Cozy Mystery Fiction
Book Reviews
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George Bellairs was the nom de plume of Harold Blundell (1902–1982), a crime writer and bank manager born in Lancashire. This is the first of his works that I have read. The Dead Shall be Raised was first published in 1942. It begins with London-based Inspector Thomas Littlejohn going to spend a quiet Christmas holiday in the small town of Hatterworth where his Read more
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“The Red-Headed League” was the second Sherlock Holmes short story that John Watson shared with the world (the first was “A Scandal in Bohemia”). It is the story of Jabez Wilson, who comes to consult Sherlock Holmes and Watson. Wilson tells them that some weeks before, his young assistant, Vincent Spaulding, had urged him to respond to a newspaper advertisement by Read more
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IIn my reading life, I have never been far away from Sherlock Holmes. I often and routinely re-read Dr. Watson’s wonderful accounts of the Great Detective’s cases. My habit over the decades has been to regularly return to Dr. Watson’s narratives, so lovingly collected by the great Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The world owes an Read more
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I have said it here often, I am an indiscriminate reader. That is how I ended listening to part of an audiobook then speed reading (and now reviewing) The Murder of Sleepy Hollow” by Michele Pariza Wacek. According to my research into Wacek and The Murder of Sleepy Hollow, belongs to a sub-genre of fiction Read more
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Sherlock Holmes stories are something I return to quite regularly. In the month of September this year, I reread the Sherlock Holmes novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles. For those who have not read it, the story begins with Dr. James Mortimer visiting Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in London. He presents them with a Read more
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During the Month of October, I will again be reviewing Gothic and Horror fiction here at ClimbingSky. I begin this month of reviews with an unexpected surprise from the “Queen of Mystery” herself, Agatha Christie. When you begin a Christie short story, you naturally expect to find yourself reading a detective mystery of some kind. Read more
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Completely satisfactory detectives are extremely rare. Indeed, I only know of three: Sherlock Holmes(Conan Doyle), Inspector French (Freeman Wills Crofts), and Father Brown (Chesterton). The job of the detective is to restore the state of grace in which the aesthetic and the ethical are as one. Since the murderer who caused their disjunction is the aesthetically defiant individual, his opponent, Read more
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