Classic Mysteries

"Crimson Snow"

It's Spring already. How in the world did that happen? Oh well, the main problem with Spring's quick arrival, from my perspective anyway, is that I had been meaning to offer you a nice collection of mysteries to keep the cold away and warm your heart a bit, but I haven't had the time to do so. So before the weather gets warm enough to melt any left over snow, here's another of those fine anthologies of classic tales edited for the British Library Crime Classics series by British mystery writer and Golden Age expert Martin Edwards, called Crimson Snow.

As usual, you can listen to an audio review of Crimson Snow on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and I strongly advise you to do so this week, for on the podcast you'll find a short but (I hope) enticing summary of each one of the stories. I'll tell you upfront that the idea is to lure you into reading the book; as always, Edwards's taste in such stories is impeccable, and he has put together an excellent selection of winter stories, with his own wise and witty introductions. Some of the stories are by old friends to mystery readers, such as Margery Allingham, Edgar Wallace and Julian Symons. Other names are less familiar, which makes these stories a good way to meet some authors who may be new to you. I suppose, however, that I should warn you against reading some of these stories late at night, before turning out the light...

From the Vault: "To Love and Be Wise"

It is really a pity that Josephine Tey wrote only eight mysteries in her all-too-brief career. Writing mostly at the tail end of the Golden Age, her books generally defy easy description. After all, she was the author of The Daughter of Time, best described perhaps as an historical novel set in modern times, while she was also the author of seven other books, most quite different from each other. Each, in my estimation, is carefully plotted and well-written, with believable characters, and all deserve your attention. One of my favorites, first reviewed on the Classic Mysteries podcast some nine years ago, is To Love and Be Wise - quite different from The Daughter of Time, and breathtaking in the games it plays with the reader's perceptions. Here's a somewhat edited version of that review:

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A young American photographer turns up at a cocktail party and asks to be introduced to one of the guests. He is soon invited for a weekend in the country – a weekend that quickly stretches into a much longer visit. The photographer becomes involved in the lives of several people. And then, quite suddenly and completely, he disappears. How and why? Could he have been murdered? Or did he simply walk away into the night, for some unknown reason? This is the mystery at the heart of To Love and Be Wise, by Josephine Tey.

 “It is impossible to love and be wise.” That phrase, generally attributed to the British philosopher and essayist Francis Bacon, is the source of the title for Josephine Tey’s delightful and witty book – for reasons that will become clear only after you have read it.

Tey is widely regarded as one of the finest authors of Britain’s Golden Age of detective fiction. To Love and Be Wise was one of her later works, published in 1950, and I think it is a fine display of her virtuosity. The story is ingenious, the plot deceptively simple, the characters drawn expertly and economically.

I suppose that if you insist on classifying it, you would consider it a fine example of a “cozy” mystery – absolutely no on-stage bloodshed is allowed. But this is no simple genre book. That "simple" plot turns out to be an amazingly complex story about relationships that go wrong – and the consequences of them.

The story begins at a literary cocktail party. Tey’s detective character, Detective Inspector Alan Grant, visits the party to pick up a friend and take her to dinner. At the party, he quite literally bumps into a young man, looking somewhat lost, who asks Grant to introduce him to the guest of honor, Lavinia Fitch, who is celebrating the publication of her new book. The young man introduces himself as Leslie Searle, an American. He wishes to meet Lavinia’s nephew, Walter Whitmore. Searle is quickly invited by Lavinia for a weekend in the country, at her house, called “Trimmings” in a very English village named Salcott Saint Mary.

Grant, having overseen this bit of polite maneuvering, escorts his friend, actress Marta Hallard, out of the party. They talk, briefly, about the young American they have just seen. And the chapter ends, with Grant saying this:

“I don’t think safe is the adjective I would apply to Searle, somehow,” he said reflectively; and from that moment forgot all about Leslie Searle until the day when he was sent down to Salcott St. Mary to search for the young man’s body.

If you think that line was a bit unexpected – you’re right. Tey had a genius for writing witty and sophisticated passages which, while often delighting the reader, would also be likely to deliver the occasional unexpected knockout punch. Certainly, that is not the kind of line we might have expected from what – up to that point – could have been the setup for a sophisticated comedy of manners.

As the book progresses, we are treated to glimpses of the relationships among the key characters – Searle, of course, Lavinia, her nephew Walter and Walter’s fiancée, Liz, Liz’s mother (who is fearful that Searle could upset the impending marriage between her daughter and Walter), and so on. We meet some of the residents of Salcott St. Mary – some long-time natives and a number of artistic newcomers, all of whom become further involved with Searle.

Then, one evening, in the local pub, Searle and Walter are observed having a fairly quiet but intense conversation. Walter leaves, quite suddenly. Searle tells one of the locals, Bill Maddox, that he, Searle, has been irritating Whitmore. The story continues:

Maddox clicked his tongue and went away to get the beer.

After that, conversation became general. Searle stayed until closing time, said goodnight to Reeve, the landlord, as he locked the door behind them, and walked down the village street with the others. At the narrow lane that led between the houses to the fields he turned off, pelted by their mock-condolences on his lack of a snug bed, and throwing back in his turn accusations of frowst and ageing arteries.

“Goodnight!” he called from far down the lane.

And that was the last that anyone in Salcott St. Mary ever saw of Leslie Searle.

Forty-eight hours later, Alan Grant stepped back onto the affairs of the Trimmings household.

Now that’s what I mean when I talk about her ability to surprise the reader without warning. And Grant discovers he’s walked into a fairly unusual situation. Searle has disappeared – but there is no body. There is simply no trace of the young man. He is widely believed to have fallen into the local river and drowned, but there is no physical evidence. Could someone have hit him over the head and pushed him into the river, and the body lost in the river’s deep mud? Possibly – but again there is no sign of any violence. Could Searle have simply walked away? Again, it’s possible –but why, and where, and why does it appear nobody saw him if he did so?

It takes Grant a while to sort out the truth of the matter – and it is, I think, one of the most ingenious and fascinating crime stories I have read anywhere. I am reluctant to say much more about it, because I really hope that you will be moved to find the book and read it, and I fear spoiling any of the pleasurable discoveries that await you. I will say this: Tey is generally quite fair about her clues, although there are some instances, particularly late in the book, where Grant asks for a piece of information and fails to share it with the reader. However, by the time he does so, the reader might be able to make a pretty shrewd guess about the nature of the information Grant is looking for – and the answer he receives. In fact, on a number of occasions, Tey very specifically points out to the reader that a key piece of information has just been given to them – yet, I suspect, the solution is so well contrived and carefully hidden that the reader will be quite mystified until the startling ending to the book.

To Love and Be Wise, by Josephine Tey, is still in print – as are most of her mysteries – and I strongly urge you to visit your favorite bookseller to get a copy. In an introduction to the edition of the book sitting on my shelves, another fine English mystery writer, Robert Barnard, says, “Mystery readers who have never encountered Josephine Tey are in for a delicious treat.” I agree whole-heartedly. To Love and Be Wise is a book to savor.

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You can listen to the original audio review by clicking here.

Next week: The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars, by Anthony Boucher

Weekend with Lefty

Very sorry to be posting this so late - and other late posts as well. Blame it on LCC.

It was quite a weekend at Left Coast Crime, as several hundred mystery authors and readers gathered to enjoy a few deadly pleasures together.

 

The conference had a fine group of authors, always available for panels, or conversations, or other mystery-related pastimes. This panel featured Lee Goldberg questioning the Guests of Honor at the convention. From the left: Lee Goldberg (moderating)(author, TV producer/writer); Colin Cotterill, International Guest of Honor (author/creator of Dr. Siri series); Faye and Jonathan Kellerman, Lifetime Achievement Awards; Dana Stabenow, U.S. Guest of Honor (author of the Kate Shugak series and others); Laurie R. King, Toastmaster (author of the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series).

 

 

 Leslie and I sported matching Hawaiian shirts - all right, really Disney Caribbean from Castaway Key - for our fun "Speed-Dating with Authors" session to open the convention.

 

 I also wound up on a panel called "Reviewers & Critics: Are Authors at Their Mercy?" with moderator Jen Forbus, novelists Daniel Boucher and Jane Stillwater (standing), and fellow-blogger Dru Ann Love. In my defense, I pointed out that the books I review were, for the most part, written by authors from nearly a century ago, no longer in any position to worry about being at my mercy...

 

 Meanwhile, Leslie was moderating a panel on "YA & Mid-Grade Novels: The young and the restless," with (from the left): Catherine Paul (AKA Evelyn Cirincione); Pamela Beason; Kelley Armstrong; Penny Warner; and Leslie Blatt.

 

As we prepared for the closing banquet, those of us who serve on the Standing Committee for LCC (and members of the current LCC Committee) were welcomed with traditional Hawaiian leis. From the left: Janet Rudolph; Noemi Levine; Linda McNab; Colleen Glynn; Toby and Bill Gottfried; Leslie and Les Blatt; Stan Ulrich; Lucinda Surber.

 

 Er...this was taken at the banquet, OK? Don't ask. Just. Don't. Ask.

 

 The convention at an end, Leslie and I are now recuperating at Disney's Aulani resort on another corner of the island of Oahu. With this view from our room, we're beginning to think that we might have survived Left Coast Crime - for this year, anyway. A weekend spent with these authors and sp many other fans is a weekend well-spent.

"The House Opposite"

Now here's a mystery for you with an odd-sort of hero - a tramp. The "passing tramp" is frequently invoked in mysteries as the usually mythical character who "must" have been responsible for the murder - certainly it couldn't be a family member, or someone being blackmailed, or a presumptive hear tired of waiting around for an inheritance. As it happens, there is at least one passing tramp who served as the protagonist in a series of mysteries by the author, J. Jefferson Farjeon. The character's name is "Ben the Tramp," and he is featured in a fine Golden Age mystery called The House Opposite, first published in 1931. The House Opposite 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.

Ben the Tramp is a totally down-and-out character, likely to get drawn into mysteries simply because he happens to wander into them – as he might, for example, wander into a deserted and falling-down house at number 29 Jowle Street in London…and become curious about some rather strange and seemingly inexplicable goings-on in the house directly across the street, at number 26. Ben doesn’t want to get involved, doesn’t like getting involved, has little reason to get involved – and gets involved. 

When he first breaks into 29 Jowle Street, Ben is merely looking for a place to squat for a while. But he finds a great deal more than he bargained for – there are strange people showing up at the front door, or, worse, inside the house, all of whom are trying to persuade Ben (by subtle or not-so-subtle means) to leave at once, if he knows what’s good for him. This is not a good tactic to pursue with Ben. And when another stranger who shows up uninvited – a young woman – gives Ben a whole pound note (Ben had been down to his last few pence) to act as her “caretaker” for the house, Ben feels an obligation to stay and help her – though he doesn’t know who she is. What he does know, from looking out of the window at number 29, is that there are strange doings across the way at number 26 Jowle Street. And he sees a variety of people – almost all of whom will turn out to be most unsavory and several of whom don’t seem to have a very high regard for human life. Including his.

This is a thriller, rather than a detective story. It reads like the sort of thing Edgar Wallace was particularly adept at whipping up – by which I mean that the reader really has to be willing to suspend a fair amount of disbelief and (unless I’ve missed a number of key points) must gloss over some unexplained details as we rush to an exciting conclusion. The House Opposite is a very effective little page-turner of a book, and Ben is probably the most endearing passing tramp that the reader could ever hope to meet.

We're a Little Late, Folks...

The weekly podcast is a bit late this week - has a LOT to do with being six hours off in my time zone. Sigh. So sue me. My review of J. J. Farjeon's The House Opposite will be posted sometime on Tuesday.  So sue me...

Waiting for Lefty

The Left Coast Crime awards, better known as the Lefty awards, were presented this evening to the winners of the traditional honors. They were selected by ballots cast by the attendees of the Left Coast Crime conference in Honolulu, and presented at the annual awards banquets. May I have the envelope, please?

Best Humorous Mystery

• **Body on the Bayou, by Ellen Byron**
  
• Die Like an Eagle, by Donna Andrews
• Fields Where They Lay, by Timothy Hallinan
• The CEO Came DOA, by Heather Haven
• Floodgate, by Johnny Shaw
• A Disguise to Die for, by Diane Vallere

Best Historical  Mystery (prior to 1960)

(The Bruce Alexander Memorial)

• **The Reek of Red Herrings, by Catriona McPherson**
• Crowned and Dangerous, by Rhys Bowen
• A Death Along the River Fleet, by Susanna Calkins
• The Murder of Mary Russell, by Laurie R. King
• What Gold Buys, by Ann Parker

Best Debut Mystery

• **Murder in G Major, by Alexia Gordon**
• Cleaning Up Finn, by Sarah M. Chen
• Terror in Taffeta, by Marla Cooper
• Decanting a Murder, by Nadine Nettmann
• Design for Dying, by Renee Patrick

**Best Mystery (not in other categories)

• **A Great Reckoning, by Louise Penny**
• Dark Fissures, by Matt Coyle
• Michelangelo's Ghost, by Gigi Pandian
• The Necessary Murder of Nonie Blake, by Terry Shames
• Heart of Stone, by James W. Ziskin

As always, congratulations to all of the honorees1

 

 

From the Vault: "Busman's Honeymoon"

My selection "From the Vault" this week may be a bit controversial with some fans - and some detractors - of Dorothy L. Sayers and her creations, Lord Peter Wimsey and his eventual wife, Harriet Vane. While I believe there's general agreement on Sayers's contributions to the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, there's a certain amount of grumbling about the last of Sayers's novels to feature the couple, Busman's Honeymoon. Well, gruntle away, oh disgruntled reader. I've always enjoyed Busman's Honeymoon, a book I have read and re-read several times, and I want to share some of the reasons why. Here, edited as always, is the review I did a decade ago for the Classic Mysteries podcast.

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So there you are – a successful detective who has just married the most wonderful woman in the world after pursuing her for more than five years. You have escaped together from pursuing reporters and disapproving in-laws to a romantic hideaway for your honeymoon. And a body turns up in the basement. What’s a detective to do? That’s the problem confronting Lord Peter Wimsey and his bride, Harriet Vane, in Dorothy L. Sayers’ marvelous book, Busman’s Honeymoon.

 Perhaps the best way to explain Busman’s Honeymoon is to quote from a letter Dorothy Sayers wrote to friends – a letter which now forms the introduction to the book. Here is what she said:

"It has been said, by myself and others, that a love-interest is only an intrusion upon a detective story. But to the characters involved, the detective-interest might well seem an irritating intrusion upon their love-story. This book deals with such a situation."

Busman’s Honeymoon, dating from 1937, was the last mystery novel Sayers would complete about her sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey. It begins with his marriage to Harriet Vane, a story told through several letters and excerpts from the diary of Lord Peter’s mother. Lord Peter had pursued Harriet through three earlier novels, beginning when he saved her life during her trial for the murder of a former lover. His pursuit lasted more than five years before she eventually said yes. As for the wedding, as one of Harriet’s friends described it in a letter:

“There was something rather splendid about the way those two claimed one another, as though nothing and nobody else mattered or even existed; he was the only bridegroom I have ever seen who looked as though he knew exactly what he was doing and meant to do it."

At any rate, they are married, elude a flock of reporters, and escape to a small farmhouse, in the town where Harriet was born, where they intend to spend their honeymoon. Here, the real story begins, as they find the house locked and deserted, the neighbors initially hostile, and the agent who was supposed to have everything ready for them appears to be missing.

Still, they move in. And throughout, Sayers is laying the groundwork for the couple, spending much of her time on the emotions and insights of bride and bridegroom about each other. There is a marvelous moment, for example, where they are talking to the local vicar, who has dropped by. Harriet, listening to her new husband talk to the vicar, is deeply moved:

"More than any of the friends in her own world, he spoke the familiar language of her childhood. In London, anybody, at any moment, might do or become anything. But in a village – no matter what village – they were all immutably themselves; parson, organist, sweep, duke’s son and doctor’s daughter, moving like chessmen upon their allotted squares. She was curiously excited. She thought, 'I have married England.' Her fingers tightened on his arm.

"England, serenely unaware of his symbolic importance, acknowledge the squeeze with a pressure of the elbow. 'Splendid!' he said, heartily."

And so Sayers continues to outline the newlyweds. In fact, almost all of the first hundred pages of the novel go by without being interrupted by any detection – until the missing agent turns up, dead, in the honeymooners’ basement.

And so Lord Peter Wimsey is drawn into another murder investigation – or, perhaps more accurately, finds himself involved in it, whether he wants to be or not. And it turns out to be a difficult and, ultimately, painful case.

But a fair amount of the story here deals less with the mystery and detection than with the way Peter and Harriet must work out for themselves the degree to which this activity – this detective work, for want of a better way of describing it – will be allowed to play a significant part in their lives together. It has always been all-consuming for Lord Peter Wimsey – but he is no longer alone, and must come to grips with its impact on himself, his new wife, and their marriage. And so we see the new couple working through their difficulties, coming to terms with their new relationship.

Throughout, the love story continues to dominate. There is a wonderful line, when Harriet looks at her husband’s face:

"she lifted his head between her hands, and what she saw in his face stopped her heart."

There is a great deal more of that in this book, and it’s one of the reasons why it is one of my favorites in the series.

There is a great deal that can annoy the casual reader today in the Sayers novels, and it is on display in Busman’s Honeymoon. There is the tendency of this Oxford-educated-and-raised author to throw in quote after quote, often unidentified. There are untranslated letters written in French. There are the rigidities of the English class system of the time.

But I believe all these are minor considerations overall. The mystery is ingenious – Wimsey solves it almost entirely on the strength of a chance remark by another character. And the overriding importance of the love story, as Peter and Harriet explore their new relationship, make for an extremely readable and enjoyable book – and this one, in particular, I think, stands up well on re-reading.

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 To listen to the original podcast, click here.

Next week: To Love and Be Wise, by Josephine Tey

"Seven Keys to Baldpate"

The Chinese-American detective from Honolulu, Charlie Chan, is probably the best known creation of author Earl Derr Biggers. If and when we remember Biggers today, it is primarily for the six books that introduced Charlie to the world - and those of us who are old enough to have seen on late-night television many of the movies about Charlie Chan (very few of them based on the books by Biggers) know what a delightful character he was. But more than a decade before the first Charlie Chan book, Biggers wrote another clever and still entertaining book, best described, I think, as a mild thrller, called Seven Keys to Baldpate. This week in Honolulu, as the writers and mystery readers attending the Left Coast Crime conference pause to pay tribute to their "Ghost of Honor," Earl Derr Biggers, I would like to call their, and your, attention to Seven Keys to Baldpate. It's 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 book tells the story of Billy Magee, a successful young author who has made a career for himself of writing melodramas and such, but whose real ambition is to write The Great American Novel. Like most writers, Billy feels he can't do it unless he can get away from everyone and everything and just sit down and write! A friend of his, who owns a secluded hotel in rural New Jersey, suggests that Billy go off to that very large and very deserted hotel, called Baldpate. It's winter time, and there is nobody at the place, which is all locked up for the winter. Armed with what appears to be the only key, Billy sets out for Baldpate. The caretaker (who doesn't live there) takes him to the deserted hotel. He finds it cold and empty, manages to build a fire, and settles down to think about writing.

And that's when the deserted hotel's house telephone rings in his room...

Billy is about to learn that his key isn't the only one. - there are, as the title explains, Seven Keys to Baldpate. there's a sudden and rather surprising (to Billy, anyway) love interest, all sorts of plots and counterplots, and a rather surprising number of people turning up at a supposedly deserted lodge. So what is going on at Baldpate? Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys? Will Billy Magee ever get anywhere with that novel – considering that he came to Baldpate in the first place to get away from melodrama? Stay tuned.

It's a thriller - a rather mild one, I must say - and there are some social and cultural attitudes that may make some readers cringe as the characters debate, for example, whether women should have the right to vote. But Seven Keys to Baldpate has earned a lot of popularity since its first appearance in 1913. It was turned into a play and made into a movie seven times (generally NOT following the plot of the book) and adapted for radio and television; the play still turns up from time to time as a favorite of community theater groups. The book is long out of copyright, and it's readily available in electronic and/or print formats. For my friends visiting Left Coast Crime this week, it's another insight into the mind of the man who created one of the best-loved movie detectives of all time. Give it a try.

 

From the Vault: "The Big Sleep"

Last week, we shared one of my early podcast audio reviews, focusing on Dashiell Hammett's book The Thin Man. Hammett is generally regarded as one of the leading proponents of the "hard-boiled" school of American mystery fiction. This week, I want to share another of my early reviews dealing with another of the leaders of that school - Raymond Chandler, whose books about private eye Philip Marlowe helped to promote the hard-boiled mystery into its prominent position in crime fiction. Here, again somewhat edited, is what I had to say about Chandler's first book, The Big Sleep, originally published in 1939:

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Start with murder. Mix in some pornography and a double helping of blackmail. Add a mysterious disappearance. Season with an elderly millionaire and his psychotic daughters. Now stir in some gangsters and some illegal gambling. Carefully add several additional murders. Finally, mix in one hard-boiled, but sensitive, American private eye. You have the recipe for The Big Sleep, the first Philip Marlowe novel written by Raymond Chandler.

You can’t really have a conversation about the American mystery novel without talking about Raymond Chandler. Just like Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade, Chandler’s creation of Philip Marlowe really defined the American, hard-boiled school of mystery writing. Unlike many of the great puzzle mysteries we associate with the Golden Age, the hard-boiled novels were filled with action – the reader, like the detective, barely having time to catch a breath before another murder or some other event propelled the plot still further along.

Chandler’s first novel was The Big Sleep. The plot is enormously convoluted. I’ve lost count of the total number of murders, but I’m not alone – even Chandler himself, famously, observed once that he didn’t have any idea who really killed one of the victims or if it might have been suicide. It’s that kind of plot.

Basically, private eye Philip Marlowe is hired by an elderly and very rich man, a retired general, to try to deal with an extortionist, who apparently has some IOU’s signed by the general’s younger daughter. We quickly discover that the daughter is also a nymphomaniac and a drug addict, and a blackmailer manages to take a nude photo of her. The blackmailer is murdered, and we’re off and running. Characters come and go with dizzying speed. We meet the general’s other daughter, whose husband apparently ran off with another man’s wife about a month earlier. She’s also a gambler, deeply involved with a gangster and a number of other unsavory types.

I’m not going to try to lay out much more of the plot, because, as I say, it is remarkably complicated – and, to be honest, it’s only part of what makes The Big Sleep a classic. Chandler was a fine writer, and both his descriptions and his dialogue are snappy and memorable.

Let me give you a couple of examples.

Early on, for instance, when Marlowe meets the general’s older daughter, her maid walks into the room. Here’s how she is described:

A maid came into the room by a side door. She was a middle-aged woman with a long yellow gentle face, a long nose, no chin, large wet eyes. She looked like a nice old horse that had been turned out to pasture after long service.

That’s a remarkably economical way to introduce us to a minor character.

Or listen to this description of a woman clerk in a bookstore, where Marlowe has discovered something strange is going on and confronts the clerk:

I thought she was going to fall on her nose. Her whole body shivered and her face fell apart like a bride’s pie crust. She put it together again slowly, as if lifting a great weight, by sheer will power. The smile came back, with a couple of corners badly bent.

And the dialogue is memorable. One of my favorite lines comes when Marlowe is in trouble – tied up in a remote house, guarded by a woman he’s been searching for, waiting for a hit man named Canino to come back…he tells her:

"You know what Canino will do – beat my teeth out and then kick me in the stomach for mumbling."

Or, on another occasion, having just kissed the general’s older daughter, he tells her,

“Kissing is nice, but your father didn’t hire me to sleep with you.”

It all adds up to the quintessential American hard-boiled detective story. Chandler wrote a number of other books about Philip Marlowe, but The Big Sleep remains my favorite.

Fans of old movies may remember the movie version of The Big Sleep, made by the American director Howard Hawks and released in 1946. It starred Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe and Lauren Bacall as the general’s older daughter. The screenplay authors included William Faulkner, but a great deal of the dialogue comes straight from the book. The plot had some changes – we’re talking about 1946, and the movie censors would never have approved of some of the nudity, the discussion of pornography and the rough language which are essential to the book. In fact, the ending of the movie was changed, wrapping things up far more neatly than the book does – although that one murder I mentioned earlier is as unsolved in the movie as it was in the book.

I have said before that I’m not a great fan of hard-boiled detective stories, but Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett are the exceptions to that rule – maybe because, in a lot of ways, they were the originators of the form. If you haven’t read The Big Sleep, I recommend it to you.

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You can listen to the original audio review by clicking here.

Next week, Busman's Honeymoon, by Dorothy L. Sayers

"Accounting for Murder"

A passionate accountant meets a sticky end, strangled with the electric cord of his own adding machine. Clarence Fortinbras was indeed passionate about accounting - he was, among other things, the author of a standard textbook for accountants, Fortinbras on Accounts Receivable. And it appeared that something was radically wrong with the finances at the National Calculating Company, and that Fortinbras was just the man to uncover the problem and, if one existed, the perpetrator. Which may explain why Fortinbras met such an unfortunate end. It would be up to a banker, John Putnam Thatcher, Senior Vice President of the Sloan Guaranty Trust, to uncover a calculating killer. It happens in Accounting for Murder, by Emma Lathen, and it's the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast. You can listen to the entire review by clicking here.

Between 1961 and 1997, Mary Jane Latsis and Martha Henissart, writing as “Emma Lathen,” turned out two dozen very good traditional puzzle-plot mysteries starring a banker as their principal detective character. John Putnam Thatcher, senior vice president and the head of the Trusts department at the Sloan Guaranty Trust, the third largest bank in the world, finds himself confronting difficult situations on behalf of the bank and its many interests. Each of the books focuses on a different industry; Accounting for Murder, first published in 1964, turns a spotlight on accounting - as it used to be in the days before desktop computers changed the way business was conducted. Computers were still pretty rare and, as a result, fair game for speculation about ways to cheat the machines. For it would appear that something odd is going on at National Calculating – and a group of dissident stockholders want action. Enter Clarence Fortinbras, determined to get to the bottom of any cheating going on in National Calculating’s books. Among other things, he wants to know why two divisions at National Calculating produce virtually the same product for different buyers – and one division makes money while the other loses money. Is somebody cooking the books? Fortinbras is determined to find out – and that determination will cost him his life. And while other accountants – including a most experienced police department accountant – try to figure out what Fortinbras may have discovered, it is John Putnam Thatcher (whose bank, unhappily, owns a very large share in National Calculating through convertible bonds) who must eventually figure out the secret that will explain murder.

Accounting for Murder is nicely leavened with quiet humor – and there’s also some pleasure to be had by looking back from our perch in the 21^st century to a time when computers were a lot bigger and less understood than they are today, a time when people still used carbon paper, and an accountant’s personal adding machine could be used in a murder. I urge you to take this opportunity to meet John Putnam Thatcher and his colleagues. He’s well worth knowing.