B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 81

Mystery Melange

Dettie Gould has won the Harvill Secker Bloody Scotland Crime Writing Award with her "deliciously dark thriller," The Light and Shade of Ellen Swithin. The prize, which aims to discover exciting new crime fiction by writers of color, was judged by winner of the inaugural competition, Ajay Chowdhury; journalist and public speaker, Paula Akpan; creative producer at Words of Colour, Heather Marks; and Harvill Secker publisher, Liz Foley. Gould will have her book published under the Harvill Secker imprint, in a publishing deal with an advance of £5,000. She will also appear on a panel at the Bloody Scotland festival and receive a guest pass for the weekend’s events. (HT to The Bookseller)

Christie J Newport has won the inaugural Joffe Books Prize for Crime Writers of Colour with the "enormously promising" first installment in a police procedural series. The competition aims to champion authors from Black, Asian, and minority ethnic backgrounds, who are particularly underrepresented in crime fiction publishing, and is open to debut, previously published, or self-published writers. The prize will now be an annual event, with the next submissions period opening in May 2022.

The 2021 Nero Award, given by the Wolfe Pack for "the best American Mystery written in the tradition of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe stories," has been won by Stephen Spotswood for Fortune Favors the Dead. The Black Orchid Novella Award, presented jointly by the Wolfe Pack and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and honoring the novella format popularized by Rex Stout, was won by Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson for "The Man Who Went Down Under." The novella will be published in the July 2022 issue of AHMM. Honorable mentions for the Black Orchid Novella Award went to: "Bad Apples" by Kathleen Marple Kalb (writing as Nikki Knight); "The Inside Shake" by Jason Koontz; "House of Tigers" by William Burton McCormick; "The Mystery of the Missing Woman" by Regina M. Sestak; and "Lovely As" by Jacqueline Vick.

Goodreads announced its Choice Awards today, including the winner of the Mystery & Thriller category, The Last Thing He Told me by Laura Dave. For the other nineteen finalist books, follow this link.

The Crime Fiction Lover online magazine/blog announced the winners of its inaugural Crime Fiction Lover Awards 2021 for Best Crime Novel, Best Debut, Best Novel in Translation, Best Indie Novel, and Best Crime Show. Check out the winners (both readers' choices and editors' choices) here.

Canberra pharmacist, Hayley Young, has won Sisters in Crime Australia’s 28th Scarlet Stiletto Short Story Awards for her police procedural tale, "Monster Hunters." That story also picked up the 2021 ScriptWorks’s Great Film Idea Award. This year, 241 short stories competed for a record $11,910 in prize money and benefits. The Simon & Schuster Second Prize went to Jaclyn Riley-Smith, while the Sun Bookshop & Wild Dingo Press Third Prize was won by Ellen Coates. For all the various awards in several additional categories, click on over here.

Left Coast Crime announced the special guests for the next conference, which is currently slated to be held as an in-person event April 7-10, 2022, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Guests of Honor include Mick Herron and Catriona McPherson; Fan Guest of Honor: Kristopher Zgorski; Toastmaster: Kellye Garrett; and Ghost of Honor: Tony Hillerman. Event organizers also noted that LCC attendees will be required to provide proof of full vaccination before check-in.  (HT to Mystery Fanfare)

Mystery Readers Journal: Cold Case Mysteries (Volume 37:4// Winter 2021/2022) is now available as PDF and hardcopy. You can also check out a few free online articles including, "Cold Cases and Deep Waters" by Martin Edwards; "A Snitch in Time" by James L’Etoile; and "An Old San Francisco Mystery Is Unburied, and Inspiration Strikes" by Ann Parker.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Ear Witness" by Tom Barlow.

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Media Murder for Monday

It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a brand-new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

David Dastmalchian (Dune) has joined the cast of the true-crime film, Boston Strangler, which tells the story of the Boston Strangler murders in the 1960s. Keira Knightley, Carrie Coon, Alessandro Nivola, and Chris Cooper are also attached to star. Knightley will portray Loretta McLaughlin, who was the first reporter to connect the murders and break the story of the Strangler. She and fellow reporter, Jean Cole, challenged the sexism of the early ’60s to report on the city’s most notorious serial killer and worked tirelessly to keep women informed. McLaughlin pursued the story at great personal risk and uncovered corruption that cast doubt on the true identity of the killer.

The Pale Blue Eye, Netflix’s mystery thriller that follows a young Edgar Allan Poe, has added an impressive supporting cast that includes Gillian Anderson, Lucy Boynton, and Robert Duvall. Christian Bale and Harry Melling star in the fictional Gothic thriller, which is being directed by Scott Cooper. Bale plays a detective in 1830 tasked with investigating a series of murders at the United States Military Academy in West Point, and who takes a young cadet named Edgar Allan Poe (Melling) under his wing to help him solve the case.

Charlie Weber (How to Get Away with Murder) will star alongside Ryan Phillippe and Kate Bosworth in The Locksmith, a crime thriller directed by Nicolas Harvard, which is currently in production in New Mexico. The film centers on Miller (Phillippe), a thief fresh out of prison after a job gone bad who tries to work his way back into the life of his daughter as well as his ex-girlfriend, Beth (Bosworth), who is now a police detective. Determined to make a clean start, he is forced to use the only skills he has as a gifted locksmith to make ends meet. But things soon get complicated after an unexpected kidnapping, and from there take a tumultuous turn. Weber will play Garrett, a real estate developer with a dark secret who keeps dirty cops and politicians on his payroll.

Rob Schneider has joined the cast of writer-director Rick Bieber’s indie film, Dead Wrong. He’ll star alongside Cress Williams, Katrina Bowden, Derek Smith, Chelsea Debo, Rosalie Ward, Chet Hanks, and Joshua Bitton. The crime drama is based on K.E. Clark’s novel, Deadly Instinct, and follows Billy Evans (Smith), a narcissist of psychotic proportions who is blinded with jealousy over the wealth accumulated by his best friend and local mob boss (Hanks), and schemes to steal his infant son to obtain a multi-million dollar settlement from the hospital’s insurance company. In so doing, he ignites a chain reaction that overwhelms the lives of his now suicidal wife (Bowden), her nymphomaniacal younger sister (Debo) with whom he’s having an affair, a deeply indebted gambling and alcoholic lawyer (Schneider), a Brooklyn born bookmaker/pimp/murderer (Bitton), a rural ex-con (Shields) seeking redemption from his angelic wife (Ward), and a hard-nosed insurance investigator (Williams).

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Miramax TV has optioned the rights to Nina de Gramont’s upcoming novel, The Christie Affair, with British writer Juliette Towhidi set to pen the adaptation. In 1926, when her husband’s affair became public, Agatha Christie vanished for eleven days. This reimagining is told through the eyes of her husband’s mistress, Nan O’Dea (a fictionalized version of his real-life paramour, Nancy Neele). Agatha and Nan transform from competitors to unlikely allies while the world around them remains cloaked in the dark. Set mostly in the beautiful and historic British spa town of Harrogate, The Christie Affair is part sweeping love story, part exploration of the bonds of womanhood, and part murder mystery to rival one of Christie’s own famous stories.

Alfonso Cuarón is adapting Renee Knight’s novel, Disclaimer, as a series for Apple TV+ with Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline starring. Blanchett plays Catherine Ravenscroft, a successful and respected television documentary journalist whose work has been built on revealing the concealed transgressions of long-respected institutions. When an intriguing novel written by a widower, played by Kline, appears on her bedside table, she is horrified to realize she is a key character in a story that she had hoped was long buried in the past—a story that reveals her darkest secret she thought was hers alone.

Jo Nesbø’s Headhunters is returning to screens, this time as a TV series for Sweden’s C More and TV2 Norway, starring Axel Bøyum (Betrayed) and Martin Wallström (Mr. Robot). Headhunters, which was made into a highly-rated Norwegian film 10 years ago, follows the successful but insecure corporate recruiter, Roger Brown, who lives a double life as an art thief to fund his lavish lifestyle. He finds out that one of his job prospects is in possession of a valuable painting and sets out to steal it.

AMC Networks' Acorn TV announced a second season of the popular British crime drama, Whitstable Pearl. Based on the "The Whitstable Pearl Mysteries" by Julie Wassmer, the second six-part series sees the return of Kerry Godliman in the lead role as Pearl Nolan. Howard Charles also returns as DCI Mike McGuire and Frances Barber as Dolly Nolan, Pearl’s mother. Whitstable Pearl explores the dark undercurrents of murder and debauchery swirling beneath the surface of the picturesque 16th century English seaside town of Whitstable, famous for its native oysters and buffeted by the prevailing winds and spray of the North Sea.

Ahead of the final run of the popular Spanish series, Money Heist, Netflix announced a spinoff centered on Pedro Alonso’s character, Berlin. Money Heist revolves around a group of would-be robbers brought together by a man known as "The Professor" to break into the Royal Mint of Spain to steal millions of Euros in untraceable cash. Berlin (every character goes by the name of a city to hide their identities) is the de facto leader of the group on the ground. The new series will be an origin story on the character and will premiere in 2023. Outside of "Squid Game," the crime thriller is Netflix’s most popular foreign-language series.

Bianca Santos will star alongside Mischa Barton and Seamus Dever in Stephen Shimek’s indie thriller, Invitation to a Murder. The film sees a reclusive billionaire invite six seemingly random strangers to his island estate, including aspiring detective Miranda Green (Barton). When another guest turns up dead, Miranda must get to the bottom of the plot behind the gathering to prove herself and maybe save her own life. Santos will play Carmen Blanco, a poor waitress from Seville who joins Green and Dever’s attorney, Lawrence Kane, as a guest at the mansion. She gets swept up in a romance with another guest, but when things take a deadly turn, she must decide whose side she’s on.

Amazon has debuted the first trailer for its upcoming series based on Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels, called simply Reacher, featuring Alan Ritchson in the title role. Jack Reacher is a veteran military police investigator who has just recently entered civilian life. He's also a drifter, carrying no phone and the barest of essentials as he travels the country and explores the nation he once served. When Reacher arrives in the small town of Margrave, Georgia, he finds a community grappling with its first homicide in 20 years. The cops immediately arrest him and eyewitnesses claim to place Reacher at the scene of the crime. Lee Child has apparently given his blessing to the casting of Ritchson, who more closely follows the character described in the novels as being 6'5", 235 pounds, and with hands "the size of dinner plates." The character was previously played in a pair of movies by the diminutive Tom Cruise, which infuriated many fans of the novels.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Luke McCallin chatted with Paul Burke on Crime Time FM about his new historical thriller, Where God Does Not Walk, featuring Gregor Reinhardt, a young lieutenant in a stormtrooper battalion on the Western Front during WWI. When Reinhardt uncovers a murderous conspiracy at the heart of the German army, it opens his eyes to the corruption and callousness all around him.

Scottish author, Val McDermid, best known for her Tony Hill novels, spoke with ABC Radio National about how her time as a newspaper journalist inspired a new crime series.

Meet the Thriller Author welcomed Wanda M. Morris, who worked in the legal departments of American top Fortune 100 companies and established a signature female empowerment program known as the Women’s Initiative, to discuss her debut novel, All Her Little Secrets.

Read or Dead hosts Katie and Liberty chatted about their favorite new and backlist historical mystery titles.

Wrong Place, Write Crime spoke with Spencer Fleury about his new release, How I'm Spending My Afterlife.

Writers Detective Bureau host, Detective Adam Richardson, tackled the topics of stake-out locations; when cases go cold; the upcoming Writer's Detective School Cohort; and a debrief of what he learned at the 2021 20BooksVegas conference.

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Sunday Music Treat

Arnold Schoenberg is best known for his dissonant modernist music, but his "Weihnachtsmusik (Christmas Music)," is actually a nice little arrangement for chamber ensemble of the classic carol, "Es ist ein Ros' entsprungen," by Praetorius, with even a touch of Silent Night for good measure. Here's Andrew Parrott conducting the Taverner Consort and Players:

 

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Quote of the Week

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Friday's "Forgotten" Books: The Mynns' Mystery

George Manville Fenn (1831-1909) was an English novelist, journalist and editor. Although primarily self-taught, he went on to become a schoolmaster and magazine publisher, attracting the attention of none other than Charles Dickens. He was rather prodigious in his literary output, with numerous articles, short stories, a few plays, some nonfiction books, and something like 140 novels, although several of those were YA stories for boys.



The title setting of The Mynns' Mystery, published in 1891, is an Old English manor home owned by a elderly rich man, who is dying. He adopted a young woman named Gertie, and the elderly man fears that an opportunistic suitor, Saul Harrington, will marry the girl for her inheritance and treat her no better than a slave. So he decides to leave the bulk of his estate to his long-estranged grandson George, whose parents emigrated to America, in hopes that he'll marry Gertie. But as the story progresses, the question arises as to who is the greater villain, the opportunistic Saul or George?



After the old man dies and leaves a codicil in his Will that if George dies, Saul inherits everything, you know that murder won't be far behind. But in one twist, the hunter becomes the hunted, and the chase is on. As one might expect from the era the book was written, and the fact that the author specialized in children's stories, the writing is a bit facile and overly melodramatic. But it has a credible plot (for its day), some decent charactization, and a great dog named Bruno.

          

Mystery Melange

 

The Historical Writers' Association has announced the winners of this year's HWA Crown Awards, "celebrating the best historical writing of the year, fiction and non-fiction." This year's winner was The Unwanted Dead by Chris Lloyd, the first in a new crime fiction series featuring Paris police detective, Eddie Giral, set in WWII during the German occupation.

As part of the Barnes and Noble Midday Mystery Virtual Event Series, author Patricia Cornwell will be in conversation with Jamie Lee Curtis to celebrate the publication of Cornwell's latest thriller, Autopsy. The book marks the 25th installment in Cornwell's series featuring chief medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta. For ticket information about the event, which will air as a Zoom Webinar tomorrow, Thursday, December 2, at 3 PM ET, follow this link.

The Poisoned Pen Bookstore will offer a free online event on December 9th featuring the authors from the Jungle Red Writers blog. This Special Holiday Cheer Celebration will include Rhys Bowen, Lucy Burdette, Deborah Crombie, Hallie Ephron, Jenn McKinlay, Hank Phillippi Ryan, and Julia Spencer-Fleming.

The deadline is fast approaching for submissions to the Tony Hillerman Prize for Best First Mystery Set in the Southwest Competition, sponsored by St. Martin’s Press. This is for a debut novel of unpublished crime fiction, and all entrants must be at least 18 years of age and a legal resident of one of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia, or Canada (excluding Quebec). To be considered for the 2021 competition, all manuscripts must be received by 11:59 pm on January 1, 2022. The Grand Prize consists of an offer to have the winner’s manuscript published with an advance against future royalties in the amount of $10,000.

The Washington Post's Maureen Corrigan and Richard Lipez compiled their list of the "Best thriller and mystery books of 2021."

The anthology, Under the Thumb: Stories of Police Oppression, edited by S. A. Cosby for Rock and a Hard Place, is now available for Kindle at Amazon. Rock and a Hard Place Press is a lit-noir publisher, focused on stories of struggle, tales of the powerless and marginalized, characters on the fringes of society … and what they do next. Proceeds from this latest collection go to the New Jersey branch of Black Lives Matter.

The late B.K. Stevens hosted "The First Two Pages" on her blog, with craft essays by short story writers and novelists analyzing the openings of their own work. In November 2017, the blog series relocated to Art Taylor's website, and among the latest offerings is the first essay in a series from contributors to the new holiday anthology, Festive Mayhem 2, edited by Marla Bradeen. This week's feature comes via "Last Bite," written by Rhoda Berlin—a family therapist as well as a crime writer—that offers all levels of perspective on the story and the holiday and families in general.

Janet Rudolph compiled a list of Chanukah (a/k/a Hanukah, Hanukkah) themed crime fiction titles for adults and children, both novels and short stories (and a few games).

Janet Rudolph is also the editor of Mystery Readers Journal and announced that the first issue of the 2022 will focus on New England Mysteries. They're looking for reviews (50-250 words), articles (250-1000 words), and Author! Author! essays (500-1500 words). Author essays are first person, about yourself, your books, and the "New England" connection. The deadline is January 15, 2022. For more information, check out the guidelines here.

Cain’s Jawbone continues to fascinate readers even after 87 years. Only four readers have solved the fiendish murder mystery, devised by former Observer crossword setter, Edward Powys Mathers, and now thanks to a series of TikTok postings by a young documentary assistant in San Francisco, the book has sold out in bookshops around the world.

The Cross Examining Crime blog made a clever online classic crime version of the National Book Token Hidden Book Game. The illustrated village is reminiscent of Midsomer and contains 36 clues, each for a classic crime title, (many of which feature a village in them).

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 is "Neal's Torment: The Villanelle of the Pontiac" by Cynthia Steele.

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Media Murder for Monday

It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a brand-new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Nadine Crocker is on board to direct the psychological thriller, Hallow, which is also written by Crocker along with Chris Tardio. Shooting is scheduled to begin in early 2022 in New York and New Jersey. The film follows an event that unearths hidden secrets of corruption in a small East Coast town and forces a priest to look at his past and the trauma that he’s long shut out. He grapples with what kind of man he will become: a man of forgiveness and faith, to which he has dedicated his life, or a man of revenge and justice.

Christina Ricci has signed on to play a supporting role in The Dresden Sun, a cyberpunk indie from writer-director Michael Ryan that also stars Samantha Win. The film is set in motion by a heist that goes south when a brilliant, principled mercenary with a traumatic past works with an insider to steal a valued asset from Peredor Corporation called "the sphere." Meanwhile, a financial analyst finds himself caught in the middle between deadly corporate rivals, financial fraud, and technological espionage, and is ultimately forced to run from the most psychopathic military contractor in the world.

Showtime has unveiled the first trailer for its feature follow-up to the Ray Donovan series starring Liev Schreiber, and announced the release date as Friday, January 14. The movie comes almost exactly two years since the season seven finale aired on the premium network. The film picks up where season seven left off, with Mickey, played by Jon Voight, on the run and Schreiber’s Ray determined to find and stop him before he can cause any more carnage. It will also weave together the present-day fallout from the Donovan/Sullivan feud with Ray and Mickey’s origin story from 30 years ago. Original cast members reprising their roles include Eddie Marsan as Ray’s brother Terry, Dash Mihok as Ray’s brother Bunchy, Pooch Hall as the Donovan’s half-brother Daryll, Kerris Dorsey as Ray’s daughter Bridget, Katherine Moennig as Lena, along with Kerry Condon as Molly Sullivan.

TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES

Gabriel Basso and Luciane Buchanan are set as the leads in The Night Agent, Netflix’s political conspiracy thriller series created by Shawn Ryan and based on author Matthew Quirk’s 2019 New York Times bestseller. The story centers on a low-level FBI agent, Peter Sutherland (Basso), who works in the basement of the White House manning an emergency hotline for American spies that never rings—until the night that it does, propelling him into a fast moving and dangerous conspiracy that ultimately leads all the way to the Oval Office.

NBC announced that Anthony Anderson will reprise his role as Detective Kevin Bernard on the revival of Law & Order, becoming the first series alum to officially return to the show. Fellow original star, Sam Waterston, who was also approached early on about returning, is still in discussions. A new franchise addition, Hugh Dancy, has been added to the cast in a lead role playing an assistant district attorney, joining the other previously announced series newcomer, Jeffrey Donovan, who will be playing an NYPD detective.

Jurassic Park star, Sam Neill, is set to lead Foxtel’s Australian TV drama series, The Twelve, which is due to begin production next week. Neill will be joined by Marta Dusseldorp, Kate Mulvaney, Brooke Satchwell, and Hazem Shammas in the 10-part series, which is adapted from the Belgian crime drama of the same name. The Twelve follows 12 jurors—ordinary Australians with struggles of their own—who are tasked with deciding the case of a woman (Mulvaney) accused of killing a child. Neill will play a lawyer involved in the case, while Satchwell and Shammas form part of the jury.

Zuleikha Robinson, Louis Ozawa, and Okieriete Onaodowan have been tapped as series regulars opposite John Krasinski on the upcoming fourth season of the Amazon Prime Video series, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan. Additionally, Derek Cecil and Nancy Lenehan have been cast in recurring roles in the drama series. Production recently wrapped on Season 3 which finds Jack Ryan (Krasinski) on the run and in a race against time. Jack is wrongly implicated in a larger conspiracy and suddenly finds himself a fugitive out in the cold. Now, wanted by both the CIA and an international rogue faction that he has uncovered, Jack is forced underground, crisscrossing Europe, trying to stay alive and prevent a massive global conflict.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

Crime Cafe host, Debbi Mack, interviewed author Iain Parke, creator of the British Biker Noir themed "The Brethren MC" series.

The Red Hot Chili Writers welcomed Mikhail Sen, star of the recent A Suitable Boy adaptation, to talk about his acting life; the audiobook of The Shadows of Men; and to take a Hollywood great quotations quiz.

Author Chris Offutt chatted with Crime Time FM host, Paul Burke, about his latest book, The Killing Hills, featuring a combat veteran now working as an Army CID agent. Also discussed:  land and culture; spy fiction; and photography.

Meet the Thriller Author spoke with Mark Edward Langley about his Arthur Nakai mystery books set in the American Southwest.

The featured guest on Wrong Place, Write Crime was Sarah Gailey, talking about her new book, The Echo Wife (and also killer hippos).

The latest podcast from Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine featured Jeff Cohen's "The Question of the Befuddled Judge" from the May/June 2020 issue, read by the author. Jeff Cohen is the author of the humorous Double Feature and Aaron Tucker mystery series. As E.J. Copperman, he writes the Haunted Guesthouse mystery series, the Agent to the Paws series, the Mysterious Detective series, and the Samuel Hoenig series.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Book Club had a True Crime Round-Up for 2021.

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Sunday Music Treat

In keeping with the season, here's a little something from Franz Liszt. We're ordinarily more accustomed to his virtuosic style compositions, but this charming piece is "In dulci jubilo" from Weihnachtsbaum (Christmas Tree), a suite of 12 pieces written by Liszt in 1873–76 to his first grandchild, Daniela von Bülow (1860-1940; daughter of conductor Hans von Bülow), who was born on Christmas Eve. The pianist in this Naxos recording is Jeffrey Biegel (Scott Drayco hasn't made a recording of this, alas):

 

          

Quote of the Week

          

Friday's "Forgotten" Books

Melville Davisson Post (1869-1930) was born into a prosperous family in West Virginia and practiced criminal and corporate law for several years. However, after the success of his first novel series, he promptly dropped his law career to write full time. He was a prolific writer, penning numerous stories in national magazines like The Saturday Evening Post and The Ladies Home Journal.



He wrote a couple of series and some standalone novels, but it may have been his twenty-plus stories featuring the mystery-solving and justice dispensing West Virginian backwoodsman, Uncle Abner, which helped make Post popular. Ellery Queen called the stories "an out-of-this-world target for future detective-story writers," and the 1941 review of the mystery genre, Murder for Pleasure, declared that Uncle Abner was, after Edgar Allan Poe's Arsène Dupin, "the greatest American contribution" to the cast of fictional detectives.



Uncle Abner is described as "a big, broad-shouldered, deep-chested Saxon, with all those marked characteristics of a race living out of doors and hardened by wind and sun. His powerful frame carried no ounce of surplus weight. It was the frame of an empire builder on the frontier of the empire. The face reminded one of Cromwell, the craggy features in repose seemed molded over iron but the fine gray eyes had a calm serenity, like remote spaces in the summer sky. The man's clothes were plain and somber. And he gave the impression of things big and vast."



Abner is also a Puritan at heart who always carries a Bible in his pocket and has a knack for finding out the truth. As his nephew, Martin, who frequently narrates the stories, says, "for all his iron ways, Abner was a man who saw justice in its large and human aspect, and he stood for the spirit, above the letter, of the truth." He is a stern authoritarian figure but equally so a kind and compassionate philosopher.



Uncle Abner, Master of Mysteries was the first anthology (1918), and contained 18 Uncle Abner stories all told by Martin. The crimes primarily deal with murder or robbery and start after the crime has been committed and the killer thinks he's gotten away with it. "The Doomdorf Mystery," is the first story in the collection and also one of Post's best known. It features more than one possible suspect who all admit to being the killer, as well as a locked-room scenario ("the wall of the house is plumb with the sheer face of the rock. It is a hundred feet to the river ... but that is not all. Look at these window frames; they are cemented into their casement with dust").



The stories are most definitely of their pre-Civil War setting, in that they feature the attitudes toward African-Americans prevalent at the time (NOTE: this means they have the associated language that today's readers might find offensive). If you can get past that, these are entertaining for the shrewd characterizations, tight plots, and for the dispensing of frontier justice in an era that predated American police forces and procedures.