FFB: The Detective Novels of Harriette Ashbrook

If it hadn't been for an unmentionable book by a writer known only by his initials Harriette Ashbrook might never have become a mystery writer. Just as Agatha Christie was inspired to pen her first novel by reading a poorly written detective novel Ashbrook in a newspaper interview done in 1933 confessed, "I owe it all to T.S. Fine literary style is discouraging to the beginner. It's better to read a terrible piece of tripe and get encouraged." Whatever that book and whoever T.S. might be we have to thank him for the creation of Ashbrook's ne'er-do-well amateur detective Philip "Spike" Tracy.

We first meet Spike Tracy in The Murder of Cecily Thane (1930) and he's a near twin of Philo Vance, who at the time had only appeared in five books. Tracy has got a playboy's philosophy of life, appears to be utterly hedonistic, has no job, and thinks becoming an amateur sleuth might be rather fun. The main difference between Ashbrook's detective and her obvious inspiration is while Vance loves to lecture ostentatiously on esoteric topics like Chinese pottery and ancient Egyptian burial rites Tracy is more down to earth, keenly observant but also a smart aleck. Tracy notices things the police overlook and enjoys pointing out their faults without ever appearing snobbish or patronizing as Vance often is.

Tracy has a brother who is the Manhattan District Attorney. R. Montgomery Tracy is his professional name as it is painted on his New York office door. The R stands for Richard and thankfully he doesn't go by Dick. As Vance has Markham and Sgt. Healy and Ellery Queen deals with a D.A. and his policeman father Tracy is paired with his brother and Inspector Henschmann.  For good measure Ashbrook supplies a medical examiner bored with his job who displays the requisite black humor when examining the many corpses that turn up in the series.

...Cecily Thane is fairly traditional compared to Ashbrooks' later novels featuring Spike Tracy. The victim is the unliked young wife of an older man who allowed her to go out regularly with a "dancer" named Tommy Spencer. Mrs. Thane is found shot in her bedroom with a safe open and robbed of jewels. Turns out another woman was robbed and killed earlier and she too was seen in the company of a dancing gigolo named William Preston. Is there a criminal gang of male escorts turned thieves and murderers?

There are some unusual aspects to the criminal investigation like the search for the murder weapon which was disposed of in an odd manner and turns up in a most unlikely place. Also, a blotting paper clue is reproduced in the book and allows the reader to hold it up to a mirror in order to read the message thus getting a feeling of joining Tracy in his sleuthing. But the cleverest part is that the entire crime hinges on an altered timepiece. Ashbrook's insightful observations about the difference between actual time and perceived time make for one of the more modern features of the story.

The Murder of Steven Kester, UK edition (1933)

She followed her debut with The Murder of Steven Kester (1931) which fans of obscure B movies may know in its cinematic adaptation known as Green Eyes. The movie turns up all over the internet these days as it was released by one of the bargain basement video outfits that churned out hundreds of DVD cheapies of movies now in the public domain. A murder takes place during a masquerade party held at the Long Island mansion of the title character. Kester is dressed as Bottom (from A Midsummer Night’s Dream) complete with donkey's head. Tracy comes as a gladiator in an abbreviated costume consisting only of a tiger skin loincloth. When he goes in search of a safety pin in order to prevent an accidental charge of public indecency he stumbles upon the corpse. Ashbrook's offbeat sense of humor and her tendency to be a bit risqué is on flamboyant display in this book. Like many scenes added for comic effect in her books seemingly insignificant minutiae will take on greater importance when the crime is fully explained.

Her plotting is original but her execution is sometimes faulty. There are some great clues like the evidence of something having been destroyed in the furnace of the Kester home, a suspect's past life as an actress, and a pair of dice that turn up during a scene involving an ostensibly extraneous crap game -- yet another "big clue" disguised in a scene of minutiae that helps Tracy solve the murder. But while the reader is presented with all of this Tracy still withholds some important data. Too much offstage action in this story for my tastes, too many scenes when Tracy goes away and we have no idea what he does until pages later in the denouement.

Ashbrook starts to experiment with unusual themes in her next two books. In one book she touches on abnormal psychology and uses some groundbreaking research in a rather daring surprise reveal while the other gives her a chance to discuss the lonely life of World War 1 veterans, their often tortured lives, and the private demons they must learn to deal with back home far from the brutality of the front.

The Murder of Sigurd Sharon (1933) shows considerable improvement from her first two detective novels. Tracy is on his own in this outing which takes him to the backcountry of Vermont. Ashbrook does an excellent job with misdirection and even manages to include an impossible disappearance. For the 1930s this was probably an astonishing mystery with a gasp inducing, surprise ending. It deals with twin sisters -- Mary, a bedridden invalid, and Jill, an extroverted, highly sexual young woman. Jill believes there is a plot to kill her. She enlists Tracy's aid to prevent her impending murder at the hands of her oppressive and odious guardian and his nurse, but the old man turns up dead first. And Jill is discovered standing over his body with the bloody weapon in her hand.

Though it may all become rather obvious to the 21st century reader Ashbrook must be commended for handling a topic rarely used in detective fiction of the 1930s. A rural Vermont sheriff mentions a well known Victorian novel in the final pages, perhaps the only familiar reference on the topic to a reader of Ashbrook's time. She handles the topic fairly well for a device that is now an overused trick in thriller and mystery fiction. I like ...Sigurd Sharon for its daring invention and its subversive depiction of a sexually free female character.

The theft of a valuable stamp collection, several murders and a handful of attempted murders are at the core of the elaborately constructed A Most Immoral Murder (1935). Tracy is back in Manhattan with the usual supporting characters from the police and D.A.'s office. He also makes frequent trips to New Jersey, notably the fictitious town of West Albion where a secret in the past is revealed to have a connection to the murders and the stamp collection theft. Ashbrook uses a murder investigation to draw comparison between wartime killing and murder in civilian life and has some very strong opinions about each and the effect killing has on soldiers. I found it to be her most mature work even if the plot gets a bit creaky with some old fashioned tropes involving adopted children that seem borrowed from Victorian sensation novels. The unfolding of events, however, is impressively done. The large cast of well drawn characters holds the reader's interest with the stamp expert being the most memorable of the lot.

Harriette Ashbrook wrote only seven novels using her real name then handful more under the pseudonym "Susannah Shane." The Shane novels are a blend of Mignon Eberhart style "women in peril" thrillers and all-out farcical comic crime novels like the work of Phoebe Atwood Taylor and Craig Rice. I prefer her work under her own name.

These days Spike Tracy is utterly forgotten. Sadly, so too is Harriette Ashbrook. I'd recommend tracking down any of her books -- they're entertaining, sometimes devious, and often very original for the time they were written. Spike Tracy was one of the better Vance impersonators but a lot more likable. As Ashbrook says of her own creation, "He's the kind of man I wish I could meet in real life."

Philip "Spike" Tracy Detective Novels
The Murder of Cecily Thane (1930)
The Murder of Stephen Kester (1931)
The Murder of Sigurd Sharon (1933)
A Most Immoral Murder (1935)
Murder Makes Murder (1937)
Murder Comes Back (1940)
The Purple Onion Mystery (1941) (AKA Murder on Friday)

FFB: Murder Comes Back - Harriette Ashbrook

THE STORY: Moira Ballinger, widow of department store millionaire, is found dead in her bedroom shot through the head, apparently self-inflicted. Twenty years earlier her husband supposedly committed suicide in the same manner using the very same monogrammed revolver found in her limp hand. Is it merely a case of eerie déjà vu? Or is it a murder disguised?

CHARACTERS: Initially Murder Comes Back (1940) seems like it will be a run-of-the mill story of greedy relatives clinging tightly to secrets and too easily motivated to kill a vile relative in order to gain their inheritance. Money seems the obvious motive for all those implicated.  But Ashbrook is too clever to resort to tiresome conventions and cliche plot ideas. There are plenty of secrets in the Ballinger household a veritable avalanche of skeletons come tumbling out of multiple closets once Spike Tracy and Inspector Herschman begin questioning the relatives.

The murder investigation gets under way almost immediately with the intrusive presence of Dr. Horatio Pennypacker, a suspicious outspoken family physician who has taken it upon himself to imprison the person he thinks is the obvious murderer. He entrusts the key to a bedroom where he has locked up James Wort, the Ballinger family lawyer. Then Pennypacker enumerates several points about Prentice Ballinger's death and the outrageous coincidences that match up with his wife's recent supposed suicide, the most compelling being that each bedroom was wiped clean of all fingerprints except for those found on the revolver near the hand of each victim. Murder seems a proven fact with that detail in the open. Tracy then adds one more observation to the list of coincidences -- that Dr. Pennypacker was the first person on the scene at each death. That seems to put Pennypacker in his place leaving him quietly seething and shutting his supercilious mouth for the remainder of the chapter.

Tracy will face off with his Irene Adler in this murder case. She is Patsy,  the youngest Ballinger and the only child not even born when her father was killed two decades ago. Patsy seems to be digging through the past and finding bits of evidence that she refuses to share with Tracy.  He curses her in every other chapter calling her all sorts of names but at the same time marveling at her wily intellect and admiring her ability to outwit every policeman sent to keep an eye on her in her lower Manhattan apartment building.

The rest of the family are featured in small vignettes but are almost relegated to the background for the bulk of the novel. Sidney, the older brother, is eager to get an investment partner to renew a promissory note for $100,000 lest his business fall into bankruptcy. His money problems make him a prime suspect. David, the other son,  and his wife Paula live in near squalor thanks to Moira's selfishness. He too needs money and could use the Ballinger millions denied him by his haughty disdainful mother. And then there' s Olivia, affectionately called Ollie by Patsy, who lives in lonely spinsterhood in her isolated third floor apartment in the family mansion. Her only friends seem to be the female servants with whom she frequently goes to the movies. Is she harboring a secret that requires money too? Though the Ballinger sons may not feature prominently and Ollie seems to be present only for window dressing all of them play important parts in the solution of the Ballinger murders.

INNOVATIONS: Ashbrook has constructed a complex plot in which an overlooked crime in the past has led to a swath of violence in the present. Prentice Ballinger’s suicide is clearly a murder as is Moira’s death and both seem to be the work of a single person. But several other murders follow in quick succession, one of them rather shocking. Inspector Herschman and Tracy follow the clues believing that one greedy soul is the culprit. In a brave departure from the conventions of traditional detective fiction Ashbrook has allowed her love of violent murder movies to influence the outcome of her gripping story of violence, blackmail and revenge. There are multiple villains in the piece, few people escape guilt for one reason or another, surprise witnesses appear who don’t know they are witnesses, an intricate cover-up is slowly revealed and a genuine surprise in the final pages of who killed Moira and what happens to that criminal. Ashbrook has broken several time honored rules in Murder Comes Back and I enjoyed it immensely as a subversive murder mystery published well before similarly transgressive crime novels would flood the shelves in the post-WW2 era.

QUOTES: The only kind of big game he’s interested in wears lace step-ins.

I’m the only one who has an ironclad alibi for both cases. […] Twenty years ago when old [Prentice] was popped off, I was in what the poets call the 'primordial darkness of the womb.'

And so Spike told him. All. That was one of Pug’s chief virtues. Telling him All was as safe as pouring it down the kitchen sink.

Her artless, foolish, and malicious chatter had lightened one of the most obscure spots in the case -- the spot between four-thirty and six o’clock on a certain afternoon in the life of the late Moira Ballinger.

A female who figures in a murder investigation, even in a minor capacity, should be a ravishing blonde or a flashing brunette. She should be sinister or of touching innocence. She should be an intriguing vixen or an adorable angel. In the light of these requirements Miss Lillian Gillespie was a bust.

EASY TO FIND?  You can buy an eBook version of Murder Comes Back from an outfit called Black Heath Editions who sell their reissued vintage crime novels via amazon. I've been informed that it is available in the UK, EU and USA as well as India. Good news for a digital edition for a change! Even more exciting news is that Black Heath has remarkably reissued all of Harriette Ashbrook's mystery novels. If you like this one, you can read them all! Luckily for those who prefer original and vintage editions there are still a handful of copies of Murder Comes Back in both hardcover and paperback offered via the usual internet bookselling sites outside of amazon. Only one is priced in the collector’s range. Act now!

TomCat who blogs at Beneath the Stains of Time is reviewing many more of Ashbrook's novels over the next couple of weeks. You can find them all by clicking here.  I'll be reviewing at least one more, The Purple Onion Mystery, the final book in the Spike Tracy series.

FFB: Lady in Danger - Susannah Shane

THE STORY: "The Countess de Pontarlieu requests the pleasure of your company at supper, Sunday evening, June 4th, on the yacht Aguila, South Shore Anchorage, Long Island." So reads the invitation sent to ten guests of a motley group ranging from a stage actress to a gag shop owner keen on practical jokes. Someone wants them dead. After a failed attempt at poisoning the entire dinner party with crepes Suzette laced with rat poison, the killer stages a series of fatal accidents. One by one the group is being killed off. But why? What on earth do a Broadway actress, a gas station attendant, a playwright, a lawyer, a farmer, and the five others who barely know one another have in common that would mean they all need to die? Christopher Saxe, urbane playboy and amateur sleuth, digs into their past and discovers a secret pact dating back twenty years and missing $100,000 stolen from a train that someone wants all to himself.

Cartoon of Harriette Ashbrook
(orig source & artist unknown)

THE CHARACTERS: Lady in Danger (1942) marks the debut of Susannah Shane's series character Christopher Saxe. Similar to Spike Tracy, another amateur detective the same writer created under her own name, Saxe is yet another independently wealthy man-about-town who discovers he has a knack for solving crimes. We get his entire history of his previous cases, his relationship with the Manhattan police, and the origins of his friendship with his best buddy Buzz Batterson. Saxe is a likeable, astute young man with a strong sense of righting wrongs and unmasking criminals. Batterson is the typical wisecracking comic relief sidekick you find in many of these mystery novels of the period.

Because of the large cast of characters and the high body count we don't get to know many of the cast very well until after their deaths. Mark Priestley, the writer and playwright, is one of the first victims and we catch him at work with his loyal secretary in only one scene. His file of story ideas both published and unpublished along with the manuscript for the new play he is writing became crucial to Saxe's understanding of why the dinner party took place and why the killer is targeting the guests. Seems that Mark has a penchant for basing his stories and plays on real life events and he is not good at disguising the sources.

The lady of the title at first appears to be actress Juliet Brinig whose latest starring vehicle is bringing her attention and accolades in the Broadway community. Her role as a willful septuagenarian who marries late in life is the talk of the town and people are comparing her work to Helen Hayes as Queen Victoria. Juliet is only in her 40s but she is completely convincing as the title character in The Matriarch Marries. A subplot which eventually ties into the main story concerns Juliet's true identity and her mysterious rise seemingly out of nowhere as a leading lady in theater. But there is another woman who just as easily might fit the role of Lady in Danger. She is Miss Tuttle, Priestley's secretary, who Saxe will discover had another role as record keeper for a investment scheme involving all those present at the dinner party on the yacht.

The characters are all well defined, each has a pointed moment in the spotlight, and all of their actions contribute to the solution of the multiple murders. Shane maintains a good level of suspense as each character's many secrets are uncovered further revealing the closely guarded connections that tie them together. Saxe will uncover them all using a combination of street smarts, intuition, and solid detective work. The story is both a crime novel and a literary detective story of sorts as there is a metafiction element involved with Priestley's stories and plays being based on true crimes.

Lady in Danger (UK ed., 1948)

INNOVATIONS: I enjoyed the use of Priestley's stories as the primary clues that lead Saxe to the truth of what brought the ten people together. There are two stories within the novel's story that the reader is privy to and which align with later plot features. It's a clever use of fiction about fiction and it works very well in the context of this novel. Intriguing clues are plentiful as well including a set of golden cigarette cases all engraved with the same cryptic message that keep turning up in the victims' personal effects, Miss Tuttle's unusual coded filing system that relies on ambiguous initials, and Dennis Neville's odd side trip to a Colorado cemetery with Saxe hot on his trail to find out what Neville is up to. Most of this is done in the tradition of a fair play detective novel, but the clues (especially the events related in Priestley's stories) are more like signals of what's to come leading the reader to anticipate the revelation of the not too surprising murder motive. Saxe makes some cryptic remarks like "I had to look up a word in the dictionary" that are also clues to the solution. The word in question is probably one unfamiliar to many contemporary readers and I imagine they too would find themselves drawn to a dictionary for clarification. But we never really know what that word is until Saxe is good and ready to tell us -- in the second to last chapter to be precise.

Surprises, too, are teeming over the course of this rather intricate and complexly plotted mystery. As much as I thought I knew where Shane was headed with her main plot thread she managed to pull the ultimate unexpected punch when it came to revealing the identity of the murderer. The clues were all there and subtly laid out while the more blatant evidence was discussed and mulled over at length. I'm not sure if this was truly ingenious or just a side effect of having such a complicated plot with so many layers and secrets to keep track of. Still, I was impressed and she wins extra points for fooling me.

THE AUTHOR: "Susannah Shane" was the pseudonym and second life for Harriette Ashbrook's detective and crime fiction career. After realizing that her own name was not among the most respected mystery writers (she enjoyed making fun of a handful of middling book reviews) and that she was not a bestselling writer she invented an alter ego. Start from scratch, so to speak. Her first novel as Shane -- Lady in Lilac, a suspense thriller in the style of Cornell Woolrich -- was a huge success winning her the coveted Red Badge Mystery Novel Prize of $1000 and a book contract with Dodd Mead. Lady in Lilac was reprinted in massive quantities by Books, Inc. as part of their "Midnite Mysteries" imprint and to this day is the easiest of the Susannah Shane books to find in the used book market. It was recently reprinted by Coachwhip Press. Why they haven't picked up any of Ashbrook's other well plotted and entertaining books or the remaining Shane novels mystifies me.

Prior to her mystery novelist career Ashbrook was a freelance newspaper writer whose work regularly appeared in The New York Times, New York Tribune and The Brooklyn Daily Eagle throughout the 1920s. She also apparently contributed to the Kiddie Klub Korner as children's advice giver Aunt Jean. This was a column that appeared in the Evening World, another New York paper, also during the 1920s.

Her writing career was cut short when she died in 1947 at the relatively young age of 50. Had she lived longer we might have seen more of Christopher Saxe or even some other series character. For more on Ashbrook see my post on the Spike Tracy detective novels.

EASY TO FIND? Of her six detective novels written as Shane Lady in Danger is the second most common after Lady in Lilac. I found about ten copies for sale in both US and UK editions. Unlike the last few books under her own name none of the Shane books were reprinted in paperback. One of the other titles was included in a 3-in-1 omnibus as part of the Detective Book Club. If you live in the US you might be lucky enough to find one of the Susannah Shane books in your local library or get it through interlibrary loan. I'd like to see all of Ashbrook's books reprinted. While they may not be stellar examples of the genre they are hugely entertaining. When she was cooking up an intricate plot with neatly planted clues as in the case of Lady in Danger she really did a bang up job with her mystery books.

Christopher Saxe Detective novels
Lady in Danger (1942)
Lady in a Wedding Dress (1943)
Lady in a Million (1943)
The Baby in the Ash Can (1944)
Diamonds in the Dumplings (1946)

I'll Respect Your Opinion If You Don't Steal Mine

Source Look! I cited the URL where I found this photo. Not hard at all.

What a nice birthday present I discovered today. On December 15 (my birthday) a series of "reviews" on the works of Harriet Rutland appeared on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk and every single one of them says the same thing. Here is what the reviewer posted:

There is nothing more satisfying to a mystery novel addict like me than to chose a book fairly at random and from the first amazing sentence to the final paragraph be thoroughly entertained. I wanted to read a good old fashioned whodunit after indulging in too many suspense style crime stories. One with a gory murder or two, a weird murder method and enough clues to keep me guessing whodunit to the end. Never did I imagine that the book I chose would deliver on all counts, that it would surpass every expectation, every single one!

Does that sound familiar to anyone? It should. It's merely a cut and paste of the opening paragraph of my review for Knock, Murderer, Knock.  Just compare them. OK, there may be a few words deleted, and some others altered here and there like all bad plagiarists will do. But that will never change the fact that I wrote those opinions. Those are my thoughts. Clare, the "reviewer" from amazon, did not write them.

It's so brazen!  Cut and pasted not only to Knock, Murderer, Knock but to the other books Rutland wrote as well. The same paragraph with commentary written specifically for one book is applied to two others with no regard for the content of each book. Just slap the review on all items created by Harriet Rutland. This is not thinking or book reviewing, this is mindless consumerism. I bet Clare never read one of these books.

Santosh asked me last night on a different post if the Grinches are spoiling my holiday spirit. No, Santosh, not exactly. They're f----ing pissing me off! This is the third instance in the past month alone (!) of my work being lifted and passed off as someone else's. Only a few weeks ago I sent an email to a blogger who last year allegedly tried to get permission for a post I wrote on another Harriet -- Harriette Ashbrook -- but couldn't get my email. So she just cut and pasted my entire post on Ashbrook that appears on the Golden Age of Detective Fiction wiki (clearly with my byline and the date I wrote it) and blithely ignored the fundamental rule of citing where she found it.

I sorted everything out with that women and the post now includes full attribution with my name as author and the original source for the paragraph she cut and pasted onto her blog. She, like Clare, clearly changed a few words here and there like removing every reference that compared Spike Tracy (Ashbrook's private detective hero) to Philo Vance in an attempt to disguise the original source. She denied passing the work off as her own, but the fact that she altered the paragraph proves to me exactly the opposite of what she told me.

The internet is rife with this kind of indifference and laziness with regard to other people's work. It' s this kind of thievery that makes me want to just quit writing altogether and abandon this blog for good. The justifications and excuses you get for the laziness and outright thievery are astounding!

I've reported every post that Clare "wrote" about Harriet Rutland's books on both amazon sites. With luck each "review" will be deleted and I'm hoping she'll be banned from reviewing on either site. But, of course, people like this always find a way to resurface under another username.

UPDATE - Dec 29, 2015:  My relentless accusations and comments on the amazon pages for the Harriet Rutland book reviews paid off. All of Clare's "reviews" were deleted a few days ago.  Guilty conscience on her part or amazon's doing?  I don't really care as long as they're all gone.

FIRST BOOKS: Murder in Make-Up - Charles Ashton

THE STORY:  During the filming of Tempest, a crime movie about a gentleman thief, the actor playing the thief is found stabbed behind a bit of scenery. The movie crew insists that the police remove the actor's make-up prior to carting away the corpse to spare him the indignity of the false beard and greasepaint.  The police remove the make-up and reveal the man is a completely different actor -- Lancelot Weston, the young romantic lead in the movie. Why did Weston pretend to be William Harvey for that one scene? Was Harvey actually the intended victim? Inspector Bob Saunders investigates assisted by his police consultant Major Jack Atherley.

THE CHARACTERS: Murder in Make-Up (1934) is the first detective novel by former silent film actor Charles Ashton.  The novel introduces his series characters Jack Atherley and Inspector Saunders.  Atherley is the true sleuth in Ashton's series of detective novels and he's a breath of fresh air. Saunders is a by-the-book copper while Atherley is his witty, carefree aide with a talent for seeing things "out of the box".  He reminds me of Philip "Spike" Tracy, the playboy amateur detective created by Harriette Ashbrook. Saunders and Atherley are perfect foils for one another and I enjoyed how Atherley routinely exasperated Saunders, often for the sheer joy of annoying his policeman colleague.

The rest of the cast is made up of Saunders' homicide squad headed by Sgt. Davis, another serious policeman who is more tolerant of Atherley's lightheartedness and often anticipates when the Major is about to pull one over on Saunders.  And of course because the murder takes place in the world of cinema we have a  supporting cast of suspects in the movie biz.  They are:

William Harvey - the character actor who plays the gentleman thief and was supposed to be in the scene being filmed when Weston was killed.  As the story progresses several more attempts are made on Harvey's life.  The police do their best to protect him, but the killer always manages to penetrate the police protecting Harvey

Lettise Moore - the ingenue lead in Tempest. She has a secret related to Harvey that the police soon uncover. This makes her a prime suspect but she is protected by...

Mrs. Moxon - a dresser on the set for Miss Moore, and a servant/confidante in Moore's private life.  Maternal, overprotective and somewhat of a termagant. Moxon is a thorn in Saunders' side.  Atherley is the only who can tame this shrew. She is actually on his list of suspects because after stabbing Weston the killer needed to be able to silently lower his athletic body behind the flats while the scene was being filmed. Atherley is certain the killer is one of a similar build and with enough upper body strength to carry out the silent disposal of the corpse. Besides three of the male suspects, Mrs. Moxon is the only woman who could also to do everything as he thought it out.

Ralph Lastor - the producer (in the US we'd call him the director) of the movie. His mind is only on the movie, its delays and the possible scrapping of the production due to the criminal investigation and the loss of his leading man. Why would he kill one of his actors and sabotage his own production?  Does he have a secret too?

Dick Howard - assistant director, man of all work. Suspicious, shifty, mistrustful. He draws the attention of Saunders when his police team while following Howard as directed see him sneaking around off the set making visits to Miss Moore's home and conversing confidentially with... 

Miss Laurie - the script girl (continuity in modern movie talk) who is always on set. We learn fairly quickly that she talks in a fake American accent, flirts with nearly all the men, and had the hots for handsome Weston. But she was rejected by him. If Weston was the true intended target then Miss Laurie is definitely suspect #1 thinks Atherley. But was she strong enough to commit the murder as he envisioned it. Or was Weston somehow stabbed in some other manner?

INNOVATIONS: For a novice effort at detective novel Ashton does some admirable work here.  It is almost a purely fair play novel. Unfortunately, he does hold back a bit and does more suggesting what happened which forces the reader to fill in some unexplained events.  For instance, late in the book Atherley finds some supplies left behind by workmen who were doing plumbing repairs in his flat.  Atherley is described as picking up a bucket of paint and stepping onto the fire escape.  He then exclaims with a smile, "What a fine night!" and the chapter ends.  But why was he out there with a bucket of paint?  It's all explained in the final chapter. The reader has to figure it out on his own prior to being told what Atherley did.  This kind of "sneaky" clueing is perhaps forgivable in a novice mystery writer.  But! I know that Ashton continued to do this sort of thing in his later books. Here Comes Murder was written nearly ten years later and includes similar scenes only partially explained when first presented to the reader.

Really the best part of the book is the insider information on how an early “talkie” is produced.  Ashton, a former silent film actor, offers up not only the glamorous part of movie making but the complicated work of the non-actors consisting of the lighting crew, cameramen, make-up and wardrobe staff, as well as the hassles of keeping track of all the changes from shot to shot carried out by the continuity person -- in the early days of moviemaking usually called "the script girl" and almost always (as in the novel) a woman. The script girl is really nothing more than a secretary who spends all day taking copious notes, later typing them up in a daily report, on what everyone is wearing, which props are held in which hand, and all the rest of the minutiae of a movie scene.

Charles Ashton as Dick Alward
in Pillars of Society (1920)

THINGS I LEARNED:  One of the first scenes explains exactly why a clapper board was necessary in making early sound movies.  The sound of the clap was used to synchronize all sound in the scene that followed.  A clapper was used to end the scene as well.  I'm unsure if this is why they still use a clapper.  Maybe with all the digital technology used in moviemaking it's used more to label all the scenes for the editing team.

Atherley uses an odd abbreviation in a single line of dialogue: "And it's got the archives of the famous Yard l.b.w." He says this after looking up one of the suspects in Who's Who on the Screen. I spent nearly an hour using various search terms in trying to find what those three letters meant. Turns out it's the cricket term "Leg Before Wicket" which I think means a foul that can get a batter dismissed. If it had been made clear early in the novel that Atherley was also a cricket player and often uses cricket terms I'd been able to figure this out faster. By the midpoint long after the use of that abbreviation we learn that Atherley is an avid cricket player and has played in tournaments. Apparently on a professional team because a taxi driver recognizes him from a past game. Why he uses "l.b.w." in reference to the Who's Who listing still eludes me.  

EASY TO FIND?  You can have my copy (it's the "Cherry Tree Book" copy pictured at the top) if you're lucky enough to place the highest bid. (SOLD!) Good luck finding a copy anywhere else. Like all of Ashton's detective novels it's as rare as finding a silver nitrate copy of one of Charles Ashton's movies from the silent era.

Reflected Glory - John Russell Fearn

The forensic psychology subgenre was not well known or often utilized until the tail end of the Golden Age of Detection. It really only became popular with the rise of the serial killer novels in the mid 1980s when protagonists who were adept at criminal profiling become more and more popular. With the advent of TV series like Criminal Minds there seemed to be no stopping the trend of creating lurid murders committed by truly disturbed killers. Nevertheless, the idea of solving a crime based solely on the construction of the murderer’s psychological history and behavior can be traced back as early as the novels of Charles J. Dutton whose series detective John Hartley, a professor in abnormal psychology, aided police in gruesome multiple murder cases detailed in novels like The Crooked Cross (1923) and Streaked with Crimson (1929). Similar landmark novels appeared in the following decades as exemplified by The Murder of Sigurd Sharon (1933) by Harriette Ashbrook, The Horizontal Man (1946) by Helen Eustis, and Ellery Queen’s seminal serial killer mystery Cat of Many Tails (1949). John Russell Fearn also entered the realm of abnormal psychology when he created psychologist and criminologist Dr. Adam Castle who appears in at least two novels: Shattering Glass (1947) and Reflected Glory (2005). The second of these was never published in Fearn’s lifetime though it was, according to Philip Harbottle Fearn’s literary executor, written many years later than Shattering Glass. Having just completed the second Castle title it is clear to me why it was left alone.  As an example of a crime plot based on rudimentary pop psychology it doesn’t hold up well at all.

The first half of Reflected Glory is perfectly fine. It’s all set up and exposition and it promises an intriguing story of impassioned characters, lovers betrayed and rejected, and rampant jealousies. There is a bizarre practical joke that takes place in an early chapter that results in a dreadful injury rendering painter Clive Hexley’s hand practically useless. As Clive is an artist he is horrified that he may never be able to paint again. And Elsa Farraday, his most recent muse, sees Clive’s injury as life altering to them both. If the story was to be focussed on psychology here was a veritable Pandora’s box of ills and troubles to write about. But instead we get the story of a troubled young woman haunted by her past with the cliché abusive parent who tortured and scarred her for life.

I thought this kind of thing wasn’t really part of pop fiction well until the late 1960s or mid 1970s. Hard to tell when exactly Reflected Glory was originally written, perhaps it did come from that time. Poor Elsa Farraday truly seems like she could only have been created after the publication of Sybil (1975) and similar stories both fictional and non-fictional. Yet here was Fearn dreaming up a little girl terrorized by a brutal father and imprisoned like a Gothic heroine. Granted monstrous mothers seemed to be more prevalent in this kind of fiction with Carrie White’s mother taking the grand prize, but a brutal abusive father was probably easier to dream up and possibly more palatable for the reader.

The detective plot involves the disappearance of Clive and Elsa’s apparent guilt surrounding his possible murder. Late in the novel (given away on the plot blurb of my edition) she confesses to his murder but the police don’t take her seriously. Without a body the confession is legally useless to them. They continue to search for the body in vain. The reason for Elsa’s open and brazen confession will not be entirely explained until the final pages. Rest assured it has a lot to do with her “abnormal” behavior. A major clue for that behavior comes in the explanation of the title which Elsa talks about with Clive prior to his disappearance: “My glory such as it is, Mr. Hexley, is reflected. I said that I am not an artist in the same sense that you are. By that I mean I cannot paint or draw I’m a writer.”

This idea of “reflected glory” is key to understanding Elsa. The reader should be allowed to slowly realize that Elsa prefers to seek attention through anonymous means. Thus she chooses a pen name to write under. The chance to model for Hexley’s most recent portrait she sees as the crown jewel in her vying for attention without truly being seen or known. But we never slowly realize any of this; we have all of it spelled out for us. Repeatedly, Elsa will explain everything in confessional dialogue as if the reader is not smart enough to glean it all from situations and behavior. Dr. Castle uses the term “reflected glory” often throughout the story as he comes to understand Elsa’s decidedly perverse form of an “inferiority complex.” And he too will lecture and explain what we may have missed in an earlier scene.

The trouble with many of these fictional mysteries that rely solely on psychology as their method of detection is that the plots tend to be fabricated with utterly phony business that never rings true. When a writer creates a psychologist character he ought to have a sophisticated knowledge of the behavioral sciences and psychology theorists and their work that can then be diffused through the character. Relying solely on pop psychological terms like “inferiority complex” and then using some of the most absurd abnormal behavior to explain that complex may make for some luridly eyebrow-raising reading but it has not a shred of authenticity. For example, we are asked to believe that Elsa finds it easier to concentrate in her writing persona if she dresses up as a ten year-old girl and retreats to a reconstructed childhood bedroom with child-sized furniture. As someone suffering from “inferiority complex” her retreat to the safety of childhood is comforting and simultaneously she is dominant as she is an adult in a room of miniature furniture. If she was an abused kid why would she find it necessary to dress up as one? We are told she is haunted by her cruel past. And yet she has an entire wardrobe of little girl’s clothes she dons in order to feel safe and enable her to concentrate on her writing? Which of course is all about violence and torture.

The entrance to a forbidden basement in Elsa’s home has been screwed up tight. Castle manages to surreptitiously unscrew the doorway and gain entry. (Don’t get me started on the ridiculous stunt which results in his visit to Elsa’s home under an assumed identity. It involves his wife and daughter and is 100% unethical.) What he finds beyond that door is sure to startle any reader but will not shock or thrill as was probably intended. Fearn draws on Gothic novel horror motifs but then undermines the horrible with kitschy bad taste and sophomoric character traits. Elsa, who writes grisly crime novels, uses the pen name “Hardy Strong”. This Castle tells us is another signifier of her desire to be a dominant personality and yet paradoxically she prefers to be remain hidden in the guise of an assumed persona.

While reading Reflected Glory I was continually reminded of drecky horror movies of the 1960s like The Mad Room and Picture Mommy Dead, both of which make use of kitschy pop-psych motives for the criminal acts. Dr. Castle’s lectures when he attempts to explain Elsa’s troubles are less revelatory than they are predictable, and sometimes – unfortunately – laughable. Only in the final two pages when Castle adopts a paternal tone and reminds Elsa of her genuine self-worth and counsels her to abandon her strange rituals and pretenses does the story finally become what Fearn intended. But by then it’s really too late to care for Elsa or her future.

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.

FFB: They Can't Hang Me - James Ronald

James Ronald received quite a bit of praise with his first few detective novels from writer August Derleth to novelist and book reviewer Harriette Ashbrook all pointing out his ingenuity and freshness.  Of course you have to take this kind of enthusiastic praise with a grain of salt and maybe a dash of sugar, too.  Book hype has been with us for decades though it has skyrocketed in the past 15 years or so with the kind of gimmicky stunts some P.R. people are pulling.  When I learned that Ronald started out as a bargain basement pulp writer for the British digest publisher Garmol who published his early novels sporting such lurid titles as The Green Ghost Murder, The Man Who Made Monsters, and The Sundial Drug Mystery I was very wary of the blurbs Ronald received for his books. Was it just a fluke or did he really rival the kind of clever plots of a John Rhode or Carr?

They Can’t Hang Me (1938), listed in Adey’s Locked Room Murders, also offers the added bonus of an impossible crime. Actually, two impossible crimes. Ronald had a lot to live up to. I’m glad to report that despite his background in pulp digests James Ronald does indeed merit all the praise lavished upon him. They Can’t Hang Me is a corker of a mystery novel. Ingenious murder methods call to mind the brilliant John Rhode; two impossible crimes, one of which is worthy of Carr; and witty dialogue reminiscent of Clifford Witting. All are on colorful display in this page-turner of a story.

The plot is familiar to any crime fiction fan and seems lifted from the cliffhanger serials of the 1930s. Lucius Marplay, an inmate from a mental institution, escapes with the intent of carrying out a plan of murderous revenge, threats of which sent him to the asylum in the first place. Each murder is announced in the obituary section of The Echo, the newspaper where the victims work, on the very day of the death leading the police to believe the killer is hiding out in the building. A thorough search of The Echo building and its environs turns up no one who shouldn’t already be there. Though the police are fairly certain the escaped lunatic is the culprit somehow he manages to elude capture with each baffling crime. The title comes from Marplay's claim that his plan is as close to a perfect crime as one can dream up for even if he is caught he can't be hanged as he has already been declared insane. He will just be thrown back into the asylum.

Perhaps what makes the book work so well is Ronald’s sharp sense of humor. Even amidst the terror Ronald still finds ample opportunity to lighten the tone. The book is very funny with handful of well drawn colorful characters who serve as the author’s comic voice. Some of the best wisecracks come from a scene between Agatha Trimm, the guardian of Joan Marplay, daughter to the escaped lunatic and the offbeat private investigator Alastair McNab. Some of my favorites are:

Agatha Trimm: "Cocoa is a perverted taste for a man. I'd be careful of him, Joan."

Alastair McNab: "There's two things I like naked and whiskey's one of them."

Sir John Digby (a psychiatrist fed up with the Freudian imaginings of his female clients): What he longed to say to them was "What you need is more fat here"--slapping them where a woman should be comfortably rounded-- "and then you'd have less fat here" --smacking them on the head.

Later UK edition, circa 1940s

The characters, too, are a lively bunch who hold the reader's interest and keep the story moving at brisk pace:

Mark Peters -- managing editor ready to fire anyone whose actions threaten to ruin the already tarnished reputation of his dying newspaper.

The aptly named Ambrose Craven -- an overweight skirt chaser whose cowardice and fear has him fainting in every other chapter.

Flinders -- an ex-reporter gone to seed and drink, who’ll risk his life when he turns to blackmail in order to feed his alcoholic cravings.

Alastair McNab -- the odd and rambunctious private investigator determined to unmask the murderer and sell his story to a rival newspaper.

Agatha Trimm -- guardian to the plucky heroine Joan Marplay. Agatha is a tough as nails, no nonsense woman distrusting of nearly every man Joan sets eyes on.

The detective work is shared by two characters. Joan Marplay who acts a sort of girl sleuth trying to prove her father is not the madman the police and newspapermen think he is. She is sure he was sent to the asylum wrongfully and that his sworn revenge was only a reaction to his furor at being thought mad. Then there is McNab who arrives with a letter in of introduction from the asylum announcing he has been hired to track down the escaped Marplay. With his pronounced Scottish brogue, rendered in a typical 1930s phonetic dialect, and his oddball tastes and habits (like carrying his lunch around in a wicker basket wherever he goes), McNab is the most unusual of the cast. So unusual that he arouses the suspicions of Superintendent Wrenn who has his sergeant investigate McNab's background. McNab is shrewd yet enigmatic. One never knows if he is out for himself or if he really wants to solve the case and apprehend Marplay.

They Can't Hang Me is an excellent example of a crime novel that mixes elements of the detective novel with that of the pulp thriller. So good was this first outing I had to read the other easily accessible crime books of James Ronald. I found some of his later books lean towards psychological crime novels that foreshadow the work of Patricia Highsmith and Julian Symons.

A Year in Review (part 1)

Sometimes a sudden change in one's life is all one needs to reevaluate what gives life purpose, meaning and most importantly joy.

I am now retired.  It was planned for this year, but came six months earlier than anticipated.  I was made an offer I couldn't refuse, so to speak. In the past two weeks I have had to fast forward all my planning that I was going to spread out over three months. Then yesterday a financial emergency had me spending close to three hours cancelling auto-payments and reorganizing that part of my life.  When it was all solved, I sat back and reflected. I realized that 2025 is a year of new beginnings in more ways than I ever anticipated. With new beginnings comes a re-evaluation of what I missed doing and what brought me not only satisfaction but actual joy. And here I am again.

When I left the blog I entered a new phase of creativity in the world of theater which I had also abandoned back in 2013 or so.  I've had modest successes (though very little monetary reward) but it was all exhilarating and joyous, aspects that were greatly missing from my life for decades. Now I'm finding a balance between theater and blogging as well as a return to bookselling. Slowly but surely you will find me selling online in at least two places in the coming weeks.  But for now let's catch you up on what I read over the past year and a half. Well, at least the most noteworthy books.

In 2024 I spent much of my time reading newly published books, discovering writers working now as opposed to being obscure, forgotten and usually very dead. Here are some highlights for those who mix their vintage reading with contemporary and new books:

• Benjamin Stevenson - Everyone on this Train is a Suspect (2023) and Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret (2024) I think this guy is one of the best traditional mystery writers out there. He worships fair play motifs, and also sort of sends up the rules and conventions of traditional detective novels. I love the meta-fiction part of each book. His novels are not only puzzling and engaging but very witty with a offbeat sense of humor.
• Tom Mead - Cabaret Macabre (2024) Loved this rule breaking impossible crime mystery. The best of his three novels so far, I think.
  

Margot Douaihy - Scorched Grace (2023) and Blessed Water (2024)  Features a chain-smoking, heavily tattooed, queer nun. How's that for modern? Pretty much a fair play mystery writer. BUT! You must read them in the order listed. The second book spoils the first book three times. Ugh. Luckily, I read them in order.

Angie Kim - Happiness Falls (2023) A domestic tragedy mystery that deals with a teenager with autism and the violent accident that lead to his father's death. Profoundly moving.

B.R. Myers - A Dreadful Splendor (2022) The best of the historical mystery novels I read that dealt with spiritualists and ghosts. A fraudulent medium is rescued from prison and given the opportunity to prove her "talent" is genuine when a rich man offers her legal representation in court if she can show evidence that his dead wife has moved on to eternal peace in the afterlife.  Set in 19th century England.  This first novel won the Mary Higgins Clark award from the MWA who also do the Edgar awards.

Stuart Turton - The Last Murder at the End of the World  (2024) Inventive, complex genre blending mystery/sci-fi commenting on the prevalence and encroaching dangers of AI. Oddly, there was a TV show (A Murder at the End of the World) that seemed to have been inspired by this book if not outright plagiarized. The plot of the TV show was more an And Then There Were None ripoff, but ultimately the use of AI in each work resulted in essentially the same story as each finale was almost identical.

I read a slew of horror novels and ghost stories in 2023 and 2024 and would love to rave about those too, but I have to move on to the vintage nuggets of gold from 2024. Following the habits of a few of my fellow vintage mystery bloggers I'll pick the best vintage mystery I read each month last year.  And here are the first six...

JANUARY:  Lady in a Wedding Dress - Susannah Shane, aka Harriette Ashbrook (1943) What a coup this was! I've been looking for this book for over a decade.  Then when copy turned up on Ebay I snagged it for only $18. Three days later another copy was offered on Ebay and this one had a DJ and was only $15.  Steals, both of them! (Don't worry. I'm not a greedy bastard. I'll be selling the one without the DJ and it's in excellent condition.)  This was an exciting, complex mystery novel but does not (As I originally thought) feature her series private eye Christopher Saxe.  It's an involved puzzler featuring a dress designer who is murdered and the bride who is discovered in a blood stained dress moments after the murder occurs. Did she do it? In my reading notes I described the climax as a "Thunderstorm of hurricane proportions: car wrecks, accidents, power failure. Blood transfusion reveals shocking secret..."  Hits a lot of excitement buttons for me.

FEBRUARY:  The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo - Michael Butterworth (1983) Comic crime novel about a shoe salesman who in order to inherit his dead unce's estate must comply with a bizarre last wish according to the eccentric's will.  The nephew must take the uncle's dead body to Monte Carlo on an all expense paid vacation and gamble away a set amount of money. How on earth is he going to pull that off? If he fails, then the money goes to a charity that cares for rescue dogs. Along the way the woman who owns the Universal Dog Home of Brooklyn becomes his partner in the vacation adventure.  Gangsters, disguises, silliness galore.  Amazingly, this book was turned into an award winning musical called Lucky Stiff by Stephen Flaherty & Lynn Ahrens, the duo best known for Ragtime and Once on This Island.  This was one of their earliest collaborations.

MARCH:  The Forest Mystery - Nigel Burnaby (1934)  Obscure and definitely forgotten writer (a journalist during the 30s and 40s) who wrote only five mystery novels.  This one is about woman who has escaped from an asylum whose nude body is found in a wooded area off a remote country road. The body is battered and almost unidentifiable. Her husband is implicated in the crime and must clear his name. Intriguing plot twists with an ending that reminded me of Anthony Berkeley's early rule-breaking mystery novels. Innovative and often witty. Was so unusual that I bought two more of his books. Still have yet to read those.

APRIL: No real winner this month. I read four new books (three of them superior and two already mentioned above in the modern section. Only read one vintage mystery: Too Much of Water by Bruce Hamilton (1958).  I didn't really like it. Not up to the level of his other earlier novels, two of which I reviewed here at Pretty Sinister Books. Very talky, little action and an unsatisfactory, slightly contrived, resolution with one of the deaths turning out to be an accident.  Only good thing about the book was the cool DJ and the plan of the cruise ship that was the novel's setting.

MAY:  Swing High Sweet Murder - S. H Courtier (1962)  One of my favorite mystery writers.  A shame his books are so damn hard to find.  Miraculously, I bought five of Courtier's books in the past two years and read almost all of them in 2024. All but one had a lot to recommend them. This is an impossible crime mystery about a tennis coach found hanged in a treehouse which serves as a fire tower for the area. Set in Australia, of course, with his series detective policeman "Digger" Haig. It cries out to filmed because the setting is so unusual and demands to be seen rather than imagined.  I had to re-read passages to figure out how the house was built in this massive tree.  Features a minor character who is developmentally delayed and has the talent of mimicking indigenous bird calls.  The tennis background is also fascinating making this doubly tempting for sports mystery fans as well as impossible crime devotees.

JUNE:  It Happened in Boston? - Russell H Greenan (1968)  Utterly bizarre, often contemplative and prophetic, thoroughly entertaining. For once it’s a book that is easy to find and affordable to buy in cheap paperback copies.  Highly recommend this unclassifiable "mystery". While not exactly a detective novel it does qualify as a crime novel but that aspect is the least of its merits. Absurd, satiric, trenchant and witty.  Greenan was sui generis among the writers of the mystery world. In an ideal world everyone would know him, his books would have received several awards, and he'd still be in print. One plus -  this book was reprinted by The Modern Library in 2003 with an intro by Jonathan Lethem. But I think that edition had a small print run. I dare not summarize nor mention any of the story of It Happened in Boston? for it must be personally experienced. The most surprising aspect of this book is it's about the art world and NONE of the blurbs on ANY of the editions mention this facet of the story. Those who enjoy art mysteries or novels about the art world take note! I thoroughly enjoyed this book. A true must read for people who love imaginative fiction of any type. With a mystery or without -- it's a damn fine book. 

 I'll post the next six months' worth of highlights of 2024 vintage mystery reading later this week.

"If you build it, they will come." So goes the famous line in the movie Field of Dreams. And they did come to this blog for years and years.  Perhaps if I rebuild, then they will return.  If you are one of them now reading this, thank you for returning.  I hope to stay here for as long as I can this time. 

Just the Stats, Ma'am

I am astonished that I read a total of 116 books last year. In reviewing my monthly notes I see that a large portion of the books I read last year were paperback originals from the 1950s and 1960s. These books tend to be about 150 pages or less and can be read sometimes in a single day. No wonder I manged to rip through so many books last year.

The average number of books in a month was 9.8. The maximum number was in February when I read 14 books and the least in December with only five. I seemed to slow down around August when I read eight and the totals never got much higher for the rest of the year. In September I must've reached book glut because I read only six books to completion. There is a note in parentheses saying I left many books unfinished in that month. Was I picking badly then? Or was I in a fog of confusion and distraction? December with so much going on in my personal life I only managed to read five books and only one has been reviewed so far.

There was a small list of books I never finished reading, too. The grand total of abandoned books was 17. Some of these I hope to return to this year. I developed an odd habit of reading two or three books at a time last year and this was probably why so many were left unfinished. But I do see that many of them were "just plain bad" as my notes tell me.  Avoid at all costs a book called Too Many Doors by Lee Crosby which I rated BAD (capital letters emphasized) with many exclamation marks after it. It's out of print and hard to find so you will most likely be spared even an accidental encounter with that one. I sadly paid far too much for a copy with a DJ. I'm hoping I'll be able to sell it to a local used book store.

I did not review every single book I read last year either. Of the grand total there were 34 books I did not review for this blog. Many of them were new books that I didn't think needed any more exposure on the book blogs, some of them I took notes on for posts that are still in progress (!), and a few of them were forgettable and not worth writing about at all. But that still leaves more than 75% of the books I read written up here at Pretty Sinister Books. I tend not to write scathing reviews anymore, but there were a few tongue-in-cheek pans of some of the lesser books I read. The truly awful books I don't bother bringing to anyone's attention. Some forgotten out of print books are best forgotten. A book has to have some merit in my opinion to be reviewed here. I don't understand rants and tirades about works of fiction. Seems a waste of energy to get angry over the work of someone's imagination.

Because I find it so difficult to make a real "Best of" list with the most favorite book at number one and all others following in descending order I am resorting to a kind of cheat list in which I list the best book for each month of last year with a few runner-ups worth your attention. Below in the order I read them and not in order of how good each one is you will find the titles and links to the reviews on this blog.

January - The Death of Laurence Vining by Alan Thomas
(runner-up The Moon Murders by Nigel Morland)

February - Exit Charlie by Alex Atkinson
(runner-ups: Jade in Aries by Donald E. Westlake, The Grindle Nightmare by Q. Patrick)

March - The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
(runner-up The Case of the Seven of Calvary by Anthony Boucher)

April - Murder on the Moor by Thomas Kindon
(runner-up An Afternoon to Kill by Shelley Smith)

May - Be Silent, Love by Fan Nichols
(runner-up The Three Corpse Trick by Miles Burton - not reviewed on my blog)

June - The Brotherhood of Velvet by David Karp
(runner-ups: Old Bones by Herman Peterson, The Body Vanishes by Jacquemard-Sénécal)

July - The Pass Beyond Kashmir by Berkley Mather
(runner-ups: The House Next Door by Lionel White, The Hatter's Phantoms by Georges Simenon)

August - The Lesser Antilles Case by Rufus King (not reviewed by me, but see Curt Evan's post)
(runner-up The Cross-Eyed Bear by Dorothy B Hughes

September - Antidote to Venom by Freeman Wills Crofts
(runner-up Aunt Beardie by Joseph Shearing, aka Marjorie Bowen, aka Gabrielle Long)

October - The Deadly Truth by Helen McCloy
(runner-up For Fear of Little Men by John Blackburn)

November - The Chill by Ross Macdonald (not reviewed yet)
(runner-ups: Singular Case of the Multiple Dead by Mark McShane, Double Death of Frédéric Belot by Claude Aveline, Burglars in Bucks by the Coles)

December - Room to Swing and The Moment of Untruth by Ed Lacy
(Both to be reviewed very soon)

Writers discovered this year whose work I will be reading a lot of in the future:  Rufus King, Bart Spicer, Ed Lacy, Ross Macdonald (yes, I only started reading his novels this year!), Lionel White, Harriette Ashbrook, Shelley Smith, Russell Greenan, Herman Petersen, Berkley Mather, Richard Neely, Fan Nichols, and Dorothy B Hughes. Hughes is more of a re-discovery since the first book I read of hers was many years ago and I hadn't read any since.