Hello readers, I am finally back from taking a rather unexpected break from writing on this blog due to a sudden and apparently long-lasting bout of stomach issues. It was not a pleasant hiatus with a lot of my time spent curled up on the couch or my bed staring at the wall.
I’m pretty behind in posting reviews- I had read several other books for #1937club, such as Think Fast, Mr. Moto, The Busman’s Holiday, and The Case of the Seven of Calvary, which I guess I’ll just post while I’m on vacation in May.
I also have upcoming reviews of Elephants Can Remember, Death of Jezebel, and The Maid, which were all scheduled to come out in late April, that are in the works. I really hate being this far behind, but that’s the way life is sometimes.
I thought I’d dip my toe back into the blogging waters by talking about the books I added to my collection in April and why I’m looking forward to reading them.
April 2024 Purchases
A Botanists Guide to Parties and Poisons by Kate Khavari
I think the cover of this book is so alluring and pretty with the flowers and the dark teal background. After reading A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie, which details the use of poisons in real life and the works of Agatha Christie, I have found a real apreaciation for writers who work these deadly and complex substances into their mysteries well. I have heard mixed reviews of the series but am keen to try it.
Due to a Death by Mary Kelly
Technically this was a gift from my husband, but since all our purchases come from the same pot, I’m counting it as a purchase.
Amazon synopsis:
A car speeds down a road between miles of marshes and estuary flats, its passenger a young woman named Agnes—hands bloodied, number with fear, her world turned upside down.
Meanwhile, the news of a girl found dead on the marsh is spreading round the local area, panic following in its wake. A masterpiece of suspense, Mary Kelly’s 1962 novel follows Agnes as she casts her mind back through the past few days to find the links between her husband, his friends, a mysterious stranger new to the village, and a case of unexplained death.
I mean… the synopsis alone hooked me. What the hell is going on with Agnes, coupled with bleak cover I am intrigued. who is the dead woman, did Agnes kill her, does she know too much? I’m getting really great hitchcockian noir vibes from this British Library Crime Classic.
Mary Kelly is a new to me author and Due to a Death seems like a fantastic introduction to her work.
The Bloody Moonlight by Frederic Brown
I am a fan of Frederic Brown’s science fiction, and The Bloody Moonlight appears to be a perfect blend of mystery, science fiction, and horror.
The Bloody Moonlight is the third book in the Ed Hunter and Uncle Am series. The duo is currently employed by the Ben Starlock Agency in their latest adventure, the third installment of their series. Their latest case intertwines an ingenious inventor who claims to have developed an interstellar radio receiver, a curious female investor eager to verify his alleged communications with Mars, and a series of ominous murders, possibly linked to the lore of a lurking werewolf.
Honestly, this sounds like a fantastic, schlocky B or C-grade horror movie that would be featured on an MST3K episode. My husband and I are fighting over who gets to read it first!
Death of a Frightened Editor by E. Radford and M.A. Radford
I bought this book because it had cats on the cover AND because I worked as a freelance editor after college, so it hit a nostalgic button. I’m sure my clients would have loved to poison me, like the protagonist in this book, Alexis Mortensen. The synopsis really ticks all the boxes for me: a mysterious poisoning, train travel, a closed circle of suspects.
Death of a Frightened Editor really makes me yearn for train travel to be more integrated into American life. I wish could read this while whizzing along to some far-flung destination in the American West. However, I’ll probably read this while traveling home to Detroit in a tiny plane with 5000 of my closest strangers.
Agatha Christie: A Woman and Her Mysteries by Gillian Gill
I’m an avid reader of biographies, so I picked this up because it’s a biography of Agatha Christie I don’t already own. As the Amazon synopsis suggests, I’m curious to find out if this is a complete biography of her life or is centered around her disappearance. There has been a lot of renewed interest in Christie’s life with fictionalized accounts of this period of her life being created as entertainment and new smash hit books.
I’ll confess that I don’t find her disappearance very intriguing. It was obviously a very emotionally distraught period due to her husband’s affair, and she was going through some intense emotions and wanted privacy. If the book is mainly about speculating about this time in her life, I’ll probably stop reading it.
The Problem of the Wire Cage by John Dickson Carr
Growing up my cousin and Aunt were avid tennis players and watched many matches on TV. They spent hours playing at their country club and I…mostly watched them because I was, frankly terrible at the game. They gave up any delusions that I too could join them on the court after I broke two windows while “practicing” with them in their backyard.
However, that’s not to say I don’t have a lot of nostalgia surrounding tennis and when I saw this newish release of American Mystery Classics of The Problem of the Wire Cage I was instantly transported to my youth, where under the baking sun, I too probably wished for a murder to liven things up after day 3 of a 4 day tennis tournament.
The Problem of the Wire Cage has all of Carr’s usual tricks: a “impossible crime” a lack of clues and of course Dr. Gideon Fell. The strange positioning of the body and lack of clues to explain the death reminds me of the Ellery Queen classic The Spanish Cape Mystery which I loved reading.
The Mystery of the Cape Cod Players by Phoebe Atwood Taylor
One of my favorite reads of 2023 was The Cape Cod Mystery by Phoebe Atwood Taylor, and I have been impatiently waiting for its release.
This book hits all of my nostalgia buttons- my grandfather is from Cape Cod, and we frequently visit his old stomping grounds over the summer. On one particular ill-fated visit, my sister was bit in the face by a dog and needed stitches, and I had mononucleosis and threw up every five minutes.
Family memories…
While I was not a tennis prodigy, I was good at theatre and spent most of my summers working at amateur theatre companies as either a player or a backstage manager, so The Mystery of the Cape Cod Players and their ill-fated production bring me both joy and dread.
The only real drawback of this book is that its victim is a magician, and I really hate magic—in books and real life.
Dead on Time and Midsummer Mystery by Clifford Witting
I originally bought Midsummer Mystery by Clifford Witting because it’s befitting this time of year and I am planning to get it out in June close to midsummer. I noticed that it was the second book of the Inspector Harry Charlton series so I went back and bought the first Dead on Time just in case I needed to read them in series order.
Final Acts: Theatrical Mysteries edited Martin Edwards
Final Acts a collection of short story mysteries set in the theatre is going to be my traveling companion while visiting the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon during the month of July. While my husband will be digging away in the wild for his field season, I’ll be visiting family and seeing Coriolanus and Much Ado about Nothing.
I have visions of reading these short stories of murder and mayhem and am looking forward to the selection made my the esteemed Martin Edwards.
The Maid and the The Mystery Guest by Nita Prose
In 2022, I attended a roundtable where Nita Prose and her fellow Edgar Award finalists spoke about their books and writing processes, and I was immediately intrigued. The Maid had been on my library wish list for many months and was one of my must-reads for 2023.
Well, the second half of 2023 didn’t really go to plan, with my mother moving in with me after losing her job and housing and then my grandmother slowly dying from breast cancer and needing around-the-clock care. I took several months off from the blog, helped my mom settle into her own place and get a new job, left home to live with my grandparents, and helped care for my grandmother until she passed.
Needless to say, I never got around to reading The Maid.
However, I saw it on sale for Kindle for $1.99 and snapped it up. I think in the intervening 18 months since I went to that roundtable, I forgot the actual plot of the book: namely, an autistic woman dealing with the death (from cancer) of her protective and loving grandmother finds herself caught up in the death of one of the wealthiest patrons at the hotel she works at. Easily manipulated and taken advantage of, Molly, the maid, must clear her name and find the killer.
The Maid has been a slow, laborious, cathartic read that has really brought to the fore a lot of the emotions I hadn’t dealt with surrounding my own grief about my grandmother’s passing. I’m struggling to stay motivated to read this book, and I have so much compassion for Molly and so much anger towards the people manipulating her.
I bought the second book in the series to tell my brain that everything will work out okay for Molly and maybe by extension, everything will be okay for me too.
I only borrowed a few books from the library; they all have reviews! That’s a win, given how April sort of spiraled out of control.
Library Loot
Crook O Lune Goodreads synopsis:
Renowned for its authentic characters and settings based partly on the author’s own experiences of life in the Lune Valley, E. C. R. Lorac’s classic rural mystery returns to print for the first time since 1953. This edition includes an introduction by award-winning author Martin Edwards. “I’m minded of the way a fire spreads in dry bracken when we burn it off the tongues of flame this way and that—tis human tongues and words that’s creeping like flames in brushwood.” It all began up at High Gimmerdale with the sheep-stealing, a hateful act in the shepherding fells above the bend in the Lune River—the Crook o’ Lune. Then came the fire at Aikengill house and with the leaping of the flames, death, disorder, and dangerous gossip came to the quiet moorlands. Visiting his friends, the Hoggetts, while searching for some farmland to buy up ahead of his retirement, Chief Inspector Robert Macdonald’s trip becomes a busman’s holiday when he is drawn to investigate the deadly blaze and the deep-rooted motives behind the rising spate of crimes.
Death of an Author Goodreads synopsis:
‘I hate murders and I hate murderers, but I must admit that the discovery of a bearded corpse would give a fillip to my jaded mind.’ Vivian Lestrange – celebrated author of the popular mystery novel The Charterhouse Case and total recluse – has apparently dropped off the face of the Earth. Reported missing by his secretary Eleanor, whom Inspector Bond suspects to be the author herself, it appears that crime and murder is afoot when Lestrange’s housekeeper is also found to have disappeared. Bond and Warner of Scotland Yard set to work to investigate a murder with no body and a potentially fictional victim, as E C R Lorac spins a twisting tale full of wry humour and red herrings, poking some fun at her contemporary reviewers who long suspected the Lorac pseudonym to belong to a man (since a woman could apparently not have written mysteries the way that she did).Incredibly rare today, this mystery returns to print for the first time since 1935.
Murder in E Minor Goodreads synopsis:
Iconic sleuth Nero Wolfe returns to track down the murderer of a New York Symphony Orchestra conductor in this Nero Award–winning mystery. Ever since disgraced associate Orrie Cather’s suicide, armchair detective Nero Wolfe has relished retirement in his Manhattan brownstone on West Thirty-Fifth Street. Two years after Cather’s death, only a visit from Maria Radovich—and the urging of Wolfe’s prize assistant, Archie Goodwin—could draw the eccentric and reclusive genius back into business. Maria’s uncle, New York Symphony Orchestra conductor Milan Stevens, formerly known as Milos Stefanovic, spent his youth alongside Wolfe as a fellow freedom fighter in the mountains of Montenegro. And now that the maestro has been receiving death threats, Wolfe can’t turn his back on the compatriot who once saved his life. Though her uncle has dismissed the menacing letters, Maria fears they’re more than the work of a harmless crank. But before Wolfe can attack the case, Stevens is murdered. The accused is the orchestra’s lead violinist, whose intimate relationship with Maria hit more than a few sour notes in her uncle’s professional circle. But Wolfe knows that when it comes to murder, nothing is so simple—especially when there are so many suspects, from newspaper critics and ex-lovers to an assortment of shady musicians. Now, in this award-winning novel that carries on the great tradition of Rex Stout, the irascible and immovable Nero Wolfe is back in the game, listening for clues and ready to go to war to find a killer. Murder in E Minor is the 48th book in the Nero Wolfe Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allen Poe Goodreads synopsis:
“The Purloined Letter” is a story by American author Edgar Allan Poe. It is the third of his three detective stories featuring the fictional C. Auguste Dupin, the other two being “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt”. These stories are considered to be important early forerunners of the modern detective story. The narrator is discussing with the famous Parisian amateur detective C. Auguste Dupin some of his most celebrated cases when they are joined by the Prefect of the Police, a man known as G—. The Prefect has a case he would like to discuss with Dupin. A letter has been stolen from the boudoir of an unnamed woman by the unscrupulous Minister D—. It is said to contain compromising information. D— was in the room, saw the letter, and switched it for a letter of no importance. He has been blackmailing his victim.
I have to say, I really enjoyed collecting new authors this month and seem to have been picking books that really hit my nostalgia buttons. It’s always interesting to see what motivates monthly purchases—which I think at the time are random, but sometimes themes jump out.
Golden Age of Detective Fiction 
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