Wed 28 Nov 2018
Archived Mystery Review: JOHN STEPHEN STRANGE – The Clue of the Second Murder.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[13] Comments
JOHN STEPHEN STRANGE – The Clue of the Second Murder. Van Dusen Ormsberry #2. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1929. Grosset & Dunlap, hardcover reprint (cover shown).
When this book was written (60 years ago!), Philo Vance was all the rage, and in the same pattern is fastidious gentleman detective Van Dusen Ormsberry, whose second recorded case this is. Assisting him is his 13-year-old protégé, the freckle-faced Bill Adams.
While the book is readable, the telling is flawed, and Ormsberry does very little in the way of detecting. He is a bad judge of character, and allowing young Bill to assist leads to an even greater error on his part. His career was over after only one more book.
The Van Dusen Ormsberry series —
The Man Who Killed Fortescue. Doubleday 1928
The Clue of the Second Murder. Doubleday 1929
Murder on the Ten-Yard Line. Doubleday 1931
[UPDATE] 11-28-18. Time does not stand still. It’s now been almost 90 years since this book was written, very near a relic — but not a forgotten one. There is currently a POD edition published by lulu.com, apparently from a source in the UK. I don’t know if how interested anyone (including myself) would be after reading review above, but as a note to myself, I did say it was readable.
I did not say much about the plot, so I went looking, and I found this description of the book online:
November 28th, 2018 at 7:03 pm
Strange would do better, but this one didn’t show much promise, or much understanding of what Wright was doing with Vance, much as some of Sayers imitators got everything right but Lord Peter and the seriousness of most the crimes he investigated.
It’s as if they read the books and missed the point.
November 28th, 2018 at 10:19 pm
From the Fantastic Fiction webpage for her, obviously taken from one or all of the reprint editions someone is doing:
John Stephen Strange was the pen name of Dorothy Stockbridge Tillett, who wrote 22 mystery novels for the Crime Club published from 1928 to 1976. All of her books have been out of print for many years now, and recently we have decided to reprint them mostly unabridged, but with added annotations for today’s readers to enjoy these thrilling stories.
Dorothy Stockbridge Tillett was born in 1896 in New York, where she lived for most of her life. She published poetry in various magazines in the late 1910’s, which were compiled into a book in 1920. She was a playwright of one-acts, often performing in her own plays. In 1928 she began her mystery-writing career with her first novel for the newly formed Crime Club, The Man Who Killed Fortescue. She maintained the secret of her true identity through the 48 years she published under the name John Stephen Strange, finally retiring from writing with the publication of her last novel, The House on 9th Street in 1976. Dorothy died in Connecticut in 1983.
November 28th, 2018 at 10:23 pm
Whether she improved over the years over the years, I don’t know, but I’d like to think she did. This is the only one of her books that I remember reading, and without this review I wouldn’t remember it either. I’m sure I own copies of them all. I’ll have to try another!
November 28th, 2018 at 10:02 pm
Steve, This one is filled with typos — beginning with a misspelling of “Grosset”
November 28th, 2018 at 10:15 pm
Thanks, Randy. I hope I caught them all. Blame it on jet lag. I spent all day yesterday flying home to CT from Burbank CA, in the middle seat on both planes I had to take. Obviously even ten hours sleep last night didn’t help!
November 28th, 2018 at 11:17 pm
I’ve always wanted to read THE STRANGLER FIG and BLACK HAWTHORNE which both have fantastic DJ illustrations in the Doubleday Crime Club series and both of which I own. They seem to be detective novels with weird fiction elements based on the plot blurbs. I’ll see if I can get to one or the other in December his year.
November 29th, 2018 at 1:20 pm
John
Strange you should mention THE STRANGLER FIG. It reminded me that I posted an old review by Marv Lachman of that book on this blog some time ago:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=%2016435
In the comments that follow, I expressed some doubt that I’d ever read the book, and probably never any of Strange’s books, for that matter. None of them sound as though they’re meant for me.
On the other hand, I’ve learned to never say never.
November 29th, 2018 at 11:52 am
I’ve been trying to expand my article on Strange, but still have a long way to go:
http://mikegrost.com/abbott.htm#Tillett
November 29th, 2018 at 1:50 pm
Thanks for the link, Mike. You don’t seem to have been greatly impressed by anything you’ve read by her. Flashes of good writing, otherwise both the stories and the telling are quite ordinary — is that a fair assessment?
November 29th, 2018 at 4:42 pm
Her best book so far is “The Bell in the Fog” (1936). There is a long opening section (Chapters 1-10) that makes solid reading. This is the first third of the book. Most people here will enjoy setting, characters and sleuths, one guesses!
As you say, there are “flashes” in other works. I’m still at the start, rather than the finish, of exploring her fiction.
“The Bell in the Fog” was reprinted in paperback. Haven’t looked – but bet it’s not too expensive to find.
November 29th, 2018 at 5:07 pm
I also feel a certain sympathy for young Bill Adams in Strange’s series about Van Dusen Ormsberry. Plucky, hard-working teenagers (Adams is an office boy when we first meet him) run through a number of early American mysteries. They likely are an attempt to appeal to the “youth market”.
Still, they show a respect for young people. Many teenagers today work endlessly hard. It’s good to see them shown positively in fiction.
November 30th, 2018 at 11:56 am
If you’re of a mind to take on some of Strange’s rare short fiction, two stories, both from COLLIER’S in the ’20s, are featured here:
https://carrdickson.blogspot.com/2017/08/my-sins-are-many-and-long-but-murder-is.html
November 30th, 2018 at 4:53 pm
Thanks for the link, Mike. Rare is an understatement. As far I’ve discovered, these are the only two short stories Strange ever wrote.