#whodunitwednesday

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Fair Warning! - prudence be damned! - the schemers beyond this point are monsters....

Featured titles:

Eberhart, Mignon Good. Fair Warning. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran, 1936.

McMullen, Mary. Prudence Be Damned. Garden City, N.Y.: Published for the Crime Club by Doubleday, 1978.

Fenisong, Ruth. The Schemers. Garden City, N.Y.: Published for the Crime Club by Doubleday, 1957.

Millar, Margaret. Beyond This Point Are Monsters. New York: Random House, 1970. 

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Here in #NC , March is blowing hot - up to 80 degrees Fahrenheit - or 27 C - unseasonably warm! For #WhodunitWednesday , we’ll be bringing out the mysteries published in March, beginning with Anna Katherine Green’s The Filigree Ball, published in March 1903.

Here’s a taste of the story: 

BOOK I

THE FORBIDDEN ROOM

"THE MOORE HOUSE? ARE YOU SPEAKING OF THE MOORE HOUSE?"

For a detective whose talents, had not been recognized at headquarters, I possessed an ambition which, fortunately for my standing with the lieutenant of the precinct, had not yet been expressed in words. Though I had small reason for expecting great things of myself, I had always cherished the hope that if a big case came my way I should be found able to do something with it something more, that is, than I had seen accomplished by the police of the District of Columbia since I had had the honor of being one of their number. Therefore, when I found myself plunged, almost without my own volition, into the Jeffrey Moore affair, I believed that the opportunity had come whereby I might distinguish myself.

It had complications, this Jeffrey-Moore affair; greater ones than the public ever knew, keen as the interest in it ran both in and out of Washington. This is why I propose to tell the story of this great tragedy from my own standpoint, even if in so doing I risk the charge of attempting to exploit my own connection with this celebrated case. In its course I encountered as many disappointments as triumphs, and brought out of the affair a heart as sore as it was satisfied; for I am a lover of women and—

But I am keeping you from the story itself.

Read it at Project Gutenberg: 

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2371/2371-h/2371-h.htm

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#WhodunitWednesday can’t overlook the two cunning #cats , Koko and Yum Yum, in Lilian Jackson Braun’s books. Just in time for #Thanksgiving , here’s:  The Cat Who Talked Turkey. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2004.

Keep reading for a taste of the tale:

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In recognition of the two nuclear tests performed on October 5, 1958, one by the US at the Nevada Test Site and the other by the USSR at Novaya Zemlya,  #WhodunitWednesday features:

King, Terry Johnson. The Neutron Beam Murder. London: Abelard-Schuman, 1965.

This may be the one and only murder mystery in the Robbie Emily Dunn Collection of American Detective Fiction that was reviewed in a scientific journal:

“Murder by neutron beam is one of the more appalling possibilities provided by modern technology to the vindictive and envious. … Mrs. King's novel differs from most of the genre in another respect: It is not simply an amusing criminal mystery; it has also the aspects of a medieval morality play.”

Thomsen, Dietrich E. “The punishment fits the crime”, Physics Today. January 1966.

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For #BannedBookWeek2016, #WhodunitWednesday hunted high and low for a banned book in our Robbie Emily Dunn Collection of American Detective Fiction - and we found not one title. So, to celebrate the freedom to read, we’re bringing you a mystery set in a bookshop AND the fourth dimension!

Converse, Florence. Into the Void: A Bookshop Mystery. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co, 1926.

You’ve got to love that she dedicated her book to her mother:

And now, here’s the blurb about the book itself:

Beware of declarations of prancing into the fourth dimension - you may just disappear after all! 

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Just in time for #Rio2016 #Olympics , #WhodunitWednesday brings 

Kelsey, Vera. The Owl Sang Three Times. New York: Published for the Crime Club by Doubleday, Doran and Co, 1941. Jackson Library Special Collections-Women's Detective Fiction

set in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I love a map:

but don’t try to find this location as it is now... “Rua Quem Sabe” translates to “Who Knows?” Here’s the first page:

..... you just have to read the book for the rest!