Classic Mysteries

"Farewell, My Lovely"

Philip Marlowe certainly seemed to have a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. His curiosity about a man he just happened to see while walking down the street got him involved with -and in - several murders, the theft of a valuable jade necklace, several cops (all corrupt to some degree), hints of blackmail, considerable physical danger, and entanglements with a number of women. The "how" and "why" of it all may be found in Raymond Chandler's second novel, Farewell, My Lovely, first published in 1929. It's the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the complete review by clicking here.

For an author who really created only a handful of novels and a somewhat larger handful of short stories, Raymond Chandler exerted - and continues to exert - enormous influence on the American Private Eye detective story. Chandler's stories are generally quite gloomy - noir, in today's vocabulary of mystery elements - and certainly hard-boiled. That's certainly true of Farewell, My Lovely. What redeems them - for me, at least - is Chandler's extraordinary writing, especially his gift for very dark humor. If his characters live their lives down those "mean streets" that Chandler discussed in his essay on The Simple Art of Murder, then his heroes, at least, do so with few illusions.

The story begins almost accidentally. Marlowe has been looking – unsuccessfully – for a missing barber – a case he’s about ready to give up on. As he leaves the barber shop, his eye is caught by a very big man, walking down the street – as Marlowe describes him, “He was a big man but not more than six feet five inches tall and not wider than a beer truck.” Marlowe goes on to describe the way the man is dressed and concludes, “he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.” 

Curious, he sees the man enter what he calls a "dine and dice joint" called Florian’s. Marlowe follows him, just to see what will happen. What happens is a murder – and let me stop here for a moment to warn readers that we’re dealing with the kind of racial attitudes you might find in far too many places in the days before World War II. The murder of a black man is treated pretty lightly by most of the down-and-outers in Farewell, My Lovely; it’s clearly stated, for example, that police aren’t too likely to follow up the murder of a black victim. It can be unsettling to a 21st-century reader – but it’s really only a small part of the story.

At any rate, Marlowe is practically a witness to the murder – and here’s where the story starts to get complicated. Marlowe will be asked to find out what happened to a dancer named Velma – it seems that man whom Marlowe followed has just gotten out of prison and is looking for his old flame. Then, there’s another job for our detective, involving the theft and recovery of a valuable piece of jade jewelry – and that leads to more murders. There’s a phony medium, a kidnapping operation involving a private drug hospital, some tense moments on board a sea-going gambling casino, and – as the blurb on my copy of the book says – "more corruption than your average graveyard."

It's a grim read - or it would be if it weren't for Chandler's bitter but often very funny humor. It’s fair to say that many (if not most) of the American "private eye" books of the 20^th century and even on into today follow the same basic paths that Chandler and his characters walked in Farewell, My Lovely and his other books. If you haven't read it - I suggest you do so.

"The Flemish House"

The young woman named Anna Peeters had a note for Detective Chief Inspector Maigret. It was from his wife's cousin:

"My dear Maigret,

"Miss Anna Peeters has been recommended to me by my brother-in-law, who has known her for about ten years. She is a very responsible young woman, who will tell you of her misfortunes herself. Do what you can for her..."

She wasn't an ordinary supplicant. She didn't lower her eyes. There was nothing humble about her bearing. She spoke frankly, looking straight ahead, as if to claim what was rightfully hers.

"If you don't agree to look at our case, my parents and I will be lost, and it will be the most hateful miscarriage of justice..."

And that is why Maigret - who was supposed to be on his vacation - found himself instead in Givet, a small town on the Meuse River, right on the border between France and Belgium, where a young woman had disappeared - and Anna Peeters's family was accused of having murdered the missing girl. The story is told in The Flemish House, by Georges Simenon, and it's the topic of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast. You can listen to the complete review by clicking here.

Anna Peeters's brother, Joseph, had had a child by a young local woman. The child was three years old. But her mother had disappeared, and her family insisted that the Peeters family had killed or kidnapped her. Arriving in Givet with no official standing (but welcomed by the local police, who believe that the Peeters family had indeed gotten rid of the young woman - but had no proof), Maigret spends his time talking to the people involved in the case. The main problem, from the point of view of the police, is that no body has been discovered – and without a body, there was no way to prove that anything at all had happened, that the missing girl had not simply decided to go away. 

The Flemish House tells a fairly grim story, as many of the early Maigret novels do; there’s not much in the way of happy endings, I’m afraid. But it’s a compelling story, ably translated by Shaun Whiteside for a new Penguin Classics edition. The Maigret books, as a rule, are quite short – The Flemish House is only 146 pages – but they are very powerfully written. Maigret has long been a favorite, not only with French readers but with audiences around the world, and Penguin’s new translations deserve your attention.

From the Vault: "The Maltese Falcon"

Regular visitors to this site know that I am not a huge fan of hard (or even medium) boiled P.I. mysteries. Here's a significant exception: I love Dashiell Hammett's classic Sam Spade mystery, The Maltese Falcon, both in its original format as a book and also in its classic film incarnation. My podcast, edited from the original posted more than nine years ago, will explain why I'm so eager to share the book with you.

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“Well, now, the Emperor Charles has given them Malta, and all the rent he asks is one insignificant bird per annum, just as a matter of form. What could be more natural than for these immeasurably wealthy Knights to look around for some way of expressing their gratitude? Well, sir, that’s exactly what they did, and they hit on the happy thought of sending Charles for the first year’s tribute, not an insignificant live bird, but a glorious golden falcon encrusted from head to foot with the finest jewels in their coffers.”

That’s the description of the black bird – The Maltese Falcon – a classic American mystery by Dashiell Hammett.

Hammett was not only a good mystery writer, he was a fine author, and I think his 1930 novel, The Maltese Falcon, may have been his finest creation. According to Wikipedia, it was the only novel to feature his detective character, Sam Spade, although Spade does appear in a few short stories as well. Spade is tough, cynical, operating on some obscure and very personal moral code. The setting is San Francisco. The streets are mean, and some of the characters even meaner.

The plot revolves around the fabulous “black bird,” the Maltese Falcon. There are four murders in the course of the book, all tied in with the search for the falcon. It’s not really a “puzzle” mystery – the reader is generally left to sort it out, along with Sam Spade, as he tries to figure out what has happened and what to do next.

But the story comes alive through its characters! There is Spade himself, the tough private eye following his own private code of morality. There is a young woman named Brigid O’Shaughnessy, beautiful, unpredictable, perhaps very dangerous. There is the effeminate Joel Cairo, whose allegiances are not always clear. There is a sinister and very fat man who appears to be the spider at the center of this web of intrigue. There is the fat man’s henchman, a young gunman named Wilmer. There is Spade’s secretary, Effie Perrine, whose relationship with Spade may be more than a straightforward boss-and-secretary thing. There is Spade’s partner, Miles Archer – an early victim – and Archer’s widow, who has been having an affair with Spade. Most of these characters may be treacherous, prepared to switch sides at a moment’s notice – that is, if you can even figure out which “sides” exist. For much of the novel, it’s hard to tell who may be working with whom – and against whom. Add to the mix a couple of San Francisco cops, trying to sort it all out, maybe by pinning everything on Spade. Eventually it does all get sorted out, leading to a characteristically dark ending.

The dialogue alone is worth the price of the book. Here’s a brief sample. It comes from Spade’s first meeting with Kasper Gutman – the fat man at the center of the plot. Gutman pours a drink for Spade. Here’s part of the exchange:

“We begin well, sir,” the fat man purred, turning with a proffered glass in his hand. “I distrust a man that says when. If he’s got to be careful not to drink too much it’s because he’s not to be trusted when he does.

Spade took the glass, and, smiling, made the beginning of a bow over it...

The fat man looked shrewdly at Spade and asked: “You’re a close-mouthed man?”

Spade shook his head. “I like to talk.”

“Better and better!” the fat man exclaimed. I distrust a close-mouthed man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk and says the wrong things. Talking’s something you can’t do judiciously unless you keep in practice.” He beamed over his glass. “We’ll get along, sir, that we will.”

Now that exchange turns out to be a fairly good insight into the fat man’s character. Cold-blooded, ruthless, his polite comments on the surface seem quite friendly – which merely adds to the menace overall.

If you haven’t seen the 1941 movie that was made from The Maltese Falcon, do yourself a favor and get that movie. It was directed by John Huston, who also wrote the screenplay, and virtually all the dialogue comes directly from the novel. The casting was superb, drawn from the finest character actors available at the time: Humphrey Bogart as Spade, Mary Astor as Brigid, Peter Lorre as Joel Cairo, Sidney Greenstreet imparting just the right air of menacing jocularity to the sinister fat man, Elisha Cook, Jr., as Wilmer, the fat man’s dangerous henchman. Having seen the movie, it’s hard not to hear their voices as you read the dialogue in the book.

The Maltese Falcon was an influence on a great many other writers, and the hardboiled Sam Spade was a model for other characters as well. It’s a wonderful mystery and a delight to read. Both the book and the movie are readily available. If you haven’t read it, or seen it, do yourself a favor and get both versions.

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To listen to the original podcast, click here.

Next week: Police at the Funeral, by Margery Allingham

From the Vault: "And Then There Were None"

Ask just about any fan of Agatha Christie's mysteries to name their favorites, and one title will almost invariably be on their list: And Then There Were None. It doesn't feature either of her regular sleuths - no Hercule Poirot, no Miss Marple - but it is probably her cleverest thriller-mystery by far.

I have always been a fan of Agatha Christie, widely acknowledged as being among the reigning "crime queens" of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, widely defined as the period between the two world wars of the twentieth century. Her skill at misdirection, at pointing her readers carefully the wrong way while still providing clues to her mysteries, was virtually unequalled. Even though she died more than 40 years ago, almost all of her books - perhaps all - remain in print. Here's some of what I had to say about And Then There Were None in my original podcast review back in 2007:

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Ten people are invited to spend a few days on a lonely island off the British coast. When they arrive on the island, they discover a peculiar setup: the person or persons who invited them to the island aren’t there, a children’s nursery rhyme has been framed and placed in each of their rooms, they are completely cut off from the outside world  – and even more disturbing – it quickly becomes apparent that there is nobody else on the island except the ten of them. And then the deadly countdown begins.

In this book, Agatha Christie set out to accomplish a number of goals, not the least of which was writing one of the finest “impossible crime” novels ever.

We soon discover that the ten people who have been invited to Soldier Island, on a variety of pretexts, all have been involved in crimes before – but the kind of crimes that could not be punished. Shortly after they arrive on the island, they hear a voice – from what turns out to be a recorded message – accusing each of them of murder. The accusations may be true, although the deaths involved may or may not have been what the law would call “murder,” but they have never been punished and the perpetrators are beyond the law.

But the reason for the summons quickly becomes clear when the first person is murdered.

If you don’t remember the nursery rhyme, it begins:

Ten little soldier boys went out to dine

One choked his little self and then there were nine

And the countdown continues, verse by verse.

The murderer is following the guidelines set forth in the nursery rhymes. It becomes apparent (with the second murder) that he or she plans to continue the countdown until there are none.

So, naturally, they decide to search the island. And they discover that there is nobody hiding anywhere on the island. Which means the murderer must be one of their group.

If it sounds suspenseful, it is. Freed from the need for a detective character to act omnipotent, Christie looks to different characters among the group of ten to provide some insight. You learn a great deal about what each character is thinking at any particular time – but you will probably learn very little about what is really happening, or how. And the suspense continues to build.

One of the characters, Justice Wargrave, a retired criminal court judge, sums it up this way, as the frightened survivors meet after the third murder:

“We have inquired into the circumstances of these three deaths to the best of our ability. Whilst probability in some cases is against certain people being implicated, yet we cannot say definitely that any one person can be considered as cleared of all complicity. I reiterate my positive belief that of the seven persons assembled in this room one is a dangerous and probably insane criminal. There is no evidence before us as to who that person is.”

As we will see, Agatha Christie does play fairly with the audience – providing some clues along the way, had we deciphered them correctly. I suspect most of us will not.

And Then There Were None, according to Wikipedia, is Agatha Christie’s best selling novel, with more than 100 million copies sold to date. I believe it is among the best and most gripping novels she ever wrote. The paperback should be readily available at your local bookstore. Enjoy it.

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For more details, you're welcome to listen to my original podcast review from 2007 by clicking here.

Next week: The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars, by Anthony Boucher

 

"The Methods of Sergeant Cluff"

The working-class town of Gunnarshaw, a town on the edge of the part of England known as the Yorkshire Dales, really had only one true criminal investigator in its police force - CID Sergeant Caleb Cluff. He was a good investigator, but with plenty of rough edges. His immediate supervisor, Inspector Mole, didn't like him at all. But Sergeant Cluff knew his town and knew the townspeople (and they knew and respected him), and he knew what made sense and what didn't seem to make sense when it came down to a murder investigation. So when a young assistant in the local chemist's shop - pharmacist, to those of us on the American side of the pond - is discovered lying on the cobblestones of a Gunnarshaw street, Sergeant Cluff has to rely on his own methods of reaching the truth about the case, truth that would upset some of the town's rigid assumptions about its social conventions. The story is told in The Methods of Sergeant Cluff, a 1961 cross between a police procedural and a traditional puzzle mystery by Gil North. It's the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the entire review by clicking here.

Gil North, the pen name of author Geoffrey Horne, is another of those writers being rediscovered and republished by the British Library Crime Classics series. The books are published in the U.S. by Poisoned Pen Press, which made a copy available to me for this review. Gil North wrote eleven books about Sergeant Cluff, a policeman of a type that should be familiar to modern readers: the troubled policeman misunderstood and/or hampered by his superiors. Caleb Cluff has an overbearing superior officer, Inspector Mole, who finds Cluff infuriating because he refuses to stick to the normal rules for investigating crime. To Inspector Mole, if the facts point to an obvious solution to a crime, that should be the end of it. Sergeant Cluff, as the title of the book implies, has his own methods, and - fortunately for him -the backing of his superintendent, and, frankly, he doesn't care what Mole thinks of him or of his methods:

"The facts were clear. He didn’t believe in facts, not when interpretation of the facts involved men and women he’d grown up with. Facts didn’t lie to Mole. Cluff closed his eyes to shut out the facts. He wanted to throw away what he knew already and begin again…More than facts was in question here, the intangible, invisible passions of human beings…It wasn’t facts that mattered but what lay behind the facts."

The apparent facts in the case seem to point directly to one suspect. Mole wants to arrest that person. Cluff refuses, because – knowing the people of his town as he does – he thinks there is a much more likely candidate for the role of first murderer. We will see how Cluff goes about gathering the evidence – and how he uses and manipulates that evidence to solve the case.

While it's not particularly hard-boiled, this is no fireside cozy. The town of Gunnershaw – based on the real Yorkshire town of Shipton – was very much a working class place. There are rough edges on almost all the characters. Frankly, there are very few who are likely to strike the reader as deserving of much sympathy. The writing style can be difficult – there are too many places where readers are likely to have trouble figuring out who is speaking to whom, and where, and when. And the book ends in additional violence that will prove Sergeant Cluff right in his methods while adding some considerable ambiguity to the final resolution of the plot.This new edition includes an introduction by mystery author and historian Martin Edwards. If you like something a bit darker than the normal traditional mystery, by all means try The Methods of Sergeant Cluff.

New Feature: From the Vault

               

A major milestone is looming ahead for Classic Mysteries. Sometime near the end of this year, I'll be posting my 500th review on the Classic Mysteries podcast. That means the podcast has been providing a weekly review of a mystery classic every week for 9 1/2 years.

The podcast began in May, 2007, and the blog followed in June 2008. It's been a pretty good run so far, and I intend to keep going for a while. But it occurs to me that I reviewed a LOT of my own personal favorite classic mysteries in that first year or so - about 70 books in as many weeks, in fact - that were done only as podcasts before this blog came along to give my friends, my visitors and readers, a chance to read, learn about and discuss those books.

So I'm going to start a new feature on this blog - let's say, every Thursday, beginning on September 1. I'm going to bring back and re-post edited text versions of the original podcast reviews of some of my favorite books and favorite authors from that first year or so of reviews. I'm going to try to be certain that the books I write about are still readily available - either in print, as e-books, or (if neither of those options is available) are at least pretty readily available through second-hand copies found for you by your favorite independent book dealers (including dealers who work through Amazon). 

As always, I invite your comments about these books. There's nothing more satisfying for me than to hear that one of my visitors has discovered a new (to them) author or book that I've told them about. I'm calling the feature "From the Vault," and I have already picked several of the books I plan to re-review (or, at least, the podcasts I plan to provide in text format). It all starts on Thursday, when we'll begin with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles. Come along for the ride!

               

"Death of a Bovver Boy"

There's no question that "Dutch" Carver was nothing more than a young hooligan - a "Bovver boy," as Cockney slang would have it. Certainly, when he was murdered - his body stripped of clothing, his head shaved, apparently beaten - there didn't seem to be anybody mourning his death, not even his parents. To schoolmaster Carolus Deene, that seemed just plain wrong. Even if the police weren't particularly interested in Carver's death, Deene was determined to get at the truth about the murder. What he found is the subject of Leo Bruce's dark and powerful Death of a Bovver Boy, first published in 1974. It's the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the complete review by clicking here.

Leo Bruce - the pen name of Rupert Croft-Cooke - is remembered today primarily for two series of mystery stories which he wrote between 1937 and 1974. The first featured a British policeman called Sergeant Beef and the books were mostly written as parodies of other popular detective story writers. In 1955, however, Bruce began writing about another character, Carolus Deene, a schoolmaster, a former commando, with his own sense of justice and morality. The Sergeant Beef novels, for the most part, have a light touch and are written with considerable wit and humor. The later books featuring Carolus Deene tend to be darker. Certainly that's true of Death of a Bovver Boy, which the author, in the very first sentence, calls "the ugliest case which Carolus Deene ever chose to investigate." 

Deene’s housekeeper, Mrs. Stick, first brings the boy’s murder to her employer's attention, because her husband discovers the body of “Dutch” Carver abandoned by the roadside. The boy appeared to have been beaten, there are marks on the ankles and wrists, most of his hair appears to have been shaved off his head, and the body is completely naked. Deene dutifully reports the finding of the body to the police. But he is intrigued by the death – by the way so many people (including the police) seem to react with only a shrug or even with downright hostility towards the victim. So, working with the blessing of the local investigators, he begins asking questions – and is greeted everywhere with that same hostility. Was it because of the teen’s lack of social standing? His record of minor brushes with the law? Why did his parents seem to consider the boy’s death as merely another bother? The more Deene digs into the case, the more he becomes convinced that there is a great deal more going on here than the simple murder of one “bovver boy” by – perhaps – other groups of rivals and so-called friends.

It’s a story told, for the most part, without flinching from the ugliness of the case, and with very little humor. It's hardly a "fair-play" mystery; our detective really tells his readers very little until the final solution has been reached - and he must rely for that on a sort of confession. But the setting in the rural slums of England and amid the skinheads of the early 1970s, and the milieu of casual violence and seedy relationships that swallowed up many young people (and still does so today) make for a powerful book, well-written and certainly worth reading.

"The Grand Banks Cafe"

It had been a stange and terrible voyage for the crew of the French fishing trawler Océan. Now the ship's captain himself was dead - strangled, his body dumped into the harbor at the fishing port of Fécamp. The police arrested the ship's radio operator, a young man on bad terms with the captain - but his friends and relatives refused to believe that he was the killer. One of those friends appealed to another old friend, Chief Detective Inspector Jules Maigret to get involved. And so Maigret decided to go to Fécamp for his annual vacation and ask a few questions. He quickly discovered that there were some very dark secrets hidden away on that last voyage of the Océan - and that the key to unlocking those secrets was hidden among the crew members who could be found between voyages at a small waterfront bar called The Grand Banks Café. That's the title of the 1931 bleak but gripping story about Maigret from author Georges Simenon. It's the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the complete review by clicking here.

Maigret goes to Fécamp and discovers that many members of the Océan's crew spend their time (and money) when in port at the seedy little bar called the Grand Banks Café. He discovers that the men are very unwilling to talk about their last voyage. The trawler had an incredible run of bad luck, they say – and the captain appears to have been largely to blame. His behavior was most peculiar for the entire journey. Meanwhile, bad things kept happening. There were accidents – one of them fatal. And the fish they had caught was beginning to go bad even before they could bring it back to port. It was a terrible trip. Perhaps the ship – or the captain himself – was under some curse, the evil eye? Better not to talk about it. And so, when the captain was murdered, and the young radio operator who had quarreled with him was arrested, the rest of the crew members were surprised – but resigned.

Maigret begins his own investigation (with the help and approval of the local police). As he digs his way through the evidence he uncovers, he begins to realize that this voyage of the Océan was very different from its usual fishing trips. And he would need to break through the silence of the crew and the others connected with the case before he would be able to determine the truth about what really happened on board the trawler – and why.

Georges Simenon was an amazingly prolific writer, credited with some 450 novels and short stories, including about 75 featuring Maigret. In 1931 alone, he wrote ten novels about Maigret, including The Grand Banks Café. These early books tend to be quite dark in tone, but they are fascinating stories, Penguin has been republishing Simenon's Maigret books, many in new and very good translations; the one for The Grand Banks Café is credited to David Coward. It is quite short, fewer than 150 pages, but it is a powerful story, told by a master storyteller, and I recommend it heartily.

Bookgiving: Day Twelve

On the twelfth day of Bookgiving, my true love gave to me:

The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett.

“Well, now, the Emperor Charles has given them Malta, and all the rent he asks is one insignificant bird per annum, just as a matter of form. What could be more natural than for these immeasurably wealthy Knights to look around for some way of expressing their gratitude? Well, sir, that’s exactly what they did, and they hit on the happy thought of sending Charles for the first year’s tribute, not an insignificant live bird, but a glorious golden falcon encrusted from head to foot with the finest jewels in their coffers.”

That’s the description of the black bird – The Maltese Falcon – a classic American mystery by Dashiell Hammett. Regular visitors to this site will know that I don't really write very often about hardboiled (or even medium-boiled) detectives or the American "P.I." tradition. One notable exception to that is The Maltese Falcon, first published in 1930, which is one of the books which really defines that tradition. Hammett's detective in this book (and in a few other short stories - that's all!) is Sam Spade. He is tough, cynical, operating on his own obscure and very personal moral code. The setting is San Francisco. The streets are mean, and most of the characters even meaner.

The plot revolves around that fabulous “black bird,” the Maltese falcon. There are four murders in the course of the book, all tied in with the search for the falcon. It’s not really a “puzzle” mystery – the reader is generally left to sort it out, along with Sam Spade, as he tries to figure out what has happened and what to do next. But the story comes alive through its characters and its dialogue. Maybe that's one reason why the movie version still bears repeated viewing; that crackling dialogue on the screen is lifted pretty much verbatim from the book. But I do urge you, if you're familiar with the movie but not the book, to go back to the original source and savor it.

The latest printed version of the book is in the form of a paperback from Vintage. There are e-book versions, including this version for the Amazon Kindle. If you'd rather have it read to you, there's a recording via Audible. And, if you're one of those unfortunates who has never had a chance to see that classic movie version written and directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor (and a whole wonderful cast of leading character actors), I'm happy to say that you can still get this film on DVD.

(If you came in late, here's what we're doing for bookgiving - I hope you'll join in!)

"The Golden Slipper"

As a young woman living in New York City in the early years of the 20th century, Violet Strange certainly stood out. She was, to be sure, one of the leading social lights of New York society, constantly attending parties and other affairs. But she also had another, more secret life as a detective, working very discreetly with another, male, detective - and commanding a large sum of money for her work. Why? That's just one of the mysteries to be discovered in a thoroughly enjoyable collection of short stories called The Golden Slipper: and Other Problems for Violet Strange, by Anna Katharine Green, originally published a century ago, in 1915. The Golden Slipper is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the full review, together with brief summaries of the nine individual stories that make up the book, by clicking here.

Anna Katharine Green is remembered today primarily as the author of The Leavenworth Case, which was reviewed here and on the podcast several months ago. In Violet Strange, Green gives us a fascinating character, one whose real motive for the work she does - and for keeping it secret - is only revealed to us in the final story in The Golden Slipper. We meet her first in a story where her acceptance and admittance into society functions give her the opportunity to solve a puzzling series of thefts. We go on to stories of murder and intrigue, some of them quite dark and unhappy - think of it as "early noir." There is a tendency (shared with many other authors and books of the period) to use very emotional and florid prose, but it feels justified in these stories, right for the period and right for the characters.

Nine problems, nine interesting stories, ranging from intricate puzzles to full-fledged Gothic and emotional nightmares. Violet Strange is a remarkable heroine – there’s not much of the "had-I-but-known" vapors about her. The Golden Slipper: and Other Problems for Violet Strange is available in a variety of formats, including an ebook edition from MysteriousPress.com and Open Road Media. It's definitely worth your reading time.

The 2015 Bingo Challenge

We're closing in on the last few titles to fill the remaining squares in the 2015 Vintage Mystery Bingo challenge. under way at the My Reader's Block blog, The Golden Slipper: and Other Problems for Violet Strange is my entry for the square (third row, fourth column) calling for one book already read by a fellow challenger. In this case, the book was reviewed back in January by Bev Hankins at My Reader's Block. Just one more week to go for the challenge!