Innes, Michael

 Michael Innes was the pseudonym of Oxford don J.I.M. Stewart.  It had been many years since I last read any of the seven of his mystery novels in my collection; I have to say that it's been rather heavy going so far.  

Detective Inspector John Appleby, summoned from Scotland Yard to St. Anthony's College to investigate a Death At The President's Lodging, finds a mystery complicated by the secrets of the various members of the college.  Suspects are limited to those members living in a locked compound, but that doesn't necessarily make it any easier for Appleby, even when assisted by Giles Gott, one of the dons who writes mystery novels under an assumed name.   I found the plot convoluted and obscure, and none of the characters particularly interesting.  Grade:  C.  

An amateur production of Hamlet at Scamnum, seat of the Dukes of Horton, featuring the Duke as Claudius and the Lord Chancellor of England as Polonius, is preceded by an ominous series of warnings on the theme of Hamlet, Revenge.  When murder occurs during the play, Appleby is called upon by the Prime Minister to determine whether this is a private act of murderous revenge, or whether there is espionage involved.  This should have been an interesting plot, but it dragged on tediously to the point where I'm still not sure what really happened or why.  Grade:  C.  

With everyone in Britain on edge in the days leading up to WWII, Shiela Grant is traveling by train to Scotland, when a passenger in her compartment begins reciting poetry.  Another passenger tops that by reciting a long poem by Algernon Swinburne, but Sheila recognizes that additional lines have been added to the poem.  When she foils an attempted kidnapping, she realizes that she has stumbled into The Secret Vanguard of Nazi spies.  I'm unsure how to grade this one:  I give it an A for Sheila Grant and her cracking resourcefulness in escaping from and combating the spies, but a D for the clunky plot device of using obscure poetry to pass on secret information.  Grade:  A/D.  

I started The Daffodil Affair, involving the apparent theft of a London carriage horse, but couldn't get going on it, so DNF.  

In The Weight Of The Evidence, Inspector Appleby finds himself again investigating a murder among academics, this time the death of a professor who has been crushed to death by a meteorite dropped from the window of one of the university buildings.  Appleby has to sort out the various academic rivalries and petty jealousies to solve the murder.  Again, it's a convoluted and unlikely plot that gets a bit tedious as Appleby works his way through it.  Grade:  C.  

Appleby, by now (1958) Sir John Appleby and the Assistant Commissioner of Crime at Scotland Yard, while vacationing in Italy, stops by to visit Lewis Packford, a retiring and secretive scholar known for springing surprises on the academic world in The Long Farewell.  Realizing that Packford is about to unleash one of his bombshells, Appleby leaves him to it, only to find himself attending Packford's funeral in London shortly thereafter, and confronting Packford's two bigamous wives.  Was the suicide note a forgery?  What has become of the priceless Shakespeare document Packford apparently purchased in Italy?  These are a few of the questions Appleby must answer to sort it all out.   I'm giving this one a B, mainly because the plot is a little more coherent, but doubt I'll ever read it again.  Grade:  B.  

It's 1962 and Appleby and his wife Judith are visiting her uncle Julius when they become involved in The Crabtree Affair.  Out hiking in the neighborhood one day, they stop at the Jolly Leggers Inn, a local pub named for the "leggers" who in years past propelled barges through a long canal tunnel; there they meet elderly Seth Crabtree, a former local resident, newly returned from living in America to check out Scroop House, where he was formerly a servant.  A short time later they find Crabtree's body floating in the canal, dead from a bash on the head.  It's another convoluted plot, with numerous suspects congregating in the vicinity of the murder with improbable motives at the crucial time.  I'm giving this on a grade of C, too, and probably going to donate the lot to the library.  Grade:  C.  

Hull, Richard

 Richard Hull's Keep It Quiet just never rang the bell for me.   When one of the more irritating members  of an exclusive London gentlemen's club is found dead, possibly poisoned in an unfortunate cooking accident, the weak-kneed club secretary and resident doctor decide to avoid scandal by keeping it quiet.  Naturally, this decision only complicates matters.  However, since none of the characters in it were even remotely likable or appealing, I decided not to waste time on the book.   Into the donation bin it goes.  Grade:  D. 

Heyer, Georgette

 I usually find Georgette Heyer's mysteries fun to read, but Footsteps In The Dark is a bit too Gothic for my taste.  Siblings Peter, Margaret and Celia and Celia's husband Charles have inherited a large old country house, a former priory, said to be haunted by a mysterious monk.  Peter, Margaret and Charles pursue various suspicious characters through their grounds and the local village, while Celia clings timorously to her aunt.  I'll probably put this one in the donation bin, too.  Grade:  C.  

Businessman Arnold Vereker has been found sitting in the stocks on the village green where he keeps a cottage for amorous weekends, dead from a knife wound in the back in Death In The Stocks.  The local police immediately suspect his half-sister Antonia when they find her staying in the cottage with blood on her skirt, but soon find out that several other people also have it in for Arnold, with Antonia's brother Kenneth, an artist and the next heir, leading the pack.  It's up to Superintendent Hannasyde and Sergeant Hemingway to sort it all out.  This book has long been one of my favorites, largely because of the eccentric and unpredictable Vereker clan.  Example:  Superintendent Hannasyde, on viewing one of Kenneth's paintings, remarks to Antonia Vereker, "Your brother told me to-day that his hands are worth more than all your half-brother's money," to which Antonia replies, "Yes, he does think a lot of himself... you'll have to get used to that sort of swank if you mean to see much of him."  Priceless.  Grade:  A.

Barrister Frank Amberley, following the "short cut" recommended by his cousin, comes upon a car on the roadside with a dead body in it.  When the body turns out to be the butler of his uncle's neighbors, Amberley confronts the question:  Why Shoot A Butler?   Grade:  B.  

With the death of domineering Gregory Matthews in Behold, Here's Poison, Superintendent Hannasyde and Sergeant Hemingway again have to deal with an eccentric family, including Gregory's waspish and cheeseparing sister Harriet, uncompromising sister Gertrude, and soulful sister-in-law Zoe, as well as other family members and friends, many of whom had reasons to wish Gregory dead.  When Harriet is also poisoned, the circle narrows.  Grade:  C.  I just found all these people a bit much, and I get tired of Heyer marrying off characters to people they should run from.  

When elderly Silas Kane is found to have fallen over a cliff in They Found Him Dead, only inquisitive fourteen year old Timothy Harte, heavily influenced by American gangster movies, suspects that Silas may have been murdered.  But when Silas' cousin Clement, who has inherited the family business, is found shot to death there's no question of accident, and Hannasyde and Hemingway again have to deal with convoluted family relationships.  This is a good one, mainly because of Timothy's entertainment value.  Grade:  A.  

Affable businessman Ernie Fletcher is found bludgeoned to death in his study with A Blunt Instrument.  The timing of the murder is tight, the blunt instrument is nowhere to be found and Ernie's nephew and heir Neville is busy providing false clues and confusing the matter for his own amusement.  Worse yet, Sergeant Hemingway is saddled with the Bible-spouting constable who discovered the murder.  Grade:  B.  

In No Wind Of Blame, scapegrace Wally Carter, who expects his rich wife to pay for Wally's illegitimate child, is shot and killed in a landscape crawling with potential suspects, including his self-dramatizing step daughter, a Russian prince and a long-time admirer of Wally's wife, Ermentrude.  Former Sergeant, now Inspector Hemingway is baffled not only by the murder but also by the dramatic antics of Wally's step daughter, Vickie.  I give this one an A for the humor alone.   Grade:  A.  

Retired Army General Sir Arthur Billington-Smith bullies his wife and everyone around him, then really blows his top when his poet son Geoffrey brings home an exotic cabaret dancer as his fiancee, so no one is very surprised when Sir Arthur is found stabbed to death in The Unfinished Clue.  I'm giving this one a grade of B mainly because of the wicked humor of it.  Grade:  B.  

Smiling, genial Uncle Joseph Herriard has assembled a Christmas party at his curmudgeonly brother Nathaniel's country house in Envious Casca.  Although Joe tries to spread sweetness and light, Nathaniel quarrels with almost everyone present, from his crusty nephew Stephen, his intense niece Paula, his sly business partner Edgar Mottisfont, and assorted other guests, and the situation seems ripe for murder.  When Nathaniel is discovered stabbed to death in a locked room, it's up to Inspector Hemingway to unlock the puzzle.  Grade:  B.  

Duplicate Death, featuring the return of Timothy Harte, known to Chief Inspector Hemingway as "Terrible Timothy", has long been a favorite of mine.  When Dan Seaton-Carew is strangled to death during a duplicate bridge party given by social climber Mrs. Haddington, and her secretary, the now grown up barrister Timothy's fiancee is among the suspects, Timothy and Hemingway have to sort it out.  Grade:  A.  

When newcomer Sampson Warrenby is found shot to death in his garden, none of the many people who disliked or downright hated the pushy social climber seem to have alibis, but absolutely everyone has a favorite theory of who dunnit, and  Chief Inspector Hemingway has to dodge the amateur detectives "helping" him before he can solve the case in Detection Unlimited.  Grade:  B.  

Hastings, Macdonald

 Cork On The Water is Macdonald Hastings' first Montague Cork mystery.  When a salmon fisherman snags a dead body instead of the giant salmon he's been pursuing in a Scottish stream and Cork's insurance company is presented with a claim, Cork proceeds to investigate.  I didn't find either Montague Cork or the mystery especially interesting, so this one will probably go in the donation bin.  Grade:  C.  

Hess, Joan

 Joan Hess lived in Fayetteville, Arkansas and celebrated the region with two mystery series, the Maggody series set in the fictional town of Maggody, Arkansas, and the Claire Molloy series set in Farberville, Arkansas.  

Arly Hanks has returned to her hometown of Maggody, Arkansas, after living in New York City and enduring a painful divorce, to serve as the town's police chief where most of her duties consist of policing the criminal activities of the inbred but not overly bright Buchanon clan.  In Misery Loves Maggody, the only Maggody book I have, Arly's mother Ruby Bee and her best friend Estelle take off on a tour bus following the Elvis trail into Tennessee and Mississippi.  These books were fun to read once, but the "hicks in the sticks" routine gets a bit old after a while; I read most of them years ago, but I'm glad I don't have any more of them.  Grade:  C.  

I also have one book, The Goodbye Body, from another Hess series; Claire Molloy is the owner of a bookshop in Farberville, Arkansas, who has been accidentally involved in several murder cases.  Claire and her daughter are forced to evacuate their home for a couple of weeks while the landlord has it fumigated to get rid of the rats other tenants have attracted, and a friend offers them the use of her house while she's on vacation.  No sooner have they moved into the house when Claire's daughter and her friend find a dead body behind the pool house, although it has disappeared by the time the police arrive.  Soon two young women show up looking for the woman, with whom they claim some sort of vague family relationship.  The plot gets more complicated from there, but unfortunately not any more interesting.  I'm giving this on a C, too, and probably won't keep either one of these books.  Grade:  C.  

Hartman, Honor

Dean James writes a string of mystery series under various pseudonyms, including Honor Hartman and Miranda James, so I'll list them separately under each name.  

In On The Slam, recently widowed Emma Diamond has moved to a Houston subdivision next door to her life-long best friend Sophie.  A beginning bridge player, Emma is invited to a neighborhood bridge party at the home of Janet and Gerald McGreevy; when much-hated Janet drops dead at Emma's feet during the party, Emma goes to work to figure out whodunnit.   These people play a LOT of bridge, although it's not necessary to understand the game to read the book.  This book was a pleasant "cosy", but I don't think I'll ever want to read it again.  Grade:  C

In Unkindest Cut, Emma, Sophie, next-door neighbor Marylou, along with Marylou's friend Paula, go off to the Texas hill country to attend a week-long bridge gathering featuring Paula's former husband, bridge expert Basil Dumont.  When another leading bridge expert, Avery Trowbridge, who happens to be Paula's current husband, unexpectedly turns up, tensions mount and gossip flies faster than the playing cards.  Grade:  C.  

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."  

Watson

Note:  This page will be updated from time to time to include more examples of the Watson convention.  

A "Watson" in mystery fiction is the detective's sidekick and first person narrator of events, so called after Dr. John H. Watson, the chronicler of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories.  The Watson is usually presumed to be a bit dimwitted and bumbling, mainly to show off the superlative abilities of the detective himself.  In fact, Father Ronald Knox's Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction rule that says that the Watson must be slightly less intelligent than the average reader.  

I've always felt that dictum to be rather unfair to the original Watson of the Holmes stories, which show Dr. Watson to be intelligent and observant, although less so than Holmes himself.  The popular movie series of the 1940s featuring Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson may have contributed to the image of Watson as bumbling and not too bright.

Although the first person narration can be helpful to the reader in that the reader sees everything the Watson, and presumably the detective, sees, the narrative form can also subject the reader to any mistaken observations or inferences or opinions expressed by the narrator.  The use of a Watson can be quite annoying at times, as witness Agatha Christie's use of Captain Hastings as the Watson of Hercule Poirot.  Christie introduced both characters in The Mysterious Affair At Styles, published in 1920, but eventually decided to do without him and sent him off to herd cattle in Argentina in Murder On The Links, published in 1923.  She brought Hastings back several more times over the years, but also brilliantly used the Watson convention to bamboozle the reader in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.  

Probably the next most notable use of a Watson can be found in R. Austin Freeman's Dr. Thorndyke stories; Freeman actually uses several different narrators, but the most usual one is Dr. Jervis, Thorndyke's junior partner, who, like Thorndyke, is both a medical doctor and a lawyer and who assists Thorndyke in most of his cases.  Jervis sees the factual matters Thorndyke sees, but Thorndyke often possesses additional knowledge that Jervis does not have and refuses to disclose any inferences or opinions he has until the end of the case.  For example, in one case Thorndyke notes that the clothing of the murder victim includes the shell of a particular mollusk, but Jervis does not know, and this reader certainly did not know, that the mollusk was on the verge of extinction and therefore only found in two very limited geographic locations in Great Britain, which renders Thorndyke's zeroing in on a particular site as the scene of the murder unnecessarily mysterious.   

Freeman, R. Austin

 Once again I started these out of chronological order, but oh, well, it's my party and I'll read them in whatever order I want.  

R. Austin Freeman was the creator of Dr. John Thorndyke, who remains preeminent among the scientific forensic detectives.  Thorndyke is both a lawyer and a medical doctor who maintains his own laboratory where he can scientifically test materials and substances found at crime scenes.  

One of Freeman's earlier Thorndyke books, The Eye of Osiris, first published in 1911, finds Dr. Berkeley, a young colleague of Thorndyke's, involved with members of a family reduced to poverty by the bizarre will of an uncle who disappeared under suspicious circumstances two years earlier.  When bones appear on the uncle's property,  Berkeley calls on Thorndyke's legal knowledge as well as his scientific abilities to sort the matter out.  Grade:  A.  

The Stoneware Monkey, first published in 1939, begins with a narrative by Dr. Oldfield, a young doctor who encounters the murder of a police constable while on a temporary assignment in the country.  In addition to the murder, a sizable quantity of diamonds has been stolen that same night.  Later, the doctor becomes friendly with an artist, Peter Gannet, a potter whose primitively constructed pieces appear to sell unaccountably well.  When Gannet disappears under suspicious circumstances, Dr. Oldfield enlists the help of Dr. Thorndyke in determining whether the ashes of human bone discovered in Peter Gannet's pottery kiln are connected with his disappearance.  The hilarious explanation of modern abstract pottery art alone makes this one worth rereading.  Grade:  A.  

The Penrose Mystery, first published in 1936, finds Dr. Thorndyke, Dr. Jervis, and their associate Mr. Polton searching for a wealthy collector of antiquities, Daniel Penrose, who has disappeared shortly after showing a collection of valuable jewels to a lawyer whom he swears to secrecy.  I found the solution of this case to be bewilderingly complicated and improbable.  Grade:  C.  

Dr. Thorndyke's Discovery, published in 1932, with an alternate title of When Rogues Fall Out, is an "inverted" mystery tale, starting with the commission of the crime and then proceeding to follow its detection.  In this case, there are two crimes; first the disappearance of Mr. Didbury Toke, a collector of art objects and fence of stolen jewelry, then second the murder of Scotland Yard Inspector Badger, a zealous but secretive official investigator.  It takes Thorndyke's special skills to connect the two crimes and apprehend the unknown perpetrator.  Grade:  A.  I have to say this was a difficult book for me to read because the copy I have is a cheap paperback with center gutters so narrow you have to guess at some of the words.  This copy cost $.25 when it was printed, and as Mark Twain said of paying $7 for a five hour Wagner opera at Bayreuth, it was almost too much for the money.  

After slogging through approximately a thousand pages of short stories in The Famous Cases of Dr. Thorndyke, I have to confess some sympathy for Father Ronald Knox's Commandment against elaborate scientific plot devices.  For example, when the location of a crime is determined by the presence on the victim's clothing of a rare, almost extinct mollusk found in only two places in Britain, a fact known to Thorndyke, but not to the reader, this reader is inclined to be a bit cranky.  Thorndyke's absolute refusal to reveal any of his thought process during the case to either Dr. Jervis, his usual Watson, or to the reader until the dénouement, in case after case is irritating.  

I finished off the Thorndyke series with The Unconscious Witness.  Landscape artist Tom Pedley is blissfully paining a rural scene one day when he notices three people walking past; two men and a woman who appears to be following and eavesdropping on the two men's conversation.  A short time later the woman and one of the men return up the path separately, but there's no sign of the third man.  Pedley is intrigued by the eavesdropper and makes a sketch of the three figures, then forgets about it until the police come to question him about the murder of the third man.  A short time later a woman who claims to be an artist, but who has neither taste nor talent, moves into the studio next to Pedley's and begins to try to involve him in an intimate friendship.  I found the plot of this one involved so many coincidences that the whole thing was unbelievable, but the commentary on modern art is pretty funny.  Grade:  C.  

Artists In Crime

 It occurred to me that several of the mystery novels I've been reading involve artists as either suspects or victims, and I thought that might be worth exploring as I continue to read through my collection.  I'll be looking at each story involving one or more artists to see whether they seem genuine or phony.  And I will be adding to this post as I discover more Artists in Crime.  

First up would have to be Margery Allingham with The Estate of the Beckoning Lady, featuring Minnie Cassands, a painter who is driven to increasingly step up her production levels by an unfortunate quirk in the British tax codes; it seems the more she paints, the more her tax burden increases, and then her problems multiply when the local tax agent who's hounding her is found murdered.  The art in this is mostly decorative background to the complicated plot, but it all sounds good.  A particularly funny bit comes when a teenage relative is seriously disillusioned when he discovers that Minnie's conversation with two important party guests is not about Art, but about money instead.    

Agatha Christie involves artists in several of her books.  The murder victim in Five Little Pigs is artist Amyas Crayle, whose characteristic absorption in his work contributes to his murder in several ways.  Henrietta Saversnake, an artist in The Hollow, uses her sculptural work in an unusual way; she conceals the murder weapon inside the sculpture of a horse.  I found these two depictions of artists to be reasonably believable.  

Charlotte and Aaron Elkins' Alix London books deal less with artists and more with art conservation, and, thanks to Alix's disgraced father Geoffrey London, forgery and fraud in the art world.  A former American Art librarian at San Francisco's De Young Museum, Charlotte Elkins knows her way around the art world, and it shows in this series of books.  A Dangerous Talent leads Alix London to Santa Fe and Ghost Ranch to examine a painting alleged to be by Georgia O'Keefe that a client is considering buying. A Cruise To Die For finds Alix embroiled with a forged Monet... or was it a Manet?  In The Art Whisperer, Alix encounters a jargon spewing art museum director who has a personal vendetta against her, and in The Trouble With Mirrors, her beloved Uncle Tiny may have been involved in the disappearance of a priceless Cellini medallion from an Italian museum decades earlier.  I found all of these to be believable and very entertaining--it's a cracking good series of books.  

R. Austin Freeman's Dr. Thorndyke is called in The Stoneware Monkey to examine ashes of human bone to determine whether they might belong to Peter Gannet, a potter from whose pottery kiln the ashes and bone fragments were recovered.  Gannet builds his pieces by hand, scorning use of the pottery wheel; his pieces appear something between a birds nest and a flower pot to the narrator, Dr. Oldfield, but are expounded by art expert Mr. Bunderby as, "this noble and impressive work ...typical of the great artist by whose genius was it created. .... Looking at it, we realized with respectful admiration the wonderful power of analysis, the sensibility--at once subtle and intense--that made its conception possible; and we can trace the deep thought, the profound research--the untiring search for the essential of abstract form."  When a viewer says he's not quite clear as to what was meant by 'abstract form', Bunderby replies that "The words 'abstract form,' then evoke in me the conception of that essential, pervading, geometric sub-structure which persists when all the trivial and superficial accidents of mere visual appearances have been eliminated.  In short, it is the fundamental rhythm which is the basic aesthetic factor underlying all our abstract conception of spatial limitation.  Do I make myself clear?"  The questioner naturally retreats in confusion from this flood of nebulous bloviation.  But then the moment of truth emerges to Dr. Oldfield when Bunderby presents as Gannet's master work a decorated jar that Dr. Oldfield recognizes as something he himself created by experimenting on the potter's wheel and decorated with indentations from his own latch-key and clinical thermometer and is now being passed off as one of Gannet's hand-built pottery pieces.  

Freeman also incorporates art and artists in the plot of The Unconscious Witness; landscape painter Tom Pedley witnesses the prelude to murder, then is ensnared in a friendship with a woman claiming to be an artist who has neither taste nor talent.  Her drawing skills are about the level of a nine-year old child, but she's very quick with the current modern art patter.  Freeman's hilarious satire of the jargon of the modern art world is not to be missed.  

Forrest, Katherine V.

 It's been years since I read any of Katherine V. Forrest's Kate Delafield police procedural novels, so I was pleased to see them next on the list.  

In Amateur City, LAPD homicide detective Kate Delafield arrives at the scene of a homicide in the building of the Modern Office corporation, where an overbearing, much hated manager has been stabbed to death.  The early hour of the murder and building security features limit the pool of suspects to the upper level managers, all of whom had reason to hate the victim.  More than just a routine police procedural, the book explores the internal police culture as it affects lesbian and gay police officers.  Grade:  A.  

Investigating Murder At The Nightwood Bar, homicide detective Kate Delafield finds a young lesbian murdered in the bar's parking lot with her own baseball bat.  Although initially suspicious and unhelpful, the bar's lesbian customers warm up to Kate after she fights off an attempted kidnapping of one of the women by a gang of young homophobes.  WARNING:  this book contains descriptions of sexual child abuse.  Grade:  A.  

Someone has killed a resident of The Beverly Mailbu and sat and watched during the three hours it took him to die.  The victim turns out to have been an informer during the dark days of the McCarthy Communist witch hunt era that affected the lives of many people working in the motion picture industry, including some of the other residents of the building.  Grade:  A.

Sleeping Bones entangles Kate in a web of international intrigue when an ancient fossil is found at the scene of a murder at the tar pits of Rancho La Brea.  Is the fossil real or a fake, and who is it that cares so much about it, anyway?  I found the plot of this one a bit more difficult to believe, but it's still an engrossing mystery.  Grade:  B.  

Evanovich, Janet

I started to re-read Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series, starting with One For The Money, and I just couldn't do it.   I enjoyed the series when I originally read them about twenty years ago, but this time around, I just can't.  The messes Stephanie gets into as a bounty hunter or skip tracer, the waffling between the two attractive men in her life, the old junky car, no, I just can't.  How many times can she get hit over the head before her brain turns to mush?  How much pasta can she eat before the cupcake turns into a muffin top?  The feral giraffe named Kevin roaming the streets of Trenton, New Jersey was a "jump the shark" moment for me even years ago.  I might try one more that I recall as pretty funny before I send the rest of them to the library donation pile and free up some space on my library shelves.  

So I decided to try one of the Lizzy and Diesel books, Wicked Appetite, to see how that series was.  The premise is that Lizzy is a baker of wickedly delicious cupcakes in a Salem, Massachusetts, bakery.  Two men pop up in her life, dark, vampirish Wulf, and beach bum Diesel.  They and Lizzy are all Unmentionables, people with special abilities.  The two men are seeking one of the seven stones that supposedly control the seven deadly sins.  In this case, the sin is gluttony.  Lizzy ends up working with Diesel to try to find the pieces of the stone before Wulf can find them and therefore the stone and achieve his desire of creating Hell on earth.  I have to say I got tired of this one pretty fast--the shtick stops working and I just get tired of it.  Grade:  D.  

I tried another Lizzy and Diesel book, Wicked Business, but that one's a "nope", too.  So all the Evanovich books are in the bin to donate to the library--maybe someone will like them more than I do.  

Erskine, Margaret

It's been years since I read any of the Margaret Erskine books I have; I had forgotten how interesting they are.  

Detective Inspector Septimus Finch is summoned from New Scotland Yard to investigate the brutal murder of rich, spoiled, narcissistic Lisa Harcourt, The Woman At Belguardo.   Although it looks as if her rejected boy toy did it, other suspects in the form of former lovers, an ex-husband and other people who had reason to hate her are plentiful, too.  Grade:  A.  

Something fishy is going on at No. 9 Belmont Square:  a famous opera tenor has arrived at the run down boarding house filled with elderly ladies in search of his long-lost love and the fabulous diamond she owned.  What he finds instead is at least one murder and possibly more.  It's up to Inspector Finch to sort it out before there are even more murders.  I found the plot of this one complicated and unlikely.  And note to authors:  please, please, PLEASE don't send young women out on dodgy errands to empty buildings on foggy evenings.  Grade:  C.  

I found the Case With Three Husbands convoluted and confusing.  I never did figure out all the complicated family relationships, and frankly didn't care.  Grade:  C.  

Inspector Finch has been temporarily seconded to a London suburb where crime tends to be of the white-collar, financial type rather than murder in Harriet Farewell, when a local resident is shot under the cover of a Guy Fawkes Night fireworks display.  The leading suspect is poor, mad Harriet Buckler, just out of a mental hospital where she has been since her son died in a car accident two years earlier.  Now she wanders the grounds of the family estate, gun in hand, and may have shot her blackmailing mother-in-law.  Grade:  A.  

Elkins, Charlotte and Aaron--Alix London books

 I had to give this series of books their own page just because I've enjoyed them so much.  Update:  And I've added the Chris Norgren books, as well, although these were published under Aaron Elkins's name alone in 1987 and 1993.  

Alix London, daughter of disgraced art conservator and master forger Geoffrey London, is trying to pick of the pieces of her fledgling career in the Seattle art world after her father's trial and imprisonment for fraud in A Dangerous Talent, published in 2012  She's been hired by nouveau riche art collector Chris LeMay to evaluate a painting alleged to be by Georgia O'Keefe that Chris is thinking of buying.  Alix and Chris fly to Santa Fe, but before they even get a good look at the painting someone has attempted to kill Alix and has succeeded in murdering the gallery owner.  If that's not enough, Alix has to deal with a snooty art dealer (or is he really?) and try to sort out her feelings about her father, who is out of prison and has now resurfaced in her life.   Caution:  this book moves along at a cracking pace, don't start reading it just before bedtime, you'll be up all night finishing it.  Ask me how I know this.  Grade:  A+

Now working as a consultant for the FBI's Art Fraud team, Alix is sent on A Cruise To Die For aboard the super-yacht of Greek multimillionaire Panos Papadakis to gather information about a Ponzi scheme he's running involving fractional investments in art works.  Alix's job is to give informal talks to a group of wealthy investors before an on-board art auction as the yacht cruises around the Greek isles, but she's barely on board before she's cracked over the head and a famous Manet is slashed before she can even get a good look at it.  Grade:  A.  

A nasty campaign of negative reviews of Alix's modest little book on painting conservation threatens to undermine her budding career as she sets off to work on three paintings destined for auction by a Palm Springs museum in The Art Whisperer.  When she is murderously attacked after expressing doubts about the authenticity of the museum's recently acquired Jackson Pollack painting, and the well-hated senior curator of the museum is killed, it's apparent that something is very wrong at the museum.  Grade:  A.  I had to give this series of books their own page just because I've enjoyed them so much.  

The Trouble With Mirrors, as Alix London discovers, is that sometimes they're not what they seem to be.  A mirror given to her years ago by her beloved Zio Beni, AKA her father's art forger friend Tiny, has been stolen from her apartment just days after it's shown in a photograph on the cover of Art World Insider magazine.  Not only that, but Tiny himself has disappeared and may even have Genoese Mafia hoodlums after him.  What else can Alix do but try to find him herself and discover the secret of the mirror?  This is another one you shouldn't start reading just before bedtime.  Grade A+.  

Update:  Although Charlotte Elkins gets no official credit for the Chris Norgren books, it's pretty clear that no one but art historian and museum curator Charlotte Elkins could have contributed the wealth of detail to these books, so I've included them to this post.  And, as sort of a wink to the reader, several of the characters in the Norgren books, written decades earlier, show up later in several of the London books.  

In A Deceptive Clarity, published in 1987, San Francisco art historian and curator Chris Norgren accepts a temporary assignment in Europe to escape from the details of a painful divorce.  The U.S. Army is sponsoring an exhibit in Berlin called The Plundered Past, featuring art works seized during the war by the Nazis from the collection of wealthy Italian art collector Claudio Bolzano; the art works, including three additional pieces recently found in a salt mine, have been restored to Bolzano by the Army, who may now be changing his mind about allowing them to be exhibited.  When Chris's boss tells him that one of the works may be a forgery, and is then promptly murdered, Chris starts to take the job seriously.  Grade:  A.  

Art historian Chris Norgren is once again jetting off to Europe in Old Scores, this time to Dijon, France, to examine a possible Rembrandt that has been offered to the Seattle Art Museum.  The catch is that he's given a limited amount of time to evaluate the painting's authenticity, and the collector offering the painting is notorious for his ambiguous dealings with the art world.  Grade:  A.