lyzard's list: Wrapped in the mists of obscurity in 2023 - Part 1

Most of my favourite animals have shown up here at one time or another: this year I'm going to introduce you to some of the world's most beautiful and interesting frogs.

****

In 2015 researcher Brian Kubicki discovered a new species of frog in Costa Rica: it was a variety of glass frog, so-called for their translucent underbelly, which in this case also exposed the heart. Kubicki posited that the frog had gone undiscovered so long because of its unpredictable behaviour and unusual, metallic call, more like an insect than a frog.

In naming his discovery, Kubicki called it after his mother: Hyalinobatrachium dianae, Diane's bare-hearted glass frog.

Everyone else, however, took one look and shrieked: "OMG IT'S KERMIT!!"


  

Welcome!

New Year, New Thread...I'd like to say 'New Me' but who am I kidding??

Better organisation is the most I am aiming for in 2023. I will need it, as my list of challenges and shared reads is expanding exponentially.

Hopefully, this extra reading socialisation translates into better socialisation generally: more thread visiting - and more commenting when I get there - and more general participation in LT activities.

Keeping my reviews up to date, and posting regularly at my book and film blogs, remains an important goal. Again, organisation.

Fingers crossed for a fulfilling, entertaining and surprising reading year...

My thread title this year is adapted from a quote from Virginia Woolf: she was talking about the artist rather than the art, but it works for me:

"While fame impedes and constricts, obscurity wraps about a man like a mist; obscurity is dark, ample, and free; obscurity lets the mind take its way unimpeded..."

****



Horizon by Robert Carse (1927)

2023 reading:

January:

1. The Belton Estate by Anthony Trollope (1865)
2. The Sorcerer's Apprentice by Hanns Heinz Ewers (1910)
3. Old Saint Paul's: A Tale Of The Plague And The Fire by William Harrison Ainsworth (1841)
4. Where's Emily? by Carolyn Wells (1927)
5. The Garden Murder Case by S. S. Van Dine (1935)
6. Man Missing by Mignon G. Eberhart (1954)
7. Some Buried Caesar by Rex Stout (1938)
8. The Secret Of The Crooked Cat by William Arden (1970)
9. The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub (1984)
10. Captain Nemesis by Francis van Wyck Mason (1931)
11. Re-Enter Dr Fu Manchu - Sax Rohmer (1957)
12. Sayings And Doings; or, Sketches From Life (First Series) by Theodore Hook (1824)

Books in transit:

To borrow:
The Clan Of The Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel {Fisher Library}
The Harlem Cycle Volume 2 by Chester Himes {Fisher Library}
The Recess by Sophia Lee {Fisher Library / missing??}
Gains And Losses by Robert Lee Wolff {Fisher storage}
Cut Throat by Christopher Bush {Fisher storage}

On interlibrary loan / branch transfer / storage / stack / Rare Book request:
Gosta Berling's Saga by Selma Lagerlöf {Fisher storage}
Ten Thousand A Year by Samuel Warren {Fisher storage}

Possible requests:
Sudden Death by Freeman Wills Crofts {ILL}

On loan:

*Kim by Rudyard Kipling (21/02/2023)
*End Of The Chapter by John Galsworthy (21/02/2023)
*Captain Nemesis by F. van Wyck Mason (06/03/2023)
*Don't Stop The Carnival by Herman Wouk (15/03/2023)
*Flowering Wilderness by John Galsworthy (15/03/2023)
**The Harlem Cycle Vol. 1 by Chester Himes (15/03/2023)
*Corrupt Relations by Richard Barickman (15/03/2023)
*The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub (15/03/2023)
The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo (15/03/2023)
The Honourable Schoolboy by John le Carré (15/03/2023)
World's End by Upton Sinclair (16/03/2023)
Taras Bulba by Nikolai Gogol (16/03/2023)
**The Belton Estate by Anthony Trollope (16/03/2023)
**Old St. Paul's by William Harrison Ainsworth (16/03/2023)

Ongoing reading projects:

Blog reads:
Chronobibliography: The Penitent Hermit by "A Lady" / The Post-Boy Rob'd Of His Mail by Charles Gildon
Authors In Depth:
- Adelaide; or, The Countercharm by Catherine Cuthbertson
- Shannondale (aka "The Three Beauties; or, Shannondale: A Novel") by E.D.E.N. Southworth
- Lady Audley's Secret / The White Phantom by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
- Anecdotes Of The Altamont Family by "Gabrielli"
- The Cottage by Margaret Minifie
- The Old Engagement by Julia Day
- The Abbess by Frances Trollope
Reading Roulette: Pique by Frances Notley / Our Mr Wrenn by Sinclair Lewis
Australian fiction: Narrative of the capture, sufferings, and miraculous escape of Mrs. Eliza Fraser by Eliza Fraser
Gothic novel timeline: Anecdotes Of A Convent by Anonymous
Early crime fiction: The Mysteries Of London by G. W. M. Reynolds
Silver-fork novels: Sayings And Doings; or, Sketches From Life (First Series) by Theodore Hook
Related reading: Gains And Losses by Robert Lee Wollf / The Man Of Feeling by Henry Mackenzie / Le Loup Blanc by Paul Féval / Theresa Marchmont; or, The Maid Of Honour by Catherine Gore

Group reads:

Next up: The Belton Estate by Anthony Trollope

Virago chronological reading project:
Next up: Aurora Floyd by Mary Elizabeth Braddon / Phoebe Junior by Margaret Oliphant

General reading challenges:

America's best-selling novels (1895 - ????):
Next up: The Mammoth Hunters by Jean M. Auel (1985)

Nobel Prize / fiction challenge:
Next up: Gösta Berling's Saga by Selma Lagerlöf (1909 winner)

The C.K. Shorter List of the Best 100 Novels:
Next up: Ten Thousand A Year by Samuel Warren (1841)

A Century Of Reading:
Next up: 1825 - Tremaine; or, The Man Of Refinement by Robert Plumer Ward

Mystery League publications:
Next up: The Hunterstone Outrage by Seldon Truss

Banned In Boston!: (here)
Next up: Horizon by Robert Carse

Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe series (shared reads):
Next up: Over My Dead Body (#7)

"The Three Investigators" (shared reads):
Next up: The Mystery Of The Coughing Dragon by Nick West (#14)

The evolution of detective fiction:
Next up: Clement Lorimer by Angus B. Reach

Random reading 1940 - 1969:
Next up: World's End by Upton Sinclair (1940)

Potential decommission / re-shelving:
Next up: ????

Completed challenges:
- Georgette Heyer historical romances in chronological order
- Agatha Christie mysteries in chronological order
- Agatha Christie uncollected short stories
- Patricia Wentworth's Miss Silver series
- Georgette Heyer historical fiction

Possible future reading projects:
- Daily Telegraph's 100 Best Novels, 1899
- James Tait Black Memorial Prize
- Berkeley "Books Of The Century"
- Collins White Circle Crime Club / Green Penguins
- Dell paperbacks
- "El Mundo" 100 best novels of the twentieth century
- 100 Best Books by American Women During the Past 100 Years, 1833-1933
- 50 Classics of Crime Fiction 1900–1950 (Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor)
- The Guardian's 100 Best Novels
- Life Magazine "The 100 Outstanding Books of 1924 - 1944" (Henry Seidel Canby)
- "40 Trashy Novels You Must Read Before You Die" (Flavorwire)
- best-novel lists in Wikipedia article on The Grapes Of Wrath
- Pandora 'Mothers Of The Novel'
- Newark Library list (here)
- "The Story Of Classic Crime In 100 Books" (here)
- Dean's Classics series
- "Fifty Best Australian Novels" (here)
- "The Top 100 Crime Novels Of All Time" (here)
- Haycraft Queen Cornerstones (here)

TBR notes:

Rare Books:
Secret Judges by Francis D. Grierson (Sims and Wells #2)
Dead Men At The Folly by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #13)
The Rum Row Murders by Charles Reed Jones
The Torch Murder by Charles Reed Jones (Leighton Swift #2)
The Crooked Lip by Herbert Adams (Jimmie Haswell #2)
Death By Appointment by Francis Bonnamy (Peter Utley Shane #1)
The Inconsistent Villains by N. A. Temple-Ellis {Montrose Arbuthnot #1)
The Unexpected Legacy by E. R. Punshon (Carter and Bell #1)
Rope To Spare by Philip MacDonald (Anthony Gethryn #9)

State Library NSW, held:
The White-Faced Man (aka "The Praying Monkey") by Gavin Holt (Luther Bastion #2)
Pitiful Dust by Vernon Knowles
The Brink (aka "The Swaying Rock") by Arthur J. Rees
The Black Joss by John Gordon Brandon
This Way To Happiness (aka "Janice") by Maysie Greig
The Top Step by Nelle Scanlan

Interlibrary loan:
McLean Investigates by George Goodchild {JFR}
The Solange Stories by F. Tennyson Jesse {JFR}
The Vagrant Heart by Deirdre O'Brien {JFR}
Jinks by Oliver Sandys {JFR}
Storms And Tea-Cups by Cecily Wilhelmine Sidgwick (Mrs Alfred Sidgwick) {JFR}
Pawns & Kings (aka "Pawns And Kings") by Seamark (Austin J. Small) {JFR}
The Agent Outside by Patrick Wynnton {JFR}

Online:
The Wedding March Murder by Monte Barrett (Peter Cardigan #2) {newspapers.com}
The Whisperer by J. M. Walsh {online; possibly abridged? / Mitchell Lbrary}
About The Murder Of A Night Club Lady by Anthony Abbot {serialised}

CARM / National Library / academic loan:
The Black Death by Moray Dalton {CARM}
The Click Of The Gate by Alice Campbell {CARM}
Storm by Charles Rodda {National Library}
The Trail Of The Lotto by Anthony Armstrong {CARM}

Series back-reading:
The Crime In The Crypt by Carolyn Wells {mobilereads}
The Creeping Jenny Mystery by Brian Flynn {Kindle / ZLibrary}
The Net Around Joan Ingilby by A. Fielding {Rare Books}
Corpse In Canonicals (aka "The Corpse In The Constable's Garden") by George and Margaret Cole {Rare Books}
Alias Dr Ely by Lee Thayer {Rare Books}
Murder On The Bus by Cecil Freeman Gregg {Rare Books / Kindle}
The Case Of The Marsden Rubies by Leonard Gribble {Rare Books}
The Roman Hat Mystery by Ellery Queen {Rare Books / ILL / Internet Archive / ZLibrary}
A Family That Was by Ernest Raymond {State Library NSW, JFR}
The Cancelled Score Mystery by Gret Lane {Kindle}
Jalna by Mazo de la Roche {State Library NSW, JFR / ILL}

Completist reading:
Thieves' Nights by Harry Stephen Keeler (#5) {Rare Books}
The Old Stone House And Other Stories by Anna Katharine Green (#11) {Project Gutenberg}
Dangerous Days by Mary Roberts Rinehart (#10) {Project Gutenberg}
The White Cockatoo by Mignon Eberhart {Rare Books}

A Century (And A Bit) Of Reading:

At least one book a year from 1800 - 1900!

1800: Juliania; or, The Affectionate Sisters by Elizabeth Sandham
1801: Belinda by Maria Edgeworth
1802: The Infidel Father by Jane West
1803: Thaddeus Of Warsaw by Jane Porter
1804: The Lake Of Killarney by Anna Maria Porter
1805: The Impenetrable Secret, Find It Out! by Francis Lathom
1806: The Wild Irish Girl by Sydney Owenson
1807: Corinne; ou, l'Italie by Madame de Staël
1808: The Marquise Of O. by Heinrich Von Kleist
1809: The Scottish Chiefs by Jane Porter
1810: Forest Of Montalbano by Catherine Cuthbertson / Zastrozzi by Percy Bysshe Shelley / St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian by Percy Bysshe Shelley
1811: Self-Control by Mary Brunton
1812: The Absentee by Maria Edgeworth
1813: The Heroine; or, Adventures Of A Fair Romance Reader by Eaton Stannard Barrett
1814: The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties by Frances Burney
1815: Headlong Hall by Thomas Love Peacock
1816: Glenarvon by Lady Caroline Lamb
1817: Harrington by Maria Edgeworth
1818: Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock
1819: The Vampyre by John William Polidori
1820: The Sketch Book Of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. by Washington Irving
1821: The Ayrshire Legatees; or, The Pringle Family by John Galt / Valerius: A Roman Story by J. G. Lockhart / Kenilworth by Walter Scott
1822: Bracebridge Hall; or, The Humorists by Washington Irving
1823: The Two Broken Hearts by Catherine Gore
1824: The Adventures Of Hajji Baba Of Ispahan by James Justinian Morier
1826: Lichtenstein by Wilhelm Hauff / The Last Of The Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
1827: The Epicurean by Thomas Moore / The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni
1828: The Life Of Mansie Wauch, Tailor In Dalkeith by David Moir
1829: Wilhelm Meister's Travels by Johann Goethe / The Collegians by Gerald Griffin / Louisa Egerton; or, Castle Herbert by Mary Leman Grimstone / Richelieu: A Tale Of France by G. P. R. James
1830: Alfred Dudley; or, The Australian Settlers by Sarah Porter
1832: The Refugee In America by Frances Trollope
1833: Tom Cringle's Log by Michael Scott
1836: Mr Midshipman Easy by Frederick Marrat / The Tree And Its Fruits; or, Narratives From Real Life by Phoebe Hinsdale Brown
1837: Rory O'More by Samuel Lover / Jack Brag by Theodore Hook
1839: Fardorougha The Miser; or, The Convicts Of Lisnamona by William Carleton
1840: The Life And Adventures Of Valentine Vox, The Ventriloquist by Henry Cockton
1841: Old Saint Paul's by William Harrison Ainsworth
1845: Zoe: The History Of Two Lives by Geraldine Jewsbury / The Mysteries Of London (Volume I) by G. W. M. Reynolds
1846: The Mysteries Of London (Volume II) by G. W. M. Reynolds
1847: Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë / The Macdermots Of Ballycloran by Anthony Trollope / The Mysteries Of London: Volume III by G. W. M. Reynolds
1848: The Kellys And The O'Kellys by Anthony Trollope / The Mysteries Of London: Volume IV by G. W. M. Reynolds
1850: Pique by Frances Notley
1851: The Mother-In-Law; or, The Isle Of Rays by E.D.E.N. Southworth
1856: Recollections Of A Detective Police-Officer by "Waters"
1857: The Three Clerks by Anthony Trollope / Synnøve Solbakken by Bjornstjerne Bjornson
1859: The Semi-Detached House by Emily Eden / The Bertrams by Anthony Trollope
1860: The Semi-Attached Couple by Emily Eden / Castle Richmond by Anthony Trollope
1861: The Executor by Margaret Oliphant / The Rector by Margaret Oliphant
1862: Orley Farm by Anthony Trollope / The Struggles Of Brown, Jones, And Robinson by Anthony Trollope
1863: The Doctor's Family by Margaret Oliphant / Marian Grey; or, The Heiress Of Redstone Hall by Mary Jane Holmes / Salem Chapel by Margaret Oliphant
1865: Miss Mackenzie by Anthony Trollope / The Belton Estate by Anthony Trollope
1869: He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope
1873: Had You Been In His Place by Lizzie Bates
1874: Chaste As Ice, Pure As Snow by Charlotte Despard
1877: Elsie's Children by Martha Finley
1880: The Duke's Children: First Complete Edition by Anthony Trollope / Elsie's Widowhood by Martha Finley
1881: Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen / The Beautiful Wretch by William Black / The Autobiography Of Mark Rutherford by William Hale White
1882: Grandmother Elsie by Martha Finley
1883: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson / Elsie's New Relations by Martha Finley / X Y Z: A Detective Story by Anna Katharine Green
1884: Elsie At Nantucket by Martha Finley
1885: The Two Elsies by Martha Finley / Two Broken Hearts by Robert R. Hoes
1886: The Mill Mystery by Anna Katharine Green / Elsie's Kith And Kin by Martha Finley
1887: Elsie's Friends At Woodburn by Martha Finley
1888: Christmas With Grandma Elsie by Martha Finley
1889: Under False Pretences by Adeline Sergeant / Elsie And The Raymonds by Martha Finley
1890: Elsie Yachting With The Raymonds by Martha Finley
1891: Elsie's Vacation And After Events by Martha Finley
1892: The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman / Elsie At Viamede by Martha Finley / Blood Royal by Grant Allen
1893: Elsie At Ion by Martha Finley
1894: Martin Hewitt, Investigator by Arthur Morrison / The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen / Elsie At The World's Fair by Martha Finley
1895: Chronicles Of Martin Hewitt by Arthur Morrison / Elsie's Journey On Inland Waters by Martha Finley
1896: The Island Of Dr Moreau by H. G. Wells / Adventures Of Martin Hewitt by Arthur Morrison
1897: Penelope's Progress by Kate Douglas Wiggin
1898: A Man From The North by Arnold Bennett / The Lust Of Hate by Guy Newell Boothby / Elsie On The Hudson And Elsewhere by Martha Finley
1899: Agatha Webb by Anna Katharine Green / Dr Nikola's Experiment by Guy Newell Boothby / Elsie In The South by Martha Finley
1900: The Circular Study by Anna Katharine Green / Elsie's Young Folks In Peace And War by Martha Finley

Timeline of detective fiction:

An examination of the roots of modern crime and mystery fiction:

Pre-history:
Things As They Are; or, The Adventures Of Caleb Williams by William Godwin (1794)
Mademoiselle de Scudéri by E. T. A. Hoffmann (1819); Tales Of Hoffmann (1982)
Richmond: Scenes In The Life Of A Bow Street Officer by Anonymous (1827)
Memoirs Of Vidocq by Eugene Francois Vidocq (1828)
Le Pere Goriot by Honore de Balzac (1835)
Passages In The Secret History Of An Irish Countess by J. Sheridan Le Fanu (1838); The Purcell Papers (1880)
The Murders In The Rue Morgue: The Dupin Tales by Edgar Allan Poe (1841, 1842, 1845)

Serials:
The Mysteries Of Paris by Eugene Sue (1842 - 1843)
The Mysteries Of London by Paul Feval (1844)
The Mysteries Of London by George Reynolds (1844 - 1848)
- The Mysteries Of London: Volume I
- The Mysteries Of London: Volume II
- The Mysteries Of London: Volume III
- The Mysteries Of London: Volume IV
The Mysteries Of The Court Of London by George Reynolds (1848 - 1856)
John Devil by Paul Feval (1861)

Early detective novels:
Recollections Of A Detective Police-Officer by "Waters" (William Russell) (1856)
The Widow Lerouge by Emile Gaboriau (1866)
Under Lock And Key by T. W. Speight (1869)
Checkmate by J. Sheridan LeFanu (1871)
Is He The Man? by William Clark Russell (1876)
Devlin The Barber by B. J. Farjeon (1888)
Mr Meeson's Will by H. Rider Haggard (1888)
The Mystery Of A Hansom Cab by Fergus Hume (1889)
The Queen Anne's Gate Mystery by Richard Arkwright (1889)
The Ivory Queen by Norman Hurst (1889) (Check Julius H. Hurst 1899)
The Big Bow Mystery by Israel Zangwill (1892)

Female detectives:
The Diary Of Anne Rodway by Wilkie Collins (1856)
Ruth The Betrayer; or, The Female Spy by Edward Ellis (1862-1863)
The Female Detective by Andrew Forrester (1864)
Revelations Of A Lady Detective by William Stephens Hayward (1864)
The Law And The Lady by Wilkie Collins (1875)
Madeline Payne; or, The Detective's Daughter by Lawrence L. Lynch (Emma Murdoch Van Deventer) (1884)
Mr Bazalgette's Agent by Leonard Merrick (1888)
Moina; or, Against The Mighty by Lawrence L. Lynch (Emma Murdoch Van Deventer) (sequel to Madeline Payne?) (1891)
The Experiences Of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective by Catherine Louisa Pirkis (1893)
When The Sea Gives Up Its Dead by Elizaberth Burgoyne Corbett (Mrs George Corbett)
Dorcas Dene, Detective by George Sims (1897)
- Amelia Butterworth series by Anna Katharine Grant (1897 - 1900)
Hagar Of The Pawn-Shop by Fergus Hume (1898)
The Adventures Of A Lady Pearl-Broker by Beatrice Heron-Maxwell (1899)
Miss Cayley's Adventures by Grant Allan (1899)
Hilda Wade by Grant Allan (1900)
Dora Myrl, The Lady Detective by M. McDonnel Bodkin (1900)
The Investigators by J. S. Fletcher (1902)
Hagar's Daughter by Pauline Hopkins (1902)
Lady Molly Of Scotland Yard by Baroness Orczy (1910)
Constance Dunlap, Woman Detective by Arthur B. Reeve (1913)
Miss Madelyn Mack, Detective by Hugh C. Weir (1914)

Related mainstream works:
Adventures Of Susan Hopley by Catherine Crowe (1841)
Men And Women; or, Manorial Rights by Catherine Crowe (1843)
Hargrave by Frances Trollope (1843)
Clement Lorimer by Angus Reach (1849)
Clara Vaughan by R. D. Blackmore (1864)

True crime:
Clues: or, Leaves from a Chief Constable's Note Book by Sir William Henderson (1889)
Dreadful Deeds And Awful Murders by Joan Lock

Series and sequels, 1866 - 1919:

(1866 - 1876) **Emile Gaboriau - Monsieur Lecoq - The Widow Lerouge (1/6) {ManyBooks}
(1878 - 1917) **Anna Katharine Green - Ebenezer Gryce - The Mystery Of The Hasty Arrow (13/13)
(1896 - 1909) **Melville Davisson Post - Randolph Mason - The Corrector Of Destinies (3/3)
(1894 - 1903) **Arthur Morrison - Martin Hewitt - The Red Triangle (4/4)
(1895 - 1901) **Guy Newell Boothby - Dr Nikola - Farewell, Nikola (5/5)
(1897 - 1900) **Anna Katharine Green - Amelia Butterworth - The Circular Study (3/3)
(1899 - 1917) **Anna Katharine Green - Caleb Sweetwater - The Mystery Of The Hasty Arrow (7/7)
(1899 - 1909) **E. W. Hornung - Raffles - Mr Justice Raffles (4/4)
(1900 - 1974) Ernest Bramah - Kai Lung - Kai Lung: Six / Kai Lung Raises His Voice (7/7)
(1903 - 1904) **Louis Tracy - Reginald Brett - The Albert Gate Mystery (2/2)
(1905 - 1925) **Baroness Orczy - The Old Man In The Corner - Unravelled Knots (3/3)}
(1905 - 1928) **Edgar Wallace - The Just Men - Again The Three Just Men (6/6)
(1907 - 1942) R. Austin Freeman - Dr John Thorndyke - The Jacob Street Mystery (26/26)
(1907 - 1941) *Maurice Leblanc - Arsene Lupin - The Secret Of Sarek (aka "The Island Of Thirty Coffins") (9/25) {Project Gutenberg}
(1909 - 1942) *Carolyn Wells - Fleming Stone - The Crime In The Crypt (24/49) {mobilereads}
(1909 - 1929) *J. S. Fletcher - Inspector Skarratt - Marchester Royal (1/3) {Kindle}
(1910 - 1936) *Arthur B. Reeve - Craig Kennedy - The Film Mystery (14/24) {Project Gutenberg}
(1910 - 1946) A. E. W. Mason - Inspector Hanaud - The House In Lordship Lane (7/7)
(1910 - 1917) Edgar Wallace - Inspector Smith - Kate Plus Ten (3/3)
(1910 - 1930) **Edgar Wallace - Inspector Elk - The India-Rubber Men (5/6) {Roy Glashan's Library}
^^^^^(1910 - 1932) *Thomas, Mary and Hazel Hanshew - Cleek - The Amber Junk (aka Riddle Of The Amber Ship (9/12) {rare, expensive}
(1910 - 1918) **John McIntyre - Ashton-Kirk - Ashton-Kirk: Criminologist (4/4)
^^^(1910 - 1928) **Louis Tracy - Winter and Furneaux - The Black Cat (8/9) {Rare Books}

(1911 - 1935) G. K. Chesterton - Father Brown - The Scandal Of Father Brown (5/5)
^^^(1911 - 1940) Bertram Atkey - Smiler Bunn - Arsenic And Gold (10/11) {Rare Books}
(1912 - 1919) **Gordon Holmes (Louis Tracy) - Steingall and Clancy - The Bartlett Mystery (3/3)
(1913 - 1973) Sax Rohmer - Fu Manchu - Emperor Fu Manchu (13/14) {ILL / Kindle}
(1913 - 1952) Jeffery Farnol - Jasper Shrig - Heritage Perilous (7/9) {owned}
(1914 - 1950) Mary Roberts Rinehart - Hilda Adams - Episode Of The Wandering Knife (5/5)
(1914 - 1934) Ernest Bramah - Max Carrados - The Bravo Of London (5/5)
(1915 - 1936) *John Buchan - Richard Hannay - The Thirty-Nine Steps (1/5) {Fisher Library / Project Gutenberg / branch transfer / Kindle}
(1916 - 1917) **Carolyn Wells - Alan Ford - Faulkner's Folly (2/2) {owned}
^^^(1916 - 1927) **Natalie Sumner Lincoln - Inspector Mitchell - The Moving Finger (3/10) {ManyBooks / Kindle}
^^^^^(1916 - 1917) **Nevil Monroe Hopkins - Mason Brant - The Strange Cases Of Mason Brant (1/2) {expensive}
(1918 - 1923) **Carolyn Wells - Pennington Wise - Wheels Within Wheels (8/8)
(1918 - 1939) Valentine Williams - The Okewood Brothers - The Fox Prowls (5/5)
(1918 - 1944) Valentine Williams - Clubfoot - Courier To Marrakesh (7/7)
(1918 - 1950) *Wyndham Martyn - Anthony Trent - The Mysterious Mr Garland (3/26) {Rare Books / CARM}
(1919 - 1966) *Lee Thayer - Peter Clancy - Alias Dr Ely (8/60) {Rare Books}
(1919 - 1922) **Octavus Roy Cohen - David Carroll - Midnight (4/4)

^^^^^ Remainder of series unavailable
^^^ Incompletely available series
** Series complete pre-1931
* Present status pre-1931

Series and sequels, 1920 - 1927:

(1920 - 1948) H. C. Bailey - Reggie Fortune - Black Land, White Land (12/23) {Rare Books}
(1920 - 1975) Agatha Christie - Hercule Poirot - Curtain (38/38)
(1920 - 1921) **Natalie Sumner Lincoln - Ferguson - The Unseen Ear (2/2)
(1920 - 1937) *"Sapper" (H. C. McNeile) - Bulldog Drummond - The Third Round (3/10 - series continued) {Roy Glashan's Library}

(1921 - 1929) **Charles J. Dutton - John Bartley - Streaked With Crimson (9/9)
(1921 - 1925) **Herman Landon - The Gray Phantom - Gray Magic (5/5)

(1922 - 1973) Agatha Christie - Tommy and Tuppence - Postern Of Fate (5/5)
^^^^^(1922 - 1927) *Alice MacGowan and Perry Newberry - Jerry Boyne - The Seventh Passenger (4/5) {Amazon}
(1922 - 1931) Valentine Williams - Inspector Manderton - Death Answers The Bell (4/4)
(1922 - ????) *Armstrong Livingston - Jimmy Traynor - The Doublecross (aka "The Double-Cross") (2/?) {AbeBooks}

(1923 - 1937) Dorothy L. Sayers - Lord Peter Wimsey - In The Teeth Of The Evidence (14/14)
(1923 - 1924) **Carolyn Wells - Lorimer Lane - The Fourteenth Key (2/2)
(1923 - 1927) Annie Haynes - Inspector Furnival - The Crow's Inn Tragedy (3/3)

(1924 - 1959) Philip MacDonald - Colonel Anthony Gethryn - Rope To Spare (8/24) {Rare Books}
(1924 - 1957) Freeman Wills Crofts - Inspector French - Sudden Death (8/30) {Rare Books / ILL}
^^^(1924 - 1935) *Francis D. Grierson - Inspector Sims and Professor Wells - Secret Judges (2/13) {Rare Books}
(1924 - 1940) *Lynn Brock - Colonel Gore - The Mendip Mystery (aka "Murder At The Inn") (5/12) {Kindle}
(1924 - 1933) *Herbert Adams - Jimmie Haswell - The Crooked Lip (2/9) {Rare Books}
(1924 - 1944) *A. Fielding - Inspector Pointer - The Net Around Joan Ingilby (5/23) {Rare Books}
(1924 - 1936) *Hulbert Footner - Madame Storey - The Richest Widow (10/11) {Roy Glashan's Library}
^^^^^(1924 - 1931) R. Francis Foster - Anthony Ravenhill - The Missing Gates (1/7) {unavailable}

(1925 - 1961) ***John Rhode - Dr Priestley - Dead Men At The Folly (13/72) {Rare Books}
(1925 - 1953) *G. D. H. Cole / M. Cole - Superintendent Wilson - Corpse In Canonicals (aka "Corpse In The Constable's Garden") (8/?) {Rare Books}
(1925 - 1932) Earl Derr Biggers - Charlie Chan - Keeper Of The Keys (6/6)
(1925 - 1944) Agatha Christie - Superintendent Battle - Towards Zero (5/5)
(1925 - 1934) *Anthony Berkeley - Roger Sheringham - The Second Shot (6/10) {academic loan / Rare Books / Internet Archive}
(1925 - 1950) *Anthony Wynne (Robert McNair Wilson) - Dr Eustace Hailey - The Mystery Of The Ashes (3/27) {Trove}
^^^(1925 - 1939) *Charles Barry (Charles Bryson) - Inspector Lawrence Gilmartin - The Detective's Holiday (2/15) {Rare Books / GooglePlay}
(1925 - 1929) **Will Scott - Will Disher - Disher--Detective (aka "The Black Stamp") (1/5) {HathiTrust}
(1925 - 1927) **Francis Beeding - Professor Kreutzemark - The Hidden Kingdom (2/2)
(1925 - ????) *Livingston Armstrong - Peter Creighton - On The Right Wrists (1/?) {AbeBooks}

(1926 - 1968) Christopher Bush - Ludovic Travers - Cut Throat (7/63) {Kindle / ZLibrary / Fisher Library storage}
(1926 - 1939) S. S. Van Dine - Philo Vance - The Kidnap Murder Case (10/12) {fadedpage.com}
(1926 - 1952) J. Jefferson Farjeon - Ben the Tramp - Detective Ben (6/8) {interlibrary loan / Kindle / ZLibrary}
(1926 - ????) *G. D. H. Cole / M. Cole - Everard Blatchington - Burglars In Bucks (aka "The Berkshire Mystery") (2/6) {Fisher Library}
(1926 - ????) *Arthur Gask - Gilbert Larose - The Lonely House (3/27) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1926 - 1931) *Aidan de Brune - Dr Night - The Green Pearl (2/3) {Roy Glashan's Library}

^^^(1927 - 1933) *Herman Landon - The Picaroon - The Picaroon: Knight Errant (7/8) {State Library NSW, JFR}
(1927 - 1932) *Anthony Armstrong - Jimmie Rezaire - The Trail Of The Lotto (3/5) {CARM / AbeBooks}
(1927 - 1937) *Ronald Knox - Miles Bredon - The Body In The Silo (3/5) {Kindle / Rare Books}
(1927 - 1958) *Brian Flynn - Anthony Bathurst - The Creeping Jenny Mystery (7/54) {Kindle / ZLibrary}
(1927 - 1947) J. J. Connington - Sir Clinton Driffield - The Boathouse Riddle (6/17) {Kindle / mobilereads / ZLibrary}
(1927 - 1935) *Anthony Gilbert (Lucy Malleson) - Scott Egerton - Mystery Of The Open Window (4/10) {Rare Books}
^^^^^(1927 - 1932) *William Morton (aka William Blair Morton Ferguson) - Kirker Cameron and Daniel "Biff" Corrigan - Masquerade (1/4) {expensive}
^^^^^(1927 - 1929) **George Dilnot - Inspector Strickland - The Crooks' Game (1/2) {AbeBooks / Amazon}
(1927 - 1949) **Dornford Yates - Richard Chandos - Blood Royal (3/8) {State Library, JFR / Kindle / ZLibrary}

^^^^^ Remainder of series unavailable
^^^ Incompletely available series
** Series complete pre-1931
* Present status pre-1931

Series and sequels, 1928 - 1930:

(1928 - 1961) Patricia Wentworth - Miss Silver - The Girl In The Cellar (32/32)
(1928 - 1936) *Gavin Holt - Luther Bastion - The White-Faced Man (aka "The Praying Monkey") (2/17) {academic loan / State Library NSW, held}
(1928 - 1936) Kay Cleaver Strahan - Lynn MacDonald - The Meriwether Mystery (5/7) {Kindle / ZLibrary}
^^^^^(1928 - 1937) John Alexander Ferguson - Francis McNab - Death Of Mr Dodsley (5/5) {unavailable}
^^^(1928 - 1960) *Cecil Freeman Gregg - Inspector Higgins - Murder On The Bus (3/35) {Rare Books / Kindle}
(1928 - 1959) *John Gordon Brandon - Inspector Patrick Aloysius McCarthy - The Black Joss (2/53) {State Library NSW, held / JFR}
^^^^^(1928 - 1935) *Roland Daniel - Wu Fang / Inspector Saville - The Society Of The Spiders (1/6)
(1928 - 1946) *Francis Beeding - Alistair Granby - Pretty Sinister (2/18) {academic loan}
(1928 - 1930) **Annie Haynes - Inspector Stoddart - The Crystal Beads Murder (4/4)
(1928 - 1930) **Elsa Barker - Dexter Drake and Paul Howard - The Cobra Candlestick (aka "The Cobra Shaped Candlestick") (1/3) {AbeBooks / Rare Books}
^^^(1928 - ????) Adam Broome - Denzil Grigson - The Queen's Hall Murder (4/10) {Trove}
(1928 - 1931) **John Stephen Strange (Dorothy Stockbridge Tillet) - Van Dusen Ormsberry - The Clue Of The Second Murder (2/3) {GooglePlay / Rare Books}

(1929 - 1947) Margery Allingham - Albert Campion - The Case Of The Late Pig (8/35) {SMSA / interlibrary loan / Kindle / fadedpage.com}
(1929 - 1984) Gladys Mitchell - Mrs Bradley - The Devil At Saxon Wall (6/67) {interlibrary loan / Kindle}
(1929 - 1937) Patricia Wentworth - Benbow Smith - Down Under (4/4)
^^^(1929 - 1954) Mignon Eberhart - Nurse Sarah Keate - Dead Yesterday And Other Stories (6/8) (NB: multiple Eberhart characters) {expensive / limited edition} / Man Missing (8/8) {Internet Archive}
^^^(1929 - ????) Moray Dalton - Inspector Collier - The Belgrave Manor Crime (5/14) {Kindle}
^^^(1929 - 1930) * / ***Charles Reed Jones - Leighton Swift - The Torch Murder (1/3) {Rare Books}
(1929 - 1931) Carolyn Wells - Kenneth Carlisle - The Skeleton At The Feast (3/3) {Kindle}
(1929 - 1967) *George Goodchild - Inspector McLean - McLean Investigates (2/65) {State Library NSW, JFR}
(1929 - 1979) *Leonard Gribble - Anthony Slade - The Case Of The Marsden Rubies (1/33) {AbeBooks / Rare Books / re-check Kindle}
(1929 - 1932) *E. R. Punshon - Carter and Bell - The Unexpected Legacy (1/5) {Rare Books}
(1929 - 1971) *Ellery Queen - Ellery Queen - The Roman Hat Mystery (1/40) {interlibrary loan / Internet Archive}
(1929 - 1966) *Arthur Upfield - Bony - The Mystery Of Swordfish Reef (7/29) {SMSA}
(1929 - 1937) *Anthony Berkeley - Ambrose Chitterwick - The Piccadilly Murder (2/3) {interlibrary loan / Internet Archive}
^^^^^(1929 - 1940) *Jean Lilly - DA Bruce Perkins - The Seven Sisters (1/3) {rare, expensive}
(1929 - 1935) *N. A. Temple-Ellis (Nevile Holdaway) - Montrose Arbuthnot - The Inconsistent Villains (1/4) {Rare Books}
(1929 - 1943) *Gret Lane - Kate Clare Marsh and Inspector Barrin - The Cancelled Score Mystery (1/9) {Kindle}
(1929 - 1961) Henry Holt - Inspector Silver - The Necklace Of Death (3/16) {Rare Books}
(1929 - 1930) **J. J. Connington - Superintendent Ross - The Two Tickets Puzzle (2/2)
(1929 - 1941) *H. Maynard Smith - Inspector Frost - Inspector Frost In Crevenna Cove (5/7) {Kindle}
(1929 - 1932) Clemence Dane and Helen Simpson - Sir John Saumarez - Re-Enter Sir John (3/3)
(1929 - 1940) *Rufus King - Lieutenant Valcour - Murder By The Clock (1/11) {Rare Books / Kindle / ZLibrary}
(1929 - 1933) *Will Levinrew (Will Levine) - Professor Brierly - For Sale - Murder (4/5) {AbeBooks}
(1929 - 1932) *Nancy Barr Mavity - Peter Piper - The Body On The Floor (1/5) {AbeBooks / Rare Books / State Library NSW, JFR}
(1929 - 1934) *Charles J. Dutton - Professor Harley Manners - The Circle Of Death (4/6) {newspapers.com}
(1929 - 1932) Thomas Cobb - Inspector Bedison - Who Closed The Casement? (4/4)
(1929 - ????) * J. C. Lenehan - Inspector Kilby - The Silecroft Case (2/?) {Kindle}
(1929 - 1936) *Robin Forsythe - Anthony "Algernon" Vereker - The Polo Ground Mystery (2/5) {Kindle}
^^^^^(1929 - 1931) */***David Frome (Zenith Jones Brown) - Major Gregory Lewis - The Murder Of An Old Man (1/3) {rare, expensive}

(1930 - ????) Moray Dalton - Hermann Glide - The Strange Case Of Harriet Hall (4/?) {Kindle}
^^^(1930 - 1960) Miles Burton - Desmond Merrion - Death At Low Tide (16/57) {Internet Archive}
^^^(1930 - 1960) Miles Burton - Inspector Arnold - Death At Low Tide (16/57) {Internet Archive}
(1930 - 1933) Roger Scarlett - Inspector Kane - Murder Among The Angells (4/5) {expensive}
(1930 - 1941) Harriette Ashbrook - Philip "Spike" Tracy - Murder Comes Back (6/7) {Kindle}
(1930 - 1943) Anthony Abbot - Thatcher Colt - About The Murder Of The Night Club Lady (3/8) {AbeBooks / serialised}
^^^^^(1930 - ????) ***David Sharp - Professor Fielding - I, The Criminal (4/?) {unavailable?}
(1930 - 1950) *H. C. Bailey - Josiah Clunk - Garstons (aka The Garston Murder Case) (1/11) {HathiTrust}
(1930 - 1968) *Francis Van Wyck Mason - Hugh North - The Vesper Service Murders (2/41) {Kindle}
(1930 - 1976) Agatha Christie - Miss Jane Marple - Miss Marple's Final Cases (14/14)
(1930 - 1939) Anne Austin - James "Bonnie" Dundee - Murdered But Not Dead (5/5)
(1930 - 1950) *Leslie Ford (as David Frome) - Mr Pinkerton and Inspector Bull - The Hammersmith Murders (1/11) {AbeBooks / Rare Books}
^^^^^(1930 - 1935) *"Diplomat" (John Franklin Carter) - Dennis Tyler - Murder In The State Department (1/7) {Amazon / Abebooks}
(1930 - 1962) *Helen Reilly - Inspector Christopher McKee - The Diamond Feather (1/31) {Rare Books}
(1930 - 1933) *Mary Plum - John Smith - The Killing Of Judge MacFarlane (1/4) {AbeBooks / Rare Books}
(1930 - 1945) *Hulbert Footner - Amos Lee Mappin - The Nation's Missing Guest (3/10) {fadedpage.com}
^^^(1930 - 1933) *Monte Barrett - Peter Cardigan - The Wedding March Murder (2/3) {serialised}
(1930 - 1931) Vernon Loder - Inspector Brews - Death Of An Editor (2/2)
^^^^^(1930 - 1931) *Roland Daniel - John Hopkins - The Rosario Murder Case (1/2) {unavailable?}
^^^(1930 - 1961) *Mark Cross ("Valentine", aka Archibald Thomas Pechey) - Daphne Wrayne and her Four Adjusters - The Grip Of The Four (1/53) {Rare Books}
^^^(1930 - 1937) Elaine Hamilton - Inspector Reynolds - Peril At Midnight (6/9) {Kindle}
(1930 - 1932) *J. S. Fletcher - Sergeant Charlesworth - The Borgia Cabinet (1/2) {fadedpage.com / Kindle}
(1930 - ????) *Carolyn Keene - Nancy Drew - The Bungalow Mystery (3/?) {original text unavailable}
(1930 - 1937) John Dickson Carr - Henri Bencolin - The Four False Weapons (5/5) {SMSA / Fisher Library}

^^^^^ Remainder of series unavailable
^^^ Incompletely available series
** Series complete pre-1931
* Present status pre-1931

Series and sequels, 1931 - 1932:

^^^(1931 - 1940) Bruce Graeme - Superintendent Stevens and Pierre Allain - Not Proven (5/8) {Trove}
(1931 - 1951) Phoebe Atwood Taylor - Asey Mayo - The Tinkling Symbol (6/24) {Rare Books / academic loan}
(1931 - 1955) Stuart Palmer - Hildegarde Withers - The Puzzle Of The Silver Persian (5/18) {Kindle / ILL / ZLibrary}
(1931 - 1933) Sydney Fowler - Inspector Cleveland - Arresting Delia (4/4)
(1931 - 1934) J. H. Wallis - Inspector Wilton Jacks - The Capital City Mystery (2/6) {Rare Books}
(1931 - ????) Paul McGuire - Inspector Cummings - Daylight Murder (aka "Murder At High Noon") (3/5) {academic loan / State Library NSW, held}
(1931 - 1936) Carlton Dawe - Leathermouth - Leathermouth's Luck (5/6) {Trove / State Library NSW, held}
(1931 - 1947) R. L. Goldman - Asaph Clume and Rufus Reed - Death Plays Solitaire (3/6) {Kindle}
^^^(1931 - 1959) E. C. R. Lorac (Edith Caroline Rivett) - Inspector Robert Macdonald - The Affair On Thor's Head (2/46) {State Library NSW, JFR}
(1931 - 1935) Clifton Robbins - Clay Harrison - Methylated Murder (5/5)
(1931 - 1972) Georges Simenon - Inspector Maigret - Le Fou de Bergerac (16/75) {ILL / ZLibrary}
^^^(1931 - 1942) R. A. J. Walling - Garstang - Murder At Midnight (2/3) {Rare Books}
(1931 - ????) Francis Bonnamy (Audrey Boyers Walz) - Peter Utley Shane - Death By Appointment (1/8) {AbeBooks / Rare Books}
(1931 - 1937) J. S. Fletcher - Ronald Camberwell - Murder In The Squire's Pew (3/11) {Kindle / State Library NSW, held}
(1931 - 1933) Edwin Dial Torgerson - Sergeant Pierre Montigny - The Murderer Returns (1/2) {Rare Books)
(1931 - 1933) Molly Thynne - Dr Constantine and Inspector Arkwright - He Dies And Makes No Sign (3/3)
(1931 - 1935) Valentine Williams - Sergeant Trevor Dene - The Clue Of The Rising Moon (4/4)
(1931 - 1942) Patricia Wentworth - Frank Garrett - Pursuit Of A Parcel (5/5)
(1931 - 1931) Frances Shelley Wees - Michael Forrester and Tuck Torrie - The Mystery Of The Creeping Man (2/2)
(1931 - 1948) Alice Campbell - Tommy Rostetter - The Click Of The Gate (1/?) {CARM}
^^^(1931 - 1939) Roland Daniel - Inspector Walk - The Stool Pigeon (4/8) {Rare Books}

(1932 - 1954) Sydney Fowler - Inspector Cambridge and Mr Jellipot - The Bell Street Murders (1/11) {AbeBooks / Rare Books}
^^^^^(1932 - 1935) Murray Thomas - Inspector Wilkins - Buzzards Pick The Bones (1/3) {AbeBooks, expensive}
(1932 - ????) R. A. J. Walling - Philip Tolefree - Mr Tolefree's Reluctant Witnesses (aka "The Corpse In The Coppice") (7/22) {Kindle}
(1932 - 1962) T. Arthur Plummer - Detective-Inspector Andrew Frampton - Frampton Of The Yard! (3/50) {Rare Books}
(1932 - 1946) David Hume - Mick Cardby - Bullets Bite Deep (1/29) {Rare Books}
(1932 - 1936) John Victor Turner (David Hume) - Amos Petrie - Amos Petrie's Puzzle (3/7) {Kindle}
(1932 - 1944) Nicholas Brady (David Hume) - Ebenezer Buckle - The House Of Strange Guests (1/4) {Kindle}
(1932 - 1933) Barnaby Ross (aka Ellery Queen) - Drury Lane - Drury Lane's Last Case (4/4)
^^^(1932 - ????) Richard Essex (Richard Harry Starr) - Jack Slade - Slade Scores Again (2/?) {Rare Books}
(1932 - 1933) Gerard Fairlie - Mr Malcolm - Mr Malcolm Presents (2/3) (unavailable?}
(1932 - 1934) Paul McGuire - Superintendent Fillinger - Murder By The Law (2/5) {State Library, held}
^^^^^(1932 - 1946) Roland Daniel - Inspector Pearson - The Crackswoman (1/6) {unavailable}
(1932 - 1951) Sydney Horler - Tiger Standish - Tiger Standish (1/11) {Rare Books}

^^^^^ Remainder of series unavailable
^^^ Incompletely available series

Series and sequels, 1933 onwards:

(1933 - 1959) John Gordon Brandon - Arthur Stukeley Pennington - West End! (1/?) {AbeBooks / State Library, held}
(1933 - 1940) Lilian Garis - Carol Duncan - The Ghost Of Melody Lane (1/9) {fadedpage.com / Internet Archive}
^^^^^(1933 - 1934) Peter Hunt (George Worthing Yates and Charles Hunt Marshall) - Allan Miller - Murders At Scandal House (1/3) {AbeBooks / Amazon}
(1933 - 1968) John Dickson Carr - Gideon Fell - Hag's Nook (1/23) {Better World Books / State Library NSW, interlibrary loan}
^^^^^(1933 - 1939) Gregory Dean (Jacob D. Posner) - Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Simon - The Case Of Marie Corwin (1/3) {AbeBooks / Amazon}
(1933 - 1956) E. R. Punshon - Detective-Sergeant Bobby Owen - Information Received (1/35) {academic loan / State Library NSW, held / Rare Books}
(1933 - 1934) Jackson Gregory - Paul Savoy - A Case For Mr Paul Savoy (1/3) {AbeBooks / Rare Books}
(1933 - 1957) John Creasey - Department Z - The Death Miser (1/28) {State Library NSW, held}
^^^^^(1933 - 1940) Bruce Graeme - Superintendent Stevens - Body Unknown (2/2) {expensive}
(1933 - 1952) Wyndham Martyn - Christopher Bond - The Denmede Mystery (3/8) {State Library NSW, JFR}

^^^^^(1934 - 1949) Richard Goyne - Paul Templeton - Strange Motives (1/13) {unavailable?}
^^^^^(1934 - 1941) N. A. Temple-Ellis (Nevile Holdaway) - Inspector Wren - Three Went In (1/3) {unavailable?}
(1934 - 1953) Carter Dickson (John Dickson Carr) - Sir Henry Merivale - The Plague Court Murders (1/22) {Fisher Library}
(1934 - 1953) Leslie Ford (Zenith Jones Brown) - Colonel Primrose - The Strangled Witness (1/17) {Rare Books}
(1934 - 1975) Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe - Over My Dead Body (7/?) {ILL / SMSA}
(1934 - 1935) Vernon Loder - Inspector Chace - Murder From Three Angles (1/2) {Kindle / ????}

(1935 - 1939) Francis Beeding - Inspector George Martin - The Norwich Victims (1/3) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1935 - 1976) Nigel Morland - Palmyra Pym - The Moon Murders (1/28) {State Library NSW, held}
(1935 - 1941) Clyde Clason - Professor Theocritus Lucius Westborough - The Fifth Tumbler (1/10) {HathiTrust}
(1935 - ????) G. D. H. Cole / M. Cole - Dr Tancred - Dr Tancred Begins (1/?) (AbeBooks, expensive / State Library NSW, held / Rare Books}
(1935 - ????) George Harmon Coxe - Kent Murdock - Murder With Pictures (1/22) {ebook? / AbeBooks}
^^^(1935 - 1959) Kathleen Moore Knight - Elisha Macomber - The Tainted Token (6/16) {Rare Books}

(1936 - 1974) Anthony Gilbert (Lucy Malleson) - Arthur Crook - Murder By Experts (1/51) {Kindle / interlibrary loan}
(1936 - 1940) George Bell Dyer - The Catalyst Club - The Catalyst Club (1/3) {Rare Books}
^^^(1936 - 1956) Theodora Du Bois - Anne and Jeffrey McNeil - Death Dines Out (4/19) {Rare Books}
(1936 - 1945) Charles Kingston - Chief Inspector Wake - Murder In Piccadilly (1/7) {Kindle}
(1937 - 1953) Leslie Ford (Zenith Jones Brown) - Grace Latham - Ill Met By Moonlight (1/16) {Kindle / Internet Archive}
(1938 - 1944) Zelda Popkin - Mary Carner - Time Off For Murder (2/6) {Kindle}
^^^^^(1938 - 1939) D. B. Olsen (Dolores Hitchens) - Lt. Stephen Mayhew - The Clue In The Clay (1/2) {expensive}
(1939 - 1953) Patricia Wentworth - Inspector Lamb - Vanishing Point (11/11)
^^^(1939 - 1940) Clifton Robbins - George Staveley - Death Forms Threes (2/2) {Rare Books}
(1939 - 1956) D. B. Olsen (Dolores Hitchens) - Rachel Murdock (check Stephen Mayhew) - The Cat Saw Murder (1/12) {Kindle / ZLibrary}

^^^(1940 - 1943) Bruce Graeme - Pierre Allain - The Corporal Died In Bed (1/3) {CARM}
(1941 - 1951) Bruce Graeme - Theodore I. Terhune - Seven Clues In Search Of A Crime (1/7) {Kindle / GooglePlay}
(1943 - 1961) Enid Blyton - Five Find-Outers - The Mystery Of The Disappearing Cat (2/15) {fadedpage}
(1945 - 1952) D. B. Olsen (Dolores Hitchens) - Professor Pennyfeather - Bring The Bride A Shroud (aka "A Shroud For The Bride") (1/6) {Rare Books / National Library}
(1947 - 1953) Michael Gilbert - Inspector Hazelrigg - They Never Looked Inside (2/6) {State Library NSW, JFR / ZLibrary}
(1955 - 1991) Patricia Highsmith - Tom Ripley - Ripley's Game (3/5) {SMSA}
(1957 - 1993) Chester B. Himes - The Harlem Cycle - The Big Gold Dream (4/9) {Fisher Library}
(1961 - 2017) - John le Carré - George Smiley - The Honourable Schoolboy (6/9) {Sutherland Library / Fisher Library / SMSA}
(1964 - 1987) Robert Arthur / William Arden / Nick West - The Three Investigators - The Mystery Of The Coughing Dragon (14/43) {freebooklover / Internet Archive}
(1965 - 1975) Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö - Martin Beck - The Laughing Policeman (4/10) {SMSA}
(1992 - 2000) Barbara Neely - Blanche White - Blanche Passes Go (4/4)
^^^^^(2001 - 2012) Esmahan Aykol - Kati Hirschel - Divorce Turkish Style (3/4)

^^^^^ Remainder of series unavailable
^^^ Incompletely available series

Non-crime series and sequels:

(1861 - 1876) **Margaret Oliphant - Carlingford - Phoebe Junior (7/7) {Fisher storage}
(1867 - 1905) **Martha Finley - Elsie Dinsmore - Elsie And Her Namesakes (28/28)
(1867 - 1872) **George MacDonald - The Seaboard Parish - Annals Of A Quiet Neighbourhood (1/3) {ManyBooks}
(1893 - 1915) **Kate Douglas Wiggins - Penelope - Penelope's Postscripts (4/4)
(1894 - 1898) **Anthony Hope - Ruritania - Rupert Of Hentzau (3/3)
(1898 - 1918) **Arnold Bennett - Five Towns - Tales Of The Five Towns (3/11) {Fisher storage / Project Gutenberg / Internet Archive}

(1901 - 1919) **Carolyn Wells - Patty Fairfield - Patty And Azalea (17/17)
(1901 - 1927) **George Barr McCutcheon - Graustark - Beverly Of Graustark (2/6) {Project Gutenberg}
(1906 - 1933) John Galsworthy - The Forsyte Saga - Over The River (12/12)
(1907 - 1912) **Carolyn Wells - Marjorie - Marjorie's Vacation (1/6) {ManyBooks}
(1908 - 1924) **Margaret Penrose - Dorothy Dale - Dorothy Dale: A Girl Of Today (1/13) {ManyBooks}
(1909 - 1912) **Emerson Hough - Western Trilogy - 54-40 Or Fight (1/3) {Project Gutenberg}
(1910 - 1931) Grace S. Richmond - Red Pepper Burns - Red Pepper Returns (6/6)
(1910 - 1933) Jeffery Farnol - The Vibarts - The Way Beyond (3/3) {Fisher Library storage / fadedpage.com}
(1910 - 1921) **Hanns Heinz Ewers - Frank Braun - Alraune (2/3) {Kindle / Zlibrary}

(1911 - 1937) Mary Roberts Rinehart - Letitia Carberry - Tish Marches On (5/5)
^^^(1911 - 1919) **Alfred Bishop Mason - Tom Strong - Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout (5/5)
(1913 - 1934) *Alice B. Emerson - Ruth Fielding - Ruth Fielding In The Far North (20/30) {expensive}
(1916 - 1941) John Buchan - Edward Leithen - Sick Heart River (5/5)
(1915 - 1923) **Booth Tarkington - Growth - The Magnificent Ambersons (2/3) {Project Gutenberg / Fisher Library / Kindle}
(1917 - 1929) **Henry Handel Richardson - Dr Richard Mahony - Australia Felix (1/3) {Fisher Library / Kindle}

(1920 - 1939) E. F. Benson - Mapp And Lucia - Trouble For Lucia (6/6)
(1920 - 1952) William McFee - Spenlove - The Adopted - (7/7)
(1920 - 1932) *Alice B. Emerson - Betty Gordon - Betty Gordon At Bramble Farm (1/15) {ManyBooks}
^^^(1923 - 1931) *Agnes Miller - The Linger-Nots - The Linger-Nots And The Secret Maze (5/5)
(1924 - 1928) **Ford Madox Ford - Parade's End - Last Post (4/4)
(1926 - 1936) *Margery Lawrence - The Round Table - Nights Of The Round Table (1/2) {Kindle}
(1927 - 1960) **Mazo de la Roche - Jalna - Jalna (1/16) {State Library NSW, JFR / fadedpage.com}

(1928 - ????) Trygve Lund - Weston of the Royal North-West Mounted Police - The Vanished Prospector (6/9) {AbeBooks}
(1929 - 1931) *Ernest Raymond - Once In England - A Family That Was (1/3) {State Library NSW, JFR}

(1930 - 1932) Hugh Walpole - The Herries Chronicles - Vanessa (4/4)
(1930 - 1932) Faith Baldwin - The Girls Of Divine Corners - Myra: A Story Of Divine Corners (4/4)
(1930 - 1940) E. M. Delafield - The Provincial Lady - The Provincial Lady In Wartime (4/4)
(1930 - 1937) *Nina Murdoch - Miss Emily - Miss Emily In Black Lace (1/3) {State Library, held}

(1931 - 1951) Olive Higgins Prouty - The Vale Novels - Fabia (5/5)
(1931 - 1934) T. S. Stribling - The Vaiden Trilogy - The Store (2/3) {Internet Archive / academic loan / State Library, held}
(1931 - 1935) Pearl S. Buck - The House Of Earth - A House Divided (3/3)
(1932 - 1932) Lizette M. Edholm - The Merriweather Girls - The Merriweather Girls At Good Old Rockhill (4/4)
(1932 - 1952) D. E. Stevenson - Mrs Tim - Mrs Tim Flies Home (5/5) {interlibrary loan}

(1933 - 1970) Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richlieu - The Forbidden Territory (1/11) {Fisher Library}
(1934 - 1936) Storm Jameson - The Mirror In Darkness - Company Parade (1/3) {Fisher Library}
(1934 - 1968) Dennis Wheatley - Gregory Sallust - Black August (1/11) {interlibrary loan / omnibus}
(1936 - 1952) Helen Dore Boylston - Sue Barton - Sue Barton, Student Nurse (1/7) {interlibrary loan}

(1947 - 1974) Dennis Wheatley - Roger Brook - The Launching Of Roger Brook (1/12) {Fisher Library storage}
(1948 - 1971) E. V. Timms - The Gubbys - Forever To Remain (1/12) {Fisher Library / interlibrary loan}
(1953 - 1960) Dennis Wheatley - Molly Fountain and Colonel Verney - To The Devil A Daughter (1/2) {Fisher Library storage}
(1955 - 1956) D. E. Stevenson - The Ayrton Family - Summerhills (2/2) {interlibrary loan}
(1989 - ????) Nancy A. Collins - Sonja Blue - A Dozen Black Roses (4/7) {Internet Archive / Kindle / ZLibrary}

*** Incompletely available series
** Series complete pre-1931
* Present status pre-1931

Unavailable series works (Part 1: series partially available):

Esmahan Aykol - Kati Hirschel
Istanbul Tango (#4) {untranslated}

John Rhode - Dr Priestley
The Hanging Woman (#11) {rare, expensive}

Miles Burton - Desmond Merrion / Inspector Arnold
The Three Crimes (#2 Merrion / #1 Arnold) {rare, expensive}
The Menace On The Downs (#2 Arnold) {rare, expensive}
Fate At The Fair (#4 Merrion / #4 Arnold) {unavailable}
Tragedy At The Thirteenth Hole (#5 Merrion / #5 Arnold) {unavailable}
Death At The Cross-Roads (#6 Merrion / #6 Arnold) {unavailable}
The Charabanc Mystery (#7 Merrion / #7 Arnold) {unavailable}
To Catch A Thief (#8 Merrion / #8 Arnold) {unavailable}
The Devereux Court Mystery (#9 Merrion / #9 Arnold) {unavailable}
Murder Of A Chemist (#11 Merrion / #11 Arnold) {unavailable}
Where Is Barbara Prentice? (aka "The Clue Of The Silver Cellar") (#13 Merrion / #13 Arnold) {rare, expensive}
Death At The Club (aka "The Clue Of The Fourteen Keys") (#14 Merrion/ #14 Arnold) {unavailable}
Murder In Crown Passage (aka "The Man With The Tattoed Face") (#15 Merrion / #15 Arnold) {unavailable}

Natalie Sumner Lincoln - Inspector Mitchell
The Nameless Man (#2) {expensive}

Louis Tracy - Winter and Furneaux
The Park Lane Mystery (#6) {unavailable}

John Alexander Ferguson - Francis McNab
Death Of Mr Dodsley (#5) {unavailable}

Moray Dalton - Inspector Collier
The Harvest Of Tares (#4) {unavailable}

E. C. R. Lorac - Inspector Robert MacDonald
The Murder On The Burrows (#1) {unavailable}
The Greenwell Mystery (#3) {unavailable}

R. A. J. Walling - Garstang
Stroke Of One (#1) {unavailable}

T. Arthur Plummer - Inspector Frampton
Shadowed By The C.I.D. (#1) {unavailable}
Shot At Night (#2) {unavailable}

Bruce Graeme - Superintendent Stevens
Body Unknown (#?) {unavailable}

Charles Barry (real name: Charles Bryson) - Inspector Gilmartin
The Smaller Penny (#1) {expensive}

Francis D. Grierson - Inspector Sims and Professor Wells
The Double Thumb (#3) {unavailable}

Cecil Freeman Gregg - Inspector Higgins
The Murdered Manservant (aka "The Body In The Safe") (#1) {HathiTrust/not accessible}
The Three Daggers (#2) {HathiTrust/not accessible}

Charles J. Dutton - Harley Manners
The Shadow Of Evil (#2) {rare, expensive}

Elaine Hamilton - Inspector Reynolds
Murder In The Fog (#2) {unavailable}
The Chelsea Mystery (#3) {unavailable}
The Green Death (Reynolds #4?) {unavailable}
The Silent Bell (Reynolds #5?) {unavailable}

Herman Landon - The Picaroon
The Picaroon Does Justice (#2) {CARM}
Buy My Silence! (#3) {rare, expensive}
The Picaroon Resumes Practice (#5) {unavailable}
The Picaroon In Pursuit (#6) {CARM}

Bertram Atkey - Smiler Bunn
The Smiler Bunn Brigade (#2) {rare, expensive}
Smiler Bunn, Man-Hunter (#3) {unavailable}
Smiler Bunn, Gentleman Crook (#4) {unavailable}
The Man With Yellow Eyes (#5) {unavailable}
Smiler Bunn: Byewayman (#6) {unavailable}
Smiler Bunn, Gentleman-Adventurer (#7) {unavailable}
Smiler Bunn, Crook (#8) {unavailable}
The House Of Clystevill (#11) {unavailable}

Charles Reed Jones - Leighton Swift
The King Murder (#1) {unavailable}
The Van Norton Murders (#3) {Complete Detective Novel Magazine}

Monte Barrett - Peter Cardigan
Murder Off Stage (aka "Knotted Silk") (#2) {expensive shipping}

Roland Daniel - Inspector John Walk
Dead Man's Vengeance (#1) {unavailable}
Ann Turns Detective (#2) {unavailable}
Ruby Of A Thousand Dreams (#3) {Ramble House} (NB: Wu Fang)

George Dilnot - Inspector Strickland
Crooks' Game (#1) {expensive}
The Black Ace (#2) {expensive}

Richard Essex (aka ) - Jack Slade
Slade Of The Yard (#1) {expensive}

Mark Cross aka Archibald Thomas Pechey aka Valentine - Daphne Wrayne and the Four Adjusters
The Shadow Of The Four (#1) {rare, expensive}

Bruce Graeme - Stevens and Allain
Satan's Mistress (#4) {unavailable}

Wyndham Martyn - Christopher Bond
Christopher Bond, Adventurer (#1) {unavailable}
Spies Of Peace (#2) {unavailable}

Clifton Robbins - George Staveley
Six Sign-Post Murder (#1) {expensive}

Unavailable series works (Part 2: series effectively unavailable):

R. Francis Foster - Anthony Ravenhill
The Missing Gates (#1) {unavailable}
Anthony Ravenhill, Crime Merchant (#2) {expensive}
The Music Gallery Murder (#3) {unavailable}
The Moat House Mystery (#4) {unavailable}
The Dark Night (#5) {unavailable}

David Sharp - Professor Fielding
When No Man Pursueth (#1) {unavailable}
I, The Criminal (#4) {rare, expensive}
The Inconvenient Corpse (#5 rare, expensive}
Marriage And Murder (#6) {unavailable}

Adam Broome - Denzil Grigson
Crowner's Quest (#2) {rare, expensive}
The Island Of Death (#3) {rare, expensive}
The Crocodile Club (#5) {unavailable}
The Black Mamba (#6) {rare, expensive}
Snakes And Ladders (#7) {unavailable}
The Red Queen Club (#8) {unavailable}
Flame Of The Forest (#9) {rare, expensive}

Roger Scarlett - Inspector Kane
Murder Among The Angells (#4) {expensive}
In The First Degree (#5) {expensive}

Alice MacGowan and Perry Newberry - Jerry Boyne
The Seventh Passenger (#4) {expensive}
Who Is This Man? (#5) {available, expensive shipping}

Roland Daniel - Wu Fang
The Society Of The Spiders (#1) {Ramble House}
Wu Fang (#2) {unavailable}
Ruby Of A Thousand Dreams (#3) {Ramble House}
Wu Fang's Revenge (#4) {unavailable}
The Son Of Wu Fang (#5) {Ramble House}
The Return Of Wu Fang (#6) {Ramble House}

The Hanshews - Cleek
The Amber Junk (aka "Riddle Of The Amber Ship") (#9) {rare, expensive}
The House Of Seven Keys (#10) {rare, expensive}
The Riddle Of The Winged Death (#11) {unavailable}
Murder In The Hotel (#12) {unavailable}

William Morton (aka William Blair Morton Ferguson) - Daniel "Biff" Corrigan / Police Commissioner Kirker Cameron
Masquerade (#1) {expensive}
The Mystery Of The Human Bookcase (#2) {expensive}
The Murderer (aka "The Pilditch Puzzle") (#3) {expensive}
The Case Of Casper Gault ????

Jean Lilly - DA Bruce Perkins
The Seven Sisters (#1) {rare, expensive}
False Face (#2) {rare, expensive}
Death In B-Minor (#3) {rare, expensive}
Death Thumbs A Ride (#4) {rare, expensive}

David Frome (Zenith Jones Brown) - Major Gregory Lewis
Murder Of An Old Man (#1) {rare, expensive}
In At The Death (#2) {rare, expensive}
The Strange Death Of Martin Green (#3) {rare, expensive}

John Franklin Carter (aka "Diplomat") - Dennis Tyler
Murder In The State Department (#1) {unavailable}
Murder In The Embassy (#2) {unavailable}
Scandal In The Chancery (#3) {unavailable}
The Corpse On The White House Lawn (#4) {unavailable}
Death In The Senate (#5) {unavailable}
Slow Death At Geneva (#6) {unavailable}
Brain Trust Murder (#7) {unavailable}

Murray Thomas - Inspector Wilkins
Buzzards Pick The Bones (#1) {unavailable}
Inspector Wilkins Sees Red (#2) {rare, expensive}
Inspector Wilkins Reads The Proofs (#3) {unavailable}

Roland Daniel - John Hopkins
The Rosario Murder Case (#1) {unavailable}
The Shooting Of Sergius Leroy (#2) {unavailable}

Roland Daniel - Inspector Pearson
The Crackswoman (#1) {unavailable}
The Green Jade God (#2) {unavailable}
White Eagle (#3) {unavailable}
The Crimson Shadow (#4) {expensive}
The Gangster's Last Shot (#5) {unavailable}
Murder At Little Malling (#6) {CARM}

Kathleen Moore Knight - Elisha Macomber
Death Blew Out The Match (#1) {expensive}
The Clue Of The Poor Man's Shilling (aka "The Poor Man's Shilling") (#2) {CARM / expensive}
The Wheel That Turned (#3) {expensive}
Seven Were Veiled (#4) {expensive}
Acts Of Black Night (#5) {expensive}

Peter Hunt (aka George Worthing Yates and Charles Hunt Marshall) - Alan Miller
Murders At Scandal House (#1) {expensive}
Murder For Breakfast (#2) {expensive}
Murder Among The Nudists (#3) {expensive}

Gregory Dean (aka Jacob D. Posner) - Benjamin Simon
The Case Of Marie Corwin (#1) {unavailable}
The Case Of The Fifth Key (#2) {unavailable}
Murder On Stilts (#3) {unavailable}

N. A. Temple-Ellis (aka Nevile Holdaway) - Inspector Wren
Three Went In (#1) {unavailable}
Dead In No Time (aka "Murder In The Ruins") (#2) {expensive}
Death Of A Decent Fellow (#3) {unavailable}

Richard Goyne - Paul Templeton
Strange Motives (#1) {unavailable}
Murder At The Inn (#2) {unavailable}
Produce The Body (#3) {unavailable}
Death By Desire (#4) {expensive}
Hanged I'll Be! (#5) {CARM}
Death In Harbour (#6) {unavailable}
Seven Were Suspect (#7) {unavailable}
The Merrylees Mystery (#8) {unavailable}
Who Killed My Wife? (#9) {unavailable}
Fear Haunts The Fells (#10) {unavailable}
Five Roads Inn (#11) {unavailable}
Murder Made Easy (#12) {unavailable}
Murderer's Moon (#13) {expensive}

Theodora du Bois - Anne and Jeffrey McNeill
Armed With A New Terror (#1) {unavailable}
Death Wears A White Coat (#2) {unavailable}
Death Tears A Comic Strip (#3) {expensive}

D. B. Olsen (aka Dolores Hichens) - Stephen Mayhew (overlaps with Rachel Murdock)
The Clue In The Clay (#1) {expensive}
Death Cuts A Silhouette (#2) {expensive}

Alfred Bishop Mason - Tom Strong
Tom Strong, Boy-Captain (#2) {unavailable}
Tom Strong, Junior (#3) {unavailable}
Tom Strong, Third (#4) {unavailable}

Agnes Miller - The Linger-Nots
The Linger-Nots And The Secret Maze (#5) {unavailable}

Books currently on loan:

      

        

    

    

Reading projects:

Blog:

        

        

Other projects:

        

        

Group read news:

We will be continuing our examination of Anthony Trollope's lesser-known works in January, with a group read of The Belton Estate.

I will put up the thread in the next day or two, and post around when we are ready to make a start.

In April, we will be wrapping up our reading of Margaret Oliphant's 'Chronicles of Carlingford' with a group read of the final novel, Phoebe Junior.

...and I think that's more than sufficient!

Welcome, everyone! Happy New Year (and group)! :)

Welcome back! Took one look at the little green guy and thought “Kermit!” too. 😀

As usual, your lists are overwhelming! Have fun attacking them.

I noticed you have Taras Bulba on your list. Give yourself a break and skip it - it's awful.

My New Year's gift to you. I hope your year is great.

Wishing you a comfortable reading year in 2023, Liz.

Happy New Year and Happy New Thread!

Happy new year, I look forward to another year of following along your reading in awe!

>22 drneutron:

Thanks, Jim - and thanks as always for all your work for the group. :)

The resemblance is pretty amazing! :D

>23 ffortsa:

Hi, Judy, thanks for visiting!

The lists are supposed to help me stay organised but really they just add to my anxiety. :D

Taras Bulba was an "impulse buy", so to speak, after I read Sienkiewicz's With Fire And Sword, which is the same story from the opposite perspective. I will keep what you say in mind; at least it's a lot shorter!

>24 PaulCranswick:

Thanks, Paul - I hope you have a great year too. :)

>25 SandDune:

Hi, Rhian! - thanks for visiting, and Happy New Everything to you. :)

>26 Helenliz:

Thanks so much for your company, Helen!

Happy New Reading Year!

>1 lyzard: Kermit, yes. But with his heart exposed, isn’t that special?

>32 EllaTim:

Hi, Ella! Thanks so much for visiting, I hope you have a great reading year too.

Such a strange and wonderful little frog! :)

Finished The Belton Estate for TIOLI #2.

Now reading The Sorcerer's Apprentice by Hanns Heinz Ewers.

Wow, someone who loves lists even more than I!

As regards, Taras Bulba, which we were just discussing on the Nobel thread, I can understand why modern readers would be put off by the virulent hatred of other expressed in the book. I thought it was exceptional writing, however, and historically important. I'll be curious as to your thoughts when you read it. One suggestion might be to find the introduction by Robert D. Kaplan. I thought it was very thought-provoking and helpful in placing TB in historical context.

>35 labfs39:

Hi, Lisa, thanks for tracking me down! Do you have a thread up this year? I will come and find you when I have have things more under control. (Ha, ha!)

Yes I do love a list! :D

That's really helpful, thank you. I have picked up an old edition that has no introducton as such, but does have Gogol's original preface; I might see if I can find the Kaplan piece elsewhere.

The thread is up for the group read of Anthony Trollope's The Belton Estate - here.

There is no hurry about starting, but please stop by and check in if you will be participating.

All welcome!

(BTW it's a shorter novel as novels by Trollope go, so if you've been thinking of giving him a try this might be a good place to start.)

Dropping a star and wishing you a happy new year Liz!

I think I will join in with the group read of The Belton Estate - it's one I happen to have in the house and I've not yet read it.

Dropping off a star and looking forward to keeping up with your reading adventures this year.

Best wishes for a fantastic year, including but not limited to, your reading. I’m looking forward to following your thread, which I always enjoy so much.

>38 swynn:

Thanks so much, Steve! Thanks also for your ongoing companionship in our challenges. :)

>39 SandDune:

We'd love to have you join us, Rhian!

>40 MickyFine:

Hi, Micky, thanks so much!

>41 Matke:

Thank you, Gail, I really appreciate it. :)

>1 lyzard: I never thought I'd hear myself say this but ... I'm going to miss seeing the beautiful peacock spiders from your last thread topper. Although Kermit is certainly adorable in his own way.

In a truly weird coincidence, I recently read an article about the glass frog in The Atlantic magazine. Here's a link, which I think should work for even non-subscribers:

How Glass Frogs Weave the World’s Best Invisibility Cloak

>46 rosalita:

Told you so. :)

I can access that, yes, thanks so much!

2023 #1

Publication date: 1865
Genre: Classic
Read for: Group read

The Belton Estate - The death by suicide of debt-laden young Charlie Amendroz leaves his father and sister in dire financial circumstances. The future is even darker for Clara since, at her father's death, the family property will pass to a distant cousin, Will Belton, a Norfolk farmer. Though Mr Amendroz comforts himself that Clara will be provided for by the elderly Mrs Winterfield, a connection by marriage, Clara herself knows that Mrs Winterfield, out of a sense of family duty, has decided to will her entire property to her nephew, Captain Frederic Aylmer. However, it is evident that Mrs Winterfield hopes for a marriage between Aylmer and Clara---and perhaps Clara secretly hopes so too. When Will Belton writes to Mr Amendroz proposing that he visit, Clara persuades her indignant father that, far from presuming, Belton's professions of assistance and friendship are sincere. When he arrives, she finds him somewhat rough in manner and clearly less educated than herself; but also good-humoured, generous, and willing and able to help. However, when Belton promptly falls in love with her, his premature proposal alarms Clara into a flat rejection that seems to negate any future connection. When Mrs Winterfield dies, Clara's grief is somewhat assuaged by a proposal from Captain Aylmer, which she willingly accepts; but when she learns of Aylmer's deathbed promise to his aunt, she wonders if she has made the right decision... Though considered only one of Anthony Trollope's minor novels, The Belton Estate is not without interest, in that it is unusually vocal in its criticisms of its society's treatment of women---and all the more interesting for coming in the wake of Can You Forgive Her? and Miss Mackenzie, both of which tacitly argue for female acquiescence to the existing societal norms, be they ever so unjust or narrow. Here, though on the whole she acts with the expected accordance, Clara Amedroz is surprisingly vocal in her protests about financial dependence, the necessity for marriage, and the expectation of female submission. In outline, however, The Belton Estate is an entirely typical Trollope novel, with a young woman caught between two men, their opposing styles of courtship, and the dissimilar futures they offer: a framework via which Trollope questions what qualities in fact make a man a "gentleman". Clara's attraction to Frederic Aylmer is not entirely convincing, though we understand that her loneliness and lack of appreciation at home may have imbued his mild attentions with a greater value than they inherently possessed. After the engagement is ratified, Aylmer progressively reveals himself as over-influenced by his cold and domineering mother, cautious to the point of selfishness---and inclined to despise Clara for accepting him so readily, rather than playing hard to get. Aylmer's hesitancy forms a drastic contrast to Will Belton's bull-at-a-gate approach to life, which is simultaneously his greatest virtue and his most significant shortcoming, with his impatience and overbearing tendencies sometimes negating his good intentions. A crisis occurs when Clara's only close friend, Mrs Askerton, who with her husband rents a cottage from Mr Amendroz, is revealed as "a woman with a past". Already doubting the wisdom of her engagement, when the outraged Lady Aylmer demands that she sever herself from her friend, Clara must make a very serious decision. However, the consequences of her own actions are forestalled when Mr Amendroz dies, leaving her alone in the world and destitute...

    Then Captain Aylmer asked after her father, and Clara told him of Mr Belton's visit, telling him nothing---as the reader will hardly require to be told---of Mr Belton's offer. And so, by degrees, they fell into close and intimate conversation...
    "He is clever; and then there's a way about him of doing everything just as he likes it, which is wonderful. You feel quite sure that he'll become master of everything... But he doesn't meddle in things that he doesn't understand. And then he is so generous! His spending all that money down there is only done because he thinks it will make the place pleasanter to papa."
    "Has he got plenty of money?"
    "Oh, plenty! At least, I think so. He says that he has."
    "The idea of any man owning that he had got plenty of money! What a happy mortal! And then to be handsome, and omnipotent, and to understand cattle and fields! One would strive to emulate him rather than envy him, had not one learned to acknowledge that it is not given to every one to get to Corinth."
    "You may laugh at him, but you'd like him if you knew him."
    "One never can be sure of that from a lady's account of a man. When a man talks to me about another man, I can generally tell whether I should like him or not---particularly if I know the man well who is giving the description; but it is quite different when a woman is the describer."
    "You mean that you won't take my word?"
    "We see with different eyes in such matters. I have no doubt your cousin is a worthy man---and as prosperous a gentleman as the Thane of Cawdor in his prosperous days;---but probably if he and I came together we shouldn't have a word to say to each other."
    Clara almost hated Captain Aylmer for speaking as he did, and yet she knew that it was true. Will Belton was not an educated man, and were they two to meet in her presence,---the captain and the farmer,---she felt that she might have to blush for her cousin. But yet he was the better man of the two. She knew that he was the better man of the two, though she knew also that she could not love him as she loved the other...

Finished The Sorcerer's Apprentice---hopefully for TIOLI #14, if I can catch the right slot.

Now reading Old Saint Paul's by William Harrison Ainsworth.

A pair of OCD triggers with this one: first of all, publishers and critics toggle between abbreviating and not (Saint / St.), though it seems this is just for their own convenience. The first, three-volume edition of 1841 uses 'Saint' and therefore so shall I.

Second, my library copy has no publication date---ugh.

And this is really helpful {eye-roll}:

Other editions by Routledge, 1857, 1884, 1891, etc.

However, I may in fact have the 1891 edition: its plain cover indicates it isn't any of the earlier Routledge single-volume editions, which were embossed with various designs, but its typeface still suggests a 19th century reissue.

>49 lyzard: It's really cruel of those 19th century publishers not to consider how obsessive readers more than 100 years hence would need to know about the publication history of the books they turned out. For shame!

>50 rosalita:

A shocking lack of foresight, I agree! :D

It does seem a weird omission, though, it's such a standard publishing touch.

2022 #113

Publication date: 1959
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones #3
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (verb used as noun in the title)

The Crazy Kill - A wake is held for Big Joe Pullen, with jazz and spirituals ushering in the following dawn. On the third-floor apartment balcony, the Reverend Short sees a robbery in progress over the street, leans out to see better---and falls... Upstairs, Mamie Pullen hustles her niece, Dulcy Perry, into the bathroom and tells her that, if she doesn't want bad trouble, she needs to stop flirting with Chink Charlie Dawson. Dulcy replies resentfully that she can't stop Charlie pursuing her---but that she too is scared of the hot-temper and even more violent jealousy of her husband, Johnny. No-one knows how to react when the Reverend Short appears at the front door, announcing that was pushed off the balcony by Chink Charlie---and that his life was saved by a delivery of bread loaves. In the face of disbelief, he marches the mourners to the balcony to show them the box of bread on the pavement below---which is now occupied by a dead man with a knife in his heart... The third entry in Chester Himes' series featuring Harlem police detectives, "Coffin" Ed Johnson and "Grave Digger" Jones, The Crazy Kill is a typically dizzying mixture of sex, violence, absurdity and - for want of a better word - poetry. Though overtly concerned with twinned central narratives, the detectives' hunt for Val Haines' killer and Johnny Perry's quest to determine whether Dulcy is or is not cheating on him, rather than being what the novel is "about" these plot-threads merely form the framework for Himes' cynical yet heartfelt depiction of Harlem in high summer: a land of criminals, whores, gamblers, drunks, cheaters and people just trying to get by. Likewise, rather than being the focus of the novel, Coffin Ed and Grave Digger are simply one more element of Harlem life. The pair commit as many crimes as they solve in their quest for Val's murderer---though that said, there is more straight interrogation of suspects and witnesses here than we are accustomed to in this series; and if interrogation fails, there's always hands-on violence... As the investigation proceeds, the detectives' hear repeatedly an unlikely story of a ten thousand dollar pay-off from Johnny Perry to Val Haines, the cover-story of Johnny backing Val in a new business being self-evidently false, and suggesting that Val knew something about Dulcy that Johnny would pay to know---or kill to keep quiet. Dulcy herself, meanwhile, lives in escalating fear of Chink's lust and Johnny's violence---while an even greater danger lurks in the shadows...

    It was eight o'clock, but still light.
    "Let's go for a ride," Grave Digger said to Coffin Ed, "and look at some scenery. See the brown girls blooming in pink dresses, smell the perfume of poppies and marijuana."
    "And listen to the stool pigeons sing," Coffin Ed supplied.
    They were cruising south on Seventh Avenue in the small battered black sedan. Grave Digger eased the little car behind a big slow-moving trailer truck, and Coffin Ed kept his eyes skinned along the sidewalk.
    A numbers writer standing in front of Madame Sweetie-pie's hairdressing parlor, flashing a handful of paper slips with the day's winning numbers, looked up and saw Coffin Ed's baleful eyes pinned on him and began eating the paper slips as though they were taffy candy.
    Hidden behind the big truck trailer, they sneaked up on a group of weedheads standing in front of the bar on the corner of 126th Street. Eight young hoodlums dressed in tight black pants, fancy straw hats with mixed-colored bands, pointed shoes and loud-colored sport shirts, wearing smoked glasses, and looking like an assemblage of exotic grasshoppers, had already finished one stick and were passing around the second one when one of them exclaimed, "Split! Here comes King Kong and Frankenstein."
    The boy smoking the stick swallowed it so fast the fire burnt his gullet and he doubled over, strangling...
    Grave Digger smiled grimly. "I could hit that punk in the belly and make him vomit up enough evidence to give him a year in the cooler," he said.
    "We'll teach him that trick some other time," Coffin Ed said.

>48 lyzard: Wow! We haven't even finished the Group Read and your review is up! I'm impressed!

>53 kac522:

Hi, Kathy!

I figured I might actually try keeping up-to-date this year...given that I'm still two and a half months behind in 2022. :D

2023 #2

Publication date: 1910
Genre: Horror
Series: Frank Braun #1
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (first in a trilogy)

The Sorcerer's Apprentice (original title: Der Zauberlehrling, oder Die Teufelsjäger / "The Sorcerer's Apprentice; or, The Devil Hunters"; translation: Joe Bandel) - A chance encounter with an Italian priest directs Frank Braun to the isolated mountain village of Val di Scodra, where he hopes to work uninterrupted. Having made this suggestion, however, Father Vincenza retracts it: he tells Braun that the villagers are currently neglecting their church for a bastardised form of evangelical worship introduced by one of their number newly returned from America. This only intrigues Braun, who makes the difficult journey to Val di Scodra and finds himself in the most primitive of surroundings, with the villagers wary of him as an outsider and an unbeliever. He discovers that the only people not under the sway of Pietro Nosclere - Mr Peter as he now calls himself - are the irreligious inn-keeper, Raimondi, and his daughter, Teresa, a devout Catholic who is Father Vincenza's source of information. Braun is, as he says wryly to the priest, a "collector of extraordinary people"; secretly, he is also a man of strange visions and powers, who begins to toy with the notion of bending Val di Scodra to his will... In the course of a complicated and contradictory career, Hanns Heinz Ewers produced a trilogy of philosophical horror novels featuring the character Frank Braun: clearly intended as his creator's alter-ego (and giving a rather sad impression of Ewers as someone who wanted desperately to be thought of as dangerous), Braun springs Minerva-like from Ewers' imagination in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, which leaves the reader with some catching up to do. Reading this book feels like beginning a series in the middle: there is no explanation of who Braun is, what the "work" we hear about really is, what he is trying to achieve, or how he gained his power of influence over others. In place of these basic facts, we are given long passages of philosophical rumination as Ewers, via Braun, spells out his distinctly Nietzschean views on life, the universe, and everything---most particularly, the relationship between God and man. (This aspect of the book remains puzzling: Braun clearly believes in God, yet repeatedly refers to himself as an unbeliever: possibly he means he is incapable of worship, or of accepting the broader tenets of Christianity, or the necessary humility.) While these passages are gruelling, no less so - though in a very different way - is the central plot-thread of The Sorcerer's Apprentice, which blends cynicism, physical and spiritual horror, and brutal violence. Much of the novel's material is deliberately offensive, though there is rarely a sense that the reader is not supposed to "admire" Braun in some way: this, even though his first act upon taking up residence in Val di Scodra is to violently rape Teresa; the act itself compounded by the girl becoming, under Braun's influence, not merely submissive but eagerly compliant: her "reward" is to be treated literally like a dog. Braun quickly loses physical interest in her, but discovers that she is a remarkably sensitive hypnotic subject, something which puts a disturbing plan into his mind... Having observed the nature of the religious worship led by Pietro Nosclere, with its emphasis on sin and penitence, Braun conceives the idea of converting Val di Scodra into a religious retreat, a place of miracles and healing---at a price. Convinced that he may bend the entire village to his will, and fired with a vision of himself as puppet-master - or God-maker - Braun seeks out Nosclere, filling him with his own twisted ideas---and looks on amused and fascinated as, believing himself a new Elijah, Nosclere leads the village down a dark path of public confession and physical scourging. Braun also begins to implant ideas of sainthood and martyrdom in Teresa but, in a sudden fit of revulsion, changes his mind and abandons his plans for the valley. However, when Teresa subsequently develops stigmata, a series of horrifying events are set in motion which Braun is powerless to stop...

    "Yes, I have lain in your arms and do not deny it. Nor do I deny what is more: that it was you who showed me the path that leads to God. Do you believe that Pietro would deny it?---he as little as myself."
    Teresa turned to the latter with her smile of assurance. "Tell him yourself, brother."
    The American hesitated a moment. Then he spoke aloud. "Yes, he led me upon the path. He told me that the Lord had blessed me with His grace and that the spirit of the prophet Elijah was alive in me. He taught me what power God had placed in the blows of the scourge, and how, in my hand, the wine should be transformed into the Blood of the Lamb."
    "Do you hear it?" said Teresa. "And so I also will tell what you did. It was you who took me to the prophet's hall, you alone. You know that I didn't want to go and only obeyed out of my love for you. And it was you who spoke to me of all the things that I did not know. You told me of the lives of the saints who bore the wounds of our Lord and saw His face---it was you alone. And if the high gate of all grace has opened in Val di Scodra---it was you who brought us the key."
    Her voice rose and sounded bright and clear in great full tones. "We know well that it was the Lord who sent you. But we also know that you alone do not believe in His power. You were His tool and thought you were master. Because you unlocked the gate to the realm of all splendours you thought that it was your kingdom. But now all enter through that lofty gate---and you alone must remain outside."
    Her words sounded prophetical, she raised her arms high and very gently rocked her head to and fro. "Difficult is the way that leads upward, full of thorns and jagged shards. The thorns tear our naked feet and blood flows as from a sparkling spring. But I go that way, and above, a bright light is radiant: there the Heavenly Bridegroom will embrace the bride. There my sight aspires and does not see the snake that creeps amid the stones. It will sting me, it will sting me, but my feet stride farther upward---upward"
    Her eyes glowed and her hand touched her temple. "You are that snake!" she cried.

>55 lyzard: The Sorcerer's Apprentice, which blends cynicism, physical and spiritual horror, and brutal violence

People don't give Walt Disney enough credit for pushing the envelope on animated movies.

;-)

>56 rosalita:

"Mickey Mouse IS Frank Braun!" :D

>57 lyzard: I knew that perky little rodent was hiding something!

>55 lyzard: I'm embarrassed to say I wasn't aware of this; I was vaguely aware of Ewers, but not the particulars of his life or work which ... wow what a fascinating train wreck.

>59 swynn:

I came at him backwards, via the films based on his books, or one of them: it was Alraune I was actually interested in reading, but then I discovered it was the second work in a trilogy so here we are.

"Train wreck" is putting it mildly. :D

2022 #114

Publication date: 1937
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Read for: Shared read

The Hand In The Glove (UK title: Crime On Her Hands) - After her ruined father kills himself, and her fiancé deserts her, Theodolinda "Dol" Bonner must find a way to support herself, and sets up as a private investigator: a line of work that appeals to he for a number of reasons, including being her own boss---and having to answer to no man. Dol is backed in her venture by her young friend, Sylvia Raffray; but wealthy though she is, Sylvia is still under-age: and when her guardian, P. L. Storrs, insists that she withdraw from the partnership, Sylvia reluctantly agrees. Curiously, however, Storrs then hires Dol, inviting her to join a house party and observe his wife's "guru", George Ranth, who he believes is financially exploiting Mrs Storrs and, worse, pursuing Sylvia. Dol accepts the assignment, joining a party consisting of the Storrs and their withdrawn poet-daughter, Janet; Martin Foltz, the Storrs' country neighbour and Sylvia's fiancé; Steve Zimmermann, a psychologist and a friend of Martin's; and Ranth himself; while Len Banister, a newspaperman who has earned Storrs' wrath, tags along. It doesn't take long for Dol to conclude that Ranth is a fraud - possibly a dangerous fraud - but the situation takes a deadly turn when Storrs is murdered, strung up by a wire noose in his own garden... There is a sense in The Hand In The Glove that, having set out to break some boundaries via one of the mystery genre's first female private investigators, Rex Stout then changed his mind. His handling of Dol Bonner is ambivalent, to say the least: the novel is studded with strange male attitudes to women that ought to provide support for Dol's choices but feel like criticism instead; plus there are moments when Dol is unconvincingly dismayed by her own lack of "femininity" as she pursues her investigation. It feels, in fact, as if Stout found himself disapproving of his own creation; and it is not altogether surprising that, after this one novel-length adventure, she was relegated to an occasional supporting role in Stout's much more famous (and properly masculine) Nero Wolfe series. The Hand In The Glove was clearly intended as an exercise in psychological detection: it is soon evident that in spite of the characters' wealth and prominence, and Ranth's predatory nature, that something far other than money is at the bottom of the unfolding mystery; though some of what is eventually revealed is both unpleasant and confusing. The Hand In The Glove is, finally, a failed experiment---but still an interesting one. It is Dol herself who finds Storrs' body, and she is able to conduct a hast investigation before the police land at the scene and attempt to exclude her; though she pertinaciously holds her ground, arguing that Storrs is still her client. Dol has certain advantages over the police: she knows the people involved, and is also aware, of her own knowledge, of their movements on the afternoon of the crime. The nature of the crime-scene tells Dol that the killer must have worn thick leather gloves, in order to have handled the deadly wire; and the search for those gloves becomes a key part of her investigation---leading her not only to a suspect, but to others willing to lie and misdirect her for reasons of their own. But it is not until a second murder is committed that Dol is able to build her case, and expose a killer at great risk to herself...

    Six hours later, at eleven o'clock, Dol Bonner sat on the window seat in her room, sipping a cup of hot tea and staring out at the sunny lawn.
    She had reached the conclusion that there was no safe detour for her, no trail that might be found or blazed to avoid the risk she must take; she must either leap the crevasse or give it up...
    Dol had not slept. She knew her head was not clear: the sunny lawn outside was like a landscape in a dream, in appearance fair and cheerful, but with a sinister and threatening quality that could not be defined. And her brain was muddled. She knew it but couldn't help it. She could not lie down and sleep. She must first leap that crevasse; she knew that she must, all these hours that she had been shrinking from it...
    She had considered presenting Sherwood with her facts and surmises and leaving it to him, but from what she had seen of his methods she doubted if he would be equal to the job---and now the job must be done. The murderer must be unmasked. She had considered a direct attack on de Roode with whatever weapons she might command, but dismissed that as hopeless. She had considered, again, the possibility of coercing Janet into disclosure, and had dismissed that too. One false step might be ruin, for when she once betrayed her knowledge all the defenses of cunning and despair would be erected against her...

I may say that I was on ENTIRELY the wrong track with The Hand In The Glove, which doesn't happen often. Actually, I don't think I was misdirected the way Rex Stout intended, but one touch here sent me off at a tangent:

If Martin was aware of what he was doing, why was he trying to "solve" the animal killings---to the extent of hiring Dol and her people? Surely that would only make sense if he was having blackouts or suppressing his knowledge of his own actions? Why would he draw attention to it? Okay, he's not going to do anything while people are watching---but why have them watching at all?

In fact I had a COMPLETELY different reading of that situation: I thought that Storrs was fixated on Sylvia and passive-aggressively attacking Martin through his animals; and that de Roode retaliated in kind.

Otherwise, it should have (somehow) been de Roode protecting Martin from the consequences of his unknowing actions. I didn't buy Martin as a self-aware killer.

Happy New Year! >61 lyzard: I didn't realize that Cousin Rex wrote detective novels that didn't feature Nero Wolfe. I'll have to add this one to my TBRs!

>63 cbl_tn:

Thanks, Carrie!

This one, plus a three-book series featuring Tecumseh Fox that began in 1939. If there are any more, I'm sure Julia will be able to enlighten us?? :)

As with The Hand In The Glove, I was planning on overlapping those three with the Wolfes at the appropriate time: please feel free to join in!

>3 lyzard: What do/did you think of it? I read it recently for “pandemic” interest and found it quite disappointing, as you can see from the review I posted in 2020.

>65 booksaplenty1949:

Hi, thanks for visiting! I hardly know yet, I'm just at the end of Book One so he's still setting up his characters and cross-plots. There certainly isn't the same sudden plunge into events that opened Rookwood, which was the last Ainsworth I read, but I'll reserve judgement.

ETA: Having read a little further, I kind of want the plague to step things up. :D

>61 lyzard: Good comments, Liz. As I said earlier (I think), I thought the characters of Dol and Sylvia could have carried a series, so it's a pity that Stout abandoned the idea. I wonder if he wasn't satisfied with the way he wrote female characters — certainly the Wolfe series is suffocatingly male-centric. Or maybe he felt the norms of the time didn't allow him to write them the way he would have wanted? Someday I'm going to read John McAleer's biography of Stout and see if he sheds any insights.

>62 lyzard: I didn't love the eventual solution to the murder, but then the whole plot was so crazypants that it was hard for me to pinpoint what was wrong with it. I think you've put your finger on at least one glaring issue, for sure.

This is a dangerous thread! I just ordered a used copy of The Hand in the Glove. It should be here in a week to 10 days.

>63 cbl_tn: >64 lyzard: In addition to this Dol Bonner mystery and the three Tecumseh Fox books (Double for Death, Bad for Business (the plot of which was re-purposed by Stout for the Wolfe novella Bitter End) and The Broken Vase, Stout also wrote a standalone mystery featuring Wolfe foil Inspector Cramer (Red Threads) and a novel and short story featuring a character called Alphabet Hicks (The Sound of Murder and By His Own Hand. Cramer sidekick Purley Stebbins appears in the Hicks short story, by the way.

There are a few other crime-centric novels, including Her Forbidden Knight, A Prize for Princes, The Last Drive (the murder method here being a forerunner of what he would use in Fer-de-Lance) and The Mountain Cat Murders amongst the dozen or so other novels that Stout wrote in the decades prior to Nero Wolfe's inception in 1934. The rest were historical fiction, psychological thrillers and romances (!).

Stout didn't write any novels that didn't feature Wolfe after 1941.

>67 rosalita:

Yes, it's interesting to ponder whether Stout was dissatisfied with his own characterisation, or whether he actually found a female private investigator an unrealistic construct. Though it's funny to think that the person who created Nero Wolfe might then stumble on insufficient "realism"!

For whatever reason, female private investigators were thin at the ground at this time and for many years later.

(Side-thought: who was the first female police detective to star in a mystery series??)

That's true! I don't object to crazypants-ness, but it needs to make sense on its own terms and I think Stout didn't quite get it right there. (Maybe that was the source of his dissatisfaction?)

>69 rosalita:

Thanks for that information, Julia!

>68 cbl_tn:

Ooh, how exciting! - I hardly ever get to deliver a BB. :D

After this discussion, I'll be very interested to hear what you make of it, Carrie. (Also, do note Julia's contribution in >69 rosalita:)

>70 lyzard: I certainly hope Stout was dissatisfied with the plot of The Hand in the Glove! The other possibility that occurred to me was that he might have gotten pushback from a publisher not eager to break new ground with a female PI.

And now I need to know: who was the first female police detective to star in a mystery series?!

>72 rosalita:

Maybe, though there were one or two others already out there; it wasn't entirely new ground. I believe Kay Cleaver Strahan's Lynn MacDonald was the first, and she debuted in 1928. But maybe it wasn't popular.

I don't know! - and now I can feel my Sunday slipping away as I try to find out---ack!! :D

ETA: The obvious answer would be Jane Tennison in Lynda La Plante's 'Prime Suspect' series, who was herself based on one of the very first real female police detectives; but then I'm always wary of the obvious answer! :)

>1 lyzard: such impressive organization on view, and plenty of book bullets flying around!

I've starred your thread.

>73 lyzard: Cagney & Lacey preceded Prime Suspect by five years.

>74 fuzzi:

Hi, fuzzi - thanks! Delighted you're finding book bullets here. :)

>75 booksaplenty1949:

'Cagney & Lacey' wasn't based on a book series, though, was it? Or was it? That's what we were trying to figure out, the first (literary) mystery series with a female cop as the protagonist.

This conversation has put me in mind of 'Honey West', which was an adaptation of a book series and, I believe, the first American TV crime drama to have a female protagonist. Honey was a private detective, not a cop, but that series certainly paved the way for Angie Dickinson in 'Police Woman'. Which probably paved the way for 'Cagney & Lacey'. :)

Mind you---one female lead per decade shows how direly slow all this was to happen, which (to return to the original question) makes me think the book series I'm looking for is also likely a lot later than you feel it should be. La Plante's Prime Suspect was published in 1991 and at the moment does look like it might be it.

>77 lyzard: Yes, sorry, did not realise Prime Suspect TV series was based on a series of novels.

>78 booksaplenty1949:

And based in turn on the career of Jackie Maltin, who was one of the very first women to rise to the rank of Chief Inspector (and a horrible fight she had to get there, too).

>79 lyzard: I'm sure once she got the promotion she was warmly welcomed into the fold, though, right? Right?!

>80 rosalita:

They made things hot for her, if that's what you mean. :D

>81 lyzard: Not what I meant, but exactly what I expected. :-)

>82 rosalita:

She was a woman, which was bad enough; but she was also gay, so you can just imagine. :(

Anyway. Sigh. Two more series onto The Lists, I guess...

>83 lyzard: You know, I've never understood the conservative mindset — they don't like women but they also don't think lesbians are real women, so shouldn't the two cancel each other out? Haters gonna hate, I guess.

>84 rosalita:

The stereotypes they apply to prove woman are inferior don't apply?? I dunno.

Sort of in this area---

I was watching The Million Eyes Of Sumuru yesterday, about an all-female organisation trying to take down the patriarchy - an evil all-female organisation, it need hardly be said, in a 60s film based on a 50s novel - which was just awful.

The 50s novel in question was by none other than Sax Rohmer...and was part of a series...and now I'm fighting the feeling that needs to go onto The Lists too...though even if it does, I'm sure as hell not touching it until I finally get Fu Manchu wrapped up.

>86 lyzard: Don't do that to yourself!

>84 rosalita: Women are inferior but at least fill a function; lesbians are women but decline to fill that function, so no redeeming features.

>88 booksaplenty1949: I think you've put your finger on it! Along with a general male sense of outrage for being rejected in favor of a woman, who as we've already established is inferior.

>87 rosalita:

I know!---aack!! :D

>88 booksaplenty1949:

Or worse yet, could but won't. :)

2022 #115

Publication date: 1914
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Read for: Completist reading

The After House - A serious illness just on graduation leaves newly qualified doctor Ralph Leslie worn down, unemployed, and broke. To address all three, Leslie secures a berth as a deckhand of the yacht Ella, owned by wealthy businessman, Marshall Turner: his party includes his wife, Helen; her young sister, Elsa Lee; and two friends, Adele Johns and Wilmer Vail. Leslie soon realises that this supposed pleasure cruise has a darker purpose, to "dry out" the heavy-drinking Turner. However, to the dismay of he rest, with the connivance of his butler, Williams, Turner has smuggled onboard a large supply of spirits. Not long into the cruise, trouble starts: a drunken Turner accuses Vail and Helen of an affair, and has an ugly confrontation with his captain. Things go from bad to worse when, during a storm, a crewman is lost overboard. Then, on one incredible night, Vail is brutally axed to death. Having found the body, Leslie is trying to deal with the aftermath when he discovers that the captain, too, has been murdered, and so has one of the women's attendants... More a grim thriller than a mystery, though it centres on the search for an unknown killer, The After House is a flawed but interesting work by Mary Roberts Rinehart. Its shortcomings are the usual ones for this time, namely, it is melodramtic and hardly credible; though this is less of an issue than some nasty racial attitudes, plus rampant class snobbery in the guise of "breeding" (the riche trying to deny their nouveau). Leslie himself, having disguised his background, is subjected to the latter, until the crisis brings his qualities to the flaw and makes him the one person both guests and crew are willing to trust---up to a point. The After House's scenario is an unusually gruesome one---and unusually practical, too (Rinehart was a nurse before she started writing), with the survivors having to decide what to do with the bodies. Their solution is to place them in one of the life-boats, nail down a tarpaulin, and tether the makeshift morgue to the yacht: the little vessel and its nightmare cargo becomes a haunting motif through the rest of the narrative, as it bobs along after the yacht... Two simultaneous crises face those onboard the Ella: how to defend themselves from the killer, and how to get back to shore. Short-handed, short on experience, and unable to trust anyone, the crew must both mount constant guard - on the passengers and each other - while attempting to navigate back to land. Exhaustion, paranoia and fear run rampant, as it becomes clear that the killer hasn't finished...

    My earlier testimony had merely established the finding of the bodies. I was now to have a bad two hours. I was an important witness, probably the most important. I had heard the scream that had revealed the tragedy, and had been in the main cabin of the after house only a moment or so after the murderer. I had found the bodies, Vail still living, and had been with the accused mate when he saw the captain prostrate at the foot of the forward companion.
    All of this, aided by skillful questions, I told as exactly as possible. I told of the mate’s strange manner on finding the bodies; I related, to a breathless quiet, the placing of the bodies in the jolly-boat; and the reading of the burial service over them; I told of the little boat that followed us, like some avenging spirit, carrying by day a small American flag, union down, and at night a white light. I told of having to increase the length of the towing-line as the heat grew greater, and of a fear I had that the rope would separate, or that the mysterious hand that was the author of the misfortunes would cut the line.
    I told of the long nights without sleep, while, with our few available men, we tried to work the Ella back to land; of guarding the after house; of a hundred false alarms that set our nerves quivering and our hearts leaping. And I made them feel, I think, the horror of a situation where each man suspected his neighbour, feared and loathed him, and yet stayed close by him because a known danger is better than an unknown horror...

>91 lyzard: This sounds like And Then There Were None on a Boat, but I'm intrigued by the high body count, I must admit.

Also, I don't know if you are aware of a terrible reality TV show called Below Deck: Sailing Yacht? I guess I don't know it's terrible because I've never watched it but I've seen endless promos during shows I do watch. And I have to say, if the producers were to adopt this plot for next season, where a participant in the show got killed off every week, I might actually tune in!

Especially if they towed the bodies behind the yacht for the rest of the season ...

>77 lyzard: Another contender: Warren Adler's homicide detective Fiona Fitzgerald debuted in 1982's American Quartet

Though that still feels late to me, considering Police Woman's run in the mid-1970s.

>92 rosalita:

Too many survivors! More than we want. :D

I've seen the ads: that's enough.

>93 swynn:

Ooh! Excellent, thanks. If that's a series I think we may have a winner.

ETA: Yup, that looks like it: thanks so much for bringing that to my attention!

'Police Woman' was hardly intended to be realistic, though. Actually, this is reminding me of when I went looking for the first mystery series with a black female protagonist of any kind, and was appalled at how late that came---later than the white female cop, as it turns out; a lot later, if your nominee is the first.

I have a candidate I like better: Lillian O'Donnell's Norah Mulcahaney, a homicide detective in New York City, debuted in 1972's The Phone Calls

My strategy was to go through the "Police" entry of the job index at Stop You're Killing Me and check for characters with feminine names. My sense of "feminine names" is of course unreliable, and like most Internet reference sources SYKM's memory is sketchy pre-1995, so I have low confidence that this is the Correct Answer, but it feels more right

>95 swynn:

Ah, well done! I hadn't thought of that as a resource, though I was getting nowhere fast with general searches which seem determined to ignore my request for book series.

Yes, I can't imagine there would be anything earlier than that (and not much later from the look of it, not for a couple of decades).

And that's a long series, too, which should or ought to be informative about the shifting status of its protagonist. Excellent!

(Assuming the books are available here...!)

Sooooo...just a casual half-dozen more series to add to The Lists then?? :D

>97 lyzard: Oh, Liz.

>98 rosalita:

I'd better get cracking and wrap a few up! :D

Finished Old Saint Paul's for TIOLI #3.

It escapes my 'crushed by a book' logo, but only just.

And now---I may have a real crisis on my hands, as I actually can't find my copy of The Talisman, which wasn't in the box it should have been. Of course I move books around all the time but I don't remember moving that particular subset.

I'll have another search in the morning when the light is better, but in the meantime I'd better start working on a Plan B.

And also rethink my 'Now reading---'

ETA: Oh, well. When in doubt, retreat.

Now reading Where's Emily? by Carolyn Wells.

2023 #3

Publication date: 1841
Genre: Historical drama
Read for: C. K. Shorter 'Best 100 Novels' challenge

Old Saint Paul's: A Tale Of The Plague And The Fire - William Harrison Ainsworth's 1841 novel describes, as its subtitle indicates, the two great catastrophes that struck London across 1665 - 1666. Drawing heavily in the first instance upon Defoe's A Journal Of The Plague Year, although without credit, Ainsworth offers an account of the spreading pestilence and its associated horrors that is strangely unmoving---possibly because his central characters either avoid disease or recover from it, or perhaps reflecting that for those living - or dying - through it, the plague simply became an inescapable fact. Nevertheless, there is no shortage of revolting reality here, as attempts to deal with the situation escalate from enforced isolation, to pest-houses and dead-carts, to mass burials in plague-pits, and finally to corpses rotting in the streets because there is no-one to remove them and nowhere to remove them to. Ainsworth's description of the Great Fire is much more urgent and gripping: here the author draws, credited, upon the eyewitness accounts of the poet John Dryden, the preacher Thomas Vincent, and diarists John Evelyn and Samuel Pepys (who has a cameo). Ainsworth chooses to buy into the most lurid theories of the fire's origins, with its beginning and spread, and a lack of water for fire-fighting, chalked up to the actions of a conspiracy of incendiaries. As the fire engulfs the predominantly wooden city, the narrative succeeds in creating a sense of breathless intensity; while the destruction of St. Paul's Cathedral, which appears throughout the story in various guises - we see it as a place of business, a pleasure-resort, a pest-house, and the setting for various Gothicky scenes; as everything, in fact, but a place of worship - forms the dramatic climax of the novel. As a novel, however, Old Saint Paul's fails to offer a fictional framework adequate to the huge historical events it is describing. Its backbone concerns the family of the saintly grocer, Stephen Bloundel, whose daughter, Amabel, becomes the target of the licentious Earl of Rochester---who despite his position at court, as the friend and advisor of Charles II, apparently had nothing better to do throughout the plague than pursue a beautiful but rather stupid young woman: his protracted efforts to seduce and/or abduct Amabel comprise a tiresome amount of the overall plot. (The cynical but intelligent Rochester we see over the novel's closing stages is far closer to reality.) In conjunction with this we have the activities of the novel's hero, the grocer's apprentice, Leonard Holt, who not only turns out to be a version of the literary construct I like to call the Suspiciously Superior Peasant, but is one of those characters frequently to be found in historical fiction, who manages to show up at all the (real) critical events. The third strike against this novel is that it places at its heart a love-triangle, with Leonard obsessed with Amabel while becoming the object of obsession of Nizza Macascree, whose mysterious origins are the basis for yet another plot-thread. In the end, Old Saint Paul's has its virtues, but its failure as fiction overrides its success as history.

    Leonard then cast his eye round the cathedral before he himself descended. The sight was magnificent in the extreme. From the flaming roof three silvery cascades descended. The choir was in flame, and a glowing stream like lava was spreading over the floor, and slowly trickling down the steps leading to the body of the church. The transepts and the greater part of the nave were similarly flooded. Above the roar of the flames and the hissing plash of the descending torrents, was heard the wild laughter of Solomon Eagle. Perceiving him in one of the arcades of the southern gallery, Leonard shouted to him to descend, and make good his escape while there was yet time, adding that in a few moments it would be too late.
    "I shall never quit it more," rejoined the enthusiast, in a voice of thunder, "but shall perish with the fire I have kindled. No monarch on earth ever lighted a nobler funeral pyre..."
    As Leonard advanced, the king discerned him amid the crowd, and motioned him to come forward... "I am glad to find no harm has happened to you, friend," said Charles, as he approached. "Rochester informed me you were gone to Newgate, and as the gaol had been burnt down, I feared you might have met with the same mishap. I now regret that I did not adopt your plan, but it may not be yet too late."
    "It is not too late to save a portion of your city, sire," replied Leonard; "but, alas! how much is gone!"
    "It is so," replied the king, mournfully.
    Further conversation was here interrupted by the sudden breaking out of the fire from the magnificent rose window of the cathedral... The flames now raged with a fierceness wholly inconceivable, considering the material they had to work upon. The molten lead poured down in torrents, and not merely flooded the whole interior of the fabric, but ran down in a wide and boiling stream almost as far as the Thames, consuming everything in its way, and rendering the very pavements red-hot. Every stone, spout, and gutter in the sacred pile, of which there were some hundreds, added to this fatal shower, and scattered destruction far and wide; nor will this be wondered at when it is considered that the quantity of lead thus melted covered a space of no less than six acres. Having burned with incredible fury and fierceness for some time, the whole roof of the sacred structure fell in at once, and with a crash heard at an amazing distance. After an instant's pause, the flames burst forth from every window in the fabric, producing such an intensity of heat, that the stone pinnacles, transom beams, and mullions split and cracked with a sound like volleys of artillery, shivering and flying in every direction. The whole interior of the pile was now one vast sheet of flame, which soared upwards, and consumed even the very stones. Not a vestige of the reverend structure was left untouched---its bells---its plate---its woodwork---its monuments---its mighty pillars---its galleries---its chapels---all, all were destroyed...

The good news here is that, despite its historical setting, I don't feel the need to blog about this novel. Whoo! for untriggered OCD!

On that point--- Though I have little time for the Stuarts it should be mentioned that, as is on record, both Charles and James did sterling, hands-on work in combatting the fire, frequently at great danger to themselves. (It's the best I know of either of them.)

Old Saint Paul's was read for the C. K. Shorter challenge; next up---


#47: Ten Thousand A Year by Samuel Warren (1840)



And once again Shorter brings to my attention a novel I hadn't heard of before. I think he has the date wrong on this one, though understandably: this novel seems to have been serialised in 1839, then published in America first, in 1840, before the first British edition of 1841.

Samuel Warren started out studying medicine but chose not to practice: he later became a barrister and an MP and - what on earth!? - "a Master of Lunacy" (!!). He began writing medically based short stories for Blackwood's in 1830*, and later wrote two novels, of which the satirical Ten Thousand A Year was the most popular and successful.

(*Oh dear. These sound really interesting. I don't need another reading thread, but... Dammit, they seem to have been collected into volume-form. Sigh...)

Belated happy reading in 2023, Liz!

Always enjoy your thread toppers, this one looks like Kermit indeed.

ETA: my spelling was not like it should be...

>101 lyzard: Every time you post one of these reviews, I see the word Shorter and think, "Oh good, Liz has finally given herself a break with a non-doorstopper!" Then I realize it's just the name of the guy who made the list, and I see the picture with the three (!) volumes, and I feel sorry for you all over again. :-)

>104 FAMeulstee:

Thanks, Anita! :)

>105 rosalita:

Never mind, luv, I'm only 47 books into that challenge after all. :D

>106 lyzard: You'd think after 47 books I'd have gotten used to it, but no. Some things take a while to sink in, apparently. :-D

>107 rosalita:

It's just possible that the problem is the lag-phase between the individual challenge books. But I'm working on it! :)

2022 #135

Publication date: 1937
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Henri Bencolin #5
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (4+ letter word embedded in title)

The Four False Weapons - Richard Curtis, a young English solicitor, is sent to France to meet with Ralph Douglas, one of his firm's clients. Douglas has written a letter to the senior partner hinting at trouble involving his former mistress, Rose Klonec. Though newly engaged to Magda Toller over the objections of her domineering mother, Douglas tells Curtis that his trouble is not the ordinary kind: rather, it seems to involve the country villa that he bought for Rose during their affair. Having received a belated offer to buy the villa from his "successor" with Rose, Douglas went to look the place over and found signs of recent habitation despite the house being closed for months. The two men drive out to the villa, where they are met by Rose Klonec's maid, who welcomes Douglas calmly and speaks of the instructions she received from him. Denying he has been in contact, Douglas demands to see Rose, and learns that she is sleeping; but when he and Curtis enter the bedroom, they find her not asleep, but dead. Nearby are several ominous articles including a razor and a gun, but there is no immediate sign of violence... After a lapse of some years, John Dickson Carr brought back his Parisian detective, Henri Bencolin, for one last hurrah. (He did not bring back Bencolin's side-kick, the young American, Jeff Marle, whose continued presence was getting harder and harder to justify; which is all to the good.) In The Four False Weapons, Carr gives us an older Bencolin, now retired as head of the Sûreté and juge d'instruction after some sort of political row, but still in contact with the police and keeping a finger in the professional pie. The circumstances of the murder, in typical Carr fashion, are bizarre beyond credibility, with one of those scenarios where several people manage to be on the spot at almost the same time, missing each other by split-second timing and each interfering in the crime scene in a way that muddies the water in a manner beyond the powers of anyone to reconstruct---anyone but Henri Bencolin. Also typical of Carr, the narrative of The Four False Weapons rests on a set-piece involving the 18th century card game, basset, played for huge stakes and based entirely upon luck, which is Bencolin's way of cornering a reluctant witness. It has become clear by this time that someone has gone to extraordinary lengths to frame Ralph Douglas for the murder of Rose Klonec: the maid not only sticks to her first story of having been summoned to the villa by Douglas, but insists that he was there the night before, that they met and spoke; though she admits that her eyesight is poor and that, in any case, "all Englishmen look alike". Douglas, however, entirely through luck, has a solid alibi for the presumed time of the crime, leaving the investigators to focus on the bizarre crime scene where, in addition to the gun and the razor, they find a half-empty box of sleeping-pills, a pair of pliers, and a bloodstained dagger in the bathroom---where, it transpires, Rose Klonec was drained of her blood before being put to bed. The question of who hates Ralph Douglas this much brings into the case some unlikely suspects, including M. De Lautrec, Rose's "keeper" at the time of her death; Douglas's half-brother, Bryce Cartwright; Magda Toller's mother; George Stanfield, her business associate; and even Magda herself...

    "Inspector Durrand...my friends," Bencolin said, with a long rumbling throat-clearing as though he were going to begin an address. We have here a fine example of of facts which cannot possibly mean what they seem to mean. Every mirror gives back the wrong reflection. Every natural action has the wrong ending. I like it. But I think that before long we had better try to reconstruct what happened here last night, or we shall never have a notion of where to look for the murderer. It would appear, however, that the truth may depend upon what one person considered so foolish---a missing half-bottle of champagne...
    "You yourselves have noticed," he went on, "the impossibility of holding a person in or over a bathtub until she bleeds to death---all without an outcry, a struggle, a disturbance of some kind---unless that person is either stunned or drugged. Now, consider the murderer's position. He dares not, he cannot, come face to face with Rose Klonec: she is expecting Ralph Douglas, but the murderer is not Mr Douglas. He can deceive a half-blind woman like Hortense, who has never seen him before; but assuredly he cannot deceive Rose Klonec. Therefore he must make certain she is drugged before he arrives..."
    Again there was a pause. Ralph and Curtis looked at each other, and the former struck his fist into his palm. "I believe you've got it!" he said excitedly. "i never thought of that; of course he wouldn't have dared to meet her face to face. And he didn't; that's why he kept out of the way all evening. The champagne had knockout-drops or something in it---"
    Bencolin looked at him. "You believe that?" he said doubtfully. "For myself, I find it almost incredible."
    "But you said---"
    "Well, I confess I enjoy hearing myself talk..."

Noting again: John Dickson Carr published several short stories featuring Henri Bencolin before launching the series proper:

The Shadow Of The Goat
The Fourth Suspect
The Ends Of Justice
The Murder In Number Four
Grand Guignol (the forerunner of It Walks By Night)

The Shadow Of The Goat may be found online here.

Almost finished with The Bone Is Pointed and I'll be back tomorrow with questions, but for now I just want to say: "RABBIT STAMPEDE!!!!!!"

>111 rosalita:

If it exists, we can have a plague of it.

You do NOT want to be here when there's a mouse plague. :(

Afterthought: do you know the movie Night Of The Lepus, about giant killer rabbits (seriously)? There's documentary footage in that of one of our rabbit plagues, if you'd like to see it for yourself.

Also there's giant killer rabbits. :D

Finished Where's Emily? for TIOLI #11.

Now reading The Garden Murder Case by S. S. Van Dine.

>112 lyzard: Night of the Lepus is an outright classic. Love the big bunny paws.

>112 lyzard: I knew something was going to happen with rabbits because the map at the front of the book had an entry for "rabbit migration" with an arrow pointing to the southeast. So I was waiting through the whole book to see what it would be, and it did not disappoint!

I do not know that movie, but it sounds intriguing. I'll have to see if it's available here anywhere.

>114 NinieB:

We're almost talking me into re-watching it!

>115 rosalita:

I'm betting that's not how you pictured it!

Hmm. I'm not sure "intriguing" is exactly the word, but it's---well, it's a thing. :D

2023 #4

Publication date: 1927
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Fleming Stone #23
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (connection to the 1920s)

Where's Emily - On the eve of the wedding of Emily Duane and Rod Sayre, friends gather at the former's house in the small community of Hillside, in the Ramapo Mountains: an afternoon tea is to be followed by a rehearsal for the wedding-party. The former is breaking up when Emily slips out to make a phone-call. Learning that her friend has had her baby at the local hospital, she decides impulsively on a quick visit. Telling no-one but Rod, Emily quietly departs by the back door, heading for the lonely path through woods and across foot-bridges known locally as "going cross-lots", which is the quickest way to the small town... When Emily does not return, her friends, knowing her, are not worried; though the rehearsal, without the bride and also without Pauline Pennington, the matron of honour, who does not attend, is a farce. But as more time passes, and neither young woman appears, concern grows. Discovering that Emily never reached the hospital, Rod calls the police and a search is instituted: it ends in the discovery of Pauline's body in the ravine below one of the foot bridges. Nearby is Emily's fur collar and a piece broken from the diamond chain that was Rod's wedding-gift---but of Emily herself there is no sign... This entry in Carolyn Wells' Fleming Stone series is a curious work all round, including the manner in which, so to speak, the case eventually solves itself. There is some potential here, but it never really comes to the forefront---necessarily in some respects (there is, for example, a tacit consideration of the gulf between murder by impulse and murder in cold blood); and instead too much of the narrative is taken up by scenes of the characters sitting around feeling helpless---and Wells is far from being a good enough writer to make that work. Nor is this section of the novel made more enjoyable by a subplot involving a fake Indian mystic. The characters' lengthy ruminations upon the character of Emily Duane also test the reader's patience, but this is, at least, directly relevant to the plot, as everyone tries to decide the significance of her disappearance. Knowing his wife's history of instability, and her fits of depression brought on by the loss of their baby, Jim Pennington admits that he believes she committed suicide. However, for the local police, the discovery of Emily's collar and the diamond links has only one interpretation: that a quarrel between the two women ended in Emily pushing Pauline to her death and running away to avoid the consequences. Emily's friends reject this theory, but are left to the cold comfort of believing that she has been abducted for ransom; but when a letter demanding money is received, it turns out to be a fake. Rod Sayre finally makes the decision to bring in "the best detective available", which of course means Fleming Stone. With the help of two of Emily's friends, Stone gets a foot in the door with the tight-lipped Hillside community, trying to piece together everyone's movements at the end of the tea-party, when Emily and Pauline separately left the house, and how they ended up together; but it is finally a stray word in the fake ransom note that puts him on the right track...

    “Not a mite of proof or evidence of any such thing,” Stone said, wearily passing his hand across his forehead. “I’ve never had such a baffling proposition as this whole matter seems to be. There’s nothing to take hold of, no pointing facts, no clues of any sort. Emily was here one minute and gone the next, and that’s all we know about it.”
    “And Mrs Pennington?”
    “There again, we’ve nothing to work on. Accident, suicide, murder. It may have been any one of the three.”
    “And we don’t know that the cases are connected at all.” Pete was trying hard to put forth some new theory or idea, but none seemed to come to him.
    “No, we don’t know it, but the broken diamond chain makes it seem so. I can’t see how Mrs Pennington fell over the rail with the diamonds in her hand unless she had clutched at the chain round Emily’s neck. For that chain wouldn’t be anywhere else but on its owner’s neck.”
    “Unless the bandit had already stolen it from Emily, and Pauline clutched it from him.”
    “Then he would have retrieved those six diamonds before pushing the lady over. The police theory of Miss Duane’s killing Mrs Pennington, either intentionally or not, is, to my mind, absurd. But the bandit theory, allowing said bandit to be Lal Singh, or a stranger, necessitates the abducting of Miss Duane and the killing of Mrs Pennington in such a short time as to make it seem impossible...”

>116 lyzard: I'm betting that's not how you pictured it!


Not even close! :-D

>101 lyzard: I have always found William Harrison Ainsworth a very readable novelist. Really enjoyed his Jack Sheppard when I read it a few years ago.

>119 PaulCranswick:

I haven't read as many of his books as I feel I should have, including Jack Sheppard, particularly given it was such a controversial book in its day for its criminal-hero. (It's on The List, of course.)

It's interesting that neither Jack Sheppard nor Rookwood, which was Ainsworth's other major success, was the pick for the Shorter list. That said, one of the things I enjoy about this challenge is that Shorter very often doesn't pick the obvious book for a particular author, so you get exposed to a wider range of works that maybe you wouldn't read otherwise. And he obviously liked historical fiction so Old Saint Paul's makes sense from that perspective.

2022 #137

Publication date: 1967
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Martin Beck #3
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (4+ letter embedded word in title)

The Man On The Balcony (original title: Mannen på balkongen; translation: Alan Blair) - Now a detective-superintendent based out of a different precinct, Martin Beck still calls from time to time at his old department to see his friend and colleague, Fredrik Melander, and draw upon his remarkable memory. On one of these visits he is rubbed the wrong way by Gunvald Larsson, a detective whose bad temper and surly manner with the public he disapproves; however, Beck understands the pressure that Larsson is under with respect to a series of brutal robbery-assaults taking place in the parks of Stockholm. Pressure on the police escalates to an entirely new level when the body of a young girl is discovered in the same park where the last mugging occurs; and the investigation into the horrifying crime has barely begun when the body of a second victim is found. Briefly the police wonder whether the vicious mugger could also be responsible for the murders, but soon realise that, rather than being the killer, he is probably their best chance of a witness... This third entry in the series by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö featuring police detective Martin Beck is a disturbing work built around two distinct, horrifyingly violent series of crimes. The Man On The Balcony paints an unexpectedly bleak portrait of Stockholm during he late 1960s as a place where lawlessness is on the rise, young people increasingly out of control, and the police struggling to maintain order: general unrest giving way to two distinct cases of serial violence. It is also a novel that emphasises not only the grimmest aspects of police work, but the reality, painstaking yet tedious, of real investigations---and the further reality that however enormous the effort, it may also be futile. Ultimately, both series of violent crimes are solved only because a member of the public chooses to make a report. In the first instance, a disgruntled ex-girlfriend puts Beck and his colleagues on the tail of the mugger, who has otherwise evaded all police efforts to catch him with arrogant ease. As Beck has realised, the mugger was indeed in the park when the paedophile-killer was stalking his first victim, and he is able to give a description of the man---but one so generic it would offer nothing, did it not trigger in Beck a memory of a similar description offered by a woman some weeks before with respect to her neighbour, a man who stands on his balcony for hours, night and day, staring down into the street... Martin Beck was present when the impatient Gunvald Larsson spoke so rudely to the woman, she hung up on him---and now Beck and his colleagues must try to track down their potential witness, with only the slenderest of information to guide them and - a third child having been abducted - time running out...

    "As for this woman and her phone call," said Kollberg, "let's try and find her. And since we must start somewhere, as you so aptly pointed out, and since we're only guessing our way along anyway, we might just as well presume that you are right. How do you want it done?"
    "We'll start in the fifth and ninth districts," Martin Beck said. "Put a couple of men onto calling everyone by the name of Andersson and a couple more onto door knocking. We'll ask the entire personnel to focus their attention on this particular question. Especially along wide streets where there are balconies---Odengaten, Karlbergsvägen, Tegnérgatan, Sveavägen and so on."
    "Okay," Kollberg said.
    They set to work.
    It was an awful Monday. The Great Detective (the general public), who had seemed less busy during Sunday, partly because so many people had gone into the country for the weekend, partly because of the reassuring appeals in press and television, were fully active once more. The central office for tips was swamped with calls from people who thought they knew something, from lunatics who wanted to confess and from scoundrels who called up just to be cussed. Parks and wooded areas swarmed with plain-clothes police, as far as a hundred men can be said to swarm, and on top of all this came the search for someone called Andersson.
    And the whole time fear was lurking in the background. Many parents called the police about children who had not been away from home for longer than fifteen or twenty minutes. Everything had to be noted down and checked. The material grew and grew. And in all cases was utterly useless...

2022 #119

Publication date: 2000
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Blanche White #4
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (uneven number of pages)

Blanche Passes Go - After nearly four years in Boston, and many more years away, Blanche White is finally able to return home to Farleigh, North Carolina: a move facilitated both by the fact that Taifa and Malik, the niece and nephew she is raising, are growing up and forging their own path, and a fire at the sheriff's office that destroyed the evidence that Blanche is, in fact, still a fugitive from the law. On the journey home, Blanche meets train conductor, Thelvin Lewis: the two are immediately attracted, and begin a relationship; while being in Farleigh gives Blanche the chance to help out her best friend, Ardell, with her new catering business while maintaining her independence through her cleaning work. But one very dark cloud hangs over Blanche's homecoming: she knows that, either through her own job or Ardell's, it is only a matter of time before she comes face to face with David Palmer, the man who raped her at knife-point many years before. The encounter happens at a party Ardell is catering and, even though Blanche expected it, she is shaken to the core. She is still dealing with this when news breaks of the murder of a young girl---and soon Blanche has reason to believe Palmer may be involved... The fourth and final entry in Barbara Neely's series featuring Blanche White follows the pattern of its predecessors in that it weaves a mystery plot of sorts into a broader consideration of a social issue impacting the black community in general and women in particular---in this case, male violence. Blanche's rape and her unresolved trauma form the backdrop to a narrative that addresses the many forms of violence and how it manifests. Living alone in a small cottage, Blanche soon discovers that one of her neighbours is regularly subjected to domestic violence; and even the otherwise desirable Thelvin reveals himself as jealous and controlling when Blanche is brought back in contact with her long-time lover, Leo, now rebound-married and regretting it. But the narrative of Blanche Passes Go is also about how women can themselves become complicit in such acts of violence, either actively by protecting the man or passively by letting the violence pass---and Blanche must finally deal with her guilt over not reporting her rape, particularly when it seems that David Palmer may now have committed an even more heinous crime. Determined to expose Palmer for the man she knows he is, Blanche begins looking into his life and associates, and comes across a small piece of evidence that seems to link him to the murder of Maybelle Jenkins, a white teenager whose body is found dumped in the woods outside Fairleigh. However, Blanche's fixation of Palmer begins to skew her usually sharp perceptions; while in addition, she finds herself the target of anonymous but escalating threats of violence...

    "Palmer, yes." Miz Minnie nodded her head. "Now, Mary Lou Pachette useta work for his people. In the kitchen. She passed, and Dorothy Dotson took over the cookin. Aint no sense talking to her, 'less you wants him to know you askin. She what you call a house nigger." Miz Minnie aimed another jet of tobacco juice at her can. "Whole family's thataway. Daughter works there, too, so you aint gon git nothin outa they house people."
    Damn! Blanche lowered her head to hide the tears prickling her eyes. As she became more menopausal, tears seemed to be her first response to everything... She sighed and wrote down the names attached to some of the other positions. Miz Minnie also gave her the names of some other folk who might be helpful. Blanche then sat politely listening to the old woman talk about the weather and how Farleigh was changing.
    "I sure do thank you for your help, Miz Minnie," Blanche said, when she thought it was about time to leave.
    "Glad to do it, daughter. Man aint got no right to put his hands on a woman dont ask him to."
    "I never said he touched me."
    Miz Minnie shifted her jawful of snuff from one side of her mouth to the other. She raised one butt cheek and tugged at her cotton dress.
    "'Course you did, chile. Lookit how you sittin there."
    Blanche looked down at her arms, held close to her sides, her legs, crossed at knee and ankle and pulled in under her. She was leaning forward in her chair, almost rolling herself into a ball, into a woman with all her tender, most often wounded parts protected.
    Miz Minnie leaned over and patted Blanche's arm. "It's all right, daughter. Everything you doin you s'posed to be doin. This is your time to step up for yourself."

>120 lyzard: Don’t feel you “should have” read any of Ainsworth’s books. There’s a reason why he’s not on university syllabi or the subject of serious critical attention—-he was a hack. I recently reread Barnaby Rudge—a historical novel and one of Dickens’ least well-regarded works—and it leaves Old St Paul’s in the dust.

>120 lyzard:

I promise, I read all the authors I (critically speaking) actually should have years ago. :)

These days I don't need all my books to be on university syllabi or be the subject of critical attention: I like to know what people were actually reading, and I like lacunae. Old Saint Paul's was a challenge read as you know and flawed as it is, it shows how writers were approaching historical fiction in the mid-19th century. Meanwhile novels like Jack Sheppard and Rookwood and the Newgate novels generally were an important bridge in the creation of modern crime and mystery fiction, and a lot of my reading goes into tracing that sort of evolution.

Which reminds me, I *still* have to find a way of addressing my blogging of the third and fourth volumes of George Reynolds' Mysteries Of London---yike! :D

Finished The Garden Murder Case for TIOLI #7.

Now reading Man Missing by Mignon Eberhart.

>124 lyzard: Your point about Ainsworth’s contribution to the crime and mystery genres is interesting. And of course a second- or third-rate novel can often provide insight into first-rate novels contemporary with it. In a first rate novel we are distracted by, well, art. But it can share structural features and cultural assumptions which the inferior writer makes more obvious in his or her work.

>126 booksaplenty1949:

In all seriousness that's exactly the way I approach a lot of my reading. The classics are imperative but to focus on them to the exclusion of lesser works gives a very skewed view of what people were reading---and also, I think, of what was really influential in the development of certain strands of writing. And quite often I find that minor novels present a view of their society that is lacking in works of greater artistry.

And while most if not all of the major Victorian novelists dabbled in crime to a greater or lesser degree, one of my particular areas of interest is the way you can draw a line from the Gothic (and domestic-Gothic) novels through the Newgate novels and other early books with a crime focus, to the penny-dreadfuls, and from there to the sensation novels of Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Wilkie Collins and co., which effectively spawned the modern detective novel.

I won't say that these second-tier novels aren't sometimes a slog, but sometimes too you discover something really interesting and worthwhile.

Finished Man Missing for TIOLI #18, and FINISHED A SERIES---

---sort of.

As with the Henri Bencolin series of John Dickson Carr, Mignon Eberhart's Sarah Keate series is over, but it ain't over. I've read the seven novels that comprise the bulk of the series, but along the way there is also Dead Yesterday And Other Stories, a collection of short stories, some of which feature Sarah Keate, and others, other of Eberhart's various detectives.

This volume was produced in a limited edition and is only available in expensive, hard-copy form. I can't really afford it---plus (better justifying the omission to myself) I haven't read the other detectives yet.

So I'm finished, but I'm not celebrating...

...which means you only get a pygmy marmoset:

Now reading Some Buried Caesar by Rex Stout.

(And had better get Too Many Cooks written up, yike!)

>127 lyzard: As someone with a great interest in the Oxford Movement I have read many novels written by Victorians who did not regard themselves as capital “N” novelists but who saw the novel as an effective tool in getting a message out. So I am not insisting that we limit ourselves to Great Books. Also very interested in mystery stories written by people who had other day jobs. Mystery seems to be a genre which it is intellectually okay to relax with, both as a reader and a writer. Why is that?

>129 lyzard: Aw, pygmy in size perhaps but a giant in cuteness!

>130 lyzard: And had better get Too Many Cooks written up, yike!

Indeed!

>131 booksaplenty1949:

Oh, I've been there too, over at my blog: tractarian novels, anti-tractarian novels---all the good stuff!

I will say this: once you've read one of these 400-page-sermon-pretending-to-be-a-novel books, anything else is relatively easy. :D

I think a couple of things were going on with the mystery genre: I think, at the height of (what we now see as) the Golden Age, a mystery was the easiest way to get a first book published---you see that with quite a few writers, for example James Hilton.

But I also think there was a situation of either, "Oh, anyone can write one of those!" - or - people trying to find out if they actually could. You're right, pretty much everyone took at least one shot at it!

Mind you, the people who fascinate me were the ones who were insanely busy in their professional lives and apparently wrote mysteries as their relaxing hobby---like the Coles, and Ronald Knox, and the Australian author, Paul McGuire.

>132 rosalita:

I can feel things slipping out of control again, sigh.

Though in my defense I have a bunch of library books that I have to get reviewed and returned before I do anything else.

2022 #136

Publication date: 1974
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: George Smiley #5
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (title word ending in '-er')

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - George Smiley's personal and professional lives have both fallen apart: one one hand, his wife has left him---perhaps permanently this time; on the other, he and his long-time intelligence superior, 'Control', have been forced into retirement following the disastrous failure of a mission in which their agents in Eastern Europe were captured, tortured and killed. Control has since died---and George Smiley faces a lonely and futile future. But in spite of the cloud under which his career ended, for many people in the murky world of intelligence Smiley is still the one man they can trust. Without warning, Smiley finds himself being carried by his friend and colleague, Peter Guillam, another casualty of the overhaul of the Circus, to the home of Oliver Lacon, the government's watch-dog over the intelligence community. There, from a part-time agent called Ricki Tarr, Smiley hears an incredible story. Tarr, as Smiley well knows, is an unreliable, reckless individual, but the information he brings cannot be ignored---nothing less than the suggestion that there is, and has long been, a double-agent at the highest levels of the Circus... The excoriating cynicism that marked the conclusion of The Looking Glass War, the previous book to feature George Smiley, is the tone-note throughout Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which is rightly one of John le Carré's most acclaimed works. The novel is self-evidently a reaction to the 'Cambridge Five' scandal which rocked British intelligence during the 1960s (and of which, incidentally, one of the casualties was a young agent called David Cornwall, who subsequently changed his name and started writing fiction); more broadly, it reflects a world in which the international influence of Britain was waning in the face of the increasing powers of the US and the USSR. This is one of the longest and most complex of le Carré's espionage thrillers, as Smiley's hunt for the Soviet mole within his own organisation is interwoven with the narrative of the mission that ended - or was made an excuse to end - his career; and through this, in turn, runs the quiet but painfully emotional subplot of Jim Prideaux, who was captured and tortured as a result of the mole's betrayal. Though it deals with the dangerous political reality of the Cold War, the most effective sequences in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy are those in which Smiley and Peter Guillam must use their professional skills against their own people, and within their own organisation---knowing that they too are guilty of espionage and treason, and what the consequences will be if they are exposed. The two men learn that Control had become aware of the mole, code-named 'Gerald', and had narrowed it down to Sir Percy Alleline, the new Chief of the Circus, and his main supporters: Toby Esterhase, Roy Bland and Bill Haydon---who also happens to be a distant cousin of Lady Ann Smiley, among other things... Also involved are a Soviet embassy official known as Polyakov, actually Colonel Gregor Viktorov and Gerald's handler; while behind the whole operation is an intelligence officer called Karla who, many years before, Smiley tried but failed to turn into a defector, and for whom this may be an obscure form of revenge. Eventually certain of this network of connections, Smiley, Guillam and Lacon use Ricki Tarr to set a deadly trap...

    "Now that this has happened I've no doubt that we shall take even more rigorous precautions."
    "I wouldn't do that if I were you. Gerald might smell a rat."
    "That's the point, isn't it?" Lacon observed quickly... "We can't move. We can't investigate because all the instruments of enquiry are in the Circus's hands, perhaps in the mole Gerald's. We can't watch, or listen, or open mail. To do any one of those things would require the resources of Esterhase's lamplighters, and Esterhase, like anyone else, must be suspect. We can't interrogate, we can't take steps to particular person's access to delicate secrets. To do any of those things would be to run the risk of alarming the mole. It's the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies?..."
    "Then go to the competition," Smiley called. "Go to the security people. They're the experts, they'll do the job."
    "The Minister won't have that... He has a perfectly good point, George. We do have agents in the field and I wouldn't give much for their chances once the security gentlemen barge in."
    Now it was Smiley's turn to slow down. "How many?"
    "Six hundred, give or take a few."
    "And behind the Curtain?"
    "We budget for a hundred and twenty... So I can tell them you'll do it, can I?" Lacon sang out quite casually, as if the question were mere formality, tick the appropriate box. "You'll take the job, clean the stables? Go backwards, go forwards, do whatever is necessary? It's your generation, after all. Your legacy."

2022 #130

Publication date: 1932
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Mr Malcolm #1
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (cliché in title)

Shot In The Dark - In the death of Peter Browne, the verdict of the coroner's jury is 'suicide while of unsound mind'. On one hand this is reasonable: Browne was ill, neurotic and paranoid; and he was found dead in his bed with a gun in his hand. But certain things worry the inspector in charge of the case: that no-one in the house heard either of the two shots fired---and that there were two shots, Browne having apparently missed the first time. Indeed, the inspector is worried enough to carry his suspicions to his friend, Mr Malcolm---not asking directly for his help, but saying enough to interest him... In the wake of the verdict, people gather for the reading of the will: Alaris Browne, the dead man's adopted daughter, is joined by his brother, Colonel Michael Browne; the colonel's wife, Angela; a spinster sister, Miss Kate Browne; and a nephew, Vivian Waugh; while Paul Norman, with whom Alaris is involved despite her guardian's objections. Browne's solicitor breaks it to the others that the will is not the usual kind, but was instead made into a record, which he has instructions to play for the family. The others are disturbed and indignant---and become even more so, when the dead man's voice insists upon murder... Though it has its points of interest, the various absurdities of the plot finally overwhelm a decent mystery in Shot In The Dark, the first entry in Gerard Fairlie's series featuring private investigator, Mr Malcolm (no first name). Not only is this one of those mysteries which involve a number of people managing to place themselves at a crime scene while just missing each other - in the dark, literally - but when we sit back at the end we realise that, within the space of a single evening, Peter Brown was the target of murder, attempted murder, accidental murder and inadvertent murder---all this leading to several competing confessions---so that the identification of his actual killer is a matter of extreme importance to quite a number of people. The way in which Mr Malcolm intrudes himself into the Browne house is also fairly ridiculous; as indeed is the suggestion that this distraction allowed someone to lift the incriminating record off the gramophone and hide it without being seen. Furthermore, at one point one of the characters does something that almost results in the death of Mr Malcolm, and this is effectively shrugged off with, "Oh, well, you didn't mean it." However--- If you can swallow all this, or at least set it to one side, there is, as I say, quite an intriguing mystery at the heart of Shot In The Dark, with Malcolm having to work his way through all these complications to get at who actually killed Peter Browne, and how, and why. Peter Browne was an eminently hate-able man - his family did hate him - so getting to the bottom of things is no easy task. In turns Malcolm recruits the other parties to his assistance, and finds a surprisingly effective collaborator in the acidulous Kate Browne, who is bearing the burden of a terrible secret. In fact, she has motive---but then, so does everyone...

    Mr Malcolm broke in upon him curtly. In his voice was a brisk, business-like note, and the doctor was quick to respond to it.
    "I must be going now, doctor, as I've a lot to do. But before I leave you I want to know definitely whether Peter Brown died from poisoning or if he was killed by the shot in his head. Was he alive when he was shot?"
    "He was." The answer was instantaneous. "He most certainly was, Mr Malcolm. That poison would have needed at least an hour in which to take effect...it was very slow, but...but it would have been sure."
    "So the man who shot Peter Browne could not possibly escape justice by the suggestion that his victim was dead when he was shot? Please think carefully before you answer, doctor. This is a very important point."
    "Yes." The doctor nodded his head gravely. "Yes, I quite appreciate that, Mr Malcolm. But I can only say what I said before...there can be no possible loophole for anyone who murdered Peter Browne. He was most certainly not dead when he was shot...

Finished Some Buried Caesar for TIOLI #8.

Now reading The Secret Of The Crooked Cat by William Arden.

>137 lyzard: Finished Some Buried Caesar

Beautiful, Escamillo! Do it again!

:-p

>138 rosalita:

I can't say I care much for his taste in women. :D

>139 lyzard: Get used to Lily; now that she and her antelope legs have elbowed their way into the series she's here to stay. :-D

She does get more likable as the series goes on, thankfully. I was shocked when I read this one after having met her in numerous later books at how awful she was.

>140 rosalita:

I don't think women were Rex's strong suit. :)

I do kind of admire him for doing that after describing her (or having one of his characters do so) as a "sex maniac". Though presumably it's her ability to tell convincing lies that's the real attraction...

>141 lyzard: I also think he might have felt that he needed to give Archie a somewhat steady female companion to soften his general horndog attitude toward every women he meets. :) Although Lily's presence doesn't really stop him from passing instant physical judgments on women, come to think of it ...

Now I'm imagining if Lily had bankrolled Dol Bonner's detective agency instead of the other woman whose name I've already forgotten — was it Sylvie? I think Lily and Dol could have been a great pairing of "opposites attract," one woman who thinks men are at best useless and the other who thinks men are the whole point.

>142 rosalita:

It's a compliment. {*eye-roll*}

Sylvia Raffray, yes---and that is an EXCELLENT idea! Come to think of it, how did Dol get along after Sylvia's withdrawal? Do we find that out later? Or did Sylvia leave her money in once her guardian couldn't interfere any more?

Given that her marriage was off, to put it mildly, should Sylvia not have just gone back to Plan A? And then we would have had a partnership of young women with a grudge against the male sex, sisters doin' it for themselves...

...and Rex has a coronary! :D

I think he struggled to imagine women other than as man-fixated or as a man's adjunct---which is weird given Dol's back-story. I guess he could imagine it but didn't approve.

>143 lyzard: I don't think it was specifically stated but my impression was that Sylvia did rejoin Dol in the agency once they planted her guardian.

I guess he could imagine it but didn't approve.

Or he lacked the imagination to figure out what to do with such a character once he'd conceived of her. Like, what exactly does a woman *do* without a man?

>144 rosalita:

That's something to look out for when she reappears.

I guess. Funny how they never have any trouble imagining a man without a woman, isn't it?? :)

While you're here---

I am happy to take a ruling from you on this: do we want to try to slot in the Tecumseh Fox books, or shall we let those slide?

I ran in to my city library today to drop off some books and of course pick some up---securing a copy of The Talisman for the best-seller challenge (still can't think where mine is).

Now---the last thing in the world I need is another reading challenge---

---but---

---you knew there'd be a 'but' coming, right?---

---BUT---

---as I have mentioned before, I think, about a third of this library is given over to mystery and crime fiction, with paperbacks in their own room and the rest shelved out in the main room.

While I was there, it crossed my mind that a way of mixing up my reading and getting some more recent items into my diet was simply to start at the beginning of each section.

(This is a flashback to something I used to do in my very earliest library-usage days: reading along a shelf in lieu of actually selecting a book.)

I didn't do anything more about it this time, beyond checking who those authors would be; and I might, if you will excuse the expression, be biting off more than I can chew:

Paperback: Avery Aames, with what looks like a series of cupcake shop mysteries;
General: Tasha Alexander, who I think writes historical mysteries, though I'm not sure the one I looked at was.

What do you think, people? - yes / no / don't be stupid?

Anyone here familiar with either Aames or Alexander?

...and there it is, that panicky I-am-completely-out-of-control-here feeling! :D

Of course, I had that thought (above) on the back of (i) signing myself up for more shared reads, and (ii) having acquired - though not started - several new series in my hunt for the first female police detective in a crime series.

I tried last year to divvy my challenges and shared reads up into Month A and Month B, which is feeling like a good idea again.

Using the same template but adding in my new commitments, it looks something like this.

Month A:

Best-seller challenge
Nero Wolfe series
Three Investigators
C. K. Shorter
Mystery League
Nobel Prize challenge

Month B:

Best-seller challenge
Napoleon Bonaparte series
Albert Campion series
A Century Of Reading
Banned in Boston!
Random reading

The Mystery League challenge and the Banned in Boston! challenge are both a bit wild-card-y in terms of book availability and may well not happen on a regular basis (though I do have the next BiB book, thank you, Steve!).

I could, theoretically, add in both a 'potential decommission' slot and a 'modern mystery' slot; or I could leave those to fill up all of my ample spare reading time---bwuh-ha-ha-ha-ha!

>145 lyzard: That's something to look out for when she reappears.

Of course, Lily does have a man though she is somewhere on the spectrum of indifferent to resistant to the idea of marrying him. Maybe that was the compromise that Stout came up with to be able to work with such a character.

do we want to try to slot in the Tecumseh Fox books, or shall we let those slide?

I know I've read at least one of them before, Red Threads, but I'm pretty sure I deaccessioned it the last time I moved. :( I'd definitely be open to reading them if I can find copies, though after reading your post at >147 lyzard: I question whether *you* want to try?! :-)

>146 lyzard: I'm not going to lie, it sounds like a fun project — for someone who didn't already have 72 different reading projects on the go. :-D

Belatedly, I have some questions for Aussie Whisperer about some things in The Bone Is Pointed:

In Chapter 10, talking about all the rabbits populating Meena Station, John Gordon says, "We've got millions. I've never seen so many around Meena Lake. They're thicker than they were in NVOV."

What is "NVOV"?

In several places throughout the book, describing a packed lunch eaten out of doors, there is a description similar to this one in Chapter 17:

Sergeant Blake set the food out on a square of American cloth ...

What is "American cloth"?

When the aboriginals curse Bony by "pointing the bone" at him, he begins to get sick. But he doesn't want anyone to know that he has been cursed.

"You're not lookin' too well, Bony," observed their host. "No, I am not well. I have a touch of the Barcoo sickness."

What is the "Barcoo sickness"?

Those are the things that I highlighted while I was reading. The first one is especially puzzling and I'm wondering if it's some sort of typo created by digitally scanning a printed book that didn't get caught? But I can't work out what it was meant to be if that's the case, so I'm completely in the dark.

>150 rosalita: “American cloth” is oilcloth.

>148 rosalita:

I'll reserve judgement until I see what he does with her in the future. :)

I'm a bit torn for several reasons and of course that's one of them! Mind you, I haven't yet checked to see if I have a source, so that might be our out.

>149 rosalita:

Yes, that's pretty much how I feel!

I'll have another think about it before I have to go back to that library---though given it's looking like my most likely source of both The Mystery Of Swordfish Reef and Over My Dead Body (ETA: Ooh! - and The Case Of The Late Pig, when Helen is good to go with the Albert Campion books), that will be sooner rather than later.

>150 rosalita:

You are correct in your guess that that is a transcription error: the sentence is, "They're thicker than they were in 1929."

Sorry it wasn't something more mysterious. :D

"Barcoo sickness" was a water-borne condition rather like typhoid, which was believed to be caused by drinking unsafe water---possibly by ingesting toxins released by blue-green algae. It was almost entirely confined to outback regions and it is thought that as better methods for storing and filtering and transporting water developed, it ceased to be a threat, because it was progressively eliminated. They never knew for sure what caused it.

It is interesting in context because barcoo sickness nearly always afflicted the white settlers, not the indigenous population, who presumably knew what to avoid. Also, apparently boiling the water didn't kill the toxins, and the taste of them would be disguised by tea or coffee.

Is it deliberate that Bony attributes his sickness to "white man's disease" rather than what he has, "black man's disease"?

>150 rosalita:, >151 booksaplenty1949:

"American cloth" is also called "enameled cloth", but I don't know whether those terms and "oilcloth" are all interchangeable or if there was actually a difference. It was waterproof linen sheeting, anyway.

>153 lyzard: Is it deliberate that Bony attributes his sickness to "white man's disease" rather than what he has, "black man's disease"?

Oooh, now that's a good question! It's possible, because he took some care to avoid letting the white settlers know that he had been cursed (he did take Sergeant Blake into his confidence).

On the other hand, he might have just chosen a known ailment that they would all readily understand. With, perhaps, a soupçon of sly mockery that they were so bedazzled by his ability to interact freely with white folks (that instant racism erasure that a nice suit, piercing blue eyes and a pleasant educated voice bought him all the time) that they wouldn't question his falling sick to something he would have known to avoid.

I am familiar with the term oilcloth so now I know what was meant. Although why was it called "American cloth" — was it imported from America or was it something Americans invented and other countries copied?

By the way, do you appreciate being called the Aussie Whisperer?

:D

>154 rosalita:

Or maybe it was something as simple as that the symptoms he was showing could be mistaken for that; though of course I prefer the more devious explanation. :)

I don't know. I had a quick look around but couldn't find out the origin of the term.

>155 rosalita:

Very much! :D

2022 #116

Publication date: 1917
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Arsène Lupin #8
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (autumn colour in title)

The Golden Triangle (original title: Le Triangle d'Or; translator: Alexander Teixeira de Mattos) - A nurse known only as "Madame Coralie" has endeared herself to the wounded soldiers in her care in a Parisian hospital: so much so, when they become aware of a threat against her, a group of them under the leadership of Captain Patrice Belval band together to protect her. The men do indeed thwart an attempted abduction, and capture one of the perpetrators; but he is murdered by his own accomplices before he can be questioned. Afterwards, Patrice confesses his love to Madame Coralie; in return, she must tell him that she is married, and forbids him to try and discover her identity. Danger still threatens, however, and clues lead Patrice to a country house where, as he looks on - and as Coralie does too, without knowing of his presence - a man called Essarès is tortured by a group led by a Colonel Fakhi in an attempt to make him reveal a great secret: the whereabouts of a cache of stolen gold... Despite that synopsis, The Golden Triangle is the eighth entry in Maurice Leblanc's series featuring the gentleman-crook, Arsène Lupin. Lupin's back-story was always inconsistent and contradictory, but we gather that this story takes places during WWI, and in the wake of the events of 813, at the end of which Lupin supposedly commits suicide---and is, in any event, declared officially dead, despite resurrecting himself in The Teeth Of The Tiger in the guise of Don Luis Perenna, a Spanish grandee: an identity he uses here too. Lupin is late on the scene in The Golden Triangle, but makes a dramatic entrance rescuing Coralie and Patrice from a death-trap into which they had fallen. However, although the subsequent narrative does involve the revelation of all sorts of secrets regarding an unknown but life-long connection between the two, Lupin's interest in them is far more pragmatic. Turkish by birth but a French citizen by marriage and choice, Essarès used his financial and banking connections to effect the theft and removal from France of enormous sums in gold: money critically needed for the war effort. The last shipment out was thwarted, however---and now a cache worth a thousand million francs lies concealed. This is the secret that Essarès swore he would die to protect; apparently did die to protect, after he is found gruesomely murdered. A desperate battle to find the gold then ensues, between Essarès' surviving collaborators, the government authorities led by M. Masseron, and Arsène Lupin; but someone else is involved, a shadowy figure who will stop at nothing to secure the hidden treasure...

    Don Luis led Patrice slowly towards the lodge and, speaking in a rather serious voice:
    “I must ask you,” he said, “to be absolutely discreet in this whole matter. With the exception of a few old friends and of Ya-Bon, whom I met in Africa, where he saved my life, no one in France knows me by my real name. I call myself Don Luis Perenna. In Morocco, where I was soldiering, I had occasion to do a service to the very gracious sovereign of a neighbouring neutral nation, who, though obliged to conceal his true feelings, is ardently on our side. He sent for me; and, in return, I asked him to give me my credentials and to obtain a pass for me. Officially, therefore, I am on a secret mission, which expires in two days. In two days I shall go back...to whence I came, to a place where, during the war, I am serving France in my fashion: not a bad one, believe me, as people will see one day.”
    They came to the settee on which Coralie lay sleeping. Don Luis laid his hand on Patrice’s arm:
    “One word more, captain. I swore to myself and I gave my word of honour to him who trusted me that, while I was on this mission, my time should be devoted exclusively to defending the interests of my country to the best of my power. I must warn you, therefore, that, notwithstanding all my sympathy for you, I shall not be able to prolong my stay for a single minute after I have discovered the eighteen hundred bags of gold. They were the one and only reason why I came in answer to Ya-Bon’s appeal. When the bags of gold are in our possession, that is to say, to-morrow evening at latest, I shall go away. However, the two quests are joined. The clearing up of the one will mean the end of the other...”

Finished The Secret Of The Crooked Cat for TIOLI #15.

Now reading The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub.

>158 lyzard: I remember really loving The Talisman when I read it lo, these many years ago. I look forward to your review!

>159 rosalita:

{insert 'looking forward / review' joke}

...and I'm not reading my paperback edition which I have still failed to find, but a hardcover library copy. My poor wrists!

It feels like the universe intervened to get the best-seller challenge back on its proper chunkster track after the story-books of the past two months. :D

2022 #117

Publication date: 1948
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Fu Manchu #11
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (rolling challenge: author's name starts with 'R')

Shadow Of Fu Manchu - In Manhattan, a research project headed by physicist Dr Michael Craig and bankrolled by Michael Frobisher, head of Huston Electric, is nearing completion. Craig's device is, or will be, capable of harnessing the energy of ultraviolet waves to create a new energy source; but, once the focusing transmuter is completed, it will not take much to turn the new technology into a terrifyingly destruction weapon. Government agents from across the world have descended upon New York, waiting only for Dr Craig to complete his work. Also there is Dr Fu Manchu... Dr Craig is incredulous when Sir Denis Nayland Smith, who he has known since his days at Oxford, tries to convince him that he and his device are in real and imminent danger, some of which may be closer to hand than anyone realises: Camille Navarre, Craig's secretary, with whom he is, almost unknowingly, falling in love, is secretly in the employ of a foreign power. But Craig is not the only one in danger: Nayland Smith finds himself in the hands of his old enemy, at imminent risk of being transformed against his will into one of Dr Fu Manchu's many "harnessed brains"... The first post-WWII entry in Sax Rohmer's long-running series is an awkward attempt to make Dr Fu Manchu relevant during the Cold War: something which Rohmer does by having his criminal genius put his own plans for world domination on the back-burner while he works at thwarting the threat of Communism. You might think an agenda like that would put Fu Manchu and Nayland Smith on the same side, but this is one of the bizarrely exasperating works in this series in which Nayland Smith still works to thwart Fu Manchu even though the good doctor is, by any reasonable standard, in the right. (Smith even admits it: the best counter-argument he can come up with is, "I don't like your methods." Well, boo-hoo, buddy.) And having once intervened to stop Fu Manchu from killing Hitler - no, really - this time around he tries to stop him from preventing Morris Craig's device falling into the hands of the Soviets. It's enough to do your head in. Overall, Shadow Of Fu Manchu is a failure: the book, despite its absurdities, is too "real world": it lacks the idiotic fun and exotic settings of the earlier entries - though alas, not their racist and sexist attitudes - while at the same time simply going through the familiar motions---managing in the process to make abductions, mind control, sinister drugs, death-traps and doomsday devices dull. The final insult is that Shadow Of Fu Manchu offers no compensating cameo from the doctor's pet marmoset; the final injury, that while he has acquired a pet cheetah, (i) we don't see it, and (ii) it has a "high, wailing cry" that sounds like someone being tortured: really, Sax??

    "Morris Craig, a physicist touched with genius, is perfecting a device which, in the hands of warmongers, would wreck those fragments of civilisation which survive the maniac, Hitler. News of this pending disaster brought me here. I am inadequately served. There has been no time to organise a suitable staff...
    "Power is strong wine even for men of culture. When it touches the lips of those unaccustomed to it, power drives them mad. Such a group of power-drunk fools threatens today the future of man. One of its agents is watching Dr Craig's experiments. He must be silenced."
    "Why don't you silence him, then?"
    The brilliant green eyes almost closed so that they became mere slits in an ivory mask. It is possible that Nayland Smith was the only man of his acquaintance who assumed, though he didn't feel, complete indifference in the presence of Dr Fu Manchu.
    "I have always respected your character, Sir Denis." The words were no more than whispered. "It has that mulish stupidity which won the Battle of Britain. The incompetents who serve me have failed, so far, to identify this agent. I still believe that if you could appreciate my purpose, you would become of real use to a world hurtling headlong to disaster. I repeat---I respect your character."
    "It was this respect, no doubt, which prompted you to attempt my murder?"
    "The attempt was clumsy. It was undertaken contrary to my orders. You can be of greater use to me alive than dead."
    And those softly spoken words were more terrifying to Nayland Smiththan any threat. Had Fu Manchu decided to smuggle him into his Far Eastern base, by that mysterious subway which so far had defied all inquiry?
    As the dreadful prospect flashed to his mind, Fu Manchu exercised one of his uncanny gifts, that of answering an unspoken question. "Yes---such is my present intention, Sir Denis. I have work for you to do..."

>160 lyzard: Yeah, Stephen King stopped getting edited once he had a few bestsellers in a row. :-)

>160 lyzard: I'm about halfway through. I'm pretty sure I'd have liked it better forty years ago.

>161 lyzard: Overall, Shadow Of Fu Manchu is a failure: the book, despite its absurdities, is too "real world": it lacks the idiotic fun and exotic settings of the earlier entries - though alas, not their racist and sexist attitudes - while at the same time simply going through the familiar motions---managing in the process to make abductions, mind control, sinister drugs, death-traps and doomsday devices dull.

Isn't it though? When I read this one I was convinced that Rohmer or his publisher must have hired someone to produce this entry because it's so unlike every other Fu Manchu adventure, and yet still somehow, undebatably, *worse*

I later read somewhere (and currently haven't the motivation to track the reference down) that it had originally been conceived as a stage play, and was converted to a novel when the Broadway plans didn't work out. Which explains a lot, such as its lack of exotic locales and car chases and marmosets. Without which, really: why bother?

>162 rosalita:

He's in good company. Or at least company. :D

>163 swynn:

I certainly did like it back then but I'm not far enough along yet to judge how far that might have changed (or not): he's just getting started.

why bother?

Amen, brother!

The thing that struck me was how artificially English Michael Craig was---in an English series written by an Englishman---his Englishness conveyed mostly by having him drop his 'g'-s. The Philo Vance manoeuvre, if you will. He feels like an Englishman written by an American. So I wondered about the authorship too; was it a collaboration?

>164 lyzard: It really feels like somebody else's work, doesn't it? I couldn't find any evidence of that other than my own suspicions, though.

>165 swynn:

If this did start out as a play Rohmer would probably have had a collaborator, and the setting indicates it was aimed at an American audience, so maybe a hasty re-formatting explains it.

2022 #120

Publication date: 1995
Genre: Horror
Series: Sonja Blue #3
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (read a scary book)

Paint It Black - When Sonja Blue resumes her hunt for the ancient vampire who calls himself Morgan, she is unaware that his obsession with her has reached such proportions, he has decided that he can only free himself by destroying her. Sonja's quest is further complicated by the restlessness, hunger and sadism of the fully vampiric part of her nature, the side she thinks of as The Other, which she is struggling to keep under control... At their isolated retreat in the Yucatan, Sonja's human lover, William Palmer, attempts to care for their adopted daughter, the hybrid-vampire Lethe, with the assistance - and interference - of "Fido", a seraphim that has taken on physical form in order to guard her. Already physically advanced well beyond her age, Lethe begins to undergo some extraordinary changes... The third entry in the series by Nancy A. Collins is a transition work, with the battle between Sonja Blue and her sire, Morgan, reaching its bloody conclusion, and the focus of the narrative shifting to Lethe and her terrifying mission. Paint It Black offers both the strengths and weaknesses of Collins' work: her writing per se, and her dialogue in particular, tends to let down the power of her vision; but her world-building, with its fully imagined parallel realm occupied by paranormal beings of all kinds, is remarkable---violent, unnerving and humorous in turns; while Lethe is something new and genuinely disturbing. Having created Sonja by accident, the previous series entry, In The Blood, found Morgan experimenting with vampire reproduction in an attempt to replicate the process; but in creating Lethe, Morgan unleashes upon the world a being that will literally alter the course of history... Meanwhile, Sonja must face several painful crises that will likewise result in personal transformation: her human mother dies, severing one more connection between Sonja and her past as Denise Thorne, and allowing The Other still more ascendancy; while Sonja's relationship with Palmer crumbles as, faced with The Other on one side and the transformed Lethe on the other, he finally flees the world of the Pretenders. Finally, Sonja's battle with Morgan has unexpected consequences---allowing her to reconcile the conflicting aspects of her nature, and imbuing her with new and even more dangerous powers...

    I feel her presence before I can see it much the same way I'd been able to sense Morgan before he came into a room.
    The darkened kitchen is filled with a golden light that pours in through the windows facing the courtyard.
    "Auntie Blue."
    The voice in my head is Lethe's, but it isn't the voice of a child. Still holding the mask in one hand, I step out onto the patio, shielding my eyes against her brilliance with an upraised arm.
    The light fades as if someone has hit a dimmer switch, revealing a female figure at its heart. The woman is not the teenaged beauty Palmer described to me but a very, very old woman, her breasts hanging loose and her thighs and sex withered and wrinkled. I can hardly believe that this ancient crone is my three-year-old stepdaughter.
    "Lethe?"
    "Yes, I was Lethe."
    "What the hell happened to you?"
    "I underwent a sea change. As you did yourself."
    "You know about---?"
    "We are agents of change, you and I. True, we are fashioned for completely different tasks, but our goals are the same. You are the Destroyer, I am the the Maker. You're the sickle, I am the seed..."

>167 lyzard: Not gonna lie, this series sounds kind of interesting. I'm not adding any more new series to my TBR, but it sounds interesting.

>166 lyzard: That certainly makes sense. Rohmer had a background in musical theater, but I don't remember that he had ever written a stage play prior to Shadow of Fu Manchu. He certainly would have known people in the business, and somebody must have convinced him it was a good idea. My failure to find a ghostwriter/collaborator's name is just a failure to find a name.

2022 #121

Publication date: 1931
Genre: Children's fiction
Read for: TIOLI (read a book in a language that is not your mother tongue)

Histoire de Babar, le petit éléphant - Faced with the challenge of reading a non-English-language work, I turned to this children's book by Jean de Brunhoff, and discovered that my grasp of written French is okay but imperfect: I could follow the story in outline but lost some of its specifics; although that said, the English edition I was using as a guide was not a particularly accurate translation. The Babar series is somewhat controversial these days, with its general tendency sometimes seen as excusing French colonialism in Africa. More specifically, this is the kind of children's book that tends to be horrifying to adults, from the killing of Babar's mother, to his casual abandonment of his friends (first elephant, then human), to the equally casual but also rather ruthless removal from Babar's path of the king elephant. In between, Babar escapes to the human city, is adopted by a wealthy old lady, learns about all sorts of human things like wearing clothes, and is finally reunited with the other elephants who decide that his new "wisdom" about "civilisation" makes him the best candidate to rule over them.

    Dans la grande forêt, un petit éléphant est né.
    Il s’appelle Babar.
    Sa maman l’aime beaucoup...

Though of course, much of the point of the Babar stories is their illustrations, also by Jean de Brunhoff:


  

>168 rosalita:

Coward! :D

>169 swynn:

I'd forgotten that about Rohmer's background; I think we're onto something! :)

Did the remaining books (which I'd really like to get wrapped) feel "normal" to you?

October (2022) stats:

Works read: 12
TIOLI: 12, in 10 different challenges, with 1 shared read

Mystery / thriller: 7
Classic: 2
Historical drama: 1
Children's fiction: 1
Horror: 1

Series works: 7
Re-reads: 2
Blog reads: 1
1932: 0
1931: 1
Virago / Persephone: 1
Potential decommission: 0

Owned: 0
Library: 5
Ebooks: 7

Male authors : female authors: 7 : 5

Oldest work: Alfred Dudley; or, The Australian Settlers by Sarah Porter (1830)
Newest work: Blanche Passes Go by Barbara Neely (2000)

****

YTD stats:

Works read: 121
TIOLI: 121, in 108 different challenges, with 17 shared reads

Mystery / thriller: 63
Classic: 15
Young adult: 14
Historical drama: 8
Contemporary drama: 7
Non-fiction: 3
Historical romance: 2
Children's fiction: 2
Short story: 2
Humour: 2
Fantasy: 2
Horror: 1

Series works: 78
Re-reads: 13
Blog reads: 1
1932: 4
1931: 14
Virago / Persephone: 4
Potential decommission: 0

Owned: 5
Library: 47
Ebooks: 68
Borrowed: 1

Male authors : female authors: 83 : 42 (including 2 using a male pseudonym)

Oldest work: Incognita; or, Love And Duty Reconcil'd by William Congreve (1692)
Newest work: Divorce Turkish Style by Esmahan Aykol (2007)

October isn't great, I agree...though I have written up some of the later stuff, library books mainly, so it's not as bad as it looks.

And at least it's done---so I think we're entitled to celebrate with a sloth or two---

>174 lyzard: SLOTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And bonus SLOTH BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

>170 lyzard: Have to say that I read Babar with my children and they emerged unscathed, psychologically and politically.

>176 booksaplenty1949:

Not I sure I can make entirely the same claim but I did read them myself, way back when. :D

I don't think anything in their attitude would strike a child but I admit I found myself raising my eyebrows on this re-read.

>174 lyzard: Awwwww. Sloth & baby sloth.

>177 lyzard: I often think that I'm not the target audience, and so have no idea what the target audience would make of that.

>178 Helenliz:

Children's fiction often does have that ruthless quality to it, which is something that I think as an adult you lose sight of.

Finished The Talisman for TIOLI #10.

Now reading Captain Nemesis by Francis van Wyck Mason.

...and ohhhhhhhhh, dear...

I may need some advice here: anyone knowledgeable about Jean Aurl's Earth's Children series?

>179 lyzard: It’s fatuous to think that the children’s books being written now to reflect current ideas on race, class, gender, etc etc will not appear hopelessly dated and unenlightened in the 22ndC.

>181 lyzard: I read Clan of the Cave Bear in high school, and remember very little. My sense is that the books are a continuous story and wouldn't necessarily stand alone well. I had an optimistic idea of re-reading the first after The Talisman then cramming books 2 and 3 into February. If you're also interested in catching up on the series, though, I would not object to taking more time.

>182 booksaplenty1949:

True! Or anyway, you'd hope so: I'd hate to think this is the best we can be. :D

>183 swynn:

I was kind of hoping you were going to say the reverse: this has never really caught my interest and I was trying to avoid having to read the first two as well.

I shall ponder a little more... :)

Oops.

Cat pics, maybe?

Definitely:


  

Sigh.

As noted above, our next best-seller is Jean Auel's The Mammoth Hunters, which is the third book in a six-book series, much to my OCD's horror.

Steve seems to feel that these are not really standalone works, so we are currently in negotiation over whether we are going to insert a hiatus in our challenge and read The Clan Of The Cave Bear and The Valley Of Horses first.

Otherwise---February is a 'Month B' in my tentative schedule which, pending the above decision, is looking like this:

The Clan Of The Cave Bear or The Mammoth Hunters by Jean M. Auel {best-seller challenge}
The Mystery Of Swordfish Reef by Arthur Upfield {shared read}
Tremaine; or, The Man Of Refinement by Robert Plumer Ward {A Century Of Reading}
Horizon by Robert Carse {Banned in Boston!}
World's End by Upton Sinclair {random reading}

Julia has done sterling work in catching up Arthur Upfield's Bony series and we hope to be starting our shared reads next month---very exciting!

(Going forward I am hoping to also have a shared read of Margery Allingham's Albert Campion series with Helen in Month B, but we aren't quite ready to go yet.)

I have several series that are nearing completion - just as well! - and working on those via TIOLI would be my other goal for February. I also have a project going with books that were the source of early horror movies, which would be my other - or other other - reading thread.

Finished Captain Nemesis for TIOLI #13.

Now reading Sayings And Doings; or, Sketches From Life (First Series) by Theodore Hook.

But since this is a long book {*groan*} and will have to be read online {**GROAN**}, I will also need to pick a bath book. Hmm...

ETA: Also now reading Re-Enter Dr Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer.

Ha!

The copy of Re-Enter Dr Fu Manchu I'm reading has the series listed at the beginning under the generic title of 'The Adventures Of Nayland Smith'.

Really? You think that's what we're reading these for? Really!?

>191 lyzard: I read them all and am on team "Wait, Nayland *Who*?"

>192 swynn:

If they'd called it 'The Adventures Of The Marmoset That Shows Up Occasionally' they would have been on firmer ground.

I've got some blogging done---WHOO!!

I've written up Julia Day's 1857 novel, The Old Engagement, which I read last November. This isn't as good as Day's follow-up work, The Gilberts And their Guests, but it is still an interesting domestic novel about those eternal 19th century topics, marriage and women's lives.

The Old Engagement. A Spinster's Story

...and I seem to have caught this lemur off-guard:

>195 lyzard: "A blog post?! Is there anything this woman can't do?"

>196 rosalita:

Keep her reviews up to date? :D

>197 lyzard: That thought might have crossed my mind, but it seemed churlish to mention. :-D

>198 rosalita:

I appreciate your tact. :D

November was a long month too. I've done half of December because it was mostly library books bit I've got a slog ahead of me to get there.

>189 lyzard: I have read the first three of Jean Auel's Earth's Children series. I liked the first, a lot, but it's brutal at points, with rape, etc.

But the next two reminded me of bad movies, the type where the director tries to distract the audience from how bad the movie is by having sudden and prolonged sex scenes. I got tired of reading who was licking who, and where, ad nauseam. Otherwise I liked the characters just fine.

>200 fuzzi:

Thank you for the various warnings, I appreciate it! Though, sigh.

Steve and I have decided to divert from our challenge and read The Clan Of The Cave Bear and The Valley Of Horses before The Mammoth Hunters, but I'm not going to make myself go any further than that if I don't want to (and from what you say, I likely won't!).

>199 lyzard: The good news is February is a short month! Although I'm not sure that will help you get caught up on reviews, exactly. :-)

>200 fuzzi: Oh dear.

>201 lyzard: Brave decision.

>202 rosalita:

It won't, but since I'm yet to find anything that does we won't blame February. :D

>203 Helenliz:

That's one word for it...

2022 #125

Publication date: 1935
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Philip Tolefree #6
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI ("I am thankful for...")

The Cat And The Corpse (US title: The Corpse In The Green Pyjamas) - While negotiating the purchase of a piece of art, the banker, Isaac Stratton, along with his wife, stay at Wolborough Castle, the ancestral home of the aristocratic but cash-strapped Meriden family---which consists of Lord and Lady Meriden, the former's brother and heir, the Honourable John Meriden, and John's son, Anthony. Stratton is dismayed to find that Eric Yves, who he once dismissed from his bank for mishandling the money, is also a guest. Late one night, Stratton returns to his room after taking a bath and finds it a wreck; though nothing seems to have been stolen. The next morning it is discovered that Eric Yves has departed - or disappeared - his bed has not been slept in, and all his clothes are there except his pyjamas. With the permission of the family, Stratton summons private investigator, Philip Tolefree. He questions the Meridens, and is soon aware of the intense family pride with which he will have to deal. Alone in his room, Tolefree hears a strange noise that he traces to a passageway hidden in the wall, where the family cat has had her kittens. That isn't all that's in there: to his horror, Tolefree also finds a dead man. He alerts Lord Meriden, who with his brother goes to examine the scene: they return with the news that Tolefree must have been mistaken---there is no body in the passage... Three points: first, by this sixth book in the series by R. A. J. Walling, Philip Tolefree is officially a orivate investigator, rather than an insurance investigator who dabbles in crime; second, The Cat And The Corpse is told in the third-person, relegating Tolefree's usual sidekick / narrator, his friend Farrar, to a supporting role, and is the better for it; and third, the cat is a lot less prominent than the title promises---though she plays her part in leading Tolefree to the pyjama-clad corpse of Eric Yves. The Cat And The Corpse is a lengthy and complex mystery in which Tolefree is tasked, not just with solving a murder, but proving one happened in the first place. Though the initial suggestion that he was "seeing things" won't fly, Tolefree has only his own conviction that he saw a dead man to go on: he cannot actually prove that Eric Yves didn't get in and out of the passageway - and the Castle - on his own. It is very soon clear to Tolefree that the Meridens have closed ranks, and will allow or admit to nothing that might tarnish the family's reputation; furthermore, he finds the local area almost feudal in in its attitude towards the Meridens, with the local police, and the Chief Constable, reluctant (to put it mildly) to believe anything to their detriment or take any action against them. Having started with what he believes to be two tampered-with crime scenes, Tolefree must also wrestle with a chain of faked evidence when Yves' body is eventually discovered a convenient distance from the Castle, along with clear signs proving that he was alive when he left it. Failing the Meridens, and given the hostile personal history between himself and Yves, police suspicion has already fastened on Isaac Stratton, whose movements serve, accidentally, to strengthen the case against him. Though he does not initially believe that Stratton had anything to do with Yves' death, Tolefree's task becomes even more difficult when he realises that Stratton is withholding information from him about his real reasons for being at Wolborough, and his movements on what he, Tolefree, believes to have been the night of the crime; that he has a secret that involves his wife, that may in fact give him motive...

    Tolefree took three strides to the panel and bumped against it. Mrs Stratton gave out a little gasp as they heard the scutter of footsteps and the banging of a door.
    "Good God!" said Stratton, staring at the wall.
    "You see why no names should be mentioned?" Stratton started for the door. Tolefree detained him. "No. Let him go. It'll serve our purpose better. His famous subtlety deserted him when he guessed no one would notice that the panel wasn't quite closed. Amateurish, eh? Now that he's safe out of hearing, the reason why I'm certain that these marks on your mullion were faked and the whole of the Colonel's clews are false is this: On Sunday morning none of 'em were here."
    "What!---"
    "Not one. No rope-marks. No rag on the chevron. No disturbance of the grass. No bloodstains. The Honourable one had toyed with the theory of an escape by the window in our talk the night before. So naturally, when I came to examine the place I had a good look at the window. Next, Mrs Stratton, you remember that we looked at the window from outside. You didn't see anything of all this?"
    "No---but it's true I wasn't thinking of anything of the sort."
    "Of course not---but I was."
    "But, Tolefree! Sure? And if it's so, what does it all mean?" asked Stratton, bewildered.
    "It means this---that last night, when the Meridens were talking about mares'-nests, they knew about the discovery in the wood. It means that they realised that Wolborough would have to own up to Yves. It means that last night all these trails were laid. It means that the Meridens are in deadly fear the truth may come out..."

>205 lyzard: The Cat And The Corpse (US title: The Corpse In The Green Pyjamas)

I could ask what US publishers have against cats, but the larger question is why is a US publisher using the "wrong" spelling for pajamas?

2022 #126

Publication date: 1927
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Fleming Stone #22
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (a book whose title is not unique)

All At Sea - The Hotel Majusaca, in the coastal resort of Ocean Town, attracts visitors from all over. The beach and the surrounding waters are usually crowded; and for the inexpert or nervous swimmer, a series of rope-chains are staked out from the shore, to provide support or a refuge. One morning, a group of friends take to the water: while engaged couple, Robin Sears and Angelica Fair, both strong swimmers, venture to a raft tethered further out, Ned and Madeline Barron, Robin's father, Croydon Sears, Roger Neville, Mrs Valdon and Mrs Barnaby stay near the ropes. Ned Barron is annoyed when brusque midwestern businessman, Garrett Folsom, tries to scrape acquaintance with himself and his wife. The friends are turning towards shore when a large wave envelopes everyone and, when it has passed, Folson has disappeared... The friends, and Ocean Town generally, are disturbed but not upset by the tragedy, until a doctor, upon examining the recovered body, discovers that Folsom was stabbed to death... All At Sea is a mystery that makes you wish that Carolyn Wells was a better writer. Part of the attraction of this novel is, at this distance, accidental: Wells' description of a 1920s seaside resort, contemporary beach culture, and the arrangements for uncertain swimmers, is fascinating (though modern readers might get a snicker out of the fact that this is "the Jersey shore"); while her mystery scenario, with murder committed in the middle of the crowd clinging to a series of safety ropes, is striking. There is also one touch much creepier than, I think, Wells intended: Garret Folsom has in his possession, and carries with him, a set of designer dolls (apparently there was a collecting craze at the time), with each doll made up to represent one of his past romantic "conquests". However, All At Sea eventually founders where Wells' novels generally do: her characterisations are weak, and too much of her narrative is spent either creating fairly obvious red herrings, with those characters behaving in an overtly suspicious manner, or on the efforts of various self-appointed amateur detectives---until thankfully things get urgent enough for someone - eventually - to send for Fleming Stone. (I have one other gripe: Wells is unclear about the age of one of her characters; it's important, and I had quite a different image in my head.) In the wake of Garrett Folsom's murder, his sister, Miss Anastasia Folsom, arrives in Ocean Town with vengeance on her mind; but the subsequent investigation is disrupted by her autocratic ways and her refusal to hear anything to the detriment of her brother. In time, however, stories begin to surface about Folsom's ugly treatment of women, and about his use of people's secrets in his business dealings, which was little short of blackmail...

    "I'm excluding Mr Sears as a suspect," Stone said, "because he didn't do it. But the police are not so sure of that as I am, and so to prove my point I must find the real murderer."
    "Who is," Sears appended, "the man who bought a bundle of junk at the auction room late in the evening the night before the murder."
    "And who," Anastasia broke in, "bought it for Carmelita Valdon..."
    With this parting bit of suggestion Miss Folsom went off to her own room, and the men remained for a few more words.
    "My aunt is a strange personage," Pelton said thoughtfully, "but she's nobody's fool. And her arguments against Mrs Valdon are just plausible enough to catch the attention of the police... Yes," he went on, catching Stone's quick glance, "as my aunt says, I have fallen for that woman... I am frank, Mr Stone, because I want the matter cleared up as well as my aunt does, and if you can get at the real truth you will do away with all hint of suspicion of Mrs Valdon."
    Stone looked at him a little quizzically. "I had but two legitimate suspects," he said, with pretended ruefulness. "Sears here and Mrs Valdon. If you deprive me of both at one fell swoop, what, pray, am I to do?"
    "Get the real one," said Tite Riggs, rising to go. "I can't do it; I haven't a glimmer of a notion what way to look, but I'll bet you manage it, Mr Stone."
    "I'll bet he does," agreed Pelton, but the anxious eyes of Croydon Sears did not echo their assurance.
    "I'll have a try at it," Stone told them. "But I don't mind admitting that at the present I've no evidence to work on, no clue to follow up. I'm all at sea."

>206 rosalita:

The cat is disappointingly minor; maybe they thought the original title promised more than it delivered? We certainly see / hear a lot more of the green pyjamas!---

---which brings us to your second point: in fact they used the correct spelling; that is, the original Indian spelling.

I'm getting the feeling here that Walling's American publisher was as pedantic as I am! :D

2023 #5

Publication date: 1935
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Philo Vance #9
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (author uses two initials)

The Garden Murder Case - Philo Vance receives a cryptic anonymous message intimation serious trouble amongst the Garden family, possibly to do with the private gambling society that involves Floyd Garden, his cousin, Woode Strode, and a number of their friends. Despite the smokescreen, Vance is sure that the sender was Dr Miles Siefert, the family physician, who has used these means to skirt his professional ethics. Acquainted with the Gardens, Vance manages to infiltrate their gambling club, with the group listening to and betting on horse races by radio and phone. He finds strange tensions among the group, particularly in the behaviour of Woode Strode, who places a recklessly large wager on one particular horse before withdrawing to the family's rooftop garden to listen to the race alone. His horse is unplaced and, almost immediately, there is the sound of a shot. Rushing to the roof, Vance finds Strode dead in what looks like suicide---but an examination of the scene convinces him it was murder... By this point in the series by "S. S. Van Dine" (Willard Huntington Wright), a distinct sense of strain is evident. The Garden Murder Case opens almost exactly as does its predecessor, The Casino Murder Case, with an anonymous message sending Vance to the scene of what turns out to be murder (he never manages to prevent the crime, but anyhoo); the various diversions, lectures and footnotes are even less apropos than usual; and no-one even pretends that there's a reason for Vance's secretary / friend / publicist - "S. S. Van Dine" - to be hanging around (I don't think he even speaks in this one). We're also expected to be shocked, or enraptured, or something, when the basically asexual Vance is attracted to one of the women involved in the case, but the matter is set aside almost as soon as it has wasted a few pages. All this, of course, is a matter of taste. A more pertinent observation / criticism is that this is one of those murder mysteries that depends upon the layout of a house, where the rooms are relative to one another, and who could have been where, when---and I'm always terrible at those (I have no spatial awareness). When Vance finds evidence that Strode was murdered, suspicion falls on those not listening to the critical race: Cecil Kroon, who supposedly had a meeting with his lawyers but, as it is determined, never left the apartment building; and Zalia Graem, who was in another room making a phone-call---so she says. Vance's theory, however, is that Strode was murdered earlier, the scene staged, and the "suicide" shot meant to be heard---changing the thrust of the investigation altogether... The strange tensions amongst the Gardens explode when the neurotic Mrs Garden, who is under the care of a nurse, Miss Beeton, accuses Floyd of murdering his cousin out of jealousy and greed, after she divided her fortune between them in her new will. Miss Beeton, whose sharp and professional observations Vance draws upon, has a close call when someone traps her in a small room with a broken vial of deadly gas designed by Professor Garden, a chemist; but matters reach their climax when a second murder is committed...

    “Markham, I can assure you the few drops of blood you see on the chappie’s temple could not have thickened to the extent they had when I first saw the body---they must have been exposed to the air for several minutes. And, as I say, I was up here approximately thirty seconds after we heard the shot.”
    “But that being the case,” returned Markham in astonishment, “how can you possibly explain the fact?”
    Vance straightened a little and looked at the District Attorney with unwonted gravity. “Swift,” he said, “was not killed by the shot we heard.”
    “That don’t make sense to me, Mr Vance,” Heath interposed, scowling.
    “Just a moment, Sergeant.” Vance nodded to him in friendly fashion. “When I realized that the shot that wiped out this johnnie’s existence was not the shot that we had heard, I tried to figure out where the fatal shot could have been fired without our hearing it below. And I’ve found the place. It was in a vault-like storeroom---practically sound-proof, I should say---on the other side of the passageway that leads to the study. I found the door unlocked and looked for evidence of some activity there...”
    Markham had risen and taken a few nervous steps around the pool in the centre of the roof. “Did you find any evidence,” he asked, “to corroborate your theory?”
    “Yes---unmistakable evidence.” Vance walked over to the still figure in the chair and pointed to the thick-lensed glasses tipped forward on the nose. “To begin with, Markham, you will notice that Swift’s glasses are in a position far from normal, indicatin’ that they were put on hurriedly and inaccurately by some one else---just as was the headphone... The left lens of the glasses---the one furthest from the punctured temple---is cracked at the corner, and there’s a very small V-shaped piece missing where the crack begins---an indication that the glasses have been dropped and nicked. I can assure you that the lens was neither cracked nor nicked when I last saw Swift alive... That piece of glass is at present in my waistcoat pocket.”
    Markham showed a new interest. “Where did you find it?” he demanded brusquely.
    “I found it,” Vance told him, “on the tiled floor in the vault across the hall.”

Finished Re-Enter Dr Fu Manchu for TIOLI #9.

Still reading Sayings And Doings by Theodore Hook (and may not get it done this month; fortunately it also fits TIOLI next month!).

2022 #127

Publication date: 1932
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Leathermouth #3
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (by an author whose name has different spelling variations)

Fifteen Keys - While researching this series by the Australian-born author, Carlton Dawe, I discovered to my horror that I had read the fourth entry, Crumpled Lilies, out of order; not that it mattered in a general sense, as it turned out to be set, for some reason, before the second entry, The Sign Of The Glove. Part of that minor mystery was solved when I discovered that the third entry, Fifteen Keys, had been serialised under a different title, The Man Of Many Faces; which meant at least that it was available to be read online for free. That turned out to be the most positive aspect of the reading experience. I described The Sign Of The Glove as "a damp squib", and Fifteen Keys is even worse: this series talks big, threatening "revolution" and "attacks upon the Empire" at every turn, but never amounts to more than a personal struggle between its protagonist, Colonel Peter Gantian - nicknamed "Leathermouth" - and "international agitator", Leo Jask, who keeps interrupting his efforts to "bring down the Empire" to attempt petty revenge on Gantian and his friends, only to be thwarted at each turn by the now-proverbial "Leathermouth's Luck": this being Carlton Dawe's way of getting his protagonist out of the death-traps he keeps walking into. Here we have all that in spades; while in between Jask popping up all over the place using a series of "impenetrable" disguises, the narrative is tiresomely padded out (this was written for serialisation, of course) by Gantian's constant rehashing of the same arguments; lengthy verbal sparring between him and Jask and, conversely, supposedly jocular banter between him and Mayford; and the exceedingly uninteresting courtship of Gantian's manservant and two-fisted sidekick, Albert, and Julia's maid, Elsie. Set three years after the events of The Sign Of The Glove, the opening of Fifteen Keys finds its characters settled into happy matrimony, with Gantian having married American heiress, Julia Wallington, and her brother, John, Gantian's sister, Edna: the latter couple have a young son, the former a new baby girl. This domestic bliss is threatened when word reaches Gantien and Wallington (or course they don't "frighten the women") that their old enemy, Jask, supposedly killed some time back, has been spotted in Afghanistan...though as it turns out, he's a lot closer than that. His first move against the group is to kidnap John and Edna's little boy; and it is soon clear that he means to torture everyone quite as much as extort a fortune from the boy's parents. A series of taunting messages signed "Fifteen Keys" eventually puts Gantian, Wallington and their old colleague from Scotland Yard, George Mayford, on the heels of their enemies, who include the ambiguous Anna Asterley: still furious and offended with a younger John Wallington's spurning of her charms, but with a yen for Gantian that sometimes prompts her to lend her assistance---for a price...

    "The truth is, my dear colonel," said Jask, "and I don't mind admitting it now---since it can go no farther"---(He spoke parenthetically, with unpleasant emphasis.)---"I was anxious to get you first. There are one of two old scores between us which needed wiping out. As a matter of fact, you have been rather a nuisance. In a manner, perfectly inexplicable to me, you have become a sort of menace. Ever since my coming to this country, after some exceedingly useful work in China and India, you have managed to stumble across my path, and in stumbling have kicked up a bit of dust. It is a very curious fact, and one which I have endeavoured vainly to comprehend, but most of my biggest hopes have been brought to nothing by the interference of fools. It has been comparatively easy to outwit the clever ones: give me a man who thinks he knows everything and I will bounce him like a ball. But it's fellows like you who check progress, and whom I have always regarded with a certain amount of trepidation. You see, you can do nothing with a fool but get rid of him..."
    "Aren't you protesting a little too much?" I asked him. "When you set out to destroy the British Empire, don't you think you were indulging in the most colossal of all follies?"
    "I have sown the seed, he replied; "if I don't reap the harvest others will. This monstrous absurdity which you call the British Empire is doomed..."

Finished Sayings And Doings for TIOLI #16, in just under the wire.

Now...I have a slight problem in that I should have been to the library by now, but they're taking forever to get my requests out of storage, so I will have to start the month with something other than what I had planned.

Hmm...

Now reading Taras Bulba by Nikolai Gogol.

ETA: ...or at least, was going to: but it is evident that there are edition / revision / translation issues here, so I might have to stop and think about it.

Quote:

Most people who have read Taras Bulba would have read its amended version (or its translation), which was published as a second edition in 1842. The difference between the second and the lesser-known original edition of 1835 is considerable. The second edition was unfortunately heavily censored. It eliminated almost all mention of the main character’s homeland of Ukraine, makes Bulba a devoted knight of the state, which in reality was a hostile neighbouring country, and, finally, perverts his credo to the extent that he, a kozak, which by definition is synonymous with freedom, starts glorifying the occupying state and its ruler, the tsar...

This is a from a listing for an upcoming English-language translation which goes back to the original text...but which is of course unavailable, whereas copies of the 1842 edition are rife. In fact it looks like there was no English translation of the 1835 text until this advertised one.

Oh dear. This is bothering my brain.

Hmm...

ETA2: Okay, it looks like, if I'm going to do this at all, it will have to be the 1842 edition with significant mental reservations; that said, though I have a library copy of a 1907 British edition, I think I'm going to read Isabel Hapgood's 1915 translation online: people seem to treat that as the 'definitive' one.

ETA3:...or the 1955 translation that was apparently the first by a native Russian speaker*; that might be the way to go.

(*...who gets around these little difficulties by arguing that the 1835 version of Taras Bulba was "unfinished".)

(ETA4: It turns out that the new English translation is / will be the work of a small specialty press in Sydney specialising in Ukrainian works, so maybe one day...)

...though of course after all that kerfuffle, I'm going to need a bath book! :D

Now also reading Horizon by Robert Carse.

Just FYI. Flowers for the Judge and The case of the late pig are at the library for collection.

>214 Helenliz:

****GASP!!**** :D

April suit you for the latter?

2022 #128

Publication date: 1969
Genre: Young adult
Series: The Three Investigators #12
Read for: Shared read

The Mystery Of The Laughing Shadow - Pete Crenshaw and Bob Andrews are biking home after a day in the mountains when they hear a cry for help behind the high wall of an old estate, and Bob is hit by an object thrown over the wall. Threatening voices send the boys into cover---from where they see a tall, misshapen shadow, and hear a wild laugh... Back in Rocky Beach, Jupiter Jones is puzzled by the others' conflicting accounts of the strange laugh. He examines the object that hit Bob, a small native artefact of solid gold, and discovers that it has a tiny hidden compartment. Inside, the boys find a message in a language they cannot identify, which is written in blood... Well. I can remember greeting this particular entry in The Three Investigators series with a sceptical eyebrow the first time I ever read it, lo these many years ago; and my objection to that particular plot-point has not, as it turns out, lessened any over the intervening years. Be that as it may, The Mystery Of The Laughing Shadow offers both the strengths and the weaknesses of this series, with its young protagonists stumbling into the mystery of a long-hidden cache of gold artefacts, tangling with some nasty crooks who want the treasure for themselves, setting right various injustices---and getting involved with the representatives of an unfamiliar culture, in this case the (fictional) Yaquali people of the Mexican mountains, who are presented in a way that makes you clench your teeth a bit in spite of the obvious good intentions. (Mind you---at this distance, some readers may find this short work's views on vegetarianism every bit as bemusing.) However, the narrative's descriptions and use of its mountain settings are effective, and all three boys are given plenty to do. While working with Professor Meeker, an expert on the Yaquali, The Three Investigators also come into contact with Ted Sandow, the young relative of the elderly Miss Sarah Sandow, whose estate was the scene of Bob and Pete's adventure, and who was the owner of the stolen amulet. They begin to look into the history of the Sandow family, and the legends surrounding the bandit, Magnus Verde, who boasted at the last that his treasure was hidden, "In the eye of the sky where no man can find it." But at every turn, the boys face competition and danger from a group of Yaquali, and from a gang led by the strange man with the wild laugh...

    Jupiter threw the hook up to the top of the wall, where it caught on the stone ridge. The two boys tested it, and Pete pulled himself up. At the top he peered over. Then he hauled Jupiter up. They pulled the rope over and lowered themselves down inside the wall. Jupiter returned the rope to the bag which he hid.
    "We'll go up to the house," the First Investigator whispered in the fading twilight. "Be alert, Pete."
    They made their way through the trees and brush to a small rise from where they could watch the house and barn. The estate grounds became dark and quiet as the last rays of sunlight vanished.
    There was light inside the big house, and shadows moved, but no one came out. All was quiet. In the distance they could hear cars passing on the road. The boys became stiff and cramped from lying so long in one position. Pete's leg went to sleep, and he moved to start the circulation. But Jupiter remained absolutely still. The lights went out downstairs in the house, and the moonless light grew even darker.
    Suddenly, Jupiter touched Pete.
    "What?" Pete whispered, startled.
    "There!"
    A vague, tall shape moved near the house. The shadow hesitated for a time as if listening, then began to move past the barn towards the woods to the east.
    "When he reaches the woods we'll..." Jupiter began.
    The First Investigator never finished. At that moment a wild, chilling laugh echoed through the dark night...

2022 #129

Publication date: 1938
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Nero Wolfe #5
Read for: Shared read

Too Many Cooks - When, in his role as amateur gourmand, Nero Wolfe is invited to give the keynote address at a gathering of renowned international chefs, his assistant, Archie Goodwin, faces the formidable task of manoeuvring the legendarily stationary Wolfe from his New York Brownstone to the Kanawha Spa in West Virginia. On the train, Wolfe is reunited with his old friend, Marko Vukcic, who invited him, and meets Jerome Berin, originator of a recipe that Wolfe has been pursuing for years---unsuccessfully. It is soon clear that trouble is brewing amongst Les Quinze Maîtres: one of the society, Philip Laszio, is despised by the rest both personally and professionally; and tensions heighten still more when, on the opening night, Laszio insults the cooking of the gathering's host, Louis Servan. Matters culminate during a taste-test organised by Laszio, in which each chef, separately, is asked to assess the ingredients of a set of variant sauces. At some point in the process, Laszio himself disappears---his body later found thrust behind a screen in his kitchen... This fifth entry in the series featuring private investigator, Nero Wolfe, strikes an amusing balance between Wolfe's (that is, Rex Stout's) various self-indulgences, and his extraordinary professional acuity: Wolfe agrees - eventually - to investigate the murder of Philip Laszio, not for justice, but because he sees an opportunity to blackmail Jerome Berin into giving up the recipe he has been guarding so tenaciously, when Berin falls under suspicion and is arrested; though an attempt on his, Wolfe's, own life also enrages and motivates him. Laszio himself is the kind of skunk who needed killing; and it is revealed that, after stealing Marko Vukcic's wife, Dina - also present - and cheating Leon Blanc out of a prestigious appointment, he also arranged the taste-test to humiliate his enemies by ensuring they failed it. The comings and goings around the dining-room at this time become the focus of the investigation; and the local authorities react with a palpable sense of relief when witness testimony allows them to shift their suspicions from the spa's white guests to its black waitstaff... While its gourmandry is both entertaining and enlightening (and occasionally eye-rolling), the aspect of Too Many Cooks most striking to the modern reader is surely its subplot dealing with Wolfe's interactions with the spa's waiters, in which the split we've seen before, between the widespread racism typical of the time and Wolfe's forthright rejection of such attitudes, is foregrounded. The detective's respectful and intelligent interaction with the men - understanding their impulse to protect "one of their own", but arguing that in doing so, they are living down to everyone's expectations - strikes a chord amongst the waiters. One of them, Paul Whipple - a college student, we learn in passing - finally admits to being one of the two men on the scene at the time of the murder (the white witnesses having failed to identify any particular black man because, well, you know...). However, Whipple reveals to Wolfe that he is not protecting another of the waitstaff---that the second man at the scene was not a black man at all, but a white man in black-face...

    Tolman, with his brows up, shuffled through the papers before him, extracted one, handed it to me, and I passed it to Wolfe. Wolfe looked at it with his forehead wrinkled, and exclaimed, "Good God!" He looked at it again, and turning to me, shaking the paper in his hand, "Archie. Coyne was right! Number 3 was shallots!"
    Tolman asked sarcastically, "Comedy relief? Much obliged for that help."
    I grinned at him. "Comedy hell, he won't sleep for a week, he guessed wrong."
    Wolfe reproved me: "It was not a guess. It was a deliberate conclusion, and it was wrong." He handed me the paper. "Pardon me, Mr Tolman, I've had a blow. Actually, I wouldn't expect you to appreciate it. As I was saying, I am already more than sceptical regarding Berin and Vukcic. I have known Mr Vukcic all my life. I can conceive of him stabbing a man, under hypotethical conditions, but I am sure that if he did you wouldn't find the knife in the man's back. I don't know Mr Berin well, but I saw him at close range and heard him speak less than a minute after he left the dining room last night, and I would stake something that he was not fresh from the commission of a cowardly murder. He had but a moment before sunk a knife in Mr Laszio's back, and I detected no residue of that experience in his posture, his hands, his eyes, his voice? I don't believe it."
    "And about comparing those lists---"
    "I'm coming to that. I take it that Mr Servin has described the nature of the test to you---each sauce lacking one or another of the seasonings. We were permitted but one taste from each dish---only one! Have you any conception of the delicacy and sensitivity required? It took the highest degree of concentration and receptivity of stimuli. To detect a single false note in one of the wood winds in a symphonic passage by full orchestra would be the same. So, compare those lists. If you find that Berin and Vukcic were substantially correct---say seven or eight out of nine---they are eliminated. Even six. No man about to kill another, or having just done so, could possibly control his nervous system sufficiently to perform such a feat. I assure you this is not comedy..."

2022 #131

Publication date: 1927
Genre: Contemporary drama
Read for: Banned In Boston! challenge

Pilgrims - Born illegitimately into a conservative Dutch family, Louis Van Roon is adopted by relatives who keep his origins a secret from him. From his earliest days, Louis is conscious that he sees the world differently from those around him, and as he grows the desire to be a painter becomes his dominant passion. Johan Mulder, an art dealer, is at first pleased with Louis' ambition; however, a committed classicist who sees nothing of value in the newer forms of art, he is disturbed by Louis' experimental style and tries to force him into a more conventional career. But Louis' ambitions cannot be quashed... Ethel Mannin's 1927 novel, Pilgrims, is an odd work of fiction given, accidentally, an increased interest due to its juxtaposition with a previous novel that also dealt with "the art scene" of the between-the-wars era, William Faulkner's Mosquitoes. Faulkner excoriates the American version of that scene, and the people who inhabit or aspire to it, compared to the "real deal" in Paris; so it was amusing to find Mannin being just as scathing about Paris and the fakers and poseurs that it was attracting, with genuine artists thin on the ground. Mannin's presentation of her protagonist is also ambiguous. There is no question of Louis' sincerity or passion when it comes to his art, and some of the novel's strongest passages are those in which Mannin attempts to describe how he sees the world, and his struggle to transfer his vision onto canvas. However, Louis' very concept of himself is treated with a certain irony; likewise, it is unlikely that - in a novel by a woman - we are intended to take the solemn and self-congratulatory assertion that "art" is an exclusively male pursuit at anything like face value. There is also a suggestion that, though he sees the world generally through the eyes of an artist, Louis understands very little about the people in it, and the women he so casually excludes least of all. We spend an exasperating amount of time of Louis' obsession with a shallow young Belgian girl with whom he has nothing in common, and whose only attraction is her looks; his naivety somehow transferring itself to later sexual relationships. This aspect of the novel does pave the way for one of the novel's most striking touches, however, when after breaking with a woman who does love him, and does understand him, Louis realises he sees nothing more in her suffering than that she is "paintable". This moment of clarity begs to be set against the passages that give this novel its title, in which Louis' rather grandiloquent vision of himself as an artistic "pilgrim" - which for the most part is allowed to stand, including at the novel's climax - is undermined by the reality of his stuttering, frustrated career and the occasional rueful recognition that he is "a pilgrim without a Mecca"; or worse, "a pilgrim without progress"...

    There were times when a gigantic rage swelled up in him concerning all these students and models and artists and near-artists and pseudo-artists gathered from all parts of two great continents; times when the models seemed nothing but tawdry painted drabs, and all the students a pitiful collection of poseurs. At such times he found the cafés intolerable, and would go striding down long, dark, deserted streets, scourged by the whips of dreams, lashed into a frenzy by a consciousness of impotence and futility; the precious days slipping by so relentlessly, and what was he doing? He had been three months in Paris, what had he painted that was as good as the bells or the night study he had done in Bruges?
    It was true, as Shanklin had said, that here in Paris one could not work. There were too many distractions, too many parties, too much sitting at cafés, too much gossiping at the doors of art schools, too much talk and too little work. And he was sick of the jargon of the schools, he told himself passionately, sick of the strutting and the posing of the students, and their carefully cherished convention of viciousness and pseudo-decadence that was amusing enough to watch and talk about, and yet which left one with a bad taste in the mouth after a time. There were, he discovered, static types; one encountered over and over again the alleged Urnings of Madame's, and after a while these long-haired males and short-haired females became less amusing, and all the gossip and scandal that was passed through the schools and the cafés with such gusto became at one disgusting and pathetic.
    And yet Paris with a glamour sui generis held him. There was a glamour about these days at the schools; the overheated rooms, the benches, the nude model, the silence, the preoccupation, the elaborate seriousness of the whole thing absorbed itself curiously into one's life, in spite of all the insincerities and a recurring sense of futility and pretence... And glamour about the heavy noons, and in the very sultriness of the leaves on the boulevard tress, and in the way the sunlight drenched the shuttered windows...

Pilgrims was read for the Banned In Boston! challenge; and though it takes a while to get going, the casual sexual escapades of the characters including Louis, plus the discussions of the necessity for such encounters - for the male artist - would have been enough. In addition there are various considerations of "painting from life" and the models it requires, plus some casually nasty references to homosexuality---I'm still trying to decide whether they are the characters' or Mannin's own.

(Note the quote above: Mannin is, I think, suggesting that some members of the Parisian art scene are posing as homosexual, in order to appear "vicious" and "decadent", rather than being the real deal. I would take that as another criticism of the poseurs rather than homophobic. OTOH the use of "Urnings"...)

>215 lyzard: Yup, that suits me fine.

>220 Helenliz:

Excellent! {*Monty Burns fingers*}

Best-selling books in the United States for 1982:

1. E.T. The Extraterrestrial Storybook by William Kotzwinkle
2. Space by James A. Michener
3. The Parsifal Mosaic by Robert Ludlum
4. Master of the Game by Sidney Sheldon
5. Mistral's Daughter by Judith Krantz
6. The Valley of Horses by Jean M. Auel
7. Different Seasons by Stephen King
8. North and South by John Jakes
9. 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke
10. The Man from St. Petersburg by Ken Follett

1982 gives us a fairly familiar blend of popular fiction.

Steve and I dodged a bullet here, with Space, James A. Michener's novel tracing the history of the space program, coming in at #2. Two more conventional historical chunksters also made the list: John Jakes' North and South, the first in his trilogy of novels dealing with the Civil War and its aftermath; and Jean M. Auel's The Valley of Horses, second in her 'Earth's Children' series dealing with Cro-Magnon society.

The list offers dueling trashy novels in Sidney Sheldon's Master of the Game, a multigenerational novel about a warring business family; and Judith Krantz's Mistral's Daughter, set against the worlds of art and high fashion.

Robert Ludlum's The Parsifal Mosaic is a Cold War thriller about a mentally unstable Secretary of State whose actions threaten to provoke nuclear war. Ken Follett's The Man from St. Petersburg is set pre-WWI and deals with efforts to sabotage British-Russian negotiations.

Stephen King's Different Seasons is a collection of four novellas, more "straight" than horror (though certainly with some horror themes): this is the source of both Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption.

2010: Odyssey Two is Arthur C. Clarke's belated sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey, about a joint US-USSR space expedition to investigate the outcomes of the original mission.

1982's rather improbable best-seller, however - to which, again, Steve and I owe a debt of thanks - is William Kotzwinkle's E. T. The Extra-Terrestrial Storybook.

William Kotzwinkle was born in Scranton PA in 1938, and attended Rider College and Pennsylvania State University. During the 1960s he worked as an editor for a publishing house, but soon turned to writing fulltime, becoming a prolific author of short stories, novels and children's fiction, predominantly with fantasy and science-fiction themes.

Kotzwinkle received the National Magazine Award for fiction in both 1972 and 1975; in 1977, he won the World Fantasy Award for best novel, for Doctor Rat.

In 1981 Kotzwinkle was commissioned to novelise Melissa Matheson's screenplay for E. T. The Extra-Terrestrial: E. T. The Extra-Terrestrial: A Novel subsequently won the North Dakota Children's Choice Award in 1983, and the Buckeye Award in 1984.

In 1982, William Kotzwinkle turned his own novelisation into E. T. The Extra-Terrestrial Storybook, which became that year's best=selling book (!).

2022 #132

Publication date: 1982
Genre: Children's fiction
Read for: Best-seller challenge

E. T. The Extra-Terrestrial Storybook - Though it follows in outline Stephen Spielberg and Melissa Matheson's story of an alien botanist left behind on Earth, who is discovered and befriended by three siblings, this is a skewed and slightly peculiar rendering of it---with its emphasis frequently shifting away from the film's main headers. William Kotzwinkle based this short children's work on his own novelisation of Matheson's screenplay, and what he seems to have done here is focus on those parts of his novel where he expanded upon the thoughts and motivations of the characters, or linked the different sections of the narrative. Consequently there are gaps in the story and its timeline is uncertain; while the story's set-pieces are muted or incomplete. It is, in this respect, a strange children's book, because it doesn't always go where its young audience likely wanted it to---which is odd coming from an experienced children's author like Kotzwinkle.

    He pushed along through the grass, trying to become visible to the Ship, to put his heart-light in touch, but his long, ridiculous toes were entangled in some weeds that wouldn't let go. He yanked loose and pushed forward, into the outermost aura of shiplight, just at the edge of the grass. He spied the hatch, still open, and a crewmate standing in it, heart-light flashing, calling to him, desperately searching.
    I'm coming, I'm coming.
    He shuffled through the grass, but his hanging stomach, shaped by other degrees of gravity, slowed him, and a sudden group decision flooded him, a feeling that swept through his very bones.
    The hatch closed, petals folding inwards. The Ship lifted off as he burst from the grass, waving his long-fingered hand. But the Ship couldn't see him now. It hovered momentarily, then departed, spinning above the treetops.
    The creature stood on the grass, his heart-light flashing with fear.
    He was alone, three million light-years from home...

>224 lyzard: It is, in this respect, a strange children's book, because it doesn't always go where its young audience likely wanted it to

True that. Kotzwinkle is much more interested in Elliot's mother's internal life than Spielberg ever was -- which, in the novelization, is fair enough and kudos to Spielberg & Co for letting Kotzwinkle explore that. But I'd bet even Spielberg was more interested in that than the target audience. OTOH, I'd also bet that the target audience was mostly interested in the pictures.

And yes, thank goodness it was this and not Michener.

>225 swynn:

Interesting, but not entirely appropriate? Anyway, I thought Jedi was a much better simplification, as I shall get around to saying sooner or later. :)

BTW I picked up The Clan Of The Cave Bear today: about 500 pages but reasonably large font, so no Michener wannabe at least!

So yes, did a library run today.

The good news: secured a copy of The Mystery Of Swordfish Reef---Julia and I will be beginning our shared reads of Arthur Upfield's Bony books this month, whoo!

The bad news: the hard copy I found of Samuel Warren's Ten Thousand A Year, for the C. K. Shorter challenge, is one of those abominations* with tiny font and double columns, and even then it has 749 pages. It's huge; Michener huge!

(*Which I actually thought an exclusively American phenomenon, but this is a Blackwood edition of 1854.)

I love a paper book but I don't think I can't face this: hopefully I can find an ebook somewhere.

>227 lyzard: C K Shorter list—-wow. Not just books, but authors I have never heard of, mixed in with Austen and Victor Hugo. Wild. Where did it appear? Reminds me yet again how long it takes for the wheat to be sifted from the chaff.

>228 booksaplenty1949:

The word I like to use is 'idiosyncratic'. And at this point you probably won't be surprised to hear that it's the stuff I haven't heard of that appeals to me. :D

Shorter published his list in The Bookman in 1898 (that is where the first American best-seller lists came from too, around that time, so it might have been connected to that project). He was trying, I think, to cover as much literary ground as possible, though you can tell where his own bias enters into it too (he obviously had a liking for historical fiction).

He also restricted himself to one book per author, which opened up a lot of territory; and to me this makes his list superior, or at least a lot more interesting, than a competing Daily Telegraph list from around the same time, which basically just slapped together the complete works of the most obvious people and left it at that.

>223 lyzard: Interesting that Kotzwinkle grew up in Scranton as did Joe Biden. Also Robert Reich, Jay Parini, WS Merwin and former world pool champ Jim Rempe.

>230 PaulCranswick:

How'd you get to be such an expert on Scranton!? :D

2022 #133

Publication date: 1982
Genre: Non-fiction: books on books
Read for: Non-fiction reading / TIOLI (the numbers 1 and 3, or 2 and 5 in the ISBN)

Corrupt Relations: Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope, Collins, and the Victorian Sexual System - There seems to me to be an uncomfortable irony at the heart of this 1982 study of Victorian fiction, which supposedly came about because its co-authors, Richard Barickman, Susan MacDonald and Myra Stark, discovered they were working in "more or less the same area" and decided to collaborate. Perhaps---but the results have a distinctly masculine voice to them, with little sense of Richard Barickman's co-authors speaking for themselves; even as the text itself over-reaches in its praise of its four central subject authors for their criticisms of the Victorian sexual system, while dismissing the efforts of the era's female novelists, if not indeed accusing them of being part of the problem. Corrupt Relations is an intermittently interesting but unsatisfactory and occasionally exasperating examination of the novels of Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Anthony Trollope and Wilkie Collins, and the ways in which these authors examined the hypocrisy, corruption and double standards of the prevailing social and sexual mores---without, perhaps, sufficiently acknowledging the limits of those examinations, and where the four chose to retreat and/or sit back upon their own masculine privilege. Particularly frustrating is the text's attempts to argue that the authors' nastier or more patronising female stereotypes were intended as some kind of attack upon the system; and in this respect, I may say that I found the apologist reading of the Mrs Joe subplot in Great Expectations absolutely horrifying. The text is on firmer ground in its illustration of the warping effect of the system upon both sexes and its long-term consequences: for example, one of the book's more engaging sections deals with what it calls the "basic deformity" of all of Dickens' happy families, in spite of the "narrative glow" with which they are presented. While it deals in passing with other authors and numerous texts, Corrupt Relations focuses its analysis of Dickens upon Bleak House, Little Dorrit and Great Expectations; of Thackeray, upon Vanity Fair, Pendennis and Henry Esmond; of Trollope, upon Phineas Redux, Can You Forgive Her? and The Way We Live Now; and of Collins, upon The Woman In White, Armadale and No Name.

    When these four novelists turn to the predictable resolution through marriage, we do not sense a retreat from the possibility of an alternative world: we sense rather that they have struggled to find some sign of regeneration within the system and have failed. Their exposure of sexual corruption comes close to suggesting that the present system simply cannot satisfy human needs for creativity, growth, physical and emotional satisfaction, and some integration of personal desires with social roles. The infernal misery of Tom-all-Alone's, the despair that lies just under the tawdry bustle of Vanity Fair, the fraud and crime that spread to taint the most respectable characters in Phineas Redux and No Name---these are not thematic hyperboles but such inescapable consequences of the novels' social vision that a return to a domestic enclave is a tempting refuge. At the very best, these four novelists offer a melioration of traditional oppression that, in a way typical of the paradox, serves to mute the outrage against the whole system that the novels have generated.
    Amy Dorrit and Arthur Clennam, Rochester and Jane Eyre, Lydgate and Rosamund, Laura Fairlie and Walter Hartright, Alice Vavasor and John Grey , all the impaired couples who salvage some measure of personal contentment and humane relationship from the devastation of sexual relationships are absolutely typical of the Victorian novel. A more promising fulfillment (including perhaps some resolution of personal and social aspirations beyond the exchange of marriage vows) is lacking not because of a failure of the novelists' own imagination or will but because of a flaw in the whole culture's imagination. The women novelists can more easily frame an appeal for a radical change in their characters' or narrators' thoughts, but they often endorse a heroine's ultimate submissiveness to male-controlled values than do the creators of Mrs Joe, Glencora Palliser, Becky Sharp and Magdalen Vanstone...

November (2022) stats:

Works read: 12
TIOLI: 12, in 11 different challenges, with 1 shared read

Mystery / thriller: 5
Classic: 3
Contemporary drama: 1
Children's fiction: 1
Young adult: 1
Non-fiction: 1

Series works: 6
Re-reads: 1
Blog reads: 1
1932: 2
1931: 0
Virago / Persephone: 0
Potential decommission: 0

Owned: 0
Library: 5
Ebooks: 7

Male authors : female authors: 9 : 5

Oldest work: The Life And Adventures Of Valentine Vox, The Ventriloquist by Henry Cockton (1840)
Newest work: E. T. The Extra-Terrestrial Storybook by William Kotzwinkle (1982) / Corrupt Relations: Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope, Collins and the Victorian Sexual System by Richard Barickman, Susan MacDonald and Myra Stark (1982)

******

YTD stats:

Works read: 133
TIOLI: 133, in 119 different challenges, with 18 shared reads

Mystery / thriller: 68
Classic: 18
Young adult: 15
Contemporary drama: 8
Historical drama: 8
Non-fiction: 4
Children's fiction: 3
Historical romance: 2
Short story: 2
Humour: 2
Fantasy: 2
Horror: 1

Series works: 84
Re-reads: 14
Blog reads: 2
1932: 6
1931: 14
Virago / Persephone: 4
Potential decommission: 0

Owned: 5
Library: 52
Ebooks: 75
Borrowed: 1

Male authors : female authors: 92 : 47 (including 2 using a male pseudonym)

Oldest work: Incognita; or, Love And Duty Reconcil'd by William Congreve (1692)
Newest work: Divorce Turkish Style by Esmahan Aykol (2007)

"Is that...the finish line I can see over there!?"---

>232 lyzard: That sounds like an infuriating read. I probably would have chucked it across the room.

>235 MickyFine:

Well, I'm not a chucker, particularly not of library books, but there were definitely some Are-you-kidding-me-s going on. :D

Finished Taras Bulba for TIOLI #14.

Still reading Horizon by Robert Carse.

Wrapping up my November reviews seemed like the good place for a break, so please join me over at my new thread:

Part 2

>217 lyzard: That's a very nice wrap up of this one, Liz! I'm sure I've mentioned before it's one of my favorites so I won't belabor that point again. I will say that re-reading it this go-round (the umpteenth re-read at a guess) the casual racial slurs, from Archie and from the southern sheriff and DA, seemed especially jarring even though they are certainly period appropriate. Wolfe's big speech was a nice counterpoint to that.

By the way, the "college boy" Whipple appears much later in the corpus, so we have that to look forward to.

I do think for sheer comedy in the interactions between Wolfe and Archie, this is one of my favorites. Wolfe is such a big baby and Stout has finally found the right tone for Archie to skewer Nero with. The scenes on the train are especially amusing.

Also, now I want sausages ...

>227 lyzard: secured a copy of The Mystery Of Swordfish Reef---Julia and I will be beginning our shared reads of Arthur Upfield's Bony books this month, whoo!

Whoo, indeed!

>234 lyzard: SLOTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

At first I thought he was holding a banana. but those are his claws (!). He does appear about to chomp into a big ole tasty leaf, though.

>239 rosalita:

Yes, he'd got the tone right by this point. Regarding the racism, though, the foregrounding of Wolfe's attitude speaks for itself, but I'm a bit surprised that Archie hasn't been verbally corrected on that point, as he has on so many others. :)

>240 rosalita:

Whoo---but only if you're sure you're feeling up for it? I don't want you pushing it if you're still not feeling well, so just say if you'd rather wait.

>241 rosalita:

Those are his three toes. :D

>242 lyzard: I seem to recall that Wolfe reproved Archie in The League of Frightened Men for referring to Paul Chapin as a cripple or something similar, after having not reacting to Archie's racism toward Manuel Kimball in Fer-de-Lance. But that's the only time I can think of off-hand. Perhaps he thought Wolfe's speech would have more impact on contemporary readers if they were lulled into thinking the Archie and the others were endorsing those attitudes, only to be brought up short by Wolfe's acknowledgment of the waiters' humanity.

I'll be ready for another dose of Bony, for sure. He's a boon companion.

You'd think with such a distinctive feature they would incorporate that into the animal's name ... oh, wait. :-D

>243 rosalita:

Well, it's showing not telling and probably the better for it. It also occurs to me that we are privy to Archie's thoughts and it might not be a case of Wolfe not reacting but rather him not "hearing" what we are.

Excellent! I have a couple of...yike, possibly a few...chunksters to get through first but I will definitely be there this month! :)

:P

>244 lyzard: I had not considered the notion that most of the language from Archie is in his dialogue with us, not what he says out loud to Wolfe. That's an excellent point!