Not too many recognizable detectives turn up in this discussion because frankly most of the magician detectives from the Golden Age are found in the pages of long forgotten pulp magazines from the the early 20th century. Too few of those thousands of stories have been reprinted in collections for 21st century readers. But we do cover The Great Merlini created by magician mystery writer Clayton Rawson as well as another of Rawson's magician detectives who appeared only in pulp short stories. The impossible crime mystery masterpiece The Rim of the Pit by Hake Talbot, also a magician turned mystery writer, is discussed with admiration too.
We travel all over the magic in mystery spectrum with a somewhat chronological exploration starting with some pulp stories from the very early days of that business and my discovery that Charles Fulton Oursler (aka Anthony Abbot) had been writing weird mysteries, many with magician detectives, between 1919 and 1929. Ken Crossen and Bruce Elliott turn up, we segue into talk of seances, mediums and the fraudulent spiritualists of the early 20th century a topic that popped up in many novels of the era. The rarely mentioned, quite forgotten, American mystery writer Henry Kitchell Webster makes a long overdue appearance when I discuss his excellent crime novel The Ghost Girl and the talk of seances and mediums in books gives way to TV shows and movies that feature either magicians or seances.It's quite a hodgepodge of a discussion. We have a lot of fun, there's much more laughter than in the other talks. (It's the American with no real filter talking, after all.) And you will finally hear what I sound like, why I'm so odd, and why I have been drawn to macabre genre fiction since I was a child.
Why not have a listen! Click on this link Episode 4: Magic, Mummery, and Misdirection.
Nice to finally hear your voice. Must admit, I'd more or less forgotten about Doug Henning, though I once followed his political career with great interest, and was horrified by his efforts to build a Transcendental Meditation theme park in Ontario's wine country.
ReplyDeleteThanks for listening, Brian. Doug Henning was one of my heroes when I was a kid. He was proof to me that geeks and nerds can grow up to be successful. Once I headed off to college I basically forgot he was alive. Never knew about his political career or anything else.
Deletemy discovery that Charles Fulton Oursler (aka Anthony Abbot) had been writing weird mysteries, many with magician detectives, between 1919 and 1929.
ReplyDeleteI'd love to get hold of some of those stories. I'm quite fond of the Anthony Abbot novels.