Classic Mysteries

Too Much Sherlock?

Here's a question for mystery lovers: can there be such a thing as too much Sherlock Holmes? Given the recent surge of interest in things Holmesian - movies, new television series, new books featuring Holmes and Watson and others - how much is too much?

It's an interesting question. So Bill Lengeman of the Traditional Mysteries Blog invited several other mystery bloggers to discuss the question and talk about things Sherlockian in general on an inaugural roundtable podcast. Taking part, besides Bill, were Patrick (At the Scene of the Crime), Sergio (Tipping My Fedora), John (Pretty Sinister Books), Steven (In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel) and yours truly from Classic Mysteries. It turned into a fun and, I hope, informative conversation, which you can listen to by clicking here.

"The Secret House"

The name of Edgar Wallace is largely forgotten today, but in his time, roughly the first third of the 20th century, few authors enjoyed a wider readership. During the 1920s, one of Wallace's publishers once claimed that fully one quarter of all the books read in England were written by Wallace; the entry on Wallace in the Golden Age of Detection wiki notes that more than 160 movies have been made from his novels, more than any other author.

I must admit that I count Wallace's books among my own secret pleasures. It's not great literature, but I guarantee you'll have a good time when you read them - particularly his thrillers.

If you want a good example of the kind of story that was Wallace's specialty, you'll find it in a marvelous book originally published in 1917 called "The Secret House." It's the subject of this week's review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the full review by clicking here.  

"The Secret House" is pure escapism, a lovely little thriller which, like most of Wallace's works, gets off to a high-speed and energetic start and doesn't slow down for an instant. I'm not going to try for a synopsis, because it pretty well defies description, as only a Wallace thriller could. It involves an international blackmailer - whose picture, of course, is unknown to police - and a couple of quick and easy murders on a millionaire's doorstep. Among the sure-fire thriller ingredients, you'll find a damsel in distress, a young hero, a major international criminal and blackmailer, a number of thoroughly disreputable types who work for said blackmailer (including a would-be suitor for the hand of the aforementioned distressed damsel), a crafty senior policeman, some suspicious doctors, a very rich and possibly insane American millionaire...get the idea?

Oh, and there's the Secret House itself, a rather fantastic dwelling with interior rooms that can be shifted around mechanically to literally rearrange the architecture of the place. And would such a house be complete without some hidden escape tunnels? It's all quite ridiculous, but the action is so fast-paced that the reader hardly has a chance to remark on the sheer unbelievability of it all. My best advice is to hang on to your seat and enjoy it; "The Secret House" is as much fun as a good roller coaster ride and about as long-lasting. It's available in print, to be sure, but it's also available absolutely free for the Amazon Kindle (see the Amazon link above).

"The Secret House," from 1917, is my third entry in the "Deadly Decades" themed section of the Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge at Bev Hankins' excellent "My Reader's Block" blog. Follow the link to see what everyone is reading - you may find some worthwhile additions to your "to be read" pile.

The Dilys Awards

The Independent Mystery Booksellers Association has announced its nominees for the Dilys Award, presented each year "to the mystery titles of the year which the member booksellers have most enjoyed selling." The nominees:

•  Faithful Place, by Tana French
• Wicked Autumn, by G. M. Malliet
•  Tag Man, by Archer Mayor
• A Trick of the Light, by Louise Penny
• Ghost Hero, by S. J. Rozan

The award is named for Dilys Wynn, who founded what was the first specialty bookstore dealing with mystery books, New York City's "Murder Ink," now, alas, long-since closed. At the link above, you'll find more information about the award and the group, along with a list of previous winners and nominees. The winner will be announced on March 31 at this year's Left Coast Crime conference in Sacramento, CA.

Hat tip: The Rap Sheet

She's At It Again!

The "she" of the headline is blogger Jen Forbus, who blogs at Jen's Book Thoughts, one of the mystery book blogs that I check daily. She reviews mysteries in virtually all genres, with particular emphasis on mysteries available as audiobooks. She also does great author interviews. And she is involved in a fair number of reading challenges, some of which she has originated herself.

For the past couple of years, Jen has also sponsored a "theme week" for other book bloggers, inviting us to post reviews and other material on our blogs, with links to her theme week (often including her own version of "March Madness" in the form of a contest). Now, as the headline says, she's at it again, inviting other book bloggers to join her for a week in mid-April to talk about "Heroes and Villains." The idea is for participants to post a review of a mystery featuring a particular hero - or villain - along with an additional post with background about that hero or villain. If you're a book blogger (and I know a number of my readers are), it sounds like a great deal of fun; if not, I promise you it will be worth reading the entries and taking part in whatever contest accompanies the festivities. Full details (and a sign-up form for bloggers) may be found here.

"The Man in Lower Ten"

Back in the early years of the last century, long distance travel in the United States generally meant getting on board a train. If you could afford it, you would generally get yourself a bunk in a Pullman sleeper car, where upper and lower berths extended the length of the car, affording little privacy but a certain degree of comfort on an overnight journey. Of course, things could go wrong. And did. Which brings us to "The Man in Lower Ten," by Mary Roberts Rinehart, the subject of this week's book review on the Classic Mysteries podcast. You can listen to the full review by clicking here.

"The Man in Lower Ten" follows the adventures and misadventures of a lawyer named Lawrence Blakely, who is traveling by train to take a deposition in a major forgery case. Blakely is assigned to sleep in "lower ten" - the designation for a particular lower berth in the Pullman car. For a variety of reasons, he winds up sleeping elsewhere, which turns out to be a good thing, because the unfortunate man who does go to sleep in "lower ten" is murdered during the night - and suspicion falls on Blakely. The train is then wrecked in a disastrous crash...and the story goes on from there, as Blakely and his friends try to stay one step ahead of the police while attempting to solve the murder. It's mostly a thriller, with some detective work involved as well, and it's all great fun. Rinehart was enormously popular during the first half of the 20th century, coming up with very enjoyable mysteries and thrillers.

"The Man in Lower Ten" was first published in 1909, and it is my entry for a book published during the first decade of the 20th century in the ongoing Vintage Mysteries Reading Challenge at the My Reader's Block blog. I suspect most visitors here would enjoy it. While it's still available in regular print editions, I see that Amazon is offering a free eBook version for the Kindle. At that price, what are you waiting for?

Come Discuss!

For Nero Wolfe fans living in the New York City area, the next book discussion of The Wolfe Pack will be held this coming Monday evening, January 23, at Jackson Hole, a bar and restaurant located on Third Avenue between 34th and 35th Streets. The group will be discussing three of the four novellas in And Four to Go - "Easter Parade," "Fourth of July Picnic" and "Murder Is No Joke." A discussion of the first novella in the book, "Christmas Party," was featured last month at the Black Orchid weekend festivities.

If you enjoy the company of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin (not to mention the rest of Rex Stout's marvelous creations), you would enjoy these meetings. There's no charge for the discussion itself - everyone orders his/her own dinner and drinks and pays separately. The conversation is usually lively and the people friendly. So, if you haven't been to one yet...why not drop by Monday evening? (And if you're not a member of The Wolfe Pack...shouldn't you be? The membership fee is VERY inexpensive...)

Full details are available at The Wolfe Pack's website.

Mysterious Blogroll

 A drum roll, please: after nearly five years, I have finally lived up to my promise and added...THE MYSTERIOUS BLOGROLL to Classic Mysteries.

It's not complete yet by any means (and if you have nominees, please let me know about them), so it is a work in progress. You will find the Mysterious Blogroll at the bottom of the right hand column of this blog, so just scroll down to it. Only the names of the blogs are there; rolling your cursor over any linked name will reveal a few lines of text describing the blog.

What they all have in common is a love and respect for traditional mysteries - whether they're "classics" or brand new. I hope you'll find new reading ideas there.

Edgar Fever

It's that time of year again: the Mystery Writers of America have released the names of the books and authors nominated for this year's Edgar Awards. The Rap Sheet has the full list.

As usual, I find I've read only a very few of the books on the list, so I'll be interested to see who wins. I see that Martha Grimes will be receiving a Grand Master award. Richly deserved.

The awards will be presented at the MWA's banquet, April 26th in New York City.

The Rap Sheet points out that Edgar - Edgar Allan Poe, that is, for whom the award is named - would have been celebrating his 203rd birthday today.

Stop SOPA

As I suspect most of my visitors today realize, a number of major web sites have shut down (Wikipedia) or otherwise altered their sites (Google) for the day to protest the so-called "Stop Online Piracy Act," or SOPA.

This site isn't a major web site (I wish!), but I do feel it necessary to go off-topic for this post just to say that I wholeheartedly agree with the critics who want to see a more reasoned, less entertainment-industry dictated bill.

Look, I'm a writer, and I both respect and (for many years) have lived by copyright. But there are ways to protect copyrights and fight offshore pirate websites without essentially destroying the Internet, which is what many critics warn will happen if SOPA (or its senate equivalent, PIPA) becomes law.

Please check out this excellent FAQ from CNET to find out what's at stake and how these proposed laws could affect you. And please join us in petitioning your senators and congressperson - respectfully - to throw out these disasters and come up with legislation that will protect copyrights while also preserving the rights of all Internet providers and users. Thank you.

"A Study in Scarlet"

If you had been living in the city of London in the year 1887, you might have enjoyed reading a new story published in Beeton's Christmas Annual for that year. Written by a young medical man named Arthur Conan Doyle, it was a fairly short novel called "A Study in Scarlet." It introduced a number of significant and long-lasting characters to the British public, including another young medical man, an army veteran named John Watson, and another young man who became his roommate, one Sherlock Holmes. "A Study in Scarlet," the first recorded case solved by Sherlock Holmes, is the subject of this week's book review on the "Classic Mysteries" podcast, and you can listen to the full review by clicking here.

The mystery here is straightforward enough: there is a murder, followed by a second one. The police, as represented by Inspectors Lestrade and Gregson, cannot solve the mystery, so they turn to Holmes for help. By using logic and making rational deductions, Holmes solves the case. There is a long flashback which provides the backstory of the victims and the killer, followed by a wrapup taken from Dr. Watson's notes.

What was important here was not so much the mystery itself but the characters. Wikipedia tells us that the novel did not immediately catch the public's imagination - but after a second novel, "The Sign of Four," and the short stories of "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," the character became so popular that when Doyle tried to kill off his creation some years later, public outrage forced him to bring Holmes back to life.

It is hard to think of another character whose very existence was so profoundly influential on the development of the detective story. For the reader who loves traditional mysteries, "A Study in Scarlet" is an essential book, as it tells of the meeting between Holmes and Watson, provides examples of the workings of Holmes's mind as he repeatedly astounds Watson by his insight, and elevates logic, order and reasoning to pre-eminent tools to be used in solving crimes. Oh, and you see that little man with the magnifying glass in the Classic Mysteries logo above? According to Wikipedia again, "A Study in Scarlet" was the first book to feature the use of a magnifying glass as an investigative tool in detective fiction.

"A Study in Scarlet" remains readily available, both in print and electronically, more than 127 years after its first appearance. E-book readers will find there are very inexpensive - even free - versions available in a variety of formats.

With "A Study in Scarlet," this blog begins taking part in an eight-week vintage mysteries reading challenge, set up by Bev Hankins at the MyReadersBlock blog. I have posted details about the challenge here - and I invite my readers to take the challenge themselves. This is my first entry - representing the years before 1900 - in a series which has been called "Deadly Decades."