June 2012
8 posts
This Gun for Hire
4 tags
From The Philosophy of Composition (1846), Edgar...
Poe writes —
“Nothing is more clear than that every plot, worth the name, must be elaborated to its dénouement before any thing be attempted with the pen. It is only with the dénouement constantly in view that we can give a plot its indispensable air of consequence, or causation, by making the incidents, and especially the tone at all points, tend to the development of the...
5 tags
Detective Profile: Nigel Strangeways
Has sandy coloured hair. Faultless verbal memory = greatest strength. Eats heartily. Is fairly clumsy. Incurably inquisitive. Borderline kleptomaniac (will pocket objects of interest). Forgetful (will forget said pocketed objects of interest). Feels fear. Has a colonial bent of mind. Not a charlatan, thanks to inherent bumbling nature, but refers to self as an exhibitionist nonetheless. Very...
5 tags
On There's Trouble Brewing (1937), by Nicholas...
I was not too blown away by this one (did Thou Shell of Death raise expectations too high?). The humour here is sporadic, Nigel a tad too amateurish, and the resolution a little predictable. The problem with the author harping upon Nigel’s faultless verbal memory is that the reader is going to catch on at some point. That said, it is still a very good read, the chief delight being Mr....
“The common thread of crime is crisis, which has the striking power to generate...”
– Otto Penzler and Thomas H. Cook; Preface, The Best American Crime Reporting 2007
10 tags
Thou Shell of Death, by Nicholas Blake
Delightful, humorous and bursting with allusions. The solution rests on sound literary knowledge. Nigel Strangeways is a romantic, slightly flawed, erudite and rather mischievous private investigator (an ‘amateur,’ as he calls himself sometimes), with a perfect verbal memory. He falls asleep when he should not, falls in love with the prime suspect, loves a hearty meal....
3 tags
“I write when I can and I don’t write when I can’t.”
– The Raymond Chandler Papers 