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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
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.
John Dickson Carr is generally recognized as the undisputed master of the locked room mystery. In some of his books, too, he was a master at creating a truly terrifying atmosphere, so that the crimes committed in his books appeared to be the work of supernatural forces. You'll find that talent is on display in his 1934 book, "The Plague Court Murders
For fans of Sir Henry, be forewarned: there's very little of the humor (often slapstick comedy) displayed by Sir Henry in most of the later "Carter Dickson" novels. What you have, instead, is an often-terrifying story of a night spent in a supposedly haunted house - a night which culminates in a murder inside a locked and bolted room, one being watched by the police, where the murderer has apparently disappeared - but the very distinctive and unusual knife which was used remains inside that room.
Carr weaves this into a story about a rather horrible man named Louis Playge, an assistant to the public hangman some three hundred years earlier, whose malevolent ghost may be responsible for the very modern crimes in Plague Court. At the same time, the reader is given fair - but well-disguised - clues to the real solution, which Sir Henry pursues with only a minimum of his usual antics. The reader is warned: there are some very well-done surprising twists in store here. It's not my favorite Carr (or Dickson) book, but it's a fine puzzle plot, concealed nicely inside what appears to be a first-rate ghost story. For readers of vintage mysteries from the Golden Age of Detection, this is well worth your interest. It's available in print, and an e-book version is available
In my review (below) of Rex Stout's "If Death Ever Slept," I mentioned the fact that some of Nero Wolfe's most intriguing cases come about as the result of a practical joke or a minor feud between Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.
One of the best examples of this is "The Golden Spiders
I reviewed "The Golden Spiders" last year, and there's also a podcast version of the review. As I say, it's a personal favorite among so many fine entries in the series. If you haven't read it, you really ought to consider finding a copy for yourself.
Some of Nero Wolfe's most interesting cases come about because he and Archie are having a fight about something and get themselves involved in a case they might not otherwise have taken. That's pretty much what happens in "If Death Ever Slept
As a general rule, Nero Wolfe doesn't accept cases involving marital discord. But he and Archie are having one of their periodic fights, and wind up goading each other into taking a case brought by a multimillionaire, Otis Jarrell, who wants to get his daughter-in-law (whom he refers to as a "snake") out of his house. Think of it as marital discord once removed. Archie winds up going to the Jarrell mansion disguised as the multimillionaire's secretary, under a phony name.
Pretty soon, the murders start. And with the ever-suspicious police wondering what Archie's doing there, it quickly becomes a case where Nero Wolfe will find plenty of reasons to wish he had obeyed his usual rules and not allowed himself to get involved.
As usual, Rex Stout's writing, Archie's wisecracking and Wolfe's genius combine for a very readable and enjoyable read for those who enjoy these vintage mysteries. For those who prefer an ebook version, there's a version available for the Amazon Kindle
Do you have someone in your family headed back to school? Are they in need of textbooks?
You could do them (and me) a favor by pointing out that Amazon.com sells textbooks. And you could point out that they can use this link
Thank you!
For the first time on the Classic Mysteries podcast, I won't be reviewing a work of detective/crime fiction this week. Instead, I want to share a non-fiction book with you that is based on fact, or at least as close to fact as it may be possible to get with the biography of a remarkably slippery subject. The book is "The First Detective: The Life and Revolutionary Times of Vidocq, Criminal, Spy and Private Eye
Who, exactly, was Vidocq? Eugene-Francois Vidocq, born in 1775, was a career French criminal, a thief, a possible forger and an escape artist who managed frequent escapes from the many prisons into which he was thrown. Eventually, seeing no future in that kind of life, he became a police spy and informer. He then rose through the ranks of the police - using his former criminal informants, in turn, as informers and aides. Eventually, he left the police and formed what Morton describes as the first private detective agency. As an investigator, he also developed some of the techniques which would form the basis for modern forensic science.
Vidocq was the inspiration for a great many fictional characters. Victor Hugo used him as the model for two of the principal characters in "Les Miserables" - both the convict-hero Jean Valjean and Valjean's nemesis, Inspector Javert. He was Poe's inspiration for the first true fictional detective character, C. Auguste Dupin, and for many other characters in early mystery and crime fiction, such as Maurice LeBlanc's Arsene Lupin. Morton cites Vidocq's influence on various characters created by such authors as Balzac, Dickens and Melville. Even Sherlock Holmes may owe his propensity for using disguises and makeup to Vidocq, who employed those techniques all the time.
Morton takes this story and presents "The First Detective" almost as a picaresque novel, for, as he cheerfully admits, it is extremely difficult to piece together the reality of Vidocq's biography from all the different versions and anecdotes passed along, not only by Vidocq in his own memoirs, but by his associates and his enemies in theirs. The result, however, is a thoroughly researched, lively and entertaining book, packed with anecdote after anecdote about this thief turned thief-catcher. Originally published in the U. K. in 2004, this edition has just been published in the United States by the Overlook Press, which made a copy available for this review.