When I first became interested in detective fiction, I had difficulty finding blogs to foster my newfound passion. Perhaps I was entering the wrong words into Google, but most of the sites I encountered only wrote about modern fiction and not the sort I was reading. In December of last year, I was busy working… Continue reading Black Aura by John Sladek
It doesn't take far into Carr's oeuvre before a reader begins to recognize the signposts. Here's the meet-cute and there's the first brief mention of the curse/legend/myth which will soon be tragically reenacted for our ghoulish pleasure. The foolish authority figure (not quite so foolish this time round), the suspicious relatives, and the blusterous authority… Continue reading Hag’s Nook
Any discussion of Paul Halter's The Crimson Fog has to be done in two (very) distinct parts. We begin in 1887. A man goes back to his hometown to solve a decade-old impossible murder. Straight away, we get an entertaining series of narrative game playing. "Sidney" reveals a false identity to some characters, creates another… Continue reading The Crimson Fog
Advanced praise for John Dickson Carr's Death-Watch: "Wall-to-wall dialogue!" "The meager traces of romance are cynically used in service of the puzzle, appearing only when necessary and resembling little in the way of true human emotion!" "The chess-piece characters don't learn anything, nor do they change throughout the course of the story. The same goes… Continue reading DEATH-WATCH
The first half of John Dickson Carr's It Walks By Night deals with the murder and its immediate aftermath. What a grand murder it is! A former athlete (who has only recently become a recluse) is found beheaded in the card room at Fenelli's restaurant. The room had two entrances, both of which were under… Continue reading It Walks By Night
When I bought the The Locked Room Reader , I thought I had only read one of the stories. As it turned out, I had read a few of them. (Damn you, early onset of Alzheimer's!) Nevertheless, I thought I'd write some impressions. Collections of shorts (be they stories or films) tend to vary in… Continue reading The Locked Room Reader
