Guilty Creatures" is the latest vintage mystery short-story anthology from British Library Crime Classics/Poisoned Pen Press, edited by Martin Edwards. This outing is all about mysteries where an animal is a key component of the case.

Guilty Creatures: A Menagerie of Mysteries - British Library

There were several other strong stories too but a Father Brown story from Chesterton that was just too old and labored for me. Ants, as individuals, do not seem like very complicated animals to me (I’m sure E. O. Wilson would correct me), but every time I smush one I am aware I am extinguishing for all eternity one being’s I wish I could find more of F Tennyson Jesse's stories featuring the unique detective Solange Fontaine. She's the daughter (and professsional partner) of a scientist, but her detecting is based on her intuitive sense of evil, even in the most innocent of situations. I liked this story about a French family of modest means. The sweet, elderly parents are devoted to their adopted daughter, who is devoted to her pretty parakeet. What could possibly be wrong in this picture?

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Given the ominous situation at the very beginning, I was quite sure about what events were set to occur. I was wrong about half of them. The death occurs in a zoo, and it is with extremely small chance encounters that the issue is resolved, but it feels possible for the reader to follow the logic without dwelling too much on it.(3 stars) As ever with these anthologies, part of the joy of reading them comes from the mix of authors included, ranging from the well-known (Arthur Conan Doyle, G. K. Chesterton and Edgar Wallace) to the somewhat less familiar (Christianna Brand, Mary Fitt and Clifford Witting). Also of note is the seam of darkness running through this collection, with several of the stories channelling a rather sinister vibe not always associated with ‘cosy crime’ fiction from this era. It’s something that gives this anthology an interesting edge, very much in line with the predatory characteristics one might observe within the animal kingdom itself. On that ominous note, I’ll start with some of the gentler stories here and work my way up to the more ruthless end of the spectrum… Ham. Hark you, Guildenstern- and you too- at each ear a hearer! That great baby you see there is not yet out of his swaddling clouts.

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The Yellow Slugs by HC Bailey – a Reggie Fortune story. He is called in by Superintendent Bell to a troubling case. A small boy was seen trying to drown his little sister. Both survived and are in hospital. There seems little doubt that the boy meant to kill her, but Reggie wants to know why. He believes that there must have been a very strong reason for a child of that age to act that way, especially since the boy seems to love his sister. This is a chilling and disturbing story. I’ve read a couple of Fortune stories where children have been involved and they seem to bring out his strong sense of justice and an underlying anger, presumably the author’s, at some of the social concerns of the day. The title tells you which creature is involved, but you’ll need to read it if you want to know how! When you see a bug in your home, what do you do? Do you leave it alone? Do you kill it, or ask someone else to do the dirty work for you? Or do you ever try to catch it and set it free outside? Why do you make those I was so pleasantly surprised by this anthology. To be honest, I usually favor full-length novels over short story collections, but I had a great time reading this. There was so much variety in tone and style, so it never felt redundant or repetitive. The story introductions by editor Martin Edwards also gave some great insight into each of the writers and their careers—thanks to this, my TBR list just got even longer!So some excellent and varied stories and, as always, despite the varying quality in these anthologies, they are a great way of being introduced to new authors to look out for. For me, one of the biggest draws of the books in the crime classics series are the erudite and always interesting introductions by editor Martin Edwards. Mr. Edwards has a prodigious knowledge of the genre and writes engagingly and well. Ham. God's bodykins, man, much better! Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity. The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in. Animals play an extraordinarily wide variety of roles in crime stories. They may be victims, witnesses, even detectives. (p. 8)

Guilty Creatures (2020) directed by Dacre Montgomery ‎Guilty Creatures (2020) directed by Dacre Montgomery

It’s always a joy to receive one of the latest British Library Crime Classics releases through the post, and this clever anthology of short stories, Guilty Creatures – a Menagerie of Mysteries, is no exception to the rule. (My thanks to the publishers for kindly providing a review copy.) Included here are fourteen vintage mysteries, each featuring an animal, bird or invertebrate of some description as an integral component in the case. As Martin Edwards notes in his introduction: I wonder if it is now time for BLCC to stop issuing these under themes and perhaps just calling them Summer and Christmas collections? For me an animal centred set of tales came out as a bit of a mongrel.There's a Dr Fortune story and he's less annoying than he is sometimes. It's a grim tale of how people caught in poverty and powerlessness are easy prey for religious charlatans. To his credit, Dr Fortune's concern is for the two small children involved. He's not sentimental, but he's not ready to believe that a young boy would kill his tiny sister so that they can go to heaven. As he always does, he uses his wide base of knowledge to figure out who murdered whom and why.

Guilty x Creatures | Scribble Hub Guilty x Creatures | Scribble Hub

Ham. It shall to the barber's, with your beard.- Prithee say on. He's for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps. Say on; come to Hecuba. The Man Who Hated Earthworms” by Edgar Wallace (Pamela’s pa) is awful, Garnett Radcliffe’s 1938 “Pit of Screams” was simply unreadable, and the rest forgettable. That includes G.K. Chesterton’s “The Oracle of the Dog” (1923) and “The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane” (1926), which is not up to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s usual standard (as is true of many of Conan Doyle’s later stories). I'm a great admirer of the British Library Crime Classics short story collections and its editor Martin Edwards. One of his selections for this book is "The Case of Janissary" by Arthur Morrison. In his introduction, he praises Morrison's Bad Boy detective Horace Dorrington and I agree that Dorrington is a fascinating character, if you don't mind that he's greedy and a murderer. I take strong exception to Edward's lofty dismissal of Morrison's other detective Martin Hewitt, whom he claims was too "ordinary" to be interesting to readers.The “O! what a rogue and peasant slave” speech, performed live on Broadway in 1964 by Richard Burton, under the direction of Sir John Gielgud: Pol. The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral; scene individable, or poem unlimited. Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the liberty, these are the only men. Ham. We'll ha't to-morrow night. You could, for a need, study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines which I would set down and insert in't, could you not? Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. Some of the stories are weaker, mystery-wise, such as "The Man Who Shot Birds" by Mary Fitt, but the tale itself is so entertaining that that can be overlooked.