Subtitled Con Artists, Burglars, Rogues, and Scoundrels from the Time of Sherlock Holmes, The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime [ss] (2009) collects twelve stories originally published between 1896 and 1919 — an era which I find myself increasingly interested in, giving birth as it did to the Golden Age of the 1920s-40s.

Editor Michael Sims begins this collection in a way that will warm the hearts of Golden Age fans, acknowledging the work of Ellery Queen, Otto Penzler, and Douglas Greene, among others, in getting him started in “this entertaining subset of crime fiction”. Sims’ introduction makes for lively reading, outlining his intent to populate a collection with capers over stories of detection, and ones where the criminals “arm themselves with wit rather than with guns” since “the threat of death requires no talent”.

You need not be afraid to invite [these characters] to dinner — but don’t let them wander about the house unattended.

Pleasing, too, is Sims’ assertion that he chose only those stories which entertained in the telling, rather than feeling obliged to include famous names whose prose might veer towards the purple. Sounds promising, no? Let’s see how it turns out.

First up, and an author I’m clearly going to have to read more by, is Grant Allen with ‘The Episode the Diamond Links’ (1896). While the idea may lose a little in repetition, Allen’s core conceit here sounds fascinating: South African millionaire Charles Vandrift is repeatedly made the object of attentions of thief Colonel Clay who, by means both devious and somewhat transparent, always seems to get the better of the wealthy man. To say much about the contents or direction of this would be to spoil a great deal of its charm, but charm it has in spades, not least on account of Allen’s ability to rub a caustic world-weariness against the more genteel prose which we’d perhaps expect:

For the next three days, at intervals, [a businessman seeking investment] returned to the charge. He bored me to death with his platinum and his rubies … I listened and smiled; I listened and yawned; I listened and was rude; I ceased to listen at all; but still he droned on with it. I fell asleep on the steamer one day, and woke up in ten minutes to hear him droning yet, “And the yield of platinum per ton was certified to be—” I forget how many pounds, or ounces, or pennyweights. These details of assays have ceased to interest me: like the man who “didn’t believe in ghosts,” I have seen too many of them.

Warm-hearted, delightful escapism at its purest — this is the stuff I came for, and wonderful it is.

Jewels are again the target in second story ‘The Duchess of Wiltshire’s Diamonds’, a.k.a. ‘A Prince of Swindlers’ (1897) by Guy Boothby. Here, it is Simon Carne, gentleman thief, who “pit[s] his wits and cunning against the forces of society in general” — although, in fairness, the technical work is done by his Indian servants Hiram Singh and Wajib Baksh. Again, this is light and undemanding fun, with a clever double game being played by Carne as he assumes the identity of private investigator du jour Klimo and uncovers the clues that he has himself laid while in the guise of the hump-backed Carne. The dialogue is oddly stilted (“”…for in this case thou wilt need to have all thy wits about thee…”) and luck plays as much a part as skill in the scheme’s success…but, look, it does exactly what I want this style of story to do, and more power to Boothby for that.

Interesting to see a reference to “the late lamented Sherlock Holmes”, too, which leaves it unclear whether Holmes was a fictional character in Carne’s world. Ah, the possibilities…

I read ‘Nine Points of the Law’ (1898) in the first collection of tales about E.W. Hornung‘s gentleman thief Raffles, and it still amuses me that someone who played cricket for England would be under the impression that they could reply to a summons to commit crimes with nothing more than a nom de guerre and get away without being recognised. Two further things strike me on revisiting the story now: firstly the sheer incongruity of men who “belong to good clubs” being assumed innocent of any facility for underhand activity on basis of membership alone, and secondly that this is the first time the intended victim of the theft — this time a painting — is in any way an undesirable. Clay and Carne stole from the rich because they were rich, but Hornung at least wants to make Australian legislator the Hon. John Montagu Craggs’ fate enjoyable for the reader:

He was that terrible type, the Silly Cynic, his aim a caustic commentary on all things and all men, his achievement mere vulgar irreverence and unintelligent scorn. Ill-bred and ill-informed, he had (on his own showing) fluked into fortune on a rise in land; yet cunning he possessed, as well as malice, and he chuckled till he choked over the misfortunes of less astute speculators in the same boom. Even now I cannot feel much compunction for my behaviour by the Hon. J. M. Craggs, M.L.C.

Perhaps this was an effort to lessen the shock of a criminal being cast in the heroic mould, but really — given chronicler Harry “Bunny” Manders’ behaviour towards his light-fingered pal being more than a little redolent of John H. Watson’s towards Mr. S. Holmes (await my telegram, bring your revolver, don’t ask any questions…) — you’d think Arthur Conan Doyle might have found other grounds to criticise the Raffles stories on.

Back to jewels — a diamond necklace which “seems actually to have exerted a malign influence over everyone who had the misfortune to be connected with it” — for ‘The Mystery of the Five Hundred Diamonds’ (1904) by Robert Barr, though with a change of focus: this time we see events from the perspective of Eugene Valmont, French detective extraordinaire. When the necklace goes up for auction, the reputation of not just Valmont but the nation of France as a whole is at stake: the successful bidder must make it beyond the country’s borders without any misfortune befalling them.

Valmont’s methods are amusingly OTT — arresting any known or suspected thief on sometimes trumped-up charges, exhibiting an almost racial mistrust of Americans (“Of all evil-doers the American is most to be feared; he uses more ingenuity in the planning of his projects, and will take greater risks in carrying them out than any other malefactor on earth.”) — but Barr’s text is peppered with humorous asides (bemoaning the inherent stupidity of the average French policeman, say) and his plot unfolds with a complexity that feels like a forerunner to Freeman Wills Crofts’ The Cask (1920).

The puzzle plot tradition isn’t quite in full swing yet in that not every event feels fully explained — I’m still not sure why (rot13) gur zna whzcf va gur evire — but there’s a definite increase in complexity here, and you can expect more Robert Barr to follow on this blog.

I don’t wish to overburden this collection with Freeman Wills Crofts comparisons, but it’s interesting how the theft in ‘A Comedy on the Gold Coast’ (1905) by Arnold Bennett shares so many points with Crofts’ The End of Andrew Harrison (1938). Here, our swindler is millionaire Cecil Thorold, aided by trusty manservant Lecky “who, in various capacities and incarnations — now as liftman, now as financial agent, now as no matter what — assisted Cecil in his diversions”; fellow millionaire Simeon Rainshore, disapproving of a love match made by his daughter Geraldine, is to be our victim.

Sims’ introduction to author and character alike makes Thorold sound interesting — a thief who gets involved in schemes purely out of a search for some excitement or joy in an otherwise mundane, moneyed existence — but it’s difficult to draw lines between these scoundrels too distinctly on a single story each, and, the semi-twist of the ending aside, this is more diverting than it is compelling. It stands out for daring to veer into high finance, however, rather than simply being about pilfering a valuable bauble, so credit to author and editor both for that.

I find it hard to believe that it’s taken me this long to read anything by William Le Queux, but ‘The Story of a Secret’ (1906) is my first encounter with this hugely prolific writer. Told not from the perspective of our resident rogue, Count Bindo di Ferraris, but rather his chauffeur George Ewart, this is notable because Ewart remains in the dark about many of the manoeuvres he is instructed to undertake by an employer he knows is up to no good.

The story itself is…fine. It’s an easy read and, while the scheme at its core is rather simplistic when put against others in this collection, passes in a very enjoyable manner, as is very much a feature of this collection as a whole. But, on this scanty evidence, one is made to wonder if Le Queux’s prodigious output tells against him, and if more might have been accomplished had the man written less.

O. Henry‘s magnificently-titled ‘The Chair of Philanthromathematics’ (1908) is redolent with bizarrely charming dialects and malapropisms as two con men get an attack of “philanthropitis” and so set up a free college in a remote town.

“‘Andy,’ says I to him one day, ‘there’s something we overlooked. The boys ought to have dromedaries.’

“‘What’s that?’ Andy asks.

“‘Why, something to sleep in, of course,’ says I. ‘All colleges have ’em.’

“‘Oh, you mean pajamas,’ says Andy.”

It’s fairly amazing how many enjoyable ideas Henry crams in to such a short story (“‘Come to think of it now,’ goes on Andy, ‘all the philanthropists I ever knew had plenty of money. I ought to have looked into that matter long ago, and located which was the cause and which was the effect.'”) and, with an ending that turns the tables on the narrative superbly, it’s a hard heart indeed that can’t enjoy this.

The opening two chapters of Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford (1908) by George Randolph Chester follow, concerning the eponymous con man who blows into town, makes hay on questionable business investments, and clears out again just as quickly. Here, we see Wallingford laying his arrival on thick — the best hotels, the finest rooms — despite his “entire capitlized worth [being] the less than one hundred dollars he carried in this pocket”.

When he meets a similarly shady associate who assures Wallingford that the town is full of people “that you could separate from a dollar without chloroform and an ax”, our rogue goes into full assault, laying it on thick to impress a wealthy individual and so convince him to invest in a (somewhat ingenious) bogus idea that Wallingford improvises on the spot. The only criticism I have about this setup is that is only setup; being an extract of a novel, we never get to see how this plays out. I’m not sure I get the impression there’s going to be anything ingenious in the novel to make it worth checking out, but the tone of this is again very enjoyable.

I’m afraid I must disagree with Sims when it comes to ‘Blind Man’s Bluff’ (1913) by Frederick Irving Anderson — I found it drawn out, difficult to follow, needlessly complex in its descriptions and dialogue, and generally significantly below the standards of the other stories in this collection. Concerning a blind magician who, I think, is to perform a disappearing trick for, I think, a millionaires’ club, this meanders badly and contains a surprise ending which would have been all the better for coming 3,000 words earlier. Every collection has one duff; this, for me, is it.

I had a mixed time with William Hope Hodgson‘s stories about Carnacki the Ghost-Finder, so to have enjoyed ‘The Diamond Spy’ (1914) as much as I did was both a surprise and a delight. Gault, the captain of a passenger ship, isn’t a rogue in the gentleman thief mould — or at least, he isn’t in this story — but has a playful sense of disregard for the feelings and property of others that finds him in good company in this collection.

When Gault begins to suspect that one of his passengers is an agent working to prevent the illegal trade in diamonds, he sets in motion a plan which will see the man lose face with his employers. There’s something both juvenile and endearing in Gault’s actions, and Hodgson’s prose is fleet of foot and winsome throughout, not least when passenger Mr. Brown loses his prized pigeons as Gault has intended as part of his ruse:

Then Mr. Brown proved himself more of a man than I had hitherto supposed possible in one who flew pigeons. He attained a height of denunciatory eloquence, which not only brought most of the first-class passengers to the spot; but cause a number, even of the married women, to withdraw hastily.

Good fun; more Captain Gault stories may well follow, if I can find them.

The longest story in here, ‘The Willow Walk’ (1918) by Sinclair Lewis is also something of a masterpiece. I don’t even know how to write about this, so impressed was I with its clever manoeuvring. From the off, it’s clear that bank teller Jasper Holt has some malfeasance in mind, and as his complex plans gradually become clear it’s difficult, as in the best of this ilk of story, not to feel some burgeoning respect for this attention to detail and intelligent design.

But Lewis has much more in his sights than simply crime and its commission, turning his eye first on narrow-minded religiosity and latterly, as Sims intimates in his introduction, stepping confidently onto Dostoyevsky’s turf with a series of developments that change the face of the whole undertaking. It reminded me especially of Jim Thompson — called the Dimestore Dostoyevsky for good reason — when he gets the satirical bit between his teeth (c.f. A Hell of a Woman (1954), The Getaway (1958), Pop. 1280 (1964)) and comes recommended in the strongest possible terms.

Finally, it’s the turn of Edgar Wallace with the only female scoundrel in the book, ‘Four Square Jane’, a.k.a. ‘The Missing Romney’ (1919), in which a Robin Hood-esque figure steals valuable items and then ransoms them back to their owners, ensuring the spoils go to well-meaning causes. Her intended targets, who have “bank balances accumulated as a direct consequence of shady exploitation companies”, are, however hard to forewarn…

“Even if she is only hitting at the grossly rich she has forty thousand people to strike at. Obviously, it is impossible to protect them all.”

…and the ingenious ruse devised to make away with a valuable painting shows Wallace’s keen mind working to maximum effect. Adey has this listed as an impossible crime, but I’m not sure it quite qualifies…though I’m happy to be convinced otherwise. It is, however, clever and very enjoyable; thankfully one of the times that Wallace’s prolific tendencies produced something worthy of your attention.

I usually pick a top five stories for longer collections, and here they’d probably be…

1. ‘The Willow Walk’ (1918) by Sinclair Lewis
2. ‘The Mystery of the Five Hundred Diamonds’ (1904) by Robert Barr
3. ‘The Episode of the Diamond Links’ (1896) by Grant Allen
4. ‘The Chair of Philanthromathematics’ (1908) by O. Henry
5. ‘The Diamond Spy’ (1914) by William Hope Hodgson

…but the overall quality is very high, making this a charming collection of sprightly tales, superbly selected by Michael Sims, and well deserving of your time if the early days of crime fiction pique your interest in any way.