Classic Mysteries

The Scoop on "The Scoop"

I finally got around to reading a delightful short novel that is probably best known not for its plot but for its authors. The book is called "The Scoop," and it was written by Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, E. C. Bentley, Anthony Berkeley, Freeman Wills Crofts and Clemence Dane. All were among the earliest members of Britain's prestigious Detection Club.

"The Scoop" was first published as a serial in a BBC publication in 1931. The premise was simple: each of the authors would write a chapter of a murder mystery...then, when the chapter was complete, it would be passed along to the next author, who would have to carry the story along from that point.

As a result, each chapter ends with a cliff-hanger or a sudden twist, which the following author must use as a starting point - or, at least, incorporate into the story. As an example: much is made early in the story about the fact that the murder weapon is missing. At the end of one chapter, author E. C. Bentley announces, dramatically, that the weapon has been found. It was then up to the author of the next chapter, Agatha Christie, to decide where, when, why and how the weapon had been found - and then move the story along.

The result, of course, is a remarkably good-humored book, as each author tries to top the preceding author or stump the next one. I suppose it's rather amazing that, in only twelve chapters, these six writers managed to produce a coherent (if not always clearly logical) mystery.

"The Scoop" has long been out of print; there was a paperback edition with another of the Detection Club's serial novels, "Behind the Screen," published in 1984. I'd suggest talking to your favorite mystery bookseller to see if he or she can find an inexpensive copy for you. With this notable group of authors playfully interacting with each other, it's realy a fascinating read.

"The Man Who Was Thursday"

A most unusual book is featured on this week's "Classic Mysteries" podcast. It is a thriller, a traditional struggle between good and evil, order and anarchy. It is a mystery. It is also a surreal farce, richly funny and profoundly dark, a work of metaphysics and logic and illogic. It is, in fact, a nightmare - or, to be specific, it is "The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare," by G. K. Chesterton. It is, as I say, the subject of this week's podcast review, which you may listen to by clicking here.

Chesterton, the creator of the Father Brown stories, had a profound influence on mystery fiction. In "The Man Who Was Thursday," first published more than a century ago in 1908, he begins with the exposure of a terrible plot by anarchists to destroy the civilized world. The leaders of the plot are seven men, each of whom uses the name of a day of the week as an alias. The leader of the plot is a terrifying man who calls himself "Sunday."

But the group is infiltrated by our protagonist, a poet named Gabriel Syme, who is elected to the leadership council as "Thursday." Syme is, secretly, working for the police against the plotters. What he finds out, as he infiltrates the group, is that all is not as clear-cut as it seems. In a series of increasingly fantastic episodes - many of them quite comic, most equally surreal (there is, for example, a chase sequence involving both a hot-air balloon and an elephant) - much is revealed. And, ultimately, it is a nightmare - whether real or surreal is up to the reader to judge.

Penguin Books has released a new edition of "The Man Who Was Thursday," with an introduction and comprehensive footnotes by Matthew Beaumont. Penguin provided me with a copy of the book for this review. Frankly, I would urge you to read the story itself before reading Beaumont's introduction, because the latter does, of necessity, give away much of the plot. It is useful and informative, after reading the book itself, for explaining some of the cultural and social references of the time.

For readers of vintage mysteries, this is one of the finest, written by Chesterton at the top of his form. The Penguin edition is also available electronically for the Amazon Kindle. The book is entertaining, funny, frightening, often all at once; it is, in fact, "a nightmare," as the subtitle indicates. Enjoy the dream!

Banned Books

Tomorrow marks the start of "Banned Books Week," an annual observance of the surprisingly large number of good books that, for one reason or another, wind up "banned," whether it's from school or public libraries.

Now I can certainly see why some books are banned. As a mystery reader and book blogger, for example, I can think of plenty of books that I have read (or, to be honest, read the first 20 or so pages and dropped thereafter) that probably ought to be banned for bad taste, bad language, bad thoughts and/or bad writing.

However. For some reason I cannot fathom, it appears that there are other clearly misguided people who actually do read those books and, again for reasons I cannot fathom, consider them worthwhile. They may even learn something from them.

That being the case, I guess, I need to admit, grudgingly, that maybe my own personal taste and prejudices aren't the only ones that count. Accordingly, and on a more serious note, let me urge you to read a "banned" book or two or three this week. The would-be censors never understand that their censorship merely makes their target more attractive to intelligent readers. But, if they were intelligent, they wouldn't be censors, would they?

For more information about Banned Books Week, and some truly amazing lists of the books which have been banned or challenged somewhere in the U.S., check out the American Library Association.

Definitions

All of us have read many, many book reviews (including, I fear, the ones published here) which contain certain buzzwords. These are words used by the publishing industry, blurb writers and reviewers to provide more-or-less useful guides to a book's content and/or style. But in order to understand them properly, it is essential to know their definitions - what the words really mean.

In that spirit, I call your attention to a most helpful post at One-Minute Book Reviews called "40 Publishing Buzzwords, Clichés and Euphemisms Decoded." Yeah, that's the word - "helpful."

I think she's nailed it. Ouch.

Hat tip: Patrick Ohl of "At the Scene of the Crime."

Raising Cain

Here's some exciting news today for readers of hardboiled and/or "noir" crime fiction. Charles Ardai, the person responsible for the Hard Case Crime line of mysteries from Titan Books, sends word that his company has acquired the rights to a never-before-published novel by James M. Cain. Cain is the author of such classics as Mildred Pierce, Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice. The newly-discovered book is called The Cocktail Waitress, and it should be out in Fall, 2012.

What's it about? According to Ardai's e-mail:

THE COCKTAIL WAITRESS is the story of beautiful young widow Joan Medford, whose husband died under suspicious circumstances. Desperate to make ends meet after his death, Joan takes a job as a waitress in a cocktail lounge, where two new men enter her life: a handsome young schemer she falls for and a rich but unwell older man she marries.

Although Cain published many books during his lifetime, The Cocktail Waitress apparently is brand-new, having never appeared in any form. As Ardai points out, Cain is generally considered one of the "big three" in hardboiled, along with Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, so this is truly a major find for hardboiled fans. Congratulations to Hard Case Crime are in order.

More details and background are available at the Rap Sheet blog.

"Night of the Jabberwock"

The setting almost sounds hackneyed: a small-town weekly newspaper publisher/editor, putting his paper "to bed" one Thursday night complains bitterly that there's absolutely no news in the paper. By the middle of the night, he is overwhelmed with fabulous stories - murders, gangsters on the run, what-have-you - that could make sensational news for his paper if he can survive the night. Which is, unfortunately, far from certain.

But that's just the beginning of one of my all-time favorite mysteries, "Night of the Jabberwock," by Fredric Brown. This 1951 classic had been out of print for a long time, but it's available again thanks to the Langtail Press. It's the subject of this week's review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, which you can listen to by clicking here.

The newspaper editor, Doc Stoeger, is a devoted fan of Lewis Carroll, the marvelous author who wrote Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, among other books. In the latter, you'll find one of the masterpieces of nonsense verse (disguised as a heroic epic), "Jabberwocky." That poem, and Carroll's other works, are going to play a key role in the fantastic and deadly events that will happen in the book and put Doc's life at risk, not once but several times.

It's a fast moving, action-packed book. It's quite short - you can easily read it in one or two sittings - but it packs an enormous punch. It's funny, semi-hard-boiled, fairly blood-soaked, but - above all else - it is a traditional mystery. The clues are there for the reader to find and follow, just as Doc must do in the course of this amazing night. The book does honor to Lewis Carroll - and to the reader of traditional, vintage mysteries. Langtail Press has even made available in an inexpensive edition for the Amazon Kindle. Don't miss this one - as I say, it has long been one of my favorites.

Holmes Sweet Holmes

A rhetorical question asked at Bouchercon: how can you have a mystery conference without a panel about Sherlock Holmes?

When that question went unanswered, a couple of people decided to do something about it: they added a mini-panel event Saturday afternoon to talk about Holmes and his continuing influence on crime literature and film and television.

Discussing Sherlockiana were a couple of experts in the field. Les Klinger, generally regarded as one of the most notable students of all things Holmes-related - he's the editor/author/compiler of the updated Annotated Sherlock Holmes, among other things, and has served as an advisor on various Holmesian projects for Hollywood - was one of the speakers. The other was author Laurie R. King, whose best-selling series of books about Mary Russell, the young woman who marries Holmes in King's books. Her latest book in the series, The Pirate King, just went on sale this week and immediately jumped to number 7 on the New York Times best-seller list.

Is it heretical to do to the Holmes canon what Laurie King has done, making Holmes a major supporting character (but NOT the lead) in a series of new novels? I think not, nor does Les Klinger, nor, rather obviously, Laurie R. King. Certainly her books have been at least partly responsible for a renewal of interest in Holmes, including successful new movies and television productions. Frankly, I would argue that anything which revives and nurtures that interest will eventually lead readers to the original stories, and that can only be good.

Winners All

There are a number of mystery literary awards presented each year at Bouchercon, culminating in the Anthonys. Those will be announced tomorrow (Sunday) at mid-day. But there have already been several other awards handed out to the winners, including the Macavitys, the Barrys and the Shamus Awards.

The estimable J. Kingston Pierce has been at Bouchercon (and it was good seeing him again), and he has been blogging the winners at The Rap Sheet blog. You'll find all the information at the link. Congratulations, as always, to the winners and to all the nominees. You're in pretty exclusive company.

Nothing Like a Dame

There truly is nothing, and was no-one, like Dame Agatha Christie, and it is almost impossible to imagine what today's mystery fiction would have been like if she hadn't blazed a trail for other writers to follow.

She was the topic of a first-rate panel discussion at Bouchercon today. Moderated by Ted Hertel (on the right), the panel consisted of authors G. M. Malliet (on the left) and Val McDermid, Ayo Onatade of Shots Magazine, and author Carolyn Hart.  Christie fans, all, acknowledging their own debt as writers to Christie.

Carolyn Hart probably summed it up best. In an article she wrote about Christie some years ago, in portions read at the discussion today, Hart said:

Christie's heart is in her books, speaking to us through her characters, just as clearly and forthrightly as she would speak could she walk into her drawing room and greet a friend. Every writer reveals in print the stamp of his soul. The qualities an author admires, the emotions that rule an author's heart are there for the finding.

            * * *

Agatha Christie is there, in the insouciance of Tuppence, in the determination of Poirot, in so many laughing quips and telling comments. Read her books once again and catch glimpses of that most elusive, most reclusive author. Read for her heart - it's there to find.

Indeed.

Wolfe for Breakfast

Had a fascinating meetup at the Bouchercon mystery conference today - a breakfast for librarians, reviewers, readers and authors, sponsored by the Mystery Writers of America and CriminalElement.com. At our table, we were hosted by two authors - both of whom have been influenced by Rex Stout and his creation, Nero Wolfe.

Larry D. Sweazy has a number of series in play at the moment, including four featuring a Texas Ranger named...Josiah Wolfe. And, yes, that's in honor of Nero Wolfe.

The other author, Brad Parks, won both the Nero Award and the Shamus Award last year for his debut novel, "Faces of the Gone." The Nero was presented to Brad by the Wolfe Pack at last winter's Black Orchid banquet.

One of the great things about conferences such as Bouchercon is the opportunity to meet authors such as these two who are new to me - and get a line on some new worthwhile reads. I'm looking forward to checking both of them out.