#john rhode

Mademoiselle from Armentières. John Rhode. London: Geoffrey Bles, (1927). First edition, presumed first issue. Original dust jacket.

An espionage novel set in the first world war when the song of that name was popular amongst the soldiers. Despite the obscenity of many popular versions of the song, it was reportedly quite clean in its original form.  

The Venner Crime. John Rhode. London: Odhams Press Limited, 1933. First edition. Original dust jacket.

A review of Dr Priestley Investigates by John Rhode – 251231 Cecil Street was a prolific British novelist writing under the pseudonyms of John Rhode, Miles Burton and Cecil Waye. Dr Priestley Investigates, the American title of his 1930 novel published in Britain as Pinehurst, is the eighth in Rhodes’ Dr Priestley series. In later books Dr Priestley is the archetypal armchair sleuth who delights…

A review of The Mysterious Suspect by John Rhode – 251130 Originally published in 1952, the fifty-sixth novel in John Rhode’s Dr Priestley series was issued in Britain under the slightly less prosaic title of By Registered Post, but the American edition bore the title of The Mysterious Suspect. As the Kindle e-book adopts the American title, I have chosen to follow suit. As is the case with…

Historically, I always like to feature some classic crime on the Ramblings for the first day of our Club Reading Weeks – and more often than not, it turns out to be Agatha Christie! The 1920s were certainly a Golden Age for crime fiction, but 1925’s Christie title was “The Secret of Chimneys” and somehow I wasn’t feeling it. I contemplated a non-crime book and started it, but I’m afraid it turned…

A review of The Venner Crime by John Rhode – 250815 The sixteenth book in the prolific John Rhode’s Dr Lancelot Priestley series, originally published in 1933, spins together an intriguing mystery from two seemingly disparate incidents albeit with a common pathological link. Usually the epitome of the classic armchair sleuth Priestly does actually bestir himself, travelling to amongst other…

A review of Vegetable Duck by John Rhode – 250701 At the risk of sounding like Julian Clary, I love a stuffed marrow but I did not know that the vegetable stuffed with meat was known as a vegetable duck, at least in the 1940s. This is the key to understanding the curious title of the fortieth book in John Rhode’s long-running Dr Lancelot Priestly series, originally published, and recently…

A review of Dr Priestley Lays a Trap by John Rhode – 250501 For a book that centres around a fatal motor crash that occurs during a motor rally Dr Priestly Lays a Trap, the American title, otherwise known as The Motor Rally Mystery, the fifteenth in Rhode’s Dr Priestley series originally published in 1933, is a rather pedestrian affair. There are rather too few suspects to make it a riveting…