My July-Aug 2026 EQMM column.

My new Jury Box column w/reviews of mystery short story collections and classic reprints is now posted at Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, featuring works that focus on the impossible crime (Elsa Barker, Christianna Brand, Charles Chadwick, Mary Collins, Celia Fremlin, Peter Lovesey, T.S. Stribling).

The gifts of Celia Fremlin.

Author Lucy Lethbridge in the July 2019 issue of The Oldie lauds Celia Fremlin's Edgar-winning The Hours Before Dawn (1958) and the skills applied by Fremlin from her time in the British project Mass Observation. Says Lethbridge, "This is a novel about intelligent, frustrated women in the impoverished disappointment of 1950s London."

The return of Celia Fremlin.

Faber Finds has reissued a number of mysteries by Celia Fremlin (1914–2009), including her Edgar-winning The Hours before Dawn (dramatized on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour as "The Lonely Hours").

• Appointment with Yesterday 
• By Horror Haunted (short story collection)
• Dangerous Thoughts (Kirkus review here)
• Don't Go to Sleep in the Dark (short story collection)
• The Echoing Stones
• The Jealous One
• King of the World (her last novel)
• Listening in the Dusk
• The Long Shadow (Pittsburgh Press review here)
• A Lovely Way to Die (short story collection; Kirkus review here)
• The Parasite Person
• Possession
• Prisoner's Base (Kirkus review here)
• Seven Lean Years
• The Spider Orchid
• The Trouble-Makers
• Uncle Paul
• With No Crying  

Faber Finds also has republished Fremlin's first book, the nonfiction work War Factory, which is a result of the British World War II effort called Mass Observation.

Celia Fremlin this week on Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Encore.

Gena Rowlands in "The Lonely
Hours," Alfred Hitchcock Hour

A distinct treat is coming up for fans of Celia Fremlin's Edgar-winning The Hours before Dawn (1959)—this week, Encore is showing the Alfred Hitchcock Hour adaptation, "The Lonely Hours," starring Gena Rowlands. (Also can be seen via YouTube)