FRIGHT FEST #4: The Shadow Guest - Hillary Waugh

In the 1970s there was an explosion of Gothic suspense novels mostly appearing in mass market paperbacks. You didn't have to go to a bookstore to find any of them, you could buy these book in Woolworth's, local drug stores, newsstands and train station book stalls. They were ubiquitous. To some extent they still are as I find them by the dozens at library fundraising sales, used bookstores and estate sales.  The stories were even more formulaic than traditional detective novels with the exception of the addition of supernatural or quasi-supernatural incidents. In the better neo-Gothics the supernatural events are genuine but in the majority of them they are always rationalized.  The formula can be summed up in a quip that is attributed to Donald E. Westlake (or was it Elmore Leonard? or Mike Avallone? or who?) that goes like this: "A gothic is a book where the girl gets the house."

In The Shadow Guest (1971) Hillary Waugh inverts the entire formula by first making the lead character and narrator a man. Howard Whelan, a successful architect, finds himself in charge of a large building project in England. He takes his new bride Angela with him to London. He hopes her odd depressive persona will come to life in a new setting. Back in New York she was under the care of a psychiatrist who approves of a new setting as part of her recuperation. Angela is the woman in peril of the novel, but as she is not the narrator  and we see her only through her husband’s eyes the story is unusual and rises above the standard neo-Gothic.

Waugh even starts his book with an homage to a HIBK narrator. Many sentences in the opening paragraph start "If only I had..." The terrible things we are about to read about might never have occurred if Howard had seen everything the way it really was. I smiled at this opening paragraph and dismissed it as a semi-parody of the entire genre. Big mistake. Howard was telling the truth and the reader really should be paying attention to how the story unfold.

Cliffside home reminiscent 
of the Whelan's house
(© William Dax/SWNS)

Shortly after they arrive in England Howard has a heart attack. His doctor tells him he has been working too hard and stress led to his attack. He loses leadership over his project, is told to take a hiatus from work. It is even suggested that he leave London and find a home far away from hectic urban life. Angela is excited to look for a new home and she finds one in a lonely house built by a forlorn seacoast. With much cajoling and prodding Howard gives in to her desire to move in to Heather Cottage. The girl gets the house, just as we expect, and very early on. But not without a load of trouble.

Because -- of course -- Heather Cottage is a house with a past. Soon Angela is seeing visions, hearing horrible sounds, and is drawn to a ghostly apparition that appears in the yard outside. But Howard also sees the apparition and hears the terrible sounds. He does his best to assuage her fears.  But if he is also seeing and hearing these supposed hallucinations is there a real ghost at work? One night they hear what sounds like a car crash but when they go out to explore they find no sign of a car wreck.  All the more disturbing because they know that a few years ago a car came careening down the hill above their house and smashed through a guardrail plummeting over the cliff and ending in a fiery crash on the rocky shore below. Are the Whelans being haunted by that crash and is the apparition a ghost of one of the crash victims?

Waugh tells a creepily effective and engaging story loaded with suspense.  Nearly everyone they meet has some inside dope on Heather Cottage's previous occupants or something about the horrible car crash. Slowly but surely we are provided with just enough information to keep reading in order to find out what actually happened. Questions were flooding my mind as I tore through this book. Did someone survive that crash? Is there a bizarre vendetta taking place? And why?

Added to the weird haunting and the riddle of the car crash is Beverly Gaines, the Whelan's young housekeeper, who may have a psychic power. The first day at Heather Cottage she is frightened by a vision in the sitting room and flees in terror. It takes some time to calm her down and when she re-enters the house it's as if nothing ever happened. She has no memory of being frightened or seeing anything strange. When Howard questions some of the locals about Beverly he discovers she is shunned because of her deadly premonitions. She had a similar vision on the road where the car crash happened. Howard is warned that if Beverly saw something in their house they should be careful because it is a sure sign that someone will die there soon.

Then there is the mysterious painter who lives in a house on the hill above the Whelan’s new home. He is reclusive, distrustful of almost everyone, and won't allow anyone in his home. Howard meets him in an odd scene that leaves the reader thinking something very strange is up with the hermit-like artist.

The rear cover of my paperback edition of The Shadow Guest  quotes a newspaper review that states "...At no point does the enthralled reader have the slightest suspicion about the horrendous climax." For once, that's no exaggeration. When the utterly unexpected twist occurred I shouted aloud, "WHAT?!" It is a near brilliant achievement.  Although the ending seems rushed and overloaded with twists and double twists, all is explained cleverly and succinctly. It was all there if we -- like Howard -- had only been paying attention to what was actually happening.

As the only example I know of a neo-Gothic told from a male viewpoint that simultaneously subverts and pays homage to all the conventions and motifs of this genre The Shadow Guest succeeds magnificently. I was truly impressed with this book. Waugh was so successful with this book he went on to write a small batch of true Gothic novels that were published under his female pseudonym "Elissa Grandower."  I also read The Secret Room of Morgate House (1977) to see if he was as innovative with the genre. Sadly, it's too much of a clone of the hundreds of books that cling to the Gothic suspense formula. The Shadow Guest because it basically is an inversion of a neo-Gothic is far more original, innovative and --dare I say it?-- ingenious in its conception.

FRIGHT FEST #1: The Death Fire - Lilian Bennet-Thompson & George Hubbard

This month I'll be reviewing a small batch of supernatural mysteries and thrillers as part of this Halloween season. Usually I do one single post tagged Halloween Special (sometimes two), but I pulled a bunch of books to sell, read them prior to listing them, and coincidentally they all had Halloween themes of sorts. To start this Fright Fest off I've chosen what I think is the epitome of the weird menace mystery novel.

"Was there to be no end to the fantastic horror of this thing? Like those of some giant octopus, the tentacles of mystery kept whipping out first in one direction, then in another, clinging and tightening their hold with every effort that was made to loosen them!" - from Chapter 24,"The Fiend"

The Death Fire (1929) not only is the earliest of this small batch of thrillers it also exemplifies a type of story that became a staple of pulp magazines in the 1930s. In fact, there were a slew of magazines that specialized in the "weird menace" story like Dime Detective, Ten Detective Aces and Strange Detective Stories. Weird menace stories deal with ostensibly supernatural events and bizarre crimes that may or may not also feature supernatural creatures and legends. Excessive violence and scenes of torture often were also conventions of these stories. Almost always the supernatural events and creatures will turn out to be rationalized. Many of these stories can be likened to the ghostbusting tales and novels about occult detectives who do battle with otherworldly phenomena and creatures who often have a knowledge of arcane lore. I guess you might also draw analogies to the popular Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? cartoons of the 1970s in which the ghosts and weird creatures always turn out to be elaborate fakes with mechanical ingenuity accompanying the supposed hauntings. Real estate greed or fraud almost always turned out to be the motive of the haunting in the Scooby-Doo cartoons.

Bennet & Thompson, a writing duo who mostly specialized in westerns and western romances, wrote three weird menace detective serials (The Beak of Death and The Golden Ball are the other two) for Detective Story Magazine in the late 1920s which eventually were all published as books by Chelsea House, the book publishing arm of Street & Smith magazines. The Death Fire, originally serialized in 1927, became a book in 1929. It's the grandest of Grand Guignol novels they wrote and features a house haunted by a ghostly presence known as The Lady of the Mist.  She appears on the grounds of a cliffside home near the eastern coast of New York and her manifestations occur just after the appearance of an eerie blue light emanating from the foggy coastline.  Jimmy Clyde, a detective, and his friend Dr. Meredith travel to Cragwood to investigate. Cragwood is the mansion built by David Courtney, a psychic researcher who spent his lifetime investigating real and fraudulent supernatural events. Though long dead Courtney's influence and fascination with psychic phenomena have infected the household. Even the butler has become a true believer for he has seen things he cannot explain.

At the start of the novel Courtney's son Douglas is bedridden with a strange ulcer on his throat. Dr. Meredith has been consulted as he has an expertise in cancers, though everyone hopes that Douglas' wound is not so serious. Douglas refuses to leave his bedroom or the estate as he is fearful for his life and that of his sister Alice, who he bears a close resemblance to. Alice has also grown fearful of the weird events surrounding their home. Her fiance Tony was distracted by the vision of the Lady of the Mist one evening weeks ago and ended up driving his car off the cliff and died in a fiery crash. So already there is one death ascribed to the haunting.

The book is filled with incidents, they pile up on one another quickly until Clyde and Meredith are practically swimming in strange and eerie events. All of the dogs kept in a kennel for hunting have mysteriously died, a swarm of rats invaded Douglas' bedroom (the possible cause of his throat injury), a pool of blood weirdly manifests itself on the floor at the base of the grand staircase though no one seems to have been anywhere around, a black cat that was harassing Alice is poisoned but suddenly reappears after it was killed and buried, and finally Alice has been attacked in her sleep. Two puncture marks are found on her throat. Uh oh...  Everyone knows what that means.

The sheer number of manifestations and weird phenomena is to be marveled at.  Clyde and Meredith may initially be puzzled, but each of them is determined to discover what human agency is responsible for the haunting of Cragwood.  Meredith with his medical science background learns that Douglas' wound despite routine treatment with antibiotics and careful dressing is getting worse and seems to be a horrible skin cancer not the result of an animal attack.  Clyde refuses to accept ghosts and manifestations and suspects only human hands at work.  That is, until one night when the peculiar secretary Varlam, a Russian immigrant known to wander the grounds at night even during a thunderstorm, is discovered in a tomb with an apparently sleepwalking Douglas.  The two of them are armed with a pickaxe, wooden mallets and a sharpened stake, even a gun with silver tipped bullets. Clyde tells Meredith that the two truly believed that a vampire was after Alice. The word nosferatu is tossed around puzzling everyone but Clyde. He has knowledge of Eastern European legends which I'm sure he learned by going to the silent cinema. Or at least the authors must have been silent movie fans. No coincidence that Murnau's movie with its English translated intertitles was popular in theaters around the time this story was first published. 

Eventually all is explained in a very lengthy revelation scene. It should come as no surprise that Cragwood is riddled with secret passages. After all, the owner and builder David Courtney needed special hidden rooms in which to spy on the mediums he invited to his home in order to unmask them as frauds.  After discovering a secret panel the detective team follow some labyrinthine corridors into the basement of Cragwood where they discover all the machinery and equipment that created each and every manifestation.  At this point I got a major Scooby-Doo vibe. Still, this was the template for weird menace decades before that cartoon was even a figment in the animators' minds. Bennet-Thomspon and Hubbard get gold stars for their elaborately designed ghostly machinery. 

Even now The Death Fire with its abundance of incident dominated by freakishly weird events make for a helluva read. Clearly inspired by 19th century sensation fiction and Gothic masterpieces of the same era Bennet-Thompson and Hubbard have left us with the quintessential weird menace thriller of the 20th century.  It's definitely worth seeking out. For if you read this novel as an example of weird menace, then I guarantee that you've read them all.

Anyone interested in savoring this phantasmagorical pulp novel can buy my copy which is listed here.  Three other copies are for sale at other online bookselling sites and all of them are extremely affordable ranging in price from $15 - $25. 

Murder Mansion - Herman Landon

THE STORY: Donald Chadmore, newly released from prison for an assault charge has come to his uncle Theodore's home in order to protect him from a possible attack. He takes his uncle to the library at the ancient gloomy Chadmore home known to locals as "Mystery Mansion" and locks both of them inside.  The heavy door is bolted twice and locked from the inside. All windows are barred. There is no way anyone can get inside. And yet spectral music plays from the piano in the corner of the library and a shadowy figure emerges from the darkness. Uncle Theodore cries out to Donald. Donald fires his revolver at the shadowy figure. He goes to the divan where his uncle was sitting but it's empty.  Uncle Theodore is found behind the furniture piece on the floor. He's been shot. Not only shot but stabbed with an antique dirk that Donald had handled only a few hours ago and which was left in the hands of someone now locked upstairs in the attic. Who was the shadowy figure and how did it get in to kill Theodore Chadmore?

HIGHLIGHTS: Murder Mansion (1928) is another Herman Landon pulp extravaganza.  Think of any pulp magazine story trope and its bound to be in this novel.  Several beatings and fistfights, abduction, two locked rooms, a haunted house, a family curse, hidden jewels, strange legacies, disguise and masquerade, ventriloquism, a dying message, and a handful of gangsters all make their appearances in this story. The entire book is surprisingly well written (at times rather literary), cleverly plotted, and often laugh out loud funny.  Landon can't help but pile on the Gothic excesses and melodrama which tend to turn up the moody atmosphere to 11, 12 or even 13 too often. Still it's a helluva story, well told and teeming with fun characters, innovation, exciting incidents, and enough puzzling elements to keep any hardcore GAD fan glued to the pages.

THE CHARACTERS:  This book has a huge cast of characters but even some of the most minor characters have memorable moments. There are too many to list, including six mystery guests who turn up for a secret meeting with Theodore on the night of his murder. Below are the best of the cast.

Donald Chadmore - Our ostensible protagonist and an amateur sleuth of sorts. As the book continues he is more of a victim of circumstance, chosen by the villains of the piece to take the fall for his uncle's death as well as being blamed for several other bizarre activities. His  dancing partner, both literal and figurative is...

Gloria Westcott - The Bright Young Thing of the book. A real Jazz Age girl complete with 1920s lingo she shows off to her "big boy."  One wonders why she  turns up so often too coincidentally in the most unusual locations. All will be explained later in the book. She's an utter delight providing much of the lightheartedness to offset the heavy-handed strum and drang whenever Donald and Gloria exploring dark passages or dealing with yet another thunderstorm. I loved the Jazz era slang she slings around as easily as she does the foxtrot.

Samuel Peterkin - Valet who works at a luxury hotel, on loan to Donald for his stay and travels to Mystery Mansion to help him as not only valet, but personal assistant.  Peterkin can't help but offer up his talents as a detective and comes up with an ingenious idea to solve the locked room murder. He turns out to be the real sleuth of the book despite the presence of police, a D.A. and a private detective working for the prosecutor's office.

Milliken - Investigator for D.A. Mott. Won't have anything to do with ghosts or locked rooms. The whole crime gets his goat.  "It ain't natural!" he continually pronounces. He can't stand anyone who "blows froth" at him.  Some kind of 1920s slang, I gathered, for telling lies or making up stories (a running gag in the last third of the book). He has a few excellent scenes showing off his detective skills. Notably, he proves that the odd placement of Donald's fingerprints found on the dirk show that Donald could not have stabbed his uncle. Almost everything and everyone he encounters in this case is classified as "unnatural." Nevertheless, he's determined to find the real reasons for the murder and dismiss all the claptrap.

Mr. Amicus - A very dead character whose presence is always felt at Mystery Mansion.  Real name Jacob Hamilton Chadmore, he is Donald's great grandfather.  The story behind his self chosen moniker is too involved to explain here. But it is a bronze bust of the dead man and his promise to return from the grave on the anniversary of his death that keeps Theodore and his wife on their toes and often up late at night unable to sleep. They’re especially troubled every October 7, the night he died back in 1800 and something. The novel of course opens on October 7 and Theodore is killed on the anniversary night. Could it be a ghost that did him in?

Groody - A butler with a suitably weird name this servant to the Chadmore household is privy to several secrets that he won't reveal until the final chapter. He's a bit shifty but always answers Donald's questions honestly.  Trouble is Donald never asks the right questions.

"Doc Locks" - For a while I thought this exceptionally astute expert would turn out to be the detective. But he has only one scene and then he's gone. Neither a physician nor a PhD scholar "Doc Locks" is a nickname given to him by the police and the prosecutor's office. We never know his real name, still Doc is clearly the Gideon Fell of this novel. No locked rook can stump him. Through careful examination of any murder scene deemed a locked room and using his knowledge of criminal tricks and clever illusions he finds any secret passages and all possible means of exit and always proves a locked room is never hermetically sealed. Until this one, that is. Before he tells everyone that it seems impossible for anyone to have entered the locked room tells a few interesting true crime anecdotes like the one about the 19th c. French murderer who managed to infiltrate a locked room with a blazing fire in the hearth by coming down the wide mouthed chimney wearing an asbestos suit and a helmet with built-in oxygen tank!

John Pagan - One of six guests who were to visit Theodore Chadmore on the night of his death. He arrives t dressed in white tie and tails, the only person in such formal attire. He has an unusually deep and theatrical voice that Donald recognizes as belonging to someone he heard plotting his uncle's death. That person calls himself Staglawn.  Much of the book involves characters trying to uncover the true identity of Staglawn. Pagan denies being the murder plot mastermind. He also has a hilarious running gag of sorts that takes the form of an aversion to certain vocabulary and vernacular.  When anyone uses these words he responds with outrage and satirical wit: "Candid? Abominable word! Just as if anyone could be candid in this world of sham and pretense and stupid amenities!" See the quotes section for a couple more of these amusing outbursts.

QUOTES: Gloria: "Secrets should only be told in the moonlight."

Donald: "What do you think, Milliken? Do I look like a murderer?"
Milliken: "You do.  All the murderers I've seen looked innocent."

Pagan: "Hunch? I detest that word. It's a lazy man's designation of an idea he is too indolent to think out clearly."

Pagan: "Kindness? That's another word I detest. What we call kindness is only inverted selfishness." 

"This will be a lesson to me," Don added. "I'll never again trust strange women."
"Poor Don!" Gloria gave a mock sigh. "Everything is a lesson to you, isn't it, Don? But you always forget."

Peterkin: "[Valeting is] the best education in the world. Keep a man waiting two minutes for his trousers before he's had his morning coffee, and you learn as much about human nature as it would take you two years to learn in any other way. To know human nature, you've got to study it in the raw, with the frills off. Sometimes I've found it awfully raw, sir." 

THINGS I LEARNED:  Mr. Amicus is a great devotee of Haydn and remarkably has learned several haunting themes from his opera The Devil on Two Sticks.  Prior to any Mr Amicus manifestation in the library the weird dissonant music from this opera plays on the piano.  I was intrigued by "dissonant" music from Haydn most of whose music I think of as bright and melodious.  Lo and behold!  It is true that he wrote the music for an opera titled Der Krumme Teufel (his first full opera written at the age of 19) based on the 17th century French satirical novel by Alain-René Lesage translated as The Devil on Two Sticks. But how Mr. Amicus can play the music is the ultimate unsolved mystery of Murder Mansion.  According to all accounts I found online Haydn's opera is a lost work and though there are archival copies of the libretto no sheet music nor any recordings are known to exist. The only anecdote I could find connected to the actual composition was told in an 19th century collection of composer biographies. Here it is related that Hadyn and Josef von Kurz, his librettist collaborator, had a discussion on how to capture in music the sound of a thunderstorm.  Haydn could not come up with a suitable musical motif.  In frustration he slammed his hands on the keyboard and his companion exclaimed, "That's it!" Probably someone's vivid imagination at work. Landon certainly makes the music seem creepy in his lush descriptions. Don't know why he didn't use something more immediately recognizable like "Danse Macabre". I guess music that doesn't exist is easier to work with for a novelist; he can make it sound any way he wants it to sound. 

THE AUTHOR:  Herman Landon (1882-1960) was born in Stockholm and came to the United States with his family in 1895. At one time he worked as a journalist for the Washington Herald where he was feature writer and a managing editor. His primary fame, however, is as a pulp magazine short story writer and crime fiction novelist.  Throughout his fiction writing career lasting from 1907 to 1942 he wrote close to 200 short stories and 20 novels. He created several popular series characters for the pulp magazines among them The Gray Phantom (who may have been the inspiration for Batman), The Picaroon, Godfrey Usher, and Kingdon Cole. Some of his Picaroon stories were collected into book format and published in the UK only. Most of his stories were published in Street & Smith magazines with the majority of them (more than two thirds of his total output) appearing in Detective Story Magazine and Detective Fiction Weekly. His stories also appeared in 10 Story Book, The Blue Book, The Smart Set, The Corner Magazine. and The Popular Complete Stories. Some of his stories were adapted into silent movies.

EASY TO FIND?  Nearly impossible these days I'm sorry to report.  I found one copy available for an cheap price due to its poor condition. Looks beat to hell, but if you don't mind reading copies (I certainly don't when the book is extremely hard to find) then it's waiting for you. Two copies (maybe only one listed at two different sites) translated into French also turned up for sale. My copy in VG condition, pictured at top of this post, was sold within 12 hours of the post appearing. Sorry to anyone who was looking for it earlier. 

UPDATE:  Remarkably, three days after this review was posted I checked for copies of Murder Mansion and discovered all were sold. Even the French translated copies! Also sold were two copies of The Forbidden Door (before I even mentioned it in the comment below). Oddly, another copy of Murder Mansion has turned up. That one final copy is the Liveright 1st edition and is priced exorbitantly. It will cost you well over $300 including shipping and taxes if you live in the US. Even more if you live outside of the US. But the copy has four torn pages. In pieces! Still, I am sure that someone will buy that book soon. That and a roll of Scotch tape. 

The Snare of Circumstance - Edith E. Buckley

THE STORY  Elmer Bliss, reporter, is hired by a mysterious gentleman called Philander Summerfield to look into a recent Peter Somhers murder case that he believes was never solved. Bliss has been fascinated by the case because Somhers' nephew, Harrison Milbrath, was tried twice for the murder. In the first trial he was found guilty then he and his lawyer appealed due to an abundance of circumstantial evidence that should not have led to a guilty verdict. In Milbrath's second trial he is acquitted. Summerfield offers Bliss $20,000 to find the actual murderer. With such a sizeable reward Bliss is keen to turn detective and discover the real murderer of Peter Somhers.

THE CHARACTERS  In the second chapter Buckley introduces Murray Kilbourne, "by predilection a sleuth of no mean ability."  We learn he turned to criminal detection after leaving college. He inherited a fortune from an uncle and in order to claim that money the will had a proviso that Kilbourne was instructed to give up detective work and "devote his energies to the cultivation of his literary talents."  Kilbourne pops up at various points in the early portion of the novel,  but then leaves the country. To me his inclusion is utterly superfluous. Buckley makes it seem that Bliss and Kilbourne will be a team similar to Holmes and Watson, but Kilbourne is actually the worst kind of bogey character.  He serves absolutely no purpose. It was the only irritating part of the book.

Elmer Bliss is, in fact, the real sleuth and he proves to be far superior to Kilbourne who allows his libido to intrude and cloud his judgment in the detective work.  The real sleuthing team tuns out to be Bliss and Harrison Milbrath. The two join forces at the midpoint when Bliss uncovers a secret that Milbrath was hoping no one would learn. The revelation of this secret binds them in a friendship and strengthens Bliss's resolve to repair Harrison's reputation damaged after being found both guilty and not guilty of a single crime.  Together they are sure that once the "snare of circumstance" is finally lifted the young man will be able to carry on with his life both professionally and personally without shame or ignominy.

Philander Summerfield is indeed a mystery man making his first appearance in the first chapter and then vanishing for the remainder of the book. Or has he?  An elderly bearded man matching Summerfield's description and behavior is frequently seen around the Somhers estate by several witnesses that Bliss questions during his investigation.  Is Summerfield spying on Bliss?  Or is this a Summerfield look-alike?

Dolores "Dolly" McClure is the mystery "woman in white" (an obvious nod to Wilkie Collins) that BLiss follows for several days before he discovers who she really is. This young beauty stirs the hearts of all young men who meet her and is rather obviously involved with Harrison though it takes both Bliss and Kilbourne several days to figure this out. Her scenes are some of the strongest in the first half of the book when Buckley is setting up her intricate plot and layering multiple secrets and ambiguities into the story. She is willful, forthright, witty, a bit of a tease, and on the verge of heartbreak. When she learns that Bliss is intent on clearing Harrison's name she becomes one of his closest allies.

Chauncey McClure, Dolores' grandfather, lives nearby the Somhers estate and swears he has seen the ghost of Somhers wandering the grounds late at night. There are some very eerie sequences related to this eyewitness account.  Chauncey also provides a bit of gentle humor prior to his confession of ghost sighting.

Hutton, the station master for the local train depot, is one of Elmer's best sources. Hutton is a born gossip and a fine raconteur.  Elmer Bliss learns more than he ever hoped for from the many stories Hutton cannot help but share.  The most intriguing of his tales is the past history of Somhers building a wing onto his library, a retreat from noise, servant gossip and other intrusions and distractions.  Bliss believes there is also a hidden room (possible influence of Carolyn Wells?) somewhere within this building addition. Hutton also reveals he has seen an old man with a gray beard frequently visiting in town and that he arrives and departs on the train headed fro Boston. Bliss is sure this proves that Summerfield is indeed following him and keeping tabs on his investigation.

Jim Arms and Horsford seem to be the two primary antagonists. Each man lives on the Somhers estate and while Horsford, a caretaker of sorts, has a wife and daughter, Arms is a single man. Arms is the more villainous of the two men holding a grudge against Harrison for years and responsible for testimony that led to the first trial finding Harrison guilty. Bliss suspects that Horsford has secrets and knows more than he is willing to tell. Certainly Horsford's daughter has a piece of information that she is holding close and Bliss suspects she is protecting her father. Ultimately, Bliss will gain one of these men as an ally in an unexpected turn of events around the novel's midpoint. 

INFLUENCES  The Snare of Circumstance (1910) was published at a time when Conan Doyle and all his Holmesian tricks were still the primary influence of neophyte detective novelists. Buckley's novel is one of the finest examples from this nascent period of detective fiction in America. It's all the more remarkable for being her only detective novel and having received numerous rave reviews ranging from H. L. Mencken in the May 1910 issue of The Smart Set ("...well worth the money asked for it.") to the unsigned review in The New York Times March 19, 1910 ("...one of the few [detective novels] which...carries the reader without a hitch. The plot is...most ingeniously carried out. At no point can the reader guess the surprise finally sprung upon him.")  She has clearly drawn from several of the Holmes stories (alluded to by both reviewers, BTW) and in particular borrowed one iconic scene from The Hound of the Baskervilles where Holmes tries to prove a person's identity using a portrait painting. In Buckley's case it is not a painting but a photograph that proves the identification. Bliss does exactly what Holmes did:  he covers up a beard to leave only the eyes and face.

There is another novel that has major influence on the plot, too. Buckley mentions the book outright in the final chapter, but neither the title nor the author can be named, lest I giveaway the crème de la crème surprise.  Let me only remark that this influential novel held sway over several detective fiction and thriller writers from the 1930s through the 1960s who were keen on introducing psychological terror into their plots. Prior to this novel I had thought the earliest use of this familiar motif was in a book published in 1933. Always eyebrow raising to find yet another example and one so early in the 20th century. Buckley's may be, if not the first, one of the first American detective novels to employ this particular psychological plot motif.  For contemporary audiences in Buckley's day it must certainly have been a shocking finale.

THINGS I LEARNED  I was certain that the book took place around 1908 but automobiles are rarely encountered.  Instead there is a type of vehicle I'd never heard of. Bliss employs an early form of taxi called the herdic. As more and more herdics pop up in the story, I was starting to reassess the time as the late 1890s.  At one point there is a herdic chase and Bliss actually says, "Follow that cab!"  In any case, a herdic is a horse drawn taxi with side seats and a rear entrance. The vehicle is named for its inventor Peter Herdic who designed the carriage in 1881.  I found several photographs and drawings of them and chose the best example to include in this post.  There is an excellent history of the herdic and its Pennsylvanian inventor with several illustrations and photos here.

QUOTES Bliss:  "[Horsford] implied that there is a 'real ghost,' but it was to the atmosphere of mystery and danger that he referred. I dare say this man of yours has seen the ghost!"

McClure: "It is only recently that I have indulged in speculation of [unpopular thoughts], but I have had an experience that sent my thoughts in channels quite out of their usual run. Wild as the statement may sound to you, it is a fact that I, too, this summer, nearly two years after his death, have seen the spirit of my old friend, Peter Somhers!"

McClure: "But Mr. Bliss, the figure was not an illusion. Phantom or man it was real, and individual, and if it was not a 'materialization' some one on earth has a wish to give color to the sentiment against the place." 

Dolly: "You know what Tennyson says...? 'But a lie that is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.' That was the case with the testimony of Jim Arms; only the truthful part was so exceedingly small. Now that he has convicted Harry to a living death he is not content. He dares to sneer at him..."

EASY TO FIND?  Having been out of copyright for the past 16 years The Snare of Circumstance has been snatched up by the POD People. Several affordable paperback copies are available from a couple of print-on-demand outfits like Forgotten Books. I'm sure a copy has been uploaded to one of the many internet archives as well. Those seeking out the handsomely designed hardcover from Little, Brown & Company (shown throughout this post) with four original illustrations by Arthur E. Becher can pick from six different copies offered from online sellers. Prices range from $17 - $75 in various states of condition from reading copy to very good. I also found one Canadian edition, one of the better copies, priced at only $20. Happy hunting!

NEW STUFF: Murder at Gulls Nest - Jess Kidd

I will always read anything published by Jess Kidd, one of the most imaginative Irish writers of the past 20 years. I first heard of her through the dozens of rave reviews for her unique genre blending debut Himself (2016), a mix of crime novel and ghost story. But the first book I read of hers was Mr Flood's Last Resort (2017) -- original UK title The Hoarder -- an unconventional mystery novel which also coincidentally has some ghosts in it. She has written all sorts of novels, including a book geared for young readers, all of which tend to feature some element of a traditional mystery novel though none of them were true detective novels until she wrote Things in Jars (2019), a wild, dizzying imaginative mystery thriller with a real detective that blends bizarre murders with supernatural creatures and Irish mythology. She followed that third novel with an unusual historical adventure and coming of age novel, The Night Ship (2022), based on the actual shipwreck of a Dutch sailing vessel in the 17th century. Now she has turned her hand to a full fledged, retro Golden Age mystery completely embracing the traditional detective novel.

As much as I wished that she would have created a series character with Bridie Devine, her Victorian era woman detective from Things in Jars, we are now promised a series character in the person of Nora Breen, the protagonist of Murder at Gulls Nest.  Nora is a former nun who has recently left her cloistered existence in the Carmelite monastery of High Dallow and traveled to Kent to the resort town of Gore-on-Sea which sounds suspiciously like a real city in West Sussex that I know is the home of one of my favorite rare bookselling entities (World of Rare Books in Goring-by-Sea). Here she sets up in the boarding house of the title hoping to learn what happened to another nun from her monastery who also left the order after getting ill and needing to recuperate in the outside world. Frieda Borgan, the young nun Nora befriended, promised to write to Nora regularly. When those news-filled letters suddenly stopped in August Nora decided to find out what happened to Frieda that would prevent her from writing.  A prologue pretty much hints at her fate alerting us to expect an unhappy outcome for Frieda.

Nora starts her inquiry on the sly. She comes across as a busybody yet oddly manages to gather quite a bit of information. Within days one of the boarders dies unexpectedly and everyone assumes the person committed suicide. Nora and the another boarder think otherwise.

This is a well done traditional mystery novel, following too closely perhaps to formula, but not without Kidd's requisite offbeat humor and touches of the bizarre. Among the oddball characters are an elderly puppeteer who specializes in Punch and Judy performances, a stern housekeeper/cook who serves up unpalatable meals and runs the boarding house like a jail with rigid rules, a strange 10 year-old girl who refuses to speak and dresses like a miniature Miss Haversham, and the local reverend who lives next door and cultivates a huge brood of rabbits - his only friends - as he tends to dislike most people. Reverend Audley (an allusion to Braddon?) was maybe my favorite of the supporting characters. Another unusual character is Hosmer, the artsy photographer Nora meets in town, who both offers her info on a boarder who fled Gulls Nest immediately after the supposed suicide and also takes her portrait in a quirky scene involving jazz music and Nora's shedding her inhibitions in a literal dance of freedom. Also worth nothing as typical Kiddian quirkiness are the scenes with Nora feeding a seagull she names after a priest. The bird regularly visits her on the ledge outside her bedroom window, she mulls over the case, and discusses her ideas with the gull as the bird swallows chunks of herring Nora has bought for the bird to snack on.

Ultimately the characters and their relationships make Murder at Gulls Nest an enjoyable read and distract from endless Q&A sequences that otherwise might have proved tiresome. Inspector Rideout, the primary policeman of the book, has an intriguing relationship with Nora -- at first adversarial, then giving way to mutual admiration, and finally budding friendship. At one point Rideout says to Nora:

"The war hasn't helped. It has blown us apart in so many ways; the old rituals, the old beliefs no longer hold. We want death, like life, to have a reason. [...] Sometimes we have to accept that when it comes to matters of life and death, we can't know everything and never will."

I think this is what Kidd was attempting to accomplish with this homage to the traditional mystery.  She has succinctly and simply summed up the post-WW2 mindset. How war has permanently changed all preconceived notions of modern life and all human interaction.  Perhaps there will be no real tidy ending that will explain all the death and misery churned up at Gulls Nest.

Kidd knows the genre well and has already proven she is a wiz at dreaming up complex and fairly clued plots.  however, in this outing as formulaic as it is and not so cleverly clued I was able to figure many of the twists dozens of chapters before Nora had any idea what was going on.  I think most readers well read in mystery fiction will be able to figure out some secrets early on and see through some of the misdirection.  I was hoping for a finale in which Dinah, the mute child, would suddenly regain her speech and become the real detective of the piece by pointing out everything she had overheard while hiding behind curtains and in the sideboard of the dining room. Alas! no such denouement occurs. The finale is indeed rather melodramatic and Dinah does play a part in the unmasking of the rather obvious villain.

I look forward to Nora's next adventure in which she will solve a series of "supernatural murders" associated with a seance that goes terribly wrong. There is a medium and a seance in Murder at Gulls Nest, but whether the medium Miss Elspeth Dence (very reminiscent of the kooky Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit) will also appear in the next book I will not know until I can read it. Book two of the Nora Breen investigations entitled Murder at the Spirit Lounge is due out in June 2026. 

HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: Sinister House - Leland Hall

The most uncanny thing about my reading Sinister House (1919) is not so much the content of this fine tale of a haunted house and malevolent ghosts but my timing.  A few days after I started the book I attended a performance of the new stage thriller Paranormal Activity (conceived and directed by Felix Barrett, written by Levi Holloway) based on the series of horror movies of the same name. The play deserves a post all to itself and I will have to refrain from talking about it here. But the eerie coincidences between a supernatural novel written more than a century ago and a play only written one year ago are seriously unreal. They both begin as commentary on routine living then morph slowly into tales of malign presences infecting the living. There is even a manifestation that takes place in the novel that is exactly the same as a fleeting moment in the play I saw.  That's chillingly coincidental and mindbogglingly uncanny as far as I’m concerned!

Leland Hall's novel starts out so utterly mundane that he includes lectures on the real estate business, building concerns and one of the characters' disdain for developmental communities which were already a blight on American neighborhoods in 1919, at least according to Leland Hall. Then the routine of everyday life gives way to disturbing and unsettling events. The first major shift in the story happens when the narrator Pierre is visited -- during a torrential thunderstorm, no less -- by his neighbor Eric Grier who has recently moved into a ramshackle home on the outskirts of the cookie cutter development known as Forsby. He has returned from a business trip in Buffalo, walked from the train station as there were no cabs at that late hour and when he saw the light on in Pierre's house hoped to gain entry and shelter from the storm. Eric is eager to get home to his new bride Julia who he could not stop thinking of while he was away.

Immediately, there is a discussion of the difference between the two homes in the novel. Pierre's house in Forsby is wholly modern made of cement with a "granolithic walkway" leading up to the front door, equipped with modern plumbing including turn-of-the-century fad of exposed pipes and, of course, electricity. Eric's 19th century home is still trapped in the past made almost entirely of wood and stone and no modern conveniences. Gaslight and fireplaces providing heat and illumination, water is fetched from a well. Eric is beginning to behave differently and Pierre and his wife Annette notice that Julia is especially happy in the gloomy house when her husband is absent. At first Pierre cannot understand why the two young newlyweds have moved into such an eyesore of a house. Annette finds nothing at all attractive about the place neither outside nor in. But Julia seems happy and finds comfort in its old-fashioned atmosphere. Pierre, however, finds that atmosphere chilling -- literally and figuratively.

Frontispiece from the US 1st edition,
illustrations all by Haydon Jones

 

It seems a malign influence has permeated the house and is infecting Eric. One night when Pierre, his wife and three year-old son Bobbie are traveling home their car breaks down with not one but two flat tires. They are forced to seek out help and shelter from the Griers. Little Bobbie is terrified of setting foot in the house having had his fertile young imagination stimulated by some strange fairy tales his mother has told him, notably one about the Loreley. In her version the siren sings tempting songs in order to lure men to the death and she eventually eats them! Bobbie calls the Grier home the "Singing House" and does not want to go in. His mother manages to calm him until he sees Eric. Bobbie has a fit of hysterical screaming crying out: "No, mama! Get him away, get him away! Don't let him touch me. He's going to eat me!"

Annette's cousin Giles is the primary skeptic in this cast. He is certain that Eric did not just stumble upon the house in Stanton by accident as he claims. Pierre learned that the house belonged to Morgan Snart, "an eccentric old man, very religious," and his  homely daughter Huldah "who had taken to religion even more entirely than her father." Giles digs into the Snart's past and uncovers secrets about the two that belie their supposed good character and surface religious demeanor. He also finds out a bit more about Eric but is circumspect in relaying that news to everyone.  Compounding this mystery is a forbidden room that Julia insists Eric never open. It remains locked for the majority of the novel. When it is opened out of necessity terror reigns down upon everyone.

Sinister House is clearly a precursor to Shirley Jackson's pioneering haunted house novel The Haunting of Hill House published five decades later in its depiction of a malign presence in an evil house that affects one single person. Hall's novel is both prophetic and iconoclastic in that he defies the traditions of Gothic literature by making the man the object of the haunting and not the woman. In fact, both Julia and Annette are the voices of reason throughout the entire book. It is the men who suffer the most -- from fear, susceptibility, and rash judgment -- when the evil presences finally manifest themselves and carry out their wicked plans. True Julia is targeted in a frightening scene (see illustration plate at right) but it is Eric, Pierre and even Giles who are the sorriest victims suffering both physical and psychological injury more than either of the women.

QUOTES:   I say it walked; but really it moved in some half-human, half-fiendish gait, slowly yet in springs. It was the shape of a tall woman. ...as this thing passed along the wall, its insubstantial head was turned to me, so that I was subjected to a lidless stare of incredibly sinister malice.

Books which teach etiquette of the drawing room had better put in a special clause to warn students against behaving before their hosts as if they were seeing the hideous family specter pass along the wall of the dwelling in which they are being entertained.

There's nothing like a familiar unpleasant job to keep the mind from brooding. 

Giles: "Dead men rise up never --read even your poets.  Ghosts breed in the living. That's where we'll catch them."

Truly I believe that the past was dead to [Eric]. By force of his will to live he had made it as if it had never been. He denied it to himself. And if he denied it to himself, it was no lie for him to deny it to others.

It doesn't do any good at all to say "Boo!" at the past if you're afraid of it.

THINGS I LEARNED:  Pierre talks about his intolerance for lack of modern utilities at the Grier house. He mentions one of his pet peeves is the presence of cannel coal in so many country homes and how he much prefers gaslight. Cannel coal, also called  candle coal and oil shale, was used in the 19th century for its bright and steady flame. Because it burned longer than wood it was a preferred choice for home fireplaces. Its compact dense structure also made it an easily carved material for sculpture, ornaments and jewelry.

Pierre comforts an injured Giles in the finale and describes himself as "kneeling like a Mussulman beside him in the gloom." He's not talking about an apple sauce brand or a misspelling of a he-man here. Mussulman is an archaic term for anyone of the Islam faith. We use the word Muslim now.

THE AUTHOR:  Leland Hall (1883-1957) was born and raised in Massachusetts. I was unable to locate a newspaper obituary online to share other biographical info. According to his gravestone shown in a photo at Find A Grave he was born in Malden and was laid to rest there alongside one of his relatives. Based on the dates this is most likely his father. Anyone with info on Hall is welcome to email more info or comment below. I can't even verify any other books he may have written. I'm curious about his work, if any more exists.

EASY TO FIND? Copies of the original edition are few and far between.  I found only two copies, priced rather steeply, of the US edition (Houghton & Mifflin, 1919) offered for sale online. It was first reprinted in hardcover in the 1970s by the private publisher Bookfinger in a limited edition of about 500 copies. Some if those turn up frequently for sale at affordable prices. Finally, there is a comparatively cheaper reprint in a paperback omnibus (Hippocampus Press, 2008) that is still out there in the used book market and available brand new from the publisher. In addition to Sinister House you get another classic haunted house novel in that two-fer reprint:  Cold Harbor by Francis Brett Young. 

The Bowstring Murders - Carr Dickson (John Dickson Carr)

I've had my copy of The Bowstring Murders (1933) for decades. Why have I never read it until a few days ago? Well, for one thing it's a treasure. I own the hardcover first edition with the silly attempt at creating a new pseudonym for John Dickson Carr. Instead of "Christopher Street", the name Carr wanted as his pseudonym, an executive at William Morrow slapped the utterly giveaway name of "Carr Dickson" on the book. Copies of the original hardcover with this pseudonym are extremely hard to find these days. It's the only book with that dumb pen name.

Maybe Carr's angry reaction to that decision of which he was not notified as Douglas Greene records in The Man Who Explained Miracles (1995) was the reason that this book is also the only one with John Gaunt, a detective consultant to Scotland Yard who shuns modern scientific advances. I was sorting through a box of vintage paperbacks and I found another copy of The Bowstring Murders, this one a 1970s era reprint from Belmont Books. I figured: Well, no time like the present. So I dashed off my long overdue read of this early John Dickson Carr book in a couple of days last week.  Interestingly, it seems more of a retread of both Carr's own books as well as the work of some of his influences.

The story takes place in a familiar Carr setting: the Gothic castle known as Bowstring, home of Henry Steyne, AKA Lord Rayle. Bowstring comes complete with a moat and a man made waterfall on the vast estate that feeds the water in the moat and keeps it flowing to avoid the stench and health hazards of stagnant water.  The reader is constantly reminded of the presence of the waterfall and its never-ending roar which prevents many of the characters from hearing certain crucial sounds related to the several murders that take place. Also notable is that the story takes place over only three days.

UK 1st edition. Used Carter Dickson as author.
Body is illustrated as face up unlike in the book.

Lord Rayle is an eccentric medievalist who prefers living in the past and lecturing anyone who will indulge him on his vast collection of medieval weaponry and suits of armor. The night before he is killed a pair of gauntlets go missing. Then Lord Rayle decides to nail shut a door hidden behind a tapestry in the armor room that leads to a secret alcove. It's almost a case of shutting barn door after the horse has fled.  Later, we learn that passageway was used a trysting spot for his daughter Patricia. She would use that hidden area to meet a handsome guest, Larry Kestevan, for midnight snogging sessions. As she is thwarted from meeting her lover Patricia eventually discovers her father's body, practically tripping over it in the candlelit armor room. Her father was apparently strangled by a bowstring and his body is crumpled in a strange position face down on the floor of the armor room.

Gaunt is called in to help Inspector Tape. Prior to the arrival of Gaunt the book is fairly colorless with lots of chit chat from Francis Steyne, son to Lord Rayle, and what amounts to a lot of malarkey about the collection of armor. For me, Gaunt was the only really interesting person in the entire cast.  Another in a long line of omniscient detectives with antisocial tendencies, a high opinion of himself, and critical opinions of everyone else, he's also a rampant alcoholic. Carr tries to hint at a tragedy in his past as a reason for his heavy drinking. (He caused the death of one of his partners, I think. I forgot to note it exactly.) Eventually he lost his job with the police due to his drinking, but still manages to be called in regularly to help with unusual crimes. And so we find him at Bowstring trying to make sense of not only the strangling death of Lord Rayle but also the strangling of the maid Doris, who claimed to have seen a suit of armor standing in a stairway a few nights prior to both violent murders. About midway through the book another character is killed. But this person is shot to death which immediately dismisses the idea of anything supernatural related to a ghostly figure in armor.

1973 Belmont paperback
This time the body is face down (sort of), but
his arms are wrong! They should be underneath.
And the clothes are all wrong, too.

The most impressive feature is not the bizarre murder method of strangling by gauntlets (already used by Carolyn Wells in 1931's Horror House) or the impossible circumstances surrounding the brutal murders. Instead what stands out as more ingenious is how Carr manages to take all the minute details -- details most readers will dismiss as ornament and filler -- and apply them to the overarching plot. Offhand comments and one particular insult, for example, all serve to support Gaunt's solution. All details reveal the strange weak character flaw of the murderer, a person with a lack of imagination whose lies are obvious. At least to Gaunt.

Lying and the art of lying seem to be central to the book.  Gaunt has a mini lecture on the dubious science behind the lie detector machine, a fairly new invention and used regularly in police investigations since the mid 1920s. He describes in detail the lack of understanding of psychology of liars' behavior and how that will almost certainly backfire the moment a lie detector machine is introduced.  He believes that the machine's recording of the body's reactions (pulse, heart rate and respiratory signals) are not the telltale signs of lying. In fact, the liar he believes will immediately be put on guard and the usual giveaway of a liar -- elaborate storytelling -- will be substituted for short colorless answers lacking in the details that will always reveal a liar.

Due to a rather small set of suspects the ultimate reveal of the killer is no real gasp-inducing surprise. It's clear that of the small pool of suspects -- Francis, Patricia, Larry, the footman Saunders, and Bruce Massey, Lord Rayle's secretary and financial advisor -- it can only be one of three people. Greene mentions in The Men Who Explained Miracles that the solution seems to very similar to another book Carr wrote prior to 1933 which featured Henri Bencolin.  He says that it may be one of Carr's many cases of self-plagiarism in his early career. Carr was known to recycle ideas form short stories and put them into his novels. This happened several times in the stories that appear in Department of Queer Complaints, for example. Ultimately, it was fun to see just how Gaunt caught the killer who he says acted mostly on impulse even though his crimes had been well thought out in advance. In one way this novel is more satisfying as a howdunit and whydunit than it is the old-fashioned whodunit.

Murder Up the Glen - Colin Campbell

THE STORY:  Lorin Weir is on a walking tour of the West Highlands. He is warned to stay away from his intended hiking paths because of the dangerous  poorly maintained trails that proved deadly to a couple of young men on recent unsuccessful climbs. But the terrain is not the only danger. Lorin learns of the legend of the Black Walker, ghost of a Spanish invader to Scotland, that appears in the area on Beltane (May 1) and Midsummer -- two nights favored by witches, warlocks and haunts.  Lorin dismisses the superstitious warning and camps in the forbidden area.  He witnesses a murder an d sees a black caped figure fleeing into the night.  Lorin also flees but in doing so he dsrops his monogrammed knife. Uh oh! Now he'll be implicated.

CHARACTERS:  Initially, Lorie Weir appears to be the protagonist detective in Murder Up the Glen (1933), but the novel is structured in an unusual manner. In Part One Lorin and the villagers are featured as they all search for Duncan Grant, a gameskeeper who has gone missing then turns out to be the murder victim Lorin found in the highlands.  In Part Two a writer, Martin Loan, and his colleague Dr. Lawrence Neal, an Irish physician interested in crime and supernatural, take over as narrator and detective respectively.  As the story gets more complex and detailed Loan adds several letters and diary entries to his "manuscript" to offer up alternate points of view and provide eyewitness testimony that he was unable to provide himself.  Loan and Dr. Neal take an arduous journey to Fantassich Lodge where they set up temporary headquarters to help the Neil family (distant cousins of the physician) make sense of the murder and  clear up whether the ghost might be involved or not. 

The Neil family is headed up by Colonel Evan Neil. The others -- Cynthia, a 17 year old preparing for university, and John 14 years-old -- are joined by Neil's two stepchildren Alan and Mary, both under 10 years old. All these supporting characters have their own special scenes with Cynthia eventually taking on a major role as she becomes more and more attracted to Lorin Weir and determined to clear his name. In fact, the youngest boy Alan serves to be crucial to the investigation when he stumbles on the incriminating knife with Lorin's initials in a burn (a large stream) while fishing.

The austere and grim setting with its foreboding landscape dominates the first half of the book. Descriptions of the craggy land, mountains and glens, burns and rivers provide substantial creepy atmosphere. The landscape and geography become like a character unto itself.  The inclusion of a gorgeously rendered map (see below & click to enlarge) that serves as the front endpapers in the first edition allows the reader to realize more fully the all-important landscape.

The Neil's maid Mairag and Dugald Cameron, her boyfriend of sorts, will also emerge from the background and take up a majority of the story when Lorin focuses his efforts on proving that Dugald killed Duncan Grant. The comely Mairag was the object of many of the local men's attentions including Grant, the murder victim. Lorin is sure jealousy is the motive. Mairag, of course, denies Duglad had anything to do with the crime pointing out his relatively good nature, despite his temper, he would never kill anyone. However, Dugald becomes surly and often violent in his own denials. The two seem to be protecting each other.  Or are their actually protecting someone entirely different?  Cynthia is puzzling out all the seeming jealousies and cover-ups and tries to help Lorin see the truth.

Meanwhile, Dr. Neil is out to prove that the ghost is real and that the legends and stories surrounding  The Black Walker have some legitimacy.  Is it possible that this caped figure is an actual ghost? And what of Daft Jimmy who has been seen wandering the mountainous terrain in his own black cape? This local "half-wit" who spends much of his time herding sheep seems to be part of a crime. Lorin suggests that Daft Jimmy is being exploited and manipulated by an angry, more intelligent man in order to carry out violence and is doing so in a Black Walker get-up.

INNOVATIONS:  What makes Murder up the Glen a bit remarkable is the manner in which Campbell manages to blend the real with the legendary.  The shifting between suspects is also well done. By the final third of the novel the plot becomes similar to a Christianna Brand detective novel with quickly shifting accusations arising and almost as quickly demolished as new facts come to light. Ultimately, Dr. Neal uncovers a Gothic surprise of sorts and disproves what seems to be the ultimate accusation. Neal offers up his own ideas which incorporate a hint at supernatural activity while others dismiss his claims and point the finger at the only mortal suspect left to have been accused. While the book is not actually open-ended in the finale, there is a oddly ephemeral suggestion that is left up to the reader to either believe or dismiss. This book is unique among detective novels in this regard.  I thought of The Burning Court (1937) and wondered if perhaps John Dickson Carr had read this book and tried his hand at a similar introduction of genuine supernatural content revealed in the novel's conclusion.

THE AUTHOR:  Colin Campbell was the pseudonym of Douglas Christie (1894-1935) who wrote novels under his own name, his Campbell alter ego and a second pen name, Lynn Durie. According to Hubin's Bibliography of Crime Fiction Dr. Larry Neal, is a series detective and appears in two other mystery novels. The first novel, a frustratingly rare book I am still in search of for over 20 years (!), Out of the Wild Hills (1932) is a mystery with genuine supernatural content.  The third and last of the Neal mysteries, Murder on the Moors (1934),  I managed to find in a scarce POD reprint edition and will review that one in the future.

EASY TO FIND?  If you want a hardcover edition -- well, good luck. Copies are scarce, practically impossible to find. I found a battered copy a few years ago but recently sold that in my online listings. However, if you don't mind eBooks or digital texts, then you are indeed in luck!  I suggest you click here and you will find three different digital versions of Murder Up the Glen, one for Kindle, one in Epub, and one full length PDF.  Happy reading!

NEGLECTED DETECTIVES: Rosalie LeGrange, medium turned sleuth for hire

THE STORY:  Dr. Walter Blake meets Annette Markham on a train and falls in love with her.  She tells him she is not meant for men according to her aunt and guardian, Paula Markham, a student of Eastern occult religions. Annette says her Aunt Paula told her she has "the Light" and is meant for higher things. Dr. Blake soon meets Paula and is suspicious of an ulterior motive, possibly fraud,  in tutoring her niece. The physician seeks out Rosalie LeGrange, a medium, to help him expose Paula Markham. But Rosalie cautions Dr. Blake that Mrs. Markham is not a fraud at all, but the real thing. Exposing such a powerful woman (if she is faking it) will be difficult to impossible. Dr. Blake's real concern is the possible exploitation of Annette and he admits to his love for her.  Immediately Rosalie gives in for she has soft spot for young love. Turns out Mrs. Markham is in need of a new housekeeper and through clever manipulation Rosalie gains the job. The investigation begins! Stock manipulation and con artistry abound as Rosalie and Dr. Blake make their through The House of Mystery (1910).

THE CHARACTERS:  Rosalie lets Blake know that most medium fakery grows out of the genuine thing. She should know because she is a real medium herself having from her teen years had visions and heard voices telling her things that later prove true. In charging money for consultations she confesses that it is easy to give in to fake stories when the client is eager to hear anything positive. This, she says, is the crux of the fortune telling racket no matter how it shows up - crystal balls, tarot cards or seances. It's the showmanship that is so tempting and the resulting ease of foretelling good news rather than doling out the awful news that more often make up the real truth. She likes a challenge, though, and facing off with Paula Markham will test her like no other job she's taken on.

Rosalie is sharp witted, highly observant, sometimes wise, but hardly an intellectual. All of her dialogue is rendered in a working class style peppered with period slang and folksy idioms. She makes for a refreshing detective fiction protagonist as most of these characters from the late 19th century and early 20th century are all cut from the same cloth: aloof, dispassionate, so logical as to appear ruthless and cruel. Rosalie bears little resemblance to those super sleuths. No surprise that such a likeable, warm-hearted, amateur detective proved to be popular with readers for she returned in a sequel, The Red Button (1912), this time trying her hand at solving a murder.

In Paula Markham we actually see a personality that would make the perfect fictional detective of this time. Paula's personality is the coolly aloof sophisticate and she proves adept at subterfuge and deceit.  Rosalie has met her match just as she feared. Paula Markham seems inspired by the master criminals that were so popular in serial fiction and magazine short stories in the pre-WW1 era. She meets up with Arthur Bulgar, a corrupt mining company executive fearful that his company is about to fail, who in turn seeks out Robert Norcross, Wall Street financier, haunted by the death of his lost love. Bulgar and Markham use this knowledge to cajole Norcross into helping bail out the mining company. Annette will play a part in the scheme acting as the voice -- and sometimes "body" -- of Norcross' dead lover.

THE AUTHOR:  Will Irwin (1873-1948) was a journalist and novelist. He covered the 1906 San Francisco earthquake for The New York Sun, wrote about Japanese racism in California, and had a series of newspaper articles appear in Colliers Weekly exposing fraudulent mediums and the "spirit racket".  No doubt that series led him to write The House of Mystery.  In addition to his two detective novels, Irwin was the author of numerous nonfiction books ranging from a history of San Francisco to a biography on Herbert Hoover for whom he worked from 1914-1915. Irwin was married to the writer Inez Haynes Irwin, noted feminist, novelist, and also a dabbler in detective fiction.  See my review of The Women Swore Revenge for a look at his wife's style of mystery novel

THINGS I LEARNED:   On p. 141 Rosalie says: "It all come from Mrs. Markham. It was like a sweet smell radiatin' from that room, and just makin' me drunk. It was like--maybe you've heard John B. Gough speak. Remember how he had you while you listened?"  Gough was a Temperance orator and revivalist, apparently known for his smooth and persuasive voice.  The internet is teeming with info on him.  Google away if you want to know more.

Two other personalities -- Marsh and Miss Debar -- are mentioned in passing as topical references which led me to look them up.  Marsh is Luther Marsh, a lawyer who was swindled by Ann O'Delia Diss Debar (at left), one of America's notorious crooked spiritualists. Houdini called her "one of the most extraordinary fake mediums and mystery swindlers the world has ever known."  In 1888 she was finally undone when her extravagant greed led her to tricking Marsh into signing over the deed to his townhouse on Madison Avenue in Manhattan. The police caught up with her leading to a sensational trial. She was convicted and went to prison... for a mere six months! There's a wealth of info online about Debar. She makes for fascinating reading. Look her up!

Walter hears a piano playing a tune on p. 202.  Some lyrics pop into his head "Wild roamed an Indian maid..."  Turns out these are lyrics from the first American "popular hit" written by a woman. The song  is "The Blue Juniata" by Marion Dix Sullivan with lyrics by her husband J. W. Sullivan.  In the novel the song is used as a hypnotic cue to induce Annette to play her part in the spirit fakery.  For an upbeat 1956 arrangement of the folk tune click here.  It's a pleasant recording with a quick tempo featuring the male singing group The Plainsmen.

AVAILABILITY:  Lucky you! (a rare cry around here)  The House of Mystery has been uploaded to Project Gutenberg.  You can read it for free there, may be even download it.  As a bonus you get all eight original illustrations from the first US edition which I freely used to decorate this post. My edition has only four illustrations and the plates are tinted a faint yellow which I don't like. The artwork most likely appeared in a magazine when the story was first serialized. Illustrations are by noted American artist Frederick C. Yohn.