Sat 5 Nov 2016
Reviewed by Mike Tooney: FREDERICK IRVING ANDERSON – The Purple Flame and Other Stories.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[11] Comments
FREDERICK IRVING ANDERSON – The Purple Flame and Other Stories. Edited by Benjamin F. Fisher. Crippen & Landru Publishers, 2016. Lost Classics Series No. 38. Hardcover/trade paperback. Short story collection (15 stories).
During his writing career, Frederick Irving Anderson produced dozens of stories, the majority being mysteries, that proved very popular with readers, especially those of The Saturday Evening Post, where most of them appeared over a period of nearly twenty years.
In accordance with the era, some of Anderson’s characters fit comfortably into the Rogue School of likeable criminals who more often than not work on the side of right, if only sometimes to avoid worse situations; with their help, the cause of justice, and not just the legal system, is served. Two such rogues created by Anderson were the “Infallible” Godahl and Sophie Lang, with only the latter actually making it to the silver screen.
Equally memorable are his creations Oliver Armiston (“the extinct author”), who fits the Armchair Detective model very nicely, and his constant partner in crime solving, Deputy Inspector Parr (“the famous man hunter”). Their modus operandi ordinarily goes along these lines:
“It was this faculty of logical connotation that had made Oliver Armiston so unexpectedly valuable to the police deputy. Parenthetically, it was this same virtuosity that had been Oliver’s undoing in his career; when a clever thief dramatized one of his lurid tales, in real life, with murder as the sequel, the police stepped in and politely but firmly requested Oliver to cease, in the interests of society. Now the only outlet Armiston had for his fantastic powers of divination came through these occasional frozen plots, served up by his friend and admirer, Parr.”
Which brings us to the present book; in it Doug Greene at Crippen & Landru has collected fifteen highly entertaining adventures in crime busting, eleven of them featuring the Armiston-Parr duo, with the first one (“The Purple Flame”), using different characters, presumably being the prototype for the series; one with Parr only; and two showcasing the short-lived character Judge Alan Ebbs.
With Anderson, readers get what you might call a “three-fer”: a capable mystery author, a local colorist, and a sly social critic. The preface by Poe scholar Benjamin F. Fisher is a fine introduction to both Anderson and his series characters. In Fisher’s estimation Anderson possessed that rarest of authorial attributes, originality, and that without following the trend in American crime fiction towards the new hardboiled school which was gaining ascendancy at the beginning of the 20th century, the same period in which Anderson’s popularity soared.
His ability to add dimension to his characters and their environments and his carefully modulated diction (“Anderson leavens his fiction with abundant colloquial language”) all combined to make Frederick Irving Anderson not only a good detective fiction writer but also an important local color author and a chronicler of the American scene as it existed in the first third of the 20th century.
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You can find The Purple Flame and Other Detective Stories on the Crippen & Landru website here.
November 5th, 2016 at 6:12 pm
I dropped out of the standing order plan I had with Crippen & Landru a while back, but in this case, I really regret doing so. I’ll have to order it soon on its own.
Do you know, we really live in the Golden Age of Detection right now. Back 4o or 50 years ago, when I was reading some of these stories, perhaps, in various EQ anthologies or the magazine itself, who’d have dreamed they’d come collected in handsome editions such as this?
November 5th, 2016 at 7:33 pm
I’ll be writing a review of this for the Winter issue of Dime Novel Round-Up. It’s top drawer …
November 5th, 2016 at 8:14 pm
Very glad to read this review!
I’ve been incorporating comments on the “Purple Flame” stories into my Anderson article:
http://mikegrost.com/anderson.htm
Suggestion: there’s an article on Anderson’s collection “Book of Murder” in 1001 Midnights. Don’t think it has ever been reprinted at Mystery*File. It would be great if it were available.
November 5th, 2016 at 8:51 pm
I’d gladly reprint any review of Anderson from 1001 MIDNIGHTS, if there were one, Mike, but while both James Anderson and Poul Anderson are included, Frederick Irving Anderson is not.
November 5th, 2016 at 9:12 pm
Steve,
You’re right!
I don’t know where I got the idea there was a review there.
November 6th, 2016 at 1:21 am
Highly, and deservedly, popular in his time, Anderson has fared poorly because his best work is in the short story form. I’ve usually enjoyed when his work is reprinted, and some is available in ebook form. but I’m afraid because so much of his work was magazine fiction he is doomed to be forgotten by all but enthusiasts.
November 6th, 2016 at 9:11 am
David, it is sad or is a better word ironic that so many of the pulp writers remembered today such as Dashiell Hammett, Norbert Davis and Paul Ernst had so low of an opinion of pulp work versus writing for the slicks such as Saturday Evening Post that so little of the stories from the slicks still survive and the writers forgotten.
November 7th, 2016 at 7:32 am
Ben Fisher wrote reviews of several of Anderson’s books for my Poisoned Pen some 35 years ago. (They are in Volumes 2 and 4, according to Bill Deeck’s index.)
November 7th, 2016 at 10:46 am
This must be Mr. Fisher, professor emeritus of English at the University of Mississippi:
http://english.olemiss.edu/2011/10/16/benjamin-fisher/
November 28th, 2016 at 1:44 pm
Steve:
I am the critter you name in your comment, having retired from fulltime teaching in 2011. My work on F. I. Anderson dates from the 1970s, when I saw in a list of secondhand items THE BOOK OF MURDER, and, lifelong reader of detective fiction though I’ve been, I had never before encountered Anderson’s name or fiction. The rest is history.
November 28th, 2016 at 3:36 pm
Hello Ben: Good to hear from you. You’re not alone in your appreciation of Mr Anderson’s work, as the number of comments left should tell us. I don’t have a copy of this book from Crippen & Landru yet, but I’m starting to think I should!