lyzard's list: worshipping obscurity in 2017 - Part 6

The Northern Territory is home to Australia's largest national park, Kakadu, which covers some 20,000 square kilometres. Although generally associated with a desert landscape, during the wet season (June - October) Kakadu explodes into life, with teeming rivers and waterfalls, vast wetlands filled with flowering plants and wildlife.

On the left is an image of the Jim Jim Falls, a plunge waterfall some 200 metres high formed as Jim Jim Creek reaches the edge of the Arnhem Land escarpment, in the northern part of the Territory.

On the right is the more familiar face of the Northern Territory: Kata Tjuṯa (also known as the Olgas) is a group of bornhardts, or domed rock formations, located about 365 km southwest of Alice Springs.

  

"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:



The Private Life Of Helen Of Troy by John Erskine (1925)

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:

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)

2017 reading

July:

113. He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope (1869)
114. The Merrivale Mystery by James Corbett (1929)
115. Vote For Love by Barbara Cartland (1977)
116. Soundings by A. Hamilton Gibbs (1925)
117. Red Pepper Returns by Grace S. Richmond (1931)
118. Le Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane by Alain René Le Sage (1715 / 1735)
119. The Bravo Of London by Ernest Bramah (1934)
120. Had You Been In His Place by Lizzie Bates (1873)
121. Towards Zero by Agatha Christie (1944)
122. Down Under by Patricia Wentworth (1937)

August:

123. The Mad Monk by R. T. M. Scott (1931)
124. Death On The Highway by Clifton Robbins (1933)
125. Dead Or Alive by Patricia Wentworth (1936)
126. Death At Windward Hill by Helen Joan Hultman (1931)
127. When Rogues Fall Out by R. Austin Freeman (1932)
128. The Beachcomber by William McFee (1935)
129. The House Of Terror by Edward Woodward (1929)
130. Julia De Roubigné by Henry Mackenzie (1777)

Books in transit:

On interlibrary loan / branch transfer / storage request:

Purchased and shipped:

On loan:
A House Divided by Pearl S. Buck (29/08/2017)
Gains And Losses by Robert Lee Wolff (29/08/2017)
*Julia De Roubigné by Henry Mackenzie (31/08/2017)
Death Of A Ghost by Margery Allingham (08/09/2017)
*The Mad Monk by R. T. M. Scott (27/09/2017)
The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers (27/10/2017)
Corinne by Madame de Stael (27/10/2017)
The Mysteries Of London by G. W. M. Reynolds (30/10/2017)
**Gil Blas by Alain René Le Sage (30/10/2017)

Reading projects 2017:

Blog reads:
Chronobibliography: Gallantry Unmask'd; or, Women In Their Proper Colours by Anonymous
Authors In Depth:
- Forest Of Montalbano by Catherine Cuthbertson
- 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: The Prisoners Of Hartling by J. D. Beresford
Australian fiction: Louisa Egerton by Mary Leman Grimstone
Gothic novel timeline: Julia De Roubigné by Henry Mackenzie / Reginald Du Bray by 'A Late Nobleman'
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)
Completed: He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope (thread here)

Upcoming: Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte
Upcoming: The Duke's Children (restored edition) by Anthony Trollope

General reading challenges:

America's best-selling novels (1895 - ????):
Next up: The Private Life Of Helen Of Troy by John Erskine

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

Agatha Christie mysteries in chronological order:
Next up: Death Comes As The End

C.K. Shorter List of Best 100 Novels:
Next up: Corinne by Madame de Staël

Mystery League publications:
Next up: The Curse Of Doone by Sydney Horler

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: The Darker Saints by Brian Hodge

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)
- The Guardian's 100 Best Novels

A Century (And A Bit) Of Reading:

1845: Zoe: The History Of Two Lives by Geraldine Jewsbury
1869: He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope
1873: Had You Been In His Place by Lizzie Bates
1877: Elsie's Children by Martha Finley
1881: The Beautiful Wretch by William Black
1899: Agatha Webb by Anna Katharine Green
1900: The Circular Study 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)
When The Sea Gives Up Its Dead by Elizaberth Burgoyne Corbett (Mrs George Corbett)
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 - Dr Thorndyke Intervenes (20/26) {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 / Kindle}
(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 - 1952) William McFee - Spenlove - The Beachcomber - (3/7) {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 - Smash And Grab (4/5) {Kindle}
(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 - Rolling Stone (4/5) {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}
(1939 - 1940) Clifton Robbins - George Staveley - Six Sign-Post Murder (1/2) {Biblio / rare}
(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}

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:

        

        

...and I think that's it.

Welcome, all!

Hope I am not too early to wish you a happy new thread, Liz.

Not at all - thank you! :)

Happy new thread, Liz! I see you've started Gil Blas; it will likely be a couple days before I get going with it.

Hi, Liz! Happy New Thread!

Happy new thread. Setting that up must take an age!

Happy new thread, Liz!

Happy new thread, Liz, you have found again some beautiful topper pictures!

Happy New Thread, Liz. Those toppers are gorgeous.

The second one reminded me of Uluru, in the southern part of the Northern Territory.

Beautiful photos as always, Liz! Your thread is a constant enticement to visit Australia!

Nice to see The Merrivale Mystery on your Other Projects list!

Hi, Harry, Roni, Helen, Amber, Anita, Joe and Julia! - thank you all for stopping by. :)

>22 harrygbutler:

No hurry at all, Harry; I'm not planning on rushing it, trust me! :)

>24 Helenliz:

It's not quick, but (sadly?) it's the kind of fiddly job I enjoy!

>26 FAMeulstee:

Glad you like them, Anita. :)

>27 jnwelch:

Yes, they are related formations, but I thought I would go with the less well-known ones.

>28 rosalita:

Thanks, Julia.

Stick around for more 'Other Projects' details...!

>29 lyzard: Ooooh, enticing!

BTW, am I am right in assuming that the touchstones had an overhaul? While I was copying my lists they held the original title choice in most cases, and were noticeably offering more relevant choices even when they didn't. (I didn't get offered Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban once, let alone for every other book!)

On the other hand, I do find being offered the film before the book really irritating...

And now, time to pick up a couple of neglected self-challenges---

The C.K. Shorter List of Best 100 Novels:

#3: Le Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane by Alain René Le Sage (1715 / 1735)



The picaresque novel was perhaps the earliest form of "genre fiction". Originating in Spain, this rambling style of fiction was popular from the very birth of the novel through to the mid-18th century. It would not be unfair to say that the form was attractive to budding writing of fiction because it wasn't necessary to have a real plot: a novel could consist simply of a string of improbable adventures and interpolated narratives, kept going until the word target had been reached. The better picaresques, however, were more realistic, and used the form as a commentary upon society; in many cases, they could also be considered an early example of the Bildungsroman.

At #3 in the C. K. Shorter list we find one of the most enduringly popular examples of the form, Alain René Le Sage's Gil Blas, in which the title character offers an extremely lengthy rumination upon a life of adventure, folly, happiness and tragedy. The work was translated into English in 1749, by the novelist Tobias Smollett; a second, corrected edition was published in 1750, and this remains the standard English-language version.

The Mystery League Inc. challenge:

#2: The Merrivale Mystery by James Corbett (published in the UK in 1929, then in the US in 1930); cover art by Gene Thurston:




James Corbett has recently required something of a reputation as "the Edward D. Wood Jr" of the Golden Age mystery, and while that might be an overstatement, it cannot be denied that his writing style is...unique.

This will be a re-read for me, but a first exposure to Corbett for both Harry and Julia who, I am delighted (in a somewhat sadistic way) to announce, will be joining me.

>31 lyzard: Indeed Touchstones are now running off the new and improved site search. They really are noticeably better, aren't they? Here's the thread with details if you're interested: https://www.librarything.com/topic/258659

When are we starting The Merrivale Mystery? I am about two-thirds of the way through my current book so I could start as early as the weekend, or anytime after that.

I had missed that discussion, but it's very obvious from using them.

Go ahead whenever you like: I'll be using it as one of my "relief books" from Gil Blas.

>35 rosalita: >36 lyzard: I can start at any point. In fact, I almost did so today. :-)

>OK, I'll crack it open as soon as I finish this one. Are we meant to be commenting along the way or just comparing notes at the end? I'm fine with either method.

>37 harrygbutler:

Hard to restrain yourself, hey?? :D

>38 rosalita:

Whichever you like! I ended up posting a bunch of quotes the first time; that might work for you.

>38 rosalita: I'm flexible on that score. I'll likely read at least the first half in approximately 50-page chunks (wherever a good chapter break falls), unless I'm swept along by the writing :-) , so I could comment on the portions as I go, but I'm also fine with comparing at the end.

>39 lyzard: That's right. :-)

I started The Merrivale Mystery last night: it's...everything I remembered. :D

I'm going to be taking my time with Gil Blas, aiming at 50 pages per day as a minimum. The tiny font and heaviness of the book make it inappropriate bedtime reading, so I need to find a time-slot during the day.

>41 lyzard: I started Gil Blas last night and read just about 50 pages. I wish I could bump it up to read a Book a day (it appears they're about 75 pages each in the first volume of the copy I have), but I don't know whether I'll manage it. I probably won't start The Merrivale Mystery tonight, as I'm hoping to finish up Leave It to Psmith.

The Hand Of Power - In 1930, new publishing concern The Mystery League, Inc. launched with an Edgar Wallace thriller which had been published in the UK in 1927, but which had not previously achieved a US release---for, as it turns out, good reason. No-one expects "realism" in a Wallace thriller, but The Hand Of Power is a mess of a work which throws together a mish-mash of plot-points without ever really making their connection clear. It was also written for serialisation, and published in novel form unrevised---meaning that almost every chapter ends in a cliffhanger, complete with exclamation mark! The first, confusing half of The Hand Of Power is chiefly the story of Betty Carew, an aspiring actress. She is also the ward of the strange Dr Laffin, who forces her to perform peculiar tasks for him - such as sitting in a shop-front window for three days - keeping her in subjection through the fact that he adopted her out of an orphanage, and that she is the daughter of a man who was hanged for murder. Dr Laffin - and, even more so, the lovely Betty - attract the attention of American reporter, Bill Holbrook, who begins to see something dangerous in Laffin's eccentricity. Meanwhile, the police are watching an organisation known as The Proud Sons of Ragusa, a "lodge" which has done much social good since its founding, but which seems recently to have begun recruiting criminal elements... After wandering through a narrative maze that tosses together a secret society, hidden identities, occult powers, murder and a love triangle, The Hand Of Power finally straightens out to become (pretty much out of the blue) a crime thriller about the mid-ocean hijacking of a liner carrying a crowd of wealthy passengers. Our band of heroes are also on board, and they find themselves locked in a desperate battle not only for their own lives, but those of everyone on the ship... While the final phase of The Hand Of Power is much more the kind of thing we expect from Edgar Wallace, there is a definite sense that he changed his mind about this story halfway through writing it (probably when he realised he had written himself into a corner). Whether the end is worth persisting for is debatable, but Wallace does create two memorable characters over the second half of the book: Toby Marsh, an erudite pickpocket and cracksman, whose vendetta against Dr Laffin brings him into a partnership of sorts with Bill Holbrook; and Inspector Bullot, whose extraordinary memory for faces and facts has kept him in the background at Scotland Yard for almost his whole career, a mere "information man", but who finally gets the chance to handle a high-profile murder case---which turns out to be much, much more...

    "This move certainly puzzles me," said Bullott. "I knew, of course, they were steering north last night."
    "There is a good reason," said Bill. "We shall be running into the fog belt later in the day, and whether we do or not, we are well off the regular track of shipping. Unless we happen to be seen by a chance whaler or one of the Greenland trading ships, we shall have disappeared from human knowledge."
    "But you can't steal a ship and hide it in the Arctic," protested Bullott.
    "They're doing it," was the laconic reply. "Here's another point, Inspector: the farther north we go the less danger there is to the gang. The only possibility of recovering this ship is by a surprise attack in the night---there will be no night from now onward!"

>42 harrygbutler:

A much more sensible choice!

Happy new-ish thread!

>44 lyzard: Ah, but because I finished Leave It to Psmith last night, I had time this morning to start The Merrivale Mystery. It certainly is ... interesting. :-)

>45 drneutron:

Thanks, Jim!

>46 harrygbutler:

I prefer "unique". :D

I do hope you're worshipping Serge as a super-intelligence, hmm??

>48 lyzard: I am of course in awe of his powers! :-)

>49 harrygbutler:

I wish I could see the back of his cranium!

Streaked With Crimson - This 1929 novel by Charles J. Dutton is the last in his series featuring private investigator, John Bartley. It also introduces his new series character, young Professor of Psychology Harley Manners, who features in half-a-dozen mysteries which place an emphasis upon aberrant psychology. Such is certainly the case with Streaked With Crimson, which is another of this era's proto-serial killer novels, and features a psychopath intent upon punishing people guilty of sexual transgressions. Interesting, too, is that Manners shows no immediate "detective instinct", but must learn from watching Bartley; although his close observation and memory for details do help crack the case. Alas, nothing else has changed: Dutton's style is still ponderous and repetitive, and his plot highly improbable; he even introduces his new detective by, effectively, replicating the exact circumstances that opened the previous Bartley book, with Manners getting lost on some isolated backroads on his way to visit a friend, and stumbling into murder. (And he owns an Airedale with much more intelligence than most of the human characters; Bartley has one too; so, unsurprisingly, did Charles Dutton.) In this case, Manners discovers an apparent suicide in an abandoned country house. Shocked as he is, Manners notices two details: that there is nothing present he could have jumped from to hang himself; and that the rope used is marked at regular intervals with red paint. Pressing on to his original destination, the home of seeming young man of leisure (and actual secret service agent) George Carter, Manners insists upon calling the police immediately. The local Chief of Police, none too happy about being rousted out of bed, is even less so when, upon arriving at the lonely house, the three men discover that the body has disappeared... Circumstances support Manners' story, however, and the investigators find signs that the house had been used for secret meetings between a man and a woman. When Manners encounters a stranger in the dark, who escapes after a violent struggle, he concludes that the body is still on the premises. It is found on the roof, and identified as that of Paul Mason, a financier, who was also suspected of certain criminal activities. The investigation has barely begun when a second murder occurs, this time of a woman, Mrs Rand, who is likewise found hanged with a rope streaked with crimson. A bible nearby is opened to the Book of Ezekiel, and its exhortations about sinning women. With the police getting nowhere, George Carter sends for his close friend, private investigator John Bartley...

    The professor slowly shook his head. From the moment he had seen the face of the figure in the black robe his mind had been in a tangle of confused thoughts. Even now he was not certain just what had been behind it all. But he knew that the quiet self-possessed man who had started again to speak, did know.
    "When Manners and Carter told me of that sinister black rope and the crimson spots which had been splashed upon it I realised at once that the solution of the crime must be found in the answer to one question! What kind of individual would do such a thing? All the settings, the ropes, the spots, the black robe of which we heard later, were grotesque fantastic circumstances, which could be explained only upon one assumption, that we were dealing with some unbalanced neurotic, one with a sadistic love of cruelty, who used red as a symbol, used it because the colour had some meaning to his disturbed brain."
    "That sounds rather silly," was Rogan's sharp retort.
    "Perhaps; but it's not silly. There are several books written upon the symbolism of colours. Every student of crime knows that the colour red crops up often in these weird and unusual murders which are committed by abnormal individuals. The colour has both a sexual and a religious meaning..."

...and even as, earlier in the year, I accidentally read two "family slaughter" novels back-to-back, with Murder On The Palisades and The Greene Murder Case, this time around I accidentally read two early serial-killer novels back-to-back...

Murder Gone Mad - The late 20s and early 30s produced a number of novels dealing - or seeming to deal - with the phenomenon we now call "serial killing", but of all of them, perhaps this 1931 work by Philip MacDonald represents the first work to capture both the psychology and the horror of such crimes. (Francis Beeding's Death Walks In Eastrepps is, from memory, its main challenger.) The novel seems to have been inspired by the case of Peter Kürten, the "Vampire of Dusseldorf", who surrendered to police early the same year, after a two-year rampage of murder, rape and blood-drinking. Holmdale, a pleasant "garden city" commuting distance from London, becomes the target of a killer whose only motive seems to be blood lust---coupled, perhaps, with a sick desire to cause as much devastation as possible: the victims are all young, all experiencing a period of happiness or success, all popular and much loved. The local police, the Chief Constable and the Holmdale Clarion begin to receive letters signed "The Butcher", at first taking responsibility for the crimes, later warning of more to come... Over the objections of his local officers, the Chief Constable calls in Scotland Yard: Superintendent Arnold Pike and two of his trusted subordinates are dispatched to Holmdale, where they find a community gripped by terror and a killer who strikes with impunity, leaving no evidence behind... Golden Age mysteries are often accused of treating murder purely as an entertainment, but no-one could say such a thing of Murder Gone Mad, which is one of its era's grimmest works---and includes two of the most brutal and upsetting murders that I've encountered in a novel of this vintage. This is not a novel of deduction, but an account of painstaking police procedure, with trial and error the only way forward---even as the murders continue. In this respect, it may come as a disappointment to some readers that there is no attempt to understand the killer's motivation, or to "explain" the killings; but this is not the business of the police. Superintendent Pike (who appears in MacDonald's series featuring Colonel Anthony Gethryn, who is name-checked here) is made the focus of the second half of the novel, as he and his men work day and night to check statements and confirm alibis, and so eliminate suspects, before constructing a trap which will allow them to narrow their investigation to a mere handful of possibilities (a procedure which involves the 1930s equivalent of CCTV surveillance!). This exhaustive, unrelenting effort eventually begins to bear fruit, giving the police genuine hope of identifying the killer---but not before Pike himself suffers a devastating loss...

    Mr Colby halted by Mr Harvey's shoulder. Mr Harvey looked up sharply. "Get away!" he said. "Get away!"
    But Mr Colby did not get away. He was standing like a little, plump statue staring down at the thing beside which Mr Harvey knelt.
    "Oh!" said Mr Colby in a whisper which seemed torn from him. And then again: "Oh!"
    What he looked at---what Mr Harvey was looking at---was Lionel.
    And Lionel lay in an odd, twisted, sturdy little heap on the black road and where Lionel's waistcoat should have been was something else. Mr Harvey picked up one of Lionel's hands. It was cold like the road upon which it was lying...

So---early serial killer novels---not all of which turn out to be about a "real" serial killer, but sometimes involve an individual disguising their materially-motivated crimes as something else. In any case, these novels offer an interesting reflection of what was understood at the time about the psychology of such killers:

The Mystery Of The Evil Eye by Anthony Wynne (1925)
The Greene Murder Case by S. S. Van Dine (1928)
The Poison Plague by Will Levinrew (1929)
Streaked With Crimson by Charles J. Dutton (1929)
Murder On The Palisades by Will Levinrew (1930)
Death Walks In Eastrepps by Francis Beeding (1931)
Murder Gone Mad by Philip MacDonald (1931)
The 'Z' Murders by J. Jefferson Farjeon (1932)
The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie (1936)
And Then There were None by Agatha Christie (1939)

>50 lyzard: Ah, but if you did, would you think him loopy?

>55 harrygbutler:

Something a bit odd about his brain-box, yes! :D

(I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying having someone to share this with...!)

>56 lyzard: Of course, he is a criminologist, a student who has devoted years to all the ramifications of crime; therefore, he is entitled to the facts, so that he can use his super-intelligence to penetrate to the heart of the jungle. :-)

It is great fun!

>53 lyzard: That one sounds really interesting. If only the Someday Swamp weren't so crowded already ...

>57 harrygbutler:

I'm glad you feel that way! I had visions of you refusing ever to speak to me again... :D

(Of course, I don't know yet how Julia feels about it!)

>58 swynn:

It really is quite different from anything else from that era which I've read. The good news is, it's always been in print (in fact it was reissued earlier this year), so if you decide to take a look you shouldn't have any trouble finding a copy.

The Man From The River - Young doctor Michael Prendergast is holidaying in Essex, and expecting his friend, Superintendent Henry Wilson, to join him for a weekend, when the body of a man is pulled from the river which winds by the small town of Steeple Tollesbury. A quick examination shows Michael that the dead man's neck is broken, and he is astonished when the local doctor, Kershaw, pronounces him drowned apparently without noticing. When, at the inquest, Dr Kershaw does put the death down to a broken neck, but goes on to describe a head injury that was not present when Michael examined the body, astonishment turns to grim suspicion---and instead of a relaxing weekend, Superintendent Wilson arrives in Steeple Tollesbury to find himself enjoying a "busman's holiday"... This fourth book in the Wilson series by George and Margaret Cole is a lengthy and quite complex mystery, as much concerned with character as with whodunnit. Perhaps the most curious thing about it is the depiction of Michael Prendergast, who is, familiarly enough, positioned as "Watson" during the investigation into the death of Mr Meston---but who progressively reveals himself as a judgemental prig. That we are intended to find him unlikeable is certain - at one point, the narrative refers to his "Puritan vindictiveness" - and I can only assume that the Coles were amused by the contrast between Prendergast's narrow-mindedness and Wilson's genial tolerance, born of his wide experience. Meanwhile, the investigation is both helped and hindered by a local solicitor, Brandeth, who seems to consider the murder of Meston a perverse kind of entertainment arranged for his own amusement---or is there something more behind his strange behaviour? And why would Dr Kershaw risk his career by falsifying the details of Meston's death? It is soon determined that Meston stood, as it were, at a junction of motives: he was attached to a brokerage firm around which rumours of financial mismanagement and even embezzlement were swirling; but he was also separated from his beautiful wife, Sylvia, whose wealthy relatives have closed ranks around her, in particular the local squire, Godfrey Loring, her cousin and guardian. Knowing that Meston had refused his wife a divorce, despite her "keeping company" with at least one other man, and offended by both her morals and her indifference to her husband's death, Michael is determined to prove that Sylvia was somehow involved in the murder. Wilson, however, is given pause by the gruesome details of Meston's death, and the need to reconstruct the crime in a way that will allow for them---for while Meston did die of a broken neck, the autopsy reveals that he was hanged...

    "I can't believe it. You say the poor devil was strangled. That means, as far as I can see, that it wasn't an accident---or suicide."
    "The case," said Michael grimly, "is one of murder."
    "Is that your view too, Mr Wilson?" asked the Colonel. Wilson nodded. The three stood still for a moment, facing the fact...
    "He was strangled," the Colonel repeated. "Strangled. But how?"
    "With a silk rope," said Michael.
    "And in a rather peculiar way," Wilson added. "Did you notice the position of the marks, Michael?" He illustrated on his own neck, while the Colonel shuddered with horror. "Do you remember, they come close up under his chin, and then slope up at the back of his head? And his neck was broken. Doesn't that suggest anything to you?"
    "Good God!" said Michael, as Wilson's meaning came gradually home to him. "It's not possible..."

The Furthest Fury - The small Connecticut town of New Midian is shocked by the murders of Nevin Lawrence and his sister. The two, both widowers, were relative newcomers to the town, and though very private people, were well-liked by all. In such a peaceful town, it seems at first that the motive can only have been robbery committed by a passing stranger---except that nothing has been taken from the house. David Stanhope, a visitor, is dismayed when official suspicion focuses upon Barker Hazelton, the son of the friend with whom he is staying: Barker and Lawrence were fierce rivals for the presidency of a local country club, an inadequate motive were it not for the young man's volatile temper. Seeing that Barker is likely to be arrested purely for lack of an alternative suspect, Stanhope decides to send for Fleming Stone... After several weak series entries, this 1924 novel by Carolyn Wells is a welcome improvement---although I was dismayed by the absence from the narrative of "Fibsy" McGuire, Stone's teenage side-kick, who is often the best things about these mysteries. Compensating for this, however, is the fact that Stone shows up at a relatively early stage of the story, rather than (as is too often the case) turning up a few pages from the end, looking around for five minutes, and delivering a verdict. Indeed, this is one of the few times when Stone is genuinely stumped, and needs to do some serious, sustained detecting before he can solve the crime. Another positive is the relationship that develops between Stone and the shrewd, tart-tongued maidservant, Emma Lily, who starts out as a suspect because she benefits under her employers' wills, but who becomes a valuable colleague (and whose involvement somewhat compensates for the absence of Fibsy). Wells' novels are often a hotbed of unabashed class snobbery, so it is refreshing to find her narrative offering support to the cross-class romance of Barker and the daughter of the local seamstress; while there is some genuine humour about the subplot involving a clue in the form of part of a woman's hair-net, which forces Stone, in his masculine ignorance, to seek enlightenment from some of the townswomen. Despite both Barker and his girlfriend, Gladys, admitting they were at the scene of the crime on the night in question, and gossipy neighbour, Miss Busby, telling a strange story of a dark figure lurking in the grounds, Stone becomes convinced that the motive for the murders must lie in the past of one or both of the victims: a theory which receives tacit support from the very absence of personal memorabilia from their house, as if both of them had attempted to bury their pasts. Apart from the piece of hair-netting, Stone can identify only two real clues: the smashing of a figurine, which seems to have been done deliberately; and some initials engraved inside a wedding-ring...

    Lewis saw the evidence of these portentous thoughts on his face, and said to him, banteringly, "Look here, Mr Stone, I've read of transcendent detectives who can deduce the personality of a criminal from a hat or a shoe, but I believe you could reconstruct our murderer from a pair of missing shoes."
    "I can," said Stone, gazing at him calmly.
    Lewis gasped. "And was it the man Miss Busby saw looking in at the window?"
    "It was."
    "You know him?"
    "I didn't say that; I said I could reconstruct the personality. The personality is five feet, seven inches tall; weighs one hundred and sixty pounds, and is active and energetic. Of a passionate and vindictive temperament, yet shrewd, cool and calculating. Of wonderful efficiency, and of an uncanny shrewdness. Of indomitable will and courage, absolutely and entirely cold-blooded, and diabolically clever."

Finished my re-read of The Merrivale Mystery for the Mystery League, Inc. challenge, and for TIOLI #2.

:D

Still reading Le Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane; my 'relief book' is now Vote For Love by Barbara Cartland.

What on earth are these two doing??

>62 lyzard: How far have you gotten with Gil Blas? I'm somewhere in Book III, I think.

>63 lyzard: It looks awfully like he just kneecapped her, Liz! Either that, or she's trying desperately to slither away from him by going limp and sliding to the floor. Sure makes me think "made for each other"!

>64 harrygbutler:

Hi, Harry! About the same: I'm certainly not rocketing through it; I read for what feels like ages, and then find it's only been twenty pages... :)

>65 rosalita:

I had a brief respite in the last Cartland I read (not reviewed yet) but we're back to Obnoxious Alpha Male in this one, sigh, so I'd be slithering too!

Finished Vote For Love for TIOLI #8.

Still reading Le Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane; my new 'relief' book is Soundings by Arthur Hamilton Gibbs.

Drury Lane's Last Case - Ex-police inspector Thumm and his daughter, Patience, now partners in a private investigation firm, are hired by a strange individual who gives an envelope into their keeping, with orders to open it if they do not hear from him on the 20th of each month: the assignment is paid for in advance with a crisp thousand-dollar note. Meanwhile, the detectives are called in over the disappearance of another former policeman from his job as a security guard at a private museum, which houses a priceless collection of Shakespeareana. Questioning the curator, Dr Choate, and young academic, Gordon Rowe, the Thumms learn the suspicious detail that during some renovation work, the glass top of a locked cabinet holding rare volumes was broken; though Choate insists that nothing was stolen. It takes the expert eye and knowledge of Drury Lane to see that one of the original volumes is missing: the reason no-one realised is that the thief replaced it with an almost identical book---but one even rarer and more valuable... As its title indicates, this is indeed the final work by "Barnaby Ross" (Ellery Queen) to feature the elderly, deaf former actor, Drury Lane; but whereas the previous series works found Lane leaving his faux-Elizabethan sanctuary and entering the sordid world of everyday crime, this final entry finds crime entering, as it were, into his world, with a mystery steeped in the life and works of William Shakespeare. The first third or so of Drury Lane's Last Case, which is populated with characters just a bit too determinedly eccentric, proved to be something of a chore. I was also put off both by the narrative's mockery of a group of holidaying schoolteachers (they like to visit museums! let's all point and laugh!) and, conversely, by the thuggishness of Inspector Thumm, with his constant desire to beat the truth out of someone, anyone; all of which the authors evidently found a lost more amusing than I did. However, when Thumm throws up his hands over the esoteric nature of the developing mystery and departs to take on a "real" case, things take a turn for the better---not least because Patience Thumm emerges as the novel's lead detective, with Drury Lane as her expert consultant...and Gordon Rowe as an additional attraction / irritant. The jocular opening of Drury Lane's Last Case ultimately functions as an effective bait-and-switch, with the rug ripped out from beneath detectives and readers alike as the seemingly trivial case takes several increasingly dark and quite jolting turns into impersonation, abduction and finally murder; with the bizarre "anti-theft" of the volume of Shakespeare finally revealed as the key to a mystery some 300 years in the making...

    "In this letter Shakespeare wrote to his friend William Humphrey that he was 'fast sinking', that he was in 'sore bodily distress', and that he was convinced someone was slowly poisoning him. The next day---he died."
    "Oh, good Lord," said Rowe again and again...
    "Poisoned, hey?" said the Inspector, shaking his head. "Who the hell would want to poison the old bird?"
    Patience said stiffly: "It looks horribly as if we'll have to solve a three-hundred-year old murder before..."
    "Before what, Patience?" asked Lane in a curious voice.
    She shivered a little.

So, "terrified girls" sell books; intelligent female detectives not so much, I'm guessing:


  

The Circular Study - First published in 1900, this short-ish novel by Anna Katharine Green is a peculiar work in a number of ways. Firstly, she brings together in it all three of her series detectives: Ebenezer Gryce, though by now in his eighties, is still attached to the NYPD, and is called in when Felix Adams is found stabbed to death in his own study: a strange room, built in a circular shape, with a range of coloured lights and a sliding door that can close to form a trap---as Gryce subsequently learns the hard way. As Gryce begins his investigation, we discover that Caleb Sweetwater, having proved to himself that he has "the true detective instinct" during the events of Agatha Webb, has left his small seaport home to become a city policeman---and has the honour of being Gryce's protégé. The first order of business for both men is to learn the identity of the anonymous woman - "a lady", insists the boy to whom her message was entrusted - who apparently first discovered, and then reported, the murder. Gryce is astonished - though really, he should not be - when he finds that the police owe their information to his old colleague-cum-adversary, Miss Amelia Butterworth---who has not yet managed to quell her own "true detective instinct", unladylike as it may be... Based on information provided by Miss Butterworth, Gryce and Sweetwater are put on the trail of a young man and woman seen fleeing the Adams house shortly before the discovery of the body. When Sweetwater locates a couple who may be the suspects in a Long Island resort, Gryce invites Miss Butterworth to accompany him there, to identify them. The young woman - a new bride - lies dangerously ill under the care of a nurse and her father; the young man, Thomas Adams - brother of the dead man - at first denies any knowledge of the crime, then abruptly confesses to it---then tells a third story... I have spoken before of the relationship between the modern detective novel and the "sensation fiction" of the 19th century, with the former evolving out of the latter. All of Anna Katharine Green's mysteries make the relationship quite clear, with as much or more emphasis in her plots upon romance and melodrama as upon detection. The Circular Study, however, is an extreme example: the first part of the book describes a mystery and an investigation, with the prime suspects located only halfway into the story; while the remaining half is a lengthy first-person narrative offering many of the standard ingredients of the sensation novel---in this case, a long-standing family feud, an obsession with revenge, secret identities, dangerous plots, young love...and murder. Consequently, though the opening section of the novel is almost overloaded with detectives, all three of them almost disappear from the rest of the book, which may frustrate those readers looking for a more conventional work of detective fiction and/or unfamiliar with the roots of the genre. While I was able to cope with that aspect of The Circular Study, it does hold a disappointment of a different sort, albeit not an unexpected one: this was the last of the three novels to feature Amelia Butterworth, who is finally cured of her desire to "detect" by the story told by Thomas Adams. But fear not, spinster-detective fans!---Amelia was later reincarnated as Miss Jane Marple...

    "I sent a telegram to the postmaster at Belleville. Here is his answer. It is unequivocal: 'Mr Poindexter of Montgomery PA, Mr Thomas Adams and Mrs Adams of the same place have been at the Bedell House in this place five days.'"
    "Very good; then we have them! Be ready to start for Belleville by one o'clock sharp. And mind, Sweetwater, keep your wits alert and your tongue still. Remember that as yet we are feeling our way blindfold, and must continue to do so till some kind hand tears away the bandage from our eyes. Go! I have a letter to write, for which you may send in a boy at the end of five minutes."
    This letter was for Miss Butterworth, and created, a half-hour later, quite a stir in the fine old mansion in Gramercy Park. It ran thus:
    'Have you sufficient interest in the outcome of a certain matter to take a short journey into the country? I leave town at 1 P.M. for Belleville, Long Island. If you choose to do the same, you will find me at the Bedell House, in that town, early in the afternoon. If you enjoy novels, take one with you, and let me see you reading it on the hotel piazza at five o'clock. I may be reading too; if so, and my choice is a book, all is well, and you may devour your story in peace. But if I lay aside my book and take up a paper, devote but one eye to your story and turn the other on the people who are passing you. If after you have done so, you leave your book open, I shall understand that you fail to recognise these persons. But if you shut the volume, you may expect to see me also fold up my newspaper; for by so doing you will have signaled me that you have identified the young man and woman you saw leaving Mr Adams's house on the fatal afternoon of your first entrance...'

Best-selling books in the United States for 1924:

1. So Big by Edna Ferber
2. The Plastic Age by Percy Marks
3. The Little French Girl by Anne Douglas Sedgwick
4. Heirs Apparent by Philip Gibbs
5. A Gentleman of Courage by James Oliver Curwood
6. The Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey
7. The Midlander by Booth Tarkington
8. The Coast of Folly by Coningsby Dawson
9. Mistress Wilding by Rafael Sabatini
10. The Homemaker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

1924 found the best-seller lists dominated by post-war angst and concern for the direction of society; although still with a little escapism in the mix. James Oliver Curwood's A Gentleman of Courage is another of his Canadian wilderness tales, about two orphans adopted by a small community situated on the shores of Lake Superior; while Rafael Sabatini's Mistress Wilding is an historical novel about the Monmouth Rebellion, but which allows its Protestant / Catholic "romance" plot to overwhelm its history and politics. Zane Grey's The Call of the Canyon sits between the two camps, with a physically and emotionally wounded WWI veteran finding himself again in the wide open spaces of Arizona.

Dorothy Canfield Fisher's The Homemaker is a daring feminist / social theory novel, which finds a married couple swapping roles---she finding a job and he caring for the children. Less daring but equally concerned with imposed social roles is Anne Douglas Sedgwick's The Little French Girl, in which its young heroine is sent from post-war France to England by her mother to find a husband.

Percy Marks' The Plastic Age is an overwrought indictment of the American college system in the mid-20s, which wallows in the "scandalous" behaviour of its young characters; Philip Gibbs' Heirs Apparent is a more understanding British version of the same, with its young hero and heroine (secretly as conservative as their parents) learning to stand on their own two feet after quitting / getting expelled from university. Coningsby Dawson's The Coast of Folly is a novel of social and sexual mores, with its heroine forced to re-consider her drifting life when she is caught up in an ugly divorce case. Booth Tarkington's The Midlander, the final work in his so-called "Growth" trilogy, concerns two brothers of opposing philosophy, the woman they both love, and the inexorable industrialisation of the American midwest.

(Curious to note that though it won the Pulitzer Prize for 1919, Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons, certainly the best-known of the trilogy these days, did not make the best-seller list.)

The year's best-selling novel, however, was Edna Ferber's So Big, which won the 1925 Pulitzer Prize.

Edna Ferber was born in Michigan in 1885, the daughter of Jewish immigrants; the family subsequently moved to Illinois and Iowa before settling in Wisconsin. Ferber attended college for a short time, but dropped out to get a job. She became a reporter, and in time began to specialise in political writing, covering many of the Conventions of the 1920s. She was a prolific author of short stories, a successful playwright and, in time, an award-winning novelist; she was also involved in the adaptation of a number of her works for the screen. Her better-known works these days include Show Boat, Cimarron and Giant, and the plays Stage Door and Dinner At Eight (both co-written with George S. Kaufman).

Ferber's novels are usually set in the midwest, and tend to feature strong female protagonists of brain and personality rather than beauty. Her sympathies are with life's fighters, with her characters facing real struggle and heartache, but winning through by their persistence and courage. Her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of 1924, So Big, is a wholly representative work.

So Big - The daughter of an inveterate gambler, Selina Peake leads an uncertain existence, experiencing periods of great luxury and others of deprivation. Under her father's tutelage, however, she learns to see life as an adventure. When Mr Peake dies suddenly, Selina finds herself alone and almost destitute; a friend's father secures her a post as a teacher in a one-room school in an Illinois farming community. Selina starts out holding her father's lessons close to her heart, but her romantic imaginings are soon crushed by a reality of hard, thankless work, rough fare, bitter cold and loneliness. Her one consolation is Roelf Pool, the son of the family with whom she boards: a secretive, silent boy, to Selina's surprise and joy he is an aspiring artist, an ambition she encourages him to pursue in spite of his parents' incomprehension and disapproval. In time, Selina marries farmer Pervus DeJong, thankful to give up her teaching and to have a home; but she soon realises she has exchanged one life of toil for another even harder. Pervus is a poor farmer, not merely expecting failure but almost courting it, and immovable in the face of Selina's various plans for improvement of his land, which he considers "woman's foolishness". When Pervus dies, Selina finds herself again on the verge of destitution, and must take drastic steps to survive: not merely for her own sake, but for that of her young son, Dirk, who Selina never manages to stop thinking of under his babyhood nickname of So Big... Edna Ferber's 1924 novel, So Big, became an almost instant best-seller, not least on the strength - and I do mean 'strength' - of its heroine, Selina DeJong, one of the most beloved literary characters of her time. Ferber does a masterly job in evoking the bitter hardships, back-breaking labour and hand-to-mouth existence of farming life at the turn of the 20th century, while repeatedly emphasising the critical role played in America by farming. Joining the community full of romantic ideas about bringing beauty to the rural district to which her fate has led her, Selina has her misconceptions almost beaten out of her by the stark reality of her new existence---but those ideals are not killed, merely suppressed; and in the long run, it is her imagination, her grasp of the potentialities of life, her love of beauty, that make it possible for her to fight her way through dirt and ugliness and near-starvation, and force life to yield to her demands. Selina's life is not an unqualified success, however. There is both a double meaning and an irony in the title of Ferber's novel: it refers as much to Selina's vision of what life may and should be, one which she shares with several other characters - including Roelf Pool, who becomes a sculptor, and Dallas O'Mara, an artist - as to the son for whose sake she has given so much of herself. Dirk - "So Big" - turns out to be a much smaller person than his his rough-tongued, farm-bound mother, lacking both her insight and her integrity; with the college education for which Selina scrimped and saved and sacrificed teaching him chiefly to be ashamed of her. Though graduating as an architect, to Selina's pride, as soon as he grasps that success will require years of hard, unremunerative work, Dirk gives up his profession for a soft but lucrative job selling bonds. The growing estrangement between mother and son, one more of values than their respective social standing, is the focus of the second half of the novel, and comes to an ironic conclusion when Dirk, after dallying with Paula Storm, who married money but cannot get over her feelings for him, falls in earnest for painter Dallas O'Mara, who supports herself in advertising while she works at her art---but finds himself baffled by her disinterest in the material wealth by which he measures himself, and by her passionate pursuit of her own vision of truth...

    Selina and Gerneral Goguet had got on famously from the start, meeting on the common ground of asparagus culture... He was very comfortable, the General. He partook largely of tea and cakes. He flattered Selina with his eyes. She actually dimpled, flushed, laughed like a girl. But it was to Roelf she turned; it was on Roelf that her eyes dwelt and rested. It was with him she walked when she was silent and the others talked. It was as though he were her one son, and had come home. Her face was radiant, beautiful.
    Seated next to Dirk, Dallas said, in a low voice: "There, that's what I mean when I say I want to do portraits. Not portraits of ladies with a string of pearls and one lily half hidden in the folds of a satin skirt. I mean character portraits of men and women who are really distinguished looking---distinguishedly American, for example---like your mother."
    Dirk looked up at her quickly, half smiling, as though he expected to find her smiling too. But she was not smiling...

The Taking Men - Priscilla Delaine inherits a shop in a small Scottish town from her mother's sister, Janet Purdie, under two conditions: that she run the shop herself, and that she never allows a local family called the Maitlands to get their hands on the business. To the horror of her guardian-aunts, who view with disgust anything resembling "trade", Priscilla ignores their demands that she give up her inheritance sight-unseen, instead slipping away without bothering to ask for permission that she knows will not be forthcoming, to inspect the shop for herself. Discovering that her inheritance includes not merely the small general store, but the old, rambling, one-time inn which contains it, Priscilla is charmed---and makes up her mind to do as the late Miss Purdie wished, in spite of the added complication of her reluctant reliance upon the advice and help of Redd Maitland, the nephew of Miss Purdie's inveterate enemy... Set several decades before its 1947 publication date, this romance by Anne Hepple is a reasonably enjoyable yet frustrating work, thanks chiefly to its heroine. Those parts of the novel which deal with Priscilla working out how to organise and run her small shop, making friends in the largely rural community, and adjusting to an entirely new set of social values from those instilled by her conservative aunts, are thoroughly engaging; but unfortunately they are offset by the romance - or "romance" - that comes to dominate the narrative. In her interaction with Redd, Priscilla behaves so petulantly - and cries so much - that she becomes utterly tiresome. It is impossible to imagine what Redd, a far more interesting character, sees in her---but we're eventually asked to accept that he fell for her almost at first sight. Meanwhile, mindful of Miss Purdie's warnings against the Maitlands as "taking men", and having learnt for herself the hard way that there is nothing the individual known as 'Auld Maitland' will not stoop to, to force her to sell her business or at least give it up, Priscilla is suspicious of Redd Maitland's motives in offering her his spasmodic advice and assistance with the running of the shop, and tries to keep him at arm's length---even as acknowledges within herself her feelings for him...

    "Why is your heart so set on this shop? Girls like you belong to the town and an easy life." He spoke roughly again.
    "That is my business, Mr Maitland."
    Again he took her by surprise by throwing his coat impatiently over the back of a chair and holding out his hand. "Well, let me see those lists."
    There was no hint of having taken any offence in his voice, nor was their any disclaimer about the machinations of the Maitlands, nor any reassurance that he would not use the knowledge he might gain to her disadvantage. It was as if all that was, not so much beneath his notice, as absolutely outside it.
    "He's as proud as Lucifer," she thought to herself slowly, almost involuntarily gathering up the lists, "but it seems that sort of unconscious pride that you can't deal with, that doesn't give you anything to get hold of and argue with." Her mind went racing on, full of resentment on the one hand and relief on the other at the thought of help so close at hand if she cared to take it. "And, after all, why shouldn't I use a Maitland---get all I can from him and then drop him like a hot potato? They used my aunt like that, didn't they?"

The Outrageous Lady - When Galatea, Lady Roysdon, slips away from a party at the Royal Pavillion, Brighton, to avoid the importunities of the Earl of Sheringham, she has her carriage driven home over a side-road, so that if he chases her, the Earl will not catch her. This manoeuvre leads to danger, however, when the carriage is stopped by a highwayman: a strange highwayman, who has a cultured voice and manners, who grants Galatea's desperate request that he not take the ring which is her only token of her mother---and who takes a kiss before he leaves... This 1977 novel is rather better than most of Barbara Cartland's offerings, with a more likeable (i.e. less alpha) hero, a heroine who undergoes genuine personal growth, and a stepping-away from society instead of the usual "rewarded with a fortune as well as love" attitude; although all that said, it is certainly not without the usual king-sized serving of melodrama and absurdity. (Not to mention a surfeit of symbolic names: "Just" and "Galatea"? Really?) Though barely of age, Galatea is tied to husband very much older than herself, who suffered an incapacitating stroke on their wedding-night (very early on their wedding-night, the narrative reassures us), and in her resentment and frustration at her forced marriage and anomalous position - "married to a corpse", as she puts it herself - she has allowed herself to be drawn into a series of reckless adventures by the dissolute Lord Sheringham. To the narrative's credit, Galatea pulls herself up on the brink and takes stock of herself before she meets the dashing highwayman---who turns out to be a Cornish baronet, Sir Just Trevena, who fell in love with her from a distance some time before, and who - not wealthy enough to join her social set - has adopted this novel way of keeping tabs on her. (Robin Hood-like, he donates his thefts to charity.) When a friend of Galatea's, a young widow, is left almost destitute by her avaricious and vindictive brother-in-law, who has claimed almost everything as part of "the family estate", Galatea makes up her mind to intervene---and soon finds herself taking part in a daring moonlight robbery. Her connection with the highwayman is soon suspected by the jealous Earl, however, placing both herself and Sir Just in grave danger...

    Now as the stallion drew nearer she could see the Earl spurring it, an expression on his face so vicious, so malignant, that she felt as if she must cry out at the horror of it.
    She knew that when he reached the top of the rise and was on straight ground it would only be a question of time before he would overtake Sir Just and either kill or capture him. It would be a matter of no importance to him that Sir Just was unarmed. He would be congratulated and commended for having gunned down a criminal who was undoubtedly trying to escape.
    Nearer and nearer came the black stallion and now almost as if a voice told her what to do Lady Roysdon raised the pistol she held in her hand.
    The horse's hoofs sounded like thunder in her ears and pieces of turf were flying out behind the stallion as he passed her. Then she fired, aiming at the Earl's back and hearing the report of the pistol like an explosion...

Finished Soundings for TIOLI #4.

Still reading Le Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane; my new 'relief' book is Red Pepper Returns by Grace S. Richmond.

The Linger-Nots And The Whispering Charm; or, The Secret From Old Alaska - Published in 1925, this fourth book in Agnes Miller's young adult series is a strange book---disappointing and admirable at the same time; which is to say, its B-Plot is much more engaging than its A-Plot. All of the 'Linger-Not' stories mingle American history with the girls' adventures, but this one takes it too far, with the bulk of the narrative consisting of info-dumps about the history of Alaska. I can appreciate that much of this may not have been common knowledge at the time, and the history itself is interesting; there's just too much of it. All this comes our way via a series of contrivances which sees the younger Linger-Nots - Joyce Barry, Virginia Gaines and Muriel Ives - travelling west to be part of a cruise around the coast of Alaska. During their visits to the various isolated townships, the girls stumble over a piece of Russian history which impacts a new friend back in New York... And while it forms only a secondary part of the narrative, I found the New York part of the novel more successful. Young adult fiction of this time - including this series - is too often shot through with snobbery and exclusiveness, but The Linger-Nots And The Whispering Charm displays a refreshingly broadminded attitude, while touching upon serious social issues such as prejudice, immigration and the abuse of political power. The academically-focused Evelyn Barry, to her dismay and humiliation, has received a poor grade for the first time in her life, which threatens her ambitions for college. Instead of the usual holiday, Evelyn spends her summer retaking algebra at a local college, where she finds herself surrounded by girls who are "not her kind": mostly the daughters of poor immigrants, who have to work to help support their families, but are determined to get an education by any means open to them. Evelyn's initial discomfort fades away as she gets to know her new companions, and learns to admire their intelligence and determination. This subplot blends into another featuring a Russian girl who works as a dish-washer at the same restaurant as two more of the Linger-Nots, Helena Hawthorne and Aline Gaines, which ties the two sections of the narrative together.

    "The autocracy in power knew that, of course, and they proved their own weakness by sending him straight into Siberia without a trial. How could they try him? He wasn't even accused!"
    "I never heard of anything so awful!" said Evelyn, deeply shocked.
    "You'll see plenty of things similar to it if you just look around you," said Dick.
    "Not here!"
    "Yes, here. It's not ridiculous, it's true. How many one hundred per cent Americans do you know who hate other people who are different from themselves in any way? And I don't mean only foreigners, by the way, but other one hundred per cent Americans, sometimes---school friends, and neighbours, and people they know socially?"
    "Oh, you're right, Dick! Such narrowness is a mean trait every really patriotic person ought to fight, I think. Your story about Doctor Bardin just shows the results of such ignorance and cowardice carried to an extreme by people who have too much power."

Howdy Liz! I look forward to your Agnes Grey tutored read. I have never read it.

Oh Happy Youth (serialisation title: Three Kinds Of Love) - Kay Cleaver Strahan was best-known and most successful as a writer of mysteries (she was a pioneer both with respect to the regional mystery, and in having a female private investigator as her detective), but she also wrote straight fiction, including this 1931 novel which is less a standard romance than a rumination upon the difficulties of maintaining romantic love in the face of day-to-day reality. When their parents die of influenza, the three Fenwick girls - Ann, Cecilia and the much younger Mary-Frances - are taken in and raised by their grandparents. Colonel and Mrs Fenwick are welcoming and loving; it is only as they grow older that Ann and Cissy recognise the selfish improvidence of the elderly couple---and learn that their own parents' financial difficulties were the result of the constant demands made upon their father, an academic; demands that, in time, are inherited by the girls, particularly the serious-minded and responsible Ann... Newspaper advertisements for the serialisation of Oh Happy Youth had Strahan standing up for "the young people of today", arguing that far from being either pleasure-obsessed, or money-obsessed, or both, they were often more self-sacrificing and hard-working than their elders. The question asked by this novel is, where do you draw the line? Having accepted financial responsibility for the household when still in her teens, Ann finds it impossible to imagine getting out from underneath---with the result that her engagement to young lawyer, Phil Ecroyd, is dragging on with no conclusion in sight, much to his increasing frustration. Matters reach a crisis when Cissy, too, becomes engaged: financially, the elder Fenwicks could survive one granddaughter marrying and leaving home, but not two... Meanwhile, though their mutual stand-off places a severe strain on what has always been a close sisterly bond, both Ann and Cissy are determined that life will be easier for Mary-Frances than it has been (and, it looks like, always will be) for them; but the spoiled Mary-Frances, her head full of silly romantic dreams, is hard at work wrecking everything via a foolish flirtation with a second-rate actor who, misunderstanding her family's situation, sees her as an easy meal-ticket...

    "There are so many different sorts of love, and I believe---or try to believe," Ann amended truthfully, "that lots of the sorts are better, surer---happier, anyway, than the love between men and women. Take our love, Cissy, for each other and for Mary-Frances. We've always had it, so we can't always appreciate it. But, honey, stop and think if you can what it amounts to. It is certain. It is safe. Nothing can change it or hurt it, and it will last forever. Before I'd hurt you---as you're hurt now---I'd---I'd take myself to pieces and cook me. I wouldn't want to live if I'd hurt you, Cissy. And you wouldn't hurt me, as I'm hurt now, not even to have Barry again. But these men, these mean men, hurt us, and break our hearts, and go away and stay away, and let us be hurt and suffer... Why should we value that love---men's love---old hateful, hurting, selfish love---too highly?"
    "I don't know. I just want Barry. I want to love him whether he loves me or not. I want to see him---hear his voice. I can't live, I can't breathe without him. I can't, and I don't want to, and I won't try."
    "You think that way now, but you'll find out later that you can. Someway you---you get used to it..."

>78 luvamystery65:

Hi, Roberta! It would be fabulous to have you join us; I have read Agnes Grey before, but not for many years.

Nothing definite has been settled yet about the group read, but it will probably be September---I hope that suits you?

>78 luvamystery65: I've put this on reserve at the library and will join you (even though I read at a snail's pace these days). Do post in here when the thread goes up, I don;t read a lot ofthe 75 group otherwise (find it a bit overwhelming).
Thankyou >:-)

I'm very flattered! :)

It will be lovely if you can join us, Helen. I will post more information next month, here and at the Virago threads.

Finished Red Pepper Returns for TIOLI #2, which means I have FINISHED ANOTHER SERIES!!

Meanwhile, I am - *puff, pant, gasp* - still reading Le Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane; my 'relief' book is now The Bravo Of London by Ernest Bramah.

>83 lyzard: Aw, it isn't that bad. :-) Of course, I've only made it to Book V, so I may not yet be qualified to judge.

ETA: And congratulations on completing another series!

It's a marathon, not a sprint! :D

I'm in Book VIII, so I am making progress, even if sometimes it doesn't feel like it.

Thanks!

>85 lyzard: I think of it more as a leisurely stroll. :-)

How very picaresque! :)

Note to self: Philip MacDonald

>80 lyzard: I'll be on the lookout Liz. Thank you. I'm still working on Udolpho and that white whale book so September sounds great!

I finished Mary Barton. So good. Have you read Ruth by Gaskell?

I have a white whale of my own going at the moment, so I'm in the same boat (so to speak!).

I have read all of Gaskell's novels, not all of her shorter works. She - or rather, not she, exactly - is frustrating to me as she was forced to compromise her writing so often by her editors and publishers, because she was dealing with such controversial material. I love her books but I can't help thinking about the novels she would have written if she had been writing at a different time or under different conditions (or if, sigh, she'd been a man).

FYI, Ruth got her into the most trouble... :)

>90 lyzard: I love the social justice and reform aspects of her books and I really love her spot on portrayal of people who are neither good nor bad, but just human. This I picked up from reading North and South and Mary Barton. Ruth sounds like it would have gotten her in trouble. I really loved her treatment of Esther in MB. I am working on getting my hands on Ruth and then read Gaskell's works in order.

Thank you for your insights.

Catching up: I enjoyed your comments on So Big, and share your admiration for Ferber's portrayal of farm life.

>91 luvamystery65:

It's great that you're enjoying these novels, Roberta! :)

>92 swynn:

Thanks, Steve. That section of the novel is very powerful, even allowing for the coincidence that concludes it.

Finished Le Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane for TIOLI #12.





Still reading The Bravo Of London by Ernest Bramah.

Having finally wrapped up Gil Blas, I looked to see what work might be up next in my C. K. Shorter Best 100 Books Challenge---and discovered that I am in a position, if I so choose, to jump the next fifteen works in the list!

Amongst the intervening works are a number that I have not read for many years, some of which I absolutely intend to read again; however, at the outset I undertook this challenge with the goal of plugging the gaps in my reading, not of finding an excuse to re-read. (It's also having the unintentional side-effect of exposing my weakness in classic French literature!)

So after some internal debate, I've decided to stick to the plan, and therefore skip from Book #3 to Book #19. However, since I won't be starting the next read until next month at the earliest, I will add a series of short posts about the intervening works---please let me know what you think about their inclusion!

Finished The Bravo Of London for TIOLI #4...and also ANOTHER SERIES!!

Now reading Had You Been In His Place by Lizzie Bates; and, as I can only read this online, my 'relief' book will be Towards Zero by Agatha Christie.

I just couldn't finish The Merrivale Mystery. Partly because real life got in the way, but mostly because it turns out my capacity for terrible mysteries isn't quite as deep as I thought it was. I feel I've let you and Harry down, but at least you still have each other. As for me, I will go back to living the life of a potato.

Never mind, sweetie - I'm sure that book has taken down more hardened mystery readers than you! You certainly haven't let anyone down: it was simply an experiment, and sometimes experiments have negative results! :D

The C.K. Shorter List of the Best 100 Novels:

#4: Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (1719)



Confession: I have an unjust personal prejudice against Daniel Defoe, courtesy of various academics who keep trying to tell me that Defoe was "the first English novelist".

He wasn't (not by about 40 years), but he certainly played an enormously important role in the development of the novel during the early 18th century, and the wide acceptance of fiction as an important literary form.

After side-stepping John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress for his much lesser-known The Holy War, Shorter toes the critical line in choosing Defoe's most famous and lasting work. With its narrative of shipwreck and survival, Robinson Crusoe is a novel which has captured the imagination of generations; although some modern readers may be dismayed by the discovery that Robinson Crusoe is as much a religious allegory as an adventure story. However, Defoe's blending of the then-popular "confessional" narrative with Crusoe's detailed day-to-day account of life on the island offered the reading public of the day something new and fascinating, while soothing Puritan qualms about fiction by being offered up as "a true story".

>96 lyzard: Bravo! Another series complete.

Aww, thank you! :)

>98 lyzard: You are too kind, my friend — and I'm sure that sloth accurately reflects the expression on your face when you read the bad news. :-)

Just for the record, I am absolutely up for continuing our Miss Silver adventures when you are ready to go on. And I suspect Patricia Wentworth will look even better to me after this experience!

>97 rosalita: As I mentioned on my thread, Julia, that's all right; I can see that The Merrivale Mystery wouldn't have universal (ha!) appeal.

>99 lyzard: Hi, Liz! I don't remember Robinson Crusoe being a garden gnome.

>102 rosalita: I should be ready for another Miss Silver next month but would be willing to wait until September, too.

>103 harrygbutler: You are too kind, Harry! I think you and Liz have read so many of those dreadful old mysteries that you have developed a tolerance for them. Much in the same way people build up resistance to antibiotics and such. :-)

And yay for Miss Silver! I'm happy with August or September, however it shakes out. I'm remembering that Liz had to complete another reading project first, and I'm not sure where she is in that venture?

>102 rosalita:

I suspect Patricia Wentworth will look even better to me after this experience!

Ha! Yes, these little ventures do have that side-effect! :D

>103 harrygbutler:

Actually that's a fair rendering of the description of Robinson Crusoe in the book (as long as we interpret it as full-sized, not a foot high!).

>104 rosalita:

you have developed a tolerance for them. Much in the same way people build up resistance to antibiotics and such

I can't speak for Harry but that's very true on my part! (I watch bad movies, too, so my skin is even thicker!)

>103 harrygbutler:, >104 rosalita:

Oh, dear, I was hoping to have gotten much further with catching up the intervening non-Miss Silver series works by now, so that we could pick Miss Silver up again. I am still expecting to read Down Under, the last book in the Benbow Smith series, this month; if I press on as special project next month, maybe we can start again in September?

>104 rosalita: Perhaps so, Julia. I don't necessarily concede that I've read that many dreadful old mysteries. :-) Now, I do watch plenty of bad movies, and especially bad old mystery movies, and that might explain my tolerance.

>105 lyzard: Oh, sure, his hat is similar, but I don't think of it as being quite so pointy. I guess my image is the N. C. Wyeth illustration: https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/d/defoe/daniel/d31r/images/beach.jpg

>104 rosalita: >105 lyzard: I guess September it is.

The C.K. Shorter List of the Best 100 Novels:

#5: Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726 / 1735)



Again, no argument here: Jonathan Swift's excoriating political satire is one of the pivotal works of 18th century fiction. Typically, Swift claimed that he wrote the book, "To vex the world, not to amuse it", but whatever his intentions, it became (in the modern sense) one of English literature's first best-sellers.

Originally published as Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, Gulliver's Travels is an extended satire of England under the government of Robert Walpole. Swift's manuscript frightened its intended publisher so much, he forced Swift to cut some of the most vicious material (pieces of which were restored in later editions) and to include passages tacitly excusing Queen Anne from his attacks.

While the book is predominantly a political satire, Gulliver's Travels is also a satire of the "travel tales" that were popular at the time (most of which were rank fiction posing as true stories), and contains elements of fantasy and science fiction. In literary terms, the book is a rebuttal of the contentions about "the human spirit" offered by Daniel Defoe in Robinson Crusoe, which Swift believed placed the individual ahead of society as a whole. Ironically, like Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels tends to be viewed these days simply as an adventure or fantasy tale, rather than as a philosophical work.

While Gulliver's encounter with the Lilliputians has come to dominate both impressions of this novel and its cover art, I like this particular cover as it acknowledges his subsequent encounter with the Houyhnhnms (which personally I think is most important part of the book).

>106 harrygbutler:

Likewise. It does toughen you up, doesn't it?? :D

Yes, fair enough---although pointiness aside, I think those two sketches are pretty close.

Sorry to be lagging behind like this; you can blame Gil Blas!

>106 harrygbutler: >108 lyzard: September it is!

Red Of The Redfields - Following on from Red And Black, this 1924 novel by Grace S. Richmond goes even further towards making Dr Redfield Pepper Burns a supporting character in his own series. Likewise, even as Red gave a poor showing in comparison to the earlier work's "real" hero, the minister Robert McPherson Black, here he continues to display the harsher side of his character, all but abandoning a patient because he takes a personal dislike to him. There is, too, a disturbing sense of scorn in this narrative towards people who can't just "get over" their war experiences---as if there is something "cowardly" in not being able to forget and move on. On the other hand, Richmond's depiction of the Redfield family, in particular the relationship between Marcia and her only daughter, Ruth Rust Redfield (another redhead, inevitably nicknamed 'Rusty'), and Rusty's hesitantly deepening romance with her best friend, newspaper editor Andy Carter, is shot through with warmth and humour, and rescues this otherwise rather uncomfortable book. Having been compelled to give up surgery because of his heart condition, Red is called in to consult on the case of Felix Rowe, a young man who suffered serious injuries when acting as a war correspondent during WWI; he has since recovered physically, but has withdrawn from life mentally and emotionally, and seems unable to make any effort to resume his former life. Nursing a scornful suspicion that Rowe's problems are merely a "pose", Red decides to treat him with a dose of reality, and has him taken in as a border by relatives of his, the Redfields, where the high-minded, compassionate Marcia Redfield makes do on a small income while caring for her elderly father-in-law, who is all but deaf, her husband, who has been struck blind in the prime of life, and three college-aged children. To Red's disgust, even the combination of compassion and courage with which Rowe is surrounded has little effect upon him, so that he all but washes his hands of the case. It takes the insight of Robert McPherson Black to recognise that what is retarding Rowe's recovery is not his wartime experiences, but a soul-crushing load of guilt...

    ""My dear Redfield Pepper Burns," Black burst out, "I've followed you around a hospital too many times not to know how you get looked at. If this chap baffles you it's because you've allowed yourself to put up your guard against him. Maybe I don't remember what a time I had breaking down that guard of yours. It was like tackling a stone wall. But I was a minister, and you didn't like ministers, and didn't mean to like me. I never knew you to put up that guard against a patient before. The reason you're not curing Felix Rowe is---you don't like him. And don't mean to."
    The two faced each other, the car slowing. It wasn't the first time, nor the hundredth, that these two had had something out between them; that they had told each other the plain truth. Absolute honesty was the great thing each was sure of from the other. Red's brow darkened. He didn't like being told the plain truth, any more than he ever had. Few of us do. He himself had told it to Robert Black on certain occasions, and Black had taken it standing. Red knew he had ultimately to take Black's criticism the same way. The worst of it was, his friend was pretty nearly sure to be right...

Skimming through. You've done awfully well this year, Liz!

An International Affair - The third book by "Bruce Graeme" (Graham Montague Jeffries) to bring together Superintendent William Stevens of Scotland Yard and Inspector Pierre Allain of the Sûreté Générale is a thriller rather than a mystery, a tangled tale of espionage playing out chiefly in Spain (which allows Graeme to expound upon Spanish police methods, in addition to the series' ongoing contrast of English and French methods). The novel offers an amusing if contrived framework, with retired C.I.D. inspector Alan Ackroyd telling the story of the case, in which he was tangentially involved, to a reporter friend, John Perryman, as the two of them work on a jigsaw puzzle which Ackroyd has had made from the case's evidence photographs. However, despite this overtly comic presentation, An International Affair maintains the almost shocking pragmatism which is the hallmark of the series, with ladies'-man Allain attempting to seduce a wanted woman as the easiest way of getting her voluntarily to re-enter France, and a female spy falling into the hands of white slavers being shrugged off as "a just punishment". After being wounded in the line of duty, a recovering Superintendant Stevens is forced to take a holiday; but this soon becomes a "busman's holiday", as his time in Spain is interrupted by a request that he look into the death of a man found murdered in a hotel room in Malaga; apparently an Englishman, though his passport turns out to be a forgery. Working with Comisaro Barroso of the Cuerpo de Investigación, Stevens learns that before he died, the man uttered what was taken as an accusation against a woman called Ninon de Brissac, who often stayed at the same hotel at the same time, and is assumed to be the dead man's mistress---and who has since disappeared. Stevens notes, however, that the dead man seemed almost destitute: could he afford the type of woman described? The investigators determine that the victim was Hugh Thomson, a former British army officer stationed in Gibraltar who was cashiered on suspicion of selling military secrets. An attempt to obtain information about Ninon de Brissac from the Sûreté brings Pierre Allain to the scene. Reuniting with his old colleague, Stevens, Allain confides to him that while publicly he will be assisting with the murder investigation, his real mission is to track down a spy...

    "Like Alice in Wonderland, I am becoming curiouser and curiouser," John then said. "At the moment you have me tied up in tangles. Already there is Tim Connor and Dimity Cardew in England, there is Stevens and Barroso solving a murder mystery in Spain, and now you introduce me to a most peculiar bloke by the name of Keith Franklin. Yet you maintain that they all have a bearing on the Hugh Thomson case---of whom, incidentally, you have made no mention as yet."
    "Without a doubt they are all connected with the Hugh Thomson affair," Ackroyd confirmed. "If Tim Connor hadn't met Dimity, if Stevens hadn't been in Malaga convalescing because of his injuries, and if Keith Franklin hadn't inherited his aunt's money, it would have been a thousand to one against---well, against your being able to solve the Thomson affair by putting a jigsaw puzzle together."
    John surveyed the many pieces still loose on the table. "I think that figure fairly represents the odds even now."

>111 Matke:

Thanks, Gail - lovely to see you out and about again! :)

Finished Had You Been In His Place for TIOLI #9.

Still reading Towards Zero by Agatha Christie.

>108 lyzard: That Gil Blas is quite the rogue! :-)

From Towards Zero, one of Agatha Christie's standalones:

    Battle rubbed his chin and frowned. "I wish I knew what keeps putting Hercule Poirot into my head."
    "You mean that old chap---the Belgian---comic little guy."
    "Comic my foot," said Superintendent Battle. "About as dangerous as a black mamba and a she-leopard---that's what he is when he starts making a mountebank of himself."

Finished Towards Zero for TIOLI #14...and also YET ANOTHER series, if only one by the way: this is the last novel in which Agatha Christie's deceptively stolid Superintendent Battle appears, and it's nice that she let him be the hero once after his various strong but not dominant supporting appearances.

Now reading Down Under by Patricia Wentworth.

The C.K. Shorter List of the Best 100 Novels:

#6: The Adventures Of Roderick Random by Tobias Smollett (1748)



The immediate fruit of Tobias Smollett's translation of Alain René Le Sage's Le Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane was this, his first novel, which is effectively an English picaresque tale: one about a young man shunned by his wealthy relatives because of his mother's low birth, and forced to make his own way in the world, who must fight his way through many difficult and dangerous adventures before finding a safe harbour in life. However, this novel is also partly autobiographical, with Smollett working his own unhappy experiences as a naval surgeon into his narrative.

I've confessed to a prejudice against Daniel Defoe, so I might as well admit that I have one against Smollett, too, whose novels were reprinted throughout the 19th century, even as his contemporary female authors were banned from libraries and dropped by publishers as "too improper". Most of Smollett's books are hard going, full of sex and violence and scatological humour, and with his thoroughly unpleasant "heroes" invariably rewarded with a woman far too good for them. However, they represent yet another important step forward in the acceptance of realism in the English novel (even if they are sometimes too "real" for comfort).

Yay for Towards Zero! I read that one recently, too, and enjoyed it.

Hi, Amber! I really enjoy Towards Zero, and I think it's one of the Christies that most repays re-reading.

>120 lyzard: Gosh, but there are So Many of them, I don't know that I'll ever get round to re-reading (she says, after just re-reading Murder on the Orient Express (but that was for a good cause - the movie coming out this fall!)).

That Christie is a new one for me, and it sounds awfully good. And how sly of her to drag her own fictional creation into the story as an aside! I think it's one of the things I'm appreciating most by my current project of reading all the Marple and Poirot: the re-discovery of just how mischievously funny she could be.

>121 scaifea:

That's very true, of course. I was just thinking of the fun that comes when you know the answer and can spot all the subtle ways that Christie fooled you the first time. :)

>122 rosalita:

It's one of my favourites, Julia. I really like Battle, one of many smart cops found in British mysteries of the time (despite what the dogma says).

I find Christie very funny, in between all the corpses and horror! (And I've just realised I meant to post a passage from The Moving Finger that always cracks me up; I'll to do it when I get the review written.)

Wow. I wish I'd known about Wentworth's Down Under when I posted my "red-headed character" TIOLI challenge:

People having red hair is THE PLOT. :)

The Chinese Parrot - Detective Charlie Chan is tasked with couriering the valuable pearls owned by Mrs Jordan from Honolulu to San Francisco, but by the time he arrives, jeweller Alexander Eden, who has brokered the sale of the pearls to eccentric millionaire financier, P. J. Madden, is sure something is wrong. First, having declared that the sale must take place in New York, Madden phones to demand that the pearls be brought to his ranch in the California desert instead. Then a second call, purporting to be from Madden at his ranch, is traced to a pay-phone in San Francisco. Eden sends his son, Bob, to the ranch with Charlie Chan, the latter secretly carrying the pearls and the former with orders to stall the sale until he is sure all is well. Once arrived, the two men are faced with several unnerving details---including the presence of a man Bob is sure was following him in San Francisco, and a parrot which shrieks about "Murder!"... The second book in the series by Earl Derr Biggers carries his Honolulu-based Chinese detective, Charlie Chan, out of his own comfort zone not just to the American mainland, but into the desert. This is one of a number of American mysteries of the 1920s to set its action against the eeriness and isolation of the desert; and it is also one of an odd, smaller subset from the same time to have a parrot as the witness to a crime. (And that's not taking into account the "Benbow Smith" series by British author Patricia Wentworth, which has an exceedingly mouthy bird as a recurring character!) Alas, unlike the avian eyewitness of Anne Austin's The Avenging Parrot, which I read last year, Tony does not make it triumphantly to the end of the book, but instead meets a grim fate after Madden's secretary catches Charlie Chan encouraging the bird to talk in Chinese... It is the absence of Tony's owner, the Chinese cook, Louie Wong, which allows Charlie to slip into the ranch undercover, adopting the name "Ah Kim" and taking Wong's place---adopting too a submissive attitude and a rather stupid demeanour. This pose sets up a clever narrative "split-vision": a large part of the point of the Charlie Chan series is the shifting attitudes of the "superior" white people as they interact with Charlie, gradually realising that the detective is much smarter than themselves despite being - gasp! - Chinese. The Chinese Parrot foregrounds this aspect of the novel by having the story told from the perspective of Bob Eden, overtly the novel's protagonist (though in truth rather a prat), whose initially patronising and dismissive attitude undergoes a complete change as he and Charlie face escalating danger together. While Bob tries to stall the sale of the pearls without raising the suspicions of P. J. Madden, Charlie tackles the question of proving murder in the absence of a body. But a body there is soon enough: returning unexpectedly, Louie Wong is furious and distressed when he learns of the fate of his pet---but he does not live to avenge the unfortunate parrot, instead sharing its fate...

    Chan was silent for a moment. "If I might presume again, I would speak a few hearty words in praise of patience. Youth, pardon me, is too hot around the head. Take my advice, please, and wait."
    "Wait. Wait for what?"
    "Wait until I have snatched more conversation out of Tony. Tony very smart bird---he speaks Chinese. I am not so smart---but so do I."
    "And what do you think Tony would tell you?"
    "Tony might reveal just what is wrong on this ranch," suggested Chan.
    "I don't believe anything's wrong," objected Eden.
    Chan shook his head. "Not very happy position for me," he said, "that I must argue with bright boy like you are."
    "But listen, Charlie," Eden protested. "I promised to call my father this morning. And Madden isn't an easy man to handle."
    "Hoo malimali," responded Chan.
    "No doubt you're right," Eden said. "But I don't understand Chinese."
    "You have made natural error," Chan answered. "Pardon me while I correct you. That are not Chinese. It are Hawaiian talk. Well known in islands---hoo malimali---make Madden feel good by a little harmless deception..."

The Moving Finger - Recovering from injuries suffered when his plane crashed, Jerry Burton leases a house in the quiet village of Lymstock, where he and his sister, Joanna, have their first taste of country life. Their initial pleasure is their new situation is tempered, however, by the arrival of a nasty anonymous letter... The Burtons assume at first that they have been attacked as "outsiders", but soon learn that Lymsock as a whole is suffering an epidemic of these poison-pen letters, which have caused serious trouble in more than one household with their ugly insinuations. Nevertheless, everyone is aghast when the quiet, proper wife of local attorney, Richard Symmington, commits suicide after receiving a letter declaring that her younger son is not her husband's child... Lymstock is still reeling from this tragedy when worse follows, with the Symmingtons' maid, Agnes Woddell, found murdered, her body hidden in a cupboard beneath the stairs... The Moving Finger is one of my favourites among the novels of Agatha Christie, despite - or perhaps because of - being something of an anomalous work. This 1944 publication finds Christie doing something she is often accused of never doing, taking time for her characters. There is a leisurely attitude to the novel's first half, with the Burtons, Londoners both, adjusting to the much slower pace of life in the country, taking an interest in their neighbours, and being scrutinised in turn; while the relationship between the siblings is amusingly credible, each treating the other with affection laced with mild mockery. Meanwhile, the Lymstock villagers include the officious Aimée Griffith and her doctor-brother, Owen; Elsie Holland, the Symmingtons' nursery governess, a stunning "Helen of Troy" on the outside and perfectly ordinary girl on the inside; Partridge, the Burtons' stiffly proper housekeeper-maid; timid, Victorian-minded Miss Emily Barton; the fussy Mr Pye (Christie's first overtly gay character, who is laughed about, but by no means unkindly treated by the standards of the time); the marvellously eccentric Maud Dane Calthrop, the vicar's wife (who also pops up in a couple of later Christie mysteries); and the novel's triumph, Megan Hunter, the daughter of Mrs Symmington's unhappy first marriage, and an unwanted outsider in her own home---a prickly, defensive, emotionally complex girl, who attracts first Jerry's sympathy, and then his real interest. But when the investigation into the poison-pen letters turns abruptly into a murder investigation, Jerry finds himself experiencing a growing fear in the face of both the police inspector's assertion that "an adolescent mentality" is being the letters, and Megan's own declaration that she is "better at hating than loving". And then, it was Megan who found Agnes's body, looking where no-one else thought to look... The Moving Finger is part of Christie's Miss Marple series---though Jane turns up late and plays a relatively minor role, as much catalyst as detective---so that some people have argued that she is "unnecessary" to the plot. This is not so, however. Christie is playing a subtle game in this novel, deconstructing that beloved British literary construct, the amateur detective---and demonstrating that it isn't as easy as some books make it look. Himself playing detective, Jerry Burton is confused and contemptuous when the "expert" summoned by Mrs Dane Calthrop turns out to be a fluttery old woman---but is she, not he, who manages to weave the threads of the mystery into a complete pattern, even though (as Jane points out to Jerry while she is reconstructing the crime) he has noticed everything of importance in the case; he just hasn't been able to see how the pieces fit together. The hunt for the writer of the anonymous letters climaxes in a shockingly unexpected arrest---but a still greater shock is to follow, as Miss Marple sets a trap for the murderer: a venture which, as Jerry sees to his frightened dismay, somehow involves Megan...

    "So you see," said Mrs Dane Calthrop, "I was quite right to call in an expert."
    I stared at her. We were all at the vicarage. The rain was pouring down outside and there was a pleasant log fire, and Mrs Dane Calthrop had just wandered round, beat up a sofa cushion and put it for some reason of her own on top of the grand piano.
    "But did you?" I said, surprised. "Who was it? What did he do?"
    "It wasn't a he," said Mrs Dane Calthrop.
    With a sweeping gesture she indicated Miss Marple. Miss Marple had finished the fleecy knitting and was now engaged with a crochet hook and a ball of cotton.
    "That's my expert," said Mrs Dane Calthrop. "Jane Marple. Look at her well. I tell you, that woman knows more about the different kinds of human wickedness than anyone I've ever known."
    "I don't think you should put it quite like that, dear," murmured Miss Marple.
    "But you do."
    "One sees a good deal of human nature living in a village all the year round," said Miss Marple placidly. Then, seeming to feel it was expected of her, she laid down her crochet, and delivered a gentle old-maidish dissertation on murder...

Un Crime en Hollande (translation / reissue titles: A Crime In Holland, Maigret In Holland) - When a French academic becomes the prime suspect in the murder of an instructor at a naval academy, Maigret is sent to Delfzijl, a small seaport on the north coast of the Netherlands, to assist - or not - with the local investigation. Between the language barrier, the extreme conservatism of the townspeople, and the annoying nature of Professor Jean Duclos himself, Maigret has his hands full---although as he soon realises, the real stumbling-block is that no-one seems to want the murder solved... This eighth book in Georges Simenon's series featuring Inspector Maigret, is an odd, amusing work, wherein the murder of Conrad Popinga is merely the excuse for Simenon, via Maigret, to have a little fun. Faced with his own inability to speak Dutch, and the limited French speakers in the village (forcing communication, and interrogation, in stumbling English and German), Maigret at first turns with relief to Jean Duclos, only to be forced to listen to his pompous dissertations on criminal psychology, and his concomitant dismissal of standard police procedures. Meanwhile, the strict Dutch Protestants of Delfzijl look down their noses at the French Catholic inspector, and the local police, terrified of stepping on the toes of the widow, the high-minded and morally impeccable Madame Popinga, eagerly follow any clue that leads away from the Popinga household. As a foreigner, Jean Duclos is an ideal suspect; although failing him, the uncouth Captain Oosting, another outsider, will do... Maigret learns that, despite having married and "settled down", Conrad Popinga had itchy feet and an eye for the ladies. His indiscreet affair with the much-younger Beetje Liewens, which she saw as her ticket out of Delfzijl, outraged and scandalised the town, in particular Beetje's strict father and young cadet, Cornelius Barens, who was both in love with Beetje and devoted to Madame Popinga. But then---everyone knew about it...

    Maigret's bulky figure towered over everybody. The drawing-room was small, and as he leant against the door he seemed altogether too big for it. His face was grey, though not stern, in fact his humanity had never been more obvious than when he went on, speaking slowly, quietly, in an almost muffled voice... Madame Popinga stared at the floor. Any's feverish pupils never left Maigret as he pursued his monologue.
    "The murderer already knows what he's going to do... There's someone in the room who watches Conrad dancing, knowing that within a couple of hours this man who laughs a little too boisterously, not yet resigned to a quiet life, and still trying desperately to have a good time in spite of everything---that this man will be lying dead..."
    One could feel the shock of the words as they electrified the little audience. Madame Popinga's mouth opened for a scream which, however, remained pent up. Beetje's sobs continued.
    In a flash the atmosphere had changed. You could almost have thought Conrad was there in the flesh. Conrad dancing, dancing with two eyes fixed upon him...

>124 lyzard: I can't wait to read your review to find out how having red hair can be the major plot point! Does Heather know about this book?

>125 lyzard: You know, I just realized while reading your review that I never knew that Charlie Chan was from Hawaii! The things I learn from you ...

>126 lyzard: I really liked that one! I hardly even noticed that Marple didn't show up until late because the rest of the characters were so interesting, as you said. Usually when I know a book is part of a series, it can be distracting to be kept waiting for that character to show up so the book can start.

Before The Crossing - This 1947 novel by Storm Jameson is one of her most obscure works---understandably. This is a strange, uncomfortable book, written in the closing days of WWII but set in 1939, during the two months before war was officially declared; and it paints an unnerving portrait of a frightened and pessimistic England, waiting for a crushing blow to fall... Before The Crossing is a murder mystery of sorts, though the investigation into the brutal killing of socialist M.P. Henry Smith is only one thread of many running through the narrative. The novel's protagonist - certainly not hero - is David Renn, overtly a novelist, but covertly an agent of the Foreign Office. Once an idealist, his experiences during and after WWI have turned Renn into a bitter cynic, one quite capable of using his social position to, in effect, spy on his acquaintances. Henry Smith is one of the very many friends from whom Renn has become estranged over the years; nevertheless, the murder hits Renn on a sore spot, and leads him to persuade his handlers at the Foreign Office to let him look into it. His investigation eventually encompasses Julian Swan, editor of a right-wing newspaper and secretly a Nazi agent in Britain; his mysterious associate, Captain Hunt, who does the jobs Swan won't dirty his hands with; Swan's attractive but pathetic wife, Georgina, who consoles herself for her disappointments with promiscuity; T. S. Heyward, her lover, a physicist who has been drawn into chemical weapons and nuclear research; corrupt politician Louis Earlham, making a fortune from armaments, and his Jewish wife, Rachel, upon whom Smith called just before he was killed; Stephen Coster, the pompous minister unaware of his own failure, his obsessively ambitious wife, and above all their eighteen-year-old son, Arnold, who is drawn into the adult world of sex and corruption and power even as he begins to grasp the imminent reality of war, and his own inevitable involvement... The characterisations in Before The Crossing are sharp and credible, but the book itself is bleak and uncomfortable, full of desperate, unhappy people who almost welcome what they assume will be the destruction of England by German forces. The pervasive air of defeatism is one of the most striking and most curious things about this novel (one character even leaves England for France, assuming he'll be safer there); while Renn himself, on an individual level, is forced to confront the myriad failures of his life, even as he finds a measure of personal redemption in tracking down the murderer of Henry Smith. In a sense this is a story about the loss of ideals, and the emotional toll taken by a life in which cynicism prevails; a depiction of the many failing "systems" of the pre-WWII generation, all about to be swept away by six years of hell.

    "You have nothing to hope for. You know it. The future belongs to the virile and ruthless, the male aristocrat, to men who know what it is to be unashamedly happy. And selfish! I'm not justifying us. There's no need for strength to bawl about justice or make excuses for itself." Swan laughed. "No wonder you despair."
    Renn was silent. Do I? he wondered. His mind cleared suddenly. It was as startling and joyous as if he had dived and emerged into sunlight through the weight of the sea on him. Of course the future is to the ruthless---in one way or another---bestially in one country, suavely in another. And it doesn't matter! Ruthless men succeed at first---by whips, lies, sedatives. And at the appointed hour, when whipping and drugging have done their work, the barbarian marches in like a knife cutting into rotten cheese---and begins to create his own form of injustice and doom: but not at once. The infancy and youth of an empire has more grace than cruelty... He looked curiously at Swan. Which is the victim---which of us will kill the other? It was still---in this last neutral moment---possible to speculate...

>128 rosalita:

I like these 'Benbow Smith' thrillers, but this one really is beyond what you can easily swallow; although I almost forgive Down Under that for its gargantuan red-haired villain, who has red-haired sons and nephews, and only lets them marry red-haired women... :D

Yes, indeed, though I don't know yet how many of the series are set there. The first one is all about Honolulu in the 1920s, when the Hawaiian monarchy was passing away and the white people taking over, very interesting!

I do too. It's funny, we end up doing just what Jerry does, when he's told to take an interest in his neighbours and listen to gossip!

Dang! - forgot again to post the bit that always cracks me up! I'd better do it now...

One of the subplots of The Moving Finger finds the attractive, flirtatious Joanna Burton turning her weapons upon the serious-minded local doctor, Owen Griffith; among other things, convincing him she's deeply interested in his work. She gets a little more in return than she bargained for...

    I went out on the veranda. Two chairs were drawn up to an iron table and there were two empty sherry glasses. On another chair was an object at which I looked with bewilderment for some time.
    "What on earth is this?"
    "Oh," said Joanna. "I think it's a photograph of a diseased spleen or something. Dr Griffith seemed to think I'd be interested to see it."
    I looked at the photograph with some interest. Every man has his own way of courting the female sex. I should not, myself, choose to do it with photographs of spleens, diseased or otherwise. But no doubt Joanna had asked for it...

June stats:

Works read: 18
TIOLI: 18, in 12 different challenges

Mystery / thriller: 11
Contemporary drama: 3
Contemporary romance: 2
Historical romance: 1
Young adult: 1

Re-reads: 2
Series works: 11
Blog reads: 0
1932: 0
1931: 3
Virago / Persephone: 0
Potential decommission: 1

Owned: 7
Library: 6
Ebook: 5

Male authors : female authors: 9 (including 2 using a single male pseudonym) : 11

Oldest work: The Circular Study by Anna Katharine Green (1900)
Newest work: The Outrageous Lady by Barbara Cartland (1977)

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

YTD:

Works read: 112
TIOLI: 112, in 83 different challenges, with 12 shared reads and 1 sweep

Mystery / thriller: 58 (51.8%)
Contemporary drama: 14 (12.5%)
Young adult: 11 (9.8%)
Classic: 8 (7.1%)
Historical romance: 6 (5.4%)
Contemporary romance: 3 (2.7%)
Non-fiction: 3 (2.7%)
Humour: 3 (2.7%)
Short stories: 2 (1.8%)
Historical drama: 1 (0.9%)
Science fiction: 1 (0.9%)
Western: 1 (0.9%)
Fantasy: 1 (0.9%)

Re-reads: 15 (13.4%)
Series works: 75 (67.0%)
Blog reads: 3 (2.7%)
1932: 8 (7.1%)
1931: 7 (6.3%)
Virago / Persephone: 2 (1.8%)
Potential decommission: 4 (3.6%)

Owned: 31 (27.7%)
Library: 30 (26.8%)
Ebook: 51 (45.5%)

Male authors : female authors: 63 : 56

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

...and having finally caught up June (on the last day of July!), I shall reward myself with---

---A SLOTH!!

Finished Down Under for TIOLI #2, which is me done for July, and also THE END OF ANOTHER SERIES!!

Now reading The Mad Monk by R. T. M. Scott.

Oh, dear.

While I was looking up which book is next on the C. K. Shorter List of the Best 100 Novels, I accidentally stumbled over yet another Best 100 List, this one from The Guardian in 2015.

Of course, the very last thing I need is another list, another potential challenge...but how can I resist?? To quote the marvellously terrible 50s SF epic, Robot Monster: "I must!...but I cannot!"

>131 lyzard: That is a funny passage, Liz! The things some women will do to keep a man's attention. :-)

>133 lyzard: SLOTH!!!!!!!!!!!!

>135 lyzard: I only hope for your sake that all these 100-best lists overlap here and there or you may never come up for air!

I don't think Joanna was expecting THAT! :D

That one's real cutie, isn't it??

This one is "The Best 100 Novels In English", and (being published more than 100 years after the list I'm currently working on) has a lot more contemporary material, which would probably do me good!

However, it agrees with C. K. Shorter about the next book, which is how I found it...

By "more contemporary", do you mean books published after 1950?

:-D

>138 rosalita:

I do! Apparently people continued to write books after 1950---isn't it shocking!!??

The C.K. Shorter List of the Best 100 Novels:

#7: Clarissa; or, The History Of A Young Lady by Samuel Richardson (1748)



Samuel Richardson's 1748 epistolary novel is the story of the high-minded, high-principled Clarissa Harlowe, who is attracted against her will to the handsome young rake, Richard Lovelace. Lovelace, for his part, loves Clarissa too (at least as he understands "love"), but is determined to win her on his own terms. The resulting moral battle occupied no less than nine volumes when this novel was first published, and had the Georgian reading public hanging on Richardson's every word.

Samuel Richardson was the first English novelist of the 18th century to foreground his heroines, the first also to find his subject matter in the position of women in what was a brutal, dog-eat-dog society. Clarissa is a gruelling read, both with respect to its length and its content; but in my opinion it truly is one of the great English novels. I've only read it once (I'm not sure I could face it again!), and that many years ago, but I remember it with a clarity which speaks to the power of Richardson's writing.

Wow! The end of a series and a sloth. My, how you spoil us, ambassador. >:-)

Hi, Helen! I wish I had more opportunities for that sort of spoiling. :)

Finished The Mad Monk for TIOLI #10.

Now reading Death On The Highway by Clifton Robbins.

Howdy Liz!

Going back to your previous thread (yes, I am that far behind) I have to confess that although I found The Madwoman in the Attic interesting I also found it too much of a slog and gave up around the 250 page mark. I think it was all the references and comparisons to Milton's Paradise Lost which threw me. I would like to try again one day though...

>99 lyzard: I loved my children's version of Robinson Crusoe when I was younger and was rather disappointed to find that the adult version just had more moralising and no more adventure. I may try to reread the adult version again one day.

>133 lyzard: Woo!

>140 lyzard: Agree completely with your analysis of Clarissa - not sure whether I could reread it but I also have very vivid memories. I have the shorter Pamela on my shelves to try one day.

And I'm averting my eyes in shame from all the series where I was joining in and you are leaping ahead on. *whispers* I may just join in again later on rather than trying to catch up with all the books I've missed....

The Moving Finger has long been one of my favorite Christies, Liz, precisely for its characters and humor. The solution was pretty good, too, I thought.

Clarissa: Your determination to tackle difficult works is amazing! I never could manage that one; too long and unpleasant for me.

And now you've set me off to look into Charlie Chan. Do you have any idea of the havoc you've wrought on my desire to have/read/think about more books?

>144 souloftherose:

Hi, Heather! Great to see you out and around. :)

I was okay with the Milton stuff but the constant use of Emily Dickinson as a 'touchstone' I did find difficult. Still, it's one of those books you're glad afterwards that you've read...

...like Clarissa! Pamela is a different kettle of fish, easier to read but exasperating in other ways. You can understand why it was so successful and influential, though.

There's an odd subset of books that have somehow been absorbed into "children's fiction" but which have no business being there. If they released an adventure-only version of Robinson Crusoe, I guess you can understand that; though for many of them, the book hasn't been changed but there have been movie adaptations that likewise just keep "the good bits".

I miss our shared reads, of course, but please don't stress about it! :)

>145 Matke:

Hi, Gail!

Great to find another fan of The Moving Finger, it's one I frequently re-read.

Clarissa was part of my first "read through literary history" books, when I was working at a university and got access to a well-stocked academic library (and went a little nuts!). It's hard to argue with "long and unpleasant", but as I say, it has stayed with me vividly over the years.

You're making me drunk on my own sense of power, Gail! :D

It's very interesting how extremely popular the Charlie Chan books were at the time of their initial publication; they were adapted for the screen almost immediately too (albeit not with Chinese actors, sigh). You do wonder what their audience was...

Catching up Liz and wishing you a glorious weekend.

Much appreciated, Paul! :)

The C.K. Shorter List of the Best 100 Novels:

#8: The History Of Tom Jones, A Founding by Henry Fielding (1749)



In the mid-18th century, English literature was dominated by Henry Fielding and Samuel Richardson: the former writing overtly comic novels about well-meaning but irresponsible young men exploiting the double standard for all they were worth, the latter serious novels about young women trying to survive in a society that made a sport out of destroying them. The reader could take their choice.

1749 saw the publication of the most enduringly popular of Fielding's studies of "human nature". A foundling is left upon the doorstep of Squire Allworthy, who decides to adopt and raise the boy. Tom Jones grows up into kind-hearted, generous, fun-loving young man, but one quite incapable of resisting the charms of women, despite his growing love for Sophia Western, the lovely young daughter of the Squire's neighbour. Tom's illegitimacy makes Sophia's father oppose their marriage, while young Blifil, the Squire's nephew, who wants Sophia for himself, manages to cause a serious breach between Tom and the Squire. Tom is turned out of the Squire's house, and sets out on the open road to make his own way in the world...

By foregrounding his hero's illegitimacy, and contrasting Tom's inherent good-nature with the selfish and manipulative behaviour of the world's "respectable" people, Fielding was able to use his novel to dissect his society's class structure, its many prevailing cruelties and hypocrisies, and above all its sexual mores. The resulting mixture of social criticism, picaresque adventure, and broad (and often bawdy) humour divided critics and readers, but everyone read Tom Jones. The lengthy, rambling novel retains much of its charm today; although Tom's constant infidelities, and Fielding's shrugging "boys will be boys" attitude, may be problematic for some.

Both Tom Jones and Clarissa have been "ought to read"s for me for ages. Sounds like Tom Jones would certainly be more fun ...

Not by any stretch of the imagination could Clarissa be considered "fun"! Tom Jones, on the other hand, certainly can, albeit with a caveat. :)

Finished Death On The Highway for TIOLI #3.

Now reading Dead Or Alive by Patricia Wentworth.

Hmm...Tom Jones seems entirely possible. I do enjoy a long, good-natured tale that skewers a few social mores along the way.

I've a question: I've been reading Dickens for what seems like my whole life, but now I discover that I've been reading the same 6 novels and various short stories over and over. Currently I'm struggling with Nicholas Nickelby, which is quite boring in parts. Is it worthwhile going on? I've read Pickwick, Oliver, Copperfield, Bleak House, Expectations, and Two Cities. I'd like to read a couple more. Which two of the rest would you recommend? I'm not sure The Old Curiosity Shop would be a good choice. Help!

Oh, and I love re-reading Christie. Not everyone understands this admittedly odd habit. I'm very glad that you do.

Hi, Gail!

Yes, from that perspective Tom Jones is very good and enjoyable.

As for Dickens, I think I'd simply recommend the major novels you haven't tackled yet: Dombey And Son, Little Dorrit and Our Mutual Friend. All of those have some very strong characters and writing (along with some of the more problematic Dickens elements!). We did a group read of the last a couple of years back, so there's an old thread around if that would help. The other two are chunksters, so be prepared! (About the same length as Bleak House, I guess.)

I think you have to read Agatha at least twice! - you miss so much otherwise. :)

>153 Matke: in my experience of Dickens, I think he spends the first 2/3rds of the book setting it up and the final third is where all the action is. I may be doing him a disservice, but that's how they strike me. You get to the end and it's been a good read, but it's not good all the way through.

I've taken to listening to them in the car, an hour at a time. The episodic listening seems to work well, even though it can take several weeks to finish a book.

That's true of a lot of books, though it does then become a matter of how much you enjoy the journey---in Dickens' case, all the digressions and the raft of supporting characters. It isn't surprising there's a wide range of responses.

Your episodic listening probably gives you an experience very close to that of Dickens' original readers, when his books were serialised.

Finished Dead Or Alive for TIOLI #3. That was #125 for the year, which puts me well on track for 150!

Now reading Death At Windward Hill by Helen Joan Hultman; but because I am reading that online, my 'relief' book is When Rogues Fall Out by R. Austin Freeman.

The C.K. Shorter List of the Best 100 Novels:

#9: Candide; ou, l'Optimisme by Voltaire (1759)



Voltaire's blackly humorous novella is a vicious satire of---well, almost everything, including most notably the church, the government, the army, social philosophy and the people who expound it, and above all Leibnizian optimism---the contention that, as the world was made by a benevolent Deity, all things must be as they were intended to be, and that no matter how grim, cruel or tragic something appears, it must lead to a good end; a philosophy usually rendered as, "All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds."

Candide is close in spirit to Swift's Gulliver's Travels, likewise using the framework of the picaresque tale to make its points about modern society; but whereas Swift disguised his criticisms (at least a bit) by placing Gulliver in fantastic realms and situations, Voltaire has his characters moving from one real country to another, and from one real-life horror to the next. Having been raised in a secluded corner, by his mentor, Professor Pangloss, and tutored in Leibnizian optimism, this is all the naive Candide has to depend upon when he and his sweetheart, Cunégonde, are cast out into the world. Circumstances contrive to carry the young couple all over the globe, and for them to be confronted with everything from the Lisbon earthquake and tsunami of 1755, to the Seven Years' War, to the auto-de-fé of the Inquisition, while they themselves are brutalised, humiliated and cheated; all the while assuring each other that it must be for the best...

Unsurprisingly, Candide was highly controversial: it was denounced by both religious and secular authorities, and banned in many territories. Despite this it was widely read and much quoted, and soon found an enduring place as a classic of French literature.

>158 lyzard: Need to reread this one.

Yes, me too!

That's what I was saying about this stretch of books---for almost every one, it's, "Oh, I must re-read that!" I keep having to remind myself that's not the point of this exercise. :)

>158 lyzard: Now there's one I have read, though many years ago now. I expect I'd find some of the laughs rather less comfortable were I to revisit it ...

Yeah, it's pretty brutal; it really does require an 18th century sense of humour, I think.

Finished Death At Windward Hill for TIOLI #3.

Still reading When Rogues Fall Out by R. Austin Freeman.

The C.K. Shorter List of the Best 100 Novels:

#10: The History Of Rasselas, Prince Of Abissinia by Samuel Johnson (1759)



Perhaps best known these days as the book Helen Burns is reading in Jane Eyre, Samuel Johnson's 1759 publication is more a philosophical argument than a conventional novel, though it uses a narrative framework. In particular, Johnson exploits the contemporary popularity of the Oriental tale (real and fictional), but turns the usual structure on its head: instead of having a European explorer reporting his experiences in some obscure corner of the world, Johnson gives the reader Europe as seen through the bewildered and ultimately horrified gaze of an Oriental visitor.

Published the same year as Candide, Johnson's short fiction bears some similarity to Voltaire's work, likewise concerning a naive young man who escapes his safe but boring life (in "Happy Valley") to seek adventure and happiness in the world at large, only to find himself confronted with brutal realities including war, colonialism and slavery, and conflicting ideas over what constitutes the "right" way to live. While Voltaire's targets were almost limitless, in Rasselas Johnson chiefly expresses his concern about British imperialism, and its rising human cost. In a broader sense, Rasselas is a rumination upon the futility of human ambition (even the simple ambition of being happy) and the need to focus upon the higher truths of religion.

Thank you for writing up your notes on these old classics even though you've made the entirely sensible, sanity-saving decision not to re-read them all! So many of them are just familiar titles to me with no knowledge of the actual contents; now I can fool myself into thinking I know what they are about so I don't have to read them. :-)

Adding my thanks, Liz. Like you and Roberta, I'm reminded that I want to re-read Candide.

>165 rosalita: P.S. Candide is one worth reading, Julia. Leonard Bernstein, along with Lillian Hellman and Richard Wilbur, did a good musical adaptation that I saw many years ago with Jim Dale as Voltaire.

>166 jnwelch: Well, I take a triple recommendation from you, Liz, and Roberta seriously, Joe, so I will add it to the list!

>164 lyzard: I bounced off that one, probably unfairly. It was required reading in a survey class, assigned near midterms. I remember cramming the reading in between projects that had higher priority and thinking Rasselas was an insufferable timesink. I should probably give it another chance, since my negative opinion probably has little to do with the book itself.

Well! - this is all very nice. I'm glad that others are finding some real value in one of my projects...even if it amounts to them being able to "fake it". :D

As I've mentioned before, many years ago I had a job which gave me access to a first-rate academic library, and went a little nuts... At that time I read most of the "obvious" classics, certainly the British ones; most of what I'm skipping now would have been read then, though a few others were for later projects. (Yes, even before LT there was always a "project"!)

What is interesting to me at the moment is the way that the fairly simplistic picaresque tales and rogue's biographies that were so popular in England in the late 17th and early 18th centuries (when "fiction" was still a dubious undertaking, and it helped to be able to insist you were telling "a true story") began to be used as a vehicle for other concerns, including overt social criticism.

Candide is certainly worth a read, though it's a pretty rough ride. (Fortunately it's quite short!) Rasselas may be an even tougher proposition, being altogether more straight-faced, and in its way almost as gloomy. It is extremely valuable, though, as perhaps the first overt literary protest against the rising tide of British militancy and the brutality of colonialism.

To this point the Shorter list is dealing mostly in the established classics, all of which are worth reading (though of course it's a case of YMMV). A quick run down the list when I first encountered it suggests he gets considerably more idiosyncratic in the 19th century...

...and since you've chosen to encourage me:

The C.K. Shorter List of the Best 100 Novels:

#11: The Castle Of Otranto by Horace Walpole (1764)



Supposedly translated from an old Italian manuscript (though Walpole dropped that pretense for the second edition), The Castle Of Otranto is the story of a usurper-prince, Manfred, whose desperate efforts to hold onto a throne not truly his bring upon him supernatural vengeance of a most unexpected kind...

It was a cherished tenet of the Age of Reason that mankind had progressed beyond emotionalism and superstition, and functioned on pure reason. Walpole's short novel blew that theory out of the water, with contemporary readers eagerly devouring its improbable horrors. The breach made, a distinct shift in English literature followed, with the second half of the 18th century dominated by poetry and the sentimental novel.

It is generally asserted that The Castle Of Otranto was "the first Gothic novel". This isn't entirely accurate, although it was certainly responsible for the emergence of the true Gothic novel some twenty years later: a branch of fiction which in turn gave rise to both the true British horror novel and the British detective story. Quite a legacy...

(If anyone is interested, I wrote about these matters and The Castle Of Otranto itself at greater length a few years back, at my poor neglected book blog, where one of the altogether too many sub-projects is about tracing the rise of the Gothic novel. Also, as Roberta mentions below, there was a tutored read a few years back.)

>170 lyzard: This was my first "old time" gothic book! Your tutored thread was invaluable. I enjoyed it and as you know, I have continued my journey to read more of these books.

He Knew He Was Right - The previously happy marriage of Louis and Emily Trevelyan begins to disintegrate when the thin-skinned, jealous Louis takes exception to Emily's relationship with Colonel Osborne, a middle-aged man with a questionable reputation with woman, but who Emily knows and regards simply as an old friend of her father. Deeply offended by the language Louis has used towards her and the implications of his accusations about the Colonel, Emily refuses to accede to her husband's demands that she admit her "fault", despite her sister, Nora, and others counselling her to give in for the sake of peace. The resulting quarrel escalates into an open breach, with Louis insisting that unless Emily submits to him completely, they must live apart. Rejecting pleas for a compromise from friends on both sides of the quarrel, Louis separates from his wife and withdraws from society to brood upon his injuries... Published in 1869, Anthony Trollope's lengthy standalone novel offers a remarkable depiction of the contemporary understanding of mental illness, as Louis Trevelyan undergoes the slow but inexorable journey from stubborn, self-righteous Victorian husband to "monomaniac", consumed by the thought of his wife's "sin" and his own absolute rightness. Here Trollope once again displays his extraordinary ability to put himself in someone else's shoes: significant sections of the narrative are written from Louis' point of view, as his initial sense of grievance festers into a devouring obsession; with, likewise, Emily's defiance becoming distorted in his sick imagination into proof of her infidelity. In particular, the way in which Louis is able simply to ignore anything which does not support his own view of events, while twisting everything else into fuel for his growing rage, is chillingly convincing. However, as Trollope makes clear, Louis is not insane in the legal sense---meaning that when he decides that his young son must be "rescued" from his mother's contaminating influence, there is nothing that the law can do... As was his wont, Trollope makes the crumbling of the Trevelyan marriage part of a wide-ranging rumination upon marriage itself, surrounding his miserable central couple with numerous other characters contemplating the attractions and pitfalls of matrimony. This is both the strength of the novel, and its most exasperating aspect. In He Knew He Was Right, Trollope shows more clearly than in any other of his novels his understanding of the perilous position occupied by the Victorian woman - the humiliation of financial dependency, the lack of legal standing, the potential dangers of marriage in a society which gave limitless power to the husband, what the sheer desperation to be married might drive a woman to do - yet for all this, he will not for a moment contemplate the idea of women having the option of earning their own money and living an independent life. (Of course, these things were in reality becoming more feasible with every passing day, whether Trollope liked it or not.) However, these frustrations and shortcomings are offset not only by the emotional and psychological insight with which the novel's central plot is presented, but by two of Trollope's finest characterisations---ironically enough, single women both: the elderly Miss Jemima Stanbury, stubborn, domineering, and every bit as convinced of her own "rightness" as Louis Trevelyan, until she is brought to see (as he never is) that other things in life are more important; and the proud, courageous, almost painfully honest Priscilla Stanbury, unflinching as she faces a future of ever-narrowing deprivation.

    "Though I would welcome you back to my arms with joy, I cannot do so, till you have---confessed your fault."
    "What fault, Louis? If I have made you unhappy, I do, indeed, grieve that it has been so."
    "It is of no use," said he. "I cannot talk about it. Do you suppose that it does not tear me to the very soul to think of it?"
    "What is it that you think, Louis?" As she had been travelling thither, she had determined that she would say anything that he wished her to say,---make any admission that might satisfy him. That she could be happy again as other women are happy, she did not expect; but if it could be conceded between them that bygones should be bygones, she might live with him and do her duty, and, at least, have her child with her. Her father had told her that her husband was mad; but she was willing to put up with his madness on such terms as these. What could her husband do to her in his madness that he could not do also to the child? "Tell me what you want me to say, and I will say it," she said.
    "You have sinned against me," he said, raising her head gently from his shoulder.
    "Never!" she exclaimed. "As God is my judge, I never have!" As she said this, she retreated and took the sobbing boy again into her arms.
    He was at once placed upon his guard, telling himself that he saw the necessity of holding by his child. How could he tell? Might there not be a policeman down from Florence, ready round the house, to seize the boy and carry him away? Though all his remaining life should be a torment to him, though infinite plagues should be poured upon his head, though he should die like a dog, alone, unfriended, and in despair, while he was fighting this battle of his, he would not give way...

>171 luvamystery65:

That's great to hear, Roberta! I miss that branch of my reading very much and simply must get back to it, one of these days...

I read and reviewed The Merrivale Mystery by James Corbett last year - my review is here, if you are interested - so I'm not going to do it again. Instead, I will post a selection of quotes from the novel, which should you give you all at least some idea of its truly remarkable qualities:

"Frankly, I am not thinking of the intestinal glands at present."

{The Scotland Yard men} worshipped Serge as a super-intelligence...

"I dare not utter my thoughts at present. They are too absurd and incredulous!"

Moreton wondered if the girl had lost her reason with the shock of the crime? Were her words those of a demented woman who is going insane?

He could change his expression without effort, and this signified great mobility of thought and temperament.

"My spine is a useless thing without bone or muscle."

"Selfishness is in the Merrivale blood, and it will never be ostracised until Death comes as the Deliverer!"

Bancroft was staggered. He never met with such impudence and cheek.

"A theory has already suggested itself to my mind, but it is so intricate and fantastic I dare not express it. Bancroft would say I had gone loopy!"

"Although many of your theories are incredible, I notice they all stand the test of realism!"

"You have always proved a first-class enigma," he said reflectively, "and I can never get to the bottom of your brain-box."

Serge stood rigid, surveying the scene from every angle of thought, his nostrils dilated like a wolfhound...

"You are all living the life of a potato."

"Your steps are feline and cat-like."

"The other two half-brothers are developing into congenital idiots."

The men saluted in the darkness and stole away with furtive tread. They knew the anti-climax was at hand, and their satisfaction was unbounded...

And of course, THIS inarguable gem:

"Books are my constant inspiration and delight, and without them I should be a dead thing minus animation."

Vote For Love - Bullied and beaten by her step-mother into participating in the most extreme acts of the Suffragette movement, when Viola Brandon is forced to smuggle a bomb into the house of Under-Secretary of State, Rayburn Lyle, she decides despairingly to commit suicide by staying there while it goes off. However, due to an early close of Parliament, Lyle arrives home unexpectedly, catching her; and in any event, the bomb is a dud. The furious Lyle soon realises that the Viola is both terrified and deeply repentant; also that her youth and gentleness will not allow her to withstand the iron-willed Lady Brandon. Lyle, meanwhile, has problems of his own, when the husband of his mistress, Eloise Davenport, dies suddenly. Knowing that Eloise will expect him to propose, Lyle instead takes the drastic step of suggesting a false engagement to Viola---thus helping both of them out of their difficulties... After a brief though welcome respite during my previous two Cartland outings, in Vote For Love we're back in the ugly realm of the square-jawed, square-headed, Obnoxious Alpha Male. The only thing more repellent is Cartland's distorted depiction of the Suffragettes, with the group's militant edge being presented as its entirety, and the whole thing being sniffingly disapproved as "unfeminine". (Remember, girls: if you vote, boys won't like you!) In this context, it is less than surprising to find Viola's "weakness", "helplessness" and "inability to look after herself" being presented as positive character traits. It is likely, however, that the reader will be more impressed with the wicked Eloise, who responds to her failure to break up the relationship between Lyle and Viola by framing the latter: inviting her to tea before setting a fire in her own house and scattering Suffragette pamphlets about. Viola is arrested on Eloise's testimony, and so finds herself in jail, facing an appearance before a magistrate, and potentially the horrors of Holloway Prison...

    "How could she do this to him...how could she?" Viola asked herself and knew she had been right in comparing Lady Davenport with a snake.
    She had planned it all out. She had been determined to strike at the man who had abandoned her and to hurt him where he was most vulnerable---his career.
    Nothing could be more disastrous at this time when everybody in the Government was against women's Suffrage than for Rayburn to be involved in it politically. And from the personal point of view the drama would make him the laughing-stock of the social world.
    "He will have to resign," Viola thought despairingly, and she wished she could have died as she had wanted to when she planted the bomb in his house...

>174 lyzard: Wow, just ... Wow. Actually some of the lines would be pretty good in the right context. Corbett would be a hard author to satirize because how do you write jokes funnier than his straight lines?

Best-selling books in the United States for 1925:

1. Soundings by A. Hamilton Gibbs
2. The Constant Nymph by Margaret Kennedy
3. The Keeper of the Bees by Gene Stratton-Porter
4. Glorious Apollo by E. Barrington
5. The Green Hat by Michael Arlen
6. The Little French Girl by Anne Douglas Sedgwick
7. Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
8. The Perennial Bachelor by Anne Parrish
9. The Carolinian by Rafael Sabatini
10. One Increasing Purpose by A. S. M. Hutchinson

The rebuilding of the post-WWI world and the re-shaping of its mores continue to dominate in 1925.

The exceptions are two historical romances, Rafael Sabatini's The Carolinian, which is set against the Revolutionary War; and Glorious Apollo by "E. Barrington" (Elizabeth Moresby), which is a fictionalised account of the life of Byron; and Anne Parrish's The Perennial Bachelor, which finds four sisters, raised in the strict Victorian codes of female submission, sacrificing their lives to the comfort of their only brother.

Sinclair Lewis's Pulitzer Prize-winning Arrowsmith, about a young medical researcher trying to carve out a career in the face of resistance to scientific progress on one hand, and social and financial pressures and temptations on the other, is an anomalous work of sorts, but does deal with social change in the 1920s.

The remaining books, including one holdover from the previous list, Anne Douglas Sedgwick's The Little French Girl, deal (either approvingly or disapprovingly) with shifting ideals and morals in the years following the war. Both A. S. M. Hutchinson's One Increasing Purpose and Gene Stratton-Porter's The Keeper of the Bees have young war veterans trying to rebuild their lives, in the former seeking a reason why he should have been spared when so many were not, in the latter recovering from physical and emotional wounds through contact with nature.

Margaret Kennedy's The Constant Nymph and Michael Arlen's The Green Hat were both highly controversial. The first is about the clash between English society and a group of Bohemian artists, and was considered shocking for its emphasis upon teenage sexuality; the second (filmed, and bowdlerised, as A Woman Of Affairs, with Greta Garbo) is a "Lost Generation" story that went even further, dealing with such previously forbidden subjects as promiscuity, homosexuality, venereal disease and drug abuse.

Sex is also a major component, albeit in a very different way, of the year's best-seller, Soundings by A. Hamilton Gibbs.

Arthur Hamilton Gibbs was born in England in 1888, one of three literary brothers: Sir Philip Gibbs was a prolific novelist and and author of non-fiction, and also a journalist, one of the five official British field reporters during WWI; while Cosmo Hamilton (born 'Henry Gibbs') was also a novelist, but best known as a playwright and a screenwriter.

The youngest of the three, Arthur published steadily for nearly forty years, achieving a strong reputation as a novelist; he also wrote two books of poetry. Beginning with a couple of so-called "Oxford novels", Gibbs was a strong proponent of "writing what you know", and his books were popular for their contemporary themes and their reflections upon modern life.

In 1931, Gibbs left England for the US, settling in Massachusetts and finally becoming an American citizen.

Soundings - Shaken when a young male friend suddenly oversteps the arm's length at which she has always kept him, Nancy Hawthorne finds herself awakening to life's possibilities---and growing discontented with her isolated life, spent in a country cottage with her artist father. Regretting Nancy's company but accepting that she must spread her wings, Jim Hawthorne sends his daughter out in the world where, after a year spent travelling and working on her own art, she ends up sharing a Parisian studio with a wealthy young American, Cornelia Evans, who is taking singing lessons. Everything changes for Nancy when Cornelia's brother, Lloyd comes from Oxford for a visit, bringing his friend, Bob Whittaker: Lloyd is immediately drawn to Nancy, but she only has eyes for Bob, with whom she falls passionately in love. A cruel disappointment is in store for her, however; and as she picks up the pieces, Nancy must decide how her future is to be lived: how she is to find happiness and fulfillment in the absence of love; and whether she dare satisfy her longing for a child... This 1925 novel by Arthur Hamilton Gibbs is both interesting and frustrating. On the positive side, it offers an engaging contemporary picture of young people being young people; while is fully invested in its heroine, taking her hopes and disappointments seriously, and never trivialising her feelings, as too many novels of this era (and later!) tend to do with their female characters. At the same time, it could fairly be argued that Gibbs takes Nancy too seriously: huge chunks of the narrative consist of Nancy's blow-by-blow analysis of her emotional sufferings, even to an absurd degree---as if no young woman before her had ever discovered that the man she had fallen for was a liar and a cheat! Here Soundings begins to shift to the other side of the ledger, being one of those exasperating books which insist that women have no real life apart from their emotions. Consequently, though Nancy (with almost insulting casualness) achieves a career as a professional artist that is simultaneously successful and remunerative, she remains dissatisfied and unhappy. Having accepted that love is over for her, Nancy is nevertheless desperate to have a child; and finally considers the drastic step of deliberately having a baby out of wedlock... Soundings was controversial in its day for its frank depiction of female sexuality, and for the manner in which the outspoken Nancy wrestles with temptation and desire; but ultimately, it is a compromised work: a quality which may, perversely, have helped to secure it best-seller status. Thus, Nancy is frank about her capacity for sexual desire---but she never acts on it; she and her father rail against the injustice of social convention---but neither of them flouts it; Nancy seriously contemplates having an illegitimate child---but refrains from doing so. Finally, she does marry in order to have a child---and Gibbs closes his novel without allowing the reader to cross the marital threshold. From all this it can be seen that, unlike the more frankly transgressive works of the same period, such as Michael Arlen's The Green Hat, which don't pull their punches, Soundings is a novel which allowed middle-class readers to have their cake and eat it too; to be titillated by the subject matter, but without having ever their beliefs more than theoretically challenged.

    "What kept me blind?" she asked herself. "Why couldn't I see the truth? I was giving him my whole self, my thoughts and dreams and faith and hopes. He---or what I thought was he---was the answer to all those feelings which, alone, have an ache in them, but which, shared, mean utter happiness. I wanted to give him laughter and courage, ambition and fulfillment, and to find my own in him. I wanted to give him all the inner things that are me,---the real me. Was I a fool to expect the same? Doesn't love mean that?--- He didn't want me. All he wanted was my body. Anyone else inside it would have done. To him I was simply a physical experiment, like that girl at Oxford. I don't understand. It puts people down to the level of animals, as if one's soul simply didn't matter, as if it were entirely outside the question. I loved Bob's body too, of course, but not like that, not by itself!..."
    Then had come another phase in the late spring which had made her loathe herself and hate him for being the cause of it,---a phase when at times the desire to feel his lips on hers again, to have him stroke her hair and rub her cheek against her hand, frightened her with its violence...

>176 swynn:

:D

There's no sign it wasn't done with the straight face, either; and really, I don't think someone who was joking could have kept it up all the way through. My guess is that his editor realised that any attempt to "fix" the novel would make it less entertaining, and just let it all go.

Julia couldn't finish it, but she *has* adopted "You are all living the life of a potato!", while Harry has learned to say "loopy"; so I feel my work here is done...

Finished When Rogues Fall Out for TIOLI #10: a book which also has red hair as a major plot-point!

Now reading The Beachcomber by William McFee.

The C.K. Shorter List of the Best 100 Novels:

#12: The Vicar Of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith (1766)



Completed in 1762, the manuscript of Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar Of Wakefield was hurriedly sold to a publisher by Samuel Johnson, in order to raise sufficient money to prevent Goldsmith being evicted from his rooms even as he lay ill in bed; the publisher then sat on it for several years, finally issuing a two-volume edition in 1766---and found himself with a surprise hit upon his hands.

The opening of The Vicar Of Wakefield finds the Reverend Mr Primrose, his wife and two daughters comfortably established in a respectable parish, the only difficulty in life the minister's expansive ideas upon charity, which sometimes leaves the family in straitened circumstances. This placid opening is deceptive, however, as calamity is about to strike the Primrose family---again, and again, and again...

For a short and seemingly straightforward work, The Vicar Of Wakefield has attracted a number of different "readings". Some people see it as a satire upon the rising tide of sentimental and pastoral novels, as seemingly familiar fictional scenarios turn to tragedy and/or farce; other commentators see Mr Primrose as a modern interpretation of Job, clinging to his faith as his world collapses around him. The novel's offering of good-humoured didacticism, and its warnings against those prime Georgian "sins", vanity, ambition and not being contented where God has placed you, made it a popular work for family reading and a favourite with readers of a more serious turn of mind (hence allusions to it in the works of Jane Austen and George Eliot, among others).

Red Pepper Returns - Published in 1931, after a gap of some seven years, this was the final book in Grace S. Richmond's series featuring Dr Redfield Pepper Burns and, like its two predecessors, gives the impression that Richmond has lost interest in, or anyway patience with, her central character; perhaps she was pressured into continuing the series by her publisher? In any case, this novel again finds Red exposing one of the more unattractive facets of his personality, in this instance his unwarrantable jealousy. Medically speaking, meanwhile, the narrative displays an interest uncommon for the time in mental health, and its impact upon general health. Thus, Red Pepper Returns finds the physician chiefly ministering to minds diseas'd, dealing with various unhappy, neurotic individuals who cannot seem to get their lives on track---including one young woman in her early twenties who has already dashed through two marriages and divorces, and who ends up, bizarrely, adopting aviation as a "cure". (Or perhaps, not so bizarrely in context: in many novels of the 20s and 30s, learning to fly was used as a signifier of intelligence and courage; what was really unusual is how many female flyers turned up in these books.) Another plot-thread throws back to Red And Black, with Cary Ray (a recovered alcoholic) falling off the wagon with a vengeance, in company with his flighty wife, Fanny, despite the best efforts of his sister and brother-in-law, Jane Black and her minister-husband, Robert MacPherson Black. The novel's most significant subplot, however, finds Red working desperately to save the life of an old friend and colleague, who has irreparably damaged his heath with overwork---like Red himself; but unlike Red, he has no wife, no family, no close friends to give meaning to his private life. Red soon learns that Dr Maxwell Buller has long been in love with an unobtainable woman; yet he is unprepared for the revelation that his friend's secret love is his own wife, Ellen; and when Ellen, recognising this, but recognising also that her quiet companionship is Buller's best hope of recovery, devotes herself to him, Red finds himself fighting an ugly growing suspicion...

    "People haven't known him---haven't tried to. But...beneath all that drabness, fires glow---only he's been keeping them smothered, and nobody has even noticed the smoke."
    "Now, see here, Len." Red's eyes were glowing dangerously. He was all but glaring at her, he, Red, who worshipped her. Which, of course, was why he was glaring. "Am I to understand he's been showing those fires to you? Fires! Max Buller!---the old watchdog---the sick old dog who crawls and licks your hand. Do you mean to say he's sitting up and begging you for his life---barking at you---getting up spirit enough to dash at you---and then lying down again with his nose between his paws and pretending to be asleep when I come around?..."
    Ellen got up and slowly walked away from him down the rocky, ferny trail. Her head was proudly up, as he had seen it many times. It was no use---he never got anywhere by thundering at her. He couldn't intimidate her. The more he lost his temper the less headway he could make with her. He watched her now with a sinking heart...

Le Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane - Alain René Le Sage's mammoth picaresque novel was originally published in four volumes, the first two in 1715, the next one in 1724 and the final one in 1735. It was translated into English in 1749, by failed doctor and future novelist, Tobias Smollett, and it is the revised second edition of 1750 which has become the "canon" English-language version. Although Le Sage was French, and his novel written in that language, it is set in Spain and draws heavily upon the literary tradition of the country. In fact, the picaresque novel was perhaps the first form of genre fiction, appearing in Spain as early as the 16th century; and while "picaresque" came to mean a narrative describing the characters' travels and adventures, the term was derived from the Spanish word, picaro, meaning "rogue". Gil Blas sits somewhat within this tradition, but differs from many of its ilk by having a clear moral purpose. The son of a former soldier, afterwards a manservant to a noble family, young Gil Blas is given an education above his station by his uncle, a canon, but otherwise has only his wits to depend upon. At the age of seventeen, Gil Blas is sent away from his home in Ovieda to find a post in Salamanca---but it doesn't quite work out like that as, almost immediately, he falls in with a group of roving bandits... In keeping with the picaresque tradition (and that of its English cousin, the rogue's biography), Gil Blas is an extremely loosely structured work that finds its young hero moving through all levels of Spanish society, encountering people both good and bad, both wise and foolish, falling in and out of love, and finally - after many painful lessons - achieving safety and a measure of personal success. Much of the narrative consists of the interpolated stories of the various characters, told with a minuteness of detail that can be trying to the modern reader (though we should note, it is occasionally trying to Gil Blas, too!). While most picaresque novels and rogue's biographies claimed to be written with a moral purpose, that is, to warn the reader of the pitfalls of the world at large, Gil Blas differs from its fellows in following through on its premise. Gill Blas is a young man with rather too good an opinion of himself (despite various experiences that should have deflated his ego), and he is often led astray by vanity and ambition. Conversely, when he forgets himself in selfless service of others, or makes a point of remembering the friendship of, and expressing his gratitude to, those who aid him, he tends to prosper. This schema underlies the second half of the novel, lengthy passages of which deal with real Spanish history, and finds Gil Blas securing positions of confidential servant to two powerful politicians: first, to the Duke of Lerma, chief minister of Philip III; later to his successor, the Comte d'Oliveres. In the first place, Gil Blas becomes corrupt and venal, considering himself "above" his former friends, selling favours, and dabbling in political scheming: a misstep which sees him stripped of his accumulated wealth and his powers and incarcerated; in the second, having learned his lesson, Gil Blas tries to stay on the straight and narrow, despite the manoeuvring of his master, and eventually pilots his way to security and happiness. Meanwhile, supporting cautionary tales are offered to the reader in the form of the grim fates dished out to a number of the criminals and conmen (and politicians, a career treated as more or less the same thing) whom Gil Blas meets along the way; although that said, and despite many hair-raising episodes of jealousy and slaughter in the name of "honour", the narrative is rather more forgiving of the sexual transgressions and scheming of women, accepting that for many, it was a necessary means of survival. The sheer magnitude of Gil Blas makes it a difficult undertaking for the modern reader, but it is a work which throws a fascinating light upon the early development of "the novel", and includes enough engaging and humorous interludes to keep you turning its many pages.

    With respect to my general adventures, I passed them over lightly; but when I came to speak of the visit which the son of Bertrand Muscada, the grocer of Oviedo, had paid me at Madrid, I enlarged upon that article: "I own, (said I to my mother) that I gave that young man a very bad reception; who to be revenged, has, doubtless, drawn a very frightful picture of me." "In that he did not fail: (answered she) he told us that he found you so proud of the favour of the prime-minister, that you scarce deigned to recollect him: and when he described our distress, heard him with the utmost indifference. As parents (added she) always endeavour to find excuses for the behaviour of their children, we could not believe that you had such a bad heart: your arrival in Ovieda justifies our good opinion of you, and your present sorrow confirms your apology."
    "You judge too favorably of me; (I replied) there is a great deal of truth in young Muscada's report: when he visited me, I was wholly engrossed by the care of making my fortune; and the ambition that possessed me would not permit me to think of my parents... I ought to have reflected, that it was not your fault, if the grocer wanted manners; and that his advice was never the worse for its being brutally delivered.
    "This is what I represented to myself immediately after I had sent Muscada about his business. My blood spoke in your behalf; I recalled all my duty to my parents; and, blushing for shame for having performed so ill, felt remorse, which, nevertheless, can do me no honour with you, because it was soon stifled by avarice and ambition: but having afterwards been imprisoned, by the king's order, in the tower of Segovia, I fell dangerously ill, and that happy distemper hath restored your son to you: yes, it was my disease and imprisonment that made nature resume all her rights, and entirely detached me from court. I now thirst after solitude..."

The Bravo Of London - Julian Joolby, a physically repulsive, near-crippled yet criminally shrewd individual, uses his antique business as a 'front' for his illegal enterprises, including the planning and preparation for an extraordinary coup: the theft of the actual paper upon which banknotes are printed, which will allow him to create undetectable counterfeits. Unfortunately for Mr Joolby, his path is twice crossed by Max Carrados---once in his shop where, to Joolby's indignation, the blind man is able to detect a forged antique coin in spite of his disability; and then again in the country, in the little town near to the guarded factory where the paper is produced. And it is what Carrados detects via his heightened senses of hearing and smell which convinces him that a dangerous criminal conspiracy is afoot... The final work in Ernest Bramah's series featuring the blind detective, Max Carrados, is also its only novel: not a format Bramah was ever comfortable in, and a certain strain shows in several aspects of the narrative, including the padding provided by three characters' mangling of the English language. (The book's attitude to "foreigners" is exceedingly tiresome.) Furthermore, though Joolby's plan is brilliant in theory, it is impossible not to notice that there was no way he could have even tried to pull it off but for a belated coincidence of a magnitude unforgiveable even in literature of this sort. The novel's biggest disappointment, however, is its climax, which finds Ernest Bramah ripping himself off---reusing the ending of a short story from the previous entry in the Carrados series, and doing so almost word for word, detail for detail. Consequently, the strongest section of the book comes in the middle, when the various plot-strands begin to wind together, and when - thanks to that untenable coincidence - Joolby is finally able to set his plan in motion. This action happens to coincide with Max Carrados paying a visit to his niece, Nora Melhuish, whose almost-fiancé holds a responsible position at the paper manufactory. Carrados is therefore present when Geoffrey Tilehurst turns up one day physically injured and in a state of shock, unable to speak and almost oblivious to the people around him. Fortunately a doctor who just happens to specialise in such cases happens to be having car trouble nearby, and is able to reassure everyone that Geoffrey's condition will soon pass; though in the meantime they must be patient if he seems, so to speak, not quite himself...

    Like many blind men of ingenious mind Mr Carrados prided himself on his ability to get about by himself and to tell the truth he was occasionally a little unceremonious in his rejection of sympathetic assistance.
    "Let me find my own way; I'll manage to do it somehow," he would remark as he put these well-intentioned people aside. "If I do knock my shins it will teach me to remember the position of something for ever," and though none of his closest friends could recall the occasion when Mr Carrados had knocked his shins they all might have instanced rather odd little touches of clumsiness or unaccountable lapses in his form which had at the time seemed surprising. Inspector Beedel, whose Yard record was not unaffected by their acquaintanceship in the past, had his own views of these failings.
    "When Mr Carrados makes a break," he had been known to say, "it's about time for some blighter to hop it."
    On this occasion, however, there was nothing drastic to deplore. Smiling away Mrs Larch's proffered arm the blind man stretched out his hands right and left and---more than anything from a matter of habit, one would judge---touched the door and wall here and there as though to learn thereby the points of his location. Certainly he narrowly escaped a minor disaster at the telephone table which lay in his path, but with an exclamation of annoyance at the contact---a mere brush---he neatly verified its position and nature...

Hi Liz, what with your knowledge of all things random and obscure, have you ever heard of Death of a Dissenter by Lynton Lamb? I asked on a bellringing site about books other than The Nine Tailors that feature bellringing and that one was suggested. Never heard of him (I assume), so wondered if you had any insider information.

Hi, Helen! I've heard of him but he is way out of my current comfort zone, publishing in the 60s and 70s, so I haven't read him. Lamb was a bit of a Renaissance man and is probably better known for some of his other activities, like his painting and illustrations.

Harry might know something about his mysteries, though; he's more wide-ranging in his mystery reading than me.

The C.K. Shorter List of the Best 100 Novels:

#13: The Old English Baron by Clara Reeve (1777)



Though Horace Walpole's The Castle Of Otranto was extremely popular, not everyone approved of it---particularly not of its numerous supernatural manifestations. There were various literary responses to Walpole's novel, the most important of which was Clara Reeve's The Old English Baron, which reworked and toned down Walpole's excesses in a manner considered more appropriate for English readers.

Reeve's romance is set in England during the first half of the 15th century. After a separation of many years, Sir Philip Harclay seeks out his old friend, Lord Lovel, only to discover that both he and his wife died under mysterious circumstances; that his title, castle and estates were inherited by his cousin; and that the cousin subsequently sold Castle Lovel to his brother-in-law, Lord Fitz-Owen---according to local rumour, because it was haunted...

While the main plot of The Old English Baron features murder most foul and a ghost crying out for justice, all of this is muted and soft-pedaled to a degree which modern readers often find disappointing, but which reflects contemporary sensibilities far more than Horace Walpole's extravagant fiction. And for this very reason, Clara Reeve's polite romance is also a very significant book. On one hand, with its specific setting and attention to detail, it was an important step in the development of the true historical novel; on the other, it encouraged other writers to adopt and expand upon the themes which Walpole had introduced, but which were indeed too exaggerated for 18th century English comfort, and so simultaneously was another stepping-stone in the evolution of the Gothic novel.

(I have also blogged about The Old English Baron.)

Towards Zero - When visitors gather at the Devon home of the elderly, bed-ridden Lady Tressilian, the result is an extremely strained atmosphere---not surprisingly, since amongst the guests are professional tennis-player, Nevile Strange, the ward of the late Sir Mathew Tressilian; his young and beautiful new wife, Kay; and his ex-wife, Audrey, who suffered a breakdown after the dissolution of her marriage. No-one is happy about the situation; nor do they entirely believe Nevile when he insists it was his idea, a way of clearing the air; but then, why would Audrey have wanted the meeting? The old-fashioned Lady Tressilian, who disapproves of divorce, becomes furious when it seems that Nevile is attempting a reconciliation with Audrey: summoning him to her room, she makes her feelings plainly known; the result is a furious row... When Lady Tressilian is found murdered, her head beaten in, all the preliminary physical evidence points to Nevile Strange. He is on the verge of being arrested when Lady Tressilian's maid testifies to seeing her employer alive after Nevile left her room; for the rest of the time, he has an alibi. With Nevile cleared, the question then becomes---how did that evidence get there...? This 1944 publication by Agatha Christie is another favourite of mine: another of her works that richly repays careful re-reading, and which finds her doing what she "never" does, taking her time about her set-up and characters. Another pleasure of Towards Zero is that while, sadly, it is the last of her novels to feature Superintendent Battle, it allows him to play a starring role. When Camilla Tressilian is murdered, Battle is in the district visiting his nephew, Inspector Leach, who is only too glad to have the assistance of the Scotland Yard heavyweight. And, as it turns out, it is just as well that someone of Battle's wide experience is on the scene, because what starts out looking like an almost absurdly straightforward case takes a sinister turn when Nevile Strange is alibied. Battle then turns his attention to the rest of those in the house: Mary Alden, Lady Tressilian's cousin and companion, who benefits under her will; Thomas Royde, an old family friend, who has long loved Audrey and returned to England in the hope of marrying her; Kay Strange, an unwanted outsider in the house of her husband's family; Ted Latimer, Kay's life-long friend, who has always loved her but was too poor to marry her; and the quiet, self-contained Audrey. The police inspectors must begin their investigation all over again, seeking evidence beyond the obvious, and in the shadow of the question---who hated Nevile Strange enough to frame him for murder? It takes the intervention of a stranger, an outsider who witnessed something critical on the night of the crime, before Battle can unravel one of the darkest cases in his long experience...

    Not until they were under the frowning shadow of Stark Head did Battle throttle down the engine and begin to speak his piece. He spoke without self-consciousness and in a tone that was more reflective than anything else.
    "This has been a very odd case---one of the oddest I've ever known, and I'd like to say something on the subject of murder generally...
    "It's this! When you read the account of a murder---or say, a fiction story based on murder, you usually begin with the murder itself. That's all wrong. The murder begins a long time beforehand. A murder is the culmination of a lot of different circumstances, all converging at a given moment at a given point. People are brought into it from different parts of the globe and for unforeseen reasons. Mr Royde is here from Malaya. Mr MacWhirter is here because he wanted to revisit a spot where he once tried to commit suicide. The murder itself is the end of the story. It's Zero Hour."
    He paused.
    "It's Zero Hour now..."

>187 lyzard: Passing by and saw my name mentioned. :-)

I'm sorry, Helen, but I don't think I've ever read anything by Mr. Lamb. I do have a different book to suggest that may fit your interest: The Devil in the Belfry (aka Herod's Peal), by Russell Thorndike. I got a copy earlier this year but alas haven't gotten around to reading it. You haven't read it, have you, Liz?

I did find a review posted online: http://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=27124.

Down Under - When Rose Anne Carew disappears the day before her wedding - and when circumstantial evidence suggests she has run off with another man - Oliver Lodden's world comes crashing down. Unable to believe, not just that Rose Anne would leave him, but that she would do so without a word, in a manner so hurtful to her family and friends, Oliver stubbornly investigates ever detail of her last day at home---and realises that if she did not leave voluntarily, someone has tried very hard to make it look like she did... Oliver is approached by Loveday Ross, the wife of one of Rose Anne's cousins, who suggests that he consult her uncle, Benbow Smith, an unofficial advisor to the Foreign Office and the wisest person she knows. Out of options, Oliver finally does; and though it is an enormous relief to have someone accept his insistence that Rose Anne did not disappear of her own volition, he finds himself unable to credit Smith's own bizarre story of numerous disappearances over a passage of years---all of them tied to the apparent death of crooked, egotistical financier, Amos Rennard... This is the final work in the short series by Patricia Wentworth featuring Horatio Collingwood Benbow Smith; and while I have enjoyed these romantic thrillers, it must be said that Down Under requires from the reader an extreme effort in the area of suspension of disbelief. Smith himself is an intriguing character (though his jerky diction gets annoying); while, as always, the show is stolen by his pet parrot, Ananais, who has an extensive vocabulary encompassing everything from obscenities in various languages to a collection of sea-shanties, and who acts as the narrative's Greek chorus. The novels themselves keep Smith in the background, even as he functions in the background for the government, usually with a young couple in trouble taking centre-stage. In this case, Smith responds to Oliver's tale of woe with his own story about Amos Rennard, supposedly dead in a plane crash; the likewise indeterminate fates of his two sons, Mark and Philip, and the disappearance of his nephew, Ernest: all of which preceded mass disappearances, of builders, electricians, and other skilled tradespeople; of entertainers---musicians and singers; of a doctor, and a minister. Smith's bizarre story culminates with the death of a private investigator, who sent back word that he had discovered a clue in the vicinity of the deserted mining village of Hillock St Anne, before being found with a broken neck... Though Oliver cannot believe all he has been told, the proximity of Hillock St Anne to the site of Rose Anne's disappearance cannot be ignored; nor indeed can the worrying detail of Rennard's red hair, of which he was inordinately proud; proud too that his descendants had it; as would, if he could manage it, their descendants. Rose Anne has reddish hair... Smith tells Oliver that Amos Rennard was married to woman whose surname was Garstnet: this is also the name of the owner of the public house where Rose Anne was last seen, a man who has red hair, as do his daughters. Torn between incredulity and dawning hope, Oliver restarts his search---and stumbles on a trail that leads him into the incredible underground lair to which Amos Rennard has retreated with his family, and which he rules like a despot. The good news is that Rose Anne is there; the bad news is, escape is impossible...

    "Well," said Oliver, "a friend of mine was talking about you---the case, you know, and how you tried to get away by aeroplane. He didn't believe you were dead. He said they'd found the pilot's body after the smash, but not yours, and he didn't believe you were dead. He'd made a regular study of the whole thing, and he'd got amazingly near the truth---near enough to set me looking for you."
    He had glanced away. Now, at a sound, he looked back to see Amos Rennard's face convulsed with rage. So sudden was the transition from an easy good nature to this mask of rage that it fairly took his breath away.
    "Near enough---near enough---" The words came on a deep growl. And then suddenly oath followed oath in a torrent of language as foul as Oliver had ever heard...
    The man was a human conflagration. The redness of his face, his hair, his beard, the heat of his gross body and clutching hand, affected Oliver. He felt giddy and sick. It was like being pawed by a gorilla. He must be careful what he said...it didn't matter what he said...it didn't matter, because they were doomed already, he and Rose Anne. In the midst of his physical distress his mind had a moment of fearful clarity. He had butted in upon Amos Rennard's private kingdom. Amos Rennard would squeeze him dry and throw him away...

>190 harrygbutler:

Thanks for chipping in, Harry! Herod's Peal is on my wishlist, but I haven't been able to find a copy. If you have, you've been lucky: I believe it's very rare.

(I have the Dr Syn novels on The List, of course: I'm expecting better luck with those!)

>192 lyzard: I stumbled on a copy of The Devil in the Belfry (the title on the volume I bought) at a local bookstore back at the beginning of April. I hope to find more of the Dr. Syn books at some point, after reading and quite enjoying the first.

I haven't read Dr Syn yet, but I have seen both film versions.

Thank you both. I will keep my eyes open for those and see if they cross my path.

>188 lyzard: Count me among those who find Walpole's supernatural manifestations a bit much. The giant helmet always makes me laugh, which I'm pretty sure is not the intended effect. Sounds like I'm in the audience for The Old English Baron and it's a new one to me.

>195 Helenliz:

Good luck!

>196 swynn:

I'm sure most people now do laugh at the helmet---but then, you need to put yourself in the mindset of readers who had never before encountered anything of the kind in their reading.

It's a case of YMMV with The Old English Baron: some people find it easier to accept and some people just find it dull. I'll be interested to see what you make of it.

The C.K. Shorter List of the Best 100 Novels:

#14: Evelina by Frances Burney (1778)



Raised in the country by her strict but loving guardian, the Reverend Mr Villars, lovely, naive young Evelina Anville first goes out into the world under the dubious care of her brash, underbred grandmother, her only acknowledged blood relative. Painfully aware of her anomalous background - she is the daughter of a wealthy baronet, who repudiated his marriage with her mother - Evelina must navigate the dangerous waters of 18th century London society with only her own judgement to guide her, and with her impulsive nature to combat...

Though many critics now consider Frances Burney's second novel, Cecilia; or, Memoirs Of An Heiress, to be her best, Shorter sticks with her first, breakthrough work. Evelina was an enormous best-seller, eagerly devoured by the reading public of the day. It was the first important work to suggest that the ordinary experiences of a young lady might be sufficient material for a novel, while its evident appeal for women readers (many of them newly literate) was also something fresh on the literary scene. Burney's hero, Lord Orville (modelled on Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison, but less exasperatingly perfect) was a many a reading girl's first crush---and caused the novel to be criticised for giving young women "unrealistic expectations".

Ultimately, Frances Burney's writing had a significant influence upon the direction of the English novel---stressing day-to-day realism over "adventures", and instigating a shift from the male-focused, picaresque-like tales of writers like Fielding and Smollett, towards the more female-centric domestic novel which would be the dominant form during the 19th century. Burney was likewise a huge influence on the female writers who followed her---not least Jane Austen, who admired Burney tremendously, and referenced her several times in her own novels, most famously in her "Oh, it's only a novel!" speech in Northanger Abbey.

(There was a group read of Evelina a few years ago.)

...because, really, you can never quote this too often:

...and while the abilities of the nine-hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogised by a thousand pens---there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them. “I am no novel-reader---I seldom look into novels---Do not imagine that I often read novels---It is really very well for a novel.” Such is the common cant. “And what are you reading, Miss---?” “Oh! It is only a novel!” replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. “It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda”; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language...
---Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

Unexpected success on the book access front:

One of this country's lesser known sources (as in, the librarian I consulted didn't know about it, and I had to explain it to her) is the CARM Centre in Victoria, an archiving facility that specialises in document storage, but which also holds old books that have been removed from libraries.

The Centre's website is dominated by its document storage / delivery functions and says very little about its books; but there was nothing to suggest that it wouldn't also lend books. Interpretation of the very fine print suggested that it might be possible to access books via interlibrary loan, albeit at the increased cost of an "academic loan". Following up with my local library, this proved to be the case, with the added restriction that books must stay within the borrowing library.

Consequently, I will be off this afternoon to make a start upon the next book in my other reading project.

Which is to say, my other other reading project...

The Mystery League Inc. challenge:

#3: The House Of Terror by Edward Woodward (published in the UK in 1929, then in the US in 1930); cover art by Gene Thurston:



Actually, I'm a little surprised and annoyed I've had so much trouble finding a copy of The House Of Terror: this is one of the few Mystery League books to be reissued in later years, twice in fact: there was a second British edition in 1940, and an American paperback edition in 1963. I gather it is the latter which I will be reading.

I have finished a blog post about Had You Been In His Place by Lizzie Bates: a piece of Christian-didactic-temperance fiction from 1873.

You've been warned

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

July was a lesser reading month, numerically at least, dominated by two chunksters; which has at least given me a chance to catch up my reviewing!

July stats:

Works read: 10
TIOLI: 10, in 6 different challenges, with 1 shared read

Mystery / thriller: 4
Classics: 3
Contemporary drama: 2
Historical romance: 1

Re-reads: 4
Series works: 4
Blog reads: 1
1932: 0
1931: 1
Virago / Persephone: 0
Potential decommission: 1

Owned: 3
Library: 2
Ebook: 5

Male authors : female authors: 5 : 5

Oldest work: Le Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane by Alain René Le Sage (1715 / 1735)
Newest work: Vote For Love by Barbara Cartland (1977)

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

YTD stats:

Works read: 122
TIOLI: 122, in 89 different challenges, with 13 shared reads and 1 sweep

Mystery / thriller: 62 (50.8%)
Contemporary drama: 16 (13.1%)
Young adult: 11 (9.0%)
Classic: 11 (9.0%)
Historical romance: 7 (5.7%)
Contemporary romance: 3 (2.7%)
Non-fiction: 3 (2.5%)
Humour: 3 (2.5%)
Short stories: 2 (1.6%)
Historical drama: 1 (0.8%)
Science fiction: 1 (0.8%)
Western: 1 (0.8%)
Fantasy: 1 (0.8%)

Re-reads: 19 (15.6%)
Series works: 79 (64.8%)
Blog reads: 4 (3.3%)
1932: 8 (6.6%)
1931: 8 (6.6%)
Virago / Persephone: 2 (1.6%)
Potential decommission: 5 (4.1%)

Owned: 34 (27.9%)
Library: 32 (26.2%)
Ebook: 56 (45.9%)

Male authors : female authors: 68 (52.7%) : 61 (47.3%)

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

Small numbers mean---

---a small sloth!!

>203 lyzard: LEMUR!!! Bless their hearts, they can't help looking startled, can they?

>205 lyzard: SLOTH!!!!! Your numbers don't seem so small to me — you've just set the bar too high for yourself. Not that I'm complaining about the wee sloth — he/she is a cutie.

No, I think that's pretty much the default setting. :D

I don't sweat the numbers too much, but I've been running at about 15 - 18 books per month, so only just making it to 10 felt like a slump. (A deceiving impression, it certainly wasn't in words read.)

that's an early round up for the previous month, usually it would be the end of August before July was written up! premature sloth, surely!!

(said with love)

>200 lyzard: Does that mean they do send the book to your library, but you have to read it there?

>203 lyzard: Lemur!! :-)
>204 lyzard: stats!!!! perfect score on male/female writers :-)
>205 lyzard: Sloth!!!!!! :-D

>208 Helenliz:

I know, I'm shocked too!

And while you'd think this would pave the way for me to keep up, the sad truth is I usually celebrate these moments by letting things slide again...

>209 FAMeulstee:

Yes, that's right. I'm used to that, as it's what I do at the State Library and the Rare Books section of my academic library; this is my local library, much closer to home, so it's all good!

If lemurs, sloths and stats are your thing, you've come to the right place!

(Though I notice my overall male : female stats have somehow slipped from my totals - yikes! Off to fix it...)

(ETA: Fixed now!)

>203 lyzard: Wonderful expression, Liz. Perhaps he is just surprised to learn that someone else has actually read Ernest Bramah.

Have a great weekend.

Yes, I think you'd find it interesting, though as with The Castle Of Otranto it does require a certain tolerance---of its extravagance on one hand, and its 18th century stuffiness on the other: a weird combination! :)

It's fascinating watching how the novels of this period acted and reacted on each other; in Vathek, the combination of the Orientalism of Rasselas with the supernatural doings of Otranto; in The Old English Baron, the pushback against the extravagance and supernatural doings.

And speaking of which---

The C.K. Shorter List of the Best 100 Novels:

#16: The Mysteries Of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe (1794)



Thirty years after Horace Walpole set English literature on a new path, the emerging sub-genre which became known as "the Gothic novel" reached its pinnacle in 1794, in Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries Of Udolpho. Emily St Aubert, a beautiful and sensitive young woman, is left almost alone in the world when her father dies. Emily is taken in by her aunt, who has recently married a mysterious Italian nobleman; both women are carried high into the Pyrenees, to Montoni's vast but crumbling stronghold, Udolpho...

A runaway best-seller, The Mysteries Of Udolpho gave late 18th centuries everything they craved, mixing together a young couple full of "sensibility", numerous panegyrics about nature and long descriptions of strange foreign lands (all regularly punctuated with Radcliffe's poetry), with a gloomy castle, a violent yet attractive anti-hero, additional threats in the form of banditti, and a series of apparently - stress, apparently - supernatural events; all while maintaining the thread of didacticism so necessary for a novel's general acceptance.

Though modern readers (and probably quite a few contemporary ones) are disappointed when all of Emily's strange adventures are explained away, this was a vital aspect of the novel's success. Much of the popularity of the Gothic novel stemmed from its co-opting of the tropes of the male-centric picaresque tale, twisting them into a female-centric story that both thrilled and conveyed a lesson. Though a handsome young hero, Valencourt, lurks on the sidelines, The Mysteries Of Udolpho is all about Emily who, to survive the dangerous situation in which circumstances have placed her, must learn to depend upon her own judgement and to control her over-active imagination. Ann Radcliffe's careful blending of the exciting and the cautionary made The Mysteries Of Udolpho a novel for everyone to enjoy, while her focus upon her young heroine's emotional maturation became a model for many female authors to follow.

...and of course, one of the most famous follow-ons from The Mysteries Of Udolpho is Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, whose young heroine must also learn to control her imagination, albeit in the context of polite English society, not in the wilds of the Pyrenees.

Though she entirely agreed with Ann Radcliffe about the need for young women to learn to depend upon themselves, Austen added to the mix a staunch defence of novel-reading, which was an activity still often frowned upon, and particularly for girls, who were widely believed to be led astray by fiction. Austen, conversely, believed in the ability of a good novel to entertain while conveying important lessons. In addition to the "Oh! It's only a novel!" speech quoted above, Austen adds a second defiant piece of praise for her preferred form of literature---and gives it weight by placing it in the mouth of her hero, Henry Tilney:

    “I never look at it,” said Catherine, as they walked along the side of the river, “without thinking of the south of France.”
    “You have been abroad then?” said Henry, a little surprised.
    “Oh! No, I only mean what I have read about. It always puts me in mind of the country that Emily and her father travelled through, in The Mysteries of Udolpho. But you never read novels, I dare say?”
    “Why not?”
    “Because they are not clever enough for you---gentlemen read better books.”
    “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."

Liz I'm reading Framley Parsonage right now and Trollope mentions Udolpho!

Hi, Roberta!

Udolpho remained a very popular novel right through the 19th century; that passage shows how it became a common reference point: novelists could safely assume their readers had read that too! :)

Guess what day it is, Liz? It's ...



I hope you're having a good one. :-)

Awww, what a cutie. :)

Thanks, Julia!

Finished The House Of Terror for TIOLI #8.

Still reading Julia de Roubigné by Henry Mackenzie.

The C.K. Shorter List of the Best 100 Novels:

#17: Caleb Williams; or, Things As They Are (1794)



William Godwin's 1793 treatise, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, was a wide-ranging examination and denunciation of the many injustices extant in British society in the late 18th century. The highly controversial publication was widely read, but not widely enough to satisfy Godwin, who subsequently turned to fiction to reach a reading audience that might not be attracted by straight political discourse.

First published as Things As They Are; or, The Adventures Of Caleb Williams, but these days better known under its reversed, second edition title, Caleb Williams; or, Things As They Are, or just simply as Caleb Williams, William Godwin's 1794 novel was conceived as a dramatic illustration of the arguments of Enquiry Concerning Political Justice. When his parents die, young Caleb Williams is taken into the service of their former landlord, Mr Falkland, to whom Caleb becomes devoted. However, Falkland's erratic moods and behaviour pique the young man's curiosity. When Caleb discovers that his master has a dangerous secret, Falkland turns on him, bringing to bear all the powers at his disposal to ruin the young man. Caleb flees, trying to hide from his former employer and to build a new life for himself; but wherever he goes, the shadow of Falkland falls upon him...

Much of Caleb Williams is given over to stories of the abuse of power, the persecution of the poor and friendless, and the way in which rich people were able to twist the law into a weapon to use against anyone who offended or challenged them. However, though it paints a grim and disturbing picture of the inequalities and injustices of British society, it is not this aspect of Caleb Williams which has won this novel its enduring fame, but rather that William Godwin accidentally invented the detective story---or so the dogma goes. While this is not entirely accurate, Caleb does have what we might call the "detective instinct": once he realises that Falkland has a secret, he cannot stop himself from trying to find out what it is, even though he recognises that pursuing the point will only bring trouble upon himself; although exactly how much trouble, he cannot begin to imagine. The psychological complexity of Caleb himself, and the relationship between himself and Falkland, makes this a novel ahead of its time.

(Caleb Williams was the first book I examined when I began my meandering journey through the evolution of detective fiction, and I wrote a very long review of it at that time.)

The C.K. Shorter List of the Best 100 Novels:

#18: The Wild Irish Girl by Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan) (1806)



While the Gothic novel, like the Oriental novel, was usually set in familiar foreign lands purely for the sake of exoticism, very late in the 18th century there was a shift in British writing towards the true regional novel, which set itself away from the London and the English countryside, and displayed both sympathy and understanding for people often dismissed or ridiculed by mainstream literature.

While the exemplar form of this kind of writing is Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent, a blackly comic tale told in the voice of a servant to a landowning Irish family, C. K. Shorter displays a degree of iconoclasm by choosing The Wild Irish Girl by Sydney Owenson.

Written in epistolary form, Owenson's novel is told from the perspective of a dissolute young man banished to the "wilds" of Ireland by his father as punishment for his debts and bad conduct. Horatio encounters, and grows increasingly interested in, a father and daughter who occupy the remains of an ancient castle on the northwest coast. Learning that they part of the local, Catholic nobility whom his own ancestors helped conquer and displace, Horatio takes on a false identity which allows him to befriend the family and their priest. Through his interaction with them, Horatio gains a new understanding for Irish history and culture, and the injustices inflicted upon Ireland by the English. Horatio and Glorvina fall in love, but their idyll is shattered when Horatio's father arranges for him a mercenary marriage...

As was not uncommon in the epistolary form, Owenson uses a double vision in her novel to make her points. Though the main text consists of Horatio's letters to a friend in Dublin, the letters have supposedly been "edited for publication", with the "editor" adding footnotes and comments to clarify the matters under discussion. In this way, Owenson gives her text additional weight and authority---adding to the male voice of the narrative that of an expert in Irish affairs. The resulting combination of regional colour, romance and history found an unexpectedly sympathetic audience in England, with Owenson using her consequent celebrity to ongoingly champion the Irish cause.

...which brings us at last to the next book that I will actually be reading for this challenge (hopefully this month):

The C.K. Shorter List of the Best 100 Novels:

#19: Corinne; ou, l'Italie by Madame de Staël (1807)



Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein was an outspoken, controversial woman of letters, whose career extended over the most turbulent period in French history, encompassing both the French Revolution and the era of Napoleon, who she staunchly opposed. Her marriage to a Swedish diplomat gave her political standing, which lent authority to her non-fiction writing on politics and philosophy. She also became an influential literary critic, before embarking upon a career as a novelist which won her great success and acclaim. Her works are credited with greatly influencing the Romantic Movement of the early 19th century, and the Romantic poets in particular. Her most famous work, her novel Corinne, was published in 1807.

Finished Julia De Roubigné for TIOLI #7.

Now reading The Private Life Of Helen Of Troy by John Erskine.

Time for a new thread---

Please join me there!