Live from The Howard Stern Show in 2023:
August 2025
Monthly Archive
Sun 3 Aug 2025
Music I’m Listening To: CARRIE UNDERWOOD “Mama, I’m Coming Home.”
Posted by Steve under Music I'm Listening ToNo Comments
Sat 2 Aug 2025
A correspondent known to me as Gunnar asks the following question. Perhaps those of you who have read more early detection fiction than I can tell us more:
“Tony Baer’s recent review of A. A. Milne’s Red House Mystery (1922) got me thinking of the origins and early history of the country house mystery. I suppose you can trace its early prototypes back to Wilkie Collins, but later Sherlock is mainly metropolitan – and while Baskervilles, Valley of Fear and some of the short stories do feature country houses or castles, they’re not really country house mysteries in the true sense (with a closed circle of suspects and all that).
“The first proper instance I can think of is The Mystery of the Yellow Room (1907) followed perhaps by Trent’s Last Case (1913) and then of course Styles (1920). Are there other early examples that predate Christie’s debut?”
Fri 1 Aug 2025
Archived Mystery Review: MARJORIE BONIFACE – Murder As an Ornament.
Posted by Steve under Reviews1 Comment
MARJORIE BONIFACE – Murder As an Ornament. Mabel Wickley/Sheriff Odom #1. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1940.
A Christmas story, taking place on a Texas dude ranch facing the Rio Grande, When a body is found hanging from a tree on Christmas Eve, everyone thinks it is suicide, until the doctor discovers that the woman was actually poisoned first.
While Sheriff Hiram Odom is the detective in this case, the calm, seemingly slow-witted man does not do too much to produce the killer. This is a “little did I know” kind of story, but catching me by surprise, hidden in the nooks and crannies, are a few clever clues.
— Reprinted from Mystery.File.4, March 1988.
NOTE: Two later books in the series appear to be Venom in Eden (1942), and Wings of Death (1946)