Sun 23 Aug 2015
GEORGE DILNOT – The Crooks’ Game. Geoffrey Bles, UK, hardcover, 1927. Cherry Tree, UK, paperback, 1938/1945. Houghton, US, 1927. McKinlay, Stone & Mackenzie: “The Scotland Yard Library,” US, no date given. Also published in Detective Classics, May 1930.
According to Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, George Dilnot was the author of 22 works of detective fiction, two of them collaborations with Frank Froest, and another three of them Sexton Blake paperbacks in the 1930s. All but a handful were never published in the US, so any that weren’t are going to be scarce. Based on reading this one, which I purchased at PulpFest, I may go looking, but if no cheap inexpensive copies turn up, I won’t go into a funk about it.
Dilnot’s hero is a rather down-to-earth gentleman by the name of Detective-Inspector Strickland of Scotland Yard, no first name ever stated, so far I can recall. The case revolves around a millionaire from the US, one Buck Shang, and his daughter Shirley. Having been pardoned from the jail sentence he was serving back in Colorado, he now goes by the name of Earl Millard.
Some former associates have followed father and daughter to England, and they are determined to get two million dollars from them, no matter how they get it or who gets in their way, and that includes Inspector Strickland.
What follows in the story is a grand game of murder, capture, escape and recapture, boat trips up and down the Thames, and all around London town, good sections and bad, accomplices, assorted gang members, double-crosses and twists galore. It’s a lot of fun to read, and not until you’re finished do you realize that only a very routine lot of detective work ever went on.
One really striking surprise occurs well before the end of the book, with the unfortunate result being that it also ends the case as well. What follows from here is a long recap, mostly unnecessary, and a short romantic interlude at the very end.
Which also means that Strickland is about to chuck his job at Scotland Yard and head to the US with the Millards (if I’m telling you anything I shouldn’t, I apologize), and yet Strickland showed up in one of Dilnot’s novels two years later, in The Black Ace, his second and final appearance, but still in England. I’m curious enough to make this the first one I may go looking for.
August 24th, 2015 at 12:06 am
Some of Dilnot’s work is available in ebook form as well as one or two of Froest, the latter actually head of of the Yard’s elite Murder Squad.
The thriller element was strong in these and many of the Detection Club rules were a result of things like that intrusive romance you mention and too much running around.
But the heroine was Shirley Shang? No wonder she changed her name.
As for Strickland I would not be surprised to learn Dilnot forgot he married him off and sent him to the States. Sapper managed to lose Jim Maitland’s wife in his second adventure. Writers weren’t as anal then as we are, witness Watson’s multiple first names and wives.
August 24th, 2015 at 12:43 am
David, fans do need to calm down if the current version doesn’t get every past fact about the character from forty years ago correct.
But I like it when they try to keep the character’s past as constant as possible. I did a writers guild for REMINGTON STEELE used by the producers and writing staff that was a 100 pages long.
Having the current character stay loyal to its past does reward long time fans. But fans can get possessive, for example fans of comic books and genre fiction.
I enjoy inside references but have grown weary of the overuse of “easter eggs” in today’s fiction.
August 24th, 2015 at 7:18 am
I love these obscure little gems, and you evoked their charm nicely, Steve.
As for obsessive fans, wasn’t it William Shatner who coined the phrase, “Get a life.”?
August 24th, 2015 at 10:57 am
I have no problem, and in fact prefer writers to stay true to a time line and certain facts about continuing characters, but it isn’t something writers of past eras always stuck to. Burroughs offers two separate explanations of his characters perpetual youth in Tarzan for instance. Holmesiana is in part based on the many contradictions in Doyle ‘ s work.
I do think today some writers divulge too much history as if that were a substitute for characterization and storytelling skill. We still read the Shadow’s exploits today and from the text itself (not what others have speculated) I could not definitively tell you he is really Kent Allard or some third identity never revealed.
Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin are perfect examples. Stout gives us tantalizing speculations on Wolfe, but tells us almost nothing about Archie so that when late in their adventures Wolfe states that if he were black Archie would have to be too even Archie doesn’t know what he means.
That room for speculation makes the characters more vivid than if I knew every detail of their lives. Stout even used that vagueness to reveal in one late novel a recurring character was a murderer, something he could not have done if he had not left himself some leeway.
August 24th, 2015 at 11:03 am
A good example of this is in the Arsene Lupin pastiche I write for the TALES OF THE SHADOWMEN anthologies. Jean Marc Loffcier has compiled a strict time line for Lupin ‘ s adventures he prefers I follow, but Maurice Leblanc was nor so constrained. While it has its uses and I have no problem with it the time line is still a burden Lupin ‘ s creator wouldn’t have been constrained by.
August 24th, 2015 at 11:28 am
Facebook had a thing pop up that asked the question if the obsessive sports fans are accepted and even encouraged, why not the fans of fiction? Both dress up, make fools of themselves in public, and buy tons of junk.
I think we all need something beyond family to enjoy obsessively.
David, I can’t think of an example where too much information has been revealed about a character. Usually writers have ways to find new parts of the character to explore such as The Batman, Sherlock Holmes, and Doctor Who.
I think the readers/audience always have obsessed over characters they care about. Today’s TV series featuring one story line for a year or series depends on the accuracy of the backstory. Toss in an internet where fans can connect and it has become harder for lazy writers not to care about the character’s established backstory.
The problem with the obsessive fan, be it fiction, sports, or whatever, is they think they own the character and know the character better than those who write or created it. It can be a challenge today for too many to just be patient and let the writer tell the story.
August 24th, 2015 at 11:48 am
5. David, you posted an example while I was asking for one. To counter your Lupin timeline as too much backstory for the writer to bother with, I give you Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. Pratchett himself went into deep details of the world he created and by doing so made his stories more grounded, fun and real.
Granted, fiction taking place in fictional worlds need a stronger backdrop and history than fiction set in the real world. Yet it is the backstory and loyalty to history of character that deepen our connection to the characters world. Much of the discussion about Holmes I read is an effort to explain how this or that fits into Holmes biography.
My point is while Leblanc might not need to make an effort to be loyal to the trivia of the character’s past, it would have made a stronger and better character. I am a fan of Lupin but my one complaint is the lack of fair play and a narrator I have my doubts about, but it is one of those characters I relax and let the writer tell the story.
August 24th, 2015 at 5:54 pm
Thanks for the great discussion, guys. I didn’t have any idea the comments on this old British hardcover would go off in this direction at all.
As for me, I have simply given up on trying to read any comic books in either the Marvel or DC universe. Every character has his or her own life story, and all of their stories are all tied in together.
It’s been that way for about 40 years now, and even with reboots it’s impossible to jump in and know what going on, no matter which title you try.
If I miss the first episode of almost any dramatic TV show now, I wait for the DVD to start from the beginning. I find it no fun to be watching something and something from the past is referred to and I know I’ve just missed something.
It’s a balancing act. At the other extreme is Perry Mason, with each episode (or book) dedicated to one case only, and the characters do not ever seem to have an iota of personal life.
Successful long-running shows do this, thinking of NCIS as an example, but even there the most uninteresting shows (for me) come when they have an extended arc that builds up to some dramatic finale that bores the Bejesus out of me.
August 24th, 2015 at 5:55 pm
PS. I’ve just ordered a copy of THE BLACK ACE, the second case for Inspector Strickland, the ones that started this long followup conversation. I’ll report back when it gets here.
August 24th, 2015 at 11:20 pm
8. Steve, my problems with superhero genre and anime is death means nothing so it devolves into a bunch of talky fights signifying nothing. GOTHAM loses much of its suspense when you know characters such as The Penguin, Catwoman, etc will survive. I don’t share the audience’s interest in the mystery of whether this character is The Joker or The Riddler or whoever.
TV will have the episodic and serial series. Each has its place. Heck, ARCHER has used both.
I find the network websites now air episodes a few days after it airs the old fashion way so if I miss an episode I can catch up. I did this with USA’s MR. ROBOT. The series started out great but lost me with its downer characters. But it had a creative twist that could only have of been tried in the serial format.
August 24th, 2015 at 11:25 pm
My problem is not with character history, but with writers who spend an inordinate time with it to the expense of characterization. Doyle doles out Holmes history over the course of the entire series from the late 1880’s to the 1920’s, we get none at all for Father Brown of Dr. Thorndyke, and for Lord Peter his life history beyond family begins and ends with Bunter saving his life in the war and a few niggling mentions of school and such.
We know almost nothing of Horatio Hornblower before his first adventure, his life begins at sea, and Fleming tinkered with Bond’s history throughout the series dropping bits and pieces.
Some books are improved by a rich background for the characters, but not all. Nero Wolfe, Holmes, Bond, Fu Manchu, Lupin, Hornblower, Lord Peter, Perry Mason those are all what Rex Stout called created characters, and they spring to life on the printed page with only enough background to give them substance. Over time they acquire a bit of history, but their creators never felt the need to lay out their lives in literary blueprints.
I create detailed character biographies and descriptions of characters, and then I use next to nothing of them because they slow down narrative and hamper action. Philip Marlowe or Travis McGee step full blown onto the printed page and the reader knows only enough about their history to explain how they came to be who and where they are in relation to the narrative.
I enjoy books that create biographies and history for fictional characters, I enjoy the whole Wold Newton thing, but at the same time I do not impose that on the creators of the characters. I could not begin to tell you much about Sam Spade, or Michael Shayne, or Dr.Fell, or Nick Charles, or Pam North, or most successful fictional characters because the writers only use what they need in relation to the story. As I pointed out, study of Sherlock Holmes exists because Doyle did not spell out his history but merely dropped hints here and there. Doyle doesn’t name his parents, explain his childhood, and only touches on his education in “The Musgrave Ritual.” Everything we know about Sherlock Holmes, including his birthdate and age is conjecture by other writers.
Re Pratchett, he and Tolkien and Robert E. Howard for that matter wrote fantasy, and literal world building was a necessity. It is not as much when we are reading contemporary or historical adventures. No one ever through aside THE THREE MUSKETEERS because Dumas has a street in 17th Century Paris named after one of Napoleon’s marshals. THE DA VINCI CODE doesn’t suffer because Dan Brown has a major Parisian street running the wrong way, but playing fast and loose with Middle Earth’s geography or history could destroy the delicate suspension of disbelief.
For most popular fiction the character’s history is delineated only enough to explain how and why he is in the adventure at hand. James Bond is nearly forty in CASINO ROYALE and still nearly forty in MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN, though by then his WWII actions that earned him the Double O mean he did them at 16. John Creasey aged his heroes about a decade for every twenty years that passed. We have one or two adventures about the young Maigret, but for the run of the series he is a man around 50, never younger or older.
As for too much information the classic example is Rider Haggard and Allan Quatermain whose death is hinted at in the first book and confirmed in the second and then Haggard has to come up with early adventures whose impact are lessoned for me because I know when and how Quatermain will die. In the Rocambole saga author Ponson du Terrail has his hero sentenced to the galleys and horribly scarred, which lasts for one book and is gone later because it no longer fit his needs. E.W. Hornung killed of Raffles and seems to have lived to regret it.
DC and Marvel have burdened some of their creations with so much backstory they have to start from scratch about once a decade now or deal with a character bible longer than the King James version; it was recently in the papers where Lois Lane found out Clark Kent was Superman, for about the umpteenth time since they first did it back in the 1980’s.
Series characters tend to spring full blown on the page with as little background as can be divulged. Over the years we have learned a bit about Dirk Pitt, but because Cussler wrote himself into a corner with Pitt’s grown children he has had to make major changes to the dynamic of the books that I think harm them a bit.
I don’t think 90% of fans, the real ones who read the books and don’t obsess about them, care if their are contradictions. But if you impose too much history on them they will. It’s fine if you have a character whose history is part of the story like Elizabeth Peters Amelia Peabody, fans read those for the ongoing history, but that is only one type of popular character.
I would just argue, and not beyond this, that too much history limits the readers imagination, and burdens the writer. With a good fictional character the writer gives the reader just enough so that they can make him vivid in their minds eye. No one reads Hammett and sees Spade as a blond Satan, they see Bogart, and I would argue Sherlock Holmes illustrators have more to do with his indelible image physically than Conan Doyle’s description. Those writers created a framework, a brilliant and vivid one, on which others hung the drapery and history they have today.
August 24th, 2015 at 11:55 pm
My problem is when this week’s episode or this book has the hero motivation tied to a wrong done to his never mentioned BFF or totally out of nowhere sister. Important events of the characters past needs foreshadowing before throwing it at us.
Every character has a past it has shared with us. The writer doesn’t have to do a complete biography of every character before we meet them, but the history the writer tells us of the character should mean something or why am I following this unreliable narrative?
It can surprise a reader who feels close to a character and then realize they can’t even describe what the character looks like. Books cheat by using the reader’s POV to fill the gaps. TV-Film can’t do that but it can dish out bits of character over each episode to further develop the character and involve the audience with the fate of the character.
By the third season of REMINGTON STEELE much of his past had been established and to ignore it would have ruined much of the appeal of the mystery of Mr. Steele.
August 25th, 2015 at 6:28 pm
I agree on REMINGTON STEELE, and forgot to say so. The history was part of the series much as the flashbacks that form Oliver Queen’s story in THE ARROW are vital to understanding, but I don’t really feel I need to know all that much about Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Philo Vance, Lew Archer, Travis McGee, or most fictional characters.
Modesty Blaise has a vivid history, but when you actually write it down it only takes a page or two, there isn’t that much detail — detail was filled in over the course of the books and comic strip, it wasn’t there to begin with.
In one Tom Clancy novel he spends 5,000 words on the history of a navy radioman who appears in one chapter for a brief scene. It is excess verbiage that tells nothing important the reader could not have done without.
Even a character like Harry Potter really has little history going in. We don’t know or care to know what school was like for Harry or have more than an idea of his Oliver Twist like childhood among muggles. Save for who he is and the history of his parents that is revealed as the series goes on exact details about Harry are few and far between and not needed. We don’t even really know if he attended school before Hogwarts or had any friends. I think it would be to the detriment of the series if we did.
The perfect example of a hero with no history is the Saint. We know Simon Templar may or may not be his real name and nothing else — not where he went to school or who his parents were or why he became the Saint or even why he called himself that other than the initials ST. All these years later we still don’t know. There is barely any history from book to book other than a few titles and the trilogy. Maybe that bothers some readers, but millions of others seem to agree with me that it is unimportant. His history is not only unimportant, it is nonexistent.
August 25th, 2015 at 7:10 pm
David, I think we are agreeing with one minor exception. I don’t care how much I know about the characters but if the writer says the character has a sister then the next story tells me he is a only child it annoys me. I lose my ability to suspend belief enough to believe the character is real.
I hate fiction series years in suddenly has the character’s Best Friend Forever arrive and I am supposed to care when the BFF has never been mentioned before and disappears forever at the end of the story. It is a cheap lazy plot device to motivate the hero.
Doc Savage for example has his sister Pat. Once Dent put her in the story she was a part of Doc’s history and to in the next book forget he had a sister and claim he was an only child would insult me as a reader.
No history is fine. But to ignore established history is not. Characters such as The Saint with no known past is fine but all characters change and develop over time from actions and events taken in the books. There should be continuity of the character’s revealed past.
One of the more interesting examples of how important the character’s backstory is comes from Gregory Mcdonald’s two characters. Flynn remains one of my favorite characters in fiction and his background played a role in the series of books. I enjoy the Fletch books a great deal but find Fletch hard to relate to because the character changed for reasons I would not know until future stories. Mcdonald has an established timeline for both characters but he told Fletch stories out of order of Fletch’s timeline. The past tells how we got to be who we are, the Fletch books rejected that advantage and I think it hurt the books success and the reader’s ability to connect to the main character.