"Nobody who deals with real crime ought ever to read Agatha Christie novels ( Read more... )

I just acquired IORICH from the library today ( Read more... )

Arrived in the post sometime Friday; I finished reading it before Saturday.

( spoilers )

Continuing yesterday's train of thought - a bit more analysis of cases where the killer had gotten away with a crime previously, and only got caught for the most recent crime / murder.

( spoilers )

The Inspector Sloan mysteries can be thought of as police procedural mysteries. The inspector is the head of the tiny Criminal Investigation Department in Berebury, and gets handed whatever mystery investigations need handling there and in surrounding small villages and towns. (On one occasion, he got handed an investigation further away, because ( Read more... )

Note: I enjoy Catherine Aird's work very much. I have just been thinking about trying to see how many weak points I can find in various mysteries, and happened to start with her ( Read more... )

In this case, the weakness is that the whole scheme should have unravelled before the first murder was committed ( Read more... )

Unlike james_nicoll, I write reviews for fun rather than professionally (and no, this isn't a "you get what you pay for" post ( Read more... )

Many thanks to eighthweasley for mentioning that this was in the works ( Read more... )

Very few people would be aware of this (or care), but I have the SOED [Shorter Oxford English Dictionary] on CD. The newer-than-new edition, the older one's CD (a.k.a. the "new" SOED or NSOED) having met with a regrettable demise due to being transported with insufficient care by yours truly. The newer-than-new edition likes to chirpily offer up a ( Read more... )