Friday, December 30, 2011

last post

Due to lack of interest from kindle folks, I'm closing down this blog. I'll remove it from the Kindle on Jan 2.

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Regular blog postings begin on DECEMBER 26, Monday.

Friday, December 16, 2011

16 December: This Day in Mystery

The second Sherlock Holmes film starring Robert Downey opens in the United States.

Friday, November 25, 2011

25 November: This Day in Mystery

25 November 1899
W.R. Burnett is born in Springfield, Ohio.

Burnett is the author of Little Caesar (1929), High Sierra (1940), and The Asphalt Jungle (1949).

25 November 1947

Out of the Past, the "definitive existential noir film" starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, and Kirk Douglas is released.

25 November 1952
Agatha Christie's play The Mousetrap opens at the Ambassador Theatre in London, with Richard Attenborough and Shela Sim. The Mousetrap is still running today!

Thursday, November 24, 2011

24 November: This Day in Mystery

24 November 1908
Harry Kemelman, whose detective hero Rabbi David Small is acclaimed the best clerical sleuth since Father Brown, is born in Boston. Small assists police chief Hugh Lanagan in solving crimes that happen on a daily basis: Friday the Rabbi Slept Late (1964), Tuesday the Rabbi Saw Red (1974).

24 November 1925
William F. Buckley Jr is born in New York City. Famed conservative commentator and editor of The National Review, Buckley also writes best-selling thrillers featuring Blackford Oakes, a Yale-educated CIA agent (Saving the Queen, 1976).

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

23 November: This Day in Mystery

23 November 1887
Boris Karloff, christened William Henry Pratt, is born in Dulwich, England. Karloff, an ex-truckdriver, receives his first good reviews for his roles as crimonals in such early talkie crime melodramas as The Criminal Code (1931) before going on to become one of Hollywood's best-known actors after his performance as Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein, 1931.

23 November 1910
Wife murderer Dr. H. H. Crippen is executed at Pentonville prison in England.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

22 November: This Day in Mystery

22 November 1917
John Cleary is born in Sydney, Australia. He becomes a writer of suspense novels, and will win the 1974 Edgar for best novel for Peter's Pence, "an exciting heist yarn set in the Vatican." In it the Pope is kidnapped by a group of IRA extremists and ransomed for 15 million Deutsche marks.