The wait is over, mystery fans! It’s time for a new season of Clued in Mystery. After a quick preview of the upcoming season, Brook and Sarah kick things off by discussing what they read during the summer break.
Discussed and mentioned
The Antique Hunter’s Guide to Murder (2024) C.L. Miller
The Poisonous Solicitor: The True Story of a Nineteen Twenty’s Murder Mystery (2022) Stephen Bates
Lord Edgware Dies (1933) Agatha Christie
The Secret Adversary (1922) Agatha Christie
Listen for the Lie (2024) Amy Tintera
The Documents in the Case (1930) Dorothy L. Sayers
Holmes is Missing (2025) James Patterson and Brian Sitts
The Four Queens of Crime (2025) Rosanne Limoncelli
You might also like
Christie’s Sleuths: Tommy and Tuppence (released June 20, 2023)
Dorothy L. Sayers (released April 12, 2022)
Read along: Holmes Marple and Poe (released April 6, 2024)
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Transcript
This transcript is generated by a computer and there may be some mis-spellings and strange punctuation. We try to catch these before posting, but some things slip through.
| Sarah | Welcome to Clued in Mystery. I’m Sarah. |
| Brook | And I’m Brook and we both love mystery. |
| Sarah | Hi, Brook. |
| Brook | Hi, Sarah. It’s time to start a brand new season. |
| Sarah | I know, can you hear the excitement in my voice? |
| Brook | Yes. I’ve been I’ve been excited for like two or three days getting ready for today. |
| Sarah | And as we typically do after our summer break, today we are going to be talking about what we read and what we watched ah during our time off. |
| Sarah | But before we do that, let’s talk about what we have in store for this season. |
| Brook | Yes, let’s. |
| Sarah | So one of the things that I’m really excited about this season is that we are doing a deep dive on Josephine Tey. |
| Brook | I am so excited for this. Talking about ah the Golden Age authors and learning about, you know, all about their life and their process. It’s been some of my favorite episodes, and I’m sure this one will be another. |
| Sarah | And we’re not only going to have her as our Golden Age author, but we are also going to do a read along for one of her books. |
| Brook | That’s right. You know, this has been something that we’ve done um with more contemporary titles, a lot of contemporary mysteries, but we have discovered how much you listeners enjoy our golden age topics. And so we’re going to do a read along with a golden age title. And ah that is The Daughter of Time. |
| Sarah | That’s right. It’s probably one of her most popular books and often appears on kind of lists of the best mysteries. But we’ll get into all of that when we get to that episode. |
| Sarah | Another thing I’m really excited about is it’s going to be a bit of an experiment, but we are going to have a little game show on Clued Mystery. |
| Brook | That’s right. Sarah discovered a really fun ah historic game show that was done in the radio days, and we were so inspired by it that we would like to carry that on here on Clued in Mystery. |
| Sarah | And we’ve invited some past guests of the show to come and join us for our first try and it our first attempt at this experiment. |
| Brook | I can’t wait. |
| Brook | Well, I’m also excited about ah talking about more Christie characters. We’re going to cover more of the Agatha Christie recurring characters. And that’s been a really fun way to learn more about the history of mystery. So I’m looking forward to that as well. |
| Sarah | And of course, we have some guests that we’ve invited to join us for an episode. We’re going to do our usual, What Would You Do? and more. |
| Brook | And lots more. It’s going to be a great season. |
| Sarah | All right, Brook, you’ve had some time to read and watch. Let’s get into what we covered over the summer. So I’m going to start by talking about the Antique Hunter’s Guide to Murder, which was one of the books that um I was looking forward to reading over the summer break. And if you’ll recall, the estranged former mentor of a woman dies in a mysterious way. She goes to uncover the truth. |
| Sarah | It was lots of fun. I know it’s something that you read. That’s what inspired me to read it. I would read more about Freya and and her aunt Carole. |
| Brook | I think it is a series, Sarah. I have I have not read more than just the first book as well, but I’m glad you liked it. It was one I really enjoyed last year, too. |
| Brook | The first one I’ll talk about um is The Poisonous Solicitor. And this was the one I chose. It’s a true crime story. And I chose it because, you know, last season we did an episode on ah poisons as ah as the fictional murder method in in mystery. |
| Brook | And so this was a real life tale of a man, an attorney actually, who um who poisoned his wife, sadly. um And, you know, usually I love these true crime stories that have lots and lots of historical grounding where you like learn all about what is also going on in the world. But um I have to admit, this was pretty dense. And there were times when I wasn’t sure I was going to finish. |
| Brook | um But I did, I did enjoy it in the long run. And um it’s an example of what we talked about where true life did, you know, influence some of those authors in the 20s and 30s to write these ah mysteries based on poisonings. |
| Sarah | Brook, um was there a any link to crime fiction like in the book? |
| Brook | You know, it definitely, this case was big in the newspapers. And so I imagine that it definitely, we we talk about that, right? The authors who are but kind of mining the newspapers for for ideas. I didn’t see a direct connection, but I like to imagine that our favorite ah Golden Age authors were reading about this guy. |
| Sarah | Okay. So I had two Christie books that I was thinking of reading, and I actually did get to both of them. So the first was Lord Edgware Dies, which features Hercule Poirot. |
| Sarah | And I really enjoyed that. And then I also read Tommy and Tuppence, their first book, um The Secret Adversary. |
| Sarah | And Brook, I loved this book. I think this is probably my favorite, Christie It is so different from her mysteries. |
| Sarah | It was just, it was lots of fun. And over the summer, I learned that there’s a screen adaptation in development. And I cannot wait. I know it has been done on screen before, but just can’t wait to see how, um how they treat this story. ah Yeah, such great characters. Absolutely love them. |
| Brook | It is such a fun set of characters. And as you said, so different than other things that um that she’s written. I, I like Tommy and Tuppence too. |
| Sarah | And I couldn’t believe that this was her second book. Right. And she only she only wrote a few books featuring them. I know we did an episode [SS1] where we talked about them as Christie characters and you know she ah had them age along with her, but she didn’t you know they didn’t up appear in nearly as many stories as some of her other sleuths. But I just imagine that she had so much fun writing them. |
| Brook | I do too. Yeah. And it has that, you know, that little bit of romance in there, which we know she did write romance as well under her other pen name. um Yeah, it’s it’s really fun to see. We’ve talked before about how she seems to be able to do it all. And this that’s a great example of it. |
| Brook | The next one I will talk about is Listen for the Lie (2024). This is by Amy Tintera. And um I read this as an e-book. And it’s also an unusual format because the ah book contains parts of a podcast that are being done. |
| Brook | This woman’s best friend died when they were teenagers and she cannot recall anything that happens and it puts her in the position of a suspect. um It definitely kept me turning pages. It was like very quick paced and a ah quick read. |
| Brook | We have an unreliable narrator and quite honestly, every character is quite unreliable as well. So that makes it fun. um The only issue I had with it was like everybody’s secrets seemed to revolve around cheating and infidelity. And I really think that um the author could have been a little more creative in like some of the motives, but ah it was a fun read and a great for a summertime quick, quick vacation read. |
| Sarah | I think I read it last year and I i enjoyed it. um I don’t remember picking up on ah kind of all of the secrets being around infidelity, but I mean, that’s a ah pretty easy secret, right? To to weave into a story. |
| Brook | Mm-hmm. |
| Sarah | ah I also read a book in an unusual format and that was The Documents in the Case, which is 1930 publication by Dorothy L. Sayers. Most of the book is told through letters between different characters and you get to, as the reader, ah kind of figure out what is going on and also figure out if all of the letter writers are reliable. |
| Sarah | ah So it was it it was ah a great read. And it doesn’t feature Lord Peter Wimsey, who is the sleuth that um but appeared in most of ah her other books. But I really enjoyed it. |
| Brook | That’s great. I love an epistolary novel. |
| Brook | So we did something completely different this time, Sarah, in that we both chose the same book. We read the second book in the Holmes, Marple, and Poe series, which is Holmes is Missing. And I think I liked this one better than book one. How about you? |
| Sarah | Yeah, I think I agree. I think we got to know the characters a little bit more. I did feel like it was maybe misnamed because from the title, you think that Holmes is not around for most of the book, but in fact, he is. And I I you know I don’t think that that’s a spoiler. |
| Brook | No. |
| Sarah | um So it was a bit of a like red herring in the title, I feel like. |
| Brook | I would agree. You get the idea that that’s going to be their case to solve, there but not at all. So, I, I felt like they had maybe a little bit more investigating in this one. That was one of our criticisms of book one is that there weren’t a lot of clues and actual investigating going on, but I i thought that was a little better. But I have a feeling that they’re setting us up for a book three. What about you? |
| Sarah | Yeah, I got that sense as well. And, you know, I think I enjoyed that book enough that I would read the third one. And so this is a co-authored book, James Patterson and Brian Sitz. And, you know, I know James Patterson kind of anything he writes is is um pretty popular. And yeah, I think I would read the next in the series. |
| Brook | Yeah, like you said, they we do get to know the characters a little more. And now I’m curious about how some things will turn out. So I would read number three as well. |
| Sarah | hmm. |
| Brook | Well, the last book on my list is definitely my favorite read of the summer, and that is The Four Queens of Crime. That’s a 2025 release by Roseanne Limoncelli. And, you know, I went in with some reluctance because I am leery anytime a author name drops like that um or that it will be gimmicky, maybe won’t won’t pay off, but she definitely delivers. |
| Brook | In case you don’t remember, this is Sayers, Christie, Marsh, and Allingham, the four queens of crime. They attend a fundraising event um for you know some very rich people at a manor house. |
| Brook | And guess what? There’s a real murder when they get there. ah So she just did such a great job characterizing the four women. I’m so glad, Sarah, that we had done our deep dives on all four of them because there are some Easter eggs. And if we had not really learned about those women, I I would not have picked up on those. So that was fun. And the mystery is really, really good too. |
| Brook | Yeah, I just can’t say enough good things about it. I really liked the way she portrayed the authors being called in to help because, you know, sometimes we see in books that they’re like already pros at it or something, you know, because they write these stories, but they were very reluctant and like, hey, we only write fictional mysteries. We don’t want to get involved. It was really realistic in that way. um so that was fun. But another wonderful thing she does is that she includes other real life stories historic figures, um Lillian Wyles was the first woman in the CID at Scotland Yard, and she was originally hired to interview women and children who were involved in crimes because the you know Scotland Yard realized that it would be helpful to have a woman in in that position. |
| Brook | But she was eventually promoted to chief inspector in 1935, and by the time she retired, there were over 300 women in the Metro Police. So she really took part in that growth of women in the police force. |
| Brook | And then the story also includes Dorothy Peto, who was an inquiry officer, and then eventually the first superintendent of women police in 1932. Um and then to a few other real life ah characters. And I just thought that that was such a brilliant idea to really make this whole world seem real. |
| Sarah | I love that. And it sounds so good, Brook. I’m going to have to put it on my list um and, and read it as well because it just sounds excellent. |
| Sarah | Well, Brook I think it sounds like you had a great time reading over the summer I can say the same is true for me um and I’m just really looking forward to diving deeper into mystery over the next season with you. |
| Brook | I am too, Sarah. I just can’t wait to get started on all the fun topics and interviews and and games that we have planned. And we hope that you’re excited too, listeners. |
| Brook | Don’t forget to go out and subscribe to the Clued in Chronicle newsletter twice a month. We’ll keep you updated on everything we’re doing and you won’t miss a thing. But for today, thank you for joining us on Clued in Mystery. |
| Brook | I’m Brook. |
| Sarah | And I’m Sarah. And we both love mystery. |
