Nicks` Cabinet of Curios

  Israel Zangwill - The Perfect Crime - Collins Detective Club - 2015 (also known as the Big Bow Mystery) Also contains Edgar Allan Poe - The Murders in the Rue Morgue NOTE Poe`s The Murders in the Rue Morgue is said to be the first locked room mystery . Zangwill`s The Perfect Crime aka The Big Bow Mystery is said to be the first full-length novel LRM (though in fact it is in the area of being a novella/a long short story/a short novel, whichever term you prefer). The publication of the two in a single volume has generally been received with enthusiasm by lovers of old-style detective fiction.  To my complete surprise, I didn`t enjoy this as much as others have ! It certainly has all the usual ingredients - a man is found dead in a locked room. Investigations show that he has not committed suicide, but as he was alone in a room with the door and windows apparently locked from the inside, how did the murderer first gain access and then escape ?  Just to complicate matters,...

   Lynn Brock (aka Alister McAllister aka Anthony Wharton) - The Deductions of Colonel Gore - Collins Detective Club - 2018 This book has it`s detractors, but for me it was a very enjoyable introduction to the world of Colonel Gore and left me wanting to sample some of his subsequent adventures.  This was the first Colonel Gore book (published 1924) and at the time the author was probably not considering a series.  In this story, Col G has not yet become a private investigator and has no experience of solving mysteries. In fact he walks into this case quite by chance and in places  is motivated less by a desire to crack the case than to protect his childhood friend Barbara Melhuish, known by the nickname Pickles. It may be as well to address some of the criticisms/misunderstandings that have been written about this book.  For a start, I cannot see that it is intended as a satire on Golden Age detective stories. At the time of publication, the Golden Age was...

  David Stuart Davies - Spinechillers - Collectors Library - 2012 Note `Collectors Library is/was an imprint of CRW Publishing Ltd, London NW1 Will I ever get tired of collecting anthologies of classic ghost stories and/or detective fiction ? Probably not ! Here we have 22 short stories in an anthology compiled by the excellent David Stuart Davies.  Any collection overseen by DSD is going to be out of the ordinary and this was no disappointment.  Inevitably (for me) there were a couple of stories I already have, and a couple I didn`t care for, but the great thing is that still leaves 18 I`d never encountered before and thoroughly enjoyed. If I have one criticism, I would single out the inclusion of Elizabeth Gaskell`s The Grey Woman. Not just because I personally don`t like it - (though I do think it`s overly long and carelessly written) , but because I just can`t see how it belongs in a collection of this sort - it doesn`t chill the spine because it wasn`t, as far as I c...

  Gordon Ashe   - Come Home to Death - Mystery Book Guild - 1958 Gordon Ashe was a pseudonym used by John Creasey for a series of novels featuring his character Patrick Dawlish. This is the first Dawlish novel I have read, but I understand that in the preceding novels he is portrayed as a former intelligence officer turned freelance crime fighter, possibly a man of action rather than a man of reflection.  This book must have been something of a departure.  As the story begins, Dawlish and his wife are preparing to go on holiday. She has been seriously ill and he feels both would benefit from a break. Only as the story proceeds do we realise how much of a toll his wife`s illness has taken on him.  Reluctantly, he becomes involved with a case brought to him by a young woman who believes she is being followed. He does what he can do help and arranges for some of his associates to deal with the matter while he is away. Returning to England he finds himself the ...