#1416: How Weary, Stale, Flat and Unprofitable – Crime Fiction Clichés from The Mystery Writer’s Handbook (1956) ed. Herbert Brean

Being something of a fan of the mystery writer Herbert Brean, I am ever on the lookout for work by him, especially the short stories ‘Murder Buys a Ticket’, a.k.a. ‘Nine Hours Late on the Opening Run’ (1941) and ‘The Man Who Talked with Spirits’ (1943) listed in Adey. In these searches, I recently discovered that Brean acted as editor for The Mystery Writer’s Handbook (1956), in which members of the Mystery Writers of America (MWA) provided advice for people looking to write “detective, suspense, mystery, and crime stories”.

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#1415: The Layton Court Mystery (1925) by Anthony Berkeley [a.p.a. by “?”]


Well, I am thoroughly enjoying revisiting the work of Anthony Berkeley, with Not to be Taken (1938) proving decidedly more fun at second assessment, and now his debut The Layton Court Mystery (1925) upgrading itself from ‘amusing but seriously flawed’ to ‘Holy hell, this is superb!’ after a reread. Indeed, I enjoyed this so much that I’m deliberately reviewing it on a Thursday so that I don’t go over my self-imposed 1,000 word limit, because I feel like I could talk about this book for weeks, and frankly no-one needs that. So, a gathering at a country pile, complete with one host found shot in the locked library…hit me with the classics.

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#1413: “You make me feel that the writing of a detective story is very complicated.” – Into Thin Air (1928) by Horatio Winslow and Leslie Quirk

Image from Facsimile Dust Jackets

The Roland Lacourbe-curated list of 100 impossible crime novels has held quite a sway in my reading life. Hell, I got one of the titles on it reprinted purely so I could read it myself. Until John Pugmire’s death, Locked Room International did a stalwart job bringing many of the foreign-language titles into English…but still some books on the list seemed frustratingly out of reach, no more so than Into Thin Air (1928) by Horatio Winslow and Leslie Quirk.

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#1412: The Wrong Verdict (1937) by Walter S. Masterman


It is interesting to me that I’ve delved into the career of Walter S. Masterman somewhat contemporaneously with that of Edgar Wallace; the men were briefly literary contemporaries, of course, but they also share a looseness of structure that means you’re never sure if you’re on the verge of a masterpiece, always one sentence or clever idea from being wrong-footed…but equally you always feel one sentence away from what seems to have the seeds of genius turning out to be utter codswallop. It’s a tightrope I’m not sure either man meant to walk, no doubt genuinely trying their best with everything they wrote, but the similarity helps for some reason when, as with The Wrong Verdict (1937), all the promise collapses in a heap.

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#1410: “I deal in results. I care little for methods.” – The Case of the Baited Hook (1940) by Erle Stanley Gardner

I first read The Case of the Baited Hook (1940), the sixteenth novel by Erle Stanley Gardner to feature go-fast-and-hit-hard attorney Perry Mason, back in about 2002. Its recent republishing in the American Mystery Classics range, then, was a chance to revisit it — an intriguing prospect, given that I was even vaguer on the events herein than usual.

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#1409: Dr. Thorndyke Intervenes (1933) by R. Austin Freeman


The next couple of years will see me read the final few titles by a bunch of authors I’ve come to very much enjoy: I have five novels by Freeman Wills Crofts remaining, five by J.J. Connington, and now, having read Dr. Thorndyke Intervenes (1933), six by R. Austin Freeman. So my enjoyment of these books — and their later books are still proving enjoyable, though I appreciate that may not continue, with John Dickson Carr‘s work already stumbling into that slough of despond — is tinged with melancholy. It’s been such fun, and I don’t want it to end; and I especially don’t want it to end on a damp squib of turgid prose and bumbling plot mechanics.

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