Friday’s Forgotten Book: Miss Jessica’s Stick by Aylmer Hunter (1942)

" There's good stuff in all the Mildmays. And bad stuff too. Either win the V.C. or commit murder." @ebay Jane Carstairs has been through a lot. At the age of 21 while she was all rich and comfortable, her father lost everything on certain dubious speculations. In what was termed a fit of insanity …

Forgotten Book: Black-Out in Gretley by J.B. Priestley (1942)

Already he was somewhere else, muttering explanations in a German I couldn't follow. Suddenly he smiled, as if they were all friends again wherever he was and had begun playing Mozart, and a minute later he was dead.I stared from one to the other of these dead Germans, so far from anything they really understood, …

Forgotten Books: Five Mysteries by Rhode, Rinehart, Jackson, and Vine

Very brief descriptions of five mysteries read at the fag-end of this year.The Murders in Praed Street by John Rhode (1928)A book which begins extremely well as a man receives a call from a hospital to come and identify a body. He reaches there only to be told that no such call had been made …

Three Recommendations

You will all agree that one of the best things about blogging is discovering new authors and books. This year, I read quite a few books that were recommended by fellow bloggers. Here are brief sketches of three such books.FEAR by L. Ron Hubbard (1940)I knew of L. Ron Hubbard as the founder of Scientology …

Forgotten Book: Heads You Lose by Christianna Brand

I first heard of Christianna Brand sometime last year when there was a flurry of posts about her in the blogosphere. Since she was compared to Agatha Christie I was really keen to read her. Finally, this fortnight it did happen. Heads You Lose is her second book and the first that features Inspector Cockrill …

Murder during a Mock Attack: John Rhode’s Night Exercise

Listening there, in tense expectation of the first sudden shot which would tell that the opposing forces had made contact, Ledbury felt a quickening of the pulses. Ridiculous, perhaps, for this was merely an exercise, a mock-battle, in which imagination ruled and much had to be taken for granted. But, after all, it was a …