Hare, Cyril

 And we're done with the hard-boiled American stories and back to classic English mysteries, in this case, those of Cyril Hare, pseudonym of Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark, whose mysteries usually have a legal background.  

Two young clerks in a real estate office go to inspect the premises of a house that has been rented for the previous month in Tenant For Death find the strangled body of Lionel Ballentine, an absconding financier.  Since Ballentine had been threatened by failed banker John Fanshaw that same morning, the case seems obvious, except for the fact that Fanshaw cannot be the person who rented the house the month before since he was still in Maidstone Prison until a few days before the murder.  So who is the mysterious Colin James who rented the house and what has become of him; these are the complicated questions Inspector Mallett of Scotland Yard has to answer before he can unravel the mystery.  Grade:  B.  

Death Is No Sportsman finds Inspector Mallett investigating the murder of Sir Peter Packer, the much hated local squire who is found dead on the banks of an exclusive trout fishing stream.  Suspects include Packer's downtrodden young wife, the members of the fly-fishing syndicate who own the fishing rights, and the young laborer whose fiancee Packer has seduced.  Grade: B.

Inspector Mallett is wrapping up his vacation with a stay at Pendlebury Old Hall, a country hotel that was formerly the residence of the Dickinson family.  Over dinner the inspector falls into conversation with Leonard Dickinson, a sadly depressing man who returns annually to visit his birthplace.  When Dickinson is found dead in his bed the next morning, with indications of suicide, Mallett isn't surprised, and resists the efforts of Dickinson's son Stephen, who insists that it can't have been suicide, to drag the inspector into a murder investigation in Suicide Excepted.  Grade:  C.  

Tragedy At Law introduces Francis Pettigrew, a lawyer who follows the Southern Circuit on its rounds, presided over by Pettigrew's judicial nemisis, Sir William Barber.  Pettigrew is present in the judge's car one night when the judge, having had rather too much brandy at dinner,  has the misfortune to hit and injure a pedestrian.  Naturally, complications ensue for Pettigrew and Inspector Mallet to unravel.  Grade:  B.  

With A Bare Bodkin finds Francis Pettigrew pressed into service as the legal advisor to the war-time Pin Control Ministry, evacuated from London to a distant location in the north of England far from the Blitz.  Pettigrew and many of his co-workers are housed in a hotel; when one of the residents is discovered to be the author of several mystery novels, the game is soon afoot to devise The Plot.  The plotters soon settle on Miss Danville as the most unlikely of murderers, at least in part because of her inoffensiveness and her obvious mental instability.  When Miss Danville herself is actually murdered, Pettigrew and Inspector Mallett have to unravel the plot within The Plot.  Grade:  A.  

Now married and settled in rural England, Francis Pettigrew is drawn into the affairs of the local musical society; although he himself is not musical, his wife plays violin in the local orchestra in When The Wind Blows.  When the visiting soloist is found murdered during their first concert, Pettigrew and the local police must track down a mysterious vanishing clarinetist.  Grade:  B.  

Francis Pettigrew is called upon to sit in for an ailing judge on the local bench and hears several local cases of interest, including that of a poor widow, Mrs. Pink, whose landlord is trying to evict her.  When Mrs. Pink is found murdered in Death Walks In The Woods, it appears she may not have been what she seemed to be and suspects abound.  Grade:  B.

Untimely Death (alternate title:  He Should Have Died Hereafter) finds the Pettigrews vacationing in Exmoor, where Frank spent some of his childhood.  One of his memories from those days, when he stumbled upon a dead body, has haunted him for years.  That memory comes flooding back when he also encounters a dead body in the same location as the one from all those years ago, but this body promptly disappears when he goes to seek help, only to reappear several days later.  Subsequently, Frank finds himself in the unaccustomed position of appearing as a witness in the Court of Chancery in the case of a contested will.  The description of the trial includes one of my all time favorite scenes, and for that alone I give this an A.  Grade:  A.  

Hammett, Dashiell

Dashiell Hammett was a former detective for the Pinkerton Detective Agency, founded in 1850, who turned to writing crime novels and founded the "hard-boiled" school of detective fiction.  His first detective was the Continental Op, an operative for the Continental Detective Agency, who uses many names but never reveals his own name.  A short, fat, balding man, the Op is adept at both smooth talking and violence in a world that seemingly requires much more of the latter than of the former.  I once tried to total the body count in Red Harvest and lost track of the number of violent deaths, as I recall, somewhere in the forties.  Upon re-reading it, I lost count again in the twenties, but that's still a lot of bodies.  

Although the hard-boiled school is often conflated with the noir sub-genre of crime fiction, critics point out that the protagonists in noir are the victims or perpetrators within a corrupt system, whereas the hard-boiled detective "may bend or break the law, this is done by a protagonist with meaningful agency in pursuit of justice."   

The Continental Op, a collection of seven short stories, introduces the Op and his world of crime and violence.  Unlike other writers who denigrate the efforts and efficiency of the police, the Op often works with them to resolve cases for the benefit of his agency and clients.  Grade:  A.  

In Blood Money, published in 1927, criminals from all over the country have gathered in San Francisco to knock over a couple of banks in a well organized attack on San Francisco's financial district.  After the attack, however, many of the hoodlums themselves are killed by their own confederates.  As the Op follows the trail of blood and the body count mounts, the plot keeps getting more and more complicated.  Grade:  B.  

The Big Knockover is a collection of short stories, most of which are too short to be novels, but the story from which the collection takes its name became the first part of Blood Money; the second part of that book details the Op's efforts to trace and collar the planner of the operation.  Grade:  B.

In Red Harvest, the Op is sent by his agency to a Western mining town at the request of the reform-minded publisher of the local newspapers, only to find that his client is murdered before he has a chance even to meet the man.  The Op goes to the publisher's elderly father, the corrupt kingpin of the town, who feels control slipping from his grip, and who reluctantly hires the Op to clean up the town, which he proceeds to do by setting rival factions against each other as the body count mounts.  Grade:  A.  

Who could ever give any grade but an A+ to the quintessential hard-boiled detective story, The Maltese Falcon?   The taut, crisply written story follows Sam Spade's quest from the entry of his lovely, lying client to the final revelation of the falcon itself.  I always enjoy reading this book, and I'm sure I will be reading it again someday, maybe after I finish the remaining eight shelves of books (sigh).   Grade:  A+

I've never been that fond of The Thin Man, who, by the way, is NOT detective Nick Charles, but rather his erstwhile client, Clyde Wynant, a crazy inventor of whom it is said he's so thin he has to stand in the same place twice in order to cast a shadow.  Charles, his wife Nora, and their rambunctious Airedale Asta  are back in New York for the holidays when Charles receives word that Clyde wants to hire him.  Between the cocktail parties and speakeasies of Prohibition era New York, Charles puts away an amazing amount of booze while he chases the elusive Clyde all over town, dodging Clyde's lying, vengeful ex-wife Mimi, her gigolo new husband, and Mimi and Clyde's precociously dissipated daughter Dorothy.  Probably not going to read it again.  Grade:  C.   

And I'm DONE with hard-boiled for a while, on to the legal mysteries of Cyril Hare!

Gardner, Earl Stanley

I had three of Earl Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason mystery novels, but couldn't finish any of them.  Mason's perpetual fencing with the police and the district attorney's office on behalf of his shady clients really turned me off this time around, so they're all in the "donate" bin.   

Gaboriau, Emile

 I must have bought this translation of Emile Gaboriau's Other People's Money (L'argent d'autres), first published in 1874, decades ago, but had never read it.  Gaboriau is considered one of the pioneers of mystery fiction and his detective, Monsieur Lecoq, is considered to have influenced Conan Doyle's creation of Sherlock Holmes years later.  

However, Monsieur Lecoq is not in this story; the detection is done by interested parties and by an otherwise anonymous Commissary of Police, who guides the detection of the financial maneuverings of the absconding cashier of the Mutual Credit Society, who has made off with embezzled millions.  The story gradually unravels the complicated secret life of the cashier, and of the other important members of the Mutual Credit Society.  It's an interesting book in many ways, revealing the relationship between the political and financial elements of French society of the day, but I doubt I'll read it again.  Grade:  C.  

Gallico, Paul

 Paul Gallico's The Zoo Gang consists of four longish stories, too short to be novels, too long to be short stories, but fascinating no matter what you call them.  The central character of each story is Colonel Pierre Roqubrun, an antique dealer on France's Cote d'Azur, playground of the rich and famous as well as the greedy and unscrupulous, and four of his former colleagues in the French Resistance of WWII.  During the war the gang was the scourge of the German occupiers of the Riviera; now they are all respected citizens with their memories of the perilous days at war.    

    In The Picture Thieves, a gang has stolen twelve famous Renoir paintings from a museum in Cannes.  Captain Scoubide, the local police detective, suspects that the Zoo Gang may be involved in this burglary as well as two other recent art thefts in the area.  His questioning leads the Colonel to wonder whether his former colleagues, now all respectable merchants and tradesmen, might indeed be involved, and if they are, how he can extricate them.  

In How To Stick Up A Million Dollar Riviera Gala, a whisper of a planned attack on a glittering society charity gala leads Colonel Roqubrun to ask the Zoo Gang to tell him how they would pull off such a heist; when they come up with a plan, he has the uneasy feeling that they might actually be planning to do it.  

In Snow Over The Cote d'Azur, the death of the Colonel's favorite niece from a heroin overdose leads him to declare war on the drug traffickers of the Riviera, using the special talents of his four WWII Resistance colleagues, although he has to apologize to them for blowing up a chocolate factory on his own that was being used to process drugs.  

Le Double Snatch finds the Colonel narrating the story of a double kidnapping as the final chapter unfolds before his audience.  

These are just great stories.  Grade:  A.  

Frazer, Margaret

•  Margaret Frazer's historical mystery novels featuring Dame Frevisse are set in the priory of St. Frideswide during the complicated reign of King Henry VI of England.  Dame Frevisse is the niece of the powerful and well connected Thomas Chaucer, son of poet Geoffrey Chaucer, the ramifications of whose political dealings sometimes reach into the cloistered walls of the priory. These tales are well written, preserving the manners and flavor of medieval England, but with language accessible to modern readers.   

In The Novice's Tale, saintly novice Thomasine, who is soon to take her vows as a nun, is dismayed when her aunt, hard drinking and brash Lady Ermentrude, descends upon the priory with her entourage, including a pet monkey, and demands that Thomasine leave the priory with her and marry.  When Thomasine resists, Lady Ermentrude flies into a drunken rage and rides off to Thomasine's sister's house, where she berates Lady Isobel and her husband, Sir John.  Shortly after Lady Ermentrude returns to the priory she has a seizure and becomes incoherent.  When both Lady Ermentrude and a servant who has drunk some of her medicated wine die Dame Frevisse realizes she must step in and investigate to keep the Crowner (coroner) from coming to the easy and convenient conclusion that Thomasine has poisoned them both to avoid being removed from the priory.  I found this story accurate in historical detail and believable as a mystery novel.  Grade:  A.  

I read The Servant's Tale years ago, but found it so sad and depressing that I think I'm going to skip it this time around, although as I recall, I found the details of the arrival of a troupe of players at the priory to perform a play to be very interesting.  It was the details of the lives of medieval peasants that got me down.  

In The Maiden's Tale, Dame Frevisse travels to London with Abbot Gilberd to escort the new Prioress to St. Frideswide, but before that can happen, she becomes involved in the political intrigues of Cardinal Beaufort, the Duke of Gloucester, and her own cousin Alice, wife of the earl of Suffolk, as Parliament convenes to consider contracting peace with France, the price of which is the release of the Duc d'Orleans, who has been a prisoner in England since the battle of Agincourt, twenty five years earlier.   This is a cracking good tale, based on a brief historical reference to a cousin of Suffolk, Lady Jane, known as "Jane with the blemish" for a large birthmark on her face, who had the fortitude to refuse to take vows in the convent she had been raised in and forced the world to let her live her own life.  Grade:  A.  

I got a bit bogged down in the complicated plot ramifications of an estate dispute in The Clerk's Tale.  Dame Frevisse and her prioress, Domina Elizabeth, have traveled to St. Mary's nunnery in the village of Goring to visit a cousin of Elizabeth's who is dying.  They arrive to find that Master Montfort, with whom Frevisse has dealt on previous occasions as Crowner, has been murdered in the nunnery garden.  That doesn't come as much surprise as almost everyone hated the greedy, grasping Montfort, who has been playing one side against the other in a legal dispute he has been handling in his new role as Escheator.  Montfort's son Christopher had succeeded him as Crowner and now must investigate his father's murder.  Grade:  B.  

I did not finish The Bastard's Tale, either.  Arteys, the illegitimate son of the Duke of Gloucester, is caught up in the political machinations of the ruthless and powerful men around King Henry VI, and Dame Frevisse must use what influence she has to extricate him from them.  

I gave a couple of these books grades of A, but I'm not sure I'll ever read them again; I love the well researched history, but in many ways the stories are just too intense. 

Link to a chronology of the history depicted in the Dame Frevisse books:  Chronology.  

Link to a chronology of the history depicted in the Dame Frevisse books:  Chronology. 

Futrelle, Jaques

American journalist Jaques Futrelle was the creator of the Thinking Machine cases, the most famous of which is "The Problem of Cell 13", republished in 1973 in Best Thinking Machine Cases.  In that story, the Thinking Machine, AKA Professor Augustus S. F. X. van Dusen, a scientist with a string of letters signifying professional degrees after his already impressive name, undertakes to escape from a prison cell by thinking himself out.  Of a slight physical build and an irascible temperament, the Thinking Machine is notable for his irritation with the use of the word "impossible", which leads him to take the bet.  

These stories, and additional one republished in 1976 in Great Cases of the Thinking Machine, were written in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; the author, Jaques Futrelle, died aboard the Titanic in 1912.   Unlike Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Thorndyke, Professor van Dusen makes full use of the technology of the day, especially the telephone, although most of the leg work in the cases is done by reporter Henry Hatch.   I'd have to give "The Problem of Cell 13" an A, but most of the rest of the stories get a grade of B.  I did get rather tired of van Dusen's often repeated dictum of "two and two always make four, not some of the time, but ALL of the time."