Pretty Sinister Books

When last I wrote of Jean Leslie's professor detective, Peter Ponsonby, several years ago ( One Cried Murder ) he was faced with the app...

THE STORY:   In this seventh Judge Peck detective novel August Derleth once again revisits his favorite plot motif - the family decimation m...

When I started Death at Ash House (1942) I was ready for some kind of riff on haunted houses or shunned houses or abandoned houses with a ...

THE STORY:   Sir Roger Liskard and his wife Linda are having a house party. The timing couldn't have been worse. As the guests arrive at...

THE STORY:  Augustus Beale is relatively calm when he reports that he has found a dead body in his wardrobe in Room 11 of the Enterprise Hot...

The first words Amy Brewster utters in her debut mystery novel are: "Of course he didn't you quibbling corporation jackanapes!...

THE STORY:  Dr. Walter Blake meets Annette Markham on a train and falls in love with her.  She tells him she is not meant for men according ...

Here is the continuation of my 2024 reading summation.  In looking over my reading log I see a predominance of newly translated Japanese det...

THE STORY: Inspector Michael Tandy makes his debut in Death Walks Softly (1938) an excellent example of three subgenres:  police procedura...

THE STORY: Novelist Gervoise Trevellyan is an Author in Distress (1934). And first time mystery writer Cecil Wills wastes no time in getti...