Back in February I reviewed the first novel in Gertrude Lynley’s Miss Lamb mystery series, Death Came Secondhand (2022) in which the amateur sleuth Geraldine Lamb has to figure out if one of her fe…| crossexaminingcrime
Agatha Christie’s “The Witness for the Prosecution”: Truth, Lies, and a Perfect Performance Christie published The Secret of Chimneys in 1925 and you can read an amusingly scathing review here. I am sure others may have more positive things to say. But Christie also published something else that year – a short story that has had a remarkable second life …Continue Reading→| Rattlebag and Rhubarb
Le livre : : Trois souris… d’Agatha Christie, traductions révisées de Jean-Michel Alamagny, Pascal Aubin, Michel Averlant et autres. Réédité en poche le 26 octobre 2022 chez Le Livre de poche, n°6288. Policiers & thrillers. 7€90. (311 p.); 18 x 11 cm 4e de couverture Trois souris… Jeunes mariés, Molly et Giles Davis accueillent leurs premiers … Lire la suite de Trois souris…, Agatha Christie| Collectif polar : chronique de nuit
Welcome back! How is October over already? I’ve been in deep in cozy activities. I made soup. I’ve been bundled up in blankets, playing PowerWash Simulator 2. Lots of reading in bed; I’m back on my webcomics grind. How are the changing seasons treating you? … I recently re-discovered my love of Book Outlet. I used it a ton in grad school and then sort of forgot about it. But with purse strings getting a bit tighter, … Continue reading Links: Hope, Agatha Christie, & More→| Smart Bitches, Trashy BooksSmart Bitches, Trashy Books
It is incredible to think that today my blog turns eight years old. It doesn’t seem like that long since I posted my very first review (The Detective Wore Silk Drawers) here. Clearly time passes quickly when you’re having fun. In those eight years, I have reviewed over six hundred books. I have also written […]| Mysteries Ahoy!
It recently occurred to me that I have never offered detailed thoughts on a Miss Marple book. That seemed a pretty significant omission, particularly given my blog’s title was inspired by a M…| Mysteries Ahoy!
Agatha Christie est sans nul doute l’une des romancières les plus appréciées de son temps. Auteure de quatre-vingt-quatre ouvrages qui constituent pour la plupart des intrigues policières, d’une vingtaine de pièces de théâtre et de plusieurs recueils de nouvelles, elle est parvenue à faire de ses oeuvres de grands succès du XXe siècle, lues partout […]| des livres, des livres !
Monday 20th October to Sunday 26th October sees readers coming together for the 1925 Club Challenge hosted by Karen of kaggsybookishramblings and Simon at Stuck in a Book. I haven’t read any Agatha Christie before so this was my first book from the world famous author. Thank you 1925 Club for making me finally get […]| Volatile Rune
Monday 20th October to Sunday 26th October sees readers coming together for the 1925 Club Challenge hosted by Karen of kaggsybookishramblings and Simon at Stuck in a Book. The challenge is simply to read a book or books from the year in question then review, comment or otherwise share out views. My choice of book […]| Volatile Rune
In case you missed my Be Back Soon (ish) post, I am taking some time off from blogging in October, to dedicate my energy upon two projects. Here’s a link to fill you in on those. However, whilst I …| crossexaminingcrime
It’s time for another Top Ten Tuesday! Don’t forget to head over to That Artsy Reader Girl and join the linkup! Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love… Continue reading Top Ten Tuesday ~ Books I Wish I Could Read Again for the First Time→| BookWyrm Knits
A little while back, Leslie and Books Are the New Black did this tag, and it looked like fun so I decided to play along. It looks like the tag was originally created by Tabby, a booktuber (and you can watch the original video here). The original rules also appear to have a “time to… Continue reading Do I Have That Book? Challenge→| BookWyrm Knits
Monday sees the launch of our 10th Anniversary Club Reading Week, where we’re focusing on the year 1925. It was a stellar one, which saw the publication of some classic books, and we’re very much looking forward to hearing about what you read. I will have a dedicated page on my site, and you can […]| Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings
Hello everyone! Here’s this week’s WWW Wednesday post! WWW Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words. Each week, you’re supposed to let your readers know what you’re currently reading, what you recently finished, and what you think you’ll read next. Let me know if you’ve read any of […] The post WWW Wednesday – 15 October 2025 first appeared on Books Are 42.| Books Are 42
In my online book club, discussion turns from time to time to our favourite GAD novels of a particular decade. Having done the 1930s and the 1940s, we turned to the 1920s. And, since there’s …| The Invisible Event
Eleven cases from the early career of the World’s Favourite Golden Age Sleuth, Poirot Investigates (1923) offers a chance to revisit a collection I’ve not read in, oh, twenty years. Lovely stuff. Agatha Christie is hardly known, of course, as the doyenne of the short story, her talents being much more readily on display in … Continue reading #1339: “With method and logic one can accomplish anything!” – Poirot Investigates [ss] (1924) by Agatha Christie| The Invisible Event
It’s actually harder to come across a body in the library than you might expect. Agatha Christie described this trope as one of the ‘cliches’ of ‘the detective story’. Over the course of her career, only 5 people are killed in this room in her mystery novels, although she does have some further library victims […]| crossexaminingcrime
During October I will be taking a step back from blogging, although I won’t be disappearing entirely. What does this mean? What will I be doing with this extra time? I have limited energy, and I have two projects on the go, so I need to ease back on the blogging to make more room […]| crossexaminingcrime
As a fan of Agatha Christie and audio drama, I am surprised at myself. Somehow I never clocked that Audible had released another adaptation of a Poirot adventure. This is even more surprising to me given that I'm an Audible member, so I already had access to this. I'm not quite sure what their algorithm was up to there...| Mysteries Ahoy!
Recently, I shared photos with you as evidence of my wall to wall to wall to wall assortment of mystery books. Interspersed amongst the novels and plays and story collections are books about mystery fiction. There are the historical, like Martin Edwards’ The Golden Age of Murder i(2015), the critical, like Julian Symons’ Mortal Consequences (in Britain Bloody Murder, 1973) and the playful, like Dilys … Continue reading LUCID, LUDIC AND WELL-CLUED: The Murder Game, by John C...| Ah Sweet Mystery!
Ten years ago on this very day, I posted for the first time. I promised you I would cover classic mysteries in every format – page, stage, and screen – and I made no bones about my adoration for Agatha Christie. No wonder I decided to celebrate my first decade with a quiz for all … Continue reading THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY GREAT BIG GIGANTIC AGATHA CHRISTIE QUIZ ANSWERS| Ah Sweet Mystery!
“’Elephants don’t forget,’ said Mrs. Oliver. ‘You know, a story children get brought up on? How someone, an Indian tailor, stuck a needle or something in an elephant’s tusk. No, Not a tusk, his trunk, of course, an elephant’s trunk. And the next time the elephant came past he had a great mouthful of water … Continue reading THE POIROT PROJECT #12: Elephants Can Remember| Ah Sweet Mystery!
Elle est bien belle, la concubine qu’Imhotep a ramenée de son voyage dans le Nord. Mais elle n’est qu’une étrangère, et on ne l’aime pas. D’ailleurs, depuis qu’e…| Melle Cup Of Tea Bouquine
Today marks the beginning of the annual Agatha Christie Festival in Torquay! While you read this, there are walks and teas and library events and detection galore going on all around Torquay and ne…| Ah Sweet Mystery!
Death is in the air at the Toronto International Film Festival — or at least it was at the world premiere of Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery on| Book and Film Globe
The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimberly @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news. A post to recap the past week on your blog, showcase books and things we have receive…| Words And Peace
Today’s post finishes off my reviewing for August and Writing the Murder was an unplanned bonus nonfiction read. The introduction begins with the general premise that crime fiction grew up alongside the development of law enforcement e.g. the rise of the modern-day police force etc. Not the most groundbreaking but I guess a book has […]| crossexaminingcrime
Jane’s Parlour by O Douglas / Anna Buchan published 1937 Linden Rise by Richmal Crompton published 1952 The Mystery of the Blue Train ...| clothesinbooks.blogspot.com
Culture at the I newspaper:| Clothes In Books
Dr. John Curran’s description of what he found over the fifty pages of Notebook 12 that comprised the planning of Hickory Dickory Dock (U.S. title: Hickory Hickory Death) suggest that Agatha didn’t…| Ah Sweet Mystery!
The real fun with my Book Club occurs when we toss aside the traditional “Read-of-the-Month” format and talk about books in general. When we read something together, we make quick work of our discu…| Ah Sweet Mystery!
Sophie Harrison review the adaptation of Richard Osman's bestselling cosy crime novel The Thursday Murder Club, now streaming on Netflix.| The Oxford Student
In Death in the Clouds (1935), Norman Gale says to Jane Grey: “Murder […] doesn’t concern the victim and the guilty only. It affects the innocent too. You and I are innocent, but the shadow of murder has touched us. We don’t know how that shadow is going to affect our lives.” Hercule Poirot also […]| crossexaminingcrime
Today’s a read is a recent edition to the A Very Short Introduction series. I have read various ones over the years, including one on Crime Fiction (2015). This was a particularly bad reading exper…| crossexaminingcrime
Agatha Christie est sans nul doute l’une des romancières les plus appréciées de son temps. Auteure de quatre-vingt-quatre ouvrages qui constituent pour la plupart des intrigues policières, d’une vi…| des livres, des livres !
The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimberly @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news. A post to recap the past week on your blog, showcase books and things we have receive…| Words And Peace
There is one murder mystery subgenre that I will never tire of, and that’s the closed-circle mystery. If I could wave a magic wand, every single mystery novel would be set on a remote island, an isolated mountain top, or feature a group of people cut off from the world by a bizarre weather event.Continue reading "If You Loved “And Then There Were None”, Try These Modern Closed-Circle Mysteries" The post If You Loved “And Then There Were None”, Try These Modern Closed-Circle Mysterie...| A Home Is Announced
Spell the month in books: August 2025 Click on the logo to join 📚 📚 📚 I discovered this meme thanks to Marianne @ Let’s read. “The idea is to spell the month using the first letter of…| Words And Peace
Hi all: I bring you a book by a classic and very famous writer, although it was quite a surprise to me, and not one I had come across before. It is not one of her best, in my opinion, but it is a f…| Just Olga
If you come here often, you may have picked up that I love talking about movies. Sadly, the most fraught discussions tend to center around the adaptations of my very favorite subject R…| Ah Sweet Mystery!
“Your travel life has the essence of a dream . . . you are yourself, but a different self.” (Agatha Christie) Full disclosure: I’ve tried writing this article five times, and it becomes increasingl…| Ah Sweet Mystery!
On Sunday, I met with my buddies Sergio Angelini and Nick Cardillo for our latest game of list-drafting. After tackling Christie, Hitchcock, Sherlock Holmes and Charlie Chan, we decided to broaden …| Ah Sweet Mystery!
After blogging for ten years on classic crime – with a focus on Agatha Christie, mind you – I could still forgive myself for not having written closely about . . . The Secret of Chimneys …| Ah Sweet Mystery!
From my 10 titles published in 1952 original list, I started with El piano, by Carmen Laforet, unfortunately not translated, & I also added an 11th title which I read, The Palm Wine Drinkard, by Amos Tutuola, written in English by Tutuola, a Nigerian born author. Carmen Laforet’s most popular book, -this one in English, […]| Silvia Cachia
BBC Maestro has delivered a writing course taught by a speaking and moving on-screen image of Agatha Christie. Did the AI behind it succeed?| The Scholarly Kitchen
It’s easy to argue that The Big Four represents the artistic nadir of Agatha Christie’s career. It barely makes a mention in the biographies: Laura Thompson calls it “one of the worst pie…| Ah Sweet Mystery!
Hello readers! I am excited to participate in the 20 Books of Summer this year, hosted by AnnaBookBel and Emma at Words and Peace. 20 Books of Summer is a fun reading challenge in which participant…| Golden Age of Detective Fiction
Amidst the array of masterpieces that constitute the Christies of the 1930’s, Death in the Clouds (American title: Death in the Air) suffers by comparison. Hercule Poirot spent a large part of this…| Ah Sweet Mystery!
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, Agatha Christie’s twenty-eighth mystery and the nineteenth featuring Hercule Poirot, has the disadvantage of being surrounded by better titles. Its two predecessors are&nb…| Ah Sweet Mystery!
Having the poet’s worst predictions come true is never fun, but over this past weekend, my best-laid plans for a Christie reunion “gang aft very very agley” indeed! When my pal Christophe…| Ah Sweet Mystery!
AN ADAPTED CONVERGENCE: The BBC’s Towards Zero (NOTE: This is a SPOILER-FREE review of the recent BBC adaptation. I have also refrained from any major spoilers of the book, so make yourselves at ho…| Ah Sweet Mystery!
Three-Act Tragedy is the first of nine Poirot novels to appear back-to-back in the latter half of the 1930’s. (Between 1931 -38, there were twelve in total.) It was an extraordinary decade for…| Ah Sweet Mystery!
For the past couple of years, Fanda @Classiclit has been hosting an Agatha Christie short story readalong. The idea is to read two AC short stories each month (you can see her selections for each m…| This Reading Life
Last week, I explained how circumstances led me to revisit Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, the series that starred Joan Hickson and which aired on the BBC from 1986 to 1992. I shared my th…| Ah Sweet Mystery!
A week or so ago, I was texting back and forth with my friends (and fellow Christie fanatics) Jeff and Chris. It was just after the dinner hour, and Jeff informed us that he was settling down to wa…| Ah Sweet Mystery!
This week, as the UK weathers Storm Éowyn, we look at books read and reviewed, discover some of the best writing about literature on the blogosphere, direct you to the Agatha Christie Short Stories…| Book Jotter
The order in which I read the sixty-six mystery novels of Agatha Christie was a total crapshoot, based largely on what cover or blurb struck my teenaged fancy. I couldn’t recite my reading chronolo…| Ah Sweet Mystery!
Discover the top 10 Agatha Christie mysteries that every fan should read and the four classic Agatha Christie mysteries I'd skip!| A Home Is Announced
This week we look at books read and reviewed, discover some of the best writing about literature on the blogosphere, announce the Hundred Years Hence Reading Challenge along with several others, fo…| Book Jotter
When it comes to the high seas, I prefer my voyages to be vicarious. I have been known to get seasick on a slow ferry. My antipathy toward those flashy floating malls they call “luxury liners” is b…| Ah Sweet Mystery!
It’s New Year’s Eve, the final day of a most, er, dramatic year, and this is my 79th and final post of 2024. It’s also the time when some of my fellow bloggers review their accomplishmen…| Ah Sweet Mystery!
I picked my ten favourite crime and detective novels published in the 1930s a little while ago for my online book club, but I only do a Ten Favourite… list every four months or so and thus am…| The Invisible Event
Here's my Christmas reading taster menu, from the top of my TBR pile. Something to fill in deadly gaps between TV Xmas Specials.| Charles Harris author
“As soon as I heard you were coming over, I said to myself: Something will arise. As in former days, we will hunt together, we two. But if so, it must be no common affair. It must be something – so…| Ah Sweet Mystery!
As per tradition, I’m starting the yearly recap posts with next year’s resolutions! I love coming up with these resolutions, even if I don’t fulfil all of them. Now, without furth…| Morgan Is Reading Again
That’s right, folks, my birthday is coming! Okay, the actual date is a week from today. A passel of famous artistic folk consider themselves lucky to share the day with me, including Ludwig v…| Ah Sweet Mystery!
Easy to Kill was first serialized during the winter of 1938, around the time that Hercule Poirot’s Christmas was published. It was released as a novel the following summer, sharing the publication year with one of Christie’s most famous stories, And Then There Were None. That seemed like a fertile setting for a potential quality … Continue reading "Easy to Kill (Murder is Easy) – Agatha Christie (1939)"| The Green Capsule
Dive into 25 unsolved mysteries that will leave you guessing! Explore baffling cases and secrets the world still can't explain.| List25
Another surprise episode of my increasingly-irregular podcast In GAD We Trust, this time featuring Mark Aldridge in discussion about his new book, Agatha Christie’s Marple: Expert on Wickedne…| The Invisible Event
If this had been an old house, with creaking wood, and dark shadows, and heavily panelled walls, there might have been an eerie feeling. But this house was the essence of modernity. There were no dark corners – no possible sliding panels – … Continue reading →| Past Offences: Classic crime, thrillers and mystery book reviews
Every month at Past Offences an intrepid band of bloggers proffers their opinions on a particular year on crime fiction. I call it Crimes of the Century. The stakes were high this time. Regular pla…| Past Offences: Classic crime, thrillers and mystery book reviews
I’ve written many times here about my issues with TV and movie adaptations of existing stories. Short synopsis: I usually find them lacking. Especially the more recent attempts. Extra especia…| Logos con carne
