Tag Archives: mystery

Sharon Kay Penman’s The Queen’s Man, Cruel as the Grave, and Dragon’s Lair

Since Ellis Peters started it all with her Brother Cadfael series, the medieval mystery genre has exploded in popularity: Candace Robb’s Owen Archer series; Margaret Frazer’s Sister Frevisse mysteries; Edward Marston’s Norman Domesday tales. Noted for her historical novels, such … Continue reading

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Caroline Graham’s The Killings at Badger’s Drift

A first edition of this novel, which inspired The Midsomer Murders series in Britain, will set you back some six hundred dollars! Fortunately Felony & Mayhem has published a new edition that costs considerably less. Now this an English mystery … Continue reading

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Deborah Grabien’s Still Life with Devils

Christopher White penned this review. Deborah Grabien is a writer with a style that is easy and pleasant to read; in short, she is a talented storyteller. Still Life with Devils is a potentially interesting genre mash-up, mystery meets supernatural. … Continue reading

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Jean-Luc Bannalec’s The King Arthur Case

Jean-Luc Bannalec’s The King Arthur Case represents a new entry in the author’s Commissaire Georges Dupin series. It also sports a connection to one of the western world’s most well-known schools of folklore and mythology. Georges Dupin is an entertaining … Continue reading

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Acorn Media’s A Mind to Kill, Series One

A Mind to Kill was a really gritty police detective series developed from a 1991 pilot with the series running from 1994 to 2004 and which aired first in Wales. Befitting its setting in Mid Wales, it was indeed filmed … Continue reading

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J. K. Van Dover’s Making the Detective Story American

The past decade has witnessed a dark flowering of detective stories in genre fiction, from the Harry Dresden series to the more recent “weird-boiled noir” of Paul Tremblay’s The Little Sleep and China Mieville’s The City & the City, not … Continue reading

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Anthony Horowitz’s Foyle’s War

Foyle’s War is an immensely popular British mystery series created and largely written by Anthony Horowitz, who also had a hand in screenwriting for Poirot and Midsomer Murders, two other British mystery series I also enjoy. The British commercial television … Continue reading

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Acorn Media’s Midsomer Murders, Set 13

Damn, those were good! Indeed they were the finest set of Midsomer Murders in the span of the entire series. I’ve seen every one of them, courtesy of Acorn, which has released them all on DVD in the USA. I … Continue reading

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Acorn Media Group’s Midsomer Murders, Set Eleven and Set 12

Bless Acorn Media for sending us these wonderful DVD sets as they become available! I remember all too well the exquisite torture of watching some of the earlier Midsomer Murders episodes, well larded with commercial breaks, on the A&E Network. … Continue reading

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Acorn Media Group’s Midsomer Murders, Set 1

‘Every time I go into any Midsomer village, it’s always the same thing’, he huffs. ‘Blackmail, sexual deviancy, suicide and murder.’ – Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby in Midsomer Murders I first saw the Midsomer Murders series on A&E, the American … Continue reading

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