lyzard's list: worshipping obscurity in 2017 - Part 5

The enormity and variety of Western Australia is hard to imagine; much of the state is national park, each one with its own dramatic attractions.

On the left is the Knox Gorge, Karijini National Park, in the Pilbara region in the north of the state; one of a chain of spectacular gorges. On the right are the Pinnacles, limestone formations within the Nambung National Park on the south-west coast, about 200 km north of Perth.


  

"When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity."
---G. K. Chesterton (I'm pretty sure he was talking about books...)

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Currently reading:



He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope (1869)

2017 reading

January:

1. Deerbrook by Harriet Martineau (1839)
2. The Case Of The Black Twenty-Two by Brian Flynn (1928)
3. Forgive Us Our Trespasses by Lloyd C. Douglas (1932)
4. The Man Who Fell Through The Earth by Carolyn Wells (1919)
5. Elsie's Motherhood by Martha Finley (1876)
6. Hatter's Castle by A. J. Cronin (1931)
7. Colonel Gore's Third Case by Lynn Brock (1927)
8. The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez (1916)
9. Mrs Tim Flies Home by D. E. Stevenson (1952)
10. Summerhills by D. E. Stevenson (1956)
11. Red Pepper's Patients by Grace S. Richmond (1917)
12. Penelope's English Experiences by Kate Douglas Wiggin (1893)
13. Madeline; or, Love, Treachery And Revenge by James Summerfield Slaughter (1859)
14. The Merriweather Girls At Good Old Rockhill by Lizette M. Edholm (1932)
15. 1815: Regency Britain In The Year Of Waterloo by Stephen Bates (2015)
16. Cousin Kate by Georgette Heyer (1968)
17. One, Two, Buckle My Shoe by Agatha Christie (1940)
18. Mr Pottermack's Oversight by R. Austin Freeman (1930)
19. The Linger-Nots And The Mystery House; or, The Story Of Nine Adventurous Girls by Agnes Miller (1923)

February:

20. The Riddle Of The Mysterious Light by Mary E. Hanshew and Hazel Phillips Hanshew (1921)
21. The Man Without A Face by Clifton Robbins (1932)
22. The Barrakee Mystery by Arthur W. Upfield (1929)
23. More Tales Of The Unexpected by Roald Dahl (1980)
24. Wind In His Fists by Phyllis Bottome (1931)
25. Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat by Ernest Bramah (1928)
26. The Devil's Highway by Harold Bell Wright and John Lebar (1932)
27. The Ellerby Case by John Rhode (1927)
28. Gentlemen Of Crime by Arthur Gask (1932)
29. The Man Of The Forest by Zane Grey (1920)
30. Sons by Pearl S. Buck (1932)
31. Mr Fortune, Please by H. C. Bailey (1927)
32. Death At Four Corners by Anthony Gilbert (1929)
33. Evil Under The Sun by Agatha Christie (1941)
34. Charity Girl by Georgette Heyer (1970)

March:

35. The Duke's Children by Anthony Trollope (1880)
36. Feathers Left Around by Carolyn Wells (1923)
37. Flying Clues by Charles J. Dutton (1927)
38. Murder On The Palisades by Will Levinrew (1930)
39. The Greene Murder Case by S. S. Van Dine (1928)
40. One Wonderful Night by Louis Tracy (1912)
41. Lost Man's Lane by Anna Katharine Green (1898)
42. The Linger-Nots And The Valley Feud; or, The Great West Point Chain by Agnes Miller (1923)
43. Ruth Fielding Down In Dixie; or, Great Times In The Land Of Cotton by Alice B. Emerson (1916)
44. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis (1920)
45. The Hermit In Van Diemen's Land by Henry Savery (1830)
46. This House Of Grief: The Story Of A Murder Trial by Helen Garner (2014)
47. The Magic Pudding by Norman Lindsay (1918)
48. Arresting Delia by Sydney Fowler (1933)
49. Dr Nikola by Guy Newell Boothby (1895)
50. N or M? by Agatha Christie (1941)
51. Lady Of Quality by Georgette Heyer (1972)
52. Daylight Murder by Paul McGuire (1934)
53. The Bartlett Mystery by Louis Tracy (1919)

2017 reading

April - June:

54. The House Of Discord by Hazel Phillips Hanshew (1922)
55. Death At The Opera by Gladys Mitchell (1934)
56. Danger Point by Patricia Wentworth (1941)
57. None Of My Business by David Sharp (1931)
58. The Tragedy Of Z by Barnaby Ross (1933)
59. The Zoo Murder by Francis D. Grierson (1926)
60. If Winter Comes by A. S. M. Hutchinson (1921)
61. Elsie's Children by Martha Finley (1877)
62. The Linger-Nots And Their Golden Quest; or, The Log Of The Ocean Monarch by Agnes Miller (1923)
63. The Three Just Men by Edgar Wallace (1926)
64. Again The Three Just Men by Edgar Wallace (1928)
65. Ruth Fielding At College; or, The Missing Examination Papers by Alice B. Emerson (1917)
66. The Dangerous Dandy by Barbara Cartland (1974)
67. Graustark: The Story Of A Love Behind A Throne by George Barr McCutcheon (1901)
68. Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers (1933)
69. Peril At Cranbury Hall by John Rhode (1930)
70. The Clutching Hand by Charles J. Dutton (1928)
71. The Body In The Library by Agatha Christie (1942)
72. The Mysteries Of London; or, Revelations Of The British Metropolis by Paul Féval (1847)
73. The Mystery Of The Cape Cod Players by Phoebe Atwood Taylor (1933)
74. The 'Z' Murders by J. Jefferson Farjeon (1932)
75. The Holy War by John Bunyan (1682)

May:

76. Zoe: The History Of Two Lives by Geraldine Jewsbury (1845)
77. Patty's Friends by Carolyn Wells (1908)
78. Peregrine's Progress; or, Diana Of The Dawn by Jeffery Farnol (1922)
79. Agatha Webb by Anna Katharine Green (1899)
80. Black Oxen by Gertrude Atherton (1923)
81. Ruth Fielding In The Saddle; or, College Girls In The Land Of Gold by Alice B. Emerson (1917)
82. Red And Black by Grace S. Richmond (1919)
83. The Bunch Of Violets by Ernest Bramah (1924)
84. Ma Cinderella by Harold Bell Wright (1932)
85. Max Carrados Mysteries by Ernest Bramah (1927)
86. Someone Like You by Roald Dahl (1961)
87. The Beautiful Wretch by William Black (1881)
88. The Chinese Shawl by Patricia Wentworth (1943)
89. Walk With Care by Patricia Wentworth (1933)
90. The Murder At Crome House by G. D. H. and Margaret Cole (1927)
91. Spooky Hollow by Carolyn Wells (1923)
92. Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie (1942)
93. The Madwoman In The Attic: The Woman Writer And The Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar (1979)
94. Pontifex, Son And Thorndyke by R. Austin Freeman (1931)

June:

95. The Hand Of Power by Edgar Wallace (1927)
96. Streaked With Crimson by Charles J. Dutton (1929)
97. Murder Gone Mad by Philip MacDonald (1931)
98. The Man From The River by G. D. H. and Margaret Cole (1928)
99. The Furthest Fury by Carolyn Wells (1924)
100. Drury Lane's Last Case by Barnaby Ross (1933)
101. The Circular Study by Anna Katharine Green (1900)
102. So Big by Edna Ferber (1924)
103. The Taking Men by Anne Hepple (1940)
104. The Outrageous Lady by Barbara Cartland (1977)
105. The Linger-Nots And The Whispering Charm; or, The Secret From Old Alaska by Agnes Miller (1925)
106. Oh Happy Youth by Kay Cleaver Strahan (1931)
107. Red Of The Redfields by Grace S. Richmond (1924)
108. An International Affair by Bruce Graeme (1934)
109. The Chinese Parrot by Earl Derr Biggers (1926)
110. The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie (1943)
111. Un Crime en Hollande by Georges Simenon (1931)
112. Before The Crossing by Storm Jameson (1947)

Books in transit:

On interlibrary loan / branch transfer / storage request:

Purchased and shipped:

On loan:
**The Madwoman In The Attic by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar (06/07/2017)
* Murder Gone Mad by Philip MacDonald (06/07/2017)
The Mad Monk by R. T. M. Scott (06/07/2017)
He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope (20/07/2017)
* Un Crime en Hollande by Georges Simenon (03/08/2017)
The Mysteries Of London by G. W. M. Reynolds (10/08/2017)
Gil Blas by Alain René Le Sage (10/08/2017)
* So Big by Edna Ferber (29/08/2017)
A House Divided by Pearl S. Buck (29/08/2017)
* The Man From The River by G.D.H. and Margaret Cole (29/08/2017)
Gains And Losses by Robert Lee Wolff (29/08/2017)

Reading projects 2017:

Blog reads:
Chronobibliography: Gallantry Unmask'd; or, Women In Their Proper Colours by Anonymous
Authors In Depth:
- The Mother-In-Law by E. D. E. N. Southworth
- The Captain Of The Vulture by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
- The Sicilian by 'the author of The Mysterious Wife'
- Family Pictures by Susannah and Margaret Minifie
- The Old Engagement by Julia Day
- The Refugee In America by Frances Trollope
Reading Roulette: Had You Been In His Place by Lizzie Bates
Australian fiction: Louisa Egerton by Mary Leman Grimstone
Gothic novel timeline: Julia De Roubigné by Henry Mackenzie
Early crime fiction: The Mysteries Of London by G. W. M. Reynolds
Related reading: Gains And Losses by Robert Lee Wollf / G. W. M. Reynolds: Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Politics, And The Press by Anne Humpherys and Louis James (eds.)

Group / tutored reads:

Completed: Deerbrook by Harriet Martineau (thread here)
Completed: The Duke's Children by Anthony Trollope (thread here)
Completed: Zoe: The History Of Two Lives by Geraldine Jewsbury (thread here)

Now: He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope (thread here)

Upcoming: Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte

General reading challenges:

America's best-selling novels (1895 - ????):
Next up: Soundings by A. Hamilton Gibbs

Virago chronological reading project:
Next up: Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte

Agatha Christie mysteries in chronological order:
Next up: Towards Zero

C.K. Shorter List of Best 100 Novels:
Next up: Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane by Alain René Le Sage

Mystery League publications:
Next up: The Merrivale Mystery

The evolution of detective fiction:
Next up: The Mysteries Of London by G. W. M. Reynolds

Random reading 1940 - 1969:
Next up: Down There by David Goodis

Potential decommission:
Next up: Vote For Love by Barbara Cartland

Completed:
Georgette Heyer historical romances in chronological order

Possible future reading projects:
- Nobel Prize winners who won for fiction
- Daily Telegraph's 100 Best Novels, 1899
- James Tait Black Memorial Prize
- Berkeley "Books Of The Century"
- Collins White Circle Crime Club / Green Penguins
- Dell paperbacks
- "El Mundo" 100 best novels of the twentieth century
- 100 Best Books by American Women During the Past 100 Years, 1833-1933
- 50 Classics of Crime Fiction 1900–1950 (Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor)

As outlined in my previous thread, I have finally succumbed to a long-standing temptation and set myself the challenge of A Century Of Reading; although my century of choice is the 19th. I am hoping to read at least one book a month for this challenge, working books for my blog and other challenges into this one.

I'm not going to list 100 empty slots here; I will simply fill in the dates as I go!


1845: Zoe: The History Of Two Lives by Geraldine Jewsbury
1877: Elsie's Children by Martha Finley
1881: The Beautiful Wretch by William Black
1899: Agatha Webb by Anna Katharine Green

(Note: I'm not counting the copy read of Paul Féval's The Mysteries Of London, as it is an abridgement.)

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 (1841, 1842, 1845)

Serials:
The Mysteries Of Paris by Eugene Sue (1842 - 1843)
The Mysteries Of London - Paul Feval (1844)
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)
The Law And The Lady by Wilkie Collins (1875)
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)
The Investigators by J. S. Fletcher (1902)
Lady Molly Of Scotland Yard by Baroness Orczy (1910)
Constance Dunlap, Woman Detective by Arthur B. Reeve (1913)

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

Series and sequels, 1866 - 1919:

(1866 - 1876) **Emile Gaboriau - Monsieur Lecoq - The Widow Lerouge (1/6) {ManyBooks}
(1867 - 1905) **Martha Finley - Elsie Dinsmore - Elsie's Widowhood (7/28) {Project Gutenberg}
(1867 - 1872) **George MacDonald - The Seaboard Parish - Annals Of A Quiet Neighbourhood (1/3) {ManyBooks}
(1878 - 1917) **Anna Katharine Green - Ebenezer Gryce - One Of My Sons (11/13) {Project Gutenberg}
(1896 - 1909) **Melville Davisson Post - Randolph Mason - The Corrector Of Destinies (3/3) {Internet Archive}
(1893 - 1915) **Kate Douglas Wiggins - Penelope - Penelope's Progress (2/4) {Project Gutenberg}
(1894 - 1898) **Anthony Hope - Ruritania - Rupert Of Hentzau (3/3) {Project Gutenberg}
(1895 - 1901) **Guy Newell Boothby - Dr Nikola - The Lust Of Hate (3/5) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1897 - 1900) **Anna Katharine Green - Amelia Butterworth - The Circular Study (3/3) {Project Gutenberg}
(1899 - 1917) **Anna Katharine Green - Caleb Sweetwater - The Woman In The Alcove (3/6) {Project Gutenberg}
(1899 - 1909) **E. W. Hornung - Raffles - The Black Mask (aka Raffles: Further Adventures Of The Amateur Cracksman) (2/4) {Project Gutenberg}
(1900 - 1974) Ernest Bramah - Kai Lung - The Moon Of Much Gladness (4/6) {State Library NSW, interlibrary loan}

(1901 - 1919) **Carolyn Wells - Patty Fairfield - Patty's Pleasure Trip (7/17) {HathiTrust / Kindle}
(1901 - 1927) **George Barr McCutcheon - Graustark - Beverly Of Graustark (2/6) {Project Gutenberg}
(1903 - 1904) **Louis Tracy - Reginald Brett - The Albert Gate Mystery (2/2) {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 - Again The Three Just Men (6/6) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1906 - 1930) **John Galsworthy - The Forsyte Saga - Awakening (4/11) {Project Gutenberg}
(1907 - 1912) **Carolyn Wells - Marjorie - Marjorie's Vacation (1/6) {ManyBooks}
(1907 - 1942) R. Austin Freeman - Dr John Thorndyke - When Rogues Fall Out (19/26) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1907 - 1941) *Maurice Leblanc - Arsene Lupin - The Hollow Needle (3/21) {ManyBooks}
(1908 - 1924) **Margaret Penrose - Dorothy Dale - Dorothy Dale: A Girl Of Today (1/13) {ManyBooks}
(1909 - 1942) *Carolyn Wells - Fleming Stone - Prillil Girl (17/49) {Rare Books}
(1909 - 1929) *J. S. Fletcher - Inspector Skarratt - Marchester Royal (1/3) {Kindle}
(1909 - 1912) **Emerson Hough - Western Trilogy - 54-40 Or Fight (1/3) {Project Gutenberg}
(1910 - 1936) *Arthur B. Reeve - Craig Kennedy - The Treasure-Train (6/11) {ManyBooks}
(1910 - 1946) A. E. W. Mason - Inspector Hanaud - The House In Lordship Lane (7/7) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1910 - 1917) ***Edgar Wallace - Inspector Smith - Kate Plus Ten (3/3) {Project Gutenberg Australia}
(1910 - 1930) **Edgar Wallace - Inspector Elk - The Joker (3/6?) {ManyBooks}
(1910 - 1932) *Thomas, Mary and Hazel Hanshew - Cleek - The Amber Junk (9/12) {AbeBooks}
(1910 - 1918) **John McIntyre - Ashton-Kirk - Ashton-Kirk: Special Detective (3/4) {HathiTrust}
(1910 - 1931) *Grace S. Richmond - Red Pepper Burns - Red Pepper Returns (6/6) {Internet Archive}
(1910 - 1933) Jeffery Farnol - The Vibarts - The Way Beyond (3/3) {Fisher Library storage}

(1911 - 1935) G. K. Chesterton - Father Brown - The Scandal Of Father Brown (5/5) {branch transfer}
(1911 - 1937) Mary Roberts Rinehart - Letitia Carberry - Tish Marches On (5/5) {Kindle}
(1911 - 1919) **Alfred Bishop Mason - Tom Strong - Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout (5/5) {Project Gutenberg}
(1911 - 1940) *Bertram Atkey - Smiler Bunn - The Amazing Mr Bunn (1/10) {AbeBooks}
(1912 - 1919) **Gordon Holmes (Louis Tracy) - Steingall and Clancy - The Bartlett Mystery (3/3) {ManyBooks}
(1913 - 1928) **Louis Tracy - Winter and Furneaux - The Strange Case Of Mortimer Fenley (2/9) {ManyBooks}
(1913 - 1934) *Alice B. Emerson - Ruth Fielding - Ruth Fielding In The Red Cross (13/30) {Project Gutenberg}
(1913 - 1973) Sax Rohmer - Fu-Manchu - The Bride Of Fu-Manchu (6/14) {interlibrary loan / Kindle}
(1913 - 1952) *Jeffery Farnol - Jasper Shrig - The Loring Mystery (3/9) {Project Gutenberg Canada / mobilereads / Rare Books}
(1914 - 1950) Mary Roberts Rinehart - Hilda Adams - Episode Of The Wandering Knife (5/5) Better World Books}
(1914 - 1934) Ernest Bramah - Max Carrados - The Bravo Of London (5/5) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1916 - 1941) John Buchan - Edward Leithen - Sick Heart River (5/5) {Fisher Library}
(1915 - 1936) *John Buchan - Richard Hannay - The Thirty-Nine Steps (1/5) {Fisher Library / Project Gutenberg / branch transfer / Kindle}
(1915 - 1923) **Booth Tarkington - Growth - The Magnificent Ambersons (2/3) {Project Gutenberg / Fisher Library / Kindle}
(1916 - 1917) **Carolyn Wells - Alan Ford - Faulkner's Folly (2/2) {owned}
(1916 - 1927) **Natalie Sumner Lincoln - Inspector Mitchell - The Nameless Man (2/10) {AbeBooks}
(1916 - 1917) **Nevil Monroe Hopkins - Mason Brant - The Strange Cases Of Mason Brant (1/2) {Coachwhip Books}
(1917 - 1929) **Henry Handel Richardson - Dr Richard Mahony - Australia Felix (1/3) {Fisher Library / Kindle}
(1918 - 1923) **Carolyn Wells - Pennington Wise - In The Onyx Lobby (3/8) {Project Gutenberg}
(1918 - ????) *Valentine Williams - Okewood / Clubfoot - Clubfoot The Avenger (4/?) {AbeBooks}
(1919 - 1966) *Lee Thayer - Peter Clancy - The Key (6/60) {expensive / Rare Books}
(1919 - 1921) **Octavus Roy Cohen - David Carroll - The Crimson Alibi (1/3) {Rare Books / HathiTrust}

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

Series and sequels, 1920 - 1927:

(1920 - 1939) E. F. Benson - Mapp And Lucia - Trouble For Lucia (6/6) {interlibrary loan}
(1920 - 1948) *H. C. Bailey - Reggie Fortune - Mr Fortune Speaking (5/23) {State Library NSW, interlibrary loan}
(1920 - 1949) William McFee - Spenlove - The Beachcomber - (3/6) {owned}
(1920 - 1932) *Alice B. Emerson - Betty Gordon - Betty Gordon At Bramble Farm (1/15) {ManyBooks}
(1920 - 1975) Agatha Christie - Hercule Poirot - The Hollow (24/39) {owned}
(1920 - 1921) **Natalie Sumner Lincoln - Ferguson - The Unseen Ear (2/2) {HathiTrust}
(1920 - 1937) *H. C. McNeile - Bulldog Drummond - Bull-Dog Drummond (1/10 - series continued) {Project Gutenberg / Fisher storage}

(1921 - 1929) **Charles J. Dutton - John Bartley - Streaked With Crimson (9/9) {owned}
(1921 - 1925) **Herman Landon - The Gray Phantom - Gray Terror (3/5) {Amazon}

(1922 - 1973) Agatha Christie - Tommy and Tuppence - By The Pricking Of My Thumbs (4/5) {owned}
(1922 - 1927) *Alice MacGowan and Perry Newberry - Jerry Boyne - The Seventh Passenger (4/5) {Amazon}
(1922 - 1931) *Valentine Williams - Inspector Manderton - The Orange Divan (2/4) {AbeBooks}

(1923 - 1937) Dorothy L. Sayers - Lord Peter Wimsey - The Nine Tailors (11/15) {Fisher Library / branch transfer}
(1923 - 1924) **Carolyn Wells - Lorimer Lane - The Fourteenth Key (2/2) {eBay}
(1923 - 1931) *Agnes Miller - The Linger-Nots - The Linger-Nots And The Secret Maze (5/5) {unavailable}
(1923 - 1927) **Annie Haynes - Inspector Furnival - The Abbey Court Murder (1/3) {Kindle}

(1924 - 1959) Philip MacDonald - Colonel Anthony Gethryn - Persons Unknown (aka "The Maze") (5/24) {academic loan / State Library NSW, held / Kindle / interlibrary loan}
(1924 - 1957) *Freeman Wills Crofts - Inspector French - Inspector French And The Starvel Tragedy (3/30) {academic loan / State Library NSW, Rare Books / Rare Books / Kindle upcoming}
(1924 - 1935) * / ***Francis D. Grierson - Inspector Sims and Professor Wells - The Smiling Death (6/13) {AbeBooks, expensive}
(1924 - 1940) *Lynn Brock - Colonel Gore - The Slip-Carriage Mystery (4/12) {Kindle}
(1924 - 1933) *Herbert Adams - Jimmie Haswell - The Crooked Lip (2/9) {Rare Books}
(1924 - 1944) *A. Fielding - Inspector Pointer - The Charteris Mystery (2/23) {AbeBooks / Rare Books / Kindle, Resurrected Press}
(1924 - 1928) **Ford Madox Ford - Parade's End - No More Parades (2/4) {ebook}

(1925 - 1961) ***John Rhode - Dr Priestley - Death In The Hopfields (25/72) {HathiTrust / State Library NSW, held}
(1925 - 1953) *G. D. H. Cole / M. Cole - Superintendent Wilson - Superintendent Wilson's Holiday (5/?) {Internet Archive}
(1925 - 1937) *Hulbert Footner - Madame Storey - Madame Storey (2/10) {mobilereads / Project Gutenberg Canada}
(1925 - 1932) *Earl Derr Biggers - Charlie Chan - Behind That Curtain (3/6) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1925 - 1944) *Agatha Christie - Superintendent Battle - Towards Zero (5/5) {owned}
(1925 - 1934) *Anthony Berkeley - Roger Sheringham - The Second Shot (6/10) {academic loan / Rare Books}
(1925 - 1950) *Anthony Wynne (Robert McNair Wilson) - Dr Eustace Hailey - The Double-Thirteen Mystery (2/27) (aka "The Double Thirteen") {AbeBooks / Rare Books}
(1925 - 1939) *Charles Barry (Charles Bryson) - Inspector Lawrence Gilmartin - The Smaller Penny (1/15) {AbeBooks / Amazon}
(1925 - 1929) **Will Scott - Will Disher - Disher--Detective (aka "The Black Stamp") (1/3) {AbeBooks, expensive}
(1925 - 1927) **Francis Beeding - Professor Kreutzemark - The Seven Sleepers (1/2) {State Library NSW, interlibrary loan}

(1926 - 1968) * / ***Christopher Bush - Ludovic Travers - Murder At Fenwold (3/63) {Rare Books}
(1926 - 1939) *S. S. Van Dine - Philo Vance - The Bishop Murder Case (4/12) {Rare Books}
(1926 - 1952) *J. Jefferson Farjeon - Ben the Tramp - The House Opposite (2/8) {Kindle / State Library NSW, held}
(1926 - ????) *G. D. H. Cole / M. Cole - Everard Blatchington - Burglars In Bucks (aka "The Berkshire Mystery") (2/6) {Fisher Library}
(1926 - 1936) *Margery Lawrence - The Round Table - Nights Of The Round Table (1/2) {Kindle}
(1926 - ????) *Arthur Gask - Gilbert Larose - Cloud, The Smiter (1/27) {University of Adelaide / Project Gutenberg Australia}

(1927 - 1933) *Herman Landon - The Picaroon - The Picaroon Does Justice (2/7) {Book Searchers}
(1927 - 1932) *Anthony Armstrong - Jimmie Rezaire - The Secret Trail (2/5) {Kindle}
(1927 - 1937) *Ronald Knox - Miles Bredon - Footsteps At The Lock (2/5) {State Library NSW, interlibrary loan / Kindle / Project Gutenberg Canada}
(1927 - 1958) *Brian Flynn - Anthony Bathurst - The Murders Near Mapleton (3/54) {HathiTrust}
(1927 - 1947) *J. J. Connington - Sir Clinton Driffield - Tragedy At Ravensthorpe (2/17) {Murder Room ebook / Kindle}
(1927 - 1935) *Anthony Gilbert (Lucy Malleson) - Scott Egerton - Mystery Of The Open Window (4/10) {expensive}
(1927 - 1932) *William Morton (aka William Blair Morton Ferguson) - Daniel "Biff" Corrigan - Masquerade (1/4) {expensive}
(1927- 1929) **George Dilnot - Inspector Strickland - The Crooks' Game (1/2) {AbeBooks / Amazon}

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

Series and sequels, 1928 - 1930:

(1928 - 1961) Patricia Wentworth - Miss Silver - Miss Silver Intervenes (6/33) {Kindle / interlibrary loan}
(1928 - 1936) *Gavin Holt - Luther Bastion - The Garden Of Silent Beasts (5/17) {academic loan / State Library NSW, held}
(1928 - ????) Trygve Lund - Weston of the Royal North-West Mounted Police - Robbery At Portage Bend (4/5) {AbeBooks}
(1928 - 1936) *Kay Cleaver Strahan - Lynn MacDonald - October House (4/7) {AbeBooks}
(1928 - 1937) *John Alexander Ferguson - Francis McNab - Murder On The Marsh (2/5) {Internet Archive / Rare Books / State Library NSW, held}
(1928 - 1960) *Cecil Freeman Gregg - Inspector Higgins - The Murdered Manservant (aka "The Body In The Safe") (1/35) {rare, expensive}
(1928 - 1959) *John Gordon Brandon - Inspector Patrick Aloysius McCarthy - The Black Joss (2/53) {State Library NSW, held}
(1928 - 1935) *Roland Daniel - Wu Fang / Inspector Saville - Wu Fang (2/6) {expensive}
(1928 - 1946) *Francis Beeding - Alistair Granby - Pretty Sinister (2/18) {academic loan}
(1928 - 1930) **Annie Haynes - Inspector Stoddart - The Man With The Dark Beard (1/4) {Project Gutenberg Australia / Kindle}
(1928 - 1930) **Elsa Barker - Dexter Drake and Paul Howard - The Cobra Candlestick (aka "The Cobra Shaped Candlestick") (1/3) {AbeBooks / Rare Books}
(1928 - ????) Adam Broome - Denzil Grigson - Crowner's Quest (2/?) {AbeBooks / eBay}

(1929 - 1947) Margery Allingham - Albert Campion - Death Of A Ghost (6/35) {interlibrary loan / Kindle}
(1929 - 1984) Gladys Mitchell - Mrs Bradley - The Devil At Saxon Wall (6/67) {interlibrary loan / Kindle}
(1929 - 1937) Patricia Wentworth - Benbow Smith - Down Under (4/4) {Kindle}
(1929 - ????) Mignon Eberhart - Nurse Sarah Keate - Murder By An Aristocrat (aka "Murder Of My Patient") (5/8) {Rare Books / Kindle US / academic loan}
(1929 - ????) ***Moray Dalton - Inspector Collier - ???? (3/?) - Death In The Cup {unavailable}, The Wife Of Baal {unavailable}
(1929 - ????) * / ***Charles Reed Jones - Leighton Swift - The King Murder (1/?) {AbeBooks}
(1929 - 1931) Carolyn Wells - Kenneth Carlisle - Sleeping Dogs (1/3) {Rare Books / Kindle}
(1929 - 1967) *George Goodchild - Inspector McLean - McLean Of Scotland Yard (1/65) {State Library NSW, held}
(1929 - 1979) *Leonard Gribble - Anthony Slade - The Case Of The Marsden Rubies (1/33) {AbeBooks / Rare Books / re-check Kindle}
(1929 - 1932) *E. R. Punshon - Carter and Bell - The Unexpected Legacy (1/5) {expensive, omnibus / Rare Books}
(1929 - 1971) *Ellery Queen - Ellery Queen - The Roman Hat Mystery (1/40) {interlibrary loan}
(1929 - 1966) *Arthur Upfield - Bony - The Sands Of Windee (2/29) {interlibrary loan / Rare Books}
(1929 - 1931) *Ernest Raymond - Once In England - A Family That Was (1/3) {State Library NSW, interlibrary loan}
(1929 - 1937) *Anthony Berkeley - Ambrose Chitterwick - The Piccadilly Murder (2/3) {interlibrary loan}
(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) {Kindle}
(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) {Kindle}
(1929 - 1941) *H. Maynard Smith - Inspector Frost - Inspector Frost's Jigsaw (1/7) {AbeBooks, omnibus}
(1929 - ????) *Armstrong Livingston - Jimmy Traynor - The Doublecross (1/?) {AbeBooks}
(1929 - 1932) Clemence Dane and Helen Simpson - Sir John Saumarez - Re-Enter Sir John (3/3) {Fisher Library storage}
(1929 - 1940) *Rufus King - Lieutenant Valcour - Murder By The Clock (1/11) {AbeBooks, omnibus / Kindle}
(1929 - 1933) *Will Levinrew (Will Levine) - Professor Brierly - Murder From The Grave (3/5) {owned}
(1929 - 1932) *Nancy Barr Mavity - Peter Piper - The Body On The Floor (1/5) {AbeBooks / Rare Books / State Library NSW, held}
(1929 - 1934) *Charles J. Dutton - Professor Harley Manners - The Shadow Of Evil (2/6) {expensive}
(1929 - 1932) *Thomas Cobb - Inspector Bedison - The Crime Without A Clue (1/4) {Kindle}

(1930 - ????) ***Moray Dalton - Hermann Glide - ???? (3/?) {see above}
(1930 - 1932) Hugh Walpole - The Herries Chronicles - Vanessa (4/4) {Fisher Library storage}
(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 Platinum Cat (17/57) {Rare Books}
(1930 - 1960) ***Miles Burton - Inspector Henry Arnold - The Platinum Cat (18/57) {Rare Books}
(1930 - 1933) ***Roger Scarlett - Inspector Kane - In The First Degree (5/5) {unavailable}
(1930 - 1941) *Harriette Ashbrook - Philip "Spike" Tracy - The Murder Of Sigurd Sharon (3/7) {Rare Books}
(1930 - 1943) Anthony Abbot - Thatcher Colt - About The Murder Of The Night Club Lady (3/8) {AbeBooks / serialised}
(1930 - ????) ***David Sharp - Professor Fielding - I, The Criminal (4/?) {unavailable?}
(1930 - 1950) *H. C. Bailey - Josiah Clunk - Garstons (aka The Garston Murder Case) (1/11) {HathiTrust}
(1930 - 1968) *Francis Van Wyck Mason - Hugh North - The Vesper Service Murders (2/41) {Kindle}
(1930 - 1976) *Agatha Christie - Miss Jane Marple - A Murder Is Announced (5/12) {owned}
(1930 - ????) *Anne Austin - James "Bonnie" Dundee - Murder Backstairs (2/?) - {Kindle}
(1930 - 1950) *Leslie Ford (as David Frome) - Mr Pinkerton and Inspector Bull - The Hammersmith Murders (1/11) {AbeBooks / Rare Books}
(1930 - 1935) *"Diplomat" (John Franklin Carter) - Dennis Tyler - Murder In The State Department (1/7) {Amazon / Abebooks}
(1930 - 1962) *Helen Reilly - Inspector Christopher McKee - The Diamond Feather (1/31) {Rare Books}
(1930 - 1933) *Mary Plum - John Smith - The Killing Of Judge MacFarlane (1/4) {AbeBooks / Rare Books}
(1930 - 1945) *Hulbert Footner - Amos Lee Mappin - The Mystery Of The Folded Paper (aka The Folded Paper Mystery (1/10) {mobilereads / omnibus}
(1930 - 1940) *E. M. Delafield - The Provincial Lady - The Provincial Lady In Wartime (4/4) {Fisher Library}
(1930 - 1933) *Monte Barrett - Peter Cardigan - The Pelham Murder Case (1/3) {Amazon}
(1930 - 1931) Vernon Loder - Inspector Brews - Death Of An Editor (2/2) {Kindle}
(1930 - 1931) *Roland Daniel - John Hopkins - The Rosario Murder Case (1/2) {unavailable?}

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

Series and sequels, 1931 - 1955:

(1931 - 1940) Bruce Graeme - Superintendent Stevens and Pierre Allain - Satan's Mistress (4/8) {expensive}
(1931 - 1951) Phoebe Atwood Taylor - Asey Mayo - The Mystery Of The Cape Cod Tavern (4/24) {AbeBooks / Book Depository}
(1931 - 1955) Stuart Palmer - Hildegarde Withers - Murder On Wheels (2/18) {Kindle}
(1931 - 1951) Olive Higgins Prouty - The Vale Novels - Now, Voyager (3/5) {interlibrary loan / Kindle}
(1931 - 1933) Sydney Fowler - Inspector Cleveland - Arresting Delia (4/4) {Book Depository / Rare Books / online}
(1931 - 1934) J. H. Wallis - Inspector Wilton Jacks - The Capital City Mystery (2/6) {Rare Books}
(1931 - ????) Paul McGuire - Inspector Cummings - Daylight Murder (aka "Murder At High Noon") (3/5) {academic loan / State Library NSW, held}
(1931 - 1937) Carlton Dawe - Leathermouth - The Sign Of The Glove (2/13) {academic loan / State Library NSW, held}
(1931 - 1947) R. L. Goldman - Asaph Clume and Rufus Reed - Murder Without Motive (2/6) {Wildside Press}
(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 - Death On The Highway (3/5) {owned}
(1931 - 1972) Georges Simenon - Inspector Maigret - Au Rendez-vous des Terre-Neuves (9/75) {State Library NSW, held}
(1931 - 1934) T. S. Stribling - The Vaiden Trilogy - The Store (2/3) {academic loan / State Library, held}
(1931 - 1935) Pearl S. Buck - The House Of Earth - A House Divided (3/3) {Fisher Library storage}
(1931 - 1942) R. A. J. Walling - Garstang - The Stroke Of One (1/3) {Amazon}
(1931 - ????) Francis Bonnamy (Audrey Boyers Walz) - Peter Utley Shane - Death By Appointment (1/8){AbeBooks / Rare Books}
(1931 - 1937) J. S. Fletcher - Ronald Camberwell - Murder In The Squire's Pew (3/11) {Kindle / State Library NSW, held}
(1931 - 1933) Edwin Dial Torgerson - Sergeant Pierre Montigny - The Murderer Returns (1/2) {Rare Books)
(1931 - 1933) Molly Thynne - Dr Constantine and Inspector Arkwright - The Crime At The 'Noah's Ark' (1/3) {Kindle}
(1931 - 1935) Valentine Williams - Sergeant Trevor Dene - Death Answers The Bell (1/4) {Kindle}
(1931 - 1942) Patricia Wentworth - Frank Garrett - Dead Or Alive (3/5) {Kindle}

(1932 - 1954) Sydney Fowler - Inspector Cambridge and Mr Jellipot - The Bell Street Murders (1/11) {AbeBooks / Rare Books}
(1932 - 1935) Murray Thomas - Inspector Wilkins - Buzzards Pick The Bones (1/3) {AbeBooks, expensive}
(1932 - ????) R. A. J. Walling - Philip Tolefree - Prove It, Mr Tolefree (aka The Tolliver Case) (3/22) {AbeBooks}
(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) {Rare Books}
(1932 - 1944) Nicholas Brady (John Victor Turner) - Ebenezer Buckle - The House Of Strange Guests (1/4) {Kindle}
(1932 - 1932) Lizette M. Edholm - The Merriweather Girls - The Merriweather Girls At Good Old Rockhill (4/4) {HathiTrust}
(1932 - 1933) Barnaby Ross (aka Ellery Queen) - Drury Lane - Drury Lane's Last Case (4/4) {AbeBooks}
(1932 - 1952) D. E. Stevenson - Mrs Tim - Mrs Tim Flies Home (5/5) {interlibrary loan}
(1932 - ????) Richard Essex (Richard Harry Starr) - Jack Slade - Slade Of The Yard (1/?) {AbeBooks}
(1932 - 1933) Gerard Fairlie - Mr Malcolm - Shot In The Dark (1/3) (State Library NSW, held}
(1932 - 1934) Paul McGuire - Inspector Fillinger - The Tower Mystery (aka Death Tolls The Bell) (1/5) {Rare Books / State Library, held}
(1932 - 1946) Roland Daniel - Inspector Pearson - The Crackswoman (1/6) {unavailable?}

(1933 - 1959) John Gordon Brandon - Arthur Stukeley Pennington - West End! (1/?) {AbeBooks / State Library, held}
(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 / State Library NSW, interlibrary loan}
(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 / State Library NSW, held / Rare Books}
(1933 - 1970) Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richlieu - The Forbidden Territory (1/11) {Fisher Library}
(1933 - 1934) Jackson Gregory - Paul Savoy - A Case For Mr Paul Savoy (1/3) {AbeBooks / Rare Books}
(1933 - 1957) John Creasey - Department Z - The Death Miser (1/28) {State Library NSW, held}
(1933 - 1940) Bruce Graeme - Superintendent Stevens - Body Unknown (2/2) {expensive}
(1934 - 1936) Storm Jameson - The Mirror In Darkness - Company Parade (1/3) {Fisher Library}
(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) {unavailable?}
(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) {interlibrary loan / omnibus}
(1935 - 1939) Francis Beeding - Inspector George Martin - The Norwich Victims (1/3) {AbeBooks / Book Depository / State Library NSW, held}
(1935 - 1976) Nigel Morland - Palmyra Pym - The Moon Murders (1/28) {State Library NSW, held}
(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 / State Library NSW, held / Rare Books}
(1935 - ????) George Harmon Coxe - Kent Murdock - Murder With Pictures (1/22) {AbeBooks}
(1935 - 1959) Kathleen Moore Knight - Elisha Macomber - Death Blew Out The Match (1/16) {AbeBooks / Amazon}
(1935 - 1953) Leslie Ford (Zenith Jones Brown) - Colonel John Primrose and Grace Latham - The Clock Strikes Twelve (aka "The Supreme Court Murder") (NB: novella) {owned}
(1936 - 1974) Anthony Gilbert (Lucy Malleson) - Arthur Crook - Murder By Experts (1/51) {interlibrary loan}
(1936 - 1952) Helen Dore Boylston - Sue Barton - Sue Barton, Student Nurse (1/7) {interlibrary loan}
(1936 - 1940) George Bell Dyer - The Catalyst Club - The Catalyst Club (1/3) {AbeBooks}
(1939 - 1942) Patricia Wentworth - Inspector Lamb - Who Pays The Piper? (aka "Account Rendered") (2/3) {Kindle / State Library NSW, interlibrary loan}
(1940 - 1943) Bruce Graeme - Pierre Allain - The Corporal Died In Bed (1/3) {unavailable?}
(1941 - 1951) Bruce Graeme - Theodore I. Terhune - Seven Clues In Search Of A Crime (1/7) {unavailable?}
(1947 - 1974) Dennis Wheatley - Roger Brook - The Launching Of Roger Brook (1/12) {Fisher Library storage}
(1948 - 1971) E. V. Timms - The Gubbys - Forever To Remain (1/12) {Fisher Library / interlibrary loan}
(1953 - 1960) Dennis Wheatley - Molly Fountain and Colonel Verney - To The Devil A Daughter (1/2) {Fisher Library storage}
(1955 - 1956) D. E. Stevenson - The Ayrton Family - Summerhills (2/2) {interlibrary loan}

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

Unavailable series works:

John Rhode - Dr Priestley
The Paddington Mystery (#1)
Tragedy At The Unicorn (#5)
The Hanging Woman (#11)
The Corpse In The Car (#20) {expensive}

Christopher Bush - Ludovic Travers
The Plumley Inheritance (#1)

Moray Dalton - Inspector Collier
>#3 onwards (to end of series)

Moray Dalton - Hermann Glide
>#3 onwards (to end of series)

Miles Burton - Desmond Merrion / Inspector Arnold
>everything from #2 - #11 inclusive

David Sharp - Professor Fielding
When No Man Pursueth (#1)

Francis D. Grierson - Inspector Sims and Professor Wells
The Double Thumb (#3) {expensive}

Roger Scarlett - Inspector Kane
>#4 onwards (to end of series)

Tom Strong - Alfred Bishop Mason
Tom Strong, Boy-Captain (#2)
Tom Strong, Junior (#3)
Tom Strong, Third (#4)

Wu Fang - Roland Daniel
The Society Of The Spiders (#1)

The Linger-Nots - Agnes Miller
The Linger-Nots And The Secret Maze (#5)

TBR notes:

Currently 'missing':

The Paddington Mystery by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #1) {CARM}
Tragedy At The Unicorn by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #5) {CARM}
The Corpse In The Car by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #20) {CARM}
The Black Death by Moray Dalton {CARM}

Mystery At Greycombe Farm by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #12) {Rare Books}
Dead Men At The Folly by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #13) {Rare Books}
The Robthorne Mystery by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #17) {Rare Books / State Library NSW, held}
Poison For One by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #18) {Rare Books / State Library NSW, held}
Shot At Dawn by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #19) {Rare Books}
Hendon's First Case by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #21) {Rare Books}
In Face Of The Verdict by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #24) {Rare Books / State Library NSW, held}
Secret Judges by Francis D. Grierson (Sims and Wells #2) {Rare Books}
The Platinum Cat by Miles Burton (Desmond Merrion #17 / Inspector Arnold #18) {Rare Books}
The Double-Thirteen Mystery by Anthony Wynne (Dr Eustace Hailey #2) {Rare Books}

Six Minutes Past Twelve by Gavin Holt (Luther Bastion #1) {State Library NSW, held}
The White-Faced Man by Gavin Holt (Luther Bastion #2) {State Library NSW, held}

Find The Clock by Harry Stephen Keeler {Kindle}
Down River by John Haslette Vahey {serialised, SMH}

The Wychford Poisoning Case by Anthony Berkeley (Roger Sheringham #2) {Kindle}
Mystery At Olympia (aka "Murder At The Motor Show") (Dr Priestley #22) {Kindle / State Library NSW, held}

1931:

Wanted! by Carlton Dawe {serialised, SMH / State Library NSW, held}

Death At Windward Hill by Helen Joan Hultman {HathiTrust}
Cottage Sinister by Q. Patrick {HathiTrust}

The Matilda Hunter Murder by Harry Stephen Keeler {Kindle}

The Marching Feet by Annie S. Swan {interlibrary loan}
Fever Of Love by Denise Robins {interlibrary loan}
The Flickering Lamp by Netta Muskett {interlibrary loan}
After Rain by Netta Muskett {interlibrary loan}
Pack Mule by Ursula Bloom {interlibrary loan, missing?}

The Crime At The 'Noah's Ark' by Molly Thynne (Dr Constantine and Inspector Arkwright #1) {Kindle / Rare Books}

Tragedy On The Line by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #10) {Rare Books}
Death By Appointment by "Francis Bonnamy" (Audrey Walz) (Peter Utley Shane #1) {Rare Books}
The Bell Street Murders by Sydney Fowler (S. Fowler Wright) (Inspector Cambridge and Mr Jellipot #1) {Rare Books}
The Murderer Returns by Edwin Dial Torgerson (Pierre Montigny #1) {Rare Books}

NB: Rest of 1931 listed on the Wiki

Shopping list:

The Orange Divan by Valentine Williams
The Seventh Passenger by Alice MacGowan and Perry Newberry
Gray Terror by Herman Landon
The Pelham Murder Case by Monte Barrett
Prove It, Mr Tolefree by R. A. J. Walling

Expensive:

The Hawkmoor Mystery by W. H. Lane Crauford
Dead Man's Hat by Hulbert Footner
October House by Kay Cleaver Strahan
The Double Thumb by Francis Grierson
The Mystery Of The Open Window by Anthony Gilbert
The Mystery Of The Creeping Man by Frances Shelley Wees
The Shadow Of Evil by Charles J. Dutton

Books currently on loan:



      

      

  

Reading projects:

Blog:

        



Other projects:

        

    

Short-list TBR:

        

        

Input needed!

As has been touched upon before, there has been some expression of interest of choosing other novels by Anthony Trollope for group reads, now that the reads of the 'Barchester' and 'Palliser' novels have been wrapped up.

There is already a pencilled-in group read of the expanded edition of The Duke's Children, now that this has been released in a general edition. This will probably take place in October.

However, there was also some discussion of choosing another Trollope novel for a group read in June or July.

Because that discussion was a bit scattered, I will be setting up a thread so that we can gauge interest and take suggestions for further reads. I will post more details when it is up. If you are interested in more Trollope, please drop in and let us know!

ETA:

I have now created a thread to discuss the possibility of more Trollope: please stop by if you'd like to register your interest!

...and that should be it.

Have at it!

The picture of the Pinnacles looks like a Titan's Zen garden! Happy new thread, Liz.

Happy new thread, Liz!

Happy new thread. The pictures are spectacular! I have dreams of visiting Western Australia. My one visit of two weeks centered on Sydney and the Hunter Valley (wineries) and Brisbane. It's such a huge country, it would take months to even get a sense of it.

Happy new thread, Liz!
You found some spectaculair toppers again, there is so much beauty in Australia.

>18 lyzard: Can't help you there, as far as I could find only an abridged version of The Pallisers was translated.

Happy new thread, Liz!

Love the thread topper, Liz. Western Australia does look inviting so long as you have a means of transport to get back again!

I am not quite John Major who cannot be separated from his Trollope (or was that trollop?) but I have quite a few of his books lying around and deserving of some attention. If the majority choose something I also have on the shelves I shall probably join in.

I had a peek at a map — you weren't kidding about Western Australia being huge! I hadn't realized just how much territory it covers. The Knox Gorge is gorge-ous (sorry, couldn't resist). ;-)

Re: Trollope. I'm too far behind to participate in anything, still being in the midst of the Barset novels, but I will take note of whatever you end up settling on.

Happy new thread! I love the pics you're using as a topper.

Happy new thread and a slightly late cry of *sloths*.

I thought of you last night when I was reading my non-fiction book, In search of Shakespeare. He;s discussing the publication of some of Shakespeare's plays in his lifetime and went on to give an estimated top to best sellers of the early 1500s! That might be a bit early, even for you.

Hi, Roni, Harry, Jan, Anita, Amber, Paul, Julia, Jim and Helen - phew! :)

Thank you all for dropping in!

>20 ronincats:, >22 Oregonreader:, >25 PaulCranswick:, >26 rosalita:

Glad that you all like my tread-toppers!

Many of our visitors do underestimate the distances involved in travelling through our remoter areas---and the time needed. The rewards are certainly to be had but you can appreciate why a place like New Zealand, where it is possible to do justice to most of the country within a limited time, is often considered a more desirable holiday destination.

>23 FAMeulstee:

I hadn't thought about the translation situation! That's a great shame, Anita.

>25 PaulCranswick:

Good to hear, Paul!

>26 rosalita:

Well... As long as you keep plugging away at the Barset books, I guess I'll forgive you. :)

>28 Helenliz:

Heh! No, I certainly don't need that, although (admittedly, I've been neglecting that aspect of it, and need to get back to it) the initial main thrust of my book-blog was best-sellers of the 1600s!

>29 lyzard: You modernists! Best-sellers of the 600s are more my speed. :-) (Though, saying that, I have begun rereading Ben Jonson's poetry, starting with his Epigrammes, so there's a bit of 17th-century reading going on.)

I know; it's not like me, is it?? :)

The only excuse I can offer is that I was trying to trace the roots of the English novel, and the English were rather slow off the mark. (Darn those Puritans, with their anti-fiction stance!)

I hardly know whether to be outraged or relieved...

I ran into my academic library yesterday, to make a start on the Coles' The Murder At Crome House. While I was there I picked up G. W. M. Reynolds The Mysteries Of London, which is next up in my history of crime fiction, and Alain René Le Sage's Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane, next in the C. K. Shorter challenge. The latter, the 2011 edition from the Georgia Press, is presented as 598 pages of teeny-weeny font...which means that technically it doesn't fit this month's mega-chunkster challenge, even though, clearly, any "normal" font would put the book at well over 900 pages.

So now I'm resisting a terrible urge to find an ebook version that *does* have over 900 pages...

I don't have time this month; I really don't; and yet...and yet...

So yeah:

Now reading The Murder At Crome House by G. D. H. and Margaret Cole; still reading The Beautiful Wretch by William Black.

Finished Someone Like You for TIOLI #9.

The Murder At Crome House had the unfortunate side-effect of reminding me about the "Classics Of Crime Fiction" lists compiled by Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor, authors of the seminal (albeit controversial) reference work, A Catalogue Of Crime. Barzun and Taylor followed up the publication by compiling two "best of" lists, 50 Classics of Crime Fiction 1900–1950 and 50 Classics of Crime Fiction 1950–1975...

...the former of which is now on my "future self-challenges" list.

Sigh...

Very sensible!

From The Murder At Crome House:

Perhaps he would not have secured even this book had it not been an inferior specimen of its class---even less entertaining, more inconsequent and more portentous than the majority of works upon the subject. At any rate, he had not read more than a few pages when his eyebrows went up, and his mouth formed itself into the shape of a whistle. Presently an attentive observer might have noticed other signs of intellectual discomfort, even amounting to muttered comment---"My dear sir!" "No, it does not follow!" "What do you mean by 'scientific'?" etc., etc.; and after about twenty minutes' vain attempt to follow the writer's thought through a labyrinth of denunciation of the Nancy school, the Vienna school, the Bombay school---every school, in fact, but the school of Milwaukee, whence the book emanated---he gave it up, dropped the book, with something less than his usual gentleness, on the floor, and turned to his shelves to get down a novel of Anthony Trollope's...

***

The evening passed without event. None of Flint's acquaintances interrupted his enjoyment of Mr Trollope, whose spell lasted so long that it was well after midnight when the book was finished and the reader took himself off to bed...

Don't demand help, though! Just take a pill and get on with it!

From the Lismore Northern Star, January 1932:

Finished The Beautiful Wretch for TIOLI #15.

Now reading The Chinese Shawl by Patricia Wentworth; still reading The Murder At Crome House by George and Margaret Cole.

...and alas, it seems that the recent large-print re-releases of the Miss Silver novels did not include The Chinese Shawl, so we don't have our regular Terrible Cover.

I am strangely disappointed.

>38 lyzard: How disappointing! I always love the Terrible Cover Revue.

Finished The Chinese Shawl for TIOLI #16.

Now reading Walk With Care, also by Patricia Wentworth; still reading The Murder At Crome House by George and Margaret Cole.

>39 rosalita:

Well, there you go: we may not have a Terrible Cover for this month's Miss Silver, but it turns out that the cover for the first US edition of Walk With Care is every bit as boring:

...and speaking of Miss Silver, next month or July for the next??

Oh dear. That's a truly dreadful cover. I'm just getting started with Miss Silver and know nothing about her at all, so I have new mystery territory to discover!

Hi, Gail!

I don't know if you saw these Miss Silver covers from a couple of threads back, our current benchmarks for Terrible Covers. Don't let them put you off the books, though; I hope you enjoy them! :)

>42 lyzard: I lean toward July.

>42 lyzard: >45 harrygbutler: I'm good with July as well.

>41 lyzard: I meant to also comment on that cover in my last message, but I fell asleep looking at it. :-) Unless a scarf plays a key role as the murder weapon, I'm not feeling it.

Actually you confused me for a moment with that one, because I knew the next Miss Silver is listed under one title in LibraryThing (Miss Silver Intervenes) and the only copy I could find has a completely different (presumably the U.S.) title, Miss Silver Deals With Death. Oh, publishers.

I guess "Intervenes" wasn't violent enough for American readers. :)

Walk With Care is the third book in a different, (much) lesser known series by Wentworth: I stopped midway through it a couple of years ago because the books were unavailable, but they've recently been re-released on Kindle so I've picked it up again.

July works for me!

Finished Walk With Care for TIOLI #3.

Now reading Spooky Hollow by Carolyn Wells; still reading The Murder At Crome House by George and Margaret Cole.

Oh, dear.

Patricia Wentworth wrote several series other than the Miss Silver books, and apparently in the late thirties they all collided.

Research indicates that Frank Garrett of the Foreign Office, who appears as a supporting character in Danger Calling and Walk With Care, books #2 and #3 in the Benbow Smith series, has two series works to himself, Dead Or Alive from 1936 and Rolling Stone from 1940, before appearing in a third series, that featuring Inspector Lamb and Sergeant Abbott. Lamb and Abbott, meanwhile, had two books to themselves, 1939's The Blind Side (which I read a couple of years ago) and 1940's Who Pays The Piper?, before appearing with Garrett in 1942's Pursuit Of A Parcel, and then being absorbed into the Miss Silver mysteries starting with Miss Silver Intervenes.

It seems that Harry and Julia may need to go on without me, and leave me to catch them up at a later date... :(

Speak of the devil! - if John Bunyan will forgive my use of that expression.

From Walk With Care:

    "There is scriptural precedence for a scapegoat," said Mr Smith dreamily. A---er---calculated indiscretion, and---er---someone else to take the blame. I have known it happen. On the other hand, the whole thing may be much simpler. Mannister may merely have been yielding to an instinct for self-preservation in taking cover behind Mr Jeremy Ware. Did you ever read The Pilgrim's Progress?"
    Garrett shook his head and drew at his pipe.
    "You should---you really should. It is a gold-mine. As I was saying---or rather as I was going to say---there is a gentleman in The Pilgrim's Progress called Mr Facing-Both-Ways. He appears to have left a numerous progeny."

>50 lyzard: What?! No! We don't want to go on without you!

>50 lyzard: I'm certainly willing to pause Miss Silver until you can join in again, Liz!

Aww, you're sweet. :)

It's up to you guys, of course, but there are six books intervening* before I can resume Miss Silver so it's going to be a while, even if I make catching up a priority. So don't feel obliged.

(*See what I did there??)

>53 harrygbutler: As am I, Harry!

>54 lyzard: Hey, I've waited 70-plus years to read the Miss Silver books (well, sorta — they are that old but I'm not), so I can certainly wait a while longer. So, six books before you're ready to go on — how long could that take? A couple weeks? :-)

>54 lyzard: What Julia said in >55 rosalita: — a hiatus is fine.

>41 lyzard: Poor Miss Silver! But I guess she at least has a picture, unlike the early Victor Gollancz yellow and red covers for Sayers, Orwell, DuMarier, Crispin, Innes, etc. I'd like to get my hands on some of those for my library though!

>55 rosalita:, >56 harrygbutler:

My understanding is that most or even all of these books are available, either by Kindle or ILL, but as for how long I will be getting through them--- Yike! Pressure!! :)

But if you're sure you prefer to wait, I'll do my bit by making these a focus.

>57 rretzler:

Hi, Robin! I usually prefer the first edition covers for my Golden Age books because many of them have amazing art work, but that cover for Walk With Care is just sad (AND really inaccurate!). Oh, yes, I know what you mean about the Gollancz books; I avoid those when I can, image-wise. :)

Oh, Teh Interwebz! You and your Miz Information!

My 'sit in a library' book this month has been The Murder At Crome House by George and Margaret Cole, which is held in the Rare Books section of my academic library. It's a long and quite complex mystery (lots of false identities and alibi-breaking), and also something of a deconstruction of the amateur-detective mysteries of the time; but---

---it is not a part of the Coles' Superintendent Wilson series, as I was led to believe.

I mean, I'm not sorry I read it, but it wasn't what I was after just now.

ETA: ...and's what's even more annoying is that what seems to be the real next book in the series, The Man From The River, is available for general borrowing.

So, yeah:

Finished The Murder At Crome House for TIOLI #10; also finished Spooky Hollow for TIOLI #8.

Now reading Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie.

All those lists up above notwithstanding, I'm feeling a bit disorganised at the moment; or maybe 'over-committed' is closer to the mark, albeit that this should be within my own control. :)

The good news is that I have no less than five series within reach of being wrapped up:

ETA: Stop the presses! - I actually have six series for which I'm up to the last book! My apologies to Max Carrados:

ETA2: Seven! - although the Pearl Buck novels are more strictly a trilogy:


        

  

...although not without a caveat or three:
- while The Circular Study wraps up Green's Amelia Butterworth series, it overlaps with her ongoing series featuring Ebernezer Gryce and Caleb Sweetwater;
- Agnes Miller's Linger-Not series will be 'finished' inasmuch as the belated final book is rare to the point of unavailability;
- although Streaked With Crimson is the final book in Charles J. Dutton's John Bartley series, it is also the first book in his Harley Manners series.

Oh, well.

Meanwhile, as noted up above, the Patricia Wentworth overlaps are causing me some grief. Intervening between now and the next Miss Silver we have:


      

Dead Or Alive (1936) (Frank Garrett #3)
Down Under (1937) (Benbow Smith #4)
The Blind Side (1939) (Inspector Lamb and Sergeant Abbott #1) {read 2015}
Rolling Stone (1940) (Frank Garrett #4)
Who Pays The Piper? (1940) (Inspector Lamb and Sergeant Abbott #2)
Pursuit Of A Parcel (1942) (Frank Garret #5 / Inspector Lamb and Sergeant Abbott #3)


I haven't yet managed to make a start on my self-imposed 'Mystery League' challenge, although I'm hoping to get to it next month...along with everything else; and yes, I did finally chicken out of trying to cram the next work in my 'C. K. Shorter challenge' into this month---for obvious reasons (i.e. teeny-weeny font):

>58 lyzard: All jokes about "two weeks" aside, I'm happy to wait as long as it takes you to get through the ones you need to read before resuming with Miss Silver, so please don't put undue pressure on yourself or let this derail your other list-y goals. I know I am in no danger of running out of other books to read, and judging from Harry's periodic book-sale sprees documented on his thread, neither is he. :-)

>61 lyzard: Say, Who Pays the Piper? sure has a flashy cover! I like the general style of the other two in that row, without knowing whether the illustrations are actually relevant to the plots or not.

Who Pays The Piper? is one of those books where you can only find a decent cover image for the, sigh, American retitling. :)

The first two are from the first general re-release of Wentworth's books, which happened in the early nineties. I've had a couple of those, and they are mostly generic, though they make up for it by being quite stylish too.

Anyway--- I will try to keep the Wentworths ticking over! June was already shaping as a "catching stuff up / getting stuff done" month, so now it's that but more so. Of course, over-commitment is one thing; over-commitment straight-jacketed by TIOLI something else! :D

Are you saying you can't manipulate TIIOLI to make it fit any book you want to read?!

>64 rosalita: Whoa! That woke me up, Julia!

Hi, Liz. You all are intriguing me with the Miss Silver mysteries. She's new to me.

>62 rosalita: I'll do what I can to find books to fill in until we get back to the Miss Silver series. ;-)

>64 rosalita:

Only up to a point (and mostly by bugging Heather!) :D

>65 jnwelch:

Hi, Joe! Miss Silver probably never achieved the fame of certain competing Golden Age detectives, but she was popular enough to sustain a 33 book series running between 1928 and 1961. It's a good time to get interested in her, as most of the series books have been recently re-released in paperback and Kindle.

>66 harrygbutler:

Well, okay. As long as there are still one or two other books on your TBR?? :)

>67 lyzard: One or two. :-) Indeed, I just added another today -- at a thrift store I picked up The Crime at the Crossways, which, based on the books listed opposite the title page, must be somewhere around #5 in the Anthony Bathurst series by Brian Flynn.

Ooh, score! I'm only up to #3, The Murders Near Mapleton.

Finished Five Little Pigs for TIOLI #1.

Now reading The Madwoman In The Attic by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar.

>69 lyzard: I haven't started the series yet. I'll have to see what I can get via interlibrary loan.

I'm not hurrying with it: Anthony Bathurst is yet another of the post-Peter-Wimsey bundles of affectations and the first two books, at least, weren't strong enough to compensate for that. :)

It's fascinating how many long, long series of mysteries there were that have left scarcely a trace. I'd like to find more of T. Arthur Plummer's Detective Inspector Andrew Frampton books (there were about 50 of them, too); I got a copy of Frampton of the "Yard" a few years ago at a book sale in a barn at a local fairgrounds and liked it well enough.

Oh my goodness, yes! Lots of people must have been reading them, you'd think, to let them run that long, and yet they're almost impossible to get hold of---particularly (and I'm sure you've noticed this!) the first books.

I think John Rhode's Dr Priestley holds the record with 72 - particularly in conjunction with his Desmond Merrion / Inspector Arnold books, which run to another 57 - but my lists also note Gladys Mitchell's Mrs Bradley series (67 books), George Goodchild's Inspector McLean (65 books), Christopher Bush's Ludovic Travers (63 books), Lee Thayer's Peter Clancy (60 books), John Brandon's Inspector McCarthy (53 books), Carolyn Wells' Fleming Stone (49 books) and E. C. R. Lorac's Inspector Macdonald (46 books), in addition to Flynn's Anthony Bathurst (54 books) and Plummer's Inspector Frampton (50 books). And there are many more in the 30 - 40 books range.

The Chinese Shawl - Laura Fane accepts an invitation to The Priory, the country house which - now that she is twenty-one - she owns, but has never seen: the property has been leased since before Laura was born to Miss Agnes Fane, to whom her father was once engaged, but who he jilted when he fell in love with Laura's mother. It is Agnes Fane's wish to buy The Priory, and although Laura does not want to sell, she is aware that she may not be able to afford the upkeep of the house---besides feeling some guilt over the family history, including the "accident" that left Agnes in a wheelchair. At The Priory, Laura is thrilled to meet again injured airman Carey Desborough, with whom she is falling in love; but she is repelled by the behaviour of her second cousin, the alluring but cold-blooded Tanis Lyle, who has already discarded a husband, and who amuses herself by toying with both the engaged Alastair Maxwell and the married Tim Madison. It is Carey she wants, however, for her own purposes; and when she cannot charm him away from Laura, she tries blackmail instead. When Tanis is found shot dead, there is no shortage of suspects; but the discovery in Tanis's hand of silken threads town from a distinctive shawl worn by Laura the night before focuses police attention upon her and Carey... While the earlier works in Patricia Wentworth's series featuring private investigator Miss Maud Silver are, for the most part, romantic thrillers, The Chinese Shawl is structured as a more traditional mystery; and---despite contemporary details that include servicemen on leave, combat injuries, blackouts and the presence at The Priory of evacuees from London---a "country-house party" mystery, at that, with a gathering of guests falling under suspicion when one of their number is murdered. At the same time, there is - inevitably, it seems, with Wentworth - a prominent romance; and while I am never a fan of any plot that requires the reader to believe in love at first sight, the apparent replaying of the Fane family romance / tragedy, with Carey rejecting Tanis for Laura, even as Laura's father rejected Agnes for another woman, is well used. The investigation of Tanis's murder falls to Inspector Randal March (returning from the previous book, Danger Point), who is surprised and pleased to find that he has within the house both a witness and an assistant in the form of Miss Maud Silver. An old friend of the Fane family, Miss Silver is one of the guests; although as she reveals to March, she was in fact hired by Agnes Fane to look discreetly into an unrelated matter. When investigation eliminates the most obvious suspect, Tanis's alcoholic ex-husband, suspicion fastens upon Carey, who had an ugly scene with Tanis on the day of her death, and Laura, with the evidence of the shawl fragments placing her at the scene of the crime. Laura was seen leaving her room almost at the time of the murder by Miss Lucy Adams, another of Tanis's aunts; and her explanation, that she was looking for but could not find her shawl, is unconvincing. It is, however, the fact that Laura's shawl has disappeared that puts Miss Silver on the right track...

    March made an impatient gesture. "The fact is, we don't know what happened, and probably never shall. As for what a murderer will do and won't do, you know very well that a man who is off his balance - and I suppose no one murders unless he is off his balance - is incalculable..."
    Miss Silver smiled indulgently. "Able but fallacious, my dear Randal," she said. "What I was pointing out to you was that what we have here the evidence of a controlled intention to murder and, having murdered, to avoid the consequences. I find that incompatible with either Mr Desborough or Mr Maxwell's frame of mind, or even with what you suppose to have been their frame of mind, on Thursday night. And you do not account for the disappearance of the Chinese shawl."
    March half frowned, half laughed. "You want to hoist me on my own petard. How like a woman! Because, as you very well know, I did account for it on the supposition that Laura Fane was an accessory either during or after the fact, and that the shawl became stained and had to be destroyed. That is, of course, presuming that Desborough was the murderer. If it were Maxwell, you may have your point---the shawl eludes me."

>75 lyzard: Well done as usual, Liz. You have a knack for plot summary that eludes me. I nearly tied myself into a knot trying to sum up the various relationships in this one! I really liked the interaction between March and Miss Silver, and unlike in the previous book they actually did some detecting instead of serving as exposition engines. It's always nice when the police don't ridicule the amateur sleuth (though technically I guess Miss Silver is a pro). It's the same thing that appeals to me about the Miss Marple stories, which I think we've discussed before.

>74 lyzard: Those are substantial runs — not quite Nick Carter, the Shadow, or Sexton Blake territory (though Rhode comes close), but certainly quite a bit to manage, and the dime novel and magazine detectives usually had novels (frequently novella length) written by various authors (though Walter Gibson did write more than 250 of the 325 Shadow novels, I believe).

Slightly random question, to which I'm sure you'll have the answer.
When Dickens (and others of that era) serialized their books and then converted them into a book, was one edition of the serial, in essence, one chapter?
Listening to Great Expectations and it seems that the chapters are pretty similar in length, so I was just wondering.

>76 rosalita:

Thanks, Julia! All the relationships and cross-purposes do make this one tricky. Yes, much better used, though I guess you could argue that the fact that they have a connection outside of their professions is a bit cheaty: Maud never has to earn his respect or fight to get him to listen to her. Jane, on the other hand, encounters a number of different policemen, each of whom reacts to her differently. The smart ones learn to listen!

>77 harrygbutler:

The pulps were written under such different conditions - and, as you note, often by different people - that I don't tend to include them. Even with my passion for lists they're a bit too much! :D

>78 Helenliz:

Hi, Helen! It wasn't about chapters so much as words per issue; authors writing for serialisation had to learn to work within those bounds, and there are many stories about Dickens in particular "running long" and having to cut for publication. (Anthony Trollope used to finish his novels, or almost so, before serialisation started, to avoid falling into that trap.) The easiest way was to keep chapters to the same approximate length, which is what you're noticing.

The number of chapters published would be internally consistent, but vary according to the length of the magazine and whether it came out weekly, fortnightly or monthly. Most serialisations also involved extra chapters in the first and last issues.

Most modern editions (all the Penguin ones, I believe) include serialisation details in their introductions, so you can find out the specifics if you're interested.

>79 lyzard:, see, I knew you'd know.
Have a sloth as a reward.


:-)
It's actually quite handy from a listening perspective, as I can decide to stop listening if I'm nearly home and have got to the end of a chapter. Means I pick back up at a defined spot, not just mid paragraph and have to backtrack to get back into it again.

Good grief! :D

Stopping by to say "Hello" Liz.

>80 Helenliz: - ........ SLOTH! What a cute face he/she has!

Thanks for dropping in, Lori!

I have now written a blog post about the abridged English-language translation of Paul Féval's 1844 crime / sensation novel, Les Mystères de Londres, which like all of the examples of this sub-branch of fiction, throws together a cast of thousands - most with secret identities - plots, crimes and romances, in a narrative that was probably confusing even before three-quarters of it was cut out.

A warning, though: the fact that we're dealing with an abridgement doesn't make my post any shorter...

Les Mystères de Londres

...and because I've written a blog post, you get a startled lemur:

BOO!

I think he looks more like he walked in on me getting changed: startled, but also dismayed. :)

>85 lyzard: argh! That is not a happy and relaxed face.

>79 lyzard: Very interesting and helpful, thanks, Liz.

>80 Helenliz: Great sloth!

>85 lyzard: Holy Moley! I'm starting my day and wasn't ready for that one.

He does look rather dismayed!

I love reading your reviews because they outline plots, go over characters, and give a bit of opinion as well. Very informative!

I'm not madly in love with romances inserted into my mysteries. They tend to eliminate suspects in most cases, though not always.

I also am intrigued by your devotion to reading things in order, and the struggles that can result. Since I am bone-lazy, I just read what I can find, but I admire your diligence.

>88 Helenliz:

No, I don't think lemurs do 'relaxed'! :)

>89 jnwelch:

Just a little eye-opener for you, Joe!

>90 Matke:

Hi, Gail - thank you, that's nice to hear.

That's exactly how I feel! (As opposed to Dame Agatha, for instance, where all bets are off and anyone could be guilty.) But it's fairly clear that her tendency to mix in a romance was one of the reasons for Wentworth's contemporary popularity.

There's a good dollop of OCD behind my 'devotion' but I do find that reading in order brings a variety of rewards, so it's not something I struggle against very hard. :)

>85 lyzard: That's what I look like when mrsdrneutron catches me snacking in the middle of the night... :)

:D

Finished The Madwoman In The Attic for TIOLI #5.

Phew!!

Now resting my brain with Pontifex, Son And Thorndyke by R. Austin Freeman.

>94 lyzard: Well done on finishing Madwoman! I am about 299 pages in but not sure if I will be able to finish by the end of the month.

After all that!? :D

No worries - it's certainly not an easy or quick read.

Winter is officially here! - at least according to Kara:


  

Beautiful cat.

I thank you, and Kara says, "I know!" :)

>96 lyzard: 'After all that!? :D'

I know!

>97 lyzard: She's beautiful :-)

>97 lyzard: aww lovely cat.

The weather has decided to be summer here. Last week was nice. Rained overnight and it is now looking like a dreary (but warm) bank holiday Monday. That will probably be summer done though.

>100 souloftherose:

Never mind!

Spoiled rotten, is what she is... :)

>101 Helenliz:

Thank you!

I'm not a fan of 'cold' but we're in quite a nice patch at the moment, chilly but dry with clear blue skies.

Zoe: The History Of Two Lives - Published in 1845 but set one hundred years earlier, Geraldine Jewsbury's first novel is a difficult but provocative work that was, understandably, highly controversial in its day. The "two lives" of its subtitle are those of Zoe Gifford, the daughter of an English soldier and his Greek mistress, who enters into a loveless marriage with a friend of her father simply for the "freedom" she has been taught comes to married women, and Everhard Burrows, an English Catholic priest who suffers a crisis of faith just at the moment his superiors begin to groom him for a role as "champion of the church". The two cross paths when Everhard is appointed the head of a Catholic seminary established by Mr Gifford, and fall passionately in love... Zoe is a peculiar and often frustrating novel; although it is hard not to admire its obstinate determination to be unlike any other Victorian novel, a stance which envelopes both its overarching themes and the working out of its twin plots. It is generally accepted that Zoe and Everhard represent two different aspects of Jewsbury's own character, with the former an expression of her rebellious rejection of the restrictions and limitations of women's lives, the latter her doubts about the efficacy of conventional religion, and about the role played, and authority assumed, by the church. In light of this, it is perhaps not entirely unexpected that the relationship between the characters does not play out as it might in a less unconventional work. The main weakness of Zoe is Jewsbury's habit of telling rather than showing: we hear again and again about Zoe's "genius", her "brilliance" in conversation, but we are given little chance to judge for ourselves. At the same time, Jewsbury offers both scathing criticism of various aspects of her society (albeit that she disguises them by historical displacement to the 18th century), and an attractive vision of female solidarity, in particular with respect to Zoe's relationships with her step-daughter, the devout Clothilde, and her "frenemy", Lady Clara Mandeville. Furthermore, though Zoe herself is depicted as an unrepentant "free-thinker", the novel displays an unusual - and, for its time, daring - degree of sympathy with the situation of Catholics in England, even as it satirises the Established Church. While ultimately it cannot be said that Zoe ever comes together into a coherent whole, Jewsbury's mutinous attitudes and her idiosyncratic handling of her characters hold the attention even when her narrative wanders.

    The letter contained only a statement of Everhard's determination to give up the control of the college, with a frank statement of the private opinions which made it impossible for him longer to remain a member of the Church of Rome, or of any church. It was written in a dry, suppressed tone of detail, as if he had feared to colour the actual facts by the smallest expression of emotion... There was no mention of Zoe in the whole letter, till within three lines of the end: "Tell your noble wife that I shall venerate her memory to the last hour of my life. Two such women as she were never created in the world. Tell her to act up always to the mark of what she was intended to be. And now, farewell. Write to me, even if it be in anger - let me hear from you once more. If you can remain my friend after all I have told you, I shall feel that I have been called upon to sacrifice very little..."
    Zoe had sunk on a chair, her head buried in her hands, and was almost convulsed with the violence of her emotion.
    "I fear, Zoe," said Gifford, gravely, "it is you who have encouraged him in this perilous course; you are a free thinker yourself, and you have undermined him."
    "He is good and noble," sobbed Zoe, almost choked with emotion, "I am weak and erring; it is he who has strengthened me. What was I before I knew him? He has made me all that is worth any thing. No, no, I have not perverted him, he cannot be perverted."
    Gifford had never seen Zoe so moved before, and he hardly knew what to make of it; but he was pleased to see any thing like a display of natural feeling in her. The secret meaning of her last words did not strike him...

Finished Pontifex, Son And Thorndyke for TIOLI #1, which is me done for May.

And now---because I haven't started a new reading challenge for, ooh, days---

The Mystery League Inc. Challenge; or, Why You Shouldn't Judge A Book By Its Cover

Between 1930 - 1933, a small American publisher calling itself The Mystery League Inc. operated a new kind of marketing campaign for its books, targeting those readers who didn't frequent bookstores or even necessarily read all that much.

The Mystery League's publications were not released through bookstores at all, but were sold as part of an exclusive deal with a chain of drugstores, the United Cigar Stores Company of America. Intended to catch the eye of non-habitual readers, these books boasted some of their era's most stunning cover art.

Alas, what was inside the cover was a secondary consideration: although the company did pick up the American publishing rights to a few well-known British authors, and the first novel by a handful of authors who later had successful careers, on the whole the novels published this way were of a poor standard. In fact, it has been suggested that The Mystery League operated by picking up cheaply manuscripts that had been rejected by all the other publishing houses.

The consequence of this is that, in spite of the fact that The Mystery League books are generally considered of poor quality as novels, today they command collector's item prices for their covers, with a dust jacket in good condition commanding hundreds of dollars.

So the purpose of this challenge is two-fold: (i) to discover for myself if The Mystery League books are as bad as dogma suggests; and (ii) to highlight the wonderful cover art (and thereby balance out all the terrible covers I usually inflict upon you!).

The first book released by The Mystery League was an American reprint of an established British writer:


The Mystery League, Inc. #1: The Hand Of Power by Edgar Wallace (1927 in the UK, 1930 in the US); cover art by Gene Thurston:

That is a very cool cover!

>105 lyzard: I agree that's an excellent cover. And as for quality ... well, Edgar Wallace may not be high art, but he's pretty good for the audience they're trying to reach, no?

>106 rosalita:, >107 swynn:

Agreed, it was a good beginning. Wallace was a known name with an established reader base, so he made a good starting point for the enterprise.

>107 swynn: >108 lyzard: Wallace was a good choice, but unfortunately The Hand of Power is not very good Wallace.

>109 harrygbutler:

...which would explain why it hadn't already been released in the US. :)

Just as a general FYI, there is a group read of Anthony Trollope's He Knew He Was Right planned for next month (i.e. July) - all welcome, but for those of you unfamiliar with the book, be warned: it's a chunkster! :)

I will post more details towards the end of June.

Finished The Hand Of Power for TIOLI #2.

Now reading Streaked With Crimson by Charles J. Dutton.

Finished Streaked With Crimson for TIOLI #3, which means that I have FINISHED A SERIES!!

And in fact, at 9 books, this is the longest series I have yet managed to read in its totality - whoo!

That's the good news; the bad news is that while it is the last book in Charles J. Dutton's series featuring private investigator John Bartley, it is also the first to feature psychology professor, Harley Manners.

Worse news is that some of the Manners books are even harder to get hold of than the Bartley books: a couple of them are available online, but others, like the second in the series, The Shadow Of Evil, are priced from US$53.00 upwards to US$450.00.

Trust me, those prices have nothing to do with the quality of the books, but rather (as we are seeing with my Mystery League challenge) because Dutton's publisher decided to promote his Manners books via fabulous cover art. It's that which makes these books so valuable, and consequently so hard to get hold of:


  

Hmm...

So, was it because Charles Dutton was a minister that no-one had the nerve to tell him he was a terrible writer?

Congrats on finishing another series, Liz! And starting another at the same time, sigh. Those really are great covers — if only you could make a deal with a collector to let them have the dust covers and you borrow the books to read and then send back.

>113 lyzard: Congratulations on finishing a series, Liz, and starting the next one ;-)
The cover art is good, but doesn't look that great, is it by a well known artist?

>113 lyzard: look on the bright side, it is a series finished.

Just read my first Wallace. It was the one on the left, The Ringer, so I don;t know where that sits in his works (sorry, not sorry really). I'd agree with the comment in >107 swynn:, it's not high art, but it was a read that whizzed along. It shoe horned a romance into the equation and the social commentary was probably a lot more shocking in 1926 than it seems now.

>115 rosalita:

That's a great idea - one day I might just get desperate enough to try! :D

>116 FAMeulstee:

Thanks, Anita!

I haven't been able to find out who the artist was for this series: unlike the books of Gene Thurston, who did the cover for The Hand Of Power up above, among many others, there's no signature.

>117 Helenliz:

Yes!!

No, you're not going to find much art in Wallace, but if you get one of his better works, "whizzed along" is usually a good description! - and let's face it, it's best if his stories don't give the reader too much time to think about things! He wrote over 150 books with only a few short series tucked into that number so "in order" isn't an issue most of the time. Most writers of thrillers in that era used a romantic subplot (for better or worse).

Chocolate sloth!

Video of said sloth

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww... :D

Finished Murder Gone Mad for TIOLI #8.

My read-in-the-library book this month is The Furthest Fury by Carolyn Wells; meanwhile, my portable book is The Man From The River by George and Margaret Cole.

While I've gone for the rather gruesome British first edition cover of The Man From The River (see above), I'm intrigued by its American equivalent, which prefigures the famous "Dell Mapback" books of the 1940s:





My copy of The Man From The River gave me something of a nasty jolt, though: in a list of "Detective Novels" by the Coles given on the flyleaf, it lists Superintendent Wilson's Holiday. For once I remembered not to get suckered in by alphabetical listing and to research publication order before moving on with a series; and although they were both published in 1928, I thought I had established that The Man From The River came first. I notice that my copy of the latter is a second impression, released six months after the first; so maybe Superintendent Wilson's Holiday came in between?

More amusingly, also the list of the Coles' detective novels is The Life Of William Cobbett---George Cole's biography of an early 19th century political radical. I hope not too many mystery fans fell for that!

More input needed!

We are wrapping up the group read of Geraldine Jewsbury's Zoe: The History Of Two Lives, so I have been looking forward to see what the next Virago might be, chronologically.

The next year on the list is 1847, which gives us, if anything, too many possibilities!

Could people please indicate their interest (or otherwise), either here or at the Virago Chronological Red Project thread, in a group read of any or all of the following:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Patty's Friends - Picking up in the immediate aftermath of Patty In Paris, this sixth book in Carolyn Wells' young adult series opens with Patty Fairfield enjoying London with her father and step-mother, but then separating from them when they decide to do some travelling in the Alps. Patty longs instead for the experience of staying in a real English country house, and she is given the opportunity she desires when she is invited to join a family party at Cromarty Manor, the home of her friend, Mabel Hartley. Patty enjoys herself as she anticipated; however, she soon realises that something is wrong within the family. From Mabel's brother, Sinclair, she learns that the family may soon have to lease or even sell their property, as they cannot afford its upkeep. She also learns of the eccentric Marmaduke Cromarty who, instead of bequeathing his fortune, hid it---and left behind a riddle that no-one has been able to solve... For the most part I have enjoyed, Wells' "Patty" series, but I found this entry a bit tiresome. Patty's sunny personality and her ability to find something to enjoy no matter what her circumstances have always made her a bit "Pollyanna-ish", but not unbearably so. Here, however, people keep telling her what a little ray of sunshine she is; while her various adventures become ever-more improbable, and present her as ever-more intolerably perfect: thus, she reconciles a long-estranged father and daughter; attracts a proposal of marriage from an earl on her first venture into Society; and of course solves the riddle that has baffled the Cromarty family and their friends and relatives for so many years. All of this is credited to Patty's "American-ness", if you please; with the narrative being punctuated with Patty's reflections on the differences between America and England - as Patty In Paris was, with those between America and France - always with an overt or covert rider to the effect that the American way is naturally right and anything else funny and/or peculiar. There are some good passages in this short novel, but overall it is rather irritating.

    One afternoon she sat cross-legged, in Turk fashion, on the library floor, absorbed in an account of the beautiful old mansion known as “Audley End.” The description so interested her that she read on and on, and in her perusal she came to this sentence: “There are other curious relics, among them the chair of Alexander Pope, and the carved oak head of Cromwell’s bed, converted into a chimney-piece.” Anything in reference to the headboard of a bedstead caught Patty’s attention, and she read the paragraph over again.
    “Sinclair,” she called, but he had gone elsewhere, and did not hear her. Patty looked around at the mantel or chimney-piece in the library, but it was so evidently a part of the plan of wall decoration, that it could not possibly have been anything else.
    Patty sighed. “It would have been so lovely,” she thought to herself, “if it only had been a bedhead, made into a mantel, for then that bothering old man could easily have tucked his money between it and the wall.”
    And then, though Patty’s thoughts came slowly, they came surely, and she remembered that in the great hall, or living-room, the mantel was a massive affair of carved oak. Half bewildered, Patty dropped the book, jumped up, and went to the door of the hall. No one was there, and the girl was glad of it, for if she really was on the eve of a great discovery she wanted to be alone at first...

Peregrine's Progress - Having been orphaned in early childhood, nineteen-year-old Peregrine Vereker has been raised by his loving but domineering Aunt Julia. Peregrine is well-satisfied with himself until one night when, overhearing a conversation between his uncles, the brothers Jervas and George Vereker, he learns to his mortification that they consider him a "mollycoddle", not a real man at all. On impulse, Peregrine decides to venture out into the world on his own and find out for himself what manner of man he might be---only to discover that he has much more to learn than he ever dreamed, especially about women... Published in 1922, this historical romance by Jeffery Farnol is one of several by the author that involves a young man setting out in search of adventure, and ultimately finding himself. Farnol acknowledges this resemblance readily enough, including allusions to his 1910 best-seller, The Broad Highway, and winking at readers of The Amateur Gentleman by having the heroine of Peregrine's Progress reading the female equivalent of the book on etiquette that features in the earlier work---sold in both cases by erudite tinker and book-dealer, Jessamy Todd. It is Jessamy who becomes Peregrine's first friend during his travels, and who first takes the wind out of his sails, with the tinker's poems - written simply for his own enjoyment - showing Peregrine's self-published volume up for the shallow, unoriginal work it is. More chastening follows when - after hesitating to get involved in the first place - Peregrine tries to rescue a gipsy girl who is being attacked, and takes a thorough beating from his much-larger adversary. His mortification is complete when the girl, Diana, shows him the knife with which she finally defended herself---but this is only the first of many hard lessons Peregrine will learn from his younger but much more worldly-wise new acquaintance... Like most of Jeffery Farnol's novels, Peregrine's Progress is a mix of romance, adventure and humour; there is also a dash of mystery and crime, with Peregrine and recurrent series character, Bow Street Runner Jasper Shrig, crossing paths. However, the relationship between Peregrine and Diana remains the novel's focus, with the two of them falling in love during their subsequent wanderings, and Peregrine becoming determined to marry the girl no matter who or what she is. Their idyll comes to an end when Peregrine's relatives catch up with him, and force him to see that such a marriage is impossible. Another of their friends---a lonely, shabby old man who turns out to be the eccentric Earl of Wyvelstoke---offers to adopt Diana and have her educated, as well as arranging for her to have formal training for her wonderful voice. Reluctantly accepting, Peregrine steels himself to face their enforced separation, counting the days until he comes of age and may formally propose. It is a very different Diana with whom he is eventually reunited, however: beautiful and wise as ever, but now poised and well-informed too, with a voice to break heart, and men without number at her feet. But Peregrine clings to his belief that she has not essentially changed---at least until an accidental discovery hints that she is involved in a secret, illicit relationship...

    This is the tale of Diana, the Gipsy, the Goddess, the Woman, one in all and all in one and that one so wonderful, so elusive, so utterly feminine that I, being but a man and no great student in the Sex, may, in striving to set her before you in cold words, distort this dear image out of all semblance and true proportion.
    Here and now I would begin this book by telling of Diana as I remember her, a young dryad vivid with life, treading the leafy ways, grey eyes a-dream, kissed by sun and wind, filling the woodland with the glory of her singing, out-carolling the birds.
    I would fain show her to you in her swift angers and ineffable tenderness, in her lofty pride and sweet humility, passionate with life yet boldly virginal, fronting evil scornful and undismayed, with eyes glittering bright as her "little churi" yet yielding herself a willing sacrifice and meekly enduring for Friendship's sake.
    With her should this book properly commence; but because I doubt my pen (more especially at this so early stage) I will begin not with Diana but with my aunt Julia, my uncle Jervas, my uncle George and my painfully conscious self...

Finished The Man From The River for TIOLI #13.

Some good news and bad news here: the conclusion of The Man From The River reassured me that I had been right in the first place about the publication order of the Coles' 1928 novels:

    "Well," said Michael, "each to his trade. You've got the glory and he's had his joke. What more do you want?"
    "Immediately," said Wilson, stretching himself, "a whisky. Then, I think, another holiday. But not with you, Michael. Holidays with you are too much like work."

...but as it turns out, Superintendent Wilson's Holiday is rare and extremely expensive.

All of my usual sources having failed me, I was doing a broader search in the hope of turning something up, and eventually stumbled over a digital scan of the novel at the Internet Archive---which hadn't come up in the first place because the person who uploaded it left out the apostrophe in the title! My excitement was subsequently tempered by the fact that, incredibly, the book's scanner left out the first page!?...but clearly, this is as good as it's going to get; and considering that the few available copies of Superintendent Wilson's Holiday range between US$125 - US$3323, I suppose I'll grin and bear it.

Meanwhile, still reading The Furthest Fury by Carolyn Wells; my new 'portable' book is Drury Lane's Last Case by "Barnaby Ross" (Ellery Queen).

>126 lyzard: Just hope that they didn't also omit the last page. Can you imagine not knowing who did it?

>128 Helenliz: There's an episode of M*A*S*H with that exact premise. ("The Light That Failed" Season 6, episode 6) If I remember correctly, it involves a (very) long-distance call to the author in the US.

>128 Helenliz:

Don't raise THAT spectre!

Still---it's a book of short stories, so I guess that would have less impact there than in most. :)

>129 casvelyn:

The Rooster Crowed At Midnight. Which I would guess is based on The Big Sleep, since they realise after they phone the author that the solution they were given can't possibly be correct. :D

Dagnabbit.

I moved on to The Furthest Fury this month, the next in Carolyn Wells' Fleming Stone books, because the teenage sidekick in that series has red hair...only of course, he's not in this one, is he??

(In fact he's not even mentioned, which is a bit worrying. I hope she didn't write him out: he's one of the most enjoyable things about the series.)

So, yeah---finished The Furthest Fury for TIOLI #5 (not #2!); still reading Drury Lane's Last Case.

Agatha Webb - Sutherlandtown is shocked to its core when the respected Agatha Webb is stabbed to death in what looks like a robbery-homicide. Adding to the horror, Mrs Webb's cook is also found dead at the scene of an apparent heart attack. Mr Sutherland, the town's leading citizen and and old friend of the Webbs, is one of the first on the scene; he rejects the idea that Mr Webb, an elderly man whose mind is failing, could have killed his wife. Mr Sutherland is disgusted with the behaviour of Amabel Page, the niece of his housekeeper, who intrudes herself upon the investigation, learning what she can about the murder and pointing out a blood stain on the Webbs' front lawn. His response is to dismiss her from his household. Unconcerned, Amabel seeks a private conversation with Frederick, Mr Sutherland's black-sheep son, informing him coolly that she followed him on the night of the murder---and that the price of her silence will be marriage... Though she is an important figure in the early development of detective fiction, most of Anna Katharine Green's mysteries are closer in structure and spirit to the sensation novels out of which such fiction evolved, and this 1899 publication is no exception. On the contrary: Agatha Webb is as convoluted and extravagant as anything in a genre not exactly known for its restraint, with a final explanation of its crime for which "incredible" is too small a word. At the same time, however, this novel carries the detective story a couple of important steps forward. For example, there is unusual realism in the fact that although Frederick Sutherland finally convinces the people to whom he gives an account of his movements on the night of Mrs Webb's death of his innocence, he is nevertheless arrested and charged because the evidence still points to his guilt. Most crucial of all, however, is what Green does with her detective---who we may not recognise as such upon his first appearance. In fact, over the first third of this book, Caleb Sweetwater is a distinctly unlikeable character: thin-skinned, prickly, and obviously motivated chiefly by his personal animus against Amabel Page (who, we are not surprised to discover, once rejected his advances none too gently). Then the perspective of the novel switches to become Caleb's own---and suddenly we're reading a completely different book. In fact, what Green does here is what Dorothy Sayers is credited with doing via Lord Peter Wimsey: she uses a detective story as the vehicle for a complex character study. This is not to say that Green does it as well as Sayers---but she seems to have done it first. It is interesting, too, that Caleb is poor, working-class and physically unattractive: three strikes he has been struggling against all his life, and which help to explain the very prominent chip on his shoulder. We learn that Mr Sutherland once saved Caleb's life, earning his loyalty and devotion in the process; so that when Caleb's investigation points ever more strongly to Frederick Sutherland's guilt in the matter of Agatha Webb's death, he decides that he must leave town so that, for Mr Sutherland's sake, he can't be forced to give evidence---even though this means leaving behind his widowed mother, which causes him great grief. Circumstances, however---or, as Caleb comes to believe, Providence---seem determined to carry the amateur detective back to Sutherlandtown whether he likes it or not; which, as it ultimately turns, is just as well for Frederick...

    Sweetwater had promised Mr Sutherland that he would keep counsel in regard to his present convictions concerning Frederick's guilt; but this he knew he could not do if he remained in Sutherlandtown and fell under the pitiless examination of Mr Courtney, the shrewd and able prosecuting attorney of the district. He was too young, too honest, and had made himself too conspicuous in this affair to succeed in an undertaking requiring so much dissimulation, if not actual falsehood. Indeed, he was not sure that in his present state of mind he could hear Frederick's name mentioned without flushing, and slight as such a hint might be, it would be enough to direct attention to Frederick, which once done could but lead to discovery and permanent disgrace to all who bore the name of Sutherland.
    What was he to do then? How avoid a consequence he found himself absolutely unable to face? It was a problem which this night must solve for him. But how? As I have said, he went down to his house to think.
    Sweetwater was not a man of absolute rectitude. He was not so much high-minded as large-hearted. He had, besides, certain foibles. In the first place, he was vain, and vanity in a very plain man is all the more acute since it centres in his capabilities, rather than in his appearance... He had fixed his hope and his ambition on doing something which would rouse the admiration of those about him and bring him into that prominence to which he felt himself entitled.

>131 lyzard: That seems unsporting for an author to just suddenly drop a regular cast member! Are you sure he wasn't just hiding in the attic? :-)

>132 lyzard: I feel like I've heard of Anna Katherine Green before, but none of her books' titles ring a bell. I am probably confusing her with the plethora of other three-named female authors that Britain seems to churn out effortlessly.

He may have been left behind in New York while Stone travelled into Connecticut, but the one vague reference to "my assistant" seems ominous.

Anna Katharine Green is one of the first writers of modern detective fiction, one of the first to have a recurrent detective as a series character---her novel The Leavenworth Case, from 1878, is often considered the first*---although as I say, her books are still steeped in the exaggeration and improbability that is the hallmark of the earlier sensation fiction. She was influential, though: Agatha was a big fan, and based Miss Marple on Green's Amelia Butterworth (the first spinster-detective though, sign of the times, she's only in her forties.)

(*The French series by Emile Gaboriau featuring police detective Monsieur Lecoq is a more likely "first", but I haven't read those yet to be sure. Green being given the prize is probably because of English-language bias.)

>130 lyzard: Yes! It's a great episode and I kind of wish it was a real book. I want to know who did it. :)

Yeah, that's how we always felt too! :D

Finished Drury Lane's Last Case for TIOLI #15, which is #100 for the year, and also means that I have finished another series!

I think that calls for a TAH-DAHHH!!!

Now reading The Circular Study by (here she is again!) Anna Katharine Green.

Congrats on 100!

>134 lyzard: The Old Sleuth series started before 1878, too, though his eponymous publication came later.

Happy 100th, Liz!

>138 drneutron:, >140 rosalita:

Thank you, Jim and Julia! :)

>139 harrygbutler:

I guess I tend to put Old Sleuth at the tail-end of the serial / penny-dreadful era of crime-writing, rather than the beginning of what I would call "true series", but that's pretty subjective.

Bingo!

When I was compiling the list of publications for my Mystery League challenge, I was almost sure I was missing one: discussions of this publishing house usually refer to 30 releases, whereas I could only find 29; and although this might have been a case of 'rounding up', I didn't think so.

Anyway, I've rounded up the stray book: The Stingaree Murders by W. Shepard Pleasants.

>141 lyzard: Since it inspired a slew of imitators and ran for 30+ years, including 20 in an eponymous series, I don't tend to think of it as a tail-end. I don't believe the Old Sleuth stories were serials, though they were dime (well, started at less) novels — and that genre still had a lot of years to go before the rise of the pulps when Old Sleuth debuted in 1872.

>142 lyzard: Hurrah! I'll add it to my list.

Oh, and congratulations on book 100!

That whole area of publishing is one big can of worms that I haven't dared open!

For a variety of reasons I'm better versed in what was going on in British publishing than American; I haven't dabbled much in either the dimes or the pulps, whereas I can tell you all about George W. M. Reynolds and Thomas Peckett Prest and James Malcolm Rymer. :D

ETA: Thanks!

I'm not sure why The Stingaree Murders didn't come up in any of my original searches, but I'm glad to have that niggle settled.

>144 lyzard: I know what you mean. I was offered a huge box of dime novels at a low price ($3 apiece, and I likely would have gotten the lot for less than that) at a pulp festival last fall but didn't really want to embark on yet another area of buying, reading, and collecting, so contented myself with just Frank Merriwell's Air Voyage; or, Heroes Undaunted — and that one was for Erika, as she casually collects books with or about airships. Still, if the same guy is there this coming fall and offering them again, I may weaken. :-)

My knowledge of periodical publishing before the pulp era is fairly shallow (not that it's exactly deep after that), though probably a bit stronger for American journals. Weak indeed for the non-English-language areas, though I know some titles and some characters, but only at the most superficial level (e.g., I've heard of Lord Lister, and seen the covers of some issues, and I've seen covers of the Italian Nick Carter magazines, but I've not read any of them).

Best-selling books in the United States for 1923:

1. Black Oxen by Gertrude Atherton
2. His Children's Children by Arthur Train
3. The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim
4. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
5. The Dim Lantern by Temple Bailey
6. This Freedom by A. S. M. Hutchinson
7. The Mine with the Iron Door by Harold Bell Wright
8. Wanderer of the Wasteland by Zane Grey
9. The Sea Hawk by Rafael Sabatini
10. The Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart

The 1923 list contains three holdovers from the previous year's best-seller list: Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt, Mary Roberts Rinehart's The Breaking Point and A. S. M. Hutchinson's This Freedom (rather than his #1 work, If Winter Comes, interestingly).

The rest of the list is predominantly social commentary, with just a dash of escapism---the latter represented by The Sea Hawk, Rafael Sabatini's historical romance about an English gentleman who becomes a Barbary pirate, and Zane Grey's Wanderer of the Wasteland, about a young man with a difficult past finding himself amidst the hardships of the desert. Harold Bell Wright's The Mine with the Iron Door, which is set in Arizona and draws upon the legends of the "lost mine" of the Cañada del Oro, is also a moral tale set in the deserts of the west.

The shadow of WWI continues to hang over the rest of the list. Arthur Train's His Children's Children offers a grim expose of social conditions in New York; while Temple Bailey's The Dim Lantern has a young man struggling to overcome his post-war demons to make himself worthy of the girl he loves.

Elizabeth von Arnim's The Enchanted April is also a post-WWI book, though a very different kind: well-known now as a Virago reissue and for its 1991 film adaptation, this is about a small group of unhappy, dissatisfied Englishwomen rediscovering their love of life in an Italian castle offering "wisteria and sunshine".

At the top of the 1923 list, however, we find the year's strangest book: Gertrude Atherton's Black Oxen.

Gertrude Franklin Horn was born in San Francisco in 1857, and in 1876 eloped with George Atherton---who, rather creepily, had been showing an interest in her widowed mother when she first met him. The marriage proved difficult, and ended in tragedy when Atherton was drowned and the couple's only son died of diphtheria. Left with a daughter to support, like so many other women before her, Gertrude Atherton began writing. Despite the necessity of the step, when her family found out she was earning money through writing, they ostracised her.

Though she also wrote a number of well-received supernatural stories, Atherton's novels tend to fall into two classes: those dealing with the social history of California, which won her praise and approval; and those dealing with themes of social criticism and feminism, for which she was often attacked. The latter remained her main personal focus, however, and as her fame grew she bean to write non-fiction articles and essays on these subjects. Atherton believed that modern civilisation had become "over-civilised", decadent and effete. She also held strong (though often contradictory) views on the place of women in society.

Despite the critics, Atherton's more controversial works were embraced by the public; and in 1923 she achieved America's best-selling work with her novel, Black Oxen.

Black Oxen - Critic and columnist Lee Clavering is attending an unsuccessful first night when he is struck by the appearance of a woman sitting a few rows in front of him---and he is not the only one. The older generation, however, cannot help remarking the resemblance between the stranger and one of their own, Mary Ogden, who thirty years before married a Hungarian diplomat, Count Zattiany, and departed for Europe. Knowing that the Zattianys had no children, gossip begins to whisper that the young woman is Mary's illegitimate daughter; and although she declares to Clavering, who has become acquainted with her, that she is a cousin from another branch of the Ogden family, he does not believe her. Finding that she cannot avoid the spotlight, the woman eventually brings together Mary Ogden's old friends and makes a stunning announcement---one greeted by a mixture of horror, curiosity and envy: that she is Mary Ogden... Gertrude Atherton's 1923 best-seller is a weird mixture of romance, social commentary and politics---and while these days we might be tempted to add "science fiction", the so-called "Steinach treatment", a course of x-rays which was supposed to result in mental and physical rejuvenation (if not the restoration of youth, as happens here), was a real thing: Atherton wrote Black Oxen in the wake of undergoing it herself. Via Mary Zattiany, aged fifty-eight but looking thirty, Atherton explores a variety of themes, including the relations between the sexes, social attitudes to women, ageism and the generation gap. The prominence of subplots exploring the impact that youth and beauty - and their inevitable loss - have upon the way they women are treated are self-evidently feminist in nature; yet Black Oxen is no straightforward feminist work. On the contrary, you would be hard put to figure out, via a reading of this novel, what Atherton actually did think about most of the issues she raises; and she muddies the waters even more by telling her story from the perspective of an unlikeable alpha male, who is the voice of "convention" and has very definite ideas about the secondary place that should be occupied by the female sex. (Five minutes after their mutual declaration of passion, we find Clavering contemplating how he can bring Mary to a proper state of "subjection".) The impression left by Black Oxen is that while Atherton was feminist in principle, she very often found her own sex exasperating in practice; and though she finds excuses for the older generation (that is, her own) in the narrowness and rigidity of their upbringing, she makes no attempt to disguise her disgust with the use, or misuse, of their new freedoms by the post-war "flapper" generation. However, through this zig-zagging of contradictory opinion runs one main plot-thread: it is not to re-live her youth that Mary Zattiany undergoes the rejuvenating treatment, but because of the cruel conjunction between her physical failing and the peaking of her mental powers. Passionately devoted to the cause of rebuilding post-war Austria, Mary has sought to regain the physical strength needed to undertake such a onerous task; and if her new beauty helps to sway important men, so much the better. Visiting New York only to set her financial affairs in order, Mary does not intend or want to fall in love---but when she finds herself so strongly drawn to Clavering, when she is offered a second chance to experience the youthful passion that she did not find in her unhappy marriage, she is forced to make a difficult and painful choice...

    "Many of the intellectual women of Europe are taking it, too---and with the sole purpose of reinvigorating their mental faculties and recapturing the physical endurance necessary to their work. I happen to know of a woman scientist, Frau Bloch, who is now working sixteen hours a day, and she had had a bitter struggle with her enfeebled forces to work at all. Lorenz is no more remarkable. He seems to be the only disciple besides yourself that this country has heard of, but I could name a hundred men, out of my own knowledge, who are once more working with all the vigor of youth---"
    "Yes," she interrupted sarcastically. "And without a thought of women, of course."
    "Probably not." Hohenhauer waved his hand negligently. "But incidentally. That is where men have the supreme advantage of women. The woman is an incident in their lives, even when sincerely in love. And if these men indulge occasionally in the pleasures of youth, or even marry young wives, the world will not be interested. But with women, who renew their youth and return to its follies, it will be quite another matter. If they are not made the theme of obscene lampoons they may count themselves fortunate. There will certainly be verbal lampoons in private."
    "Orthodoxy! Orthodoxy!"
    "Possibly. But orthodoxy is a fixed habit of mind. The average man and woman hug their orthodoxies and spit their venom on those that outrage them. How it may be some years hence, when this cure for senescence has become a commonplace, I do not pretend to say. But so it is today... If you marry this young man it will be out of defiance, or possibly out of a mistaken consideration for him---although he will be an object for sympathy later on. And you will marry him as Marie Zattiany, without an illusion left in that clear brain of yours---from which the mists have been blown by the cold wind of truth. And in a year---if you can stand self-contempt and ineffable ennui so long---you will leave him, resume your present name---the name by which Europe knows you---and return to us. But it may be too late. Vienna would still be laughing..."

...the title of Atherton's strange novel comes from the play, The Countess Cathleen, by William Butler Yeats, who apparently also underwent the Steinach treatment:

    The years like great black oxen tread the world
    And God the herdsman goads them on behind
    And I am broken by their passing feet...

>145 harrygbutler:

The simultaneous appearance in England of the roots of modern crime and horror writing in the 1840s, in the penny-dreadfuls, is something I'm very interested in and chasing up to an extent at my blog, but the American dimes and pulps are a swamp I'm steering clear of: I have quite enough on my plate already, though I'm tempted from time to time.

>148 lyzard: Well, that sounds really interesting! And I love the twist of why she took the treatment — not to maintain her looks but to make her stronger. That's pretty badass.

>147 lyzard: I'm not much interested in reading more Atherton, but her biography sounds fascinating.

>148 lyzard: I am relieved to hear that you also found the point of Atherton's social themes elusive. I'd agree that there's a sense of exasperation with women but suggest that her exasperation is equal-opportunity. I was strongly reminded of Hawthorne's "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" and its theme of youth inevitably wasting itself.

So I've started reading The Billiard Room Mystery, and I think I already know what famous previous novel you alluded to in your review. :-) I'll keep going, though, as the writing is decent enough.

>151 rosalita:

Interesting, yes; odd, confusing, annoying... Different. :)

It is explained that Mary's physiology made her a rare perfect subject for the treatment and therefore resulted in complete rejuvenation, but that was never her motivation. She gets sidetracked by the possibilities of her restored youth, but her work remains her goal.

>152 swynn:

I don't think the focus is equal, though: there's an off-hand sense of, "Well, of course I'm annoyed about male privilege, duh!", but her real interest / exasperation is elsewhere.

I am kind of interested in more Atherton just to find out how representative of her writing Black Oxen is---are all her books this weird and frustrating??

And of course, Black Oxen is a semi-sequel to The Sisters-In-Law, so I'm almost obliged to read that. :)

>153 harrygbutler:

Well, yeah---like I said, if you're well-read in that era, it's pretty obvious, if you can get your head around someone doing that in the first place. :D

Anyway, I look forward to your reaction.

>74 lyzard: Trying to catch up! There are a couple of authors in that list I haven't heard of. Sigh...more golden age books that I'd like to read, but will probably never be able to find a copy. Too bad that Langtail Press and Rue Morgue Press are out of business.

Ruth Fielding In The Saddle; or, College Girls In The Land Of Gold - When she is offered the chance to travel to Arizona, where a film based upon her latest story is to be shot on location, Ruth Fielding gathers a group of friends, planning a hard horseback journey from Yucca to the former mining town, now a ghost town, which the film company intends to turn into a set: finding along the way adventure, danger, and a mystery... This twelfth book in the young adult series by "Alice B. Emerson" is a more substantial work than its immediate predecessors, offering character development, with Ruth pursuing her career as a writer for the movies in spite of the disapproval of her great-uncle and guardian, Jabez Potter; another interesting glimpse of the early days of the film industry; and the improbable if entertaining one-thing-after-the-other adventures that were the hallmark of the earlier, stronger works in the series. The Ruth Fielding series overall is famous for the "real-time" ageing of its characters, who are now at college after finishing school, and beginning to look forward to their adult careers; and this entry offers another landmark when Tom Cameron, the twin brother of Ruth's best friend, Helen, decides that wants more than just to be Ruth's "chum". However, offsetting these positives are a nasty attitude towards the story's minority characters (with nasty language to match), and also a high level of violence against animals. The main narrative finds the party of friends riding and camping their way across the desert, facing dangers including a marauding bear and a cattle stampede, taking small roles in the film being shot, and discovering a vein of gold in a canyon near their camp. The latter event also presents Ruth with a mystery to solve, one strangely involving Edith Phelps, Ruth and Helen's college enemy, and the identity of a young man living in a solitary cabin in the hills...

    To own a real gold mine oneself! The thought was too great for utterance. Besides, they had agreed not to whisper about the find at the camp. Not even Miss Cullam knew that the report had come from the assayer regarding the first specimen of ore the girls had found.
    It was not hard to hide their excitement, for there was so much going on at Freezeout Camp. Mr Grimes was trying to rush the work as much as possible, for the picture actors were complaining constantly regarding their trials and the manifold privations of the situation.
    The college girls and Ann Hicks, however, were having the time of their lives. They dressed up in astonishing apparel furnished by the film company and posed as the female populace of Freezeout Camp in some of the episodes. Min, in the part Ruth had especially written for her, was a pronounced success. Miss Gray, of course, as she always did, filled the character of the heroine “to the queen’s taste”---and to Mr Grimes’ satisfaction as well, which was of much more importance.
    The weather was just the kind the “sun worshippers” delighted in. The camera man could grind his machine for six hours a day or more. The film of “The Forty-Niners” grew steadily...

>155 rretzler:

Hi, Robin! Yes, it can be a frustrating business to have a taste for these old books. I suppose I should be grateful that so many of them are still available, but incomplete series drive me crazy! :)

I am (very) belatedly checking in on the thread, Liz. Life has gotten in the way of my LT time lately.

Know all about that! Thank you for dropping in. :)

(NB: Spoiler for Red Pepper's Patients)

Red And Black - This fourth book in Grace S. Richmond's series about physician and surgeon Redfield Pepper Burns differs radically from its predecessors---not least in that it finds Red becoming a supporting character in his own narrative, with the focus being instead upon "Black" - Robert McPherson Black, the new young minister in town - while, rather than being another tale of the trials and triumphs of Red's career, the novel deals with America's entry into WWI, and the experiences of those confronted with its horrors. Red And Black is unabashedly hawkish in its attitude, with Red and Black, otherwise opposed in many things, united in their profound belief in the necessity for America's involvement, and arguing that anything less would be a failure of the country's principles and duties. At this distance, it is strange indeed to read an American book that is so passionately pro-French, so determined to remind everyone of America's historical debt to France---as Red and Black remind their foot-dragging fellow townspeople, with the latter earning the ire of the very men who hired him to be their minister in the process. Black has every intention of living up to his own words, however: immediately upon his country's official entry into the conflict, he volunteers as an army chaplain and is soon on his way to the trenches. Red, meanwhile, is faced with a different sort of challenge when he learns that the bout of surgery-contracted septicaemia that nearly killed him (as recounted in Red Pepper's Patients) has left him with a heart condition that precludes his enlistment as an army surgeon... Somewhat curiously, we might feel, side-by-side with its arguments for the necessity of war - or at least, this war - Red And Black offers an equally passionate case for the reality and necessity of religious faith, and does so in a refreshingly adult way. Not only does Black find himself at loggerheads with Red on this point - the latter is not only a "doubter", he hasn't much opinion of ministers as men - but he finds himself falling passionately in love with the intelligent and cultured Jane Ray...who happens, like Red, to be a sceptic. Though the two end up declaring their passion for one another, there is recognition on both sides that they cannot be married unless they hold the same beliefs; and Jane will not pretend. However, she too has every intention of enlisting as soon as she may; and while serving as a nurse at the front, undergoes experiences which cause her to examine her heart and the nature of her beliefs...

    Many a man knows what it is to feel his spirit suddenly strengthen with the hour of need, to feel pour into it something intangible yet absolutely real and definite - and Divine - to know himself able to take the minds and hearts and wills of men into his two human hands and mould them in spite of themselves. And this, as he had hoped and prayed upon his knees, was what happened to Robert Black this last morning of his ministry to these people. He could not have asked for a greater gift---no, not if by putting out his hand he could have taken Jane's hand and led her away with him. For that hour, at least, as he had wished, the man was lost in the priest; he was consecrated, heart and soul, to his task. How should those before him resist him---the messenger who spoke to them with the tongue of inspiration? For so he spoke.
    Christ upon the battle-field---that was his theme. Of itself it was a moving theme; as he made use of it it became a glorious one. Those who listened seemed almost to see a manly, compassionate Figure moving among His young soldiers, living in the trenches with them, facing the fight with them, enduring the long night with them, lifting their hearts, speaking to their spirits - inhabiting the place of the skull as they inhabited it - and when the bullet or the bit of shrapnel had gone home, saying, "I am with you, be not afraid."

Finished The Circular Study for TIOLI #9, and so have FINISHED ANOTHER SERIES!!...though only a short one this time, the three-book series featuring prototype spinster-detective, Miss Amelia Butterworth.

Now reading So Big by Edna Ferber.

Finished So Big for TIOLI #4.

Now reading The Taking Men by Anne Hepple.

The Bunch Of Violets - This standalone short story in Ernest Bramah's series featuring blind detective, Max Carrados, was first published in The Strand Magazine in 1924, but recounts a story of WWI, during which (we learn) Carrados acted as a consultant to the War Office. A young American, J. Berringer Hulse, in London on an important mission that will conclude with him carrying vital papers to Paris, has fallen in with a seemingly harmless and charming group of people who have nevertheless raised red flags in the corridors of power. And indeed, a clever plot to relieve Hulse of his papers he carries on his person without his even realising it has been done is afoot---and would have succeeded if not for the blind detective's heightened powers of smell and touch...

    "Thanks. I'll take a light from yours," remarked Carrados, ignoring the lit match, and he rose to avail himself. His back was towards the others, who still had a word of instruction to exchange. With cool precision he handled the cloth on Hulse's outstretched arm, critically touched the pocket he was already familiar with, and then deliberately drew the lapel to his face.
    "You wore some violets?" he said beneath his breath.

>161 lyzard: Another complete series knocked off? You are en fuego this year, Liz! Well done, you.

Max Carrados Mysteries - I have always had a bit of an issue with Ernest Bramah's blind detective, Max Carrados, in that Bramah presents him not merely with his other senses heightened, but heightened to the point where he could hardly be said to be blind---he can read print with his fingertips, for instance. However, this collection of short stories does a better job of acknowledging the existence of the detective's disability and finding ingenious ways for him to work around it, rather than just ignoring it; besides showing (where appropriate) a welcome sense of humour. In that respect - and others - the best story in the collection may be The Ingenious Mind Of Mr Rigby Lacksome, which finds a young man going to extraordinary lengths to win over his prospective father-in-law, a collector of rare Shakespeariana. The Curious Circumstance Of The Two Left Shoes finds Carrados unravelling the truth behind a peculiar and senseless burglary; while in The Mystery Of The Vanished Petition Coin he is asked to intervene in the case of a young female journalist accused of stealing a rare coin. The Crime At The House In Culver Street is a grim story of embezzlement, arson and insanity, but its tone is lightened by the contribution of a youthful devourer of pulp fiction who calls himself "Frederick the Boy Detective". The remaining stories are more serious: The Secret Of Headlam Height is (like the standalone, The Bunch Of Violets) a tale of WWI espionage; The Holloway Flat Tragedy involves a cunningly plotted murder; and The Strange Case Of Cyril Bycourt deals with an endangered child, in a tale with supernatural overtones. In the final story, The Missing Witness Sensation, Max Carrados himself is the target when he is abducted in order to prevent him testifying in the case of an accused Sinn Fein member, and must save himself not only from imprisonment, but lingering death by thirst and starvation...

But the next morning there was no breakfast. Again an unnatural silence lay upon the place. With his ear to the wall, the blind prisoner had been able to follow a footstep from his door up to the distant kitchen, but not the faintest echo now reached him. He took off a boot and beat a crescendo of remonstrance upon the door... He might just as well have flicked it with his handkerchief for all the attention it provoked. Yet it could scarcely have failed to be heard, remote and subterranean as his prison was, if there had been anyone... If there had been anyone! The thought suddenly developed and spread in half a dozen directions like a flame among dry shavings: was it part of a plan to starve him to submission---had some been arrested and the remainder fled---was there some ghastly misunderstanding, everyone leaving his care or release to someone else---had they suddenly given up all hope of influencing Rank's disposal and in revenge had left him there to die? In less than five minutes he was speculating on the probable discoverer of his body and how long hence the event would be a month, a year, or so remote that he would be referred to as 'a shrivelled skeleton'...

>164 rosalita:

Well, I have made it a priority this year, but it's nice to make some real headway, yes! :)

>165 lyzard: He can read print with his fingertips?! Oh for pity's sake, as my Aunt Clara would have said.

Yes, that's my issue: his blindness barely impacts him, to an extent which to me seems to make it pointless for him to be blind in the first place.

Congratulations on 100 books and finishing a series! I don't think I will make it to The Circular Study this month (and I didn't manage Agatha Webb last month either). I think I'm having a month off from reading plans in preparation for the chunkster that is He Knew He Was Right next month!

Thanks, Heather! No worries: it's always lovely to share a read with you, but I certainly don't want you to feel pressured. :)

Ma Cinderella - Though from a wealthy family, Diane Carrol is determined to support herself through her art. Visiting an isolated corner of the Ozarks, she finds rich material in both her rugged surroundings and the local people. In particular she is drawn to - albeit a little frightened of - a woman called Ann Haskel, who between her personality and her shotgun rules the territory, and is a force to be reckoned with. As her visit draws to a close, Diane drives into the area's tiny railway terminus to make her arrangements for departure. At the station, she is astonished to be confronted by a handsome young college graduate---and stunned to discover he is Ann Haskel's son, John Herbert. She offers to drive him to his mother's, but on the way back a violent storm strands the two in the woods, forcing them to take rough shelter for the night. As they talk, a dismayed Diane learns that Ann sent John away when he was a small boy, to be raised an educated in the city by a friend of his late father; and that he nurses a very romanticised image of his mother. But if John is in for a terrific shock, so too is Ann: John has rejected her plans for his life and wants to be a writer... After the significant failure of his two previous novels, including the exceedingly peculiar science-fiction story, The Devil's Highway, with this 1932 work Harold Bell Wright turned back to the themes on which his early, successful career had been built. Most prominently, and most exasperatingly, we are again confronted with Wright's view of artists as spiritual warriors, responsible for disseminating beauty and moral uplift, and thus doomed to be unappreciated by a facile, immoral world. This is not to say, of course, that art does not serve this purpose; but Wright's stance is so shot through with smug self-approval and resentment of his critics that it becomes laughable. However, both Diane and John, each pursuing their own star, are less idealised and therefore less intolerable than some of Wright's earlier constructs; with Diane more of a person and less of a symbol than Wright's young women tend to be. The main narrative deals with Diane trying to show Ann that she should be proud of, not embarrassed by, John's life-choices. She gets her chance when Ann most unexpectedly inherits a fortune from a distant relative, and leaves the Ozarks for the city, where she and John occupy an old, gracious house - belonging to Diane, though they don't know that - and Ann has her eyes opened to a way of life she has never before contemplated: one, not merely of wealth, but of beauty; while that world, in turn, is confronted with the walking life-lesson that is Ann Haskel. At this point Ma Cinderella is basically The Beverly Hillbillies done with a straight face, and is every bit as hard to swallow as you might imagine. However, this interlude is mercifully brief, and ends with the exposure of various secrets and a retreat to the Ozarks, where in Ann's absence a violent gang led by her own step-son has taken over...

    Ann Haskel's face set in the old hard lines and her black eyes shone dangerously. "I don't reckon you know your maw so very well yit, Herb," she drawled. "If you did you'd sure know that Ann Haskel ain't fergittin' nothin' like that. I ain't never goin' to fergit what I hyeard them Lodge folks say 'bout me till I've squared hit with 'em fer good an' all."
    "Then why put yourself in their hands by giving this party?"
    "I figger hit's the other way 'round, son. I ain't aimin' to put myse'f in their hands. I'm aimin' fer them to put theirse'ves in mine... I got hit all figgered out. Didn't I hyear them a-talkin' what fun hit'd be to make a fool out of old Ann Haskel? Didn't I hyear them a-wantin' to take Ma Cinderella to the city so's they could laugh at her? I hyeard all the names they called me behind my back. An' I hyeard 'em a-tellin' how sorry they war fer you on account of you havin' sich an ignorant old she-hellion fer a mother. Wal, son, I'm askin' 'em all to this hyear party of mine so's to give 'em a good chance to go right ahead with what they 'lowed they'd do to me if they had me in the city. I aim fer them to git all the fun they can out of me---which mebbe won't be so much as they're a-figgerin' on..."

Someone Like You - First published in 1954, then in expanded form in 1961, this collection contains many of Roald Dahl's most deservedly famous short stories---in fact, it's hard to say that there's failure amongst them, although some readers (including, to be honest, this one) may not care for the grim reality of the three tales that make up this volume's conclusion, included under the joint title of Claud's Dog, which contain a disturbing amount of violence against animals. Otherwise, all the violence - physical and emotional - is directed against Homo sapiens---and who could object to that?---as Dahl runs the gamut from horror to humour, and from fantasy to unpleasant reality. In addition to Poison and The Great Sound Machine (both of which were reprinted in More Tales Of The Unexpected, which I read earlier in the year), Someone Like You includes Lamb To The Slaughter, about a most unlikely murder weapon; Man From The South, about a compulsive gambler; Taste, about an obnoxious wine expert and the amateur determined to beat him at any cost; Nunc Dimittis, about an egotist's elaborate revenge on a woman who wounds his amour propre; Neck, about a quiet man pushed too far by his hateful wife; Dip In The Pool, about a man on an ocean liner going to desperate lengths to win a prize; Skin, about a man with a tattoo done by a later-famous artist; and My Lady Love, My Dove, about a loving couple's secret for winning at bridge. All of these stories, be they ever so grim, have a note of burlesque to leaven their horrors; while The Great Automatic Grammatizator, about a computer that writes books, is straight comedy (albeit for a reader or an author, their worst nightmare). However, the remaining three stories leave the reader with nowhere to hide: The Wish, about the terrors lurking in a child's imagination; The Soldier, about a man suffering (in modern terms) from PTSD; and Galloping Foxley, about a middle-aged man suddenly confronted with the sadistic bully who made his childhood miserable.

    Thereafter, Knipe wisely decided to concentrate only upon mediocrity. Anything better than that - and there were so few it didn't matter much - was apparently not quite so easy to seduce.
    In the end, after several months of work, he had persuaded something like seventy per cent of the writers on his list to sign the contract. He found that the older ones, those who were running out of ideas and had taken to drink, were the easiest to handle. The younger people were more troublesome. They were apt to become abusive, sometimes violent when he approached them; and more than once Knipe was slightly injured on his rounds.
    But on the whole, it was a satisfactory beginning. This last year - the first full year of the machine's operation - it was estimated that at least one half of all the novels and stories published in the English language were produced by Adolph Knipe upon the Great Automatic Grammatizator.
    Does this surprise you?
    I doubt it...

>171 lyzard: Wait, Harold Bell Wright wrote an exceedingly peculiar science fiction story? Following links I see you read and reviewed it back in February. And I missed it. With a mad scientist in a Mexican volcano lab pursuing the secret of super powers? My interest in reading more Harold Bell Wright just jumped higher than I imagined possible.

>172 lyzard: I know Roald.Dahl from his terrific children's stories. I should expand my exposure.

>173 swynn:

Well! - I am cut to the heart by the discovery that you're not hanging breathlessly upon my every word! :D

The Devil's Highway was one of the books that basically killed Wright's career, but it's a LOT more fun than anything else by him I've read, albeit (i) he didn't intend it to be "fun", and (ii) it's still a novel by Harold Bell Wright.

Because it was such a complete failure it's hard to find, but there's an online copy at the HathiTrust (which is where I read it).

I went through a significant Dahl phase in the late 70s / early 80s, when they started filming his stories as Tales Of The Unexpected, and am now re-reading the books acquired at the time. They hold up very well, other than some of their era's sexism (and even then you get something like Lamb To The Slaughter...)

Note to self: in the future, hang breathlessly upon Liz's every word. Thanks for the Hathi Trust tip.

You're right about it being hard to find: in my library consortium, which covers territory where Shepherd of the Hills is holy writ, there are three copies, all of them in closed stacks in special collections.

Hmmm. Gotta find The Devil's Highway...

If people are going to start reading Harold Bell Wright because of me, I think I need to add a disclaimer:

All care taken, no responsibility accepted. :D

Finished The Taking Men for TIOLI #2.

Now reading Oh Happy Youth by Kay Cleaver Strahan; but because it is only available online, in teeny font, I shall also be resting my eyes (and my brain) with The Outrageous Lady by Barbara Cartland.

Finished The Outrageous Lady for TIOLI #4.

Still reading Oh Happy Youth by Kay Cleaver Strahan; my back-up book is now The Linger-Nots And The Whispering Charm by Agnes Miller.

>178 lyzard: It's a shame that a book only available online also has a teeny font size, since changing the font size in e-books is one of the biggest pluses of the format for me. I suppose it's a PDF or something else that you can't just zoom the browser window or something?

It was serialised in a newspaper which has been scanned; if I make the image too big it blurs, so I have to find a compromise point between size and clarity.

The things I do...

Oh yeah, digitized old newspapers are the worst for legibility onscreen! I salute your persistence, my friend. I can't think of many books for which I'd be willing to endure that.

Ordinarily I wouldn't bother for a non-series work, but Strahan is an author I like and I'm interested to read some of her non-mystery writing. Sadly none of her books are easily accessible, so here we are.

The Beautiful Wretch - Published in 1881, this domestic novel by Scottish author William Black is a frustrating if not uninteresting work: a typical Victorian novel in that it manages to have its plot entirely driven by foolish male behaviour while still taking male superiority for granted. The thin plot involves the interaction of a young naval officer with the Beresford family, consisting of the widowed mother, one son and four unmarried daughters. Lieutenant King is immediately drawn to seventeen-year-old Nan Beresford ('beautiful wretch' is her contrived and inappropriate nickname), but she, with a head full of ideas that are the despair of her mother, yet emotionally young for her years, is startled and dismayed by his premature proposal, and rejects him in no uncertain terms. King continues to carry her in his heart through several years of duty all over the world, but when he finally returns to England it is to the unwelcome news that Nan is expected to marry a clergyman. While reeling from this discovery, Beresford encounters the youngest of the Beresford family, Madge, who at eighteen is the image of what Nan was when he first knew her---but, as King discovers too late, after rushing into an impetuous courtship, is a very different kind of girl... While the main narrative of The Beautiful Wretch is mostly tiresome, around that narrative is enough interesting material to make this short novel worthwhile. Nan herself is an appealing character, intelligent and generous, hungry for knowledge, with friends from all walks of life, and a streak of unconventionality that draws her away from the usual pursuits and haunts of young womanhood. In particular she is given to solitary walking---and here we find one of the real strengths of the novel, in its lyrical descriptions of the countryside surrounding Brighton, where The Beautiful Wretch is chiefly set. (William Black lived in Brighton from 1879 onwards, and these passages would seem to reflect his own delighted exploration of the area.) Moreover, though very 'Victorian' in many respects, this novel does reflect the fact that, by the 1880s, the world was changing for young women, albeit that marriage was still considered the Holy Grail: at one point the three eldest Beresford sisters go for a holiday together on the Continent, travelling through Italy and Switzerland and staying in hotels without a chaperone in sight.

Nan had taken her ticket for Newhaven wharf, with a vague intention of walking from thence by the short cut to Seaford, and from Seaford to Alfriston and so back to Lewes. However, when the train stopped she thought she would have a look at the harbour, and very pretty and bright and busy it appeared on this clear morning ; the brass and copper of the steamers all polished up, flags flying, the sun brilliant on the green water of the estuary and on the blue water of the ponds beyond that were ruffled with the wind. Then, just below her, came in the ferry-boat. She thought she would cross (though that was not the way to Seaford). When she got to the other side, the slopes leading up to the fort seemed temptingly high; she knew that from the summit of the downs this morning one would have a splendid view. And so, perhaps from mere habit, she took the old familiar road past the coastguard station, past the pools of ruffled water, up the valley by the farmstead, and so on to the high and solitary downs overlooking the wide, moving, shining sea...

Hi, Liz! I stopped at the book store with those cheap Mystery League books today and found them just 25 cents apiece, so I bought all four. I've listed them over on Julia's thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/258555#6081514. I leave it to you two to sort out who wants which ones — and if neither, they can readily go into the deaccession pile.

That's great, Harry - thank you! I will answer on Julia's thread for ease of discussion.

Finished The Linger-Nots And The Whispering Charm for TIOLI #1.

And I'm calling that as the finish of another series, but without a celebration this time, as the final book, The Linger-Nots And The Secret Maze, is effectively unavailable.

There is also something odd about that last book. The first four books in the series were published close together, in 1923, 1923, 1923 and 1925; the last also feels as if it was meant as a conclusion, with the last two pages spent on the girls talking broadly about their futures. Then, in 1931, a fifth book appeared---was this a previously rejected manuscript? Was it ghost-written? It seems significant that when Cupples & Leon re-released the Linger-Not stories in 1934, as the omnibus Mystery Stories For Girls, this fifth book was excluded.

In any event, there seems to be only one copy of The Linger-Nots And The Secret Maze commercially available, and as they are asking US$100 for it, I shall regretfully draw a line here.

Meanwhile---still reading Oh Happy Youth by Kay Cleaver Strahan; my back-up book is now Red Of The Redfields by Grace S. Richmond.

Finished Oh Happy Youth for TIOLI #5, thanks mostly to the Klamath News of Klamath Falls, Oregon (with a few other papers helping out with missing issues).

Still reading Red Of The Redfields by Grace S. Richmond.

The Murder At Crome House - Oliver de Bellew is acquitted of the murder of his step-father, Sir Harry Wye, because of a lack of solid evidence, but his life is ruined anyway, because everyone believes he did it---including his own solicitor. Underwood is stunned when his friend, academic James Flint, tells him a strange story about a photograph which he found in a library book, showing one man pointing a gun at another: just a such a photograph was one of the main pieces of evidence against de Bellew, but this photograph shows a different man, Sir Harry's friend and son-in-law, William Exeter. Intrigued, Flint persuades Underwood to introduce him to the embittered de Bellew and his loyal fiancée, Alison, who is Underwood's cousin, and suggests that they undertake a reinvestigation of the case, with the goal of, at least, clearing de Bellew's name... While George and Margaret Cole were always listed as joint authors on their mystery novels, it seems that generally one or the other of them did most of the writing for each book, and that this 1927 standalone was chiefly the work of Margaret---which helps explain the fact that its lead character, the fidgety, obsessive and rather anti-social academic, James Flint, is clearly meant as a satirical sketch of George Cole himself. But if Margaret chose to immortalise her husband's more irritating character traits in print, she also gave full credit to his keen, analytical mind, with Flint eventually cracking a case that becomes more convoluted with every discovery. This is a long book, perhaps overlong given its matter-of-fact style, with a complicated plot and a great deal of extraneous detail in the narrative (the business with the twin photographs, for example, is bewildering), in addition to the Coles tackling several overarching themes at once. Overtly (and rather in the vein of Freeman Wills Croft), The Murder At Crome House is a tortuously detailed exercise in alibi-cracking, since the main alternative suspect identified by Flint seems to have a solid alibi for the time of the murder. On a deeper level, we find some of the Coles' usual social criticisms; and while, in their novels featuring Superintendent Wilson, they tended to display a fairly positive attitude towards the police, this one illustrates the dangers of official tunnel-vision, with it becoming clear that, having made up their minds early that Oliver de Bellew was guilty, the original investigators didn't bother to look any further, with numerous potential lines of inquiry simply dropped. This line of criticism runs parallel with the subplot involving Peter Anstey, who witnessed something critical near Crome House at the time of the murder, but whose inarticulateness in giving evidence at the inquest leads to him being ridiculed and dismissed by the coroner. But it is precisely this evidence, painstakingly drawn from Anstey by Flint, that eventually puts the new investigators on the right track. Ultimately, however, The Murder At Crome House is a subtle and amusing deconstruction of the mystery novel, or at least the genre's favourite invention, the brilliant amateur detective, with what starts as an academic exercise, an amusement, growing deadly serious; the small band of investigators losing their tempers with one another, running up dead alleys, and blundering towards, rather than coolly deducing, the truth; and mystery-novel fan James Flint growing increasingly aggrieved by the realisation that nothing works in real life the way it does in books---for instance, when long afternoons spent doggedly buying beers all around in the pubs near Crome House, far from prompting detailed accounts of everyone's movements on the day of the murder, leave him out of pocket, out of temper, and none the wiser...

    "I'm going with Oliver," Alison said. "I'd rather not go home while there's a chance we may find out something about Peter. It's partly our fault---we ought never to have let him go alone to find a dangerous man like that, and then never ask whether he'd come back or not!"
    "I wish to God we'd left it alone, all of us," was Oliver's heartfelt comment as they went out...
    Left alone with Underwood, Flint echoed miserably Oliver's parting words. Partly, no doubt, because it had come at the end of a tiring day, partly because he had had no dinner, the evening's news had given him a blow that was almost physical. The whole Wye case had come alive under his hands, and from a cross-word puzzle whose non-solution annoyed others beside himself had suddenly turned into a trap which might have caught a friend's life in it. An affection of which he had hardly been conscious for Peter Anstey stirred in him, and added a morbid touch to his imaginings. Out of vanity, amusement, or half-a-dozen wholly inadequate motives, he had revived this case, and lo! the one wholly innocent innocent member of the party was engulfed by it...

>184 lyzard: Your quote from The Beautiful Wretch was lovely. It does sound worth reading in spite of a predictable plot.

Hi, Jan! One of the reasons I like reading "old books" rather than historical fiction is that sense of immediate reality; it was obvious that William Black was describing something that he was very familiar with, and that he had real feeling for.

Finished Red Of The Redfields for TIOLI #2.

Now reading An International Affair by Bruce Graeme.

Spooky Hollow - A businessman called John Haydock travels to 'Greatlarch', the isolated but palatial Vermont home of Homer Vincent, to consult him on a matter of business---giving, however, the name of "Henry Johnson" to the butler. Haydock is received by Vincent and his spinster sister, Miss Anne Vincent, and, after a private meeting, asked to stay the night. The third member of the household, Vincent's orphan niece Rosemary, is not at home, and in fact stays out later than the time permitted by her controlling uncle. The following morning, Miss Anne's maid alerts Vincent when she finds her mistress's room locked, and there is no answer to her knocking. The door is forced, and Homer Vincent rushes across to his sister's curtained bed---recoiling in horror from the sight of a knife plunged into her chest. A search determines that Miss Anne's huge ruby is missing---and so is "Henry Johnson", apparently having fled the scene leaving all his possessions behind... The fifteenth book in Carolyn Wells' series featuring private investigator Fleming Stone is a good idea poorly executed. Believable characterisations were never Wells' strong point, and though the eccentric, domineering Homer Vincent - whose desire for a peaceful life makes him utterly ruthless where his sister and niece are concerned, barely allowing them to leave the house, still less have visitors - is an interesting conception, she never succeeds in making him credible. Wells does better in describing the extraordinary house which is the pride and joy of Vincent's life, a sprawling marble masterpiece to which he devotes all of his time and resources---and whose one flaw is the "Spooky Hollow", a tangled, boggy jungle at the edge of the estate from where, according to local legend and frightened servants, emanate ghostly music and voices. Homer Vincent himself has always dismissed these stories as nonsense---but after her murder, his sister begins to speak to him... The local police are completely baffled by the double-locked-door mystery of Anne Vincent's death - she murdered inside a locked room, the ruby taken from her safe - although they have no doubt of John Haydock's guilt, and set in motion a sweeping search for him. It is Bryce Collins, who wants to marry Rosemary, who suggests sending for Fleming Stone---though he has a double purpose in doing so. While the central mystery in Spooky Hollow is fair, it is likely that contemporary readers will be distracted from it by the subplot dealing with the revelation of Rosemary's illegitimate birth and adoption by Homer Vincent's brother---or, more to the point, by the appalling and brutal way that Rosemary is treated once her origins are revealed: effectively, "You're not really one of us, so out you go!" And what's worse, Rosemary herself completely agrees with this reaction, considering herself as having "tainted blood", and refusing to marry Bryce on the grounds that, for all they know, her parents could have been, "The scum of the earth." Consequently, Bryce not only wants Fleming Stone to solve the murder, but to investigate Rosemary's birth---an investigation which will have the unexpected side-effect of revealing a hitherto unsuspected motive for Anne Vincent's death...

    "I have decided not to send any more on the case, and---I have a reason---a secret reason why I prefer not to delve any further into the mystery."
    "I know what that reason is," Rosemary cried. "Bryce, Uncle Homer has gone over to the spiritualists! He has messages from Aunt Anne and I've no doubt his secret reason is is connected with---"
    "You're quite right, Rosemary," Vincent spoke very seriously, "my reason is that my sister's spirit has communicated with me, and she has asked me to refrain from further investigations."
    "Did she tell you who killed her?" Collins asked, not showing his true feelings in regard to these supernatural communications.
    "No,---not exactly, but she said the murderer would never be caught, and for my own peace of mind and---for Rosemary's, it would be better to let the matter rest."
    "And you fancy it may be some of Rosemary's relatives---on her mother's side---"

Yes, indeed:

He was anxious to meet the English detective. He had read so much of New Scotland Yard; he had read, in English, so many novels, which either portrayed all police as brainless, inefficient nincompoops, or else went to the other extreme, and made them out to be such inhuman geniuses...
---An International Affair, 1934

Finished An International Affair for TIOLI #6.

Now reading The Chinese Parrot by Earl Derr Biggers.

Off to the State Library today to make a start on Storm Jameson's Before The Crossing, and also to capture a cover image for W. Carlton Dawe's Wanted!. The latter was serialised in the Sydney Morning Herald in 1931, so I don't have to read it in the library, but other than this single copy now held in storage, the book seems to have vanished off the face of the earth. (So I guess this is the literary equivalent of 'proof of life'.)

Good news, Liz and Harry!! I just got a text from the library saying that my ILL request for The Merrivale Mystery has been fulfilled! I'll stop to pick it up after work tomorrow, and we can plan our reading schedule. I don't know how long the loan period is, but proabably 2-3 weeks.

>198 rosalita: Excellent! My library has switched to sending automatic e-mails instead of calling when ILL books come in, but I don't know whether they offer text notifications.

Whoo-hoo!!

I'm so very much looking forward to watching the two of you react to James Corbett's writing! :D

My library lets you select your notification preferences: books tend to come in in the afternoon, I get a text then and also an email the next morning as back-up.

I will be starting July with a re-read of Anthony Trollope's He Knew He Was Right, for our group read, but I am happy to slot The Merrivale Mystery in next.

>199 harrygbutler: >200 lyzard: Sounds like a plan!

Finished The Chinese Parrot for TIOLI #12.

Now reading The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie.

Finished The Moving Finger for TIOLI #5.

Now reading Un Crime en Hollande by Georges Simenon.

Five Little Pigs - When Carla Lemarchant turns twenty-one, she comes into her inheritance---but she also learns that her real surname is Crale, and that her mother died in prison after being convicted of murdering her father, the artist Amyas Crale. Amongst the things received by Carla is a letter from her mother, Caroline, solemnly attesting to her innocence; moreover, though at the time a very young child, Carla remembers Caroline as not being the kind of person who tells kind lies. With her life in turmoil, Carla turns to Hercule Poirot, asking him to re-examine her mother's case---and to solve a sixteen-year-old murder... This 1943 mystery finds Agatha Christie presenting Hercule Poirot with a new sort of challenge: discovering the truth of a long-past event, in the absence of any solid evidence and with nothing but the memories of those involved to rely upon. The resulting narrative functions as a disturbing commentary upon the doubtful evidentiary value of eyewitness testimony, with Poirot picking his way through accounts of the Crale case distorted not merely by time, but by false impressions and outright prejudice---uncovering in the process (in one of the cruellest moments in the whole Christie canon) the fact that one witness kept quiet about something seen but misinterpreted, and in doing so helped to damn Caroline Crale. From the various officials involved, Poirot learns the outlines of the case: how Amyas Crale, a great artist but a serial philanderer, not only allowed his infatuation with his latest model to go so far as bringing her into the family home, but planned to leave his wife for her; and how, only hours after a confrontation between himself and Caroline, Amyas Crale was found dead, poisoned... Posing as an agent for a "true crime" series (such writing became increasingly popular from the 1920s onwards), Poirot visits the five main witnesses in the Crale case, all of whom were present on the day of the murder, and involved in the events leading up to it: Philip Blake, Amyas's best friend, who hates Caroline with a passion; Meredith Blake, his older brother, who conversely was long infatuated with her; Elsa Greer, now Lady Dittisham, the "other woman" in the case; Angela Warren, Caroline's half-sister, then only in her teens; and Cecilia Williams, Angela's governess. Of the five, only Angela is convinced of Caroline's innocence; the others, whether reluctantly or with hostility, express no doubt of her guilt; Miss Williams, indeed, considers that she was justified, given the provocation offered. Poirot persuades each of the five to write out their own account of the murder---and from these biased, second-guessing, self-interested and necessarily incomplete testimonies, extracts the truth of Amyas Crale's murder...

    "I start on my backwards journey---to learn everything I can about the tragedy. I will tell you how I set about it. I talked to the Counsel who defended Caroline Crale, to the Junior Counsel for the Crown, to the old solicitor who had known the Crale family intimately, to the lawyer's clerk who had been in court during the trial, to the police officer in charge of the case---and I came finally to the five eyewitnesses who had been upon the scene. And from all of these I put together a picture---a composite picture of a woman. And I learned these facts:
    "That at no time did Caroline Crale protest her innocence---except in that one letter written to her daughter.
    "That Caroline Crale showed no fear in the dock, that she showed, in fact, hardly any interest, that she adopted throughout a thoroughly defeatist attitude. That in prison she was quiet and serene. That in a letter she wrote to her sister immediately after the verdict, she expressed herself as acquiescent in the fate that had overtaken her. And in the opinion of everyone I talked to (with one notable exception) Caroline Crale was guilty."
    Philip Blake nodded his head. "Of course she was."
    Hercule Poirot said: "But it was not my part to accept the verdict of others. I had to examine the evidence for myself. To examine the facts and satisfy myself that the psychology of the case accorded itself with them..."

A reminder that there will be a group read of Anthony Trollope's He Knew He was Right next month - all welcome! I will be putting up the thread over the weekend.

>204 lyzard: Skipping reading this one as I'm not quite there yet. My next Poirot is Death in the Clouds.

>204 lyzard: I just re-read Five Little Pigs a while ago, Liz, and it was fun to re-experience it through your comments. She is so good at mis-direction and subtle clues.

>206 rosalita:, >207 jnwelch:

Thanks, Joe!

Both of the books you guys mention show what's so great about Christie, how she continued to play with the formula and find new approaches in writing her mysteries---using a plane as the setting for a 'locked-room' story, reinvestigating a crime that had been 'solved'...

Finished Un Crime en Hollande for TIOLI #10.

Still reading Before The Crossing, but I will (should?) be wrapping it up this afternoon; I have also begun my re-read of He Knew He Was right by Anthony Trollope, in preparation for the group read.

I now have The Merrivale Mystery in hand, Liz and Harry. I have it until July 26, although the librarian Nick said it could probably be renewed if needed. So just let me know when you have cleared the decks and we are ready to start.

Excellent!

I'd say "Enjoy!" but it would probably be construed as sarcasm. :D

Finished Before The Crossing for TIOLI #10, and that wraps up June.

Still reading He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope.

>210 rosalita: >211 lyzard: I've got my copy of The Merrivale Mystery sitting next to my desk, so I'm ready to start whenever.

I will aim to make The Merrivale Mystery the peculiar lunchmeat in an oversized sandwich comprised of He Knew He Was Right and Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane, although I may need to leaven that rather doughy concoction with some condiments... :)

I'm shockingly behind in my review writing (and likely to remain so, the way things are shaping), so I thought I'd at least offer some content in the form of terrible covers.

I had to go hunting for a cover image of David Goodis' Down There under its original title - it was reissued as Shoot The Piano Player after it was filmed by Francois Truffaut - and that led me back into the pulp fiction cover databases where I found most of my red-heads. A few things caught my eye, but I liked this one best, partly because (at least to my eyes) both participants have red hair, because they both look incredibly uncomfortable here, because of the matter-of-fact insistence that these circumstances "can only lead to bed"---but mostly because "Gloria was OLD":

She was 30! If that's old I must be already dead. That isn't even a huge age gap between them — if she was the man and he was the woman no one would blink an eye. Heck, Georgette Heyer made a career out of it!

As we can see from that image, she's completely decrepit! :D

The age gap in relationships tended to vary with social status: working-class couples were usually around the same age, whereas for middle- and particularly upper-class couples, ten to fifteen years difference was standard.

Much to my amused dismay, apparently there was an entire crop of these "older woman / younger man" novels published during the 1950s, where, yes, the age difference was evidently considered very shocking, much more shocking than the illicit proceedings themselves.

(Actually I was going to post a different image, where the text is even funnier, but the title of the novel in question is a bit...dubious...so I thought better not.)

The thread is up for the group read of Anthony Trollope's He Knew He was Right---

Here

All welcome!

>217 lyzard: Well, now you're just stoking my curiosity!

Weeeeelllll...maybe with a disclaimer (and an apology!)---

He's eighteen, people! Says so right on the back cover (where for some reason the capitalisation makes me giggle like an idiot):

Her Husband Couldn’t Satisfy Her. Maybe This Boy Could!

Babs Duncan rose from her sunbathing, flaunting her woman’s body sensuously before him. He couldn’t be more than eighteen. His hard, garage-mechanic’s body lit fires deep within her...

He knew he should get out but his judgment was no match for the fire of desire she lit in him. Before long this eighteen-year-old boy was her slave, addicted to strange lusts that only her greater experience could satisfy. She made him her puppet of passion. There were no lengths to which this woman would not go to keep this boy in her bed---and that included divorcing her rich husband.

What Kind Of Woman Seeks Out Young Men Or Boys For Satisfaction Her Own Husband Can’t Give Her? This Book Gives A Fearlessly Frank And Honest New Insight Into A Social Problem More Common Today Than Is Generally Realized.

>220 lyzard: Oh, dear! So lurid. A few things spring to mind:

1. The cover text says "her golden loveliness" but of course the photo reveals the truth: REDHEAD.

2. Poor dear men (and boys): so completely unable to control their emotions in the presence of a woman! Always the woman's fault when lust takes over.

3. I always love the bit of text on most of these old salacious books that tries to pretend that you're not reading Smut, you're getting A Fearlessly Frank And Honest New Insight Into A Social Problem More Common Today Than Is Generally Realized. Really, it's your duty to read this!

>220 lyzard: Wow. That's so bad it's awesome! 😀

>221 rosalita:

Well, OF COURSE REDHEAD.

No-one ever went broke selling smut as A Daring Exposé. :D

>222 drneutron:

Merely the tip of the iceberg, dear boy. :)

Actually my favourite subgenre in terms of so-bad-it's-awesome is the lesbian pulp fiction of this era, although I hesitate to post any of them: they're hilarious from one perspective, but the language might offend. Still, I'll take it under advisement...?

>220 lyzard: Despite classing myself as a lover of ladies - the purple prose is more than a little cringeworthy.

My experience has not taught me that redheads have any particular advantages desire wise over blondes or brunettes!

Have a lovely Sunday, Liz.

Thanks, Paul!

If pulp fiction is to be trusted (and where could you possibly find a more reliable source of information??), in the 50s and 60s red-heads were all hot-to-trot. :D

The Madwoman In The Attic: The Woman Writer And The Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination - The 1970s push-back against the literary cult of the "dead white male" saw the publication of a number of important feminist studies, which sought to re-establish the reputation of 18th and 19th century female novelists. Perhaps the single most significant of these works, certainly the most lasting, is Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar's breakthrough 1979 study, The Madwoman In The Attic, which undertook simultaneously to describe the personal, societal and psychological barriers to female authorship which existed in the 19th century, and the extraordinary literature produced in the face of stifling social convention and often crippling self-doubt. This is a long, detailed, complex study of 19th century literature, and while it is by no means humourless - as we see from the deliberately provocative and by-now notorious opening sentence - "Is the pen a metaphorical penis?" - it does require from the reader both patience and familiarity with the works being dissected. Gilbert and Gubar begin by showing how, historically, literary expression was a form of male privilege, and the reductive arguments used to "prove" that women could not / should not write---with abuse and ridicule the inevitable response to any woman "unwomanly" enough, or mad enough, to persist. Nevertheless, by the 19th century it was grudgingly accepted that women, in certain circumstances, might write; but any woman attempting anything which breathed either social criticism or dissatisfaction with the female lot would almost invariably attract the familiar chorus of condemnation. Yet from the most discouraging of circumstances emerged novelists whose works are today considered great by any literary standard, and whose novels illustrate both their authors' difficulties and self-doubts, and their courage, intelligence and talent---even as the authors themselves consistently spoke deprecatingly or apologetically about their own works, and indeed about writing in the first place (or, like the stubbornly unapologetic George Eliot, developed a chronic illness). Gilbert and Gubar demonstrate how, with their creators bound both by Christian doctrine and a patriarchal culture which idealised the passively perfect "angel in the house", the works of 19th century women are overtly filled with images of confinement and suffocation, and with characters who feel "trapped" by their circumstances or their options. (When Jane Austen had Maria Bertram quote Sterne's starling - "I cannot get out!" - she was paving the way for generations of sister-writers to follow.) At the same time, however, they contend, the same writers resorted covertly to the use of a "double", a transgressive female character who, by violently breaking from the narrow prescribed bounds, became the vehicle for the anger, frustration and rebellious impulses which they - and their heroines - felt but dared not express directly. As we might expect from the title of their volume, the authors make Jane Eyre the main vehicle of their argument, demonstrating via a minute analysis of Charlotte Bronte's novel the perverse relationship between Jane Eyre and Bertha Mason, with the latter acting as the former's "creature from the id", her outbreaks coinciding with with Jane's moments of anger and resentment. The thread of the argument is further traced through the works of a number of significant female authors - Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Emily Bronte, George Eliot, and the poet Emily Dickinson, as well as in the other works of Charlotte Bronte - with Gilbert and Gubar highlighting the way that negative emotion and social criticism are disguised, displaced and in other ways hidden behind a smokescreen...but invariably there. (The omission of Anne Bronte is intriguing: she may have been considered "minor" compared to her sisters, but I think this reflects Anne's more realistic, less "disguised" style of writing. There is certainly little pulling of punches in her best novel, The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall.) The authors further contend that the fact that the works in question are often in some way unsatisfactory, retreating into convention or full of contradictory attitudes towards society in general and the role of women, was not only unavoidable under the circumstances, but that these "flawed" works shine the most interesting light upon the difficulties faced not merely by the authors themselves, but by 19th century women generally. So far any reader with a good grasp of 19th century literature may follow the main arguments found in The Madwoman In The Attic with ease, but the two additional threads of criticism may prove more challenging. Gilbert and Gubar argue that the shadow of John Milton, and in particular his depiction of Eve in Paradise Lost, lies over much of the writing of women in the 19th century, with authors including Mary Shelley, Emily Bronte and George Eliot provoked into re-writing, arguing with or, occasionally, agreeing with Milton's stern depiction of Eve as the Mother of Sin. Furthermore, and in addition to devoting the final chapter of their study to her, Gilbert and Gubar use the writings of Emily Dickinson (also the sole American writer to be considered in detail) as a reference point throughout The Madwoman In The Attic, an approach which may be problematical for anyone whose "specialty" is the prose rather than the poetry of the 19th century. But despite these potential difficulties, The Madwoman In The Attic remains an imperative piece of literary criticism, and a vital feminist work.

    Clearly there is conscious or semiconscious irony in all these choices of the apparently minor over the assuredly major, of the domestic over the dramatic, of the private over the public, of obscurity over glory. But just as clearly the very need to make such choices emphasises the sickening anxiety of authorship inherent in the situation of almost every woman writer in England and America until quite recently.
    What the lives and lines and choices of all these women tell us, in short, is that the literary woman has always faced equally degrading options when she had to define her public presence in the world. If she did not suppress her work entirely or publish it pseudonymously or anonymously, she could modestly confess her female "limitations" and concentrate on the "lesser" subjects reserved for ladies as becoming to their inferior powers. If the latter alternative seemed an admission of failure, she could rebel, accepting the ostracism that must have seemed inevitable. Thus, as Virginia Woolf observed, the woman writer seemed locked into a disconcerting double bind: she had to choose between admitting she was "only a woman" or protesting that she was "as good as a man". Inevitably, as we shall see, the literature produced by women confronted with such anxiety-inducing choices has been strongly marked not only by an obsessive imagery of confinement that reveals the ways in which female artists feel trapped and sickened both by suffocating alternatives and by the culture that created them. Goethe's fictional Makarie was not, after all, the only angelic woman to suffer from terrible headaches. George Eliot (like Virginia Woolf) had them too, and perhaps we can begin to understand why...

Pontifex, Son, And Thorndyke - This 1931 novel by R. Austin Freeman is an unusually structured but engaging work. One half of its divided narrative introduces us to young Jasper Gray, the son of a fallen gentleman, once a clergyman, brought low by vicissitudes (and his predilection for the bottle), who now earns a precarious living as a "crammer" for those members of the working-classes with higher ambitions. Jasper himself has a good job as a carrier, but this does not prevent him from accepting "side-jobs" when they present themselves. Offered five shillings to transport to the docks a case which he is told contains eggs - "eggs" which move around and swear whenever Jasper's barrow hits a bump - the boy finds himself pitchforked into a series of increasingly dangerous adventures, as he becomes the target of a vicious criminal gang... Meanwhile, Dr John Thorndyke is consulted by his friend, the solicitor Mr Brodribb, about a letter received from one client which, bizarrely enough, bears the seal of another, Sir Edward Hardcastle, who he has just learned has been missing for over a week. Mr Brodribb asks Thorndyke to look into Sir Edward's disappearance, with his inquiry taking a dark and disturbing turn when Sir Edward is found dead, apparently a suicide; although Thorndyke has his doubts... Outrageous coincidence is the hallmark of Pontifex, Son, And Thorndyke, although the tale unfolded via its dual narratives is entertaining enough that we don't mind its myriad improbabilities. Though published in 1931, the story is set nearly thirty years earlier (the events of the first Thorndyke novel, The Red Thumb Mark, are briefly referenced), in a London where gaslight and horse-drawn cabs are still the order of the day; and while the twin plots are given equal weight, the overarching perspective is that of Jasper Gray, looking back after a lapse of many years to the events which turned his entire life upside-down. It is evident to the reader long before it is to any of the characters what the connection must be between Jasper's strange adventures and the grim, lonely death of Sir Edward Hardcastle, with much of the fun of this mystery lying in how Austin Freeman manages to bring together the threads of his widely divided plots. The novel as a whole is let down by its tiresome attitude towards "foreigners" (Thorndyke takes his investigation in a particular direction on the grounds that the circumstance's of Sir Edward's murder are "un-English"), but its constant twists and turns hold the attention; while young Jasper himself is a very likeable protagonist.

    I had been expecting this question, and obviously it had got to be answered. For the seal had probably been stolen and I had to make it clear that it had not been stolen by me. It would not be enough merely to say that I had found it. "I have no objection at all," said I, "but it is rather a long story."
    "So much the better," said Dr Jervis, "if it is as amusing as the last. But tell us the whole of it."
    "Yes," urged Dr Thorndyke, "begin at the beginning and don't be afraid of going into detail. We want to know all about that seal."
    My recent experience in Pentecost Grove had completely cured me of any tendency to reticence. Here was an opportunity to expose that nest of criminals and I resolved to take it. Accordingly, in obedience to Dr Thorndyke's directions, I began with the incident of the truck and the egg-chest and recounted in full detail all the adventures and perils of that unforgettable day.
    "Bless the boy!" exclaimed Miss Vernet, as I described my entry into the egg-chest on the schooner's deck, "he is a regular Sindbad the Sailor! But don't let me interrupt."
    She did interrupt, nevertheless, from time to time, with ejaculations of astonishment and horror. But what interested me especially was the effect of my story on the three men. They all listened with rapt attention, especially Dr Thorndyke; and I had the feeling that they were comparing what I was telling them with something that they already knew. For instance, when I described Ebbstein's house and the work-room with the goose on the fire and the sour smell and the big tub of herrings and cabbage, Dr Jervis seemed to start; and then he turned to Dr. Thorndyke, and looked at him in a most singular way. And Dr Thorndyke caught his eye and nodded as if he understood that look...

May stats:

Works read: 19
TIOLI: 19, in 14 different challenges, and 1 shared read

Mystery / thriller: 9
Contemporary drama: 3
Young adult: 2
Classic: 2
Historical romance: 1
Short stories: 1
Non-fiction: 1

Re-reads: 2
Series works: 11
Blog reads: 0
1932: 1
1931: 1
Virago / Persephone: 1
Potential decommission: 1

Owned: 3
Library: 3
Ebook: 13

Male authors : female authors: 9 (including 1 using a female pseudonym) : 12

Oldest work: Zoe: The History Of Two Lives by Geraldine Jewsbury (1845)
Newest work: The Madwoman In The Attic: The Woman Writer And The Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar (1979)

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

YTD:

Works read: 94
TIOLI: 94, in 71 different challenges, with 12 shared reads and 1 sweep

Mystery / thriller: 47 (50.0%)
Contemporary drama: 11 (11.7%)
Young adult: 10 (10.6%)
Classic: 8 (8.5%)
Historical romance: 5 (5.3%)
Non-fiction: 3 (3.2%)
Humour: 3 (3.2%)
Short stories: 2 (2.1%)
Contemporary romance: 1 (1.1%)
Historical drama: 1 (1.1%)
Science fiction: 1 (1.1%)
Western: 1 (1.1%)
Fantasy: 1 (1.1%)

Re-reads: 13 (13.8%)
Series works: 64 (68.1%)
Blog reads: 3 (3.2%)
1932: 8 (8.5%)
1931: 4 (4.3%)
Virago / Persephone: 2 (2.1%)
Potential decommission: 3 (3.2%)

Owned: 24 (25.5%)
Library: 24 (25.5%)
Ebook: 46 (48.9%)

Male authors : female authors: 54 : 45

Oldest work: The Holy War by John Bunyan (1682)
Newest work: 1815: Regency Britain In The Year Of Waterloo by Stephen Bates (2015)

I'm still more than a month behind with my reviews!? I review like---

---A SLOTH!!

>229 lyzard: Sloths are adorable, so must be you doing reviews ;-)

Aw, thanks, Anita - but I'm afraid the resemblance is only temperamental! :)

Finished He Knew He Was Right for TIOLI #9.

Still contemplating my next move...

...but while I'm pondering, I might put up a new thread...

New digs now open - please drop in and say hi!

New thread

This is what I get for being offline on a holiday: I miss

SLOTH!!!!!!!!!

Pretty flimsy excuse, missy! :D