I took plenty of books on holiday with me this summer and enjoyed them all. Even so, I couldn’t resist looking at the small library at the property we stayed in, which consisted of books that previous guests had left behind. You could see why they hadn’t bothered to pack them: most were tired, tattered paperbacks representing an unappealing mix of romance, thrillers, and historical fiction along bodice-ripping lines. But four of the books caught my attention, partly because they were in quite good condition; partly because they were by J Jefferson Farjeon, one of the writers of the “Golden Age” of detective fiction; and mainly because I was intrigued by the protagonist, Ben the Tramp. I read No. 17, Murderer’s Trail , Ben on the Job and Ben Sees it Through .   The first Ben the Tramp novel, originally a stage play.   Ben really is a tramp. He’s not Sherlock Holmes in disguise, and he’s not a toff slumming it. He’s a full-blown, hungry, homeless destitute in ragged clothes...

This is an extended version of a talk given at the Crime, Thriller and Mystery Books event, Hawkesbury Upton Literary Festival, 30 April 2022.    This is a "long read" and if you prefer to download and read it, there is a pdf version on my website here .      “How are you this morning, Betteredge?” asked Franklin Blake.   “Very poorly, sir,” answered Gabriel Betteredge.   “Sorry to hear it. What do you complain of?”   “I complain of a new disease, Mr. Franklin, of my own inventing. I don’t want to alarm you, but you’re certain to catch it before the morning is out.”   “The devil I am!”   “Do you feel an uncomfortable heat at the pit of your stomach, sir? and a nasty thumping at the top of your head? Ah! not yet? It will lay hold of you…, Mr. Franklin. I call it the detective-fever; and I first caught it in the company of Sergeant Cuff.” Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone   The new disease of Detective Fev...

Th e Widows of Malabar Hill , Sujata Massey (Soho Crime, 2018) The Widows of Malabar Hill is the first book in the 1920s mystery series featuring Perveen Mistry, Bombay’s first and only woman lawyer. Like all good mysteries, it’s got plenty of secrets at its heart. The central secret is, of course, kept by the murderer. But there are other secrets, such as the secrets of an adulterer or an embezzler. There are the secrets of a marriage, the things one partner keeps from anther; secrets within a household; and secrets around normal bodily functions such as menstruation, during which, in some families, women are kept apart from the rest of the family. Even the buildings have secrets: tunnels, screened windows, locked rooms. Not all the secrets are sinister. Perveen’s father, in his determination to protect his daughter, keeps things from her. Perveen hides her unhappiness from her parents as she doesn’t want to worry them. The secrecy surrounding the lives of the three widows, who l...