Last Update 8/3/26

Suspicion by Seicho Matsumoto, Modern Library, 2026

The Japanese version was published in 1982. This is a novella about a woman who is being tried for murdering her husband by driving their car off a pier. She had plenty of motive - mostly insurance, a long criminal record,  and her husband had expressed his conviction that their marriage was a mistake. Her first lawyer is seriously ill and has to drop out, and the only other lawyer potentially willing to take her case declines because its nature might sully his image. So she is given the Japanese equivalent of a public defender, a nondescript man who does not specialize in criminal law. A journalist who wrote a series of libelous stories about the woman is happy because if she is not convicted, she would probably come after him seeking revenge. He is dismayed when the lawyer finds evidence that almost certainly will result in her acquittal, and the story ends with him murdering the lawyer. Interesting story. 8/3/26

Detroit Massacre by Barry Malzberg (as Mike Barry), Berkley, 1975

The vigilante protagonist was finally arrested at the end of the previous book in this series. But the drug dealers are still killing people and he somewhat reluctantly agrees to escape custody, making him even more desperate a fugitive. His latest target is in Detroit, where drugs are being smuggled by being placed inside of cars on the assembly line. One worker saw too much and has been murdered.  Wulff shows up and begins eliminating the people responsible, but the story is surprisingly low key for what had been a pretty violent series. And the villains are not particularly interesting. 8/2/26

Pendergast the Beginning by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, Grand Central, 2026

The latest in this series is chronologically the first in the series. This jumps back through time to describe the title character’s early days as an FBI agent when he and his supervising detective investigate a serial killer who seems to dislike killing but who has an obsession with severing the right arms of male prisoners who are in good physical condition. We know who the killer is almost immediately and see parts of the story from his point of view. He believes that as the result of experiments performed on him by two doctors, he has an evil presence in his own right arm. He has coerced the other two into agreeing to a transplant, threatening to expose their as yet unrevealed crimes. Halfway through, the story changes direction sharply. Solid but not exceptional. 7/31/26

Harlem Showdown by Barry Malzberg (as Mike Barry), Berkley, 1974

The vigilante’s arch enemy died in a plane crash and he finds himself without a clear purpose, so he returns to New York City, where naturally he has to survive multiple attacks by drug dealers and minions who either want revenge or who assume he will continue his murderous crusade. The police now have a task force looking for him as well. Despite all this, the stakes are relatively low. Wulff deals with a man seeking revenge, a small time dealer, an aggressive addict, and a crooked police officer. His ambivalent friend on the police force has the chance to arrest him and he is finally in police custody. 7/30/26

Miami Marauder by Barry Malzberg (as Mike Barry), Berkley, 1974

For a change, much of this installment in the series consists of the inner thoughts of the vigilante protagonist, and to a lesser extent, those of the young woman and ex-drug addict whom he rescued earlier in the series, and who has now been kidnapped by his arch enemy – the drug lord Calabrese – to use as bait in a trap in Miami. The vigilante protagonist agonizes about the risks to his friends, which are basically his fault, but his response is naturally to escalate the level of violence. 7/29/26

Los Angeles Holocaust by Barry Malzberg (as Mike Barry, Berkley, 1974

The vigilante hero is starting to feel as though his mission is doomed and he will not live much longer. He is still using stolen drugs as bait, and for a change the same main villain has been after him for three books. His occasional police contact becomes disenchanted and wants to join him, but is refused. Fewer battles than usual and more dialogue, although we still don’t see much of the protagonist’s thought processes. I’ve been watching the John Wick movies and they share something with this series – no matter where he goes, random people on the streets recognize him and try to kill him. About a third of the book is told from Williams’ point of view, which was a radical change. 7/27/26

Peruvian Nightmare by Barry Malzberg (as Mike Barry), Berkley, 1974

Our vigilante protagonist – he is clearly not a hero – has been captured by drug dealers and is being loosely held at a hotel in Peru. Another drug dealer approaches him and offers to set him free if he will deliver a consignment of drugs in return. Caught between two drug gangs, Wulff gets to kill several people while the other two group harvest their share of the opposition. Open warfare breaks out between two gangs, but Wulff’s escape in complicated by a sabotaged helicopter, an uncooperative horse, and assorted thugs. 7/23/26

Chicago Slaughter by Barry Malzberg (as Mike Barry, Berkley, 1974) 

Our vigilante hero is arrested by quasi-government agents, but they are corrupt so he kills them in his usual abrupt fashion. There are gangsters as well, but they follow the same pattern as the villains in the earlier books, and they even repeat the meme of eliminating their subordinates for not doing a competent job. The protagonist has started to go off the rails – he is clearly not playing with a full deck.  There was never any pretense that you were supposed to like the protagonist, or anyone else in the series. 7/22/26

Havana Run by Barry Malzberg (as Mike Barry), Berkley, 1974

The vigilante has his plans altered when the airplane on which he is travelling is hijacked to Cuba by men who want the cache of drugs which he stole at the end of the previous book in the series. The Cubans find his presence inconvenient and a government official tries to have him quietly murdered, but fails. Although he is technically free following that incident, Wulff wants the drugs that were taken from him because they are bait for the next step in his campaign. Average for the series. 7/9/26

Desert Stalker by Barry Malzberg (as Mike Barry), Berkley, 1974

The vigilante protagonist is off to Las Vegas to continue his campaign to wipe out as many drug dealers as possible. His target this time own a hotel/casino complex and has a lot of guards, but that doesn’t prevent Wulff from overpowering him, killing several bodyguards, and extracting information from his target. He also has explosives with him, which is why the remaining guards are reluctant to storm the office. The siege last for almost half of the novel, and then ends in a flurry of violence that literally leaves dozens of dead bodies. Wulff also picks up intelligence about the next link in the chain of supply. 7/4/26

Boston Avenger by Barry Malzberg (as Mike Barry), Berkley, 1973

Third in the Lone Wolf series. This one falls into the formula. Wulff steals a major shipment of drugs from some dealers, which is then stolen from him by a couple of amateurs who get themselves killed, although only after they pass it on to an avaricious college professor. Then Wulff gets it back, supposedly in exchange for his wife from a drug boss, but Wulff kills the boss instead and destroys the drugs. A couple of innocent people get injured along the way, a police officer shot in the shoulder and a woman who is apparently driven mad when she finds her husband’s body. Nothing outstanding. 7/1/26

Bay Prowler by Barry Malzberg (as Mike Barry), Berkley, 1973

The anti-drug vigilante heads to San Francisco in this men’s action series. In short order, he kills a drug dealer, an assassin sent from New York, the main enforcer for the local drug lord, and an armed confrontation with the man in his home. More shootings, some dynamite, a female addict whom Wulff finds it impossible to desert, and more levels of hierarchy in the drug gangs, who turn on each other from time to time. There is a bit more plot than in the first novel, although it remains straightforward and tightly focused. There is a very violent, three way gun battle at the conclusion, after which Wulff sets off for Boston. 6/26/26

Deadfall by Keith Laumer, Pocket, 1971

Filmed as Fat Chance and reissued under that title. This is a pastiche of Philip Marlowe style mysteries and a pretty good one. The protagonist is hired to find a young woman who was put up for adoption as a child. The trail leads to a wealthy family. There are the usual thugs, beatings, threats, and the dogged detectives perseveres. The woman whom we believe is the one he seeks turns out to be the killer and not the adoptee at all. This was good enough that I wish Laumer had continued in this vein, but alas, he did not. 6/25/26

Night Raider by Barry Malzberg (as Mike Barry), Berkley, 1973

The first novel in Malzberg’s men’s violent adventure series, the Lone Wolf. Wulff is an ex-narcotics detective who becomes a vigilante after drug dealers murder his fiancé. It’s a pretty straightforward vigilante story with several violent incidents as Wulff executes two low level criminals, then their boss, then sets his sights on the next man up in the hierarchy. There is not much characterization – the bad guys are either cowardly or bullies – and little time is spent on background, setting, or even in examining the consequences of vigilantism. The series fits squarely in the rash of men’s adventure series that were popular at the time. 6/24/26

She Reincarnate by Sam Siciliano, Isola Curiosa, 2026

Sherlock Holmes investigates a secret occult society, one of whose leaders is a doctor who is using hypnotism to convince a young woman that she is the reincarnation of Ayesha, the immortal queen in H. Rider Haggard’s novel She.  His cousin Henry Vernier takes the place of Watson and Vernier’s wife is also a significant character. Although the villains are casual about medical ethics, there is no outright crime committed for the bulk of the novel. The murder is discovered on page 250. Holmes uses impersonation to penetrate the secret society and see at first hand what is going on. This was a well told story but felt less like Sherlock Holmes than did the author's several previous books in this series. 6/21/26

She Walks at Night by Seishi Yokomizo, Pushkin, 2026

Japanese edition 1973. Lots of disparate plot elements in this one, and lots of coincidences. We have two men with almost identical physical build, including a hunchback, who are both in love with the same woman. We have three different people who perform elaborate tasks while sleepwalking. We have an unreliable narrator - that is, the person telling the story is not telling the truth. We have three decapitations and confusion about the identities of the bodies. We have a madwoman whom no one has seen closely. We have suggestions of incest. This was the weakest of the several books I have read by this author, partly because the implausibility level got too high, but mostly because the detective - who arrives later in the book - looks around and provides the solution. But we never see how he discovered it. 6/19/26

Murder in the Moor by Thomas Kindon, Coachwhip, 2026

Originally published in 1929. The author apparently never wrote anything else. Two people hiking on the moors – one is the police detective who becomes the protagonist – when they get involved with a dead man who had his head bashed in with an unexploded artillery round. There is also an escaped convict, and a recluse who is apparently a mildly crazy inventor. The first fifty pages are very good, but the story slows down dramatically after that and it was quite a haul to get to the end. The author did present a surprisingly evocative portrait of the moor itself, and the difficulties of traveling therein.  6/1/26

The Afrit Affair, The Gold Bomb, & The Drowned Queen by Keith Laumer, Berkley, 1968

Laumer's three short tie-in novels to the Avengers television show all appeared the same year. The first time has Mrs Peel but the other two involve Tara King. The first title involves mostly Steed protecting a diplomatic conference from a mysterious party who has threatened to assassinate some of the attendees. The second title is the only one that is science fiction - Steed and King are aboard the first submersible ocean liner, which seems like a pretty silly concept to me. The third and weakest of the novels has them tracking down a madman who is planning to set off a nuclear bomb somewhere in the British Isles. Obviously our heroes succeed in all three cases. 5/30/26

Following Footsteps by J. Jefferson Farjeon, Coachwhip, 2926

Originally published in 1930. . The protagonist impulsively helps a young woman who is being forced to steal by a ruthless gang. This puts him at odds with the gang, and with his fiancé, and arguably indirectly with the police as well. The bad guys chase the two of them over various parts of England while the protagonist has to deal as well with his own conflicted feelings about the young woman. The villains are corrupt but not particularly menacing and there is a lightness to the narrative style that makes it all seem like fun rather than danger. Kind of blah really. 5/25/26

Death on the Last Train by George Bellairs, Bloomsbury, 2018

Originally published in 1948. A train is mysterious stalled when someone monkeys around with the track signals. A man on the train who has been receiving threatening letters is found shot to death with his own weapon. Looks like a clever plot by the killer, but actually neither the sabotage nor the letters have anything to do with the murder. Bellairs was a solid, reliable writer of detective stories and this is about average for him. The use of red herrings is better than average, but the motives of some of the people involved are murky at best and inadequate to justify their actions at times. Inspector Littlejohn does not have a lot of personality despite having appeared in many of Bellairs’ novels. 5/6/26

The Wench Is Dead by Ruth Fenisong, Ace, 1953

A murder mystery that is actually more of a woman in danger novel. The protagonist is staying at the cottage on the property of some wealthy but not very close friends. She meets a neighbor who is mysterious and charming but is wanted for murder elsewhere. A suspicious death attracts police attention and despite her attraction to the mystery man, she has some reservations. Very well written, but oddly unengaging, probably because I didn’t care for any of the characters. Pretty standard plot as well, which is usually not a problem in mysteries, but is in this case. 5/2/26

About the Murder of Geraldine Foster by Anthony Abbott, Spitfire, 2026

Originally published in 1930. A young woman reports that her roommate has disappeared under mysterious circumstances. There are rumors that she has called off her engagement, that she quarreled with the doctor who employs her, that she might have been blackmailing someone, and it appears that the woman who reported her missing is holding back some crucial information. This starts fairly well but in the middle third, there are several awkward scenes I found it impossible to take seriously. The police commissioner decides to investigate the crime on his own. He makes wild guesses that are always right. The second half of the novel goes steadily downhill. Motivations, the sequence of events, the actions of the police, all are severely flawed, confusing, and hard to believe. I have one other Abbott novel which is believed to have been ghostwritten and is supposedly better written, so I’ll read that, but I won’t be looking for his other work. 4/26/26

The Mystery on the Moor by J. Jefferson Farjeon, Spitfire, 2026

Originally published in 1930. Fog settles over the moor and the protagonist finds himself disoriented and alone. Then he encounters a young woman who has broken her ankle, and who is not completely honest with him. There is also a man in the fog whom he never sees clearly and who disappears. Seeking help the two of them find a house occupied by a seemingly paranoid man and his servants. They are given shelter in what is a veritable fortress, and find a written threat of something vague that is supposed to occur within the next day. Someone prowls around the house, climbs a drainpipe, and drops threats through the mail slot.  This was pretty good except that the final chapters became rather overly melodramatic and occasionally awkward. 4/23/26

Death Drops the Pilot by George Bellairs, Endeavor, 2016

Originally published in 1960. The captain of a ferryboat disappears from the bridge and is found in the water the following day. He was stabbed in the back. There are mysteries in the man’s past. Is he the father of a young woman working at the local inn, to whom he has left his entire estate? Who sent him some threatening post cards? Why has he continued to support the brother whom he clearly despises? Who jumped off the ferry before it reached shore? Why was a local drunkard strangled a few days later? This is a workmanlike police procedural in which slow and thorough investigation slowly works out the kinks in the plot and identifies the killer. 4/22/26

Guilt by Keigo Higashino, Minotaur, 2026

This complex murder mystery may be a bit slow paced for some readers, but it is necessary because there are so many layers of truth to unravel and so many lies to be uncovered. A man confesses to the murder of a lawyer, and asserts that he did so to avoid being exposed as the villain in a decades old murder case - in Japan, murder at one time had a statute of limitations so he could not be tried for it even if exposed. He expresses regret for the pain he caused the family in the earlier murder, but is strangely silent in the latter. Although the police are officially satisfied, two of the detectives still have reservations about the case and quietly keep looking into it. But the real detectives are the dead lawyer's daughter and the confessor's son, neither of whom believes that the confession is true. They begin to uncover small inconsistencies that become more significant when enough of them accumulate. I've enjoyed every mystery I've read by this author and am looking forward to his next, which will appear in a few months. 4/13/26

Evil Bones by Kathy Reichs, Scribner, 2025

The latest Bones novel has an interesting premise and the first third is very good, but then it slips into the usual pattern with Brennan being personally targeted by the villain and failing to take even routine precautions despite her obvious awareness that she is in danger. The story involves a mystery person who is killing and mutilating animals and displaying them in public places. The perpetrator progresses to digging up human bodies and eventually to killing people. The concluding chapters are appalling. The killer turns out to be a person we have never seen before, or heard about, and he is only caught by accident. There is a repetitious red herring about Brennan's niece, who keeps taking off without telling anyone where she is going. The weakest book in the series by far. 3/28/26

Death Within the Evil Eye by Masahiro Imamura, Locked Room International, 2022

Japanese edition in 2019. This is a very convoluted mystery story in which a group of disparate people find themselves stranded in a remote area. They take shelter in a strange building called the Box of the Evil Eye, whose resident is a woman whom the local people believe can see the future. She predicts that four members of the group will die within two days, and of course she is right. Despite the mysterious plot, it was quite a while before I was not struggling to stay interested. The revelations are in some cases quite cleverly done. The dialogue is a little bit stiff, which is common in translations of some Japanese authors because, I assume, of differences in speech patterns and the balance between translating accurately and making the dialogue sound natural to Western readers. 3/21/26

Back of Town Blues by D.G. Compton, Gollancz, 1996

I believe this mystery novel was the author’s last book. It’s an okay but rather disappointing story not nearly as well written as most of his science fiction. The protagonist is a police officer in England who gives up his job because of his propensity for violence and takes a job as a jazz pianist. He is reasonably successful. He is also grieving about the murder of his girlfriend, and even visits the convicted killer in prison. But his troubles are not over as he is wrongly accused of murder himself, and has to find out the truth to keep himself out of prison. Competent, but unexciting sequel to Justice City. 3/20/26

The Protégé by Charlotte Armstrong, Crest, 1970

Armstrong’s last novel, published posthumously, is about an elderly woman whose grandson ran off years earlier and has never been heard from since. A young man arrives in town and claims to be a childhood friend of the missing man, so she lets him stay at the detached cottage on her property. The reader knows – and so does the woman – that he is an imposter. He is actually working with the missing man, who wants to steal a jewelry box from his grandmother which he believes is quite valuable. Not only does his plan go awry, but it turns out that the jewels are all cheap fakes. She tells him to go away and not come back. Interesting psychological study and there is a mystery, but there really isn’t any crime. 3/16/26

Revenge Prey by John Sandford, Putnam, 2026. $32, ISBN 978-0-593-85206-4

The new Lucas Davenport novel follows pretty much the same formula as the earlier books in the series, but with some interesting embellishments. Davenport continues to irritate the FBI and other agencies because he breaks too many rules, although he does get results. In this case he is attempting to prevent the assassination of a Russian defector who has been targeted by a very skilled Russian hit team, supported by various sleeper cells and informed by someone who has intimate information about the movements and precautions of the people guarding the defector. The defector is actually a pretty awful person and the assassins are described with considerable sympathy. The story takes some surprising turns along the way and while the end is pretty much inevitable, it is an exciting and involving road the reader has to travel in order to get there. 3/13/26

Night Call and Other Stories of Suspense by Charlotte Armstrong, 2014

A collection of sort suspense stories – sometimes involving a mystery, sometimes not, but always a crime. A woman covers up having killed a man in self defense. A kidnapped woman uses a code to alert the authorities. A doctor is called out for an emergency and stumbles into a planned armed robbery. A woman dies of natural causes, but with a bit of an assist. There is a novelette about a pastor who may or may not have pushed his new, rich wife off a cliff, but it is more of a character study than a mystery and is not suspenseful. Nor is it really resolved.

I See You by Charlotte Armstrong, 1966

Although this was the name the author used when writing mysteries, this collection contains only two real mystery stories and a couple that are marginal. Most of them are tales of relationships – a rocky beginning to a romance changes during an emergency, a child realizes a new relationship to her parents, a student and teacher discuss elements of the creative process, a game involving randomly chosen mottoes alters the relationship between two people, and so on. I found them to be generally too lightweight to really deal with the issues they raised and only a couple of them were actually entertaining.

Seven Seats to the Moon by Charlotte Armstrong, Crest, 1969

The premise of this is so implausible that I couldn’t take it seriously. A man in a hospital overhears a cryptic conversation between two government officials. They decide to bribe him with a fake story about evacuating people to the moon to avoid an imminent war and promise to take his entire family is he keeps the secret. The real secret is that a major international conference is going to take place in seclusion. A madman has also learned about the event and he wants to extract the information from the protagonist, who actually does not possess it, so there are spies from both sides dogging him for the rest of the novel. Really bad ending. 3/10/26

The Balloon Man by Charlotte Armstrong, Crest, 1968

A woman runs away from her drug using husband after he assaults their son, who is hospitalized. The husband’s family hates her and starts a legal action to take custody of the boy. To advance their case, they hire a goon to take a room where she is staying and ruin her reputation. He reserves the right to just killer if that turns out to be easier. But he didn’t count on the other, oddball residents of the rooming house, who help undermine his plans and eventually lead to his identification as a murderer. The minor characters steal the show in this one, which is actually quite good. It was filmed as The Breach. 3/7/26

Lemon in the Basket by Charlotte Armstrong, Crest, 1967

Armstrong’s attempt at international intrigue was an Edgar Award finalist, but I found it disappointing. A hostile government’s head of state has a young son who needs complicated surgery. The most competent surgeon is Michael Tyler, a Californian. The ruler takes a number of Americans hostage and demands that the operation be successfully performed before they can be released. For various reasons, the entire affair is to be kept secret. Unfortunately, the Tyler family includes one member who has never been as successful as his siblings or parents and when he learns about the situation, he decides to have his day of fame and leak the story to the newspapers. This also attracts the attention of an assassin working for the opposition government in the other country and the boy is staying at the Tyler estate. The predictable consequences ensue but it has a happy ending. 3/5/26

The Gift Shop by Charlotte Armstrong, Crest, 1966

This was a comparatively light hearted action/suspense novel. A dying man leaves an important note inside a piggy bank at an airport gift shop. The piggy bank, and several others, are sold that same day. Before he dies, he calls the protagonist and tells him where it is. The protagonist and the woman who works in the gift shop then have to travel all over the world to track down the various banks until they find the right one, while the villains are doing the same. The whole story only consumes four days, so they are in nearly constant motion. There was more romance than usual in an Armstrong novel. The plot is a bit over the top but it’s fun. 3/2/26

Murder of a Mistress by Henry Kuttner, Pocket, 1957

A divorced woman turned call girl is stabbed to death and then set on fire. Four different people confess to the crime, including one who is a patient of Michael Gray. He does not believe that she is capable of committing murder, so he supplements the police investigation by asking some questions of his own. This predictably puts his own life in danger. This is the best of the four Gray novels. Kuttner seems to have been transitioning from science fiction to mystery novels on a major basis when he wrote this, but unfortunately he died before the fourth was published. 2/27/26

Murder of a Wife by Henry Kuttner, Pocket, 1958

Kuttner died just before this was published, so the Michael Gray series came to an end. This time he has a patient who insists that her husband tried to kill her. Unfortunately she is a pathological liar and he is not sure how much of her story to believe. He does some investigation, which leads him to shyster doctors who prey on gullible women, a private detective who likes to blackmail his clients, a murder victim, and eventually a murderer who doesn’t want anyone looking too closely at his activities. Good but not great. 2/27/26

Dream of Fair Woman by Charlotte Armstrong, Crest, 1992

Originally published in 1966. This has a great though not completely plausible premise. A woman rents a room, then falls asleep and cannot be awakened. Three different people try to claim custody of her – she is either a cult member, a very rich woman, or an actress. All three have gone missing. There is also a double of her lying in the city morgue. It appears that all three can pass for one another, and one of them has an identical twin, just to add to the confusion. It’s all a plot to kill the very rich woman and replace her with a biddable duplicate, and it is engineered by her uncle and aunt. There are some almost comical scenes as the hero tries to discover who she really is. 2/26/26

My Grandfather, the Master Detective by Masateru Konishi, Putnam, 2026, $29, ISBN 979-8-217-17763-9

This is a debut novel by a Japanese mystery writer. The narrator is the granddaughter of a once brilliant teacher who is now suffering from a rare form of dementia that causes him to hallucinate. He is perfectly aware that what he is seeing is not real, but he continues to function mostly quite well, although he receives outside help daily. The narrator keeps running into mystery puzzles – sometimes locked rooms, sometimes not – and she describes each case to her grandfather, who eventually – and often idiosyncratically – comes up with the solution. The novel is episodic so it feels like a series of novelettes. There are frequent references to British and American golden age mystery writers and some discussions of their relative merit. The cases are all interesting and the careful line of reasoning which leads to the correct answers is well described and logical. I collect Japanese mystery novels and I would place this somewhere between average and great. 2/25/26

The Turret Room by Charlotte Armstrong, Crest, 1965

This is as close as Armstrong ever got to a traditional murder mystery. It even sort of has a locked room murder. A man was framed for an assault by his ex-wife’s family and confined for two years. Just after he is released, another member of the family is attacked, hospitalized, and then murdered in the hospital room. He is the obvious suspect, but a distant relative of the family knows that they are nasty and manipulative and she hides him in a disused part of their sprawling mansion. She then tries to discover the truth, which makes her a target for the killer. The most obvious suspect in the reader’s eyes is an outside engaged to marry the ex-wife, but he is not the killer, although he helps cover up the truth. 2/23/26

Man Drowning by Henry Kuttner, Bantam, 1952

By far the least interesting of the Kuttner/Moore mysteries and suspense novels. The protagonist is obsessed with his ex-wife and follows her to a remote area in Arizona, where she repeatedly rejects him. He gets a job working for a weird married couple and slowly loses control of his own emotions, which causes escalating problems. Then he is accused of murder – though he is innocent – and while he is eventually vindicated, it is impossible for the reader to like him. Or anyone else in the novel, for that matter. 2/22/26

Japanese Mystery Stories edited by Ellery Queen, Tuttle, 2020

This collection was originally published in 1978 as Japan’s Golden Dozen. It assembles short mystery and suspense stories from Japanese writers, most of whom were new to me. Seichi Matsumoto is the only one whose novels have been widely published in the US. The stories are quite varied, some in a very western style, some not. A couple are tongue in cheek. One very effective story is about a supposedly benevolent child who is actually a monster. The Matsumoto story has a double twist ending that should fool many readers. This was a good introduction to the Japanese mystery field for its time, and the stories hold up very well. 2/21/26

A Little Less Than Kind by Charlotte Armstrong, Berkley, 1963

This was Armstrong’s retelling of Hamlet.  A young man who is mentally disturbed is irate when his mother remarries her recently deceased husband’s business partner. He interprets innocuous evidence as proof that his father was murdered and decides to make life hell for his stepfather. Along the way he seriously disrupts the lives of several other people, including a girl who thinks she is in love with him. The ending is changed. There is no duel and none of the characters die. The young man is sent to an institution. His mother and a neighbor are significantly injured, but both survive. Interesting at times, but too slow paced. 2/19/26

The Murder of Eleanor Pope by Henry Kuttner, Perma, 1956

Psychoanalyst/detective Michael Gray made his debut in this novel and appeared three more times. In his first case, he has a deeply troubled patient whose sister-in-law has just been murdered. After several sessions, the patient dies of poisoning in front of the dead woman’s husband, and he is set up as prime suspect. But then he dies, also poisoned, and the police flounder around for a while before Gray figures out that his client was responsible for all three deaths. He planted poison in the last victim’s liquor cabinet, which is why he died later. Not bad, and the psychology is actually an important part of the plot. 2/17/26

The Murder of Ann Avery by Henry Kuttner, Pocket, 1956

A teenaged gang member is accused of stabbing a young woman to death. Michael Gray is asked to interview him and comment on his mental health, but there are interested parties who are willing to use threats and violence to convince him to rule one way or the other. This turns into an actual attempt on his life, which causes him to launch his own investigation into the murder to figure out why so many people are so interested in convicting the young man. A solid if unmemorable mystery story. 2/17/26

The Girl with a Secret by Charlotte Armstrong, Crest. 1957

A short and not very memorable thriller. A newly married woman discovers that her husband was an undercover police officer who has to interrupt their honeymoon to take a dangerous assignment in Mexico searching for drug smugglers. He parks her with his family, who are not aware of his job, and tells her to keep it a secret. But she gets confused trying to keep her story straight, and someone overhears enough to threaten blackmail. The family soon realizes that she is lying. Worse, an enemy of her husband’s is stalking her. She disappears and goes into hiding until he gets back, at which point the murderer is arrested. 2/15/26

The Witch’s House by Charlotte Armstrong, Coward McCann, 1953

This somewhat resembles Misery by Stephen King. A college professor catches a colleague stealing some equipment. There is a confrontation and he is left for dead in a rural area, where he is found by an insane woman who is convinced that he is her son. The son has been dead for years. The professor can barely walk and the woman has a vicious guard dog which she uses to keep him from leaving. His wife and the daughter of the other man team up to track them down, aided by another man whom they do not realize is a secret murderer who doesn’t want them to succeed. Pretty good. 2/15/26

A Dram of Poison by Charlotte Armstrong, Crest, 1956

This was the first Armstrong I ever read, back when I was a high school freshman. It was one of the earliest mystery novels I purchased rather than drew out of the library. Although it won an Edgar for best mystery novel, it is really just a suspense story and the worst crime is petty theft. An elderly and lonely college professor takes a much younger woman under his wing because she is broke, psychologically stunted, and she appeals to his sense of duty. They marry, although they are not in love. His sister moves in and tries to disrupt the marriage, but instead she drives her brother into considering suicide. He steals some poison but accidentally leaves it on a bus. The bulk of the novel is several people trying to recover it before someone dies tragically. It’s very well written suspense and the evil sister gets her just desserts. 2/13/26

Something Blue by Charlotte Armstrong, Ace, 1959

A young woman agrees to marry a wealthy wine maker even though her aunt has sent her a message that she must call off the wedding. The aunt is killed before she can explain herself, in a suspicious accident of course. The woman’s mother was supposedly murdered by her father, which information has been concealed from her. The man to whom she is engaged is the real killer, and he plans to murder her as well after getting his hands on the wealthy estate that has been left to her. A friend of the family investigates and turns up the truth but not before he kills a third person. There is some confusion about switched babies as well. This one was okay but transparent. 2/13/26

Murder in Brass by Henry Kuttner & C.L. Moore (as Lewis Padgett), Bantam, 1947

Aka The Brass Ring. This was their first mystery novel, a standalone featuring a private detective who hates investigatory work and has semi-retired. He gets manipulated into helping find a mentally ill man who has disappeared. Two murders follow in short order, both attributed to the missing man, but our hero suspects otherwise. There is suicide, blackmail, business wrongdoing, suicide, insanity, and other elements all swirled together. Parts of the novel are quite good. Others, not so much. The middle third of the book moves very slowly, and the detective does not seem to have any real plan about how to proceed. It’s not a big element in the plot, but one of the characters is apparently telepathic at times. 2/11/26

The Day He Died by Henry Kuttner & C.L. Moore (as Lewis Padgett), Bantam, 1947

This was a pretty good mystery involving a writer whose career is in danger because someone has been inserting pages into her submissions that are clearly plagiarized. She also finds items in her apartment that she never saw before. For most of the book, she believes that her erratic ex-husband is responsible, but that proves to be wrong because he – and two other men – get murdered and the pranks do not stop. There is a pretty obvious clue early on that someone is drugging her medication so that he can enter and do whatever he wants without waking her up. Not great, but solid. 2/11/26

The Mark of the Hand by Charlotte Armstrong, Ace, 1963

This is just a novella and it is typical of Armstrong’s work. We know who shot the murder victim and why, but she arranged things to make it appear that a four year old child pulled the trigger. The child’s nanny suspects the truth and manages to undermine her story, although the real breakthrough is when the police trace her past and discover that she is a known associate of gangsters. The dead man was planning to blackmail her. Most of the investigation occurs off stage and the story feels as though it was a condensed version of a longer work. 2/9/26

The Trouble in Thor by Charlotte Armstrong, Berkley, 1953

Although this is a suspenseful story, it is not a mystery. A small mining town in Michigan during the 1920s is the scene of a major mine collapse that traps five men underground. As the extensive rescue attempt stretches out in time, the tensions among those who know the trapped men grow ever stronger, and there is anger directed at the mine owners and others. This originally appeared under the name Jo Valentine, which Armstrong used for her mainstream novels, and somehow got repackaged as a mystery novel when her success there increased demand for her books. 2/6/26

The Dream Walker by Charlotte Armstrong, Ace, 1955

This suspense novel was a commentary on Senator Joseph McCarthy, though cleverly concealed. A performer who claims to be able to astrally project herself – this is accomplished by means of a double – conspires with a disgraced businessman to frame a philanthropist for a murder supposedly witnessed astrally. The public, by and large, is taken in by this, but two friends of the accused man figure out how it was contrived and track down the double in order to prove their friend innocent. Like most of Armstrong’s novels, this one tells us right from the outset who the villains are. I’d like to say that the public gullibility is not credible, but we’ve seen even worse examples this past year in the real world. 2/6/26

We Three Queens by Rhys Bowen, Berkley, 2024

The Royal Spyness series has been mostly enjoyable from the outset, but it is starting to wear on me a bit. I suspect the author has gotten too fond of her characters – who mostly are not very interesting – and her marriage in a previous book and her renunciation of her place in the royal lineage have reduced the main character to just another British aristocrat solving mysteries. This one, alas, seems too fond of humorous situations and less interested in the murder. Our heroine has just had her first baby when she is asked to domicile a controversial woman for a period of time, which complicates her investigation severely. Throw in a few other subplots, and you have an unfocused and not very serious detective story, and I rarely like that form. 2/3/26

Catch-as-Catch Can by Charlotte Armstrong, Ace, 1952

This is more of a suspense novel than a mystery. A young heiress has accidentally eaten some poisoned salad before going off to an undisclosed location after encountering unrequited love. She has two cousins, one of whom wants to track her down and save her life. The other wants just the opposite because he will inherit her fortune if she should die. He is initially just uncooperative, but once it is likely that the other cousin will find her in time, he takes positive steps to make sure she dies. He fails and is arrested, and the cousin is saved. Pretty suspenseful overall.

Then Came Two Women by Charlotte Armstrong, Ace, 1962

Although this novella was published as a mystery it is really not. It is a mildly suspenseful psychological story. One of the main characters is a woman recovering from a nervous breakdown. The other is a successful actress who has some dark secrets in her past. The former learns about the secrets and decides to engage in some subtle, not quite blackmail. But the thrust of the novel is the interaction between the two, and the toll the incidents take on both of the women. Armstrong specialized in psychological studies.  2/2/26

The Black-Eyed Stranger by Charlotte Armstrong, Coward McCann, 1951

Kay Salisbury, who is engaged to Alan Dulain, meets Sam Lynch at a party. Lynch subsequently overhears part of a plot by gangsters to kidnap and ransom Salisbury. He is afraid to tip off the police because the bad guys would know who did it and retaliate, so instead he warns Salisbury and Dulain, neither of whom believe him. So he decides to kidnap Salisbury himself so that the gangsters cannot. This leads to various confrontations with the woman’s family, her fiancé, and the frustrated gangsters. The climax results in the death of the chief gangster, but also the shooting of the protagonist, whose fate seems sealed as the book ends. 1/31/26

The Better to Eat You by Charlotte Armstrong, Ace, 1954

A pretty familiar plot here. A young woman who is going to inherit a fortune believes she is a Jonah because everyone she gets close to has seriously bad luck. A college professor who admires her decides to bring her out of her shell, and meets her grandfather and his two cohorts, a disgraced doctor and a scheming woman. They decide to arrange an accident for the woman in a fire, but the professor saves her. He is now convinced that there is a conspiracy and of course the reader already knows that. 1/29/26

The Devouring Fire by Lord Gorell, Spitfire, 2025.

Originally published in 1928. The plot for this vintage mystery is pretty standard. A rich man is murdered in his home and his nephew is suddenly rich, free of his uncle’s repressive set of rules, capable of marrying the woman he loves, and chief suspect in the murder investigation. A typical fictional Scotland Yard detective investigates and soon discovers that other people have good motives to have wanted the man dead. This should have been a fun read but like the first book I tried by this author, the prose is ponderous, dull, and really interfered with my ability to immerse myself in the story. I won’t be trying a third. 1/27/26

Mischief by Charlotte Armstrong, Ace, 1954

Originally published in 1950 and twice filmed under other titles. It is a novel of suspense rather than a mystery. When their babysitter cancels, the Jones family is forced to resort to an unknown babysitter to stay with their daughter in a hotel room. She is clearly nuts, makes prank calls, pretends to be the girl’s mother, and flirts with an airline pilot staying in the adjacent room. He quickly realizes that she is unbalanced and is potentially a danger to the child, but for various reasons he and others who suspect the same are not able to act on their suspicions until a violent and dangerous climax brings the story to an end. Not my cup of tea, but well done. 1/27/26

Who’s Been Sitting in My Chair? by Charlotte Armstrong, Ace, 1954

The protagonist is a disc jockey who works nights and comes home to find that someone has been in his apartment while he was gone. This is not an isolated event. The previous occupant was the fiancé of a man who was convicted of strangling another woman who lived in the building, but she terminated her lease. The fiancé, however, has just escaped from prison, and the protagonist thinks that she may be his mysterious visitor, though he has no good reason to believe so. He turns into an amateur detective. There are no real surprises – I knew what had really happened within a few pages of reading the history of the murder. 1/26/26

The Pavilion by the Lake by Arthur Rees, Spitfire, 2026

Originally published in 1930. Australian writer Rees set his mystery novels in England and followed the usual pattern. A rich man with a profligate son is murdered, making him the most likely suspect. But things are never that simple. More motives emerge, more opportunities, and more clues. Although Rees followed the pattern pretty well, his prose is often flat and uninteresting, and this is the weakest of the three novels I have read by him. The characters never come to life and some of the situations do not feel realistic. There are obvious reasons why he has not been reprinted until recently. 1/26/26

The Unsuspected by Charlotte Armstrong, Pocket, 1947

This was the first mystery not involve Mac Duff, and it’s a big improvement. An irritating movie director claims to be puzzled when his secretary hangs herself in his home office. One of his wards, who disappeared at sea, turns up alive and returns, much to the consternation of a young man who is posing as her secret husband in order to investigate what he thinks is murder. A second ward is married to a man who is supposedly invariably pleasant, but who becomes testy after the police ask questions about some discrepancies at the crime scene. I was a little disappointed because there are no real surprises. We know who the killer is right away, and the unraveling of his scheme is predictable. 1/24/26

The Chocolate Cobweb by Charlotte Armstrong, Ace, 1954

Originally published in 1947. This is a psychological suspense story with not much mystery. A young woman ingratiates herself with a family wherein she thinks the stepmother is trying to murder her husband’s son by another marriage. She’s right, of course, and her efforts to outwit the killer and save the victim’s life put her in danger as well. We know almost immediately who the potential killer is, but as she and the protagonist match wits, we find out a lot more about her twisted motivation. Strong characterization was Armstrong’s greatest strength and it’s on display in depth in this early novel. 1/24/26

The Vase Mystery by Vernon Loder, Spitfire, 2025

This 1928 murder mystery is about the murder of an unpopular guest at a boarding house. It appears that he was bludgeoned to death with a heavy vase, although there is an alternative explanation suggesting that it was actually an accident following a string of misleading coincidences. His wife was threatening to leave him, he harassed the other guests, was known to spy on lovers at the nearby beach, may have been blackmailing the landlord, and teased one of the hotel workers who had mental issues. The police have to figure out what happened despite a dearth of clues, possible lies by the others and certainly things being concealed, and the large number of suspects. This was pretty good. Loder was a pseudonym for a writer who used almost a dozen names for his crime fiction. 1/22/26

The Death of Laurence Vining by Alan Thomas, Spitfire, 2025

Originally published in 1928. This is a fairly clever locked room – locked elevator car in this case – murder mystery which falls apart at the end. The victim is a Sherlock Holmes type amateur detective but not a nice person. His best friend is a doctor. He is found stabbed in the back in an elevator car where he was the only passenger. There are a number of suspects in terms of motive. The physical explanation is convoluted but reasonably clever. The motivation is balderdash. In the final pages we learn that the detective actually committed a murder and framed another man for the crime. There are a few too many coincidences – and I make allowance for a good many in a mystery of this type. The lazy, insensitive nephew completely reverses his personality – off stage – in the closing chapters. The prose is fine and I’ll read his other work if it becomes available, but I won’t be holding my breath waiting for it. 1/19/26

The Albatross and Other Stories by Charlotte Armstrong, Peter Davies, 1958

The title story is a novella, also published as Mask of Evil. A man believes that he accidentally killed a man, so he and his wife take in the widow and her disabled sister, who are in financial trouble. But his wife is suspicious that they are being fooled. The other stories are not particularly interesting. The poisoning of a dog leads to a low key investigation. A dead man is spotted alive in a story that lacks a conclusion. A teacher has to deal with four high school students who have turned to the dark side. A teenager solves an old murder mystery and is almost killed to silence her. 1/19/26

In the Night by Lord Gorell, Spitfire, 2025

The first novel by a minor mystery writer, first published in 1917.  An unpopular man is found murdered at the foot of the stairs in his house. Was it the secretary, the wife, the daughter, the butler, or an outsider? A rather mediocre detective investigates – he comes to the wrong conclusion which is only corrected when the killer confesses. Pretty dull. The mystery is fairly simple but there is no way to determine which of the very few suspects was responsible. The prose is a bit awkward at times. There is no suspense at all and some of the red herrings are too obviously red herrings. 1/17/26

The Innocent Flower by Charlotte Armstrong, Berkley, 1970

Originally published in 1945, this was the third and final book about MacDougal Duff. It is also the weakest and about a third of it could have been summarized in a single page. Duff volunteers to stay with five children in a house where a woman has just died after drinking poisoned wine. There are various characters who come and go, most of whom are a bit nutty. A third of the book is spent trying to track the movements of two separate bottles of wine, interspersed with sometimes silly interchanges with the children. Armstrong wrote no further adventures of Duff, which was probably a good thing. 1/12/26

The Scarlet Circle by Jonathan Stagge, Penzler, 2025

Originally published in 19. Stagge was one of three pseudonyms – the others were Q. Patrick and Patrick Quention – used by several writers in various combinations, most notably for the Peter Duluth series. This one appears to be in a shorter series about a doctor who solves mysteries. In this case, he is on vacation when one of the guests at a small resort is murdered on the beach. Several people had obvious motives. Almost everyone is acting strangely and most of them are lying as well. There are creepy events galore – Japanese lanterns appearing in odd places, digging in the cemetery at night, an abandoned church, shadowy figures, etc. I guessed the killer – there is one scene that gives it away – but the book was thoroughly enjoyable. 1/10/26

The Case of the Weird Sisters by Charlotte Armstrong, Zebra, 1992

Originally published in 1943. A woman, her rich fiancé, and their chauffeur are forced by a mechanical problem to stay briefly with his three half-sisters, one blind, one deaf, and one missing an arm. They are not happy to hear of the impending marriage, which would put his fortune beyond their reach. Within hours he has suffered food poisoning, is almost hit by a falling light fixture, almost drives off a cliff, survives a gas leak in his bedroom, and is nearly poisoned. Which of the sisters is responsible? Or is it all three of them? Not bad, but Mac Duff is not an interesting protagonist. 1/7/26

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