(It’s L. A.) : Nicholas Ray – “In a Lonely Place”

Out of Alfred Hitchcock’s canonized classics, I am most skeptical of Suspicion, a great movie betrayed by its ending. All the suspense Hitchcock masterfully conjures dissolves into one of the silliest, most abrupt, audience-appeasing “plot twist” finales ever. It amounts to “it was all a dream," negating the importance of all previous events. Much better …

Some European Thrills

Pushkin Vertigo is an imprint that has been doing a great job of publishing translations of mysteries from Europe and Asia.  The Disappearance of Signora Giulia by Piero Chiara is a great example of what a thoughtful, literary mystery can be in the hands of a great writer. Set near Milan, the novel stars Investigator …

Smiley? More Like Frowny! : John Le Carre : “Call for the Dead” and “A Murder of Quality” (George Smiley #1-2)

David John Moore Cornwell, better known by his spy-novel pseudonym of John le Carre, was easily the most critically acclaimed author of spy fiction, and arguably the most successful this side of Ian Fleming. But the first George Smiley novel, Call for the Dead, is closer to a murder mystery than to the espionage genre …

Detection Selection : Anthony Berkeley _ “The Layton Court Mystery” and “Murder in the Basement”

The Golden Age Detection Club might not have come together if not for Anthony Berkeley, so fundamental in its creation (along with the likes of Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, G. K. Chesterton, and R. Austin Freeman). His main series revolve around a gentleman detective, Roger Sheringham, who also happens to amuse himself as an …

Further Adventures : Mark Twain – “Tom Sawyer Abroad” and “Tom Sawyer Detective”

Well, I didn't expect Mark Twain's neglected Tom Sawyer Abroad (from 1894) to have anything even remotely topical to say, but three pages in, and already we have some philosophizing about the Middle East that might as well come from a 2023 thread. Tom is trying to recruit Huck and Jim into a Crusade to …