Tea, Tonic & Toxin: Recent Episodes
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Tea, Tonic, and Toxin is a book club and podcast for people who love mysteries, thrillers, introspection, and good conversation. Each month, your hosts, Carolyn Daughters and Sarah Harrison, will discuss a game-changing mystery or thriller, starting in 1841 onward. Together, we’ll see firsthand how the genre evolvedAlong the way, we’ll entertain ideas, prospects, theories, doubts, and grudges, along with the occasional guest. And we hope to entertain you, dear friend. We want you to experience the joys of reading some of the best mysteries and thrillers ever written.
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On Fire and Under Water is a new crime fiction anthology from Rock and a Hard Place Press. The anthology explores the intersection of climate change and crime through the lens of 15 short stories from some of today’s best crime fiction writers.
Edited by Anthony Award-winning author Curtis Ippolito and the editorial team at RHP Press, the stories peel back the curtain on the ways in which climate change impacts real people in their most desperate hour.
Get your copy of our guest's books here!
History of Mystery book slections available in our Amazon Storefront or support your favorite local bookstore in our Bookshop Storefront as well! Guests have their own list here!
Or if you happen to be in lovely Roanoke, Virginia, stop in person at the BiblioPub to get your copy.
Watch clips from our conversations with guests!
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“The Devil Doesn’t Live Hand to Mouth” is a short story in the anthology by Puja Guha. Mozambique has been hit hard by Cyclone Jasper. Antonio’s Bahia Mar Sanctuary, a boutique resort/coastal B&B, has been destroyed. But he has another option. A Chinese spy, Ernest Mao, has asked Antonio to place a few bugs in the home of the uber-wealthy Fred and Gina.
His dream is dead. His resort is gone. He drives a 10-year-old Toyota Corolla. Everything about Fred and Gina is a reminder of what he will never have. Antonio grapples with his decision – what should he do?
“Long Night of the Polar Bear” by C.E. McKenna takes place in Longyearbyen, a small coal-mining town on Spitsbergen Island, in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago. Svalbard is between Norway and the North Pole. Atle Solas has been banished by his boss, Vlad, to Svalbard for accidentally killing an old woman during a job. He has a plan for escape: before heading to Svalbard, he had copied the contents of his boss’ daughter’s laptop onto a thumb drive. He has stored the thumb drive in a small cavern carved into the back of the leg of a dancing polar bear in the bar. His plan is to collect €2 million for the contents and retire in Thailand.
“No one is allowed to be born on Svalbard and the dead are shipped immediately to be buried off-island. This place is a land of living, but not life, of dying, but not death.”
C.E. McKenna is a writer and historian from Colorado. She has history theses in the libraries of Reed College and Oklahoma State, and her short stories have found awards and publication with Writing by Writers, Desperate Literature, Cagibi, Lumina, Quarterly West, Northwest Review, and Shift. In 2022, she completed AWP’s 17th Writer to Writer Mentorship Program, and in 2024 was invited to the Chateau d’Orquevaux for a 4-week writing residency. She is currently an MFA student at Emerson College with an expected graduation of 2026.
Most of C.E. McKenna’s work focuses on the untold stories of the American West. Her short fiction and research often deals with the dangers of western environments—particularly wildland fire. Her long-form work combines deft historical research with speculative fiction, resulting in vivid, thrilling pageturners. Her debut novel, The Primary Source, is about the murderous origins of Stanford University.
C.E. McKenna lives in Boulder, Colorado, where she works as a software developer and spends her free time traipsing local hiking trails, attempting to avoid moose.
Tea, Tonic & Toxin interviews Raymond J. Brash, who discusses his short story “Ban Yuh Belly,” published in On Fire and Under Water: A Climate Change Crime Fiction Anthology. He’s joined by authors Curtis Ipppolito, Puja Guha, and C.E. McKenna.
He’s is a Trinidadian-American writer residing in Colorado with his wife and rescue pittie, Bessie.
He enjoys reading and writing speculative fiction, noir, and anything that crushes multiple genres into a pulpy, edible mash.
Raymond has stories published or forthcoming in The Lines We Cross: Bouchercon 2026 Anthology, On Fire and Under Water: A Climate Change Crime Fiction Anthology, Shotgun Honey, Rock and a Hard Place Press, and others, and has been nominated for a Best of the Net Award. Follow him on Instagram @raymond.j.brash, Bluesky @rjbrash.bsky.social, or visit his website raymondjbrash.work
“Ban Yuh Belly” is a short story by Raymond J. Brash published in the anthology. “Ban yuh belly” is Caribbean patios meaning “brace yourself and prepare for hard times. The story is set in Trinidad and Tobago. “Rainy season getting worse and worse by the year,” Jeffrey Perrera says. “And they say God is a Trini.”
Jeffrey finds bodies washed up on the shore and takes their money. When we first meet him, he has also taken a watch. Jeffrey tells us, “I don’t read names on cards or stare at pictures too much. It’s easier that way.” Jeffrey is trying to do right by his sister, Denise, and her daughter, Hazel. Denise’s sound and look remind him of Mumzie, their mother.
Curtis Ippolito is an Anthony Award-and Derringer Award-winning writer. He is the author of Burying the Newspaper Man and the newly published Waves of Burden.
His short stories have appeared in many prominent publications and have been featured in several anthologies. He lives in San Diego and is a member of Mystery Writers of America and serves as vice-president of the San Diego chapter of Sisters in Crime.
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DEATH COMES AS THE END by Agatha Christie is a groundbreaking historical mystery set in ancient Egypt. When a wealthy patriarch’s death sparks a series of murders within his family, suspicion and secrets abound. It’s the first full-length historical whodunit.
History of Mystery book selections available in our Amazon Storefront or support your favorite local bookstore in our Bookshop Storefront as well! Guests have their own list here!
Or if you happen to be in lovely Roanoke, Virginia, stop in person at the BiblioPub to get your copy.
Watch clips from our conversations with guests!
For bonus episodes and to get all episodes first, join our Patreon community.
Dr. Nicky Nielsen is a Senior Lecturer in Egyptology at the University of Manchester. Originally from Denmark, he was awarded an AHRC Block Grant to undertake PhD research at the University of Liverpool, investigating subsistence strategies and craft production at the Ramesside fortress site of Zawiyet Umm el-Rakham. He obtained his PhD in 2016.
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Read his article Agatha Christie: World’s First Historical Whodunnit Was Inspired by 4,000 Year‑Old Letters
Author’s Note on Death Comes as the End
“The action of this book takes place on the west bank of the Nile at Thebes in Egypt about 2000 B.C. Both places and time are incidental to the story. Any other place at any other time would have served as well, but it so happened that the inspiration of both characters and plot was derived from two or three Egyptian letters of the XIth Dynasty, found during the 1920-1921 season by the Egyptian Expedition of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in a rock tomb opposite Luxor, and translated by Professor Battiscombe Gunn in the Museum’s Bulletin.
“It may be of interest to the reader to note that an endowment for ka-service–an everyday feature of ancient Egyptian civilization–was very similar in principle to a medieval chantry bequest. Property was bequeathed to the ka-priest, in return for which he was expected to maintain the tomb of the testator, and to provide offerings at the tomb on certain feast days throughout the year for the repose of the deceased’s soul.
“The terms ‘Brother,’ ‘Sister,’ in Egyptian text regularly meaning ‘Lover,’ are frequently interchangeable with ‘Husband,’ ‘Wife.’ They are so used on occasion in this book.
“The agricultural calendar of Ancient Egypt, consisting of three seasons of four months of thirty days, formed the background of peasant life, and with the addition of five intercalary days at the end of the year, was used as the official calendar of 365 days to the year. This ‘year’ originally began with the arrival in Egypt of the flood-water of the Nile in the third week of July by our reckoning. The absence of a leap year caused this to lag through the centuries, so that at the opening of the agricultural year, i.e. in January instead of July. To save the reader from continually having to make allowance for this six months, however, the dates here used as chapter headings are calculated by the agricultural year of the time, i.e., Inundation–late July to late November; Winter–late November to late March; and Summer–late March to late July.”
Characters in Death Comes as the End
- Imhotep, a mortuary priest (ka-priest); fussily pompous; provider for his large household
- Nofret, Imhotep’s beautiful young concubine, newly arrived from the north
- Esa, Imhotep’s mother; blunt-spoken, disdainful of much of her family; she calls her son a fool
- Renisenb (ren-eh-seb), Imhotep’s recently widowed daughter (husband Khay); mother of Teti
- Yahmose, Imhotep’s eldest son; he’s kind and hesitant, rarely asserting his rights as eldest son
- Satipy (sah-tee-pee), Yahmose’s wife; tall, energetic, loud woman who bullied her husband
- Sobek, Imhotep’s second son; handsome braggart who resents his dependent status
- Kait, Sobek’s wife; her love for her children dominated her every word and act
- Ipy (ee-pee), Imhotep’s youngest son; only his father could tolerate his adolescent arrogance
- Henet, obsequious, malicious family retainer, poor relation of Ashayet, Imhotep’s dead wife
- Hori, Imhotep’s family’s scribe and man of business; he is in love with Renisenb
- Kameni, a handsome scribe and kinsman from the North; he sings songs of love for Renisenb
Crippen and Landru
The very best in short mystery fiction
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DEATH COMES AS THE END by Agatha Christie is a groundbreaking historical mystery set in ancient Egypt. When a wealthy patriarch’s death sparks a series of murders within his family, suspicion and secrets abound. It’s the first full-length historical whodunit.
Get your copy of our guest's books here!
History of Mystery book slections available in our Amazon Storefront or support your favorite local bookstore in our Bookshop Storefront as well! Guests have their own list here!
Or if you happen to be in lovely Roanoke, Virginia, stop in person at the BiblioPub to get your copy.
Watch clips from our conversations with guests!
For bonus episodes, video conversations, and to get all episodes first, join our Patreon community.
Dr. Nicky Nielsen is a Senior Lecturer in Egyptology at the University of Manchester. Originally from Denmark, he was awarded an AHRC Block Grant to undertake PhD research at the University of Liverpool, investigating subsistence strategies and craft production at the Ramesside fortress site of Zawiyet Umm el-Rakham. He obtained his PhD in 2016.
Nicky Nielsen has excavated in Europe, Turkey and Egypt, and he is currently the field director of the University of Liverpool Tell Nabasha Survey Project, which conducts archaeological investigations of the ancient city of Imet located in the north-eastern Nile Delta.
He has published several peer-reviewed papers, as well as more public-oriented articles, and he is the author of ‘Pharaoh Seti I’ (2018), ‘From Mummies to Microchips’ (2020, co-authored with Professor Joyce Tyldesley) and ‘Egyptomaniacs: How We Became Obsessed with Ancient Egypt’ (2020).
Read his article Agatha Christie: World’s First Historical Whodunnit Was Inspired by 4,000 Year‑Old Letters
In Death Comes as the End by Agatha Christie (1944), the Queen of Mystery transports us to ancient Egypt. In 2000 BC, death gives meaning to life. At the foot of a cliff lies the body of Nofret, concubine to a ka-priest. Many see it as fate—the beautiful, venomous young woman deserved to die.
But the priest’s daughter suspects foul play and believes the evil-doer lurks within their household—and watches helplessly as the family’s passions explode in murder.
The novel reflects Christie’s fascination with the ancient world, inspired by her time in the Middle East with her archaeologist husband, Sir Max Mallowan. It’s the first full-length novel to merge historical fiction with the mystery genre, paving the way for the historical whodunit.
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HOME SWEET HOMICIDE (1944) by Craig Rice is a classic in the mystery genre that features three resourceful siblings determined to solve a neighborhood murder. Rice’s sharp wit and unique approach to the detective genre earned her widespread acclaim, including a rare Time Magazine cover, solidifying her legacy as one of the most distinctive voices in mystery fiction.
Jeff Marks, publisher at Crippen and Landru, joins us to discuss Home Sweet Homicide by Craig Rice. He wrote Craig Rice’s bio (Who Was That Lady?) and has been nominated for an Edgar, three Agathas, and many other awards.
Get your copy of our guest's books here!
History of Mystery book slections available in our Amazon Storefront or support your favorite local bookstore in our Bookshop Storefront as well! Guests have their own list here!
Or if you happen to be in lovely Roanoke, Virginia, stop in person at the BiblioPub to get your copy.
Watch clips from our conversations with guests!
For bonus episodes and to get all episodes first, join our Patreon community.
Real Violence vs. Comic Framing in Home Sweet Homicide by Craig Rice
Does the novel successfully balance murder with comedy? Did the comedy ever undermine the stakes for you, or did it actually make the danger feel stranger and sharper? How does the novel handle blackmail, kidnapping, murder, and corruption? How does this novel make murder funny without making it weightless?
What moments in the book reminded you that murder is serious business and is not, in fact, just a game for the children?
Craig Rice is often praised for blending mystery with screwball comedy. (Carolyn even noted some similarities to The Brady Bunch.) She has been called the Dorothy Parker of detective fiction—do you agree with this assessment?
Are there moments where the book feels almost like a film comedy rather than a traditional novel?
Crime Fiction About Crime Fiction
This is a mystery about children who have absorbed detective conventions from their mother’s books. How self-aware is the novel about mystery tropes?
Is the book an affectionate satire of detective fiction? Or a love letter to the genre’s imaginative power?
How effective is the actual puzzle once you set aside the comedy? Is it a strong mystery in its own right? Is the mystery itself strong enough to survive if you stripped away the charm?
The book keeps introducing suspects, hidden histories, false identities, and side scandals. Did that feel delightfully layered or did you have trouble keeping track of all the details?
The Social World / Historical Context of Home Sweet Homicide by Craig Rice
Published in 1944, the novel sits in a wartime America full of newspapers, movie culture, celebrity, crime magazines, and public scandal. In what ways does that broader world shape the book’s energy?
How important is class in this book? Is it less rigid than in British mysteries, or simply rearranged into American forms of status and aspiration?
For all the jokes and plotting, this is also a very affectionate portrait of a family. What makes Marian and the children believable as a family unit? What about this family gives the book its emotional warmth? Why do the kids want their mom to marry Bill Smith? Are they looking for a father? Are they trying to reduce their mother’s workload?
What do you make of the book’s title?
Jeffrey Marks received a grant while working on that book. It was nominated for an Agatha and, fittingly, won an Anthony Award. Marks is currently working on a biography of Erle Stanley Gardner, a book on Gardner’s work with his Pre-Innocence Project, Court of Last Resort, and a dual biography of the two men who wrote as Ellery Queen.
In 2014, Jeffrey Marks offered to help Doug Greene fix issues with the Crippen & Landru Publishers website. After fixing those issues, he proceeded to upgrade the website to a new shopping cart software package. That led to creating a more robust eBook program. In 2018, Doug Greene retired (to become Senior Editor) and Marks took over the company.
Jeffrey Marks has been nominated for a Maxwell award (DWAA), an Edgar (MWA), three Agathas (Malice Domestic), two Macavity awards, and three Anthony awards (Bouchercon). Marks retired from teaching in 2020, today, he writes from his home in Cincinnati, which he shares with his spouse and two dogs.
Crippen and Landru
The very best in short mystery fiction
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Jeffrey Marks (publisher, Crippen and Landru) joins us to discuss Home Sweet Homicide (1944), written by Craig Rice.
After numerous mystery author profiles for The Armchair Detective, Mystery Scene, and other genre publications, Jeffrey Marks chose to chronicle the short but full life of mystery writer Craig Rice. That biography (Who Was That Lady?) encouraged him to write mystery fiction.
He has been nominated for a Maxwell Award (DWAA), an Edgar (MWA), three Agathas (Malice Domestic), two Macavity Awards, and three Anthony Awards (Bouchercon).
Get your copy of our guest's books here!
History of Mystery book slections now in our Bookshop Storefront as well! Guests have their own list here!
Or if you happen to be in lovely Roanoke, Virginia, stop in person at the BiblioPub to get your copy.
Watch clips from our conversations with guests!
HOME SWEET HOMICIDE (1944) by Craig Rice is a classic in the mystery genre for its clever combination of humor and an engaging plot. Featuring three resourceful siblings determined to solve a neighborhood murder, the novel highlights Rice’s knack for lighthearted storytelling and crafting intricate puzzles. The children’s enthusiasm for amateur sleuthing adds a whimsical (and relatable) touch.
Rice’s sharp wit and unique approach to the detective genre earned her widespread acclaim, including a rare Time Magazine cover, solidifying her legacy as one of the most distinctive voices in mystery fiction.
First Impressions About Home Sweet Homicide by Craig Rice: The Carstairs Children as Detectives
What was your first reaction to the Carstairs children? Endearing, exhausting, too clever by half, or instantly relatable and irresistible? (Carolyn particularly loved how they tracked expenditures and measured and divided amounts and quantities of food and drink—she and her siblings did the same.)
The children think that reading mystery fiction has trained them for real detection. Is the novel making fun of that idea, celebrating it, or both?
How does the sibling dynamic shape the story? Would the mystery work as well without the constant bargaining, bickering, loyalty, King Tut dialogue, and shared invention? Who’s the brains, who’s the strategist, who’s the pragmatist, and who’s the chaos engine?
Craig Rice and Marian Carstairs: Mothers, Writers, Workers
Marian is a working widow supporting her family by producing popular crime novels at warp speed. What does the book suggest about women’s work—especially Marian’s endless labor as mother and writer? How unusual or modern did she feel as a protagonist, even when she’s not technically the central sleuth?
What does the book suggest about the life of a woman writer—especially one writing under multiple (male) names and trying to turn imagination into income?
The children are deeply invested in getting Marian both publicity and romance. In what ways do the children act like parents? In what ways does Marian act childlike?
Gender, Performance, and Identity
What does the novel do with feminine performance—movie glamour, flirtation, false helplessness, beauty, tears, “slick chicks,” and social manipulation? Do you think the book is poking fun at gender roles—or quietly depending on them to make the machinery work?
Like Craig Rice herself, Marian writes under male names. The book keeps circling questions of presentation, alias, performance, and reinvention. How important is that to the novel’s worldview?
How does Marian compare with other women in Golden Age crime fiction?
Crippen and Landru
The very best in short mystery fiction
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Maureen and Jay join us to discuss their wonderful interactive whodunit, You Are the Detective: The Creeping Hand Murder. It’s 1933, and your job is to help Scotland Yard solve an impossible murder. Are you up to the task?
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History of Mystery book slections now in our Bookshop Storefront as well! Guests have their own list here!
Or if you happen to be in lovely Roanoke, Virginia, stop in person at the BiblioPub to get your copy.
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November 1933. London. Seven people receive mysterious letters. Someone knows their terrible secrets. They are summoned to a posh townhouse where one is stabbed right in front of the others, but somehow no one saw a thing.
Can you help Scotland Yard solve the mystery? An interactive murder mystery from the bestselling author and illustrator of Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village
Dear Detective, Have you seen the story in the papers about the dreadful murder of the American novelist? The crime is so devious, so logistically impossible, that it seems to have been committed not by a person but by a disembodied hand. I must confess that we are at a loss. Who wrote the poison pen letters that lured these seven people to this deadly gathering? What do a poet, an earl, an actress, a cook, a telephone operator, and a lothario have in common? And how can a man be stabbed in a room full of suspects when none of them went near him or saw a thing? We have had our best people on the case, Detective, and we still can’t make heads or tails of it. We are giving this case file to you. Can you decipher the clues, decode the witness statements, and identify the murderer? You are our last hope. Can you help us crack the Creeping Hand Murder? Yours truly,
Detective Chief Inspector of the Metropolitan Police
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Special guests Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin join Tea, Tonic & Toxin to discuss their book The Bletchley Riddle.
Remember, you are bound by the Official Secrets Act…
Summer, 1940. Nineteen-year-old Jakob Novis and his quirky younger sister, Lizzie, share a love of riddles and puzzles. And now they’re living inside of one. The quarrelsome siblings find themselves amid one of the greatest secrets of World War II—Britain’s eccentric codebreaking factory at Bletchley Park. As Jakob joins Bletchley’s top minds to crack the Nazi’s Enigma cipher, fourteen-year-old Lizzie embarks on a mission to solve the mysterious disappearance of their mother.
The Battle of Britain rages and Hitler’s invasion creeps closer. And at the same time, baffling messages and codes arrive on their doorstep while a menacing inspector lurks outside the gates of the Bletchley mansion. Are the messages truly for them, or are they a trap? Could the riddles of Enigma and their mother’s disappearance be somehow connected? Jakob and Lizzie must find a way to work together as they race to decipher clues that unravel a shocking puzzle that presents the ultimate challenge: How long must a secret be kept?
Get your copy of all of our History of Mystery book selections here! (including even some 2027 selections)
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Ruta Sepetys (Rūta Šepetys) is an internationally acclaimed, #1 New York Times bestselling author of historical fiction published in over sixty countries and forty languages. Considered a “crossover” novelist, her books are read by both students and adults worldwide. Winner of the Carnegie Medal and honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Ruta is renowned for giving voice to underrepresented history and those who experienced it. Her books have won or been shortlisted for more than fifty book prizes, appear on over forty state reading lists, and are currently in development for film and television.
A former textbook writer, Steve Sheinkin is now making amends by writing books young people might actually want to read.
He’s the author of fast-paced, cinematic, nonfiction page-turners, including Bomb, Fallout, Undefeated, Born to Fly, The Port Chicago 50, and Impossible Escape.
He is also the author of The Bletchley Riddle, a middle grade novel written with Ruta Sepetys. The historical mystery is set in Bletchley Park, Britain’s top secret codebreaking factory during World War II.
Steve’s many accolades include a Newbery Honor, three Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards, a Sibert Medal and Honor, three National Book Award finalist honors, and the Margaret A. Edwards Award. He lives with his family in Saratoga Springs, New York.
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We were delighted to discuss all things mysterious with Otto Penzler in this episode.
Otto Penzler joins Tea, Tonic & Toxin to discuss the Golden Age of Mystery.
Otto Penzler is president and CEO of MysteriousPress.com and proprietor of New York City’s Mysterious Bookshop.
Widely regarded as a leading authority on crime, mystery, and suspense fiction, he founded The Mysterious Press in 1975 and later launched Penzler Publishers, including American Mystery Classics and Scarlet. A prolific editor and publisher, he has received two Edgar Awards, the Ellery Queen Award, and the Raven.
Get your copy of all of our History of Mystery book selections here! (including even some 2027 selections)
History of Mystery book slections now in our Bookshop Storefront as well! Support your local bookseller.
Or if you happen to be in lovely Roanoke, Virginia, stop in person at the BiblioPub to get your copy.
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Otto Penzler is president and CEO of MysteriousPress.com and proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City. Long regarded as one of the world’s foremost authorities on crime, mystery, and suspense fiction, he has spent decades shaping the field as a publisher, editor, bookseller, and champion of both classic and contemporary crime writing.
In 1975, Penzler founded The Mysterious Press, a publishing house that became one of the most respected names in mystery and suspense fiction. He sold the company to Warner Books in 1989, reacquired the imprint in 2010, and continued publishing literary crime fiction through Grove/Atlantic. Since January 2021, The Mysterious Press has again been independently owned. Through MysteriousPress.com, in partnership with Open Road Integrated Media, he publishes both original works and classic crime fiction.
In fall 2018, Penzler established Penzler Publishers, which introduced American Mystery Classics, a line dedicated to bringing distinguished mystery and detective novels back into print, many after decades of unavailability. In September 2020, he launched Scarlet, an imprint devoted to psychological and domestic suspense. Charles Perry serves as publisher of all Penzler Publishers imprints, and Luisa Smith is editor-in-chief of Scarlet.
Penzler’s contributions to the mystery world extend well beyond book publishing. For seventeen years, he published The Armchair Detective, the Edgar Award-winning quarterly journal devoted to the study of mystery and suspense fiction. He also created Otto Penzler Books and The Armchair Detective Library, further expanding his influence on the genre’s publishing landscape.
Crippen and Landru
The very best in short mystery fiction
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Sergio Angelini joins Tea, Tonic & Toxin to discuss Green for Danger (1944) by Christianna Brand.
Sergio was born and bred in Rome, Italy, moving to Singapore for 5 years in the 1980s before settling in the UK. He studied Law at London School of Economics and got a joint MA in Film Studies and Film Archiving from the University of East Anglia. He hosts a podcast focused on crime and film noir called Tipping My Fedora.
Get your copy of all of our History of Mystery book selections here! (including even some 2027 selections)
History of Mystery book slections now in our Bookshop Storefront as well! Support your local bookseller.
Or if you happen to be in lovely Roanoke, Virginia, stop in person at the BiblioPub to get your copy.
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For bonus episodes and to get all episodes first, join our Patreon community.
Sergio has worked in film and education for over thirty years. He edited the educational media quarterly Viewfinder for a decade and for over eight years was the reviewer of TV home video releases for Sight & Sound magazine. For 15 years he was involved in the development and running of the educational streaming resource, BoB (Box of Broadcasts). He has provided video essays, audio commentaries and booklet notes for various DVD and Blu-ray releases for such labels as Arrow, BFI, Eureka (Masters of Cinema), Hammer Films, Imprint and Indicator.
Previous print publications include contributions to Gilbert Adair (Verbivoracious Festschrift, 2014), Mysteries Unlocked (McFarland, 2014), The Cult TV Book (IB Tauris 2010) and Directors in British and Irish Cinema (BFI, 2006).
Special guest Sergio Angelini joined Tea, Tonic & Toxin to discuss Christianna Brand’s Green for Danger, published in 1943.
Green for Danger is a Golden Age masterclass of red herrings and twists. The story, set during World War II, features a tense and claustrophobic investigation with a close-knit circle of suspects.
It’s 1942, and struggling up the hill to the new Kent military hospital, Heron’s Park, postman Joseph Higgins is soon to deliver seven acceptance letters for roles at the infirmary. He has no idea that the sender of one of the letters will be the cause of his death in just one year’s time.
When Higgins returns to Heron’s Park with injuries from a bombing raid in 1943, his death by asphyxiation in the operating theatre casts four nurses and three doctors under suspicion. When a second death occurs in quick succession, the moody, yet shrewd, Inspector Cockrill arrives on the scene. The stage is set for a tense and claustrophobic investigation. One of the doctors and nurses in this close-knit group must be the murderer. But who did it? And why?
Crippen and Landru
The very best in short mystery fiction
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GREEN FOR DANGER by Christianna Brand is a masterful wartime mystery set in a British hospital during the Blitz. When a patient dies under suspicious circumstances, Inspector Cockrill investigates a web of secrets among the medical staff. It’s a standout in Golden Age detective fiction.
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Characters & Relationships in Green for Danger by Christianna Brand
- The characters are intensely intertwined—romantically, professionally, emotionally. Did that closeness heighten the tension for you, or did the story veer into melodrama?
- Several characters fall hard and fast in love. Marion loves Gervase, who toys with her affections. Barney loves less-than-steady Freddi, who has a thing for Gervase. Barney tells Freddi, “I’d rather have cruelty than dishonesty. I’d rather be hurt than deceived.” If given the choice, which would you prefer? And is this type of emotional intensity convincing given the historical moment—or did it feel exaggerated?
- Gervase “looked at his ugly face and greying hair, at his thin, angular body and restless hands—and wondered what on earth women saw in him, and wished they wouldn’t” (2). He’s also married: “Once, long ago, one of the lovely ladies had been importunate, and he had not then acquired his skill in evading desperate situations. He had not seen her for several years, but she formed a shield against similar assaults upon his liberty” (32). Esther is the “only female in the hospital who can see Gervase Eden without swooning at his feet” (35). What exactly do the female characters see in “Don Juan” Gervase?
- Some characters are haunted by loss. Esther left her mother behind to volunteer. After her mother’s building was hit, and “For two days and two nights she had waited in anguish while men toiled unceasingly at the mountain of rubble” (20). Major Moon mourns his dead son. Did you feel more for some characters than others?
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We are so excited to expand our discussion of the transcendant The Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene with special guest Dr. Robert Willingham.
Rob Willingham is a history professor at Roanoke College. After receiving his doctorate from UT-Austin (where he shared office space with future Heritage Foundation head, Kevin Roberts, oddly), he’s gone on to write and teach about 20th century Europe, specializing in the era of War and Holocaust. He is the author of Jews in Leipzig and has won the distinguished teaching award at Roanoke and served two terms as chair of the history department. He lives in Salem with his wife, twin daughters and cats. He thinks Graham Greene is a great writer and also just found out there’s a movie of the book; as a teacher, he would never watch it before reading the novel.
Get your copy of all of our History of Mystery book selections here! (including even some 2027 selections)
History of Mystery book slections now in our Bookshop Storefront as well! Support your local bookseller.
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For a long time Sarah & Carolyn have wanted to do more of an in depth conversation with someone who really knows the history of the times these books are being written in and about, and we are delighted that Rob is just that guy.
Published in 1943, THE MINISTRY OF FEAR by Graham Greene blends espionage and psychological mystery set in wartime London. The story follows Arthur Rowe, an ordinary man caught up in Nazi intrigue, navigating a world where nothing is as it seems. The story’s moral complexity redefined the boundaries of the mystery genre.
The title reflects the pervasive atmosphere of dread and paranoia in wartime Britain, where fear itself becomes a tool of control. The ministry of fear represents an institution or force that spreads fear to undermine trust and stability, both on a personal and societal level.
We also touch on the Fritz Lang film, Ministry of Fear, to be discussed futher in upcoming bonus content! Wikipedia summarizes:
Ministry of Fear is a 1944 American spy thriller film noir directed by Fritz Lang, and starring Ray Milland and Marjorie Reynolds. Based on the 1943 novel by Graham Greene, the film tells the story of a man just released from a mental asylum who finds himself caught up in an international spy ring and pursued by Nazi agents after inadvertently receiving something they want. The original music for the film was composed by Victor Young.
We can't wait to hear your take on this discussion.
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THE MINISTRY OF FEAR by Graham Greene is a thrilling blend of espionage and psychological mystery set in wartime London. The story follows Arthur Rowe, an ordinary man caught up in Nazi intrigue. Celebrated for its moral complexity, it redefined the boundaries of the mystery genre.
Get your copy of all of our History of Mystery book selections here! (including even some 2027 selections)
History of Mystery book slections now in our Bookshop Storefront as well! Support your local bookseller.
Watch clips from our conversations with guests!
For bonus episodes and to get all episodes first, join our Patreon community.
The title reflects the pervasive atmosphere of dread and paranoia in wartime Britain, where fear itself becomes a tool of control. The ministry of fear represents an institution or force that spreads fear to undermine trust and stability, both on a personal and societal level.
Is The Ministry of Fear a Spy Thriller? An Entertainment? A Study of What It Is to Be Human?
Once the police are involved, the “murky trail leads to a Thirty-Nine Steps type of organization and a microfilm” that must be found. (Tom Ruffles, The Joy of Mere Words)
It’s a page-turning thriller combined with psychological nuance, interesting characters, believable settings, and an exploration of what it means to be human. The Ministry of Fear was billed as an “entertainment” — much-needed escapism from wartime life. The “somewhat preposterous spy thriller [is] a dark analysis of personal responsibility, loss, and the obligations that go with love. (Tom Ruffles, The Joy of Mere Words)
Greeneland: the seedy, dangerous, and politically charged world of Greene’s novels. Greene believed the real world could often be more horrific than fiction. The term describes a milieu charged with existential or religious questions and implications.
References to The Little Duke – Richard the Fearless (1854) in The Ministry of Fear
Set in 943, the children’s adventure story by Charlotte Yonge concerns the young Duke of Normandy who must avenge his father’s death while keeping the King of France from absorbing his independent dukedom. The war that breaks out draws in the Danes and the young Duke’s Danish bodyguard. The young Duke eventually learns forgiveness towards his enemies, the French king’s sons.
Why is Rowe drawn to The Little Duke? How do explorers, heroes, and high ideals fit into the real world, where morality isn’t always clear?
Graham Greene Sets The Ministry of Fear During Wartime England
“A bomb early in the blitz had fallen in the middle of the street and blasted both sides, but Rowe stayed on. Houses went overnight, but [Arthur Rowe] stayed.”
“Far away on the outskirts of London the sirens began their nightly wail … Somewhere two miles above their heads an enemy bomber came up from the estuary.”
The sirens sounded the All Clear. “Nobody moved to go home: this was their home now. They were quite accustomed to sleeping underground …. This was the world they knew.”
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2025 was an amazing and tumultous year for Carolyn and Sarah, both of us making moves out of Denver. But we kept on reading (albiet at a slower pace!) and loved having conversations about it all. Join us for our take on 2025, and let us know yours!
Get your copy of all of our History of Mystery book selections here! (including even some 2027 selections)
History of Mystery book slections now in our Bookshop Storefront as well!
Watch clips from our conversations with guests!
Tea, Tonic & Toxin is a history of mystery book club and podcast. We’re discussing the best mysteries ever written and interviewing some of the world’s best contemporary mystery and thriller writers.
THE BIG SLEEP (1939) is a seminal work in the hardboiled detective genre, and it’s among the best of the Raymond Chandler books. It showcases Chandler’s masterful use of sharp dialogue, complex characters and his gritty depiction of 1930s Los Angeles.
Farewell, My Lovely (1940) by Raymond Chandler is a cornerstone of the noir genre and the Philip Marlowe books, showcasing Marlowe in one of his most memorable cases. The novel’s richly atmospheric prose vividly captures the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles, immersing readers in its gritty, dangerous world. Chandler’s exploration of moral ambiguity and flawed characters adds depth to the mystery, elevating it beyond a simple whodunit.
TRAITOR’S PURSE (1940) by Margery Allingham is a mystery thriller classic that masterfully combines psychological tension with a high-stakes plot. Suffering from amnesia, amateur sleuth Albert Campion races to stop a wartime national security threat.
The novel’s unique premise and tightly woven narrative create a sense of urgency and intrigue. Known for its psychological depth, it showcases Allingham’s skill at blending espionage with a classic whodunit. Allingham’s exploration of identity, loyalty, and duty cements the book’s status as a timeless classic in the genre.
Published in 1942, LAURA by Vera Caspary is a sophisticated mystery novel blending romance and psychological intrigue. Told through shifting perspectives, it follows a detective investigating the apparent murder of a glamorous ad exec. It remains a cornerstone of noir fiction.
Rear Window (1942) by Cornell Woolrich is a classic in the suspense genre for its masterful use of tension and claustrophobia. The story’s premise—a man confined to his apartment who becomes an unwitting witness to sinister events—brilliantly explores themes of isolation, voyeurism, and moral responsibility.
The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope (1943) by C. W. Grafton (the father of Sue Grafton) is a classic in the mystery genre for its clever fusion of humor, small-town charm, and hardboiled crime elements. Featuring Gil Henry, an unassuming and resourceful lawyer, the novel showcases an unconventional hero who unravels a web of corruption and intrigue with sharp wit and determination. Grafton’s skillful storytelling and engaging prose set a high standard for blending humor with suspense.
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Rear Window (1942) by Cornell Woolrich is a classic in the suspense genre for its masterful use of tension and claustrophobia. The story’s premise—a man confined to his apartment who becomes an unwitting witness to sinister events—brilliantly explores themes of isolation, voyeurism, and moral responsibility.
The book was inspired by “Through a Window” by H. G. Wells. The tight pacing and psychological depth create a gripping sense of unease. As the basis for Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic film, the story’s enduring legacy lies in its ability to turn an ordinary setting into a stage for extraordinary suspense, influencing many works in the thriller genre.
Get your copy of all of our History of Mystery book selections here! (including even some 2027 selections)
History of Mystery book slections now in our Bookshop Storefront as well!
Watch clips from our conversations with guests!
Voyeurism and the Confined Observer
Due to his injury, Jeff spends most of his time looking out the window, scrutinizing the lives of his neighbors. He has the “fevered concentration of a Peeping Tom. That wasn’t my fault. … what should I do, sit there with my eyes tightly shuttered?”
The story by Cornell Woolrich explores the idea of observing others’ lives from a distance and the potential for misinterpretation and obsession that can arise from such behavior.
The Daily Habits of the Rear Window Dwellers
“I didn’t know their names. I’d never heard their voices. I didn’t even know them by sight, strictly speaking, for their faces were too small to fill in with identifiable features at that distance. Yet I could have constructed a timetable of their comings and goings, their daily habits and activities.”
“The lights started to come on around the quadrangle. … The chain of little habits that were their lives unreeled themselves. They were all bound in them tighter than the tightest straitjacket any jailer ever devised, though they all thought themselves free. The jitterbugs made their nightly dash for the great open spaces, forgot their lights, he came careening back, thumbed them out, and their place was dark until the early morning hours. The woman put her child to bed, leaned mournfully over its cot, then sat down with heavy despair to redden her mouth.”
When Mrs. Thorvald doesn’t come out to greet her husband, the “first link, of the so-strong chain of habits, of custom, that binds us all, had snapped wide open.”
Cornell Woolrich Builds Empathy … and Breaks It
“I felt sorry for the couple in the flat below. I used to wonder how they stood it with that bedlam going on above their heads. To make it worse the wife was in chronic poor health, too; I could tell that even at a distance by the listless way she moved about over there, and remained in her bathrobe without dressing. Sometimes I’d see her sitting by the window, holding her head. I used to wonder why he didn’t have a doctor in to look her over, but maybe they couldn’t afford it. He seemed to be out of work.”
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L. Wayne Hicks joins Tea, Tonic & Toxin to discuss The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope, published in 1943 by C. W. Grafton (father of Sue Grafton).
L. Wayne Hicks is a freelance writer who covered real-life crimes for newspapers in Florida and Colorado. He has written profiles of many mystery writers including Sara Paretsky, Michael Connelly, John Dunning, Robert B. Parker, Donald J. Sobol, Stephen White, and C. W. Grafton.
Get your copy of all of our History of Mystery book selections here! (including even some 2027 selections)
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Watch clips from our conversations with guests!
L. Wayne Hicks has been a lifelong fan of mysteries, beginning with The Hardy Boys and The Three Investigators books. As a newspaper reporter in Florida, he covered criminal trials and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for an investigative project that wound up helping to free a man wrongly convicted of murder after more than 20 years in prison.
He has interviewed and profiled such acclaimed mystery novelists as Jeffery Deaver, Michael Connelly, Ridley Pearson, John Dunning, Sara Paretsky, Stephen White, and Donald J. Sobol.
Hicks writes for various magazines and websites, including CrimeReads.com, where he profiled C.W. Grafton and explored the continuation of Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series.
Hicks’ first book, a nonfiction tale about the children’s television series Romper Room, will be published in 2026.
About The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope
The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope (1943) by C. W. Grafton (the father of Sue Grafton) is a classic in the mystery genre for its clever fusion of humor, small-town charm, and hardboiled crime elements. Featuring Gil Henry, an unassuming and resourceful lawyer, the novel showcases an unconventional hero who unravels a web of corruption and intrigue with sharp wit and determination. Grafton’s skillful storytelling and engaging prose set a high standard for blending humor with suspense.
Sue Grafton wrote the famous “alphabet series.” C.W. Grafton’s work also holds historical significance, reflecting a legacy of inventive storytelling in mystery fiction.
Discussion Questions for L. Wayne Hicks
- You’ve profiled many mystery writers—from Sara Paretsky and Michael Connelly to John Dunning and now C. W. Grafton. What do you look for when deciding which authors to explore in depth?
- You’ve covered both true crime and fictional crime throughout your career. How has reporting on real-life cases shaped the way you understand or interpret mystery fiction?
- As a longtime journalist and storyteller, what draws you personally to the mystery genre—and what lessons from your reporting life do you bring to your literary profiles?
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L. Wayne Hicks joins Tea, Tonic & Toxin to discuss The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope, published in 1943 by C. W. Grafton (father of Sue Grafton).
L. Wayne Hicks is a freelance writer who covered real-life crimes for newspapers in Florida and Colorado. He has written profiles of many mystery writers including Sara Paretsky, Michael Connelly, John Dunning, Robert B. Parker, Donald J. Sobol, Stephen White, and C. W. Grafton.
The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope (1943) by C. W. Grafton (the father of Sue Grafton) is a classic in the mystery genre for its clever fusion of humor, small-town charm, and hardboiled crime elements. Featuring Gil Henry, an unassuming and resourceful lawyer, the novel showcases an unconventional hero who unravels a web of corruption and intrigue with sharp wit and determination. Grafton’s skillful storytelling and engaging prose set a high standard for blending humor with suspense.
Sue Grafton wrote the famous “alphabet series.” C.W. Grafton’s work also holds historical significance, reflecting a legacy of inventive storytelling in mystery fiction.
Get your copy of all of our History of Mystery book selections here! (including even some 2027 selections)
Watch clips from our conversations with guests!
Access bonus content as a Patreon subscriber as well.
The Life and Career of C. W. Grafton, Father of Sue Grafton
- Grafton led a fascinating double life as a practicing lawyer and novelist. How might his legal training have shaped the voice, pacing, or logic of his fiction—and might writing fiction have helped him think differently about the law?
- Grafton spent his early years as the child of missionaries in China. Based on what you’ve learned, what elements of that unusual upbringing—cultural displacement, observation, alienation—do you see reflected in his worldview or narrative style?
- C. W. Grafton seemed torn between creative ambition and professional responsibility. How does that tension surface in his work or in his private correspondence? Did he ever try to reconcile the “lawyer” and the “storyteller” within himself?
- How would you characterize Grafton’s personality—especially his humor, his self-awareness (or self-deprecation), and his feelings about success and failure?
The Writing and Themes
- The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope won the Mary Roberts Rinehart Prize in 1943. What set this debut apart from its contemporaries? Was it the humor, the voice, the unusual protagonist, the legal realism, or something else entirely?
- For modern readers encountering the novel for the first time, what should they expect stylistically? How well does the book’s blend of hard-boiled grit, small-town politics, and sharp wit hold up today?
- Grafton mixes genuine violence with laugh-out-loud humor—Gil getting “anatomical difficulties” in a new suit, deadpan one-liners, and witty observational asides. How successful was at balancing this humor with the darker elements of the plot?
- Gil Henry is such an unusual protagonist: pudgy, mild-mannered, YMCA resident, overly thoughtful at all the wrong times, yet also dogged and surprisingly gutsy. What does Gil’s characterization reveal about Grafton’s idea of heroism—or of justice?
- The nursery-rhyme title signals a larger conceptual game, possibly a series. What evidence do we have about whether Grafton intended additional Gil Henry books—and why did he pivot away?
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The 2026 book list revealed and discussed. What was selected and why? Do you agree? Disagree? Have authors to add?
Get your copy of all of our History of Mystery book selections here! (including even some 2027 selections)
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January 2026
Publication: 1943
THE MINISTRY OF FEAR by Graham Greene is a thrilling blend of espionage and psychological mystery set in wartime London.
Publication: 1944
GREEN FOR DANGER by Christianna Brand is a masterful wartime mystery set in a British hospital during the Blitz. It’s a standout in Golden Age detective fiction.
March 2026
Publication: 1944
DEATH COMES AS THE END by Agatha Christie is a groundbreaking historical mystery set in ancient Egypt. It’s the first full-length historical whodunit.
April 2026
Publication: 1944
HOME SWEET HOMICIDE by Craig Rice features a trio of resourceful siblings who set out to solve a murder in their neighborhood. The novel exemplifies Rice’s talent for blending lighthearted storytelling with intricate puzzles, earning her acclaim in the genre — and a Time Magazine cover.
May 2025
Publication: 1945
DIED IN THE WOOL by Ngaio Marsh is a compelling mystery set on a remote New Zealand sheep farm. Marsh was one of the Queens of Crime, and this novel is among her best.
June 2025
Publication: 1946
THE MOVING TOYSHOP by Edmund Crispin is an ingenious mystery featuring eccentric Oxford professor Gervase Fen. Celebrated for its wit and inventive plot, it’s a crime fiction classic.
July 2026
Publication: 1946
THE HORIZONTAL MAN by Helen Eustis is a psychological mystery set in an Ivy League women’s college. But as the investigation unfolds, the line between sanity and madness begins to blur.
August 2026
Publication: 1946
THE BIG CLOCK by Kenneth Fearing is a thriller-noir about a man trapped inside the machinery of a powerful publishing empire. This classic inspired the film No Way Out.
September 2026
Publication: 1947
THE FABULOUS CLIPJOINT by Fredric Brown is a gritty mystery about the search for truth. Their investigation takes them through the burlesque houses, bars, and back alleys of Chicago.
October 2026
Publication: 1947
IN A LONELY PLACE by Dorothy B. Hughes is a haunting psychological noir told from the perspective of a charming but deeply disturbed war veteran. As a series of L.A. stranglings terrifies the city, the truth about the protagonist’s volatile desires and violent impulses slowly unravel.
November 2026
Publication: 1947
THE BLANK WALL by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding a suspenseful psychological thriller about an ordinary woman who becomes entangled in a man’s suspicious death while protecting her daughter from inside her seemingly quiet home.
December 2026
Publication: 1948
THE FRANCHISE AFFAIR by Josephine Tey is a mystery centered on a disturbing accusation. The novel is celebrated for its nuanced psychology and dismantling of false
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Tea, Tonic & Toxin is a history of mystery book club and podcast. We’re reading the best mysteries ever written and interviewing some of the world’s best contemporary mystery and thriller writers.
LAURA by Vera Caspary (1943) is a sophisticated mystery that blends romance and psychological intrigue. Told through shifting perspectives, it follows a detective investigating the murder of a glamorous ad exec. It remains a cornerstone of noir fiction.
Otto Preminger’s 1944 film version is also a stunner. The American Film Institute named it one of the 10 best mystery films of all time.
Get your copy of Laura and all of our History of Mystery book selections here!
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Waldo Lydecker in Laura by Vera Caspary
He met the “lovely child” eight years earlier when she tried to get him to endorse a Byron fountain pen. He describes her as a “fawn and fawn-like,” a “Bambi.”
He’s an omniscient narrator and interpreter. He describes scenes he never saw and dialogues he never heard. “My written dialogue will have more clarity, compatness, and essence of character than their spoken lines, for I am able to edit while I write, whereas they carried on their conversations in a loose and pointless fashion with no sense of form or crisis in the building of their scenes” (19).
Waldo saw everything through the lens of his own emotions. He thought of Laura as a perfect innocent protégée, Shelby as the false hero, and Mark as a little boy he could toy with. McPherson about Waldo: “You’re smooth all right, but you’ve got nothing to say” (9).
The restaurant he and Laura dined at is Montagnino’s. Slum smells mix with the smells of luscious Italian food and a rising storm. Waldo and Mark eat mussels cooked with mustard greens in a chianti, along with a chicken fried in olive oil, laid on a bed of yellow taglierini, garlanded with mushrooms and red peppers. They drink wine Lacrymae Christi (“Christ’s tear”) (produced on the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius, it’s the nearest equivalent of the wine drunk by ancient Romans).
Waldo sees in Claudius’s window a duplicate of the vase made of mercury glass that he had given Laura. Learning the piece has been sold, he breaks it. “He stood in the rain, looking back at Claudius’s shop and smiling. Almost as if he’d got the vase anyway” (105).
At the end of Laura by Vera Caspary, in the ambulance and at the hospital, Waldo keeps talking about himself in the third person. “He was like a hero a boy had always worshipped” (171).
Detective Mark McPherson
“A two-timing dame gets murdered in her flat. So what? … I’m a workingman, I’ve got hours like everyone else. And if you expect me to work overtime on this third-class mystery, you’re thinking of a couple other fellows” (8). Soon thereafter, Waldo sees the light on in Laura’s apartment. “I knew that a young man who had once scorned overtime had given his heart to a job” (39).
He walks with a limp from a shootout (The Siege of Babylon, Long Island). How he lives: “The steel furniture in my bedroom reminded me of a dentist’s office. There wasn’t a comfortable chair in the room” (65). Waldo thinks he’s a misogynist and thinks “his heart was guarded” (35).
A female reporter uses female tricks, saying, “I shouldn’t mind being murdered half so much … if you were the detective seeking clues to my private life” (35).
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Mike Ripley joins Tea, Tonic & Toxin to discuss Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion novels, along with his latest novel in the series, Mr Campion’s Christmas.
Mike Ripley completed the third Albert Campion novel left unfinished on the death of Pip Youngman Carter (Margery Allingham’s husband) in 1969. Mr Campion’s Farewell was published in 2014, and Mike has continued the Campion series annually with the twelfth and final book in the series, Mr Campion’s Christmas, appearing in 2024.
Check out Mike Ripley's work here.
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Mike Ripley joined Carolyn Daughters and Sarah Harrison to discuss the Margery Allingham Campion novels and his latest book in the series, Mr Campion’s Christmas.
Mike is the author of 28 novels, including the award-winning ‘Angel’ series of comedy thrillers and one of the few authors to win the Crime Writers’ Last Laugh Award twice. From 1989 to 2008, he was a crime fiction critic for The Daily Telegraph and then The Birmingham Post, reviewing more than 950 crime novels. He co-edited three volumes of Fresh Blood stories by new British writers, including Ian Rankin, Lee Child, Ken Bruen, Charlie Higson, and Christopher Brookmyre. He was also a scriptwriter on the BBC’s series Lovejoy.
Mike Ripley completed the third Albert Campion novel left unfinished on the death of Pip Youngman Carter (husband of Margery Allingham) in 1969. Mr Campion’s Farewell was published in the UK and the US in 2014, and Mike has continued the Campion series annually with the twelfth and final book in the series, Mr Campion’s Christmas, appearing in 2024.
Described by The Times as “England’s funniest crime writer,” Mike is a respected critic of crime fiction, writing for the Guardian, Daily Telegraph, and The Times. He writes the monthly “Getting Away With Murder” column on Shots Magazine. He was the series editor of the Ostara Crime and Top Notch Thrillers imprints, rescuing and reviving more than a hundred crime novels and thrillers that did not deserve to be forgotten. He also became known as the unofficial historian of the British thriller after the publication of “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” which won the 2018 H.R.F. Keating Award for non-fiction.
Mike Ripley first learned of the final unfinished Albert Campion novel when he was a guest speaker at the Margery Allingham Society’s annual convention. He offered – and received the Margery Allingham Society’s blessing – to complete the manuscript on the adventures of Albert Campion, who Ripley describes as “one of the brightest stars in the rich firmament of British crime writing.”
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Tea, Tonic & Toxin is a history of mystery book club and podcast. We’re reading the best mysteries ever written and interviewing some of the world’s best contemporary mystery and thriller writers.
Traitor’s Purse (1940) by Margery Allingham is a mystery thriller classic that masterfully combines psychological tension with a high-stakes plot. Suffering from amnesia, amateur sleuth Albert Campion races to stop a wartime national security threat.
Known for its psychological depth, the book blends espionage with a classic whodunit. Allingham’s exploration of identity, loyalty, and duty cements the book’s status as a timeless classic in the genre.
Get your book here!
Or check out Mike Ripley's work here.
Watch clips from our conversations with guests!
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Mike Ripley joins Tea, Tonic & Toxin to discuss Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion novels, along with his latest novel in the series, Mr Campion’s Christmas.
Mike Ripley completed the third Albert Campion novel left unfinished on the death of Pip Youngman Carter (Margery Allingham’s husband) in 1969. Mr Campion’s Farewell was published in 2014, and Mike has continued the Campion series annually with the twelfth and final book in the series, Mr Campion’s Christmas, appearing in 2024.
Mike Ripley joined Carolyn Daughters and Sarah Harrison to discuss the Margery Allingham Campion novels and his latest book in the series, Mr Campion’s Christmas.
Mike is the author of 28 novels, including the award-winning ‘Angel’ series of comedy thrillers and one of the few authors to win the Crime Writers’ Last Laugh Award twice. From 1989 to 2008, he was a crime fiction critic for The Daily Telegraph and then The Birmingham Post, reviewing more than 950 crime novels. He co-edited three volumes of Fresh Blood stories by new British writers, including Ian Rankin, Lee Child, Ken Bruen, Charlie Higson, and Christopher Brookmyre. He was also a scriptwriter on the BBC’s series Lovejoy.
Mike Ripley completed the third Albert Campion novel left unfinished on the death of Pip Youngman Carter (husband of Margery Allingham) in 1969. Mr Campion’s Farewell was published in the UK and the US in 2014, and Mike has continued the Campion series annually with the twelfth and final book in the series, Mr Campion’s Christmas, appearing in 2024.
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TRAITOR’S PURSE (1940) by Margery Allingham is a mystery thriller classic that masterfully combines psychological tension with a high-stakes plot. Suffering from amnesia, amateur sleuth Albert Campion races to stop a wartime national security threat.
The novel’s unique premise and tightly woven narrative create a sense of urgency and intrigue. Known for its psychological depth, it showcases Allingham’s skill at blending espionage with a classic whodunit. Allingham’s exploration of identity, loyalty, and duty cements the book’s status as a timeless classic in the genre.
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Amnesia as a Literary Trope in Traitor’s Purse by Margery Allingham
What has happened to the amnesiac? Why is he in a county hospital? Has he killed a police officer? Will he be hanged? Why did he have a lot of money on him when he was found? “There was danger behind him and something tremendously important ahead” (1).
“Everyone was turning to himself for assurance. He dared not reveal the dreadful emptiness of his mind. Somehow he must struggle on, blind and halfwitted though he was. There was to be no outside help. He was quite alone” (17).
Amnesia is a commonly used storytelling plot device in thrillers and romances. Amnesia offers a fresh perspective: characters can re-evaluate their actions and motivations. Amnesia creates conflict, forcing characters to re-evaluate their lives and relationships. Amnesia creates suspense and mystery as the character tries to piece together their past. The amnesiac often regains memories after being hit on the head.
In Traitor’s Purse by Margery Allingham, Campion is knocked unconscious at the police station. When he wakes, he recalls the events before his arrival at the hospital.
Other Examples: The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins: Rachel suffers from amnesia related to alcohol consumption and wakes up with no memory of what happened the night before. In the Woods by Tana French, Robert Ludlum’s Bourne Identity, The English Patient, The Time Traveler’s Wife, Memento (Christopher Nolan), Wolverine (Marvel), Ursula Le Guin’s City of Illusions, Severance
Peter Wimsey (Dorothy Sayers) vs. Albert Campion (Margery Allingham)
Lord Peter WimseyAlbert CampionWoos mystery novelist Harriet Vane.Meets aircraft engineer Amanda Fitton.Spent time overseas on secret government missions.Spent the war years overseas on a mission so secret that he never discovered what it was.Loyal butler (and occasional Watson) Bunter, a stickler for traditional, propriety, and detail.Friend of reformed burglar Lugg, who “in spite of magnificent qualities, has elements of the Oaf about him.”Second son of the Duke of Denver. Inherited wealth (as the second son) has made him independent and free. Collector of literature, music, wine, and men’s fashion.“Educated at Rugby and St. Ignatius College, Cambridge. Embarked on adventurous career 1924. Name known to be a pseudonym. Clubs: Puffin’s, The Junior Greys. Hobbies: odd.”
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Tom Epperson, a native of Arkansas, headed west to Los Angeles with his boyhood friend Billy Bob Thornton to pursue a career in show business. Epperson’s co-written the scripts for One False Move, A Family Thing, The Gift, A Gun, a Car, a Blonde, and Jayne Mansfield’s Car. His L.A. noir The Kind Onewas nominated for both the Edgar Award and the Barry Award for Best First Novel. Three more books followed, Sailor, Roberto to the Dark Tower Came, and Make Believe. His most recent book is Baby Hawk, a novel in verse. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his wife, Stefani, two pampered cats, and two frisky dogs.
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Called simply “the female,” she is seventeen, one of the few survivors of a worldwide plague known simply as the Sickness—and quite possibly the last woman on Earth.
She lives in the mountains and forests of northern California, protected by her father. Life is hard, but they’re happy.
Until one chilly autumn morning when a violent, racist band of males, led by an elite ex-soldier called Braydon, finds them. Overjoyed at discovering a female they can “enjoy,” the men kill the female’s father and take her prisoner. Life becomes intolerable for the female. Delighted to be in possession of the last woman on Earth—or so they believe— they keep her isolated in a cabin of her own, for them to take turns with. Braydon sets up a strict rotation to avoid any unrest within the camp—but his own intention is to make her the new Eve, to breed with her and repopulate the Earth.
Throughout the winter, the female trains—making herself as strong and fit as she can for the spring. She is determined to escape, or die trying.
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Farewell, My Lovely (1940) by Raymond Chandler is a cornerstone of the noir genre and the Philip Marlowe books, showcasing Marlowe in one of his most memorable cases. The novel’s richly atmospheric prose vividly captures the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles, immersing readers in its gritty, dangerous world. Chandler’s exploration of moral ambiguity and flawed characters adds depth to the mystery, elevating it beyond a simple whodunit.
With its sharp dialogue, intricate plotting, and evocative style, the book solidified Chandler’s reputation as a master of noir and influenced generations of crime writers.
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Owen Hill joins Tea, Tonic & Toxin to discuss Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler.
Owen is a novelist and a poet, and The Giveaway: The Clay Blackburn Story, an omnibus of his crime fiction, was recently published by PM Press. It includes three novels and a short story. Owen coedited The Annotated Big Sleep (Vintage, 2018) with Pamela Jackson and Anthony Dean Rizzuto.
Owen Hill joined us as our guest to discuss Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler. Owen is the author of three crime novels, two books of short fiction, and many collections of poetry. He has reviewed crime novels for the Los Angeles Times and the East Bay Express.
In 2005, Owen Hill was awarded the Howard Moss residency at Yaddo. He is co-editor (with Jerry Thompson) of Berkeley Noir for Akashic Press. A memoir, Hands on a Mirror, is also available from Bootstrap Press.
Owen was a buyer at a second-hand bookstore for many years in Berkeley. He is currently an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). He lives in Oakland.
Owen Hill is also the author of The Giveaway: The Clay Blackburn Story (PM Press), an omnibus of his crime fiction. It includes three novels and a short story.
Clay Blackburn—poet, book scout, and sometimes detective—cruises the mean, and sometimes not so mean, streets of Berkeley. With his accomplices, a soldier of fortune, a “defrocked” FBI agent, and a smooth and sexy con man, he lives a life of bisexual sensation with a little crime solving on the side. As such, Blackburn is a sly, witty, and more or less reliable raconteur of the last thirty something years of the Bay Area’s radical bohemia and bookselling.
And in the tradition of Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh, and Jean-Claude Izzo’s Marseilles, bears uncomfortable witness to Berkeley’s descent from countercultural paradise to neoliberal inferno.
This omnibus collection collects the novels The Chandler Apartments (2002), The Incredible Double (2010), and the previously unpublished Mayakovsky’s Bugatti (2025), and includes the Blackburn short story “Righteous Kill” (2021).
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Farewell, My Lovely (1940) by Raymond Chandler is a cornerstone of the noir genre and the Philip Marlowe books, showcasing Marlowe in one of his most memorable cases. The novel’s richly atmospheric prose vividly captures the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles, immersing readers in its gritty, dangerous world. Chandler’s exploration of moral ambiguity and flawed characters adds depth to the mystery, elevating it beyond a simple whodunit.
With its sharp dialogue, intricate plotting, and evocative style, the book solidified Chandler’s reputation as a master of noir and influenced generations of crime writers.
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Owen Hill joins Tea, Tonic & Toxin to discuss Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler.
Owen is a novelist and a poet, and The Giveaway: The Clay Blackburn Story, an omnibus of his crime fiction, was recently published by PM Press. It includes three novels and a short story. Owen coedited The Annotated Big Sleep (Vintage, 2018) with Pamela Jackson and Anthony Dean Rizzuto.
Let’s Talk About the Philip Marlowe Books
Insubordination: Marlowe is 33 and went to college once. He’s a bit of a cynic, and his manners are bad. He was fired for insubordination. “I test very high on insubordination.” (The Big Sleep)
American hero: “Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious” (NYT Book Review).
A detective always has a code: “Marlowe is Prometheus [of American myth]: the noble outsider, sacrificing and enduring for a code he alone upholds.” [The Annotated Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler (eds. Owen Hill, Pamela Jackson, and Anthony Rizzuto)]
Tough guy: He’s tough, clever, and a good judge of character. He’s brash and witty.
At his tiny apartment, he goes to a chessboard on a card table. “There was a problem laid out on the board, a six-mover. I couldn’t solve it, like a lot of my problems” (The Big Sleep ch. 24).
In the Philip Marlowe books, Marlowe doesn’t have a backstory, a love interest, or family drama.
“Look,” I said. “This room is eighteen floors above ground. And this little bug climbs all the way up here just to make a friend. Me. My luck piece.” I folded the bug carefully into the soft part of the handkerchief and tucked the handkerchief into my pocket. Randall was pie-eyed. His mouth moved, but nothing came out of it.
“I wonder whose lucky piece Marriott was,” I said.
“Not yours, pal.” [Randall’s] voice was acid—cold acid.
“Perhaps not yours either.” My voice was just a voice. I went out of the room and shut the door.
I rode the express elevator down to the Spring Street entrance and walked out on the front porch of City Hall and down some steps and over to the flower beds. I put the pink bug down carefully behind a bush.
I wondered, in the taxi going home, how long it would take him to make the Homicide Bureau again” (31).
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Arvind Ethan David joins Tea, Tonic & Toxin to discuss Trouble Is My Business by Raymond Chandler.
Arvind is a writer and and producer who tells stories and builds accidental businesses around them.
Most recently, he released Douglas Adams: The Ends of the Earth (Pushkin). The Boy with Wings (based on Sir Lenny Henry’s book) premiered in summer 2025 at The Polka Theatre London.
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What an interview! Arvind Ethan David joined Carolyn Daughters and Sarah Harrison to discuss Trouble Is My Business, a new graphic novel version of Raymond Chandler’s classic tale. We could have talked to him for hours!
Arvind Ethan David is a Stoker Award nominated graphic novelist who has also written chart-topping audiodramas (The Crimes of Dorian Gray, Earworms), television (Anansi Boys), and plays (The Boy with Wings). Arvind is also a producer of film and theater, including the Emmy & Grammy award winning musical Jagged Little Pill.
Arvind’s career as a writer and producer started when he adapted the Douglas Adams novel Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency as a college play. The great science fiction author came to see it and took the young writer under his wing. (Years later, Arvind brought Dirk Gently to a global audience as a Netflix/AMC TV series.)
Since then, Arvind has written for page, stage, screen, audio and everywhere else one can tell a story. In addition to Trouble is my Business, his graphic novels include the Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency series (also with art by Ilias Kyriazis), Darkness Visible (Stoker nominated, written with Mike Carey) and Gray,his reimagining of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Arvind’s audio work includes the chart-topping Audible Originals: The Neil Gaiman at the End of the Universe, the science fiction Anthology series Earworms and The Crimes of Dorian Gray.
Arvind Ethan David also works in television, including serving as an Executive Producer on Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency for Netflix and BBC America and writing on Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys for Amazon Studios.
His theater experience includes writing the stage adaptations of the Douglas Adams novels Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (with James Goss) and Lenny Henry’s The Boy with Wings. He is also a lead producer of the Tony & Grammy winning musical Jagged Little Pill.
Arvind Ethan David runs Prodigal, an entertainment business, with producer Tarquin Pack (KICKASS, X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, STARDUST) and entrepreneur Scott Kay. Together, they work across TV, film, theater, publishing, gaming, and escape rooms — anywhere there is a good story to be told.
Trouble Is My Business is a new graphic novel by Raymond Chandler and Arvind Ethan David. The book is illustrated by Ilias Kyriazis. The forward was written by Ben H. Winters. The colorist is Cris Peter.
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THE BIG SLEEP (1939) is a seminal work in the hardboiled detective genre, and it’s among the best of the Raymond Chandler books. It showcases Chandler’s masterful use of sharp dialogue, complex characters and his gritty depiction of 1930s Los Angeles.
This classic hardboiled detective novel introduces private eye Philip Marlowe. Hired to resolve a blackmail scheme, Marlowe uncovers a web of corruption and murder. It revolutionized crime fiction, establishing a template for noir storytelling that continues to influence literature and film.
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Pulp Magazines and Black Mask
English detective stories “are too contrived, and too little aware of what goes on in the world. … The boys with their feet on the desks know that the easiest murder case in the world to break is the one somebody tried to get very cute with; the one that really bothers them is the murder somebody thought of only two minutes before he pulled it off. But if the writers of this fiction wrote about the kind of murders that happen, they would also have to write about the authentic flavor of life as it is lived.” (The Simple Art of Murder, Raymond Chandler)
Pulp magazines (printed on wood-pulp paper) were a cheap source of popular entertainment that sometimes mixed in subversive social commentary. The format was invented in 1882 as a vehicle for children’s adventure stories. By the 1920s, pulps specialized in detective stories, love stories, westerns, …. During the Depression, they provided a sense of escape. [The Annotated Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler (eds. Owen Hill, Pamela Jackson, and Anthony Rizzuto)]
“In 1931 my wife and I used to cruise up and down the Pacific Coast in a very leisurely way, and at night, just to have something to read, I would pick a pulp magazine off the rack. It suddenly struck me that I might be able to write this stuff and get paid while I was learning.” [The Annotated Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler (eds. Owen Hill, Pamela Jackson, and Anthony Rizzuto)]
“It took me a year to write my first story. I had to … learn to write all over again.” [The Annotated Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler (eds. Owen Hill, Pamela Jackson, and Anthony Rizzuto)]
The emotional basis of the standard detective story had always been that justice will be done. Its technical basis was the relative insignificance of everything except the final denouement. What led up to that was more or less passagework. The denouement justified everything. (Trouble Is My Business, Raymond Chandler)
The technical basis of the Black Mask type of story, however, was that the scene outranked the plot. The ideal mystery was one you would read if the end was missing. (Trouble Is My Business, Raymond Chandler)
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THE BIG SLEEP (1939) is a seminal work in the hardboiled detective genre, and it’s among the best of the Raymond Chandler books. It showcases Chandler’s masterful use of sharp dialogue, complex characters and his gritty depiction of 1930s Los Angeles.
This classic hardboiled detective novel introduces private eye Philip Marlowe. Hired to resolve a blackmail scheme, Marlowe uncovers a web of corruption and murder. It revolutionized crime fiction, establishing a template for noir storytelling that continues to influence literature and film.
Get your book here! Or Anthony's annotated version here!
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Join our Patreon community here! It's free to join, with extra perks for members at every level.
Here are some questions and discussion starters here. Also – we want to hear from YOU! Share your thoughts, and we may just include them in our upcoming episodes!
Philip Marlowe (Raymond Chandler Books)
Marlowe is 33 and went to college once. He’s a bit of a cynic, and his manners are bad. He was fired for insubordination. “I test very high on insubordination.”
American hero: “Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious” (NYT Book Review).
Prometheus: “Marlowe is Prometheus [of American myth]: the noble outsider, sacrificing and enduring for a code he alone upholds.” [The Annotated Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler (eds. Owen Hill, Pamela Jackson, and Anthony Rizzuto)]
Honest: Vivian asks if Marlowe is honest. “Painfully,” he says. He tells Carmen he has “professional pride.” Her father trusts him not to “pull any stunts.”
Tough Guy: He’s tough, clever, and a good judge of character. His speech is brash and witty.
Self-Destructive streak? “I had concealed a murder and suppressed evidence for twenty-four hours, but I was still at large and had a five-hundred-dollar check coming. The smart thing for me to do was to take another drink and forget the whole mess. That being the obviously smart thing to do, I called Eddie Mars and told him I was coming … That was how smart I was” (ch. 21).
Catalyst: There are the aficionados of deduction and the aficionados of sex who can’t get it into their hot little heads that the fictional detective is a catalyst, not a Casanova. (Trouble Is My Business, Raymond Chandler)
Dashiell Hammett’s Influence on the Raymond Chandler Books
The famous Detection Club: “Its roster includes practically every important writer of detective fiction since Conan Doyle. But Graves and Hodge decided that only one first-class writer had written detective stories at all. An American, Dashiell Hammett. … Graves and Hodge were not fuddy-duddy connoisseurs of the second-rate; they … were aware that writers who have the vision and the ability to produce real fiction do not produce unreal fiction.” (The Simple Art of Murder, Raymond Chandler)
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Puja Guha grew up and has worked all over the world. Her spy thriller series THE AHRIMAN LEGACY is an Amazon bestseller, and she has been featured on TV and media, including Fox5, Reader’s Digest, and The London Post.
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Espionage. Assassins. Middle East. 2021.
Three years ago, a traumatic op forced her into a quiet life as an analyst. But after new intel surfaces on a terrorist plot Kuwait, intelligence agent Petra Shirazi has no choice but to return to the field. Thrust back into a violent world she vowed to leave behind, Petra must face her personal demons and her guilt over the death of one of her sources.
A money trail exposes a massive wave of terrorist attacks, implicating the highest levels of the Kuwaiti and Iranian governments. All signs point to the Ahriman, the Iranian mastermind behind the cruelest and deadliest attacks in history. Petra must confront her past if she is to stop the world from tilting into an abyss from which there is no return. The race to stop the Ahriman begins.
Fans of global espionage thrillers like Patriot Games and The Day of the Jackal will love this fast-paced spy novel from master storyteller Puja Guha. Find out why The US Review of Books says: “Like Grisham and Clancy … this title shines among the genre simply through superb storytelling.”
Let’s talk about Kuwait. You were inspired to write Ahriman: The Spirit of Destruction while visiting family in Kuwait. You thought about the nuances of the Kuwaiti political system.
- Kuwait is a major oil exporter and historically one of the richest countries in the Middle East.
- Of the 4.8M people living in Kuwait, 1.5M are Kuwaiti citizens; the rest are foreign nationals.
- Kuwait is a constitutional monarchy. The Emir (king) doesn’t have legislative powers while the National Assembly (Parliament) is in session. The Emir can disband the Assembly.
- The monarchy is more moderate than the democratically elected Assembly. The monarchy has enabled progress for women (not requiring burkas; women can drive, vote, and run for office). Women gained the right to vote in 2005. Accused of being puppets of the west.
- Political instability and chronic political deadlock have hampered Kuwait’s economic development and infrastructure. Islamist and liberal factions can’t agree on anything, including how many traffic lights to install on one of the main roads.
In the prologue, we meet Kasem Ismaili and “Lila’s” friend Nurah Bahar. Jamal is sleeping on Kasem’s sofa. Kasem is kidnapped. Puja Guha, how did you decide to the start the novel here?
Petra attends a meeting. “The eight individuals in the room covered as many countries, each with their own unique ethnic and racial backgrounds” (7-8). A secret organization was created to cater to global intelligence needs without being bogged down in political bureaucracy (121). The Agency tackles global threats other intelligence organizations can’t handle. Let’s talk about the Agency.
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Yes, you read that right! 2024! Due to Carolyn & Sarah's lives exploding they've been getting the episodes out a bit slower than they would prefer. Not to worry, they are actively working on solutions to be able to make more time to catch up on getting book discussions out to you!
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Listen to Sarah & Carolyn discuss the entire 2024 book club selection as a group, talk through favorites, stand outs, and the progression of the club in its third year.
Tea, Tonic, and Toxin is a book club and podcast for people who love mysteries, thrillers, introspection, and good conversation. Your hosts, Carolyn Daughters and Sarah Harrison, are discussing game-changing mysteries, starting with Edgar Allan Poe onward. Together, we’ll watch the genre evolved.
Along the way, we’ll entertain ideas, prospects, theories, doubts, grudges, fabulous guests, and interviews with talented, contemporary mystery authors. Together, we’ll experience the joys of reading the best mysteries and thrillers ever written.
Carolyn has loved mysteries ever since she and her sister Michele started the CarMich Detective Agency when they were kids. Though she has never solved a crime, she is an excellent detective. When she isn't trying to convince people she's an excellent detective, she's busy running her company, CarolynDaughters.com, serving as a fractional chief marketing officer for small businesses, teaching persuasive writing courses, exploring new neighborhoods on foot, photographing street art, and boarding planes early and often (47 states, 42 countries, and counting). She's coming for you, North Dakota and Bhutan.
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Reach out, and you might just get an on-air shout out and an awesome sticker!
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Ann Claire joins us in studio to discuss Dead and Gondola, the first book in her Christie Bookshop Mystery series. The second book in the series, Last Word to the Wise, was released in 2023.
Her Bookmobile Mysteries, Santa Fe Cafe Mysteries, and Cyclist’s Guide Mysteries are available in print, ebook, and audiobook formats on Amazon and from other booksellers.
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Ann earned degrees in geography, which took her all across the world. Now she lives with her geographer husband in Colorado, where the mountains beckon from their kitchen windows.
When she’s not writing, you can find her hiking, gardening, herding housecats, and enjoying a good mystery, especially one by Agatha Christie.
Dead and Gondola is the series debut of the Christie Bookshop Mystery series by author Ann Claire. A mysterious bookshop visitor dies under murderous circumstances, compelling the Christie sisters and their cat, Agatha, to call on all they’ve learned about solving mysteries from their favorite novelist.
Ellie Christie is thrilled to begin a new chapter. She’s recently returned to her tiny Colorado hometown to run her family’s historic bookshop with her elder sister, Meg, and their beloved cat, Agatha. Perched in a Swiss-style hamlet accessible by ski gondola and a twisty mountain road, the Book Chalet is a famed bibliophile destination known for its maze of shelves and relaxing reading lounge. At least, until trouble blows in with a wintry whiteout. A man is found dead on the gondola, and a rockslide throws the town into lockdown—no one in, no one out.
The victim was a mysterious stranger who’d visited the bookshop. At the time, his only blunders had been disrupting a book club and leaving behind a first-edition Agatha Christie novel, written under a pseudonym. However, once revealed, the man’s identity shocks the town. Motives and secrets swirl like the snow, but when the police narrow in on the sisters’ close friends, the Christies have to act.
Although the only Agatha in their family tree is their cat, Ellie and Meg know a lot about mysteries and realize they must summon their inner Miss Marple to trek through a blizzard of clues before the killer turns the page to their final chapter.
BookPage says, “Dead and Gondola is a lighthearted, fast-paced cozy mystery with a cast of likeable characters. … Who wouldn’t want to ride a glass-domed gondola to a historic bookshop and cozy up by the fire with a good read?” Publishers Weekly wrote, “A fair-play plot, vivid characters, fascinating facts about Dame Agatha, and an intelligent and appealing protagonist make this a winner. Cozy fans will chomp at the bit for more.”
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The intricate plot, morally complex characters, and exploration of the human psyche in A COFFIN FOR DIMITRIOS (THE MASK OF DIMITRIOS) (1939) make it one of the first modern suspense thrillers. Eric Ambler paved the way for such writers as John Le Carré, Len Deighton, and Robert Ludlum. It’s one of TIME Magazine’s 100 best mystery and thriller books of all time.
Special guest Neil Nyren joins us to discuss the book. Check out the conversation starters below. Weigh in, and you might just get an on-air shoutout and a fab sticker!
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Neil Nyren is the former executive vice president (EVP), associate publisher, and editor in chief of G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
Neil is the winner of the 2017 Ellery Queen Award from the Mystery Writers of America and the 2025 Thriller Legend award from the International Thriller Writers.
Neil joins Tea, Tonic & Toxin to discuss A Coffin for Dimitrios (also published as The Mask of Dimitrios), a 1939 thriller by Eric Ambler.
You can read Neil’s many articles on Crime Reads here.
The 100 Best Mystery and Thriller Books of All Time (TIME Magazine)
“In an Eric Ambler spy novel, the hero is usually an ordinary fellow who lands in an unfamiliar foreign city and soon finds himself in rising water. In A Coffin For Dimitrios, published in 1939, the city is Istanbul between the world wars, and the hero is a writer intrigued by a newly dead Greek criminal whose life story leads him deep into the Balkans, and worse. Everything unfolds with the brisk tension and debonair assurance that made Ambler fans of everyone from Alfred Hitchcock to John le Carré to Alan Furst, and anchored the nascent genre in a kind of dashing realism.” —Karl Vick (TIME Magazine editor)
“I set out to improve a shoddy article,” Eric Ambler once explained. “Dorothy Sayers had taken the detective story and made it literate. Why shouldn’t I do the same for spies?”
Neil, you wrote, “Eric Ambler was the father of the modern thriller. John Le Carré called him ‘the source on which we all draw,’ and Len Deighton, ‘the man who lit the way for us all.’ Frederick Forsyth said he was the man ‘who took the spy thriller out of the gentility of the drawing room and into the back streets where it all really happened.’ Graham Greene called him ‘unquestionably our best thriller writer.’”
Neil, you wrote, “I’ve worked with many writers of international suspense, and whenever I’ve wanted to recommend a book to any of them that captures the genre as well as any book possibly can—this is the one I send them to.”
Neil, you wrote, “Before Eric Ambler, international thrillers were dominated by such writers as John Buchan (The Thirty-Nine Steps) and their many imitators.” Talk a bit about the difference between these earlier books and books like Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household and A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler.
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The intricate plot, morally complex characters, and exploration of the human psyche in A COFFIN FOR DIMITRIOS (THE MASK OF DIMITRIOS) (1939) make it one of the first modern suspense thrillers. Eric Ambler paved the way for such writers as John Le Carré, Len Deighton, and Robert Ludlum. It’s one of TIME Magazine’s 100 best mystery and thriller books of all time.
Special guest Neil Nyren joins us to discuss the book. Check out the conversation starters below. Weigh in, and you might just get an on-air shoutout and a fab sticker!
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Neil Nyren is the former executive vice president (EVP), associate publisher, and editor in chief of G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
Neil is the winner of the 2017 Ellery Queen Award from the Mystery Writers of America and the 2025 Thriller Legend award from the International Thriller Writers.
Neil joins Tea, Tonic & Toxin to discuss A Coffin for Dimitrios (also published as The Mask of Dimitrios), a 1939 thriller by Eric Ambler.
You can read Neil’s many articles on Crime Reads here.
Among the writers of crime and suspense he has edited are Tom Clancy, Clive Cussler, John Sandford, C. J. Box, Robert Crais, Carl Hiaasen, Daniel Silva, Jack Higgins, Frederick Forsyth, Ken Follett, Jonathan Kellerman, Martha Grimes, Alex Berenson, Thomas Perry, Gerald Seymour, Ed McBain, and Ace Atkins. In all, he has edited more than 300 New York Times bestsellers.
Neil Nyren was awarded the 2017 Ellery Queen Award for “outstanding people in the mystery publishing industry” from the Mystery Writers of America. He also received the 2025 Thriller Legend award from the International Thriller Writers.
Besides still editing two of his longtime authors, he now writes about crime fiction and publishing for CrimeReads, BookTrib, The Big Thrill, and The Third Degree, among others. He is also a contributing writer to the Mystery Writers of America’s Anthony/Agatha/Macavity-winning How to Write a Mystery. He has spoken at conferences from Maine to Florida and from South Carolina to Hawaii.
The Opening
Neil, you wrote, “Eric Ambler’s heroes, especially in his between-wars novels (1936-1940), are ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances. They’re often engineers, journalists, or writers who stumble into danger through a combination of bad judgment and bad luck and then have no choice but to try to dig themselves out of it … They are solidly middle class, raised in a world of black-and-white certainties that they discover has been completely obliterated by gray.”
Neil, you wrote, “Eric Ambler’s villains live in that gray. They’re criminals, conmen, governments, corporations, revolutionaries, spies, and corrupt officials. … They’re realists. They’ve calculated what it takes to succeed and are willing to do whatever is necessary to achieve that goal. If those acts are considered reprehensible by others, that’s not their problem.”
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Ten strangers, each with a dark secret, are lured to a remote island and drawn into a deadly game. As the body count rises, paranoia intensifies in this classic whodunit. Agatha Christie’s AND THEN THERE WERE NONE (1939) will keep you guessing until the very end. Check out the And Then There Were None notes below!
Special guest Ann Perramond joins us to discuss the best-selling crime novel of all time. Weigh in, and you might just get an on-air shoutout and a fab sticker!
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Justice Wargrave (good name) is described as looking cruel, predatory, and inhuman. He’s the logical choice for U.N. Owen, the man playing judge, jury, and executioner. How is the opening (and the narrator’s ability to dip in and out of all characters’ heads) a red herring? Were you misled?
Did you know anything about And Then There Were None before reading it? If so, did this impact your experience of the novel? (It reminded us of Knives Out. And the movie Clue!)
Who did you think the killer was before the identity is revealed? Was there anyone you suspected? Did you think someone was hiding on the island? (Sarah thought someone had to be hiking on the island.)
Suspense thriller author Dean Koontz says people are always living in a “constant state of suspense.” Do you feel that suspense is a fundamental part of human existence? Are people constantly wondering about the future, facing unknown situations, and dealing with uncertainty? PARANOIA
Did knowing the characters’ responsibility for the deaths of innocents impact how you felt when the characters themselves were murdered?
And Then There Were None notes about death order: Justice Wargrave arranges the deaths of the various characters in order of ascending culpability. “Anthony Marston and Mrs. Rogers died first, the one instantaneously, the other in a peaceful sleep.” Marston, I recognized, was a type born without that feeling of moral responsibility which most have. He was amoral–pagan. Mrs. Rogers, I had no doubt, had acted very largely under the influence of her husband.” Do you agree with his assessment of the characters’ relative guilt?
Incorporated into this is the level of guilt they felt about their crime. Wargrave gives Marston one of the easiest deaths. He killed two children he could barely remember and felt no remorse. Claythorne, who killed a child for love and felt remorse, has the worst death. This makes no sense. A lack of remorse feels more monstrous. Also, the general killed for revenge against the man sleeping with his wife behind his back. This feels again more understandable than Marston. Is Emily Brent really worse than Rogers, who committed actual murder? Both are witholders in some way. One withheld medicine. One withheld pity.
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David Morrell is the award-winning author of First Blood, the novel in which Rambo was created. He joins us to discuss Rogue Male (by Geoffrey Household) and First Blood.
He holds a Ph. D. in American literature from Penn State and was a professor in the English department at the University of Iowa. His many New York Times bestsellers include the classic spy trilogy that begins with THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE ROSE, the basis for the only television mini-series to premier after a Super Bowl. An Edgar, Anthony, and Macavity nominee, he’s the recipient of three Bram Stoker awards and the prestigious Thriller Master award from the International Thriller Writers organization.
Learn more about David Morrell below!
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David Morrell was born in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. In 1960, at the age of seventeen, he became a fan of the classic television series, route 66, about two young men in a Corvette convertible traveling the US in search of America and themselves. The scripts by Stirling Silliphant combined action with ideas and so impressed Morrell that he decided to become a writer.
In 1966, the work of Hemingway scholar Philip Young prompted David Morrell to move to the United States, where he studied with Young at Penn State and received his M.A. and Ph. D. in American literature. There, he also met the esteemed science-fiction author William Tenn (real name Philip Klass), who taught Morrell the basics of fiction writing. The result was First Blood, a ground-breaking novel about a returned Vietnam veteran suffering from post-trauma stress disorder who comes into conflict with a small-town police chief and fights his own version of the Vietnam War.
That “father” of modern action novels was published in 1972 while Morrell was a professor in the English department at the University of Iowa. He taught American literature there from 1970 to 1986, simultaneously writing other novels, many of them international bestsellers, including the classic spy trilogy, The Brotherhood of the Rose (the basis for the only television mini-series to premier after a Super Bowl), The Fraternity of the Stone, and The League of Night and Fog.
Eventually wearying of two professions, Morrell gave up his academic tenure in order to write full time. Shortly afterward, his fifteen-year-old son Matthew was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer and died in 1987, a loss that haunts not only Morrell’s life but his work, as in his memoir about Matthew, Fireflies, and his novel Desperate Measures, whose main character lost a son.
David Morrell is a co-founder of the International Thriller Writers organization. Noted for his research, he is a graduate of the National Outdoor Leadership School for wilderness survival as well as the G. Gordon Liddy Academy of Corporate Security. He is also an honorary lifetime member of the Special Operations Association and the Association of Intelligence Officers.
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ROGUE MALE (1939) is an enduring masterpiece of mystery, adventure, suspense, and the sheer thrill of the chase. Described by author Geoffrey Household as a “bastard offspring of Stevenson and Conrad,” it’s “the best escape and pursuit story yet written, with lip-chewing tension right to the end.” –The Times (UK)
Special guest David Morrell, New York Times bestselling author of First Blood (the classic thriller that inspired the RAMBO movies) joins us. Check out the conversation starters below. Weigh in, and you might just get an on-air shoutout and a fab sticker!
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The NYT praised Geoffrey Household for developing suspense into an art form. The Times (UK) called it, “Simply the best escape and pursuit story yet written.”
What We Know About Geoffrey Household + the Narrator
A wealthy, well-known, unnamed Englishman, not yet 40, is a sportsman “who couldn’t resist the temptation to stalk the impossible.” He has no grievances and has a “sense of adventure.” He’s not an anarchist or fanatic. He becomes obsessed with stalking the biggest game of all, a European “great man” in a country near Poland. The country resembles Germany; the dictator, Hitler. He’s caught before the kill and pursued across Europe by Nazi assassins.
Geoffrey Household had a sales job for an ink manufacturer and loved his adventurous life (Europe, South America). Britain entered the war on 9/03/39. He served in British intelligence. He said his feeling toward Nazi Germany “had the savagery of a personal vendetta” (Against the Wind).
“The Almighty looks after the rogue male”
Geoffrey Household writes: “The behavior of a rogue may be described as individual, separation from its fellows appearing to increase both cunning and ferocity. These solitary beasts [are] found among all the larger carnivores and graminivores, and are generally male.”
PART I – ESCAPE / SURFACE – The Hunter Becomes the Hunted (AUGUST)
The narrator is tortured and thrown off a cliff. He walks, crawls, curses, and cries, slipping in and out of consciousness, doing rather than thinking, using the “reasoning of a hunted beast.”
“In these days of visas and identification cards it is impossible to travel without leaving a trail that can, with patience, bribery, and access to public records, be picked up.”
“It was a convenience to have no existence. Had I stolen a watch instead of stalking the head of a nation, my photograph would have been in all the police stations.”
He has a passport, maps, and money. He speaks the language well.
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Part memoir and part literary true crime, Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation by Erika Krouse is the mesmerizing story of a landmark sexual assault investigation and the female private investigator who helped crack it open.
The book won the 2023 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime, and it was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.
Erika Krouse is a writer of fiction and nonfiction. Her upcoming collection of stories, Save Me, Stranger, will be released in January 2025. Learn more about Erika below!
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Erika Krouse is a writer of fiction and nonfiction. Her recent memoir, Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation (2022, Flatiron Books/Macmillan) is a Book of the Month pick, has been optioned by Playground Entertainment for TV adaptation, and received starred advance reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Library Journal, and Bookpage.
Erika Krouse is also the author of Contenders (novel, Rare Bird, 2015), and Come Up and See Me Sometime (short stories, Scribner, 2001). Erika’s short fiction has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Ploughshares, and One Story, and has been shortlisted for Best American Short Stories, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and the Pushcart Prize.
Erika teaches at the Lighthouse Book Project at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, and is a winner of the Lighthouse Beacon Award for Teaching Excellence. Her next book, Save Me: Stories (Flatiron Books/Macmillan) will be published in 2023 or 2024. www.erikakrouse.com.
Erika Krouse has one of those faces. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” people say, spilling confessions. In fall 2002, Erika accepts a new contract job investigating lawsuits as a private investigator. The role seems perfect for her, but she quickly realizes she has no idea what she’s doing.
Then a lawyer named Grayson assigns her to investigate a sexual assault, a college student who was attacked by football players and recruits at a party a year earlier. Erika knows she should turn the assignment down. Her own history with sexual violence makes it all too personal. But she takes the job anyway, inspired by Grayson’s conviction that he could help change things forever. And maybe she could, too.
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Georgia Jeffries joins Sarah and Carolyn to discuss The Younger Girl, a supernatural thriller based on a true crime.
Georgia is a writer of Emmy Award-winning drama and acclaimed noir fiction. Honored with multiple Writers Guild Awards, Golden Globes, and the Humanitas Prize, her work in film has been praised by the Los Angeles Times as “standing ovation television.”
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A DARK LABYRINTH OF FAMILY BETRAYAL
Based on a true crime, The Younger Girl, by trailblazing, award-winning writer Georgia Jeffries combines historical fiction and supernatural suspense to unravel a thrilling tale of family deception and long-denied redemption.
In 1933, Chicago tabloids trumpeted the death of twenty-year-old town belle Aldine Younger.
“HEIRESS SLAIN, MARRIED MAN HELD.”
In the aftermath of Aldine Younger’s tragic death, her grieving brother Owen suspects that their wealthy uncle orchestrated a sinister murder plot to cover up the theft of Aldine’s inheritance. Fast forward to 1996, when an aging Owen, burdened by the weight of the past, is compelled to discover the truth before he dies. His daughter, Joanna, becomes the key to unraveling the family’s twisted history.
Father and daughter journey back to Pontiac, Illinois, to claim Owen’s rightful bequest. They find themselves caught in a labyrinth of lies born of family greed and treachery crossing three generations. Amidst violent storms and dramatic revelations, Owen’s sanity teeters on the edge as he confuses Joanna with the sister he lost. Joanna, racing against time, unearths secrets that could shatter her world and discovers a psychic bridge linking past, present, and future. But at what cost? And who will survive the revelations?
Georgia Jeffries is a writer of Emmy Award-winning drama and acclaimed noir fiction. Honored with multiple Writers Guild Awards, Golden Globes, and the Humanitas Prize, her work in film has been praised by the Los Angeles Times as “standing ovation television.”
Born in the Illinois heartland, Georgia worked as a journalist for American Film before writing and producing the groundbreaking female-driven dramas Cagney & Lacey, China Beach, and Sisters. Her screenwriting career has been distinguished by extensive field research, from patrolling the mean streets of Rampart with the LAPD to crashing a Vegas bounty hunters’ convention to reporting from a Walter Reed Army Hospital surgical bay. Each investigation was the basis for one of her many docudramas and series pilots for CBS, ABC, NBC, HBO, and Showtime.
Her short stories have appeared in national suspense anthologies, including Mystery Writers of America’s Odd Partners and Sisters in Crime’s The Last Resort. She has also written biography and historical profiles for HuffPost, Los Angeles Review of Books, and University of California Press. A cum laude UCLA graduate, Georgia Jeffries is a professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, where she created the first BFA Television Thesis program at an American university.
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Shana Kelly began her career as a literary agent at the William Morris Agency in New York and London for 10 years. She currently works as a documentary screenwriter, book editor, writer, and publishing consultant. She also teaches at Denver-based Lighthouse Writers Workshop.
In 2024, Shana won an Emmy for writing A Towering Task: The Story of the Peace Corps, a historical documentary that aired on PBS in 2023. She is currently writing a historical documentary about the League of Women Voters.
Shana Kelly joins Tea, Tonic & Toxin to discuss Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. Learn more below!
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Reader Response: Did you enjoy Rebecca? Had you read it before, or was this your first time?
Gothic Setting
- Gothic fiction is characterized by an environment of fear, the threat of supernatural events, and the intrusion of the past upon the present (Je Reviens). Reminders of the past, like ruined buildings, signify a previously thriving world that’s decaying.
- In the narrator’s dream, Manderley is overtaken by unnatural growth: “Nature had come into her own again and … in her stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with long, tenacious fingers. The woods, always a menace even in the past, had triumphed in the end. They crowded, dark and uncontrolled, to the borders of the drive.”
- In the dream, she sees plants, once cultured. “No hand had checked their progress, and they had gone native now, rearing to monster height without a bloom.”
- Daphne du Maurier uses the weather to signal and even drive the events in the novel. The wind is often a friendly presence, and stillness brings with it a sense of doom. The fog plays a role in the shipwreck that exposes Rebecca’s boat and corpse. Many characters hope for rain throughout the book. There are repeated references to fire as well, which seems connected to Rebecca (as well at the color red, see below).
- They enter Manderley up a serpent drive (it reminds her of the forest path in a Grimm’s fairy tale, surrounded by bloodred rhododendrons (powerful monsters). There is no sense of beauty in this jungle growth. “That tangle of shrubs there should be cut down to bring light to the path. It was dark, much too dark. … The birds did not sing here.”
- How is Daphne du Maurier using Gothic tropes in the book? What are your thoughts about the sense of loss and physical/spiritual exile in the opening pages?
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We are beyond excited to be starting our fourth year, and to share with you the books we have on tap!
Give a listen and let us know what you think, or if we're leaving out pivotal content to the genre.
See the full book club list here!
Watch clips from our conversations with guests (and ourselves)!
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Tea, Tonic, and Toxin is a mystery and thriller podcast and book club for people obsessed with mysteries and thrillers. Each month, your hosts, Sarah Harrison and Carolyn Daughters, will discuss a game-changing mystery or thriller, starting in the mid-19th century onward. Together, we’ll see firsthand how the genre evolved.
Along the way, we’ll entertain ideas, prospects, theories, and doubts, along with the occasional guest. And we hope to entertain you, dear friend. We want you to experience the joys of reading the best mysteries and thrillers ever written.
We’ll read and explore ideas about the book and about ourselves. And we’ll start at the very beginning with “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar Allan Poe.
We’re excited to read these books. And we’re excited that you’ll be reading these books. Please share your ideas early and often. We want to hear from YOU.
Follow us month to month or jump in anywhere you like. You’re our people, and we’re glad we found you (and vice versa). We’re thrilled to have you join us anywhere on this marvelous journey through the best mysteries, thrillers, and detective stories ever written.
On a final note, with your encouragement and support, we’re getting better at this podcasting adventure each and every day. Our goal: Make Tea, Tonic & Toxin a mystery and thriller podcast and book club that provides a forum for introspection, good conversation, and inspiration.
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“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again …”
A young bride is haunted by the lingering shadow of her husband’s first wife at the eerie Manderley estate. Secrets, jealousy, and suspense converge in a chilling tale of love and deception.
The classic Gothic suspense novel REBECCA (1938) by Daphne du Maurier won the Anthony Award for Best Novel of the Century.
Shana Kelly was the signing agent for many successful authors, including New York Times bestseller Curtis Sittenfeld, author of PREP and ELIGIBLE.
In 2024, Shana Kelly won an Emmy for writing A Towering Task: The Story of the Peace Corps, a historical documentary which aired on PBS in September 2023.
Founded during the Cold War, the Peace Corps stands as an icon of American idealism. From the beginning its mission of world peace and friendship proved to be a towering task. Imbued with the unbounded energy and vision of its charismatic leader, Sargent Shriver, and thousands of vigorous volunteers, the story of the Peace Corps is a uniquely American tale.
From the political machinations to establish not just a brand new government agency, but a new concept in international relations, to the growing pains of an agency striving to define its mission, A Towering Task takes viewers on a journey of what it means to be a global citizen.
Shana Kelly is also currently writing a a feature-length historical documentary exploring the past, present, and future of women’s political power through the lens of the 100-year history of the League of Women Voters and allied groups.
This new documentary will inspire audiences to use their power, vote, get involved and make a difference on issues they care about. As a work that connects history to the present day with an accessible and entertaining approach, the film will be both a catalyst during the 2024 election year and an enduring work to spark voter turnout, civic engagement, and women’s leadership for years to come.
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Tea, Tonic, and Toxin is a book club and podcast for people who love mysteries, thrillers, introspection, and good conversation. Each month, your hosts, Sarah Harrison and Carolyn Daughters, will discuss a game-changing mystery or thriller from the 19th and 20th centuries. Together, we’ll see firsthand how the genre evolved.
Along the way, we’ll entertain ideas, prospects, theories, doubts, and grudges, along with the occasional guest. And we hope to entertain you, dear friend. We want you to experience the joys of reading some of the best mysteries and thrillers ever written.
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Mystery writer Kathy Reichs joins Sarah and Carolyn to discuss her latest book, Fire and Bones.
1 New York Times bestselling author Kathy Reichs returns with a twisty, unputdownable thriller featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan, who finds herself at the center of a DC arson investigation that spawns deepening levels of mystery and, ultimately, violence.
Mystery writer Kathy Reichs joins Sarah and Carolyn to discuss her latest book, Fire and Bones.
1 New York Times bestselling author Kathy Reichs returns with a twisty, unputdownable thriller featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan, who finds herself at the center of a DC arson investigation that spawns deepening levels of mystery and, ultimately, violence.
Tea, Tonic & Toxin is a history of mystery book club and podcast. We’re reading the best mysteries ever written, as well as interviewing some of the world’s best contemporary mystery and thriller writers.
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Always apprehensive about working fire scenes, Tempe is called to Washington, DC, to analyze the victims of a deadly blaze and sees her misgivings justified. The devastated building is in Foggy Bottom, a neighborhood with a colorful past and present, and Tempe becomes suspicious about the property’s ownership when she delves into its history.
The pieces start falling into place strangely and quickly, and, sensing a good story, Tempe teams with a new ally, telejournalist Ivy Doyle. Soon the duo learns that back in the thirties and forties the home was the hangout of a group of bootleggers and racketeers known as the Foggy Bottom Gang. Though interesting, this fact seems irrelevant—until the son of a Foggy Bottom gang member is shot dead at his home in an affluent part of the district. Coincidence? Targeted attacks? So many questions.
As Tempe and Ivy dig deeper, an arrest is finally made. Then another Foggy Bottom Gang-linked property burns to the ground, claiming one more victim. Slowly, Tempe’s instincts begin pointing to the obvious: somehow, her moves since coming to Washington have been anticipated, and every path forward seems to bring with it a lethal threat.
Kathy Reichs’s first novel Déjà Dead, published in 1997, won the Ellis Award for Best First Novel and was an international bestseller. Fire and Bones is Reichs’s twenty-third novel featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
Reichs was a producer of Fox Television’s longest running scripted drama, Bones, which was based on her work and her novels. One of few forensic anthropologists certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology, she divides her time between Charlotte, NC, and Charleston, SC.
Visit her at KathyReichs.com or follow her on X and Instagram @KathyReichs or Facebook @KathyReichsBooks.
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Tea, Tonic & Toxin is a history of mystery book club and podcast. We’re reading the best mysteries ever written, as well as interviewing some of the world’s best contemporary mystery and thriller writers.
In The Wheel Spins (1938), a young woman’s train journey takes a sinister turn when a fellow passenger mysteriously disappears. Ethel Lina White’s suspenseful, edge-of-your-seat read served as the basis for Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic film The Lady Vanishes. It’s a classic of the genre.
Alex Csurko joins us to discuss The Wheel Spins (The Lady Vanishes) by Welsh-born interwar writer Ethel Lina White.
He is writing his PhD thesis on White, whom he first discovered during his undergraduate studies on Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock made the film The Lady Vanishes based on The Wheel Spins.
Alex is recognized as an up-and-coming authority on White after his interview with BBC Wales Online, published in December 2021, discussing the author’s life and work.
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Alex Csurko is one of the world’s foremost experts on the works of Ethel Lina White, including The Wheel Spins (The Lady Vanishes). In 2023, he contributed an extensive biography on Ethel Lina White for the Gwent Local History Journal.
Most recently, he collaborated with Tony Medawar on the short-story collection Blackout and Other Stories, to be published by Crippen and Landru in 2025.
As a Member of the Magic Circle, Alex also regularly contributes theoretical essays on the craft of Magic for the Society’s prestigious international magazine.
Which Brings Up the Topic of Insanity/Hysteria/Delirium/Neurosis
In The Wheel Turns by Ethel Lina White, there is much talk of Iris’ supposed hysteria and weakened mental state.
Baroness: “There has been no English lady, here, in this carriage, never, at any time, except you. You are the only English lady here” (92). Iris questions her own sanity and reliability. Hare tells her a story of getting kicked in the head whilst playing football. His captain visited him in hospital, but he thought it was the Prince of Wales (Edward VIII).
Iris resolves to talk to the English visitors who saw her with Miss Froy. No one except Miss Barnes admits to seeing her. Then a stranger, Frau Kummer, appears, pretending to be Miss Froy.
The doctor offers to “take care” of Iris by placing her in a nursing home for the night. Yikes!
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In THE WHEEL SPINS (1936), a young woman’s train journey takes a sinister turn when a fellow passenger mysteriously disappears. This suspenseful, edge-of-your-seat novel by Ethel Lina White served as the basis for Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic film The Lady Vanishes. The book is a stunner.
Special guest Alex Csurko joins us to discuss this classic novel. Check out the conversation starters below. Weigh in, and you might just get an on-air shoutout and a fab sticker!
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Hitchcock
Even reading the book by Ethel Lina White, it felt like it could be a Hitchcock film with the psychological tension and the way the scenes are painted. The New York Times ranked it the best picture of the year (1938).
Premonition/Foreboding (Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign)
The first paragraph introduces us to Iris. Every chapter, starting with chapter one, ends with a sense of foreboding.
- Safety vs. danger – Iris’ square on her palm
- Miss Froy is homesick, which she sees as a warning.
- The dangerous hike (being lost) was a warning.
- Rose’s dream of a railway smash.
- Iris passes out from sunstroke and barely makes the train.
- Miss Froy’s story about an Englishwoman locked in an asylum (friendless foreigner who didn’t speak the language)
- Mr. and Mrs. Froy feel apprehensive about their daughter’s safety.
Premonition plays a role throughout the book by Ethel Lina White. Is it just a psychological variable here? Is premonition real? Is it inescapable?
Stranger in a Strange Land
In The Wheel Turns by Ethel Lina White, Iris and her friends are staying in a village of “picturesque squalor in a remote corner of Europe,” filled with barbarous scenery, magnificent ruggedness, and desolate hollows. She doesn’t speak the language or understand the culture. She’s also an outsider amongst the British “decent, well-bred” guests. And when she passes out at the station from sunstroke, she awakes to foreign people and foreign voices.
Keep your eye on Crippen & Landru to see when the new Ethel Lina White collection drops!
A Legal Criticism
- As Iris waits at the train station, she overhears a disagreement between Hare and the professor. Hare says trial by jury is poor justice, people have inherent biases, people can’t control themselves from erroneous snap judgements, and even evidence isn’t reliable. He says everyone’s a “bag of his special prejudices” (50) and an unreliable witness.
- Iris rather takes Hare’s side, but then agrees with the professor’s side when she thinks about trusting the solid, dependable British woman over a foreign seductress type.
- Then Iris finds herself in this exact situation. She’s the beautiful, hysterical, rude attention seeker. She’s the least reliable person on the train — and the only one who’s right.
- Not even Hare believes her at all, though she directly calls into reality his own arguments.
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Fleur Bradley is the author of many mysteries for kids, including Midnight at the Barclay Hotel and Daybreak on Raven Island.
Originally from the Netherlands, she now lives in Colorado with her family.
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grace sigma
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Full-time writer KEMPER DONOVAN is currently publishing an ongoing mystery series via Kensington Books. He joins us to discuss The Busy Body, the first in the Ghostwriter series, and The A.B.C. Murders by Agatha Christie.
Previously, he published the standalone novel The Decent Proposal (HarperCollins). He is also the host of the podcast All About Agatha, dedicated to all things Agatha Christie, in which guise he has appeared on BBC TV and Radio New Zealand and written for the official Agatha Christie website, agathachristie.com.
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Learn more about our hosts The Ucross Foundation.
Former Senator Dorothy Gibson, aka “that woman,” is the most talked-about person in the country. Dorothy had been the independent candidate for President, and after her very public defeat she has retreated to her home in rural Maine. She invites a ghostwriter to join her so they can work on her memoir.
A ghostwriter tells other people’s stories for a living, and this is a dream assignment. The ghostwriter is impressed by Dorothy’s work ethic and steel-trap mind, not to mention the lovely surroundings (and one particularly gorgeous bodyguard). But when a neighbor dies under suspicious circumstances, Dorothy is determined to find the killer, and she and the ghostwriter team up to launch their own murder investigation.
The best ghostwriters are adept at asking questions and spinning stories … two talents, it turns out, that also come in handy for sleuths. Dorothy’s political career, meanwhile, has made her an expert at recognizing lies and double-dealing. Working together, the two women are soon untangling motives and whittling down suspects, to the exasperation of local police. But this investigation—much like the election—may not unfold the way anyone expects …
Influence
The Busy Body by Kemper Donovan has been described as a mystery in the “timeless tradition of Agatha Christie.” In what ways has Christie’s writing influenced you?
Do you agree that the novel is Agatha Christie-esque? In what ways? Was that by intention?
Carolyn Daughters
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THE ABC MURDERS (1936) is one of the earliest examples of the “serial killer” novel. Striking in alphabetical order, a killer challenges renowned detective Hercule Poirot to a battle of wits. With ingenious twists and red herrings, the book will keep you guessing until the end.
Special guest Kemper Donovan joins us to discuss Agatha Christie’s classic murder mystery. Check out the conversation starters below. Weigh in, and you might just get an on-air shoutout and a fab sticker!
Full-time writer KEMPER DONOVAN is currently publishing an ongoing mystery series via Kensington Books. In the next episode he joins us to discuss The Busy Body, the first in the Ghostwriter series, and The A.B.C. Murders by Agatha Christie.
Previously, he published the standalone novel The Decent Proposal (HarperCollins). He is also the host of the podcast All About Agatha, dedicated to all things Agatha Christie, in which guise he has appeared on BBC TV and Radio New Zealand and written for the official Agatha Christie website, agathachristie.com.
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Watch clips from our conversation with Kemper!
Join our brand new Patreon community here! It's free to join, with extra perks for members at every level.
Serial Killer
The ABC Murdes is commonly considered the first serial killer book. In a sense, it wasn’t because the serial killing was a screen.
In another sense, were serial killers becoming more common? Jack the Ripper was referenced. several times. HP & the police seem to be drawing on a body of knowledge.
The Psychological Aspect
Similar to Gaudy Night, Agatha Christie in The ABC Murders spends time trying to analyze the psychological makeup of the killer as a key to solving the crimes.
Freud and Jung started to become more well known starting in 1910. Is this related? The rise in psychoanalytic thinking? This does turn out to be the key to solving the mystery. Poirot guesses the dual aspect presented of the killer. Hercule Poirot even dabbles in dream interpretation.
In contrast to Sayers, Christie books have less psychological elements to discuss. They are terrific and satisfying stories though.
The Vanishing and the Problem of Memory
In The ABC Murders, Cust is an epileptic World War I veteran who suffers from bouts of short-term blackouts due to a wartime head injury. He has been hired as a traveling stocking salesman and happens to be in the towns where the murders occur. Cust can’t recall his whereabouts during the last murder, and he was found with blood on his sleeve and a knife. He has no memory of writing letters to Poirot or of committing any of the murders, but he thinks he might have committed them because of his blackouts.
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We were thrilled to chat with Craig Johnson during the 2024 Longmire Days this year about his 20th book, First Frost!
Tea, Tonic & Toxin is a history of mystery book club and podcast. We’re reading the best mysteries ever written, as well as interviewing some of the world’s best contemporary mystery and thriller writers.
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Johnson is the New York Times bestselling author of the Longmire novels, which are the basis for Longmire, the hit Netflix drama. He lives in Ucross, Wyoming (pop. 26).
The books have won multiple awards: Le Prix du Polar Nouvel Observateur / Bibliobs, the Wyoming Historical Association’s Book of the Year, Le Prix 813, Western Writers of America Spur Award, the Mountains & Plains Book of the Year, SNCF Prix de Polar, Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, The Watson Award, Library Journal’s Best Mystery of the Year, the Rocky, and the Will Rogers Award for Fiction.
Find Craig's website, follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and X.
It’s the summer of 1964, and recent college graduates Walt Longmire and Henry Standing Bear read the writing on the wall and enlist to serve in the Vietnam War. As they catch a few final waves in California before reporting for duty, a sudden storm assaults the shores and capsizes a nearby cargo boat. Walt and Henry jump to action, but it’s soon revealed by the police who greet them ashore that the sunken boat carried valuable contraband from underground sources.
The boys, in their early 20s and at the peak of their physical prowess from playing college football for the last 4 years, head out on Route 66. The question, of course, is how far they’ll get before the consequences of their actions catch up to them — the answer being, not very.
Back in the present day, Walt is forced to speak before a Judge following the fatal events of The Longmire Defense. With powerful enemies lurking behind the scenes, the sheriff of Absaroka County must consider his options if he wishes to finish the fight he started.
Going back and forth between 1964 and the present day, Craig Johnson brings us a propulsive dual timeline as Walt Longmire stands between the crossfire of good and evil, law and anarchy, and compassion and cruelty at two pivotal stages in his life.
New York Times bestseller First Frost is the 20th novel in the Walt Longmire mystery series. It was released on May 28, 2024. Sarah Harrison and Carolyn Daughters are thrilled to be in Buffalo, Wyoming, to meet with Craig Johnson during the annual Longmire Days festival.
grace sigma
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Tea, Tonic & Toxin is a history of mystery book club and podcast. We’re reading the best mysteries ever written, as well as interviewing some of the world’s best contemporary mystery and thriller writers.
In Gaudy Night, Harriet Vane returns to her alma mater, Oxford, only to find the tranquil setting disturbed by a series of unsettling incidents. Published in 1935, it’s considered by some to be the first feminist mystery novel, and it’s a prime example of Dorothy L. Sayers’ elegant prose, complex characterization, and intricate, emotionally charged storytelling.
Guest ZJ Czupor (Zoltan James) joins Sarah and Carolyn in a delightful discussion.
Zoltan James is the pen name of ZJ Czupor. He writes mysteries, thrillers, and the occasional poem, and is proud to be represented by Terrie Wolf, founder and owner of AKA Literary Management.
His monthly column ON TOUR WITH DEAD WRITERS features vignettes about famous mystery writers and is available exclusively on Rogue Women Writers blog. Check it out here.
zjames.substack.com
Buy the book here!
We chose Gaudy Night as one of our “history of mystery” book reads. Let’s discuss why … and make a case for having chosen the other.
For instance, Gaudy Night shows up on several lists of important books. Written by a woman, with a woman acting as detective, at a critical historical juncture, AND this is a huge departure for Sayers, with A LOT of internal monologue for Vane, the detective. It feels very autobiographical in many ways.
Gaudy Night pushes the mystery genre in the direction of philosophical treatise, asking questions about duty and where our ultimate loyalty lies. It’s a social commentary, specifically on the question of prospects for women who are smart and would like both a career and family.
A Hearkening Back to College Days / Love Letter to Oxford
John Donne (quoted in the book): “The university is a paradise, rivers of knowledge are there, arts and sciences flow from thence. Council tables are Horti conclusi, (as it is said in the Canticles) Gardens that are walled in, and they are fontes signati, wells that are sealed up; bottomless depths of unsearchable counsels there.”
We get a picture of Oxford life, with all its traditions and habits. Oxford itself becomes a character. Harriet wants to recapture the love that she had for Shrewsbury while she was there. She seems to want to reclaim her student experience. But what is it about that student experience that resonates for her (and for Carolyn) so deeply?
Shrewsbury is an oasis/retreat where she can detach from the day-to-day world and reflect (or meditatively not reflect). It’s a civilized safe haven where order (normally) reigns.
(Warden) ‘Probably you are not specially interested in all this question of women’s education.’
(Wimsey) ‘Is it still a question? It ought not to be. I hope you are not going to ask me whether I approve of women’s doing this and that.’
‘Why not?’
‘You should not imply that I have any right either to approve or disapprove.’
‘I assure you,’ said the Warden, ‘that even in Oxford we still encounter a certain number of people who maintain their right to disapprove.’
‘And I had hoped I was returning to civilisation.’
Carolyn Daughters
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Tea, Tonic & Toxin is a history of mystery book club and podcast. We’re reading the best mysteries ever written, as well as interviewing some of the world’s best contemporary mystery and thriller writers.
In Gaudy Night, Harriet Vane returns to her alma mater, Oxford, only to find the tranquil setting disturbed by a series of unsettling incidents. Published in 1935, it’s considered by some to be the first feminist mystery novel, and it’s a prime example of Dorothy L. Sayers’ elegant prose, complex characterization, and intricate, emotionally charged storytelling.
Guest ZJ Czupor (Zoltan James) joins Sarah and Carolyn in a delightful discussion. Join us, won’t you?
Zoltan James is the pen name of ZJ Czupor. He writes mysteries, thrillers, and the occasional poem, and is proud to be represented by Terrie Wolf, founder and owner of AKA Literary Management.
His monthly column ON TOUR WITH DEAD WRITERS features vignettes about famous mystery writers and is available exclusively on Rogue Women Writers blog. Check it out here.
zjames.substack.com
Buy the book here!
We chose Gaudy Night as one of our “history of mystery” book reads. Let’s discuss why … and make a case for having chosen the other.
For instance, Gaudy Night shows up on several lists of important books. Written by a woman, with a woman acting as detective, at a critical historical juncture, AND this is a huge departure for Sayers, with A LOT of internal monologue for Vane, the detective. It feels very autobiographical in many ways.
Gaudy Night pushes the mystery genre in the direction of philosophical treatise, asking questions about duty and where our ultimate loyalty lies. It’s a social commentary, specifically on the question of prospects for women who are smart and would like both a career and family.
Sayers includes long passages of complicated dialogue — long scenes where Oxford dons debate matters of ethics and social policy or conversations where Harriet Vane ponders what it means to write mysteries.
Gaudy Night has been called the first feminist mystery novel. Is it a mystery novel posing as a philosophical treatise (or the opposite)? How did you feel about the many discussions of life, love, men/women, marriage and family, class/status, education, …. Is it less a mystery novel than a romance, social commentary, comedy of manners, philosophical exploration, feminist manifesto, novel of personal growth, künstlerroman (artist’s novel) …?
Which is paramount here: plot or philosophy? In what ways do the ideas introduced at the beginning of the book evolve throughout the book? In what ways does Harriet herself change?
Backstory: Harriet Vane is an Oxford graduate with a First in English. She attends Shrewsbury College then moves to London to write mystery novels. She’s wrongly accused of murder. Lord Peter Wimsey secures her release from prison. For the past five years, he has wanted to marry her. Harriet hasn’t been back to Shrewsbury since she finished her studies and is nervous about attending the Gaudy. (Contained in Strong Poison & Have His Carcase)
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Montana thriller writer Christine Carbo joins Sarah and Carolyn to discuss her book The Wild Inside.
Christine is a recipient of the Womens’ National Book Association Pinckley Prize, the Silver Falchion Award, and the High Plains Book Award. She and her family live in Whitefish, Montana.
When Christine’s not teaching Pilates or writing suspense, she’s enjoying all that living in Northwest Montana has to offer.
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It was a clear night in Glacier National Park. Fourteen-year-old Ted Systead and his father were camping beneath the rugged peaks and starlit skies when something unimaginable happened: a grizzly bear attacked Ted’s father and dragged him to his death.
Now, twenty years later, as Special Agent for the Department of the Interior, Ted gets called back to investigate a crime that mirrors the horror of that night. Except this time, the victim was tied to a tree before the mauling. Ted teams up with one of the park officers—a man named Monty, whose pleasant exterior masks an all-too-vivid knowledge of the hazardous terrain surrounding them. Residents of the area turn out to be suspicious of outsiders and less than forthcoming. Their intimate connection to the wild forces them to confront nature, and their fellow man, with equal measures of reverence and ruthlessness.
As the case progresses with no clear answers, more than human life is at stake—including that of the majestic creature responsible for the attack. Ted’s search for the truth ends up leading him deeper into the wilderness than he ever imagined, on the trail of a killer, until he reaches a shocking and unexpected personal conclusion.
As intriguing and alluring as bestselling crime novels by C.J. Box, Louise Penny, and William Kent Krueger, as atmospheric and evocative as the nature writing of John Krakauer and Cheryl Strayed, The Wild Inside is a gripping debut novel about the perilous, unforgiving intersection between man and nature.
Christine grew up in Gainesville, Florida – the same town her main character in The Wild Inside grows up in. She then moved to Kalispell, Montana when she was twelve.
Throughout this process, Christine has come to realize that writing is even more fulfilling when she stays involved with other writers. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, Authors of the Flathead, Pacific Northwest Writers Association, International Thriller Writers, Outdoor Writers Association of America and Montana Women Writers.
More importantly, she is aware of the investment of time and money when readers take a chance on a new author and a book in general. For this, she is eternally grateful for the support!
grace sigma
Consultancy specializing in lean process, systems design, data storytelling, and data visualization.
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When a man is found dead in a quaint English village, Inspector Hannasyde must unravel the secrets of the eccentric family involved. In DEATH IN THE STOCKS (1935), a beloved classic, Georgette Heyer infuses the traditional mystery with her signature style of historical romance (and its Regency romance sub-genre).
Reflect: Check out the conversation starters below.
Weigh In: Speak up, and you might get an on-air shout out and a fabulous sticker!
Jennifer Kloester is the bestselling author of Georgette Heyer’s Regency World, Georgette Heyer: Biography of a Bestseller, and Society The Novels of Georgette Heyer: A Celebration.
Jennifer is a Patroness of the International Heyer, and a producer of the forthcoming documentary Who the Hell is Georgette Heyer?
She is also a popular presenter and public speaker and, in 2015, with Stephen Fry, she was delighted to speak at the unveiling of Georgette Heyer’s English Heritage Blue Plaque in Wimbledon.
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And check out our Amazon store where we've compiled all things Georgette Heyer and Jennifer Kloester!
For a peek at some of the Show & Tell Jen was sharing, check out our YouTube channel.
Finding the Romance
Kenneth and Antonia both start the book engaged, and spend most of the book engaged, to people they don’t like and no one else likes. Took a bit to find where the romance would be emerging from in the story. Carolyn particularly enjoyed Tony’s “sorry not sorry” breakup with Rudolph (336).
Kenneth and Antonia Vereker
Death in the Stocks by Georgette Heyer includes interesting and unique characterizations of people who say exactly what they’re thinking, without malice. The siblings in particular seem to have a hard time relating to social niceties or expectations. They are both wholly lacking in tact and, at times, human feeling and good sense. They have zero interest in their half-brother’s murder (other than the 250,000€ inheritance coming Kenneth’s way) and couldn’t care less who killed him .
Hannasyde, the voice of reason, says that Tony “doesn’t appear to conceal a thing. It’s the same with her brother: you don’t know whether they’re very clever, or completely innocent, or a pair of lunatics” (170). At one point, Hannasyde wishes he could convict both siblings for murder. Charles Carrington refers to the siblings as “those Vereker brats” (177).
Hannasyde to Kenneth in reference to Roger’s death: “You have reminded me yourself that I am not a Vereker. I don’t joke on such matters.”
Kenneth: ‘These hands … are worth more than all Arnold’s filthy money, and when he’s been forgotten for centuries people will still be talking about me!” (103)
Kenneth and Antonia live in a home “decorated in a modernist style, with curtains and a carpet of cubist design.” Giles refers to the upper-crust bohemian Kenneth as “looking like a third-rate artist from Chelsea” (95) and says he hates his “effeminate tie.” It’s the Great Depression (1929-1939), but they seem to be doing just fine. Are these siblings modern? Are they rebels who reject traditional moral principles?
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When a man is found dead in a quaint English village, Inspector Hannasyde must unravel the secrets of the eccentric family involved. In DEATH IN THE STOCKS (1935), a beloved classic, Georgette Heyer infuses the traditional mystery with her signature style of historical romance (and its Regency romance sub-genre).
Reflect: Check out the conversation starters below.
Weigh In: Speak up, and you might get an on-air shout out and a fabulous sticker!
Jennifer Kloester is the bestselling author of Georgette Heyer’s Regency World, Georgette Heyer: Biography of a Bestseller, and Society The Novels of Georgette Heyer: A Celebration.
Jennifer is a Patroness of the International Heyer, and a producer of the forthcoming documentary Who the Hell is Georgette Heyer?
She is also a popular presenter and public speaker and, in 2015, with Stephen Fry, she was delighted to speak at the unveiling of Georgette Heyer’s English Heritage Blue Plaque in Wimbledon.
Jen's Facebook
Instagram
Check out Jen's website here
And check out our Amazon store where we've compiled all things Georgette Heyer and Jennifer Kloester!
Several of our books, though not many, have had elements of humor. There’s The Thin Man, with the witty Nick and Nora. And there’s this one, with humorous banter throughout. How successful did you feel the humor was?
At times, the banter reminded Carolyn a bit of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. These lines made Carolyn smile – Roger says to Hannasyde: “if I know just how much you know, it’ll save a great deal of bother. I mean, it’s no use my telling you I went to the Zoo if you’re going to prove I spent the day in the British Museum. At the same time, I don’t want to tell you anything I needn’t. You see my difficulty?” (224)
Of the characters in the novel, Dorothy L. Sayers said: ‘Miss Heyer’s characters and dialogue are an abiding delight to me…I have seldom met people to whom I took so violent a fancy from the word “Go”.’
“Death in the Stocks is not only a very neat and mystifying detective story, it is also an excellent example of what can be achieved when the commonplace material of detective fiction is worked up by an experienced novelist. Miss Heyer’s characters act and speak with ease and conviction that is as refreshing as it is rare in a mystery story.” ~ Jennifer Kloester
Regency Romance
From Goodreads: Georgette Heyer “was an intensely private person who remained a best selling author all her life without the aid of publicity. She made no appearances, never gave an interview and only answered fan letters herself if they made an interesting historical point.”
It’s fascinating that she seems to have invented the genre. Georgette Heyer wrote in two genres — regency romance and detec
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Thriller writer David Ignatius joins Sarah and Carolyn to discuss his latest book Phantom Orbit.
Check out more of his work and get the book here.
Website: www.davidignatius.com
David Ignatius is a prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post and has been covering the Middle East and the CIA for nearly four decades. He has written several New York Times bestsellers. He lives in Washington, DC.
David Ignatius is known for his uncanny ability, in novel after novel, to predict the next great national security headline.
In Phantom Orbit, he presents a story both searing and topical, with stakes as far-reaching as outer space. It follows Ivan Volkov, a Russian student in Beijing, who discovers an unsolved puzzle in the writings of the seventeenth-century astronomer Johannes Kepler. He takes the puzzle to a senior scientist in the Chinese space program and declares his intention to solve it. Volkov returns to Moscow and continues his secret work. The puzzle holds untold consequences for space warfare.
The years pass, and they are not kind to Volkov. After the loss of his son, a prosecutor who’d been too tough on corruption, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Volkov makes the fraught decision to contact the CIA. He writes: Satellites are your enemies, especially your own. … Hidden codes can make time stop and turn north into south. … If you are smart, you will find me.
With this timely novel, David Ignatius addresses our moment of renewed interest in space exploration amid geopolitical tumult. Phantom Orbit brims with the author’s vital insights and casts Volkov as the man who, at the risk of his life, may be able to stop the Doomsday clock.
David Ignatius writes a twice-a-week foreign affairs column for The Washington Post. Ignatius has written 11 spy novels: “The Paladin” (2020), “The Quantum Spy,” (2017), “The Director,” (2014), “Bloodmoney” (2011), “The Increment” (2009), “Body of Lies” (2007), “The Sun King” (1999), “A Firing Offense” (1997), “The Bank of Fear” (1994), “SIRO” (1991), and “Agents of Innocence” (1987). “Body of Lies” was made into a 2008 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe.
Ignatius joined The Post in 1986 as editor of its Sunday Outlook section. In 1990 he became foreign editor, and in 1993, assistant managing editor for business news. He began writing his column in 1998 and continued even during a three-year stint as executive editor of the International Herald Tribune in Paris. Earlier in his career, Ignatius was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, covering at various times the steel industry, the Departments of State and Justice, the CIA, the Senate and the Middle East.
Honors and Awards: 2018 Finalist team, Pulitzer Prize for Public Service; 2018 George Polk Award; 2010 Urbino International Press Award; 2013 Overseas Press Club Award for Foreign Affairs Commentary; Lifetime Achievement Award, International Committee for Foreign Journalists; Legion D’Honneur awarded by the French government; 2004 Edward Weintal Prize; 2000 Gerald Loeb Award for Commentary; As The Post’s f
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A hazing prank at Harvard left Paul Chapin disabled. Years later, two of the men responsible end up dead, and a series of poems promises continued retribution. Now the other men who hazed Paul are desperate for the protection of brilliant detective Nero Wolfe.
Is Paul Chapin exacting revenge on his former classmates, and can Nero Wolfe and his wise-cracking sidekick, Archie Goodwin, stop him before he kills again? Find out in Rex Stout’s The League of Frightened Men (1935).
Check out The Offical Nero Wolfe Society!
On X: @NeroWolfePack
Reach out to Ira: werowance@nerowolf.org
Review more books and media by Rex Stout & Ira Brad Matetsky in our amazon store.
Our special guest, Ira Brad Matetsky, joins Tea, Tonic & Toxin hosts Sarah and Carolyn to discuss The League of Frightened Men by Nero Wolfe. He has been the Werowance (President) of the Wolfe Pack, the international literary society for the Nero Wolfe stories by Rex Stout, since 2007.
Ira Matetsky has written a number of articles about Nero Wolfe and related topics and edited The Last Drive and Other Stories, a collection of some of Rex Stout’s earliest work, published by the Mysterious Press/Open Road in 2015.
He is also a Sherlockian and is invested as a member of the Baker Street Irregulars (“The Final Problem”) and the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes (“The Lawyer Whose Name Was Given in the Paper”).
By day he is a litigation partner at the law firm of Dorf Nelson & Zauderer LLP in New York City.
Rex Stout received the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award in 1959. In 2000, Bouchercon nominated him as Best Mystery Writer of the Century and the Nero Wolfe books as Best Mystery Series of the Century. The Wolfe Pack is the international literary society devoted to Nero Wolfe. Every year on the first Saturday in December, the Wolfe Pack holds a Black Orchid Banquet and presents the Nero Award & the Black Orchid Novella Award for excellence in the mystery genre.
Food & Drink in Nero Wolfe Novels
Perhaps one of the primary characters. Fritz’s cooking is mentioned in every chapter, as is the enormity of Wolfe and his predilection to eating, tasting. Archie refers to himself as a swallower.
We’re even given a recipe: p 237 – “he had lined a casserole with butter, put in it six tablespoons of cream, three fresh eggs, four Lambert sausages, salt, pepper, paprika and chives, and conveyed it to the oven.” Sarah will be making it if she can figure out what a Lambert sausage is.
Archie drinks a pitcher of milk a night. He doesn’t necessarily abstain from alcohol, but he rarely drinks it, preferring milk. Several characters (Pitney Scott and Mike Ayers) are portrayed rather harshly for what appears to be alcoholism. Scott is definitely trying to stay sober. This is a huge departure from the constant drinking of Hammett’s hardboiled detectives. Wolfe constantly drinks beer. Another departure from hard drinking, but not remotely abstemious.
Has the social climate changed at this time? Or are these trends more related to the individual authors or characters?
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A hazing prank at Harvard left Paul Chapin disabled. Years later, two of the men responsible end up dead, and a series of poems promises continued retribution. Now the other men who hazed Paul are desperate for the protection of brilliant detective Nero Wolfe.
Is Paul Chapin exacting revenge on his former classmates, and can Nero Wolfe and his wise-cracking sidekick, Archie Goodwin, stop him before he kills again? Find out in Rex Stout’s The League of Frightened Men (1935).
Check out The Offical Nero Wolfe Society!
On X: @NeroWolfePack
Reach out to Ira: werowance@nerowolf.org
Review more books and media by Rex Stout & Ira Brad Matetsky in our amazon store.
Our special guest, Ira Brad Matetsky, joins Tea, Tonic & Toxin hosts Sarah and Carolyn to discuss The League of Frightened Men by Nero Wolfe. He has been the Werowance (President) of the Wolfe Pack, the international literary society for the Nero Wolfe stories by Rex Stout, since 2007.
Ira Matetsky has written a number of articles about Nero Wolfe and related topics and edited The Last Drive and Other Stories, a collection of some of Rex Stout’s earliest work, published by the Mysterious Press/Open Road in 2015.
He is also a Sherlockian and is invested as a member of the Baker Street Irregulars (“The Final Problem”) and the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes (“The Lawyer Whose Name Was Given in the Paper”).
By day he is a litigation partner at the law firm of Dorf Nelson & Zauderer LLP in New York City.
Rex Stout received the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award in 1959. In 2000, Bouchercon nominated him as Best Mystery Writer of the Century and the Nero Wolfe books as Best Mystery Series of the Century. The Wolfe Pack is the international literary society devoted to Nero Wolfe. Every year on the first Saturday in December, the Wolfe Pack holds a Black Orchid Banquet and presents the Nero Award & the Black Orchid Novella Award for excellence in the mystery genre.
Nero Wolfe Character Types
The Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin of A Family Affair (46th and last book) are essentially the same as the characters we first meet in Fer-de-Lance.
The books have a Golden Age sense of order/puzzles and the hardboiled American school inspired by Prohibition and the Depression. Wolfe and Archie have great chemistry.
Nero Wolfe seems to be a return, an extreme return, to the brilliant armchair amateur. But he has his trusty employee, Archie Goodman, who at once seems a hardboiled detective and a studious secretary. Is Stout blending approaches to detective fiction?
Evelyn Hibbard describes herself as “hard-boiled.” Archie is also hardboiled. Hardboiled (the boiling of an egg) was first used by Mark Twain in 1886 to mean “emotionally hardened.”
Archie Goodwin
Part hardboiled detective and man of action, part studious, live-in secretary and orchid cataloger. He observes but doesn’t get involved with women. A swallower of food, drinker of milk. Intense loyalty and frequent annoyance with his employer, Wolfe. He takes detailed notes in shorthand for Wolfe. He acts as Wolfe’s eyes and ears on the outside. He doesn’t read books. Strong work ethic: “[I’m] too conscientious. I love to do a good job more than anything else I can think of.”
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Thriller author James McLaughlin joins Sarah and Carolyn to discuss his book Bearskin.
McLaughlin is the author of Bearskin, published by Ecco/HarperCollins in 2018 and winner of the 2019 Edgar Award for Best First Novel.
Bearskin has been featured, mentioned, and reviewed in The New York Times (4 Writers to Watch, Bears and Poets, New Books We Recommend, and Best Crime Fiction), The Washington Post, USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, and Goodreads.
He’s currently working on a sequel to Bearskin.
Check out all the book and other items inspired by the conversation here.
Check out Jim's website at jamesamclaughlin.com
Rice Moore is just beginning to think his troubles are behind him. He’s found a job protecting a remote forest preserve in Virginian Appalachia where his main responsibilities include tracking wildlife and refurbishing cabins. It’s hard work, and totally solitary—perfect to hide away from the Mexican drug cartels he betrayed back in Arizona. But when Rice finds the carcass of a bear killed on the grounds, the quiet solitude he’s so desperately sought is suddenly at risk.
More bears are killed on the preserve and Rice’s obsession with catching the poachers escalates, leading to hostile altercations with the locals and attention from both the law and Rice’s employers. Partnering with his predecessor, a scientist who hopes to continue her research on the preserve, Rice puts into motion a plan that could expose the poachers but risks revealing his own whereabouts to the dangerous people he was running from in the first place.
James McLaughlin expertly brings the beauty and danger of Appalachia to life. The result is an elemental, slow burn of a novel—one that will haunt you long after you turn the final page.
James McLaughlin won the 15 Bytes Book Award for Fiction (Artists of Utah) and was a finalist for the 2019 Library of Virginia Literary Award in fiction, the 2019 Anthony Award for Best First Novel, and the 2019 Barry Award for Best First Novel.
Bearskin was included in Amazon’s Best Mysteries and Thrillers of 2018, Garden & Gun‘s Best Southern Books of 2018, and Southern Living’s Best Southern Books of 2018. It was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection and a Publishers Weekly Summer Reads staff pick. The list goes on and on …
grace sigma
Consultancy specializing in lean process, systems design, data storytelling, and data visualization.
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Brooklyn-born New Jersey class-action attorney turned author Norman Shabel has written seven plays and eight novels. Three of his plays have been produced off Broadway in NYC, Philadelphia, and Florida.
You can find novels from all our guests in our amazon store.
Prolific author and playwright, Normal Shabel had a difficult childhood. He grew up in a poor Jewish and Italian neighborhood called Brownsville in Brooklyn, NY. At the time, many immigrants as well as Jewish children like himself and people of color faced daily injustices. For example, he and his friends were beaten regularly by antisemitic gangs while walking up the stairs to enter his junior high school.
These early experiences led him to become a class action and personal injury plaintiff’s attorney as well as a criminal prosecutor. His eight crime novels are based on his 55 years as a practicing attorney and detail how such injustices play out in a courtroom.
His books offer a behind the scenes look at how lawyers navigate the prejudices and unconscious biases of judges and juries to get the best outcome for their clients. Reviewers have commented that only an attorney could have written some of the multifaceted courtroom scenes featured in his books.
The topic would be how the theme of injustice plays out in his books. He would discuss several of his books. One standalone interview just about his books would be great. What are some Saturday dates and times that you have available for a podcast interview for him? What is the name of the podcast again? Also, I will be out of pocket for the next two days, so, when you respond, please hit "reply all" to include my boss, Sharon, who is included here. Thanks so much.
- God Knows No Heroes – Based on the true case of a Rabbi in New Jersey that hired someone to murder his wife. Shabel was not his attorney, but he was a member of his congregation.
- Four Women – A depiction of the many women that Shabel represented over the years where builders were pushing them out of their homes so that they could make a profit.
- The Corporation – About the murder of corporate employees who were also stockholders in a company and could stop the merger of two very powerful companies. The merger was based on one of Shabel’s cases to show the corruption that exists when money and power are involved. However, the murders were artistic license.
- The Badger Game – Based on a true case where Shabel was the prosecutor who represented the State of New Jersey against accused murderers. It shows the prejudices, corruption, and thirst for power of the players, including judges and attorneys on both sides of the aisle. If the judge is biased against the defendant or his attorney, many decisions are in line with those prejudices.
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THE THREE COFFINS (THE HOLLOW MAN) (1935) by John Dickson Carr is celebrated for its exceptional execution of the locked-room mystery, a subgenre demanding ingenious plotting and cerebral depth. Many consider it the best locked room mystery of all time. Carr’s complex puzzles, cryptic clues, and taut, suspenseful atmosphere make it a mystery fiction masterpiece.
Read: Buy the book on Amazon.
Reflect: Check out the conversation starters below.
The Novel as a Riddle
“To the murder of Professor Grimaud, and later the equally incredible crime in Cagliostro Street, many fantastic terms could be applied — with reason. Those of Dr Fell’s friends who like impossible situations will not find in his case-book any puzzle more baffling or more terrifying. Thus: two murders were committed, in such fashion that the murderer must have been not only invisible, but lighter than air. According to the evidence, this person killed his first victim and literally disappeared. Again according to the evidence, he killed his second victim in the middle of an empty street, with watchers at either end; yet not a soul saw him, and no footprint appeared in the snow.”
Locked Room Lecture / Breaking Down the Third Wall
Ch. 17 contains the oft-cited “locked room lecture,” where Fell speaks directly to readers. Fell says, “[W]e’re in a detective story, and we don’t fool the reader by pretending we’re not.” Fell then describes the various ways murder can be committed in a locked room.
From the books we’ve read, Is this the first break in the third wall?
Method #7 from The Three Coffins (The Hollow Man) by John Dickson Carr: “The victim is presumed to be dead long before he really is. The victim lies asleep drugged (but not harmed) in a locked room. Knockings on the door fail to rouse him. The murderer starts a foul-play scare; forces the door; gets in ahead and kills by stabbing or throat-cutting, while suggesting to other watchers that they have seen something they have not seen. The honour of inventing this device belongs to Israel Zangwill [The Big Bow Mystery].”
Pettis says, “[It] would seem pretty sound to say exclude the impossible and whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” (Sherlock Holmes, The Sign of the Four, 1890) (Compare with Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express, 1934: “The impossible cannot have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.”)
In The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books (2017), Martin Edwards called this chapter “an extraordinarily bold move.” Do you agree? How did you feel about this chapter? And have the books John Dickson Carr mentioned stood the test of time as greats?
G.K. Chesterton was mentioned for the man in the passage. In The Wrong Shape, similar to Israel Zangwill, the killer rushes in pretending they are already dead and kills them while asleep.
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Penny has never met anyone smarter than her. That's par for the course when you're a savant - one of fewer than 100 in the world. But despite her photographic memory and superpowered intellect, there's one ystery Penny's never been able to solve: Why did her father leave when she was in a coma at age seven, and where is he now?
On Penny's twenty-first birthdya, she receives a card in the mail from him, just as she has every year since he left. But this birthday card is different. For the first time ever, there's a return address. And a goodbye.
Penny doesn't know the world beyond her mother's house and the special school she's attended since her unusual abilities revealed themselves, but the mystery of her father's disappearance becomes her new obsession. For the first time ever, she decides to leave home to break free of everything that has kept her safe and use her gifts to answer the questions that have always eluded her. What Penny doesn't realize is she might not be able to outsmart a world far more complicated and dangerous than she'd ever imagined...
Check out our guest Carter Wilson at CarterWilson.com
See more of Carter's book, and references from the episode in our specially curated list in our amazon store.
Carter Wilson is the USA Today bestselling author of nine critically acclaimed, standalone psychological thrillers, as well as numerous short stories. He is an ITW Thriller Award finalist, a five-time winner of the Colorado Book Award, and his works have been optioned for television and film. Carter lives in Erie, Colorado in a Victorian house that is spooky but isn’t haunted…yet.
Born in New Mexico in 1970, Carter grew up primarily in Los Angeles before attending Cornell University in New York. He lived in Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and Miami before moving to Boulder, Colorado in 1996. Throughout his life, Carter has journeyed the globe for both work and pleasure, and his travels have been a constant source of inspiration in his fiction.
Carter’s writing career began on a spring day in 2003, when an exercise to ward off boredom during a continuing-education class evolved into a 400-page manuscript. Since that day, Carter has been constantly writing. In addition to his published novels, Carter has also contributed short fiction to various publications, and most notably was featured in the R.L. Stine young-adult anthology Scream and Scream Again.
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THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (1934) is James M. Cain’s gripping, groundbreaking noir tale of passion and betrayal. In a dusty roadside diner, love and lust ignite a murderous plot and challenge conventional notions of right and wrong. As secrets unravel, two lovers are drawn deeper into a web of crime, leading to a shocking and morally ambiguous climax.
Read: Buy the book on Amazon.
Reflect: Check out the conversation starters below.
Our guest, Rebecca Heisler, lives outside Boston with her two rescue mutts, who are usually by her side while she's reading. Outside of her digital marketing day job, she can usually be found with a book, often recommending the most absurd genres to her book club. She also loves writing, drinking wine, and watching and reviewing every Hallmark Christmas movie each year. Check her out @bookworminbostonAnd while you're at it, visit our mutual friend @readfarandwide for bookish travel tips.
One of the things we love about book conversations is how the discussion makes so many connections. For this episode, we made a special idea list, and compiled the links here! Check it out and let us know if we missed any references.
And while you're at it, pick up the next book here!
The Postman Always Rings Twice is on the Modern Library’s list of 100 best novels. Most elements of the hardboiled genre are here. Dark passions. Heroes of dubious morality/amorality in a hardscrabble world. Sudden, squalid violence. Retribution. Albert Camus said the book’s themes and style influenced The Stranger. Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone) has talked about the impact Cain’s dialogue had on him (full of vernacular; true to character). Cain featured the perpetrator of the crime, rather than the detective or law enforcement. Crime novelists owe a lot to Cain.
The book feels like another major departure from the types of books we’ve been reading — the brutality, the psychopathy, the sex. What was the context of this development? What was going on in American fiction? Is Cain the first to do this?
Did you like any of the characters? How did it feel to read the book from inside the killer’s head? For Sarah it was difficult, like having a one way conversation with a crazy person who wants to tell you all about themselves, thinks they have it figured out, but you don’t agree that they do.
In The Postman Always Rings Twice, Nick’s ethnic background is looked down upon, even by his wife. Her distaste for her husband is implied to derive in part from her perception that she is less “white” for being married to him. Mexicans are described as less worthy characters.
Desperation, driven by grinding Depression-era poverty, is key to the psychological landscape of the novel, driving Cora first to marriage and then to murder. She went into the marriage assuming that Nick was unchangeable (and maybe he was), but it was the burden she was willing to bear to get out of the hash house.
Cora also blames her class as to why she couldn’t
Carolyn Daughters
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In this episode we are delighted to chat with Barbara Nickless! She is the Wall Street Journal and #1 Amazon Charts bestselling author of the multi-award-winning Sydney Parnell crime novels. Barbara’s new series features forensic semiotician Dr. Evan Wilding—a man whose gift for interpreting the words and symbols left behind by killers has led him to consult on some of the world’s grisliest cases. She’s the winner of the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence, the Golden Quill Award, Suspense Magazine Best Debut of 2016, Amazon Editors’ Best Mystery, Thriller, and Suspense Novel, and a four-time recipient of the Colorado Authors League Writing Award. In addition, she has been nominated for the Colorado Book Award five times and won three times. Barbara lives in Colorado at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, where she loves to hike, cave, snowshoe, and drink single-malt Scotch. Her most recent travels—while conducting research for a novel—involved taking cover from rocketfire and being grilled at military checkpoints.
https://barbaranickless.com/
An ancient creature of Greek mythology drives a killer’s unspeakable motives in a pulse-pounding thriller by Barbara Nickless, the Amazon Charts and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Dark of Night.
On a stormy Chicago night, renowned semiotician Dr. Evan Wilding and his brother, River, who’s back from an archaeological dig, reunite in a mystery. A package addressed to both of them contains a hand-drawn maze, an ancient Cretan coin, and a cryptic greeting: Let the game begin.
The opening move is murder.
In a downtown alley, a man has been found nearly cleaved in two, a symbol drawn on his forehead and a savage rip in his throat. Given the clues, Evan sees a parallel to a fearsome Greek myth. Which means his friend Detective Addie Bisset is on the trail of a legendary flesh-eating monster―one terrifyingly human and tumbling a panicked city toward chaos.
Evan, Addie, and River scramble to discover who’s behind the appalling crimes and decipher the baffling motives. The body count is rising. The endgame is nowhere in sight. And the stakes are nothing less than life and death.
Barbara references Far from the Tree & we can't wait to check it out!
Start researching your next book, Barbara-style!
grace sigma
Consultancy specializing in lean process, systems design, data storytelling, and data visualization.
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Tea, Tonic, and Toxin is a mystery and thriller podcast and book club for people obsessed with mysteries and thrillers. Each month, your hosts, Sarah Harrison and Carolyn Daughters, will discuss a game-changing mystery or thriller, starting in the mid-19th century onward. Together, we’ll see firsthand how the genre evolved.
Along the way, we’ll entertain ideas, prospects, theories, and doubts, along with the occasional guest. And we hope to entertain you, dear friend. We want you to experience the joys of reading the best mysteries and thrillers ever written.
We’ll read and explore ideas about the book and about ourselves. And we’ll start at the very beginning with “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar Allan Poe.
This episode we discuss The Thin Man. The allure of THE THIN MAN (1934) lies in its timeless intrigue, captivating characters, and masterful storytelling. Dashiell Hammett’s novel is known for its clever plot twists, witty dialogue, a surprising blend crime and comedy – and the enigmatic detective duo of Nick and Nora Charles.
Read: Buy the book on Amazon.
Reflect: Check out the conversation starters below.
Weigh In: Speak up, and you might get an on-air shout out and a fabulous sticker!
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Our incredible guest is Julie Rivett! Julie M. Rivett is a granddaughter of Dashiell Hammett, an advocate for Hammett’s life and literature, a trustee for his estate, and an essayist, editor, and lecturer. Working with Hammett biographer Richard Layman, she has edited six books by or about her grandfather, including Selected Letters of Dashiell Hammett (2001), Return of The Thin Man (2012), The Hunter and Other Stories (2013), and The Big Book of the Continental Op (2017). She studied literature, culture, and persuasive arts at California State University, Long Beach, where she earned an M.A. in Communication Studies.
The Thin Man, Chapter 1 (72 Intro Words and 62 Closing Words That Set the Scene): “I was leaning against the bar in a speakeasy on Fifty-second Street, waiting for Nora to finish her Christmas shopping, when a girl got up from the table where she had been sitting with three other people and came over to me. She was small and blonde, and whether you looked at her face or at her body in powder-blue sports clothes the result was satisfactory. ‘Aren’t you Nick Charles?’ she asked.”
Nick and Nora find a table. Nora said: “She’s pretty.” [referring to Dorothy Wynant]
“If you like them like that.”
She grinned at me. “You got types?”
“Only you, darling–lanky brunettes with wicked jaws.”
“And how about the red-head you wandered off with at the Quinns’ last night?”
”That’s silly,” I said. “She just wanted to show me some French etchings.”
Vintage Books is planning to reissue all five of her grandfather’s novels, each with a fresh introduction by a well-regarded contemporary author! Check Julie's Facebook page for updates!
Carolyn Daughters
Brand therapy. Persuasive writing courses. Tell the best story possible.
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It’s time for more mysteries, detective stories, and thrillers! Our 2024 selections include stunners published from 1934-1939. Get reading, and subscribe so you never miss an episode! (You can find the 2022 schedule here and 2023 schedule here.)
The allure of THE THIN MAN (1934) lies in its timeless intrigue, captivating characters, and masterful storytelling. Dashiell Hammett’s novel is known for its clever plot twists, witty dialogue, a surprising blend crime and comedy – and the enigmatic detective duo of Nick and Nora Charles.
Read: Buy the book on Amazon.
Our guest for The Thin Man is the incredible Julie Rivett, Hammett's own grandaughter & a trustee of his estate. Julie M. Rivett brings a unique personal and professional perspective to the study of Dashiell Hammett. She is one of four Hammett grandchildren, a Hammett scholar, and a trustee for the Hammett literary estate. Although her memories of her grandfather stem from a single childhood visit, she has developed an understanding of Hammett that integrates conversations with family and friends, study of Hammett’s public and private writings, and research on his life.
Working with Hammett biographer Richard Layman, she has co-edited six books by or
about her famous grandfather. Selected Letters of Dashiell Hammett 1921-1960 and her mother’s memoir Dashiell Hammett: A Daughter Remembers, both nominated for Edgar Awards, were released in 2001. Return of the Thin Man, with Hammett’s screen stories for two of the beloved Thin Man film series sequels, was published in 2012. The Hunter and Other Stories followed in 2013, featuring unpublished and rarely seen Hammett fiction, screen stories, and an unfinished Sam Spade adventure. The Continental Op: The Complete Case Files collected all 28 of Hammett’s Op short stories in ebook in 2016. The complete collection of Op stories, in addition to the original serialized versions of Hammett’s two novels featuring the Op were released in print for the first time in The Big Book of the Continental Op in November of 2017.
Julie has lectured and curated exhibits on Hammett and his works for one-city-read-one-book programs, libraries, schools and universities, writers’ groups, book clubs, and
literacy organizations across the U.S. Her interviews and essays have been published at
home and abroad, helping to maintain her grandfather’s legacy and introduce his writings to new generations.
When she’s not editing or lecturing, Julie volunteers for arts, literacy, and political
organizations and minds her grandchildren. She lives with her husband in Orange
County, California, where she raised two daughters and earned degrees in American
Studies and Communication Studies from California State University, Long Beach.
Vintage Books is planning to reissue all five of her grandfather’s novels, each with a fresh introduction by a well-regarded contemporary author! Check Ju
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Tea, Tonic, and Toxin is a book club and podcast for people who love mysteries, thrillers, introspection, and good conversation. Each month, your hosts, Carolyn Daughters and Sarah Harrison, will discuss a game-changing mystery or thriller, starting in 1841 onward. Together, we’ll see firsthand how the genre evolved.
Along the way, we’ll entertain ideas, prospects, theories, doubts, and grudges, along with the occasional guest. And we hope to entertain you, dear friend. We want you to experience the joys of reading some of the best mysteries and thrillers ever written.
In this episode Sarah & Carolyn discuss their 2023 in podcasting, and highlights from the books. To see all our book selections by year, as well as the work of our modern guests, check out our shop!
Enjoy our podcast? Consider sponsoring our show or making a donation toward audio and video tech, site expenses, and listener rewards. To learn more, email us at info@teatonicandtoxin.com. Thank you!
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Tea, Tonic & Toxin is a book club and podcast focused on the history of mystery. We’re discussing the best mysteries, detective stories, and thrillers ever written — in chronological order.
The Nine Tailors, a Lord Peter Wimsey mystery, is quite possibly Dorothy Sayers’ masterpiece. The murder method in the 1934 novel is a stunner to be sure. The idea came from a sixpenny pamphlet that explained bell-ringing. Is it her finest literary achievement? Let us know what YOU think!
Dan Drake was born in Los Angeles two months after Pearl Harbor. A year or so after, his family moved to the Bay Area, where he has lived since, with notably rare exceptions – those exceptions being Portland OR, where he took a degree in biology at Reed College; UC San Diego for studies in biology; and San Diego State. At UC Berkeley, he studied in the newly renamed Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, where he earned an MS and worked at a couple of computerish jobs. In 1982, he and some very sharp programmers started a software company for those fashionable new “personal computers.” That venture succeeded and has gone on succeeding for 40+ years under the same name, Autodesk.
Now, Dan’s parents were Sherlock Holmes fans, and Dan grew up in a home filled with Holmesiana. His father belonged to a local affiliate of the Baker Street Irregulars, for which he wrote a few pieces of Sherlockian fanfic. Dan found a book by Dorothy L Sayers called Unpopular Opinions, and then he read Whose Body? By good fortune, he read the Lord Peter Wimsey books more or less in order.
Dan eventually joined a new newsgroup dedicated to Lord Peter. When he learned about the Peter Wimsey Companion, he gave up his production of notes on the Wimsey corpus. Dan also collects Sayersiana, and on a few occasions he has attended conventions of the Dorothy L Sayers Society in England, along with one held at Wheaton College in Illinois.
Today, Dan lives in Mill Valley, California, under redwood trees on a steep hillside, with his wife of many years. He has two adult children.
Sarah found Dan's incredible notes on the internet researching Whose Body**.
Other references Dan Made:**His father (Stillman Drake - see, if you like, his entry in Wikipedia) was active in the Northern California Holmesian society, called the Scowrers, and wrote a couple of essays in that capacity. dandrake.com/porlock/index.html
A group called Lord Peter, which he joined. It's still alive (https://groups.io/g/LordPeter/topics) though not very active. And it got him to writing these annotations.
Dorothy Sayers Book on Education: The Lost Tools of Learning
VII: Journal of the Marion E Wade Center at Wheaton College
Change R
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Stay mysterious...
Tea, Tonic & Toxin is a book club and podcast focused on the history of mystery. We’re discussing the best mysteries, detective stories, and thrillers ever written — in chronological order.
It’s time for more mysteries, detective stories, and thrillers! Our 2024 selections include stunners published from 1934-1939. Scroll down the page, get reading, and subscribe so you never miss an episode! (You can find the 2022 schedule here and 2023 schedule here.)
The allure of THE THIN MAN lies in its timeless intrigue, captivating characters, and masterful storytelling. Dashiell Hammett’s novel is known for its clever plot twists, witty dialogue, a surprising blend crime and comedy – and the enigmatic duo of Nick and Nora Charles.
THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE is James M. Cain’s groundbreaking noir tale of passion and betrayal. In a dusty roadside diner, love and lust ignite a murderous plot. As secrets unravel, two lovers are drawn into a web of crime, leading to a shocking and morally ambiguous climax.
John Dickson Carr’s THE HOLLOW MAN (THE THREE COFFINS) is celebrated for its exceptional execution of the locked-room mystery, a sub-genre demanding ingenious plotting and cerebral depth. Many consider it the best locked room mystery of all time. It’s a mystery fiction masterpiece.
THE LEAGUE OF FRIGHTENED MEN introduces the brilliant and eccentric detective Nero Wolfe and his wise-cracking sidekick, Archie Goodwin. When a sinister secret society seeks revenge, Wolfe’s genius is put to the test. Rex Stout’s classic mystery is a thrilling, witty, page-turning delight.
When a man is found dead in a quaint English village, Inspector Hannasyde must unravel the secrets of the eccentric family involved. In DEATH IN THE STOCKS, a beloved classic, Georgette Heyer infuses the traditional mystery with her signature style of historical Regency romance.
Harriet Vane returns to her alma mater, Oxford, only to find the tranquil setting disturbed by a series of unsettling incidents. A strong and independent woman, Harriet defied gender norms of her time, and some consider Dorothy Sayers’ GAUDY NIGHT to be the first feminist mystery novel.
THE ABC MURDERS is an early example of a “serial killer” novel. A killer strikes in alphabetical order, challenging renowned detective Hercule Poirot to a battle of wits. With ingenious twists and red herrings, Agatha Christie’s classic murder mystery keeps readers guessing until the end.
In THE WHEEL SPINS, a young woman’s train journey takes a sinister turn when a fellow passenger mysteriously disappears. Ethel Lina White’s suspenseful, edge-of-your-seat read served as the basis for Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic film The Lady Vanishes. It’s a classic of the genre.
A young bride is haunted by the lingering shadow of her husband’s first wife at the eerie Manderley estate. Secrets, jealousy, and suspense converge in a chilling tale of love and deception. Daphne du Maurier’s classic Gothic novel REBECCA won the Anthony Award for Best Novel of the Century.
ROGUE MALE is an enduring masterpiece of mystery, adventure, suspense, and the sheer thrill of the chase. Geoffrey Household called it a “bastard
Carolyn Daughters
Brand therapy. Persuasive writing courses. Tell the best story possible.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the Show.
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Stay mysterious...
Tea, Tonic & Toxin is a book club and podcast focused on the history of mystery. We’re discussing the best mysteries, detective stories, and thrillers ever written — in chronological order.
The Nine Tailors, a Lord Peter Wimsey mystery, is quite possibly Dorothy Sayers’ masterpiece. The murder method in the 1934 novel is a stunner to be sure. The idea came from a sixpenny pamphlet that explained bell-ringing. Is it her finest literary achievement? Let us know what YOU think!
Dan Drake was born in Los Angeles two months after Pearl Harbor. A year or so after, his family moved to the Bay Area, where he has lived since, with notably rare exceptions – those exceptions being Portland OR, where he took a degree in biology at Reed College; UC San Diego for studies in biology; and San Diego State. At UC Berkeley, he studied in the newly renamed Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, where he earned an MS and worked at a couple of computerish jobs. In 1982, he and some very sharp programmers started a software company for those fashionable new “personal computers.” That venture succeeded and has gone on succeeding for 40+ years under the same name, Autodesk.
Now, Dan’s parents were Sherlock Holmes fans, and Dan grew up in a home filled with Holmesiana. His father belonged to a local affiliate of the Baker Street Irregulars, for which he wrote a few pieces of Sherlockian fanfic. Dan found a book by Dorothy L Sayers called Unpopular Opinions, and then he read Whose Body? By good fortune, he read the Lord Peter Wimsey books more or less in order.
Dan eventually joined a new newsgroup dedicated to Lord Peter. When he learned about the Peter Wimsey Companion, he gave up his production of notes on the Wimsey corpus. Dan also collects Sayersiana, and on a few occasions he has attended conventions of the Dorothy L Sayers Society in England, along with one held at Wheaton College in Illinois.
Today, Dan lives in Mill Valley, California, under redwood trees on a steep hillside, with his wife of many years. He has two adult children.
Sarah found Dan's incredible notes on the internet researching Whose Body**.
Other references Dan Made:** His father (Stillman Drake - see, if you like, his entry in Wikipedia) was active in the Northern California Holmesian society, called the Scowrers, and wrote a couple of essays in that capacity. dandrake.com/porlock/index.html
A group called Lord Peter, which he joined. It's still alive (https://groups.io/g/LordPeter/topics) though not very active. And it got him to writing these annotations.
Dorothy Sayers Book on Education: The Lost Tools of Learning
VII: Journal of the Marion E Wade Center at Wheaton College
C
grace sigma
Consultancy specializing in lean process, systems design, data storytelling, and data visualization.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the Show.
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Stay mysterious...
Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages. Once you read Murder on the Orient Express (1934), you’ll understand why.
Read: Buy it used or new on Amazon.
Reflect: Check out the conversation starters below.
Welcome our guest, Emily Schwartz!
Emily Schwartz was the Artistic Director of, and Resident Playwright for the immersive (and mostly macabre) theater company, The Strange Tree Group from 2003 to 2014. For the Trees she penned the Jeff Award-winning The Three Faces of Doctor Crippen, which also won the New York Fringe excellence award. When it was performed at Steppenwolf in 2011 the forensic scientist who discovered that the remains of Cora Crippen might not be Cora Crippen after all came to opening night where Emily debated him on what actually happened with the murder.
Other critically acclaimed productions include The Dastardly Ficus and Other Comedic Tales of Woe and Misery, Mr. Spacky, the Man Who Was Continuously Followed by Wolves, The Mysterious Elephant, and more. You can still find productions of her work across the country. The local Denver theater group The Catamounts, have performed both Dr. Crippen and Mr. Spacky, and the Three Faces of Doctor Crippen has a performance in the planning stages for 2024.
Currently Emily is mostly a professional event planner and mom to four year old Henry to whom she is passing on her love of the strange and unusual. She recently wrote an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland for the Latin school of Chicago, and is working on a children's book. Emily has known Sarah for approximately 50 or 60 years.
Here are some conversation starters and questions to get you thinking about the book!
The story was partly inspired by the shocking real-life kidnapping case involving the Charles Lindbergh baby. In 1932, aviator Charles Lindbergh’s 20-month old son was held for a $50,000 ransom. The ransom was paid, but Lindbergh’s son was later found dead. The case captivated and outraged the American public. What are the similarities and differences between the real-life story and the fictional account in this book?
Which character did you identify with most in Murder on the Orient Express? If you had to choose to be one of the characters on the Orient Express, who would you choose, and why? Or would you choose another alias altogether?
Poirot says, “I saw it as a perfect mosaic, each person playing his or her allotted part.” Were you able to identify the murderer before the very end? If so, what tipped you off? If not, who did you think the murderer was? Were you surprised when Poirot revealed whodunit?
The first time Poirot sees Samuel Ratchett, he says, “I could not rid myself of the impression that evil had passed me by very close.” What does it mean to be evil? Does pure evil exist? Along those lines, what’s the difference between vengeance and justice? Were the murderers justified in killing Ratchett because he was completely evil?
Have you seen either of the film versions of Murder on the Orient Express (1974 or 2017)? Before or after reading the book? Did it affect how you read the book?
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Stay mysterious...
Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages. Once you read Murder on the Orient Express (1934), you’ll understand why.
Read: Buy it used or new on Amazon.
Reflect: Check out the conversation starters below.
Welcome our guest, Emily Schwartz!
Emily Schwartz was the Artistic Director of, and Resident Playwright for the immersive (and mostly macabre) theater company, The Strange Tree Group from 2003 to 2014. For the Trees she penned the Jeff Award-winning The Three Faces of Doctor Crippen, which also won the New York Fringe excellence award. When it was performed at Steppenwolf in 2011 the forensic scientist who discovered that the remains of Cora Crippen might not be Cora Crippen after all came to opening night where Emily debated him on what actually happened with the murder.
Other critically acclaimed productions include The Dastardly Ficus and Other Comedic Tales of Woe and Misery, Mr. Spacky, the Man Who Was Continuously Followed by Wolves, The Mysterious Elephant, and more. You can still find productions of her work across the country. The local Denver theater group The Catamounts, have performed both Dr. Crippen and Mr. Spacky, and the Three Faces of Doctor Crippen has a performance in the planning stages for 2024.
Currently Emily is mostly a professional event planner and mom to four year old Henry to whom she is passing on her love of the strange and unusual. She recently wrote an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland for the Latin school of Chicago, and is working on a children's book. Emily has known Sarah for approximately 50 or 60 years
Here are some conversation starters and questions to get you thinking about the book!
The story was partly inspired by the shocking real-life kidnapping case involving the Charles Lindbergh baby. In 1932, aviator Charles Lindbergh’s 20-month old son was held for a $50,000 ransom. The ransom was paid, but Lindbergh’s son was later found dead. The case captivated and outraged the American public. What are the similarities and differences between the real-life story and the fictional account in this book?
Which character did you identify with most in Murder on the Orient Express? If you had to choose to be one of the characters on the Orient Express, who would you choose, and why? Or would you choose another alias altogether?
One of the early assumptions that Dr. Constantine, the Greek doctor, and M. Bouc make about the murderer is that it must have been either a woman or Antonio Foscarelli, the American of Italian descent. The narrator even says Foscarelli has a “typical looking Italian face, sunny looking and swarthy.” What role do stereotypes play in the novel?
The characters in Murder on the Orient Express are traveling from Syria to Istanbul and on to Calais and then London. Why did Agatha Christie set the murder on a train? What does the train symbolize in the novel?
The characters constantly reference America. Colonel Arbuthnot calls Americans “sentimental and idealistic.” Mr. Hardman says, “Europe wants waking up. She’s half asleep.” What does America symbolize in the book? How does diversity shape American culture? How is this diversity shown through the passengers, and how does it affect Poirot’s investigation of the case?
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Stay mysterious...
Karen Pierce, a detective-fiction devotee, food lover, and Agatha Christie superfan, has attended and volunteered at several Anthony Boucher Memorial World Mystery Conventions and has taken pilgrimages to Torquay and Greenway House, Christie’s hometown and home. Pierce lives in Toronto, Canada.
Drink and dine with recipes inspired by the best-selling novelist of all time in Recipes for Murder: 66 Dishes That Celebrate the Mysteries of Agatha Christie, by Karen Pierce (Countryman; Aug 22, 2023).
Poisons, knives, and bullets riddle the stories of Agatha Christie, but so does food, which she uses to invoke settings, to develop characters, and, of course, to commit murder. This to-die-for cookbook offers recipes written by the author for one accessible, easy-to-follow dish or drink for each of Christie’s 66 mysteries. Recipes include Fish and Chips at the Seven Dials Club, Literary Luncheon Meringues, Oysters Rockefeller on the Orient Express, Sixpence Blackbird Pie, Orange Marmalade from Gossington Hall, and more. Along the way, you’ll learn how to make an exquisite omelet, how to roast a leg of lamb properly, and how to serve perfectly timed steak frites.
Framing these dishes are insightful essays and headnotes that detail the history of the recipes, their context in Christie’s life and times, and the roles they play in the source works. Based on extensive research and investigation, all dishes appear traditional to their respective eras, so steak fried for 1923 but marinated and grilled for 1964. Completing the collection, thematic menus assemble recipes for a Halloween murder mystery gathering, a “Christie for Christmas,” a book club buffet, and other occasions, making it a filling tribute to the grand dame of detective fiction.
Join us as Carolyn, Sarah & Karen dive into this delicious volume, and discuss all things Agatha Christie!
Follow Karen on social @recipesformurder
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Stay mysterious...
Karen Pierce, a detective-fiction devotee, food lover, and Agatha Christie superfan, has attended and volunteered at several Anthony Boucher Memorial World Mystery Conventions and has taken pilgrimages to Torquay and Greenway House, Christie’s hometown and home. Pierce lives in Toronto, Canada.
Drink and dine with recipes inspired by the best-selling novelist of all time in Recipes for Murder: 66 Dishes That Celebrate the Mysteries of Agatha Christie, by Karen Pierce (Countryman; Aug 22, 2023).
Poisons, knives, and bullets riddle the stories of Agatha Christie, but so does food, which she uses to invoke settings, to develop characters, and, of course, to commit murder. This to-die-for cookbook offers recipes written by the author for one accessible, easy-to-follow dish or drink for each of Christie’s 66 mysteries. Recipes include Fish and Chips at the Seven Dials Club, Literary Luncheon Meringues, Oysters Rockefeller on the Orient Express, Sixpence Blackbird Pie, Orange Marmalade from Gossington Hall, and more. Along the way, you’ll learn how to make an exquisite omelet, how to roast a leg of lamb properly, and how to serve perfectly timed steak frites.
Framing these dishes are insightful essays and headnotes that detail the history of the recipes, their context in Christie’s life and times, and the roles they play in the source works. Based on extensive research and investigation, all dishes appear traditional to their respective eras, so steak fried for 1923 but marinated and grilled for 1964. Completing the collection, thematic menus assemble recipes for a Halloween murder mystery gathering, a “Christie for Christmas,” a book club buffet, and other occasions, making it a filling tribute to the grand dame of detective fiction.
Join us as Carolyn, Sarah & Karen dive into this delicious volume!
Follow Karen on social @recipesformurder
Support the show
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Stay mysterious...
The Case of the Velvet Claws (1933) introduces criminal defense lawyer and detective Perry Mason and Della Street, his secretary. Perry is hired by Eva Belter, who’s being blackmailed and soon falls under suspicion for murder.
The book sets the stage for one of the most popular series in crime fiction history. Author Erle Stanley Gardner went on to write 150 books that sold 300 million copies worldwide.
Read: Buy it on Amazon. (Read time: ~4 hours)
Reflect: Check out the conversation starters below..
Here are some conversation starters and questions to get you thinking about The Case of the Velvet Claws!
Book Comparison – The Case of the Velvet Claws vs. The Maltese Falcon
Two books leap to mind as a comparison to Velvet Claws. The first is The Maltese Falcon. The second is The Innocence of Father Brown. In many ways, The Case of the Velvet Claws mirrors The Maltese Falcon. There’s a hardboiled detective in a sparsely furnished office, his Girl Friday faithful secretary, and a vicious, double-crossing, beautiful lady client. Each secretary even chides him on his behavior. Della Street is Effie Perine-like. Her eyes see far below the surface.
Then the contrasts begin. Effie Perine in The Maltese Falcon is totally taken in by the wonderful Miss Wonderly. Her feminine intuition is way off. Della immediately hates Eva Belter and spends most of the book excoriating her.
When both secretaries chide their “chief,” it’s for not doing enough for their client. When Effie scolds Sam, Effie doesn’t understand that Wonderly is a cold-blooded murderer and feels that Sam betrayed her by turning her over to the cops. When Della scolds Perry Mason in The Case of the Velvet Claws, she understands exactly what Eva is but feels that Perry has somehow betrayed himself and his own ethics.
In The Maltese Falcon, Wonderly is Sam’s love interest, the woman he’s drawn to in spite of everything. One feels that if he ever wanted to settle down into a stable domestic life, he should probably go for an Effie, but that’s not who he is, and Effie’s love goes unrequited.
Perry, on the other hand, ignores several of Eva’s attempts at flirtation. Instead, it’s Della who he loves and whose respect he craves.
Whereas Spade can blow Effie off for being on the wrong track, Perry pleads with Della to have confidence in him.
What Most Attorneys Are Like …
In The Case of the Velvet Claws, Mason tells Eva, “Most of the attorneys that you’ve consulted have had expensive suites of offices and a lot of clerks running in and out. You’ve paid them big money and haven’t had anything much to show for it. They’ve bowed and scraped when you came in the room, and charged you big retainers. But when you get in a real jam you don’t dare to go to them.”
“I’m different. I get my business because I fight for it, and because I fight for my clients. … People that come to me don’t come to me because they like the looks of my eyes, or the way my office is furnished, or because they’ve known me at a club. They come to me because they need me.”
grace sigma
Consultancy specializing in lean process, systems design, data storytelling, and data visualization.
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Carolyn & Sarah are thrilled to speak with author Gary Braver on his latest mystery: Rumor of Evil. Just in time for spooky season, it was selected as one of Amazon Editors' Pick of Best Mysteries of October.
Gary Braver has been touted as “one of the best thriller writers in America.” His novels have been translated into seventeen languages; three have been optioned for movies, including Elixir by director Ridley Scott. And he is the only author to have three books listed on the top-10 highest customer-rated thrillers on Amazon.com at the same time.
Now, on the heels of the bestseller CHOOSE ME, Braver brings us his latest title, the “unpredictable whodunit” (Publishers Weekly) RUMOR OF EVIL.
Detectives Kirk Lucian and Mandy Wing are charged with investigating a reported suicide of a Cambridge, Massachusetts woman in her backyard on the anniversary of her young son’s death. After further investigation, the hanging appears staged. Once Kirk and Mandy' s suspicions are confirmed, they make a list of suspects. Clues begin to connect the recent murder to the decades-old mysterious death of a beautiful 16-year-old Romany exchange student who perished when a treehouse she was asleep in caught fire. The girl, Vadima Lupescu, had done “odd” things among her American peers that stirred up prejudices and suspicions, leading to her brutal death— and cover-up. As Kirk and Mandy investigate the bizarre rumors— that Vadima had “gypsy powers” and put curses on those around her— they discover a cauldron of dark secrets. Will they uncover the true cause of this tangled web of deaths and horrors before it spirals out of control?
Gary Braver is the award-winning, international bestselling author of nine critically acclaimed medical thrillers and mysteries. His novels have been celebrated for their high-concepts, careful craftsmanship, well-rounded characters, and page-turning momentum. His novel FLASHBACK, which received a starred review in Publishers Weekly, is the only thriller to have won a Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction. His previous book, CHOOSE ME (co-authored with Tess Gerritsen) was a #1 bestseller on Kindle and a bestseller in several foreign countries.
Under his own name, Gary Goshgarian is an award-winning Professor Emeritus of English at Northeastern University where he taught Fiction Writing, Science Fiction, Horror Fiction, and Bestsellers. He has also taught fiction-writing workshops throughout the United States and Europe and was founder of the London Writers Workshop. He is the author of six popular college writing textbooks.
Goshgarian holds a Bachelor’s of Science degree in physics from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, an MA in English from the University of Connecticut, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Wisconsin. He lives in Arlington, MA with his family. To learn more about him and his novels, visit www.garybraver.com.
Join us as we chat with Gary about what inspired him to write this story, authors that influence him, his writing process, and more!
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Malice Aforethought is considered one of the first examples of the “inverted detective story.” Here, both the murder AND murderer are revealed at the beginning. The intrigue builds as the reader sees how the detective unravels the clues to solve the mystery.
Published in 1931, the book ranks #16 in the Crime Writers’ Association’s Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time.
Read: Buy it used or new on Amazon. (Read time: ~4 hours)
Reflect: Check out the conversation starters below.
Our Guest: Nate Harrison is a Geophysicist that works in the field of environmental remediation. He grew up in Palo Alto, California and attended college at the University of California at Davis and graduate school at the University of Montana. He's been living in Denver for the past 16 years now where he met his wife Sarah. In addition to geology and the environmental work Nate enjoys hobbies such as biking and photography. His primary interests today include being a father to his two children and working on the house that he and his wife helped design and build.
Desire and Obsession
Infatuated with Madeleine, Teddy in Malice Aforethought is willing to take extreme measures to be with her. Ivy pretends to be pregnant. Chatford goes to Scotland Yard.
At first, Teddy isn’t even attracted to her (she’s nondescript and dowdily dressed). However, she’s described as “one of those fortunate people who can make every stranger feel that he or she is the person they’ve been longing in secret all their lives to meet.” She’s also very deferential, a throwback in a day and age that’s increasingly feeling “modern.” (“she never said a single word about her own aspirations and accomplishments. Yes, a girl like this was to be met only once in a lifetime.”)
Infatuation grows into obsession. Teddy leads a rich fantasy life. He dreams of being summoned to Buckingham Palace — Lord Bickleigh, the greatest surgeon, tennis player, and artist of all time. What starts out as a life without Julia fantasy morphs into a how to murder Julia fantasy. Were you able to identify with this sort of fantasy life? Do you have any idea seeds that grow to become consuming?
Human Psychology
Anthony Berkeley Cox, author of Malice Aforethought, was known for his dry, sardonic wit and looked “beyond the straightforward puzzle aspect of the classic British Golden Age mystery and had begun to examine the psychological aspects of his protagonists” (Barry Forshaw). He was more interested in the puzzle of character than of plot (time, place, motive, and opportunity).
Malice Aforethought delves into the psychology of the murderer, the dark corners of the human mind, and the fine line between sanity and madness.
Teddy has what they call an inferiority complex. “In these days of glib reference to complexes, repressions, and fixations on every layman’s lips, it is not to be supposed that Dr Bickleigh did not know what was the matter with him. He could diagnose an inferiority complex, … But to diagnose is not to cure.” (p28) These words ring so true these days as well. Daily references to diagnoses of the self and others. What is the power of a diagnosis? Is a cure something we even work toward?
Teddy “liked to be liked by the people he liked – and he did like most people.” (p30)
Carolyn Daughters
Brand therapy. Persuasive writing courses. Tell the best story possible.
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Welcome to the Tea, Tonic & Toxin book club and podcast! Our focus is the history of mystery. We’re reading and discussing the best mysteries, detective stories, and thrillers ever written.
Malice Aforethought is considered one of the first examples of the “inverted detective story.” Both the murder AND murderer are revealed at the beginning. The intrigue builds as the reader sees how the murderer’s scheme starts to falls apart.
Published in 1931, the book ranks #16 in the Crime Writers’ Association Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time.
Read: Buy it used or new on Amazon. (Read time: ~4 hours)
Reflect: Check out the conversation starters below.
Here are some questions about Malice Aforethought to get you started. Read, reflect, weigh in above, and listen to the podcast!
Detection Club
Anthony Berkeley Cox, author of Malice Aforethought, was one of the founding members of the Detection Club, formed in 1930. Members included Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Hugh Walpole, E. C. Bentley, and Baroness Emma Orczy. Berkeley Cox came up with the idea of fellow crime writers gathering for dinner. The first president was G. K. Chesterton. The club aimed to provide a social gathering for crime writers and use its influence to promote high standards.
Dorothy Sayers wrote the initiation oath: “Do you promise that your detectives shall well and truly detect the crimes presented to them using those wits which it may please you to bestow upon them and not placing reliance on nor making use of Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence, or Act of God?”
At first, the Detection Club restricted membership to respectable detective novelists. The club eventually relaxed the qualification criteria and now allows writers of spy thrillers, etc. Today, the Detection Club still holds regular meetings in London.
Inverted Mystery
Malice Aforethought is an inverted mystery, which is a mystery that reveals the murderer early in the story. The real mystery of the story is why the murder was committed or how the murderer is caught. Here are the opening lines: “It was not until several weeks after he had decided to murder his wife that Dr. Bickleigh took any active steps in the matter. Murder is a serious business. The slightest slip may be disastrous. Dr. Bickleigh had no intention of risking disaster.”
How did you feel about getting all this information right up front?
Deception
In Malice Aforethought, Teddy maintains the façade of a devoted husband while secretly planning his wife’s murder. Characters manipulate and betray others to achieve their desires.
Beyond external deception there is the deep self-deception that Teddy practices. I was often reminded of George Costanza: “It’s not a lie if you believe it.” Teddy sees his petty degradations in a grandiose light. His petty affairs he sees as finding the “one woman in the world he ought to have married
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Stay mysterious...
Tea, Tonic, and Toxin is a book club and podcast for people who love mysteries, thrillers, introspection, and good conversation. Each month, your hosts, Sarah Harrison and Carolyn Daughters, will discuss a game-changing mystery or thriller from the 19th and 20th centuries. Together, we’ll see firsthand how the genre evolved.
Along the way, we’ll entertain ideas, prospects, theories, doubts, and grudges, along with the occasional guest. And we hope to entertain you, dear friend. We want you to experience the joys of reading some of the best mysteries and thrillers ever written.
Consider Subscribing for an on-air shout out and merch!
Thanks to our Sponsor! gracesigma.com: Consultancy specializing in lean process improvement, continuous improvement, Six Sigma, systems design, metric development, data storytelling, and data visualization.
Meet our guest:
Mike Nugent has worked as a lawyer, lobbyist, litigator and business executive in the
technology, intellectual property and financial services fields, and has always worked at being a writer. He has self-published three political mystery novels and has a fourth about to be submitted. He has self-published a children’s book and has had several short stories published in various journals in the US and abroad, one of which he’s turned into a short screenplay. One of his books was a Writers & Readers Magazine’s Authorlink! Featured Thriller for two straight months and another made it to the semifinalist round in the 2015 James Jones First Novel Fellowship contest, meaning it was selected in the top 30 of over 675 submissions.
Mike’s work can be found at amazon.com/author/pmnugent.
https://www.facebook.com/pmnudge
Mike is a member of Lighthouse Writers’ Workshop in Denver, Colorado where he completed a 2-year Book Project program on writing novels led by 2023 Edgar Award winner Erika Krouse. He lives near the Jersey Shore.
THAT ENDING: Spade tried to turn the thugs against each other - In the end, Spade sees right through Brigid. Like the Op, nothing escapes his attention. How do you interpret Spade’s actions in the final scene?
THE FLITCRAFT PARABLE: Is the search for meaning futile in our chaotic, unpredictable, morally ambiguous world? Here’s the story Spade tells Brigid. Back in 1922, a man named Flitcraft left his real estate office in Tacoma and never returned. In 1927, Mrs. Flitcraft came to the detective agency where Spade was then working, claiming someone had seen a man in Spokane that looked like her husband. Spade checked it out, and sure enough the man was Flitcraft. Going by the name Charles Pierce, Flitcraft had a car business, a wife, and a baby son. Flitcraft explained to Spade that one day he was walking down the sidewalk when a beam fell from a construction site and almost killed him. Though he wasn’t seriously injured, the incident made him realize that we can die at random at any time. “He felt like somebody had taken the lid off life and let him look at the works.” He decided to change his own life at random by simply disappearing. After drifting around the country for several years, he settled in Spokane and got married. Spade is fascinated by the fact that Flitcraft’s new life wasn’t that different from his previous life. “He adjusted himself to beams falling, and then no more of them fell, and he adjusted himself to them not falling.” (Ch.7)
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Published in 1930, The Maltese Falcon is gritty, gripping noir at its best. As far as detective stories go, this one’s a game changer.
Detective Sam Spade’s cool, cynical nature turned him into one of the most memorable characters in literature and film, most notably the 1941 release starring Humphrey Bogart. Both the book and the movie are stunners.
Read: Buy it used or new on Amazon. (Read time: ~4 hours)
Reflect: Check out the conversation starters below.
Meet our guest:
Mike Nugent has worked as a lawyer, lobbyist, litigator and business executive in the
technology, intellectual property and financial services fields, and has always worked at being a writer. He has self-published three political mystery novels and has a fourth about to be submitted. He has self-published a children’s book and has had several short stories published in various journals in the US and abroad, one of which he’s turned into a short screenplay. One of his books was a Writers & Readers Magazine’s Authorlink! Featured Thriller for two straight months and another made it to the semifinalist round in the 2015 James Jones First Novel Fellowship contest, meaning it was selected in the top 30 of over 675 submissions.
Mike’s work can be found at amazon.com/author/pmnugent.
https://www.facebook.com/pmnudge
Mike is a member of Lighthouse Writers’ Workshop in Denver, Colorado where he completed a 2-year Book Project program on writing novels led by 2023 Edgar Award winner Erika Krouse.
He lives near the Jersey Shore.
WRITING STYLE + NOIR MYSTERY: Spade’s gruff “matter of fact” voice lacks any sign of emotion and seems hyper-masculine, modern, and American. The Maltese Falcon’s mystery at the center of the story – how is it different from prior (pre-1929) mystery styles? Does it hold up? Do Hammett’s writing craft, methods, and tricks work?
SANITARIUMS, SAN QUENTIN & SAN FRANCISCO: Spade tells Brigid, “Most things in San Francisco can be bought, or taken.” (Ch.6) How important is the novel’s setting in The Maltese Falcon?
“Cold steamy air blew in through two open windows, bringing with it half a dozen times a minute the Alcatraz foghorn’s dull moaning. A tinny alarm-clock, insecurely mounted on a corner of Duke’s Celebrated Criminal Cases of America—face down on the table—held its hands at five minutes past two.” (Ch.2)
“This is my city and my game. I could manage to land on my feet—sure—this time, but the next time I tried to put over a fast one they’d stop me so fast I’d swallow my teeth. Hell with that. You birds’ll be in New York or Constantinople or some place else. I’m in business here.” (Ch.18)
SAM SPADE: He’s 6’ tall and “looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan.” What’s his moral code? Is it hard (impossible?) to have one in so violent a world as the one in The Maltese Falcon? In Ch.12, he says he’s “no damned good.” Is that true? Is he a hero? Anti-hero?
“It’s tough, him getting it like that. Miles had his faults same as the rest of us, but I guess he must’ve had some good points too.” [Tom Polhaus speaking]
“I guess so,” Spade agreed in a tone that was utterly meaningless ….” (Ch.2)
“Have the Spade & Archer taken off the door and Samuel Spade put on.” (Ch.3)
Spade stopped pacing the floor. He put his hands on his hips and glared at the girl. He addressed her in a loud savage voice: “Nobody followed her. Do you think I’m a God-damned schoolboy? I made sure of it before I put her in the cab, I rode a dozen blocks with her to be more sure, and I checked her another half-dozen blocks after I got out.”
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Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett (1929) marked Hammett’s transition from short stories to novels. His portrayal of the Continental Op as a “hard-boiled” detective eventually became a prototype for many detective stories to come. A former detective, Hammett knew his stuff.
Read: Buy it used or on Amazon. (Reading time: ~4 hours)
Reflect: Check out the conversation starters below.
A+ Detective Work
“What kind of gunman would use a .32 [to kill Donald Willsson]?” (Albury used the bank gun; he knew about certified check; he called Mrs. Willsson and Whisper.)
“[Tim Noonan] didn’t say Whisper. I’ve heard women call Thaler Max, but I’ve never heard a man here call him anything but Whisper. Tim didn’t say Max. He said MacS—the first part of MacSwain—and died before he could finish it.”
The old man laughed savagely and began blustering again. …
I laughed at him. Now I had it. The old boy was scared stiff. Fright was the something behind his clowning. That was why he blustered, and why he wouldn’t let them take the body away. He wanted it there to look at, to keep panic away, visible proof of his ability to defend himself. I knew where I stood.
The Op’s Goal: Harvest
The Op’s job is technically over after he figures out that Albury murdered Donald (roughly 1/3 the way through the book). Yet the Op decides to stay in town to clean up the city. The word “harvest” is used metaphorically to refer to the Continental Op’s retributive and diabolical plan to turn everyone against each other.
“I don’t like the way Poisonville has treated me. I’ve got my chance now, and I’m going to even up. … You want to be let alone. There was a time when I wanted to be let alone. If I had been, maybe now I’d be riding back to San Francisco. But I wasn’t. Especially I wasn’t let alone by that fat Noonan. He’s had two tries at my scalp in two days. … Now it’s my turn to run him ragged, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Poisonville is ripe for the harvest. It’s a job I like, and I’m going to it.” (Op to Dinah)
The Op’s Plan: Turn the Thugs Against One Other
“Personville had only some forty thousand inhabitants. It shouldn’t be hard to spread news. Ten o’clock found me out spreading it.”
Noonan says: “Everybody’s killing everybody. Where’s it going to end? I’m sick of this butchering. I can’t stand any more of it.” The Op manipulates Noonan, suggesting a “peace conference out of which at least a dozen killings ought to grow.” Noonan, Elihu, Whisper, Pete the Finn, and Reno Starkey attend. Elihu suggests a frank conversation “without turning Personville into a slaughterhouse.”
“I’ve got to have a wedge that can be put between Pete and Yard, Yard and Noonan, Pete and Noonan, Pete and Thaler …. If we can smash things up enough—break the combination—they’ll have their knives in each other’s backs, doing our work for us.”
“[E]verybody sat around and behaved and watched everybody else while I juggled death and destruction.” (20.32)
Is the Op cleaning up Personville, or is he complicit in poisoning Personville? Is he a hero? An antihero? Something else altogether?
The Fascinating Femme Fatale
A femme fatale (“deadly woman”) is attractive, aggressive, and sexually provocative. In Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett, Dinah uses her charms to serve her own interests, but Hammett complicates her in surprising ways. Dinah has lots of “boyfriends,” including the narrator, but there’s zero sexual tension. She also doesn’t look like the typical femme fatale. Why is she so obsessed with getting more money? How do you feel about Dinah – and why?
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Welcome to the Tea, Tonic & Toxin book club and podcast! Our focus is the history of mystery. We’re reading and discussing the best mysteries, detective stories, and thrillers ever written.
Time Magazine included Red Harvest as one of the 100 Best English-Language Novels from 1923-2005, noting Dashiell Hammett created the prototype for the hard-boiled sleuth.
The book surely belongs on any list of the best crime fiction ever written. The morally ambiguous Continental Op and the self-serving Dinah Brand are amazing characters, to boot.
Read: Buy it used or on Amazon. (Reading time: ~4 hours)
Reflect: Check out the conversation starters below.
Language, Voice, and Tone
- Hammett had worked as an operative for Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency. The narrator is an operative (PI) of the Continental Detective Agency’s San Francisco office. He’s one of the first hardboiled detectives, followed by Hammett’s Sam Spade, Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, and many others.
- “Poisonville’s prize fighting was done in a big wooden ex-casino in what had once been an amusement park on the edge of town. When I got there at eight-thirty, most of the population seemed to be on hand, packed tight in close rows of folding chairs on the main floor, packed tighter on benches in two dinky balconies. Smoke. Stink. Heat. Noise.”
- In an Atlantic essay, Ted Gioia talks about the transition from an Anglocentric to an American world. “No one told stories in that crisp, uncluttered way before 1926 [publication year of The Sun Also Rises]. But soon, other ways of pushing a narrative forward would seem slow-paced and old-fashioned.”
Booze and Blood
Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett is set during Prohibition (1919-1933), which banned the manufacture, transport, and sale of alcohol. This ban led to unprecedented levels of organized crime. Racketeering and bootlegging became widespread problems across the US.
Characters drink constantly, including the Op, who always carries a flask of Scotch. The entire town revolves around the black market. The Op also drinks laudanum (opium tincture) with Dinah the night after the big meeting with all the local gangsters.
In 1921, “To beat the miners [and end a labor strike], [Elihu] had to let his hired thugs run wild. … They took the city for their spoils.” Personville becomes Poisonville when lives are expendable. “[S]warthy foreign-looking men in laborers’ clothes” are used as decoys, and they’re all killed. Home isn’t a sanctuary. No one is safe indoors or out.
In Personville, Honest Man → Cop → Criminal
What is it about being in Personville that turns a cop into a criminal? Do they see too much corruption and become disillusioned? Is the lust for power contagious? Is it possible for a code of ethics to exist in a place as corrupt as Personville?
Dinah says: “I knew the dick—MacSwain. […] He had been a pretty good guy, straight as ace-deuce-trey-four-five, till he got on the force. Then he went the way of the rest of them. (11)
The Perfect Guy for the Cleanup Job
In Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett, Elihu Willsson hires the Op to clean up Personville. The Op agrees so long as he can “have a free hand—no favors to anybody—run the job as I pleased.” Only a stranger like the Op has no motives tied to the town. The Op is the only person in Poisonville who can rid the city of its crime.
What’s his attitude toward power and wealth? What’s his moral code?
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The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) has become known as one of Agatha Christie’s most controversial novels due to an unexpected stunner of a twist at the end. Christie considered it her masterpiece.
In 2013, the British Crime Writers’ Association voted it the best crime novel ever written.
Read: Buy it used, read it for free, or get it on Amazon. (Reading time: ~4 hours)
Reflect: Check out the conversation starters below.
Weigh In: Share your thoughts using the comments below!
Our guest: Simon Eli Milliman - aka the mythical white panther who cries.
Host of the podcast Everything I Hate About Me.Urban Jack of Urban Jack Productions
Check out these Marrow recipes from the BBC and get in touch with your inner HP!
Obsession, Guilt, and Redemption: Mrs. Ferrars and Dr. Sheppard relentlessly pursue their desires, even at the cost of their health, morality, and sanity. Compulsive behavior drives people to commit acts they might not otherwise consider, leading to tragic outcomes. Mrs. Ferrars grapples with guilt and the need for redemption; Dr. Sheppard arguably does not. Past actions haunt them nonetheless. Their choices have consequences.
“not that I take any responsibility for Mrs. Ferrar’s death. It was the direct consequence of her own actions. I feel no pity for her. I have no pity for myself either.”
A woman trapped in an abusive marriage murders her husband. Roger Ackroyd was horrified. How do you feel? Is there any quarter for pity here?
A woman trapped in an abusive marriage murders her husband. You see an opening to take advantage of this knowledge. Do you consider blackmail? How do you approach it?
Shepherd has no pity for himself either. How is this possible? Is he truly this consistent in his “weakness?” It’s fair, but is it possible?
When do you pity yourself?
The Big Reveal:
“A person who was at the Three Boars earlier that day, a person who knew Ackroyd well enough to know that he had purchased a dictaphone, a person who was of a mechanical turn of mind, who had the opportunity to take the dagger from the silver table before Miss Flora arrived, who had with him a receptacle suitable for hiding the dictaphone—such as a black bag, and who had the study to himself for a few minutes after the crime was discovered while Parker was telephoning for the police. In fact—Dr. Sheppard!”
My first time reading this book I was completely stumped and never saw it coming. Were you surprised?
I wondered what my second reading would be like. I rarely read or watch things a second time. Would it feel just as obfuscated to me as before? I was surprised to find it glaring off the pages! Page after page, she points to the doctor. If you’ve read it more than once, how was your second reading?
Is it really just the concept of the unreliable narrator that makes one so blind to the possibility that Sheppard did it?
Diabolical Doctors: Whose Body and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd have had the admired doctor as the murderer. Is it because no one would suspect him? Or because everyone should suspect him? A man with a lot of knowledge & opportunity.
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The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) has become known as one of Agatha Christie’s most controversial novels due to an unexpected stunner of a twist at the end. Christie considered it her masterpiece.
In 2013, the British Crime Writers’ Association voted it the best crime novel ever written.
Read: Buy it used, read it for free, or get it on Amazon. (Reading time: ~4 hours)
Reflect: Check out the conversation starters below.
Weigh In: Share your thoughts using the comments below!
Our guest: Simon Eli Milliman - To some, he’s known as the mythical white panther who cries. To others, he’s the host of the podcast Everything I Hate About Me. To others still, he’s Urban Jack of the synth pop band Urban Jack and the Savage Sophisticates, or the long-gone front man of Subterranean Howl. Music producer, photographer, and now director of theatrical productions -
Check out these Marrow recipes from the BBC and get in touch with your inner HP!
We All Have Something to Hide: Things aren’t always as they seem. Characters present themselves in one way but hide their true intentions and true selves beneath the surface. We all have something to hide, don’t we?
“Every one of you in this room is concealing something from me.” He raised his hand as a faint murmur of protest arose. “Yes, yes, I know what I am saying. It may be something unimportant—trivial—which is supposed to have no bearing on the case, but there it is. Each one of you has something to hide.”
What on Earth Is a Vegetable Marrow? A marrow is a cucurbit, which means it’s from the same family as the melon, cucumber, squash and courgette (zucchini). The marrow is actually a courgette that has been left on the plant to grow a little longer; likewise, if you pick a marrow when small, it’s classed as a courgette. Marrow has a creamy flesh, edible skin and seeds, and a mild flavour.
You can steam, bake, boil, fry or roast marrow. The stripy skin is edible, but if you are roasting or frying you might want to remove the seeds and stringy middles so you can just enjoy the flesh.
Have you ever eaten vegetable marrow? Do you garden? Have you ever given yourself over to gardening a single vegetable as an all-consuming hobby? If you were to garden a single food, what would that food be?
The Mongoose: Rudyard Kipling’s story “Ricki-Ticki-Tavi” is referenced, part of The Jungle Book (a story dear to my heart, having recently read it to my son). “Go & find out” or sit placidly at home and find out. Are you familiar with either of these two types of personalities? Do you have one?
The Intelligence Corps: Miss Marple: Agatha Christie said Caroline was her favorite character and her inspiration to create the character of Miss Marple. How do you feel about Caroline? Have you read any Miss Marple?
“I was able to set M. Poirot right upon several points. He was very grateful to me. He said I had the makings of a born detective in me—and a wonderful psychological insight into human nature.”
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WHOSE BODY?by Dorothy Sayers
Dorothy Sayers’ Whose Body? is the first of 16 detective novels published by Sayers, one of the queens of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.
This 1923 novel introduces Lord Peter Wimsey, considered the father of the amateur “gentleman sleuth” who will appear in many British novels for decades to come.
Read: Buy it used, read it for free, or get it on Amazon. (Reading time: ~4 hours)
Reflect: Check out the conversation starters below.
Weigh In: Share your thoughts using the form below!
THE GAME IS AFOOT … BUT SHOULD IT BE A GAME? So much to unpack here … For one thing, Wimsey seems self-aware. For another, Parker seems to have no qualms about calling him out. It’s a great scene in Whose Body?
ASSOCIATIONS AND RIDDLES – “Thing I object to in detective stories,” said Mr. Piggott, “is the way fellows remember every bloomin’ thing that’s happened to ’em within the last six months. They’re always ready with their time of day and was it rainin’ or not, and what were they doin’ on such an’ such a day. Reel it all off like a page of poetry. But one ain’t like that in real life … One day’s so like another, I’m sure I couldn’t remember—well, I might remember yesterday, p’r’aps, but I couldn’t be certain about what I was doin’ last week if I was to be shot for it.”
… “But they don’t really get it like that, you know. I mean, a man doesn’t just say, ‘Last Friday I went out at 10 a.m. to buy a mutton chop. As I was turning into Mortimer Street I noticed a girl of about twenty-two with black hair and brown eyes, wearing a green jumper, check skirt, Panama hat and black shoes, riding a Royal Sunbeam Cycle at about ten miles an hour turning the corner by the Church of St. Simon and St. Jude on the wrong side of the road riding towards the market place!’ It amounts to that, of course, but it’s really wormed out of him by a series of questions.”
Then Wimsey and Parker worm the details out of Piggott through a series of questions.
CORPSES FOR MEDICAL RESEARCH AND SCIENTIFIC STUDY – In Whose Body?, we learn that bodies used for medical research were usually vagrants supplied by the workhouses and free hospitals. Whoa.
PANIC ATTACKS AND PTSD – So, such much to unpack here. What, if anything, surprised you about these scenes? Did Wimsey’s experience seem real to you?
WHAT DOES “BEING USEFUL” LOOK LIKE? What do we learn from the scene below? What does being useful actually look like? Is Gerald useful? Is the Duchess useful? How about Lord Peter Wimsey? Are you useful? Am I?
THE STRANGE + CREEPY SIR JULIAN FREKE – Carolyn would argue Freke made roughly 142 bad decisions, any one of which might have made him a suspect. (He swapped the bodies, risked being seen or heard by his servants, risked being seen in the Levy house, risked being seen as he deposited the body in a random bathtub …)
Tea, Tonic, and Toxin is a book club and podcast for people who love mysteries, thrillers, introspection, and good conversation. Each month, your hosts, Sarah Harrison and Carolyn Daughters, will discuss a game-changing mystery or thriller from the 19th and 20th centuries. Together, we’ll see firsthand how the genre evolved.
Along the way, we’ll entertain ideas, prospects, theories, doubts, and grudges, along with the occasional guest. And we hope to entertain you, dear friend. We want you to experience the joys of reading some of the best mysteries and thrillers ever written.
Visit Carolyndaughters.com for Brand therapy. Persuasive writing courses. Fractional chief marketing officer (CMO) strategy for
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Welcome to the Tea, Tonic & Toxin book club and podcast! We’re reading and discussing the best mysteries and detective stories ever written.
Whose Body? (1921) is the first of 16 detective novels published by Sayers, one of the queens of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. The story introduces Lord Peter Wimsey, considered the father of the amateur “gentleman sleuth” who will appear in many British novels for decades to come.
Can Wimsey solve a seemingly unsolvable murder? Can you?
Here are some conversation starters and questions here. Please also share your thoughts using the form above!
IS LORD PETER WIMSEY A “TYPICAL ARISTOCRAT”? Did you find Wimsey delightful? Did he bug you? Did he seem like a “typical aristocrat,” or did he seem more complex? Were you able to identify with him? In what ways — and why?
IS BUNTER A TYPICAL SERVANT? What is a “typical servant,” and does Bunter fit that bill? Is Bunter better off than Wimsey (as Wimsey suggests)? In what ways does Bunter hearken back to old-fashioned norms? In what ways is Bunter possibly ahead of his time? And what does Bunter really think about anything?
WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH INSPECTOR PARKER? How well do we get to know this guy? What’s his deal? (Throughout Whose Body?, Carolyn kept wanting to know him better.) Are you inclined to like him? Why or why not? (He will return in future stories, including The Nine Tailors.)
DETECTIVE WIMSEY, INSPECTOR PARKER, AND THE BODY IN THE BATH – Wimsey and Parker make quite the detective team. Do they seem on par as detectives, or do they seem Holmes/Watson-like (or Poirot/Hastings-like) to you? What familiar character traits do these two detectives have? What traits make their stand out?
TELLING THE STORY THROUGH DIALOGUE VS. ACTION – Whose Body? contains very little action. Characters sit and talk throughout most of the book. Telling story through action is a much more conventional storytelling technique — Carolyn would argue for good reason.
How did you feel about the dialogue that dominated the pages of Whose Body? Did you want more action? Did you follow the characters’ verbal tics and manners of expression? In what ways did the dialogue engage you or disengage you from the story?
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF REUBEN LEVY: ODE TO TRENT’S LAST CASE – Wealthy business magnate Reuben Levy bears some similarity to Sigsbee Manderson. Levy is the “terrible fighter of the Stock Exchange, who could with one nod set the surly bear dancing, or bring the savage bull to feed out of his hand, whose breath devastated whole districts with famine or swept financial potentates from their seats.” Levy left his home without his watch, checkbook, clothes, or spectacles. And someone impersonated him in his own home.
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The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) is the first Hercule Poirot mystery! Can Belgian detective Hercule Poirot solve an unsolvable crime? From the Times Literary Supplement (1921): “[The story] is said to be the result of a bet about the possibility of writing a detective story in which the reader would not be able to spot the criminal. Every reader must admit that the bet was won.”
Read: Buy it used, read it for free, or get it on Amazon. (Reading time: ~4 hours)
Reflect: Check out the conversation starters below.
Weigh In: Share your thoughts using the form below
We're excited to have Jill Carstens as a guest to discuss Agatha Christie's The Mysterious Affair at Styles! Jill is a journalist and an author of narrative nonfiction, and she was also a teacher for 30 years. These days, Jill is concentrating on memoir writing and painting. As she likes to say, "art and words can make a difference." An avid outdoor enthusiast, she has homes in both Denver and Salida, Colorado, where she, her husband, and her son spend as much time outside as possible.
You can find Jill on Instagram @lettersfrommissjill & @graphittirainbow
Welcome Jill!
A Funny Little Man with a Matter of Method: Hastings notes he “came across a man in Belgium once, a very famous detective …. He was a marvellous little fellow. He used to say that all good detective work was a mere matter of method. … He was a funny little man, a great dandy, but wonderfully clever.”
Later, Poirot says to Hastings, “Beware! Peril to the detective who says: ‘It is so small—it does not matter. It will not agree. I will forget it.’ That way lies confusion! Everything matters.”
Poirot also tells Hastings, “You gave too much rein to your imagination. Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master. The simplest explanation is always the most likely.”
Let’s talk about Hercule Poirot and his method.
The Worst Proposal Ever?
“Mr. Hastings—you are always so kind, and you know such a lot.”
“It struck me at this moment that Cynthia was really a very charming girl! Much more charming than Mary, who never said things of that kind.”
Hastings proposes. Cynthia laughs and walks away. And Carolyn is confounded by both Hastings and Cynthia. How about you?
Marriage as Escape: “[It] was a very good match for me. … [John] was simply a way of escape from the insufferable monotony of my life. … Don’t misunderstand me. I was quite honest with him. I told him, what was true, that I liked him very much, that I hoped to come to like him more, but that I was not in any way what the world calls ‘in love’ with him. He declared that that satisfied him, and so—we were married.”
Surrounded by Family and Yet Unloved:
In working so hard to cover tracks, neither Mary nor Lawrence seem to care about saving Mrs. Inglethorp. Hastings at one point asks, “Was the family prostrated by grief? Was the sorrow at Mrs. Inglethorp’s death so great? … The dead woman had not the gift of commanding love. Her death was a shock and a distress, but she would not be passionately regretted.” Mrs. Inglethorp thus dies with no one to truly mourn her.
Evie says, “Emily was a selfish old woman in her way. She was very generous, but she always wanted a return. She never let people forget what she had done for them—and, that way she missed love. … I was on a different footing. I took my stand from the first. ‘So many pounds a year I’m worth to you. Well and good. … I kept my self-respect. And so, out of the whole bunch, I was the only one who could allow myself to be fond of her.”
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Welcome to the Tea, Tonic & Toxin book club and podcast! We’re reading and discussing the best mysteries and detective stories ever written.
The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) is the first Hercule Poirot mystery! From the Times Literary Supplement (1921): The story is “said to be the result of a bet about the possibility of writing a detective story in which the reader would not be able to spot the criminal. Every reader must admit that the bet was won.”
Can Hercule Poirot solve a seemingly unsolvable murder? Can you?
Read: Buy it used, read it for free, or get it on Amazon. (Reading time: ~4 hours)
Reflect: Check out the conversation starters below.
Weigh In: Share your thoughts using the form below!
We're excited to have Jill Carstens as a guest to discuss Agatha Christie's The Mysterious Affair at Styles! Jill is a journalist and an author of narrative nonfiction, and she was also a teacher for 30 years. These days, Jill is concentrating on memoir writing and painting. As she likes to say, "art and words can make a difference." An avid outdoor enthusiast, she has homes in both Denver and Salida, Colorado, where she, her husband, and her son spend as much time outside as possible.
You can find Jill on Instagram @lettersfrommissjill & @graphittirainbow
Welcome Jill!
Here are some questions about the first Hercule Poirot mystery to get you started. Read, reflect, weigh in above, and listen to the podcast!
Period and Setting: The first Hercule Poirot mystery is set during the Great War. We learn that Hastings was injured in the Great War. Mrs. Inglethorp runs dozens (hundreds?) of charitable societies, many of them war related, and she recites a war poem at an evening bazaar. Cynthia works in a dispensary at a Red Cross Hospital. Belgian refugees are in the area, including Poirot. War economies dictate that scrap paper is saved and sent away in sacks for recycling. In the second half of the book, Hastings takes a job at the War Office.
When Hastings first arrives at Styles Court, he writes, “As one looked out over the flat Essex country, lying so green and peaceful under the afternoon sun, it seemed almost impossible to believe that, not so very far away, a great war was running its appointed course. I felt I had suddenly strayed into another world.”
Hastings later notes, “The war was momentarily inactive, and the newspapers seized with avidity on this crime in fashionable life: ‘The Mysterious Affair at Styles’ was the topic of the moment.”
What do you find intriguing, surprising, or unsettling about the period in which the book is set and the book’s Styles Court setting?
Poe’s Narrator vs. Watson vs. Hastings: In what ways do these narrators differ? In what ways are they variations on a theme?
And start with Hastings’ lack of self-awareness. He notes, “I flatter myself that my first judgments are usually fairly shrewd.” He also notes, “The idea crossed my mind … that poor old Poirot was growing old. Privately I thought it lucky that he had associated with him someone of a more receptive type of mind.” And at one point he says, “My system is based on [Poirot’s]—though of course I have progressed rather further.”
And Hastings’ reason for writing: “[In] view of the world-wide notoriety which attended [the case], I have been asked, both by my friend Poirot and the family themselves, to write an account of the whole story. This, we trust, will effectually silence the sensational rumors which still persist.”
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When a freelance spy is murdered in Richard Hannay’s London flat, Richard Hannay goes on the run. Fearing for his life, his goal is to stay one step ahead of both the police and the spies who will stop at nothing to find him.
What are the thirty-nine steps, and can Richard Hannay manage to stay one step ahead of his pursuers?
Published in 1915, The Thirty-Nine Steps is one of the most popular espionage thrillers ever written.
Read: Buy it used, read it for free, or get it on Amazon. (Reading time: ~4 hours)
Reflect: Check out the conversation starters below.
An Ordinary Man as Hero: “Here was I, a very ordinary fellow, with no particular brains, and yet I was convinced that somehow I was needed to help this business through—that without me it would all go to blazes. I told myself it was sheer silly conceit, that … the cleverest people living, with all the might of the British Empire at their back, had the job in hand.”
Not Sherlock: Richard Hannay says, “I wasn’t any kind of Sherlock Holmes. But I have always fancied I had a kind of instinct … I used to use my brains as far as they went, and after they came to a blank wall I guessed, and I usually found my guesses pretty right.”
Scotland Is Dreamy: “We rumbled slowly into a land of little wooded glens and then to a great wide moorland place, gleaming with lochs, with high blue hills showing northwards.” I’m ready to board a plane — how about you?
Tea, Tonic, and Toxin is a book club and podcast for people who love mysteries, thrillers, introspection, and good conversation. Each month, your hosts, Sarah Harrison and Carolyn Daughters, will discuss a game-changing mystery or thriller from the 19th and 20th centuries. Together, we’ll see firsthand how the genre evolved.
Along the way, we’ll entertain ideas, prospects, theories, doubts, and grudges, along with the occasional guest. And we hope to entertain you, dear friend. We want you to experience the joys of reading some of the best mysteries and thrillers ever written.
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Welcome to the Tea, Tonic & Toxin book club and podcast! We’re reading and discussing the best mysteries and detective stories ever written.
The Thirty-Nine Steps, published in 1915, is one of the most popular espionage thrillers ever written. The action-packed story begins in May 1914. One day, our protagonist, Richard Hannay, finds a man named Franklin Scudder at the door of his London flat. Scudder is a freelance spy who has secret information about an assassination plot that could lead to a world war. Days later, Scudder is murdered in Hannay’s flat.
Fearing for his life, Hannay goes on the run. His goal: Stay one step ahead of both the police and the spies who will stop at nothing to find him.
Read: Buy it used, read it for free, or get it on Amazon. (Reading time: ~4 hours)
Reflect: Check out the conversation starters below.
A Real Page Turner: Sudden surprises, rapid scene shifts, and changes of location, all elements of any number of spy thrillers like The Bourne Identity and detective on the run stories like Poker Face.
The Brink of War: The book starts in May 1914. In the book’s dedication, author John Buchan says he has “long cherished an affection for that elementary type of tale which Americans call the ‘dime novel,’ and which we know as the ‘shocker’ – the romance where the incidents defy the probabilities, and march just inside the borders of the possible.” He also notes, “these days … the wildest fictions are so much less improbable than the facts.”
Moral Code – It’s a story of good and evil where a brave man unselfishly risks his life to honor a dead man and a patriotic cause. Richard Hannay says, “I am an ordinary sort of fellow, not braver than other people, but I hate to see a good man downed, and that long knife would not be the end of Scudder if I could play the game in his place.”
Yearning for Adventure: Richard Hannay, a 37-year-old Scotsman raised in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), returns to an England, where he quickly becomes bored. He envies shop-girls and clerks and policemen for having something to do.
Then Something Happens – The occupant of the flat upstairs, a Kentucky man named Franklin Scudder, tells of a well-financed anarchic conspiracy.
Escape from Boredom: Richard Hannay is happy to be on the run. “It was going to be a giddy hunt, and it was queer how the prospect comforted me. I had been slack so long that almost any chance of activity was welcome.” He feels lighthearted and childlike, relishing the intrigue. From that point on, it’s nonstop action – trains, stolen cars, bicycles, running on foot …
Hiding in Plain Sight – He hides out in a dovecote, as his enemies would assume he had made for open country and search for him on the moors.
The Milk of Human Kindness – When things look bleak, Richard Hannay finds sanctuary and unexpected allies. Goodhearted souls feed, clothe, and shelter him. Sir Henry, a liberal candidate, puts him in touch with his godfather. A roadman nurses him back to health over 10 days.
Judging the Person vs. the Story: Hannay “had made a practice of judging the man rather than the story.”
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Published in 1913, Trent’s Last Case is considered one of the first “whodunits” – stories in which new clues appear throughout, making it possible for readers to feel as if they’re solving the crime along with the detective. Also, this Philip Trent mystery includes a “less than perfect” sleuth – in contrast to Sherlock Holmes. Agatha Christie called it one of the three best mystery stories ever written.
Read: Buy it used, read it for free, or get it on Amazon. (Reading time: ~4 hours)
Reflect: Check out the conversation starters below.
Certainty of Achievement – “There are moments in life … when that which is within us … lets escape into consciousness some hint of a fortunate thing ordained. Who does not know what it is to feel at times a wave of unaccountable persuasion that it is about to go well with him [and] success is at hand … The general suddenly knows at dawn that the day will bring him victory; the man on the green suddenly knows that he will put down the long putt. As Trent mounted the stairway outside the library door he seemed to rise into certainty of achievement.” Ever feel certain of your own achievement — a gut sense that everything’s going your way?
Fear – The “only thing that held [Trent] back was fear of an unfamiliar task. To react against fear had become a fixed moral habit with him.” Can anyone identify? Carolyn sure can.
The Modern Woman – Cupples says, “I have observed a sort of imitative hardness out of the products of the higher education of women to-day which would carry them through anything.” However, he says Mabel is different – refined, reserved, and filled with “womanly mystery.” For his part, Trent “went through life full of a strange respect for certain feminine weakness and a very simple terror of certain feminine strength.” Bentley sure seems terrified of women …
Tea, Tonic, and Toxin is a book club and podcast for people who love mysteries, thrillers, introspection, and good conversation. Each month, your hosts, Sarah Harrison and Carolyn Daughters, will discuss a game-changing mystery or thriller from the 19th and 20th centuries. Together, we’ll see firsthand how the genre evolved.
Along the way, we’ll entertain ideas, prospects, theories, doubts, and grudges, along with the occasional guest. And we hope to entertain you, dear friend. We want you to experience the joys of reading some of the best mysteries and thrillers ever written.
https://www.instagram.com/teatonicandtoxin/
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Published in 1913, Trent’s Last Case is considered one of the first “whodunits” – stories in which new clues appear throughout, making it possible for readers to feel as if they’re solving the crime along with the detective. Also, this Philip Trent mystery includes a “less than perfect” sleuth – in contrast to Sherlock Holmes. Agatha Christie called it one of the three best mystery stories ever written.
Read: Buy it used, read it for free, or get it on Amazon. (Reading time: ~4 hours)
Reflect: Check out the conversation starters below.
Here are some conversation starters and questions. Also, be sure to share your thoughts using the form below (just scroll down)!
A Stepping Stone for the Genre with (Too?) Much Praise:
- G. K. Chesterton called it “The finest detective story of modern times.”
- Agatha Christie: “One of the three best detective stories ever written.”
- Dorothy Sayers: “It is the one detective story of the present century which I am certain will go down to posterity as a classic. It is a masterpiece.”
- New York Times: “One of the few genuine classics of detective fiction.”
The Anti-Detective Detective – Unlike G. K. Chesterton, Bentley wasn’t a fan of detective fiction. In fact, he disliked the detective fiction of his day, which he considered formulaic and humorless. Bentley wanted to create a detective who felt like a real human being with emotions. He didn’t want to create a quirky, analytical, infallible detective like Sherlock Holmes.
In this Philip Trent mystery, we’re told Trent is a famous detective. He had a “patrimony large enough to relieve him of the perilous imputation of being a struggling man.” He’s a cultured, successful painter and man about town. He analyzes clues and assumes he has solved the case. He falls in love with one of the suspects. He finds out “grave things … about [Manderson’s] death, things not suspected by anyone else ….” At the end, he learns that he reached the wrong conclusion.
Rival Detectives – Trent and Inspector Murch, one of “the ablest detectives at Scotland Yard,” are both interested in “the game,” which involved “strivings for the credit of the press and of the police.”
Trent’s Pretension – Trent points to a sentence in a letter he’s writing and notes only two words of more than one syllable: “This letter is meant to impress … We must have long words.” Words such as “terminological inexactitude,” a phrase introduced by Winston Churchill used as a euphemism for a lie or a substantially correct but technically inaccurate statement. Trent also likes to toss quotes from his favorite poems into “casual” conversations. Examples:
- I am blown along a wandering wind, / And hollow, hollow, hollow all delight.” – Tennyson, “Idylls of the King”
- “from childhood’s hour, / I’ve seen my fondest hopes decay;” Thomas Moore, “Lalla Rookh”
- “the dun deer’s hide / On fleeter foot was never tied.” Sir Walter Scott, The Lady of the Lake
- “drain not to its dregs the urn / Of bitter prophecy” Shelley, “Hellas”
Love at First Sight Leads to … Melodrama – “The two things that had taken [Trent] utterly by surprise in the matter of his feeling towards Mabel Manderson were the insane suddenness of its uprising in full strength and its extravagant hopelessness.”
Casual Racism – The book includes racist ramblings about Native American peoples and even a song about African American people. These ramblings made the story very hard to read at time.
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The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) is G. K. Chesterton’s first collection of short stories featuring Father Brown, a nondescript Catholic priest who solves crimes using intuition and by tapping into spiritual and philosophic truths rather than scientific details. The stories are clever, thoughtful, and lovely.
Meet our first guest, Deb Donner. She's a bookaholic. Reading is her escape but it's also her inspiration and my therapy. Her current favorite genre is Memoir; She loves to hear the stories of other people. Everyone has a unique life story. Her story is how she survived and escaped a religious cult. Her mother joined when I was 12. She escaped when she was 19. She writes about that experience and finds it more healing than therapy.
She also enjoy crafting and her latest joy is slow stitching little bits of fabric together into various fabric stories.
social media is:
@debdonner62, where she shares her crafty fun,
@letstalkcults, where she shares her story of being trapped in a cult.
How to Read It: Buy it on Amazon, buy a used copy, or read it for free, courtesy of Project Gutenberg.
Estimated Reading Time: 5 hours
Share your thoughts and check out the conversation starters below!
In what ways did the stories’ Christianity (Catholicism) enrich or complicate the stories? Where did your sympathies lie? Which tale hit home hardest for you, and why?
In the “The Invisible Man,” a woman admits she has felt the presence of a former suitor. Her confidant says, “if he were Satan himself, he is done, for now you have told somebody. One goes mad all alone.” In what ways do we tend to discount our intuition? Does one go mad all alone?
In “The Wrong Shape,” Father Brown says Mrs. Quinton is “over-driven. That’s the kind of woman who does her duty for twenty years, and then does something dreadful.” Do you know anyone who fits the description of Mrs. Quinton?
“The Eye of Apollo”: “A frigid fierceness (peculiar to the modern woman)” drove Pauline “to what she considered a harsher and higher existence.” She invested her wealth in her typewriting emporium and causes that advanced such work among women. What are your thoughts about Pauline? Have you ever resented someone for holding a door open for you (as she resents Flambeau)?
In the first few stories in The Innocence of Father Brown, Flambeau is a “good criminal” who commits bloodless crimes such as theft. He’s a tall, streetwise, outlaw hero who enjoys the “game” of crime. Under Father Brown’s influence, Flambeau reforms and becomes an amateur detective. In “The Wrong Shape,” Father Brown says to Flambeau, “You are my only friend in the world, and I want to talk to you. Or, perhaps, be silent with you.”
In “The Sign of the Broken Sword,” Father Brown asks Flambeau if he recalls whom Dante put in the last circle of ice. (Answer: Traitors who committed fraud against those with whom they shared special bonds of love and trust.) Flambeau “could almost fancy he was Dante, and [Father Brown was] Virgil leading him through a land of eternal sins.”
How do you feel about the good criminal and the road that “goes down and down”? How important is it to you to have friends with whom you can talk AND be silent? Has someone guided you through parts of your life? Have any Judas’ or Brutus’ in your life?
Tea, Tonic, and Toxin is a book club and podcast for people who love mysteries, thrillers, introspection, and good conversation. Each month, your hosts, Sarah Harrison and Carolyn Daughters, will discuss a game-changing mystery or thriller from the 19th and 20th centuries.
https://www.instagram.com/teatonicandtoxin/
https://www.facebook.com/teatonicandtoxin
The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) is G. K. Chesterton’s first collection of short stories featuring Father Brown, a nondescript Catholic priest who solves crimes using intuition and by tapping into spiritual and philosophic truths rather than scientific details. The stories are clever, thoughtful, and lovely.
Meet our first guest, Deb Donner. She's a bookaholic. Reading is her escape but it's also her inspiration and my therapy. Her current favorite genre is Memoir; She loves to hear the stories of other people. Everyone has a unique life story. Her story is how she survived and escaped a religious cult. Her mother joined when I was 12. She escaped when she was 19. She writes about that experience and finds it more healing than therapy.
She also enjoy crafting and her latest joy is slow stitching little bits of fabric together into various fabric stories.
social media is:
@debdonner62, where she shares her crafty fun,
@letstalkcults, where she shares her story of being trapped in a cult.
How to Read It: Buy it on Amazon, buy a used copy, or read it for free, courtesy of Project Gutenberg.
Estimated Reading Time: 5 hours
Share your thoughts and check out the conversation starters below!
Here are some conversation starters and questions that got us thinking. We hope they’ll get you thinking, too! We invite you to be part of the conversation. You can share your thoughts using the form below!
The fantastic tales in The Innocence of Father Brown mix fantasy, humor, and horror and push the bounds of reality. Were you able to suspend disbelief? Did the stories seem contrived? Thoughtful? Charming?
Father Brown has brown hair. He’s featureless, inconspicuous, shabby, clumsy, self-effacing, and expressionless, his “eyes as empty as the North Sea.” In “The Blue Cross,” he’s very naïve. Does he evolve as a character in the stories? In what ways?
Father Brown has great spiritual intuition and the “kind of head that cannot help asking questions.” In “The Secret Garden,” he says, “Will God give me strength? Will my brain make the one jump and see all?” He observes details missed by others and is skilled in the art of deduction. He “put two and two together and made four million” (”The Queer Feet”). In what ways is he similar to Sherlock Holmes? In what ways is he different?
In The Innocence of Father Brown, Father Brown gets inside the criminal’s mind and empathizes with his evil motives. In “The Sign of the Broken Sword,” the world thinks Sir Arthur St. Clare was brave and heroic, but he was really a traitor who sent 800 men to their death to cover up a murder he had committed. Father Brown says, “I can’t prove it, but I can do more—I can see it.”
What surprised you most about Father Brown? Have you known people who seemed on the surface to be one thing and turned out to be something else altogether?
In “The Queer Feet,” the narrator says it is “unlikely that you will ever rise high enough in the social world to find ‘The Twelve True Fishermen’ or that you will ever sink low enough among slums and criminals to find Father Brown.” In “The Flying Stars,” Father Brown is asked what he would “call a man who wants to embrace the chimney-sweep?” Father Brown’s reply: “A saint.” Where do Father Brown’s (and Chesterton’s) sympathies lie in The Innocence of Father Brown?
In what ways did the stories’ Christianity (Catholicism) enrich or complicate the stories? Where did your sympathies lie? Which tale hit home hardest for you, and why?
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The Innocence of Father Brown (1911)
G. K. Chesterton’s first collection of short stories featuring a Catholic priest who solves crimes by tapping into spiritual and philosophic truths.
Trent’s Last Case (1913)
In E. C. Bentley’s “whodunit,” new clues appear throughout the story, making readers feel as if they’re solving the crime along with Trent.
The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915)
In John Buchan’s prototype of the “man-on-the-run” adventure, a spy is murdered in Richard Hannay’s flat. Can Hannay evade his pursuers?
The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)
Agatha Christie’s incredible whodunit introduces brilliant Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, Arthur Hastings, and Inspector Japp.
Whose Body? (1923)
Dorothy Sayers introduces Lord Peter Wimsey, the father of the “gentleman sleuth” who will appear in British novels for decades to come.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)
One of Agatha Christie’s most controversial novels due to an unexpected twist at the end. Christie considered it her masterpiece.
Red Harvest (1929)
Dashiell Hammett’s portrayal of the Continental Op as a “hard-boiled” detective became a prototype for many detective stories to come.
The Maltese Falcon (1930)
Dashiell Hammett introduces Sam Spade. The third-person-objective narrative includes no insights into characters’ thoughts and feelings.
Malice Aforethought (1931)
Frances Iles’ novel is an early example of the “inverted detective story,” in which the murder AND murderer are revealed at the beginning.
The Case of the Velvet Claws (1933)
We meet criminal defense lawyer and detective Perry Mason. Earle Stanley Gardner went on to write 150 books that sold 300 million copies.
Murder on the Orient Express (1934)
Agatha Christie’s books have sold more than two billion copies. This page-turner starring Hercule Poirot helps to explain why.
The Nine Tailors (1934)
The murder method in Dorothy Sayers’ marvelous story was unique. The idea came from a sixpenny pamphlet about bell-ringing.
ALL THE PODCAST EPISODES
We’re reading and discussing many of the best mysteries, thrillers, and detective stories ever written. Join us on this marvelous journey!
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“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841)
Edgar Allan Poe is the mystery master. Set in Paris, this gruesome tale introduces amateur detective Auguste Dupin and his trusty sidekick.
“The Purloined Letter” (1844)
Edgar Allan Poe called it “perhaps the best of my tales of ratiocination.” It’s a great mystery — minus the Gothic horror of “Rue Morgue.”
Bleak House (1853)
In Charles Dickens’ masterpiece, Inspector Bucket, the first important police detective in English literature, investigates a murder.
The Woman in White (1860)
Wilkie Collins’ book has it all — switched identities, false imprisonment, foreign agents, blackmail, conspiracies, and shocking secrets.
The Notting Hill Mystery (1862-3)
A woman dies after drinking acid. Was it an accident? The intrigue includes a kidnapping, a sinister mesmerist, and many dastardly crimes.
The Moonstone (1868)
Wilkie Collins’ amazing mystery includes red herrings, plot twists, a small circle of suspects, and a stolen Indian gem with a bloody past.
The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886)
Set in Melbourne, Fergus Hume’s literary sensation puts a spotlight on social class as a crime is committed by an unknown assassin.
A Study in Scarlet (1887)
Arthur Conan Doyle introduces us to Sherlock Holmes, the world’s most famous “consulting detective,” and Watson, his sidekick.
The Big Bow Mystery (1892)
In Israel Zangwill’s locked-room mystery, two detectives race to solve a murder and the startling solution is revealed at the very end.
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902)
In Arthur Conan Doyle’s Gothic-inspired spine-tingler, the great Sherlock Holmes must discover the truth about a deadly spectral hound.
Lady Molly of Scotland Yard (1910)
Baroness Orczy’s short story collection stars one of the first female detectives in fiction. Lady Molly solves crimes using feminine intuition.
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Tea, Tonic, and Toxin is a book club and podcast for anyone who loves mysteries and detective stories. We’re making our way through the 19th-century stories that helped the genre evolve. Next up: Baroness Orczy’s 1910 collection of short stories, Lady Molly of Scotland Yard, about a lady detective — one of the first in fiction!
Baroness Orczy, author of The Scarlet Pimpernel, wrote this collection of short stories about Molly Robertson-Kirk. Lady Molly of Scotland Yard uses her feminine intuition to solve crimes.
How to Read It: Buy it on Amazon or find a copy at a used bookstore.
Estimated Reading Time: 4 hours. Share your thoughts and check out the questions below!
Professional career of a lady detective – one of the first female detectives – Lady Molly is respected by Scotland Yard – she’s often brought in if there’s a woman in the case – her cases are famous.
Expository storytelling – Mary narrates, much like Watson in the Sherlock Holmes stories.
Feminine intuition – sixth sense – Molly is the “most wonderful psychologist of her time” – this lady detective is smarter, bolder, savvier than men (according to Mary) – the “extraordinary faculty which she possesses of divining her fellow-creatures’ motives and intentions.”
Close to the vest – Molly often keeps Mary in the dark – Molly likes the big reveal – Mary speculates at times, and at times Molly toys with Mary (much in the way Sherlock Holmes toys with Watson).
Masquerade – Molly and Mary disguise themselves to obtain information – they’re bold, daring risk-takers, and they’re both quite clever.
Mary’s obsession with Molly – Mary is the smartest, sweetest, most beautiful, most ultra-feminine woman in the world – “I, of course, was her slave” – “dearer than any child could be to its mother” – “my business was to obey” – “I have carried obedience to the level of a fine art.”
Mary, assistant extraordinaire (though their friendship seems uneven).
Station and rank in life (social class) – behaviors, proprietary/impropriety of various connections, legitimacy, good breeding; who should/shouldn’t make it into the will, the [fill in the blank] “usual pattern” common to her class/kind – “Miss—er—Lulu Fay” who bore the stamp of the profession.
Plot holes – By the third story in the collection, Mary has “severed official connection with the Yard” and is working as Lady Mary’s private secretary. In the last two stories, we go back in time, before Lady Mary joined Scotland Yard, and find that Mary was Lady Molly’s maid (?).
Secret marriage – Molly married Captain Hubert, who’s accused of murdering his grandfather’s solicitor and is serving 20 years in prison; Philip Baddock will let him escape to Buenos Aires, as he wants to marry her – isn’t he her half-brother (they have the same mother, Mlle. Desty)?
Career closure – Happy once again, Molly gives up her connection with the police. Goodbye to the lady detective we have come to know and love. (How we wished for a different ending!)
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Tea, Tonic, and Toxin is a book club and podcast for anyone who loves mysteries and detective stories. We’re making our way through the 19th-century stories that helped the genre evolve. Next up: Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1902 novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles.
This turn-of-the-century, Gothic-inspired spine-tingler includes a spectral hound and a decidedly hands-off Sherlock Holmes. The Hound of the Baskervilles is considered by many to be Arthur Conan Doyle’s best — and one of the most gripping and suspenseful murder mysteries ever written.
How to Read It: Buy it on Amazon, find a copy at a used bookstore, or read it for free (courtesy of Project Gutenberg).
Estimated Reading Time: 4 hours. Share your thoughts and check out the questions below!
Brain Attic: Holmes says, “Intense mental concentration has a curious way of blotting out what has passed. The barrister who … is able to argue with an expert upon his own subject finds that a week or two of the courts will drive it all out of his head once more. So each of my cases displaces the last.”
Lies and Deceit: Even though The Hound of the Baskervilles emphasizes the importance of truth and justice, almost everyone lies in the book. The Barrymores lie about Selden, the Stapletons lie about their relationship (and about most everything else), Watson lies to Mr. Frankland, and Holmes lies to Watson. When is deceit justified?
Aiding and Abetting: Barrymore says Watson shouldn’t have hunted the murderer, Selden. Henry says they might have kept quiet if Barrymore had told the secret of his own free will. Barrymore says Selden is heading to South America and turning him in would only get the Barrymores in trouble. Watson says Selden’s departure would “relieve the tax-payer of a burden.” Watson even pities Selden on the rainy moors, noting, “Whatever his crimes, he has suffered something to atone for them.” Keep in mind that Watson remembers Selden’s case well “on account of the peculiar ferocity of the crime and the wanton brutality.” So many sketchy rationalizations …
The Ties That Bind: Mrs. Barrymore’s brother was a violent murderer, but she grieves his death, for to her “he always remained the little wilful boy of her own girlhood, the child who had clung to her hand.” Watson writes, “Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him.” Selden has Mrs. Barrymore to mourn him. Stapleton has no one. Did you see Stapleton as more evil than Selden? How far would you go to protect one you love?
Hell Hath No Fury Like a Woman Scorned: Does Stapleton’s poor treatment of Beryl and Laura Lyons relieve either woman of responsibility in helping him? Are they accessories to murder?
Supernatural Horror: In the intro to The Big Bow Mystery, Israel Zangwill said mysteries should have a “pervasive atmosphere of horror and awe such as Poe manages to create.” How would you describe the atmosphere in Baskervilles? At one point, Mortimer says, “There is a realm in which the most acute and most experienced of detectives is helpless.” What if Holmes had found no rational explanation for the events on the moor? How shocked would you have been if the story included an actual supernatural hound?
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Tea, Tonic, and Toxin is a book club and podcast for anyone who loves mysteries and detective stories. We’re making our way through the 19th-century stories that helped the genre evolve. Next up: Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1902 novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles.
This turn-of-the-century, Gothic-inspired spine-tingler includes a spectral hound and a decidedly hands-off Sherlock Holmes. The Hound of the Baskervilles is considered by many to be Arthur Conan Doyle’s best — and one of the most gripping and suspenseful murder mysteries ever written.
How to Read It: Buy it on Amazon, find a copy at a used bookstore, or read it for free (courtesy of Project Gutenberg).
Estimated Reading Time: 4 hours. Share your thoughts and check out the questions below!
Scientific Method: Conan Doyle uses Mortimer’s walking stick to introduce the reader to Sherlock Holmes (much in the same way that Edgar Allan Poe introduces Dupin in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”). Holmes, in turn, uses the walking stick to test Watson’s deductive skills. How do you feel about Holmes’ scientific method of deduction?
A Complex Friendship: In that first scene, Holmes tells Watson, “It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.” Holmes expresses his appreciation for his friend in a condescending way. However, Watson seems content being Holmes’s muse, noting, “his words gave me keen pleasure.” Why is Watson flattered by Holmes’s rudeness? Is Holmes’s hubris excusable?
Setting: Let’s talk London vs. Dartmoor. The Grimpen Mire is unstable ground. It seems to represent the idea that Dartmoor is stuck in the past. There’s poetic justice to the fact that Stapleton eventually gets dragged down into it.
All the Spies: A man spies on Sir Henry in London, Barrymore keeps watch for Selden, Holmes spies on Stapleton, Franklin peers out his telescope, Watson and Henry spy on Barrymore, and Cartwright spies on Watson.
Communication: “One of Sherlock Holmes’s defects—if, indeed, one may call it a defect—was that he was exceedingly loath to communicate his full plans to any other person until the instant of their fulfilment. Partly it came no doubt from his own masterful nature, which loved to dominate and surprise ….” What do you think? Is this communication style a “defect”?
Brain Attic: Holmes says, “Intense mental concentration has a curious way of blotting out what has passed. The barrister who … is able to argue with an expert upon his own subject finds that a week or two of the courts will drive it all out of his head once more. So each of my cases displaces the last.”
Lies and Deceit: Even though The Hound of the Baskervilles emphasizes the importance of truth and justice, almost everyone lies in the book. The Barrymores lie about Selden, the Stapletons lie about their relationship (and about most everything else), Watson lies to Mr. Frankland, and Holmes lies to Watson. When is deceit justified?
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Tea, Tonic, and Toxin is a book club and podcast for anyone who loves mysteries and detective stories. We’re making our way through the 19th-century stories that helped the genre evolve. Next up: Israel Zangwill’s 1892 novel, The Big Bow Mystery.
Set in London’s working-class East End, The Big Bow Mystery is one of the earliest examples of the locked-room mystery genre. In the story, two detectives race to solve a murder, an innocent man is condemned, and only at the very end is the startling solution revealed.
How to Read It: Buy it on Amazon, find a copy at a used bookstore, or read it for free (courtesy of Project Gutenberg).
Estimated Reading Time: 3 hours. Share your thoughts and check out the questions below!
Rival Detectives. Two rival detectives try to solve the case. Here, we have retired policeman George Grodman and Inspector Edward Wimp of Scotland Yard. When Wimp shows up at a liberal rally to arrest Tom Mortlake, the narrator says, “Wimp had won; Grodman felt like a whipped cur.”
Several books we’ve read (The Mystery of a Hansom Cab and A Study in Scarlet) have focused on the rivalry between detectives. Did this trope develop during this time period? Is it still common in detective novels? Who are your rivals?
Red Herrings. Zangwill offers up several possible solutions and suspects. Did Denzil Cantercot commit the murder, as Grodman seems to suspect? Or did Tom Mortlake do it? Did these red herrings fool you?
Fair Play. In the preface, Zangwill introduces the idea of fair play: “The indispensable condition of a good mystery is that it should be able and unable to be solved by the reader, and that the writer’s solution should satisfy.” Fair play is a key tenet of Golden Age detective fiction (1920-39). How would you compare Poe’s solution in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841) with Zangwill’s?
Foul Play. Readers have access to the same clues as the characters. Mrs. Drabdump entered Constant’s room with “her hands before her as if to ward off the dreadful vision.” After Grodman bust open the door, he spread a handkerchief over Constant’s face. It’s a sort of conjuring trick. However, readers face a hurdle that the characters don’t: misdirection. What do you think about the narrator keeping secrets?
The Eye Sees What It Expects to See. Grodman says people go through life without eyes, and their observation and judgment are impaired by irrelevant prejudices. He knew Mrs. Drabdump, like most women, would cry murder: “She habitually takes her prepossessions for facts, her inferences for observations. … The key to the Big Bow Mystery is feminine psychology.” So much to unpack here …
Means (Capability), Motive (Desire), and Opportunity. Tom Mortlake goes to trial, where his guilt was “as clear as circumstantial evidence could make it.” At the end, he’s rescued from the gallows, and we learn the least likely suspect committed the crime. The killer tells the Home Secretary, “There came on me the desire to commit a crime that should baffle detection.” Were you thrown by the killer’s motive?
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Set in London’s working-class East End, this 1892 book is one of the earliest examples of the locked-room mystery genre. In The Big Bow Mystery, two detectives race to solve a murder, an innocent man is condemned, and only at the very end is the startling solution revealed.
Locked Room Mysteries. The Big Bow Mystery is generally seen as the first locked room mystery novel. In a locked room mystery, a crime is committed in a room locked from the inside. How could any murderer have committed the crime and then escaped? It seems impossible. Writers have developed many ingenious solutions to locked room murders, but Israel Zangwill took the locked room device to a new level.
Dickensian Influence. The novel’s style is reminiscent of Dickens, including the use of funny character names, such as Edward Wimp and Mrs. Drabdump. The book also highlights the lot of the working man and the fight for workers’ rights. Like Bleak House, the book even begins with a description of a dense morning fog …
Humor. Zangwill has a dry wit. In the intro, he called the book’s humor too abundant and that “Mysteries should be sedate and sober. There should be a pervasive atmosphere of horror and awe such as Poe manages to create.” Do you agree?
Comparisons with Fergus Hume’s Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886). Big Bow opens with an inquest, followed by press frenzy, public speculation, and proposed solutions in letters to the editor. Jessie Dymond may save Tom from the gallows if she can be found in time (much as Sal Rawlins saves Brian Fitzgerald in Hansom Cab).
All the Theories. The book was serialized in The Star, a popular paper known for sensationalizing Jack the Ripper’s Whitechapel murders (1888-91). The burning question in Big Bow: how did the murderer commit the crime? Various theories are suggested in the book, including:
- Small monkey with a razor came down the chimney
- Removal and replacement of a windowpane cut with a diamond
- Door panel sliced and replaced
- Powerful magnets used to turn the key and push the bolt
- Secret passages and trapdoors
- Arthur Constant swallowed the razor he used to cut his own throat
- The murderer hid and escaped when the door was broken down
- The murderer got in when Grodman and Mrs. Drabdump entered
- Wimp’s theory: the broken bolt and a loose key (or key on the floor)
Rival Detectives. Two rival detectives try to solve the case. Here, we have retired policeman George Grodman and Inspector Edward Wimp of Scotland Yard. When Wimp shows up at a liberal rally to arrest Tom Mortlake, the narrator says, “Wimp had won; Grodman felt like a whipped cur.”
Several books we’ve read (The Mystery of a Hansom Cab and A Study in Scarlet) have focused on the rivalry between detectives. Did this trope develop during this time period? Is it still common in detective novels? Who are your rivals?
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The “consulting detective” Sherlock Holmes and his trusty sidekick, Watson — two of the most famous characters in English literature — make their first appearance in this tale, which forever changed the way mystery novels were written.
Reasoning Backwards: Holmes says that if you describe a train of events, most people “will tell you what the result would be. They can put those events together in their minds, and argue from them that something will come to pass. There are few people, however, who, if you told them a result, would be able to evolve from their own inner consciousness what the steps were which led up to that result.” Is the ability to reason backward the key skill of the consulting detective?
Honor, Justice, and Credit Where Credit Is Due:
Jefferson Hope won’t kill in cold blood. He says, “[Drebber and Stangerson] should each have a draw out of one of these [pill]boxes, while I ate the pill that remained.”
Watson describes Enoch Drebber as “baboon-like.” He says, “If ever human features bespoke vice of the most malignant type, they were certainly those of Enoch J. Drebber, of Cleveland.” Nonetheless, Watson “recognized that justice must be done, and that the depravity of the victim was no condonement in the eyes of the law.”
Holmes asks the name of Jefferson Hope’s accomplice. Hope says, “I can tell my own secrets, but I don’t get other people into trouble.”
Holmes is initially reluctant to take the case because he knows Gregson and Lestrade will take the credit. At the end, Watson tells Holmes, “Your merits should be publicly recognized. You should publish an account of the case. If you won’t, I will for you.”
Tea, Tonic, and Toxin is a book club and podcast for people who love mysteries, thrillers, introspection, and good conversation. Each month, your hosts, Sarah Harrison and Carolyn Daughters, will discuss a game-changing mystery or thriller from the 19th and 20th centuries. Together, we’ll see firsthand how the genre evolved.
Along the way, we’ll entertain ideas, prospects, theories, doubts, and grudges, along with the occasional guest. And we hope to entertain you, dear friend. We want you to experience the joys of reading some of the best mysteries and thrillers ever written.
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Tea, Tonic, and Toxin is a book club and podcast for anyone who loves mysteries and detective stories. We’re making our way through the 19th-century stories that helped the genre evolve. Next up: Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1887 novel, A Study in Scarlet.
The “consulting detective” Sherlock Holmes and his trusty sidekick, Watson — two of the most famous characters in English literature — make their first appearance in this tale, which forever changed the way mystery novels were written.
How to Read It: Buy it on Amazon, find a copy at a used bookstore, or read it for free (courtesy of Project Gutenberg).
Estimated Reading Time: 3 hours. Share your thoughts and check out the questions below!
Knowledge Is Power: Sherlock Holmes is ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the solar system. “That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to me to be such an extraordinary fact,” says Watson. What does Holmes know, and how does this knowledge serve him?
The Brain Attic: Holmes says, “A man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order.” What do you think about the brain attic?
The Consulting Detective: Holmes is the one and only consulting detective. Why does he prefer the consulting detective gig? Why not simply become a Scotland Yard detective or a private detective?
Throwing Down the Gauntlet: Holmes calls Edgar Allan Poe’s Auguste Dupin an “inferior fellow. He had some analytical genius, but he was by no means such a phenomenon as Poe appeared to imagine.”
The Dearth of Both Detectives and Criminals: Holmes says, “No man lives or has ever lived who has brought the same amount of study and of natural talent to the detection of crime which I have done. And what is the result? There is no crime to detect, or, at most, some bungling villainy with a motive so transparent that even a Scotland Yard official can see through it.”
Biased Judgment: “It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.” Sarah and Carolyn very much agree.
Story Structure: Part Two is a complete departure from Part One. An unnamed third-person narrator takes the place of John Watson. This new story starts in 1847, roughly 34 years before the events of Part One. We then catch back up with the ending of Part One and continue the present-day story. Does this structure work? Why or why not?
The Mormon Faith: There’s some controversy about the story told in Part Two. What’s your take on the way Mormonism is presented?
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Australia’s first literary sensation, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab sold hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide upon publication. Set in the charming and deadly streets of Melbourne, this 1886 thriller highlights class and social issues as a crime is committed by an unknown assassin.
- Legitimacy — Frettlby was married to Rosanna, and Sal was conceived in wedlock. Madge is Frettlby’s illegitimate daughter. How did this turn of events strike you, and what do you think about the lengths people go to protect Frettlby’s “good name”?
- Fate — Men discovered the deity Nemesis wasn’t “altogether useless as a scapegoat upon which to lay the blame of their own shortcomings, so they created a new deity called Fate and laid any misfortune which happened to them to her charge. Her worship is still very popular, especially among lazy and unlucky people, who never bestir themselves on the ground that … their lives are already settled by Fate.” Thoughts?
- Plot Holes — Was Frettlby ever going to tell his father that he married Rosanna and had a child? Why didn’t Rosanna tell her mother she was married? Why did Rosanna allow Frettlby to believe she and their child were dead, and why didn’t he confirm these stories? Why did Moreland wait so long to start blackmailing Frettlby?
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Tea, Tonic, and Toxin is a book club and podcast for anyone who loves mysteries and detective stories. We’re making our way through the 19th-century stories that helped the genre evolve. Next up: Fergus Hume’s 1886 novel, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab.
Australia’s first literary sensation, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab sold hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide upon publication. Set in the charming and deadly streets of Melbourne, this thriller highlights class and social issues as a crime is committed by an unknown assassin.
- So Many Mysteries — Who is the dead man, why was he killed, who killed him, and is the man who killed him the same guy who hailed the hansom cab? And what is Brian Fitzgerald hiding? The complex plot has many twists and turns, along with several suspects and red herrings. And don’t forget the “exotic” setting. What are your thoughts about this Australian sensation?
- “One of the Cleverest of the Melbourne Detectives” — Mr. Gorby is the first detective we meet. Is he really “one of the cleverest of the Melbourne detectives”? What do you think of his process of detection and the conclusions he reaches?
- All the Other Detectives — Calton, Madge Frettlby, Fitzgerald, and Kilsip all play the role of detective in the story. What do you think of their detective work? How do they compare with Gorby?
- Was Nero a Pleasant Man? — The narrator says some see Nero’s cruelties as the result of an “overflow of high spirits and regard Henry VIII in the light of a henpecked husband unfortunate in the possession of six wives. These people delight in expressing their sympathy with great scoundrels of the Ned Kelly order. They view them as the embodiment of heroism, unsympathetically and disgracefully treated by the narrow understanding of the law. If one half the world does kick a man when he is down, the other half invariably consoles the prostrate individual with halfpence.” Thoughts?
- The Author’s Take on Women — Women love to shop for things they don’t want or need. Men can’t possibly understand women. Women prattle on and draw upon feminine instincts instead of reason. Women often suffer from brain fever caused by mental strain. Women’s highly strung nerves are the reason they age faster than men. How did these comments make you feel?
- The Insane Among Us — The doctor says “there are more mad people at large than the world is aware of. [T]here are many people … whose lives are one long struggle against insanity, and yet who eat, drink, talk, and walk with the rest of their fellow men, apparently as gay and lighthearted as they are.”
- The Land of Opportunity — Mark Frettlby came to Australia “determined to become a rich man.” Brian Fitzgerald “had that extraordinary vivacious Irish temperament, which enables a man to put all trouble behind his back, and thoroughly enjoy the present.” What were their lives like back in England and Ireland, and how did they become wealthy in Australia?
- The Class System — The novel points out the differences between fashionable Melbourne (including the Frettlbys), men of few means (Oliver Whyte and Roger Moreland), the working class (the hansom cab driver, the landlady, and Sal Rawlins), and “guttersnipes” (scruffy, badly behaved street urchins like Mother Guttersnipe). How did the narrator and characters feel about these class distinctions? How did you feel about them?
This masterpiece includes a stolen Indian gem with a bloody past, plot twists, red herrings, a small circle of suspects, and a couple amazing detectives. It’s a serious page-turner.
T. S. Eliot described The Moonstone as the “first … and greatest of modern English detective novels.” The story includes several features of contemporary detective fiction and helped establish many of the genre’s conventions.
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Betteredge references the promise of youth in his narrative. Franklin had promised to be tall, but he didn’t keep that promise. Penelope had promised to be beautiful, and she did keep that promise. What did your parents consider your “promise” as a child, and did you keep it? What sort of expectations do we place on children? Is it fair? Can we help it?
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The narrators often refer to themselves as superior to reason. Betteredge is superior to reason because he knows and loves the family he works for. Miss Clack is superior to reason because she believes her religion is on her side. Are these claims ridiculous, or do they have some merit?
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Miss Clack is clearly in love with Godfrey, though she disguises it with admiration for his Christian virtues. When have you deceived yourself over your true motivations?
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Let’s talk about the characters’ morality and motivations. Miss Clack is painted in a rather absurd light in the way she speaks about her genteel family members. She tries to get them to read tracts and books and participate in her bizarre charities. And she often seems misguided. And yet she has her points.
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Her family does seem lazy and absurd, at least to the average working class Londoner. Why aren’t they concerned with helping others?
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The only one who participates in charitable efforts is Godfrey, and he’s seen as a bit of a shammy ladies man. Is he?
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And then there’s the doctor’s ridiculous recommendations not to exert oneself and only think of frivolous things. I agree with Miss Clack on the absurdity of that prescription. Did he only recommend such things to women? What should one think about as one nears the close of life?
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Was Wilkie Collins intending to merely portray Miss Clack as a hypocrite, or did he agree with her on some points? Does Collins seems to lack Dickens’ biting sarcasm over neglect of the poor?
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When Godfrey proposes to Rachel, he asks her, “Do you know many wives … who respect and admire their husbands? And yet they and their husbands get on very well. How many brides go to the altar with hearts that would bear inspection by the men who take them there? And yet it doesn’t end unhappily — somehow or other the nuptial establishment jogs on. The truth is, that women try marriage as a Refuge, far more numerously than they are willing to admit; and, what is more, they find that marriage has justified their confidence in it.” Whoa. Thoughts?
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Gabriel Betteredge has what he calls “detective-fever,” where the “horrid mystery hanging over us in this house gets into my head like liquor, and makes me wild.” Characters like Rosanna behave as though subconsciously intoxicated by outside forces. What are your thoughts about “detective-fever”?
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It’s implied at the beginning that the original perpetrator, John Herncastle, probably killed several Indians and stole their sacred moonstone, contrary to a direct command, under threat of death. No one could definitely prove it until he died and the moonstone came out of hiding to be bequeathed to Rachel. Then comes so much indecision, and plotting, and hiding, and suspecting the Indians of trying to get it back. At what point did it become British property? It was stolen, and the theft came to light when the thief died. Why wasn’t it returned to the Indians? Is this a representative example of historical looting?
Tea, Tonic, and Toxin is a book club and podcast for anyone who loves mysteries and detective stories. We began with Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin stories, Dickens’ Bleak House, and Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White. Next up: Collins’ 1868 novel, The Moonstone.
This masterpiece includes a stolen Indian gem with a bloody past, plot twists, red herrings, a small circle of suspects, and a couple amazing detectives. It’s a serious page-turner.
T. S. Eliot described The Moonstone as the “first … and greatest of modern English detective novels.” The story includes several features of contemporary detective fiction and helped establish many of the genre’s conventions.
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The Moonstone was originally published in 32 weekly parts in Charles Dickens’ magazine All the Year Round. How do you think this schedule affected the way Wilkie Collins structured the book and its chapters?
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Sarah loves when old books reference other old books. Gabriel Betteredge seems to use Robinson Crusoe as his bible. For example, he shares this quote: “Now I saw, though too late, the Folly of beginning a Work before we count the Cost, and before we judge rightly of our own Strength to go through with it.” He goes on to share many other quotes, including, “To-day we love what to-morrow we hate” and “Fear of Danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than Danger itself.” Why do you think the author chose Robinson Crusoe and these particular quotes? And do you have any books you revere and quote like this?
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Betteredge writes, “I am asked to tell the story of the Diamond, [and instead] I have been telling the story of my own self. … I wonder whether the gentlemen who make … a living out of writing books, ever find their own selves getting in the way of their subjects …?” In what ways do we bring ourselves into the stories we tell?
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Franklin Blake grew up in many homes and many nations. Rather than being wedded to any one philosophy or belief system, he continually asks questions and searches for the truth. Are you like him? Do you wish you were like him?
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Betteredge says gentlefolk have it tough because they spend their time searching for something to do. He says, “thank your stars that your head has got something it must think of and your hands something that they must do.” Do you agree? He also writes that “People in high life have … the luxury of indulging their feelings. People in low life have no such privilege. Necessity, which spares our betters, has no pity on us. We learn to put our feelings back into ourselves and to jog on with our duties …” Do you agree?
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Sherlock Holmes first appeared in print in 1887, nearly 20 years after The Moonstone. In what ways were Arthur Conan Doyle and other writers influenced by Wilkie Collins’ storytelling techniques and whip-smart detective Sergeant Cuff?
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In the 1799 family paper, John Herncastle’s cousin writes, “It is my conviction or my delusion … that crime brings its own fatality with it.” The story hinges on this idea. This line was also in The Woman in White. Fosco and Percival teased Laura and Marian about their morality. Is this a true saying? Do you identify with this idea? What do you believe?
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Let’s talk about the women. The sanctimonious Miss Clack. The spirited Rachel Verinder, who’s “unlike other girls her age.” Rachel’s alter ego, the tragic Rosanna Spearman, an unattractive servant with a prison record and a physical disability who falls in love with a man outside her class. Rosanna writes, “Suppose you put Miss Rachel into a servant’s dress, and took her ornaments off”? Good question …
The Notting Hill Mystery (1862-1863) is often called the first detective novel. In it, the wife of Baron R dies after drinking acid. It looks like an accident until insurance investigator Ralph Henderson discovers that Baron R took out several life insurance policies on her. From there, the plot continues to thicken.
Readers see everything Henderson sees, including letters, diary entries, witness interviews, a marriage certificate, and a map of the crime scene. The New York Times Book Review called The Notting Hill Mystery “both utterly of its time and utterly ahead of it.”
Had you ever heard of the Notting Hill Mystery before now? What parts felt dated? How might the story have been told differently today?
The forensic techniques used to gather and analyze evidence in the story would have felt fresh and new to a 19th-century reading audience. Examples include diary entries, letters, and witness depositions. As the British Library notes, these innovative techniques “would not become common features of detective fiction until the 1920s.” Did you enjoy being able to review all of these materials? Did the forensic feel of the book interest you? Bore you?
In Section VI, Ralph Henderson writes, “Unless the case can be made to stand out clearly, step by step, in all its details, from the commencement to the end, its isolated portions become at once a mere chaos of coincidences.” The case he builds leads to a “conclusion so at variance with all the most firmly established laws of nature” that, it seems almost impossible to accept. Did some parts of the case seem impossible for you to accept? Why?
Some details are deemed immaterial to the story. For example, how and why was Rosalie kidnapped? Are we really meant to believe Baron R really just met Rosalie by accident? To whom was Rosalie’s Notting Hill letter addressed (Section IV)? Would the housemaid Sarah really have fessed up to poisoning Madame R to avoid being blamed for tasting marmalade? Did these details bother you, or did you willingly suspend your disbelief?
Mesmerism is key to the novel. When direct manipulation isn’t possible (due to questions of propriety), Baron R experiments with secondhand manipulation with the help of a medium named Rosalie. We see the power Baron R wields, along with broader implications related to the sympathy of twins. In what ways does Henderson’s (and others like Dr. Marsden and Mrs. Ellis, the mesmerized sick nurse) disdain for and disbelief in mesmerism ultimately enable Henderson to build a strong case about mesmerism and twin connections?
Secrecy plays a role in this story. Mrs. Anderton and those around her never mention the kidnapping of her twin sister. Mrs. Anderton also conceals the biweekly leaden taste in her mouth. No one tells Rosalie that she’s sleepwalking, and the housemaid Susan Turner doesn’t tell anyone what she and her beau witnessed even after Madame R** takes ill. In each case, this information is deemed too dangerous to share or too upsetting to hear. In what ways does the desire to “protect” others often lead to terrible outcomes?
Catherine Boleton (Rosalie) is sold twice: once to Signor Leopoldo at the Olympian Circus for 5£ and once to Baron R for 50£. Slavery was made illegal in England in 1807. The young “spinster” (see the marriage certificate) then marries Baron R. What gives?
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In The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins tells the story of a woman locked away in an insane asylum. Well, sort of.
This 1860 thriller is considered to be among the first mystery novels (along with Bleak House, among others) and among the first and finest sensation novels. The story includes a ghostly woman, a secret society, switched identities, foreign agents, paranoia, bribery, blackmail, and conspiracies. Seriously, what’s not to love?
Count Fosco, “a man who could tame anything,” became the model of modern crime novel villains. Why are men like this so terrifying?
Hartright says Marian is ugly: “Never was the fair promise of a lovely figure more startlingly belied by the face and head that crowned it. Her complexion was almost swarthy, and the dark down on her upper lip was almost a moustache.” In what way do her looks factor into the story being told?
Marian is repelled by Fosco, who nonetheless “has attracted me, has forced me to like him.” Despite Marian’s looks, Fosco adores her. “At sixty, I worshipped her with the volcanic ardour of eighteen. All the gold of my rich nature was poured hopelessly at her feet.” Thoughts?
Marian tells Laura, “Our endurance must end, and our resistance must begin to-day.” Marian climbs out a window and crosses the roof of the verandah – in the rain – to eavesdrop on Sir Percival and Count Fosco, which is pretty awesome. Why does Marian increasingly focus on revenge against Fosco as the novel progresses? In what ways does this fixation feel real and human?
For all her admirable traits, Marian is a product of the 19th century. Many readers find her both inspiring and frustrating. How about you?
At the end, Count Fosco calls Marian the “first and last weakness” of his life. In what ways does this admission feel real and human?
Are Marian and Fosco the true protagonists of The Woman in White? How does the story end for Hartright, Marian, and Fosco?
In The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins tells the story of a woman wrongfully locked away in an insane asylum. This 1860 thriller includes a ghostly woman, a secret society, switched identities, foreign agents, paranoia, bribery, blackmail, and conspiracies. What’s not to love?
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Wilkie Collins has been called the creator of the sensation novel. The Woman in White includes a ghostly woman, switched identities, forged documents, bribery, drugging, spying, foreign agents, blackmail, lies, and conspiracies. What feels familiar about sensation novels? In what ways is the book a detective story?
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In his preface to the 1860 edition, Collins wrote, “An experiment is attempted in this novel, which has not (so far as I know) been hitherto tried in fiction.” The story is told by the book’s characters. How did you feel about these diverse first-person narratives? What qualities does each narrator bring to the story? And how does everyone remember every minute detail of every conversation?
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How do Frederick Fairlie, Sir Percival, Count Fosco, and Hartright each represent distinct styles of masculinity? Did these four men feel real to you?
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How much power do women have in The Woman in White? In what ways are the women characters ideals of Victorian womanhood? Why do Hartright and Marian lie to Laura about their investigation? Why don’t Laura and Anne ever get to tell their own stories?)
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Laura and Anne end up switching places, which is one of the book’s biggest plot points. What’s the deal with these asylums? Details, please! And how did you feel once Laura’s identity was restored?
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When Hartright returns from Honduras, he fights to restore Laura’s identity, applying tactics he used “against suspected treachery in the wilds of Central America” in the “heart of civilised London.” How has he changed since the first time we met him? Why does he work outside society’s laws and conventions?
In Bleak House, Charles Dickens’s tenacious criminal investigator, Inspector Bucket, is a London police detective who investigates a murder. Inspector Bucket and Poe’s amateur detective Auguste Dupin were the first professional criminal investigators in English literature.
This is part two of a two part series, and covers chapter 32 to the end of the book.
- Birthright: In Chapter 35, Esther says it’s “not the custom in England to confer titles on men unless they consisted of the accumulation of some very large amount of money.” Miss Flite thinks Allan Woodcourt should receive a title for saving people after his boat is shipwrecked. Esther agrees he deserves it but says he won’t get it.
So let’s talk about privilege and birthright. “Privilege” might be defined as an advantage in life not enjoyed by all. “Birthright” might be defined as one’s rights from birth onward due to one’s inheritance—rights essentially conferred through an accident of birth. Bleak House is in many ways a story about birthrights. What are Jo’s, Charley’s, and Esther’s birthrights? What are the birthrights of Ada and Richard? What’s YOURS?
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The Many Forms of Neglect and Charity. Mrs. Jellyby neglects her family while she corresponds about far-off Africa. Mrs. Pardiggle brings her family with her everywhere and takes their money to support her efforts closer to home, going about lecturing the poor. Mr. Skimpole’s object of charity is himself. He neglects his family while thinking everyone should support his being “free.” Mr. Turveydrop considers his deportment a gift to family and society. He’s an object of charity, as he contributes nothing, working his wife and son into illness so he can live in the way he pleases. Sir Leicester Dedlock considers hiring Rosa as Lady Dedlock’s servant to be a form of charity and patronage, as does Rosa herself. Yet Mr. Rouncewell finds this patronage insufficient for the wife of his son, and he proposes that she be sent to Europe to finish her education. Thoughts?
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Mrs. Bagnet is “that rare sort of old girl that she receives Good to her arms without a hint that it might be Better; and catches light from any little spot of darkness near her.” Do you know people like Mrs. Bagnet? Are you yourself like Mrs. Bagnet?
It’s big, so start reading now. (Don’t fret – we’ll spend two months on this 1853 masterpiece.) Dickens addresses class and lineage, law vs. justice, social responsibility, guilt, and identity. And Inspector Bucket, the first important police detective in English literature, investigates a murder.
In Bleak House, Charles Dickens’s tenacious criminal investigator, Inspector Bucket, is a London police detective who investigates a murder. Inspector Bucket and Poe’s amateur detective Auguste Dupin were the first professional criminal investigators in English literature.
Edgar Allan Poe called “The Purloined Letter” “perhaps the best of my tales of ratiocination.” The story, published in 1844, is an excellent mystery, minus the Gothic horror of “Rue Morgue.” Together, Poe’s stories form the foundation of the mystery novel as we know it.
Tea, Tonic, and Toxin is a book club and podcast for people who love mysteries, thrillers, introspection, and good conversation. Each month, your hosts, Carolyn Daughters and Sarah Harrison, will discuss a game-changing mystery or thriller, starting in 1841 onward. Together, we’ll see firsthand how the genre evolved
Along the way, we’ll entertain ideas, prospects, theories, doubts, and grudges, along with the occasional guest. And we hope to entertain you, dear friend. We want you to experience the joys of reading some of the best mysteries and thrillers ever written.
Edgar Allan Poe is the master of mysteries and thrillers, and some consider “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” published in 1841, to be the first detective story. Set in Paris, the story features amateur detective Auguste Dupin, along with his trusty sidekick who narrates the gruesome tale.