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Saturday, December 15, 2018

Best Vintage Mystery Reprint of 2018, part two

Here's my second nomination for our vintage mystery blogging community competition to name the "Best Vintage Mystery Reprint of 2018." As you know, last week we all wrote about our first of two books that we think deserve the digital award and the high outpouring of love from the blogging community -- that's you! -- will help decide the winner. For all the details see Kate Jackson's post over at Cross Examining Crime. So enough of this obligatory introduction. Onto the announcement!

Once again I find myself bending the rules because I want to nominate an entire series of books that have been reprinted. Similar to last week's choice of The Threefold Cord by Francis Vivian, I thoroughly enjoy the character of the lead detective. Also, like Vivian this author I'm nominating is a literate writer who is unsparing with his sense of humor. Finally, I think the plots are original and the books are fine examples of the traditional detective novel which of course means that the books include the fast diminishing art (not altogether lost as of yet!) of "fair play clueing."

And so Pretty Sinister Books would like to nominate the newly reprinted detective novels of R. T. Campbell released by Dover, a publisher that seems to be unnoticed by almost everyone in the vintage crime fiction blogging community. And as the best of the lot I select ...drum roll...

Death for Madame by R. T. Campbell

To entice you like a manipulative marketing maven, behold the blurb taken directly from the back cover:

Max Boyle was hoping for a quiet life after the rough and tumble of World War II, but "my life with Professor Stubbs had been nothing more than one damned murder after another, and even in between murders I'd had no peace." As the professor's/amateur detective's assistant, Max is inevitably drawn into the latest imbroglio, this one involving Stubbs' drinking buddy, an amiable lunatic known as Mr. Carr. It seems that Mr. Carr's dotty old Aunt Lottie, who ran a tawdry hotel in Notting Hill, was found strangled in her rocking chair. Each boarder is mentioned in her will, and all of their alibis are weak.

There's more but I'll stop. You get the three best characters listed above, most importantly the detective Professor Stubbs.  Here are my unconventional reasons for selecting this book:
  • Another under-the-radar author of detective novels that everyone should know and read. I only learned of Campbell thanks to Dover's reprints of the first two Prof. Stubbs back in the 80s and now we have four of the seven books available for our reading pleasure.
  • A delightful amateur sleuth who may remind hardcore fans of such stalwart heroes of our genre as Sir Henry Merrivale, Arthur Crook, and Reggie Fortune. Stubbs is another rotund, irreverent, beer guzzling, brilliant man who suffers no fools gladly.
  • Clever plots with lively characters, literate writing and the best of all--
  • Laugh out loud humor like this passage from Chapter 3
He appeared in the doorway wrapped in a voluminous and violently tartan dressing gown, so violent, in fact, that I suspect that it must have been responsible for the interdict on tartan after the 1745 rising. I knew that it would have frightened the guts out of me if I had had anything in the way of a hangover.
Only Bev at My Reader's Block seems to be aware of the adventures of Professor Stubbs. Her review of Bodies in the Bookshop (click on the link to read it) is proof that Campbell still has the power to delight the most discriminating of detective fiction readers. Bev with her often perspicacious reviews has proven time and again to be highly discriminating.

Death for Madame falls at the end of the brief series of seven books, but of the two newest reprints Death for Madame best exemplifies Campbell's approach to the detective novel. The final book in the series Swing Low, Swing Death, has also been reprinted by Dover along with Unholy Dying and Bodies in the Bookshop which were the only Stubbs books available in reprint editions since the late 1980s. Swing Low... is one of the most unusual of the Prof. Stubbs mysteries. As much as I enjoyed it for a whole different set of reasons I couldn't offer it up as the "Best Vintage Crime Reprint" because it is more a satire of the modern art world than it is a detective novel.

I know that neither of my nominations will get many votes, (if any at all!) but it did give me a chance to once again remind everyone of the Francis Vivian mysteries with my mention of The Threefold Cord and to clue everyone in about the fine work that Dover Publications is doing in this Vintage Crime Fiction Renaissance. In addition to Campbell's books, over the past year Dover has managed to reprint (all without any fanfare or marketing blitz) books by Frances & Richard Lockridge, Ellis Peters, Joan Fleming (one of my favorites), and even Bill Pronzini and Max Allan Collins.  Time for us to pay a little more attention to the American publishers rather than limiting ourselves to Dean Street Press, British Library Crime Classics and HarperCollins as the hallowed triumvirate of vintage crime reprints.

Voting starts next week and the winner will be announced soon. Good luck to all the nominees!

13 comments:

  1. Glad you managed to pin down your second choice. I too have read Bodies in a Bookshop, back in 2015. I liked the character of the professor, but thought the plot needed a little more oomph.

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  2. That was fast. And you’re welcome! 😉

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    1. Yes, I can move fast and read fast when under pressure!

      Well, I did thank you last week in the comment section. But once again I will tell others that without Ken notifying me of Dover's reprint of Malice Aforethought I would never have learned of the many new reprints Dover released this year.

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  3. I think it's worth noting that Campbell is the pseudonym of Ruthven Todd, Edinburgh-born poet and novelist, friend of Dylan Thomas, Wyndham Lewis, and also Julian Symons who bases a character in The Immaterial Murder Case (Symons' first detective novel?) on Todd!!

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    1. Well hello there, stranger! Thanks for stopping by. As I said to Kate I rushed this one out. Didn’t have time to do a full review or add any author info. Much appreciated, Ron. Happy holidays to you out there in BC!

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  4. As I recollect Barzun disdained the early two Dover reprints, which was disappointing to me since they sounded so enticing, But I've learned to disagree with Prof. Barzun!

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    1. Like I said I bend the rules in this contest (exploit the rules is perhaps more accurate) in order to bring attention to little known writers whose deserved to be reprinted. By no means are either of my nominations the “best”. But Professor Stubbs is an affable and fun character. I enjoy Campbell’s humor and his penchant for farce. You might like these books. If you know anything about modern art and have a big problem with it as Ruthven Todd clearly did, then Swing Low... is a book you’d love. It’s a hilariously scathing indictment of the sham that is “modern art”.

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    2. I visited the Uffizi in Florence. Their “modern” section is magnificent. Really it is.

      Of course, they define “modern” as after 1500, so there's that.

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  5. It's funny because my sheer association with Dover is the inexpensive, rather plain paperback copies of classics from my high school English classes--Dover Thrift Editions. I particularly remember the Dover Thrift Scarlet Letter, the cover of which was just a pattern of red uppercase As on a black background. It's hard to reconcile that with novelty and excitement, but I'm looking at their selection now and they have some great, exciting reprints! So interesting.

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    1. I don’t know who’s working for them these days but they’ve drastically improved for the better in every way: book selection, book design, typography. I wonder why they arent sending out review copies to blog writers. They’re missing out on increasing their sales with these new reprints.

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  6. Hey, I read the Dover edition of Bodies in the Bookshop years ago, before I began blogging, but can't remembering anything about it. Not a single thing. So I'll take your word for it and throw Death for Madame on the pile for next year.

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  7. "I know that neither of my nominations will get many votes, (if any at all!)"
    Well, one of my 3 votes was for The Threefold Cord. Hence you will get at least one vote !

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  8. A fervent mind : the life of Ruthven Todd by Peter Main (ISBN: 9780992916060 a biography of Ruthven Todd/R.T. Campbell was published recently.

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