Golden Age of Detective Fiction

Goodreads synopsis:

A dead body is found near the estuary of a river. Here the country detective works his way throught a maze of conflicting clues and captures the murderer whithout calling in Scotland Yard.
The plot is distinctly original and is well handled. A classic worth rediscovering from the Golden Age of Detection

Goodreads synopsis:

An isolated country house sets the scene for a wartime mystery from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author known as the American Agatha Christie.   As far as Carol Spencer is concerned, the war has spoiled everything. She and Don had been engaged for years and were on the verge of marriage when he was shot down in the South Pacific, leaving Carol on the verge of spinsterhood at twenty-four. She wants to take some kind of job in the war effort, but her invalid mother demands that Carol accompany her to the family’s summer home in Maine. But when they arrive at the faded mansion, they find it completely locked up. The servants are gone, the lights are dark—and there is a body in the closet. There is a killer on the grounds of the abandoned Spencer estate, and the police believe it is Carol. As war rages across the seas, Carol Spencer fights a private battle of her own—to prove her own innocence, and to save her mother’s life. 

Goodreads synopsis:

Welcome to the first exciting volume in the ‘Death in Paradise’ series.

Aslan Kennedy has an idyllic life as leader of a spiritual retreat for wealthy holidaymakers on one of the Caribbean’s most unspoiled islands, Saint Marie. Until he’s murdered, that is. The case seems open and shut. Aslan was killed inside a locked room with only five other people, one of whom has already confessed.

Detective Inspector Richard Poole is hot, bothered, and fed up with talking to witnesses who’d rather discuss his ‘aura’ than their whereabouts at the time of the murder. But he also knows that the facts of the case don’t quite stack up. In fact, he’s convinced that the person who’s just confessed to the murder is the one person who couldn’t have done it.

Determined to track down the real killer, Poole is soon on the trail and he won’t leave any stone unturned

Goodreads synopsis:

In the heat of a Central American summer, Miss Withers investigates murder on the Mexico Express
Oscar Piper doesn’t belong on Mexican trains. A New York City detective, he’s in the Dominican Republic as part of an international delegation come to cut the ribbon on a new transcontinental highway. This grants him the honor of a trip to Mexico City on the hottest, dustiest train in North America—a crowded slow coach that’s about to become a crime scene. The alderman’s wife does not know how the bottle of Elixir d’Amour got into her bag. She only knows that when the porter smelled it, he dropped dead. She seems to have been the intended target for the poisoned perfume—but who would want to kill a corrupt politician’s trophy wife? Oscar sends a wire to his friend Hildegarde Withers, a schoolteacher and amateur sleuth, whom he knows will not wilt in the Mexican heat. Before she begins her investigation, she has only one “¿ Cómo se dice ‘murder’?”  The Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla is part of the Hildegarde Withers Mysteries series, which also includes The Penguin Pool Murder and Murder on the Blackboard .

Goodreads synopsis:

The second Dorothy L. Sayers classic to feature mystery writer Harriet Vane, Have His Carcase. Harriet’s discovery of a murdered body on the beach before it is swept out to sea unites her once more with the indomitable Lord Peter Wimsey, as together they attempt to solve a most lethal mystery, and find themselves become much closer than mere sleuthing partners in the process

Goodreads synopsis:

While driving a motorboat around the Twin Lakes, Nancy and her friend Helen get caught in a dangerous storm. Luckily, they are rescued by another teenage girl in a rowboat. They soon learn that their rescuer is Laura Pendleton, whose mother has recently having passed away. Laura has come to meet up with her new guardians, but something isn’t quite right about them. Nancy investigates the situation, and soon she stumbles upon a shocking surprise in the cellar of a bungalow!

Goodreads synopsis:

John J. Malone, defender of the guilty, is notorious for getting his culpable clients off. It’s the innocent ones who are problems. Like Holly Inglehart, accused of piercing the black heart of her well-heeled and tyrannical aunt Alexandria with a lovely Florentine paper cutter. No one who knew the old battle-ax liked her, but Holly’s prints were found on the murder weapon. Plus, she had a motive: She was about to be disinherited for marrying a common bandleader.

With each new lurid headline, Holly’s friends and supporters start to rally. There’s North Shore debutante Helene Brand; Holly’s groom’s press agent, Jake Justus; the madam of a local brothel, and Alexandria’s hand-wringing servants. But not one of them can explain the queerest bent to the crime: At the time of the murder, every clock in the Inglehart mansion stopped dead. And that’s only the first twist in a baffling case of “aunty-cide”—because Alexandria won’t be the last to die.

The first novel in Rice’s John J. Malone series, Eight Faces at Three introduces the hard-drinking Chicago-based attorney that made the author a household name. Comic, witty, and lush, the Malone books are a throwback to a time when alcoholism was commonplace and murder (or, reading about murder) was fun. Fans of Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man series and Richard and Frances Lockridge’s Mr. and Mrs. North will find much to enjoy in the witty banter of Malone and his constant companions, Brand and Justus.

Goodreads synopsis:

The body of a brilliant woman journalist is recovered from the wreck of a burning car. It is soon discovered that the smash did not kill her; she was dead already, shot by a Browning automatic that was found near by. Superintendent Mitchell, with the help of Owen, a young University graduate turned policeman, follows the enigmatic clues backwards and forwards between a furrier, a picture dealer, and the establishment of a fanatical sunbathing enthusiast.

Then dramatically the story begins to repeat itself, as the persistently recurring figure of an old lag who calls himself ‘Bobs-the-boy’ carries another body out into the night.

Death Among The Sunbathers is the second of E.R. Punshon’s acclaimed Bobby Owen mysteries, first published in 1934 and part of a series which eventually spanned thirty-five novels.

This edition features a new introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

Goodreads synopsis:

After a body is found on a Florida fishing boat, a vacationing PI and his wife must cast a wide net . . .

After Capt. Cy Martingale’s boat is docked in Key West, a passenger is left behind–not just dead drunk, but dead. Pat and Jean Abbott are in town for some rest and relaxation, but the captain is a friend and he wants their help. Unfortunately, what he wants help with is getting rid of the body, since he doesn’t really trust the local police.

Pat Abbott is not about to be an accessory to murder, so he turns to another kind of captain: his friend on the force in New Orleans. They’ll have to debate their theories of the case before they can reel in the killer . . .

Goodreads synopsis:

The journey of the Mexico City-bound Pullman seems ill-fated from the outset — what with the engine troubles and the threat of an impending railway strike — but no one aboard expects the terror that will descend upon the luxury train between Laredo and its destination. First a man dies as the vehicle passes through a dark tunnel and then, just as United States Customs Agent Hugh Rennert begins to investigate, the train comes to a screeching halt in the middle of the desert.

More deaths follow as night falls, and when it becomes clear that a murderer is on the loose, the stationary cars transform into an isolated hall of horrors. The varied and intriguing cast of passengers begins to panic, but Rennert remains calm and collected, untangling the web of motives in a desperate search for the culprit. Will he be able to unmask the killer before the voyage ends?

A suspenseful whodunnit that charts a path through the Mexican wilderness, Vultures in the Sky highlights the best aspects of the Golden Age mystery, mixing classical detective work with a tense, closed-circle setting. The third novel in Todd Downing’s Hugh Rennert series (which can be enjoyed in any order), it shows an undeservedly forgotten author working at the top of his craft.