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Dorothy Bowers and Women’s Worlds
We are delighted to see not just one, but TWO reviews of Dorothy Bowers’ work by golden age crime fiction historian Curtis Evans on his blog The Passing Tramp, for Fear for Miss Betony, and The Bells...
View ArticleFavourite Vintage Mystery Blogs
Pretty Sinister The Passing Tramp Do you Write under Your own Name? In Search of the Classic Mystery Blog Crossing Examining Crime Beneath the Stains of Time Mystery*File Ah Sweet Mystery Blog The...
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Bibliomysteries
One of the lovely thing about murder mysteries is that sub-genres abound that cater to every taste. Bibliomysteries are a category of crime novel concerned with the world of authors, manuscripts, rare...
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The Inspiration for ‘Five to Five’…..The Case of Oscar Slater
Queens Terrace, Glasgow in 1908 On the evening of December 21st, 1908 around 7pm, maidservant Helen Lambie was sent out to fetch the evening paper by her employer Miss Marion Gilchrist, a wealthy...
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The Inspiration for ‘In Muffled Night’….The Sandyford Place Murder
Old James Fleming On July 4th 1862, 33-year-old servant Jess McPherson was discovered dead at her master’s home at 17 Sandyford Place, Glasgow, the victim of forty blows to her head, face and body,...
View ArticleDry Wit and Dry Sherry in ‘Murder at Liberty Hall’
“If you really think they want for a detective a man who has had such a cloistered existence as I have, why then I had better go.” Murder at Liberty Hall (1941) follows social scientist James...
View ArticleFrom Classicist to Crime Writer: the novels of Mary Fitt (Kathleen Freeman)
Kathleen Freeman (1897-1959) was a Greek classicist who had already published scholarly work before her first crime novel appeared in 1936 under the pseudonym Mary Fitt. Her intellectual background...
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Booksellers and Rental Libraries
‘I must try not read this one too quickly otherwise I shall be compelled to pay a second visit to [you] today, just to borrow another book.’ — Customer to bookseller in Seven Clues in Search of a Crime...
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Gothic Mysteries and the Lost English Country House.
My love for the gothic house mystery started in childhood. Our bookshelves were filled with Wilkie Collins, the Brontes, Henry James, Edgar Allan Poe, Du Maurier and yes, Jane Austin — who can forget...
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In Search of Bray-in-the-Marsh
One of the joys of vintage crime novels (aside from the whodunnit) is the glimpse of life from the past. With Bruce Graeme there is the added pleasure that his settings were often real places rather...
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