Classic Mysteries

The Twelve Reading Days of Christmas

For the Classic Mysteries blog and podcast this week, may I present all my readers here with a gift: a list of twelve mysteries that may help instill a bit of the Christmas spirit into the stoutest Grinch. I would hope that you'd take your list down to your favorite mystery bookstore, whose staff, I'm sure, would be happy to help you fill your shopping basket with these books. Believe me, those bookstores really can use your support. Another reason for me to celebrate: this is podcast # 600 - give or take a couple of the early ones. We're at about 11 1/2 years of doing the podcast; the blog came a year or so later.

That said, and in an effort to keep the size of this post to a level where it really is readable, let me urge you to listen to today's podcast (#600!!), which contains brief descriptions of each of the twelve books, along with other useful information about the Twelve Reading Days of Christmas. Then, as you wish, please look at the links below. For each book, I have provided a link to my original podcast review. For all but one of them, I have also provided a link to each book's original post on this blog. The exception is Ngaio Marsh's Tied Up in Tinsel, which was reviewed on the podcast before the blog began, meaning I have nowhere to link.

This is being posted about two weeks ahead of the holiday, so I'm hoping many of you will take advantage of the opportunities to add to your collections and to enjoy what I suppose is a more murderous way to greet the season. May we all have something to celebrate during this season.

The twelve books:

1. Agatha Christie, Murder for Christmas   click for podcast     click for blog post

 

2. Rex Stout, "Christmas Party." In And Four to Go.     click for podcast     click for blog post

 

3. Georgette Heyer, Envious Casca     click for podcast     click for blog post

 

4. Nicholas Blake, Thou Shell of Death     click for podcast     click for blog post

 

5. T. Jefferson Farjeon, Mystery in White     click for podcast     click for blog post

 

6. Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet     click for podcast     click for blog post

 

7. Ngaio Marsh, Tied Up in Tinsel     click for podcast     Blog post unavailable. Sorry!

 

8. Charlotte Macleod, Rest You Merry     click for podcast     click for blog post

 

9. Mavis Doriel Hay, The Santa Klaus Murder     click for podcast     click for blog post

 

10. Francis Duncan, Murder for Christmas     click for podcast     click for blog post

 

11. Martin Edwards (ed.), Crimson Snow     click for podcast     click for blog post

 

12. John Mortimer, A Rumpole Christmas     click for podcast     click for blog post

I do hope you'll get the chance to read and enjoy at least a few of these. I'm off to celebrate with the world's friendliest mouse at Disney World. See you next week!

"The Second Confession"

A couple of months ago, when I brought my old podcast of Rex Stout's And Be a Villain back from the Classic Mysteries vault, I promised to work on reviews of the other two novels which provide the second and third parts of what Nero Wolfe fans refer to as the "Zeck Trilogy." And Be a Villain was the first book in a three-part series, in which Nero Wolfe finds himself facing a man named Arnold Zeck, the kind of super-villain made popular by the work of many other authors, such as Sax Rohmer, Edgar Wallace or "Sapper." Today, let's talk about the second part, The Second Confession, first published in 1949. (We'll look at the third and final part, In the Best Families, next week.) 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.

It begins with a very rich businessman, James U. Sperling, who wants to hire Nero Wolfe to find evidence that would prove that the man his daughter wants to marry, Louis Rony, is a card-carrying member of the Communist Party U.S.A. Wolfe gets a phone call from Arnold Zeck ordering the detective to drop the case - but Wolfe, of course, never takes orders from anyone. Wolfe sends Archie Goodwin to the Sperling home to pursue his investigation. What he finds is that Rony may or may not be a Communist – but he certainly appears to have close ties with Arnold Zeck’s criminal organization. 

Wolfe's investigation, inevitably, draws Zeck into it – and Zeck issues a warning – or, really, a blunt command to Wolfe: abandon your investigation of Louis Rony. Wolfe does not take kindly to it. And the result is a show of force by Zeck’s organization. In order to continue his work on the case, Wolfe and Archie are forced to change some of the things they do – among other things, Wolfe actually leaves the brownstone where he lives and works in order to investigate a critical point. Archie notes:

“He was not really smashing a precedent. It was true that he had an unbreakable rule not to stir from his office to see anyone on business, but what had happened that night had taken this out of the category of business and listed it under struggle for survival.”

Certainly Wolfe and Zeck appear headed for a showdown. But a murder dramatically shifts the focus of Wolfe and Archie’s investigation. And the Zeck story line continues to play a significant role in the book, though it is no longer – for now – a life-and-death struggle. Instead, the focus returns to the activities of the Communist Party U. S. A. – and Wolfe’s closing gambit in the book successfully uncovers a traitor as well as a murderer.

The Second Confession is, as I noted earlier, one of my favorite books about Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. The plotting is more complex than it is in many other books in the series, and Archie’s usual wisecracking, while it is certainly still evident, seems somewhat more subdued when he is confronted by the reality of Arnold Zeck. Next week, we’ll talk about how that confrontation will play out.

While most of Rex Stout's books about Wolfe and Goodwin can be read in any order, I would strongly suggest reading these three novels in order - begin with And Be a Villain, then read The Second Confession, and finish up with In the Best Families. These links go to each of the books independently. However, back in the 1970s, Bantam published a single volume, called Triple Zeck, which contained all three of the novels in a single volume. It's long out of print, but Amazon's independent booksellers (and, I'm pretty sure, your own favorite indie book stores) appear to have a number of copies available, if you would rather get them in that format.

From the Vault: "The Tuesday Club Murders"

This week, we're enjoying ourselves at the Malice Domestic conference, an event which - among other things - honors the name and memory of Agatha Christie in its Agatha Awards. In keeping with the spirit of this weekend, then, we have made another trip to the Classic Mysteries vault and found, for your enjoyment, some of Miss Jane Marple's earliest crimes. Perhaps I ought to clarify that: Miss Marple, of course, did not commit the crimes - in fact, she solved a whole series of crimes, mysteries which were puzzling a lot of other people including some very high ranking policemen. She did so in a series of short stories by Agatha Christie, known as The Tuesday Club Murders. A quick check online reveals that this all-too-brief anthology of thirteen stories is fairly difficult to find by itself, but the stories are included in collections of all the Miss Marple short stories, and your mystery bookseller should have no trouble finding one for you. Here's what I had to say about The Tuesday Club Murders when I first reviewed it nearly a decade ago. As always, it has been updated slightly, mostly to talk about availability:

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They must have been interesting meetings – those Tuesday evening get-togethers to talk about unsolved mysteries. What an interesting group: you had an ex-commissioner of Scotland Yard, a doctor, a distinguished author, and several other people, all of whom met regularly to talk about baffling cases. They often came up with interesting and provocative solutions – the only trouble being that their solutions were wrong. For the right answers, they had to rely on just one member of the group, an elderly woman described – rather unfairly – by another member as “the typical old maid of fiction.” Yet she was the one person in the group who came up with the correct answers every time. Nice work for Miss Jane Marple – in The Tuesday Club Murders, by Agatha Christie.

A few weeks ago, I spoke of another collection of Agatha Christie short stories, featuring the exploits of Hercule Poirot in The Labors of Hercules. A friend of mine suggested that it might be a good idea to talk about some of Miss Marple’s shorter cases as well, for she appears in twenty short stories. Thirteen of them were in the first collection of Miss Marple short stories, called The Tuesday Club Murders when they were published in the United States. The original title in Britain was The Thirteen Problems. According to Mark Campbell’s excellent book about Agatha Christie, the first six of them were written in 1928 for Sketch Magazine, which make these the first stories about Miss Marple, predating her first book-length appearance in 1930 in Murder at the Vicarage. Christie wrote an additional seven stories to round out the collection, and The Thirteen Problems was published in 1931.

Miss Marple’s friends and acquaintances in the Tuesday club tend to be a little dismissive of Miss Marple. After all, what experience can this little old lady possibly have of crime and violence? But Miss Marple points out that her long experience of life in a small village has given her a great deal of insight into human behavior. And she uses that insight to draw parallels between the small everyday mysteries of village life and the kind of criminal activity that may lie behind the mysteries being tackled by the club and its members. Does that mean, as Sir Henry Clithering says in one of the stories, that Miss Marple’s little village is a hotbed of crime and vice?

Not at all, Miss Marple assures him. I’m sure I never said anything of the kind. The only thing I ever said was that human nature is much the same in a village as anywhere else, only one has opportunities and leisure for seeing it at closer quarters.

So Miss Marple puts that knowledge of human nature to work in these thirteen cases, solving puzzles that occasionally had baffled police and other observers. She explains the mysterious death of a salesman’s wife. She solves the mystery of a seemingly impossible murder at a mysterious house dedicated to a Phoenician goddess. A wife is drowned – and Miss Marple finds the solution in a painting of bloodstains. An old lady dies in a room where the painted flowers on the wall somehow change colors. An architect is accused of murdering a young woman. A woman appears to have murdered her traveling companion for no reason. Thirteen cases, all told. Thirteen ingenious solutions by Miss Marple.

Through it all, Christie plays quite fairly with us – though I will admit to having been surprised by many of the plot twists and the ultimate solutions; Christie deserved her reputation for pinning her fictional murders on the least likely suspects. But when Miss Marple draws her parallels with the everyday mysteries of village life to solve these ingenious crimes, we are forced to admit that, for the most part, we have been treated quite fairly by the author.

It’s also worth noting, of course, that the short story form has advantages for those of us who love to read, even though we are pressed for time. A good, page-turning novel is a delight, to be sure – but short stories can fill in when we have a few minutes to spare. These puzzles provide a lot of mental stimulation, and I find them a great deal of fun. I assure you that a Tuesday evening or any other day for that matter spent with Miss Marple and Agatha Christie will never be a waste of your time.

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

Next: The Poisoned Chocolates Case, by Anthony Berkeley

From the Vault: "Smallbone Deceased"

If the entry about author Michael Gilbert in the Golden Age of Detection Wiki is correct, one of the many features worth mentioning about Gilbert is that he had, at one point in his legal career, Raymond Chandler as a client. I do wonder what Chandler, that dour and hard-boiled creator of Philip Marlowe, might have thought of Gilbert's rather light-hearted, distinctly Golden-Age-style Smallbone Deceased (1950), a clever and witty mystery that is generally quite highly regarded by genre historians and critics. It looks as though it has slipped out of print again, due mostly to the unfortunate closing of the Rue Morgue Press, but Amazon, at least, lists several dozen copies floating around out there, most at reasonable prices. Here's what I had to say about Smallbone Deceased in my review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, some nine years ago (edited primarily to address the question of its availability):

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Here’s a problem which gives a new meaning to the phrase, “an open and shut case.” A firm of London solicitors finds the body of a missing client crammed into a large, hermetically-sealed deed box in their own office. It’s the story told in Smallbone Deceased, by Michael Gilbert.

Michael Gilbert’s work has been honored by other mystery writers and fans in both the United States and his native Britain. Smallbone Deceased is widely regarded as his masterpiece – a tightly plotted, fairly clued puzzle, written with a great deal of humor, and featuring some of Gilbert’s more interesting characters.

The story begins in the offices of a firm of London solicitors – a term which, in the U. K., refers to lawyers who handle most legal matters but do not represent their clients in court. The firm of Horniman, Birley and Craine is a most respectable, if fairly small, establishment, dealing with leases, conveyances, estates, trusts and so forth. The story begins, in fact, with the search for one of the trustees for a charitable trust, whose signature is needed on an obscure legal document. The missing trustee, Marcus Smallbone, turns up, all right – quite dead, stuffed inside the hermetically-sealed box in which the papers relating to that trust were supposed to be stored. Let me add that I have some trouble visualizing the size of safe deposit box that must be involved; then again, we are told that Smallbone was not a large man.

The case is turned over to Inspector Hazlerigg, an intelligent, insightful police officer, who quickly realizes that it would be useful to have an ally inside the firm. He chooses a solicitor named Henry Bohun, who is quite intelligent and completely free of any suspicion, having been hired after the murder must have taken place. Bohun is also useful because he suffers from what is called parainsomnia – that is, he sleeps only one-and-a-half to two hours a night, giving him a great deal of time in which he can help Inspector Hazlerigg with his investigations. It is with the blessing of Scotland Yard’s assistant commissioner that Hazlerigg approaches Bohun – though the commissioner does observe, “It’s quite a good idea. Only for heaven’s sake don’t be like that mug in the detective story who confides all his best ideas to a friendly sort of character who turns out to be the murderer in Chapter Sixteen.”

At first it appears to be a very straightforward case – it’s believed that the dead man was most likely killed by the firm’s senior partner, Abel Horniman, who had himself died quite recently, presumably after the murder. But that theory quickly falls apart – particularly when there is a second murder, making it clear that they are dealing with a very live and lively killer.

All this is presented quite fairly to the reader, though Gilbert’s tongue is usually quite firmly in his cheek. There is a good deal of humor here, and it helps to lighten the overall mood caused by a couple of fairly unpleasant murders. Gilbert’s own background as a lawyer comes across fairly clearly in his explanations of some of the issues at stake.

Smallbone Deceased has been admired since it first appeared in 1950, and H. R. F. Keating included it in his list of the 100 best crime novels of all time. There is no shortage of possible suspects, and the red herrings are well and truly distributed throughout the book. But there are also legitimate and carefully placed clues. I must say that I wound up suspecting the murderer based on a fact that had been presented pretty early in the book – though, in fairness, I would have to add that I was well and truly fooled by some of the developments.

The bottom line, I think, is that if you are looking for a classic puzzle mystery, with a truly unusual premise, interesting characters, and fair play leading to a surprising but logical conclusion, then you should enjoy Michael Gilbert’s Smallbone Deceased.

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You can listen to the original audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast by clicking here.

Next week: The Journeying Boy, by Michael Innes.

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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You can listen to the original podcast in full by clicking here.

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

From the Vault: "An Excellent Mystery"

Edith Pargeter was a remarkably talented author, working in many fields and under many different names. She is best known, certainly, as "Ellis Peters," the author of a fascinating series of historical mysteries set in twelfth century England and starring a Benedictine monk named Brother Cadfael. I must admit that I am a fan of Brother Cadfael - and of Ellis Peters's remarkable writing abilities and her ability to create memorable characters. It has been a decade or more since I last read my favorite Cadfael mystery, one which fully lives up to its title, An Excellent Mystery. I have met other readers who do not care for Peters or for her books. Frankly, I can't understand it - the power of Ellis Peters's storytelling is overwhelming to me. Here, somewhat edited, is what I had to say about An Excellent Mystery after my last reading of it, fully a decade ago:

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In the summer of the year 1141, a civil war is under way in England – a war which, as is often the case in such wars, was brutal and unforgiving towards those caught between the two sides. When their own monastery is destroyed in the fighting, two Benedictine monks ride into the abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, near the border with Wales, home to Brother Cadfael, an herbalist and healer and a remarkably able detective. The monks bring with them disturbing news of the war – and a mystery that ultimately threatens the stability of the Benedictine order itself. That is at the heart of Ellis Peters’ novel, An Excellent Mystery. 

Ellis Peters was the pen name of a truly remarkable Welsh writer, Edith Pargeter. Under the name Ellis Peters, she wrote two excellent series of novels – one set in modern times, around the exploits of a Scotland Yard detective named George Felse, and the other, far better known, set more than 900 years in the past, featuring the Benedictine monk, Brother Cadfael.

I find myself at a bit of a loss here. I want to tell you enough about the story to intrigue you, and, I hope, to encourage you to find this book and read it. But I hesitate to give away very much of the plot – for this is an excellent mystery indeed, one to savor, and it is only by peeling away the many layers of the plot over the course of this book that we – and Brother Cadfael – come to understand at last the true nature of the mysteries involved here – and why they are so perilous.

Naturally, the two monks who arrive at the abbey are at the center of the mystery. One, an older man, a crusader, badly wounded in the fighting, is remembered and revered locally as a hero, a fair and just man. The other brother, a much younger man, is mute – he cannot speak. But he is totally devoted to the older monk, acting as nurse, attendant, and general assistant.

But it is clear to Cadfael that there is a deeper mystery here. And we soon learn of the apparent disappearance of the woman who was to have been married to the older monk – before he returned, gravely wounded from the crusades, and released her from her vows. All the events of the novel take place within the framework of the civil war under way in England at that time. And before the story has ended, we will find incredibly dangerous new mysteries – ones which, as I noted a moment ago, could even threaten the very existence of Cadfael’s beloved Benedictine order.

It is the writing in this book – and in the other Cadfael mysteries – which, to my mind, set it apart and mark it as great. Peters had a marvelous ear; her descriptions and insights can be breathtaking. This is the opening sentence of the book:

"August came in, that summer of 1141, tawny as a lion and somnolent and purring as a hearthside cat."

Isn’t that a marvelous image? But beyond images, Peters was a master at creating and maintaining suspense. And she plays with our emotions; I found myself moved to tears more than once by her images and the flashes of insight she provides into her characters. As with many of the Cadfael novels, An Excellent Mystery is a love story – a love story involving many people and playing out in unexpected and unpredictable ways, as the story reaches its stunning conclusion. It is also a story of faith, on many levels – for Cadfael believes deeply in his religion and in miracles.

And that is truly all I can say about this book without giving away too much.

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When last I checked, An Excellent Mystery was available in e-book formats, but there also seem to be a fair number of used print copies of the book. Your favorite mystery book specialist should be able to help you, or Amazon's used book dealers appear to have dozens of copies available. As I've said, in my opinion, An Excellent Mystery, by Ellis Peters, is true to its name – an excellent mystery indeed.

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

Next: The Father Hunt, by Rex Stout.

From the Vault: The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars

There are exceptions to every rule. I prefer to limit the books which I review on the Classic Mysteries podcast  to those still in print or otherwise readily available. Today's offering From the Vault is different. It's The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars, by Anthony Boucher, and it's sadly out of print. There do seem to be a dozen or so old paperback copies listed for sale at reasonable prices through Amazon's network of second-hand book dealers, and I'm sure you could find dealers in mystery books who would be glad to help you find a copy. Why go to all that trouble? Because (1) it's very very good, (2) it's very very Sherlockian, and (3) it's by Anthony Boucher, the author and critic for whom Bouchercon, the world's largest and oldest mystery conference, is named. It's pronounced BOW-cher, by the way, with the "bow" of "take a bow" or rhyming with "brow" or "ouch" or a tree "bough." All that being said, here's my original review of The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars, first published on the podcast nearly a decade ago.

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The game’s afoot again Watson – but this time, it’s not Sherlock Holmes, but the Baker Street Irregulars who are called upon to solve the case. And what a mystery it turns out to be. Direct from Hollywood, it’s The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars, by Anthony Boucher..

As you must guess from the title alone, this book is a particular delight to fans of the Sherlock Holmes stories – or, as the Irregulars themselves would call them, the “sacred writings.” The irregulars were – and are – a devoted group of Holmes fans, who take their name from Holmes’s "irregular" army of street urchins, who would carry out errands for him. Back in 1940, when this book was written, the irregulars included a great many famous writers and critics, such as Christopher Morley and Alexander Woollcott, among its members.

Here’s the situation: a major movie company is about to make a film based on one of the Holmes short stories. For reasons known only to Hollywood, it has picked a screenwriter who is not only a mystery author of what we will politely call the blood-and-guts school…in addition, he hates everything about Holmes and about people who admire Holmes.

The studio receives a petition from the Baker Street Irregulars – and remember, these include influential critics and writers – demanding that this script writer be removed from the project. With the real possibility of a boycott looming over it, the studio responds by inviting members of the irregulars to come to Hollywood to supervise the making of the film.

So several leading (and fictional) members of the group go to Hollywood. Immediately, of course, there is a violent confrontation with the despised scriptwriter There are cryptic warnings – all delivered in a fashion that readers of the Holmes stories will recognize: an envelope containing dried orange pips, for example, and another with a series of drawings of what appear to be dancing men. The irregulars very quickly become involved in a murder, followed by the disappearance of the body. And, in very quick order, each of them is lured into what can only be described as an individual fantastic adventure – each based, as we will discover, on one or more of the supposedly unwritten Sherlock Holmes cases mentioned and promised in the original stories, but never delivered by Dr. Watson.

Eventually, the murder is solved. But along the way, we have a housekeeper named Mrs. Hudson and the Los Angeles Police even manage to come up with a Sergeant named Watson, so our Sherlock Holmes atmosphere is maintained on all fronts. And it’s worth noting that the ultimate clue leading to the solution will be provided by Sergeant Watson.

All of this is done in fairly high good humor, and the Holmesian references are broad enough and familiar enough to even the casual reader to make them easy to follow. In addition, Boucher writes all of this as a conventional mystery – that is, the reader is given the clues fairly in the course of the novel, though, of course, they are pretty well obscured by all the references to the Holmes stories.

Anthony Boucher's mysteries, unfortunately, are mostly forgotten today – and I think that’s a pity, because I believe he was very much a part of the American version of the “golden age” of mysteries. His plots, while convoluted – and The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars is no exception – always played fair with the reader. Boucher was a fan of Holmes – the book is dedicated to Sherlock Holmes – and there is enough to please any lover of the Holmes stories, from the most casual reader to a true Baker Street Irregular who delights in the kind of trivia that we find at the heart of the Holmesian adventures contained in this book.

Unfortunately, you’re going to have to go searching for this one – The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars is long out of print. Don’t be misled by the paperback with that title which seems to be available online – that is by a different author, and, I believe, is aimed at younger readers. If you like Sherlock Holmes, and if you are fond of a good, fair mystery story, told with more than a touch of humor, then do a little digging and find The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars, by Anthony Boucher.

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To listen to the original podcast recording, click here.

Next week: Death Lights a Candle, by Phoebe Atwood Taylor.

From the Vault: "The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars"

I am bringing this out of the vault on the same day - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - that Bouchercon begins its annual convention, this year gathering in New Orleans. For those unfamiliar with the festivities, Bouchercon is the World Mystery Convention, the oldest and largest mystery conference in the world, attracting well over a thousand people each year. This year, there are nearly 1900 people scheduled to be here. There are hundreds of authors eager to meet more than a thousand readers and fans. The conference is named for Anthony Boucher, the tremendously influential author, editor and mystery critic. He died in 1968; the first Bouchercon was held in his honor in 1970 and has been held every year since then.

It's a huge party, and it honors a most singular man. To give you some idea of his writing, here is the review I wrote about one of his truly excellent books, The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars, first published in 1940. The review is from 2007; I didn't start attending Bouchercons until 2010, so the convention isn't even mentioned in the review. More on that later.

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The game’s afoot again Watson – but this time, it’s not Sherlock Holmes, but the Baker Street Irregulars who are called upon to solve the case. And what a mystery it turns out to be!

As you must guess from the title alone, The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars, by Anthony Boucher, is a particular delight to fans of the Sherlock Holmes stories – or, as the Irregulars themselves would call them, the “sacred writings.” The irregulars were – and are – a devoted group of Holmes fans, who take their name from Holmes’s irregular army of street urchins, who would carry out errands for him. Back in 1940, when this story was written, the irregulars included a great many famous writers and critics, such as Christopher Morley and Alexander Woollcott, among its ranks.

Here’s the situation: a major movie company is about to make a film based on one of the Holmes short stories. For reasons known only to Hollywood, it has picked a screenwriter who is not only a mystery author of what we will politely call the blood-and-guts school…in addition, he hates everything about Holmes and about people who admire Holmes.

The studio receives a petition from the Baker Street Irregulars – and remember, these include influential critics and writers – demanding that this script writer be removed from the project. With the real possibility of a boycott looming over it, the studio responds by inviting members of the irregulars to come to Hollywood to supervise the making of the film.

So several leading (and fictional) members of the group go to Hollywood. Immediately, of course, there is a violent confrontation with the despised scriptwriter There are cryptic warnings – all delivered in a fashion that readers of the Holmes stories will recognize: an envelope containing dried orange pips, for example, and another with a series of drawings of what appear to be dancing men. The irregulars very quickly become involved in a murder, followed by the disappearance of the body. And, in very quick order, each of them is lured into what can only be described as an individual fantastic adventure – each based, as we will discover, on one or more of the supposedly unwritten Sherlock Holmes cases mentioned and promised in the original stories, but never delivered, by Dr. Watson.

Eventually, the murder is solved. But along the way, we have a housekeeper named Mrs. Hudson, and the Los Angeles Police even manage to come up with a Sergeant named Watson, so our Sherlock Holmes atmosphere is maintained on all fronts. And it’s worth noting that the ultimate clue leading to the solution will be provided by Sergeant Watson.

All of this is done in fairly high good humor, and the Holmesian references are broad enough and familiar enough to even the casual reader to make them easy to follow.

In addition, Boucher writes all of this as a conventional mystery – that is, the reader is given the clues fairly in the course of the novel, though, of course, they are pretty well obscured by all the references to the Holmes stories.

A word or two about Anthony Boucher: he is probably better known to readers of science fiction and fantasy than he is today to mystery readers. Boucher was one of the founding editors of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and throughout the 1950s and 60s he edited an annual collection of fine science fiction stories.

His mysteries, unfortunately, are mostly forgotten today – and I think that’s a pity, because I believe he was very much a part of the American version of the “Golden Age” of mysteries. His plots, while convoluted – and The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars is no exception – always played fair with the reader. Boucher was a fan of Holmes – the book is dedicated to Sherlock Holmes – and there is enough to satisfy anyone, from the most casual reader of the Holmes stories to a true Baker Street Irregular who delights in the kind of trivia that we find at the heart of the Holmesian adventures contained in this book.

Unfortunately, you’re going to have to go searching for this one – The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars is long out of print.

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While that last point remains true nearly a decade after I wrote it, I see that there appear to be used copies of out-of-print editions available on the market. I'd suggest talking to your favorite mystery bookseller to see if they have, or can find, a copy. If you don't have an independent mystery bookseller, you can check out Amazon's resellers or try Abe Books. It's really worth the effort.

If you'd like to see what others have had to say about The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars, click here for an article from the GAD Wiki. If you want to know more about Boucher and his contributions to both mystery and science fiction, click here for a number of critical posts from the same source.

If you would like to listen to my original review (most of which appears above), you can do so by clicking here.

Next week: The Doorbell Rang, by Rex Stout.

New Feature: From the Vault

               

A major milestone is looming ahead for Classic Mysteries. Sometime near the end of this year, I'll be posting my 500th review on the Classic Mysteries podcast. That means the podcast has been providing a weekly review of a mystery classic every week for 9 1/2 years.

The podcast began in May, 2007, and the blog followed in June 2008. It's been a pretty good run so far, and I intend to keep going for a while. But it occurs to me that I reviewed a LOT of my own personal favorite classic mysteries in that first year or so - about 70 books in as many weeks, in fact - that were done only as podcasts before this blog came along to give my friends, my visitors and readers, a chance to read, learn about and discuss those books.

So I'm going to start a new feature on this blog - let's say, every Thursday, beginning on September 1. I'm going to bring back and re-post edited text versions of the original podcast reviews of some of my favorite books and favorite authors from that first year or so of reviews. I'm going to try to be certain that the books I write about are still readily available - either in print, as e-books, or (if neither of those options is available) are at least pretty readily available through second-hand copies found for you by your favorite independent book dealers (including dealers who work through Amazon). 

As always, I invite your comments about these books. There's nothing more satisfying for me than to hear that one of my visitors has discovered a new (to them) author or book that I've told them about. I'm calling the feature "From the Vault," and I have already picked several of the books I plan to re-review (or, at least, the podcasts I plan to provide in text format). It all starts on Thursday, when we'll begin with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles. Come along for the ride!

               

Distressing News About the Rue Morgue Press

It appears that one of my favorite publishers of classic mysteries, the Rue Morgue Press, has gone out of business. According to some comments published in TomCat's "Beneath the Stains of Time" blog and a longer appreciation in JJ's "The Invisible Event" blog, a combination of factors - including books seriously damaged by flood waters and both financial and health problems - has led the RMP to shut down; its website seems to have disappeared.

This is terrible news, to put it mildly. Tom Schantz and his late wife Enid were pioneers in republishing some of the great - and often little-known - classic authors and their works, long before many of today's smaller presses got into the business. RMP was responsible for republishing several of the finest John Dickson Carr mysteries, but they also specialized in other first rate, if often obscure, mysteries. RMP introduced me to Dorothy Bowers, Glyn Carr, Clyde B. Clason, Gladys Mitchell, Craig Rice, Kelley Roos, Margaret Scherf and many more authors of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction and beyond. Each book had a brief, literate and entertaining introduction written by Tom and Enid which provided information about the author and his/her works. The Rue Morgue Press books remain centerpieces of my classic mystery collection. I'll miss them.