Classic Mysteries

"Any Shape or Form"

An elderly woman is shot to death at Johnny Redfield's country estate. The victim is his elderly aunt, a woman who claimed to belong to an obscure "sun cult" and insisted on being called by her astral name of "Vega." What possible motive could there be for the murder? And what significance attaches to a particularly grotesque statue in the garden of the estate?

It's a classic country-home murder, but the setting isn't rural England and the author isn't Agatha Christie. The book is "Any Shape or Form," written in 1945 by Elizabeth Daly, who was one of Agatha Christie's favorite American writers. It's the subject of today's review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the full review by clicking here.

Christie's admiration for Daly is quite understandable, because Daly was one of the finest American practitioners of the classic puzzle-plot mystery. Her detective, an expert on rare books and manuscripts named Henry Gamadge, is within a few feet of "Vega" when she is shot to death. There is a house full of potential suspects, although both motive and opportunity seem difficult to establish. Daly keeps things moving along, with clues carefully palnted amidst some expert misdirection, not to mention another murder, and I suspect that most readers will find the final twists to the plot both unexpected and breathtaking in their audacity. I would advise you to pay particular attention to that statue in the garden.

Between 1940 and 1951, Daly wrote 16 mysteries featuring Henry Gamadge, who is one of my favorite American detectives. The Felony & Mayhem Press has been republishing Daly's books, with seven of them in print at the moment, and I can recommend all of them quite heartily. I am delighted to be able to offer Elizabeth Daly's "Any Shape or Form" as my entry for the 1940s in the My Reader's Block book blog Vintage Mysteries Reading Challenge.

March (Mystery) Madness

It's nearly that time of year again - March Madness is almost upon us.

No, not that peculiar sports thing involving a batch of college teams engaged in some sport played mostly by very tall people. A fad, I'm sure.

I'm talking about the version of March Madness designed by Jen Forbus, the blogger (blogress?) responsible for the marvelous Jen's Book Thoughts blog. For two years now, Jen has celebrated the month of March with a version of March Madness especially for mystery lovers which involves competing brackets and elimination rounds, just the way that other March Madness tournament does. Through those brackets and voting by mystery readers, Jen has been able to come up with some very interesting results in her contests to find the most popular mysteries and mystery characters.

This year, she's preparing her Crime Fiction Bracket Tourney to match up Heroes and Villains. All she needs is suggestions for said heroes and villains - and that's where you come in. Between now and March 4th, Jen is inviting us to enter the names of favorite heroes and/or villains. She will compile them and set up an initial field of 16 heroes and 16 villains...and we will all then begin the rounds of voting to winnow them down.

Sound like fun? Yes, it is. So go ahead, click the links and start submitting the names of your favorites. I think she's permitting more than one entry, by the way, so let your imaginations run free. Oh, and it certainly isn't limited to the classics (though those are the names I'll be entering); Jen reads (and reviews) mostly contemporary crime novels and thrillers, so you can expect to see a lot of familiar names from today's best crime fiction. Have at it!

"The Rubber Band," by Rex Stout

Here's an early Nero Wolfe book with some very unusual features from Wolfe's perennial battle with police:

• Nero Wolfe hides a young woman in his house, to keep her from the police;
• The police outrage Wolfe by searching the house with a search warrant;
• And Inspector Cramer actually smokes a cigar rather than just chewing it!

It's all incidental, of course, to murder - and, in this case, to a story that has roots in a lawless Nevada mining town in 1895, a near-lynching, a promise unkept, and a disreputable character called "Rubber" Coleman. It's the story of "The Rubber Band," by Rex Stout, the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast. You can listen to the full review by clicking here.

"The Rubber Band" was only Stout's third novel about Nero Wolfe, Archie Goodwin, and the rest of the 35th Street crowd. It's still a bit rough around the edges - Archie, in particular, has some maturing to do - but I think it's one of the better plots, overall.

The story begins with a businessman trying to hire Wolfe to investigate an apparent theft from his office. Before he can do so, however, the woman who is suspected in that theft, Clara Fox, shows up, trying to hire Wolfe to investigate (and collect) an old and potentially very valuable debt. More than 40 years earlier, her father was involved in an escapade in a Nevada mining town, where he and his friends - members of the "Rubber band," led by Rubber Coleman - freed a man about to be lynched by a mob. In return, the man - an Englishman - had promised them a share of his fortune. Now, 40 years later, that man has finally been traced. He's a wealthy English diplomat, and Clara Fox and others want their share of his wealth.

But there's much more - and, obviously, there is a murder. And, with the police now very interested in Clara Fox, Wolfe is forced to hide her in the brownstone. The scene where the police - in the form of Lieutenant Rowcliff, Archie Goodwin's nemesis - search the brownstone for Clara Fox is, by itself, worth the price of admission. The book, of course, ends with one of Nero Wolfe's distinctive office confrontations.

"The Rubber Band" is, I think, excellent in many ways. It is my entry for the 1930s in the "Deadly Decades" division of Bev Hankins' Vintage Mysteries Reading Challenge at the My Reader's Block blog. The book is available in print and also as an eBook; for Nero Wolfe fans, it is a must-read.

"The Mysterious Affair at Styles"

It was a meeting (a reunion, actually) that rivals, in the history of crime fiction, the first meeting between Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson:

As I came out again, I cannoned into a little man who was just entering. I drew aside and apologized, when suddenly, with a loud exclamation, he clasped me in his arms and kissed me warmly.

"Mon ami Hastings" he cried. "It is indeed mon ami Hastings!"

"Poirot" I exclaimed.

And so, for the first time, Captain Arthur Hastings introduces the reader to his "old friend," Monsieur Hercule Poirot, war refugee and retired Belgian police detective. And it proves to be a good thing that he did, for without M. Poirot's intervention (and without Captain Hastings to record the results!), the poisoning of a disagreeable old woman at the country manor known as Styles might well have gone unsolved - or pinned on the wrong person. It all happens in Agatha Christie's very first mystery novel, published in 1920, "The Mysterious Affair at Styles," which is the subject of today's review on the Classic Mysteries podcast. You can listen to the complete review by clicking here.

"The Mysterious Affair at Styles" contains a great many of what would become Christie's trademarks: it is set in a country house; the victim is a particularly unpleasant family tyrant; there are a lot of people around who might well have had sufficient motive for murder; the police are headed in the wrong direction and need help from Poirot; and the mystery is solved and explained at a confrontation in a drawing room where Poirot has gathered all the suspects.

The story of the creation of Hercule Poirot is fairly well known. He sprang, more-or-less fully formed, into Agatha Christie's head, an already-elderly retired foreign police detective who came to England as a war refugee from his native Belgium. That "already-elderly" designation would come to haunt Christie, who acknowledged in her autobiography that Poirot must have been well over a hundred years old before his career finally ended.

All the same, Poirot's first case, in "The Mysterious Affair at Styles," is a delight, made all the more astonishing by the fact that the story was written by a young woman with next to no real writing experience, dared by her sister to try her hand at writing a detective story. The book is full of Christie's marvelous tricks, as she uses misdirection artfully to throw readers off the right track. The poisoning is quite brilliantly handled; Christie used her extensive knowledge of poisons (acquired as a hospital dispenser during the Great War) to provide a novel and ingenious solution to the problem of "howdunit." If the characters are less than perfectly drawn, the plot is more than sufficient to carry the book along.

After "The Mysterious Affair at Styles," Christie went on to write novels, short stories and plays, eighty books in all; I think that no other author quite embodies the heart of the Golden Age of Detection as Agatha Christie does. If you've never read the book that started it all, what are you waiting for? There are inexpensive paperbacks available (see the link above); for that matter there are inexpensive Amazon Kindle versions including one for 99 cents which also includes Christie's second novel, the Tommy-and-Tuppence thriller "The Secret Adversary," another fun read.

"The Mysterious Affair at Styles" is my entry for the 1920s in the "Deadly Decades" division of the Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge under way at Bev's My Reader's Block blog. Check there for some of the other wonderful classic mysteries being read by other bloggers - books which you might enjoy reading.

"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.

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?

"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."

And on the Other Hand...

While we're talking reading challenges here, let me accept another one to be completed this year - this time from Jen Forbus, the blogger responsible for the indispensable Jen's Book Thoughts blog. She calls it "Criminal Plots II."

It works a little differently from other challenges. Jen has come up with six categories - things like "Novel with a weapon in the title" and "Crime novel whose protagonist is the opposite gender of the author," for example. The idea is to read one book in each category, write a review, then publish the review. If you have a blog, do it on your blog and link to it; if not, just post it as a comment on Jen's blog.

Sounds like fun. You can find the complete rules, explanations and descriptions here. I plan to keep my entries to the same kinds of mysteries I write about here - traditional, classical mysteries. There are plenty of them and, yes, they fit into Jen's categories.

Why don't you take part, too? Again, you don't need to have a blog of your own - just read the books and post your reviews as comments on Jen's blog. No, they don't have to be lengthy, formal reviews - just write down your reactions to the books and post them. Again, you'll find full details at the links.

Accepting the Challenge

As I noted here a couple of months back, I have accepted this year's Vintage Mystery Challenge sponsored at the ever-admirable My Reader's Block blog. This is the second year that blog hostess Bev Hankins has challenged lovers of vintage and traditional mysteries to read - and write about - classic mysteries. This year, she has provided readers with what she calls "vintage themes": a wide range of topical choices, including the ability to create flexible lists. The only requirement is that the books must have been published before 1960.

Fair enough. Beginning next Monday, for the next eight weeks, this blog and podcast will focus on the theme called "Deadly Decades." We begin with a novel written before 1900, followed by a book from each decade through the fifties - plus a "bonus" title, for a total of eight mysteries in eight weeks.

Here's what you can expect to see (and hear) reviewed here:

• January 16: "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1887);
• January 23: "The Man in Lower Ten," by Mary Roberts Rinehart (1909);
• January 30: "The Secret House," by Edgar Wallace (1917);
• February 6: "The Mysterious Affair at Styles," by Agatha Christie (1920);
• February 13: "The Rubber Band," by Rex Stout (1936);
• February 20: "Any Shape or Form," by Elizabeth Daly (1945);
• February 27: "Dead Men Don't Ski," by Patricia Moyes (1959);
• March 5: "The Left Leg," by Phoebe Atwood Taylor (writing as Alice Tilton) (1940).

That last one is still tentative, but I think a good farce about murder - which nicely describes "The Left Leg" - will round things out quite well.

I intend to have a lot of fun with this - and I'd like to remind my readers that they too can be a part of this challenge. You can find details about how to enter the challenge here, and Bev is also modifying the terms to allow people to complete a kind of "mini-challenge," by reading only four books - details here. If you'd like to see what others are reading and track everyone's progress in the challenge, you can do so here.

If you've never been part of a reading challenge, this might be a fun way to start. The goal is to get more people to read more vintage mysteries. And I can't think of anything wrong with that goal at all.