Poisoned Pen Press
An Unconventional Christmas Novel by an Unconventional Writer
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The Christmas Egg, first published in 1958, is an unconventional Christmas crime novel by an unconventional writer. Mary Kelly was one of the most talented British novelists to write crime fiction in the post-war era, coming to the fore just before P.D. James and Ruth Rendell appeared on the scene. Having risen rapidly to the…
The Mysterious Mr. Badman Is A Masterpiece of Macabre Humor
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The Mysterious Mr. Badman is a long-forgotten but entertaining crime novel, its light-heartedness all the more unexpected given the author’s reputation as a master of the macabre. The teasing tone is set right from the start, in the opening sentence: “When at two o’clock on a sultry July afternoon Athelstan Digby undertook to keep an…
All the (Crime) World’s a Stage: The Irresistible Pairing of Mysteries and the Theater
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Crime writers utilize an extraordinarily wide range of back-grounds for their stories, but the stage is one of the most popular of them all. Stories set in—or connected with—the theatre, concert halls, or similar venues have entertained readers since the nineteenth century, and there is no sign of this changing. One of the main strengths…
On The Rise, Fall, and Seemingly Inexplicable Appeal of Golden-Age Sleuth Philo Vance
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Philo Vance—the creation of Willard Huntington Wright, writing as S. S. Van Dine—first appeared in 1926 and overnight became an American publishing phenomenon. Vance appeared in twelve novels and seventeen films, and was so successful and well-known that genre historian J. K. Van Dover declared that by 1930, “Philo Vance was the American detective.” Van…
The Orchestral Stirrings of Death on the Down Beat, a Musician’s Murder Mystery
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Death on the Down Beat, originally published in 1941, is subtitled “An Orchestral Fantasy of Detection.” This is a highly unusual detective novel which is likely to appeal particularly to music lovers. A rare and little-known novel, it has nevertheless been described by the Golden Age mystery aficionado Barry Pike in The Oxford Companion to…
The White Priory Murders, A Christmas Mystery That Deserves To Be Remembered
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The White Priory Murders is an “impossible crime” novel by the master of the locked-room mystery, John Dickson Carr, masquerading as Carter Dickson, the name associated with his stories featuring Sir Henry Merrivale. Originally published in 1934, this was Merrivale’s second recorded case, written with youthful verve at a time when the author was still…
There’s Nothing Better Than A Good Bad Guy
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“The more successful the villain, the more successful the picture.” —Alfred Hitchcock Let’s start with the simple assertion that all great fiction is crime fiction. From classic Greek tragedies to Shakespeare’s plays to film noir, To Kill A Mockingbird, Lord of The Rings or Stars Wars or Game of Thrones—something has been stolen, someone has…