Classic Mysteries

Of Violence and Snobs

Colin Watson's "Hopjoy Was Here," the book reviewed this week on the Classics Mystery podcast, is the third in his "Flaxborough Chronicles," a series of mysteries set in and around the remarkably amoral English town of Flaxborough. I have reviewed the first two, "Coffin, Scarecely Used," and "Bump in the Night" elsewhere on this blog.

The Flaxborough mysteries are also satires of traditional British mysteries - and other mystery genres as well. Watson was the author of a fairly short non-fiction book called "Snobbery with Violence: Crime Stories and their Audience," which traces some of the history of the detective story and the thriller and tries to put this kind of writing into the wider context of popular tastes and beliefs.

What you get is a witty and biting history of the genre and an analysis of some of the best and best-known authors in the field. One often-quoted chapter in Watson's book is called "The little world of Mayhem Parva," about the idealized little English villages inhabited by such sleuths as Miss Marple and friends, a place described as "a cross between a village and a commuters' dormitory in the South of England". When Watson wrote his Flaxborough stories, he was deliberately writing against those stereotypes, which is why they work remarkably well as satires of such traditional mysteries.

"Snobbery with Violence," alas, is not easy to find, although Amazon seems to have a  fairly expensive paperback edition available. It's worth noting that Amazon booksellers seem to have other used copies available, including some at a lower price. While I don't agree with a number of his conclusions, I think it's an entertaining and fairly provocative look at our genre.

Guys and Dol

During the late 1930s, when Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin were getting themselves established as Rex Stout's primary fictional detectives, Stout tried his hand at a few books featuring other heroes. There was Tecumseh Fox, for example, who operated completely apart from anyone in the Wolfe books. Even Inspector Cramer got his own book with "Red Threads."

But only once in that period did Rex Stout write a mystery featuring a female detective - Dol Bonner, who would later appear in a couple of the Wolfe books when Wolfe needed a female detective to help him gather evidence. Dol Bonner is the heroine of "The Hand in the Glove," which originally appeared in 1937.

The complicated plot has to do with Dol Bonner's investigation of a phony spiritualist who is leeching money from a rich man's wife. The rich man soon turns up murdered, with Bonner finding the body herself. As the victim was hanged and tied to a tree with thin wire, Bonner deduces that the killer must have worn gloves to protect his or her hands - and she manages to find where those gloves are hidden, after a police search fails to turn them up. Eventually, after another murder, she forces a confession from the killer.

Frankly, it's not one of my favorites. When it came to his detectives, Stout was much better with his guys than his dolls or his Dol (short for "Theodolinda," by the way). She's intended to be a tough private eye, but has some trouble controlling her emotional reactions to some of the plot twists, including a last-minute fainting spell. While much of the third-party narration follows her movements, there are a couple of other points of view that could confuse the reader somewhat. Inspector Cramer also makes a brief appearance, to help the local police, as do a couple of other official investigators.

"The Hand in the Glove" has been newly re-released in an e-book format for Amazon Kindle, although the book itself is out of print. In 1992, "The Hand in the Glove" was turned into a made-for-TV movie on NBC, called "Lady Against the Odds." Rex Stout fans in the New York City area should note that next Monday, the Wolfean group known as the Wolfe Pack will be discussing the book and screening the TV movie at one of the group's regular book discussion evenings. There's no charge (you order and pay for your own dinner and drinks), and the discussions are usually fun and lively. There's more information about where, when and how at the link.

Sleepless in Seattle

Well, sort of sleepless, because Seattle is a good place to be a lover of mysteries - for once including the classics I enjoy talking about.

First of all, there's the marvelous Seattle Mystery Bookshop, located all of 1/2 block from my hotel, which turns out to be dangerously close. If it's a mystery and it's in print, the chances are excellent that you'll find it in stock at their store (or, of course, they can get it for you). You may find signed copies as well.

But for me, perhaps not surprisingly, the real pleasure is in working through their collection of classics, both newly-republished and out-of-print. In fact, I picked up - for $10 - a copy of Rex Stout's "Hand in Glove," a non-Nero Wolfe book that will be discussed at a Wolfe Pack dinner in New York in a couple of weeks. They also had a copy of one of the funniest Nero Wolfe covers I've ever seen - a paperback of "Too Many Cooks," with a lurid cover of what looks like someone firing a gun at Nero Wolfe. The fact that there are no guns AT ALL in the story apparently didn't slow the artist down at all.

As an equally pleasant surprise, I found two good used book stalls in the Pike Place Market's collection of small stores and dealers. At one, all mass market paperbacks - of any vintage - were on sale for $1.75 each, and that included some Ellery Queens, a Michael Innes and even a Mary Roberts Rinehart. At another stall, called the BLMF Bookshop, I walked out with a couple of Georges Simenons and an Erle Stanley Gardner that I hadn't read, all at ridiculously low prices.

So I'm sleepless in Seattle. Too much reading to do. If you're out there for work or pleasure or because you live there, these bookshops are well worth your time.

Good - and Bad - Kindle News

I am delighted to find that Amazon.com is now making many of Rex Stout's "Nero Wolfe" books available in electronic editions for the Kindle. That's the good news.

The bad news is that the process of transferring the text from paper to pixels is a little sloppy, at least in the version I have of "If Death Ever Slept." In particular, there are repeated instances where the word "his" becomes "Ms" and "him" becomes "Mm," which is distracting at best when trying to read the book. If it were a freebie or ultra-low-cost book, I'd make allowances, but at a price point ranging from $6 to $12 or so, depending on the book, I think a bit more care should have been taken.

Recommending More Carr Books

I've been meaning to write a followup post this week, recommending other titles by John Dickson Carr to go along with this week's review of "The Case of the Constant Suicides." The problem is - there are so many good books by this master of the locked room/impossible crime genre - and yet so few of them now in print - that it's not easy to make recommendations.

As I've written many times before, my favorite Carr is still "The Three Coffins," published in England as "The Hollow Man." It remains out of print, but there seem to be a fair number of used copies still on the market, and any good mystery bookseller should be able to help you.

The Rue Morgue Press has republished Carr's "The Crooked Hinge." It's another very good one, although I find the solution a bit implausible. But then it's easy to make that criticism of most locked room/impossible crime mysteries. As with most good magic tricks (for these books deal largely in illusion), when you know how it's done, the urge to say "Is that all?" becomes almost irresistable.

Don't forget that Carr also wrote under the name of Carter Dickson - he wrote his series featuring the irascible Sir Henry Merrivale under that name. One of the best of those - "The Judas Window" - is still in print, and it's an excellent mystery.

For a broader overview - and to get an idea of what may be available - you can check out Amazon's author pages for John Dickson Carr and Carter Dickson. Some titles are weaker than others, to be sure, but there are only a few real howlers. And let me recommend again Doug Greene's marvelous biography of Carr, John Dickson Carr: The Man Who Explained Miracles - if you really want to learn about his life and his writing, this book is indispensable.

Looking Back: "Green for Danger"

The short stories of Christianna Brand reviewed on the podcast this week are excellent. But I have to take this opportunity to recommend Brand's best-known and, quite possibly, best mystery, "Green for Danger."

When I reviewed the book a couple of years back, I said, "This is the kind of book that reminds me why I am so hooked on good, classic mysteries." I stand by that statement today. Written during World War II, it brings Inspector Cockrill to a military hospital to investigate the mysterious death of a patient, who dies during surgery. It appears impossible for it to have been a crime, and there appears to be absolutely no motive. Yet one of the nurses insists it was murder and that she can prove it - and she, in turn, is murdered.

It's a marvelous book. The reader is given plenty of clues - yet I suspect that the final twists and turns in the story will absolutely stun you. I know I was left gasping. Even Inspector Cockrill got some of the key points exactly backwards.

The blurb on my edition of "Green for Danger" quotes mystery writer and critic H. R. F. Keating as calling it "perhaps the last golden crown of the Golden Age detective story." If you've never read it - and even if you've seen the classic 1946 British mystery thriller of the same name starring Alastair Sim as Inspector Cockrill - you owe it to yourself to read "Green for Danger." It appears to be out of print again, but Amazon's booksellers appear to have a variety of inexpensive copies in various editions.

Looking Back: More Crispin

Edmund Crispin, the author of "Holy Disorders," wrote 9 novels and two collections of short stories featuring Oxford professor and eclectic detective Gervase Fen. Crispin was the pen name of Robert Bruce Montgomery, whose primary source of income was as a composer of movie music. Readers old enough to remember the old British movie comedies in the "Carry On" series will have heard Montgomery's music in those movies.

His books are witty, literate and very funny. The humor is frequently a very dark humor indeed, with laugh-out-loud scenes juxtaposed against some of the very real horrors in the books. Too many of his books remain out of print. At the moment, that includes his best-known work, "The Moving Toyshop," although I am hopeful that Felony & Mayhem Press, which has been republishing other Crispins, will get around to this one as well. For now, a number of Amazon's third-party sellers have copies, most of which are fairly expensive but there may be some decent prices at the link.

I have reviewed several Crispins on the podcast, and I will be doing more as we move forward. But if you want what I think is one of the best Crispins, let me recommend "Swan Song." It features the murder of an operatic baritone (and all-around nasty individual), and it combines a fine impossible-crime situation with some very funny backstage antics. Crispin's characters are eccentric, but also quite well drawn, with many sympathetic characters and some really unpleasant villains.

Good News & Bad News from the Rue Morgue Press

I've just received the Rue Morgue Press's Augumn 2010 catalog, which contains (as the headline say) good news and bad news.

Let's start with the good news - the books that they will be publishing over the next few months. I'm most excited to see that they'll be republishing John Dickson Carr's "The Case of the Constant Suicides," which is a fine story with two locked-room murders and some of the funniest and finest drinking scenes in any book. It's been a long time since I read it, and I'm ordering a copy.

Then there are two - two! - Gladys Mitchell mysteries. She is, as I've said in several reviews, something of an acquired taste, but I have been acquiring that taste, having read several of her books, and I eagerly look forward to both "Merlin's Furlong" (which is available now) and "Dead Man's Morris," coming around the end of the year.

They will be publishing a couple of Manning Coles books. I haven't reviewed any of these yet, and haven't read them in many years, and will probably use this as an excuse to refamiliarize myself with Coles' Tommy Hambledon. There are more entries from Stuart Palmer, Colin Watson, Frances Crane and Catherine Aird. It should be an enjoyable few months.

But now the bad news: in the course of their announcement, they warn that "a number of our titles have recently gone out of print."  Ouch! I suppose it's inevitable, given the nature of the business, but still...well, if you haven't ordered from them in a while and have been putting it off, now would be a good time to visit their website.

(Full disclosure: I had the pleasure of meeting Tom and Enid Schantz, who are the Rue Morgue Press, at Malice Domestic, and they gave me copies of several of their books as read/review copies. I've paid for most of my RMP books, however, and I've pre-ordered the new ones via Amazon, which also gives me a small percentage of the price. So there.)

Explaining Miracles

In my opinion, John Dickson Carr was the absolute master of the locked room/impossible crime genre. With that in mind, may I make two recommendations.

The first is for what I still believe is the finest impossible crime story ever written: "The Three Coffins." As I have said before, Carr begins with a direct challenge to the reader - a challenge which says, "Watch me - I'm going to fool you," and then delivers on the challenge. It is scrupulously fair, but I suspect few readers will be up to the challenge, as the information you need to solve the murders is cleverly hidden behind some excellent atmospherics. And, as a bonus, the book contains Dr. Fell's marvelous locked room lecture, where the action is stopped while Dr. Fell lists all the ways in which impossible crimes may be carried out.

If you have read Carr before, you might also be interested in Douglas G. Greene's excellent biography, called "John Dickson Carr: The Man Who Explained Miracles." It's out of print, and copies seem to be pretty expensive, but it's worth checking with your local library to see if they have a copy of the book. Be forewarned that Greene's discussion of the plots of the novels will, of necessity, include some spoilers - with the reader warned ahead of time so he/she can ignore those paragraphs. But if you have read the stories, and want more insight into Carr and how he lived and worked, this is an excellent and very readable reference book.

Making a Joyful Moyes...

I haven't written very much here about another top-notch mystery writer, Patricia Moyes. For one thing, all of her books are out of print, which I think is an outrage. I really enjoy her books, which feature Scotland Yard Chief Inspector (or higher) Henry Tibbett and, in most cases, his wife Emmy, and I do wish she were better known.

Let me recommend this excellent review by Jim Napier, over at the Rap Sheet blog, of Moyes's "Murder Fantastical," which I think is one of her best. As he notes, second-hand copies of her books are fairly easy to come by. She's worth the effort!