A clever logo produced by group member Bev Hankins.
About a month ago, The Tuesday Night Bloggers (TNB) began as a kind of impromptu celebration of all things Agatha Christie to celebrate her 125th birthday. Essentially members of a Facebook group decided that they were going to post something in their own blogs about Agatha Christie every Tuesday for what turned out to be a little more than the month of October, 2015. Yes, we’re still doing it. I’ve personally had fun working to a tighter deadline than “whenever”, and it encouraged me to find interesting things to present that could be explained in 500 words or so. Which, as you know, for me is barely a clearing of the throat 😉
Tuesday Night Bloggers (alphabetically by last name;the blog’s name links to the blog)
- Curtis Evans (The Passing Tramp)
- Brad Friedman (ahsweetmysteryblog)
- Bev Hankins (My Reader’s Block)
- Jeffrey Marks (The Corpse Steps Out)
- Moira Redmond (Clothes in Books)
- Noah Stewart (Noah’s Archives)
- Helen Szamuely Your Freedom and Ours.)
In conversation with a couple of my fellow TNB bloggers, I’ve learned that they are attracting a new and improved readership as a result of these Christie posts, as have I. Apparently people come for the Christie and look around for the Golden Age mystery, I guess, and welcome aboard! So I was wondering what would happen if we kept up the frequency but changed the topic a little bit … and we’re about to find out.
The seven bloggers in Tuesday Night Bloggers have come to an agreement that, provisionally at least, we’re going to keep posting on Tuesdays but we’re going to change the topic once a month. We’re going to talk about a different Golden Age writer for a month of Tuesdays, and hope that our new readers are as interested in the other major names as they have been in Agatha Christie.
Personally I think this is going to work best if we focus on the major writers — as I put it, writers with a large number of novels that have been printed in a large number of editions. My TNB friends are all all aware of mystery writers whose work is rare and expensive, and when we find rare and expensive novels that we enjoyed or understood, I believe we’ll continue to bring you our opinions. (E.C.R. Lorac and Miles Burton are the literary equivalent of $500/bottle Scotch!) In the meantime there are a bunch of Golden Age writers whose names many people will recognize and whose books are abundantly available at libraries and bookstores, and I think our breadth of information can shed light on these writers in a way that will interest people who may only be glancingly familiar with their work, or even people very familiar with their output. If you’ve read two Ngaio Marsh novels, well, we’ve frequently read all 29, and we have reasons why we like our favourites that we’ll share with you. I’m hoping this will encourage more people to share our pleasure in Golden Age mysteries.
So here’s the list of suggested topics for a year.
- October: Agatha Christie
- November: Ellery Queen
- December: Ngaio Marsh
- January: Rex Stout
- February: Dorothy L. Sayers
- March: John Dickson Carr
- April: Phoebe Atwood Taylor
- May: Erle Stanley Gardner
- June: Mary Roberts Rinehart
- July: Arthur Upfield
- August: Patricia Wentworth
- September: S. S. Van Dine
Believe me, I’m open to changing this list, any part of it or any name on it. (I alternated males and females.) And I know that the TNB would join me in welcoming any blogger with an interest in Golden Age mysteries to add his/her blog to this list, even if — especially if — they’re not members of our Facebook group. There is no need to post every single Tuesday, for existing members or new ones; I’m sure we’d even welcome guests who merely wanted to contribute a single post from their own blog.
Your comments below are welcome and earnestly solicited. I have shamelessly swiped the logo that Bev Hankins designed for the group since I like it better than mine (and I will now retire my variant terminology for this effort of Tuesday Club Murders); thank you Bev!
Noah's Archives 
Excellent intro/advertisement post! I think things are shaping up nicely.
Oh….and thanks for the nod. I certainly don’t mind the grab of the Christie cover adaptation. That actually came about because I didn’t have a decent image of the version of Bertram’s Hotel that I read (from the library–mine is buried in a box somewhere).
This seems a very interesting project. I’d love to be a part of it, albeit only occasionally. Hope that’s fine.
Occasional participation is fine — just be sure to let us know so that we can link to your posts!
Looks marvellous Noah – now, several important questions – is this Tuesday Eastern Standard Time, GMT or … just kidding 🙂 That list of authors looks great to me – I hope to contribute to a good half of those at least (love that Van Dine made the cut).
It’s a great list that will require some reading from me (Mayo, Upfield.) I wish Christianna Brand was in there instead of MRR – in other words, had-I-but-known you were going to include Rinehart, I would have spoken up for Inspector Cockrill…
It’s a great list that will require some extra reading from me (Mayo, Upfield). Had I but known that you were going to include Rinehart, I would have put in a request for Christiana Brand instead!
Excellent piece Noah, and I think your list is a good one: I like the variety. Some of these writers are a lot more familiar to me than others, so will enjoy discovering new and revisiting old…
Based on what I see here, I think we should consider inserting a month of “blogger’s choice”. Again, folks, my choices were based on which authors had the most books widely available, AFAIK. I love Christianna Brand too, Brad!
[…] Curt, Bev Hankins, Moira Redmond, Helen Szamuely, Jeffrey Marks, Noah Stewart and I have been having a ball with this. Now Noah has suggested we switch up each month with a new GAD classic author. (See his blog entry here, and get involved to your heart’s content – and check out Noah or Curt for links to everyone’s blog: http://noah-stewart.com/2015/10/09/the-tuesday-night-bloggers-where-do-we-go-from-here/ […]
This sounds like a lovely idea, Noah, and I would love to contribute, but I don’t know where I would find the time and energy for in-depth posts on any author, even Rex Stout, my favorite, whose books I have read 3 or 4 times each. Nowadays I can barely find time for one post a week for a book review. But I will be checking the posts on these authors and hoping to learn more about them.
I’m sure we’d all like to see everyone having fun with it, Tracy — why not make a mental note to contribute if you can? Or sometimes other people’s posts stimulate me to a kind of “reply” … Or you can just wait until Rex Stout’s month and then comment on, say, “My five favourite independent women in Rex Stout’s mysteries”. There you go!! LOL
You have convinced me, Noah. I should at least be able to contribute for Stout.
Now that you know you want to, you’ll find topics suggesting themselves to you. It’s taken me a little while to get the hang of picking smaller topics, and I still have a ways to go, but it’s a whole different category of effort. Instead of one large book with a lot of points, I can say one little thing.
I’ve never even heard of Phoebe Atwood Taylor and Arthur Upfield. Thanks for expanding my education with just their names. The other authors I’ve read — not the complete works of any of them, but I have enjoyed several titles from each of them
Taylor is an American writer with more than 30 comedy-mystery titles to her credit (she also writes as Alice Tilton). And Arthur Upfield has about 30 mysteries featuring an Australian Aboriginal police officer named “Bony”. People who get hooked on them tend to want them all!
Sounds like fun – I’ll certainly try and contribute an occasional post or two. Is there a central place to link posts to – like Past Offence’s Crimes Of The Century where links can be left in the comments? Or maybe using a hashtag on Twitter #tuesdaynightblog for example?
You know, a Twitter hashtag is probably a really good idea … I wish I knew more about it and actually used Twitter. Right now I think Curtis Evans is coordinating the efforts at his blog, but I’ll be doing a weekly post during November to coordinate any Ellery Queen efforts. If you leave a note here or on Curtis’s blog, or both, that should suffice.
And welcome aboard, I’m sure you have a lot to contribute!!
[…] authors to ponder and peruse, a list compiled by my learned colleague, Noah Stewart, right here: http://noah-stewart.com/2015/10/09/the-tuesday-night-bloggers-where-do-we-go-from-here/ . Noah will be in charge of posting links this month, so check out his blog, as well as the amazing […]
[…] Curtis Evans to commemorate Agatha Christie’s 125th birthday but since expanded to include a broader program of authors from the Golden Age – has produced a glorious range or diverse posts from a variety of contributors and […]