From the Vault: "The Dream Detective"

I went digging in the Classic Mysteries vault again and came up with a rather unusual one - by an author widely popular in his time, but now regarded as politically incorrect. What makes this mystery unusual, however, is the oddness of its central character - a gentleman named Moris Klaw, the person whose style of detection is summed up in the title of the collection of stories in which he stars: The Dream Detective, by Sax Rohmer. The book was published in 1920. I admit that a taste for Rohmer's rather lurid brand of fiction is a character weakness on my part, and I'm fully prepared to revel in it. Here's the review about it that I posted nearly a decade ago on the Classic Mysteries podcast - as always, somewhat edited:

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When the detective story first really caught hold of the public imagination, during, say, the first quarter of the 20^th century, a great many detectives were created, and they struggled to build their own followings. Authors would try to make their characters unique, giving them memorable characteristics, whether those were physical qualities, or their methods of detection, or the kinds of cases they attracted. So we were given characters such as Carnacki, the ghost detective, who investigated the occult and often tangled with the supernatural. There was the Thinking Machine, Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, the brilliant logician. There was Baroness Orczy’s “The Old Man in the Corner,” a pure armchair detective. There was Max Carrados, the blind detective. And then there was Moris Klaw, a truly unique individual who used his own dreams to help solve mysteries. He starred in one book of stories, published in 1920, called The Dream Detective, by Sax Rohmer.

When Sax Rohmer is remembered today – if he is remembered at all – it is as the creator of Dr. Fu Manchu, that politically incorrect evil genius whose stories were wildly popular during the first half of the 20^th century. But Rohmer wrote a large number of other books as well, most of them with settings and/or characters best described as exotic. Few characters were more exotic than Moris Klaw – even the spelling is exotic. A man of fairly odd appearance, Moris Klaw is a dealer in antiques – at least, we are told, he is the proprietor of an odd little shop in what was then one of London’s worst neighborhoods, the dock areas of Wapping. Klaw has trained himself, however, as a dream detective – that is, he uses his dreams to create in his mind a psychic photograph of the thoughts of the villain he is seeking.

As explained in the course of the ten stories that make up The Dream Detective, Klaw has a theory he calls The Cycle of Crime. Here is how it is described by the narrator of the story called “The Case of the Headless Mummies” (the titles by themselves are worth the price of admission):

I have seen his theory of the Cycle of Crime proved triumphantly time and time again; I have known him successfully to demonstrate how the history of a valuable gem or curio automatically repeats itself, subject, it would seem, to that obscure law of chance into which he had made particular inquiry. Then his peculiar power – assiduously cultivated by a course of obscure study – of recovering from the atmosphere, the ether, call it what you will, the thought-forms – the ideas thrown out by the scheming mind of the criminal he sought for – enabled him to succeed where any ordinary investigator must inevitably have failed.

Got that? Good; perhaps you can explain it to me. In practice, Klaw usually tries to sleep on the spot where the crime or other strange phenomenon has occurred, resting on what he calls an odically sterile pillow. What’s THAT? According to a 1913 Webster’s dictionary – thank you, Internet search! – “od” or “odic” would refer to an alleged force or natural power, supposed…to produce the phenomena of mesmerism and to be developed by various agencies, as by magnets, heat, light, chemical or vital action, et cetera. In practical terms, you get Moris Klaw making comments such as “I shall sleep in the museum until I reproduce the thoughts of the dead man in my mind.”

Okay. It’s all supposed to give a pseudo-scientific basis for what are, in the end, really colorful and unusual stories. Some deal with crimes, others with apparent supernatural phenomena that – in most cases – turn out to have very natural human causes. These aren’t really classic puzzle mysteries, for Moris Klaw rarely shares his clues with us until the very end – and those clues sometimes include this mental photograph he has found in his dreams, although they usually point to physical evidence against the culprit. There is one story that does appear to rely on the supernatural, but the other stories have human villains.

Sax Rohmer’s great strength was in coming up with the colorful settings and characters who peopled his stories. We spend a fair amount of time here with Egyptian mummies, for Egyptology was very much in the news in those early years of the 20^th century, as sensational finds were made by archeologists. There are ancient curses – which, in most cases, turn out to be based on the actions of very modern human characters. There are haunted houses, weapons with evil pasts, and – in one story – what appears to be the reincarnation of an Egyptian goddess. Through it all, Moris Klaw and his daughter Isis – always described as a tremendously beautiful woman who helps her father with his investigations – are the central figures in this drama. And Sax Rohmer always adds enough of an unusual touch to his stories to make them seem truly exotic – I am particularly fond of the parrot in Klaw’s shop who announces visitors by croaking, "Moris Klaw! Moris Klaw! The devil’s come for you!”

Nine of Sax Rohmer’s stories about The Dream Detective were published in book form in England in 1920; a tenth story was added for the U. S. edition in 1925. I thought the book was long out of print, but – to my surprise – Amazon.com shows a link to a hardcover edition which appears still to be available. And there are a great many used editions around, as you can see from the link above – I would add, parenthetically, that the version in my own library is a paperback published in 1966 by Pyramid, which I bought at the time for 50 cents. Those were indeed the Good Old Days. At any rate,  if you’re looking for something a little out of the ordinary, with exotic settings and a most unusual detective, try The Dream Detective, by Sax Rohmer.

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Next week: The House Without a Key, by Earl Derr Biggers

Comments

[Shay Simmons]

Open Library has an e-copy of this and I've added it to the growing pile of TBRs.

[Les Blatt]

Yes, there are copies around, Shay. I hope you enjoy the stories if/when you read them.