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Maureen and Jay join us to discuss their wonderful interactive whodunit, You Are the Detective: The Creeping Hand Murder. It’s 1933, and your job is to help Scotland Yard solve an impossible murder. Are you up to the task?
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November 1933. London. Seven people receive mysterious letters. Someone knows their terrible secrets. They are summoned to a posh townhouse where one is stabbed right in front of the others, but somehow no one saw a thing.
Can you help Scotland Yard solve the mystery? An interactive murder mystery from the bestselling author and illustrator of Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village
Dear Detective, Have you seen the story in the papers about the dreadful murder of the American novelist? The crime is so devious, so logistically impossible, that it seems to have been committed not by a person but by a disembodied hand. I must confess that we are at a loss. Who wrote the poison pen letters that lured these seven people to this deadly gathering? What do a poet, an earl, an actress, a cook, a telephone operator, and a lothario have in common? And how can a man be stabbed in a room full of suspects when none of them went near him or saw a thing? We have had our best people on the case, Detective, and we still can’t make heads or tails of it. We are giving this case file to you. Can you decipher the clues, decode the witness statements, and identify the murderer? You are our last hope. Can you help us crack the Creeping Hand Murder? Yours truly,
Detective Chief Inspector of the Metropolitan Police
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Special guests Ruta Sepetys  and Steve Sheinkin join Tea, Tonic & Toxin to discuss their book The Bletchley Riddle.
Remember, you are bound by the Official Secrets Act…
Summer, 1940. Nineteen-year-old Jakob Novis and his quirky younger sister, Lizzie, share a love of riddles and puzzles. And now they’re living inside of one. The quarrelsome siblings find themselves amid one of the greatest secrets of World War II—Britain’s eccentric codebreaking factory at Bletchley Park. As Jakob joins Bletchley’s top minds to crack the Nazi’s Enigma cipher, fourteen-year-old Lizzie embarks on a mission to solve the mysterious disappearance of their mother.
The Battle of Britain rages and Hitler’s invasion creeps closer. And at the same time, baffling messages and codes arrive on their doorstep while a menacing inspector lurks outside the gates of the Bletchley mansion. Are the messages truly for them, or are they a trap? Could the riddles of Enigma and their mother’s disappearance be somehow connected? Jakob and Lizzie must find a way to work together as they race to decipher clues that unravel a shocking puzzle that presents the ultimate challenge: How long must a secret be kept?
Get your copy of all of our History of Mystery book selections here! (including even some 2027 selections)
History of Mystery book slections now in our Bookshop Storefront as well! Support your local bookseller.
Or if you happen to be in lovely Roanoke, Virginia, stop in person at the BiblioPub to get your copy.
Watch clips from our conversations with guests!
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Ruta Sepetys (Rūta Šepetys) is an internationally acclaimed, #1 New York Times bestselling author of historical fiction published in over sixty countries and forty languages. Considered a “crossover” novelist, her books are read by both students and adults worldwide. Winner of the Carnegie Medal and honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Ruta is renowned for giving voice to underrepresented history and those who experienced it. Her books have won or been shortlisted for more than fifty book prizes, appear on over forty state reading lists, and are currently in development for film and television.
A former textbook writer, Steve Sheinkin is now making amends by writing books young people might actually want to read.
He’s the author of fast-paced, cinematic, nonfiction page-turners, including Bomb, Fallout, Undefeated, Born to Fly, The Port Chicago 50, and Impossible Escape.
He is also the author of The Bletchley Riddle, a middle grade novel written with Ruta Sepetys. The historical mystery is set in Bletchley Park, Britain’s top secret codebreaking factory during World War II.
Steve’s many accolades include a Newbery Honor, three Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards, a Sibert Medal and Honor, three National Book Award finalist honors, and the Margaret A. Edwards Award. He lives with his family in Saratoga Springs, New York.
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We were delighted to discuss all things mysterious with Otto Penzler in this episode. 
Otto Penzler joins Tea, Tonic & Toxin to discuss the Golden Age of Mystery.
Otto Penzler is president and CEO of MysteriousPress.com and proprietor of New York City’s Mysterious Bookshop.
Widely regarded as a leading authority on crime, mystery, and suspense fiction, he founded The Mysterious Press in 1975 and later launched Penzler Publishers, including American Mystery Classics and Scarlet. A prolific editor and publisher, he has received two Edgar Awards, the Ellery Queen Award, and the Raven.
Get your copy of all of our History of Mystery book selections here! (including even some 2027 selections)
History of Mystery book slections now in our Bookshop Storefront as well! Support your local bookseller.
Or if you happen to be in lovely Roanoke, Virginia, stop in person at the BiblioPub to get your copy.
Watch clips from our conversations with guests!
For bonus episodes and to get all episodes first, join our Patreon community.
Otto Penzler is president and CEO of MysteriousPress.com and proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City. Long regarded as one of the world’s foremost authorities on crime, mystery, and suspense fiction, he has spent decades shaping the field as a publisher, editor, bookseller, and champion of both classic and contemporary crime writing.
In 1975, Penzler founded The Mysterious Press, a publishing house that became one of the most respected names in mystery and suspense fiction. He sold the company to Warner Books in 1989, reacquired the imprint in 2010, and continued publishing literary crime fiction through Grove/Atlantic. Since January 2021, The Mysterious Press has again been independently owned. Through MysteriousPress.com, in partnership with Open Road Integrated Media, he publishes both original works and classic crime fiction.
In fall 2018, Penzler established Penzler Publishers, which introduced American Mystery Classics, a line dedicated to bringing distinguished mystery and detective novels back into print, many after decades of unavailability. In September 2020, he launched Scarlet, an imprint devoted to psychological and domestic suspense. Charles Perry serves as publisher of all Penzler Publishers imprints, and Luisa Smith is editor-in-chief of Scarlet.
Penzler’s contributions to the mystery world extend well beyond book publishing. For seventeen years, he published The Armchair Detective, the Edgar Award-winning quarterly journal devoted to the study of mystery and suspense fiction. He also created Otto Penzler Books and The Armchair Detective Library, further expanding his influence on the genre’s publishing landscape.
Crippen and Landru
The very best in short mystery fiction

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Sergio Angelini joins Tea, Tonic & Toxin to discuss Green for Danger (1944) by Christianna Brand.
Sergio was born and bred in Rome, Italy, moving to Singapore for 5 years in the 1980s before settling in the UK. He studied Law at London School of Economics and got a joint MA in Film Studies and Film Archiving from the University of East Anglia. He hosts a podcast focused on crime and film noir called Tipping My Fedora.
Get your copy of all of our History of Mystery book selections here! (including even some 2027 selections)
History of Mystery book slections now in our Bookshop Storefront as well! Support your local bookseller.
Or if you happen to be in lovely Roanoke, Virginia, stop in person at the BiblioPub to get your copy.
Watch clips from our conversations with guests!
For bonus episodes and to get all episodes first, join our Patreon community.
Sergio has worked in film and education for over thirty years. He edited the educational media quarterly Viewfinder for a decade and for over eight years was the reviewer of TV home video releases for Sight & Sound magazine. For 15 years he was involved in the development and running of the educational streaming resource, BoB (Box of Broadcasts). He has provided video essays, audio commentaries and booklet notes for various DVD and Blu-ray releases for such labels as Arrow, BFI, Eureka (Masters of Cinema), Hammer Films, Imprint and Indicator.
Previous print publications include contributions to Gilbert Adair (Verbivoracious Festschrift, 2014), Mysteries Unlocked (McFarland, 2014), The Cult TV Book (IB Tauris 2010) and Directors in British and Irish Cinema (BFI, 2006).
Special guest Sergio Angelini joined Tea, Tonic & Toxin to discuss Christianna Brand’s Green for Danger, published in 1943.
Green for Danger is a Golden Age masterclass of red herrings and twists. The story, set during World War II, features a tense and claustrophobic investigation with a close-knit circle of suspects.
It’s 1942, and struggling up the hill to the new Kent military hospital, Heron’s Park, postman Joseph Higgins is soon to deliver seven acceptance letters for roles at the infirmary. He has no idea that the sender of one of the letters will be the cause of his death in just one year’s time.
When Higgins returns to Heron’s Park with injuries from a bombing raid in 1943, his death by asphyxiation in the operating theatre casts four nurses and three doctors under suspicion. When a second death occurs in quick succession, the moody, yet shrewd, Inspector Cockrill arrives on the scene. The stage is set for a tense and claustrophobic investigation. One of the doctors and nurses in this close-knit group must be the murderer. But who did it? And why?

Crippen and Landru
The very best in short mystery fiction

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GREEN FOR DANGER by Christianna Brand is a masterful wartime mystery set in a British hospital during the Blitz. When a patient dies under suspicious circumstances, Inspector Cockrill investigates a web of secrets among the medical staff. It’s a standout in Golden Age detective fiction.
Get your copy of all of our History of Mystery book selections here! (including even some 2027 selections)
History of Mystery book slections now in our Bookshop Storefront as well! Support your local bookseller.
Or if you happen to be in lovely Roanoke, Virginia, stop in person at the BiblioPub to get your copy.
Watch clips from our conversations with guests!
For bonus episodes and to get all episodes first, join our Patreon community.
Characters & Relationships in Green for Danger by Christianna Brand
The characters are intensely intertwined—romantically, professionally, emotionally. Did that closeness heighten the tension for you, or did the story veer into melodrama?
Several characters fall hard and fast in love. Marion loves Gervase, who toys with her affections. Barney loves less-than-steady Freddi, who has a thing for Gervase. Barney tells Freddi, “I’d rather have cruelty than dishonesty. I’d rather be hurt than deceived.” If given the choice, which would you prefer? And is this type of emotional intensity convincing given the historical moment—or did it feel exaggerated?
Gervase “looked at his ugly face and greying hair, at his thin, angular body and restless hands—and wondered what on earth women saw in him, and wished they wouldn’t” (2). He’s also married: “Once, long ago, one of the lovely ladies had been importunate, and he had not then acquired his skill in evading desperate situations. He had not seen her for several years, but she formed a shield against similar assaults upon his liberty” (32). Esther is the “only female in the hospital who can see Gervase Eden without swooning at his feet” (35). What exactly do the female characters see in “Don Juan” Gervase?
Some characters are haunted by loss. Esther left her mother behind to volunteer. After her mother’s building was hit, and “For two days and two nights she had waited in anguish while men toiled unceasingly at the mountain of rubble” (20). Major Moon mourns his dead son. Did you feel more for some characters than others?
 
 

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