Classic Mysteries

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SECOND UPDATE 10:50 AM 3/1/2013 The newsletter site appears to be working again. Thanks again to my readers for letting me know about the problem.

UPDATE 3/1/2013 - the I Love a Mystery site is down at the moment. Editor Sally Powers says she hopes to have it back up and running sometime today. I'll update this again when it's back. My (and her) apologies to all.

If you're always in the market for a good mystery - of any kind - you are likely to find what you're looking for in the bimonthly I Love a Mystery Newsletter.  Nearly three dozen reviewers are on hand (myself included), and, in this issue alone, you'll find nearly a hundred reviews of newly published or republished mysteries. Depending on your own taste in mysteries, you'll find lots of new reading ideas here. There's even a table of contents listing all the books reviewed. Come on over and visit. (You'll find me in the Classic Corner.)

Adding to the Blogroll

Here's another regular stop to add to your list of bloggers-who-really-need-to-be-read-regularly: blogger TracyK has just celebrated the first anniversary of her blog, Bitter Tea and Mystery. She reads - and writes about - a number of mystery genres, and she also throws in the occasional non-mystery, just to keep things interesting. Please welcome her to the Classic Mysteries blogroll - and check out her blog!

(With a hat tip to Jeff Pierce at The Rap Sheet for pointing out Tracy's anniversary!)

"Gaudy Night"

As I am writing this post on an evening when the entertainment industry gathers for a glittering showcase of Oscar presentations at the Academy Awards, "Gaudy Night" might seem like a good description of those annual festivities. But the "Gaudy Night" to which I am referring is something that endures far longer than the glitter of an awards show. It is the title of a delightful mystery by Dorothy L. Sayers that studies the perils endured by a pioneering college for women at ancient Oxford University. The book is "Gaudy Night," published in 1936, and it is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast. You can listen to the entire review by clicking here.

A "Gaudy Night" in the British academic sense is a kind of formal reunion of "old grads," who return to their college for a sort of academic festival. They renew old acquaintances with their professors and with each other. That is how Harriet Vane, a graduate of the fictional Shrewsbury College, the first college entirely for women at Oxford, is drawn into the mysterious and dangerous goings-on at her old school.

The newly republished edition of "Gaudy Night" from the Bourbon Street Books imprint of HarperCollins  says, on the front cover, "A Lord Peter Wimsey mystery with Harriet Vane." This is backwards; it is really a Harriet Vane mystery with occasional appearances by Lord Peter. This is fine; Harriet is more than capable of handling things quite nicely, even if Wimsey does come in towards the end to help unravel some of the mystery. For readers who may be new to Sayers, and to Wimsey and Vane, Lord Peter first met Harriet when she was on trial for murder a couple of books earlier in the series. His investigations saved her life. He has been wooing her ever since, to her general consternation - she worries whether she is mistaking a natural gratitude for love. There will be some resolution in the course of "Gaudy Night."

The main plot has Harriet pressed into service to help investigate a series of poison pen letters aimed at students and officials at Shrewsbury College. The letters are quickly augmented by a series of increasingly dangerous practical jokes. It appears that somebody is trying to destroy the reputation of the school and of its scholars. Harriet and Lord Peter must determine what is happening - and try to head off the growing possibility of tragedy.

As with most of Sayers' other books, "Gaudy Night" is written with humor and wit and a great deal of insight into the personalities and conflicts of the central characters. The tension between Lord Peter and Harriet in their relationship is also at the heart of the novel. At one point, for example, Harriet, having just read a rather surprising letter from Lord Peter - one that clearly accepts her as his equal in every way - muses:]

"That was an admission of equality, and she had not expected it of him. If he conceived of marriage along those lines, then the whole problem would have to be reviewed in that new light, but that seemed scarcely possible. To take such a line and stick to it, he would have to be not a man but a miracle."

Mystery readers frequently argue over the merits of "Gaudy Night." Some are put off by its length, some object to its frequent literary quotes and allusions and some complain that not enough "happens" to suit their taste. All may be fair complaints, but I don't join in them. Sayers has a wonderful writing style that keeps the story moving while providing insightful and witty and, yes, thought-provoking comments that I find extremely entertaining. It's also a well-plotted and gripping mystery with a fair number of surprising twists that lead to a thoroughly logical conclusion. This should not be your only Sayers novel - almost certainly not your first. But it should definitely be on your "To Be Read" list as an example of the kind of elegant writing that made the Golden Age of Detective Fiction in England so memorable.

My thanks to Sally Powers, the editor of the "I Love a Mystery" Newsletter, where portions of this review also appeared, for permitting me to review the book here as well.

"Gaudy Night" is also another of my entries in the Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge, in the category "Murder is Academic: a mystery involving a scholar, teacher, librarian, etc. OR set at a school, university, library, etc." "Gaudy Night" is both.

 

Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge I: No Coffin for the Corpse

As I noted in the last post, I have some catching up to do on Bev's Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge. Let me start with the book that was reviewed here last Monday: "No Coffin for the Corpse," by Clayton Rawson. This mystery falls into the challenge's Category 21: Things That Go Bump in the Night: a mystery with something spooky, creepy, gothic.

Oh yes, it's spooky all right. As I noted earlier in the week, the mystery at the heart of this excellent "impossible crime" story deals with what appears to be the ghost of a murdered man - a ghost that apparently can walk through walls, materialize and disappear inside a house where the rooms are wired with alarms that never sound when the ghost appears...and the ghost apparently can commit a murder in front of witnesses and then vanish through a locked door. Creepy enough? It's enough to keep The Great Merlini occupied uncovering the truth behind the ghostly goings-on...much to the reader's delight.

Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge 2013: It Begins

I should have known that Bev, over at the My Reader's Block blog wouldn't rest on her laurels after two years of running vintage mystery reading challenges. So it's my own fault that I haven't checked over there yet this year and find myself nearly two months behind. I should have checked earlier, for - sure enough - Bev is running a 2013 vintage mystery reading challenge that is designed for...well...just about anybody who enjoys reading the kind of classic mysteries written before 1960.

This year's challenge goes by the subtitle "Scattergories." Briefly, Bev is challenging everyone - book bloggers, to be sure, but everyone who enjoys reading these mysteries - to read a total of eight mysteries, one in each of eight different categories. Bev has defined 29 possible categories, and her readers have added  several more. Just a few examples:

• 1. Colorful Crime: a book with a color or reference to color in the title.
• 8. Dangerous Beasts: a book with an animal in the title.
• 12. Murderous Methods: a book with a means of death in the title.
• 13. Staging the Crime: a mystery set in the entertainment world.
• 17. Country House Criminals: a standard (or not-so-standard) Golden Age country house.

You get the idea - you'll find a full list of categories at the link. The challenge runs through the whole year. The only fixed requirement is that the book MUST have been written before 1960. And, of course, only mysteries are eligible.

If eight books are too much for you, there's a mini-challenge requiring you to read just four books.

Bev invites everyone to sign up here. When we finish reading a book, we can post a comment and/or review (for book bloggers, clearly, a link back to their own review) over here.

I've got some catching up to do. I hope a lot of my readers will choose to join the challenge - it should be a lot of fun.

"No Coffin for the Corpse"

As a general rule, I suppose, mystery readers expect the bodies of fictional murder victims to behave with some decorum. Granted, a clever writer may occasionally arrange for a body to be moved, the better to hide it; in one notorious book, Edmund Crispin managed not only to dispose of a body but also the entire toy shop in which it was found. But, as experienced mystery readers, we know those disappearances are temporary; there is no question that the victim, once dead, remains immobile.

But what if the victim is quite clearly dead - and yet his ghost appears to be wreaking considerable havoc in the neighborhood? That appears to be the case in the rather unnerving - and quite well written - 1942 mystery, "No Coffin for the Corpse," by Clayton Rawson. Here, we have a man, apparently killed in a fight, buried by several witnesses...but who seems intent on coming back and terrorizing the people responsible for his death. "No Coffin for the Corpse" 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.

The central problem here is the constant reappearance of what appears to be the ghost of the man who was killed. He appears and disappears inside a house wired with a sophisticated alarm system, yet the alarm is not triggered. He appears to have the ability to travel through walls, to escape from locked rooms - and to commit murder in front of witnesses and then disappear.

It is up to Rawson's detective, the stage magician known as The Great Merlini, to explain what is really going on in this classic "impossible crime" mystery. Rawson was one of the four founders of the Mystery Writers of America, and he was a skilled magician himself. The reader will learn a great deal about some of the tricks of the trade in the course of this mystery. But before it is over, I suspect many readers will echo the sentiments voiced by the story's narrator: “What we all needed at that moment more than anything else was a week or two in bed in a quiet secluded sanitarium with no visitors allowed.”

Rawson only wrote four novel-length books about The Great Merlini, but many readers believe "No Coffin for the Corpse" was the best of them. It's a fascinating puzzle, and the reader can only hang on for dear life and follow Merlini as he struggles to explain an apparent ghost and an impossible murder. The book is hard to find in print editions, but The Mysterious Press, through Open Road Integrated Media, has released it in electronic formats for the Kindle and other popular readers. If you enjoy classic locked room puzzles, this should be on your reading list. 

Parker, Spenser and Penzler

No, that's not the name of a high-powered law firm. It's a summary of a book that may be a bit off the regular reading path of my visitors here. It's a collection of new essays by some of today's best writers of P.I. mysteries about another very important writer, the late Robert B. Parker, creator of the Boston P.I., Spenser. The book, "In Pursuit of Spenser: Mystery Writers on Robert B. Parker and the Creation of an American Hero", is edited by Otto Penzler, of the Mysterious Press and the Mysterious Bookshop.

Readers of this blog know that I don't write about hard-boiled P.I. books very often - they're really not my speed. But it is also undeniably true that Robert B. Parker has been tremendously influential on many of today's authors who are in what might properly be called the Hammett-Chandler-Parker tradition. The table of contents of "In Pursuit of Spenser" includes familiar names such as Ace Atkins (who has been chosen to continue the Spenser series), Lawrence Block, Dennis Lehane, Max Allan Collins, Parnell Hall and S. J. Rozan. There are essays on different aspects of Parker's skills, Spenser's character and about some of the other regulars in the series. There's a good introduction from Otto Penzler. And there's a bonus treat: "Spenser: A Profile," originally written by Parker for the Mysterious Bookshop, now available to a wider readership.

"In Pursuit of Spenser" has been nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Critical/Biographical this year by the Mystery Writers of America. It has been published by the Smart Pop imprint of the alliteratively-named Ben Bella Books, which was kind enough to provide me with a copy for this review. If you enjoy Spenser, or if you merely want to learn more about an important author in the wider mystery field, you will enjoy this book.

"Mrs. McGinty's Dead"

On the surface, it was just a sordid little crime. An elderly cleaning woman, Mrs. McGinty, apparently managed to save up a little bit of money. Someone bashed her over the head and stole the money. All the evidence pointed to her hapless lodger, who was duly arrested, tried, and convicted of the murder. By rights, that should have been the end of the story - not the beginning.

But it is, indeed, just the beginning of Agatha Christie's 1952 novel, "Mrs. McGinty's Dead." It's the end of the "official" case, but the person in charge of that case, Superintendent Spence, isn't convinced that he has arrested the right man. Something just doesn't seem right. And so he turns to a friend for help. That friend is Hercule Poirot. And when Poirot investigates the case, he finds himself agreeing with Superintendent Spence: there is decidedly more to this case than a simple murder-with-robbery. And so...as the time ticks down towards the convicted lodger's date with the hangman...Poirot races to find out the truth of what really happened to Mrs. McGinty.

"Mrs. McGinty's Dead" is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the complete review by clicking here. "Mrs. McGinty's Dead" is one of Christie's best, with plenty of misdirection and lots of interesting and surprising twists. The book is helped by the presence of another wonderful character, Mrs. Ariadne Oliver, who - not unlike another female mystery writer who might come to mind - has written a successful series of mysteries featuring an elderly, foreign-born detective. Mrs. Oliver is trying to collaborate with a local playwright who is turning her book into a play - changing everything she has written as he does so, a problem undoubtedly quite familiar to Mrs. Oliver's creator. She's a delightful character, who appears in several Poirot books, and she plays quite a significant role in this one.

"Mrs. McGinty's Dead" surely ranks among Christie's finest plots, and it is populated with interesting characters. The closing confrontation and explanation staged by Poirot works extremely well. As with most of Christie's other books, "Mrs. McGinty's Dead" is in print and readily available, and it's also been published in electronic editions. If you enjoy Agatha Christie, you'll certainly enjoy this one.

 

2012 Agatha Award Nominations

The folks who bring us the Malice Domestic conference every year have just announced the nominations for the 2012 Agatha Award. Malice, and the Agathas, celebrate the traditional mystery, as practiced by such first-rate writers as Agatha Christie. Nomination for one of the Agatha Awards is quite an honor. Here are this year's nominees:

Best Novel

• The Diva Digs Up the Dirt, by Krista Davis
• A Fatal Winter, by G. M. Malliet
• The Buzzard Table, by Margaret Maron
• The Beautiful Mystery, by Louise Penny
• The Other Woman, by Hank Phillippi Ryan

Best Historical Novel

•  The Twelve Clues of Christmas, by Rhys Bowen
• Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for Murder, by Catriona McPherson
• Murder on Fifth Avenue, by Victoria Thompson
• An Unmarked Grave, by Charles Todd
• Elegy for Eddie, by Jacqueline Winspear

Best First Novel

• Lowcountry Boil, by Susan M. Boyer
• Iced Chiffon, by Duffy Brown
• A Scrapbook of Secrets, by Mollie Cox Bryan
• A Killer Read, by Erika Chase
• Faithful Unto Death, by Stephanie Jaye Evans

Best Nonfiction

• Books to Die For: The World's Greatest Mystery Writers on the World's Greatest Mystery Novels, by John Connolly/Declan Burke
• Blood Relations: The Selected Letters of Ellery Queen, 1947-1950, by Joseph Goodrich, Editor
• More Forensics and Fiction: Crime Writers Morbidly Curious Qudestions Expertly Answered, by D. P. Lyle
• Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies, by Ben Macintyre
• The Grand Tour: Around the World with the Queen of Mystery Agatha Christie, by Mathew Prichard, Editor

Best Short Story

• "Mischief in Mesopotamia," by Dana Cameron, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
• "Kept in the Dark," by Shelia Connolly, Best New England Crime Stories 2013: Blood Moon Anthology
• "The Lord is My Shamus," by Barb Goffman, Chesapeake Crimes: This Job is Murder
• "Thea's First Husband," by B. K. Stevens, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine
• "When Duty Calls," by Art Taylor, Chesapeake Crimes: This Job is Murder

Best Children's/Young Adult Novel

• Seconds Away, by Harlen Coben
• The Edge of Nowhere, by Elizabeth George
• Liar & Spy, by Rebecca Stead
• The Code Busters Club, Case #2: The Haunted Lighthouse, by Penny Warner
• Code Name Verity, by Elizabeth Wein

Attendees at this year's Malice Domestic Conference - the 25th annual, by the way - will vote on the final awards, which will be announced at the conference banquet over the first weekend in May. Congratulations to all the nominees!

Glad About Gladys Mitchell

More good news this week about still another classic author now showing up in e-book editions. One of my regular readers, Joan Kyler, writes to remind me that Amazon.com has made a dozen mysteries by Gladys Mitchell available as Kindle e-books.

Gladys Mitchell is something of an acquired taste for most American readers. Her primary character, Dame Beatrice Bradley, a criminologist and psychiatrist, appeared in a series of more than sixty books, beginning in 1929 and lasting well into the 1980s. Mrs. Bradley is a marvelously eccentric - but shrewd, intelligent and generally rather sympathetic - character. In the U. K., Mitchell was always considered the equal of the other so-called "Crime Queens" of the Golden Age between the World Wars, but her books never really caught on in the U. S., and only about a third of them were ever published here.

British viewers were treated to some television adaptations of the Mrs. Bradley stories, starring Diana Rigg as Mrs. Bradley. I haven't seen them, and I love Diana Rigg, but I have trouble picturing her as Mrs. Bradley, a woman who is renowned for her reptilian looks and appalling fashion sense. She also has a uniquely personal viewpoint on crime and punishment, even going so far as to commit murder herself. And yet, Mitchell's writing is so filled with quirky (and sometimes VERY dark) humor that Mrs. Bradley comes across as truly likeable. In one novel, for example, speaking to a possible suspect, Mitchell writes: "'I warn you, you’d better stay here,' Mrs. Bradley continued, eyeing him with the maternal anxiety of a boa constrictor which watches its young attempting to devour their first donkey." My own sense of humor is quirky enough to really enjoy that kind of thing. As they say, your mileage may vary, depending on your tolerance for English eccentricity.

The Rue Morgue Press has republished some of Mitchell's better titles in trade paperback editions, giving some their first American publication ever. The addition of a dozen titles for the Kindle at a very affordable price may introduce Mrs. Bradley to a new generation of readers.