Tag Archives: Checkmate to Murder

A Mysterious Glossary

Do you know your ack emma from your pip emma? Would you wear the cat’s pyjamas? Are you, in fact, a goop? Helen Zaltzman joins me to delve into some baffling language from golden age detective fiction.

Thanks to my guest for this episode, Helen Zaltzman. She is the host of The Allusionist, a marvellous podcast about language, which I strongly recommend that you support on Patreon now.

A bonus episode with 20 minutes of extra material will be published later this month just for Shedunnit Book Club members. If you’d like to hear it, join now at shedunnitbookclub.com/join.

There are no major plot spoilers in this episode.

Books referenced:
— A Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie
— “The Tuesday Night Club” by Agatha Christie from The Tuesday Club Murders aka The Thirteen Problems
— The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey
— Checkmate to Murder by ECR Lorac
— The Ha-Ha Case by JJ Connington
— The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

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Find a full transcript of this episode at shedunnitshow.com/amysteriousglossarytranscript.

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E.C.R. Lorac Rises Through The Ranks

Her WW2 mysteries are best of all. This is the second episode of Queens of Crime at War, a six part series looking at what the best writers from the golden age of detective fiction did once that period came to an end with the start of the Second World War. Thanks to my guest,… Continue Reading