Michael J. Ritchie's Blog, page 48

“Gently Does It” by Alan Hunter (1955)

[image error] “Chief Inspector Gently, Central Office, CID, reached automatically into his pocket for another peppermint cream and fed it unconsciously into his mouth.”

Due to the sheer number of crimes that take place annually within fiction, it follows that there have been an awful lot of detectives invented to catch the criminals. Each has appeared with their own methods, and many of them are household names. Hercule Poirot relies on psychology. Miss Marple uses her knowledge of human nature to pin peop...

“After Man” by Dougal Dixon (1981)

[image error] “During the period immediately before and during the Age of Man the principal large-scale grazers and browsers were the ungulates, the hoofed mammals.”

I’ve always had a soft spot for prehistoric creatures. The dinosaurs are amazingly interesting, the evolution of birds and mammals is fascinating, and it’s always cool to see all the weird twists and turns nature took to get us to where we are today. A lot of people seem to treat what exists now as the end point, apparently under the illusion...

“Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?” by Agatha Christie (1934)

[image error]

“Bobby Jones teed up his ball, gave a short preliminary waggle, took the club back slowly, then brought it down and through with the rapidity of lightning.”

And with this one down, I’ve only got two Christie novels left to read. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to think of a good introduction for this one, so unless you want to skip back and read my post about Agatha Christie herself, we may as well crack on.

Vicar’s son Bobby Jones is playing golf one misty afternoon when he hears a cry –...

“How To Stop Time” by Matt Haig (2017)

[image error] “I am old.”

It was years ago when I first picked up a Matt Haig book, The Humans, thinking it sounded like a funny concept. I wasn’t prepared for what a profoundly wise and beautiful book it was, nor that he would become such an important part of my life, and the lives of countless other readers. I’ve plowed through his stuff since, and we finally now arrive at his latest offering, How to Stop Time. Everyone else seems to have read this a couple of months ago, so I’m a bit behind, but nonethe...

“The Beginner’s Goodbye” by Anne Tyler (2012)

[image error] “The strangest thing about my wife’s return from the dead was how other people reacted.”

A couple of weeks ago, I spent a few days in Winchester. It’s a city with several affiliated historical residents, such as King Arthur, William II and Jane Austen, the latter two I encountered the graves of. But there was a name I came away with instead: Anne Tyler. She’s more associated with Baltimore, where all her books are set. On the first day there, I stumbled into her books in a bookshop and was od...

“Strangers On A Train” by Patricia Highsmith (1950)

[image error] “The train tore along with an angry, irregular rhythm.”

While most people would never act on murderous impulses, should they have them, it’s fortunate that this is the case. Quite a fun (purely theoretical) exercise, however, is to come up with the “perfect murder”. I’ve discussed some true ones before, and my extensive time spent reading crime fiction and books on how to write crime fiction means I’ve got a couple of ideas. But don’t worry, you’re not in any immediate danger.

In Patricia Hig...

25 Facts About Agatha Christie

If you’re a regular reader to this blog, you’ll know that my favourite writer is Agatha Christie. Like pretty much everybody, I was vaguely familiar with her work and had seen the odd episode of Marple, but I didn’t actually read one until about 2009, while I was at university. We’d studied her in one seminar, and around the same time there was that Doctor Who episode about her, which is still one of the best episodes ever.

Some people actually are surprised that I came quite late to Christie...

“The Miniaturist” by Jessie Burton (2014)

[image error] “The funeral is supposed to be a quiet affair, for the deceased had no friends.”

I’m very poorly-travelled in the real world, preferring to do my travelling via literature. As such, I’ve never been to Amsterdam in reality, although I keep stopping in. In just the few years I’ve been writing this blog, I’ve been there on a stag weekend, hidden from Nazis with Anne Frank, and on one occasion just stopped in for dinner. I returned again this week, but it’s an Amsterdam I’m not familiar with from...

“The Floating Admiral” by The Detection Club (1931)

[image error] “Three glimpses through the rolling smoke of opium, three stories that still hover about a squalid opium joint in Hong Kong, might very well at this distance of time be dismissed as pipe dreams.”

Have you ever played Consequences? It’s that quaint party game where people write a sentence of a story, pass it on, and the next person has to continue the story and so on through as many players are there are. It’s quite good fun, and usually ends up with some ludicrous stories at the end. Now imag...

“Being A Beast” by Charles Foster (2016)

[image error] “I am a human.”

Humans have a confusing relationship with every other animal species on the planet. There’s nothing else quite like us, which is either a good or bad thing. Some other animals we’ve domesticated, others we watch with awe, and quite often we anthropomorphise them and give them tweed jackets and a knowledge and society they can’t possibly possess. Charles Foster has decided he wants to get to know animals better and so begins a mission to become something else, as best he can. T...