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A review of Just Desserts by Tim Heald – 260703 Just Desserts, the fifth in Tim Heald’s Simon Bognor series, originally published in 1979 and reissued by Dean Street Press, is not a book to be read if you are hungry or thirsty. A murder mystery with a whiff of espionage and blackmail it is … Continue reading Just Desserts →
One of the most uncomfortable moments when visiting a restaurant is deciding whether to tip and if so, by how much. British hospitality venues have taken some of the angst out of the process by imposing a service charge, mandatory rather than voluntary, which can leave a bad taste in the mouth if the service … Continue reading Tipping The Balance →
A review of The Unicorn Murders by Carter Dickson – 260701 The issues around rights having been resolved, there are a number of recent British Library Crime Classics issues to catch up on and the first is this rather remarkable effort from Carter Dickson, a nom de plume of John Dickson Carr. The fourth in … Continue reading The Unicorn Murders →
Experiments with steam-powered vehicles can be traced back to at least 1769 but the prospect of producing a vehicle that could harness this form of power efficiently captivated the minds of several intrepid souls in the 19th century. While best known for his contribution to clockmaking, portable, interior, and tower clocks, the Czech engineer Josef … Continue reading More Steam Vehicles →
A review of Dangerous Curves by Peter Cheyney – 260629 The second book in Peter Cheyney’s Slim Callaghan series, Dangerous Curves, originally published in 1939 and reissued by Dean Street Press, sees the private investigator live up to Detective Inspector Gringall’s assessment of his approach “we get there somehow and who the hell cares”. The … Continue reading Dangerous Curves →
By definition the London Underground is (mostly) underground and passengers have to descend to the platform to catch their train and ascend to the surface once they have reached their definition. According to Transport for London, there are now 202 underground lifts, over 450 escalators, and a further 24 lifts on the Elizabeth line to … Continue reading William “Bumper” Harris →
The hot dry summer has left many a groundsman pulling what is left of their hair out in despair, having turned their usual bowling green into a dusty, baked, patch of straw. The ground had become so hard that there was a real risk of serious injury to players as they fell to the ground … Continue reading Pitch Perfect →
A review of The Second Shot by Anthony Berkeley – 260623 What an extraordinary book and I can see why Anthony Berkeley’s The Second Shot, originally published in 1930, has polarized opinion. The clues of what the author was trying to pull off lie in a letter to A. D. Peters in which he discusses … Continue reading The Second Shot →
We have all done it from time to time, succumbed to the irresistible temptation to enter a symptom or two that we are experiencing into our search function and wait with bated breath to see what turns up. These searches produce answers spanning the whole spectrum of possibilities, and it is easy to take the … Continue reading The 19th Century Doctor Google →
A review of The Case of the Prodigal Daughter by Christopher Bush – 260620 All good things must come to an end, I consoled myself, as I finished the last page of this, the sixty-third and final book in Bush’s Ludovic Travers, a series that started out with The Plumley Inheritance in 1926 and ends … Continue reading The Case Of The Prodigal Daughter →
Leaving aside environmental considerations, I am always overcome by a wave of nostalgia when I see a vehicle powered by steam. The history of steam railway engines is a line well-travelled but the story of the development of steam cars is less well-known. Our story starts with a French military engineer, Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot. After cutting … Continue reading Steam Vehicles →
