Last Update 6/29/24

Mistress of Horror House by William Woody, Ace, 1959

An attempt at the tough PI novel that pretty much fails. The detective follows the usual pattern except that he is on good terms with the chief of police. He is warned against accepting a new client, a woman from an influential family, and someone shoots at his office while she is there. She claims that someone has been threatening her and her grandfather if they do not sell their family home. There is reason to believe her husband, a fugitive who was a Nazi agent during the war, is still around and is involved. There is also reason to believe that she is lying, as is everyone else involved. Not awful, but not very good.

Passenger to Frankfurt by Agatha Christie, 1970

Probably Christie’s worst book, unfocused, with too many characters, implausible international politics, and flat characters. A mediocre diplomat gets involved in an espionage plot that reveals a plan to introduce drugs into the world’s environment that will turn everyone into a nicer person, against their will. There are long discussions of various evils of the world, mostly cliches, and the shortcomings of the next generation. Christie never really learned how to write a thriller, but she kept trying. 6/27/24

Elephants Can Remember by Agatha Chrstie, 1971

Poirot’s penultimate case. Hercule Poirot and Ariadne Oliver team up in this low key and slow paced murder mystery. A bossy woman demands to know the truth about the apparent murder and suicide of the parents of the woman who wants to marry her son. This leads to an investigation of a very cold case, but the solution involves a twin sister, impersonation, and other devices which came perilously close to cheating, and the general outline of the revelation was very obvious way too soon. Oliver does as much investigating as Poirot this time. 6/27/24

Nemesis by Agatha Christie, 1971

Jane Marple returns. A request from an old friend takes Marple on a mysterious – and rather artlessly contrived – series of adventures as she investigates an old crime that sent the wrong man to prison. It’s an interesting setup, but awkwardly carried out. The dead man has arranged for a collision among most of the people involved in a pair of killings many years earlier. One of them is murdered in the process and Marple almost becomes a victim as well. There is rather too much time spent with Marple speculating about her old friend’s motives, and there are an awful lot of coincidences. 6/19/24

The Case of the Sapphire Brooch by Christopher Bush, Dean Street, 2022 (originally published in 1960)

The complexity in this entertaining mystery is largely caused by two women, each of whom had several different identities, and who looked enough alike to be confused with each other. There are also three men who changed their names.  There are several murders – a thug during an apparent burglary, a woman thrown into a river, the administration of an overdose to a head waiter, and the victim of an illegal abortion. There are two different killers with very different motives. Almost all of the characters tell lies – two doctors, a retired woman, the head of a photography studio, both of the namechanging women, and others. Another man is arrested for altering medical records and another of lying to the police during an inquiry. And finally a bitter man attempts to kill his wife when he finds out that she was previously married and is therefor not his wife after all. 6/19/24

Hallowe’en Party by Agatha Christie, 1969

For some reason the recent movie version of this was moved to Venice – A Haunting in Venice – and radical changes were made to other elements in the plot. The novel involves the murder of a teenage girl who unwisely announces that when she was younger she witnessed a murder. Obviously the killer hastens to close her mouth for good. Hercule Poirot is asked to investigate and this means looking at four deaths and a disappearance that happened a few years earlier. I thought this one was mostly quite obvious. I guessed the killer right after the murder took place because the motive and the earlier crime were so obvious.

The Dummy Murder Case by Milton Ozaki, Armchair, 2023  (originally published in 1951)

I was pleasantly surprised by this one, from an author I had never tried before. It’s no prizewinner but the mystery is well constructed and it’s decently written. A plot to fake a violent incident as a demonstration to a psychology class goes awry when a real body turns up. T he dead woman had been something of a recluse, and for some reason she had spent many hours gift wrapping empty boxes and carrying them off to an unknown destination. The solution to that – which is not related to the murder – is cleverly worked out. The murder itself is investigated fairly routinely, but there are a couple of decent red herrings, though I did guess right. The only real flaw is that the occasional romantic scenes are awkward and implausible.

Death of Mr. Dodsley by John Ferguson, Poisoned Pen, 2024 (originally published in 1937)

Ferguson was a minor Golden Age mystery writer. I’ve been entertained but unimpressed by a couple of his books I’ve read. This one was below par. The murder of a bookseller is connected to some personal and political rivalries in Parliament, although the connection is not clear for a while. The investigation plods and the novel is really too long for its subject matter. Nor were the characters very interesting and the prose was frequently awkward. I can think of more worthy authors from this period who have books still mired in obscurity. 6/10/24

By the Pricking of My Thumbs by Agatha Christie, 1968

I was never a fan of Tommy and Tuppence but Christie brought them back in this novel from later in her career. They are growing old but have not lost their love of adventure. Tommy’s aunt dies in a nursing home and there is nothing odd about that, but they meet a number of unusual people while winding up her affairs, and get more interested when the aunt’s best friend, also a resident there, disappears under mysterious circumstances. I never really got involved in this one. It felt like something she felt she owed to her fans rather than a story she was interested in telling.  6/10/24

Endless Night by Agatha Christie, 1968

This was an experiment for Christie. It’s psychological suspense rather than a typical mystery, and there is a strong undercurrent of ambiguous supernatural elements. A drifter meets a young woman who turns out to be an heiress. They both express delight with a piece of property that is supposed to be cursed. They secretly marry as soon as she is of age and there is a lot of tension because neither of them meets the other’s family or friends. Things are not as they seem, however, and when the heiress falls ill and dies, apparently because of the curse, he ends up with all of her money. Not to mention her best friend as his new partner.

Death of an Author by E.C.R. Lorac, Poisoned Pen, 2024 (originally published in 1935)

A woman reports that her employer - a prominent author - and his housekeeper have both vanished, leaving an empty house behind. One window displays a bullet hole. Another writer has lately been expressing interest in the missing man, who is so reclusive that not even his publishers have met him. Through a bit of luck, the investigators find parallels between the two men and a pair of brothers who were involved in an embezzlement scheme a decade earlier. One went to jail, proclaiming his innocence. The other went abroad and was never heard of again. They suspect the two writers might be the brothers. They also suspect the woman who reported the missing persons. There are a lot of embellishments on this, elements that do not make sense if they really are siblings, but eventually they untangle things. About midlevel for Lorac.

The Third Girl by Agatha Christie, 1967 

A Poirot novel. The solution involves an impersonation that I cannot believe would every have succeeded. A young woman rents an apartment with two others and never notices that one of them is her stepmother in a different wig. Her supposed father – whom she hasn’t seen in more than a decade – is also a fake, and he is put in charge of a fortune and a business concern without being checked. The two of them are trying to drive the daughter crazy by using drugs to convince her that she has committed two murders. There is also a blackmailer, a batch of sensitive documents which turn out not to have been stolen, and a red herring that is never explained. Not one of her best. 6.3.24

A Slice of Death by Bob McKnight, Ace, 1958 

This is another of those crime novels where the hero has been framed for a murder and has to dodge the police while attempting to identify the real killer and thereby clear his name. He is a trained investigator who was looking into claims that an electronic betting system had been rigged to cheat the winners and the man in charge of the equipment is, of course, the murder victim. Somehow the police were warned of the imminent murder, and had been told that our hero was the killer. Not too bad, but very routine. 6/2/24

Tongking! by Dan Cushman, Ace, 1954 

Although this is a competently written international crime adventure story, it really never approaches the quality of Hammond Innes or Eric Ambler. An American in Thailand is coerced into helping run a shipment of guns into China and deliver them to rebels against the communist government. But his employer has not told him the truth about the shipment, a feisty young woman upsets his plans, and naturally he has to find a way to extricate himself. It was entertaining without being impressive. Cushman briefly seemed to be a potentially promising adventure writer, but he produced mostly westerns thereafter and is largely forgotten today. 6/1/24

At Bertram’s Hotel by Agatha Christie, 1966

Another Jane Marple novel. A fabulously maintained hotel turns out to be the headquarters for a major crime ring in this about average murder mystery. Miss Marple is reliving some of her childhood experiences when she overhears enough to realize that blackmail and other crimes are in the offing. An absent minded cleric is abducted and remains missing for several days. An adventurous woman confronts the man she married in her youth. A very efficient hotel staff manages things just a bit too well. A young heiress outwits her guardian in order to pursue investigations of her own. 5/29/24

The Case of the Careless Thief by Christopher Bush. Dean Street, 2022 (originally published in 1959)

A collection of jewels is stolen from a hotel safe. There are indications that it was an inside job and that the owner may have been involved in the theft as well. Ludovic Travers investigates and is immediately puzzled when the police report that the very professional safecracker left behind a flashlight bearing his fingerprints. He is also suspicious that a romantic quadrangle may be more than it appears to be. When a journalist has a fatal “accident,” it adds fuel to the fire and he launches a larger investigation to discover the truth. Above average for this series. 5/28/24

The Case of the Running Man by Christopher Bush, Dean Street, 2022 (originally published in 1958)

Although this is not a bad story, it employs a number of mystery cliches – the fake will substituted for the real one but covered by a sheet of paper so that it gets signed properly, the time of the murder obscured because someone altered the clock and then turned it back, the blackmailer who unwisely meets her victim alone and ends up dead, and the fakes substituted for the actually valuable paintings. There are two separate sets of crimes independent of one another, which makes it somewhat difficult to figure out whose did which and for what reason. There is also a hoax telephone call designed to get the protagonist off on a wild goose chase, but in fact there was no reason to do so. 5/27/24

The Clocks by Agatha Christie, 1964

Although the explanation for this one is not entirely satisfactory – the murder takes place in a blind woman’s house and someone leaves four clocks at the scene – it is for the most part quite mystifying. The murdered man is a complete stranger. Someone arranged for a professional typist to find the body – and the explanation for this is incomplete. She is unknowingly the daughter of the blind woman, but the person who arranged the murder could not have known that. There are in fact two murderers – although the final death is not even mentioned in the revelations at the end. It is also rather too coincidental that there be two communist agents, completely unknown to each other, living in adjacent houses. The end fumbles a bit – and Poirot only has a cameo – but the plot moves well. 5/24/24

A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie, 1965

Jane Marple takes a vacation in the West Indies. Although the identity of the murderer is telegraphed a bit early, this is a reasonably good mystery which would have been a lot better if some of the prime suspects had not been so summarily treated. There are a couple of characters whom we only know by one attribute or incident. A retired army officer mentions an old murder story whose villain was never caught and then reacts suddenly enough for us to know the killer is present. A handful of guests as well as some staff members are all in the running when the man is found murdered in his bed. Two more murders will follow before Marple is able to solve the case. 5/24/24

Fog of Doubt by Christianna Brand, Carroll & Graf, 1984 (originally published in 1955) 

A somewhat diverse extended family is rocked by turmoil when a visitor is murdered while he is waiting for his hostess to tend to her child on another floor. Most of the people involved have pretty solid alibis, although solid alibis are notoriously porous in detective fiction. Is it the suddenly pregnant young woman, the doctor who loves her, the devoted brother, the demented grandmother, the protective sister-in-law, the boyfriend? There are some tricks to obscure the time of death, quite a bit of telling lies, and several instances of people confessing to protect other people. One of Brand’s better books. 5/21/24

The Mirror Crack’d by Agatha Christie, 1963

A famous actress moves to Jane Marple’s village and hosts a fete during which one of the local people is poisoned, and apparently the poison was meant for the actress. I guessed the killer right away but missed her motive, although I should have caught the early hint that gave things away. Two more murders and a suicide follow. There are a couple of blackmailers operating independently and a couple of very good red herrings. There is also one coincidence so enormous that I couldn’t quite accept it as realistic. Not bad overall. Aka The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side. 5/21/24

The Case of the Treble Twist by Christopher Bush, Dean Street, 2022 (originally published in 1957) 

An above average entry in the Ludovic Travers series. There’s an old jewel heist whose proceeds disappeared, a mysterious fence the police cannot identify, a daughter who wants to find out what really happened to her father on the night he was robbed – although this turns out to be an impersonation, a murder, a couple of people get slugged, a fortune in diamonds is found inside a stuffed dog, a recently released convict tries to track down the loot he hid before his arrest, and other complications. A lot of people double cross a lot of other people in this one. 5/17/24

The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie, 1962 

This standalone mystery is unfortunately awful. A gang of killers who disguise themselves as three witches are actually contract killers. They implausibly use various chemicals to cause people to die of apparently natural causes in return for a cut of the money gained by whoever contracts with them. There is a lot of pseudo-science, supernatural mumbo jumbo, and some unnecessary complications whose purpose is to confuse the reader by has no purpose within the context of the story. Intelligent characters fall for dumb tricks. The police are unusually dimwitted. This rivals The Big Four as Christie’s worst book. 5/17/24

The Case of the Prodigal Daughter by Christopher Bush, Dean Street, 2022 (originally published in 1968) a

The last Ludovic Travers mystery novel. A domineering woman hires Travers to find her missing daughter. The trail leads to a collection of businesses that appear to be on the up and up, but which mask pornography, drugs, and eventually murder. The daughter does not even appear until the closing chapter, except briefly under a false name. It is the side issues raked up by the investigation that make up the main plot. Travers is almost murdered himself before it is over with. There is also a nice bit of blackmail, which brings things to a boil. Not exceptional but the series ended on a relatively high note. 5/14/24

Never Kill a Cop by Mel Colton, Ace, 1953

This was not my cup of tea. The protagonist is a mostly honest cop whose promotions are in large part due to the influence of his brother, who is a bigwig in the local, not entirely honest, political machine. When a realignment among the criminals and our hero’s own justified but controversial shooting of a suspect coincide, the two brothers both become fugitives, hunted by two separate but overlapping organizations. Lots of violence and brutality follow, but not much actual mystery detection and since I didn’t like the heroes, there wasn’t much investment I could make in the story. 5/14/24

The Doctor of Pimlico by William Le Queux, Oleander, 2013 (originally published in 1919) 

I prefer traditional mysteries to crime novels, and this is one of the latter. It is basically a duel between a Moriarty style criminal mastermind who uses extortion, blackmail, and other methods to impose his will on various people, and his opponent, a writer of mystery novels who is in his spare time a brilliant criminologist who is on the verge of exposing the crime ring. Caught in the middle is a young woman who is in love with the writer, but whose stepfather is in thrall to the bad guy. There are several cringeworthy melodramatic scenes, instances where characters don’t tell things to other characters chiefly to advance the plot, and other implausibilities. The author was very prolific but I am unlikely to try any of his other books. 5/12/24

Cat Among the Pigeons by Agatha Christie, 1960           

This one is a bit of a combination of thriller and classic mystery, but fortunately the former is peripheral to the main story and chiefly involves smuggling gems out of a fictional Mideastern country in the throes of a revolution. The story shifts to an exclusive girls’ school in England where murder is committed, strange characters search for a tennis racket, friendly spies try to watch over a foreign princess, and a handful of red herrings disguises the identity of the killer. This wasn’t very good. Poirot is only present in the closing chapters and he clears things up very quickly. There are three murders and a faked kidnapping before it’s over with. The characters are poorly delineated and the plot is not very interesting. One of her lesser novels. 5/12/24

Fear No More by Leslie Edgley, Ace, 1953 (originally published in 1946)

This is a solid but unexceptional suspense novel. A woman is sent on a trip for her boss and is promptly framed for a murder. She escapes the not particularly bright police and discovers that the trip was fake, so her boss must have been involved. She goes to see the man to whom she was supposed to deliver an envelope, but shortly after she gives it to him, he is attacked and it is stolen. He is a kind of low key private investigator, and he accepts that her story is true. It all gets unraveled but only after another murder, an abduction, and some assorted violence. I pretty much guessed what was going on fairly early, but it wasn’t really meant to be a secret. 5/9/24

The Smell of Trouble by Louis Trimble, Ace, 1958

Police corruption is a theme in crime stories that I find to often be excessively overt and overdone as a plot device. This is one of them. The protagonist is technically second in command of a local force who returns from a training stint to discover that the chief has died that morning, officially a suicide, but clearly a murder victim. He is also told my the third in command that his presumed elevation to temporary chief is not only void but that he had best leave the force and relocate to another city. When he balks, he finds himself scheduled to be the next person to die. Not good at all. 5/9/24

Ordeal by Innocence by Agatha Christie, 1958

A young man is convicted of killing his adopted mother and dies in prison. A scientist returns from a long stay in Antarctica and reveals that he can provide an alibi for the dead man. He informs the family, but rather than relieve them, it causes further tension because now they have to come to terms with the fact that one of their number is the real killer. More of a character study than usual for Christie, with multiple viewpoint characters. The solution involves a conspiracy, which always feels like cheating to me even when it isn’t. The dead man was an accomplice so it is not as much of a tragedy as it might have been. 5/7/24

The Case of the Russian Cross by Christopher Bush, Dean Street, 2022 (originally published in 1957)

Four separate cases all have cross connections that eventually lead to the arrest of two murderers and one accomplice. They involve the theft of some jewels, the murder of a man whose body was then burnt, a newly released convict, multiple name changes by multiple people, blackmail, pornography, fraud, and two murders. This was the last novel in which Ludovic Travers worked with George Wharton of Scotland Yard. I never liked Wharton so I was glad to see him go. The author’s class snobbishness is a bit more visible than usual. There’s also a mildly interesting puzzle about a photograph that seems to be impossible. 5/7/24

The Case of the Flowery Corpse by Christopher Bush, Dean Street, 2022 (originally published in 1956)

Ludovic Travers is on vacation visiting a friend when one of the local people is poisoned and crashes his car. At about the same time, another villager – who hated the dead man – disappears. Later his body is found in a haystack and he too has been poisoned. Throw in a set of identical twin brothers, a brooding retired military man, a widow who is relieved to have her husband gone, hints of blackmail, and some strange disparities involving tire tracks, foot prints, and the trunks of cars. Was the body really transported in two different vehicles?  The solution makes perfect sense but is less imaginative than usual, and the final confrontation is so low key it really isn’t even a climax. 5/4/24

Dead Man’s Mirror by Agatha Christie, 1966 

Two novellas and one short story, all featuring Hercule Poirot. The longest, the title story, is actually an expanded version of “The Second Gong,” a locked room puzzle. “Murder in the Mews” is a pretty good novelette in which a woman’s suicide is made to look like murder by her roommate, who wants vengeance on the man who drove her to take her own life. “Triangle at Rhodes” involves a lover’s triangle at a resort that leads to an attempt to poison a rival. Unfortunately, the wrong person drinks from the tainted glass. 5/4/24

Hickory Dickory Death by Agatha Chrisie, 1956 

Aka Hickory Dickory Dock. A series of petty thefts and nasty pranks at a student hostelry turns ugly when one of the residents is murdered. Poirot is brought in before that happens in order to clear up the assumed kleptomania, but he is soon involved in the investigation of smuggling as well as a second murder. The story proceeds in the usual manner with a couple of reasonably good red herrings, questions of actual identities, and hints of a major smuggling operation. Some of the character interactions stuck me as unconvincing – particularly the sudden shift of affection between the psychology student and the supposed kleptomaniac. Love at first sight was a familiar theme in Golden Age mystery novels. 5/2/24

Dead Man’s Folly by Agatha Christie, 1956

Poirot is summoned by an old friend to a sprawling mansion where a kind of public fair for charity is about to be staged, including a murder game. The owner is popular but his wife – who seems to have the intelligence of a five year old – has several enemies. A young girl is supposed to play the victim in the game, but when she is actually murdered, things take a serious turn. The wife mysteriously disappears. A mysterious cousin arrives and keeps his own counsel. The police are baffled. Poirot initially accepts tentative defeat, but months later he realizes the truth – and the solution is actually quite clever. 5/2/24

Impact of Evidence by Carol Carnac, British Library, 2024 (originally published in 1952)

The author is better known as E.C.R. Lorac. A reclusive retired man has a fatal car crash in a remote village, caught off temporarily from the rest of the world by an overflowing river. The real mystery is that there is a second dead man in the vehicle. Not only is he a complete stranger, but he has been dead for two days before the crash. The corpse is identified as a man once convicted for blackmail, and it turns out the retiree was convicted of theft under his real name. So was the corpse blackmailing him, or did someone else put the dead man in his car – it was under a blanket, or did he find the body while he was out driving and plan to turn it over to the authorities?

Trial by Perjury by John Creighton, Ace, 1958

The premise for this mystery is a bit of a leap. The protagonist agrees to plead guilty to a hit and run charge when the actual offender offers him money. He serves several months in jail and is released. Then he is framed for a murder charge, and the best way to prove his innocence is to demonstrate that he was lying at his previous trial. But this would make him guilty of perjury. Throw in a beautiful woman, a conniving gangster, and a crooked lawyer, and then have the protagonist launch his own investigation to find the real killer while dodging the police and the bad guys.

So Many Steps to Death by Agatha Christie, 1955 

Once again Christie tries and fails to write a thriller. Someone appears to be recruiting or kidnapping prominent scientists and the world’s governments are getting concerned. A suicidal young woman is talked into impersonating the wife of one of the missing men so that spies can find out where all of this brain power is going. That takes her to Morocco and the site of a secret project by a very rich man who seeks world power. The slow pace and sense of unreality that pervade the book rob it of any chance of being suspenseful. Or entertaining. 4/27/24

Three Times a Victim by F.L. Wallace, Ace, 1957 

Wallace wrote some decent science fiction, now virtually forgotten, and some decent crime fiction, even less remembered. This one is about a private detective who happens to notice a dead body at a construction site. Hours later he is hired to find an eccentric homeless man, and he has a strong suspicion is client is lying about his motives and that his quarry was the body in the dirt. He investigates and discovers various things including more dead bodies, crimes with international implications, and the mandatory mysterious woman. 4/27/24

Suddenly at His Residence by Christianna Brand, British Library, 2023 (originally published in 1947) 

I find Brand to be very inconsistent. Some of her novels are great, but some are a struggle to read. There does not seem to be a middle ground. This is one of the latter. The characters are deliberately exaggerated almost to the point of being comical, which makes it hard to take the murder seriously. They are mostly the grandchildren of a rich man who threatens to write a new will cutting them all off because they are not suitably serious. He is poisoned within hours. Inspector Cockrill is on the case, but it’s hard to stay serious when there is so much comedy in the background.  4/25/24

The Case of the Three Lost Letters by Christopher Bush, Dean Street, 2020 (originally published in 1954) 

I was completely fooled by this Ludovic Travers mystery. An odd but wealthy man undergoes a religious conversion. He then arranges interviews with his three relatives, apparently about the disposition of his estate, but is murdered before any of them arrive. One of Travers’ employees was working as the dead man’s bodyguard, but was sent on an errand at the critical moment. All three relatives have something suspect in their past, embezzlement, a hidden pregnancy, and possible smuggling. Travers investigates all three, as well as an army deserter working as a gardener. I never remotely suspected who the killer was. 4/25/24

The Case of the Extra Man by Christopher Bush, Dean Street, 2022 (originally published in 1956)

Ludovic Travers becomes involved in four cases over the course of more than a year, none of which seem related at first, but all of which are drawn together at the end. There is a missing husband, a smuggling ring, a drowned man, a misidentification, a shady restaurant owner, a failed singer, a blackmailer, a body mutilated with acid to defy identification, echoes of events during the war in France, a rich man troubled by his wife’s sudden change in mood, a disabled veteran who is very protective of his sister, and a handful of other people and events. This was as much adventure as mystery. The solution depends upon information not available to the reader. Not bad though.

A Pocket Full of Rye by Agatha Christie, 1954

Another murder in a dysfunctional family. The patriarch dies after eating poisoned marmalade, his wife drinks tea laced with cyanide, and a maid is strangled taking down the laundry. There is a prodigal son, a pair of fortune hunters, two brothers who hate one another, a possible murder in the distant past, vengeful relatives, an insane woman in an asylum, a gold mine that appears to be worthless, and an elderly woman who rarely leaves her room but seems to know a great deal about what is going on., And of course there is Jane Marple who arrives in time to clear everything up.

The Saint and the Templar Treasure by Leslie Charteris, 1979

Ghostwritten by Graham Weaver from a television script. Templar is traveling through France when by chance he helps put out a fire at a chateau near an old Knights Templar site. He accepts an offer to stay for a while and learns that there has been a series of incidents ever since an ancient tombstone was uncovered. Before long there is a murder to be solved and a treasure to be uncovered, although the treasure is a lot more contemporary than the one mentioned in the legend. Not bad. 4/22/24

Count on the Saint by Leslie Charteris, 1980 

Ghostwritten by Graham Weaver from a television screenplay. Two novellas. In the first, a pastor connives with Templar to steal a valuable artifact from his church, sell it, and donate the proceeds back to the church. It was donated originally on the condition that it never be sold. Templar is agreeable but annoyed when someone steals it from him. The second appears to be a serial killer story about a madman dressed as Santa Claus who chooses his victims at random. Templar suspects there is more to it than that, and discovers that most of the murders were simply meant as a smoke screen. 4/22/24

The Theft of the Iron Dogs by E.C.R. Lorac, British Library, 2023 (originally published in 1946) 

This is a pleasant relaxed mystery that unfolds in the rural north of England. A farmer notices that a few relatively worthless items have been stolen from his cottage on the river, suggesting that something was weighted and dropped into the river. He writes to Scotland Yard because the local police are unlikely to investigate and Lorac’s regular detective, MacDonald, shows up for a casual visit that becomes formal when he finds a body in a sack under the bank of the river. The dead man is a known black marketeer for whom he has been looking, so he has a personal interest in the case. Various characters circle the discovery without establishing an obvious killer – two itinerant tinkers, a landowner from London, a local farmer, and an artist whose chicken farm is in serious trouble.  Smoothly written – one of the author’s best books – and with little melodrama. 4/20/24

Toxic Prey by John Sandford, Putnam, 2024

Although this is technically the newest in the Lucas Davenport series, it really isn't. The protagonist is his adopted daughter Letty, who now works for Homeland Security. The plot has been used so many times that I had almost no interest in the story. A scientist who is mentally disturbed decides that the world needs to be depopulated. He enlists the aid of a few allies and develops a plague that will kill something on the order of half of the people in the world and is almost at the point where he is ready to start spreading it when his sudden disappearance triggers a frantic search by the authorities. A few good scenes but color me very disappointed. 4/19/24

The Saint in Trouble by Leslie Charteris, 1978

Two more Saint novellas adapted from the television show by ghostwriters. Both of these are really spy stories and bear little relation to the traditional Saint. In the first, he has to convince a gullible scientist not to defect to the communist world with his invention of a new method of harvesting solar energy. He is discouraged by the western world’s preference to protect the oil industry and naturally the communists would far prefer that their economies collapse. The second concerns an Arab terrorist who defects. The Israeli authorities want to interview him before he disappears and they know he is in London. 4/17/24

Murder Jigsaw by E. & M.A. Radford, Dean Street, 2019 (originally published in 1944)

My first exposure to this husband and wife writing team, who wrote a few dozen thrillers, most of which like this one involve Dr. Manson, an early forensic specialist. An unpopular man is found drowned in a river and the initial conclusion is that he fell in while fishing. Manson spots several inconsistencies in the story, however, and Scotland Yard decides to investigate further.  The forensic discussions become rather repetitive and boring from time to time, as does the technical material about fly fishing. The identity of the killer is almost presented as an afterthought. 4/16/24

Dr. Priestly’s Quest by John Rhode, 1926

One of the author’s earliest books, before he polished his skills. Priestly was his best known detective but I have always preferred his other mysteries. This one is no exception. He’s an irascible and not very likeable Sherlock Holmes clone. In this, his second outing, he matches wits with a kind of Dr. Moriarty, a secretive crime lord who uses the same analytical tools. This was the least favorite of the two dozen books I’ve read by Rhode, who fortunately improved considerably since he published 140 detective novels. 4/16/24

The Case of the Red Brunette by Christopher Bush, Dean Street, 2020 (originally published in 1954)

An obnoxious literary agent is lured to a hotel and murdered. He had previously had an affair with a young girl, and she committed suicide when he dropped her. Her family includes a couple of famous actors, an acerbic vicar, and others. They obviously had the best motive to kill him, but they all appear to have an adequate alibi. At the same time, a school teacher disappears, leaving behind a trail of clues that at first suggest that he was a communist agent, but then lead Ludovic Travers to discover his connection with the family in question. There is a bit of cheating. We are never told that two characters look very much alike until the revelation.

Funerals Are Fatal by Agatha Christie, 1953

Aka After the Funeral. A rich man dies an apparently natural death, but one person at his funeral suggests that it was murder. She is herself murdered by a supposed burglar the very next day. Naturally all of the varied members of the family are suspects. The first victim’s body has been cremated so it cannot be checked for poison. The companion to the second victim indicates that a mysterious nun has been following her around, and she herself receives a piece of cake that contains arsenic. The family lawyer calls in Hercule Poirot, who untangles several family intricacies and a rather large collection of lies in order to determine the truth.

Murder with Mirrors by Agatha Christie, 1952 

Aka They Do It with Mirrors. Jane Marple returns. Jane Marple visits an old friend to investigate rumors that there is something wrong at her household, which consists of various relatives from her three marriages, as well as the adjoining treatment center for juvenile delinquents, which is managed by her husband. There is a good deal of tension – jealousies and resentments left over from childhood, a troubled marriage, a paranoid patient, a domineering housekeeper, and so on. Another relative shows up and is promptly murdered, and evidence suggests that he had discovered that the friend was being slowly poisoned. There is a good deal of misdirection in this one, some of it quite cleverly done. There is also a little cheating, some withhold information, but it’s not significant. I did guess the killer. 4/12/24

Send for the Saint by Leslie Charteris, 1978 

Two ghostwritten novellas based on television episodes. The first has a fairly interesting plot. A wealthy businessman asks the Saint for help because his double is so convincing that he has been able to disrupt operations of his shipping fleet. Templar tracks down the double, who insists that he is the original and that the Saint was hired by the impostor. Then it turns out that the company is illegally smuggling arms to North Korea. Templar figures out the truth. There is no impostor. The businessman created him as a scapegoat in case his smuggling was discovered, and figured the Saint would be a good witness to the effect that he was not responsible. 4/11/24

The Saint Returns by Leslie Charteris, 1968 

Two more ghostwritten adaptations of episodes from the television series. In the first, Templar runs into a woman who claims to be Adolf Hitler’s daughter. She also claims that a neo-Nazi group wants to force her to become the figurehead for a revival of their party in Germany. She then confesses to being the runaway daughter of a very rich man who opposes her marriage plans. Except that isn’t the truth either, as Templar discovers when he rescues her from kidnappers. The second is a very inferior story about the development of a new explosive that makes assassinations easier. 4/9/24

The Saint and the Hapsburg Necklace by Leslie Charteris, 1975

Ghostwritten by Christopher Short. This is the weakest of all the Saint adventures, poorly written, with Nazi agents who come right out of Hogan’s Heroes. There is none of the charm of the rest of the series. It reads more like an outline than a novel. The plot is a plan by Nazis in 1938 Austria to steal a valuable necklace from a wealthy family. Templar is unusually inept. The necklace is stolen despite his best efforts – which aren’t very good – and there are further complications because of a very realistic fake. I lost interest about page thirty. 4/9/24

Salvage for the Saint by Leslie Charteris, 1982 

A ghostwritten novel based on episodes of The Return of the Saint. This was the last Saint story written until novelization of the awful movie more than a decade later, and it’s actually pretty good. A man is murdered when his racing boat explodes. His widow is off to France to claim his yacht, but a gang of thugs believes that she knows the whereabouts of a cache of gold bullion that her husband had concealed. The Saint rescues her from their first attack, then accompanies her to Corsica to find the gold and finish off the thugs. 4/5/24

Mrs McGinty’s Dead by Agatha Christie, 1952 

This is a pretty good Poirot mystery, despite a little bit of cheating along the way. A charwoman is murdered and her boarder has been sentenced to death. The investigating officer is unconvinced and asks Poirot to look things over. The motive involves a newspaper article with pictures of four women, all of whom have disappeared, and all of whom were involved with violent deaths. It seems likely that one of those women, or someone associated with them, is in the village and does not want to be identified. Then there is a second murder and this time Christie somewhat telegraphs the solution. When a mystery writer spends time on an apparently unimportant scene, it is usually a giveaway that it is more significant than it appears. 4/5/24

The Case of the Benevolent Bookie by Christopher Bush, Dean Street, 2020 (originally published in 1955)  

This is a slightly above average entry in the series. Travers is hired to track down a runaway wife. Then he learns that there may be stolen jewels involved. His client flies to America for a few days and disappears, then is sighted in London. A bookie and his thuggish partner appear to be unusually interested in the missing man’s property. A second set of jewels – worthless copies – complicates things even further. Then a body shows up, followed soon after by a second. Virtually every character in the book lies repeatedly, making things even more difficult than usual, although it’s pretty obvious that the bookie or his partner are the major villains. 4/3/224

They Came to Baghdad by Agatha Christie, 1951 

Apparently no one had the nerve to tell Christie how awful she was at writing espionage. This standalone novel starts off a little better than some of her efforts at a thriller – a courier in Iraq has been assassinated after acquiring some important information. The protagonist is a naïve young woman who – very absurdly – is recruited by a British master spy to try to find the missing information – on her own – in a place she has never been before – without knowing the nature of the information – without any hint about where or what or who she should be looking for. He decides to rely on “beginner’s luck.” Thoroughly awful. 4/3/24

Catch the Saint by Leslie Charteris, Doubleday, 1975 

Two novellas based on scripts from the television series, adapted by Fleming Lee and Norman Worker. The first is a rather overly familiar story. A friend of Templar’s is swindled and has no legal recourse against the bad guy. Templar decides to act outside the law to get the money back, but he first runs into a woman who believes the swindler is involved with the disappearance of her brother. The second story is pretty much the same thing with modest variations. Tje television format feels a bit too obvious in these. 4/1/24

The Ellerby Case by John Rhode, Spitfire, 2023 (originally published in 1927) 

Dr Priestly makes a rare appearance outside of his study in this one, spurred on by the mysterious death of an old friend, who was killed by a booby trap in his safe following a burglary in which nothing was stolen. The dead man was investigating the production of illegal saccharine in England, which was apparently an issue at the time. This is possibly the dullest Rhode mystery I have ever read. There are really no suspects at all – the criminals are off stage, the murder is mildly clever but explained immediately, and I have never liked Priestly in any of his previous adventures. 4/1/24

Mourning After by Thomas B. Dewey, Ace, 1950  

A young woman is almost abducted from a hotel following her visit to a bar, but two members of the staff thwart armed gunmen. Nevertheless, she disappears the following day and it is likely that they tracked her down. Eventually she turns up dead. The protagonist is crotchety and doesn’t get along with the local sheriff, who is also crotchety, or the owner of the bar where the murder took place – she’s also pretty crotchety. She was dating the son of a local judge who is planning to run for political office. The protagonist’s girl friend is beaten up, apparently to warn him off when he keeps asking questions. Throw in some illegal gambling and violations of liquor licenses. The murderer was not whom I suspected. 4/1/24

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