Classic Mysteries

Bookstore Survival

There's good news to report, for a change, from the world of independent mystery bookstores. Last May, we received an email from Ed Kaufman, the owner of the "M is for Mystery...and More" bookstore in San Mateo, California, near San Francisco, saying that he was planning to retire - given that the store was in its fifteenth year and Kaufman in his 81st. But he also said he really wanted to keep the store going:

It is impossible to sum up how satisfying, and often exciting, it has been to be a bookseller. People frequently say how much they would love to own a bookstore, and I am one of the fortunate ones who have had that experience. For anyone with an active interest, this is an invitation to contact me directly.

Now, I've received another email from Kaufman announcing that somebody actually has taken him up on his offer.

Today I am delighted to announce that the bookstore will continue in this space, but under the name Third Avenue Bookstore, with the subtitle of "M" is for Mystery...and More. We hope you will share our enthusiasm for this venture, which we feel is a most fortunate outcome. [...]

The new owner will be Steve Feldman, whose background includes over 22 years in primarily used and rare books here on the Peninsula. Steve will feature quality used books, in all categories, along with a special section for mystery and crime fiction, which will include used, collectible and a selection of new books. In addition, the intention is to continue to have some author events as well.

Sounds to me like the best possible outcome. Ed Kaufman is inviting people to put themselves on his mailing list - which I have done - and to support the new store. For readers in the San Francisco Bay area, as well as potential mail order customers, it sounds like a great idea.

It's a Gift

Perhaps it's just that this is the season for giving, but here's a delightful gift for classic/vintage mystery lovers from HarperCollins: how about a nice electronic volume of facts and tips about Agatha Christie, including three of her short stories. The book is called "Clues to Christie: The Definitive Guide to Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Tommy & Tuppence and All of Agatha Christie's Mysteries," and it contains an introduction by John Curran (the man who has given us Agatha Christie's diaries).

For newcomers to Christie, the book also includes introductions to her principal detectives as well as what look like some other fascinating notes, pointers and articles.

It's an electronic book - only available for machines, I fear, but apparently in several formats. And - here's the best part - HarperCollins is giving it away free. Nope, no hidden gimmicks. Free. I've already downloaded it for my Kindle, and I'm looking forward to reading it. The more I read and reread Christie, the more I realize what a truly amazing author she was - her plots, her characters, her scene-setting, all her works are often underestimated and dismissed by younger authors and critics who should know better. If, by any terrible chance, you haven't read her yet - here's a good place to start.

Hat tip to the Agatha Christie page on Facebook.

"Give a Corpse a Bad Name"

An unknown man dies in an apparent accident on a dangerous stretch of road. How many mysteries open with similar scenes? Often, that unknown person is almost impossible to identify. Not so, this time - in fact, people seem all too eager to identify him. But is that identification reliable? It certainly looks as if someone is trying to "Give a Corpse a Bad Name," the title of the first book by Elizabeth Ferrars. 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 book begins with an apparent accident in the English village of Chovey: a man is run over by a car, driven by a local woman. As the man, who had apparently been lying in the road, had obviously been very drunk - and the horrified driver was completely sober - it would seem to be just an unfortunate accident along a particularly dangerous road.

Only things are not quite so straightforward. A local landowner identifies the body as that of his son - but the landowner's wife insists that he is wrong. A former crime reporter, Toby Dyke, assisted by his friend George (who never does reveal his last name!), gets involved, trying to help the police determine what really happened - and the true identity of the victim.

All I'm willing to say beyond that is to warn you to take nothing for granted in this delightful mystery, for there are plenty of twists and turns along the way to a startling solution. Elizabeth Ferrars - in the United States, her books were published under the name "E. X. Ferrars" - had a long, popular and prolific career writing mysteries. "Give a Corpse a Bad Name," published in 1940, at the end of the Golden Age of Detection, was her first - and, it appears, one of her best. Lovers of vintage mysteries should add this one to their To Be Read piles. Long out of print, it has been brought back by the Langtail Press, which has also published it in an edition for the Amazon Kindle.

Support Your Local Blogger

Okay, here's a modest plea from your humble local blogger:

We are coming up on the holiday season, and I would imagine that a lot of my readers and visitors will be buying gifts for their families and their friends.

My first plea: if you're buying books - particularly if you're buying mysteries - support your local independent bookstore, assuming you have one, or your favorite online bookseller who specializes in mysteries. They need and deserve your support.

My second plea: if you are searching for other gift items, and if you have local stores (not local branches of national chains, real locally-owned stores), support them through your purchases.

My third plea: if you want to buy anything online from Amazon.com - or any of the many sellers who work through Amazon - I would very much appreciate it if you would support me by using the Amazon search box (on the upper right side of this blog). You could also use this link to get to the Amazon home page. The result is the same: I would get a remarkably small percentage of the sale price, and it won't cost you an additional penny. Their prices on just about everything are pretty good, and they have regular special offers every day - every hour, for that matter.

Thank you. We now return to our regularly-scheduled feast of mysteries.

"Dead Men's Morris"

Gladys Mitchell's eccentric psychiatrist-sleuth, Mrs. Beatrice Bradley, is surely one of the more unusual mystery heroines. I can think of very few besides Mrs. Bradley who can claim a nephew who is an English pig farmer - a fact which gets Mrs. Bradley quite deeply involved in murder and mayhem in "Dead Men's Morris." The book is the subject of this week's review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the full review by clicking here.

"Dead Men's Morris" was first published in Britain in 1936, a fairly early entry in the Mrs. Bradley series which eventually numbered 67 books. In this one, Mrs. Bradley goes to spend the Christmas holidays with her pig farming nephew. It isn't long before a local lawyer turns up dead - quite possibly frightened into a heart attack by chasing or being chased by a ghost. Then another man dies, apparently having been gored by a prize pig. It all somehow ties into the folk art known as Morris dancing, and Mrs. Bradley unmasks the murderer during one of the dances. There are a lot of fascinating and memorable characters, and Mitchell's wry sense of humor helps to keep the reader interested.

Gladys Mitchell is not nearly as well known in the United States as some of her Golden Age contemporaries, including Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, but her British audiences loved her, and some of her books are making their way into print in the U. S. She may be an acquired taste, but for lovers of vintage, Golden Age mysteries, she is a character who really has to be encountered and enjoyed.

Miss Withers on Screen

Stuart Palmer's delightful schoolteacher sleuth, Hildegarde Withers, made quite a name for herself in the movies. As mentioned in some of the comments on my post about "Murder on the Blackboard," a number of movies were made from Palmer's books, starring Edna May Oliver as Hildy and James Gleason as her friend and foil, Inspector Oscar Piper.

I haven't seen any of the movies lately, but Oliver is said to have been perfect in the role. That's not surprising, as she was one of Palmer's inspirations for the character, after he saw Oliver on stage in the first run of the Kern/Hammerstein/Ferber musical "Showboat" (according to Tom and Enid Schantz's introduction to "Murder on the Blackboard").

As best as I can tell, the movie version of "Murder on the Blackboard" isn't easily available, although TCM, Turner Classic Movies, apparently runs it from time to time. Here's a link to the TCM page describing the movie; I'd warn against reading the full synopsis there, however, as it gives away the entire plot. If you want more information about the movie, here's its page from the International Movie Database.

Another Vintage Mysteries Challenge!

For those of us who love traditional, vintage mysteries, here's some very good news: Bev Hankins, who writes about books at her MyReadersBlock book blog, will be hosting another Vintage Mysteries Reading Challenge in 2012.

The new challenge is a follow-up to the vintage mysteries challenge she is still running this year - a challenge I had the pleasure of taking earlier this year. The only requirement this year has been that the book was originally published prior to 1960. For those of you looking for some good ideas about vintage mysteries you might enjoy, I commend the comments you will find on her original challenge post.

In the new year, the challenge will be a little bit different. This year, those of us participating in the challenge will have to choose a particular theme for our mysteries and read eight books that fit in our chosen theme. There are ten themes to choose from - amateur sleuths, perilous policemen, lethal locations, and so forth. The one that caught my eye was Deadly Decades. That requires reading one book from each of 7 time periods (pre-1900s, and then each decade through 1959) plus an extra. Sounds good to me.

Barring a change of mind (which, I will grant you, happens to me with some regularity), I plan to read (or re-read) and review:

• A Study in Scarlet, by Arthur Conan Doyle (1887);
• The Man in Lower Ten, by Mary Roberts Rinehart (1909);
• The Secret House, by Edgar Wallace (1917);
• The Mysterious Affair at Styles, by Agatha Christie (1920);
• The Rubber Band, by Rex Stout (1936);
• Any Shape or Form, by Elizabeth Daly (1945);
• Dead Men Don't Ski, by Patricia Moyes (1959).

That's seven. The eighth book is a "bonus," and I can choose it from any of the above decades. For now, I'll leave it open. The fun will begin in mid-January.

Do you want to be part of this challenge? Take a look at the categories Bev has set up and agree to read eight books in that category - and you're in. Full instructions at the link!

"Murder on the Blackboard"

Have you met Hildegarde Withers? She's the "meddlesome old battleaxe" of a schoolteacher featured in more than a dozen books by Stuart Palmer, not to mention a number of short stories and some movies as well. She brings a teacher's eagle eye and sense of discipline to her avocation - solving crimes along with her friend, New York City police Inspector Oscar Piper.

The third of Palmer's books about Hildy, "Murder on the Blackboard," appeared in 1932. It's the subject of today's review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the full review by clicking here. In "Murder on the Blackboard," the murder takes place right in the room across the hall from Miss Withers' classroom. In fact, Hildy finds the body herself. And when she calls for help, and Inspector Piper arrives on the scene, he is promptly knocked out while searching the building, and he spends much of the remainder of the book in the hospital, while the real detective work is left to Miss Withers, aided (or hindered, depending on your point of view) by the Inspector's police colleagues.

The Hildegarde Withers mysteries generally had a light touch, and that's certainly the case in "Murder on the Blackboard," although both the murder and some of the events in its aftermath are pretty horrific. The murder method, which is revealed only at the end of the book, is pretty unusual as well. Not bad for an American "Golden Age" mystery, and ideal for readers of vintage mysteries. All in all, I think it's one of the better novels in the series.

Why Libraries Matter

Okay, I'm letting my prejudices show here. After all, I'm married to a school librarian. I write about books, some of which have been out of print for so long that the only good reading copies are in libraries. As I say, I'm prejudiced. All the same, I don't think you'll find a better explanation for why public libraries are so very important today - at a time when, in far too many places, library budgets are being cut - than you'll find in this column by Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez.

Turns out that his son is a librarian at a college in New Orleans. So I guess that means that, like me, he is prejudiced. But he's right. Libraries matter. They matter a lot. Read his column and see if you don't agree.

Hat tip: The Rap Sheet blog.

"A Smell of Smoke"

I seem to recall that Sherlock Holmes claimed to have written a treatise on distinctive cigarette ashes. He might have done the same about the distinctive smell of certain types of tobacco. It is on such a scent that the mystery hangs in "A Smell of Smoke," by Miles Burton. It's the subject of today's Classic Mysteries podcast review, and you can listen to the full review by clicking here.

Miles Burton was one of the pen names used by Cecil John Charles Street, who also wrote mysteries as "John Rhode" and a couple of other names. While he is largely forgotten today, he turned out four mysteries a year for 37 years - quite an impressive output.

In "A Smell of Smoke," we meet a man named Matthew Calder. Taking a walk late one night, he hears a splash from a nearby stream. He also smells the scent of a distinctive brand of Turkish cigarettes - a brand used only by his nephew. He thinks no more of it until the next day, when the body of a generally disliked local resident is fished out of the stream. It appears to be an accidental death - but Calder cannot forget the scent of that cigarette. And he suspects foul play - and that his own nephew may have been responsible for it.

His suspicions will lead to another murder. And that will lead to the arrival of Burton's detective team - the police, in the person of Scotland yard Inspector Henry Arnold, and a "freelance" sleuth named Desmond Merrion, who work together to peel back the layers of this most enjoyable mystery.