Sat 28 Jun 2014
SMALL GENRE DEPARTMENT, by Marvin Lachman
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists[12] Comments
by Marvin Lachman
Everyone knows the major divisions of the mystery: the private eye, the classic puzzle, the police procedural, et al. I like small genres, which I define as at least two mysteries about one topic, usually an obscure one. Here are some examples:
1. Mysteries about black-eyed blondes. In the Anthony Abbot book About the Murder of a Man Afraid of Women discussed here, Colt is drawn into the mystery when his fiancee sends him a young blonds with a problem-and a shiner. There was also the 1944 Erie Stanley Gardner novel, The Case of the Black-Eyed Blonde.
2. Mysteries about beautiful women who have documents tattooed on their backs. The only novel which comes to mind is H. Rider Haggard’s Mr. Meeson’s Will (1888), in which the heroine has a will tattooed on her back. In the movies, Myrna Loy had plans on her back in Stamboul Quest (1934) and so did Paulette Goddard in The Lady Has Plans (1942), My favorite variation on this is in the Helen Simpson short story, “A Posteriori,” in EQMM, September 1954.
3. Murders observed by people on trains. I’m sure there are more than the two examples which come to my mind: Agatha Christie’s 1957 Miss Marple novel, What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw (in Britain as The 4.50 from Paddington), and Cornell Woolrich’s novelette, “Death in the Air” (Detective Fiction Weekly, Oct. 10, 1936), in which the hero sees two people struggling in a tenement, one of whom shoots someone in the elevated car in which he is riding.
4. Mysteries in which the detective is named Paul Pry. Erie Stanley Gardner had a pulp sleuth named Paul Pry, and the hero of Margaret Millar’s first three books was a psychiatrist, Paul Prye. The hero of Albert Borowitz’s This Club Frowns on Murder (1990) is true-crime historian Paul Prye.
5. Mysteries with plots based on the Ted Kennedy Chappaquiddick affair:
a. Warren Adler’s Options (1974), published in paperback as Waters of Decision.
b. Douglas Kiker’s Death at the Cut (1988).
c. Margaret Truman’s Murder at the Kennedy Center (1989).
6. Mysteries about bag people used as couriers for drugs or drug money:
a. Dorothy Salisbury Davis’s Julie Hayes series.
b. Anna Porter’s Judith Hayes series.
7.Mysteries set at the Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston:
a. Jane Langton’s Murder at the Gardner (1988).
b. Charlotte MacLeod’s The Palace Guard (1981). (Madam Wilkins’s Palazzo seems based on the Gardner.)
8. Mysteries with reporter-detectives named J. Hayes:
a. Dorothy Salisbury Davis’s Julie Hayes series.
b. Anna Porter’s Judith Hayes series.
9. Mysteries in which the authors get to make use (or fun) of the famous armaments company, Smith and Wesson:
a. In Michael Bowen’s cleverly titled recent book, Washington Deceased, he has a prison guard named Wesson Smith.
b. Phoebe Atwood Taylor had a murder suspect in Spring Harrowing (1939) named Susan Remington who owns a pair of bobcats named Smith and Wesson.
c. The series characters in Annette Meyers’s Wall Street mysteries are Xenia Smith and Leslie Wetzon.
Vol. 13, No. 2, Spring 1991 (very slightly revised).
Editorial Comment: This list was put together 24 years ago. If you can add examples to any of Marv’s nine categories, please do so in the comments. And if you can add a category 10 (or more), that would be most welcome as well!
June 28th, 2014 at 4:19 pm
I’m intrigued by the mention of a Helen Simpson short story, “A Posteriori.” Anyone have more details?
June 28th, 2014 at 4:48 pm
David A
Try
http://books.google.com/books?id=k_SCHjdtqCQC&pg=PA265&lpg=PA265&dq=Helen+Simpson+short+story,+%E2%80%9CA+Posteriori.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=uF3JTrAOmf&sig=DSCpBoRVW9TFuZbHFG5jeYaqMLM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=VjavU9rcLYiqyASAjoHQDQ&ved=0CDUQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=Helen%20Simpson%20short%20story%2C%20%E2%80%9CA%20Posteriori.%E2%80%9D&f=false
and
A Posteriori Helen Simpson , 1989-1935 short story
— Appears in: Goodbye to Romance : Stories by New Zealand and Australian Women Writers 1930-1988 1989; (p. 19-25)
besides of course its appearance in EQMM. Anyone with easy access to that particular issue could perhaps tell us more, especially about the tattoos.
June 28th, 2014 at 4:41 pm
Henry Kane’s Don’t Go Away Dead (1970) is one of the earliest mysteries based on the Chappaquiddick affair.
June 28th, 2014 at 5:04 pm
Seeing a murder from a train, Leslie Charteris Lady on a Train also filmed with his co write on the screenplay. And Ethel Lina Whites The Wheel Spins (The Lady Vanishes) is at least kidnapping and attempted murder seen on a train (a sub genre of a sub genre). I can’t recall off hand if the Gordon’s Murder on the Campaign Train or Hughes Dreadful Journey quite qualify, does anyone recall if the latter’s drunken protagonist sees the crime or just solves it?
I know John J. Malone and Hildy Withers pursue a killer in Craig Rice and Stuart Palmer’s “Once Upon a Train” (filmed as Mrs. O’Malley and Mr. Malone), but does Hildy see a murder on the train in that one? I can think of a couple like this on a ship, and at least one in an airplane. More sub sub genres).
Does anyone witness the crime in Rome Express or Passenger From Calais, Phillipotts My Adventure on the Flying Dutchman(it’s an express train), or Wood’s Passenger from Scotland Yard? Surely time table king Crofts did this at least once. I know there is a reluctant witness in Japrisot’s 10:30 from Marseilles (The Sleeping Car Murders) and I think a Maigret short by Simenon as well. As best I recall the latter’s The Train and Paris Express don’t depict a crime on the train itself.
Bag people used as drug couriers, John Creasey’s Death of a Postman and while it is horror, the second book in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series introduces a main character who is a drug courier. There is likely a sub genre here of secret papers and microfilm dating back to LeQueux.
Tattoos, there is at least one where a map or some such is hidden in a tattoo on a murder victims back that I recall, but I can’t quite come up with the name. That one has been used by a couple of cop shows, especially of the forensic type though including if I recall Bones, NCIS, and Castle.
The best part of Mr. Meeson’s Will is when the heroine has to reveal the tattoo in court — Haggard being pretty racy for his day. I still recall the handsome illustration of the scene (it’s in la Tour and Cage’s The Mystery Book), I think originally from The Strand. I know there are some adventure stories like this, but not always mysteries and not all women’s backs. I would be surprised if this idea doesn’t predate Haggard quite a bit. I want to say Sue’s The Wandering Jew, but there are so many wills in that they sort of all blend together.
June 28th, 2014 at 5:44 pm
I’m going to have to check out that Haggard book, David, and thanks for all of the other references and suggestions you gave us.
The Judith Hayes series of books by Anna Porter was a new one for me. Turns out they were published first in Canada before they showed up here in the US. Here’s what Goodreads says about Ms Hayes:
“Judith Hayes, a divorced freelance journalist with two teenagers, and her friend, Manhattan editor Marsha Hillier, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.”
https://www.goodreads.com/series/104437-judith-hayes
June 28th, 2014 at 6:16 pm
#2. Darrell. I seem to have missed that one by Henry Kane. Didn’t know about it at all. Thanks!
June 29th, 2014 at 5:12 am
I remembered something with BLACK and BLONDE in a book title by Ben Benson, but it is: “The Blonde in Black”. There is a similar title by crime writer Peter Chambers: “The Blonde Wore Black”. Perhaps another small subgenre.
Another small genre could be crime novels which have taken over pop music song titles like “Yesterday’s Papers” by Martin Edwards who has published several crime novels with such titles. And think of “Devil in a Blue Dress” by Walter Mosley.
June 29th, 2014 at 4:07 pm
Reply to David A:
In Helen Simpson’s “A Posteriori†a very genteel Englishwoman is traveling in France and forced to use a dirty toilet in a French train station. She uses a newspaper, which leaves an imprint on her posterior. She has inadvertently picked up a spool of film and during a police check is accused of being a spy. She is forced to strip, and the police matron sees what she considers to be secret plans you know where. Its a clever story. In publishing it in EQMM, Fredric Dannay said there was a certain “indelicacy†in the subject matter. I don’t think an editor would say that today.
June 29th, 2014 at 4:11 pm
Thanks, Marv. I’m a little surprised that Dannay published it at all, now that I know more!
June 29th, 2014 at 6:22 pm
Thanks for the details of the Simpson story. Fascinating stuff!
June 30th, 2014 at 2:04 am
Oh, and the Phillipots is Flying Scotsman, not Dutchman, a pamphlet written as part of an advertising campaign I believe. for the express to Scotland.
July 1st, 2014 at 9:04 am
Certainly crime fiction, if not mystery per se, is BLACK WATER by Joyce Carol Oates for the TK file.