Tangled Yarns
Where GAD is reviewed, analyzed, and connected. Hopefully.
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“Tom Sawyer, Detective” by Mark Twain
As happens with more of the books I review here than I like, this was not the book I had planned to read following Erasure by Percival Everett, which I picked up having seen its recent (and very good) film adaptation American Fiction in theaters back in January. (By the way, I wholeheartedly recommend both…
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“About the Murder of the Night Club Lady” by Anthony Abbot
The Van Dine school of detective fiction holds a special, albeit curious interest for me. I find much of it flawed, what with its thinner-than-paper characterization, often annoying detective figures, and sleep-inducing pacing. Yet somehow, the sum of its parts is much, much greater than the whole. Although I would argue that only about two-thirds…
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“The Lost Gallows” by John Dickson Carr
Perhaps this has something to do with my more chronic book slump that’s been afflicting me since around November, but for the first time since I actually started to explore John Dickson Carr’s novels, I’ve been unenthusiastic to start one. This one, to be specific. I’ve searched within my soul to try and figure out…
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“Swan Song” by Edmund Crispin
I have tried for so long to get into opera. So much of it is beautiful music, and there are so many engrossing stories to tell. But there are only a select few works – Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Ravel’s L’Enfant et les sortilèges, and Adams’ Nixon in China to name some – that have actually…
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“The Night of the Hunter” by Davis Grubb
I usually try to read the book before I watch the movie. It used to be more of a steadfast rule I kept for myself, but these days I’m a lot more lax about it. I made sure to pore over every page before watching the film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings, No…
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“The Mystery of the Yellow Room” by Gaston Leroux
The Hollow Man. Rim of the Pit. The Mystery of the Yellow Room. For connoisseurs of locked-room mysteries and impossible crime fiction in general, this trio of novels has gained a reputation and mystique ever since they were listed as the 3 greatest locked-room mysteries of all time in the famous 1981 poll of GAD…
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“The Big Sleep” by Raymond Chandler
For someone who is so enamored by the rigorous plotting and cluing of fair-play whodunits and impossible-crime mysteries, I honestly surprise myself at how receptive I am to detective stories in the hardboiled, private-eye genre. One of the few mysteries that I really enjoyed between the end of my grade-school Christie binge and my rediscovery…
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“When the Wind Blows” by Cyril Hare
(Also published as The Wind Blows Death.) I couldn’t really tell you why, but for some reason I almost dreaded having to read this book. I know it sounds absolutely silly, but I think there may have been a couple subconscious reasons why I kept putting this off from the time I bought it until…
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“Whistle Up the Devil” by Derek Smith
There are some books that you hear so much about over time — so much praise, so much discussion, and occasionally, so much critique — that in saving this book to read at some distant point in the future, its many possibilities and outcomes fester and linger in your mind. You hear that a book…
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“Hamlet, Revenge!” by Michael Innes
The murder-on-stage is one of those favorite, time-tested tropes of the mystery genre. Ngaio Marsh was probably the most famous author to develop it, beginning with her second novel Enter a Murderer and continuing through the several theatrically-set mysteries she became especially famous for. Impossible crimes happening during a production of a play have become…
Next on the Blog:
- Heir Presumptive by Henry Wade
Agatha Christie American Mystery Classics Anthony Boucher British Library Crime Classics Captain Leopold Christianna Brand Clayton Rawson Cool and Lam Cornell Woolrich Dr. Fell Dr. Sam Hawthorne Edward D. Hoch Ellery Queen Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine Erle Stanley Gardner Fergus O'Breen Films Freeman Wills Crofts Henri Bencolin Humdrum Impossible Crime Inspector Cockrill Inspector French Inspector Morse Inspector Wexford Inverted James Scott Byrnside Jeffery Rand Jerrold Phaon John Dickson Carr John Rhode Joseph Spector Musical Mysteries New Horizons Challenge Nick Velvet Noir Reviews Ruth Rendell S. S. Van Dine Short Stories Sir Henry Merrivale Stephen King Superintendent Battle Tom Mead Uncategorized
“You are your life, and nothing else.”
– Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit
Waiting in the Wings:
- The Mill House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji
- Night of the Jabberwock by Fredric Brown
- Death and the Gilded Man by Carter Dickson
- The Case of the Shoplifter’s Shoe by Erle Stanley Gardner
- Death at the Opera by Gladys Mitchell
- Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley
Be on the lookout for: “The Many Hats of John Dickson Carr,” my first long-form essay!
Tangled Yarns 