Well, it looks like my attempt at 20 Books Of Summer has kind of fizzled out. In the period in question I’ve read thirty five-ish books, just not the twenty books I announced that I was going to read. I’ve only read nine of those – whoops – but I’ll try and squeeze another in to make it at least 50% of the challenge. But I think it’s time to start a longer term project…
You can blame FictionFan for this one – another of we bloggers who keeps their real names to themselves – and their recent post concerning Martin Edwards’ The Story Of Classic Crime in 100 Books. FictionFan has decided to have a go at all… erm, 102 books detailed Martin’s opus. And then after a brief exchange of comments, I thought, what the hell? I’m going to have a go too.
Now I do think it’s important not to list the books to be read – one of the charms of the book is which books have been chosen – but what I’ll do is list the books that I’ve read and reviewed, along with their categories. When I get round to it, I’ll set up a page to detail the progress so far.
So far, I’ve already reviewed the following, from the following categories.
The Great Detectives
- The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley – and again here
- The Murder At The Vicarage by Agatha Christie
“Play Up! Play Up! and Play The Game!”
Miraculous Murders
Serpents In Eden
Murder At The Manor
Making Fun Of Murder
Scientific Enquiries
The Long Arm Of The Law
The Justice Game
Multiplying Murders
- Death Walks In Eastrepps by Francis Beeding
- X vs Rex by Martin Porlock aka Philip Macdonald
- The Z Murders by J Jefferson Farjeon
- The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie
Across The Atlantic
The Way Ahead
So that’s 18 already out of 102 – honest, I’ve double-checked, there’s 102 books here – let’s see how we get on with this. I’m not setting an end date for this, as there’s every chance the sun’s going to explode before I can find some of these titles in an affordable way, but I’m going to try and do at least one a month. Shouldn’t take too long then…
Wish me luck!
In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel 
We should get together a joint reading effort to tackle these masterpieces…. Keep me posted!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Will do. It’s going to be the last quarter or so that are going to be a problem, I think – but once I get a good way into the list, I’ll start to collate reviews for the remainder.
As I said when I reviewed the book, it’s a bit of an odd list. There’s some classics that I couldn’t stand – Some Must Watch for example – and one or two – The Z Murders, for example – that really shouldn’t be on any such list, especially being put side by side with The ABC Murders, X v Rex and Eastrepps.
Still, let’s see how things go
LikeLike
Wow that is quite the challenge! Least you’ve got a head start on it. If we’re going off the titles mentioned in the contents pages I’ve read 47 of them I think. Not reviewed all 47 of course. Some of those titles are quite hard to get a hold of so I’ll be interested to see how you track them down.
LikeLike
I’m going to start with the easy ones – I’ve got a few on my shelf and I’ve just order the Hammett and the Symons which exist in cheap copies. Let’s be honest, this is a long term plan…
LikeLike
Oh, and it’s just the (cough) 102 books in the main index. I’ll probably do a post soon on the general availability of those books, if I get bored.
LikeLike
Well Hogarth Press reprinted a handful of the ones on your list, which is helpful for getting cheap copies but yes I imagine finding Six Dead Men by Steeman will be interesting task. If I have any you’re struggling to get a hold of, you’re welcome to borrow them.
LikeLike
I appreciate the offer, Kate. Let’s see how far I can get on my own first – a post on the relative availability seems appropriate apart from the fact it might spoil the list for people who haven’t read the book. Maybe when I get to the halfway point…
LikeLike
Six dead men is a very good “impossible crime” novel (even if you can guess the ending now) but with Steeman I will go for his masterpiece, “L’assassin habite au 21” (if you can’t find the book the movie is worth seeing and the blu ray have english subs: https://www.amazon.fr/LAssassin-habite-au-21-Blu-ray/dp/B00DE6NG94/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1503772412&sr=8-1&keywords=l%27assassin+habite+au+21+blu+ray)
Another great underated belgian writer
LikeLike
Coincidentally, I have just started “L’assassin habite au 21” !
LikeLike
Where can I find the list of the 102 books?
Good luck 🙂
LikeLike
Buy the book? Sorry, I’m not listing them as that’s kind of the point of Martin’s book. I figure by the time I get to the end of the list, someone will have posted it.
Thanks for the good wishes – I’ll need them.
LikeLike
Go to the listing of the book at Amazon. “Look Inside”. The table of contents is included in the sample pages shown. Here you will get the list of the 102 books !
LikeLike
Well, I suppose you could do that. Or buy the book to see what Martin has to say about them…
LikeLike
Thank you.
I’ve only read 14 of the books…
I’ve 3 or 4 more that wait for me 😉
LikeLike
Wishing you good luck on this one, PD. And if you do finish all those books, you can go back and start working on all the OTHER classic books that Martin mentions in his main articles…
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think the 102 will take long enough, but I’m more than likely to hit a bunch of those by accident rather than by design. Cheers, Les
LikeLike
A great challenge. Not one for me, but i will be following your reviews.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Cheers, Tracy
LikeLike
Not that you were lacking in any challenges for yourself… Good luck with this, it does sound great!
I also had to laugh at the idea that you did read more than twenty books this summer, just not the ones you had planned. Same thing always applies to me, which is why I didn’t do it this year!
LikeLike
Haha – sorry for tempting you! It should be great fun though, and you’re off to a great start already. I’ve checked the whole list now and about 80 or so seem to be readily available, so fingers crossed at least some of the rest will have been published by the time by the time we run out of those. Thanks for the mention and the link – I look forward to reading your reviews… 😀
LikeLike
I’ve ordered a couple of the more obscure but cheap titles and I’ve got a few on the shelf – Quick Curtain is first up…
LikeLike
My first will be Verdict of Twelve. I found lots of the oldest ones on wikisource. Oddly quite often it’s the more recent ones that seem to be harder – copyright issues perhaps.
LikeLike
What a wonderful idea. And yes, there are 102. You might say I got carried away… But as the publishers tell me, it’s all about delivering value!
LikeLiked by 1 person
How is the challenge going? Just purchased the book and I have read only six. Would love to read all of them!
LikeLike
Ah. After issuing the self-challenge, I’ve read exactly no additional titles… Oops.
LikeLike
One of the books I was most happy to see him list was A Pin to See the Peepshow, by Jesse. This is one of my real favourites. ( It is not a clued mystery.) I actually had a first edition, but I leant it and it got lost 😦
Edward’s book is quite fun because he recommends a lot of stuff I have never come across, and is spoiler free.
LikeLiked by 1 person