Classic Mysteries

"Brazen Tongue"

With World War II getting under way around them, the residents of a small English town called Willington – already quite preoccupied with the grim preparations for war and trying to protect themselves from a nightly bombing blitz that had not yet begun – suddenly endure a series of three violent deaths within the space of a few hours. Are the deaths related – or merely coincidental? The local police inspector believes they are related; many others (including some very prominent citizens) don’t want to see any linkage among the victims or similarities among the deaths. That's when Mrs. Beatrice Bradley, psychologist and psychiatrist, enters the picture, offering  to help the police and discover the truth, in Gladys Mitchell’s 1940 book, Brazen Tongue. It's the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the entire review by clicking here.

Gladys Mitchell wrote her first Mrs. Bradley book in 1929, at the heart of the Golden Age of Detection, and she continued to write them well up into the 1980s. Brazen Tongue was published in 1940, during the early days of the war before the German blitz really got under way. The story revolves around the sudden deaths of three people in what may or may not have been related crimes. Here’s some of the way Gladys Mitchell describes the situation, as seen by Mrs. Bradley:

“The deaths had been, as it were, topical, and their aftermath had been too spectacular to be in keeping with such a town[...]in the first two months of the war – as though reports of schools closed, children sent into the country, and descriptions (with photographs) of the new public air raid shelters, were not enough to give the paper that extra fillip which the times appeared to require – there must be a Council member poisoned with arsenic. And then[...]there had followed the sensational discovery of his body propped up in a doorway near the local cinema, this in addition to the discovery of another body, that of an unknown woman, in the municipal A.R.P. cistern in an obscure cul-de-sac at the western end of the town. Then, ‘overdoing it,’ said Mrs. Bradley to herself (an almost exact echo of the words of the inspector of police, although she did not know this until later) there was also the apparently motiveless murder of the red-haired telephonist at the Town Hall Report Centre.”

I think that may give you some idea of the story - which, I warn you, becomes quite convoluted; it takes Mrs. Bradley (and Mitchell) what seems to be an inordinate amount of time at the end to explain exactly what did happen and who did what to whom (and why). I hesitate to recommend it to new readers of Mitchell's stories, but if you're already a fan, you are likely to find Brazen Tongue an intriguing entry among the Mrs. Bradley books.

If you'd like to read more about both Mrs. Bradley and Brazen Tongue, you will find a lengthy article by Jason Half at The Stone House, which he describes as :A Gladys Mitchell Tribute Site." I'd also recommend another thoughtful review from Curtis Evans at his blog, The Passing Tramp. The book is readily available as an e-book; the only paper copies I can find are pretty expensive.

From the Vault: "Death and the Chaste Apprentice"

The late Robert Barnard was a very good writer indeed. He wrote dozens of fine mysteries over the course of his career. Some featured series detective characters while others were stand-alones. Barnard's books were written with a good deal of sometimes savage satire and wit, and some of his books managed to combine laugh-out-loud humor with tight, well-plotted stories. One of my favorites among his novels was Death and the Chaste Apprentice, a 1989 book that could give you a good sense of Barnard's abilities. I first reviewed this book some nine years ago. Here's what I said on the podcast (somewhat edited, as always):

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Here’s a mystery that’s not only a classic itself…it takes place surrounded by other types of classics. The scene is an arts festival, home to a fairly improbable play from the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, and also to a fictional opera by Donizetti. A large group of actors and singers is involved in these productions. And when murder occurs, the field of suspects is wide indeed. That’s a quick summary of Death and the Chaste Apprentice, by Robert Barnard.

What is it about singers and actors that seem to make them natural characters to appear in mysteries? Many great mystery stories revolve around these artists. Sometimes it is a matter of their egos, their temperaments and the often very public natures of their private lives. Authors such as Agatha Christie, Michael Innes and Edmund Crispin have written about them with considerable zeal.

To that company, certainly, belongs the name of Robert Barnard, a fine author who has been writing mysteries – more than 40 of them [at the time  this review was written, several years prior to Barnard's death] – over the past thirty years. He brings a remarkably sharp wit and biting humor to his stories, and they really do fit into the classic mold, providing clues for the reader who is sharp enough to spot them and relying on smart detective work to solve the cases.

In Death and the Chaste Apprentice, we are taken to the annual arts festival in the fictional London suburb of Ketterick. It’s one of those festivals that feature the most obscure plays and relatively unknown musical performances, and Barnard treats it with considerable relish. The play this year will be “The Chaste Apprentice of Bowe,” a work supposedly attributed to an unknown author here. Barnard notes in a brief preface that the quotations taken from this non-existent play actually come from real Elizabethan and Restoration dramas (and ends his note with, "so don't blame me,") but you get the idea quite easily. The festival also will feature an opera, attributed here to Donizetti – a real enough composer, although he never created an opera called “Adelaide di Birkenhead.”

Barnard’s descriptions of these artistic works are scathing. In describing the unknown authorship of “The Chaste Apprentice of Bowe,” for example, Barnard notes, "it was generally agreed that two hands were discernible in it, though only half a brain." And his supposed quotes from critics about operas, mostly imaginary, are, if anything, even funnier. He talks about one Rossini opera as “a stillborn curiosity,” an opera called “Attila” is described as “proving that even Verdi nodded,” and another Donizetti opera earns, “This is less a revival than a resurrection, in the Burke and Hare sense of the word.”

The point of all this is simply to give you an idea of Barnard’s humor, and there is a great deal of satire in his approach to the play and opera that are central to this story. The same is true of the larger-than-life artistic types involved. As one reviewer noted, the chaste apprentice of the title appears to be one of the very few characters to whom that adjective could be applied. Virtually all the actors and/or singers appear to be involved in affairs. There is a great deal of activity, both out in the open and hidden.

And – unfortunately for the artists – there is also the manager of the hotel where all of this is going on, the Saracen Head Inn, an old and sprawling coaching inn dating back to the Elizabethan era that hosts the festival play and houses all of the key characters. The hotel manager, who is Australian – is described by Barnard, “he was the most loathsome of God’s creations, the Australian know-all.” His name is Des Capper, and he is incredibly nosy, being one of those types who love to accumulate knowledge about other people – and then use that knowledge against them.

As any mystery reader will understand, that sort of thing can be very dangerous, and it soon proves to be fatal to Des Capper. And so the police have to be called in – much to the displeasure of Superintendent Iain Dundy, who confesses, quite gloomily, when he is called in,

“I do hate arty people. I admit it. I can’t stand them. They touch a nerve in me. I’ve had a feeling ever since this festival started up that one day I was going to get stuck with a case chock-a-block full of arty people. And I wouldn’t mind betting this is it!”

Dundy, of course, will be proven right – but, to his credit, he manages to keep his investigation on course. Once the murder has occurred, the clues are quite fairly presented, both to Dundy and to the reader, and the usual process of figuring out who could have had both motive and opportunity is carried out quite fairly. The trouble, of course, is that Des Capper has managed to make an enemy of nearly everybody. Dundy is set on the right course, however, by one of his assistants – a young policeman named Charlie Peace, who plays a minor role here but who will be featured as the primary detective in a series of Barnard’s later books.

Death and the Chaste Apprentice is smart, tightly written, quite funny and a thoroughly good mystery story. The plot is well-constructed and fairly clued – and when the real motive for the murder is revealed, it will undoubtedly come as a surprise to most readers. There are a great many plot twists here in a story that is very much in the classic tradition – and largely blood-free as well. If you enjoy mysteries with a theatrical or operatic background, stories which play the game fairly with the reader, and books which are loaded with memorable characters, you’ll enjoy Death and the Chaste Apprentice, by Robert Barnard.

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

Next week, The Roman Hat Mystery, by Ellery Queen.

"The Crooked Wreath"

Maybe it was the heat of a summer's day that caused tempers to fray. Or perhaps it was the frustrations shared by members of Sir Richard March's family, much-bullied by the family patriarch who kept threatening to disinherit them. The result, eventually and perhaps inevitably, was murder - but how could the murderer have approached the victim (or escaped the scene of the crime) without leaving a tell-tale trail of footprints on the sandy path? You can find the answers in The Crooked Wreath, an Inspector Cockrill mystery by Christianna Brand, first published in 1946, The Crooked Wreath is the American title; the original title in the U.K. was Suddenly at his Residence. 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.

The Crooked Wreath is set at an English country estate called Swanswater, filled with squabbling relatives and an interesting cross-set of tensions and emotions. Sir Richard keeps his grandchildren (as well as his second wife) on a pretty tight leash; he’s also in the habit of changing his will with some regularity, disinheriting one or more of his potential heirs while returning others to favor. This is always a dangerous pastime in a classic English mystery, so when Sir Richard announces that he is now angry enough to disinherit ALL of his squabbling relatives, it really doesn’t surprise the reader to find Sir Richard meeting an untimely end pretty quickly, courtesy of some particularly nasty poison. Scotland Yard’s Inspector Cockrill investigates and realizes that the murderer must be one of a small group of people, most of them being part of Sir Richard’s family. And as the investigation drags on, relations among the family members deteriorate, with plenty of accusations being hurled as nerves fray. Then too, with World War II going on around them and England being bombed nightly, the war itself will play a critical role in finding a solution to the murder.

As usual in a mystery by Christianna Brand, we are treated to some excellent and quite memorable characters, and it's harrowing to watch as they accuse each other of murder - and do so in very believable ways. Inspector Cockrill is on hand to sort the information and try to make sense out of the mysteries, but, as usual in Brand's books, Cockie makes mistakes - and those will have consequences, too.

The Crooked Wreath is available in e-book formats. Under this title and also as Suddenly at his Residence, you may find copies from your favorite mystery bookstore. When Brand is good, she is very good indeed - and she is very good in The Crooked Wreath. 

From the Vault: "Clutch of Constables"

If my calendar is correct, we are now in the so-called "dog days" of summer, when many of us try to get away from the stress of our everyday lives for a little while. Sometimes, our plans may go a bit awry. Certainly that's what happens to Agatha Troy - the wife of Scotland Yard Superintendent Roderick Alleyn, the creation of author Ngaio Marsh. Troy sets out for a peaceful river cruise through the English countryside - and finds it is not as peaceful as she might have hoped. It's about those murders...

The result is Clutch of Constables, one of my favorite books by an author who is still widely considered to have been one of the so-called Crime Queens of the Golden Age. Clutch of Constables was written fairly late in Marsh's career, but I think it contains some of her best work. I first reviewed it on the podcast more than nine years ago. Here's a slightly edited version of what I had to say about the book.

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“For five days, you step out of time.” So said the advertisement for a five-day cruise on an English river, through beautiful countryside. It seemed like a wonderful idea at the time. It was a little less appealing after the bodies began turning up. The story is Clutch of Constables, by Ngaio Marsh.

I think Ngaio Marsh was one of the finest classic mystery authors. Her books, all of them featuring Scotland Yard detective Roderick Alleyn, provide interesting puzzles, and – perhaps even more important – believable and memorable characters, and they are set in fascinating locations.

I like Clutch of Constables for those reasons – and because it is a little different in its focus from most of the Marsh novels: for much of the book, the central character is not Superintendent Alleyn – it is his wife, Agatha Troy Alleyn. I have always been very fond of the books that feature Troy – she is a fascinating character. An artist, and, from the description, clearly one of the most successful and accomplished painters in England, Troy becomes involved in a few of her husband’s cases – always, it must be said, to his absolute horror.

In Clutch of Constables, Troy’s involvement comes about quite innocently. Having just opened a one-woman show of her paintings, she is about to get on a train to go home to London when she sees a hand-printed card in the window of a riverboat cruise line office: a place has become available on a five-day cruise along the river Trent. Listen to how beautifully Marsh sets this up:

She read the card:

M. V. Zodiac. Last-minute cancellation. A single-berth cabin is available for this day’s sailing. Apply within.

Placed about the window were photographs of M.V. Zodiac in transit and of the places she visited. In the background hung a map of the river and the canals that articulated with it: Ramsdyke, Bullsdyke. Crossdyke. A five-day cruise from Norminster to Longminster and back was offered. Passengers slept and ate on board. The countryside, said a pamphlet that lay on the floor, was rich in historical associations. Someone with a taste for fanciful phrases had added “For five days you step out of time.”

She had had a grueling summer working for her one-man show, and was due in a few weeks to see it launched in Paris and afterwards New York. Her husband was in America and her son was taking a course at Grenoble. She thought of the long train journey south, the gritty arrival, the summer stifle of London and the empty stuffy house. It seemed to her, afterwards, that she behaved like a child in a fairytale. She opened the door, and as she did so she heard something say within her head: “For five days I step out of time.”

And so, Marsh sets up Troy Alleyn for this cruise. Her husband, as noted, is in America. Marsh uses a very clever device to keep him involved in the story: she has Superintendent Alleyn using this case as an example in a lecture he is giving to a class of police students. Each chapter opens with a brief portion of the lecture, in which Alleyn sets up what is happening, what he knew and when he knew it, and what he learned in letters from Troy. But it is Troy who will carry the first two-thirds of the book before her husband, back from America, moves in to investigate what, by then, will be horrifying developments.

For Troy quickly discovers that something very peculiar seems to be going on. There are only eight passengers and three crew members, yet Troy feels that something is not quite right – there are undercurrents she does not fully understand. This is most noticeable to her when she makes an offhand remark to her fellow passengers as the ship cruises through countryside made familiar to artists and art lovers by the paintings of John Constable. At one point, as she looks out over a landscape that incorporates many of the features of Constable’s art, she observes, “Oh look! The place is swarming with Constables. Everywhere you look – a perfect clutch of them.”

And suddenly she feels that some of the other passengers – well, at least ONE of them – was completely taken aback by what she had said. And she also felt that her explanation – that she was talking about the artist Constable and not the police constables – seemed to make the situation worse.

From that point, the voyage becomes more and more disturbing to Troy – and eventually to her husband. There are murders. Theft. There may be art forgeries involved as well.

It’s a marvelous book. As I observed earlier, Marsh has a genius for creating believable characters, and her descriptions are usually perfect in giving the reader a good sense of the personalities involved. For example I love the image presented by this introductory description:

The first to alight was an undistinguished man of about forty. Under a belted raincoat he wore a pinstriped suit which, revealed, would surely prove abominable. His shirt was mauve and his tie a brightish pink.

It goes on – but you get the idea. Clutch of Constables is a thoroughly literate, enjoyable romp through the English countryside, in the presence of a fine artist, her police husband, and a curious collection of travelers that includes one particularly unpleasant murderer. I think it is one of Ngaio Marsh’s finest books. And, best of all, it remains in print – so what are you waiting for? Get it and enjoy it.

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If you would like to listen to the original podcast, please click here.

Next week: Death and the Chaste Apprentice, by Robert Barnard

"The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books"

Short version of this review: if you enjoy traditional mysteries - especially British traditional mysteries from before, during and after the Golden Age - you must have this book.

Now for some details about The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books, by Martin Edwards. The book, meant as a companion and guide to the British Library Crime Classics series, will be published at the beginning of August in the United States by Poisoned Pen Press, which provided me with an advance copy for this review. It is already available in the U. K. The book is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the complete review by clicking here.

Let’s start by discussing some things which The Story of Classic Crimes is NOT. It’s not a list of the 100 best mysteries ever written – I’m not sure why anyone would even bother trying to compile such a list (though they do!) and I doubt that any two readers would come up with identical lists. It’s not a list of 100 mysteries you should read before you die. It’s neither a listing of 100 books that will almost certainly be familiar to its readers nor one that contains only obscure and hidden gems.

What it IS, is a book with far more than 100 mysteries to discuss, augmented by a list of 100 mysteries which were influential enough, or interesting enough, or important enough to have a significant impact on the genre and on the audience. The author and list-compiler is Martin Edwards, a mystery writer himself as well as a mystery historian and the president of England's prestigious Detection Club.  The book is divided into 24 chapters, presenting the history of the genre in a more-or-less orderly examination of how the classic mystery story has evolved, with plenty of examples. Thus, for example, the book opens by looking back at the earliest detective fiction, as it began to appear from early authors, such as Poe, through Doyle and his contemporaries and rivals. The next chapter looks at the birth of the Golden Age. There is a chapter on the Great Detectives – that’s capitalized, by the way, Edwards means “the Great Detectives” with an emphasis on "great." We see how some authors began playing a game with their readers, challenging them to beat the fictional detective to a solution, providing them with clues of varying degrees of fairness. There are chapters devoted to the different types of mysteries that evolved –miraculous murders, the presence of evil, country house murders, crimes rooted in psychology and character, and so forth.

The focus here is on the British detective story; the Americans and a handful of authors from Europe are given a couple of chapters later in the book, but this is primarily an in-depth look at the Golden Age of British detective fiction.

While there are dozens of books cited in the course of Edwards’s history, the most interesting – to me, at least – are the eponymous hundred books which are presented in some depth as examples for the books discussed in each chapter. Edwards provides  each book with a brief, spoiler-free outline of the plot and some interesting and relevant facts about its author. I consider myself reasonably well-versed in classic mystery fiction, but I am amazed at the number of titles – and authors – who were entirely new to me. 

If you’re getting the idea that I am extremely enthusiastic about The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books, by Martin Edwards, I can assure you that I am indeed. If you enjoy traditional mysteries, and if you have read (or plan to read) the series of books now being re-published by the British Library, this is an indispensable, informative – and highly entertaining – book.

From the Vault: "The Four Just Men"

I have said here - frequently - that I'm not much of a fan of today's thrillers. That's not meant as a putdown of those thrillers or of readers who enjoy them - they're just not where my own tastes lead me. I do admit something of a weakness for classic thrillers, particularly those from around the Golden Age - thrillers of the sort that writers such as Edgar Wallace churned out with astonishing frequency. Perhaps the quintessential Wallace thriller was his first: The Four Just Men. On the podcast a decade ago, I spelled out some of the things I enjoyed about that book and the others like it:

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During the early years of the 20^th Century, Edgar Wallace was one of the most prolific and most popular mystery authors. The author of 175 novels – and a wide variety of other plays and stories as well, Wallace is remembered today mostly as the man who wrote the first draft of the screenplay for the original King Kong, completed shortly before his death in 1932. But there was a great deal more to Edgar Wallace than that biography of a giant ape. Today, we’ll look at the novel that really began his career – The Four Just Men.

How popular was Edgar Wallace? Wikipedia cites Wallace’s publisher in the 1920s, who said that Wallace was the author of one quarter of all books read in England. As an author, Wallace was able to churn out books at a tremendous speed. Many of them were pretty much written to formula – usually, in his detective stories, there was a young woman in trouble, a man regarded as a sinister character who would turn out to be the true hero, and always a truly evil and memorable villain. Wallace wrote very few series about individual characters, though he did create the very popular Inspector J. G. Reeder. But the most enduring of his early creations, surely, were the Four Just Men.

Actually, there were only three just men – the fourth was added for the very first thriller novel that Wallace ever wrote. The Four Just Men certainly marks the origin of the modern thriller novel. It is about a group of men who – not to put too fine a point on it – carry out vigilante murders in the name of justice, killing criminals who cannot be touched by the law.

Certainly in this first novel, the men are working outside the law: they threaten the life of Britain’s Foreign Minister if he insists on pushing a particular law through Parliament that would force Britain to send certain exiles back to a sure death in their native lands. While the foreign minister is set up as a fairly sympathetic character, there is never any question in Wallace’s mind – or the reader’s – that the Four Just Men are justified in their position and in their willingness to use violence to achieve their end. The novel, then, is set up as a thriller: will the four be able to carry out their well-advertised plan, or will the minister relent. For the four make it very clear that they regard the murder of the minister as a last resort, referring to him as an otherwise honorable man.

And so we are treated to a cat-and-mouse game of international intrigue, with very high stakes on both sides. The minister honestly believes his bill is necessary because Britain has made promises to some of its international allies; the Four just Men believe just as honestly that the bill is an invitation to chaos and murder and that only they can prevent its passage.

Throughout, they justify their actions in terms which – in today’s age of terrorist killings and intrigues – could horrify. For example, the leader of the group – an Englishman named Manfred – explains their position this way, to the fourth man who has been recruited for this job because of his special talents – not revealed or explained until the end of the book. Manfred says:

"You kill for benefit; we kill for justice, which lifts us out of the ruck of professional slayers. When we see an unjust man oppressing his fellows; when we see an evil thing done against the good God" – Thery crossed himself – "and against man – and know that by the laws of man this evildoer may escape punishment – we punish."

In fairness to Wallace, his characters are not merely cardboard cutouts – at least not in The Four Just Men. He makes his potential victim, the Foreign Minister, very human and quite fairly states his position, explaining why he will not withdraw the bill in question, thus saving his own life:

"I have gone too far," he went on, raising his hand to check Falmouth’s appeal. "I have got beyond fear. I have even got beyond resentment; it is now to me a question of justice. Am I right in introducing a law that will remove from this country colonies of dangerously intelligent criminals, who, whilst enjoying immunity from arrest, urge ignorant men forward to commit acts of violence and treason? If I am right, the Four Just Men are wrong. Or are they right: is this measure an unjust thing, an act of tyranny, a piece of barbarism dropped into the very centre of twentieth-century thought, an anachronism? If these men are right, then I am wrong. So it has come to this, that I have to satisfy my mind as to the standard of right and wrong that I must accept – and I accept my own."

Now remember, that is spoken by someone placed by the author in the position of being a potential target. If our sympathies are intended to be with the Four Just Men – and they are – then that passage, among many others, reminds us of the human cost and principles behind the battle.

Most of the novel, of course, deals with the efforts by police to keep the murder from taking place – and on the preparations made by the Four Just Men to carry out their crime. Can they do it? Well, the novel is readily available – still in print and still read, more than a century after its initial publication. So I invite you to find the answer for yourself – and, in the process, to enjoy this very early thriller, The Four Just Men, by Edgar Wallace, with fascinating characters and ingenious plot twists.

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To listen to the original podcast, please click here.

The Four Just Men, long out of copyright and even online in free editions, is now available in both paper and electronic editions which also include the other novels and stories which Wallace wrote about the Just Men, often with added notation. They're all pretty enjoyable (and the Just Men even wind up on the side of the authorities in later books). Details here from Amazon.com.

Next week: A Clutch of Constables, by Ngaio Marsh.

"The Case of William Smith"

“She puts things together – things you don’t notice when you’re saying them – you don’t think they’re going to mean anything to anyone else. She puts them together and she’s got something you didn’t mean to tell her.”

The speaker is talking about Miss Maud Silver, the first-rate "private enquiry agent" created by author Patricia Wentworth. Miss Silver is often compared to Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. The primary difference between them may be that Miss Silver is a professional investigator, where Miss Marple is a gifted amateur. Miss Silver looks like the stereotypical "little old lady," sitting in a corner of the room, busily knitting, while listening to people - particularly suspects in a murder case - reveal their secrets through gossip. Miss Silver's talents are on display in the strange story of the man known as "William Smith," in a book with the rather prosaic title, The Case of William Smith. It's the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the entire review by clicking here.

William Smith - we may as well call him by that name - had awakened in a German military hospital as a prisoner of war during the final years of World War II. He knew nothing of his life prior to that awakening. He did have a British identity disk which said he was “William Smith,” but there really wasn’t any proof one way or the other. As a prisoner of the Germans in World War II, he managed to survive the living death of the concentration camps. After eventually being liberated, he returned to London - he was an English soldier, after all - still with no idea about who he really was. As a skilled craftsman in wood carving - another talent he had obviously developed in his previous life - he got a job making beautiful and intricate toys for children.

And then some unusual things began happening. There were a couple of deaths – people apparently tripping and falling in front of buses. It happened to William Smith, more than once, though he survived. And it bothered Frank Abbott, a Scotland Yard detective who happened to witness one of those attacks. Frank Abbott suggested to William Smith that it might be a very good idea for him to consult an expert – a woman who appeared to be just an inconsequential little old lady – but one who could boast an astounding history of success as a "private enquiry agent." And so Miss Silver becomes involved in the case of William Smith. 

Miss Silver presumes that the attacks against Smith are happening because someone from the young man’s lost past has seen – and recognized – him and finds him a threat. She discovers that a number of recent attacks against other people seem to be linked very closely with the one on Bill (I think we can refer to him familiarly now, don't you). So she devotes her energy to uncovering Bill’s past – using her detective skills very cleverly indeed. She also realizes that Bill and the people around him – including the young woman who loves him – are in grave danger until the mystery can be resolved.

I have a confession to make: I’m in love with Maud Silver. Between 1928 and 1961, Patricia Wentworth wrote more than thirty novels featuring her. I think The Case of William Smith is one of the best of them. I suggest you read it and see if you don’t fall in love with Miss Silver too. At the moment, it seems to be most readily available as an e-book, but there seem to be plenty of inexpensive second-hand copies floating around. It's worth the effort.

From the Vault: "Detection by Gaslight"

Lovers of traditional, plot-and-puzzle oriented mysteries generally point to the Golden Age of Detective Fiction when they speak of books which they find most enjoyable. It's worth noting that by the time of the Golden Age, detective stories (in one form or another) had been around since the mid-nineteenth century. On this "From the Vault" feature last week, we looked at a very good collection of stories featuring the rivals of Sherlock Holmes. There's more where those came from, to be sure. Nearly a decade ago, I reviewed another excellent anthology of early mystery stories called Detection by Gaslight, edited by Douglas G. Greene. Here's what I had to say about the book in my original review on the Classic Mysteries podcast (which I have updated to bring availability and publication information up to date):

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 Come time traveling with me today. We’re going to go back more than a century and visit London – the London of the final years of Queen Victoria's reign and, after her, Edwardian London. A London where smog and pollution led to the kind of pea-soup fogs that made it possible to get lost in a narrow street, and the activities of a Jack the Ripper were hidden from prying eyes. A London visible only by gaslight. But a London where fictional detectives were welcome – beginning with the greatest of them, Sherlock Holmes. It was Detection by Gaslight – and an anthology of those stories, edited by Douglas G. Greene, is our subject today on Classic Mysteries.

The stories in “Detection by Gaslight” deal with a particular time period – the Victorian and early Edwardian era, a period that Greene considers the first Golden Age of British mysteries. It began with Sherlock Holmes, and lasted for perhaps 25 or 30 years. And the 14 stories contained in Detection by Gaslight feature some of the most interesting detectives of the period – and some of the more noteworthy authors.

The volume begins – as I suppose any collection of detective stories from this period must begin – with one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. The one chosen for this anthology is “The Adventure of The Copper Beeches,” which, as Greene notes, was the last story in the first Holmes collection. It features some fine detective work by Holmes, as he and Watson rescue a young woman from a most peculiar situation in a country estate. I have always been partial to this particular story, because it is the one in which Holmes sets forth his theory about country homes. Responding to Watson’s enthusiasm for the beautiful countryside, Holmes says to him:

“You look at these scattered houses and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there."

"Good heavens," I cried, "who would associate crime with these dear old homesteads?"

"They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside."

The thoughts of Sherlock Holmes. And think back over the mysteries you have read over the year, set in isolated country houses or remote villages. It is the same observation, for example, which you will find from Miss Marple in her little village of St. Mary Mead.

But back to Detection by Gaslight. After the Holmes story, we are given 13 more stories, by a series of authors that includes Rudyard Kipling and G. K. Chesterton. Some of the stories, to be honest, are not what we would expect from the standard detective story. There are excursions into the supernatural – Kipling’s “The Return of Imray,” for instance, relies on a ghost to point out some of the clues. But there are more than enough fascinating detective characters to keep us going.

That would include, for example, Baroness Orczy’s detective character, the Man in the Corner. He was, as Greene says, the first true armchair detective, for he sits in the corner in a restaurant, tying and untying endless knots in a piece of string while he solves mysteries that baffle other observers. Ellery Queen also noted, by the way, that the man in the corner actually aged with the passage of time – in the first volume of stories about him, published in 1909, he was known as The Man in the Corner, but in the second volume, which appeared 17 years later, he is referred to as The Old Man in the Corner. The story in this anthology, “The York Mystery,” deals with a murder with two principal suspects – neither of whom, as it turns out, could have committed the crime.

Chesterton’s Father Brown is represented here by “The Eye of Apollo,” a nasty little murder solved by the nondescript and incredibly shrewd priest.

Austin Freeman, the creator of Dr. Thorndyke, is the author of an unusual story called “The Dead Hand.” It is not a Thorndyke story – rather it is an inverted detective story. The reader witnesses the crime and the criminal at the beginning, and the remainder of the story hinges on how the investigators are able to link the events with the perpetrators.

Jacques Futrelle’s detective, “The Thinking Machine,” is able to think his way through another murder case called “The Tragedy of the Life Raft.” Through a series of clues – overlooked, of course, by the official investigators – the thinking machine is able to unravel a case where the murderer would seem to have disappeared in front of witnesses.

There are fourteen of these stories in all, and they present a very wide variety of styles and subjects, having in common only their general background as Victorian or Edwardian mysteries. Douglas G. Greene provides a fine introduction, as well as individual notes for each of the stories, giving us more of an insight into the authors and their work beyond the individual examples given here.

As I have said before in this series, I love Sherlock Holmes – but if you’re not familiar with some of his contemporaries, or with the authors who rivaled Conan Doyle, then let me recommend Detection by Gaslight: 14 Victorian Detective Stories, edited by Douglas G. Greene. The stories are the perfect companion for a foggy night. The anthology is available in e-book formats, but I see that Amazon's specialty book dealers have a fair number of second-hand paperback editions available as well.

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To listen to the original podcast version of the review, click here.

Next week: The Four Just Men, by Edgar Wallace.

"The Incredible Crime," by Lois Austen-Leigh

The "country house" mystery was a very recognizable sub-genre of mystery fiction during England's Golden Age of Detective fiction. So, for that matter, was the academic mystery, set in or around a prominent university. Combine the two and you might end up with the book we're reviewing today on the Classic Mysteries podcast, The Incredible Crime: A Cambridge Mystery, by Lois Austen-Leigh, originally published in 1931. It has just been republished as part of the British Library Crime Classics series, which is being published in the United States by Poisoned Pen Press, who made a copy available to me for this review.

Lois Austen-Leigh wrote four books during the Golden Age. The Incredible Crime was the first of these.  It deals with an investigation into drug smuggling that may involve senior professors, administrators and staff members at Prince’s College, Cambridge, on the one hand and, on the other, the aristocratic members of a distinguished and ancient family. The central character, Prudence Pinsent, is the daughter of the Master of Prince's College; she is also the cousin of the very aristocratic Lord Wellende, whom Prudence is visiting for a few days' hunting. (Be forewarned: a great deal of time is spent describing the traditional British fox hunt in glowing terms.) On her way to Lord Wellende's family home,  Prudence meets a young coast guard officer, Captain Studde, who is trying to track down the source of a very powerful illicit drug. As he explains to Prudence:

“I can’t really tell you, Prudence,…what an awful thing this drug is; they tell me its power is simply superhuman; taken in one way, it gives the most lovely sensations of peace and well-being, it stimulates the brain to an incredible extent, and then when after a short time he can’t give it up, it degrades a man into nothing more than a low, criminal beast. It ought never to exist.”

“It sounds awful; I never somehow thought such things really could exist.”

“They not only exist, they are among us; and I think, Prudence…friends of yours are handling that stuff.”

So Prudence finds herself deeply involved – rather against her will – in the search for the smugglers; a search which might prove to be quite dangerous, as the smugglers appear to be willing to kill, if necessary, to protect their trade.

It is an entertaining and unusual story being told here by an author with a very good sense of humor. The book begins with Prudence, who has been reading a lurid mystery, throwing her book across the room:

“What im-possible…in-credible…unutterable bilge; and that…is modern detective fiction!”

"There is nothing stranger in fiction than there is in real life," said a sententious voice.

“Rot! When you go to stay in a country-house, you don’t step on corpses or meet blood trickling down the front stairs.”

Which is certainly an interesting way to begin a mystery set, for the most part, in a country house.

Prudence, as readers will discover, is a strong-minded and strong-willed young woman. And as she becomes involved in the mystery of the smuggling business – and tries to determine whether the aristocratic members of her family or the distinguished dons of Prince’s College may be involved in a trade which is so destructive to other people – she will uncover secrets perhaps better left hidden. 

The author, Lois Austen-Leigh, is said to have been the granddaughter of Jane Austen's favorite nephew; certainly she writes with wit and style. The new edition from Poisoned Pen Press includes an introduction by Kirsten T. Saxton, professor of English at Mills College in California.