-
Recent Posts
== Currently off the shelf ==
Categories
Archives
Top Posts & Pages
- Top 20 Amnesia Mystery Movies
- 9 of the Best by Ellery Queen
- The Carey Treatment (1972) - Tuesday's Overlooked Film
- Top 20: Private Eye movies
- The Perry Mason movies (1934-37)
- In Praise of ... COLUMBO
- THE QUIET AMERICAN (1955) by Graham Greene
- THE YELLOW DOG (1931) by Georges Simenon
- THE LETTER (1927) by Somerset Maugham
- Ranking the 87th Precinct Mysteries
Blogroll
- Aficionado
- At the Scene of the Crime
- Battered, Tattered, Yellowed, & Creased
- Beneath the Stains of Time (aka Detection by Moonlight)
- Bitter Tea and Mystery
- Book Dirt
- Chess, Comics, Crosswords, Books, Music, Cinema
- Classic Mysteries
- Clothes in Books
- Confessions of a Mystery Novelist….
- Death Can Read
- Do You Write Under Your Own Name
- Existential Ennui
- Film Dirt
- Films on the Box
- Howdunit
- In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel
- In so many words …
- Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings
- La morte sa leggere
- Mike Ripley's getting away with murder
- Mrs. Peabody Investigates
- My Reader's Block
- Mystery File
- Noir of the Week
- Noirish
- Novels by Candlelight
- Past Offences
- pattinase
- Paul D Brazill
- Pretty Sinister Books
- Riding the High Country
- Sheldon Times – Sheldon Hall on Films and TV
- Sweet Freedom
- The Dark Time
- The Invisible Event
- The Locked Room
- The Passing Tramp
- The Rap Sheet
- The Stalking Moon
- Tip the Wink
- Vanished Into Thin Air
- West 1 Girl
Category Archives: 2017 Golden Age Vintage Mystery Scavenger Hunt
2017 Vintage Mystery Scavenger Hunt Wrap-up
Bev over at My Reader’s Block has been hosting her vintage mystery reading challenges for much longer than I’ve been blogging and it’s been a pleasure to take part all these years. So how did I do this year? Well … Continue reading
Posted in 2017 Golden Age Vintage Mystery Scavenger Hunt, 2017 Silver Age Vintage Mystery Scavenger Hunt, Agatha Christie, Anthony Berkeley, Carter Brown, Carter Dickson, Colin Dexter, Gideon Fell, Graham Greene, Helen Nielsen, Henry Merrivale, Inspector Morse, Jim Thompson, John Dickson Carr, John Lange, Michael Crichton, Poirot, Stark House Press
18 Comments
Buon Natale 2017
So, what’s 2017 been like? Well, about this big as James Stewart might have said in that dark example of Film Noir that bizarrely seems to everyone’s favourite feel good Christmas movie … And on the mystery front? Well … … Continue reading
GREEN FOR DANGER (1944) by Christianna Brand
Easily he best-known of Brand’s Inspector Cockrill mysteries, this clever and funny book was turned into a clever and funny film that is also one of the most atmospheric whodunits you will ever see. The setting is a secluded hospital now … Continue reading
THE WENCH IS WICKED / BLONDE VERDICT / DELILAH WAS DEADLY by Carter Brown
This omnibus by ultra-prolific paperback writer ‘Carter Brown’ (in private life Alan Geoffrey Yates) – courtesy of those very nice people at Stark House Press – features the first three cases of Al Wheeler, the unorthodox and wise-cracking Lieutenant working in the California … Continue reading
TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT (1937) by Ernest Hemingway
A tale of smuggling between Cuba and Florida, this is generally considered one of Hemingway’s lesser works, which may actually explain why it made surprisingly good movie fodder. The hardboiled story of downtrodden boat-owner Harry Morgan was famously filmed with … Continue reading
TILL DEATH DO US PART (1944) by John Dickson Carr
This classic Golden Age detective story tends to get a little lost among the multitude of enthralling mysteries that John Dickson Carr was producing at such a prodigious rate at that time. It begins with a superb set piece in … Continue reading
NINE-AND DEATH MAKES TEN (1941) by Carter Dickson
I fell in love with John Dickson Carr’s work via his ‘Carter Dickson’ alter ego when I chanced across his classic The Reader is Warned back when I was 14. Nine and Death Makes Ten (aka Murder in the Submarine … Continue reading
THE BURNING COURT (1937) by John Dickson Carr
There are oddly obscure mysteries from the Golden Age that are in fact still entertaining and clever and deserve to be rediscovered. Then there are novels that once were considered classics but now seem very tame indeed. And then there … Continue reading
TRIAL AND ERROR (1937) by Anthony Berkeley
It’s time for a guest post from my blogging buddy Livius, who writes about movies at his marvellous blog, Riding the High Country. And now it’s over to the man himself: The inverted crime story is one where the perpetrator … Continue reading
SHE DIED A LADY (1943) by Carter Dickson
OK, let’s get this out of the way: Carter Dickson, aka John Dickson Carr, is my favourite Golden Age detective story writer. For me, he was better than Christie, Queen, Sayers and Stout, love them all though I do. And … Continue reading
DEATH IN THE TUNNEL (1936) by Miles Burton
This is a bit of a special post – I have so far managed to get through life without reading a single novel by John Rhode, who often published as Miles Burton and whose real name was Cecil John Street. … Continue reading
DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1943) by James M. Cain
It is possible that the public conception of Noir owes more to the success of this book than any other. On the face of it, author James M. Cain just rewrote The Postman Always Rings Twice (click here for my review … Continue reading
MINISTRY OF FEAR (1943) by Graham Greene
A wartime story of espionage and guilt, this was the last and personal favourite of Graham Greene’s self-styled ‘entertainments,’ the term he used to differentiate his thrillers from his more mainstream novels, though several of his books fall into that category … Continue reading
WOMAN ON THE ROOF (1954) by Helen Nielsen
This books starts off with a premise reminiscent of the Hitchcock movie Rear Window (or rather, the short story on which it was based, ‘It Had to Be Murder’ by Cornell Woolwich / William Irish): looking through a window a … Continue reading
DEATH IN THE CLOUDS (1935) by Agatha Christie
I rarely review Christie’s books, mainly because her work is already so well covered out there on the blogosphere. But now that my amazing oldest niece (of two, by 12 minutes) is getting into crime fiction, its time for one … Continue reading
THE GETAWAY (1959) by Jim Thompson
This tale of thieves falling out is lifted out of the ordinary by Thompson’s uncanny ability to create chillingly credible portraits of criminals, misfits, felons and psychopaths at the extremes of human behaviour. He then caps it all with a … Continue reading
Vintage Mystery Cover Scavenger Hunt 2017
That inveterate Challenge setter Bev Hankin, she of My Reader’s Block, keeps finding new and fiendish ways to get us vintage mystery fans into action – and here is her latest reading challenge: Here’s the plot premise for 2017:
Tipping My Fedora 