Two Envelopes And A Phone > Recent Status Updates

Okay - the best story in Part One was the last one, 'The Regent's Park Murder' by Baroness Orczy. Now the book shifts to its longer section, called Mystery and Horror. It makes no sense that a book called The Best Crime Stories Ever Told is mostly full of Horror tales; plus the fact that most of the stories in Part One - Detection and Mystery - were nowhere near the best of the genre. Hmmmmm...

I thought I might be sick of Mysteries at such a rapid rate - 2 out of every 3 novels - but so far it hasn’t been, uh, overkill, so to speak. That may happen…as my “John Dickson Carr/Carter Dickson and Friends reading project continues all summer, I may go to “2 Mysteries out of every 4 novels” approach. But the graphic novels and short stories I sneak in between novels keep things from getting too same-y.

Little town, a cat, a dead body, lots of suspects. I would visit...but not in November. A little surprised to hit the amnesia trope so soon after taking a potshot at it in my review of Seeing is Believing. I guess nothing is as certain as Amnesia, Taxes, and...what's the other thing?

Scared of it, before starting…

Wow. It is amazing to me that a saying I have not heard in years, or that often - “find a pin, pick it up; all day long you’ll have good luck” - should come into play, both in the novel I just finished, AND the short story, ‘White Magic’, I just read in this book! What are the odds!

A fatality resulting from a stunning hypnotism demo gone wrong…which means this could be a huge favorite of mine. Mysteries, Spy novels, even Horror…throw in hypnotism, especially an evil hypnotist (we don’t know if we have that, here!), and I’m thrilled. Get Out is a movie after my own heart, The Manchurian Candidate, and one book I love but don’t want to spoil…and now this. Yay!

Back on track, when it comes to my John Dickson Carr/Carter Dickson and Friends summer reading stint. This versus Blood on the Cat. The cat means I’m reading the ‘animal on the cover’ book for Giallo July - though The Beetle may also get dealt with, we’ll see. Rocket Summer may not fit my plans, at least not all the prompts. Private Eye July will factor in again, as the weeks unfold. Not enough time for everything…!

Yes, I love this one, so much more than The Defense.

I don’t think this is so weird a pick for Giallo July! I mean, it’s not the archetype, but even besides the yellow cover, this is a schlocky, shabby Legal Thriller that’s gonna have more violence than your average Legal Thriller. Plus: whodunit. I also think I will like this better than the first one in the series; I felt The Defence was too contrived and high-concept to generate Die Hard-esque suspense.

I’ll be reading this in tandem with Blood on the Cat by Nancy Rutledge. My John Dickson Carr/Carter Dickson and Friends reading jag is going very well, in terms of how great the books have been so far. Blood on the Cat also works for Week 2 of the Giallo July Challenge: ‘Read a book with an animal on the cover.”.

It's kind of funny - I've had to fit this in between picks for my John Dickson Carr and Friends reading project, because of all the Mystery novels that means I'll get to, most of them don't feature a paid private eye. I could have double-checked, but I also felt I wanted something more hardboiled noir-ish. Now I'm reading this, and the first book it reminds me of is JDC's great book, The Mad Hatter Mystery!

This will be the other book I get to, before saturating more of my summer with John Dickson Carr and Friends. I’m reading this for Giallo July - I need a Crime Thriller with yellow on the cover, and though this is a bit modern, I don’t own some old potboiler that looks like bloody buttercup. So this is what I got. Call it Contemporary Irish Giallo. Next big thing.

Okay! I’ve decided Tarzan can wait - and, in fact, I’m going to take a two-book break from my John Dickson Carr project. Someone is running something called Private Eye July, and I’m gonna take care of the first part of that: reading one private-eye novel from earlier than 1970 (I don’t think Gideon Fell or Sir Henry have collected a dime over in the JDC novels, so they can’t help me out!).

These are not the best crime stories ever told. I’m not saying they all stink…but the book is mis-titled.

I need Inspector French back in my life. I don’t think we ever got that TV series we were promised. And if I missed it, while blinking, then I don’t want to see it! I imagine Colin Firth in the role; that’s fun. Anyway, this will likely be paired off with Seeing is Believing, by John Dickson Carr (Carter Dickson), as part of my ongoing summer project, and we’ll see which book tops the other…if that happens.