August | 2025 | The Invisible Event
10 posts published by JJ during August 2025| The Invisible Event
10 posts published by JJ during August 2025| The Invisible Event
Good heavens, I wish Gerald Verner had written 20 books about Simon Gale. The larger-than-life Gale — “He paints and he writes, but mostly he just does anything that appeals to him…” — featured in a mere three of Verner’s books: Noose for a Lady (1952), Sorcerer’s House (1956), and The Snark was a Boojum … Continue reading #1336: “This doesn’t happen to be a detective story, you see…” – Sorcerer’s House (1956) by Gerald Verner| The Invisible Event
Reading her novels chronologically, I’m moved to declare that 1942 was a big year for Craig Rice. Prior to then, she had written five fast-moving, wildly inventive mysteries featuring wisecracking lawyer John J. Malone and Jake and Helene Justus, but 1942 saw Rice diversify with (not necessarily in this order) a Malone novel in The … Continue reading #1335: The Man Who Slept All Day (1942) by Craig Rice [a.p.a. by Michael Venning]| The Invisible Event
The Invisible Event has, as of yesterday, officially been online for ten years. Where does the time go? And when does the money start pouring in? Last week, I celebrated various failures with this blog; this week, I’d like to mark the decade by considering some of the many ways my life has been enriched … Continue reading #1334: The Tenniversary – Ten Positive Side-Effects of Blogging| The Invisible Event
I first encountered James Yaffe via his story ‘The Problem of the Emperor’s Mushrooms’ (1945), but have heard much about his ‘Mom’ stories, in which a police officer’s mother “is usually able to solve over the dinner table crimes that keep the police running around in circles for weeks”. So I was delighted to acquire … Continue reading #1333: “Why shouldn’t I know? I know how people act, don’t I?” – My Mother, the Detective [ss] (2016) by James Yaffe| The Invisible Event
One sympathises with Martin Edwards when he says that he found the style of the opening pages of Pontifex, Son and Thorndyke (1931), the nineteenth book and thirteenth novel by R. Austin Freeman to feature medical jurist Dr. John Evelyn Thorndyke, “off-putting”. I am an avowed Freeman fan, this being the 19th book by him … Continue reading #1332: Pontifex, Son and Thorndyke (1931) by R. Austin Freeman| The Invisible Event
Man plans and God laughs, words which apply in life as in blogging. And, as The Invisible Event turns ten years old next week, I don’t want you thinking that I’m the acme of perfection and everything I’ve ever done — in my life and in blogging — has worked out exactly as intended. And … Continue reading #1331: The Tenniversary – Ten Things That Didn’t Pan Out as Intended| The Invisible Event
I first read Not to be Taken, a.k.a. A Puzzle in Poison (1938), my debut experience of the work of Anthony Berkeley, after happening across a Black Dagger Crime edition in about 2005. And I bloody …| The Invisible Event
Having curbed the slaughter in his first two books, S.S. van Dine’s early promise that The Greene Murder Case (1928) is “the first complete and unedited history of the Greene holocaust&…| The Invisible Event
The recent publication of the tenth and eleventh volumes of James Ronald’s stories of crime and detection by Moonstone Press turned my mind back to the opportunity to read one of his novels t…| The Invisible Event
On 18th August 2025, The Invisible Event will have been running for ten years. And while I’m not a big one for introspection — I read books, I write about those books, some people read what I’ve written, rinse, repeat — a decade feels like a notable achievement and so some introspection is going to … Continue reading #1328: The Tenniversary – Ten Books That (Unwittingly) Shaped This Blog| The Invisible Event
While Brad adopts a thematic approach to reading the Perry Mason novels of Erle Stanley Gardner, I’m more a sort of wander in the meadow, la-la-la, isn’t everything beautiful kinda guy, and so I’m just getting it into my head I want to (re)read one and picking them up on a whim. But let’s attempt … Continue reading #1327: “There’s a plain, logical solution to the whole business…” – The Case of the Substitute Face (1938) by Erle Stanley Gardner| The Invisible Event
The twelfth published novel from Erle Stanley Gardner under his A.A. Fair nom de plume, Bedrooms Have Windows (1949) finds L.A. P.I.s Bertha Cool and Donald Lam once more skirting the law in pursuit of a case whose precise shape is obscured by the sheer number of actions dragged across its trail. And while this … Continue reading #1326: Bedrooms Have Windows (1949) by A.A. Fair| The Invisible Event
It’s true that, by reading a lot of crime and detective fiction and trying to write three posts a week on that subject, I sometimes forget to just enjoy my reading. So thank heavens it’s time for another Alasdair Beckett-King novel, with Sabotage at Sea (2025) being the fourth in the Montgomery Bonbon corpus. This … Continue reading #1325: Minor Felonies – Montgomery Bonbon: Sabotage at Sea (2025) by Alasdair Beckett-King [ill. Claire Powell]| The Invisible Event
Fun fact: I did not pick up With a Vengeance (2025), the ninth novel by Riley Sager, because I knew it featured an impossible crime. In fact, I’m not even sure it does feature an impossible crime. But it might, and I had a lot of fun with this book, and those two points alone … Continue reading #1324: A Little Help for My Friends – Finding a Modern Locked Room Mystery for TomCat Attempt #28: With a Vengeance (2025) by Riley Sager| The Invisible Event
I first heard of The Deadly Percheron (1946), John Franklin Bardin’s debut novel of identity and madness, when Anthony Horowitz called it his favourite crime novel in an interview (which I’ve been unable to find, so [citation needed] that for now). And then Kate loved it and Brad loved it and so, with this Penguin … Continue reading #1323: The Deadly Percheron (1946) by John Franklin Bardin| The Invisible Event
I cannot remember how I stumbled across Stuart Gibbs’ Space Case (2014), but whatever combination of events brought it to my attention is to be thanked for the 11 books of his I’ve now …| The Invisible Event
Janice Hallett fairly set the crime fiction firmament a-gaggle with her debut The Appeal (2021), a story of murder in a community theatre group told via emails and texts. Her third novel, The Myste…| The Invisible Event
There’s joy in your heart, a spring in your step, a tune in your soul — could it be that The Men Who Explain Miracles are here with another episode of their universally listened-to-by-s…| The Invisible Event
“I am going to kill a man” — it must surely be the most famous opening line in the whole firmament of Golden Age detective fiction, and but for Sherlock Holmes and “the̶…| The Invisible Event
10 posts published by JJ during November 2024| The Invisible Event
With Libby at Solving Mystery of Murder continuing to struggle with the work of French maestro of the impossible crime Paul Halter, and with no new Halter titles on the horizon for a little while at least, I got to reflecting on the titles that John Pugmire so selflessly translated under his Locked Room International … Continue reading #1321: A Joyous-Going Fellow – My Ten Favourite Paul Halter Translations| The Invisible Event
If the year 2020 will be remembered for anything, it will be that I bought a set of 18 J.J. Connington novels on eBay and started my way through them. Of those 18, only A Minor Operation (1937) — Connington’s sixteenth novel and the eleventh to feature Chief Constable Sir Clinton Driffield — showed any … Continue reading #1320: A Minor Operation (1937) by J.J. Connington| The Invisible Event
I’m not entirely sure what I expected from The Murderer’s Ape (2014) by Jakob Wegelius, but it wasn’t a Gulliver’s Travels (1726)-esque multinational adventure written by an intelligent gorilla. And while the book that results is in no way a bad thing, it’s also not really a murder mystery in the vein of what I’m … Continue reading #1319: Minor Felonies – The Murderer’s Ape (2014) by Jakob Wegelius [trans. Peter Graves 2017]| The Invisible Event
An earlier British Library Crime Classics short story collection today, with The Long Arm of the Law [ss] (2017) featuring 15 stories of professional police selected by the hugely knowledgeable Martin Edwards. Like, I imagine, a lot of GAD readers, I was drawn to the genre by the histrionics of private investigators like Hercule Poirot … Continue reading #1318: “That’s the worst of these detective stories; every criminal knows that trick.” – The Long Arm of the Law [ss] (2017) ed. M...| The Invisible Event
Crazy to think that even a couple of years ago the works of James Ronald were so wildly unavailable that it seemed we’d never know exactly what, of the fair amount he wrote, was crime fiction and what came from other, equally profitable, genres. Then Chris Verner and Moonstone Press entered the arena, and Ronald’s … Continue reading #1317: Murder for Cash, a.k.a. The Fatal .45 (1938) by James Ronald| The Invisible Event
A third mystery for Roger, Diana, Snubby, Loony, Barney, and Miranda, and, well, one that frankly makes me wonder if I’ll bother reading the remaining three books in this series. I suppose my main difficulty with The Ring O’ Bells Mystery (1951) by Enid Blyton is that not only is it not very mysterious, it’s … Continue reading #1316: Minor Felonies – The Ring O’ Bells Mystery (1951) by Enid Blyton| The Invisible Event
Having sold squillions of copies in its native Japan, Strange Pictures (2022), the debut novel of mysterious YouTuber Uketsu, vaults over the language barrier into English thanks to Pushkin Vertigo…| The Invisible Event
I’ve been able, in only the briefest of online searches, to find little on the British pulp writer James Ronald, but the small amount of his material I have read thus far has been very enjoya…| The Invisible Event
Leo Bruce’s eighth and final novel in which Sergeant William Beef sallies forth into polite company to batter them with blunt questions hiding a brilliant mind, Cold Blood (1952) is a strong effort that marks a distinct improvement from preceding title, the over-long and frankly tedious Neck and Neck (1951). It’s the battering to death … Continue reading #1314: Cold Blood (1952) by Leo Bruce| The Invisible Event
Current crime and detective fiction fans needn’t look too hard to find a successful children’s author who transitioned well into writing books for grown-ups, and now Janice Hallett, author of The Appeal (2021) and four subsequent books, is heading in the other direction, with A Box Full of Murders (2025) being her debut for the … Continue reading #1313: Minor Felonies – A Box Full of Murders (2025) by Janice Hallett| The Invisible Event
Mary Virginia Carey was not, it seems, scared of a little velitation in her stewardship of The Three Investigators. Having written arguably the strongest post-Robert Arthur title in The Mystery of the Singing Serpent (1972), Carey structured The Mystery of Monster Mountain (1973) like a classical whodunnit, pulling out some strong clewing on the way … Continue reading #1312: Curious Incidents in the Night-Time in The Mystery of the Invisible Dog (1975) by M.V. Carey| The Invisible Event
Your typical Freeman Wills Crofts protagonist — fallen on hard times, usually following the death of a loved one — young widow Julia Langley enters into a marriage of convenience with solicitor Richard Elton. He will provide for her daughter Mollie, and she will run his house, Chalfont, as hostess for social events that singularly … Continue reading #1311: Fear Comes to Chalfont (1942) by Freeman Wills Crofts| The Invisible Event
I’m doing Roger Ormerod a slight disservice here, by lumping him into this tranche of Mining Mount TBR. See, this series is an initiative by which I get to finally scrape books off my TBR that have been clinging there for arguably too long, and Ormerod has been so entertaining thus far that I was … Continue reading #1310: Mining Mount TBR – Face Value, a.k.a. The Hanging Doll Murder (1983) by Roger Ormerod| The Invisible Event
Today is the tenth Bodies from the Library Conference, at which, until other considerations intervened, I was due to present on the topic of inverted mysteries. And you can bet I would at some point have talked about Six Against the Yard (1936), in which six crime writers put their ‘perfect murder’ on paper and … Continue reading #1309: Murderers Make Mistakes – Sudden Death Aplenty in Six Against the Yard [ss] (1936)| The Invisible Event
Like The Serial Killers’ Club (2006) by Jeff Povey and the Darkly Dreaming Dexter (2004-15) series by Jeff Lindsay, Joanna Wallace’s debut You’d Look Better as a Ghost (2023) take…| The Invisible Event
Let’s revisit a classic, shall we?| The Invisible Event
I know, I know, it looks like I’ve forgotten my brief for this blog, but I haven’t. This is something I’ve been mulling for a little while, and I wanted to raise it here to see w…| The Invisible Event
Another Tuesday in June, another book which has lingered on my TBR, and, coincidentally, another impossible crime. So, does Murder Most Ingenious (1962) by Kip Chase live up to its own self-confident billing? Sort of. The setup sees the wealthy and unpopular Hubert Goodall, owner and operator of a small art gallery, take possession of … Continue reading #1307: Mining Mount TBR – Murder Most Ingenious (1962) by Kip Chase| The Invisible Event
You don’t write as much as Edward D. Hoch without hitting the bull’s-eye a few times, so I’m finally doing what I should have done all along and starting the Dr. Sam Hawthorne series from the beginning, with this first tranche of 12 stories published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine between 1974 and 1978. The … Continue reading #1306: “Ain’t nothin’ like this ever happened in Northmont afore!” – Diagnosis: Impossible: The Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne [ss] (2000) by Edward D...| The Invisible Event
I’m not entirely sure where Casual Slaughters (1935) by James Quince first came to my attention, but it might have been this list of 150 largely very good detective novels, compiled by Curtis Evans back in 2010. And since Curtis and I recently agreed about The Dead Man’s Knock (1958) by John Dickson Carr, and … Continue reading #1305: Casual Slaughters (1935) by James Quince| The Invisible Event
Another book, bought because I understood it to contain an impossible crime, which has been left lingering on my TBR because it’s a later entry in a series I’ve not otherwise read. More than that, this is a continuation novel, so not even by the series’ original author. I’m starting to think that I should … Continue reading #1304: Mining Mount TBR – McNally’s Folly (2000) by Vincent Lardo| The Invisible Event
I have an undeniable fondness for the work of Edgar Allan Poe, having looked at his tales of ratiocination on this blog as well as written a novel inspired by one of his most famous stories. So Beyond Rue Morgue [ss] (2013), a collection of stories edited by Paul Kane and Charles Prepolec purporting to … Continue reading #1303: “Why ask for my deductions if you seek only to dismiss them?” – Beyond Rue Morgue: Further Tales of Edgar Allan Poe’s First Detective [ss] (2013) ed. Paul Ka...| The Invisible Event
Not to split hairs, but if you receive an anonymous note on the 1st June telling you that you have thirteen days to live, the person threatening your life is going to kill you on 14th June, not the 13th. Either way, the wealthy George Hayling waits the best part of a week, receiving one … Continue reading #1302: The Avenger Strikes (1936) by Walter S. Masterman| The Invisible Event
Tuesdays this month will once again be dedicated to digging books out of my TBR pile that have lingered unloved and are likely to remain so without drastic intervention. First up, Mind Over Magic (…| The Invisible Event
As a firm proponent of reading an author’s work chronologically, I’m a terrible hypocrite. I initially encountered Dr. John Evelyn Thorndyke in his eighteenth published volume, and then…| The Invisible Event
Slightly later than promised — or not, depending on your time zone — here’s the long-anticipated spoiler-heavy discussion betwixt Brad, Moira, and myself about Agatha ChristieR…| The Invisible Event
Given the state of limerence in which I exist when it comes to the impossible crime in fiction, it was with great excitement that I received a copy About the Murder of the Circus Queen (1932) by Anthony Abbot, which has not one but two entries in Adey. It is Tod Robinson, manager of Dawson … Continue reading #1300: “Any idea who killed her?” – About the Murder of the Circus Queen (1932) by Anthony Abbot| The Invisible Event
In principle, the core concept of Murder by the Clock (1929), the debut novel for both author Rufus King and character Lieutenant Valcour, is a good one: the youthful Mrs. Endicott calls the police because she fears her husband has gone out that evening to pay off a blackmailer, only for Valcour, the policeman who … Continue reading #1299: Murder by the Clock (1929) by Rufus King| The Invisible Event
Having given up on no fewer than three Sherlock Holmes pastiches in this final entry for my Tuesday undertakings this month, I return to the source: what was for me the book that got me reading stories about Holmes not written by people called A. Conan Doyle or J.D. Carr, The House of Silk (2011) … Continue reading #1298: No Police Like Holmes – The House of Silk (2011) by Anthony Horowitz| The Invisible Event
Image from ‘The Man on the Train’ Something a little different today: knowing that I’m a fan of the Australian dramatist and novelist Malcolm ‘Max’ Afford, Tony Medawar — the closest thing the GAD firmament has to Indiana Jones — sent me a selection of Afford’s thus-far-uncollected short fiction, as found in a variety of … Continue reading #1297: Appointments with Death – Some Uncollected Tales (1932-48) by Max Afford| The Invisible Event
I have, since encountering the work of Charlotte Armstrong, developed a newfound appreciation for the novel of suspense. And so when Kate at Cross-Examining Crime mentioned that The Hours Before Dawn (1958) by Celia Fremlin was among her favourite debuts in the genre, I was willing to put my scepticism aside — Kate and I … Continue reading #1296: The Hours Before Dawn (1958) by Celia Fremlin| The Invisible Event
A second Sherlock Holmes pastiche from the pen of Robert J. Harris, The Devil’s Blaze (2022) sees him once again take his cue from the Second World War setting of the Basil Rathbone films rather than Arthur Conan Doyle’s original Victorian milieu. As with his debut in this series, A Study in Crimson (2020), we … Continue reading #1295: No Police Like Holmes – The Devil’s Blaze: Sherlock Holmes 1943 (2022) by Robert J. Harris| The Invisible Event
I have been known to be something of an impatient reader. In the first half of this decade, I read 713 books — an average of 2.74 a week — all while maintaining the physique of a Greek …| The Invisible Event
One of my favourite discoveries of recent years has been the character of Captain Duncan Maclain, the blind protagonist of a baker’s dozen of books by Baynard Kendrick. Having enjoyed The Odor of Violets (1941) and Blind Man’s Bluff (1943) as part of the American Mystery Classics range, I’ve been keeping an eye out for … Continue reading #1293: The Whistling Hangman (1937) by Baynard Kendrick| The Invisible Event
I’ll level with you: I have never understood the obsession Sherlockians have with the Giant Rat of Sumatra. For those not in the know, this R.O.U.S. is mentioned once by Arthur Conan Doyle in his story ‘The Sussex Vampire’ (1924), when a note sent to Sherlock Holmes makes reference to “your successful action in the … Continue reading #1292: No Police Like Holmes – The Giant Rat of Sumatra (1976) by Richard L. Boyer| The Invisible Event
In my very first post on this blog I shared the belief that G.K. Chesterton’s writing is “too verbose”, and I’ll confess that I’ve found him hard to enjoy in the past. But reading some stories with Countdown John got me thinking that maybe I could suffer to give him another go, and so here, … Continue reading #1291: “Surely it must be a superstitious yarn spun out of something much simpler.” – The Wisdom of Father Brown [ss] (1914) by G.K. Chesterton| The Invisible Event
With an intriguing title taken from Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) (“Murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.”), Silence After Dinner (1953) is the eleventh Clifford Witting novel republished by Galileo Publishers. And since they were kind enough to send me a … Continue reading #1290: Silence After Dinner (1953) by Clifford Witting| The Invisible Event
It is no doubt fitting that the last Sherlock Holmes pastiche I read saw our Great Detective tackling a copycat of the Jack the Ripper killings in 1942, given that the next one I would go on to read would see him tackle the actual Ripper killings in 1888. Back in January, I asked for … Continue reading #1289: No Police Like Holmes – Dust and Shadow (2009) by Lyndsay Faye| The Invisible Event
When we talk about examples of the classic novel of detection being treated as a knowing parody of itself, titles oft-mentioned include The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929) or Jumping Jenny (1933) by Anthony Berkeley. But I’ve just read The Body in the Library (1942) by Agatha Christie for the first time in 25 years, and, … Continue reading #1288: “I thought they only happened in books.” – The Body in the Library (1942) by Agatha Christie| The Invisible Event
You have to buy the whole book of A Certain Dr. Thorndyke (1927), the tenth novel featuring R. Austin Freeman’s eponymous, esteemed medical jurist, but I’d advise only reading half of i…| The Invisible Event
Even before the sad death of John Pugmire, who brought us much in the way of foreign language impossible crime novels through Locked Room International, Pushkin Vertigo had started some heavy lifti…| The Invisible Event
Among the five books I have reread for Thursday reviews this January, The Case of the Gilded Fly (1944), the debut of the composer Bruce Montgomery under the name Edmund Crispin, is unique in that …| The Invisible Event
The last time I read a book by Richard Austin Freeman, my House of Stratus edition told me it was a collection of short stories only for it to turn out to be a novel. So it’s fitting that my …| The Invisible Event
With the annual Bodies from the Library collections, which have brought long out-of-print stories of crime and detection back to public awareness, proving rightly popular, editor Tony Medawar turns…| The Invisible Event
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
Since I don’t post about books in the order that I read them, I must start this review by informing you that, behind the scenes, I gave up on five books by five different authors before settl…| The Invisible Event
Perhaps there’s a charm imbued here by being slightly separated from too direct an experience of the career of former Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel; the porcine indiscretions of David C…| The Invisible Event
Last week I sat this out because other business needed attending to. This week I’m going to try and convince you that the recent republication of Robert Adey’s Locked Room Murders from…| The Invisible Event
It’s easy to dismiss James Patterson for not writing his own books or being too prolific or being a hack or [insert insult of choice here], but I’m a fan of giving someone a chance befo…| The Invisible Event
“My New Year’s resolution is to murder a man I’ve never met” — thus does Basil Palmer lay out his intentions at the very start of his journal in Hemlock Bay (2024) by …| The Invisible Event
How do you go about discussing a book you couldn’t even be bothered to finish? The tempting thing is not to review it at all, but I’m committed to certain undertakings on this blog R…| The Invisible Event
In the back of my mind when I started The Invisible Event was the idea that exactly half of what I’d post about would feature impossible crimes, locked room mysteries, and/or miracle problems…| The Invisible Event
Far from the short story collection my House of Stratus edition pictured here promises on the back cover, The Shadow of the Wolf (1925) is the eighth novel to feature R. Austin Freeman’s R…| The Invisible Event
I’m a fan of Sherlock Holmes, and I’m a fan of a good Sherlock Holmes pastiche, so when Holmes and Moriarty (2024) by Gareth Rubin floated across my radar as being endorsed by the Conan…| The Invisible Event
Let’s take a moment to reflect on what Tony Medawar has done in recent years for GAD fans, with Wicked Spirits (2024) being the eighth collection of lost, forgotten, and so-rare-they-doubt-th…| The Invisible Event
The inverted mystery has been tickling my brain recently, and I got to thinking that I’d very much like to rewatch Alfred Hitchock’s Rope (1948). But the closest thing I could find on t…| The Invisible Event
Apparently, you either love Philo Vance — dilettante, bon vivant, sleuth — or you wish to give him the much-vaunted “kick in the pance”. I, having read his sixth inves…| The Invisible Event
I’ve written before about the impact the long-defunct Orion Crime Masterworks series had on my discovery of classic-era crime and detective fiction, and a recent pruning of my shelves brought…| The Invisible Event
It’s been nearly a year since Beth’s friend Charlotte died, struck down by a car one October evening while out training for a marathon. Finally beginning to emerge from her cocoon of gr…| The Invisible Event
Soren Kierkegaard said that life is to be lived forwards but only understood backwards, and the same is true of my reading Anthony Berkeley Cox. I’m reasonably sure that I’ve read the m…| The Invisible Event
Even though — or perhaps, because — I’m a fan of Anthony Berkeley Cox’s work, I approach him with some trepidation. At his best you get the innovative brilliance of The Pois…| The Invisible Event
The setup of The Poisoned Chocolates Case is rightly very famous: a lady is killed when a box of chocolates given to her husband by another member of his gentlemen’s club — who himself …| The Invisible Event
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
Perhaps April Fool’s Day isn’t the best scheduling of this post, but the recent experience of dragging my way through Helen Vardon’s Confession (1922) by R. Austin Freeman got me …| The Invisible Event
Sometimes the Holmes canon surprises me; I have very fond memories of certain stories, while others are almost a complete blank.| The Invisible Event
I have in the past referred to The Punch and Judy Murders, a.k.a. The Magic Lantern Murders (1936) — the fifth book to feature Sir Henry ‘H.M.’ Merrivale under John Dickson Carr&#…| The Invisible Event
I’ve read a lot of middle-of-the-road books lately, so thought I’d take away the pressure of expecting something to be good and read an author who is, at the very least, usually enterta…| The Invisible Event
Is this the the best title in the Sherlock Holmes canon? I don’t mean the best story, but rather the most intriguing combination of words put together to entice you in.| The Invisible Event
Thirty stories from the pen of Cyril Hare, an author whose legal-themed novels leave me rather cold, but whose scattered short fiction I have encountered is typically very positive. So a chance to …| The Invisible Event
Having researched and written a book in which a woman poisons several people, Victoria Hime inevitably ends up as the prime suspect when someone close to her is poisoned by the same means. The fact…| The Invisible Event
Many authors and film-makers would seek to overturn this in the years ahead, but as far as the canon goes we find ourselves visiting Sherlock Holmes’ first ever case.| The Invisible Event
Another month, another Sherlock Holmes pastiche, this time from the very enjoyable US TV series Elementary (2012-19). My belated discovery of two novelisations in that universe was a source of imme…| The Invisible Event
Following the revelation at the end of my recent review of Case for Three Detectives (1936) by Leo Bruce that I had not read three of sometime-Sergeant William Beef’s later cases, a friend ha…| The Invisible Event
Arthur Conan Doyle wrote 56 short stories about Sherlock Holmes, solidly 15 of which must be among the most prized creations in the genre. The other 41, then, vary somewhat.| The Invisible Event
Comments were made in the, er, comments of my previous Three Investigators review, The Secret of Phantom Lake (1973) regarding an apparently love-it-or-hate-it element to the next title in the seri…| The Invisible Event
Shirley Ballas. Richard Coles. Susie Dent. Richard Osman. Robert Rinder. These days, if you want to publish a crime novel, it clearly helps to be a UK media personality. And why not? Publishing&…| The Invisible Event
