2025 Medical Examiner Mystery Reading Challenge

 

Once again Rick at the Rick Mills Project will be offering up the Medical Examiner Mystery Reading Challenge as well as the Six Shooter Challenge and the Mystery Marathon. I, having no self-control when it comes to challenges--especially mystery-related challenges, will--of course--sign up for all three. For full details, check out the link above after the new year starts. Basically, just read mysteries and log the number of named corpses on his handy form.

Rick doesn't require a sign-up post, but in order to claim this one as complete on my own personal challenge tally sheet, I must submit at least 20 death certificate reports. With the number of mysteries I read per year, this doesn't prove too difficult--so, there should be plenty of toe tags signed by "Quincy" Hankins at the Mystillery Morgue.

1. The Devil's Flute Murders by Seishi Yokomizo [11 deaths] (1/5/25)

2. The Price of Silence by Kate Wilhelm [9 deaths] (1/10/25)

3. Dangerous Davies: The Last Detective by Leslie Thomas [4 deaths] (1/11/25)

4. The Deadly Truth by Helen McCloy [4 deaths] (1/15/25)

5. The Art School Murders by Moray Dalton [4 deaths] (1/20/25)

6. The Cloisters by Katy Hays [6 deaths] (1/24/25)

7. Poison for Teacher by Nancy Spain [4 deaths] (1/31/25)

8. The Book of Killowen by Erin Hart [6 deaths] (2/4/25)

9. The Girl from the Mimosa Club by Leslie Ford [one death] (2/6/25) 

************The following are from Capital Crimes by Martin Edwards, ed (2/10/25)

10. "A Mystery of the Underground" by John Oxenham (6 deaths)

11. "The Finchley Puzzle" by Richard Marsh (3 deaths)

12. "The Magic Casket" by R. Austin Freeman (3 deaths)

13. "The Holloway Flat Tragedy" by Ernest Bramah (2 deaths)

14. "The Magician of Cannon Street" by J. S. Fletcher (2 deaths)

15. "The Stealer of Marble" by Edgar Wallace (one death)

16. "The Tea Leaf" by Robert Eustace & Edgar Jepson (one death)

17. "The Hands of Mr. Ottermole" by Thomas Burke (4 named)

18. "The Little House" by H. C. Bailey (one death)

19. "Wind in the East" by Henry Wade [Sir Henry Aubrey-Fletcher] (one death)

20. "The Avenging Chance" by Anthony Berkeley (one death)

21. "The Unseen Door" by Margery Allingham([one death)

22. "Cheese" by Ethel Lina White (one death)

23. "You Can't Hang Twice" by Anthony Gilbert [Lucy Beatrice Malleson] (2 deaths)

*************

24. The Last Resort by Michael Kaufman [5 deaths] (2/13/25)

25. Murder in Williamstown by Kerry Greenwood [2 deaths] (2/15/25)

26. "Inquest" by Henrietta Clandon [2 deaths] (2/21/25)

27.