Last Update 9/27/24

The Little Sparrow Murders by Seishi Yokomizo, Pushkin Vertigo, 2024.

The latest in this series of classic Japanese murder mysteries involves the murders of three young women and the disappearance of a village elder, all somehow connected to another murder which took place twenty years earlier. A vacationing private investigator gets caught up in the investigation when it appears that someone disguised as an elderly woman is luring people to their deaths. The story is a mix of predictable and surprising events which kept me guessing throughout - and I never even suspected the killer's real identity. An informative portrayal of life in a remote Japanese village as well, and with some genuinely interesting characters. 9/27/24

Dead Ahead by William L Stuart, Ace, 1953 (originally published in 1945 as The Dead Lie Still)

This was the well received first novel of a writer who produced only one other mystery as far as I know, and who is certainly not the fantasy writer of the same name who wrote a few books a decade ago. It’s a Chandleresque thriller about the aftermath of the assassination of a prominent criminal figure and a man who gets caught up in the turmoil caused when federal agents attempt to gather up the dead man’s minions. There are some surprises along the way. The prose is pretty good. The second novel, Night Cry, was filmed. The characters are a bit flat but not excessively so. 9/24/24

Shady Lady by Cleve F. Adams, Ace, 1955

I didn’t really care for this, the author’s last book. Most of it is standard hardboiled detective – an insurance agent trying to track down a female embezzler – and their duel of wits is complicated by a hard fought political campaign, a few minor heavies, some trickery, some missteps, and a bit of bad luck. The prose is good and the plot isn’t awful, but it feels like a refurbishing of several other stories I’ve read with similar plots. The detective never really develops much personality. His female opponent is somewhat more interesting. I feel no urge to look for the author’s previous work. 9/24/24

One Got Away by Harry Whittington, Ace, 1955

Whittington is one of the underrated thriller writers of the 1950s. None of his novels were really great, but they were all pretty good. If he had used a recurring protagonist, he would probably be better known. This time his hero is a government agent who was assigned to bring in a renegade scientist who had become a fugitive. He finds the man, dead, and the department suspects that he is a traitor and killed the target to prevent his capture. He decides to investigate the dead man’s past, which eventually leads him to a cache of counterfeit money and eventually vindication. The end is a bit rushed but the story is suspenseful. 9/21/24

Play for Keeps by Harry Whittington, Ace, 1957

The protagonist wakes up one morning with a strange woman in his bed and no recollection of how his previous evening’s drinking bout came to an end. She tells him that she saw him push his wife to death from a balcony and she expects a large blackmail payment to remain silent. Although he is certain that he did not kill her, they were on the verge of divorce and her story is plausible enough to lead to his arrest. This was not one of the author’s better novels. The cop with a grudge is overdone to the point of caricature. The killer is a surprise, but only because the reader has not been privy to a lot of information. The sudden romance in the closing chapter is forced and implausible. 9/21/24

The Corpse Without a Country by Louis Trimble, Ace, 1959

An insurance inspector is on the trail of an arsonist who specializes in starting fires on board cruise ships. This would seem to be relatively easy – find the person who was on the three vessels in question at the time of the fires. But it doesn’t work out that way. And there are complications. An unidentified woman who turns up dead and no one knows who she is or where is from, let alone why she would be murdered. And there is a large amount of cash missing. The suspects include a self professed beatnik who really isn’t into peace and kindness, a mysterious Oriental man who keeps his own council, and a beautiful woman who also has her own agenda. Routine. 9/18/24

Big Ben Strikes Eleven by David Magarshack, British Library, 2023 (originally published in 1934)

A business magnate is found shot to death in his car. There are no clues, no witnesses, but plenty of potential motives. Was it his mistress? His wife? The estranged nephew? The artist whom he refused to pay for work that had been completed? The jealous husband of the mistress? The too perfect secretary who may have been embezzling from the firm he led? Two police detectives take very different approaches as they try to unravel the secrets of his life, and the many secrets others are concealing, in order to bring the killer to justice.  The novel, which is rather unnecessarily long, suffers from a slow middle section which rehashes things already discussed by introducing a new set of characters to confuse things even further.  9/13/24

Underground by J. Jefferson Farjeon, Spitfire, 2024 (originally published in 1928)

There is no question who the villains are in this above average crime novel. The mystery is what they are up to. They have congregated around an abandoned and supposedly haunted house in a remote part of England. A clerk overhears two thugs plotting against a young woman and decides to follow her and warn her. He picks up three companions along the way and there are lots of mysterious comings and goings. Clearly something criminal is taking place on the premises but out of sight of the neighbors. There is a touch of humor mixed with the suspense. This would have made a good movie. 9/9/24

Mrs. Homicide by Day Keene, Ace, 1953

The protagonist in this one is the wife of a homicide detective. She is found naked and drunk in a locked room with a blackmailer who has been shot to death. There are witnesses who claim that she was having an affair with the dead man. Although her marriage is indeed troubled, she insists that she never slept with the man, did not shoot him, and does not know how she came to be in his apartment. Her husband is initially resigned to the fact of her guilt, but subsequent investigations begin to raise small doubts that grow into even bigger ones and eventually he proves her innocent and they are reconciled. Pretty well done. 9/9/24

Someone from the Past by Margot Bennett, British Library, 2023 (originally published in 1958)

After receiving threatening letters, a young woman is murdered in her rooms. A friend finds the body, and is soon the prime suspect in the crime, even though we know that she is innocent. The murderer decides to arrange things so that she will be even further implicated, but he is overconfident of his abilities and eventually the truth comes out. There are extensive flashbacks to illustrate events from the victim’s past. This is the third mystery I have read by Bennett – she also had an obscure science fiction novel which I read and immediately forgot. I am not sure why I am so indifferent to her work. There is some aspect of her prose and story structure that inhibit my ability to appreciate her work. 9/1/24

A Smell of Smoke by John Rhode (as by Miles Burton, Ramble House, 2008 (originally published in 1959)

One of the author’s better mysteries, although the solution is a mild cheat. An unpopular man appears to have accidentally drowned on his way home from a pub. Later evidence suggests that he was blackmailing the nephew of a wealthy local businessman. The uncle suspects his nephew and threatens to disinherit him if he marries a young woman, a misguided effort to protect the woman. Then he is also murdered and logically the nephew is the prime suspect, although there is no direct evidence and some indications that he could not have committed the crime. He didn’t, of course, and the real killer’s identity comes as a surprise because he was a very minor character who hadn’t even had a line of dialogue until the closing chapters.  9/1/24

The Confession and Sight Unseen by Mary Roberts Rinehart, 1921 

Two novellas, the first of which is a reasonably good murder mystery. An elderly woman rents a house from another elderly woman, and begins experiencing mysterious telephone calls with no one on the line, things moved in the house at night, interlopers who don’t steal anything and so on. It all stems from a case of manslaughter five years earlier, tied to a family scandal. The plot is somewhat overly contrived but the story is suspenseful. The second, which contains genuine supernatural events, is less satisfying. A medium describes a murder that actually took place while the séance was being conducted at a nearby house. One of the attendees becomes obsessed with discovering the truth and eventually does – but it involves a character never even mentioned earlier in the story and the overly drawn out ending never really comes to grip with the questions surrounding the murder. 8/29/24

Tragedy at the Unicorn by John Rhode, Spitfire, 2024 (originally published in 1928)

A man is found murdered in his room at an inn, possibly a suicide who took an overdose of drugs. But there were a lot of people who hated him. His estranged nephew had been cut out of his will. The innkeeper’s daughter was being pressured to have sex with him, much to her own dismay and that of her boyfriend. Two different business rivals had serious problems with the man. Only one person appears to be mourning his death – so naturally he’s the reader’s primary suspect. I thought this was a red herring, but it turns out he really was the killer, which was disappointing. 8/29/24

Killing Cousins by Fletcher Flora, Ace, 1960

This is a rather light hearted account of a woman who murders her husband, on impulse, and then recruits her lover to help dispose of the body and make it appear that he deserted her. The humor is in the dialogue primarily. Neither of the protagonists takes things very seriously. The lover is pretty clever and develops a quite thorough and convincing plan, but naturally things do not go the way they were intended to. An unpredictable automobile accident prevents the dead man’s car from being delivered to a chop shop, and it turns out that he was planning to run away with his mistress, who insists that he would not have abandoned her. The story ends, however, with another plan underway. 8/25/24

Twice Round the Clock by Billie Houston, Poisoned Pen, 2024 (originally published in 1935)

Entertainer Billie Houston produced only this one murder mystery. The plot itself, which involves the murder of a particularly cruel man who manipulates everyone within reach, is not badly done. The prose is okay in general, but the actions of the characters sometimes feel forced and the characters themselves have very little depth. The dead man’s terrorized daughter and his housekeeper are among several suspects. The protagonist/amateur investigator is the younger woman’s fiancé, who solves things in due course. Mostly of historical interest as it feels amateurish at times. 8/25/24

The Crime by Anthony Lang, Spitfire, 2024 (originally published in 1927)

The author used several pen names and I have previously read some of his work as by Vernon Loder. This was reasonably good. Two men are lured to an apartment house where a dead man is concealed under a sofa. A second corpse is found in the room below. There is confusion about the identities of the two men thanks to impersonation and forgery. There is also a valuable parcel of uncut diamonds missing. The police and an insurance inspector pursue separate but converging inquiries which lead to the owner of the missing gemstones, who presumably wanted to keep them and the insurance value as well. The construction of the story is a bit unusual. Three different men function as the protagonist in succession. 8/23/24

The Case of the Heavenly Twin by Christopher Bush, Dean Street, 2022 (originally published in 1963)

Although this detective story is not badly written, it is painfully obvious what is going on. A rich man dies. He had twin grandsons, one of whom supposedly was a successful businessman in Canada, the other a black sheep who had been involved in forgery and other crimes. The good brother shows up to collect his inheritance, but it is immediately clear that this is the bad brother impersonating him after murdering his twin – and the supposedly good one was also a crook. Nobody including lawyers, policemen, or the private investigators ever questions his identity even though the two brothers are never seen together. Then more murders occur to cover his tracks, he is connected to a forgery operation, and the house of cards falls down. But he should have been caught about eighty pages earlier. 8/18/24

Counterspy Express by A.S. Fleischman, Ace, 1954

Spy novels have gone out of fashion in recent years, now that Ambler, Fleming, and LeCarre are gone. This is a rather placid story of an agent assigned to smuggle a Soviet scientist to America. But the Russians don’t want him to escape, and some other countries would like to snaffle him up for their own purposes, so the mission has multiple complications. Most of the story takes place in Italy and Monaco and involves sneaking around and avoiding traps. Naturally there is a beautiful woman whose loyalties are never quite clear to either the hero or the reader until very late. Naturally the mission is a success. 8/18/24

Fire and Bones by Kathy Reichs, Scribner, 2024

The latest Bones novel is disappointing despite a promising beginning and if you don't like spoilers, read no further. Brennan is investigating an arson case that involve four fatalities when a fifth body is found in a hidden room, a woman who has been dead for decades. This turns out to be a red herring. There are in fact several red herrings in the story, some of which are clever, some just annoying. The solution is not very satisfying - it is the result of an old underworld feud. There are some very implausible elements. Brennan is trapped by a killer - and on the next page he has gone into hiding, leaving her free to talk with no explanation. There is also another murderer superimposed on the story whose entire subplot was patched together with bubblegum. 8/15/24

Murder Among Friends by Lange Lewis, Wildside (originally published in 1942)

A young woman takes a job as secretary to the Dean of Medicine at a college, replacing another woman who mysteriously disappeared. The latter’s body turns up as a dissection subject, which predictably causes a commotion. Coincidentally – there are a lot of coincidences = the new secretary rents her predecessor’s now empty apartment. The dead woman was a flirt and the chief suspects are a handful of men who had dated her. But the police detective somehow believes that there is a link with a mysterious serial killer who varies his methods from case to case but always steals his victim’s purse. This is a pretty tenuous theory. 8/13/24

The Blonde Cried Murder by John Creighton, Ace, 1961

A private detective whose business and life in general are on a downward spin acquires a new client whom he hopes will serve as a turning point. The client wants him to find her husband, who disappeared after embezzling a large amount of money. Rather predictably, he runs into and is roughed up by some thugs. There was a double cross in the embezzlement, and his client is not telling the whole truth either. Routine investigation follows which eventually leads him to the missing man. Readable but not memorable. 8/13/24

The Case of the Grand Alliance by Christopher Bush, Dean Street, 2022 (originally published in 1964)

There are five villains in this one, two blackmailers and three thieves. A collection of valuable jewelry disappears from the safe at a company hired to clear them and is replaced by copies. The author did not think this through – there is no reason to have substituted the fakes. They did not conceal the theft. In fact, they focus attention on the family and actually help the police. There is a crooked private investigator who indulges in blackmail on an industrial scale until he is caught. The one violent death in the book is actually an accident. The three thieves become obvious quite early on. Bush may have been running out of interesting plots at this point in his career. 8/11/24

Treachery in Trieste by Charles L. Leonard, Ace, 1951

This espionage thriller is set in Trieste during the period when Yugoslavia was coalescing, for a time, as a single nation. The city is obviously a hotbed of intrigue as various powers attempt to shape the outcome to their own purposes. The protagonist’s main mission is to interrupt the steady flow of weaponry – small arms – into the city, which generates more violence and makes the situation even less table. I wasn’t tremendously interested in the plot but the writing was well done and kept me involved. 8/11/24

Perish by the Sword by Poul Anderson, MacMillan, 1959

Anderson's first murder mystery - he wrote one more - involves a jealous husband who may be on the verge of a nervous breakdown, scheming partners, investors, subordinates, and rivals. Several of the characters collect Japanese swords and one of them is the murder weapon. The plot is competently done, although I thought the villain's identity was painfully obvious. Anderson also manages to make snide remarks about various groups he dislikes - hippies, the mentally ill, liberals, Zen Buddhists, pacifists, arms control advocates, etc. It happens so often that it becomes positively irritating and they are almost always juvenile cheap shots rather than rational criticisms. They really spoil what is otherwise an averagely interesting mystery novel. 8/10/24

The Case of the Good Employer by Christopher Bush, Dean Street, 2022 (originally published in 1966)

A reclusive man is generally liked by the people he employs, but his past contains a shady secret. He was in France at one time in his youth and he deliberately stole the money from a successful businessman that led to bankruptcy and suicide. He now feels remorse and hires Travers to find the dead man’s son – although naturally he does not tell him why. Then he dies after a stroke. Travers, who knew him slightly, was aware that the man owned some valuable paintings. A niece and nephew come to look after him and in due course he dies. The house burns down, the nephew’s body is found inside, and the niece has disappeared. The ruins of the pictures suggest that they were fakes, substituted for the real paintings just before the fire. The niece and nephew are bogus, of course, and Travers has to uncover their real identities in order to recover the artwork. 8/5/24

Drink With the Dead by J.M.Flynn, Ace, 1959

Bootleggers in Northern California are making so much money that they feel entitled to kill a treasury agent who is investigating. The protagonist is sent to follow up, camouflaged as a small time swindler. But someone knows his true occupation because before long he is framed for a murder he did not commit. So in order to get back to his job, he has to prove himself innocent while avoiding the police and the bootleggers. Naturally he does, and finds that the two crimes are connected, no surprise to the reader. Pretty standard, reasonably well done. 8/5/24

Drawn to Evil by Harry Whittington, Ace, 1952

A well liked Senator is found murdered. The police detective assigned to the case finds the widow very attractive, and it appears that she is the prime suspect because of a recent quarrel and the fact that she lies about where she was at the time of the murder. Another, apparently unrelated murder, distracts the protagonist, one involved organized crime and the drug trade, but in such a short novel, it is obvious that the two cases are going to converge at some point. This was one of the author’s less interesting stories. Parts of it were trite, other parts rather hastily sketched in, and I didn’t like the main character.

The Scarlet Spade by Eaton K. Goldthwaite, Ace, 1951

Aka Cut for Partners. This is another of those crime novels that has largely been forgotten, and with some justification. The story has been told scores of times with variations, sometimes by much better writers. But it isn’t badly written and the plot is well constructed. A private detective has gone into a kind of partnership with an idiosyncratic prospector who claims to have found a vein of gold. When the prospector is murdered, the detective realizes that his claim was probably real and that someone else is trying to seize it. So naturally he has a double incentive to track down the killer or killers, which he accomplishes in due course.

The Case of the Deadly Diamonds by Christopher Bush, Dean Street, 2022 (originally published in 1967)

A consignment of diamonds is apparently stolen from a jeweler’s safe. The thief is caught immediately but does not have the diamonds and there are other aspects of the case that seem odd. Travers is hired to recover the gems, if possible. He has to wait three years for the thief to be released from prison, but plans to follow him collapse within hours. There are connections to the jeweler’s adult daughter, to a private detective who worked for the jeweler’s wife, and others. If the thief had an accomplice who took the diamonds, who was it and where did the diamonds go? Interesting solution to this one. 7/31/24

Open Season by Bernard Thielen, Ace, 1958 

The protagonist is asked by his brother to meet him urgently in New York City. The brother works for a super secret government agency. The meeting never happens because the man has been kidnapped by communist agents. For some reason they want the protagonist as well, so while he searches for his missing brother, they search for him. This was a ho hum book. There is very little mystery or suspense are really just sketches. I realized only when I was almost done that this is an abridged version, so it’s possible that the original addresses some of these problems. 7/31/24

Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night by Sophie Hannah, Harper, 2023

This is the best of the five Poirot novels by this author, although the plot founders a bit in the final third. Poirot has to solve a murder that took place in a hospital and he only has a few days to finish if he is to avoid spending Christmas with the annoying mother of the annoying Scotland Yard detective, Catchpoole. Catchpoole is meant to be a replacement for Agatha Christie’s Hastings, but she makes that character seem like a genius. I cannot imagine Scotland Yard employing such an obtuse and incompetent person, but then again, earlier books in the series have made the senior officials at the Yard seem universally dimwitted.  7/28/24

The Case of the Three Ring Puzzle by Christopher Bush, Dean Street, 2022 (originally published in 1962)

Once again multiple cases over a period of years converge. One involves a swindler who targets elderly women with investment schemes. Another is a client looking for a missing man who uses a false name and disappears. The major one is a blackmailer who targets the owner of a successful restaurant. This target’s partner is a brash, violent man who decides to make his own investigation separate from the one conducted by Travers. Travers is the one who discovers the truth, but only after a complex investigation. 7/28/24

Marked Down for Murder by Spencer Dean, Ace, 1956

This is my first try at this author, and it was quite promising. The protagonist is a department store detective who catches a woman shoplifting. Shortly thereafter she is murdered and her body is mutilated. He rather irrationally feels somewhat guilty because she had insisted that her apprehension would cost her life. So he decides to poke around and see if he can find out more about her and perhaps even identify her killer. Although he is a bit clumsy in his detection, he soon picks up the trail, which naturally puts his own life in jeopardy. Not ground breaking but solid.

The Killings at Kingfisher Hill by Sophie Hannah, Harper, 2020

There is notable improvement over the first three in this revival series, but it still falls apart somewhere along the way. A woman has been convicted of murder but before she can hang, another woman confesses to the same crime. The family of the murdered man consists of various bizarre characters – the brother of the dead man proposes to the condemned woman. There are incidents in which characters act in a bizarre and totally unnecessary fashion simply to create odd puzzles that are designed to confuse the reader. Sometimes there is not even the trace of a motive for what they are doing.

The Mystery of Three Quarters by Sophie Hannah, Harper, 2018

Although not quite as bad as the first two in the revived Hercule Poirot series, this is still not worth your time. The opening presents an interesting scenario – someone forges letters from Poirot to various people, accusing each of them of murdering an elderly man. The new sidekick, Catchpool, is as irritating as ever and more inept than Hastings. The senior officials at Scotland Yard are reduced to Keystone Cops. The dead man actually died accidentally, but there is a real murder and a second is attempted, all motivated by anger that someone rescued a dog before rescuing a young girl, even though both survived. The second half of the novel is particularly painful to read.

The Buried Motive by Bruce Cassiday, Ace, 1957

Yet another variation of the hero as fugitive story. A professional investigator gets a line to a man who claims to know the whereabouts of an embezzler who has managed to evade the law. When he arrives, he finds the informer dead, and even worse, he is the prime suspect for the murder and is promptly arrested. A woman he has never met shows up and provides an alibi – a false one – which gets him out of jail and he sets about trying to find out who the real killer was. But the reason that he was sprung from jail was so that he could be killed and the case would be closed.

The Proof of the Pudding by Rhys Bowen, Berkley, 2023

Lady Georgianna returns, now married and pregnant. Her new chef is so good that a popular, though idiosyncratic, horror writer/aristocrat wants to borrow him for a fancy dinner on his own estate, with all of the recurring characters among the guests. But several of the guests get food poisoning and one of them is additionally poisoned by berries from their host’s garden of poisons. The chef is suspected of carelessness if not actual malice, with murder charges looming, but Georgianna believes that he is innocent and has to track down the person who is really responsible, and who is determined not to be unmasked. This has been a very consistent series and this volume is a step up from the preceding one. 7/19/24

Juliet Dies Twice by Lange Lewis, Wildside (originally published in 1943)

An actress in a play is bludgeoned to death in the prop room right after a rehearsal, but is not found until the following day. No one seems to have disliked her. She was happily married, well liked by the other actors and the instructors, and her life appears to have been an open book. Lieutenant Tuck investigates, aided to some extent by a psychology student who worked as a set designer. Then the dead woman’s under study is also attacked. Does someone have a grudge against both women or is it a fixation on people who play Juliet in the Shakespearean play?  There is also an escapee from an asylum who provides a clever surprise toward the end. 7/19/24

The Gentleman Burglar by Sam Siciliano, Titan, 2024

Sherlock Holmes competes with Arsene Lupin in the search for a lost treasure that may or may not exist. in this partial rewrite of the Maurice Renard novel, The Hollow Needle. Holmes and his cousin, Henry Vernier, are in France where they are hired by a recently enriched aristocrat to find the lost family treasure, ostensibly to hand it over to the government, although Holmes is sure this is a lie. Lupin is also searching for the treasure and the two parties compete for a while and cooperate for a while. It's a nicely told Holmes adventure although it did not always feel as though this was the authentic Holmes. 7/17/24

Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie, 1976

The final published novel by Christie features Jane Marple. A young woman suddenly has memories of seeing her stepmother strangled in the house that she and her husband have just purchased. She belatedly learns that her late father had claimed to have strangled her, but no one believed him. It was assumed that she had run off with another man. Her brother has received letters although none of them were preserved – and in fact they never existed. He is the killer.. Although the end is given away a bit too early, this was actually one of Christie’s best novels and my favorite of the Marples. 7/15/24

The Case of the Dead Man Gone by Christopher Bush, Dean Street, 2022 (originally published in 1962)

A mysterious woman hires Ludovic Travers to find a missing stage magician. He does so fairly quickly, but the man disappears shortly thereafter, and a man he was known to visit is found murdered. The woman turns out to be the magician’s wife, although he had a previous common law marriage, so it is not clear if their marriage was valid. She has subsequently married a philanthropist, who turns out to be a crook. The magician’s body turns up. Two blackmailers are shot to death. What in the world is going on? Well, the author pretty much gives it away when we learn that the woman has a missing brother and a journalist with a very similar background takes a special interest in the case. A bit below average for the series. 7/15/24

Lost Lady by Octavus Roy Cohen, Armchair, 2023 (originally published in 1951) 

A married woman with an unfaithful husband goes missing and is later found shot to death in a motel room. But she had been killed elsewhere. A police officer is drawn into the investigation. The suspects include the husband, the sister, the husband’s mistress, and the sister’s boyfriend. The puzzle is slowly unwrapped when the husband is murdered and later another man is shot to death in an attempt to kill the protagonist. There is blackmail, falsified birth records, illegal gambling, and other crimes involved in the background. I had pretty much figured out the killer by the end, although his motivation was not clear until it was all explained. Not bad at all. 7/10/24 

The Red Scar by Anthony Wynne, Spitfire, 2024 (originally published in 1928) 

Despite some very clear misogyny, this is a decent mystery novel in which an artist is found stabbed in his studio, apparently dying. Another man suspects that the girl he loves is responsible, so he covers up a good deal of evidence – though not very effectively. The dead man had promised to marry three different women at the same time, so they and their husbands and other admirers are all suspects. But the body disappears before the police arrive. Was he alive after all and left on his own or did someone steal the corpse? There’s a good deal of rather silly psychological blather and the usual instance of people lying to protect others, who actually aren’t guilty, and thereby making the situation even worse. 7/10/24

The Case of the Extra Grave by Christopher Bush, Dean Street, 2022 (originally published in 1961)

Ludovic Travers is hired to find a missing wife who apparently stole some valuable jewels. Her car and luggage turn up, but she is nowhere to be found. He eventually discovers that her lover is a famous singer who had rented a house under another name. This leads to the discovery of her body in a ditch, but there are conflicting stories about how she got there. This one cheats a bit as one of the major players is off screen for almost the entire story and ends up dead as well.  Two of the villains take excessive chances and naturally that is their undoing. Throw in some blackmail, a touch of fraud, and other details. 7/87/24

Death in the Dusk by Virgil Markham, Spitfire, 2024 (originally published in 1928)

This is a quite long mystery novel which involves several deaths, some quite bizarre, surrounding a wedding announcement and party. The plot is lively and intricate and fairly logically presented. Unfortunately, the author's flowery prose loses its novelty value pretty quickly and becomes very intrusive after that. The main protagonist is a man who gets lost in the remote area and becomes an unwanted and uncomfortable guest at the proceedings, which soon take a turn for the worst. A lot of wasted potential here. 7/5/24

Postern of Fate by Agatha Christie, 1973

Tommy and Tuppence find a coded message in an old book and begin to investigate a death decades in the past that might have been murder. There are some international political aspects and naturally it is hard to find people who have, or can remember, anything specific to the case. They persevere, of course, and reach the not very interesting solution after what feels like endless repetitive conversations and regurgitations thereof. Without doubt Christie’s worst novel, and the last one she actually wrote, although two more would appear posthumously. 7/25/24

Curtain by Agatha Christie, 1975

Hercule Poirot, confined to a wheelchair, returns to Styles, the scene of his first major case. He has analyzed a pattern of death and believes that a murder is about to be committed. He knows the killer but not the victim and has no evidence to present to the police. His old friend Hastings is back to play Watson and discovers that everyone at Styles has a connection to at least one of the cases in Poirot’s perceived pattern.  Spoiler – Poirot murders the killer and then dies himself. He has no way to prove the man was responsible for talking several people into murdering others. Rather unconvincing. 7/25/24

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