Posts Categorized: Mystery
Sherlock Holmes would be nothing without Dr. Watson. Yes, John H. Watson – medical doctor, wounded veteran of the second Anglo-Afghan War, congenial companion, capable chronicler – the 19th century British Everyman. He’s the ideal foil for the brilliance of Holmes, and tells the story in a way that Holmes never could. He also makes the Great…
How far back do we need to go to find the first detective novel? There are lots of examples of early stories from cultures around the world. My post on Judge Dee, for example, discusses how Van Gulik based his work on fictional stories from the Ming Dynasty about magistrate Gong An. But in terms of…
Welcome to Masters of Mystery Monday, where each week we feature a fictional detective and examine his or her unique contribution to the mystery genre. You are invited to challenge yourself with a short detective quiz, and see the answers to the previous week’s quiz. Today we’re revisiting a Master Detective from an earlier post:…
Early last month, Robert Downey, Jr. announced that he would produce and star in a new Perry Mason film: Click here for the entire Fandango article. For fans of Erle Stanley Gardner’s lawyer-detective Perry Mason, this can either be exciting or distressing news; it depends on how much of a purist you are. Either way, a…
In terms of puzzle and suspense, most of us consider mystery stories primarily “Whodunnit” in nature. However, a lot of mysteries also thrive on the pursuit of the “MacGuffin.” What the heck’s a MacGuffin? The MacGuffin is an object everyone in the story wants, and are racing around to get. Alfred Hitchcock made the term…
How could there be a mystery to Shakespeare’s Macbeth, you ask? American humorist and cartoonist James Thurber asked the same question, with some funny results. Thurber’s life had some interesting moments, including being blinded in one eye as a child when his brother tried to shoot an apple off his head with an arrow (they…
Welcome to Masters of Mystery Monday, where each week we feature a fictional detective and examine his or her unique contribution to mystery fiction. This week, I am thrilled to have mystery author Jeri Westerson guest posting about her detective: Crispin Guest My Detective and Me By Jeri Westerson I have a secret relationship.…
Anyone familiar with the Sherlock Holmes stories has read, or at least heard of, “The Red-Headed League.” The story was published in The Strand Magazine’s August 1891 issue, and later collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892). Be the first to like. Like Unlike
