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The Dr Britling Stories – Volume One
A review of The Dr Britling Stories – Volume 1 – by James Ronald – 240316
Moonstone Press have recently reissued the first volume of a collection of short stories and a novel-cum novella from the crime writer, James Ronald, with the promise of more to come. Curiously, despite the title, the final story in volume one does not involve his police surgeon cum amateur detective, Dr Daniel Britling.…
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#Blind Man’s Bluff#Dr Britling#Find The Lady#James Ronald#Moonstone Press#Six Were To Die#The Green Ghost#Too Many Motives
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Bennerley Viaduct
Astride the Erewash Valley between Ilkeston in Derbyshire and Awsworth in Nottinghamshire stands the longest wrought iron viaduct in the British Isles, some 1452 feet long carrying the railway track 60 feet and ten inches above the river. The only other wrought iron viaduct left standing in Britain is in Devon, the Meldon Viaduct.
Completed in 1877 the Bennerley Viaduct was constructed for the…
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The Case Of The Happy Warrior
My thoughts on The Case of the Happy Warrior by #ChristopherBush reissued by @DeanStPress #CrimeFiction #BookReview
A review of The Case of the Happy Warrior by Christopher Bush – 240313
In delirio veritas. The fear of someone with a secret to hide is that the truth will emerge when their subconscious takes over as happens in the thirty-seventh novel in Christopher Bush’s Ludovic Travers, originally published in 1950 and reissued by Dean Street Press. In her feverish state, Alice Stonhill mutters a phrase…
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Team Of The Week
Grass roots football is poles apart from the pampered world of the elite game. The almost endless rain that we have endured over the last couple of months has meant that many non league teams are faced with a backlog of fixtures, a situation exacerbated by the refusal of the FA and their associated league committees to extend the season. So much for a duty of care to players.
The situation…
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The Dreadful Hollow
My thoughts on The Dreadful Hollow by #NicholasBlake #CrimeFiction #BookReview
A review of The Dreadful Hollow by Nicholas Blake – 240311
Drawing its title from the opening line of Tennyson’s Maud: A Monodrama, the tenth book in Nicholas Blake’s Nigel Strangeways series, originally published in 1953, starts off as a relatively simple case of poison-pen letters, but takes a grimmer and more disturbing turn midway through the book. One of the characters, Stanford Blick,…
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A Special Kind Of Mirage
The truth behind the Flying Dutchman and its link with Arthurian legend #mirage #science #KingArthur
Those imbued with a less romantic spirit, though, sought to provide a rational explanation of the phenomenon of The Flying Dutchman. An early attempt appeared in Frank Stockton’s Round-About Rambles (1870) in which he tells of a captain’s reaction when some of his crew reported a sighting. “This strange appearance”, he explained, “was caused by the reflection of some ship that was sailing on the…
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#fata morgana#Frank Stockton#inferior mirage#King Arthur#mirage#Morgan La Fey#superior mirage#The Flying Dutchman
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Power On The Scent
My thoughts on Power on the Scent by #HenriettaClandon reissued by @DeanStPress #CrimeFiction #BookReview
A review of Power on the Scent by Henrietta Clandon – 240307
I seem to be on a random sort of thematic chain at the moment. Having just finished two books that involved a poison despatched by dart I now have two books, of which this is the second, where a wasp, one actual and in this case putative, make an appearance.
Originally published in 1937 Power on the Scent is another novel that John…
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Driving Tests
The first Briton to pass a driving test was not the first person to pass a British driving test. To find out more about this curiosity and to discover the history of the improvements in road safety, follow the link below.
Curious Questions: Who was the first person to take a driving test?
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Book Binding Of The Week
I cannot say that I have given anthropodermic bibliopegy much thought but the practice of using human skin as a form of binding for a book has recently been in the headlines when Harvard University announced that it was removing the binding from the copy of, appropriately enough, Des Destinées de l’Ame they have held since the 1930s.
The book, written by Arsène Houssaye in the 1880s, a…
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Death In The Clouds
My thoughts on Death in the Clouds by #AgathaChristie #HerculePoirot #CrimeFiction #BookReview
A review of Death in the Clouds by Agatha Christie – 240305
The twelfth novel in Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot series, originally published in 1935 and going under the title of Death in the Air in America, is a variation of a murder in a railway carriage with an impossible and closed crime thrown in for good measure. Her eccentric and megalomanic sleuth is on board a flight from Paris to…
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Hardwick’s Great Hall
The splendour that was the Great Hall of #EustonStation #railwayana
The success of the London and Birmingham line prompted other lines from the Midlands and the North East to use the Euston terminus as their gateway to London, putting pressure on the already rudimentary facilities of the station. It might have had an impressive but purely decorative propylaeum but the directors of the newly formed London and North Western Railway Company (L&NWR) wanted to build…
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#National railway Museum of York#Philip Charles Hardwick#Philip Hardwick#the Euston Tap#the Great Hall of Euston
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The Sharp Quillet
My thoughts on The Sharp Quillet by #BrianFlynn reissued by @DeanStPress #CrimeFiction #BookReview
A review of The Sharp Quillet by Brian Flynn – 240303
After Conspiracy at Angel had been almost universally panned by critics Brian Flynn went back to basics and starts The Sharp Quillet, the thirty-third in his Anthony Bathurst series, originally published in 1947 and reissued by Dean Street Press, with quite a bang. In the prologue there are no less than fifteen bodies, the sex worker who was…
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The Flying Dutchman
The #myth of The Flying Dutchman #history #mystery
The fate of a merchant ship owned by the Dutch East India Company, which went missing off the Cape of Good Hope in 1641, was the source of increasingly more lurid tales. By May 1821, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine was telling how its captain, Van der Decken, after searching vainly for the Cape and caught in a storm, swore that he would round it, even if it took until doomsday. The ship was…
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Impact Of Evidence
My thoughts on Impact of Evidence by #CarolCarnac reissued by @BL_Publishing #CrimeFiction #BookReview
A review of Impact of Evidence by Carol Carnac – 240301
For its February 2024 reissue the excellent British Library Crime Classics series has chosen Impact of Evidence, originally published in 1954, a welcome addition to the canon of Edith Caroline Rivett’s work that is available once more to those without the patience or deep pockets to seek out the originals. Rivett wrote under a number of…
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#British Library Crime Classics series#Carol Carnac#Edith Caroline Rivett#Impact of Evidence#Julian Rivers
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Waiters Of The Week
If you are in Paris and are looking for fast café service in Paris, perhaps you should seek out Pauline van Wymeersch at the Le Petit Pont café facing the Notre Dame cathedral or Samy Lamrous who plies his trade at La Centrescarpe in Paris’ 5th arrondissement. They were the winners of the women’s and men’s sections of the revived Course des Cafes, a two kilometre race through the streets of the…
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Vanishing Point
My thoughts on Vanishing Point by #PatriciaWentworth #CrimeFiction #BookReview
A review of Vanishing Point by Patricia Wentworth – 240228
In the twenty-fifth book in her Miss Silver series, originally published in 1953, Patricia Wentworth blends two familiar topics, an incipient romance between an impoverished relative used as a skivvy by her mean-spirited benefactress, Rosamond Maxwell, and a dashing all-action hero, Craig Lester, with a murder mystery, although the…
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Hardwick’s Euston Arch
The story of the #arch at #Euston station #PhilipHardwick
The circularity of history. When George and Robert Stephenson conceived their plan for what was to be the world’s first long distance passenger railway, they planned to run the line from Euston Square to Birmingham, which did not gain city status until 1889. However, in order to get their bill through Parliament, which they did in May 1833, they had to bow to objections from local land owners and…
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#Augustus Pugin#Boxmoor#Curzon Street#Dan Cruickshank#Euston Arch#George Stephenson#Philip Hardwick#propylaeum
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