Challenge Complete: Noah's October 8 Challenge

About this time last year, Noah, Golden Age Detection (GAD) aficionado and participant in my Vintage Mystery Challenge, put together the October 8 Challenge. A fiendish Bingo-style reading challenge designed to encourage us to read, think about, and write about GAD fiction in new and exciting ways--as well as to compete for glory and prizes.  

Of course, I signed up and said that I would complete at least one Bingo. And then realized I was going to have to scour the rust off my essay-writing skills. Because writing a review for one book isn't the same as tackling these multi-book essays (and I hadn't done this sort of thing since college...). 

Once I got into the groove, I really enjoyed myself and I want to thank Noah for putting this together and pushing me to think beyond one book at a time.

Here's the Bingo card and links to my essays:

Square 4C: Written in the 1940s (11/18/14)
Square 3B: Just a Girl Detective [linked by a theme] (2/18/15)
Square 4B: Written in the 1930s (5/25/15) 
Square 2B: Trains & Murder in the Golden Age [location] (5/26/15)
Square 1B: The Detection Club [inter-related personal lives] (9/8/15) 

The Detection Club

About this time last year, Noah, Golden Age Detection (GAD) aficionado and one of my Vintage Mystery Challengers, put together a bingo-style GAD essay challenge of his own. For my fifth essay contribution (a square that asks us to link works by authors whose personal lives are inter-related), I plan to highlight authors who were all members of that most GAD of groups--the Detection Club. Martin Edwards has given us a most in-depth look at the Club in his recently published book The Golden Age of Murder and I'm quite sure that if I were to expound on the Club itself I would provide little that is new to anyone who has read his book or done research on the Club themselves.

Since last October, I have read books by such Club luminaries as Agatha Christie, Ronald A. Knox, Gwendoline Butler, Nicholas Blake (Cecil Day-Lewis), Michael Innes (J.I.M. Stewart), John Dickson Carr, E. C. R. Lorac (Edith Caroline Rivett), Patricia Moyes, Ruth Rendell, and Elizabeth Ferrars (Morna Doris McTaggart). For the purposes of this challenge, I am highlighting only those authors whose work I read was published during Noah's stipulated time period (through the 1950s). That narrows it down to Christie, Innes, Blake, Knox and Lorac.

Christie, of course is one of the most well-known detective novelists of all time and certainly one of the most recognized authors of the Golden Age. Even folks who claim no love for the mystery story tend to know who Agatha Christie is. She was one of the founding members of the Detection Club along with Ronald A. Knox (more on him later) and others and is recognized as one of the "Queens of Crime." Her reign over the detection field comes in part from her output--her career spanned over 50 years with her first mystery novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, published in 1920 and with a final book (Sleeping Murder) published posthumously in 1976. But she was also the queen of plot twists. She found more ways to use standard mystery plot devices than would seem to be possible and devised devious twists which has caused more than one critic to cry "Unfair!"
 
The works of Christie which I read over the past year included The Underdog and Other Stories (1951) and The Labors of Hercules (1947), two collections of short stories, as well her novel The A.B.C. Murders (1936). One thing that struck me about The Underdog collection was how much Christie was following the Holmesian short story model. All but one of the stories are told by Captain Hastings in the same narrative-journal format that Dr. Watson uses. And Poirot uses some Holmes dramatic flair to wrap up a few of the cases. He is much more active in tracking down clues (despite talking about the psychology and the little grey cells)...or at least giving the appearance of doing so. In "The Submarine Plans" he even devotes time to the search for footprints. Labors was a fun collection of stories and built very nicely upon the classical twelve labors conceit. The only unfortunate part is that in order to fulfill his tasks, Poirot has to travel a bit more than usual, but all things considered it is impressive how many of the stories did manage to stay close to home for our detective. The A.B.C. Murders was a "reread" for me (in quotes because I actually listened to an audio version of a BBC production). Christie provides for us her particular take on the serial killer. It was very interesting to listen to Christie work her magic and hear Poirot explain how he gets into the mind of the killer to discover who s/he is.

Michael Innes, the pen name for the Oxford don J.I.M. Stewart, wrote, as might be expected from an academic, mystery stories with a very literary bent--full of quotations and mischievous wit. Sometimes that wit can be a trifle obscure and fanciful and one needs to be prepared for the slightly off-the-wall plots and story lines in a few of the titles (The Open House comes to mind). In Bloody Murder, Julian Symons identified Innes as one of the "farceurs"—crime writers for whom the detective story was "an over-civilized joke with a frivolity which makes it a literary conversation piece with detection taking place on the side." If you like your mysteries with a bit of unusual humor, then Innes is definitely an author worth looking for.
 Lament for a Maker (1938) is often regarded as one of Innes's best books and has been praised as such by fellow mystery writers Nicholas Blake and Michael Gilbert. Unfortunately, I didn't find it as engaging. While I will agree that the mystery itself is quite nicely twisty and surprising, the journey he takes the reader on to get to that brilliant, twisty ending is a rather arduous one. The tale is told through the narratives of various characters--five in all, including his detective John Appleby--and wading through the Scots dialect of the opening narrative nearly put me off entirely. Definitely worth reading for the mystery itself, but not, to my mind, one of Innes' absolute best. I've rated Death at the President's Lodgings, The Weight of the Evidence, and The Long Farewell each higher. I did enjoy being fooled by the final twist and I found the narrative threads by Noel Gylby and Appleby to be the most entertaining.

Speaking of Nicholas Blake, that nom de plume served British poet and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom Cecil Day-Lewis for his detective novel career from 1935-1968. His work tends to reflect his poetic abilities--the best of his books have a lyrical quality that comes with terrific descriptions and language as well as good dialogue.  He sets up a pretty twisty plot as well. My favorites so far are The Morning After Death and A Question of Proof--which really should surprise no one who knows me since both of these have academic connections. This past year I read Head of a Traveller and The Smiler with the Knife. 

The first was one of the few disappointments I've read at the hands of Blake. Much as I generally love Blake's writing and plotting, the whole story just came across as a convoluted mess. Much more convoluted than necessary for the purposes of mystifying the reader--I didn't feel mystified. I felt frustrated with everything from the opener (Nigel Strangeways's journal entry--in first person present while the rest of the novel is in past tense) to the bizarre characterizations (a gibbering dwarf? seriously?). This one was quite simply not up to Blake's usual par--at least not for me. Others have rated it quite highly, so your mileage may vary. 

Smiler was a slight departure from the usual Blake fare. Instead of focusing on Strangeways, this novel gives us an enjoyable political thriller with a very resourceful heroine indeed--Nigel's wife Georgia. Georgia handles herself rather well among the hush-hush cloak and dagger types and uses great ingenuity to get herself out of some rather tight places. She dresses up as everything from Father Christmas to a Radiance Girl (a cross between an interpretative dancer and a New Age devotee) and is aided by adventurer-wannabes like the manager of a well-known department store and a plucky vicar's wife. There's a cross-country chase and Georgia manages a rather MacGyver-style escape. It's all great fun and a thrilling adventure all in the name of foiling the fascist bad guys. No great mysteries here, just a straight political thriller complete with evil master mind and henchmen. A topical story for the times which has held up very well.

Monsignor Ronald A. Knox in his religious capacity served as chaplain to Oxford--providing suitable Catholic lectures when C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien trod the hallowed halls--as well as translating the Latin Vulgate Bible into English using Hebrew and Greek sources. But in his spare time, he was a founding member of the Detection Club, penned the Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction which outlined basic principles that authors were supposed to follow in order to "play fair" with their readers, and authored six detective novels--five of which feature Miles Bredon. Bredon is an investigator who is often called upon by the Indescribable Insurance company to investigate suspicious circumstances connected with their insurance policies.

Double Cross Purposes is the last of the Bredon novels. It is a quite lovely Golden Age Detective story--in every sense of the word. It was written between the wars, it's fairly clued, and it has a nifty, intricate puzzle plot. What more could a GAD-lover want? It has disguises and maps and suspicious chauffeurs. It has a curse on the treasure and a missing key. There is minister who seems a tad too interested in the treasure hunt which lies at the center of the mystery and policemen who don't seem interested enough in dead bodies. The banter between Bredon and his wife is witty and I enjoyed their good-natured teasing of their schoolmaster friend. Poultney is every inch the pedant (who will tell you the origins of any word or phrase at the drop of a hat), but he is also an over-grown school boy just dying to play at sleuth hound with big kids. He is utterly delightful when he discovers a major clue and springs it upon Bredon. I had a great deal of fun with this one even though I guessed part (but not all!) of the solution.

 And, finally, E. C. R. Lorac. Edith Caroline Rivett wrote about eighty detective novels under two pen names--E.C.R. Lorac and Carol Carnac. Her primary detective under the Lorac name was Chief Inspector (and later Superintendent) Robert MacDonald, a London Scot who often is assisted by Detective Inspector Reeves among others.Her books are police procedurals, but they are no plodding affairs. There are generally plenty of clues and red herrings strewn about and GAD readers will definitely feel like the detective rules have been fairly played by. Lorac can be a bit difficult to find (especially if, like me, you like to discover your books "in the wild" of used books stores, rather than online), but I have been fortunate to find a handful. 

My most recent Lorac read was The Case of Colonel Marchand in which Macdonald is called upon when the Colonel is found dead in his well-appointed drawing room after he has entertained a beautiful young woman at an elaborate tea. I enjoyed this one immensely. Unfortunately, unless I provide you all with a huge spoiler, I can't tell you why I love this one so much. Let's just say that Lorac makes good use of a standard mystery trope and pulls it off with aplomb and fair play. She displays the clues for the reader and, really, as a long-time reader of Golden Age mysteries, I'm well enough acquainted with the customs of the times that I should have recognized the primary clues paraded under my nose. But I didn't--and that makes it all the more fun. I thoroughly enjoyed Macdonald's investigations into the amorous Colonel's life and the Inspector's interactions with various peripheral characters. Nicely plotted. A highly recommended entry in Lorac's mystery offerings.


The Detection Club has had and currently has among its members so many fine mystery writers. Of the over 150 writers who have been added to the roll since it was formed in 1930, I've had the great good fortune to read works by at least 80 of its members. There is enough variety in the styles and methods to satisfy just about any taste in detective fiction. If you enjoy a good mystery and haven't given the folks on the Club list a try, you have a treat in store.

This is my final offering in Noah's October 8 Challenge. With square B-1, I have finished my personal commitment to complete at least one Bingo before October 8.

Trains & Murder in the Golden Age

 

image from Dover edition of The Passenger from Scotland Yard

Trains often play an important in Golden Age mysteries. Murderers shove their victims from rail carriages or leave them behind after exiting themselves. Sometimes an alibi depends on a railway timetable. Of course, probably the most famous train murder mystery is the Christie classic, Murder on the Orient Express featuring a disparate group of passengers, including the great detective Hercule Poirot, all snow-bound on the luxurious train and trapped with murder in their midst. The train itself and the enclosed, almost locked-room nature of its snow-bound circumstances are central the plot and determining who had the opportunity to murder the malevolent American, Mr. Ratchett.

But the characters don't have to stay on the train for the entire course of the novel for it to be an important element. Like another Christie novel, 4:50 from Paddington (aka What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw), Josephine Bell's Bones in the Barrow relies on what a witness sees from his train window to set the wheels of justice in motion. Terry Byrnes is making his slow way to work aboard a train to London. Progress is slow because a crippling fog has made visibility near zero. For just a moment the fog clears as the train sits and waits and Byrnes stares out the window while he contemplates how angry his boss will be over his extreme lateness. He has an unimpeded view of a row of houses along the track. The scene that unfolds before him is like a murderous silent film.

....framed in his hole in the fog, all the dirty windows of the four or five houses were empty. At the next, he saw in one of them the distorted face and frantic figure of a woman. She was in a state of extreme terror; that was clear from her fixed staring eyes and desperate snatching fingers. She was trying to throw up the window....This in absolute silence, as far as Terry was concerned, the window being shut, and the fog all round, still and deep....For a few seconds the woman fought the window. Then Terry saw a dark shape behind her in the unlighted room. She turned her head, her mouth opening in a scream as she did so. A hand struck, and she toppled forward....

By the time he understands what he's seeing, the fog closes in and the train starts moving. There's no time to make any of his fellow passengers see what he's seen. Already very late and reluctant to look foolish before the authorities, Byrnes doesn't report the incident until much later that evening. Chief Inspector Johnson is the only one who takes him seriously, but even he has difficulty finding evidence of any foul play. A number of other suspicious incidents will have to be reported before the event can be properly investigated and solved--but Johnson always comes back to that first report of violence witnessed from a train window.

Shroud of Darkness by E. C. R. Lorac also begins with a train ride through one of the worst fogs that England, and particularly London, has seen in "half a century." Riding in the same train car we have an upset young man, a psychiatrist's secretary, a large female writer with a deep voice, a businessman who looks very stockbrokerish, and an "eel-like," unsavoury young man who looks a bit like a racing tout. At journey's end the agitated young man is left for dead in the black, "monster of a fog" and the police have one monster of a mystery on their hands. After being beaten sensless, the victim's pockets are rifled and his haversack stolen and the police find themselves faced with a nameless injured man on an evening of near solid blackout when nobody could be expected to notice anybody or anything. 

Once again, the police have to start with very little information beyond what the victim's fellow-travelers can tell them. Fortunately, the secretary and the businessman both prove to be excellent witnesses and Inspector MacDonald identifies the young man fairly quickly as Richard Greville. But discovering who he is doesn't answer all the questions and MacDonald still needs to find out what about that train journey resulted in the attack on the man. Did Greville recognize someone from his past? Or did something else happen? There are other clues to follow, but MacDonald keeps that train journey in mind throughout the book.

As might be suspected by the title, a train trip also plays an important part in Night Train to Paris by Manning Coles. Edward Logan is a stuffy, predictable, highly respectable businessman who just happens to get himself mixed up with secret plans and Russian spies and is killed when he tries to keep out their way by planning an unexpected trip to his brother Laurence in Paris.


Laurence is baffled by the odd request. Every time his brother has visited, it has been arranged long in advance, down to the last detail. His brother never does anything on the spur of the moment. Edward is very mysterious and will only tell him that it's a matter of life and death and that all will be explained when he sees Laurence. Laurence's bewilderment increases when he arrives at the station late to find an almost empty train and no sign of his brother. He heads to Edward's compartment and finds his luggage, passport, tickets, and hotel reservations laid out for custom inspection but Edward has vanished without a trace! Before he can decide what to do, the conductor comes and addresses him as Mr. Edward Logan. 

Laurence spends the rest of the book masquerading as his brother and trying to determine what happened before and during that fateful train journey. We know--because we watched Edward from the entrance of the Russian spies to his last moments on the train--but it is still highly entertaining to watch Laurence puzzle things out and, assisted by Britain's master spy Tommy Hambledon, outwit the Russians in the end. Given the reader's knowledge, the focus of this book on the train journey is slightly different from those previously highlighted. In Night Train, the reader isn't trying to figure out what happened to whom (along with the detective), but are waiting to see what Laurence and Tommy must do to solve Edward's disappearance and how soon they will figure it out.

This is my fourth offering in Noah's October 8 Challenge. Noah is a Golden Age Detection (GAD) aficionado and one of my Vintage Mystery Challengers and he's put together a Bingo-style Golden Age mystery essay challenge of his own. It's beginning to look like I just might get that Bingo after all...one more square to go!

  

1930s Detective Fiction: October 8 Challenge Square #3

Here comes a third entry in my friend Noah's October 8 Challenge. Noah is a Golden Age Detection (GAD) aficionado and one of my Vintage Mystery Challengers and he's put together a Bingo-style Golden Age mystery essay challenge of his own. I'm still not entirely sure that I'm going to meet my goal of one Bingo. Especially since it looks like I'm hopping around the board rather than making a straight line. But...it is looking a bit more promising. AND Noah has dangled a possible prize in front of me that makes me all the more eager to fill in more squares.

Today's entry is a round-up of detective fiction from the 1930s. So far this year, I've read five novels from that decade: The Case of the Painted Girl by Frank King (1931); The Case of Colonel Marchand by E. C. R. Lorac (1933); The Murder of Sir Edmund by John Dickson Carr (1936); Brighton Rock by Graham Greene (1938) and The Smiler with the Knife by Nicholas Blake (1939). And what these books tell me is that there definitely wasn't just one kind of detective novel to be had at this time.

The Case of the Painted Girl and The Smiler with Knife are the two most closely related. Each of these novels are very thriller-esque and have a bit of the old serials that used to play at the theaters before the feature film. Just when you think the heroes in the the first
have discovered an answer and are getting close to capturing the criminals, up pops another little mystery and they're off on another adventure. And just when you think the heroine in the second has escaped the bad guys once and for all, up they pop again to give chase. Both novels are great fun and require little detective work on the part of the reader. All that's necessary is a sense of adventure and a willingness to sit back and enjoy the ride.
 
The Case of Colonel Marchand is novel in the classic mystery tradition. Lorac (aka Edith Caroline Rivett) makes good use of a standard mystery trope and pulls it off with aplomb and fair play. She displays the clues for the reader and, really, as a long-time reader of Golden Age mysteries, I'm well enough acquainted with the customs of the times that I should have recognized the primary clues paraded under my nose. But I didn't--and that makes it all the more fun. It is a nicely plotted, fairly clued, highly recommended entry in Lorac's mystery offerings.

The last two novels are definitely something a little different. Brighton Rock has a definite edge--no comfy village mystery, no quirky amateur detective, no adventurous cloak and dagger spy thriller. It is obvious why it is a classic in the field. It provides terrific snapshot of the pop culture of the day and shows the reader the wicked underbelly of Brighton and the racetrack nearby. But an enjoyable book it is not. It is bleak and there are few appealing characters. Even Ida, whom we feel that we must root for, is a bit frightening in her single-minded quest. Yes, we do want to see Hale's killer brought to justice, but the advancement of justice is such an unrelenting process. By the end of the book, I felt ground down by the weight of Ida's quest and burdened with Pinkie's guilt and horrible treatment of everyone he comes in contact with--from his gang members to Rose, the girl who loves him. It is novel that crime aficionados really should read to understand its place in history of the genre, but it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea.

And Carr's The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey is an early example of that field which has lately grown to have a wide following and numerous practitioners--the historical mystery. In Carr's case, the work is heavy on history and not quite as fictionalized as most modern historical mysteries. The book tells the very real story of the murder of a high-profile, well-known London magistrate named Sir Edmund Godrey in 1678. Carr examines the historical evidence and the theories of various historians and other interested parties to weave a fictionalized account of the crime. It is a superbly researched book and he not only gives us what he believes to be the solution to the ultimate questions--Who killed Sir Edmund Godfrey and Why--but he also supplies the reader with eleven other possible solutions complete with historical details that might lead one to at least consider them if not actually believe them. The historical detail accurately brings to life a bawdy, brutal time period full of plots and counter-plots.

So, no matter what kind of detective novel you like--adventure, thriller, classic detective puzzle, historical...or a peek at the realistic (for me, that reads as "bleak") novels yet to come--the thirties would seem to have you covered. And, of course, there are other varieties that I haven't even touched this year.
 

Just a Girl Detective: October 8 Challenge Square #2

I'm back again for another entry in my friend Noah's October 8 Challenge. Noah is a Golden Age Detection (GAD) aficionado and one of my Vintage Mystery Challengers and he's put together a Bingo-style Golden Age mystery essay challenge of his own. I'm not entirely sure that I'm going to meet my goal of one Bingo. Especially since it looks like I'm hopping around the board rather than making a straight line. But...I'm still going to give it my best shot.

Today's entry is a little essay on Girl Detectives to fulfill B3 (linked by a theme). My first acquaintance with the girl detective genre came, as I'm sure it did for many girls, with Nancy Drew when my mom passed her set of six Nancy books on to me. She was, in fact, my introduction to mysteries.  More than than that Nancy and her blue roadster stood for adventures.  My parents have always supported me no matter what.  They believe I can do anything I want--and made me believe it too and taught me that it never mattered that I was a girl.  Nancy was my first reinforcement of that idea in book-from.  She began her adventures in 1930 and was independent and self-sufficient from the beginning. She was supported by a loving and interested father who had taught her to take care of herself.  When Nancy has a flat tire while out detecting in her roadster, she doesn't have to wait for some strong man to come along and change it for her. She sets to work on it herself.

And she's prepared for the dangers of detective work as well. When Nancy first indicates that she wants to try and track down the missing will in The Secret of the Old Clock, Carson Drew doesn't tell her the job is too difficult or too dangerous for a girl.  He just tells her: "Detective work isn't always the safest occupation in which to engage. I happen to know that Richard Topham is an unpleasant man when crossed. If you actually succeed in learning anything which may help the Horner girls, you are certain to have the Tophams in your wool." He warns her of the dangers....but he doesn't warn her off. Throughout the series Nancy finds herself in tight spots and manages to work her way out of them.
 
Nancy was my mainstay in detective fiction for a long time. She was always on my Christmas wish list and I regularly spent my hard-earned allowance at the local used bookstore on editions of her stories that I didn't yet have. I worked my way through all 56 of the hardbacks and a few of the soft cover stories before leaving her behind for Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie. But Nancy wasn't the only girl detective on my list.

Trixie Belden, whose first book was published in 1948, was in some ways a more realistic character for a middle-class girl to relate to. I might have wanted to be Nancy with her roadster and the ability to travel just about anywhere at the drop of a hat, but it was far easier to see myself as Trixie--the tomboyish girl with a quick temper. Nancy is well-to-do and has a wealthy father to support her in all the travels she does--from ski lodges to Hawaii to Scotland to the jungles of Africa. Trixie has to work hard at her chores to earn spending money and is often struggling with her schoolwork. Her trips are usually to visit family. She seems to face more of the ups and downs of teenage life than Nancy does--everything from squabbles with her brothers to dealing with her own insecurities. But the one thing she does share with Nancy is her knack for solving mysteries.  

Trixie and Nancy were my girls growing up. Nancy was my ideal and Trixie represented a more realistic view of what I might be able to do if I wanted to set up a girl detective business of my own. But I abandoned them once I got started on Holmes and Poirot and Miss Marple and others. Then, just a few years ago, I found a first edition Judy Bolton story in an antique shop--and, on a whim, I bought The Voice in the Suitcase. That story reminded me of my early love for the girl detectives and I've been susceptible to picking up a few every now and then in recent trips to used book stores...including a second Judy Bolton story The Name on the Bracelet.

Created by Margaret Sutton in 1932, the Judy Bolton series seems at first glance to be very like Nancy Drew. Judy's dad is a doctor and Judy still has her mom and an older brother thrown in the mix. Her family is fairly well-to-do as Nancy's is. But for those who may think Nancy a bit too privileged (rich dad who let her go on all sorts of trips to ski lodges and what-not; her own little roadster; etc), Judy is a bit more down-to-earth. She is employed as a secretary to a local lawyer and has thoughts of marriage and a family--and, unlike most of her fellow girl detectives, actually does marry about half-way through the series. 

Another recent acquisition was Dorothy Dixon and the Double Cousin (1933). Dorothy is a lot like Nancy...but even more so, if that were possible. She's just your typical girl sleuth--you know, the kind of girl who can fly planes, pilot motor boats, throw a knife with deadly accuracy, and take the place of an almost-identical twin cousin at the drop of a hat (without ever having met the cousin before and, therefore, without having the first clue how said cousin behaves in day-to-day situations). Dorothy is a mere sixteen years old, but by the time Dorothy Dixon and the Double Cousin takes place, she already has three mysteries under her belt and the local Secret Service agent trusts her enough to take her into his confidence over top secret plans for a super spiffy, super dangerous formula for a brand new explosive. Much adventurous hi-jinks ensue and it all ends well...as readers of these Girl Super Sleuth adventures know it will.

That's one of the good things about these mysteries. Dorothy (or Nancy or Trixie or Judy....) always gets her man--or woman as the case may be. Good triumphs and the criminal is always caught. The clues all come together and it makes for a nice happy wrap-up. They make for very comfortable, feel-good reading...especially for those of us looking for a nice nostalgic trip down memory lane.

October 8 Challenge: Square One

As I mentioned back in October, my friend Noah, Golden Age Detection (GAD) aficionado and participant in my Vintage Mystery Challenge, has put together the October 8 Challenge. A Bingo-style Golden Age mystery essay challenge, to be exact. My goal, overall, is to complete one Bingo and to fill in at least one square in 2014. Now, I have to say, I'm not quite the mystery scholar that some of my fellow-GAD folks are--but I'm out to do my best. 

For my first effort I present a little examination of three books published in 1946--brought to my attention by Rich's monthly book-of-the-year challenge (November is 1946). They came to me all nicely bound together in a well-preserved Detective Book Club Edition. How much more convenient could you get? The leading story is The D.A. Breaks a Seal by Erle Stanley Gardner and it represents my first experience with Gardner's series featuring Doug Selby who serves through most of the series as the District Attorney in fictional Madison City, California. Seal is the seventh in this nine-book series and, apparently, is the odd-book out--covering Selby's only adventure during the period in which he served in the military as an intelligence officer during World War II. 

The story finds Selby on a week's furlough before heading back to the war in the Pacific. He decides to stop in Madison City to visit with old friends--Sheriff Rex Brandon, reporter Sylvia Martin, and fellow-lawyer Inez Stapleton--and immediately finds himself drawn into mysterious circumstances surrounding a contested will, people wearing white gardenias, and the murder of an unscrupulous lawyer. He plays a few spectacular hunches and manages to help Brandon arrest a killer, Stapleton win a court battle, and give Martin the inside scoop on a the story behind it all.

The D.A. Breaks a Seal was first published in 1946, but obviously covers some time earlier because Major Selby is headed off somewhere unnamed in the Pacific to, as his friend Brandon tells him at the end of the novel, "Clean up the Japs." So the war isn't quite over for Selby. There is also mention of difficulties for anyone wanting to travel purely for pleasure--a point of interest when Selby is investigating one of the gardenia-wearers and how she managed to travel by train to Madison City. Of course references to mass train travel and Pullman cars also give a hint to the time period, but overall the story has a rather timeless feel to it. You know you're reading about early- to mid-twentieth century, but beyond the few mentions of Selby's military service, there isn't much to nail it down tighter than that. And the war doesn't really overshadow the story in any way.

Next in the line-up is Murder Within Murder, one of Frances and Richard Lockridge's light, comic mysteries featuring Pam & Jerry North. In this one, Miss Amelia Gipson (note that's with a "p" and not a "b"--she'd have you know), a retired instructor from girl's college in Indiana, is doing a bit of research for North Books. Her current project is to track down info on several murder cases of the near-past (near to 1946, that is) to provide facts for the authors who will write the cases up for an up-coming North publication.  She winds up poisoned while sitting in the New York Public Library, hard at work on her note-taking. Pam and Jerry naturally have to help Lieutenant Bill Weigand and Sergeant Mullins get to the bottom of things.

The Lockridge book makes it clear that the war is over. Our first look at Jerry North is at home reading a manuscript about the post-war world and he realizes that he's hearing a buzzing sound:

"It must be admitted," the manuscript said, "that in the post-war world we face an increasing agglomeration of--" Clearly, Jerry North decided, it was the manuscript. The post-war world was buzzing at him. Its shining machinery, made to a large degree out of plastic was whirring at unimagined tasks, turning out things made largely of glass. Whatever the post-war world might finally be, it would inevitably also be a buzzing in the ears.

Of course, there really isn't any post-war machinery whirring away in his living room. He looks up to find his wife sitting on the sofa, earnestly trying to beat cream into butter with an egg beater. Just one sign of the post-war world they live in--Pam has already used up her ration points for butter and has decided to make her own. This book is a very good snapshot of New York City at the end of World War II.  There is mention of the difficulties of post-war housing when the subject of how rigid Miss Gipson had been about her apartment comes up. "The manager...said Miss Gipson wanted them to fire the maid. He pointed out that it would have been much easier to replace Miss Gipson; there was a suggestion that he had tactfully, conveyed this fact of post-war housing to her." There is also discussion of what life was like for the soldiers returning from the war. Even Deputy Chief Inspector O'Malley shows the influence of the war in his fondness for the use of snafu in reference to the Norths participation in Weigand's police work. "...the trouble with you, Weigand, is that you let the Norths ball things up. Here you've got a nice simple suicide and you let the Norths ball you up. Snafu!"


The final book in this collection is Hilda Lawrence's The Pavilion. Which features 20-something Regan Carr in a Southern Gothic mystery. When Regan's mother dies, she receives a letter from her cousin Hurst Herald inviting her to come live with him. She last saw him when she was six years old. But she arrives at Herald House, battered suitcase in hand, to find that Cousin Hurst just passed away--yesterday. Her welcome committee isn't very warm and she needs to find a few friends...for it seems like every Herald family member who comes home to the house dies.
 
Lawrence's book is the least tied to its time period. There is no mention of the war. The only possible reference might be found in a conversation with the old family doctor when he mentions the use of gasoline that brought Regan and her cousin Fray to visit him. But that's it. Otherwise, with the number of servants and the atmosphere in the house, this could just as easily be a Mary Roberts Rinehart book set well before World War II or a Christie country house mystery from between the wars. There is the eccentric group of family members and nervous servants, the feeling of oppression and lurking evil in the house, and the gradual clues that Regan and Fray find in Hurst Herald's papers that seem to indicate that someone just a little bit crazy is knocking off the family one-by-one. Quite the little period piece without being tied to a particular period.

Attention Vintage Mystery Fans: The October 8 Challenge

Noah, Golden Age Detection (GAD) aficionado and participant in my Vintage Mystery Challenge, has been bitten by the challenge-sponsor bug. In honor of his and a friend's birthday, he has put together the October 8 Challenge. A fiendish Bingo-style reading challenge designed to encourage us to read, think about, and write about GAD fiction in new and exciting ways--as well as to compete for glory and prizes.  I'm in! I'm going to commit to one Bingo by next October and at least one essay by the end of the year to claim it for my 2014 challenges. Please join us. Click on the link for Noah's full post and to let him know you'd like to play along.

Here are the basic rules:

The challenge will run from October 8, 2014 to October 8, 2015. He will keep track of any essay submitted as an entry in this challenge and will collect them at his blog.

On October 8, 2015, He’ll be asking all interested parties (contributors and my readers) to select essays that they feel were best. The three participants who receive the most applause will each receive a small token of his esteem; a collectible paperback from his large collection.

You can create a line of four squares horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. The idea of a “Bingo” was selected to stimulate you to get some work done, not to make you write something in which you’re relatively uninterested; He’d rather see one great essay than four ordinary ones. The other criteria:

• Each group of books must represent the work of at least two different authors.
• Each group of books must contain at least three volumes.
• Volumes of collected shorter stories are welcome as long as all the stories fit the selected criterion.
• Ambiguous words like “theme” or “location” are meant to be interpreted generously.
• The books you select should, generally speaking, have been published before 1950. Please don’t misuse the privilege, but if a book written after 1950 directly relates to your chosen theme, feel free to include it as part of the group. The primary focus should still be upon GAD books and authors. (I expect that A-1, about a single series character with multiple authors, will almost always include books written after 1950.)

And the Bingo card:

Square 4C: Written in the 1940s (11/18/14)
Square 3B: Just a Girl Detective [linked by a theme] (2/18/15)
Square 4B: Written in the 1930s (5/25/15) 
Square 2B: Trains & Murder in the Golden Age [location] (5/26/15)
Square 1B: The Detection Club [inter-related personal lives] (9/8/15)