Caroline Crampton

Connington, Cecil Freeman Gregg, and Anthony Weymouth.

Also on the blog, you can read about his research into early TV adaptations of Golden Age crime, many of which sadly no longer exist in the archives.

And if you've ever been to the annual Bodies in the Library conference at the British Library, you will recognise Ronaldo for his wonderful talks about these books on screen.

This year, on 20th of June, he'll be talking about the BBC TV series Detective, which contained many episodes adapted from Golden Age crime authors, including Marjorie Allingham, Niall Marsh, Anthony Barkley and John Dixon Carr.

Ronaldo is the most knowledgeable person I know about all of Cecil Street's many, many books.

He's actually read them all, unlike me, so I couldn't think of anyone better with whom to discuss John Rhodes' first appearance as a Green Penguin.

Before we get into the book, though, I'll give my usual spoiler warning here.

Until you hear me say that we are entering the spoiler zone, you can safely listen without hearing major plot details.

The timestamp for that point will also be in the episode description.

After that, you can expect to hear major spoilers up to and including the full solution to the mystery.

And at the end of every episode, I ask my guests to award the book a rating.

So stay tuned to the end to hear how many green penguins out of five Ronaldo gives this one and why.

Tell me how you got interested in Cecil Street, a.k.a.

John Road.

By that, are you referring to Julian Simmons and him being tarred as a humdrum?

Including John Road in that humdrum group has always seemed a little bit odd to me.

I am by no means as widely read of him as you are, but he doesn't have the obvious characteristics of someone like Freeman Wills Crofts, I think.

Especially in this book, his prose is great.

It's really exciting, which is not something I would ever call humdrum.

Because although this has improved of late, there hasn't been this huge wave of republication for him as there have been for maybe some other writers.