Our full, extended discussion of House in the Mist, The Ruby and the Caldron, and The Hermit of _ Street for Death of the Reader. These three short stories take some of the best aspects of murder mystery and detective fiction, and divide them among a collection that sets a wonderful atmosphere. We spoke with Dr. Jack I. Abecassis from Pomona College about why you should be reading books and engaging with them, we spoke with Anna Fienberg, author of the beloved Tashi series about children’s fiction and adapting fairy tales, and we spoke with Dr. Stephanie Russo about the origins of crime fiction and social criticism.

Anna Katharine Green was an American author in the late 19th and early 20th century, and has been credited by some as the “mother of the detective novel”, as she was one of the first prominent female authors in the genre, paving the way for iconic authors like Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. Green’s most famous Detective Novel, The Leavenworth Case, was credited by Agatha Christie as being formative in her writing.

Even though this collection doesn’t contain anything in our normal ‘detective-solves-a-murder’ interpretation of Detective Fiction, it still represents an important style of story reflected in many authors of Detective Fiction. These short stories can be an excellent opportunity for you to brush up on the modes of the genre in new and interesting ways that can be tackled quickly.

For this episode, Herds was blind and Flex was the veteran. Was there even a solution worth having in this story? We think so; tune in to find out more!

The original episodes:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Death of the Reader’s extended cut brings all three shows for a book into one bundle, with extra content, discussion, and sometimes even a meta discussion; a behind-the-scenes peek at how we put the episode together.

This extended cut was edited by Felix Shannon.