Classic Mysteries

"The Left Leg"

While a great many fine authors use humor in their mysteries, often to lighten the mood after (or before) some horrifying event, there are few who write their murder mysteries as out-and-out farces. One who did was Phoebe Atwood Taylor, author under her own name of mysteries featuring Asey Mayo, the New England amateur detective known as the "Codfish Sherlock." But those mysteries are mostly fairly straightforward, although there are some excellent comic elements in many of them.

But Taylor also wrote another series, under the pen name "Alice Tilton" featuring a New England schoolteacher named Leonidas Witherall, whose principal claim to fame is the fact that he strongly resembles playwright William Shakespeare (or at least Shakespearan busts and portraits). And those books are out-and-out farces, racing from cliffhanger to cliffhanger, as Witherall gets himself involved in a murder (often, in fact, he is being framed for one) and must stay a step or two ahead of the police and try to solve the murder before they arrest him.

What kind of farce? Well consider the events in "The Left Leg," first published in 1940. It's the subject of today's review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the entire review by clicking here. In "The Left Leg," we begin with Witherall being thrown off a local bus, after another passenger, a young woman, makes some very peculiar (and fraudulent) accusations against him. As there is a snowstorm raging, he ducks into a nearby hardware store for shelter. The store appears to be empty - but as Witherall stands there, a man runs in wearing a green top hat and green silk suit and carrying an Irish harp under his arm. The man runs to the cash register, opens it, takes an envelope out of the register, and runs out of the store. Witherall leaves (with the store owner, now returned, insisting that Witherall must have robbed him) and next seeks refuge at the home of his boss, the headmaster of the school where Witherall teaches, only to find the man has been murdered and police are banging on the door. And the headmaster's body is missing a (prosthetic) left leg. And Witherall's galoshes are on the floor near the body.

Complicated enough for you? And that's just the BEGINNING of the novel. It's sort of the literary equivalent of the Three Stooges meet the Keystone Cops. And it is hilarious. Leonidas Witherall - usually called "Bill" by the other characters, because of his resemblance to William Shakespeare - is a more-or-less solid pillar of relative sanity in the midst of a remarkably crazy world. Taylor wrote eight of these wild comedy-mysteries between 1937 and 1947, and some are back in print again. I find these books a good way to refresh my own quirky sense of humor. "The Left Leg" is great fun.

Malice Domestic 25: Something to Look Forward to

This is being written on my way home from Malice Domestic 24, the convention for traditional mystery readers and writers. It was a great weekend, and I'm sorry to see it end.

But look what's coming next year: Malice Domestic 25, the 25th anniversary edition, which will be held in Bethesda, MD from May 3 to May 5, 2013. As of today, here are the great writers being honored at next year's convention:

• Guest of Honor: Laurie R. King
• Toastmaster: Laura Lippman
• Lifetime Achievement award: Aaron Elkins
• International Guest of Honor: Peter Robinson
• Malice Remembers: Dick Francis
• (Plus a Fan Guest of Honor, Cindy Silberblatt)

Will I be back? As they say, God willing and the creek don't rise...but I am duly registered for next year. When Malice is ready for online registrations, I'll post an update. But if you're a traditional mystery fan - and why else would you be reading this? - now is the time to mark your calendars.

UPDATE 5/1 It looks as if Malice is using Yahoo to book early registrations for next year. Check it out here.

Agatha Award Winners

The annual Agatha Awards were announced tonight at the Malice Domestic conference. The winners:

BEST NOVEL: Three Day Town, Margaret Maron

BEST FIRST NOVEL: Learning to Swim: A Novel, Sara J. Henry

BEST HISTORICAL MYSTERY: Naughty in Nice (A Royal Spyness Mystery), Rhys Bowen

BEST NONFICTION: Books, Crooks and Counselors: How to Write Accurately About Criminal Law and Courtroom Procedure, Leslie Budewitz

BEST SHORT STORY: "Disarming," Dana Cameron, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

BEST CHILDREN'S/YOUNG ADULT: The Black Heart Crypt: A Haunted Mystery, Chris Grabenstein

Click here for a complete list of all the nominees. Congratulations to the winners and nominees!

Malice - Day 1

And it was a very good day indeed.

The first day of the 24th annual Malice Domestic convention, the annual get-together of the writers and fans of traditional mysteries, had one unfortunate failure mixed with a large number of excellent experiences.

To get the unfortunate incident out of the way first, author Rhys Bowen fell and injured herself the night before Malice began. She cracked her pelvis. She'll be all right, but she's in some pain and had to drop out of the activities - she had been scheduled to interview Poirot honoree Lee Goldberg, among other things. She's still a nominee for an Agatha award tonight, but she's going home ASAP.

As for the conference, it began, as always, with Malice Go Round, an event described as "speed dating for authors." Picture a room filled with large tables. All but two chairs at each table are taken by fans (who remain in place throughout the 90-minute event). The other two chairs at each table are filled by authors.

When the event begins, each author has two minutes to talk about his/her book (or anything else). At the end of that time, strictly kept by a moderator, the authors all get up from their tables and move to the next table, and the process begins again. In this way, some 50 authors can present their books to some 200 guests. Not bad for 90 minutes. And, yes, I found several of the presentations persuasive in making me want to read their books - you'll be hearing more about that in later days and weeks.

 The afternoon was filled with one-on-one interviews with some of the honorees and a couple of panels, one with the honorees sharing some of the funniest and/or most outragious fan letters, the other featuring the nominees for the Best Novel Agatha award. All were enjoyable - Lee Goldberg, in particular, is a very funny guy.

In the evening, a charity auction raised thousands of dollars for the Regional Institute for Children and Adolescents. Happily, I was outbid on the items I wanted. WAY outbid.

And so to Saturday - a day filled with panels and, tonight, the Agatha Awards banquet.  Stay tuned.

Ready, Set...

Waiting for the fun to begin. And it will, it will.

A Forethought on Malice

OK, OK, I apologize, but I can't resist wordplay. Anyway, I'm about to head out (tomorrow) to Malice Domestic, that marvelous weekend get-together for mystery writers and mystery readers all of whom enjoy (and write and read) what we call "traditional" mysteries.

There may be other genres mixed in, but the basic ground rules are: no gratuitous violence or sex, both of which preferably take place off-stage as needed; a real emphasis on the mystery - that is, it's not just an excuse for other devices regarded as more fun or more literary. Suspense? Sure. "Thrillers"? Some. Private eyes, hardworking cops? Frequently. Noir? Has been spotted. But still the elements of the traditional mystery - usually including fair-play and clues - are generally there to be found and enjoyed by the reader.

This will be the 24th annual Malice Domestic conference. During the weekend, attendees will be voting for the "Agatha Awards," which will be presented to the winners - named, obviously, for the grand "crime queen" herself, Agatha Christie. Nominees are at the link. It's going to be a great weekend; I'll try to file occasional reports. See you there?

"Champagne for One"

The police said the young woman's death certainly looked like suicide.

The people at the party where she died were sure it was suicide.

Only Archie Goodwin said it couldn't be suicide. That didn't help his popularity any with the people at the party - or, for that matter, with the police.

Nero Wolfe, of course, believed Archie. That's how he came to be involved, which proved to be most unfortunate for a cold-blooded killer. It happens in "Champagne for One," by Rex Stout, the subject of the Classic Mysteries podcast review this week. You can listen to the full review by clicking here.

The victim's name was Faith Usher, and she died after drinking a glass of champagne laced with cyanide. Faith was known to be suicidal, and she always carried a small bottle of cyanide around with her, so her death didn't exactly surprise the others at that party.

But Archie Goodwin had been warned about that bottle of cyanide, so he was watching when Faith's glass of champagne was poured, when it was handed to her, and when she drank it. He was willing to swear that she did not put anything into that champagne. The police, of course, pointed out that they were pretty damned sure nobody else put anything into it, so Faith must have done it.

Into that impasse wades Nero Wolfe - in part to protect Archie's reputation, but also because he has been hired by one of the other party guests to get to the bottom of the mystery. He does so, of course, much to the reader's delight. The final, inevitable, confrontation in Wolfe's office is one of the more interesting of the great detective's gambits. "Champagne for One" is a great deal of fun. For e-book readers, Amazon has Kindle edition available.

Detective with a Difference

"How did you manage to rise so high in your Police Department? I am not being impertinent, I do assure you. You must have met many obstacles, extraordinary hurdles, and I sense a story far more irresistible than that of errand boy to millionaire."

"My beginning was subordinate to that of the errand boy," replied Bony. "I was found beneath a sandalwood tree, found in the arms of my mother, who had been clubbed to death for breaking a law. Subsequently, the matron of the Mission Station to which I was taken and reared found me eating the pages of Abbotts's Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. The matron possessed a peculiar sense of humour. The result - my name."

                --The Battling Prophet, by Arthur W. Upfield (1956)

I can think of few characters in 20th century detective fiction who are quite as original as Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte of the Queensland, Australia, Police Department. As my contribution to the "Heroes & Villains" theme week under way at Jen's Book Thoughts blog, I'd like to introduce him more fully.

What sets this Australian detective apart from so many other fictional detectives? To begin, he is half-white, half-Aborigine, combining the best talents and skills of both races. From his unknown white father, he inherits the logic and other skills that enable him to excel at the formal requirements of police work. From his mother's people (and he is a full initiate in her tribe), he inherits his knowledge of the bush, the Australian outback, and the ability to read the virtually invisible clues left by man and nature that allow him to survive and to track his quarry over the countless miles of brush and desert that make up inland Australia. According to his author, Arthur W. Upfield, Bony, as he is known to his friends, was modeled after a real person, a half-Aborigine named Tracker Leon, who served as a highly skilled tracker for the police.

If Bony's mixed-race heritage contributes to his success as a detective, it is viewed with suspicion by some readers today, who feel that Upfield was far too condescending to the Aborigine people. I think this is unfair. Much of what Upfield wrote about Bony and about other Aboriginal characters during the middle third of the twentieth century shows the author's tremendous respect and affection for that ancient culture. The occasional bigot who shows up in these stories is usually put down quite successfully by Bony and others.

According to Kees de Hoog's book, When Bony Was There (2011), some time before finishing college (where he received a Master's degree), "A grave disappointment in love sent Bony back to the bush. For a year he ran wild among the aborigines of his mother's tribe." Undoubtedly, that interlude also gave him a chance to perfect the tracking and bush skills that would stand him in such good stead when he became a detective. Bony later married a young woman named Marie, who, like him, was half white and half Aborigine, and the couple had three sons. In his early days, Bony also spent a great deal of time working as an itinerant laborer on various ranches and stations in the outback - a background which makes it easy for him, as a detective, to disguise himself among working men and women as an ordinary laborer, which allows him to carry on conversations with witnesses who would normally never dream of talking to the police.

It's worth noting, also, that Bony - and Upfield - share a belief in the reality of certain kinds of magic, such as the ability of Aboriginal chiefs and shamans to communicate over long distances telepathically, and in the mental spell-casting which could cause offenders to wither and die, a ritual called "pointing the bone." One of the best of the Bony books is called The Bone is Pointed, in which Bony himself narrowly escapes what I suppose can only be called death by witchcraft. (I reviewed that one for the Classic Mysteries podcast a few years back, and you can listen to that review by clicking here.)

Yet in this exotic atmosphere, Bony flourishes. For the most part, he gets to choose his own cases, showing disdain for common murders. He prefers the cold cases, the ones, often set in the bush, where there are no apparent clues, where the trail has gone cold over a period of months. To Bony, his greatest ally is time, his greatest virtue, patience. He infuriates his boss in the police, Colonel Spender, but the colonel knows that Bony is probably his most valuable investigator, a man who has never failed to "finalize" a case. The colonel puts up with a great deal from Bony - but his faith in his star detective is always vindicated.

In every book, Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte makes it a point to invite almost everyone he meets to call him "Bony," as all of his friends, his boss, his wife, even his sons do. I think any of us would have been honored to call Bony our friend.

"Death of a Swagman"

The murder of an Australian drifter - an itinerant laborer, called a "swagman" - might very well have gone unsolved, had it not been for the sharp eye of Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, known to his friends as "Bony." He saw, in a photo of the murder scene, a cryptic clue that nobody else had noticed. And the result is the story of "Death of a Swagman," by Arthur W. Upfield, featuring this most unusual of detectives. It is the subject of this week's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the entire review by clicking here.

Between 1928 and 1966, Upfield wrote 29 books featuring Bony, whose amazing mix of skills inherited from his white father and his Aborigine mother have made him a detective with a perfect record at "finalizing" difficult cases. Bony picks up clues that other detectives have missed - as he does in this case. He delights in working in unusual ways. In "Death of a Swagman," for instance, he arrives in the small town where his investigation will take place and immediately gets himself arrested by insulting the local police sergeant. After his very public arrest, he reveals his identity to the sergeant and arranges to have himself locked up in jail for 14 days - assigned to paint the fence around the jail. As a result, he is able to sit outside painting, as a simple itinerant laborer himself who has run afoul of those nasty police - so, as Bony explains it to the sergeant, "instead of everyone holding their horses in the presence of Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, they will talk quite freely with poor old Bony, the latest victim of the ber-lasted per-leece."

"Death of a Swagman" finds Bony solving a couple of murders - and interacting with some memorable characters; he is thoroughly charmed by the police sergeant's eight-year-old daughter, Rose Marie, who plays a critical role in solving the case. It is also fair to say that the motive for murder here is one of the most unusual in any mystery I have ever read.

Bony is a fascinating character and a perennial favorite of mine. He's my entry in the "Heroes & Villains" [Updated to add link] Theme Week tournament under way this week at the Jen's Book Thoughts blog. Later this week, I'll have a more detailed post here providing more background about Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte - who he is, how he got that way, and how he works. Most of the books featuring Bony, alas, are out of print, but some - including "Death of a Swagman" - are available as audio books from Audible. If you have never met him, you should do so. He's one of the most memorable, and, I think, likeable detectives in mystery fiction.

And It Comes Down to...

And so the contest has just one remaining match. Jen Forbus's contribution to March Madness began with 32 heroes and 32 villains. Now, there is just one hero to take on just one villain...and your votes will determine who wins this ultimate contest:

Harry Bosch

vs.

Professor Moriarty

Now, as a devotee of classic mysteries, I must admit that I'm rooting for evil to win out this time, in the form of Sherlock Holmes's nemesis. You may not agree...and my vote counts no more heavily than yours. Check out Jen's Book Thoughts blog - the final voting will begin tomorrow (Monday).

And, while you're there, check out her site this week to see what other surprises she will have in store for you during Heroes & Villains Theme Week. I'll be contributing this week with a book featuring one of my favorite heroes - see my post and my podcast Monday morning for details. Other bloggers will be posting about their favorites, and the books that feature them. It should be a lot of fun, so please check it out beginning Monday morning.