So, 2018 has arrived. Resolutions have been made (and not broken just yet), fingers have been crossed that the orange skinned nutjob doesn’t blow the world up, and bookshelves have been tidied. A bit.

So what does 2018 hold for the blog? Well, who can say? But I know what I’ve got planned. Nothing less than, of course, WORLD DOMINATION!!!

Let me explain…

In Search Of The Classic Mystery Novel has been running for just over seven years now – I haven’t quite hit the 1 000 000 visits just yet. The current tally is about 950 000. The most popular posts are, as you might expect, the older ones – The Miss Marple Top Five holds the top spot at 25 000, about 4 000 ahead of her Belgian counterpart. The most viewed reviews are for The House In Goblin Wood by Carter Dickson – because of the college courses that it’s required reading for, The Death Maze by Ariana Franklin and The Hollow and Five Little Pigs by you know who.

[BTW the least viewed reviews? No idea, as the data only goes down to the top 494 (?) out of 1206 posts. Which is a shame, as I’d love to know my least popular post. Anyone know how to do that on WordPress?]

But while I’m pretty chuffed with that – it’s always pleasing to see people want to actually read my dribblings – my work is not complete. WordPress also provides me with information as to where my visits come from:

I make that about fourteen countries that have yet to visit my blog. And Svalbard, which WordPress seems to think is a separate country from Norway. OK, it’s got a population of less than 3 000 but statistically, one of them must like crime fiction, surely.

So, one of my targets for this year is to finally get a visit from Western Sahara, Mauritania, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Guinea, Niger, Chad, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Dijbouti, Kosovo, Turkmenistan and Vanuatu. Oh, and North Korea. I know a lot of those places are warzones, but I can live in hope – Afghanistan has popped by six times…

On a more serious note (and not trivialising the conflicts that most of those countries are undergoing) what am I going to be doing on the blog this year?

More of the same, basically, but veering a little more to the Golden Age than before, with possibly a little less modern fiction. Having said that, I’m looking forward to reading the next books from Jane Harper and Catherine Ryan Howard next month, and there’s a review coming soon for a very good modern take on the Golden Age style of mystery.

But I’ve a few on my shelf that will be coming soon – apart from the usual smattering of John Street and Brian Flynn, there’s a particularly rare Milward Kennedy title on the way, Corpse In Cold Storage, and the rather obscure The Stingaree Murders by the rather obscure W Shephard Pleasants. I’ll try and get back to J J Connington at some point, there’s my Secret Santa gift of The Three Taps by Ronald Knox and I’ll finally return to Christianna Brand, sooner rather than later. I’m also planning to up the amount of Christie and Carr on the blog as I’ve neglected them a bit. And, of course, there will be my annual nose-dive into the works of Ngaio Marsh…

UK readers and fans of the Golden Age, don’t forget about Bodies From The Library in June. No news yet who will be speaking (although don’t put any money on Martin Edwards not being there) or who they will be speaking on – surely it’s time to talk about Carr and/or Queen, despite them not being that British – but it’ll be well worth the time. And if anyone wants me to sign printouts of your favourite ISCOTCMN reviews, then it’s a tenner a go and bring your own printouts…

But in the meantime, thanks for dropping by over the years, hopefully you’ll still keep dropping by in 2018, and have a Happy New Year! And if you have a friend on Svalbard…