Fri 16 Jan 2009
A 1001 MIDNIGHTS review: CAROLYN WELLS – The Wooden Indian.
Posted by Steve under 1001 Midnights , Reviews[16] Comments
CAROLYN WELLS – The Wooden Indian. J. B. Lippincott, hardcover, 1935.
During the first four decades of this century, Carolyn Wells wrote more than eighty mystery novels — most of them to a strict (and decidedly outmoded) formula she herself devised.
She has been called, with some justification, an expert at the construction of the formal mystery, and she has also been credited with popularizing the locked-room/impossible-crime type of story, of which she wrote more than a score.
Her other claim to fame is that she was the author of the genre’s first nonfiction work, a combination of how-to and historical overview called The Technique of the Mystery Story (1913). Unfortunately, that book is far more readable today than her novels, which are riddled with stilted prose, weak characterization, and flaws in logic and common sense.
The Wooden Indian, one of her later titles, is a good example. It features her most popular series sleuth, Fleming Stone, a type she describes in The Technique of the Mystery Story as a “transcendent detective” — that is, a detective larger than life, omniscient, a creature of fiction rather than fact.
And indeed, Fleming Stone is as fictitious as they come: colorless and one-dimensional, a virtual cipher whose activities are somewhat less interesting to watch than an ant making its way across a sheet of blank paper. The same is true of most of her other characters. None of them come alive; and if you can’t care about a novel’s characters, how can you care about its plot?
The plot in this instance is a dilly. An obnoxious collector of Indian artifacts, David Corbin, keeps a huge wooden Indian, a Pequot chief named Opodyldoc, in a room full of relics at his home in “a tiny village in Connecticut which rejoiced in the name of Greentree.”
One of the accouterments of this wooden Indian is a bow and arrow, fitted and ready to fire. And fire it does, of course, killing Corbin in what would seem to be an accident (or the fulfillment of an old Pequot curse against the Corbin family), since he was alone in the room at the time and there was no way anyone could have gotten in or out.
Several guests are on hand at the time, one of them Fleming Stone. Stone sorts out the various motives and clues, determines that Corbin was murdered, identifies the culprit, and explains the mystery — an explanation that is not only silly (as were many of Wells’s solutions) but implausible, perhaps even as impossible as the crime itself was purported to be.
Fleming Stone is featured in such other titles as The Clue (1909), The Mystery of the Sycamore (1921), and The Tapestry Room Murder (1929).
Wells also created several other series detectives — Pennington (“Penny”) Wise, Kenneth Carlisle, Alan Ford, Lorimer Lane — all of whom are as “transcendent” as Fleming Stone.
Her novels are important from a historical point of view, certainly; but the casual reader looking for entertaining, well-written, believable mysteries would do well to look elsewhere.
———
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.
January 18th, 2009 at 10:27 am
“None of them come alive; and if you can’t care about a novel’s characters, how can you care about its plot?”
I speak only from personal experience, but to me it’s quite possible to care for the plot, provided it’s good enough, even though characters are poorly realized or not interesting. The problem with Wells, on the basis of the reviews that I’ve read, is that she failed on both counts. Now readers and critics at the time seem to have held her in higher esteem than we do, which confirm my old feeling that books don’t change but the audience does.
January 18th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
That’s a very good point, Xavier, one that anyone writing a history of mystery and detective fiction should take into account.
Putting today’s values and perspectives on an author’s output of crime fiction is next to useless, as far as I’m concerned, though it’s certainly easy enough to do.
I can think of several questions that beg to be answered: Why were Carolyn Wells’ books so popular? Was it a matter of “compared to whom”? Her books were published over a fairly long time period, from 1909 to 1942. Early on, what competition did she have?
But certainly by the 1930s, there were many authors whose characters and plots both were better developed than hers (a statement based largely on hearsay, I have to admit, as far as I’m concerned).
Did she follow her own rules of writing mystery fiction? Her guide to doing so came out in 1913, so while I’m guessing, I imagine it soon became outdated, and her books likewise.
Was it just her reputation that kept her in the public’s eye?
— Steve
January 18th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
“I can think of several questions that beg to be answered: Why were Carolyn Wells’ books so popular? Was it a matter of “compared to whom”? Her books were published over a fairly long time period, from 1909 to 1942. Early on, what competition did she have?”
British imports like Doyle set aside, Wells’ most significant competitors in the early century were Futrelle, Post, Reeve, Rinehart and Green, none of which can be dismissed as lightweight. Wells’ early popularity may be due in part to what we now see as a weakness, that is, the wild absurdity of her plots. Belle Epoque readers were particularly fond of improbable stories and protagonists and her books’ “flaws in logic and common sense” and “silly” solutions may have been exactly what appealed to her audience.
January 18th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
I think your explanation of Wells’ early readers being fond of wild, absurd plots is a good one. And anyone reading her books from that time period should take that into consideration.
But that takes us through the teens and barely into the 20s, when more and more competition came along. Agatha Christie’s first novel (Styles) was published in 1920, for example.
A worthy dissertation might look into Wells popularity as the years passed on, assuming of course such things as sales figures would be available.
As another gauge of popularity, looking at the number of books available on ABE might give some insight.
For example, right now there are 142 copies of Vicky Van (1918, Fleming Stone) available, and only 12 copies of Murder Plus (1940, also with Fleming Stone).
Of course there are many other factors that help determine how many copies of a book have survived, but the disparity between these two numbers certainly suggests that Carolyn Well’s popularity with the readers at the time had severely faded by the end of her career.
— Steve
January 18th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Mystery by the forties was much more “sophisticated” and/or codified than it was back when Wells started writing; Knox and Van Dine had devised their decalogues that banned all of the “cheap tricks” she relied on.
To contemporary readers she must have looked kind of a dinosaur, a survivor from a bygone era unable to catch up on the times – much like the only other major Gilded Age mystery writer still in activity at the time, Mary Roberts Rinehart. By the way, does Rinehart have one entry in 1001 Midnights? If so, I’d really like to read it.
January 18th, 2009 at 11:58 pm
Speaking of 1001 MIDNIGHTS, which is an excellent mystery reference book, abebooks.com has multiple copies for sale, including a copy for $1.00 plus postage. Also quite a few copies are available for less than $10.00. In addition the book is in print from Battered Silicon Dispatch Box.
January 22nd, 2009 at 5:46 pm
The one novel I’ve read by Carolyn Wells, Faulkner’s Folly (1917), seems like a Golden Age ancestor. It resembles Christie and Carr to come, without being anywhere as well-plotted as either. Carr was Wells’ biggest fan, and read her while young.
During her lifetime, Carolyn Wells was also a well-known expert on humor and parodies. Her non-mystery books in these fields probably helped the popularity of her mystery novels.
Wells does not resemble Rinehart much at all, as far as I can tell. They both did publish in the pulp All Story magazine.
January 22nd, 2009 at 6:11 pm
I agree with Mike in seeing no similarity between Carolyn Wells’ detective fiction and the mysteries that Mary Roberts Rinehart did.
They were contemporaries, both starting to write mysteries in the early 1900s, but while Wells’ interest was detective fiction, I’d classify most of Rinehart’s work as Had-I-But-Known romantic suspense, where the rules and requirements are different.
Marcia Muller wrote one review of the latter’s books in 1001 MIDNIGHTS, that being THE CIRCULAR STAIRCASE (1908), which she calls “action-packed,” “genteel melodrama” and “pretty good stuff.”
I’ll post the entire review here on the blog as soon as I get the chance.
One author whose work may resemble that of Carolyn Wells is Lee Thayer, also female, whose first mystery appeared in 1919.
Of her detective fiction, Mike Nevins, again in 1001 MIDNIGHTS, says: “Thayer’s novels move with the speed of an arthritic snail trying to cross a piece of flypaper, Her plotting is abysmal, her style unbearable, her characters impossible.”
I’ll have to post that review, that of BRIEF CANDLE (1948), sometime here soon as well.
— Steve
January 23rd, 2009 at 8:06 am
I didn’t meant to say that Wells was stylistically close to Rinehart; as Mike rightly points out they were totally different. Still, they were to my knowledge the only mystery writers from the Gilded Age still active by the early forties.
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:05 am
Xavier
I mentioned Lee Thayer as an author comparable to Carolyn Wells. Her career extended until 1966, believe it or not.
But Thayer didn’t start writing until 1919, and both Rinehart and Wells had had at least a 10 year start on her.
You said of the latter two that:
“To contemporary readers [Wells] must have looked kind of a dinosaur, a survivor from a bygone era unable to catch up on the times – much like the only other major Gilded Age mystery writer still in activity at the time, Mary Roberts Rinehart.”
In comparing the two in popularity, rather than stylistically, I think that Wells’ fame died with her in 1942. Rinehart didn’t die until 1958, but her books were extremely popular well past then, being reprinted in paperback throughout the 1960s and the “gothic” boomlet in the 1970s.
While her reputation may have suffered since then, many of Rinehart’s books were reprinted as recently as the early 1990s by Zebra.
But historically speaking, you’re right about this: I can’t think of any other mystery writers who started in the 19 oughts who was still active in the 1940s.
Maybe Mike can.
— Steve
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:40 am
Xavier’s ideas about the 1910’s public liking improbable, larger-than-life stories is a good one. One wishes that contemporary audiences felt the same way. We are drowning in superficial realism today.
His point about the value of plot is also spot-on.
William MacHarg was still writing Officer O’Malley tales in the slicks in the 1940’s. John McIntyre was at the tail end of his career – and boy, “Mooney Moves Around” (1939) is awful, compared to his glory days with Ashton-Kirk in the 1910’s.
Samuel Hopkins Adams even threw out an occasional short story in the 1940’s, but mainly did historical fiction by then.
In Britain, we have R. Austin Freeman.
I remember the Zebra paperbacks of Rinehart in the 1990’s. It was astonishing to go into the grocery store, and see “The Man in Lower Ten” (1906) on the shelf with the current best sellers.
Rinehart did try to keep up with the times. She wrote two stories about radio patrol cars in the 1930’s – then the last word in high tech.
I’ve only read 3 books by Ostrander, 2 by Thayer, and a novel and 2 shorts by Wells. This hardly allows any overview of their careers. Apparently, no one today has any real total insight into their books as a whole.
What is notable, is that at least some of their 1910’s books are regular mystery novels, much like more famous authors would write in the Golden Age to come.
A check shows that lots of Ostrander is available on-line at Google Books for free. I prefer reading print books – but will have to check some of this out.
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:56 am
Hulbert Footner also had a career from the 1910’s to the 1940’s. He’s little read. But his on-line availability is creating a mini-revival of interest.
July 18th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
[…] had beaten me to it. One of his reviews from 1001 Midnights is of this same book and was posted here on this blog back in January of this […]
April 8th, 2010 at 1:49 am
It looks as though Wells’s style changed in the mid-1920s – Fleming Stone enters early, rather than towards the end, and there are several murders, rather than just one.
January 15th, 2011 at 5:42 pm
I realize I’m coming to this discussion long after it’s ended, but I wanted to add a few things about Carolyn Wells:
She basically had three separate, if overlapping careers: first, beginning in the 180s, she was a humorist. Then, for most of the first two decades of the 20th century, she was a popular writer of books for girls of various ages. Her first detective novel was published in, I think, 1909, and she continued to write detective stories for the rest of her career.
She apparently got into mystery writing after reading something by Anna Katherine Green, and I think that’s where she got at least part of her outmoded formula. Certainly the way the murders in Wells’ books always seem to “rescue” some young woman from some kind of oppression always reminds me of The Leavenworth Case.
Also: yes, Wells’ characterization is weak, and her mysteries ore often ridiculous, but I’ve enjoyed a number of them. In particular, I think Vicky Van is worth reading.
May 7th, 2022 at 1:55 pm
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