Another, earlier pre-Orient-Express train ride for Hercule Poirot comes complete with jewel robberies, blackmail, and murder on a luxury train across France.

On the Classic Mysteries podcast this week, you might call it a portrait of the artist as a young...dog? Inspector Knollis had to decipher the secret of Francis Vivian's "The Laughing Dog." 

On the Classic Mysteries blog, Scotland Yard Inspector Macdonald thought he was going on holiday in Vienna. So how did he wind up helping local police investigate some nasty murders? E.C.R. Lorac's "Murder in Vienna," reviewed.

A grim solution to a grim problem: how to deal with a loathsome blackmailer who may also be a serial killer? For half-a-dozen young Englishmen, the answer appears to be a well-plotted murder, one where it will be impossible to tell who struck the fatal blow. Only things may not always go quite as smoothly as planned.

In Archie Goodwin’s world view, the word that best fits Isabel Kerr is a four-letter word: doxy. The dictionary says, it defines "a woman who is regarded as sexually promiscuous." Only trouble was, Isabel Kerr was dead. Murdered. And – with the police focused on a suspect who is both a friend and sometime colleague of both Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe, it was clear that  Wolfe was going to have to get involved in the search for the real killer.

The dead woman was a humble chemistry teacher at a girls' school. So, wonders Detective Inspector C.D. Sloan, why did she have a quarter-million pounds in her bank account? And was she murdered? Catherine Aird's "Some Die Eloquent," from her Calleshire Chronicles reviewed.

On the Classic Mysteries podcast this week, a review of some non-fiction - a book of essays about mysteries and the people who make them. "Unusual Suspects: Selected Non-Fiction," by Joseph Goodrich, reviewed.

Maigret stars in one of these holiday stories, while other associates of Maigret feature in two more tales of holiday crime and redemption.

Too bad about Joe Wilson. The itinerant traveling salesman had a secret. And it’s only fair to point out that it turned out to be a deadly secret indeed – a secret which apparently led to his murder. Ellery Queen needed the truth to keep the wrong person from paying for someone else's crime.

The victim's body turned up under a tree in a park, the body unusually battered and bruised – but that’s not what killed him; he appeared to have had potassium cyanide sprayed into his nose. What kind of animal could do that - and why?