FFB: Death at the Wheel - Vernon Loder

THE STORY: Two bodies found in cars, both shot dead, within days of one another.  The first is a policeman who has been investigating a sting of jewel robberies. The second corpse is a two bit (or six penny since this is England) fortune teller who calls himself Osiris. The question is - are these two murders or a murder and suicide? Rufus Tate (aka Osiris) seems to be implicated in the jewel robberies and it appears he may have killed the cop and then himself. Arthur Way, the Sulcote chief constable, doubts the verdict at the double coroner's inquest. Too many oddities make the suicide highly unlikely. With the help of a large crew of police, both local and Scotland Yard officials, as well as some surprise ideas from Clare, his fiancee, Arthur uncovers a very strange truth.

THE CHARACTERS: Death at the Wheel (1933) features a large cast led by Arthur Way, a rural chief constable at odds with the more experienced city cops of Scotland Yard.  Arthur, however, sees this unusual set of crimes as an opportunity to shine as the detective he always wanted to be. He has some very ingenious ideas how to approach the crime and is complimented for his contributions.  Scotland Yard should be assisting only at his instruction but that doesn't stop Assistant Commissioner Cance from setting up a rather unethical undercover operation with his ace detective Inspector Brow. When Arthur stumbles upon Brow in the disguise of a fly fisherman on holiday he becomes very angry.

Meanwhile, Clare's stepfather Holroyd Sayce is targeted as the primary suspect as the mastermind of the jewel robberies.  Sayce happens to be in the jewelry business making it all the more likely that he may be involved with a ring of thieves who are all carnival workers who have always been nearby each time a home was burglarized. 

Loder's signature wit is not lacking here. Clare Winkton is definitely a highlight with her brash wit and good sense. Clare is always teasing her stepfather nicknaming him Holly and treating him irreverently. Paradoxically she also seems to be protecting him from the police.She provides Arthur with one of the cleverest ideas when they brainstorm about where Smith, the master crook, might be hiding out.  She also points out to Arthur that a slip of paper that he is convinced is an intricate code is actually nothing more than a series of dates and initials.  The reader knows this as quickly as Clare does. In his attempt to prove himself a great detective Arthur does tend to overthink a lot of the obvious

Also I liked the bit part of Sir Guy Lunt, owner of an amber necklace that was stolen and broken up for its gemstones. Lunt is a foppish hypochondriac with a malingering case of "bronchitic tendencies." He reminded me of the vile Frederick Fairleigh in Collin's The Woman in White who never stepped out of his dressing gown and complained of aches and pains while pawing over his pornographic drawings.  Sir Guy Lunt is just as ludicrous, a perfect satiric creation and one more character in Loder's collection of worthless aristocrats who pop up frequently in his mystery novels.

INNOVATIONS: Too many cooks may spoil the broth, but too many policemen don't spoil this detective novel. There are a slew of policemen that I didn't really think I needed to keep straight. The more that were added to the story the more I kept thinking that this might have been Loder's attempt to imitate Henry Wade.  By the midpoint of the novel I was truly impressed with how different this was form the usual Loder detective novel which is usually brimming with eccentric touches, bizarre murder methods and outlandish incidents.  In a high contrast to his first eight books Death at the Wheel is grounded in real crime, murder committed with guns, dogged police work and career criminals.  It's a genuine police procedural and one of the best of its type by any of his contemporaries.  Loder can stand shoulder to shoulder with Wade, Nigel Morland or Helen Reilly, three of the best practitioners of true police procedurals, meaning detective novels that not only show us how police solve crimes but also explore the culture of police stations and the collegiality of policemen.

Guns & bicycles!  The murder weapon was
manufactured by this company based in St. Etienne.

Loder manages to juggle parallel storylines and we follow Arthur's raw edged, ingenious and experimental style of detection which is in strong contrast to the polished technical police work of the Scotland Yard men and local police.  The book might very well have been called The Case of the Three Shells for the bulk of the novel deals with the bullets, casings and shells of a French made .22 handgun, the murder weapon in both shootings.  Arthur spends a lot of time thinking about three .22 shells, where they were found, the lack of fingerprints on some when they should be present. He creates a variety of involved experiments like  the one with a pair of trousers worn by one of the victims. Arthur tires to discover if a fingerprint on a shell casing could be worn away over time if placed in a tight fitting pocket. He also studies wear patterns in the fabric to determine whether or not a gun could have been habitually carried in a certain pocket in the trousers. This was a fascinating section of the book showing off Loder's masterful plotting techniques and unusual ideas about crime solving.

THINGS I LEARNED:  At the end of Chapter 10 Clare makes this quip in reference to Smith, the burglar the police are hunting: "No one would knowingly put Charles Peace in the post of chief clerk, where jewels were bought and sold."  I had no idea who Charles Peace was and so off I went a-Googling.  I guess I should have known because he turns out to be one of the most notorious criminals in the history of British criminology.  Peace, a talented musician, in the guise of a travelling violin player and bric-a-brac peddler committed multiple burglaries over a three year period. He became wanted for two murders and one attempted murder of a policeman. He was pursued by police, arrested and tried in 1879. In a record breaking 12 minute jury deliberation Peace was found guilty and executed.  Peace has been immortalized in the penny dreadfuls of Victorian fiction, has music hall songs written about him and his life story was filmed at least three times. The most well known movie of his life and crimes may be The Case of Charles Peace (1949) directed by Norman Lee.

Arthur Way utters this odd sentence late in the book: "If he died, he died very suddenly. And like the dead donkeys, which they say no one ever sees, sir, he buried himself rather mysteriously."  I figured this was some sort of British slang so I went looking in various reference books. I'm not sure I got the actual origin, but this fit as close as possible. I was looking for something to do with dead donkeys never being seen. What I found is a "dead donkey" comes from the world of journalism, a phrase that refers to a story that is so trivial it can be killed to make room for more newsworthy story that deserves to be in print. Supposedly the phrase comes from a 1990s UK sit com called Drop the Dead Donkey and many people think it was created by the writers. But obviously since the phrase appears in a book in 1933 it's a lot older than the TV show. If anyone knows more about this odd allusion and phrase, please let me know in the comments.

QUOTES:  One of these mystery story writers would have made something of that, he mused. There would be a masked gang...with headquarters in some riverside dive. Clare would be their languid queen, at one moment in a Paris gown at some elegant hotel, at another clothed in black tights burgling the suite of a duke...

Arthur Way was a man with an active mind, and even the most busy of country Chief Constables finds that the routine of his job does not highly try his faculties. The idea of doing a bit of detective work on his own appealed to the boy which is latent in most of us.

"Good luck to you," said Cance, "but try to use your imagination, Brow! Common sense is a fine thing, but there isn't much of the X-ray about it!"

Clare: "...I could have skipped down to the gun-room, got one of Holly's shotguns and peppered the brute.  I wasn't really afraid."
That was like her.  It had always struck him that she was both cool and courageous.

EASY TO FIND? If you want a real book you're out of luck. It's a rarity.  But the good news for readers who have Kindle devices and live in the UK or Europe is that you can purchase a digital copy of Death at the Wheel from Black Heath Classic Crime.  TomCat has been reading the Nicholas Brady books put out by Black Heath so I guess they're OK. The fact that they don't have their own website makes me think these are pirated digital books and I'm not comfortable helping to promote them. But if this is the only way you can read the book, then go ahead and spend your money on them. They are ridiculously cheap, that's for sure.

It's a solid police procedural, one of Loder's better books filled with creative ideas and invention.  But as such it's very different from the weirdness that was displayed in the more original and bizarre mystery The Shop Window Murders recently reprinted by HarperCollins.

TUESDAY CLUB: Death under Sail - C. P. Snow

The shipboard mystery or nautical mystery novel is just as prevalent in the Golden Age as those set on a train. Death on the Nile may very well be the quintessential detective novel set on board a ship. Freeman Wills Crofts is better known for his train mysteries but he wrote quite a few with ships and yachts including The Sea Mystery, Mystery in the Channel, The Loss of the 'Jane Vosper', and Mystery on Southampton Water (Crime on the Solent in the US). A small sampling of other titles: Hate Ship by Bruce Graeme, Singing in the Shrouds and A Clutch of Constables by Ngaio Marsh, and Too Much of Water by Bruce Hamilton.

The American writers were just as good at setting murders on board luxury yachts, cruise ships, military craft, submarines and rowboats just as well as their British counterparts. S.S. Murder by Q. Patrick tells of a bridge party on board a yacht and one of the card players being done in. Obelists at Sea by C. Daly King is the debut detective novel featuring the erudite and long winded Dr. L. Rees Pons. John Dickson Carr's shipboard mystery The Blind Barber is more farce than detective novel, but as Carter Dickson Nine-And Death Makes Ten (aka Murder in the Submarine Zone) is rather unique in that the ship featured is a military cargo carrier that is been temporarily assigned as a passenger ship and the plot brings up all sorts of maritime laws during WW2 including how the blackout rules in England extended to ships and cruise lines. Rufus King made an entire career of writing about killers dispatching their victims at sea in titles such as Murder on the Yacht, Murder by Latitude, The Lesser Antilles Case, Murder Masks Miami and many, many more.

This may lead you to believe that I'll be writing about one of these American shipboard mysteries and I thought I was going to do so, too. That is until I uncovered my very old copy of Death under Sail (1932) and decided to finally give it its long overdue examination.

A wherry yacht and all its parts

Roger Mills, physician and yachting enthusiast, invites six friends on an excursion through the Broads, the system of rivers and lakes in Norfolk. The morning after picking up Ian Capel, the oldest guest and narrator of Death Under Sail, Roger is found shot dead still holding on to the tiller in the stern well (see plan of The Siren below). Though the murder in C. P. Snow's very first work of fiction (and first of only two detective novels) does indeed take place on a ship -- specifically a wherry yacht -- the majority of the book actually takes place on land. The yachting party is confined to a bungalow several miles down the River Bure and a short jaunt up the River Thurne in the Norfolk village of Potter Heigham. There they stew, fester and fret doing their best to endure the Puritan tirades of shrewish housekeeper Mrs. Tufts and undergoing absurd interrogations from Det.-Sgt. Aloysius Birrell who seems to have learned most of his techniques from one volume of criminology and about a dozen detective novels.

The novel at first appears to be a parody of the detective novel. Birrell comes off as a comic character from the moment of his entrance where his apparent reckless driving of a police motorboat causes a violent wake to capsize the dinghy sending three men into the river. Contrasted with Birrell, is the omniscient amateur sleuth Finbow who is a friend of Ian Capel's and who Capel calls in to help investigate the puzzling death of Roger Mills. Finbow spends much of his time observing, flattering the suspects into revealing themselves, and eavesdropping on people's private conversations like any good amateur detective of the Golden Age would do. Ethics have nothing to do with crime solving where Finbow is concerned. He also spends a lot of time expounding some of Snow's own personal beliefs which interestingly will serve as the foundation for his later mission in life as spokesman for the scientific mind. All these mini-lectures seem to be thrown in to distract the reader. But Snow has plotted the book in a devious fashion and despite the lectures that appear to be filler the book is actually very much in the fair play tradition.

There is a lot of talk about the routine that develops on a ship when people travel in such a confined space like the Siren. The murderer must have been aware of who did what and where they went every morning, Finbow surmises. Ian is therefore eliminated from the start as he has only been on board the Siren for a single day and night. Not long enough for anyone else to know where he might be when Roger was shot. The rest of the detective work is done along these lines. Snow might have been influenced by the detective novels of Anthony Berkeley who was a pioneer in stressing the importance of psychological motive and human behavior in crime fiction. There is not much physical evidence to review. Rather, Finbow is more interested in why Avice is so frightened and why her crying seems to be more acting than genuine, why William remained shirtless on the morning of the murder and the importance of how he undresses, why Tonia appears to be in love with Phillip but may be masking a hidden love affair, and why Christopher needed to get out of his wet clothes so quickly after the capsizing of the dinghy. These "psychological insights" are what lead Finbow to eliminate most of the suspects eventually leading him to the identity and motive of the killer. He develops a list of five important questions that include all the suspects and each question is answered in grand detail in the final chapter. It is only then that the reader learns that everything mattered, each incident and discussion was essential to the story. It's all brilliantly done with some bravura misdirection that even the most seasoned detective fiction aficionados will not spot.

THINGS I LEARNED: Though not much is discussed about the wherry itself or the Broads I needed to satisfy my curiosity and so I looked up all sorts of photos of Norfolk locales mentioned along the rivers shown on Finbow's map. Then I visited a fascinating website with photos of families and friends on their wherry yachts and got to see just how the Norfolk towns looked at the time when Snow's novel was set and even earlier. In fact, the bulk of the photos are from the post World War I era. You can look at the same photos if you so desire by going to Broadland Memories.

MCC is mentioned in passing but I had no idea what the characters were talking about. The passage is here: "Tradition, my boy," William broke in sharply. "Like the M.C.C. and Public Schools. Doing a thing twice is good enough reason for doing it forever." Based on the linking of tradition with MCC and public schools I'm guessing William means the Marylebone Cricket Club which controlled the way both amateur and professional cricket was played for over three centuries. From the info I looked up the MCC still owns the copyright on cricket rules that were created back in the late 18th century. Apparently another group known as the ICC (International Cricket Club) is trying to wrest control from them and make a more harmonious, less rigid rule governing board for international cricket playing.

One of the many Penguin reprints

EASY TO FIND? Yes, indeed. Luckily, Death Under Sail was chosen as one of the "Top 50 Detective Novels from 1900-1950" by Jacques Barzun and Wendell Taylor. That selection allowed the book to be reprinted multiple times since its original 1932 publication. Several paperback reprints are available in the used book market in both US and UK editions. And you can still find a few copies of either the Doubleday Crime Club 1st edition (US) or the Collins Crime Club 1st edition (UK) if you're willing to shell out $75 or more. The prices for the paperback reprints, of course, are much more reasonable and there are literally hundreds of copies out there. Happy hunting!

* * *
This is my second post on travel in detective fiction which is the theme for May for the group of vintage mystery fiction fans who call themselves "The Tuesday Bloggers." Other links are here:

Throw Mama (or Anyone Else) from the Train! - Bev at My Reader's Block
Christie on Holiday - Moira at Clothes in Books
Why Set a Murder Mystery on Holiday or a Mode of Transportation? - Kate at Cross-Examining Crime
This Train Is Bound for Gory - Brad at Ah! Sweet Mystery
 Coach Tours to Crime - Helen at Your Freedom and Ours

IN BRIEF: No Pockets in Shrouds - Louisa Revell

THE STORY: Self-confessed murder addict Julia Tyler has been keeping a scrapbook of interesting murder cases. She spies in one of her newspaper clippings a photo of an acquaintance and she takes advantage of that friend's open invitation to visit her and nose around in the murder. The story takes her to Louisville, Kentucky. Seems a butler was poisoned in the household of a wealthy Kentuckian and no one seems to know why he was killed. Julia thinks perhaps the patriarch was the intended target. Sure enough murder happens again while she is doing her Jane Marple impression. Involved inquest, suspicious relatives, plots and stratagems, and Revell's arch humor make for an engaging often very funny detective novel.

QUOTES: “It isn’t that I’m not scared to death; I am. The trip we took to New York scared me so I didn’t think I’d live to get there. But I did, in exactly one hour and seventeen minutes, and it taught me a lesson. You can stand almost anything for an hour and seventeen minutes.”

Her opinion of a tramp committing the butler's murder:
“A tramp on the fourth floor of a Louisville townhouse, especially anno Domini 1945 when -- whatever the other ills of our country -- tramps are as extinct as the American buffalo!”

On taking advantage of her friend’s gift for gab and asking prying questions about the murder:
“Charlotte was like the husbands who never dream their wives have married them for money.”

Real murder vs. fictional murder:
“That’s why for every fantastically reasoned murder book there are a dozen about rich people killed before they can change their wills. Fantasia makes interesting reading sometimes, but the old moth-eaten plots are real.”

Her instant dislike of Dr. Jordan:
“I admitted [I was a friend of the family], and added “Idiot” under my breath. Who did he think I was, the paperboy?”

SOME SOUTHERN IDIOMS: Title of the book comes from a Southern Black aphorism:
“[Gus] thought it was fine for [Breckenridge] to leave money to the church or the university library and the charities he was interested in: ‘There ain’t no pockets in shrouds, and the best pocket to leave your earthly substance in is the pocket of the Lord.’ said Gus to Breckinridge just before someone poisoned him.”

“Aunt Charlotte would have had a duck with lavender feathers if I’d stuck my nose out of the family vault.”

Isn't that bizarre? My parents used to say “Don't have a conniption fit”. In the 70s my friends and I used to say "Don't have a cow, man. Lighten up." I've read similar things like “have kittens” to express the same thing. All versions of a hyperbole for "being upset". But "having a duck with lavender feathers"? That one cracked me up.

THINGS I LEARNED: In my first blog post about Julia Tyler I mentioned the large part of the novel devoted to the toxic properties of sodium fluoride which was alternately fascinating and horrifying. Click here if you missed that post or are interested in knowing about that.

Hattie Carnegie, a popular clothing designer who I had never heard of, apparently is credited with inventing the “head to toe” designer look. She mass produced not only ready-to-wear designer clothing but various accessories meant to go with her clothing. In the long run she became best known for the accessories like her costume jewelry and hats rather than her clothing. Most of her clothes seem to be of the "sensible fashions" variety. But I did find some photos from vintage fashion magazines that seem fairly glamorous for the period like the one over there on the right.

Revell makes a big deal about the Kentucky Derby not being held in May for the first time since 1875. But this is wrong. It *was* held in May; on May 5, 1945 to be precise. There were times when it was held in June but every year during WW2 it was held in May. I have no idea what she was thinking or why she would make a statement so false, especially since this book wasn’t published until 1948.

Things I Learned While Reading Detective Fiction, part 3

For a quasi Luddite like myself a smart phone was one of the last things I ever wanted to purchase. Begrudgingly I have come to recognize how handy the phone can be. Like satisfying my never waning curiosity. In the "pre smart phone" days if I came across some arcane tidbit while reading I would make a note of it and then wait until I had computer access to look it up. Now I just pull out the phone and get the answer immediately. Odd names, unfamiliar places, historical events, mythological creatures, even foreign words and phrases are no longer mysteries that remain to be solved along with who did in Lady Gertrude Horsey-Ridingsworth in the locked, sealed and unusually hot conservatory. All my questions are answered instantaneously with a few simple keystrokes.

And with that long winded introduction out of the way let’s segue into this year’s annual post dedicated to only a smidgen of the really cool trivia I’ve gleaned in my reading of both long forgotten and contemporary crime and supernatural fiction.

1. Ever hear of the kylin? Probably not. All you sinologists probably prefer qilin, the accepted transliteration of this Chinese word. In fact, it took me a while to find it online since it was spelled kwylin in The Golden Salamander by Victor Canning where I first came across the word. It’s a mythical Chinese creature and according to a Chinese cultural website the qilin (kylin or however you wish to spell it) "is somewhat like a deer, with horns on the head and scales over the body. Its tail is like that of an ox's. The kylin is said to be an animal of longevity that could live for 2,000 years. It is also believed that the beast could spit fire and roar like thunder." Supposedly the kylin appeared to presage the arrival or passing of a wise person or a powerful leader. Its image is used on talismans, art and sculpture to signify good luck, prosperity and intelligence. One of the "Four Divine Creatures" the kylin is second only to the dragon in terms of importance in Chinese mythology. So how come we’ve never heard of it? We’ve certainly seen plenty of them in movies, post cards and Chinese restaurants. Check out the photo used here. Time to start a "Remember the kylin!" movement.

2. British life jackets were made of cork during World War 2 and blackout procedures so well known on land throughout urban England were also in place on ocean liners. This comes to you courtesy of the madcap plot in Nine -- And Death Makes Ten by Carter Dickson , also known as Murder in the Submarine Zone. I also learned all about George Robey (1869-1954), a music hall performer who is mentioned in passing in the novel. He apparently was very popular in the pantomime scene in the early part of the 20th century and was well known for his crazy eyebrows exaggerated and enhanced by make-up.

Thomas Hood

3. I had only heard the name Eugene Aram in the context of an obscure book by Bulwer-Lytton. Little did I know that the man was a real person. Eugene Aram was a resourceful philologist and linguist prior to becoming a notorious murderer. The story of Aram’s crime was made popular one year earlier than Bulwer-Lytton's novel in a lyrical ballad by poet Thomas Hood (1799-1845). Thanks, Joan Fleming, who dropped several allusions to the poem and Eugene’s fate in her crime novel Polly Put the Kettle On.

4. World history has always been lacking in my knowledge. Not much of what I learned decades ago in high school stayed locked in my memory bank. Thanks to my voracious reading, however, I’m always learning something new. In Captain Cut-Throat by John Dickson Carr I received a crash course in the Napoleonic Wars and got more than I ever would want to know about Joseph Fouché, Napoleon’s Minister of Police who serves as a leading character in one of Carr’s most successful historical crime novels.

A early Murphy drip
It ain't for brewin' java.

5. Long forgotten medical procedures tend to crop up a lot in vintage crime novels. I learned all about the Murphy drip and proctolysis in The Cat Saw Murder. You know what a proctologist studies and treats, right? Well, back in 1909 Wisconsin surgeon John Benjamin Murphy invented a very early alternative to intravenous and subcutaneous injections that focussed on a human's rear end as an entry. It was primarily used like an enema to administer fluids and drugs when the regular oral method was not viable. Here I thought a colonoscopy was the worst possible medical procedure a human could endure.

6. The Strangler Vine by Miranda Carter was one of the best historical adventure novels I’ve read in recent years. I learned all about the amoral business practices of the East India Company, how they had their own army (!) and how the company operated on its own agenda disregarding all rules, regulations and humanity in their plan to take over India and subjugate its people. Long live imperialism! (That’s sarcasm, gang.) Yes, it’s a novel but Carter used numerous historical texts and diaries as research in order to tell her story. Eye opening and highly recommended.

7. Ancient Egyptian burial practices and the mythology of Egypt served as the background for The Game of Thirty by William Kotzwinkle. The name of an unrecognizable god or goddess appeared about every five pages and their importance in ancient Egyptian beliefs filled those pages. Rather thrilling for a mythology junkie like me. What wasn’t so thrilling was the pedophile subplot that polluted the rest of the pages. Seemed like every other book published in the mid 1990s was about murderous pedophiles. I always avoid these books and was pissed off that Kotzwinkle included one in his plot.

"Vision after the Sermon" by Paul Gaughin is featured
prominently in Death in Brittany by Jean-Luc Bannalec

8. I learned a heck of a lot about Paul Gauguin and (to me at least) the obscure group of artists who made up the Pont-Aven School in the fascinating German crime novel Death in Brittany (originally published as Bretonische Verhältnisse). I thought Gauguin moved to Tahiti and did all his most well known work in the South Pacific. Little did I know that he founded an entire style of painting in the small town of Pont Aven in Western France, that his early work done here is considered by the locals to be the birth of modern painting, and that he is celebrated throughout Brittany. Someday I’d like to visit this part of France which we completely bypassed the first time I travelled there.

9. Who doesn't learn something arcane when devouring a Christopher Fowler book? Take his latest, The Burning Man. Its pages are chock full of Guy Fawkes facts and legends and the origin of burning effigies that led to the annual celebration of the Gunpowder Plot. But I never need to double check on anything when reading his books because Fowler always gives you *all* the details you'd ever want.  And then some!

10. Even a former Brit Lit student like me needs a refresher in his supposed field of expertise. So when I came across Malbecco in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it allusion in Catherine Aird's excellent impossible crime novel His Burial Too I was not so surprised that he turned out to be a minor character in The Faerie Queen. I wasn’t a fan of Edmund Spenser back in my college days. I tend to forget everything about that epic poem other than the Bower of Bliss section and that I found most of it boring as hell. Turns out that using the name Malbecco is an arcane way to call someone a paranoid jealous husband. He’s in Book III, Canto X (et al.) of Spenser’s seemingly endless poem if you want to read about him. I think an Othello allusion would've sufficed. What a show off that Catherine Aird is. Witty and smart, but a show off.

Things I Learned While Reading Detective Fiction, part 2

Cartoon ©2014 by Nina Paley

Alexander Pope wrote "A little learning is a dang'rous thing/Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring" Oh, I like a very deep drink from that mythical fount of knowledge. Spare the sipping straw and hand me a ladle. Better yet give me one of those yard long glasses -- the Coachman's Quaff! I'll be there for hours gulping away until my thirst for little known facts is quenched. I can't help it but I am one of those people whose curiosity never dies and who can't keep his fingers away from the Google search box. Throw an arcane nugget my way. Go on! I will not sleep until I find out exactly what it means or refers to. For your reading delectation here's another potpourri of esoterica gleaned from my reading of obscure murder mysteries and adventure novels.

1. Almoner is an odd word I’ve never seen nor heard in all my fifty plus years. In the some hospital scenes in the suspense thriller Give Me Back Myself (review coming soon) I understood an almoner to be a person who arranges for welfare benefits for indigent patients. It was never really explained outright. The word was dropped into conversation and I had to glean meaning from the context. Further internet searching taught me that the word dates back to the medieval era when almoners were more prominent as distributors of alms. Usually an almoner was a monk, priest or other member of the clergy. It’s a distinctly British word (explains why I’ve never heard it even in all my decades working in hospitals) but I suspect that its use is probably passé these days. Anyone serving in a hospital as an almoner is almost certainly called a social worker or perhaps even may be a chaplain with extended duties.

2. Chances are if you’re a drinker you’ll know what a Manhattan is. But have you ever heard of a Bronx cocktail? Never came across it in books or bar menus. Never heard it ordered by my worldly college drinking pals who were known for their predilection for unusual potent potables. A Bronx turned up in a list of cocktails Waldo Lydecker ordered in Laura. I was hoping for something strange but a Bronx is a nothing more than a standard martini (gin mixed with both sweet and dry vermouth) plus orange juice. No olive, of course. Sounds dreadful, frankly. Who wants to ruin good gin with fruit juice of any kind?

3. Reading The City of Whispering Stone was like getting a crash course in 1970s Iranian politics and culture. It enlightened me about that country’s oppressive past and how the Shah, despite his charismatic persona as portrayed in US media of the 1970s, was a pretty nasty fellow especially regarding his suppression of political dissenters in consort with SAVAK, the Iranian secret police.

4. I have for some years now been reading and writing about witchcraft and devil worship as a motif in the detective novel. I thought by now I knew everything there is to know about the history of witchcraft in Europe and America. Wrong! Though I was hip to Matthew Hopkins, the infamous Witchfinder General, and his nightmarish campaign against witches in 17th century England I did not know of his book The Discovery of Witches. In Witchwater G. M. Wilson also tells us that within this notorious memoir, more a handbook for torture than a historical document, Hopkins lists the names of the most popular witch’s familiars. Paddock and Graymalkin who are beckoned by Macbeth’s Three Weird Sisters are there as well as Pyewacket (Kim Novak's pet in Bell, Book and Candle). Another cat familiar named Elemauzer is mentioned too, though it is spelled Ilemauzar in the illustration below taken from a copy of Hopkin's original text. And it is a stray black cat named Elemauzer that ultimately provides the detective in Witchwater with his most important piece of evidence.

5. Cultural enlightenment in art, music, and theater came to me at the most unexpected times. I learned all about the Mexican silversmith trade in Kathleen Moore Knight’s excellent South of the Border mystery The Blue Horse of Taxco. Charles Willeford fooled me into thinking that numerous artists and painters he invented in The Burnt Orange Heresy were real so compelling were their portraits. Imagine how frustrated I was when no one turned up in my Google searches. I actually started to laugh as my own gullibility. A Sad Song Singing by Thomas B. Dewey gave a documentary feel to the early 1960s folk music and coffeehouse and hootenanny scene in New York City’s lower east side.

6. Had I been as curious as I usually am when I encountered the names of François Arago, Boisgiraud, and Sir Humphrey Davy, pioneers in the field of electromagnetic physics, I would’ve had one of the most ingenious mysteries I read this year ruined. And of course I’m not telling you the book’s title or even who wrote it. If you’ve already had the pleasure of reading this particular book you’re sure to know the title and author.

Tjitjingalla corroboree, circa 1901

7. One of my favorite reads of 2014 was The Glass Spear, Australian writer Sidney Courtier’s first novel and a corker of a mystery. Within its pages I uncovered a treasure trove of Aussie lore and Aboriginal rites and celebrations including the corroboree, a ceremonial ritual involving tribal costumes and masks, dance and acting as well as kurdaitcha, a kind of aboriginal magic usually tinged with evil intent.

8. Joanna Cannan’s near parody of a detective novel The Body in the Beck was rife with literary allusions to -- of all things -– mountaineering poetry! I learned more than I have ever wanted to know about those minor poets from the dusty halls of truly forgotten literature.

9. Even new books have a lot to teach me. I had a full-on immersion in the Inuit culture while reading The Bone Seeker by M. J. McGrath. Though I didn't get a chance to review this book during my hectic summer it's a highly unusual mystery that I recommend to readers who like an anthropological challenge. You may come away with a whole new appreciation for Nunavut cuisine which includes pickled walrus flippers and aalu, a dipping sauce made from caribou meat, fat and blood.

10. I got pages of info dump when reading Syndrome E, another contemporary thriller, ranging from the neuromarketing trend in advertising to the fundamentals of splicing and editing 16mm celluloid. But the most gruesome bit of arcana came when I read of a shameful part of Quebec's history in the tragedy of the Duplessis orphans.  There's an example of a horror story in real life that one hopes is never repeated.

Things I Learned While Reading Detective Fiction

The more I dig into all these forgotten mysteries of the past the more my curiosity is aroused. I end up discovering more unusual tidbits about pop culture, world history, medicine, physics, animal behavior, what have you. For instance, a character will mention he played a game of bezique and I react with a cry of "What?" sending me off to my laptop a-Googling into the vastness of cyberspace in an attempt to quench my thirst for more trivia.

Here's a list of the most recent learning in my extracurricular education.

1. Bezique is a trick taking card game for two players. It can be traced back to the early 19th century in France. Winston Churchill apparently loved it. The scoring seems arbitrary and rather complicated. I am determined to learn how to play it if I can get Joe to stay of out of the garden for a couple hours in the coming months. (mentioned in Death Comes to Cambers by E.R. Punshon)

2. The Maginot Line, France's attempt to build a series of fortifications along the French-German border with the hope that it would contain fighting along the borders and prevent interior attacks, had a system of underground barracks interconnected with railways. A very cool set of map endpapers in Papa Pontivy and The Maginot Murder by Bernard Newman was pretty much the deciding factor in my purchase of this book. Still reading it and a review is soon to come.

3. August Wimmer (1872-1937) was a Danish psychiatrist who pioneered the field of study involving dissociative identity disorder back as early as the 1900s. The disorder is more commonly (and inaccurately) referred to as multiple personality disorder. I later learned one of his most important works, Psychogenic Psychoses (1936), wasn't even translated into English until 2003. (Can't reveal the name of the book where I learned this or the entire story is ruined.)

4. The first postage stamp was created in England in 1840 and is known as the "penny black." Stamps created for the island of Mauritius because a printing error (I later learned this was a myth) were at one time the most highly prized stamps in the world of philately.  Does anyone still collect stamps? (Mentioned, along with lots of other philatelic history in the excellent stamp collecting mystery A Most Immoral Murder by Harriette Ashbrook

5. The Monkey Gland Cocktail created sometime in the 1920s was named after a trendy surgical procedure developed by Serge Voronoff. (mentioned in The Dead Walk by Gilbert Collins)

6. Playing time on records of any given musical composition can vary from record to record depending on who is singing or conducting. This may seem obvious to most of you but it was a bit of an eye opener for me. (Murder Plays an Ugly Scene by L.A.G. Strong)

7. There is a fish called a roach native to Europe that is often found in brackish freshwater. When spawning they get violent and often jump out of the water. (Between Twelve and One by Vernon Loder)

8. I learned more than I ever dreamed of about aerodynamics, the science of wind tunnels, and their importance in designing aircraft in the fascinating military mystery Death Flies Low by "Neal Shepherd", aka Nigel Morland.

9. For an FFB post back in February I ended up researching the life of Huey P. Long after learning that his bid for the U.S. Presidency had inspired Sax Rohmer to write President Fu Manchu.

10. Elevator design does not seem all that much improved from 1930. OK, this one is facetious. This is mostly based on my frustrations in the new building where I work where all the staff elevators despite being computerized behave as if they are being operated by hand crank. (suggested by the elevator problems in From This Dark Stairway by Mignon G. Eberhart)

This may be a continuing series.  Let me know if anyone wants more trivia in the coming months.