Classic Mysteries

That Other Series by Ellis Peters

Mystery readers are undoubtedly familiar with Ellis Peters as the author of the excellent historical mystery series featuring Brother Cadfael, set in the twelfth century. But between 1951 and 1978, before she wrote her novels about Cadfael, Ellis Peters wrote a series of 13 contemporary classic mysteries featuring Detective Inspector George Felse. They have mostly been out of print for a while now. I reviewed one of them, Black Is the Colour of My True Love's Heart (The Felse Investigations), in 2009, recommending it highly.

So there's good news to share: the thirteen books of the Felse series - now grouped together as "The Felse Investigations" - are being re-released in e-book editions (some also in print) from the Mysterious Press and Open Road Media, who had already published the Brother Cadfael series. I have only read six of them, all of which I enjoyed, and I will be adding the others to my Kindle for future enjoyment. Here's a link to my original podcast review about Black is the Color of my True Love's Heart. The Felse family - his wife, Bunty and son, Dominic get to play some role in the later adventures - is worth meeting. Peters's writing is warm and emotional; she appears to care deeply about her characters and what happens to them. I predict that you will feel the same way. More details at the Mysterious Press website.

"Love Lies Bleeding"

All things considered, it was a very good thing indeed that Oxford Professor Gervase Fen was on hand. Fen had been invited by his friend, the headmaster of Castrevenford School, an English "public" school for boys, to help hand out prizes at the school's annual Speech Day ceremonies. That's why Fen was on hand when word came that one of the students at the Castrevenford High School for Girls, 16-year-old Brenda Boyce, had disappeared. A boy friend might have been involved, but the girl's parents insisted their daughter had seemed badly frightened at dinner the previous night. So Fen, a man with considerable experience at solving difficult crimes, offered to help - and had no sooner done so than a couple of murders were discovered. The investigation would uncover a great many secrets and a fantastic motive for murder. It happens in Love Lies Bleeding, by Edmund Crispin, and it is the subject of this week's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast. You can listen to the complete review by clicking here.

Love Lies Bleeding, originally published in 1948, was the fifth of Edmund Crispin’s mysteries, all of which feature Gervase Fen, an Oxford professor who becomes involved in difficult, often seemingly impossible, murder cases. He is on hand at Castrevenford School when Brenda Boyce disappears – and there is word that somebody has stolen some powerful chemicals from the school’s chemistry lab. There’s every reason to think the two events may be related. The local police, led by Superintendent Stagge, are very glad for Fen’s presence, for – in a very short time – it becomes clear that they are dealing with at least two murders as well as Brenda Boyce’s disappearance and the theft of the dangerous chemicals.

As usual with a Crispin novel, the plot is complex and the characters fascinating. I am particularly fond of the inappropriately named Mr. Merrythought, an elderly bloodhound who, according to the headmaster, has occasional fits of homicidal mania. Because it is by Crispin, the book is filled with literary quotes and jokes (many of them quite unexplained and uncredited). It also manages to switch without warning between scenes that are genuinely funny and some that are really quite horrifying; let me warn you that some of the events in the book are both dark and disturbing. I would recommend other books if you're new to Crispin (and to Fen): The Moving Toyshop, for instance, or my own favorite, Swan Song. But this is still a first-rate mystery, well plotted and executed. I do recommend it very highly to you.

We Interrupt This Blog...

...to send you this greeting and message of hope: 

To my friends who celebrate Christmas, may you enjoy a merry one. To all my friends, whatever you observe (or do not observe), may your holidays be bright and filled with happiness and peace. To those who are having a tough time over these holidays - you have my wishes and prayers for a better year ahead. You are all part of my life, and I am richer for it.

"An Advancement of Learning"

I suppose the best way to describe the relationship between these two Yorkshire policemen, Superintendent Andy Dalziel and Sergeant Peter Pascoe, would be to call them "the odd couple" of detective fiction. They get on each other’s nerves, to be sure; Dalziel is contemptuous of Pascoe’s education, while Pascoe chafes at many of his superior’s sometimes crude and boorish investigative techniques and attitudes. But each, in his own way, is a first-rate police detective, and together they do make a very efficient and successful team. Consider the events in Reginald Hill's second Dalziel and Pascoe mystery, An Advancement of Learning, first published in the U.K. in 1971 (and in the U.S. fourteen years later). It's the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the complete review by clicking here.

A few years ago, I read (and reviewed as an "extra" for the blog) Hill's first Dalziel and Pascoe book, A Clubbable Woman, which I certainly enjoyed. They were (and are) extremely popular, both as books and in a series created for television. But I never really felt moved to go back and read more books in the series of about two dozen until after Hill's death in 2012. I've been told repeatedly that the series really began to take off with the second book, An Advancement of Learning. I finally got to read it for the first time just a few weeks ago - and I'm very glad I did, because the characters of Dalziel and Pascoe are much better developed and more clearly defined in their second outing.

An Advancement of Learning takes place at Holm Coultran College, a small school in Yorkshire. Originally a teachers’ training college for a few hundred female students, the school had begun broadening its offerings and turned coeducational a few years earlier, a move that still was a sore point among some staff members. There is considerable shock when a construction project on the campus uncovers the skeleton of a woman – and examination shows that she must have been murdered a few years earlier. Enter Dalziel and Pascoe. Andy Dalziel does not like universities, or teachers, or students for that matter – as a self-made man, he is perversely proud of having little formal education. Peter Pascoe, on the other hand, with his collegiate background, is far more in tune with the faculty and students of the school. The two begin their investigation – but they do not get very far before there is another murder. And what had looked like an investigation of a very cold and old crime suddenly developed an urgency it hadn’t had before.

The Dalziel and Pascoe books are very good police procedurals, for the most part, but they are also pretty strong traditional mysteries, offering interesting plot twists and fascinating characters. I very much enjoyed An Advancement of Learning, which has been republished by the Felony & Mayhem Press, and I plan to read more of the series.

Shopping at Amazon?

With Christmas now just a week away, are you by chance planning to shop through Amazon.com? If so, and if you enjoy my blog, I do hope that you'll use the link box on the right (that says "Amazon Shop. Connect. Enjoy.) to get to Amazon and begin your shopping. For that matter, if you're buying one of the books featured on the site, you'll usually find a text link within my post which will take you right to the page. If you use my links (including that box) to get to Amazon, and then do your own searches on Amazon and purchase items, I get a distinctly small percentage of the sale. It costs you nothing more than the item's price, but it can help pay for some of the expenses of maintaining the site. 

Here's an idea: still toying with the idea of trying e-books? I just bought a new Amazon Paperwhite at a very good price - Amazon has special deals on a lot of Amazon devices, including the Kindle Paperwhite. I find it's a lot easier on my eyes than my older-model Kindle, and I recommend it if you're looking for a good e-book reader!

To reiterate, by the way: if you are buying books, and you have a preferred independent bookstore either nearby or with an online site, by all means please do use them for your book shopping. If there are other items - especially things other than books - and you plan to buy them from Amazon, I'd greatly appreciate your using my links.

 

R.I.P. Peter Dickinson

Saddened to learn of the death of British mystery writer Peter Dickinson, who, according to the BBC, died yesterday on his 88th birthday after a brief illness. The Beeb focuses on his books for children, but he was also a very fine writer of traditional mysteries - Wikipedia has a complete listing. He was the only writer (according to the Beeb, "the first and so far only") writer to win Gold Dagger Awards from the Crime Writers' Association for two consecutive novels, 1968's Skin Deep and 1969's A Pride of Heroes.

Hat tip: Doug Greene, via Facebook 

"Comes a Stranger"

"This library seemed to Bobby no place of peace and calm and learning, but of lurking evil, a place of darkness and old death, a place of hidden whispers and secret device, and the aged, white-haired librarian, standing there in the distance, watching them with a malign intentness, gave him the impression of an ancient spider for ever spinning webs in which his victims were to be entangled."

Hardly sounds like the kind of place you'd want to spend time among some of the greatest and rarest treasures of literary history, does it? It's a description of a place called the Kayne Library, a treasure-house of ancient books and manuscripts, some of them dating back to pre-Gutenberg days, all of them rare - surely the perfect setting for a 1938 bibliomystery called Comes a Stranger, by E. R. Punshon. It's the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the complete review by clicking here.

Punshon is another of those unjustly-neglected writers of the Golden Age whose work is slowly but - I hope - steadily being revived by publishers such as the Dean Street Press, which has reissued Comes a Stranger in both trade paperback and e-book format (and provided a copy of the latter to me for review). The "Bobby" mentioned above is Detective Sergeant Bobby Owen, visiting his fiancée, Olive Farrar, who is staying with a family friend named Miss Kayne at the latter's home, Wynton Lodge, the home of the famous Kayne Library. It doesn't take long for Bobby - who is, happily off-duty - to discover that some very peculiar people are associated with the library, either working there or living at the lodge. Miss Kayne herself is an oddity - she makes it very clear that she loathes the family library. She also mentions in casual conversation to Bobby Owen that she has committed the perfect murder. Bobby isn't at all sure how to take this - is it a joke? Can she be serious? - and, being off-duty, is inclined to write off Miss Kayne's remark.

But it isn’t long before strange and deadly things begin happening that all seem to involve, somehow, the Kayne Library. First, a young man comes to the local police, claiming to have peeked inside a window of the library building and seen the body of a dead man lying on the floor. Having a Scotland Yard detective on hand, the local police ask him to take a look at the library – which he does and, not surprisingly in a Golden Age mystery, finds no sign of any body. But then there comes word that someone has been shot to death in the neighboring woods, and this time there is indeed a body and proof of murder – but it’s worth noting that the body in the woods is definitely not the body that young man claims to have seen in the library. Is there a connection between the two events – if, in fact, there have been two murders? Why did Kayne family members and library staff members clearly recognize the description of that missing body? Why did the librarian seem so protective of the admittedly valuable manuscripts and books in the library – and so angry when one of the books fails to match correctly his description of it?

In Comes a Stranger, we have an excellent bibliomystery - a mystery surrounded by books and manuscripts. There's plenty of action, and the story keeps moving us along. Punshon writes with wit and a certain wry humor. At one point, for example, when Bobby and Olive are talking to the librarian’s secretary, who seems a rather insipid young woman with a highly irritating giggle, Punshon writes, "She giggled once again. Bobby and Olive exchanged glances, two minds with but a single thought, and that regrettably tending towards assault and battery." It's one of a number of laugh-out-loud moments in what will eventually be a fairly terrifying and grim story. I'm glad to see it's available again - I think you'd enjoy it very much indeed. The new edition comes with both a foreword and an afterword by mystery historian Curtis Evans, who tells us that the plot of Comes a Stranger was based on a real-life incident. In the afterword, Evans explains what that incident was and how it influenced this book, so please do NOT read the afterword before reading the book itself. 

In Case You Came In Late...

For the past dozen days, I've been offering suggestions of books you might consider as "stocking stuffer" gifts for friends who read mysteries, or, better yet, for friends who have never read a classic mystery and may not know what they are missing. In keeping with the holiday spirit, I call these suggestions "The Twelve Days of Bookgiving." All are readily available, many in a variety of formats. Most have print editions that can be provided to you by your favorite mystery book seller or other independent bookstore. If not, there's always Amazon.

These are the twelve books (links will take you to the relevant post from the past several days):

1. The Complete Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle;
2. And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie;
3. He Who Whispers, by John Dickson Carr;
4. The Doorbell Rang, by Rex Stout;
5. Flowers for the Judge, by Margery Allingham;
6. The Book of the Dead, by Elizabeth Daly;
7. The Poisoned Chocolates Case, by Anthony Berkeley;
8. The Moving Toy Shop, by Edmund Crispin;
9. The Chinese Lake Murders, by Robert Van Gulik;
10. Man of Two Tribes, by Arthur Upfield;
11. Lament for a Maker, by Michael Innes;
12. The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett

The friends who receive your gifts will, I'm sure, be grateful, and they will undoubtedly recognize your good taste and discernment. For that matter, if there are books on this list which you haven't read...well, what are you waiting for! In any case, have a wonderful Chanukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice - whatever you prefer to observe. And may it be pleasantly mysterious.

Bookgiving: Day Twelve

On the twelfth day of Bookgiving, my true love gave to me:

The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett.

“Well, now, the Emperor Charles has given them Malta, and all the rent he asks is one insignificant bird per annum, just as a matter of form. What could be more natural than for these immeasurably wealthy Knights to look around for some way of expressing their gratitude? Well, sir, that’s exactly what they did, and they hit on the happy thought of sending Charles for the first year’s tribute, not an insignificant live bird, but a glorious golden falcon encrusted from head to foot with the finest jewels in their coffers.”

That’s the description of the black bird – The Maltese Falcon – a classic American mystery by Dashiell Hammett. Regular visitors to this site will know that I don't really write very often about hardboiled (or even medium-boiled) detectives or the American "P.I." tradition. One notable exception to that is The Maltese Falcon, first published in 1930, which is one of the books which really defines that tradition. Hammett's detective in this book (and in a few other short stories - that's all!) is Sam Spade. He is tough, cynical, operating on his own obscure and very personal moral code. The setting is San Francisco. The streets are mean, and most of the characters even meaner.

The plot revolves around that fabulous “black bird,” the Maltese falcon. There are four murders in the course of the book, all tied in with the search for the falcon. It’s not really a “puzzle” mystery – the reader is generally left to sort it out, along with Sam Spade, as he tries to figure out what has happened and what to do next. But the story comes alive through its characters and its dialogue. Maybe that's one reason why the movie version still bears repeated viewing; that crackling dialogue on the screen is lifted pretty much verbatim from the book. But I do urge you, if you're familiar with the movie but not the book, to go back to the original source and savor it.

The latest printed version of the book is in the form of a paperback from Vintage. There are e-book versions, including this version for the Amazon Kindle. If you'd rather have it read to you, there's a recording via Audible. And, if you're one of those unfortunates who has never had a chance to see that classic movie version written and directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor (and a whole wonderful cast of leading character actors), I'm happy to say that you can still get this film on DVD.

(If you came in late, here's what we're doing for bookgiving - I hope you'll join in!)

Bookgiving: Day Eleven

On the eleventh day of Bookgiving, my true love gave to me:

Lament for a Maker, by Michael Innes.

In a remote castle, deep in the Scottish highlands in the dead of a winter's night, strange things are happening. The laird of the castle, widely detested as a grasping miser, roams the hallways of his castle by the light of a single candle, chanting a 500-year old Scottish poem, while plotting…what? The laird will die – but was it suicide, or accident, or murder? There, in a nutshell, you have the central problem of the novel Lament for a Maker, by Michael Innes.

To tell the story of the strange death of the laird of Erchany castle, Ranald Guthrie, Innes uses a series of narrators, each of whom reveals a portion of the story. It's the same technique used by Willkie Collins to tell the story of The Moonstone. The result is a narrative written in a variety of styles, which peels away the mysteries of the events in the novel very much like peeling the layers of an onion. It is to Michael Innes’s credit that he provides each narrative in a different and appropriate style for the narrator. From the Scottish shoemaker Ewan Bell, whose narratives will open and close the book, you will get Scottish dialect – and a familiarity with some Scottish vocabulary will be helpful here; think Robert Louis Stevenson and Kidnapped. From an English traveler who happens on the scene, you get a flippant commentary on the events he observes. From the detective, John Appleby, you get a more clinical view of events. The case eventually is “solved” – in fact, it is solved several times over – but each solution in turn is destroyed by further revelations, and the ultimate unraveling of the story is deeply shocking and poignant, even as it is satisfying. Just when you (and the characters) think you finally understand what has really happened, there will be a plot twist that will take your breath away.

Michael Innes had a long and prolific career. His writing is erudite and witty. His plots sometimes border on the surreal - wait until you meet "the learned rats" - but he can also create a wonderful atmosphere of terror. Lament for a Maker was his third book, first published in 1938, and I have always liked it best among all of his novels. It is available as a House of Stratus trade paperback, and there is a Kindle edition as well, and I'm pretty sure other e-book versions are available for other readers.

(If you came in late, here's what we're doing for bookgiving - I hope you'll join in!)