LB's Rambles

"Murder for Christmas"

How appropriate: our book reviewed on this week's Classic Mysteries podcast comes with its own alias. The book is Agatha Christie's "Murder for Christmas," which also goes by the title "Hercule Poirot's Christmas." It's a perfect confection for Christmas: a country house party murder, a locked room, fascinating characters, lots of blood and Hercule Poirot. You can isten to the full review here. It's vintage Agatha Christie, where nothing is quite what it may seem to be at first glance, and a most ingenious mystery.

If that's the sort of mystery you like, why not join the discussion at www.classicmysteries.net? I'd love to hear from you there. The holiday and the season are perfect for settling down with a good cozy mystery. This one fills the bill perfectly.

"Who Killed the Curate?"

Now THERE's a good, old-fashioned, English-Golden-Age style title for you. And it's a Christmas mystery to boot - the murder takes place on Christmas Eve. But there's more in "Who Killed the Curate?," by Joan Coggin, our book reviewed this week on the Classic Mysteries podcast - you can hear the full review here.

The added factor in Coggin's book is the heroine (and detective figure), Lady Lupin Lorrimer Hastings, known as "Loops" to her friend and perhaps the most scatterbrained detective character you'll ever meet. Her mental processes, as expressed through the book's hilarious dialogue, are stunning, to say the least - and quite funny. It's a good Golden Age mystery (dating from 1944) for the holiday season.

In season or out, if you enjoy classic mysteries, please join me at www.classicmysteries.net to continue discussing them!

"The Journeying Boy"

Sometimes a mystery reader can't make up his/her mind between a classic puzzle mystery or a good thriller. So here's a good compromise, containing both kinds of mystery in a single novel: "The Journeying Boy," by Michael Innes. It's our book reviewed this week on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the review here.

The two threads of the story: first, there's a young man hired as a tutor, to accompany the teenaged son of a prominent scientist as he goes on holiday to distant relatives in Ireland; the second concerns a Scotland Yard investigation into the peculiar murder of an unknown man in a London movie theater. Innes carefully provides clues that often keep the reader ahead of the characters in the novel, but there are more than enough puzzles, surprises, twists and a great deal of humor, including some slapstick, to satisfy any reader. If you enjoy mysteries, this is a fine one.

And, if you enjoy mysteries, have you visited www.classicmysteries.net yet? You should...

"13 to the Gallows"

The subject of this week's podcast review on our "Classic Mysteries" podcast is a collection of four plays written by John Dickson Carr, the acknowledged master of the impossible crime story. The plays collected in "13 to the Gallows" surely must have baffled and pleased theater audiences when originally produced in the 1940s, and I am delighted to find that they have now been reprinted and made available to today's mystery readers. You can listen to a full review here.

The plays all feature impossible crimes or locked room murders. In all, Carr is scrupulous about providing playgoers with clues to the correct solution, even as he carefully misdirects their attention away from those clues. Two of the plays were co-authored with British radio producer Val Gielgud, but all are quite clearly the product of Carr's ingenious plotting and masterful atmospherics. Add an introduction and afterword essays by Tony Medawar and you have a fine gift for any classic mystery lover.

If that last description fits you, by the way, please join me at www.classicmysteries.net where we can discuss this and many other books and mystery writing in general. I hope to see you there.

"The Continental Op"

On our Classic Mysteries podcast this week, you'll find a review of a series of short stories by Dashiell Hammett, featuring his detective, "The Continental Op." This detective without a name prowls the streets of San Francisco in the 1920s. The op - short for operative - is the epitome of a Hammett private eye - tough, but fair; preferring to use his brain, but quite willing to use his fists or a gun. You can hear the entire review here.

Given his enormous influence on detective fiction in the U. S., it is amazing how few novels and stories he actually wrote. The Continental Op was featured in a number of short stories, and this collection from Vintage collects seven of the best. They're not so much puzzle-type mysteries; rather they're excellent, fairly hard-boiled private eye pieces. It's a collection that ought to be on your mystery bookshelf.

For more discussion of this book and other mysteries, please visit www.classicmysteries.net - and join the conversations there.

"The Labors of Hercules"

The mythical Graeco-Roman demigod, Hercules, had to perform a dozen seemingly impossible tasks. His modern detective counterpart, Hercule Poirot, also found himself investigating twelve quite distinctive mysteries, each with a parallel to one of the original labors, in "The Labors of Hercules," by Agatha Christie. This excellent collection of short stories is reviewed on today's Classic Mysteries podcast, which you can listen to here.

Christie's stories are excellent. Not all deal with murders, but all prove to be very much worth M. Poirot's time - and yours as well. While it appears that Amazon.com isn't shipping new copies at the moment, the link above will take you to a page with a great many different editions available through Amazon's dealer network. I find also that Barnes & Noble does have copies of a mass market paperback version. And, of course, your own favorite mystery bookdealer should be able to locate a copy for you quite easily. It really is one of Christie's best collections.

"Smallbone Deceased"

It is distressing when members of a prestigious English law firm cannot find one of their prominent clients, the trustee of a charitable foundation. It is more distressing when that client turns up - quite dead - inside an oversized safe deposit box, or deed box. That's the situation in "Smallbone Deceased," by Michael Gilbert, which is reviewed on this week's "Classic Mysteries" podcast. You can listen to the complete review here.

Gilbert was a much-honored writer of all kinds of crime fiction, and "Smallbone Deceased" is widely regarded as one of his best books. It is a classic puzzle mystery, with the major clues made available to the reader who will be challenged to solve the mystery before the detectives can do so. First published in 1950, it is one of the few Gilbert mysteries available in print. If you're a fan of these puzzles, you'll enjoy it.

For more discussions about this and other mysteries, please visit www.classicmysteries.net and join in the conversation.

"The Longer Bodies"

Murder most British is on tap this week, as our "Classic Mysteries" podcast reviews "The Longer Bodies," by Gladys Mitchell. This novel, which first appeared in 1930, features the detective work of Beatrice Lestrange Bradley, a psychiatrist who helps the police - and who is sufficiently eccentric in her appearance and her behavior to be one of the more memorable detectives in fiction. You can listen to the full review here.

The plot is complex, but it begins with an old woman's plan to choose an heir for her rather considerable fortune by encouraging her grandnephews to train for the Olympics. Her idea is to award her estate to the first grandnephew to win an Olympic medal for Britain. If that sounds odd, let me stress that it is only the beginning of a most remarkable book that incorporates murder and a bit of madness as well.

If you are fond of mysteries from the golden age, or of other classic mysteries both before and after that era, I hope you'll come visit www.classicmysteries.net - that's where we continue our discussions about these fine vintage mysteries. Come on over and join the conversation!

"The Widening Stain"

This week's podcast review on Classic Mysteries comes with the due weight, solemnity and overall gravitas one would expect to find at a prestigious Ivy League university. Or maybe not. The goings-on in Morris Bishop's "The Widening Stain" were sufficiently irreverent and offbeat for Bishop, a Cornell University professor and later the school's provost, to hide behind the unlikely pseudonym of "W. Bolingbroke Johnson," which may have been a good career move. 

The book is marked by a significant number of funny limericks, some unfortunate professorial behavior, and a couple of murders, including a quite-well-done impossible crime. The Rue Morgue Press has brought this 1942 comic mystery back from relative obscurity - which is a fine thing for classic mystery readers.

And let me put in my weekly plug: for those of you who enjoy good mysteries, come visit me at www.classicmysteries.net and let's talk about them!

"The House Without the Door"

Our "Classic Mysteries" podcast this week takes us back to New York in the 1940s, in "The House Without the Door," by Elizabeth Daly. A criminal jury has acquitted a woman of the charge of murdering her husband. But public opinion believes she did it - and somebody may be trying to murder her as well. Enter Daly's sleuth, Henry Gamadge, a professional expert in rare books who also has made a name for himself investigating difficult criminal cases. If you don't know Elizabeth Daly's books, this is a good place to start. You can hear my full review here. And, as always, I invite you to join the conversation at www.classicmysteries.net.