CHRISTIE CASTS LONG SHADOWS

Agatha Christie has been on my mind all day. First, the trailer for the first ever adaptation of the delicious Crooked House appeared on my Facebook feed this morning, and it looks absolutely marvelous! (Watch it here.) It reminded me that only a few weeks ago, I saw the trailer for the, to my mind, …

FIVE BOOKS TO READ BEFORE THEY’RE SPOILED FOR YOU – Agatha Christie Edition

“Taking stock of what I have and what I haven’t: What do I find?”                                   (Irving Berlin) It’s Saturday night, and I’m kicking back in front of the ol’ blog site. I checked out my stats a minute ago: twenty posts …

THE MASTER AT WORK: The Problem of The Green Capsule

Bear with me: I’ve got a fantastic book to talk about today - John Dickson Carr’s classic The Problem of the Green Capsule (aka The Black Spectacles, 1939) – but I’m going to take my own sweet time getting to it. Like so many in this vast blogosphere, I follow a lot of other bloggers …

PUZZLING PUDDLES: Paul Halter’s The Madman’s Room

“A family united all together under the same roof, in an old manor, with a generous and very rich man. If this were a novel, it would end in tragedy.” It would seem that the madman here is yours truly. My problematical relationship with author Paul Halter has been well documented on this site. And …

IN THE END IS MY BEGINNING: Agatha Christie’s Nemesis

The mystery equivalent of the question, “Are you a dog person or a cat person?” is “Do you fancy Poirot or Miss Marple?” (Well, actually, it’s “Classic detection or hardboiled?” but that’s not where we’re going today.) I’m a cat person because I live with cats and love the ones I live with, but I’d …

I SUSPECT MICE: A Discourse on the Dying Message

Smack dab in the middle of The Tragedy of X, the 1930 debut of mystery writer Barnaby Ross, detective Drury Lane, a retired Shakespearean actor who is stone deaf, resides in a castle called The Hamlet, and employs a hunchback dwarf named Falstaff as a butler, is philosophizing with a group of men – one …

NILE vs. SUN: Fair Play With Spoilers

Over at The Invisible Event, JJ has compiled a list, voted on by an erudite assortment of fans, consisting of twelve titles that purportedly demonstrate the best qualities of a “fair play” mystery. It’s a list that does what these sorts of lists are supposed to do: it provides a jumping off point for arguments …