Lighting the Pipes

In this episode, our final of the year, we send 2025 on its way with a deep-dive into John Gardner's ninth James Bond continuation novel. While on "vacation" in Canada, Bond's forc...

2025 has been a great year on the pod and in this episode we look back at this successful and surprising stretch of reading and collaborating across thirty episodes. In addition to...

Damon Runyan's Broadway stories are characterised by crooks, rogues and revelers with hearts of gold. In "Dancing Dan's Christmas" from 1932, we see a trio of pals, led by Dan, on ...

It's Christmas Eve in Oldhampton and as residents enjoy what's left of their pre-holiday errands, cub reporter Sonia is looking to eschew the society fluff of her regular assignmen...

Before Philip Marlowe there was... "shamus"... aka Proto-Marlowe!In this episode, Scott goes on solo assignment through the pages of Black Mask magazine to share his thoughts on Ra...

In this, his first Bernard Samson narrative, Len Deighton gives us the story of a weary MI6 veteran who's pulled back into danger when a suspected mole threatens London's Berlin in...

From a post 9/11 framework, some could read John Gardner's Scorpius as chilling and prophetic. In the year of its publication, however, it was aiming to hit more contemporary targe...

It's Halloween on Yellow Street and outcast Robbie Glinton has a plan for revenge. Let down by teachers, abandoned by parents and ignored by "the man", he and his troop of juvenile...

The John Gardner sweep continues with "Win, Lose or Die", the eighth continuation novel in his cycle of Bond adventures. With this story, Gardner keeps on trend-jumping, here drawi...

In this special episode, Nick Anderson from The Book Graveyard lends his enthusiasm and rides sidecar through our exploration of "Maigret and the Ghost". When one of the Inspector'...

Dr Richard Talbot: "I'm writing a paper on ailments of the heart." Nora Prentiss: "A paper? I could write a book!"LTP Noir is back with "oomph" and a deep-dive into 1947's Nora Pre...

What would happen if a bunch of thugs were chasing down an old-man's horse-betting system? And what if only a sharpshooting physics teacher and his jockey-dreaming younger brother ...