HA!!!!! I'm smarter than Lord Peter Wimsey

The Nine Tailors, by Dorothy L. Sayers (1934)


Well, I was beaten by Hercule Poirot. I was out-smarted by Miss Marple. I was bested by Ellery Queen. I was left behind by Charlie Chan. But, by golly, I'm smarter than Lord Peter Wimsey!!!


Despite their popularity (and my supposed expertise of the mystery genre), I had never read one of the Wimsey books before. This one, at least, turns out to be a cracking good mystery. And Lord Peter is a good protagonist--a rich guy who likes to be useful, isn't stuck up about being member of nobility and has a talent for solving crimes. His manservant Bunter is a pretty cool guy as well.


The Nine Tailors starts a little slowly. Lord Peter and his manservant Bunter have a minor car accident near the village of Fenchurch St. Paul. They are put up for the night by the local reverend and his wife. Wimsey ends up taking part in a special ringing of the church bells--the locals are trying to beat a record by ringing the eight large bells over 15,000 times in a nine hour period.


The title, by the way, refers to the ringing of the church bells to note someone's death.


All this gives us necessary background information and actually provides a vital clue for solving the subsequent crime, but the book doesn't really get moving until a body is found buried in the churchyard. From that point on, the book is a lot of fun. There are several aspects to the mystery--not only who the killer is, but who the victim is and how his was killed. The case soon turns out to be connected to some valuable emeralds that had been stolen years before and never recovered, so the location of the emeralds also becomes a factor.


It's a well-constructed mystery with fair clues. And, as I've bragged several times already, I was a good fifty pages ahead of Lord Peter. I figured out who the victim was before he did. I figured out how the victim was killed long before Lord Peter did.


This is the last book of our Survey of Great Detectives. It took me all this time to beat one of the detectives to the solution. But, gee whiz and by golly, I finally did it.

How did the body GET in the library anyways.

The Body in the Library (1941),  by Agatha Christie.

If I were asked to choose between Agatha Christies two most famous creations—to pick whether I enjoy reading about Hercule Poirot more than Miss Jane Marple, or visa versa—then I believe I’d be stumped.

Both are classic characters—fictional people who (like Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe) we can easily come to believe as real. We’ve already run across Poirot in this post, but it’s Miss Marple who fingers the killer in The Body in the Library.

The body belongs to a young dancer named Ruby Keene, who’s been strangled to death. The library is in Gossington Hall, the upper-class home of Colonel and Mrs. Bantry. How the body ended up in their library is one of many mysterious aspects of the case. Neither the Bantrys nor their servants knew the poor girl.

So Mrs. Bantry calls Miss Marple, the elderly woman with a predilection for solving crimes.

It’s always fun to follow along with Miss Marple when she’s on a case. She puts things together not just through deductive reasoning, but also through her sharp and cynical understanding of human nature. She parallels what she sees in people with analogous situations she has encountered in her small hometown. For instance, when she sees the body in the library, she comments that it’s just like when young Tommy Bond put the frog in the clock. And that actually makes sense, when she eventually explains herself.

Anyway, the investigation of the crime leads to the hotel where the murdered girl worked. Soon, another body turns up, though the connection to the first murder isn’t obvious. (Well, not obvious to us. Miss Marple sees it pretty much right away.)  There’s a couple of likely suspects, but both have good alibis. And how the heck DID the body end up in the library anyways?

As is typical of Agatha Christie’s wonderful novels, the clues are all there for us to see along with Miss Marple. The solution is intricate, but makes perfect sense when it’s all explained to us in the end. And the dénouement is excellent—the killer’s identity isn’t revealed even after he or she is caught. It’s only when Miss Marple finally takes us through her reasoning that we all come to understand exactly what’s been going on.


Next time, we'll finish off our Great Detective Survey with a look at The Nine Tailors, by Dorothy Sayers.

Murder Amongst the Upper Crust

Inspector Roderick Alleyn himself comes from the upper crust of society. The second son of a baronet, he spent two years in the British diplomatic service before (for reasons never explained) deciding to become a cop.


And quite a successful cop he was. In thirty-two novels written over nearly a half-century, Alleyn used his sharp mind and keen deductive skills to unravel one complex murder case after another.



The Alleyn books were written by New Zealand native Ngaio Marsh, who consistently presented her readers with the two most important things in a mystery series: a likable protagonist and well-constructed mysteries.



Overture of Death (1939) is typical of just how skilled a writer Marsh was. A woman who was about to play the piano introduction for an amateur play is shot dead. It turns out the piano had been booby-trapped with a pistol rigged to fire when one of the foot pedals was pressed.



But wait! The woman hadn’t been the person originally scheduled to play the piano, but rather a last-minute replacement. Was she the intended victim, or was the lady who was supposed to play the real target? Both women were unpleasant, mean-spirited gossips, so there is certainly more than enough motive to go around.



So Inspector Alleyn has quite a job ahead of him. But we have fun following him around as he gradually pieces it all together. He’s a witty and decent person—someone we can’t help but like. His interplay with his sidekicks—Inspector Fox (refered to as “Brer Fox” by Alleyn) and reporter Nigel Bathgate--adds to the entertainment value of the book and helps to humanize the man. I love a bit where Alleyn and Fox rig the booby-trap back into the piano using a water pistol to test it out, then playfully trick Nigel into getting a face full of water.



But there’s little time for Alleyn to play. He digs up obscure and superficially meaningless clues (an onion found discarded near the crime scene proves important) and deals with the fact that pretty much every suspect is lying or withholding information about something. But, in the end, he comes up with a time table that allows him to finger the killer.



Despite his long and successful career, Inspector Alleyn never reached the same level of fame as Hercule Poirot or Philip Marlowe. But Ngaio Marsh was an excellent mystery writer and Alleyn would easily deserve a seat the same table along side the other Great Detectives.


Only two books to go before the Great Detectives Survey comes to an end. Next month, we'll visit Miss Marble and The Body in the Library.

Always playing fair

The Dutch Shoe Mystery, by Ellery Queen (1931)



Ellery Queen the author is really two guys--Manfred B. Lee and Frederic Dannay. They used the Queen byline when they write about mystery writer Ellery Queen, who assists his homicide detective dad in solving crimes. The conceit of the novels is that we are reading fictionalized accounts of cases solved by the real "Ellery."

And the cases he solves are doozies. Lee and Dannay were masters at constructing complex but perfectly fair mysteries. All the clues are always there for us to see as clearly as Ellery does. But are we as smart as Ellery? Can we follow the deductive path laid out by the clues and then ourselves finger the killer? Not usually--Lee and Dannay pretty much always turn out to be smarter than we are.


But, gee whiz, we have fun trying.


When we first meet Ellery Queen in the 1929 novel The Roman Hat Mystery, he's a little bit of a pretentious jerk. We're constantly reminded of how smart he is by his tendency to lecture and pull obscure qoutes out of the air. This is fine by itself, but when you add in his annoying habit of calling his dad Pater and using exclamations like "By the Minotaur!" then there are moments when you really want to smack him one.


But Lee and Dannay gradually stripped Ellery of his more annoying habits and morphed him into a logical but still compassionate person-- a perfectly likeable human being who happens to be smarter than everyone else. His most admirable trait--and the real cornerstone of the series--is the affectionate and healthy relationship he has with his father.



The Dutch Shoe Mystery is the third novel in the series and Ellery is already getting more likeable (though he still comes up with a few two many "By the Minotaur"-like exclamations) and the mystery he has to solve is particularly subtle.

A woman is murdered in a hospital, just moments before she was wheeled into the operating room to have a ruptured gall bladder removed. Ellery happened to be at the hospital visiting a doctor friend, so he's on hand from the moment the woman is declared dead.


An investigation turns up several people with motive and opportunity. But some of the suspects are refusing to share information with the police. A set of hospital scrubs and a pair of shoes worn by the killer is found abandoned nearby and Ellery makes several important deductions drawn from the shoes, but it's not enough to identify the killer.


It's not until another murder is committed that Ellery is able to gain enough information to put it all together. And, as always in an Ellery novel, it's all perfectly fair to the reader. We're given all the clues as well. But can we follow the same complex chain of deductions that Ellery does? Probably not. Mandred Lee and Frederick Dannay are just plain too smart for us.


Next month, we'll visit with the social elite in Overture to Death, by Ngaio Marsh, featuring Inspector Roderick Alleyn.

Down the mean streats a man must go who is not himself mean.

The High Window, by Raymond Chandler


Raymond Chandler didn't invent the hard-boiled genre, but he did it better than anyone except (arguably) Dashiell Hammett.


His career as a writer started--as so many of the best hard-boiled writers did--working for Black Mask magazine. But unlike most of the best writers in the pulp era, he wasn't prolific enough to make a living doing short stories. So he began to concentrate on novels. In 1939, he cannibalized the plots of several of his stories, melded his various protagonists into wisecracking P.I. Philip Marlowe, and produced the superb novel The Big Sleep. It was the first of a series of wonderful, evocotive books in which Chandler repeatedly proved himself to be a master of the English language.


Chandler was always more concerned with character and theme than with plot. To be honest, that's why I prefer Hammett over Chandler--if only slightly. Both men would often construct stories with complex plots, but Hammett always managed to tie up all the loose threads in time for the climax. Chandler, on the other hand, almost always left a thread or two dangling.


But this is a matter of pure personal preference on my part. It's unfair to seriously criticize Chandler for considering his plots to be of secondary importance. He knew exactly what he was doing. He knew that what was most imporant was the image of a tough but good man who maintains his personal integrety no matter how much corruption bubbles up around him. Philip Marlowe is a modern knight-in-armor. Not shining armor, perhaps--there are too many whiskey and tobacco stains for that. But he's a knight all the same.


He is, in fact, the perfect example of what makes the hard-boiled genre so valuable. It's a literary form that is inherently cynical about human nature and human society. But the best hard-boiled stories balance this out by reminding us that there are men and women in the world who still live by their word and maintain a viable code of ethics.


In The High Window (1942), Marlowe is hired to recover a rare coin that's been stolen by an errant member of a rich family. Not surprisingly, the case soon expands outward to include jealously, unfaithful spouses, greed and (of course) murder.


Marlowe slogs through it all until he finally gets to the truth, sifting through a cesspool of lies and half-truths along the way. But in the end, we see that Marlowe--tough guy that he is--will always act with compassion and honor as he chooses to look after the welfare of one of the few more-or-less innocent persons he encounters.


The High Window is the only one of the first four Marlowe novels that was plotted out in advance by Chandler as a self-contained story--the others all made use of plot elements cobbled together from Chandler's short stories. Because of this, it's more tightly plotted than the other novels--though one can also argue it's more formulaic.


But it's still a fast-paced, atmospheric tale. However loose or tight his novels were in terms of plot, Chandler's prose is always a joy to read. His ability to use a few sharply worded sentences to both advance the plot and capture the essence of a scene or character never ceases to amaze me. Take these two sentences, for instance, describing a former showgirl who's caught herself a rich husband:


"From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away, she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away."


It's crisp and funny; it literally begs to be read aloud; and it gives us a perfect sense of the character. Chandler was always doing stuff like that. It's why he still remains virtually unmatched as a writer.


Next month, we'll visit with mystery writer Ellery Queen as he solves The Dutch Shoe Mystery.

If it's 9 o'clock, then he's up with the orchids.

The Golden Spiders, by Rex Stout (1953)


It's always a lot of fun to spend some time with Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. The two play off each other so well. In fact, the two men do a remarkable job of combining the traditional whodunit with the hard-boiled detective genre.


The obese but brilliant Wolfe represents the traditional detective. "I have no talents," he once said. "I have genius or nothing!" So he becomes a private investigator, using his genius to earn often very high fees.


Archie represents the hard-boiled P.I. When Wolfe takes a case, it's Archie who does the footwork, collecting facts and interviewing witnesses. Archie is a skilled detective in his own right, quite able to make intelligent decisions while out on his own. But it's Wolfe who puts all the facts together and solves the case.


But it's the prose and the dialouge of the Wolfe stories that really make them the classics they are. Wolfe and Archie are also just plain fun to listen to. Wolfe's grammatically precise sentences, peppered with obscure words, nicely counterpoints Archie's cynical wit. And Rex Stout's excellent storytelling skills allow the sometimes complex plots to unfold in a staightforward and intelligent fashion.


Wolfe and Archie are perfect partners, but often get on each other's nerves. That's pretty much how they got involved in solving a trio of murders in The Golden Spiders. Wolfe had gotten into a snit when his personal chef unexpectedly changed a recipe for the main course at dinner. This leads Archie to decide that Wolfe needs to be taught a lesson.


So when a 12-year-old boy shows up on the doorstep, demanding to see Wolfe, Archie lets him in. But Wolfe gets back in turn at Archie by politely listening to the boy (who thinks he's seen a woman in danger) and obligating Archie to forgo a night out to take notes.


Everything gets a bit more serious the next day when the boy is murdered. A couple of other deaths follow and an odd chain of circumstances (and a $10,000 check) obligate Wolfe to investigate.


What follows is an expertly constructed mystery with a satisfying conclusion. The novel also includes some great scenes with some of the series' regular supporting characters, including the perpetually aggravated Police Inspector Cramer and the three independent private eyes (Saul Panzar, Orrie Cather and Fred Durkin) often hired by Wolfe when they need more help on a case. It all comes to an end, as it usally does, in Wolfe's study, with the corpulant genius explaining to a roomful of suspects and cops who killed whom. It's a great novel from start to finish--one of the best of the series.


Next month, we'll visit with P.I. Philip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler's The High Window.

The First Forensic Scientist

For the Defence: Dr. Thorndyke, by R. Austin Freeman (1934)


When I sat down to write this post, I tried twice to briefly summerize the plot and provide a little bit of detail. But I couldn't do it without going on for paragraph after paragraph. It's all just too bizarre. Suffice to say that an artist and all-around nice guy named Andrew Barton gets arrested for murder. The oddest thing about this, though, is that he's accused of murdering himself, having been mistaken by the police for being his cousin Ronald.


The book ambles along at a slow but still interesting pace, gradually setting up a series of unlikely events and bad decision-making that lead up to this odd situation. Fortunately for Andrew, he manages to get Dr. John Thorndyke for his lawyer.


Dr. Thorndyke is an interesting figure in the History of Mystery. He first appeared in the 1907 novel The Red Thumb Mark. Created at a time after Arthur Conan Doyle had perfected the traditional mystery story, but before hard-boiled fiction added new blood to the genre, he's one of many pseudo-Holmsian characters that then filled the pages of fiction magazines.


But Thorndyke stuck around for thirty years because he was one of the better creations of the era. He was one of the first of what today would be called a forensic scientist, collecting evidence which he carefully studies and analyzes to get to the truth of the matter. In most of the Thorndyke novels, we know who the real killer is, but the fun is seeing how Thorndyke proves it. (It's a format similar in some ways to what Lt. Columbo would be doing on TV in the 1970s.)


And the author, R. Austin Freeman, is a very good writer. As I said above, the pace of For the Defence is slow. But Freeman keeps us involved. The plot is unlikely, but Freeman doesn't deny this--he instead uses this fact to help make things look grim for poor Andrew Barton. And Barton is a very sympathetic character--a thoroughly decent person who loves his wife and wants to do the correct and honest thing at all times. He does make a few dumb decisions as the story progresses, but they are mistakes we can understand that someone under severe stress might very well make.


This empathy for Barton carries us through most of the story. Then getting to see and hear Thorndyke expertly pick apart the prosecution's case during the trial makes for a satisfying climax.


Yes, Dr. Thorndyke didn't have the staying power in our popular culture that Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot have obtained, but he did all right for himself during his long career.


Next time, I think we'll take a look at a character who's staying power may be equal to that of Sherlock Holmes--corpulant detective Nero Wolfe. The book will be The Golden Spiders.

Hard-boiled tragedy

Black Money (1966), by Ross Macdonald


The case seems to be a fairly straightforward one: A wealthy young man is afraid his ex-fianceé new boyfriend is actually a con artist—and not the French aristocrat he claims to be.


So he hires private eye Lew Archer to look into it. But, in a hard-boiled detective novel, nothing is ever straightforward. The case expands outward to soon include a couple of murders, a seven-year-old suicide that might not be a suicide, and a missing $100,000 in cash.


Archer eventually gets to the bottom of it, but not before having to slog his way past a succession of sad, broken people and ruined lives. The plot is actually modeled after the novel The Great Gatsby (which, I recently learned from Archer’s entry at the excellent web site Thrilling Detective, was Macdonald’s favorite novel)—revolving around people who have everything in a material sense, but still manage to screw their lives up anyways.


Archer sticks with it, though. He’s one of the hard-boiled genre’s great characters—similar to Philip Marlowe in his ability to merge world-weary cynicism with compassion for those in trouble. Archer, though, wears his heart on his sleeve more visibly than Marlowe did. A middle-aged loner, Archer seems to pretty much devote all his time and energy to helping his clients. It often turns out they don’t really deserve help all that much, but Archer keeps slogging along for them regardless.


Aside from strong, well-constructed plots, that’s what makes the Archer novels so appealing. Archer’s empathy is literally contagious—he makes us also care about the people he’s trying to help. No matter that they themselves are often (though not always) pretty sleazy—we end up feeling for them as well.


As a mystery novel, Black Money is perhaps paced a little too slowly as Macdonald introduces us to the various characters and provides us with background information. But once a particular character is unexpectedly killed, the plot rapidly becomes fascinating. There’s certainly no shortage of motives or suspects. The case seems to thread in various directions at once, involving gambling debts, secret love affairs, greed and despair.


It ought to be a depressing book, but it’s not. Archer serves as an effective emotional anchor, reminding us that there are still a few good guys out there. That’s often the role of the protagonist in the world of hard-boiled fiction. Lew Archer plays that part better than most.


Next month, we’ll jump back to 1934 and step away from hard-boiled tragedy to take a look at For the Defence: Dr. Throndyke, by R. Austin Freeman

A dead parrot and a missing body

THE CHINESE PARROT (1926), by Earl Derr Biggers


In Radio by the Book, I start the chapter on Charlie Chan with the sentence “Charlie Chan is always both the smartest and the most likable guy in the room.”


And, by golly, this is true. It’s impossible not to like and admire Charlie—not just because he’s a great detective, but also because he’s a thoroughly decent man who makes friends easily and devoutly loves his large family.


He demonstrates his decency within the first few chapters of The Chinese Parrot. On vacation from the Honolulu police force, he sails to San Francisco as a favor for an old friend, guarding a valuable string of pearls that’s being delivered to its new owner.


But when there are indications that thieves are after the pearls, Charlie readily agrees to sacrifice more vacation time and stay on the job.


He teams up with Bob Eden—the wayward son of the jeweler who is facilitating the purchase of the pearls. The two are soon wrapped up in a strange case in which they are pretty sure they know who committed a murder, but don’t have any idea who was actually killed. Along the way, a parrot is poisoned and a servant is stabbed to death (giving them a body this time, but leaving them uncertain as to who committed the crime on this occasion). Charlie shows he has some fire in him when he has to deal with an incompetent and racist policeman, but he keeps his cool over all, putting the clues together and eventually explaining everything.


It’s a good, solid mystery with an unusual slant to it. There are a few too many instances in which a clue comes Charlie’s way purely by chance for the plot to be perfect, but his deductions leading to the denouement are still clever and reasonable—so it is, overall, a satisfying mystery.


Besides, the fun of a Charlie Chan novel is being able to hang out with the guy for a couple hundred pages. He is—as I believe I’ve already mentioned—the smartest and most likable guy in the room.


Next month, we’ll jump back into hard-boiled territory with a look at Black Money, by Ross MacDonald, featuring P.I. Lew Archer.

Curse you, Agatha Christie!!!!!!

The ABC Murders, by Agatha Christie


No mystery writer was better at twist endings and planting incredibly subtle clues that reveal one of the least likeliest suspects (or, often, someone who wasn’t a suspect at all) turn out to be the killer. It actually kind of gets on my nerves. I can occasionally figure out a Perry Mason solution. I remember being insufferable proud of myself as a 12-year-old when I figured out the solution to “The Red Headed League” right along with Sherlock Holmes.


But I don’t think I’ve ever beaten Hercule Poirot or Miss Marble to the punch. When the solution to the mystery is revealed, it will turn out that the clues were all there right in front of us. But only I’ve never manage to quite figure it all out before the wonderful creations of Agatha Christie do.


The ABC Murders seems to at first be atypical. Poirot receives letters from a madman who signs his name ABC, taunting Poirot to catch him and revealing in each letter the town in which the next murder would take place. The madman seems to have an alphabet obsession—his kills a Mrs. Asher in the town of Andover. Then a Miss Barnard in the town of Bexhill. And so on.


It does not seem to be a matter in which Poirot’s usual deductive genius can really help, since there is no logical motive or method behind it all. But Poirot’s skills do play a part when he gathers the friends and relatives together, questioning them until a certain pattern to the events is made clear.


Then the killer is finally caught. It all seems very straightforward, at least until Poirot suddenly comes forward with the announcement that all is not as it seems…


At which point he gives us a summary of several clues that were right there for us to see as well. But we don’t—at least not until Poirot points them out to us. Agatha Christie, darn her, is far too good at her job to all that. That’s why her often brilliant mysteries are still in print today—over eight decades after she first began to write them. That’s why The ABC Murders is so much fun to read. That’s why she continues to get on my nerves.


Next month, we'll look at "The Chinese Parrot" and visit with the world's most likable detective--Charlie Chan.

If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It.

The Case of the Beautiful Begger (1965), by Erle Stanley Gardner


In the 80 or so Perry Mason novels Gardner pumped out, I don’t think the formula ever varied at all. Someone would come to Mason about a legal matter of some sort. While Mason was dealing with that, someone would be murdered. Mason’s client would be accused and the lawyer would have to uncover the real killer’s identity to win his case.


But if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Gardner was a masterful storyteller, able to concoct infinite variations on this theme. The Mason novels are plot-driven, dialogue-heavy tales that are quick and fun to read, dripping with entertaining plot twists.


In Beautiful Begger, a young woman comes to Mason for help after her rich uncle has been declared mentally incompetent by greedy relatives. Mason, as he always does, goes all out for his client—even when his client isn’t really playing ball with him.


In this case, his client’s primary concern is helping her uncle. To this end, she takes it on herself to pretty much bust him out of the sanitarium in which he’s been confined. This, in turn, makes Mason’s job that much more difficult.


It’s not long before someone turns up dead and the young lady is arrested for murder. But Mason soon comes up with a ploy (involving tampering—but not really tampering—with evidence) to trick the real killer into revealing himself.


Gee whiz, this is fun stuff. Mason is a smart, likable protagonist. There’s not a lot of deep characterization here, but little touches (like Mason giving a large tip and making a special point of verbally thanking his waitress after getting good service in a restaurant) help make the various cast members seem real.


But Gardner’s incredible skills at sound plot construction and basic storytelling are what really carry the novel along. Erle Stanley Gardner could not have written a boring Perry Mason novel if he tried.


Next time, we’ll see what Belgium sleuth Hercule Poirot is up to in The ABC Murders.

Hard-Boiled storytelling

The Big Knockover & $106,000 Blood Money (1926), by Dashiell Hammett


Dash Hammett was the driving force behind the development of the hard-boiled school of detective fiction, combining his awesome skill as a writer with his experience as a Pinkerton to add a sense of realism and healthy cynicism to the genre.




But writing for the pulps didn’t always pay that well and Hammett briefly retired from writing in the mid-1920s. Fortunately, the promise of better pay and more creative freedom lured him back to the typewriter.


He soon produced a pair of novellas (published in Black Mask magazine in 1926) that pretty much tell a single story—a very, very hard-boiled tale involving murder, thievery, double-crosses, triple-crosses and (if you counted it out) probably a quadruple-cross or two.


Hammett’s protagonist is the same unnamed, overweight operative for the Continental Detective Agency who had headlined most of the writer’s previous short stories. When a large and very organized band of outlaws knock over two banks at once, he gets involved in the investigation. Soon, though, the field of suspects shrinks considerably as the bad guys begin to whack each other (often in large batches all at once) to avoid having to divide up the loot.


When said loot is recovered, the top crook manages to slip away. The second novella involves efforts to track him down.


There’s so much to enjoy in these two stories. Hammett’s precise, straightforward prose is always fun to read. The names of the various crooks involved in the big robbery are wonderful (The Dis-and-Dat Kid; L.A. Slim; Old Pete Best; Shorty McCoy; etc.) I have no idea if these names come from his own experience as a detective or from his imagination as a writer. I do know that if crooks didn’t have such names in the 1920s, they sure as heck should have. It just sounds right.


There’s a few nifty action scenes and some really good twists at the end of both stories.


The protagonist (referred to by fans—though never in the stories—as the Continental Op) is smart and capable, following up leads in a logical manner and playing intelligent hunches. But there’s another aspect to him that Hammett continued to follow up on in future stories—the idea that a career chasing criminals can drain a person of his humanity. The Op’s boss, for instance, is described thus: “Fifty years of crook-hunting for the Continental had emptied him of everything except brains and a soft-spoken, gently smiling shell of politeness that was the same whether things went good or bad—and meant as little at one time or another.”


The Op is going down the same road. He’s been a detective so long that he really doesn’t have anything else in his life other than detective work. This shows several times in the stories when we see just how ruthless he can be in order to get the job done. It’s an element to the character that adds extra bite to an already sharp story.

Next month, we'll visit the L.A. criminal court room along with Perry Mason in "The Case of the Beautiful Begger."

Monks and Murder

One appeal of historical mysteries is that they boil the genre down to its basics. In an historical mystery, there’s no access to advanced science. No DNA—no fingerprints—no testing for gunpowder residue. The detective investigating a crime has only his wits and good, old-fashioned deductive reasoning to help him catch the guilty and help the innocent.


One of the best-known and most successful historical mystery series is Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael books. Set in 12th Century England, the series plops its hero into a series of complex and intriguing mysteries.


Cadfael is a fun character—a former soldier and sailor who entered the Benedictine order late in life. Now he is steward of the monastery gardens near the town of Shrewsbury. And when villainy raises its ugly head, Cadfael uses his brains, his exceptional powers of observation and his keen appreciation of human nature to help figure out who committed what crimes.


St. Peter’s Fair (1981) is a fine example of the series. The fair is an annual event that brings a lot of merchants (and hence a lot of money) to Shrewsbury. But, with the town still recovering from getting caught in the middle of a recent civil war, the townspeople and the monks disagree about who should profit from the tolls and levies. This leads to a small riot. Soon after that, a merchant is found stabbed to death.


Initially, the evidence seems to point to the son of one of the town leaders. But Cadfael and his friend, deputy sheriff Hugh Beringar, have their doubts about that. What follows is a very well-constructed mystery. Clues are gradually found as several other crimes—including another murder—occur and Cadfael is eventually able to put everything together into a solution that seems to explain everything. But has he done so soon enough to prevent yet another killing?


Medieval England is a neat setting for a mystery series to start with. The fair creates a plausible reason for bringing different characters together and creating motives both mercenary and political that might explain the crimes being committed. Adding to the strong plot is the fact that Cadfael is the world’s nicest guy—a man who understands that service to God includes service to his fellow man and a deep desire for justice. He’s one of the genre’s most appealing heroes and his presence at St. Peter’s Fair makes the place well worth a visit.


Next time, we’ll jump into some hard-boiled adventure with Dashiell Hammett's two interlocking short stories "The Big Knockover" and "$106,000 Blood Money."

An Unusual Bit of Piracy

The Saint Overboard, by Leslie Charteris (1936)


Because of my fondness for old-fashioned mysteries and pulp adventures, I end up reading about an awful lot of occasions in which beautiful women in need of rescuing from horrible danger turn up on the doorsteps of heroes.


This has pretty much led me to expect this to one day happen to me. It never does, though, forcing me to exist in perpetual disappointment.


Sigh.


But at least I can read about beautiful women in need of rescuing. Simon Templar, aka the Saint, pretty much stumbles over them by the gross.


In The Saint Overboard, the plot jump starts in the first few paragraphs when a beautiful woman shows up at Simon’s doorstep. Well, actually, she swims up to his yacht, but the idea is the same.


The girl is Loretta Page, a private eye working to catch a particularly dangerous bad guy who has already done away with at least three other detectives. To the surprise of no one, Simon soon becomes involved.


It all turns out to revolve around a plot to illegally salvage gold off of recently sunken ships before the insurance companies can launch a legal salvage operation. The potential haul reaches into the tens of millions of dollars and the villains are more than willing to kill to protect their take.


The novel contains just a few scenes of straightforward action—instead, Charteris depends on building up suspense based on Simon and Loretta each taking on a sort-of undercover role without really being sure if the leader of the gang is on to either of them.
The leader, named Kurt Vogel, plays multi-layered mind games with them both in an attempt to trick them into giving themselves away.


It’s all done very well, with the tension inherent in the story growing quite thick by the end. Vogel is smart enough (and scary enough) make a good villain, while Loretta is smart and brave enough to be more than just a damsel in distress. Charteris’ prose is witty and fast-moving, but he can generate some pretty strong emotional reactions from his readers when he wants to. This time, the emotion comes not just from the danger to Simon and Loretta, but from their respective willingness to make some pretty serious sacrifices for each other when the chips are down.


On a geekier note—there are several scenes in the story that take place underwater, with Simon and several other characters clad in those bulky pre-aqualung diving suits. And those old-school suits are just plain cool.


Simon Templar has always been a fun character. A thief who steals most often from other thieves, he always ends up showing a sense of honor and justice that makes him the hero almost in spite of himself.


That’s it for this month’s book. Next month, I think we’ll jump back in time a few centuries and take a look at St. Peter’s Fair, by Ellis Peters.

"It was the footprint of a gigantic hound!!!!"

Gee whiz, Sherlock Holmes investigated some creepy cases during his career. A trained snake used as a murder weapon--a pygmy with a blowgun offing someone--an assassin with a silent air gun stalking Holmes himself.




But the Hound might have been the creepiest of them all. The Hound of the Baskervilles is as much a Gothic Horror novel as a mystery novel. And it works on both levels. Holmes does his usual nifty deductive reasoning, while Watson (on his own for a large part of the novel) proves to be a competent investigator in his own right when he needs to be. It all works just fine as a whodunit. But the setting--ancient Baskerville Manor and the surrounding fog-shrouded moors--give the whole novel a delightful aura of spookiness.





All four novel-length Holmes stories are justifiably considered classics, but Hound has always been my favorite. I like the creepy Gothic atmosphere that overlays the story. I like that Watson has a all-too-rare opportunity to prove he's a brave and capable human being. I like the suspense that builds up during the climax, when Holmes, Watson and Lestrade are waiting to catch the Hound, but the fog is growing to thick for comfort...




I'm glad I created an excuse to revisit it once again.





Next month's book: "The Saint Overboard," by Leslie Charteris.

The Great Detectives of Literature project

Usually, Thursday will be my day for posting whatever random bit of geekiness comes to mind. But the first Thurdsay of each month will be set aside for my personal survey of the Great Detectives of Literature. Once a month, on the that particular Thursday, I'll post comments on one of the following novels (listed here with the author and the protagonist):


"Overture to Death," by Ngaio Marsh (Roderick Alleyn)

"Black Money," by Ross MacDonald (Lew Archer)

"Saint Peter's Fair," by Ellis Peters (Brother Cadfael)

"The Chinese Parrot," by Earl Derr Biggers (Charlie Chan)

"The Big Knockover" and "$106,000 Blood Money," by Dashiell Hammett (Continental Op) [2 novellas making up a single story]

"The Hound of the Baskervilles," by Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes)

"The Body in the Library," by Agatha Christie (Miss Marble)

"The High Window," by Raymond Chandler (Philip Marlowe)

"The Case of the Beautiful Begger," by Erle Stanley Gardner (Perry Mason)

"The ABC Murders," by Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot)

"The Dutch Shoe Mystery," by Ellery Queen (Ellery Queen)

"The Saint Overboard," by Leslie Charteris (Simon Templar--the Saint)

"For the Defense: Dr. Thorndyke," by R. Austin Freeman

"The Nine Tailors," by Dorothy Sayers (Lord Peter Wimsey)

"Golden Spiders," by Rex Stout (Nero Wolfe)


I'm not going to go in any particular order--just reading whichever one of the list strikes my fancy. But I will get through the entire list before stopping. And I'll always let you know (in case anyone wants to read along) which one I'll cover in the next month's post.

So--for the first Thursday in February--we'll be looking at "The Hound of the Baskervilles" starring the Great Detective himself--Sherlock Holmes.