FFB: The Dead Have No Friends - John Donavan

THE STORY:  Intensely disliked, but extremely popular and financially profitable, novelist Emmanuel Cortal is murdered in his unique glass enclosed writing studio.  There is only one entrance and it was locked from the inside. His death may at first seem to have been natural, but police find he has been poisoned with a highly unusual toxin. How was the administered when apparently no one went into the studio the night he died?

THE CHARACTERS: Although The Dead Have No Friends (1952) is by John Donavan Sergeant Johnny Lamb, Donavan's usual series detective is nowhere in sight.  Instead we have Chief Inspector Roger Newlyn, the son of a Marquis who is affectionately referred to as "the Dook" by the policeman on his team or as Mrs. Coker, the cook in the Cortal household, describes him " a reel haristocrat." Despite the deferential attitude of servants who address him as "my lord" and the perks he gets that come with his family name Newlyn would much prefer to be done with his inherited title and just be known as a policeman.  He's efficient,  likeable and very good at his job as are the men who serve under him. Though as prominent as his role is Newlyn surprisingly is not the one who solves the case. Figuring out the strange murder weapon, the way it was administered and the unveiling of the identity of the killer falls to someone else entirely.

That man is Benjamin Scarle, who we first get to know in a scene of outrageous bluster and pompous anger in the office of literary agent T. F. Rodder.  Scarle is a former police commissioner, now retired, and is a bit behind in turning in the manuscript of his memoir he was coaxed into writing. Contentious, opinionated, and formidable Scarle will remind detective fiction fans of similar larger the life sleuths as Sir Henry Merrivale, Professor Stubbs, and Simon Gale.

Cortal, of course, is also one of Rodder's clients and this is how Scarle becomes involved in the case.  Though he claims to be retired Benjamin Scarle is one of those policeman who will never give up his work. Often Scarle serves as a consultant in some of the more complex cases involving Scotland Yard.  Newlyn is quick to enlist his aid when he is told the coincidence of Cortal and Scarle being clients at the same literary agency.

I made a long list of characters because the first section of this novel, a scathing satire of literary workplaces, was overflowing with names and personalities.  None of the people at the Rodder agency is pertinent to the murder case other than T. F. Rodder himself.  I wasted an entire piece of paper making notes on the staff and their delightful eccentricities only to never read of many of them after the first three chapters. Nigel Morland, the writer behind the "John Donavan" pen name, clearly was having a lot of fun in poking fun at the world of agents, publishers and writers. I wouldn't be surprised if many of these characters were based on people he knew. Instead of eagerly scribbling down notes on the staff of the agency I should have just waited until the police started their murder investigation. For it is the Cortal household with its myriad servants, Cortal's soon-to-be ex-wife Vivien, his 12 year old son Tony, and actress paramour Gerda Heywood who are the real characters to pay attention to.

INNOVATIONS:  The murder scene, of course, is perhaps the most original element.  Cortal has built for himself a private sanctuary where he can be in isolation while he writes. Within the cavernous ballroom converted into a library of his Georgian mansion he has placed his transparent studio, an entirely glass-enclosed private domain where he can see anyone coming toward him on all sides. Thankfully we are given a beautifully drawn and labeled plan of Cortal's glass room-within-a-room that definitely helps the reader understand how impenetrable it appears to be.

 

But in addition to the odd murder setting Morland adds clueing about the door of the ballroom's main entry which leads to the glass encased writing studio.  One of the maids has a great scene where she mentions the clicking of the door handle. She has exceptionally acute hearing and has always been aware of the odd noise which reverberates through the nearly deserted floor where the ballroom and studio are located.  Much is made of this and Newlyn sensing the young woman's sincere attitude and resolute testimony has his team investigate the door. They determine that the clicking sound only occurs when someone leaves the room. One brilliantly observant cop even shows Newlyn exactly how it makes the noise. This bit of info is crucial to eliminating possible suspects among the list of those who visited the ballroom just prior to Cortal's death.  The whole book is filled with excellent details like the "mystery of the clicking door" in helping the police determine who could have killed Cortal.

Also notable is Cortal's weird museum of African artifacts and medieval weaponry, a hodgepodge of dangerous objects that were left in an unlocked room. I was reminded of the many similar scenes from the crime museum in Isabel Ostrander's The Twenty-Six Clues to the collection of skulls in Freeman's The Uttermost Farthing all the way up to the prominently displayed weapon collection that features in the climax of the recent movie Knives Out.

Much of The Dead Have No Friends reminded me of a classic Agatha Christie novel. The multiple Golden Age motifs and conventions continued to pile up and delighted me the deeper I got into the book. A convoluted will with a cruel legacy, an actress who does more acting in real life than on stage, a murder mystery novel ghost written by one of the suspects, minor characters who seem to be thrown in only to  entertain the reader but who prove to be most important of all -- all of these elements make The Dead Have No Friends a corker of a murder mystery. Morland was always a thriller writer first and foremost, and he cannot resist adding a hair-rising climax worthy of the cinema. It's so well done that I found myself gasping in awe but moreso for it being highly reminiscent of the finale of one of Christie's best mysteries.

QUOTES:  Wessex Street on a Sunday forenoon has a peculiar air, like an old lady in a tube subway waiting for somebody to tell her where to go.

A typical outburst from Benjamin Scarle: "Hell's bell, Malcolm, you're a nasty-minded chap! Don't stare at me like a recalcitrant bacteria, startin' revolutions on a culture plate."

"Your mental dexterity is only equaled by your appalling audacity."

The English worship old customs, colourful anachronisms, and self-opinionated old men with original ways.

Scarle was not a psychic man: he had that quality of all real thinkers, in that he could parade invisible people before him and survey them from a godlike peak, guided by understanding and insight blessed with the incisive, merciless qualities of a scalpel. As the actors in the tragedy...passed before him each was dissected neatly, as if the heart was cut open and its secrets betrayed.

"'Turns out well'?" Scarle waved. "My dear chap, I'm takin' over, aren't I? That's an assurance of success."

EDGAR WALLACE ALLUSIONS:  Morland was Edgar Wallace's protege and friend. His early books were dedicated to Wallace and are modeled on his style of thriller with policemen as protagonists and not an amateur sleuth in sight.  Morland also claimed to be his secretary. Wallace is mentioned two separate times in this book. First, in a faint allusion that only a few might catch. Cortal is described as posing with a cigarette in an extremely long holder "copied from a long dead and still unforgotten writer of detective stories who had been loved as Cortal never would be."  The second time Wallace is directly mentioned when the investigation uncovers the ghost written novel The Pliny Problem. Rodder, the literary agent says: "Don't you recall how people used to say that Edgar Wallace had hacks to write his books? I knew E.W. well and I can assure you it was fatuous nonsense."  A clear case of Morland inserting himself into the narrative.

THINGS I LEARNED:  The Yost Typewriter is mentioned in a throwaway line and of course I needed to look it up.  Named after its inventor George Washington Yost it is one of the earliest typewriters, created in the last decade of the 19th century. An early ad proclaimed its original features: "No ribbon, direct printing, permanent alignment." As for the remarkable lack of ribbon here is how that worked according to an article at Antiquetypewriters.com: "Inking is done by a felt pad positioned in a full circle around the top of the tower where the type-bars rest. The type-bars travel an intricate half-flip upwards to reach the platen and then are channeled, by an inverse pyramid shaped guide hole, to strike the platen in exactly the same spot every time, giving the accurate alignment that Yost demanded."

I learned all about Acokanthera schimperi a plant indigenous to eastern Africa. Its bark wood and roots are used to make an arrow poison as well as being used in tribal medicines.

SUMMARY:  Written in 1952 and seemingly very modern The Dead Have No Friends simultaneously seems like a retro Golden Age book.  It may have been written years before and sat around waiting for the right time for Morland to submit it. The only sign that it is a later work is his more mature approach to characterization, the moral nature of the resolution, and the focus on psychology which was one of his main interests in the last half of his writing career.  I found little in his writing to arouse my irritation like xenophobic or ethnic slurs, misogyny or any of his other sins for which he has been derided.  The locked room puzzle, the clever murder method, the clues that lead to the solution, the abundance of suspects and motives -- all of this is redolent of the good ol' days of pure detection.  In fact, of all the Morland books I've read, whether under his real name or a pseudonym, I will concede that this is perhaps the best of the lot. As seen on the final page to the left (no spoilers at all in the bittersweet final paragraphs, BTW) the publisher promised more adventures from the thoroughly enjoyable Benjamin Scarle. Sadly, nothing ever came of that. The Dead Have No Friends is his first and only appearance.

It's a shame that this fine book is so ridiculously scarce. Purchased a few months ago my copy is the first I have seen in over 45 years of collecting and reading vintage crime fiction. This is one to add to the list of Must Be Reprinted titles. Here's hope that some enterprising publisher stumbles across this post and takes up the challenge.

NEW STUFF: The Eighth Detective - Alex Pavesi

The Eighth Detective
(UK title: Eight Detectives)
by Alex Pavesi
Henry Holt & Co.
ISBN: 978-1-250-75593-3
289 pp. $26.99
Publication date: August 4, 2020

"I think that when you're reading about death as entertainment it should leave you feeling slightly uncomfortable, even slightly sick." -- Julia Hart, The Eighth Detective

Devotees of Golden Age detective fiction are well aware of the may lists of rules that cognizant and often protective writers of the genre have devised as suggestions for those who wish to adhere to the fair play tenets of mystery storytelling that make detective fiction a kind of intellectual competition between reader and writer.  Ronald A. Knox's Decalogue and the 20 Rules of Willard Huntington Wright as "S. S. Van Dine" date back to the early 20th century and for the most part are now tacit instructions followed by novice and veteran mystery writers alike.  There have been countless deconstructions of these rules as mystery fiction faced challenges from post-modern writers like Gilbert Adair and Paul Auster who wrote intellectual send-ups of the detective novel. In the case of Josef Škvorecký's short story collection Sins for Father Knox (1973) a detective story writer defiantly wrote ten stories which break each of the hallowed ten rules set forth by Knox. Now we have yet another deconstruction of the conventions of detective fiction in a new short story collection that is also a clever novel in which the "ingredients" of a generic detective story plot are mixed up and presented in a medley of rearrangements of those ingredients. In essence The Eight Detective gives us variations on the theme of victim, suspects, and detective.

The idea is very simple.  It is 1970 and Grant McAllister, a retired mathematician living a solitary life on an undisclosed Mediterranean island, is visited by an editor eager to reprint his privately published mystery short story collection of thirty years ago, The White Murders, a book that has achieved cult status among crime fiction collectors.  The book contains seven stories that comment on McAllister's  mathematical/literary essay "The Permutations of Detective Fiction" published in 1937 in a small journal called Mathematical Recreations. Over the course of the novel Julia Hart, the editor, reads the stories in the presence of McAllister and then discusses them afterward.  We, as readers, are treated to all seven stories and each of the seven ensuing "Conversations." But it is not just a story collection. The stories themselves fuel a mystery that create the story of the novel.

Julia begins to notice oddities in the structure of each story, elements she calls "discrepancies." By the fourth instance of these discrepancies Julia believes they are meant as clues to a larger mystery McAllister has laid out in secret within all seven tales. She is certain the mystery involves a notorious murder that occurred around the time McAllister was writing these stories. Julie believes that the title of the collection The White Murders is not referring to the many settings of white buildings as McAllister claims but instead to an actress and playwright named Elizabeth White who was found strangled back in 1940. Her killer was never found. As the reader progresses from story to story he may find himself matching wits with Julia trying to find the "discrepancy" in each story before she reveals it in the "Conversation" chapter immediately following. McAllister is elusive and cryptic in answering Julia's penetrating and provocative questions. Is he feigning ignorance or is he genuinely telling the truth?  Is Julia imagining wholly coincidental parallels to Elizabeth White's murder?

Those readers who take up the tacit challenge will find themselves turning literary detective and amateur linguist as the solving of a mystery turns away from the standard whodunnit and whydunnit questions and becomes the mystery of syntax and word choice and off putting plotholes. Some examples:  Pavesi has fun with the use of colors throughout the stories (in one story all of the characters are named after colors), unusual choices of adjectives, and allusions to well known detective stories and novels. But is this all there is to the mystery of The Eighth Detective?

Of course not. The Eighth Detective could not be a real detective novel unless it also had some sort of inherent murder mystery. Julia's perspicacious reading uncovers a genuine mystery that relates to Elizabeth White's murder.  No more can I say about this cleverly worked out mix of word puzzles, stylistic mysteries in seven different narratives, and the overarching mystery Julia uncovers. You can only truly enjoy the challenges and imaginative riffs by discovering them on your own.

Alex Pavesi, himself a mathematician, is clearly is a fan of mystery fiction.  He has written seven fine examples of mystery short stories that will recall a variety of writers. Notably, "Trouble on Blue Pearl Island" is most obviously his homage to And Then There Were None (who hasn't written one of these lately?) that answers one of McAllister's variations of the "ingredients" in giving us a story in which all the suspects are murdered. The murder methods are diabolical, far from the kind of thing one finds in Golden Age mystery fiction unless you have indulged in the American shudder pulps of the 1930s and 1940s. Though the plot is clearly a mirror of Agatha Christie's landmark murder mystery it often reminded me more of the Saw horror movie franchise. Be prepared!

Alex Pavesi

Of the other six stories I enjoyed most of all "Death at the Seaside" featuring a Carr-like egomaniacal amateur detective named Winstone Brown and is the most fairly clued of the stories; "A Detective and His Evidence" atypically nasty and amoral in tone which is explained rather brilliantly in the finale; and "The Cursed Village," the most ambitious of the stories in its variation on the theme of both multiple criminals and multiple solutions. In fact, by the time the reader has reached the final page of The Eighth Detective he may discover that the book was also a homage to Christianna Brand, the queen of multiple solutions. 

I enjoyed some of the philosophical ideas contained in McAlllister's essay "The Permutations of Detective Fiction " and he of course outlines those ideas in one of the many "Conversation" chapters. But the essay is reductive rather than all-encompassing in its discussion of detective fiction in terms only of victims, suspects and detectives.  Julia at one point says his theory is inherently flawed because these four "ingredient" sets and subsets cannot account for a murder mystery with multiple crimes committed by more than one suspect as often occurs in the work of my favorite Golden Age neglected writer Vernon Loder. McAllister dismisses that observation with a lame excuse: "It's cheating really."  Yet as I see it in the 21st century there really can be no cheating when it comes to writing detective fiction.  In this type of imaginative writing there never were any real rules -- only expectations of a defined set of narrative conventions. In the end the entire novel is one huge piece of ironic fiction writing. For what Pavesi does in The Eighth Detective so ingeniously is to point out that even McAllister's "permutations" can be flouted and defied.

Finally -- a warning to those who like to flip and scan ahead.  Do not read the chapter headings before you get to them.  There is a reason there is no Table of Contents in this book.  If you read the chapter headings looking for the story titles you may reveal one last minute surprise that may just spoil the overall brilliance of the book as a novel.

NEW STUFF: Eight Perfect Murders - Peter Swanson

This is not a review. This is pretty much a diatribe and a warning to anyone vaguely titillated by the premise of Eight Perfect Murders (2020) by Peter Swanson. I have never read any of Swanson's other books. I was only interested in this because it is yet another contemporary crime novel that is paying homage to classic mystery novels -- or rather books (and one play, later a screenplay) that feature murder. The ostensibly "perfect murders" are found in eight different crime fiction works, only three of them genuine detective novels, spanning seventy years from The Red House Mystery by A. A. Milne published in 1922 to 1992's The Secret History by Donna Tartt.

Interesting that last title. Admittedly as far removed from crime fiction as one can get, Tartt's book is an overhyped 'literary novel' that features murder. It's not really a mystery as I define the genre nor is it anything remotely resembling a detective novel. However, the list in which these books appear is not really concerned with genre of any type even if it was composed by Malcolm Kershaw, a mystery bookstore owner and narrator of Swanson's novel. The list plays with the idea of a supposedly perfectly executed murder on paper that could have allowed the culprit to escape justice. In the novel this list appears to be the inspiration for a serial killer who is copying the murder methods from each book on the list. The killer's murders are similarly made to look like accidents or natural deaths and each victim is someone who deserves death for unpunished crimes.

#1 on the list

#2 on the list

My problem with Eight Perfect Murders is that Peter Swanson blatantly disregards one of the tacit rules of paying homage to any work of fiction, but especially a mystery novel. He ruins every one of the eight books by divulging in great detail the endings. He reveals not only the method of each "perfect murder" but the motivations and the identity of each murderer. Essentially, scattered throughout his own story Swanson has written a Cliff Notes of classic crime works.

#3 on the list

#4 on the list

It was not necessary to explain the entire plot of every book, it was quite easy to discuss the murder method without revealing who the killer was. Not only does he spoil these books once – he does so repeatedly. I got the feeling I was reading a old time serial there was so much repetition. The only thing missing was "Previously on..." or "In our last episode..." He tells us the plot of Malice Aforethought about three separate times. He mentions the ending of The Drowner by John D. MacDonald just as many.

[Aside: Where are the editors, BTW? Asleep at the wheel as usual. This is my eternal woeful complaint about contemporary publishing houses for the past 20+ years.]

#5 on the list

#6 on the list

That Swanson chose not to be circumspect in discussing the various killers' identities makes me think that the writer supposedly paying homage to works of the past is contemptuous of, or at least envious of, those writers and their capacity for ingenuity and originality. Who at Morrow and HarperCollins thought this was a cool idea to give away the endings of all these books? I was beyond disappointed with Swanson I was furious with him. Luckily, I was familiar with all of the old books mentioned, even less well known titles like The Drowner and The Burnt Orange Heresy by Charles Willeford, the latter mentioned only in passing towards the end of the book. [Both of those titles, BTW, are reviewed on my blog.] However, the vast majority of readers will not be familiar with even half of these books. More likely most people will be familiar with the movie and TV versions of five of them.

#7 on the list

#8 on the list

As for Swanson's novel itself? Extremely limited in originality from what is on display here. Since so much of the book is based on the works of more skilled, more interesting, and more imaginative writers Swanson had to surpass all of them in my estimation in order to succeed. He failed. His ideas are pedestrian or derivative of movies and TV shows. The overarching plot and the slow reveal of Malcolm’s true personality is a retread of every damn "unreliable narrator" book (a subgenre I am beginning to grow weary of) published in the past ten years. He even alludes to Gone Girl as a "clue" that Malcolm is just as unreliable as the narrator in that book. And makes it seem like Gillian Flynn invented the concept.

Nothing was surprising at all. The movie-of-the-week style motivations of the protagonist and the horrible secrets of the victims “who deserved to die” (another reprehensible conceit cropping up in modern crime fiction these days) were neither creepy nor spine-chilling. It was all just banal.

Finally, the biggest insult of all. In Malcolm Kershaw the writer has created a bookseller who doesn't read the books he sells, who pretends to have read them when having conversations with his customers and employees. He confesses that he just can't read crime fiction anymore even though this is his chosen profession. Swanson gives an entirely lame reason for Malcolm’s decision to stop reading crime fiction, one that is entirely in conflict with his the bookseller's personality, but tied to his deep, dark secrets in the past. Most readers will figure it all out.

Ultimately, all the twists are mechanical and cliched. Drawing from past writers' plots makes this book nothing more than rehash. As a result the story lacks suspense and the genuinely unexpected events that should be the hallmark of all crime fiction. That most of the rave reviews dismiss the blatant spoilers, Swanson's ballsy borrowing, and focus on what they think is original shows that very few people care about classic crime novels anymore. It's all up for grabs now. It's just a matter of who has the nerve to get there first.

FFB: Shadows Before - Dorothy Bowers

UK Reprint (Hodder & Stoughton, circa 1940)

THE STORY: Mrs. Weir needs a companion to keep her out of harm's way.  The woman seems to be suffering from early senility -- drifting into her past memories, calling people by the wrong names -- and needs careful watching. But her newly hired caretaker is unable to prevent Mrs. Weir's death by arsenic poisoning.  Inspector Dan Pardoe investigates uncovering a household rife with greedy relatives and secretive employees. Complicating the overall investigation is the shadow of a previous crime still haunting the family. Mr. Weir has recently been acquitted of the murder of his sister-in-law, also poisoned. Is he in fact guilty of that crime and still on an arsenical rampage? 

THE CHARACTERS:  Shadows Before (1939), Dorothy Bowers' second detective novel, is quite a complicated story. We think at first that the story will focus on Aurelia Brett, the newly employed caretaker who was to prevent Mrs. Weir from doing herself harm and to perhaps also prevent anyone else from doing her harm. The entire first section "Coming Events" deals almost exclusively with Aurelia, her job interview, her new career plans and her settling into the Weir household. We get to know everyone through her point of view. When Mrs. Weir dies Inspector Pardoe enters the picture and the point of view shifts entirely. The lives of the Weir family are revealed, several motives and opportunities are uncovered. Aurelia, who was drugged the night of the murder to keep her away from Mrs. Weir, almost disappears into the background. It's an odd shift in point of view, but not one without a purpose.

US edition (Doubleday Crime Club, 1939)

Aurelia is hired mostly as an adult babysitter rather than a nurse. Mrs. Weir has a habit of taking long walks and gathering wild plants for an "herbal tea" she enjoys making.  In her muddled state of mind the Weir household are fearful she may pick some wrong plant and poison herself. She has already had a few bouts of illness that may have been caused by her tea. And so Aurelia becomes Mrs. Weir's constant companion, keeping a watch on her and her plant gathering/tea making rituals.

Religious zealot and imperious housekeeper Mrs. Kingdom accuses Alice Gretton, former tenant in a cottage near the Weir home, of causing Mrs. Weir to become ill.  Every time she visited Alice Mrs. Weir's health would deteriorate within a day or so. Because Mrs. Kingdom also espouses a vehement fundamental Christian worldview her ranting is dismissed; no one takes any of her warnings seriously. Alice has mysteriously vanished without a word to anyone other than placing a sign on her home "No Milk" to cancel deliveries from the milkman. Mrs. Kingdom is certain that Alice was a malicious woman, inveigling her way into Mrs. Weir's affections and trying to wheedle her way into the will in order to rob the family of the Weir fortune. The murder investigation and the disappearance of Alice will later intersect in one of the novel's most ingenious plot turns.

The other suspects include Mr. Weir's nephew Nick Terris, an Oxford student who rather enjoys pontificating on the subject of euthanasia; Augustus Weir, the widower's brother, an affected poet who runs a literary magazine in dire need of a financial boost; William Mond, a sinister butler guarding several secrets;  Miss Leith, an actress and friend of Matthew Weir; and Andrew Pitt, another Oxford student and friend of Nick's, invited to the Weir home for the Easter holiday and whose presence puts a few people on edge.

Adding to the fun of this intricately plotted tale are additional mysteries uncovered during the investigation like the previously mentioned disappearance of Alice Gretton.  We also must contend with the whereabouts of someone named Fenella Pagan, an actress last known to have been living in Australia; a group of gypsies living near the Weir home; and the reason for automotive sabotage that results in a near fatal car crash.

I liked the interaction between the two primary policemen though there are some other interesting bits with very minor cop characters, too. Pardoe is assisted by Sgt. Salt, a younger and insightful detective whose unconventional theories and deductions provide clarity for Pardoe's more reasonable ideas about the case. They make a good contrast of two generational styles police work -- the often brash, quick to judge, youthful learner and the calmer, more rational, seasoned veteran.

Ombres (Albin Michel, 1950)
French edition

INNOVATIONS:  By the time I had reached the penultimate chapter I marveled at one aspect of this novel more than any other. Some standard detective novel conventions are put to good use here: excellent misdirection that actually fooled me coupled with the labyrinthine use of multiple identities and masquerade. Most readers will catch on quickly that some of the characters aren't who they say they are, especially when you read one letter in the  final epistolary chapter of the first section. But the sheer number of aliases in this book rivals anything in the Victorian sensation novels I love so much in which beggars turn out to be policemen and actors are unmasked as private detectives and servants are revealed to be escaped convicts and what all else. Bowers shows some real hutzpah in this book. She manages to lead us down the garden path leading our attention to what she wants us to see as we overlook what should have been clear from the onset.  I simultaneously was admiring her and shaking my head at the overkill.

QUOTES:  These talks with Salt always served Pardoe as an admirable clearing-house for ideas that too often seemed at their most confusing before light broke. All the better if Salt, as was frequently the case, propounded a conflicting theory. The clash of inference acted as a stimulus on the Inspector, who had more than once pounced upon a truth hidden from both until they had found themselves in opposing camps.

THINGS  I LEARNED:  The V.A.D. is mentioned in passing to explain why one of the women characters is so savvy about poisons.  (I forgot to write down which woman.)  As many well read detective fiction fans know this is the Voluntary Aid Detachment, organized by the Red Cross in England to help civilians, mostly women, become part of the war effort. Volunteers in the V.A.D. worked alongside military nurses and physicians. The V.A.D. is the same outfit that Dame Agatha joined as a young woman during World War I. Similar to the character in Shadows Before Christie's experiences there helped her gain her vast knowledge of poisons and toxicity of abused medications.

Dog in the manger turned up again!  But it seems to have been inappropriately used in this context:  "Andy's a guest here, and I know he didn't want to be dog-in-the manger and squash Freddy..." Nick Terris is the one speaks that line. Maybe this was supposed to indicate his poseur university student persona.  I can't imagine that Bowers, who is an intelligent and informed writer, would have misused it by accident.

THE AUTHOR: Dorothy Bowers (1902-1948) and her work have been been discussed at length all over the blogosphere. No real need for me to go in to any great detail on this blog. A lovely capsule of her life can be found here at the Moonstone Press website. Everyone concedes that had Bowers lived longer she would have been quite a contender for some of her contemporaries in the world of mystery fiction.  Robbed of life by the ravages of tuberculosis Bowers died before she reached the age of 50.  Her five detective novels did get her noticed by the crime fiction world and she was about to be inducted into the Detection Club just prior to her death.

EASY TO FIND?  Huzzah! This one is available in multiple editions, one of them brand new from last year.  All of Dorothy Bowers' mystery novels have been reprinted in handsome editions by Moonstone Press, the same wonderful publisher who brought us The Perfect Alibi by Christopher St. John Sprigg along with three other of his detective novels. Additionally, all of the Rue Morgue Press reprint editions of Bowers' five books are still out there in abundance in the used book market.  So take your pick brand spanking new or barely old from the early 2000s. For those with more cash to spare and who want the real thing, as it were, you can dig a little deeper by using Hodder & Stoughton in yuor search terms and turn up a handful of vintage UK copies, albeit reprints rather than first editions. There are sadly no copies for sale online of the US Doubleday Crime Club edition though I have provided the very cool dust jacket with the skull illustration courtesy of Mark Terry's Facsimile Dust Jackets website.

Previously reviewed on this blog are two other equally well plotted and entertaining Bowers mystery novels: Fear for Miss Betony and A Deed without a Name.

NEW STUFF: A Different Kind of Evil - Andrew Wilson

A Different Kind of Evil by Andrew Wilson
Atria Books/Washington Square Press
(Simon & Schuster)
ISBN: 978-1501145094
336 pp. $16 (paperback)
Publication date: March 13, 2018

Agatha Christie is back in a sequel to the first book by Andrew Wilson (A Talent for Murder, 2017) which presented an alternative story to the reason for her amnesia episode back in the 1920s. A Different Kind of Evil takes place only two months after that headline making event that brought Christie a bit of international notoriety and has repercussions in her latest adventure in crime solving. Also based on her vacation in the Grand Canary Islands taken in the February following the Harrowgate Incident this second novel allows her to become a legitimate sleuth and not a would-be murderer. Her intended escape to Paradise for rest and relaxation turns into a detour into a den of vice and haven for hellish violence. Fans of Christie's mystery novels who might have been disappointed with the lack of detective novel features in the previous book will have nothing to complain about in this book. There are plenty of dead bodies, lots of clues in a wonderful homage to traditional detective novel storytelling, all culminating in a mind-blowing finale that dares to thumb its nose at those traditions while at the same time delivering a satisfying and thrilling ending to the multiple mysteries.

I hesitate to talk about the plot at all. And, in fact, I'm not going to. Imagine that! This is a book that is best read knowing as little as possible. I suggest you not read the plot blurb or any of the publicity related to it. Still, I cannot resist indulging in my knowledge of the Christie Canon by dropping a few hints for her diehard fans. Know that if you are among the cognoscenti who have read all her books and count among your favorites such prizewinners as Evil Under the Sun, Death on the Nile, Cards on the Table, Murder at Mesopotamia and Triangle at Rhodes there will be plenty for you to enjoy. I found elements of all of those books from a Salome Otterbourne clone in the person of the garrulous Mrs. Brendel to the feuding lovers Guy Trevelyan and Helen Hart who recall several similar couples in Christie's books. The inclusion of some Afro-Caribe occult rituals recall the voodoo business poor Linda Marshall got up to in Evil Under the Sun. Gerard Grenville, the occult master of Tenerife in A Different Kind of Evil and a standout creation among the intriguing cast, will remind Christie fans of many similar sinister types from Mr. Shaitana (Cards on the Table) to the creepy "witch" Thyrza Grey (The Pale Horse). None of these references are spoilers in any way, as they will be quite obvious nods to Christie's books by those well acquainted with them.

Set in the Canary Islands on Tenerife and its surrounding villages and beaches A Different Kind of Evil includes absorbing detail on mythology, culture and religion of the islands. With two archeologists and one geologist in the cast of characters frequent discussions of those sciences allow Wilson to enhance an already colorful setting. Of particular interest and what made the book even more unique as a mystery novel were the background on the Guanches (the pre-colonial indigenous people of the Canary Islands), their practice of mummification and death rituals, the mythology related to the volcano Mount Teide, and some fascinating details on the demon figures known as Tibicenas. I doubt anyone will be familiar with any of those topics unless they are anthropologists or students of arcane mythology.

Though Wilson's book is ingeniously clued in a manner very much in keeping with the Grand Dame's time honored methods of planting her clues as well as her skill in creating ample misdirection I very much doubt even the most astute readers will be able to outguess Wilson in his brilliant homage to Christie's life and work. With only a few sentimental indulgences when the story veers away from mystery to domesticity and motherhood in dealing with Agatha and her daughter Rosamund, Wilson keeps the focus on the many crimes plaguing Tenerife and its expatriate community. He succeeds in creating a pervading atmosphere of amorality and unnerving random violence when he sticks to his murder mystery plot. By far this is one of the most admirably performed and accomplished Christie pastiches in quite some time. Wilson matches Christie's talent in plot structure and mechanics, use of unusual characters, and multiple compellingly told mysteries in a book worthy of standing alongside any of the Grand Dame of Mystery's books.

NEW STUFF: Ten Dead Comedians - Fred Van Lente

Ten Dead Comedians
by Fred Van Lente
Quirk Publications
Hardcover ISBN: 9781594749742
e-Book ISBN: 9781594749759
288 pages
Release Date: July 11, 2017

The blurb on the back cover of Ten Dead Comedians tells it all. One deserted island, two nights of terror, three secret rooms... (see photo below) Actually one of those is a red herring, but it’s number five you ought to pay attention to. Yes, there really are five critical clues. In fact I think there are more than that. And yes those five clues can lead you to the solution of the mystery. This is not only an often laugh out loud funny satire about Hollywood self-involvement and unmanageable egos, or a dead on evisceration of the world of stand-up and improv comedy, it’s also one of the best plotted, fairly clued modern mysteries I’ve read this year. It takes a lot to impress me and Fred Van Lente did it.

The sometimes clunky opening chapter takes some concentration. It’s that kind of necessary evil in any send-up of the And Then There Were None style mystery novel overloaded with exposition and character introductions. Yes, as the back cover might have sounded all too familiar to a seasoned mystery reader, this is another clone of And Then There Were None. No, not a clone. An evil twin. A cackling, jibing, nasty spirited evil twin. And I mean all of that in a good way.

As the title clearly spells out for us instead of murderers we have jokesters and comics as the intended victims. Once the introductions are out of the way and we head to the thoroughly booby-trapped island the book settles in for a macabre and creepy weekend of horror and laughs. It becomes a real page turner, the characters are fleshed out more, the plot becomes ever more intriguing and the murder methods become ever more baroque. It’s a gruesome story, my friends. At times it seems that Van Lente may have decided to write a mash-up of Christie with the Saw franchise. Imagine such a monster genre-blender with laughs! Difficult I know, but dang it all it works. Just as Christie’s book becomes increasingly serious fueled by fear and paranoia so does Ten Dead Comedians. The book can be downright somber when it needs to be. Yet another facet that impressed me.

Each of the ten chapters is divided into ten sections and separated by ten transcripts. As the book progresses those transcripts, eight of which are actual stand-up routines, display Van Lente’s versatility as a comic writer perfectly capturing a different tone and style for each of his uniquely different comedians. My favorite and the funniest of those sections is Janet Kahn’s relentless and merciless tearing down of a heckler who dared to interrupt her set. The diatribe was recorded on a YouTube video and we read the transcript of that video. The comic highlight of the novel those three pages alone are well worth the cover charge.

In addition to the mystery of who is knocking off all the comedians and why the reader may find himself engaged in a match of wits with the writer in trying to pair up the fictional comics with their real world inspirations. The most obvious to me is Van Lente’s scurrilous parody of the Blue Man Group empire in the person of Oliver Rees and his absurdly infantile Orange Baby Man act which has become an international phenomenon. He’s about to open yet another Orange Baby Man theater at a Sandals resort in the US Virgin islands as the story opens. There is a sardonic female insult comic who is clearly an amalgam of Joan Rivers, Sarah Silverman, Kathy Griffin and maybe a few others. The rest are a mix of men and women representing all races and every type you can think of from smug late night talk show host to the tirelessly touring washed up comic seeking solace from the bottle and longing for a clean motel room that isn’t near a loud and busy highway or airport. From the quasi feminist woman comic who enjoys talking about her pet dog more than anything to a subversive podcaster who seems to hate everything about stand up and tries (unsuccessfully) to be funny in pointing out their hypocrisies. Van Lente has some original touches to this motley group like the redneck comic who in reality is an ultra snob with a refined taste in modern art, gourmet food, expensive wine and a multisyllabic vocabulary. In fact, the absolute antithesis of his onstage persona, Billy the Contractor. The audience during his act, a self-deprecating celebration of everything working class and mundane, are unaware of their being cruelly mocked and belittled.

The real draw here and the most pleasant surprise of all is that the book is a tightly plotted, well constructed, genuine traditional murder mystery. The average reader may catch on early to the scheme and motivation of the unseen killer as will the veteran whodunit reader, but I guarantee that even the most polished of fans will miss some of Van Lente’s subtle clues that are revealed by an unexpected detective in the triple twist filled final pages. One of the best jokes cannot be revealed here either because it gives away something about that character and how that person acquired such finely honed detective skills. Apart from Janet’s lacerating tongue lashing of her crass heckler it was the one joke that cracked me up the most.

Be warned, however, that Ten Dead Comedians is just like the title of Steve Martin’s third 1970s album Comedy Is Not Pretty! This is a very American, very vulgar, four letter word (and then some) littered story. Those easily offended or put off by Technicolor swearing and cursing might just as well keep on strolling past this title to something tamer and less colorful. That’s not a joke on the rear cover where it brags of "Seven words you can’t say on TV!", that’s Van Lente’s true homage to one of his many comedy heroes – George Carlin – listed on his Acknowledgments page. And yes, each of those seven words appear in the text. Some of them several times.

If your tastes in humor lean toward the tasteless, then step right in. The book is not a laugh riot on every page, but there are moments of comedy gold here. It's the bloody well done murder mystery you're after anyway. Mystery aficionados will eat up the plot looking for the similarities to Christie and others of this ilk as well as thoroughly enjoying having the rug pulled out from under them in the final pages. You’ll get some laughs, some chuckles and some well-earned gasps. Just like comics’ slang for doing well in a set you might say that Fred Van Lente really killed with his debut mystery. Slaughtered them even.

NEW STUFF: A Talent for Murder - Andrew Wilson

A Talent for Murder by Andrew Wilson
Atria Books/Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 978-1-5001-4506-3
310 pp. $26
Publication date: July 11, 2017

Back in 1978 I remember reading (and later seeing the movie) Agatha by Kathleen Tynan. This was the first attempt by an novelist to concoct a reason for Agatha Christie’s mysterious two week disappearance in December 1926, following an argument with her husband about his affair with a young woman. Christie's strange relocation to a spa at Harrowgate (where she was registered under the same last name as her husband’s lover) was attributed to amnesia and depression. But before she was found the press dreamed up wild stories ranging from an elaborate publicity stunt to help sell her books to kidnapping to possible murder. Tynan’s story reduced the mystery to a preposterous revenge plot completely out of character for the real Agatha Christie. Now Andrew Wilson, biographer of Patricia Highsmith and many others, has tried his hand at spinning his own thriller to explain the same period when the Grand Dame of Mysterydom vanished for several days in A Talent for Murder (2017). Having completed extensive biographical and literary research Wilson’s story is more in keeping with Christie’s personality and temperament but it is nonetheless just as implausible. Knowing that he was first interested in the life and writing of Highsmith ought to prepare you for what is clearly a crime novel inspired by both women’s books.

Wilson has fashioned an odd story of grief, depression and murder by proxy. Like Highsmith’s first novel Strangers on a Train he has created his own version of Charles Bruno in the person of Patrick Kurs, a megalomaniac physician who is tired of his invalid wife and wants her gone. He manipulates Agatha into carrying out the murder of his wife by threatening her with exposure of her husband’s affair which he knows far too much about. Agatha is just beginning to enjoy success as a bestselling writer thanks to the publication of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and any publicity of her philandering husband would be scandalous to her personal life and detrimental to her professional life.

Kurs has read …Ackroyd, of course, and commends Agatha for the tour de force novel. He cannot stop talking about it and how he greatly admires the character Dr. Sheppard, who he feels is one of Mrs. Christie’s greatest creations. In fact, he regards the fictional doctor “something of a hero” much to Agatha’s horror. Even more horrifying is Kurs' additional threat of doing harm to Agatha’s young daughter Rosamund if the novelist does not follow Dr. Kurs’ implicit instructions on how to do in his wife.

A parallel story follows when Agatha meets Una Crowe and her friend John Davison. Una aspires to become a reporter and will have ample opportunity to do so when Mrs. Christie suddenly goes missing. Sensational newspaper headlines spur on Una who is determined to beat the pros at their own game and reveal the truth herself. Her amateur sleuthing uncovers Archie Christie’s affair which leads her to Nancy Neele, the mistress, and eventually to the office of Nancy’s confidante, her private physician Dr. Patrick Kurs.

Wilson has done an admirable job of incorporating Christie’s biography into A Talent for Murder. However, there is an unfortunate avalanche of this information within the first two chapters that almost ruins the crime plot before it has a chance to even start. Wilson has chosen to emphasize the recent death of Christie’s mother and he allows Agatha to spend much of her time wallowing in nostalgia and reminiscing about her childhood. This is how she is coping with her grief, but coupled with the knowledge that her husband is cheating on her and planning to leave her Agatha’s emotional life and state of mind are always at the near breaking point.

In the parallel story of Una Crowe there is also the shadow of a recent family death. We learn just as much about Una’s interior life as we do Agatha’s. The idea that fragile women both dealing with overpowering grief are channeling their energies into writing and sleuthing is an interesting one. While Una is determined to solve the riddle of the missing mystery writer, Mrs. Christie is determined to outwit Dr. Kurs in his bizarre murder plot and expose him at his own game. Each woman is doing her best to live up to the memory of her lost relative as well as finding a way back to herself and the real world. The juxtaposition of these two stories and their eventual intersection and overlap are the most successful aspects of this often gripping book.

Unfortunately, the character work is often heavy handed and one gets the feeling that Wilson couldn’t decide between his two crime novelist influences. Several scenes with the stubborn Supt. Kenward who suspects Archie Christie of killing his wife become repetitious in how Christie continually denies all accusations levelled at him increasingly losing his patience and temper with the unimaginative policemen. There are also elements of Christie’s Westamacott novels that threaten to drown the story in domestic soap opera. But then Wilson will insert a delicious scene with ambiguous dialogue and hidden motives straight out of Highsmith that invigorates the narrative.

Andrew Wilson
(photo ©Johnny Ring)

The use of unusual poisons in the plot, however, remind us we are clearly in the world of Agatha Christie. There are several chapters devoted to Agatha’s research into choosing a unique poison with chemical properties that will allow her to thwart Dr. Kurs’ murder plot. The final third of the novel in which Agatha finally meets up with Flora Kurs, their joining forces against the amoral doctor coupled with the story of Una Crowe’s near coup de grace in uncovering the truth about Agatha’s disappearance make for the most exciting parts of this on-again-off-again thriller.

If in the end the novel is less of a whodunit honoring Christie and more homage to Highsmith’s fascination with criminal behavior and the dark recesses of human emotion that is no real fault. The reader unfamiliar with Agatha Christie’s personal life will benefit from Wilson’s intensive research with an ample amount of biographical background that renders her more lifelike and true than Kathleen Tynan’s Agatha. Wilson’s love of Christie’s work and respect for her storytelling and plotting skills are also on grand display. There are some well done Christie-like touches and requisite plot twists that may catch a few readers off guard and perhaps even elicit a gasp or two.

CHRISTIE FIRSTS: There's Nothing Like a Dame Agatha

Happy Birthday, Dame Agatha! A writer never looked better. I’m talking about her books, gang. No amount of plastic surgery would make a human of 126 years old look good. At the suggestion of Kate Jackson, who helms the Crossexamining Crime blog, a gaggle of mystery fiction bloggers have joined together to celebrate Agatha Christie’s birthday with their personal choices for favorite books. As Kate put it to us in her invitation the post is to be "called Christie Firsts which suggests to new Christie readers which novels are the best introduction [to her various detective characters] Christie's thrillers and Christie's stand alone novels."  And because I always get carried away with these invitations to write about my favorite books I’m adding three other categories to those she gave us: best play, best short story collection and best Colonel Race novel.

Hercule Poirot
“I am Hercule Poirot!" "What a lovely name. Greek, isn't it?"
I should probably pick something from her early years like Peril at End House (1932), Death on the Nile (1937) or Evil Under the Sun (1941) but I happen to love Mrs. McGinty’s Dead (1952) more than any other Poirot novel. I can’t help it. It’s one of her funniest books and it has a devilishly clever trick in the plot. It’s pure detective novel fancy chockful of deep, dark secrets waiting to be unearthed. And watching Poirot suffer in silence at Maureen Summerhayes’ guest house -- from her inept cooking to her overly zealous hospitality -- is alone worth the price of admission. Ariadne Oliver, Dame Agatha’s alter ego, is also present and we get a lot of talk about the dreary life of a detective novelist and her disgust with her own creation which is easily seen as Christie’s own expression of her own exasperation with Poirot.

Jane Marple
I prefer the later Marple books again over the earlier ones. A Murder Is Announced is pure Christie. It’s almost the template for her midpoint career books. That it has much in common plot-wise with Mrs. McGinty’s Dead is no coincidence. I’m drawn to the books from our Grand Dame’s oeuvre that deal with criminals in hiding and people trying to escape their shameful past. Brilliant use of misdirection in this book and a nifty surprise reveal.

Tommy & Tuppence
I can’t overlook that the Beresford's debut The Secret Adversary (1922) was a less than stellar performance. But their sophomore effort is such an original twist and simultaneously a tribute to the then very trendy notion of being a detective fiction fan. So I pick Partners in Crime (1929) as both a lesson in early overlooked fictional detectives and for Dame Agatha’s send-up of many writers who she obviously enjoyed reading. That she thought she could improve on many of those still unknown and forgotten characters (Thornley Colton, the blind sleuth and McCarty & Riordan, Isabel Ostrander’s beat cop and fireman detective team, to give a handful of examples) showed even at an early age she was a risk taking mystery writer.

Superintendant Battle
For high drama, a good puzzle, some trademark Christie clever misdirection and trenchant observations about a marriage headed for ruin I pick Towards Zero (1944) as the best of the Battle books. This was the midpoint in her career and it’s the era (1942-1955) when Christie began to delve deep and created some of her most human and complex characters.

Colonel Race
Sparkling Cyanide (1945) [US title: Remembered Death] may be a reworking of a Poirot short story but as a novel I enjoyed it a lot. Also I had read this novel first before the short story so the ingenious ploy that leads to murder went unnoticed. One of the best plotting gimmicks in her entire output. Subtle, clever, and completely believable.

No Series Character
This is my second choice for favorite in order to avoid duplicating the one I know will pop up over and over -- And Then There Were None (1939). It’s a true mystery classic, her masterwork I’d say, and it’s deserving of all the accolades. But once again I turn to her later career. Like Dame Agatha I will forever be fascinated with the occult, black magic, and superstition and how those beliefs affect human behavior. For that reason I choose The Pale Horse (1961) as the best of her stand alones.

Thriller
To be honest I don’t care for many of her thrillers at all. The early ones all seemed to have been pale imitations of her fellow crime writers who were doing it much better in the late 1920s. The heroes and heroines seem interchangeable in most of them and the plots are overloaded with what Carolyn Wells loved to call “hackneyed devices.” Her three globe-trotting thrillers of the 1950s are dull to me. But if I have to pick one out of the small bunch then I’ll go with The Man in the Brown Suit (1924). It works well as both a mystery and a thriller and it’s the most entertaining of the lot – hackneyed devices notwithstanding. No Bundle Brent in sight, thankfully. (Sorry, I don’t like her.) It also incorporates a trick that would become her infamous hallmark and used at least three other times that I can recall.

Short Story Collection
I think her most original character is Harley Quin, the mysterious man from nowhere who appears as a detective guide to help Mr. Satterthwaite solve crimes and restore order to troubled lives. Many of the tales are tinged with supernatural events so no surprise that I count it among my favorite Christie books. The Mysterious Mr. Quin (1930) is one of her most refreshing short story collections covering all aspects of crime fiction from straight detection to action thriller. There is ample romance as well. Quin enjoys bringing about reconciliation among the young lovers in each story. He seems to be a precursor to her later Parker Pyne, perhaps mysterydom’s first “love detective”.

Play
Though Christie wrote many original mystery dramas directly for the stage none of those are worthy of her. The Unexpected Guest? Really rather dreary and I’m afraid to say utterly obvious from the moment the curtain goes up. Black Coffee? Trite. Three Blind Mice was written for radio before it was adapted into a short story and later the stage play The Mousetrap and it will always work best on radio, I think. Too often the strangling murder is ineptly staged and badly lit so that the murderer’s identity is obvious to the audience. What does that leave us? The stage adaptations of her novels or short stories. For my money the best of her stage plays is hands down Witness for the Prosecution (1953). There’s something about the courtroom and the stage that go hand in hand. Both have so much in common. Murder trials are part showmanship, part legal procedure and lend themselves easily to the stage. So many dramas about courtroom trials make for riveting theater (Inherit the Wind, Twelve Angry Men, Execution of Justice) and Christie’s adaptation of her short story is no exception.

COVERING THEIR TRACKS: "English Murder Mystery" - The Lucksmiths

"I love her but she loves Agatha Christie." She sure does, me lad.

What a great song! A girl obsessed with Agatha Christie's work and the narrator of the tune is head over heels in love with her. He can't even make her a meal without her suspecting that he's added a special ingredient. Poor guy. Allusions include Peter Falk as Columbo, Miss Scarlet from the Clue® board game, and anything having to do with the works of Agatha Christie and the entire genre of traditional English detective novel.

I'd never heard of The Lucksmiths, an Australian indie rock group based in Melbourne, until I uncovered this song. I'm sure their other music is just as witty and fun.



We took a cliche cliff top walk
I made the mistake of mentioning Peter Falk
She says American TV has killed the murder mystery
'Cause the killer is always caught by 10:23

Written by Marty Donald, ©Marty Donald/Candle Records

1954 STORIES: Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Nov. 1954

In my mad obsession with the year 1954 for Past Offenses blog's monthly Crime of the Century meme I've completely immersed myself in writings from that year. This issue of EQMM was brought to my attention when I read that it included a story by L. Frank Baum reprinted for the first time since its original publication in an obscure magazine at the turn of the 20th century. TomCat, our resident locked room/impossible crime enthusiast, mentioned Baum's "The Suicide of Kiaros" as one of the stories he came across in a different locked room mystery anthology. Of course I had to track down a copy of the magazine. Luckily , I found a copy on eBay (why don't I have this kind of luck in casinos?!) and managed to make an offer for a price I thought more suitable for a 50 year old magazine. And when I pored over the table of contents what did I find but a more fascinating serendipitous discovery. The very first story by William Link and Richard Levinson, creators of Columbo and many other TV crime dramas and movies, when they were only 20 years old and still students at the University of Pennsylvania.

As readers of EQMM might know each first time writer's story is accompanied by a brief intro by the editors giving some biographical info on the writer and how the story came about. In the case of Levinson and Link the bio is longer than usual and filled with tidbits that you most likely will not find anywhere else on the web whether it be their separate IMDB.com pages or the Columbo tribute website. I learned that they knew each other since junior high in Philadelphia and became a writing team as early as their teen years. While still in high school they wrote and produced a musical comedy "that was so great a success that both were inspired to pursue a writing career." Having their first taste of "show business" the two college boys went on to write radio scripts in college and humor pieces for the UPenn humor magazine as well as detective short stories. They probably never imagined that their writing hobby would eventually lead to a career as the leading mystery writing duo of TV just under twenty years later.

"Whistle While You Work" is a neat little tale of a henpecked mailman who everyday looks forward to leaving his claustrophobic household dominated by his shrewish wife. Over a period of days a series of weirdly addressed letters in blue envelopes with black borders turn up in his mailbag all addressed to women. Later each woman who received such a letter is found brutally murdered. It's kind of a James Thurber meets James M. Cain story displaying a mature voice, an ironic sense of humor, and some keen insight for a couple of 20 year old college boys. If I were to give you the story to read and you knew nothing about the writers you'd imagine each might be a cynical old 50-something who had his fill of harpy of a wife.

The L. Frank Baum story is also a crime story rather than a detective story. It presents the life of a brazen bank teller with a gambling addiction and a taste for embezzlement who seeks out the help of a money lender to help him pay his debts and cover his "loans" from the cashier's till. He seizes an opportunity to make off with a sizable amount of the moneylender's cash only after resorting to murder. He then cleverly seals up the room and makes the crime look like suicide. Does he get away with it? The unusual ending -- especially for a story written in 1897 -- probably made jaws drop. I'm sure the story was shocking and considered tasteless and immoral by Baum's contemporaries.

Included also in the issue are a familiar Hercule Poirot story about poisoning and an unusual murder method ("How Does Your Garden Grow?"); a Lester Leith story ("The Candy Kid", first published in 1931 in Detective Fiction Weekly) featuring Erle Stanley Gardner's version of the urbane, wealthy playboy sleuth popular in the pulp magazines long before he created Perry Mason; and stories by John D MacDonald, Charles B Child and Peter Godfrey. I particularly liked an odd puzzle story by Laurence Blochman ("The Man with the Blue Ears") in which the reader is asked to find 18 intentional mistakes within the story. Some of them were easy to spot like knowing that lapis lazuli is a blue gemstone not a red one or that Washington and Lincoln appear on the $1 and $5 bills not Jackson and Hamilton. But lots of the errors like the mention of Pisco punch being made with Brazilian brandy (it's made with Peruvian brandy) or "a .32 police positive" (it should be a .38) went right over my head. Van Deen test for bloodstains? If you work in a forensic lab maybe. A regular Joe Reader knowing this? Probably not. Apparently Blochman, whose adventure thrillers and detective novels set in India I know very well and recommend highly, wrote a series of these type of "Spot the Mistake" stories for EQMM during the 1950s. This is also one of EQMM's more literary issues with reprints of two crime stories by Jack London and Roald Dahl ("Only a Chinago" and "Taste",  respectively).

Printer's Devil or Ignorant Editor?

Santosh has reminded me that I intended to mention in passing a particularly egregious error I came across in my 1933 reprint edition of The Z Murders reviewed only a few days ago on this blog.

I did in fact mention it on the internet, but in a comment on someone else's blog. So here it is for my readers' entertainment. Along with photographic proof of the embarrassing error.

On page 95 of my edition Richard is attempting to broach a topic and wants to start the conversation in a way that will catch her off guard. He fails miserably:

Poiret?!

I was so appalled I took out my mini Post-It note pad, scrawled off this note and stuck it to the page as a reminder to bring it up in my review.

But the Post-It got moved to the inside cover (see above) and that in turn was covered by an index card. So I never saw it and I forgot to write about it.

I'm wondering why no eagle eyed editor caught that error. True, as my note remarks there had only been seven Poirot novels published by 1933 when this reprint came out, but you would think that someone at Collins might know the correct spelling of a fictional character by one of their own authors who was selling a lot of books by that time.

I have been told that the error does not exist in the 2015 reprint British Library Crime Classics edition. At least in the 21st century someone was on the ball.

FFB: The Hollow - Agatha Christie

When Agatha Christie discussed The Hollow (1946) in An Autobiography she mentioned that including Hercule Poirot as the detective was a huge mistake.  Consequently, when she decided to adapt it for the stage she removed him entirely.  I imagine if he were missing from the novel not much would be lost because what Christie was doing in The Hollow was decidedly different than most of her Poirot novels; the content borders on the profound. It is intensely serious and maybe the most personal of all of Christie's detective novels.

This book comes in her mid-career, only two years after the publication of what Christie called "the one book that has satisfied me completely." That book is Absent in the Spring, one of her mainstream novels nominally lumped together as her Mary Westmacott romances though to call them romances is to do them a disservice. The Hollow is the least Christie-like of her detective novels of the 1940s; it might even be called the most Westmacott of her detective novels for it shares a lot with what is found in the pages of Absent in the Spring. Identity, self-delusion, misplaced and misinterpreted affections are all on display. Above all, is one of her most recurrent themes -- the dangers of possessive love. It barely makes the grade as a detective novel, though there is some detection by the variety of characters and Poirot who is, in fact, a supporting character and not the lead. The Hollow is Christie's earliest attempt to write a wholly modern detective novel and uses the tropes and gimmicks that are her hallmark in a most realistic manner.

Ostensibly, The Hollow tells the story of a crime of passion. But as anyone who reads any detective novel knows appearances are always deceiving. What you see isn't always the truth. Gerda Christow is found by the swimming pool of the Angkatell estate with a gun in her hand. Her husband has been shot and three people come running to the poolside. As John Christow lies dying from his fatal bullet wound he cries out, "Henrietta..." who happened to be one of the three almost eyewitnesses who came running. When Henrietta screams at Gerda she drops the gun into the pool. She doesn't seem to remember anything: how she got there, where the gun came from, or whether or not she pulled the trigger. The gun is retrieved from the pool now spoiled of any fingerprint evidence and police lab reports prove that it was not the gun used to kill her husband. What happened to the gun that was used? And what was Gerda doing there?

Christie's writing is markedly different here. The emphasis is on character and not plot. Relationships are more important than who was where when the murder was committed. But most noticeably is the multiple viewpoint in the narration. It's the most author omniscient of her Poirot books. Much of the narrative is spent in the interior life and thoughts of the characters. We get to know more than any other of her books what each character is thinking and what secrets they are harboring. Perhaps And Then There Were None, written seven years earlier, is the first instance of this kind of interior character work, but in The Hollow her effective technique makes the book a stand-out among her entire work.

Poirot may not take center stage in this novel but that is not to say that he is not instrumental in uncovering the truth. Henrietta Savernake, a sculptor and close friend to the Christows, has a notable scene in which she and Poirot discuss knowledge vs. truth. Henrietta likens crime solving to a creative art. She asks Poirot if he considers himself an artist. In response Poirot counters that it is a passion for the truth that trumps any creative power of a detective. "A passion for the truth," Henrietta says. "Yes, I can see how dangerous that might make make you." The two continue to bandy with words and semantics and Henrietta implies throughout the conversation that she knows more than she is willing to give up. She challenges Poirot to act on his knowledge if he comes to know the full truth. By the book's close Poirot acknowledges that Henrietta was his most formidable antagonist to date.

Anyone interested in discussing Christie as a novelist beyond her skills as a master of the detective novel ought to read The Hollow. The murder is treated not as a puzzle but as a true mystery of human behavior. Complications arise, questions both investigative and philosophical arise out of the nature of this crime. Christie tells a story of devotion and love and protection in a world where violence is increasingly ambiguous. Has a murder actually been committed? In the end Poirot once again acts not so much as the agent of truth but as an agent of mercy.

NOTE: Those of you who live in the US and still like to buy used books in brick and mortar stores should know that many of the 1960s and 1970s paperback editions of The Hollow were reprinted under the title Murder After Hours. There are umpteen hundred copies of this book out there in US, UK and Canadian editions and under both titles. The majority of copies for sale through online bookselling sites are very affordable.