lyzard's list: the "100? Ha!" hubris thread - Part 3

    

Continuing my pictorial journey through some of our lesser known fauna, this month's header is the quoll, a carnivorous marsupial native to Australia and New Guinea. There are six species of quoll; the one shown here is the rather mysteriously named tiger quoll*, which is found in the south-east coastal region of Australia and in Tasmania, and which persists over a restricted range in far north Queensland. The species is considered endangered due to its low population density, competition from feral animals and human threats including poisoning and cars. However, last year there was a confirmed sighting of a tiger quoll on the far south coast of Victoria, suggesting that the species may be spreading into new territory. New conservation efforts are under way in the area, including the purchase of land for a sanctuary.

(*No-one ever said our early settlers were smart.)

2013 will be my third full year in the 75 Books Challenge, after I joined LibraryThing to catalogue my books in April 2010 and found the 75ers later the same year. As many others have discovered, the immediate consequence of this was an increase both in the number of books read, and their diversity.

However, there are several main threads within my reading:

Thanks to the deadly combination of obsessive wishlisting and a compulsive need to do things "in order", my general reading is presently fixated upon the novels of the early 1930s.

I also have a great passion for 18th and 19th century literature...and for works of that time that don't really deserve the description "literature".

The main thrust of my blog project is an examination of the development of the English novel, from the 1660s onwards. While this period saw a surge in the publication of fiction for the sake of fiction, it was also a time of highly politicised writing reflecting the rise of political parties as we now understand them and the religious conflict that came with the return of the Stuart monarchy. My reading in this area has encompassed the reign of Charles II, and is now poised at the point of the forced abdication of James II, with William and Mary imminent.

Over the last eighteen months, my old love of Silver and Golden Age mysteries has revived, and a great deal of my current reading is comprised of mysteries and thrillers published between 1860 - 1930. In particular I am investigating novelists who were highly successful in their time, but have since been forgotten.

I am making a conscious effort to read more non-fiction. This tends to include works that support my blog reading, such as history, sociology and politics, true crime, and of course books about books.

Finally - and perhaps a little perversely - I think that this year I may deliberately re-read rather more. I used to be a regular re-reader, but have drifted away from my favourites recently because of the wide open vistas of LibraryThing. In particular, neither of two great comfort read collections, the novels of Georgette Heyer and Agatha Christie, are catalogued. What better excuse to work my way through them both once again? - in order, of course.

I have cracked 100 books for each of the last two years, and intend to make a concerted effort to reach 150 in 2013...but I guess we'll see. I also intend to make a concerted effort to STOP writing reviews that are almost as long as the books being reviewed - but, knowing myself, I suspect that this resolution will go about as well as my New Year's resolutions usually do...

I'm always very grateful when people stop by my thread, and I hope that my visitors will find something here to interest them, in spite of (because of?) the obscurity of my reading.

=============================================================

Currently reading:



Murder In Bostall by Paul McGuire (1931)

January:

1. The Four Just Men by Edgar Wallace (1905)
2. The Sword Of Damocles: A Story Of New York Life by Anna Katharine Green (1881)
3. The Mysterious Affair At Styles by Agatha Christie (1920)
4. The Dream Doctor by Arthur B. Reeve (1914)
5. The Reckoning by Joan Conquest (1931)
6. Vanderlyn's Adventure by Marie Belloc Lowndes (1931)
7. The Case Of Miss Elliott by Baroness Emmuska Orczy (1905)
8. Patty At Home by Carolyn Wells (1904)
9. Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini (1922)
10. A Queen After Death by William Harman Black (1933)
11. While The Patient Slept by Mignon G. Eberhart (1930)
12. The Fortunes Of Mary Fortune by Mary Fortune; edited by Lucy Sussex (1989)
13. Vicky Van by Carolyn Wells (1918)
14. Gun In Cheek: A Study Of "Alternative" Crime Fiction by Bill Pronzini (1982)
15. The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie (1922)

February:

16. A Modern Mephistopheles by Louisa May Alcott (1877)
17. Ruth Fielding At Lighthouse Point; or, Nita The Girl Castaway by Alice B. Emerson (1913)
18. The Sign Of The Spider by Bertram Mitford (1897)
19. The Castle Of Otranto by Horace Walpole (1764)
20. The "Moth" Murder by Lynton Blow (1931)
21. The Cell Murder Mystery by Donald Bayne Hobart (1931)
22. The Black Moth by Georgette Heyer (1921)
23. A Lantern In Her Hand by Bess Streeter Aldrich (1928)
24. The Detectives' Album: Stories Of Crime And Mystery From Colonial Australia by Mary Fortune (2003)
25. Detective Piggott's Casebook: True Tales Of Murder, Madness And The Rise Of Forensic Science by Kevin Morgan (2012)
26. Q. E. D. by Lee Thayer (1922)
27. The Missing Money-Lender by W. Stanley Sykes (1931)

March:

28. Dr Thorne by Anthony Trollope (1858)
29. Sanctuary by William Faulkner (1931)
30. The Murder On the Links by Agatha Christie (1923)
31. The Prisoner In The Opal by A. E. W. Mason (1928)
32. Vandals Of The Void by James Morgan Walsh (1931)
33. About The Murder Of Geraldine Foster by Anthony Abbot (Fulton Oursler) (1930)
34. Richmond: Scenes In The Life Of A Bow Street Officer by Anonymous (1827)
35. The Invention Of Murder: How The Victorians Revelled In Death And Detection And Created Modern Crime by Judith Flanders (2011)
36. The Insane Root: A Romance Of A Strange Country by Rosa Praed (1902)
37. Murder In The French Room by Helen Joan Hultman (1931)
38. Pinehurst by John Rhode (Cecil John Street) (1930)
39. The Nine Bears by Edgar Wallace (1910)
40. A Long Fatal Love Chase by Louisa May Alcott (1995)

April:

41. Mr Fortune's Practice by H. C. Bailey (1923)
42. The Man Of The Forty Faces by Thomas W. Hanshew (1910)
43. Things As They Are; or, The Adventures Of Caleb Williams by William Godwin (1794)
44. The Murder Of Steven Kester by Harriette Ashbrook (1931)
45. John Lang & "The Forger's Wife": A True Tale Of Early Australia by Nancy Keesing (1979)
46. The Wisdom Of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton (1914)
47. Women Writing Crime Fiction, 1860-1880: Fourteen American, British And Australian Authors by Kate Watson (2012)
48. Powder And Patch by Georgette Heyer (1923 / 1930)
49. The Octoroon; or, The Lily Of Louisiana by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1859)
50. The Man In The Brown Suit by Agatha Christie (1924)
51. Captain Macedoine's Daughter by William McFee (1920)

May:

52. The Sixth Journey by Alice Grant Rosman (1931)
53. The Memoirs Of Vidocq (Volume 1) by Eugène François Vidocq (1828)
54. The Mystery Of Hunting's End by Mignon Eberhart (1930)
55. Tish: The Chronicle Of Her Escapades And Excursions by Mary Roberts Rinehart (1916)
56. Silver Fork Society: Fashionable Life And Literature From 1814-1840 by Alison Adburgham (1983)
57. Ruth Fielding At Silver Ranch; or, Schoolgirls Among The Cowboys by Alice B. Emerson (1913)
58. A White Bird Flying by Bess Streeter Aldrich (1931)
59. The Memoirs Of Vidocq (Volume 2) by Eugène François Vidocq (1828)
60. Return I Dare Not by Margaret Kennedy (1931)
61. Poirot Investigates by Agatha Christie (1924)
62. The Seduction Of The Gullible: The Curious History Of The British "Video Nasties" Phenomenon by John Martin (1993)
63. The Mystery Of Dr Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer (Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward) (1913)
64. The Germ Growers: An Australian Story Of Adventure And Mystery by Robert Potter (1892)

June:

65. Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope (1861)
66. Footprints by Kay Cleaver Strahan (1929)
67. The Memoirs Of Vidocq (Volume 3) by Eugène François Vidocq (1828)
68. The Memoirs Of Vidocq (Volume 4) by Eugène François Vidocq (1828)
69. Bloodhounds Of Heaven: The Detective In English Fiction From Godwin To Doyle by Ian Ousby (1976)
70. The Devil Doctor by Sax Rohmer (Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward) (1916)
71. Out Of The Darkness by Charles J. Dutton (1922)
72. From This Dark Stairway by Mignon Eberhart (1931)
73. Elsie Dinsmore by Martha Finley (1867)
74. Saraband by Eliot Bliss (1931)
75. Lady Patty: A Sketch by Margaret Wolfe Hungerford (1892)
76. These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer (1926)
77. Murder In Bostall by Paul McGuire (1931)

Books in transit:

On interlibrary loan / storage request:

Purchased and shipped:
Patty In The City by Carolyn Wells
More Lives Than One by Carolyn Wells
The Bride Of A Moment by Carolyn Wells
Murder Incidental by Keith Trask
Dead Men Do Tell by Keith Trask

On loan:
The Fu Manchu Omnibus Volume 1 by Sax Rohmer (04/07/2013)
The Unfortunate Traveller by Thomas Nashe (03/07/2013)
Murder In Bostall by Paul McGuire (17/07/2013)
Plots And Counterplots by Richard Braverman (03/09/2013)
Tales Of Hoffmann by E. T. A. Hoffmann (03/09/2013)
The Purcell Papers by J. Sheridan Le Fanu (03/09/2013)
Max Carrados by Ernest Bramah (03/09/2013)
*From This Dark Stairway by Mignon Eberhart (03/09/2013)

Track down:
Handfasted by Catherine Helen Spence {interlibrary loan}
Quintus Servinton by Henry Savery (aka The Bitter Bread Of Banishment) {Fisher Library / storage & new edition}
The Power Of Sympathy by William Hill Brown
The Final War by Louis Tracy {Internet Archive}
Guilty Bonds by William Le Queux {Project Gutenberg}
An Australian Heroine by Rosa Praed {Internet Archive}
The Last Lemurian by G. Firth Scott {Project Gutenberg Australia}
Lesser Breeds by Michael Diamond {interlibrary loan}
Who's Who In Stuart Britain by C. P. Hill {Fisher Library}

Timeline of detective fiction:
Mademoiselle de Scudéri by E.T.A. Hoffmann (1819) {Tales Of Hoffmann, Fisher Library}
Memoirs Of Vidocq by Eugene Francois Vidocq {GoogleBooks, 4 volumes} (1827 - 1829)
Le Pere Goriot by Honore de Balzac (1835) (Olivia McCannon / A. J. Krailsheimer / Burton Raffel) {interlibrary loan}
Ghost Stories And Tales Of Mystery by Sheridan LeFanu {Internet Archive} (1851)
- Passages In The Secret History Of An Irish Countess, 1838; The Purcell Papers, 1880 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Purcell_Papers) {Fisher Library}
- The Murdered Cousin, 1851
- Uncle Silas
The Murders In The Rue Morgue: The Dupin Tales by Edgar Allan Poe {interlibrary loan} (1841, 1842, 1845)
The Mysteries Of Paris by Eugene Sue (1842 - 1843)
The Mysteries Of London - Paul Feval (1844) (no translation?)
The Mysteries Of London - George Reynolds (1844 - 1848)
The Mysteries Of The Court Of London - George Reynolds (1848 - 1856)
Recollections Of A Detective Police-Officer by "Waters" (William Russell) (1856)
John Devil by Paul Feval (1861)
The Widow Lerouge by Emile Gaboriau (1866)

Important related works:
Adventures Of Susan Hopley by Catherine Crowe (1841)
Men And Women; or, Manorial Rights by Catherine Crowe (1843)
Hargrave by Frances Trollope (1843)
Clement Lorimer by Angus Reach (1849)

Ongoing series and sequels:

(1866 - 1876) **Emile Gaboriau - Monsieur Lecoq - The Widow Lerouge (1/6) {ManyBooks}
(1867 - 1905) **Martha Finley - Elsie Dinsmore - Elsie Dinsmore (1/28) {ManyBooks}
(1878 - 1917) **Anna Katharine Green - Ebenezer Gryce - Hand And Ring (4/12) {ManyBooks}
(1896 - 1909) **Melville Davisson Post - Randolph Mason - The Man Of Last Resort (2/3) {Internet Archive}
(1897 - 1900) **Anna Katharine Green - Amelia Butterworth - That Affair Next Door (1/3) {Fisher Library}
(1901 - 1919) **Carolyn Wells - Patty Fairfield - Patty In The City (3/17) {ordered}
(1905 - 1925) **Baroness Orczy - The Old Man In The Corner - Unravelled Knots (3/3) {ebookbrowse / Arthur's Bookshelf}
(1905 - 1928) **Edgar Wallace - The Just Men - The Council Of Justice (2/6) {ManyBooks}
(1907 - 1912) **Carolyn Wells - Marjorie - Marjorie's Vacation (1/6) {ManyBooks}
(1907 - 1942) *R. Austin Freeman - Dr John Thorndyke - The Shadow Of The Wolf (12/26) {Feedbooks}
(1908 - 1924) **Margaret Penrose - Dorothy Dale - Dorothy Dale: A Girl Of Today (1/13) {ManyBooks}
(1909 - 1942) *Carolyn Wells - Fleming Stone - The Diamond Pin (10/49) {ManyBooks}
(1910 - 1936) *Arthur B. Reeve - Craig Kennedy - The War Terror (4/11) {ManyBooks}
(1910 - 1946) A. E. W. Mason - Inspector Hanaud - They Wouldn't Be Chessmen (4/5) {AbeBooks}
(1910 - ????) * Edgar Wallace - Inspector Smith - The Admirable Carfew - (2/?) {ebook}
(1910 - 1930) **Edgar Wallace - Inspector Elk - The Fellowship Of The Frog (2/6?) {ebook}
(1910 - ????) *Thomas Hanshew - Cleek - Cleek Of Scotland Yard (2/?) {ManyBooks}
(1911 - 1935) *G. K. Chesterton - Father Brown - The Incredulity Of Father Brown (3/5) {interlibrary loan}
(1911 - 1937) *Mary Roberts Rinehart - Letitia Carberry - More Tish (3/5) {ManyBooks}
(1913 - 1934) *Alice B. Emerson - Ruth Fielding - Ruth Fielding On Cliff Island (6/30) {ManyBooks}
(1913 - 1973) *Sax Rohmer - Fu-Manchu - The Si-Fan Mysteries (3/14) {interlibrary loan}
(1914 - 1950) Mary Roberts Rinehart - Hilda Adams - Miss Pinkerton (3/5) {Owned}
(1914 - 1934) *Ernest Bramah - Max Carrados - Max Carrados (1/5) {ManyBooks}
(1916 - 1917) **Carolyn Wells - Alan Ford - The Bride Of A Moment (1/2) {ordered}
(1918 - 1923) **Carolyn Wells - Pennington Wise - The Room With The Tassels (1/8) {Internet Archive}
(1919 - 1966) *Lee Thayer - Peter Clancy - The Sinister Mark (5/60) {owned}
(1920 - 1939) E. F. Benson - Mapp And Lucia - Lucia's Progress (5/6) {Fisher Library}
(1920 - 1948) *H. C. Bailey - Reggie Fortune - Mr Fortune's Trials (3/23) {expensive}
(1920 - 1949) William McFee - Spenlove - The Beachcomber - (3/6) {AbeBooks}
(1920 - 1932) *Alice B. Emerson - Betty Gordon - Betty Gordon At Bramble Farm (1/15) {ManyBooks}
(1920 - 1975) *Agatha Christie - Hercule Poirot - The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd (4/39) {owned}
(1921 - 1929) **Charles J. Dutton - John Bartley - Out Of The Darkness (2/9) {Internet Archive}
(1921 - 1925) **Herman Landon - The Gray Phantom - The Gray Phantom (1/5) {Internet Archive}
(1922 - 1973) *Agatha Christie - Tommy and Tuppence - Partners In Crime (2/5) {owned}
(1923 - 1937) Dorothy L. Sayers - Lord Peter Wimsey - Have His Carcase (8/15) {Fisher Library}
(1923 - 1924) **Carolyn Wells - Lorimer Lane - More Lives Than One (1/2) {ordered}
(1924 - 1959) * / ***Philip MacDonald - Colonel Anthony Gethryn - The Noose (4/24) {academic loan}
(1924 - 1957) * Freeman Willis Crofts - Inspector French - Inspector French's Greatest Case (1/30) {interlibrary loan}
(1924 - 1935) *Francis D. Grierson - Inspector Sims and Professor Wells - The Limping Man (1/13) {Wonder Book}
(1925 - 1961) ***John Rhode - Dr Priestley - Tragedy On The Line (10/72) {rare, expensive}
(1925 - 1953) *G. D. H. Cole / M. Cole - Superintendent Wilson - The Death Of A Millionaire (2/?) {academic loan}
(1925 - 1937) *Hulbert Footner - Madame Storey - The Under Dogs (1/8) {ebookbrowse / Arthur's Bookshelf}
(1925 - 1932) *Earl Derr Biggers - Charlie Chan - The House Without A Key (1/6) {Internet Archive}
(1926 - 1968) *Christopher Bush - Ludovic Travers - The Plumley Inheritance (1/63) {Unavailable}
(1926 - 1939) *S. S. Van Dine - Philo Vance - The Benson Murder Case (1/12) {Fisher Library}
(1927 - 1933) *Herman Landon - The Picaroon - The Green Shadow (1/7) {AbeBooks / eBay}
(1927 - 1932) *Anthony Armstrong - Jimmie Rezaire - Jimmie Rezaire aka The Trail Of Fear (1/5) {AbeBooks}
(1928 - 1961) Patricia Wentworth - Miss Silver - The Case Is Closed (2/33) {branch transfer}
(1928 - 1936) ***Gavin Holt - Luther Bastion - The Garden Of Silent Beasts (5/17) {academic loan}
(1928 - ????) Trygve Lund - Weston of the Royal North-West Mounted Police - In The Snow: A Romance Of The Canadian Backwoods (4/?) {AbeBooks}
(1928 - 1936) *Kay Cleaver Strahan - Lynn MacDonald - Death Traps (3/7) {AbeBooks}
(1928 - 1960) *Cecil Freeman Gregg - Inspector Higgins - The Murdered Manservant (1/35) {unavailable}
(1929 - 1947) Margery Allingham - Albert Campion - Sweet Danger (5/35) {Fisher Library}
(1929 - 1984) Gladys Mitchell - Mrs Bradley - The Saltmarsh Murders (4/67) {interlibrary loan}
(1929 - 1937) ***Patricia Wentworth - Benbow Smith - Walk With Care (3/4) {expensive}
(1929 - ????) Mignon Eberhart - Nurse Sarah Keate - From This Dark Stairway (4/8) {Fisher Library / storage}
(1929 - ????) Moray Dalton - Inspector Collier - ???? (3/?) - Death In The Cup {AbeBooks}, The Wife Of Baal {unavailable}
(1929 - ????) * / ***Charles Reed Jones - Leighton Swift - The King Murder (1/?) {Unavailable}
(1929 - 1931) Carolyn Wells - Kenneth Carlisle - Sleeping Dogs (1/3) {Amazon / eBay}
(1929 - 1967) *George Goodchild - Inspector McLean - McLean Of Scotland Yard (1/65) {AbeBooks}
(1929 - 1979) *Leonard Gribble - Anthony Slade - The Case Of The Marsden Rubies (1/33) {AbeBooks}
(1929 - 1932) *E. R. Punshon - Carter and Bell - The Unexpected Legacy (1/5) {expensive}
(1929 - 1971) *Ellery Queen - Ellery Queen - The Roman Hat Mystery (1/40) {interlibrary loan}
(1929 - 1966) *Arthur Upfield - Bony - The Barrakee Mystery (1/29) {Fisher Library}
(1929 - 1931) *Ernest Raymond - Once In England - A Family That Was (1/3) {AbeBooks}
(1930 - ????) Moray Dalton - Hermann Glide - ???? (3/?) {see above}
(1930 - 1932) Hugh Walpole - The Herries Chronicles - The Fortress (3/4) {Fisher Library}
(1930 - 1932) Faith Baldwin - The Girls Of Divine Corners - Myra: A Story Of Divine Corners (4/4) {owned}
(1930 - 1960) ***Miles Burton - Desmond Merrion - The Milk-Churn Murder (10/61) {Munsey's}
(1930 - 1933) Roger Scarlett - Inspector Kane - Murder Among The Angells (4/5) {online shopping}
(1930 - 1941) *Harriette Ashbrook - Philip "Spike" Tracy - The Murder Of Sigurd Sharon (3/7) {AbeBooks}
(1930 - 1943) Anthony Abbot - Thatcher Colt - About The Murder Of The Clergyman's Mistress (2/8) {owned}
(1930 - ????) * / ***David Sharp - Professor Henry Arthur Fielding - My Particular Murder (2/?) {AbeBooks}
(1930 - 1950) *H. C. Bailey - Josiah Clunk - Garstons aka The Garston Murder Case (1/11) {AbeBooks}
(1930 - 1968) *Francis Van Wyck Mason - Captain North - Seeds Of Murder (1/41) {rare, expensive}
(1930 - 1976) *Agatha Christie - Miss Jane Marple - The Murder At The Vicarage (1/12) {owned}
(1930 - ????) *Anne Austin - James "Bonnie" Dundee - Murder Backstairs (1/?) - {AbeBooks}
(1931 - 1940) Bruce Graeme - Superintendent Stevens and Pierre Allain - The Imperfect Crime (2/8) {AbeBooks}
(1931 - 1951) Phoebe Atwood Taylor - Asey Mayo - Death Lights A Candle (2/24) {interlibrary loan}
(1931 - 1933) ***Martin Porlock - Charles Fox-Browne - Mystery In Kensington Gore (2/3) {unavailable}
(1931 - 1955) Stuart Palmer - Hildegarde Withers - Murder On Wheels (2/18) {AbeBooks}
(1931 - 1951) Olive Higgins Prouty - The Vale Novels - Lisa Vale (2/5) {academic loan}
(1931 - 1933) Sydney Fowler - Inspector Cleveland - Crime &. Co. (2/4) {Book Depository}
(1931 - 1934) J. H. Wallis - Inspector Wilton Jacks - Murder By Formula (1/6) {Amazon}
(1931 - ????) Paul McGuire - Inspector Cummings - Murder In Bostall (1/5) - {academic loan}
(1932 - 1954) Sydney Fowler - Inspector Combridge and Mr Jellipot - The Bell Street Murders (1/11) {AbeBooks}
(1934 - 1936) Storm Jameson - The Mirror In Darkness - Company Parade (1/3) {Fisher Library}

*** Incompletely available series
** Series complete pre-1931
* Present status pre-1931

...polish, polish...

What a nice, shiny new thread! I love the tiger quolls. Are they always polka-dotted?

The tiger quolls are really cute, but what were they thinking with the name?

BTW, as always, I loved your review of A Long Fatal Love Chase. I read it quite a few years ago, but your review brought it all back.

Happy new thread, Liz! I was checking out your blog, and can I just say that I absolutely loved your thoughts on Captain Blood! I grew up watching that movie, all those Errol Flynn movies, really, and last year I picked up the original novel on Kindle thinking that it would be fun to see how it compared to the movie. You have done all the work for me, but I'll still read the novel as now you have made me bump it up higher on the list. Thanks for that! Wishing for you a Sunday full of fabulous!

Happy new thread from me, too, Liz. Oh, I've just checked out your blog ... you are amazing! To be 1/10 as organized!

Just popping in to say hello!

Whoo, visitors! Hi, Carrie, Dejah, Mamie, Nancy, Roberta!!

>>#8 & 9

A lot of our animals have odd names because the settlers tried to relate them to animals they knew, even though there was no real resemblance. Some of them thought the quoll was like a marten, and some thought it was like an opossum. Then this species got called "tiger cat" even though it wasn't a cat and didn't have stripes. Finally they adopted one of the native words for the animal, but for some reason "tiger" stuck.

Yes, they all have spots but the pattern varies between species; the tiger quoll is the only one to have spots on its tail.

>>#10

Thanks, Dejah - it's always a pleasant surprise when anyone else has read what I do! :)

>>#11 & 12

Oh, my poor neglected blog! Where does all the time go?? I need to do some catching up in that area, too. Thank you both for dropping in over there.

Mamie, I was raised on Errol Flynn movies, too. The book is good but very different.

Thank you, Nancy - although truthfully my chronic disorganisation is making me a little panicky at the moment. :)

>>#13

Hi, Roberta - thanks for visiting!

Hi Liz, I'm wondering if you have trouble finding the books you describe because I'm reading Barbara Pym books for her centenary this year and my library is a very poor source. The same was true last year for the Elizabeth Taylor centenary.

And lovely new thread.

Hi, Bonnie - thank you for stopping by!

On the whole I'm very fortunate here because we have an excellent library system with nation-wide interlibrary loans for a minimal fee; I also have access to a significant academic library, although I pay for that privilege. Many of our libraries are conscious not just of publishers' series but related books - so for example, if someone has once been a Virago author, it is likely many of their other books will have been obtained as well as the Virago release.

My personal difficulties arise with books that were published in the 20s and 30s but not reissued since: they tend to end up in depositories and so aren't accessible though they are technically still "held". Those are the books I end up buying second-hand, though I'm trying to cut back a little in that area.

Cute animals sitting atop your thread.

Hi, Lori - glad you like them! :)

Decisions, decisions...

There has recently been a significant increase in overseas shipping costs in the US. I don't know whether it is tied to across-the-board changes or whether it is an isolated event, but I do know it is forcing me to think hard about my book purchasing.

As my visitors would be aware, much of my reading and therefore my buying is concentrated on hunting down the old and obscure, and necessarily involves online shopping. This often means buying "a pig in a poke", which is good fun, but becoming an increasingly expensive hobby. I do try to keep a mental cut-off point, and not pay above a certain cumulative price for an unknown book (though I will often violate my own rule with regard to series reading). But with shipping taking up an increasingly large proportion of that cumulative price, I'm either going to have to raise the bar or get tough with myself. Two very depressing prospects.

raise the bar or get tough ... yes, depressing, indeed. My sister in the US used to often send me this or that (not books, but other), and she tells me postal rates in the US for Canada have gone through the roof recently. I wonder if the culprit is the US Postal Service rates?

I've been shopping online long enough to remember when there were special low rates for shipping books. I was fairly reckless with my purchases back then, I suppose; I'd've been even more reckless if I'd known how soon the good times would end!

The lift is most obvious to me at Amazon, where it often feels (perhaps wrongly) that overseas customers are subsiding various local discounts. Shipping there felt unreasonable when it was $12.49 per book; it's now $16.95 per book. But possibly this is simply a reflection of a broader shift in this area.

I wonder if the US postal service is trying to stay solvent financially without raising prices on the majority of its users? They keep talking about closing post offices and sorting facilities, laying off employees, and ending Saturday mail delivery, yet domestic postage really doesn't go up that much. So the could be charging more for overseas shipping and hoping to defray some of the costs onto non-Americans.

Yes, I realised it was quite likely that I've been feeling a spillover effect from a bigger issue. I've noticed discussions of the postal service around a number of threads.

Seems like that should be a leopard quoll, maybe, but you know what Shakespeare said: A quoll by any other name would still make people go 'awwwwww'!

That Shakespeare was a great poet! :D

Finished Things As They Are; or, The Adventures Of Caleb Williams for TIOLI #10.

Now resting my brain with The Murder Of Steven Kester by Harriette Ashbrook, for TIOLI #1.

He had a way with words, that's for sure!

Finished The Murder Of Steven Kester for TIOLI #1.

Now reading John Lang & The Forger's Wife by Nancy Keesing, also for TIOLI #1.

:-( about the shipping cost interfering with your book buying. Boo!

A late arrival to your third thread! Chuckling over the name of the tiger quoll and admiring its cuteness.

#6 Just spotted your timeline of detective fiction - very interesting. Is it new?

And disappointing news about the shipping costs.

#26 My copy of Caleb Williams finally arrived :-) Hoping to make some progress this weekend.

>>#29

Hi, Roberta! Is there anything worse than having to STOP AND THINK before buying books!? :)

>>#30

Hi, Heather.

Yes, I put that in to stop myself having to go over and over the same ground: I keep coming across references to pertinent works then forgetting where I've seen them and not being able to find them again. So it finally occurred to me, WRITE IT DOWN, STUPID!! :)

I hope you get on all right with Caleb; it's not an easy read.

Finished John Lang & "The Forger's Wife": A True Tale Of Early Australia for TIOLI #1.

Now reading The Wisdom Of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton for TIOLI #9.

Finished The Wisdom Of Father Brown for TIOLI #9.

Now reading Women Writing Crime Fiction, 1860-1880: Fourteen American, British And Australian Authors by Kate Watson, also for TIOLI #9 (I think).

Oh, man...I have got to get some reviews written...

Finished Women Writing Crime Fiction, 1860-1880 for TIOLI #9.

Now reading Powder And Patch by Georgette Heyer for TIOLI #11.

THAT MOMENT...

...when you "pop in" to a second-hand bookstore for a "quick browse", and there are so many books you want to buy that you begin to hyperventilate.

THAT SECONDARY MOMENT...

...when your vision clears enough for you to realise that there are green spines scattered all around the shelves, and you get so over-excited that you can't remember what you own and what you don't.

Would you be surprised to learn that I was sensible? Yeah, me, too. Though perhaps it's lucky that I didn't have much money on me. In the end I settled for picking up two relatively obscure Viragoes that I was sure I didn't already own, and making good intentions about re-checking my catalogue before returning. Soon.

So:

Saraband by Eliot Bliss
Keynotes & Discords by George Egerton

    

(I will be scanning my copy of Keynotes & Discords this weekend to get a properly green image.)

"you get so over-excited that you can't remember what you own and what you don't." *Nods head*

Congratulations on the bookhaul!

I think I'm making slow but steady progress with Caleb Williams - I must be tired this week because I keep nodding off reading in bed but I don't think it's the book!

Thank you! It was a strange experience. I don't get to this bookshop all that often because while it is walking distance from where I work, it's not easy walking distance, so I only get there when I can steal a longer lunch break. They've completely reorganised their shelves since I was there last: I don't know if that's why I suddenly saw all these books or whether they've had a significant influx of new material, but holy moly! :)

The first thing I picked up was the Virago Omnibus: The Weather In The Streets plus Frost In May plus The Doves Of Venus, at a very reasonable price; then I thought, "Wait! Didn't I pick up Frost In May at that book sale last year?" Then my hand drifted towards Mr Skeffington, but I baulked again and thought, "But I must own that! Don't I?"

(The answers were "Yes" and "No", respectively.)

Anyway, I shall take stock of my shelves and then, as a certain military man once said, "I shall return!"

Caleb Williams is a book of ideas rather than characters (although its psychological profiling is very advanced for its time), so it's not the easiest read. I'll be interested to hear what you make of the ending...when you get there. :)

Liz, here's to hyperventilating in book shops, to green spines, and over-excitement. And you were sensible! I'm not sure whether to offer you congratulations or condolences on that last point, LOL.

Lucky you picking up green spines! Way to go Liz.

>>#38

It's not like me, I assure you! But I've been a bit out of the Virago "zone" recently and have a horrible history of buying duplicates on impulse, so confining myself to a couple I was confident I didn't own seemed the way to go.

>>#39

Thanks, Laura!

Mr Fortune's Practice - I struggled with the first entry in H. C. Bailey's series about medico-cum-amateur detective Reggie Fortune, which I read towards the end of last year, because I found Reggie himself a compendium of thoroughly unpleasant character traits. In fact, I believe I referred to him at the time as "an insufferable jackass". Whether others reacted the same way I did, or whether Bailey himself realised he'd gone a bit too far in bestowing quirks upon his detective, I am pleased to be able to report that almost everything I complained about in Call Mr Fortune has been the subject of remedial action in Mr Fortune's Practice. First and foremost, Reggie now has an official appointment as medical advisor to the Home Office, and is called into cases accordingly. Furthermore, rather than doing Scotland's Yard's job for it, as was basically the case in Call Mr Fortune, here Reggie often finds himself at loggerheads with his now-professional colleagues, more than once intervening when the official investigators think a case has been satisfactorily closed. The danger of "the obvious" is a recurrent theme here, with the Powers That Be repeatedly led astray by assumption. As for Reggie himself, he has thankfully shed his irritating attitude of ineffable boredom. Here, he tends rather to assume an air of boredom when he wants to throw other parties (usually reporters) off a scent. The earlier book's condescending attitude towards women and its jibes at marriage are conspicuous by their absence---not surprisingly, in light of Reggie's engagement to Joan Amber, the actress whose acquaintance he made in the course of a difficult case in Call Mr Fortune. But alas!---the series' ugly attitude towards "foreigners" has not changed a bit...but I suppose you can't have everything.

The chief characteristic that separates the Reggie Fortune series from its numerous contemporaries is its grim willingness to deal seriously with aberrant psychology. The most striking case in Call Mr Fortune involved an individual so obsessed with humiliating and destroying his perceived enemy that he was willing to kill himself to do it. This was the case in which Reggie and Joan met, and we also find her prominent in The Unknown Murderer, her warm and loving normality providing a welcome counterbalance in a chilling story of a psychopath who is driven to kill where it will cause the most distress and misery amongst the survivors. The first victim is a man on the eve of his wedding; the second, the much-loved medical attendant of a charitable orphanage. Reggie realises what kind of person they are dealing with when the physical evidence reveals that after slashing Dr Hall's throat, the killer sat down in a chair opposite to watch her die. The bulk of the story concerns Reggie's desperate fight to protect the potential third victim, a small boy. He succeeds in thwarting the killer in that direction, only to find himself and Joan in deadly danger...

Also grim is The Young Doctor, a story of the conviction on a capital charge of an innocent man on the basis of a case worked up by an inspector who happens to be a friend of his; in his desperation to demonstrate that he is unbiased by their personal relationship, the police officer strays dangerously in the other direction. The President Of San Jacinto also deals with false imprisonment and legal malfeasance - and medical incompetence as well, when it turns out that a elderly man found with his head beaten in actually died of a stab wound. This case is one of Reggie's failures, inasmuch as the killer gets away - and turns up later in a most unlikely place - but his intervention saves the life of a young man who has been wrongly convicted. The story that opens this volume, The Ascot Tragedy, is where its attitude to "foreigners" is most distastefully displayed, which spoils an intriguing tale of murder committed in the midst of the crowd at the races. The Magic Stone, too, is rife with racial stereotyping, but is redeemed by a complicated plot, in which a situation that begins with a collapse at a museum escalates into kidnapping and attempted murder, and by a charmingly improbable romance. The remaining two stories are mirror images of one another. In The Leading Lady, Reggie is drawn into case involving a possible murder, an attempted suicide and a smattering of blackmail, but all is not as it seems... Conversely, in The Snowball Burglary, some of Reggie's fellow guests at a house party try to work up a "perfect crime" as a joke, only for an unlikely criminal to take advantage of the situation... All in all, Mr Fortune's Practice is an uneven work, sometimes annoying and sometimes compelling; but when it hits the mark, it hits powerfully.

I feel obliged to point out that the gentleman in the cover image above bears no resemblance whatsoever to the eponymous Reggie.

    Mr Fortune himself is convinced that he was meant by Providence to be a general practitioner: to attend my lumbago, and your daughter's measles. He has been heard to complain of the chance that has made him, knowing something of everything, nothing completely, into a specialist. His only qualification, he will tell you, is that he doesn't get muddled.
    There you have it, then. He is singularly sensitive to people. "Very odd how he knows men," said Superintendant Bell reverently. "As if he had an extra sense to tell him of people's souls, like smells or colours." And he has a clear head. He is never confused about what is important and what is not, and he has never been known to hesitate in doing what is necessary. Consider his dealing with the affair of the unknown murderer...

The Man Of The Forty Faces (Revised reissue title: Cleek: The Man Of The Forty Faces, US title: Cleek, The Master Detective) - I have - for reasons that will soon be apparent - put some time and effort into trying to unravel the publication history of Thomas W. Hanshew's first foray into the improbable adventures of a still more improbable detective. As far as I can tell, the first batch of tales featuring Hamilton Cleek appeared as individual short stories across 1909 and 1910, and were then collected into a book titled The Man Of The Forty Faces. At first I thought that was what I read, but apparently not: the much more commonly available version of the work is its second issue. Just at this time, the novel was becoming the preferred vehicle for detective fiction, and Hanshew hedged his bets by joining his short stories and turning them into a novel featuring a series of adventures; he also added one further, previously uncollected tale. The revised work was re-released as Cleek: The Man Of The Forty Faces; this volume was subsequently published in America as Cleek, The Master Detective, just to confuse the issue even more.

Of course, Thomas W. Hanshew is rather confusing himself - as is the history of the Cleek series in its entirety. Hanshew was an American born actor who, after relocating to England, gave up the stage to become a writer. He had a prolific career in pulp fiction, probably far more so than we can measure, since he spent much of his time as a "house" writer working under a variety of pseudonyms (including female ones). He did publish the Cleek stories under his own name, however. After writing the first series solo, Hanshew wrote some of the later ones in collaboration with his wife, Mary, although she was not always acknowledged. Mary later did some solo work on the series herself, while after Hanshew's death, the Cleek stories were continued by the couple's daughter, Hazel.

Though I have not been in a position to read the short stories that make up The Man Of The Forty Faces as individual works, my sense here is that weaving them into a novel was the better way of presenting them, because the overarching back-story is ultimately what matters most. I don't quite know how to describe Hanshew's tone here; perhaps by saying he has his tongue in his cheek just far enough, and never too far, keeping a straight face while not taking any of it seriously in the least. The result is quite deliciously absurd, a farrago of melodramatic nonsense that offers up an anti-hero who (anticipating Prince by a good eighty years) is not in fact Hamilton Cleek, but "The Man Who Calls Himself Hamilton Cleek", a head of Scotland Yard called "Maverick Narkom", and - last but certainly not least - "Margot, Queen Of The Apaches" (that's the French kind of Apache, not the American kind), the leader of a criminal gang that likes to celebrate its successes by drinking absinthe and dancing quadrilles.

No, really.

The Man Who Calls Himself Hamilton Cleek is also The Vanishing Cracksman, a master-criminal who gets bored with his string of jewel robberies and begins letting Scotland Yard know in advance where he intends to commit his next crime, and then committing it anyway. When he isn't being called The Vanishing Cracksman, The Man Who Calls Himself Hamilton Cleek tends to get called The Man Of The Forty Faces, thanks to his mysterious ability to distort his facial features into a resemblance of just about anyone he chooses. (Cleek complains to the newspapers that his sobriquets are vulgar: "You would not think of calling Paganini a fiddler...") Superintendent Narkom swears to bring Cleek to justice or die trying, and thinks he sees his chance when his nemesis declares his intention of stealing the jewellery given as wedding-gifts to the daughter of Sir Horace Wyvern. Narkom sets a trap for Cleek that he is absolutely certain cannot fail; though of course; he's been certain of that before...

This particular escapade does bring an end to Cleek's criminal career, but not as Superintendent Narkom imagined. In the course of his burglary, Cleek happens to catch a glimpse of Sir Horace's poor-but-beautiful niece, Ailsa Lorne---and in the fluttering of a heartbeat, his life is changed forever. Subsequently, Cleek turns the jewellery and - under a flag of truce - himself over to Narkom, begging him to arrange an interview with Sir Horace, who happens to be a brain specialist. Sir Horace solemnly assures Cleek that criminals are born, not made, and after examining him as requested, breaks the bad news that he has "the criminal brain, fully developed, horribly pronounced". Cleek swears that he will defy his fate, however, and offers his services to Narkom, pleading for a chance to redeem himself by turning The Vanishing Cracksman into The Master Detective. Narkom - uttering the novel's signature cry of "Bully!"; Teddy Roosevelt would have been proud - immediately takes him up on his offer; and Cleek, having acquired the services of a Cockney stray going by the unlikely name of "Dollops" (whose literally dog-like devotion to his "master" is actually quite disturbing, not to mention horribly classist), embarks upon his new career.

Though its notion of genetic criminality is pernicious (albeit, granted, in keeping with the beliefs of the day), Cleek's determination to outrun his doom is the most seriously interesting thing about The Man Of The Forty Faces. Reformation does not come easily to him, but requires a constant battle against his antisocial impulses. Nor does Cleek ever reach the point of doing good for the sake of doing good. Instead, the whole goal of his life becomes undoing, as far as he can, the damage of his criminal enterprises - including using his professional fees to reimburse his former victims - in the distant and desperate hope of making himself worthy of Ailsa. Besides being stunningly beautiful, Ailsa is quite nauseatingly good and pure - and a vicar's daughter, no less - and when after two years of good deeds, Cleek steals himself to confess his past to her, he takes it as a measure of just how good and pure she really is when she recoils from him in horror. (Most readers today will, I suspect, view the matter rather differently.) Subsequently, Cleek's career tends to fluctuate according to the status of his relationship with the girl; when he manages to convince himself that she has fallen in love with another man, his professional successes come to an abrupt and embarrassing halt. Circumstances, however, conspire to throw Cleek and Ailsa together, and allow her to see not only how much he has changed, but his courage and ingenuity - and the depth of his devotion to her. Back when Cleek was The Vanishing Cracksman, his partner in crime (and, it is implied, his lover) was no less a personage than Margot, Queen Of The Apaches; and the fact that Cleek has not only deserted her, but reformed for love of another woman, is an insult that Margot cannot and will not swallow. It is war to the knife between them - with Ailsa caught in the middle...

While the ongoing battle between Cleek and Margot is foregrounded, in the background of The Man Of The Forty Faces is the tantalising question of who, exactly, The Man Who Calls Himself Hamilton Cleek really is; and Thomas Hanshew has enormous fun scattering clues to the ridiculous truth all through his narrative. The first shock for everyone is that the notorious criminal is unmistakably a gentleman - there was something about him, in look, in speech, in bearing, that mutely stood sponsor for the thing called "birth" - while later on, Cleek accounts to Ailsa for his ability to change his features by, supposedly, relating a story he "once heard" about a certain "noble lady" who played too often with a rubber-faced doll while pregnant. However, it is not until Cleek is summoned to a small Central European country called Mauravania, in order to prevent a scandal and a potential revolution by the people against the future King Ulric, that all becomes clear...

Recommended for those who can take their crime fiction with a grain of salt. And a glass of absinthe.

"Heavens!" gulped Collins, too far gone to say anything else, too deeply dejected to think of anything but that he had had the man for whom Scotland Yard had been groping for a year---the man over whom all England, all France, all Germany wondered---close shut in the grip of his hands and then had let him go. The biggest and boldest criminal the police had ever had to cope with, the almost supernatural genius of crime, who defied all systems, laughed at all laws, mocked at all the Vidocqs, and Dupins, and Sherlock Holmeses, whether amateur or professional, French or English, or German or American, that ever had been or ever could be pitted against him, and who, for sheer devilry, for diabolical ingenuity and for colossal impudence, as well as for a nature-bestowed power that was simply amazing, had not his match in all the universe.

I find it interesting after the wishful thinking of Edgar Wallace's The Nine Bears, which has Britain, France, Germany and America teaming up for the common good, that in contrast The Man Of The Forty Faces, which was published the same year, takes it for granted that it is only a matter of time before England and France will have to join forces against Germany.

Like most English writing of this time, The Man Of The Forty Faces also assumes that the ultimate goal of any German aggression will be the invasion of England; although it differs from most in perceiving France as an ally, not an enemy.

Finished Powder And Patch for TIOLI #11.

Now reading The Octoroon; or, The Lily Of Louisiana, Mary Elizabeth Braddon's first novel, for TIOLI #10.

{*rubs hands together while uttering cackles of evil glee*}

        

I love that cover for Painted Clay.

The man in the bookstore said it was nice to see them going to a good home. :)

On the other hand, I have left myself a little short for my weekly train ticket, so, hmm...

Finished The Octoroon; or, The Lily Of Louisiana by Mary Elizabeth Braddon for TIOLI #10.

Now reading The Man In The Brown Suit by Agatha Christie for TIOLI #9...

...which I've just realised is my 50th book for the year, keeping me on-track - just - for my target of 150.

I hope you enjoyed The Wisdom of Father Brown - read it some years ago and remember liking it - although not ecstatic. Want to read some more of the Father Brown-stories.

Just love the Virago Modern Classics covers. I gotta have some to put on the shelf.

I second Carsten's post in loving the Virago covers, Liz. Woot! Great finds!

>>#47

Hi, Carsten - great to have you here! I actually preferred the first volume, The Innocence Of Father Brown, to this one, where I found that Chesterton's prejudices too often got in the way of the story. Still some good stuff in there, though.

And oh yes, love those green books!

>>#48

Hi, Nancy - gorgeous, aren't they? It was indeed a wonderful book-finding week! :)

Reading The Man In The Brown Suit again after a considerable lapse, I'm discovering that I've forgotten almost all of the plot specifics...while remembering the ending PERFECTLY.

Bummer. :)

Things As They Are; or, The Adventures Of Caleb Williams (Alternative titles: Caleb Williams; or, Things As They Are, Caleb Williams) - In the second half of the 18th century, against a backdrop that included both the American War of Independence and the French Revolution, the English novel became a powerful vehicle for the expression of political arguments, particularly in the hands of those people who are generally grouped together under the general heading of "radicals". Gathered under this broad denomination (often denunciation) were writers of a wide range of political persuasions, from the genuinely revolutionary in favour of wholesale reform to those who supported the existing system but refused to shut their eyes to its practical injustices. William Godwin's Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, which was published in 1793, was a treatise denouncing political government but also advocating gradual reform rather than violent revolution. Godwin was a believer in the progressive self-improvement of Man, and envisaged a time when enlightened self-government would supersede punative political authority. He was a passionate critic of the existing legal system, which he viewed as inherently and deeply corrupt, purporting to hold all men equal while in reality being exploited by those in power to crush opposition and protest.

Like a number of his fellow radicals, William Godwin eventually turned to the novel as a means of propagating his views and of reaching an audience that would never dream of reading a straight political treatise. First published in 1794, Things As They Are; or, The Adventures Of Caleb Williams was an enormous success - perhaps not least because, almost alone amongst this school of authors, Godwin managed to resist the temptation of the polemic and to express his views by showing, not telling. The novel was reissued several times over the following years, and each time Godwin revised it slightly; he was still tinkering with the text in 1831, when his work took its place in the pantheon of approved British "classics" by being included in the famous "Standard Novels" series of the publishers Colburn and Bentley. In 2009. the Oxford University Press reprinted the original text of Things As They Are for the first time since 1794: a shorter, more emotionally detached version of the story. This edition also includes the novel's alternative endings. Godwin "finished" his book the first time in April of 1794, then completely rewrote its conclusion a month later. While this rethinking is more psychologically complex, and much better expresses Godwin's belief that "the truth" must ultimately triumph, I must admit I prefer the cynical simplicity of the original climax, whose unrelieved pessimism seems to me a more fitting end to the story.

In conceiving his novel, William Godwin famously "imagined it backwards", dreaming up a story of pursuit and persecution and then having to think of what circumstances might bring such a situation about. Things As They Are; or, The Adventures Of Caleb Williams opens with the eponymous Caleb, a farmer's son, being taken into the employ of his father's landlord, Mr Falkland, after the death of his parents. Ignorant of the world but educated above his station, the young Caleb is given a position as Falkland's secretary and librarian. Though high-born and wealthy, Falkland lives in seclusion, rarely leaving his estate and never receiving guests or visitors. Knowing little of men, Caleb is fascinated by his moody employer, who is sometimes calm and kind, and sometimes explosively angry for seemingly no cause. At other times, he suffers from strange fits that Caleb begins to think of as "insanity". Eventually, Caleb is taken into the confidence of Mr Collins, Falkland's steward, who has a fatherly interest in the boy. He learns of Falkland's generosity and fairness and high ideals; but he learns, too, of the squire's hot temper and his morbidly acute sense of personal honour. It is the latter that is responsible for his withdrawal from the world and his erratic behaviour, after Falkland was suspected of the murder of his neighbour, Barnabas Tyrrel.

The first volume of Things As They Are is focused upon the escalating feud between Falkland and Tyrrel, and its abrupt and violent termination. It is through the character of Tyrrel that William Godwin begins to illustrate the corruption of the extant legal system. Tyrrel is a crude, brutal man, a bully and a coward who, perversely enough, longs to be liked and admired, and who lashes out when it is borne upon him that people despise and fear him instead. For a time Tyrrel is free to indulge his vicious impulses, his willingness to go to any lengths to revenge an injury, real or perceived, making others understandably wary of opposing him. Not that Tyrrel usually dirties his own hands while crushing his so-called enemies; rather, he lets the law do it all for him:

"You have a lease, have you? You will not quit, not you? A pretty pass things have come to, if a lease can protect such fellows as you against the lord of the manor!"

"Ass! Scoundrel! I tell you she does owe me, owes me---eleven hundred pound.---The law justifies it.---What do you think laws were made for? I do nothing but right, and my rights I will have."

"Murderer?---Did I employ knives or pistols? Did I give her poison? I did nothing but what the law allows. If she be dead, nobody can say that I am to blame!"

For a time Tyrrel has it all his own way, but when Falkland returns to his neighbouring estate after an absence of some years, the power balance suddenly shifts. Falkland is everything Tyrrel is not: cultured and refined, just and compassionate, loved and respected; the clash between the two is as violent as it is inevitable. It reaches its climax when Tyrrel's young cousin and ward, Emily Melville, falls in love with Falkland and is too inexperienced to hide her feelings---or to understand why she should. After Tyrrel's plan to punish her by forcing her into an abhorrant marriage is thwarted, he falls back on his usual tactic of letting the law do his dirty work for him: he has Emily arrested for debt, eleven years' unpaid room and board. The shock of prison on top of the emotional strain of resisting her cousin's persecution is too much for her; she collapses, contracts a fever, and dies. The neighbourhood was willing to look the other way while Tyrrel was destroying a tenant farmer who tried to oppose him, but this is too much: at Falkland's prompting, Tyrrel is ostracised. In a blind fury, he responds by forcing his way into a social gathering and attacking Falkland, knocking him to the ground and dragging him along the floor until forcibly restrained and ejected. Not long afterwards, Tyrrel is found dead in the streets, stabbed in the back. Suspicion falls unavoidably upon Falkland, who proudly declares his innocence and is triumphantly acquitted. Some time afterwards, Hawkins, Tyrrel's former tenant, and his son are convicted of the murder and executed. Nevertheless, the humiliation of first being beaten by Tyrrel, and then accused of murder, is more than Falkland's refined sense of honour can bear, and he withdraws from the world entirely.

This gloomy narrative does not have quite the effect upon Caleb that Mr Collins anticipates. The young man first accepts it at face value, but the more he sees of Falkland's erratic behaviour, the more he begins to ask himself whether it is indeed a manifestation of injured innocence---or of conscious guilt? After he finds amongst Falkland's papers a letter from the unfortunate Hawkins that bears no hint of intended vengeance, Caleb is increasingly unable to conceal his growing suspicions from his employer. The matter reaches an unexpected climax when Falkland tells Caleb the entire truth...warning him simultaneously that they are now bound together, body and soul, and that he, Falkland, will never again let Caleb out of his sight or his service. For a time Caleb tries to bear his new situation, but the relationship between himself and Falkland grows ever more untenable, until finally, desperately, the young man bolts. His vain hope is that he will be permitted to conceal himself in some obscure corner of the country. Instead, he finds himself hunted the length and breadth of England, falsely accused and imprisoned, slandered and despised, feeling the full brunt of English law as wielded by a man with the power and the will to exploit it to its utmost...

Things As They Are is a powerful work, although not an easy one for the modern reader; it does not carry its political intent lightly, not does it offer much respite from the increasing miseries of its plot. It is from start to finish an angry novel, a stark portrait of injustice and the systematic abuse of power by those in authority. However, while it could be justly asserted that this is a novel of ideas rather than people, it is also true that it often displays a remarkable degree of psychological depth. Even the hateful Tyrrel is given shadings, his worst acts of violence stemming perversely enough from a core of over-sensitivity that borders on paranoia and leads him to perceive everything Falkland is and does as a calculated insult directed at himself. Falkland himself is a mass of contradictions; as with Tyrrel, the disconnection between his inner and his outer life finally leads to tragedy. The crowning irony of the novel is that in his determination to maintain, not his actual honour, but his public reputation for honour, the refined Falkland, a man celebrated for his virtues, resorts to tactics so dirty that even Barnabas Tyrrel might have hesitated to employ them. And as for Caleb himself---

Though I blush to admit it, the truth is that I was led to this re-reading of Things As They Are not by its virtues as a novel or its powerful political message, but by a tendency amongst modern academics to position it as an early progenitor of detective fiction. Though Things As They Are cannot by any stretch be called a "detective novel" as such - though some do, leading to many disappointed readers - a fair argument can indeed be made for Caleb being the distant ancestor of the amateur detective who sprang into life some hundred years after his own creation and who flourishes to this day. Fascinatingly, Caleb's "detective instinct" is presented clearly as a psychological kink: from the moment he discovers that there is a mystery in Falkland's past, he cannot let it alone. He pokes, he pries, he asks questions; he deliberately leads conversations with Falkland towards questions of justice and honour, in order to observe his reaction; he is even driven to an act of burglary. Although perfectly aware of both the danger and the transgression of his conduct, he is quite unable to stop himself playing with fire.

However, there is a significant difference between Caleb and his descendents, in that the text that contains him does not justify his behaviour. Instead, his "investigation" of Falkland's secret is depicted as an act of betrayal. It is here that we must stop and remind ourselves that Godwin, though radical in many ways, did not uphold the idea of the full equality of man. Rather, he believed that though change for the better would eventually come, class distinctions would never be entirely eradicated, and that any successful social system must adjust to accommodate them. In the relationship between Falkland and Caleb, therefore, Godwin also considers the relationship between the classes, and the question of what each owes to the other. Though the relentless persecution that results is a punishment far beyond the crime, Caleb is guilty of breaking the social contract between master and servant. Furthermore, as his story progresses, he becomes guilty of something that is, in Godwin's eyes, infinitely more serious: losing faith in the power of the truth and not holding firm to his principles, failures which inevitably entail punishment more bitter than any even the most corrupt legal system can inflict.

    Thank God! exclaims the Englishman, we have no Bastille! Thank God, with us no man can be punished without a crime! Unthinking wretch! Is that a country of liberty where thousands languish in dungeons and fetters? Go, go, ignorant fool! and visit the scenes of our prisons! witness their unwholesomeness, their filth, the tyranny of their governors, the misery of their inmates!...
    For myself I looked round upon my walls, and forward upon the premature death I had too much reason to expect; I consulted my own heart that whispered nothing but innocence; and I said, This is society. This is the object, the distribution of justice, which is the end of human reason. For this the sages have toiled, and the midnight oil has been wasted. This!

Finished The Man In The Brown Suit by Agatha Christie for TIOLI #9.

Now reading Captain Macedoine's Daughter by William McFee for TIOLI #1.

The Murder Of Steven Kester - Although a self-made man himself, the wealthy Steven Kester violently disapproves of his granddaughter's relationship with Cliff Millard, a poor young man who has worked his way through law school. Though spoiled and headstrong, Jennifer Vinton is honest enough to know that she will not make a fit wife for a working man; she refuses Cliff's angry demand that they marry in spite of her grandfather's objections, hoping that she can talk him around. As the household prepares for one of Jennifer's parties, a man called Roger Herries arrives unexpectedly. Kester introduces him as an old friend, but it is evident that there is a strange tension between the two men. Herries has the air of a soldier of fortune, and entertains the house-party with tales from his exciting but dangerous past - though his deliberate mentions of the Arco Mine clearly make his host uncomfortable. It is evident to Horace Pritchard, Kester's secretary, who with his wife, Enid, spends most of the summer at Kester's Long Island estate, that his employer is seriously troubled about something: he is startled beyond measure when Kester abruptly orders him to arrange the sale of all his stock in the Arco Mine. Kester further orders Pritchard to have his attorney, Raynor, come to the house first thing the following Monday. Meanwhile, the household prepares for one of Jennifer's parties, a fancy-dress affair. The evening goes well until the unmasking. One of the stars of the evening, a man dressed as Bottom, is nowhere to be seen. The excited guests begin a mock-hunt, determined to discover who was hiding beneath the ass's head, but their fun comes to an abrupt halt when a woman suddenly screams. Enid Pritchard is found staring in horror at something crammed into a cupboard. The ass's head is lifted away to reveal the body of Steven Kester. He has been stabbed to death...

One of the most interesting things about Harriette Ashbrook's 1931 mystery, The Murder Of Steven Kester, is its publisher's blurb, in which it actually introduces its hero as "Spike Tracy, the silly ass young detective of The Murder Of Cecily Thane". Of course, as with all of his ilk, the point is that Spike isn't nearly such a silly ass as he seems - thank heavens - but you can certainly understand why the writers of the hard-boiled school found this particular branch of detective fiction so infuriating. Myself, though I don't find Spike's antics anywhere near as charming as his creator evidently did, I can tolerate that aspect of this novel. Less easily done is that, as is often the case, the "silly ass" amateur is pitted against a thick-headed police inspector whose investigative style resembles a bull rushing at a gate, and who, having once gotten an idea into his head, holds fast to it come hell or high water - or evidence. In this case, the professional in question is Rufus J. Bean, once of the NYPD (he got demoted in a departmental shake-up), and the idea in his head is that Steven Kester was murdered by Jennifer Vinton and Cliff Millard. For this, he can hardly be blamed: Jennifer was overheard quarrelling violently with her grandfather, after which he sent for his attorney with the declared intention of changing his will; there is a large sum of money missing from Kester's safe, to which Jennifer had the combination; she was seen near the scene of the crime by Enid Pritchard; and when the authorities arrive, she and Cliff are trying to flee the scene. The police are late because not only have the phone-lines been cut, but all vehicles on the premises disabled. They are then faced with the unenviable task of sorting through the party guests and determining who was downstairs dancing when the murder took place. At length the casual guests are dismissed, with attention turning to those staying at the house - including one Philip Tracy. Captain Bean is understandably furious when the young man intrudes himself upon the investigation, but Joseph Foxcroft, the local D.A., knows that Spike is the brother of R. Montgomery Tracy, the New York D.A., and knows too (in spite of what the public was told) who really solved the murder of Cecily Thane. To Bean's great annoyance, Foxcroft invites Spike to add his efforts to theirs. He does so---although his activities are temporarily derailed when it comes to light that, like Jennifer Vinton, he was in the vicinity of the crime at the time of its commission, and he finds himself being regarded by Captain Bean with suspicion as well as hostility...

The Murder Of Steven Kester is a fair mystery, but as a mystery, it suffers from an inadequate number of suspects; strange, considering that it pulls the standard cosy trick of giving us a thoroughly unpleasant victim, so we don't feel bad when he gets murdered: it shouldn't have been too difficult to come up with a few more people who wanted to kill Steven Kester. But as it stands, we effectively have The Obvious Suspects, The Less Obvious Suspects, and The Red Herring, so... However, if the "who" is a bit too easy, the "why" and the "how" make a satisfactory story. Spike spends much of his time trying to untangle the threads of two separate plots that were enacted in parallel on the night of the murder: no easy task given the obdurate attitudes of Jennifer and Cliff, and the evident determination of Jennifer's maid and former nurse, Dora, to lie herself black in the face if that's what it takes to protect the girl. The police are hesitant to arrest Jennifer, in view of her age, sex and social prominence - they have no such qualms about arresting Cliff, the son of a grocer and a boarding-house manager - giving Spike time to work out the tantalising side-question of who exactly Roger Herries is, and why his arrival disturbed Steven Kester so much. It is soon proved that the murder weapon was a knife belonging to Herries, though it certainly could have been taken from his room. On the other hand, there is no doubt that Herries' behaviour since the murder has been suspicious. In fact, it has been so very ostentaciously suspicious that Spike begins to question its real meaning. Above all, however, his attention is caught by Herries' general attitude to Steven Kester's murder, which he seems to view as a perverse kind of joke, at once amusing and exasperating. Spike was one of the first on the scene when the body was discovered, and registered Herries' strange reaction to it: an exclamation, more surprised than horrified, of, "Well, I'll be damned!"

"Save yourself the trouble, Captain; I'll tell all without coercion. I met Jennifer Vinton at a party in town two weeks ago, and she confessed that she was rather bored with life except on the week-ends, and why didn't I bring a friend and stick around a bit. And so I did. I never set eyes on Steven Kester until two weeks ago. I'm not mentioned in his will, he never did me or mine dirt, I don't want to marry his graddaughter for her money, and he hasn't got a thing on me. The only motive I might have for killing him is that I didn't like him. He was a bloody snob. Which, if you ask me, is as good a reason as any for making away with people."

Liz - I have been away for a goodly while but it is always a pleasure to catch up over here with the usual array of books that I have to research and which never fail to pique my interest.

Caleb Williams I do have however on the shelves and very much enjoyed your review of the same.

Have a lovely weekend and I must add that the stat geek in me relishes your listing the publication dates of all the books in your lists and series lists.

John Lang & "The Forger's Wife": A True Tale Of Early Australia - Trying to determine "firsts" in any study of Australian literature is always a tricky business. There were writers who were born in Britain but migrated - or were transported - to Australia; and there were writers born in Australia who migrated to Britain. There were writers who lived in Britain but wrote of Australia; and there were writers who lived in Australia and wrote of Britain. A perfect illustration of the confusing nature of the business of author classification is John George Lang, who was born in Australia, but published most of his work - including that set in his native country - in England, while living in India. However, if, as a number of researchers believe, Lang was indeed the author of 1842's Legends Of Australia, the first in a proposed but never completed series of novels, then he was the first to be both born and published in Australia. In John Lang & "The Forger's Wife", Nancy Keesing tries to piece together a biography of Lang from a very incomplete record, as well as tracing the various influences upon his writing; the volume also contains a reproduction of one of his works, The Forger's Wife, which has book-end scenes in England but is set predominantly in Sydney.

Born in 1816, John Lang grew up as part of an uneasy generation, at a time when certain class barriers were beginning to make themselves felt between those with convict connections and those who had emigrated freely. Not everyone was bothered about such things, granted; on the contrary, a party who openly called themselves "emancipists" were beginning to agitate for a local parliament and a measure of self-government; but in some quarters - such as the better Sydney schools - it could be a problem. Nevertheless, in spite of his perceived social shortcomings John Lang did well during his years at Sydney College. In 1837, he sailed for England with the aim of attending Cambridge before studying for the bar - and then things started to go wrong. Lang was expelled from Cambridge for a piece of writing deemed blasphemous; there are also hints of social indiscretions connected with too much drinking. In 1841, he returned to Australia with his wife, but could not make a go of it as a lawyer. He tried to raise his public profile by a variety of means, but only gained a reputation as a braggart. In 1842, Lang and his family left Australia for India, where his brother-in-law was already established as a lawyer. He did better in his new life, practising at the bar as well as becoming the editor (and then owner) of an English-language newspaper; he continued to write, publishing novels, poetry, sketches and essays in England as well as India. He never returned to Australia.

The Forger's Wife (also known as Assigned To His Wife and The Convict's Wife) was serialised in Fraser's Magazine in 1853, and published in book form in 1855. It opens in England, with its young heroine, Emily Orford, falling in love with a - at least to the reader - self-evident scoundrel going by the name of Captain Reginald Harcourt. Also self-evidently, the Captain's interest in Emily revolves around her father's fortune, and consequently he persuades the innocent girl to elope with him. Alas for his ambition, the Orfords are ruthlessly prompt in cutting their only child off without even the proverbial shilling; and alas also, he barely has time to adjust to this setback before he is arrested and charged with forgery. Emily is horrified, but convinced that it is a case of mistaken identity; particularly as "dear Reginald" is convicted under the name of Charles Roberts. When he is sentenced to transportation, she determines to follow and find him. In her journey to Sydney she has the assistance of the ship's captain, who sympathises with her youth and innocence, and fears for what she might find at the end of her journey. In fact, it turns out that Roberts has done a runner, and is a wanted man with a bounty of ten pounds on his head. When he is unable to convince her to return with him to England, Captain Dent helps Emily to rent a small cottage, where she supports herself by doing needlework, and later by teaching music and dancing. An assigned convict by the name of Nelson encounters Roberts, and tells him that Emily is in Sydney, offering to take him to her for a consideration. However, Nelson's real plan is to inform on Roberts to the famous constable and thief-taker, George Flower, and split the reward with him. A reader of men, Flower takes Roberts' measure in a moment---but he also takes Emily's, and silently appoints himself her protector. She is in need of one: she has caught the eye of a corrupt and brutal police magistrate called Brade, a man used to getting his own way by any means; and suddenly Roberts sees in his innocent and loving wife his ticket to freedom...

While it is true that The Forger's Wife is an uneven work, albeit an entertaining one, as an historical document it is nothing short of fascinating. It falls into none of the common categories of early Australian writing. It is neither a travelogue in disguise, nor (as Nancy Keesing puts it) a "look at the funny Australians" work. It was clearly written for an English audience, but is most vividly alive in its Australian scenes, in which Lang uses the vernacular both comfortably and correctly. Both convicts and bushrangers appear in its pages, but neither one nor the other is its focus. This is exactly the novella's main charm: though the narrative does for a time shift its attention to the activities of George Flower as he hunts down a gang of bushrangers, and though various convict characters are scattered through its pages, The Forger's Wife also offers the reader a vivid portrait of day-to-day life in Sydney and its surrounds during the first half of the 19th century, when a new society was struggling into existence.

I always prefer reading "old books" to historical novels set in the same period, because of what authors tell us about their time without even intending it. What we learn from the pages of The Forger's Wife is how many of Sydney's very first streets and landmarks and settlements are still there, and still under their original names. Emily's cottage is at the end of Castlereagh Street (now the very heart of the city); Brade has a "country villa" at Rose Bay, on the South Head Road; there are scenes in "Paramatta" and "Campbell Town", and lengthier journeys to Penrith, Windsor and Bathurst; and while the township of Bong Bong itself no longer exists, the Bong Bong Picnic Races are still held every year in the Southern Highlands. We are given glimpses of life in both the city and the country; of offices, pawn shops, pubs and farms; of a day at the races; of honest people striving to build a life and dishonest people plotting to take advantage. There are also passing references to a number of important real-life figures including General Sir Richard Bourke, Francis Forbes and Edward Deas Thomson (the Governor of New South Wales, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, and the Colonial Secretary, respectively), which place the action prior to 1836; prior, that is, to John Lang's own departure for England. Writing in 1853, he was still able to call upon the memories of his youth, nearly twenty years earlier.

The convict system itself is very much a thing taken for granted here. While more hardened criminals are kept under restraint and put to work in road gangs, most of the transportees end up as "assigned servants", doing whatever work they given, from hard labour to pushing papers. Many of them live essentially normal lives, wearing ordinary clothes and working in offices. The ticket-of-leave - a partial pardon for good behaviour, granting freedoms including the right to marry and to live independently - is a realistic goal for most. Charles Roberts is "assigned" to George Flower, through that individual's pulling of strings, and ends up in a lawyer's office, where he proves extremely adept. He could, in fact, quite easily work off his sentence, earn his ticket-of-leave, and live an honest life...but he won't, as Flower knows from the time he first casts a disgusted glance upon him.

The most difficult thing about The Forger's Wife is deciding how to react to the character of Emily. While it may be that we are intended to take her and her wilful blindness about her husband seriously, the truth is that she comes across almost as a satire on 19th century womanhood. Most of the time, far from sympathising with her, you just want to grab her and shake her until the blinders fall off. Fortunately, Emily and her numerous travails are not the sole focus of the story. Instead, she shares centre stage with George Flower, who progressively dominates the narrative, in particular during a daring expedition to capture or kill three dangerous bushrangers.

Nancy Keesing suggests that Flower may be a partial portrait of Israel Chapman, a convict who became a famous "police runner", that is, part of a thief-taking band modelled on England's Bow Street Runners. However, there was another potential model for the character rather closer to home. In 1789, John Lang's grandfather, John Harris, was charged with a theft to the value of a few shillings; he was then fourteen years old. The boy was twice sentenced to death (the second time possibly for escaping), and twice commuted, before finally being transported. Ten years after his arrival in Sydney, as the penal settlement struggled to survive in the face of widespread starvation and disease, and a complete lack of law and order, Harris took the remarkable step of proposing to the local Judge Advocate the establishment of a "night watch", a street patrol made up of convicts who had proven themselves trustworthy, dedicated to keeping a lid on the colony's rampant thievery, which the marines who were actually in charge could not or would not prevent. They were, in fact if not in name, Australia's first police force.

The men of the night watch were not popular with their fellow convicts, to put it mildly. Israel Chapman, meanwhile, who arrived on the scene some twenty years later, was hated and despised for his job, but renowned for his courage and famous for never giving up an informant: two qualities that John Lang gives to George Flower who, like him, is a former convict. Also like Chapman, he is basically a bounty-hunter under another title. Flower is a quite complex character. Gentle with women, children and animals, with men he is capable of brutal violence. He is ruthless in the commission of his job, frank about doing it for financial gain, and unhesitating about using force to get information. Yet in spite of all this, George Flower emerges from the text as a positive figure; indeed, as something more. And this seems to me the real historical importance of John Lang: not his birth or his publishing record, but the fact that he was the first Australian writer with the nerve to make a hero out of A POLICEMAN.

George Flower was a great character in the colony of New South Wales. He had been transported for discharging, in cold blood, the contents of a double-barrelled gun into the body of a young squire who had seduced his sister. This misfortune had overtaken Flower when he was only nineteen years of age. He was the son of a gamekeeper; and a handsomer lad had rarely breathed. Flower had received a conditional pardon from the Colonial Government for capturing, single-handed, three desperate bushrangers, for whose apprehension a reward of one hundred pounds had been offered in the Government Gazette. Flower was now a "sworn constable", and as a thief-taker was without a rival in the colony. So many attempts had been made upon his life, that, like Macbeth, Flower used to boast of having a charmed existence. His sagacity was on a par with his courage and personal prowess; and in many points he strikingly resembled the blood-hound. He walked about the police-office in Sydney with a swagger which spoke his consciousness of his superiority in his profession.

>>#54

Hi, Paul! Lovely to have you back here - and if you like publication dates, you've certainly come to the right place. :)

It makes me feel very guilty, though, that you're only just back from your adventures and you're more caught up on the threads than I am! Glad you had such a wonderful time - and isn't it funny how LT holidays always manage to include bookshops on the itinery!?

The Wisdom Of Father Brown - The Father Brown stories of G. K. Chesterton almost define the expression "an acquired taste". Conceived and written during the period of contemplation and struggle that would culminate in Chesterton's conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1922, these tales tend to deal not with the law and order of Man, but the complexities of God. Any real appreciation of the stories requires the reader to accept Chesterton's fundamentally Catholic view of the world; human institutions generally are given very short shrift.

While I did my best to accommodate Chesterton's point of view and to take these stories as he would wish, I have to say that I found The Wisdom Of Father Brown a difficult read compared with its predecessor, The Innocence Of Father Brown. It's almost a case of this collection "protesting too much". What were undertones in the earlier work are raised voices here; the anti-science / anti-intellectual note has become strident, with too many of the stories devoted to setting up and tearing down paper tigers. This over-insistence eventually had what I presume was the opposite of the desired effect: it irritated me into disconnection with the text. I found myself, not focusing upon the moral condundrums before me, but wondering how Father Brown had the time and the money to take so many holidays, or whether Flambeau ever did any work.

Only a minority of the tales in The Wisdom Of Father Brown bear any resemblance to conventional crime or detective fiction. In The Man In The Passage, several people, including Father Brown, are nearby when a famous actress is murdered in a dark passageway. All of them are sure that they saw someone else on the scene - yet each of them seems to have glimpsed a different person. The Head Of Caesar involves blackmail and stalking; while The Paradise Of Thieves describes an encounter with bandits who are like something out of a romance. In The Fairy Tale Of Father Brown, the priest suggests a solution to a mysterious assassination, in which the ruler of a small European state is found shot dead where no guns could possibly be. Three of the stories in this collection, The Perishing Of The Pendragons, The Salad Of Colonel Cray and The Purple Wig, deal with curses apparently coming home to roost.

The Absence Of Mr Glass seems intended as a satire upon the methods of Sherlock Holmes. Dr Orion Hood, a famous criminologist - a man renowned for his many "scientific triumphs" - is called in to give his opinion in the mysterious case of young Mr Todhunter, found bound and gagged in his own room. After examining the scene, Hood deduces blackmail and criminal assault by a tall man of advanced years with a bald head, who gambles and drinks too much. It is left to Father Brown to suggest that he may be over-interpreting the evidence just a tad... In The Mistake Of The Machine, a prison warden employs a lie-detector in a case of the presumed murder of an aristocrat, who is missing, by an escaped convict. He tries to convince Father Brown that by eliminating the human element, the lie-detector becomes infallible. The priest, however, points out that the machine still has a fallible human being operating it...

The Strange Crime Of John Boulnois is perhaps the most appealling story in this volume (definitely the most appealing for the bibliophiles amongst us). A man notoriously involved with Boulnois' wife is found dying, and accuses the outraged husband of the crime. Boulnois, an introverted scholar, insists that at the time, he was at home immersed in a good book...

On the other hand, the two remaining tales in The Wisdom Of Father Brown are frankly disturbing. In The Duel Of Mr Hirsch, a French intellectual is accused of spying for Germany; he declares that he is being framed - that it is "another Dreyfus case". Mr Hirsch is "a saint of science"; his followers are openly atheistic. Inevitably in this context, Hirsch is eventually exposed as a fraud and a coward, his followers as deluded fools. The parallels drawn between Hirsch and Alfred Dreyfus - and the suggestion that the truth of that matter is yet to be established, in spite of Dreyfus' exoneration eight years earlier - make this an extremely uncomfortable read. But however dubious the philosophy of this particular tale, it pales in comparison to the horrors of The God Of The Gongs, which is a vicious racist screed from start to finish. A conspiracy of "niggers" + blood sacrifice to a "monkey god" = NO THANK YOU. Even by the standards of its day, this story is one of the ugliest things I've ever read; so much so that, unfortunately, my dominant memory of The Wisdom Of Father Brown is the bad taste it left behind.

Fate, being in a funny mood, pushed the door open and introduced into those long, strict, sea-flanked apartments one who was perhaps the most startling opposite of them and their master. In answer to a curt but civil summons, the door opened inwards and there shambled into the room a shapeless little figure, which seemed to find its own hat and umbrella as unmanageable as a mass of luggage. The umbrella was a black and prosaic bundle long past repair; the hat was a broad-curved black hat, clerical but not common in England; the man was the embodiment of all that is homely and helpless...

Finished Captain Macedoine's Daughter for TIOLI #1, which is me done for April.

Now reading The Sixth Journey by Alice Grant Rosman, which horror of horrors, is not going to be a TIOLI unless I can bring myself to admit publicly that I'm reading a Mills & Boon "just for fun, just cuz I want to"... :)

#42 "Margot, Queen Of The Apaches" (that's the French kind of Apache, not the American kind), the leader of a criminal gang that likes to celebrate its successes by drinking absinthe and dancing quadrilles. *snort*

That one sounds fun - I've downloaded the ebook. :-)

#45 Good haul! Very appropriate to get an Australian VMC too.

And pausing before catching up on your other reviews because I have to go to work.... Back later!

I always learn so much when I visit your thread, Liz - it's fascinating!

I hope you're enjoying all your recent acquisitions - I'm pretty sure you read all the books you buy which I can't say is true for the rest of us!

>>#59

Hi, Heather! I hope you enjoy the adventures of Cleek and Margot; I wonder if you'll want to slap Ailsa as much as I did?? :)

Yes, it was another good haul, and I do like to pick up up local authors if I can. I did have to leave behind a lesser-known Miles Franklin, but I'd expect to be able to find that at the library, unlike some of the others.

Work!? Feh!

>>#60

Hi, Dejah - thanks! I wish it were true I read all my acquisitions, but the shameful truth is I have untouched shelves just like the rest of you! :)

*waving* at Liz

Should I bring the cat out so you recognize me?

Thank you, I saw you waving that cat around elsewhere the other day, as well as giving away my shameful secret, so I don't think that will be necessary!!

I assure you I can recognise you even without your impatient little friend. :)

OK, just checking! lol

Finished The Sixth Journey...and liked it well enough to "come out" and list it for TIOLI #12. :)

Now drawing a very deep breath and embarking upon the first volume of The Memoirs Of Vidocq, for TIOLI #15.

I'll be watching for your comments on Vidocq. He is a central character in The Black Tower, which I read a few weeks ago.

I'm interested in the way that he became an influential real-life figure and a popular fictional character, at the same time. :)

Dropping by to say that I love the pictures of the quoll. I think I've vaguely heard of a quoll but I don't think I'd ever seen a picture of one before.

#51 Very good review of Caleb Williams Liz. I think some of Godwin's political aims went over my head but I found volumes II and III to be very powerful emotionally.

I'm still thinking about the different endings - the published ending took me completely by surprise and I'm still trying to work out why it surprised me so much. It felt like it didn't fit with the rest of the book for some reason. I thought the original ending included in the notes fit better but as you said, it's very pessimistic.

#57 Sorry The Wisdom of Father Brown left such an unpleasant taste. I read a selection of the Father Brown stories many, many years ago and have been meaning to read the series properly but I'll bear your comments in mind.

>>#68

Hi, Rhian - how lovely to have you stop by! (I do lurk at your thread; I really should speak up more often!) Glad you like my quolls - they're not as well known as they deserve to be, that's for sure. :)

>>#69

Thanks, Heather. I do see what Godwin is getting at in his revised ending, and the notion of "transference" is very advanced for its time, but the more pessimistic outcome seems to me the more logical outcome. (Not that the alternative is optimistic, exactly!)

I will be persisting with the Father Brown stories, but I certainly hope Chesterton reins it in in the later volumes. :(

A few preliminary words on the subject of Eugène François Vidocq:

Vidocq was a man with two separate public faces. He was famous, not to say notorious, as a criminal turned police informant who eventually became a police detective himself and then head of the newly founded Sûreté. Though always a controversial figure - and frequently accused of committing as much crime as he prevented or solved - there is no denying Vidocq's influence upon the development of police work and criminal investigaton as we now understand it. He pioneered many techniques in this area, and was consulted by the authorities in a number of countries, including England and America, with respect to the setting up and running of detective divisions. In 1833, he founded what is generally considered the world's first private detective agency. The Vidocq Society, an international gathering of experts who re-investigate "cold cases", was established in Philadelphia in 1990.

Vidocq's own memoirs, published in 1827 after his first enforced departure from the Sûreté, were at least partially ghostwritten, and have been criticised as self-aggrandising and exaggerated. Nevertheless, they were an enormous influence not only upon those in the legal community, but those in the artistic community. There was always a sense of "larger than life" about Vidocq, and this is reflected in an ever-increasing gallery of fictionalised portraits of him. He was the model for the recurrent character of Vautrin in the works of Honoré de Balzac, and the inspiration for both Jean Valjean and Inspector Javert in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. Versions of him also appear in the works of Alexandre Dumas and Eugene Sue. Perhaps most critically of all, however, Vidocq's memoirs were a significant factor in Edgar Allan Poe's creation of Auguste Dupin, and Dupin himself - in skill if not behaviour - another fictionalised Vidocq. So too is "Monsieur Lecoq", a criminal-turned-detective, in a series of stories by Emile Gaboriau, which was in turn an important influence upon Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Meanwhile, pulp fiction featuring Vidocq himself in a number of imaginary adventures became popular in Britain, and persisted well into the 20th century. Both genuine biographies and fictionalised accounts of Vidocq's life have proliferated in recent years, and any number of historial novels feature him as a character. In 2001, the film Vidocq (known as Dark Portals: The Chronicles of Vidocq in America), starring Gerard Depardieu, was released.

All these eventual consequences notwithstanding, I am expecting to find the memoirs themselves a bit of a slog...which is why I'm cheating a little by choosing to consider the four volumes - which were published separately - as four separate works. Altogether they add up to over one thousand pages, however, so I don't feel all that guilty about it.

The other issue is finding the "right" version. The memoirs have been reissued in full as late as 1968, but only in French. Earlier translations abound, but many of them openly brag about having censored the content, both for ribald language and what we might call "adult situations". Much to my pleased surprise, I discovered that the first English translation, from 1828 - 1829, which appears not to have been tampered with, was available through GoogleBooks (who I have not in other respects been very happy with lately).

I think you're entitle to consider them however you like - no cheating involved! I am all admiration of your thoughtful, purposeful reading. And I love the reviews and comments, of course!

Thanks, Dejah! - that's good to know. 'Cos sometimes I feel like a bit of a random nutjob. :)

Popping in to say a quick hello!

Hi, Roberta! Thanks for stopping by!

Women Writing Crime Fiction, 1860-1880: Fourteen American, British And Australian Authors - Kate Watson is unapologetic about the bias of her study of late 19th century crime writing, pointing out, firstly, how very many studies on this topic mention no female authors at all---and emphasise the point with titles like "The Masters Of Mystery" and "The Fathers Of Crime"---and secondly, how many of them treat the nominated period as an "interregnum", claiming that there was no crime writing of note during those years. In fact, as Watson shows, this was a particularly rich period for the women who worked in this area, if you know where to look. Much female-authored crime fiction from this time is disguised as something else, with women frequently resorting to embedding their crime narratives within another form of fiction in order to circumvent a variety of barriers to their work. There is an emphasis upon the social implications of women's crime writing, and what women could and could not get away with. Over the course of Women Writing Crime Fiction, Watson traces crime writing and the emergence of the detective narrative from the early 18th century onwards and highlights examples of overlooked crime fiction by women from throughout the 19th century (including by authors rarely considered in this context, such as Frances Trollope and Elizabeth Gaskell), and compares the real-life evolution of the detective to that found in the literature, before examining in greater depth the works of fourteen female writers from America, Britain and Australia who published between 1860 - 1880. It should be noted that in spite of its focus, this study discusses male writers of crime fiction as and where relevant.

Women Writing Crime Fiction is a thorough and well-researched work that not only succeeds at its professed goal of balancing the gender ledger, but makes an interesting case for the interconnectedness of crime writing at the time, tracing influences not just from writer to writer, but country to country. In each of the nominated territories, Watson focuses upon one or two of the most highly influential authors. In Britain, much to my delight, she chooses Mary Elizabeth Braddon as her exemplar, dwelling upon the importance of The Trail Of The Serpent generally, and of its detective-figure in particular. Furthermore, Watson nominates Braddon as a key influence upon the "secret thrillers" of Louisa May Alcott, whose daringly original novella, Behind A Mask, is also considered in detail. However, though her work did feature detective figures and the unravelling of criminal plots, Alcott did not write a detective story proper; and the focus of the American section is upon Metta Victor, whose The Dead Letter is now generally recognised as the first American detective novel, and Anna Katharine Green, who pioneered the modern form of the genre with The Leavenworth Case. In Australia (where, we discover, Mary Elizabeth Braddon was a consistent best-seller, and referred to as "the Queen of the Colonies"), Ellen Davitt's Force And Fraud, the first local mystery novel (it involves a murder, but has no detective as such) is examined in detail. However, and rightly, most weight is given to the career of Mary Helena Fortune, in a section that necessarily draws heavily upon the recent scholarship of Lucy Sussex (editor of The Detectives' Album and The Fortunes Of Mary Fortune).

From my own personal perspective, Women Writing Crime Fiction's greatest value lies in its unearthing of forgotten writers from each of its considered territories. In Britain, of particular interest are the works of Catherine Crowe, who in the 1840s wrote several popular novels incorporating themes of crime and detection; her Adventures Of Susan Hopley; or, Circumstantial Evidence features a maidservant who acts as a proto-detective. Significantly, though those works were later traced to their source, they were first published anonymously: a recurrent theme of this study is the need for women crime writers to disguise their identities in order to have their works accepted; instances of anonymous publication and the use of male or androgynous pseudonyms abound. (Watson makes a case for the author of 1864's The Female Detective, who used the known pseudonym "Andrew Forrester", being a woman who later published novels simply as "Mrs Forrester".) Another author who frequently published anonymously was the American Harriet Prescott Spofford, a prolific writer who published in a variety of genres, foreshadowing Alcott by winning fame for her children's fiction while secretly publishing crime stories. Spofford is of note for creating a recurrent detective-figure, Mr Furbush, and for emphasising technological advances like photography in her stories. In Australia, Watson highlights the work of Céleste de Chabrillan, a French émigré whose 1857 novel, The Gold Robbers, is important both as an historical document (comparable to John Lang's The Forger's Wife) and as a progenitor work to later crime fiction by Australian women. Similarly, The Broad Arrow: Being Passages From The History Of Maida Gwynnham, A Lifer, by Caroline Woolmer Leakey (who wrote as Oline Keese), addresses the convict experience from the point of view of a woman, and functions as the gender-reversed equivalent of Marcus Clarke's far more famous For The Term Of His Natural Life.

Men have long been considered the progenitors of the crime fiction form, but what this study seeks to illustrate is that women were present in criminous discourse from the beginning. In addition to this, women were significantly adding to the corpus of crime and detective fiction as we now know it and are thus as essential (but often neglected) part of this construction. While this feminine exclusion indicates a limited outlook which, to some extent, is still upheld, crime fiction was also synchronic and appeared in many countries. Though the general and critical focus on crime and detective literature has traditionally been on British, French and American exponents, this book will examine British, American and Australian women's crime writing, considering agency, reception and the development and interplay between nations and voices: what can be said and challenged, and what cannot and why.

It probably goes without saying, but Women Writing Crime Fiction has done terrible things to my wishlist.

It has also (slightly odd for a book about women's fiction, but indicative of Watson's unblinkered stance) made me want to re-read the novels of Charles Brockden Brown.

And, my goodness, there we go again...

{*starts to hyperventilate*}

Liz, what a fascinating book Women Writing Crime Fiction appears to be. Just when I thought your catalogue couldn't get any bigger you go and unearth this tempting morsel.

Have a lovely weekend salivating over your intended targets!

ETA By the way you have 2 51st reads in your list of books read this year.

51. Captain Macedoine's Daughter by William McFee (1920)

May:

51. The Sixth Journey by Alice Grant Rosman (1931)

I always learn so much when I visit your thread Liz! You have a great gift for passing along information in a useful and entertaining way.
'
And what a few dozen (hundred?) more books on your already outrageous wishlist? A drop in the bucket!

>78 PaulCranswick: LOL, Paul - great catch!

>>#78

Oh, duh! I'm not surprised, though, it's been that kind of week. I've been slipping behind the pace lately, so I'm glad to discover that I've read one more book than I thought - thanks!

>>#79

Yes, you're probably right, Dejah - it's a bit late to start worrying about the figures now! :)

Finished the first volume of The Memoirs Of Vidocq, for TIOLI #15.

Phew! :)

Now relaxing with The Mystery Of Hunting's End, the third in the "Nurse Sarah Keate" series by Mignon Eberhart, for TIOLI #9.

I'm going to give the 'Nurse Sarah Keate' books a try, Liz. Thanks!

#71 Well, I have tentatively downloaded Volume 1 of Vidocq's memoirs from googlebooks so I coul try and read it on our tablet. Was it as much of a slog as you thought it would be?

#76 "In Britain, much to my delight, she chooses Mary Elizabeth Braddon as her exemplar, dwelling upon the importance of The Trail Of The Serpent generally, and of its detective-figure in particular." Woo! I have Behind a Mask on my 'not-making-any-plans-so-shouldn't-have-a-list' list for this month so it will be interesting to see if I can spot Braddon's influence.

Watson makes a case for the author of 1864's The Female Detective, who used the known pseudonym "Andrew Forrester", being a woman who later published novels simply as "Mrs Forrester" Interesting!

#77 "It probably goes without saying, but Women Writing Crime Fiction has done terrible things to my wishlist. " Heh.

>>#82

Hi, Dejah! I hope you enjoy them. They're quite good and the central dynamic is different from most of the mystery series from that time.

>>#83

At this point I wouldn't recommend the Vidocq memoir, Heather - Volume 1 was indeed a slog. However, since that's the volume dealing with his criminal career, I was more or less prepared for that. It remains to be seen where it goes from here but so far my decision to treat the memoir as four separate books feels vindicated. :)

In that context I think the main similarity between Braddon and Alcott is their capacity to sympathise with marginalised people. Some of Alcott's other stories, particularly V. V.; or, Plots And Counterplots, are closer for content.

Eep! May is slipping away and I'm just realising properly that I need to figure out when I'm going to tackle my re-read of Framley Parsonage!

Finished The Mystery Of Hunting's End for TIOLI #9.

Now reading Tish by Mary Roberts Rinehart, for TIOLI...um...???

ETA: 6! TIOLI #6!

Speaking of Mary Roberts Rinehart, I was rolling through some reels of the local newspaper on microfilm and ran across one of her novels in serial form on the pages. I'm not sure I want the experience of reading one of those in that manner, but I have enjoyed the novels by her that I've read over the years.

Ok, I will ignore Vidocq as I definitely don't feel like slogging through anything at the moment. But you have reminded me that I was going to try The Amazing Adventures Of Letitia Carberry now that I have a tablet which can cope with pdfs.

>>#86

Hi, Lori! I'm used to thinking about 19th century novels being serialised, but it's curious to realise how long newspaper serialisation went on into the 20th century. There was one particular novel I was chasing second-hand a while back, but all I kept turning up was individual chapters in an online newspaper archive - most frustrating!

For the most part I'm very much enjoying Rinehart's writing, although it occasionally suffers from "being a product of its time".

>>#87

Yeah, I'm inclined to think this is one of those occasions where you should just let me throw myself on the grenade, Heather! But who knows? - things might pick up when we get to the actual detective work.

now that I have a tablet which can cope with pdfs

Which is exactly why I picked a Sony eReader - it was a lot more expensive but had better PDF support than the other models. (I didn't want a tablet because of the backlighting; my eyes struggle with my computer work as is.)

Yes, Liz. The last Rinehart I read was a bit dated, but I still enjoyed it enough to not want to quit reading it.

Oh, me too! And on the other hand they're a fascinating insight into the times. For example, the stories I'm reading now were written across 1914 - 1916 and in one of the earlier ones we get a vague reference to "the European war"...

Finished Tish for TIOLI #6.

Now reading Silver Fork Society: Fashionable Life And Literature From 1814-1840 by Alison Adburgham for TIOLI #8.

The first three 'Nurse Sarah Keate' books have arrived from the library. I'll pick them up soon! Thanks, Liz.

Eep! I hope you like them. I always get nervous when someone reads on my recommendation. :)

Powder And Patch - Georgette Heyer's second novel was first published in 1923 - by Mills and Boon! - as The Transformation Of Philip Jettan. When it was reissued in 1930 - by William Heinemann Ltd. - it had its title changed to Powder And Patch, and the last chapter of the original text was removed; it has been available only in this form ever since. Like its predecessor, The Black Moth, this novel is set in Georgian times, with its story very much predicated upon the social rituals and expectations of the period. Originally subtitled "A Comedy Of Manners", this is generally a light-hearted work, a sort of Cinderella story with the sexes reversed, but one not without some serious undertones.

A reformed rake himself, Sir Maurice Jettan is secretly somewhat dismayed that his son, Philip, has grown up to be an exemplarily behaved young man. Indifferent to dress and contemptuous of the exaggerated conduct expected in "the great world", Philip has no ambition beyond marriage to his lovely neighbour, Cleone Charteris, and life in the country on his father's estate. However, while Cleone is in love with Philip, she grows increasingly dissatisfied with his lack of polish and resents his taking their eventual marriage for granted. Matters reach a crisis when the son of another neighbour, Henry Bancroft, returns home. Dressed in the height of fashion, wigged, powdered and patched, full of flattery and compliments, and with a scandalous duel with an outraged husband in his immediate past, Bancroft is everything that Philip most despises---and it with a mixture of horror and disbelief that he sees Cleone responding eagerly to his expert flirtation. Sick with jealousy, Philip stumbles from blunder to blunder; he finally challenges Bancroft to a duel, and is beaten with humiliating ease. Determined to settle things once and for all, Philip abruptly proposes to Cleone, who is provoked into refusing him, calling him a "country bumpkin" in the process. Turning to his father, Philip finds no comfort: Sir Maurice sides with Cleone, telling Philip bluntly that he, too, would prefer it if he were more of a man of the world. Bitterly hurt by this double rejection, Philip packs his bags and heads for London, determined to punish both his father and Cleone by giving them exactly what they think they want...

More famous for her Regency-set tales, Georgette Heyer was no less adept at sketching the extremities of mid-18th century life. Powder And Patch tends to leave the modern reader blinking in disbelief at what was, at the time, expected of a man who wanted to be accepted in Polite Society: the narrative follows Philip as he is taught to wear make-up and a wig, obsess over his clothing, exhibit a taste for jewellery, handle a sword, flirt outrageously, and write poetry. (The latter proves beyond his talents, though nothing his mock-horrified friends can say will convince him of it.) This is a short but not insubstantial novel, one which succeeds by having neither Philip nor Cleone entirely in the right. We may, for instance, criticise Cleone for not putting a proper value upon Philip's sincerity and honest love; but on the other hand she has every right to resent his "air of ownership", the way he simply assumes that she will marry him one day. Sir Maurice is also right when he sees a measure of egotism in Philip's refusal to follow social convention. At the same time, it is impossible not to wince through the scenes of Philip's dismissal by the two people he loves best, or enjoy his calculated revenge upon them. Sir Maurice's chagrin at discovering that his formerly openly affectionate and punctiliously dutiful son has become "an impertinent puppy" is particularly satisfying. Cleone, meanwhile, is left to ponder the painful question of whether she really wants a Philip who can pay elaborate compliments at the price of having him learn to do so by flirting with every other woman who crosses his path, earning for himself the nickname of le petit Philippe au coeur perdu - little Philip without a heart - in the process. Of course, what Cleone doesn't know is that Philip's friends have bestowed that title upon him in recognition of the fact that he has no heart to lose: he has long since given it away...

Cleone tried to answer, and failed. Dazedly she stared at him, from the powdered curls of his wig to the diamond buckles on his shoes. Philip! Philip! Philip in stiff silks and laces! Philip patched and painted! Philip with jewels scattered about his person, and polished nails! Was she dreaming? This foppish gentleman her blunt Philip? It was incredible, impossible!

The Man In The Brown Suit - After the sudden death of her anthropologist father, Anne Beddingfield finds herself thrown upon the world with very little money to her name. Having previously lived a quiet and rather straitened existence, Anne longs for adventure. It comes to her unexpectedly when she is on the scene of a fatality at a railway station. Watching as a brown-suited man who claims to be a doctor examines the body, Anne gets the feeling that something is wrong. She later realises what it is: the "doctor" was feeling on the wrong side for the dead man's heart. As he hurries from the scene, the man drops a scribbled note which mentions a "Kilmorden Castle". It is later reported that the victim was carrying an order to view a property to rent; the body of an indentified woman is found at the same house, shortly after a brown-suited man was seen leaving the premises. Anne tries to convince the police that the two deaths are related and the same man involved, but they evince little interest in her story. Discovering that the Kilmorden Castle is a ship bound for South Africa, Anne impulsively buys a ticket. Once on board, she finds herself with some interesting travelling companions: the socialite Suzanne Blair, with whom Anne forms a friendship; Colonel Race, whispered to be in the Secret Service; Sir Eustace Pedlar, the owner of the house where the woman's body was found; his secretary, Guy Pagett, who, as Sir Eustace observes, looks far too much like a murderer to actually be one; and the Reverend Edward Chichester, who claims to have spent two years in the interior of Africa - though, observing his pale skin, Anne doubts it. A strange brangle over possession of cabin 17 fixes Anne's suspicions on Pagett and Chichester. Over dinner one night, Colonel Race tells the story of two young men, John Eardsley and Harry Lucas, who some years before were involved in a diamond theft in the Kimberley. The matter was hushed up, and both men subsequently enlisted; Eardsley was killed in action, while Lucas was reported as missing, presumed dead. Race's story is interrupted by the entrance of Sir Eustace's second secretary, a man he knows as Harry Rayburn - but who Anne has come to think of as "the man in the brown suit"...

Published in 1924, Agatha Christie's fourth novel is a stand-alone thriller very much in the mold of The Secret Adversary - meaning that while she succeeds in creating a suspenseful tale of danger and romance and narrow escapes and secret identities, Christie doesn't ask the reader to take it all too seriously. Consequently, a story that encompasses espionage, arms dealing, jewel robbery and murders both successful and attempted is amusingly balanced by dividing the narrator's duties between Anne herself, giving an account of the matter after the event, and Sir Eustace Pedlar, via extracts from his diary which reveal a rather comical gap between that gentleman's public and private personae. Anne's own involvement in the increasingly dangerous business owes less to her presence at the site of the seemingly accidental railway death than it does to a recurrent odour of mothballs; while the narrative is at points dominated by Sir Eustace's escalating feud with a large wooden giraffe owned by Anne and Mrs Blair, which they refuse to leave behind no matter how much inconvenience it causes. The unfortunate Guy Pagett, so perfect a secretary that Sir Eustace simply cannot stand him, suffers karmic punishment when his determination to martyr himself in the cause of doing his professional duty leads to him suffering a host of personal indignities. The others are inclined to treat Pagett as a figure of fun---at least until it is discovered that he was in the vicinity of the unknown woman's murder when he was supposed to be in Italy.

As is progressively revealed, the adventures of Anne Beddingfield are tied to the activities of a criminal syndicate that operates under the orders of a man known only as "the Colonel", who lets others take the risks while he maintains both a safe distance and the secret of his true identity. Predominantly jewel thieves, during the war the syndicate dabbled in espionage, while "the Colonel" is now busy stirring up trouble in South Africa in order to profit from the sale of weapons - to both sides. The dead man of the railway and the murdered woman were both members of the syndicate, and involved in the diamond heist for which Eardsley and Lucas were ultimately blamed; both paid the price for attempting to double-cross "the Colonel". When Anne comes into possession of the missing diamonds at the heart of the matter, what had been merely an exciting game suddenly becomes grimly serious---and then, as she finds herself hiding the man she now knows as Harry Rayburn from the authorities after an attempt upon his life, a matter of life and death...

Along with its thrills and spills (literally: Anne twice nearly falls to her death), The Man In The Brown Suit works a love story into its main narrative, albeit (at least in this reader's opinion) a rather unnerving one - or perhaps, all things considered, primitive might be a better word - as Anne finds herself powerfully attracted to a man who, in spite of her vehement protests to the contrary, she isn't quite sure isn't a thief and a murderer. The novel also offers some fascinating glimpses of South Africa and Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) - granted, from a frankly colonialist perspective - while some important events occur around the Victoria Falls. For Christie fans, The Man In The Brown Suit marks the first appearance of Colonel Race, who reappears in several later novels, usually in company with Hercule Poirot. Here, he plays an undetermined role somewhere between secondary hero and secondary villain, as he falls in love with Anne and so finds himself in competition with the wanted man who he knows only too well is not "Harry Rayburn" at all...

I, priding myself myself upon the role of the watcher, had become the watched. And I was afraid! For the first time, I began to lose my nerve. I was the little bit of grit that was impeding the smooth working of the great machine---and I fancied that the machine would have a short way with bits of grit. Once Harry Rayburn had saved me, once I had saved myself---but I felt suddenly that the odds were heavily against me. My enemies were all around me in every direction, and they were closing in. If I continued to play a lone hand I was doomed...

I've never quite been able to bring myself to read Powder and Patch even though I've read a lot G.H. - and while I loved your review I don't think I'm going to too soon!

I just requested The Man in the Brown Suit - it sounds great.

Thanks, Liz.

Aha, Georgette Heyer. She was just recommended to me a couple of weeks ago by another LTer. Love your review of Powder and Patch, Liz. Had to chuckle in spite of myself at your description of mid-18C talented, versatile men (well, they'd best hope for talented, particularly as regards the sword stuff): wear make-up and a wig, obsess over his clothing, exhibit a taste for jewellery, handle a sword, flirt outrageously, and write poetry. Indeed!

>>#96

Powder And Patch is the shortest of Heyer's novels, Dejah, so at least if you don't care for it, it doesn't really have a chance to wear out its welcome. :)

The Man In The Brown Suit is good fun, in spite of its peculiar central relationship. (I'm not much into the caveman type myself!)

>>#97

Hi, Nancy! I love Georgette, though Powder And Patch isn't entirely a representative work - she was still finding her voice. The situations in it are almost unimaginable these days, though given her reputation for historical accuracy she no doubt has it right. Perhaps we need to think of it in terms of birds, with the male "displaying" for the female rather than the other way around? :)

Tell me---is there ANYTHING more infuriating than your computer freezing 90% of the way through a review you've been wrestling with for over an hour?

If there is, it's probably being certain that you have saved your text, but the computer refusing to give it back anyway...

@#$%!&%$#@!&@#$#@&!!!!!!!

I could have sworn I'd read Powder and Patch, (I've read virtually all the other Heyer's) but your plot summary doesn't sound familiar at all!

As a teenager (some years ago now) I read all the Georgette Heyers but every time I read one now I can't remember a thing about it so either I'm delusional about my early reading or my memory is going (or both!).

>>#100

It's certainly one of the lesser known ones, Rhian. I found it pleasingly unfamiliar - which is to say I've re-read it less often than a number of the others. :)

>>#101

Hi, Kerri! Uhh.. You're delusional? (Is that the right answer??)

Captain Macedoine's Daughter - Born into an English sea-faring family, William McFee served as an engineer in both the merchant service and the Royal Navy. He began to publish sporadically in 1911, and after settling in America in 1924 gave up the sea in order to write full-time. While most of his novels, not surprisingly, do focus upon shipboard life, they are not the usual adventure stories and were praised by contemporary critics for their refusal to romanticise. After reading McFee's 1931 novel, The Harbour-Master, last year, I discovered belatedly that it was part of a series of semi-autobiographical works featuring Chief Engineer Fred Spenlove, his creator's alter-ego. Published in 1920, Captain Macedoine's Daughter resembles its first sequel, inasmuch as it consists largely of Spenlove's ruminations upon such matters as life at sea versus life on land, the relations between the sexes, and the very different viewpoints of western and eastern society, all tied into his recollections of past experiences. However, while in the later novel, which describes a self-evidently doomed love affair between two of his friends Spenlove is only an observer of the main action, here - and in spite of himself - he is necessarily promoted from supporting player to lead actor in the drama he recounts, which centres upon the short unhappy life of Artemisia Macedoine.

While it may or may not be true that he is descended from Alexander of Macedon, as he insists, it is a fact that Captain Macedoine is not a captain at all: he was just mistaken for one because he looks as if he should be. In fact, the "Captain" depends very much upon "looking" something desirable, rather than actually being it; he is a fraud, a self-invented man; a con-artist at best, at worst---well, who knows? Much to everyone's surprise, the Captain was honestly married to Artemisia's mother, but the girl's resultant mixed blood leaves her outside society's firmly shut doors. The novel's fragmented narrative follows Spenlove as he moves in and out of Artemisia's life as his job permits, looking on while the pragmatic girl tries to carve a path for herself through a world that gives her few options. There is a failed love affair, an illegitimate child, a generous but controlling "protector"---and through it all, something unacknowledged between Artemisia and Spenlove, which he denies to himself for as long as he can, and of which she does not speak, in acceptance of the futility of doing so. Only once Artemisia lashes out, with Spenlove bowing his head beneath her sneering observation that the sea is such a useful profession for a man: at the first sign of trouble, he can simply sail away. By the time he steels himself for decisive action, it is far too late: the matter is settled by a bitter twist of fate that for Spenlove is simultaneously a tragedy and a reprieve.

Captain Macedoine's Daughter is a strange mixture of the engaging and the exasperating. Spenlove's tendency to make pronouncements about women and "what they want" is particularly hard to take in the context of a narrative held together by the revelation of his failures and shortcomings; but perhaps that's the point: what use is there in recognising what is wanted if you are unable to give it? Spenlove's indirect analysis of his own inadequacy runs in parallel with the novel's broader themes, as summed up by its epigraph, a faux-quotation from Spenlove himself:

It is an amiable but disastrous illusion on the part of the westerns nations that they have created a monopoly in freedom and truth and the right way to live.

Though Spenlove speaks in the post-war era, he looks back across the years to a time of missed signals. A product of his upbringing, his society and his nation, a reader of the English papers which, as Captain Macedoine observes drily, "print a great deal of football news and racing but pass over a matter like this in silence", he has accepted without thought the prevailing view that war is something that happens somewhere else, politely out of sight. Much of Captain Macedoine's Daughter is given over to the consideration of the failures of the western social system, and the limitations inherent in a certainty of right, both at a personal and a political level. The novel unfolds chiefly in Greece and Turkey, and while the reader is permitted only to catch glimpses of the bigger picture via Spenlove's own piecemeal vision, the cumulative effect is an ominous sense of increasing danger, of great events in the making just beyond our range of vision. At the centre of these events, in one capacity or another, is Captain Macedoine, that outcast from proper society, that bundle of delusions, who Spenlove regards with a kind of fascinated embarrassment as he lurches from one fortune-making scheme to another---yet it is Macedoine who has put the correct interpretation upon the unrest that surrounds him, to which his civilised acquaintances are so dangerously blind, and given up trade concessions for dealing in ammunition and arms. It is 1912...

I suppose I had understood in a vague sort of way, but I certainly had not credited her with any active designs of this sort. And while I sat beside her reflecting upon the precarious nature of a bachelor's existence, I found she had glanced round upon me again, her expression at once critical and derisive. She saw through my sentimental interest in her affairs. She knew that at the first signal of danger to my own peace and position I would sheer off, regretfully but swiftly. Of course she was right. The mere thought of her father and his mangy lieutenant was sufficient. She had so much against her. It was horrible. As I sat there counting up the handicaps which Fate had imposed upon her I was aware of that critical and derisive smile regarding me over her shoulder. And I was ashamed.

...and a very belated April wrap:

April was a strange, struggling month - and a whip around the threads shows that I'm not the only one who found it so. Reading was down, with eleven books completed; but all of them fitted TIOLI, and there were a number of real highlights, including renewing my acquaintance with Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and discovering the bizarrely enjoyable "Cleek" stories of Thomas Hanshew. I continued on with four series, and started one more - of course I did! - as well as continuing my re-reading of Agatha Christie and Georgette Heyer, and my increasingly convoluted investigation of the roots of detective fiction.

However, it seems that the theme for this year is that each month will serve up an "Ew!" read; but at least in April it was confined to a single short story...

April stats:

Mysteries / thrillers / crime: 5 1/2*
Classics: 1**
Sensation novels: 1
Historical romance: 1
Contemporary (i.e. at time of publication) drama: 1
Non-fiction: 1 1/2*

(*John Lang & "The Forger's Wife" is both fiction and non-fiction; **I don't want William Godwin spinning in his grave, so I classified Things As They Are as "classic", not "crime")

Series reading: 5

Male : female authors: 6 : 6

Oldest work: Things As They Are; or, The Adventures Of Caleb Williams by William Godwin (1794)
Newest work: Women Writing Crime Fiction, 1860-1880 by Kate Watson (2012)

Well! - I'm not quite caught up with my reviews (and I have to get at least one more written today, because I have an interlibrary loan due back), but I feel I've made good progress this weekend, particularly considering my computer's ill-timed meltdown. So I'm going to stop here for a moment and have a little celebration.

And we all know what THAT means, right!?---

OMG. Adorable.

The Sixth Journey - Born and raised in Australia, Alice Rosman worked as a journalist while publishing short stories in a variety of magazines. In 1911, after the death of her father, she relocated to England with her mother and sister, and found herself by happy accident in the middle of the Bloomsbury Group. Rosman again found employment as a journalist, but increasingly concentrated upon her fiction, becoming a successful and popular writer. Though her novels may be classified as "romance", Rosman found a way to mix the traditional with the progressive. Her novels tend to be set in a rose-tinted England of country houses and tea parties, while dealing with serious contemporary problems; and although they usually foreground a standard love-and-marriage plot, they became loved for their portraits of happy and contented single women, who are often given the role of Deus ex machina. Rosman's villains, conversely, tend to be monsters of morality, who leave destruction in their wake in the name of a sterile and unforgiving "virtue".

Published in 1931, The Sixth Journey is a good example of Rosman's style. It offers a number of pleasant surprises for the modern reader, including the fact that it isn't really a romance at all---though it starts out looking like one, with the shipboard "cute meet" of architect John Falconer and travel writer Hilary Revel. John is returning to an England that hasn't been home since the early death of his wife, while Hilary has spent ten years as nurse-companion to a brother dying slowly and painfully from injuries sustained in WWI. Both emotionally wounded, the coming together of John and Hilary is slow and tentative, based upon a mutual sense of humour and a willingness to respect one another's boundaries. Their short separation after the ship docks is enough to make John sure of his own feelings; he proposes, and is accepted.

Determined not to repeat his past mistakes, John is frank with Hilary about his illegitimate daughter, Judith, the result of a hasty wartime romance. Learning of the girl's existence only upon the death of her mother several years later, after he had married Sylvia, John made arrangements for her care but did not confide in his wife, fearing the consequences. When Sylvia discovered his secret by accident, she surprised him by making herself responsible for the girl; when her health failed, she passed the responsibility to John's sister, Gertrude Livingstone, a widow with children of her own. Though he is not aware of it himself, John's account of the matter reveals clearly to Hilary the extent to which he has been manipulated by his wife and sister, and that most of their efforts were aimed not at providing for Judith, but at separating her from her father and keeping her hidden from the world at large. Angered by this revelation, Hilary swears to herself that she will never try to "manage" John, nor interfere in his arrangements for Judith...

The Sixth Journey is a scathing indictment of a moral code that can put so-called "decency" ahead ahead of simple kindness, and so justify the emotional abuse of a child. From the moment of her foster-mother's death and her consequent discovery by Sylvia, Judith is relentlessly punished: by Gertrude, who considers her the embodiment of her parents' sin and treats her accordingly; by Sylvia, whose vanity is wounded by her, even as she revels in the pose of magnanimously forgiving wife; and by Maud Tracy, Sylvia's former nurse, a bitter misanthrope who who considers the girl's mere existence an intolerable insult to "her darling". Judith does not understand why she is shunned and isolated and deprived of the things she most desires, but she grasps the lesson that all three have been at pains to teach: that she is guilty of something terrible; that there is something wrong with her... As its narrative progresses, The Sixth Journey spends more and more time inside Judith's consciousness - and an achingly sad and lonely place it is. Banished to the country, Judith holds herself together in the face of Maud Tracy's escalating cruelty by - how can anyone not love this child? - practising her French, running over self-made spelling lists, and deflecting Miss Tracy's calculated insults by mentally correcting her grammar. (Judy, since she didn't know the French for slut, parsed this sentence with great enthusiasm...) Conversely, the novel grows increasingly critical of John and Hilary, both of whom - damning words! - mean well, but whose joint hesitation over Judith has disastrous consequences for the girl. Wrestling with the belated realisation that his perfect Sylvia was anything but, and reluctant to bring the consequences of his past relationships into his engagement to Hilary, John vacillates, trying to believe that Gertrude knows best. Hilary, meanwhile, in her determination not to interfere, likewise fails to act. It takes a most unlikely hero to rescue Judith: her young cousin, Prue Livingstone, who in spite of an alienating rudeness of manner almost defines the expression "her heart is in the right place", and who between her disgust with her mother and her growing anger at John and Hilary is finally driven to decisive action...

    Prudence might be angry, but she was determined to be just. This was no fault of Miss Revel's, but of the Falconer-Livingstone family. Prue was ashamed of them, but would not broadcast their infamy until all other means were exhausted. Uncle John? Here at last was an inspiration surely? He had silenced her mother that night at Wandsworth in a way which seemed to suggest he could put his foot down, even if Aunt Sylvia had once run him at her chariot wheels... She reached for a sheet of notepaper, and after careful thought decided that here brevity was the best spice for her tale.
    "Dear Uncle John,---I happened to be passing Beech Farm, Haydon, Bedfordshire, and saw Judy. You may like to know that Tracy is calling her a bastard to her face.---Yours truly, Prudence Livingstone."

Sigh.

I enjoyed The Sixth Journey, so it pains me to acknowledge that it blots its copy-book towards the end - actually on the last page - via the use of an out-of-the-blue racial slur. The word isn't used maliciously - it isn't aimed at anybody - but still it is there; and after having been so critical of The Wisdom Of Father Brown for its open prejudice, I didn't feel I could let it pass without comment.

And the other thing about The Sixth Journey is that it was published by Mills and Boon.

Which means I've read two Mills and Boon-s in the past couple of weeks.

OH. MY. GOD.

>>#106

Hi, Laura - glad you like him! :)

Finished Silver Fork Society: Fashionable Life And Literature From 1814-1840 for TIOLI #8.

Now reading Ruth Fielding At Silver Ranch for TIOLI #9.

Finished Ruth Fielding At Silver Ranch; or, Schoolgirls Among The Cowboys for TIOLI #9.

Now reading A White Bird Flying by Bess Streeter Aldrich, for TIOLI #10.

Finished A White Bird Flying for TIOLI #10.

Now back to The Memoirs Of Vidocq for TIOLI #15.

Finished Volume 2 of The Memoirs Of Vidocq for TIOLI #15.

Now reading Return I Dare Not by Margaret Kennedy for TIOLI #14.

Memoirs Of Vidocq - In June, 1827, after eighteen years of service including sixteen as the head of the Brigade de la Sûreté (later called the Sûreté Nationale, then simply the Sûreté), Eugène François Vidocq resigned. A year earlier, Jean Henry, the former police chief of Paris, who had sponsored and protected Vidocq since he had offered his services as a police spy in 1809, had been forced into retirement, and his successor, Marc Duplessis, devoted much time and energy to making Vidocq's situation impossible. Vidocq's years of service had made him wealthy, and after his separation from the police he embarked upon two ambitious projects. The first was the founding of a paper mill in the town of Saint-Mandé in which he employed former convicts, men and women, who could not find honest employment elsewhere. This philanthropic project ultimately failed, bankrupting Vidocq, because his potential customers refused to pay market price for goods they assumed (incorrectly) to have been produced for slave-labour wages.

While the mill was being established, Vidocq also devoted himself to the production of his memoirs, which were published in France in 1828. It is generally assumed that Vidocq had a ghostwriter, although no-one has been identified as contributing to the project. Vidocq himself has some peculiar things to say upon the subject. In a lengthy foreword to the first volume, he takes pains to explain to the reader that a portion of his memoirs was interfered with. Having finished the first draft of his text in January 1828, Vidocq suffered an accident and nearly lost his right arm. While recovering, he was persuaded to give the task of preparing his memoirs for the press to "a writer well spoken of in the literary world". However, upon examining the proofs of the first and second volumes in July, Vidocq discovered to his horror that they had been tampered with, blackening his own name and removing from the text all unflattering references to authority figures. Furthermore (and he seems more indignant about this than the factual alterations), "I was shocked at the multitude of vicious conversations, long circumlocutions, and prolix phrases, in which the ear, good sense, and syntax, were equally offended..." Vidocq places the blame for this hatchet job on his enemies in the police force.

Vidocq's first impulse, he asserts, was to destroy the bastardised work, but the first volume was on the verge of publication and the second in advanced production. To renege on the project was an expense he could not bear. He therefore compromised by appending an outline of the situation, explaining what had happened and, effectively, disclaiming responsibility for all of the first volume and a portion of the second, admitting authorship only for that portion of the narrative dealing with his life after a stint with some privateers. In fact, he insists, he should not have to say this; it should be evident when the writing is his own work and when it is not: "After my enlistment amongst the pirates at Boulogne, it will be perceived easily that it is I who hold the pen. The prose is such as M. Baron Pasquier was pleased to approve, for which he even had a predilection which he did not conceal. I ought to remember the eulogiums he passed on the abriged reports which I addressed to him..."

As with almost everything else in these memoirs, it is impossible to be sure of the truth of Vidocq's assertions. However, the reader cannot help but notice that the portion of the narrative which he disclaims is that dealing with his criminal youth; his acceptance of responsibility for the manuscript coincides with his abandoning a life of crime and trying to reform.

Funny, that.

The first volume of The Memoirs Of Vidocq covers the years 1775 - 1899, from the birth of Eugène François Vidocq (usually called François) in the town of Arras in northern France, to his escape from the notorious Bagne of Toulon. The son of a baker, the young François developed a precocious taste for wine, women and song, as well as a reputation as a brawler and a duellist. (He also acquired the nickname Vautrin, meaning "wild boar" in the local dialect, a name later appropriated by Honoré de Balzac for a character based upon Vidocq.) His expensive tastes led him to embark upon a criminal path at the age of fourteen, by robbing his own parents and running away. Stints in the army followed, with duelling and discipline more prominent in Vidocq's career than actual service, and a pattern of desertion and re-enlistment under a false identity soon developed. His first serious stint in prison came not as a result of criminal activity, but after being denounced to the revolutionary council in Arras by a vindictive rival.

There is an amusing sort of self-absorption about Vidocq's recounting of his history, with events in the world at large appearing in the narrative only so far as they affect himself. For instance, this period of imprisonment, in which he is threatened with the guillotine for, supposedly, "speaking ill of the Sans Culottes", is the only time that the French Revolution comes to the forefront: "Having left prison, I was conducted with great state to the patriotic society, where they made me take the oath of fidelity to the republic, and hatred to tyrants. I swore all they desired. What sacrifice will not a man make to procure his freedom!"

It is a constant theme throughout the memoir that Vidocq was not truly of a criminal nature, but merely "led astray"; in keeping with this, the turning point of his life is being convicted of a crime he did not commit. After stupidly kicking up a ruckus upon catching his mistress with another man, Vidocq serves a short sentence in the prison called the Petit Hotel, where a conspiracy is afoot to provide forged documents to facilitate the escape of one of the prisoners. Though not involved himself, Vidocq is pressured into giving up his private cell (to which he is entitled by virtue of his military service) to the men during the day; when the plot is exposed and the escapee recaptured, he names Vidocq as one of his co-conspirators. The others agree together to throw the bulk of the blame upon Vidocq and falsely swear that he was the one who forged the official seal on the documentation. They are believed, and Vidocq finds himself sentenced to eight years as a "galley-slave", one of those kept perpetually in chains and fetters in the brutal Bagne of Toulon. Although he manages to escape, the severity of the crime for which he was convicted, in contrast to the comparative triviality of his earlier offences, makes him a hunted man with a possible death sentence in his future...

The first volume of The Memoirs Of Vidocq is, as I feared it might be, rather a grim slog, with the narrative becoming an increasingly wearying round of criminal acts, arrests, imprisonments, escapes and false identities. However, perseverance does yield material of greater interest. Vidocq's experiences as a galley-slave scar him profoundly, and are a major impetus for his eventual reformation, a fact not only of historical but great literary importance, as this passage in Vidocq's life was the inspiration for Jean Valjean's similar sufferings in Les Miserables. Historians, I know, value these memoirs for what they reveal about this period in European history, in particular the shifting allegiances and conflicts of the time. For myself, I found Vidocq's various ruminations upon the penal system surprisingly progressive and insightful, particularly his recognition of how the indiscriminate mingling of types and ages produces more criminals than it reforms. (His frankness regarding male prostitution, homosexuality and rape in prison was unexpected and startling - not your usual 19th century fare!) The greatest interest of this volume for me was, however, of a peculiarly personal nature: Vidocq's consideration of alternatives to imprisonment suddenly morphs into a critical analysis of the British system of convict transportation. Clearly there were those who were pushing for France to adopt a similar system, but Vidocq is strongly against it. In support of his views, he presents first a rather prettified picture of the convict / colonial experience (which, we assume, was the kind of propaganda being offered by the pro-transportation lobby), then counters it with a nightmarish account of what was actually going on in New South Wales - one so inaccurate, I confess it gave me the giggles...

I never was so wretched as after my entry at the Bagne at Toulon. Cast at twenty-four years of age amongst the most abandoned wretches, and necessarily in contact with them, although I would have preferred a hundred times to be reduced to living in the midst of people infected with the plague,---compelled only to see and hear degraded beings, whose minds were incessantly bent on devising evil schemes, I feared the dire contagion of such vicious society. When, day and night, in my presence, they openly practised the most vile and demoralised actions, I was not so confident in the strength of my own character as not to fear that I might become but too much familiarised with such atrocious and dangerous conversation. In fact, I had resisted many dangerous temptations; but want, misery, and the thirst of liberty, will often involuntarily tempt us to step towards crime. I had never been in any situation where it was more positively incimbent on me to attempt an escape; and henceforward all my ideas and thoughts were turned to the compassing of this measure...

Imagine if you can my startled delight upon learning, courtesy of The Memoirs Of Vidocq, that it was a common thing for convicts in Australia to steal a ship and turn pirate!

To be clear, there were indeed various instances of convicts "turning pirate" in the sense of commandeering a ship (legally termed "piracy") in order to make an escape---but not, alas, in the "Arrr, matey!" sense, which is what Vidocq seems to have believed.

The Mystery Of Hunting's End - As a frightened seventeen-year-old, swayed by ominous hints of personal and professional scandal, Matil Kingery remained silent while her father's friends and business associates covered up the facts surrounding his death: it was not heart failure, as ruled by a venal coroner, but murder... Now, five years later, Matil is determined to discover the truth. She reassembles the same house party at Hunting's End, Huber Kingery's isolated hunting lodge; as she comments cynically, the guests come because they are afraid not to: Julian Barre, Kingery's best friend and business partner; Gerald Frawley, Laurence Killian and Newell Morse, three young men with positions in the Kingery Trust Company; Helene Paggi, once the dead man's mistress, and her opera-singer husband, José; and the widowed Baronness Terice von Turcum, who aspired to marry Kingery. Even Brunker, the manservant, and Annette, the cook, are back again. The only outsiders are the police detective Lance O'Leary, to whom Matil has appealed for help, who comes posing as a friend of hers, and Nurse Sarah Keate, officially there to tend the invalid Lucy Kingery, who has been "not quite right" since discovering her brother's body, but unofficially to act as O'Leary's eyes and ears. The atmosphere at the lodge is understandably strained, and not improved by the realisation that someone will have to sleep in the room in which Huber Kingery died; it is finally taken by Gerald Frawley. Late that night, unable to sleep, Miss Keate is going to the kitchen when she hears the murmur of voices in Frawley's room. Frankly curious, she joins an equally sleepless José Paggi before the dying fire. Suddenly, the silence is shattered by a shot. After a frozen moment, the panicked guests rush from all corners of the lodge towards Frawley's room, where - like Kingery before him - he lies shot dead. No gun is found at the scene; the internal doors and windows are locked; and yet Sarah Keate is sure that no-one left the room...

The third entry in Mignon Eberhart's series featuring the unlikely detective duo of Sarah Keate and Lance O'Leary is an effective and grimly atmospheric mystery. As always, the central relationship is a large part of the charm. From initial respect, grudging on her part and amused on his, the two have grown into a state of genuine if unspoken affection; though not, I hasten to add, of anything even vaguely resembling the romantic kind. On the contrary, Sarah's attitude towards her unofficial partner is rather that of a caring but critical older sister. O'Leary, for his part, has learned to put a high value upon Sarah's powers of observation. Though she has a tendency to put the wrong construction upon what she observes, it is invariably a snippet of information or an odd detail gathered by Sarah that allows O'Leary to solve the case - which in this instance is a classic "locked room" mystery. The sandhills of northern Nebraska (where Mignon Eberhart lived as a newlywed) provide an eerie backdrop to this novel, while a genuinely unnerving sense of claustrophia takes hold when the area is hit by a violent storm and the increasingly frantic house guests realise not just that they are snowed in with no means of communicating with the outside world, but trapped with a murderer. Nerves that were already frayed begin to unravel altogether as the horror of the situation mounts. There is, for one thing, the necessity of leaving Gerald Frawley's body where it is - "on ice", as it were - as the chilling cold outside begins to permeate the house, and supplies of food and fuel start to run low. The final straw is a lean, unlovely cat that turns up in the middle of the storm like a bird feline of ill omen and horrifies the party by deliberately swerving away from the room in which Huber Kingery died - as if seeing something that they cannot. The cat is later found sleeping on the bed on which Gerald Frawley's body once lay. The body, however, has disappeared...

The most unexpected aspect of The Mystery Of Hunting's End is its strong vein of social commentary. The guests assembled at Hunting's End represent the elite of Barrington, a city where Lance and Sarah are merely workers. Upon their arrival at the lodge they are prepared to go through the usual rituals of polite behaviour, despite the obvious tensions; but when, in the wake of Gerald Frawley's death, O'Leary necessarily drops his disguise, the reaction of the guests is not relief, but anger at Matil and open hostility towards the detective. No-one shows any interest in solving either Huber Kingery or Gerald Frawley's murder, and O'Leary's dogged investigation learns why: Kingery was, as his unnervingly spider-like sister, Lucy, puts it, "a man who cheated everyone", financially as well as emotionally; the whole gathering suffered at his hands, one way or another. The story that emerges is one of mismanagement, if not outright malfeasance, at the Kingery Trust Company, and the bribing of the coroner in the wake of Kingery's murder was to spare more reputations than his. Arrogantly confident that the authorities will continue to accept their version of events, the house guests at first view O'Leary as simply a minor inconvenience, assuming that they may buy his silence as they did the coroner's before him; but when it is finally borne upon them that the detective is determined to get to the bottom of both murders, it becomes a question of whether the simplest way of resolving the situation might not be a third...?

The way we separated and went to our rooms was the most perplexing and strangely terrifying thing in the world. You see, we all realized quite perfectly that there was no murderer hidden in any room for---were we not all there together? Had we not seen Brunker going up the stairs and into his own room on the gallery? Did we not know that Annette was bolted securely, probably with bottle, into her own room off the kitchen? And the rest of us---were all together. The murderer, whoever it was, was there in plain sight all the time, was one of us. I marvel yet that we could go along, eat a little, sleep a little, carry on somehow, never knowing when our hands were touching hands that were red, when our eyes were meeting eyes that held blood-guilt...

Finished Return I Dare Not by Margaret Kennedy for TIOLI #14.

Now reading Poirot Investigates by Agatha Christie for TIOLI #9.

You made me laugh out loud at your Mills and Boon horror back in post #109 - I may have actually snorted....

I particularly enjoyed your review of The Sixth Journey - I'm not familiar with Rosman's work, but I may have to give her a try. I skipped the review of The Mystery of Hunting's End because I'm hoping to get to the series soon.

Hi, Dejah!

I do try not to be a book snob, so I shouldn't be unkind about M&B, I guess...but it's a struggle. :) The unexpected shift in perspective made The Sixth Journey very engaging. I'm also hoping I can find a few more of Rosman's books tucked away in libraries.

I'll be very interested to hear what you make of the Eberhart series.

Kiss Millie for me!

Liz> Do you think The Mystery of Hunting's End would work without reading the first two in the series> The ratings for those two are pretty low, but this one sounds somewhat interesting. If it won't work well alone, I've already got plenty of books in my TBR list anyway.

Hi, Lori. Yes, you probably could read it as a stand-alone; the stories themselves don't overlap much. What you would miss would be the development of the relationship between Sarah and Lance. For what it's worth I enjoyed the first two entries in the series, but I would agree that The Mystery Of Hunting's End is the strongest of the three.

Finished Poirot Investigates for TIOLI #9.

And now...I'm rather pleased with myself, because while I love to play TIOLI, I usually end up slotting in books I was going to read anyway rather than expanding my reading by finding something unplanned that fits the challenge - which which would be more in the spirit of the thing. However, this month Luci's "Maggie's Farm" challenge has prompted me to put aside the planned reads and dig out one particular book. Because when I think about the Thatcher years, the first thing that comes to mind isn't necessarily rising unemployment, or miners' strikes, or rioting, or even the Falklands War; it's, well...

...horror movies.

So. Now reading Seduction Of The Gullible: The Curious History Of The British "Video Nasties" Phenomenon by John Martin.

123 > I'll have to remember you've put Poirot Investigates in TIOLI # 9, it's on my TBR list for this month as well.

Hi, Samantha - thanks for visiting! I'm always pleased to have a shared read. :) It's quite a quick read, too, so I should probably suggest it on the thread.

#94 I'm proud to have read and enjoyed my first Mills and Boon novel thanks to you Liz! :-) I'm intrigued by the removal of the final chapter in later editions though - have you been able to find out what the last chapter was?

#95 & #123 Whoops, I'm two books behind on the Agatha Christie rereads. I'm going to try and squeeze in Poirot Investigates this month too.

#105 Love the sloth cuteness!

#107 - 109 The Sixth Journey sounds really interesting (despite the racial slur and the Mills and Boon-ness). Sadly no copies in the UK but I've added an abebooks 'want'.

#115 "The first volume of The Memoirs Of Vidocq is, as I feared it might be, rather a grim slog" I'm glad I passed on that in the end - it was much more entertaining to just read your review :-)

Hi, Heather! No, I know nothing more about the end of Powder And Patch. I think at that time, though many of their books could be broadly classified as "romance", Mills and Boon were a more general publisher with a wider scope for submitting authors. At any rate, honesty compels me to stand up and say, I ENJOYED THE TWO MILLS AND BOON NOVELS I'VE READ THIS YEAR. :)

Ooh, yes, please do join me for Poirot Investigates!

No, I don't think there's any real need for you to allow my OCD to drag you into Vidocq's memoirs. I promise I'll report back on anything relevant to the timeline! - but I think that this is more likely to end up being useful background information to future reading, rather than useful in and of itself. The second volume, where he hooks up with the police, is an improvement over the first, though.

Just a reminder to those who are intending (or hoping) to join in---there will be a group read of Framley Parsonage, the fourth of Anthony Trollope's Barsetshire novels, in June. At the moment we are are planning to kick it off at the beginning of the month, and I will be setting up the thread next Friday.

Hope to see you there!

Decisions, decisions, yet again...

A remark I made recently on Suzanne's thread about the distinction between "historical fiction" and "historical romance" has made me think about my re-reading of Georgette Heyer. I have so far left her historical novels out of the re-read, indicating that I made the distinction above without even thinking about it...which is rather revealing.

Heyer's historical novels were like a thorn in her flesh. She was irrestistibly drawn back this branch of writing again and again, but was either so dissatisfied with the results that she suppressed them herself, or suffered the disappointment of having her work ignored by a public that never stopped demanded more period romances. Heyer's only true success in this area was An Infamous Army, which brilliantly blends both branches of writing; her six pure historical novels vie with her contemporary dramas for the dubious honour of being her least known works.

After vacillating over the question in my usual OCD manner, I think I'm going to carry on with the romances, then return to the historical novels later on.

For the record, the historical novels are:

The Great Roxhythe (1923)
Simon The Coldheart (1925)
Beauvallet (1929)
The Conqueror (1931)
Royal Escape (1938)
The Spanish Bride (1940)
My Lord John (1975)

I've never really considered any of Heyer's historical novels either although I've read most of her romances. Maybe I should give them a go. I've been wanting to read Framley Parsonage ever since I read Tooth and Claw earlier in the year, which is supposedly based on it (but with dragons). But I've got the rest of the Barsetshire novels to get through first: The Warden is currently waiting to be listened to on audio.

#130 I've done that the other way round and have been waiting to start Tooth and Claw until I've read Framley Parsonage :-)

I read Simon The Coldheart years ago (decades ago, actually) and all I can remember is that it was horrible. Truly. Are you sure you want to add them in?

>>#130

Hi, Rhian! Glad to welcome another member to the Trollope fold! The Barsetshire novels certainly are best read in order - please feel free to access the previous discussion threads and ask further questions or leave comments if you like. The Warden in particular (as Heather can attest!) can be a bit impenetrable for modern readers. :)

>>#131

That is one of odder "tributes" I've ever come across!

>>#132

Heyer felt as you do, Dejah - she was so unhappy with The Great Roxhythe and Simon The Coldheart that she withdrew them after their initial publication and asked that they not be republished after her death. Her son, Ronald, who was her executor, did as she asked about The Great Roxhythe (although it seems to have been released recently in a limited American edition; a first US edition), but he apparently felt she'd been too hard on Simon The Coldheart and did allow that to be reissued.

As for me "adding them on"--- Hey, you know me and my wishlist: just because I say I'll get to them "someday", it doesn't actually mean I will get to them someday. :)

#129 So which is going to be your next Heyer romance? These Old Shades?

I've read These Old Shades so many times...it was one of my favorites when I was younger.

Yes and yes, ladies. Hopefully there will be a nice cooperative challenge for it next month. (Won't be mine, of course: I've got other fish to fry...)

Tish: The Chronicle Of Her Escapades And Excursions - Mary Roberts Rinehart's second volume describing the misadventures of Letitia 'Tish' Carberry and her friends Aggie Pilkington and Lizzie (who, as narrator, has not yet deigned to reveal her surname to us) consists of five short novellas - long short stories? - that were written across the years 1914 - 1916. Much of the humour of this series lies not just in the situations that the ladies manage to get themselves into, courtesy of Tish's generalship, but the contrast between their actual behaviour and society's expectations for women of their age---whatever that is. The ladies themselves tend to be a little vague on that point, although we may reasonably infer that they are somewhere between their late forties and early fifties...which not only makes the various references to them as "elderly" somewhat confronting for this reader (and note the depiction of Tish herself on that cover image!), but also makes it very easy to sympathise even with their more ridiculous ventures---from which, by the way, they tend to emerge triumphant, if not always quite in one piece.

The least successful story in this collection is the second one, Wolf In The Fold, which finds the ladies getting ever more entangled in the personal affairs of a young Syrian refugee. The situations are funny, but the racial and class assumptions underlying the story are not, while the ending is just plain uncomfortable: the trio do not come out of this one smelling of roses.

However, the rest of the volume finds us in more agreeable territory. In Mind Over Motor, Tish's passion for automobiles and high speeds finds her providing the financial backing for a provincial motor-race. When it turns out that the race is a "fix" - and when, upon the arrival of the police, her business partner does a runner - there's simply nothing for it but for Tish to jump behind the wheel and try to win the purse herself... Tish's sudden disgust with civilisation in The Simple Lifers has her dragging Aggie and Lizzie into an isolated corner of Maine, where she intends that the three of them will shed all their usual comforts, live off the land, and think profound thoughts. The three are distracted from the latter, at least, by the discovery that they are sharing their valley with a young man sent there to prove himself worthy of a certain young woman with a disapproving father. Always sympathetic to lovers, the ladies can't help but lend a hand... Not having had their fill of the woods, in Tish's Spy the friends set out for a camping holiday in Canada, taking along the young woman Tish has employed as her chauffeur---who is followed into the wilderness by two different but equally determined men. A series of strange occurrences convinces Tish that they have inadvertently stumbled into a nest of spies... In a spirit of "see your own country first", in My Country Tish Of Thee the three head for Glacier National Park, where to Tish's outrage they find the pristine wilderness invaded by a movie crew staging fake bandit raids upon the tourists to drum up publicity. Determined to teach the interlopers a lesson, Tish decides to intervene and perform a citizens' arrest on the "bandits". There's just one problem...

There are plenty of laughs to be found in Tish, not just in the details of the friends' various "escapades and excursions", but also with respect to the "elderly" ladies' frequent regretful headshaking over "young people these days", who they find disappointingly conservative and unadventurous, not to mention easily shocked. Another, more serious highlight is the heartfelt descriptions of the remote areas in which three of the stories are set. Mary Roberts Rinehart was quite the adventurer herself, and in 1916 and 1918 published two lengthy travelogues describing her own experiences in Glacier National Park; My Country Tish Of Thee reflects both her personal knowledge and her feelings about the region. However, for the modern reader there are a few contentious points in this volume, even aside from the prejudices expressed in Wolf In The Fold. As was also the case with The Amazing Adventures Of Letitia Carberry, this collection contains a disturbing amount of animal killing - although here, at least, it is due to the ladies "living off the land" or defending themselves in the wildnerness, not just the result of Tish's reckless driving. Also a bit discomforting is the collection's fairly casual attitude to what it likes to call "the European war" - the main significance of which here is that the three can't have the holiday they planned. Still, no doubt this accurately reflects the time and place in which these stories were written. I gather that the next volume in the series understandably views what was no longer "the European war" in a very different light...

    I suppose there is something in all of us that harks back to the soil. When you come to think of it, what are picnics but outcroppings of instinct? No one really enjoys them or expects to enjoy them, but with the first warm days some prehistoric instinct takes us out into the woods, to fry potatoes over a strangling wood fire and spend the next week getting grass stains out of our clothes. It must be instinct; every atom of intelligence warns us to stay at home near the refrigerator.
    Tish is really a child of instinct. She is intelligent enough, but in a contest between instinct and brains, she always follows her instinct. Aggie under the same circumstances follows her heart. As for me, I generally follow Tish and Aggie, and they've led me into some curious places...

#133 I've started listening to The Warden on audio, and loving it so far. I really like Trollope slightly ironical style.

Your quoll picks are very cute!
but the contrast between their actual behaviour and society's expectations for women of their age---whatever that is. LOL - sounds like Jeeves & Wooster meets Mrs Pollifax

>>#138

Very glad to hear you're enjoying it, Rhian!

>>#139

Hi, Katie! Whoo - more quoll love! That's a great description of the Tish books. :)

...there are always such interesting books on your thread! My goodness, I'd never have heard of these before if it wasn't for your reading (Poirot aside). I love it!

Silver Fork Society: Fashionable Life And Literature From 1814-1840 - During the first half of the 19th century, from the end of the Napoleonic Wars to the advent of Victoria, the literary world became increasingly dominated by a school of novel-writing devoted to what we might call "Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous": that is, the depiction of the rituals and privileges of the aristocracy. Not everyone was happy about it. The critic William Hazlitt coined the pejorative term "silver fork novel" to describe this particular trend, specifically in reference to the novels of Theodore Hook who (among other sins, real and perceived) was not even properly of the society he aspired to describe, and who had besides, in Hazlitt's opinion, a very peculiar fixation, one which he revealed again and again during his countless dinner-table scenes:

"Provided a few select persons eat fish with silver forks, he considers it a circumstance of no consequence if a whole country starves; but these privileged persons are surely not thinking all the time and every day of their lives of that which Mr Theodore Hook has never forgotten since he first witnessed it, viz. that they eat their fish with a silver fork."

For approximately twenty years, the English devoured these vivid accounts of upper-class life. For the aristocracy, they were an amusing mirror; for those with social aspirations, a guidebook; for the rest, either a glimpse of a dazzlingly exclusive world to which they could not even dream of finding an entrance, a shocking exposé of aristocratic immorality, or a comforting reminder that wealth does not necessarily bring happiness. Then, almost overnight, these most fashionable of novels became unfashionable; what had made them so popular in the easy-going days of the Regency and under the profligate rule of George IV put them beyond the pale in a society increasingly gripped by (in the mournful words of Alfred Doolittle) middle-class morality. The silver fork novels disappeared from the shelves of the circulating libraries, to be replaced by more "improving" tomes; very few were reprinted, and even those tended to be bowdlerised. Within a surprisingly short space of time, it was if they had never existed.

And this subset of writing remained largely disregarded until almost 150 years had passed, when academics began to realise that these novels, whatever their literary shortcomings, offered an extraordinarily detailed window into early 19th century life. One of the first important studies in this area was Alison Adburgham's Silver Fork Society: Fashionable Life And Literature From 1814-1840, which traces in parallel the ups and downs of English high society and the novels that described it during the stated period. From my own warped perspective, its mixture of famous people and obscure books makes it quite irresistible.

Adburgham's study is arranged chronologically. It offers an outline of the shifting social world of the Regency, and describes institutions of particular importance at the time---giving an account of the founding and operation of Almack's, for example---and uses extracts from letters and diaries to add an insider's view. The text moves through the years noting important events and outrageous scandals, particularly as they affected people in the literary world or were reflected in the writing of the time. In novelistic terms, the study is bookended by the 1816 publication of Lady Caroline Lamb's Glenarvon, a roman à clef describing her affair with Lord Byron, and by the appearance in 1841 of Catherne Gore's Cecil; or, The Adventures Of A Coxcomb, a clever and satirical work that Adburgham annoints as "the silver fork novel to end all silver fork novels"---which, as it turned out, was true literally as well as figuratively. As Adburgham comments, the years in between were "a lacuna in the sequence of English fiction writing"; Jane Austen was gone, and Dickens and Thackeray were twenty years in the future. Few of the novelists working in this period have retained any reputation; their books, like the society they described, burned brightly but briefly. Yet the very ephemerality of this branch of writing, its fixation upon the here-and-now, makes it peculiarly revealing.

At the very beginning, we do indeed find Theodore Hook, soon inadvertently to give a title to this new school of writing. Hook was a rabid Tory who as editor of the magazine John Bull launched savage personal attacks upon the Whigs, those who criticised the Prince Regent (who became George IV in 1820), and anyone else whose politics, morals or character he didn't like. (It was standard practice at the time for a novel to be praised or damned in the magazines according to the relative politics of the author and critic.) Hook's early writings, while they did describe the behaviours of the upper classes, were predominantly cruel portraits of the nouveau riche, who aped the manners of their betters but gave themselves away at every clumsy turn. It was the publisher Henry Colburn who realised the market potential for sketches of the aristocracy written from the inside. He began courting aspiring writers with connections, talent being less important than a title: his first recruits were Lady Morgan, the former Sydney Owenson, and Lady Charlotte Bury. Colburn used his own magazines to promote his novelists, penning cunning "puff pieces" that dismissed the works of Hook and his ilk as poor imitations from the outside, and hinted at aristocratic authorship, first-hand knowledge of "the great world", and satirical sketches of famous people. The tactic worked, and the silver fork novel proper was born.

Though most of the silver fork novelists are forgotten today, some authors more famous for other genres did dabble in this school of writing, including Edward Bulwer-Lytton, whose Pelham is described here as "impudently witty", and the young Benjamin Disraeli (like Theodore Hook, an outsider desperate to become an insider), whose Vivian Grey and The Young Duke reveal quite as much about their author and his ambitions as they do about the world they describe. Lady Morgan, who had earned her reputation by writing impassioned and well-received stories about her native Ireland, responded to Henry Colburn's financial overtures with some half-a-dozen social novels. Lady Charlotte Bury, who had a poor clergyman husband and nine children from her first marriage to support, had been writing to supplement her slender income before her recruitment by Henry Colburn; she published regularly between 1815 and her death in 1861, including more than a dozen novels of the silver fork variety. Marguerite, Countess of Blessington (whose husband notoriously "bought" her from her then-protector), likewise tried to keep herself afloat by writing after being widowed, and progressively shut out from a society prepared to tolerate her as the wife of an Earl but not as a single woman. Other authors of note in this area include Letitia Elizabeth Landon (better known as the poet L.E.L.), Thomas Henry Lister, Robert Plumer Ward and Lord Normanby. However, without doubt the champion silver fork novelist was Catherine Gore, who between 1830 and 1841 wrote no less than eighteen of the breed, which were enthusiastically embraced for their accuracy of detail, their satrical edge, and above all their sparkling dialogue. Alison Adburgham devotes considerable space to Gore's career, and rightly so: in the pages of her witty novels she captures daily life for the fortunate few who comprised the British upper classes; the contradictions, the rituals, the scandals, the pleasures and the pains of an era.

There were other writers of fashionable novels who had been born into the society whose shibboleths they satirised, whose personalities they portrayed, whose style of living they faithfully depicted---verisimilitude to the day-to-day detail of fashionable living was an important feature of the genre... The novels were handbooks to the language of the beau monde, to the etiquette of chaperonage, to permissible and impermissible flirations, to extra-marital affairs, to all modish attitudes and affectations; and in addition to the social climbers for whom the novels were guide books, there was an ever-increasing readership composed of middle-class suscribers to circulating libraries in all parts of the country. For them, the novels had the fascination of voyeurism into upper-class life. And for us, some hundred and fifty years on, they provide an enlightening record of aristocratic manners and morals, language and behaviour, houses and carriages, hotels and clubs, shops, theatres, balls and masquerades, fêtes champêtres and country house parties...

Ruth Fielding At Silver Ranch; or, Schoolgirls Among The Cowboys - The fifth entry in the series picks up immediately after the events described in its predecessor, Ruth Fielding At Lighthouse Point, and finds our band of friends on their way to Montana. While having a seaside holiday, Ruth and her cronies befriended a girl who called herself simply "Nita", but who turned out to be Jane Ann Hicks, the runaway niece of a wealthy cattle-rancher. (Disliking her own name, Jane Ann picked a new one from a novel.) In relief at finding the girl safe and well, and grateful for their rescue of her from a man who, upon discovering her identity, tried to hold her to ransom, Bill Hicks immediately invited Jane Ann's new friends to stay at Silver Ranch.

Even by the always energetic standards of this series, Ruth Fielding At Silver Ranch moves at a breakneck pace, with Ruth dashing from one adventure to the next with barely an opportunity to catch her breath. Ruth and her companions have barely arrived in Montana before their car is caught between a potential stampede and an attack by a notoriously dangerous steer known as Old Trouble-Maker. From there, the friends witness a wildfire and an actual stampede, survive a ride in an out-of-control wagon on a dangerous mountain pass, explore the vast but isolated territory in which the ranch is situated, attend a dance, and even find time to play matchmaker between a good-natured but bashful ranch hand and the local school-marm; while Ruth herself is sequentially menaced by a bear, a puma and a wolf. As always, a major attraction of the narrative is its prevailing assertion that anything boys can do, girls can - and should - do, too. Ruth develops into both a skilful rider and a fair shot during her time on Silver Ranch, and "rides herd" at night with Jane Ann---finding herself one of those battling the stampede when a violent electrical storm panics the cattle. However, even this pales beside her experiences at the isolated Tintacker Mine, when, after being left to nurse a solitary fever-victim while her companion goes for help, she finds his life and her own in deadly peril from a marauding wolf...

It is probably for the best that Ruth Fielding At Silver Ranch never gives the reader much of a chance to stop and think about Ruth's increasingly wild adventures. However, the issue of its heroine's myriad narrow escapes aside for the moment, a couple of uncomfortable things about this entry in the series do force themselves upon the attention. The first is that the narrative, short as it is, contains numerous scenes of animal killing, all graphically described; and while none of it is gratuitous in context, the cumulative effect is rather upsetting. Also disturbing is the novel's confused attitude to its non-white characters, namely, the Mexican ranch-hands and a Native American cowboy. In the former case, bizarrely, one of the characters is reprimanded for using derogatory language about the Mexicans; the novel itself then proceeds to call them "Greasers". In the latter, Jib Pottoway - despite being either "a half-breed" or "a full-blooded savage", the text can't quite decide; either way, he says "Ugh!" a lot - is given a pass mark because he's been to an eastern school and had a "white" education (better yet, he used to play football), and is held up to the reader as evidence of the wisdom of the government's paternalistic policies.

On the other hand, Ruth Fielding At Silver Ranch offers a more complex narrative than usual, with a serious story arc carrying on from the preceding entry. In that earlier story, Ruth's miserly Uncle Jabez, having been lured out of character into investing in a silver mine, loses a large sum of money when the venture apparently fails; the suggestion is, he was swindled by a con-artist. As a consequence, Jabez tells Ruth that he cannot afford to send her back to Briarwood School, a bitter blow for the girl. Part of Ruth's eagerness to visit Silver Ranch is because of its (comparative) proximity to the mine in question. She takes the opportunity to look into its history, its ownership and its earning potential, learning that it was recently acquired by a young man calling himself John Cox. After the wildfire, Ruth hears wrathful talk about a stranger in the area who the cowboys consider "plumb loco", and sets out to investigate whether this could be the elusive John Cox. In the process, she learns the truth about her Uncle Jabez's investment, and discovers a startling connection between the wandering stranger and one of the members of her own party...

    The fangs of the beast were exposed. The jaws dripped saliva, and the eyes seemed blood-red. A more awful sight the girl had never seen. This fierce, hungry creature was even more terrifying in appearance than the bear that had chased her in the cañon. He seemed, indeed, more savage and threatening than the puma that Jib had roped that forenoon as they rode over to Tintacker.
    He turned squarely and faced her. He was not afraid, but seemed to welcome her as an antagonist worthy of his prowess. He did not advance, but he stood between Ruth and the door of the sick man's cabin. She might retreat, but in doing so she would abandon the unfortunate to his fate. And what that fate would be she could not doubt when once she had glimpsed the savage aspect of the wolf...

Finished Seduction Of The Gullible for TIOLI #4.

Now reading The Mystery Of Dr Fu-Manchu, the first of Sax Rohmer's notorious "Yellow Peril" novels, for TIOLI #19.

>>#141

Hi, Faith! Sorry, missed your message there in the midst of actually getting some reviews written! I'm glad you find my books interesting in spite of their obscurity. :)

Goodness! So many reviews! Of course, they are excellent as always. Silver Fork Society sounds fascinating - a used copy may be in my future. Thanks!

#142 Darn it, you have made Silver Fork Society sound interesting and I'm tempted despite the fact that it sounds like it might make me want to read some silver fork novels.

>>#146

On the contrary, Dejah, not nearly enough reviews!! - but thank you! :)

>>#147

...and unlike Vidocq's memoirs, I'm not going to try and talk you out of it... :)

By the way, I see you finally got to Behind A Mask - were you as pleased and stunned by the ending of the title story as I was??

Finished The Mystery Of Dr Fu-Manchu for TIOLI #19.

Now reading The Germ Growers by Robert Potter for TIOLI #21.

#148 "By the way, I see you finally got to Behind A Mask - were you as pleased and stunned by the ending of the title story as I was??" Yes! I have reserved Plots and Counterplots and Madeleine Stern's biography of Alcott from the library.

#149 The Germ Growers has a lovely cover.

Towards the end of Behind A Mask, when all the characters started heading for the railway station, I was totally expecting---you know, Anna Karenina. :)

Plots And Counterplots is fun, too!

Yes, that's a picture of the very rare British edition - currently selling for a mere $3500.00. (A strange and interesting book, BTW.)

Finished The Germ Growers for TIOLI #21.

And that will be me done for May!

Now re-reading Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope for June TIOLI #3.

Mmm...Trollope...

I'll be starting Framley soon!

Excellent! - I hope you enjoy it. :)

Ah, yes, Trollope ... enough said. Have just finished Phineas Redux and am completely taken with the Palliser novels. I'm listening to them; Simon Vance RULES as narrator! Thought I would listen to the series intermittently, but I'm going straight-out, one after the next. Bliss!

That's great to hear, Nancy! And yes, the I'll just have one more trap is very easy to fall into. :)

And speaking of which---

For those interested, I have just set up the thread for the group read of Framley Parsonage - here.

A White Bird Flying - This sequel to Bess Streeter Aldrich's A Lantern In Her Hand picks up immediately following the conclusion of the earlier novel, in the aftermath of the funeral of Nebraska pioneer Abbie Deal, as her family gathers to divide her rather idiosyncratic possessions. Of all her descendants, the one closest to Abbie was her twelve-year-old granddaughter, Laura Deal, a dreamy child who prefers solitude to company, and with whom she shared her passion for the beauty and power of language. Laura is considered "odd" by her family, particularly her ambitious mother, Eloise, but unperturbed pursues her ambition to be a writer. As she grows into womanhood, however, her dream of a career is complicated by her growing friendship with Allen Rinemiller, the grandson of Abbie Deal's oldest friend and fellow pioneer, Christine Reinmueller, and her slow realisation that everyone else expects the relationship to lead to marriage...

As was the case with A Lantern In Her Hand, much of the strength and beauty of A White Bird Flying stems from Aldrich's deep admiration for the pioneers who faced hardship and heartbreak to open up the Midwest, and her appreciation of the stark beauties of the region. The framework of the novel is almost contradictory in its twin pursuits, on one hand expressing scorn for those who ignorantly treat the Midwest as "backwards" or "primitive" (the attitude that would later spawn the expression "flyover country"), on the other evincing a profound concern that in the area's rush to modernisation, something precious is being lost. Few of the modern Nebraskans who populate this novel give much sign of sharing the courage, the endurance or the capacity for self-sacrifice of those who founded the state. Their pioneer history, though only two generations back, is already slipping away into the mists of time. With Abbie Deal gone, only two of the original settlers of Cedartown survive: Christine Reinmueller, who is slowly losing her grip on reality, and old Oscar Lutz, for whom the past - including his beloved wife, Matty - is much more vividly alive than the present. Oscar is a talker. Whenever he can find an audience, be it ever so reluctant, his subject is invariably those early days in the territory: the brutal winters, the sweeping winds, the baking summers; the primitive conditions and deprivation: a life of struggle and suffering, yet so much more profoundly real than comfortable modernity. To most people in Cedartown, Oscar Lutz is an old bore, to be avoided whenever possible. It is only Laura, with so much of her grandmother in her, who listens, and who understands...

So far A White Bird Flying is a powerful and moving piece of writing. However, unfortunately I had certain issues with the other thread of the novel, that following the life of Laura Deal. The conflict in this section of the novel seems to me unnecessarily forced, with Laura deciding that for her it must be "all or nothing" - marriage or a career, but not both at once. If she is to write, therefore, she can never marry. And having brought Laura to this point, Aldrich spends the rest of the novel exposing her dreams of a career as false and hollow. What starts out as a vocation becomes progressively an intellectual pose; worse, a cowardly retreat from life - and by "life", she means marriage and children.

It's always tricky when your criticisms of a novel boil down to "I didn't like it because I disagreed with it" - or rather (let's be honest), "Because it disagreed with me". Don't get me wrong: I'm perfectly content for everyone to be happy in their own way. What I don't like is to be told that there is only one way for people to be happy, and that anyone who says otherwise is either deluded or a conscious coward, which is basically what A White Bird Flying does. In pursuit of her thesis, Aldrich resorts to what I'm inclined to call some fairly cheap tricks. Laura's unmarried aunt, who in A Lantern In Her Hand horrifies her mother by choosing a single life and a career, and who to this point has shown no sign of regretting her choice, suddenly has an emotional breakdown over the man she rejected twenty years earlier and begs Laura not to make the mistake she did. Likewise, Laura's married cousin, condemned in the narrative for being insufficiently stay-at-home (she doesn't work, but does like to socialise), is punished by having her young daughter fall seriously ill during one of her absences. (I wonder if James M. Cain read this?) There is one thoroughly unhappy married woman in this novel, Laura's Aunt Carolyn, but the narrative never lets us anywhere near her consciousness, or so much as hints at what advice she might give to Laura.

I suppose my real issue with all this isn't so much the fact of it, as that it seems very peculiar coming from a woman who did have both marriage and a career - becoming, indeed, one of the most successful and highest-paid writers of her time - and who received an honorary degree in literature from the University of Nebraska; ironic, considering that this novel treats college as somewhere a girl goes to catch a husband. Was Aldrich writing to please a particular audience? Working out feelings of guilt? Examining the road not taken? Whatever the reason, I found the tone of this novel, particularly the increasing scorn with which Laura herself is treated, at least until she has her inevitable epiphany, increasingly uncomfortable. Furthermore, the adult Laura is simply not as engaging as her younger self, the sensitive, imaginative child who thrills to the power of words, and has the capacity to find poetry in everything. Consequently, A White Bird Flying becomes progressively less interesting, and was ultimately a disappointment.

The novel's title is taken from a poem by Margaret Widdemer.

    She felt aloof, a little like a candidate for a sisterhood, a novice who would some day take the veil. She lived and moved and had her being with her family and friends, laughed, joked, conversed with them, but was not one of them. A story accepted by The Prairie Schooner, Nebraska's own literary magazine of highest type, was a thrilling reality. A poem in the same periodical, following later, added fuel to the little flame that burned so steadily within her very being.
    It seemed strange that one could so thoroughly play two parts, she told herself,---that a girl could take her place in the activities of college and sorority life, genuinely enjoying most of them, and remain the cloistered nun looking out through windows upon the panorama of the world. But it was true. That was her own dual personality. And the cloistered person was the real one,---the real Laura Deal, who, looking through the windows, saw always the wings of a white bird flying.

Memoirs Of Vidocq (Volume 2) - The second volume of the memoirs of Eugène François Vidocq picks up the story in 1799 after Vidocq's escape from the Bagne at Toulon, and finds him for some time falling out of frying-pans and into fires. He is first compelled to join up with a band of robbers and murderers, who initially came together as an anti-royalist force but later simply turned bandit. When he tries to separate themselves from them, they denounce him to the local authorities. Later, there is a time spent as one of a crew of privateers; the description of their ship's desperate battle against an English frigate, during which a violent storm breaks, is some of this volume's most powerful writing. There is even another period in the military, this time (putting to good use the skills gained as a privateer) as a marine. In between these episodes, determined on reform, Vidocq tries to make an honest living as a merchant, and twice succeeds in doing so - but he cannot escape his past: always there is recognition and arrest - and, Vidocq being Vidocq, escape and flight. Detained in Lyon, it first occurs to him to offer his services to the police, and he successfully buys his freedom with information about wanted criminals.

A turning point for Vidocq comes during a visit to Paris, when he witnesses the execution of César Herbaux, one of the men who framed him for forgery and got him sentenced to eight years as a galley-slave. On the heels of this, he encounters his ex-wife, now near destitute, and is moved to assist her. This proves to be a fatal blunder: he is persecuted and blackmailed by her family, and forced to become a receiver of stolen goods. Finally, in his misery and desperation, Vidocq turns himself in to M. Henry of the police, explaining his situation and offering his services as an informant. He is at first rebuffed, but when, months later, having again been arrested and imprisoned, he repeats the offer, he finds M. Henry more inclined to listen. Although again imprisoned, having stated his willingness to serve out his sentence provided he is not sent back to Toulon, Vidocq begins his work for the police by gaining the confidence of his fellow inmates (not difficult, as his reputation precedes him) and passing on what he learns. After nearly two years of this, M. Henry manages to persuade the higher authorities to release Vidocq...although his "release" naturally takes the form of another escape, this one pre-arranged for appearances' sake. Out of prison but not free, Vidocq becomes a police spy, operating on the streets of Paris as he had in prison, though naturally under a series of disguises instead of in his own persona. Towards the end of 1811, he receives permission to train a small band of ex-criminals as his assistants. This unofficial plain-clothes division becomes known as the Brigade de la Sûreté.

On the whole this second volume of the Memoirs Of Vidocq is more engaging than the first, although it still has its difficult patches - particularly during the first third of its length, where it follows the picaresque tradition of having various individuals interpolate lengthy personal stories into the narrative. While remaining largely self-absorbed, Vidocq does scatter some crumbs for the historically minded. Oddly amusing is the way Napoleon comes and goes in the background of Vidocq's personal story: we hear of his return from Egypt, his decision to wage war against Austria instead of England, his coronation...and then, all of a sudden, much effort is being devoted by the police (and their spies) to the suppression of "anti-imperial" activities and the persecution of those expressing "anti-imperial" sentiments. However, the predominant interesting of this volume lies in Vidocq's account of his escapades once he assumes his duties in Paris (although how much of it is strictly true is open to debate). He becomes a master of disguise, infiltrating various criminal gangs to learn their secrets. We hear of plots and counterplots, desperate battles, daring traps, hairs'-breadth escapes. When his success inevitably robs him of his anonymity, attempts upon his life become almost a daily event. Moreover, as a consequence of his success, Vidocq finds himself almost as great an object of detestation by the police themselves as he is by the criminal classes: the higher authorities resent the way he and his small band show them up; the ordinary police complain that as a result of his discoveries, they have to work too hard.

The other fascinating thing about this volume is the way in which, during its latter stages, it ceases to be a straight chronological narrative and gives itself over to Vidocq's ruminations upon his career and his ambivalent feelings about those early days as a "police spy" in particular. While on the whole he clearly feels that the end justified the means, there is still a clear degree of discomfort over his position as a "snitch", which even dwelling on the violent acts committed by many of those whom he betrayed cannot quite dissipate. Nor does the number of times he himself was betrayed, denounced, blackmailed and framed by his criminal associates seem to make any difference to his lingering guilt. Towards his reluctant colleagues (and writing after he was forced out of the Sûreté), Vidocq is largely contemptuous - excepting always the stalwart M. Henry, who for many years was forced to defend him against the jealousy and resentment of the police force generally. He answers many of the accusations brought against him by his enemies (criminal and otherwise), including the standing insinuation that he instigated crime in order to "solve" it, and concludes with a prideful account of the successes of the Sûreté, achieved with the most pitiful of resources.

It was with a troop so small as this that I had to watch over more than twelve hundred pardoned convicts, freed, some from public prisons, others from solitary confinement: to put in execution, annually, from four to five hundred warrants, as well from the préfet as the judicial authorities; to procure information, to undertake searches, and obtain particulars of every description; to make nightly rounds, so perpetual and arduous during the winter season; to assist the commissaries of police in their searches, or in the execution of search-warrants; to explore the various rendezvous in every part; to go to the theatres, the boulevards, the barricades, and all other public places, the haunts of thieves and pickpockets. What activity must be exercised when only twenty-eight men were appointed for such details on so vast a space, and on so many points at once! My agents had almost the talent of ubiquity, and I, to keep alive the spirit of emulation and zeal amongst them, incited them by unremitting exertions. In no expedition, however perilous, did I spare myself...

Finished my re-read of Framley Parsonage for the group read, and for TIOLI #3.

Now reading Footprints, the second in Kay Cleaver Strahan's series about female private investigator Lynn MacDonald, for TIOLI #7.

Finished Footprints for TIOLI #7.

And now, Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more---

Reading Volume 3 of the Memoirs Of Vidocq for TIOLI #16.

I am in awe of your determination...and am a bit concerned over your apparent streak of masochism....lol.

Actually, Dejah, I find my masochism an enormous help with quite a number of my projects. :)

Return I Dare Not - This apparently little known novel by Margaret Kennedy takes as its basis that most cherished of English situations, the weekend house party in the country where a comedy of misunderstanding is enacted. As you would expect, there is plenty of humour in this novel, but it comes with a very sharp edge. A series of character sketches - character dissections, we might more accurately say - rather than a story, Return I Dare Not finds its cast dealing with a range of emotional upheavals, most of them involving their life choices and the roads not taken. As is usual with Kennedy, Return I Dare Not has little good to say about the prevailing generation, with the novel's wisdom being vested in the very old and the very young.

Though it skips from perspective to perspective throughout, as far as Return I Dare Not has an identification character it is the young playwright, Hugo Pott. When the novel opens Hugo is at the very pinnacle of success, with three plays running simultaneously and having secured an invitation to a weekend party at Syranwood, country home of the Lady Geraldine Rivaz and her family. Hugo is a genuinely nice young man, on the whole unspoiled by his success; but when we meet him he is undergoing an epiphany of sorts, coming to the realisation that his life is no longer his own: that he does what is expected of him, behaves as he is expected to, even eats where he is expected to---becoming in the process a strange, hollow, artificial version of himself: Hugo Pott, That Nice Young Man Unspoiled By Success. Even the triumph of being invited into the exclusive circle of Syranwood is tempered by the dismaying knowledge that he will be expected to "be amusing" for the whole weekend; specifically, to amuse the notoriously temperamental Lady Agneta Melmotte. Exhausted and increasingly self-loathing, as he heads out for Syranwood Hugo knows that a crisis is looming...

And Hugo is not the only one to undergo a crisis at Syranwood. The critic Sir Adrian Upward, a poseur whose main pastime is avoiding his family responsibilities, finds himself confronted by his determined young daughter, Solange, who has arranged an invitation for herself in order to force a showdown. Lady Laura Le Fanu is to meet again her first love, Ford Usher, now a famous medical researcher but still chronically poor. It was Ford's mother, the gossip columnist Dulcie Usher, who separated them twenty years before - and who, upon hearing that he has been invited to Syranwood, realises that she may have to again... Philomena Grey, bored and frustrated after fifteen years of being "a good wife", decides to have a reinvigorating love affair - and in the name of honesty, announces the fact beforehand, much to the horror of both her husband and Hugo, the intended beneficiary of her "generosity". Trying to escape Philomena's clutches, the distracted Hugo is hardly up to the task of entertaining Lady Aggie. When Aggie cuts her visit short, Hugo's recognition of his own social failure sends him into a state in spiralling panic... Meanwhile, Lady Geraldine, only two of whose numerous children were actually her husband's, but who conducted her affairs so secretly as to defy detection, can only shake her head sadly over the blundering indiscretion of the current generation. Also looking on in condemnation, but without any of her grandmother's pitying understanding, is Marianne Spalding, who try as she might cannot distance herself from the emotional disasters playing out around her; for Marianne knew Hugo Pott back when he was still a genuinely nice young man...

Ultimately, Return I Dare Not is both funny and sad; although its main strength lies in the clarity and psychological acuteness of its character portraits, with each individual laid bare to the reader in turn. On the whole Margaret Kennedy is harder on her women than her men, even while acknowledging their lack of life choices and that critical decisions are often taken out of their hands. She finds, for example, some exculpatory words for the awful Sir Adrian Upward while flaying Philomena Grey, though both are equally self-absorbed and careless of the feelings of others. On the other hand, it is in the two teenagers, Marianne and Solange, that Kennedy sees hope for the future, with Marianne functioning as the novel's moral centre. I find myself ambivalent about this aspect of Return I Dare Not - Marianne, though intelligent and sensitive, is rather conspicuously lacking that great life-weapon, a sense of humour. Personally I prefer the pragmatic Solange, who aspires to a career as a toxicologist and so becomes an unexpected object of interest to Ford Usher. As for Hugo, older than the girls but younger than the rest of the gathering, he spends the novel teetering on the brink, caught between an increasingly empty life as a professional celebrity, and the new possibilities that can only come at the cost of sacrificing his success...

    At dinner he found himself placed between Marianne and Mrs Comstock, the rector's wife. Of course, this was not accidental. It was another milestone on the road to ruin. He had only to compare it with his position last night, between Aggie and his hostess, to know how far he had sunk. And his anger stiffened into a black sulkiness which kept him as silent as either of his neighbours. Nothing should make him speak until they did, and if they began he would give them a bad time. He ate up his soup and his fish and looked straight in front of him.
    After twenty minutes his silence had become conspicuous. Lady Geraldine threw him one or two disturbed glances, and he was aware that Laura had said something about him to Adrian. He was being inexcusable, and they all knew it. He was dramatizing his own failure. As, in prosperity, he had been swift to impersonate a darling of the gods, so now, in adversity, he gave them a very good imitation of a pariah. But never again would it be said that he put on no airs...

Poirot Investigates - Across 1923, Agatha Christie published a series of short stories featuring Hercule Poirot in The Sketch, at the invitation of the magazine's editor; in 1924, they were collected and reissued as a single volume. The result is a rather uneven collection, one that tends to illustrate the various pitfalls associated with the short-form detective story, particularly for authors whose true metier is the novel, as Christie's clearly was.

The weakest of the stories in this volume are The Tragedy Of Marsden Manor and The Adventure Of The Cheap Flat, both of which stretch credulity too far. The former turns equally on some very simplistic word-association and a fake séance, while the latter resembles one of Christie's adventure novels from this period in its outlandish plot, but lacks the necessary self-deprecating humour. Conversely, the best of the bunch is The Adventure Of The Egyptian Tomb, in which the discovery of the burial chamber of an ancient Egyptian king is followed by a series of strange deaths amongst the members of the expeditionary party. Drawing (as it admits) upon the circumstances surrounding the opening of Tutankhamun's tomb, this story interestingly anticipates Christie's frequent use of such backdrops in novels written after her marriage to the archaeologist Max Mallowan. In The Kidnapped Prime Minister, which is set during WWI, Poirot is called upon by a desperate government after the British Prime Minister vanishes on his way to a crucial European conference. In The Million Dollar Bond Robbery, a young man's life and career lie in ruins after the bonds with which he boarded an ocean liner in London have disappeared without trace by the time he docks in New York. The Jewel Robbery At The Grand Metropolitan finds Poirot and Hastings at Brighton, where their weekend by the sea is interrupted by the disappearance of a valuable pearl necklace.

The remaining stories offer a number of clever twists. The Adventure Of "The Western Star" features a tale of cursed jewels and vengeful "Orientals" (and a smattering of racial invective), but then thankfully turns these clichés on their head. The Mystery Of Hunter's Lodge finds Poirot conducting his investigation from his bed, stricken with influenza, while Hastings acts as his eyes and ears. The Disappearance Of Mr Davenheim goes this one better, with Poirot wagering Inspector Japp that he can solve a certain mystery without moving from his armchair; this story also asks the reader to swallow a bit too much, but makes up for it with an amusing explanation of the title "disappearance". In The Adventure Of The Italian Nobleman, the hunt for a murderer turns upon some undrawn curtains and one man's gastronomic capacity; while in The Case Of The Missing Will, a progressive young woman can only receive her inheritance from her deeply conservative uncle by proving that her educated intelligence surpasses his native cunning. She does so by hiring Hercule Poirot...

Individually, while the stories in Poirot Investigates have their merits (or some of them do), the overall result is a bit same-ish and unsatisfying. To be fair, though---it occurs to me that the problem these days may be that all of these stories have been adapted for TV as part of the series of hour-long episodes starring David Suchet, and there altered and padded out to fill the timeslot. The consequence of this tampering is that the original stories now seem even more insubstantial than they actually are. Even so, there is no escaping from the sense that Christie was simply marking time with these stories, keeping her hand in while she contemplated the next serious move for her idiosyncratic detective; and if this was indeed the case, we can hardly argue with the results: the next novel to feature Hercule Poirot, not published for another two years, was Christie's career-making The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd.

    "Come now, monsieur, you're not going to run down the value of details as clues?"
    "By no means. These things are all good in their way. The danger is that they may assume undue importance. Most details are insignificant; one or two are vital. It is the brain, the little grey cells"---he tapped his forehead---"on which one must rely. The senses mislead. One must seek the truth within---not without."

I've noticed that many short story collections by mystery writers of that era are disappointing in the repetition of themes and plot points, which severely weakens the collection. Many stories I would have enjoyed on their own are spoiled by be read in close company. This, of course, is much less true for author who were writing many short stories on a regular basis.

Have you noticed the same thing, Liz?

Well---I think you have to distinguish between those writers who wrote short stories preferentially, and those who just did it from time to time. There were quite a lot of mystery writers during this period who worked almost exclusively in the short form and had a lot of success: H. C. Bailey, Jacques Futrelle and Ernest Bramah, for example. However, they were not always successful at novel-writing; even as those we associate more with novels, like Agatha Christie, struggled in the shorter format.

(Although I think Agatha used her short stories to work out some of her ideas, which is why you get that disconcerting situation of the same premise appearing in a short story and a later novel.)

Also, most of these stories were originally published sporadically, in the magazines; it's when they end up in single volumes that their shortcomings become evident.

The Seduction Of The Gullible: The Curious History Of The British "Video Nasties" Phenomenon - It is a peculiar thing to contemplate at this distance, but when the humble VCR began to appear more frequently in the family home during the early 1980s there were those who viewed it as a disruptive force at best, at worst yet another in the very long line of portents heralding The End Of Civilisation As We Know It. In Britain its arrival more or less coincided with that of the Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party government - one of life's little ironies - and over the next decade and a half, indeed well into the era of John Major, the two would become inexorably intertwined in a kind of real-life "horror movie", one you would defy the most imaginative screenwriter to invent. It all began, innocuously and indeed understandably enough, with a protest lodged over some tasteless advertising for a still more tasteless film, Sergio Garrone's S. S. Experiment Camp. From there what became known as the "Video Nasties" campaign escalated into a bewildering tangle of political scapegoating, social panic, and vested interests. In The Seduction Of The Gullible - the title deliberately echoing that of Fredric Wertham's famous anti-comic book polemic of the mid-1950s, Seduction Of The Innocent - John Martin, a film critic specialising in outré cinema, charts the course of this most bizarre period in the history of censorship.

In essence, the "Video Nasties" campaign held that the minds of British people generally, but children in particular, were being warped and damaged by movies featuring graphic sex and violence; the argument was that people watching these films were then "driven" to commit acts of violence themselves, and that this was at the root of a rising crime-rate. (In fact, the VCR was still an uncommon household object when the incidence of violence across the country began to escalate.) Though treated as a new phenomenon brought about by the introduction of home video, the contentious movies in question were often many years old, with distributors in the burgeoning video business desperate for enough material to meet growing demand and so releasing anything that came to hand. Early in 1983, the newspapers began to take note of the situation, and in a surprisingly short space of time there was a push to prosecute those connected with the distribution of certain videos under the Obscene Publications Act - that document which notoriously defines "obscenity" as "having a tendency to deprave or corrupt". Police raids, arrests and prosecutions followed---with the result that various people were fined, lost their businesses, and in some cases went to jail for distributing, renting or even just owning a particular movie. Meanwhile, the British Board of Film Censors (later the British Board of Film Classification) was invested with increasingly wide-ranging powers over the content of home video, which they exercised without restraint. Many films were denounced during the months and years of the campaign (some by mistake, including Sam Fuller's war film The Big Red One, apparently confused with its pornographic equivalent, and some as a result of malicious intent by anti-censorship campaigners, such as the Disney film The Devil And Max Devlin), but in the end a list of 39 films was issued by the Director of Public Prosecutions - the so-called "Video Nasties" list - with anyone distributing, selling, renting or being found in possession of these films liable to prosecution under the OPA.

Throughout The Seduction Of The Gullible, John Martin uses the newspaper reporting of the time to trace on an almost day-by-day basis the major events of this story---not without conscious irony. The papers that lent themselves most enthusiastically to the call for increased video censorship were - oh, what a surprise! - chiefly those owned by Rupert Murdoch, who had his own axe to grind: home video was a direct competitor to his own satellite broadcast companies, and consequently his papers attacked it with great gusto if little logical consistency; the level of the ensuing discourse is perhaps best illustrated by the papers' tendency to refer to Possession, Andrzej Żuławski's surreal political allegory about life behind the Berlin Wall, as "the octopus sex film". (It's not actually an octopus, but yes, it does have sex with Isabelle Adjani. For the record, the film was declared "not obscene" by the courts.) The early public expressions of concern over the "Video Nasties" may have been sincere, but examination of the government's response to the situation makes it evident that it realised it had found a satisfactory scapegoat at a time of rising unemployment, strikes, riots, and the war in the Falkland Islands. A number of politicians made enormous personal mileage out of the censorship campaign, which culminated in the same Conservative government that had spoken so derisively of "the nanny state" during its early days instituting some of the most draconian censorship in the western world, on the declared grounds that British parents were incapable of looking after their own children.

John Martin spends considerable time pointing out the blatant hypocrisy of much of the campaign, with the newspapers involved seeing no apparent contradiction in, for instance, running double-page spreads decrying the "Nasties" next to full-page ads for satellite broadcasts of films like the sexually explicit and graphically violent thriller Kalifornia. Nor indeed did the papers hesitate to take at face value the claims of defendants in various criminal cases, who were not slow to jump on the bandwagon and blame their violent acts upon watching certain films on video (not via satellite broadcast; heavens, no). There is so much sheer stupidity in this section of the story that it's hard to single out any one piece in particular. There's the defendant who claimed he "heard the voice of Michael Myers" from the Halloween movies (Michael being, of course, mute); a man "driven to kill" by Fright Night; a rape-murder blamed on John Carpenter's The Thing, and a gay bondage killing on Lucio Fulci's Zombie; and perhaps my personal favourite, a series of sexual assaults of horses, which a senior police officer is quoted as attributing to someone who, "Could be affected by video nasties or the full moon."

Though I have a great fondness for The Seduction Of The Gullible, as the first book I ever read on a topic I find deeply interesting, it is not the one I'd necessarily recommend to someone coming to the subject "cold" and seeking to understand this peculiar time. This is an angry, exasperated work written by someone who lived through this period and was personally hurt by it. (Martin was repeatedly attacked in the media for his anti-censorship stance.) The evident emotion that drives this account of the "Nasties" campaign makes up for its undeniable literary shortcomings...not to mention the frequent typos and grammatical errors: this was originally a "small press edition" in the full early meaning of that expression. (The book was recently revised and reissued as Seduction Of The Gullible: The Truth Behind The Video Nasty Scandal; presumably these glitches have been fixed.) Nevertheless, it succeeds in doing what it set out to do, exposing the motives behind the censorship campaign, naming and shaming the major players, and highlighting the endless contradictions inherent in the situation. It also devotes half its pages to facetious reviews of the films that fell foul of the BBFC, treating them with (mostly) affectionate mockery and pointing out the numerous ways in which they were not in fact going to bring about The End Of Civilisation As We Know It; although, given a film that warrants it, Martin proves capable of serious critical insight and a neat turn of phrase. (I'm particularly taken by his description of Mario Bava's proto-slasher film, Bay Of Blood, in which the greedy members of an extended family slaughter each other to gain possession of a prime piece of real estate: "The hysterical Thatcherite response to Bava's bloody parable was no more than the howl of Caliban recognising his own reflection.") Of course, the overriding point of The Seduction Of The Gullible, as it is of just about any examination of censorship, is that had the censors not interfered, most of these films would have vanished without trace on the basis of their own lack of merit; the "Nasties" campaign, however, turned them into collector's items. Today, indeed, most of these "vile, degrading films", these "sick, violent films that shame Britain", are available as beautifully restored Collector's Edition R2 DVDs...make of that what you will.

Taking as their pretext the "Winter of Discontent" which swept them to power, Margaret Thatcher's government of avowed right-wing ideologues began in 1979 to dismantle the whole post-war consensus of British social and political philosophy... With the New Right tugging so relentlessly at the social fabric, it was only a matter of time before it broke, and the summer of 1981 saw major social unrest and full-blown rioting in London, Liverpool, Bristol and other major cities. The people at the cutting edge of the Thatcher experiment weren't becoming more industrious and virtuous - they were out of work, levelling their own streets and lobbing Molotov cocktails at the police, all of which was doubly embarrassing to the government in light of its incessant knee-jerk "law and order" posturing. The ideologues couldn't accept that their theories might be wrong, so they and their supporters cast around for alternative explanations. Sinister Trotskyite conspiracies, always a good bet, were duly trotted out, but the Tory press was soon stalking another scapegoat...thus the "video nasty".

If anyone is interested in this subject, the books I would recommend are The Video Nasties: Freedom And Censorship In The Media, edited by Martin Barker, a series of anti-censorship essays bravely published at the height of the panic (and highlighted by an account of the burying of a government-commissioned report into the effects of movie violence on children when its findings contradicted the claims of the censorship campaigners), and David Kerekes and David Slater's See No Evil: Banned Films And Video Controversy, which encompasses the "Nasties" campaign but goes beyond it into a wide-ranging and thoughtful consideration of violence, censorship and the media.

The Mystery Of Dr Fu-Manchu (US title: The Insidious Dr Fu-Manchu) - The first of the notorious "Yellow Peril" stories by Sax Rohmer (real name: Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward) were serialised across 1912 - 1913, and then collected into a single volume. As was a common practice at the time, what started out as discrete short stories were re-worked into a complete if episodic novel, which begins with the abrupt appearance in London of Nayland Smith, police commissioner of Burma (then under British rule and considered a province of India). Smith turns up without warning at the rooms of his friend, Dr Petrie, who then finds himself plunged into a series of dangerous adventures as he and Smith strive to thwart the evil schemes of a man described as "the yellow peril incarnate" - Dr Fu-Manchu.

Well---there's no point dancing around it: The Mystery Of Dr Fu-Manchu is from start to finish an appalling piece of racist tosh. Its single saving grace, an entirely unintended one, is that it goes so far over the top in pursuing its xenophobic agenda as to become perfectly ludicrous. In fact, this novel's absurdities put me in mind of nothing so much as The Man Of The Forty Faces, which I read earlier this year; except that while it is clear Thomas Hanshew did not mean his rubber-faced protagonist, Hamilton Cleek, to be taken at all seriously, there's nothing in The Mystery Of Dr Fu-Manchu to suggest that Sax Rohmer was joking. On the contrary, the novel is full of solemn speeches about the cruel and insidious "yellow race" and its endlessly evil intentions. I should perhaps clarify that under the general heading "yellow race", Rohmer lumps together a remarkable number of peoples and cultures, all of whom apparently believe the same, think the same, act the same, and all want the same thing: namely, to destroy the noble and superior "white race". Frankly, on the basis of The Mystery Of Dr Fu-Manchu, I don't blame them a bit.

We never do find out what Fu-Manchu's evil scheme actually is (though it does involve the kidnapping of various engineers and scientists), but any white man who gets wind of it is marked for death. Conveniently enough, all of those white men have converged in England, allowing Nayland Smith to wage a campaign against Fu-Manchu and his cornucopia of death, with their lives as the prize. It is fortunate for our alleged heroes and those they are trying to protect that the doctor never stoops to using anything as crude as a gun (only disposable henchmen get shot in these stories). Instead, Fu-Manchu employs Indian Thugs and Burmese dacoits, wielding strangling cords and knives, respectively, while he himself calls upon "the secrets of the Orient", attacking his enemies with biological weapons such as venom, or chemical weapons including poison gas. (In one spectacularly gruesome scene, a whole squad of policemen is first driven insane by the material released by giant, exploding death-cap mushrooms, then enveloped and suffocated by spores released by an equally gigantic pathogenic mould, as Fu-Manchu shrieks, "I am the god of destruction!") Fu-Manchu also has a distinct predilection for living weapons - spiders, scorpions, centipedes, snakes - which is supposed to be yet another illustration of the depths of his depravity; although personally I find it difficult to hate anyone who goes around with a marmoset perched on his shoulder. (Don't be fooled by its adorable cuteness: it's an eeevil Oriental marmoset, which assists Fu-Manchu in his schemes.)

As they wage their war against the "devilish, inscrutable" Fu-Manchu, Smith and Petrie prove themselves much more conspicuous for their determination and courage than their brains, walking again and again into traps laid for them by the "evil genius". Fortunately, there's usually someone at hand to pull their butts out of the fire - in one case, literally. No story such as this would be complete without an intoxicatingly beautiful yet potentially treacherous female, and one of Fu-Manchu's main operatives is a mysterious girl who calls herself Kâramanèh. Conveniently enough for our heroes, she falls desperately in love with Petrie at first sight - "Orientals" are given to that sort of thing, we are assured - and thereafter treads a dangerous path between doing Fu-Manchu's bidding and trying to protect Petrie, and Smith by default. The verbal contortions of Sax Rohmer / Petrie as he describes Kâramanèh, trying to make her "Oriental" but not too, well, you know---Asian---are both hilarious and exasperating. We are eventually led to believe that the girl is Egyptian (the Egyptians are also "Oriental", dontcha know), which rather begs the question of how she ended up with such perfectly white skin. However, white skin notwithstanding, Kâramanèh is still one of "them", so Petrie reluctantly accepts that a closer relationship is out of the question. (He takes a moment to explain to us that it is as a doctor that he disapproves of mixed marriages; charming.) It is a struggle for Petrie to withstand Kâramanèh's seductive charms, but he eventually succeeds in mastering himself, being a superior white man (and a racist).

It turns out that Kâramanèh is Fu-Manchu's slave - literally his slave; sold to him in the marketplace - and that he compels her obedience by keeping her young brother not only in his power, but in a state of suspended animation from which he can be recovered only by the administration of a secret drug of Fu-Manchu's own devising. Kâramanèh finally agrees to help Smith and Petrie take down Fu-Manchu once and for all, but only if they succeed in reviving and rescuing Azîz first. The Mystery Of Dr Fu-Manchu then builds to a climax that makes it clear that cliff-hanger endings and set-ups for sequels are by no means a recent phenomenon: the building in which Fu-Manchu is trapped goes up in a flames, a conflagration from which no-one could possibly escape alive---

Or could he!?

"Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of true cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the respurces of science past and present, with all the resources, if you will, of a wealthy government---which, however, already has denied all knowledge of his existence. Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man."

Behold! - THE MARMOSET OF DOOM!

LOOK OUT WHITE PEOPLE IT'S COMING TO GET YOU!!

Your "video nasties" review is quite interesting, and puts new meaning (at least for an American) to the Young Ones sitting around their TV watching video nasties. We went through the same thing here in the US at about the same time, but I don't think our campaign was so serious. But the blame the movies thing reached its peak when someone tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan for Jodie Foster, because of a part she played in a movie.

The Young Ones is (in its own warped way) entirely about life under the Thatcher government, so you would certainly expect to find the boys watching video nasties. :)

It's really a matter of drawing a line in a sensible place: yes, some of these movies contain extremely graphic and confronting material, and yes, there are some mentally disturbed individuals who can't tell fantasy from reality; but to suggest that widespread social unrest was the result of people watching silly movies like Luigi Cozzi's Contamination is both absurd and dishonest.

Yes. I totally agree. Thatcher and Reagan were reading from the same World Leader Handbook. Not that he planned to be shot by a nutter who thought Jodi Foster would be impressed. You make me wish I new more about life under Thatcher. Would bring a whole new depth to Rik especially.

Rik Mayall then went on to The New Statesman, which is an even more overt satire of the Conservative Party government - have you seen that? It would probably tell you all you need to know. :)

ETA: Love this description! - "The main character was a selfish, greedy, dishonest, devious, lecherous, sadistic ultra-right-wing Conservative back bencher..."

The Germ Growers: An Australian Story Of Mystery And Adventure - When I read Vandals Of The Void earlier this year, I was surprised to discover that this first ever science fiction story about a battle in outer space was written by an Australian, James Morgan Walsh. To my even greater surprise, it now turns out that the genre's first ever alien invasion story - pre-dating The War Of The Worlds by six years - was also written by an Australian. Published in 1892, first in Melbourne and then in London, The Germ Growers was originally touted as being by Robert Easterley and James Wilbraham, who are actually its two main characters. In fact it was the work of Robert Potter, Canon of St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne, an Anglican clergyman of Irish birth who was ordained after emigrating and served the church for many years in various capacities, including as one of the managers of the Australian College of Theology. This being the case, it is not altogether unexpected to find that The Germ Growers is not just a straightforward work of science fiction, but a religious allegory as well.

Committed to paper many years after the event - written by Bob Easterley, but with the input and concurrence of Jack Wilbraham - The Germ Growers tells of a strange and terrifying experience that befall two young British immigrants, who before settling to their new life in Australia decided to explore some of the country first. On their way out, they fall in with a team of engineers involved with the laying of telegraph wires between Port Augusta in South Australia and Port Darwin in the Northern Territory. The two young men decide to accompany the party's Aboriginal guide when he departs to join his own people and participate in a massing of the tribes for a Corroboree. Contrary to the grim warnings uttered by the other members of their party, Bob and Jack are made welcome by Gioro's people and permitted to travel with them into the interior of Western Australia. However, the travellers are forced off-course by the aftermath of a fire, and further confused by unexpectedly foggy weather. At last a sense of trepidation begins to grip the tribe, with Bob and Jack grasping, though not understanding, that if when the fog clears they are where the tribe's leader thinks they are - if a certain rock formation is exposed - then they are in deadly peril...

It is as the tribe fears. In an instant, there is mass panic, a stampede - and Bob and Jack find themselves alone and with minimal supplies in the middle of the outback. Their hopes are briefly raised when Gioro returns leading a horse - but both man and animal are dying, evidently poisoned by some strange weapon. Concluding that near the strange rock formation there must be white settlers with whom the tribe had a violent conflict in the past, Bob and Jack agree to head that way. In the face of the strange outcropping - which looks, as the young men agree, "for all the world as if it had been dropped out of the sky" - there is an opening, perhaps the entrance to a cave. Leaving Jack to keep watch, Bob cautiously ascends the formation to the mouth of the cave - and what he finds inside is beyond his wildest imaginings...

The Germ Growers is a strange and fascinating story. On one hand, it is straight science fiction, with invaders who are literally "from space" - they call themselves "the people of the ether", and usually exist in a disembodied form. Who they actually are, we never find out; but there are good people of the ether as well as bad, and one of the good ones (of the majority, he insists) later turns up to help Bob and Jack. Meanwhile, however, we meet the bad ones, who have come to Earth with conquest in mind, and who control much strange and superior technology. In particular, the invaders have perfected that most cherished of all science-fiction gadgets, the flying car...and what's more, have the power to make their cars invisible, by covering them with paint of colours existing outside of the visible spectrum. (In good sunlight, their shadows give their positions away, though.) The invaders' evil intentions show themselves in a strange series of seed beds on the limit of their settlement, where they not only cultivate deadly germs but (Canon Potter displaying an impressive grasp of biology) select out and multiply the most virulent strains, to be unleashed upon mankind...

It is never entirely clear whether the leader of the invaders, who calls himself Niccolo Davelli, is actually Satan or merely one of his emissaries, but either way he is on earth doing Satan's work. The point of the germs is to unleash terrifying diseases, striking down populations at random and causing misery and destruction - with the long-term goal of weakening man's faith in God. It is intimated that the invaders have been responsible for all the worst plagues in history. This thread of the novel leads into considerable discussion around two of the religious eternals, the nature of free will and why bad things happen to good people.

Bob and Jack are each "tempted" by Davelli, who wants them to join his people. This offer holds no attraction in itself, and particularly not after Bob recognises amongst the invaders an acquaintance of his childhood, a moody, cruel-natured young man who one day - after, now that Bob thinks about it, a strange shadow passed overhead - simply vanished. (Bob's po-faced description of the young James Redpath is unintentionally hilarious: Except that he was rather cruel to dogs and cats, and had a nasty habit of frightening children, I do not know that I noticed anything particular about him..) Yet there is a particular danger in the situation for Bob, who is fascinated by the advanced science of the invaders and longs to understand and master it. This weakness - and it is bluntly presented as a weakness - gives Davelli a hold over Bob's will, which he increases by sending him, apparently, on a strange and wonderful journey, perhaps even to the moon; the experience carrying with it a distinct suggestion of, All this will I give to you if... It is left to Jack to come to the rescue: the athletic but not particularly bright Jack, of whom Bob is fond but slightly contemptuous; Jack, who has no interest in science and no intellectual curiosity, but who does have firm ideas of right and wrong and an uncomplicated faith - all of which makes him a dire threat to Davelli and his plans...

It is much to Robert Potter's credit that he succeeds where many others both before and after him have failed, in that he manages to keep his allegory subordinate to his story - if never exactly hidden. The religious aspects of this novel are of course a matter of personal interpretation, and I will only say that the arguments never become intrusive or wearisome, but are well and thoughtfully integrated into the story. As for the science fiction aspects of The Germ Growers, between the flying cars and the biological warfare this is a remarkably innovative work. However, I have to confess that the "real-life" aspects of this novel held quite as much fascination for me as the rest. The descriptions of the Australian interior, at a time when much of the country was still a vast and dangerous unknown, are both beautiful and rather eerie. Yet most interesting of all to me is the novel's handling of its indigenous characters, which is revealing in its very ambivalence. On one hand there is derogatory language and a condescending attitude...but on the other, there are sharp, angry words for those white people who "were often known to treat the blacks as if they were mere wild beasts". The members of the travelling party warn Bob and Jack they'll be killed on sight by the natives - but in fact they are welcomed with open arms and treated kindly and generously (which doesn't stop Our Heroes laughing at them behind their backs). When the tribe is overcome by terror and makes its panicked flight through the desert, it is because, as we soon realise, they have encountered the invaders before; Bob and Jack immediately assume it is simply because they have encountered white men before...

    We hurried along the platform to the car. It was on the very spot where we saw it first, on the evening when we made our first voyage in it. Everything was ready. One battery was in position, and another lay by it ready to take its place. There was a pocket on one side of the car filled with the lozenge-like articles of diet on which we had lived since we came here. There were two glasses like that with which I had observed the seed beds, and Jack, after examination, pronounced that there was an abundant store of the matters required for the production of the gas which was needed for the inflation of the balloons. The light by which we saw all this stood in the fore part of the car just over a little binnacle where a compass was fixed...
    As soon as we got into the car Jack proceeded to raise it, as Niccolo Davelli had done, by inflating the balloons. This cannot be quickly done by any but a practised hand... This was only the second day of practice for Jack, but he managed by raising the car slowly to produce very little of the rolling motion. As soon as he had attained what he judged a sufficient height he connected the batteries with the paddles, and as the wind was, as the sailors say, "dead aft", we soon began to make a very great speed...

Whoo! May wrap!!

I read 13 books in May, which, seeing that it includes two volumes of The Memoirs Of Vidocq, is pretty impressive, I think.

However, the highlight of the month for me was not just that I fitted all 13 into TIOLI, but I covered a much greater range of challenges than I normally do: I have a tendency to huddle in one or two that suit my normal reading, rather than stretching my boundaries. Anyway, my 13 books encompassed 10 different challenges.

I also continued on with four series, and began yet another: the Fu-Manchu stories of Sax Rohmer, heaven help me! My Agatha Christie re-reads also continued, but Georgette Heyer missed out this month. May's highlight was probably the discovery of The Germ Growers, a very early piece of Australian science fiction. No stinkers this month, though Vidocq is not exactly a breezy read.

May stats:

Non-fiction: 2
Memoirs*: 2
Mystery / thriller: 3
Young adult: 1
Science fiction: 1
Humour: 2
Contemporary (i.e. at time of publication) drama: 2

(*I'm calling Vidocq "memoirs" so as not to have to decide whether it's fiction or non-fiction)

Series reading: 5

Male : female authors: 6 : 7 (including one male using a female pseudonym)

Oldest work: Memoirs Of Vidocq, Principal Agent Of The French Police Until 1827 (Volumes 1 & 2) by Eugène François Vidocq (1828)
Newest work: The Seduction Of The Gullible: The Curious History Of The British "Video Nasties" Phenomenon by John Martin (1993)

Footprints - This second entry in Kay Cleaver Strahan's series featuring Lynn MacDonald (to the best of my knowledge, the mystery genre's first female private investigator) is an unusual book in both structure and content. After an impressive if slightly apprehensive debut in The Desert Moon Mystery - apprehensive on the part of her creator, that is, who seemed not entirely sure she wasn't being a bit too daring - we are reassured at the beginning of Footprints both that Lynn MacDonald is a growing success in her chosen field, and that Strahan had second thoughts about the romantic relationship hinted at - or threatened - towards the end of her first novel. It is, at any rate, a fully professionally focused Lynn who is here called upon to investigate a most baffling crime. It is a common phenomenon today to find an author whose first novel has been an unexpected success struggling with their second, but for Kay Cleaver Strahan the laudatory reception of The Desert Moon Mystery seems to have inspired her. This is the work of a confident author---confident enough, indeed, not only to have her detective barely present in the flesh (as it were), but solving a murder without budging from her office. Footprints is, first and foremost, an "impossible crime" mystery, with a family forced to accept that one of them must be a murderer, yet, given the circumstances of the crime in question, unable to see how any one of them really could be. Furthermore, though it is during 1928 that Lynn MacDonald is called upon to investigate the unsolved murder of Oregon rancher Richard Quilter, the crime occurred in 1900...

At that time, like many ranchers, the Quilters were struggling through a period of depression and threatened with the loss of their property; now, they are one of the wealthiest families in the state. All is not well with them, however: Neal Quilter, eighteen at the time of his father's murder, has begun to show signs of mental instability, becoming convinced against the evidence that he is the guilty party, and threatening to confess. Judith Quilter Whitefield, Neal's widowed sister, carries the problem to Dr Joseph Elm, the family doctor and an old and trusted friend. It is he who suggests they hire Lynn MacDonald. After twenty-eight years there is nothing tangible to investigate, of course, as Lynn points out; but after some hesitation she accepts the challenge presented by Dr Joe. He gives her two sets of letters written to Judith at the time, one before the murder and one after; the first by her young sister, Lucy, the second by Neal himself. It is Dr Joe's hope that in these letters Lynn will find something they can use to help Neal---stressing that Quilter family does not necessarily want the murder solved; what they want is a possible explanation they can all live with...

Footprints is then, in effect, an epistolary novel---although one in which only one-half of the correspondence is offered. At the time of her father's death, Judith was in Colorado with her husband, who was seriously - indeed, terminally - ill; the letters written by her precocious young sister (who has since grown up to become a well-known and successful novelist) started out as an effort to lift Judith's spirits and keep her fully informed of all the family doings; later, they became an outlet for Lucy's distress in the face of growing family tension. We meet through Lucy's conscientious efforts all of the Quilters. The elderly patriarch is Thaddeus Quilter, who is devoted to the ranch and whose courage and strength has held both the family and the property together through difficult times; Phineas and Olympe, his brother and sister-in-law, are respectively a frustrated adventurer and a thwarted actress given to self-dramatisation. Between Thaddeus's children, Richard and Gracia, there has been an estrangement since Richard shot dead the man courting Gracia after he caught him attacking his own wife; we later learn that at the time, she was pregnant with Neal. Gracia herself has since withdrawn from the world into her faith. However, the immediate problem lies with Christopher, Thaddeus's great-nephew, who arrives at the ranch with his spoiled socialite bride, Irene. Although the Quilters have always behaved as if the property belonged to the family generally, in fact it is entirely owned by Christopher, the only son of Thaddeus's eldest son. Under pressure from Irene, Christopher, a failed playwright, announces his intention of selling the ranch, settling the family on a smaller farm, and keeping the proceeds.

Neal's letters commence in the aftermath of Richard's death. There has been an attempt by some to hide the truth from Judith, but Neal lays bare for her the bizarre and increasingly worrying circumstances of his father's murder. On the night in question, the family was woken by the sound of a single shot---then found that each of them was locked in their room. The one exception was Irene, who after a tiff with Christopher had left their bedroom and gone downstairs for a time. Later discovering that their bedroom door was locked, and taking it personally, she made a bed for herself on a couch in the library downstairs rather than call out for admission. Rushing upstairs after the shot, it was she who discovered Richard dying from a single shot to his chest. In spite of the family's incredulity, Irene insists that Richard spoke the words red mask. Finding a pile of keys in Richard's room, she released the others from their rooms. Immediately, the house was searched from top to bottom---but no outsider was discovered. In Richard's room, there was a rope tied to the foot of his bed, which had been thrown through the open window. At first the family assumed that the killer escaped that way---only to realise that this could not be so. The rope was covered with the snow that fell earlier in the evening, but which was not falling at the time of the murder. Outside, the snow lying about the ranch-house was pure, even and unbroken; there was not a footprint to be seen...

    "You see, the letters made such a point of the absence of footprints that, while I was reading, last night, I thought rather fancifully to myself of the disclosures as footprints. Step by step, almost from the first one of Lucy's letters, the whole thing was so absolutely evident, the intangible footprints were so sure and straight, that an unimportant thing like actual footprints in the snow being necessary for a solution seemed---well, perfectly absurd."
    Dr Elm said, "'Sands of time.' McGuffey, I guess. All the poetry I ever knew I got from McGuffey, 'Make our lives sublime, and departing, leave behind us footprints on the sands of time.'"
    "Precisely," said Lynn MacDonald.

#164 Return I Dare Not sounds very interesting Liz. Sadly it's a bit on the pricey side secondhand.

#165 "The result is a rather uneven collection"

I'm relieved you thought so too - I knew I wasn't enjoying the collection as much as I normally enjoy her books but was worried I might be missing something! Some of the stories reminded me a lot of some of the Sherlock Holmes canon, particularly the one which involved Hastings having to investigate on his own and The Million Dollar Bond robbery. I couldn't decide if these were conscious nods towards ACD's detective or not.

#168 Gosh, well all of that went completely over my head at that time.

#170 And another very entertaining review of a book I'm thankful I won't be reading :-)

The verbal contortions of Sax Rohmer / Petrie as he describes Kâramanèh, trying to make her "Oriental" but not too, well, you know---Asian---are both hilarious and exasperating.

I've noticed something similar in John Buchan's Prester John - the one 'noble' black character has to be described as looking very white apart from the colour of his skin....

#171 Eep!

#176 Go Australians!

#177 I also continued on with four series, and began yet another: the Fu-Manchu stories of Sax Rohmer, heaven help me!

Er, really? You're going to continue with that series?

#178 Happy sloth! :-)

#179 Another 'sounds interesting but expensive' book.

Hi, Heather!

I was lucky enough to find an inexpensive copy of Return I Dare Not.

Yeah, I think you end up with an unfair perspective on a lot of the short stories, which were after all written as one0offs to be read over several months, not crammed into a day or two. I hadn't thought specifically about Holmes but considering what Christie did not too long afterwards with Partners In Crime its possible that at this time she was doing a lot of thinking about the detective story generally and that it came out in her writing.

Gosh, well all of that went completely over my head at that time.

When of course, you were very, very young :)

Naturally it's always easier to see patterns of behaviour with hindsight. What gets a wry smile out of me these days is the admission by the current version of the BBFC - when challenged over passing the DVD versions of films that were "destroying Britain" back then - that yeah, well, maybe they got a bit carried away back then...

Er, really? You're going to continue with that series?

I'm hoping the marmoset shows up again.

Sad as it is to think contemplate, the Fu-Manchu stories were both very popular and very influential, so yeah. And honestly, they're so over the top that they almost become inoffensive, if that makes sense; they provoke mockery rather than anger. Realistic stories with casual slurs are much harder for me to take.

Yes, the "racial re-working" stunt goes back at least as far as Aphra Behn, whose Oroonoko is as black as he could be, but nevertheless has a "Roman nose". :)

Go Australians!

I admit I had no idea about any of this until very recently. There's another story in this bunch it seems I need to find, which has Lemuria (the southern hemisphere's equivalent of Atlantis) somewhere in the outback.

Another 'sounds interesting but expensive' book.

And now on top of the lift in shipping costs, our dollar is slipping - *sniff*.

Thinking about that, I finally decided that I could spend a bit more on series books, since skipping them bruises my OCD, but at the same time I need to cut back on the pig-in-a-poke one-off purchases. So I've mentally drawn an upper line for random book costs which I am trying to stick to...

Finished The Memoirs Of Vidocq (Volume 3) for TIOLI #16.

And since the memoir has become an easier read now that Vidocq has settled in with the police, and since I'm kind of over it anyway---

Now reading The Memoirs Of Vidocq (Volume 4), also for TIOLI #16.

Finished The Memoirs Of Vidocq.

{*noise indicative of a mixture of exhaustion, relief and exasperation*}

Now reading Bloodhounds Of Heaven: The Detective In English Fiction From Godwin To Doyle for TIOLI #1.

ETA: ...which as it turns out devotes a chapter to the English reaction to Vidocq's memoirs...

Hi! I wanted to thank you for popping in on my thread and leaving a comment during the Jack Reacher discussion. You certainly write very interesting and thorough reviews. I especially enjoyed your comments about the Fu Manchu book and the Australian scifi....both sound very intriguing in different ways.

I am interested in reading Trollope but I have no idea where to begin....any suggestions? You seem to be an expert in this area.

Hi, Heidi! Thank you so much for visiting my thread. Yes, I tend to lurk on threads more than speaking up but Tom Cruise provoked me. :)

My reviews are thorough in the sense that I never know when to stop, certainly!

Ah, Trollope! Where to start is a tricky question.

My first impulse is always to recommend his Barchester novels, which a group of us are working through at the moment, however the first two, The Warden and Barchester Towers, do revolve quite a lot around mid-19th century church politics and so can leave modern readers scratching their heads. I don't know if you are aware of it, but the group reads of those two novels were done as "tutored reads" with lots of questions and answers about the church stuff. If you do start with The Warden you might like to access those threads and use them as a resource.

The other problem with Trollope is that his best stand-alones are real chunksters - He Knew He Was Right and The Way We Live Now. If you just want to get a taste of his style, you might try one of the (comparatively) shorter ones, perhaps Orley Farm, The Vicar Of Bullhampton or Rachel Ray.

Oh, I have noticed some of the tutored reads threads! In fact, last year when I was lurking (not creepy I swear!) I followed the Persuasion one and got a lot out of it. I have just now downloaded The Warden and Barchester Towers for my Kindle and starred The Warden tutored read thread. As soon as I finish Romeo and Juliet I think I will give it a whirl.

Thanks for your thoughtful response!

Don't worry, we fully understand the difference between thread lurking and creepy lurking. :)

Do feel free to ask more questions on any of the tutored read threads if you need to.

Margaret Kennedy, Christie, Heyer, and MARY ROBERTS RINEHART! Plus+++!
Something, maybe the schoolgirl/cowgirl reminds me to ask you whether you read/have read/reread the Arthur Upfield Boney mysteries. You just have to accept the racism, but the mysteries themselves, especially the early ones, are top-notch.

Hello, Peggy, how lovely to see you here!

I have read a few of the Upfield novels, but a lo-oo-oo-ong time ago. However, they are on The List, and I expect to be tackling them in a more ordered fashion at some point...though not, perhaps, while I'm also wrestling with the Fu-Manchu stories - enough is enough! :)

(...and speaking of which...)

Finished Bloodhounds Of Heaven for TIOLI #1.

Now reading The Devil Doctor, the second in Sax Rohmer's Fu-Manchu series, for TIOLI #12.

Look out! It's the marmoset of DOOM!!

From The Devil Doctor:

    With Smith still grasping my wrist, I shrank back into the doorway, as something that looked in the darkness like a great ball of fluff came rapidly along the passage towards me. Just at my feet the thing stopped, and I made out for a small animal. The tiny, gleaming eyes looked up at me, and, chattering wickedly, the creature bounded past and was lost from view.
    It was Dr Fu-Manchu's marmoset...\

Eek!!

See, that's why I prefer sloths. They don't "bound" anywhere, either into or out of the darkness.

They don't "chatter wickedly", either.

The Memoirs Of Vidocq (Volume 3) - The third volume picks up where the second left off, with Vidocq still in an angry, defensive mood. In this section of the tale, however, he reverts to his earliest days with the police and the formation of the Sûreté, recounting the innumerable plots by those both above and below him to ruin him through false accusations and the setting of traps---even attempts upon his life. In particular, Vidocq dwells upon the inadequacies and iniquities of one of his subordinates, one Barthelemy "Coco" Lacour, who like all of the agents of the Sûreté in those early days was a former thief: Lacour is repeatedly derided as untrustworthy and two-faced, and is exposed in the narrative as one of the prime movers in the campaign to be rid of Vidocq by framing him. This lingering rancour on Vidocq's part is hardly surprising given that, following his exasperated resignation from the Sûreté in 1827, it was Lacour who was appointed in his place. On the other hand - a point that Vidocq sweeps past rather hurriedly - Lacour's own rancour is not surprising either: he was one of the first "beneficiaries" of Vidocq's time as a prison informer.

Needless to say, all of the plots against Vidocq fail, and at length his professional successes bring him a measure of security. This third volume then devotes itself in its entirety to recounting Vidocq's various cases. This section of the story is engaging enough, since {*cough*} it reads very much like a fictional thriller, being full of plots and counterplots and hair's-breadth escapes; but it delivers very little of what I was hoping to find in these memoirs. Chiefly, it dwells upon Vidocq's peculiar personal talents and how he exploited them to capture (by his own reckoning) innumerable thieves and a handful of murderers. At the outset of these volumes, Vidocq comments upon "the flexibility of my features, and a singular power of grimacing" (putting this reader amusingly in mind of Hamilton Cleek, The Man Of The Forty Faces); add to that a mastery of disguise supported by a facility for languages, and Vidocq emerges as a protean individual capable of assuming any character and insinuating himself into any company. Needing either to catch criminals in the very act or at least in immediate possession of stolen goods, Vidocq's main tactic is to get himself invited into various criminal enterprises and then send information to the gendarmes so that the gang (himself included) can be caught red-handed. The foregrounding of Vidocq's assumption of various disguises and characters obscures, but cannot wholly conceal, the morally dubious nature of his proceedings. Vidocq insists repeatedly that he only ever exploited plots in the making, and never instigated a crime; yet his very insistence highlights his own consciousness that his methods were far from above reproach. However---given that three hundred years later the moral greyness of undercover investigation is a problem still with us, it seems hardly fair to condemn Vidocq for his "the end justifies the means" philosophy.

Given Vidocq's long-term influence upon the evolution of police work and criminal investigation, it was disappointing that at only at a very few points in this narrative is the reader given anything that hints at those particular historical developments. One of the cases described has the criminal identified through footprints left at the scene: Vidocq and an underling befriend the suspect in order to give themselves the opportunity of examining his shoes. Vidocq himself had a photographic memory for faces; but recognising that this gift was not one shared by the population in general, he began recording and retaining detailed physical descriptions of criminals. This was the beginning of systematic criminal identification, and it is exasperating that this breakthrough is accorded no more than a remark in passing. Furthermore, I would go so far as to say that the true highlight of this volume is a short - and Vidocq-less - passage describing what I can only call crime scene investigation, which in its startling modernity almost leaps off the page at the reader.

The most minute exactitude had been observed in removing the body. Nothing had been neglected which might lead to the discovery of the assassins. Accurate impressions were taken of the footmarks; buttons, fragments of paper dyed in blood were carefully collected: on one of those pieces, which appeared to have been hastily torn off to wipe the blade of a knife found at no great distance from it, was observed some written characters. Upon more narrowly exploring the spot where Fontaine had been found lying, a second morsel was picked up, which presented every appearance of a torn address...

*************************************************************************************************************************************

The Memoirs Of Vidocq (Volume 4) - Those of us who hoped that those brief passages describing the beginning of modern crime investigation might be expanded upon in the final volume of Vidocq's memoirs were doomed to bitter disappointment. Here the narrative takes a turn both bewildering and boring, with Vidocq devoting the entire length of this book to a roll-call of criminal sub-societies, describing the usual social backgrounds, the dress patterns and the habits of different varieties of thieves and swindlers. Vidocq himself barely appears in this volume: a surprising turn of events given the egotistical self-absorption that marks the memoirs up to this point. This final section of the tale is also notable for internal contradictions that leave the reader blinking in confusion. Most notably, Vidocq rails at length against a social system that effectively makes it impossible for anyone with a criminal past to reform, by preventing them from finding work and so driving them back into crime simply as a means of survival. And having devoted much time and energy to an impassioned defence of those unfortunates thwarted in their attempts to reform and live an honest life, he turns around and devotes equal time to encouraging blanket distrust and advising against ever giving anyone a first chance, let alone a second; recommending, in effect, a system of constant watchfulness in which even thoroughly honest people must be treated as potential criminals, to the point of avoiding contact with them altogether. But then, according to this account, there is no such thing as an honest person to be found in the whole of Paris... The lingering impression here is that his years of immersion in the criminal milieu have left M. Vidocq more than a little paranoid.

Most curiously of all, however, there is no conclusion at all to this fourth volume. At the end of one of its interminable descriptions of criminal types, it simply stops. The effect is not only bewildering, but infuriating: as if the reader is the victim of a shaggy-dog joke extending for over one thousand pages.

Distrust all hawkers of glass, sellers of wooden spoons, menders of crockery, savoyards, and that roving army of men and women who carry about muslins, linen, calico, &c &c. Follow the milliners who go upstairs with their cards and boxes, sellers of decorations for toilettes, and others who come to offer you goods: all these trotters and trampers are thieves, or in alliance with thieves, to whom they give all the requisite information. Always be on your guard when there are, or after their have been, workmen in the house you inhabit. Most frequently one or more robberies are committed after the departure of masons, tilers, whitewashers, bricklayers, &c. Never deal with old clothes men, old lace buyers, but in the street. If you can do otherwise, never lodge in the same house with a washerwoman, a medical man, a midwife, a commissary of charity, a pawnbroker, a justice of the peace, or commissary of police, a lawyer, or a constable. Avoid houses where there is much bustle, and perpetual ingress and egress of people.

*************************************************************************************************************************************

So, yes, overall The Memoirs Of Vidocq were a disappointment. We know, historically, that Vidocq went on to act as an advisor to senior authorities in Britain and America when they wanted to implement police forces of their own; yet on the basis of this account it is difficult to know what he could have said to them but "Get yourself a Vidocq". This account is all about the man and nothing about the method, offering only tantalising hints of the innovative investigative techniques that we know were instigated during his time at the Sûreté.

Ultimately, then, it is a lot easier to perceive how these memoirs could have inspired writers like Balzac and Hugo to invent Vidocq-like characters, than it is to understand what Edgar Allan Poe found in them that led him to create C. Auguste Dupin.

Before I conclude, a few words about the contentious relationship that develops over time between Vidocq and the English translator of these volumes, which appeared in England as part of a publisher's series entitled Autobiography. A Collection Of The Most Instructive And Amusing Lives Ever Published, Written By The Parties Themselves. Signing himself only "H. T. R", the translator was Henry Thomas Riley, who, it appears, underwent with respect to the memoirs a personal journey that paralleled my own: that is, he grew increasingly sceptical and exasperated.

Riley starts out defending Vidocq against accusations that his memoirs were more fiction that fact (of which I will have more to say in a different context below), but by the end is making accusations of his own. The infuriating fourth volume comes with an angry afterword by Riley, in which he points out all the ways that Vidocq failed to fulfil the commitments made in the early stages of the memoirs when he promised not only to expose the corruptions of the prevailing authorities, not fearing to name names, but to offer solutions to many of the shortcomings inherent in the French system of criminal justice:

    Where are "his important ameliorations"? Where his "only remedies it is possible to apply, and which alone will not be temporising, but effective"? Where his "institutions, to purify and regulate the manners of the people"? Where are his accounts "of all police now existing, from that of the Jesuit to that of the court: from the police of the Bureau des Maeurs to the diplomatic police"? Where is the show-up of all the wheel-work, great and small, of those machines, which are always in motion? Where is the "development of all those things (and more), without disguise, without fear, without temper"? Where, we ask, are "all these details,---all these revelations,---all this information,---all this counsel"?---And Echo answers---"Where?"
    And do your omissions, repressions, result from fear?---We believe not. Do they result from incapability, from incompetency to undertake, from inadequacy to fulfil your promised task?---We believe not. Was it that you were compelled to silence by the powers that be? Was it that you wished to puff your work into a more extensive sale? Was it that, in durance vile, when cash ran low, and necessities high,---when pocket and stomach both were empty, that "your poverty and not your will consented" to refrain from making those disclosures, which you had pledged yourself to the public at large that you would make? Vidocq! was an offer made you, and did you sell yourself? We ask these questions, because we think we are entitled to an explanation.

So while I didn't get out of The Memoirs Of Vidocq anything like what I was hoping for, at least I made the acquaintance of Mr Henry Thomas Riley, towards whom I developed a deep sense of fellow-feeling.

Phew! Just...phew!

#186 Another innocent person sucked into Anthony Trollope novels.... :-)

#191 Well, for your sake, I'm glad the marmoset made a return!

#194 & 195

"Phew! Just...phew!"

*Applause*

Why do I keep banging my head against a brick wall? Because it feels so good when I stop! :)

I was delighted to meet up again with the marmoset, but I'm not sure that even he compensates for the fact that the racism has now been joined by a large dollop of misogyny. Oh, and a smattering of anti-Semitism! So it's pretty much a case of having all the bases covered...

Another innocent person sucked into Anthony Trollope novels.... :-)

{*rubs hands together ands cackles with evil glee*}

Bloodhounds Of Heaven: The Detective In English Fiction From Godwin To Doyle - It seems only right to admit that I came to this book in a prejudiced state of mind, sensitised by my recent reading of Kate Watson's Women Writing Crime Fiction, 1860-1880, in which she pointed out how many studies of early crime fiction disregard the work of female writers. I hadn't read far into Bloodhounds Of Heaven before something in its tone suggested that it would be one of those books. In fact, I made a mental bet with myself that no woman writer would even be mentioned; and while that turned out not to be the case, in practical terms it might as well have been. In the chapter on sensation fiction, Ian Ousby does briefly allude to Ellen Wood and Mary Elizabeth Braddon, but has little good to say of either. Furthermore, he criticises some of Wilkie Collins' stories by calling them "no better than Braddon" (though he is forced to admit that Collins sometimes pinched ideas from her) and, when he wants to talk about the detective plot in Braddon's Henry Dunbar, does so by referring to the novel's stage adaptation instead...which was written by a man. The only other woman mentioned in this book is Florence Warden, whose novel The House On The Marsh was based upon a famous real-life crime.

While the blatant bias of Bloodhounds Of Heaven meant that I read it with my hackles up throughout, I can understand - if not appreciate - where it came from. The book was published in 1976, when the suggestion that detective fiction might warrant serious study and analysis would probably have raised incredulous eyebrows. Ian Ousby evidently thought that writing this book at all was going quite far enough, without bringing women's writing into it; his doubts show themselves with amusing clarity in his opening paragraph, in which he speaks disparagingly of his own choice of subject matter:

Detective fiction is pre-eminently the literature of the sickroom and the railway carriage; even its admirers rarely argue that it is a serious art form.

Is it just me, or does the phrase "even its admirers" suggest that he isn't one of them? Perhaps not: as it turns out, Bloodhounds Of Heaven is not about detective fiction per se, but rather an examination of how public opinion about the status and actions of the police expressed itself in English detective fiction from the late 18th century into the early 20th. Its concerns are sociological rather than literary, and the works examined considered of value not in their own right, but for what they say about the times in which they were published.

Though I've been critical up to this point - meeting bias with bias, if you like - I have to admit that I found some real value in Bloodhounds Of Heaven, in which Ousby traces the shifting reaction of the English to the police, and to detectives in particular: from the initial hostile resistance to the creation of a police force, to deep ambivalence following its implementation, to increasing acceptance and even enthusiasm during the mid-19th century, and then the backlash that came with a serious of highly publicised police blunders late in the century, culminating in the failure to apprehend Jack the Ripper. The pivot of this study is the formal establishment, in 1842, of a police detective division, after public resistance turned to public demand in the wake of the existing forces' failure to capture a wanted murderer. Even so, it was not until 1849, when the new technology of the telegraph was a key factor in the apprehension of the notorious Mannings, that the idea of the professional detective was fully embraced.

Ian Ousby devotes a chapter to Charles Dickens' somewhat peculiar relationship with the police detectives of the time, including his series of almost hero-worshipful pieces published in Household Words. Ousby suggests that at a time when Dickens was beginning to chafe against the restrictions of middle-class life (this was also the period when he started going off to France with Wilkie Collins for dirty weekends, or even weeks), the new detectives represented to him the potential for adventure and the freedom to cross boundaries. Dickens' relationship with Inspector Field of the new "Detective Department" is then considered in terms of its influence upon the character of Bucket in Bleak House, himself a great crosser of boundaries as he moves with ease from the heights of Chesney Wold to the depths of Tom-All-Alone's, interacting with individuals at every existing level of society in the process.

Created in 1852, Bucket succeeds in some - certainly not all - of what he undertakes; but by the time Wilkie Collins wrote The Moonstone in 1868, growing public ambivalence about the police was reflected in the character of Sergeant Cuff, who misinterprets the events which have transpired around the theft of a famous jewel, fails utterly to solve the crime, and is ignominiously dismissed. In Ousby's own words, this shift in attitude represents "the dethronement of a minor cultural hero": police detectives were no longer the reliable protectors of society, but fallible individuals capable of grave - even fatal - error. A series of worrying murder cases through the 1860s and 1870s, with significant doubt over the guilt of the convicted (and executed) party, raised public concern to new heights. In literary terms, this concern expressed itself in the emergence of the private investigator, who operated distinct from the police and could act - in the words of the genre's most iconic figure - as "a final court of appeal". In the closing section of Bloodhounds Of Heaven, which is devoted to Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes, Ian Ousby shows how Holmes was simultaneously the product of a line of fictional detectives stretching back nearly one hundred years, and a wish-fulfilment fantasy for a society grown deeply disillusioned with its own legal system.

I began this consideration of Bloodhounds Of Heaven in the middle because its real strength lies in its early chapters. Ousby opens his study with a sketch of the essentially police-less 18th century, considers briefly the career of the notorious thief / thief-taker Jonathan Wild (and its influence on the English attitude to "the informer") and the establishment of the Bow Street Runners under Henry and John Fielding, before embarking upon a deeply insightful analysis of William Godwin's Things As They Are; or, The Adventures Of Caleb Williams. Ousby does an excellent job highlighting how Godwin uses his novel to express his views about an increasingly adversarial society created by political schism and the abuse of power. Though he includes in in his study of detective fiction, Ousby emphasises the point that the text does not use the word "detective" - which was not invented for another forty or fifty years - but employs what was, at the time, a far more profoundly significant one: spy.

"Spying" is also a focus of the next progenitor work of detective fiction considered in Bloodhounds Of Heaven. Imagine if you can my reaction when, upon turning to this book in search of relief and relaxation in the wake of The Memoirs Of Vidocq, I discovered that it contained a chapter entitled "Vidocq Translated", and found myself back in the company of my old friend, Eugène François! Ousby here describes the reception of the memoirs in England, pointing out the many ways in which they tapped into the zeitgeist of the time. To the English, the term "police" was shorthand for the abhorred French system of spies, agents provocateurs and political persecution. So profound was the local resistance to the mere idea of a police force, even a crime-rate reaching astronomical levels could barely shake it. Arriving on the scene in 1828, as Sir Robert Peel was beginning his fight for the Metropolitan Police Act, Vidocq's lurid tales of false identities, entrapment and betrayal must have seemed like the confirmation of everyone's worst fears. However, though he does not underestimate either their popularity or their impact upon their readers, Ousby has little good to say about the memoirs themselves. In fact, he considers them a fabrication from start to finish---and not without good reason, perhaps. I mentioned at the beginning of my own tussle with Vidocq that many people believed the memoirs to have been ghost-written: in Bloodhounds Of Heaven, Ian Ousby not only "outs" those the evidence suggests were the most likely perpetrators, Emile Morice and Louis-François L'Héritier, but points out that one of the interminable anecdotes that makes up the fourth volume, that concerning a former prostitute's unsuccessful efforts to earn an honest living, was adapted from a short story previously published by L'Héritier.

For that factoid alone, I found Bloodhounds Of Heaven a worthwhile read.

Seen in its historical perspective, the portrait of Holmes carries the mid-Victorian respect for the detective to new heights of hero-worship. In other ways, however, it represents a clean break with the stereotype evolved by Waters out of Gaspey and Vidocq, and continued by Dickens and Collins. Holmes is a private detective, not a policeman; a gentleman, not a modestly successful burgher; and is possessed by genius rather than endowed simply with native shrewdness. Doyle supplied the formula for which the writers of the 1870s and 1880s, in their disillusionment with the police detective, had been fumbling. Moreover, as the success which was accorded his work in his day shows, he had created a figure uniquely attractive to the public for light reading. Sherlock Holmes, it may be said, was a cliché whose time had come; he was, contemporaries felt, the perfect hero for his age.

Most of what I knew about the Bow Street Runners was from Georgette Heyer, prior to reading the Blind Justice series by Bruce Alexander. Have you read those? I think they are quite good, and John Fielding, as you might guess from the title, is a major character.

Hi, Roni - thanks for visiting! Apparently there's very little solid information about the Runners in existence: most of the related documentation was destroyed after they were disbanded. I'm still working my way through detective fiction written "at the time", so although I'm aware of the John Fielding series, I haven't gone in that direction yet. It's on the List, though! :)

From The Devil Doctor:

Dr Petrie is handcuffed, and his handcuffs are attached by a long chain to a wall. Evidently someone has left the keys lying around, because---

    My fear left me, and a mighty anxiety took its place. This creature which now crouched chattering at me from beneath the big table was Fu-Manchu's marmoset, and in the intervals of its chattering and grimacing, it nibbled, speculatively, at the keys upon the ring which it clutched in its tiny hands. Key after key it sampled, evincing a growing dissatisfaction with the uncrackable nature of its find.
    Were there no means whereby I could induce the marmoset to approach me?
    Whilst I racked my brains for some scheme, the little animal took the matter out of my hands. Tossing the ring with the jangling contents a yard or so across the carpet in my direction, it leapt in pursuit, picked up the ring, whirled it over its head, and then threw a complete somersault around it. Now it snatched up the keys again, and holding them close to its ear, rattled them furiously. Finally, with an incredible spring, it leapt onto the chain supporting the lamp above my head, and sat there looking down at me like an acrobat on a trapeze. The tiny bluish face, completely framed in grotesque whiskers, enhanced the illusion of an acrobatic comedian. Never for a moment did it release its hold upon the key-chain...

Face it, doctor: that marmoset's just screwing with you.

This is the first proper description we've had of it, which suggests that it may be a white-eared marmoset.

(Pretty terrifying, hey?)

It's adorable!! Such fluffy ears.

Its adorable fluffy ears are a deadly trap! Don't fall for it!! :D

And obviously it has a warped sense of humor!

It's one of the many reasons I'm finding myself siding more and more with the bad guys... :)

Finished The Devil Doctor by Sax Rohmer for TIOLI #12...

...in which, in spite of really having nothing better to do with his time, Dr Fu-Manchu yet again fails to kill our thick-headed British heroes. A disappointment, in other words.

Now reading Out Of The Darkness by Charles J. Dutton, the second in his series featuring private investigator, John Bartley.

Liz - Fu-Manchu brings back memories of Saturday morning tv which filmed the five Christopher Lee films with Lee as the dastardly Dr.

Ah, dear old Chris! Come to think of it, I have an idea I have a couple of those tucked away on video somewhere; I'll have to dig them out. :)

#198 Despite the absence of women and the sneer towards Braddon that sounds very interesting Liz.

#201 Cutie!

#201 by @lyzard> There's something about that face ... I think it has the same expression my old editor used to get when I missed deadline.

>>#209

It certainly has its strong points but the sense that the author had no real liking for the material he was dealing with never went away.

Cutie!

Are you mad, woman!? The thing is clearly evil! EVIL!!

>>#210

Like I said...EVIL!!

Finished Out Of The Darkness by Charles J. Dutton for TIOLI #6.

Now reading From This Dark Stairway, the fourth in Mignon Eberhart's series about Nurse Sarah Keate.

Liz, I just found your thread, and enjoyed several of your reviews. I need to come back when I have a little more time to read all of them. I will need to check out your first two threads as well. It looks like you read a lot of books that I would like.

Hi, Nana - thank you for stopping by! Ha, yes, I can imagine you would need more time I'm you're going to read through my insane ramblings! I hope it does turn out we have some tastes in common; I'm always thrilled to find another person to chat to. :)

Finished From This Dark Stairway for TIOLI #7.

And because having finished The Memoirs Of Vidocq, I simply don't have enough pain in my life---

---now reading Elsie Dinsmore by Martha Finley, for TIOLI #1.

I read many of the Elsie Dinsmore books when I was 10 or so and thought they were great. My opinion changed as I got older, and not for the better, so I'm curious to see what you think of it.

Hi - thanks for visiting! I'm curious about these books rather than particularly expecting to enjoy them. So far most of my worst fears have been confirmed: she's had six separate crying fits within the first nine pages. :)

Well, I was going through a "mistreated orphans" phase back when I liked them. But yes, Elsie cries a lot.

...to put it mildly. :)

Never had a "mistreated orphan" phase myself, although I guess I can appreciate the psychology of it. I was more into "precocious children turn detective" and "children wander around the countryside in an alarmingly unsupervised manner" books.

I read a lot of "precocious children turn detective" too. I think A Little Princess and Mara, Daughter of the Nile (and to a lesser degree, Anne of Green Gables are to blame for the orphan phase. I loved those books and reread them all the time when I was between 8 and 10 years old.

Just wanted to stop by and give you a big "Thank You" for pointing me in the direction of The Warden and the tutored read thread for it. I just finished the book early this morning and I really, really enjoyed it. All the information and conversation on the tutored read thread added to my enjoyment and understanding in a big way.

I found it interesting how many of the themes of The Warden echo social issues of today - the purpose of long established charitites, if the poor are "entitled" to said charities, etc. Much food for thought there.

I'm looking forward to continuing on with Barchester Towers!

>>#220

Hmm, I can't say that Elsie is doing anything to win me over to the "mistreated orphan" camp...

>>#221

How lovely to have another Trollope convert! I'm very glad you enjoyed The Warden, Heidi - I always find it a bit nerve-wracking when people read on my recommendation! There is a tutored read thread for Barchester Towers, too; after that the books get a little easier. :)

Finished Elsie Dinsmore for TIOLI #1.

Now reading Saraband by Eliot Bliss for TIOLI #15.

I've been very neglectful of my Virago reading this year, so I'm glad of an excuse to start fixing that, even before August!

>222 lyzard: I tried rereading Elsie Dinsmore a few years ago and didn't even get halfway through. I kept asking myself, "What did I ever see in this?"

Yes, granted I'm not the target audience---to say the least---but I had trouble understanding Elsie's popularity - she such a wet little thing on one hand, and such a killjoy on the other! I found myself sympathising with the "wicked" supporting characters who are all irritated by her. :)

!! Hope to never meet Fu-Manchu's Marmoset when I need help !!

I've gone over to netflix and asked for the New Statesmen. & as for my British Fix, just saw Red Dwarf X (the library had it) and Black Adder Goes Forth with it's sad, un-Adderish ending.

The Devil Doctor - Published in 1916, this second entry in Sax Rohmer's Fu-Manchu series picks up two years after the events of The Mystery Of Dr Fu-Manchu, at the end of which the insidious doctor supposedly perished in a fire. Fu-Manchu demonstrates his continued existence by abducting the Reverend Eltham, who Nayland Smith and Dr Petrie protected from him in the earlier novel. The Reverend was once a missionary in China (his activities there helped bring about the Boxer Rebellion; it is entirely in keeping with this series' peculiar philosophy that it treats this as something to be proud of), and has since maintained ties with certain individuals who oppose the faction for whom Fu-Manchu works. One mandarin in particular, with whom Eltham corresponds, is regarded as a threat - and in order to discover his identity, Fu-Manchu is quite prepared to resort to torture... After this opening, which promises more of the same, The Devil Doctor takes an odd turn. Instead of pursuing the nebulous "plan" of which we heard so much in the first novel - albeit with a complete lack of detail - Fu-Manchu devotes all his time and effort to trying to kill Smith and Petrie---as if the violent uprising of "the countless hordes" who make up "the yellow races" simply can't happen before these two thick-skulled Brits are removed from the scene.

So most of this novel is taken up with scenes of Our Heroes blundering into Fu-Manchu's traps, and escaping from them by the skin of their teeth. Fu-Manchu being Fu-Manchu, many of these involve some sort of killer animal; and to the spiders, centipedes and scorpions of the first novel, we are now able to add a black cat with its claws dipped in a deadly poison (which apparently never washes its feet), an Abyssinian baboon with freakishly long forearms and a penchant for strangling, and - whoo! - an Australian death-adder.

And then of course there's the marmoset.

Alas, however, though they manage to remove one or two minor characters from the scene, this army of biological weapons has no such good fortune when it comes to Smith and Petrie, forcing Fu-Manchu to take a more decisive role in matters. His doing so results in a delightfully outré scene in which, both men having been captured, Petrie finds himself forced to choose between killing Smith himself - with a samurai sword, no less - or allowing his best friend to be eaten by rats. Naturally they manage to escape from this too, although not, I am pleased to be able to report, before Smith gets a little chewed...

And just how do they escape? Ah, thereby hangs a tale...

The Devil Doctor is just as ridiculously racist as its predecessor, full of gasp!-shock!-horror! exclamations such as, "Though highly educated, and possibly an American citizen, Van Roon was a Chinaman!" However, overall it spends less time dwelling of the natural iniquities of "the yellow races" than did The Mystery Of Dr Fu-Manchu, chiefly because it's got other fish to fry. At the end of the previous novel, we left Smith and Petrie heading for Egypt to seek out the beautiful Kâramanèh and her brother, Azîz, who fled to their native land after escaping Fu-Manchu's clutches. They are unable to find a trace of them, a disappointment that finally wakes Petrie up to the true nature of his feelings. He is still pining for the girl two years later when he discovers that not only is she back in Fu-Manchu's service, evidently of her own volition, but behaves as if she has no idea who he is... For Smith, one of those lone-wolf career misogynists who tend to view women as a lower form of life even when they aren't "Oriental", Kâramanèh's seeming betrayal is proof of every low opinion he ever held, and he lets loose with sneering speeches about how, "Women are very much alike...from Charing Cross to Pagoda Road", treating Petrie with contempt because he can't kill his feelings for the girl. The two, openly or inwardly, continue to indulge in bitter, ugly remarks about Kâramanèh all throughout the narrative---after, that is, she has twice saved their lives at great risk to her own. Her blank puzzlement at their hostility, her insistence that she doesn't know who they are or why they should hate her, they take as further evidence of her "treachery". It doesn't occur to either of them that this pose, if pose it is, is completely pointless, or that perhaps her memory loss is genuine, even though in the first novel one of their colleagues had his memory wiped by Fu-Manchu's drugs. No, much easier to assume the worst about the girl, much easier to condemn her as "utterly false", as "a beautiful viper", as "false and evil", as "the faithless, evil Kâramanèh"...

It takes Kâramanèh regaining her memory after a series of shocks and then shooting Fu-Manchu in the head - or at least {*cough*} winging him in the head - for Smith and Petrie to admit that, well, golly gosh, maybe they were wrong about her. Petrie finally gives up the struggle, admits that he loves her, and decides to marry her---or so we infer: the word "love" never appears in the narrative, and nor does the word "marriage". Instead, we get Petrie's mutterings about "ostracism" and having to buy a practice in Cairo, while a disapproving Smith shakes his head in the background. He does, nevertheless, accompany Petrie, Kâramanèh and Azîz (who shows up late in proceedings) to Egypt. On the journey out, we find Petrie, rather than announcing himself as Kâramanèh's fiancé, posing as her doctor. That's right, folks: he's ashamed of his relationship with her---and why not? Sure, Kâramanèh is incredibly beautiful, intelligent and cultured, she's courageous, she's saved his live at least half-a-dozen times, and she utterly adores him...but then on the other hand, she's an Oriental---right?

I swear, if it wasn't for the marmoset, I would throw these books on the compost heap...

"Kâramanèh," Smith continued coldly, "is a beautiful toy, I grant you; but so is a cobra. Neither is suitable for playful purposes... You know that she is utterly false, yet a glance or two from those dark eyes can make a fool of you! A woman made a fool of me once, but I learned my lesson; you have failed to learn yours. If you are determined to go to pieces on the rock that broke up Adam, do so! But don't involve me in the wreck, Petrie, for that might mean a yellow emperor of the world, and you know it!"

Oh, yes!

I got so distracted by the misogyny of The Devil Doctor that I almost forgot its anti-Semitism! One of the minor characters is Jewish (and American, so we get two stereotypes for the price of one), and though he isn't around long enough for Sax Rohmer to really let loose*, he manages to cram quite a number of slurs into this character's brief appearance. Some of them are obvious; some of them...less so:

Abel Slattin shrugged his shoulders, racially...

Tell me...how exactly would one go about shrugging one's shoulders, RACIALLY...??

(*He becomes the victim of the Australian death-adder - whoo!)

>>#226

Hi, Katie! Trust me, if you knew Smith and Petrie like I do, you wouldn't blame that marmoset one bit!

I'll be interested to hear what you make of The New Statesman. And, ohhhh, the ending of Blackadder Goes Forth---!!!!

I'm enjoying your summaries of Fu Manchu Liz, though not even that marmoset will get me to put down this ten-foot pole.

Hi, Steve - thanks for stopping by! Ha! Yes, you wouldn't think, would you, that someone could write a series of novels in which a marmoset is presented as the tool of evil and yet not have a sense of humour?---but...

#227 Liz, I can safely say I will never read the Fu-Manchu books but I love reading your reviews of them!

#228 *snort*

Are you still planning on reading These Old Shades this month?

Hi, Heather!

Just as well you're enjoying them, because I'll probably be heading into the third book before too long. (When I requested the first novel as an ILL, they sent me an omnibus of the first three, sigh.)

Are you still planning on reading These Old Shades this month?

Ah! Thank you for mentioning that! I'm in a bit of a pickle. I'm - eep! - up to #75, and as you know I always like to do something old and bloggy for my landmark reads; but unfortunately the ebook version of what I have picked out is so dreadful, if I read it at all I'll have to read it online. That means I need a second book at the same time for the train; and though I don't like reading more than one book at a time, I think since These Old Shades will be a re-read (indeed, a re-re-re-re-re-read), it won't mess with my head like juggling two books usually does.

Unless it has a flower on pg 23, I will probably add it to the curve / line letter challenge.

ETA: Yike! My copy is literally in pieces!

ETA2: My copy has the word "corn" on pg 23 - see you in Challenge #1!

Have you got a Kindle? I can lend you my copy. I'd like to read These Old Shades with you, but I can use my paper version. My 1966 copy? Oh, no! The pristine 2009 Sourcebooks version that I bought BECAUSE my older Heyers were falling apart. Is there a separate thread for the Heyer reads?

Hi, Roni! No, there isn't a thread for the Heyers, just a few of us working through them in chronological order to no particular schedule, and having a chat on each other's threads. They're all re-reads for me, but other people are coming to them for the first time.

Thank you for the offer, but no, I don't have a Kindle. I'll make do with my battered old paper copy...and perhaps start looking for a replacement...

where can I find the chronological order for them, Liz?

Hi, Jean. We're not working off a particular list, just figuring it out as we go. I think there is a list of the original publication dates at Heyer's Wikipedia entry, though, or you can do what I tend to do and use "Add Books": Georgette Heyer 1926 = These Old Shades. :)

Does this mean you'll be joining us? Excellent!

oh sure, why not!

#233 Great - I needed a new train book this week and I think These Old Shades will do very nicely. Sorry to hear your copy is on its last legs :-(

>>#238 & #239

Whoo-hoo! :)

And I'm excited to see lots of references to red hair in These Old Shades:

p9 "Why do you want him? At least tell me that?"
"He has Titian hair," said Justin blandly. "Titian hair has ever been one of - my - ruling - passions"

Oh, there's no shortage of positive reinforcement in THAT book! :)

Finished Saraband by Eliot Bliss for TIOLI #15.

Now reading Lady Patty: A Sketch by Margaret Wolfe Hungerford for TIOLI #6...interspersed with These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer for TIOLI #1. :)

I started These Old Shades today. Heather, the references to red hair aren't necessarily positive. Do you have a temper?

Liz, I have heard people be totally turned off TOS by such comments as Hugh's about Léon having to be gently born because of his face, hands and speech. I feel they are imposing 20th century attitudes onto 18th century behavior, but it led me to wonder. Other than by-blows, there would not have been much interbreeding between the aristocracy and the peasant class over a long period--would there be physical differences?

It's quite possible - not so much in specifics such as nose shape or eye colour - or hair - but because the conditions that the poor lived in led to stunted growth and physical deformities such as rickets. So yes, quite likely there would have been some, but not the kind that novelists tend to take note of.

It's worth noting that the physical differences between English convicts and their Australian offspring were marked enough to provoke a startled reaction - there are numerous documents recording remarks to the effect that they were almost two different species. What was different was that the next generations had fresh air, enough to eat and room to move, instead of slums, starvation and disease.

The belief that "birth" would inevitably show itself (and that environment has nothing to do with it) persists in English novels well into the 20th century. Which is not to say that the authors necessarily believed it, but it makes a good plot point. :)

On the other hand, we are talking about mid-18th century France, when there was probably less crossing of class lines than any other time and place, so I guess in this case it's not out of the question.

#245 "Do you have a temper?" I don't(*), but you'd be surprised how many complete strangers would think it was perfectly acceptable to ask me that when I was younger! I never thought it was a very sensible thing to do - what would they have done if I did turn out to have a fiery temper?

(*Well no more than everyone does - I think I'm probably more of a sulker really. Very mature I know.)

#246 "It's worth noting that the physical differences between English convicts and their Australian offspring were marked enough to provoke a startled reaction" Wow - I'd never heard that before but it makes a lot of sense.

I remember reading somewhere that the children making up the first freeborn generation grew up to be almost a foot taller than their parents on average.

Well! Lady Patty: A Sketch turned out to be a sketch indeed: bright, breezy and short...so I have officially finished #75 for the year - whoo!! And before the end of June, too, so I'm on track for 150!!

...and now officially reading These Old Shades. :)

Congratulations on reaching the 75 book mark already! And I just finished These Old Shades 5 minutes ago. I just love the way Heyer weaves all those threads together into a compelling story. Of course, I also love the way she reprises them in Devil's Cub too.

Spoiler warning!!

ETA: With the latter story in mind, and some of the difficulties attendant to that story, is it feasible that the Curé is able to oblige the Duc at the end, since I assume he is Catholic? Not something that has occurred to me before.

Thank you, Roni!

I'm only up to a discussion of breeches. :)

Spoiler warning for These Old Shades and Devil's Cub

...

...

If we're talking about the ceremony (rather than the fake confession, which was my first thought), there was no absolute bar: it was usually a question of both parties being willing and one of them being qualified. :)

In the later book the person summoned (but not used) is explictly Protestant.

Continued Spoiler warning:

Yes, that is why I wondered, because finding a Protestant was such a major undertaking. You are correct that it was the ceremony to which I refer.

Continued spoiler warning

...

Later on we find out that the Alastairs were further enobled under Queen Mary, that the family stuck by the Stuarts from the Civil War through to the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, and that Justin's mother was French, that so it's not out of the question that he's Catholic himself. Given the political climate at the time, he may have decided that it was safer to raise his son a Protestant, though.

Quite right, I was aware of that, and wondered.

Congrats on reaching 75 Liz.

Sounds like you and Roni are getting a LOT more out of These Old Shades than I did!!

Congratulations on reading 75 books!

I'm only halfway through These Old Shades so I'll revisit and read the spoiler posts once I'm done...

>>#256

Hi, Heidi- thanks! Does that mean you didn't care for These Old Shades, or just that you didn't obsess over the details like Roni and me?? :)

>>257 souloftherose:

Thank you!

DON'T!! - they contain spoilers for Devil's Cub, too, so it's safer to just avert your eyes.

Speaking of which---finished These Old Shades for TIOLI #1.

Now reading Murder In Bostall by Paul MacGuire for TIOLI #19, which I have belatedly discovered is the first in a series.

BECAUSE ANOTHER SERIES IS JUST EXACTLY WHAT I NEED.

a deserved marmoset attack? You're making me really curious!

Wow...!

I just looked up Perilous Question: The Drama Of The Great Reform Bill by Lady Antonia Fraser in my local library system and found out that although it holds 6 copies, they're all on loan - so if I want it, I'm going to have to wait. Even queue.

I don't think that's ever happened to me before. Seriously.

One thing about a taste for obscure books---assuming they're available in the first place, you rarely have to compete for them...

>>#261

Hi, Katie! Ha, no, the marmoset doesn't actually attack anyone, although it does do jobs for Fu-Manchu like carrying objects to high places on command. But its main talent seems to be taunting people while they are under duress. :)

Good marmoset!!! It has a sense of humor.

>258 lyzard: Oh my no, I loved These Old Shades! I just like them (Georgette Heyer's books) for the dialogue and the romance. I am kind of oblivious to the social ideas and values of the time period that are being commented on!

>>#263

I enjoy its choice of people to taunt, too!

>>#264

Whereas I tend to read books like this for the social ideas and values of the time. :)

That's one reason I read a lot of old books rather than historical novels: I like what authors writing at that time have to tell me about their society. Too many historical novelists get the details or the characters' speech or attitudes wrong. One of the joys of Heyer is that she very, very rarely made that sort of error.

Finished Murder In Bostall by Paul McGuire for TIOLI #19.

And that, I believe, will be me done for June - 13 books, after a slow start; I also hit the magical #75, which means I'm on track for 150 in the year. Whoo!

Now if I could just get some reviews written...

Anyway...now reading The Si-Fan Mysteries by Sax Rohmer, the third of his Fu-Manchu novels.

I believe the expression you're looking for is "sucker for punishment".

In the further spirit of BECAUSE ANOTHER SERIES IS JUST EXACTLY WHAT I NEED, last night I discovered that Anne Austin's Murder At Bridge, which I read last year, and which I thought was a standalone, is actually part of a series...

Sigh.

While I'm not expecting to enjoy The Si-Fan Mysteries - at least not in the unironic sense - I do have to admire this gorgeous cover image (although if that's supposed to be Kâramanèh, someone should have told them she has white skin):

Sigh.

Getting reviews caught up is tough enough. I didn't need it to be one of those days when my cat decides that the only place in the world she wants to be is between me and my computer.

ETA: Oh, goody! - now she's doing the "I must lie on your left arm!" thing...

Well, I was hoping to get my reviews caught up before starting a new thread, but then I didn't really want to be starting my July thread in August...or September...

So please join me over on Thread 4! Who knows, with a spiffy new thread and lots of room to move, maybe I'll actually manage to get caught up!

No promises, mind...