Just Deserts

UNNATURAL DEATH.
By Dorothy L. Sayers.
The Dial Press.
1928. $2.00
[a.k.a. THE DAWSON PEDIGREE]

Murder to get to the front of the line: a venerable detective fiction trope. Excerpt:

Golden Age mysteries and those of the Fifties and Sixties still assumed that the reader would root for the rightful heir, or at least be against the usurper. Mary Stewart’s 'The Ivy Tree' and Josephine Tey’s 'Brat Farrar' were organized around this premise. Both writers stacked the deck by making their usurpers bad guys who would kill to get what they wanted. But in each case, I find myself asking this: If the antagonist weren’t a homicidal villain, why would it be so bad for him to get the property? — Elizabeth Zelvin, POE'S DEADLY DAUGHTERS (December 10, 2009)

Among many other Golden Age authors, Dorothy Sayers used the notion in UNNATURAL DEATH.

But societal changes have pretty much relegated the murder-for-inheritance plot theme to the rubbish heap:

The classic detective story often relies on a group of people—usually relatives—being isolated together while a murder is being committed. But families are smaller today, and better communications means that isolation is very rare.

Classic detective fiction also often relies on the difficulty of divorce and the shame and social disaster of being caught in adultery—both of which are no longer significant for most people.

The servant class has virtually vanished due to economic changes, and the increasing financial independence of the young—coupled with the effects of long-term inflation—makes inheritance less of an issue than it used to be.

Thus a lot of the background and motive power behind the classical mystery is gone. In its place we find 'suburban mysteries' of the kind written by Julian Symons and Elizabeth Ferrars; but these often teem with so many characters that the reader simply can't keep track of who has done what, or why.

On another level we find an increasing preoccupation with the serial killer who murders many people for trivial reasons or for 'kicks,' making detection a routine forensic process rather than a search for motive or clues. — Jon Jermey, INTRODUCTION TO A COURSE ON GAD (recommended reading)

A contemporary review of UNNATURAL DEATH is here.

Category: Detective fiction

And You Thought Holmes Was Unrivaled

Sherlock had competition, all right, as this television series proves:

"Ah, the marvels of DVD! Just two years ago, 'The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes' was lost to the world, an intriguing entry on the IMDB with little information available about the production. I’d long cherished Hugh Greene’s collections of short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle’s contemporaries and was intrigued to see that some of them had been adapted for television. But I didn’t think I’d ever have the chance to see them. Today, thanks to Acorn here in the US and Network in the UK, both seasons of Thames Television’s 'The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes' are now available in their entirety–and what a discovery they are." — Tanner

Tanner on DOUBLE O SECTION has reviews here, here, and here. IMDb has more. If you're in a buying mood, you can get the series in two sets here and here, but—if you live in Australia, you lucky people—in one set here.

Category: Detective fiction

What's the Diff?

George Bernard Shaw notwithstanding, America and England are separated by more than just a common language, especially with respect to detective fiction. Nicholas Fuller (MYSTERICAL-E, Fall 2009) explains further:

The “murder mystery” emphasises mystery: the murderer is (hopefully) kept a secret from the reader until the end, even if there is not much actual detection. (The Americans tended to prefer suspense and atmosphere, and, indeed, many of Carr's late novels are fair play Gothic mysteries, in which the hero has adventures and falls in love, while the series detective remains in the background.) The “detective story”, on the other hand, emphasises detection, with the murderer's identity often fairly obvious.

This was the dominant form in Britain until WWII, and had been ever since the days of Sherlock Holmes, when the Victorian readers of the 'Strand' were invited to marvel at Holmes's miraculous deductions from footprints and bicycle tyre-tracks, rather than working out which of the suspects did it—rather pointless, as the criminal (seldom a murderer) was often obvious or introduced only at the very end. The Sherlock Holmes stories simply don't work as formal detective problems.

In short order, attitudes began to shift against "formal detective problems," to the extent 

that . . .

. . . we must return to the 1920s and the 1930s for the detective story—whether the brilliantly ingenious works of John Dickson Carr, with their jaw-droppingly astounding solutions, or the formal problems in deduction of Ellery Queen; or the well-crafted, intellectually satisfying work of Freeman or Rhode. Yet how we can we find them?

The problem is that the American writers and those of the 1930s are very easy to find; they have all been consistently reprinted in paperback form since the 1940s. It is very easy to find a complete set of Carr or Queen in second-hand bookshops, and almost every first-hand bookshop stocks the complete works of Agatha Christie.

Try looking for many of the traditional British writers, and it's a different story.

Category: Detective fiction

Wodehouse Tweaks Detective Fiction

Many a truth has been said in jest. P. G. Wodehouse underscores the handicaps that "thriller" writers of his day (and ours, too) imposed on themselves, using a hypothetical generic novel:

For the mystery novel SUSPICION HANDICAP, the field is limited. You know it wasn't the hero or the heroine who did the murder.

You are practically sure it couldn't have been Reggie Banks, because he is a comic character, and any vestige of humor in any character in a mystery story automatically rules him out as a potential criminal.

It can't have been Uncle Joe, because he is explicitly stated to be kind to dogs.

So you assume it must have been some totally uninteresting minor character who hardly ever appears and who is disclosed on the last page as the son of the inventor whom the murdered man swindled forty years ago.

At any rate, you know quite well it's one of them . . . .

If I were writing a mystery story I would go boldly out for the big sensation. I would not have the crime committed by anybody in the book at all . . . . — THE SATURDAY EVENING POST, May 25, 1929

Category: Detective fiction

Is This Carr's WORST Novel?

JOHN DICKSON CARR'S 'THE THREE COFFINS': A HOLLOW VICTORY?
By J. Morris.
CADS Supplement 13.
2011. 54 pages.
Illustrated with diagrams, maps, and photographs.
Appendix I: Floor Plan of the Crime Scene.
Appendix II: "The London of THE THREE COFFINS" by Tony Medawar.

Previously on ONTOS, there was a posting about John Dickson Carr's immensely popular THE THREE COFFINS (a.k.a. THE HOLLOW MAN) editorially wondering out loud whether it might be his best novel.

If you're in the same crowd with Edward D. Hoch and Julian Symons who thought it was, after reading J. Morris's CADS monograph, you might change your mind.

In his introduction, Morris tells us:

There are elements of THE THREE COFFINS which I admire greatly, and these will be pointed out from time to time in what follows, and highlighted in the concluding section. However, my analysis is overall extremely critical of Carr's book. Unlike, for instance, THE CROOKED HINGE or THE JUDAS WINDOW . . . THE THREE COFFINS, in my view as against [Douglas] Greene's, can only disappoint, the more carefully it is reread. Its defects are wider and deeper than the two or three most commonly noted difficulties with the main plot construction.

Essentially, by a close reading of the text, Morris has identified over two dozen mistakes which Carr and his supposedly punctilious editors somehow overlooked when the book went to press. Typically these errors are of a factual or logical nature, given what has been established in Carr's narrative, thus threatening to unravel the author's own carefully wrought construction:

I will point out discrepancies, unexplained facts, impossibilities, implausibilities, misdirection that I consider unfair—and occasional moments of inspired mystification. In any analysis of this sort, meta-questions about fair-play conventions will necessarily arise, and I will point these out but not pursue them at great length.

As Morris notes, Carr occasionally trips himself up due to a tendency—not always indulged in—towards what Morris terms Unnecessary Webwork, imposing thematic resonances that could easily have been dispensed with.

Among the twenty-five "problems" Morris discovers in THE THREE COFFINS, he pinpoints six of them as being major flaws:

"The Problem of the Unnoticed Haze"

"The Problem of the Dying Man's Lie"

"The Problem of the Bamboozled Detective"

"The Problem of the Panicked Murderer"

"The Famous Time Problem"

"The Problem of Twenty Minutes"

To be fair to Carr, Morris also gives six good reasons why THE THREE COFFINS should not be scorned, even with all its defects.

And be forewarned: Morris tells us that A HOLLOW VICTORY? is "one huge spoiler, for obvious reasons. Those unfamiliar with THE THREE COFFINS should leave the premises."

All in all, A HOLLOW VICTORY? is a fine addition to Golden Age of Detection scholarship.

Category: Detective fiction

Monkey Business

THE STONEWARE MONKEY.
By R. Austin Freeman (1862-1943).
Dodd, Mead.
1938. $2.00

Ray O'Leary revisits a novel (MYSTERY*FILE, 21 October 2009):

. . . [Freeman] also takes some amusing pot-shots at what was then Modern Art. The plot twists won’t come as much of a surprise to readers who have read a lot of classic detective stories, but it was an enjoyable re-read.

From THE SATURDAY REVIEW (February 25, 1939):

Murder and jewel theft in rural England have deadly aftermath in artistic London circles, as erudite Dr. Thorndyke discovers. - Masterly handling by G.O.M. of mystery writers of not entirely opaque problem made specially enjoyable by sly jabs at modern art. - Verdict: Perfection.

From SCRIBNER'S (March 1939, by S. S. Van Dine):

The Rhadamanthine Doctor Thorndyke is at his magisterial best in 'The Stoneware Monkey.' Although the book is made up of several narratives by different people, the sum total is satisfactory, and the puzzle is excellent.

There is considerable skulduggery afoot in its pages, with the remains of one victim turning up in the shape of a calcined finger bone and some bits of porcelain teeth salvaged from a potter's furnace.

The ultimate, and startling, discovery clears up two murders and elucidates the mystery of the hideous simian from which the story takes its name.

All details are painstakingly worked out, and though there are few pyrotechnics, the story marches.

More on the GAD Wiki. See also Mike Grost's Freeman page here.

Category: Detective fiction

Digging Up Murder

MURDER BY BURIAL.
By Stanley Casson.
Harper's.
1938. $2.00

Casson's solo performance as a mystery writer:

Well written, quite literate, amusing in parts, informative on both archaeology and numismatics. The dialogue sometimes seems more lecture than conversation, but the lectures are interesting and thus tolerable. — William F. Deeck, MYSTERY*FILE (27 August 2009)

Another viewpoint:

'Murder by Burial' is far from a Golden Age classic in terms of plot or detection (the ‘detective’ doesn’t turn up until quite late in the day), but it is clever, informative if you have an interest in archaeology (and an attention span longer than Time Team’s regulation “only three days . . .”), very well written and, in parts, extremely funny. — Mike Ripley, GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER

From THE SATURDAY REVIEW (September 10, 1938):

Cave-in "accidentally" smothers amateur archeologist. Expert excavator scents murder and scotches clever killers. - Soberly paced, highly analytical affair, with Fascist-plot furbelows and some British—but acceptable—humor. - Verdict: Competent.

When it came to archaeology, Casson produced a good deal more; the UNZ index lists 26 items.

Category: Detective fiction