The Woman in Red is the 12th in the McCabe & Cody mystery series — 14th if you count the two volumes of short stories — but it’s the one I jumped ahead to because of its premise. As you might gather from the cover, the murder case involves a comic artist. I’ve read the first two or three of the books, enough to recognize the characters, but it’s a big help that author Dan Andriacco makes sure to introduce […]

Perhaps this premise is only of interest to a limited audience, but I loved it. Stuart Douglas’ Death at the Dress Rehearsal, billed as “the first Lowe and Le Breton mystery”*, takes place while two older actors are on location filming a terrible British sitcom in the 70s. Edward Lowe is fussy, pretentious and self-absorbed, convinced his acting skills are wasted on low-brow TV. He doesn’t admit it, but he’s also lonely, not sure how to make friends. John Le […]

There are thousands of Sherlock Holmes pastiches (by which I mean stories by other authors set in the same time period as Arthur Conan Doyle’s originals). There are many fewer, only a handful, that explore the question of how work as a consulting detective or a doctor would be different if Sherlock Holmes and John Watson were woman in the Victorian era. Yet that’s a fascinating way, given good research by the writer, to explore both historical sexism and what […]

I found the most charming book when I was in Minnesota for a Sherlockian gathering. Trouble in Bugland: A Collection of Inspector Mantis Mysteries is a set of five stories by William Kotzwinkle about a very Holmesian detective … who is a praying mantis. He lives with his friend and assistant, Doctor Hopper, and they solve crimes in tales “profusely illustrated by Joe Servello”. It was those illustrations that sold me on the book. It was such a pleasure to […]

If you like Regency romances but think more of the men need to be coupled up, this is the series for you. And if you like misanthropic detectives who fall in love, fighting it all the way, with their newly made best friend, this is the book for you.

Addy and Zabel, the investigative couple from Sherlock’s Secretary, return in Nessie’s Nemesis. Addy is still answering letters sent to Sherlock Holmes, which brings them this second case. Like the one in the first book, it has a media connection to the great detective. As many know, there’s a key scene in the 1970 Billy Wilder movie The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes involving a fake Loch Ness Monster. (If you don’t know, don’t worry — one character tells another […]

When I discovered The Misadventures of Ellery Queen, I thought, “of course this book has to exist.” It’s a collection of pastiches, parodies, and other stories inspired by the fictional detective Ellery Queen and his creators, Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee.

Eleanor Dash became a mystery author by accident. She went to Italy, got involved in a real-life murder, and turned her vacation fling into a wildly successful novel. Now, the con artist she fell in love with during that trip — who became the lead of her mystery series — is blackmailing her; her younger, prettier sister Harper is her personal assistant; and they’re trapped on a ridiculous promotional trip to Italy.