lyzard's list: the "100? Ha!" hubris thread - Part 4

    

Topping my new thread is the bilby, a nocturnal, desert-dwelling marsupial found in Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland. There were originally two species of bilby: one is now extinct and the other severely endangered due to habitat loss related to cattle farming, predation by feral animals and human efforts to control feral animals, such as poisoning and traps (you can't win). Significant conservation efforts are being made through captive breeding and reintroduction programs, including in feral-free sanctuaries in South Australia, Western Australia and New South Wales.

Due to its long ears, its hopping movements, its construction of extensive burrow systems and, perhaps, its remarkably short gestation period (~ two weeks), there has been a push in recent years for the bilby to replace the rabbit - one of its main introduced competitors, after all - as the local symbol for Easter:

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:



Cleek Of Scotland Yard by Thomas W. Hanshew (1914)

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)

July:

78. The Si-Fan Mysteries: Being A New Phase In The Activities Of Fu-Manchu, The Devil Doctor by Sax Rohmer (Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward) (1917)
79. Tales Of Hoffmann by E. T. A. Hoffmann (translated by R. J. Hollingdale) (1982)
80. The Man Of Last Resort; or, The Clients Of Randolph Mason by Melville Davisson Post (1897)
81. Unravelled Knots by Baroness Emmuska Orczy (1925)
82. The Secret Of Chimneys by Agatha Christie (1925)
83. The Masqueraders by Georgette Heyer (1928)
84. Le Père Goriot by Honore de Balzac (translated by Burton Raffel) (1835)
85. Three Dead Men by Paul McGuire (1931)
86. The Corrector Of Destinies by Melville Davisson Post (1908)
87. Hand And Ring: The Story Of A Mysterious Crime by Anna Katharine Green (1883)

August:

88. The Amours Of Messalina by Anonymous (1689)
89. The Small House At Allington by Anthony Trollope (1864)
90. Boy by James Hanley (1931)
91. 'Lesser Breeds': Racial Attitudes In Popular British Culture, 1890-1940 by Michael Diamond (2006)
92. Patty In The City by Carolyn Wells (1905)
93. The Purcell Papers by J. Sheridan Le Fanu (1880)
94. Painted Clay by Capel Boake (1917)
95. 9985357::Steepleton; Or, High Church And Low Church: Being The Present Tendencies Of Parties In The Church, Exhibited In The History Of Frank Faithful by Stephen Jenner (1847)
96. The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie (1926)
97. The True Heart by Sylvia Townsend Warner (1929)
98. Death Comes To Perigord by John Alexander Ferguson (1931)
99. Devil's Cub by Georgette Heyer (1932)
100. True Relation Of A Horrid Murder Committed Upon Thomas Kidderminster Of Tupsley In The County Of Hereford, Gent. by Anonymous (1688)
101. Plots And Counterplots: Sexual Politics And The Body Politic In English Literature, 1660-1730 by Richard Braverman (1993)

September:

102. Daughter Of Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer (Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward) (1930)
103. The Diamond Pin by Carolyn Wells (1919)
104. The Shadow Of The Wolf by R. Austin Freeman (1925)
105. The War Terror by Arthur B. Reeve (1915)
106. The Council Of Justice by Edgar Wallace (1908)
107. Murder Incidental by Keith Trask (1931)

Books in transit:

On interlibrary loan / storage request:
Wanted! by Carlton Dawe
The Murders In The Rue Morgue: The Dupin Tales by Edgar Allan Poe
The Incredulity Of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton

Purchased and shipped:
Julian Probert by Susan Ertz
The Sons Of Mrs Aab by Sarag Millin
The First Lady Brendon by Robert Hichens

On loan:
*Daughter Of Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer (17/09/2013)
Alicia Deane by E. V. Timms (26/11/13)
Leathermouth by Carlton Dawe (26/11/13)
*Plots And Counterplots by Richard Braverman (26/11/13)
Max Carrados by Ernest Bramah (26/11/13)

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 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}

Ongoing series and sequels:

(1866 - 1876) **Emile Gaboriau - Monsieur Lecoq - The Widow Lerouge (1/6) {ManyBooks}
(1867 - 1905) **Martha Finley - Elsie Dinsmore - Holidays At Roselands (2/28) {ManyBooks}
(1878 - 1917) **Anna Katharine Green - Ebenezer Gryce - Behind Closed Doors (5/12) {Book Depository}
(1896 - 1909) **Melville Davisson Post - Randolph Mason - The Corrector Of Destinies (3/3) {Internet Archive}
(1897 - 1900) **Anna Katharine Green - Amelia Butterworth - That Affair Next Door (1/3) {Fisher Library}
(1901 - 1919) **Carolyn Wells - Patty Fairfield - Patty's Summer Days (4/17) {ManyBooks}
(1905 - 1925) **Baroness Orczy - The Old Man In The Corner - Unravelled Knots (3/3) {Project Gutenberg Australia}}
(1905 - 1928) **Edgar Wallace - The Just Men - The Just Men Of Cordova (3/6) {ManyBooks}
(1907 - 1912) **Carolyn Wells - Marjorie - Marjorie's Vacation (1/6) {ManyBooks}
(1907 - 1942) *R. Austin Freeman - Dr John Thorndyke - The D'Arblay Mystery (13/26) {Feedbooks}
(1908 - 1924) **Margaret Penrose - Dorothy Dale - Dorothy Dale: A Girl Of Today (1/13) {ManyBooks}
(1909 - 1942) *Carolyn Wells - Fleming Stone - Raspberry Jam (11/49) {ManyBooks}
(1910 - 1936) *Arthur B. Reeve - Craig Kennedy - The Social Gangster (5/11) {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 Mask Of Fu-Manchu (5/14) {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 - The House By The Road (3/9) {AbeBooks}
(1921 - 1925) **Herman Landon - The Gray Phantom - The Gray Phantom (1/5) {Internet Archive}
(1921 - 1937) *John Alexander Ferguson - Francis McNab - The Dark Geraldine (1/6) {AbeBooks}
(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}
(1925 - 1944) *Agatha Christie - Superintendent Battle - The Secret Of Chimneys (1/5) {owned}
(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}
(1928 - 1959) *John Gordon Brandon - Inspector Patrick Aloysius McCarthy - Red Altars (1/?) {AbeBooks}
(1928 - 1935) *Roland Daniel - Inspector Saville - The Society Of The Spiders (1/?) {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 - Murder By An Aristocrat (5/8) {Better World Books}
(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) {owned}
(1931 - 1934) J. H. Wallis - Inspector Wilton Jacks - Murder By Formula (1/6) {Amazon}
(1931 - ????) Paul McGuire - Inspector Cummings - Daylight Murder (3/5) {academic loan}
(1931 - ????) Carlton Dawe - Leathermouth - Leathermouth (1/?) {Fisher Library}
(1932 - 1954) Sydney Fowler - Inspector Combridge and Mr Jellipot - The Bell Street Murders (1/11) {AbeBooks}
(1933 - 1959) John Gordon Brandon - Arthur Stukeley Pennington - West End! (1/?) {AbeBooks}
(1933 - 1940) Lilian Garis - Carol Duncan - The Ghost Of Melody Lane (1/9) {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

Timeline of detective fiction:

Mademoiselle de Scudéri by E.T.A. Hoffmann (1819)
Memoirs Of Vidocq by Eugene Francois Vidocq (1828)
Le Pere Goriot by Honore de Balzac (1835)
Passages In The Secret History Of An Irish Countess by J. Sheridan Le Fanu (1838); The Purcell Papers (1880)
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)

A new thread: the inspiration I need to get some reviews written, or just more procrastination?

Only time will tell...

Mid-year report:

The end of June finds me at 77 books read, which has me on target for 150 books for the year...just.

Despite the numbers, I don't feel as if I've made the progress I hoped for: I seem to be drowning in stalled projects. My poor blog, in particular, has been shamefully neglected. This year has turned out to be difficult - nothing seriously wrong, just constant interruptions and frustrations - which has seen me slip back into a surfeit of comfort reading. Don't get me wrong: I'm a big fan of comfort reading in times of stress; but as with comfort food, it's possible to overdo it. I have that uncomfortable feeling, mentally, that usually comes physically after too much of our old friends, Salt Sugar Fat. In other words---I need exercise.

At the least - the VERY least - I need to get my outstanding blog reviews caught up (I owe posts on The Octoroon; or, The Lily Of Louisiana by Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Lady Patty: A Sketch by Margaret Wolfe Hungerford), as well as getting the main thread of the blog, the history of the development of the English novel, back on track. (It's the end of June, and I STILL haven't cracked 1689!)

As my comfort reading has gone up, my non-fiction reading has systematically slipped away. I need to do more in that respect.

I was also expecting to have gotten a little further with my re-reading of Agatha Christie and Georgette Heyer, although there's no particular need to rush, I guess; it's certainly nice that more people are joining in these chronological meanderings.

And I had hoped to have dispensed with 1931 by now...although at least there's---well, not a logical explanation, but an explanation for my inability to escape that particular year - i.e apparently my brain is having trouble making the connection between adding books from 1931 and not finishing with books from 1931...

My ongoing series continue to breed like rabbits bilbies. What's worse, while starting more indiscriminately, I haven't managed to finish a single one! But I've set up an extremely self-serving TIOLI challenge this month, in which I'm hoping to knock off a couple of the shorter ones, anyway.

On the other hand, my examination of the roots of detective fiction is proceeding in an orderly manner. After my tussle with The Memoirs Of Vidocq, I can now sit back and relax with some relevant fiction. (Or perhaps I should say, some fiction that admits it's fiction...)

So over the next few months I want to:

*Catch up my outstanding blog reviews

*Get back to my chronological blog reading / writing

*Read more non-fiction

*Keep my reviews up to date

*Settle into a pattern of one Christie / one Heyer a month

*Get a series or two off the list

*GET THE HELL OUT OF 1931

Out Of The Darkness - The second novel in Charles J. Dutton's series featuring private investigator John Bartley is set before the events of the first, The Underwood Mystery, shortly after Bartley's return from his Secret Service work during WWI. A long-hoped-for vacation for Bartley and his assistant, Pelt, must be set aside when the Governor of New York, via Chief of Detectives Rogers, asks Bartley to look into a possible miscarriage of justice. Initially agreeing only due to the official pressure brought to bear, Bartley's real interest is aroused when he hears the details of the case, which almost exactly replicate those of a notorious English case from some thirty years earlier that involved falsified evidence. He and Pelt travel to Circle Lake, a summer retreat for the wealthy near Saratoga, where the robbery took place; the two stay with Bob Currie, an old college friend of Bartley's, whose near neighbour, Robert Slyke, was the victim of the attempted robbery for which two possibly innocent men were jailed. Bartley finds Slyke uncooperative and evasive, but manages to win his reluctant agreement to discuss the details of the burglary. As it happens, however, Bartley is called to Slyke's house much sooner than he expected. There he discovers Slyke dead in his bed, a bullet wound in his head and a gun in his hand. Suicide - or murder?

The Underwood Mystery, Charles Dutton's first novel, was quite an interesting effort, but unfortunately its follow-up, Out Of The Darkness, is a disappointment on every level. Part of the problem is the character of John Bartley himself, who---not to put too fine a point upon the matter---is a bit of a dick. An obnoxious detective is not an unprecedented phenomenon, of course, and nor does such a character necessarily make his books unenjoyable (sometimes on the contrary); but Bartley has little else to offer as a protagonist, while his habit of reacting to everything and everyone with "an amused little smile" is the reverse of endearing. As for Pelt, Bartley's assistant, he sometimes gives Arthur Hastings a run for his money in the "thick-headed incomprehension" stakes - though to be fair, Hastings is an amateur: this is supposed to be Pelt's job, heaven help us! (We note that Bartley rarely trusts him with anything more demanding than simple leg-work, however.) At least at this early stage of his career, Charles Dutton has a flat, this-happened-then-that-happened style of writing. This wasn't such an issue with The Underwood Mystery, which got by on the strength of its story, but it makes Out Of The Darkness a dreary read. Yet the overwhelming problem here is that Dutton clearly didn't trust his audience. This novel ultimately turns on "the curious incident of the dog in the night-time" - literally: it is the fact that there is no incident that is curious - but rather than pointing this out once and allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions, Dutton has Pelt repeat three or four times that as the dog did not react to his or her presence, the murderer must be a member of the household. Thank you, some of us had already noticed that there was one outsider the dog had a liking for...

But Out Of The Darkness was a lost cause well before then. Much of the narrative is taken up with hand-wringing over whether Bartley will be able to prove that Slyke's death was murder...even though the bullet wound is on the left side of Slyke's head, and the gun found in his right hand! But not only do none of the characters notice, I don't think Charles Dutton did either, or his editor! It's hard to stay engaged with a work that allows a blunder like that through. Furthermore, the initial set-up, with the replication of the details of the English burglary case in Slyke's own home, which seems to promise an interesting back-story, turns out to be nothing more than an elaborate red herring, with the fact that Slyke left England the same year as the original case occurred having no bearing on anything; another bit of authorial sloppiness. The final blow is that in order to flush out the killer, Bartley resorts to one of my least-favourite of all plot devices, the fake séance---although I will say this, it is better justified here than is often the case. On a brighter note, Dutton does manage one seriously impressive scene, when the killer takes advantage of a violent thunderstorm and a consequent loss of electrical power to murder a key witness who is about to incriminate him - during the inquest into Slyke's death - while the witness is sitting next to the Chief of Police... It's not enough to salvage the novel as a whole, but hopefully it indicates better to come in the future.

    At first glance, there seemed to be nothing wrong; then I noticed that King was bending over his desk, his face dead white, his eyes fixed on something on the floor in front of him, and fear showing in his every feature. I realized suddenly that the chauffeur's chair was empty, and that Roche was on his knees before some object. Miss Potter, who had also been staring at the floor, fainted and fell sideways into the arms of her niece. Then I saw what was the matter: the chauffeur was lying on the floor, with his face white, and his eyes closed.
    Bartley dropped to his knees beside Roche and gave one searching look at the man, then straightened up with a queer expression on his face. He pointed silently to the chauffeur. On his brown coat, slowly darkening and widening, was a splotch of blood, and from his heart protruded the hilt of a knife.

So will I be persisting with the Bartley mysteries? Of course!

Believe it or not, I have an explanation for this beyond the obvious one of "OCD": at some point, the Bartley series overlaps with and gives way to a second series by Charles Dutton that features one of the first psychological detectives (that is, he is actually a psychologist), which is supposed to be much superior. The trouble is, I don't know at what point in proceedings the handover takes place...

From This Dark Stairway - The fourth entry in the mystery series by Mignon Eberhart finds Sarah Keate returning to hospital duty after several forays into private nursing (and amateur detection). As the novel opens she has cause to regret her decision: it is a stiflingly hot July, and everyone is on edge due to the admission for surgery of Peter Melady, head of the Melady Drug Company, grandson of the hospital's founders and chairman of its Board of Directors. To make things more difficult still, Melady's daughter, Dione, has also been admitted with severe sunburn; Melady is under the care of Dr Leo Harrigan, once his closest friend but now his bitterest enemy; and Harrigan's own wife, Ina, to whom he is unhappily married, has been injured in a car accident and occupies another private room in the same ward. Much to her exasperation, Sarah is taken off general ward duties and assigned as Peter Melady's private nurse. After being delayed out of concern for the condition of his heart, Melady's surgery has been scheduled for the following morning. As the ward full of difficult, privileged patients finally begins to settle down for the night, Sarah overhears part of a whispered conversation in one of the rooms: one person urging another to do something, and the word "murder"... Towards midnight, when Sarah returns to duty from her supper, she finds to her astonishment that Dr Harrigan has decided that Peter Melady's surgery will not wait; she receives a message that the patient has already been sent up to the operating theatres. After trying and failing to summon the elevator, Sarah hurries up the stairs to the next floor. There is an empty trolley from the third floor in the operating suite, but it is otherwise deserted. The elevator again failing to respond, Sarah returns to the chart desk via the dark, curving staircase. Assured by a student nurse that Dr Harrigan himself took Melady to the fourth floor, Sarah finds herself repeating the same actions. This time an orderly, Jacob Teuber, who is taking a dead charity patient to the morgue, is trying to summon the lift. Sarah steps away to take what she knows is an irrational peek under the sheet, but - since the deceased is certainly not Peter Melady - she gives up and runs upstairs to the still deserted operating rooms. Bewildered, Sarah automatically rings for the elevator, which this time responds---but its lights are out of order. It is not until she exits on the third floor and emerges into the subdued light that Sarah notices that she is leaving a trail of bloody footprints... They lead back to the elevator, where hidden in the shadows she finds the body of Dr Harrigan, who has been stabbed through the heart. Of Peter Melady, there is no sign at all...

Following on from The Mystery Of Hunting's End, Mignon Eberhart delivers an even more impressive piece of work in From This Dark Stairway, which benefits enormously from Sarah Keate's return to hospital work---and to night duty. Eberhart knows very well that most people find hospitals unsettling at the best of times, and how much more so during the night?---when lighting is at a minimum due a parsimonious administrator, corridors are long and dark, and the eponymous staircase, winding from the top to the bottom of the the hospital, becomes an ominous, shadowy presence... But apart from the undeniable atmosphere, Eberhart's setting has practical dimensions. As in her first novel, The Patient In Room 18, where the mystery involved the theft of a small amount of radium being used for cancer treatments, she introduces a serious medical aspect to the plot in the shape of a formula for a new anaesthetic, infinitely superior to ether and worth a fortune to whoever markets it - and which has not yet been patented... Annoyed by being sent to Melady's house to collect a small objet d'art, a Chinese snuff-bottle of carved lapis lazuli, Sarah assumes it is some sort of good luck charm. She is astonished to later discover that the eccentric Melady has been keeping the formula for the anaesthetic in the small bottle, which disappears as completely as its owner. It turns up eventually, empty---and so does Melady, dead of heart failure. It seems likely that he died of fright...

Prior to the eventual discovery of Melady's body, the circumstances Of Harrigan's death suggest that he is the most likely murderer - though Sarah is adamant that he would not have had the strength to strike the fatal blow, still less to manoeuvre the body into the elevator. The weapon used is an amputating knife, which Sarah establishes was taken from theatres, begging the question of who had access the rooms. Indeed, much as everyone wishes very much to believe that an outsider committed the murder, it grows increasingly difficult to see how this could have been possible. As the police investigation strives to establish everyone's movements, it becomes evident that the crime occurred during a few crucial minutes. To the short list of hospital personnel who might have had an opportunity, two names are added: those of Courtney Melady, Dione's second cousin and husband, and of Kenwood Ladd, a rising young architect who gossip says is involved with Ina Harrigan; both men were visiting on the night of the murder, and neither was seen to leave. Meanwhile, Sarah finds herself worrying about her young colleague, Nancy Page, who is a little too obviously attracted to Ladd, and in whose room Sarah eventually finds the empty snuff-bottle, and about the odd behaviour of Nurse Lillian Ash who, for a startling moment on the night in question, she saw staring at Harrigan in abject terror... Unimpressed with the tactless and unimaginative Police Sergeant Lamb (particularly after he makes a rude remark about her red hair, on which she rather prides herself), Sarah begins an investigation of her own - of sorts - one that involves not only making detailed notes of her own observations of people's movements and behaviours, but the more dubious choice to tamper with evidence: specifically, a blonde hair found on Harrigan's body, which she fears may be Nancy's. Sarah justifies her behaviour to herself by dwelling on the fact that in a few short days, Lance O'Leary, a newly appointed Lieutenant of Police, will be taking over the investigation: she can and will tell him everything...

As M. K. Lorens touches upon in the introduction to the Bison Books edition of From This Dark Stairway, some readers of this series find it exasperating that Sarah seems to do all the work while O'Leary gets all the credit---particularly when, as is the case here, he shows up so late in the proceedings. In fact, as O'Leary frankly admits, it is Sarah who solves the mystery in From This Dark Stairway: as soon as he hears everything that she has to tell him, including one single, decisive detail, he knows who the murderer is; it is only because she is so exhausted and distracted - and because her time is taken up with her actual duties - that she has failed to join the dots herself. And this brings us to what seems to me the main point: Sarah is not a detective - she doesn't want to be a detective - she just wants the mystery cleared up so that she can get back to her real business of nursing. Her medical training, not her amateur detective work, makes Sarah such a close and reliable observer: she notices everything, and forgets nothing. It is this that makes her so invaluable to O'Leary, and why he keeps calling her away from her professional duties to lend him a hand.

In fact, if we're worried about credit where it's due---it could be truly said that Sarah can do her job perfectly well without O'Leary, but he can't do his without her.

Of course, it isn't only O'Leary who has registered Sarah's acute observational skills. Time and again over the course of the investigation - even when the objectionable Sergeant Lamb is in charge - she is asked for her version of events, until at last she is asked to sit in on consultations about the crime - crimes - almost as a matter of course. And although she has not herself registered the importance of that particular detail, that one observation among so many, O'Leary sees instantly that her unrecognised knowledge puts her in very grave danger, since the killer must know that she knows... But Sarah is, first, last and always, a nurse; and when her duty calls her she sets aside O'Leary's urgent plea and goes on her own into an isolated corner of the hospital...

There we were then, that hot, still July night: Peter Melady and Dione Melady and Mrs Harrigan all in the east wing, with Lillian Ash nursing the typhoid convalescent in the room opposite Ina Harrigan's, and Courtney Melady, who was Dione's cousin and husband and a gentleman of none too savory a reputation, wandering about, in and out of Dione's and Peter Melady's rooms, viewing the hospital, himself, and the world with cold, weary eyes. I had no idea, no premonition at all, of the drama that was about to begin. The actors were at their entrances, their lines on their lips, the stage was set, the drug-room key, the cork, the ugly amputating knife, the bit of white chewing gum were all at hand ready to play their own not unimportant roles. And in the charity ward a Negro lay slowly dying and I carried in my hand the Chinese snuff-bottle.

So ambitious!!

Keeping my reviews up to date, or getting the hell out of 1931??

It doesn't matter, it's all an exercise in futility... :D

There, there.

They say that if you write something down it's more motivating, but I can't say that I've ever found it very effective - more's the pity!

It's all right, Liz, we're all in the same boat, leaky though it may be.

Still struggling with reading pre-2013 purchases, while maddeningly making many buys this year.

There's something wrong with me, I think.

If there's something wrong with you, Gail, at least you're in good company! :)

I keep buying books from the Kindle Daily Deals and then never looking at them again. Instead I've embarked on ambitious re-reads of several mystery series from start to finish. My reading this year is completely out of control.

Edited to add: I can't believe I was so busy whining about my book buying and reading habits that I forgot to say that the bilby is totes adorable, and I fully support its efforts to wrest Easter away from the lowly (and not even Oz-native) rabbit. So there!

Hi, Julia! Yes, it's probably fortunate I don't own a Kindle: my eReader download process is a minimum of three steps, which gives me time to stop and reflect. :)

I know some of the group have been rebelling against too much structure to their reading and taking a more laissez-faire approach, but if I don't have some structure I get a bit panicky.

Bilbies are cute little so-and-sos, aren't they?? And not just when rendered in chocolate...

It's the ears. Those are some Olympic-class ears on this little fellas.

>23 rosalita: The better to hear you with, my dear!

Happy new thread, Liz! Here's hoping that you'll make it "the hell out of 1931". LOL! That made me laugh out loud! As always, your thread is a delight to catch up with!

I've just read a 1931 book - Boy by James Hanley. But I can't really recommend it!

Hello, ladies! - thank you for dropping in. :)

I'm glad you find something in my thread to entertain you, Mamie!

I was very interested in your review of Boy, Rhian; I think that's one of those books better known for being daring than being good. Oddly enough, it's a 1931 book I haven't gotten around to---and, oh groan, now I feel compelled! And it's all your fault!! :D

WELL, IT'S ABOUT TIME!

I'm reading The Si-Fan Mysteries at the moment, the third of the Fu-Manchu novels; an odd, cranky sort of book. We've seen almost nothing of Kâramanèh, and as far as that goes very little of Fu-Manchu himself; but it is not until Chapter 31 - Chapter 31!! - that the most significant omission is redressed:

    Quickly opening the bag, I took out the lamp, and, passing around the corner of the steps, directed a ray of light into the narrow passage which communicated with the rear of the building. Half-way along the passage, looking back at me over its shoulder, and whistling angrily, was a little marmoset!
    I pulled up sharply as though the point of a sword had been held at my throat. One marmoset is sufficiently like another to deceive the ordinary observer, but unless I was permitting a not unnatural prejudice to influence my opinion, this particular specimen was the pet of Dr Fu-Manchu!

But Dr Petrie, how can you possibly be sure? Why could it not be one of the countless thousands of other marmosets that freely wander the streets of London!?

"Whistling angrily", hey? Last book it was "chattering wickedly".

"Here's what I think of you, Dr Petrie!"

Ha ha ha! I love the marmoset sticking his tongue out, whether he's whistling angrily or chattering wickedly. Come to think of it, I've been known to do both those things myself on occasion ...

While bounding??

That marmoset's always bounding along. It's a right little bounder.

oh no. thanks for that visual. now I'll always picture our RV, brand name Bounder, as a marmoset with its tongue out!

Hi Liz!

#1 I always enjoy the introductions to weird, wonderful and cute creatures on your thread :-)

#7 Let me know when you get to Pere Goriot - I've had that one wishlisted for a while although I hadn't realised it had links to detective fiction.

#12 Well, Out of the Darkness certainly sounds like one I'll avoid.

#14 Liz, you have me seriously considering trying to order some of the Sarah Keate books from the US now - stop it! (I will be strong....)

#27 :-D

>>#30

Hello, Jean! I've been admiring your holiday photos. Ha, sorry, didn't mean to give you a weird mental image! - but I think you'll be okay in your Bounder as long as it doesn't start chattering wickedly or whistling angrily! :)

>>#31

Hi, Heather! Glad you like my bilbies. And the marmoset. :)

I actually have Pere Goriot on interlibrary loan request now (as of yesterday) - my academic library has it, but I wanted the recent translation by Olivia McCannon, which was recommended by Rebecca (rebeccanyc). This novel contains the first appearance of Balzac's recurring character, Vautrin, who was based upon Vidocq - so I guess its link to detective fiction per se is a bit tenuous, but it seemed a good excuse to read some Balzac, which is something I've been meaning to do.

No, certainly not recommending the Bartley mysteries. The Sarah Keate mysteries, on the other hand... :) Are those books not available in your libraries? They were reissued not so long ago, and we seem to have them all here so I'd be surprised if you didn't. (Not that I know how your interlibrary loan system works, of course.)

By the way, I've found a copy of The Secret Of Chimneys with an arch on the cover, so I was planning on adding it to Challenge #6 if you'd care to join me? Also looking for a slot for The Masqueraders but that may just come down to the less-than-300 pages thing...

Hi Liz! I've started on Barchester Towers. Only though chapter two so far but already surprised at the two major deaths discussed. Onward I shall go!

Trollope can be a bit ruthless like that. But then, sudden death was a much more accepted part of life at that time.

Rest assured than in spite of that opening, the rest of the novel is very funny. I hope you enjoy it!

For those intending to join the group read of The Small House At Allington, I have set up some voting buttons over at the Framley Parsonage thread: please stop in there and let me know your preferred starting date. Thank you!

Finished The Si-Fan Mysteries for TIOLI #1.

Now reading Tales Of Hoffmann, also for TIOLI #1.

#29 by @lyzard> Well, now I have to say my bounding days are behind me, I'm afraid. I'm more of a hobbler these days, and it's hard to hobble while chattering wickedly but I bet I could manage it in the right circumstances.

I have to know Liz and I am not clever enough to figure it out from your comments on the tutored read thread....does the archdeacon call the new bishop's wife a whore in Chapter 6? or is it something even more vulgar?

GASP!!

Yes, that's exactly what he called her. Although how he said it apparently depends upon your accent. I'm giggling just thinking about that conversation! :)

I just got far enough along in the tutored read thread that I figured out the problem is my accent! LOL

Thanks for clearing it up.

Boy, the archdeacon was REALLY irritated huh!

Oh, no, really? That's so funny!!

Boy, the archdeacon was REALLY irritated huh!

I can only repeat:

"The archdeacon hereupon forgot himself. I will not follow his example, nor shock my readers by transcribing the term in which he expressed his feeling as to the lady who had been named... There was a pause, during which the precentor tried to realize the fact that the wife of a Bishop of Barchester had been thus designated, in the close of the cathedral, by the lips of its own archdeacon; but he could not do it..."

:D

Managed a quick two-for-the-price-of-one (or four-for-the-price-of-two) snabble while passing my favourite used bookstore last night.

Well...not exactly passing...

    

The Power Of Sympathy by William Hill Brown + The Coquette by Hannah Webster Foster

Wieland; or, The Transformation and Memoirs Of Carwin The Biloquist by Charles Brockden Brown

As I like to say, William Hill Brown wrote the first American novel, while Charles Brock Brockden was the first professional American novelist. Hannah Webster Foster was the first female American novelist.

Book Fair, oh glorious Book Fair!!

A very pleasing haul:

Collectibles:
The Scottish Chiefs by Jane Porter

Classics:
The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox
The Old Manor House by Charlotte Smith
Jonathan Wild by Henry Fielding
Not Wisely But Too Well by Rhoda Broughton
Cousin Henry by Anthony Trollope

Virago:
The Lacquer Lady by F. Tennyson Jesse
Smoke And Other Early Stories by Djuna Barnes
A Saturday Life by Radclyffe Hall
Some Everyday Folk and Dawn by Miles Franklin
The Roaring Nineties by Katharine Susannah Prichard

$1.00 table:
Robbery Under Arms by Rolf Boldrewood
The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley
A Passage To India by E. M. Forster
How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn

And because I always have one outlier:
Disordered Minds by Minette Walters

        

    

#32 Liz, there are no books by Mignon Eberhart in any of my local libraries and the only used copies I've seen are from US sellers. There are some kindle books available but none of the Sarah Keate books :-( I'm trying to remind myself that I have enough books to read...

Definitely in for The Secret of Chimneys and The Masqueraders. If I purchase The Masqueraders online whilst on the train do yout think that would count as a book acquired whilst travelling? It might be stretching the definition a bit... :-P

I may leave Pere Goriot for another time as I'm trying to whittle down the number of library books I have out in case we move.

#42 - 44 Hooray for favourite used bookstores and book fairs and hooray for your finds!

Those green covers look lovely. I have a copy of Some Everyday Folk and Dawn which I was thinking of reading for All Virago, All August (not that I'm making plans, you understand) and I've wanted to read more F. Tennyson Jesse since being bowled over by A Pin to See the Peepshow.

You do realise Disordered Minds is a 21st century novel, don't you?

You will also be pleased to hear that I've finished The Black Band, or, The Mysteries of Midnight! I think Braddon managed to include every sensation novel subplot you could possibly think of in one novel. I was a little disappointed with the ending - given her audience I knew she would have to end it that way but I wished it could have been a bit more convincing.

Congrats on your finds at the bookstore and the book fair - how fun! And those covers are so lovely!

Great book acquisitions! And I'm a big fan of The Masqueraders as well--also not a Regency but a Georgian period book.

>>#45

I'm surprised about the Eberharts, Heather - it's not often we get something and you don't. How disappointing! But I think you should definitely keep them on your "one day" list. :)

Very understandable that you would not want to be burdened with library books just now. How lovely that I will have company for The Secret Of Chimneys and The Masqueraders! If you want to start the former, list it as having an arch in the cover and I will post the appropriate images on the thread.

I haven't read A Pin To See The Peepshow (though I'm familiar with its background), but I recall that several Virago-ites were singing its praises not so long ago.

You do realise Disordered Minds is a 21st century novel, don't you?

Yes, I do own one or two of those. Just one or two. :)

I think Braddon managed to include every sensation novel subplot you could possibly think of in one novel.

I like the sound of that!! Pity about the ending, but as you say, it was an occupational hazard at the time. Do let me know what you would prefer to do about The Black Band: there's absolutely no hurry about it, but if you want it off your hands before you move, let me know and we'll sort out the reimbursement. Thank you again for doing that!

>>#46

Hi, Mamie! Now I just have to figure out where to put them... :)

>>#47

Thanks, Roni! No, we have two or three more Georgian novels to go before we move to the Regencies.

Elsie Dinsmore - "Pictures of perfection as you know make me sick and wicked," Jane Austen once famously declared, and I'm having trouble thinking of a better way to begin explaining my reaction to the first in Martha Finley's series of religious-didactic novels - or at least, and more correctly, to its heroine. If we regard Elsie Dinsmore as a tract, it succeeds on that level, offering lengthy quotations from the Bible and much earnest discussion of right-living and Christian practice, and placing its thesis in the hands of eight-year-old Elsie in a deliberate invocation of, A little child shall lead them. It is here that things become problematic: as an authorial construct Elsie is acceptable, but as a flesh-and-blood little girl, she is well nigh intolerable. There is only one word for Elsie Dinsmore, and that word is wet - literally as well as figuratively: she has sixty-five separate fits of crying over the course of this 171-page novel, and that may even be an underestimate given that I counted "her eyes filled with tears" on one page and "she burst into sobs" on the next as one fit, not two. Who would have thought the young girl to have had so much salt water in her? As the floodwaters rise over the course of Elsie Dinsmore, it becomes increasingly difficult not to sympathise with the novel's "wicked" characters, who frequently react to Elsie with open irritation. I have no desire to attack the faith that inspired this series of books, but I can't help feeling that the dismally damp Elsie is more likely to turn people off than recruit them to her cause.

But even apart from my issues with Elsie herself, I found this novel increasingly worrisome. For one thing, it is set on a slave-owning Southern plantation in pre-Civil War times - something with which the text declines to engage, even as it skips past the point that Elsie owns her "mammy", Aunt Chloe, who has raised her since she was a baby. However, at this stage in the series, at least, Roselands is simply a backdrop for the evolving relationship between Elsie and her father, which is frankly disturbing. Much as I pay her out for it, certainly when this novel opens Elsie has plenty of reason to cry. Her father, only eighteen when she was born, has abandoned her to the care of his own family: his father, step-mother and half-siblings, who along with a born-bully governess go out of the way to make Elsie's life miserable. The girl suffers torments of loneliness and neglect, but is sustained by her faith. While the Dinsmores have no religion, Elsie has been schooled by Aunt Chloe and by a former housekeeper, Mrs Murray, "a pious old Scotch woman". (I find it highly unlikely that these two would have taught Elsie the same version of Christianity, but be that as it may... Chloe's own views on religion provoke an involuntary cringe: "I's only a poor old black sinner, but de good Lord Jesus, He loves me jes de same as if I was white.")

The other thing to which Elsie clings is her dream that one day her father, who has never seen her nor to this point evinced any interest in her, will come home and love her - and she gets the first part of her wish, at least, when Horace Dinsmore finally returns from Europe. It is difficult to remember while reading Elsie Dinsmore that Horace is not some bewhiskered old Victorian patriarch, but twenty-six years old (and that, moreover, only a few years earlier he persuaded a fifteen-year-old girl into a secret marriage). Horace may have ignored Elsie's existence for the first eight years of her life, but as soon as he returns home he takes to parenting like a duck to water---or at least, to the FORBIDDING part of parenting. From the moment he and Elsie meet it is FORBID, FORBID, FORBID, these interactions carrying the uncomfortable subtext that anything less than utter, unquestioning obedience makes a child unworthy of a parent's affection - and that a withdrawal of affection is a reasonable parental response to even the most minor of transgressions. (When Elsie briefly forgets one of the 1,845,903 different prohibitions placed upon her by Horace and sits on the floor for a few minutes, you'd think from his reaction that she'd committed mass murder.) The bulk of Elsie Dinsmore is taken up with Elsie's struggles with her sinful, unregenerate nature - the novel's stance, which tends to suggest that there's not much hope for the rest of us - and her battle to be both a perfect Christian and a perfect daughter; something which causes a surprising amount of conflict.

There's something almost pathological about the interaction between Horace and Elsie, a sick sort of co-dependency in which his need for dominance feeds into her desire to martyr herself. Indeed, as the novel progresses it becomes unnervingly clear that Horace's love for his daughter is rooted in a fascination with how completely he can control her---as he absolutely does, up to a point. Horace, like the rest of his family, has no religion, and he takes it as a personal affront that his daughter frankly admits to loving Jesus better than him. Time and again he tries to make her prove her love for him by setting aside her religious principles, but this is one time (and with full authorial approval) that Elsie is disobedient. In one of the novel's most notorious scenes, Horace commands Elsie to play and sing a (presumably) secular song on a Sunday and, when she refuses, furiously orders her to sit at the piano until she's ready to obey him. She does---at least until she keels over in a dead faint, hits her head on the way to the floor, and frightens her father into a temporary fit of remorse. At the conclusion of Elsie Dinsmore the battle between Horace and Jesus is still ongoing, but I don't imagine there's any doubt about the final outcome.

Elsie's defiance of her father in religious matters is by far the most interesting thing about Elsie Dinsmore, inasmuch as it allows that a parent can be wrong: not something that didactic children's literature is usually willing to admit. Moreover, Horace is at various times unjust to his daughter, though the truth generally emerges before he can follow through on his threats of dire punishment. Unjust or not, however, Elsie invariably bows her head beneath whatever he decrees---and it is here, I suppose, in spite of my attempts to take it on its own terms, that this novel finally stuck in my craw. The lessons it teaches of unquestioning obedience, abject submission to authority and meek silence in the face of injustice are clearly intended not for children generally, but specifically for girls. Call it a consequence of my sinful, unregenerate nature if you will - Martha Finley certainly would - but I'm afraid this aspect of Elsie Dinsmore finally put my back up, and kept it there.

    "I was on the veranda, and hearing sobs, came in to see if I could be of any assistance. You look very much distressed; will you not tell me the cause of your sorrow?" Elsie answered only by a fresh burst of tears. "They have all gone to the fair and left you at home alone; perhaps to learn a lesson you have failed in reciting?" said the lady inquiringly.
    "Yes, ma'am," said the child; "but that is not the worst;" and her tears fell faster, as she laid the little Bible on the desk, and pointed with her finger to the words she had been reading. "Oh!" she sobbed, "I---I did not do it; I did not bear it patiently. I was treated unjustly, and punished when I was not to blame, and I grew angry. Oh! I'm afraid I shall never be like Jesus! never, never!"

Are you planning on reading the rest of the Elsie series? (I hope not, although I'd love to read your reviews of it.) She does cry less and less as the series progresses, but the rest of the cringe-worthy stuff remains the same.

Possible spoilers, but only if you plan on reading further:

When the Emancipation Proclamation is announced, most or all of Elsie's slaves are sad, because they don't want to leave her. She does end up offering them jobs at fair wages, but still.... Elsie was always a kind mistress, but slavery is slavery, even if no slave is ever mistreated.

I don't remember if Horace Dinsmore's college friend, Mr. Travilla, is in this book, but if so, meet Elsie's future husband. Because marrying your father's best friend isn't creepy at all, right? When they finally get married, there's all this talk about how Elsie just couldn't meet anyone else she really loved, etc., etc. But this isn't real life, where women complain about not being able to meet decent men and possibly have a point. This is fiction. Finley could have written a perfect guy Elsie's age if she'd wanted to.

Not really a spoiler, but something I found funny, even as a child. Later in the series, when Elsie has kids, her kids are always surprised when she has another child. You mean any reasonably intelligent child above the age of six can't be around a pregnant woman for nine months and not notice any physical changes? Really? Plus, if you were going to have a baby, wouldn't it occur to you to possibly mention it to your other children at least once?

I never just stop doing anything; it's not in my nature. :)

Spoilers for the Elsie Dinsmore series:

Mr Travilla is in the first book and is instantly very aware of Elsie and sensitive to her moods in a way her father is not...and yes, even at this stage it's a bit creepy.

Significant age differences were common at the time, of course, reflecting the contention that women were essentially perpetual children who continued to need an authority figure. It's not the age difference per se that's creepy, rather the inference that the only difference between a father and a husband is the sex...and then there's a man seeing his future wife in an eight-year-old...

"Elsie just couldn't find anyone else" sounds like this series trying to lower female expectations...again.

That last bit is quite correct: it was a social convention that pregnancy was rarely remarked even among adults, and never amongst children. The clothing styles made it fairly easy to conceal a pregnancy, and then one day "God sent a baby". Whether the children were really completely ignorant is debatable, but daring to mention it would almost certainly bring on a severe punishment.

This convention persisted into the 20th century, too; probably another thing that WWI put an end to. In The Murder At The Vicarage, which was - 1930? - one of the village spinsters uses the expression "innocent as a babe unborn" and the vicar, who narrates, reflects how odd that is, when she'd never dream of mentioning an actual unborn baby. :)

Actually, she couldn't find anyone else who was Christian enough. Also, if I recall correctly, all the other women in the book married someone much closer in age to themselves. Of course, they weren't all Christians or even good men, but whatever.

I bet lots of kids figured out something was going on with mom, even if they didn't realize it was a baby. Kids aren't stupid.

Why didn't they talk about pregnancy? Was it too close to sex to be mentionable in polite company?

"No-one else is sufficiently Christian" is better than "Oh, well, he's better than nothing", at least.

No, they aren't stupid: if a kid gets beaten black and blue for asking a question, it's a good bet it won't be asked again.

The silence was something that phased in over the increasingly uptight 19th century. Before that there was more of a pragmatic view of sex and more of a community interest in people's situations; so yeah, probably.

Of course we're talking about the wealthy / upper classes here. When you had poor families living together in only one or two rooms, the dynamic was a bit different.

Liz, I think it is safe to say that I will never be reading any of the Elsie Dinsmore books. That being said, however, I hope that you read every one of them because your review was highly entertaining. I especially loved: "There is only one word for Elsie Dinsmore, and that word is wet". And I cracked up that you counted her sob sessions. Please keep up the good work! Thumb for you - I really hope you posted that to the review page.

I hope that you read every one of them

What did I ever do to you!?

I'm glad you enjoyed it, Mamie, but I don't think I will add it to the review page: there's a certain group out there that does not take criticism of these novels at all well, and the last thing I need is to end up in a flame war! Thank you for the thumb, though. :)

Well, when I wrote that I was thinking that there were perhaps two or three of them. Not 28! YIKES! Completely understood about the review page - I will just leave my thumb here instead.

Aww...thank you!! :D

Wait, people actually like these books? I mean, I fully admit to reading and enjoying them when going through a "maligned orphan" reading phase as a child, but even then I knew the books had issues (I enjoyed reading about Elsie's trials and tribulations, no matter how ridiculous, but I really didn't see her as any kind of role model, except maybe how *not* to act). As an adult, I just want to smack the younger me upside the head and tell her to find some better books.

These books are going through a huge resurgance at the moment - and in a serious sense, not a "blinking in bewilderment" sense - which is what brought them to my attention. Let's just say that those who think Harry Potter is the tool of the devil like to combat him with stories about rich, privileged, white children who own slaves. (Hence my fear of flame wars.)

I didn't realize that, Liz. I can't understand why. I did enjoy your review. I actually have the book and maybe some of the sequels. There is a box somewhere in the attic with the early 1900 books (original publications)I collected in my twenties--Elsie Dinsmore, Pollyanna, The Five Little Peppers, a bunch of Louisa May Alcott, Ruth Fielding, Marjorie somebody or other for all four years of high school and four more of college--I keep meaning to find it so I can catalog them. I don't remember Elsie at all, although I know I read her at the time.

Is it wicked of me to hope that you continue to read awful books just so that I can enjoy your excellent reviews?

Probably. I'm not going to cry about it, though. "Dismally damp" indeed.

The thought that these books are being read by an approving audience in the 21st century, though ... now, that's enough to bring me to tears.

>>#60

That's not the Marjorie series by Carolyn Wells is it, Roni? Because if so I'll gladly take them off your hands! (Wells' children are nice but definitely not perfect!) The Ruth Fieldings I'm working on, as you know, and I'm sure The Five Little Peppers are on the list somewhere... This is my first encounter with Elsie; I wonder what I would have made of her as a child?

>>#61

Another one who wants me to suffer! {*eyes fill with tears*} It certainly is wicked, and you SHOULD cry about it!! {*tears begin to spill over*} And if you don't, I will!!! {*bursts into sobs*}

Yeah, I find the fact that these are being revived in all seriousness more than a little disturbing. I wonder if they're being given to boys or just to girls?

I'm a fan of the Chalet School series by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer and the Elsie books are used as a plot point in some of the earlier books, published in the late 1920s. The characters poke fun at the extreme Christianity and regard the stories as rather dreary but no mention of any disquiet that Elsie marries her father's friend. The Chalet School books were still being written and published in the late 1960s and although lots of babies were born to the adult characters I don't think the word pregnant ever appears. The favouite euphemism is that a woman is going to be 'busy'.

I did a film study course a few years back looking at the introduction of CinemaScope, so we spent weeks immersed in the 1950s. In the 1954 film The Black Widow, one character says to another, "By the way - you did know she was pregnant?"---and the whole group went, "GASP!!" :)

I'm not sure that's *the* first use of that word in a film but it's the earliest instance I know of.

Would boys even read them? They seem to resonate with some girls, particularly at a certain age, but I just don't see most boys being remotely interested.

#49 "Who would have thought the young girl to have had so much salt water in her?" :-D

#49 - 54 Whilst I look forward to your reviews and discussions of the future Elsie Dinsmore books, I'm with Mamie on this one!

Your discussion around the age difference between Elsie and her future husband reminded me of something that left me feeling uncomfortable in These Old Shades.

Spoilers for These Old Shades

I think I would be ok with a 19 year old marrying a 40(?) year old given the historical context but the 19 year old seemed to act like she was 12 a lot of the time and it had seemed initially more like a father-daughter relationship in many ways.

Although this was nothing compared to how uncomfortable I felt in the opening chapters when you have a 40 year old aristocrat picking up what seems to be a 12 year old boy in the street to be his special 'page'. Presumably not a conclusion a 1936 reader would jump to but I was having a hard time turning my 21st century brain off.

#62 "Another one who wants me to suffer! {*eyes fill with tears*} It certainly is wicked, and you SHOULD cry about it!! {*tears begin to spill over*} And if you don't, I will!!! {*bursts into sobs*}" An actual LOL.

Oh, dear, Liz: you've stumbled over (perhaps that should be across?) dear Elsie. I read that first one at a very young age and simply ignored the rest. Sickening, even to my stupidly romantic young mind.

>66 souloftherose:: It's a bit of an icky age difference with Holmes and Russel, do you think? I mean, he's got to be doddering, and she's a smart young miss. I enjoy them, but that is a bit off-putting.

#67 In the Laurie King series? I haven't read those yet but I saw a discussion on someone else's thread about the age difference in those books.

I think I'll skip the Elsie Dinsmore series. Thanks for taking one for the team on that one! I probably wouldn't have noticed most of those problems when I was younger, but I'd find them troubling if I tried to read it now.

>>#65

I don't think boys would be *asked* to read them; that's my point. If the lesson is "proper Christianity" surely they should be given to both sexes? - but if it's "suffer and be silent" then they're only meant for girls.

>>#66

Spoilers for These Old Shades:

Forty-year-old men picked up twelve-year-old-boys on the streets then, and forty-year-old-men pick up twelve-year-old boys on the streets now. To Justin's credit we know he didn't have THAT in mind, even if his reasons weren't particularly praiseworthy.

As for Leonie, she's damaged by the life she's led, so that she's very young in some ways and very old in others; inexperienced, while knowing too much. I don't think she ever felt daughterly towards Justin, even if he managed to kid himself for a time that he felt fatherly towards her...and his reaction to the "elopement" put paid to that delusion.

I think we have to be careful not to over-impose a modern mindset: at the time that novel was set girls were commonly married at fifteen and sixteen, often to much older men; a girl was considered marriageable as soon as she had her first period. The age gap remained a common thing right through the 19th century. Men were supposed to "establish themselves" and "look around" before marrying, while girls were supposed to marry as soon as possible. I don't have a problem with it per se, but rather when they go out of their way to make it fatherly-daughterly - as if that's the most desirable arrangement.

(I'm reading Tales Of Hoffmann at the moment. One story has an eighty-year-old husband and a nineteen-year-old wife, which I'm pleased to report is *not* considered acceptable.)

>>#67

Hi, Gail! "Oh, dear", indeed. I'm happy to go with "stumble over" since that novel knocked me on my butt a few times...and certainly not in a good way! :)

>>#69

Hi, Carrie! Yes, it can be a weird experience to re-read something that flew over your head as a child.

Ah, well: the tribe seems to have voted me in for the rest of the Elsie series... {*girds loins*}

I suspect the difference is between what Finley intended and what people now intend. Based on what I've read about Finley, she wanted to teach good Christianity (and she was writing in the context of the late 1800s, when people had drastically different ideas about women than they do now, but they weren't being consciously anti-woman; that's just the way the culture was), but some people nowadays want to use the Elsie books to teach girls to sit down and shut up. Or so it seems; I can't speak for everyone.

Liz, no, the books are the Marjorie Dean series by Pauline Lester. Inspired by our discussion, I went to Amazon, and the 8 books I have are all free on Kindle--and the 5 "Postgraduate" books I don't have are only available in dead-tree books and expensive. Wouldn't you know it!

>>#71

There are certainly some disturbing developments going on out there, I agree.

>>#72

Rats! And oh yes, I know how frustrating it can be when series weave and out of electronic availability: I recently caved and ordered a hard copy of Carolyn Wells' Patty In The City.

#70 "I think we have to be careful not to over-impose a modern mindset" Agreed, perhaps I read a father-daughter aspect to their relationship that wasn't really there.

This is values dissonance at its finest. :)

Compared to actual history - particularly royal history - Heyer is conservative: isn't there a novel out there at the moment about Isabella of Valois, who was six when she married Richard II? Anne of Denmark was twelve when she married James I; Mary of Modena was fifteen when she married James II, who was then forty.

It's easy to see how---not so much historical novelists, but historical film-makers struggle with this: no-one casts a fifteen-year-old as Marie Antoinette, for instance. I find it hilarious that the one place where they had the nerve to tackle this phenomenon head-on was Blackadder.

Finished Tales Of Hoffman for TIOLI #1.

Now reading The Man Of Last Resort; or The Clients Of Randolph Mason by Melville Davisson Post

Finished The Man Of Last Resort; or, The Clients Of Randolph Mason for TIOLI #15.

Now reading Unravelled Knots by the Baroness Orczy.

Saraband - Published in 1931, the first of the only two novels by Eliot Bliss is a semi-autobiographical account of a girl's coming-of-age. It is a work filled with lengthy, lyrical descriptions and with very little in the way of a conventional plot, reflecting the intensely imaginative yet detached nature of its central character, Louise Charlotte Mallord Burnett - "Louie". The novel opens in the years before WWI, with the young Louie one of the numerous occupants of a rambling country house. Though acutely aware of the beauties of the natural world, she is emotionally close only to her grandmother. Louie's private, internal world is painfully disrupted when she is forced to give up her attic playroom - otherwise the Kingdom of Pomoroyal - to accommodate her orphaned cousin, Tim. Louie is certain that she will hate the newcomer, but finds in him an ally and an understanding friend. Self-contained and fastidious, Tim is a brilliant violinist and plans a career as a musician, an ambition to which he silently adheres despite the crudely practical urgings of his family. While fundamentally her nature never changes, as she grows up Louie must learn to survive in a wider and often distasteful world, first when she is sent away to convent school, and later when her family's financial struggles force her to make some difficult choices...

As its title suggests, Saraband is an episodic novel full of distinct "movements". The narrative never leaves the consciousness of its central character, and the reader is often left to draw conclusions through the filter of Louie's disengagement. Louie herself is something of a contradiction, sensitive and passionate but living in deliberate withdrawal from all but a very few individuals to whom she is profoundly attached. In its quiet, oblique way, Saraband is deeply critical of the world it portrays. Surrounded by unhappy marriages within her family, at no point does Louie so much as contemplate what her relatives assume is her only destiny; yet when monetary difficulties at home both excuse and compel her choice of an independent life, Louie finds herself in a lacerating world of crush and haste and unfeeling practicality, where even the sudden and shocking death of a child is nothing more than a brief disruption to routine. Louie is emotionally sustained by friendships both rare and deep, and above all by her affinity with Tim. Though her family, exchanging knowing looks and smiles, disregard Louie's quiet insistence that Tim is not in love with her, the connection between the two is on a different plane from the conventionally romantic---and perhaps for very good reason. Modern sensibilities may read more into Tim's private life, and his relationship with his friend and musical mentor, than Eliot Bliss intended. Then again, perhaps not: Bliss herself was a lesbian, and it seems not unlikely that there is a measure of transference in her characterisation of Tim.

Particularly in its early stages, Saraband is rich in poetical description: the countryside around her home is alive to Louie in a way that most people are not; with the exception of her beloved grandmother and, later, Tim, the members of Louie's family seem like mere shadows across a landscape that is vividly real to her. As the novel progresses, and Louie is more often compelled into ugly, urban regions, this heightened consciousness remains and erupts into the narrative during her occasional escapes to the country and her brief encounters with touches of unexpected beauty, like a flower on a girl's dress. However, while Eliot Bliss' writing style is, more than just a feature, a major aspect of Saraband, it is not without its challenges. It is amusing, in the wake of so much debate over Hilary Mantel's use of the pronoun "he" in Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies, to find Bliss in 1931 deploying "she" in much the same way, and perhaps even more disconcertingly. There are in fact numerous points where the reader is jerked out of this novel by the realisation that the female character mentioned by name in the first sentence of a paragraph is not the same person as the "she" of the second sentence of the paragraph. The necessity to stop and re-read is a problem when dealing with a work that, if not stream-of-consciousness, at least demands the full engagement of the reader with Louie's idiosyncratic point of view. Nevertheless, this remains a heartfelt and rather beautiful piece of writing.

There was a clarity, a roundness, a luminosity about early emotions, that later on, tinctured and muddied by a growing experience, one did not get. When one realised that the world for the most part was made up, not of pleasant but of reasonably unpleasant people, then one had arrived at a point when one was able to accept them as they were. But the time of first expectations was over. That wonderful thing that one had felt waiting outside the gate of Linden, what was it?... That feeling of richness and expectation; that creative life that had seemed to emanate from the smell of winter, from the smell of spring; that had been behind one in summer and again in front of one in autumn; that look in the sky that even when one saw it from the middle of the city, made one think of the sea; that feeling that came out of the trees and grass so strongly that it seemed there must be a personality there; she now knew what it was. It was the personality of creative life. It had taken her all this time to find it out.

These Old Shades - Justin Alastair, Duke of Avon, is walking home late at night through a Parisian backstreet when he has an unexpected encounter with a boy fleeing in terror from his tavern-keeper brother. On impulse, Avon buys the boy and takes him home where his friend, Hugh Davenant, cannot help remarking on his appearance: the boy, Léon, has red hair, dark eyebrows and blue eyes, a rare combination usually associated with the French family of Saint-Vire. The present Comte de Saint-Vire is Avon's deadliest enemy, having inflicted upon the Duke an intolerable humiliation some twenty years earlier. Avon makes Léon his page, taking the boy into society with him, where he attracts the attention of all who see him - including the Comte and his wife. An usually close relationship develops between Avon and Léon, with the Duke allowing the boy to take liberties with him that no-one else would dare. Hugh Davenant, however, grows increasingly uncomfortable with Léon's worshipful attitude towards a man who has thoroughly earned the nickname "Satanas". Unbeknownst to Hugh, Léon has not one, but two, profound secrets, the first of which Avon divined upon first setting eyes upon him, the second of which he grows increasingly sure of as he observes the agitation of the Saint-Vires whenever Léon is in their presence. In search of the truth, Avon travels into the country, seeking out a priest who gave Léon some education in the time before he was taken to Paris by his brother. The Curé is wary of Avon, however, and to compel him to speak the Duke must reveal what he has known from their first meeting: that the boy Léon is in truth a girl called Léonie...

In many ways, These Old Shades is a representative Georgette Heyer novel. It offers a vivid picture of mid-18th century France and England, particularly the former, including a visit to Versailles and glimpses of Louis the XV ("just like the coins") and his queen, and of Madame de Pompadour; while the narrative itself is a nice mix of romance, suspense, character scenes and action. At the same time, the 1926 publication of These Old Shades turned out to be a watershed in Georgette Heyer's career - or at least that part of it involving her historical romances. This novel marks the beginning of a tendency that for many people is at the heart of their love for her books, Heyer's willingness to build her stories around unconventional or unexpected romantic pairings. She hints at this in the very title of These Old Shades, which not only refers to guilty deeds thought buried coming back to haunt their perpetrator, but is a tacit admission that this novel is in essence a re-working of her first, The Black Moth. However, while in that work the young lovers were threatened by the selfish machinations of a duke with an evil reputation (and a nickname to match), here the evil duke himself turns out to be the somewhat unlikely romantic lead, with the characters we might tend to expect to occupy that role, the young Lord Rupert Alastair and even the Prince de Condé, dismissed by Leonie as "silly boys". The earlier duke was finally incapable of an honest love, seeking only his own gratification and resorting to violence to obtain his ends. In contrast, These Old Shades is a novel of redemption, with Avon discovering an unexpected capacity not only for love, but for self-sacrifice, and Léonie herself becoming a catalyst for the mending of relationships and the healing of old wounds.

While some readers are uncomfortable with the age difference between Justin and Leonie (as evidenced by discussion on this thread), it is both historically accurate and justified within the text. Léonie, though young, is not inexperienced: she has seen the ugliness of life amongst the non-privileged at close hand, and lived through poverty, violence and neglect. There is no delusion, nothing blind, about her love for "Monseigneur"; she knows Justin for what he is. However, compared to Justin himself, she is indeed an innocent. As he comes to terms with his feelings for the girl, Justin must also confront the bitter realisation that his many years of gross, cynical self-indulgence have made him unworthy of her. But though he accepts that a closer relationship is out of the question, Justin is determined to right Léonie's wrongs. While his impulsive acquisition of "Léon" has its roots wholly in his old feud with Saint-Vire, and his vow to one day be revenged, as her story becomes clear to him his own grievance is all but forgotten. In his desire to make Saint-Vire suffer as much as possible, Justin delays in striking the final blow: a miscalculation that fatally rebounds upon him when a horrified Léonie, the gossip of Paris belatedly reaching her, puts a weapon in the hands of the Comte de Saint-Vire when she confronts him in person and demands to know if she is indeed his bastard; if there is indeed such a barrier, invisible yet insuperable, between herself and His Grace of Avon...

    Gradually she relaxed her taut muscles and sank down upon the couch, trembling... At first she was incredulous of Madame de Verchoureux's pronouncement, but little by little she came to see the probability of the story's truth. Saint-Vire's attempt to kidnap her was thus explained, as was the interest he had always taken in her. Sick disgust rose in her...
    Disgust gave way to a feeling of horror, and of fright. If Madame de Verchoureux had spoken the truth, Léonie could see the old loneliness stretching ahead, for it was clearly unthinkable that such a one as Avon could marry, or even adopt, a girl of her blood. He came of the nobility; she felt herself to be of mongrel blood. Lax he might be, but Léonie knew that if he married her he would disgrace the ancient name he bore. Those who knew him said that he would count no cost, but Léonie would count the cost for him, and because she loved him, because he was her seigneur, she would sacrifice everything sooner than drag him down in the eyes of his world...

Murder In Bostall (US title: The Black Rose Murder) - The Australian-born Paul McGuire began to write when he was hardly more than a boy, and eventually expressed his literary ambitions in a variety of ways: as a magazine editor, a journalist, a poet, a contributor to secular and Catholic journals, and finally as a novelist. After a period spent in London among the explicitly Catholic literary set headed by G. K. Chesterton, McGuire returned to Australia inspired to use his gifts to work for his faith, and became one of the co-founders of the Catholic Guild for Social Studies. As WWII approached, McGuire had a varied career as a war correspondent, a public speaker on religious matters, an historian, and an intelligence officer; afterwards, he gained fame as campaigner for social and moral reform. In time he became Australia's ambassador to Ireland, a delegate to the United Nations' General Assembly, and a special ambassador and envoy to the Holy See for the funeral of Pope Pius XII.

And---as I seem to say of a great many people who lived amazingly complicated lives during the first half of the 20th century---in his spare time, he wrote mysteries.

In Murder In Bostall, Mr Modstone, the head of a private inquiry agency specialising in "rich men's vices", finds himself worried about his nephew, Edward Steyn, who also happens to be his most valuable agent. Having been set to discover whether Lord Barbury's suspicions about his wife and a certain Mr Stephen Crawley M. P. are well-founded, Steyn's report to his uncle is definite yet somehow unsatisfactory. Pressed, Steyn admits that he has found out something unexpected, "something big", in connection with the Barbury case, and begs leave to keep silent on this matter, at least for another few days. To his later, bitter regret, Modstone agrees...only to be called to Scotland Yard to identify his nephew's body, found dead in Bostall Wood of a severe head injury. Though impressed with Inspector Cummings, who is in charge of the case, Modstone is consumed by the fear that Steyn had involved himself in something disreputable - specifically, blackmail - and determines to do whatever it takes to protect his nephew's reputation. Consequently, he finds himself walking a dangerous line, seeming to cooperate with Cummings while in fact withholding from him key pieces of information, as he attempts to discover for himself what Steyn had learned while investigating the Barburys. In retracing his nephew's movements, he finds a bundle of old letters that hint at a secret marriage, and learns that Steyn called upon Lord Barbury's mother, now the widowed Mrs Huston. Meanwhile, finding Modstone ahead of him each step of the way, much to his annoyance, Cummings takes steps to force the inquiry agent to cooperate with the police investigation. The two form a wary yet mutually respectful partnership, working together to solve a crime with its roots deep in the past...

The publisher's blurb attached to Murder In Bostall praises it for "having more of the human element" than most mysteries - and so it does. Obviously the point of contention is the "cosy" tendency to treat murder like a light-hearted diversion, and to avoid too much depth in its characterisations, for fear of spoiling the reader's fun by forcing him or her to take crime seriously. Murder In Bostall, conversely, manages the trick of being simultaneously an engaging murder mystery, and an effective, character-driven novel. Though it would be Inspector Cummings who would feature in half-a-dozen more novels by Paul McGuire, it is Mr Modstone who is the heart of Murder In Bostall. (It is one of this novel's idiosyncrasies that neither of its main characters has a first name.) In fact, this novel is apparently unique in the annals of British Golden Age mysteries, inasmuch as it not only has a lead character who is Jewish, but treats him throughout with dignity and respect, particularly in regard to his profound grief over his nephew's violent death.

As anyone who has winced their way through the sneers and slurs of Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and many others would be well aware, this is not a small thing. Murder In Bostall is quite free of pernicious stereotype. Modstone's background relevant only inasmuch as it dictates the nature of his interaction with his clients (Steyn's value to his uncle's agency was that he was accepted by the younger set of the upper classes, a sign that things were beginning to change), and that it expresses itself as a fierce sense of family loyalty. It is his fear not only that Steyn had involved himself in something dishonourable, but that the police investigation must inevitably result in his posthumous exposure, that drives Modstone to obstruct justice for as long as he can. He finally takes himself to task on this point, arguing that he should have more faith in his nephew's proven character, and finally steeling himself to reveal all to the exasperated but not unadmiring Inspector Cummings. From this point Murder In Bostall becomes quite as much about the odd, complimentary relationship that develops between Modstone and Cummings as it is about their efforts, separate and joint, to solve the murder of Edward Steyn. Though its focus is on Modstone, Cummings emerges as an appealingly human figure over the course of the novel, intelligent but not infallible, and with what his colleagues consider an inordinate interest in his wardrobe. Cummings' interactions with his fellow officers - particularly Sergeant Wittler, who specialises in "the West End" and has a tendency to look down his nose at those less fortunate - are another of the novel's charms. (There is also a lovely literary in-joke when Cummings wonders why the name "Steyn" should be familiar to him. Thackeray, deadpans his subordinate. Though curiously, neither of them reacts to the name "Crawley".)

The mystery that develops over the course of Murder In Bostall is unusual for never quite going in the direction the reader expects. The investigation eventually embraces not only Lord and Lady Barbary and Stephen Crawley, but also Mrs Huston and the man to whom she is engaged, an elusive figure known as Mr Willie. Though in most respects Murder In Bostall is quite as British as might be expected were its author born and bred, rather than only a visitor in passing, Paul McGuire does not entirely neglect his real roots. From the beginning, the object with which the fatal blow was inflicted is a point of confusion, given the strange shape and angle of the wound. The police are frankly baffled but, having followed Steyn's movements so far as calling upon Mrs Huston in her country home - once a showpiece, now a guesthouse - Modstone finds himself gazing upon a barbaric piece of decoration in the shape of a collection of weapons, and realises what the missing object must be: a boomerang...

    "I have come to see you," said Mr Modstone, "at this late hour, and intruding upon your privacy, because I wanted a talk with you: one that might have less of the official savour than a conversation at your Scotland Yard during the hours of duty. I have come especially because of a feeling I have had. All along through the course of this case, since we examined together my nephew's flat, I have been haunted by a fear, a fear that has coloured my attitude and determined my actions and decisions; a fear, as you know, that my nephew's character and conduct might not come well out of this affair. To-night it occurred to me, with some intensity, that I have been swayed by an assumption, an unfair, unjust assumption... So I have resolved that I will act from now on in the knowledge that if we unveil the whole truth of this affair we cannot injure my nephew's memory and reputation."
    The Inspector thought for a moment. "This means then that you and I will work wholeheartedly together? We will have the same object: to drag the affair up by the roots."

Yay!! June wrap!!

I read 13 books in June, all of them fitting TIOLI. The month started with a struggle, namely wrapping up the 3rd and 4th volumes of The Memoirs Of Vidocq, but after that it was plain sailing...almost. My first encounter with the lachrymous Elsie Dinsmore was enough for me to revive the sub-category of "Ew!" that dominated my reading early in the year. On the other hand, I had the pleasure of reading three unusual and thoroughly engaging mysteries, namely, From This Dark Stairway, Footprints and Murder In Bostall; though Out Of The Darkness was a disappointment. My tussle with Sax Rohmer and his prejudices continued, there was a smattering of non-fiction, and for the first time in ages I managed a Virago, and - gasp! - a blog read. (Though I haven't reviewed it yet. Oh, well.) Agatha missed out this month, but I progressed on Georgette with These Old Shades. I started two new series (one inadvertently), and continued on with four others. And naturally, the group reading of Framley Parsonage was a major highlight.

June stats:

Non-fiction: 1
Memoirs: 2
Classics: 2
Mystery / thriller: 5
Historical romance: 1
Young adult: 1
Contemporary (i.e. at time of publication) drama: 1

Series reading: 6

Male : female authors: 7 : 6

Oldest work: Memoirs Of Vidocq, Principal Agent Of The French Police Until 1827 (Volumes 3 & 4) by Eugène François Vidocq (1828)
Newest work: Bloodhounds Of Heaven: The Detective In English Fiction From Godwin To Doyle by Ian Ousby (1976)

And in keeping with June's theme of "animals showing humans exactly what they think of them (and rightly so)"---

The Si-Fan Mysteries: Being A New Phase In The Activities Of Fu-Manchu, The Devil Doctor - Published in 1917, the third of Sax Rohmer's Fu-Manchu novels opens with Dr Petrie abruptly recalled to England by Nayland Smith, and therefore being unable to go ahead with his plans to marry Kâramanèh. OH WHAT A COMPLETELY SHOCKING DEVELOPMENT THAT I TOTALLY DIDN'T SEE COMING. Smith and Petrie wait impatiently for a summons from Sir Gregory Hale, who has recently returned the Far East in possession of the shocking secret that lurks "behind the veil of Lamaism". Before the proposed meeting can occur, however, Sir Gregory dies under mysterious circumstances, the victim of a deadly plant known as the Flower of Silence. Smith reveals to Petrie that he was always aware that Fu-Manchu, powerful as he was, was only the agent of a greater, and even more insidious, force: the Si-Fan, a fanatical organisation that worships an immaculate, allegedly immortal princess. Though he scornfully waves away the bulk of the story as Oriental superstition, Smith insists that the Si-Fan is real enough - and deadly enough. Slowly, the two men become aware that they are surrounded on all sides by the tools of this murderous organisation. Even as they must fight for their lives against overwhelming odds, Smith and Petrie suffer two appalling shocks: not only is Kâramanèh kidnapped on her way back to England, but after believing him safely dead, with a bullet in his brain and a collapsing building on top of him, they discover that Dr Fu-Manchu is still alive...

There is entertainment to be wrung from The Si-Fan Mysteries, but it has more to do with the general tone of the novel than with anything that happens between its covers. By this stage it is perfectly evident that, like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle before him, Sax Rohmer had grown tired of his most famous and popular literary creation, and really wanted to be done with him so that he could move onto something new. (Also like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, this would be a battle that Rohmer would eventually lose; but that's another story.) There is a sense of impatience about The Si-Fan Mysteries, one which shows itself in the way the narrative lurches from adventure to adventure with a minimum of linking text, and in the disappointingly brief appearances of the series' two most interesting characters...or three, counting the marmoset. Kâramanèh herself barely appears, being either a hostage, or asleep or unconscious, most of the time; I think she gets only one bit of dialogue in the whole novel. Then again, given that the same scene finds Petrie openly gloating about his control over her---"It made my blood course faster to watch this lovely Eastern girl conquering the barbaric impulses that sometimes flamed up within her, because I willed it"---perhaps it's for the best. The loss to the overall narrative of the morally ambiguous Kâramanèh shows itself in the addition to the cast of Zarmi, "the beautiful Eurasian", who enjoys nothing more than luring men to their doom, unless it's holding a knife to their throats for no particular reason.

On a brighter note, it turns out that I did Kâramanèh an injustice when I raised sceptical eyebrows at her apparent wounding of Fu-Manchu at the end of The Devil Doctor, after she proved herself a dead shot during The Mystery Of Dr Fu-Manchu. She did in fact lodge a bullet in his brain: it just didn't quite get the job done, leaving him alive but paralysed down the right side of his body. For the bulk of this novel, Fu-Manchu is unseen, present only as an unnerving mixture of dragging and tapping sounds, consequent upon his hauling himself around on two walking sticks. He eventually reacts to his situation as any sensible super-criminal would: he kidnaps England's leading surgeon, with Petrie along as anaesthetist, and offers the old I-die-you-die deal, with Kâramanèh's life as an added inducement. The bullet removed, Fu-Manchu at least begins to resemble his old self; although truthfully (rather like Sherlock Holmes after Reichenbach), he's never quite the same again...

Although we are constantly warned about the lengths to which the Si-Fan will go in their efforts to overthrow "the white race" and place their mysterious Empress upon the throne of the whole world (!), it must be said that their proceedings throughout this novel seem even more than usually pointless: far from getting any closer to world dominance, they put an inordinate amount of time and effort into hunting down and killing by tortuously complicated means anyone who has made it back to England from the Mysterious East. (Why they don't just kill these people while they are in the Mysterious East is, well, mysterious.) The sense that Sax Rohmer himself was struggling through The Si-Fan Mysteries tempered my usual exasperation with him; although I have to say that I found something peculiarly offensive about his choice to locate the heart of "this stupendous business", this "giant conspiracy" which is to end in "the Yellow races overrunning Europe", in Tibet. Then again, Rohmer seems to think that "Lamaism" consists of the practice of hypnotism and mind control, so it's doubtful he meant anything in particular by it. After a lengthy climax in the secret passages of an ancient estate featuring the long-past-due appearance of Fu-Manchu's army of centipedes, scorpions and spiders, Smith and Petrie discover that their quarry has eluded them once again...or at least so it seems, until Nature intervenes in the form of a violent storm. Amusingly, exasperated though he clearly was with his literary progeny, even here Sax Rohmer does not definitively kill off Fu-Manchu, but closes upon the ambiguous scene of a wrecked yacht; and let's face it, after surviving a massive explosion, a bullet in the head and ten tons of falling rubble, it isn't likely a trifle like that is going to stop the good doctor...

I think I have never experienced in my life a sensation identical with that which now possessed me. Although Nayland Smith had declared that Fu-Manchu was alive, yet I would have sworn upon oath before any jury summonable that he was dead; for with my own eyes I had seen the bullet enter his skull. Now, while I crouched against the matting-covered wall, teeth tightly clenched and my hair quivering upon my scalp, he dragged himself laboriously across the room, the sticks going tap---tap---tap upon the floor, and the tall body, enveloped in a yellow robe, bent grotesquely, gruesomely, with every effort he made. He wore a surgical bandage about his skull, and its presence seemed to accentuate the height of the great dome-like brow, to through into more evil prominence the wonderful Satanic countenance of the man...

Sax Rohmer did in fact quit after The Si-Fan Mysteries - but it didn't stick. During the 1920s, the film industry discovered Fu-Manchu and won for him a whole new audience. Of course, three novels could only go so far - even three novels as packed with improbable adventures as The Mystery Of Dr Fu-Manchu, The Devil Doctor and The Si-Fan Mysteries - and at length Sax Rohmer found himself under constant and increasing pressure from his publisher to give the punters what they wanted by resurrecting the good doctor once again. After resisting for some considerable time, Rohmer finally capitulated by writing Daughter Of Fu-Manchu, with more Fu-Manchu novels appearing at regular intervals until 1959.

Though he did eventually cave, like Conan Doyle before him, Rohmer's dogged resistance means that there is a fourteen-year gap between the third and fourth novels in his series, with The Si-Fan Mysteries published in 1917, and Daughter Of Fu-Manchu not appearing until...

...1931.

Dammit.

#78 & 80 Saraband and Murder in Bostall both sound very interesting. Unfortunately the latter is quite expensive over here.

#82 And quite right too!

#84 Oh dear...

Hi, Heather!

Paul McGuire's books are hard to get hold of, that's for sure - and you never can tell about our libraries: they very often hold works by Australian writers, but they don't always make them available for loan. Fortunately, the University of Adelaide is more generous in that respect than most, hence Murder In Bostall. I have another book by McGuire on request, but it remains to be seen...

Sax Rohmer has hurt me in many and varied ways over the Fu-Manchu books, but that might be the unkindest cut of all. :)

And I've finally gotten some blogging done, too!

I've written a post on Mary Elizabeth Braddon's The Octoroon; or, The Lily Of Louisiana, which is here.

A few weeks ago I also wrote up Thomas Leland's Longsword, Earl Of Salisbury, which I read - ulp! - last year. That post is here.

Oh hooray for all those lovely reviews - checking in to see what's new over here, and to my delight find that you have been very busy!! Let me just go get my coffee, and I'll be right back to settle into a decadent Sunday morning of reading your thread. Thanks, Liz!

#87 Very entertaining thoughts on The Octoroon Liz. I found Plot B rather confusing because it didn't seem to bear much relation to Plot A. In fact, I had completely forgotten about Plot B until you mentioned it!

Having read The Black Band, or, The Mysteries of Midnight, which I think was also started in 1861, I'm inclined to agree with you about The Octoroon being an earlier novel. There seemed to be quite an improvement in the writing style and plotting in TBB compared to The Octoroon. I look forward to your thoughts on TBB when I manage to send the book yo you :-)

Hooray for lovely visitors!

>>#88

Thank you, Mamie - that's very nice to hear. I hope I go well with your coffee. :)

>>#89

Thanks, Heather. I think there was an attempt to make the themes of Plot B echo the themes of Plot A, but it didn't really work.

when I manage to send the book

Absolutely no hurry, believe me! Two more interlibrary loans to pick up today, sigh...

What!?

From Unravelled Knots:

"No doubt you know the geography of the place. The halfpenny papers have been full of maps and plans of 'Hardacres'. It is a rather lonely house on the road between Langford and Barchester, about three quarters of a mile from Meere village. Meere Court is another half-mile or so further on, the house hidden by clumps of stately trees, above which can be perceived the towers of Barchester Cathedral..."

I wonder what the Baroness Orczy was reading while she was working on these stories?

>83 lyzard:: Hooray for more Fu Manchu summaries! By which of course I mean, "I'm sorry for your pain, Liz."

Perusing LT's list of Fu Manchu novels, I see there are 14, with the last one appearing in 1974(!). If Rohmer wanted to quit after three that almost makes me feel sorry for him.

I suppose I'll allow you to almost feel sorry for him: not only did he want to quit after three, he ended up writing these things literally to the bitter end: Rohmer died in 1959, the year the last "official" Fu-Manchu novel was published. The last listing is a posthumous collection of shorter works, only one of which was previously published (I think).

Anyway, I shall undoubtedly feel compelled to tackle the 1931 novel before too long - oh, the pain, the pain of it all! - and then even my OCD will allow me to take a break.

Hi Liz. Just to let you know that I've finished The Secret of Chimneys and added it to TIOLI challenge #6. Sadly I still haven't been able to find a challenge for The Masqueraders as my copy was over 300 pages.

A drive by posting to say hello! None of the books you are reading are familiar to me though I'm glad that overall it seems you are enjoying your current reading.

Hi there Liz! Your review of These Old Shades was great. It has been quite some time since I read it and reading your thoughts helped me remember much of the story that I had forgotten. I did like the story but remember feeling a bit squicked out by the relationship...not so much because of the age difference, but because of the power relationship. Avon spends a good deal of time either being employer or guardian to Leonie. Even if he did know who she was the whole time, he definitely had all the power in that relationship. But as you say, this is historically accurate, even if our modern tastes are different.

Hi Liz! I hope you're doing well. It's been a while, and I'm trying to get caught up.

#43 - Wonderful book haul, particularly the Viragos.

As always, it's a joy to read through your wonderful reviews. I was particularly interested in Saraband, until I read about the Wolf Hall-esque pronoun nonsense. Ha! Just kidding, I'll check it out anyway...

>>#94

I'm hoping to start The Secret Of Chimneys today, Heather - if I ever do finish Unravelled Knots, which seems to be going on forever. My copy of The Masqueraders is 251 pages, so maybe we can get away with a shared read? I'll check the rules and we'll see.

>>#95

Hi, Morphy! How lovely to see you here. :)

Ha! - no, I'm not surprised that you haven't heard of most of my books, it's an occupational hazard!

>>#96

Hi, Heidi! I think in that particular relationship the power imbalance is - or rather, becomes - more perceived than actual. It maintains its appearance because of who and what Leonie thinks she is, but in reality it's a lot more equitable than the concurrent relationship between Fanny and Edward, with all it's "You're my wife, madam!" ordering around.

>>#97

Thank you for stopping by, Kerri - much appreciated! Yes, the pronoun trick is nothing new, I'm afraid! - but Saraband is an oddly interesting sort of book anyway.

Finished Unravelled Knots by the Baroness Orczy for TIOLI #4.

Which means that I have FINISHED A SERIES!!!!

Oh, yes, yes, yes, okay...a three-book series. Baby steps, people!

Now reading The Secret Of Chimneys by Agatha Christie for TIOLI #6.

Which you can look upon as the first book in a series , if you choose...

I don't choose.

I don't know what is about The Secret Of Chimneys, but there are some really terrible cover images out there; so many, it's hard to choose, but I think (in the negative sense) that these two are my favourites.

Are we sensing a theme?

    

I wonder if that's supposed to be Bundle or Virginia?

Ooooh! Agatha Christie! I know her! LOL.

Whoo! We CONNECTED!! :)

I don't choose.

Ahhh, who'm I kidding? :(

Finished The Secret Of Chimneys...the first in the series featuring Superintendent Battle...for TIOLI #6.

You win again, OCD!

Now reading The Masqueraders by Georgette Heyer for TIOLI #16.

What?

Funny how some retailers go out of their way to put you off. One book-dealer who has The Masqueraders listed says the following in the course of their blurb:

...implicated in the Stuart Rebellion (this would appear to be a reference to the Second Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, although it hardly matters)...

"The Stuart Rebellion"? I'm quite sure Georgette Heyer never used an inaccurate term like that, so where did they get it from? And, by the way, it matters A LOT, inasmuch as the dangerous political climate at the time is the driving motivation for the plot. I presume this is meant to indicate that the story takes place after the Rebellion and not during it, but what an odd, sneery way of putting it!

Ah, another of my favorites--and you are so right, Heyer would NEVER be caught out in such an obvious historical error! I think I've mentioned I like the big quiet gents, and Prue is one of my favorite characters! As is the old gentleman, although I undoubtedly would not be so tolerant did I have to live with him.

Hello, Roni - how nice to see you out and about again. I was very sorry to hear you've been under the weather, though I gather it gave you plenty of time for reading!

Ah, it was you with the yen for big, quiet men - I was trying to remember who'd 'fessed up to that! The Masqueraders is another of the lesser-known Heyers that a have a particular fondness for. As for the old gentleman, I think he's best appreciated at a safe distance. :)

Tales Of Hoffmann - I was brought to this collection of stories by E. T. A. Hoffmann at this time by various references to his 1819 tale, Das Fräulein von Scuderi, as a progenitor of the modern detective story. I am somewhat disappointed to have to report that while it is a fine piece of crime fiction, it is certainly not a detective story. Hoffmann's story centres upon the real historical figure of Madeleine de Scudery, a 17th century writer and salon hostess. During the time of Louis XIV, Paris is terrorised by a wave of robbery-murders, which are believed to be the work of a highly organised and ruthless criminal gang. A special tribunal set up to combat the crimes proves worse than the criminals themselves, arresting and executing suspects on the flimsiest of pretexts---but the crimes do not stop. The murder of a goldsmith results in the arrest of the man's young partner, Olivier Brusson, who is charged with all the murders. In his desperation appeals to Mlle de Scudery, who was his mother's patron and guardian, and she determines to uncover the truth...

So far Das Fräulein von Scuderi may sound like a detective story, but the problem is that Mlle de Scudery does no actual detection: because of her influence with the king, and her reputation for absolute honour and virtue, those with knowledge of the ghastly crimes feel safe confiding in her. She does not discover the truth, but has it revealed to her; her difficulty is how to convince others in the absence of concrete proof. The story becomes one of perception versus reality, of the difficulty of distinguishing between genuine and apparent innocence, and of the terrors that may lurk behind a façade of normality. The murders themselves turn out to be, not the work of a gang, but (in a startlingly modern touch) of a serial killer in the grip of a terrible compulsion. A psychopath by night, but a highly respected citizen by day, the killer is protected by his public reputation. A soldier who knows that Olivier Brusson is innocent of his employer's murder stays silent, because, "Who would believe me?" Terrified of the possibility of falling victim to the special tribunal if they get involved, witnesses repeatedly suppress their knowledge of the crimes. It is left to Mlle de Scudery to use her unassailable position to see that the truth prevails.

Der Sandmann (The Sandman) is probably the best-known of the remaining tales in this volume. As a child, Nathaniel confounds the central figure of a horrifying fairy-tale, a sinister being who steals the eyes of children who won't go to sleep, with a mysterious visitor who calls upon his father at night. When the visitor is indirectly responsible for his father's death, Nathaniel's psychological scars lead to future tragedy... The tone-shifts in Der Sandmann almost induce whiplash. Part-horror, part-science fiction, and part a cynically comic take on "young love", the tale bounces wildly from mood to mood until arriving at its inevitable disaster. One plot-thread involves the merchant Coppola, who Nathaniel believes is the doppelgänger of the sinister Coppelius of his childhood; another, the mysterious Professor Spalanzani and his beautiful but strangely inexpressive daughter, Olympia; the third, Nathaniel's growing passion for Olympia, in whom he believes he has found the perfect woman... This story is one of the inspirations for the ballet, Coppelia.

In Der Artushof, an aspiring artist becomes obsessed with two of the figures in the extraordinary mural upon the wall of the Artus Court in Gdańsk, Poland: those of a knight and his page. One day the young man meets a father and daughter who bear a startling resemblance to the figures in the mural---and for very good reason, insists the father: he painted those figures himself, some 200 years ago... Rat Krespel (Councillor Krespel, also known as The Cremona Violin) involves a young woman, Antonia, who is forbidden to exercise her extraordinary musical talents. She and the man with whom she lives, Councillor Krespel - no-one is quite sure of the relationship between the two - become obsessed with collecting violins and taking them apart to see how they work - after which, of course, they may never be played again... In Das Majorat (The Entail), a German nobleman's attempt to compel his descendants to live in and maintain a crumbling castle on a desolate coast leads to deception, violence, murder, and a possible haunting...

Doge und Dogaressa is based upon historical events of the mid-1400s, the failed coup d'état of Marino Faliero, the Doge of Venice, but focuses upon the secondary tragedy of the disastrous marriage of the elderly Doge with the very young and very innocent Annunziata. Die Bergwerke zu Falun (The Mines At Falun) is also based upon a true story, but turned into a tale of supernatural horror. A former sailor left alone in the world is convinced by a mysterious stranger to become a miner. When he believes that he has lost all chance of marrying the girl he loves, he rashly swears to devote himself to the mines instead - and they are not prepared to let him go, ever... In Die Brautwahl (The Choosing Of The Bride), a young man is assisted in his courtship of the object of his affections by two strange individuals who may or may not be alchemists who were condemned to death some centuries before...

As is evident even from these short summaries, certain themes recur throughout this collection of stories. Hoffmann was an artist and a musician as well as writer, and the arts play a significant role in many of the tales, though not always in a positive way: art can be a dangerous obsession as well as an inspiration. The seeming supernatural is also a recurrent touch in these stories, although in all cases Hoffmann leaves room for an alternative explanation---not uncommonly, the mental or emotional instability of his frequently unreliable narrators. The other striking thing about these tales is their cynical attitude to love; a stance all the more remarkable given Hoffmann's position as a "Romantic" writer. These stories, collectively, seem like a riposte to the attitudes of that movement generally, and the excesses of The Sorrows Of Young Werther and its ilk in particular. Foolish young men in love abound in this volume; and while love can be the basis of a great tragedy, as in Doge und Dogaressa and Die Bergwerke zu Falun, more often it is no more than a passing fancy, which evaporates as soon as the obstacles to it are overcome. One thing it never is, however, is simply happy...

Never before so bitterly deceived by her feelings, mortally crushed by the hellish power in whose existence she had not believed, Mademoiselle Scudery doubted all truth. She gave way to the awful suspicion that Madelon was an accomplice and might have participated in the terrible crime. And since, once a picture appears to the human mind, it seeks to paint it in more and more vivid colours, so Mademoiselle Scudery, too, considering Madelon's behaviour in the minutest detail, found in each circumstance of the deed much to nourish suspicion. Many things which before had seemed to her proof of innocence and purity now became a sure sign of outrageous evil and studied deceit.

Ah, but the Easter Bilby would forget about delivering candy to Minnesota. After all, we don't have Bilbies around here! It's terribly cute though!

Tales of Hoffman looks quite interesting! Sounds like gothic horror. I'll bet some of his stories are in my gothic horror collections, but I've never heard of him before. What you say about him makes me think a little of the modern horror writer Lucius Shepard.

Unravelled Knots - The third - and FINAL - volume in the Baroness Orczy's series about the amateur detective known only as The Old Man In The Corner was not published until 1925, some twenty years after the first two collections of short stories. Whatever the reason for the delay, there is an unavoidable feeling that these stories were indeed "leftovers", a kind of afterthought. It seems likely that they were written much earlier, and later revised for publication; the world depicted in them, though many references are made to WWI and its effects, is not realistically that of the mid-1920s. In particular, the investigation of crime seems mired in a pre-scientific period: not only is there no mention of fingerprint evidence at any point, there is no mention of even looking for it, though murder weapons and burglary scenes abound. Small wonder the police invariably fail to solve the crimes in question!

The narrator of these stories is, strangely, never named at any point, though those of us who have been paying attention know her as Polly Burton, a journalist. She is unable to account for the impulse that one afternoon propels her into a certain tea-shop, where she is simultaneously surprised and unsurprised to find her old acquaintance, to all appearances unchanged, right down to his fixation with tying and untying elaborate knots in a piece of string. (That she refers to him as "The Man In The Corner" rather than "The Old Man" is, however, indicative that Polly is aware of the passage of time.) She recognises him at once; but she does not realise that he has also recognised her, until with hardly a glance in her direction he begins to speak about the latest mystery to baffle Scotland Yard...

Overall, the stories that make up Unravelled Knots are weaker than those in the earlier volumes. In most instances The Old Man's solutions to the crimes in question are psychological rather than evidential, and too often his explanations do not completely convince, for all that he insists that they are "the only possible answer". (I may say that I came up with an alternative solution to the murder committed in the opening story, The Mystery Of the Khaki Tunic, which seemed to me far more likely than the one offered in the narrative.) Likewise, too many of the stories depend upon ordinary individuals suddenly evincing an extraordinary talent for disguise and/or impersonation, or previously honest people suddenly throwing themselves with great enthusiasm into criminal conspiracies. Sometimes, too, the explanation is not "shocking" at all, but rather so obvious that you don't really believe the police wouldn't have least considered it. The strongest stories are those which avoid most, if not all, of these pitfalls: The Mystery Of The Pearl Necklace, in which a husband and wife cunningly outwit the blackmailer threatening them; The Tytherton Case, in which a defrauded inventor is determined to have his rights - one way or another; and The Fulton Gardens Mystery, in which two women silently conspire to save the man they both love.

Though the standard of its stories varies, the real issue with Unravelled Knots is its voice. In the earlier collections, the stories themselves were presented as more of a conversation between Polly and The Old Man. Here, however, The Old Man simply talks, with Polly contributing very little, albeit that she is the putative narrator. And The Old Man's voice is not a nice one: his tales abound with sneering, condescending remarks about women, the working classes, and that eternal target, "foreigners" (which in this case encompasses "colonials" - don't you trust those Australians!) The cumulative effect is extremely wearisome. What's more, though presumably Polly has had a successful career as a journalist for over twenty years, this volume not only finds her working for a tabloid, but carries the nasty suggestion that these days, her success depends upon picking The Old Man's brains and then passing his ideas off as her own work. It's a disappointing end to what started as a fun, imaginative series.

"Fortunately for me," my eccentric friend went on glibly, "I was up betimes that morning when the papers came out with an account of the mysterious crime in Bishop's Road. I say fortunately, because, as you know, mysteries of that sort interest me beyond everything, and for me there is no theatre in the world to equal in excitement the preliminary investigations of a well-conceived and cleverly executed crime. I should have been bitterly disappointed had circumstances prevented me from attending that particular inquest. From the first, one was conscious of an atmosphere of mystery that hung over the events of that night in the Bishop's Road household: here indeed was no ordinary crime; the motive for it was still obscure, and one instinctively felt that somewhere, in this vast city of London, there lurked a criminal of no mean intelligence, who would probably remain unpunished..."

>>#109

Hi, Katie! Well, you can keep your bunny, then - I'd hate for you to miss out on your chocolate. :)

Hoffmann's tales are Gothic in tone, but usually they involve the intrusion of the extraordinary into quite ordinary lives. (Except for The Entail, which has a spooky castle which is very Gothic indeed.) I'm not familiar with the work of Lucius Shepard but I shall now keep an eye out, thanks!

The Man Of Last Resort; or, The Clients Of Randolph Mason - To judge from the preface to this second volume by Melville Davisson Post dealing with the legal machinations of the thoroughly amoral Randolph Mason, the first was roundly attacked---which is not altogether surprising. The premise of these stories is that Mason uses his encyclopaedic knowledge of the law and its loopholes to help his clients evade the consequences of their criminal actions. In the most notorious story in The Strange Schemes Of Randolph Mason, he not only helps a man to get away with murder, but does so a priori by advising him how to commit it. To the obvious criticism of his stories as a "how-to" manual for criminals, Post asserts that he is simply illustrating the shortcomings of the law as it stands, ones which any attorney worth his salt ought to be exploiting (albeit not to the extent of planning crimes). By showing where the gaps in the law exist, he creates an opportunity for the law-makers to close them. As in The Strange Schemes Of Randolph Mason, Post provides a frontispiece to each individual story in The Man Of Last Resort, wherein he quotes real-life cases in which rulings were made based upon the laws in question.

In The Governor's Machine, New Mexico's Secretary of State, Abercrombie Hergen, aka Billy the Plunger, gambles away some $50,000 of the State's money. Aware all along of his friend's weakness, Governor Alfred Capland Randal accepts responsibility, even though repaying the debt will leave him penniless and mean the end of his aspirations with respect to the lovely New York socialite, Marion Lanmar. Hergen, however, travels to New York to consult Randolph Mason---and comes back with a plan not only for restoring the money, but leaving others holding the bag... Once In Jeopardy turns on the fact that no-one may be tried twice for the same crime. Knowing that it is only a matter of time before he is found out, Robert Gilmore confesses to Randolph Mason that he has murdered his business partner, Brown Hirst. Mason advises Gilmore that under the circumstances, his best hope of avoiding justice is a rush to judgement... In The Grazier, Rufus Alshire, an Oklahoma cattle baron, is drawn ever deeper into debt by a syndicate that knows, but has no intention of revealing, that there is a rich deposit of oil under his land. When the scheme is given away to him by a driller whose life he once saved, Alshire consults Randolph Mason about how to hang onto his land---and learns of the many ways in which red tape may be exploited... The most painful story in this volume is Mrs Van Bartan, in which we meet another lawyer, Robert Dalton, who is every bit as conversant with the lacunae of the law as Randolph Mason himself---and who uses his knowledge to silently help the woman he loves by committing a legal "blunder" that destroys both his career and his reputation... The Man Of Last Resort ends on a particularly cold and bitter note, when the financier Russell Carper, about to be exposed as a thief and an embezzler, decides that he only has two options: suicide, or Randolph Mason. He sets out for the lawyer's house, but upon arriving there discovers to his horror that Mason has problems of his own...

We do not see as much of Randolph Mason himself in this volume as we did in its predecessor. Rather, as the subtitle of The Man Of Last Resort suggests, we spend more time with his potential clients, learning of their back-stories and following the events that lead them - all of them "respectable" people - to the commission of a serious crime. Indeed, this volume invites criticism on a different basis from the earlier one, by encouraging the reader to sympathise with these characters to the point of wanting them to get away with it. There's no avoiding the fact that these stories are wonderfully entertaining, even if we do feel a little guilty about enjoying them. Its intriguing (il)legality aside, there's some lovely writing in The Man Of Last Resort, including fascinating regional descriptions (two of the stories are set in West Virginia, where Melville Post studied law, one in Oklahoma and one in New Mexico), as well as numerous insightful character sketches. This emphasis upon character means that the stories are fewer in number than we might expect, but more detailed and thoughtful in execution.

As for Mason himself, there is an excuse for his behaviour even beyond "what the law permits": clearly, though it is never spelled out, he is mentally ill. His struggles throughout The Strange Schemes Of Randolph Mason culminated in a complete breakdown, and he was last seen on a ship heading to the South of France for a rest cure. His behaviour in The Man Of Last Resort indicates that it would be incorrect to say he is recovered. This volume finds him even more obsessed with the absolutes of the law, and more disgusted than ever with humanity at large; he treats with brutal contempt and hostility those clients who try to explain their crimes to him in terms of their emotions. But such are the exigencies of Mason's legal speciality that something's got to give; and so it is that when Russell Carper approaches Mason's house at the end of the book he finds the medical profession well in evidence. "A bad case of acute mania," one doctor say to another. "I have given him two hypodermics of morphine, and he is still raving like a drunken sailor..."

Randolph Mason arose slowly and pointed his finger at Alshire. "The old story," he sneered, "a child afraid of a goblin. Moral wrong! A name used to frighten fools. There is no such thing. The law lays down the only standard by which the acts of citizens are to be governed. What the law permits is right, else it would prohibit it. What the law prohibits is wrong, because it punishes it. This is the only lawful measure, the only measure bearing the stamp and the sanction of the State. All others are spurious, counterfeit, and void. The word 'moral' is a pure metaphysical symbol, possessing no more intrinsic value than the radical sign."

Throughout yr discussion of Elsie Dinsmore I was trying to recall where on earth I had heard tell of this dripping soppy wet young creature, and then CDVicarage nailed it -- the Chalet School books. Which I loved as a child and still do because although they clearly were written from a privileged/conservative point of view, the morality is combined with humor not self abnegation. And although the main character throughout the 60 or so books, Joey Bettany, (SPOILER ALERT) goes on to marry a young doctor she first meets as a very young teen and there clearly is a significant age gap, it may only (!) be 15 years. And while Joey goes on to have 11 children (including, improbably, a set of triplets and two sets of twins) she also writes for a living, churning out her own school stories. In a lot of ways I have outgrown these books, but even when they were explicitly moralistic and delivering a religious message, it's one that I could accept as having roots in humanism, compassion or simply common sense.

On another note -- I've been reading the Laurie King novels featuring a young Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, which has a 40 year age gap between them and in which Holmes, in his 50s, confesses he fell for Mary when he first saw her, age 15. Dismaying, and I'm still struggling to get past that.

Betrothals and early marriages in history made a lot of sense. (Although rarely would a marriage be consummated before the girl was 14 or so.) It was all about fertility: younger girls were more likely to be fertile, and that was their purpose. In the case of Mary of Modena, she was James II's second wife and only two daughters survived from his first marriage (only slightly younger than the bride...) He needed an heir, and given the mortality rates among children and women in childbirth, it made sense to look for a young woman. That said, parents could be cautious about consummation, as in the case of the young Arthur, Prince of Wales, and Catherine of Aragon (the whole cause celebre associated with Henry VIII's divorce). They were apparently either forbidden to sleep together or kept apart much of the time by their respective governors after the official marriage ceremony; apparently Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII's mother and Arthur's grandmother was in part responsible for this. She had been married, a mother and a widow by the age of 13, and apparently was so physically damaged by the ordeal of childbirth at such an early age that she couldn't have any more children and there is doubt that any of her subsequent marriages were consummated. (She took a kind of religious vow to live as a celibate while still married to her third husband.)

Incidentally, I love the phrase "snabble". I may have to snabble it.

>108 lyzard:: I have a vague recollection of having read some Hoffmann's Tales, but your descriptions don't ring any bells, other than The Sandman and Councillor Krespel. Now I'm wondering if I ever read the tales, or only recollect them through Offenbach's opera. Well, another one for the swamp.

>112 lyzard:: That series sounds good, too. I must have missed your review of the first volume, but the premise sounds intriguing.

>>#113

Hello, Suz - how lovely to get a visit from you! Elsie must have made quite an impact in her day, as references to her in other texts seem to be a common thing. I can appreciate your sticking with the Chalet School stories for their " humanism, compassion or simply common sense"; I can't say that I found any of those qualities in Elsie Dinsmore - certainly not the latter. :)

Yes, you're quite right: royal marriages were a thing apart. Poor Mary of Modena was obviously considered "old enough" at fifteen, though: she started having miscarriages right away, like all good Stuart wives. The irony there is that it was her eventual production of a male heir that was the problem.

I would feel very honoured if you snabbled snabble!

>>#114

Hi, Steve. Yes, Hoffmann's stories turn up in so many other contexts that it's hard to know what you know and what you just think you know.

The Randolph Mason stories are very good, and actually quite shocking considering when they were written. I would certainly recommend the first two volumes; I'm hoping that Post doesn't let me down with the third, which I plan to get to by the end of the month.

Finished The Masqueraders by Georgette Heyer for TIOLI #16.

Now reading Le Pere Goriot by Honore de Balzac for TIOLI #27.

Interesting review of The man of last resort. I'd never heard of Randolph Mason. He sounds like the Anti-Rumpole. Quite the characterization!

Hope you love Le Pere Goriot. I remember loving it when I read it, but that was so long ago. I need to read more Balzac.

Hi, Katie. I think the Randolph Mason stories should be much better known than they are. If you're interested, the first two books, at least, are available online.

I haven't read as much Balzac as I should have, either. I'm enjoying Le Pere Goriot so far, though I'm not entirely thrilled with the translation.

Oooh! Georgette Heyer! I know her! As a matter of fact, I'll soon by reading my first book by her, The Grand Sophy. Probably in the next couple weeks as the library will start looking at me funny else wise.

Two!! Whoo-hoo!! :)

I hope you enjoy The Grand Sophy, Morphy - it's a favourite for a lot of Heyer readers.

lyz/liz, yes, poor Mary of Modena -- even with all those people watching the birth, there was still the baby-in-a-warming-pan allegation. Poor Mary and poor Anne, too, deprived of their father and never knowing their brother. It's not as if either of them went on to have terribly happy lives. And wow, you're right about Stuart women and miscarriages. Leave aside Henrietta Maria or Princess Elizabeth, who ended up giving birth to countless little Bohemiams in exile in the Hague, and they were a horribly infertile lot. Of Henrietta Maria's six children, though, there were only six legitimate grandchildren...

Have you ever read the books by Margaret Irwin about some of them? Royal Flush deals with Minette, the youngest of Charles I's children; she also wrote about Louise, sister of Rupert of the Rhine and daughter of the aforementioned Elizabeth. Another good historical novel is Christie Dickason's The King's Daughter, which is about Elizabeth's life up until her marriage. She portrays James I in a very harsh light indeed, emphasizing his utter paranoia.

I haven't read too much historical fiction on this era, though your recommendations are noted. At my blog, I've been looking at the political propaganda that sprang up around the "sham prince". I think Mary was the one really caught in an untenable situation, which may be why she refused to rule alone. Anne seems to have taken a hard line without too many qualms, if we judge by her language around the first Jacobite Rebellion, when she kept calling her half-brother "Perkin Warbeck". :)

Between Catharine of Braganza, Mary of Modena, and Mary and Anne, the Stuarts were a reproductive nightmare. Anne was pregnant eighteen times without managing to produce an heir---thus is royal history made.

Well, Anne did manage to produce that one young son -- was he William? -- who lived past toddlerhood, but suffered from water on the brain or something similar.

I'm going to have to go back and read some more about the Glorious Revolution. I had thought it was kind of tacitly accepted that Mary, while asked to rule alone, wouldn't really. Moreover, Dutch William had her fairly firmly under his thumb. Apparently his grief when she died caught many of his Dutch courtiers by surprise.

I do feel rather sorry for the Brits who had to deal with an influx of Dutch courtiers and then only a few decades later, an influx of German ones!

And then, of course, the legitimate Stuart line died out anyway...

Mary and William seem to have had a very solid relationship (he had a mistress, of course, but "only" one: in Stuart terms he was practically a saint). The English used William to get rid of James, but they didn't really want him as king, and certainly offered Mary the chance to rule alone. It's a matter of debate as to why she refused, but it's interesting they ended up as joint rulers rather than William taking the throne alone. Anyway, Mary was the one who did most of the actual ruling in the long term, because William was away at war for so much of their reign, so I suppose it worked out for everyone.

I think for the British this whole era was one of trying to figure out the lesser of various evils. :)

I have blogged about Lady Patty: A Sketch by Margaret Wolfe Hungerford, which I read last month - here.

And with that---I have caught up all my outstanding blog reviews! Whoo!!

Finished Le Pere Goriot by Honore de Balzac for TIOLI #27.

Now reading Three Dead Men by Paul McGuire---and horrors!---it doesn't fit TIOLI! But it is a short-term interlibrary loan, so I'd better just bite the bullet...

Finished Three Dead Men by Paul McGuire, which turned out to be the second in his series featuring Inspector Cummings, after Murder In Bostall.

Now reading The Corrector Of Destinies by Melville Davisson Post, the third and FINAL volume dealing with the legal machinations of Randolph Mason; this is for TIOLI #4.

The Secret Of Chimneys - Ah, dear. Best to get the unpleasantness out of the way at the outset, I suppose. Like many of her contemporaries, Agatha Christie was sometimes given to expressing attitudes which today require "making allowances", as they say, but she was never nastier nor more persistent in her use of derogatory language than in The Secret Of Chimneys. The first two chapters, indeed, contain such a barrage of slurs and sneers that it takes some effort to persist with the book at all---although doing so brings rich rewards in the form of one of Christie's most entertaining early works. While murder does eventually - we might say inevitably - occur in The Secret Of Chimneys, the novel is much closer in spirit to earlier, stand-alone thrillers like The Secret Adversary and The Man In The Brown Suit than to the series works for which Christie is better known. Here she offers up a deliciously convoluted plot involving a dead diplomat and his indiscreet memoirs, a missing jewel of fabulous value, a dangerous criminal gang led by a man known only as "King Victor", competing oil concerns, Ruritanian royalty and its perpetually revolting subjects, blackmail, murder, secret societies, and more false identities than you can keep track of without a scorecard---and wonder of wonder, it all comes together in the end. The Secret Of Chimneys is a novel that may be reread again and again, for the simple reason that it is impossible to keep all the details straight in between times. Personally, I always forget where the packet of letters comes into it...

The Secret Of Chimneys opens with the meeting in South Africa of two old friends, Jimmy McGrath and Anthony Cade. Jimmy is due to go to England on two assignments, but would much rather looking for gold in the middle of nowhere. Having been reduced to leading tour groups, Anthony willingly takes on his jobs. The first is the delivery to a firm of British publishers the memoirs of the late Count Stylptitch, a Herzoslovakian diplomat. Jimmy warns Anthony that the task will be no sinecure, as factions on both sides of the political fence have a vested interest in getting their hands on the document at a moment when the current republic of Herzoslovakia is contemplating the restoration of the Obolovich royal family. The second job involves a packet of letters written by a married woman to her lover, received from a dying man who had intended to use them for blackmail. The chivalrous Jimmy is determined to return them to their author, a woman called Virginia Revel. Anthony takes on both assignments, and finds that Jimmy has not exaggerated, with attempts made to obtain the memoirs via both bribery and violence. He manages to hang onto them, but in the process loses possession of the packet of letters...

Meanwhile, the Marquis of Caterham reluctantly allows his country estate, Chimneys, to be the site of a diplomatic meeting between Prince Michael Obolovich and certain business interests which are prepared to support his claim to the throne in exchange for oil concessions. The meeting is overshadowed, however, by the imminent publication of Count Stylptitch's memoirs, potentially full of damaging secrets---including the truth about the theft of one of the royal jewels of Herzoslovakia some years before, during another meeting at Chimneys. George Lomax, in charge of the gathering, decides to invite Anthony - or Jimmy McGrath, as he thinks - to Chimneys in a last-ditch attempt to prevent publication. He also invites his cousin, Virginia Revel, who is amused to learn that she is expected to charm the memoirs out of the presumably simple "colonial". At her London house, Virginia is confronted by a stranger demanding money in return for her compromising letters. As it happens, he has the wrong Virginia Revel---but Virginia gives him some money anyway, partly out of sympathy for her namesake, and partly to find out what being blackmailed feels like. She has cause to regret her impulsive act, however, when she returns home the following day to find the blackmailer dead in her study. A small revolver engraved with the name Virginia lies beside the body...

And from here the plot of The Secret Of Chimneys---well, I won't say "spins out of control", since it turns out that Christie has a reassuringly firm grip on her rapidly multiplying plot-threads---but continues to pile complication on top of complication. The result is amusing, suspenseful and more than a little bewildering. The Secret Of Chimneys holds quite an important place in the Christie oeuvre. Chimneys itself is the first fictional rendering of Abney Hall, the country estate owned by Agatha's brother-in-law, which reappears in a number of guises throughout her fiction. Naturally, this novel also introduces the present owners of Chimneys, that most reluctant and perpetually harassed of noblemen, the Marquis of Caterham, and his daughter, Lady Eileen Brent---better known as Bundle. More significantly, however, The Secret Of Chimneys marks the first appearance of Superintendent Battle, easily the most successful of Christie's various policemen, who hides an acute intelligence and much professional acumen behind a stolid exterior, and who is valued by the higher-ups for his limitless discretion. It is this latter quality that finds Battle called to Chimneys after Prince Michael is shot dead. The timing of the murder creates a difficulty for Anthony, who happened to be nearby, and has left an incriminating trail of footprints at the scene. Anthony's problems, however, have only just begun. A stranger caught in the grounds turns out to be the famous M. Lemoine of the Sûreté, who is obsessed with capturing the notorious thief, King Victor. Convinced that the missing Herzoslovakian jewel, believed to be concealed somewhere at Chimneys, is a bait that King Victor could not resist, Lemoine's attention becomes fixed upon Anthony, whose life before his sudden appearance in South Africa is shrouded in mystery...

    Virginia and Anthony walked side by side down the path which led to the lake. For some minutes after leaving the house they were silent. It was Virginia who broke the silence at last with a little laugh. "Oh, dear," she said, "isn't it dreadful? Here I am so bursting with the things I want to tell you, and the things I want to know, that I simply don't know where to begin. First of all"---she lowered her voice---"what have you done with the body? How awful it sounds, doesn't it? I never dreamt that I should be so steeped in crime."
    "I suppose it's quite a novel sensation for you," agreed Anthony.
    "But not for you?"
    "Well, I've never disposed of a corpse before, certainly."

The Secret Of Chimneys also marks the first time in Christie's writing that someone contemplates retiring to the country and growing vegetable marrows...which makes me think she was working out the details of The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd as early as 1925.

Liz, I read this quote today, and it made me think of you:

"My mother took me to the Public Library and introduced me: 'Let her have any book she wants, except Elsie Dinsmore.' I looked for the book I couldn't have and it was a row. That was how I learned about the Series Books. The Five Little Peppers belonged, so did The Wizard of Oz, so did The Little Colonel, so did The Green Fairy Book. There were many of everything, instead of one. I wasn't coming to the end of reading, after all -- I was saved."

~Eudora Welty, "A Sweet Devouring"

"I wasn't coming to the end of reading, after all -- I was saved."

Now that is a kind of being "saved" that I can get behind! What a wonderful quotation.

splutter splutter re Herzoslovakian. I recently re-read a couple of Christies but then stopped again. Not sure why. Though I do like "Bundle" and company limited. And I just re-watched 'Death on the Nile' and loved it!

>>#130

I am fascinated by both ladies! I need to know why Elsie was a forbidden book!

On the other hand, this requires no explanation at all:

"I looked for the book I couldn't have..."

It's like sex education for young readers, isn't it? - that startling moment when you discover how books multiply...

>>#131

I suppose if you wanted misbehaving royalty in 1925, it was safer to make something up. :)

You're very welcome to join us on our chronological wanderings, Suz; we'll probably be tackling The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd next month, not a bad place to jump back on the bandwagon. The TV adaptations are a very mixed bag, I find. Not surprisingly, the better ones are those where they don't tamper with the text too much. The ones where they shoehorn Miss Marple in where she doesn't belong are generally infuriating, and The Secret Of Chimneys is the worst of the lot: a complete re-write to the point where you wonder why they bothered retaining the title - grr!

The Masqueraders - A wanted fugitive following his involvement in the disastrous Jacobite Rebellion, Robin Lacey hides from the pursuing authorities by exchanging identities with his sister, Prudence; it is a masquerade the two have played before, along with many others. As Peter and Kate Merriot, the two set out for London, as per the orders of their father, also a man of many identities. On the road they stumble upon an elopement that has turned into an abduction and intervene, rescuing the lovely young Letitia Grayson and making a deadly enemy out of Gregory Markham. Presently they are joined by Sir Anthony Fanshawe, a friend of the Graysons sent after Letty by her frantic father. The four travel back to London together, with the Merriots taking up residence with Lady Lowestoft, an old friend from the days of their ramshackle European wanderings. They are surprised to learn that their father has given orders for their launch into society. On their mettle in their disguises, the two begin to attend balls and parties; and while "Kate" is confined to morning visits and gossip over tea, "Peter" finds himself in a thoroughly masculine world of clubs, card parties and heavy drinking. A friendship develops between himself and Sir Anthony. The baronet has a reputation for good-natured indolence, but Peter learns that there is steel beneath the placid exterior and begins to fear his steady gaze. The attention of Polite Society becomes fixed upon a claim made to the Viscounty of Barham: though the title has recently been inherited by a cousin of the name of Rensley after the apparent extinction of the family of Tremaine, a man claiming to be the long-lost younger brother of the late Lord Barham has appeared upon the scene. Peter and Kate are only mildly interested in the story, until they see who it is that has made the claim: their father, in perhaps the most audacious of his many masquerades...

While These Old Shades is usually considered Georgette Heyer's breakthrough novel, to my mind The Masqueraders is a work more indicative of the direction her career would take; in particular with respect to the relationships at its heart. In a work by any other author the traditionally "romantic" Robin and Letitia would probably be the focus, but Heyer's interest is elsewhere; and in The Masqueraders we have the first example of what would become one of her most satisfying trademarks. Heyer's real lovers are friends first, drawn together by a growing appreciation of one another's qualities and a shared sense of humour. Prue's masquerade as Peter Merriot allows just such a friendship to develop between herself and Sir Anthony, which the social conventions of the day would not otherwise have permitted. It is one of this novel's pleasures that Sir Anthony is explicitly attracted to Prue by what might (in other contexts) be viewed as her most unfeminine attributes: her courage, her intelligence, her resourcefulness; she is, by all usual measures, far more this novel's hero than its heroine. But if Prudence is an unconventional woman, she finds her proper match. Perhaps the real triumph of The Masqueraders is its slow unveiling of Sir Anthony, in his way no less a masquerader than the Merriots themselves. The object of affectionate mockery amongst his acquaintances for, on one hand, his unshakeable respectability, and on the other for the extreme placidity of his temperament, Sir Anthony's involvement with the Merriots reveals a very different and most unexpected man: strong-willed, acutely observant and quick-thinking, and capable of dazzling swordplay - or, for that matter, of taking to the King's Highway armed and masked, should circumstances demand it...

A proper appreciation of The Masqueraders requires two things from the reader: an understanding of the politics of the day, and a willing suspension of disbelief with regard to both the central premise of the story and the convoluted plots of the man now calling himself Viscount Barham - whatever he may have called himself in the past. "The old gentlemen", as his children tend to refer to him, is gifted with a passion for intrigue, a talent for manipulation, and a limitless belief in his own superiority to mankind in general. It is at his orders that Robin and Prue embark upon the last and most dangerous masquerade of a long and rackety career. With respect to the gender swap, it is interesting that people seem to have more of a problem with Robin's disguise than with Prue's. However, at a time when the sexes lived sharply divided lives, when clothing styles were extravagant yet quite different for each, and when makeup, jewellery and wigs were the norm for both men and women, the success of such a pose is not as unlikely as it seems. Then, too, something extreme was required to successfully hide someone in Robin's situation. The suppression of the Jacobite Rebellion was followed by a bloodbath of executions, with convicted rebels hanged, drawn and quartered, and in some cases - as is referenced here - with their severed heads left to rot on spikes upon London Bridge. His involvement in the Rebellion leaves Robin in the most imminent danger; likewise, once convinced that her father is implicated, Letitia has every reason to fear for his life. In a rare slip, the old gentleman once set his name - one of his names - to a paper that ties him to the Rebellion. When that paper turns up in the hands of Gregory Markham, it provides an opening for the old gentleman: in exchange for it, he offers Markam a weapon with which to force Letitia into a second elopement---thus creating a situation which will simultaneously rid him of this threat to his security, dispose of the odious Markham, and pave Robin's way to Letitia's hand. So far it works beautifully - except that in her eagerness to deflect suspicion from her actual rescuer, Letitia unwittingly provides the authorities with an excellent description of Peter Merriot...

She stood before him, a slim figure in dove grey velvet, one hand fingering the black riband that held her quizzing-glass, and her tranquil eyes resting on his face. Even though he was angry with her for her obstinacy he could find it in him to admire the firm set of her mouth, and the clean-cut determination of her chin. She had spirit, this girl, in the man's clothes, and with the man's brain. Ay, and she had courage, too, and a calmness of demeanour that pleased. No hysterics there; no sentimentalism; no wavering that one could see. Bravery! He warmed to the thought of it. She made nothing of this masquerade; she had faith in herself, and for all the restfulness that characterised her, that slow speech, and the slow smile she had, the wits of her were quick, and marvellously resourceful. She would fleece the wolf at cards, flash a sword out on a party of Mohocks, and stand by with a cool head while her brother fought a grim duel. She could even contemplate a duel on her own account without outward flinching.

Le Père Goriot - This 1835 publication forms part of the Scènes de la vie Parisienne cycle of novels by Honoré de Balzac, and is one of the author's most popular and influential works. Balzac saw himself as a kind of social historian, a recorder of the world as it really was, and this novel offers an excellent introduction to both the themes that would preoccupy him and his idiosyncratic writing style, at once uncompromising and melodramatic. Spanning Parisian society of the 1820s, from its heights down to the lowest fringes of bare respectability, Le Père Goriot is largely the story of Eugène de Rastignac, a poor student come to the city supposedly to study law, but who begins to yearn for the luxuries of high life and to seek a rapid path to them. The one ace that Eugène holds is a family connection to the Vicomtesse de Beauséant, who can give him an entrance into the world he aspires to, should she choose to do so. However, Eugène's first foray into high society ends disastrously when, while calling upon the beautiful Countess Anastasie de Restaud, who deigned to notice him at Madame de Beauséant's party, he catches an unexpected glimpse of someone he knows: one of his fellow lodgers at the pension run by the rapacious Madame Vauquer. Eugène's disrespectful reference to the elderly man in question leads to his banishment from the Restaud household. His bewilderment turns into astonishment when he learns that Old Goriot, as he is contemptuously called at the pension, is the father of the Countess Anastasie...

Over the years there has been a great deal of debate over the correct rendering into English of this novel's title. I find myself in agreement with those who argue that to use the colloquial meaning of "Père" - "Old" - while ignoring the literal - "Father" - is to do Balzac's thesis a disservice. In his interactions with his daughters, the character of Goriot explicitly evokes King Lear. Once a wealthy and successful merchant, Goriot has sacrificed everything for his daughters---and continues to do so, sliding from a position as the most pampered of Madame Vauquer's lodgers to a despised hanger-on scarcely able to afford the barest of rooms and the most meagre provisions. The marriages of his daughters, Anastasie into the aristocracy and Delphine to a wealthy banker, has brought them neither happiness nor security. Battling for access to their fortunes against the husbands who only married them for the portions their father was able to give, and constantly in debt - or if not themselves, their lovers - Anastasie and Delphine's demands upon their besotted father are unrelenting and merciless. Though embarrassed by him, they do not hesitate to use him. Unwelcome in the homes of the sons-in-law he has financed, Goriot is reduced to lurking in parks and by the roadside in order to catch an occasional glimpse of his girls, who never come near him except in monetary need.

Eugène's discoveries with respect to Goriot and his daughters form a part of his painful education about Parisian life. In Le Père Goriot, Balzac offers a scathing portrait of the Paris of the 1820s, in which fortunes are built upon deception and betrayal, marriage is a business, husbands and wives take lovers as a matter of course, money is everything, and the fastest way for a young man to achieve social success is to batten onto a married woman. Having wrecked himself at the outset with the Countess, Eugène starts over with her less secure, and therefore more vulnerable, sister; his connection with Delphine opens doors and wins him a position in society that years of honest work could not have done. But the exploitation is not a one-way street: Delphine's marriage has not given her an entry into the aristocratic world occupied by her sister, but she sees a way in via Eugène and his connection to Madame de Beauséant. To attend a ball given by the Vicomtesse becomes the whole of her ambition, even if she must bleed her father dry to pay for a new gown, and even if word should happen to be brought to her on the night of the ball that, his health having finally given way, her father lies dying...

The rest of Eugène's education comes at the hands of his fellow-lodgers at Madame Vauquer's - and one in particular. The student becomes an object of interest to one M. Vautrin, an ambiguous figure with a dominating personality who, as Eugène learns, is involved in certain criminal activities that fund his comparatively comfortable existence. Frankly presented as Eugène's evil genius - at one point he is referred to as "the Tempter" - Vautrin takes a grim pleasure in robbing the young man of his remaining illusions, particularly those he holds about himself. Both attracted and repelled by the pernicious philosophy espoused by Vautrin, Eugène fights against giving in to the darker impulses which his words provoke. His most profound struggle comes when Vautrin, in return for a consideration, offers to show Eugène a second and even more rapid path to fortune, via marriage to another of his fellow-lodgers, Mademoiselle Taillefer - once she has become her estranged father's heiress. That this plan requires the removal of the young lady's brother by luring him into a fatal duel - polite murder, in other words - is a mere detail...

Le Père Goriot marks an important turning point in Balzac's career: it was here that he began to conceive of his novels as part of a gigantic tapestry, full of intersecting stories and recurring characters seen again and again at different phases of their lives and from a variety of perspectives. Eugène himself would become an important ongoing focus for Balzac, with the trajectory of his life allowing all facets of French society to come under his creator's microscope; Eugène's surname, "Rastignac", would eventually become slang for a social-climber. Another of Balzac's recurring characters, who makes his first appearance in Le Père Goriot, is Vautrin---and this is the reason for this novel coming to my attention at this time. The character of Vautrin is literature's first fictionalised portrait of Eugène François Vidocq, the notorious criminal turned head of the Sûreté, with whom Balzac was acquainted. In Vautrin, he captures Vidocq's larger-than-life personality and his ability to manipulate others. In fact, despite Eugène's horrified reaction to Vautrin's schemes, the characterisation is an oddly sympathetic one: when Vautrin is betrayed into the hands of the police by two of his fellow-lodgers, it is they rather than he who are condemned. The capture of Vautrin comprises one of the novel's strangest episodes, inasmuch as, in a bizarre sort of in-joke, the police officer who comes to arrest him is Vidocq!

Reading a novel in translation is always a tricky business: so much can ride upon the choice of a turn of phrase. I was hoping to acquire the recent translation of Le Père Goriot by Olivia McCannon, as recommended by Rebecca (rebeccanyc), but unfortunately this was not available. I read instead the version contained in the Norton Critical Edition of Le Père Goriot, translated by Burton Raffel. While this is overall an effective piece of work, there are times when, in an attempt to render vernacular speech, Raffel resorts to using both modern slang and some Americanisms - "guy", "kid", "dollar", "stool pigeon" - which I found very jarring. It is interesting to note that the blurber of this edition, who claims that, "It doesn't read at all like a translation", was also American: perhaps he didn't notice?

All during the ball, the student tried to calculate just where he stood, finally understanding that as Madame de Beauséant's openly acknowledged cousin he did indeed enjoy significant status. His conquest of the Baroness de Nucingen, which that status had already given him, made him stand out from the crowd so clearly that, as he was now aware, all the other young men were staring at him enviously---and, in intercepting some of their glances, he relished the first fruits of complacency... His cousin introduced him to a number of women, all of whom had pretensions to elegance, and whose houses were said to be pleasant enough; he could see himself being propelled toward the greatest, the most beautiful things in Parisian life. For him, the evening had all the charms of a debutante's brilliant coming-out ball, something he would remember till the day he died, exactly as a woman's mind will return to the ball where she first had her successes. And the next day, when, over breakfast, and for all to hear, he told Goriot how everything had gone, he could see Vautrin smiling diabolically.

I do love The Masqueraders, and you did it complete justice in your review. I also have encountered readers who refuse to believe that the cross-dressing would have succeeded. Indeed, in Regency times, I doubt it could have. But during this Georgian period, with its heavy brocade fashions, face macquilage, and powdered hair and wigs, people would see what they expected to see. Such a clever plot--I am all admiration for the old gentleman, and Heyer as well.

Thanks, Roni!

And I agree! Mid-18th century clothing was so elaborate and so artificial that it created an identity all on its own. Both sexes wore their hair long: Robin makes a point of curling his and wearing it so that it partly conceals his face, and he's always hiding behind his fan. Plus a throat-band to hide the Adam's apple...

On the other hand, the Regency habit of wearing very thin, low-cut muslin and damping the petticoats to show off the figure would have made it a rather more challenging proposition. :)

Precisely!

Awesome review of Pere Goriot! And translations are always awful on some level, no matter how good they are!

Thank you, Katie! To be honest I've never gotten into non-English 19th century literature the way I would have liked to (and feel that I should), and I do wonder how much of that is due to language issues? I find I just can't lose myself in these books the way I can in an English classic.

Three Dead Men - Having retired early from business, Hubert Horner vacations at Brinesey Bay, the newest seaside resort. He finds an isolated bit of beach, one shielded by the rocky coastline, where he may sun-bathe undisturbed by prying eyes, but is soon disturbed by something far more shocking: the plunging of a man from the cliff-top above to the rocks below... The local police believe that the man's death is an accident, but Horner isn't so sure. The man did not cry out, nor did any loose earth fall with him. Superintendent Fillinger is unconvinced, until he discovers that the dead man is wearing an entirely new outfit with every possible form of identification removed. Horner is surprised and delighted when the police ask for his help. He learns that the cliff death was the second case involving an unidentified victim in recent weeks, after another man was run over by a train. While publically treating both deaths as accidental, the similarities have caused Fillinger to call Scotland Yard. An Inspector Partington comes incognito to Brinesey Bay, ostensibly to join Horner, who finds himself accompanying his "friend" on his investigation, which is disguised as day-tripping. An examination of the circumstances of the rail death convinces Partington that the victim was dead or unconscious when placed on the tracks. Horner discovers a discarded poaching snare nearby, which suggests that there might have been a witness. The men are heading back to Brinesey Bay when their car runs out of petrol, leading them stranded on an isolated road through the woods. Partington, who filled the car himself that morning, takes alarm at once: he urges Horner to go for help, and as quickly as he can. Horner exhausts himself running to the cottage home of the local constable, who immediately accompanies Horner back to the car---but Partington has disappeared. A search locates his body face down in a stream nearby, a deep wound in his head. The murder of an inspector from Scotland Yard brings the police out into the open. The case is taken over by Chief Inspector Cummings, who is grimly determined to find the killers of his friend and colleague...

The second in Paul McGuire's series featuring Cummings of the C.I.D., Three Dead Men much resembles its predecessor, Murder In Bostall, in that it is both a gripping mystery and a novel whose real impact lies in its thoughtful characterisations. Perhaps its greatest surprise - or at least, one of two - is Superintendent Fillinger, who after being introduced in the most unpromising terms - we hear of his "hairless dome of a head and corrugated face", with its "little, venomous eyes" - turns out to be a sensible man and a good police officer, albeit brusque and impatient. Hubert Horner, meanwhile, is a likeably imperfect figure: a shy, rather lonely man who, after having always lived a quiet life, gets more excitement than he bargained for when he finds himself up to his neck in murder. As with the earlier novel, Paul McGuire declines to regard death merely as an entertainment, even in the context of a whodunnit. Horner takes an immediate liking to the personable and insightful Partington, who treats him with both kindness and respect; the inspector's murder is therefore a grief to him as well as a shock---as indeed it is to Partington's colleagues, although they maintain a cool professional demeanour. Horner is wracked with guilt over Partington's death, particularly when he realises that he is still alive only because Partington sent him away from the site of their stranding so quickly. The murder convinces Cummings of what he has suspected all along: that in spite of hints of a gang at work, they are dealing with amateurs, and rather stupid ones at that; no professional criminal would do something so foolhardy as killing a Scotland Yard man in cold blood. The re-investigation of the two "accidental" deaths reveal more similarities than just the disguising of the victims' identities. It emerges that people are being swindled with false investment schemes; and while most of them have been too embarrassed to make a complaint, one or two have threatened to go to the police...

Paul McGuire was one of the small subset of Golden Age mystery writers to have a thorough respect for the police. Amusingly, we find Cummings here expressing the same opinion of detective novels as did Superintendent Battle in The Secret Of Chimneys: they're useful, because they make people think the police are stupid. The other fallacy which Cummings exploits is the jealousy that supposedly exists between Scotland Yard and the regional force: while using their theoretical antagonism as a blind, Cummings finds intelligent and reliable support in Fillinger and his men, right down to the local constable who is the first on the scene of Partington's disappearance. Meanwhile, after his wholly professional introduction in Murder In Bostall, we learn a little more about Cummings the man here: that he comes from a sea-faring family, is well-read, indeed self-educated, and that his friends and colleagues know him as "Bill". However, while its focus is certainly upon the police force, one of the unexpected pleasures of Three Dead Men is that it features all three variants of detective: the professional, the private and the amateur. Though Hubert Horner does not try to "detect" in the usual sense, his stubborn conviction that the cliff death was not an accident pushes the police investigation in the right direction. After being recruited to provide a smokescreen for the undercover Partington, his observant nature and good memory allow him to provide a detailed account of the inspector's movements, which proves vital to the investigation; he also makes one or two important contributions himself, including the discovery of the snare. However, the real surprise packet here is the private investigator on the trail of the swindlers, who comes to Brinesey Bay posing as just another holiday-maker. The rather romantically inclined Hubert is already smitten with the lovely and vivacious Miss Treble, in whose company he has passed some very pleasant hours at the Regal Hotel; but when he discovers that Miss Treble is in fact Miss Nellie Gay, private detective, an operative of the Modstone Agency, he is swept completely off his feet...

    "Let me think," said Mr Horner. "Partington made some remark and---gracious, yes! Supple said something about Scotland Yard being called in."
    "Did he now? That's interesting."
    "It is!" Fillinger leaned forward and his vast face reddened. "What made him think of that?"
    "He suggested that you would need their help in identifying that poor man---"
    "What the devil put that into his head, anyway?"
    "Oh, everybody knows about Scotland Yard nowadays," said Cummings easily. "They all read detective stories."
    "Humph! I don't," said the superintendent.
    "I'll bet he suggested the local officers would be jealous of the Yard." Cummings turned to Horner again.
    "No, it was Mr Partington who suggested that."
    The chief inspector laughed---with an eye on the superintendent. "Good for Partington! That's another convention of the detective story. Partington was careful of detail." The laughter left his face. "We're going to miss him."

In the course of Three Dead Men, Paul McGuire moves from generalities to specifics in expressing his opinion of detective fiction generally. We know that Dorothy Sayers found Agatha Christie superficial, and meant her own books as a riposte; Paul McGuire, in turn, seems to have found Miss Sayers' approach to murder a bit "tidy". Hubert Horner, a reader of detective stories, is distressed by the grim details of the three deaths under investigation, reflecting dismally that: "It was not like an Edgar Wallace, or even a Dorothy Sayers..."

While I am only an occasional reader of mysteries (too many deaths can turn me off even cosies, as witness The Cat Who... series in my youth, and serious gore is a real no-no), your review of Three Dead Men makes me want to read it!

Ooh, thank you! :)

I think this would be a good series for someone who is only an occasional reader of mysteries. It has quite a distinct tone and attitude, and though it doesn't dwell on the gruesome details there is a bit of gore simply because it doesn't treat death casually or as something "clean". It's a pity these books aren't better known.

Finished The Corrector Of Destinies, the third and FINAL volume in the Randolph Mason series, for TIOLI #4.

Now reading Hand And Ring by Anna Katharine Green, the fourth in her series featuring Ebenezer Gryce, which I think will fit TIOLI #18.

#110 "Unravelled Knots - The third - and FINAL - volume in the Baroness Orczy's series" Woo hoo!

Sounds like Unravelled Knots is one I can safely skip although I do want to read The Old Man in the Corner.

#125 Lady Patty sounds like a lot of fun from your review.

#128 I thought The Secret of Chimneys was a lot of fun. Lord Caterham reminded me of Wodehouse's Lord Emsworth in a lot of ways.

#132 My husband and I have been watching some of the David Suchet Poirot adaptations and I like those but I don't think we've come across any where they've changed too much of the book. Haven't seen The Secret of Chimneys adaptation - not sure I can imagine it with Miss Marple in it. As you say, why did they do that??

#133 "Heyer's real lovers are friends first, drawn together by a growing appreciation of one another's qualities and a shared sense of humour" I think that's why I like Heyer's romances when I seem to have quite a low tolerance of some other romance novels (although admittedly, I haven't read very many)

#139 I used to read a lot more non-English 19th century literature but I haven't read much of it recently. I think I'm more conscious of the different translations available now and also conscious that I don't understand any of the non-English languages or the translation process well enough to know which translations are good translations. I've got the new OUP edition of Pere Goriot wishlisted based on a comparison of the first page via amazon (and they translated the title as Pere Goriot which I'm taking as a good sign based on your comments).

#140 "Amusingly, we find Cummings here expressing the same opinion of detective novels as did Superintendent Battle in The Secret Of Chimneys: they're useful, because they make people think the police are stupid."

I enjoyed that comment by Superintendent Battle too :-)

#144 I'll be very interested in your thoughts on Hand and Ring - I think that's been my favourite of the Ebenezer Gryce books so far.

Hi, Heather!

No, I wouldn't recommend Unravelled Knots, but the two early volumes are good fun.

Lady Patty is---probably not so unusual in itself, but an example of the way writing was changing towards the end of the 19th century, and a bit jolting when you've been buried in the traditional three- and four-volume novels. It's very trim and brisk.

Lord Caterham reminded me of Wodehouse's Lord Emsworth in a lot of ways.

I thought that too!

I love The Secret Of Chimneys but that opening just makes me cringe.

The trouble with the TV adaptations is that there were only 12 actual Miss Marple books (including the short stories), so to make up the numbers they've shoehorned the character into a bunch of the standalones - and even into By The Pricking Of My Thumbs! - and most of them are pretty awful. They tamper less with the Poirot novels, so on the whole they're better---although they still do tamper: they like to have a shootout or a chase at the end!? There's a sense about all of these adaptations that their modern adaptors think they "know better" which is very exasperating.

The trouble with most romances is that they leave you wondering what the characters will find to talk about once their hormones settle down. Heyer has a knack for relationships that seem both real and enduring; you can imagine her couples building a life together.

There were two recent Oxford editions of Le Pere Goriot - one is the Olivia McCannon which I couldn't get, so if you have that I'll be very interested in your feelings about it. Translations are a minefield - too often you feel like you're not grasping the essence of the original work, and that consequently you can't do it justice.

I didn't know you'd read Hand And Ring! - I missed that. The thing with Green is, she was so unbound by the conventions of detective fiction that you never know where her books are going to go. I have to get that finished today, so we'll be able to compare notes shortly. :)

Finished Hand And Ring by Anna Katharine Green for TIOLI #18 - and that's me done for July.

Not a very productive month. :(

My first August read will be my first "proper" blog read in simply ages: a scurrilous piece of political propaganda from 1689, The Amours Of Messalina. This is for TIOLI #5.

#146 True, I'd forgotten how few Miss Marple books there were.

I read Hand and Ring over a year ago so I'm not surprised you'd forgotten! I read it before The Sword of Damocles by mistake. Lesson learnt to also check OPD.... I haven't been able to find any copies of the next two Gryce books (Behind Closed Doors and A Matter of Millions) so I've been meaning to read her non-Gryce books until I've worked my through to 1895 and The Doctor, His Wife, and the Clock.

The Corrector Of Destinies - The term "retcon" may not have been invented until the 1980s, but evidently the phenomenon itself was alive and well in 1908. I can only suppose that the public backlash that greeted The Strange Schemes Of Randolph Mason and The Man Of Last Resort finally got too much for Melville Davisson Post, because the third and last collection of Randolph Mason stories finds the amoral attorney on the side of right - mostly - having developed a "curious mania for adjustment". Mason himself is not the only one to have undergone a character overhaul between volumes. These stories are narrated by the lawyer's secretary, Courtlandt Parks, who in The Strange Schemes Of Randolph Mason appeared as a rather shadowy, sneaking individual given to manipulating his mentally unstable employer, often for his own advantage. The Parks of this volume is an upstanding young man with good family connections who moves easily amongst New York's social elite, from whence most of Mason's clients are now drawn. Far from exploiting his employer's peculiarities, this Parks is repeatedly shocked by Mason's emotional detachment and his refusal to confuse the legal and the moral. But of course, the biggest difference is that instead of using loopholes in the law to get the guilty off the hook, Mason now spends his time using the law as written - and people's ignorance of it - to correct injustices.

I don't want to imply that the stories in The Corrector Of Destinies are not entertaining. They are; but they lack the bite of Post's earlier works, that sense of nose-thumbing that underlay Randolph Mason's exploitation of the law on behalf of wrongdoers, which made them so wickedly enjoyable. Furthermore, these stories do not have the detailed character development and vivid backgrounds of those in The Man Of Last Resort, and tend to end rather abruptly with a blunt statement of real-life instances of the legal principles involved.

The overarching problem, however - although I stress that this is a matter of personal taste - is that most of the stories involve financial manoeuvring, usually turning on the minutiae of taxation, banking, mortgage, trusteeship and corporation law, and with swindlers being - legally - re-swindled. Not only did I find this less inherently interesting than the issues addressed in the earlier tales, but in some of the stories the explanation of the point of law in question was either inadequately detailed or too steeped in legalese to be perfectly clear to the layperson; or at any rate, this layperson. Of this batch, the more intriguing ones are those that move beyond the purely monetary: The Danseuse, which highlights the complicated, state-based divorce laws of the time; The District Attorney, which addresses how trials must be conducted; The Last Check, with its almost breathtakingly casual assumption that American politics runs entirely upon bribery and corruption and a sufficiently fat bank account; and - at least in a teeth-clenching sort of way - The Burgoyne-Hayes Dinner, which turns upon what a wife may not do without her husband's permission...

However, it is certainly no coincidence that the most gripping story in this volume, The Virgin Of The Mountain, is the one that bears the greatest resemblance to the earlier works, offering both a more complex, detailed background (although one that relies rather too much on assumptions about "foreigners"), and a central character who gets away with murder. Perhaps the greatest pleasure of this story, however, is that it pits Randolph Mason against a District Attorney who knows the law every bit as well as he does, and who refuses to allow himself to be pressured or manipulated into giving Mason what he wants: namely, the swift indictment of his client. Alas for justice, the combination of vox populi and the newspapers sees the appointment of an Assistant District Attorney only too eager to rush to judgement...

    "Ah!" said Mason, as though the only difficulty presented in the whole desperate business were now removed. "There remains, then, only the detail of putting you beyond punishment by the State of New York for what the laws will consider to be a murder."
    I have never grown accustomed to the indifference with which Randolph Mason regarded those stupendous legal problems held usually by men to be impossible of solution. The detail of putting this man beyond punishment by the State of New York! There is, on earth, no authority so far-reaching, efficient, tireless as that of a government in pursuit of a capital offender. The police of every civilized state are its allies. Its writs of extradition run even in the islands of the sea. Had not the unforeseen arrived, had not the dying man named his killer, the crime might never have been unravelled, and the marquis safe. But now, only the holes in the earth were open to him...

Hand And Ring - During an adjournment, some of those involved in a legal case in the upper New York State town of Sibley gather on the courtroom steps, discussing the ways of criminals. They are interrupted by a stranger, a rough-looking hunchback, who tells them that the way to get away with murder is to choose a spot where many pass and leave traces, and to use a weapon found at the scene. He even points out a certain house where such a crime could occur, before slouching off. The men disperse in the wake of this interruption, with Tremont Orcutt, a criminal lawyer of high repute, crossing to the very house pointed out by the stranger: it is the dwelling of a widow, Mrs Clemmens, who provides his meals on the days in which he is in court. Minutes later, the others see Orcutt gesturing frantically for help. To their amazement and horror, they discover that Mrs Clemmens has been brutally struck down in her own dining-room, with a piece of wood taken from the fireplace. Mr Ferris, the District Attorney, immediately sends a constable to find the stranger, but there is no sign of him... Mrs Clemmens still lives, although Dr Tredwell, who is also the coroner, sees that she cannot for much longer; she is conveyed to her bedroom. As word of the tragedy spreads, a crowd gathers outside the house. The investigation is suddenly interrupted when a young woman, Imogene Dare, forces her way into the house, wildly demanding to know what has happened. This strange conduct is startling to all, and particularly to Mr Orcutt, who - as is generally known - hopes to make Miss Dare his wife. A furtive gesture on the lady's part catches the attention of Horace Byrd, a New York detective, who sees what has caught her attention: a diamond ring lying on the floor. He announces his discovery, only for Miss Dare to claim that she dropped the ring. This, too, is dismaying for Mr Orcutt, who is certain that the ring is not hers at all. Meanwhile, Mrs Clemmens briefly rallies, uttering two disjointed statements: the first a cry of, "Hand! Ring!"; the second, a muttered imprecation that the same fate might fall upon her assailant...

Although it is by no means as well known as The Leavenworth Case, the novel which launched Anna Katharine Green's career as a crime writer, to my mind Hand And Ring is the superior work---in fact, it is a first-class mystery. Possibly not coincidentally, it is also the first of Green's novels since The Leavenworth Case that actually is a mystery, rather than simply having a mystery as one of the subplots in a more general drama, and also the first in which her series detective, Ebenezer Gryce, plays a prominent role in the solution. In Hand And Ring, Green not only constructs a complex plot, but plays absolutely fair with the reader with regard to its various twists: this is a novel that demands re-reading, in order to appreciate the careful way in which the groundwork is laid and each story revelation justified.

Of course, all that said, Green is still something of an acquired taste. Her style is melodramatic in the extreme, and her stories full of blithe assumptions about "ladies" and "gentlemen" and what they will and will not do; her characters spend much time wrestling with matters of honour and the demands of noblesse oblige. Still, in Hand And Ring Green finds a way of making these tendencies the very fabric of her story. Even before Ebenezer Gryce himself shows up, there are two detectives on the case in Mrs Clemmens' murder. One is a "typical" operative - no gentleman, in other words - the other recruited precisely because he is a gentleman. Back in The Leavenworth Case, we found Gryce making Everett Raymond his assistant, because the young lawyer could go where Gryce could not, socially speaking. We now discover that Gryce has recruited Horace Byrd specifically to be a gentleman-detective - that he works only those cases involving the upper classes, and usually operates undercover, without his profession becoming generally known. At one point in Hand And Ring, the plebeian Detective Hickory observes that Byrd is "too squeamish" for police work, and jeeringly supposes that he is usually, "Kept for the fancy business." He's right, although the squeamishness he observes has nothing to do with a reaction to bloodshed, but rather that there are things that Horace's sense of personal honour will not allow him to stoop to, even in the pursuit of a murderer. Horace's sensitivity is tried even more than usual in the case of Mrs Clemmens, because from the first moment of laying eyes upon her he becomes infatuated with Imogene Dare. The longer the investigation goes on, the more convinced Horace becomes that Imogene has secret knowledge vital to the case; that she may, in fact, know more about the murder than anyone...

Although everyone is Sibley wants to believe a tramp seen near Mrs Clemmens' house is guilty of her murder, it is soon evident that no such comforting solution will be found. Suspicion next falls upon Gouverneur Hildreth, a young man in desperate financial straits who, due to a complicated trust, can only inherit his estate after Mrs Clemmens dies. When it turns out that Hildreth was in the widow's house shortly before her death, he is arrested and charged. There is, however, a second, equally likely suspect: Craik Mansell, Mrs Clemmens' nephew, who is in urgent need of money to pay for the patent of an invention that he believes will make his fortune, and who inherits his aunt's estate under her will. When Gouverneur Hildreth attempts suicide while in custody, it forces Imogene Dare to reveal the facts she has been concealing: facts that not only exonerate Hildreth, but throw the weight of suspicion onto Craik Mansell---with whom Imogene is in love... A repressed, career-minded man, Tremont Orcutt has been caught off-guard by the intensity of his passion for Imogene. The revelation of her involvement with Craik Mansell is an unexpected and bitter blow to him. When, on the strength of Imogene's testimony, Hildreth is released and Mansell indicted by the Grand Jury, Orcutt makes a bargain with Imogene: he will take Mansell's case and defend him---and, should he win an acquittal, she must become his, Orcutt's, wife...

    "Sir," Imogene interrupted in her turn, "can you, dare you say, that without my testimony he would have stood at any time in a really critical position?---or that he would stand in jeopardy of his life even now, if it were not for this fact I have to tell?"
    Mr Ferris was silent.
    "Oh, I knew it, I knew it!" she cried. There will be no doubt concerning whose testimony it was that convicted him, if he is sentenced by the court for this crime. Ah, ah, what an enviable position is mine! What an honourable deed I am called upon to perform! To tell the truth at the expense of a life most dear to you. It is a Roman virtue! I shall be held up as a model to my sex. All the world must shower plaudits upon the woman who, sooner than rob justice of its due, delivered her own lover over to the hangman."

July wrap:

July was not a productive reading month: a lack of time and a lot of tiring intrusions means that only 10 books got read (so that I have slipped behind my overall target for the first time), and only 9 fit TIOLI.

There were, however, a couple of positive milestones in there. I finished two - count 'em, TWO series - in July...though unfortunately I also started another one, which somewhat offset the gain. Still, and even though the two in question are only three-book series, it was quite satisfying striking them off the list.

I caught up my blog reviews during July, which has been hanging over my head since the end of LAST YEAR.

I also carried on with my personal history of the detective novel, and got back on track with Agatha and Georgette. So, all in all, if not enough got read, what did was pretty good.

July stats:

Mystery / thriller: 7
Classic: 2
Historical romance: 1

Series reading: 7

Male : female authors: 6 : 4

Oldest work: Le Père Goriot by Honoré de Balzac (1835); Tales Of Hoffman published 1982, stories originally published 1816 - 1819.
Newest work: Three Dead Men by Paul McGuire (1931)

...and because my reading for July was less than its usual dimensions, here is a pygmy sloth:

Finished The Amours Of Messalina for TIOLI #5.

Now reading The Small House At Allington by Anthony Trollope for TIOLI #4.

And speaking of The Small House At Allington, we will be starting the group read next weekend; I will probably set the thread up on Friday. See you there!

I LOVE sloths. I think they are engaging and appealing little critters. I remember running across one this past winter as I was whipping my way through the Aubrey/Maturin series of nautical historical novels: Maturin adopts one, brings it aboard the ship and one of the two of them ends up feeding it bread dipped in wine or some such. Enter drunken sloth; cue comment: "Jack, you have debauched the sloth!" PaulCranswick and I agreed that the Debauched Sloth would be a great name for a pub.

Separately, enjoyed the review of the Heyer novel. Not sure I have read that, but completely agree with you re the gender role swap. Had the duo been older, it may not have worked, or, as you note, had the clothing been different. I do wonder how he concealed his hands? Still, gender swapping is almost a routine device -- look at Shakespeare.

Ah, yes, the Debauched Sloth! - I would be an habitué with my own corner, who had to be gently turned out every closing time.

Heyer has fun across a few novels with girls dressed as boys; this is the only time she dared the reverse! I don't think the hands would be a problem, since gentlemen of the time were very into manicures and polished nails and flashy rings, but there is a remark in the text that "her" arms are a bit muscular. :)

I was thinking of you as I was reading The Amours Of Messalina - "Messalina" being poor Mary of Modena - it's a roman à clef of the events surrounding the Glorious Revolution; thoroughly slanderous and unfair.

#150 I'm really glad you also enjoyed Hand and Ring :-)

#152 What a cutie!

Oh, dear.

I had SUCH a lot of housework to do yesterday, and I didn't do any of it. Instead I spent most of the day lying on the couch reading The Small House At Allington. Now it's all just sitting there glaring at me...

#158 But if you'd done the housework it would just need doing again at some point, whereas a day spent reading Trollope can never be said to be a day wasted....

Or even {*cough*} re-reading Trollope.

Anyway...more reading done, much housework undone. I blame you. :)

Finished The Small House At Allington for TIOLI #4.

Now reading Boy by James Hanley for TIOLI #1...and it's all Rhian's fault! :)

Books can glare at you too.

Or maybe not. They more whisper at you, "...read me...read me..."

#160 ".more reading done, much housework undone. I blame you. :)" That's fine, as long as I can reciprocate.

#161 I can't say Boy sounded very appealling when Rhian reviewed it ("I've rarely read such a tale of unremitting gloom and misery"). I suspect this will be another book where reading your review is likely to be more enjoyable than reading the book.

#162 Sometimes I think mine say "Why haven't you read me yet?"

#161 and it's all Rhian's fault! - Sorry!

>>#162

Hi, Morphy! Certainly there was much seductive whispering coming from The Small House At Allington. Ordinarily I get less reading done on the weekend but this time I succumbed to temptation.

>>#163

Happy to take one for the anti-housework team!

>>#164

...by which I mean you shifted a book from 1931 from the fringes of my consciousness to the forefront. But I would have gotten to it sooner or later! And yes, unremitting gloom and misery is right - yikes! :(

I come here innocently, seeking reviews that are pleasurable to peruse.

And always, but always leave with many more additions to the WL, and often immediate purchases as well.

Liz, you are an enabler.

And I thank all gods for you.

Oh, Gail, how lovely that is to hear! Thank you so much - I'm very glad to be your enabler! :)

Finished Boy by James Hanley for TIOLI #1.

Now reading 'Lesser Breeds': Racial Attitudes In Popular British Fiction, 1890-1940 by Michael Diamond for TIOLI #14...and it's all Sax Rohmer's fault! :D

Finished 'Lesser Breeds': Racial Attitudes In Popular British Culture, 1890-1940 for TIOLI #14.

Now reading Patty In The City by Carolyn Wells for TIOLI #8.

Heh! From Patty In The City:

    "In the bright lexicon of your youth, a cosey time seems to mean a box of candy and a new book."
    "Yes," said Patty; "I'm sure I don't know anything cosier."

I'm inclined to agree. :)

Finished Patty In The City for TIOLI #8.

Now reading The Purcell Papers by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, which won't be a TIOLI unless it turns out to have murder in its heart...and given that it's a collection of mostly ghost stories, I'm not without some hope.

ETA: Ha! Apparently I should be reading The House By The Church-Yard instead of The Purcell Papers---it is described in the introduction to the latter as "a story of murder and blackmail and more murder".

I have set up the thread for the group read of Anthony Trollope's The Small House At Allington - it is here.

You SUCK, real life! :(

Just sayin'...

Anyway---I managed to get a blog post written on The Amours Of Messalina - it is here.

Sorry life is in the sucky mode right now; hope it passes soon.

Finished my current course reading and am now casting about for something to help get over the amazing, moving, horrifying and educational book "Beloved". I might never recover from that one. Perhaps I'll dip into S.H.a.A. after all.

Also sorry life is sucky :-(

I was just stopping by to say I've finally started Plots and Counterplots and am loving the first novella, V.V.

Sometimes you are the windshield, sometimes you are the bug.

Sorry life is treating you poorly.

*hugs*

Aw, thank you, ladies. It's nothing major, just an accumulation of crappiness. Exasperating and time-consuming.

We would love to have you for The Small House At Allington, Gail - I think it would make a splendid antidote to Beloved.

Enjoy, Heather - I'm sure you will!

I dunno, Morphy, I always feel like the bug. It's more a matter of "sometimes the car is moving more slowly than at other times". :)

{{{Hugs}}} back to you - I know you've been having some issues of your own.

Finished The Purcell Papers by J. Sheridan Le Fanu. It's a collection of short stories, and the mood and subject matter varies a lot, but overall I'd say there's enough murder, and attempted murder, and plotting to get people killed, to say that it has murder in its heart...so yeah, TIOLI #15.

Now reading Painted Clay by Capel Boake for TIOLI #17 and for ALL VIRAGO / ALL AUGUST.

>177 lyzard: Sooo... sometimes you go *SPLAT* and sometimes you cling to the wiper screaming, "Arrrghhhhh!!!"?

:D

I am lagging behind in the Trollope group reads. I will be starting Framley Parsonage soon and will have to enjoy the group reads post-humously! :)

I hope life starts treating you better soon!

That's exactly it, Morphy! :D

Thanks, Heidi - hope you enjoy Framley Parsonage!

Finished Painted Clay for TIOLI #17 and for AV / AA.

Now reading - I am tempted to say, for my sins - Steepleton; Or, High Church And Low Church: Being The Present Tendencies Of Parties In The Church, Exhibited In The History Of Frank Faithful. By A Clergyman by Stephen Jenner, for TIOLI #14.

(The only thing more painful than this book is the misbehaving touchstones...)

very cute pygmy sloth! That's fitting for my August reading so far. As for 19th century foreign language page turners, I'll recommend The Count of Monte Cristo. It's a doorstopper, but it will take over your life for a few weeks because you'll have to know what happens next.

Oh! I love le Fanu! I haven't read The Purcell Papers yet though. I just keep running across his writing in a million anthologies.

Ack! Painful books! Stop! Stop!

#182. That sounds painful. But then, so does being a bug on the windscreen.

Quick, run and find something mindlessly entertaining...

Boy - Having spent so much time immersed in the popular light literature of 1931, it comes as something of a shock to realise that those works co-existed with a novel like James Hanley's Boy. Hanley was a "niche" novelist for almost the entirety of his career, but never more so than with this confronting piece of writing, which deals with the miserable life of a working-class boy from Liverpool. The book was first issued in a limited edition, then as a trade release with censorable material replaced by rows of asterisks, then in a bowdlerised form. However, when a new publisher re-released it in 1934 with a sexually provocative cover, there was a complaint to the police and the book ended up the subject of charges of obscene libel, to which the publishers pleaded guilty for fear of a prison sentence. Boy was then withdrawn, and the remaining copies of it literally burnt; the novel did not appear again until 1986, sadly a year after James Hanley's death.

Boy is the story of Arthur Fearon, whose parents remove him from school as soon as he turns thirteen in order to send him to work. Fearon, a good student, dreams of university and a career as a chemist, and it is one of the book's many cruelties that these things are not necessarily out of his grasp. We learn that he is already working to support his parents, at night and on the weekend, while his father sits out a seven-month-long strike. Fearon's parents, however - a violently abusive father, and a mother who looks the other way - consider his ambition a sign he thinks himself above them, and take pains to crush his hopes as soon as possible. Beaten into submission, Fearon begins work on the docks, forced to do the dirtiest and most back-breaking jobs and put through a terrifying "initiation" by the other hands, most of them scarcely older than he. His spirit almost destroyed by this first exposure to this new reality, Fearon stows away on a cargo ship heading for Alexandria, thinking that nothing could be worse than the life he is escaping. He is wrong...

Throughout this novel, everyone - parents, teachers, co-workers, shipmates - calls Arthur Fearon boy, as if he has no individual identity, as if he is something less than fully human. Thus he becomes a target of abuse by almost everyone he encounters---physical, emotional, and sexual. Anthony Burgess, in the introduction to the most recent edition of the novel, is right when he says that while this book might be obscene, it is anything but titillating. On the contrary, the most striking things about the novel are its understanding of the grim cycle of victim and victimiser, and the starkness of its depiction of working-class conditions as the Depression began to bite, something the vast majority of literature of the time preferred to ignore---and found distasteful and offensive when others did not. However, while many people have championed Boy since its first appearance, and while it is for his use of language for which James Hanley is often lauded, to me this is a novel that is more notable for its courage than its literary qualities. There are inconsistencies in the character of Arthur Fearon, and more particularly in the book's dialogue, that have a distancing effect and make it somewhat unconvincing overall---though that said, we do not doubt the honesty of its intentions. James Hanley seems to have taken to heart Thomas Hobbes' contention that the life of man is necessarily "solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short". You probably won't enjoy reading Boy---but you won't forget it, either.

Inside his room he locked the door. He was white-faced, his lips trembled like those of a person on the verge of a fit, he thought his legs were going to give way, and sat down. Continually he clasped and unclasped his hands. His mind was running riot with all kinds of thoughts. He felt a sickness in the pit of his stomach, a certain pain beneath his heart. He suddenly shouted: "Mother! Mother! Oh, Mother! Father! These men. These terrible men." He commenced to hammer the wooden sides of his bunk with his hands. He continually shouted "Mother!" He imagined that all these men had stolen into his room, that they were crowded around him, taunting and laughing at him, goading him in his misery, cursing him when he endeavoured to do his best. He saw them all. The lamp-trimmer and the cook were there. The bosun and leading greaser were there too. "Oh, Christ! Mother take me out of this..."

>>#183

Hi, Katie! I actually picked up a copy of The Count Of Monte Cristo not so long ago, but won't let myself read it now for fear of falling behind too much on my numbers for the year {*blush*}. I know I shouldn't be so obsessive over the numbers...but then let's face it, I'm obsessive over everything. :)

I haven't read Le Fanu properly either, though like you I'm familiar with some of his work. It was nice to feel I was finally doing him justice. You might like The Purcell Papers, which definitely has some Gothic-y stories in it; although the tone does vary enormously across the collection.

As for "painful books", see "obsessive", above: it's my latest selection by random number generator, and I just can't break my own reading rules!

If nothing else, I'm sure Steepleton will make me appreciate Anthony Trollope's approach to writing about the church even more.

>>#184

Hi, Suz! Don't worry, I have a couple of mindlessly entertaining novels specifically set aside as palette-cleansers after Steepleton. :)

#187 to me this is a novel that is more notable for its courage than its literary qualities - that was very much my overall feeling on Boy as well.

'Lesser Breeds': Racial Attitudes In British Popular Culture, 1890-1940 - I don't suppose it will come as any surprise if I say that I was led to this intriguing and often disturbing study by my recent reading of the Fu-Manchu novels of Sax Rohmer, which have the dubious distinction of crystallising English anti-Asian feeling during the early decades of the 20th century. However, "Yellow Peril" literature is only one small area under consideration in Michael Diamond's Lesser Breeds, which examines the attitudes towards other races and cultures expressed in, chiefly, British fiction of the era, but also in plays, newspapers and even popular songs. Diamond takes pains at the outset to define and explain his study, stressing that he is, in effect, studying his own, personal cultural roots in this book, not arbitrarily singling out one nation, people and/or time as more racist than any other. In fact, one of the depressing aspects of this book is how everything old is new again, how the same old invective reoccurs again and again in different settings and with different targets. (One thing we take away from this book is a feeling that racists are not very imaginative.) During the period and place under consideration, however, the views expressed towards other peoples in British writing went hand-in-hand with a belief in a literally God-given British superiority that is simply breathtaking in its humourless sincerity---one accompanied by a contention that the blood of other races was, also literally, inferior. In novel after novel, someone British preens themselves upon being a member of "the dominant race"; there's even a novel called The Dominant Race. The cut-off date in this study speaks for itself: it stops at the time when Germany began showing the world the natural end-point of such beliefs.

Though the attitudes expressed embraced pretty much everyone in the world who didn't have the good fortune to be British, Canadian, American (sometimes), South African (under certain circumstances), Australian (thank you so much) or New Zealander - and, of course, white - Michael Diamond confines his study to the four groups which dominated the works under consideration: the Chinese, Arabs, Jews and blacks. Diamond highlights recurrent themes, and links them to various real-life events, showing how the tide of opinion ebbed and flowed over time. For example, the "Yellow Peril" literature was born in the wake of the Boxer Rebellion; a wave of anti-Semitic publications followed the arrival of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, driven first out of Russia and then further westward; Arab villains became more frequent following the death of General Gordon at Khartoum; while the supposed adventures of T. E. Lawrence spawned a whole sub-genre of "desert romances", of which The Sheik is the most notorious example. Only the British attitude to black people remained constant and unaffected by world events: they were simply "a lesser breed", who must be kept in their place by whatever means necessary. Diamond quotes example after appalling example in this area, with the nadir perhaps being reached in certain of the Sexton Blake stories, one of which offers advice on how to inflict a beating that will "hit the nigger's weak spots", and another which describes the Ku Klux Klan as being "as fair as it was relentless". Inevitably, attitudes were very much shaped by the reality of colonialism, with unspoken guilt often mutating into a pattern of blaming the victim by harping on the inferiority, savagery and/or innate dishonesty of the people whose lands were occupied. Meanwhile, the mere existence of Haiti was taken almost as a personal affront.

One thing that we learn from this study is that the British people of the time were almost obsessed with inter-racial relationships, being particularly horror-struck by the thought that any British woman might voluntarily - let alone eagerly - involve herself with someone of another race. (To do so was indicative of a shameful lack of "pride of race", another of the era's stock phrases.) Perhaps most distasteful aspect of this literature time is its credo surrounding "half-caste" children: the assertion that such children must necessarily inherit "all the worst and none of the best" of both races appears with monotonous regularity, frequently being used to frighten people willing to overlook race differences on their own account. However, fiction did not always represent reality. For example, while Sax Rohmer and others were ever more hysterically depicting the Chinese as a race of cruel, cold-blooded sadists and torturers, British women, particularly working-class women, were increasingly marrying Chinese men, who had a reputation as gentle and considerate husbands. The fact that most of these marriages were happy and successful did nothing to stem the tide of invective; if anything, it increased it. In 1941 - 1941!! - we find Sax Rohmer trying to convince the world that, "Hitler and Stalin were babes and sucklings compared to Dr Fu-Manchu." One hardly knows whether to laugh or cry. At the other end of the spectrum, taking their cue from Ethel Hull, the writers of desert romances (including my old foe, Joan Conquest) had their cake and ate it too by tantalising their readers with the prospect of inter-racial sex, only to reveal that one party or the other was not who they appeared to be (emphasising that it was not skin colour that mattered, but "blood"). In these books we find an astonishing number of Europeans leaving their children to be raised by Arabs---and as Arabs---at least until it was time for happy-ever-after. Real Arabs, however "Sheiky", were out of the question: "He's quite a decent youth, I admit, and has a topping backhand at tennis. But he's black for all that and your kids would be half-castes all right," observes the pragmatic sister of one tempted young Englishwoman. She ignores this sage advice (swept off her feet by the topping backhand, perhaps) and suffers accordingly. It took a brave novelist indeed to depict a happy, cross-cultural marriage. A few did, but their books were rarely successful.

But to return to the point that Michael Diamond makes at the outset, it was by no means a simplistic case of "British people of this time were racist": beliefs were wildly varied, often contradictory and deeply confused. Racism was often surprisingly absent in some quarters - colonials and soldiers sometimes developed a deep respect for the peoples they rubbed shoulders with - and disturbingly present in others. Diamond points out, for instance, that a significant subsection of the anti-Semitic writing that appeared in the wake of the increased immigration was the work of assimilated, middle-class English Jews, who were embarrassed by the new arrivals, no less for their orthodoxy than because, out of financial necessity, they tended to congregate in London's notorious East End. The difference here is that, far more than the other groups considered in this study, the Jews were able to speak for themselves. Jewish novelists proliferated in this period, underlining its general confusion by expressing as wide a range of viewpoints as might be found in the population at large---some pro-assimilation, some isolationist, some Zionist. However, it is notable that various works describing "the Jewish experience", particularly multi-generational ones such as the Gollantz Saga by Naomi Jacob and G. B. Stern's chronicles of the Rakonitz family, were well-received and popular. By the end of the period under consideration, black novelists, too, though hardly commonplace, were beginning to find a literary voice and to offer their own experiences to the world at large. Definitely things were changing; and in fact, it is only necessary to compare the kinds of books being published at the turn of the century to those appearing as the 1930s drew to a close to see how much---even if they hadn't changed quite as much as we might wish.

Well, hell---they still haven't.

The demise of the British Empire is one of the two major factors which make the period 1890-1940 different from the present. The second is the growth of our multiracial society. The former means that white people no longer have an interest in believing in the old racial hierarchy; the latter that they have an interest in rejecting it. Quite apart from the immorality of fellow citizens being treated as inferior, society needs everyone to be able to contribute to the best of their ability. Many of the quotations in the foregoing chapters show by their very offensiveness how far things have changed. Readers will know this is not a matter of political correctness. They do not need any guardian of public morality to tell them what is unacceptable. If they also find some wry amusement at the pretensions behind some of the remarks quoted, this is a sign of change too.

Michael Diamond follows up the quotation above by pointing out that he is speaking as a white British male and that YMMV. :)

The book's title comes from a poem by Kipling, of whom he comments impatiently: "Kipling, it is said, indignantly, was a racist. Of course he was. So were nearly all his contemporaries..."

>>#187.

Hi, Rhian. Yes, I went back and re-read your review when I'd done; we're pretty much on the same page. I appreciated Boy, but I didn't enjoy it.

Fantastic reviews of Boy and of 'Lesser Breeds': Racial Attitudes In British Popular Culture, 1890-1940. They sound compelling but difficult.

You've got to read The Count of Monte Cristo so there is a book on your thread I can actually comment on. HA!

Wow two wonderful reviews Liz. They both sound very compelling and probably impossible for me to find.

>>#191

Thank you, Heidi - and that's a very good way of describing them.

>>#192

:D

I'll make sure to let you know when I finally get to it, Morphy!

>>#193

Thanks, Bonnie. I don't know about Boy but there was definitely an American edition of Lesser Breeds, with a slightly different title.

Spoilers for Patty At Home

Patty In The City - The third entry in the series by Carolyn Wells finds Patty Fairfield and her father changing their residence once again. Although they very much enjoy their big house in Vernondale, New Jersey, where Patty - after some trial and error - proved herself a competent housekeeper, and the proximity of their relatives, the Elliotts, Mr Fairfield worries that Patty's education has been neglected for too long, while the two of them were deciding where and how to live. A period in New York is the solution, where Patty can attend a first-class school. A further decision is taken to invite Grandma Elliott to go with them, to be Patty's companion-chaperon, since the freedoms she has enjoyed in the country will not be possible in the city. Mrs Elliott, a long-time resident of New York, is delighted with the opportunity to return for a time to her former home. The three take up residence in an apartment-hotel, The Wilberforce, which is near to Central Park, and Patty is enrolled in the nearby Oliphant School, where she finds many new challenges awaiting her...

The focus of Patty In The City is on its heroine's adjustment to big city life in general, and formal schooling in particular, after the fun and freedom of the preceding two years. Patty's sunny disposition and her knack for making friends stand her in good, and after a rocky introductory period she finds herself enjoying her lessons and at the centre of a growing social circle. Furthermore, having decided that none of the school's existing "societies" is right for her, Patty is instrumental in the founding of the Grigs - as in "merry as grigs" - a society whose members are dedicated not only to being as merry as possible themselves, but bringing merriment to others who need it---for instance, through hospital visiting. Throughout these novels, it is reiterated that Patty's outstanding quality is her ability to look on the bright side of everything and find something to be cheerful about, but in Patty In The City the reader is tempted to call her Pollyanna-like - except that Patty pre-dates Pollyanna by several years. One wonders if Eleanor Porter was influenced by these books.

There is nothing sugary about Patty's cheerfulness, however: she simply thinks making the best of things is a sensible way to proceed. Moreover, her first days at school are so awful that even her sunny disposition is severely challenged. As always, part of the pleasure of these books is Carolyn Wells quiet proselytising about what girls can and should do. One of Patty's works-in-progress is a girl called Lorraine Hamilton, whose moroseness makes her Patty's polar opposite. Patty has always been active and fond of sports, and takes gym as a matter of course. Lorraine does not, and the text chalks her depressed spirits up to, in large part, a lack of regular exercise. Once she settles down, Patty excels at her lessons, writing in particular, but turns out to be weak at maths. Lest we think that this is "correct" for girls, we find Lorraine, blossoming under Patty's influence, knuckling down to her studies and shining in math class above all. (One amusing subplot has the two friends neck-and-neck for the major school prizes; trouble is, each wants the other to win...) However, the novel's most charming surprise is another new friend, Adelaide Hart, who has an aptitude for design. She is responsible for the water-feature in her family's home, and likes to make carved, brass-hinged chests as gifts for her friends. "I love to build things," she explains simply.

In spite of its concentration upon schoolgirl life, Patty In The City reminds us that time is passing and its heroine growing up. In Patty At Home, Patty became, unknowingly, an object of great interest to two young men, her friend Kenneth Harper and the artist Mr Hepworth. Unexpectedly, however, in that novel it was Mr Fairfield who found romance, engaging himself to Nan Allen, the oldest amongst Patty's ever-increasing circle of friends. Part of Mr Fairfield's eagerness to move to New York lies in the city's proximity to Philadelphia, where the Allens live, and at various points in the narrative he disappears for the length of a weekend. Kenneth is a student at Columbia, and Mr Hepworth lives and works in New York; both are delighted when the Fairfields take up residence in the city, and become regular visitors. It is only towards the very end of the novel that there is a hint that they might want more from Patty than friendship. Though Patty has no such thought in her head, the two young men are distantly aware that they are rivals, and finally an emboldened Ken asks Patty which of them she likes better. She can only reply that she does not know...

    "And you stayed home to-day," said Patty, grabbing Lorraine by the shoulders, and looking her straight in the eyes, "you stayed home to-day so that I might get ahead of you!"
    Lorraine's eyes opened wider. A sudden thought struck her. "If you suspect that," she said, "it's just because you're doing the same thing yourself! Otherwise you never would have thought of it. Patty Fairfield, you stayed home to-day so that I might get ahead of you!"
    The two girls read confession in each other's eyes, and they dropped into two chairs and laughed and laughed...

Hi Liz!

#185 - I have this on my wishlist, based on Rhian's review a while back. Working-class fiction is an interest of mine, but I'm not very familiar with the English variety. Thank you for providing the fascinating back story.

Having spent so much time immersed in the popular light literature of 1931...
It's funny, because I've had the complete opposite experience with literature of the 30s that I've read - pretty much all coal mines, poverty, and labor struggles. Ha!

>188 lyzard:: Lesser Breeds looks fascinating. Thanks for the detailed review, Liz!

>>#196

Hi, Kerri! That is funny - I've been reading a mixture of cosy mysteries and Viragoes from that year so Boy was a bit of a shock to the system! I'd be very interested to hear what someone better versed in this area of literature makes of it.

>>#197

Hi, Steve - it's a very interesting read, worth your time if you can find a copy.

Finished Steepleton Yada-Yada-The-Touchstones-Still-Aren't-Working for TIOLI #14.

Phew!

Now relaxing with a re-read of The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd for TIOLI #15.

Oh! My favorite Christie. Love that one, ans perhaps 3 or 5 others. Although there are only a very few that I wouldn't be happy to read again.

Having shaken off the pretty heavy weight of course reading, I polished off a couple of pieces of fluff and am now reabsorbed by Mr. Trollope.

Hi, Gail! Yes, The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd is one of those that very much rewards re-reading.

Glad to hear you're enjoying Mr Trollope! :)

The Fu Manchu books came up in the concluding chapters of Julia Lovell's excellent book about The Opium War. That book sounds like a useful overview of the whole eugenics nonsense, a reminder of how prevalent it is and a reason to sigh thankfully that at least we seem to have gotten something right in the last half-century or so. At least fewer intelligent/rational people subscribe to those convictions today.

It's a glass-half-full / glass-half-empty situation, I guess. There are still plenty of reasons to feel like tearing your hair, but at the same time it's important not to overlook how far things have changed in this respect.

Finished The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd for TIOLI #15.

Now reading The True Heart by Sylvia Townsend Warner for TIOLI #18.

Finished The True Heart for TIOLI #18.

Now reading Death Comes To Perigord by John Alexander Ferguson for TIOLI #10.

??

Is Perigord that place where they have truffles?

Hi, Gail! The original Perigord is a famous truffle region in France but in this case "Perigord" is the name of an estate on one of the Channel Islands. And also of a bar / wine shop owned by the brother-in-law of the estate owner, who wants to annoy him. No truffles are so far in evidence. :)

I've just realised that Death Comes To Perigord is part of a series...book 4 of 6, in fact.

I hate it when I do that! :(

The Purcell Papers - The stories in this collection by J. Sheridan Le Fanu first appeared individually in the Dublin University Magazine between 1838 - 1850. Their common link is Father Francis Purcell, who supposedly collected these stories over the course of a fifty-year incumbency as parish priest in the south of Ireland. Somewhat uncomfortably, the first story opens with an explanation that the tales have been published by Purcell's executor, who found them amongst the priest's papers after his death; The Purcell Papers was in reality published posthumously, appearing as a single work in 1880, seven years after Le Fanu's death.

There are thirteen tales in this collection, and their tone varies considerably. The outlier is Scraps Of Hibernian Ballads, which is a serious demonstration of the Irish poetic tradition. Both Jim Sulivan's Adventures In The Great Snow and Billy Malowney's Taste Of Love And Glory are humorous stories in which people supposedly dead are mistaken for ghosts; The Quare Gander is a bizarre account of a man who comes to believe that the spirit of his late father inhabits a goose that has become attached to him; while The Ghost And The Bone-Setter draws upon the Irish superstition that the latest soul into Purgatory must carry water for all the others already there. These latter four stories are rendered in a broad Irish "voice" which occasionally makes them tricky to read. My favourite of the quartet was The Quare Gander, or at least, it would have been if I hadn't been braced throughout, waiting for something awful to happen to the goose. (Spoiler: it doesn't!)

The remaining stories in The Purcell Papers are a grim mixture of the supernatural tales for which Le Fanu is best known, and real-life horrors which are even more unnerving. The former, like The Ghost And The Bone-Setter, often draw upon long-standing traditions; the latter, upon historical events. In The Drunkard's Dream, the priest is called too late to the death-bed of a violent, drunken reprobate---except that the "dead" man then awakes to give a vivid description of hell... The Fortunes Of Sir Robert Ardagh is a variant of the Faust story; while Strange Events In The Life Of Schalken The Painter provides a back-story for one of the atmospheric paintings of the Dutch artist, Gotfried Schalcken, in the form of a "ghostly wedding" of the kind so popular with the Romantic writers of the early 19th century. An Adventure Of Hardress Fitzgerald, A Royalist Captain is a straightforward historical fiction taking place in the aftermath of the Battle of the Boyne. The Bridal Of Carrigvarrah draws upon the circumstances leading up to the notorious real-life murder of Ellen Hanley, now widely known as "the Colleen Bawn", but re-works them into a different kind of tragedy: a young gentlemen courts and marries a beautiful peasant girl even as his father arranges an aristocratic marriage for him... The Last Heir Of Castle Connor is perhaps the most disturbing story in the collection, featuring a man whose great pleasure in life is to lure reckless young men into fatal duels...

While all of the stories in The Purcell Papers are entertaining, two of them have something extra to offer. One of these I knew about; the other was an unexpected pleasure. I was brought to this collection by a work on the forerunners of detective fiction, in which the invention of the "locked room mystery" by Edgar Allan Poe was disputed, the author arguing that the first such story was not Poe's The Murders In The Rue Morgue, as is generally asserted, but Le Fanu's Passages In The Secret History Of An Irish Countess, which was published three years earlier. Having now read the story in question, I agree that the plaudits for the first use of a locked room in a mystery must go to Le Fanu---but the work in question is not a detective story: that breakthrough does indeed belong to Poe.

Passages In The Secret History Of An Irish Countess is a classic bit of Gothic writing. A man is murdered in the house of a friend after a night of extravagant gambling, and while the victim's host is naturally suspected, the room in which he is found dead is locked and sealed from the inside. Though no charges are laid, and the crime never solved, the host is subsequently shunned by society. The man's elder brother never doubts him, however, and demonstrates his faith by naming him the guardian of his daughter in his will, and also his heir should the girl die unmarried. At first the orphaned Lady Margaret is charmed by her Uncle Arthur, but then comes to realise that a plot is afoot to force her into marriage with her repellent cousin, Edward. Margaret declares that nothing could make her marry Edward---and soon afterwards she finds her uncle in her bedroom, overseeing certain "alterations"... In 1851, Le Fanu revised and republished this story as The Murdered Cousin, while later he used the same premise as the basis for perhaps his best-known novel, Uncle Silas.

The surprise packet of The Purcell Papers, however, turned out to be another Gothic tale of an endangered girl. In A Chapter In The History Of A Tyrone Family, a young heiress is forced into marriage with a much older man by her ambitious parents. Taken to his isolated family mansion, she soon discovers that her husband has a shocking, and potentially deadly, secret... A prototype locked room mystery I was expecting to find in this collection; what I was not expecting was a potential inspiration for Jane Eyre!

"Listen to me, my dear Fanny; I speak now in solemn earnest. What I desire is intimately, inseparably, connected with your happiness as well as my own; and your compliance with my request will not be difficult. It will impose upon you a trifling restraint during your sojourn here, which certain events which have occurred since our arrival have determined me will not be a long one. You must promise me, upon your sacred honour, that you will visit only that part of the castle which can be reached from the front entrance, leaving the back entrance and the part of the building commanded immediately by it to the menials, as also the small garden whose high wall you see yonder; and never at any time seek to pry or peep into them, nor to open the door which communicates from the front part of the house through the corridor with the back. I do not urge this in jest or in caprice, but from a solemn conviction that danger and misery will be the certain consequences of your not observing what I prescribe..."

Finished Death Comes To Perigord for TIOLI #10.

Now reading Devil's Cub by Georgette Heyer for TIOLI #14.

Aww, man...

So I go to the library to pick up a copy of Daughter Of Fu-Manchu...

...and on the desk is the only Asian librarian.

{*blush*}

Finished Devil's Cub for TIOLI #14.

And THAT brings me to my 100th book for the year! Ordinarily for landmarks I like to do a blog read, but this time I have one that is both a potential blog read and related to my look at the roots of the detective story---an account of a real-life murder published in 1688 and featuring a female detective:

True Relation Of A Horrid Murder Committed Upon Thomas Kidderminster Of Tupsley In The County Of Hereford, Gent.

#209 "what I was not expecting was a potential inspiration for Jane Eyre!" I love how many tidbits like this you uncover in your reading :-) Le Fanu might be another author I need to add to my reading list.

#211 Oops! At least you weren't also checking out a book entitled Lesser Breeds at the same time?

I'm also temtped to add Carolyn Wells' Patty books to the never-ending wishlist...

Hi! I'm surprised you've got time for thread visiting, but also very pleased. :)

If you like 19th century ghost stories, Le Fanu was one of the leading exponents. He did write many different kinds of stories, though. The Jane Eyre-ish business came completely out of the blue!

Yes, fortunately that particular librarian was not on duty as Lesser Breeds came and went, but I wasn't so lucky this time!

I had an idea you'd already started the Patty books? They're sweet without being cloying. The first two are available online and I cracked and bought the third---you're welcome to borrow it when you get to that point. :)

Finished True Relation Of A Horrid Murder Committed Upon Thomas Kidderminster Of Tupsley In The County Of Hereford, Gent. for TIOLI #15.

Which means that I have finished my 100th book for the year - whoo!! And reaching that point before the end of August means that I am back on track for 150 - double whoo!!

Now reading Plots And Counterplots: Sexual Politics And The Body Politic In English Literature, 1660-1730 by Richard Braverman, possibly for TIOLI #14, but it's quite heavy going and I'm not sure I'll make it by the end of the month...

So I went on a bit of a book buying spree this week...

Allow me to qualify that:

Though I love to browse book fairs and secondhand bookstores, the truth is I'm a reader rather than a collector; and generally speaking, I will only buy a book if I can't access it any other way.

I know: shocking, isn't it!?

But sometimes, particularly with my taste for the old and obscure, there is no other way. And while it would be business as usual for quite a number of our 75ers (not mentioning any names!), having 10 books on order at once is quite an unusual experience for me.

The importance of these particular purchases is something else again: they mean that I have now obtained, or am in the process of obtaining, every book on my wishlist from 1931 that is (comparatively) readily accessible. Not that I'm strictly finished with the year; but what's now left on the list are series books I'm not up to yet, and random, standalone, generally obscure works that got on there any time in the past four years because they or their author "sounded interesting".

Whether I decide I can't live without any of the latter remains to be seen. The significance of my current situation is that I have progressed to a point where my OCD has relaxed its grip on me...which means I finally stand a reasonable chance of getting the hell out of 1931.

Or at least, I do if I can bring myself to follow two simple rules:

    1. Read the books when they arrive - don't put them aside and start pursuing others!

    2. Stop putting books from 1931 on the wishlist!!

Congratulations on hitting the 100 book mark, Liz.

And sending good vibrations to help you keep those last two resolutions!

Thanks, Roni - I suspect I'm going to need them! :)

Congratulations on reading 100 books but more on standing a reasonable chance of getting the hell out of 1931 because I think that's the more difficult goal!

I could do with adopting your first resolution myself. I've managed it this month but I think it's the first ever month when I've read all the books I've bought as soon as I've bought them. Nope, just checked and I haven't even managed it this month with my paltry three acquisitions.

I'm sure this was explained in an earlier thread which I've missed ... but why 1931?

>>#219

Thanks, Heather! I think so too! Maybe you and I can work on Resolution #1 together?? :)

>>#220

Hi, Rhian! Well, long and very stupid story short, one of my side-projects at my blog is reading novels published between 1741 - 1930, randomly selected from my wishlist, so over here I started out just reading "anything on the wishlist published after 1930", but then my OCD got hold of me and decided I had to read all my wishlisted books from 1931 before moving on to 1932 and so on, and I've been stuck there ever since. (It didn't help that at one point, for reasons that now escape me, I was actively searching for books from 1931.)

Congrats on reaching 100 already this year. This is really fabulous considering how long some of the books are that you have read! Also, good luck on getting out of 1931, LOL. How many books do you already have lined up for 1932 reads?

Thank you, Heidi! I don't know what awaits me; I only know that there could not possibly be as many books from 1932 on the wishlist as there were for 1931! :)

Phew! Brought my last August read in just under the wire, not helped in the least by a two-hour blackout: thanks a bunch, Energy Australia! :(

So - finished Plots And Counterplots: Sexual Politics And The Body Politic In English Literature, 1660-1730 by Richard Braverman for TIOLI #14.

I had some tough reads in August, but this month I think I'm going to relax by geting into the spirit of September Series & Sequels and concentrating upon making some headway with my endless, endless list of started series.

And in that spirit, now reading Daughter Of Fu-Manchu for TIOLI #11.

>224 lyzard:: Looking forward to the summary of that one, Liz!

Sadist! :D

With the fourteen year gap between books, *I'm* looking forward to finding out if Sax Rohmer was forced to acknowledge that the world had moved on, or if we're still occupying the same sort of creepy never-never land.

Finished Daughter Of Fu-Manchu for TIOLI #11.

Now reading The Diamond Pin by Carolyn Wells, the 10th of her Fleming Stone mysteries, for TIOLI #1.

Finished The Diamond Pin for TIOLI #1.

Now reading The Shadow Of The Wolf by R. Austin Freeman, the 12th of his books featuring Dr John Thorndyke, for TIOLI #7.

Dammit. (Part Two)

Tidying up some book details, I chased down an odd lead and discovered what I didn't want to know: that while Daughter Of Fu-Manchu went into wide release in 1931 (the usual publication date listed), there was a limited edition published by Collier's in 1930 - "the Orient Edition" - subsequent to the novel being serialised in the magazine.

Which means I didn't have to read it just yet...

Sigh.

If there's one thing I don't need, it's books falsely listed as first published in 1931!

It is interesting, though, to note not just that pressure was brought to bear upon Sax Rohmer to write more Fu-Manchu stories, but where it was coming from: when he picked up the series his novels were first published in America, and in the case of the first two, at least, were immediately transferred to the screen. Daughter Of Fu-Manchu (1930) was adapted as Daughter Of The Dragon (1931) with Anna May Wong (even though Paramount didn't hold the rights, so all the names were changed!), while The Mask Of Fu-Manchu (1932) was filmed under the same title and in the same year, with Boris Karloff and Myrna Loy.

Job for the weekend:

Find a book which is lost...somewhere in the house...

Man, I hate when I do that. :(

Just remember...
Not all those who wander are lost...

Hi, Jim! Well, perhaps not so much "lost" as "in hiding", in payback for being passed over so many times. :)

Finished The Shadow Of The Wolf for TIOLI #7.

Now reading The War Terror* by Arthur B. Reeve, the fourth in his series featuring scientific detective Craig Kennedy.

(*NOT "The War ON Terror", despite what 500 different touchstones are trying to tell me.)

Hah, Jim, a nice little Gandalf allusion there!

This book's gone on an unexpected journey, all right... {*grumble*}

Ah, dear. I've had this one a few times in my quest for second-hand books, and it never fails to make me grin:

Stamped inside the cover of not one, but BOTH books that arrived for me today from the UK is NATIONAL FICTION RESERVE SCHEME DO NOT DISCARD.

Librarians---they're such rebels.

In other news, quelle horreur!

The same two books are outright romances. No mixing of genres, no distracting elements---

Nowhere to hide. :D

#214 "I had an idea you'd already started the Patty books?" Oops, I just realised I never replied to this. No, I half recall putting them off because the third book was so hard to come by. Given how long it takes me to get around to starting the series you recommend I won't let that worry me overly!

#225 I'm also very much looking forward to your review of Daughter of Fu-Manchu. :-)

#229 Are you going to watch (and more importantly) review the films for our entertainment too? Interestingly, Sax Rohmer gets a mention in Ann Lee Wong's biography on imdb. I also liked the look of The Fiendish Plot of Fu-Manchu, a 1980s film starring Peter Sellers and Helen Mirren.

#230 I hate losing books like that. I got rather worried to find that my next Albert Campion wasn't in the box with all the other Allingham books but luckily I found it at the top of another box I happened to open today.

#236 Well there goes my chance of being able to get them through the library system if they sound good....

Hi! I wasn't expecting thread visits from you at all. I hope you and yours are settling into your lovely new home. :)

I haven't looked any further, but three of the first four Patty books are available online, and as I say, I'd be happy to send you the third one if you wanted.

I have seen some of the early Fu-Manchu films and some of the Christopher Lee ones, but the last one is a comedy so I'm rather wary. :)

The lost book is still lost. I've done the first round of "likely" places with no success, so a plunge into the completely unlikely is next on the agenda.

I would be perfectly happy to send you my romances, too! :)

Finished The War Terror by Arthur B. Reeve for TIOLI #12.

Now reading The Council Of Justice by Edgar Wallace, the second in his series featuring The Four Just Men.

Man, I have got to get some reviews written... :(

On the other hand, I did blog about Steepleton; or, High Church And Low Church, which I read last month - the post is here.

Liz, I wanted to pop in and say I finally finished The Warden and was so happy to have the tutored thread to guide me through some of the more obscure (to me) church and political issues of the day. I felt I got so much more out of the book knowing all that, so that what otherwise would have been a moderately amusing story ended up being quite sharply hilarious at times. Thank you to you and Heather and everyone else who contributed.

Hi, Julia - how nice to have you back! :)

I'm very glad to hear that the tutored read thread was helpful to you - and that you enjoyed The Warden, of course! You really should stop in and thank Heather, though, because really these exercises come down to someone willing to stop and ask the questions.

I hope you will be going on with the Barchester novels?? :)

Finished The Council Of Justice* for TIOLI #6.

(*No, NOT the Confessions of St Augustine, you silly touchstones!)

Now reading Murder Incidental by Keith Trask.

I was looking for a copy of J. Sheridan Le Fanu's Uncle Silas a while ago (the novel being an expansion of his important locked-room mystery prototype short story, Passages From The Secret History Of An Irish Countess), and I came across a ridiculously inexpensive listing of the Folio Society edition - about $20.00 including shipping from the UK. I wasn't necessarily planning on buying the novel, but...

It is a second-hand copy and the pale buff slipcase is a bit grubby but the book itself is immaculate. Here is an online image of this edition (better than I could do myself); I will scan the title pages over the weekend, when I get a chance:

Hi Liz! Just stopping by to say that I have started Framley Parsonage and will be making use of the group read thread. Only into chapter three but have encountered some LOL moments already.

I will be going on with the Barchester novels, Liz! I managed to snag an ebook volume of all of them for only 99 cents! I see Barchester Towers is up next. I'll go look, but was there a group read for that one as well? I've already found and starred the group reads for Dr. Thorne!

Just looked: Yes, there's a group read, and it is duly starred!

Hi, Heidi! Please add comments or questions to the Framley Parsonage thread if you like. :)

That's good to hear, Julia! The Barchester Towers thread is also a tutored read, and after that they settle down into group reads, as they have less specialised content.

Finished Murder Incidental for TIOLI #13.

Now reading Cleek Of Scotland Yard, the second in Thomas W. Hanshew's series about The Man Who Calls Himself Hamilton Cleek.

Well, the whole "getting reviews written" thing just isn't happening here, so let's see what a nice new thread can accomplish...