Lighting the Pipes

Collected in "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes", this narrative is unique in the canon for a few reasons: first, it is the longest short story written by Conan Doyle for publication; secondly, it is one of only a handful of cases that is brought to Holmes by Watson; third, it happened to be one of Conan Doyle's personal favourites; and, finally, it's Josh's choice for this year's Summer series! "The...

"The worst man in London... the king of all blackmailers." These are the blunt, declarative answers Holmes provides to his Watson when asked about this story's titular antagonist. Some immodest letters have been intercepted that would mark the ruin of Lady Eva Blackwell and her upcoming nuptials. The fee for their return is a punishing £7000 (over a million dollars today). She's employed Sherlock...

As if the clammy heat of New Orleans wasn't enough for a nun in full habit, an arson spree is threatening the community of St Sebastian's School in Margot Douaihy's "Scorched Grace". This is the first of the author's Sister Holiday mysteries and introduces readers to the Order of the Sublime Blood and a crime spree that dredges up old trauma with impressive force. Steered by her uniquely queer, co...

The year is 1878. Detectives in fiction had cut shapes before (Poe, Collins and Gaboriau had all experimented) but few woman, if any, had ever been credited for work in the genre, let alone acclaimed. Along comes Anna Katherine Green, metaphorically brandishing "fingers up" to the establishment and bestowing upon the literary world this classic narrative. "The Leavenworth Case" is a story of two s...

In this episode, we head back to the world of graphic novels and explore the suburban mystery of "Where the Body Was" by celebrated comics duo, Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. What starts innocently enough, with some feral Gen-X childhood crime-fighting, soon curdles into something darker: hidden affairs, small-time crooks, unrequited love and a dead body that nobody can quite explain. The mytholog...

The iron curtain has fallen. Intelligence is dispersing in its heavy draught. Europe is transitioning towards a single market. Conditions are ripe for a new world order... and for the twelfth continuation novel by John Gardner. "Death is Forever" situates Bond upon the shifting sands of this new environment, investigating the disintegration of "Cabal" - an allied intelligence network that once ran...

The long-running "Assignment" spy fiction series by Edward S Aarons showcases CIA operative Sam Durell in a range of pulpy, Cold War adventures. "Sorrento Siren", its 17th installment, sends Durell to Naples where he races against the clock to locate some stolen art and a rogue, murderous agent with ties to a libidinous Italian Countess. What's worse, his communist counterpart is travelling a para...

The Mystery Writers of America honoured John Dickson Carr with two Edgars (1950, 1970) and a Grand Masters Award (1963) in acknowledgement of his long career and contributions to mystery writing. Especially noteworthy across his 40 years of publishing were the innovations he made to the locked-room mystery genre. Though best known and celebrated for 1935's The Hollow Man , Carr's detective Gideon...

In February 1923, Howard Carter unearthed the tomb of Tutankhamun and fed the '20s zeitgeist an abundance of ancient-world dopamine hits. One writer who picked up on this wave was Agatha Christie, who would return to Egypt five more times in her famous stories. Here, however, she pits Hercule Poirot against a series of sudden deaths at the excavation site of Men-her-Ra's tomb in the Valley of the...

In this episode, we crack open "Swag" from 1976, one of Elmore Leonard's leanest Detroit crime novels. This caper follows Frank Ryan and Ernest "Stick" Stickley, two likeable rogues from the morally-ambiguous side of the tracks who pair-up with a plan to get rich. As the stick-ups slowly stack up, Leonard dismantles the partnership's illusory hold on their American dream and makes room for hubris...

When an inconvenient corpse is discovered in a Battersea bathtub, a complex puzzle unfolds for the London authorities. What's with the pince-nez and birthday suit combo? And isn't that a surgical college just across the rooftops? In this episode we strike a match and settle in with Dorothy L Sayers' "Whose Body?" and review the first appearance of Lord Peter Wimsey, her amateur sleuth of impeccabl...

When a celebrated Soviet hero is alleged to have marched among the SS in some of history's worst butchery, James Bond is sent to validate the claims and protect the source. Along the way 007 poses as cameraman in a deep-fake propaganda production designed to rewrite history and redirect the dying embers of cold war chaos. Marked by inter-agency intrigue and a staggering cast of secondary character...

LTP Noir returns with a bang for a close look at the original 1947 adaptation of William Lindsay Gresham's novel "Nightmare Alley". From the fascinating, tormented life of its author to the tension between rising star and skeptical studio mogul, Josh gives the lowdown on how this conmen thriller and its controversial carnies were brought to life. This episode tracks the full-flavoured story of a o...

Inspired by the real life Tang-dynasty magistrate, Di Renjie, Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee stories continue a rich history of Chinese crime writing, gong'an , featuring government figures who solve mysteries. In this adventure, Judge Dee and his entourage find themselves seeking shelter in the Morning Cloud Monastery, suspiciously linked to the mysterious deaths of three young women. Dee and his l...

In the conclusion of our two-part feature on Leslie Charteris' globetrotting collection from 1956, we join The Saint on his three final adventures. In "the Lovelorn Sheikh", Simon Templar buddies-up with a sympathetic dowser in the Middle East to aid his zany struggle for freedom and finance. Then it's off to Singapore, where a Somerset Maugham story holds the key to understanding the criminal con...

Our exploration of Leslie Charteris's famous character continues here in the first of a two-part special on this (not-so) short story collection from 1956. From the warm beaches of Bermuda to a naturalist colony on Ile du Levant, the Saint's predictable charm, comeuppance and occasional moral lecturing are all on display here amidst a series of globe-trotting capers. This episode features reviews...

In this episode, our final of the year, we send 2025 on its way with a deep-dive into John Gardner's ninth James Bond continuation novel. While on "vacation" in Canada, Bond's forced leisure is cut short when he's sent to investigate Lee Fu-Chu, aka "Brokenclaw", a half-Blackfoot, half-Chinese billionaire with a penchant for deception and murder. When leading scientists begin disappearing across t...

2025 has been a great year on the pod and in this episode we look back at this successful and surprising stretch of reading and collaborating across thirty episodes. In addition to sharing our rankings for the shared novels and stories we explored, we also share some laughs and challenges in tackling our annual Sherlock and Year-in-Review quizzes!

Damon Runyan's Broadway stories are characterised by crooks, rogues and revelers with hearts of gold. In "Dancing Dan's Christmas" from 1932, we see a trio of pals, led by Dan, on a Christmas mission to make Gammer O'Neil believe in Santa. All it will take is a cheap disguise, some stolen jewels and the courage that only comes from necking Tom and Jerry cocktails for a couple hours beforehand! LTP...

It's Christmas Eve in Oldhampton and as residents enjoy what's left of their pre-holiday errands, cub reporter Sonia is looking to eschew the society fluff of her regular assignments by tackling a more thrilling angle. Nobody has yet spent a night among the wax effigies in the local Hall of Horrors without meeting a ghastly end. Success here would certainly propel Sonia over the bigoted jibes and...

Before Philip Marlowe there was... "shamus"... aka Proto-Marlowe! In this episode, Scott goes on solo assignment through the pages of Black Mask magazine to share his thoughts on Raymond Chandler's 1935 story "Killer in the Rain", the key progenitor of The Big Sleep. From salacious booksellers to double-crossing hoods, this complex story presented readers with the blueprint for what would become a...

In this, his first Bernard Samson narrative, Len Deighton gives us the story of a weary MI6 veteran who's pulled back into danger when a suspected mole threatens London's Berlin intelligence network. As Cold War pressures intensify, Samson is forced to negotiate frayed loyalties and return to the divided city of his youth, where nostalgia threatens to cloud his professional judgement further. Deig...

From a post 9/11 framework, some could read John Gardner's Scorpius as chilling and prophetic. In the year of its publication, however, it was aiming to hit more contemporary targets. From growing world terrorism to the microchip boom, from satanic panic to luxury golf resorts, this outing sees M throw Bond into a complex web of inter-agency activity and exceedingly heavy stakes. Our run through t...

It's Halloween on Yellow Street and outcast Robbie Glinton has a plan for revenge. Let down by teachers, abandoned by parents and ignored by "the man", he and his troop of juvenile delinquents (Jody, Dags and Midge) are out for a little payback. Daniel Kraus' Blood Sugar, an exclusive Hard Case Crime publication from 2019, presents a complex story of trauma covered in seasonal guise and a veneer o...

The John Gardner sweep continues with "Win, Lose or Die", the eighth continuation novel in his cycle of Bond adventures. With this story, Gardner keeps on trend-jumping, here drawing inspiration from the "Top Gun" and "Iron Eagle" craze of the era. Bond returns to the Navy, upgrades to Captain and plays War Games with some very important dignitaries in order to defend a top-secret Steward's Meetin...