Having removed their turbans, Muslim and Hindhu Sikh police recruits are instructed in drill at a Frontier Constabulary training establishment, Nowshera, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, India, 1944
Every month on Past Offences I gather together blog posts about crime fiction written or filmed in a particular year. I’ve called it Crimes of the Century. Brad suggested 1944 or 1948 for July, and I’ve plumped for 1944.
If you want to take part, you can! When you’ve written your post, just let me know below. I’ll gather them all together at the end of the month.
Anyone can play, so over to you…
Small print
- Don’t be shy!
- Just comment below to link to your blog post.
- If you want to play but you haven’t got a blog, I’m happy to have you as a guest poster, or to link to Goodreads or Amazon.
- Books, comics, films, plays and TV also welcome.
- Sorry in advance if I miss you in the round-up, although I am getting better at that bit.
Past Offences: Classic crime, thrillers and mystery book reviews 
oooooh I already have a book from ’44 in my tiny TBR of classics…Australian author A.E. Martin’s Murder in Sideshow Alley.
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What a fantastic title!
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Fabulous book about carnival freaks compassionately presented. Has a quasi impossible crime. Very entertaining and insightful. I have it in the US title: THE OUTSIDERS. Highly recommend all the mysteries by A. E. Maritn. He’s greatly under appreciated.
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Don’t have any books in my TBR pile from this year (though plenty from 39 and 58), so I think I will re-read Towards Zero, as this is a Christie I loved when I read it. Here are a few book and film suggestions for anyone needing help deciding what to read or watch:
Towards Zero and Death Comes as the End by Agatha Christie
Green for Danger by Christianna Brand
Till Death Do Us Part and He Wouldn’t Kill Patience by John Dickson Carr
The Case of the Gilded Fly by Edmund Crispin
Not Quite Dead Enough by Rex Stout
Dead Ernest by Alice Tilton
Home Sweet Homicide by Craig Rice
Secrets Can’t Be Kept by E R Punshon
My Father Sleeps by Gladys Mitchell
The Key and The Clock Strikes Twelve by Gladys Mitchell
The Case of the Crooked Candle and The Case of the Black-Eyed Blonde by Erle Stanley Gardner
The Secret in the Old Attic by Carolyn Keene
The Simple Art of Murder by Raymond Chandler
The Mystery of the Disappearing Cat by Enid Blyton (amongst many others)
The Melted Coins by Franklin W Dixon
While We Still Live by Helen MacInnes
Signed, Picpus by Georges Simenon
Deadline at Dawn by Cornell Woolrich
The Dark Tunnel by Ross Macdonald
Films: Arsenic and Old Lace, Double Indemnity, Murder My Sweet, The Lodger and The Mask of Dimitrios.
Only watched one of these films but I thought Arsenic and Old Lace very good and very funny.
Unfortunately no Marsh novels for this year so JJ and the Puzzle Doctor will be quite disappointed by that. At least there’s a Gladys Mitchell novel for them.
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Oh found another few titles:
Death in White Pyjamas by John Bude
Greenmask by J Jefferson Farjeon
The Black Express by Constance and Gwenyth Little
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Ha. Ha. Well, as with this month, your list makes me oddly determined to find something not on it! Unfortunately the four Rhode/Burton titles are ridiculously expensive (although there is a vaguely affordable – the cheapest is a £27 copy of The Three Corpse Trick described as “Extremely rare as a 1st but the text ends on p190 – not sure how many pages are missing.” But I have got my hands on a copy of the wonderfully titled Slippery Ann by H C Bailey…
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haha didn’t realise finding a book not on my list was an extra level of challenge for Rich’s monthly challenge. Forgot to look for any Rhode titles. Only read one book by Bailey and didn’t really enjoy so will be interesting to see what you make of Slippery Ann. No doubt the talk at the recent British Library Conference spurred you on…
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“The Key and The Clock Strikes Twelve by Gladys Mitchell”
uh… that should be Patricia Wentworth for those two titles.
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haha oh my goodness I hadn’t realised I had typed that. I think I was probably typing those Wentworth titles up whilst thinking about Mitchell. I imagine they would have been very different novels if Mitchell had written them.
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It’s possible Marsh’s Died in the Wool might qualify as it seems to have a 1944 pub date in NZ though I’m finding it hard to verify that for sure.
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Don’t know yet what to read for 1944, but anyway I’m in.
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I never know what it’ll be till the right book turns up, but I’m in… .
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I love it when you announce a year for the next month. Off to look for a book.
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I’d like to write on the film The Suspect with Charles Laughton and Ella Raines. You’ll find it on YouTube if you want to watch it. It’s a fabulous Edwardian noir.
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Oh, yes, I remember that one. The scene where the body’s under the sofa is priceless.
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I think I’ll write about how it’s often missed, like the body, because there is so much good noir in 44.
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Also, to be fair, it’s rather borderline noir — I personally think it can be profitably considered within the noir canon, but there’s lots as wouldn’t.
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Subcategory, Victorian/Edwardian noir 🙂
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It’s not the historicity, it’s the ambience. Whatever, I’m looking forward to your account of the movie!
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Agreed – not high noir style, but a fab noir cast.
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Also, btw, Raymond Chandler’s Five Murderers was published in 1944, as was his famous piece “The Simple Art of Murder.”
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I’m in! Off to check the stacks….
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Okay…Here are my likely suspects (in order of probability) :
Checkmate to Murder by E.C.R. Lorac
All Fall Down by L.A.G. Strong
Fire Will Freeze by Margaret Millar
Pattern for Murder by Ione Sandberg Shriber
Avalanche by Kay Boyle
Too Busy to Die by H. W. Roden
Murder & the Married Virgin by Brett Halliday
The Green Turtle Mystery by Ellery Queen, Jr.
Sailor, Take Warning by Kelley Roos
Dark Street Murders, Peter Cheyney
The Opening Door by Helen Reilly
Puzzle for Puppets by Patrick Quentin
Give ‘Em the Ax by A.A. Fair
The Visitor by Carl Randau
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The fact you have that many options to pick from in your TBR pile is impressive. I’m chuffed if I have one!
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I would skip the Lorac book, Bev, unless you’re interested in yet another murder that takes advantage of the London Blackout rules. It was my first Lorac and did not encourage me to pursue her books even though I have about ten of them still unread.
But by all means dig right into ALL FALL DOWN. Excellent! I think Strong’s detective character is a real winner. A good plot and very engaging. He only wrote a handful of mystery novels, but his mainstream novels I think you would enjoy even more. SAILOR, TAKE WARNING! is very, very good, too.
Shriber is was so heavily influenced by Eberhart her books might easily serve as a textbook examples of a formulaic HIBK mystery. I started but could never finish HEAD OVER HEELS IN MURDER, her first prize winning mystery. The heroine is terrified of everything and the book is seriously over laden with “eerie” atmosphere.
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Kate–it only means that my reading eyes are bigger than my bookshelves and there are WAY too many books waiting on the TBR stacks. I buy much faster than I can read. 🙂
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Just finishing “Toward Zero,” and will be posting my review of that one on-or-about July 10. Hmf. That’s the year I was born. Anybody makes any snide comments, I’ll throw my walker at them.
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Thank you, lesblatt. From one codger to another, it’s a delight to discover that someone who frequents these pages is (insert phthisic cough here) older than I am.
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OK, this may once again be a marathon for me. I have loads of books that were published in 1944. I have almost every title in Bev’s list! Some of them I’ve already read and some will have to remain unread so that I don’t duplicate any of her choices. I’ll shoot for American writers as I usually do. I’m sort of on a Leslie Ford kick and I happen to have ALL FOR THE LOVE OF A LADY. That’s at least one I’ll be writing up. Probably two or three more as I did this month.
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John, I actually have that one too…but I’ve already read a Ford book this year and I’m trying not to do too many duplicates.
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Pingback: THIS WAY LIES MADNESS: The 1944 Novels of Agatha Christie | ahsweetmysteryblog
Okay, nothing rare or unique here! Just starting things off with a couple of Christies! Happy July, everyone!
https://ahsweetmysteryblog.wordpress.com/2016/07/01/this-way-lies-madness-the-1944-novels-of-agatha-christie/
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Pingback: Books of the month: June 2016 | Reactions to Reading
Here is the Wikipedia list of fiction published in 1944 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1944_in_literature#Fiction
– which is reliable and relevant up to a point.
Having discovered your website, I might have a go at this, and it’ll probably be Towards Zero…
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Pingback: Film Notes: Gaslight (1944) directed by George Cukor – A Crime is Afoot
I’ve ordered three Maigrets, Signed, Picpus (tr. David Coward) Penguin Classics – Inspector Maigret (23); Inspector Cadaver (tr. William Hobson) Penguin Classics – Inspector Maigret (24) and Félicie (tr. David Coward) Penguin Classics – Inspector Maigret (25). Besides I have seen again Gaslight (1944) directed by George Cukor. I need that at least one of the books can arrive on time.
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New to this community, so I hope I’m doing this right: here‘s my review of Green for Danger, Christianna Brand.
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Excellent post, Roger! Glad you’ve joined us.
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Here’s my first one: All Fall Down by L. A. G. Strong
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Here’s my take on Agatha Christie’s “Towards Zero.” Did I mention that 1944 also produced…me? No reviews, please, and if you can’t resist a snide comment, be prepared for me to throw my walker at you…sigh… 🙂 Thanks, Rich (et. al.).
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Happy birthday, sort of, Les 🙂
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Happy birth year, Les!
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Here’s my second review (despite John’s efforts to get me to steer clear of it): Checkmate to Murder by E. C. R. Lorac
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Pingback: Review: Signed, Picpus, 1944 (Inspector Maigret #23) by Georges Simenon. Trans: David Coward – A Crime is Afoot
Pingback: Rogues Gallery (1944) | Noirish
Here’s a piece on the movie Rogues Gallery (1944).
Pedants please note: There ain’t no apostrophe in the movie’s title, as given in the opening credits, so . . .
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Cant stand pedant’s.
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A greengrocer speak’s out!
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The poster has it Rogues’ Gallery – must have been one of those college boys working at the poster factory…
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Bearing in mind quite how many errors there can be in the credits of these old B-movies, a mere missing apostrophe doesn’t seem much.
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Pingback: Towards Zero (1944) by Agatha Christie | crossexaminingcrime
Here is my review on Towards Zero:
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Because I had a boxful of 1944 titles to choose from (just like 1929 I kept running across books from this month’s year) and so many of them had tempting plot blurbs I ended up reading two others before I got to Leslie Ford. So here’s #1:
Death Looks Down by Amelia Reynolds Long. Probably the best written and plotted of her books I’ve read. But good luck finding a copy. Don’t I always say that?
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Pingback: #114: Till Death Do Us Part (1944) by John Dickson Carr | The Invisible Event
Here’s my review of Carr’s Till Death Do Us Part.
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High praise indeed, I’m going to get this.
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I have a copy of that sheep book now, by the way; hoping to get to it before the summer is out 🙂
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*feeling responsible*
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Well, yeah, obviously — that’s a given. Hopefully our thinly-veiled contempt for each other will survive the experience.
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Pah!
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My thoughts exactly.
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Second book read and reviewed: Puzzle for Puppets by Patrick Quentin
Loved it! Like Craig Rice, Harry Stephen Keeler and Dorothy B Hughes all wrapped in one package. Could easily be the best of the Peter & Iris Duluth books.
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There seems to be something agley with your link.
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Just click on my name. That link will take you directly to the page…for now. Until I write a new post, of course.
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Here’s the link folks http://prettysinister.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/ffb-puzzle-for-puppets-patrick-quentin.html
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My link above isn’t underlined in blue even though I typed the HTML correct. Odd. On my computer what I tried to make a link turns to red if I pass the cursor over the title words of the book. But it wont’ work as a hyperlink. Can you fix that, Rich?
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Pingback: Review: Towards Zero (1944) by Agatha Christie – A Crime is Afoot
Pingback: Slippery Ann by H C Bailey – In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel
Good news: I’ve posted possibly the internet’s only review of Slippery Ann by H.C. Bailey.
Bad news: The book is dreadful…
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Maybe that’s the reason why yours is the only review on the internet. Perhaps you are the only one who has ever got to the end of it!
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Ha. It’s only 170 pages long, although the tiny print (9 point) makes it seem longer…
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When I saw your post for books of 1954, it reminded me I had not notified you of my book for 1944. It is Fire Will Freeze, and I posted it on July 13, at Bitter Tea and Mystery.
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I got one more done in the nick of time! All for the Love of a Lady by Leslie Ford. A very good mystery and a very good novel, too. It encourages me to read the entire series featuring Colonel Primrose and Grace Latham.
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Got in a look at LAURA before the month ends! https://ahsweetmysteryblog.wordpress.com/2016/07/29/a-portrait-of-laura/
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Managed to just sneak in a review of Vegetable Duck by John Rhode. But what is the mysterious vegetable duck? Read the review and find out… https://classicmystery.wordpress.com/2016/07/31/vegetable-duck-by-john-rhode/
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