Classic Mysteries

Slight Delay...

I'm doing some traveling today (Sunday) and tomorrow - long flight over lots of time zones, etc. All of which means my usual Monday publishing for the podcast and relevant blog post are likely to be delayed - it'll all be in place late Monday or Tuesday. Please check back. For the record, it will be a review of Josephine Tey's Miss Pym Disposes. Or at least that's the plan. Thanks for your patience.

"Resorting to Murder: Holiday Mysteries"

Here we are in late Spring, when a young man's (or woman's) fancy turns to thoughts of...vacation. Or "holidays," as our British cousins would put it. So what better way to prepare for a summer's pleasure and leisure than by reading a new release from the British Library's Crime Classics series called Resorting to Murder: Holiday Mysteries, selected and edited by British mystery writer and critic Martin Edwards (and published in the U. S. by the Poisoned Pen Press, which made a copy available to me for this review). It is a collection of 14 classic mystery stories about holidays – and, for that matter, about sleuths and criminals on holidays - 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.

Many of the stories in Resorting to Murder date from the Golden Age of detective fiction, those years between the two world wars, although a couple of the stories, while written in that period, have never been published, at least in book form, until this volume. There are familiar authors - Arthur Conan Doyle, G. K. Chesterton, Anthony Berkeley, R. Austin Freeman - and some far less familiar: M. McDonnell Bodkin anyone? But all the stories are cleverly written and plotted, and even the better-known author are represented by stories that don't often get reprinted. Edwards contributes a lively and informative introduction to the book as well as supplying excellent introductory essays to each story. It's perfect for your holidays - the stories are light and the right length for summer reading.

I'm on vacation myself this week, so I'll direct you to the podcast (linked above), where you'll find my summary of the stories that are contained in this delightful volume. Try it. You'll  like it. 

Mr. Gryce and Mr. Goby

Ebenezer Gryce, the detective introduced in Anna Katharine Green's The Leavenworth Case, is a marvelous character. According to mystery essayist Michael Sims, Gryce was the first series detective, a character who returns in later books to continue solving mysteries. Beyond that, some of his mannerisms and habits keep reappearing in later detectives.

Consider, for example, the question of Mr. Gryce's habit of never looking at the person to whom he was speaking:

"Mr. Gryce was a portly, comfortable personage with an eye that never pounced, that did not even rest - on you. If it rested anywhere, it was always on some insignificant object in your vicinity, some vase, inkstand, book or button. These things he would seem to take into his confidence, make the repositories of his conclusions, but you - you might as well be the steeple on Trinity Church, for all the connection you ever appeared to have with him or his thoughts. At present, then, Mr. Gryce was, as I have already suggested, on intimate terms with the door-knob."

That was Mr. Gryce in 1878. Fifty years later, in 1928, Agatha Christie, in The Mystery of the Blue Train, introduced us to Mr. Goby, a private investigator and friend of Hercule Poirot, who has his own visual peculiarities, as Randall Toye points out in The Agatha Christie WHO'S WHO:

[He] had never been known to address the human being he was working for directly. He selected always the cornice, a radiator, a television set, a clock, sometimes a carpet or a mat."

Mr. Goby returns several times in later books to investigate some point for Poirot - but still winds up talking to a point on the wall or an electric socket, but never to his employer. I cannot prove that Mr. Goby is the son (or grandson) of Ebenezer Gryce, but I do have my suspicions; old family habits die hard.

 

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"The Leavenworth Case"

Let's travel back in time today, all the way back to 1878. Mystery fiction was still fairly new at that point. Sherlock Holmes wouldn't be along for another eight years. But 1878 saw the publication of a book that really became a signpost pointing towards what the modern mystery would soon entail. The book was The Leavenworth Case, by Anna Katharine Green, and it introduced a detective, Ebenezer Gryce, who would become the first American series detective. The Leavenworth Case is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the full review by clicking here.

The book begins with the murder of Horatio Leavenworth, a wealthy New York industrialist. It was quite clearly a case of murder - and it must have been committed by someone living in the house. Suspicion is directed at Leavenworth's two nieces, one of whom stands to inherit practically all of the dead man's fortune. A young lawyer, Everett Raymond, who serves as our narrator, is on hand to assist the young women, but he is increasingly concerned when the evidence seems to indicate that one of them must have committed the crime. Fortunately, the police investigation is in the hands of Ebenezer Gryce, and Gryce's surprising discoveries will take quite a number of unexpected twists before the crime is solved.

A word about Mr. Gryce: he stands as the first American detective to appear in a series of mysteries, for Anna Katharine Green used his character as the detective in several more mysteries after The Leavenworth Case. He is quite intelligent, and he welcomes the offer of assistance from our narrator. Gryce laments that his one major failing is that he is not a “gentleman” – at least as the term was understood, even in the U. S., in those Victorian times; Mr. Raymond, he says, can go into corners of upper-class society – including the Leavenworth family – where Gryce would be most unwelcome and highly unlikely to be successful in his investigations. Raymond collects information for Gryce, and it is the latter who understands the significance of what is learned. The book ends with one of those marvelous confrontation scenes where the detective gathers the suspects and traps the killer into a confession, in the best fashion of, say, Nero Wolfe or Hercule Poirot. It was a relatively new idea when Anna Katharine Green used it, and it works extremely well.

The Leavenworth Case is long out of copyright, and there are free electronic editions available, but I'd recommend the Penguin Classic version (whether in paper or as an e-book), which has the benefit of a first-rate introduction by Michael Sims. After 137 years, this book holds up amazingly well. 

The 2015 Bingo Challenge

Continuing my participation in the 2015 Vintage Mystery Bingo challenge. under way at the My Reader's Block blog, Call Dr. Fortune is my entry for the square (fourth row, third column) calling for one book with a man in the title.

Extra: "The Studio Crime," by Ianthe Jerrold

"It's a bad night for most things. But a good night for crime."

That observation comes from one of the guests at a dinner party, given by a young artist on an evening when London is enshrouded by one of those awful pea-soup fogs so dear to the hearts (and plots) of Golden Age mystery writers. Shortly after that, a murder is discovered in a neighboring apartment - and away we go.

That's the starting point for a delightful Golden Age mystery by Ianthe Jerrold an author who is being rescued from obscurity by the Dean Street Press. The Studio Crime, published in 1929, was one of just two classic mysteries written by Jerrold, who went on to write in several other genres as well over a fairly long career. Her mysteries, featuring an amateur gentleman-detective named John Christmas, are well plotted, written with a fairly light touch, have interesting, amusing and sympathetic characters,  and deserve to be reread.

I'm offering this as an "extra" review this week (as I continue to prolong my cruise before returning home at the end of the week). It's worth noting that this new edition of The Studio Crime contains a good critical introduction written by Curtis Evans, who writes, "The Studio Crime and Dead Man's Quarry, Ianthe Jerrold's two Golden Age detective novels, are superlative examples of the form, manifestly deserving of modeern revival." I second that whole-heartedly.

The Dean Street Press provided me with an e-book version for review, but it's also available from them as a paperback. In any format, it's worth your reading time.

"Dead Man's Shoes"

Wilbury Larkin certainly was a bully. But was he a murderer - or a murderee? Larkin was traveling on board the cargo ship Saragossa from Tangier on his way back to England in order to meet with police, who thought Larkin might have murdered someone. But Larkin disappeared overboard one stormy night at sea, after having totally alienated every other passenger (not to mention the crew) on the ship with his rude and thoroughly offensive behavior. He even left a suicide note. So why did people think that he may have been murdered?

That's the initial problem in Dead Man's Shoes, a 1958 mystery by Leo Bruce. It's the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the full review by clicking here.

It seemed highly improbable to anyone who knew Wilbury Larkin that he would commit suicide. It also seemed improbable that he really could have committed that murder the police wanted to talk to him about. So, while the police appear to be quite satisfied that Larkin’s apparent suicide also clears up that earlier murder, friends and family of the victim are not at all satisfied. And so they ask Carolus Deene, a schoolteacher and ex-commando with a fair amount of crime-solving experience,  to use his upcoming vacation from his teaching position to do his own investigating of the whole affair.

Deene agrees. He takes one of his students, a rather obnoxious young man named Rupert Priggley, with him as an assistant of sorts. And they follow a series of clues that lead from England to Tangier and back again. It is a dangerous journey for Deene, but ultimately he is able to sort out the many inconsistencies and oddities in the story of the murder and the apparent suicide and bring the case to a genuinely shocking conclusion.

The books featuring Carolus Deene make up the second series written by Leo Bruce, another once-popular and now unjustly obscure author of traditional, plot-oriented mysteries. His first series, featuring the stolid, unimaginative - but generally correct and successful where others fail - Sergeant Beef is a delight. The Carolus Deene books are somewhat darker than that early series, but they are cleverly written and generally quite full of twists and surprises. That's certainly true of Dead Man's Shoes, and I recommend it heartily.

The 2015 Bingo Challenge

Continuing my participation in the 2015 Vintage Mystery Bingo challenge. under way at the My Reader's Block blog, Dead Man's Shoes is my entry for the square (sixth row, fourth column) calling for one book written by an author whose first or last name begins with the same letter as mine - in this case both  the L of Leo and the B of Bruce.

"Call Mr. Fortune"

It is hardly unusual for doctors to specialize in certain areas of medical practice. It is, perhaps, a bit less usual to hear one's specialty described as "the surgery of crime." Yet that's the way author H. C. Bailey describes the  area of specialization of his creation, Reggie Fortune:

“The Criminal Investigation Department, solicitors, and others dealing with those experiments in social reform which are called crimes, by continually appealing to his multifarious knowledge and his all-observant eye, turned Dr. Reginald Fortune, general practitioner at Westhampton, into Mr. Fortune of Wimpole Street, specialist in – what shall we say? – the surgery of crime. And Reggie Fortune, though richer for the change, was not grateful. He liked ordinary things, and any day would have gladly bartered a murder for a case of chicken-pox. This accounts for his unequalled sanity of judgment.”  

That was in 1920, when Reggie Fortune made his first book appearance in Call Mr. Fortune, a collection of six short stories by H. C. Bailey. That collection 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.

Reggie Fortune didn't appear in very many novels. His many appearances in short stories, however, were quite popular. In the first short story in this book, called “The Archduke’s Tea,” we are introduced to Reggie Fortune. He is taking over his father’s medical practice temporarily while the senior Mr. Fortune is away. Reggie is summoned to the London residence of the Archduke Maurice of Bohemia. The archduke has been struck by a motor car and is unconscious; could Mr. Fortune please come at once. Reggie answers the call, only to find a great deal more mystery than he bargained for.

If you listen to that audio review on the podcast, you will hear brief rundowns of the other five stories contained in Call Mr. Fortune.  The stories all are quite well done. I must admit that Reggie Fortune can be a bit of a drag sometime - always dropping his 'g's is a very irritatin' and even provokin' habit, as is his tendency to moan and groan a lot when he speaks. Also, as is often the case with mysteries from the early years of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, there are occasional mention of racial and gender attitudes in ways that may make a modern reader wince. On the whole, however, these stories are quite enjoyable. Call Mr. Fortune is available in e-book editions from The Mysterious Press/Open Road Media.

The 2015 Bingo Challenge

Continuing my participation in the 2015 Vintage Mystery Bingo challenge. under way at the My Reader's Block blog, Call Dr. Fortune is my entry for the square (fifth row, first column) calling for one medical mystery (or features Dr. or nurse).