Fri 18 Dec 2009
INQUIRY: Hammet, Chandler and Gardner as Fictional Characters.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Characters , Inquiries[25] Comments
In the Revised Crime Fiction IV, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Erle Stanley Gardner are denoted as series characters in a series of three novels by author William F. Nolan:
The Black Mask Murders. St. Martin’s, 1994.
The Marble Orchard. St. Martin’s, 1996.
Sharks Never Sleep. St. Martin’s, 1998.
None of the above are given credit as fictional characters in other detective novels. Hammett and Chandler both appeared in Chandler, by William Denbow, for example; and obviously Hammett appeared in Joe Gores’ Hammett.
Question: Are there other novels, ones I’m not thinking of, in which any of the above (including Gardner) appeared as fictional characters?
And as long as I’m asking, what other real life mystery writers may have shown up as characters in novels written by someone else? Josephine Tey, I know, in a couple of novels by Nicola Upson, but since they were published after 2000, they’re beyond the scope of CFIV. Disregarding the date, are there others?
December 18th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Hammett has a decent-sized supporting role assisting Toby Peters in Stuart Kaminsky’s “Buried Caesars”.
I have some faint memory that Chandler does a bit part in the first of the Toby Peters mysteries “Murder On The Yellow Brick Road” too.
Ian Fleming provides Toby some assistance in another bit part in one of the books in the same series–“MOTYBR”, maybe?–also. ..
December 18th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
Thanks, Rick. Maybe someone with quick access to MURDER ON THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD can take a quick peek inside.
And speaking of Ian Fleming, there’s also a series of books by “Quinn Fawcett” in which he definitely has the leading role:
1. Death to Spies (2002)
2. Siren Song (2003)
3. Honor Among Spies (2004)
I’ve not seen any of these. I wonder if they’re any good?
— Steve
December 18th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Both Gardner and Fleming play significant roles (with some historical basis) in my Nathan Heller novel, CARNAL HOURS, about the Sir Harry Oakes murder (a real-life locked room mystery).
December 18th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
I have a copy of Murder on the Yellow Brick Road. Raymond Chandler is indeed featured as a character.
December 18th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
Mark
Thanks for confirming Rick’s memory that Raymond Chandler made an appearance in MOTYBR. Any chance you saw Ian Fleming there also?
Max
I didn’t remember Gardner and Fleming in CARNAL HOURS. I must have missed that one, and I thought I’d read all of the Nathen Heller books.
But you could have (should have) mentioned the other authors who’ve shown up in some of your other books, all of which I own, but (I hate to admit this) I haven’t read yet:
Leslie Charteris in THE HINDENBURG MURDERS.
Jacques Futrelle in THE TITANIC MURDERS
S. S. van Dine in THE LUSITANIA MURDERS.
Agatha Christie in THE LONDON BLITZ MURDERS.
Walter Gibson in THE WAR OF THE WORLDS MURDER.
Edgar Rice Burroughs in THE PEARL HARBOR MURDERS.
(This last one is rather marginal, since ERB is hardly well known as a mystery writer, but it had to be included.)
I hope I haven’t missed any!
— Steve
December 18th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
Steve:
I believe Ian Fleming appears in another Toby Peters book, You Bet Your Life.
December 18th, 2009 at 11:04 pm
Thanks to Max Allan Collins for reminding me about CARNAL HOURS. Somehow my copy got misplaced when it first came out in paper and I’ve never read more than the first 20-30 pages. I need to buy that again.
And Steve, i also own all the books by Mr. Collins you list, though I haven’t read the Hindenberg and Lusitania books. I’ve heartily enjoyed all the Collins I’ve read. Which seems like at least twenty books.
Mark Murphy, I think you’re correct about Ian Fleming being in YOU BET YOUR LIFE…in a Chicago hotel bar perhaps.
December 19th, 2009 at 4:12 am
Fleming appears as a character in several of Christopher Hyde’s books, and John Buchan in at least one. Fleming also appears as the narrator of In Secret Service by Mitch Silver.
Sax Rohmer, S.S. Van Dine, and Hammett are the inebriated sleuth’s in Philip Wylie’s The Smiling Corpse.
Several real writers appear as characters in Anthony Boucher’s Rocket to the Morgue, and others appear in MWA mysteries by Brett Halliday and Edward D. Hoch. A number of real writers also appeared in Asimov’s Murder at the ABA.
In The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont, Walter Gibson, Robert Heinlien, L. Ron Hubbard, and Lester Dent investigate the murder of H.P. Lovecraft, while several of their pulp colleagues also appear.
And Steve, didn’t someone review a privately printed mystery where Hammett ran his own detective agency several months ago on this blog?
And of course Mickey Spillane played Mickey Spillane in Ring of Fear.
Several novels have been done with Poe, Collins. Dickens, Doyle, and even Chesterton as the detective — Dickens and Collins even team up in several books, and at least one teamed Poe and Davy Crockett. Agatha Christie appears in Agatha of course.
Karl Alexander has H.G. Wells as a time traveling sleuth in three novels (the most recent published this year).
And James M Cain and H.L. Menken appear as sleuths in a novel about the Tea Pot Dome scandal by Roy Hoopes, Cain’s biographer.
December 19th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Thanks to all for your input, especially yours, David!
Of course to be listed in Hubin, a character usually needs to be the primary detective, although cameo appearances are included if he or she was the sleuth of record in other books by the same author.
So while all of the suggestions above are worthy of note — otherwise why ask the question? — some won’t qualify for Hubin inclusion.
Taking the Toby Peters books by the late Stuart Kaminsky as an example, Peters gets the credit in Hubin, no matter how much assistance he gets from Raymond Chandler in YELLOW BRICK ROAD.
Paul Drake isn’t cited as a series character in any of the Perry Mason mysteries either, and it wouldn’t take much stretching of the point to say he should be.
Unfortunately I’ve haven’t had time to look more carefully into all of the author appearances above to say yea or no as to whether they’d satisfy the Hubin criterion, or even whether they’re already in or not, but to satisfy my curiosity, I’ve looked to see which of Poe’s appearances are already included:
POE, EDGAR ALLAN
* David Madsen:
o Black Plumes (n.) Simon 1980
* Manny Meyers:
o The Last Mystery of Edgar Allan Poe (n.) Lippincott 1978
* Marc Olden:
o Poe Must Die (n.) Charter 1978
* Harold Schechter:
o Nevermore (n.) Pocket Books 1999
* Andrew Sinclair:
o The Facts in the Case of E.A. Poe (n.) Weidenfeld 1979
* Barbara Steward & Dwight Steward:
o Evermore (n.) Morrow 1978
o The Lincoln Diddle (n.) Morrow 1979
More than this I have not done….
December 19th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Although I don’t own a copy and have never read the book, how about “The John Riddell Murder Case” ? I know Philo Vance appears, but also Hammett and a few other well known mystery authors from the 30’s as well? I’m sure one of your knowledgable lurkers can tell us more?
December 20th, 2009 at 7:35 am
As you say in the MWA and Boucher books they writers aren’t the sleuths, though in the Halliday book Michael Shayne has to prove Halliday isn’t the killer.
However in the others I mentioned the writers are the sleuths, or at least play that role in part (Fleming and Buchan in Hyde’s books). At least three different writers have done books with Collins an Dickens playing detective. I’ve read one with Chesteron playing sleuth from a religious publisher, and Cain and Wells are the sleuth’s in the books I mention.
I can’t remember, is there a chapter in the Hammett style in The John Riddell Murder Case? He does a lot of bestselling writers, but most of them are pretty obscure now. Good book though, and he is dead on about Van Dine.
To the Poe list add A Singular Conspiracy by Barry Perowne, and Lighthouse at the End of the World by Stephen Marlowe, the latter which has Poe teaming with Baudelaire and Dumas as well as the real Dupin in a mystery in Paris.
Although he is given another name the sleuth in Asimov’s Murder in the ABA is unashamedly based on Harlan Ellison.
December 20th, 2009 at 7:46 am
Do we even want to mention all the books with Conan Doyle playing at detective?
December 20th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Edgar Allan Poe in Norwegian writer Nikolaj Frobenius’s “The Face of Fear”:
http://pulpetti.blogspot.com/2009/12/edgar-allan-poe-from-norway.html
December 20th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
Steve
The Quinn Fawcett books with Fleming are pretty good. He did a pretty good series with Mycroft Holmes too. His first series featured the wife of one of Napoleon’s officers who acted as a detective.
Re Max Allan Collins Carnal Hours, it’s a good take on the Sir Harry Oakes murder in the Bahama’s in 1943 with Gardner and Fleming helping Nate Heller solve the crime and Nate playing the part played in real life by legendary private detective Raymond Schindler, whose evidence clearing Oakes son in law, Alfred de Marginy, was called by Gardner “the damndest piece of detective work in or out of fiction.”
December 20th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
I still haven’t had a chance to do any definitive research on all of the suggestions, but they’re all good ones. Thanks again!
As for Conan Doyle as detective character, as David you brought up, here’s a list of what Hubin has. I have a feeling that he may have missed a few. (Though keep in mind his cutoff year is 2000.)
DOYLE, A. CONAN
* Roberta Rogow:
o The Problem of the Missing Miss (n.) St. Martin’s 1998 [Charles Dodgson]
o The Problem of the Spiteful Spiritualist (n.) St. Martin’s 1999 [Charles Dodgson]
o The Problem of the Evil Editor (n.) St. Martin’s 2000 [Charles Dodgson]
DOYLE, ARTHUR CONAN
* Mark Frost:
o The List of 7 (n.) Morrow 1993 [Jack Sparks]
o The Six Messiahs (n.) Morrow 1995 [Jack Sparks]
* Harry Stone:
o The Casebook of Sherlock Doyle (co) Henry 1991
As for “Quinn Fawcett,” it’s the joint pen name of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and Bill Fawcett.
The books they did with the wife of one of Napoleon’s officers are these:
VERNET, VICTOIRE
o Death Wears a Crown (n.) Avon 1993
o Napoleon Must Die (n.) Avon 1993
December 20th, 2009 at 10:23 pm
And lest we forget, try as we may, Believe by William Shatner and Michael Tobias with A.C.D. and Harry Houdini, and W.L. Grace’s Last Case (can’t think of the author, Grace was a famous Cricketer and the book is something of a sendup), both mysteries and both prior to 2000.
Since 2000, Julian Barnes’s novel George and Arthur about the Edalji case was a critical success.
There is also a pre-2000 mystery about the Piltdown Man where Conan Doyle acts as the detective.
December 24th, 2009 at 1:17 am
Wasn’t there a modern detective novel that had both Christie and Sayers as lead characters?
December 25th, 2009 at 9:22 am
Young Arthur Conan Doyle teams up with Dr Joseph Bell in Howard Engel’s Mr. Doyle & Dr. Bell, published in 1997.
December 26th, 2009 at 4:38 am
Sorry for a late comment, but I just remembered that Domenic Stansberry who might be labeled as a neo-noir writer has old Jim Thompson working as an amateur detective in one of his novels. Forgot the title, though, but I think it was published in the late nineties.
December 26th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
David, was the Doyle-Piltdown novel you’re thinking of The Piltdown Confession by Irwin Schwartz? I could be wrong, since I’ve never ever seen the book, but I think Doyle is the one responsible for the fraud, not the detective.
The title of the Christie-Sayers team-up was Dorothy and Agatha, by Gaylord Larsen, Curt, and Richard, you’re certainly right about Doyle & Bell. Add both to the list.
And the Stansberry book that Juri mentions with Jim Thompson as the leading character is Manifesto for the Dead, which is a book I really ought to have read, and I haven’t.
Thanks again to all who’ve made suggestions. They’ve all been good!
— Steve
December 26th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
Steve
I’ve read about four Piltdown novels and can’t recall which is which without some digging, but in the one I’m thinking of Doyle uncovers the fraud but lets it pass on the grounds that all the scientists making fools of themselves deserve to — which is a fairly Holmesian action. Of course since in real life he fell for that obviously faked fairy photo we can only hope he did better on Piltdown.
Doyle does have one distinction that can’t be taken away from him. He was apparently the first man in England — maybe the world — to get a traffic ticket for speeding.
Re Doyle and Bell was that the source for that series they did with Ian Richardson as Bell and Doyle his Watson? Or just a conicidence.
November 10th, 2010 at 1:29 pm
THE SMILING CORPSE, written anonymously by Philip Wylie in 1935, is a wonderful spoof on the Golden Age of detective fiction. Chesterton, Van Dine, Rohmer, and Hammett are guests at a literary tea in which a noted critic is found dead in the bathroom. The writers, in trying to solve the baffling case, utilize the tactics employed by such characters as Father Brown, Philo Vance, Fu Manchu, and Sam Spade. This is a marvelous satire of the detective-story genre and it needs to be reprinted for a new generation of readers.
November 10th, 2010 at 3:21 pm
Richard
THE SMILING CORPSE has been reviewed elsewhere on this blog, and while I’ve not yet read the book, Al Hubin’s comments agree 100% with your take on the book.
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=1381
There’s no doubt that it should be reprinted, but thanks for the reminder. I was going to find a copy of the original, but it slipped my mind, and so far I haven’t. Not yet, that is.
January 19th, 2015 at 10:02 pm
Author Philip Wylie was no slouch. Classic innovator in the field of science fiction. A string of fine novels in that realm.
I wonder if the above Wylie story is where Neil Simon was inspired to write ‘Murder by Death’.
Also, let’s not forget Holmes’ teaming up with Sigmund Freud in Nick Meyers’ ‘Seven Per Cent Solution’.
December 16th, 2020 at 6:12 pm
To Whomever Finds This:
Comment #16:
W.G. Grace’s Last Case is a book that I happen to have in my stacks of as-yet-unread books.
The author is William Rushton (1937-1996), a legendary figure in the world of British humor (humour?).
Rushton was a co-founder of the satirical magazine Private Eye and a charter member of the original BBC That Was The Week That Was in the ’60s.
Willie Rushton was omnipresent in all media, as writer and performer, for the whole of his lifetime: this included many appearances on game and panel shows, which he treated as social occasions where he could enjoy the company of friends.
The Grace book was his second novel; it grew from his lifelong love of cricket, and of Holmes-era mystery fiction.
As I said above, I’ve got this book in my inventory, but haven’t yet read it; I believe I’ll need a course on cricket before I get around to that …