself on, but I don’t read mysteries for that) and like he thinks he’s superior… but here in a short story that wasn’t so much on show, and there was something that just stood out about it, in the attention to detail, and the little sting in the tail.
Overall, it’s a fun enough collection, and as usual it’s fascinating to see a range of approaches through the chronological presentation of the various stories. I missed that in the newest volume, even though I hadn’t consciously thought about it before.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, Martin Edwards, mystery
Posted December 19, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Mirror Lake
Genres: Crime,
Fantasy,
Mystery Pages: 240
Series: Shady Hollow #3 Rating: Synopsis: A murder to solve. A reporter on the trail. Is this a case of mistaken identity?
Welcome dear reader! You have happened upon the delightful village of Shady Hollow, a place where rabbits and raptors, squirrels and snakes live together in civilised accord...with only the occasional murder to mar the peace of daily life.
Keen journalist Vera Vixen is recovering from the Harvest Festival (and its bounty of local cheeses, cider and pies) when the calm is shattered by a scream from one of the small town's grandes houses. Dorothy Springfield, a rat with a reputation for eccentricity, claims her husband - who is standing right next to her - has been murdered. Has Dorothy finally lost her grip on reality? Or is the rat who claims to be Edward an imposter? Vera's fox nose scents a story. And it's not long before the discovery of a body, minus the read, complicates things further...
Juneau Black’s Shady Hollow books seem to invariably end up being swallowed whole — by me at least. As with the others, I steamed right through it, enjoying myself all the way. As with the others, if you find the situation (the town of woodland creatures living in vegetarian harmony) inherently ridiculous and you’re unable to suspend your disbelief, then it won’t be so much your thing… and, once again, I found the mystery a little obvious. (I blame the fact that I’ve been training my brain on John Dickson Carr and other mystery greats.)
But that’s quibbling, because I personally still enjoyed it a lot. I’m still a little mad that the animals apparently don’t have a sense of smell, not even the creatures who would normally be trackers — it’d add a great extra dimension — but I’m trying not to argue with it, because I’m just having fun.
It helps that it’s a town of basically nice people. There are petty jealousies, of course, and here and there a murder or other crime (though it’s usually an outsider), but it just sounds like a nice place to be, and that makes it a nice place to read about. Vera and Orville’s romance is mostly sweet (without ever being saccharine), and Lenore is the best raven friend you could ever ask for.
Lovely escapism, and I refuse to overthink it any further!
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, crime, Juneau Black, mystery, SF/F
Posted December 2, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments
The Black Spectacles
Genres: Crime,
Mystery Pages: 222
Series: British Library Crime Classics Rating: Synopsis: A sinister case of deadly poisoned chocolates from Sodbury Cross’s high street shop haunts the group of friends and relatives assembled at Bellegarde, among the orchards of ‘peach-fancier’ Marcus Chesney. To prove a point about how the sweets could have been poisoned under the nose of the shopkeeper, Chesney stages an elaborate memory game to test whether any of his guests can see beyond their ‘black spectacles’; that is, to see the truth without any assumptions as witnesses.
During the test – which is also being filmed – Chesney is murdered by his supposed accomplice. The keen wits of Dr. Gideon Fell are called for to crack this brazen and bizarre murder committed in full view of an audience.
It’s still funny how I thought I really disliked John Dickson Carr’s writing, and now here I am inhaling his books in a day. The Black Spectacles has quite a bit going on, with the police detective getting deeply emotionally involved with the whole thing and Gideon Fell coming in all sympathy and understanding. He’s rather human for one of the Great Detective types, albeit you never learn much about his personal life or opinions outside of crime.
The crime isn’t the locked-room mystery that Carr specialised in, but it is an “impossible crime” — though I realised quickly what was up with that (a similar device used in a couple of other crime novels that I happen to like). It’s fun to work out what’s going on and why.
There is something rather dark about the motivations and the way a particular character is treated, that left me wanting a little more at the end of the novel — something to set the world properly to rights for her. Maybe an epilogue or something. But the mystery is resolved well.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, John Dickson Carr, mystery
Posted November 28, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Cold Clay
Genres: Crime,
Fantasy,
Mystery Pages: 208
Series: Shady Hollow #2 Rating: Synopsis: It's autumn in Shady Hollow, and residents are looking forward to harvest feasts. But then a rabbit discovers a grisly crop: the bones of a moose.
Soon, the owner of Joe's Mug is dragged out of the coffeeshop and questioned by the police about the night his wife walked out of his life—and Shady Hollow—forever. It seems like an open-and-shut case, but dogged reporter Vera Vixen doesn't believe gentle Joe is a killer. She'll do anything to prove his innocence ... even if it means digging into secrets her neighbors would rather leave buried.
Juneau Black’s Cold Clay is another reasonably cosy mystery in the same vein as the first book: if you didn’t enjoy that, then you won’t find yourself charmed by this one, and if you did enjoy the first one, it’s likely your thing unless the conceit is wearing thin for you already. For me, it wasn’t: I was ready to suspend my disbelief once more, readily engage with the world in which a raven runs a bookshop and a moose a café, and get mildly outraged that the police bear would arrest a hard-working honest moose.
If that all sounds ridiculous, it may not be for you, but the book treats it as obvious (aside from a brief introductory page in which it advises not to get caught up on the how of it all), and it doesn’t get played as ridiculous. Really it’s just about people, except they happen to have some animal traits. Here and there I was annoyed that they didn’t use their animal traits a bit more (flying’s all very well, but some of you have noses, why did nobody ever hunt down a quarry by scent?), but mostly I just suspended my disbelief and settled in to enjoy.
I say it’s a “reasonably” cosy mystery because… I’m never entirely sure where the boundaries are on this one. Murder seems, by definition, pretty uncosy — but a lot of mystery fiction is really about that closure at the end, and saying “everything is going to be okay now”, which is profoundly cosy. Your mileage may vary, but I think this one qualifies.
As far as the actual plot goes, once again I was a bit ahead of the game and identified the culprit quickly, but watching Vera get there was entertaining as far as it goes. I could’ve done without the relationship drama between Orville and Vera — really, kids, just communicate! But all in all, I enjoyed myself once more, and quickly grabbed the next book in the series, the short stories, and the fourth book as well for good measure. I’m having fun.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, crime, Juneau Black, mystery, SF/F
