Send us a Text Message.

When a man is found dead in a quaint English village, Inspector Hannasyde must unravel the secrets of the eccentric family involved. In DEATH IN THE STOCKS (1935), a beloved classic, Georgette Heyer infuses the traditional mystery with her signature style of historical romance (and its Regency romance sub-genre).

Reflect: Check out the conversation starters below.

Weigh In: Speak up, and you might get an on-air shout out and a fabulous sticker!

Jennifer Kloester is the bestselling author of Georgette Heyer’s Regency World, Georgette Heyer: Biography of a Bestseller, and Society The Novels of Georgette Heyer: A Celebration.

Jennifer is a Patroness of the International Heyer, and a producer of the forthcoming documentary Who the Hell is Georgette Heyer?

She is also a popular presenter and public speaker and, in 2015, with Stephen Fry, she was delighted to speak at the unveiling of Georgette Heyer’s English Heritage Blue Plaque in Wimbledon.

Jen's Facebook
Instagram
Check out Jen's website here
And check out our Amazon store where we've compiled all things Georgette Heyer and Jennifer Kloester!

Several of our books, though not many, have had elements of humor. There’s The Thin Man, with the witty Nick and Nora. And there’s this one, with humorous banter throughout. How successful did you feel the humor was?

At times, the banter reminded Carolyn a bit of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. These lines made Carolyn smile – Roger says to Hannasyde: “if I know just how much you know, it’ll save a great deal of bother. I mean, it’s no use my telling you I went to the Zoo if you’re going to prove I spent the day in the British Museum. At the same time, I don’t want to tell you anything I needn’t. You see my difficulty?” (224)

Of the characters in the novel, Dorothy L. Sayers said: ‘Miss Heyer’s characters and dialogue are an abiding delight to me…I have seldom met people to whom I took so violent a fancy from the word “Go”.’

“Death in the Stocks is not only a very neat and mystifying detective story, it is also an excellent example of what can be achieved when the commonplace material of detective fiction is worked up by an experienced novelist. Miss Heyer’s characters act and speak with ease and conviction that is as refreshing as it is rare in a mystery story.” ~ Jennifer Kloester

Regency Romance

From Goodreads: Georgette Heyer “was an intensely private person who remained a best selling author all her life without the aid of publicity. She made no appearances, never gave an interview and only answered fan letters herself if they made an interesting historical point.”

It’s fascinating that she seems to have invented the genre. Georgette Heyer wrote in two genres — regency romance and detec

Support the Show.

https://www.instagram.com/teatonicandtoxin/
https://www.facebook.com/teatonicandtoxin
https://www.teatonicandtoxin.com

Stay mysterious...

Send us a Text Message.

Thriller writer David Ignatius joins Sarah and Carolyn to discuss his latest book Phantom Orbit.

Check out more of his work and get the book here.
Website: www.davidignatius.com

David Ignatius is a prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post and has been covering the Middle East and the CIA for nearly four decades. He has written several New York Times bestsellers. He lives in Washington, DC.

David Ignatius is known for his uncanny ability, in novel after novel, to predict the next great national security headline.

In Phantom Orbit, he presents a story both searing and topical, with stakes as far-reaching as outer space. It follows Ivan Volkov, a Russian student in Beijing, who discovers an unsolved puzzle in the writings of the seventeenth-century astronomer Johannes Kepler. He takes the puzzle to a senior scientist in the Chinese space program and declares his intention to solve it. Volkov returns to Moscow and continues his secret work. The puzzle holds untold consequences for space warfare.

The years pass, and they are not kind to Volkov. After the loss of his son, a prosecutor who’d been too tough on corruption, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Volkov makes the fraught decision to contact the CIA. He writes: Satellites are your enemies, especially your own. … Hidden codes can make time stop and turn north into south. … If you are smart, you will find me.

With this timely novel, David Ignatius addresses our moment of renewed interest in space exploration amid geopolitical tumult. Phantom Orbit brims with the author’s vital insights and casts Volkov as the man who, at the risk of his life, may be able to stop the Doomsday clock.

David Ignatius writes a twice-a-week foreign affairs column for The Washington Post. Ignatius has written 11 spy novels: “The Paladin” (2020), “The Quantum Spy,” (2017), “The Director,” (2014), “Bloodmoney” (2011), “The Increment” (2009), “Body of Lies” (2007), “The Sun King” (1999), “A Firing Offense” (1997), “The Bank of Fear” (1994), “SIRO” (1991), and “Agents of Innocence” (1987). “Body of Lies” was made into a 2008 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe.

Ignatius joined The Post in 1986 as editor of its Sunday Outlook section. In 1990 he became foreign editor, and in 1993, assistant managing editor for business news. He began writing his column in 1998 and continued even during a three-year stint as executive editor of the International Herald Tribune in Paris. Earlier in his career, Ignatius was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, covering at various times the steel industry, the Departments of State and Justice, the CIA, the Senate and the Middle East.

Honors and Awards: 2018 Finalist team, Pulitzer Prize for Public Service; 2018 George Polk Award; 2010 Urbino International Press Award; 2013 Overseas Press Club Award for Foreign Affairs Commentary; Lifetime Achievement Award, International Committee for Foreign Journalists; Legion D’Honneur awarded by the French government; 2004 Edward Weintal Prize; 2000 Gerald Loeb Award for Commentary; As The Post’s f

Support the Show.

https://www.instagram.com/teatonicandtoxin/
https://www.facebook.com/teatonicandtoxin
https://www.teatonicandtoxin.com

Stay mysterious...

Send us a Text Message.

A hazing prank at Harvard left Paul Chapin disabled. Years later, two of the men responsible end up dead, and a series of poems promises continued retribution. Now the other men who hazed Paul are desperate for the protection of brilliant detective Nero Wolfe.

Is Paul Chapin exacting revenge on his former classmates, and can Nero Wolfe and his wise-cracking sidekick, Archie Goodwin, stop him before he kills again? Find out in Rex Stout’s The League of Frightened Men (1935).

Check out The Offical Nero Wolfe Society!
On X: @NeroWolfePack
Reach out to Ira: werowance@nerowolf.org

Review more books and media by Rex Stout & Ira Brad Matetsky in our amazon store.

Our special guest, Ira Brad Matetsky, joins Tea, Tonic & Toxin hosts Sarah and Carolyn to discuss The League of Frightened Men by Nero Wolfe. He has been the Werowance (President) of the Wolfe Pack, the international literary society for the Nero Wolfe stories by Rex Stout, since 2007.

Ira Matetsky has written a number of articles about Nero Wolfe and related topics and edited The Last Drive and Other Stories, a collection of some of Rex Stout’s earliest work, published by the Mysterious Press/Open Road in 2015.

He is also a Sherlockian and is invested as a member of the Baker Street Irregulars (“The Final Problem”) and the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes (“The Lawyer Whose Name Was Given in the Paper”).

By day he is a litigation partner at the law firm of Dorf Nelson & Zauderer LLP in New York City.

Rex Stout received the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award in 1959. In 2000, Bouchercon nominated him as Best Mystery Writer of the Century and the Nero Wolfe books as Best Mystery Series of the Century. The Wolfe Pack is the international literary society devoted to Nero Wolfe. Every year on the first Saturday in December, the Wolfe Pack holds a Black Orchid Banquet and presents the Nero Award & the Black Orchid Novella Award for excellence in the mystery genre.

Food & Drink in Nero Wolfe Novels

Perhaps one of the primary characters. Fritz’s cooking is mentioned in every chapter, as is the enormity of Wolfe and his predilection to eating, tasting. Archie refers to himself as a swallower.

We’re even given a recipe: p 237 – “he had lined a casserole with butter, put in it six tablespoons of cream, three fresh eggs, four Lambert sausages, salt, pepper, paprika and chives, and conveyed it to the oven.” Sarah will be making it if she can figure out what a Lambert sausage is.

Archie drinks a pitcher of milk a night. He doesn’t necessarily abstain from alcohol, but he rarely drinks it, preferring milk. Several characters (Pitney Scott and Mike Ayers) are portrayed rather harshly for what appears to be alcoholism. Scott is definitely trying to stay sober. This is a huge departure from the constant drinking of Hammett’s hardboiled detectives. Wolfe constantly drinks beer. Another departure from hard drinking, but not remotely abstemious.

Has the social climate changed at this time? Or are these trends more re

Support the Show.

https://www.instagram.com/teatonicandtoxin/
https://www.facebook.com/teatonicandtoxin
https://www.teatonicandtoxin.com

Stay mysterious...