My Ghost in Disguise

“There are, fortunately, very few people who can say that they have actually attended a murder.”

—Margery Allingham, Death of a Ghost [opening sentence]

Everyone agrees that John Lafcadio was a brilliant artist far ahead of his time. In fact, he himself was certain that his reputation would improve after his death, and so he came up with a unique scheme to exploit his popularity from the after-life. He left a dozen paintings with his agent, and instructed his widow Belle to wait for ten years. After that, she was to hold an annual celebration where one portrait would be unveiled. Lafcadio calculated that, if his archrival Tanqueray was still as popular 22 years after his death, then good luck to him. But as it turned out, he needn’t have worried: Tanqueray did not survive Lafcadio long, and his critical reputation has since undergone a steep decline while Lafcadio is celebrated as an artistic genius.

But Belle honours Lafcadio’s wish and this year marks the eighth year of the annual show. A colourful cast of characters is present: for instance, there’s Max Fustian, an art critic and dealer whose entire fame was built on his appreciations of Lafcadio’s work. There’s the great Lafcadio’s former mistress Donna Beatrice, who shared the artist with his wife in a ménage à trois. There’s his granddaughter, and his former top model (now reduced to the position of the household cook). Oh, and also Mr. Albert Campion among the guests, which is fortunate: for he is about to investigate the Death of a Ghost when one of the guests at the gathering, Tommy Dacre, is murdered with a pair of scissors…

Petri Wine brings you...

The year '87 furnished us with a long series of cases of greater or less interest, of which I retain the records. Among my headings under this one twelve months I find an account of the adventure of the Paradol Chamber, of the Amateur Mendicant Society, who held a luxurious club in the lower vault of a furniture warehouse, of the facts connected with the loss of the British bark Sophy Anderson, of the singular adventures of the Grice Patersons in the island of Uffa, and finally of the Camberwell poisoning case.

—The Five Orange Pips

I am a very big fan of the radio series The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It initially starred Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, but near the end of its run Rathbone left the show and was replaced by Tom Conway. The program was sponsored by Petri Wine, and spokesperson Harry Bartell served as the announcer. He gave you three plugs for Petri Wine: at the beginning and at the end of the program, and at a cliff-hanger moment in the middle. But the man’s crisp, clear, smooth voice made it an enjoyable piece of advertising, and often times the final plug would be a bit of a running gag, with Dr. Watson desperately trying to avoid the subject of Petri Wine and Bartell managing to shove the plug in there nonetheless. Take, for instance, the conclusion to The Problem of Thor Bridge:

Bartell: I take you for a very charming gentleman, a wonderful storyteller, and a fine host. [Watson's chuckling, mutters of thanks] Well, you are a gentleman, of the old school... [More mutters of thanks] And you do tell a fine story.

Watson: Well, you flatter me, you-

Bartell: And you are a perfect host. That meal we had tonight was wonderful. And, um, that wine, what kind was it?

Watson: It was Petri wine, and you know it, and I should've known that you were leading up to something. Mr. Bartell, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Petri Wine was one of the many charms of the series, and although there were plenty of other series, no advertiser or host was ever as charming as Mr. Bartell with his Petri Wine— and Mr. Bell of Kreml Hair Tonic frankly creeped me out. By the time John Stanley replaced Tom Conway as Sherlock Holmes, the series really had me lost, and I've only listened to a handful of episodes from this era.

It Feels So Good to Be Bad!

Anyone who reads my blog regularly has, by now, noticed two things about me. First off, I’m positively insane. Second, whenever I get introduced to a new author and am very impressed with the book in question, I tend to go on a reading binge. I did this earlier in 2012 with Donald E. Westlake, devouring Dortmunder and Parker novels as though they were potato chips until I realized that I would soon run out of my supplies if I kept at it. But I just can’t learn my lesson, and I’m at serious risk of doing it again with the work of Charlotte Armstrong. The symptoms are all there, and I just got finished reading Armstrong’s novel Mischief.

In Mischief, Mr. and Mrs. Peter O. Jones are on their way to an important social function, where Mr. Jones is due to deliver a speech. They have to leave their daughter Bunny behind, and they planned to leave her at the hotel with Mr. Jones’ sister. But at the last moment, she cancels on them, and they’re forced to scramble around to find a replacement. Fortunately, an elevator operator named Eddie Munro hears of their plight and volunteers the services of his niece, Nell Munro. The Joneses are only too happy to accept Eddie’s offer, but something feels odd the instant Nell steps into room 807…

A deer, a deer! My kingdom for a deer(stalker)!!!

“Today I do some real sleuthing. In a deerstalker, I suppose. Wonder if Holmes ever did? Stalk a deer, I mean.”

—Thackeray Phin, By an Unknown Hand (by John Sladek)

Anthony Boucher’s The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars is a delightful book full of wit, but at the same time it is an incredibly frustrating mystery. Boucher, a prolific author, critic, and editor, was also a big Sherlockian and this really shows in this book, which I own in a highly attractive Gregg Press edition. Although it does not star his usual detective, Fergus O’Breen, it does connect to O’Breen in that his sister is a major character, as well as a police officer who appeared in The Case of the Seven of Cavalry.

[Note: This review is far overdue. This is because on the day I originally planned to release this review into the wild, TomCat had just written a review of Boucher’s The Case of the Crumpled Knave. I decided to push back the review due to the extremely similar content.]

When F. X. Weinberg of Metropolis Pictures set out to adapt the Sherlock Holmes story The Speckled Band into a film, the reception was initially enthusiastic. After all, it is a great story for adaptation and Conan Doyle himself said so. Unfortunately, Sherlockians everywhere suddenly turned against Weinberg when he hired the hated Stephen Worth to write the screenplay.

That is the question...

The title of René Reouven’s Tobie or not Tobie could be translated as Tobias or not Tobias, but to be honest, it ruins one of the best bilingual puns I’ve ever heard and certainly one of my favourite titles. So I will go with the name “Tobie” throughout this article to describe the central character of Reouven’s book. It is constructed around an idea that captured my imagination the very moment I heard of it: Reouven takes the Biblical Book of Tobit and rewrites it as a mystery! And Archons of Athens— Reouven even manages to construct the mystery around an impossible crime!

The Book of Tobit lends itself excellently to this rewriting process. A quick summary of the plot might be in order: Tobit, an elderly man, is blind, and despairs that his son Tobie is twenty and still not married. He sends Tobie to Media to collect a large sum of money he loaned to a cousin named Gabael. And while he’s there, there’s a nearby town where a young woman named Sarah lives. She’s twenty years old, beautiful, and unmarried! What a happy coincidence! So Tobit hires a guide for Tobie, a man going under the moniker of Azariah.

We like to get the trial over with quickly, because it's the sentence that's really the fun!

It’s rare for me to be thoroughly disgusted by a novel. There have been plenty of unpleasant reading experiences, such as Anthony Wynne’s The Toll House Murder or Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye. I have been alarmed a handful of times, such as with a disturbing central character in Peter Lovesey’s Mad Hatter’s Holiday. But until now, only George Baxt’s The Affair at Royalties had thoroughly disgusted me— I can now add Mickey Spillane’s I, The Jury to the list.

Spillane was once the most vilified writer in America. His hero, Mike Hammer, is as politically incorrect as they come. He refuses to forgive the Japanese for the war, he plays games with his secretary, he sleeps with every woman he comes into contact with on the job, and he threatens or beats up half the suspects he interrogates. And that’s just the first few chapters.

The Case of the Catholic Critic

Strictly speaking, I made my first professional sale when I was sixteen; a short ghost story so abominably written that I now feel that the editor who bought it must have had a sadistic grudge against his readers.

— Anthony Boucher, Exeunt Murderers

William Anthony Parker White (alias Anthony Boucher)

Today I will attempt a first here on the blog. Thus far, I’ve mainly reviewed mystery novels, with the occasional foray into the short story collection. I’ve reviewed one film. All of these have been works of fiction, but today, I will write about some non-fiction for a change. But before I do, allow me to give a note of introduction.

Back in my pre-Agatha-Christie days (Heavens! Was there such a time?), I had finished reading the Sherlock Holmes stories and was unsure where to go to next. There were plenty of juvenile mysteries in the library, and I’d read them, but something just seemed to be missing, and soon enough I gave up on the adventures of the Hardy Boys or their female counterpart, Nancy Drew.

Sister Act

My acquaintance with Anthony Boucher (rhymes with voucher) has been limited to date. I mainly know him as one of the scriptwriters on the radio series The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which was always a delight to listen to, even when Basil Rathbone left the show. Boucher and his partner in crime, Denis Green, came up with interesting problems for Holmes to investigate; although the mysteries themselves were often easily solved (after all, the episodes were less than a half hour long) they showed creativity in their scenarios. Overall, they were interesting expansions of references to un-chronicled cases throughout the Holmes canon. (Occasionally, they dramatized the original stories as well, such as The Speckled Band or A Scandal in Bohemia.)

I’m also aware of Boucher’s influential role as a mystery critic, but he was also involved in the world of science fiction. (You can read all that and more in the back of the IPL edition, which I own, where one "Burke N. Hare" gives a brief biographical outline of Boucher's life. Incidentally, the cover to Nine Times Nine is proof that Nicky Zann is a genius. After all, thanks to his genius, I bought that monstrosity, The Affair at Royalties. Awful, awful stuff. I'm still attending group therapy to get over it. But his cover is once again magnificent, and really intrigued me and intellectually blackmailed me to read this book.) But until now, I never read a novel by Boucher. This mistake has been rectified, as I’ve finished his excellent novel, Nine Times Nine.