*Trent's Last Case, by E.C. Bentley

9780008216269
Harper Collins, Detective Story Club, 2017
originally published 1913
212 pp
hardcover

"This mystery is all wrong."

In John Curran's introduction to this edition, he refers to Trent's Last Case as "one of the most famous milestones in the genre."  He quotes EC Bentley from his autobiography, Those Days (1940) where he writes

"Some time in the year 1910 it occurred to me that it would be a good idea to write a detective story of a new sort..."

and, "among the dozens of detectives" (long dominated by and modeled after Sherlock Holmes) currently filling magazine pages in a market that was "thriving," as Curran notes, "the stage was set" for just that.  Enter Philip Trent.

Trent is an artist who does fairly well, and also works from time to time as a journalist.  It is in this role that he becomes involved in the case of the death of American businessman Sigsbee Manderson, the "Colossus" of Wall Street, a man whose number one concern was the accumulation of his own wealth, often becoming "lawless or ruthless" in the process.  He's someone that no one will likely mourn, most especially the "tens of thousands of the poor;" in his lifetime he is "execrated" by the "financier or the speculator" as well.   And as Trent himself will come to remark later,

"Here's a man suddenly and violently killed, and nobody's heart seems to be broken about it, to say the least."

Trent's work in journalism has brought him a reputation for having "great powers as a detective," with "past successes" in solving cases which have left the police stymied.  However, in writing his detective as someone "as far away from Holmes," as possible, Bentley's Trent has good relations with the police, who are not an object of scorn or derision, but rather people with whom Trent has no problems in terms of cooperation.   In this case though,  even Trent has not-so-positive feelings about investigating Manderson's death; as he says,

"I tell you frankly, I wouldn't have a hand in hanging a poor devil who had let daylight into a man like Sig Manderson as a measure of social protest." 

But he takes on the case anyway and despite a number of suspects and theories, he quickly comes to a solution.  However, he encounters complications that lead Trent to question his confidence as a detective, the biggest of them arising in the form of the murdered man's widow, "The Woman in Black" of the American title of this novel.   I can't really say any more without giving away the show here, but as it turns out, it's probably a good thing that he didn't have his findings published in his newspaper.

There is no question as to the importance of this book in mystery/detective fiction history.   Curran refers to Trent's Last Case in  his introduction as  "one of the most famous milestones in the genre,"  "one of the earliest defining detective novels of the twentieth century"  and a book that "heralded, in fact, detective fiction's Golden Age," a statement with which any number of later detective fiction writers, critics, scholars, and readers concur.   I also can't help but think that  the switch to a more human sort of detective must have been a welcome change to contemporary readers.   Now that I've read this book after finishing a huge number of detective stories where the central character is a serious, Holmesian sort of figure where reasoning or science rules the entire story, I found that I quite enjoyed Trent's "fallible human" personality.  As Bentley wrote, quoted here at House of Stratus:

"I am not sure why Sherlock Holmes and his earlier imitators could never be at all amusing or light-hearted; but it may have been because they felt they had a mission, and had to sustain a position of superiority to the ordinary run of mankind."

Not so with Philip Trent: we watch him sort of crumble a bit while falling in love, lose his confidence more than once, experience doubt and anxiety, and eventually acknowledge his own "high-blown pride" and "the impotence of human reason." Frankly, I find his character quite a breath of fresh air at this stage of the mystery/detective fiction game. 

The twisty plot, however, is the true centerpiece of this book, and as I said to someone recently, I've read so much crime fiction that I feel sometimes like I know every plot possible.  However, Trent's Last Case came with a totally unexpected ending that made me say a not-so-quiet "bravo" in appreciation for a job well done. 

I can recommend this book with no qualms at all -- just please bear in mind when it was written (just coming out of the Edwardian era) when it comes to some rather objectionable content.  It is still a worthy read, even for the most modern mystery and crime fiction lovers.

And one more thing:  I LOVE these Harper hardcover reprints!!

*2 Detectives: Astro, the Master of Mysteries, by Gelett Burgess and Dr. Xavier Wycherley, The Mind-Reader, by Max Rittenberg

9781616461034

Coachwhip Publications, 2011

622 pp

paperback

My latest stop along my journey into crime/mystery fiction of yesteryear brought me to this book, which despite its hefty weight and 600-plus page length turned out to be an ahhhhh read.  First of all, these books are early examples of stories in the psychic detective zone (Astro, The Master of Mysteries was published in 1912; Dr. Xavier Wycherley, The Mind-Reader came out in 1913); second, they both have this lovely early pulp vibe, and the third reason is that the plots of these stories are so out there that reading them is just pure pleasure for someone like myself who thrives on this stuff.

Even heftier than the weight of this book, the true title of Astro, The Master of Mysteries goes like this:

The Master of Mysteries; Being an Account of the Problems Solved by Astro, Seer of Secrets, and His Love Affair with Valeska Wynne, His Assistant

from Public Domain Superheroes

and there they are, the two main characters.  Of course, there's much more to this book than the romance between Astro and Valeska; in fact, we only pick up a vague idea of his feelings for her as the stories progress, right up until the very end when he starts dropping not-so-veiled hints.  In the publisher's note before the beginning of Astro, The Master of Mysteries, we're told that when this book was first published in 1912, it was done so anonymously.  It also provides another clue:

"The Introduction ... suggests there are three cryptograms hidden in the text. Two of these are known and easily discovered. (The first provides the name of the author, Gelett Burgess.) The third cryptogram remains a puzzle." 

In  Classic Mystery Stories (Dover, 1999)  editor Douglas G. Greene provides the way to solve the first two cryptograms, but goes on to say that he doesn't believe that anyone has "yet discovered the third cypher."  So we know we have mysteries within a book of mysteries before we even turn the first page.  Greene also reveals that

"Victor Berch, the scholar of popular fiction, has discovered that the Astro "Seer of Secrets" stories, were first published in 1905-1906 issues of The Sunday Magazine under the pseudonym Alan Braghampton"

and that Astro's real name is Astrogen Kerby. (131)  For a quick look at an Astro story published under the name of Braghampton, you can click here.

While I won't go into the twenty-four stories specifically, Astro is a medium whose spiel runs like this:

"...there are waves of the ether, --N-rays, X-rays, acitinic and ultraviolet vibrations, to which I am exceedingly susceptible.  I have an inner sense and an esoteric knowledge of life and its mysteries that is hidden from all who have not lived for cycles and eons in solitude and contemplation with the Mahatmas of the Himalayas!" 

He is adored by New York society, wears a turban and robes, and is fond of the hookah; he often refers to himself as the "Mahatma of the Fourth Sphere," is a "skilled and artistic musician," reads constantly,  and has a working knowledge of most subjects.  He's also a complete fake, aided by his assistant Valeska, and as the book goes along, he schools her in the art of his own charlatanry, all the while dropping hints to her that he's in love with her. Together, and often with the help of a police detective whose career Astro has helped to boost, they solve a wide-ranging variety of different mysteries that make for hours of fun reading.

Next up is Max Rittenberg's Dr. Xavier Wycherley, The Mind-Reader.  Wycherley is an interesting character who blends science, psychology, and his ability as a "mental healer" in solving problems, but he detests the idea of being considered as a detective. As we learn,

"Detective work was strongly distasteful to him unless it were to open out fresh experiences in the realm of the human mind."

 He can also astrally project, but it's his reading of auras that often provides all he needs to know about a subject.   According to Robert Sampson in his Yesterday's Faces: A Study of Series Characters in the Early Pulp Magazines Volume 2: Strange Days, (Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1984),   Wycherley made his first appearance in The London Magazine in March 1911, finding his way ("leaped the Atlantic," as Sampson says) into The Blue Book  later that same year.  (47)

The Blue Book Magazine, June 1911 

Wycherley refers to himself as a "specialist," but notes that his name would "not be found on the British register...", and that he is called upon throughout the world, "wherever there is call for my services as a mental healer."  As Rittenberg explains,

"The mental healer was a combination of scientist and humanitarian which is far from usual. As the latter, his warm human sympathies went out unceasingly to the weak, the oppressed, the suffering, the sick of body and the sick of mind. But as a scientist he would for the time being forget the patient in the subject."

We also learn that in his "younger days" he had to fight the "intense" prejudices of the English medical profession against "anything approaching hypnotism or mental suggestion..." and even though he's not on the registers, he keeps a consulting room in London. He also has a villa on the private Isola Salvatore on Lake Rovellasco where his patients often come for help.  He moves in and out of the highest circles of society and government, and for the most part, in his quest to heal minds (his life's work), often leaves it to people to do their duty, to do what is right.  This particular characteristic of Wycherley's is quite interesting, and says a great deal about the Edwardian milieu in which Rittenberg wrote.  As far as the stories go, they take him to several different places, with a wide variety of cases.  The first case, for example, finds him at Isola Salvatore where he does something that reminded me of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; while later he'll find himself in Felsbrunnen where he is thrust into the midst of a most bizarre and dastardly secret in an old castle.   He does have a strange quirk: he will sort of put himself into a trance to puzzle out a problem, often locking out the outside world except for the pain caused by a lit cigarette burning in his hands that wakes him up and brings him back around.  The cases themselves are most interesting, as we watch this man combine science, psychoanalysis, and often (it seems) downright mysticism to bring about some sort of resolution.  These are absolutely not your average crime stories, and well worth reading to serious pulp fans or fans of stories involving scientific or psychic detectives

Hats off to Tim Prasil at Coachwhip for collecting these two very obscure books and putting them into one volume.  I had so much fun here, although it did take me a while to warm up to Dr. Wycherley until "The Countess Plunges," which has such an amazing solution that I couldn't help but to be impressed.  Astro, on the other hand, I loved immediately, because you know right from the start that he is a complete fraud, and the fun is not only in watching how he solves the cases he's given but also in watching him teach Valeska his bag of tricks.   The book as a whole is most likely a niche read for diehard early pulp fans and people like me who are interested in off-the-beaten-path kinds of early crime/mystery fiction, but anyone who falls into those categories will absolutely love this book.

Recommended for fellow niche readers.  Have a great time with it -- I certainly did.

*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.

*Prince Zaleski, by M.P. Shiel

9781934555033
Valancourt Books, 2010
originally published 1895
84 pp
paperback

With Prince Zaleski, my time in the 1890s and the nineteenth century comes to an end, although I still have tons of books sitting here from that decade which I'll eventually come back to.  And that brings up a good question -- with all of  the books from that time sitting here still unread, why Prince Zaleski? The answer is simple: it combines mystery/detective fiction with  fin-de-siècle Decadence, something I hadn't yet encountered in British detective fiction of the period.

Briefly, Prince Zaleski was published as part of John Lane's Keynotes fiction series of books published between 1893 and 1897. As we learn in the introduction to this edition by Paul Fox, contemporary reviews were mixed.  For example, H.G. Wells panned the book, saying that Lane  "in his short but brilliant career" had never "published anything half so bad before." He calls Zaleski "Sherlock -- demented..." while he goes on to say that "the book is too foolish even to keep one laughing at it," questioning its placement in the Keynotes series.  Oops. At the same time, Vanity Fair gave it a fine review, calling it "a very superior article altogether," a book that was "intended for the delight of a very superior class of readers." (x)   

In Prince Zaleski the strange mysteries that he ponders are brought to him by a character named "Shiel." As the first story, "The Race of Orven," opens, Shiel (who is unnamed at this point) reveals that Prince Zaleski had been a victim of a

 "too importunate, too unfortunate Love, which the fulgor of the throne itself could not abash; exile perforce from his native land, and voluntary exile from the rest of  men!"

He lives in a "place of hermitage," a "brooding-place so desolate for the passage of his days," which Shiel sees as a "vast tomb of Mausolus." It is an old mansion which has definitely seen better days -- in the hall, for example, which was built along the lines of a "Roman atrium" complete with "oblong pool of turgid water," Shiel encounters a "troop of fat and otiose rats."  Dust clouds are everywhere, and Shiel  describes a  "funereal gloom" that permeates the place. He finds Zaleski is at home in a small apartment in "remote tower of the building," the entrance of which is guarded by his manservant Ham.  Evidently the Prince is quite fond of pot -- the air was "heavy" with the "fumes" of cannibis sativa.   There are all manner of Asian curios surrounding Zaleski, none the least of which is a sarcophagus with a rotting mummy within, culminating in an effect of a "bizarrerie of half-weird sheen and gloom."

 After some hash smoking and breakfast the next day, Shiel gets to the point of his visit, which has to do with the mysterious death of a certain Lord Pharanx.   After Zaleski manages to solve that particular enigma, two more cases are presented to him: "The Stone of the Edmundsbury Monks" and "The S.S."  While I'm not going to go into particulars of any of the three cases here,  Zaleski combines his encyclopedic brain and his powers of deduction  to provide answers via the armchair detective method in the first two cases, while taking on a more active role of investigator in the third.

There might be something to the "Sherlock -- demented" comment by H.G. Wells, but it becomes obvious not too long into the book that Prince Zaleski seemed to have been written more with Poe's Auguste Dupin as a model for the detective side of the main character.  Having read Poe's Dupin stories just last year, I can say that Shiel employs the same sort of "ratiocination" technique here as did Poe with his detective.  I have very mixed feelings about Prince Zaleski, precisely because of the style in which the solutions were given (which I didn't care for in the Dupin stories either) in the first two stories,  but I thoroughly enjoyed the sort of arcane and esoteric lore that comes out of Zaleski's head that helps him to solve his cases.  My favorite mystery is "The S.S." which is a horrific case of either mass suicides or murders; this one continues to have relevance to our times, but in my opinion it is the best of three cases here.

Prince Zaleski is the quintessential aesthete, which appeals to me, as does the Decadence tone of the book as a whole.  In his Glorious Perversity, Brian Stableford sets Prince Zaleski in the group of "most intensely lurid products of English Decadence"  between 1893 and 1896 including Studies of Death, by Count Eric Steinbock, The Stone-Dragon and Other Tragic Romances, by R. Murray Gilchrist, Machen's The Great God Pan and the Inmost Light, and Shiel's own Shapes in the Fire. (119).

Bottom line: while it's probably not going to grab the hearts and minds of modern crime/detective fiction readers, it is very much worth reading for others who are more inclined toward the weird, the esoteric and the just-plain strange.  This is not at all an average Victorian detective book, and it takes an extremely brave and patient reader to get through it.  But it is definitely a book I'm very happy to have read.

*Miss Cayley's Adventures, by Grant Allen

9781934555439
Valancourt Books, 2016
originally serialized in The Strand, 1898-1899
220 pp

paperback

"I am an adventuress ... and I am in quest of adventures." 
                                                                 -- 36


Continuing on with my look at crime/mystery/detective novels of yesteryear, Miss Cayley's Adventures presents a bit of a surprise.  To be very honest, I hadn't heard of it until 2016 when it was republished by Valancourt, and even then I bought it and shelved it thinking I'd get to it sooner or later.  As I began to research exactly what books I wanted to read in my little independent survey here, I kept coming across this title, so here we are.

Because I don't really read reviews or too much in the way of plot synopses before I pick up a book, I assumed this book was going to be another Victorian work of the exploits of a  female detective much along the lines of the previous ones I've read and talked about here. But no -- with Miss Lois Cayley I got way more than I bargained for.  She is, like Loveday Brooke, an example of the "New Woman" of fin-de-siècle Victorian literature; at the same time, unlike Loveday Brooke, Miss Cayley does not make detection her specific profession. She is 21, has just finished her studies at Girton College and although (according to her friend Elsie Petheridge) her next logical step would be to teach, Miss Cayley is not at all interested in becoming one of the group of "dear good schoolmistresses."

from Project Gutenberg

Instead, she views herself as "a bit of a rebel," and has devised a plan of

"going out, simply in search of adventure. What adventure may come, I have not at the moment the faintest conception. The fun lies in the search, the uncertainty, the toss-up of it."

She also has only twopence in her pocket, but has made up her mind to "go round the world."  Her first opportunity for adventure arises when she overhears a "Cantankerous Old Lady" complaining loudly about having lost her maid just as she's about to go abroad and head for the waters at Schlagenbad.  Lois offers herself as traveling companion to the woman, Lady Georgina Fawley, to travel with her and to stay for one week, giving Lady Georgina plenty of time to find a replacement maid. After all, as Lois considers,

"The Rhine leads you on to the Danube, the Danube to the Black Sea, the Black Sea to Asia; and so by way of India, China, and Japan, you reach the Pacific and San Francisco; whence one returns quite easily by New York and the White Star Liners... the Cantankerous Old Lady was the thin end of the wedge -- the first rung of the ladder!"

Lady Georgina accepts, and Miss Cawley's journey begins; she proves her worth early on, even before they arrive in Germany, by thwarting the theft of Lady Georgina's jewels by a fellow passenger whom she knows only as "The Count."  This is only the first of many adventures that will befall Miss Cawley as she makes her way to several destinations; along the way she will compete in a cycling competition against German army soldiers, take on a mountain rescue when Lady Georgina's nephew takes a nasty tumble and can't climb back up, unmask  a bogus faith healer, take part in a tiger hunt, and much, much more. Her detection skills serve her best when they are most needed, especially at the end of the book.

"I gripped the rope and let myself down."  from Project Gutenberg

One thing that the author does very carefully here is to discern between connotations of the word  "adventuress."  This is one of the main themes running throughout the book, beginning with Lady Georgina's worries that her nephew Harold (who has fallen for our heroine and wants to marry her) will be tempted by "some fascinating adventuress" who will "try to marry him out of hand," and that she must make sure that he is saved from "the clever clutches of designing creatures." Lois considers herself an "adventuress," but not in the negative term as set forth by Lady Georgina -- but because of what his aunt has said, feels the need to refuse Harold's proposal of marriage. As she says:

"I dare not tell you how much I like him. He is a dear, good, kind fellow. But I cannot rest under the cruel imputation of being moved by his wealth and having tried to capture him." 

To put it briefly into context (and just FYI, I find I get much more out of my reading by doing so, not because I want to be an "authority," but to make myself a more informed reader), according to Joseph A. Kestner in Sherlock's Sisters: The British Female Detective 1864-1913, the author here is offering a repudiation to an essay written by the "virulently anti-feminist" essayist Eliza Linn Lynton, whose "animosity towards....the New Woman" was noted even in her obituary.  She referred to them as "Wild Women" who had about them "an unpleasant suggestion of the adventuress."  While Linton's name appears in the text of Miss Cayley's Adventures, it seems that, as Kestner notes, "many aspects of Lois Cayley's character seem created to challenge the predispositions of opponents of the New Woman." (124)  And once again, as in the case of Loveday Brooke, we find the question referring to the meaning of "ladylike"  come up more than once. 

Miss Cayley's Adventures is a surprisingly fun hybrid of detection, travel narrative and adventure, with a bit of romance thrown in, but it's so much more. The words "plucky heroine" come to mind, but that's really sort of belittling what the author does here with his lead character.  It's a book I could chat about for hours, and is a refreshing and never-dull  take on the Victorian New Woman, but there's much, much more going on here as well.   And the fact that it was written by a man makes it even more interesting, in my opinion.  

While my copy is from Valancourt, it is also available online at Project Gutenberg. Very much recommended, especially to those looking for something different in their reading or for early detective novels featuring an independent woman as a lead character.  It's also a book to just relax and have fun with while looking forward to whatever adventure waits around the corner for our Miss Cayley. Dear reader,  I loved her. 

*huzzah for the ladies: The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective

9781434440549
Wildside Press, 2012
originally serialized in Ludgate Monthly (1893)
   (minus "Missing"); published 1894
142 pp

hardcover

"Too much of a lady, do you say?...I don't care twopence halfpenny whether she is or is not a lady." 

So says Mr. Ebenezer Dyer, the head of the "flourishing detective agency in Lynch Court.  In fact, he goes on to brag about his operative, Loveday Brooke, as having "so much common sense that it amounts to genius."  And that she does, often, it seems, moreso than the police or even her boss when it comes to solving a case.

Up to now in this "history of mystery" I've been doing, I've experienced two "lady" detectives, both of them characters sprung from male minds.   Loveday Brooke comes straight from the pen of Catherine Louisa Pirkis (1839-1910),  who would go on to write a total of thirteen novels, several short stories (aside from Loveday Brooke), and a novella.  She and her husband were very actively involved in the anti-vivisectionist movement as well as the National Canine Defence League, and she was also engaged in other types of humanitarian work. 

Loveday Brooke as a fictional character fits squarely into the "New Woman" mold, a term which refers to

"a significant cultural icon of the fin de siècle, departed from the stereotypical Victorian woman. She was intelligent, educated, emancipated, independent and self-supporting."

 Her significance as a New Woman detective is so important, in fact, that Volume IV of a series produced by Routledge  that explores New Women Fiction is completely dedicated to this character; since it's highly likely that while I'm very much into it, the state of fin-de-siècle Britain's pre-feminist women's literature is probably not a hot topic for a number people reading this at the moment, I'll leave it to anyone at all interested to read Adrienne Gavin's introduction  here and get right to the book.

from victorianclare, original cover complete with business card

We actually learn very little about Loveday Brooke herself here.  We know that she was "a little over thirty years of age" that she dressed "invariably" in black, her dress "almost Quaker-like in its appearance."   Of her backstory Pirkis writes that

"Some five or six years previously, by a jerk of Fortune's wheel, Loveday had been thrown upon the world penniless and all but friendless. Marketable accomplishments she had found she had none, so she had forthwith defied convention, she had chosen for herself a career that had cut her off sharply from her former associates and her position in society.  For five or six years she drudged away patiently in the lower walks of her profession; then chance, or to speak more precisely, an intricate criminal case, threw her in the way of the experienced head of the flourishing detective agency in Lynch Court." (8)

Her boss seems to have been a shrewd man; he realized her worth quickly and "threw her in the way of better-class work," which meant better pay.    Over the course of the seven stories in this book, her "common sense" that "amounts to genius" is reflected in the way she not only comes up with solutions to each mystery, but also in the way that she refuses to go along with the police or with the victims of each crime who immediately settle on "foreigners" as the guilty parties. Xenophobic attitudes of the period are writ large here, by the way, but to her credit, our heroine has an ability to see right through them.   She is also not the sort of female detective who needs to rely on seduction as a tool for getting close to suspects, relying mainly on her keen sense of observation and her wide-ranging understanding of human nature.

all pulped-up, from Amazon  (NO!)

I have to say that one thing readers might notice is that in most of these stories it doesn't seem like Brooke is doing much "detecting" -- that she goes on scene, takes in a few details and then dazzles us with her observations.  That is true in more than one case and it has caused readers to complain about the lack of "fair play."  I had to go and look up the concept of "fair play," and learned that the so-called "rules" involved in "fair play" were not codified until 1928, so really, in my opinion it doesn't apply here.  There are a couple of very good stories here, none the least of which is "The Redhill Sisterhood," in which Loveday is sent to spy on a "home for cripples" (you really have to look beyond the language here) in order to try to figure out the connection between the nuns who run the place and a string of country house robberies.   That one was just great, for several reasons I won't go into in case anyone decides to read the book.  I will also mention that I completely sussed the solution to "Drawn Daggers!" not too far into it, but for the most part, the big reveals were complete surprises.  However, because this collection of tales is a product of the late Victorian era, I would advise a bit of patience while reading.  The stories are good, not great, but to me it's all about Loveday Brooke herself, making her way in what was normally a male profession, often doing a much better job than her male counterparts in this book.

*and finally, A Study in Scarlet, by Arthur Conan Doyle

9780140439083
Penguin Classics, 2001
originally published 1887
144 pp

paperback

"There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it." 

I think it only fitting that I end  this year's reading of crime/mystery fiction of yesteryear with Sherlock Holmes. Consider the fact that all of the authors whose works I've read this year still largely remain in obscurity, while you'd have to live under a rock these days not to know about Sherlock Holmes.  He endures.  Holmes and Watson have been revisited myriad numbers of times on film, television, and in print beyond Conan Doyle's original stories; Sherlockian societies exist worldwide, and there are a huge number of websites like this one that keep the great detective alive, living and relevant. But why?

 In his book Crime Fiction Since 1800: Detection, Death, Diversity, Stephen Knight says the following:

"...Doyle's creation is unquestionably an apotheosis, a conveying of quasi-divine status on the figure that had emerged slowly through the nineteenth century: a detective who is highly intelligent, essentially moral, somewhat elitist, all-knowing, disciplinary in knowledge and skills, energetic, eccentric, yet also in touch with the ordinary people who populate the stories." (55)

He also notes that

" Inside the learned mumbo-jumbo, the mystique of all-night pipe smoking and austerely distant behaviour is someone who can apply the common knowledge of the human tribe. It is both exciting and consoling to have a hero so grand ... The essential power of Sherlock Holmes is that his substantial disciplinary authority is in fact enacted in a publicly accessible way: the ultimate methods of solving a crime are usually as simple as any used by the mid-century detective foot-soldiers." (57)

Whether you ascribe to this theory or not, or  whatever it is in your own make up that holds fascination for Holmes and Watson, they've been alive and well for 130 years since A Study in Scarlet first appeared  in Beeton's Christmas Annual in 1887, after having been rejected by a number of publishers.

from The Best of Sherlock Holmes

A Study in Scarlet is an unusual novel -- in a big way, it doesn't really cohere like a novel should.  The first part of this book brings together Holmes and Watson who both need roommates. Holmes introduces himself as a "consulting detective," stepping in to provide his expertise when government and private detectives "are at fault."  Many of his clients come from "private inquiry agents," from whom he collects fees. Shortly after Holmes dazzles Watson with his "intuition," his "special knowledge," and his "train of reasoning," Holmes is called to the scene of a "bad business" at 3 Lauriston Gardens.  There is very little to go on at the scene -- a dead body and few clues, the word "RACHE" written in blood on the wall -- but after a short time, Holmes manages to bring the guilty man to his very doorstep, and even knows his name.  Leaving the reader wondering how the hell he did that, the next page takes us to "The Great Alkali Plain," and an intriguing story involving Mormons in Utah, a man with an orphaned little girl, and ultimately, a quest for revenge.  Then it's back to the final act with Dr. Watson and Holmes for the dazzling solution.  It is a flawed story in terms of its telling, but as Julian Symons notes in his Bloody Murder, it doesn't really matter because "Sherlock Holmes triumphs as a character from the moment we meet him." 

And that for me, in a nutshell, is why I've loved Holmes since I read this book as a teenager; it's why I keep reading Holmes over and over again -- it's that first meeting that really sealed the deal.  I fell in love with his mind -- there's just no better way of putting it -- and I'll turn to Symons once more here when he says that

"... the pleasure one gets from this opening up of a fine machine, so that every cog in it can be seen revolving, is hardly to be overestimated." 

And perhaps that's why Holmes continues to fascinate over a century after his creation. 

The introduction in this book is by Iain Sinclair, and it is excellent, making me think of A Study in Scarlet in an entirely new way.  I won't go into it, but if you can get this edition, it's well worth having just for that.

If your first experience of Holmes and Watson is from the fast-paced, high-tech BBC series with Benedict Cumberbatch, well, the stories might come across as a bit tame.  The luckiest people, I think, are the ones who've read the stories first and then watch them play out across the screen. 

* and another.... The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, by Fergus Hume

0701210133
Hogarth Press, 1985
originally published 1886
224 pp

paperback

"...life is a chessboard, after all, and we are the puppets of Fate."

In his Washington Post review of this book, critic Michael Dirda asks why The Mystery of a Hansom Cab was so successful, and goes on to say the following:

"I think because it's the detective story equivalent of the kitchen sink," 

and really, I can't think of a better way to describe this book.

According to Stephen Knight in his Towards Sherlock Holmes,  once Hume had decided to try his luck at publishing fiction, he went to a Melbourne bookseller and asked what "style of book he sold the most of."  He learned that "the detective stories of Gaboriau" were extremely popular. After buying "all  his works" and reading them "carefully," he started his book in 1885.  Lucy Sussex reveals in her book Blockbuster!: Fergus Hume & The Mystery of a Hansom Cab that Hume's idea, as noted in his preface, came to him while riding in a hansom cab "while driving at a late hour to St. Kilda, a suburb of Melbourne." (85)  He revealed to friends that not only was he writing a book, but more importantly, and one part of this "kitchen sink" mix, Hume also noted that he was "going to put on the local colour with a spade." (89)  In fact, the first British edition had been advertised as "a startling and realistic story of Melbourne social life," which really does come shining through this book, not just in terms of the upper classes but also moving through level after level downward into the lives of the denizens occupying the city's underworld.

The story itself is a mix of crime, investigations, courtroom drama, melodrama, and elements of sensation fiction, complete with dark secrets from the past.  The novel begins with a report from the Argus on "Saturday, the 28th of July, 18--"  telling its readers of an "extraordinary murder" that occurred in a most unlikely place -- a hansom cab:

"...committed by an unknown assassin, within a short distance of the principal streets of this great city, ... surrounded by an impenetrable mystery.  Indeed, from the nature of the crime itself, the place where it was committed, and the fact that the assassin has escaped without leaving a trace behind him, it would seem as though the case itself had been taken bodily out of one of Gaboriau's novels, and that his famous detective Lecoq would only be able to unravel it."

Gorby, the detective working on the case, follows a series of clues that lead to the arrest of one of society's own.  While he claims his innocence, the man refuses to disclose any information that might provide him with an alibi, and at first, even refuses to "engage a lawyer," because

"the first question he will ask me will be where I was on that night, and if I tell him all will be discovered, and then -- no -- no -- I cannot do it; it would kill her, my darling,..."

The secret that the accused is holding close to his chest will become a major focus of this story, and will lead the reader through the streets of Melbourne from the gentility of the city's gentlemen's clubs down into its  darker dens of vice. It also belies the idea that the upper classes, these pillars of society,  are immune to corruptibility; how that plays out I'll leave for others to discover.  And while we're busy wondering what exactly is the nature of this secret and why a man is willing to risk his own life for it,  another detective, Kislip,  is added to the mix, this time working for the attorney of the accused.  In fact, as Sussex mentions in her book, there is not just one or two detectives at work, but "the investigating is shared," among several of the characters in this book.

The Mystery of a Hansom Cab is fun but at the same time delivers strong commentary and criticism on society of the time, which is, I think,  one of the reasons I enjoyed it so much.  And then, of course, there is the mystery of the whodunit, which I didn't guess, and Hume's incredible attention to detail in writing this case which kept me guessing every step of the way.   Add to that the elements of sensation fiction (which I love) and the characterizations (the landladies cracked me up);  putting aside the melodrama, it all made for a couple of days of reading pleasure.

I liked it so much, in fact, that I bought the DVD of the tv adaptation made in Australia.  That I didn't care for as much as I did the book, since for some reason, whoever put it together got the strange idea of giving away tiny pieces of the secret in flashback form here and there.  I mean, I'd just read the book and knew the secret but I couldn't understand why the powers that be couldn't have just let things play out the way Hume had intended.  Had I watched this dvd only, without ever having read the novel, I would have figured things out way earlier than I should have; to be perfectly blunt, I would have also been pissed off.   On the other hand, I love seeing books I've just read played out on the screen, and other than what I see as the major flaw here of practically dumping the unknown right into your lap, I did get caught up in the story and the ending left me with a bit of a lump in the throat.  Positively swoonworthy it was, for sure.

*...and diving into the 1880s: Devlin the Barber, by Benjamin Leopold Farjeon

9781540370426
createspace, 2016
originally published 1888, Ward and Downey
202 pp

paperback


"...the ends of justice are sometimes reached by roads we cannot see." 

and now, for something completely different...

I first heard of this book while looking at the website of the Lilly Library at Indiana called The First Hundred Years of Detective Fiction. 1841-1941, and bought it back in January of this year while I was plotting out what I might be reading over the next twelve months. I had no idea what I was getting into at the time, and I must say that it took me completely by surprise. Eye-opening surprise. 

Benjamin Leopold Farjeon (1838-1903) was a prolific British author who wrote his first novel, The Life and Adventures of Christopher Cogleton (1862-1863) after leaving the gold fields of Australia and New Zealand and taking on a job as journalist for The Otago Daily Times.  [In the spirit of purely historical interest, according to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, that particular novel was the first book ever "printed, published, and bound in New Zealand."]  Father of famed children's writer Eleanor Farjeon and mystery novelist Joseph Jefferson Farjeon, Benjamin  also dabbled in "sensation mystery novels," for example his Great Porter Square of 1885 and his The Mystery of M. Felix of 1890, with Devlin the Barber falling between those two in 1888.   It was in 1888 that the series of Jack the Ripper murders began, and from what I can see, the timing of Devlin the Barber was no coincidence.

And yet, the focus here is not so much on the actual crime itself, but rather on the titular character Devlin, who rents a room at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Lemon.  The fact that Devlin is a lodger might bring to mind the spectacular novel The Lodger written in 1913 by Marie Belloc Lowndes,  but trust me, outside of the Ripper connection,  the two books are as different as can be.  It all begins when a Mr. Melladew discovers in the newspaper that his daughter Lizzie had been the victim of a "Horrible Murder in Victoria Park!," which comes as a shock because he'd seen her just the night before when kissing her goodnight.  Adding to his misery, he also discovers that her twin sister Mary has vanished with no clue as to her whereabouts.  Portland, the girls' uncle, newly-arrived from Australia, puts forth a proposition to our narrator, offering him a thousand pounds to discover who killed Lizzie and another thousand if he brings Mary home safe.  Having just recently been laid off, the money is sorely needed, but where to begin?   As fate would have it, a letter arrives from a much-loved former servant from his parents' home, a Mrs. Lemon, entreating him to come to her house.  Answering her summons, he discovers that she wants to talk about her lodger, Mr. Devlin, and oh what a bizarre, strange tale it turns out to be!   If  you will  forgive the cliché,  the story revealed by Mrs. Lemon held me completely spellbound to the point where upon returning to the hunt for Lizzie's murderer I almost didn't care about that part of the story any more.

Devlin the Barber is a real treasure, not so much in terms of the crime aspect, but because it is so vastly different from all of the old crime/mystery/detective novels from the 19th century I've read to this point.  Really, outside of the murder mystery, the draw is Devlin himself, especially as seen through the eyes of his landlady.  Farjeon must have had a right jolly old time writing this novel, and I had a right jolly old time reading it.  I'm not going to discuss particulars here, but I'll just say that it would probably be much more fitting to post about this novel in the dark fiction section of my reading journal.  It's also a much easier book to get through than the others read so far with far less melodrama, narrative that flows much more smoothly -- in short, it's much more reader friendly.

It is a book so far out of the ordinary that it begs to be read.  I absolutely loved it.

*closing out the 1870s: The Leavenworth Case, by Anna Katherine Green

9780143106128
Penguin, 2010
originally published 1878
326 pp

paperback

No look back at early crime/detective/mystery fiction would be complete without talking about The Leavenworth Case, which is a true landmark in the genre.  In this book the author introduces the first American series detective, Ebenezer Gryce, of the New York Metropolitan Police force, who would go on to be involved in eleven more cases.  But it is also, as Kate Watson notes in her book Women Writing Crime Fiction, 1860-1880, 

"innovative in the introduction of a number of a number of themes and tropes, now familiar to the reader of crime fiction, but then new and exciting. The Leavenworth Case is original in its deployment of ballistics, science, medicine, and a coroner's inquest, the illustration of the crime scene, replica letters, and the inclusion of the locked room mystery.  There is a diagram of the murder scene and the layout of the library, hall and bedroom, a ploy familiar to modern readers of the Golden Age detective fiction of Agatha Christie.  While some of these elements had appeared in earlier criminography, the way in which Green cleverly combines them locates her text as the forerunner of what Knight has called the clue-puzzle mystery." (122)

In short,  The Leavenworth Case occupies a sort of transitional space -- here we find a beginning in the movement toward more modern mystery/crime/detective fiction. And by the way, Sherlock Holmes hasn't appeared on the scene yet and won't for nearly a decade, but as Watson tells us,  "In the wake of Green, women writing crime became almost commonplace in America," listing several women authors, many of them now faded into the fabric of obscurity,  who went on to contribute "to the form after The Leavenworth Case."  (130)

Although the story is told from a first-person point of view, the narrator is not Detective Gryce, but rather a junior partner in a law firm named Everett Raymond.  As the story opens, Raymond has received news that Mr. Leavenworth has been murdered, "shot through the head by some unknown person while sitting at his library table."   There is to be a coroner's inquest, and Leavenworth's two young nieces Eleanore and Mary need someone to be present in an advisory capacity.  The senior member of the firm is Leavenworth's best friend, but he is temporarily absent, so Raymond takes the job upon himself.  When Raymond arrives at the Leavenworth home, he is met at the door by Mr. Gryce, who takes Raymond to the scene of the crime.  When Raymond asks who Mr. Gryce suspects, his answer is "Everybody and nobody."  However, the circumstances of the murder reveal that it must have been someone in the Leavenworth house; as we learn more about possible motives, the evidence begins piling up against Eleanore.  Everyone is questioned, with the exception of one of the maids, Hannah, who has now mysteriously disappeared.  Raymond finds himself dazzled by Eleanore, and can't bring himself to believe that she had anything to do with it, but Eleanore isn't helping matters much -- she obviously seems to know something, but refuses to talk.  In fact, Eleanore isn't the only one in the Leavenworth house who is keeping quiet, and with each new clue uncovered, things become more desperate.  Mr. Gryce, though, has a suggestion for Mr. Raymond: he would like the attorney to do some detecting on his own, to play "the mole" in an effort to get to the bottom of what's actually going on.  As he notes, it's not something he can easily do himself:

"Mr. Raymond...have you any idea of the disadvantages under which a detective labors? For instance now, you imagine that I can insinuate myself into all sorts of society perhaps, but you are mistaken. Strange as it may appear, I have never by any possibility of means succeeded with one class of persons at all. I cannot pass myself off for a gentleman...

...When we are in want of a gentleman to work for us, we have to go outside of our profession." (104-105). 

 And although Raymond is somewhat aghast at serving as a "spy," he agrees.  Trying to defend Eleanore by seeking the truth of events leads Raymond into a maze of secrets -- but will his findings prove Eleanore innocent or will they add further weight to what seems to be the evidence of her guilt?

from Blue Ridge Vintage

The Leavenworth Case is truly a whodunit, and unlike my bad luck with modern crime novels, I had absolutely no clue as to the identity of the murderer until the very end.  There is much to enjoy about this book -- a preponderance of clues that slowly appear, several people with motive to do away with the deceased, and a number of secrets to be unlocked as the story goes along.  And then there are the numerous themes that Green works into her narrative, for example, as Michael Sims notes in his introduction, "female dependence and inheritance laws;" an examination of class constraints are also obvious here.  If you enjoy books that turn on secrets then this a good one; I'm someone who just loves this sort of thing.  I will admit that the reluctance of the characters to spill what they know got a bit frustrating after a time, and I will also say that some readers unfamiliar with writing during this period might become tired of  the rather florid writing style in parts or the more melodramatic aspects of the story that crop up here and there.  But in the long run, I found it to be a fine mystery, one I couldn't put down.

*talk about fake news: The Mystery of the Sintra Road, by Eça de Queiróz and Ramalho Ortigão

9781909232297

Dedalus, 2013

originally published in 1870 as O mistério da estrada Sintra

translated by Margaret Jull Costa and Nick Phillips

287 pp

paperback

On July 23, 1870, readers of the Lisbon-based newspaper Diário de noticias would have seen a notice therein from the editor that said the following:

"At a rather late hour yesterday we received a singular piece of writing. It is an unsigned letter, posted to the editor, with the beginning of a stupendous narrative which suggests a dreadful crime, clouded in mystery and full of truly extraordinary occurrences which seem to have been related in order to sharpen our curiosity and confuse our minds in thousands of vague and contradictory conjectures."  (as quoted in Maria Filomena Monica's Eça de Queiróz, 69). 

The idea behind the story that was about to be published in the newspaper in daily installments (a departure from the normal serialization publication timing) came from two writers, Jose Maria Eça de Queiróz (24) and Ramalho Ortigão (33), who were both friends of the editor.   In an afterword to The Mystery of the Sintra Road, Nick Phillips writes that the two understood  that Portuguese readers had "avidly embraced foreign fiction," especially French feuilletons, and by 1870 "had become aware of a new style: the crime and detection novel." (281)  The two writers decided that they'd give it a go as well,

"to be published as instalments (sic) in the newspaper, Diário de Noticias, with the intention of stirring up Lisbon, which they saw as a city overcome by inertia, and showing its people how literary styles were changing." (282)

In Nancy Vosburg's Iberian Crime Fiction, Paul Castro notes that it was "designed to be a hoax, a spoof devised to reveal the attitudes of its readers and expose their stance to critical ridicule." (117)

The editor/founder of the newspaper saw its publication as an opportunity to "boost circulation," and the first installment began July 24th.  Phillips explains that on that day, a letter to the editor appeared in which the anonymous author said that he was a doctor who had been

 "kidnapped at pistol-point, blindfolded, bundled into a coach and taken to the site of what looked to be a serious crime.. He had been released unharmed, but through fear of retribution for having written to the newspaper, he had not dared to sign his letter."

 And we're off, into a series of events which the Doctor himself called "so grave, so veiled in mystery, so seemingly steeped in criminality," that he felt that the facts should be made available to the public "as a way of providing the only key to unlocking what seems to me a truly horrifying drama."  I won't and can't get into plot here, but the drama, as so nicely recounted on the back-cover blurb is as follows:

"Two friends are kidnapped by several masked men, who, to judge by their manners and their accent come from the very best society. One of the friends is a doctor, and the masked men say that they need him to assist a noblewoman, who is about to give birth. When they reach the house, they find no such noblewoman, only a corpse.  Another man, known only as A.M.C., bursts in at this point and declares that the dead man died of opium poisoning."

 This section, which introduces the crime and its seeming impossibility, is followed by a fake letter from a reader, then a letter from the friend of the doctor who was with him at the time of the abduction, another fake letter, and then we come to the testimony of one of the "masked men" who had taken part in the kidnapping.  Then we hear from A.M.C. himself, followed by the confession of the killer, and then all is concluded with a final account, once again from A.M.C.  The back-cover blurb also reveals that "Many readers believed the letters to be genuine," which made me think that if people were actually believing that this whole thing was true because it was in the paper every day, it would have been great fodder for morning coffee conversation at home or later around the 1870 equivalent of the office water cooler. As I said in my GR post, it was a case of fake newsapolooza!!

Looking back on their work in 1884, Eça de Queiróz notes that today he and his co-author find their tale "quite atrocious," and indeed, while it begins mysteriously enough, I found that once the "tall masked man" got his say, the story moved into a different territory altogether. Granted, everything he says helps lead to the final reveal, where the mystery sort of just flattens for a while until we get back to the crime elements.  On the other hand, though, I was so caught up in the story that I didn't care, and put together, this book made for what I like to call a rollicking good yarn, so good, in fact, that after turning the last page, I put the novel down and applauded.  Serious crime readers wanting just the crime facts etc.,  may not find it to their liking, but I'm in for its place in the history of crime -- the first Portuguese crime novel --  and I wouldn't have missed it for the world.  It may not be the most intellectually-stimulating book in my reading history, but I loved it. Sometimes you just gotta let go and have fun.

... and as usual, there's plenty going on under the surface, so read it slowly if you can.