Dear listeners,

For the final Shedunnit episode of 2025, I am asking all six of the guests who joined me for Green Penguin Book Club episodes this year to take a nostalgic look at the place the series has in their own lives. In particular, I asked them to remember what their first Green Penguin encounter was. We talked about everything from the joys of the Puffin Club to the fun of coming across unknown titles in bookshops.

As several of them pointed out in the discussions you'll hear in this new episode, the Penguin series is often an early way of discovering new titles and authors for a young reader. As long as you aren't after rare titles or first editions, secondhand Penguin paperbacks tend to be pretty easy and cheap to come by. Plus, you have the guarantee that somebody knowledgable back in the day thought the book was worth republishing, even if it isn't very well known today.

What was your first Green Penguin? Do you remember? I think mine was a loved-to-death copy of The Labours of Hercules by Agatha Christie, a short story collection I have always loved because it was among the first mysteries I ever read.

I went looking in my own Green Penguin collection to see if I had any of the books my guests named so that I could show them to you, with mixed results.

I do have The Plague Court Murders by Carter Dickson (aka John Dickson Carr), which Tom Mead named as one of his most prized Penguins:

And I also have The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, which Sergio Angelini talked about (even though I have — gasp! — yet to actually read it):

But otherwise I drew a blank on their specific titles! I do have some others by authors they named, though, such as this Margery Allingham, another favourite of Sergio's:

Plus this book by J.J. Connington, which I think is brilliant:

Lastly, I pulled out my slightly battered copy of The Documents in the Case by Dorothy L. Sayers and Robert Eustace, because that's going to be the subject of the next Green Penguin episode in January:

I will see you in two weeks for the start of a brand new year of Shedunnit! I think you're really going to like the first episode I've got lined up...

Until then,

Caroline

Dear listeners,

We have arrived at our final reading update of 2025! I hope you have enjoyed getting this monthly peek into what Leandra and I are reading while we are working on Shedunnit, and have been inspired to pick up a book or two yourself as a result. We're finishing strongly, with a mixture of classic literature, fantasy and, of course, crime fiction for you.

If you're interested in more reading content from us, I'll be doing my full round-up of every book I've read on my personal newsletter at the end of December — you can sign up for that here. Leandra is also talking about what she's read this year and her reading goals for next year on her YouTube channel.

Caroline Has Read: The Mystery at Orchard House by Joan Coggin

In December 2024, the Shedunnit Book Club selected as its monthly book Who Killed the Curate? by Joan Coggin. Both the book and the writer were brand new to me, and so was the series detective, Lady Lupin. I found this village Christmas mystery delightful, with the ditzy debutante Lupin simultaneously settling into her new role as an ordinary vicar's wife and trying to solve the murder of her husband's unpleasant curate.

I was thus very pleased to see that Galileo Publishers had this summer republished another of Joan Coggin's four Lady Lupin mysteries: The Mystery at Orchard House. This one was originally published in 1946 and is set on the eve of World War Two, three years after her marriage. This time, Lupin is not in her home village, but staying at a hotel in the Kent countryside for a two-week rest cure after being ill with influenza. She's there in spring, when the daffodils and apple blossom is out, so I think this would be a nice book to read at that time of year (we talk of summer mysteries and wintry/Christmas ones, but how many other seasons are represented?). Of course, during Lupin's stay at the hotel — which is run by an old friend who recently inherited it as a manor house and is now Making It Pay — she is drawn into the detection of crime via several petty thefts and an attempted murder. She's as scatterbrained and disorganised as ever, but remains charming and a fundamentally moral person, making her a good figure to follow through the mystery. The plot probably wouldn't win any awards for great originality or innovation, but since I tend to care more about quality of writing, character and setting anyway, this did not trouble me.

I'm taking part in Kate Jackson's "Reprint of the Year" awards this year, and this is the second of the two titles that I'm proposing for the prize. (The first was Not To Be Taken by Anthony Berkeley, read my thoughts on it here.) Do head over to Kate's blog and vote for it if you also enjoyed The Mystery at Orchard House this year! Joan Coggin is exactly the kind of writer I would never have discovered if it weren't for Galileo's republication of her mysteries, and I am very grateful to them for putting it out.

Caroline Will Read: The Documents in the Case by Dorothy L. Sayers and Robert Eustace

This is the next title coming up in the Green Penguin Book Club series! I'm looking forward to re-reading this co-written epistolary mystery (especially after doing a whole episode about this format, Death on Paper, earlier in the year). It's Sayers' only full-length novel not to feature Lord Peter Wimsey and the only one that she worked on with someone else. The episode will be out in the second half of January, so that's your deadline if you're reading along with me.

Leandra Has Read: Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

This was my first time reading Northanger Abbey. A friend gifted me a copy not long ago, and what finally motivated me to pick up this classic was the upcoming 250th anniversary of Jane Austen's birth. She was born on the 16th of December 1775, sharing a birthday with my father actually! Unbeknownst to me at the time of reading Northanger Abbey, this title was celebrating an anniversary of its own. Five months after Austen's death in July 1817, her brother and literary agent, Henry, published Northanger Abbey and Persuasion in a single volume in December of that year.

Catherine Morland was an absolute delight, and I loved the brief moments in which the narrator breaks the fourth wall to address the reader throughout our heroine's adventure. The book's tone reminded me of I Capture the Castle and Arabella, two other titles I have thoroughly enjoyed in the past. The most fascinating element of Northanger Abbey for me, however, was its rocky journey toward publication. Initially, it seemed as though it would be Austen's first published work, sold to Crosby & Co in 1803 for £10. The London bookseller proceeded to sit on the manuscript for over a decade as Austen published Sense & Sensibility, Pride & Prejudice, and so on. In 1816, the bookseller sold the book back to Henry for the amount they originally paid Austen, and the author jumped immediately into revisions. She died before she was able to finish the novel to her exact liking, but I would rather have some version of this story than none at all! It's officially my favourite Austen to date.

Leandra Will Read: A Tangle of Time by Josiah Bancroft

In December, I always have the goal of ending the year strongly with as many "easy win" reads as possible. That leads to a lot of mood-reading! Recently, my mood led me to start the sequel of Josiah Bancroft's fantasy mystery novel, The Hexologists, and it feels wonderful to be back with this sleuthing couple, Isolde and Warren Wilby. This time around, Is and War are investigating the mysterious death of an artist who reached out to Is not longer before she died. I'm excited to see just how much of the art world we see in this mystery. If you enjoy fantasy mysteries like The Witness for the Dead or the Sherlockian reimagining The Tainted Cup, then I highly recommend you add The Hexologists to your TBR. Hopefully I will be able to say the same for its sequel!

That's us for now! What are you planning on reading over the next few weeks? If you get some downtime over the festive period, do you line up a particular kind of book, or just see what you might receive as gifts? Let us know by replying directly or by leaving a comment to join the conversation with other readers.

Until next time,

Caroline

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Dear listeners,

This is seventh time December has rolled around during the time I've been making Shedunnit, which means that I've had plenty of opportunity to think about festive and wintry themes in murder mysteries. And, with the exception of 2022 (when I lost my voice because I had Covid!), each year I have made a different episode about how the authors of the golden age of detective fiction handled this in their fiction. I've looked at everything from the publishing phenomenon that was the Christie for Christmas to the surprisingly large number of fictional corpses that show up dressed as Father Christmas. I thought I was done! Surely, I said to myself, there can't be anything left to say about the phenomenon of the Christmas mystery.

But then, while I was reading the Shedunnit Book Club's book for December — The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers — I suddenly realised that there is a very important part of the traditional Christmas celebration that I have never addressed. The food! That book isn't particularly forthcoming on what Lord Peter Wimsey and Bunter eat during their rural Norfolk Christmas, but the mere mention of the cold roast beef and trifle they have at the vicarage on Christmas Eve was enough to give me inspiration. My research assistant Leandra and I sent to work, scouring our memories and our bookshelves for the most interesting examples of Christmas food in murder mysteries. The resulting episode, A Christmas Feast, has just landed in your podfeeds this morning and I hope you will enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed making it.

For the full line-up of Christmas food related books and stories you'll have to get into the episode proper, but while I have you hear I thought I might just highlight three slightly less well-known titles that you might want to have a look at over the next couple of weeks.

I re-read An English Murder at top speed while I was making this episode and marvelled anew at how incredibly good it is. It's technically a post golden age detective novel, being published in 1951, but in a way this makes it even better because Cyril Hare is able to play with the reader's expectations of the form. A country house, a tense Christmas dinner, family members with political differences — there's a lot to enjoy here.

Who Killed the Curate? by Joan Coggin was the Shedunnit Book Club's reading selection for December 2024 and we all ended up enjoying this sprightly village Christmas mystery.

Crime at Christmas by C.H.B. Kitchin was a book I hadn't read for many years but it has plenty to recommend it, not least its wry first-person narrator. I would also recommend this one to anyone who enjoys either stories set in Hampstead (niche, but a little mini-genre, I promise) or books that bring out the nuances of class snobbery in the interwar years.

That's it for me on the subject of Christmas for this year. Will I be inspired to make another festive episode in 2026? We'll all find out together... That isn't all from Shedunnit this year, though. There will be another newsletter next week with some reading recommendations from myself and Leandra, and then on the 24th an extra-special green penguin episode drops, so make sure you're looking out for that.

Until next time,

Caroline

You can listen to every episode of Shedunnit at shedunnitshow.com or on all major podcast apps. Selected episodes are available on BBC Sounds. There are also transcripts of all episodes on the website. The podcast is now newsletter-only — we're not updating social media — so if you'd like to spread the word about the show consider forwarding this email to a mystery-loving friend with the addition of a personal recommendation. Links to Blackwell’s are affiliate links, meaning that the podcast receives a small commission when you purchase a book there (the price remains the same for you).