lyzard's list: letting the numbers take care of themselves - Part 3

    

My new thread-topper is the Cooktown orchid, which was adopted as the floral emblem of Queensland in 1959. The orchid is native to northern Queensland, although it is not a rainforest species, and in the wild flowers during the dry season. The flowers range from mauve through shades of pink and occasionally white, with variants that have pale petals but a darker heart. The individual flowers are about 5 cm in diameter, and appear on spikes in bunches of up to twenty. It is a popular garden and house plant as it is hardy for an orchid and can be induced to flower throughout the year.

WELCOME TO 2014!

Hello, all, and welcome to my 2014 thread. I'm Liz, and this will be my fourth full year in the 75-ers group, after joining towards the end of 2010.

Because of the relative obscurity of many of the books I read, I tend to get less visitors / conversation than many of the 75-ers, so anyone who drops by this thread can be certain of a welcome bordering on the hysterical.

In 2013 I set myself a target of 150 books for the year, and while I reached it (yay!), I was feeling constrained with my reading towards the end; avoiding chunksters and so on, out of consciousness of time and numbers. So this year I've decided to take a more relaxed approached to things, and let the numbers take care of themselves.

Usually, I have several main reading "themes". I read for a blog project; I have more ongoing series than I can count; I am reading early detective fiction to examine the evolution of the genre; and I am fortunate enough to be involved in various group and tutored reads, chiefly of 19th century literature. My tastes run to the old, obscure and forgotten - which is fun for me, but tends to restrict conversation!

This year, however, I want to shake things up a bit by reading through some of my long untouched books, with a view to pruning my collection. This will be predominantly horror, fantasy and crime fiction from the mid-1990s (I was going through "a phase").

Similarly, I may finally tackle some of the many classics I have accumulated over the years but never actually gotten around to reading.

I have a blog, A Course Of Steady Reading, where the main thrust is the examination of the development of the English novel, from 1660 onwards. In addition, I am looking at the roots of the Gothic novel, reading certain 18th and 19th century authors in depth, and reviewing novels published between 1751 - 1930 selected randomly from my wishlist.

This year I will be undertaking a new project which will involve working through as-yet unread Virago Press releases in chronological order by original publication date. I am delighted to say that Heather (souloftherose) will be joining me for at least some of this project, and anyone else who cares to join in would be most welcome!

Another of my obsessions is "books from a particular year". Towards the end of last year I more or less wrapped up 1931, and will soon be launching into - yes, you guessed it! - 1932.

I am also one of several people working through the detective fiction of Agatha Christie, and the historical romances of Georgette Heyer - another project where anyone is welcome. This is a leisurely pursuit involving one of each per month, on average. These are re-reads for me, while others are just discovering these two authors.

This may also be the year I finally get around to reading the Harry Potter books...

So to summarise:

Main reading themes for 2014:

* Blog reading

* Series and sequels

* Early detective fiction

* Chronological Virago

* Books off the shelves

* 1932

* Agatha Christie / Georgette Heyer re-reads

* Group / tutored reads

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

Currently reading:



Murder At School by James Hilton (1931)

January:

1. Munster Abbey, A Romance: Interspersed With Reflections On Virtue And Morality by Sir Samuel Egerton Leigh (1797)
2. The Senator's Lady by Mathilde Eiker (1932)
3. The Girl, The Gold Watch & Everything by John D. MacDonald (1962)
4. The Admirable Carfew by Edgar Wallace (1914)
5. The Talisman Ring by Georgette Heyer (1936)
6. The House By The Road by Charles J. Dutton (1924)
7. The Gray Phantom by Herman Landon (1921)
8. The Million-Dollar Suitcase by Alice MacGowan and Perry Newberry (1922)
9. The Prisoner Of Zenda by Anthony Hope (1894)
10. Trilby by George Du Maurier (1894)
11. Partners In Crime by Agatha Christie (1929)

February:

12. May It Please Your Lordship by E. S. Turner (1971)
13. Bernard Leslie; or, A Tale Of The Last Ten Years by William Gresley (1942)
14. Japanese Tales Of Mystery And Imagination by Egogawa Rampo (1956)
15. Inspector French's Greatest Case by Freeman Wills Crofts (1924)
16. Suffer And Be Still: Women In The Victorian Age by Martha Vicinus (ed.) (1972)
17. Thank Heaven Fasting by E. M. Delafield (1932)
18. The Man In The Dark by John Alexander Ferguson (1928)
19. An Infamous Army by Georgette Heyer (1937)
20. The Secret Of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton (1927)
21. The History Of The Nun; or, The Fair Vow-Breaker by Aphra Behn (1689)
22. The Mysterious Mr Quin by Agatha Christie (1930)

March:

23. The Last Chronicle Of Barset by Anthony Trollope (1867)
24. The Noose by Philip MacDonald (1930)
25. Yesterday's Woman: Domestic Realism In The English Novel by Vineta Colby (1974)
26. As We Are: A Modern Revue by E. F. Benson (1932)
27. The Princess Of All Lands by Russell Kirk (1979)
28. The Claverton Mystery by John Rhode (1933)
29. The Death Of A Millionaire by G. D. H. and Margaret Cole (1925)
30. The Murder At The Vicarage by Agatha Christie (1930)
31. A Modern Hero by Louis Bromfield (1932)

April:

32. The Corinthian by Georgette Heyer (1940)
33. The Scandal Of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton (1935)
34. Venusberg by Anthony Powell (1932)
35. The Adventures Of Miss Sophia Berkley by Anonymous (1760)
36. The Silver-Fork School: Novels Of Fashion Preceding Vanity Fair by Matthew Whiting Rosa (1936)
37. The Ultimate Werewolf by Byron Preiss (ed.) (1992)
38. Victorian People And Ideas: A Companion For The Modern Reader Of Victorian Literature by Richard D. Altick (1973)
39. Miss Pinkerton by Mary Roberts Rinehart (1932)
40. Mr Fortune's Trials by H. C. Bailey (1925)
41. The Sittaford Mystery by Agatha Christie (1931)
42. Contango by James Hilton (1932)

Books in transit:

On interlibrary loan / storage request:

Purchased and shipped:
The Mystery Of The Evil Eye by Anthony Wynne

On loan:
**The Scandal Of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton (22/04/2014)
**The Silver-Fork School: Novels Of Fashion Preceding Vanity Fair by Matthew Whiting Rosa (28/04/2014)
The Best Circles: Society, Etiquette And The Season by Leonore Davidoff (04/07/2014)
Love-Letters Between A Nobleman And His Sister by Aphra Behn (04/07/2014)
Pamela's Daughters by Robert Palfrey Utter and Gwendolyn Bridges Needham (04/07/2014)
The Early Victorians At Home by Elizabeth Burton (04/07/2014)
The Social Novel In England, 1830-1850 by Louis François Cazamian, translated by Martin Fido (04/07/2014)
*Victorian People And Ideas by Richard Altick (04/07/2014)
Three Houses by Angela Thirkell (17/07/2014)
Was It Murder? by James Hilton (17/07/2014)
The Man Of Property by John Galsworthy (17/07/2014)
The Gods Arrive by Edith Wharton (17/07/2014)

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}
An Australian Girl by Catherine Martin {interlibrary loan}

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}
(1894 - 1898) **Anthony Hope - Ruritania - The Heart Of Princess Osra (2/3) {Project Gutenberg}
(1895 - 1901) **Guy Newell Boothby - Dr Nikola - A Bid For Fortune (1/5) {Project Gutenberg}
(1897 - 1900) **Anna Katharine Green - Amelia Butterworth - That Affair Next Door (1/3) {Fisher Library}
(1900 - 1974) *Ernest Bramah - Kai Lung - The Wallet Of Kai Lung (1/6) {ManyBooks}
(1901 - 1919) **Carolyn Wells - Patty Fairfield - Patty's Summer Days (4/17) {ManyBooks}
(1903 - 1904) **Louis Tracy - Reginald Brett - A Fatal Legacy (aka The Stowmarket Mystery) (1/2) {ManyBooks}
(1904 - ????) *Louis Tracy - Winter and Furneaux - The Albert Gate Mystery (1/?) {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}
(1906 - 1930) **John Galsworthy - The Forsyte Saga - The Man Of Property (1/11) {Fisher Library}
(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}
(1907 - 1941) *Maurice Leblanc - Arsene Lupin - Arsene Lupin, Gentleman Burglar (1/21) {ManyBooks}
(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 - Kate Plus Ten (3/?) {Project Gutenberg Australia}
(1910 - 1930) **Edgar Wallace - Inspector Elk - The Fellowship Of The Frog (2/6?) {ebook}
(1910 - ????) *Thomas Hanshew - Cleek - Cleek's Government Cases (3/?) {Internet Archive / Mobilereads}
(1910 - 1918) *John McIntyre - Ashton-Kirk - Ashton-Kirk: Investigator (1/4) {ManyBooks / Project Gutenberg}
(1910 - 1931) *Grace S. Richmond - Red Pepper Burns - Red Pepper Burns (1/6) {ManyBooks}

(1911 - 1935) *G. K. Chesterton - Father Brown - The Scandal Of Father Brown (5/5) {branch transfer}
(1911 - 1937) *Mary Roberts Rinehart - Letitia Carberry - Tish Plays The Game (4/5) {GooglePlay}
(1913 - 1934) *Alice B. Emerson - Ruth Fielding - Ruth Fielding At Sunrise Farm (7/30) {Project Gutenberg}
(1913 - 1973) Sax Rohmer - Fu-Manchu - The Mask Of Fu-Manchu (5/14) {interlibrary loan}
(1914 - 1950) Mary Roberts Rinehart - Hilda Adams - Haunted Lady (4/5) {Owned}
(1914 - 1934) *Ernest Bramah - Max Carrados - The Eyes Of Max Carrados (2/4) {interlibrary loan}
(1916 - 1941) John Buchan - Edward Leithen - Sick Heart River (5/5) {Fisher Library}
(1916 - 1917) **Carolyn Wells - Alan Ford - Faulkner's Folly (2/2) {Book Depository}
(1918 - 1923) **Carolyn Wells - Pennington Wise - The Room With The Tassels (1/8) {Internet Archive / Book Depository}
(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, Please (4/23) {academic loan}
(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 - Peril At End House (7/39) {owned}

(1921 - 1929) **Charles J. Dutton - John Bartley - The Second Bullet (5/9) {expensive}
(1921 - 1925) **Herman Landon - The Gray Phantom - The Gray Phantom's Return (2/5) {Project Gutenberg}
(1922 - 1973) *Agatha Christie - Tommy and Tuppence - N. Or M.? (3/5) {owned}
(1922 - 1927) *Alice MacGowan and Perry Newberry - Jerry Boyne - The Mystery Woman (2/5) {Amazon, eBay?}
(1923 - 1937) Dorothy L. Sayers - Lord Peter Wimsey - Have His Carcase (8/15) {Fisher Library}
(1923 - 1924) **Carolyn Wells - Lorimer Lane - The Fourteenth Key (2/2) {Amazon domestic}
(1924 - 1959) * / ***Philip MacDonald - Colonel Anthony Gethryn - Persons Unknown (aka "The Maze") (5/24) {academic loan}
(1924 - 1957) *Freeman Wills Crofts - Inspector French - The Cheyne Mystery (2/30) {Fisher Library}
(1924 - 1935) *Francis D. Grierson - Inspector Sims and Professor Wells - The Limping Man (1/13) {owned}
(1924 - 1940) *Lynn Brock - Colonel Gore - The Deductions Of Colonel Gore (1/12) {owned}
(1924 - 1933) *Herbert Adams - Jimmie Haswell - The Secret Of Bogey House (1/9) {owned}
(1924 - 1944) *A. Fielding - Inspector Pointer - The Eames-Erskine Case (1/23) {ordered}
(1925 - 1961) ***John Rhode - Dr Priestley - Mystery At Greycombe Farm (12/72) {rare, expensive}
(1925 - 1953) *G. D. H. Cole / M. Cole - Superintendent Wilson - The Blatchington Tangle (3/?) {AbeBooks, expensive}
(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 - Cards On The Table (3/5) {owned}
(1925 - 1934) *Anthony Berkeley - Roger Sheringham - The Layton Court Mystery (1/10) {Book Depository}
(1925 - 1950) *Anthony Wynne (Robert McNair Wilson) - Dr Eustace Hailey - The Mystery Of The Evil Eye (aka The Sign Of Evil) (1/27) {AbeBooks}

(1926 - 1968) * / ***Christopher Bush - Ludovic Travers - The Perfect Murder Case (2/63) {online}
(1926 - 1939) *S. S. Van Dine - Philo Vance - The Benson Murder Case (1/12) {Fisher Library}
(1926 - 1952) *J. Jefferson Farjeon - Ben the Tramp - No. 17 (1/8) {academic loan}
(1926 - ????) *G. D. H. Cole / M. Cole - Everard Blatchington - The Blatchington Tangle (1/?) {AbeBooks, expensive}
(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}
(1927 - 1937) *Ronald Knox - Miles Bredon - The Three Taps (1/5) {AbeBooks}
(1927 - 1958) *Brian Flynn - Anthony Bathurst - The Billiard-Room Mystery (1/54) {AbeBooks}
(1927 - 1947) *J. J. Connington - Sir Clinton Driffield - Murder In The Maze (1/17) {academic loan}
(1927 - 1935) *Anthony Gilbert (Lucy Malleson) - Scott Egerton - Tragedy At Freyne (1/10) {expensive}
(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 - 1937) *John Alexander Ferguson - Francis McNab - Murder On The Marsh (2/5) {Internet Archive}
(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}
(1928 - 1946) *Francis Beeding - Alistair Granby - The Six Proud Walkers (1/18) {academic loan}
(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}
(1929 - 1937) *Anthony Berkeley - Ambrose Chitterwick - The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1/3) {City of Sydney / Fisher Library}
(1929 - 1940) *Jean Lilly - DA Bruce Perkins - The Seven Sisters (1/3) {AbeBooks / expensive shipping}
(1929 - 1935) *N. A. Temple-Ellis (Nevile Holdaway) - Montrose Arbuthnot - The Inconsistent Villains (1/4) {AbeBooks / expensive shipping}
(1929 - 1943) *Gret Lane - Kate Clare Marsh and Inspector Barrin - The Cancelled Score Mystery (1/9) {unavailable?}
(1929 - 1961) *Henry Holt - Inspector Silver - The Mayfair Mystery (aka "The Mayfair Murder") (1/16) {AbeBooks}
(1929 - 1930) *J. J. Connington - Superintendent Ross - The Eye In The Museum (1/2) {AbeBooks}
(1929 - 1941) *H. Maynard Smith - Inspector Frost - Inspector Frost's Jigsaw (1/7) {AbeBooks}
(1929 - ????) *Armstrong Livingston - Jimmy Traynor - The Doublecross (1/?) {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 Night Club Lady (3/8) {AbeBooks}
(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 Body In The Library (2/12) {owned}
(1930 - ????) *Anne Austin - James "Bonnie" Dundee - Murder Backstairs (1/?) - {AbeBooks}
(1930 - 1950) *Leslie Ford (as David Frome) - Mr Pinkerton and Inspector Bull - The Hammersmith Murders (1/11) {AbeBooks}
(1930 - 1935) *"Diplomat" (John Franklin Carter) - Dennis Tyler - Murder In The State Department (1/7) {expensive}
(1930 - 1962) *Helen Reilly - Inspector Christopher McKee - The Diamond Feather (1/31) {AbeBooks / expensive shipping}
(1930 - 1933) *Mary Plum - John Smith - The Killing Of Judge MacFarlane (1/4) {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 - 1937) Carlton Dawe - Leathermouth - The Sign Of The Glove (2/13) {academic loan}
(1931 - 1947) R. L. Goldman - Asaph Clume and Rufus Reed - The Murder Of Harvey Blake (1/6) {AbeBooks}
(1931 - 1959) E. C. R. Lorac (Edith Caroline Rivett) - Inspector Robert Macdonald - The Murder On The Burrows (1/46) {rare, expensive}
(1931 - ????) Clifton Robbins - Clay Harrison - Dusty Death (1/?) {AbeBooks}
(1931 - 1972) Georges Simenon - Inspector Maigret - Pietr-le-Letton (1/75) {ordered}
(1931 - 1934) T. S. Stribling - The Vaiden Trilogy - The Forge (1/3) {academic loan}
(1932 - 1954) Sydney Fowler - Inspector Cambridge and Mr Jellipot - The Bell Street Murders (1/11) {AbeBooks}
(1932 - 1935) Murray Thomas - Inspector Wilkins - Buzzards Pick The Bones (1/3) {AbeBooks / expensive}
(1932 - ????) R. A. J. Walling - Philip Tolefree - The Fatal Five Minutes (1/?) {academic loan}
(1932 - 1962) T. Arthur Plummer - Detective-Inspector Andrew Frampton - Shadowed By The C. I. D. (1/50) {unavailable?}
(1932 - 1936) John Victor Turner - Amos Petrie - Death Must Have Laughed (1/7) {unavailable?}
(1932 - 1944) Nicholas Brady (John Victor Turner) - Ebenezer Buckle - The House Of Strange Guests (1/4) {unavailable?}

(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}
(1933 - 1934) Peter Hunt (George Worthing Yates and Charles Hunt Marshall) - Allan Miller - Murders At Scandal House (1/3) {AbeBooks / Amazon}
(1933 - 1968) John Dickson Carr - Gideon Fell - Hag's Nook (1/23) {Better World Books}
(1933 - 1939) Gregory Dean - Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Simon - The Case Of Marie Corwin (1/3) {AbeBooks / Amazon}
(1933 - 1956) E. R. Punshon - Detective-Sergeant Bobby Owen - Information Received (1/35) {academic loan}
(1933 - 1970) Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richlieu - The Forbidden Territory (1/11) {Fisher Library}
(1934 - 1936) Storm Jameson - The Mirror In Darkness - Company Parade (1/3) {Fisher Library}
(1934 - 1953) Leslie Ford (Zenith Jones Brown) - Colonel John Primrose and Grace Latham - The Clock Strikes Twelve (aka "The Supreme Court Murder") (NB: novella)
(1934 - 1949) Richard Goyne - Paul Templeton - Strange Motives (1/13) {unavailable?}
(1934 - 1941) N. A. Temple-Ellis (Nevile Holdaway) - Inspector Wren - Three Went In (1/3)
(1934 - 1953) Carter Dickson (John Dickson Carr) - Sir Henry Merivale - The Plague Court Murders (1/22) {Fisher Library}
(1934 - 1968) Dennis Wheatley - Gregory Sallust - Black August (1/11)
(1935 - 1939) Francis Beeding - Inspector George Martin - The Norwich Victims (1/3) {AbeBooks / Book Depository}
(1935 - 1976) Nigel Morland - Palmyra Pym - The Moon Murders (1/28) {unavailable?}
(1935 - 1941) Clyde Clason - Professor Theocritus Lucius Westborough - The Fifth Tumbler (1/10) {unavailable?}
(1935 - ????) G. D. H. Cole / M. Cole - Dr Tancred - Dr Tancred Begins (1/?) (AbeBooks, expensive}
(1947 - 1974) Dennis Wheatley - Roger Brook - The Launching Of Roger Brook (1/12) {Fisher Library storage}
(1953 - 1960) Dennis Whealey - Molly Fountain and Colonel Verney - To The Devil A Daughter (1/2) {Fisher Library storage}

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

Timeline of detective fiction:

Pre-history:
Things As They Are; or, The Adventures Of Caleb Williams by William Godwin (1794)
Mademoiselle de Scudéri by E.T.A. Hoffmann (1819)
Richmond: Scenes In The Life Of A Bow Street Officer by Anonymous (1827)
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)

Serials:
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)
John Devil by Paul Feval (1861)

Early detective novels:
Recollections Of A Detective Police-Officer by "Waters" (William Russell) (1856)
The Widow Lerouge by Emile Gaboriau (1866)
Under Lock And Key by T. W. Speight (1869)
Checkmate by J. Sheridan LeFanu (1871)
Is He The Man? by William Clark Russell (1876)
Devlin The Barber by B. J. Farjeon (1888)
Mr Meeson's Will by H. Rider Haggard (1888)
The Mystery Of A Hansom Cab by Fergus Hume (1889)
The Queen Anne's Gate Mystery by Richard Arkwright (1889)
The Ivory Queen by Norman Hurst (1889) (Check Julius H. Hurst 1899)
The Big Bow Mystery by Israel Zangwill (1892)

Female detectives:
The Diary Of Anne Rodway by Wilkie Collins (1856)
The Female Detective by Andrew Forrester (1864)
Revelations Of A Lady Detective by William Stephens Hayward (1864)
Madeline Payne; or, The Detective's Daughter by Lawrence L. Lynch (Emma Murdoch Van Deventer) (1884)
Mr Bazalgette's Agent by Leonard Merrick (1888)
Moina; or, Against The Mighty by Lawrence L. Lynch (Emma Murdoch Van Deventer) (sequel to Madeline Payne?) (1891)
The Experiences Of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective by Catherine Louisa Pirkis (1893)
Dorcas Dene, Detective by George Sims (1897)
- Amelia Butterworth series by Anna Katharine Grant (1897 - 1900)
Miss Cayley's Adventures by Grant Allan (1899)
Hilda Wade by Grant Allan (1900)
Dora Myrl, The Lady Detective by M. McDonnel Bodkin (1900)
Lady Molly Of Scotland Yard by Baroness Orczy (1910)

Related mainstream 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)

True crime:
Clues: or, Leaves from a Chief Constable's Note Book by Sir William Henderson (1889)
Dreadful Deeds And Awful Murders by Joan Lock

2013 stats:

Books read: 151

Oldest work: A True Relation Of A Horrid Murder Committed upon the Person of Thomas Kidderminster of Tupsley in the County of Hereford, Gent. by Anonymous (1688)
Newest work: Detective Piggott's Casebook: True Tales Of Murder, Madness And The Rise Of Forensic Science by Kevin John Morgan (2012), Women Writing Crime Fiction, 1860-1880: Fourteen American, British And Australian Authors by Kate Watson (2012)

Male authors: 77 (50.6%)
Female authors: 72 (47.4%)
Anonymous: 3 (2.0%)

New-to-me authors: 62 (40.8%)

Re-reads: 25 (16.6%)
Series reads: 62 (41.1%)
TIOLI: 146 (96.7%)
1931: 37 (24.5%)

Mysteries / thrillers: 70.5 (46.7%)
Classics*: 19 (12.6%)
Contemporary drama: 13 (8.6%)
Historical romance: 13 (8.6%)
Non-fiction: 11 (7.3%)
Young adult: 7 (4.6%)
Memoirs: 5.5 (3.6%)
Humour: 4 (2.6%)
Science fiction: 4 (2.6%)
Romance: 2 (1.4%)
Adventure: 1 (0.7%)
Fantasy: 1 (0.7%)

(*Anything published before 1900 not classified as mystery / thriller / adventure / science fiction / memoir)

Best in class (for categories >10 Ameise1: books read):

Mysteries / thrillers:
Hand And Ring: The Story Of A Mysterious Crime by Anna Katharine Green (1883)
The Man Of Last Resort; or, The Clients Of Randolph Mason by Melville Davisson Post (1897)
Vicky Van by Carolyn Wells (1918)
The Shadow Of The Wolf by R. Austin Freeman (1925)
*The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie (1926)
The Incredulity Of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton (1926)
Footprints by Kay Cleaver Strahan (1929)
From This Dark Stairway by Mignon Eberhart (1931)
The Missing Money-Lender by W. Stanley Sykes (1931)
Murder Incidental by Keith Trask (1931)
Three Dead Men by Paul McGuire (1931)
The Detectives' Album: Stories Of Crime And Mystery From Colonial Australia by Mary Fortune (2003)

Classics:
*Things As They Are; or, The Adventures Of Caleb Williams by William Godwin (1794)
Le Père Goriot by Honore de Balzac (translated by Burton Raffel) (1835)
Adventures Of Susan Hopley; or, Circumstantial Evidence by Catharine Crowe (1841)
*Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope (1861)
*Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope (1865)

Historical romance:
Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini (1922)
*The Masqueraders by Georgette Heyer (1928)
The True Heart by Sylvia Townsend Warner (1929)
Dragonwyck by Anya Seton (1944)

Non-fiction:
Silver Fork Society: Fashionable Life And Literature From 1814-1840 by Alison Adburgham (1983)
'Lesser Breeds': Racial Attitudes In Popular British Culture, 1890-1940 by Michael Diamond (2006)
The Invention Of Murder: How The Victorians Revelled In Death And Detection And Created Modern Crime by Judith Flanders (2011)
Women Writing Crime Fiction, 1860-1880: Fourteen American, British And Australian Authors by Kate Watson (2012)

Contemporary drama:
Painted Clay by Capel Boake (1917)
Friends And Relations by Elizabeth Bowen (1931)

Good fun:

Castle Of Wolfenbach: A German Story by Eliza Parsons (1793)
The Four Just Men by Edgar Wallace (1905)
The Man Of The Forty Faces by Thomas W. Hanshew (1910)
*The Secret Of Chimneys by Agatha Christie (1925)
Crime & Co. by Sydney Fowler (1931)
70,000 Witnesses by Cortland Fitzsimmons (1931)
Devil's Cub by Georgette Heyer (1932)

Ew!

The Court Secret by Peter Belon (1689)
Elsie Dinsmore by Martha Finley (1867)
The Sign Of The Spider by Bertram Mitford (1897)
The Devil Doctor by Sax Rohmer (Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward) (1916)
Leathermouth by Carlton Dawe (1931)
Lovers Of Janine by Denise Robins (1931)
The Reckoning by Joan Conquest (1931)
*/**Sanctuary by William Faulkner (1931)
The Singular Anomaly: Women Novelists Of The Nineteenth Century by Vineta Colby (1970)

Discoveries:

Catharine Crowe
Mary Helena Fortune
Thomas W. Hanshew
Paul McGuire
Rosa Praed
W. Stanley Sykes

*Re-read
**Part of me feels I owe Faulkner an apology for putting him in this company; the other part of me feels he had it coming.

Group reads, tutored reads, everybody's-welcome reads:

Tutored read of Pride And Prejudice (completed - thread here)

Group read of The Last Chronicle Of Barset (completed - thread here)

Tutored read of Sense And Sensibility (completed - thread here)

Tutored read of The Italian (beginning 2nd May)

Tutored read of Love-Letters Between A Nobleman And His Sister (beginning after The Italian)

Georgette Heyer (April): Faro's Daughter

Agatha Christie (May): Peril At End House

Happy new thread, Liz. I like the the photos.

Hi, Liz!

I see we're on for Last Chronicle. Glad I stopped by today, as I had forgotten it was scheduled for March.

And Murder at the Vicarage! One of my top five in the Christie bibliography. I may turn up there as well...

Happy new thread, Liz!

>2 lyzard: Because of the relative obscurity of many of the books I read, I tend to get less visitors / conversation than many of the 75-ers, so anyone who drops by this thread can be certain of a welcome bordering on the hysterical.

I am surprised, given the circumstances, that you have left that little statement on your intros.

The "unpopularity" of your thread has been scotched completed in the last couple of months, Liz, and rightly so.

Congratulations on your latest thread. xx

Lovely flower, and lovely new thread, Liz!

Hi Liz, love the flowers at the top.

Happy new thread, Liz! I love the orchid in your topper.

Happy new thread Liz! I enjoyed Mr Quin a lot so don't worry about that.

#1 Beautiful!

#9 Busy schedule! Is it wrong that I felt excited when I went to the work page for The Corinthian and saw the tag 'cross-dressing'?

More beautiful flowers, especially enjoyable as we have a very grey day here today.

Happy New Thread, Liz!

Gorgeous orchids! And to respond to your last comment to me on your old thread, I definitely plan to continue the Barset series! In fact, I should just plan to start the next one this month, which is Barchester Towers. I've got an e-omnibus of all 6 novels, happily waiting for me on my Kobo.

>13 PaulCranswick: Shush. I want my hysterical welcome.

Hi, Barbara, Gail, Lori, Paul, Roni, Steph, Diana, Heather, Kerry, Amber, Julia and Morphy - thank you all so much for visiting! I'm glad you're enjoying my flowers - particularly if they can brighten up what I know for many of you has been a long and difficult winter.

>11 Matke: I hope to have your company for both, Gail.

>13 PaulCranswick: Sez Mr Fourteen-Threads-And-It's-Barely-March. :)

>17 souloftherose: I'm glad of that, anyway!

It depends what kind of cross-dressing you're expecting. :)

>20 rosalita: Thrilled that you're going on with the Barchester novels, Julia. Please do post on the tutored read thread for Barchester Towers if you want or need to.

>21 Morphidae: MORRRRRRRRRRPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D

On a more serious note, very sorry to hear of your recent health issues. I hope things are looking up for you.

Regular visitors would know what it generally means when I set up a new thread - namely, that I'm badly behind with my reviewing and looking for inspiration.

That was certainly the plan yesterday, but I only got so far as setting up the thread before I was taken down by the most awful headache - the kind that only recedes if you lie down with your eyes shut, and so won't even let you read.

Of course, now that it's Monday morning I feel perfectly fine...

On the other hand, I had a bit of good book-buying fortune over the weekend. I've been chasing a copy of John Rhode's The Claverton Mystery and found an inexpensive copy listed on a local bidding site. I ended up securing that plus three other books for a total of $29.40 including shipping; the seller was nice enough to combine the latter when she didn't have to. The other three books were not things I was specifically looking for but were old and obscure enough to attract my attention. :)

So---

The Claverton Mystery by John Rhode (1932)
A Woman In Exile by Horace Annesley Vachell (1926)
The Girl From Nowhere by Mrs Baillie Reynolds (1910)
Comin' Thro' The Rye by Helen Mathers (1898)

Finished The Last Chronicle Of Barset for TIOLI #2.

Now reading The Noose by Philip MacDonald.

>22 lyzard: I'm sure I will be making good use of the tutored thread, Liz! I hadn't realized until I checked to make sure I had it starred that it was put up in 2012. Good grief, I'm 2 years behind. :-0

Yike!!

(That's a yike recognising how long I've been doing this, not a yike at where you're up to!)

Yike!! (from me, too!)

Congrats on your longevity as a tutor...and heartfelt thanks as well!

Is there a "tutored read" thread for 2014? If so, could you point me to it? Thx!

Thanks, Madeline, but as I said to Ilana during Pride And Prejudice, the success of a tutored read rests with the tutee and their willingness to talk and ask questions; responding is the easy bit. :)

Which sadly brings us to your second point---no, I didn't bother this year, because things had pretty much shrivelled down to "just me". Other than Suzanne's leading of Wolf Hall we really couldn't get the concept to work on a broader stage, unfortunately.

:(

Agreed. But it ended up looking like a weird exercise in self-promotion on my part, which was just too uncomfortable.

Having finished The Noose, I was doing a little research into the next title in the Anthony Gethryn series - in correct publication order, having been misled previously over the #3 and #4 series entries - and discovered that Philip MacDonald apparently wrote seven books in 1931. That can't be right - can it!?

ETA: Good grief! Make that eight!

ETA2: No, strike that, we're back to seven...

ETA3: Nope, we're definitely back at eight...

>31 lyzard: It might just work as a concept at a different time, as the group dynamic changes with constant flux in the membership base. There are the core members who have been here many many years, and then new people joining, other people leaving. And then reading interests evolving over time too. Might be worth giving the tutored reading concept on a wider scale a try again eventually because it seems like such an amazing feature!

Yes, it's difficult to know how to "advertise" outside the 75ers, which is not necessarily the best place for such a concept, or anyway certainly not the only place.

But then, we got "outsiders" for both Castle Of Wolfenbach and Pride And Prejudice, so hopefully the word is getting out there a little. :)

Well, perhaps it might be worth starting a separate group for it eventually so it's readily available LT-wide? Something else to think about...

Oh, Philip MacDonald - you prolific nuisance, you! I can't remember the last time I had so many OCD buttons pushed at once!

As far as I have been able to determine - and I *have* determined which is the next book in my series, so at least my breathing has slowed down a little - within a fourteen-month period, Philip MacDonald's publishing activities look something like this:

Persons Unknown - aka and much better known as The Maze - first published in the US late in 1930, republished early in 1931, published in the UK in 1932, which is usually, incorrectly, listed as its publication date; an Anthony Gethryn story and therefore the next in my series (Book #5).
The Wraith - 1931 (Book#6)
The Crime Conductor - published late 1931 in the US, early 1932 in the UK (Book #7)

Murder Gone Mad - 1931 - sort of a standalone, except that Anthony Gethryn gets name-checked and the main detective is a character who often appears in the Gethryn mysteries as a supporting character, leaving me to ponder if he should be considered an independent series character or not

Mystery At Friar's Pardon - 1931 - either a standalone or the first in a short series, published as by "Philip MacDonald" in the UK and as by "Martin Porlock" in the US

The Choice aka The Polferry Mystery aka The Polferry Riddle - 1931 - a standalone mystery

Harbour - 1931 - a standalone mystery published as by "Philip MacDonald" in the UK and by "Anthony Lawless" in the US

Moonfisher - 1931 - a horsey romance published as by "Anthony Lawless"

>35 Smiler69: Yes, that's something to think about. When we start Sense And Sensibility I might put that out for discussion.

Good idea. I think we might have quite a few people following along on that one.

It looks that way from the TIOLI shared reads - excellent! :)

Yes, the funny thing about the TIOLI listing is that I doubt very much I'll finish it in March considering the time it took me to get through P&P!

>36 lyzard: As a fan of many older mysteries, I've been enjoying your posts. Thanks for sharing! The Polferry Riddle is not a standalone, but part of the Anthony Gethryn series. My Crime Club edition names him on the title page, and he has already shown up early in Ch. 2 (I had just started reading it this evening).

Hello, Harry - thank you so much for visiting!

I bow down before your personal knowledge of The Polferry Riddle - your statement completely contradicts most of what is asserted out there in internet-land. Thanks for dropping in with that piece of information, it's much appreciated! It seems impossible that MacDonald would have published four Gethryn novels in one year, but that's how it seems to be falling out - unless you know better?? :)

Unfortunately, I don't really know more. I'm not surprised by the quantity written, but I'm a bit surprised that all were published within such a short period.

In case it helps in sorting out the order, I'll note that the last book listed before The Polferry Riddle in my copy (a rather battered first edition, per the publishing information) is Persons Unknown, which appears fifth in the list, with The Polferry Riddle sixth.

That is helpful - it confirms what I thought I knew from scrambling around in copyright databases. (Yes, I'm that obsessive!)

If he was churning out books at such a frantic rate, you can understand why his publisher might have wanted to "hide" one or two behind a pseudonym.

>31 lyzard: >37 lyzard:

But it ended up looking like a weird exercise in self-promotion on my part

I understand, but what a disappointment. Drneutron did that great tutorial with bell7 in the past as well.

So where do you keep a running list of own your tutorial schedule? If someone else later wants to be a tutor, how do they do that?

it's difficult to know how to "advertise" outside the 75ers

How about asking Loranne to put it into one of our State of the Thing newsletters? If you do that, set up the Tutored Read group first so others can first join, then follow what comes next.

The good thing about a group is that you could use actual messages to convey information rather than a wiki page (which some people either can't find or easily use).

I know this would be taking it outside of the 75ers group, but that would not be a bad thing.

>35 Smiler69: >38 Smiler69: >40 Smiler69:

separate group for it

Ilana, I like that idea. At least I'd know where to look for this information.

I think we might have quite a few people following along on that one.

Even me! Tee hee!!

the funny thing about the TIOLI listing is that I doubt very much I'll finish it in March

I'm known for moving most of my tutored reads from one month to the next month in the TIOLI challenges. :D

In theory I agree with you, but in practice it's a bit like you and TIOLI - I don't really want it turning into a big thing that has to be administered.

It fell apart before partly because we just couldn't find tutors at the right time, and partly because too few of the tutees were willing to do the work - in fact, they wanted to be "led" rather than leading. As I keep saying, it's the willingness of the tutee to ask the questions that make these things work or not. Too often it turned out that a tutee really just wanted a group read situation to keep them motivated.

But Ilana's idea of a group might be a way of putting out a feeler and seeing if this is the kind of thing that might appeal to a broader audience.

FYI, I will be setting up the thread for Sense And Sensibility next Friday - see you there! :)

Just stopping by to say I saw this and thought of you....

"I saw a sloth and thought of Liz."

I have now achieved my peak ambition in life! :)

>46 lyzard:

In theory I agree with you, but in practice it's a bit like you and TIOLI - I don't really want it turning into a big thing that has to be administered.

Well, I can understand that! :)

FYI, I will be setting up the thread for Sense And Sensibility next Friday - see you there!

Hooray!! ...and I don't even have to ask the questions. :)

Well, I just thought I'd mention it while you were passing through... :)

No reviews forthcoming as yet, but I have managed to get William Gresley's Bernard Leslie; or, A Tale Of The Last Ten Years, a hard-core Tractarian, anti-Evangelical novel from 1842, blogged---post here.

I think we might have quite a few people following along on that one.

I'll be picking up a copy of the book on the 15th at Barnes & Noble. I don't want to have to worry about returning it to the library. One of the rare times I'll actually buy a book! It's a classic though so there should be a cheap "generic" one.

>47 souloftherose: >48 lyzard: "I saw a sloth and thought of Liz."

Not just any sloth Liz, but a durn happy shortsighted* sloth which a passion for books! :-)

>49 SqueakyChu: Hooray!! ...and I don't even have to ask the questions.

Yes, that is the part that contributes to it taking me a long time to get through the books. Reading is one thing, but reading while looking for things to take notes and comment on is another thing altogether. It's a sure bet I'll be trying to fit S&S into a new TIOLI challenge in April!

>52 Morphidae: There's bound to be a cheap generic edition, but you would also find and even cheaper copy from a second hand source very easily, often in near new condition: http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=austen&n=200000237&tn=s...

* (or is that farsighted, can never keep them straight?)

Beautiful orchids. Now I have to go see if they are available here.

>53 Smiler69: Yeah, but I prefer new book smell and new book feel.

Plus I can get into our Barnes & Noble and fondle the books myself. I would have to send MrMorphy to the used book store because it isn't accessible for me.

>53 Smiler69: If that sloth's supposed to be me, definitely short-sighted. And astigmatic, and night blind, and with an epi-retinal membrane... But nevertheless happily reading! :)

Your willingness to take the time to ask the questions is VERY greatly appreciated, Ilana!

>54 Oberon: Hello, Erik - thank you so much for visiting! Glad you like the orchids.

>55 Morphidae: That's a bitch about the used bookstore, Morphy - I confess to a preference for "old book smell". :)

Japanese Tales Of Mystery And Imagination - Edogawa Rampo, his pseudonym derived from the Japanese pronunciation of "Edgar Allan Poe", was one of his country's earliest pioneers in the area of crime and mystery writing. Rampo was a devoted reader of American and European mysteries, but conversely his works were for many years little known outside of Japan. Collated and translated into English in 1956, Japanese Tales Of Mystery And Imagination represents the first concerted effort to bring this intriguing writer to the attention of a wider audience. Rampo himself was behind the volume's development; he could read English but not speak or write it, and he chose as his translator James B. Harris, an English-speaking Japanese-American who could also speak Japanese, but not read or write it. The two collaborated closely in choosing English words and phrases that would most accurately convey Rampo's intentions.

Certain themes recur throughout this collection of nine short stories. People become obsessed with the thought of committing the perfect crime; horror lurks in reflective surfaces that show us more than they ought; individuals learn to profoundly distrust their own perceptions; a sense that a crime is pre-destined becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. In some ways these stories seem like forerunners to the work of Roald Dahl: most of them come with a sting in the tale, although rarely one as outright nasty as those found in Dahl's short stories. Ignore the tags attached to this book that say "ghost stories": there are horrors in this volume, sure enough, but most of them emanate from within the human psyche.

The Human Chair: A hideously ugly furniture-builder makes the human contact that is otherwise denied him by designing a chair in which he can conceal himself.

The Psychological Test: A student who has committed a murder for profit and framed his friend finds himself pitted against a detective skilled in psychological investigation.

The Caterpillar: A young wife resigns herself to a bitterly difficult and lonely life caring for her husband, whose war injuries have left him limbless, facially disfigured, and mute. At first consoled by being considered noble and selfless, over time the wife begins to realise how complete is her power over her husband...

The Cliff: As newlyweds analyse the death of the wife's first husband, who she was forced to kill in self-defence, it begins to seem that she has a talent for attracting the wrong sort of man - or is it the other way around?

The Hell Of Mirrors: A young man studying optics becomes increasingly obsessed with the properties of mirrors, finally devoting all his time and money to the creation of a reflective orb that will show him everything...

The Twins: A murderer scheduled for execution makes his confession, admitting that he was not only guilty of the crime for which he was condemned, but another infinitely worse that no-one ever suspected...

The Red Chamber: The members of a society that meets to exchange stories of horror and crime get more than they bargained for when their newest member begins to recount how he committed ninety-nine murders without ever being suspected - and his plans for his one-hundredth...

Two Crippled Men: A man living with the belief that he committed a brutal murder while in a somnambulistic state discovers that the truth is even more horrifying...

The Traveler With The Pasted Rag Picture: A man travelling by train takes an interest in the pasted rag picture carried by a fellow passenger, which in spite of the crudeness of its design and construction features two dolls that are remarkably lifelike; frighteningly lifelike...

>57 lyzard:: Just the story behind that collection is reason enough to pick it up. Onto the list!

Cool! :)

Reading is one thing, but reading while looking for things to take notes and comment on is another thing altogether.

Love it!

>53 Smiler69:

It's a sure bet I'll be trying to fit S&S into a new TIOLI challenge in April!

I'll be moving my book right under yours! :)

Reading is one thing, but reading while looking for things to take notes and comment on is another thing altogether.

I'm really sorry I missed the Pride and Prejudice read with all of you. I'm sure it was fun. When reading Jane Austen books with Liz, it seemed as if there was always something about which I needed to make some cynical comment. Maybe I'll be more mellow now that I'll be just lurking on your forthcoming tutored read, my third JA book.

All comments are welcome, even cynical ones. :)

LOL!

>57 lyzard: Edogawa Rampo, his pseudonym derived from the Japanese pronunciation of "Edgar Allan Poe" Fascinating Liz! The stories sound like they might be ones I'd find a little too gruesome though.

Looking forward to S&S!

Hi, Heather! They're not particularly gruesome, except perhaps for The Caterpillar; there's more talk about what someone might do, or did do, than actual doing. :)

Looking forward to seeing you there!

I'm catching up after a few days away from LT, so happy weekend to you, Liz. I also wanted to report that I just finished the first Miss Marple, The Murder at the Vicarage. I liked it but it was interesting how Marple's characterization differs from my memory of how Christie wrote her later in the series. Or am I imagining things? Quite possible.

Thanks, Julia!

I don't know that she changes so much; the perspective of the novels do. Here we see her from the POV of the other characters, whereas later on we follow the narrative through her eyes. By the later novels the supporting cast have learned to view her with more respect. :)

Thank Heaven Fasting - Almost from the moment she disappoints her parents by being born a girl, Monica Ingram is aware that her goal in life - her only goal in life - is to make a good marriage. From her daughter's earliest childhood, Mrs Ingram drums into her head the lessons that will pave the way towards finding the right kind of husband: how to behave, talk and smile so as to be attractive to men; how to tell a man who is "all right" from one who is "not quite"; to encourage men who "may be of use" while shunning those who are "of no use"; to weigh every chance encounter with a man in terms of whether "it might lead to something". Monica is a docile pupil, and when she makes her debut it seems that she will be a success. Most of the young men to whom Monica is introduced are as predictable in their behaviour, and as rehearsed in their speech, as she is herself; her mother's lessons have not prepared her for anyone like Captain Christopher Lane, who not only disregards all the rules of conduct, but progresses swiftly to alarming behaviours such as hand-holding and an arm about the waist. Of course, these gestures can only mean that he loves her, as she loves him... When Monica's infatuation leads to her being caught in a compromising position, she is sure that Captain Lane will save her reputation by proposing; an off-hand note of apology upon his departure for India leaves her shattered. And then the whispers start - that Monica herself is "not quite"...

Earlier this year I described John D, MacDonald's The Girl, The Gold Watch & Everything as "the kind of book that makes a woman living in 2014 glad she is living in 2014"; and while in other respects you might struggle to find a novel less like MacDonald's 1962 fantasy, that description is equally true of E. M. Delafield's 1932 publication, Thank Heaven Fasting. In this novel, Delafield returns to themes of her earlier work, Consequences, in which the tribulations of a girl unable to fulfil her family's expectations are examined; but whereas that novel has a prevailing note of tragedy, Thank Heaven Fasting maintains throughout an air of detached irony - and is even more painful to read. Here, too, Delafield considers "consequences", namely, the consequences of girls being raised to think of nothing but marriage, of marriage as an end in itself. Everything in Monica's upbringing is geared to bring about this conclusion, and whatever does not tend to it - intellectual development, outside interests, friends who are just friends, rather than "useful" - is put aside as of no value. Delafield's earlier heroine finds herself different, unable to fit in; the pity of Monica Ingram is her absolute ordinariness, her desperate eagerness to be just like everybody else. There is nothing of the rebel or the iconoclast about Monica. She wants nothing more than to fulfil her mother's expectations; it barely ever crosses her mind that life might hold something else. Though girls are generally granted three years of social effort before public opinion begins to condemn them, Monica's inability to pull herself together following the shock of Captain Lane's defection ruins her first season, and she never afterwards regains her footing. Almost before she knows it she is classed amongst those who have tried and failed...

There is no doubt that E. M. Delafield knew very well that section of society which she dissects with such chilly precision; there is a degree of insight here that intimates painful personal experience. The automaton-like behaviour, the conversation by rote, the stern discouragement of personality or spontaneity, and the obsessive measuring of worth in terms of marital status or marital potential (I shudder to contemplate how many times a variant of the word "marriage" appears in this novel) evoke a stab-like wince on nearly every page. The middle section of Thank Heaven Fasting, which depicts the fallout from Monica's lapse, is almost unbearable. Caught between a father who barely tries to conceal how much his womenfolk have disappointed him, and a mother unable to process how everything has gone wrong so swiftly, Monica can only continue to go through the motions of a social life: to do anything else would not just be a failure, but an admission of failure. Between Mrs Ingram and Monica, a terrible conspiracy of silence develops; neither one of them ever allows the fear that dominates their thinking to find expression. When Mr Ingram is killed in an accident, it offers to his widow a perverse silver lining: she is able to tell herself that Monica is not a failure at all, but a devoted daughter who cannot bring herself to leave her mother... Though Monica herself is too shallow to be profoundly affected by her situation, she is contrasted with her friends - in the "useful" sense - the Marlowe sisters who, having more intellect and character, but equally unable to break the shackles of social expectation, increasingly show signs of severe psychological damage. When an unexpected means of escape is offered to the younger girl, Cecily, she is too paralysed by her circumstances to take it. Viewed by their own mother with brutal contempt, the Marlowe girls are eventually banished to a lonely and isolated life in the country, while Monica herself meets with a different fate - one which might fairly be described as a devastating happy ending...

    It seemed impossible that she should be like Frederica and Cecily---one of the innumerable girls who would give anything to get married and never had the chance. Ever since she could remember Monica had heard of women, young or middle-aged, of whom that was said, half-contemptuously and half-compassionately. People had only ceased to say it of Frederica and Cecily because it was now taken for granted, and, moreover, their mother had given up taking them into Society, and allowed them to spend most of the time in the country with an old governess, with whom they still went for walks as they had done in their schoolroom days. Monica went to stay with them; but she found the visits depressing, and her mother still said: "Visits of that kind are no real use. You don't meet anybody there, do you?"
    Meeting "anybody" meant unmarried young men...
    Her mother's anxiety and disappointment seemed to Monica harder to bear than almost anything. Sometimes Mrs Ingram would look at her daughter, thinking herself unobserved, with an expression of misery that was to Monica almost unendurable. Gradually it came to be an understood thing between them that this continual preoccupation, that overshadowed the whole of life, must never be mentioned...

>67 lyzard: I think that's it, Liz, both of those things: The later books are through Marple's eyes, and the people around her have more respect for her insights. I was startled and amused in this one by how contemptuous and dismissive everyone is of the "old cats" in the village who power the gossip machine.

>66 rosalita:, >67 lyzard: & >69 rosalita: Yes! I liked the fact that the vicar seemed to be more aware of her talents.

I've added The Murder at the Vicarage to TIOLI challenge #21.

>68 lyzard: Thank Heaven Fasting maintains throughout an air of detached irony - and is even more painful to read Gosh, and Consequences was pretty painful.

>70 souloftherose: Yes, Heather, at first he seems to agree with the rest of the village but quickly comes around to realizing that she is very sharp and observant.

The shift in perspective is disconcerting (though the real shift comes later, of course), but I have to sat that Len is one of my favourite Christie narrators. His self-inflicted romantic tribulations are rather touching, too.

I've added The Murder at the Vicarage to TIOLI challenge #21.

Noted - I hope to see you there!

Consequences was pretty painful.

This is a different kind of painful - not self-inflicted, exactly, but a willing part of the system that turns on her.

Finished Yesterday's Woman: Domestic Realism In The English Novel for TIOLI #18.

Now reading As We Are: A Modern Revue by E. F. Benson.

Interesting reading always, Liz. The Japanese book is certainly worth a try in my opinion. Weird and sort of creepy.

Len is one of my favorite Christie characters, too. His patience with their incorrigible maid-of-all-work is very funny. Having read most of Christie's work many times over, I realized that Miss Marple and Griselda have the same kind of attitude about maids, although Miss M. has a much better idea of how to train young girls to be quite satisfactory servants. My daughter thinks Miss M. is far too class conscious. What do you think?

Thanks, Gail!

I think she's a product of late-Victorian society and reflects that period's prevailing attitude towards servants - which had not changed all that much by the 1930s.

But at the same time, we know that Miss Marple takes young girls from the orphanage and trains them so that they can earn a living and support themselves, and that even after they've moved on, these girls tend to view her as, if not exactly a mother figure, someone who can be confided in and relied upon. (A number of the later stories involve a former servant writing to her for advice.) So I'd say she's doing better than most. :)

The Secret Of Father Brown - While visiting his friend Flambeau, who has married and settled down in Spain, a slightly exasperated Father Brown attempts to explain to a persistent visitor how he is able to solve crimes, mostly to refute the suggestion that his method is either a science or, conversely, some occult power. It's a matter, he explains, of getting inside...

"You see, I had murdered them all myself... I had planned out each of the crimes very carefully," went on Father Brown, "I had thought out exactly how a thing like that could be done, and in what style or state of mind a man could really do it. And when I was quite sure that I felt exactly like the murderer myself, of course I knew who he was..."

In The Mirror Of The Magistrate, a revolutionary poet is tried after being found near the scene of a magistrate's murder - but why was he there so long after the murder? - and why was a mirror shattered inside the house, when the murder took place in the garden? A famous burglar is killed during the commission of a robbery in The Man With Two Beards. When found he is wearing the famous false beard that is his trademark - so why is a second beard discovered amongst his effects? A man in a turban and robe and with bare feet is responsible for the theft of some fish made of gold in The Song Of The Flying Fish - but how did such a niticeable figure get away without being seen? In The Actor And The Alibi, the theatrical manager, Mandeville Muldoon, is murdered in his locked office while his entire cast is having a dress rehearsal, and the only other people in the theatre are in sight of one another... In The Vanishing Of Vaudrey, a man disappears from the main street in a village, to be found with his throat cut on the banks of a river some distance away... When his niece receives a proposal, Father Brown investigates the estrangement between the young man and his father, who declares that while his son will remain his heir, he is guilty of The Worst Crime In The World... A denouncer of frauds is delighted when a so-called mystic seems responsible for the theft of a jewel in The Red Moon Of Meru, but as Father Brown well knows, we should beware of those who protest too much... The strange behaviour of a reclusive nobleman is supposedly the result of undue influence by Catholic priests, but in The Chief Mourner Of Marne Father Brown uncovers a terrible secret connected to a duel fought some thirty years earlier...

Overall, The Secret Of Father Brown is a bit of a letdown compared to its series predecessor, The Incredulity Of Father Brown. For one thing we find G. K. Chesterton back in the tiresome business of setting up paper tigers (scientists on one hand, anti-Catholics on the other), although thankfully this does not dominate here as it does in one or two of the earlier collections. And as always, it is necessary for the reader to go along with Chesterton's world-view, including his blithe assumption that the Catholic church has a monopoly on wisdom and morality. However, this is balanced by this collection's grave consideration of the human capacity for evil - and conversely, for repentence and redemption. The weaker stories in the collection tend also to be the lighter, less complex ones; while the best ones are very dark indeed. The Vanishing Of Vaudrey, for example, involves a horrible murder - which, as it turns out, was committed in order to prevent an even more horrible murder... The Chief Mourner Of Marne, with its strange, isolated, tortured central character, and its rumination on foregiveness and and charity, is generally considered one of Chesterton's small masterpieces, but I have to say that my favourite story in this collection is The Worst Crime In The World, which begins with laughter in an art gallery, and ends in, well...

"Only the other day I was just going to tell my niece that there are two types of men who can laugh when they are alone. One might almost say that the man who does it is either very good or very bad. You see, he is either confiding the joke to God or confiding it to the Devil. But anyhow he has an inner life. Well, there really is a kind of man who confides the joke to the Devil. He does not mind if nobody sees the joke; if nobody can be safely allowed even to know the joke. The joke is enough in itself, if it is sufficiently sinister and malignant."

>72 lyzard: I liked Len's personality enormously as well, but I have to say that he seemed to be what I as an American think of as a stereotypical British man. He is obviously besotted by his much-younger wife but I'm not sure the word "love" is ever uttered either between them or in his narration. I mean, at the beginning he introduces her by telling us exactly why she is so unsuitable to be a vicar's wife, then says something like "I have no idea why I proposed to her 24 hours after meeting her." Um, because you fell in love with her, maybe?? Stiff upper lip and all that, what what? (Apologies for my terrible attempt at writing British slang.)

>76 lyzard: I tried to read The Man Who Knew Too Much and I wouldn't say I didn't like it, but when I put it down I promptly forgot I had ever started it. I should try again, I suppose, but there are so many books out there ...

Having read much fiction from this era I can tell you that this sort of verbal reticence was not at all unusual (at least in fiction!). The trick is to learn to read it backwards: I knew perfectly well that Griselda was completely unsuited to being a vicar's wife but I fell so desperately in love with her I prosposed before I had known her even a day...

I think too that Len is constantly embarrassed (in, yes, a very British way) over his complete inability to think or feel the way he theoretically believes a vicar should - as seen, for example, in that outrageous opening sentence. :)

I haven't read any Chesterton yet outside of the Father Brown stories but, sigh, he's on the list...

I think too that Len is constantly embarrassed (in, yes, a very British way) over his complete inability to think or feel the way he theoretically believes a vicar should

Yes!

Finished As We Are: A Modern Revue for TIOLI #5.

Now reading The Princess Of All Lands by Russell Kirk.

Testing

Anyone else having trouble posting spoiler warnings?

Hi Liz, I just tried to post a spoiler warning over on my thread and it didn't work. Strange, as it works when I "Preview" the message, but once it is posted it doesn't. Is that the same for you?

Just tried here as well and the same thing happened. It works as a Preview, but doesn't when the message is posted.

I'm finding that it *is* working, but I can't "see" it on my work computer; when I check the same post on my home computer, it is fine.

Weird, huh? Possibly a cosmic hint that I should stop LT-ing at work. :)

Hi Liz!

>68 lyzard: - Wonderful review! What a horrid little society a segment of humanity managed to whip up by that time. It does make some good reading though (Is that a bad thing to say?) I will look for this when I'm out Virago scavenging, which is often.

I wonder if that's the same for me. If you don't mind me cluttering up your thread, I will post a spoiler and perhaps you can let me know if it works.

Spoiler: I have just started to read The Jewel In the Crown and I really like it.

>84 DorsVenabili: Thanks, Kerri! Yes, it's a beautifully written book that made me squirm from beginning to end. :)

>85 DeltaQueen50:, Judy I'm finding now that the spoiler warnings are working for me, but apparently only after they've had some time to propagate. I can see the one I posted above now, which I couldn't before, as well as yours.

The Man In The Dark - Life for Alexander Kinloch has become brutally hard. Once a promising medical student with a taste for poetry, he was twice seriously wounded during the war; the second instance left him blind. Since that time things have gone from bad to worse. Now destitute and homeless, he steels himself to swallow his pride and ask help of a former fellow-student, Dr Peter Dunn, who is comfortably situated in Ealing. Though it means little to Kinloch as he makes his way carefully through London, a dense fog has almost brought the city to a standstill. As he approaches Dunn's house, Kinloch suffers the humiliation of being apprehended as a vagrant. At Kinloch's insistence the policeman walks him to the home of Dr Dunn who, though dismayed at his condition, recognises his old friend. However, from here the meeting goes badly: a clash between Kinloch's thin skin and Dunn's tactlessness finds the blind man storming off into the foggy night, not a penny the better for his long journey. Consumed by his anger, Kinloch loses his way, and is hugely relieved when a man speaks to him - and pathetically grateful when the same man offers him five pounds to do a simple job: merely sit in the room while he holds a meeting. Seated where he cannot overhear what is being discussed, at a certain point the puzzled but obedient Kinloch draws attention to his presence by making a noise---and then all hell breaks loose: the meeting turns violent, exploding into noises that can only mean murder. A panicked Kinloch tries to flee but only blunders into the walls and the furniture. The killer then turns on him---until suddenly, unexpectedly, a woman intervenes...

Published in 1928, the novel that introduced John Alexander Ferguson's Scottish private detective, Francis McNab, is more correctly classified as a thriller than a mystery. Though it has at its heart a murder that must be solved, the narrative is primarily concerned with the fate of Sandy Kinloch after he inadvertently becomes---a witness, if certainly not an eye-witness---to murder. The reader only knows what Kinloch knows; there is, consequently, very little of the standard whodunit about The Man In The Dark. A detective plot does develop, however, running in parallel with the story of Kinloch's subsequent fate. The body of the murdered man is discovered by journalist Geoffrey Chance of the Record, who recognises the dead man as Ponsonby Paget, the proprieter of another newspaper, The Eye Opener, which is devoted to exposing corruption and scandal in high places. It was, in fact, Chance who was supposed to be the third party at Ponsonby's meeting, but the fog intervened. Chance calls the police and his newspaper, and finds himself assigned to cover the story in association with Francis McNab, who is attached to the Record as a crime analyst.

The Man In The Dark is curiously structured, being broken into four lengthy sections with three different narrators. It opens with a narrative from the point of view of Kinloch, wich carries the reader through his contentious meeting with Dr Dunn, his hiring by Ponsonby Paget, the murder and its aftermath. It is the belated revelation that he is blind and cannot identify the murderer that saves his life in the first instance; although that it continues to hang in the balance Kinloch never doubts. In the end he is driven away by the woman and taken to a secluded cottage where the two of them can lie low. Recognising that he is effectively a prisoner who may be sentenced to death at any moment, the desperate Kinloch sets himself to the task of determining, through aural clues, where he is, and the real identity of the woman he knows only as Stella... Another of the narratives is from the perspective of Dr Dunn, who ironically enough is called into the Paget case as medical examiner. While at the scene of the crime, Dunn recognises Kinloch's walking-stick, which has been left behind---and says nothing. Already wracked with guilt over having allowed his meeting with his old friend to degenerate into a confrontation, and at letting him leave without giving him the help he came for, Dunn dedicates himself to the task of finding and protecting Kinloch---even if that means working in opposition to the police... The remaining two narratives are by Godfrey Chance, who recounts McNab's investigation of the murder, and his escalating conflict with the arrogant and unimaginative Inspector Snargrove. Although at length McNab manages to convince Snargrove that the man who fled the scene was blind, the police detective will not be budged from his belief that the blind man is also the murderer, and sets a manhunt in motion. McNab, conversely, concludes from the physical evidence that a third party was the killer, that a woman was also present---and that Kinloch is in deadly danger, if not dead already...

"There are many who are what you might call one-act criminals. Any policeman will tell you what a troublesome problem they make. And they would be a more trying problem for the law than they are but for one fact---the fact that in their inexperience they are apt to make mistakes. Take this case. That room in Ealing was scattered with evidence. We had a table, you remember, almost loaded with exhibits. Snargrove at once pronounced the murder to be the work of an amateur. He was quite right. But---mark this---the man did not follow up the 'mistakes' left in the room by making others afterwards, as Snargrove expected he would. Once he got away from the house he left no traces and gave no sign. There was no bungling. And when we know that he had to carry a blind man away with him, and dispose of him somewhere, surely it is obvious to you that we are dealing with a man of remarkable talent and resources."

I accidentally stumbled into the middle of the Francis McNab novels last year with Death Comes To Perigord, which is the third or fourth in the series (I'm not sure yet). I did enjoy that novel, particularly its setting in Guernsey, but I had some problems with the narrator, Dr Peter Dunn, who is---not to put too fine a point on the matter---a bit of a dick. In this respect The Man In The Dark has done me a favour: now that I know that Dunn has always been a bit of a dick, and that I'm not necessarily supposed to like him, I think I will get along better with the later novel, and will re-read it when I get back to that point in the series.

Hi Liz! Just dropping by to say I am thoroughly enjoying The Last Chronicle of Barset! I am only on chapter 17 now but I am hoping to catch up so I can comment on the group read thread in real time.

Hi, Heidi! Very glad to hear you're enjoying it! Please drop in at the thread as soon as you like - we have readers scattered from the beginning to the end, and comments on wherever you're up to are most welcome! :)

Yes! The spoiler warnings are working. :)

Everytime I see one of those green Penguin covers I want to kick myself. About a year ago I found a box full of assorted green Penguins at the second hand book store and I could have bought the whole box for $30.00. I didn't and I have regretted it ever since!

Oh, Judy, Judy, Judy... Don't you know that we only regret the books we DON'T buy!? :)

So very true, Liz. So very true.

>92 lyzard: *snork!* Words to live by, even if my husband doesn't agree...

Surely you're not going to let a little thing like a husband interfere with your book-buying!? :)

Today begins a tutored read of Jane Austen's Sense And Sensibility. The thread is here, and everyone is welcome to participate or just lurk!

The thread is here:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/171523

>95 lyzard: To be honest, he knows better than to try to interfere. Ha!

>97 Morphidae: Oops! Thanks, Morphy! Not sure what went wrong there - makes it look as if the tutored read thread is some sort of deadly secret. :)

ETA: Ah! I left out the inverted commas.

>98 scaifea: I'm glad to hear it!

Finished The Princess Of All Lands for TIOLI #21.

Now reading The Claverton Mystery by John Rhode.

Heavens. That's not like me at all

As I've mentioned previously, although they were popular and influential at the time it is extremely difficult these days to get hold of the early entries in John Rhode's Dr Priestley series: either they are ridiculously expensive or simply unavailable. I've been trying to be pragmatic, and to just move on if getting hold of a certain book simply isn't feasible, but as you'd appreciate this often requires a struggle with my OCD.

Lately things in this area have been particularly frustrating. I've been forced to skip over three books in a row: The Tragedy On The Line (#10), The Hanging Woman (#11) - both from 1931 - and The Mystery At Greycombe Farm aka The Fire At Greycombe Farm (#12) from 1932.

Possibly as a result of all this, when I got my hands on an inexpensive copy of The Claverton Mystery - #15 in the series, from 1933 - I started reading it at once.

That's right. You heard me. I'm reading something out of order...

By the way---can I just say how immensely annoying I find it that where a non-American book is published under a different title in America, the touchstones are increasingly offering only the American title??

>102 lyzard: I completely empathise with you Liz. Just like my spell-check always defaults to American spelling, though I've specified Canadian English, so I had to go over the word 'empathise' to get the 's' in. Which I guess makes for double empathy?

Oh. that drives me crazy too. I spend a lot of time changing 'z' to 's' and putting in 'u' and 'e'. :)

The title business seems to me just plain wrong, since it privileges an alternative title over an original title.

Yes well, lots of things aren't quite right with the touchstones. But I do agree with you. One thing that drives me bonkers is when referring to a major work like Anna Karenina (as just one example) which should take you to the novel by Tolstoy, pure and simple, but not so, and there are so many options for different volumes and editions and criticisms of the original that it's practically impossible to find the correct one. Just ridiculous. I would put a complaint in the bug report thread.

It's something to do with the weighting of the various catalogued editions, I believe, and therefore not strictly a bug. But yes, I flinch whenever the first touchstone offered is anything other than book by author.

The Noose - Anthony Gethryn is called home urgently from Spain by his wife, Lucia. When he arrives in a fog-bound London, it is to find a distressed Lucia caring for Selma Bronson, the Danish wife of a former boxer, Dan Bronson, who has been convicted of murder. Lucia believes that Bronson is innocent, and after he speaks with the devoted yet clear-eyed Mrs Bronson, Gethryn believes it too. But word has just come that Bronson's final appeal has been rejected, and that he is to hang in five days... Despite the seeming impossibility of the task, Gethryn gives in to Lucia's pleading and promises that he will try to help: making it clear, however, that there is very little hope. His first stop is Scotland Yard, where his previous successes in difficult cases have earned him some good friends - who, moreover, trust his judgement. When Assistant Commissioner Lucas and Detective-Inspector Arnold Pike hear that Gethryn believes Bronson may have been wrongly convicted, they are deeply dismayed; Lucas gives Gethryn the case file to study, as requested. Studying the circumstances of the murder, Gethryn appreciates the objection of the pragmatic Mrs Bronson: her husband might have committed murder, but not one in which he lured a man into a trap and then shot him in the back. It occurs to Gethryn that perhaps two men were lured into a trap... Gethryn recruits Francis Dyson and Walter Flood, two investigative journalists attached to the newspaper he co-owns, and acquires an unexpected but most welcome collaborator when Inspector Pike gives up his leave to assist with the investigation. With so time desperately short, Gethryn insists that there is no point in being subtle: on the contrary, their best chance is to put the cat amongst the pigeons as thoroughly as possible, and hope that someone who has been feeling secure up to this point is frightened into a false step...

I don't know what was going on in England towards the end of the 1920s, whether there was a high-profile case in which an innocent person was hanged or whether debate over the death penalty was volatile at that time for some other reason, but this is the fourth or fifth mystery I've read published across a brief space of time to deal with the conviction and condemnation of an innocent man. Moreover, Philip MacDonald's 1930 novel, The Noose, acts almost as a critique of the jury system itself: not in the sense that juries are necessarily wrong, but rather in questioning such a system in a matter of life and death. When Gethryn goes over the police file of the Blackatter murder, he understands perfectly why Dan Bronson was convicted: there was a quarrel between the two men; Bronson was found unconscious at the scene, having apparently tripped and knocked himself out, with the murder weapon still in his hand; a note from Blackatter arranging a meeting was found in Bronson's pocket. And yet almost from the beginning of his own investigation, cracks in the prosecution's case begin to appear. The testimony given in the trial was - maliciously or unconsciously - misleading. Details were omitted; the physical evidence was open to interpretation. Gethryn believes that they are not dealing with one murder, but two: the successful murder of Blackatter, and the prospective murder of Bronson, in which the judicial system has been manipulated into doing the actual killing...

While I still find Anthony Gethryn rather irritating - he's one of those "hiding a razor-sharp mind behind blather" types who emerged in the wake of Lord Peter Wimsey - the novels that contain him are getting better. It is also true that since his debut in The Rasp, Philip MacDonald has toned Gethryn down a little - or at least, begun to share the narrative / perspective duties around a bit more, so we do not have "blather" forced on us from beginning to end. On the other hand, the worshipful attitude of the other characters towards Gethryn is hard to take: Lucia's starry-eyed devotion is one thing, but when it comes to an experienced police detective from Scotland Yard "deifying" Gethryn, it's a bit much. But despite these irritations, The Noose is both a good mystery and (it could hardly be otherwise, given its premise) a taut, suspenseful read, with an interesting motive behind all the violence. To Gethryn's credit, he instantly realises he will need help - a LOT of it - if he is to get anywhere, and he also wins points for including Lucia in his band of amateur (or busman's-holidaying) detectives. Even she thinks he's just behind kind when he sends her to exploit a casual acquaintance and infiltrate the local gentry, but in fact her observations and overhearings are vital for getting the investigation on the right track. Gethryn himself sets out to make a friend out of Tommy Harrigan, the developmentally disabled young man who found Blackatter's body and the unconscious Bronson. Talking to him, Gethryn realises that in order to help him through the trauma of testifying and so he would not become confused by details, his well-meaning father coached him to tell a simplified version of events. The missing details, Gethryn sees, are crucial... Meanwhile, Pike makes the rounds of the local constabulary to see what he can pick up off the record, while experienced journalists Dyson and Flood play a version of "good cop, bad cop" with the prosecution's star witness, Mr Dollboys, who testified he saw a confrontation between Bronson and Blackatter shortly before the murder, and who is obviously deeply perturbed by the re-investigation. Mr Dollboys is subsequently found dead, an apparent suicide. When Gethryn proves that this, too, was murder, he knows conclusively that Dan Bronson is innocent; but the investigators have lost forever what Dollboys might have told them, and time is ticking inexorably away...

"Our starting-point is the knowledge---knowledge, Pike, that Bronson did not kill Blackatter. It's established, therefore, that X killed Blackatter. My next step is to say that X has endeavoured to kill Bronson as well, the method chosen for Bronson being a rope instead of a gun. Because, if X merely desired a scapegoat, then he could easily have found a more plausible one than Bronson. Read through that dossier again, and remember all you read in it---and into it---of Blackatter's character. Not a nice man, you know... That man must have had enemies in thick clusters over half the country. Real enemies, I mean. And yet, before the night of the murder, his only visible point of contact with Bronson is Bronson's refusal to have him in the pub or anywhere near it. No, X could have found a hundred scapegoats easier to plant it on than Bronson. But he chose Bronson. Therefore it was a double death he was after---a particular double death..."

>102 lyzard: can I just say how immensely annoying I find it that where a non-American book is published under a different title in America, the touchstones are increasingly offering only the American title??

I'm getting an opposite problem at the moment. On my thread I'm busy singing the praises of a book called The Wall by Marlen Haushofer. But The Wall doesn't seem to exist on the touchstone list at all - only the original German edition Die Wand, which confusingly then shows up as The Wall. Can't work that one out at all!

>87 lyzard: The Man in the Dark sounds interesting.

>101 lyzard: "That's right. You heard me. I'm reading something out of order..." Nooo!

Just saw this today. It made me think of you. http://www.amazon.ca/Sparky-Jenny-Offill/dp/0375870237

Liz, am back again, coming directly from Heather's thread (essentially reposting here), where she just posted a review of Castle of Wolfenbach. It inspired me to add all the Horrid Novels to my wishlist, and as I was searching Amazon for Kindle books, just found The Complete Northanger Horrid Novel Collection (9 Books of Gothic Romance and Horror) as a Kindle book for just $1.

Here is the blurb from Amazon.ca:

A total of nine early Gothic novels are mentioned in the text of Northanger Abbey, although only the first seven have become known as the "Horrid Novels". This collection contains all nine works, including:
Castle of Wolfenbach (1793) by Eliza Parsons
The Necromancer; or, The Tale of the Black Forest (1794) by Ludwig Flammenberg
The Mysterious Warning, A German Tale (1796) by Eliza Parsons
Horrid Mysteries (1796) by the Marquis de Grosse
Clermont, A Tale (1798) by Regina Maria Roche
The Midnight Bell (1798) by Francis Lathom
Orphan of the Rhine (1798) by Eleanor Sleath
The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) by Ann Radcliffe
The Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents (1797) by Ann Radcliffe

I had already gotten Udolpho late last year as both an audio and a Kindle, but I guess I'm all set now! I guess I'll have to make a challenge of it if I want to be able to read Northanger Abbey again within the decade!

Now I have a few more books in common with you in my library! :-)

>108 SandDune: Rhian, I've got a book like that on my wishlist, too, though I can't offhand remember what it is - the only other person who has catalogued it has a non-English language edition so that's what comes up both in the touchstones and when you search for it.

>109 souloftherose: Hi, Heather! Yes, it is interesting...and available online...

Nooo!

Just this once. Just this once. :)

The Priestley books aren't particularly interconnected, so you don't run any risk doing it. I certainly wouldn't do it with the Gethryn books, for example, which constantly refer to events in other books. (Which is how I knew that The Noose, which was listed as #4 in the series, was actually #3 - grr!!)

>110 Smiler69: It IS me!!!! That's exactly how I look when the alarm goes off!

>111 Smiler69: $1.00!? Oh, dear - we really must persuade Madeleine somehow that she needs to invest in a Kindle!

We do have vague long-term plans for those other books, Ilana, and would love to have you along for the ride. (And you, too, Heather!) As Heather mentioned, we may be doing The Italian sooner rather than later (perhaps May or June). If you were interested in having some company for Udolpho, I certainly wouldn't mind a re-read.

Finished The Claverton Mystery for TIOLI #5.

Now reading The Death Of A Millionaire by G. D. H. and Margaret Cole.

>112 lyzard: It IS me!!!! That's exactly how I look when the alarm goes off!

That is not what I meant and you know it! :-)

:D

I wasn't offended, I assure you!

An interesting move from The Claverton Mystery to The Death Of A Millionaire. I don't know if John Rhode had a sense of humour, but his Dr Priestley certainly doesn't; the Coles, on the other hand (who were very active in political and social reform), keep tongue ever-so-slightly in cheek while describing the myriad privileges of the rich and titled*. The shift in tone from po-faced to facetious is almost jolting.

(*Of course, it's only a matter of time before one of these hitherto privileged persons ends up very dead...)

>111 Smiler69:

Now I have a few more books in common with you in my library!

...and me! ;)

The NA "horrid novels"! What fun!! Liz got me into those...and for that I am grateful. I guess I sort of side-stepped there into gothic novels, but those were even more entertaining. I'm curious to see in what direction your tutored reads with Liz goes.

I am so sorry I never got to follow along with Pride and Prejudice, but so far I'm keeping up with Sense and Sensibility and liking it a lot. It helps that I had read Emma and Northanger Abbey already with Liz. That keeps my current complaint quotient much lower! ;)

>117 SqueakyChu: Madeline, you've mentioned feeling sorry you'd missed out on the Pride and Prejudice tutorial several times now, but you really haven't. It's still there and available to guide you through the book, as it is intended to be. I've used some tutorial threads after they weren't "live" anymore and found them very helpful and I know others have done so too. I'm anticipating you'll probably say something like "yes, but I don't get to participate" and that's fair enough, but still not a good excuse to NOT refer to a perfectly good and very helpful resource!

Hi Liz! :-)

>118 Smiler69:

You're right, Ilana. I'll keep that in mind.

You could also have a tutored read of your own at a later date, too; there's no reason we can't do the same book twice if there was a call for it.

Maybe that, but I like doing the gothic novels with you better. :)

Yes, yes - hint taken! :D

I think I'll enjoy the gothic novels. And I'll definitely refer to the tutorial threads for those you've covered already.

I find that the route my reading has taken me with the "tutored reads" has been very interesting. It started with my niece (this is she on imdb) declaring she wanted to be an English major at Princeton and taking a course in 19th century English lit. Much to my chagrin, I decided to follow along with what she was reading. That didn't last very long at all! I started with JA's Emma...and through the tangent of the Northhanger Abbey "horrid novels", I found a whole other genre of fun 19th century (or earlier) English lit to enjoy!

In the meantime, my niece has changed majors. She's now studying international affairs and hopes to go to law school. I did tell her, before she started college, that I loved her idea of being an English lit major but that was a very difficult way of making a living. She'll be fine. :)

>124 SqueakyChu: I remember your niece's reading list being your initial motivation Madeline, and I think it's just wonderful this encouraged you to go so far out of your comfort zone. I remember really enjoying both the Emma and Northanger Abbey tutorials, and consequently, loving the novels themselves too. I haven't read any 18th century gothic literature yet, but something tells me I will enjoy it too, if anything for it's 'camp' appeal, but we'll see. I do plan on following the tutorials for those books you've already covered like The Monk for instance. Oops, just saw I'm repeating myself from >123 Smiler69:. Either I'm getting old or I'm not quite awake yet.

Hi Liz! :-)

>125 Smiler69:

The Monk was my favorite! I loved the ending... :)

Hi Liz!

*Happy weekend wave*

>107 lyzard: Excellent review of The Noose Liz. That is one I have actually read as it was owned by my uncle many years ago and he used to give me a run of his strangely assorted little library of books.

Have a lovely Sunday.

>125 Smiler69: & >126 SqueakyChu: Hi! :)

Don't mind me, you too: I'm rather enjoying this brief thread hijack; that hardly ever happens to me!

>127 Ameise1: Hi, Barbara - that's lovely, thank you. :)

>128 wilkiec: Thanks, Diana, you too!

>129 PaulCranswick: Thanks, Paul! It's always an extra thrill to get a visit from someone who's read one of my books! :)

Well, that was fun...again.

Some of you may remember that last year finished with a tree falling on my house. After three months of argument between the strata company, the insurers and the builders, they finally came to fix it last week; till then there was just a tarp over the damage.

So everything seemed fine until Saturday night, when it became horribly clear that in fixing the hole in the roof, the builders had trapped a possum in there...

So I called our wildlife rescue people, who put me onto a possum specialist, whose first concern (and rightly so) was the possum. Picture me, bad balance and all, perched up a ladder manoeuvring a bowl of food through the manhole in the ceiling and into the crawlspace beyond.

Bruce the Possum Guy came on Sunday and (thankfully) took over ladder duties. He confirmed that the food had been eaten and put two baited traps up there. Come Monday morning, I ventured back up the ladder to find a very frightened possum peering back at me from one of the cages.

The poor little thing, a juvenile brushtail, has now been removed and relocated.

Thank goodness all concerned are safe and in their own habitats now. Good grief, what a year for you Liz.

Is that the actual possum that was trapped in your roof? I want to say poor thing, because it must have been a harrowing episode for him (or her), but he was lucky enough to get trapped in the house of a very humane and caring lady. Glad to know he's off to a better place (i.e. while still alive!).

eta: how did you know it was a possum specifically to begin with?

>132 AuntieClio: Hi, Steph! Yes, I could do with a little less "excitement". :)

>133 Smiler69: No, that's just to show those who might not know what a brushtail possum looks like. Probably "her", since there is a sex imbalance, plus this sort of thing is usually nesting behaviour.

I didn't know for sure, but the odds were very high. I'm in quite a bushy area and possums are common here; I'm used to them using my roof and verandah as a highway, which is why I didn't pay any attention at first to the noises---at least until they were directly overhead in my bathroom! Possums are notorious for finding their way into the nooks and crannies of houses and making their nests there. The usual way of dealing with that is to wait for the middle of the night, when the possum will be out foraging, and block off the way back in. Of course in this case the only exit was through my bedroom ceiling!

So glad the possum relocation worked out for all concerned, Liz, and that your repairs were finally done. Now I'm heading over to the S&S thread to star it.

Look forward to seeing you there, Roni!

About how large are they Liz?

>135 ronincats: You are very welcome over on the S&S thread Roni!

I was going to say "the size of a small dog", but an adult possum would be larger than Coco, I'm sure! So I'll settle for "the size of a large cat". :)

Males can be a lot bigger, though, and are generally quite larger than females.

I had a great time catching up on the S&S thread, Liz and Ilana, even though I haven't commented on it over there yet.

>131 lyzard: I'm glad they were able to rescue the possum but I'm so sorry you had yet another thing to deal with. Is the work on your roof finished now?

>139 ronincats: Good to hear, Roni - please feel free to join in.

>140 souloftherose: That particular piece of work, yes. I actually suspect I have another problem area but just at the moment I'm sticking my fingers in my ears and going "La! La! La!" about it. :)

Meanwhile, in between wildlife wrangling---

Finished The Death Of A Millionaire for TIOLI #2.

Now reading The Murder At The Vicarage by Agatha Christie.

Oh my, a possum in your attic is worse than a bee in your bonnet (or may be the cause?)! At any rate, I'm glad the thing is out of there!

And yay for Christie!

Not that we don't have enough on our reading lists but I just saw a facebook post by Valancourt Books post about a rare, gothic novel they're publishing: Leopold Warndorf by Henry Summersett

http://www.valancourtbooks.com/leopold-warndorf-1800.html

>144 souloftherose: Just saw it's available as a Kindle book here too Heather, along with three other titles by Summersett. This one definitely sounds wickedly fun. Thanks for the link!

Hi Liz! :-)

>143 scaifea: Hi, Amber! Yes, me too, poor thing!

Always glad to chat to another Christie fan. :)

>144 souloftherose: Away, foul temptress!!!! :D

>145 Smiler69: Valancourt Books are to me what Folio Editions are to you, Ilana!

Finished The Murder At The Vicarage for TIOLI #21. (Shared read - yay!)

Now reading A Modern Hero by Louis Bromfield.

An Infamous Army - Though they were dear to her own heart, the straight historical fictions of Georgette Heyer were never as popular or as well-received as her romances. Despite Heyer's talent and her meticulous research, there was always something stiff and a bit ponderous about her historical fictions, a shortcoming highlighted even more when when these "serious" works were compared to the lightness of touch that characterised the books Heyer herself thought of as "mere entertainments". The one exception to this general rule was Heyer's 1937 novel, An Infamous Army, which was better than well-received: it swiftly earned a reputation as one the best and most accurate accounts of the Battle of Waterloo ever penned, either in a novel or a work of non-fiction, and despite its fictionalised elements was adopted as a teaching text not only at general schools and universities, but at a number of military colleges including Sandhurst.

But even this apparent exception is not entirely so: despite its claims to be classed amongst Heyer's straight historical novels, An Infamous Army is a work rooted deeply in her lighter fiction. It brings back the central characters of Regency Buck as Lord and Lady Worth, now three years married and the parents of a son; while Worth's brother, Charles, is now Colonel Audley and a member of the Duke of Wellington's staff. The novel's heroine is the Lady Barbara Childe, granddaughter of Mary and Dominic from Devil's Cub, who show up in due course. This blending of the fictional and non-fictional allows Heyer to address both sides of the issue, to show the Battle of Waterloo from the points of view of both the military participants, and the civilians stranded in Brussels, who can only wait and hope. In tackling this subject matter, Heyer must contend with the long shadow of William Makepeace Thackeray, as she acknowledges in her preface; but she holds her own with aplomb.

An Infamous Army opens in the spring of 1815, when the Earl and Countess of Worth form part of the English contingent that, after many years of being confined at home by the ongoing European conflict, flocked to the continent in the wake of the Treaty of Fontainebleau and the exile of Napoleon to Elba. Those who have made their headquarters in Brussels are shocked and disturbed by Napoleon's subsequent escape and resumption of command, but on the whole they hold their ground and carry on with a whirl of social activities, comforting themselves that even if the threat posed by Napoleon is genuine, the Duke of Wellington will soon arrive to take charge. Excusing himself from the Congress of Vienna, Wellington arrives in Brussels with his staff; and as he not only encourages his officers to join in the ongoing festivities, but joins in him himself, there is little to tell the gathered pleasure-seekers that the threat posed by Napoleon is far greater than they imagine; that a hasty coalition of ill-assorted allies and inexperienced troops will soon be pitted in bloody conflict against a dangerously skilful opponent... Lady Worth is delighted by the arrival of her brother-in-law, not least because she has a marital scheme in mind involving her young friend, Lucy Devenish; but such schemes are dashed to the ground the first time Charles Audley lays eyes on the beautiful Lady Barbara Childe, a member of the notorious Alastair family and a young widow with a scandalous reputation in her own right. To the astonishment of all Brussels - and the horror of his family - Charles' direct and passionate courtship ends with the announcement of his engagement to Barbara. The idea of Lady Barbara marrying at all, least of all a younger son with no prospects, is greeted with a mixture of incredulity and ridicule, which Barbara herself cannot help heeding. Though powerfully drawn to Charles, a bitterly unhappy marriage made when she was little more than a child has left her fiercely independent and impatient of all restraint. A series of misunderstandings escalates into a final quarrel and a broken engagement. But these personal griefs pale into insignificance against the looming danger of imminent war. On the night of June 15th, in the middle of a ball given by the Duchess of Richmond, word reaches Wellington that Napoleon is on the march. Immediately he mobilises his "infamous army" for a final conflict staged in the Belgian countryside, near a village called Waterloo...

An Infamous Army is a novel which can be read on a number of levels. As far as Heyer's romances go, we are in far darker territory than usual, and not just because of the spectre of war. Heyer here inverts the cliche of the rake redeemed by love: it is Barbara who has been damaged by her past; who flirts unemotionally, and abuses laudanum, and finally drives away her patient lover with behaviour not just scandalous but cruel. In all this there is a sense of conscious self-destructiveness, as if Barbara is somehow compelled to prove to herself that she is every bit as bad as her reputation would suggest. It is not until the midst of war, when Brussels becomes a bloody casualty ward, that she has the chance to display the genuine courage and spirit that Charles always saw behind the recklessness, but by then it may be altogether too late... The early stages of this novel capture the bizarre, contradictory life that preceded this definitive battle, with balls and picnics rubbing shoulders with troop movements and military reviews. Wellington himself figures prominently in both; but behind the genial facade is a full awareness of a situation that may spell disaster - of allies in conflict, of inappropriate, politically-based appointments, of experienced forces still in America, their place taken by secondary commanders, reserve troops and green boys yet to experience war. The description of the battle itself occupies approximately one-quarter of this novel, and draws upon a variety of first-hand memoirs and historical accounts, including Wellington's own dispatches. For the casual reader, the litany of names, ranks and regiments becomes at times almost overwhelming, though Heyer is careful whenever she can to introduce the major figures in the conflict earlier on, as characters in their own right. But however much, or little, the reader is able to absorb about the technical specifics of this moment in history, the horror of the battle itself is inescapable. Nearly twelve thousand men died at Waterloo; another thirty-five thousand were wounded. Heyer's narrative gives full and grim weight to the damage done by cannon-fire and bullet, bayonet and bare hands, capturing all the terror and confusion of the conflict as well as the extraordinary courage displayed. This is a novel of both large events and small detail; and in the end, perhaps it is the latter which linger most: the departure of Wellington's forces to the piping of the Coldstream Guards; the raging thunderstorm that enveloped the conflict at the end of the third day; men being picked off one by one as they guard a crucial position; others huddling together on the battlefield in formations built on fear; a young man slowly dying all alone...

    The Duke shut the door and said abruptly: "Napoleon has humbugged me, by God! He has gained twenty-four hours' march on me."
    He walked over to the desk, and bent over the map Richmond had spread out on it, and studied it for a moment or two in silence. Richmond stood watching him, startled by what he had said and wondering a little that no anxiety should be apparent in his face. "What do you intend doing?" he asked presently.
    "I've ordered the Army to concentrate on Quatre-Bras," replied his lordship. "But we shan't stop him there, and if so, I must fight him here." As he spoke he drew his thumbnail across the map below the village of Waterloo...

Another must read.

I think I need to live to be 120.

Only 120? Quitter! :D

>150 lyzard: *snork!*

*snerk*

>151 scaifea: I made up my mind long ago that my permanent philosophy would be, "I can't die today, there's a book I need to read tomorrow."

>152 drneutron: Hi, Jim - thanks for snerking through! :)

The Mysterious Mr Quin - The Golden Age of the British mystery was notable for the parallel emergence of novelists and short-story writers who were supreme in their own field but uncomfortable in the other---though this rarely stopped them trying. Generally, however, when the short-story writers tackled novels, you could feel the struggle to the finish-line; and conversely, when the novelists turned to the short story, there was very often a sense of lack. Into the latter category fell Agatha Christie. Though she published in the shorter format throughout her career, including a number of powerful standalone tales, for the most part her short stories are somehow unsatisfactory - giving the impression of being either mere filler, while she worked on something more complex, or a dry run for certain plot ideas. (As was occasionally literally the case: for example, The Plymouth Express was re-worked into The Mystery Of The Blue Train, and Triangle At Rhodes into Evil Under The Sun.) The most significant exception to this generalisation is the collection published in 1930 as The Mysterious Mr Quin, wherein the stories have a thematic unity and a sense of completeness lacking in most of Christie's other short works. Mysteries with a tinge of the supernatural, the stories that make up this volume work individually and even better together, creating the impression of an unseen world just beyond our own, whose passions and desires occasionally intrude upon our reality. The cumulative effect is more than a little creepy.

Mr Satterthwaite is an elderly man in comfortable circumstances: a traveller, a patron of the arts, an epicure, and (if we're honest) a snob with a weakness for duchesses. Yet as he contemplates his life, Mr Satterthwaite knows that it has been a disappointment; that for much of it he has been an outsider, an observer rather than a participant. He tries to comfort himself with the thought that, though he may have missed certain experiences in life, his position on the outside looking in allows him to see things that others do not... During a visit to a house whose previous owner inexplicably committed suicide some years earlier, Mr Satterthwaite becomes acquainted with a Mr Harley Quin, who takes shelter when his car breaks down in the snow. It is the anniversary of the mysterious death, and as Mr Quin leads the new owners of the house and other acquaintances of the dead man to discuss the circumstances of his suicide, they suddenly see the events of that night in an entirely different light... As time passes, Mr Satterthwaite has further encounters with the elusive Mr Quin, who apparently has no fixed address or occupation, but rather just "comes and goes", as he says himself. Each meeting with Mr Quin seems to signal the discovery of a mystery to be solved; until at length, whenever he comes across a strange story or a peculiar set of circumstances, Mr Satterthwaite learns to anticipate with excitement an appearance by Mr Quin - which generally occurs. Yet for all these meetings, all the mysteries solved, Mr Satterthwaite finds himself no closer to understanding just who - or what - his friend really is...

A number of stories in The Mysterious Mr Quin seem to position the title character as a force for cosmic justice - although "force" is perhaps an inappropriate word to use. As Mr Satterthwaite realises, Mr Quin rarely takes direct action himself; rather, his presence acts as a catalyst, bringing clarity and resolution. In The Coming Of Mr Quin, The Shadow On The Glass and The Dead Harlequin, Mr Quin's intervention brings to light the true explanation for a mysterious death, identifying the guilty and, far more importantly, freeing the innocent. Wrongful convictions propel the action in The Sign In The Sky and The World's End, the former finding Mr Satterthwaite racing against time to prevent the execution of an innocent man. Not all of the mysteries are so serious: At The 'Bells And Motley' and The Soul Of The Croupier are, rather, investigations into human nature and the drawing of false conclusions. At other times, as in The Voice In The Dark and The Face Of Helen, the action of Mr Satterthwaite prevents an unjust death; although in each of these cases, perhaps out of an overarching need for balance, someone does die... The most disturbing stories in this volume are those which upset our sense of the rightness of things, wherein a death is not prevented - as in The Bird With A Broken Wing; though Mr Quin himself would laugh to scorn the idea that death is the worst thing that can happen - as he does in The Man From The Sea, which finds him acting as an agent for the dead. However, the final story in the collection, Harlequin's Lane, is perhaps the most upsetting - not least because it turns on their head things we thought we understood...

    "Death!" There was contempt in Mr Quin's voice. "You believe in a life after death, do you not? And who are you to say that the same wishes, the same desires, may not operate in that other life? If the desire is strong enough---a messenger may be found."
    His voice tailed away.
    Mr Sattherthwaite got up, trembling a little. "I must get back to the hotel," he said. "If you are going that way."
    But Mr Quin shook his head. "No," he said. "I shall go back the way I came."
    When Mr Satterthwaite looked back over his shoulder, he saw his friend walking towards the edge of the cliff...

>150 lyzard: *snarfle*

(Had to add her sn-oise in)

>155 Morphidae: ...*snicker*...

Finished A Modern Hero for TIOLI #11.

Now reading The Corinthian by Georgette Heyer.

So on the 29th March, I'm done with February...sort of...still two outstanding blog posts...

Sigh.

February stats:

Books read: 11
TIOLI:11

Mystery / thriller: 4
Classic: 2
Non-fiction: 2
Historical romance: 1
Horror: 1
Contemporary (i.e. at time of publication) drama: 1

Blog reads: 2
Series reads: 3
Potential decommission: 1
1932: 1

Owned: 5
Library: 4
Ebooks: 2

Male author : Female author: 6 : 5

Oldest work: The History Of The Nun; or, The Fair Vow-Breaker by Aphra Behn (1689)
Newest work: Suffer And Be Still: Women In The Victorian Age by Martha Vicinus (ed.) (1972)

Sadly, I'm once again feeling like I have the weight of the world on my back...

Is it just me, or has March been a really difficult month?

Actually, I know it's not just me: all across the board we've had people struggling with ill health, or struggling with a book funk, or just plain struggling. For our friends in the northern hemisphere I can easily appreciate that the weather has been a significant contributor to this downturn. I can't imagine having to deal with a winter like that; I'm having enough trouble dealing with a depressingly wet autumn.

Though a longer month, I did less reading than average in March, and I don't think I'm alone in that. Chronic tiredness underlay a lot of that, dozing off on the train or on the couch, or falling asleep earlier at night instead of getting my usual reading block in.

I'm also in a slightly weird place with my reading - not a funk, exactly, but an impulse to go haring off in one direction which I know is going to cause me grief in the long term, my obsessive habits being what they are.

However...the advent of April prompts a hiccup of optimism, as do skies clearing in defiance of the weather forecast. I feel like a little sunshine would do me the world of good.

I think you need to read a bunch of bodice-rippers. Or how about a bit of space opera?

>159 lyzard: Sorry about that.

>160 lyzard: I've never known February or March to be 'happy months', at least not here in the northern hemisphere. We're all worn out and fed up with winter by this point, lacking light, even if the days are slowly getting longer, feeling like spring will never come. And then, with everyone complaining about feeling badly (not blaming anyone, I do it all the time too obviously), it's kind of hard to find much cause for cheer when looking around. But hey! April Fool's Day is just around the corner! :-)

>148 lyzard: That does sound good. I'm hoping to get back to it when I'm in the right mood.

>157 lyzard: I will join you on The Corinthian. Do you think you'll squeeze it in to March?

>159 lyzard:, >160 lyzard: :-(

>157 lyzard: I've recently read The Corinthian and it was fun. Pen is an attractive heroine and I just ignore characters' ages and remind myself that things were different then.

>161 Morphidae: Since neither of those are my usual diet, they might function as a tonic at that! :)

>162 Smiler69: They're not usually a problem here weather-wise, although these days who can say what "normal" weather is? March has been very wet and since I travel by public transport that's always a struggle - too many days spent with damp feet! Our days are getting shorter, of course, and we lose daylight saving next weekend.

But it's not just the weather; there seems to have been a general malaise and lots of people having difficulties with their health and their workload.

But yes, we can always hope. :)

>163 souloftherose: No hurry, Heather - plans not working out has been a March feature too! I haven't listed The Corinthian anywhere yet on a wait-and-see basis. I suspect it might be April but it's a short enough book it's hard to judge.

>164 CDVicarage: Or consider that the age gap there was less than most of those we've had so far. :)

I have finished my blog post on Suffer And Be Still: Women In The Victorian Age, a collection of essays which I read last month---it is here.

I'm part of that blue funk of which you speak, Liz, but I'm trying to cope. I'm hoping warmer weather to work in the garden will help me as I've been unhappy about my forced retirement with very little to do here at home. I do have a book festival and parties coming up, but those are only on the weekends...and the weeks have been very long...especially with our cold, nasty weather.

I gave up on two books today, one being Sense and Sensibility. Sorry, but I was just not enjoying it and wanted to move on to books I like better. I didn't really care for the current tutored thread because the movie was discussed a lot. I don't usually see films of books I read. The odd thing is that I just joined my great niece's online book club called "Better Than the Movie Book Club". I hate books that tie in with movies, but the first book they read was Philomena which I didn't think I'd like but which I found just fascinating. One cannot judge a book by its cover...as they say.

I'll be happier later when we move on to our gothic novels, but I'm not in a hurry to start them just yet. Let's look at May or later when I hope to be in a better mood.

>166 lyzard: Liz, that is an outstanding review of Suffer and Be Still and for a wonder the library has a copy in its reserve stock so I shall borrow it and read it at some point. I think I may need to read in small doses though as from your review I think it might leave me feeling quite angry!

>167 SqueakyChu: Sorry to hear you've also experiencing the blue funk Madeline :-( I'm hoping warm weather and a better book will come your way soon.

>168 souloftherose:

Thanks! I did find the perfect book to read now. It's called House of Windows, has been on my To Read list for 6 years, and reminds me so much of the time I lived in the city of Jerusalem. What was especially fun about this book is that I found a note from jessibud2 in front of the first page. She's a fellow Bookcrosser who mailed that book to me back in 2008. It's about time I should be reading it. :O

>167 SqueakyChu: Sorry to hear about your struggles, Madeleine; even more sorry you're dropping out on us, though of course if you're not enjoying it you should. It's inevitable that there will be some discussion of the adaptations of these novels, I guess, since so many people come to the books from the films / series - and particularly in this case where the best known adaptation twists the novel quite a lot, so that people come to it with expectations that aren't met. Otherwise I try to treat books and movies as what they are, two completely separate entities. :)

May sounds good for a Gothic! We might even lure Heather and Ilana into joining us...

>168 souloftherose: Thanks very much, Heather. I have a whole subset of books now that I think of collectively as "Books To Angry Up The Blood", which are indeed best taken in small doses. For that reason I haven't yet read The Subjection Of Women in full. On the other hand I do have Dr Clarke's Sex In Education on The List and may well get to it sooner rather than later. :D

>169 SqueakyChu: That's hilarious, Madeleine!

Yesterday's Woman: Domestic Realism In The English Novel - I was hesitant to pick up this 1974 publication by Vineta Colby, having read last year her earlier study of 19th century English literature, The Singular Anomaly, which I found condescending and rather nasty in tone. Possibly I was not the only one to find it so, and possibly Vineta Colby took some criticisms of her first book on board, because Yesterday's Woman refreshingly does what The Singular Anomaly stubbornly refused to do: admit that not every novel needs to be Great Art; and that, even if not Great Art, a novel may yet be entertaining, and an important social and historical document. Furthermore, having admitted this, Colby takes it wholly to heart by devoting much of her study to that odd lacuna in the history of the 19th century English novel, the twenty-year gap between Jane Austen and Walter Scott, and William Makepeace Thackeray and Charles Dickens, which the vast majority of literary studies tend to pass over as of no importance. While it is true that this period produced no genuinely lasting literature, it is not at all true that the books were being published at that time were "of no importance". On the contrary, they are of great importance to anyone with an interest in either the popular culture or the functioning of society during this time, since at no other point in the 19th century did novelists concentrate so entirely upon the here-and-now.

Colby's thesis is that early in the 19th century, a fairly radical shift occurred in English writing, with extravagant adventures giving way to a greater focus upon realism - a shift, in short, from "the romance" to "the novel". Colby rightly credits Jane Austen with being at the forefront of this change, her novels demonstrating, via a masterly combination of art and wit, that the details of daily life could be the stuff of gripping fiction. Furthermore, Austen legitimated not just ordinary life in general, but women's lives in particular, as worthy of attention and an appropriate basis for an examination of broader social institutions and practices. In doing so she unleashed a flood of novels by women about women; and if very few - if any - of them seriously challenge Austen, they are nevertheless a fascinating repository of the hopes, fears, dreams and above all realities of the 19th century Englishwoman.

After considering this new genre of domestic realism, Yesterday's Woman is divided into four broad topic areas: "The Fashionable Novel", "The Education Of The Heart", "The Evangelical Novel", and "The Novel Of Community". The first deals primarily with the so-called "silver-fork novel" of the 1820s through to the 1840s, generally frothy works reflecting the scandalous and excessive lives of the aristocracy of this period. Inevitably, there is a significant emphasis upon the novels of Catherine Gore, who not only wrote more silver-fork novels than anyone else, at a time when almost everyone took a crack at this form of writing (even "serious" novelists like Edward Bulwer Lytton and Benjamin Disraeli), but whose novels are widely conceded to be simply better of their type than anyone else's. Gore had the knack of having her cake and eating it, exploiting to the full the outrageous behaviour of her aristocratic targets and providing for those on the outside of society (or aspring to get in) endless details of fashionable clothing, houses and parties, while maintaining a firm and thoroughly middle-class morality that saw the virtous ultimately rewarded. So of their time were Gore's novels that, as Colby points out, if they are taken in chronological order it is possible to watch history happening and society changing. However, this very quality gave to Gore's novels an ephemerality that, once society changed a little too much, saw her forgotten as a writer in a frighteningly short space of time. Social historians who turn to her work these days, however, discover a treasure-trove of details about life for the upper classes in the first half of the 19th century---and some very witty writing, to boot.

Colby next examines works dealing with education---including those of genuine educators like Maria Edgeworth, who in addition to her novels wrote common-sensical non-fiction addressing the upbringing and education of children that was immensely popular and influential. While theories of education flourished during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Colby notes that once little girls became big girls, the novelists tended to take over; and that while there was ongoing concern about what constituted a proper education for young women, novelists were equally concerned about "the education of the heart": that girls were taught not just to think, but to feel - and feel correctly. Often these novels deal with two girls of contrasted backgrounds; circumstances expose them to city and country, nature and art, society and family; in their responses and the choices they make lies the lesson. The shadow of Sense And Sensibility lies across these works, with both too much and too little emotion a dangerous trap. In addition to works of Edgeworth and Austen, the fiction and non-fiction writings of Mary Brunton, Susan Ferrier, Amelia Opie Hannah More and Anna Letitia Barbauld are considered.

In the 19th century, and in particular in the wake of the Oxford Movement of the mid-1830s, the religious novel enjoyed a surprising degree of popularity---"surprising", because it took quite some time for writers to internalise the difference between a tract and a novel. Here female novelists had the advantage of not being supposed to deal directly with doctrinal matters in the first place; the novel was for them the perfect and appropriate vehicle. In "The Evangelical Novel", Colby explains that she means small-'e'-evangelicalism: that is, a state of mind, a degree of enthusiasm, rather than a form of practice; she is therfore able to find "evangelical" novels espousing all branches of belief and practice, across the spectrum from Low Church to High Church, but also embracing the dissenting religions, Ango-Catholicism, Roman Catholicism, and even Judaism. Since women were tacitly forbidden from arguing doctrine, these "evangelical" novels concentrate upon the conversion of religious principles into practical guides for day-to-day life, and upon religion as a support for the difficulties of women's lives. Much of the focus here is upon the popular and successful domestic dramas of Charlotte Yonge, whose family sagas are realistic and engaging, even if their author's anti-feminism sometimes provokes involuntary teeth-clenching.

In "The Novel Of Community", Colby pays tribute to Harriet Martineau, a difficult, idiosyncratic woman who nevertheless carved a unique path for herself and authored two very different but equally important works. Martineau was a woman in many ways ahead of her time, particularly with her interest in economics and the financial and commercial functioning of society. In an attempt to provide a readily understandable guide to these important principles, she published Illustrations Of Political Economy, a collection of short stories, each of which gave a practical demonstration of a particular piece of political and/or economic theory, in a setting of ordinary life. Released at a time when self-education was becoming a powerful movement amongst the working-classes, Martineau's admirably practical approach found a wide and appreciative audience, being treated as a factual guide in spite of its fictionalised framework. In addition to this significant publication, Martineau produced a raft of shorter non-fiction works stressing the need for women of all walks of life to understand and practice domestic economy. Then she turned to outright fiction as a vehicle for her theories. Published in 1839, Deerbrook is a typical Martineau work: determinedly realistic to the point of being unromantic, concerned with the trials of life and how to cope with them, and finding happiness in small things - and unexpected places. It is also a typical Martineau work with respect to its inarguable flaws - particularly her inability always to turn theory into comfortable prose, but leaving in a lecture even if it wasn't working as narrative. Furthermore, she was hampered by not being able (and perhaps not willing either) to deal frankly with sexual matters. Nevertheless, Deerbrook gained recognition as a new kind of novel. There had been utopic and idealised tales about this sort of life before, such as Sarah Scott's Milennium Hall and Mary Russell Mitford's Our Village, but nothing that so realistically took as its canvas community life and its inescapable interconnectedness. In Deerbrook, Martineau laid the groundwork for what would become one of the most significant subgenres of the Victorian novel, that which embraces (among many others) Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford, the Barchester novels of Anthony Trollope and the Carlingford novels of Margaret Oliphant, and arguably reaches its pinnacle in Middlemarch.

The ephemeral minor fiction of an age often reflects, on a reduced but accurate scale, its major novels. Its influences, as many critics have observed, is not always direct. Rather, it serves to reconstruct the age and atmosphere in which the major novels were shaped---formed, as they were, in the always mysterious processes in which the creative imagination works. In this study we have examined a number of neglected novels of the first half of the nineteenth century, not for the purpose of tracing the history of the novel, but for emphasising and analysing certain significant trends in the development of an emerging art form. From the bulk of popular fiction we have concentrated upon novels of domestic realism, the work mainly of women because its subjects were closest to their recognised interests and abilities. These are novels that, we believe---by their seriousness, their emphasis upon truth-to-life and upon basic questions of human and social values---did much to erase the stigma of idle romance and to enhance the dignity and respectability of the novel as literature.

Finished The Corinthian for TIOLI #15.

Now reading The Scandal Of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton.

>170 lyzard: "May sounds good for a Gothic!"

Sounds good to me!

>171 lyzard: I was hesitant when you mentioned The Singular Anomaly too but Yesterday's Woman sounds very interesting and like it would help me fill some gaps in my 19th century reading because I have read nothing by English authors between Ivanhoe (1819) and The Pickwick Papers (1836-7). Several of the authors you mention are ones I've been meaning to try at some point (Harriet Martineau, Maria Edgeworth, Mary Brunton).

>172 lyzard: So, I didn't even manage to start The Corinthian yet but I definitely will get to it this month.

>171 lyzard: very interesting, Liz. Despite her anti-feminism I am a fan of Charlotte Yonge and I have just bought a Virago copy of Deerbrook (merely for its green cover) so I shall be reading it with your words in mind.

>173 souloftherose: It will probably be The Italian, unless {*cough*} there's a package in the mail... :D

The shift in tone betwen the two books is startling, and I really think there must have been a critical backlash over her sneering at minor authors all the way through The Singular Anomaly. Whereas in Yesterday's Woman she argues a theory that happens to agree with my own view of things and which makes her by definition quite right!

There are several of these lacunae in literary history, and I would suggest that about 95% of studies I've read pass over them without even a side-glance. The one between Austen and Thackeray is the best known but there's another in the 18th century between Defoe and Richardson. In fact one of the original ideas for my blog (and still *one* of the ideas) was to investigate those black holes, because of course novels were being published during those years, and of course they had an influence.

If we ever get back to my chronological Virago idea, we'll both get to plug at least some of these gaps!

>174 CDVicarage: Ah! I have Deerbrook in a black Virago. :)

Charlotte Yonge is one of the many, many authors from around that time I've never given sufficient attention to; Margaret Oliphant is another. AAAAHHH!!!! TOO MANY BOOKS!!!!!!!!!!

>175 lyzard: "unless {*cough*} there's a package in the mail..."

I'll have you now that I've even gone so far as to list one of the Anna Katharine Green novels for a TIOLI challenge this month - now you can't ask more than that! :-P (*Just read the damn book, Heather*)

"she argues a theory that happens to agree with my own view of things and which makes her by definition quite right!"

Of course! :-)

Yeah, yeah...as I recall, you went so far as to list one of the Anna Katharine Green novels for a TIOLI challenge LAST month... :D

Yes, it's always a little embarrassing when you find yourself thinking, "Now here's someone who's talking sense!" and then you realise why you think so...

>171 lyzard: It had never occurred to me that the gap after Austen was there until I started to track my reading last year, even though I had actually read reasonably widely amongst nineteenth century writers.

Nothing reveals these gaps more clearly than a "Century Of Reading" project. Of course everyone tends to start with the major players in literature; it's only when you develop a desire to go beyond that you realise how clustered they are, and how much gets left out, when you start picking the eyes out of a century's writing. :)

To paraphrase Adam West's Batman, Some days you just can't get rid of a book!

I am - slowly - working my way through my potential decommission books: trying to seriously assess whether I'm likely to read them again, or whether I should tag them Free To A Good Home. So far I'm only getting through about one a month, drawn blind from one of the bags and boxes I've got them packed them up in.

This morning, unfortunately, I ended up drawing not one, but two, books which turned out to be - sigh - part of a series; so instead of potentially getting rid of two books, I've now got two more series, and eleven more books, on The Wishlist.

What's that you say? Read them as standalones? Or don't read them at all?? That's crazy talk!!

Another excellent review, Liz. Although some of the characters of An Infamous Army are not as likable as in many of Heyer's books (and Barbara never does come up to Avon and Dominic in that respect), it is still a marvelous story.

I will pull The Corinthian out. Pen has never been one of my favorites. It's not just her youth, because I like Hero and Horatia. Maybe this time I'll figure it out.

>177 lyzard: I've just started reading Behind Closed Doors. So there.

>181 ronincats: I really liked The Corinthian - I think I'm developing a bit of a thing for Heyer's cross-dressing romps.

>181 ronincats: We give men an easier pass for their bad behaviour, then? :)

I like The Corinthian because I generally do prefer stories where it's about friendship first.

>182 souloftherose: I've just started reading Behind Closed Doors. So there.

Woot!!

Finished The Scandal Of Father Brown for TIOLI #6.

Now reading Venusberg by Anthony Powell.

...and with the completion of The Scandal Of Father Brown, I HAVE FINISHED A SERIES!!!!

Granted, only a five-book series - which is as long as any series I have managed to complete so far - but it still makes me feel good. And slightly off-sets the three other series I just added...

>180 lyzard:
Liz, that's totally crazy talk!

Hi, Steph! No, I'm afraid it doesn't work like that in the real world. Or at least, not in *my* real world. :)

Liz, I'm hoping to complete two series this month. One of which will go into the goes outta bin (except the first book which stands on its own). I'll have to read the other two of the second series to decide the fate of those books.

TWO!? {*fans herself, overcome at the thought*}

I'm having trouble deciding what to do with my decommissioned books. We actually have frustratingly few ways of redistributing used books here. I'd like to put them up for the taking at LT, except that the postage costs from my corner of the globe to everywhere else make that a rather extravagant way to solve the problem. On the other hand maybe it wouldn't be too much to pay to know that the books were going where they'd be appreciated.

>189 lyzard:
one series is 6 books (so say I because the original author died after the 6th and I refuse to read anything written by those who say they are carrying on the story), and I started it last month. The other is 3 books of about ~200 pages each. Then there's the three Atwood I want to get to.

And that is very frustrating about book redistribution. I'm glad to be able to give mine to friends or Goodwill.

I don't read continuations, either.

And three books is definitely a series. :)

>183 lyzard: No, I don't think so, Liz. I think that had we encountered Avon earlier, whilst he was still "damaged" before he moved on, he might have been similar to Barbara, but he is past that now and both he and Dominic have a sense of humor. Dominic has never been damaged like Barbara--he is just "wild". Barbara's wildness is self-damaging in many ways, inner-directed in a way that neither of the others were. Or so it seems to me, and that's where I have trouble connecting with her for much of the story. Ymmv.

"Just wild" = getting drunk and shooting people for fun? :D

I find Barbara's self-damaging quite psychologically convincing, sadly.

As We Are: A Modern Review - Anyone who comes to this 1932 publication by E. F. Benson expecting one of his trademark comic novels is likely to be in for a shock. As We Are is not in fact a novel at all, but an odd mixture of fiction, biography and personal reflection, which along with its predecessor, 1930's As We Were: A Victorian Peep-Show, offers a hindsight view of Britain before and after WWI. (Thankfully for my OCD, As We Are is not strictly a sequel to As We Were: the two are often referred to as a "diptych".) During the war-years, Benson found himself in a somewhat anomalous position: he was too old for the armed forces, but too young to be part of the generation that increasingly came to be blamed for the war and its conduct. (In fact, as T. J. Binyon points out in the introduction to the Hogarth Press edition of As We Are, it's not entirely evident how or where Benson spent the war years.) Afterwards, Benson seems to have suffered from a guilty sort of disconnection, as if events had left him neither fish nor foul, an observer rather than a participant. This positioning is clear in As We Are, in which Benson comments from the outside upon all sorts of pre- and post-war social phenomenon, and culminates in a devastating anecdote about a dinner with three younger friends, all of them veterans, who suddenly drop the polite mask demanded of them by society, exposing their ongoing suffering and their passionate resentment of being treated as an embarrassing reminder of things many people would prefer to forget.

There is humour in As We Were, but of a more bitter variety than we are accustomed to with Benson. The fictional component of this work, which Benson calls "a parable", deals with generation gap, already in existence before the war, and after it a yawning, unpassable chasm. It focuses upon the Earl and Countess of Buryan and their ancestral estate of Hakluyt Park, where the traditions are maintained with unflagging persistence and things are done as they have always been done; and, as the Buryans have no doubt in the year 1911, always will be done. Though they are untroubled by, because unbelieving of, rumours of approaching war, the Buryans find cause for concern in the behaviour of the younger generation, including their son and heir, Lord St Erth. When St Erth brings his fiancé, Lady Helen Morris, and some other of their friends down to Hakluyt, Lady Buryan finds their language, their amusements and their interaction with one another incomprehensible, and is hurt and dismayed by their casual rejection of the Hakluyt traditions. So it is before the war; afterwards, the younger generation are the face of a new world that seems to the Buryans to have gone quite mad... The comedy of this "parable" lies in Benson's ability to see the absurdities on both sides of the divide; but there is as much pain as pleasure to be found in this story, and the split-vision is as often the cause of a squirm of discomfort as a laugh. It is, for example, impossible not be horrified by the crass insensitivity that that can, unmoved, turn Hakluyt into a golfing resort; yet in the aftermath of the destruction of an estate dating back centuries, the narrator observes quietly that the widespread unemployment endemic in the area since the war has now been abolished. Where, then, lies right?

As We Are includes biographical sketches of Prime Minister Arthur Balfour, Archbishop Randall Davidson, and the businessmen Sir Ernest Cassell and Sir Edgar Speyer. I am not in a position to judge these, although Benson's description of the treatment of the latter two during the war years, both them of German-Jewish heritage but British citizens of long-standing, is infuriating. The personal reflections in this volume cover a wide variety of topics, too many to be considered here; but a few particularly stand out for the modern reader. At one point Benson diverts into literary criticism - criticism indeed: he rejects D. H. Lawrence altogether, dismisses both James Joyce and Virginia Woolf as pale imitations of Henry James, and offers some interesting if not entirely positive thoughts on Arnold Bennett and J. B. Priestley. In his social commentary, one of the topics Benson repeatedly returns to (understandably, but perhaps even more often than he himself consciously realised) is the shifting status of the homosexual in British society during the period before and after the war---wherein, we gather, homosexuality became increasingly regarded as one the many things that, under the circumstances, just didn't matter all that much any more. That said, there is a sudden uncomfortable diversion to consider the court-case surrounding Radclyffe Hall's The Well Of Loneliness, wherein Benson expresses the view that far from encouraging "degeneracy", as the book was accused of doing, more likely it would horrify and "straighten out" anyone contemplating life as an "invert". (It is odd that Benson seems to suggest here that homosexuality was a choice; perhaps he thought it was a choice for women?) Another topic that recurs throughout As We Were is votes for women. Having expressed his disgust with the extremes of the suffragette movement, Benson rather smugly insists that the vote was granted at just the right time, as a suitable reward for women "proving themselves" during the war. He seems oblivious to the further implications of his argument, firstly, that had the war not come, women might have waited forever, and secondly, that the price of the vote for Englishwomen was the slaughter of more than eight million Englishmen.

What of the years that went before? How had they used their power? To prevent and render impossible this colossal catastrophe? Not at all: they had done all they could, the statesmen of England, France and Germany alike, to further it. They had piled up armaments and launched fresh fleets; their chemists in a thousand industrious laboratories of the State had vied with each other in working out the formulas of new and more devastating explosives and of deadly gases: their steel-works had forged guns of larger range and more rapid fire; their mechanics had designed aircraft that would carry bombs to wreck a city and submarines that would pierce with their torpedoes the hulls of ships a mile away... Millions upon millions of gold had been spent in perfecting these engines whose sole aim was slaughter, and now the youth of England was set up as targets to prove which nation had been the cleverest. It turned out that they had all been very clever indeed, for the results were highly creditable...

That passage in As We Are in which E. F. Benson's dinner companions have a meltdown is particularly unnerving for the Australian reader, because what sets them off is Laurence Binyon's poem, For The Fallen, the fourth stanza of which is today a significant component of the memorial ceremonies held each year on ANZAC Day.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

The Princess Of All Lands - Russell Kirk is one of the more intriguing cases of someone with a hobby that you would never guess from his professional life. Best known as a prominent 20th century conservative political theorist and historian, Kirk was also the author of several works of fiction drawing heavily upon the Gothic tradition of the late 18th century, while his short stories deal overtly with the supernatural. Released as a limited, Arkham House edition in 1979, The Princess Of All Lands collects nine stories originally published between 1950 and 1977, including the award-winning There's A Long, Long Trail A-Winding; two more, The Last God's Dream and the title story, appeared for the first time in this volume. Kirk's most frequent backdrop is the American south and south-west, but there are also several stories set in England, one in the environs of Lake Superior, one in New England, and one, unexpectedly, in 1970s Yugoslavia. The tales collected in The Princess Of All Lands are unabashedly ghost stories. Russell Kirk's ghosts are frequently malevolent entities, capable of doing great harm to the living; they inhabit a realm in which time and space are disturbingly malleable.

Sorworth Place: In the aftermath of WWII, a displaced British serviceman finds himself involved with a young widow living in an isolated and crumbling Scottish manor-house, whose degenerate husband promised her on his death-bed that she had not seen the last of him...

Behind The Stumps: Stubborn, thick-skinned and insensitive, Cribben is just the man to carry out the demands of the Special Census; but when he penetrates the most hidden corners of Pottawattomie County in an effort to pin down the members of the elusive Gholson family, he gets a lot more than he bargained for...

The Princess Of All Lands: Yolande is the last of a Native American family whose women are known for their healing powers and psychic abilities. When Yolande picks up a young hitchhiker, she finds herself held at gunpoint and forced to drive deep into the swamplands to an isolated house, where a terrifying confrontation takes place...

The Last God's Dream: A naïve American couple on holiday in Yugoslavia find themselves the object of the attention of an individual who seems determined to involve them in his efforts to exorcise a ghost from his path. To their growing unease, they discover that he may mean it literally...

The Cellar Of Little Egypt: Shortly after accusing Dan Slattery and his cronies of being responsible for the horrifying death of the old man known only as "Jingo Criminy", businessman Amos Trimble also dies, apparently having been hit by a train. But Dan and the other frequenters of the Little Egypt Tavern are not yet rid of Amos Trimble...

Ex Tenebris: In the name of progress and hygiene, the elderly Mrs Oliver is to be forced out of her home: she is the last resident of a crumbling row of cottages that abuts the already-abandoned church of All Saints. Confused, rather deaf, and perhaps a little detached from reality, Mrs Oliver wonders why the vicar of All Saints never calls upon her any more---until she gets an unexpected visitor...

Balgrummo's Hell: Though local whispers speak of horrifying acts committed in his youth, to Rafe Horgan the elderly Lord Balgrummo is no more than the ideal target for an art robbery. Plotting his way into the lonely yet well-guarded mansion of his target, Horgan finds himself surrounded by a treasure-trove of art---but commits the fatal error of including in his depredations one notorious work long hidden away in the family chapel...

There's A Long, Long Trail A-Winding: Making his way along a lonely highway, ex-convict Frank Sarsfield is driven by the weather to take refuge in an abandoned house on the edge of a ghost town, where he finds himself caught up in a re-enactment of events that occurred there many decades before...

Saviourgate: In desperate ill health and facing financial ruin, Mark Findlay finds his thoughts drifting towards suicide. Having gotten lost in the fog as he makes his dreary way towards a railway station, Findlay stumbles into a pub called the Crosskeys---which he finds occupied by some very strange people indeed...

The Claverton Mystery (US title: The Claverton Affair) - Dr Priestley is surprised, and a little guilt-ridden, when he receives a summons from an old friend, Sir John Claverton, who he has not seen for a year. To his surprise, Dr Priestley discovers at Sir John's house his long-estranged sister, Mrs Littlecote, and her daughter, Helen; he takes an immediate dislike to the rather ill-mannered young woman. Taken into the library, Dr Priestley finds Sir John in poor health, and learns that he invited Helen, a nurse, to live in the house and take care of him; an act that, Dr Priestley reflects, is in keeping with Sir John's well-known dislike of unnecessary expense, as he would consider the hiring of a nurse. The scientist also gathers that Sir John is furious that Helen brought her mother with her, and has refused to see her. Sir John is clearly bothered about something, but beats around the bush so long that the two men are interrupted by Dr Oldfield, another old friend of both, who dropped out of sight after an incident that damaged his career. That night, Dr Oldfield calls upon Dr Priestley and breaks the grim news that although Sir John does have gastric trouble, some of it is attributable to arsenic poisoning---he cannot say whether deliberate or accidental. Dr Priestley questions him about Sir John's relatives: Mrs Littlecote, the widow of an itinerant preacher who now ekes a living as a medium; the sullen Helen, who was apparently dismissed before finishing her training; and Ivor Durnford, a research chemist and Sir John's nephew and heir, who in the wake of the arrival of the Littlecotes has made it his business to call frequently upon his uncle. Oldfield admits that he is still very worried about Sir John's situation, but adds wryly that there is a safeguard to murder in that no-one knows the contents of the will he has just made. Explaining that he has been called away on urgent business, he asks Dr Priestley to keep an eye on things; but when the scientist calls again upon Sir John only two days later, it is to learn of his old friend's unexpected death...

The 15th book in John Rhode's series featuring Dr Priestley, The Claverton Mystery is an intriguing work for a variety of reasons: some of which were deliberate on the part of the author, and some which I am not convinced were entirely intentional. At the outset, everything about this novel seems to place it in the classic "cosy mystery" tradition, namely, arsenic poisoning committed under the family roof when the only people present are the victim's grasping relatives. Indeed, when Sir John Claverton dies almost as soon as his main medical attendant has been called away from him, Dr Priestley has no doubt that whoever tried to poison him the first time has struck again, this time successfully; hearing of the excruciating pain in which Sir John dies only confirms his suspicions. The circumstances are such that the young locum, Dr Milverley, to whom Dr Oldfield consigned the care of Sir John if not his own fears, refuses to sign the death certificate. Dr Priestley is certain what the autopsy will reveal---only to be staggered by a ruling of death by natural causes. In disbelief, he intervenes, asking that his old friend and colleague, Sir Alured Faversham, a leading pathologist and toxicologist, to repeat the tests. He does so---confirming that no arsenic, no poison of any kind, is present. The cause of death is perforation of the stomach: a condition that in the absence of artificial causes, could not occur without many hours of preliminary symptoms; yet Helen's nursing notes indicate neither fever nor pain. The more he reflects upon this, the more the outraged Dr Priestley is convinced that Helen's notes are falsified; that she observed and ignored her patient's danger-signals; that in short, she let her uncle die; but how can murder by neglect be proven...?

It is at this point that The Claverton Mystery develops some very interesting overtones. We are accustomed, while reading the Dr Priestley mysteries, to being harangued on the "correct" scientific method, whether applied to science proper or scientific detection, and the dangers of trying to fit facts to theories, instead of allowing a theory to be dictated by the facts. Yet for a significant portion of this story, we find Dr Priestley doing precisely that. His explanation for how Sir John Claverton died is logical, granted; but the longer things go on, and the more additional facts come to light, the more it is evident that Dr Priestley is clinging to his theory because he is prejudiced against Helen: in fact, it becomes increasingly doubtful whether he dislikes Helen because he believes she murdered her uncle, or whether he believes she murdered her uncle because he dislikes her. Ultimately this subplot feels like a cautionary tale, perhaps with a moral of how the best of detectives can be swayed when they let emotion enter into it; except that I'm not altogether sure that John Rhode intended the reader to put this reading upon it---particularly since its main effect (at least if my reaction is anything to go by) is to prejudice the reader against Dr Priestley, and to induce the hope that he is wrong. As to whether or not Helen is guilty---well, I'm not going to tell you that. I will tell you that matters become a lot more complicated in the wake of the reading of Sir John's will, when it is discovered that he has disinherited all of his relatives in favour of a girl that no-one has heard of, who lives in the Midlands with her widowed mother. The Claverton Mystery produces two unexpected twists at its conclusion. I usually hate the "fake séance to flush out a killer" trope, but this novel finds a clever new take on this cliché. It is also reveals the real cause of Sir John's death: something I've never encountered before, which automatically elevates this mystery several notches in my opinion.

    Dr Priestley's feelings, as he sat in his study that afternoon, would be difficult to analyse. The negative results of Faversham's experiments had, as it were, cut away the ground from under his feet. He had confidently anticipated that the post mortem would show that Claverton had died from the effects of arsenic. It had, on the contrary, conclusively proved that arsenic had nothing to do with his death. Faced with this, Dr Priestley was conscious of a sentiment not far removed from disappointment.
    Yes, disappointment. Certainly not relief at the discovery that his friend had died a natural death. It was not that he was heartless, and that he wished to see retribution overtake a group of people whom he instinctively disliked. But it was due to a conviction, of which he could not rid himself, that Claverton's death had been brought about by some external influence.

The Death Of A Millionaire - In order to properly appreciate this 1925 mystery, it is important to understand its authors. George Douglas Howard Cole was a socialist, a political theorist and an historian, Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford, and the author of numerous well-received works on economics, politics and history; his wife, Margaret, once a Reader in Economics at Oxford, was an active feminist and prominent in education reform, who served as a Labour representative on the London County Council, and authored a number of non-fiction works on economic and sociological subjects. Somehow, in addition to their myriad other activities, the Coles found time to write together dozens of mysteries, which blend imaginative story lines with a measure of social commentary. The Death Of A Millionaire is a good example of their style: while never intrusive or strident, the Coles' political leanings are evident in their slightly jaundiced view of society, their satirical attitude to the "natural" superiority of the upper classes, and perhaps above all in the sense of humour which pervades their tale of nefarious doings amongst the wealthy and powerful. It is very clear that the Coles were under no illusions about their world: not only is there is a remarkable amount of crime in this novel, most of it - for one reason or another - goes unpunished, while (as the text itself comments) the wicked continue to flourish like the proverbial green bay tree, and our honourable and dedicated hero, Superintendent Wilson, is left to contemplate an unwanted but expedient change of career.

For The Death Of A Millionaire is the second entry in the Coles' series featuring Superintendent Wilson, who is called in when the exclusive Sugden's Hotel is the site of an apparent murder; apparent, because although the room occupied by American millionaire Hugh Restington is in a state of disarray, including blood on the sheets, there is no body. However, Restington's secretary, a Russian named Rosenbaum, departed early that morning with a suspiciously heavy trunk... Wilson is not the first on the scene, however: the Earl of Ealing, the former Home Secretary and the present chairman of the Anglo-Asiatic Commercial Corporation, had an early morning business meeting with Restington, and it is his arrival that prompts the discovery of the crime. Lord Ealing takes advantage of the obsequious instincts of the manager of Sugden's and his own impeccable social standing to arrange to be left alone for a time in Restington's room, which he uses to do a rapid search of the millionaire's papers - leaving behind in the process a set of fingerprints that in due course become of great interest to the police. Wilson's own investigation leads to the startling discovery of a man trussed up and locked in a cupboard in the next room: the deeply shaken Alfred Culpepper, another business connection of Restington, testifies that he witnessed the murder of the millionaire by his secretary. Wilson's subordinate, Inspector Blaikie, follows the trail left by Rosenbaum, but it leads nowhere except around in circles... It is revealed that "Restington" was in fact the wealthy Hugh Radlett, who disappeared after his marriage broke down. Various adventures culminated in a partnership with a footloose French-Canadian called John Pasquett, who had discovered gold deposits in an unexplored corner of Siberia. Having secured concessions from the new Soviet government, Radlett was in England to obtain British backing for his planned mining enterprise; his first act upon landing was to make a will granting power of attorney and immediate access to his American fortune to John Pasquett, to guard against accidents. Learning this, Lord Ealing dispatches his nephew and secretary, Arthur Wharton, to Warsaw, where rumour last placed Pasquett, with orders to bring him to England. Unknown to the public at large, Anglo-Asiatic is in serious trouble, and if Ealing cannot convince Pasquett to fulfil Radlett's undertakings, he will be ruined; worse than ruined...

Though it has at its heart a very clever murder mystery, The Death Of A Millionaire also has more serious fish to fry. Much of its plot is devoted to questions of honesty, loyalty and morality---and it does not provide any easy answers. The Coles also have fun with the British public's tendency to blame everything, however unlikely, on "the Bolsheviks" - the fact that Rosenbaum is a Russian Jew settles the case for just about everybody - even as Superintendent Wilson becomes increasingly sure that the noble and aristocratic Earl of Ealing is involved in stock market manipulation and fraud. At the same time, the police are no closer to solving Radlett's murder. John Pasquett obviously had the most to gain from his partner's death, but he was not even in England at the time---or was he? When Wilson discovers that Pasquett's girlfriend, who resides on the coast on France, is in the habit of running a motor-boat to the English coast and back again for reasons of her own---and that this girlfriend is Norah Culpepper, daughter of the witness to Radlett's murder---he begins, hazily, to envisage a wide-reaching and intricately planned conspiracy... Meanwhile, Arthur Wharton, who has conceived a warm friendship for the French-Canadian adventurer, discovers that Pasquett may not be Pasquett at all, but an imposter---meaning that the business arrangement worth a fortune to everyone connected with the Anglo-Asiatic is invalid... As Wharton wrestles with his moral quandary, Superintendent Wilson finds himself in an even more unenviable position, caught between his strange reluctance to believe Pasquett guilty of murder, even as the evidence mounts, and the unwelcome certainty that even though he can prove Lord Ealing guilty of various crimes and misdemeanours, the earl's position makes him essentially untouchable...

    As he walked from Sugden's Hotel towards Scotland Yard, where he meant to pass the night on the folding bed he kept at his office, Wilson was thinking hard about the case. Although by this time its main outlines seemed fairly clear, he was not yet satisfied. Logically, the proofs seemed nearly complete. He could prove positively that Pasquett was the 'Rosenbaum' of the hotel, and that would assure him of a verdict. But what on earth was this story of Pasquett not being Pasquett, but some one quite different? Not one of them had known Pasquett, or what he looked like, till he turned up some days after the crime. And, if Pasquett was not Pasquett, that would explain how he had been able to palm himself off on Radlett as Rosenbaum. Or, at least, it would help to explain. It was still a mystery how Radlett, having parted from one Rosenbaum at the customs office, had turned up with quite a different Rosenbaum at the hotel.
    But stay. It was not true that no one had known Pasquett till he turned up after the crime. The Culpeppers had known him. But of course, they were in on the plot.
    It was at this point in his thinking that Wilson suddenly stopped still in the street, and said, quite unconscious that he was speaking aloud, "My God, what a fool I've been!"

Finished Venusberg for TIOLI #16.

Now reading The Adventures Of Miss Sophia Berkley, an epistolary novel from 1760 by "a young lady".

As usual, a collection of very entertaining reviews Liz. I was going to say that I have the Dr Priestley series on my list, then realised I'd got mixed up with the Dr Thorndyke books. Was then going to say that I would add the Dr Priestley series but took a peek at the series page and saw 70(!) books in the series and changed my mind.

But you almost got me.

Thanks, Heather!

Heh! No, I won't try to force you down that path, although I'd be interested to know whether the Priestley books are more readily available in your corner of the world - I'm having to skip through the series, which is playing havoc with my OCD.

I do continue to recommend the Thorndyke books.

Yay, free books!

I went to the library to drop off one interlibrary loan and pick up another (I prefer them not to overlap - too much pressure!), and found they were doing a mild clean-out, with a trolley of free books for the taking - each of them with a smiley-face sticker insisting, Take me home and read your heart out. Who was I to resist?

I resisted a little, and only came away with four freebies, including three recent(ish) detective / thriller works out of the yellow-jacketed Gollancz series. Two of them turn out to be - but of course! - part of a series: anyone familiar with Charles Paris by Simon Brett, or Sarah Deane by J. S. Borthwick?

Finding myself mildly curious (as I work my way through Georgette Heyer) about what more modern writers are doing in that area, I also picked up a "Regency Romance". I expect to be disappointed, but who knows? - I might get a pleasant surprise.

So---

Not Dead, Only Resting by Simon Brett (Charles Paris series)
A Box Of Tricks by Simon Brett (short stories)
The Case Of The Hook-Billed Kites by J. S. Borthwick (Sarah Deane series)
The Marquis Of Carabas by Elizabeth Brodnax

(By the way, I don't know who Dale Brown is, but he appeared to be the big loser in the clean-out.)

...and now, back to The Adventures Of Miss Sophia Berkley!

(I'm guessing none of my freebies have "pyrates" in them...)

Finished The Adventures Of Miss Sophia Berkley for TIOLI #4.

Now reading The Silver-Fork School: Novels Of Fashion Preceding Vanity Fair by Matthew Whiting Rosa.

The Murder At The Vicarage - Colonel Lucian Protheroe is not popular in the village of St Mary Mead; in fact, due to his rigidity and officiousness in his duties as magistrate and churchwarden, he has a knack for making enemies. Even the Reverend Mr Leonard Clement, vicar of St Mary Mead, finds himself voicing the unguarded opinion that the world would be a better place without Colonel Protheroe in it... Having allowed the rising young artist, Laurence Redding, to use a shed in the vicarage grounds as a studio, Len is caught in the crossfire of Colonel Protheroe's discovery that Laurence is painting his daughter, Lettice, in her bathing-suit. Worse still, Len has discovered a secret romance between Laurence and Anne Protheroe, the Colonel's second wife. When the Colonel insists upon calling at the vicarage to discuss what he believes are inaccuracies in the church collection fund accounts, Len reluctantly agrees to the meeting, but is called away from home to a sick parishioner - in what turns out to be a hoax. When Len returns, he discovers Colonel Protheroe slumped over the writing-desk in his study: he has been shot in the head... An indignant Len subsequently finds himself being regarded with a suspicious eye by the tactless and self-assured Inspector Slack. The case takes an abrupt and startling turn when Laurence Redding confesses to the murder - and another, when Anne Protheroe also confesses, insisting that Laurence is covering up for her. However, eyewitness testimony of their movements from an elderly neighbour of the Clements', a Miss Marple, confirms that neither one of them could have done it, and at length each admits their false confession, made for the other's benefit. At first inclined to dismiss Miss Marple as just one of the "old cats" with which St Mary Mead abounds, the acuteness and accuracy of her observations gives Len a new respect for her; while he can only gasp at her placid assertion that she is able without effort to think of seven different people who might have wanted to kill Colonel Protheroe...

This 1930 publication marks another important milestone in the career of Agatha Christie, marking the novel-debut (after one appearance in a short story) of her most famous amateur detective, Miss Jane Marple. A slightly different tone is noticeable in this introductory story than is found in the later series entries, with Miss Marple being seen as more unpleasantly nosy and generally gossipy than is afterwards the case. However, much of this can be attributed to the fact that we are seeing her through the eyes of Len Clement, who narrates the story, and to whom the "old cats" of St Mary Mead are a cross to be borne, though not always with patience. Both Len and his wife, Griselda, consider Miss Marple the worst old cat of the lot---because she sees everything and always thinks the worst. However, when Miss Marple's powers of observation are applied to the murder of Colonel Protheroe, the Clements come to realise that behind the dithery manner and seemingly random comparisons between aspects of the murder and minor incidents from her past lies a sharp intelligence and an almost boundless knowledge of human nature. In fact, it is one of this novel's ironies that this lace-and-shawl-draped old lady is far more worldly than Len himself. Len Clement is one of Christie's most likeable characters, an appealingly flawed individual in his helpless devotion to his much younger and quite unsuitably unclerical wife, his losing battle with the vicarage's awe-inspiringly incapable maidservant, and his frequent tussles with some unclerical impulses of his own. (I longed to say, "It's damned silly." I rather wish I had. I should have liked to observe the effect on Miss Wetherby.)

With the joint elimination of Anne Protheroe and Laurence Redding as suspects, the movements of everyone else in St Mary Mead on the day in question becomes a matter of official interest. Between the hoax call that took him away from the study at the critical moment, the incorrect time on the study clock found broken by the Colonel's body, and his unguarded remark about the desirability of murder, Len has plenty to do on his own account fending off the suspicions of Inspector Slack, and can only thank heaven that Griselda did not arrive back from town that evening until after the murder. As the investigation widens, Len ponders Miss Marple's list of suspects, forced to contemplate that matters he had previously dismissed as mere village chatter might be of crucial importance. Why, for instance, has a beautiful, sophisticated woman like Mrs Lestrange retired to a tiny village like St Mary Mead - and why did she insist upon a private meeting with Colonel Protheroe on the night before his death? What was in the suitcase that Miss Gladys Cram, secretary to the archaeologist Dr Stone, who is excavating a barrow in the Protheroes' grounds, was seen carrying into the woods? Why didn't Mary, the vicarage maid - who was "walking out" with a young man sentenced by Colonel Protheroe for poaching - hear the fatal shot fired? Was a ribald anonymous phonecall directed at the gossipy Mrs Price Ridley made by the same person who made the hoax call to Len? And what could be troubling Hawes, Len's curate, so profoundly that he seems to be falling apart before the vicar's eyes? Bewildering as all this is to Len, it is bread and butter to Miss Marple, who recognises that the overarching mystery of Colonel Protheroe's death cannot be solved until these surrounding minor mysteries are correctly interpreted and put in their place...

    Again we stared at her. Miss Marple arranged her lace fichu, pushed back the fleecy shawl that draped her shoulders, and began to deliver a gentle old-maidish lecture comprising the most astounding statements in the most natural way in the world.
    "I have not thought it right to speak until now. One's own belief---even so strong as to amount to knowledge---is not the same as proof. And unless one has an explanation that will fit all the facts (as I was saying to dear Mr Clement this evening) one cannot advance it with any real conviction. And my own explanation was not quite complete---it lacked just one thing---but suddenly, just as I was leaving Mr Clement's study, I noticed the palm in the pot by the window---and---well, there the whole thing was! Clear as daylight!"

I've read a couple of the Sarah Deane books. I liked one and didn't care much for the other. I can't help with the other.

>205 lyzard: Oh, Agatha. I hope I can get back to her bibliography soonish...

>206 cbl_tn: Hi, Carrie - thanks! At least I've determined that The Case Of The Hook-Billed Kites is the first in the series, so I might even find out for myself!

>207 scaifea: I look forward to hearing your thoughts on it, Amber...whenever. :)

Finished The Silver-Fork School: Novels Of Fashion Preceding Vanity Fair for TIOLI #6.

And in the spirit of going from one extreme to the other...

...now reading The Ultimate Werewolf, an anthology edited by Byron Preiss.

A Modern Hero - This 1932 novel by Louis Bromfield is something of a mixed bag. Bromfield himself became as famous over time for his conservation work and his innovations in farming methods as for his writing, and the strongest of his novels tend to reflect his passion for the land and his admiration for those who worked it. At the same time, they also illustrate his awareness of an America changing with respect to both its landscape and its values, and his dislike of the nature of much of that change. A number of his books, including this one, are about what he believed America was losing in its rush to modernity. A Modern Hero is one such work. The novel's title, is of course, bitterly ironic: this is a cautionary tale about a young man who represents everything Bromfield most despised about his time. Not surprisingly, perhaps, it is a bit of a struggle to read. It is never less than interesting, and offers a number of vivid character studies, but in the very nature of things, you know from the outset that it's going to end in tears. It makes the journey somewhat wearing.

The "hero" of Bromfield's title is Pierre Radier, the illegitimate son of a circus performer who calls herself Madame Azais and the scion of a European banking family. In Madame Azais's young days, circus was regarded with respect and its best perfomers as artists, but when this novel opens we find her and Pierre part of a dingy concern that struggles to make a living travelling through rural America, the performers viewed with suspicion and hostility by the locals. Madame Azais now has bouts of alcoholism, and Pierre hates the circus with a passion his still star-struck mother cannot comprehend. He longs to get away - "do something" - "be something" - "have everything" - but makes barely enough to live on as a trick-rider. In a small town in the Middle West, Pierre finds himself involved with a local girl called Joanna Ryan. Generally he is a casual lover, but something about Joanna catches his heart. When he learns she is pregnant, on impulse he offers to marry her and settle down; but Joanna, wiser than he, refuses and sends him on his way. A chance meeting with a man called Herman Muller, ugly, awkward and shy, but a mechanical genius, gives Pierre the opening he needs: their business partnership is his first step on his way up the ladder. Pierre and Herman start out in bicycles, but Herman's real passion is the new form of transportation known as the automobile. When businessman Homer Flint's own motor breaks down near the bicycle-shop, Pierre sees opportunity beckoning: because not only does he - or at least, Herman, which amounts to the same thing - have a talent that Flint is willing to invest in, but Flint has something Pierre wants - a daughter, trembling on the verge of old-maid-ship and desperate to be married. Suddenly the way to the top seems perfectly easy...

One of the interesting things about A Modern Hero is that it becomes "an American tale" by having almost all of its characters immigrants, or the children of immigrants; a wide range of backgrounds and experiences fill his novel. Also typical of Bromfield, though his narrative focuses on a man it is women who anchor it - to the extent that the text is broken up into lengthy sections named for the most important women in Pierre's life: "Joanna", who becomes the mother of his son; "Leah", who earned a comfortable fortune as a kept woman, but longs to experience love; and "Hazel", who makes the fatal mistake of putting herself wholly in Pierre's power. Joanna is the most typical Bromfield-ian character, and the novel's moral centre in spite of her relationship with Pierre and its consequences. Joanna's rejection of Pierre stems from her awareness that they belong to different worlds. She marries Elmer Croy, a kind-hearted, straightforward young man willing to take her in spite of her pregnancy. The life they build together on Elmer's family farm, and Joanna's ever-deepening passion for the land they own and tend, is contrasted throughout with Pierre's money-obsessed and increasingly dishonest financial dealings. Nevertheless, Pierre never loses his feelings for Joanna - nor his genuine appreciation of the much-older Leah who, like Joanna, sees through him even as she loves him, and knows when to send him away. It is Hazel, building about him romantic dreams as extreme as his own dreams of wealth, who pays the greatest price. It is not long before Pierre realises that being Homer Flint's son-in-law is not the pinnacle of success he at first imagined. His new business enterprises send him to New York, where he discovers to his disgust that as powerful as they may be in Pentland, the Flints are no more than provincials - and that he has been tarred with their brush. Immediately Pierre starts scheming to free himself of these now-unwanted ties, to build a fortune of his own separate from his father-in-law's concerns---not realising in his misplaced self-confidence that, for the first time in his life, he is thoroughly out of his depth...

Joanna had a swift odd vision of him as some one who had never known any peace and would never know it, some one in whose whole life there would never be a moment like those moments which she herself knew in abundance, moments such as she was experiencing now when all life seemed suddenly to glow in indolence with a rich warmth. No, with him there was never any time. She wondered now whether he had ever known what love was like beyond the brief tubulent satisfaction of a driving passion, mechanical and almost inhuman. She wondered whether even in such a moment he had ever lost himself and forgotten that which lay just around the corner waiting to be done. No, in him there was no peace and there never would be peace, and so he lost much. He would hurry, driven by plans and ambition, past everything that was rich in life until at last he would fall down and be buried beneath the earth, never having lived at all.

Finished my March reviews, and it's only the 10th April! And only one outstanding blog post, which I hope to get to this weekend!

I think that deserves a smile. (And maybe an algae-bath.)

>211 lyzard: How sweet!

March stats:

Books read: 9
TIOLI: 9

Mystery / thriller: 4
Non-fiction: 1
Classic: 1
Horror: 1
Contemporary (i.e. at time of publication) drama: 1
Unclassifiable: 1

Series works: 4
Potential decommission: 1
1932: 2

Owned: 5
Library: 4

Male author : Female author: 7 : 3

Oldest work: The Last Chronicle Of Barset by Anthony Trollope (1867)
Newest work: The Princess Of All Lands by Russell Kirk (1979)

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

Quarterly stats:

Books read: 31
TIOLI: 31

Mystery / thriller: 12
Classic: 6
Non-fiction: 3
Contemporary drama: 3
Historical romance: 2
Horror: 2
Fantasy: 1
Humour: 1
Unclassifiable: 1

Blog reads: 3
Series works: 12
Potential decommission: 3
1932: 4
Virago: 1

Owned: 15
Library: 10
Ebooks: 6

Male author : Female author: 20 : 12

Oldest work: The History Of The Nun; or, The Fair Vow-Breaker by Aphra Behn (1689)
Newest work: The Princess Of All Lands by Russell Kirk (1979)

>212 cbl_tn: Hi, Carrie! Yes, I think so too. :)

Wandering around the threads, a lot of people seem to be reading The Prisoner Of Zenda.

Did I do that? I hope so! :)

Feeling a little blah today, so I pulled out The Corinthian and read it. Never one of my favorites, although Pen is quite a firecracker. Is Faro's Daughter next?

Hi, Roni - sorry to hear about the blah! Pen as "the other man" always cracks me up. Faro's Daughter is indeed next, though I don't know if I'll get to it before the end of the month.

Hi Liz!

>211 lyzard: On that subject, I saw this and thought of you:

The Power of Sloth - in pictures



Apparently this is a green tea bath which keeps their skin healthy.

I saw this and thought of you as well:

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26734289

Loving all the sloths! I never knew how fond I was of them until you introduced them to me, Liz. My love of critters big and small is one of my great joys in life, so it's no small thing.

I've been rather quiet about it, because none too proud, but I listened to The Prisoner of Zenda sometime last week (which yes, you had a lot to with, along with Paul's subsequent comments), and while I was very much prepared to love it, must say it didn't do anything for me. I'm not sure why that is, all I do know is that the chasing around part in any adventure story, while being an essential component of adventures, is also what leaves me completely bored. The Three Musketeers, for example would have left me cold too, had it not been for the wonderfully evil character of Mylady. This is not to say I will not give TPoZ another chance eventually. The narrator in this audio version is excellent, and sometimes revisiting works I'm already familiar with yields better results when I can appreciate the details and not focus so much on 'what comes next'? as is proving so very true with Sense and Sensibility as a prime example.

eta: I think I'll copy/paste my comments above as a review of sorts on my own thread. Unlike you, I am very far behind and don't know how I'll ever catch up otherwise.

Can I just say generally that I love being instinctively associated with sloths?? :D

>218 souloftherose: Awww... Thanks, Heather!

>219 SandDune: Thank you for that, Rhian - I saw something about that woman in a different context, what an amazing effort - and so sad that land-clearing continues to do so much damage.

>220 Smiler69: Visit this thread for all your slothy needs, Ilana! :)

Sorry The Prisoner Of Zenda didn't do it for you at this time. I certainly understand what you mean about the running around! - but then that's the nature of the genre. I think my response was partly to an awareness of how hugely influential that story has been over the years.

All your Agatha Christie re-reads are making me want to re-read them!

Hi, Lori! So, do! - we would be thrilled to have you join us for our very leisurely journey through Dame Agatha's mysteries. :)

Finished The Ultimate Werewolf, which will be going into TIOLI #6 unless I can think of somewhere a little less bleedingly obvious.

Now reading Victorian People And Ideas by Richard D. Altick.

Howdy, Liz! I've been away for a while but I had to stop back in and check out the sloths — and you, of course. :) While I was away I read An Infamous Army and quite liked it, although I confess that I skimmed over the meticulously detailed battle descriptions. My sense of direction isn't good enough for me to imagine what the heck is going on in scenes like that. Now I want to go back and read more about how Lady Worth and her hubby hooked up. I can't remember off the top of my head which one that is, but I've got it written down ... somewhere. :)

How lovely to have a visit from you, Julia!! No, no - you're quite right to check out the sloths first! :)

I know what you mean about the battle scenes; I even struggle with mysteries that turn on who was where when, so you can just imagine me trying to cope with something of those dimensions! The other Heyer you're looking for is Regency Buck, where war is confined to that betwen the sexes.

>225 rosalita: >226 lyzard: Yes, I didn't skim the battle scenes - it was an audio book so I couldn't - but I didn't pay a lot of attention!

I've recently read the Dornford Yates Chandos series and he gives minute detail about the set-up of rooms, tunnels, staircases etc but, although the plot seems to hinge on these details, I usually manage to follow the action well enough without having much idea of direction, or even left or right, let alone any idea of what the architectural terms mean.

Hi, Kerry! Yeah, the discovery of a "layout of the house" map in a mystery always makes my heart sink! That, and plots that turn on the fact that Person A said they were in Place B at Time C, but then Person D who was in Place E at Time F didn't see them... :)

Venusberg - Anthony Powell's second novel is an odd and somewhat uncomfortable book. Most of it is set in an unnamed Balkan state that has achieved independence from Russia. The most probable model is Estonia, with Powell drawing upon his memories of time spent in the area in the mid-1920s while visiting his father, who was attached to the British Military Mission in Helsinki. The novel's ironic title draws upon the legend of Tannhäuser, a poet-knight who discovered Venusberg, the subterranean home of the goddess Venus, and spent a year there indulging in sinful pleasures; he subsequently sought but was unable to obtain absolution from Urban IV (whose role in the legend is echoed in the character of Pope, an officious yet somehow vaguely sinister valet). This novel's central character - you can hardly call him its "hero" - the journalist Lushington, is despatched from his rather depressing London life to a post as foreign correspondent for the tiny nation "whose name he can never remember"; but instead of the haven he seeks, he finds a land of conflict, struggle and disappointment, dominated by bureaucratic pettiness, with occasional outbursts of revolutionary fervour that never come near achieving their objective.

Lushington's London life has become a dead end. He is in love with the twice-divorced Lucy, but she has fallen for Da Costa, an old school friend of Lushington, who is indifferent to Lucy on his own account but likes to feel that she cares for him. The uncomfortable triangle is broken up when Lushington receives his overseas posting; ironically, Da Costa is also sent to the same territory, as an attache to the British legation. The two men travel on the same boat, and the journey sets the tone for their subsequent situation, as they find themselves with a heterogenous mix of fellow-passengers, all headed to the same destination but none native to the country of their occupation. Once arrived and settled, Lushington moves in diplomatic circles, becomes friends with displaced Russian aristocrats, real and false, and slips into an affair with Ortrud Mavrin, the much-younger Austrian wife of a Swedish Professor of Psychology. Da Costa introduces him to the local restaurants and nightclubs, where the waiters are Russian, the food French, and the girls charge more for speaking English. Meanwhile, the country Lushington is supposed to be reporting on remains distant and somehow unreal...

Venusberg contains the sharp character sketches and subtle humour that we expect from Anthony Powell, in addition to some scenes of acute discomfort, but these positives cannot offset a sense of futility that is ultimately rather depressing. Lushington's fragmented, disjointed life is conveyed through Powell's abandonment of conventional chapters for a series of isolated passages of varying lengths, some of them only a few paragraphs long, which convey the occasional glimmers of interest in an existence that, both to Lushington and the reader, seems increasingly pointless. This feeling is further heightened in scenes involving Da Costa and his American counterpart, Cortney, whose duties are apparently confined to an endless series of social gatherings under different roofs but with the same crowd; and in the subplot of the soldier Waldemar, who clings to the false sense of importance granted by his uniform and sword, but who succeeds in his official capacity only because the local revolutionaries are even less competent than he. Waldemar offers an ironic counterpoint to Lushington, to whom he attaches himself as the embodiment of his vision of a mythical England, imbibed from reading too many novels. Neither man ever finds the country he is seeking, but Waldemar, at least, never undergoes disillusionment. The scenes in London that bookend Venusberg make it quite clear that the struggling new nation is not the only one beset with dreary pettiness and a general air of hopelessness.

    Lushington found the atmosphere congenial to writing articles about London as if he were still living there. The telegrams were for the most part about communist organisations or anti-communist organisations, according to the mood. These people were having trouble with the Communists and also with the Agrarians and the National Party and the Social-Democrats and the Fascists and more recently with the Jews and Jesuits, so there was always plenty to telegraph home about and Lushington used to send long expensive cables to the paper which subsequently appeared in two lines, low on the page opposite the sporting news... When Da Costa became secretive Lushington as a reprisal talked about Lucy, and also to work off his own feelings about her, which, as he now saw Ortrud several times a week, had become quite complex. One or two letters arrived from Lucy telling him what to tell Da Costa about herself.
    So the days passed.

>228 lyzard: I am so with you on the map dread, Liz. In fact, one of the books I'm currently reading, Ellery Queen's The Greek Coffin Mystery has a map of the exterior, a map of the interior, and a long list of characters; I consider all of these things to be warning signs that I am about to read a mystery that I have no hope of figuring out. :-)

I hear you and sympathise! :)

That tendency became terribly prevalent during the 1920s (American mysteries being even worse in that respect than British ones) - and I'm wondering if Agatha Christie was just having a bit of fun with it in The Murder At The Vicarage? There are two maps included, one of the clutch of houses and the intervening paths around the murder scene, and one of the murder scene itself, but in the end it turns out that only one detail was really important and you didn't really need a map for it after all...

I haven't started the Ellery Queens yet, but they are, of course, on The List.

I did end up adding The Ultimate werewolf to TIOLI #6, but I managed to slot Victorian People And Ideas: A Companion For The Modern Reader Of Victorian Literature into #10, which made me feel a bit better.

Now reading Miss Pinkerton by Mary Roberts Rinehart.

Finished Miss Pinkerton for TIOLI #3.

Now reading Mr Fortune's Trials by H. C. Bailey.

For a variety of reasons, this has been a very tough week.

So naturally I applied the LT panacea:

The Layton Court Mystery - Anthony Berkeley (#1 in the Roger Sheringham series)
The Mystery Of The Evil Eye - Anthony Wynne (#1 in the Dr Eustace Hailey series)
Maigret Meets A Milord Omnibus - Georges Simenon (collects Maigret Meets A Milord, Maigret And The Hundred Gibbets and Maigret And The Enigmatic Lett)
Four Fantastic Tales - Hugh Walpole (collects The Prelude To Adventure, Maradick At Forty, Portrait Of A Man With Red Hair and Above The Dark Circus)

And this is the sticker that was on the freebie books I brought home from the library last week:

Sorry to hear you've been having a tough time Liz, but yes, nothing like the book-buying cure as a plaster for all that ails us. I've been wanting to read Simenon and Maigret literally for decades now and several times came close to buying French omnibus editions, but haven't caved quite yet.

Liz, I love that we all understand books make everything better. :-)

>236 Smiler69: Yeah, I went through a weird back-tracking phase this week where I realised that in my hunt for the obscurities of 1931, I'd overlooked some things that were really obvious, and Maigret was one of those.

You would, of course, gravitate to the French editions! - I was lured in by the realisation that the whole series has been translated, which I think must be just about unique. I know that many of the current Scandi-series are only incompletely available in translation, for example.

I saw on your thread that you're reading (listening to?) In Chancery; I currently have The Man Of Property on my shortlist TBR. I keep feeling like I must have read this series before, but perhaps I've just absorbed a lot of it from other sources.

>237 AuntieClio: Hi, Steph! And yet the world outside just looks at us funny!? :)

>238 lyzard: Liz, I just look at them back funny with a little bit of "screw you" in there.

>231 lyzard: Of course the Ellery Queens are on your list! I expect nothing less from you. I only hope you will still be speaking to me when I tell you that I am reading (gasp!) out of order. I know, I know. It offends my sensibility as well, but not as much as paying full price would. :-)

>238 lyzard: I'd be very surprised to find out you haven't read the Forsyte Saga before, Liz, though I guess stranger things have been known to happen. I listened to The Man of Property and got really hooked, and now am (yes) listening to In Chancery. It took me a while to get into it because it picks up 12 years after the events of the first book, but I'm properly enthused now, more than halfway through, with just a few hours to go. Will probably finish today actually, if I spend as much time on my drawing project as I have in the last couple of days, which is perfect listening time for me.

One of the reasons I haven't purchased either of the Simenon more recent French omnibuses currently available on the market is that they don't offer the complete works, but a selection of 'best of' with either Les essentiels de Georges Simenon or Les essentiels de Maigret. Otherwise, the full Maigret series is available, but at over $30 per volume for what appears to be eight 10 volumes, it seems like a huge price commitment* (French books are much more expensive because of the more limited market). Of course, I can get him from the library, but then I find I don't like reading from big volumes when there is a time restriction. HUGE problem, as you see. ;-)

* and never mind the time commitment at around 1,000 pages each!

Happy Easter!

>239 AuntieClio: Sister! :)

>240 rosalita: Oh, groan, don't talk to me about book prices... OR shipping prices...

>241 Smiler69: Hi, Ilana! Most of the Maigrets are available here in libraries - all except the first in the series, of course! I was lucky to find that omnibus available quite inexpensively; it collects either the first three in the series, or three out of the first four (need to do some research there!). I'm hoping I won't have to pay for the rest.

Oh, time commitment---if you're going to start worrying about details like that - ! :D

>242 wilkiec: Thanks, Diana!

>243 lyzard: All Right! Sister!

Finished Mr Fortune's Trials...which I just realised fits TIOLI #19 - yay!

Now reading The Sittaford Mystery by Agatha Christie.

if you're going to start worrying about details like that

Right. The fact that I already have more books than I'll probably be able to get through in the next 10-15 years certainly doesn't stop me from buying more and borrowing others from the library. I did notice they have all 10 omnibus editions of the complete Maigret at the library, which isn't really surprising considering he's such a classic. I'll take the plunge into Simenon sooner or later and probably wonder when I've done so why it took me so long.

>234 lyzard: Sorry to hear about your tough week but hooray for buying books!

I would like to read the Maigret books but have been holding off starting another series, however I'm sure I will succumb if you do. Penguin are republishing the whole series in English in the UK..

Happy Easter, Liz!

>247 souloftherose: I...have been holding off starting another series

Not start another series!? Next you'll be telling me you didn't buy a book just because you haven't read the last one you bought!

>248 Crazymamie: Thanks, Mamie, you too!

The Corinthian - Though one of the unquestioned leaders of fashionable society, ten years of pursuit and flattery have left Sir Richard Wyndham cynical and disillusioned. All but given up on the hope that he might be loved for himself, Richard allows his mother and sister to push him towards a marriage of convenience. But although the Brandons are an old and proud family, the behaviour - and gambling debts - of the present Lord Saar and his son, Beverley, hardly make them desirable relatives; while Melissa Brandon's cold-blooded contemplation of a loveless marriage of separate lives makes Richard recoil. He stops short of committing himself, though he knows very well a proposal is expected. In the small hours of the following morning, having spent the evening getting very thoroughly drunk, Richard is wandering the London streets when he comes across a curious sight: someone climbing out of a second-storey window on a ladder made of knotted sheets. Appealed to for assistance, Richard helps the fugitive descend and discovers that what he first took to be a burglar, and then a truant schoolboy, is in fact a runaway heiress in boy's clothing. Miss Penelope Creed explains that she is an orphan living with her formidable aunt, and that, to escape being pressured into marrying her cousin, she has determined to flee to her old country home near Bristol. Aware of a sense of fellow-feeling, and certain in spite of his hazy condition that a girl of Pen's age shouldn't be travelling alone, Richard decides impulsively to escort her. Stopping at his house only to change his clothes and improve Pen's disguise via a haircut and a fresh cravat, Richard turns his back on his responsibilities and plunges into an adventure that will change his life...

In spite of a storyline that encompasses highway robbery, conspiracy, blackmail and murder, Georgette Heyer's 1940 novel, The Corinthian, is one of her more light-hearted romances, with a cross-dressing subplot that allows the hero and heroine to spend time together in a way that would not otherwise be possible, and to become fast friends before a thought of love crosses either of their minds. It is also a redemption story of sorts, although again light-heartedly, with Sir Richard Wyndham – handsome, wealthy and titled, and a leader of the dandy set famous for his cravat, the Wyndham Fall – discovering he doesn’t know as much about women as he thought he did, and a few other valuable life-lessons as well. In society's envious eyes, Richard has nothing to wish for; but even as beneath his dandified surface lurks an athlete known for his prowess as a pugilist, behind the frivolous façade of a leader of fashion is a man increasingly dissatisfied with the direction of his life. On the brink of drifting into a disastrous marriage of convenience, Richard is saved from himself when a kindly fate intervenes, and seventeen-year-old tomboy Pen Creed drops literally into his arms. Waking the next day with a splitting headache, to find himself crammed into an overcrowded stagecoach and responsible for a girl as unworldly as she is impulsive, Richard resigns himself to discomfort and annoyance, accepting that he must watch over Pen until he can place her under more appropriate guardianship. However, as the unlikely comrades pursue an erratic course towards Bristol, Pen's wholehearted enjoyment of their "splendid adventure" begins to have its effect upon the jaded man of fashion, who unexpectedly finds his boredom cured by their travels, and his cynicism disarmed by Pen's trusting friendliness. As the two draw near their destination, neither one is eager for the journey to end. But fate has further surprises in store for them…

"Richard," declares Louisa, Lady Trevor, when her brother's mysterious absence is discovered, "is fast, last, and always a man of fashion, and he will never do anything unbefitting a Corinthian..." The humour in The Corinthian stems not just from the complications associated with Pen’s assumption of a male persona – including being drawn into a romantic triangle as a most improbable “other man” – but from the increasingly undignified situations in which its most fashionable hero finds himself, as in addition to the horrors of the public stagecoach, and the gaining of an unwanted and tenacious new friend in the shape of professional thief Jimmy Yarde, he is compelled to pose sequentially as a tutor, a trustee, a cousin and an uncle, as circumstances and Pen’s ingenuity dictate. In addition, the central pair are surrounded by a cast of comic supporting characters, from George Trevor, Richard’s long-suffering brother-in-law (“Yoicks!”), to Pen’s ghastly Aunt Almeria – who nevertheless gets perhaps my favourite line of dialogue (“Frederick! Will you stand by and hear your mother being insulted by one whom I strongly suspect of being a dandy?”). But there are also darker elements to The Corinthian, as Richard and Pen find themselves embroiled in robbery and murder, and a chance encounter with a disreputable acquaintance of Richard’s leads to the threatened exposure of Pen’s secret and attempted blackmail. Although Richard is only too painfully conscious of them, the naïve Pen has not given a thought to the implications of their companionship; and it is not until a scandalised world reacts with shock to their unchaperoned ramblings, and declares that such a transgression should – must – end in marriage, that she thinks to question to the state of her heart...

    "Pen Creed," said Sir Richard calmly, "you cast me for the role of bear leader, and I accepted it. You drew a revolting picture of me which led everyone in that coach to regard me in the light of a persecutor of youth. Now you are reaping the harvest of your own sowing."
    She laughed. "Are you going to persecute me?"
    "Horribly!" said Sir Richard.
    She tucked a confiding hand in his arm and gave a little skip. "Very well, I will do as you tell me. I am very glad I met you: we are having a splendid adventure, are we not?"

>249 lyzard: Liz, wait ... we're supposed to wait to buy books until we've read the ones we have? Have I been doing it wrong?

No, no - you've got it right, Heather's got it wrong. "Not start a new series", indeed... :D

Finished The Sittaford Mystery for TIOLI #3.

Now reading Contango by James Hilton - which I will list for TIOLI #16, while shifting Venusberg by Anthony Powell to #12; because let's face it, how often do I read a book set in Eastern Europe?

>252 lyzard: Liz, whew. Good to know I'm doing something right. ;-)

>250 lyzard: Nice review Liz. The cover you picked is one of the few that seems to actually depict something or someone from the book. I'm really bad at remembering descriptions of characters but even I picked up that Pen has golden hair yet most of the book covers (including mine) depict a woman with brown hair.

>251 AuntieClio: & >252 lyzard: :-D

I wanted to pick your brains on something. I was writing up some brief thoughts on Claire Tomalin's biography of Dora Jordan (actress and mistress to William IV) and realised that I thought there was more freedom for women in 18th Britain than in the 19th century but I'm not really sure why I think that. Dora Jordan seems to have quite a bit of freedom in some ways as did Georgiana Cavendish but I wonder if they were exceptions being an actress and upper-class/very wealthy respectively? Do you know of any books that look at women's lives from the 18th century through the Regency and into the Victorian period? I feel like I ought to be able to think of one but I'm stumped.

Or depict something and get it wrong anyway. This is the copy I actually own - (i) why would you put Lydia rather than Pen on the cover? (ii) regardless, Lydia is a brunette!



You're right on both counts: things were more relaxed in the 18th century through the Regency, and began tightening up across the 19th century. But you've picked the two exceptions to the rule: morality was strictest for the middle classes and the landed gentry; above and below that women had more freedom (until Victorianism really kicked in, anyway).

There are various books about women's lives at particular periods*, and books in which shifting requirements are evident apropos of other social changes, but off the top of my head I can't think of any that have those changes over time as their main subject.

(*you're reading Judith Flanders; she and Amanda Vickery are two I've read in this area)

>250 lyzard: Fantastic review Liz! The Corinthian is one of my favorite Heyer's.

Thanks, Heidi!

The Scandal Of Father Brown - This last entry in G. K. Chesterton's series about the priest-detective Father Brown was, evidently, undertaken chiefly out of financial necessity, which might explain a certain feeling of lack that pervades this fith and final volume. The Father Brown stories are always notable for their blending of mystery and philosophy, but in the case of the eight stories that make up this collection, there is an overbalance towards the latter, with the mysteries themselves not always substantial enough to bear the burden. The results, although certainly not unentertaining, tend to take a bit too long to get where they're going.

The title story in The Scandal Of Father Brown is a slight but amusing tale about the dangers of judging by appearances. A crusading journalist gets wind of a prominent socialite abandoning her industrialist husband for a notorious poet and resolves to expose and shame her. When it seems that a Catholic priest is assisting the adulterers, his moral outrage knows no bounds... In The Quick One, Father Brown and his friend, Inspector Greenwood, are staying at the Sussex hotel in which a professional controversialist has a decorative sword rammed through his body... Confronted by a book that allegedly makes people disappear if they open it, Professor Openshaw, an investigator of psychic phenomenon, is compelled to believe in the curse when his own secretary falls victim to The Blast Of The Book. In The Green Man, a naval admiral is found dead in a pond near to his coastal home - but he has not been drowned. Locked inside a small round-house at the end of a pier, a private investigator is powerless to stop the millionaire he has been hired to protect being murdered in The Pursuit Of Mr Blue. Two potential benefactors of an Oxford college are found poisoned in The Crime Of The Communist, and suspicion points equally to an openly communistic professor and a scientist specialising in chemical weapons... In The Point Of A Pin, a businessman threatened with murder apparently evades his pursuers only to commit suicide - but where is his body...? In The Insoluble Problem, Father Brown and Flambeau are distracted from their efforts to prevent the theft of a church relic by a most bizarre murder...

The shortcomings of The Scandal Of Father Brown are perhaps most evident in the difficulties associated with highlighting the best stories: each of them has a flaw that prevents it from being wholly satisfactory - even if that flaw is simply too much talk. Sometimes, too, the talk becomes lecturing: Chesterton's tendency to set up paper tigers is still in evidence, and writing in the mid-1930s he was able to add communists and unions to his usual targets of scientists and atheists. The Crime Of The Communist, which has three out of the four, is particularly beset in this regard, which spoils an otherwise clever murder mystery with some amusing things to say about the peculiarities of tradition. Yet for all this we notice a lack of passion, as if Chesterton was simply going through the motions - as indeed he probably was. It is fair to say, I think, that the best of the Father Brown stories were penned was still going through the process of conversion to Catholicism, and perhaps wrestling with some associated demons. The heightened awareness of spiritual mysteries and earthly paradoxes that fuelled the early stories is conspicuously missing from this volume, which feels like the work of a man fully comfortable with his faith, if not with the world around him.

The Inspector was more sympathetic than the secretary; but the sequel of his sympathy was the last thing Muggleton would normally have associated with police advice. The Inspector, after some reflection, very much surprised Mr Muggleton by advising him to consult an able amateur whom he knew to be staying in town. Mr Muggleton had read reports and romances about the Great Criminologist, who sits in his library like an intellectual spider and throws out theoretical filaments of a web as large as the world. He was prepared to be led to the lonely chateau where the expert wore a purple dressing-gown, to the attic where he lived on opium and acrostics, to the vast laboratory or the lonely tower. To his astonishment he was led to the very edge of the crowded beach by the pier to meet a dumpy little clergyman, with a broad hat and a broad grin, who was at that moment hopping about on the sands with a crowd of poor children; and excitedly waving a very little wooden spade.

Oddness:

The 2004 Dales Large Print edition of The Scandal Of Father Brown has a brief introduction by H. R. F. Keating in which he admits that, overall, the stories aren't up to the standard of the earlier ones but adds that they are still very enjoyable, particularly The Vampire Of The Village...which was published as a standalone story in 1936, a year after The Scandal Of Father Brown, and only included in a selection of later editions of the book, including not this one.

>260 lyzard:: "Dear Mr. Keating, We would like to invite you to write an introduction to our new edition of the least satisfying Father Brown stories. We plan to leave out the best of the lot, and would appreciate your calling attention to it. Yours &c., Dales Pub. Co."

So Liz, are you compelled to seek out one of the later editions, or does the the chronology give you a pass?

:D

The Vampire Of The Village is one of three stray Father Brown stories; I don't think the other two were ever "collected", although I believe all three were (naturally) included in a release of The Complete Works Of--- If we have the right volumes of that available in the library system here I will probably track them down, yes.

The Silver-Fork School: Novels Of Fashion Preceding Vanity Fair - I have spoken before about the genre of 19th-century novel-writing known derisively as "the silver-fork school": novels of fashionable life that both criticised and exploited the extravagance and immorality of aristocratic life. Condemned by the critics even at the height of its popularity for pandering to the worst instincts of the reading public, after flourishing for two decades this form of writing died almost overnight, with the novels themselves literally disappearing: very few of them were later republished; copies held by circulating libraries fell to pieces and were discarded. By the 1850s, they were all but forgotten---and remained so for another eighty years, until the 1936 publication of Matthew Whiting Rosa's The Silver-Fork School: Novels Of Fashion Preceding Vanity Fair, a work derived from his PhD thesis at Columbia University. Though several more such studies have since appeared, Rosa was the first to recognise that the silver-fork novels, whatever their literary shortcomings, were a goldmine of information about life in the first half of the 19th century, and likewise offer valuable insight into the evolution of the novel during those years. His study traces the influences that gave rise to this form of writing, examines the most significant authors and works, and finally contends that the silver-fork novel did not simply die, but was killed off by the publication of the work he considers the ne plus ultra of the genre, Thackeray's Vanity Fair.

The early chapters of The Silver-Fork School examine the various influences upon the development of the genre. In the early decades of the 19th century, society itself was in a state of flux, marked by the establishment of the Regency in 1811, the rise of the dandy - Beau Brummell and others - and the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Increasing social and political tensions, which culminated in the passing of the First Reform Bill in 1832, were offset and to an extent disguised by spiralling extravagance and excess amongst the upper classes. (Rosa describes the establishment of Crockford's, a gambling club: the refurbishments prior to opening cost 94,000 pounds; sixteen years later, its owner retired with a fortune estimated at 1.2 million pounds, at a time when the average wage was around 40 pounds a year.) In literary terms, Rosa traces two separate threads: the "social novel", largely didactic works that included critical portraits of society, chiefly by female authors such as Fanny Burney, Maria Edgeworth and Susan Ferrier; and the "novel of purpose", a smaller, male-dominated school led by Robert Plumer Ward featuring dissatisfied young men seeking a higher meaning in life. The silver-fork novel proper was born around 1824, taking its first steps in the works of Theodore Hook (whose interminable dinner-party scenes prompted the critic William Hazlitt to coin the term "silver-fork novel" in the first place) and T. H. Lister. It was, almost simultaneously, Edward Bulwer Lytton and Benjamin Disraeli who worked out how to have their cake and eat it too, penning novels in which an aristocratic young man indulges in all of society's excesses while at the same time, or as a result of disillusionment, seeking "something more": Bulwer Lytton's Pelham and Disraeli's Vivian Grey and The Young Duke simultaneously glorify and satirise the society they depict. This "split vision" Rosa traces back to the influence of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, generally considered the first Bildungsroman.

The silver-fork novel represents only one aspect of the literary output of Bulwer Lytton and Disraeli, but other novelists made a career out of novels depicting the rituals and transgressions of high society. Rosa is not kind when considering the works of Marguerite, Countess Blessington, and Lady Charlotte Bury---but it is hard to dispute his assertion that had not these ladies each had a "handle" to her name, their works would never have become popular, or perhaps even been published. In fact, both were recruited by the publisher Henry Colburn specifically because he could advertise their silver-fork novels as being written by "insiders" - as opposed to those of Hook, Lister, and for that matter Disraeli, who when he began writing was an outsider desperate to get in. Rosa is more admiring, though certainly not uncritical, when examining the career of the remarkable Catherine Gore, who was the leading exponent of the silver-fork school, penning around two dozen of them over some twenty years. Though by no means a great writer, Gore's sharply observant eye and talent for witty dialogue kept her novels popular, while the sheer number of them offers to the modern critic a window into English society from the 1820s to the 1840s. Though he discusses many of her novels here, in agreement with most critical assessments of Gore's career Rosa singles out Cecil; or, The Adventures Of A Coxcomb and its sequel, Cecil, A Peer, in which an elderly roué looks back over a lengthy career of indulgence and dissipation. Rosa argues that Gore was at her best when depicting the Regency period; these novels allowed her to do so in startling detail, but also with the benefit of satirical hindsight. Fascinatingly, Cecil was published anonymously; and so brilliantly did Gore capture the masculine voice in her novel that many people were fooled as to its authorship.

So far The Silver-Fork School covers the ground that any study in this area must; but in his conclusions Rosa separates himself from many of the studies that followed his. Although Vanity Fair has many of the characteristics of the genre, most critics tend to argue that it is "great literature" and therefore - by definition - it cannot be a "silver-fork novel". Rosa takes the opposite tack, positioning Vanity Fair as literally the silver-fork novel to end all silver-fork novels, and arguing that the genre died in its wake not because Thackeray had shown authors and readers a better way, but because after Vanity Fair there was nothing left to be said on the subject. Likewise, it has often been pointed out that in his public persona as a literary critic, Thackeray tended to mock the silver-fork authors and their works; but Rosa shows that in his private writings, he spoke admiringly and even enviously of Catherine Gore. Moreover, a number of incidents in various novels by Gore are echoed in Vanity Fair, which like Cecil is a satirical examination of the Regency from the perspective of the early Victorian era.

Earlier this year, with respect to Vineta Colby's Yesterday's Woman, I acknowledged the trap associated with reading non-fiction, namely, a tendency to say "This person agrees with me, therefore s/he is right". Well, here I am again, speaking approvingly of Matthew Rosa's line of argument...

But here's the thing: great literature is not born in a vacuum, which is the impression you tend to gain by concentrating only upon great literature. In terms of literary quality, of course no-one would dream of comparing any of the earlier silver-fork novels to Vanity Fair; but to suggest that those works had no effect upon Thackeray - who we know read a great many of them - is to be deliberately blind to what is self-evident through even a casual examination of those minor and forgotten works. Authors are naturally influenced not only by the world around them, but by the writing that preceded theirs, be it bad, good or great. That influence may be negative just as much as positive - an author may very well learn from earlier works what NOT to do - but either way it is real. Looked at from this perspective, a great many "unimportant" novels become very important indeed.

    The origins of the fashionable novel were confused and uncertain, but after the period of experimentation was over, a formula was evolved which was exceedingly simple and workable. Complexities of plot and characterisation was avoided; the overload of thesis carried by so many novels of the 1790s was discarded, and an exclusive preoccupation with verisimilitude became the distinguishing mark of the fashionable novel. Social etiquette at the ball, the dinner, the hunt, the club, and the opera; conversation which seldom extended beyond the shallow conventionalities of polite discourse; and a zealous attention to the details of food and clothing supplied the material for hundreds of novels by dozens of novelists.
    Had none of the fashionable novels surpassed this standard, however, hardly any historical value could atone for their lack of intrinsic merit. The formula was too simple to produce novels which might live beyond the brief span of a season. If it had not been for the few writers, who, while fulfilling all the minimum requirements necessary to secure readers, went further and created real characters, Carlyle's indictment might well stand. But the intellectual dandies of Disraeli and Bulwer manage to combine some measure of mental alertness and serious endeavour with the frivolous graces, and even the Regency beaux and dandy chaperons of Mrs Gore occasionally deviate into sense. Both because of their place in old traditions of literature and life and because of their own interest, the fashionable novels deserve more attention than has hitherto been given them

Finished Contango for TIOLI #16.

Now reading, hmm...

...oh, misinformation, misinformation...

I missed Murder At School, James Hilton's only foray into the detective novel, on my sweep of 1931, because I had found it mistakenly listed as published in 1933. I think this is because it was originally published under the pseudonym "Glen Trevor" in 1931, but reissued in 1933 as by James Hilton.

Mind you, misinformation emanates from the most unlikely places: my Oxford University Press edition - which inexplicably uses the alternative American title, Was It Murder? - states that the novel was first published in 1953, although it gets the Glen Trevor pseudonym correct.

So anyway---now reading Murder At School, by James Hilton, from 1931.

...and, by the way, I am getting very tired of the privileging of American titles. My touchstones would have me believe that my last three reads were Murder At Hazelmoor, Ill Wind and Was It Murder?.

No. No, they weren't.

>263 lyzard:: The term "silver-fork school" is new to me. I've certainly heard of "novels of manners" but was completely ignorant of this variety. Thank you for your detailed summary -- once again, I feel smarter for having visited your thread!

>266 swynn: I can only echo these thoughts.

>261 swynn: Ha! I love that imagined pitch, Steve. Hard to resist an invitation like that, eh?

>263 lyzard: Liz, you read the most interesting books! And then you write reviews that make me want to read them, too. That's a terrible thing to do. :-)

>266 swynn: Thank you, Steve, that's very kind of you!

The novel of manners is a related, but more seriously literary form of writing. Silver-fork novels were the contemporary equivalent of "Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous": they tut-tutted over the immoral aristocracy while wallowing in the details. They were also a kind of guidebook for the rising middle-classes who might have been aspiring to get into high society - Catherine Gore in particular was notorious for including the real names of fashionable shops, milliners, caterers, etc.

>267 Matke: Thanks, Gail, much appreciated!

>268 rosalita: Julia, I can only tender my most humble apologies! :)

Thank you to everyone who stopped by this thread - please join me in my new digs!