Thursday, December 25, 2014

Vintage crime discoveries of 2014

I’ve discovered quite a few new vintage crime authors this year. Well obviously not new, but new to me. And some of them have tuned out to be very good indeed. Here are the most exciting of my 2014 discoveries:

Anthony Abbot, About the Murder of the Clergyman’s Mistress (1931). Abbot is usually regarded as a follower of S. S. Van Dine which is reasonable enough. Intricately plotted and makes fine use of its New York locations.

Christopher Bush, The Case of the Tudor Queen (1938). I like murder mysteries with a theatrical background and this one uses that background quite skillfully. Great fun.

Arthur J. Rees, The Hand in the Dark (1920). Rees is a forgotten Australian writer. He gives us not one but three detectives and the personality of the detectives is the key to solving the case. Very impressive.

John Bude, The Lake District Murder (1935). Very much in the Freeman Wills Crofts mould.


2 comments:

  1. Thanks for this list. I think #2 and 3 on your list would be most interesting to me, but who knows. I will look for all them. Anthony Abbot is totally new to me also at this point.

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  2. Rees was one of my discoveries of 2014. I was slightly underwhelmed by The Moon Rock, but saw enough good in him to go on to read The Shrieking Pit, which is excellent. I'll look out for The Hand in the Dark.

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