Three Mysteries by Miles Burton

Miles Burton has been more miss than hit with me yet when I see his books I usually borrow them. Recently, I was lucky to find three of his lesser-known titles. Where is Barbara Prentice? When a police officer finds part of a fur coat wrapped around the buffer of an engine, he is bewildered …

Women and War: E.C.R. Lorac’s Relative to Poison (1947)

The Ministry of Labour "directed" workpeople; her own daughters "registered" and performed strange tasks in strange uniforms. They "fire-watched", drove ambulances, ran rest centres - they were not their mistresses any longer. A new range of expressions like "points", "basic", "under the counter", "off the ration" developed. Elspeth Carndale is in a dillema. Her husband …

Forgotten Book: Close Quarters by Michael Gilbert

Of late, writer and lawyer, Michael Gilbert has been a lot over the blogosphere. Yvette @insomanywords did a series of posts on him and then Margot Kinberg @ Confessions of a Mustery Novelist turned the spotlight on his first novel, Close Quarters. Unable to resist any longer, I borrowed Close Quarters from the Open Library and found …

The #1947 Club: Death in the Wrong Room by Anthony Gilbert

Anthony Gilbert is the pseudonym of Lucy Beatrice Malleson (1899-1973), member of the Detection Club and author of some seventy novels, a majority of which feature Arthur Crook, a lawyer from London, whom Gilbert deliberately created, in 1936, as a foil to the aristocratic amateur detectives who dominated the literary crime scene at the time.Death …

1st september: War and Crime

The second world war is generally said to have began on this date in 1939. This year I have been reading quite a few mysteries that have the war setting the context of the novel. Elizabeth Farrars' Murder Among Friends which is set in London during the time of Blitz has already been reviewed. Here …

Tuesday’s Overlooked Film: The Web (1947)

An old man, Leopold Kroner (Fritz Leiber, Sr.- father of SF writer Fritz Leiber) walks out of jail where he had spent five years on charges of embezzlement. He is greeted by his daughter Martha (a teary-eyed Maria Palmer) but is surprised that a certain Mr.Colby is not there. The old man's surprise (and anguish) …

FFB: The Whispering House by Margaret Erskine

Finch felt the hair stirring at the back of his neck. There had been something so unnatural, so - abominable was the word that leapt to his mind - in that tall elegant figure that he stood frozen. The dark silent house, the beleaguering trees, the sense of utter solitude, the corpse-white face at the …