Lighting the Pipes

Good news, Sherlock fans! Summer has arrived (in the northern hemisphere at least) and that means the return of our world-famous "Sherlock Selects" Summer Series! Last year, we featured four classic stand-alone installments. This season we're tackling the Holmesian mythology with revamped presentations of "The Final Problem" and "The Empty House". First up, Conan Doyle's intrepid attempt to bid fa...

Inspired by real events, Robert Traver's 1958 novel was the first of its kind - a true "courtroom thriller". Showcasing the genial narrative perspective of every-man defense attorney, Paul Biegler, "Anatomy" couldn't be better named as it guides readers through the crooks and crevices of the legal corpus of a murder trial. Groundbreaking and controversial in equal measure for its detailing and con...

In this pint-sized episode, we reach into the archives and present a conversation from July 2016 on Ian Fleming's "Quantum of Solace". A divisive short story that had James Bond fans scratching their heads, Fleming's narrative experiment positions 007 as after-dinner audience to a morality tale of greed, revenge and marital conflict. It's a curious short story and well worth checking out!

In this engaging side-series, Josh flies solo in exploring the production, features and influences of Film Noir. Taking the shape of compact film reviews, the first of these complementary capsule episodes sets the stage for the genre's American premiere by looking at its European origins. Informative context then gives way to review as John Huston's 1941 adaptation of "The Maltese Falcon" by Dashi...

Dashiell Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon" wastes no time cutting shapes and setting angles in its pursuit of modelling the hard-boiled genre. The opening sentence alone produces enough sharp edge to slice through a striploin at Herbert's on Powell Street: "Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting V under the more flexible V of his mouth." However, in spite of its influence, the whett...

"The Moonstone" is regarded by many as the progenitor of the detective novel in English. Published in 1868, it marks, perhaps, the peak of Wilkie Collins's career as a novelist and emerged onto the scene at a time of great change for Scotland Yard and the British Empire at large. Steeped in foreign intrigue and trapped within a casing of disguise, mistaken identity and class conflict, "The Moonsto...

In 1955 Patricia Highsmith introduced the world to Tom Ripley, a young and ambitious con-man who gets the break of a lifetime when serendipity (in the form of an acquaintance's rich father) sends him to Italy on a rescue mission. Haunted by insecurities and struggling against his own ego, Tom "fakes it till he makes it", drawing on deep reservoirs of charm and industry, and for a while his many de...

Edgar Allan Poe's contributions to literary form can hardly be overstated. Among many accomplishments, he is widely regarded as the progenitor of the detective story. His character, C. Auguste Dupin first appeared in 1841's "Murders in the Rue Morgue" and returned the following year for "The Mystery of Marie Roget" and again in 1844's "The Purloined Letter". These three stories had an enormous imp...

In Michael Connelly's debut novel, readers meet Detective Harry Bosch of the LAPD. Bosch is haunted by several demons from his past, each of which comes out to play in "The Black Echo". First, there's the tragedy of his mother's murder and the childhood wounds of growing up in the system. Then there's his time as "tunnel-rat" in Vietnam as part of the 1st Infantry Division. Finally, his fumble ove...

What do you get when an adventurous British writer combines suspension of disbelief, war-time propaganda and a patriotic dose of daring-do? John Buchan's "The 39 Steps", of course, a "shocker" that pleased troops and arm-chair generals alike and introduced the literary world to the character of Richard Hannay. In 1915, this novella seemed to strike all the right chords with British (and allied) au...

In 1955, Graham Greene published "The Quiet American", part character confession and part political allegory, set amidst the changing of the colonial guard in Southeast Asia. As the French powers puff their last breaths in Vietnam the American agenda starts making its strident moves and there, observing all from the inside, is cynical British journalist Thomas Fowler. Forced into defending his own...

Our "Sherlock Selects" summer series concludes here with a real show-stopper! "The Copper Beeches" is one of Conan Doyle's most atmospheric and engaging mysteries, featuring a female client with moxie and a country manse full of fear. We had a great time talking over this story back in May of 2017 and proudly re-present it here today in wrapping up our seasonal series.

When old age hands you lemons... it's time to take monkey gland injections from a quack Czech doctor! Or, at least, that's what Professor Presbury might have once suggested. This curious tale is as close as Conan Doyle ever gets to showcasing the hardships of graceful aging to the love-struck pensioner. Yes, "The Adventure of the Creeping Man" is full of crazy moments but it is not bereft of relev...

In this gritty crime thriller, Detective Sergeant John Rebus makes his literary debut. Ian Rankin draws on rich material from the city of Edinburgh and his native Scotland in sculpting his protagonist's first adventure. From the dank alleyways of Auld Reekie to the spirited influence of Stevenson's "Jekyll and Hyde", Rankin works hard with his first Rebus novel to establish an immersive world of c...

A grizzly harpoon murder and a protégé inspector lure Sherlock and Watson out of London and into the remote Weald of East Sussex in this atmospheric adventure. Originally published in 1904, this yarn was collected and re-published a year later in "The Return of Sherlock Holmes". Our "Sherlock Selects" Summer mini-series continues here with a return to this dark story of revenge and retribution spa...

Our "Sherlock Selects" mini-series continues to buffer the Summer's bigger reads, this time with a conversation on "The Bruce Partington Plans" from May 2018. Originally published in 1908 (and featured in the later collection "His Last Bow") this story of stolen government plans in a fog-draped London overflows with intrigue and eventually ranked as one of Conan Doyle's own favourites. We had fun...

Published in 1977, "A Morbid Taste For Bones" introduced Brother Cadfael to the world, a Welsh Benedictine monk of the 12th Century with a penchant for solving crimes. Although Ellis Peters establishes a dynamic back-story for her protagonist, set amidst the turmoil of the First Crusade, the vibe of his first adventure is decidedly more "crofter intrigue" than "conflicts of war". Led by the suspec...

Second in our series of "Sherlock Selects" for the Summer is "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box". Originally published in January of 1893 (and first covered on LTP in June of 2017), Conan Doyle himself ruled against anthologizing this tale due to its controversial subject matter. But you can't keep a good story down and "The Cardboard Box" would soon enough see wide release in both the UK and Ame...

This season, we'll be buffering new episodes with re-introduced and smaller story reviews. For these selections, we reach back into our first season vaults and renew our love for some favourite Sherlock pieces and chats. First up is "The Abbey Grange", one of Josh's choices from The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Originally published in March of 2018, we had a great time talking through the beats of t...

"Later" marks the third and most recent crime story written by Stephen King for the Hard Case Crime label. Offering readers a predictable mix of the supernatural and police procedural, the horror master's latest tale continues his career penchant for coming-of-age narratives with soul-searching themes. Josh and Scott break down the narrative and weigh its subtle strengths as series three of LTP pi...

Josh and Scott kick off a new series of crime story explorations with a trip to Lindsey Davis's Ancient Rome, guided by Imperial Informant, Marcus Didius Falco. "The Silver Pigs" is set in AD 70, during the rule of Vespasian, and travels from the Aventine to Roman Britain where a conspiracy involving the trade of silver ingots propels Falco further into deep and dangerous territory. Join us for a...

For their series finale on the Philip Marlowe novels, Scott and Josh reflect on their reading of the canonical sweep and rank the stories and features of Raymond Chandler's enduring collection.

Chandler's final complete Marlowe novel was written at a time of deteriorating health and tumultuous circumstances for the author. Not surprisingly, some of these conflicts from 1958 find their way into the story. Marlowe is different here and the narrative is markedly unique, in ways both satisfying and off-putting to readers. Josh and Scott complete their "Marlowe Sweep" by examining the context...

1953 saw the publication of Raymond Chandler's sixth Philip Marlowe novel, "The Long Goodbye". Chandler himself regarded it as his best work and many fans agree. Nevertheless, behind the scenes it was getting harder for Chandler to find peace. Personal issues and professional conflicts continued to grow, marring his sense of contentment. Josh and Scott sit down to expose the context behind this pe...

Driven by amphetamine, Graham Greene knocked out this thriller in only 6 weeks of 1939 in a rented room of a Bloomsbury flat. He wrote fervently as premonitions of a second world war grew more tangible around him. Josh and Scott take a break from their Raymond Chandler campaign to investigate and weigh the merits of this compelling espionage adventure.