Sherlock Holmes Returns

In a new novel sanctioned by the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Murder on the Orient Express Big Budget Movie?

Indeed.

When Michael Crichton Wrote Novels During Medical School

Did Agatha Christie Have a Spy Inside?

That's the question the government wanted to know.

From a piece in the Guardian...

What made MI5 suspect one of Britain's famous crime writers? The answer, it can now be revealed, lay in the name of a character in her wartime novel N or M, whom she called Major Bletchley. He appears in the book as a friend of Christie's pair of detectives, Tommy and Tuppence.

In the book, published in 1941, N and M are the initials given to two of Hitler's agents as Tommy and Tuppence hunt for the enemy within. Major Bletchley comes across as a tedious former Indian army officer who claims to know the secrets of Britain's wartime efforts.

Christie happened to be a close friend of Dilly Knox, one of the leading codebreakers at Bletchley Park. MI5 was concerned that the major's inside knowledge of the progress of the war was based on what the codebreakers knew about Hitler's plans. Had Christie mischievously named the character Bletchley because Knox told her what was going on there?

5 Best Mysteries for Kids

The list, care of the Huffington Post.

First Ever Detective Novel Back in Print

The Notting Hill Mystery by Charles Felix, dating back to 1862, preceded The Moonstone by some years.

From a story in the Guardian...

"Is that chain one of purely accidental coincidence, or does it point with terrible certainty to a series of crimes, in their nature and execution too horrible to contemplate?" asks the author Felix, a pseudonym for the journalist, traveller and lawyer Charles Warren Adams. The story's reception at the time was positive: the Guardian called it "very ingeniously put together", the Evening Herald said that "the book in its own line stands alone", while the London Review appears to be getting to grips with what a detective story actually is, describing The Notting Hill Mystery as "a carefully prepared chaos, in which the reader, as in the game called solitaire, is compelled to pick out his own way to the elucidation of the proposed puzzle".

The author Julian Symons identified The Notting Hill Mystery as the first detective novel in 1972, calling its primacy "unquestionable" and its plot "strikingly modern". The British Library first made the novel available via print-on-demand last March, as part of a collection of hundreds of 19th century novels.

The Ten Best Fictional Sleuths

The list, care of the Guardian.