The annual Bodies from the Library (2018-present) collections, in which Tony Medawar expertly selects long-forgotten and previously-unpublished stories and plays, have become essential purchases for anyone with even a passing interest in the great and the good of detective fiction’s Golden Age.
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Within the space of about a week last year, I received two emails from blogging friends about The Lake of the Dead (1942) by André Bjerke, voted in 2001 as the best Norwegian crime novel of all time and recently translated into English by James D. Jenkins. The first email essentially said “Holy crap, you really need to read The Lake of the Dead!” while the second ran more along the lines of “Holy crap, whatever you do, don’t waste time on The Lake of the Dead!”…suffice to say, I was intrigued. Having now read it, I may side more with the latter perspective, but the book’s not without interest, especially in its gloomy atmospherics and intriguing first half.
Today begins a long-range project in which I work through the 56 canonical short stories featuring Mr. Sherlock Holmes written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle…some of which I haven’t read in over 20 years. I’m fascinated by Holmes, especially when he is as his creator made him, and, while I doubt I’ll have anything new to say, I intend to enjoy rereading him from first to last.
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In the London suburb of Balham, stark among the red-brick villas that stand like “lines of red cabbage in a field”, can be found the “ugly and squat” house Bloomfield, the one-time home of Mr. Peabody which contains within its high surrounding wall some three acres of land and presents a “forlorn appearance” to the world. Following the death of its elderly owner, who refused to sell out to the “rising tide of suburbia” and insisted the house and land be kept together, Bloomfield stands empty for many months until the mysterious Dr. Cox arrives on the scene and takes possession — refusing to answer any queries about himself or his work, much to the frustration of the local busybodies.
It speaks volumes about the excitement that the work of John Dickson Carr provokes in me that, with still around 20 of his novels unread, I’m revisiting some favourite titles from his output. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the likes of the American Mystery Classics and the British Library Crime Classics ranges are putting out such lovely new editions — and who wouldn’t want to revisit Carr in his prime?
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I don’t know the exact point at which an author becomes one I want to read in great depth, but I do know that the American Mystery Classics range has introduced me to novels by three authors who, in virtually no time at all, became fixtures on my Long-Range Reading List — those being Craig Rice, Cornell Woolrich, and Charlotte Armstrong. Of course, having now tantalised me with expertly-judged selections, the AMC will abandon all three, never reprint another of their works, and move on to pastures new, but at least my urgent searching out of further reading by these wonderful writers will give me something to do in my retirement. Or, y’know, if anyone wants to reprint them now, I won’t complain…
Five more recommended episodes of Elementary, in which Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) and Dr. Joan Watson (Lucy Liu) solve mysteries in modern day New York. Are we really up to season 5 already? Man, they grow up so fast.
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Epitaph for a Spy (1938) places me at the centre of a Venn diagram of two things I heartily dislike — the everyman espionage fiction of John le Carre, and novels whose protagonists cluelessly accidentally their way along — and so I shouldn’t exactly be surprised that these two wrongs have failed to combine to produce something I would enjoy. This story of languages teacher Josef Vadassy strong-armed into helping identify a spy while on holiday at an exclusive French pension is, in fact, riddled with just about every trope and facet of genre fiction that I dislike, and it’s difficult to imagine Eric Ambler’s intent in writing such a book. But, I get ahead of myself…
Having recently enshrined Hercule Poirot as the official World’s Favourite Golden Age Sleuth, let’s return to the probable holder of the title of World’s Favourite Detective and the very first case to feature Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
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