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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…