Christie For Christmas! The Thirteen Problems

It's Christmas! Well, it was Christmas. Reviews are like Christmas cards - better late than never. I hope that all of you have a great New Year.I thought it was high time to cover an Agatha Christie on this blog - and given I love short stories, this was the first thing I turned to. I should mention that, between Poirot and Miss Marple, my favourite is the spinster sleuth of St. Mary Mead. These thirteen stories mark the debut of Miss Marple, before…

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The Red Locked Room – Tetsuya Ayukawa (2020, trans. Ho-Ling Wong)

Tesuya Ayukawa was, as the introduction to this collection says, the foremost proponent in his time of the honkaku, or "orthodox" mystery story. These puzzle-centric mysteries were the inspiration for the later stories by Yukito Ayastuji and Taku Ashibe (who wrote the introduction). In fact Ayukawa lived to see the shin honkaku ("new orthodox") movement begin, and also helped many younger writers make their start. This selection of short stories - his best ones, apparently - features two very different detectives. First is the…

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