a date for bodies

Hello again

I’m writing this more or less entirely surrounded by entries for the CWA Gold Dagger competition, as we reached the long listing stage late last month. There was much to decide for that and we still have a ways to go… Shortlisting next!

I’m excited to be looking forward, later this year, to a conversation with publisher Robert Hyde of Galileo Publishing on the subject of Golden Age author Clifford Witting. This takes place at the Bodies from the Library day conference at the British Library on June 24th.

It is January 1940 and Mrs Mudge is busily occupied cleaning the Little Theatre in Lulverton, which is run by the local amateur dramatics society. But she’s in for an unpleasant surprise with her discovery of a corpse in the box-office, stabbed in the back with a dagger – a prop from the society’s latest play, Measure for Measure.

By the time of the conference there’ll be seven titles available - Catt Out of the Bag, Dead on Time, Let ‘X’ Be the Murderer (4/23), Measure for Murder, Midsummer Murder, Murder in Blue and Subject: Murder (4/23).

This is a fun event - it will celebrate the Golden Age of Detective Fiction and will be of interest to fans of Agatha Christie and her contemporaries – Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy L Sayers, John Dickson Carr, Margery Allingham, the Detection Club - and also to those wanting to discover forgotten authors from the period. You can get tickets here.

Another of my passions - still books, mind - is my love of related reference books. I've just recently located, ordered, and now received, these two heavy tomes, at very reasonable prices I might add, that have been on my radar for a while: Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers (St. Martin’s Press) and Sleuths, Sidekicks and Stooges by Joseph Green & Jim Finch (Ashgate Press).  These provide hours of interest - and inspiration!

I can definitely recommend one of my latest finds, published in October - Mithran Somasundrum’s The Case of the Vanishing Conman. Set in Bangkok, about a financially-challenged translator & private investigator, Vijay, and his efforts to find who shot a novelist - twists and turns a-plenty! Let me know what you think.

And today's Jacket From The Attic - again from the biblio-book stacks, is the first in the Henry Gamadge series, Elizabeth Daly's Unexpected Night, re-published by Felony & Mayhem in the USA.

Take care, cheerio for now
Richard

Books mentioned

Elizabeth Daly: Unexpected Night (out of print though another edition is available)
Joseph Green & Jim Finch: Sleuths, Sidekicks and Stooges (9781859281925)
John Reilly (Ed): Twentieth Century Crime & Mystery Writers (9780312824174)
Mithran Somasundrum: The Case of the Vanishing Conman ( 9781804054505)
Clifford Witting: Catt Out of the Bag (9781912916375)
Dead on Time (9781912916634)
Let X Be the Murderer (9781915530004)
Measure for Murder (9781912916528)
Midsummer Murder (9781912916733)
Murder in Blue (9781912916504)
Subject: Murder (9781912916993)