Ghosts of Society, by E. Phillips Oppenheim

 

9798886011203

Stark House Press, 2024

originally published 1908

235 pp

paperback

Ghosts of Society was originally published as The Distributors in 1908, coming at number thirty-two in author E. Phillips Oppenheim's (1866 - 1946) published novels, the first having been published in 1887.   He was incredibly prolific in his writing, publishing well over one hundred novels during his lifetime, along with several collections of short stories, a few autobiographical works, and as Daniel Paul Morrison notes in his extremely informative appendix at the end of this novel, "45 motion pictures."   Five of his novels, including this one, were written under the pseudonym of Anthony Partridge.  Ghosts of Society is my first novel by Oppenheim; I have a few more of his books on my shelves so it will very likely not be the last.  I had fun with this one, for sure.

The "Ghosts" are a group of seven people who are all welcomed within the higher rungs of London  society, right around the turn of the century.    Their leader is Lord Evelyn, but all decisions are made by consensus among the members.  In his introduction to this novel, Curtis Evans notes that they were a "fashionable set of Londoners,"  which 

"the postwar, Roaring Twenties generation would call denizens of "cafe society, and today in the democratic social media era we simply term influencers."

The "essential qualifications," as explained by one of their number to the young American woman Sophy Van Heldt are "birth, culture, and understanding," and "an earnest desire to acquire some interest in life apart from the purely mundane."    A more in-depth glimpse into the Ghosts is offered by another member much later in the story, who describes the group as people who 

"had gone at life with too much of a rush. Life, you know ... is made up of many chambers and a man or a woman cannot live in all of them. These people made the mistake of trying to do this. They rushed from room to room. They drank great gulps where they should have only sipped. They plunged head-foremost where they should have only paddled. Then, when they were still young, weariness came. They had tried everything. They were foolish enough to suppose that they had given everything a fair trial."

 Everyone knows that it is "considered a kind of bad form" to ask about them, and when Sophy makes the mistake of asking a certain Mr. Mallison directly about the group (not knowing that he is a member),  she is given a fairly firm and very rude snub, one she does not take kindly.  She makes up her mind that Mallison and "some of the others should suffer for it," which leads her to hire a private detective to get anything and everything he can find on the Ghosts.  What no one knows except the group (and their fence) is that when the Ghosts 

"come across a person whom we consider overburdened with this world's goods, and who shows no desire or design of doing anything else except spending his money upon himself and for his own gratification, we use our courage and our brains to make a pay a very legitimate fine."

In other words, they rob the wealthy of their jewels, using the proceeds of the sales to fund causes that benefit the poor, all anonymously of course.  In this story, one of their "victims" is a known tyrant in his own country, while the other two are more or less arriviste, all of whom have the wealth that allows them access to the company and house parties of Society.   The detective hired by Sophy just might turn out to be an issue, especially when things go very, very wrong during one such robbery. There are other forces at work as well among various individual members that may potentially threaten the group as a whole and certainly add uncertainty to the Ghosts' future. 

There is, of course, much more to this story. I found myself completely drawn to the whole  fin-de-siècle feel and the social observations of that particular era as expressed by the author, especially in terms of bored aristos craving change from what they see as their rather tedious, boring lives, and the desire to experience new sensations outside of the ordinary.   The plot is also pretty good, with the suspense slowly building as Sophy's detective moves closer to fulfilling his mission -- the last few pages are definitely page turners.  

My thanks to Stark House for my copy!  

*The Blotting Book, by E.F. Benson

0701207639
Hogarth, 1987
originally published 1908
255 pp

paperback

It generally takes me a couple of weeks to recover from October's dark-read fest, but I'm back again, with a novel from 1908, The Blotting Book by E.F. Benson.   I had planned to read this book quite some time ago but, as often happens here at casa mia, it arrived, I shelved it, and promptly lost it.  I found it again mid-October while going through my horror/supernatural books  (which live in a different room from British crime)  and had to laugh at myself --  I'm a huge fan of the author's ghost stories, so evidently my mind said "E.F. Benson. Upstairs" and I shelved it next to the other books I have written by him. I would guess that most readers of British fiction are familiar with E.F. Benson as the author of Mapp and Lucia; anyone who is a serious reader of ghost stories would also know the name.  The fact that he wrote a mystery novel or two was news to me; I had no absolutely no idea until I read Martin Edwards' The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books.  There he was, with The Blotting Book sitting between  Horniman's Israel Rank and Chesterton's The Innocence of Father Brown.  [As a completely unrelated sidebar, I'll be following Edwards' book as a guide for mystery/crime reading all of next year, title by title; I've read quite a few of these so it probably won't be all 100.]    This edition is part of Hogarth's Gaslight Crime series; I have quite of few of these little gems sitting in my British reading room, including another one by this author called The Luck of the Vails.   It's also available online at Project Gutenberg, and there are a few versions available for Kindle. 

Benson opens this story at a house in Sussex Square, Brighton, the home of a Mrs. Assheton.  She had lived there all alone until her son Morris came home from Cambridge.  It is a well-ordered, upper-class home in which everything is done to perfection.  For guests, it stands as "an example of perfect comfort," run precisely as it was before her husband's death some twenty years earlier.   Twenty-one year old Morris is Mrs. Assheton's only heir, and by the terms of his father's will,  Morris will gain his majority and thereby come into "complete control and possession" of  his fortune if he waits until he is twenty-two to marry with Mrs. Assheton's consent; failing that, he will regain  minor status until he is twenty-five. The thirty-thousand pounds that his father had left him is under the trusteeship of the family attorneys Taynton and Mills, who, as Mr. Taynton assures Morris one evening at a small gathering, have carefully invested on his behalf, so that ten thousand more pounds have been added to his portion of the inheritance.  Since the money would fall under Morris' control should Morris marry, Taynton invites Morris to take a look at the books pertaining to his account in their "stewardship," an offer that Morris declines.  As to the question of marriage, Morris most definitely has someone in mind, the other guest at the house that evening, a Miss Madge Templeton.   What Morris doesn't know, though, is that someone has gone to Madge's father and filled his head with some pretty ugly things to the point where Madge has suddenly been forbidden to see Morris in their usual way.    For reasons I won't reveal, Morris probably should have taken an interest in his accounts; he should have also listened to Taynton when he said that "we lawyers and solicitors are always supposed to be sharks..." since what is revealed that very same night at a meeting of the two attorneys reveals some very sharklike behavior, and also acts as a catalyst for everything that's going to follow, none the least of which is murder.

from Biblio.com

As Edwards notes in his book, this is a slowly-unfolding story, one that reflects "the unhurried nature of life among the well-to-do in Edwardian Britain."  (21)  It is also a novel that limits the number of possible suspects to the point where as it gets closer to the end, it becomes rather easy to guess the "who" since basically we start running out of people who could possibly be guilty.  Before that, however, Benson drops every sort of imaginable clue as well as a dream sequence that had the armchair detective in me second guessing myself for a while.    Interestingly, unlike many of the books published at the time, there is no detective figure -- the investigation as such was handled by a Superintendent Figgis, who makes an appearance here and there, and is described by Benson as

"in manner, slow, stout, and bored, and looked in every way utterly unfitted to find clues to the least mysterious occurrences, unearth crime or run down the criminal"

and "an incompetent agent of justice." 

While it may not be the most exciting mystery of its day, I stayed engrossed throughout wondering how things would turn out, largely due to Benson's writing because he delves into the inner workings of the main characters, especially that of the criminal.  In this sense, Benson's done a top-notch job despite the fact that the mystery is just too easy to figure out, especially for seasoned crime readers.   I can see that many modern readers could easily grow bored with this book, but anyone into vintage crime and mysteries really at least ought to give it a try.  And now that I've moved it downstairs where it belongs, it is a very welcome addition to my library of British mystery fiction.

According to the Evidence, by Hugh Pendexter

9781884449345
Black Dog Books, 2013
stories originally serialized 1906-1914
281 pp

paperback

Continuing my look at crime fiction and mysteries just up to the end of World War I, today's book is a collection of short stories by pulp author Hugh Pendexter, whose historical fiction is legendary.  Before I go on, I have to take my hat off to the blogger at Pulpflakes, who found way more than I did about this author.

According to the Evidence is a compilation of tales about a law firm known as The Bureau of Abnormal Litigation.  As author Jeremiah Healy writes in his introduction, these stories serve as a "window into our legal fiction of the early twentieth century."  The Bureau, which is often "called upon as a last resort in many peculiar cases,"  is headed by a certain Ezra Stackpole Butterworth, who sees himself as a

 "foolish, benevolent old man, who tries to help stupid humanity out of trouble." 

He has "mastered the peculiar happenings of life," and will only accept cases which are "abnormal," having always been

 "attracted to the unusual phases of life, called abnormal because so little observed."

When he first came to the law as a profession, he noticed

"many instances where the exact truth would have saved a case, but was ignored because of a fear it might not be believed, or because it impressed counsel as being trivial,"  

leading the Bureau to often refuse retainers in the "absence of any unique ingredient."   Butterworth's  fame has spread to the point that when reporters discover that he's going to be taking on a particular case, it is "sufficient to set the press-table to buzzing," while leaving the DA to wonder about "the inevitable surprise" that's sure to come.   Butterworth is not a detective, but he's sharp as a tack and doesn't miss a trick. He has an assistant, Jethuel who he often puts to work as a sort of private investigator, and another member of the firm who was invited to join the  Bureau to "look after the criminal branch" of the business.

Throughout the course of the thirteen cases the Bureau tackles in this book, circumstances are indeed a bit strange.  In "The Death Cup," for example, there's the statement of the maid who swears she she saw "one or more eyes" staring at her as she stumbles upon a dead body; in "According to the Evidence" (one of my favorites in this book),  an alienist's testimony as to the sanity of his client is called into question as he is forced under oath to relate his own strange visions, and in "Circumstantial Evidence," a pianist dies of a gunshot wound while alone in his apartment.    The shorter stories are fun, but the centerpiece in this book is definitely the novella-length "The Crimson Tracks," which not only has an entertaining mystery involving a strange manuscript, red footprints that come and go, and some pretty quirky characters, but also, given the time, a most ingenious solution to this bizarre case that I never saw coming.

the first appearance of Pendexter's "The Chelsea Vase," in Adventure (Vol. 8 #3, July, 1914) from The General Fiction Magazine Index

Pendexter's stories filled pages and pages of pulp magazines over the years, and luckily the good folks at Black Dog Books have taken the time to put some of these stories into collections like The Bureau of Abnormal Litigation, and  I have another anthology of Pendexter crime tales sitting on my shelves, The Voice of the Night, the stories of Jefferson Fanchon, "Inquirer"  in which Pendexter pits his crime solver against  an evil crime genius plaguing New York.

Bottom line: this book is a fun example of early pulpy crime fiction that would probably appeal to readers who are really into this sort of thing as well as readers of vintage crime who haven't yet discovered Pendexter.    Despite the title there's nothing supernatural about these tales -- just good old fashioned crime solving with a fun premise and a few curveballs thrown in to a) make the cases interesting and b) make the reader chuckle every now and then. I can see that it might get a bit tedious at times for readers of modern crime, but it's solidly right up my pulp-reading, fiction comfort-food alley.

*Scientific detectives of yesteryear

"There is a distinct place for science in the detection of crime."

                                                        -- Craig Kennedy, Scientific Detective 243

The name John Thorndyke should be well known by avid crime/mystery fiction fans, but what about Luther Trant or Craig Kennedy?  What they have in common is that all three use science in some fashion to solve various mysteries,  Thorndyke in England and  Trant and Kennedy in America.

9780755103744
House of Stratus, 2001
originally published 1907
214 pp
paperback

 R. Austin Freeman's The Red Thumb Mark is the first of twenty one full-length novels to feature Dr. John Thorndyke; there are also a number of short story collections in which he does his scientific magic.  Freeman noted in the introduction to his 1909 Dr. Thorndyke's Cases that his stories have, "for the most part, a medico-legal motive,"  and that the methodology used in solving them is similar to what is "employed in actual practice by medical jurists."   According to Mike Grost, whose A Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection is one of my go-to places online and  visited quite often when I am looking for books to read, Freeman was the "founder" of the "school of detectival realism." In that same introduction to Dr. Thorndyke's Cases, Freeman goes on to say that "the experiments described have in all cases been performed by me," so obviously this is a man whose feet were firmly on the ground sciencewise and someone who knew what he was talking about.  

The case of The Red Thumb Mark centers around the theft of a parcel of diamonds ("stones of exceptional size and value"  from the safe belonging to a Mr. John Hornby.  Whoever stole them seems to have either cut or scratched his thumb in the process, leaving "two drops of blood" at the bottom of the safe.  Along with a couple of "bloody smears" left on a paper, there was also a "remarkably clear imprint" of a bloody thumb mark.  Hornby's nephew Reuben has been blamed for the crime. Unfortunately for him, he'd earlier provided his aunt with a thumbprint for her Thumbograph (sort of like an autograph book using thumbprints) which matched the print from the safe. Fortunately, while his lawyer advises him to "plead guilty and throw himself on the mercy of the court..." since there was no possible way for a defense case to stand up against the evidence, Reuben swears that he is innocent, and Dr. Thorndyke agrees to take the case. 

I wish I had a lot of time to reflect on what's in this book aside from the mystery at hand and Thorndyke's scientific work. I'll just buzz through a few things here -- Thorndyke's views on the presumption of an accused man's innocence, the problem of  "hooligans" on the streets of London, and criticism of the Edwardian judicial system. Reader beware: the solution is easy to figure out, but that's okay -- there's plenty of other things going on this book that completely make it a worthwhile read. 

Moving on, we come to one of our own American crime solvers, Luther Trant. 

9781332612697
Forgotten Books, 2017
originally published 1910
364 pp, paperback

The authors of this book, Edwin Balmer and William MacHarg, were both reporters for the Chicago Tribune, so it's no surprise that most of the action takes place in this city.  There were, according to Robert Sampson in his Yesterday's Faces, Volume 2: Strange Days (1984), twelve original Luther Trant stories (17).  The Achievements of Luther Trant leaves out three of them, but 

original 1910 cover, courtesy of L.W. Currey

in the space of the nine stories we do have,  we watch as the main character Luther Trant evolves from a "callow assistant in a psychological laboratory" into a man whose fame has spread so widely that he could

 "not now leave his Club, even on a Sunday, without disappointing somewhere, in the great-pulsating city, an appeal to him for help in trouble."  

Indeed, after his first case, "The Man in the Room", in which he proved that a suicide was actually a murder,  young Trant asks for a leave of absence from his university job to "try the scientific psychology again," putting his talents to work in solving the mystery of the murder of Chicago's prosecuting attorney.  If that is successful, he notes, he'll resign and "keep after crime -- in the new way."

As we learn from the authors in the foreword, Trant's methods are real, as are "the tests he employs," and are

"precisely such as are being used daily in the psychological laboratories of the great universities -- both in America and Europe -- by means of which modern men of science are at last disclosing and defining the workings of that oldest of world-mysteries -- the human mind." 

 His research involves a number of experiments which measure physical changes in someone under stress that may be slight enough to go unnoticed by the human eye.  He believes that in scientific psychology

"there is no room for mistakes...Instead of analyzing evidence by the haphazard methods of the courts, we can analyze it scientifically, exactly, incontrovertibly -- we can select infallibly the true from the false."

In short, his idea is that by using these methods, which generally include some sort of "apparatus" or "device," including plethysmographs, automatographs, galvanometers (all real -- I looked them up), etc. (one time adding banana oil to the mix),  scientific psychology will be the future of police work. While most of the cops have tried everything but failed to solve the cases Trant is eventually brought into, they also start out wary of his methods. For example, in "The Empty Cartridges," one policeman asks him if he'll be doing his "psycho-palmistry," but has to sort of eat his words when all is said and done.

Of course with nine stories, some are better than others, and my favorite in this collection is "The Chalchihuitl Stone," which in a very big way reads like a cross between a mystery story and a good, old-fashioned pulp fiction yarn, complete  with ancient Aztecs and an expedition to Central America.  Another that reads as a pulp adventure is the above mentioned "The Empty Cartridges," which I have to say is also one of my favorites in this volume.  Some are pretty easy to figure out for the armchair detective, but all in all, it's a great collection that would likely have remained in oblivion had it not been for Hugo Gernsbach, who, according to Sampson, "found these device-oriented cases fascinating," and allotted five of them space in his Scientific Detective Monthly, with four more added  later to Amazing Detective Tales.  Below is a reproduction of Scientific Detective Monthly with  the red-haired Trant at the helm.

from Internet Speculative Fiction Database

I do need to say that while I enjoyed these stories tremendously and that I had a lot of fun reading them, there are several spots where the racist attitudes of the time are made very clear, so beware.  One more thing: had I known before buying my edition from Forgotten Books (a publisher I LOVE),  I would have picked up the Coachwhip Books collection, 2 Detectives, where Trant's adventures are paired with those of Inspector Addington Peace.  I know there are also e-versions of this book; online I'm not sure about.


If you look at the top banner on the photo above, you'll see two names: Arthur B. Reeve and Craig Kennedy, which takes us to book number three, volume 1 of  Craig Kennedy: Scientific Detective.  

9780857060136
Leonaur, 2010
448 pp
paperback

My edition comes from another favorite press, Leonaur, and it is the first of seven volumes of stories to feature "The American Sherlock Holmes."  Kennedy's first appearance was in in Cosmopolitan Magazine, December 1910, and his cases continued to be published through 1935 in a variety of different publications.   At the beginning of the section of stories called "The Silent Bullet," Kennedy offers readers his "theories," in which he says that "there is a distinct place for science in the detection of crime." He plans to

"apply science to the detection of crime, the same sort of methods by which you trace out the presence of a chemical, or run an unknown germ to earth."

Like Holmes, Kennedy  has a sort of sidekick guy, reporter Walter Jameson; unlike Holmes, as we learn in J. K. Van Dover's You Know My Method: The Science of the Detective (1994),

"Craig Kennedy does not search for identifiable cigarette ashes in rooms with twisted carpets, half empty wine glasses, torn bell pulls, and French doors slightly ajar." (172)

Kennedy is a professor at a New York University, and bemoans the fact that "no one has ever endowed a professorship in criminal science in any of our large universities."  As a detective, he investigates a variety of different crimes, ranging from poisonings to arson to fake mediums, always applying the latest science, scientific principles and methodology in each case.  I will say that in more than one case, I was actually appalled at how science was used at the time, especially in the story "The Silent Bullet," when Kennedy spoke of how he used blood tests to determine that the criminal was a "negro waiter."  This is quite frankly pure scientific racism, in which Kennedy reveals that in "adding to our knowledge of evolution," the Carnegie Institute had come up with a study linking the "blood of a certain branch of the human race" to "the blood of a certain group of monkeys, the chimpanzees," with "the blood of another branch" linking to "the gorilla."  By and large, though, most of the stories aren't like this, and actually in most cases have intriguing plots, some crazy enough (like one of my favorites here, "The Invisible Ray") to be great for readers of old pulp fiction.

All three books are but samples of what's out there in the realm of scientific detective stories, and aside from the reflected racism of the time, are actually quite enjoyable.  All of these books I would recommend mainly to people who are interested in the history of mystery/crime fiction, or to serious readers of old pulp fiction. 

*Detective Muller: Imperial Austrian Police, Volumes 1 and 2, by Augusta Groner

In the early 1890s, a woman in Austria who had only started writing crime in her 40s introduced a new detective, Detective Joseph Müller, a very different sort of sleuth than his British contemporary Sherlock Holmes.   His first case, "The Golden Bullet," revealed that Müller is a policeman with a heart; a man who, if he sees something worth salvaging in a criminal, he is likely to "warn his prey, once he has all proofs of the guilt and a conviction is certain"  ("The Golden Bullet", Vol. 2, 305).  His superiors despair; they know he is an excellent detective, who is "without a peer in his profession," but his "weakness" doesn't sit well with police authorities.  Strangely enough though, his talents are so valued by the very institution that won't take him on full time that they often hire him privately when a "particularly difficult case" arises.  Luckily for Müller, this very last case in his "public career" left him a man of means, because his boss had to let him go; he becomes, as the back-blurb reveals, "a member of that secret and shadowy organisation," the secret police.

It is incredibly difficult to find out much about Auguste Groner (1850-1929), which is strange, as a) she has been labeled, as Leslie Klinger tells us in his In the Shadow of Agatha Christie (2018), the "mother" of Austrian crime writing,   and b) her Müller stories remained popular for about 30 years. Even the review of Klinger's book at Open Letters Review neglects to mention her, while instead focusing on Australian and British women authors.  I went though my own collection of nonfiction books about crime writing including Barzun and Taylor, Haycraft, and even Lucy Sussex's Women Writers and Detectives in Nineteenth-Century Crime Fiction: The Mothers of the Mystery Genre, and there is nothing written about this woman.  The only time she's even mentioned in any of my books is a brief bit in a paragraph by Stephen Knight in his Crime Fiction Since 1800: Detection, Death, Diversity (2010) where he lists Groner's name (here Grüner) among contemporaries of writer Carolyn Wells, "who are now quite forgotten." (82)  Internet searching brings up little, so we just kind have to roll with what we've got, which is not much.

9780857062833

Leonaur, 2010

331 pp

paperback

Volume 1 of this "special two-volume collection" (so named by the publishers), introduces Müller before launching into four of his cases: "The Man With the Black Cord," which is actually novel length; "The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow," "The Case of the Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study," and "The Case of the Registered Letter."  My pick for favorite in this lot is the first story, as it involves the disappearance of an elderly man right out of his own bedroom, a truly-impossible situation; an old house, an inheritance, a strange neighbor, and of course, it is a great introduction to the detective, who, as we learn here knows exactly when and what to say to a villain that "gave him his power to touch the heart of even the most abandoned criminal."  We also see him at work, learning how he plies his craft -- including using a disguise, hiring a would-be prisoner as an assistant, and lots of foot time.   My least favorite story was "The Case of the Registered Letter," but the others are challenging little puzzles that left me scratching my head, wondering how the heck our erstwhile detective was going to figure them out.

9780857062864

Leonaur, 2010

326 pp

hardcover

Volume two offers three stories: "The Lamp That Went Out", "Mene Tekel: A Tale of Strange Happenings," and ironically, the last story is actually the author's first Müller tale,  "The Golden Bullet."    The first story involves the death of a stranger, found in an area of Vienna "known to be one of the safest spots" in the city.  "The Golden Bullet" is a locked-room/impossible crime mystery, in which the murder of a prominent man drives Müller to appeal to the criminal in a most unusual way, one with which his superiors do not appreciate.   My favorite in this volume is the second story, "Mene Tekel: A Tale of Strange Happenings," which actually reminded me much more of an old, pulpy adventure tale leaning a bit on the edge of sci-fi.  Here, Müller is called upon to watch over a Scandinavian scientist (without him knowing, of course), as he sets out on a journey to test his newest invention.  This story will take the reader from England to the ruins of Babylon before it's all over, with plenty of surprises all around.  Where all of the other stories in both volumes fall more along the traditional lines of whodunits, this one requires some suspension of disbelief, and it would certainly not be out of place in an anthology of archaeological adventure-pulp fiction.  I have a deep and abiding fondness for that very thing, so this story was right up my reading alley.   Other readers may not be as happy with  it as I was, because in more than one way it roams headlong into the valley of sheer farfetchedness (I know that's not a word, but it works), but its difference from every other story in this collection (and my keen love of the strange) was the biggest draw here.


Some of Groner's Müller tales are available online and in e-reader crime collections here and there on Amazon, but as someone who prefers the feel of book in hand, I'm grateful to Leonaur for publishing  this two-volume collection of her work.   I'll look forward to hopefully finding more of her work translated into English -- Auguste Groner is sadly neglected by modern crime readers, which is an absolute shame. 

recommended for readers who enjoy discovering the work of forgotten female writers, as well as people who enjoy early detective stories that feature a different sort of sleuth.  I personally thought these books were wonderful.

*femme fatale indeed! The Sorceress of the Strand and Other Stories, by L.T. Meade (ed.) Janis Dawson

9781554811489
Broadview Press, 2016
Sorceress of the Strand serialized 1902-1903 in The Strand
311 pp

paperback

Over the last year I've read a number of older books featuring early examples of women in the detecting biz,  but no books that have focused primarily on women as villains. Irish writer L.T. Meade and her various writing partners  changed all that with their serialized crime stories, which feature some of the most diabolical women masterminds of evil who let nothing stand in their way of their evil goals.    Meade's stories ran in The Strand, and as you can from see from taking a peek at this website, her stories often found themselves alongside the Holmes stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  Sadly, while  Holmes and Watson continue to entertain, LT Meade has gone the way of several women writers, fading into obscurity.  She is largely remembered for her novels about school girls but is little feted in the world of crime/mystery fiction, which is a bloody shame, if you ask me.  Luckily I recently discovered her work in this book, fell in love with her evil-genius female criminals, and bought two more books by Meade in anticipation of hours of entertainment.

Before we even get to The Sorceress of the Strand, in this particular edition from Broadview Press,  we are  treated to stories from three other works by Meade. It's kind of like the amuse bouche before the main meal, if you will, and it certainly whet my appetite for more.   The first of these is "The Seventh Step," from The Diary of a Doctor (second series) published in The Strand in January, 1895.  Her co-author on this one was listed as Dr. Clifford Halifax, who actually narrates these tales, but whose real-world identity was actually Dr. Edgar Beaumont.  In this story, Dr. Halifax's adventure begins on a ship sailing to St. Petersburg, where his compassion and curiosity lands him squarely in the midst of a most sinister plot involving a female mastermind of evil. Of this story, I'll say no more, except that for me, it had a sort of proto-, old style pulp feel to it as the story unraveled.  The second story, "At The Edge of a Crater," finds Meade writing with  collaborator Robert Eustace, in what will eventually become (after being serialized in The Strand in 1898) the novel The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings.  

1899, from LW Currey

Norman Head, who relates this story had, while in Italy some ten years earlier, "fallen victim to the wiles and fascinations of a beautiful Italian," a "scientist of no mean attainments," and because of her, became a member of the "Brotherhood of Seven Kings."  The woman here is a certain Madame Koluchy, who is, as the good people at LW Currey tell us,

"A Moriarty-like master criminal who is incredibly beautiful, intelligent and charming, and who commits extortion, blackmail and murder." 

While she is feted in London as a "marvellous woman" who "has succeeded where the medical profession gave little hope," Norman knows the real Madame Koluchy as having "bewitched London with her impostures and quackery."   And now he finds himself face to face with her again as he must stop a diabolical plot that has been set into motion, one that will take him from the salons of London to Mt. Vesuvius.   Finally, story number three is "A Little Smoke," from The Heart of a Mystery (1901), which finds a certain Rupert Phenays set against his deadly but beautiful enemy Francesca Delacourt, who is the ringleader of a "most dreadful gang of spies."  Sadly, Phenays enjoys no peace; he is on the run from Agents of the French Secret Service who believe him to be in possession of a "great secret" that he doesn't actually have.  All I'll say about this one is that dog lovers should beware.

my photo, from "A Little Smoke," p. 112

Entering into The Sorceress of the Strand itself,  we come across the title character,  Madame Sara, who reads like an early example of  the femme fatale, one whose fame and  respectability grants her entry into the homes of some of the finest families in Britain. She is, as her arch-nemesis Dixon Druce puts it, "a very emphatic somebody,"  and has wedged her way into the lives of the upper classes to the point where "London Society is at her feet."  Madame Sara is also what I'd term an evil genius, who has a background in science, can wear many hats (including that of dentist), and labels herself "a professional beautifier" who "claims the privilege of restoring youth to those who consult her."   She is an exotic, mysterious figure who looks as though she's about twenty-five, but "confesses that she is much older than she appears."  She is also, despite her appeal,  one of the most nefarious and shady female evildoers on the streets of London, something her victims would deny until, of course, they learn the horrible truth about Madame Sara. Unfortunately for some of these women and their families, the light bulb doesn't quite go off until it's much too late. Druce teams up with a doctor/scientist friend Vandeleur, and together they try to thwart Madame Sara's crimes; they aren't exactly detectives but they are on scene as the mysteries behind Madame Sara's actions unravel, trying to thwart her evil intentions before the worst can happen.

Sure, you can find a number of Meade's stories online but you'd be missing out on Janis Dawson's incredible work in this Broadview edition, including her discussion of the real-life counterpart for Madame Sara, a Madame Rachel who "specialized in swindling money, jewellery, (sic) and family heirlooms from her clients."  We also learn that at least one of her victims accused her of "magnetic influence" and "witchcraft," and that she ultimately died in 1880 while in prison. She also touches on Meade's criminal masterminds and "Fin-de-siecle Anxieties" (which are writ large in each and every story in this book) and then offers several appendices, beginning with "Contemporary Interviews and Reviews."  I'm one of those strange people who loves to get what she can out of a book by knowing more about its social/historical framework as well as the life of the author, so for me, this was a perfect introduction to Meade and to her mystery/crime writing.

Having no idea at all what to expect when I opened this book, by the end of it I became a confirmed LT Meade fan and plan to get my hands on and read every single crime story she ever wrote.  And anyone at all who is interested in Late Victorian/Early Edwardian crime writing, especially stories written by women, should read her work as well.   Beyond her historical significance in the genre, I have to say that some of her stories often read like rollicking adventure yarns, perfect for reading on a rainy day, cup of tea in hand while curled up in a blanket.  Seriously -- she's just plain fun.

*The Clue, by Carolyn Wells

9781983635380
The Best Books Publishing, 2018
originally published 1909
151 pp

paperback

The Clue is the first of a long lineup of books to feature Detective Fleming Stone.  In this particular story, Stone comes in towards the end and triumphs in solving the case, a feat that neither the police detective nor an attorney/amateur detective has managed to pull off before his arrival.  But more on that a bit later.

Wells caught my attention as I was scoping out which vintage crime novels to read this year. For one thing, I'd never heard of her and for another, this book, The Clue, appeared as part of the Haycraft-Queen Definitive Library of Detective, Crime, and Mystery Fiction.   Wells (1862-1942) was incredibly prolific, the author of "170 books, including detective stories, children's books, humour, parody and poetry," according to the blog Female Poets of the First World War.   The list of her crime/mystery/detective novels is huge, as shown here at stopyourekillingme.com., with the Fleming Stone series outnumbering all of her other mystery novels; her detective stories on the whole constituted the largest part of her work.

 Regarding her Fleming Stone novels, (all quotations below taken from the Ramble House blog)  Howard Haycraft wrote in 1941 that

"The surprising fact, perhaps, is not that some of the stories scarcely rise to the mark, but that have not perceptibly diminished in popularity.  Carolyn Wells is in many ways a remarkable woman ... She would presumably be the last to maintain that Fleming Stone belongs in the company of the immortals of detective literature.  The fact that his adventures have given harmless pleasure to many thousands of readers she undoubtedly considers full and sufficient reward."

 Other writers haven't been so kind; Dashiell Hammett said of her work that it was

"conscientiously in accordance with the formula as adopted as standard by the International Detective Story Writers' Convention at Geneva in 1904. One would expect that by now she would have learned to do the trick expertly. She hasn't."

and in 1982, Bill Pronzini wrote that Fleming Stone was

"as unreal an investigator as any of his dime novel predecessors.  In not one of his ... cases does he come alive as a human being, or as anything more than a two-dimensional silhouette with a penchant for pulling murderers out of hats on the flimsiest of clues and evidence."

original cover from Project Gutenberg Australia

While I won't go deep into plot here, the story begins on the eve of the wedding of a young heiress. She is found dead and it seems like her death will go down as a case of suicide, that is, until one of the doctors present discovers evidence that brings in the coroner and an inquest.  The suspects range from the servants to family to friends,  with the fiancé at the top of the list of suspects, having entered the house with his own key; he is also the one who discovered the body and alerted the household.     His best man, a lawyer who fancies himself as a sort of amateur detective, decides to do some digging on his own, but eventually admits defeat.  It is at this juncture, towards the last few pages of the novel, that the bridegroom suggests  bringing  in Fleming Stone, a detective who had done "wonderful work in celebrated cases all over the country."  He is described as having "a most attractive personality," a man "nearly fifty years old, with graying hair and a kindly responsive face."  And really, that is pretty much all we learn about this man except that he is good at taking the most minuscule of clues and solving a crime that seems otherwise impossible.

from Project Gutenberg Australia 

The Clue is another novel that I'm glad to have read because it was written by a woman whose work seems to have faded into obscurity.  I have to say that it would likely be more at home in the library of a cozy reader -- the romance keeps it light in tone as does the amateur detecting going on. And even though all is put right once again in this house, the ending is a bit over-the-top melodramatic, actually causing an eyeroll on my part.   But it does have its moments, for example, in an interchange between two characters who make fun of detective stories; ironically  that discussion ends up with talk of a "Mr. Smarty-Cat Detective," who "deduces the whole story." I say ironically because that is precisely what happens here, with the arrival of Fleming Stone.  He is like the living deus ex machina who comes in, takes a look around and solves the entire case in a short time.  I'd try another one just to see if this is his pattern, just out of pure interest.   I suppose, like many mystery novels, the fun is in the getting there, complete with a host of suspects with motive, a few red herrings, and a crime that borders on the impossible.  

*The Man in Lower Ten, by Mary Roberts Rinehart

Bobbs-Merrill, 1909
first serialized in All-Story, 1906
372 pp

hardcover

First edition indeed! Sadly it's pretty banged up, minus the dustjacket, and it has a library stamp in the front, but what the heck -- it still has that lovely onionskin (intact) paper covering the full-color illustration for the beautiful frontispiece done by Howard Chandler Christy, whose illustrations appear throughout the novel.

While The Circular Staircase is her first published novel (1908),   Jan Cohn, the author of  Improbable Fiction: the Life of Mary Roberts Rinehart (1980) tells us that The Man in Lower Ten is Mary Roberts Rinehart's first work of "book-length fiction."  She wrote it in 1905, and in 1906 it had been accepted for serialization in All-Story Magazine.   Considering she'd been writing short stories for just about a year and a half, as Cohn says, "Somehow in that frantic apprenticeship she had learned all she needed to know."  (35) For the serialized version of this work, Rinehart earned $400, her highest-paying story to that time.  Following the publication of The Circular Staircase, The Man in Lower Ten was published as a novel, and it was so popular that it ended up on the 1909 bestseller list (thank you, Project Gutenberg).  According to Simon and Schuster, The Man in Lower Ten was actually "the first detective novel to appear on national bestseller lists." 

The Man in Lower Ten  blends mystery, humor, dark atmospheric moments and romance in the telling and ends up being a satisfying read, meaning I never guessed the "who" at any point in time although my inner armchair-detective self made several attempts.  In this story, a young attorney named Lawrence Blakely recounts the "queer freak of the demons of chance" that set him off on the "most remarkable period" of his life.   It all starts when his partner and long-time friend Richey McKnight begs off the procurement of some very important papers having to do with an important court case, and asks Blakely if he wouldn't do it for him.  Blakely agrees, goes to Pittsburg (sic), takes a deposition, picks up the papers, and is on the return journey home when this story begins in earnest.  Blakely's ticket puts in him berth Lower Ten, car seven of the train, and by the time he's ready to go to sleep, he makes his way there for a good night's rest.  Imagine his surprise when he finds another man laying on his bed, sleeping soundly.  The porter agrees to let him use berth Lower Nine; by this time though, Blakely isn't at all tired and gets up to wander around before returning to his bed.  But there's yet another surprise for our hero -- his things are missing and he's found himself in Berth Lower Seven. But that's just the beginning, as the porter makes his way to Lower Ten and discovers that the formerly-sleeping occupant is now dead.  If that's not bad enough, all of the evidence points directly to Blakely, who probably would have been arrested at the next stop, had there been one, but a deadly train wreck intervenes.  Surviving the crash, Blakely must find a way not only to clear his name, but also to discover the real killer before the police have the chance to slap the cuffs on him.

after the train wreck: 

one of Christy's illustrations, between pp. 80 and 81

my photo

As I said, one of the elements found in this story is humor, and aside from the wisecrack remarks made by Blakely throughout the novel, she gives us a detective character who wryly pokes fun at Poe, Conan-Doyle and Emile Gaboriau.  Hotchkiss by name, he is on the train doing a bit of sleuthing after the murder. He introduces himself to Blakely, telling him that he uses

"the inductive method originated by Poe and followed since with such success by Conan Doyle. Have you ever read Gaboriau? Ah, you have missed a treat indeed."

Even after the train wreck, he follows Blakely where ever he goes, always taking notes, and later thinking he has his man, announces that "It's a great day for modern detective methods." He turns out be wrong, but it's a great bit of tongue-in-cheek irony. 

My personal favorite of Rinehart's books is The Album (1933) which I read as a kid and never, ever forgot because of the whole axe-murderer thing and the mystery leading up to the identity of the killer.  Since then I've probably read it about three times.    While I didn't find The Man in Lower Ten to be nearly as exciting and polished as that one (which is no surprise given it's her earliest book-length work), it was still a lot of fun.  The romance isn't too in your face, although I must say that Blakely spends a lot of time worrying about how to shield the reputation of the woman in the case -- how very Victorian we still are after the turn of the century here in America!   I also noticed right away that there are several places where we see this country on the edge between old and modern, for instance, in the use of automobiles vs. horse carts and hansom cabs.  One word of warning -- in 1905 our modern sensibilities about race were, of course, not in play, and I did get a bit of a jolt coming across words like "darky" and "Jap."

All in all, it's a fun read, and had this been my first introduction to Rinehart's work, I'd probably go on to read more.  As it is, I've read several of her books so in my opinion, while the stories may seem a bit thin to modern readers, she's an American mystery novelist worth exploring.

*back we go again -- The Club of Queer Trades by G.K. Chesterton

9780486255347
Dover, 1987
originally published 1905
146 pp

paperback

Whew! I see that my last visit here was on April 14th; in the meantime I've been to Seattle, then home for a brief visit before moving on to South Carolina for just under a week.   Home now, and back to reading and I'm a happy camper. 

I actually finished The Club of Queer Trades some time ago but I gave it a quick reread last night just to refresh my memory.  Arthur Conan Doyle's The Return of Sherlock Holmes was published the same year as this book,  combining several stories published between 1903 and 1904  following a huge backlash from readers when he killed off his great detective in 1893.  I mention this because in Club of Queer Trades, Chesterton takes to the familiar Holmes and Watson-ish format to tell his own tales, following the adventures of detective Rupert Grant and Swinburne, the narrator of these tales, who is often dragged into Rupert's adventures.  And then, there's Rupert's  brother Basil who generally comes up with the real solution to Rupert's cases.   The thing is that, when all is said and done, Chesterton has given us much more of a detective-story parody here, but it's parody with a purpose.

There are six stories in this collection, and while I'm not going to delve into each of them individually, they all connect to The Club of Queer Trades itself:

"It is an eccentric and Bohemian Club, of which the absolute condition of membership lies in this, that the candidate must have invented the method by which he earns his living."

The rules say that the trade involved must be "entirely new," that it can't be an "application or variation of an existing trade." It must also be "a genuine commercial source of income," from which the member gains his livelihood.  And right from the very beginning of this book we know that we're in for some snarky and satirical observations about society in general, as Chesterton describes people who might pass by the building in which it's housed as the sort who wouldn't even be curious enough to take a look or ask what it's all about, as if

"the Thugs set up a Strangers' Assassination Company in one of the great buildings in Norfolk Street, and sent in a mild man in spectacles to answer inquiries, no inquiries would be made." 

Exactly what oddball trades are involved in the Club I won't say, since a) they have to do with the short cases in this book and b) half the fun is in figuring out exactly what each might be as you're reading each story and once you get the pattern of these tales down in your head.

 What I will say is that as far as the actual detection that happens in this book, there are some clever conundrums to be found here.  My favorite is the "Awful Reason of the Vicar's Visit," which not only presents a clever little mystery but also made me laugh out loud.  And as far as the actual detective who is "solving" these cases,  Rupert takes himself quite seriously, but he has a habit of  never being  right in his deductions and ends up deferring to Basil who has a way of seeing exactly what's going on in each situation.   The law, morality, and society itself all come under scrutiny here, and what seems to be a lot of silliness actually has some serious purpose when all is said and done.  The trick is that you have to get to the end of the book before actually discovering what that purpose really is.

While it turned out to be anything but what I thought it might be, The Club of Queer Trades is actually a delightful and entertaining book.  People who enjoy Chesterton's Father Brown mysteries (not the later TV versions but the short stories themselves) will find that same sense of understanding of human nature in this book but this one makes for a completely different sort of reading experience.  It won't be for everyone, but it suited me just fine.