A Lord Peter Wimsey mystery! And so mysterious there were quite a few bits I didn’t understand. That could possibly be because I know precious little about bell ringing. The one thing I know about bell ringing didn’t turn up until fairly late in the piece, and I’m not going ...
"You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me." C.S. Lewis
Est. 2009
Another solid detective novel, set in Sydney and this time tied up with the Sydney Harbour Bridge. We get to see a little bit of history of the construction of the Bridge and that gives us a date for the setting of this book. We’re told this book is set ...
Ngaio Marsh was born in Christchurch, New Zealand. She is one of the Queens of Crime along with other wonderful writers such as Agatha Christie. She was supposedly born in 1895 but as her father didn’t register her birth until 1900 that is uncertain. This was a common occurrence for ...
This is a two for the price of one book. At less than 300 pages for the two books they’re both fairly short, but Simenon was very good with words. He managed to make few words feel like many. What I found interesting is that each book was translated by ...
I read this book many years ago. I didn’t actually remember reading it until I was a little way in. And I wasn’t sure about this until the murderer was revealed. That is how long ago it was. I bought this book from a friend who was moving and I ...
You may have heard of the series of TV movies with Rowan Atkinson in the starring role of Maigret. This book is one of the series of books written by Georges Simenon with Chief-Inspector Maigret as our protagonist. They have been translated from the French, this title was translated by ...
One of those books I picked up, without the song, at Continuum last year. I also used it for the Dymocks Reading Challenge 2020 for the Book with a colour in the title category. ‘Continuum is Melbourne’s annual fan run speculative fiction and pop culture convention’, I reckon it’s aimed ...
Picked this from my TBR Pile for the Dymocks Reading Challenge 2020 for the ‘A Book of Short Stories’ category. I knew it wouldn’t disappoint. I’ve been reading Peter Haining for much longer than I care to remember, he is the best when it comes to collections of short stories. ...
First published in 1927 and recommended to me by one of my classmates at uni, Dashiell Hammett is an icon in hard boiled detective novels. When you read his books you get a really good idea of how people must have spoken in those days and places. I won’t say ...
This is one of those phenomenal books that is actually good. I know I’ve read the translation but a good translation is going to be as good as the original rather than better, and this is very good. Having finally read it, only ten years after the translation was published, ...
I do enjoy a good murder mystery and I’m rather fond of cats. Not so fond of siamese cats as they tend to be rather more demanding than tabbies but as I’m not the one looking after these cats I’m happy. Don’t ask me why I’m talking about looking after ...
I’ve read Alan Gold before and found him a good read, this book was no different. Paired up with Mikes Jones Gold has produced a book which kept me spellbound. It’s set in Israel and opens us up to a whole new world of conspiracy theories. Unfortunately, I can see ...
If you’ve been around long enough you might possibly know that I’m in love with pulp magazines and have been since as far back as I can remember. It’s a love affair that shows in so many magazines on my shelf which include two I bought from the newsstand in ...
This was first published in 1940 using the pseudonym Raymond Marshall, and published again in 1961 with the name James Hadley Chase to bring it under the name where he did most of his writing. Neither of these were his real name. René Lodge Brabazon Raymond was his real name, but we all know him ...
The title of this book refers to The Monkey’s Mask by Dorothy Porter, a hard-boiled detective book written in poetry rather than prose. I’m not saying this book is poetical as it’s written in prose but it’s just a nod to the Porter book. Having said that there’s a quote from ...