What I'm Reading Wednesday

Recently finished: Love Lies Bleeding by Edmund Crispin.

Another one of the Gervase Fen mysteries. Rather more restrained than some in the series; it doesn't have the accelerating farce of The Moving Toyshop or the running gags of Buried for Pleasure. There's also a subplot involving what may very well be the manuscript of a lost Shakespeare play, which I found rather too similar to a subplot in John Dickson Carr's The Mad Hatter Mystery regarding what may well be the manuscript of a lost Poe story.

Reading now: Rereading Crime at Guildford by Freeman Wills Crofts.

This was the first one of Crofts' mysteries that I read, and it happens to be the last one I came to in my reread. I think, compared to some of the others I've read, it's one of his stodgier works, with the usual minor discrepancy that breaks an unbreakable alibi. In this case the discrepancy is when the company's accountant arrived at the office; was it five minutes before, or five minutes after, his colleagues?

Still liked the unintentional period detail. Rereading this series, it struck me how much Inspector French relies on tasks being done by people, that today would be automated. He gets a lot of his clues from questioning bank clerks, car park attendants and the like.