Pretty Sinister Books

The Notting Hill Mystery Back in Print!

2012-02-28T04:05:00.002-06:00

Under the hypnotic influence of the evil Baron R**
illustration from The Notting Hill Mystery

Just read this great article in The Guardian announcing the reissue of The Notting Hill Mystery (1863), an excellent Victorian sensation novel of crime and the supernatural that has been called by genre historian and crime writer Julian Symons "the first detective novel." The book caused a minor sensation over at Mystery*File where I reviewed the novel back in December 2010 and then a few weeks later Paul Collins dogged investigative work turned up the long hidden true identity of the novel's author who had been hiding behind the pseudonym "Charles Felix" for centuries. Collins' article was published in the New York Times in January 2011. My review of the book was linked to the Wikipedia article on The Notting Hill Mystery three days after the Collins article appeared.

The new issue published by The British Library includes the original illustrations (including the one included here) by Georges Du Maurier, writer, artist, and grandfather of Daphne, that accompanied the first magazine publication of the novel when it was serialized in Once a Week magazine starting on Nov. 29, 1862. The book also includes an introduction by Mike Ashley, who has done great work for Ash-Tree Press, Midnight House and other independent publishers.

Very excited about this. I'm ordering my copy pronto. You can too by clicking here.

Thanks to the gang at Shotsmag Confidential for the link to the article.

Murder in Shinbone Alley - Helen Reilly

2012-02-26T15:28:00.001-06:00

Barbara Baron, a student in fashion design at the International School of Design, is found in Shinbone Alley a forgotten byway in lower Manhattan. She plummeted to her death from the rooftop smoking terrace after modeling her winning design in the school's annual competitive fashion show. The sight of her body clad in her handmade bridal gown provides an ironic comment on her planned marriage to the school's president Jorden Fairchild. Suicide and accident are soon ruled out when McKee discovers evidence on the smoking terrace that Barbara had a visitor who gave her a fatal shove. And it turns out that lots of people might have wanted to send her flying as Babs was a supercilious and loathesome woman.

For the first few chapters this is a fairly routine detective novel that I expected to have more insight into 1940s era police work. But truly it's more of a traditional fair play detective novel than it is police procedural. I was worried when the first few clues turn out to be tired cliches of the genre (a initialed handkerchief, used match sticks, for example) that it would continue down the pathway of the hackneyed. Then the theft of an Indian dagger used by one of the life models is stolen. McKee fears that the dagger will be used on one of the suspects who he is sure saw something on the terrace, but is unwilling to reveal his secret to the police. At this point the story picks up in pace and interest and all my fears of a lackluster story filled with familiar elements were assuaged.

The art school and the various characters who make up the teaching and business staff make for an atypical background and liven the proceedings. Suspicion falls on Nairn English, one of the students, and Philip Mountain, an art instructor. McKeee knows that each is withholding information and in the manner of Trent's Last Case seem to be protecting each other thinking the other is the killer. When the mentally challenged errand boy of the school, Willie Cleet, is found stabbed and Philip is seen fleeing the crime scene and climbing a wall with bloody hands McKee focuses his investigation on finding the art teacher and has his men follow Nairn hoping she will lead him to their suspect.

Highlights of the book include the scenes devoted to the minor police characters' contributions to the murder investigation. Todhunter, a mousey nearly invisible cop, has an uncanny ability to transform himself into other personae. He does a mean drunk impersonation and uses that skill to gain access to Nairn English and gets her to confide in him without letting on he is actually a policeman. Another officer, Captain Pierson, has a great scene where her pursues Nairn though the cemetery at Barbara Baron's funeral. He falls in a shallow grave muddying himself, loses his subject, picks up her trail again and finally tails her to Mountain's hiding place. It was one of the most cinematic set pieces in the book reminding me of a similar graveyard chase on foot in Hitchcock's Family Plot.

Helen Reilly was a pioneer in the police procedural novel. She was one of the first women writers tackling this subgenre as early as the late 1920s. Howard Haycraft said in Murder for Pleasure (1941) that her novels about McKee "are among the most convincing that have been composed on the premise of actual police procedure." Perhaps her other books show off her knowledge to better effect. Surprisingly, the books ends with one of those "gather the suspects in one room" scenes and McKee's seems like something out of an old Agatha Christie novel than the kind of book contemporary police procedurals are these days. Still, Murder in Shinbone Alley (1940) is an enjoyable detective novel with a truly surprising least likely person revealed as the murderer.

AVAILABILITY: Luckily, this is a book that was reprinted in paperback edition by Macfadden and it went into two printings. Multiple copies of one or the other are available online ranging from $2 to $15. Not bad when I usually recommend books that 1. you can't find or 2. will cost you the equivalent of a winter month's heating bill.

This marks sixth book in the first part of my three part 2012 Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge sponsored by Bev at My Reader's Block. Links to the previously reviewed books are listed below.

Part I. Perilous Policemen
The Case of the Beautiful Body - Jonathan Craig
Murder by the Clock - Rufus King
The Death of Laurence Vining - Alan Thomas
The Moon Murders - Nigel Morland
Killer's Wedge - Ed McBain

FFB: The Leprechaun Murders - Adrian Reynolds

2012-02-23T23:54:00.003-06:00

Second only to Carolyn Wells is Amelia Reynolds Long in the race for the title Queen of the Wacky Detective Novel. Long lived her entire life in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania where she began her writing career with science fiction. Several of her early stories are considered classics (though whether they also classify as "alternative classics" I cannot tell you as I have read none of them). She tired of science fiction and weird fiction in the late 1930s and moved onto detective fiction in 1939 when she penned The Shakespeare Murders which feature themed murders related to the works of the Bard. Literary murderers were to be a favorite topic of Long's and she would revisit them in Murder by Scripture (1942) in which the Bible is used as an inspiration for killing and Death Looks Down (1944) with its killer using Poe as a murderous muse. She wrote under her own name and two other pseudonyms: Patrick Laing and Adrian Reynolds. As Reynolds she wrote three books featuring Professor Dennis Barrie, an American literature college professor, who quite by accident becomes an amateur detective. The Leprechaun Murders (1950) is his second appearance. It is a blend of the puzzle whodunits Agatha Christie wrote which Long loved and her own unique brand of the fantastic and the bizarre.

In the opening pages Professor Dennis Barrie has a chance encounter in a bar with Owen Maloney who latches onto him and drunkenly introduces his new friend Mr. Hannigan, an Irish gent with a suspicious resemblance to the cigar chomping fairy godfather character in the Barnaby comic strip. He also has a habit of being invisible just like Harvey, the pooka. Barrie wants to escape from Maloney's company when Maloney explains that Mr. Hannigan is a leprechaun and he has made a bargain with the leprechaun. He will pay him $5000 in order for a wish to come true. And that wish is to make his niece Eileen happy by making her husband disappear. Maloney having exhausted himself (and the reader) with an overload of exposition soon passes out (or is that just the alcohol?). The bartender is ready to throw him out but Barrie volunteers to be a Good Samaritan and drive Maloney home after learning he lives relatively nearby. When he arrives at Maloney's home he discovers an impromptu party with several neighbors and town locals in attendance. We meet almost the entire cast of characters at this party scene. They include:

Eileen Maloney - Owen's niece and her husband the unliked, unloved Bert Henderson
Michael Maloney - Eileen's twin brother, a budding poet Owen calls "the new Thomas More"
Eric Kingsley - a musician in love with Eileen
Sheriff Warner - an ex-private eye from San Francisco now in charge of the law in this Pennsylvania town
Phillip Benson ("The Great Bensoni") - an itinerant ventriloquist on a theatrical circuit currently living in the boarding house next door who provides a bit of entertainment for the party-goers
Mabel Marple - the busybody landlady of the boarding house where Kingsley and Benson live (Yes, they call her Miss Marple throughout the book. Some nerve that Amelia has, eh?)

The rainy weather continues to worsen and Barrie is invited to stay and spend the night (such hospitable strangers). He accepts the offer. During the night he is disturbed by some activity in the yard. He wakes and from his window watches a strange hunched over figure running across the lawn and into a shed in the backyard of the Maloney property. He continues to watch as the figure climbs through an open window in the shed, turns back to close the window and reveals its face -- it looks exactly like the ventriloquist's dummy. The following morning Miss Marple stumbles across a dead body just outside the shed and goes next door to get help from the Maloney. Barrie and several others come out but the body is gone though there are definite traces of a corpse having been there. When it is also learned that Bert Henderson is missing the police are contacted and a search is instituted for Bert or perhaps his dead body. Prof. Barrie is reluctant to reveal what he saw the previous night. For who would ever believe him if he offered his idea that 1. a leprechaun has made a drunk's wish come true and 2. that a ventriloquist's dummy came to life.

The author in 1931

As is usual with Long we get an entire trunkful of detective novel tropes. The story is a mish mash of gimmicks and plot devices she must have picked up in her extensive reading of old mystery fiction. She borrows heavily from the Carolyn Wells bag of tricks with a secret passage (part of the Underground Railway of the Civil War era no less) that no one seems to be aware of that amazingly connects all the cellars of the homes in the neighborhood. Henderson turns out to have a dirty secret in his past that led to his murder - a nod I'm sure to Long's hero Agatha Christie. And -- conscious borrowing or not -- one of the most outrageous parts of the book is a direct descendant of an eerie short story by John Keir Cross now virtually a cliche in mystery and horror fiction. Yet though this book may seem a compendium of other writers' trademarks Long still manages to make this one a real page turner. I had to keep going to see how much she could tip the scales in terms of the preposterous. She does an impressive job, my friends.

Like a true alternative classic mystery writer Amelia Reynolds Long has a unique way with metaphoric language. Chapter 18, the most Gothic section of this particular book, offers the best of Amelia's descriptive talent.

The dark hall in which they stood was like the inside of a pocket.

He fumbled about on the wall just inside the door for a moment, then located the light switch. As he pressed it, a small orangish bulb set close against the ceiling flashed on. Before its mellow glow, the darkness fled down the hall and scuttled up the staircase. [...] he felt the roots of his hair suddenly prickle, while the skin at the back of his neck seemed to be trying to climb up to join his scalp. From somewhere behind him, a huge snake hissed!

There is no monstrous serpent in the house, of course. It turns out that Sheriff Warner was only whispering "Professor!" to get Barrie's attention and the college man's fearful imagination took over.

While some of Long's books turn up in cheap paperback editions and relatively affordable used copies of UK editions, The Leprechaun Murders received only a single printing in hardcover in the US. Sorry to say that it is one of the most difficult of her titles to find. I located only two copies being sold on-line, both of them with the DJ shown above. One is $26, the other is $50. Don't all rush at once! If you live in Chicago you can always check out the copy I found at the library. Believe it or not it's been returned to the shelves of the main branch eagerly awaiting new readers. Luckily it happens to be in excellent condition or else it would've suffered the same fate as Long's other four books that used to be on the shelves.

A complete bibliography of Long's mystery novels is available at her tribute website. While there you can also read one of her rare interviews conducted by fantasy and horror writer and fellow book collector Chet Williamson shortly before Long's death in 1978.

The Predator - Andrew York

2012-02-22T21:29:00.008-06:00

1st US paperback (Berkley, Oct 1969)

Here's the book in which Jonas Wilde is forced to use a gun instead of his hands to deal with his enemies. It's a survival tactic and he must resort to firing a Derringer (of all things) to take out one of three pursuers in the final pages of The Predator (1968). This is only the third book and Wilde came close to being eliminated himself three times in the course of another plot that delivers action and thrills and the usual Yorkian surprise twists.

But I'm starting with the end first, aren't I? Sorry.

At the start we learn that Wilde has been officially retired from the Elimination Sector formerly known as "The Route." (see my review of The Eliminator) Yet only one day later he is picked up by trench coat wearing men who refuse to identify themselves and take n to the Five Star Photography Studio. This was formerly the front for the offices of Mocka, his much younger commander. Now it is the scene of three violent murders. One of the victims is Julia Ridout who gave Wilde his walking papers the previous night then proceeded to give him a farewell in her bedroom. Wilde was just getting over the murder of the first woman he fell for and now he's faced with a another murdered lover. The rage within him can hardly be contained.

Mocka provides Wilde with the background. It all seems to be tied to the disappearance of a CIA agent, Charlie Klaeger. Klaeger was following up leads related to the arranged prison escape and subsequent murder of Alfonso Torrio, an Italian mobster with ties to the American underworld. Klaeger, Mocka reports, must have been tortured and given the location of the photography studio and some hoods from Torrio's syndicate then infiltrated the studio trying to find out what Klaeger was after. They finished the job by killing everyone on site. Mocka hints that Wilde may be able to find the killers in Rome who have been placing personal ads in English language European newspapers hoping to lure in unsavory types for an underground academy specializing in mercenary skill.

1st UK paperback (Arrow, 1969)

With the help of some of his criminal contacts he obtains some phony ID and becomes "Johnny Foxley" – a London thug who is interested in becoming a killer for hire. He travels to Italy and answers the ad and discovers the he has enrolled in an assassination academy run by a woman with the spectacular name of Glorious Torrio, the daughter of Alfonso Torrio. Along the way he also meets a Antonia Del Rivia, a heroin addicted would-be painter with pansexual tastes, her brother Cesare he is second-in-command at the killer academy, and Paul Sanger, the primary teacher in the art of murder.

Something I have started to note in this series is that Wilde ages chronologically. In this book age and youth are always on his mind. He is bothered by the fact that at only 37 years he is already an "old man" in the spy game. Mocka, his boss, is ten years younger than he is. The students at the assassin academy also are all considerably younger than Wilde. And then there's his troublesome sciatica and muscle problems; they are his greatest weakness at a time when he must be in peak physical condition. His bad back is his undoing on more than one occasion in The Predator and it makes him seem less of a comic book superhero or a mindless athletic killing machine. A spy with chronic back problems is real. I'll take that over the old gunshot to the shoulder cliche which seems to be the only thing that tends to slow down the rest of the fictional spies I've encountered.

York's strength once again is in the creation of hypnotically fascinating woman characters like Glorious (or Glo to her friends). The women are always the most complex and intriguing characters in the Jonas Wilde books, but in Glorious Torrio York seems to have outdone himself. Smart and deadly, she is an Amazonian athlete with a heart of steel, a teasing sexual allure, and a bloodlust to match her carnal appetite. She is the closest to being Wilde's female match as a ruthless emotionally detached killer. It'll take some imagination to surpass this woman in viciousness and cunning. She nearly succeeds in sending Wilde to his great reward on more than one occasion.

Then there is Jonquil Malone, the redheaded American girl Wilde meets on the plane trip down to Rome. She has a habit of turning up unwanted in the most surprising places. She seems to be nothing more than an slightly ditsy tourist looking for a fling with a handsome Brit and she dislikes having been stood up by Wilde not once but twice. She comes off as a stalker and her curiosity gets the better of her. But is she more than just a tourist? Is it all coincidence? Is she just an incredible actress and really a spy?

Writer Christopher Nicole (AKA "Andrew York")

The Predator is a return to a straight thriller. None of the pulpy, quasi-science fiction elements found in The Coordinator are present. Jonas seems to have entered a vigilante stage and appears to be acting entirely on his own until the usual Yorkian twist in the final pages. The expository beginning is a bit to trudge through, but once Jonas lands in Italy the book is nothing but action scenes. And darn good action scenes with little of the requisite monologues that York's characters (mostly the villains) like to indulge in.

This would make a a fantastic movie. Better than Danger Route, the only film version of the Andrew York books. Any action movie producers or screenwriters out there? Here's a book screaming to be adapted into a money making screenplay. It would do phenomenally well at the box office.

UPDATE ON NEW EDITIONS OF ANDREW YORK BOOKS
From an email I received from Mike Ripley, editor at Top Notch Thrillers and overall good guy:
"…we are doing [The Predator] as a Top Notch Thriller in about two weeks time! I’ve enclosed our cover and in fact Pretty Sinister Books is quoted on page 2 in the before-the-title page. We are also doing The Deviator (which I think is better) and have plans to do The Infiltrator."

I've become part of the blurbing world! Very cool.

The entire line of Top Notch Thrillers – a variety of reissued action adventure, spy and crime novels – are available through amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, bookdepository.com (always free shipping!) and a few other online dealers.

To pre-order a copy of The Predator (release date is mid-March 2012) go directly to Ostara Publishing by clicking here. On that page you will see there is already a link to my review of the book. Thanks, Mike!

Mrs. Warrender's Profession - G. D. H. & M. Cole

2012-02-20T10:06:00.001-06:00

I ran across this little known volume of novellas at the main branch of the Chicago Public Library (though it may not be there anymore). The book details the accidental sleuthing adventures of Mrs. Elizabeth Warrender, the elderly mother of private detective James Warrender. She is the only other series character created by G.D.H. and Margaret Cole who are better known for their novels and stories about Superintendent Henry Wilson. Mrs. Warrender helps her son and sometimes outright investigates herself using her basic understanding of human nature. She gets to know people through casual but attentive conversation, she learns their habits and manners, most of all she listens to what people say unlike her son who she accuses of being unobservant. He focuses on the criminal behavior which she believes blinds him to true observations and completely overlooks people as they really are. This is all outlined in a brief "biographical" introduction titled "The Detective's Mother" that serves as a prelude to the four novellas. Overall, the collection is a mixed bag of the ordinary, the convoluted, and the intriguing. Apart from the supposed human observation theme running through the stories they also have in common a pronounced fascination with unusual murder methods.

Death in the Sun - Jeremy Haydon, handsome ballroom dancer, loves to work on his tan when he's not whirling women around the dance floor at the Grand Hotel in Madeira. Mrs. Warrender (and everyone else) loves to look at him whether dancing or swimming or just laying in the sun. She senses something is wrong when she notices several flies on his body are not being swatted during one of his many sun worshiping sessions. Surely if he had fallen asleep so many flies would've disturbed him. She asks Dr. Lang to check on Jeremy who discovers the body is cold to touch even in the blazing sun. Jeremy is dead. A hypodermic needle is nearby and foul play is suspected. The detection here is not fair play, many clues are withheld from the reader and announced later by Mrs. Warrender who alone was privy to them. This is atypical of what little I've read of the Coles. Maybe I'm wrong and this turns out to be their M.O. for the bulk of their work, but it annoyed me nonetheless. The biggest clue is one of the lousiest examples of a contrived coincidence that even Dickens would never have resorted to. Not one of the best in this collection.

In Peril of His Life – A confusing and convoluted story about the murder of Lady Robinson, wealthy philanthropist and primary supporter of the New Money League, a financial advisory agency disseminating propaganda about an alternative economical system for Britain. Her lawyer, whom she confronted in the past of attempting to kill her with altered food, a trip wire across the stairs, and other wild accusations, is charged with her strangulation murder. Sprinkled throughout the story are interesting allusions to R. Austin Freeman's The Red Thumb Mark and the borrowing from that novel the use of forged fingerprints to frame an innocent party. Mrs. Warrender is less concerned with who killed Lady Robinson and instead focuses on the disappearance of Lady Robinson's nephew. She is convinced he will turn up dead somewhere while her son and the police think he just fled the country. For me this story was tediously drawn out. The ending is anticlimactic and anyone who is familiar with Christie's Peril at End House will probably have figured it all out as I did.

Fatal Beauty – Jean Dawson, an employee from the Rose Salon, travels to the home of wealthy Mrs. Mortimer to give her facial massages and skin treatments with a specially concocted cream made by Madame Rose, the owner of the salon. Mrs. Mortimer soon dies of poison but the police and authorities are stumped as to how it was administered. Her nephew is suspected and a jealous housemaid implicates him further when she mentions he tried to get his aunt to use a homemade complexion wash made from flypaper soaked in rose water. Jean warned Mrs. Mortimer to avoid using it because of the dangers of arsenic in the flypaper. Mrs. Warrender appears in the final third and solves the crime through sheer luck. When she visits the Rose Salon she recognizes from a past encounter the culprit among the employees. It's a pretty neat tale with another of those revenge crazed killers who takes months to plan an insidious crime so often found in Golden Age detective story plots. However, the method, the culprit, and the frame-up are easy to uncover and nothing is very surprising. The story also is overly long. It could easily have been told without all the introductory background of the salon employees' relationships which takes up the first third of the story. The whole thing has a tiresome domestic air about which is a kind way of saying there was a lot of girlish chit chat about nothing of real consequence or importance to the main plot.

Toys of Death – Easily the best of the lot. A true detective story and the second tale in which Mrs. Warrender is present at the scene of the crime. She also does the only real detective work here (discovering pieces of blue glass for instance) rather than doing her kind of inductive guesswork based on her "observations of real people."

Crampton Pleydell is found dead in his locked study. His death appears to be a suicide from cyanide poisoning. As the story progresses we learn that Pleydell has a strange hobby – replicating Renaissance Italian glass. His specialty was designing duplicates of Vetturi's poison toys – glass ornaments and glass jewelry filled with poisons that were used by the Medicis to commit assassination. This is something that seems to be more up John Dickson Carr's alley than the Coles. That aspect of the story held my interest and make it the most original and intriguing of the bunch. The motive for the crimes (there are other deaths) makes the most sense out of all the stories and the characters are the most interesting. No shop girls, beauty parlor employees, gorgeous dancers or office gossips on hand in this one which was a relief.

After the book Mrs. Warrender's Profession (1938) went out of print in the UK two small publishers decided to reprint each of the stories separately. They were printed in hardcover format and treated like mini novels complete with very attractive artwork on the dust wrappers. Some of these booklets (it's hard for me to call a 65 page work a book) went through multiple printings, amazingly enough, but were only released in the UK. A similar reissue process was also done with the other Mrs. Warrender stories (and two Superintendent Wilson novellas) found in the ultra rare book A Lesson in Crime (1933). Scans of the covers from those individually published volumes are used to illustrate this post.

LEFT INSIDE: Library Date Due Slips

2012-02-19T11:07:00.000-06:00

Here's a spin-off on my post of yesterday where I discussed my shock at learning the main branch of the Chicago Public Library likes to pulp unwanted books. Usually library discards get sold or donated and below is evidence of such books going on to live longer lives now that they have been retired from circulation.

While I tend to avoid buying ex-library copies sometimes a title is so rare or the edition unblievably scarce that I end up giving in and purchasing an ex-library copy. Most of the time I will do this if it has a DJ and the DJ survived harmful damage unlike the books themselves which are often battered, dogeared, and have numerous food stains and other spillage showing the book's history of multiple careless borrowers.

Most of these ex-lib copies tend to be stripped of all the library tell-tale markings like old card pockets and date due slips prior to being sold. Some, however, escape this denuding process before being sold or perhaps "permanently borrowed" by new owners.

Below are scans of several date due cards for some of the ex-library books I've owned over the years. For a change you will definitely know what book these were left inside. I've marked all of them in the captions. Interesting to see how popular these books were when they were first sitting on the shelves all those decades ago.


From a copy of Death of Jezebel by Christianna Brand (purchased at a Milwaukee used book store in 2009)

From Vintage Murder (UK edition) by Ngaio Marsh
(purchased at the Newberry Library Book Fair several years ago)

The House Party Murders by Edgar Allan Poe, Jr.
(purchased from a dealer located in British Columbia)

The Mystery of the Vanishing Books

2012-02-18T09:27:00.001-06:00

I'm a little bit upset today. I've just learned that all my attention to the forgotten mystery writers whose books still wait to be checked out from the Chicago Public Library may be harmful to the works themselves. To my shock I just learned that the many of the books, right after I have returned them, never make it back to the shelves. They seem to be vanishing.

I think I might have mentioned that I have a habit of taking out books that have not been checked out since 1995 when the library catalog in Chicago first became digital. Often I discover that a book by A.B. Cunningham or Elisabeth Sanxay Holding or Richard Sale or William O'Farrell has not been entered into their database. This has been happening with increasing frequency since I've been trying to find more books via the Chicago Public Library rather than buying a used copy from a dealer. Lack of circulation is one of the factors that will come into play in the future of a book's life within a library system. And today I have discovered that all of the books by Amelia Reynolds Long (who I have lately discovered and whose books will soon be reviewed here) have been pulled from the shelves. But not just pulled from the shelves -- completely obliterated from the Chicago Public Library catalog system. Gone for good.

I had to find out what was happening. So I talked with one of the silky voiced librarians in the Fiction Department. She told me that the library staff regularly weed the collection. They send some poor underling to go through the shelves pulling out beaten up, "well read" books and consign them to one of two fates. Those in good condition (translation: newer books) survive and are offered for sale in the main branch's "used bookstore" which amounts to a single table in a tiny cubbyhole behind a security guard's post on the ground floor. Some store. I don't think anyone even knows it exists!

But here's the sad part. The books I like to read, the books I am always writing about here, the books by writers long gone from our world but whose words live on (translation: the old books) are often just scrapped. Sent to a recycling company with whom the library has a contract. So they are getting a little bit of cash out of killing off these old books. I'm not terribly comforted, I'm sorry to say.

Patron Saint of Libraries - St. Jerome

I told the librarian that I was interested in two specific books and she said she could check if they had been brought down to that embarrassing closet where old library books await to be purchased for pennies. I told her not to bother. I was convinced that the two Amelia Reynolds Long books are sure to be pulp in a few days. They'll be waiting to be resurrected as a mixed content packing box or the coffee cup you'll get at Starbucks a few months from now or some other form of reincarnated paper product.

I'm wondering if I should just stop taking out the books. It's almost as if I've turned into a book hitman and I've targeted these authors' books for a fate much worse than being sent to the bindery for repairs. In any case, later tonight I will be having a little memorial service for all the books that are being taken from me (and everyone else in Chicago) and destroyed in the name of more shelf space. I may even start saying a few prayers to St. Jerome.

FFB: A Jade in Aries - Tucker Coe

2012-02-17T00:38:00.002-06:00

Today Patti Abbot, our host for Friday's Forgotten books, has arranged for a tribute to Donald E. Westlake (and all his various pseudonymous incarnations). Be sure to visit her blog and click away to your heart's content traveling throughout the blogosphere to read reviews on the wide variety of books this Grand Master wrote. He did it all - tough crime novels, private eye novels, erotica, crime capers, satire, and screenplays. I chose one (well actually two ) of his books he wrote as Tucker Coe, a decidedly different voice from tough guy Richard Stark or the loony comic capers he wrote under his own name.

Mitch Tobin is the series character in the Coe books. Tobin was forced to resign in shame when in the course of pursuing a daytime adulterous affair he was responsible for the death of his partner who was shot in the line of duty. Tobin was not there to protect him. He's now a bitter and broken man. He spends his days in a sort of occupational therapy building a wall in his backyard. Later in the series when the weather turns bad he puts the wall on hold and instead retreats to the darkness of his cellar where he begins a new project by digging a sub-basement. Tobin is trying to heal. His wife and son are lost to him and long for him to return to them as husband and father. Soon he finds himself in unusual side jobs from people in need who ask him to use his police skills in making their own broken lives whole again.

His first outing is in Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death in which he is hired by a mob head to find out who killed his mistress and made off with $80,000 of his money. It's where we first learn that Tobin is utterly conflicted - he knows he needs to start re-entering the world, learn how to interact with people especially his family but he feels that he is a toxic influence on everyone. He doesn't want anyone else to die from his neglect. Eventually he gives in when his wife cajoles him plus he recognizes that the fee he will receive is $5000 that they could really use. The first book is more than just Tobin's search for a killer and recovery of stolen money it's a journey into his own psyche and how the messed up lives of other people reflect his own inner turmoil. The entire series is a study in a broken man's recovery of his true self. And in order to become whole again he will have to enter the world of misfits, outcasts, and the reviled. He takes on cases involving the hippie scene (Murder Among Children), the mentally ill (Wax Apple), and in the book reviewed here the gay subculture of New York.

In A Jade in Aries (1970), the fourth book in the series, Mitch helps Ronald Cornell find the killer of his lover and business partner Jamie Dearborn. Cornell tells Mitch that the police are trying to pass off his lover's brutal beating death as just another case of a bar pick-up gone wrong. But when Cornell is found in the alley behind his men's clothing boutique having survived a fall from the building's roof Mitch is sure that someone is trying cover up the beating by making it look like Cornell attempted suicide over the loss of his partner. As in the first book sexual attraction, love relationships, and cheating partners are the primary focus of the story. Only in this book all the involved parties are gay men.

I have to admit that I expected this book to be similar to other crime novels about gay men that were written in the 1970s - populated with limp wristed, lisping queens in flower print shirts and leather clad, hypermasculine studs with pumped up bodies. I was prepared to thoroughly despise the book. But though Mitch and a couple of other bigoted characters do like to throw around the "F" slur a lot the book floored me with its accurate, often complex, human portrayals of the gay men I knew while growing up in the 1970s. These gay men are a mix of the vain and the shy, the self-loathing and the out and proud, the butch and the queens, white guys and men of color. They're all here in all the vibrant color of a Rainbow flag as well as the darker colors of carnal desire and shame.

It's not so much the mystery of who killed Jamie Dearborn (a sexual tease and philandering bedroom thrillseeker much like Rita Castle was in Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death) or who pushed his surprisingly conservative, almost square lover Ronald Cornell off the roof that captures the reader's attention here as much as it is Mitch Tobin's slow realization that he may have an awful lot in common with all these faggots (as he first calls them) under suspicion of murder. Westlake displays a quiet compassion and insight into the troubled lives of these gay men. Mitch may not be thrilled having to deal with the strangely emotional, all male world but he has some pointed observations and confessions as the story unfolds. At a scene at a gay party where he walks up a stairwell and over two men into a heavy make-out session Mitch finds that he just sees two people kissing and doesn't think twice about literally stepping over them. Only later does it dawn on him that they were two men and he wasn't sickened by the sight. Earlier in the book Mitch fears his lack of paternal attachment and emotional distancing from his son may "turn" his son gay. A dated and guilt ridden belief to be sure, but a telling one showing that Mitch's interactions with these men are having an effect on him personally and psychologically.

For me the most significant aspect of this story is Mitch's unconscious analogy of the love and intimacy in a gay male relationship with the non-sexual intimacy in a cop's relationship with his partner.

I thought about Jock. I thought about him a lot, conversations we'd had, days of our partnership when specific things had happened. There was nothing homosexual between us, but there are other kinds of closeness than (sic) can become meaningful and real, and we had one of them.

He goes on to draw analogies between the other men and Jock and sees connections to his own life. He also sees how after having been with these emotionally frank men that he has been able to open up more, to rejoin humanity, to forgive himself and stop living in guilt and shame. It's a powerful section of the book and the real highlight, the true climax of the plot.

My only quibble and the only things that rings false is that not once do any of the men refer to themselves as "gay." Only the words "homosexual" and "faggot," and twice "queer" are used to describe them. While most of the labelling is done by the straight men in the book, two of the gay characters refer to themselves as homosexuals. And it wasn't done archly or sarcastically. That bothered me. It wasn't real at all. Even in 1970 the word gay was being used regularly - both self-referentially and disparagingly. In an old 1970s issue of Kirkus Reviews the writer called the men in A Jade in Aries "Gay Liberationists." A euphemism or a political statement? I'm not sure. But the fact that the reviewer eschewed the clinical and derogatory term homosexual cannot be overlooked. If only Westlake could've seen that and dared to use the word gay -- at least when one of the gayest characters was talking about himself -- then this would truly be a perfect crime novel about gay men in the 1970s. Still and all it's probably one of the best. It sure beats the hell out of something truly dreadful like The Last Woman in His Life by Ellery Queen and some ghostwriter. Don't get me started on that broken record.

COOL FLICKS: How to Murder a Rich Uncle (1957)

2012-02-14T07:49:00.002-06:00

Charles Addams might have liked to introduce his ghoulish cartoon characters to the Clitterberns. They would have got along marvelously. Murder becomes an obsession in the household whether it is as lurid entertainment like the novels (This Is Indeed A Bloody Business is one title) that Mother Clitterbern finds so highly amusing or the means to solving their financially wrecked household. Fittingly the movie poster for How To Murder a Rich Uncle (at left) was designed by Charles Addams. The Rube Goldberg inspired deathtrap in the illustration is not Addams' exaggerated invention, but rather one of the many methods employed by the desperate Henry Clitterbern who is intent on knocking off his uncle so he can inherit his fortune and pay off his debt ridden estate.

Nigel Patrick (who also directed) as Henry, assisted by Edith, his compliant and devoted wife (Wendy Hiller in a flighty and odd performance) as well as Albert, his dunderhead of a son (Kenneth Fortescue), is determined that visiting Uncle George die a fatal accident. But Uncle George has luck and coincidence on his side as each carefully thought out murder plan is upset and backfires resulting in the death of a member of the family. It's sort of like Kind and Hearts and Coronets filtered through a kind of Murder for Dummies handbook.

The script by John Paxton is adapted from a French farce called Il faut tuer Julie by Didier Daix. Translated as We Must Murder Julie I have not been able to find anything about that play nor have I been successful locating it under its original French title. But I suspect that it is not the very British and macabrely funny story we watch in the movie. The script makes fun of American conventions like tea bags, corn flakes, banking and ridicules the old world of post WW2 English aristocrats still clinging to their entitlement and decaying mansions. I thought most of the cast was perfect especially Hiller, Athene Seyler as her mother (called Grannie in the credits) and Charles Coburn as the apparently oblivious Uncle George.

The scene stealing star of this movie is Katie Johnson in her final movie role. Her penultimate film and her most famous role came right before this when she appeared as the kindly Mrs. Wilberforce in The Ladykillers (1955) starring Alec Guinness. Here as Aunt Alice, Johnson presents herself as a soft voiced, fanciful dreamer taken for granted by Henry and family as nothing more than a doddering old maid. She has a habit of appearing out of nowhere and making some of the most pointed observations giving her, in addition to her childlike qualities, a bit of a spooky Sibyl persona that irritates and frightens Henry more than he is willing to admit. Later, we will learn she has no magical powers or gift for ESP but rather has a penchant for eavesdropping in a variety of secret hiding places. She is a delight to watch and I kept rooting for her to put an end to the madness before she too became an inadvertent victim. I was sure she would be the last one standing. Her final scene at the inquest is a marvel as she does a turn at spinster sleuth lecturing that rivals anything from Jane Marple.

Nigel Patrick is tutored in the art of the tea bag by Wendy Hiller

Aunt Alice (Katie Johnson) informs Henry she is onto his murder plans

Aunt Alice clears up the muddle at the inquest just like Jane Marple

Two actors who would go on to bigger and better things appear here in small roles. Musical theater actor and composer Anthony Newley is the boyfriend of Henry's daughter and he fancies himself an amateur criminologist who is sure that the accidents are murder attempts though he has the wrong culprit in mind. In a tiny role as Gilrony in which he utters only one syllable repeatedly ("Aye!" in some wretched accent of indeterminate origin) a ruggedly handsome and very blond Michael Caine makes his first credited film role. He's almost unrecognizable in this incarnation.

The breakfast scene in which Uncle George's corn flakes and tea bags create havoc and Edith suggests an extra ingredient they might introduce into Uncle George's tea can be watched here.

The entire movie, broken up into six parts, is available for free viewing at YouTube.

This is my contribution to this week's "Tuesday's Overlooked Film" hosted by Todd Mason at his blog. Be sure to visit Sweet Freedom and check out the rest of the insightful comments on unusual films, TV shows and video creations.

Exit Charlie - Alex Atkinson

2012-02-13T00:56:00.001-06:00

I tend not to like many books with theatrical backgrounds because they never seem real to me. Having spent a good portion of my life in theaters both as an actor and a stagehand I know them all too well. Even Agatha Christie's stories of stage life don't have much authenticity for me. So many mysteries featuring stage backgrounds are informed of cliché ideas employing a cast of egocentric and vain artistes with mercurial temperaments. The focus always seems to be on the actors, the director and the playwright. But the theater has an entire backstage world of techies running the show for those actors, and a business world keeping an eye on the box office take, plus the bustling front of house staff catering to the needs of the audience. These portions are rarely mentioned in any mystery novels using the theater as a backdrop. Not so in the case of the phenomenally good book Exit Charlie (1955) by Alex Atkinson. The author was a former actor and playwright and knows his world inside out and includes it all in this energetic and imaginative detective novel.

Charlie Manion is playing the lead in The Second Warning, an Edgar Wallace style thriller, and he is onstage for almost the entire show. One night he makes his final exit but doesn't return for the curtain call. When the curtain falls and the audience has filed out of the theater one cast member rushes to Manion's dressing room to see what kept him from joining the cast for the bows. He finds Charlie Manion in the final throes of an agonizing death. "They've poisoned me!" he cries out and he dies only seconds later. It appears that he was entertaining a guest for there are two glasses, a whiskey bottle and a crushed cigarette on the floor. While Manion enjoyed a ritual post performance whiskey shot each night he did not smoke. The police and cast believe that whoever was his guest must've poisoned his whiskey. But it's not as simple as that, my friends.

Inspector Furniss, a shrewd policeman who likes to munch on peppermint candies during his interviews, is in charge of the investigation. He is ably assisted by Detective Sergeant Appleby, an amateur thespian himself who likes to show off his theater knowledge and can't help but repeat a tiresome anecdote about his role as Sir Toby Belch in a community theater production of Twelfth Night. Atkinson has a lot of fun with Appleby's eagerness to educate Furniss in the world of the theater and Furniss who often loses his patience with the endless definition of theater terms and backstage lore. "I have been to the theater more than once, Appleby," he sternly says at one point hoping that will silence his partner.

Alex Atkinson (photo by Harry Ivell)

The mystery plot is intricately worked out with all sorts of hidden secrets among the cast and crew, the usual display of volatile emotions, jealousies and pettiness. Furniss even learns that an actress who committed suicide was a former girlfriend of Manion and when her name and photo kept turning up he is sure that she has something to do with Manion's death. But how was it possible for him to be poisoned when nearly everyone was either on stage acting or engaged in running the show?

Clues and evidence are ample as in so many traditional detective novels and while it may be fairly easy to spot the culprit towards the end, it's Atkinson's lively writing, his sense of humor and his excellent portraits that raise this book out of the realm of cliché backstage thrillers. He doesn't confine his tale to the soap opera lives of the actors and actresses. His theater is an all inclusive world incorporating onstage, backstage and front of house staff. Everyone gets their moment to shine. In fact, one of the assistant stage managers and the woman in the tiny box office provide Furniss with his most vital pieces of evidence. Even Mrs. Holloway, the piano player who provides intermission music, has her own little solo. If you want to read a book about how a real theater operates and want a superb mystery to boot look no further than Exit Charlie.

I'm crossing off another book on my list of copper mysteries for the first part of my three part 2012 Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge sponsored by Bev at My Reader's Block. Links to the previously reviewed books are listed below.

Part I. Perilous Policemen
The Case of the Beautiful Body - Jonathan Craig
Murder by the Clock - Rufus King
The Death of Laurence Vining - Alan Thomas
The Moon Murders - Nigel Morland
Killer's Wedge - Ed McBain

Drawing on the Past #6 - GORDON ROSS

2012-02-12T10:50:00.000-06:00

Work: Ladies in Hades by Frederic Arnold Kummer
(J. H. Sears & Co., 1928)
First American Edition

Artist: Gordon Ross (1872 - 1946)

I can find little biographical data on artist Gordon Ross, but a list of his work found in books is plentiful. Mostly his paintings and drawings turn up in various volumes of The Heritage Press and The Limited Edition Club, two subscription only book clubs started by publisher George Macy. The book clubs specialized in illustrated volumes of classic works of fiction and non-fiction. To this day are still a big hit with collectors -- mostly because of the art work.

Unlike what I am posting here today some of Ross' best work was done in color and can be found in such works as The Pickwick Papers (Heritage Club, 1938), The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent (Heritage Press, 1939), and The Sir Roger de Coverly Papers (Limited Edition Club, 1945). Also you can find his work in The Children's Munchausen (Houghton Mifflin, 1921), and a color DJ for Pony Jungle (Doubleday Doran, 1941), a children's book by Lavinia Davis.

Ross was born in Scotland in 1872. As a teenager he sailed to San Francisco where he studied painting and drawing at the Mark Hopkins Art Institute. He worked in the art department of the San Francisco Chronicle until 1904. Sometime in the late 1900s he moved to New York where he focused on book illustration. He died in New York City, the day after Christmas, in 1946. His work continues to show up in auction records year after year and sells well.

Below are the comic illustrations from a satiric novel by Frederic Arnold Kummer about the "wicked women of history" including Lillith, Salome and Delilah from the Old Testament; Cleopatra, Sappho, Helen of Troy from ancient history; and Lucretia Borgia from the Renaissance. The novel is subtitled "A Story of Hell's Smart Set." I've included the captions for each picture to give you an idea of the smart ass kind of writing to be found in the book.

And a little about the author (which I rarely do in this feature that's supposed to be about the artist): Kummer wrote plays, the books to musicals and musical revues, straight novels, and humor, but I tend to know him as a writer of several crime and adventure novels. He began writing genre fiction which was serialized in pulp magazines under the pseudonym Arnold Fredericks. Kummer then dropped that and used his own name for his final two detective novels The Scarecrow Murders and The Twisted Face featuring Judge Henry Tyson (soon to be reviewed here).

As usual I suggest you click on the photos to enlarge for better appreciation. I don't use that slide show feature, so clicking will give you a very nice sized photo. Plus, you can't read the often funny captions unless you enlarge. So click away!

FFB: Post Mortem - Guy Cullingford

2012-02-10T06:33:00.000-06:00

Gilbert Worth, adulterous husband and acerbic novelist, is found dead in his study with a bullet in his temple and the smoking gun clenched in his hand. Much to Gilbert's surprise he seems to have survived the murder -- or rather his ghost has survived to look upon his own corpse. While the members of his family believe he has committed suicide Gilbert knows better. Someone killed him. Someone who tried unsuccessfully twice before - once with a carefully placed glass marble on the staircase, the second when his nighttime warmed milk was tainted with something bitter and palatable. He fed it to the cat and it was dead in the morning. Gilbert's spirit seems doomed to walk the Earth until he is satisfied with just who in his household hated him so much to send him off to an early reward. Though it's not so rewarding to Gilbert even if he can pass through walls and enter locked rooms without being seen.

At first I thought this was intended to be a satire of the detective novel. The victim comes back from the dead to solve his own murder? Surely this has to be done with some sense of humor. And it is. But Gilbert Worth is hardly a likable character and his children devoutly loathe him. Yet even though Worth tells the story of his mysterious death with a wicked sense of humor and spends much of the book spying on his relatives and the servants in some keen satiric scenes there is a pervasive somber air about the piece with hints of tragedy about the innate dysfunctionality in this loveless family.

In the early part of the book the best scenes were those in which Worth seems to make fun of his plight as a ghost. He attends his own funeral and hears a musical selection that embarrasses his family as it turns out to be an upbeat folk tune that is a particular favorite of Rosina Peck, his mistress and sex-crazed secretary. Later, he finds himself oddly moved by the sermon the minister gives and falls to his knees in guilt ridden prayer. Even Worth's own father appears to him and attempts to guide him into the afterlife but Worth will have none of that until he solves the mystery that faces him. There is also an entire chapter devoted to the servants in which we learn that the timid housemaid Ada Jenkins has a passionate hobby in stamp collecting and is belittled by her co-workers for such a frivolous, money wasting pastime. The cook Mrs Mace, another maid Jessie, and the nasty gardener Mr. Williams are all sharply drawn portraits with carefully rendered individual voices. When even the minor characters receive this kind of attention from an author you know you have a work of fiction worth some notice. Before the book becomes deadly serious and shifts into a neo-Victorian mode this was one of the highlights for me.

The humor dissipates further into Gilbert's "investigation" which he his also writing down in manuscript form. It all becomes excessively melodramatic past the midpoint and by the final scenes I felt like I was reading something by Wilkie Collins or Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Overwrought emotions are on constant display. Multiple confessions of family secrets and murderous impulses force friends and confidantes entrusted with these confessions into dilemmas of moral conscience. Several characters resort to blackmail, there are witnesses to the murder, and witnesses to the witnesses!

This is not meant to disparage the book. On the contrary, Post Mortem (1953) is a remarkable achievement -- to begin like a satiric detective novel, add the element of a modern ghost story, then slowly transform the whole work into a Neo-sensation novel. The high emotion is mirrored in the heightened prose sending the story to soaring heights both metaphorically and literally when ghostly husband and haunted wife face each other on the rooftop of Turret House. A neat epilogue written by the son of Worth's publisher brings all the fantasy crashing down to Earth not in anticlimax but in a truly satisfying manner with a final twist that explains both the mystery of Gilbert's death and the riddle of a how a ghost can have written his own autobiography.

Vintage Mystery Book Hunters Red Alert!

2012-02-07T03:21:00.000-06:00

Those of you die hard vintage mystery lovers lucky enough to live in Chicago might want to head out to The Gallery Bookstore. I was there over the weekend and discovered that someone who was moving out of the area sold his entire vintage mystery collection to the store. The place which already had an impressive number of titles from hard to find authors has now exponentially increased with mouth watering selections. I should've written down all the writers' names, but below is a sampling of those who I remember had multiple titles available:

Ann Austin
Christopher Bush
John Buchan
H.C. Bailey
Clyde Clason
Mignon Eberhart
R. Austin Freeman (about 15 books, a mix of US & UK editions)
E. Phillips Oppenheim
Ellery Queen (most of these are unfortunately Book club editions)
Mary Roberts Rinehart
Sax Rohmer
John Rhode and Miles Burton (over 25 books, the most I've ever seen in one store at a single time)

Plus there are many, many other hardbacks and the usual tremendous assortment of vintage paperbacks (most only in reading condition with higher grade books in glass enclosed cases) that continue to crowd the shelves patiently awaiting purchase by eager readers.

I've already picked over the store and spent far too much money, but some of the books I found I may never again see anywhere for a very long time. My rule has always been: If it's scarce, buy it when you see it. There are still lots left for the rest of you. I'm generous that way.

Trek on down to The Gallery at 923 W Belmont (11AM- 8PM Mon - Sat; 11-7 on Sundays) and you will be sure to find something to your liking. The Mystery section is my haunt here, but rest of the store is an amazing place and has lots of treasures to offer, too. Plus -- he offers everything in the store via mail order for those of you who don't live close enough set foot in the store.

Killer's Wedge - Ed McBain

2012-02-05T09:30:00.000-06:00

A matronly Mrs. Dodge on the 1st ed.

While reading the fairly simple story of Killer's Wedge I was reminded of the disaster movies of my teen years. You know them well, I'm sure. Airport and The Poseidon Adventure are probably the best known but The High and the Mighty really started the formula back in the 1954. A motley group of strangers are thrown together in a contained environment and we the audience are well aware of the impending disaster that awaits them while the characters travel on in blithe ignorance. While we wait in suspense we get to know the inner lives and secrets of all the cast of characters. When disaster strikes (a hijacker's bomb detonates on board a plane, a tidal wave capsizes an ocean liner, an engine malfunction sends a airplane hurtling out of the sky in the examples mentioned above) the characters discover who among them are the heroes and who are the cowards as they face their fate and try to survive.

Ed McBain's suspense novel Killer's Wedge (1959) takes the disaster genre formula and sets it firmly on land. The contained environment is a police station, the impending disaster is personified by the ruthless Virginia Dodge armed with a gun and a bottle of nitroglycerin, and she holds an entire precinct officers hostage while she waits for the return of one cop whom she holds responsible for the death of her convicted felon husband. But when I say fairly simple story I sell this book far short. What it lacks in complexity of plot it more than makes up for in richness and density of character study.

Typical of the 87th Precinct books in the early part of McBain's series (this is the eighth book) there are multiple story lines. While the cops in the detective offices are being held hostage, Steve Carella the object of Virginia's revenge, is single-handedly taking care of a puzzling hanging death in a locked room. As Carella makes his way through the lies and deceit it becomes clear that the apparent suicide is a cleverly concealed murder. While Carella has to wait for inspiration when he watches someone burning branches and leaves in the backyard, the reader already has a big clue to the solution in the title of the book.

The bulk of the story is, however, devoted to the the detectives being held hostage. We get to learn about how they feel and think. Who is concerned about their family, who is concerned about his police colleagues. Two of the best bits are devoted to clever plans to outwit the frenetic half-mad Mrs. Dodge. One detective, Meyer, asks permission of Mrs. Dodge to types out a report in triplicate but in reality types out an S.O.S. message and manages to throw it through one of the few open windows. Another Cotton Hawes surreptitiously manages to turn up the thermostat in the office to maximum hoping that the slowly increasing and sweltering heat on an already hot summer day will distract Virgina so that she will ask for the the heat to be turned down and Hawes can make his way to a hat rack where she stowed her purse containing one of the police guns she confiscated. There is also the Puerto Rican prostitute Angelica Gomez who attempts to win over Virginia with feminine wiles, but unwittingly becomes yet another pawn in the madwoman's ever increasing mind games.

A sultry noirish Virginia Dodge on the 1st PB

Mrs. Dodge never once gets a bit of my sympathy. I was hoping someone would just chuck a typewriter at her and end the ordeal. That she manages to keep them all at bay for the majority of the book is sometimes a bit too much to swallow. But McBain tries to cover all aspects of the cops' apprehension and the possible consequences should they be foolish enough to play hero. They are a team and no one is really out for himself here. It's one of the most admirable qualities in the series - the relationships that develop between police and how they really do care about and protect each other when danger threatens.

This is a quick read and a riveting suspense tale worthy of being called a "real nailbiter." The reader keeps wondering if Mrs. Dodge is bluffing as do many of the cops. Is that a bottle of nitro or is it only water? Who will be brave enough to call her bluff? Will Steve show up before they disarm and subdue Mrs. Dodge? And what about Steve's pregnant wife who worried about his late return is headed to the precinct? Will she too become a hostage? Or those horny college boys who find one of Meyer's S.O.S. papers in the street? Will they believe the message and act on it or will they ignore it and head off to the whorehouse? McBain really gets a lot of mileage out of what is now something of a cliche in crime thrillers and the movies. He had me hooked and it all pays off with a whopper of an ending.

Fans of the 87th Precinct books would be wise to visit Sergio's blog Tipping My Fedora where he has taken up the daunting task of reading and reviewing the entire series. As of this date he has knocked off fourteen of the over fifty books. Each post is an in-depth study of the book and far more insightful than my offering here.

McBain's book is number five in the first part of my three part 2012 Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge sponsored by Bev at My Reader's Block. Links to the previously reviewed books are listed below.

Part I. Perilous Policemen
The Case of the Beautiful Body - Jonathan Craig
Murder by the Clock - Rufus King
The Death of Laurence Vining - Alan Thomas
The Moon Murders - Nigel Morland

FIRST BOOKS: The Moon Murders - Nigel Morland

2012-02-02T11:17:00.000-06:00

The dedication to The Moon Murders (1935), Nigel Morland's debut as a crime fiction author, is to his mentor Edgar Wallace who he also credits with having given him the idea for Palmyra Pym. In the history of all detective fiction Palmyra Pym is the first woman police officer of high rank in command all her investigations. There have been female fictional private detectives and perhaps a few female police officer characters in the crime fiction of the late 19th century and early 20th century, but Mrs. Pym is unique with her high rank of commissioner and therefore a true pioneer for women characters in the genre.

While they display the usual elements of a traditional detective story the Mrs. Pym books are at their core police procedurals. Morland was a true crime addict and journalist and knew how Scotland Yard really worked during his lifetime. The drudgery of paperwork, the backbiting among colleagues, the sergeant trying his best to prove his skills and shine in the eyes of his superior, and the utter bureaucracy of the life of policemen -- Morland captured it all. The Moon Murders is concerned with not only the investigation and apprehension of the criminal but also the inner workings and bureaucracy of police departments and most especially the relationships of police officers with their partners and superiors. The life of police behind the scenes is really what distinguishes a true police procedural from the usual whodunit and will become the hallmark of such later crime writers as John Creasey in his books about Commander Gideon and Inspector West representing the UK and Ed McBain and Jonathan Craig in the their treatments of urban American precinct life. Morland to me seems to have nailed the formula combining detection, police work and police relationships in his first book. It's not just an entertainment it is a real novel of character.

Man from the Moon 's disguise recalls
McCulley's ex-circus performer

Like the oddball characters of Johnston McCulley's pulp magazine stories (The Crimson Clown, Black Star, and the Demon) London is plagued with a master criminal with a penchant for theatricality. Several shooting deaths have been attributed to someone calling himself "The Man from the Moon." At each crime scene police find a calling card stamped with a yellow crescent and a taunting typed message. He makes surprise appearances at Scotland Yard dressed in a billowing shapeless gown, a grisly white mask and a red fright wig and challenges Mrs. Pym to stop him before he strikes again. She is certain that "The Man from the Moon" is not acting alone and it's all a smoke screen for a crime syndicate planning something far more insidious and harmful to the city.

In one of his more daring acts the masked criminal manages to escape her office unseen by a guard on duty foreshadowing Morland's later fascination with detective novels that feature impossible crime aspects. But Mrs Pym will have nothing to do with locked rooms and impossibilities. When anything seeming to be an impossible crime surfaces she quickly dismisses and proves within minutes how the "miracle" was accomplished. One thing a criminal should never do with Mrs. Pym is toy with her unshakable respect for logic and common sense.

Morland takes the Holmesian approach to crime detection to its extreme with Mrs. Pym who tries her best to get her men to see things as they really are. She walks into a room and within minutes can tell you whose been there and she teaches her police to do the same. In her partner Inspector Shott she glimpses the potential for an excellent detective, but their first few days together are like Beatrice and Benedict trading insults. One of the best examples of her amazing detective skills comes in her examination of the rooms at Ensor Mews where a reporter has benn kidnapped. Based on indentations in the carpet, an uneaten breakfast, and hand prints left in dust on a table top Mrs. Pym figures out not only precisely what happened in the room, but the height and personality of the kidnapper. Holmes could do no better, I think.

When her loyal Chinese servant and dear friend is killed in a shootout/car chase that results in a car wreck Pym's irascible personality kicks into a more powerfully enraged and cruel Nemesis. She vows to bring in all the criminals in the gang headed by "The Man from the Moon" no matter what even if she has to kill every last one of them herself. It's an astonishing scene and the transformation is something to marvel at. Rarely do we get this kind of character arc in any detective novel of the period.

Her shift in character and motivation is marked by an ever increasing unorthodoxy, a flagrant violation of police protocol. She begins to resemble a brutal American cop not the usual genteel British police officer of a traditional detective novel. We know that she has spent some time in the U.S. (Omaha and Nevada are both mentioned) and she confesses that she had some respect for the tactics of the "third degree" favored by American police. She even stoops to bribing witnesses to speed up the investigation and get her closer to ferreting out the killers. Her superiors are shocked and lecture her. Even Shott is appalled by her sudden changes. He is concerned that Internal Affairs might get wind of Pym's "rule bending" and repeatedly warns her to curb her methods lest her actions lead to probation for both or the end of their careers.

The Wallace influence comes into full force when in the final pages Morland creates one action sequence after another in relentless succession. There is an exciting airplane chase complete with a gunfight that could've been lifted from a war movie. Vengeance is hers. Aiming straight at the plane's gas tank she fires in rapid succession crying out "Frizzle you murderer!!" her fury punctuated with not one but two exclamation marks. Such is her rage and intent on killing her target Mrs. Pym doesn't even realize she's been shot in her wrist until she's on the ground. A later shoot out in the villains' hideout is a bloodthirsty barrage of bullets and bodies falling that makes the St. Valentine's Massacre look like a tea party. Mrs. Pym orders her men to open fire and "Give 'em all you got." When she is aiming at one of the nastiest of the lot she addresses him "Speak well of me to the dead" them empties her gun into him. Mickey Spillane night approve of Palmyra Pym's crime fighting methods, though he would hardly approve of her bulldog features and her less than shapely figure and her taste in mannish attire and ugly hats.

A bibliography of the Mrs. Pym. detective novels can be found here along with an updated and complete list of all other crime fiction Nigel Morland wrote under a variety of pseudonyms. In the coming weeks I will feature an article on all of his Sgt. Johnny Lamb novels written under the name "John Donavan."

The Moon Murders counts as one more book in my Perilous Policeman category of my three part 2012 Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge sponsored by Bev at My Reader's Block. Links to the previously reviewed books are listed below.

Part I. Perilous Policemen
The Case of the Beautiful Body - Jonathan Craig
Murder by the Clock - Rufus King
The Death of Laurence Vining - Alan Thomas

ALTERNATIVE CRIME: Death Walks on Cat Feet - Paul Haggard

2012-01-31T01:12:00.002-06:00

That's supposed to be a skull in a hatbox.

Sometimes I get tired of reading the same old kind of whodunits - bodies in the library, find the hidden will, missing husbands masquerading as avenging killers. You know the kind of book I'm talking about. Every now and then I need a little jolt of the weird. Blowpipe murders, liquid nitrogen pouring out of a shower head, the search for a headless skeleton. You get the picture. I'll go browsing along my shelves for a book that's been sitting there for several years and when I dig into the pages of a select volume I usually get more than I ever bargained for. That's what happened when I started reading Death Walks on Cat Feet (1938) by Paul Haggard (aka Stephen Longstreet -- one time cartoonist, 1950s novelist, and screenwriter). Once again I find I've stumbled across a book that not only seemed way ahead of its time but is also one of the many books featured in Gun in Cheek Bill Pronzini's love letter to "bad" mystery novels.

Death Walks on Cat Feet is either Haggard's second or third mystery book (two books were published in 1938) using this pseudonym and the only one to feature amateur criminologist, museum curator, and former coroner Sam Macabre. Perfect name for a coroner, eh? Not only is the lead detective suitably named but his strange museum housing an odd collection of artifacts dealing with notorious murderers and their crimes is called Macabre, Inc. And macabre is an understated adjective to describe the near necrophilic atmosphere that pervades this grisly, often stomach churning, and very pulpy detective novel.

It's the only book of the Golden Age I've ever read where coroners takes center stage as the amateur sleuths. The only policeman in this novel, Captain Fielding, does hardly any police work at all and allows Sam Macabre to run the show along with the current coroner of Manhattan. The really strange thing is that the majority of the book takes place in Miami, Florida and that Macabre, Fielding and the NYC coroner (named -- believe it or not -- Doc Savage) fly to Florida in search of a missing body, find another murder victim and take over the investigation of that crime in conjunction with the original murder that occurred in New York. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself and probably already confusing you.

Joy Rogers, Sam's niece, is charged with suspicion of murder when she accidentally stumbles across the corpse of Ludwig Elm, theatrical producer, who is discovered with a human skull left on top of his body. In fleeing the scene she leaves behind her monogrammed handbag and a hatbox with a one of a kind hat she intended to wear to her upcoming wedding. She seeks help from her Uncle Sam who decides to send her to an upstate New York sanitarium for safekeeping. An autopsy reveals that Elm died of natural causes, but that the skull reveals two bullet holes at the rear base. The investigation then shifts to discovering the identity of the person whose skull it is and what happened to the rest of the body.

The author circa 1975
(courtesy of the Stephen Longstreet website)

Captain Fielding is in charge of the case. He reluctantly takes Sam's word that Joy is innocent. Macabre challenges Fielding to a bet. If the police avoid arresting Joy for one week, Sam will use that time to hunt down the real murderer. Fielding agrees and the first thing they do is head to the home of Sam's oddball Polish sculptor friend. Why? To reconstruct the face of course. This is the first time I have ever seen something so completely modern done in a detective novel of this era.

A zany scene introduces the Polish sculptor who of course brilliantly creates an astonishing female likeness on the skull with the aid of modelling clay and his nimble fingers. You'd think it would take a couple of days, but no this genius does it all in a couple of hours. Facial reconstruction while you wait. Sam then asks for photos of Ludwig's ex-wife who coincidentally has disappeared within the past few days. The sculpted face and the photos are a match. Now to find out who killed Mrs. Elm and why. The investigation takes them into the world of Broadway theater where we meet these colorful characters:

Eddy Prentiss – stage manager and ex-con with a rap sheet including petty theft, burglary and murder. Sam keeps him in mind as suspect number one.

Baroness Higgins (aka The Princess) – former crooked medium now a theatrical angel and wanna-be actress. Planning to marry Elm as soon as he could divorce his wife.

Freddy Martin – another stereotyped gay character who happens to be the costume designer for Ludwig Elm's current show that is intended to be a vehicle for the Baroness

Fern Deshaw – bad actress trying to pass herself of as Southern Belle who shows too much interest in Elm's murder and has a lust for diamonds. Turns out she too has a rap sheet, hers includes assault and battery.

Robert Deshaw – Fern's stepfather. Breeds and sells tropical fish. Rented a cottage to Elm's wife in Miami where Mrs. Elm fled when she left her husband. The one scene in which he appears is loaded with everything you never wanted to know about the care of tropical fish in home aquariums.

Dumpling Joe – pro wrestler turned bodyguard. Hired to keep an eye on Joy when she is stalked by Prentiss at the sanitarium. Coincidentally (of course) he also was bodyguard for Mrs. Elm who had a collection of valuable diamonds she loved to wear and needed protection from avaricious thieves.

Skulls, skeletons, missing diamonds, an obsession with graphic descriptions of autopsies, a disgusting scene devoted to the evisceration of fish, and a pool of flesh eating lampreys. What more could you ask for in weirdness?

As for detection: How about Sam's esoteric knowledge of a 16th century Duke related to the Borgias who killed his rival's wife and dangled her decapitated head in front of his victim essentially giving him the fright of his life that helps Sam figure out that Ludwig Elm must've been frightened to death by the sight of Mrs. Elm's skull. Or Sam's arcane insight into a species of red ant known only to a certain area of Miami that helps him determine that an object was hidden under the bathroom tiles of Mrs Elm's home where said red ants were thriving. This book has weirdness in spades. Weirdness galore!

"Wait! Did you say flesh eating lampreys, John? But lampreys are only bloodsucking parasitical fish. They aren't carnivorous."

Oh you smart aleck, kid. You didn't even raise your hand. But of course lampreys aren't carnivores. That doesn't stop Mr Haggard or Longstreet or Weiner (pick a name, any name) from putting them in his book. This is an alternative classic mystery novel. There are no rules here. And especially no rules for grammar, syntax or metaphorical language. Making a nice segue to these select passages from Death Walks on Cat Feet.

The paperback reprint published under Longstreet's
other pseudonym and given a more lurid & fitting title

Describing Sam Macabre's problem with a bumpy ride on the flight to Miami:
Sam felt his stomach coming north on an elevator.

Describing the sounds of a gospel choir:
The obligattos of hosannas took on a strange grandeur.

The art of the simile:
Mrs. Elm's former cottage was as silent as an obelisk.

Metaphor a la Haggard:
The nine foot cyclone-fence, that did monkey shines around the estate, was topped with thick arteries of extra tough barb wire...

Wiseacre dialog:
"Lives there a dame who isn't a pushover for any kind of stinking gallantry?"

I could fill the page with examples of this memorable writing. But you must discover the rest on your own. If you dare... Copies of Death Walks on Cat Feet are incredibly scarce but you can find a few copies under a different title and a different pseudonym (see photo at right) for between $15 and $23. Or you can purchase my "well read" copy (in the original hardcover using the original more poetic title) at the usual place.

One Year Old!

2012-01-28T16:32:00.000-06:00

It's been one year and two days for Pretty Sinister Books in the blogosphere. I missed the big one year anniversary. Life is too busy these days. So Happy Belated Birthday to the blog!

Just wanted to take the time to thank all those who are now regular readers and specifically the two people who welcomed me so warmly and openly (Bev and Yvette, that's you). Without all the many comments and varied insights I would've thrown in the towel long ago. That this is such a success is a constant surprise and delight to me. Thanks for coming back day after day.

FFB: Do Not Disturb - Helen McCloy

2012-01-27T01:00:00.002-06:00

Edith Talbot has fled Paris and her ex-husband to return to New York for a well deserved break. She takes up residence in the Hotel Majestic where she begrudgingly is given the only room available. It turns out to be next door to Room 1404 from which horrible crying can be heard – the crying and sobbing of what she believes to be an adult male. She is tempted to knock on the door but notices the "Do Not Disturb" sign on door and decides to honor the request.

The next day she mentions the incident to the desk clerk who reveals that the room she is staying in was reserved by the man in Room 1404. He is Dr. Melchior, a psychiatrist, traveling with his son who is suffering from a painful ailment. Melchior wanted to reserve the room adjacent (where Edith is staying) but not use it so that no one would be bothered by his son's frequent crying and moaning. The desk clerk reluctantly gave the room to Edith because she was insistent on staying in the hotel. Edith thinks the doctor's reasoning is odd but returns to her room.

The second night she hears a piercing scream and rushes to the room next door to find out exactly what is going on. This time she ignores the "Do Not Disturb" sign and knocks until she gets an answer. The man who opens the door identifies himself as Captain Gorgas of the New York Police. After Edith's persistent questioning he tells her they are interrogating a suspect in a crime and she should return to her room and forget anything she may have heard. It's none of her business. He closes the door in her face leaving her puzzled as to where Dr. Melchior and his son might be since they are the ones who should be in the room.

Edith leaves to visit a friend the next day and when she returns that night she discovers a dead body in her room. The man resembles one of the men she had seen when Gorgas opened the door to Room 1404. And she does what any character in a suspense novel would do – she flees the hotel in search of help.

But by doing so she inadvertently sets herself up as the accused. Soon her photograph is in all the newspapers as a woman wanted for questioning in the man's murder. Everywhere she turns she thinks someone is part of a plot to capture her and turn her into the police. She spends the entire book trying to find somewhere that is safe, someone who she can trust, who will believe her story and help her find who really killed the man in her hotel room.

This is not a detective novel, though there are elements of crime solving. Dr. Basil Willing, McCloy's usual series detective, is nowhere in sight. This is a pure cat-and-mouse pursuit thriller. But Do Not Disturb (1943) is not as fast paced as it could be due to McCloy's usual fondness for didactic passages in both the dialog and the prose. While there tends to be far too much intellectualizing on Edith's part, and lots of talk about the psychology of criminal behavior, there is also some fascinating background on life in WW2 era America – both urban and rural viewpoints. Gas rationing and its impact on traffic, air raid patrols, blackouts in buildings of fifteen stories or taller all play an important part in the story as Edith flees the city, with the police hot on her heels, to head for Pennsylvania to seek refuge with her former high school friend.

There is a very odd scene where she is helped by an overly friendly couple in the Pennsylvania hills. After escaping from a bus full of inquisitive passengers one of whom recognizes her from her infamous newspaper photo and sends out the alarm she trudges through the woods, comes across a house. Comforted by a German Shepherd and a black cat that greet her and practically invite her inside she enters the unlocked home just like Goldilocks in need of food and shelter. Inside, the unnamed man and woman treat her like their own child, feed her, chit chat with her about their life, then leave her to watch over the house while they head out for a church function. Edith is rightly suspicious of their behavior but after more rationalizing and intellectualizing decides they mean well. As it turns out she is not as safe as she thought when they leave the house. It is one of many scenes that McCloy creates to lull the reader into a false sense of Edith's safety only to let loose with a barrage of unexpected violence.

I was reminded of so many Hitchcock films like The Wrong Man, and especially The 39 Steps, while reading McCloy's book. It is relentless in its themes of pursuit and the wrongly accused. It even employs Hitchcock's favorite plot gimmick of "find the MacGuffin" as so many of the villains believe that Edith is in possession of that "something special" yet she hasn't a clue what it is.

The book shifts into a quasi-spy thriller when Edith is abducted (for the third time!) and returned to New York where she encounters more suspicious police and a lawyer named Charles Henderson who is adamant that Edith has that "something special" in her possession and demands its return. Strangely, her ex-husband Lucien will turn up in the course of the twisty plot and prove to be her most trustworthy ally. Or is he really at the core of it all? Typical of these kinds of suspense thrillers the element of paranoia, Edith's constant weighing of who is trustworthy or not, takes over. Though we see the action only through Edith's eyes it is just as difficult for the reader to determine who are the good guys and who are the baddies.

Death of Laurence Vining - Alan Thomas

2012-01-23T01:00:00.003-06:00

What a lucky find this was! I went into one of my favorite used bookstores looking for two Ed McBain books which I knew I would find. Before leaving I skimmed the shelves for odd hardbacks with DJs like I always do hoping some treasure will magically appear and I saw the spine of a book way up on a top shelf and I could only read VINING. "Is that what I think it is?" I mumbled to myself. I had to grab a stepladder, climb up, and pull it off the shelf. Lo and behold! The Death of Laurence Vining (1928) -- an impossible crime novel I've been on the hunt for years. And when I opened the cover to check the price and saw it was under $10 I had to buy it. I was in the midst of finishing a book for the Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge but I set it aside so I could finally read this incredibly hard to find book, let alone one with a dust jacket. (That's the tattered DJ over to the left - I take what I can get these days, especially for $9.25) I was pleasantly surprised that this book turned out to live up to its reputation as a minor classic with a very original spin on the detective novel and an ingeniously thought out impossible crime.

Laurence Vining is an arrogant, supercilious wanna-be criminologist who dabbles in solving crimes with the aid of his sidekick Dr. Benjamin Willing (no relation to psychiatrist Basil, BTW). After recently receiving more accolades from local newspapers for his capture of the killer in the notorious "Shop Murder" he returns home to find a letter from someone signing herself "Red Hat" who desperately needs his help. The letter instructs Vining to meet her in the Hyde Park tube station the following day at 3:25 PM and seek her out near the elevators. She'll be wearing a red hat, of course. Vining asks Dr Willing if he wants to join him, but Willing declines. That afternoon Vining is discovered stabbed, a ceremonial Malaysian dagger sticking out of his back, after descending alone in the elevator at Hyde Park station. There were only two people present at the time and both were on the platform to witness Vining falling out of the elevator. No one was inside the elevator and no one was on the upper level from where he descended. How was it done?

The Scene of the Crime - one of three diagrams in the book (click to enlarge)

I was expecting that Dr. Wiling would take over as the main sleuth having always lived int he shadow of Laurence Vining. But it is the shrewd and intolerant Inspector Widgeon who takes charge of the case and will solve the complicated murder. Widgeon suffers no fools gladly often rudely interrupting long-winded suspects and urging them to get to their point quickly.

DJ illustration from 1st US edition, Lippincott (1929)

Soon after the discovery of Vining's murdered body his nephew Jack who was longing to marry Vining's secretary vanishes. Also the trusted Malayan servant Suleiman flees the household when he learns that the weapon used to dispatch Vining was the very same rare artifact of religious importance that was stolen from a locked cabinet in Vining's study. Widgeon has two teams of policemen searching for both missing men while he continues to interrogate Vining's servants and the tube station employees looking for some motive for the bizarre crime. In the process he uncovers some strange sexual relationships among the suspects, an adulterous affair, Vinings' intent to disinherit Jack, and an outlandish secret involving Jack's true parentage that rivals anything in a Dickens novel.

The whole book is something of a send-up of the traditional detective novel. The amateur sleuth is the victim, the sidekick disappears into the background becoming almost invisible, the policeman sleuth is brusque and far from gentlemanly, and several of the suspects are presented as burlesques of the stereotypes found in the genre. While there is a trace of comedy here the book is not intended as a parody. The complexity of the plot, the singularity of the murder method, and the motive are all deadly serious at heart.Most impressive to me was discovering how meticulous the murder was planned. Not only was the deed itself thought out to the last detail, but all variations of the "impossibility" being ruined by unexpected tube passengers, ill timing of the elevators, absence of the lift man who opens the elevator doors, etc. were all taken into consideration so that the actual murder would only take place in the presence of two specific witnesses and no one else. If anything occurred to prevent this from happening the plan would be abandoned. It's truly a bravura performance on the part of Thomas.

This is the third book in the Perilous Policemen portion of my adventure in the Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge. Below are the other titles I have read so far in which the primary investigator is a policeman. Five more will follow and then I'll move on to Part Two of my three part challenge.

Part I. Perilous Policemen
The Case of the Beautiful Body - Jonathan Craig
Murder by the Clock - Rufus King

FFB: Benefit Performance - Richard Sale

2012-01-20T01:00:00.008-06:00

"Don't ever die before your time. If you die, make sure you're playing the part yourself. You find out very unkind things about the human race otherwise."
--Kerry Garth in Benefit Performance

For the first few chapters of Richard Sale's Benefit Performance (1946) I thought I had stumbled upon an overlooked alternative classic. The plot became increasingly insane reminiscent of one of the paranoid menace thrillers of Cornell Woolrich. There were prize sentences chockful of idiosyncratic adjective choices that were signaling Loony Tunes music cues in my imaginary soundtrack for the book and sent me thumbing through my Funk and Wagnall's for elucidation. Most of them all occurring in one chapter, strangely enough.

The slap sent his dark glasses free-wheeling across the room, raised galactic meteors on the curtain of his mind and stung like the devil.

His innards felt like cold madrilene.

Death's xanthic hue, its pinched fingers, its hollow repose had lent Barnes a classical look.

The sun vanished in the well-ordered and dramatic delitescense of the joint.

Madrilene? Unless you're a sous chef or a gourmet I doubt that will ring a bell. Turns out it's a fancy soup, specifically "a consommé flavored with tomato, often served jellied and chilled." Delitescence? Over my head again. The lexicographers of the interweb tell me it means obfuscation or concealment. Learned a new word, but I doubt it'll find its way into everyday use for me.

Once we clear the wreckage of Chapter 12 the writing slowly descends from the orbit of pulpy outer space and returns firmly to planet Earth. The story is fast paced maze of deception and murder plots, peppered with typical wise cracking dialog, and populated with shapely, scantily clad dames and pistol packing thugs. Though most of the characters are involved in the movie industry we might as well be in the underworld of New York or Chicago what with all the stolen guns and bullets flying everywhere.

In a nutshell...or maybe something slightly bigger: Kerry Garth, movie actor, awakens from a drunken stupor to discover he's been shot and killed. Or rather that his movie stand-in has been shot and killed. Garth's controlling press agent, Casey Jones, reminds him of the events of the past 24 hours. The two of them asked Joshua Barnes, the stand-in, to take Garth's place at a movie premiere so Garth could get a long rest from the grueling production. Casey thinks that someone intended to kill Garth and he is not safe. He devises a wild plan for Garth to impersonate Barnes until he can sort things out. But on the first night in his new role Garth learns that the man he's pretending to be was mixed up with gambling gangsters, a songbird for whom he was a piano accompanist, and a married woman who was planning to bump off her husband with Barne's help. Suddenly it looks as if Barnes was worse than no good -- he was rotten to the core and was probably the true victim of the gunsel who shot him. Garth is eager to discover the truth and sets out to play detective to his own murder.

Sale gets a lot of mileage out of the role playing business. There are lots of obvious jokes ("This was not in the script, was it, Casey?") and some farcical bits about Garth's disguise which requires him to dye his hair, sport a mustache stuck on with spirit gum, and wear dark glasses to cover his baby blues since Barnes had pale gray eyes. I also liked the classic scene where Garth attends his own funeral and overhears two writers discussing his acting talent. Make that a severe lack of acting talent - especially his mangling of script dialog, the actor's cardinal sin according to most writers. It's the best comic scene among many.

But it's the wacky multi-layered crime plot with everyone turning out to be a crook or a schemer that is Sale's real success here. I whipped through this book quickly and enjoyed every word. If you're looking for a good example of the pulpy fun and a send-up of the olden days of the Hollywood studio system look no further than Benefit Performance. For once I'm reviewing a book that's easy to find in multiple editions. The second illustration is of the most common edition - the Dell mapback - and there are many copies for sale from online dealers. It might even turn up in your local library.

This book qualifies for another few inches of successfully attained ascent in my 2012 Mount TBR Reading Challenge. Two down and thirty-eight more to go. No altitude sickness yet. I'm crossing my fingers.

Crime in the Dutch Garden - Herbert Adams

2012-01-18T10:48:00.002-06:00

I lied. I said I was going to write up a Neglected Detectives entry on Jimmie Haswell, but this book is so rich and different that I had to give it special attention. Also, the three books I ordered by Herbert Adams turned out to be books without Haswell which threw a wrench into my plan to write up about three or four books with Haswell as the protagonist. What surprised me most about Crime in the Dutch Garden (1930) is that it is one of the few examples where the addition of multiple love stories works because love and the refusal of love are at the very core of the many mysteries of the plot.

Haswell visits newlywed cousin Donald and his wife Nancy (they both appeared in The Golden Ape, the book the immediately precedes this one in Adam's bibliography) and is asked to help solve the violent murder of Annabelle Querdling. She was found crushed to death by the statue of a satyr, something that will prove to be an ironic death when Haswell learns more about her personality.

Previously, Miss Querdling's niece Evelyn and her fiance Lionel Duckworth, visited Haswell to discuss the receipt of anonymous letters threatening Miss Querdling's life. Haswell wonders if her death a culmination of those threats. A chauffeur with a volatile temper is suspected. He had recently been sacked for showing an romantic interest in Miss Querdling's maid. Haswell soon learns that not only did Miss Querdling disapprove of the romance, but she has a neurotic antipathy for all romantic attachments and especially to the idea of marriage. Her revulsion of marriage is so far gone that she wants to prevent even her two nieces ever being happy with a husband and had plans to rewrite her will so that none of her money would go to the women if they were to marry. But the will has gone missing and thorough searches have turned up nothing.

Haswell is first and foremost a lawyer by profession. Similar to the stories by Melville Davisson Post featuring his devious lawyer Randolph Mason strange quirks in the law come into play in several of Herbert Adams' detective novels. The legal issues surrounding the withdrawal of an inheritance if a legatee were to marry are discussed at length and were a very interesting insight into British law.

The usual action thriller elements of Adams' early work give way to stronger character studies and a thematic exploration of love and marriage in the context of a criminal investigation. We learn that Evelyn is determined to marry Lionel despite her aunt's protestations. Her sister, Marjorie, on the other hand honors the aunt's wishes by remaining unattached. But who is Marjorie sneaking off to meet in the garden? It seems she has more to hide than Evelyn. Even the lives of the servants are affected by Annabelle Querdling's strange anti-romance obsession. Haswell's scenes with Janet, the maid who was engaged to marry the chauffeur, are some of the most poignant in the book. He has quite a humane and compassionate touch in dealing with the sensitive aspects in this investigation as opposed to the colder police methods of Supt. Richmond.

Detection, too, is on ample display in this book. Haswell and Supt. Richmond spend plenty of time going over the crime scenes discovering that a bench had been moved to better allow for an accurate hit when the statue was toppled. The statue itself is thoroughly examined and it is determined it was so finely constructed and keenly balanced that it could not have accidentally toppled from its mount. There is also some business with alibi checking with only Evelyn and Lionel seemingly out of the picture as they had retired to the parlor for piano playing and singing and were heard there fro the entire evening the night of the murder.

Miss Querdling's estate is bordered by a golf course and country club (see that excellent map endpapers below). Like many of Adams' books golf plays its part, but here it serves as more of a social background. A game of golf becomes the perfect excuse for several characters to have private conversations without the eavesdropping ears of other suspects or servants around.

Adams has all sorts of excellent touches in this book that may be overlooked by someone who approaches the book as a mere puzzle mystery. The victim abhors love and seems to shut out beauty, but lives in one of the most beautiful and romantic homes surrounded by artfully designed and lovingly cared for gardens. She is murdered with a statue of a mythological figure that symbolizes lust, a brilliant ironic touch. The site of her murder is one of the many picturesque, serene gardens that also happens to be a place where two characters have been having nighttime trysts.

Map of the gardens at Anabelle Querdling's estate
(click to enlarge)

The gardens themselves play an important role in the book not just serving as an unusual setting. I know this is going to sound pretentious but couldn't help but think of Shakepeare's plays and his forest and garden worlds where lovers are misunderstood or misaligned, where disguise and false identities impede and hinder the course of true love, but where in the end all is put right when foolishness is set aside, magic and illusion are dispelled, and common sense helps let true love prevail. All of this can be found in Adam's detective novel. While there's no fairy magic we can think of Haswell's deductions and brilliant insights as a sort of magic that allows the lovers to achieve their rightful union and deserved happiness.

FIRST BOOKS: Murder by the Clock - Rufus King

2012-01-16T14:05:00.002-06:00

My latest addition to the Perilous Policemen part of the Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge takes me back to 1929 and the very first Lieutenant Valcour novel written by the unjustly dismissed Rufus King. It's been a long time since I've read a book from the late 1920s that seems more like something from the mid 20th century. By the time I finished the book I found more comparisons in the brooding psychological private eye novels of Ross MacDonald, the sexual temptresses of nearly every hard-boiled writer during the 1950s, and the paranoid urban households in so many paperback originals of the 1960s. King even flirts with elements of the surreal in this book classified as a detective novel from Doubleday's Crime Club, a publisher better known for traditional whodunits than this kind of literate novel that uses crime not as a means to entertain but as the springboard for delving in the darker recesses of human behavior.

Herbert Endicott, a philandering husband, is found dead in a walk in closet in his bedroom. There are some suspicious signs that lead Valcour to think foul play yet there is no sign of a weapon and no visible wound on the corpse to verify murder. But when the body refuses to stay dead and the suspects begin to voice their utter hatred for the victim I knew the book was going to stray far away from the typical "find the cigarette ash and footprints" stories that flooded the market in the 1920s. King's writing, too, is a big clue that this book is meant to be more than just a time passing entertainment. He has a way of capturing your attention with neat turns of phrase, lyrical styling, and an eccentric sense of humor.

How pleasant it would be he reflected, to come across the perfect imprint of a shoe [...] -- or what was it that was so popular at the moment? -- of course: the footprint of a gorilla. The case would then be technically known as an open-and-shut one. He'd simply take the train for California and arrest Lon Chaney, and-- But enough.

When the body is found there is no sign of any weapon. The police physician at first thinks Endicott has suffered a stroke or heart attack and his death is a natural one. Valcour finds evidence of another person being in the closet, and signs that Endicott's body has been searched. He suspects foul play and orders an autopsy of the body while it is still in the house. That's when the physician discovers that Endicott is still alive. Valcour then sets up a plan to keep Endicott guarded by both a nurse and two policemen to prevent another more fatal attack on Endicott. Perhaps he may even catch the culprit in the act of a second murder attempt.

A notable feature of the story is that it takes place in less than 12 hours, from 8:37 PM to 7:11 AM the following day, with the action almost entirely confined to the Endicott household. Valcour makes a few side trips to interview suspects not in the home and does so in the wee hours of the morning adding a very surreal element to the story. None of the characters seems to be too upset about someone knocking on their door at two or three in the morning – even if it is a policeman. In one case Valcour doesn't even get to identify himself since the woman who answers the door thinks he is Endicott. Valcour even allows her to badger him with questions for a few pages before he bothers to correct her assumption.

King experiments with the narrative. We mostly follow Valcour's point of view but on occasion he allows us into the thoughts of other characters. For example, we learn that Nurse Morrow who is put in charge of watching over Endicott, is a dreamy romantic woman who hopes her life will finally blossom into the kind of adventurous one she always imagined it would be:

The present case looked as a heaven sent oasis. Who knew what might not develop out of it? It awakened all the atrophied hunger of her starved sentimentalism. And even if nothing did result form it -- nothing practical, like marriage, or a good bonus -- it would at least leave her something to think about during those endless, tiresome, tiring hours of the future.

At the halfway mark of the one night's investigation Valcour finds Tom Hollander, a former war buddy of Endicott and who some members of the household think is the only man who Endicott can call a friend. Valcour sends for Hollander hoping that when Endicott recovers from his semi-comatose state he will confide in Hollander and reveal who attacked him. Events do not go as planned, however. Hollander is not the friend he presents himself as. Valcour inadvertently has placed Endicott's life in further danger.

1931 film poster. The movie blended the plots of two
plays, one of which was an adaptation of King's novel.

There is an air of dread that settles over the Endicott household. Like a Gothic novel death settles upon everyone and everything. The characters become brooding, turn inward, and allow their imaginations to run wild. Nurse Morrow comments to the two policeman sharing her watch over Endicott that "there is something sinister" about it all. She notes a eerie quiet that "settled gently on the house. The stillness of a grave." Mrs. Endicott's lugubrious servant Roberts, meanwhile, dwells on her haunted past. She reveals that she cannot abide her employer, pesters Valcour with odd questions like if he believes that "the dead [can] remain in emotional touch with the living." She drops several hints that Mrs. Endicott and Hollander were probably having an affair of their own. But is there proof or is it merely the product of Roberts' jealous and confused mind? Later Valcour describes Roberts as "the shortest step this side of some fervour bred in the swamp of lunacy." Menace, madness, and death are everywhere Valcour turns.

Despite all his efforts to protect Endicott the murderer does make a second and successful attempt on his life. But it seems nearly impossible. With two policeman in the room and a nurse on duty could someone really have fired a gun from the balcony through the small opening where the window was raised and struck Endicott fatally wounding him? In the remaining three hours of the book's plot Valcour manages to unearth more secrets, prevent a suicide attempt, and find the hiding place of the murderer who has remained in the house the entire night.

Murder by the Clock is unlike any other American mystery I have read from this era. True, there is detection and the policeman hero is doggedly determined to bring in the villain of the piece, but the emphasis here seems to be less on the mechanics of the criminal investigation and more on the after effects of the crime as it alters the lives of the Endicott household. In this respect King's novel is far more modern than one would expect for his era. He may have been one of the earliest writers to explore the real drama inherent in crime and its aftermath rather than exploiting a fictional murder as a mere puzzle entertainment.

LEFT INSIDE: A.C. McClurg Bookstore Receipt

2012-01-15T12:09:00.000-06:00

This was found inside my copy of Wings by Achmed Abdullah, the only copy to date that I know of that has a dust jacket. It's a collection of short stories that deal with mysticism and the supernatural elements of Asian religions. Judging by the date of publication of Wings (1920) and the date on the receipt (April 9, 1921) it's very possible that this is the original purchase receipt from the original owner of this book. But then again, maybe it's just a slip for the purchase of paper and pens. I notice that there are quantities of 6 and 3 and the only single price is 35 cents. A hardcover book cost $2.00 in the 1920s.

Front of receipt

Back of receipt

"Examined / APR 9 1921/ Main Floor"

Receipt found laid inside this book

A.C. McClurg was a leading publisher that began as Chicago's oldest book and stationery store. The publishing house is probably best known among bibliophiles as the firm responsible for bringing Tarzan to a larger reading public. In 1914 they released Tarzan of the Apes as a book after it's first appearance in the October 1912 issue of All Story Magazine. It was the most popular title in the publisher's history. They went on to publish ten more titles before Burroughs set up his own publishing operation.

From the history of the bookstore at The Newberry Library website:

A.C. McClurg & Co. traces its origins to Chicago’s oldest book and stationery store which was founded in 1844. The young Alexander C. McClurg went to work for the company, then known as S. C. Griggs, in 1859. McClurg resumed working for Griggs after returning from the Civil War with the rank of general. S.C. Griggs lost all its contents in a fire in 1868. But when the store was completely destroyed by the great Chicago Fire of 1871, Griggs decided to sell his share of the company to E. L. Jansen, A. C. McClurg and F. B. Smith. Jansen, McClurg & Co. was established in 1872. The business flourished and in 1873 published its first title, Landscape Architecture by H. W. S. Cleveland. By 1880 McClurg’s ranked as one of the country’s largest book distributors. In addition to its wholesale book business, McClurg supplied to small-town retailers throughout the West and Midwest a variety of merchandise, including “blank books and tablets, stationery, typewriter paper and supplies, hair and tooth brushes, druggists’ sundries, pocketbooks, pipes, pocket cutlery, etc.

For more about the original A.C. McClurg bookstore go here.

To learn about the Newberry Library and their bookstore named in honor of A.C. McClurg go here.

Books for Sale!

2012-01-14T14:57:00.000-06:00

From the BLATANT SELF- PROMOTION DEPARTMENT: I've mentioned in a few comments over the past week that I will be selling several boxes and bags of books for the next six months. The selection varies from week to week and is a mix of vintage hardcovers, hardcovers with dust jackets, vintage paperbacks and relatively modern paperbacks. All of the books are of the mystery, adventure or supernatural fiction genres. There may be some science fiction paperbacks added as I make my way through the boxes and bags. This is an ongoing sale and will continue through June...maybe longer.

This week the highlights are two first editions by Reginald Hill, some Craig Rice books in DJ, a rare edition of the novella Death in the Sun by G.D.H. & M. Cole, and my copy of The Sentry Box Murder previously reviewed here. Last week's books include several reading copies of Arthur Machen books, some hardboiled private eye paperbacks, and a reprint of the cult classic Killer in Drag by Ed Wood Jr., cross-dressing filmmaker and creator of Plan 9 From Outer Space among other treasures of bad cinema.

The books are being sold via eBay. It's the easiest and cheapest method for me to unload books over a short period of time. You need both an Ebay account and a PayPal account in order to buy books there. I no longer accept credit card orders direct, it's only via PayPal. However, I am one of the few sellers who continues to accept money orders for payment from anyone who doesn't have a PayPal account. I may be adding the unsold books to a Biblio.com account in the future. For now, it's Ebay only.

Click here to see what's offered. I continue to add books ten at a time each week. It's always changing so you might want to bookmark the site for future reference.

Happy browsing and I do hope you find something to your liking that you'll want to buy.

FFB: The Mummy Case Mystery - Dermot Morrah

2012-01-12T23:06:00.001-06:00

There are few university set mysteries that are as deeply immersed in academia as the sole detective novel by Dermot Morrah. With few exceptions the entire cast is made up of college professors or university officials and their world is confined to the ivy covered halls of Beaufort College, Oxford. At the heart of the story is an academic rivalry centered on the minutiae of highly specialized Egyptology research. When a dreadful accident occurs and one of their own turns up dead all that matters is that the university not suffer scandal.

A fire occurs in the rooms of Peter Benchley, professor of Egyptology, where a newly purchased mummy was being temporarily stored. The fire completely destroys his room and only one body is found inside, charred beyond recognition. The only items that can be found to identify the body are a wristwatch and a set of keys. Denys Sargent, law professor, is not satisfied with the university's quick decision to settle the matter by calling it an accident and voting that Benchley be formally named as the charred corpse. He wonders if the body is Benchley's, then what happened to the mummy? And if the body is really the mummy, then where did Benchley go? And could Benchley's rival, the Russian Egyptologist Feodor Bonoff, have something to do with the fire that is all too suspicious? Sargent and his pal Humphrey Considine, ancient Assyria professor, set out to discover the answers to these riddles and more.

Even though the book sounds violent and gruesome from my plot summary the tone is lighthearted, the writing sharp, the humor acerbic, and the emphasis always on the cerebral not the criminal. Over analysis may be the book's one fault. In Chapter 9 entitled "The Examiners" Sargent and Considine review sixteen separate points about the fire and the mysterious circumstances of the body, the mummy and what actually happened to Benchley. They outline all the possibilities and parameters in such detail it is easy to see through the culprit's deception. Yet even if the reader figures out the true identity of the charred body there are still a few delightful surprises in the amusing final chapters.

Of the many academic mysteries out there this is one of the best from the Golden Age. Satiric, clever, with a very dry British humor - they don't seem to write them like this anymore. And I doubt you will find a better book that mixes crime and universities where the motives of the culprit are so thoroughly intellectual that only a professor could dream up such a scheme.

Luckily, this is one of the rare instances where you can buy a cheap copy of the book. The Mummy Case Mystery was reissued in a paperback edition by Harper's Perennial Library in 1988 and a handful of copies are available from multiple online dealers.

The Sentry-Box Murder - Newton Gayle

2012-01-11T06:00:00.002-06:00

My attempt to tackle as many obscure writers as possible this year (I have a reputation to uphold after all) turned up this oddity that I had forgotten I owned. So far it is the only detective novel set in pre-World War Two era Puerto Rico I've ever heard of let alone read. The premise - a treasure hunt in an ancient fort with a haunted tower- was so enticing, so much like something John Dickson Carr might write if he were more a fan of exotic locales, that I had to tear into it.

A group of tourists are engaged in a treasure hunt on the grounds of El Morro, a historic fort in Old Juan (and now the only national park on that island commonwealth). Among the participants we find Senator John Monarch; his wife, movie actress Melita Avery; Monarch's lawyer and Melita's sometime lover, Fergus McKelvie; Monarch's nephew Elmer; Stella Tophet, a strident American housewife; Jim Greer, ex-British Secret Service agent; and Robin Upwood his friend and an agent in the British Foreign Office. The treasure hunt ends abruptly when someone quite literally stumbles upon the corpse of the senator in the location of the title. He has been shot in a room with only one entrance, two windows that are no more than slits in the masonry, and that was being watched by two guards. An impossible murder! More Carr influence at work? Well, not quite.

The book is narrated by Upwood and while he is involved in the action and we get to follow him along on his creepy adventures in the dungeon during the treasure hunt, the true detective of the piece is Jim Greer. Because Upwood is the first person narrator we only know of Greer's activities if the two of them are together. However, Greer is offstage a lot for much of the first part of the book and we only learn of his findings through dialogue exchanges with Upwood. This was beginning to bother me because I prefer fair play detective novels in which the reader and detective discover clues together. But later Greer will team up with Upwood and we get to follow the detection first hand via Upwood's narration.

The now inaccessible haunted sentry box at El Morro

Greer is one of those know-it-all amateur detectives. He reminded me of a British Philo Vance minus the foppery and quirky exclamations like "Oh my aunt!" He seems to be brilliant and intuitive but has a tendency to jump to conclusions, display his biases and chauvinism and make specious comments that rule out minor characters committing the crime like this: "Oakley [the chief of police] assures me that deliberate murder is totally alien to Puerto Rican character. There's a fair amount of crime of the passionel kind down here, but the local records contain no single case of killing planned in cold blood." I can't believe that the island was that much of an Eden even in 1935.

While the Puerto Rican characters are allowed to speak Spanish with Upwood acting as sometime translator (he is practically fluent in the language), there is the other end of the spectrum embodied in the character of Félise, a maid from the Virgin Islands. She speaks in heavily rendered phonetic dialog and is thrown in as the usual black character intended as an object of ridicule. With her "dems" and "dose" and her talk of spooks and superstition it's the most off putting part in a book which for the most part is very modern and sophisticated. Here's a sampling of Félise's words of wisdom, some keen advice for anyone investigating mysteries (with or without ghosts):

"Dar does be tings dat you believes and tings dat you doesn't believe. Sometime it seem a long way out but den you take a little jump home and it coom."

There is ample amount of detection but most of Greer's energy seems to be focussed on extraneous matters. A packet of shirts found in the bushes with odd scribbling on the cuff on the left sleeves, the search for the owner of a mysterious British accented voice that threatened Monarch with a terrible vengeance, and some strange verse-like scribblings left in a hotel room are only a sampling of the numerous clues that monopolize Greer's investigation. All of these seem to lead to the murderer and I was convinced I had nailed the culprit only to have the rug pulled out from under me in the final paragraphs of the penultimate chapter. While I was disappointed in the identity of the real murderer I must allow a tip of the hat to Gayle in fooling me by leading me down to the garden path to the false culprit. No mean feat for a novice mystery writer. This was, after all, the second book of a total of five.

Aerial view of the entire park enclosing El Morro

The investigation of Senator Monarch's murder is only the second book with Greer and Upwood and yet the story is peppered with allusions to several cases in their past. It happens about five times in the course of the book. The first time is a reference to their first case which was published as Death Follows the Formula (1935). This is understandable and a typical marketing strategy of publishers who want to sell books. Many of the detective novels of the 1930s have these kind of footnotes luring readers to the writer's earlier work. But later Upwood talks about the Stavinsky case "one of those things that cannot yet be told" which also "had been a crime with certain similarities" to the one being investigated in The Sentry-Box Murder. Gayle is trying to make Greer into a sort of Holmes with his own giant rat of Sumatra and other astonishing career adventures. It's irritating, especially since Greer is hardly in the class of Holmes.

More interesting than the book are the biographies of the two people who authored it. "Newton Gayle" is the pseudonym of a writing duo made up of Muna Lee and Maurice Guinness. Lee was a well known poet from Mississippi whose early career included work with the U.S. Secret Service as a confidential translator where she censored mail written Spanish as well as in Portuguese and French. She married another poet from Puerto Rico, Luis Munoz Marin and the two moved to Puerto Rico. While living there she collaborated with Guinness, a Shell Oil executive, on five detective novels most of which feature Jim Greer. Not surprisingly both their backgrounds come into play in their books. Death Follows a Formula deals with a man who discovers an alternative fuel to gasoline and his eventual murder. Their third book, Murder at 28:10 (1936), is also set in Puerto Rico. For more about Lee see this detailed article about mystery writers from Mississippi.

This is my first successfully finished book in the Mount TBR Reading Challenge. Crampons and ice pick were not necessary on this leg, though they may be required later in the year as I scale the hazardous peaks in the mini-mountain range I call my TBR pile.

The Sleeping Bacchus - Hilary St George Saunders

2012-01-09T06:00:00.010-06:00

Here's a book that has a unique history. It started as a French mystery called Le Repos Bacchus (1938) written by Pierre Boileau (whose collaborations with Thomas Narcejac I have reviewed here, here and here). Saunders, who wrote as "Francis Beeding" with his own collaborator John Palmer, came across the book in a Parisian bookshop and thought it remarkable after reading it. He had hoped to write his own version, but Palmer died in 1944 before the two could collaborate. Still Saunders managed to get permission from Boileau and wrote the book on his own. This led to the publication in English of The Sleeping Bacchus in 1951. I know nothing of the original French version, but according to the brief history on the DJ blurb Saunders felt that the story was slightly outdated and had to update it. I am assuming that the updating had to do with World War Two since many of the characters are either veterans or deserters of that war and it does play a minor part in the proceedings. This is the only case I have encountered where one mystery writer's book inspired a rewritten and updated version of the story by another mystery writer from a different country. In movies we find this kind of thing happening frequently: Japanese, Thai and Korean horror movies remade in the US by the dozens for example. And most recently the US movie versions of the Stieg Larsson books already successful in their original Swedish. I'm curious if there are other instances of rewritten stories in the book world.

Saunders' book is - like Boileau's - the story of an art theft and an apparently impossible art theft at that. the book presents three "miracle problems" with varying degrees of complexity. The large painting of the title was removed from a locked room under guard. While the thief bungled his escape and was captured the painting could not be found anywhere. Later in the book another thief shows up to retrieve the painting and seems to have climbed over an unscalable wall in a matter of seconds while being fired at by his gun toting pursuers. Finally, a third impossibility occurs when a Black Maria vanishes from a road in full view of several witnesses. There is no sign of the prisoner inside and neither the driver nor the policeman guarding the prisoner can be found.

While the later two impossible problems are less than thrilling and easily solved, the theft of the painting and where it ended up is one of those stunning pieces of misdirection worthy of the master himself - John Dickson Carr. The book itself begins as a detective novel but transforms into a cinematic action thriller. It would be a perfect candidate for a movie these days with a large number of car and foot chases, lots of gunplay, several kidnappings, and a cast of witty and intelligent characters. A scene in which our hero John Marriott is tied to a fence while he watches the second thief take flight over the moors towards the "unclimbable" fence and his rescue by a negligee clad, pistol-packing mama is one of the best in the book. She uses Marriott's shoulder to steady her aim and she fires three shots at the fleeing culprit nearly deafening him in the process but nonetheless leaving an impression of her crack marksmanship.

At one time a rather scarce book copies of The Sleeping Bacchus are now easily obtainable. My quick online search turned up several for sale with the intriguing 1st edition dust jacket shown above. As an example of an impossible crime novel without a murder The Sleeping Bacchus is unique in the genre. And it certainly can hold its own against anything by Carr, Halter or any of the other practitioners of the impossible crime mystery.

TCOT Beautiful Body - Jonathan Craig

2012-01-07T07:00:00.003-06:00

Pete Selby and Stan Rayder are on the case again. And some good news: after appearing as nothing more than a cameo in the first three books with hardly any input Stan Rayder, the apparently junior partner in the team, gets a much bigger role. We learn more about him than the constant look of surprise on his face (it's those permanently furrowed brow lines). Stan comes into his own and I suspect judging by his short temper and conservative worldview he may become something akin to the "bad cop" in a good cop/bad cop duo.

The case involves the murder and apparent rape of a Bonnie Nichols, a commercial artist who has been leading a double life. The detective work here is not as interesting as in the previous books nor is the mystery as puzzling or intriguing. The book emphasizes the duplicitous nature of the victim and the sleazier sexual escapades that gave her a thrill before someone got tired of her Machiavellian ways and gave her the brutal beating that ended her wicked life.

Among the suspects we have these colorful characters:

Mr. Connor - Bonnie's landlord and proprietor of the candy store on the first floor of the building where she lives. He may or may not have a past history of being a child molester. He arouses the ire of his easily jealous wife when he pays a bit too much attention to the pretty women who frequent the candy store.

Ralph Hagan - Bonnie's driving instructor who insists that Bonnie turned on her sex kitten charm nearly every time the two were alone in her car. Is he making it all up or was Bonnie really a predatory woman?

Lori Mason - Bonnie's ex-roommate, also an artist. A catty gossip of a young woman who has nothing good to say about Bonnie. She has plenty of dirt on Bonnie's nightlife with...

Mel Tyner - a pimp who collected money and gifts from Bonnie after her numerous "dates."

Jason Lambert - owner of the perfume company that hired Bonnie to design some labels and bottles for his company. Didn't like Bonnie because of her too close friendship with his wife....

Elaine Lambert - a tart tongued wanna-be socialite trapped in a loveless marriage with her brute of a husband. Her friendship with Bonnie was one of the decent parts of her miserable life.

Pete and Stan do a lot of leg work and interviewing of the suspects. The sexual frankness dealing with child molestation, prostitution, and even talk of one character's vasectomy are the prominent features in this case. Sex lives - or lack of one - play a big role in the crime and the murderer's motive. While the denouement is not as surprising as the previous two books I've read getting to know Stan better and seeing how he and Pete are growing as police partners was worth the reading.

FREAK OF THE WEEK: Each time I read one of these books I discover that Craig loves to throw in some wacko with an odd sexual fetish - usually one I've never heard of. This time it's Mel Tyner. We learn that in addition to being Bonnie's pimp and loves to undress his choice women, have them stand in a bathtub in their underwear and douse them with perfume from some kind of a hardware implement that amounts to a fancy squirt gun. He's a perfume fetishist. We've already had a shameless Peeping Tom caught with his pants around his ankles in public and a "snipe grabber" - a guy who gets off on smoking the cigarette butts of lipstick wearing women. Add "scentophile" to the batch.

Next month, I'll be going back to the beginning of the series with book two - Morgue of Venus - which I finally purchased at a bargain price back in November of last year. Then I'll jump ahead to book five and continue in order until the end of the series.

Other Selby/Rayder books reviewed on this blog are:

The Dead Darling (1955)
The Case of the Cold Coquette (1957)

* * *

This is my first book in Part One of Bev's 2012 Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge: Perilous Policemen: 8 books with a policeman as the primary investigator. During January and February I will be focussing on books about cops and police inspectors for this particular section of this reading challenge.

FFB: Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister - Gregory Maguire

2012-01-06T01:00:00.002-06:00

Long before Gregory Maguire's first book Wicked became a huge hit on Broadway (3388 performances and still going strong) he was still a fairly unknown writer concocting some imaginative reworkings of familiar fairy tales and children's books. Now with a blockbuster Broadway musical fashioned from his book Maguire has gained the kind of attention his books should have given more than a decade ago. His second book - Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister (1999) - still remains my favorite of all his work and ought to be as well known as Wicked. But I fear it has been overshadowed and is long forgotten due to the musical and the sequels Maguire has written as part of his re-imagined Oz.

Just when you think there have been too many re-imagined versions of well-known fairy tales along comes one that brilliantly reinvents perhaps the archetype of all fairy tales. Maguire, who with Wicked wrote a subversively political tale about Baum's Wicked Witch of the West, surpasses his debut novel with this compassionate tale of beauty and familial duty. Once again his richly detailed prose captures that feeling of a once upon a time that true fairy tales require and does so without ever appearing artificial.

This story of Iris and Ruth, their complex mother Margarethe, and their stepsister Clara of the "afflicted eternal beauty" is filled with wonderfully shaded characterizations that never fall into that good/evil dichotomy that Grimm and Perrault use in telling the original versions of Cinderella. Can kindness reside within ugliness? Is beauty and attractiveness really something to be envious of? Is a mother's apparent tyrannical household an environment that will produce wickedness? Is a nearly mute sibling nothing more than a drudge to babysit? Find the answers to these not so simple questions within Maguire's excellent story and be prepared to be reassess your own prejudices about the ugly and the beautiful.

This review (in a slightly different form) was written for amazon.com back in 1999 when the book was originally published. That's right, it's a new year and already I've become a lazy slob stealing my reviews from the interweb and posting them on my blog. Shameful.

FIRST BOOKS: The Secret of Bogey House - Herbert Adams

2011-12-31T11:31:00.000-06:00

Herbert Adams' first mystery novel is typical of the kind of crime fiction that was in ample supply in the early 1920s – a blend of the detective novel and the action thriller. This is the first appearance of Adam's lawyer detective Jimmie Haswell, but here he has a relatively minor role. Instead it is Tony Bridgman, a professional golfer and Haswell's buddy, who is our intrepid sleuthing hero. Interestingly enough The Secret of Bogey House (1924) begins with the search for a lost golf ball.

Golf will play a prominent role in Adam's later detective novels (sample these titles: The Body in the Bunker, The Golf House Mystery, Death off the Fairway, The Nineteenth Hole Mystery). It is usually the one thing that Adams is remembered for in his contributions to the genre. Both Jimmie Haswell and Adams' later detective Roger Bennion are both avid golfers. The game is almost always present in some way in the majority of his mystery novels and in some cases takes center stage. Here golf serves only as atmosphere in a tale of a murdered man found dead in a sportsman's private hotel.

While hunting for a treasured golf ball in the backyard of Mr. Teesdale Tony Bridgman is invited inside and quickly charms the old man and his young ward, Molly. Upon learning that Tony is the famous golfer Teesdale entrusts him with the task of discovering what happened to his nephew, David Gregson. The nephew recently asked for a loan of £2000 from his uncle but did not mention why he needed it so urgently. He then left with the money and has been not heard from since. Last word Teesdale had was that David had been staying at a private hotel for sportsmen run by James Mitchell. Entry to the hotel is by Mitchell's personal invitation and Teesdale hopes that Tony will be able to charm his way using his celebrity as a golfer as added incentive. Once inside he is sure Tony can learn what happened to David Gregson.

Tony finagles an invitation and sets up his investigation using Jimmie Haswell as an outside resource. Gregson does eventually return to the hotel but that very night is found stabbed (in the eye!) in a secluded area on the hotel grounds leading to a boathouse. No sign of a weapon but Tony is the only one at the scene of the crime making him suspect number one.

The story has some standard examination of physical evidence for a few chapters, but the mysterious activities of a Polish count, his reticent daughter who seems to be hiding a secret, and the sinister Mitchell overtake the story displacing any hopes for a legitimate novel of detection. Tony spends a lot of his time making midnight trips to the boathouse, eavesdropping behind curtains, risking his life swimming around the boathouse, and eventually finds a secret passageway (not so secret thanks to the first edition dust wrapper illustration) leading to an underground cave filled with smuggled antiques. A side trip to Belgium, a shifty antique dealer and his thuggish sons also feature in the fast paced story. All the while Tony is wooing Molly and trying his best to impress upon her that he is not just a dumb jock with a great tee shot.

For someone like me who usually dislikes the "starry-eyed-young-lovers-mixed-up-with-sinister-criminals" plot I was taken aback by how much I enjoyed this. Adams writes a ripping yarn and has a deft touch in creating a likeable hero and heroine, not the usual sappy love birds. His obvious romantic streak is prevalent in all his books. I think in addition to golf Adams is deserving of mention for being perhaps the preeminent detective novel writer who knew why and how to incorporate love and romance into a story about murder.

Making a nice segue into this plug: Stay tuned for the "Neglected Detective" series, a soon-to-be regular feature on this blog that will discuss at length forgotten amateur sleuths from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. First up: Jimmie Haswell who when he takes the lead role will turn out to be quite a sharp-witted young man.

FFB: The Poisoner's Mistake - Belton Cobb

2011-12-30T06:00:00.013-06:00

I'm not sure there are many vintage detective novels set on New Years' Eve but I serendipitously found one in The Poisoner's Mistake. I thought it would be perfect for this week's Forgotten Book as 2011 draws to a close. Belton Cobb will not be a familiar name among many of you. I only purchased the book due to its inclusion on a "Best of" list posted by Curt Evans at Mystery*File back in October 2010. With this one book, a startling shake-up of the old English manor murder mystery, Belton Cobb won me over. So impressive is this second novel of his I broke my rule of splurging on new books by obscure writers and purchased three more Cobb mysteries from UK online dealers and am eagerly awaiting my post-Christmas gifts to arrive in the mail.

The Poisoner's Mistake (1936) is Cobb's second detective novel with his wily police detective Inspector Cheviot Burmann in the lead role. He is called to the home of Rupert Bole on New Year's Day following the sudden death of one of Bole's party guests who was hospitalized for stomach pains. Turns out he was poisoned but just how that poison was administered is only the first of several puzzling incidents in this twisting and deviously told story.

The New Year's Eve dinner is followed by an elaborate game of anagrams and was to end with a traditional midnight toast with "Auld Lang Syne" playing on the gramophone while all guests joined hands around a table singing along. But a sudden fire in the garage adjoining the mansion interrupts the festivities. All the men run out to extinguish the blaze while the women stay indoors and call for the firemen. No one drank any of the cocktails intended for the midnight toast and Mary asks for them all to be cleared away when the fire puts a damper on the party atmosphere.

Young Bobby Letchworth complains of stomach pains and a doctor is called to care for him. It appears Bobby is suffering from food poisoning. The doctor orders Bobby to be taken to the hospital to have his stomach pumped. But all efforts are futile. In the morning Letchworth is discovered dead in his hospital bed. The diagnosis is now changed to arsenic poisoning.

The intricately told murder investigation is fascinating but perhaps a tad overly methodical. The events of the party are dissected and examined minutely. Every detail is paid close attention -- from where the cocktail glasses were placed before the fire occurred to who picked them up and where the glasses were later found. The roles of the servants and their activity, usually a routine entry in similar stories of this period, are just as crucial as the main suspects' behavior during the party. For instance, we learn that one cocktail glass was broken from the set of ten that was intended for use at the midnight toast. One of the maids secretly substituted another glass from a cheaper set and did her best to make sure her finicky and temperamental boss Mr. Bole did not receive the odd glass. But of course things do not work out as she planned. That odd glass also was placed in a ring of books arranged to hide the anagram answers and supposedly was not touched for the entire evening. But somehow it ended up across the room hidden in a recess by the fireplace. Who moved it? Was that the glass that contained the poison? If so, it must have been Rupert Bole who was the intended victim posits Inspector Burmann. And so an elaborate plan is laid out that will both protect Rupert from a poisoner who is most likely hiding among the members of his household and flush out Bobby's murderer.

The book is not only dazzling in its presentation of the minutiae of the night of the poisoning but lays out several clues cleverly hidden in seemingly mundane snippets of dialog. The motive for the crime is mentioned in an odd exchange between two characters, for example, that is so jarring I knew it had to have something to do with the crime. In the final chapter in which Burmann explains all there are footnotes with page numbers directing the reader back to these cleverly planted hints recalling Mrs. Bradley's Notebook Pages in the addenda of Gladys Mitchell's early novels as well as C. Daly King's "Clue Finder" at the end of his Obelist books.

I find it very difficult to come up with "Best of the Year" lists. Were I to make up my own list of exciting discoveries and the best books among my vintage crime reading this year I think that I would place The Poisoners' Mistake at the top of the list. The structure of the story is an enviable display of misdirection that almost outdoes the overall narrative of Rebecca. There is a sardonic humor on display and the plot is constantly shifting with neat twists and surprises. When the titular fatal error of the culprit was pointed out and the villain was unmasked I was more than satisfied and should have seen it all along.

This is an impressive work by a little known writer who somehow fell though the cracks. Of his more than forty detective novels and thrillers published in England only two were published in the US during his lifetime and few received paperback reprints in his own country. But copies of his books are out there in the used book market and (for now) remain very affordable. Though Cobb had a long career in crime fiction lasting well into the early 1970s it is his early work from the 1930s through the mid 1940s that is worth your attention and The Poisoner's Mistake certainly serves as solid proof.

And the Winners Are...

2011-12-27T06:00:00.033-06:00

I will publicly admit that this first Pretty Sinister Books Trivia Challenge was indeed far too difficult. Next time (let me know if you would like another) I am thinking of pulling questions based only on posts at the various blogs devoted to the reading of vintage crime fiction. That seems much more fair than what I did here. Let this also be my open apology for being too esoteric as well as "fiendish." And should there be a next time and another quiz I will make sure I pick a better time to do this in than December just before Christmas!

I also made blatant errors in the WATSONS section. Having only read two C. Daly King books and read them many years ago I mistakenly thought Captain Michael Lord was not the true detective of the books. I thought it was Dr. Pons. Wrong. This was politely pointed out to me by two participants. I also included Donald Lam as a sidekick when he really is the primary detective in those books by A.A. Fair (aka Erle Stanley Gardner). So those two questions were thrown out and everyone who entered automatically got two points no matter how you answered.

The points added up to 99 oddly enough. I gave everyone another free point just for entering making 100 the perfect score and the lowest score a 3 (all free points). Here are our winners and their scores:

1st place - Darrell Johnson, a whopping 93.5 points
Prize: A selection of three hardcover vintage mystery novels (Some of them have dust covers!)

2nd place - Mary Ellen Kazimer, 89 points
Prize: A selection of three paperback vintage mystery novels

3rd place - Les Blatt, 83 points
Prize: One review copy selected from the many books I received from publishers over the past year.

Congratulations to all you sleuthing detective novel lovers! If you are a winner and want some of the free books I promised as prizes, please send me your mailing address. I will email you the list of books from which you can select your coveted prizes and when I get your selections will dutifully pack them up and ship them to you. You'll get to sample the high quality packing and customer service of my bookselling entity and get some of my very cool business cards, too, which I hope you will pass out to all your friends who love buying old mystery books.

And finally -- the moment you have been waiting for. The answers (with detailed commentary)!

1. PSEUDONYMS - Give the male mystery writing alter ego for each of the women writers listed. When more than one is noted you need only supply one pseudonym.

Lucy Malleson ANTHONY GILBERT
Brenda Cecilia Hopwood PATRICK LEYTON
Zenith Jones Brown DAVID FROME (LESLIE FORD was also accepted)
Dolores Hitchins NOEL BURKE (D.B. OLSEN and DOLAN BIRKLEY were also accepted)
Dorothy Tillet JOHN STEPHEN STRANGE
Kathleen Lindsay HUGH DESMOND (NIGEL MACKENZIE was also accepted)
Isabel Ostrander DAVID FOX, ROBERT ORR CHIPPERFIELD (DOUGLAS GRANT is another but since it is the name she used only for westerns I forgot about it. You got a point for using Grant's name. Christopher Booth IS NOT one of her pseudonyms. He is a completely different person. He happens to be a pulp writer who also wrote for the Street & Smith magazines and finished one of her novels when she died tragically at a very young age. This is a perfect example of why you should never use Wikipedia to do research. ;^D )
~~Francis~~ Frances Ross Stevens CHRISTOPHER HALE (Mary Ellen K. pointed out that I misspelled the woman's first name. Yet another boo-boo. Ugh! Sorry if this caused problems with internet searches.)
Phoebe Atwood Taylor FREEMAN DANA
Amelia Reynolds Long ADRIAN REYNOLDS (PATRICK LAING or PETER REYNOLDS were also accepted)

And now give the female writing alter ego for each of the male crime writers listed below.

Michael Avallone EDWINA NOONE (Priscilla Dalton, Jeanne Anne DePre and all the others were also accepted)
Nigel Morland MARY DANE
W.E.D. Ross MARILYN ROSS (Clarissa Ross, Lydia Colby, Rose Dana and anyone else that I could verify were also accepted)
Peter O'Donnell MADELINE BRENT
John Creasey MARGARET COOKE (M.E. Cooke and Elise Fecamps were also accepted)
Lawrence Block JILL EMERSON
Dean Koontz DEANNA DWYER (If you find a book by Deanna Dwyer and it's under $15 I suggest you buy it then and there.These are highly collectible and scarce. Koontz devotees will buy big bucks for them in very good condition)

Most of these female pseudonyms are attached to the writer's Gothic suspense novels -- a genre populated with more male writers than you would ever dream of. Creasey wrote plain old romances as Margaret Cooke and Elise Fecamps. Jill Emerson is Block's alter ego for erotica though he just wrote his first crime novel using this name. As I expected many people gave ALL the pseudonyms if there were more than one. But like I said - no extra points for being a show-off. ;^)

2. SETTINGS - Name the book and author for the following settings that are featured in some well known detective novels.

Manderley REBECCA by Daphne Du Maurier
Florian's - a night club FAREWELL MY LOVELY by Raymond Chandler
The estate of Thomas Pratt, fast food mogul SOME BURIED CAESAR by Rex Stout
The Shivering Sands THE MOONSTONE by Wilkie Collins (The Shivering Sands is the name of the quicksand swamp in which the lovesick Roseanna Spearman hides an important piece of evidence. She later commits suicide there. I got all kinds of answers for different books here and didn't bother to find out if they were correct. I thought THE MOONSTONE was the obvious answer. Points awarded only for that answer. Strangely only three people got this correct. Re-read your Collins, people! :^D )
S.S. Karnak DEATH ON THE NILE by Agatha Christie
The Potts "palace" on Riverside Drive THERE WAS AN OLD WOMAN by Ellery Queen (I learned that there is a paperback reprint that retitled this book THE QUICK AND THE DEAD and so points were awarded for that answer as well)
Amalgamated Air Transport 9 am flight to Reno OBELISTS FLY HIGH by C. Daly King
Fenchurch St. Paul THE NINE TAILORS by Dorothy L. Sayers
The Madden desert ranch THE CHINESE PARROT by Earl Derr Biggers
Farnleigh Close THE CROOKED HINGE by John Dickson Carr
Temple of the Holy Grail THE DAIN CURSE by Dashiell Hammett
The Siren, a yacht DEATH UNDER SAIL by C. P. Snow
The Coe House at West 71st street THE KENNEL MURDER CASE by S. S. Van Dine
Kaitai, island in the Pacific FUNERAL IN EDEN by Paul McGuire (The original UK title of BURIAL SERVICE was also accepted, of course. Apparently the US paperback is more well known.)
San Juan el Pirata TOUR DE FORCE by Christianna Brand (Another book by Brand, THE THREE CORNERED HALO, is also set on this island. News to me! Points were awarded for that answer, too.)

3. WATSONS (of sorts) - Below are some law enforcement partners, companions and sidekicks to fictional detectives. Give the name of the proper sleuth for each partner. (UPDATE: It has been pointed out that in two cases below I used detective duos and the Watson label is not really accurate. Sorry for that.)

Magersfontein Lugg ALBERT CAMPION
John F.-X. Markham PHILO VANCE
Wendover SIR CLINTON DRIFFIELD (created by J. J. Connington who has been discussed on some of the blogs. Two people got this correct.)
Raymond West JANE MARPLE
Miles Archer SAM SPADE
Nigel Bathgate RODERICK ALLEYN
Oscar Piper HILDEGARDE WITHERS
Bella Brickley MADAME ROSIKA STOREY (created by Hulbert Footner. To Les: I own several of these books, but I have read only one.)
Quacey DRURY LANE (created by Barnaby Ross, aka Ellery Queen. He is the detective's valet)
Dr. Petrie NAYLAND SMITH (created by Sax Rohmer. They appear in the Fu Manchu books)
~~Capt. Michael Lord~~ (question thrown out, see above)
Mr. Sattherthwaite HARLEY QUIN (another case where the character I gave could be seen as the true detective and not a sidekick. But I kept it since it was answered correctly by all participants and there was little hairsplitting.)
Laura Menzies BEATRICE BRADLEY
Djuna ELLERY QUEEN
~~Donald Lam~~ (question thrown out, see above)

4. DETECTIVES - Give the true profession for each of the amateur sleuths named below. Please be as specific as possible.

Sarah Keate NURSE
Kent Murdock NEWSPAPER PHOTOGRAPHER for the Boston Courier-Herald
Haila Troy ACTRESS
Gervase Fen ENGLISH LITERATURE PROFESSOR, OXFORD UNIVERSITY
Susan Dare MYSTERY WRITER (you needed to specify MYSTERY writer for full credit)
Rogan Kincaid PROFESSIONAL GAMBLER and CARD SHARP
Beatrice Bradley PSYCHOANALYST and CONSULTANT TO THE HOME OFFICE
Roger Sheringham NOVELIST
Jake Justus PRESS AGENT
Robin Bishop NEWSPAPER REPORTER
Henry Gamadge RARE MANUSCRIPT AND BOOK APPRAISER/EXPERT
Reggie Fortune SURGEON AND PATHOLOGIST (physician or doctor was also accepted)
Peter Cutler Sargeant II PUBLIC RELATIONS MAN
Asey Mayo HANDYMAN & CHAUFFEUR, specifically for the local tycoon who owns Porter Motors (he is a former sailor, but not earning a living as one when he is a detective in the books.)
Maria Black HEADMISTRESS OF ROSEWELL COLLEGE FOR YOUNG LADIES, (mathematics teacher was also accepted)

5. COMMONALITIES - what do the following character groups have in common. For the asterisked groups it is also required to name the books for each character that tie them together. Those questions earn four points, one point for the linking trait and one point for each correct book.

Bill Crane, Peter Duluth, Jerome Middleton
In the first book appearance of these characters an asylum plays an important role as setting for the various mysteries. In order: Murder in the Madhouse by Jonathan Latimer, Puzzle for Fools by Patrick Quentin, The Spectacles of Mr. Cagliostro by Harry Stephen Keeler. The final book is obscure. It was possible to guess the answer based on knowing the other two better known books. Alcoholics was a common answer here but doesn't apply to all three. I also accepted the euphemisms sanatorium or mental hospitals.

Lt. Terence Marshall, Detective Sgt Sammy Golden, Chief Hugh Lanigan
All three policemen have partners who are religious figures and serve as amateur sleuths in the books. In order: Sister Ursula created by Anthony Boucher, Father Shanley created by Jack Webb, Rabbi David Small created by Harry Kemelman.

Trajan Beare, Lord Simon Plimsoll, Marvin Rhyerlee*
Parodies of well known detectives. In order: Nero Wolfe parodied in Murder by Pastiche by Marion Mainwaring, Lord Peter Wimsey parodied in A Case for Three Detectives by Leo Bruce, Sir Henry Merrivale parodied in The Anagram Detectives by Norma Schier -- a collection of short stories all written in the manner of well known mystery authors with both the author's name and detective turned into anagrams. I also gave one half a point for mentioning the story in the final book and the anagramatized author. But it was supposed to be the book itself.

Agatha Troy, Harriet Vane, Helene Brand*
I wanted the answer to be the character is married to the detective later in the series. Very simple. Agatha Troy is married to Roderick Alleyn in Overture to Death, Harriet Vane is married to Lord Peter Wimsey in Busman's Honeymoon, and in the final sentences of The Corpse Steps Out it is implied that Helene Brand and Jake Justus will be married very soon. I got all sorts of variations ranging from meeting, being engaged, proposes marriage, etc. I also got the books in which the character first appeared rather than the book in which the character is known to have married the detective. Due to this confusion I gave points for all the correct books and variations. Most everyone got the first two, but few people knew that Helene Brand became Jake Justus' wife. Not too many Craig Rice readers I guess.

Margaret Parsons, Laura Fremont, Mrs. Danvers
Here, I think maybe I was stretching the answer with the third character. Three people got this which not only surprised me but I think only goes to prove that I have the right reading on that last character. The characters have lesbian tendencies or are revealed to be lesbians in the end. I will not name the books because it will ruin them if you haven't yet read them. Two are very well known novels among crime fiction fans and the other is a private eye book by a writer with a cultish following.

Effie Perrine, Velda, Miss Lemon
Secretaries to private detectives. In order: Sam Spade, Mike Hammer, Hercule Poirot

Fleming Stone, Dr. Hailey, Sgt. Johnny Lamb
No one answered correctly here. All three detectives' books are primarily of the locked room or impossible crime variety. I planned on posting a piece on Johnny Lamb but things prevented me from finishing it this year.Sorry. Fleming Stone and Dr. Hailey are mentioned on my blog if nowhere else. It was possible to get this right by guessing based on the info for the first two alone. The popular answer was: "They are all scientific detectives." But while Johnny Lamb is definitely considered a scientific detective (he is a policeman with a chemistry background and all the books have a murder method involving science - particularly chemistry and physics), and you could stretch the term to include Dr. Hailey, Fleming Stone is by no stretch of the imagination a scientific detective. The authors who created these detectives in order are: Carolyn Wells, Anthony Wynne, and Nigel Morland writing as "John Donavan."

Simon Templar, Michael Lanyard, Flambeau
Thieves turned detectives. Michael Lanyard is better known as "The Lone Wolf" in the books by Louis Joseph Vance. Flambeau is partner to Father Brown in a few stories by G. K. Chesterton. Simon Templar is of course The Saint created by Leslie Charteris. Nearly everyone got this. Bravo!

Amy Leatheran, Cecilia Williams, Colin Lamb*
Only two people came close to giving the exact answer I wanted here. I awarded points if you knew that they all appeared in books by the same author and all with the same detective. Half point for mentioning Christie but not Poirot. The correct and full answer is this: They are all 1st person narrators in Hercule Poirot novels in which Captain Hastings does not appear. Hastings is the usual first person narrator in a Poirot book. If he is absent the book is in the third person with the exception of only five books. There is one Poirot book with a very famous first person narrator but I simply couldn't include that name in the list. It would be a giveaway.
In order: Murder in Mesopotamia, Five Little Pigs (or Murder in Retrospect), The Clocks all by Agatha Christie, of course.

Madge Palliser, Stanton Carlisle, Cheri-Bibi*
They are all magicians. In order: He Wouldn't Kill Patience by Carter Dickson, Nightmare Alley by William Lindsey Gresham, The Dark Road (or any of the other Cheri Bibi books using the French, US or UK titles) by Gaston Leroux. Yes, he was a magician and it is mentioned specifically in the books.

And what do these paired books have in common:

The Hand in the Glove by Rex Stout & Murderer's Choice by Anna Mary Wells
Both feature female private detectives. Dol Bonner appears in a few Nero Wolfe novels as a minor character and in Bad for Business with Tecumseh Fox, but here she appears on her own as the lead character. Grace Pomeroy, the detective in Wells' book, first appears in A Talent for Murder as a nurse to a psychiatrist. She later changes careers and gets her first job as a private eye in the book cited. It was reviewed on my blog.

Enter Sir John by Clemence Dane & Helen Simpson & A Shilling for Candles by Josephine Tey
Both books were adapted into films directed by Alfred Hitchcock. In order: Murder and The Young and the Innocent

The Red Widow Murders by Carter Dickson & Mr. Splitfoot by Helen McCloy
Person must spend a night alone in a supposedly haunted room and survive. In each case the person is locked in the room and murdered by apparently impossible means. Apparently in each book the characters cut cards to choose who went in the room though I didn't remember that part in the Dickson book.

Merlin's Furlong by Gladys Mitchell & Death's Mannikins by Max Afford
Witchcraft using dolls. Voodoo is not correct. Half point for mentioning witchcraft alone or mentioning dolls. Full point for both parts.

The Black Camel by Earl Derr Biggers & Murder Between Dark and Dark by Max Long
Both set in Hawaii. I have reviewed one other book by Long, The Lava Flow Murders, at Mystery*File where his full bibliography is listed. The review mentions that all his books are set in Hawaii. I will be reviewing Long's books next year here on my blog.

Footsteps in the Dark by Georgette Heyer & The Patient in Room 18 by Mignon Eberhart

Author's first mystery novel The key phrase here is mystery novel and you needed to say that for full credit. Mary Ellen quite rightly points out that these are NOT these women's first books.

Sparkling Cyanide by Agatha Christie & The Reader Is Warned by Carter Dickson
No one got this at all, though one of the answers can be found on my blog. I got some very interesting answers none of which got points.
Here's what I wanted: Both novels share plot elements in short stories written earlier in the author's career. Christie recycled the plot and gimmick in "The Yellow Iris" (1935) for her novel published in 1945. Carr used the exact murder method from his short story "The Empty House" (1937) in his novel published in 1939. If you know your Christie you should know this about Sparkling Cyanide. It's cited all over the web (including Wikipedia) and is mentioned in the reviews for the TV show adaptations. I wrote about Carr/Dickson borrowing from himself on my post of The Department of Queer Complaints where "The Empty House" appears.

The Mystery at Friar's Pardon by Martin Porlock & The Claverton Affair by John Rhode
A rigged seance forces a confession from the killer. Full point only if you mentioned the confession part as well as the seance. Half point was awarded for mentioning only the seance.

Cat Of Many Tails by Ellery Queen & Death Walks in Eastrepps by Francis Beeding
Serial killer novels. The proper classic detective novel term of "multiple murderers" was also accepted.

The Whistling Hangman by Baynard Kendrick & Silver Sandals by Clinton Stagg

Blind detectives. Captain Duncan McLain in the first, Thornley Colton in the other. Stagg's detective may be obscure but he is perhaps best known as the blind detective being parodied in Christie's Partners in Crime. I threw him in since Christie's book was being reviewed all over the internet this past year.

The Case of the Constant Suicides by John Dickson Carr & Appleby's End by Michael Innes
Both books begin with an extended sequence set on board a train. This was my nominee for my most stupid question. But several people got it right! In trying to come up with some of these commonality questions I got lazy (the lesbian question was another example) and this was the very last question I created. I was planning to throw it out until I got correct answers.

Trial by Fury by Craig Rice & The Mouse in the Mountain by Norbert Davis
Great Danes are featured as a sidekick to the primary detective. Hercules (actually a mixed breed that is only part Great Dane) belongs to John J. Malone in Rice's book. Carstairs -- the best dog in all of detective fiction, IMO -- is Doane's Great Dane partner in a series of excellent and very funny books by Davis. All reprinted by Rue Morgue Press - read them!

A Family Affair by Rex Stout & Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie
Final appearance by a series detective - Nero Wolfe and Jane Marple respectively. Final book by author was also accepted (though technically it's not true since Sleeping Murder was written long before it was published).

Strong Poison by Dorothy Sayers & The Judas Window by Carter Dickson
Plot centers on a murder trial in which the accused is innocent. You needed to mention that the character on trial is innocent to get full credit. Mentioning only the trial was a half point. Apparently both trials were held in Old Bailey as well. No extra credit for being that much of a trial expert.

The Rim of the Pit by Hake Talbot & The Sittaford Mystery by Agatha Christie
Winter blizzards and skiing are featured in the plot. I also accepted a seance is featured in both books which is more obvious to those who have read both books, but I didn't realize that additional commonality until the answers started coming in. I read the Christie book back when I was a teen and the cover features a pair of skis which ruined the ending for me and I have always remembered that. I already had a seance question above, but I couldn't discount it since it was indeed a very common feature.

Thanks to everyone who participated. I hope I can do this with a better turnout and less "fiendish" questions again in 2012.

Have a Cool Yule!

2011-12-23T16:24:00.002-06:00

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Blessed Solstice

...and all the rest of it, gang!

Time to disappear for a while. I'll be back on Tuesday.

Here's an urban tribute to Christmas with Bob Hope, Marilyn Maxwell and Fred Mertz...uh, William Frawley in The Lemon Drop Kid. A great little movie based on a short story by the brilliant Damon Runyon.

(If the embedded video won't play just click here and watch it at YouTube)

NEW STUFF: An Uncertain Place - Fred Vargas

2011-12-21T22:00:00.003-06:00

There is no one quite like Fred Vargas in crime fiction today. You have to go back to the "webwork" novels of Harry Stephen Keeler and John Russell Fearn to find any writer who comes close to her unique way of constructing novels that blend the weird, the bizarre and the absurd into a mind-tripping, eye-opening, jaw-dropping phantasmagoria. Luckily with Vargas you also get dreamy readable prose and not convoluted syntax or wacky word-winging as in the case of Keeler or mysteries with transparent solutions as in the case of Fearn. In the Vargas universe everything is truly connected. There is a ubiquity of significance in her books. The absurdities and oddities of life cease to be merely strange and carry a hidden meaning that sometimes borders on the supernatural. She brings the mystery back to the mystery novel on so many levels.

Randomness has no place and there are no coincidences. In a Keeler book, for example, the works of George Barr McCutcheon, a mysterious violin playing thief, and the science of acoustics all come together in the plot of The Mystery of the Fiddling Cracksman. A man eating a bowl of chow mein nearly chokes on a tiny hand made of jade in The Green Jade Hand, but the scene is not there merely to make us laugh it will have some greater importance to the story. Similarly, with Vargas the birth of a kitten is not thrown into the story offhandedly for cuteness factor; it will have repercussions throughout the entire novel. Likewise other events and discussions that seem to be mentioned in passing -- a brief talk about a man who decided to eat his wooden wardrobe piece by piece, the macabre history of Highgate Cemetery including what was discovered when the body of Dante Rossetti's wife was exhumed nine years after her death -- all have later ramifications in this hypnotically addictive book.

The ripple effect begins when Adamsberg who is in England for an international police conference quite by accident stumbles across a bizarre crime. Eighteen pairs of shoes have been found in front of Highgate Cemetery. And the shoes still contain feet. They have all been cut from nine different corpses and none of them are English. The shoes show signs of Eastern European manufacture and many of them are decades old. It appears that the feet have been collected over a period of years. But who on earth has dismembered several dead bodies and placed their feet in front of a cemetery with a past of legendary proportions? What have those feet do to with the horribly mutilated corpse of a reclusive Frenchman whose body quite literally was chopped up to tiny bits? Why are so many variations of a single name continually turning up in the course of the investigation - Plogerstein, Plögener, Plogoff, Plogodrescu.These names become so prevalent that one of the characters coins the term "Plog" as an exclamation denoting significance or surprise.

Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg will face one of the most unusual criminals in his career. He will discover that nearly everything in his life will be related to the solution of the crime. The people he encounters and takes for granted will play major roles. And most importantly he will discover that a long forgotten night in his past will come back to haunt him with a startling revelation. The less said about the wild fantastical plot the better.

And now a word about the oft forgotten yet very important translator. Sian Reynolds' translation is an intricately built, ingenious example of how translation can become a true art. Finding the right word is less important than crafting sentences that retain the original flavor of the author's native language. Vargas' books are intrinsically French and in this case have an added international dimension when Adamsberg must travel to England and later Serbia where he does not speak either language. There are ample opportunities for linguistic wordplay in these new settings. There are amusing scenes with Adamsberg repeatedly mispronouncing the name of a British police officer and his habit of calling the infamous cemetery Higg-gate and in Serbia he goes out of his way to learn a handful of Serbian words to better impress a woman who runs the guest house where he is staying. Finally, there is a policeman on Adamsberg staff who speaks in alexandrines a French verse of 12 syllables which Reynolds has confessed to being one of the most difficult tasks she tried to duplicate in English. For that alone she deserves the awards she has garnered from the CWA.

This is the time of the year when everyone is making lists of the Best of the Year. I can never make one of those lists. But I can tell you that An Uncertain Place is definitely a book I would consider to be included as one of the best of the new books, if not the absolute best, I have read this year. A little masterpiece of a book that is also an enviable work of contemporary fiction. It may not be to everyone's taste judging from a variety of indifferent and confused reactions in other reviews I've come across on other blogs. For me, however, this is pretty damn awesome crime fiction.

VIDEO: Dean Martin and "The Christmas Blues"

2011-12-21T10:47:00.001-06:00

Here's an antidote for anyone like me who is tiring of "Frosty the Snowman," "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus," "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" and the rest of those novelty Christmas tunes being piped in everywhere you go.

I had never heard this song until yesterday and I thought I knew all the sad Christmas songs ever written. It's kind of swingy and upbeat for a song that's all about loneliness.

Music by David Holt, lyrics by the incomparable Sammy Cahn. Vocal by the coolest member of the Rat Pack (IMO). I think he had a few too many cocktails before coming onstage.

The Shadow on the Glass - Charles J Dutton

2011-12-19T21:24:00.001-06:00

This is the third book featuring John Bartley as detective and narrated by a Watson character named Pelt (no first name) who makes Captain Arthur Hastings look like a candidate for Mensa. The story is slight and seems to have been written with Carolyn Wells' The Technique of the Mystery Story within easy reach. Filled with reiterative "tabulation scenes" the book could easily have been of novella length had all those portions been omitted making the story streamlined and the action unimpeded.

On the eve of his daughter's wedding Frank Rich, a millionaire book collector is found battered to death in his locked library, accessible only by private elevator and that elevator is guarded by two private detectives hired to watch over the wedding gifts. In addition to the murder it is discovered that a valuable rare book of Italian sonnets worth $30,000 and a box containing $5000 in gold coins (one of the many wedding gifts) are both missing. Donald Maxon, a spiteful cousin, who disapproved of the wedding goes missing the next day and is thought to have drowned in the ocean. For some reason the bulk of the novel is spent looking for this supposedly drowned character rather than trying to find out who killed Rich. Numerous "tabulation scenes," (a Dutton staple) an unnecessary inquest scene, and other extraneous action set pieces were surely inserted for the pulp magazine audience but serve only as padding and do not propel the story forward.

To be honest nothing much really happens in this very slight story except the endless repetition of the events of the crimes and the continual pronouncements of how puzzling it all is. The detection is negligible. Every three chapters something missing will be found in an obvious place. The "drowned" man turns out to be very much alive though this too is hardly surprising. Even with its tantalizing locked room problem the mystery is sadly routine with familiar tropes and more than a handful of "hackneyed devices." The only interesting piece comes at the end when the locked room is finally explained. But it turns out to be a faked locked room -- a definite anticlimax.

The book is chock full of lectures that are bound to annoy a 21st century reader. You will learn all about the inferiority complex and why at least two characters are thought to be suffering from this condition and will have to trudge through long paragraphs of psychological behavior. There are, however, some interesting passages on collecting medieval books as well as the art of the erotic engraving and how scandalous it was thought to own such a "dirty book" in the 1920s.

I have read several of Dutton's books but mostly those with his second detective, Harley Manners, in the lead. Manners is younger and more of an action hero than John Bartley who belongs to the old scientific detection school. This is pretty thin stuff even for Dutton whose early work first appeared in serial format in the pages of pulp magazines like Detective Story Magazine and Star Novels Magazine. Elsewhere on the internet I have written up plot summaries of some much better books by Dutton and talked about why I think he is worth reading for his insights into the early form of criminal profiling used in hunting down a multiple murderer. But I have yet to read one of his books that does not suffer from the reiteration scenes so necessary to the serial format with all those variations on how to convey "our story thus far." Sad to say that this is perhaps Dutton's poorest effort.

Drawing on the Past: CYRUS CUNEO

2011-12-18T09:25:00.000-06:00

Work: The Thief of the Night: Further Adventures of A. J. Raffles by E.W. Hornung
(Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905)
First American Edition

Artist: Cyrus Cuneo (1878 - 1916)

Apart from Arthur I. Keller who I wrote about briefly several months ago I think I have more books illustrated by Cyrus Cuneo than any other artist of his period. His work can be found in all sorts of adventure, crime and lost race novels: Queen's Sheba's Ring and Nada the Lily both by H. Rider Haggard, The Weird Picture (reviewed on this blog here) and The Viking's Skull both by John Carling, The Mystery of the Yellow Room by Gaston Leroux, Dr. Silex by Harris Burland, The Red Room by William LeQueux, and nearly all the work of Charles Gilson, author of The Lost Island, The Lost Empire, The Race Round the World and other adventure and lost race novels.

American born Cuneo spent most of his life in San Francisco, moved to Canada where he did some paintings for Canadian Pacific Railway, and then moved onto England in the early 1900s where he remained painting, doing much of his work for magazines, newspapers and books. He died very young, only 37, from blood poisoning incurred after he was accidentally stabbed by a hat pin at a dance. For a brief overview of Cuneo's life and work go here. The essay is written by his son Terrence Cuneo, a British artist well known for railway studies and strange paintings of mice.

Below are seven of the ten illustration plates found in this excellent collection of short stories about literature's most famous gentleman thief, A.J. Raffles. Click to enlarge for better appreciation.

Seven Days 'til Doomsday

2011-12-16T19:24:00.000-06:00

Not really. This is just a gentle reminder to all prospective Vintage Mystery Trivia Challengers. You have one week until the deadline. Contest closes Friday, December 23. Fear not the fiendish questions. Many entrants have made shrewd guesses based on their reading knowledge. I'm impressed with all of the entries so far. Now where's yours? Get cracking, Sherlock!

Click here for the trivia challenge, rules and other necessary info.

FFB: The Third Lady - Shizuko Natsuki

2011-12-16T00:45:00.001-06:00

The paperback cover of this excellent crime novel from the "Agatha Christie of Japan" proclaims that it "recalls Stranger on a Train." That quote comes from none other than Edward Gorman, who goes by a less formal moniker these days. And while there is a slight similarity to Highsmith's novel in this very different murder by proxy tale I would say that if you were going to look for a better analogy in the Hitchcock vein it would be in the obsessive romance of the private eye in Vertigo. For in the end The Third Lady is not so much a thrilling suspense novel about murder as revenge, but rather a subtle and haunting study of the illusions of love and the folly of pursuing the fantasy of an ideal lover.

Kohei Daigo is waiting in a salon of a Parisian hotel when he is drawn to a woman. He does not see her face but hears only her hypnotically entrancing voice. He is also intoxicated by her unique perfume. They have an enigmatic conversational exchange and suddenly the lights go out throughout the entire hotel. The two are told by a passing hotel employee to remain in the room until the lights can be turned back on. And so Daigo talks with the strange woman who reveals that she is longing to revenge herself on an evil woman she knows to have murdered a dear friend.

Daigo finds himself ever more attracted to the woman – the darkness of the room, her voice and her sincerity all allow him to become far too intimate all too quickly. He also confesses to know an evil man– a professor in a chemical research lab who inadvertently used a poisonous ingredient in the manufacture of a popular brand of cookie then covered up the mistake with forged documents released to authorities. The ingredient caused cancer in several hundred children and their families. Many of the children died. Daigo admits that he would like to murder the man. The woman tells him her name and a few details about her work as a translator and after a brief moment of shared intimacy makes a quick exit. He has never seen her face throughout their brief meeting, but he is certain he has fallen deeply in love with her. What he does not realize is that he has also created a fatal bond between them that will lead to murder.

A few days later the professor is found dead in his home. He has been poisoned and a mysterious woman was seen in the vicinity of the dead man's' house. Several clues and coincidences eventually lead Daigo to believe that Fumiko, the woman he met in the hotel, is most likely responsible for the man's death. He starts to receive strange phone messages from a woman, a post card from a hotel is sent to his house and it dawns on him that all these things are related to the "evil woman" alluded to in Fumiko's conversation with him weeks ago at the hotel. Is he to track down the woman and kill her as well? He is devoted to Fumiko and vows to prove his love for her by doing just that. His life becomes increasingly complex as he adopts a variety of assumed identities, tells exaggerated lies to gather information about his intended victim, and stalks her like a predatory animal. Simultaneously he tries to locate Fumiko using clever detective work and an arsenal of alter egos.

The novel is mostly told from the point of view of Kohei Daigo. An alternating narrative is added by the halfway mark when the reader is allowed to follow a police investigation by two teams of detectives from two different cities. They begin to make amazing connections between the poisoning of the professor and a crime in the past. Slowly the police begin to suspect a conspiracy involving murder by proxy and are soon hot on the trail of Kohei Daigo.

It is not often that a crime novel packs so powerful a punch as this one does. The finale includes a gasp inducing twist that is poignant, sorrowful, and tragically inevitable. In the end this story of a frenzied obsessive love based on the slightest of contact but mostly the tortured imaginings of Daigo becomes a tale of remorse and shame that is deeply tied to the cultural mores of Japan. It is hard to imagine that this could have been written by a Westerner and turn out as believable and as moving as it is told here. If you have never read a Japanese crime novel here is the quintessential work. Cleverly plotted, imaginatively realized, beguiling and intriguing on so many levels The Third Lady transcends the genre to reveal the complexities of not only Japanese culture and Japanese philosophy but the intoxicating and mysterious power of love.

The Carolyn Wells Technique, or: How I Learned to Stop Thinking and Love the Mess

2011-12-10T17:32:00.002-06:00

It is always unpleasant to contemplate the hanging or the electrocuting of the fiction criminal. For this reason he not infrequently takes poison (which he has ready in his pocket), as soon as he is discovered, and dies peacefully, close upon the last words of his confession. This is one of the conventions adopted to spare the reader's feelings. For a criminal that can hold the reader's interest throughout the story is often too attractive a character to be permitted a horrible taking off.

from The Technique of the Mystery Novel by Carolyn Wells

One of the most prolific American writers of the early 20th century Carolyn Wells did it all – childrens' series, poetry, light verse, humorous fiction, a parody of Sinclair Lewis' best selling Main Street called Ptomaine Street, non-fiction essays, and of course her numerous detective novels. With only four published detective novels to her name she felt to be such an authority on the genre that she was the first to write a manual on writing detective fiction called The Technique of the Mystery Story (1913). That it was published by a firm calling itself The Home Correspondence School may tell you something about the intended target audience. It must have been popular, though in reading select chapters I really can't see why, for it remained in print through 1928.

For anyone acquainted with Wells' own oddball brand of detective novel reading her handbook for writers can be as unintentionally funny as reading her mystery novels. She repeatedly advises writers to avoid cliched mystery novel conventions that she herself used ad nauseam. An example is this paragraph taken from the chapter called "Devious Devices"

Another hackneyed device is the secret panel in the wall, which slides open by pressing a hidden spring. This was overdone in sensational fiction, before Detective Stories began, but was seized upon as a valuable device for Mystery tales. But it is easily suspected, and is unsatisfactory in modern settings.

Wells was IN LOVE with secret passages, hidden entryways, and secret panels. It is laughable that she would call them "unsatisfactory in modern settings" when her books are littered with them. One particularly egregious example occurs in Spooky Hollow - the worst of the books I read - in which the solution of a missing jewel relies on not one, not two, but three secret panels hidden in a wall safe -- itself a hidden panel operated by a hidden spring! Perhaps she thought this some kind of neat twist but to me it was self-parody.

Wells also calls to tasks her fellow mystery writers of the period for relying too heavily on tiresome plot devices like birds that steal jewels, clothing threads as clues, initialed guns, calling cards and handkerchiefs left at the scene of a crime, and crimes committed during snowy, foggy or rainy weather. In giving examples of some of the better conventions to emulate Wells also reveals the identity of the murderers in five classic mysteries. Nice! Luckily I had read most of them. Finally, she also has the nerve to describe other writers' work as "bordering on self-parody." In response to that I think of a wisecrack one of my theater friends often used for people suffering from lack of self-awareness: "Alice, there's the looking glass!"

I recently went through a sampling of the Wells books I own. I selected three for their locked room and impossible crime elements, a subgenre Wells was drawn to, hoping that at least one of them would show her to be the kind of imaginative teacher she presents herself as in her handbook, one who at least avoids cliches and "hackneyed devices." I was miserably disappointed. Even as "alternative classic" reading it was a torturous couple of days. Only one of the three proved to have any lasting entertainment value. Below are my discussions of the books starting with the worst of the lot and ending with the one that I found most worthwhile.

Spooky Hollow (1923) Fleming Stone, the Wells detective who appears most often in her abundant output, is the sleuth here. Like many of Wells books he shows up only in the final third of the story. I can't say what he is like in her other work but here he is dull, dull, dull. In this book he has a teenage boy sidekick named Terence "Fibsy" McGuire who actually does most of the detecting even if ALL of it is done offstage. Stone does little but ask a few pointed questions and dismisses nearly everything that the reader would think is important. The most mysterious parts of this book are actually proven to be superfluous in the end. What a cheat! There is the usual Wellsian haunted mansion with a legend attached to it. A murder was committed in the past and the sound of a harp emanates from a mausoleum situated near a bog on the rear of the estate. If anyone hears the harp playing it is supposed to be an omen of violent death to come. The harps plays, of course, and Anne Vincent, sister of Homer Vincent a reclusive eccentric inventor, is found stabbed in her locked bedroom. A visiting stranger also mysteriously disappears that very night and the bulk of the book is spent trying to discover where he went and who he is. But we already know who he is because Wells told us in the very first chapter. Ugh. Stone's supposed detection is nothing more than manipulative grilling of the suspects and melodramatic pronouncements punctuated with an ample supply of exclamation marks. The locked room solution relies on a "hackneyed device" I'm sorry to say, and is the lazy's writer's way out. Anytime I encounter it I groan in disgust. It comes up way too often in the Golden Age and rarely does anyone put enough of a spin on this method to really make it seem clever. The explanation of the ghost-like harp of course is not supernatural but it made no sense to me whatsoever though it finally gave a reason for Homer Vincent calling himself an inventor. The fact that it took years to be discovered is absurd when you pause to think about it.

Deep Lake Mystery (1928) The premise of this book seemed very promising. Sampson Tracy, a typical millionaire Wellsian victim, is found in his locked bedroom dressed up like something out of an ancient burial ritual. There is a garland of flowers draped around his neck, a women's scarf on his head, an inverted feather duster propped up behind his head giving him the appearance of an Indian chief. Also, an orange and some crackers are set beside him and a crucifix is placed in his hand. But does any of this come into play in the solution of the crime? No. Once again the most interesting bizarre elements are extraneous. Speaking of bizarre: the murder method is one that is lifted from a real story called "The Nail," by Pedro de Alarçon. At one point a character (who apparently has the same arcane knowledge of crime fiction as Wells does) purports that someone must have read the story and if they can find a copy of it which happens to be in volume eight of Mystery Tales of All Nations then they may get closer to finding the killer. Believe it or not, it will turn out that the book is in the library of someone's home and the killer did in fact read the story!

The majority of the story is annoying and repetitive - a recurring trait of Wells. The Watson character Gray Norris has fallen head over heals in love with the prime suspect Alma Remsen, Tracy's niece. Even though all the evidence points to Alma, even though three separate eyewitnesses claim to have seen her at the scene of the crime (including Norris who watched her paddle a canoe away from the house), no one believes her guilty. Why? Because she is so darling and sweet that she could not possibly have murdered anyone, let alone her own uncle. Nice people never commit murders in a Wells book. Here's some more of Wells' writer's philosophy:

The next character to be chosen must be our criminal. Here again is one, who, if he is to be convicted, must not be too deeply in the reader's sympathy. [...] The drawing of the criminal calls for fine shading and strong effects. He must be both intelligent and ingenious, in order to give the Transcendent Detective a foeman worthy of his steel. The reader must have no liking or pity for him.

Finally, in Deep Lake Mystery we get another Wells staple and another "hackneyed device" for the murderer turns out to be a mad killer of the Mrs. Rochester variety. That's right -- someone who was thought to be dead was locked away in a room, managed to escape one night, and committed the dirty deed. But what of the locked room where the murder was committed? Well, there was that large window and it did happen to be directly above a lake - three stories above, that is. Look for the character who knows how to swim and dive, of course. And make sure that swimmer is the one who could dive perfectly into the safest spot in a rock-filled cove in the middle of the night with only the full moon as illumination. Oh. Are you sorry that I spoiled that for you? Didn't think so.

The Room with the Tassels (1918) marks the first appearance of Wells' series occult detective Pennington "Penny" Wise and his female sidekick Zizi. According to Wells' bibliography this is her twelfth book and if it is any sign of her early work then this is where I suggest people start if they are compelled to sample Carolyn Wells' mystery writing. This book had a lively and witty beginning and had more genuine humor in it than the other two I read. Wise and Zizi are all the more interesting because they are not really detectives - they are con artists. Zizi, when not teamed up with Wise on their "sleuthing" adventures is a silent movie star and she uses her talents as an actress and stuntwoman to her advantage as a sleuth. Wise tends to be drawn to cases that involve apparent supernatural events and he fancies himself a ghost buster. Zizi plays the part of his mysterious assistant and pretends to be psychic. She dresses all in black, floats in and out of rooms as quietly as the specters they are exposing, and frightens the heck out of the suspects with her freakish behavior and insinuating accusations. They're a great duo and it is largely due to their presence that I liked this book the best.

The story opens with a group of bored New Yorkers looking to enliven their dull summer by spending a weekend in a haunted house. They find the perfect place in Black Aspens, a mansion in a remote portion of Green Mountains of Vermont. Years ago a woman killed her husband with cyanide at 4:00 am. She ran out into the street in hysterics proclaiming the deed. A doctor chased her down, brought her back to the house and found what she said was true. He locked her in the room with the dead body and called the police. When they arrived and the room was opened the body was gone and the woman was raving mad. Now the "room with the tassels" where the two were temporarily imprisoned is said to be haunted by the ghost of the murderess who shows up looking for her dead husband. When the New Yorkers decide to take turns sleeping in the haunted room strange events take place. During the weekend two people are poisoned in the room while four others are present and the intended summertime lark of a weekend turns into a month long murder investigation. And later when one of the bodies disappears from the locked room with the tassels the suspects are convinced that a supernatural force is at work. Will it come as a surprise if I tell you there is no ghost? And that the massive pillars in front of Black Aspens have secret all their own? Yes, that's right -- more secret entrances. Double ugh.

For me the major flaw with Wells is her insistence on the inclusion of protracted "confab" scenes. Confab is a favorite Wells term. She uses these scenes repeatedly as "tabulation devices" in which the preceding events are discussed at length and mulled over by the numerous characters. She also has a habit of creating other private detectives as minor characters who come into the story to try their hand when the police (always inept) have failed. So when the series detective finally appears we have usually read about the events of the crime two or three times and must endure yet another confab by the REAL detective of the piece. It's her biggest failure as a mystery writer and yet it is something that she strongly believes is essential to the construction of a suspenseful mystery story. For me this endless reiteration and repetition is a suspense killer. An interest deadener. A brain numbing snoozefest.

In The Technique of the Mystery Story it is clear Wells has a wide reading knowledge of the writers of her period and those who came before her. Doyle, Gaboriau, Zangwill and Green are the most often mentioned in her discussion of what to strive for and what to avoid in writing a mystery story. Other minor writers like Burton Stevenson and Arthur Train are also cited in her numerous examples. Clearly she knew her stuff from the late Victorian and early Edwardian era. Yet with all this knowledge she still has no real understanding of how to construct and write a detective novel. She is quick to condemn the "hackneyed devices" but will use them herself. She discards useful conventions that move a story forward and invents some of her own that bog down the flow of the action. When it comes to putting it all together Carolyn Wells is more like the wannabe painter who throws buckets of paint on a canvas and sloshes around in it and then expects it to be accepted as art. Anyone else will look at it and call it a mess. But a loveable mess if you have an appreciation for her mastery of the early American alternative classic mystery.

FFB: Dead Man's Watch - G.D.H. & M. Cole

2011-12-09T04:12:00.002-06:00

George Douglas Howard and Margaret Cole are a husband and wife team who are probably better known in their academic fields. Douglas (as he preferred to be called, pointed out to me by Curt Evans) was a well known journalist and economist with numerous books in the field still read today while his wife was a classics instructor at a girls' school and later a socialist politician. In their early writing careers they teamed up to write several detective novels and created the popular policeman sleuth Superintendent Wilson. The Wilson books are characterized by satiric humor, sharply defined characters, deftly rendered settings and - for the most part - scrupulous attention to the fair play techniques in plotting. One of their best efforts is Dead Man's Watch.

A drowned man washes up on the banks of a creek in the village of Studleigh Pepperton in Devon. He is discovered by Ronald Bittaford who happens to be passing through the town with his girlfriend, Dorothy. To his shock he notices that the man is his uncle Percy, a relative Ron claims he has not been in contact with for years. Later, other people will step forward to identify the body as Percy's brother Harold, recently arrived from Australia. The problem of the identity of the corpse leads to much confusion among the inept local police and infuriates Sir Charles Wylie, a local baronet and J.P., on whose land the creek flows. He is indignant that the police refuse to see some rather obvious signs that the corpse is most likely a murder victim. In addition to some complicated issues dealing with the tides there is the fact that the corpse has been shaven after death and one witness identifying the body notes that a valuable watch is missing from the personal effects of the body.

The book is divided into three sections. Wilson appears in the first and last sections while the second is devoted mostly to the detective work of Sir Charles Wylie and his reluctant sleuthing partner Dorothy Daniells, Ron's girl friend, who takes to her job with gusto once she settles upon it. Wylie convinces her to spy on the locals in the town where Percy Bittaford was living with his wife. He asks her to write daily reports to him in letters and he will reply in kind with his follow-up detective work. Dorothy's letters are fine examples of the Coles' skill in capturing the language and world view of working class girl in pre-World War 2 era England. They are rambling, chatty, gossip-filled missives that also cleverly manage to contain some of the most important clues to the solution of the many mysteries surrounding the death of the drowned man. This kind of burying of clues reminded me the way Christianna Brand manages to plant her clues in the garrulous chit-chat among the dialog exchanges of her finely drawn characters.

What really grabbed my attention in this quick paced story are the varied cast of characters. From the reporter who inveigles his way into the crime scene and gets his big scoop passing himself off as a police aide to the oddball residents in Marine View, a boarding house right out of an Ealing Studio comedy, every person in this densely populated detective novel has their moment to shine. In addition to Sir Charles and Dorothy (a better and more likeable amateur sleuth pair may not exist in the genre) I liked the unctuous Mr. Fishcote, a landlord who manipulates Sir Charles into buying him drinks and expects a little cash for his dirt on the Bittaford brothers; and also Mrs. Devene, described as a "grass widow," who while waiting for her husband to return from his military duties in India likes to entertain gentlemen privately in her Marine View bedroom under the pretense of having tea. Sir Charles risks embarrassment and marring his reputation by accepting her offer to "go upstairs" so he can ply her for much needed information about the Bittafords.

Reading this book was a welcome surprise to me. A delightful book it is filled with biting humor and multiple puzzling mysteries. Skillful, entertaining, often very funny with a cleverly constructed mystery Dead Man's Watch is one of those rare examples from the Golden Age -- a old book that reads like a contemporary novel. Even with the few period references it holds up well mostly due to the characters' all too human behavior which is the primary focus of the story.

Such a shame that the Coles have been out of print for decades. I highly recommend this book to determined book hounds and devotees of traditional detective fiction; it's well worth reading if you can find a copy. And I would also strongly hint to independent publishers that if ever a detective novel was deserving of a reissue this is definitely it. I plan to review more of the Coles' mystery novels I have managed to acquire over the years. A bigger and unsolved mystery is why I have waited so long to read them.

IN BRIEF: Fear and Miss Betony - Dorothy Bowers

2011-12-08T07:00:00.022-06:00

Emma Betony, former schoolteacher, is contacted by an ex-pupil, Grace Aram who is now the headmistress of a girl's school housed in an old nursing home. Although most of the elderly patients were removed when the building converted to a school , two of the occupants of the nursing home are still residents and one of them is suspected by Grace to be the victim of a murderous plot. She asks Miss Betony to accept a teaching position at the school and use her free time to help Grace sort out the dastardly doings at the school. The memory of Miss Betony's Aunt Mary hovers over the story teasing the reader.

Bowers is one of the few 1940s era practitioners of the fair play detective novel who might have become the only real competition for Agatha Christie. She certainly wrote a lot of books about poison murders. I would guess she must have some medical knowledge based on the way her nurse and doctor characters speak about disease and drugs.

The book is literate and cleverly plotted with one of the best uses of misdirection in a detective novel of this era. I wouldn't call the book "ingenious" (as Tom & Enid Schantz do in their introduction to the Rue Morgue Press paperback reprint) since the device is something Christie herself employed repeatedly in the 1930s. Bowers wrote her book in 1940. Nevertheless Bowers nearly fooled me.

There are some genuine surprises here, all of the characters are very well drawn, suspicion darts between a handful of them. There is a fortune teller who dabbles in black magic featured in the plot and those scenes are some of the best in the book. The puzzles and mysteries surrounding the odd goings on at the school-cum-nursing-home never fail to keep the reader involved and intrigued. The book really is fascinatingly well written, engaging from page one to the last word. Bowers' policeman detective Chief Inspector Dan Pardoe turns up in the final three chapters.

NOTE: The UK edition's original title is Fear for Miss Betony. The change in title for this US edition seems completely unnecessary to me. But I guess Americans don't often use the imperative mood for the verb "fear" which is how the title is meant to be read, and not as if someone were handing Miss Betony a plate of fear, so to speak. The Rue Morgue Press edition is the most easily found and in some cases can be purchased for under $9 if you are an assiduous book hunter.

LEFT INSIDE: Overdue Book Notice, 1954

2011-12-04T09:42:00.000-06:00

Today's item left inside one of my books is a postcard notifying someone of their overdue library book. The book, unfortunately, is referred to by its catalog number (damn OCD librarians) and not by its title. However, the stamp cancellation offered me an opportunity to research an interesting aspect of American civil culture during the Eisenhower years. Once again, I cannot tell you from which book in my collection this card was found.

Click to enlarge

I remember when libraries had staff to send out regular notices like this. These days, at least in Chicago, our library is so disgracefully funded they have no one to reshelve the books let alone remind people to return overdue books. Books sit on carts for months before being returned to their proper place in the stacks requiring diligent users (like me) to pore over not only the shelves but the carts which thankfully are at least alpha order. Still, it's a pain in the neck trying to locate books in our main branch these days.

Here's the name and address of the guilty party. Notice the cancellation mark on the stamp.

Click to enlarge

Apart from the curiously incomplete address revealing that local mail apparently merely needed the word City to be properly delivered, I noticed the "Wear Your Red Feather Proudly!" proclaimed in the cancellation mark dated Feb 18, 1954. "What Red Feather? Why is it so prominently displayed and so exclamatory?" I wondered. Research turned up these newspaper and magazine ads (which where not left inside a book).

From an ad drawn by Robert Ripley of "Believe It or Not! fame, Life (Oct 5, 1953)

from the Milwaukee Sentinel, Oct 7, 1945

The Red Feather was a honor awarded to anyone in the United States who contributed to their local Community Chest, a fund raising charity that used the money for local community projects. (Yes, it's the same Community Chest on those cards in the Monopoly game, too.) It started in 1913 in Ohio and slowly spread throughout the US and Canada. By 1948 there more than 1000 local chapters throughout the country. The organization continued through the 1950s and in 1963 became what we now know as United Way. The phrase "I gave at the office" is attributed to both these charities.

FFB: Peril at Cranbury Hall - John Rhode

2011-12-02T06:00:00.006-06:00

The more John Rhode I read the more I am beginning to admire his skillful handling of certain aspects of the detective novel. His reputation of being a boring writer - one of the "Humdrums" - is truly undeserved. His best books can be found in the mid 1930s to late 1940s. Rhode's use of ingenious murder methods, diabolical death traps, and labyrinthine plots keep me coming back for more. Yet often Rhode lets his hand show several times. In Peril at Cranbury Hall (1930), for example, he has not yet acquired the talent for misdirection that is the hallmark of his contemporaries Christie and Carr. That is not to say that the book should be completely dismissed. There is more than enough here to satisfy most devotees of the traditional fair-play murder mystery novel.

Oliver Gilroy has recently been released from a seven year jail term for fraud. His half brother Arnold Gilroy, a lawyer, is engaged in acquiring an old mansion Cranbury Hall and its grounds for use by Dr. Richards and Professor Verclaes as a nursing home where they will cater to wealthy patients in search of the professor's anti-fatigue "miracle cure." The treatment itself sounds less like bona fide medicine at a nursing home and more like an elaborate con. Cranbury Hall will be transformed into something akin to a luxury spa/hotel designed to make the patients addicted to the comforts and indulgences like fine dining, massage treatments, and an enormous swimming pool, rather than the "miracle inoculations."

While Dr. Richards and the professor will handle the care of the patients, he tells Arnold that he will need a business manager and suggests Oliver for that position. Dr. Richards confesses that he also knows that Arnold has been manipulating the will of his dear departed Aunt Hilda and is planning to cheat Oliver out of his share of her estate. Armed with this knowledge and proof of the true will in a government registry open to the public (but unknown to Oliver) he blackmails Arnold into hiring his half brother.

Then a series of bizarre accidents befall Oliver and it appears that someone is trying to kill him. Dr. Priestley and Harold Merefield just happen to come across Oliver after he suffers a near fatal car accident – the third strange incident that nearly kills the ex-con. From Muriel Verclaes, the professor's daughter, Priestley and Merefield learn of the other accidents and Dr. Priestley is intrigued enough to investigate the possibility of foul play.

Rhode spends much time in letting the reader in on everyone's thoughts and actions prior to the appearance of Dr. Priestley who steps into the story well past the halfway mark. As the story progresses nearly every character will reveal a secret and his reason for killing Oliver. In fact, nearly everyone in the book turns out to be dishonest, a crook, or a cheat of some sort. There is an interesting use of the Iago-like power of suggestion too, put to great use in Christie's Curtain and by Rhode again in his superior Death in Harley Street (1946).

I was reminded of some of the less tightly constructed detective novels of George Bellairs and John Russell Fearn while reading Peril At Cranbury Hall. The clues are prominently displayed as if Rhode had spotlights shining on each one. There is no attempt made to hide anything, no misdirection, and no camouflage. Any sharp-eyed, attentive reader can figure out what's going on fairly quickly. This may be slightly disappointing to many readers, but perhaps a highlight for someone who has never solved a fair play detective novel. In other words, this is a great book for anyone interested in a training manual on how to solve a fair-play mystery novel.

For those who crave real puzzles there is a complex cipher that plays an integral part in the story. An entire chapter is devoted to the explanation of how the cipher works and there are ample opportunities for the reader to join Harold in decoding at least three different messages. However, you need patience and more of a mathematical mind than I have to understand how it works even with Priestley's detailed explanations. I attempted to try my hand at one, but gave up after about three minutes when I got mostly gibberish. I later discovered I misinterpreted the cipher rules and was inverting some letter pairs.

Finally, there is the puzzle of the fourth murder method -- the only successful one which dispatches Oliver Gilroy. Unfortunately, for me this was ruined on the title page of my reprint edition with an ill-advised illustration that gives it all away. Since I had read a murder method similar to what is used in an Agatha Christie novel the actual means was not as gasp inducing as perhaps it was intended. To echo something Patrick (At the Scene of the Crime blog) once said when he encountered a similar illustrated spoiler on an Edmund Crispin novel, there should be a special place in Hell reserved for book designers and illustrators who create these unnecessary ornamentations.

There is no denying that the death traps created in Peril at Cranbury Hall are the one of the main attractions of the novel. Rhode always is impressive in this regard. But it is Dr. Priestley's astonishing revelation about the multiple murder attempts that truly makes this book one of Rhode's better accomplishments. This violation of one of Father Knox's Ten Rules for Detective Fiction recalls a book by C. Daly King and another by Agatha Christie, both too well known for me to mention outright without ruining what should be a real surprise. Although most of the many mysteries can be easily solved there is this final twist that may be Rhodes' crowning achievement in this particular book. While not on the same level as something like The Claverton Affair (so far the best Rhode I have read) I would say Peril at Cranbury Hall is well worth a read if you are lucky to locate a copy.

NOTE TO COLLECTORS & BOOK BUYERS: This is one of the more difficult to find titles in John Rhodes' prolific output. Although there seem to be two copies for sale at reasonable prices at a site in the UK, I found five other copies for sale on the internet and all of them are priced over $100. One without a DJ (the Dodd Mead first US edition) although described as FINE is, I think, exorbitantly priced at $225.

The Smiling Death - Francis D. Grierson

2011-11-28T07:00:00.010-06:00

Edgar Wallace seemed to have a great influence on many of the crime writers in 1920s England. His thrillers were less concerned with the fair play detective puzzles and focused instead on the behavior of the criminals, particularly the special brand of master criminal (Silinski, White Face, The Twister) and criminal syndicates (The Fellowship of the Frog, The Green Ribbon, The Crimson Circle) that make up the bulk of his work. I saw a lot of Wallace in The Smiling Death (1927), a book that begins as a detective novel but quickly turns into a crime thriller with a typical Napoleon of Crime matching wits with a dogged police inspector and his expert sleuth companion.

This is the sixth book featuring series character Professor Wells, a expert in chemistry, friend and consultant of Inspector Sims who team up to solve baffling crimes over the course of twelve novels and one collection of short stories. A dead man is found in Tottenham Court Road with a strange smile-like expression on his face. Sims explains that the body may be one of many in a string of unexplained deaths originally attributed to heart failure and dismissed that date back to 1908. All the victims were wealthy, all bore the risus sardonicus on their faces. Wells is quick to mention that this "smiling death" is often associated in cases of tetanus and some strychnine poisonings. This is an intriguing start, but Grierson almost immediately dispenses with all the mystery in a matter of pages.

The 5th book in the series (1926)

The detection here is not fair play at all. It takes the form of lectures and in one single chapter Wells discusses his findings with Sims based on meeting Gregory Marle, handing him his walking stick after Marle drops it on the floor, and noticing a tiny pinprick in the neck of the corpse. He tells Sims he knows the murderer and the method based on these three things, but is not sure of the motive. Later in the book Sims will do some detection of his own that follows this pattern: he sees an object, examines it cursorily, then pockets it intending to discuss it with Wells when Grierson sees fit to reveal it to the reader.

While the story seems to be presented as a typical whodunit it is not Grierson's intention to withhold the identity of the killer until the final pages. We learn who he is well before the half way mark. He is Gregory Marle, a seemingly kindly bookseller who is watching over his pretty ward Pamela Fayne. In reality Marle is a master criminal and master of disguise, with a small army of local crooks and thugs at his command. Fooled into thinking this is a puzzle style whodunit the reader soon discovers he has instead picked up a crime thriller with the author's primary interest being the criminal's behavior and not the detective skills of the sleuthing protagonists.

One of the best sections in the book occurs when Marle confronts Wells and attempts to bargain with him. The two have an interesting exchange of ideas in which Marle discusses his life as a murderer and criminal and Wells reacts with a mixture of horror and admiration. Marle concludes the visit with a warning: Leave him alone and he will do nothing, interfere and he promises Wells will die. Wells accepts that, but tells Marle he has no intention of letting him continue with his criminal plans to which Marle, ever the gentleman master criminal, replies: "Professor Wells, I am going to kill you. And yet, if you would allow me, I should like to shake your hand."

The 8th book (1929)

Typical of so many of these thrillers the story is drawn out and padded with incident. Marle wastes no time in trying to eliminate Wells. But the professor foils the first attempt with a ploy similar to the one Holmes whipped up in "The Empty House" to fool Colonel Moran. Scotland Yard assigns a policeman to guard and follow the professor and there is a long, nearly pointless, sequence with Wells playing "lose the tail" with his inept policeman shadow. A subplot about a stolen string of pearls and a sequence detailing a strange method of relaying secret messages embedded in crossword puzzles also figure in the action-filled plot. The book is littered with incidents like this that seem more filler than substance. They also made me think the book was originally serialized which I later learned was true. The Smiling Death first appeared in Everybody's Magazine in four installments from April through July of 1927.

13th and final book in series (1935)

The final third of the book begins with Red Joe Smith, one of Marle's cronies, turning police informer when he recognizes the man he is assigned to kill as his former commanding officer Captain Roger Kent. Kent saved Smith's life on the battlefield years ago and Smith swore he would repay Kent for that heroic deed. After Smith gives all his information on Marle to the police there is a race to arrest him before he flees the country in a boat with two women (the love interests of two minor characters) as hostages.

It's all familiar and formulaic to a modern reader and slightly disappointing after such an interesting beginning. Only the character of Gregory Marle kept me interested in reading to the end. His dialog, like all great villains, is the best part of the book like this sample taken from his tête-à-tête with Wells:

Murder? It is a word used by the ignorant with a sort of religious awe. But let us call it the taking of a life. [...] I will admit that I have taken more than one life. I have lopped off from the parent tree certain useless branches just as a surgeon lops a gangrenous limb from a human body.

This was the first and probably last Professor Wells Book I will read. I also own the very first Wells & Sims book, The Limping Man, but after sampling four chapters I find that it too suffers from quickly resolved mysteries, no fair play detection, and too much of the thriller writer's love of action over puzzle for me to continue with it. I may try some of his other books, however, outside of this series to see if he has anything closer to a traditional detective novel.

Grierson wrote a homage to his idol, "Edgar Wallace: The Passing of a Great Personality," in The Bookman (March, 1932, pp. 3101). However, I was unable to find a complete copy of the text online. Some further digging required when I make my next trip to the Chicago Public Library.

* * *

Inspector Sims & Professor Wells Novels
The Limping Man (1924)
The Double Thumb (1925) - short stories
The Lost Pearl (1925)
Secret Judges (1925)
The Zoo Murder (US title: The Murder in the Garden) (1926)
The Smiling Death (1927)
The Blue Bucket Mystery (1929)
The White Camellia (1929)
The Yellow Rat (1929) (reissued in 1932 as Murder at the Wedding)
The Mysterious Mademoiselle (1930)
Murder at Lancaster Gate (1934)
Death on Deposit (1935)
Murder in Black (1935

NOTE: Francis D. Grierson should not be confused with an American non-fiction writer who shares his name. The Grierson who wrote detective and crime novels was a Irish man born in 1888 while the other Grierson was a British born, naturalized American born in 1848. The older Grierson isn't even a real Grierson. His real name is Benjamin Henry Jesse Shepherd, a concert pianist, who wrote under the pseudonym "Francis Grierson" and penned a number of books incorporating his interest in mysticism and spiritualism including The Valley of the Shadows and Abraham Lincoln, the Practical Mystic.

LEFT INSIDE: Barrington Fair Ticket, Sept. 1940

2011-11-27T07:00:00.002-06:00

The bi-weekly feature where I pull odd things from my ephemera collection of objects found in my books returns! I hope to keep this going every other Sunday from now on. Today's is an interesting item for anyone who lives in the area of Massachusetts surrounding the Berkshires, specifically Great Barrington and the now defunct Barrington Fair.

The internet is never ceases to astound me. Nearly everything under the sun can be found in some remote corner of the digital airspace. Had I only a library to help with my research I would have come up with little or nothing at all on this item. With Google at my fingertips and the magic search terms "Great Barrington Fair Massachusetts" I found a wealth of photos, a Facebook page, and several messages left on on-line forums all reminiscing about this fair that apparently was the oldest running state fair in all of New England. The fair has quite a colorful history and a rather a sad ending.

Here's the object that was left inside one of my books:

(Click to enlarge either photo)

No Post-it was attached nor was there a penciled notation to remind me what book it came out of. It was probably one I bought in New England. I took a trip there back in the summer of 2000 and we hit bookstores in Boston, some towns in the Boston suburbs, several towns in New Hampshire including Derry, Portland, North Hampton and all the way up to Portland, Maine. I remember we bought so many books we had to ship them home in a large duffel bag we brought along.

Here are some highlights in the history of the Barrington Fair taken directly from the Facebook page. Gary Leveille posted a timeline of the fair and I am taking all of this directly from that post.

1771: The local townspeople petitioned the General Court of Massachusetts for “having a fair established in this town” to promote agriculture and increase trade.

1841: The Housatonic Agricultural Society is formed. A plan is formulated to hold an agricultural fair in Great Barrington at the end of September, 1842. Farmers are encouraged to exhibit their livestock, fruits, vegetables and other items of interest. Prizes are awarded.

1848: The fair is incorporated. More events are added. By 1853, a brass band performs, as does a choir. Dinners are offered for 75 cents.  

1854: The Society pays $3,024.69 for nineteen acres of land south of town for a permanent fairground. Two years later the society erects a building and lays out a track for showing horses. William Cullen Bryant is the principal speaker.  

1868: The Wild Men of Borneo are exhibited.  

1875: Barbed wire had been invented and is exhibited at the fair.

1876: Special Centennial exhibition in honor of the 100th anniversary of the USA.  

1881: The Society purchases additional land to expand the fairgrounds.  

1900: A baby is born at the fairgrounds in October. The parents are members of a band of gypsies camped there to offer fortune-telling.  

1918: A war tax of 10% is charged on all admissions.

1920: Motorcycle races are held.  

1932: Night programs are added.  

1937: Sulky racing ends, and lucrative pari-mutuel horse race betting begins.  

1940: Edward Carroll purchases the fair from the Barrington Fair Association, successor to the Housatonic Agricultural Society. Carroll also owned Riverside Amusement park in Agawam.

1943: Horse racing is expanded to ten days.  

1952: Barrington Fair is the first in the country with electric ticket dispensers at the pari-mutuel windows.  

Post Card of the fair, circa 1950s

1977: Michael Abdalla purchases the fairgrounds. The Rock group Blood, Sweat and Tears appears.  

1984: State Racing Commission denies horse racing for six years.  

1991: Horse racing returns.  

1995: Memorial Day tornado devastates the fairgrounds. Owner Henry Vara rebuilds the fairground buildings after being promised seventeen days of horse racing. The fair limps along for several more years and then closes. In its hey-day, the Great Barrington Fair was the longest consecutively running agricultural fair in the country.

Based on what I read and photos I viewed, it seems the last fair was in 1999. Most of the photos of the fairgrounds I find on the internet reveal a weed overgrown place with buildings that have been attacked by spray can painting graffiti artists, smashed windows and destroyed metal furniture, and other signs of hooligans and vandals wreaking havoc. I'd hoped to post pictures of the original fair, circa 1940, to go with the ticket I have, but all that I find are copyrighted images from the past or images like those at this website showing the present ignominious state of the fairgrounds.

The Spitting Image - Michael Avallone

2011-11-26T12:55:00.002-06:00

The “alternative classic” is a term Bill Pronzini created when he wrote Gun in Cheek and Son of Gun in Cheek, two entertaining and enlightening books about those hair-brained detective and mystery novels with loopy plots and even loopier writing. Pronzini loves them. And so do I …to a point. Before I had even heard of Pronzini’s books or heard of the term I had stumbled across more than my fair share of alternative classics. The Case of Mr. Cassidy by William Targ, The Palgrave Mummy by Florence M. Pettee, and Murder on the Palisades by Will Levinrew are three outrageous examples of the kind of book discerning readers of crime fiction now call alternative classics. They may be bad, but we love them all the more because of their very badness. Ludicrous plots, wacky detective work, far-fetched murder methods, and some atrocious writing are all in great supply in each one of those books. I read them years before I learned they all ended up both celebrated and disparaged in one or the other of Pronzini’s books. Some writers are even lucky enough (if lucky is the right word) to get an entire chapter to themselves in the Gun in Cheek books. Such a lucky one is Michael Avallone.

I managed to acquire five of Avallone’s private eye novels featuring Ed Noon in my various book store hunts this year. After decades of looking for them they all started turning up with increasing frequency and all at very affordable prices. Last week I finally sat down to read one and after debating whether to go with the very first one (The Tall Dolores) or one that Pronzini wrote about with great affection (The Crazy Mixed-Up Corpse) or the one with the strangest cover (The Voodoo Murders) I finally settled on choosing the one with the most intriguing and appealing story - The Spitting Image. It also happens to employ one of my favorite overused detective novel tropes – twins – and I wanted to see what Avallone did with that. As it turned out this was perhaps the best book to start my Avallone initiation. It turned out to have a wild plot with a surprise ending that blew me away. I should’ve seen it coming miles ahead of the reveal, but I didn’t. I loved that.

The Spitting Image (1953) is the second Ed Noon novel and tells the story of April and June Wexler, twin sisters who both fear the other is planning to do her in. There’s a convoluted will (a la Harry Stephen Keeler) that their wealthy oil tycoon father drew up stating if by the date of their twenty-first birthday one of the twins dies, the other will inherit his two million dollar estate. If both survive, none will inherit anything and the estate goes to a charity. Was there ever a more inviting incentive for a murder to take place? Prior to the novel's opening chapter three attempts were made on June Wexler and she tries to hire Noon to protect her and put a stop her murderous sister’s plot. When a chandelier comes crashing from the ceiling nearly killing both girls Noon is not sure which woman is the intended target. Then April secretly tries to hire Noon as her bodyguard until her birthday which is quickly approaching. A movie star handsome lawyer, his thug of a male secretary, and couple of goons from Central Casting all figure into the storyline as well.

One surprise that didn’t impress me at all was Avallone’s depiction of the handsome lawyer. Just as Sax Rohmer created eerily “feminine” looking men and turned them into some of his best villains implying along the way things about their sexuality and planning a grisly end for him, Avallone creates a gorgeous man and goes out of his way to talk about the eerie handsomeness of the character and how it makes Noon extremely uncomfortable. The lawyer is gay, of course, and will turn out to be something of a crook as well. Think he’ll suffer a gruesome death? Of course he will. This kind of thing was pretty much standard for the period. Evil homosexuals who break the law, treat women indifferently or cruelly, and do other reprehensible things like speaking grammatically perfect English must all suffer nasty violent deaths. It shouldn’t bother me these days, but it still does.

Pronzini writes in Son of Gun in Cheek of how Avallone liked to insert his conservative social and political beliefs into his books. The loathsomeness displayed for the lawyer is one of Avallone's more subtle early examples. Apparently he gets more and more right wing in the later books when Ed Noon ceases to be the typical flatfoot and more of a secret agent for the federal government fighting Commies, fags and all other threats to the American Way. I wonder if lesbians turn up in Avallone’s books. Usually they are treated just as shabbily during the heyday of the paperback original, but also in a sexually prurient and titillating manner.

I almost forget the best part of these books - Avallone’s writing. Let me close with some choice examples of his mastery of the silly simile and other metaphorical wonders:

She came into my office like the first five bars of "Tiger Rag."

She sat down with an effort, crossing a pair of silken legs that were strictly weapons to be used on men.

A volcano was going on inside her and the bubbles were erupting like hot lava.

The floor around him was a pool of vermilion. Like the Red Sea. I'm not being funny. Just descriptive.

His eyebrows rose like a fast elevator.

Randall Crandall. That wasn't a name. It was a voice impediment.

Crandall's nostrils nearly rose in disgust.

I had a headache. A musical headache. All of the scoring was by Max Steiner with just enough Stan Kenton noisy brass section thrown in to keep my skull in an uproar.

This is a good book to start with Avallone even if you read only one. It has all his hallmarks: goofy writing, nutty characters, loopy story with a surprise twist worthy of some of the great of the Golden Age. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the Ed Noon books I own. I've even ordered one of Avallone's Gothic suspense novels written under a clever pseudonym that's more of an inside joke - "Edwina Noone."

More on Ed Noon here and an excellent remembrance on Michael Avallone here. Both posts include bibliographies.

FFB: Frank L. Packard - The Underworld & Exotic Crime

2011-11-25T01:00:00.005-06:00

Today is Friday's Forgotten Books Salute to Canada. Our guest host for this Black Friday is the ever resourceful Todd Mason. The links for today's other posts are at his blog Sweet Feedom. Check them out for other (I'm sure) more recent and contemporary writers from Canada. I had to go with one of the most neglected Canadian writers of crime fiction from the past century.

Although Frank L Packard was born and raised in Montreal, attended McGill University, and worked for years for the Canadian Pacific Railway as a civil engineer he tended to write about the dirty underworld of New York crime or exotic adventure tales set in the South Pacific and Asia like those found in Shanghai Jim (1928). Rarely do you find anything about his books on the internet and so I dove right into his books of which I had amassed quite a few.

Packard's first novels dealt with the redemption of the criminal world. The Miracle Man (1914) tells of the Patriarch, a healer who has a run in with some con men and the surprise healing of a cripple boy that transforms the lives of the crooks trying to fleece the town. The book was adapted into a stage play and later was a high grossing silent film with Lon Chaney in the role of a contortionist who stuns the town by crawling up the aisle in extreme pain and then after receiving the Patriarch's healing touch unfolds his twisted limbs and walks away apparently cured. Similarly, in The Sin That Was His (1917) a crook falsely accused of a murder disguises himself as a priest in order to escape the police, but in living out his second disguised life undergoes a spiritual and moral change.

Probably his best known character is Jimmie Dale, aka "the Gray Seal," one of many in a long line of gentleman thief characters. Jimmie Dale also shows signs of the hero pulp characters with his secret hideaway, masked costume, calling cards stamped with the figure of a seal, I saw a lot of similarities to Herman Landon's Gray Phantom who is also a devil-may-care playboy who enjoys masquerading as a crime fighter and both use multiple identities. The Gray Phantom stories appeared serially in the pulps as did the Jimmie Dale stories but Packard's character came long before making his debut in 1914 while Landon's Gray Phantom appeared in 1920. While Packard may have borrowed from Raffles, Arsene Lupin, and other similar characters of the late Edwardian period in creating his own version of the gentleman thief who fights crime there can be no doubt that in Jimmie Dale we see the culmination of the kind of hero pulp characters like The Shadow, The Spider, and even Batman. For an excellent overview of Jimmie Dale see this article by David Vineyard at Mystery*File.

One of the most interesting of the Gray Seal books is Jimmie Dale and the Blue Envelope Murder. Herbert Carruthers, the newspaper editor who knows nothing of Dale's secret identity, delivers to Jimmie Dale the news that the Gray Seal is dead.

A good example of Packard's exotic adventure novel is The Locked Book which begins aboard a merchant vessel sailing through the Malay Archipelago. After surviving an attack by savage pirates led by a white man wearing a crimson sash, Kenneth Wayne vows revenge on those who killed his father, Old Man Wayne, the skipper of the Waratan. Kenneth makes his way to a hotel run by the mysterious M. Fouché and passes himself off as a mining prospector. He succeeds in getting a local guide, a boat and heads off in search of the pirates pretending all the while to be a man looking for gold. Instead he comes across a shrine where an ancient book is being guarded as if it were a god. It's even given a name that sounds like a deity: Itu Konchi-Kan Kitab, which apparently merely means "the book that is locked." The book bound in an ornate stamped dragon that is swallowing its tongue is said to hold the key to a buried treasure of the Rajah Kana-ee-aa. But a native frightened by Kenneth's desecration of the shrine takes the book out of his hands before he can open it and flees in the jungle. Kenneth's vengeance takes a back seat to his interest in the book and the story becomes a mix of chase and intrigue as he attempts to recover the book and discover if it holds the secret to the treasure.

Part of the fun of reading this adventure tale is that the book itself is a replica of the locked book in the story. Shown above is the Copp, Clark Company 1st Canadian edition with the ornate gilt embossed dragon grasping his tail in his mouth. When the book is closed it gives the impression that it too is locked like the book guarded by the natives.

Whether he is writing about gangsters and their molls, crooked antiquarians seeking rare books with hidden secrets, sailors and merchant seamen battling marauding pirates in the South Seas, or Jimmie Dale and crew in the New York underworld, Frank L. Packard was instrumental in the development of crime fiction that shied away from amateur sleuths and focused on the darker and dirtier world that would explode into the violent writing of hard-boiled writers like Carroll John Daly and Dashiell Hammett.

I've Got No Strings

2011-11-23T10:04:00.003-06:00

By request, a brief overview of my life as a puppeteer:

Mina sees Lucy as an inviting snack in Dracula

I originally came to Chicago to be a playwright and actor. The playwright part blew up in my face because like any passionate but naive theater artist I thought I was a demi-god and could do it all. Orson Welles minus the financial smarts and bravado. I allowed myself to be bullied and things got very ugly. I gave up playwriting and directing for many, many years. But theater seemed to me my only life. I ended up acting in non-Equity theater from 1987 through 2004. I was member of three different acting ensembles over that time period, I had an agent and went on a handful of awful commercial auditions and modeling go-sees until I decided I hated that part of acting and devoted myself only to the stage. I earned money from everything I did. If it didn't pay, I didn't audition. It wasn't enough to live on, though, so I was also earning most of my income as an office temp worker. But my interest in theater and acting began to dwindle around 1999 when the world of books became my focus.

Somewhere in the late 1990s (I can't recall the exact date) I read of an audition for a puppet company and it turned out to be Hystopolis Productions, a company that was on the rise. They had just put together an amazing adaptation of Elmer Rice's The Adding Machine which had gone to the now defunct Jim Henson International Puppet Festival in New York and was quite a sensation there. They were looking to start up a junior ensemble of beginner puppeteers who would tour the Midwest with kid's shows - which had been their focus for years - while the founders, Larry Basgall and Michael Schwabe, continued to develop more advanced adult shows like The Adding Machine and their previous hit Ubu Roi, based on Alfred Jarry's play.

I ended up being selected with two other guys (both strangely enough named Adam) and we were broken in as puppeteers doing Hystopolis' old stand-by version of Rumpelstiltskin. I had seen that show at the many Chicago street festivals in the past. It was an insane blend of Saturday morning cartoon antics, madcap wild action, very adult humor that usually went over the heads of the kids and skillful Bunraku style puppetry. Most of the puppets were hand and glove puppets (like Rump at right), a few were rod puppets, and some were nothing more that objects on a stick. I operated three puppets and did their voices: Puss in Boots (who wanders in from another story as a cameo), a character named Egghead (I can't remember its purpose), and Rumpelstiltskin. We were also required to learn other parts in case one of us was unavailable for a gig. So I also learned to operate three or four other puppets and do my version of those voices as well. Later we developed an original script I devised for a holiday touring show called A Dragon for Christmas. For that play I operated two puppets and did their voices: the Wizard and Queen Foradae. There was also an ill-fated attempt at an African folktale show that was more masks and movement than puppetry. It had a story about Anansi the Spider, a cool leopard, and had an amazing elephant puppet in it. I think we did it only once though. I have not been big on picture taking when it came to theater and casts I was a part of and so I have nothing to show for this part of my life. I do, however, still have the original script for A Dragon for Christmas.

Dracula attacks Professor Van Helsing as Lucy looks on.

Eventually there was no more money to pay us. I think a grant expired. And so the junior touring company was disbanded. Sometime later Larry Basgall managed to track me down and tell me that Hystopolis was back in business at Red Hen Theater (no longer around). They were working on Dracula at the time and he wanted to get me involved in adapting a new kids' show based on "The Three Little Pigs." A series of botched phone messages (remember answering machines?) screwed everything up and I never got involved with them.

Larry and Michael now live in Michigan. Michael, who founded the company back in the late 1980s, still teaches puppetry. According to his Facebook page for Hystopolis Productions he taught a workshop at Ox Bow in Saugatuck this past summer. I miss those guys. We had a blast touring Illinois and making trips to the Botanical Gardens in St. Louis doing all those shows. Getting drunk and high in hotel rooms, laughing a lot, taking turns driving the dilapidated van all over the Midwest, and doing really good puppetry. It was one of the better theater related periods in my life.

For more photos of Hystopolis Productions' fantastically rendered version of Dracula go here.

LEFT INSIDE: George Johnstone Bookplate

2011-11-22T09:15:00.001-06:00

I bought a book at the Printer's Book Fair earlier this year solely for the book plate firmly glued to the front endpaper. It announces that the book comes from the library of George Johnstone, an American magician who died in 2004.

Apart from some amusing anecdotes from fellow magicians on several on-line magician forums I could only discover that Johnstone was an avid book collector, appeared on Ed Sullivan, was the opening act for the 1956 Elvis tour, and he started out as an assistant for Blackstone back in the 1930s.

Click on the image to enlarge and you will be able to read all of the book titles. Each one is a real book considered a classic in the magic world. I assume that the GJ on the right hand side above the bookend are George Johnstone's initials and that he himself designed the bookplate.

The book came from the huge collection of magic books, magic tricks, stage illusionist posters and ephemera belonging to Chicago magician, ventriloquist and puppeteer Jay Marshall who died in 2005. I knew Jay for exactly one year and visited his house once when I was a puppeteer with a company called Hystopolis Productions back in the late 1990s. He was approaching his seventies at the time, but was still a good spirited, very funny man with a devilish sense of humor. He still did a few tricks at summer parties and enjoyed doing his very adult puppet show for friends only. I only wish I got to know him better than the few hours I spent in his backyard for that one summer party.

It was sheer luck that I found the book pictured below at the book fair this year. The dealer was the one who told me she thinks it came from Marshall. The finest and rarest objects, posters and books from his staggering collection were auctioned off over a three year period between 2007 and 2009 in Illinois and Kentucky at three magic collector annual conventions and a private auction house. You can still view the "Part 3" auction catalog here. (Remember the auction ended over two years ago. Don't get too excited looking.) It's stunningly impressive, if you are a magic geek like me, filled with rare posters, rarer autographs, vintage magic tricks, and very scarce magic books.

Apparently some of the lesser quality books were still in Jay Marshall's world renowned store Magic Inc, a few years after Jay's death in 2005. This was one of them. Strangely, the book has nothing to do with magic. Ladies of the Underworld, as the title suggests, is a non-fiction account of women criminals. The subtitle is "The Beautiful, the Damned, and Those Who Get Away With It." There are twenty-six chapters each devoted to a specific woman or a type of female criminal. Included are such intriguing chapters as "Vera, the High Flyer and the Shooting of Prince Fahmy," "The Cobra Woman, The Parisian Queen of Crime," "Aysah, The Malayan Hell Woman," and other chapters on female spies, forgers, mafia women and one about women living as men. I haven't read any of the book yet, but just typing all that has made me want to read at least a few select chapters.

Twittering Visitors Get a Sample of Keeler-mania

2011-11-21T12:30:00.001-06:00

I get linked a lot these days -- mostly from other reading blogs pointing out a great review of an overlooked book. I enjoy when that happens. But I don't know what to make of this latest link.

I noticed an unusually high bit of traffic today to my review of Harry Stephen Keeler's The Green Jade Hand. I know the only way that could've happened was that someone had linked to the post. (Keeler just isn't that popular unless someone draws your attention to him.) A bit of detective work turned up this tweet from "notjessewalker."

You COULD read the latest Schoen/Caddell column, but really, this makes much more sense: http://t.co/25zfLGTW

The link leads to my review of The Green Jade Hand.

Turns out "not jessewalker" IS Jesse Walker, a senior editor at the online magazine Reason.com and owner of the blog The Perpetual Three Dot Column. The Douglas Schoen/Patrick Caddell column is here. They write for The Wall Street Journal. I don't read that paper and had never heard of them before today.

Here's the dilemma I face: I'm not sure if Walker is making fun of the columnists' article on their suggestion that Obama drop out of the presidential race and likening their "reasoning" to Keeler's incomprehensible plots or if he's calling my review incomprehensible. It's clear that "this makes much more sense" is meant as an ironic statement. I'm feeling a little wounded today.

Should I be thanking Jesse Walker for the increased traffic or should I be sending him a flaming email for insulting my writing?

JACKET REQUIRED: My Bookman's Alley Take

2011-11-20T12:56:00.000-06:00

"If I were a rich man, I would've left with quite a bit more" - to paraphrase Tevye. But these days I really have to watch my spending. Here's what I found to my liking among those that I were in my price range. There are lots and lots books still there. He has a first edition of John Irving's first book Setting Free the Bears, but at $1200 even a 30% off discount doesn't make it anywhere near affordable for me. [...sigh...]

Only the wrap-around art pictures can be clicked on for larger views. The rest are already at full size

Artwork by William Barss


Artwork by Charles Geer, master of the Gothic and Romantic suspense DJ

(Click to enlarge)

Artwork by the fabulous Stanley Wood who created the immortal portrait of Dr. Nikola I use as my avatar.

Artwork by Artur Barbosa (1908-1995). He also did some well known
covers for Georgette Heyer's Regency novels

(Click to enlarge)

And a lone book without a jacket. One of the most original impossible crime novels by the prolific and utterly forgotten American pulp magazine writer Isabel Ostrander whose work will be showcased here next year:

For more info about Bookman's Alley see my post here.

FFB: A Few Fiends to Tea - Virginia Coffman

2011-11-18T07:35:00.005-06:00

Imagine this if you will: you are a successful writer of Gothic and historical romances and you have dabbled in other genres as well like the western novel. Now you want to write a full out crime novel about murder vigilante style. So you dream up a character who is dying of a terminal disease, who has dreams of a career as an artist but who sold out to be a commercial cartoonist, and is disgusted with a news story of a wife killer who managed to be acquitted for murder. Think you can write a suspenseful cat and mouse thriller without resorting to the usual romance novel trappings? Virginia Coffman almost pulls it off. It’s something like a mad combination of the basic idea of Dexter (vigilante killings of murderers who escaped the law) minus the sociopathic pathology. Saddled with the lamentable title A Few Fiends to Tea (1967) it was probably attracting an audience that expected something far more genteel and “veddy British.” But it's one of the few Belmont original paperbacks to receive two editions so it must've sold very well for the third tier publisher. It’s far from cozy and down right nasty. If only Coffman managed to escape her Gothic Romance past the book might be something of a minor classic in the genre.

Deil Connor (I chose to rhyme his first name with "veil" while I was reading) is the artist fed up with life now that he is in the final stages of tuberculosis. His prey is Roger Tildesley, a man whose three wives have all suffered accidental deaths -- the last two from falls, and he is convinced that the fates of those women is far too coincidental to pass off as mere accidents. He also targets an arsonist who killed his wife and child, and a woman who poisoned the children of the man she loved. But the arsonist is in Paris and the poisoner is in Italy. Conner can’t very well travel all over the world killing acquitted murderers. If he is patient perhaps Fate will work some coincidences in his favor. And there is part of the fault with the story as fresh and as it seems to a 1967 audience. That and Coffman's inability to escape her romance novelist background.

While in Deil Connor she has created a likable character, he is also filled with anger and hatred and not a little bit of misanthropy. He's of course good looking in that dark Byronic way and his personality suits that melancholia that resides within the true Byronic hero. At one point he envisions one of his victims slowly suffocated and fantasizes how just it would be for that victim to feel the agonizing pain Connor feels now that his own lungs are ravaged by disease. There are other chilling passages revealing that Connor does indeed have the making of a cruel killer. But... Enter Olivia Brown, his tool to get at Tildesey. As much as I tried not to believe that this mousy, uninteresting character would play a major role in the story she will. And she will capture Connor's heart is a very strange way.

1st paperback edition, rather scarce

Of course there are multiple obligatory love scenes with this naive and dull woman who pines for Connor. He is dark, handsome, dangerous. He lies to her and misleads her into thinking he is a spy for the British government. She is willing to help him spy on his victims, gather information, all because she loves the thrill of it all and she deeply loves him. There is a scene where she accidentally seduces him in the most awkward manner way ending with these embarrassing lines:

The robe came off her shoulders in the struggle, and she lay against him, breathing hard, her face flushed, her eyes very bright with an emotion entirely new to her. [...] "Teach me, darling. Teach me..."

With one arm occupied, he raised the other and snapped off the bluelight.

But having dispensed with the mandatory (and censored) lovemaking scenes Coffman returns to the story. I kept hoping for Connor to return to his former vigilante mode. But it was too late; he was changed. Olivia had captured his heart so to speak. He tries to continue in the role of Nemesis, but his newfound persona and his new way of seeing life have so altered him that he cannot carry out his plans. Connor has changed so much that it has affected his artwork. His illustrations which used to depict the darker aspects of people, revealing their hidden Mr. Hyde, now show his subjects in a sunnier light.

Even prior to his transformation from killer to lover Connor found it difficult to be a murderer. He abandoned one of his plans to kill the arsonist and later the man, drunk from two bottles of brandy, knocks over a lamp in his home, sets his apartment ablaze, and dies a fitting but entirely accidental death. Fate stepped in and did the job where Connor failed. Fate and coincidence reign supreme in this book just like something Harry Stephen Keeler would write, but without his trademark brand of absurd humor.

This disappointed me. I bought the book not knowing anything about Coffman. When I got home I discovered in Hubin's Crime Fiction Bibliography that she was primarily a Gothic Romance writer with titles in her prolific output like Curse of the Island Pool, The House at Sandalwood, Night at Sea Abbey, and an entire series named after Lucifer Cove, a town where witchcraft held sway over its inhabitants and the Devil seduced women. I thought after reading the first few chapters that Coffman was trying to do something very different from a Gothic. The tone was truly dark, sinister and misanthropic. Connor had all the makings of an anti-hero out of a Patricia Highsmith novel. But then there was Olivia. How could I be as naive as she was and believe that she wouldn't hook up with Connor? Live and learn.

There is an interesting subplot that will play a crucial role in the violent finale when Coffman at last returns to her original theme of justice and retribution. A serial killer who preys on people with physical handicaps and poor health is on the loose (The Spiral Staircase, anyone?). He manages through a series of identity changes to escape each time and - just like Tildesey - makes his murders look like accidents. Tildesey is attracted to this killer and goes out of his way to find him for his own vengeful purposes. Connor, you may remember, is in the final throes of tuberculosis.

The beginning of the book, Connors' first encounter with the arsonist, and the finale are the best parts of A Few Fiends to Tea. I could've done without all the romance novel balderdash. Coffman could've created a true crime novel about the urge to kill that resides deep within most of us given the proper circumstances. She's a competent writer, often insightful, sometimes surprisingly good, one who could've easily eschewed all the romance novel trappings. But she knew her audience and she couldn't disappoint or shock them too deeply, I guess. To have done so might have been career suicide back in the heyday of old-fashioned romance novels.

Final Chapter for Bookman's Alley

2011-11-17T20:36:00.002-06:00

While browsing around in one of my favorite used bookstores I learned that a completely different bookstore will soon be closing out here and I was shocked. I gasped and said, "No!" and later the owner came over to me to fill me in.

Bookman's Alley, a store in Evanston, IL, and one of the most unique used bookstores I have ever set foot in among the hundreds I've visited across the United States, will be closing its doors in January. The owner, Roger Carlson, is one of the grand old bookman of days gone by. I had many brief conversations with him about my esoteric tastes in genre fiction and I've heard many interesting conversations from his numerous, highly informed book collecting customers in the many many hours over the past twenty years I have been frequenting his store. I can easily estimate that one third of my personal mystery library came from the shelves of Bookman's Alley. I've also used his store as a resource for customers in search of hard to find books when I was selling more often than I do these days. I've bought and resold some of Roger's books as well. It's part of the business, after all.

For those of you who have never visited Chicago and never seen Bookman's Alley (and now probably never will be able to) here are a few photographs. Because the store is so unique it has been photographed repeatedly and shows up on blogs all over the internet. Sometimes people can't believe that all of the books are for sale. I've heard first time visitors remark that it resembles a museum or an antique store more than a book store.

The Fiction & Literature Section. Through the archway is History. To the left of the wall with the framed pictures is ... MYSTERY!

Art, Science, Music sections and I believe a few shelves with a variety of Animal books.
Out of camera range is the Children's section with a huge collection of amazing 1st edition and later printing Oz books

The rear of the store with a variety of rare works of Fiction (mostly multi volume sets), Native American books, more History, Biography and (as you might guess from all the model ships) Nautical books

Roger Carlson, at home in the front of the store. Behind him
(left & right) are the rare books which I could never afford.

I was really upset when I heard the news that this fine store - truly a cornerstone of downtown Evanston - will soon be gone for good. Book hunting will never be the same for me in the Chicago area now. It's a sad time for used bookstores all over the country, but a damn shame for us out here in Chicago.

Thanks to Roger Carlson for this fantastic store which has been operating since the early 1980s. Thanks also to his son (whose name I never learned), and the other men who have often helped out in the place while Roger was recuperating from a recent illness. I had a blast in your store, bought some great books and enjoyed knowing you while the store was open. To say that you will be sorely missed is the greatest understatement I have ever written.

Bookman's Alley is located in the alleyway between Benson Avenue and Sherman Avenue ("1712 Sherman Ave., Rear" is the exact address) in Evanston, Illinois. The store is holding a 30% off sale this month and continuing through December until all books are gone. The store closes in January 2012.

The Inugami Clan - Seishi Yokomizo

2011-11-12T17:51:00.000-06:00

My knowledge of Japanese detective novel is limited, but if I am to believe what is written on the jacket blurbs of every Japanese mystery novel translated into English, then every Japanese mystery writer is a bestselling and extremely popular author in their homeland, a claim that seems farfetched. I have read the strange stories of Edogawa Rampo ("considered the dean of modern Japanese mystery writers") and a handful of novels by Shizuko Natsuki (dubbed "the Agatha Christie of Japan" on one of my books) who are supposed to be bestsellers. I have also read The Tattoo Murder Case ("among the most read of Japanese detective mysteries") and The Tokyo Zodiac Murders ("still one of the best selling mystery novels in Japan") by two more popular authors and two excellent spins on the locked room/impossible crime subgenre. One week ago through sheer luck I found a copy of The Inugami Clan, a book that is not only written by a best selling author, but is touted as a classic in Japanese detective fiction and the most popular title of the author’s 80 plus books. For once I agree with all the hyperbole on the jacket blurb. This is one Japanese detective novel that all devotees of the Golden Age ought to seek out. I would dare to call it iconic in the mystery and crime fiction of Japan.

Seishi Yokomizo in his final years

The author, Seishi Yokomizo, began writing detective fiction in the late 1940s. The Inugami Clan is his tenth book and was originally published serially between 1950-1951. The story itself is set in 1949 with post-World War 2 Japan fueling a major aspect of the plot. His detective Kosuke Kindaichi is practically an icon in Japanese popular culture having appeared in the movies, TV and graphic novels. The Inugami Clan was filmed twice (1976 and 2006), both times by renowned director Kon Ichikawa. So popular was Yokomizo's detective that a spin-off character was created who is purportedly the grandson of Kindaichi. I went to YouTube and watched countless video clips from a long running TV series about Kindaichi -- none of it dubbed, all of it completely incomprehensible to me, yet fascinating all the same since I was by then familiar with the character of Kindaichi. I even watched a trailer for a video game version of The Inugami Clan which visually I did understand even if I couldn’t read any of the Japanese phrases being flashed across the screen. The illustrations and characters depicted in that video game trailer accurately and vividly depict what I read in this fascinating and grotesque mystery novel.

Based on the other books I have read (most published in the 1970s) it appears that Seishi Yokomizo truly is the forefather of the modern Japanese detective novel. On display are all of the characteristics that you will find in any Japanese crime novel from the 1940s and onward: an intricate plot that is fairly clued, grotesque murders, family secrets, disguised individuals, false identities, an eccentric detective with wily methods, and efficient policemen clever in their own right but easily baffled by the fantastic elements that accompany the crimes. The Inugami Clan is rife with the bizarre and the grotesque, has a smattering of Japanese lore and culture, and shows more than a few nods to the detective novel tropes so well known to Western readers. The opening scenes, for example, are reminiscent of Peril at End House with a young woman who tells Kindaichi that she barely escaped three outrageous attempts on her life. Yet in its essence the novel is utterly Japanese. The motives of one of the characters make perfect sense in Japanese culture though would strain credulity in a mystery written by a European or North American.

Matsuko Inugami takes a handprint of her son Kiyo in the 2006 film remake

The basic plot is familiar to any devotee of golden Age detective fiction. A family of greedy relatives awaits the reading of the will of recently deceased Sahei Inugami, wealthy owner of a silk factory. The will turns out to have convoluted rules requiring Tamayo, a non-blood relative, to choose her husband from Sahei's three grandsons. She must do so within a required time period or risk losing her inheritance. If she chooses none of them, she forfeits the entire fortune and it reverts to the mysteriously missing Shizuma, a young man rumored to be Sahei's illegitimate son. Needless to say the will infuriates all the relatives, mostly Sahei's daughters - the mothers of the men Tamayo must consider for her husband. Soon the grandsons are being stalked by a fiendish killer who seems to be re-enacting a curse set down decades in the past.

Discovery of the decapitated head of Take Inugami in the chrysanthemum garden (2006 film version)

The story reminded me of an old Gothic sensation novel with creepy settings, frenzied characters, mutilation of dead bodies, and bizarre murder methods employed. The bodies are discovered in unusual places like the eerie garden with life sized dolls all wearing kimonos made of chrysanthemums, or submerged upside down in a frozen lake. One of the most unusual characters is Kiyo who has returned to his home horribly burnt and disfigured from the recent war and wears a life-like rubber mask that resembles the features of his face prior to his hapless service in the war. And of course there is Kindaichi himself - described as a sort of Japanese Columbo elsewhere on the internet. He is an odd man who always dresses in a traditional, albeit shabby and rumpled, Japanese kimono and wears a beaten woolen hat, and for the most part he is of unkempt appearance. He scratches his tousled hair in a fidgety manner when mulling over strange clues, and is given to excitable stammering when on the verge of solving one of the many puzzles attached to the numerous crimes.

French version of The Inugami Clan.
(The ax, the koto & the chrysanthemum are
three family heirlooms that are part of the curse)

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and if I managed to figure out many (but not all) of the puzzles in the story it is not a strike against Yokomizo as a mystery writer. He has a Christianna Brand-like plot device with several characters attempting to protect loved ones whom they suspect of being the murderer and manipulating the evidence. Consequently, the crime scenes as discovered by the police and Kindaichi may not always be a reflection of the truth. This was one of the best parts of the book to me. Yokomizo's fertile imagination and plotting make for an entertaining and satisfying read. What is most frustrating, however, are the numerous allusions to previous books in the series which tantalize an English reader like me who would love to read those other stories. Who wouldn't want to find out why the murderer in The Honjin Murders (Kindaichi's first case published in Japan in 1946) displayed the victim hung upside down from a plum tree? Or discover the horrific secret of a body found stuffed inside a temple bell in Gokumon Island (1948)? These are only two of the six other books mentioned throughout the telling of the strange murders in The Inugami Clan. But - you guessed it - this is the only Yokomizo book to have been translated into English. I'd have better luck if I could read French - there are at least three books translated into that language that I found, perhaps more. I guess I can only hope and wait for some enterprising translator to give us more of Kosuke Kindaichi's adventures in English.

Here is the trailer for the 2006 remake from director Kon Ichikawa. One of the rare versions I found with English subtitles. Enjoy, then go find a copy of the book and read it!

The Thief of Words and Ideas

2011-11-12T10:40:00.000-06:00

I have become fascinated with the plagiarism scandal surrounding the publication of Assassin of Secrets by Quentin Rowan (aka Q.R. Markham). After reading numerous reports, including the dogged detective work by Edward Cameron, and following link after link from on-line newspaper articles I was finally led to the blog of Jeremy Duns, a spy novelist who gave a "fulsome blurb" (his own words) for Rowan's book. He called it "an instant classic" -- words he now shamefacedly admits were entirely inappropriate.

Duns writes in depth about his experience of reading the book, enjoying it, and now post-scandal he re-examines how he was duped by Rowan's amalgamation of other thriller writers' words. Included are emails sent to him from Rowan throughout the process of "writing" up to the final release of the book that reveal a manipulative sociopath enjoying his moment of glory. Read the essay here. Duns' final paragraph and conclusion so aptly sums up exactly how I feel about this. Rather than joining with the post-modernist fools who claim that Rowan is some sort of "genius" (read this speculation) he calls for all of us to condemn Rowan as the thief that he truly is.

FFB: Creep, Shadow! - A. Merritt

2011-11-11T08:40:00.000-06:00

There is more than a touch of Sax Rohmer's malevolent masters of the occult (notably Antony Ferrar and Trepniak) than the usual brand of high fantasy in this penultimate novel by Abraham Merritt. And thrown in for good measure a generous amount of a Haggard-like lost race/reincarnated souls romance.

Richard Ralston, friend of Dr. Alan Caranac and Bill Bennett, has recently committed suicide inexplicably. Ralston's death is the latest in a string of suicides of wealthy young men. At a dinner party for Dr. Rene De Feradel, a visiting French psychiatrist, and his alluring and mysterious daughter Dahut, Bennett promises Caranac that he will reveal a secret Ralston confided in him prior to his death. That secret is tied to Dahut who Bennett is convinced is responsible for Ralston's death.

The talk at the dinner party involves all sorts of strange topics. Not the least of which is a reference to the story of Burn, Witch, Burn (another supernatural thriller by Merritt featuring Dr. Lowell as narrator and sole survivor). DeKeradel implies that he knows that Dr. Lowell was instrumental in the destruction of "the dollmaker" in that other book who we learn was a former lover of the French psychiatrist. The hint of a revenge scheme hangs thick in the air. Throughout Bennett's story Caranac keeps his eye on Dahut, watching for any tell-tale signs of incriminating behavior. Strange disembodied shadows seem to pursue Bennett and he has heard from Ralston's own lips prior to his death of similar shadows that appeared with no person anywhere near him to cast the shapes. Bennett suspects Dahut has some paranormal powers that she used to coerce Ralston and the other men to kill themselves.

There are echoes of Haggard's She, the classic novel of reincarnation in a lost civilization. A lengthy section of the book is devoted to a past life regression achieved through Dahut's powers of glamour and hypnotism in which Alan Caranac travels back to the ancient city of Ys and meets Dahut in previous life as the Demoiselle d'Ys. But when the book completely embraces this mode it turns into a pale imitation of Haggard's masterpiece and becomes laughably bad. The romance is highlighted with hokey stilted dialogue that never manages to sit well with a modern audience.

After all the interesting exposition and talk of African witchcraft, ancient legends and the near parody of She the book diminishes into a predictable thriller. The story is slight and repetitious. Not one of Merritt's better tales. If you need to sample his work I suggest The Dwellers in the Mirage or The Face in the Abyss for lost race adventures. Most critics agree that his fantasy masterwork is The Ship of Ishtar, a dream-like timeslip novel of a modern day man who travels back to the ancient city of Babylon.