SSoP Podcast Episode 64 — Detective Agency: Discreet Inquiries, Mysteries Solved

SSoP Podcast Episode 64 — Detective Agency: Discreet Inquiries, Mysteries Solved

Friday, 13 September, 2024

Fictional detectives are some of the most beloved characters in print and on-screen. It’s easy to relate to someone with an overblown sense of justice and a need to set the world right (or as right as it can be).

There are nosy neighbors like Nancy Drew and Miss Marple with no real credentials whatsoever and police detectives — Hello, Harry Bosch! Ta, Inspector Lynley! — with entire departments behind them. Relentless journalists, dogged medical examiners, resourceful bounty hunters (We see you, Stefanie Plum!), and, perhaps, the most endearing detectives of them all: private eyes.

This show is all about the gumshoes who work outside the pesky laws of search warrants and chain of evidence. Who maybe toil in an office with a frosted glass door and a dame with moxie tapping away at a typewriter — or perhaps the dame with moxie is the detective. This installment celebrates independent investigators who distract and delight in their search for the truth.

In this episode, we meet the world’s first PI and first American lady detective, delve into Poe scholarship and the problem with his ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue,’ and discuss one of the kindest mystery authors. Then we recommend five books we love that put us in the thick of dangerous inquiries, including the escapades of a thoroughly modern detective agency, an urban mystery with a bookish PI, a British caper with an unforgettable hero, a how-to for wannabe detectives, and a noir-tinged fantasy novel about a reluctant sleuth.

transcript

Read the full transcript of Detective Agency: Discreet Inquiries, Mysteries Solved.

The Verifiers

buy | read review

IQ

buy | read review

Odds Against

buy | read review

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Private Investigating

buy | read review

The Manual of Detection

buy | read review

other books we mentioned

rule

other cool stuff we talked about

Perhaps you’d like to listen to some mood music while you dig into these links.

And some photos to set the scene…

black and white photo of a close up of a man in a suit holding a pistol

color photo of a retro black rotary telephone sitting on a desk
Photo courtesy of RD Smith/Unsplash.
black and white photo of an office with a wooden desk and light coming in through thin window blinds
Photo courtesy of Michelle Ding/Unsplash.
color photo of blue filing cabinets with boxes of papers on top of them
Photo courtesy of Serene Archees/Unsplash+.
a late model sedan on a city street on a foggy night
Photo courtesy of Patrick Schiele/Unsplash.
 

from dave’s intro

Dave mentioned:

  • The actor Richard Armitage, his thriller Geneva, and the (brilliant) spy show Berlin Station:
 

detective agency 101

Meet Kate Warne!

Previous Podcast Episodes We Mentioned:

TV and Movies We Name-Dropped:

 

two truths and a lie

  • Statement 3: Poe scholars don’t like to talk about the culprit in ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue.’ Here’s the Reddit thread that started it all.
 

The Verifiers by Jane Pek

IQ by Joe Ide

Odds Against by Dick Francis

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Private Investigating by Steven Kerry Brown

The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry

 

Congratulations! You made it to the end. Here are your rewards:

  • Treat yourself to Mystery and Suspense Magazine — like this piece on Travel and Tourism Cozy Mysteries.

  • Or perhaps you’d like to listen to PI’s Declassified, a podcast that lets you eavesdrop as PIs discuss their real-life cases. ‘You’ll hear stories about lies and false confessions, tracking down missing persons, forensics, workplace violence, innocent people freed from prison, human trafficking, and other tantalizing cases.’

 

finally…

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Our Substack is free and awesome. Every week, you get: Tuesday Tea, an invitation to chat about bookish topics with us and other (charming, intelligent, friendly) readers — and Friday Endnotes, a communique from Mel with behind-the-scenes and bonus goodies related to our new podcast episodes, plus her favorite book- and travel-related links of the week. Sign up here.

 

Parts of the Strong Sense of Place podcast are produced in udio. Some effects are provided by soundly.

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