My best of the hundred best crime and mystery stories

(aka Blogger tries clickbait headlines) Earlier in the week I announced that I’d completed reviewing all 106 in the CWA’s list of the 100 best crime and mystery books, and promised to let you know which books I thought genuinely … Continue reading →

Achievement Unlocked: The CWA top 100

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Since beginning Past Offences I have been quietly working my way through the CWA’s 1990 list of the 100 best crime books, a list which begins or end with The Four Just Men (#100) and ends or begins with The … Continue reading →

Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None

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If this had been an old house, with creaking wood, and dark shadows, and heavily panelled walls, there might have been an eerie feeling. But this house was the essence of modernity. There were no dark corners – no possible sliding panels – … Continue reading →

Josephine Tey: The Daughter of Time

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Everything in that history had been hearsay. And if there was one word that a policeman loathed more than another it was hearsay. Especially when applied to evidence.

Raymond Chandler: The Lady in the Lake

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Derace Kingsley marched briskly behind about eight hundred dollars’ worth of executive desk and planted his backside in a tall leather chair. He reached himself a panatela out of a copper and mahogany box and trimmed it and lit it … Continue reading →

Dorothy L. Sayers: Gaudy Night

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There is no chance assembly of people who cannot make lively conversation about drains.

Raymond Chandler: The Long Goodbye

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Crime isn’t a disease, it’s a symptom. Cops are like a doctor that gives you aspirin for a brain tumour, except that the cop would rather cure it with a blackjack. We’re a big, rough, rich, wild people and crime … Continue reading →

Reginald Hill: Under World

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But down here survival was too far beneath hope to make a motive, and the darkness was fetid with doubt and accusation. Time for the bottom line, as the Yanks put it. Place for a bottom line too. And the … Continue reading →

Martin Cruz Smith: Gorky Park

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‘I just wanted you to know exactly where you stood. You’re not here legally. You’re not here illegally either, because then you’d have a leg to stand on. You’re simply not here at all, and there’s no way you can … Continue reading →

Reginald Hill: Deadheads

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‘Clever fellow, our Patrick. Very clever.’ ‘Sir,’ said Pascoe determinedly. ‘Do you still suspect him of something?’ ‘Me? No. Why should I? A lot of people have died, it’s true. But there’s always people dying, isn’t there? And we’ve no … Continue reading →