There are certain characters that it seems impossible were once not a part of popular culture: Superman, say, or James Bond, or Miss Marple. With a mystery bias to my reading, it seems incredible that most of Queen Victoria’s reign passed sans Sherlock Holmes, and, with over 80 books and countless hours of television devoted to him, how could there something so prosaic as a beginning for Perry Mason?
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It’s often the case that a line can be drawn in an author’s body of work, past which they notably change, usually for the better: John Dickson Carr after Poison in Jest (1932), say. It is, however, rare that such a line passes through one of their works, as it does for Anthony Berkeley in Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery (1927). Prior to this Berkeley had written The Layton Court Mystery (1925) and The Wychford Poisoning Case (1926), which innovated in this newfangled GADisphere but seemed interesting if minor, and are not readily discussed a century later. And after it came the likes of The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929) and Not to be Taken (1938), reprints of which were greeted with no small delight in recent years.
I was quite excited to return to this week’s Going Home book, since it feeds into a key part of what I’ve come to enjoy about classic mystery and detective fiction.
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Another modern novel which sounds like it might have an impossible crime at its core, sufficient reason for me to grab a copy — from the library, dear boy, I’m not made of money — and see if it’s worthy of TomCat‘s attention. I get no enjoyment from this whatsoever, you understand. And I do it for free!
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Recovering from a bout of jaundice, History master Carolus Deene is sent by his headmaster to sleepy Buddington, “famous for its population of rich and aged invalids” and the fact that “[t]here, alone in all England, the bath-chair survives as more than a relic”. There it is hoped that Deene will refrain from “jeopardizing the fair name of the Queen’s School by embroiling [him]self in detective work of a nature likely to result in unfortunate publicity”. Alas, immediately prior to his arrival, two elderly women are found strangled to death on the same night, the arrangement of their bodies suggesting some link. And Deene’s reputation precedes him to the point that he finds himself investigating almost against his will.
Another crime novel from my early-2000s reading that put me on the path to classic detection and hence this blog.
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Another collection from the British Library Crime Classics range, edited by Detection Club President Martin Edwards, this time focussing on mysteries based around books — what’s not to love?!
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I’m pretty sure that I’d rather, in the 24 novels of crime and detection Alfred Walter Stewart wrote as J.J. Connington, he took a few risks and so remained curious, but that doesn’t mean I’m always going to like what he wrote. And so to Murder Will Speak, a.k.a. For Murder Will Speak (1938), the thirteenth novel to feature Chief Constable Sir Clinton Driffield, and one that takes a slightly sideways steps in its telling which, while not always successful, at least fails in some interesting ways. Connington’s other experiments — The Eye in the Museum (1929), Gold Brick Island (1933), The Brandon Case (1934) — were certainly harder to read than this, and with a few pages chopped out this might have been more successful.
A potentially final visit to the work of Harlan Coben, who I got into in a big way in the early 2000s but who now, as my own tastes have moved on, occupies more a position of nostalgia than any sort of feeling of needing to continue to read him.
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A twenty-fourth case for Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw, and Bob Andrews, and the sixth time they’ve been directed by Mary Virginia Carey, The Mystery of Death Trap Mine (1976) marks very slight change of pace for the Three Investigators.
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The Invisible Event 