ANTHONY ABBOT – The Shudders. Farrar & Rinehart, US, hardcover, 1943. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, February 1943. UK title: Deadly Secret: Collins, hc, 1943.

    “The author requests that in discussing The Shudders readers and reviewers do not give away its plot.” An understandable request by Anthony Abbot (who in reality was Fulton Oursler), one must admit, since the plot is asinine.

    Still, a reviewer must mention something about the book, besides declaiming that Anthony Abbot, the narrator and Watson for Thatcher Colt, is an even bigger twit than S.S. Van Dine, the narrator and Watson for Philo Vance, which is a claim many won’t believe until they encounter Abbot the narrator.

    Briefly then — and I hope that Abbot’s shade does not come back to haunt me — Thatcher Colt, New York City Police Commissioner, more detective than administrator, has been responsible for the conviction of a villain who poisoned his boss and mentor and made off with two million never-located dollars.

    The evening he is to be executed, the poisoner asks Colt to visit with him. He warns Colt that an even greater villain — a Dr. Baldwin — who kills for sport and who kills undetectably is lurking about ready to do untold damage.

    The poisoner is executed, with Colt looking on, and then Colt begins an unsuccessful three-year search for Baldwin. One day the former warden of the prison at which the poisoner was executed rushes into Colt’s office to tell him that he has met Dr. Baldwin, that the poisoner’s executioners are dying off, and that the warden is to be next.

    He also has more important information to impart, but he’s too busy talking about side issues to do so, and then he dies — of apparently natural causes.

    Why is Dr. Baldwin seemingly avenging the executed poisoner? It’s all too silly and impossible to narrate, even if the author’s request was to be flouted even more than I have, already.

    Skip this one.

Editorial Comment:   I’ll post a review by Mike Nevins of Anthony Abbot’s About the Murder of the Clergyman’s Mistress next. At the end of his comments, he points out that the last two Abbot mysteries, The Creeps and The Shudders, are said to have been written by someone else.

    And, yes, it appears to be so, or at least it’s highly conjectured to be true. In Part 7 of the online Addenda to his Revised Crime Fiction IV, Al Hubin names Oscar Schisgall as the probable suspect.

    Which makes me curious, of course. Why should Fulton Oursler have farmed off his series character to someone to write up his last two adventures? If anyone knows or learns more, please elucidate!

MARGARET ERSKINE – Give Up the Ghost.

Doubleday Crime Club, US, hardcover, 1949. Hammond, UK, hc, 1949. Hardcover reprint: Unicorn Mystery Book Club, 4-in-1 edition, March 1949. Paperback reprints: Mercury 163, US, digest-sized, 1952, abridged; Pocket B26, UK, 1952.

   Margaret Erskine wrote the same book about Scotland Yard inspector Septimus Finch twenty-one times. In each one Finch is described as having a nondescript face and a proclivity for dressing all in gray. This repetition doesn’t enhance the inspector’s limited charms, although it could be argued that his stolidity and matter-of-factness are positive character traits.

   In Give Up the Ghost, crude and rather nasty drawings have been sent to the Camborough constabulary, but have been more or less ignored until the elderly housekeeper of the pompous Pleydon family is found murdered with another drawing pinned to her body.

   None of the Pleydons can suggest any reason for their household’s being singled out, yet several days later another woman connected with them is killed, another drawing near her body. A band of vigilantes is formed to prowl the streets.

   Meanwhile Finch, in spite of the Pleydons’ interference, investigates the family’s history and discovers their convoluted, almost forgotten web of financial skulduggery — just in time to prevent further murders.

   There are moments of humor amid the gore, such as when Finch installs young Constable Roark in the Pleydon household as a butler.

   Erskine — who has stated that writing thrillers was a revolt against her highbrow family — specializes in eccentric British families with long-held secrets, social pretensions, and heads of household who possess streaks of cunning.

   As a Scotland Yard officer, Finch solves crimes in Sussex, several seaside towns, and provincial villages. He remains as colorless through his last case, The House on Hook Street (1977), as he was in his first adventure, The Limping Man (1939). Erskine’s novels are definitely an acquired taste.

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

STUART KAMINSKY – Murder on the Yellow Brick Road. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, 1977. Paperback reprints include: Penguin, 1979; Ibooks, 2000.

   Stuart Kaminsky is a film writer and critic as well as a mystery novelist, and he has put his expertise to good use in his series about 1940s Hollywood private eye Toby Peters.

   The novels are a blend of fact and fiction — that is, of real Hollywood personalities (now deceased) and fictional characters.

   Peters, investigator for the stars, is wise to the ways of Hollywood; he shares an office with a dentist, Shelley Minck, who provides much of the comic relief in these books; he eats abominably — burgers, Pepsis, milk shakes; he lives in “one of a series of two-room, one story wooden structures L.A. management people called bungalows”; and he has a running feud with his brother, Homicide Lieutenant Phil Pevsner (the real family name).

   Murder on the Yellow Brick Road concerns the stabbing of a munchkin — one of L.A.’s many “little people” (they prefer that label to that of midget) — on the set on which The Wizard of Oz was filmed.

   Judy Garland finds the body and calls Peters in a panic. Peters goes to MGM, where he meets Miss Garland, PR man Warren Hoff, Garland’s costume designer friend Cassie James, and Louis B. Mayer himself. Mayer hires Peters to conduct an investigation and divert any adverse publicity.

   What follows is an entertaining story of Hollywood in its heyday, the inner workings of the film community, and the brotherhood of the “little people.” Peters meets such luminaries as Raymond Chandler, and pays a visit to Clark Gable at William Randolph Hearst’s fabled San Simeon.

   Kaminsky does a good job of evoking both Hollywood of the Forties and the personalities of the various stars; his portrayal of the child/woman Garland is especially good.

   Other Toby Peters novels include Never Cross a Vampire (1980), which features Bela Lugosi and William Faulkner in his screen-writing days; and He Done Her Wrong (1983), in which Mae West calls on Peters to find her missing, sizzling autobiography; and Down For the Count (1985), which features fighter Joe Louis.

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

STUART KAMINSKY, R.I.P. According to his obituary in the Chicago Tribune, Stuart Kaminsky “died of complications from hepatitis and a recent stroke Friday, Oct. 9, in Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis […] He was an Army medic in the 1950s, when his family believes he got hepatitis C.” He was 75 at the time of his death.

   Unusual for most mystery writers, Kaminsky was the creator of four distinctive series characters. Besides 1940s Hollywood PI Toby Peters, who appeared in 24 novels [see below] in which he rubbed shoulders with many movie stars of the day, Kaminsky also chronicled the adventures of (quoting again from the Tribune) “… Porfiry Rostnikov, a police inspector in Moscow [16 novels]; Abe Lieberman, a crusty but wise Chicago cop who works the streets with his younger partner, Bill Hanrahan [10 novels]; and Lew Fonesca, a former Cook County state’s attorney investigator now operating as a cut-rate private eye in Sarasota [6 novels].”

   Kaminsky also wrote two novelizations of the TV series The Rockford Files, three novelizations of CSI: New York, two stand-alone suspense novels, three story collections, and was the editor of two recent crime fiction anthologies.

   Without much fanfare, Stuart Kaminksy was without a doubt one of the more prolific mystery authors of recent years. He was a quiet giant in our field.

      The Toby Peters series —

1. Bullet for A Star (1977)

2. Murder on the Yellow Brick Road (1977)
3. You Bet Your Life (1978)
4. The Howard Hughes Affair (1979)
5. Never Cross a Vampire (1980)
6. High Midnight (1981)
7. Catch A Falling Clown (1981)

8. He Done Her Wrong (1983)
9. The Fala Factor (1984)

10. Down for the Count (1985)
11. The Man Who Shot Lewis Vance (1986)
12. Smart Moves (1986)
13. Think Fast, Mr. Peters (1987)
14. Buried Caesars (1989)

15. Poor Butterfly (1990)
16. The Melting Clock (1991)

17. The Devil Met A Lady (1993)
18. Tomorrow is Another Day (1995)
19. Dancing in the Dark (1996)
20. A Fatal Glass of Beer (1997)

21. A Few Minutes Past Midnight (2001)
22. To Catch a Spy (2002)
23. Mildred Pierced (2003)
24. Now You See It (2004)

WILLIAM HAGGARD – Powder Barrel. Cassell & Co., UK, hardcover, 1965. Ives Washburn, US, hc, 1965. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, January 1966. Paperback reprints: Signet D2991, US, 1966; Penguin, UK, 1967.

   William Haggard is, for my money the best of the later British thriller writers in the Buchan tradition, and one who wrote rings around Le Carre. Most of his books feature Sir Charles Russell of the Security Executive in the most civilized and ruthless thrillers you will ever read (roughly covering 1958 to 1991).

   Haggard’s a conservative — damn near a Tory — and he’s no doubt a bit of a snob, but it’s that civilized snobbery that marked Buchan and the best of the Buchan school.

   Indeed Russell is close to Buchan’s Edward Leithen, and like Leithen and Richard Hannay’s adventures the books are as likely to have a sympathetic or even heroic enemy — not to mention a charming Italian Madam (The Hard Sell), second story man (Slow Burn), blowzy but sympathetic courtesan (The Antagonists), or even Soviet agent (The Powder Barrel).

   None of the books run over 60,000 words, but they are masterpieces of economy, the characters well drawn, the plots intricate (but never overly so), and the suspense and action well choreographed.

   Among the non-series books his first novel The Telemann Touch and The Kinsmen are both exceptional entries, the latter having many of the qualities of a Hitchcock thriller. The Telemann Touch, about an apologetic assassin, ends on a wonderfully choreographed duel with bayonets.

   There are fine set pieces in the books too. The SF touch at the end of Slow Burn and a second story man’s seduction of a high priced call girl, an assassination on a gondola in The Venetian Blind, and a tense shootout on a ski lift in The High Wire. Haggard most resembles Victor Canning in that mastery of the clean simple and — there’s no other word for it — civilized style of thriller that seems so veddy British.

   In Powder Barrel, Ernst, aka Ernest, a likable, handsome, if none too bright, East German Soviet agent stationed in a vital Arab principality as the driver of playboy Shaikh (sic) Ali bin Hassan bin Ibrahim sets off a series explosive events when he takes it on himself, while in England for a Rolls Royce mechanic course, to try and kill British Foreign Secretary Vincent Gale.

   Vincent Gale is the man Her Majesty’s government has chosen to negotiate the new oil concessions in the shaikhdom (sic) known as the Oil Terminal along the Arab oil coast, a negotiation complicated by the fact that he had a discrete and passionate affair with the Shaikh’s sister Princess Nahid, known as ‘Madame.’ Just how he will be received by his ex-lover, an intelligent and willful woman, may be key to the powder keg growing in the shaikh’s country.

   It’s just the sort of explosive situation Russell (“He’s English of course, you have to watch them.”) handles with cool aplomb, so he sends his second in command Robert Mortimer along with Gale for security, and then is surprised when his opposite number in the Soviet government, the General, shows up to let him know that Ernst is a wild card determined to kill Gale without orders.

   Riots in the street, a hunt for the Soviet agent by the Shaikh’s handpicked Greek chief spy Stradvis, a playboy shaikh who takes his money and runs for the Riviera with Ernst’s help, and the renewal of a long term affair are some of the events that lead to Gale and a wounded Ernst alone in a villa with Madame in a taut confrontation at gunpoint between the diplomat and the oddly honorable assassin.

   As might be expected Russell pulls all the irons out the fire without anyone getting appreciably singed, and manages to get those oil concessions from the progressive Princess when she replaces her abdicating brother, but it’s a near run thing as the Duke of Wellington said of Waterloo, and the suspense runs down to the wire.

   Haggard was a civilized and intelligent writer of tautly wound thrillers that found a balance between the fantasy of Ian Fleming and the drab ordinary world of Le Carre. The Russell novels are exciting, literate, sexy, and understated in the best British tradition.

   His people are believable human beings whether good guy or villain, and Russell a likable protagonist of the old school who would have been equally at home in Buchan’s Rungates Club or Kipling’s India. Compared to today’s overblown, overwritten, and overlong thrillers they are perfect models of the form.

DEAN OWEN – Juice Town.   Monarch 290; paperback original; first printing, December 1962. Cover art by Rafael M. deSoto.

   Over the years that he was writing, Dean Owen (born Dudley Dean McGaughey, 1909-1986) was perhaps better recognized for his westerns than for his crime fiction, but at the present time I doubt that he’s a well-known name in either field — except to regular readers of this blog, of course.

   If you follow the link that follows, though, you’ll find a fairly lengthy and what I hope is a complete checklist of all the fiction he wrote, starting out in the pulps, then moving on to writing paperback originals almost exclusively.

   Of the books already listed in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, I’ve found two errors. First of all, Juice Town is listed as only a marginal entry. Not so, as you will see in a minute. And A Killer’s Bargain (Hillman, pbo, 1960) is included, and I don’t believe it should be. From all I can tell without having it in hand, it’s a western, with no more crime elements than almost any other western has.

   And of the “sleaze” books Dean wrote, some may have definite crime elements, but while they’re included in the checklist, I don’t own any of them, so someone else will have to report in on those. (And in fact, two of the hard-to-find digests Owen wrote as Hodge Evens have since been confirmed as having substantial crime content.)

   It’s been a long time since I’ve read a book like this one. It starts out really, really tough and doesn’t let up until it’s over. It doesn’t matter too much if it’s also only a song with only one note. The one note is like a small incessant drumming in the background that just doesn’t go away until the book is finished.

   In a sense (speaking of westerns) this is a western in theme, at least, if not in reality. One guy in a white hat comes to town and cleans it up, one guy against the mob, one guy who’s left himself vulnerable with a wife and kids, but he does his job anyway.

   The guy in this book is Del Painter. Out of a job and looking for work – there’s a story behind that as well – he is persuaded to return to his home town of Southbay, California, and to join the same police department that he was so proud his Uncle Ray, now deceased, was a member of for so long.

   Little does Del know that his uncle was a crook, that the entire police department is crooked (and rather openly so), and that he on his first day on the job is expected to be a crook as well. Juice, in the sense of the title, means protection, as it is carefully explained to Del on page 34, and the police in Southbay make out very well, including the use of the services of the local ladies of the evening whenever they feel they have a need for them.

   Del has a hard head, though, and hard heads make for harder enemies in towns like this. He does make a few friends, however, although it difficult to tell at times – well, most of the time – on which side some of the friends are.

   Only 144 pages long, this book can be read in only one evening, and probably in only one sitting.

   And even though several weeks later you are probably not very likely to remember much of the details of what is admittedly a rather minor effort, this vividly jagged portrayal of a town with such a blatant disregard of the law may stick with you a whole lot longer than you think it will, when you’re done with it.

Hi Steve,

   I am starting to research the authors of the Herbert Jenkins publishing company, and wonder if you can help me by asking if anyone knows anything about four of their 1930s authors.

   Robert Ladline, Peter Luck and Gret Lane are pseudonyms of unidentified writers. The HJ archive tell me the contracts they hold are signed by different names, but won’t tell me without a search for descendants who would give permission for them to release the information! Since I have waited over a year so far for them to find such a descendant for another writer, that may be something to leave till all other possibilities have been checked.

   Garstin Begbie is the name on the contracts for books under that name, but a search of Ancestry etc has failed to produce anything.

   So would it be possible for you ask on your blog if the names mean anything to anyone? I know it’s a slim chance, but there’s always a chance someone might be looking for the names.

               Regards

                 John

Bibliographic Data [taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin] —

         BEGBIE, GARSTIN

    Murder Mask (Jenkins, 1934, hc) [Supt. Samuel Quan; England]
    Sudden Death at Scotland Yard (Jenkins, 1933, hc) [Supt. Samuel Quan; England]
    Trailing Death (Jenkins, 1932, hc) [England]

         LADLINE, ROBERT

    A Devil in Downing Street (Jenkins, 1937, hc) [J. A. (Rem) Remington; England]
    The Man Who Made a King (Jenkins, 1936, hc) [England]
    The Quest of the Vanishing Star (Jenkins, 1932, hc) [England]
    The Shoe Fits (Jenkins, 1936, hc) [J. A. (Rem) Remington; England]
    Sinister Craft (Jenkins, 1939, hc) [J. A. (Rem) Remington; England]
    The Sky’s the Limit (Jenkins, 1937, hc) [J. A. (Rem) Remington; England]
    Stop That Man! (Jenkins, 1940, hc) [J. A. (Rem) Remington; England]
    They Stuck at Nothing (Jenkins, 1935, hc) [England]
    When Fools Endanger Us (Jenkins, 1938, hc) [J. A. (Rem) Remington; England]
    When the Police Failed (Jenkins, 1933, hc) [England]
    The Wolf Swept Down (Jenkins, 1935, hc) [England]

         LANE, GRET. Given name probably Margaret.

    The Cancelled Score Mystery (Jenkins, 1929, hc) [Kate Clare (Marsh); (Insp.) John Barrin; England]
    The Curlew Coombe Mystery (Jenkins, 1930, hc) [Kate Clare (Marsh); (Insp.) John Barrin; England]
    Death in Mermaid Lane (Jenkins, 1940, hc) [Kate Clare (Marsh); (Insp.) John Barrin; England]
    Death Prowls the Cove (Jenkins, 1942, hc) [Kate Clare (Marsh); (Insp.) John Barrin; England]
    Death Visits the Summer-House (Jenkins, 1939, hc) [Kate Clare (Marsh); (Insp.) John Barrin; England]
    Found on the Road (Jenkins, 1926, hc) [England]
    The Guest with the Scythe (Jenkins, 1943, hc) [Kate Clare (Marsh); (Insp.) John Barrin; England]
    The Hotel Cremona Mystery (Jenkins, 1932, hc) [Kate Clare (Marsh); (Insp.) John Barrin; London]
    The Lantern House Affair (Jenkins, 1931, hc) [Kate Clare (Marsh); England]
    The Red Mirror Mystery (Jenkins, 1938, hc) [Insp. Hook; England]
    The Stolen Scar (Jenkins, 1925, hc) [Idaho]
    Three Dead That Night (Jenkins, 1937, hc) [Insp. Hook; England]
    The Unknown Enemy (Jenkins, 1933, hc) [Kate Clare (Marsh); (Insp.) John Barrin; England]

         LUCK, PETER

    Crime Legitimate (Jenkins, 1937, hc) [England]
    Infallible Witness (Jenkins, 1932, hc) [England]
    The Killing of Ezra Burgoyne (Jenkins, 1929, hc) [England]
    Terror by Night (Jenkins, 1934, hc) [England]
    The Transome Murder Mystery (Jenkins, 1930, hc) [England]
    Two Shots (Jenkins, 1931, hc) [England]
    Under the Fourth-? (Jenkins, 1927, hc) [England]
    Who Killed Robin Cockland? (Jenkins, 1933, hc) [England]
    The Wingrave Case (Jenkins, 1935, hc) [England]
    The Wrong Number (Jenkins, 1926, hc) [England]

PETER TEMPLE – Bad Debts. Collins, Australia, pb, 1996. MacAdam/Cage, US, hc, 2005. Quercus, UK, pb, 2007.

   I read this author’s 2005 novel, The Broken Shore, which I enjoyed, even though I thought it had a few flaws and it probably wouldn’t have been my choice for an award. (I don’t know what would have been as I don’t read many newly published books.)

   [The Broken Shore was awarded the Duncan Lawrie Dagger (formerly the CWA Gold Dagger for Fiction) for 2007. Temple, born in South Africa, is the first Australian to win the award.]

   Temple previously wrote a four book series about a Melbourne private eye named Jack Irish, and this is the first in that series. Jack, who is the narrator, comes with many of the usual troubles.

   He had been a lawyer with a successful practice, but after a client had killed his (Irish’s) wife in revenge, Irish had become a drunk before straightening out a little. Now he does a little minor legal work but mainly works as an investigator for his old legal partner.

   Here he is approached by an old client who is out from jail, having been convicted on a hit-and-run death while he was drunk. Before Irish can follow up, the man is dead, shot in a police ambush. Irish has to re-investigate the case from ten years before when he had been going through the motions after his wife’s death. The investigation leads to a conspiracy on a governmental stage and soon he is the target of ruthless killers.

   On the whole, this was a readable book, though it dragged a little in places; and the plot twisted and turned, though in not wholly unexpected ways. I’m not sure I would classify this as absolutely top-notch but it was not bad. If the second book in the series falls into my hands, I might well give it a try.

      PETER TEMPLE – Bibliography:

   Bad Debts (1996).   [Jack Irish]
   An Iron Rose (1998)
   Shooting Star (1999)
   Black Tide (1999).   [Jack Irish]

   Dead Point (2000).   [Jack Irish]
   In the Evil Day (2002) aka Identity Theory.
   White Dog (2003).   [Jack Irish]
   The Broken Shore (2006).

   Truth (2008).   [Book 2 in “The Broken Shore” series.]

MERLDA MACE – Motto for Murder. Messner, hardcover, 1943. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, November 1943. Digest paperback: Crestwood / Black Cat Detective #17, 1945 (abridged).

   Motto for Murder was one of a trio of murder mysteries written by Merlda Mace during the 1940’s. The detective she deploys in this story is Timothy J. O’Neil better known as Tip to his friends. He is a 26 year old “special investigator” for Barnes and Gleason, a New York City investment firm.

   How he got this job is one of the big mysteries of this book since he readily admits that he is not much of an investigator and his performance during the story bears this out.

   This is, in essence, a country house mystery. The house is an isolated mansion located in the mountains of northern New York State near Lake Placid. The controlling and quite unpleasant matriarch of a wealthy family has gathered her extended family to tell them that she has screwed them out of their inheritances. A snowstorm descends on the region and several murders occur during a long Christmas weekend.

   This seems to me like a combination of a mediocre Mignon G. Eberhart mystery and a bad Ellery Queen mystery. The author can put words and sentences and paragraphs together in a coherent manner but the book, on the whole, is a disappointment.

   The physical and character clues are not first rate, and the author employs a HIBK technique that serves no valid storytelling purpose. Since the characters insisted on wandering around in the dark, leaving their bedrooms unlocked at night and napping in vulnerable spots, the killer did not have too much trouble carrying out the murders. The “mottos” from the title of the story refer to fortune-cookie type candies wrapped in little papers containing sayings which play a small part in the solution.

   Merlda Mace was a pseudonym of Madeleine McCoy. Apparently “Tip” O’Neil is not a series character, but according to Al Hubin’s Revised Crime Fiction IV, Mace’s other two mysteries utilize a female sleuth called Christine Anderson (the ‘blonde’ in Blondes Don’t Cry).

     Bibliographic data:   [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV]

MACE, MERLDA. Pseudonym of Madeleine McCoy, 1910?-1990?

    Headlong for Murder (n.) Messner 1943 [Christine Anderson; Connecticut]

    Motto for Murder (n.) Messner 1943 [New York]
    Blondes Don’t Cry (n.) Messner 1945 [Christine Anderson; Washington, D.C.]

KINGSLEY AMIS & ROBERT CONQUEST – The Egyptologists. Jonathan Cape, UK, hardcover, 1965. Random House, US, hardcover, 1966. UK paperback reprints: Penguin 2769, 1968; Panther, 1975.

   Who are the Egyptologists?

   Just what goes on behind the sedate doors of the Metropolitan Society for Egyptology of London?

   Women would like to know — no woman is allowed to join — especially wives.

   The BBC would like to know — their expose of the Society ended up in a virtual on air brawl.

   Egyptologists would like to know — no one with the least academic credentials is allowed to join.

   MI6 would like to know — you know how nosy spies are.

   Scotland Yard would like to know — the Vice Squad just raided the place, and now a society member has gone missing. Could it be foul play?

   Well, actually yes, but not the kind readers of this blog might expect.

   Funny too, the wives think, that all of their husbands suddenly developed an interest in Egyptology at the same time. Especially when they had never shown the least interest in the subject before. Or anything else remotely academic.

   Readers familiar with Kingsley Amis will no doubt have already developed a theory about just what the Society is up to, or what exactly their mysterious Project Nefertiti is. And just how did they break one of breasts off the bust of Nefertiti by attempting to put a bra on her? And why?

   Kingsley Amis was a literary gadfly who burst on the literary scene with Lucky Jim, a comedy of manners and sex at Oxford. The books that followed took him from dirty young man (That Uncertain Feeling — the basis for the Peter Sellers film Only Two Can Play) to dirty old man (One Fat Englishman), laughing, jibing, and harpooning the comfortable all the way.

   He also championed science fiction, writing one of the key works of criticism in the field (The New Maps of Hell) with the co-author of The Egyptologists, Robert Conquest.

   He championed Ian Fleming and James Bond in The James Bond Dossier and Every Man His Own 007 (as William Tanner), and penned the first and one of the best Bond pastiche in Colonel Sun, published as by Robert Markham.

   And he refused to sit still. The Alteration is a startling tale of an alternate world where a group tries to save a young boy from being made a castrati by the all powerful Catholic Church — it was chosen one of the 100 best modern science fiction novels.

   He wrote a coming of age novel in the form of a murder mystery, The Riverside Villa Murders, and a spy novel that was a meditation on morality, The Anti-Death League.

   His horror novel The Green Man was chosen one of the 100 best modern horror novels — it is also drop dead funny. It was made into a mini series and shown on A&E with Albert Finney in the leading role.

   I won’t give away the secret of the Metropolitan Egyptological Society, but nothing good lasts forever.

   Science fiction fans will also enjoy the many references to the genre from theories of alien invasion, to Professor Asimov, of Krakow who almost never publishes anything …

   If you aren’t familiar with Amis work, this is a perfect place to start. It reads much like one of the great British film comedies of the fifties and sixties (a few of which were based on Amis novels), you won’t be alone if you find yourself casting the novel as you read it with those great British character actors.

   You won’t forget the secret of The Egyptologists, alas for them, neither will their wives.

   Sadly membership is closed, but then your wife would never approve of your spending your Thursday evenings there.

   You know what those ancient Egyptians were like — well, actually, if you do, you couldn’t be a member anyway. You wouldn’t want an actual Egyptologist in the Metropolitan Egyptological Society — that would hardly be fair to the members.

   You wouldn’t want them to waste their Thursdays discussing ancient Egypt would you?

   That would be a complete waste of valuable time.

   And believe me, the Egyptologists have better things to do.

Editorial Comment:  For what it’s worth — and in case you were wondering — this book is NOT included in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV.

    Or should that be NOT YET?

CAROLYN WELLS – The Gold Bag. Lippincott, US/UK, hardcover, 1911. Silent film: Edison, 1913, as The Mystery of West Sedgwick. Online text: here.

   The prolific American writer Carolyn Wells was mocked by Bill Pronzini in his entertaining book on “alternative” mystery classics (books so bad they’re good), Gun in Cheek, for having written an instructive tome on the craft of mystery fiction, The Technique of the Mystery Story (1913), and then seemingly failed to follow her good advice when composing her own mystery tales.

   Wells’ second detective novel, The Gold Bag — which actually precedes The Technique of the Mystery Story by two years — illustrates Pronzini’s thesis. It might well have been titled The Leavenworth Case for Dummies.

   Carolyn Wells was first drawn to reading mystery fiction in her mid-thirties when a neighbor lady came calling on Wells and her mother and read to them some of Anna Katharine Green’s latest detective novel, That Affair Next Door (1897) (Wells, by the way, suffered hearing loss as a child and wore a hearing aid throughout her life.)

   Green had published a hugely popular mystery novel, The Leavenworth Case (1878) nearly twenty years earlier, and had settled into a comfortable career as a prolific crime writer.

   Though I personally find it unreadable due to the stilted, melodramatic speech-making of its characters (particularly the two nieces), The Leavenworth Case is considered a seminal work of mystery fiction and is still taught today. Moreover, it does have a solid plot and is fascinating for being an early instance of so many Golden Age mystery tropes: the millionaire murdered in his mansion study/library, the retinue of suspicious servants, the beautiful niece (in this case two), the private secretary, the will.

   Wells clearly was familiar with The Leavenworth Case, because The Gold Bag, her follow-up to her debut detective novel, The Clue (1909), obviously is modeled on Green’s famous tale.

   In The Gold Bag there is a Watsonesque narrator figure, as there is The Leavenworth Case (in this case Burroughs, apparently a private detective — Wells is never clear on realistic detail like this). As in Leavenworth, this figure is called in to be involved in a murder investigation, this one in a wealthy town in New Jersey (probably, one suspects, quite like Wells’ own home town).

   The case involves a millionaire murdered in his study, a retinue of suspicious servants, a beautiful niece, a private secretary and a will. (Sound familiar?) As in Leavenworth, a great deal of time is spent on the coroner’s inquest. As in Leavenworth, the Watsonesque figure becomes enamored with the beautiful niece suspected of the crime. Will true love prevail? What do you think?

   Following Leavenworth by over thirty years, The Gold Bag is written in a sprightlier style and reads much more quickly. Where it falters is in providing an adequate puzzle. Wells’ putative Great Detective, Fleming Stone, appears briefly at the beginning of a 325 page novel, then returns in the last twenty pages to solve this case.

   If this suggests to you problems with the solution, you are right. Most of the novel is devoted to Burroughs’ investigating various trails (including the trail of the gold bag of the title), all leading to different suspects, and all proving false. During virtually the whole novel, Burroughs, when not pining for the niece, is lamenting how the great Fleming Stone is not around to solve the case for him, until you just want to thrash him.

   When Stone does show up he eliminates one suspect on the basis of deductions he had made some days ago about some shoes left out to be cleaned at a hotel, shoes that just happen to turn out to have been the shoes of this suspect!

    “It is very astonishing that you should make those deductions from those shoes, and then come out here and meet the owner of those shoes,” pronounces another character. I’ll say!

   Then Stone pulls the murderer, the only person left not suspected at some point in the novel, out of his hat, and the fool hysterically confesses his/her guilt and commits suicide with one of those convenient poison pellets Golden Age murderers always seem to have handy when the Great Detective points the Dread Accusing Finger at them.

   This leaves one page for the author to pair off Young Love, and all ends happily ever after (except for the murderer, but readers will barely remember him even one page after his exit).

   So, with disappointing detection, no clever murder mechanics, cardboard characters and no interesting descriptive writing, there is not much to recommend this one, except from a sociological standpoint.

   It’s not really bad enough, either, to qualify as one of Pronzini’s alternative classics. Notably lacking here is the rather silly humor and situations found in many of Wells’ later detective novels.

   There is still an air of unreality about the whole enterprise, however. The murdered man was a businessman of some sort, but we never learn anything about his business. A police investigator is briefly mentioned, but he does nothing. Indeed, it seems to be the view in the The Gold Bag that coroners and district attorneys rely exclusively on private investigators to conduct murder cases for them, without any involvement from the police.

   One is left with the impression that Wells had a rather limited acquaintance with what might be termed “real life.” Granted, Golden Age novels often did not stress realism, but Wells’ novels seem to me too far removed from any semblance of it.

   If they were clever Michael Innes-ian parodies of the form that would be one thing, but they don’t seem to be that either. So far they just seem to me mildly silly.

   But, given their apparent popularity, they do show that there was a mystery fiction audience in the United States over the period Wells published mystery novels (1909-1942) that must have been far, far removed in taste from the celebrated hardboiled style.

  Note:   Curt hasreviewed another book by Carolyn Wells on this blog, Feathers Left Around, from 1923.