Pretty Sinister Books

There is nothing more upsetting than falling for the hype on a book jacket.  The Swan Island Murders (1930) with its striking Art Deco influ...

The Dead Takes No Bows (1941) gives us the origin of Quinny Hite, a former cop turned opportunistic private eye, two splendid plans – one o...

THE STORY: "The Countess de Pontarlieu requests the pleasure of your company at supper, Sunday evening, June 4th, on the yacht Aguila...

There's trouble at Mayfield Sanitarium now that Dr. Carl Koenig, their kindly director is dead. Someone has bludgeoned him with a miniat...

If it hadn't been for an unmentionable book by a writer known only by his initials Harriette Ashbrook might never have become a myster...

The first thing that struck me as remarkable about Murder Yet to Come (1930) was the author's gutsy use of The Moonstone and several ...

The ultra urbane New Yorkers of Helen McCloy's detective novels are beginning to remind me of  similar sophisticated Manhattanites of th...

Boucher's first mystery The Case of the Seven of Calvary (1937) is a daring piece of crime fiction in this heyday of the Golden Age whe...

Like Willard Huntington Wright who created his alter ego "S. S. Van Dine" to narrate the Philo Vance novels Fulton Oursler created...