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So, back in May, I added "The Locked Library," a companion page to "The Muniment Room," which is a permanent, easy to edit update of "The Updated Mammoth List of My Favorite Tales of Locked Murders & Impossible Crimes" – essentially doubles as my version of "99 Novels for a Locked Room...
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Last year, I tried the first of Benjamin Stevenson's Ernest Cunningham novels after some initial skepticism, but Everyone in My Family has Killed Someone (2022) sold me on Benjamin's hilarious, classically-styled meta whodunits and quickly followed it up with Everyone on This Train is a Suspect...
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In 2013, the Breakthrough Bandwagon Books translated and published over half a dozen short stories by MORI Hiroshi, associate professor, engineer and somewhat of an experimental mystery writer, which included two short stories in his popular S&M series, "Sekitō no yane kazan" ("The Rooftop...
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The first, of two, stories making up Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. iff vol. 3, "Three Killers," concern three women, Kurotsu Yui, Okada Miki and Fujishima Akiko, who have all fallen victim to Yamaguchi Senji – president of a predatory investment company ("let them try and sue me"). They all three lost...
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Percy Montgomery "Monte" Barrett was an American author, newspaperman and cartoon writer from Mitchell, Indiana, who co-created with artist Frank Ellis the original "spunky girl reporter" character, Jane Arden – cited as the prototype for similar characters like Lois Lane. More importantly than...
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Last year, James Scott Byrnside published It's About Impossible Crime (2025), a collection of original short stories, in which he paid homage to MacKinlay Kantor's It's About Crime (1960) and radio director William Spier – who worked on The Adventures of Sam Spade and Suspense. Shortly after it's...
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P.J. Fitzsimmons' Foreboding Foretelling at Ficklehouse Felling (2023) is the seventh historical locked room comedy in the Anthony "Anty" Boisjoly series, sporting a title that could have been used for an episode of Scooby Doo, Where Are You!, but "longer and more involved" than previous entries –...
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Theodore Roscoe was an American biographer, historian and one of the finest pulp writers of the day, known for his gripping tales of exotic adventure and thrilling horror that appeared in magazines like Argosy, Adventure and Short Stories, but detective fans know him for his novels Murder on the...
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Val Gielgud, an actor, director and broadcaster, was a pioneer of radio-and television drama at the BBC and served as head for both their drama departments – even directing the first ever drama for British television. Gielgud had a side hustle, writing detective and thriller novels, producing a...
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Darwin L. Teilhet was an American journalist, advertising executive, screenwriter and novelist who started out as a mystery writer, authoring seven detective novels from 1931 to 1940, four of which forming a short-lived series – featuring the irrepressible, slightly unhinged Baron von Kaz....
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W.A. Mackenzie was a Scottish poet, journalist, illustrator, editor and writer who served in Belgium, France and Italy during the First World War, where he was awarded the Military Cross for bravery in combat, but committed himself to humanitarian causes when the war ended – serving as...
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The first story from Motohiro Katou's C.M.B. vol. 11, "Phaistos Disc," returns to the two part, two chapter format in which Mau Sugal, the black market broker, invites Sakaki Shinra and Nanase Tatsuki to her antique shop in Santorini, Greece – one of a dozen shops she has around the world. Sugal...
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Over the years, I picked up a curious collection of so-called genre curiosities, alternative classics and a couple of neglected gems along the trail of obscure, largely forgotten and out-of-print detective novels, but sometimes you find one hiding in plain sight – sporting a surprisingly...