11291

Currently Reading

The Mirror and the Light
Hilary Mantel, Ben Miles
Progress: 4 %
Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy
Rachel Cusk, Olivia Manning
The Inner Life of Cats: The Science and Secrets of Our Mysterious Feline Companions
Thomas McNamee, Bob Reed
The Inner Life of Cats: The Science and Secrets of Our Mysterious Feline Companions
Thomas McNamee
Merlin Trilogy
Mary Stewart
Progress: 612/928 pages
The Mirror and the Light
Hilary Mantel

Recently Added

Memoir and Poems of Phillis Wheatley, a Native African and a Slave - Phillis Wheatley, Melissa Summers
The Diaries of Adam and Eve - Walter Cronkite, Betty Buckley, Mandy Patinkin, Mark Twain
Quidditch Through the Ages - Full Cast, Andrew Lincoln, J.K. Rowling
"You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough." ― Mae West


"The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read." ― Mark Twain


"Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea." ― Robert A. Heinlein


"Always be a first rate version of yourself and not a second rate version of someone else." ― Judy Garland
Find me elsewhere:
My Leafmarks Profile
Project Hamlet

Golden Age Mysteries: Further Reading

With my Detection Club Bingo card now blacked out, I'm going to track my reading here.  (Note: for purposes of completeness, this includes books by the below authors already read prior to the creation of this list.)  My priorities are going to be:

 

 

Arthur Conan Doyle's / Sherlock Holmes's adventures, biographies, contemporaries and rivals, as included in my 221B Baker Street and Beyond reading list

 

 

Agatha Christie's Plays and Romances:

The Stage Plays:

a) Black Coffee
b) And Then There Were None
c) Appointment with Death
d) Murder on the Nile
e) The Hollow
f) The Mousetrap
g) Witness for the Prosecution
h) Spider's Web
i) Towards Zero
j) Verdict
k) The Unexpected Guest
l) Go Back for Murder
m) Rule of Three: Afternoon at the Sea-side / The Patient / The Rats
n) Fiddlers Three
o) Akhnaton
p) Chimneys

 

The Broadcast Plays:

a) Behind The Screen
b) The Scoop
c) Wasp's Nest
d) The Yellow Iris
e) Three Blind Mice
f) Butter in a Lordly Dish
g) Personal Call

 

The Romances (writing as Mary Westmacott):

a) Giant's Bread
b) Unfinished Portrait
c) Absent in the Spring
d) The Rose and the Yew Tree
e) A Daughter's a Daughter
f) The Burden

 

-- as well as Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks by way of a companion read.

 

 

Dorothy L. Sayers's Montague Egg stories, nonfiction and plays:

The Montague Egg stories:

a) Hangman's Holiday
b) In the Teeth of the Evidence

 

The Nonfiction:

a) The Mind of the Maker
b) Unpopular Opinions
c) Are Women Human?
d) The Lost Tools of Learning
e) The Wimsey Family: A Fragmentary History (with C.W. Scott-Giles)
f) Taking Detective Stories Seriously: The Collected Crime Reviews (posthumous collection)
g) God, Hitler and Lord Peter Wimsey (posthumous collection)
h) The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers: 1899-1936: The Making of a Detective Novelist
i) The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers: 1937–1943, From Novelist to Playwright
j) The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers: 1944–1950, A Noble Daring
k) The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers: 1951–1957, In the Midst of Life
l) The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers: Child and Woman of Her Time

 

The Plays:

a) Busman's Honeymoon (with Muriel St. Clare Byrne)
b) The Zeal of Thy House
c) Love All (with Marjorie Barber)
d) He That Should Come
e) The Devil to Pay
f) The Man Born to be King
g) The Just Vengeance

 

 

Patricia Wentworth's Miss Silver series:

1: Grey Mask
2: The Case Is Closed
3: Lonesome Road
4: Danger Point
5: The Chinese Shawl
6: Miss Silver Intervenes (aka Miss Silver Deals With Death)
7: The Clock Strikes Twelve
8: The Key
9: The Traveller Returns (aka She Came Back)
10: Pilgrim's Rest
11: Latter End
12: Wicked Uncle (aka Spotlight)
13: The Case of William Smith
14: Eternity Ring
15: The Catherine Wheel
16: Miss Silver Comes to Stay
17: The Brading Collection
18: The Ivory Dagger
19: Through the Wall
20: Anna, Where Are You?
21: The Watersplash
22: Ladies' Bane
23: Out of the Past
24: The Silent Pool
25: Vanishing Point
26: The Benevent Treasure
27: The Gazebo
28: The Listening Eye
29: Poison in the Pen
30: The Fingerprint
31: The Alington Inheritance
32: The Girl in the Cellar

 

 

By Josephine Tey:

Inspector Grant series:

1. The Man in the Queue
2. A Shilling for Candles
3. The Franchise Affair
4. To Love and Be Wise
5. The Daughter of Time
6. The Singing Sands

 

Nonseries mysteries:

a) Brat Farrar
b) Miss Pym Disposes

 

Plays (written under the pseudonym Gordon Daviot):

a) Richard of Bordeaux
b) Dickon
c) The Little Dry Thorn
d) Valerius
e) Queen of Scots

 

 

Georgette Heyer's mysteries:

Non-series:

a) Footsteps in the Dark
b) Why Shoot a Butler?
c) The Unfinished Clue
d) Penhallow

 

 

Inspector Hannasyde & Sergeant Hemingway:

1. Death in the Stocks
2. Behold, Here's Poison
3. They Found Him Dead
4. A Blunt Instrument

 

Inspector Hemingway:

1. No Wind of Blame
2. Envious Casca (aka A Christmas Party)
3. Duplicate Death
4. Detection Unlimited

 

 

A (futher) taste of Gladys Mitchell's Mrs. Bradley series:

1. Speedy Death
2. The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop
4. The Saltmarsh Murders
5. Death at the Opera
7. Dead Men's Morris (aka Death Comes at Christmas)
8. Come Away, Death
18. The Rising of the Moon
23. Groaning Spinney (aka Murder in the Snow)
28. Watson's Choice

(Note to BT: These are the books currently on my TBR based on various recommendations and reviews.  If there are others that I should absolutely be including, by all means let me know!)

 

 

A taste of Christianna Brand's mysteries:

Inspector Cockrill:

1. Heads You Lose
2. Green for Danger
3. Suddenly at His Residence
5. Fog of Doubt
6. Tour de Force

 

Inspector Charlesworth:

1. Death in High Heels

 

 

By Patricia Highsmith:

a) Strangers on a Train
b) Carol (aka The Price of Salt)
c) The Blunderer
d) The Talented Mr. Ripley
d) Deep Water
e) A Game for the Living
f) This Sweet Sickness
g) The Cry of the Owl
h) The Two Faces of January
i) Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction

(Note to BT and Lillelara: See my above comments re: Gladys Mitchell -- the same applies here.)

 

 

A further taste of E.C.R. Lorac's Robert MacDonald series:

1. The Murder on the Burrows
6. Murder in St. John's Wood
7. Murder in Chelsea
8. The Organ Speaks
13. Bats in the Belfry
25. Murder by Matchlight
26. Fire in the Thatch

 

 

A further taste of Nicholas Blake (Cecil Day Lewis)'s Nigel Strangeways series:

1. A Question of Proof
2. Thou Shell of Death
4. The Beast Must Die
7. The Case of the Abominable Snowman
12. End of Chapter

 

-- as well as the nonseries mystery The Private Wound.

 

 

 

By Julian Symons:

Inspector Bland:

1. The Immaterial Murder Case
2. A Man Called Jones
3. Bland Beginning

 

Sheridan Haynes:

1. A Three-Pipe Problem

 

Nonseries mysteries:

a) The 31st of February

b) The Belting Inheritance
c) The Man Who Killed Himself
d) The Man Whose Dreams Came True
e) The Players and the Game
f) The Plot Against Roger Rider
g) The Name of Annabel Lee
h) Death's Darkest Face

 

Nonfiction:

a) The Great Detectives: Seven Original Investigations
b) Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel 

 

 

By John Dickson Carr (aka Carter Dickson):

Dr. Gideon Fell:

1. Hag's Nook
2. The Mad Hatter Mystery
4. The Blind Barber
5. Death-Watch

6. The Hollow Man (aka The Three Coffins)
8. The Crooked Hinge
9. To Wake the Dead
13. The Case of the Constant Suicides
15. Till Death Do Us Part
xx Dr. Fell, Detective, and Other Stories

 

Henri Bencolin:

1. It Walks by Night
2. Castle Skull

 

Sir Henry Merrivale:

1. The Plague Court Murders
3. The Red Widow Murders
8. The Judas Window
9. The Reader Is Warned
14. She Died a Lady
20. Night at the Mocking Widow

 

Nonseries mysteries:

a) The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey
b) The Burning Court
c) The Hungry Goblin
d) The Door to Doom and Other Detections

 

Collaborations:

John Dickson Carr & Val Gielgud: 13 to the Gallows
John Dickson Carr & John Rhode: Drop to His Death

 

 

By J. Jefferson Farjeon:

a) The House Opposite
b) The Z Murders
c) Thirteen Guests
d) Mystery in White
e) Seven Dead

 

 

 

By Cyril Hare:

Inspector Mallett:

1. Tenant for Death
2. Death Is No Sportsman
4. Tragedy at Law (also Francis Pettigrew #1)
5. With a Bare Bodkin (also Francis Pettigrew #2)

 

Francis Pettigrew:

1. Tragedy at Law (also Inspector Mallett #4)
2. With a Bare Bodkin (also Inspector Mallett #5)
3. When the Wind Blows
4. That Yew Tree's Shade
5. He Should Have Died Hereafter

 

Nonseries mysteries:

An English Murder

 

 

By Anthony Berkeley:

Roger Sheringham:

1. The Layton Court Mystery
2. The Wychford Poisoning Case
4. The Silk Stocking Murders
5. The Poisoned Chocolate Case
6. The Second Shot
7. Top Storey Murder
8. Murder in the Basement
9. Jumping Jenny
10. Panic Party
11. The Avenging Chance and Other Mysteries from Roger Sheringham

 

Ambrose Chitterwick:

1. The Piccadilly Murder
2. Trial and Error

 

Writing as Francis Iles:

a) Before the Fact
b) Malice Aforethought

 

 

By Raymond Postgate:

a) Verdict of Twelve
b) Somebody at the Door
c) The Ledger Is Kept

 

 

 

 

By E.R. Punshon:

Bobby Owen:

1. Information Received
3. Crossword Mystery
5. Death of a Beauty Queen
6. Death Comes to Cambers
10. Dictator's Way
11. Comes a Stranger
16. Ten Star Clues
17. Diabolic Candelabra

 

 

By Philip MacDonald:

Colonel Gethryn:

1. The Rasp
4. The Noose
6. The Maze
8. The Crime Conductor
11. The Nursemaid Who Disappeared (aka Warrant for X)
12. The List of Adrian Messenger

 

Nonseries mysteries:

a) Murder Gone Mad
b) X v. Rex

 

 

By Anthony Wynne:

Dr. Hailey:

12. Murder of a Lady
18. Death of a Banker
28. Death of a Shadow

 

 

 

 

 

By Edmund Crispin:

Gervase Fen:

1. The Case of the Gilded Fly
2. Holy Disorders
3. The Moving Toyshop
4. Swan Song
5. Love Lies Bleeding
6. Buried for Pleasure
10. Glimpses of the Moon

 

 

The Detection Club round robins:

a) The Floating Admiral
b) The Sinking Admiral
c) Anatomy of Murder
d) Ask a Policeman
e) Baker Street Studies
f) Detection Medley
g) Double Death
h) No Flowers by Request
i) Six Against the Yard
j) The Scoop / Behind the Screen
k) Verdict of 13

 

 

The remaining "100 books" from Martin Edwards's list in The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books (in alphabetical order and to the extent not already listed above or in the reading lists linked in this post):

H.C. Bailey: Mr. Fortune, Please (Reggie Fortune #4)
C.E. Bechhofer Roberts: A.B.C. Solves Five
Francis Beeding: Death Walks in Eastrepps
E.F. Benson: The Blotting Book
Godfrey R. Benson: Tracks in the Snow
Jorge Luis Borges: Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodi
Douglas G. Browne: What Beckoning Ghost?
Leo Bruce: Case for Three Detectives (Sergeant Beef #1)
John Bude: The Sussex Downs Murder (Superintendent Meredith #2)
Christopher Bush: The Perfect Murder Case (Ludovic Travers #2)
Joanna Cannan: No Walls of Jasper
Bernard Capes: The Mystery of the Skeleton Key
G.D.H. & Margaret Cole: End of an Ancient Mariner
J.J. Connington: Mystery at Lynden Sands (Sir Clinton Driffield #3)
Freeman Wills Crofts: The Cask
Francis Durbridge: Send for Paul Temple (Paul Temple #1)
Sebastian Farr: Death on the Down Beat
C.S. Forester: Payment Deferred
Val Gielgud: Death at Broadcasting House
Michael Gilbert: Smallbone Deceased (Inspector Hazelrigg #4 / Henry Bohun #1)
Lord R. Gorell: In the Night
Bruce Hamilton: Middle Class Murder
A.P. Herbert: The House by the River
James Hilton: Murder at School (aka Was It Murder?) (originally published as by Glen Trevor)
Roy Horniman: Israel Rank
Richard Hull: My Own Murderer
Michael Innes: Death at the President's Lodging (Sir John Appleby #1)
Romilly & Katherine John: Death by Request
Milward Kennedy: Death to the Rescue
C. Daly King: The Curious Mr. Tarrant
C.H.B. Kitchin: Birthday Party
Ronald Knox: The Body in the Silo (Miles Bredon #3)
George Limnelius: The Medbury Fort Murder
A.E.W. Mason: At the Villa Rose (Inspector Hanaud #1)
Q. Patrick: Murder at Cambridge
Rupert Penny: She Had to Have Gas (Chief Inspector Beale #6)
Eden Phillpotts: The Red Redmaynes
Ellery Queen: Calamity Town (Ellery Queen Detective #16)
John Rhode: Hendon's First Case (Dr. Priestley #20)
Joel Townsley Rogers: The Red Right Hand
Helen Simpson: Vantage Striker
Shelley Smith: Background for Murder (Jacob Chaos #1)
C.P. Snow: Death Under Sail
Stanislas-André Steeman: Six hommes morts (Six Dead Men)
F. Tennyson Jesse: A Pin to See the Peepshow
Roy Vickers: The Department of Dead Ends
Henry Wade: The Duke of York's Steps (Inspector Poole #2)
Edgar Wallace: The Four Just Men (The Four Just Men #1)
Hugh Walpole: The Killer and the Slain
T.H. White: Darkness at Pemberley
Victor L. Whitechurch: The Crime at Diana's Pool
R.C. Woodthorpe: Silence of a Purple Shirt (aka Death Wears a Purple Shirt)

 

... as well as the re-releases in the ongoing British Library Classic Crime, Collins Crime Club, and Penzler American Mystery Classics series.