#3. ARTY BEELE, by Ruth & Alexander Wilson.

   The Arty Beele stories by Ruth and Alexander Wilson were a short series of at least sixteen stories (some short stories and some novelette length) published in Detective Fiction Weekly from 1928 to 1932. There could be more.

   The character’s full name is Arthur Welliver Beele. The series involves the exploits of a hardboiled newspaper crime reporter in the Prohibition era. The stories are a bit hardboiled, too; an early example of this type of story.

   Beele is not afraid of gangsters and racketeers; he associated with them considerably and they gave him good stories. This doesn’t mean that all criminals liked him. Beele would without any compunction insult a known criminal and act unafraid of the consequences.

   Beele could often acquire information about goings on with the police and underworld. On one occasion “It had come to Arty Beele’s attention, by one of those devious routes that were at once the despair and the astonishment of his city editor…” (The Fragrant Alibi)

   In a number of the stories, John Ryan, captain of the homicide squad, leads the investigations and somewhat disapproves of Beele, but lets him ask many questions. Harrington, the Telegraph newspaper’s city editor, is a friend of his.

   The descriptions given of Beele are sketchy, but one statement about Beele is “a tall, untidy figure crowned with a disreputable Stetson…” (A Pain in the Neck) He also has a beaky, hawk nose. Beele does not let himself get involved with women, “he distrusted and detested women.” (Strike Three!)

   In the first story in the series, “Killers Have Blue Eyes” (December 15, 1928) Beele tells Hymie Jacobs, a known gunman, that he is yellow. He also notes that killers always have blue eyes, and Jacobs doesn’t. The story is a simple one where Jacobs’ enemy, another gunman, is killed. Beele knows that Jacobs didn’t kill him, and suspects who did. But Beele convinces Jacobs to confess to the killing.

   â€œThe Silent Witness” details the aftermath of a killing of Brady, a gangland leader, supposedly by his girl friend Floss Jordan. But Arty Beele sees something that others don’t see, and believes she is innocent. He plays this up in his newspaper writings, and gets a lawyer friend of his to represent the accused woman. Part of the story is a relation of the court trial, and its results.

   â€œA Ride in the Park” does not involve a mystery, but does involve a murder. When gangster Tony Costello arrives back in town, Arty Beele expects that he will be killed by enemies. When a killing does take place at the train station, Beele jumps to the conclusion it was Costello and writes up an article about it.

   The piece was not complimentary to Costello, and he it turns out was not killed. Costello waylays Beele and takes him for a ride, intending to kill him. Beele manages to wreck to the car and kill Costello. A very close call for Arty Beele.

   â€œDeath in the Dark” is a longer story than many others in the series, being of novelette length. It is a better story, as it enables the author to spend more time on details and the characters. Beele is sent by Harrington, his editor, to the house of a rich man who has been mysteriously shot while a police patrolman was not too far away.

   The only witness is too drunk to tell anyone anything, and there seems to be no place that the murderer could have gone after the crime. The crime was a complicated scheme to provide an alibi for the murderer, and it takes Arty Beele to see through it. He had the cooperation of Captain Ryan here.

   â€œThis Way Out” doesn’t involve a mystery, although someone is murdered in it. One of Arty Beele’s gangster friends named Al Donner is in trouble with the law for a murder. Beele doesn’t believe he did it, although he knows that Donner did murder someone else a short time before. So Beele gets Donner a lawyer to defend him in court, and backs up Donner. Beele feels an obligation to Donner because Donner saved his life once. This is another novelette length story.

   â€œA Pain in the Neck” is a murder mystery where Arty Beele is involved with the police in solving the case of a fight manager who has been strangled. The obvious suspect is the manager’s boxer, but Beele sees clues the others have missed and points out the correct killer.

   â€œA Swell Funeral” involves the murder of a racketeer leader at his recently opened nightclub, the Club Seville. Arty Beele is a friend of the racketeer, Dan O’Malley, and happens to be in the club at the time that he was killed. Strangely, no one saw the shooting at the front door where O’Malley fell dead.

   Captain Ryan is soon on the scene, and Beele insists on being a part of the investigation. Various other men, some of them racketeers also, come under suspicion. As usual, Beele comes up with the solution, with the cooperation of the police.

   â€œSpecial Delivery” is of novelette length, and is a story of gangsters and the newspaper. Scarron, the local liquor racketeer, has told Arty Beele that he will retire from bootlegging and move to a foreign country. However, a fellow newspaperman of Beele’s named Slim Stengel was shot supposedly by gangsters near Scarron’s home. Considering that Stengel idolized Arty Beele, Beele feels obligated to do something about the matter.

   â€œThe Murder of the Seven-Year Itch” involves another gangland killing. Al Toriano visits Arty Beele in the newspaper newsroom and gives him some stock certificates to cash in and dole out the money to a beneficiary. Toriano says that he will probably be killed by other gangsters shortly.

   When both Toriano and his beneficiary are found shot in suspicious circumstances – it looks like they killed each other – Beele stirs Captain Ryan to investigate the matter more thoroughly. Beele of course helps the investigation, and coincidentally comes across the two killers a short time later.

   â€œThe Picture of a Crime” involves Arty Beele in the murder investigation of a rich man in his mistresses’ apartment. In this story, Harrington, the Telegraph newspaper’s city editor, assigns the news coverage to him and a photographer.

   Once on the scene, Beele begins acting like one of the investigating police, asking questions of the suspects and others. There is no real mystery about the murderer, since there are only three suspects.

   â€œLive Bait” is different than other stories in the series. The story opens with Beele getting a tip-off from an underworld connection that he is going to be the target of a local crime lord, who means to kill him. Beele heads to Captain Ryan’s office to tell him the news, and together they come up with a plan to trap Orsini the crime lord. No mystery or murder to solve in this story.

   â€œStrike Three!” is a novelette length story that involves Arty Beele in the planned killing of one liquor gangster by another. One of the gangsters tips off Beele that he will kill an unnamed gangster, and Beele tries to figure out who the victim is to be. He winds up at the Club Chanticleer investigating.

   He is asked by Mike O’Mara (the intended victim), to sit in on a meeting between him and Repetti. “It was no new role for him to act as arbiter at a gangster conference.” When O’Mara and Repetti are both murdered, it is Beele who straightens out the confusion as to who killed whom.

   â€œDevil’s Brew” is something of a mystery combined with gangdom interactions. Beele is called in by two of the local liquor barons to help arbiter a problem between the three local liquor barons. Captain Ryan interferes with this work, and all of a sudden one of the barons is mysteriously shot and another disappears. Arty Beele investigates, and puts his life in danger in order to solve the problem.

   â€œThe Fragrant Alibi” is another story where Beele assists the police in the solution of a crime. No Captain Ryan here, though. Beele is in a nightclub when a gangland murder takes place, and is involved in the story before the killing takes place. As often is the case, a small clue points out the solution of the crime to Beele.

   â€œCheap at the Price” has Arty Beele investigating another gangland killing, and he is also under threat from the gangster suspected in a number of other killings. Another novelette length story.

   â€œTwenty Grand” is the last story found in the series, and is a good one. There is no murder mystery here; the culprit is known from the beginning. Blacky Frey, a gangster, has killed two people with his .22 rifle. One of these was a policeman, for which he was tried and acquitted due to lack of evidence(the police couldn’t find the rifle). However, Arty Beele thinks up a scheme to have the police catch Frey red-handed with the rifle committing a crime.

   This is an average series, with some very good stories, but mostly average or slightly above that. The best stories are the novelette length ones, because they have more scope for description and action and complexity.

   There is no element of humor in the stories, and the hardboiled nature of the stories denies any lightness to them. This series about a crime reporter does not measure up to the later crime reporter series that Richard Sale wrote about Daffy Dill. Daffy Dill was a longer running series and much more popular than many other series in DFW.

      The Arty Beele series by Ruth & Alexander Wilson:

Killers Have Blue Eyes     December 15, 1928
The Silent Witness     April 13, 1929
A Ride in the Park     August 24, 1929
Death in the Dark     April 5, 1930
This Way Out     May 10, 1930
A Pain in the Neck     September 27, 1930
A Swell Funeral     October 18, 1930
Special Delivery     January 10, 1931
The Murder of the Seven-Year Itch     January 31, 1931
The Picture of a Crime     March 7, 1931
Live Bait     March 21, 1931
Strike Three!     May 2, 1931
Devil’s Brew     August 1, 1931
The Fragrant Alibi     August 22, 1931
Cheap at the Price     November 7, 1931
Twenty Grand     January 16, 1932

NOTE:   Thanks to Phil Stephensen-Payne for helping put together this checklist of story titles. The cover images also came from his Galactic Central website. Please visit!

N. A. TEMPLE-ELLIS – The Man Who Was There. E. P. Dutton, US, hardcover, 1930. First published in the UK: Metheun, hardcover, 1930.

   In order to hasten his recovery from influenza, Montrose Arbuthnot, criminologist, has taken his faithful but not too bright companion, Sir Edmund King, to the Isle of Wight. One day as they are preparing to golf, the housekeeper from a nearby bungalow informs them that her master had been shot and killed.

   They find the corpse, an empty safe, a young man on the veranda reading Palgrave’s Golden Treasury, and Arbuthnot’s card on the floor of the dining room. The corpse’s missing pince-nez is of concern to Arbuthnot, but even more puzzling to him is the hat that cannot be found when the alleged murderer drives off a cliff. “Murderers always wear hats,” Arbuthnot contends.

   Amusing and action-filled, with a complex crime and somewhat fair play. Arbuthnot and King are interesting characters, though one does wonder how they manage to tolerate each other’s faults, if indeed Arbuthnot can be said to have faults.

    Bibliographic data:     [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.]

TEMPLE-ELLIS, N. A. Pseudonym of N. A. Holdaway, 1894-?

* The Inconsistent Villains (n.) Methuen 1929; Dutton, 1929. [Montrose Arbuthnot]
* The Cauldron Bubbles (n.) Methuen 1930
* The Man Who Was There (n.) Methuen 1930; Dutton, 1930. [Montrose Arbuthnot]
* Quest (n.) Methuen 1931 [Montrose Arbuthnot]
* Six Lines (n.) Hodder 1932
* The Case in Hand (n.) Hodder 1933
* The Hollow Land (n.) Hodder 1934

* Three Went In (n.) Hodder 1934 [Insp. Wren]
* Dead in No Time (n.) Hodder 1935 [Montrose Arbuthnot; Insp. Wren] US title: Murder in the Ruins, Dial, 1936
* Death of a Decent Fellow (n.) Hodder 1941 [Insp. Wren]

Note:   Temple-Ellis’s first book, The Inconsistent Villains, was the winner of the publisher’s Detective Story Competition of the year, beating Josephine Tey’s classic The Man in the Queue.

RICHARD FORREST – The Wizard of Death. Bobbs-Merrill, hardcover, 1977. Pocket, paperback, 1978.

   Connecticut residents will get a kick out of this inside view of state gubernatorial politics. When the nominee Randolph Llewyn is assassinated at a political rally, it appears that writer Lyon Wentworth’s wife is the next target. Bea Wentworth is a state senator and has a great deal of influence over who the next nominee will be.

   The Chamber of Commerce is not likely to be pleased with some of ground covered during the course of the investigation, including the hangouts of several motorcycle clubs lobbying against the helmet bill and the sleazier side Hartford’s massage parlors.

   The whole business is pretty unlikely, and one fears that it’s also quite superficial. But it reads quickly, and it is fun at times to indulge your fantasies.

      The Bea & Lyon Wentworth series —

A Child’s Garden of Death (n.) Bobbs 1975.
The Wizard of Death (n.) Bobbs 1977.
Death Through the Looking Glass (n.) Bobbs 1978.
Death in the Willows (n.) Holt 1979.
The Death at Yew Corner (n.) Holt 1980.
Death Under the Lilacs (n.) St. Martin’s 1985.
Death on the Mississippi (n.) St. Martin’s 1989.
The Pied Piper of Death (n.) St. Martin’s 1997.

JASPER FFORDE – One of Our Thursdays Is Missing. Hodder Library, UK, hardcover, February 2011. Viking, UK, hc, March 2011.

   Jasper Fforde is among the top writers in “cross-genre anarchy.” A prime example of the genre is One of Our Thursdays Is Missing, a book with a blend of every genre in the library except pornography and non-fiction.

   The Thursday Next series we read does not exist in the Nextian Universe where the alternative reality of RealWorld and the world of the written word in BookWorld are located. The Nextian version of the Thursday Next books is the home of Written Thursday and read by the people of RealWorld.

   RealWorld Thursday has the unique ability to travel between RealWorld and BookWorld. There has been more than one Written Thursday, the current one is dealing with self-esteem issues trying to live up to the racy Written Thursday she replaced and her idol RealWorld Thursday.

   This is the sixth book in the Thursday Next series and features a major change in protagonist. It is told from the point of view of Written Thursday as RealWorld Thursday is missing. Written Thursday’s narration does more than just tell the story, through her we discover what it feels like to be unread, almost remaindered.

   We experience the frustration of losing one’s own identity in the middle of a conversation because the “ghostwriter” has stopped using “she says” or “he said” until none of the characters know who said what. We learn the difference between reality and fiction, but from fiction’s point of view.

   The story begins on the big day when BookWorld changes from the Giant Library into a geographic world. Meanwhile, the possibility of Civil War between Racy Novel and Women’s Fiction is growing more likely.

   The Thursday Next books, located in fantasy, are suffering from such a serious drop in readers the actors playing the characters are worried about their future, and blaming Written Thursday for the lack of readers. But soon Written Thursday is faced with even more serious problems.

   Jurisfiction, BookWorld’s police, asks Written Thursday to solve the mystery of an unknown book that had mysteriously exploded over BookWorld. When Written Thursday finds evidence of sabotage, she finds herself dangerously in the middle of a deadly conspiracy that could destroy BookWorld.

   There is much in this story to please the mystery reader. Why was the book destroyed? What was its title, and who was its author? Who do the secret police Men In Plaid really serve? Why is someone trying to start a war between Racy Novel and Women’s Fiction? What role does RealWorld evil corporation Goliath play in the conspiracy and why? And where is the RealWorld Thursday Next?

   The humor has much to offer readers of all genres. For mystery fans, Written Thursday describes a scene in the land of Thriller:

   While I recommend you read the Thursday Next series in order, it is possible to enjoy this book by itself. Each book in the series has a satisfying ending but leaves enough plot threads open to set up the next book.

   For example, here we learn why, in First Among Sequels, RealWorld Thursday was the only one who could see her second daughter, Jenny. In One of Our Thursdays Are Missing, we are left with unanswered questions about Goliath’s current evil plan in the RealWorld.

   Answers to those questions will most likely be revealed in TN7. However, the mysteries of the BookWorld conspiracy are solved at the end, as is what happened to RealWorld Thursday.

   The Thursday Next series continues to satisfy fans of quality satire, mystery, and any other genre.

      The Thursday Next series —

1. The Eyre Affair (2001)

2. Lost in a Good Book (2002)
3. The Well of Lost Plots (2003)
4. Something Rotten (2004)
5. First Among Sequels (2007)
6. One of Our Thursdays Is Missing (2011)

CHRISTOPHER FOWLER – Bryant & May Off the Rails: A Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery. Bantam, hardcover, September 2010; trade paperback, September 2011. Originally published in the UK: Doubleday, hardcover, June 2010.

Genre:   Police procedural. Leading characters:  Arthur Bryant & John May; 8th in series. Setting:   England.

First Sentence:   With regard to your apprehension of the hired assassin operating in the King’s Cross area, this so-called “King’s Cross Executioner” chap, thank you for acting so quickly on the matter, although it’s a pity he subsequently managed to give you the slip.

   A killer known as Mr. Fox has been captured by Detectives Arthur Bryant and John May, but escaped, murdering one of their colleagues in the process. A body has been discovered in a station of London’s Underground. Was Mr. Fox the killer or does the Peculiar Crimes Unit have another killer on their hands?

   Okay, I’ll start right out by admitting I love Bryant and May. In them, Fowler ha created two of the most appealing characters being written today. And it is truly Fowler’s excellent writing and voice which brings them, and the story, to life.

   I have always appreciated books which include a cast of characters. Fowler found a particularly clever way of incorporating his cast of principal characters into the story as a staff roster. In this book, he provides a description of Bryant which truly does give “some measure of the man,” and I love his Bryant’s habit of reciting dictionary definitions.

   Bryant and May, while being the central characters, are not alone but supported by a host of secondary characters each given distinct backgrounds, characteristics and contributions to the story. With each book, we learn more of each character’s background and personalities. But beyond the central characters, it is a rare author who can make one feel an element of sympathy for a series killer, but Fowler manages so to do.

   There is wonderful humor balanced by touching poignancy. There is a balance of historical information — the London Underground system — with very contemporary references — the use of a flash mob as a distraction. It is the inclusion of small details about which one normally doesn’t think; such as the inclusion as to why escalators are always breaking down and the comparison between actors and serial killers, which I appreciate.

   This is a book where one should have read the previous books in the series. That is no great burden, however, as all the Bryant and May stories are so well done and delightful to read. I should hate to see this series end so, please, give them a try, spread the word and enjoy Bryant and May. Off the Rails is another excellent addition to the series.

Rating:   Excellent.

     The Bryant & May series —

1. Full Dark House (2003)
2. The Water Room (2004)

3. Seventy-Seven Clocks (2005)
4. Ten Second Staircase (2006)
5. White Corridor (2007)
6. The Victoria Vanishes (2008)

7. Bryant and May on the Loose (2009)
8. Off the Rails (2010)
9. The Memory of Blood (2011)

ALICE CAMPBELL – Desire to Kill. Farrar & Rinehart, US, hardcover, 1934. Collins Crime Club, UK, hardcover, 1934.

   In his interesting and influential but often rather one-sided analysis of English detective novels and thrillers between the wars, Snobbery with Violence: English Crime Stories and Their Audience (1971), Colin Watson portrays the Golden Age English mystery as quite straight-laced, sexually speaking, with blushing crime fiction writers of the day able to bring themselves to refer only “obliquely” to “coital encounters.”

    “The political tone [of the between-the-wars English mystery novel] was conservative save in a handful of instances,” pronounces Watson. “As for morals, it would be difficult to point to any other single branch of popular entertainment that conformed more strictly to current notions of decency. […] An almost Victorian reticence continued to be observed in crime fiction for decades after treatment of unsavory topics had come to be accepted, within limits, as a legitimate feature of the straight novel.”

   Colin Watson likely never read Alice Campbell’s 1934 crime novel Desire to Kill.

   Admittedly, the novel is set in France (specifically Paris), where many English readers no doubt could more easily accept the presence of moral decadence in human life. Still, the plot itself quite strikingly involves elements (drugs, homosexuality, prostitution and sexual voyeurism) that would be right at home in the unbuttoned and unzipped modern mystery.

   Alice Campbell (1887-?) herself was an American, though, like John Dickson Carr, she is associated with the English school of mystery. Originally she came from Atlanta, Georgia, where she was part of the socially prominent Ormond family. (Ormond was her maiden name.)

   Campbell moved to New York City at the age of nineteen and became a socialist and women’s suffragist (this according the blurb on a 1939 Penguin paperback — evidently Penguin did not deem it necessary to shield potential readers from knowledge of this author’s less than conservative background). She moved to Paris before World War One, married the American-born artist and writer James Lawrence Campbell and had a son in 1914. By the 1930s (possibly sooner), the family had left France for England, where Campbell continued writing crime fiction until 1950 (the year The Corpse Had Red Hair appeared).

   Campbell’s first mystery novel was Juggernaut, a highly-praised tale of the murderous machinations of a villainous doctor. (The story was adapted into a film starring Boris Karloff in 1936.) Throughout the rest of the pre-WW2 period, most of her crime tales were set in France.

   Desire to Kill is one of the French novels. Like many of Campbell’s crime stories, it is really more a tale of suspense, though there is some detection in the form of attempts by a couple amateur investigators to pin the crime on the true villain. Dorothy L. Sayers praised the novel “for the soundness of the charactersation and the lively vigor of the writing,” which she thought helped to lift the narrative out of “sheer melodrama.”

   And melodramatic the tale is! The opening sequence, which concerns the events at socialite heiress Dorinda Quarles’ bohemian drug party, is well-conveyed. Sybaritic “Dodo” Quarles imbibes deeply and frequently at the well of moneyed decadence:

   Dodo’s latest wicked pash is the cult-like new religion of the Bannister Mowbray, obviously a charlatan and a degenerate, at least in the eyes of the respectable:

   Bannister Mowbray’s current “henchman and slave” is Ronald Cleeves, the handsome son and heir of Lord Conisbrooke. The author compares him, in a suggestive image, to a “pure Greek temple…invaded by a band of satyrs.”

   Later on Campbell’s amateur detective, the brash, American-born freelance journalist Tommy Rostetter, visits the two men at Ronald’s Parisian abode and finds them “wearing dressing-gowns” and sitting “close together, in earnest discussion over bowls of café au lait.”

   Other characters in the novel — all guests as Dodo’s party — include:

   Peter Hummock, originally of South Bend, Indiana. “Ranked as the most pestiferous social nuisance in Paris,” Hummock nominally deals in antiques and designs tea-gowns “for middle-western compatriots” but spends most of his time “in a tireless dash from one gay function to another, impervious to snubs, detailing scandal.”

   Mrs. Cope-Villiers, “familiarly known as Dick…a reputed addict to cocaine.”

   â€œThe glum and taciturn Australian poetess, Maud Daventry.” A neighbor of Tommy’s (based on Gertrude Stein?), she first is mentioned in Campbell’s earlier Tommy Rostetter mystery, The Click of the Gate (1932). Tommy has “nothing against her, little alluring as was her soggy complexion, mannish dinner-jacket, and untidy mop of hair invariably flecked with cigarette-ash.”

   Announcing that Dodo’s party guests have consumed a powerful hallucinogenic drug, Bannister Mowbray promises them the thrill of intense dreams:

   During the period when all the guests at Dodo’s party are ostensibly in drug-induced stupors, Dodo is stabbed to death—a rather Manson-like culmination of events!

   Apparently someone indeed had cherished an ordinarily forbidden desire, a desire to kill; and its accomplishment in those dark hours was not at all illusory.

   When a woman he believes to be innocent is implicated in Dodo’s murder, Tommy investigates to discover what truly happened at this decadent affair. He finds that the dead Dodo is not missed:

   Despite encountering indifference and resistance, Tommy perseveres in his investigation and eventually discovers an amazing answer to his problem. Proving it, however, proves a perilous endeavor indeed for him.

   Much of the later part of the novel involves goings-on at a house of prostitution where, for a price, the madam allows those voyeurs who like to look but not touch access to strategically placed peepholes, so that they may watch the house’s illicit couples coupling.

   Though Campbell never directly describes sexual acts, reticent she is not in Desire to Kill. In terms of subject matter the novel certainly offers something outside the beaten Golden Age track — and the mystery is not at all a fizzle either. It is herewith recommended as an antidote to conventional genre wisdom and for its sheer entertainment value.

CAMPBELL, ALICE (Ormond). 1887-1976?

    — The bibliography above was taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.

CAROLINE GRAHAM – Death of a Hollow Man. William A. Morrow & Co., hardcover, 1989. Avon, paperback, 1991.

   I missed Caroline Graham’s debut with Inspector Tom Barnaby (The Killings at Badger’s Drift), but it seems to me very unlikely to have been better than Death of a Hollow Man, a sensitive, insightful, probing gem of a tale.

   The Causton Amateur Dramatic Society is rehearsing for its latest production, Amadeus. We meet the cast, director and crew in full and in depth. They include the lead, Esslyn Carmichael, a conceited womanizer; several young aspirants of varying talent; an assistant director, routinely squelched by the director; and Joyce Barnaby, wife of Tom.

   Passions run high and deep, and opening night bids fair to be an unmitigated disaster, for murder waits in the wings for its moment at center stage. A most impressive performance by Graham.

Bibliographic data.   This will have to wait until tomorrow as well. Caroline Graham wrote only seven Inspector Barnaby mysteries, but the character has become famous around the world as the sleuth in many seasons’ worth of British TV’s Midsomer Murders, which I’ve never seen. If any of you have, please fill me in — and compare and contrast with the novels, if you can.

[UPDATE] 05-04-11.    The Chief Inspector Barnaby series:

   I’d still like to hear more from anyone who can tell me how closely the TV series follows the overall tenor of the books, but in Comment #1, The Doc points out the recent contretemps raised by some badly spoken comments made by the (soon to be former) producer of the series.

   Here’s a portion of an online review of the episode that was aired soon after this occurred, which also coincided with Neil Dudgeon taking over as Midsomer‘s new DCI (John) Barnaby.

   From http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8402199/The-return-of-Midsomer-Murders-review.html —

    “Midsomer isn’t roaringly popular because it holds a mirror up to modern Britain, any more than Poirot serves as a primer on 21st-century Belgium. Midsomer brings to life – and gently mocks – an idea of England and Englishness that probably hasn’t existed in this country for decades, but which lives on in the popular imagination, especially overseas.

    “Much of what Brian True-May had to say on the subject of Englishness had me squirming in discomfort, but I will say this in his defence: Midsomer Murders has never claimed to have a vice-like grip on reality.

    “I can’t think of any English people I know – regardless of their ethnic origin – who’ve been bludgeoned to death with a slide projector.”

MANNING LONG – Short Shrift. Duell Sloan & Pearce, hardcover, 1945. Bestseller Mystery #B118, digest paperback, no date [1950].

   When Kathy Floyd is returning to the cold bosom of her erstwhile in-laws in southern Virginia, she asks Liz (short for Louise) Parrott, not at all reluctant to get into another possible investigation, to accompany her. Except for the upper-berth problem, the train trip in uneventful until Liz falls into a young man, a young man soon to suffer more fatal injuries.

   Two more murders occur as Liz assists the county sheriff, with his grudging assistance, in his investigations. She discovers the murderer at the same time he does — and well before I did.

   An interesting and amusing picture of Southern “aristocracy,” self-appointed and as strange as other aristocracies, wartime problems, and some peculiar people, with fair, albeit tricky play. While not a memorable novel, it does encourage me to try to find other Liz Parrott investigations.

Bibliographic data:   To be added tomorrow, along with a cover image. Bill’s last paragraph is particularly encouraging!

[UPDATE] 05-04-11.   From the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

LONG, MANNING. 1906–. Born in Chase City, Virginia, on 3/4/1906; married Peter Wentworth Williams on 5/23/1944. No further details found.

    * Here’s Blood in Your Eye (n.) Duell 1941 [Liz Parrott; New York City, NY]
    * Vicious Circle (n.) Duell 1942 [Liz Parrott; New York]
    * False Alarm (n.) Duell 1943 [Liz Parrott; New York City, NY]
    * Bury the Hatchet (n.) Duell 1944 [Liz Parrott; New York]

    * Short Shrift (n.) Duell 1945 [Liz Parrott; Virginia]
    * Dull Thud (n.) Duell 1947 [Liz Parrott; New York City, NY]
    * Savage Breast (n.) Duell 1948 [Liz Parrott; New York City, NY]

   About Liz Parrott herself, I have found little information. She does have a husband Gordon who sometimes but not always is part of the cases she solves. One bookseller includes this information about Vicious Circle:

    “Liz Parrott had never met her husband’s relatives until the strange summons to a family Christmas came. She didn’t want to go, either—from all that had heard, they wouldn’t be very friendly to an ex-artist’s model. Her suspicions of the family’s hostility turned out to be well-founded. She had only another outsider, Ruth, to comfort her. And when Ruth of arsenic poisoning, it seemed that there was a Liz to mourn her — only Liz who really cared to bring the murderer to justice.”

   And an eBay seller quotes this about Dull Thud:

    “In a house full of women whose men are away, one can expect a certain amount of backbiting and gossip, not to say a little hair pulling. When it comes, however, to stealing someone else’s love letters, Liz Parrott thought things were going to far. How much further they could go she discovered on a bleak morning she went shivering down to the cellar to find out what was wrong with the furnace-and found murder……. ”

B. J. OLIPHANT – Death and the Delinquent. Shirley McClintock #4, Fawcett Gold Medal, paperback original, 1993.

   I like Sheri Tepper whatever name she writes under. A least I think I do; I haven’t read any of her A. J. Orde books, though I’ve got one waiting. I do like the Shirley McClintock series a lot, and think they’re good enough for hard covers.

   Shirley and her foreman/companion J. Q. are vacationing in the mountains of New Mexico after the traumatic events in the last book, with her daughter Allison and Allison’s schoolmate April. April isn’t working out very well. She’s nosy, neurotic, and thoroughly obnoxious, and Shirley has decided to send her home when a sharpshooter wounds Shirley’s mule and kills April.

   Accident? Hard to see how it could be.

   Some strange items are found in April’s belongings, and then a newborn is stolen from a hospital nursery. Of course it all fits together, but Shirley-on-crutches is damned if she sees how.

   Tepper/Oliphant/Orde’s strength has always been her characters, whether they’re cat-like aliens or independent Colorado ranch ladies. Shirley McClintock is one of the stronger and more realistic, and an altogether appealing heroine.

   I haven’t found anything to dislike in this series. The writing is good, the characterization excellent, and the plots haven’t strained my credulity. All of the regulars have become real people, and I look forward to seeing more of them.

The Shirley McClintock Novels (as by B. J. Oliphant)

       1) Dead in the Scrub, 1990
       2) The Unexpected Corpse, 1990
       3) Deservedly Dead, 1992
       4) Death and the Delinquent, 1992
       5) Death Served Up Cold, 1994
       6) A Ceremonial Death, 1996
       7) Here’s to the Newly Dead, 1997

Editorial Comment:   If Barry’s reference to “cat-like aliens” puzzled you, it’s because under her own name, Sheri S. Tepper is much better known as a science fiction and fantasy author than she was a mystery writer. Here’s a link to her credentials in that “other field” as deposed on Wikipedia.

FRANCES CRANE – The Cinnamon Murder. Random House, hardcover, 1946. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition. Bantam #130, paperback, 1947.

   I’m fairly sure that part of the reason mystery readers are attracted to Frances Crane’s novels is the colorful set of titles she endowed them with. That, plus the fact that someone who picks one up to read knows that there will be a mystery involved, one that will thoroughly puzzled over before being solved in the end, and that love will find its way.

   This one takes place in New York, just as Pat and Jean Abbott are about to return home to San Francisco. This leaves Jean with just one hat, and believe me, don’t we hear about that, and how inappropriate it is for “sleuthing.”

   Why she is allowed to tag along on Pat’s cases, on one pretext or another, I don’t know. Pat is the detective in the family, and Jean misses most of everything, even those clues that might be considered of a feminine nature — clothes, fingernail polish, that sort of thing.

   Unlike the cases that Mr. and Mrs. North get involved in, there is otherwise no overt comedy in the Abbott novels, but there are more red herrings than you can flail an oar at. Jean tells the story, but Pat tells her nothing, and so after being accustomed to being left in the dark with her, I admit to being caught totally unaware when the lights went on — and this time with the guilty party firmly in Pat’s grasp.

   Feather-headed sort of stuff, but OK.

      The Pat and Jean Abbott novels [thanks to Wikipedia]

* The Turquoise Shop – 1941
* The Golden Box – 1942
* The Yellow Violet – 1942
* The Applegreen Cat – 1943
* The Pink Umbrella – 1943 (aka The Pink Umbrella Murder)
* The Amethyst Spectacles – 1944
* The Indigo Necklace – 1945 (aka The Indigo Necklace Murders)
* The Cinnamon Murder – 1946
* The Shocking Pink Hat – 1946
* Murder on the Purple Water – 1947
* Black Cypress – 1948
* The Flying Red Horse – 1949
* The Daffodil Blonde – 1950
* Murder in Blue Street – 1951 (aka Death in the Blue Hour)
* The Polkadot Murder – 1951
* 13 White Tulips – 1953
* Murder in Bright Red – 1953
* The Coral Princess Murders – 1954
* Death in Lilac Time – 1955
* Horror on the Ruby X – 1956
* The Ultraviolet Widow – 1956
* The Man in Gray – 1958 (aka The Gray Stranger)
* The Buttercup Case – 1958
* Death-Wish Green – 1960
* The Amber Eyes – 1962
* Body Beneath A Mandarin Tree – 1965

   For more on Frances Crane’s life and career, see this essay about her by Tom and Enid Schantz on their Rue Morgue Press website.