"Sleuth's Alchemy"

The more I read of the mysteries written by Gladys Mitchell, the least known of the English Golden Age "Crime Queens" to American audiences, the better I like her. If you want to know why, and you'd prefer to experiment with smaller doses rather than a full-length novel, may I recommend "Sleuth's Alchemy: Cases of Mrs. Bradley and Others," edited by Nicholas Fuller. It's the subject of this week's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the full review by clicking here.

Mitchell is a marvelous writer, reveling in English eccentricities, giving us fascinating and frequently bizarre characters and situations. Her primary detective, Mrs. Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, is a psychiatrist, called in frequently by police to help solve difficult cases. She is featured in some of the stories in "Sleuth's Alchemy," most of which were written in the early 1950s, but she is not the only detective - indeed, some of the stories don't really have a detective. They are narrated from a variety of viewpoints, some even being written by the criminals in the piece. They deal with a wide range of crimes, many with bizarre settings; one of the best Mrs. Bradley stories, for example, "The Spell," deals with a form of witchcraft - and Mrs. Bradley uses it to solve the problem and prevent a crime. Another favorite, "The Plumb-Line," which does not have Mrs. Bradley as a character, gives us a man who decides to commit a murder – but who dies before he is able to carry out his plan. Although he apparently dies of a heart attack, it is worth noting that he dies in the very place where he had planned to commit his murder – and by a variation of the same trick he had been planning to use to carry out his crime.

There are 31 stories in "Sleuth's Alchemy." Many are only a few pages long, as they were written originally for newspaper publication. They provide an excellent way to meet not only Mrs. Bradley but the characters, events and quirky humor that define the stories of Gladys Mitchell. A first-rate introduction is provided by critic and scholar Nicholas Fuller, who points out, of Mrs. Bradley, "Her morality is entirely her own, for she recognizes that every human being is a potential murderer, 'some in deed and some in thought[.]'" If that viewpoint intrigues you, you will find it very much on display in "Sleuth's Alchemy," which is another entry in the "Lost Classics" series published by Crippen & Landru.