Ever since I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs. When I was a child, you couldn’t enter our house without catching snippets of Michael Parkinson or Sue Lawley chatting to Joanna Lumley, Eric Clapton, or Princess Michael of Kent about their most treasured pieces of music. As…
When it comes to dramatic death scenes, few screenwriters have surpassed William Shakespeare. He raised that bar sky high four hundred years ago, with demises ranging from the realistically tragic (Ophelia’s drowning in Hamlet) to the action-packed (any of the stirring battles in his history plays), the downright bizarre (Antigonus’ legendary “exit, pursued by a…
Though it has been over four hundred years since William Shakespeare’s death, his works continue to inspire new generations of authors. There’s just something about the Bard, isn’t there? The tragic love of Romeo and Juliet, the darkness of King Lear’s psyche . . . Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets are rife with possibilities for retelling…
Criminal Element is thrilled to welcome author Charles Finch and his longtime editor (and the host of Case Closed, our new podcast series!) Charles Spicer. The two recently sat down to discuss Finch’s newest Charles Lenox mystery The Vanishing Man, Shakespearean London, England’s class system, and the what-ifs of time travel. *** Charles Spicer: Did…
Are people ever truly “evil”? Many people commit evil acts, but are these a sign that the perpetrator is evil, or are their actions so far beyond what civilized people might consider “normal,” that we have to conclude these evildoers are insane? Can we hold the insane responsible for their actions? Are they “evil” or…
Yesterday, in History as Mystery Part I, I explored why I love historical mysteries so much and offered 10 of my absolute favorites as sort of a crash course reading list to get you started. Now that you’re clearly convinced of how great these stories can be, it’s your turn to start exploring topics for…
The Dead Assassin by Vaughn Entwhistle is the 2nd book in the Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle where the author sets out to solve an ill-fated assassination (available June 9, 2015). I am a great fan of Barbara Hambly’s James Asher novels, urban fantasies of Victorian vampires that place the protagonist—a former spy—right in the…
Falstaff might just be Orson Welles’s greatest film. Welles himself thought so, and many among his legion of devoted fans think so. That the film remains largely unseen in America has little bearing on this opinion. In his home country, Welles is still most closely associated with Citizen Kane and The Third Man, but among…
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Meet Your Baker by Ellie Alexander is the debut in the new cozy Bakeshop Mystery series where a recent culinary school grad returns home to help her mother run a bakery (available December 30, 2014). Welcome to Torte—a friendly, small-town family bake shop where the treats are so good that, sometimes, it’s criminal… After graduating…
