Mystery makers
3 total works
In these 23 stories, Brown never rails to surprise and delight. Time after time the reader anticipates the ending only to discover that once more the author has proved too clever. Yet Brown never cheats, never feeds false clues, and his endings are always plausible. His imagination is by turns puckish, grim, outlandishbut forever fresh.Brown s stories run from the fifty-word Mistake to a novelette ( The Case of the Dancing Sandwiches ). In Granny s Birthday, a two-page short short, with Granny supervising like a benign queen, the party goes splendidly, marred only by manslaughter and murder."
The Adventures of Henry Turnbuckle
by Jack Ritchie, Francis M. Nevins, and Martin Greenberg
Published 1 September 1987
These stories are funny! The 29 Turnbuckle tales offered here mix black humor with formula crime stories in a hilarious twist to the hard-boiled detective tale.Turnbuckle s cockeyed reconstructions of a murder exasperate his logical and long-suffering sidekick, Ralph, but they lead to a solution anywaymost of the time. Turnbuckle may or may not know whodunit but he s always confident that there will soon be another murder."
Buffet for Unwelcome Guests
by Christianna Brand, Francis M. Nevins, and Martin Greenberg
Published 12 September 1983
Christianna Brand s fiction features brisk prose, wry twists, plots that lure the reader into a false sense of having figured every contingency, and ironic turns that not only spice the narrative but supply its lifeblood. No one has "read "a Brand story who has failed to read the last sentence.Christianna Brand was born Mary Christianna Milne in Malaya in 1907. She spent her childhood in India. At 17 she learned her father had lost all his money. Without a shred of training or experience she found herself faced with earning a living. She held a string of jobs, but lent little distinction to any of them: nursery governess, packer of beaded dresses for export, hostess in a plush nightclub, professional ballroom dancer, model in Bond Street dress shops, and, most hopeless of all, secretary.In 1939, lacking any training in literature or journalism, Mary Milne decided to try writing fiction. Her first novel, "Death in High Heels, "was rejected by 15 publishers before The Bodley Head took it in 1941, published under the pen name, Christianna Brand."