* Victorian women detecting X 2: The Female Detective, by Andrew Forrester, and Revelations of a Lady Detective, by Williams Stephens Hayward

Since I'm talking about two books here, it's going to be a long post, so grab a coffee, a cup of tea or whatever, sit back and relax.

With the completion of these two books and Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone (post coming shortly),  I've finally made my way out of reading the 1860s.  I could probably stay in that decade for quite a long time, since it really seems to have been a banner decade for mystery/crime/detective novels, but it's seriously time for me to move on.

I hadn't really planned on including Revelations of a Lady Detective as part of this project since I figured one book about a Victorian woman detective would be enough of a representation,  but after reading Forrester's The Female Detective, quite frankly I was rather disappointed.

9780712358781

British Library, 2012

originally published 1864

316 pp

paperback

"

It starts off well enough -- we first encounter our heroine as she introduces herself in explaining why she has compiled her experiences in a book of "memoirs," saying that

"I write in order to show, in a small way, that the profession to which I belong is so useful that it should not be despised."

In fact, she feels that the detective business is  perceived as such a despicable trade that she has hidden what she does from everyone -- "relations or friends, or merely acquaintances" -- letting them believe that she is a dressmaker, instead of as she calls it a "spy."  She knows that a woman engaged in detective work is likely "regarded with even more aversion than her brother in profession," but she doesn't budge from her belief that her trade is a "necessary one" :

"...if there is a demand for men detectives there must also be one for female detective police spies. Criminals are both masculine and feminine -- indeed my experience tells me that when a woman becomes a criminal she is far worse than the average of her male companions, and therefore it follows that the necessary detectives should be of both sexes." 

and also notes that

"... in a very great many cases women detectives are those who can only be used to arrive at certain discoveries ... the woman detective has far greater opportunities than a man of intimate watching, and of keeping her eyes upon matters near which a man could not conveniently play the eavesdropper."

In a final justification for putting her adventures down on paper, she says that it's through the detective that "the most obscure and well-planned evil-doing is brought to the light."  She ends her introduction to her readers by noting that  "even amongst criminals,"  there is "good to be found," and finally, that

"it does not follow because a man breaks the law that he is therefore heartless."

Oho, I'm thinking after I finished reading what she has to say for herself here, this is going to be great.  And it was right up until I got to "The Unraveled Case," which is the third story in this book. Now, I consider myself to be a very patient reader, but this case irritated the crap out of me.  In the first two adventures of our female detective, we are clearly shown how being a woman had its advantages in solving these cases, allowing our Miss Gladden (the name only shows up once in a while, so I'll use it here, although she says in her intro that she's purposefully left out her name) to insinuate herself into a situation that wouldn't have been appropriate for a male.  That's just not the case in "The Unraveled Mystery," where she looks at a detection failure and gives her opinion on what went wrong.  There's absolutely nothing about this case in which her being a woman has any relevance whatsoever -- in fact, it's not even her case, and reads like an excuse for Forrester to amaze and wow us (which he did not) with his deductive prowess.   The same thing happens again in "A Child Found Dead: Murder or No Murder," which isn't Gladden's case either but rather a manuscript given to her by same guy who had her take a look at the earlier case I've just mentioned; finally, in "The Mystery," we're given a story which as she says, "never came under my observation." Here's the point: if I'm expecting to read about a "female detective" and only four out of seven cases fit the bill, well, to me, that's a fail.  A big fail. Had Forrester stuck to a plan and given us the work of an undercover female detective in each case, it could have been so much better -- as it was, I was extremely disappointed.

9780712358965

British Library, 2013

originally published 1864

278 pp

paperback

However, I found only great delight and much joy in reading Revelations of a Lady Detective, by William Stephens Hayward, whose Miss Paschal found herself not only in the thick of a number of strange cases, but also faced certain death at one point.  In his introduction, Mike Ashley explains why the two women detectives are so different; why they come from "a different line of evolution," which I'll leave people to read on their own.   We are treated (yes, treated) to ten of Miss Paschal's experiences here, ranging from a countess who somehow has no income but is fabulously wealthy to a secret society that meets at an old mill and practices the old tradition of vendetta to the story of a wealthy  woman who is afraid that a conniving woman is slowly sinking her hooks into her son's fortune.  While Paschal is the first to admit that her cases are solved mainly by "accident" or by "chance," the fun is in watching her insinuate herself into various environments where she has ample opportunity to figure out what's going on before taking steps to bring the criminals to some sort of justice. 

My absolute favorite story is "The Nun, The Will, and the Abbess," a rather gothic-ish sort of tale of a young woman whose entire life was spent in preparation to take her vows and live out her life among the Ursuline sisters in a convent.  Hayward outdid himself with this one, and while I won't say why, it is truly a standout among the other nine stories.

If you had to choose only one of the two, I'd definitely go with Revelations of a Lady Detective.  For one thing, the stories are much better as a whole, for another, they all focus solely on Miss Paschal and her job as detective, and three, they're so much easier to read, obviously written more for the general reading public than was The Female Detective, published the same year. However, in both books, the novelty of a woman working with the police not as a true employee but independently, gathering financial reward for her work, is clearly realized;  the two women detectives often find it difficult to carry out what's needed to be done because of their respective senses of empathy but they both eventually put their own feelings aside to do what they need to do, and in both books, it is writ large that  justice doesn't always necessarily  mean a set of manacles and a trip to the local nick.

I've noticed that many readers find in both that there's no actual "detecting" going on, but in a big way, that's just not the case.  The women portrayed here are more or less undercover "spies" as Miss Gladden will tell you, and while they may not be busy with a magnifying glass or taking fingerprints, they are gathering information/evidence that will make it easier for them to bring a case to its end.  In "The Mysterious Countess," for example, our Miss Paschal lies in wait for something to happen once the house has settled down, actively follows her quarry, observes the suspect, and makes an incredible discovery that leads to satisfying conclusion.  How is that not "detecting?"  Quite frankly, if you want something along the lines of Kinsey Millhone, you shouldn't be reading a Victorian novel.

So much more goes on here under the surface in both books, but it's time to bring this post to a close and besides, both books have been written about extensively so more information and analyses are widely available for perusal.   I will cautiously recommend The Female Detective because of its milestone status, but wholeheartedly endorse Revelations of a Lady Detective because bottom line -- it's just plain fun.

returning to the present with Faithless, by Kjell Ola Dahl

9781910633274
Orenda Books, 2017
originally published as Kvinnen i plast, 2010
translated by Don Bartlett
265 pp

paperback

It's not all that often any more that I pick up a Scandinavian crime novel by an unknown-to-me author, and it's certainly way out of character for me to read a book that is seventh in a series without having devoured the other books beforehand. I'm actually quite OCD about series order, but I thought I'd take a chance with this book after  being offered a chance to read it by the publisher (thank you!!) and so not knowing what I was about to get myself into, I spent most of yesterday reading this book.  The first thing I did after finishing it was to pick up a Kindle edition of the author's first book in the series, Lethal Investments, because of what happens at the end of Faithless.  While I obviously can't say exactly what that might be, I felt this need to go back and see why the author would choose to end things in the way he did here, and I figured that it must have something to do with all of the things I'd missed by not reading the previous novels.  The first three books have been translated, as has book #5, so I have a bit of catching up to do. 

What drew me into this story wasn't so much the actual crimes and crime solving here (although I have to admit that I do like when the cops figure things out before I do)  but rather the dilemmas faced by a couple of the main characters that play a huge role in how this story plays out.  While there are a few different crimes under investigation here, the biggest one opens the novel with the arrest of a woman, Veronika Undset, whom the police have under surveillance because of her connections to a known criminal they are watching -- a "teflon" crook, meaning that nothing has ever stuck with this guy, so he's able to continue his operations.  While searching Undset's bag, Detective Frankie Frolich finds a quantity of heroin hidden in her lighter, but she is eventually released.   It's not long afterwards that Frankie is invited to the birthday party of an old friend he has not seen for years and gets the surprise of his life not only when he sees Veronika there, but when the friend introduces her as his fiancée.   He gets an even bigger shock when later Veronika turns up dead.  Because of his past history with her fiancé, he tries to get himself taken off of the case but is refused, and while he knows that no good is going to come of his involvement, he has no choice but to stay involved.   

What comes shining through in this book, and very nicely so, is the old cliché that the world is a very small place, and that it really is impossible to escape one's own history.  It can be buried, maybe, but it's always there, and it definitely has an influence on the present. While  this idea is reflected in several characters in this novel, it is best exemplified in Frank's role in the murder investigation.   While he tries to remain professional, he comes to realize that the past is not really past -- and the choices he makes throughout the case may not exactly be limited to his role as a police officer.  And while his own  demons certainly play a role in the police investigation, he is also portrayed as being very human as he tries to keep them under control.  The same is true of his colleague Lena, whose own circumstances lead her to make some very bad decisions.   There's much, much more, of course -- the disappearance of a young woman recently arrived in Norway, a horrendous, unsolved murder from the past -- but for me it's all about the people and the author does it right.

Faithless moves toward the dark end of the crime fiction spectrum in a hurry, as we watch how people deal with not only their own inner anxieties but also how forces that just may be out of the reach of human control have to the potential to play a role in unleashing the darker aspects of human nature.  I have to hand it to this author -- I have had enough of thriller-type crime novels to last me a lifetime, but in this book, he has put his writing energy into getting into his characters' heads, which is very much appreciated on my end. 

*back to business once again: Force and Fraud, A Tale of the Bush, by Ellen Davitt

kindle edition
Clan Destine Press, 2015
originally serialized 1865 in The Australian Journal
244 pp

"Yes, there they were: Force and Fraud, contending with each other -- the two crimes, which so often unite in the destruction of mankind, now striving for the mastery." 

High marks for this book, which has a dual significance:  since it is most likely that it is the first work of crime fiction written in Australia, that also makes it the first work of crime fiction written by an Australian woman.

Author Ellen Davitt (1812-1879) neé Heseltine, was born in Yorkshire. According to Kate Watson in her Women Writing Crime Fiction, 1860-1880, Davitt, who would later become Anthony Trollope's sister-in-law, "spent her early life in the United Kingdom."  She married her husband Arthur in 1845; by 1847 the two were in Ireland where Arthur served as an "inspector of schools" and Ellen taught drawing for three years at Dublin's Irish National Board's Model School for Girls. They emigrated to Melbourne, arriving in 1854, where Arthur had been appointed as the principal of the Model and Normal Schools and Ellen took a job as the "Superintendent of the female pupils and trainees." Arthur died in 1860 while Ellen went on to take several different positions in schools in Victoria. Watson notes that Ellen Davit was a "progressive, proto-feminist figure" who

"refused the role of a conventionally subservient woman, confined to the domestic sphere." (160) 

There is a full biography of Ellen Davitt  at Design and Art Australia Online for readers who want to know more about the author.

Force and Fraud first appeared in Volume 1, issue #1 of The Australian Journal: A Weekly Record of Amusing and Instructive Literature, Science and the Arts.  Lucy Sussex, in her book Women Writers and Detectives notes that from the Journal's beginnings, it had a "crime bent," which is obvious by some of the titles listed here in another article by Sussex; its founding editor was also an ex-policeman.  Watson says that Force and Fraud was "pioneering in its status as the first murder mystery in Australia, and the first 'whodunit'," but sadly, Davitt is yet another woman crime writer who has faded into obscurity.  The good news is that, as Derek Parker notes at The culture concept circle, Davitt's "importance to the modern day crime novel" has been recognized by Sisters in Crime Australia, who have "created the annual Davitt Awards to honour Ellen Davitt and foster home grown crime writing talent."

Considering its significance in the history of crime fiction writing, hopefully more mystery/crime readers will become aware of Force and Fraud, which as I said earlier, deserves very high marks. It is not your ordinary whodunit by any stretch -- while the story progresses, it moves from the bush to small towns to the city of Melbourne, and there's even a brief bit at sea as a ship makes its through a treacherous reef.  These parts of Australia of the time are represented well here; the sense of place is so strong that I could picture it in my mind while reading. The actual story revolves around a young woman, Flora McAlpin, whose father ("a relic of the feudal ages")  is murdered and whose fiancé Herbert Lindsey  is jailed for the crime. He, of course, protests his innocence,  but the weight of the evidence is so strong against him that even he gets the picture.   However, while Lindsey awaits trial in jail, we are made privy to the machinations of the true culprit, suspected by no one.  He's a pretty nasty piece of work and it's pretty obvious from the beginning that he's got a hand in it all, but watching everything unravel is the best part of the book.  There's also a bit of a literary angle going on here, captured in one scene in particular where  Mr. Stewart the jail chaplain opens a book "by chance," after deciding that Lindsey, "the delicately minded young man" could "never have committed murder."  The book happens to be Thomas Hood's poems about Eugene Aram; the point made is as he realizes that "all murderers had not been branded ruffians," something worth remembering as the story progresses to its end.  One more thing that I feel strongly about in this novel is the characterizations, which are unbelievably  realistic and move from lower to upper classes and everything in between.

While not all crime readers will immediately run to pick up a copy of Force and Fraud, I particularly enjoyed this one and once I'd started, was reluctant to put it down.  It's a book I can certainly recommend, especially to readers who are interested in the history of crime writing and to others who like me, are heavily  into older crime novels.  It's certainly worth checking out and the bottom line here is that it's also a lot of fun.

The Wine of Angels, by Phil Rickman

0330342681
Pan Books, 1999
629 pp

paperback

"It was the depressing side of country life; they all seemed to know their Pattern and the Pattern didn't change."  -- 326

 This old 1999 copy has been with me through several  moves (along with many of the other books in this series), and has sat quietly on its shelf since the last move eleven years ago.  Recently, though, The Wine of Angels came up in an online group discussion and I figured it was time to brush off the accumulated dust and give it another read.  It's also in keeping with the season -- not just Fall, mind you, but that spooky time of year leading up to Halloween.  Not that this book is overpowered by what I call the woo-woo factor, but there are plenty of mystical moments that helped me decide to read it as part of the Halloween book list. It is set in a small British village, but there's nothing at all cozy about this one. Other than the secrets that are hidden behind closed village doors, it's about as far from St. Mary Mead as one can get.

Wine of Angels is the series opener featuring Merrily Watkins, who has just received her first real assignment as a newly-ordained Anglican vicar.  While visiting the village of Ledwardine, Herefordshire,  deciding whether or not to "go for it," she arrives just in time to witness a strange ritual under an old apple tree known as "The Apple Tree Man."  It is supposed to be a traditional "wassailing," but one of the villagers (an "incomer," there only about a year and a half)  takes it upon herself to add rifles to the mix, citing a reference in a book about collected folk customs.  One of the long-time villagers contests that decision, saying that since it's not a local tradition, what they're doing may end up causing "offence" to the orchard itself, but rifles are fired anyway and Merrily stands by as one of the men blows off his own head.  If that's not an attention-worthy opening to a novel, I don't know what is. 

That event will return to the story later, but in the meantime, the struggle between modern and traditional takes center stage in this mystery.  Merrily ends up accepting the job in Ledwardine, but not everyone is happy about her presence there.  Her male predecessor had been there for decades, so it's not surprising that some of the villagers would be unhappy about her appointment.  But that's not the worst of it -- it seems that there is to be a Ledwardine cider festival, and one of the residents decides he's going to put on a play to solve the mystery of the centuries-old death of a local vicar, Wil Williams, who was accused of practicing witchcraft.  There are some in the village who do not want things to come out in the open, and Merrily gets stuck in the middle of a growing controversy.  In the meantime, perhaps the incomers should have paid more attention to Lucy Devenish and her warning about causing "offence" to the orchard, especially when a local girl goes missing after last being seen there.

from Tudor Stuff

Since The Wine of Angels is the first in a series, the author spends a lot of time on the people who live in Ledwardine, most especially  Merrily and her fifteen year-old daughter Jane. And while there is a lot going on in the mystical sphere here, in his review at  The Agony Column  Rick Kleffel  notes that  the interaction between  Jane and Merrily  "grounds the novel in the real world," and I'd say that's a perfect way to describe it:  not only does Merrily have to concern herself with the doubts involved in her own belief, the antagonism of some of the villagers toward her position, and a recurrent nightmare that adds to her stress, but she also worries about Jane, who is trying to find her own way after yet another move in her life.   And, like most mystery novels that are set in small villages, there are secrets that remain hidden until something forces them to float to the surface, which happens more than once in this book, leading to as Kleffel says, a story with "layers" that are peeled away to uncover "something more mysterious." 

It's fun, it's intelligent, and it's not just another point A to point B mystery story with a tired plot that's been done over and over again; combined with the people in this book  and the struggle between modernity and tradition, The Wine of Angels  makes for a very, very good read.  I'd forgotten just how much I enjoyed this novel and I went scurrying back to the shelf to grab the next one, Midwinter of the Spirit for more.  Recommended, for sure.

The Man From the Train: The Solving of a Century-Old Serial Killer Mystery, by Bill James and Rachel McCarthy James

9781476796253
Scribner, 2017
464 pp

hardcover

It's very rare that I choose to sit down and read a true-crime account, since it's not my really my thing, so the topic has to be something that piques my interest enough to get me to take a look.  So when I heard about this book last July that involves an axe-wielding serial killer who in the early part of the 20th century  rode the rails and left carnage behind him, that got my attention.  For one thing, this was a case I'd never heard of, and the deal was sealed when I discovered that this all went down over one hundred years ago.

The dustjacket blurb describes this book as a

"compelling, dramatic, and meticulously researched narrative about a century-old series of axe murders across America, and how the authors came to solve them."  

Bill James, who says here that in his "day job" he is a "baseball writer," is also the author of another book, Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebrations of Violence (2012). In a 2016 interview in The New Yorker', when Evan Hughes asked the author about the book he was currently working on, James said the following:

"You know the story of the murders in Villisca? All right, a hundred and four years ago eight people are found dead, murdered with an axe, inside this locked house, in a quiet, small town in the southern part of Iowa. It's a famous crime, and the reason that it became famous is that at the time it was obvious that it was the latest in a series of similar attacks. I had the idea that I'll bet there are others like this which have not been tied to the same murderer, because at the time they didn't have the methods you have now to connect the dots between unrelated events. So I started looking for them, and I found several."

 James hired his daughter Rachel as research assistant and this book is the result of their work.  As James writes in the preface,

"With modern computers, we can search tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of small-town newpapers, looking for reports of similar events."

And not only did he find them, but he also claims that they even discovered the culprit, the true identity behind person they label as "The Man From the Train."  It's a great premise, to be sure; on the flip side, though, rather than being the "compelling" or "dramatic" book promised by the dustjacket blurb, this has to have been one of the most frustrating, amateurish and utterly confusing true-crime accounts I've ever read.

There are no footnotes or endnotes;  there is no bibliography, and he handles the lack thereof in the acknowledgements section where he says that "it is inadequate to acknowledge in a footnote those whose work you use," and that he feels that "sources should be directly acknowledged in the text." He says that he "tried to do this throughout the book," but that's not always the case. While he does mention things said in old newspaper accounts here and there, and quotes one or two of his sources once in a while, for the most part, there are several places where I found myself while taking notes writing "Source???"  or "Citation?" especially when it came to things like statistics he gives, or phrases that start with "It has been written." In putting together a work involving historical research, the lack of sources is not just astounding, but downright appalling.

Another major issue here is that the author makes assumptions about the killer that have absolutely no factual basis; not only that, but then after he's made one statement, he contradicts himself later.  One huge example of an assumption about the killer is that the author believes that the Man From The Train "likely" lived and worked near Marianna Florida between 1901 and 1903, and then doesn't say why. There is no elaboration on the topic, and frankly, I was flabbergasted.   Another example  of his kind of waffly logic  is found on page 310 where the author is going through a list of "let's say for the sake of argument," about whether or not the killer "stalked" his victims.  There, in a brief paragraph about a murder which happened in Maine in 1901, he states the following:

"The murder of the Allen family in Maine in 1901 is him, but that this was an unplanned event that resulted from an eruption of anger on the murderer's part, when Mr. Allen insulted the murderer and drove him forcefully away from his door.

There is no evidence given anywhere that this scene occurred,  and back on page 226 he implies that one of four factors that "strongly suggest" this murder was the work from The Man From the Train was "the presence of Carrie Allen" (the daughter) since Mr. James claims that many of the murders were based on the killer's "perversion" or his penchant for young girls.  Then, on page 228, he says

"But it may not have been Carrie; it may also be that he knocked on the door and asked for a drink of water, and Wesley Allen came out at him in a bad temper, and told him to get on down the road and be quick about it."

Note the "it may also be" here as opposed to what he says on page 310.  And then he reflects on an episode of Dexter for his statement that The Man From the Train "particularly hated large men who tried to push him around," again, a statement that has absolutely no factual basis.  In fact, the entire book is filled with scenarios like this -- guesswork, lots of probablys, maybes, "it may be thats."   My point is that when you have a whole book filled with speculation it's kind of hard to take anything seriously.

Then there's the pattern that the author has established that is supposed to convince us that these murders are the work of the same man and that they go back further than anyone who's already written about the links between these axe murders has discovered. Admittedly, there do seem to be similarities and these were already noted in 1911; however, when a murder doesn't fit the pattern, the author still finds a reason that it should.  As just one example when he tries to justify including a murder in North Carolina in 1906 when the pattern the author has established here doesn't quite fit, in this case a murder where potential victims were left alive  (301), he says that the killer "heard a train coming."  Not "may have heard a train coming," or "probably heard a train coming," but "heard a train coming" and therefore decided to catch it, implying that he was in a hurry to leave.  There's no evidence for this at all unless Mr. James has a timetable of trains running through that section of North Carolina on that particular day, which he doesn't.    This sort of things occurs more than once; not only that, but he takes us through several murders that have nothing at all to do with the case  that could have been left out all together.  By the end of Section IV (330),  Mr. James notes that so far,  121 murders "have been discussed in this book."  And while the research is impressive, what's frustrating is that after he's taken us through these 121 cases,  he says that while "the authors do not believe that all 121 murders were committed by the same man,"  they do believe that a "substantial number" can be attributed to him; that gets narrowed down on page 336 to "  "perhaps fourteen crimes about which we have enough information to be certain they were committed by the same man."  So why write about all 121 and not focus just on the fourteen? That makes no sense at all and fills the book with a lot of unnecessary details and way more conjecture than fact. 

Honestly, it's enough to make your head spin and I haven't even touched on the writing style which absolutely grates.

This book is actually getting some really great reviews and high ratings, but not from me. I will say that I was impressed with how he pointed out several instances where the police or other members of the justice community were too quick to arrest or judge suspects based on race, opportunity or other factors --  that was done very well.  I also found the subject matter intriguing especially because I'd never heard of any of these murders, but as one of "today's modern readers," a phrase he uses throughout the book, speculation, guesswork, and a lot of "maybes" just aren't enough to make this a convincing story.  It's sad, really, because I had been looking forward to it for months.

*The Widow Lerouge, by Émile Gaboriau

9781515097372

CreateSpace, 2015

originally published in serial form, 1863, Le Pays

originally published in novel form, 1866 as L'Affaire Lerouge

(no translator given here)

290 pp

paperback

"...let it be a lesson for the remainder of your life... remember it is useless to try and hide the truth; it always comes to light!" 

                                                                           

This book is yet another entry in this year's reading project involving the history of crime/mystery fiction. I had thought I'd be somewhere in the 1880s by now (since this year was my reading was supposed to have taken me through to 1914) but it seems that the 1860s were a banner decade for mystery and crime writing so I'll be hovering here for a while yet. 

just a tiny bit of history before we get to the mystery:

French crime writer Émile Gaboriau should be much more well known, more widely read in the realm of crime fiction than he actually is by modern crime readers, since he was a prolific author of twelve books and a volume of short stories.    According to Professor Stephen Knight in his Towards Sherlock Holmes: A Thematic History of Crime Fiction in the 19th Century World, Gaboriau also gave readers "the first major police detective in crime fiction."  He goes on to quote Yves Oliver-Martin from his work Histoire du roman populaire en France de 1840 à 1980), who said that Gaboriau's Dectective Lecoq was, in fact,  "the prototype" (56).  While Lecoq makes only a brief, introductory appearance here in L'Affaire Lerouge, he will become involved in four more cases, and even the great Arthur Conan Doyle would bandy his name about in A Study in Scarlet, where he is referred to by Sherlock Holmes as a "miserable bungler."  While Holmes may not have thought much of Lecoq, his creator revealed that Gaboriau's "neat dovetailing of his plot" attracted him to the author, while Daniel Stashower (Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle)  notes various similarities between Holmes and Lecoq (80).   And really, it  takes no time at all once inside of The Widow Lerouge to discover Gaboriau's influence on Conan Doyle's great detective. 

frontispiece from Mémoires de Vidocq

Since coincidences abound in The Widow Lerouge, it seems appropriate here to throw in an interesting real-life coincidence before moving on to the book itself.  Going back for a moment to an earlier post, it seems that in 1862, while Paul Féval was putting together his Jean Diable,  he had taken on Gaboriau as his secretary.  Molly Carr in her book In Search of Dr. Watson notes that while Gaboriau's M. Lecoq was based on the very real Eugene François Vidocq, "a man who began as a thief and then became a high-ranking police official in Paris," a certain "villainous" Lecoq showed up as a character in  Féval's first novel of his seven-book Habits Noirs (Blackcoats) series.  Her idea is that Gaboriau may have 

"quietly appropriated the name for himself, giving it to an upholder of the law rather than to someone who was not." 

 Whether or not that's how things went down, it's still an interesting factoid.

... et maintenant, 

Original title page of L'Affaire Lerouge, from The First One Hundred Years of  Detective Fiction, 1841-1941 

As noted above, L'Affair Lerouge began as a serialization or feuilleton, in Le Pays in 1863.  (For more info on the history of the feuilleton, click here.)  It was published in novel form in 1866 by E. Dentu, and since then it has been translated into a number of languages.  The story begins when, on Shrove Tuesday, March, 1862, "five women belonging to the village of La Jonchere" turn up at the Bougival police station to report that no one had seen their neighbor, the Widow Lerouge,  for two days.  Evidently this "sudden disappearance" was not only out of the ordinary, but it was alarming, since the women were concerned that some sort of crime may have occurred.  Crime is a rarity in Bougival, but the gendarmes went to check it out along with the commissaire. They find the door to the widow's home locked and while waiting for the locksmith to get it open, a young boy hands them the key which he'd found in a ditch.  When they walk in they discover that the place is a mess with furniture that had been "knocked about," and various trunks and drawers had been forced open.  As they go deeper into the house, they discover not only that there's even more of a mess, but that the missing Widow Lerouge is dead, with her face buried in the ashes of the fireplace. Witnesses and neighbors are questioned to discover exactly who this woman was during her lifetime, and then the investigating magistrate, M. Daburon, appears on the scene, along with the chief of detective police Gevrol and his "subordinate," Lecoq. He was

"an old offender, reconciled to the law. A smart fellow in his profession, crafty as a fox, and jealous of his chief, whose abilities he held in light estimation."

It is Lecoq who asks for a certain M. Tabaret (nicknamed Tirauclair), who had discovered the truth in an earlier  case for a which an innocent man was found guilty and nearly guillotined.  Tabaret is an amateur sleuth, who "goes for playing the detective by way of amusement."  He is, however, widely respected by Lecoq, and so he joins the investigation. As it turns out, his involvement is a good thing, since Gevrol decides to follow one slim lead, leaving Tabaret to continue his "researches" outside of Gevrol's. As he says, "I am, I search, and I find," and it isn't very long until we get a taste of Tabaret's capabilities as an armchair sort of detective. I swear, it's like reading the part of a Holmes story where he dazzles everyone with his observations.   The case will continue until the culprit is discovered, although things change quickly throughout the story, meaning once you think you know the "who," don't be surprised that as circumstances change so will your guess.

I will say that while The Widow Lerouge is a solid mystery story, it's a bit frustrating because there are a number of coincidences that turn things on their heads and that have a bearing on the later parts of the tale. Normally I want to scream when a writer does this, but actually, to my surprise, once I got past my own prejudices on that issue, I realized that it sort of worked here. And  then, there's the ending, which I won't divulge, but suffice it to say that I don't think it was thought out very well at all. I can't say why without spoiling the story, but the "who" started to  become very obvious and I have to find fault with the author for his methodology here. Hopefully he improves in the later books, but in this one, well, it's amateur.    Still, as in most books like this one, for me it's all about the journey, and that was truly great fun.  There's a good story underlying it all, making this book well worth reading.  Perhaps it's time to give those domestic noir novels that are hot right now in the crime world a rest and give something classic a chance instead.

***

ps/find a better version than this one -- I was appalled a) that there was no translator given and b) that there weren't even page numbers!

a Maigret triple play: The Carter of La Providence, The Late Monsieur Gallet, and The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien, by Georges Simenon

9780141393469
Penguin, 2014
originally published as Le Charretier de la Providence, 1931
translated by David Coward
152 pp
also translated as Lock 14, Maigret Meets a Milord, The Crime at Lock 14
paperback

Sometimes when I've finished a book and have all the relevant information in my head, I can't help but to feel sorry for the villain, and that's certainly the case in this second novel in Simenon's Maigret series. This one is set along France's Canal latéral à la Marne,

from French Waterways

where two kilometers from Dizy stands Lock 14 and the nearby Café de la Marine, where "the rhythm of life ... was slow. " For a few days, life here is interrupted when something strange happens.   A body has been discovered by a carter on waking up and getting his horse ready for the day's work.  As he is moving his hand around under the straw to find his whip, next to where he'd been sleeping, he feels something "cold," and the dead woman is revealed in the light of his lantern. This discovery, we're told, is "about to bring chaos to Dizy and disrupt life on the canal."  And that it does, as Maigret takes the case, beginning with the mystery of how she got there since there was no road, and since anyone who walked there would have found him/herself knee deep in mud.  The woman's shoes are clean and there are no traces of mud on her dress; in fact she's dressed more for a night out on the town. One mystery is cleared up after yacht owner British Sir Walter Lampson identifies her as his wife, but knowing who she is doesn't answer all of Maigret's questions. It has the opposite effect, actually. 

Once again, we find ourselves steeped in atmosphere from the beginning -- rain, gloom, mud and life on the river.  Set against Lampson's yacht, the canal is filled with barges, some motorized, while some, like La Providence depend on horses and their carter to get them through.  And while Maigret follows the details of the case, it will once again be his knowledge of human nature that will solve it.  

this photo  is on the Barrow in England, but you get the idea

The Carter of La Providence is a slow burner, with a number of potential suspects and motives, but as I said, once the case was solved, I couldn't help but feel sorry for the murderer, and I think it would take someone with a heart of stone to feel otherwise.

***

9780141393377

Penguin, 2013

originally published as M. Gallet décédé, 1931

translated by Anthea Bell

155 pp

paperback

"Peace, for heaven's sake, that's what he was waiting for."

Moving on to book number three, The Late Monsieur Gallet is completely different from its two Maigret predecessors, but as in the case of The Carter of La Providence, Simenon managed once again to worm his way under my skin and right into my empathy zone. I am beginning to believe that this man must have been one of the keenest observers of human nature ever, something that becomes quite obvious here as the story unfolds, layer by layer by layer. 

Left pretty much on his own on 27 June 1930, Maigret receives a telegram informing him that a commercial traveler by the name of Émile Gallet was murdered two days earlier at the Hotel de la Loire in Sancerre. His home address was also given, and it's there that Maigret has his first exposure to the dead man in a photo. That picture, along with another photograph of the dead man's son, will come to haunt him over the course of this case, which begins with his premonition that it  "had all the hallmarks of a particularly distasteful investigation."  And as things turn out, he was right. Aside from the photos that will replay in his mind, when Gallet's widow at her home in Saint-Fargeau is told that her husband was killed in Sancerre, she produces a postcard from Rouen dated the day after Gallet was dead, proving in her mind that Maigret is wrong. Accompanying him to Sancerre, Mme. Gallet is annoyed that she's likely off on a wild-goose chase, but changes her tune when indeed it turns out to be her husband.  Then, when Maigret talks to a local inspector, he discovers that whenever the dead man stayed at the Hotel de la Loire, he'd registered as a M. Clément from Orleans.  Thus begins the strangest investigation to date in this series, which will expose much more than a murderer.  

Georges Simenon with Commissaire Marcel Guillame, his inspiration for Maigret, from France Today

When all is said and done, this book turns out to be a bit of a gut-wrenching sort of experience as Simenon basically lays bare some of the ugliness of which humans are capable;  it also, in my opinion, begins to bring out the very human (as opposed to strictly investigator) side of Maigret not yet seen in the two books prior to this one.  That trend continues to grow in the last of the books under scrutiny here, The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien,

9780141393452

Penguin, 2014

originally published as Le Pendu de Saint-Pholien, 1931

translated by Linda Coverdale

138 pp

which has also been translated as The Crime of Inspector Maigret, which, incidentally, is the first chapter heading.  Following a "shabby traveller" from France to Bremen, Maigret and his quarry have arrived at the Gare de Neuschanz at the German border, along the northern edge of Holland.  There, the man sets down his cheap suitcase, leaving it alone for two minutes. During his absence, Maigret swaps it with an exact replica that he'd picked up earlier, and the two men board the train for Bremen. He tails the man as he buys two sausage rolls (small detail but it bugs Maigret throughout the story) and then makes his way into a "poorer neighborhood," where he takes a room in a "seedy-looking" hotel.  Maigret, of course, is in a connecting room, where he puts his eye to the keyhole and watches as the man opens his suitcase, realizes that the contents are missing and goes into panic mode; he also follows as the distraught man makes his way back to the station to check for his lost bag. At around midnight, the two return to the hotel where Maigret once again peers through the keyhole, only to see the poor man put a gun in his mouth and shoot himself.  As the local police arrive, Maigret informs them that it is suicide, that the man's French, and that he would like their permission to investigate privately while they do so officially.  Maigret returns to Paris, where he 

"...was not far from -- indeed quite close to -- thinking that he had just killed a man."

And to top it all off, it was

"A man he didn't know! He knew nothing about him! There was no proof whatsoever that he was wanted by the law."

This is the point where the story begins, going back first to Brussels where it all began a day earlier,  then moving ahead as Maigret tries to find out exactly why  Louis Jeunet would take his own life. His investigation takes him into the past and into a dark secret that people will kill for rather than have it come to light.

The notions of guilt and justice are writ large throughout this novel, and  I can't help but feel that Maigret's involvement -- his need to see the case through to its end -- after Jeunet's suicide is his own way of trying to assuage the guilt he feels over his role in the man's death. However, that's just one facet of the role guilt plays in this novel.  As for justice, well, that becomes obvious along the way  and once again, as in M. Gallet, Maigret's understanding of human nature and his ability to move away from the job and into his conscience serves him well here as he has to make a decision that could change a number of lives.

It would be a grave mistake to read the Maigret novels as just another set of police procedurals or to think that Simenon is the male equivalent of Agatha Christie.  No.  These books move straight to the heart of human nature, and as I said earlier, Simenon is a master of observation.  I have seventy-one novels to go and by god I'm going to read them all.