In the second Lord Peter/Harriet Vane case, a walking tour of the English coast hardly goes according to plan when Miss Vane, mystery writer and once accused murderess, stumbles across a body on the beach. Exonerated of the poisoning murder of her former lover, Harriet is vacationing far from London… Read more
London, 1929 Miss Harriet Vane is on trial for murder. It's a most scandalous case. The victim, Philip Boyes, was not only an author who advocated free love and anarchy—he was the accused murderer's lover for more than a year. But following a nasty split, Boyes started falling ill, and… Read more
When Harriet Vane receives an invitation to attend her Oxford Gaudy — a class reunion — she's also given a most unusual request from her old professors. A poison pen is running amok at the ladies' college of Shrewsbury and the dons are terrified that the nasty notes, malicious vandalism,… Read more
In March 1980, Jon L. Breen wrote in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, “The reputation of S.S. Van Dine, creator of Philo Vance and once the most famous American writer of detective stories, has sadly slipped in recent years, not entirely deservedly.” Now, thirty-five years after Mr. Breen’s column and seventy-six… Read more
The Edwin Drood Murders by Christopher Lord is the second book in the Dickens Junction Mystery series featuring bookstore owner and Charles Dickens scholar Simon Alastair and his partner, journalist Zach Benjamin (available September 24). I’m a fan of Charles Dickens, but really didn’t have much prior knowledge about The… Read more
Funny how age changes your view of a book. I’m thinking specifically of Trent’s Last Case, the famous detective novel published in 1913 by E.C. Bentley, and how my view of it has flipped between two readings 35 years apart. As a teenager of 14 or 15, when I first… Read more
Who says modern pop stars don’t appreciate the classics? Singer Leona Lewis celebrated her 27th birthday at a country house outside London with a posh, 1920s-themed murder mystery weekend, and we’re officially green with jealousy. Joining her were family and friends, including Keisha Buchanan, formerly (to-be-again?) of pop group Sugababes,… Read more
In this special Halloween edition of Pulp in the Wild, we feature John Dickson Carr, aka John Dickson, Carter Dickson, and J.D. Carr. The Corpse in the Waxworks is one of his less-celebrated novels with his less-celebrated sleuth Henri Bencolin. While lacking Dr. Fell or Sir Henry Merrivale, it does… Read more
I count myself fortunate to hang my hat in a city that’s home to three very large used bookstores. They stock a bunch of other stuff and they actually bill themselves as entertainment exchanges, but for my money they’re just big buildings full of enough used books to make you… Read more
Crime novel critic Kiyoshi Kasai focuses in his books on “orthodox” detective novels, which refer to the Golden Age detective novels in the Christie-Queen-Carr tradition. He identifies three distinct “waves” in the development of the orthodox detective novels in Japan , the first (1920-1940s) being the one represented by Edogawa… Read more
