Talking About the Detection Club

It is often said that the “Golden Age of Detective Fiction” took place in between the two World Wars. For my money, such a characterisation is far too simplified and gives rise to a popular narrative Julian Symons’ Bloody Murder sets out, which treats Golden Age fiction like some freak of nature which popped up between the two world wars because [insert pet sociological theory here]. I cringe whenever this view of the genre’s history is brought up, all too often by authors eagerly assuring you that their stuff transcends all that silly puzzle nonsense and Asks Really Deep Questions [translation: There Is No Plot].

The truth is, the Golden Age was a time of great variety and experimentation within the genre, and The Detection Club was formed in the late 20s in England. The exclusive club gave authors a chance to socialize, and since membership was attained only by secret ballot, it was also a way to ensure the quality of the genre remained high. Martin Edwards’ The Golden Age of Murder looks at the men and women who were members of The Detection Club during the Golden Age. It’s an enormous project, one which might overwhelm a lesser man.

The Legend of the Jolly Roger

One of the first books I read when I started my temporary genre rebellion was Tim Powers’ On Stranger Tides, an outstanding adventure novel involving Blackbeard, the Fountain of Youth, zombies, voodoo, and much, much more. I had a rollicking good time, and it reminded me of my childhood when I simply couldn’t get enough of pirates, real or fiction. I don’t think I’ve ever quite outgrown that phase of my childhood; when I think of pirates, I think of epic adventures, and the name “Blackbeard” is particularly chilling (although I must confess my view of Blackbeard will forever be coloured by Peter Ustinov’s performance in Blackbeard’s Ghost).

But at the same time, I realize that the reality of a pirate’s life was very different from the fictional equivalent. I read quite a bit of non-fiction about pirates back in the day, but it’s been a while. And so, as a refresher of sorts, I decided to read another work of non-fiction on the subject, entitled Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates. The author, David Cordingly, sets out to look at pirates as we typically see them in our mind’s eye, and sort out the fact from the fiction, the embellishments from the simple truth.

Nobody Does It Better

I recently had an e-mail discussion about the James Bond films, when the talk turned to the Bond theme songs. That was when I attempted to describe Madonna’s horrific contribution to the series with Die Another Day: “Imagine Alvin and the Chipmunks singing out-of-tune through a fan, and then the music editor printing out the sheet music, feeding it through a propeller blade and reassembling the tune in whatever order came out. And you have her theme. Atrocious stuff.” Unfortunately, that description could work just as well for much of today’s music, or at least the stuff I hear. I'm afraid I've long been driven away from the world of music. Crap spews forth from the radio in seemingly-endless waves. When I go to a store or to a coffee shop I can't escape it, but I choose not to listen to any of it on my own free time.

But strictly speaking, I do listen to a type of music. I absolutely love listening to musical scores from movies, such as the work of Hans Zimmer (The Dark Knight Rises, Gladiator, and Inception are among my favourites). Another one of my passions, in case you haven’t noticed over the last little bit, is James Bond. I positively love the books of Ian Fleming and also love the series of films that they inspired. Many of these films were scored by the legendary John Barry, and I love listening to them. Some scores are better than others, of course, but Barry provided the music that kept tying the series together despite all the different actors portraying 007 throughout the years. I guess it was only a matter of time before somebody wrote a book about the music of James Bond. Enter Jon Burlingame, author of The Music of James Bond.

A Book That'll Kill Ya

I admire the mission behind Books to Die For, edited by John Connolly and Declan Burke. Some mastermind (whose plots make Ernst Blofeld’s look positively humble by comparison) has brought together some of the world’s finest crime writers from all four corners of the globe. These writers were asked to write a piece on a “book to die for”. It’s defined as follows: “If you found our contributors in a bar some evening, and the talk turned (as it almost inevitably would) to favorite novels, it would be the single book that each writer would press upon you, the book that, if there was time and the stores were still open, they would leave the bar in order to purchase for you, so they could be confident they had done all in their power to make you read it.”

It’s an admirable idea, and after all, what could go wrong? Sure, a volume of this sort is bound to contain some omissions, but at least its inclusions should be excellent, and the different viewpoints should cancel each other out. For every author who is convinced that nothing is better than noir you can have one author who is convinced that plotting in the Christie mould is the best policy. For every author who prefers characterization and setting you can have one who prefers plotting and action. And thus, this collection should contain a book for everyone, and at the very least give you a balanced portrait of the genre.

Ha! In a perfect world, maybe. But we live on this world, and in our world we got a highly biased and highly problematic book. Some of the individual contributions are brilliant, but just as many (if not more) are very bad indeed and in only gets worse the further you read.

The Name's Fleming. Ian Fleming.

James Bond is an international phenomenon. I nominate that sentence as my contribution for the coveted Understatement of the Year Award. When Skyfall, the 23^rd Bond picture, was released last year, people flocked to the cinemas en masse, and as a result the movie generated over $1 billion in revenue. It’s amazing that a character whose exploits were first published in 1953 remains relevant to this day, and all this was the product of Ian Fleming’s fertile imagination.

I’ve read almost all the Bond novels – You Only Live Twice is the only exception – and I’m a big fan. But I knew nothing about the author, Ian Fleming. What was he like? How did he get the idea for Bond? I had no idea. All I could tell you was that he was British and that his Jamaican house was called Goldeneye. As readers of my blog might recall, I decided that in 2013 I would read all of Fleming’s Bond novels. But to do this properly, I felt it was best to first learn more about Ian Fleming. And so I picked up Ian Fleming: The Man Behind James Bond by Andrew Lycett.

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 Art of Enthusiasm

Michael Dirda’s On Conan Doyle might deceptively sound like an academic text of no interest to the casual reader. When I first heard of it, I immediately passed it over—why would I want to listen to an academic tell us just how silly the Sherlock Holmes stories are and how little merit they have as Pure Literature? But, being a foolish mortal, I didn’t notice that the book came with a subtitle: or, The Whole Art of Storytelling. It was only after Curt Evans published a review of the book that I decided that, after all, this was a book worth having. And rather than spend my money on a Kindle edition, I gave $10 extra and went for a physical copy of the book.

Dirda’s book won the Edgar Award earlier this year in the “Best Critical/Biographical” category, managing to beat out John Curran’s Agatha Christie’s Murder in the Making. Although I was rooting for Curran’s excellent book, if any other nominee had to beat it, I’m glad it was Dirda. On Conan Doyle is not a dry academic text that dissects the stories we all know and love. It’s more of a personal reflection by Dirda on his love for Conan Doyle’s stories.

The Doctor is Out

It wasn’t exactly my intention, but I seem to have accidentally made this week an unofficial “Crippen Week” with my literary choices. I started off the week by reading Peter Lovesey’s excellent The False Inspector Dew, and from there I moved on to Martin Edwards’ Dancing for the Hangman. After the excellent All The Lonely People, I was eager to try another one of the author’s books, and I had already purchased Dancing for the Hangman. So the choice was fairly simple.

The book is a retelling of the story of Dr. H. H. Crippen, a notorious murderer hanged in England in 1910. A fascinating idea, that, and it immediately convinced me to buy the book. But I wasn’t quite sure what I was about to get myself into. Was this going to be a work of non-fiction—a laborious reconstruction of the case with Edwards’ personal theory as to the solution? Or was this going to be a cheerfully fictitious work that invented a wild theory in which Crippen was the victim of a conspiracy? The product descriptions didn’t quite help, so I asked Martin Edwards himself. Here is his reply:

" [It] was conceived as a novel about the character of Crippen that remains true to the established facts, as I understand them, but tries to make psychological sense of them so as to explain the various paradoxes of the case. It's meant to be psychologically plausible, but of course since nobody knows what actually happened, I don't claim this as a definitive interpretation of the case."

Hail to the Queen (of Crime)!

Devoted readers of this blog (all three of them) might remember a review I did back in April of John Curran’s Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks. I concluded the review by warning readers to keep an eye out for a review of the sequel, Agatha Christie’s Murder in the Making. Well, it’s been almost two months now, which for me is probably a record time.

Despite all the recent Batman reviews and a very negative Ellery Queen review, I remain a devoted fan of the traditional puzzle-plot mystery, and one of its greatest practitioners was Agatha Christie. Indeed, until I discovered John Dickson Carr I considered Agatha the greatest. Which is why I was very interested in John Curran’s two books, examining the notebooks that Agatha Christie left behind. Agatha Christie’s Murder in the Making is his second volume and contains much of the material that was left out of the first book, Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks.

Long live the Queen (of Crime)!

I remember the day as though it was yesterday, although it really took place on a hot summer day in 2006. The scene was a used bookstore, and I was happily browsing through the section where books were going for 25 cents. And that was when I met Agatha Christie for the first time. More specifically, I found copies of Cards on the Table and Murder on the Orient Express. I read the plot descriptions and I just knew I had to get these books—and I did! I started with Cards—to date still my favourite Christie—and moved on to Orient and then went and found a copy of Poirot Investigates… Before long, I was hooked on Agatha Christie, reading And Then There Were None, Five Little Pigs, Mrs. McGinty’s Dead, and wondering where on earth I could find a copy of Hallowe’en Party…

It didn’t take me long to read all of Agatha Christie’s novels—it took me just over a year, and the delay was due to my staying in Poland for two months, with no access to Christie whatsoever except through Polish translations… which I quickly learned were extremely subpar. But at any rate, something about the Queen of Crime has always attracted me, and until I came across the work of John Dickson Carr, Agatha Christie was my favourite crime writer of all-time. And it was that passion for Christie that led me to purchase John Curran’s Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks.

Do you know that lady?

One of the most fascinating literary figures in the mystery domain is Craig Rice. She began her writing career with Eight Faces at Three, published in 1939, and quickly rose to the top of the mystery landscape. Then, just as suddenly, her production dwindled. In the first six years of her career, she wrote at an astounding pace, coming up with 17 books (going by the bibliography in Jeffrey Marks’ Who Was That Lady?). In the final 12 years of her career, only seven books were published, of which she edited one and one was a collection of previously-written pieces.

But who was Craig Rice really? The only thing that seemed readily available was a magazine article from Time of dubious veracity. Much confusion existed about her background and her life, and just about the only thing everyone more or less agreed about was that drink destroyed the rising star’s career. Alcohol flows freely in a Craig Rice novel, but her life was a far cry from the farce that makes up a typical John J. Malone novel. In an introduction to 8 Faces at 3, published by IPL, William Ruehlmann wrote that “Craig Rice wrote the binge but lived the hangover.” You couldn’t better sum up Rice’s tragic life and the contrast it forms with her extremely funny books. But if you, like me, are itching to find out just “Who Was That Lady?” I highly recommend Jeffrey Marks’ biography of that name.

...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.

Ministry of Miracles

John Dickson Carr: Scribe du Miracle is a fascinating book by Roland Lacourbe, a French critic who is no stranger to this blog. I have mentioned Lacourbe several times before, usually in connection with Paul Halter. I’ve found Lacourbe’s introductions to Halter’s works excellent, and he conducts a brilliant interview with Halter in the first of the three Masque omnibuses.

Unfortunately, to my knowledge, there was only one copy of Lacourbe’s book in all Canadian libraries, and they wanted me to pay around $20 to get it via Interlibrary Loan. It is sometimes available on sites like PriceMinister, but for rather high prices— the lowest I’ve found right now is 36,10€. So it seemed like I was doomed to not read this book anytime soon.

Until I found out something about my university library: they could get a hold of Lacourbe’s book via RACER (their version of Interlibrary Loans) for free! I rejoiced at the prospect and placed a request, expecting to wait a few months. I got the book after two weeks, and have been reading it on the side for quite some time now.

Talking about Talking About Detective Fiction

I’d like to welcome readers to this special edition of At the Scene of the Crime, in which I’m joined by a very special guest: Curt Evans, mystery scholar extraordinaire and author of a soon to be published book on “Humdrums”, authors from the Golden Age like John Rhode who are often dismissed despite their importance in the genre’s history.

It seems ironic, now that I think about it, that Curt’s agreed to join me and examine P. D. James’ Talking About Detective Fiction, which is a book that examines the mystery genre. I’ve taken good-natured cracks at P. D. James on the blog before. I haven’t read any of her books, but their size frankly scares me—in the wrong hands, one of her books would make an admirable bludgeoning weapon. But just how well would the Baroness analyse that noblest form of literature, the mystery? The only way to find out would be by reading the book…

Curt, thanks for joining me!

Perhaps I should start by saying that I found this book could be charitably called a train-wreck. I disagreed often with Julian Symons throughout Bloody Murder, but with P. D. James, I rarely got the chance to agree! Her history of the genre is highly selective, going from Jane Austen to the Crime Queens to a cursory glance at modern day, with barely a glance at anything else in between! The entire non-hardboiled American school of writing is treated as a non-entity, as though it never existed! John Dickson Carr is lucky to escape with a mere half-sentence acknowledging him as master of the locked-room mystery, while Helen McCloy, Anthony Boucher, Ellery Queen, and S. S. Van Dine are never mentioned!

James also has a curious fixation on Ronald Knox’s “Commandments” of Detective Fiction, treating them as though they were the only set of rules ever written. Van Dine’s Commandments are never mentioned, for instance, and James gets things horribly wrong when she writes: “Rules and restrictions do not produce original, or good, literature, and the rules were not strictly adhered to.” Did you hear that, Bill Shakespeare? You and your silly sonnets are neither original nor good, because you restrict them to 14 lines! The only rule you can really apply to detective fiction is for it to play fair with the clues, which I don’t see as a problem: it’s simply something that defines the genre.

The Simple Art of Murder

I’d like to welcome readers to another special edition of At the Scene of the Crime! Back in June, I collaborated with Sergio of Tipping My Fedora on a review of George Baxt’s The Alfred Hitchcock Murder Case. Our views on the book were rather similar, but we approached it from two different vantage points: one that of a Baxt enthusiast (Sergio), the other of someone whose introduction to Baxt was far from pleasant (that would be me). So it seemed like a perfect plot to reunite with Sergio and collaborate on another review, as part of the 100^th post extravaganza celebrations.

(What follows may seem like a non-sequitur, but bear with me.)

A few years ago, I picked up a copy of Julian Symons’ Bloody Murder. I’m not sure which edition I picked up, but I was never able to finish it (and my library got rid of it since). Symons then struck me as a condescending person who didn’t understand the fun of the genre, and his appraisal of several authors, including Dorothy L. Sayers, annoyed me. But all this time later, I’ve matured somewhat, and I was interested to see what impression would remain. Would I once again be annoyed by Symons? Or would I actually enjoy Bloody Murder?

Well, there was only one way to find out, and that was by reading the book. It then struck me that Bloody Murder would make excellent material for a crossover review with Sergio, who has expressed positive sentiments for Julian Symons and this book. And here we are today!

So let the repartee begin! Welcome back to the crime scene, Sergio!

***

You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles...

My library has got an interesting feature on their website. After you log in to your account, using library card number and a pin, you can look up your reading history. This way, I can see every book I’ve ever borrowed out on my library card, from the time I moved to this city to the present day. One entry in particular interests me. On April 21^st, 2008, I checked out three books that would change my reading life for good: The Three Coffins, Hag’s Nook, and Nine— and Death Makes Ten. All three were penned by John Dickson Carr, and I read them in that order. I was immediately captivated and started placing Interlibrary Loans left and right, placing myself at the mercy of the system to read more Carr. Then, when I found out that He Wouldn’t Kill Patience and The Eight of Swords were unavailable via ILL, I started haunting the local used bookstores, to the point where I’m on a first name basis with a few of the owners. I found The Eight of Swords quickly enough—it was the first in my collection, along with The Crooked Hinge, The Mad Hatter Mystery, and A Graveyard to Let. Other titles were more elusive…

Then, on July 4^th, 2009, I checked out a book by Douglas G. Greene: John Dickson Carr: The Man Who Explained Miracles. I delayed borrowing it out for quite a while. I thought it would be a stuffy academic criticising Carr and his writing left and right, throwing in never-before suspected connotations about his sexuality every other page.

As it turns out, I was completely wrong.

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.