10 Comments
Feb 25, 2022Liked by Ted Gioia

I heartily recommend The Winshaw Legacy by Jonathan Coe. Of note is its fantastically recursive ending.

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Feb 24, 2022Liked by Ted Gioia

Thanks for this. I noticed a copy of The Locked Room (in the Martin Beck series) in the stack pictured at the outset. Would love to hear your take on that (perhaps I just missed it!). I'm a big fan of that series.

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Feb 24, 2022Liked by Ted Gioia

Shout out for 'Prague Fatale', a highlight of Philip Kerr's excellent Bernie Gunther series.

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"The Adventure of the Speckled Band" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

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Love locked-room mysteries; the first post here on the topic captured their appeal for me well. As a short mystery no longer than it could bear and a curiosity form the past, Melville Davisson Post's "The Doomdorf Mystery" is worth reading. The main character, Uncle Abner, is interesting enough in one story, maybe two at a time; I found him a bit trying in higher doses, and the attempt to make a backwoods character reflecting a certain 19th century American religious mentality is admirable but doesn't result in a really lovable detective. But that story? It's worth reading.

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A true locked room mystery: The 1958 killing of Dr. Melvin Nimer and his wife, Lou Jean, in the Clifton section of Staten Island. It is chronicled in the book "Scapegoat: How the Wrong Man was Framed for the Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping" by Anthony Scaduto.

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Completely off topic but... Who is Rudy Van Gelder, and do his remastering talents justify putting his name on the marquis in bigger letters and above the artist?

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