Poison, running through my veins...

The case of Freeman Wills Crofts on this blog is a strange one. A few years ago, I read the short story collection Murderers Make Mistakes. The stories in that collection began as a series of radio plays, and Crofts turned them into short stories. I enjoyed the book, especially the first half, which effectively showcased Inspector French’s strengths as a detective. And yet, for whatever reason, I never returned to Crofts since reviewing that book. His name popped up prominently when I reviewed Curt Evans’ Masters of the Humdrum Mystery, but apart from that, it was all quiet on the Crofts front.

So in August of last year, I decided to remedy the situation by picking up Crofts’ Antidote to Venom, a book which landed on my radar when John over at Pretty Sinister Books reviewed it (and directed me to a website where I found a cheap copy of the book – thanks once again, John!). But tragedy struck, and as I packed my bags to move to the seminary, I managed to lose my copy of Antidote to Venom, having read about halfway through. Then, a few weeks ago, when I was visiting home, a stroke of luck occurred – I found the book, with the bookmark still in place! And so I eagerly picked up the book and after briefly refreshing my memory on what had occurred, I read on.

New Publications

Well, another day has gone by here at the scene of the crime, and I have gotten one step closer to world domination. A lot of exciting things have happened over here in the last couple of weeks, and I’d like to share the good news with my blog readers.

First off, I’m very pleased to announce that I’ve written an article featured in the new issue of CADS, CADS 68. This periodical is edited and published by Geoff Bradley, and it’s my favourite place to go for all sorts of delightful articles on vintage detective fiction, crime fiction, etc. My article is entitled Was the Cornish Boatman Correct? The Post-Reichenbach Career of Sherlock Holmes. In it, I examine the Sherlockian Canon to see if there’s any truth to the old adage that Holmes may not have died at the Reichenbach Falls, but was never quite the same man afterwards. I’m very pleased with the way this article turned out, and I hope those who read it are as interested in the topic as I was.

But there’s just one more thing. Curt Evans, blogger at The Passing Tramp and author of such fine books as Masters of the Humdrum Mystery and Clues and Corpses: The Detective Fiction and Mystery Criticism of Todd Downing, has edited a new book. The book is called Mysteries Unlocked: Essays in Honor of Douglas G. Greene. It is published by McFarland and it is a tribute to Douglas Greene on his 70^th birthday. Doug has enjoyed a long career as an outstanding mystery scholar, the foremost John Dickson Carr authority, an outstanding editor and a fine publisher. I was delighted when Curt contacted me and asked me to contribute a piece to the book. My contribution is a piece about one of my favourite writers, René Reouven, in which I examine his career as an author of mysteries, especially his “apocryphal crimes” and Sherlockian pastiches.

Because I’m one of the contributors to Mysteries Unlocked, I cannot “properly” review it, but I truly believe this is a book worth talking about. This contains some of the finest mystery criticism I’ve ever read. The contributions are intelligent, insightful, and just as diverse as Doug’s career has been. Here are just some of the highlights from the book, delicacies you can expect to sample from a veritable smorgasbord of contributions:

• William Ruehlmann’s essay on Hamilton Cleek
• Michael Dirda on discovering John Dickson Carr, bringing to mind the sheer enthusiasm he exhibited in the Edgar-winning On Conan Doyle
• John Curran on Agatha Christie’s contributions to the impossible crime subgenre
• Julia Jones’ re-evaluation of Margery Allingham’s The China Governess, in which she commits an unforgivable sin: she admits to having made a mistake!!!
• Mauro Boncompagni straightens out the tangled, Keelerian web-within-a-web of authors that make up “Patrick Quentin”, “Q. Patrick” and “Jonathan Stagge”
• Henrique Valle’s look at an unusual detective story writer, the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa
• Essays by Curt Evans on subjects ranging from the nutty Carolyn Wells to the nuts-for-detective-stories T. S. Eliot
• Tom Nolan on the importance of poetry in Ross Macdonald’s The Galton Case
• Jon L. Breen  whetting your appetite for ten various writers of detective fiction
• Sergio Angelini (of Tipping My Fedora fame) on John Dickson Carr’s radio mysteries
• Joseph Goodrich presents Ellery Queen’s adventures on the radio, and includes an absolutely vicious letter penned by Manfred B. Lee regarding the show’s cancellation (seriously, this book is worth reading for this letter alone!)
• Helen Szamuely on the presence of presentism in supposedly-historical detective fiction
• Peter Lovesey on the origins of Eric the Skull and the Detection Club (with particular emphasis on Dorothy L. Sayers)

There are some fine contributors to this volume. There are Edgar winners and nominees, professors, lawyers, philosophers, biographers, a physiotherapist, a Pulitzer Prize winner… and somewhere among all these contributors you’ll find some schmuck from Canada. Seriously, though, it is an honour to be included in the same book as Jon Breen, Peter Lovesey, Michael Dirda, John Curran, and so many others. I loved reading this book, and it made me very proud to be a participant in this festschrift.

I have never had the pleasure of meeting Doug Greene personally, but we “met” online a few years ago now thanks to the Yahoo group “Fans of John Dickson Carr”. How did that happen? Funny you should ask. I was 16 years old at the time, and came up with a theory about John Dickson Carr’s The Burning Court all on my own, and was so proud of its brilliance that I simply had to share it with the group (beware, major spoilers below!!!):

Date: August 21^st, 2009

Subject: “The Burning Court” – Was Carr wrong?

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!

I finished reading "The Burning Court" a few weeks ago, and the ending *still* has me thinking, to the point where I couldn't even start reading another Carr.

What I'm wondering is, could Carr have made a mistake when it came to the solution? I know it's his book and all, but who says you can't have a little fun interpreting a work?

The rules of fair play themself are violated by making Stevens' wife, Marie, a ghost who finally got revenge by killing Uncle Miles and Mark. After all, Gaudan Cross gave a perfectly reasonable, physical explanation for how the murder was committed. It would've satisfied anyone. But Carr goes a step further, killing off his detective and adding a further twist.

So, what if Carr got it wrong, and Marie wasn't the killer after all? What if her thoughts were really the mad ramblings of an insane woman who can't be saved? What if Cross' explanation of her upbringing WAS correct, and she had been "brainwashed" to believe Marie D'Aubray would reincarnate in herself?

Anyone else have any thoughts about this? Did Carr "make a mistake", or was she really the killer all along?

***

A couple of days later, Doug responded:

Date: August 22^nd, 2009

I suggested a similar alternate explanation in an appendix to the biography.

Keep in mind that Ted Stevens of Herald publishers (I think it was Herald) is still very much alive at the time of PANIC IN BOX C.

Doug

***

This was when I first realized that Doug Greene, the guy who wrote JDC’s biography, was part of the group! I was thunderstuck – Carr’s bio was one of my favourite library books, although I had not read any sections marked as spoilers that were about books I had not yet read. I quickly dashed off a reply:

From: Patrick

Do you mean "The Man Who Explained Miracles"? I read through as much of it as I could, and positively loved it! I admit that I skipped through passages that referenced books I hadn't read (I still hadn't read "The Burning Court" when I read it), but I plan to read the extra passages that I now can.

[I then added:]

I hope you don't mind my saying so, but after I read what I could, I hoped I'd be able to one day tell the author how much I enjoyed the book. It's really an honour to be speaking (well, in a way) to you. I enjoyed the book tremendously. Thank you so much for writing it!

***

Well, Doug, I’m no longer 16 years old, but my sentiments remain the same. Thank you so much for all the great work you have done throughout the years for us mystery fans. Thanks for the JDC bio, for the great short story collections published by Crippen & Landru, and for all the reading tips you have given me in the past, which have transformed me into the reader I am today. It was an honour participating in this project!

Hoorah for the Humdrums!

Curt Evans, mystery scholar extraordinaire, has been on the blogosphere for a while now, managing an interesting little blog entitled The Passing Tramp. As the name may indicate, the blog is devoted to wandering around the mystery genre, encountering all sorts of interesting specimens, and then reporting back to readers. It’s an excellent blog, and I tend to agree with Curt on many points, especially his continued and unrepentant defense of a group of authors collectively known as “The Humdrums”. You could say he’s written the book on the subject. Literally—I am of course talking about Masters of the “Humdrum” Mystery: Cecil John Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, Alfred Walter Stewart and the British Detective Novel, 1920-61.

To put it quite simply, Curt’s book is a bravura performance. He takes a look at three major mystery authors from the Golden Age: John Rhode/Miles Burton, Freeman Wills Crofts, and J. J. Connginton. All three men have been condemned to out-of-print hell, and when brought up by academics at all, their opinions tend to be largely dismissive of these “mere puzzles”. But Curt remains unconvinced, and through his analyses he tries to prove that these books have far more merit to them than such a label might imply.

The Noble Duke of York

Oh, The grand old Duke of York,
He had ten thousand men;
He marched them up to the top of the hill,
And he marched them down again.

And when they were up, they were up,
And when they were down, they were down,
And when they were only half-way up,
They were neither up nor down.

— English children’s nursery rhyme

After my disastrous experience reading Louise Penny’s Still Life, I decided to return to the Golden Age of detective fiction: back when good plots were more important than overwriting a story with an obvious conclusion. And what better way to contrast the two experiences than to go to one of the “Humdrums”: authors with such a bad reputation that you’d think they were unable to entertain so much as a drunken fish. But I’ve challenged this point of view many times on my blog, and I will do it again. So I decided to go back to a reliable favourite: Henry Wade.

Henry Wade was the pseudonym of Major Sir Henry Lancelot Aubrey-Fletcher. I’ve said it before, but because his real name is so damn awesome I decided to say it again anyways. He’s perhaps best known for his series character of Inspector Poole, but he also wrote the fantastic inverted mystery novel Heir Presumptive, one of the best books I’ve ever read, regardless of genre. But today I decided to return to Inspector Poole, in Wade’s third book, The Duke of York’s Steps.

The Acquisitive Chuckle II: Return of the Chuckling

Hello everybody and I’d like to welcome you to another edition of me bragging about recent acquisitions of mine. This is the part of the show where I pretend to post in order to inflate my statistics, as well as taking advantage of an opportunity to just get up and brag about the newest additions to my collection. It’s been a long time since I’ve done this and there have been many acquisitions along the way—I wouldn’t be surprised if I managed to forget something along the way! So let’s get started.

 

...And not placing reliance on ... Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo-Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence or the Act of God...

The Detection Club was officially formed in 1930, and to become a member, you had to honour its core principle of “fair play”, i.e. giving readers the chance to arrive at the truth before the detective does by presenting all the clues. However, once admitted to the Club, it essentially became a social gathering.

Curt Evans takes a close look at the Detection Club in his essay Was Corinne’s Murder Clued?: The Detection Club and Fair Play, 1930-1953, which has been released as CADS supplement #14 and can be bought by contacting Geoff Bradley at Geoffcads@aol.com. It takes a look at The Detection Club and how it treated the concept of fair-play… and how the eventual death blows were self-inflicted.