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Today I am reviewing the second book in the Bernie Rhodenbarr series, which has 13 titles altogether. This is my first time reading a mystery by this author. I particularly liked the quote by Dr Samuel Johnson, which the novel starts with: ‘Sir, he who would earn his bread writing books must have the assurance of a duke, the wit of a courtier, and the guts of a burglar.’ Here’s hoping this statement does not apply to blog reviews…

As part of my book group I have compiled a few “Top 10” or “Top 5” lists and some of these have been very hard to put together, as invariably I have so many books I want to include. To date there are lists for my favourite 1920s, 1930s and 1940s mysteries. Today’s post on standalone mysteries was possibly the hardest to decide upon as there was no decade restriction to help narrow things down. I was also aware of how easy it would be for this Top 10 to overlap too much with other lists I have written. To that end, I deliberately avoided picking some authors who are obvious “Kate Favourites” such as Charlotte Armstrong, Jean Potts, and Ethel Lina White. All three are brilliant authors, so definitely check them out, but I just felt like they have had plenty of appearances in other posts and lists on my blog.

John Barrington was the penname of British writer David Harvey John Jones, who was born in 1900. He led a colourful life, and thanks goes to Steve who writes the Bear Alley blog, as it is through some of his posts, I was able to find out more about this author. Barrington joined the Foreign Legion in 1925, although it seems like he deserted and ended up serving some time in prison, before he was repatriated. Upon returning to England though he was soon charged with deserting his wife and children, and over the course of the 1930s he also got into trouble over debts, and he was imprisoned for bigamy. In the late 1920s and early 1930s he used his notoriety after the Foreign Legion incident to establish a writing career of sorts. For example, under the name John Harvey he wrote With the French Foreign Legion in Syria (1928). During the 1930s and into 1941, Steve notes that: ‘Books appeared under the names Ex-Legionnaire 1384 and Operator 1384 – 21 books over the next eight years leading up to the Second World War. Many of them were co-written in collaboration with – or more likely entirely ghosted by – William James Blackledge, an author who seems to have specialised in ghosting Foreign Legion adventures and occasionally writing about the North-West frontier for variety. At least one of the Operator 1384 novels would appear to have been ghosted by Alfred Whatoff Allen (1888-1970), who also wrote a novel under his own name for Sampson Low.’ The Barrington penname came about after his release from jail in 1938, as ‘David Harvey John Jones legally changed his name by deed to David Harvey John Barrington’. Steve further uncovered the fact that Barrington committed further criminal activities, writing: ‘In December 1940, the recently renamed Barrington, of Howley Place, Paddington, then working as a billeting officer for the St. Pancras Borough Council, was remanded on bail at Clerkenwell Police Court for obtaining £15 by means of a forged billeting notice that he had cashed at a Post Office. Unfortunately, no further press reports of the case have been found.’ Biographic information seems to dry up after the 1940s and Steve wonders if there was a further name change. No book publications can be linked to Barrington after 1947 when he wrote Murder in White Pit and The Moving Finger, which were both published by John Langdon.

This is the first in The Cat Who… series, and I decided to give it a go after I learnt that my grandma used to read them. There are 29 books in the series, which were published between 1966 and 2007. There were also three short story collections released.

Hallie Rubenhold is an author whose work I have enjoyed in the past. You can read my review of The Five (2019) here. She is good at restoring the voices of women when it comes to writing about true crime. In The Five she did this for the victims of Jack of the Ripper, and in today’s review it is for Belle Elmore and her friends who were determined to figure out what had happened to her.

To finish off my blog housekeeping for April, today’s post is taking a brief look at the classic crime fiction which was reprinted last month. If you are wondering what other books have already been reprinted this year, then here are some links to earlier posts: January 2026 February 2026 March 2026 Now let’s get started on April’s reprints, beginning with…

w ones left to read, combined with the difficulty of finding these remaining titles cheaply. But I got lucky on eBay earlier in the year and nabbed The Double Frame, which is the UK title for Knocked for a Loop. I have gone with the earliest publication date, which is the American one. It is the 10th John J. Malone mystery out of 13, and in 1958 The Spectator described it as ‘very fast and quite funny’. My edition is Black Dagger Crime, and it comes with a foreword by Peter Chambers. I was intrigued by this passage: ‘Educated privately, she grew up in the violent era of Capone and his ilk, but her work contains none of the blood-stained realities of those violent times. Certainly it is concerned with murder, extortion and general mayhem, but the manner in which it is relayed is light-hearted, far removed from the grisly “realism” of certain other interpreters. There is no dwelling on gruesome details, and we are not encouraged to linger at the scene. The impact on the leading players is far more important, and we are whisked rapidly along to the next complication, of which there is never any shortage. The real underworld may not be as portrayed by Craig Rice, but hers is vastly preferable. If this is not the way it is, then this is the way it ought to be.’ I was wondering how far readers would agree with this. I am also curious if this statement is truer of the earlier books, as to me it seems like some of the later books get a bit darker. For example, I am thinking of The Lucky Stiff (1945), which starts at a prison where a woman is nearing her execution time. Then there is also the decapitation in Having Wonderful Crime (1943).

Growing up I was fond of hidden object games on the computer (oh yes, I was that hip-and-happening as a youth), so I was intrigued when this book was released. Whilst hidden object-based books are predominantly marketed at children, I would say this one is designed for an adult audience. Not because it involves murder mysteries, or anything gruesome, but more because a child is unlikely to have the relevant book knowledge.

Anticipated reads are a bit like buses for me this year, as I had to wait diligently until April to read my first anticipated 2026 read, and then two were released quite close together, the other title being Benjamin Stevenson’s Everyone in this Bank is a Thief, which I reviewed in my last post.

Today I am very pleased to be reviewing the 4th Ernest Cunningham mystery. This is one of my most anticipated reads of 2026. I was intrigued by the choice of setting, as whilst bank robberies are common fodder in the world of crime TV dramas and films, they are far less frequent in mystery novels. Or at least it seems so to me. A quick search on the blog identified some mysteries with bank either being robbed or embezzled from in: The Blackmailers (1867) by Émile Gaboriau,‘The Bank Burglar’ (ca.1908) by Jonas Kreppel, The Bank with the Bamboo Door (1965) by Dolores Hitchens and Anxious People (2020) by Fredrik Backman. However, in most instances the robbery is a starting point or is part of a wider plot. There is little page time spent within the banks themselves, and the narrative priority is either preventing the robbery or apprehending the thief. In Backman’s story the novel takes place in an apartment where the robber is keeping several people hostage. Moreover, in Augusto De Angelis’ The Murdered Banker (1935), our murder victim is apt for the theme, but the killing does not occur within a bank. Turning my attention to Stevenson’s book, it is unusual in having so much of the story take place in the confines of a bank. What is also different and interesting is how the trigger event of the bank robbery is only one part of a much more complex picture.Naturally not everything is as it seems (in fact I would say nothing is what seems in this tale!).

Lionel Black is an author I have been aware of for a while, but it is only now that I have got around to trying his work. I didn’t realise Black wrote more traditional detective stories, but I came across Death Has Green Fingers a few weeks ago, during some research for my forthcoming book. It sounded intriguing so I decided to give it a go.

I am pretty sure time 2026 is on a skateboard, with a turbo boost feature, as every month seems to fly by. But maybe it’s just me? I kicked off April with my new list: 50 Classic Crime Novels to Read from the 1950s. Do let me know which ones you would add. This month also saw me take my first look into Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor’s A Catalogue of Crime (1989), commenting on their thoughts on authors beginning with A. I managed to review 10 different authors this month. In the main my reads were from familiar authors, although this was no guarantee of quality, as Henry Wade and unusually Elizabeth Ferrars were a bit disappointing. This month I am having two categories for Book of the Month. The first category is my Best Modern Mystery, which goes to…