Reactivated Agent's Hem

When I read Doug Greene’s brilliant biography of John Dickson Carr, The Man Who Explained Miracles (my library seriously runs the risk of not getting its copy back one of these days), I also looked in the appendices, which included a comprehensive list of works authored by Carr. In this list, Greene also devoted a section to parodies of Carr, and one title caught my eye: Hocus Pocus at Drumis Tree by Norma Schier. I was intrigued by the idea of parodying Carr while making the names anagrams—“Drumis Tree”, for instance, is a clever anagram of “Murder Site”.

However, for quite some time, I was unable to find a copy of the story to read. I finally decided to buy a copy of The Anagram Detectives, an excellent collection of stories written by Schier. In this collection, she takes cracks at everyone from Agatha Christie to Ellery Queen to Michael Innes, and she manages to create clever mysteries as well! (Sometimes, after all, the joke in a parody is how ridiculous the solution is, or how the solution is never told, but endlessly delayed. Well, not to worry- that isn’t the case here.)

The Sound of the Basketballs

My casebook also records the name of the American barque John D. Carr, whose disappearance was a fortnight’s sensation, until Homes was able to accurately predict its exact location—in drydock—from a simple mathematical calculation and the word of the steersman that he had lashed the wheel before going over the side—a case I have already chronicled in The Adventure of the Locked Rhumb.

—Dr. Watney, The Adventure of the Missing Cheyne-Stroke

“I fear some grave misfortune may have befallen Sir Lionel Train.”

Homes nodded in instant understanding. “Who?” he inquired.

“Sir Lionel Train, head of Q6-JB45-VX-2DD-T3, the most secret of our secret services. Other than the Yard and Special Services, no one has ever heard of the man.”

“Ah! That Sir Lionel Train!” Homes said, and nodded.

—     Criscroft and Schlock Homes, The Adventure of the Great Train Robbery

I discovered my love of mysteries through Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes tales. So it’s hardly a surprise that, when I tired of reading juvenile mysteries, I turned to various pastiches to try recapturing the magic of Holmes. During that period, I encountered many parodies among the Holmes pastiches. I’ve seen Holmes portrayed as a complete buffoon, Watson the genius of the duo, Holmes as a figment of Watson’s imagination, and so forth. But over the last two days, I’ve had the intense pleasure of reading Schlock Homes: The Complete Bagel Street Saga, which is single-handedly the wittiest, funniest, most wildly entertaining, and (to put it simply) the best collection of Sherlock Holmes parodies I’ve ever read, collecting all the stories of Schlock Holmes, written between 1960 and 1981.

Schlock Holmes was a creation of Robert L. Fish, and I was inspired to find this book after reading Norma Schier’s brilliant The Anagram Detectives. Her final tale, The Boing! Ritual, is a riff on Schlock Holmes, who himself is a parody of Sherlock Holmes. Homes and his assistant, Dr. Watney, are pulled through some of the most astounding adventures, brought to them at their headquarters in 221B Bagel Street. On occasion, Homes’ brother Criscroft comes by to bring an interesting problem to his attention. (Invariably, however, there is something at Criscroft’s club preventing him from investigating himself.) Throughout the collection, Homes and Watney come across their archenemy, Professor Marty (whom they call—with good reason—The Butcher), several times.

Year in Review... Best Books Read in 2011

Not to worry-- it's just a flesh wound.

It has been an interesting year for me. At the Scene of the Crime was not officially opened until March 26^th, but my blogging journey began on March 8^th. I had read a book I still consider awful in every respect: George Baxt’s The Affair at Royalties. It left me incensed and I finally decided to script and write an internet video based on a rant I wrote about the book. It was flawed in nearly every way: after a promising opening, all signs of imagination were banished from the book as George Baxt engaged in “hilarious” satire about Agatha Christie that missed the entire point. I didn’t even bother stopping before the dénouement, I just ploughed through it and pointed out just how ridiculous the ending was.

I now look back at that video with horror— it seems to me nothing more than a collection of shouts instead of a thought-out review. Nevertheless, instead of getting bashed myself, I got fairly positive reception for my video. I followed it up with two articles and then decided to open up a site on Blogger. I went with a purple colour scheme that, in retrospect, must have been absolutely hideous. I later redesigned the blog entirely, giving it a background pulled from various crime scene maps to fit in with the title. And the older the blog got, the more experienced I became.

Throughout 2011, I’ve read many books but now that the year is drawing to a close, I feel it is time to look back through the year and count down the Top 10 mystery novels I’ve read this year. This list was incredibly hard to compile and I was forced to omit many titles that I’ve given an honourable mention. But at the end of the day, these ten novels were left standing as the best of the best that I’ve read in 2011. They are in alphabetical order: