The successful thriller writer and playwright Dick Markham has just become engaged to Lesley Grant, a new inhabitant to the village, much to the disgust of many of the villagers who had expected him to marry their favourite, the local girl, Cynthia Drew, whom he’d been friendly with for some time.

The action begins at a village bazaar with the usual entertainments like a shooting-range, cricket match and fortune-teller’s tent. When Lesley shoots the fortune teller in an accident it isn’t long before rumours start to circulate that she isn’t who she claims to be and Dick doesn’t know what to believe.

The detective Dr Gideon Fell arrives to investigate the dastardly goings on in the village and things become even more perplexing before he manages to crack the case. I was kept guessing right to the end, what more can you ask for!

This book is part of the Black Dagger Crime series which is a joint effort between BBC audiobooks and the Crime Writers’ Association.

If you want to learn more about Dr Fell have a look here.

He reminds me a bit of Rex Stout, they both have a huge girth, find it difficult to get about and have more than a fondness for beer but I can’t help wondering why Dickson Carr gave him the name of Dr Fell. It’s a name which was first used in 1680 when it appears in a nursery rhyme, you can read about it here. But that article doesn’t even mention the Dickson Carr use of the name, although several other people seem to have used it.

There’s also a song by Juliet Turner which goes like this-

Miss Silver is Wentworth’s equivalent to Miss Marple, a spinster who manages to knit as she solves crimes. The twist is that Miss Silver is valued by Detective Inspector Frank Abbott of Scotland Yard and in fact it is he who sends her to the small English village of Tilling Green where someone is sending poison pen letters to the inhabitants, leading to tragedy in at least one case.

Miss Silver is a retired governess and she finds it easy to pose as a lady on holiday in the village and quickly immerses herself in the social scene. She’s soon able to hear all the local gossip and realises that there has been a murder and that there is a vicious and demented killer at work.

It’s absolutely years since I read an Agatha Christie but I think that this book was every bit as good, if not better than a Christie. I didn’t guess who the culprit was, which is always a plus. Miss Silver managed to finish knitting a blue twinset and start a red cardigan whilst she solved the case – not bad going! I’ll be reading more of Wentworth’s books in the future.

My book beginning is from Poison in the Pen by Patricia Wentworth and was first published in 1955.

Miss Silver looked across the tea-tray a good deal in the manner of the affectionate aunt who entertains a deserving nephew, but the young man who leaned forward to take the cup of tea which she had just poured out for him was not really related to her in any way. He was in fact Detective Inspector Frank Abbot of Scotland Yard, enjoying a Sunday afternoon off duty and very much at his ease.

Well it’s not exactly what you would call an exciting beginning but it’s a vintage crime book and what with that and the book title, it tells me that I’m going to be involved in a cosy mystery, most likely including anonymous letters and murder.

Don’t ask me why vintage crime books and murder equal cosy comfort reading – they just do and hopefully I’ll be inhabiting a village in 1950s Britain whilst I’m reading this one.

I hadn’t read anything by John Dickson Carr before, he was an American so I was more than a wee bit surprised to discover that this book is set mainly in Scotland. It begins at Euston station in London however, where Alan Campbell, a young professor of history, is catching the sleeper train to Glasgow, something I’ve done often myself. There has been a mix up with the booking and he ends up having to share with a young woman, Kathryn Campbell, and it transpires that they are both travelling to Castle Shira in the Western Highlands, having been invited there by yet another Campbell. Alan and Kathryn had met before, but only through a newspaper’s letters page where they had an acrimonious correspondence.

Angus Campbell, to whom they’re both distantly related, had fallen to his death a few weeks before and there is some doubt as to whether it was suicide or murder. It’s a ‘locked room’ mystery and I really enjoyed it. Dickson Carr wrote it with a good balance of mystery, romance and humour, so I’ll definitely be looking out for more of his books. He also managed to capture ‘Scotland’ which is a surprise really, apparently he was married to an English woman but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she had been Scottish, I’ve often seen that mistake, with Josephine Tey being described as English, she is probably ‘birling’ in her grave!

Anyway, he obviously knew Scotland well and managed to write in dialect which is something which isn’t easy to do. This book was first published in 1941. I’ll definitely be looking out for more of his books. Thanks again Peggy.

If you want to have a look at the part of Scotland the book is set in – have a look here, Argyle and Bute.

This is just the second book by Freeman Wills Crofts which I’ve read and although I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as The 12.30 From Croydon it’s still well worth reading if you’re into vintage crime.

The first half of this one is set in South Africa, when a man’s body is found beside a railway line on the edge of Groote Park. It’s assumed at first that there has been a horrific accident, but things don’t add up and Inspector Vandam begins to suspect foul play.

In the second half of the book the action moves to Scotland and I must admit that I preferred that part of the story. How parochial am I? (Don’t answer that!)

Anyway, it so happend that all of the Scottish locations are well known to me and it’s nice when you know exactly what it looks like when Princes Street or Queen Street is mentioned, even if you still have to imagine what it looked like in 1923, which is when the book was first published. It was enjoyable to be in Glasgow’s streets and then to travel north to Alexandria, Loch Lomond and Crianlarich – in an attempt to unravel the mystery.

I’m hoping to be able to read Inspector French’s Greatest Case soon, which is the book in which Crofts introduces us to the character who was described by someone in the Guardian’s Notes and Queries recently as the greatest fictional detective ever.

Which one would you plump for? I’m not sure, I still have a soft spot for Dorothy Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey and Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion sort of grew on me, although to begin with he was just too much of a silly-ass upper class Englishman for me. There’s a trend forming here – I must be into posh chaps!

Going off at a bit of a tangent – I was doing the dishes tonight and listening to BBC Radio 4 Extra – or whatever they’re calling it this week, and they were broadcasting an episode of Dalziel and Pascoe, which was written by Reginald Hill. I’ve watched the TV dramatisations but not read the books but I think I’ll have to give them a go. I really liked the character Andy Dalziel (pronounced Dee-ell) although he could in no way be described as posh and the actor playing him on TV best resembles a bulldog chewing a wasp. Has anyone read anything by Reginald Hill?

The Ivy Tree is Mary Stewart’s version of Josephine Tey’s vintage crime book Brat Farrar. I read that one last year and really liked it so I was a bit dubious about reading the Stewart take on the same sort of storyline.

It’s set in a farm in Northumberland in the north of England, Roman Wall country. The elderly owner is failing fast and there’s doubt as to who the property will be passed on to after his heir, his 18 year old grand-daughter Annabel, walked out after a row eight years previously, never to be seen or heard of again.

His great-nephew, Con, is desperate to get his hands on the farm and when one day he sees Annabel’s double, a young stranger from Canada, he and his half-sister Lisa cook up a plan to secure the farm with the help of the doppelganger.

Initially I thought it was a wee bit of a cheek on Mary Stewart’s part to so blatantly nick Josephine Tey’s idea but she mentions her several times in The Ivy Tree and I like to think of Stewart reading Brat Farrar and saying to herself “I could do better than that” – and she did!

There were unexpected twists and turns right to the end of The Ivy Tree, and you can’t say fairer than that.

I had completely forgotten about Freeman Wills Crofts until I saw this book in my library. I had never read any before although I’d handled the books often enough in the past, I always got his name mixed up with that shoe shop chain – Freeman Hardy Willis, do they still exist? So I was quite surprised to find out that he is regarded as one of the ‘Big Four’ of the Golden Age of Crime Fiction.

First published in 1934, The 12:30 from Croydon is crime fiction with a difference because you know who the murderer is and how he has talked himself into committing murder. The mystery is – will he get off with it and if not how did he slip up?

I ended up thoroughly enjoying this one and I’m looking forward to reading more of his books which have been reprinted by House of Stratus. At first I was not at all sure I would like it because it begins with Rose Morley, her father and grandfather taking a flight to Paris. The whole experience is described in detail as obviously in 1934 very few of the readers would have been on an aeroplane and this would have been seen as an exciting start to the book. Nowadays it just isn’t and what was cutting edge when the book was first published is now charmingly old-fashioned. Apparently there was an air-station at Victoria,London which I’m presuming was just a part of the bus station where you boarded a bus for the airport.

Luckily Freeman Wills Crofts wrote quite a lot of books, so I’ll be tracking them down soon, hopefully via the library although I believe Peggy Ann has managed to get one from Project Gutenberg.

This book was first published in 1933 and for some reason seems much more like an Agatha Christie book than the others which I’ve read by Heyer. So if you’re a fan of Christie you’ll probably really enjoy this one. I didn’t dislike it but I was just a wee bit disappointed that there wasn’t much of the witty repartee in it which I’ve come to expect of Heyer. Maybe her humour was more a feature of the later books, it’s a shame really because as far as I’m concerned there’s always a place for a bit of fun, even when there’s been a murrrderr!

It’s a classic country house whodunnit, a favourite setting of mine and it’s a plus that I didn’t guess who the culprit was until very late on in it. Either my brain wasn’t in gear or it was more of a puzzle than the last P.D. James book which I read.

It wouldn’t be a Heyer without romance, she seemed to be incapable of leaving it out of any of her books. It’s daft how quickly it all happens though – certainly no problems with her men being incapable of commiting!

The blurb on the back of the book says:

‘Miss Heyer’s characters are an abiding delight to me… I have seldom met people to whom I have taken so violent a fancy from the word “Go”.’ DOROTHY SAYERS

I’m pleased that good old Dorothy was generous with her praise of another crime writer, it wasn’t always the case, especially with female crime writers. I believe Margery Allingham was a bit of a bitch where Sayers was concerned which must have been a bit awkward as they both lived just one train stop from each other and were often on the London train at the same time.

I do love vintage crime but feel that there are far more crime writers I should be giving a go. Any recommendations vintage or modern?

I bought this book at a library booksale as I’ve read another Osborne adaptation of an Agatha Christie play and it was an enjoyable and quick read, as was this one. Black Coffee was first performed in 1930 and was the first play which Agatha Christie wrote.

It’s a Hercule Poirot mystery and Charles Osborne has set the action in 1934. Poirot is semi-retired, only taking on work which really interests him. Captain Hastings is married and has bought a ranch in Argentina but is in London to do some business. Poirot is getting bored with the same old routine every day so when he gets a phonecall from Sir Claud Amory, a government scientist in need of help, he jumps at the chance of a change of scenery and and working with Hastings again.

It’s another country house mystery! Sir Claud is a bit of an old skinflint and although he has plenty of money he keeps a tight grasp of it which doesn’t make him popular with his son and other members of the family.

Sir Amory has been working on atomic research with the result that he has discovered a new explosive – a weapon of mass destruction. The formula is worth a lot of money and Sir Claud believes that someone is trying to steal it. Naturally there is a murder!

This is one of the many plots in which Agatha Christie employed her knowledge of poisons which she gained whilst working in the dispensary of a hospital during World War I. It’s a good, light, read. I think that Charles Osborne manages to capture the feel of Christie’s writing. If you’re into Christie or vintage crime you’ll probably want to give it a go.

This book was first published in 1929 and it’s another Inspector Alan Grant mystery. I read Tey’s Daughter of Time recently and I thought that it was really good but I liked this one even more. It just absolutely hit the right spot for me at the moment. It’s also far better than The Franchise Affair which always seems to be the one which people are recommended to read.

It’s set in London to begin with and a man has been knifed in the back whilst he was standing in a theatre queue. There’s such a crush that he is dead for some time before he falls down as the crowd had kept his body upright. Nobody else in the queue had noticed anything unusual and the body has nothing on it which would help to identify it.

Bit by bit Inspector Grant uncovers his identity and the action switches to the Highlands of Scotland and a man-hunt which is every bit as good as any written by John Buchan.

This kept me guessing all the way to the end and I can’t say that about all mysteries. So if you enjoy vintage crime books you should definitely give this one a go.

The only other thing that I have to say is that the word Dago is used prolifically throughout The Man in the Queue – describing a man of dark Mediterranean appearance. In 1929 this was regarded as normal I suppose but its definitely un-PC now. Mind you I did read somewhere that Spanish/Italian people didn’t regard the word Dago as derogatory as it’s a corruption of the name Diego and so as far as they are concerned it’s just the same as being called Jimmy. I don’t know if that’s true or not though.

Josephine Tey was of course a Scottish writer and not English as I read recently on another blog. She was born in Inverness and taught in various schools in Scotland and England but moved back to the Highlands to look after her father and continued to write there.