Tea, Tonic & Toxin Carolyn Daughters & Sarah Harrison

THE THREE COFFINS (THE HOLLOW MAN) (1935) by John Dickson Carr is celebrated for its exceptional execution of the locked-room mystery, a subgenre demanding ingenious plotting and cerebral depth. Many consider it the best locked room mystery of all time. Carr’s complex puzzles, cryptic clues, and taut, suspenseful atmosphere make it a mystery fiction masterpiece.
Read: Buy the book on Amazon.
Reflect: Check out the conversation starters below.

The Novel as a Riddle
“To the murder of Professor Grimaud, and later the equally incredible crime in Cagliostro Street, many fantastic terms could be applied — with reason. Those of Dr Fell’s friends who like impossible situations will not find in his case-book any puzzle more baffling or more terrifying. Thus: two murders were committed, in such fashion that the murderer must have been not only invisible, but lighter than air. According to the evidence, this person killed his first victim and literally disappeared. Again according to the evidence, he killed his second victim in the middle of an empty street, with watchers at either end; yet not a soul saw him, and no footprint appeared in the snow.”
Locked Room Lecture / Breaking Down the Third Wall
Ch. 17 contains the oft-cited “locked room lecture,” where Fell speaks directly to readers. Fell says, “[W]e’re in a detective story, and we don’t fool the reader by pretending we’re not.” Fell then describes the various ways murder can be committed in a locked room.
From the books we’ve read, Is this the first break in the third wall?
Method #7 from The Three Coffins (The Hollow Man) by John Dickson Carr: “The victim is presumed to be dead long before he really is. The victim lies asleep drugged (but not harmed) in a locked room. Knockings on the door fail to rouse him. The murderer starts a foul-play scare; forces the door; gets in ahead and kills by stabbing or throat-cutting, while suggesting to other watchers that they have seen something they have not seen. The honour of inventing this device belongs to Israel Zangwill [The Big Bow Mystery].”
Pettis says, “[It] would seem pretty sound to say exclude the impossible and whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” (Sherlock Holmes, The Sign of the Four, 1890) (Compare with Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express, 1934: “The impossible cannot have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.”)
In The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books (2017), Martin Edwards called this chapter “an extraordinarily bold move.” Do you agree? How did you feel about this chapter? And have the books John Dickson Carr mentioned stood the test of time as greats? 
G.K. Chesterton was mentioned for the man in the passage. In The Wrong Shape, similar to Israel Zangwill, the killer rushes in pretending they are already dead and kills them while asleep. 






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Penny has never met anyone smarter than her. That's par for the course when you're a savant - one of fewer than 100 in the world. But despite her photographic memory and superpowered intellect, there's one ystery Penny's never been able to solve: Why did her father leave when she was in a coma at age seven, and where is he now?

On Penny's twenty-first birthdya, she receives a card in the mail from him, just as she has every year since he left. But this birthday card is different. For the first time ever, there's a return address. And a goodbye.

Penny doesn't know the world beyond her mother's house and the special school she's attended since her unusual abilities revealed themselves, but the mystery of her father's disappearance becomes her new obsession. For the first time ever, she decides to leave home to break free of everything that has kept her safe and use her gifts to answer the questions that have always eluded her. What Penny doesn't realize is she might not be able to outsmart a world far more complicated and dangerous than she'd ever imagined...

Check out our guest Carter Wilson at CarterWilson.com

See more of Carter's book, and references from the episode in our specially curated list in our amazon store.

Carter Wilson is the USA Today bestselling author of nine critically acclaimed, standalone psychological thrillers, as well as numerous short stories. He is an ITW Thriller Award finalist, a five-time winner of the Colorado Book Award, and his works have been optioned for television and film. Carter lives in Erie, Colorado in a Victorian house that is spooky but isn’t haunted…yet.
Born in New Mexico in 1970, Carter grew up primarily in Los Angeles before attending Cornell University in New York. He lived in Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and Miami before moving to Boulder, Colorado in 1996. Throughout his life, Carter has journeyed the globe for both work and pleasure, and his travels have been a constant source of inspiration in his fiction.
Carter’s writing career began on a spring day in 2003, when an exercise to ward off boredom during a continuing-education class evolved into a 400-page manuscript. Since that day, Carter has been constantly writing. In addition to his published novels, Carter has also contributed short fiction to various publications, and most notably was featured in the R.L. Stine young-adult anthology Scream and Scream Again.
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THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (1934) is James M. Cain’s gripping, groundbreaking noir tale of passion and betrayal. In a dusty roadside diner, love and lust ignite a murderous plot and challenge conventional notions of right and wrong. As secrets unravel, two lovers are drawn deeper into a web of crime, leading to a shocking and morally ambiguous climax.
Read: Buy the book on Amazon.
Reflect: Check out the conversation starters below.

Our guest, Rebecca Heisler, lives outside Boston with her two rescue mutts, who are usually by her side while she's reading. Outside of her digital marketing day job, she can usually be found with a book, often recommending the most absurd genres to her book club. She also loves writing, drinking wine, and watching and reviewing every Hallmark Christmas movie each year.
Check her out @bookworminboston

And while you're at it, visit our mutual friend @readfarandwide for bookish travel tips.

One of the things we love about book conversations is how the discussion makes so many connections. For this episode, we made a special idea list, and compiled the links here! Check it out and let us know if we missed any references.

And while you're at it, pick up the next book here!

The Postman Always Rings Twice is on the Modern Library’s list of 100 best novels. Most elements of the hardboiled genre are here. Dark passions. Heroes of dubious morality/amorality in a hardscrabble world. Sudden, squalid violence. Retribution. Albert Camus said the book’s themes and style influenced The Stranger. Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone) has talked about the impact Cain’s dialogue had on him (full of vernacular; true to character). Cain featured the perpetrator of the crime, rather than the detective or law enforcement. Crime novelists owe a lot to Cain.
The book feels like another major departure from the types of books we’ve been reading — the brutality, the psychopathy, the sex. What was the context of this development? What was going on in American fiction? Is Cain the first to do this?
Did you like any of the characters? How did it feel to read the book from inside the killer’s head? For Sarah it was difficult, like having a one way conversation with a crazy person who wants to tell you all about themselves, thinks they have it figured out, but you don’t agree that they do.

In The Postman Always Rings Twice, Nick’s ethnic background is looked down upon, even by his wife. Her distaste for her husband is implied to derive in part from her perception that she is less “white” for being married to him. Mexicans are described as less worthy characters.
Desperation, driven by grinding Depression-era poverty, is key to the psychological landscape of the novel, driving Cora first to marriage and then to murder. She went into the marriage assuming that Nick was unchangeable (and maybe he was), but it was the burden she was willing to bear to get out of the hash house.
Cora also blames her class as to why she couldn’t
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In this episode we are delighted to chat with Barbara Nickless! She is the Wall Street Journal and #1 Amazon Charts bestselling author of the multi-award-winning Sydney Parnell crime novels. Barbara’s new series features forensic semiotician Dr. Evan Wilding—a man whose gift for interpreting the words and symbols left behind by killers has led him to consult on some of the world’s grisliest cases. She’s the winner of the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence, the Golden Quill Award, Suspense Magazine Best Debut of 2016, Amazon Editors’ Best Mystery, Thriller, and Suspense Novel, and a four-time recipient of the Colorado Authors League Writing Award. In addition, she has been nominated for the Colorado Book Award five times and won three times. Barbara lives in Colorado at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, where she loves to hike, cave, snowshoe, and drink single-malt Scotch. Her most recent travels—while conducting research for a novel—involved taking cover from rocketfire and being grilled at military checkpoints.

https://barbaranickless.com/

An ancient creature of Greek mythology drives a killer’s unspeakable motives in a pulse-pounding thriller by Barbara Nickless, the Amazon Charts and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Dark of Night.
On a stormy Chicago night, renowned semiotician Dr. Evan Wilding and his brother, River, who’s back from an archaeological dig, reunite in a mystery. A package addressed to both of them contains a hand-drawn maze, an ancient Cretan coin, and a cryptic greeting: Let the game begin.
The opening move is murder.
In a downtown alley, a man has been found nearly cleaved in two, a symbol drawn on his forehead and a savage rip in his throat. Given the clues, Evan sees a parallel to a fearsome Greek myth. Which means his friend Detective Addie Bisset is on the trail of a legendary flesh-eating monster―one terrifyingly human and tumbling a panicked city toward chaos.
Evan, Addie, and River scramble to discover who’s behind the appalling crimes and decipher the baffling motives. The body count is rising. The endgame is nowhere in sight. And the stakes are nothing less than life and death.

Barbara references Far from the Tree & we can't wait to check it out!

Start researching your next book, Barbara-style!
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Tea, Tonic, and Toxin is a mystery and thriller podcast and book club for people obsessed with mysteries and thrillers. Each month, your hosts, Sarah Harrison and Carolyn Daughters, will discuss a game-changing mystery or thriller, starting in the mid-19th century onward. Together, we’ll see firsthand how the genre evolved.
Along the way, we’ll entertain ideas, prospects, theories, and doubts, along with the occasional guest. And we hope to entertain you, dear friend. We want you to experience the joys of reading the best mysteries and thrillers ever written.
We’ll read and explore ideas about the book and about ourselves. And we’ll start at the very beginning with “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar Allan Poe.

This episode we discuss The Thin Man. The allure of THE THIN MAN (1934) lies in its timeless intrigue, captivating characters, and masterful storytelling. Dashiell Hammett’s novel is known for its clever plot twists, witty dialogue, a surprising blend crime and comedy – and the enigmatic detective duo of Nick and Nora Charles.
Read: Buy the book on Amazon.
Reflect: Check out the conversation starters below.
Weigh In: Speak up, and you might get an on-air shout out and a fabulous sticker!
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Our incredible guest is Julie Rivett! Julie M. Rivett is a granddaughter of Dashiell Hammett, an advocate for Hammett’s life and literature, a trustee for his estate, and an essayist, editor, and lecturer. Working with Hammett biographer Richard Layman, she has edited six books by or about her grandfather, including Selected Letters of Dashiell Hammett (2001), Return of The Thin Man (2012), The Hunter and Other Stories (2013), and The Big Book of the Continental Op (2017). She studied literature, culture, and persuasive arts at California State University, Long Beach, where she earned an M.A. in Communication Studies.

The Thin Man, Chapter 1 (72 Intro Words and 62 Closing Words That Set the Scene): “I was leaning against the bar in a speakeasy on Fifty-second Street, waiting for Nora to finish her Christmas shopping, when a girl got up from the table where she had been sitting with three other people and came over to me. She was small and blonde, and whether you looked at her face or at her body in powder-blue sports clothes the result was satisfactory. ‘Aren’t you Nick Charles?’ she asked.”
    Nick and Nora find a table. Nora said: “She’s pretty.” [referring to Dorothy Wynant]
    “If you like them like that.”
    She grinned at me. “You got types?”
    “Only you, darling–lanky brunettes with wicked jaws.”
    “And how about the red-head you wandered off with at the Quinns’ last night?”
    ​​”That’s silly,” I said. “She just wanted to show me some French etchings.”

Vintage Books is planning to reissue all five of her grandfather’s novels, each with a fresh introduction by a well-regarded contemporary author! Check Julie's Facebook page for updates!
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It’s time for more mysteries, detective stories, and thrillers! Our 2024 selections include stunners published from 1934-1939.   Get reading, and subscribe so you never miss an episode! (You can find the 2022 schedule here and 2023 schedule here.)

The allure of THE THIN MAN (1934) lies in its timeless intrigue, captivating characters, and masterful storytelling. Dashiell Hammett’s novel is known for its clever plot twists, witty dialogue, a surprising blend crime and comedy – and the enigmatic detective duo of Nick and Nora Charles.
Read: Buy the book on Amazon.

Our guest for The Thin Man is the incredible Julie Rivett, Hammett's own grandaughter & a trustee of his estate. Julie M. Rivett brings a unique personal and professional perspective to the study of Dashiell Hammett. She is one of four Hammett grandchildren, a Hammett scholar, and a trustee for the Hammett literary estate. Although her memories of her grandfather stem from a single childhood visit, she has developed an understanding of Hammett that integrates conversations with family and friends, study of Hammett’s public and private writings, and research on his life.

Working with Hammett biographer Richard Layman, she has co-edited six books by or
about her famous grandfather. Selected Letters of Dashiell Hammett 1921-1960 and her mother’s memoir Dashiell Hammett: A Daughter Remembers, both nominated for Edgar Awards, were released in 2001. Return of the Thin Man, with Hammett’s screen stories for two of the beloved Thin Man film series sequels, was published in 2012. The Hunter and Other Stories followed in 2013, featuring unpublished and rarely seen Hammett fiction, screen stories, and an unfinished Sam Spade adventure. The Continental Op: The Complete Case Files collected all 28 of Hammett’s Op short stories in ebook in 2016. The complete collection of Op stories, in addition to the original serialized versions of Hammett’s two novels featuring the Op were released in print for the first time in The Big Book of the Continental Op in November of 2017.

Julie has lectured and curated exhibits on Hammett and his works for one-city-read-one-book programs, libraries, schools and universities, writers’ groups, book clubs, and
literacy organizations across the U.S. Her interviews and essays have been published at
home and abroad, helping to maintain her grandfather’s legacy and introduce his writings to new generations.

When she’s not editing or lecturing, Julie volunteers for arts, literacy, and political
organizations and minds her grandchildren. She lives with her husband in Orange
County, California, where she raised two daughters and earned degrees in American
Studies and Communication Studies from California State University, Long Beach.

Vintage Books is planning to reissue all five of her grandfather’s novels, each with a fresh introduction by a well-regarded contemporary author! Check Ju
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