Classic Mysteries

A private detective and a small group of survivors from a murderous wedding find themselves trapped with an apparently psychotic killer on a remote island, cut off from the world at large.

It sounded like the perfect story for a movie - a curse still working after 300 years. A macabre twist to a powerful drama - or simply brutal murder?

Clever plotting, pointed dialogue and murder - what more could a reader want?

A car driven by a dead man with a cut throat...a lost gallows on a missing London street...John Dickson Carr's second mystery starring Henri Bencolin, "The Lost Gallows," reviewed:

Rabbi Small needed a break in his routine. An international bombing incident wasn't what he had in mind.

Nearly everyone in his family hated Sir Adam Braid. Only the old man's granddaughter loved him - and the old miser was cutting her out of his will. A motive for murder? Or did someone else hate him enough to kill him? "The Case of Sir Adam Braid," A Golden Age classic by Molly Thynne, reviewed.

On the Classic Mysteries podcast this week, Mr. and Mrs. North only want to draw up a new will, but it's their lawyer who gets murdered.

Newly appointed to Scotland Yard, Bobby Owen finds himself weighing motives, politics and amazing beauty as he hunts for a murderer who might just be an "untouchable" British aristocrat. E.R. Punshon's "Helen Passes By," reviewed.

Another, earlier pre-Orient-Express train ride for Hercule Poirot comes complete with jewel robberies, blackmail, and murder on a luxury train across France.

On the Classic Mysteries podcast this week, you might call it a portrait of the artist as a young...dog? Inspector Knollis had to decipher the secret of Francis Vivian's "The Laughing Dog." 

On the Classic Mysteries blog, Scotland Yard Inspector Macdonald thought he was going on holiday in Vienna. So how did he wind up helping local police investigate some nasty murders? E.C.R. Lorac's "Murder in Vienna," reviewed.

A grim solution to a grim problem: how to deal with a loathsome blackmailer who may also be a serial killer? For half-a-dozen young Englishmen, the answer appears to be a well-plotted murder, one where it will be impossible to tell who struck the fatal blow. Only things may not always go quite as smoothly as planned.

The dead woman was a humble chemistry teacher at a girls' school. So, wonders Detective Inspector C.D. Sloan, why did she have a quarter-million pounds in her bank account? And was she murdered? Catherine Aird's "Some Die Eloquent," from her Calleshire Chronicles reviewed.

On the Classic Mysteries podcast this week, a review of some non-fiction - a book of essays about mysteries and the people who make them. "Unusual Suspects: Selected Non-Fiction," by Joseph Goodrich, reviewed.

Maigret stars in one of these holiday stories, while other associates of Maigret feature in two more tales of holiday crime and redemption.

Too bad about Joe Wilson. The itinerant traveling salesman had a secret. And it’s only fair to point out that it turned out to be a deadly secret indeed – a secret which apparently led to his murder. Ellery Queen needed the truth to keep the wrong person from paying for someone else's crime.

The victim's body turned up under a tree in a park, the body unusually battered and bruised – but that’s not what killed him; he appeared to have had potassium cyanide sprayed into his nose. What kind of animal could do that - and why?