Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge 2013: Wrap Up Post

In 2013, the theme for the Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge was Scattergories.  Bev at My Reader's Block came up with over 30 categories and challenged us to read vintage mysteries that fit the categories. The goal was to read eight mysteries that fit eight different categories. Once the 8 book minimum was met, any category (except the Get Out of Jail Free category) could be repeated any number of times. 

 
Listed below are the books I read for this challenge.

Vintage Categories:

Colorful Crime: a book with a color or reference to color in the title
    The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie
          
Leave It to the Professionals: a book featuring cops, private eyes, secret service, professional spies, etc.
    The Mugger by Ed McBain
    The Pusher by Ed McBain

Jolly Old England: one mystery set in Britain
    Crooked House by Agatha Christie

Yankee Doodle Dandy: one mystery set in the United States
     The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett



World Traveler: one mystery set in any country except the US or Britain
    The Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie

Dangerous Beasts: a book with an animal in the title
    The Chinese Parrot by Earl Derr Biggers

Scene of the Crime: a book with the location of the crime in the title 
      Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie

Planes, Trains & Automobiles: a mystery that involves a mode of transportation.
     The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie

Size Matters: a book with a size or measurement in the title 
    The Big Sleep by Raymond  Chandler

A Calendar of Crime: a mystery with a date/holiday/year/month/etc. in the title
     Hercule Poirot's Christmas by Agatha Christie

Psychic Phenomena: a mystery featuring a seance, medium, hypnotism, or other psychic or "supernatural" characters/events
     Murder at Hazelmoor by Agatha Christie ("table-turning")

Serial Killers: Books that were originally published in serial format, probably from the pulp era.
      The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie

 Get Out of Jail Free: This is a freebie category.  One per customer. 
       The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov 
       (cross-genre mystery, sci fi)

I was disappointed not to read 16 vintage mysteries this year. But I did make progress and I did enjoy what I read.

You will notice that the majority of books that I read for the Vintage Mystery Challenge this year were by Agatha Christie, mainly because I am trying to read all her books, roughly in order, and am participating in the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge, hosted by Kerrie of Mysteries in Paradise. I haven't read an Agatha Christie that I did not enjoy since I started the challenge, so that is going well.

Hercule Poirot's Christmas: Agatha Christie

I collect books, especially older paperbacks, with skulls or skeletons on the cover. Moira, a lover of Agatha Christie's mysteries, and author of the entertaining blog Clothes in Books, graciously offered to send me a copy of this book with a skull in a Santa hat. I decided to jump ahead in the series so I could feature this book during the Christmas season.

This is truly a country house mystery. The house belongs to Simeon Lee, the head of a large family that doesn't get along. He is overbearing, argumentative, and delights in stirring up trouble among his children.

His son, Alfred, and Alfred's wife, Lydia, live with Simeon, and Alfred has faithfully attended to the family business for many years. Simeon's other children left home at an early age and have never returned. However, all of them have accepted monetary support from Simeon over the years. Simeon has asked all of his sons (and their wives if married) to join him for Christmas at the familly home. And they have accepted.

His only daughter married a Spaniard and has recently died, so her daughter has also joined them. And a surprise guest shows up, the son of Simeon's old business partner when he was living in South Africa.

Before Christmas, someone in the family is murdered. There is not much festivity on Christmas day. Hercule Poirot is called in to investigate, to cooperate with the local policeman and the Chief Constable, Colonel Johnson.

There is a large cast of characters. Most of the characters in the family were not very likable but that did not bother me. Hercule Poirot, on the other hand, is very likable in this book. He had his quirks but he was not annoying.

I read other reviews and it is really interesting how differently various reviewers interpreted the book. This is one of my favorites so far. Certainly my favorite one starring Poirot. But some reviewers complained about the lack of description or character development.

I thought the mystery was good and for once I had no clue who the culprit was. Maybe a twinge of a suspicion that just flitted through my mind and was rejected. I always love to read books written in the late 1930's and the 1940's, around the time of World War II.  This one was written before World War II. Simeon Lee's granddaughter, who has left Spain and has come to live with Simeon, speaks of the effects of the unrest and fighting in Spain at that time. All in all, a very enjoyable read for me, even if not a jolly Christmas story.

This book has had several titles. Per Wikipedia, it was first serialised in the US from 12 November 1938 to 14 January 1939 under the title Murder For Christmas. It was published in book form in the UK in December 1938 under this title (Hercule Poirot's Christmas). It was published in US in book form in 1939 under the title of Murder for Christmas. A later paperback edition in the US was titled A Holiday for Murder.
 
As I said above, Clothes in Books is a wonderful blog, full of entertaining information about books of all types. Here is an entry on Hercule Poirot's Christmas at Moira's blog. Please check it out.

The Big Sleep: Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler is a very well-known and highly regarded author of hard-boiled mysteries featuring Philip Marlowe. He was also major influence on future writers in that sub-genre.

In The Big Sleep (1939), Philip Marlowe, a private detective in 1930's Los Angeles, is working on a job for General Sternwood, a very old, very sick rich man with two wayward daughters. The case involves blackmail but quickly evolves into a much more complicated situation. The story shows us the seamy side of Los Angeles, with the story involving gambling, pornography, and mobsters.

Chandler's writing in this book is beautiful. This was Chandler's first novel and many readers say it is not his best book. I enjoyed every minute of it. I have to be honest and say that viewing the movie may have influenced my enjoyment. I have watched the movie many times, but it had been at least a decade since I saw it last. I knew the basic story very well though.

The descriptions of Marlowe, his interactions with others, and the snappy dialog was great. I liked the plot too, but that could have been because I am so familiar with the movie. I look forward to reading more books by this author to see if my enjoyment continues (or even increases).

The book has a wonderful opening paragraph:

It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark little clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.

A Chandler quote:

The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the most valuable investment a writer can make with his time.

Which may be why the style seems to be utmost in this book. And kept me reading eagerly.

My husband has a wonderful old edition of this novel.  It is a motion picture edition, published June 1946, with photos from the movie with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.

This book counts for the Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge for the category Size Matters.

I watched the Bogart and Bacall movie based on this book last night and will be writing a post on it soon.

M is for Ed McBain

I recently read two Ed McBain novels: The Mugger and The Pusher. These are the 2nd and 3rd in a series, following the first book, Cop Hater. Since my theme for the Crime Fiction Aphabet 2013 meme is police procedurals, I had to include Ed McBain and his 87th Precinct novels.

Ed McBain was a pseudonym of Evan Hunter (October 15, 1926 – July 6, 2005) . This pseudonym was used for his series of novels about the cops in the 87th Precinct in Isola (a thinly disguised New York). Evan Hunter was born Salvatore Lambino; he legally changed his name to Evan Hunter in 1952. Per Mike Ashley, in The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Modern Crime Fiction: "The name Ed McBain was concocted to cover the author's less 'sophisticated' material, keeping his more significant pen-name, Evan Hunter, for serious mainstream novels."

I had read nothing at all by Ed McBain until about a year ago, when I read Cop Hater. I enjoyed that novel, which was fortunate since I had already purchased over ten books in the series in anticipation of reading the whole series ... eventually.

The titles of the books I read are fairly indicative of the crimes investigated. In The Mugger, the 87th Precinct is plagued with a mugger who only attacks women, always hits them, and always leaves them saying: "Clifford thanks you, Madam." Eventually, a murder occurs which could be connected. In The Pusher, a very young drug addict has committed suicide. But there is some evidence at the scene that is confusing to the cops following the case.

The 87th Precinct books give the details of an investigation, but along the way we get glimpses into the policemen's lives. The policemen involved seem like real people, not idealized versions of detectives. Some are bullies, some are more dedicated to looking for the truth. Throughout The Mugger, McBain intersperses items from the investigation: fingerprint sheet, police forms, even a map of a crime scene. As the crime is investigated in The Pusher, the complex steps to evaluate the small amounts of usable evidence found at a crime scene are described. Yet even though this may seem dry, the result in each case is a very entertaining book that moves at a brisk pace.

I am not a great fan of long doses of descriptive prose in a novel, but some of McBain's descriptive passages are just extraordinary. And the miracle is... he does not overdo them.

Cop Hater is set in the summer, during a heat wave. The oppressive weather figures in the crime and the investigation. When reading these two books back to back I noticed that The Mugger is set in the fall, and The Pusher is set in the winter.  This might have been because The Pusher starts with a bang that you cannot miss:

Winter came in like an anarchist with a bomb.

Wild-eyed, shrieking, puffing hard, it caught the city in cold, froze the marrow and froze the heart.

The wind roared under eaves and tore around corners, lifting hats and lifting skirts, caressing warm thighs with icy-cold fingers. The citizens blew on their hands and lifted their coat collars and tightened their mufflers. They had been enmeshed in the slow-dying lethargy of autumn, and now winter was upon them, rapping their teeth with knuckles of ice.

Both of the books I read were comparatively short in length, each under 160 pages. Reading these two books was like reading one of the longer books I have read recently. I understand that the later books were longer, but I am enjoying these shorter ones while they last.

On a personal note, in the 80's and the 90's, I had a co-worker who loved the 87th Precinct novels. She knew I liked mysteries, and she was always suggesting that I read the latest book he had published. And I was always declining to try the series. Now, I look back and wish I had listened to her. On the other hand, now I have the whole series ahead of me and a lot of books and entertainment to look forward to. 

The Crime Fiction Alphabet is sponsored by Mysteries in Paradise.  Please visit this post to check out other entries for this letter.

Other reviews here:
At Tipping My Fedora, Sergio is reading and reviewing the series in order.
At Yet Another Crime Fiction Blog, Keishon reviews The Pusher.
At Confessions of a Mystery Novelist..., Margot puts the spotlight on The Cop Hater.

These books are also submitted for the Vintage Mystery Challenge in the Leave It to the Professionals category, which includes books featuring cops, private eyes, secret service, etc.

Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge 2013: Scattergories

This is the first challenge I have joined for 2013. I am taking part in the Canadian Reading Challenge which runs from July 1, 2012 through June 30, 2013, but this is the first one starting in the new year. The challenge is hosted by Bev at My Reader's Block. I participated in the 2012 challenge and dipped back into my vintage mysteries for some of my reading.

The challenge sign-up link is here.

1. The challenge runs from January 1, 2013 to December 31, 2013.
2. Mystery novels for the challenge must have been originally written before 1960. Short story collections are permissible if all stories fit those guidelines. 
3. Bev has named a large number of Vintage Categories. The goal is to read books from at least eight of the categories. The categories are listed at the sign-up post. More catergories may be added so I will not list all of them here. 
4. Once you have met the 8 book minimum, you may repeat any category (except the last one, Get Out of Jail Free) any number of times to reach the 16+ level. 
5. There are more rules and explanations. See the sign-up post for further information.

 
Vintage Categories that will work for me: 

Murder by the Numbers: a book with a number, quantity in the title 
Leave It to the Professionals: a book featuring cops, private eyes, secret service, professional spies, etc. 
World Traveler: one mystery set in any country except the US or Britain 
Amateur Night: a book with a "detective" who is not a P.I.; Police Officer; Official Investigator (Nurse Keate, Father Brown, Miss Marple, etc.)
Jolly Old England: one mystery set in Britain 
Locked Rooms: a locked-room mystery 
Country House Criminals: a standard (or not-so-standard) Golden Age country house murder 
Murder Is Academic: a mystery involving a scholar, teacher, librarian, etc.  OR set at a school, university, library, etc. 
Repeat Offenders: a mystery featuring your favorite series detective or by your favorite author (the books/authors you'd read over and over again) OR reread an old favorite   
A Mystery By Any Other Name: any book that has been published under more than one title (Murder Is Easy--aka Easy to Kill [Christie]; Fog of Doubt--aka London Particular [Christianna Brand], etc.) 
Dynamic Duos: a mystery featuring a detective team--Holmes & Watson, Pam & Jerry North, Wolfe & Goodwin, or....a little-known team that you introduce to us. 
Get Out of Jail Free: This is a freebie category.  One per customer. 

My goal is to read 16 books that fit these categories in 2013.

And here is my list:

Scene of the Crime: Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie
Yankee Doodle Dandy: The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett
Jolly Old England: Crooked House by Agatha Christie
Get Out of Jail Free (cross-genre, sci-fi and mystery):  The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov
Serial Killers: The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie
Dangerous Beasts: The Chinese Parrot by Earl Derr Biggers
World Traveler: Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie