#1484: No Police Like Holmes – The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes [ss]...
Fourteen alternative takes on the Great Detective — editor Sebastian Wolfe is unable to distinguish “parodies, pastiches and burlesques” from each other — fill out The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes...
View Article#1398: “It’s goin’ to take a bit o’ thinkin’ out…”– As If by Magic: Locked...
A second anthology of impossible crimes from the British Library Crime Classics range, As If by Magic [ss] (2025) is another genre-spanning collection from editor and Detection Club President Martin...
View Article#1397: The Case of the Constant Suicides (1941) by John Dickson Carr
A man sleeping alone in a bolted room, five storeys up in the tower attached to his grand old house, wakes in the night and hurls himself out of the window to his death. Refusing to believe in spooks,...
View Article#1312: Curious Incidents in the Night-Time in The Mystery of the Invisible...
Mary Virginia Carey was not, it seems, scared of a little velitation in her stewardship of The Three Investigators. Having written arguably the strongest post-Robert Arthur title in The Mystery of the...
View Article#1284: The Dead Man’s Knock (1958) by John Dickson Carr
As my grandfather used to say, “Good god, it’s tough being a John Dickson Carr fan — he wrote some of the genre’s best and most enduring masterpieces, and yet the decline in his later works like Behind...
View Article#1282: I Knew So Perfect Yesterday – My Ten Favourite Mysteries of the 1940s
Last year my book club picked our favourite 1930s mysteries, and earlier this year we moved on a decade and each selected a top 10 for the 1940s. So, well, here’s mine. Again, the only restriction I...
View Article#1244: To Take a Backward Look – My Ten Favourite Mysteries of the 1930s
I picked my ten favourite crime and detective novels published in the 1930s a little while ago for my online book club, but I only do a Ten Favourite… list every four months or so and thus am only just...
View Article#1243: The Judas Window, a.k.a. The Crossbow Murder (1938) by Carter Dickson
One of many classic detection titles I read before I started this blog, The Judas Window (1938) is arguably among the most popular books John Dickson Carr ever wrote, under his nom de plume Carter...
View Article#1220: “About ghosts in particular he was a blatant and contemptuous...
Let’s take a moment to reflect on what Tony Medawar has done in recent years for GAD fans, with Wicked Spirits (2024) being the eighth collection of lost, forgotten, and...
View Article#1209: For This New Value in the Soul – My Ten Favourite Orion Crime Masterworks
I’ve written before about the impact the long-defunct Orion Crime Masterworks series had on my discovery of classic-era crime and detective fiction, and a recent pruning of my shelves brought back to...
View Article#1199: “There was undoubtedly method in the old boy’s madness…”– The Punch...
I have in the past referred to The Punch and Judy Murders, a.k.a. The Magic Lantern Murders (1936) — the fifth book to feature Sir Henry ‘H.M.’ Merrivale under John Dickson Carr’s Carter Dickson nom de...
View Article#1168: Patrick Butler for the Defence (1956) by John Dickson Carr
It is perhaps fitting — though, I assure you, completely accidental — that a locked room murder in a novel by John Dickson Carr, doyen of the apparently undoable nevertheless rationally explained, is...
View Article#1162: “Front door locked on the inside, Johnny…”– The Art of the Impossible,...
Having previously looked at the first ten stories in this collection of impossible crime tales selected by Jack Adrian and Robert Adey, let’s crack on with the final eleven stories, shall we? I did not...
View Article#1161: “Who was murdered? When? How? Why?”– The Art of the Impossible, a.k.a....
In a bizarre turn of events, I have no memory of acquiring the much-sought-after anthology The Art of the Impossible, a.k.a. Murder Impossible (1990) edited by the legendary pairing of Jack Adrian and...
View Article#1135: “Don’t be so infernally bloodthirsty!”– Who Killed Father Christmas?...
Astoundingly, Who Killed Father Christmas? (2023) is the fifth collection of seasonal mysteries collated by Martin Edwards for the British Library Crime Classics range. And, with the BL kind enough to...
View Article#1130: The Red Widow Murders (1935) by John Dickson Carr [a.p.a. by Carter...
I’ve written previously about The Red Widow Murders (1935) — John Dickson Carr’s first take on the Room That Kills, originally published under his Carter Dickson nom de plume — but this American...
View Article#1106: Captain Cut-Throat (1955) by John Dickson Carr
Just as you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, don’t judge Captain Cut-Throat (1955) — John Dickson Carr’s breathless tale of Napoleonic-era espionage and swagger — by its first chapter. The opening...
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#1044: To Foe of Theirs I’m Deadly Foe…– My Ten Favourite Literary Detectives
Perhaps April Fool’s Day isn’t the best scheduling of this post, but the recent experience of dragging my way through Helen Vardon’s Confession (1922) by R. Austin Freeman got me thinking about the...
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#1018: “If it’s a new wrinkle in the art of homicide, I want to know all...
It speaks volumes about the excitement that the work of John Dickson Carr provokes in me that, with still around 20 of his novels unread, I’m revisiting some favourite titles from his output. Of...
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#1000: A Locked Room Library – One Hundred Recommended Books
In the back of my mind when I started The Invisible Event was the idea that exactly half of what I’d post about would feature impossible crimes, locked room mysteries, and/or miracle problems — and...
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