Dear listeners,

Things have been a little hectic on my end the past few weeks, so I've missed a couple of newsletters. I'm sorry about that and hope to be resuming normal weekly service soon.

As such, there are two new episodes that I need to alert you to. The first concerns this book:

Jim Noy joined me for a Green Penguin Book Club discussion about The Sanfield Scandal by Richard Keverne — a golden-age era thriller from 1929 that, in one sense, was doing Enid Blyton before Enid Blyton was. It prompted some interesting discussion of how we appraise genre with hindsight versus in the moment. Keverne was also a brand new author to both of us, which as we're long-time fanatics about reading this stuff doesn't happen very often, so that was a lovely bonus of doing the episode.

And then today, I have a different kind of episode for you: I take a psychological deep dive into a single instance from Agatha Christie's autobiography and look at how it influenced her crime fiction. As a child, she experienced recurring nightmares of a "Gun Man", who appeared in a military uniform and with a musket. The terrifying thing about this figure wasn't his weapon, though, but the way he seemed to exist, unnoticed, in the happiest, most cheerful situations. In her dream, Christie would be enjoying a picnic until suddenly noticing that the person she had thought was her mother or her friend was actually this sinister Gun Man in disguise. He was always hiding in plain sight, casting an evil shadow over what had seemed to be a good day.

I'm sure you can see how this dream connects to golden age detective fiction, a style of crime writing that thrives on the closed circle of suspects and sudden revelations that characters are not all that they seem. Christie also expanded significantly on the Gun Man idea in the fiction she wrote under the Mary Westmacott pseudonym, so it was good to bring some of that into the episode as well. I recently re-read all of the Westmacott novels and feel like I have come to a greater appreciation for them than I had in the past. Absent in the Spring, in particular, is a book that I think holds up against the top rank of Christie's crime fiction.

I hope you enjoy these episodes, and I look forward to being back with more for you soon!

Until next time,

Caroline

Dear listeners,

Welcome to our reading recommendations newsletter! Once a month, I pop into your inbox to share what the Shedunnit team — that is, me and my production assistant Leandra — have been reading while we are making the show. I hope you'll find some ideas for what you might read here, or get a hint of what is coming up on the podcast in the future.

Caroline Has Read: The Perils of Lady Catherine de Bourgh by Claudia Gray

I'm cheating a bit here, because reading (or rather listening to) Claudia Gray's "Mr Darcy & Miss Tilney" series was actually a recommendation that Leandra made to me, and now I'm passing it on to everyone else. Regardless, I've really enjoyed these gentle yet well-plotted historical mysteries, with original Austen characters and settings serving as the backdrop for new crime stories. Jonathan Darcy (son of Darcy and Elizabeth) and Juliet Tilney (daughter of Henry Tilney and Catherine Morland) team up in the first book when they are both guests at a house party where Mr Wickham is murdered. This one is their third outing, by which time they have become known as crime-solvers. It sees them summoned by Jonathan's great aunt, the ever-imperious Lady Catherine de Bourgh, because she suspects that someone is trying to kill her. It's always interesting to me to see how an author handles a murder mystery-style story that doesn't begin with a murder, and I felt like Gray did a really good job here.

Caroline Will Read: The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart

The Shedunnit Book Club has just chosen our book for May, which will be Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey. A group of members has decided that alongside it, they're going to read Mary Stewart's 1961 novel The Ivy Tree, which I understand is another take on the tropes that Tey is exploring. I had never heard of this book before, so I'm excited to give it a try.

Leandra Has Read: The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey

Ever since Caroline interviewed Tana French in 2022 for The Kidnap of Elizabeth Canning episode, I have been meaning to finally pick up The Franchise Affair for the first time. It shows how quickly time passes, as it took me nearly four years to do it. With that said, I did manage to read four books by Tana French in that time! Inspired by the 18th-century abduction case, Tey reimagines the event from a post-WWII lens. The residents at the Franchise have been accused of kidnapping a young girl named Betty Kane. She says the two women locked her in their attic and beat her before she managed to escape. The accused, Mrs. and Miss Sharpe, are adamant that they have never seen Betty in their lives. Who is lying?

I thoroughly enjoyed Tey's choice to follow the story from the perspective of solicitor Robert Blair. As a character so used to his routine and life of small comforts, it was fun seeing him challenged as he seeks to uncover the truth. While Alan Grant makes an appearance, it's another example in GAD where sometimes the series detective takes a backseat role, blending into the background as a secondary character. I highly recommend this title for those interested in how media and public opinion can influence an investigation. It has a great final court scene as well!

Leandra Will Read: The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie

In a book club I host outside of Shedunnit, we will be reading The Seven Dials Mystery in honor of the new adaptation released by Netflix. The plan is to read the book in March and then watch the three-part TV series throughout April. This will be my first time reading Seven Dials, so it will be interesting to see how I get on with it. In this light-hearted thriller, a practical joke involving eight clocks backfires horribly. One of the clocks has gone missing, and someone is dead.

That's what we'll be reading in March — how about you? You can let us know by replying directly to this email or by leaving a comment to join the conversation with other readers. 

Until next time,

Caroline

Dear listeners,

I've been reading lots more short stories in the last couple of months, as I continue trying to cultivate the habit of not staying up too late reading "just one more chapter" of a novel. I talked about this recently in a bonus episode for Shedunnit Book Club members, and it's been going well. As a result, I've been building quite the list of favourite short crime fiction and also honing my ideas about what my "perfect" one would contain.

As you'll here on today's new episode, I came pretty close with "The Perfect Plan" by James Hilton. I enjoy mysteries that involve secretaries, details about journalism and/or the media, clever twists, moral commentary, compelling narrators and, sometimes, inverted plots where you are told who commits the crime at the beginning. This one has them all! Which is why I thought I'd vary the podcast's format a little and read it for you, in full.

There are other contenders, of course. Here are three other recent favourites from anthologies I would recommend seeking out if you're in the market for more short fiction yourself.

"The Elusive Bullet" by John Rhode, from Bodies in the Library Vol 1

This is a wonderful twist on the "impossible crime in a train carriage" format — I won't say any more in case of spoilers! It also stood out to me because of its setting. As some listeners might know, I am a big fan of the Thames estuary and wrote a book about my personal connection with it that was published in 2019, so getting to see places like "Purfleet" namechecked in a work of golden age detective fiction made me smile.

"Mr Ponting's Alibi" by R. Austin Freeman, from Murder in the Falling Snow

I'm not always the biggest fan of Dr John Thorndyke, R. Austin Freeman's medical jurispractitioner. He can be a shade too didactic for my liking. However, the careful building of a case from forensic clues in this story tickled my brain in just the right way. There's also an element that corresponds to a famous 1920s Agatha Christie solution, for those who enjoy spotting that sort of thing.

"An Intangible Clue" by Anna Katharine Green, from The Dead Witness

Anna Katharine Green, a nineteenth century American crime writer, created a woman sleuth named Violet Strange. This is one of her stories. I greatly enjoy how haughty Violet is and how she handles the appeal for help from a male colleague. The mystery is fairly standard fare, but the character of the detective elevates it wonderfully. We learned more about Green and her contemporaries in the Victorian Pioneers episode a few years ago.

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.