lyzard's list: Travelling a route obscure and lonely in 2020 - Part 5

Receiving a 'highly commended' award in the Animal Portrait category, this photograph of a female cougar with her rambunctious, half-grown cubs, taken in Chile by German photographer Ingo Arndt, was titled simply "Portrait of a Mother".

My thread title this year is taken from Edgar Allan Poe's poem, Dream-Land: it seemed appropriate considering the nature of my reading plans!

    By a route obscure and lonely,
    Haunted by ill angels only,
    Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
    On a black throne reigns upright,
    I have reached these lands but newly
    From an ultimate dim Thule---
    From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,
        Out of SPACE---Out of TIME.

(The complete poem can be found here.)

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Currently reading:



The Clue Of The Rising Moon by Valentine Williams (1935)

2020 reading:

January:

1. The Daughter Of The House by Carolyn Wells (1925)
2. Leandro: or, The Lucky Rescue by J. Smythies (1690)
3. Wilhelm Meister's Travels by Johann Goethe (1821 / 1829)
4. The Bertrams by Anthony Trollope (1859)
5. Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk (1955)
6. Ralph The Bailiff, And Other Tales by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1862)
7. Death Walks In Eastrepps by Francis Beeding (1931)
8. Nemesis by Agatha Christie (1971)
9. Ambrose Holt And Family by Susan Glaspell (1931)
10. The Eye In The Museum by J. J. Connington (1929)
11. The Clock Ticks On by Valentine Williams (1933)
12. Death In The Cup by Moray Dalton (1932)
13. A Jury Of Her Peers (short story) by Susan Glaspell (1917)

February:

14. Disordered Minds by Minette Walters (2003)
15. The Bronze Hand by Carolyn Wells (1926)
16. The Creaking Tree Mystery by Leonard A. Knight (1931)
17. The Last Of The Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper (1826)
18. Reginald du Bray: An Historic Tale by 'A late nobleman' (1779)
19. The Spectacles Of Mr Cagliostro by Harry Stephen Keeler (1926)
20. Don't Go Near The Water by William Brinkley (1956)
21. Patty's Social Season by Carolyn Wells (1913)
22. Murder From Beyond by R. Francis Foster (1930)
23. The Man Who Loved Lions by Ethel Lina White (1943)
24. The Seven Sleepers by Francis Beeding (1925)
25. Anna, Where Are You? by Patricia Wentworth (1951)
26. Elephants Can Remember by Agatha Christie (1972)
27. The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart (1908)
28. I've Got My Eyes On You by Mary Higgins Clark (2018)

March:

29. Pique by Frances Notley (1850)
30. The Collegians by Gerald Griffin (1829)
31. The Wild Irish Girl by Sydney Owenson (1806)
32. Oil! by Upton Sinclair (1927)
33. By Love Possessed by James Gould Cozzens (1957)
34. Postern Of Fate by Agatha Christie (1973)
35. Murder In The Cellar by Louise Eppley and Rebecca Gayton (1931)
36. The Back-Seat Murder by Herman Landon (1931)
37. Nevertheless, She Persisted by Various (2020)
38. The Two Tickets Puzzle by J. J. Connington (1930)

2020 reading:

April:

39. Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1862)
40. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (1957)
41. Poirot's Early Cases by Agatha Christie (1974)
42. The Watersplash by Patricia Wentworth (1951)
43. The Tolliver Case by R. A. J. Walling (1933)
44. Inspector Bedison And The Sunderland Case by Thomas Cobb (1931)
45. The Mystery Of The Creeping Man by Frances Shelley Wees (1931)
46. No Walls Of Jasper by Joanna Cannan (1930)
47. The Five Red Fingers by Brian Flynn (1929)
48. I Can Has Cheezburger? A LOLCat Colleckshun by Eric Nakagawa and Kari Unebasami (2008)
49. The Mill Of Happiness by Jean Barre (1931)
50. The Ipcress File by Len Deighton (1962)

May:

51. The Mysteries Of London: Volume III by George W. M. Reynolds (1847)
52. The Refugee In America by Frances Trollope (1832)
53. The Mayfair Mystery by Henry Holt (1929)
54. The Perfect Murder Case by Christopher Bush (1929)
55. Murder On The Marsh by John Ferguson (1930)
56. Inspector Bedison Risks It by Thomas Cobb (1931)
57. October House by Kay Cleaver Strahan (1931)
58. Curtain: Poirot's Last Case by Agatha Christie (1975)
59. Inspector Frost's Jigsaw by Herbert Maynard Smith (1929)
60. Six Seconds Of Darkness by Octavus Roy Cohen (1918)
61. The Charteris Mystery by A. Fielding (1925)
62. The Death Of A Celebrity by Hulbert Footner (1938)
63. The Black Gang by 'Sapper' (H. C. McNeile) (1922)

June:

64. Faces In The Smoke by Douchan Gersi (1991)
65. Songs Of A Dead Dreamer by Thomas Ligotti (1986)
66. Patty's Suitors by Carolyn Wells (1914)
67. Louisa Egerton; or, Castle Herbert by Mary Leman Grimstone (1829)
68. Sleeping Murder: Miss Marple's Last Case by Agatha Christie (1976)
69. Ladies' Bane by Patricia Wentworth (1952)
70. The Secret Of High Eldersham by Miles Burton (1930)
71. Chronicles Of Martin Hewitt by Arthur Morrison (1895)
72. Masks Off At Midnight by Valentine Williams (1933)
73. Elsie's Friends At Woodburn by Martha Finley (1887)
74. Midnight Murder by Ralph Rodd (1931)

July:

75. L'Ombre Chinoise by Georges Simenon (1932)
76. Castle Richmond by Anthony Trollope (1860)
77. Exodus by Leon Uris (1958)
78. Miss Marple's Final Cases by Agatha Christie (1979)
79. Easy To Kill by Hulbert Footner (1931)
80. Mischief by Charlotte Armstrong (1950)
81. The Joker by Edgar Wallace (1926)
82. The Luminous Face by Carolyn Wells (1921)
83. Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets by David Simon (1991)
84. The Belfry Murder by Moray Dalton (1933)
85. Marian Grey; or, The Heiress Of Redstone Hall by Mary Jane Holmes (1863)
86. One-Man Girl by Maysie Greig (1931)
87. Dave Darrin's First Year At Annapolis; or, Two Plebe Midshipmen At The United States Naval Academy by H. Irving Hancock (1910)

August:

88. The Postmaster's Daughter by Louis Tracy (1916)
89. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (1883)
90. Tara Road by Maeve Binchy (1998)
91. The Secret River by Kate Grenville (2005)
92. Dick Lester Of Kurrajong by Mary Grant Bruce (1920)
93. The Yellow Wallpaper (short story) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892)
94. Advise And Consent by Allen Drury (1959)
95. Out Of The Past by Patricia Wentworth (1953)
96. Poison In The Garden Suburb by G.D.H. and Margaret Cole (1929)
97. Who Closed The Casement? by Thomas Cobb (1932)
98. The Clue Of The Rising Moon by Valentine Williams (1935)

Books in transit:

Purchased and shipped:

On interlibrary loan / branch transfer / storage / Rare Book request:

Library books to collect:

Upcoming requests:
The Marquise Of O., And Other Stories by Heinrich von Kleist {Fisher storage}
Our Mr Wrenn by Sinclair Lewis {Fisher storage}
From Man To Man by Olive Schreiner {Fisher Storage - 2 volumes}
Close Quarters by Michael Gilbert {JFR}

On loan:
Exodus by Leon Uris (31/08/2020)
Poison In The Garden Suburb by George and Margaret Cole (24/09/2020)
Advise And Consent by Allen Drury (24/09/2020)

**The Last Of The Mohicans by James Fenimoore Cooper
**Oil! by Upton Sinclair
The Recess by Sophia Lee
**The Collegians by Gerald Griffin
**The Wild Irish Girl by Sydney Morgan
**A Gothic Bibliography by Montague Summers

^^Baby Cart At The River Styx (14/04/2020)

Ongoing reading projects:

Blog reads:
Chronobibliography: The Fugitive Reviv'd by Peter Belon
Authors In Depth:
- Forest Of Montalbano by Catherine Cuthbertson
- Shannondale (aka "The Three Beauties; or, Shannondale: A Novel") by E.D.E.N. Southworth
- Lady Audley's Secret / The White Phantom by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
- Ellesmere by Mrs Meeke
- The Cottage by Margaret Minifie
- The Old Engagement by Julia Day
- The Abbess by Frances Trollope
Reading Roulette: Pique by Frances Notley / Our Mr Wrenn by Sinclair Lewis
Australian fiction: Louisa Egerton by Mary Leman Grimstone / Alfred Dudley; or, The Australian Settlers by ??
Gothic novel timeline: Anecdotes Of A Convent by Anonymous
Early crime fiction: The Mysteries Of London by G. W. M. Reynolds
Silver-fork novels: Sayings And Doings; or, Sketches From Life (First Series) by Theodore Hook
Related reading: Gains And Losses by Robert Lee Wollf / The Man Of Feeling by Henry Mackenzie / Le Loup Blanc by Paul Féval / Theresa Marchmont; or, The Maid Of Honour by Catherine Gore

Group / tutored reads:

NOW: The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (thread here)

Completed: The Bertrams by Anthony Trollope (thread here)
Completed: Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (thread here)
Completed: Castle Richmond by Anthony Trollope (thread here)

General reading challenges:

America's best-selling novels (1895 - ????):
Next up: The Agony And The Ecstasy by Irving Stone

Virago chronological reading project:
Next up: The Rector by Margaret Oliphant

The C.K. Shorter List of Best 100 Novels:
Next up: The Life Of Mansie Wauch by David Moir

Mystery League publications:
Next up: The Gutenberg Murders by Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning

Banned In Boston!: (here)
Next up: From Man To Man by Olive Schreiner

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

Random reading 1940 - 1969:
Next up: Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh / Close Quarters by Michael Francis Gilbert

Potential decommission / re-shelving:
Next up: Captain Kirk's Guide To Women by John "Bones" Rodriguez

The Agatha / Georgette odds and ends challenge:
Next up: Black Coffee by Agatha Christie

Completed challenges:
- Georgette Heyer historical romances in chronological order
- Agatha Christie mysteries in chronological order

Possible future reading projects:
- Agatha Christie uncollected short stories
- Georgette Heyer's historical fiction
- 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
- Life Magazine "The 100 Outstanding Books of 1924 - 1944" (Henry Seidel Canby)
- "40 Trashy Novels You Must Read Before You Die" (Flavorwire)
- best-novel lists in Wikipedia article on The Grapes Of Wrath
- Pandora 'Mothers Of The Novel'
- Newark Library list (here)
- "The Story Of Classic Crime In 100 Books" (here)
- Dean's Classics series

TBR notes:

Currently 'missing' series works:

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 / Internet Archive / Kindle}
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}
The Corpse In The Car by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #20) {CARM}
Hendon's First Case by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #21) {Rare Books}
Mystery At Olympia (aka "Murder At The Motor Show") (Dr Priestley #22) {Kindle / State Library NSW, held / Internet Archive}
In Face Of The Verdict by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #24) {Rare Books / State Library NSW, held / Internet Archive}

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}

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}

The Black Death by Moray Dalton {CARM}

1931:

Murderer's Trail by J. Jefferson Farjeon {Kindle}

Cameos by Octavus Roy Cohen {State Library NSW}
"Seen Unknown..." by Naomi Jacob {State Library NSW}

The Rum Row Murders by Charles Reed Jones {Rare Books}
Unsolved by Bruce Graeme {Rare Books}

The Picaroon Does Justice by Herman Landon {CARM}
The Crooked Lip by Herbert Adams {Rare Books / CARM}
The Wraith by Philip MacDonald {Rare Books / CARM / JFR}

The Matilda Hunter Murder by Harry Stephen Keeler {Kindle}

Death By Appointment by "Francis Bonnamy" (Audrey Walz) (Peter Utley Shane #1) {Rare Books}
The Click Of The Gate by Alice Campbell (Tommy Rostetter #1) {CARM}
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

Series back-reading:

The Red-Haired Girl by Carolyn Wells {Rare Books}
Invisible Death by Brian Flynn {Kindle}
Murder At Fenwold (aka "The Murder Of Cosmo Revere") by Christopher Bush {Kindle}
The Footsteps That Stopped by A. Fielding {Kindle}

Completist reading:

Sing Sing Nights by Harry Stephen Keeler (#4) {CARM / Kindle}
XYZ by Anna Katharine Green (#5) {Project Gutenberg}
When A Man Marries by Mary Roberts Rinehart (#3) {Project Gutenberg}
The White Cockatoo by Mignon Eberhart {Rare Books}

Unavailable / expensive:

The Amber Junk (aka The Riddle Of The Amber Ship) by Hazel Phillips Hanshew (Cleek #9)
The Hawkmoor Mystery by W. H. Lane Crauford
The Double Thumb by Francis Grierson (Sims and Wells #3)
The Mystery Of The Open Window by Anthony Gilbert (Scott Egerton #4)
The Shadow Of Evil by Charles J. Dutton (Harley Manners #2)
The Seventh Passenger by Alice MacGowan and Perry Newberry (Jerry Boyne #4)
The Pelham Murder Case by Monte Barrett (Peter Cardigan #1)
The Hanging Woman by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #11)

A Century (And A Bit) Of Reading:

A book a year from 1800 - 1900!

1800: Juliania; or, The Affectionate Sisters by Elizabeth Sandham
1801: Belinda by Maria Edgeworth
1802: The Infidel Father by Jane West
1803: Thaddeus Of Warsaw by Jane Porter
1804: The Lake Of Killarney by Anna Maria Porter
1805: The Impenetrable Secret, Find It Out! by Francis Lathom
1806: The Wild Irish Girl by Sydney Owenson
1807: Corinne; ou, l'Italie by Madame de Staël
1809: The Scottish Chiefs by Jane Porter
1812: The Absentee by Maria Edgeworth
1814: The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties by Frances Burney
1815: Headlong Hall by Thomas Love Peacock
1820: The Sketch Book Of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. by Washington Irving
1821: The Ayrshire Legatees; or, The Pringle Family by John Galt / Valerius: A Roman Story by J. G. Lockhart / Kenilworth by Walter Scott
1822: Bracebridge Hall; or, The Humorists by Washington Irving
1824: The Adventures Of Hajji Baba Of Ispahan by James Justinian Morier
1826: Lichtenstein by Wilhelm Hauff / The Last Of The Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
1827: The Epicurean by Thomas Moore / The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni
1829: Wilhelm Meister's Travels by Johann Goethe / The Collegians by Gerald Griffin / Louisa Egerton; or, Castle Herbert by Mary Leman Grimstone
1832: The Refugee In America by Frances Trollope
1836: The Tree And Its Fruits; or, Narratives From Real Life by Phoebe Hinsdale Brown
1845: Zoe: The History Of Two Lives by Geraldine Jewsbury / The Mysteries Of London (Volume I) by G. W. M. Reynolds
1846: The Mysteries Of London (Volume II) by G. W. M. Reynolds
1847: Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë / The Macdermots Of Ballycloran by Anthony Trollope / The Mysteries Of London: Volume III by G. W. M. Reynolds
1848: The Kellys And The O'Kellys by Anthony Trollope
1850: Pique by Sarah Stickney Ellis
1851: The Mother-In-Law; or, The Isle Of Rays by E.D.E.N. Southworth
1857: The Three Clerks by Anthony Trollope
1859: The Semi-Detached House by Emily Eden / The Bertrams by Anthony Trollope
1860: The Semi-Attached Couple by Emily Eden / Castle Richmond by Anthony Trollope
1863: Marian Grey; or, The Heiress Of Redstone Hall by Mary Jane Holmes
1869: He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope
1873: Had You Been In His Place by Lizzie Bates
1874: Chaste As Ice, Pure As Snow by Charlotte Despard
1877: Elsie's Children by Martha Finley
1880: The Duke's Children: First Complete Edition by Anthony Trollope / Elsie's Widowhood by Martha Finley
1881: Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen / The Beautiful Wretch by William Black
1882: Grandmother Elsie by Martha Finley
1883: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson / Elsie's New Relations by Martha Finley
1884: Elsie At Nantucket by Martha Finley
1885: The Two Elsies by Martha Finley
1886: Elsie's Kith And Kin by Martha Finley
1887: Elsie's Friends At Woodburn by Martha Finley
1892: The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
1894: Martin Hewitt, Investigator by Arthur Morrison / The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen
1895: Chronicles Of Martin Hewitt by Arthur Morrison
1896: The Island Of Dr Moreau by H. G. Wells
1897: Penelope's Progress by Kate Douglas Wiggin
1898: A Man From The North by Arnold Bennett / The Lust Of Hate by Guy Newell Boothby
1899: Agatha Webb by Anna Katharine Green / Dr Nikola's Experiment by Guy Newell Boothby
1900: The Circular Study by Anna Katharine Green

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); Tales Of Hoffmann (1982)
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 London: Volume I
- The Mysteries Of London: Volume II
- The Mysteries Of London: Volume III
- The Mysteries Of London: Volume IV
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)
Ruth The Betrayer; or, The Female Spy by Edward Ellis (!862-1863)
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)
Hagar Of The Pawn-Shop by Fergus Hume (1898)
The Adventures Of A Lady Pearl-Broker by Beatrice Heron-Maxwell (1899)
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)
Miss Madelyn Mack, Detective by Hugh C. Weir (1914)

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}
(1878 - 1917) **Anna Katharine Green - Ebenezer Gryce - The Mystery Of The Hasty Arrow (13/13)
(1896 - 1909) **Melville Davisson Post - Randolph Mason - The Corrector Of Destinies (3/3)
(1894 - 1903) **Arthur Morrison - Martin Hewitt - Adventures Of Martin Hewitt (3/4) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1895 - 1901) **Guy Newell Boothby - Dr Nikola - Farewell, Nikola (5/5)
(1897 - 1900) **Anna Katharine Green - Amelia Butterworth - The Circular Study (3/3)
(1899 - 1917) **Anna Katharine Green - Caleb Sweetwater - The Mystery Of The Hasty Arrow (7/7)
(1899 - 1909) **E. W. Hornung - Raffles - Mr Justice Raffles (4/4)
(1900 - 1974) Ernest Bramah - Kai Lung - Kai Lung: Six / Kai Lung Raises His Voice (7/7)

(1903 - 1904) **Louis Tracy - Reginald Brett - The Albert Gate Mystery (2/2)
(1905 - 1925) **Baroness Orczy - The Old Man In The Corner - Unravelled Knots (3/3)}
(1905 - 1928) **Edgar Wallace - The Just Men - Again The Three Just Men (6/6)
(1907 - 1942) R. Austin Freeman - Dr John Thorndyke - The Jacob Street Mystery (26/26)
(1907 - 1941) *Maurice Leblanc - Arsene Lupin - The Hollow Needle (3/21) {ManyBooks}
(1909 - 1942) *Carolyn Wells - Fleming Stone - The Red-Haired Girl (21/49) {Rare Books}
(1909 - 1929) *J. S. Fletcher - Inspector Skarratt - Marchester Royal (1/3) {Kindle}
(1910 - 1936) *Arthur B. Reeve - Craig Kennedy - The Adventuress (10/24) {Kindle}
(1910 - 1946) A. E. W. Mason - Inspector Hanaud - The House In Lordship Lane (7/7)
(1910 - 1917) Edgar Wallace - Inspector Smith - Kate Plus Ten (3/3)
(1910 - 1930) **Edgar Wallace - Inspector Elk - The Twister (4/6) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1910 - 1932) *Thomas, Mary and Hazel Hanshew - Cleek - The Amber Junk (9/12) {AbeBooks}
(1910 - 1918) **John McIntyre - Ashton-Kirk - Ashton-Kirk: Criminologist (4/4)
(1910 - 1928) **Louis Tracy - Winter and Furneaux - The Postmaster's Daughter (5/9) {Project Gutenberg}

(1911 - 1935) G. K. Chesterton - Father Brown - The Scandal Of Father Brown (5/5)
(1911 - 1940) *Bertram Atkey - Smiler Bunn - The Smiler Bunn Brigade (2/10) {rare, expensive}
(1912 - 1919) **Gordon Holmes (Louis Tracy) - Steingall and Clancy - The Bartlett Mystery (3/3)
(1913 - 1973) Sax Rohmer - Fu-Manchu - The Bride Of Fu-Manchu (6/14) {interlibrary loan / Kindle / fadedpage.com}
(1913 - 1952) *Jeffery Farnol - Jasper Shrig - The High Adventure (4/9) {State Library NSW, JFR / Rare Books}
(1914 - 1950) Mary Roberts Rinehart - Hilda Adams - Episode Of The Wandering Knife (5/5)
(1914 - 1934) Ernest Bramah - Max Carrados - The Bravo Of London (5/5)
(1915 - 1936) *John Buchan - Richard Hannay - The Thirty-Nine Steps (1/5) {Fisher Library / Project Gutenberg / branch transfer / 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}
(1918 - 1923) **Carolyn Wells - Pennington Wise - The Vanishing Of Betty Varian (6/8) {Project Gutenberg}
(1918 - 1939) Valentine Williams - The Okewood Brothers - The Spider's Touch (6/?) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1918 - 1944) Valentine Williams - Clubfoot - The Spider's Touch (7/8) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1918 - 1950) *Wyndham Martyn - Anthony Trent - The Mysterious Mr Garland (3/26) {CARM}
(1919 - 1966) *Lee Thayer - Peter Clancy - The Key (6/60) {expensive / Rare Books}
(1919 - 1922) **Octavus Roy Cohen - David Carroll - The Crimson Alibi (2/4) {Rare Books / HathiTrust}

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

Series and sequels, 1920 - 1927:

(1920 - 1948) *H. C. Bailey - Reggie Fortune - Case For Mr Fortune (7/23) {State Library NSW, JFR}
(1920 - 1975) Agatha Christie - Hercule Poirot - Curtain (38/38)
(1920 - 1921) **Natalie Sumner Lincoln - Ferguson - The Unseen Ear (2/2)
(1920 - 1937) *H. C. McNeile - Bulldog Drummond - The Third Round (3/10 - series continued) {Roy Glashan's Library}

(1921 - 1929) **Charles J. Dutton - John Bartley - Streaked With Crimson (9/9)
(1921 - 1925) **Herman Landon - The Gray Phantom - Gray Magic (5/5)

(1922 - 1973) Agatha Christie - Tommy and Tuppence - Postern Of Fate (5/5)
(1922 - 1927) *Alice MacGowan and Perry Newberry - Jerry Boyne - The Seventh Passenger (4/5) {Amazon}
(1922 - 1931) Valentine Williams - Inspector Manderton - Death Answers The Bell (4/4)

(1923 - 1937) Dorothy L. Sayers - Lord Peter Wimsey - In The Teeth Of The Evidence (14/14)
(1923 - 1924) **Carolyn Wells - Lorimer Lane - The Fourteenth Key (2/2)
(1923 - 1927) Annie Haynes - Inspector Furnival - The Crow's Inn Tragedy (3/3)

(1924 - 1959) Philip MacDonald - Colonel Anthony Gethryn - The Wraith (6/24) {ILL / JFR}
(1924 - 1957) *Freeman Wills Crofts - Inspector French - The Sea Mystery (4/30) {Rare Books / State Library NSW, JFR / ILL / Kindle}
(1924 - 1935) * / ***Francis D. Grierson - Inspector Sims and Professor Wells - The Smiling Death (6/13) {AbeBooks, expensive}
(1924 - 1940) *Lynn Brock - Colonel Gore - The Dagwort Coombe Murder (5/12) {Kindle}
(1924 - 1933) *Herbert Adams - Jimmie Haswell - The Crooked Lip (2/9) {Rare Books}
(1924 - 1944) *A. Fielding - Inspector Pointer - The Footsteps That Stopped (3/23) {Rare Books / Kindle / Project Gutenberg Australia}
(1924 - 1936) *Hulbert Footner - Madame Storey - The Casual Murderer (8/14) {Roy Glashan's Library}

(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 - Burglars In Bucks (aka "The Berkshire Mystery") (7/?) {Fisher Library}
(1925 - 1932) Earl Derr Biggers - Charlie Chan - Keeper Of The Keys (6/6)
(1925 - 1944) Agatha Christie - Superintendent Battle - Towards Zero (5/5)
(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 Hidden Kingdom (2/2) {Roy Glashan's Library}

(1926 - 1968) *Christopher Bush - Ludovic Travers - Murder At Fenwold (aka "The Murder Of Cosmo Revere") (3/63) {Kindle / Rare Books}
(1926 - 1939) *S. S. Van Dine - Philo Vance - The Kennel Murder Case (6/12) {fadedpage.com}
(1926 - 1952) *J. Jefferson Farjeon - Ben the Tramp - Murderer's Trail (3/8) {interlibrary loan / Kindle}
(1926 - ????) *G. D. H. Cole / M. Cole - Everard Blatchington - Burglars In Bucks (aka "The Berkshire Mystery") (2/6) {Fisher Library}
(1926 - ????) *Arthur Gask - Gilbert Larose - The Dark Highway (2/27) {University of Adelaide / Project Gutenberg Australia / mobilereads}
(1926 - 1931) *Aidan de Brune - Dr Night - Dr Night (1/3) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1926 - 1931) * / ***R. Francis Foster - Anthony Ravenhill - Anthony Ravenhill, Crime Merchant (1/?) {expensive}

(1927 - 1933) *Herman Landon - The Picaroon - The Picaroon Does Justice (2/7) {Book Searchers / CARM}
(1927 - 1932) *Anthony Armstrong - Jimmie Rezaire - The Trail Of The Lotto (3/5) {CARM / AbeBooks}
(1927 - 1937) *Ronald Knox - Miles Bredon - The Body In The Silo (3/5) {Kindle / Rare Books}
(1927 - 1958) *Brian Flynn - Anthony Bathurst - Invisible Death (6/54) {Kindle}
(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) - Kirker Cameron and Daniel "Biff" Corrigan - Masquerade (1/4) {expensive}
(1927 - 1929) **George Dilnot - Inspector Strickland - The Crooks' Game (1/2) {AbeBooks / Amazon}
(1927 - 1949) **Dornford Yates - Richard Chandos - Perishable Goods (2/8) {State Library, JFR / Kindle}

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

Series and sequels, 1928 - 1930:

(1928 - 1961) Patricia Wentworth - Miss Silver - Vanishing Point (24/33) {fadedpage.com}
(1928 - 1936) *Gavin Holt - Luther Bastion - The Garden Of Silent Beasts (5/17) {academic loan / State Library NSW, held}
(1928 - 1936) Kay Cleaver Strahan - Lynn MacDonald - The Meriwether Mystery (5/7) {Kindle}
(1928 - 1937) John Alexander Ferguson - Francis McNab - The Grouse Moor Murder (3/5) {HathiTrust}
(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 Crystal Beads Murder (4/4)
(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 - The Case Of The Late Pig (8/35) {interlibrary loan / Kindle / fadedpage.com}
(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)
(1929 - ????) Mignon Eberhart - Nurse Sarah Keate - Dead Yesterday And Other Stories (6/8) (NB: multiple Eberhart characters) {expensive / limited edition} / Wolf In Man's Clothing (7/8) {Rare Books / Kindle}
(1929 - ????) Moray Dalton - Inspector Collier - The Belfry Murder (4/?) - {Kindle}
(1929 - ????) * / ***Charles Reed Jones - Leighton Swift - The King Murder (1/?) {AbeBooks}
(1929 - 1931) Carolyn Wells - Kenneth Carlisle - The Skeleton At The Feast (3/3) {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 - Wings Above The Diamantina (3/29) {Fisher Library}
(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) {Rare Books}
(1929 - 1943) *Gret Lane - Kate Clare Marsh and Inspector Barrin - The Cancelled Score Mystery (1/9) {Kindle}
(1929 - 1961) *Henry Holt - Inspector Silver - The Midnight Mail (2/16) {Kindle}
(1929 - 1930) *J. J. Connington - Superintendent Ross - The Two Tickets Puzzle (2/2)
(1929 - 1941) *H. Maynard Smith - Inspector Frost - Inspector Frost And Lady Brassingham (2/7) {Kindle}
(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)
(1929 - 1940) *Rufus King - Lieutenant Valcour - Murder By The Clock (1/11) {AbeBooks, omnibus / Kindle}
(1929 - 1933) *Will Levinrew (Will Levine) - Professor Brierly - For Sale - Murder (4/5) {AbeBooks}
(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 - Who Closed The Casement? (4/4)
(1929 - ????) * J. C. Lenehan - Inspector Kilby - The Tunnel Mystery (1/?) {Kindle}
(1929 - 1936) *Robin Forsythe - Anthony Algernon Vereker - Missing Or Murdered (1/5) {Kindle}
(1929 - 1931) */***David Frome (Zenith Jones Brown) - Major Gregory Lewis - The Murder Of An Old Man (1/3) {rare, expensive}

(1930 - ????) Moray Dalton - Hermann Glide - The Strange Case Of Harriet Hall (4/?) {Kindle}
(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) {expensive}
(1930 - 1941) *Harriette Ashbrook - Philip "Spike" Tracy - The Murder Of Sigurd Sharon (3/7) {Kindle / 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 - Miss Marple's Final Cases (14/14)
(1930 - 1939) Anne Austin - James "Bonnie" Dundee - Murdered But Not Dead (5/5)
(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 Nation's Missing Guest (3/10) {CARM}
(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)
(1930 - 1931) *Roland Daniel - John Hopkins - The Rosario Murder Case (1/2) {unavailable?}
(1930 - 1961) Mark Cross ("Valentine", aka Archibald Thomas Pechey) - Daphne Wrayne and her Four Adjusters - The Adjusters (1/53) {rare, expensive}
(1930 - ????) Elaine Hamilton - Inspector Reynolds - Some Unknown Hand (aka "The Westminster Mystery") (1/?) {Kindle}
(1930 - 1932) J. S. Fletcher - Sergeant Charlesworth - The Borgia Cabinet (1/2) {fadedpage.com / Kindle}

*** 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 - Sandbar Sinister (5/24) {AbeBooks, expensive}
(1931 - 1955) Stuart Palmer - Hildegarde Withers - Murder On The Blackboard (3/18) {Kindle}
(1931 - 1933) Sydney Fowler - Inspector Cleveland - Arresting Delia (4/4)
(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 - 1935) Clifton Robbins - Clay Harrison - Methylated Murder (5/5)
(1931 - 1972) Georges Simenon - Inspector Maigret - L'Affaire Saint-Fiacre (13/75) {ILL}
(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 - Death In The Dentist's Chair (2/3) {Kindle}
(1931 - 1935) Valentine Williams - Sergeant Trevor Dene - The Clue Of The Rising Moon (4/4)
(1931 - 1942) Patricia Wentworth - Frank Garrett - Pursuit Of A Parcel (5/5)
(1931 - 1931) Frances Shelley Wees - Michael Forrester and Tuck Torrie - The Mystery Of The Creeping Man (2/2)

(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 - VIII To IX (aka "Eight To Nine" aka "The Bachelor Flat Mystery") (4/22) {Kindle}
(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) {Kindle / Rare Books}
(1932 - 1944) Nicholas Brady (John Victor Turner) - Ebenezer Buckle - The House Of Strange Guests (1/4) {Kindle}
(1932 - 1933) Barnaby Ross (aka Ellery Queen) - Drury Lane - Drury Lane's Last Case (4/4) {AbeBooks}
(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?}
(1932 - 1951) Sydney Horler - Tiger Standish - Tiger Standish (1/11) {Rare Books}

(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 - 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}
(1933 - 1952) Wyndham Martyn - Christopher Bond - Christopher Bond, Adventurer (1/8) {rare}
(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 - 1953) Leslie Ford (Zenith Jones Brown) - Colonel Primrose - The Strangled Witness (1/17) {Rare Books}
(1934 - 1975) Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe - Fer-de-Lance (1/?) {Rare Books / State Library NSW, JFR / Kindle}
(1934 - 1935) Vernon Loder - Inspector Chace - Murder From Three Angles (1/2) {Kindle /
(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}
(1936 - 1974) Anthony Gilbert (Lucy Malleson) - Arthur Crook - Murder By Experts (1/51) {interlibrary loan}
(1936 - 1940) George Bell Dyer - The Catalyst Club - The Catalyst Club (1/3) {AbeBooks}
(1936 - 1956) Theodora Du Bois - Anne and Jeffrey McNeil - Armed With A New Terror (1/19) {unavailable?}
(1936 - 1945) Charles Kingston - Chief Inspector Wake - Murder In Piccadilly (1/7) {Kindle}
(1937 - 1953) Leslie Ford (Zenith Jones Brown) - Grace Latham - Ill Met By Moonlight (1/16){Kindle}
(1938 - 1944) Zelda Popkin - Mary Carner - Death Wears A White Gardenia (1/6) {Kindle}
(1939 - 1942) Patricia Wentworth - Inspector Lamb - The Ivory Dagger (11/?) {fadedpage.com}
(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?}
(1955 - 1991) Patricia Highsmith - Tom Ripley - Ripley Under Ground (2/5) {interlibrary loan / Kindle}
(1957 - 1993) Chester B. Himes - The Harlem Cycle - For Love Of Imabelle (aka "A Rage In Harlem") (1/9) {interlibrary loan / Kindle}

*** Incompletely available series

Non-crime series and sequels:

(1867 - 1905) **Martha Finley - Elsie Dinsmore - Christmas With Grandma Elsie (14/28) {Project Gutenberg}
(1867 - 1872) **George MacDonald - The Seaboard Parish - Annals Of A Quiet Neighbourhood (1/3) {ManyBooks}
(1893 - 1915) **Kate Douglas Wiggins - Penelope - Penelope's Postscripts (4/4)
(1894 - 1898) **Anthony Hope - Ruritania - Rupert Of Hentzau (3/3)
(1898 - 1918) **Arnold Bennett - Five Towns - Anna Of The Five Towns (2/11) {Sutherland Library}

(1901 - 1919) **Carolyn Wells - Patty Fairfield - Patty's Romance (13/17) {Project Gutenberg}
(1901 - 1927) **George Barr McCutcheon - Graustark - Beverly Of Graustark (2/6) {Project Gutenberg}
(1906 - 1930) **John Galsworthy - The Forsyte Saga - The White Monkey (6/11) {Fisher storage / Sutherland stack}
(1907 - 1912) **Carolyn Wells - Marjorie - Marjorie's Vacation (1/6) {ManyBooks}
(1908 - 1924) **Margaret Penrose - Dorothy Dale - Dorothy Dale: A Girl Of Today (1/13) {ManyBooks}
(1909 - 1912) **Emerson Hough - Western Trilogy - 54-40 Or Fight (1/3) {Project Gutenberg}
(1910 - 1931) Grace S. Richmond - Red Pepper Burns - Red Pepper Returns (6/6)
(1910 - 1933) Jeffery Farnol - The Vibarts - The Way Beyond (3/3) {Fisher Library storage / fadedpage.com}

(1911 - 1937) Mary Roberts Rinehart - Letitia Carberry - Tish Marches On (5/5)
(1911 - 1919) **Alfred Bishop Mason - Tom Strong - Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout (5/5)
(1913 - 1934) *Alice B. Emerson - Ruth Fielding - Ruth Fielding In The Far North (20/30) {expensive}
(1916 - 1941) John Buchan - Edward Leithen - Sick Heart River (5/5)
(1915 - 1923) **Booth Tarkington - Growth - The Magnificent Ambersons (2/3) {Project Gutenberg / Fisher Library / Kindle}
(1917 - 1929) **Henry Handel Richardson - Dr Richard Mahony - Australia Felix (1/3) {Fisher Library / Kindle}

(1920 - 1939) E. F. Benson - Mapp And Lucia - Trouble For Lucia (6/6)
(1920 - 1952) William McFee - Spenlove - The Adopted - (7/7)
(1920 - 1932) *Alice B. Emerson - Betty Gordon - Betty Gordon At Bramble Farm (1/15) {ManyBooks}
(1923 - 1931) *Agnes Miller - The Linger-Nots - The Linger-Nots And The Secret Maze (5/5) {unavailable}
(1924 - 1928) **Ford Madox Ford - Parade's End - No More Parades (2/4) {ebook}
(1926 - 1936) *Margery Lawrence - The Round Table - Nights Of The Round Table (1/2) {Kindle}
(1927 - 1960) **Mazo de la Roche - Jalna - Jalna (1/16) {State Library NSW, JFR / fadedpage.com}

(1928 - ????) Trygve Lund - Weston of the Royal North-West Mounted Police - The Vanished Prospector (6/9) {AbeBooks}
(1929 - 1931) *Ernest Raymond - Once In England - A Family That Was (1/3) {State Library NSW, interlibrary loan}

(1930 - 1932) Hugh Walpole - The Herries Chronicles - Vanessa (4/4)
(1930 - 1932) Faith Baldwin - The Girls Of Divine Corners - Myra: A Story Of Divine Corners (4/4)
(1930 - 1940) *E. M. Delafield - The Provincial Lady - The Provincial Lady In Wartime (4/4)

(1931 - 1951) Olive Higgins Prouty - The Vale Novels - Fabia (5/5)
(1931 - 1934) T. S. Stribling - The Vaiden Trilogy - The Store (2/3) {Internet Archive / academic loan / State Library, held}
(1931 - 1935) Pearl S. Buck - The House Of Earth - A House Divided (3/3)
(1932 - 1932) Lizette M. Edholm - The Merriweather Girls - The Merriweather Girls At Good Old Rockhill (4/4) {HathiTrust}
(1932 - 1952) D. E. Stevenson - Mrs Tim - Mrs Tim Flies Home (5/5) {interlibrary loan}

(1933 - 1970) Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richlieu - The Forbidden Territory (1/11) {Fisher Library}
(1934 - 1936) Storm Jameson - The Mirror In Darkness - Company Parade (1/3) {Fisher Library}
(1934 - 1968) Dennis Wheatley - Gregory Sallust - Black August (1/11) {interlibrary loan / omnibus}
(1936 - 1952) Helen Dore Boylston - Sue Barton - Sue Barton, Student Nurse (1/7) {interlibrary loan}

(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}

Unavailable series works:

John Rhode - Dr Priestley
The Hanging Woman (#11) {rare, expensive}

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 {NB: Now available in paperback, but expensive}
>#4 onwards (to end of series)

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

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

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

Books currently on loan:

    


        

Reading projects:

Blog:

        

        

Other projects:

        

        

Group read news:

The thread is now up for the group read of Anthony Trollope's Castle Richmond - here.

All welcome!

There will also be a group read of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, next month (part of 'All Virago, All August').

Ruminations:

Though it looked for a while like our libraries were getting back to normal, reopening has stalled and this continues to impact my reading---in particular getting into any sort of rhythm with my challenges.

This constant state of disorganisation is preying on my OCD: I'm just in a constant state of low-key irritation at not being able to make proper plans.

But there's no excuse whatsoever for the state of my reviewing, which has fallen apart both here and at my blog. I need to just knuckle down and make myself write a minimum of one per day (or a few hundred words over at the blog), and get things ticking over again.

We'll see... :)

That'll do; please come on in!

Began AND completed Easy To Kill by Hulbert Footner, for TIOLI #9.

Now reading Mischief by Charlotte Armstrong.

Happy new thread, Liz!

>1 lyzard: What a great photo, mother cougar looks so regal.

Happ New Thread, Liz!

Love the photo up top. Looks like she’s getting ready to say, “Don’t make me turn around!” judging by the position of her ears.

I appreciate all your animal pictures, Liz. They brighten what can sometimes be a dreary day.

The expression on Mama Cougar's face in your thread topper reminds me of a family portrait of my brother and I with my mom. We are all dressed up except you can clearly see that my brother managed to wear his filthy scruffy sneakers with his suit, not discovered until we were posing for the photo. Like that cougar, my mom's face seems to say, "Kids!"

>18 lyzard: I see Advice and Consent in your list of "other projects". That's long been on my TBR pile; tell me more!

>23 FAMeulstee:

Thanks, Anita! Yeah, she's gorgeous. :)

>24 Matke:

Thanks, Gail!

I know! - mothers, right?? Yes, I feel that way about them too.

>25 rosalita:

We have a photo of my brother taken impromptu when he was a kid, misbehaving and very full of himself (and refusing to do as he was told while my parents were getting ready to go out), with my mother standing behind him obviously about to land like a ton of bricks! :D

The first thing you need to know is that it is an ENORMOUS chunkster! That said, it's a book I really enjoy, though I find it sad these days: Allen Drury went tub-thumping far-right-wing later in his career and his books then are dreadful, but in this one the point is that there are good and honourable people on both sides of the political fence, and the book is about those people getting together to solve a serious problem for the good of the nation.

Sigh.

Mind you: the book is science fiction---and not just for that scenario! Its backdrop is that the Russians have reached the moon first (or say they have). Very bizarre these days, but conceivable post-Sputnik.

Happy new thread!

HAppy new one!

Love the picture at the top. I can't decide if she is studiously ignoring them or about to turn round and give them what for!

From your last thread, I feel I am one step ahead. (doesn't happen often!) I decided to read all Heyers romances and the historical novels in publication order. So I have read 4 of the earlier setting novels and waded through An Infamous Army. I've got a few of the mysteries, so may well read them as well once I've done with the current project. For completeness, you understand. In fact, this is the one place I'm pretty sure that completeness would be understood!

>26 lyzard: Well, if you'd like a reading companion for Advise and Consent just holler!

>28 figsfromthistle:

Thanks, Anita!

>29 Helenliz:

She's thinking, "How long before I can abandon them?" :)

Not just understood, embraced!

Yes, I noticed that you were doing that. As with the Agathas, cataloguing was my original excuse for the Heyer re-read, rather than hunting up her books that I don't own; but of course, my OCD soon began to take exception to me leaving gaps. :D

The historicals are more readily available now than they were when I started this, so that's a positive. Meanwhile, most of Georgette's mysteries are 1932 onwards so they haven't come my way as yet.

>30 rosalita:

I'd be delighted to have you, my dear, but I won't be putting any pressure on. (I feel bad enough about Steve!)

Finished Mischief for TIOLI #1.

Now reading The Joker by Edgar Wallace.

Finished The Joker for TIOLI #8.

Now reading The Luminous Face by Carolyn Wells.

Best-selling books in the United States for 1958:

1. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
2. Anatomy of a Murder by Robert Traver
3. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
4. Around the World with Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis
5. From the Terrace by John O'Hara
6. Eloise at Christmastime by Kay Thompson
7. Ice Palace by Edna Ferber
8. The Winthrop Woman by Anya Seton
9. The Enemy Camp by Jerome Weidman
10. Victorine by Frances Parkinson Keyes

The best-seller list of 1958 is very much a case of "one extreme to the other".

At one end of the spectrum we have two comic works: the third book in Kay Thompson's series about the bratty Eloise, Eloise at Christmastime, and Patrick Dennis' follow-up to his 1956 best-seller, Around the World with Auntie Mame.

In the middle come the inevitable historical novels. Anya Seton's The Winthrop Woman is the bizarre true story of Elizabeth Fones Winthrop, the niece and daughter-in-law of John Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Ice Palace was Edna Ferber's first novel in five years, and traces the story of Alaska from WWI through to its battle for statehood.

Frances Parkinson Keyes' Victorine is a mystery-thriller about a businessman caught between two women and embroiled in murder. Robert Traver's Anatomy of a Murder (famously filmed by Otto Preminger and starring Jimmy Stewart) is about the trial of a soldier for murdering the man who assaulted his wife---or so she says...

Jerome Weidman's The Enemy Camp is one of a number of contemporary "Jewish novels", this one about the contentious friendship between a naive Jewish boy and his rough-and-tumble Gentile best friend. John O'Hara's From the Terrace, meanwhile, dissects contemporary WASP society, via the story of an ambitious young man who marries "up" into the New York elite. (This filming starred Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.)

In spite of its widespread banning and censorship, Vladimir Nabokov's highly controversial Lolita, about a jaded middle-aged professor obsessed with his pre-teen step-daughter, made it to #3 on the list.

The best-selling book of 1958, however, was Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago.

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was born in Moscow in 1890, into an assimilated Jewish family. The Pasternaks were both wealthy and artistic: Boris's father was an artist, and his mother was a concert pianist. Both were members of "the Tolstoy Movement, and the former provided the illustrations for Tolstoy's Resurrection.

Pasternak himself initially studied music at the Moscow Conservatory, but left to pursue philosophy at the German University of Marburg. He began to write after becoming a so-called "Russian Fururist", a movement of Russian poets and artists who embraced modernity and cultural rejuvenation. He published two well-received volumes of poetry, but his initial success was overwhelmed by the outbreak of WWI. Pasternak spent the next three years working in a chemical factory. He continued to write, however, and managed to publish a third volume of poems in 1917.

When the Civil War broke out, Pasternak remained in Moscow rather than fleeing, as did many other Russian writers. Though sympathetic with the ideals of the revolution, he was clear-sighted about its consequences and critical of its leadership and increasing brutality.

In 1922, Pasternak published My Sister, Life, which was acclaimed as a landmark work of Russian poetry. His subsequent works were more erratic, but they included his first attempts at writing prose. As the 1920s wore on, Pasternak became increasingly disturbed by pressure to subvert his writing to the needs of the government; his resistance cost him many friendships, and attracted ominous attention in Moscow.

Many writers and artists fell foul of the Soviet regime, with Pasternak famously mocked by Stalin himself when he failed to speak up for his arrested friend and collaborator, Osip Mandelstam. However, this may have saved Pasternak's life: when he became one of many marked for execution during the purges, Stalin crossed his name off the list. During WWII, Pasternak was permitted to visit the front and worked amongst the soldiers as an amateur morale officer. Subsequently he supported himself as a translator.

Though married, Pasternak was having an affair with Olga Ivinskaya, which ended when she was arrested by the KGB and sent to Siberia. At the time Ivinskata was pregnant with Pasternak's baby, and suffered a miscarriage. She survived her sentence, however, and later published her memoirs; she also resumed her relationship with Pasternak after her release.

The government's treatment of Olga Ivinskaya became a watershed moment for Pasternak, and he settled down to write the novel that he had been mulling over for many years...

Publication in Russia was impossible; but through the assistance of an Italian journalist, Sergio D'Angelo, in 1956 Pasternak's manuscript was smuggled to a publishing house in Milan.

Translated in several languages (although not Russian; not then), Doctor Zhivago became an international phenomenon. With his life already in danger, Pasternak was both thrilled and horrified to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature - officially for his "contributions to poetry" - and he declined the award. The Academy responded by insisting upon the validity of the award, and declined to transfer the honour to an alternate recipient.

In the US, the government was quick to see the potential of Doctor Zhivago as anti-Communist propaganda; and it was the CIA who arranged for its translation into Russian, and had the book smuggled into the Soviet Union and other Communist countries. (In 2014, it was also revealed that the CIA had been influential in the decision to award Pasternak the Nobel Prize.)

Meanwhile, in response to public demand, a rather hasty English-language translation was undertaken by Max Hayward and Manya Harari. This first appeared in August of 1958; and by the end of that year, Doctor Zhivago was officially America's best-selling book of the year.

It was also Boris Pasternak's only work of fiction: he returned to writing poetry. He remained under threat of deportation, if not worse, until his death in 1960. In 1989, his son, Yevgenii, was permitted to travel to Stockholm to belatedly accept his father's Nobel Prize.

Publication date: 1957
Genre: Historical drama
Read for: The best-seller challenge

Doctor Zhivago - I'll be honest with you: I don't get along with the Russians. There's nothing ideological about it. Rather, I find the "translation distance" greater in Russian literature than in any other; while the convention which finds every character carrying at least three versions of their name - and the constant requirement to stop and try to remember who everyone is, and where you last saw them - results for me in an inability properly to engage with the narrative. This is a particular problem in Doctor Zhivago, wherein it is one of the novel's major points that the characters keep showing up in different identities, effectively as different people, in conjunction with the rolling upheaval that overtook Russia from the revolution of 1905 to the outbreak of WWII. The novel's protagonist is Yuri Andreevich Zhivago (also called "Yura" and "Yurochka", but fortunately for sanity's sake, mostly just "Yuri"), whose childhood is spent in poverty with his mother after they are deserted by his wealthy father, and who after being orphaned is taken in and raised by his maternal uncle, Nikolai, a philosopher who was formally a priest. His upbringing sets the seal upon Yuri's "apartness", which will haunt him all his life: though sympathetic with the ideals of the revolution, he doubts the capacity of its leaders to bring about the great change they envisage; though dreaming of poetry, he qualifies as a doctor and works amongst the people; though married and a father, he is haunted by the beautiful Larissa Fyodorovna Guichard, known as "Lara"... Doctor Zhivago is a novel divided into broad sections reflecting the various distinct periods of upheaval that unfold over the course of its narrative. Though Yuri is necessarily caught up in the tide of history, serving as a military doctor during WWI, and later press-ganged into the service of the Bolshevik guerrilla forces, he holds himself apart, remaining defiantly an individual and a humanist even as his country sweeps towards the subsuming of personal rights in the cause of "the masses". Through Yuri's critical eyes we see both the high hopes and the failures of the revolution: the justified beginnings and the descent into increasingly brutal force and violence; the inability of the leaders to deal with the newly created reality, and their refusal to accept it as such. Aware of himself as a man out of step with his times, repeatedly Yuri seeks a refuge from a world in which he can find no place of his own; but again and again, circumstances uproot him and throw him back into the maelstrom... Boris Pasternak's own political and religious feeling infuse the narrative of Doctor Zhivago and the character of Yuri, who is presented as almost mystically aware of the natural world and of a greater power behind it: a situation which both separates him from his predominantly earthy companions and allows him to cling to something bigger even than the revolution. It is here, however, that Doctor Zhivago becomes a particularly difficult read, with numerous lengthy passages reflecting Yuri's spiritual ruminations, and the author's own belief in those seemingly contradictory human goals, fellowship and freedom. Perhaps even more difficult from an artistic point of view is that coincidence runs rampant in this novel, bringing together again and again the most unlikely people, in the most unlikely places. Above all, however - unsurprisingly in a novel in which politics, philosophy and symbolism hold such sway - few of the characters really convince as real people---not even Yuri, for all the time we spend inside his head; while Lara, whose very task in the narrative is to be all things to all men, bears little resemblance to a real woman. Over hundreds of pages, this lack of what we might call "real" human companionship (ironic in so defiantly humanist a novel) grows wearisome. Doctor Zhivago is a work whose intent is pure, and whose creation took an act of great courage; its themes are vital; and it offers many striking and beautiful passages throughout its narrative; but too often, reading it feels exactly like slogging through the Russian snows.

    This printed matter consisted of newspaper articles, the records of speeches at meetings, and decrees. Yuri Andreevich glanced cursorily at the titles. 'On the Rules of the Requisition and Taxation of the Propertied Classes.' 'On Workers Control.' 'On Factory Committees.' These were the instructions of the new power that had come to the town to abolish the preceding order found there. They were a reminder of the immutability of its foundations, perhaps forgotten by the inhabitants during the temporary rule of the Whites.
    But Yuri Andreevich's head began to spin from the monotonous repetitions. What year did these headlines belong to? The time of the first upheaval, or a later period, after some intervening rebellions of the Whites? What were these inscriptions? From last year? The year before last?
    At one time in his life he had admired the unconditional quality of the language and the directness of this thinking. Could it be that he had to pay for this imprudent admiration by never seeing anything else but these frenzied cries and demands, unchanging in the course of long years, becoming ever more impractical, incomprehensible, and unfeasible? Could it be that for a moment of too-broad sympathy he had enslaved himself forever?...
    "What enviable blindness!" thought the doctor. "What bread are they talking about, when there has long been nne in nature? What propertied classes, what speculators, when they've long been abolished by the sense of previous decrees? What peasants, what villagers, if they no longer exist? What obliviousness to their own designs and measures, which have long left no stone upon stone in life! What must one be, to rave year after year with delirious feverishness about non-existent, long-extinct themes, and to know nothing, and to see nothing around one!"

Doctor Zhivago isn't exactly a bundle of laughs, but I did get a belated snicker out of this:

Finished The Luminous Face for TIOLI #13.

Now reading Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets by David Simon.

What a shame Anatomy of a Murder wasn't able to elbow itself into the top spot, Liz. I enjoy that book very much.

>39 rosalita:

Agreed! But then we see that a lot in this, the books that are actually enjoyable only make it to #2 or #3. (Probably because they were lacking a "book of the month" push.)

Published: 1977
Genre: Mystery / thriller, short stories
Read for: Agatha Christie chronological challenge

Poirot's Early Cases - Though not collected until 1977, this volume consists of eighteen short stories featuring Hercule Poirot that originally appeared in various magazines between 1923 and 1935; most of them now being far better known than we might otherwise expect, as becoming the basis for episodes of the David Suchet TV series. Although there is that sense here of something lacking, which always plagued Agatha's short mystery stories (her supernatural tales are generally more effective), taken individually the stories are entertaining enough. As was often the case, in some of them we find Agatha having a "dry run" for a later work: elements of The Market Basing Mystery were reworked (and used better) in Murder In The Mews; The Submarine Plans is all but indistinguishable from The Incredible Theft; while The Plymouth Express became the basis for the 1928 novel, The Mystery Of The Blue Train. This collection also includes Double Sin, the story that introduced Poirot's long-term crush, the Countess Vera Rossakoff; and The Chocolate Box, the only failure that Poirot ever suffered - or anyway, was willing to admit to - even to the extent of encouraging Arthur Hastings to mention the case, should he ever seem to be growing too assured of his own powers (though he was always intensely annoyed when Hastings did). Quite a number of these stories, indeed, revolve around the dynamic of the Poirot / Hastings / Inspector Japp triad, and therefore, these days, have an extra element of hindsight entertainment. All in all, this is a fun collection, provided the stories are properly spaced out. It is particularly refreshing, though also a little sad, placed as it is in the middle of Agatha's flawed final novels.

    "When I think back on your long line of successes, I am positively amazed. I don't believe you know what failure is!"
    "He would be a droll kind of original who could say that!"
    "No, but seriously, have you ever failed?"
    "Innumerable times, my friend! What would you? La bonne chance, it cannot always be on your side. I have been called in late. Very often another, working towards the same goal, has arrived there first. Twice I have been stricken down with illness just as I was on the point of success. One must take the downs with the ups, my friend."
    "I didn't quite mean that," I said. "I meant had you ever been completely down and out over a case through your own fault?"
    "Ah, I comprehend! You ask if I have ever made the complete prize ass of myself, as you say over here? Once, my friend---" A slow reflective smile hovered over Poirot's face. "Yes, once I made a fool of myself..."

Happy New Thread, Liz! This calls for baby sloths!

https://fun.shared.com/baby-sloths-having-a-conversation-and-the-internet-is-wea...

Hello there. I noticed in your lists that you have a reading thread 'early detective fiction'. I expect you have come across Inspector McLevy, but in case you haven't, he was Edinburgh's first detective in 1833, and towards the end of his career in the 1860s he published a series of fictionalised memoirs about his cases. These were re-issued in the 1990s under the titles McLevy the Edinburgh Detective and McLevy Returns. I believe they are still available. These are not to be confused with the modern series featuring McLevy by David Ashton.

>42 ronincats: awww!!!!
I never thought of sloths as making much noise, but I suppose they must communicate somehow.

Hi, Liz.

>41 lyzard: Nice review of Poirot's Early Cases. As always, it's a treat to read your comments in the context of your strong overarching knowledge of Dame Agatha's body of work. Her books, for me, always stand up well to a re-read, and you've got me putting this one down as my next re-visit.

>42 ronincats:

Aww, thank you so much, Roni! :)

(I must confess, I swiped those still images; so you might be seeing them again later...)

>44 Helenliz:

Hi, Helen!

>43 Only2rs:

Hi! - thanks for visiting. I hope you got something out of my lists. :)

I did not know about the McLevy Books of the 1860s so thank you very much for bringing those to my attention. As you would have seen, I have included a few true-crime works in my lists, even though they are predominantly about the evolution of detective fiction. It looks as if McLevy The Edinburgh Detective is available here but maybe not McLevy Returns; I'll keep looking!

>45 jnwelch:

Hi, Joe; thanks very much! After all these many months, it feels very weird not to have the next Agatha on my TBR.

>47 lyzard: Thanks lyzard. I can't say I ever read Mclevy as true crime. A more apt comparison would be the retired chief of MI6 in Britain writing and publishing spy novels. I'm sure people read them because of who the author was.

>49 Only2rs: She did. >:-)
Well actually Stella Rimington was the Director General of MI5, but close enough.

>49 Only2rs:, >50 Helenliz:

Oh, so they're THAT kind of true-crime writing? - noted! :D

Still a great addition to my lists, so thanks.

Finished Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets for TIOLI #5.

Not so much crushed by a book as crushed by the material...

And now---

{---proving I haven't an ironic bone in my body---}

---reading The Belfry Murder by Moray Dalton.

Ugh. I hate when I can only find an ebook cover...

Publication date: 1932
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Inspector Maigret #12
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (female translator)

L'ombre Chinoise (translation title: The Chinese Puppet; also published as: The Shadow Puppet, The Shadow In The Courtyard, Maigret Mystified) - The Place des Voges is a remnant of history, where separate episodes of conversion into flats brings together the wealthy and the struggling; while at the far end of the large courtyard is the Couchet laboratory, a thriving business which produces and distributes medical sera. It is in the office of the latter that Monsieur Couchet is found shot dead and slumped over his desk on a chilly November evening. There is no sign of the gun, and initially it is assumed that the crime could not be a robbery as, though the safe is open, the position of the body prevents access. Summoned to the scene by the dismayed concierge, Inspector Maigret learns that Couchet did in fact keep a large sum of money in his safe, which is now missing---but which must have been removed before he sat down at his desk. Maigret also realises that the courtyard arrangement means that there could - indeed, should - be witnesses, if they are willing to talk; if there is no reason for them not to talk... This twelfth entry in Georges Simenon's series featuring Inspector Maigret is, even by the hardly cheery standards of these short novels, a bleak piece of writing, full of people living lives of "quiet desperation"; while more than most, the solution relies upon Maigret's ability to grasp the psychology of his witnesses. Meanwhile, in typical style, Maigret takes a non-judgemental shine to Couchet's mistress, Nine Moinard, the one person who seems genuinely to mourn his death. The victim was a self-made man who, after many years of failure and poverty, found an avenue to success and made himself over, marrying "up" and achieving respectability; though his discomfort with his new bourgeoise existence drove him into the company of women like Nine. Chasing down connections, Maigret interviews Couchet's second wife, who seems more offended than shocked by his violent end; his drug-abusing son from his first marriage; and his first wife---who also lives in the Place des Voges, with her meek, civil servant second husband, M. Martin. When a rough will is discovered, in which Couchet divides his fortune between his wife, his ex-wife, and his mistress, the question becomes whether this is a crime of cupidity or of passion...

    Walking down the Boulevard Haussmann, Maigret caught himself muttering as he filled his pipe, "Good old Couchet!"
    The words escaped his lips as if Couchet had been an old friend. And the feeling was so strong that the thought that he had only seen him dead astounded him.
    He felt as if he knew him literally inside out.
    Perhaps because of the three women?
    First, there had been the confectioner's daughter, in the apartment in Nanterre, despairing at the thought that her husband would never have a proper job.
    Then the young lady from Dinard, and Couchet's pride and satisfaction in becoming the nephew of a colonel.
    Nine... Their dinners at the Select... Hôtel Pigalle...
    And the son who came to sponge off him! And Madame Martin who contrived to run into him under the archway, hoping perhaps to plague him with remorse.
    A strange ending! All alone in the office where he came as seldom as possible. Leaning against the half-open safe, his hands on the table...

>52 lyzard: as am I! No spoilers now. I feel I may have been sold a dummy; chapter 5 and no sight or sound of any bells yet, let alone an actual belfry >;-)
I took a cover photo of mine, and uploaded it, but you do get the duvet in the background.

>55 Helenliz:

Oh that's so weird! I can only reassure you that a body does eventually show up (checks: Chapter 14); and though it looks at first like a suicide, well... :D

>54 lyzard: I must admit, Liz, that the Maigret mysteries rather flummox me. There are so many of them and so many alternative titles that it is really hard to keep track of which ones I have read and which I have not.

It is something that I am going to have to look into more seriously as it is a series I, on the whole, like and it would be a good challenge to read them all.

Have a splendid weekend. By the way, this is the 1,000th post on your threads this year. x

>57 PaulCranswick:

Oh my goodness!!

Thank you for bringing that mind-boggling fact to my attention. :D

There is an excellent Wikipedia page under "Jules Maigret" which lists the books in publication order and also gives their French, English and alternative titles; it's what I use as a reference---here.

>56 lyzard: so it does! Read that bit last night and did think of you. And it is, as advertised, in a belfry. You're in the clear, no false selling here!

ETA: Where are you putting that in TIOLI? I'll join you. A shared read, how exciting! >:-)

>59 Helenliz:

I was going to ask you that! :D

At the moment it just looks like the '151+ pages' challenge but I will scan the others now that I'm finished and see if anything else works.

ETA: Yup, it looks like that's the only option; see you there!

Finished The Belfry Murder for TIOLI #12.

Now reading Marian Grey; or, The Heiress Of Redstone Hall by Mary Jane Holmes.

>60 lyzard:. I could put it in 6 (new woman author) or 12, if that makes any different to you. I can see quite a lot ending up in #12!

>62 Helenliz:

Is this your first Dalton, then? What made you start with this one?

(And is the answer that I told you months ago there was a 'belfry' book?? I told someone... :D )

ETA: I (hopefully) have a book coming for #6 - it's an in-library read though, and at the moment the weather is NOT co-operating - so I put it in #12; but if this is your only shot at #6, I'm happy to do a shared read there.

>63 lyzard: Yes, this is entirely your fault. >;-) It had belfry in the title and you told me about it.
I have no chance of sweeplette or even a near miss this month, so I really don't mind if it goes in 6 or 12. I've added mine to 12 with yours but if you want to, just move the pair of them.
I finished it last night. It gets rather, um, frenetic!

>64 Helenliz:

Ah, it was you! :)

It does! It's an unusual work for Dalton, more of a thriller than a mystery, and not entirely typical of her work.

Whether I can get to town this week for an in-library read at the State Library will determine my TIOLI placements; it's been pouring for the past few days and I'm not up to venturing out in it. :(

>61 lyzard: and following:

Aha! I’ve added a few (um...7) Daltons to the kindle in the past couple of years. Sounds like it’s time to get them moved up the list.

>66 Matke:

I'm delighted that the Dean Street Press have resurrected some of her books; it's one of those cases where you don't understand why one writer survives and another just vanishes from the record. I find her different in approach from many of her era's mystery writers. (A bit like Sayers without the snobbery!)

Publication date: 1951
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Miss Silver #21
Read for: Shared read

The Watersplash - Circumstances bring three people back to the small village of Greenings: Clarice Dean who, having nursed James Random during his last illness, returns to take up a position as nurse-companion to the hypochondriacal Miss Ora Blake; Susan Wayne, who has accepted a position cataloguing Arnold Random's inherited library; and Edward Random, who is returning home after five years of silence---of more than silence---of being missing, presumed dead. Local gossip cannot decide whether Edward was disinherited after a falling-out with his Uncle James, or if James' will was only changed to benefit his brother when Edward was believed dead; but either way, Arnold is holding tight to his inheritance. At the same time, Greenings believes the worst over Edward's absence: the only people to reach out to him are his step-mother, the kindly, cat-obsessed Emmeline Random; the self-made Lord Burlingham, who offers him a job chiefly to annoy Arnold; Clarice Dean, whose open pursuit of Edward sets tongues wagging; and Susan---who tries to keep her feelings to herself... Tensions in Greenings continue to rise, coming to a head in an ugly scene between Arnold Random and William Jackson, a heavy-drinking former employee: as Miss Mildred Blake listens in shock, she overhears angry words about James Random's will---and blackmail... Shortly afterwards, Jackson is found dead, face down in the watersplash that divides the village; and though his drinking habits make his drowning in such shallow water believable, when Clarice Dean is later found dead in exactly the same circumstances, the coincidence is too much... Let's get this out of the way at the outset: a "watersplash: is a spot where a road or path dips below the waterline; in the case of the Greenings watersplash, it is where a stream cuts across a walkway at one end of the village. There are stepping-stones across; but although they are often wet and slippery, the water below them is rarely deep enough to be dangerous to anyone who fell from them; not unless the person in question was drunk---or otherwise incapacitated... One of the main strengths of The Watersplash is its setting and atmosphere: Patricia Wentworth takes her time with the geography and people of Greenings, all of which become increasingly important in the elucidating of what is certainly one murder, and may be two. The novel's main weakness is its lack of viable suspects, which makes the ultimate solution a little too easily anticipated; although that said, I must admit to being quite wrong in my deductions about one of the deaths. Otherwise, this is a comfortably familiar mystery, with suspicion in Clarice's death, at least, falling upon Edward, who was seen and heard turning on her angrily upon the night of her death; and Susan calling upon Miss Silver's services accordingly. However, overall the romantic subplot is reasonably unobtrusive---even if Edward is one of Wentworth's stock pig-headed young men. This is also one of those novels in which Miss Silver's understanding of the ebb and flow of village life is critical: who will talk, and who won't; whose testimony can be taken at face value, and where spite and scandal must be sifted; and how a village party-line might grant knowledge of matters that would otherwise be secret... As it happens, Miss Silver has the inside running on the Greenings case: out of the blue, she was briefly consulted by Clarice Dean who, though she also tried to put the best light on her conduct, clearly had a form of blackmail on her mind in her story of a new will made by James Random shortly before his death: a will which re-established Edward as his heir; a will which was not found after his death...

    Frank Abbott said: “And on the strength of that you propose to go down to Greenings?”
    Miss Silver smiled. “It is not quite so absurd as it may sound. The daughter of one of my oldest friends is married to the Vicar of Greenings-cum-Littleton. She has been urging me to visit her for some time. Miss Dean’s story made so strong an impression on me that I wrote and asked Mrs Ball for a little more information. Miss Dean did not intend that I should be able to identify the village of which she spoke. She had, as I told you, disguised it as Greenways, but she was careless enough to let the real name slip, and my attention was naturally arrested. I wrote to Ruth Ball saying that I had come across a girl who I thought was nursing a patient in Greenings---an elderly lady to whom she had alluded as Miss Ora. Perhaps you would care to see her reply.”
    She handed it to him and watched whilst he read it.
    When he had finished, Frank said, “It was written before the girl was drowned, I see.”
    “Yes. But I had hardly read it, when Emma came in with the evening paper, and there was the headline, ‘Girl drowned in watersplash. Strange coincidence.’ You cannot be surprised that I have given the matter some thought.”
    He said in a meditative voice, “No. A watersplash is not usually deep enough to drown anyone. If a man and a girl manage to bring it off on two successive Fridays, the long arm of coincidence would seem to be doing a record stretch, and when both the man and the girl are mixed up with a missing will—well, it does begin to look as if someone had been busy. If one was on the case, which one is not, and therefore as much entitled to an opinion as any other member of the intelligent public, one might feel inclined to ask, ‘Cui bono?’ To whose advantage would it be to do away with the only two people who seemed to know anything about this inconvenient will?”
    Miss Silver coughed and said primly, “There can, of course, be only one answer to that...”

Yes, indeed:

At two o’clock Susan went back to the Hall, where she encountered a really horrifying book about a man who was transported to Australia in the old Botany Bay days. It was called For the Term of His Natural Life, and dipping into it felt exactly like opening the door upon a hurricane in which all the forces of evil were let loose...

On the whole, Susan prefers the novels of Charlotte Yonge... :D

Hey, Julia: wanna discuss The Watersplash?

Or will you need to re-read it first?? :D

>70 lyzard: Ha ha ha! Let's see if I can remember that far back ... well, I already commented on how Susan needs to be here on LibraryThing, with her love of books and cataloguing abilities. I take it you've read the Australia book referenced in the excerpt in >69 lyzard:? And who is Charlotte Yonge when she's at home? Someone I should know?

I agree that the romance was rather unusually in the background for a Miss Silver mystery. I did guess whodunit but not right away, so I felt satisfied with the way it wound up. (Generally, I feel if I can guess the culprit early on, the book must be poorly plotted because I dont really even try to figure it out!)

I suppose there's no use in commenting on how Miss Silver has friends (or friends of friends) in every small village in England? That and her regular use of the trains keeps her solidly in customers. I'm just teasing now, though. I could use a Miss Silver in my life now and then to help straighten everything out!

>71 rosalita:

For The Term Of His Natural Life is the first important work of fiction with a convict-protagonist, and as Susan notes it really rubs the reader's nose in the realities of transportation.

Charlotte Yonge was a popular Victorian novelist, however she was very conservative and anti-feminist and her books don't always wear well. (That said, a couple of them are now Viragos for their insight into women's lives.) But her first novel, The Heir Of Redclyffe (the one Susan references), was a smash hit across the board.

This was one of those books where I felt like my version of events was better! :D

I got the Jackson murder, but I thought Arnold had murdered Clarice as a case of mistaken identity.

Now, now: she's given the trains a rest for some time. And her friend in every village is in the proud tradition of Miss Marple having a god-child or a former servant everywhere she needs one, so I can hardly quibble. :)

Group read news:

The suggested group read of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper will be going ahead in August. It will be conducted through the Virago group as part of All Virago / All August, but as always, everyone is welcome.

As this is only a short story, the suggestion was that participants should read it at a time of their own choice, and then get together on a designated date to discuss it.

However the details have not been nailed down yet; I will post again when arrangements have been finalised.

Finished Marian Grey; or, The Heiress Of Redstone Hall for TIOLI #17.

Now reading Dave Darrin's First Year At Annapolis; or, Two Plebe Midshipmen At The United States Naval Academy by H. Irving Hancock.

Publication date: 1933
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Philip Tolefree #3
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (author read before)

The Tolliver Case (US title: Prove It, Mr Tolefree) - When William Tolliver is found shot dead on his isolated Cornish estate, it looks like a clear case of suicide; but Tolliver's niece, Ann Carberry, refuses to accept the verdict. However, it is not until after, not just the inquest, but Tolliver's funeral, that Ann and her widowed mother can convince their respective fiancés, Arnold Angwin and Guy Waverton, to call in an outside investigator. Mrs Carberry suggests Philip Tolefree, who in addition to his overt work as an insurance investigator has occasionally been involved in private cases; Angwin offers to have him as a house-guest, to disguise his purpose in coming. Having learned from Angwin of the circumstances of Tolliver's death, and of the discovery of his body by the river at the bottom of a gorge by Angwin, Ann Carberry and Guy Waverton, Tolefree realises that he has taken on no simple case; but he gets his first clear evidence that Ann is right about her uncle being murdered that very evening, when someone takes a shot at him... The Tolefree mysteries of R. A. J. Walling have shown a steady improvement since their inception, and this holds with the third in the series, The Tolliver Case; though the book is not without a few shortcomings, as well as a major aspect that will appeal differently to different readers. The latter is its setting in Cornwall, which becomes a dominant presence in the narrative, with many lengthy descriptions of the environs of William Tolliver's country house; but while Walling's own love of the country is evident in this, it is not gratuitous, but an important aspect of the mystery. This is, finally, one of those mysteries that turns very much upon distances and timing, and who could have been where, when. It also requires several people with motive to be more or less at the scene of Tolliver's murder; and, above all, it requires the reader to accept one really outrageous coincidence---which is excused in the sense of the murderer's outrageous luck, which initially extends to his - or her - alibi, until Tolefree appears. And this is, finally, an alibi-breaking mystery; and once Tolefree realises that, he knows how to pursue his investigation; though he must do so in the shadow of a killer who will not hesitate to kill again... At his first interview with Ann Carberry, she is able to name three people who had a serious grudge against her uncle: Ridgway, an eccentric (to say the least) inventor and photographer; Penhaligon, an arrogant landowner with whom Tolliver had a long-standing feud; and Gannet, a resentful poacher and ex-convict; while Tolefree's discoveries also bring in financier Andrew Baripper, an occasional weekend visitor and supposedly a friend. Eventually it emerges that the crux of the matter is Ada Lanherne, the daughter of Tolliver's late business partner, who herself died in a nursing home after giving birth to an illegitimate child; but was Tolliver the villain of this story, or an avenger...?

    Waverton expressed Mrs Carberry's feeling as well as his own, if not Ann's too. They were not only nervous. They were afraid. It was in the air---the premonition that Tolefree was about to drag skeletons out of cupboards which they would rather keep closed. I realised that the feeling was growing stronger. They resented the trick Tolefree had played them about his pretended journey. He realised it, too.
    "I quite understand," said Tolefree. "Yes---I've no end of things to tell you. But I'm going to be absolutely candid: I don't think you want to hear them."
    "Just what does that mean?" asked Mrs Carberry.
    "That some of the things I have to tell you may be unpleasant for you. We must face up to that, you know... And I hate to be unpleasant. It's for you to decide whether I go on to the final discovery and chance what I find on the way. I'm quite willing to pull out now if you like and leave the field to Mr Marrack---who's still inclined to stick to his suicide theory, by the way."
    Waverton hesitated, looked at Mrs Carberry; she looked back at him. Ann broke in:
    "But, Mr Tolefree, you don't believe Marrack's theory is a possible theory, do you?"
    Tolefree shook his head.
    "You believe that Uncle Bill was murdered, don't you?"
    "Undoubtedly. As sure as if I'd seen him die."
    "Then," said Ann, "I'm for going on..."

>75 lyzard: I don't know how appropriate the title change is, but at least it's an actual different title and not just re-arranging the words!

Also, I admire the chutzpah of how the author's name is presented on the book cover you posted. "The Ingenious Mr." indeed!

>76 rosalita:

This was a Wentworthian case of the book appearing in the US first, under that title, too. :)

In this case I guess they wanted the detective's name in the title, which at least makes sense.

I can think of a few British series that plastered the author's name like that and now I'm wondering whether they were all from the same publisher. I know at least one other of the Tolefree books promote R. A. J. Walling in the same way.

I managed to get in to the State Library today, and began and completed One-Man Girl by Maysie Greig, for TIOLI #6.

Still reading Dave Darrin's First Year At Annapolis; or, Two Plebe Midshipmen At The United States Naval Academy by H. Irving Hancock.

Publication date: 1931
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Inspector Bedison #2
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (APRIL Rolling Challenge)

Inspector Bedison And The Sunderland Case - When Inspector Bedison calls upon Randolph Sunderland at his home in connection with the investigation of a fraudulent mining concern with which he is associated, he finds him tense and unhappy; the next time he sees him, Sunderland is dead in the backseat of his own car on the other side of London... When medical experts rule suicide unlikely, Bedison looks into the whereabouts of Sunderland's closest connections on the night of his death: his wife and niece, who live with him; his nephew, a frequent visitor; and their closest friends. Though keeping the mine fraud in mind, Bedison suspects that he is dealing with a more personal murder. He discovers that Sunderland's car was involved in a slight accident, not just on the night of his death, but around the time of the murder---when it was possibly being driven by the killer. Bedison then tracks down the driver of the other car involved, only to learn that he, too, has been murdered... The second in Thomas Cobb's series featuring Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Bedison, this is a distinct improvement over its predecessor, The Crime Without A Clue - it would pretty much have to be - though certainly not without flaws. Cobb's characterisations remain superficial, including that of Bedison himself, and his writing is uninspired; while the plot here finally takes a turn which, though not uncommon in Golden Age mysteries, is still disappointing. However, the central concept of a murderer being in a fender-bender while disposing of a body and therefore being forced to commit an impromptu second murder is rather morbidly funny; while Cobb here does something that few writers of this era ever did: he has his detective completely wrong in his first reading of his case...at least when it comes to the identity of his killer; not so much the motive. And Bedison is right when his instincts lead him to look for Randolph Sunderland's killer close to home; though his case takes an unexpected turn when he interviews the widow of the second victim, Ambrose Wigg, and learns that the second murder was more than one of immediate necessity: though he did not reveal to her the name, Wigg recognised the driver of the other car. From here, Bedison must divide his investigation, sorting through the skeletons in the Sunderlands' closet, while also digging into Ambrose Wigg's past. He is still doing so when a third murder plays havoc with his deductions...

    The question was: what had the three cases in common? In Randolph Sunderland's there was no perceptible motive, although this was not an insuperable objection.
    If a man were seen to commit a murder he would not be less guilty because his object remained unknown. X had for some reason chloroformed Sunderland, put his body in his own car, and driven it along High Street, Notting Hill, where it was run into by Ambrose Wigg's.
    Recognising Wigg, and knowing that his number plate had been seen, X changed his plan, deserted the car in Belfast Grove, and made tracks for Southwood, where he killed the doctor, emptied his pockets, and got clean away. Now, a little more than a week later, there was this third crime, committed also by X---about that Bedison had no doubt.
    The problem was to find X, and it appeared that for guidance he had to depend on two women: Mrs Sunderland and Mrs Wigg, in one of whom he felt no confidence...

>79 lyzard: Excellent review!

In your literary travels, Liz, have you run across the Sheila Malory books by Hazel Holt? They’re pretty modern compared to what you usually read, but I thought perhaps you’d seen or heard about them. I read the first one and liked the lead character very much, but thought the book was a bit...well, not particularly well written. I don’t want to invest money and time in a series if it’s not going to get better. Holt, btw, was a close friend of Barbara Pym.

>80 Matke:

Thank you! :)

I have not, no. I do keep meaning to take on some more modern mysteries, but somehow (she said, glancing at her already existing lists) it never happens.

I can only say that British series do tend to get better after the first book, so it's probably worth trying at least one more. The British & Irish Crime Fiction group might be able to give you better guidance.

Finished Dave Darrin's First Year At Annapolis for TIOLI #4.

That is the end of July - eep! - and I haven't the faintest idea of what I'm going to read next - EEP!!

So I think I'll clear my head with a couple of lists constructed from some earlier scribblings, when the situation cut off library access: one negative list, one (more) positive list...

Stuff I still can't access:

Mystery At Greycombe Farm by John Rhode {Rare Books}
The Rum Row Murders by Charles Reed Jones {Rare Books}
The Crooked Lip by Herbert Adams {Rare Books / CARM}
Death By Appointment by Francis Bonnamy {Rare Books}
The Killing Of Judge MacFarlane by Mary Plum {Rare Books / CARM}
Murder In The News Room by Henry Charlton Beck {Rare Books}
The Capital City Mystery by J. H. Wallis {Rare Books}
The Murder Rehearsal by B. G. Quin {Rare Books}
The Bell Street Murders by Sydney Fowler {Rare Books}
The Key by Lee Thayer {Rare Books}
Unsolved by Bruce Graeme {Rare Books}
The Inconsistent Villains by N. A. Temple-Ellis {Rare Books}
The Double-Thirteen Mystery by Anthony Wynne {Rare Books}
The Unexpected Legacy by E. R. Punshon {Rare Books}
Storm by Charles Rodda {National Library}

Stuff I can access (I think):

Poison In The Garden Suburb by George and Margaret Cole {ILL}
Tragedy At Ravensthorpe by J. J. Connington {Kindle}
Murderer's Trail by J. Jefferson Farjeon {Kindle}
The Wraith by Philip MacDonald {ILL / Rare Books / CARM}
McLean Of Scotland Yard by George Goodchild {ILL}
Six Minutes Past Twelve by Gavin Holt {in-library read}
The Sea Mystery by Freeman Wills Crofts {Kindle / ILL / Rare Books}
Murder By The Clock by Rufus King {Kindle / Rare Books}
Sing Sing Nights by Harry Stephen Keeler {Kindle}
The Picaroon Does Justice by Herman Landon {CARM}
The Click Of The Gate by Alice Campbell {CARM}
The Trail Of the Lotto by Anthony Armstrong {CARM}

Other accessible stuff:

Cameos by Octavus Roy Cohen {in-library read}
Imperial Treasure by Val Gielgud {CARM}
"Seen Unknown..." by Naomi Jacob {in-library read}
The Sealed Envelope by Ben Bolt {TROVE / newspaper serialisation}
Snowbird by Ottwell Binns {TROVE / newspaper serialisation}
Gay Go Up by Anne Hepple {TROVE/ Woman's Weekly supplement, abridged?}

>83 lyzard: Favorite title:

Poison in the Garden Suburb

followed closely by

The Rum Row Murders

ETA Thanks for the tip about the British and Irish Crime Group. Very interesting.

>84 Matke:

I was just this minute over being appalled to realise I haven't posted on your - I can't even say new! - current thread! I will have to rectify that tomorrow; getting late now, just downloading an ebook...though of course not any of those on my lists... :D

I'm planning on using Poison In The Garden Suburb to find out the hard way whether my ILL system is running properly again, wish me luck!

Anyway---

Now reading The Postmaster's Daughter by Louis Tracy.

>85 lyzard:
Never worry about that, Liz. Seriously.

And yes, I just downloaded a Wimsey to go with the August Wimsey read. Seems odd that the first edition I looked at was something over $8 US but there’s another one available at $2.99.

I mean, they’re e-books. As long as there’s not a lot of errors, why not go cheap?

>87 Matke:

You're very kind. :)

Oh, I always do that---with the caveat that if there's a cheap ebook version of something available through one of those anonymous LLC companies, it means that there's a free ebook version out there if you can find it.

This is in contrast to the lovely people at Black Heath, who are making obscure Golden Age mysteries available for only a dollar or two, God love 'em!

>58 lyzard: Thanks for that link, Liz, it does clear up some of the confusion more than adequately.

75 books in the series would be a good challenge for sure.

Thank you so much by the way for hosting the Group Read for Castle Richmond - I don't think I would have finished it without the support system you set up. Your comments were always incisive and, although the Great Famine in Ireland is an "event" I was fairly familiar with, Trollope's contemporaneous attitude towards it was an unwelcome revelation.

>85 lyzard: Do remember my own little thread from time to time as well :D!

Have a lovely weekend.

>89 PaulCranswick:

75 shortish books, so it's less intimidating than some of the equally lengthy series out there!

Thank you for sticking with it! It's a difficult book in a number of ways, but hopefully everyone got something out of the project. (And also hopefully, others will now add discussion points to the thread, HINT, HINT.)

Oh I know!! - but your threads are so overwhelming! I always think I'm going to get in there early but by the time I do you're always 200 posts down! :D

Finished The Postmaster's Daughter for TIOLI #4 and oh dagnabbit!---

I've had a ridiculous amount of trouble sorting out Louis Tracy's series featuring Chief Inspector Winter and Inspector Furneaux, partly because of Tracy's habit of toggling back and forth between his own name and his pseudonym, 'Gordon Holmes', and partly because of his simultaneous toggling between the UK and the US as a first publication site.

I thought I had it sussed when I discovered that The de Bercy Affair by 'Gordon Holmes' pre-dated any of the series works as by 'Louis Tracy', but now it seems there's a Gordon Holmes work pre-dating all of the rest that features Furneaux without Winter.

This isn't a long-running series; it really shouldn't be this difficult. :(

ETA: Or maybe it is: I've just found a source that mentions casually that there are 17 Winter and Furneaux books, though of course without bothering to list them...

Dropping in some sloth love!

https://www.facebook.com/KFOXTV/videos/288524832241373/

Well, that was fun: my telco had a meltdown today. started out blaming it on EEEEEEEEE-vil cyber hackers, but it turns out they were just being their usual incompetent selves...

>92 ronincats:

You're spoiling me, Roni! :D

Anyhoo---

Now reading Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.

>95 lyzard: A permanent favorite for me.

>95 lyzard: I read that for the first time last year, I thought it a bundle of fun.

>96 Matke:, >97 Helenliz:

It's one of those books I feel I must have read as a kid, but honestly I don't remember it so it's all new to me!

Publication date: 1930
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Read for: Mistakenly thought it was from 1931 / TIOLI (read because of pandemic)

No Walls Of Jasper - Julian Prebble is a dissatisfied man. At the age of forty, he is living in a small, rather depressing house; he is lumbered with a dull, dowdy wife; and he cannot afford to buy an offered partnership at the publishing firm for which he works. Most of failure to advance in life, and to have the better things he feels he deserves, Julian blames upon his father who, though elderly and sick, stubbornly clings to life---and his money. Worse still, the old man flaunts his preference for Julian's illegitimate half-brother, Eric; and though Julian believes in neither Eric's affection for their father, nor that the latter would really favour Eric over him in his will, he cannot help thinking about how much better his own life would be if his father would just die... It is doing Joanna Cannan's No Walls Of Jasper a disservice to classify it simply as a "crime novel" or a "thriller": overarchingly it is indeed an inverted crime story, with the reader following Julian Prebble as he plots quite calmly to murder his own father; but it is also much more than that, namely an acute and blackly humorous psychological study of a man long on ego but blind to own shortcomings and failures. For all his self-satisfaction, Julian is a desperately ordinary man; and both the horror and the humour of this novel lie in the gulf between his grandiose conception of himself and his petty reality. No Walls Of Jasper is often compared to the equally black crime stories of "Francis Iles" (Anthony Berkeley), yet the influence was more likely the other way around---if only for the simple reason that this novel pre-dates those others. There is, in any event, one highly significant difference between Cannan's novel and those of Iles in that, far from embracing the latter's tendency to misogyny, Cannan suddenly switches gears in No Walls Of Jasper and turns it effectively into the story of the unfortunate Phyllis Prebble. High on the list of Julian's many causes for self-pity is that he has such an uninteresting and unattractive wife---something he uses to excuse the fact that he is contemplating an affair with Cynthia Bechler, the glamorous author of the flamboyant historical romances keeping Julian's publishing concern afloat. To the reader, however, it is revealed that prior to her marriage, Phyllis was an Oxford graduate, a brilliant scholar with a passion for poetry. It is marriage to Julian that has crushed her spirit and turned her into an almost mindless drudge... When Julian hires the struggling young schoolmaster, Martin Howard, to tutor his two boys prior to them being sent to school, his main idea is relieve himself of family responsibilities prior so that he can pursue his romance with Cynthia. Feeling only contempt for Martin in his poverty, Julian fails entirely to anticipate the effect upon Phyllis of coming into contact, for the first time in many years, with a bright mind and a congenial spirit. When Julian's would-be affair implodes he retreats to his family circle, only to discover that, during his absence, Phyllis has blossomed into a woman who is almost a stranger to him: he has forgotten the Phyllis he married. Worst still, the feeling between herself and Martin is only too evident, despite the sense of honour that keeps the two apart. His ego unable to cope with this double-blow from the two women he thought he had such power over, Julian lashes out...

    Julian turned away from the window. A cold, nauseating disillusionment gripped him, body and soul. According to his knowledge of human nature, he had come to watch a love scene, and instead of guilty or potentially guilty lovers, he had found two people spiritually exhausted but victorious in a battle he had not fought nor expected them---youngish people in the year nineteen-hundred-and-twenty-nine---to fight. His guns were spiked. He could do nothing. This fellow would continue to come to his house and have tea and air his clap-trap philosophies and literary enthusiasms. And Phyl would give him what she had never given her husband---her thoughts; he would possess her mind. And there was nothing to forbid such an association, not even in the marriage service; to the end he would be able to congratulate herself that she had kept her marriage vows. I'm strong, thought Julian, strong as a rock, and they’re nothing but a couple of neurotic intellectuals; but, whatever I do, or life does---give them summer, or night or solitude---that won’t shake them; if I live to be a hundred, I shan’t catch them; they’re safe now. I’m helpless, I’m helpless, he thought, and the fury of impotent strength shook him so that he trembled...
    Julian saw Martin close the book and replace it in the shelf, and walk across to the table, and stand there while Phyl poured out his tea. Then he watched no longer. His mood had changed. What was finest in his character, that stout, British refusal to accept defeat, bred in his bone, fostered by education, the same stiff heart’s core that had met despair over and over again in Flanders, repelled it now. Helpless? he thought. What an idea! I’m not helpless. I’m not to be beaten by that smirking young swine. He turned away from the window, a torrent of imprecations sweeping his mind. God! I'll teach him! He doesn’t know he’s up against a super-man. Yes! That was the truth at last. A super-man! so strong, so far above ordinary frailty that he could see the world as God saw it...

Oh dear.

From my academic library:

The Library will continue to remain closed to alumni, community members and other affiliates until further notice due to COVID-19. This is in line with the University's limited access to buildings. The University Library has begun a staged return to campus process with access limited to current staff and students only.

We will continue to provide you updates. However, the date that alumni, community members and other affiliates will be able to use University Library facilities will be dependent on University and government guidance.

As we value all Library members, we will extend your membership by seven months from the date we reopen. This will apply to memberships due to expire between 15 March 2020 and the date we reopen to them.

So I guess the good news is that I will eventually be getting something of a freebie with regards to my membership (as a community member, it ain't cheap).

The bad news is, I remain cut off from my main book supply {*sob*}.

>100 lyzard: Well, dagnabit!!

>95 lyzard: Atmospheric as I remember. Read it twice, I think.

>100 lyzard: That sucks!

>100 lyzard: I’m sorry, Liz. That has to be frustrating and awful.

>99 lyzard: And here I am, flattened, nearly comatose, hit by a devastating book bullet.

Great review, btw.

>101 rosalita:, >102 PaulCranswick:, >103 Matke:

Incredibly frustrating, and leaving me in a constant state of low-level OCD panic since I never can get fully organised. :(

I also resent being pretty much forced into buying Kindle books I wouldn't otherwise. (When I can even do that, as per my Exodus struggles!)

>102 PaulCranswick:

The conspiracy has just been discovered, thanks to Jim Hawkins in the apple barrel! :D

>103 Matke:

That one came out of nowhere and blindsided me. I recommend it if you can find a copy but it's inexplicably little known today. I read it online at the Internet Archive; I don't think it's downloadable.

BTW it's dedicated to Georgette Heyer with whom Cannan was good friends, and stuffed with literary references once the narrative switches to Phyllis' perspective. :)

Publication date: 1929
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Anthony Bathurst #5
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (something in a drink)

The Five Red Fingers - Having spent many months obsessing over the chances of his colt, Red Ringen, in the Derby, Julius Maitland is called away from home and the races by urgent business in South Africa, where he made his fortune in diamonds. His absence allows his lovely young second wife, Ida, to defy his orders and run her own horse, Princess Alicia, in the Derby: the filly's rapid development making her the main threat. Red Ringen does win the Derby, but only by a fraction over Princess Alicia. Even as the victory is being celebrated, a bizarre phone-call reaches the police station in the seaside village of Friningham. A desperate voice summons Sergeant Mansfield to a villa at the edge of town, where, the speaker insists, he is being murdered: an announcement followed by a noise as of something heavy being overturned, by the music of a violin, and by a wild laugh... Summoned to the scene by Mansfield, Dr Forsyth stuns everyone by his ruling that, not only was Maitland killed by the first of two shots fired into him - that which passed through his throat - but he has been dead for at least two days... This fifth entry in the series by Brian Flynn featuring amateur detective, Anthony Bathurst, is one of a number of British mysteries of the 1920s to be built around horse-racing---and when I say "built", be aware that the full first quarter of this novel is devoted to the build-up to the Derby, the growing rivalry between the Maitlands over their horses, the machinations of other interested parties, and the fall-out of the "Calcutta auction" (a weird sort of silent auction, like an upmarket version of the standard sweep)---most of which turns out to have exasperatingly little to do with Julius' Maitland murder overall, except for the strange racing rule that if a horse's owner died before the race was run, the horse was automatically disqualified, meaning that Princess Alicia - a rank outsider - becomes Derby winner, instead of the highly favoured Red Ringen. (This is the second mystery published in 1929 to turn on this point, the other being Annie Haynes' The Crime At Tattenham Corner. Did this actually happen in British racing around that time?) But was the murder really about the outcome of the Derby, or about the mysterious business in South Africa that called Julius Maitland away from the race he had put so much time and preparation into? And if he was supposed to have left the country some days before, how did Maitland end up dead in an empty villa in a resort town? Sir Austin Kemble, Commissioner of Police and a racing enthusiast, is summoned from the Derby to the scene of the crime---and is soon turning for help to his friend and collaborator, Anthony Bathurst... Even aside from that self-indulgent opening, The Five Red Fingers is a novel that foregrounds the ongoing faults of the Anthony Bathurst series. Bathurst himself is an annoying, post-Peter Wimsey type; his "deductions" usually consist of huge leaps that the reader can't possibly follow - things just "come to him in a flash" - though despite this, he is never wrong about anything. Perhaps this is why Sir Austin Kemble never bothers to call in Scotland Yard---despite being the head of Scotland Yard... In any event, Bathurst is quick enough to spot the critical points in the case: the absence of the fatal bullet at the scene; the slashing of Maitland's knuckles, and the bloodying of his hand; the long, black hairs clutched between his fingers; and the fact that he was certainly dead when the phone-call summoning the police was made...

    "What was it that Julius Maitland regarded as of such paramount importance that he disappeared on the eve of the enjoyment of his triumph in the Derby? A triumph which had meant so much to him that each of his sons states he was living for the day. His wife is informed that he has been called so South Africa very suddenly on business of extreme urgency and yet at some time on the very same day, so we are assured by Doctor Forsyth, he meets his death in a bungalow at Friningham." Mr Bathurst frowned and made a mental reservation. "In this particular connection, note one thing: Mrs Maitland's story that her husband was called away to South Africa isalso entirely uncorroborated...
    "Remarkable how that kind of evidence keeps cropping up up everywhere. In this respect there are two possibilities to be considered. Julius Maitland may have told a lie as to where he was going---she may have told a lie about what he said to her. Latter possibility remote, but certainly worth consideration. But I must obtain full details of that going-away story." Mr Bathurst selected a seat on a cliff overlooking the sea and puffed steadily at his pipe. "No bullet to be found inside the bungalow---no weapon of any kind. A man speaking, gibbering kind of laughter, a violin being skillfully played, and all the accompaniment of sound that goes with a physical struggle, except the sound of the actual shots. Mansfield could never have imagined such things. Yet when he gets there, all is as he expects to find it save the most important part of all---the dead man won't fit..."

Publication date: 2008
Genre: Humour
Read for: TIOLI (book about animals)

I Can Has Cheezburger? A LOLCat Colleckshun - As an early adopter of the cheezburger way of life, of course I own this original emanation of the first step towards cat domination of teh interwebz. That said, this is far from the best advertisement for the blog, and seems to have been constructed on the basis of what images they could most quickly and easily get permission to reproduce, rather than to showcase the best images and humour. However, we do find here a few of the most seminal moments of LOLcat history, including the origins of "I can has", "nom, nom, nom", "oh hai", "invisible---", "I'm in ur---" and "Ur doin it wrong"; and the first appearances of a range of celebrities including Ceiling Cat, Emo Kitteh, and of course Happy Cat, whose junk-food quest started it all (and who, BTW, is credited with authorship). Still---probably for completists only.

>106 lyzard: Oh, how I love this. I have a little boxed set.

And on-topic: Whatever happened to the LOLCat Bible? The whole thing used to be on teh intrawebz, but not a trace remains. I have a very slim volume of some of it. I found it utterly charming, and do wish it would return.

ETA: My oldest child begins almost all of her emails and texts to me with, “Oh hai.”

>105 lyzard: This makes me sad. I had snagged a couple of these at $1 each before I got your warning, many posts ago.

Sigh. But I won’t give up the search for Quality Golden Age Mysteries! Never, I say!

>107 Matke:

Sister! :D

A lot of the early stuff has gone missing for some reason, it's a shame.

I still say 'Oh hai' a lot too (spelling it that way in my head!).

>108 Matke:

Oh, well, they're worth a dollar (they're about $5 here). Some of them are decent as mysteries, though sometimes Flynn gets carried away as here, and I always find Bathurst on the wrong side of annoying. Harry is a lot more tolerant of him, though, so YMMV.

Rest assured I will always bring worthwhile GAM to your attention!...eventually...

Someone out there might be able to help me with this---

Do Maeve Binchy's books need to be read in order? (I gather there are recurrent characters; is that right?)

Publication date: 1962
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Read for: TIOLI (spy novel from the 60s)

The IPCRESS File - This was both Len Deighton's first novel and the first in his series to feature the intelligence agent who would come to be known in his film incarnation as "Harry Palmer"---though he remains unnamed throughout this espionage thriller (and in fact specifically denies that his first name is "Harry"). The protagonist, for want of a better description, is a WWII veteran with experience in military intelligence, but at the outset of The IPCRESS File he is attached to a civilian intelligence agency known as WOOC(P), which reports directly to the British Cabinet. The unit's current assignment involves a series of kidnappings of British VIPs, which appear to be brokered by an individual code-named "Jay". The fact that Jay is in it for the money rather than political conviction gives the unit hope that his most recent target, a scientist code-named "Raven", might be bought back. After a first attempt fails, the protagonist finds himself on an increasingly dangerous series of assignments that lead him from London to Beirut to a Pacific atoll, where an American neutron-bomb test is to be conducted. Slowly it becomes clear to the protagonist that someone within WOOC(P) is working with Jay and his people; but his efforts to identify the traitor come to an abrupt end and he must flee for his life and freedom, when he discovers that everyone else thinks he is the traitor... Set against the paranoid backdrop of the Cold War, The IPCRESS File captures both the terror and the tedium of real espionage work, with the protagonist's most numbing duties, such as close analysis of endless surveillance footage (on actual film, in those pre-video days), periodically interrupted by explosions of life-threatening violence. Told from the protagonist's point of view, this is necessarily an often confusing narrative, studded with unexplained events and people who turn out to be someone other than he (and we) have been led to believe; while references to real-life double-agent Donald Maclean remind the reader that treachery lurks in unexpected places, including the corridors of power. However, this is not a work without some humour, as the protagonist pauses now and then to deliver wry mini-lectures on how "a good agent" behaves under any given circumstances and the realities and necessities of spy-work. Furthermore, for all his tone of weary cynicism, the protagonist is an honest man---and that makes him dangerous in a world where nearly everything, and everyone, can be bought and sold. At the cost of several other lives, including two of the protagonist's closest friends, he discovers that the kidnap victims are being sold to the Soviets, and then subjected to a new form of brainwashing known as "Induction of Psycho-neuroses by Conditioned Reflex under Stress"---or IPCRESS. Framed as a double-agent after American operatives are killed during the Beirut operation, the protagonist is pursued, captured, interrogated and imprisoned, and himself subjected to endless days of physical and psychological torture before escaping; his only chance of survival lying in his belief that there is, at least, one more honest man out there...

    The Brigadier poured himself his sixth cup of coffee in half an hour and broke the long silence. "You're marked down on my dossier, Colonel, with three stars---like Michelin, it's the highest rating we use. It doesn't necessarily mean you're good at your job, it means you are a three-star potential danger to us... You tell me you didn't signal to that Russian submarine on Thursday night. I want to believe you. O.K. Thread up my information and show me your movie, mister."
    I appreciated that the old man was being even nicer than his role demanded, especially considering that he was sure I had connected his nice new tower to his nice new electric line, and made a cinder out of one of his policemen.
    "Well," I said, "I'm not convinced that the submarine didn't fire its own flare."
    "Don't get really smart with me, sonny, it's obvious that it did."
    "O.K. So why does there have to be an agent working here at all?"
    "Look at it this way, sonny, we monitored the signal for one thing---"
    "I keep asking you what sort of signal and you won't tell me!"
    "The one you sent, sonny, the one you sent...because you're..." he searched for a word, "just dirty, just dirty." He flushed in embarrassment at his outburst and began cleaning his spectacles. "I'm too old for your sort of war, I suppose..."
    A good agent follows up any debating advantage, especially when it's a continuation of life that's the subject of discussion. "I said, "I thought we were pretending that I'm innocent for the purposes of this short interrogation?"

And that is April done.

(Sort of. We won't talk about my blogging.)

April stats:

Works read: 12
TIOLI: 12, in 11 different challenges, with 2 shared reads

Mystery / thriller: 8
Contemporary romance: 1
Historical drama: 1
Humour: 1
Classic: 1

Series works: 6
Re-reads: 3
Blog reads: 1
1932: 0
1931: 3
Virago / Persephone: 1
Potential decommission: 2

Owned: 4
Library: 2
Ebooks: 6

Male authors : female authors: 6 : 7

Oldest work: Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1862)
Newest work: I Can Has Cheezburger? A LOLCat Colleckshun by Eric Nakagawa and Kari Unebasami (2008)

**********

YTD stats:

Works read: 50
TIOLI: 50, in 36 different challenges, with 9 shared reads

Mystery / thriller: 29
Classic: 10
Contemporary drama: 4
Humour: 2
Short stories: 2
Contemporary romance: 1
Historical drama: 1
Young adult: 1

Series works: 19
Re-reads: 9
Blog reads: 5
1932: 1
1931: 8
Virago / Persephone: 1
Potential decommission: 3

Owned: 10
Library: 14
Ebooks: 26

Male authors : female authors: 27 (including 4 men using a single male pseudonym) : 37

Oldest work: Leandro: or, The Lucky Rescue by J. Smythies (1690)
Newest work: Nevertheless, She Persisted by Various (2020)

Roni has been spoiling me lately with sloth videos; this is a screenshot taken from one of them:

>110 lyzard: This is an excellent question! My first thought was no, but many of the especially later books that are centered in and around contemporary Dublin are nebulously connected. (Many of the older books like Circle of Friend or Firefly Summer are more focused on charting the changes in various Irish villages over the decades from the 1950s to the late 20th century.)

The main characters in the later books are always different but they sometimes interact with characters from previous books. For example, Quentins is about the people who work at or eat at a Dublin restaurant. In subsequent books, characters might eat at Quentins, or chat in passing with some of the characters from Quentins, but it is sort of secondary to the main plot. If you hadn't read Quentins, you wouldn't notice anything odd but if you had, the extra connection is a fun bit of verisimilitude.

So I guess my final thoughts are that they do not have to be strictly read in order, but the ones that are connected ideally should be. The problem there is that as far as I know no one has created a list showing how characters/settings in one book appear in others. So I guess reading them in publication order is probably the way to go.

As an unabashed Binchy fan, I don't find that to be a hardship. There are very few of her books that I wouldn't happily re-read. Maybe I should sacrifice myself to do just that and create that chart of connections!

>114 rosalita:

Well, hop to it! :D

For once it isn't about 'in order' and 'the first'. I ask because (as I've complained before) I hardly ever get to participate in the 'cover' challenges because so few of the books I read have a proper cover. However, one of the books I rescued from a roadside dumping a while back (if you can remember that rant) was a mostly-green copy of Tara Road, which I thought would work this month. But then I thought I'd heard there was book overlap and baulked.

I think you are quite safe to go ahead. My memory is that the books Tara Road overlaps with came after this, so you'd actually want to read this one first.

You're welcome! :-)

>116 rosalita:

Excellent! :)

>116 rosalita:

Also noting that you were so worked up over Maeve Binchy you completely overlooked my SLOTH!! :D

So anyway---

Finished Treasure Island for TIOLI #1.

Now reading Tara Road by Maeve Binchy.

>118 lyzard: OMG. I was so excited to know something about books that you didn't know that I totally missed the SLOTH!!,!!!!!,!!!!!!"!,!!,!

He's verra cute, he is.

Publication date: 1929
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Inspector Silver #1
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (four elements in title)

The Mayfair Mystery (US title: The Mayfair Murder) - As the friends of author Bill Seward gather at their club for his bachelor's dinner, Tony Parke decides to walk to Seward's flat, only minutes away, to see what is keeping the guest of honour. Parke has a key and lets himself in---to find Seward standing over the body of a man with a knife in his back. When Inspector Silver of Scotland Yard arrives, the two tell their stories---neither of which, they realise, is very convincing. Seward explains that he was at work in his sound-proofed study and saw and heard nothing, until he emerged to find both the body and the front door open; a door to which only he and Parke have keys. He also admits touching the knife handle, before realising that he shouldn't. Parke in turn must admit that he was held up on his walk to the flat by a chat with an acquaintance whose name he cannot remember, and probably has no alibi. Both deny knowing the dead man who, the doctor reports, did not die of the stab wound, but was finished off by strangulation. In his pocket is a letter written by Bill Seward, which hints at blackmail... Henry Holt's Inspector Silver series would eventually run to some fifteen entries, but The Mayfair Mystery, the first, is an unsatisfactory work; in fact, the more you think about it, the less it works. The main problem here is that the narrative is overstuffed with thriller elements that turn out to have little to do with the central murder---to the point that Inspector Silver ends up dividing his time between suspecting the self-evidently innocent Bill Seward and chasing down red-herring leads, and finally having little to do with solving the case, in spite of his prominence in the narrative. (He does clear up various other matters, however.) Side by side with this, Seward and Parke - each taking the other's innocence for granted - set out to get to the bottom of the matter for themselves; while there is also a warring criminal gang, an exotic female with whom Seward was once involved, a precocious, crime-obsessed Cockney kid, and even (sigh) an inscrutable Oriental in the mix. With the weight of circumstantial evidence against him, the main thing preventing Seward's arrest is that on the day of the murder, his maid, Mary Findon, went out for her half-day and never came back. As the only other person with access to a key to the flat, Mary may be a willing participant in the crime or another victim; but until she is found, Silver cannot know what kind of crime he is investigating. The case then takes another startling turn when a shot fired in through the window of his own flat almost ends the life of Tony Parke...

    Silver had drawn the blind again and sunk into a deep chair by the fire, scarcely lifting his head while Parke's slight injury was being dressed. He had other things to think about---absorbing things.
    It was like looking down at some titanic battle of chess in which the pieces were all human beings, refusing to obey the laws of the game and thrusting an intangible curtain before his eyes, so that he could not see when greed or passion or fear drove them to make a move that was not allowed.
    There was Seward, who, but for a missing link of evidence, should now, by all the laws of common sense, be on his path to the scaffold. If that one link were found nothing could save him.
    There was Andy Marks, craven and obstinate...and that cunning unknown quantity, Slim Joe, who, according to Australian Pete's letter, bore an unforgettable grudge against Seward---if Seward and Bunty were one... Also there was the Chinaman, who just now had been a picturesque highlight flung into the situation for a few moments...and there was the servant girl who had vanished into thin air...
    Then there was this inexplicable shot in the night. Who tried to murder Anthony Parke? And why? Was it because Parke knew too much?
    Always with Silver, also, was the maddening problem of the method of entry employed at Flat 13 by the dead man and by the person who killed him. If Seward did not let the deceased in, who did...?

>121 lyzard:

Just reiterating, for anyone who might be thinking of tracking this one down, that not only was the book's title changed in the US, they changed the detective's name to "Inspector Neville" too.

But trust me, that quote makes it sound a lot more interesting than it is. :)

>120 rosalita:

Thank you. That's more like it. :D

Publication date: 1929
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Ludovic Travers #2
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (horologist vocabulary)

The Perfect Murder Case - After The Plumley Inheritance, the long-missing first entry in Christopher Bush's series featuring Ludovic Travers, was finally made available again via Kindle, I went back and re-read the second entry, which I had tackled some time before. The two books represent a significant changing of gears: the first work is a treasure-hunting thriller, in which Travers appears only as sidekick to the central character; here, the economics expert and "bespectacled intellectual" again plays something of a supporting role, but this time it is because the nature of the mystery requires the combined efforts of the police, a private investigator and an amateur detective - i.e. Travers - to solve the bizarre "Marius" case. A letter signed with the latter sobriquet is sent to Scotland Yard and to the leading London newspapers, announcing that its author intends to commit what he declares to be a justified murder---and to get away with it. In short, it will be the perfect murder. Although most people believe that the letter is only a hoax, the police agree they can't afford to take chances. Marius keeps his word and sends two more letters: assuming he is telling the truth, the police know when the murder will be committed and, generally, where; but although they take all possible precautions, Thomas Richleigh is nevertheless found stabbed to death in the dining-room of his suburban house; the room is locked on the inside. Suspecting that the "Marius" business is a smokescreen, the police discover that the only people who will benefit from Richleigh's death are his four nephews---each of whom proves to have a perfect alibi... The Perfect Murder Case is a strange but interesting mystery. Over its first half, it plays very much like a Freeman Wills Croft-esque police procedural, with painstaking efforts put into tracking the movements of the four Richleigh brothers: Ernest, who was also his uncle's solicitor, and who spent the evening at the cinema with his wife and daughter and met various acquaintances; Harold, an actor, who at the time was at Norwich, appearing in Macbeth - as a murderer, no less; the Reverend Charles, who was seen arriving home at his vicarage in Suffolk and spent the evening with his wife, writing his sermon; and Frank, a schoolteacher on leave and travelling in the Pyrenees, where a raft of disinterested hotel staff swear to his presence at the critical time. The motive is clear enough - Thomas Richleigh was about to marry and divert his significant fortune from his four previous heirs - but could any of them have actually done it? About halfway through The Perfect Murder Case, the narrative switches gears---singling out one of the four Richleighs as "Marius". With Wharton and Franklin at a factual standstill, it takes some unconventional thinking from Travers to start the investigation moving again. Urging the others to accept what he believes must be the truth - that one of these four alibis, no matter how seemingly cast-iron, is fraudulent - he proposes a complex trap to flush out the killer: a plan that evolves into a lengthy and often dangerous chase...

"Damn the impossibilities," said Travers. "Look at it fair and square. Here's a case of a unique kind. A man of keen intelligence actually announces that he can't be caught. He flaunts before everybody the assertion that the police have no chance. And why? Because he's found out a way to do something which no-one believes possible. He may have found the way to murder a man and not be there, or he may have discovered how to be in two places at once. And yet you people will persist in looking for the possible..."

>124 lyzard: This one awaits me on the kindle. It looks good!

And thanks for pointing me to Internet Archive. Located and favorited No Walls of Jasper. Frankly I’m thrilled to find a potential source for obscure books—and for free!

>125 Matke:

It's a strange book, with about three major gear-changes, but I liked it and I like Travers. The "bespectacled intellectual" bit might have something to do with it: he feels like a push-back against the Wimsey* brigade.

(*I realise it's unfair to bring Peter himself into that criticism but as the ur-figure he has to share the blame. :D )

Anyway, after being stalled forever I can finally move on to Murder At Fenwold (which might be called "The Murder Of Cosmo Revere" in your neck of the woods).

There have been a lot of new additions recently at the IA which have very much improved it as a resource. I usually end up having to read their material online but that's a minor point in the overall scheme of things. :)

Finally some good news:

My first post-lockdown ILL has gone through in record time and is already awaiting pick-up.

On the other hand I'm irritated to note that my local library has put up its ILL fee again: it's not expensive, and its not a large rise, but there has been a regular incremental creep that's getting a bit exasperating---not least because they treat fees as fines (which I find rather insulting; I've never had an actual fine!) and have now pushed it to the point where you can only request one book at a time before you have to stop and pay off your "fines" (which is probably why they've done it).

Hmm.

Okay, that all seems very ungracious and unbalanced considering the state of things; but I'm annoyed that they took a little of the gloss off my excitement at the the resumption of services.

ETA: HA!! I've just noticed that they've changed "fines" to "fees / fines": perhaps I wasn't the only one insulted by that. :D

Finished Tara Road for TIOLI #10.

Now reading The Secret River by Kate Grenville.

>127 lyzard: Our public library system (Chicago) has done away with over-due fines for most items. Plus we can renew books for up to 15 times (which comes to 45 weeks!), as long as no one else requests the item. If you don't return the item, you're charged a replacement fee, and can't borrow again until you've paid up or returned the item. There are only overdue fines for ILL items (we aren't charged any fees for ILL), and the fine depends on the institution that lent the item.

During our lockdown (mid-March to early June), all items were automatically renewed. Once the libraries opened, then the "renew" clock started ticking from 0. So I've had one item all during the lockdown, and still have it now for another 15 renewal periods. I suppose I should sit down and read the thing. I'm tired of looking at it.

Publication date: 1930
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Francis McNab #2
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI ("Mother, May I...")

Murder On The Marsh - Having been consulted by Ann Cardew about her father's increasingly strange behaviour, which suggests he is in great fear of some sort of attack, crime analyst Francis McNab is disturbed when, the very next day, the newspapers carry a brief report of James Cardew's sudden death from what appears to be heart failure. McNab sends his friend and colleague, reporter Godfrey Chance, to Burrish, the nearest village to the Cardews' isolated Romney Marsh house. Chance soon sees that the local feeling, including among the police, is that Cardew's death was somehow unnatural; he sends for McNab. At the inquest, a witness describes the circumstances of Cardew's death: how, walking alone in the night, he suddenly cried out, bent over as if to examine his own shoes, then staggered away and collapsed on his lawn. McNab's professional connections pave the way for him to be taken into the confidence of the local police: he tells Sergeant Strood about Cardew's fearful watches out of his windows, and his obsession with checking his shoes; and learns in turn that the detail giving investigators pause is a cigarette-case found at the scene, in a condition suggesting it was not lost accidentally, but left deliberately to attract Cardew's attention; but why...? This second entry in John Alexander Ferguson's series featuring the wry Scottish crime writer, Francis McNab, is a very mixed bag. It offers two of this series' usual (for me) sticking-points: McNab's narrator / sidekick, Chance, who is a bit too much in the tradition of Arthur Hastings; and McNab's rather stereotypical Scottish-ness (though as Ferguson was himself a Scot, the latter was probably meant as a joke); which here are mixed into a convoluted mystery featuring an outrageously improbable means of murder. On the other hand, Murder On The Marsh makes excellent use of its eerie marshland setting, and - for better or worse - it does something most Golden Age mysteries rarely attempt: it offers a second murder that is genuinely upsetting. The circumstances of James Cardew's life, rather than his death, seem to suggest murder for gain; though it was true that, with his control of his temper crumbling under strain, Cardew had quarrelled violently with Rowland Todd, his former estate manager, and with a young man called Sneyd, who local gossip linked to Ann Cardew---and who the police believe was the owner of the cigarette-case found at the scene, though Sneyd denies it. As McNab begins his own investigation, hampered by his decision to disguise his real reason for being in Burrish, Sergeant Strood also pursues his inquiries. He is simultaneously grateful, annoyed and vaguely alarmed by the enthusiasm and original thinking of his young subordinate, Constable Hackett, who has enough self-confidence to pursue a bizarre suspicion on his own---and loses his life in the process, in circumstances disturbingly similar to the death of James Cardew, with one vital exception: in his dead hand is found his notebook, on which the dedicated young man tried to write his last thoughts; and though the killer snatched part of the page from him, enough is left behind to offer a cryptic clue...

    "It's the 'how' that's the trouble... So little of the page is left it is impossible to say whether the second warning is made in connection with the torch, or with the shoes. No, for all that I'll have to wait for morning---for a clearer head."
    As McNab shut the book he looked up at me. "Shoes again. Odd, isn't it?"
    Strood picked up his cap and straightened himself. "All I'll say, sir, is that I shouldn't care to be in that fellow's shoes with you after me. No, neither should I when I get my hands on him," he added truculently, swelling his chest.
    McNab, I remember, stopped to look at him. Then, as the sergeant moved towards the door, he took his arm. "Strood, my friend, have you already forgotten what we said about how it was done?"
    The sergeant stopped, and both men faced each other just by the door.
    "What do you mean, sir?" Strood was obviously puzzled.
    "Just this: I asked you to observe that though Hackett knew how it was done he, all the same, got caught himself. Didn't that fact tell you anything?"
    The sergeant nodded slowly, very slowly, several times. "I see what you mean... It tells me there must be something damn' clever in the way Mr Cardew was done in---damn' clever to trap young Hackett..."
    McNab looked satisfied. "Right! So go warily. Remember the same danger is still there, alive and active. The man could have nothing in the world against Hackett, except that Hackett knew..."

>129 kac522:

All fines and fees were eliminated during lockdown and no-one was expected to return anything---including in my case two ILLs for which there are ordinarily no renewals.

I still have a pile of books from my academic library that they've made no move to get back, since they're not letting the public in. Those books automatically renew indefinitely, unless someone else requests them.

For my local library you have to self-renew after an electronic warning, but I think that's also indefinite unless requested. They're getting back to normal now, though with entry restrictions. I don't know what their fines are generally but if an adult borrower racks up $10.00 then services stop till it's paid. My ILL fee is now $5.20 which is why I'm so irritated. (That said, I have nothing to complain about in the service itself, which operates efficiently and nation-wide.)

Publication date: 1931
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Inspector Bedison #3
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (written by a foreigner)

Inspector Bedison Risks It - The Reverend Ashley Drew instinctively intervenes when he sees two men violently attacking a third---who turns out to be Inspector Bedison of Scotland Yard. The next morning, Bedison calls to tell Drew that the two were criminals suspected in a recent jewel robbery, and that one of them, Albert Plimmer, struck his head during the affray and is not expected to live. Dismayed, Drew makes a point of calling at the hospital to see if there is anything he can do. There is not---but Drew is struck by the youth and beauty of the woman who sits silently by Plimmer's bedside; his wife, the nurse tells him... Some time afterwards, Drew transfers to a country parish. For two years his life is a peaceful success, but then trouble overtakes him. He lays hands on the wealthy Mr Davenport in a very un-Christian way, after the latter kicks his dog; while the neighbourhood generally is disrupted by the arrival of brash millionaire, Harvey Slocombe, and his young wife. The latter has a secretary of about her own age: to his astonishment, Drew recognises Mrs Plimmer, now calling herself Margaret Cresswell. Uncertain that the young woman was complicit in her husband's crimes, hoping in any event for her reformation, Drew holds his tongue---until the Slocombes are robbed of a valuable ruby necklace. Drew then makes up his mind to speak---but is found shot dead near the Davenports' house before he can... The third entry in Thomas Cobb's Inspector Bedison series marks another improvement, with Inspector Bedison Risks It offering the first glimmerings of some (relatively) complex characterisation. The narrative turns very much upon the truth about Margaret Cresswell Plimmer, and whether she is the innocent victim of circumstances that she claims, or whether she was involved in the theft of the Slocombe's necklace---and in other of her husband's crimes before that. We do not, frankly, think very much of the Reverend Ashley Drew during his interactions with Margaret: not only is he clearly influenced in his first decision to stay silent by her physical attractiveness, but when, after the robbery, he decides he must denounce her, it is as much out of embarrassment at having been, he supposes, fooled by her and fear of what his neighbours will say, as anything to do with "right" or "duty". Drew's death, hard on the heels of the Slocombe burglary, brings Inspector Bedison to the scene. In spite of the Davenport row, Bedison soon concludes that the two crimes are somehow connected; that Drew saw something - or someone - and paid the price. To Bedison's practised eye, the burglary bears the hallmarks of Max Friend, a dangerous jewel-thief who was also the second man who attacked him in London. Yet another possibility soon raises its head: a local sweep nabs an ex-convict called Cosser who, reading through his prevarication, had travelled down from London to try a little blackmail on an old acquaintance. It is only then that Bedison, having questioned Margaret Cresswell along with the rest of the Slocombe household, learns who she actually is---and realises that she had motive for Drew's death separate from any connection with the burglary; not just to keep her secret generally, but because Anthony Slocombe, the son of the household, is obviously in love with her. Bedison knows he has enough circumstantial evidence to justify Margaret's arrest; but - like Drew before him - he hesitates; and like Drew, he doubts his own motives...

    "Upon my soul, I don't understand all this," said Anthony; but there was one thing the inspector well understood. Alone with Margaret, he would not have hesitated to disregard certain rules and regulations, but to do this in the presence of a barrister might eventually bring trouble on himself. He felt reluctant to deal with her more formally, but they seemed to be forcing his hand.
    "I must warn you," he said, "that anything you say may be used as evidence against you---"
    Anthony took a step nearer to the table. "What the hell---" he exclaimed, but Bedison continued without appearing to notice the interruption.
    "Your name is Plimmer?"
    She darted a glance at Anthony, then lowered her eyes. "Yes," she said.
    "Your husband---"
    "Good God," muttered Anthony.
    "Your husband, Albert Plimmer, was arrested three years ago with a man named Max Friend for the theft of a quantity of jewellery from the Consolidates Stores?"
    Margaret rose impulsively to her feet, desperately flinging out her hands. "What is the use of asking me that?" she retorted. "Wasn't it you who struck the blow that killed him?"

>132 lyzard: That looks a less than the run-of-th-mill mystery series, Liz and not one I was familiar with.

>133 PaulCranswick:

I may be over-selling it: the first book in this short series, The Crime Without A Clue, is dreadful, so I've been pleasantly surprised by the subsequent improvement and perhaps cutting them a bit too much slack. :)

Publication date: 1931
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Lynn MacDonald #4
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (marked book)

October House - After scratching a living in a variety of ways to support herself and her young daughter - when she meets her future employer, she is "Madame Petronia, psychic card reader and palmist" - Katherine Peters is only too grateful for the room and board and one hundred a month offered her by Theresa "Toy" O'Shea. What Katherine's duties will be is left rather nebulous: Toy says only that she wants someone who will be "on her side". Dismayed is hardly the word for it when Katherine finds herself at October House: the property is situated in a remote corner of Oregon, at the end of a winding road through the mountains; moreover, it is literally cut off by a broad stretch of water that requires the residents and any delivery persons to go back and forth in a launch. Inside, matters are no less intimidating: Toy shares the house with middle-aged spinster, Alyse Molehard, and divorcée Cynthia Zann; also staying there are Cynthia's brother, Durke, and her daughter, Barbara. Though Toy has spoken of her "dear friends", it is soon evident that the three women despise each other; yet despite this, and despite too that all three are financially well off, none of the three seems to have a thought of leaving. Following the tradition of October House's builder and owner, the late Alfred Van Dwyer, during the namesake month a house-party is planned, the guests being Imlay Purcell, who Toy is desperately in love with; Lucille Vane, a much-married friend of Toy's; Asa Q. Hanchett, a wealthy man of somewhat advanced years, at whom Cynthia is pushing Barbara; and Josephine Fairley, Barbara's best friend. The arrival of these outsiders only serves to increase the various tensions operating within October House, and perhaps it is not altogether surprising when the situation culminates in murder... One of the real strengths of Kay Cleaver Strahan's Lynn MacDonald series is its premise of "regional writing", with each work set in a different part of America, and much thought given to the mystery's backdrop and how geography and circumstances act upon character. All that said, Strahan takes it a bit too far in October House: the premise is too contrived, the reader is forced into lengthy stretches with some genuinely unpleasant people, and narrator Katherine Peters is not, despite obvious intentions, likeable enough or humorous enough herself to carry the weight of the situation---in fact, given her haphazard parenting of the precocious Fanchon and her attitude to the non-white servants, quite the opposite. (On a pettier point, her constant use of "of" rather than "have" nearly drove me crazy too, though I accept it as a legitimate bit of regional dialect.) As is so often the case in American mysteries of this era, the police barely make an appearance in October House, despite the narrative's spiraling crime-wave; and though erstwhile gardener, Emoreland Everett, claims to be a detective hired to protect Alyse Molehard, he can't prove it---Alyse having been stabbed to death with a paper-knife that has been coming and going with great pertinacity. It is late in proceedings before Lynn MacDonald shows up. It transpires that, anticipating trouble, Cynthia Zann arranged for Lynn to be present during the house-party; though she could hardly have anticipated exactly how much trouble---October House having become by that time the site of two murders, an apparent suicide, a robbery and two disappearances; while the cutting of the phone-lines and the removal of the launch have trapped the remaining occupants and guests within the house. No-one - Katherine least of all - is very impressed by Lynn MacDonald; there is rather a tendency to believe that she and Cynthia are in it together, whatever "it" might be; yet the fact remains that within eight hours of her arrival - bringing her own boat - Lynn has sorted out the many mysteries unfolding within October House, including the underlying mystery of the house itself...

    I'll bet it was ten minutes more, after that, before Lynn MacDonald showed up. In one hand she had her large, flat, under-arm bag---a real good-looking one of tooled leather---and with her other hand she was leading Fanchon. I never could understand it, but Fanchon took to her from the start.
    "Sorry to have kept you waiting like this," she addressed us all. "But, since I was downstairs, I stopped to talk again to the Chinese boys. And now, to make matters worse, I'm afraid, I have found that I want to go back to my original plan of talking to you one at a time. So, if you will leave me and this young woman," she referred to Beatrice Barner, "alone for the present?"
    I can't say how the others felt about it. They acted differently; some relieved, some otherwise---Asa Q. was one who acted otherwise---but, for myself, I felt exceedingly much discouraged. A woman, I thought, who could not plan better than that, getting all balled up as she had been the very first thing, was not apt to make a howling success of any venture.
    On our weary way downstairs I asked Fanchon what Lynn MacDonald had said to her.
    I regret to state that Fanchon's only answer was, "None of your business." The child is not really rude at heart, but she does pick up such rough talk, though where from I have no idea.
    When, after thirteen minutes, Beatrice joined our waiting group with the message that Miss MacDonald wanted to see Emoreland again, I just about gave up all hope. Seeing a bird like that twice, when intelligent people were waiting, took the heart right out of me...

>113 lyzard: If anyone deserves sloth videos, it is definitely you, Liz! All the hard work you put in on reviews!

>136 ronincats:

I appreciate them, Roni! :)

Publication date: 1975
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Hercule Poirot #38
Read for: Agatha Christie chronological challenge

Curtain: Poirot's Last Case - This is a work impossible to deal with on its own merits: the circumstances of its writing and publication, and its deliberate positioning as the conclusion to what turned out to be Agatha Christie's 38-book, 55-year-long series featuring Hercule Poirot, preclude a straightforward assessment. Along with Sleeping Murder, Curtain was written in the 1940s, at the height of WWII, when survival was a day-to-day question. Agatha wrote both books specifically for the financial support of her husband and daughter, should anything happen to her. As it turned out, Agatha was able to choose the publication date for Curtain, which appeared less than a year before her own death. She did not rewrite the original manuscript to reflect the actual changes to the world which occurred during the intervening thirty years, in spite of the novel being self-evidently published many years beyond the point she anticipated while writing it; and her attempt, in the mid-1940s, to "imagine the future" creates a queasy, off-kilter framework for her mystery, which unfolds in a world that seems stuck in a version of Austerity Britain, and where her characters' timelines make no chronological sense. Even details such as ex-army officers having "returned from India", or a young woman being her scientist-boss's "secretary" (assistant, really) rather than his graduate student or a PhD in her own right, give the game away. There is no question that this backdrop interferes with the success of this novel; yet at the same time, at its heart sits a mystery premise so brilliant that had it been used in a work written and published under normal circumstances, Curtain would probably be ranked alongside The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd, Murder On The Orient Express and And Then There Were None as not just Agatha's best works, but one of the premiere mysteries of all time---although of course, there was a very cogent reason why this premise could not have been so used... A newly widowed Arthur Hastings returns to England from Argentina in response to a welcome but puzzling letter written to him by Hercule Poirot, who he has not seen in many years. It is dated from Styles Court, the scene of Poirot's first English triumph so many years before, and the place where he and Hastings began their enduring friendship. However, it is a very different Styles Court awaiting Hastings, and a very different Poirot too: the former has passed from the hands of the Cavendish family and been converted into lodging-house; and the latter, to Hastings' great grief and dismay, is a wreck of his former self, elderly and fragile, unable without help to leave the wheelchair in which he spends most of his time; and, as he confides, with a serious heart condition that could kill him at any moment. But there are still flashes of the old Poirot, who is still stubbornly dying his hair and moustaches; and who, he reveals to Hastings' astonishment, is at Styles Court to catch a murderer... Explaining to Hastings that he has summoned him specifically to be his eyes and ears - and feet - Poirot lays out the case that has brought him back to Styles. He describes a series of murders, all of them solved---pointing out to Hastings that these seemingly unrelated crimes have two things in common: in all of them, there was absolutely no doubt who committed the crime, or why; and in all of them, one particular person was on the scene just beforehand. Poirot is, in fact, hunting an extraordinarily dangerous murderer---a murderer with the power to convince other people to commit his murders; and his task - his and Hastings' - is not to solve a murder, but to prevent one from being committed... To Hastings' indignation, Poirot refuses to give him any hint of the killer's identity, but instead sends him out amongst the other house-guests to make his own observations. It is no easy task; everyone seems so ordinary: Styles' owners and operators, Colonel Luttrell and his sharp-tongued-wife; Sir William Boyd Carrington, a well-known traveller and big-game hunter, who is staying at Styles while his own country house is renovated; Major Allenton, a man of the world with a way with women; Norton, a quiet, middle-aged man with a passion for bird-watching; Miss Cole, a woman sliding out of youth with hints of tragedy about her; Dr John Franklin, a poor but brilliant scientist, who has rented a cottage in the Styles grounds to use as a laboratory; his wife, Barbara, beautiful but in poor health, or at least playing as such; Nurse Craven, hired to look after her, an attractive but frustrated woman; and - last but definitely not least - Judith Hastings, Arthur's daughter, who works for Franklin. Hastings can hardly believe that such a dangerous individual can be found in this gathering, as Poirot insists is the case; but events seem to prove him right. There is a near-miss, a possibly accidental shooting that ends only in a wounding---and then a sudden death that turns out to be a case of poisoning. Worst of all, however, is that even as he deals with these tragedies, Hastings must also cope with Judith's involvement with the attractive but unscrupulous Allenton; and as his fears for his daughter's future grow, he begins to find his own thoughts turning to murder... Despite its manifest flaws, Curtain is a fitting climax to Christie's Hercule Poirot series, a case so complex that it taxes Poirot's abilities to the utmost. There is a deliberately elegiac tone to this novel: the narrative is studded with call-backs to Poirot's earlier cases (beware spoilers, if you haven't read this series from start to finish!); besides being in its own right often outright sad, full of frustrated and/or lonely people and others suffering private griefs - Hastings himself is mourning his "Cinderella" - while the spectre of Hercule Poirot's own imminent death haunts Christie's mise-en-scène. It is not, perhaps, surprising to find these things in a novel written under the daily terrors and dangers of war, but I think something else is going on here: I think that when it actually came time to part with the "little Belgian detective", who had caused her so much exasperation over the years, Agatha realised that she had learned to love him, too.

    "If anything happens to me, my friend," said Poirot, "you will find here---" he patted the locked despatch case by his side "---all the clues you need. I have arranged, you see, for every eventuality."
    "There is really no need to be so clever," I said. "Just tell me know everything there is to know."
    "No, my friend. The fact that you don't know what I know is a valuable asset."
    "You have left me a clearly written account of things?"
    "Certainly not. X might get hold of it."
    "Then what have you left?"
    "Indications in kind. They will mean nothing to X - be assured of that - but they will lead you to the discovery of the truth."
    "I'm not so sure of that. Why must you always have such a tortuous mind, Poirot? You always like making everything difficult. You always have!"
    "And it is now with me a passion? Perhaps. But rest assured, my indications will lead you to the truth." He paused. Then he said: "And perhaps, then, you would wish that they had not led you so far. You would say instead: 'Ring down the curtain.'"
    Something in his voice started again that vague unformulated dread that I had once or twice felt spasms of already. It was as though somewhere, just out of sight, was a fact that I did not want to see---that I could not bear to acknowledge. Something that, deep down, I knew...

>138 lyzard: Great review, Liz! I think you're on to something when you say that Agatha was reluctant to part with Poirot. Certainly Curtain is disturbingly dark, unlike most of Christie's other work.

>139 NinieB:

Thank you, Ninie! It's a strange and uncomfortable book; that central premise, though...!

Oh, my.

I just got my first electronic 'your books are due for renewal or return' notice since---when? February??

Publication date: 1929
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Inspector Frost #1
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (J in title)

Inspector Frost's Jigsaw - When Mrs de Morville is shot dead on her own back lawn in the village of Aldersford, the local police are quick to throw up their hands and send for Scotland Yard. The case falls to Inspector Frost, who requests the sharp young Detective William Smith - who also happens to be his godson and protégé - as his assistant. On the scene, Frost learns that the murder was committed in a ten-minute interval between the victim speaking to her maid, and that maid bringing out her tea. Unfortunately, the panicking servants carried the body into the house before calling the police, meaning that the angle of the shot cannot be determined. Superintendent Thomas shows Frost the only potential evidence, two sets of men's footprints in a nearby shrubbery; admitting that they may have nothing to do with the crime. The victim, a widow in her fifties, was active in public affairs, and perhaps more respected than popular; but a few petty incidents aside, no-one in the village can begin to suggest a motive for her murder... This first entry in Herbert Maynard Smith's series featuring Inspector Frost offers a slightly different take on the British mystery of the time. In broad outline, and perhaps following the Inspector French mysteries of Freeman Wills Crofts, this a police procedural, with due weight given to the necessary tedium of real police work---in this case, the patient questioning of anyone who might be able to shed light on Mrs de Morville's death---with the narrative broken down not just into days, but small sections within those days, as Frost carries out his investigation. The murder is committed at 4.30 pm on a Tuesday; the case is wrapped the following Saturday morning; and we follow Frost every step of his way in between. However, what chiefly separates this work from the bulk of contemporary British mysteries is Frost himself: most unusually, Inspector Frost's Jigsaw is narrated in the first person; and as he offers his thoughts and reasoning to the reader, the inspector is revealed as a cheerful, intelligent man, though one with a very good opinion of himself; his tendency to pomposity off-set by his understanding of human nature and a wry sense of humour. In fact, without undermining its mystery or treating the victim with any disrespect, the entire novel has a slightly tongue-in-cheek tone unusual in the genre at this time. Frost approaches the investigation of Mrs de Morville's murder in two very different ways. Conspicuous by his size and well known to the papers, the inspector plays to this, making himself prominent in Aldersford as "Frost of the Yard", while arranging for young Smith to arrive inconspicuously posing as a clerk on holiday, a guise that allows him freedom of movement and conversation. Frost also makes shrewd use of the reporters at the scene, in particular a young Scot named Holloway with whom he has a good working relationship. The main stumbling-block in the investigation is the absence of any apparent motive, something which prompts Miss Courtland, the victim's younger sister who lived with her, to insist that it could only have been a random attack by someone mentally unbalanced. No large sums of money are involved; though the bulk of what there is goes not to Miss Courtland, but to a nephew, Charles Steel, who was brought up by the victim. For all of his painstaking questioning, Frost comes away with only a few vague clues to follow up: the fact that Steel, though notified of his aunt's death via a telegram to Sandhurst, was slow in putting in an appearance; a counterfoil left blank in Mrs de Morville's chequebook, unusual for such an efficient woman; the discovery that there was - or is - a Courtland brother, whose existence no-one mentions; and a message about a "discovery" sent to the local magnate, Sir Walter Gerrans, for whom Mrs de Morville did genealogical research, and whose family history is his pride and passion. Will one of these random pieces allow Frost to solve his puzzle, or is there another yet to be discovered...?

    "Now tell me," I asked, "what did the pot-valiant citizens of Aldersford proclaim in your respective pubs last night?"
    "They all knew that you were not in uniform," replied Holloway, "and they were mostly sure that you were no good. You have been a long time at The Elms---as if the murderer were likely to remain there!---and you have been to the Manor to ask Sir Walter's help, and that is the only sensible thing that you have done."
    "Thank you!... Now, tell me what they said about the crime."
    "Well, several of them remembered having seen on the road during the last three months villainous tramps who looked as if they would like to have the chance of murdering a rich old lady... But," said the Scot eagerly, "the prevalent opinion is that the chauffeur is a Bolshie in disguise, and that the Soviets have sent him to Aldersford to kill Mrs de Morville, who was president of the Women's Conservative Association."
    "Is that going into your paper?"
    "I think not. It would be libellous and the man might get damages."
    "Well, one good turn deserves another. At the 'Rose and Crown' it was suggested that the Squire's son, aged thirteen, being unable to hit a rabbit, shot Mrs de Morville, she providing a larger mark."
    "I don't think I shall print that either," said the wise young Scot.
    "Now I have seen both the boy and the Bolshie, and I can assure you that the boy did not shoot the lady."
    "And the Bolshie?"
    "Refuses to commit himself."

The Inspector Bedison book sounds interesting, though I note your qualification to Paul. :-)

I'm skipping your review of Curtain for now, as I've not gotten that far in my Poirot read, but you've reminded me to get back to it. Next up is The Labors of Hercules which, alas, my library does not have.

>143 rosalita:

Yes, and the criticisms I made in >79 lyzard: apply too. But the plots are definitely getting better.

Making a necessary exception of Maudie, one of the consequences of my slack reviewing is that I won't let myself read the next in the series until I'm caught up. I'm now there with Bedison and I'm hoping to polish off this short series this month. (Marmoset ahoy!)

Oh, you do still have a way to go with Hercule! How frustrating; do you have another source?

In the Before Times, I would request it via ILL, but I'm not sure my local library is open for pickup of physical books. I'll have to give them a call and see what's possible. In the meantime, I've requested that they purchase the ebook.*

Obviously I could also, you know, buy it myself. But the ebook is $10 which is rather more spendy than I care to get for digital books. Christie ebooks do occasionally go on offer, but I haven't seen this one in the virtual bargain bin so far.

Publication date: 1918
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: David Carroll #1
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (number in title)

Six Seconds Of Darkness - Though perhaps better known for his humorous (or humorously intended) works, Octavus Roy Cohen also dabbled in crime-writing, initially via short stories and novellas written for the magazines. The short-ish work which introduced private investigator David Carroll first appeared in the (as it turned out) appropriately titled People's Favorite Magazine in 1918, where it proved so popular that it was adapted into a play before finally appearing in book form. Six Seconds Of Darkness is indeed a thoroughly entertaining bit of detective fiction, though it requires the reader to accept one of those wildly improbable scenarios in which half a dozen people - all with motive, and all carrying guns - just happen to be in the vicinity when a murder is committed. However, there is also some solid detective work here, with Carroll working out what must have been the trajectory of the fatal shot: something that becomes key to the case. The victim is Edward J. Hamilton, a wealthy businessman who has recently entered politics on a platform of civic reform, and thus won himself a score of enemies---including a number within the police force itself. In fact, when he learns of Hamilton's murder, Police Commissioner Hall takes the drastic step of appointing David Carroll to lead the investigation. Carroll's involvement in an ongoing probe into police corruption makes him persona non grata at headquarters, and Hall's decision to put him in charge over the head of his own Chief of Detectives, Barrett Rollins, exacerbates an already difficult case. Not that there is any lack of suspects in Hamilton's murder; on the contrary: the problem is, people won't stop confessing... News of the murder has barely reached headquarters before Hamilton's ward, Eunice Duval, has turned herself in; and even as Hall is dealing with this shock, Frederick Badger, a wild-eyed derelict of a man, also confesses to the crime. Hall and Carroll are still trying to make sense of the conflicting statements when they have to deal with a third confession, this one from Vincent Harrelson, a young artist who is engaged to Eunice. Though all three stubbornly insist upon being the guilty party, their conflicting stories do have certain points of agreement: most significantly, that at the critical moment, the lights in Hamilton's study went out; and that it was during this brief time that he was shot. But was it only one shot that was fired, or was it two? - or even three? While Hall and Carroll are still trying to make sense of these cross-confessions, a triumphant Barrett Rollins arrives with a man in custody: Red Hartigan, a professional burglar, discovered at the scene with a recently-fired gun in his pocket...

    Hall flashed him a keen glance. “What are you driving at, anyway, Carroll? Hartigan lied to us when he told his first story; he admitted it when he came in to see us at headquarters with his carefully thought-out revision. Rollins found Hartigan unconscious behind that screen; he found in his pocket a revolver from which one shot had been fired. His deductions were absolutely logical. Why should we believe every detail of the crook’s story?”
    “We shouldn’t,” said Carroll simply. “We shouldn’t believe any one’s story---even that of Miss Duval.”
    “Meaning?” interjected Denson eagerly.
    “That, of our four choices, three are mistaken---either deliberately or through circumstances. Remember, this case reeks with the unusual; we have one of the most prominent men in the city murdered in his own study---and immediately following the murder the confessions of his ward, a society belle; a young artist, and a half-crazy old man. Then the head of our regular detective force brings in a burglar so tightly hemmed around with a net of circumstantial evidence that he wouldn’t have a breathing chance before a jury.
    “A doctor’s investigation proves beyond peradventure of a doubt that the man was shot only once. And while every one present admits that three shots might have been fired---the likelihood is that there were only two; one fired in the dark, and the other immediately after the lights were snapped on...”

>145 rosalita:

Good luck! My library is doing ILLs again despite entrance restrictions etc. so you might be okay.

Yes, I baulk at ebooks beyond a certain price too. I'm glad to say that I have Advise And Consent on its way to me via ILL: I was grinding my teeth at the thought of being forced to buy it, on top of paying overs for Doctor Zhivago.

Compared to some of your reviews, that sounds like a glowing endorsement! Just hoping, for your sake, that this series is neither too long nor too confusing to follow in order...

>148 Helenliz:

It almost is: the circumstances of the murder are absurd but the story around it is really good.

Placing this one was the difficult bit! - there's some publication date misinformation out there; I think the rest are okay. :D

Publication date: 1925
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Inspector Pointer #2
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI ('mystery' in title)

The Charteris Mystery - When Rose Charteris is found dead in a sand-pit neat Stillwater, the estate owned by her uncle where she and her father occupy a wing, it looks like a tragic accident. However, the young men who find the body, Bond and Cockburn, and their older friend, Thornton, notice some details at the scene that worry them. Unable to convince the local police, Thornton puts through a call to Scotland Yard. Inspector Pointer is soon sure that it was indeed murder, and one that took place elsewhere. He identifies a two-storey guest-house in the grounds of Stillwater as the scene of the crime: there are indications that Rose fell or was pushed to her death, and the body moved by two people, a man and a woman. Furthermore, there is evidence of a second scene of violence: damaged plants, smashed pots, and more blood than was lost by the dead girl. Pointer's investigation suggests that Rose's murder has something to do with her father's absence in Italy: he finds evidence that someone has been searching for a letter she received from him, and which has either been well-hidden or stolen. When Colonel Scarlett's attempts to reach his brother-in-law yield no response, Pointer travels to Italy himself---where he uncovers a second murder, gets mixed up in dangerous politics, and finds himself running for his life... This second entry in the Inspector Pointer series by "A. Fielding" (still not definitely identified) is very much - as they say - a sophomore effort. This is a lengthy work for this genre, consisting of two different mysteries - and two different types of mystery - mixed together in a way that is too often just confusing. On what we might call the "Rose" side of things, the immediate problem is that the narrative starts in medias res, with a fairly large cast of characters who aren't properly introduced, whose relationships to one another aren't clear, and whose normal behaviour we have no chance to grasp before Rose is found dead. Consequently, when the plot finally returns to Stillwater towards the conclusion of the novel, it is difficult to remember who everyone is and who did what---and what the significance of it might have been. When Pointer leaves for Italy to track down the worryingly elusive Professor Charteris, The Charteris Mystery morphs into an entirely different kind of story: in essence, a political thriller, with Pointer tangling with the Fascists and the Bolsheviks alike and, having come into possession of the missing document at the back of much of this, being forced to run a dangerous gauntlet back to England in company with his good friend, the ex-secret service agent, O'Connor. The narrative then switches gears once more, belatedly teasing out the relationships behind all the strange doings at Stillwater: a secret marriage, a love-triangle and a family tragedy, among other things. On both sides of the plot sits the Count di Monti, a relative of Rose Charteris and her cousin, Sibella Scarlett, through their Italian grandmother, and a rising young Fascist with dreams of great power. Though overtly involved with Rose, and furiously jealous over her hesitation between himself and the rising young artist, George Bellairs, di Monti is also involved with Sibella, whose own jealousy led her to betray to him Rose's meetings with Bellairs and who blames herself for her cousin's death. When Inspector Pointer gathers the various interested parties at Scotland Yard on the pretext of taking impressions of the men's hands, there is no-one in the group who isn't expecting the finger of accusation to be pointed at the arrogant young Italian---but there are many surprises in store before the killer of Rose Charteris is revealed...

    "The count...took away a letter that Miss Charteris had left behind her by accident... Miss Charteris missed it at once when she returned to her room, and went to the top of the summer house to speak to you about it, Mr Bellairs. She had asked you to meet her there as soon as you could come. Evidently ten was the hour one or other of you set. I take it she had asked you to let her know how things had gone between you and Count di Monti. She was sure you would quarrel. You decided not to go."
    A chuckle came from di Monti. "I decided for him."
    "Had you gone," Pointer still spoke to the artist, "you might have postponed, but you would not have changed the end. The murderer caught sight of her standing alone under the light of the electric lantern up above. He thought that she was there to hand on the enclosure. He switched off the light, ran up the stairs, possibly made some comment about the lamp being out of order, and then as she leant back, perhaps to look at it, an arm was thrust under her knees, and she was flung full force backwards on to the flags below, breaking her neck as she struck them, and cutting her head on a flower pot."
    There was one collective gasp from the room.
    "As far as we know, she didn't even cry out. Had she done so, and had it been heard, he would have been the first to shout for help, we may be sure, and rush down to see if anything could be done for her. But he would have taken her silver chain bag just the same. Either from the top, where she had dropped it, or from beside her---"
    "The bag?" Scarlett said in a dazed voice
    "The bag which had held the enclosed letter. Miss Charteris was murdered for the sake of something which her father was believed, quite erroneously, to have sent her. And now I am sorry to say I have to tell you about another death. Professor Charteris was murdered, too. He was killed in Northern Italy, for the same reason that cost his daughter her life. By sheer accident he was present when a so-called Bulgarian traveller was killed. But the man was not a Bulgarian. He was Neumann, the great secret leader of the Soviet spy system. On him was a paper in cipher giving the names of all the chief Bolshevik agents in Europe..."

Publication date: 1938
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Amos Lee Mappin #2
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI ('death' in title)

The Death Of A Celebrity (UK title: Death Of A Celebrity) - Playwright Gavin Dordress hosts a party in his penthouse apartment, but it is not a cheerful event. Gail Garrett, an actress now on the wrong side of forty, with whom Dordress was once involved, is desperate to secure the female lead in his new play, but is put off with evasive answers. Mack Townley, Dordress' producer, is harassed both by having a beautiful young wife, Bea Ellerman, and by her equal determination to secure a part in the new play. Emmett Gundy, a struggling novelist consumed with jealousy of Dordress' success, attends the party with his devoted friend, the fading columnist, Luella Kip; Gundy never stops criticising Dordress, but means to make use of him if he can. Cynthia Dordress, Gavin's daughter, who has only recently met her father after being raised away from him by her divorced mother, arrives with Siebert Ackroyd, who runs a writer's agency: Siebert is desperately in love with Cynthia, and resents her fascination with her brilliant father. Only the criminologist Amos Lee Mappin, Dordress' old college friend, and pert young Fanny Parran, the latter's secretary, expect to have a good time---but both are taken aback by the undertows of anger and jealousy in the gathering. After most of the guests have left, the evening culminates in an ugly scene between Dordress, Gail and the Townleys, in which personal and professional passions are mingled. The next morning, Dordress is found dead... The title of this second entry in Hulbert Footner's Amos Lee Mappin series is somewhat misleading, suggesting a broader take on the ramifications of fame, and the public fallout from the playwright's murder; but in fact, Dordress' "celebrity" is mostly beside the point. Despite a few regional tweaks, including the New York ambiance - and a plot which carries the reader from a luxury penthouse to the criminal underworld - this mystery is the familiar gathering of a remarkable number of people with motive for murder; and though most of the characters do have some involvement with the arts scene or publishing, their professions are of less importance than the factors - emotional or financial - that motivate them. However, there is certainly no shortage of "artistic temperament" on display here, with many scenes involving emotional outbreaks and wild accusations, including between putative romantic leads, Cynthia and Siebert; and this aspect of the novel is frankly tiresome. However, there are also a few good twists, including Cynthia's unexpected competence when in danger, and the motive for the murder that is finally revealed---even if this does make the killer's identity a bit too obvious, a bit too early. At first glance, Dordress' death looks like suicide: there is the gun near his hand; a letter in his handwriting intimating personal and professional disillusionment; and, perhaps most significantly of all, in his fireplace, the burnt remains of the play that was the point of so much contention. However, Cynthia refuses to accept this interpretation, not least because the supposed suicide note leaves no word for her. Shrewdly, she points out not just the literary tone of it, but even that Dordress made corrections to certain words---almost as if it had been written as part of a play... While the police accept the obvious reading of Dordress' death, at Cynthia's urging Mappin takes a closer look. Cynthia has already brought to his attention the odd behaviour of Hillman, Dordress' manservant, who benefits from his will; while Mappin himself discovers that several of the party returned to the apartment building after their supposed departure. He also learns that Bea has apparently left her husband, despite Mack's insistence that she is resting in a nursing-home; and that Gail has been seen with an unsavoury character with a reputation as a hired gun. Still more unexpected is that Gail has been financing a restaurant run by Hillman and his wife. Perhaps most bizarre of all, after Cynthia disturbs a burglar in Dordress' study, Mappin discovers that her father's chess-set has been taken a replaced by a different one. Yet it is not until the death of Gavin Dordress is pushed from the headlines by the spectacular success of a new play - by an unknown author, handled by Siebert Ackroyd; produced by Mack Townley; and starring Bea Ellerman - that Mappin sees the light...

    In the second act the tension increased as the audience perceived the devilish net that was spread for the hapless youth. The men were more important than the women in this play, and it was not until the second scene of the second act that Bea Ellerman made her appearance. She took the part of a young girl, the youth's fiancée. Her perplexity and dismay at the subtle change that had come over her lover were touching in the extreme.
    Cynthia was breathing fast and her face had become agonised as she watched the scene. Lee touched her arm. "My dear, it's only a play," he whispered.
    She turned strained eyes on him, dark and enormous. "Can't you hear it?' she whispered.
    "Hear what?"
    "My father's voice."
    He stared at her, too startled to speak.
    "This is Dad's play, Lee."
    "No! no!" he whispered. "It's only your fancy."
    She obstinately shook her head. "He is speaking to me through all the lines of the play. Those are his thoughts, his feelings, his very words! That is what moves me so!"
    Lee, gazing at her face, half believed it. He was a logical man, but he knew there was that in the human consciousness which transcends logic. Pressing her hand, he whispered, "Get a grip on yourself! Draw a mask over your face. If you are right, it is certain that the thief who stole Gavin's play is watching us now..."

>151 lyzard: So this is what inspired Ali Smith to write There But For The!

Henry Wade. Any advice for me? Read, think about, avoid like poison?

>152 rosalita:

????

Sorry, you've lost me with that one!

>153 Matke:

Think about at least, but it's a matter of taste. His Inspector Poole books are important early police procedurals, with accurate knowledge of procedure, but they also get criticised for being a bit same-ish in their settings and casts. But some critics are extremely enthusiastic about them.

ETA: Ah! - just figured out / reminded myself why I haven't taken these up properly: there's some confusion about where the series starts. The Missing Partners may be a retitling of The Duke Of York's Steps, but I haven't looked into that properly yet.

ETA2: Or the other way around: it looks like it might be a case of an English novel getting published in America first: my best guess at the moment is that they're the same book (The Missing Partners was published in 1928 and The Duke Of York's Steps in 1929), but I will try to nail it down.

ETA3: Or not! - they seem to have been re-released as different works.

ETA4: And now I've found a source stating that Poole does not appear in The Missing Partners, which would mean that the series does start with The Duke Of York's Steps.

ETA5: Gotcha: it's another case of an ebook publisher slapping a detective's name on everything and in this case getting it wrong.

I hope that's helpful! :D

>153 Matke: If you like a proper Golden Age English mystery, you'll probably like Henry Wade. At least I did when I read a few 25 or so years ago!

>154 lyzard: The title of the book in >151 lyzard: is The Death of a Celebrity. The UK title is exactly the same except without the leading The. Thus, "there but for the" — but perhaps you don't have that saying in Australia? "There but for the grace of god go I".

Ah, well. They can't all be sidesplitters ...

>155 NinieB:

Thank you, Ninie, that's MUCH more helpful! :D

>156 rosalita:

Ohhhh, the missing 'the'!! Sorry, I thought you were comparing plots and I didn't get it because I'm not familiar with the Smith book.

Of course I should have known what detail caught your eye. :D

>157 lyzard: Queen of the inconsequential, they call me. :-D

The Smith book is a delight if you like a lot of wordplay and a bit of stream of consciousness.

>158 rosalita:

Noted, thanks! :)

Finished The Secret River for TIOLI #7.

Now reading Dick Lester Of Kurrajong by Mary Grant Bruce.

Publication date: 1922
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond #2
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (colour in title)

The Black Gang - As incidents of political agitation and violence rise across England, a push-back comes in the form of the activities of the so-called "Black Gang", mysterious figures who appear out of the night masked and robed, and make it their business to break up conspiracies and forcibly "deport" undesirable elements. The situation leaves the police in a quandary: though sympathetic to the gang and even privately grateful for their actions, as the members operate outside the law it is the obligation of the police to identify and stop them. Matters reach a crisis point when the gang overpowers several despicable criminals meeting in a country house---having first overpowered the policemen there on the same job. An indignant Chief Inspector McIver, having been chloroformed along with his men, carries his grievance to Sir Bryan Johnstone, head of the CID. It occurs to Sir Bryan to assign McIver a bodyguard of sorts in the form of his young friend, Hugh Drummond, who is more conspicuous for his size and physical prowess than for his brains. It is an assignment that causes Drummond a great deal of secret amusement... This second entry in the Bulldog Drummond series by "Sapper" (H. C. McNeile) manages the not inconsiderable task of being even more obnoxious than its predecessor. Whereas the first series entry was about, effectively, a private war conducted between Drummond and his friends and the criminal gang headed by Carl Peterson, The Black Gang adds an infuriating dose of politics to its pre-existing class snobbery. The bad guys are all "foreigners" or "Jews" (or both); one of the most prominent has - and is referred to as - a hunchback; while the English working-classes are depicted as well-meaning but rather stupid and therefore easily led astray---and in need of "the gentry" to tell them what to do. In addition we have the usual nauseating wallowing in violence, with Drummond and his friends meting out summary justice in the form of brutal floggings. The cherry on the top of this distasteful cake is the revelation that Carl Peterson is at back of this episode, too---and the consequent realisation that this is going to be be of those tiresome thriller series with a recurring master-criminal who is always defeated, yet always manages to escape at the end. (It occurs to me that the successful examples of this sort of series, such as Valentine Williams' "Clubfoot" stories, have the good guys escaping from the criminal.) Overtly, however, the bad guys in The Black Gang are (sigh) the Bolsheviks, who are carrying out a campaign of political agitation culminating in strikes and violence; though the Black Gang manages to thwart a planned bombing of a Sheffield steel-works, intended to throw large numbers out of work. Peterson, as usual, is only in it for the money, acting as an organiser and a go-between for pay. His real, personal interest is a cache of diamonds which he lifted from a soon-to-be-dead Russian aristocrat, but which ends up falling into the hands of Drummond---thus creating war on two fronts. Most of the rounds in the fight go to Drummond and his friends---but these days, Hugh has a new point of vulnerability in the form of his bride, Phyllis, who becomes a pawn in the escalating battle...

    "In God's name---who are you?" Latter's voice rose almost to a scream. "Aren't you the police?"
    "No---I am not." Drummond was coming nearer, and Latter cowered back, mouthing. "I am not the police, you wretched thing: I am the leader of the Black Gang."
    Latter felt the other's huge hands on him, and struggled like a puny child, whimpering, half sobbing. He writhed and squirmed as a gag was forced into his mouth: then he felt a rope cut his wrists as they were lashed behind his back. And all the while the other went on speaking in a calm, leisurely voice.
    "The leader of the Black Gang, Mr. Latter: the gang that came into existence to exterminate things like you. Ever since the war you poisonous reptiles have been at work stirring up internal trouble in this country. Not one in ten of you believe what you preach: your driving force is money and your own advancement. And as for your miserable dupes---those priceless fellows who follow you blindly because---God help them, they're hungry and their wives are hungry---what do you care for them, Mr. Latter? You just laugh in your sleeve and pocket the cash."
    With a heave he jerked the other on to the floor, and proceeded to lash him to the foot of the bed.
    "I have had my eye on you, Mr. Latter, since the Manchester effort when ten men were killed, and you were the murderer... We believe in making the punishment fit the crime. This afternoon you planned to destroy the livelihood of several thousand men with explosive, simply that you might make money. Here," he held up the square slab, "is a pound of the actual gun-cotton, which was removed from Delmorlick himself before he started on a journey to join my other specimens. I propose to place this slab under you, Mr Latter, and to light this piece of fuse which is attached to it. The fuse will take about three minutes to burn. During that three minutes if you can get free, so much the better for you; if not---well, it would be a pity not to have any explosion at all in Sheffield, wouldn't it?"

May stats:

(...and we still won't talk about my blogging...)

Works read: 13
TIOLI: 13, in 12 different challenges, with 0 shared reads

Mystery / thriller: 11
Classic: 2

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

Owned: 2
Library: 0
Ebooks: 11

Male authors : female authors: 9 : 4

Oldest work: The Refugee In America by Frances Trollope (1832)
Newest work: Curtain: Poirot's Last Case by Agatha Christie (1975)

******

YTD stats:

Works read: 63
TIOLI: 63, in 48 different challenges, with 9 shared reads

Mystery / thriller: 40
Classic: 12
Contemporary drama: 4
Humour: 2
Short stories: 2
Contemporary romance: 1
Historical drama: 1
Young adult: 1

Series works: 30
Re-reads: 11
Blog reads: 4
1932: 1
1931: 10
Virago / Persephone: 1
Potential decommission: 3

Owned: 12
Library: 14
Ebooks: 37

Male authors : female authors: 36 (including 4 men using a single male pseudonym) : 41

Oldest work: Leandro: or, The Lucky Rescue by J. Smythies (1690)
Newest work: Nevertheless, She Persisted by Various (2020)

This is another one we need to thank Roni for:

SLOTHS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hurrah for sloths!
>161 lyzard: Are you never tempted to give up a series as a bad job?

>164 rosalita:, >165 Helenliz:

:)

>165 Helenliz:

My OCD is not big on just letting stuff go.

You may not have noticed. :D

>166 lyzard: I've noticed that you don't give up on a series, but that doesn't mean you're not tempted to give up on one...

>167 Helenliz:

Ehh, I've reached the point where it's not even worth having that conversation with myself.

But tempted, yes. :)

Finished Dick Lester Of Kurrajong for TIOLI #8.

Now reading The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

And speaking of which---

For those of you interested in joining the group read of The Yellow Wallpaper, the plan is as follows:

Since we are only considering a short story, participants will be asked to read the story during this week, and then post comments and join discussion on the thread over next Friday - Monday.

I will set up the thread on Friday morning, with some background information, and then put out a notification that it is open for posting.

The short story is widely available on its own as well as in numerous collections, and can be downloaded from a number of sources including Project Gutenberg.

The group read will be conducted through the Virago group, but everyone is welcome!

Finished The Yellow Wallpaper for TIOLI #14.

Now reading Advise And Consent by Allen Drury.

So I finally got to my local library, after how long? - picking up my ILL copies of Advise And Consent and Poison In The Garden Suburb.

I already commented upon the latter - regarding a senseless tinkering with the title, natch - and now I've found another odd detail: this variant cover image with another example of 'author promotion', as we saw recently for R.A.J. Walling's The Tolliver Case (>75 lyzard:). That, however, was a Hodder & Stoughton release, while this is from Collins; so maybe it was a cover artist thing?

>172 lyzard: Erm, shouldn't Cole already know the clues? Since he, like, wrote it? I'm proabably reading too much into it ...

Also, what's with all the initials? Between R.A.J. Walling and G.D.H. and M. Cole, they've pretty well got the Scrabble board covered. (This quip was funnier when I thought the author of the poisoned suburb tale was G.D.H.E.M. Cole, I admit.)

>173 rosalita:

Yes and no, actually: apparently George and Margaret Cole took turns writing their Superintendent Wilson mysteries rather than collaborating as such, despite their co-authorship, so I guess one of them might not have known!

(There is also a non-series work, The Murder At Crome House, which includes a satirised portrait of George and is pretty clearly by Margaret!)

George did sign himself 'G.D.H.' which at least fits on covers better than 'George Douglas Howard'. :D

The thread is up for the discussion of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story, The Yellow Wallpaper---here.

All welcome!

Excellent news on getting to the library and finding that they had books!

>176 Helenliz:

It was a strange experience! - all sorts of barriers and rearrangements; but at least they let me inside, which I gather is still not the case for some people.

Publication date: 1991
Genre: Non-fiction: anthropology / parapsychology
Read for: Potential decommission / TIOLI (keep putting off)

Faces In The Smoke - It is probably only fair to state at the outset that I am not the right audience for this work by world traveller and documentarian, Douchan Gersi, which offers itself as an eyewitness account of paranormal phenomena including possession, faith healing, levitation and even teleportation, across Africa, Asia and the West Indies. I don't necessarily disbelieve any of these things, and I am open to Gersi's argument that people of what he calls "the fourth world" - or "peoples of tradition" - have a far more profound and fundamental relationship with their world and are more attuned to its possibilities and to those of their own minds than are people from a more "civilised" environment; but somehow, the longer his account of his experiences went on, the more evidence, or "evidence", that was offered, the less persuaded I was by his assertions. Part of the problem is that this book is indeed one long assertion: it is Gersi's bedrock argument that the paranormal forces he describes have the side-effect of draining the energy from electronic equipment, and therefore prevent any visual or verbal recording of their manifestations...so we just have to take his word for it. I was unable to make the leap of faith required to get past this; while I was also put off by Gersi's habit of sneering at the limitations of science and scientists, while at the same time using the fact that there have been scientifically-conducted studies into certain phenomena to legitimise his own claims. Furthermore, his condemnation of first-world closed-mindedness is rather ironic, given his own tendency to sweeping generalisation. Ultimately, the anthropological aspects of Faces In The Smoke became of more interest to me than its spiritual ones; but even then I kept wondering prosaic "first world" things like how Gersi could afford to do all this in the first place---and why, exactly, all these people were so willing to confide all their mostly cherished beliefs and secrets to him. So, like I said---not the right audience.

    There is one area, at least, where I find that peoples of tradition are more advanced than we: the powers of the mind. Indeed, one of the most striking and perplexing aspects of my many years among such people is the number of strange events I have witnessed, mysteries that range from divination to telepathy, from flying men to those who can walk through walls, from miraculous healings to magic deaths, from humans in a trance who are possessed by entities to people who can endure the most horrifying self-inflicted pain, from men who claim to converse with divinities to evidence of life after death...
    As Westerners, we have come to accept the tenets of science: that whatever cannot be experimentally proven must be false; that whatever cannot be explained rationally must be fake, that whatever cannot be duplicated in a laboratory must be sheer fraud.
    Yet I have experienced a mystical and often frightening world, in which human beings seemingly invoke the powers of spirits. I have met people who have chosen to use their powers not for economic or technological advancement, but for cultural and spiritual advancement.

Publication date: 1986
Genre: Horror / fantasy
Read for: Potential decommission: fiction / TIOLI (inside activity)

Songs Of A Dead Dreamer - This quite lengthy collection of short horror and fantasy stories by Thomas Ligotti highlights both the strengths and the weaknesses of the author---which oddly enough quite often turn out to be the same thing. In certain ways, Ligotti is reminiscent of Lovecraft, in that he seems unnervingly aware of another world just beyond this one, and the of way in which individuals may slip through a crack between the two---in one direction or the other. Nor is the connection accidental: Ligotti's use of language in some of his stories (particularly The Sect Of The Idiot and Dr Locrian's Asylum) suggests a deliberate evocation of his predecessor. But whereas Lovecraft is often loud and emphatic in his effects, fittingly when dealing with Elder Gods and a terrifying alternate universe, Ligotti is much smaller, although certainly not trivial: he deals in unease and a sense of despair, as his protagonists discover that their world is not what they thought is was...and that they are not who they thought they were. Certain themes recur: eyes, and the horror of seeing (windows play a prominent role here); transmutation of the animate and the inanimate; the wearing of masks, and the consequent question of identity; the power of blood. This is where Songs Of A Dead Dreamer runs into trouble: there is finally too much "same-ish-ness" about the stories, too much returning to the same point; and Ligotti's leisurely style only tends to exacerbate the issue. More than most short story collections, this one needs its contents to be well spaced out, if they are to have the desired effect. Nevertheless, there remains a distinct tendency for the stories to run together---with the best exceptions being, perhaps the off-kilter vampire story, The Lost Art Of Twilight; Vastarien which takes place largely in a bookstore; and Professor Nobody's Little Lectures On Supernatural Horror, in which an academic consideration of horror literature turns out to be horror literature...

Supernatural horror, in all its bizarre constructions, enables a reader to taste a selection of treats at odds with his well-being. Admittedly, this is not an indulgence likely to find universal favour. True macabrists are as rare as poets and form a secret society unto themselves, if only because their memberships elsewhere were cancelled, some of them from the moment of birth. But those who have sampled these joys marginal to stable existence, once they have gotten a good whiff of other worlds, will not be able to stay away for long. They will loiter in the moonlight, eyeing the entranceways to cemeteries, waiting for some terribly propitious moment to crash the gates...

>178 lyzard: Tee hee
>179 lyzard: My husband's a big fan of both Ligotti and Lovecraft. Interesting to read the take of someone with tastes closer to my own!

>180 NinieB:

Hi, Ninie!

Neither one quite my cuppa, though for very different reasons. :)

Finished Advise And Consent for TIOLI #5...

...and may I just say what a refreshing change it was to read a book for the best-seller challenge that I actually enjoyed!?

Now reading Out Of The Past by Patricia Wentworth.

...and oh crap: so much for enjoying the best-sellers, I fear... :D

And guess what? - when Dejah was guessing alternative chunksters for this challenge, she was right AGAIN!!

Publication date: 1914
Genre: Young adult
Series: Patty Fairfield #12
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (first two decades)

Patty's Suitors - Though she continues to insist that she is too young for "that sort of thing", and that she only wants boy friends, not boyfriends, the now-nineteen-year-old Patty Fairfield finds herself the object of serious romantic pursuit by several young men: her long-time best friend, Kenneth Harper; the impetuous, domineering Philip Van Reypen; and mischievous Kit Cameron. As she steers her way between the three, trying to hold the young men at arm's-length while maintaining her friendship with them, Patty remains emotionally unmoved---until a rumour reaches her that the big, bluff Westerner, Bill Farnsworth, is engaged to someone else... She was all very well as a girl, but as she grows up - physically, if not behaviourally - the eponymous central character of Carolyn Wells' young-adult series is becoming harder and harder to tolerate. Though her giddy behaviour and constant flirting is supposed to be charming and attractive, most of the time it made me want to reach into the book and give Patty a good slap; and while her constant use of slang and baby-talk is also exasperating (opening line: "It IS a boofy frock, isn't it, Nansome?"), all the blame for that lies with Wells, who has been guilty of similar in other contexts. Most of Patty's Suitors consists of wearying dialogue exchanges between Patty and her pursuers, particularly newcomer Kit, with whom she shares a rather stupid sense of humour and a desire to out-practical-joke the other. Matters take a turn for the more serious when Kenneth Harper, always so proper, asks Mr Fairfield's permission to propose to his daughter. A dismayed Patty must find a way to let her old friend down as gently as possible, before her own thoughts turn to Bill Farnsworth and his supposed engagement. Unexpectedly reunited with Bill, Patty finds herself hurt and angry in a way that begins to reveal her heart to her...

    "Go on," Farnsworth said briefly, "tell me what it's all about."
    "I don't know what you mean! What's all WHAT about?"
    "The way you're treating me. The last time I saw you was last winter; at the Hepworths' wedding, to be exact. We were friends then,---good friends. Then I came up here,---yesterday. I threw your own flowers in at your window, and you came and smiled at me and said you were glad to see me. Didn't you?"
    "Yes," said Patty, in a faint little voice.
    "Yes, you DID. And then,---then, Apple Blossom, when you came down stairs later, playing May Queen, you scarcely looked at me! you scarcely spoke to me! You wouldn't dance with me!"
    "But you only asked me because---"
    "Don't tell that story again! Because Adele told me to ask you, is utter rubbish, and you know it! That isn't why you wouldn't dance with me. No-sir-ee! You had some other reason, some foolish crazy reason, in your foolish crazy little noddle! Now out with it! Tell me what it is! Own up, Posy-Face. You heard something or imagined something about me, that doesn't please your ladyship, and I have a right to know what it is. At least, I'm going to know, whether I have a right or not. What is it or who is it that has interfered with our friendship?"
    Patty looked up at Bill and read determination in his face. She knew it was no time for chaffing or foolishness. So she only said, as she looked straight at him,---"Miss Morton."

>184 lyzard: most of the time it made me want to reach into the book and give Patty a good slap;

I must confess that, if that facility was available I would availed myself of the opportunity on so many occasions!

Lookit all them reviews! Time for a sloth bomb!

>186 ronincats: >:*( No sloths visible to me.

>185 PaulCranswick:

She got off light: I can't remember the book, but I know I once threatened to reach into one and smack someone's head against the wall. :D

>186 ronincats:

Aw, thank you, Roni! I'm trying to keep them ticking over, anyway.

>187 Helenliz:

It's showing up for me; maybe a browser issue? (I'm in Edge at the moment.)

Oh dear. I thought I'd dodged this one (which to be fair is "only" 208 minutes without the ads):

>189 lyzard: Good grief, that's 4 hours and 20 minutes long! (I'm including the commercial time because you'll have to sit through them unless you can fast-forward.)

>189 lyzard:

I never watch anything live these days. Least of all this!

BTW - while you're here - I can't remember where I put that last post about the correct order for Maudie; but you said you went in and fixed the series listing at the time, right??

Finished Out Of The Past for TIOLI #9.

Now reading Poison In The Garden Suburb by George and Margaret Cole.

>191 lyzard: OK, but still ... 3 hours and 28 minutes!!!

Re: Maudie: I think I did ... I see Out of the Past is listed as the next entry after Ladies' Bane. Is that where the discrepancy was?

I've now read your comments on By Love Possessed. You seem to have liked it better than I did: it was not "gripping" for me, so your finding it so tells me that I've missed something of its appeal. I do agree that the sense of place is strong. As you know, I agree wholeheartedly with your comments about the convoluted style. Your observation that the strange syntax and archaic vocabulary reflects Arthur Winner's inner turmoil is something I hadn't considered; I just assumed it was authorial flourish. It looks like Peyton Place is a benchmark of this genre, and I may try to check that out. If Dr. Zhivago leaves me any time ....

>193 rosalita:

I guess I'll crack a bottle and settle in (assuming one bottle will go the distance)...

It's another of those where there's more than one book published in the same year and the correct publication order needs to be nailed down. I did just find my original post and I think the series list initially had Out Of The Past and Vanishing Point in the wrong order. But we fixed that between us. :)

>194 swynn:

It won't! :D

I was fine with the legal side of the book and even with that aspect of it in which Arthur Winner is THE GUY, or at least trying to live up to his conception of himself as THE GUY (his daddy issues notwithstanding), and the impact of secrets revealed and his sudden self-doubt. It's when the self-doubt - and the ridiculous language of it - begins to subsume the plot that everything goes to hell. Also, the more time we spent inside Arthur Winner's head the less I wanted to be there.

>195 lyzard: Whew!

Publication date: 1976
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Miss Marple #13
Read for: Agatha Christie chronological challenge

Sleeping Murder: Miss Marple's Last Case - Like Curtain (reviewed here), Sleeping Murder was written during the dark days of WWII, as a means of providing for Agatha Christie's husband and daughter should anything happen to her; and also like Curtain, it is nebulously set in "the future"---but in this case, a near future, between the end of the war (regarding which, Agatha's prediction was happily closer to the mark than some of her others) and the coronation of the then-Princess Elizabeth (which probably happened much sooner than she was expecting). This being the case, it unfolds in a far more accurately imagined world---albeit one in which young New Zealanders think of England as "home". Such is the case with the newly-married Gwenda Reed, sent on ahead by her work-detained husband, Giles, to find the two of them a potential home on England's south coast. Gwenda takes her time about the business, viewing numerous houses but being satisfied with none---until a 'For Sale' sign on a property outside the seaside town of Dillmouth catches her eye; and from the moment she sets foot there, Gwenda is sure she has found her home... At the same time, as she sets about putting the house in order Gwenda has several unnerving experiences, including an unexplained feeling of terror while on the staircase. She also finds herself walking repeatedly towards a certain wall, as if looking for a door that does not exist. But when she discovers that she has imagined perfectly the wallpaper which once decorated the nursery, exposed by some renovation work, it is all too much: she decides to get away, and accepts an invitation from some friends of Giles, Joan and Raymond West, to have a few days in London. However, Gwenda's plans to relax and forget her troubles end abruptly at a performance of The Duchess Of Malfi, when the title character's grim fate sends her into screaming hysterics. As she recovers from her shock - and her embarrassment - Gwenda finds herself confiding her troubles to another of the theatre-party, Raymond West's elderly Aunt Jane... In a way it is curious to think of Sleeping Murder as written in the 1940s: it bears so much resemblance to one of Agatha's late-career works, which frequently dealt with murder in the past, and which depended for their solutions upon the memories of those involved. In this case the matter is still more complicated, as it depends not just upon the recall of interested parties, but the need to sort memory from childhood dreams and imaginings. To Gwenda's fear that she is beginning to lose her mind, Miss Marple returns a comfortingly prosaic suggestion: that the reason Gwenda felt so at home in her new house is that it was once her home. This sends Gwenda on a quest for her own past, in which she must sort through what she remembers and what she has forgotten; what has been kept from her, and what she has buried. It is soon evident that there is a mystery to be solved, one revolving around the fate of Gwenda's young step-mother, who apparently left her husband and ran off with another man; and around Gwenda's father, who finished his life in a hospital under psychiatric care, convinced against the evidence that he murdered his wife... Though not an outstanding mystery, Sleeping Murder makes a satisfactory conclusion to Christie's Miss Marple series. It is a story that finds Jane playing to her strengths, particularly her ability to get people talking, to dissect out motive from people's misconceptions, and to see through the smokescreen of deliberate deception. It also, despite its south-coast setting, manages a few scenes in St Mary Mead, with walk-ons from old friends including Dr Haydock - who helpfully suggests a holiday at the seaside for his favourite patient - and Colonel and Dolly Bantry. The latter sounds an appropriately elegiac note here, as in publication order we lost first the Colonel and then the Bantrys' home, Gossington Hall, quite some time ago; and this touch adds to the unavoidable sadness associated with the fact that Sleeping Murder was the last of Agatha Christie's works to be published in her lifetime.

    Dr Haydock sat down again. "My curiosity is roused. What small seaside town are you suggesting?"
    "Well, I had thought of Dillmouth."
    "Pretty little place. Rather dull. Why Dillmouth?"
    For a moment or two Miss Marple was silent. The worried look had returned to her eyes. She said: "Supposing that one day, by accident, you turned up a fact that seemed to indicate that many years ago---nineteen or twenty---a murder had occurred. The fact was known to you alone, nothing of the kind had ever been suspected or reported. What would you do about it?"
    "Murder in retrospect in fact?"
    "Just exactly that."
    Haydock reflected for a moment. "There had been no miscarriage of justice? Nobody had suffered as a result of this crime?"
    "As far as one can see, no."
    "Hmm. Murder in retrospect. Sleeping murder. Well, I'll tell you. I'd let sleeping murder lie---that's what I'd do. Messing about with murder is dangerous. It could be very dangerous."
    "That's what I'm afraid of," said Miss Marple.

Publication date: 1952
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Miss Silver #22
Read for: Shared read

Ladies' Bane - Lost in the London fog, Ione Muir sprains her ankle and ends up waiting out the night in an empty house, in company with two strange men---one of whom, she is certain, she previously overheard planning a serious crime. When the fog lifts, the latter slips away; the other, Jim Severn, takes Ione to his apartment, where she is able to clean up and rest. As the two later compare notes over breakfast, Ione mentions her plan to visit her sister, Allegra, who for a number of reasons - including her proposed visits being repeatedly put off - she has not seen since she married. Jim shows her a scrap of paper which, he now assumes, Ione dropped, but which she has never seen before: it carries the name and address of Allegra's husband, Geoffrey Trent... Arriving at the Trents' country house, Ione is shocked by her sister's fragile appearance and withdrawn behaviour. Trent exerts himself to make her welcome, however, and further diversions are provided by Margot Trent, Geoffrey's somewhat unbalanced teenage ward, and Jacqueline Delauney, her governess. Ione soon learns of Geoffrey's deep passion for their centuries-old house, which he is renting from the last of the Falconer family, in whose grounds it stands, and that his great desire is to own and restore it. However, from Allegra she learns that the former dower-house, formally called "The Ladies' House", is known locally as "Ladies' Bane"---and that ancient tradition predicts disaster for its mistress... Ladies' Bane is an unusual entry in Patricia Wentworth's Miss Silver series, with a Gothic-romance plot foregrounded - creepy old house full of sinister stairwells, secret passages and a death-trap in the basement included - and several of the series' more common features kept in the background. The latter includes the relationship that (inevitably) develops between Ione and Jim Severn, which is low-key and unobtrusive---and is chiefly there, we deduce, because a little physical prowess is required in resolving the plot. Furthermore, Miss Silver's disciple, Detective Inspector Frank Abbott, is late putting in an appearance (to the point where I began to think he wasn't going to show up at all), and plays a relatively minor role in the story---mostly providing Maudie with information about the members of the Trent household. Miss Silver herself enters the narrative when she is consulted by Miss Josepha Bowden, Allegra's god-mother, who is also gravely concerned about her. Miss Silver finds her niche with Miss Falconer, the elderly owner of The Ladies' House, who must now take in paying guests to make ends meet---yet who resists selling the last of her family's property. Before Miss Silver arrives, however, there is a suspicious death in the Trent household, with young Margot killed in what appears to be an accident brought on by her own reckless behaviour. Geoffrey is evidently greatly distressed---yet the fact remains that, as Margot's only relative, he inherits her trust-fund... Ione discovers that Geoffrey's passion for owning The Ladies' House has led Allegra to try and and realise her own fortune, a move which her trustees are firmly resisting. Ione's fears for her sister are heightened when her second companion of the fog shows up in the district, bringing with him the memory of that ominous, overheard conversation, and the mystery of the paper with Geoffrey's name and address. While the two are out together one afternoon, Allegra almost falls - or is pushed - in front of a bus; but having witnessed the incident, Miss Silver has her own ideas about who the intended victim was...

    The silence settled. It was a long time before Ione could bring herself to say, “He meant to push me?”
    “If you had not moved, it was you who would have been pushed.”
    “I see---”
    “Miss Muir, will you tell me something?... Miss Bowden informed me that both you and your sister have money.”
    “Yes.”
    “Then in the event of your death---”
    “The money would go to Allegra.”
    “And in the event of Mrs Trent’s death?”
    “Her share would come to me.”
    “Then Mr Trent would have no possible motive for desiring his wife’s death.”
    “Of course not---Miss Silver!”
    Miss Silver said equably, “There would be no motive for Mrs Trent’s death. There was a motive for the death of that poor girl Margot. She had a good deal of money, had she not, and it passes to Mr Trent. In your own case there would also be a motive. You have a considerable fortune, and it would pass to your sister.”
    Ione’s pallor was quite unbroken. Her eyes had a wide, dark stare. She said only just above her breath, “No---no---it’s too horrible...”

Publication date: 1930
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Desmond Merrion #1
Read for: Mystery League challenge

The Secret Of High Eldersham - Strangers are not welcome in the East Anglian village of High Eldersham, nor do they ever seem to prosper there. For a time it seems that Samuel Whitehead, the retired police sergeant who has taken over the lease of the 'Rose and Crown', is an exception---until he is found dead with a knife wound in his back... Arriving on the scene, Detective-Inspector Robert Young of the CID is soon aware of a strange atmosphere in the village. A slightly shamefaced Constable Viney recounts to him various odd occurrences involving newcomers to High Eldersham - the persistent ill-health of one, the contamination of another's dairy production - all of which Young takes with a large grain of salt. A local man with a grudge against Whitehead seems a likely suspect, but Ned Portch turns out to have an alibi. However, while interviewing him, Young's attention is caught by an odd detail: the presence in Portch's house of a crude wax doll with a long pin driven through it. Feeling that he is getting out of his depth, Young sends for a friend of his, an ex-Naval Intelligence officer called Desmond Merrion. Without revealing his own suspicions, Young arranges for Merrion to have a few minutes alone in Portch's living-room, from which Merrion emerges having drawn the same conclusion--- and, furthermore, able to report that the label on the pin driven through the wax doll reads "Samuel Whitehead"... Having already embarked upon his long-running series featuring the irascible Dr Priestley, John Rhode took on the pseudonym "Miles Burton" for the penning of a second series, this one featuring former intelligence officer, Desmond Merrion. Though in future he would most often work in tandem with Inspector Arnold of Scotland Yard, in The Secret Of High Eldersham Merrion comes to the aid of his friend Inspector Young, who starts out investigating a murder and ends up venturing into the murky waters of the occult. Though himself holding hard to the thought that it was no unearthly force that drove a knife into Samuel Whitehead, Young asks Merrion to look into the more esoteric side of the situation. Merrion's research into the history of witchcraft convinces him - in spite of PC Viney's sudden, inexplicable illness - not that the people of High Eldersham are actually using dark powers to chase away strangers and revenge themselves on their enemies, but that someone in authority has revived "the old ways" to gain power over the villagers and to create a smokescreen for a larger criminal enterprise. A problem for Merrion is that the obvious suspect is Sir William Owerton, the local magistrate, who has a reputation for arcane scholarship---and to whose daughter, Mavis, Merrion finds himself strongly attracted... The Secret Of High Eldersham is a strange thriller, blending a police procedural into occult horrors which, if the investigators themselves do not believe in them, are undoubtedly real to the villagers who have been drawn into the local coven. Though it does, finally - and by that time almost unexpectedly - provide a completely rational explanation for the murder of Samuel Whitehead, for much of its length The Secret Of High Eldersham focuses upon the village's secret coven, and Merrion's attempts to discover what lies behind this apparent revival of ancient witchcraft, and who it is that is exploiting the villagers' credulity, fear and lust for his own purposes. Here, describing the rituals, Burton manages some powerful and creepy writing; while he also goes as far as he dared in 1930, in describing a post-black-mass orgy. Despite the scepticism of Young and Merrion about the dark forces being invoked, the fact remains that those who have crossed members of the coven have paid a bitter price; and Merrion has no doubt at all of the reality of his own danger as he becomes a secret witness of the coven's activities. Through further research and investigation, he concludes that the next meeting of the coven will be held upon a wood-ringed promontory of land jutting into the river that winds around High Eldersham. Approaching silently by water, Merrion manages to conceal himself in some bushes behind the stone altar around which the coven gathers, from where to his horror he witnesses not only the initiation of a new member, but the baptising of a wax doll with the name "Mavis Owerton"...

    There was a subtle horror about High Eldersham that was beginning to affect even Merrion's robust nerves. It was impossible to define it. The fact that a murder had been committed, and that the murderer was still at large, influenced it not at all. Murder seemed a clean and honest business compared with the gruesome fancies that his mind persisted in dwelling upon. That mysterious grove, hidden in the shade of the impenetrable trees, had reminded him of the hideous rites that accompanied the worship of Isis or of Ashtaroth.
    It was no good to tell himself that such imaginings were ridiculous in England of the twentieth century. It was equally ridiculous to believe that the practice of witchcraft still continued. Yet he had seen the latter, almost with his own eyes. Even admitting that this practice had been continued, or more probably revived, for some obscure purpose, and not for the sake of the thing itself, it had still produced effects of which the immediate cause was unexplained. Was it, after all, a chapter of accidents that had driven those venturesome strangers from the village? Was it a coincidence that Whitehead, who had fallen under the ban of the coven, had been murdered by an unknown hand? And then there was Viney, whose sudden indisposition Doctor Padfield had apparently been unable to diagnose. Had this mysterious influence laid its finger upon him, too?
    It might well be so, and there was no telling who might be the next victim...

The Mystery League Inc. challenge:

#16: The Secret Of High Eldersham by Miles Burton (first UK edition: 1930; first US edition: 1931; cover art by Gene Thurston)



Something has very definitely gone wrong here: two strong works in a row from the Mystery League, with this, like Death Walks In Eastrepps before it, rarely out of print since. I can only suppose that they were able to obtain the rights to The Secret Of High Eldersham because everyone thought they were dealing with a new author; and to be fair, the fact that "Miles Burton" was actually John Rhode (aka Cecil John Strete) was not revealed for many years.

Another atmospheric cover from Gene Thurston, which captures one of the creepy ritual scenes while maintaining his rather abstract style.

Next up: The Gutenberg Murders by Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning (though alas, I need Rare Books for this one, and goodness knows when I'll have access again...)

Finished Poison In The Garden Suburb for TIOLI #11.

Which brings me to that always awkward point in the month where I have completed all the TIOLI challenges that come naturally to me, and then have to decide whether I'm going to stretch for some of the others, or retreat into my shell and start doubling up.

Stretching isn't really an option at the moment, I guess, at least where it doesn't involve free ebooks: I certainly don't want to be buying ebooks just to do it, particularly when there's no sign of my academic library lifting its restrictions on the general public (meaning that about 80% of my normal reading remains out of reach), and I'm already being forced into more ILLs and Kindle buys than would otherwise be the case.

I do wish my local libraries weren't so determinedly NEW about things.

Oh, well. As so often, retreat seems the sensible option.

The up-side of this is that I have the opportunity to wrap up a couple of short series (marmosets ahoy!).

So---

Now reading Who Closed The Casement by Thomas Cobb.

Publication date: 1895
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Martin Hewitt #2
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (name a puppy)

Chronicles Of Martin Hewitt - Arthur Morrison's private investigator, Martin Hewitt, was one of detective fiction's first serious Sherlock Holmes copies---right down to Hewitt admonishing his slower-witted sidekick (in this case, a reporter; perhaps the first such in a long line) that he sees but he does not observe, or at least words to that effect. Yet the Hewitt stories, though serviceable, are quite lacking the charm of their justly more celebrated forebears: Hewitt himself hasn't much personality, and though he usually ends up insisting that his cases are "simple", they tend to require about six pages of painstakingly detailed explanation to get to the bottom of his "simple" deductions---though for all that, he's never wrong about anything. However, the stories do include interesting touches such as a description of contemporary diving techniques, and in a couple of cases there is a hint of the supernatural. Chronicles Of Martin Hewitt collects six short stories originally published in The Windsor Magazine across the first half of 1895. In The Ivy Cottage Mystery, the artist Gavin Kingscote is found murdered in his cottage, the drawing-room around him having been torn to pieces, right down to wood panels ripped off the walls and chopped to pieces---a piece of vandalism duplicated at his previous lodgings... In The Nicobar Bullion Case, a ship founders and then sinks in a storm off the south coast of England. When repair divers go to access the damage, they discover that some of the ship's bullion cargo has mysteriously disappeared... In The Holford Will Case, Hewitt is consulted about the apparent theft and destruction of a will: a case in which the person with motive had no opportunity, and the person with opportunity no motive... In The Case Of The Missing Hand, it seems that the long-threatened revenge of two young men against their step-father, for his abuse of their mother, has come to pass, when the man is found hanged in the woods; but the fact that the dead man's hand has been severed sends Hewitt in a different direction... In The Case Of Laker, Absconded, a bank clerk disappears with a large sum of money, and all initial signs suggest he has fled the country; so many clear signs, indeed, that Hewitt grows suspicious... In The Case Of The Lost Foreigner, a Frenchman discovered in a state of extreme emotional distress and collapse becomes the key to averting a threatened act of violent anarchy...

    "You know the inquest evidence such as it was, and you saw everything I did in Ivy Cottage?"
    "Yes; I think so. But I'm not much the wiser."
    "Very well. Now I will tell you. What does the whole case look like? How would you class the crime?"
    "I suppose as the police do. An ordinary case of murder with the object of robbery."
    "It is not an ordinary case. If it were, I shouldn't know as much as I do, little as that is; the ordinary cases are always difficult. The assailant did not come to commit a burglary, although he was a skilled burglar, or one of them was, if more than one were concerned. The affair has, I think, nothing to do with the expected wedding, nor had Mr Campbell anything to do in it---at any rate, personally---nor the gardener. The criminal (or one of them) was known personally to the dead man, and was well-dressed: he (or again one of them, and I think there were two) even had a chat with Mr Kingscote before the murder took place. He came to ask for something which Mr Kingscote was unwilling to part with,---perhaps hadn't got. It was not a bulky thing. Now you have all my materials before you."
    "But all this doesn't look like the result of the blind spite that would ruin a man's work first and attack him bodily afterwards."
    "Spite isn't always blind, and there are other blind things besides spite; people with good eyes in their heads are blind sometimes, even detectives."
    "But where did you get all this information? What makes you suppose that this was a burglar who didn't want to burgle, and a well-dressed man, and so on?"
    Hewitt chuckled and smiled again.
    "I saw it---saw it, my boy, that's all," he said.

Publication date: 1933
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Trevor Dene #3
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (set in summer)

Masks Off At Midnight - In the Long Island community of Laurel, an ugly feud is brewing between self-made millionare, Brent Hordern, and the Tallifers, the district's oldest and - until recently - most influential family. In his ruthless way, Hordern is "buying up" all of Laurel that he can, and forcing the Tallifers out of their traditional place of power---and making plenty of enemies along the way. Young newspaperman, Paul Kentish, wages a brave though lonely war against him---until learning to his dismay that Hordern has bought a majority share in his paper. Furthermore, Hordern has plans to force his way into society via marriage to Jenny Tallifer, with whom Kentish is in love; even as the lovely young widow, Constance Barrington, realises that Hordern will never fulfill his promises to her. Sonny Parton, Randolph Waverly's brother-in-law, is provoked into wagering a sum he cannot afford that Hordern will never breach Laurel's most enduring social barrier, attendance of the Waverlys' huge, formal costume-ball, to which of course he has not been invited. In one last arrogant gesture, Hordern swears he will attend no matter who tries to bar his way---and so he does, being found dead in an antique sedan-chair during the party's climactic costume-parade... Though set in America and dealing with very American matters (long story short: tax-dodging through incorporation), Masks Off At Midnight is the third in the series by Valentine Williams featuring the nerdy young Scotland Yard detective, Trevor Dene. Though written the same year as The Clock Ticks On, the story is set two years later---two years, that is, after the marriage of Dene to socialite Nancy Ayleswood---with the couple back in New York on a visit and staying with her friends, the Waverlys. (Their lovey-dovey dialogue gets rather tiresome; though I guess the fact that they are still lovely-dovey two years along is encouraging.) As with the preceding mystery, Williams has a lot of fish-out-of-water fun with Dene; though there is nothing funny about the way Brent Hordern takes advantage of his ignorance to get a foot in the door at the exclusive Laurel Yacht Club, from which he is otherwise barred. Dene is also on the scene when Hordern's dead body is discovered at the Waverlys' elaborate costume-party---and since (an outsider agreeing with the homegrown mystery writers of the time) the local police are effectively useless, it's just as well. Dene teams up with the Assistant District Attorney, Wade Orris, to investigate Hordern's death, which is at first believed to be an accident caused by the firing of vintage carbines, supposedly charged with blanks, during the elaborate parade which was the centrepiece of the Waverlys costume-party. However, an examination by a doctor at the scene determines that Hordern was shot with a revolver, and from relatively close proximity. Furthermore, the sedan-chair itself is undamaged---which means that Hordern must have been shot in the so-called 'Tower Room', to which very few people had access, and that it happened before the windows of the sedan were closed up: a set of circumstances that turns suspicion fully on Paul Kentish, who organised the parade, and who has already admitted to succumbing to pressure and smuggling Hordern into the party... Masks Off At Midnight is certainly a flawed work. Williams' spends far too long over his descriptions of the Waverlys' party, even if there is finally a cogent reason for it; and the behaviour of a number of the characters is hardly credible. However, we can hardly complain about a lack of suspects; and as it turns out, even more people wanted Brent Hordern dead, and for a greater variety of reasons, than we initially realise. As Orris and his home-grown detective, Crowley, pursue a heavy-handed investigation, it is left to Dene to find a more subtle way through the barriers raised by the closing of the Waverly-Tallifer ranks...

    "He's a devilish lucky fellow to have a champion like you," Dene answered cryptically. "You're a very genuine person, my dear. You played up like a soldier about that gun, you're sensible and you've got something that many people hold cheap nowadays, and that's faith. You're worth helping, and damn it"---he brought his hand flat down on the table---"Crowley or no Crowley, I'm going to help you!"
    As he gazed at Jenny, he saw the grey eyes fill. She said nothing, but only put out her hand and fastened it on his in a quick, warm grip.
    "There's just this,' he remarked, absently blowing through his pipe, "I've an open mind about this business at present, Jenny. If I go into it, there's no stopping halfway---I want you to realise that!"
    She nodded, idly tracing patterns on the tablecloth.
    "Even if it should prove that your Paul's the man, after all!"
    "I'll chance that!" Her voice was husky.
    Dene had begun to fill his pipe. "Why is murder done?" he said, with a brooding air as though he were thinking aloud. "In this type of crime it's mostly because a given situation has become so intolerable that death appears to be the only way out. We have to ask ourselves to whom, in the fairly restricted circle about Brent Hordern, this definition most closely applies. Is it, in the first place, Kentish who sees himself losing you, and perhaps his capital as well, to Hordern's money? Is it pretty Mrs Barrington, determined, if Hordern doesn't marry her, that nobody else shall get him? Is it Parton, working in collusion with her, even if his own alibi is unassailable? Or someone who, like your father, was intensely resentful of this man's growing power in the community?"
    She drew back affronted. "My father?"
    Dene laughed and struck a match. 'Only a façon de parler, my dear. From all I hear, Hordern had plenty of enemies in this town..."

>199 lyzard: This one reminded me a bit of Anna, Where Are You?, not in terms of plot specifics but the gothic atmosphere, which as you say isn't Wentworth's usual modus operandi. I never really got a handle on just what exactly was Margot's deal (incorrigible brat or mentally ill), though if Wentworth was trying to create a character so unlikable nobody would mind if she was murdered, she came up trumps..

Overall I liked this one quite a bit, although I was disappointed that the "Chekhov's gun" aspect of the dungeon that Geoffrey shows Ione when she first arrives was never discharged. I fully expected Miss Silver or Ione to get locked up down there at some point! I also felt the lack of Frank Abbott rather disappointing.

>205 rosalita:

Likewise, I found it weird that the early emphasis on Ione's vocal talents - her monologuing - never came into it. Surely there was an easier way to get her out of the country?

In Margot's case the answer would seem to be "both". I suppose if you want to whack a kid you have to do it that way. I'm thinking of Christie's Hallowe'en Party where everyone agrees the young victim was "awful".

I didn't mind the absence of Frank because it was a piece with a general mixing up of the formula, which I think is all to the good.

But yes, the domestic-sinister atmosphere was very Gothic romance---which was interesting to me because the genre hadn't really come into its own at that time. I'm thinking not just of the actual 60s 'woman in peril' thrillers, but also those reissues from the 30s that I used to highlight, which kept trying to sell themselves as that when they were basically standard mysteries. (I should start looking out for those covers again...)

>206 lyzard: Good point about Ione's weird career. That whole line just seemed so bizarre that I must have just blocked it out of my brain.

Your explanation makes the Frank lack understandable but it was still disappointing. I never get tired of him calling Maudie 'preceptress'. :-)

>207 rosalita:

Revered preceptress. :D

Have you read Out Of The Past? No lack of it there!

Finished Who Closed The Casement? for TIOLI #14...and also FINISHED A SERIES!!

Now reading The Clue Of The Rising Moon by Valentine Williams.

...and of course that means I owe you a marmoset!

This is the black-headed marmoset, a rarely-sighted - and as it turns out, rarely photographed (this is the only good image I could find) - species that lives deep in the Brazilian rainforest:

BTW, don't you love these literal-minded ebook covers??

"Oh, look! It's a CASEMENT! And it's CLOSED!!"

Meanwhile, Louis Tracy's Winter and Furneaux series continues to give me order grief.

I found this bit of research that I carried out on this topic in 2015 (!):

The Case Of Mortimer Fenley (US title: "The Strange Case Of Mortimer Fenley") - 1915
Number Seventeen - 1916
The Postmaster's Daughter - 1916
The House Of Peril (UK title: "The Park Lane Mystery") - 1922
The Passing Of Charles Lanson - 1924
The Gleave Mystery - 1926
The Women In The Case - 1927
What Would You Have Done? (US title: "The Sandling Case") - 1928

It turns out there were books before these, but I have that sorted now. I did miss (at least) one, with The Second Baronet (aka "The Pelham Affair") appearing in 1923.

The break between The Postmaster's Daughter in 1916 and The House Of Peril in 1922 is worrying me, but so far I've found no evidence of an intervening book.

However---my main concern at the moment is that (as he did with the earlier No Other Way) Tracy may have significantly revised The House Of Peril in between its US publication in 1922, and when it appeared in the UK in 1924 as The Park Lane Mystery. Preliminary investigation indicates that the US version is set in New York, and the UK version in London.

I hate you sometimes, Louis...

ETA: Oh good God...



Some of you may remember (no reason why you should!) that I spent some earlier times agonising over the Steingall-and-Clancy / Winter-and-Furneaux conundrum, in which Tracy ended up with two pairs of police detectives, one American and one British, who were basically expys of each other. Steingall and Clancy appear in the American version of No Other Way, and were transformed into Winter and Furneaux in its British incarnation.

After that, the two pairs of detectives evolved apart, and each had their own series.

But here it seems as if, rather than resurrecting Steingall and Clancy (which surely would have made more sense!), Tracy turned Winter and Furneaux into Americans for The House Of Peril, and then turned them back into their normal British selves when he rewrote that book as The Park Lane Mystery.

I REALLY hate you, Louis...

>208 lyzard: Yes, mustn't forget the 'revered' bit! I haven't read OotP yet. I'm trying to adjust my Maudie timing to be closer to when you post your review so I still remember stuff to discuss. :-)

>210 lyzard: That's a handsome marmoset even if he is a bit publicity-averse.

>211 lyzard: Who closed the casement? Clearly the only person in this house with the sense who cares whether it rains in on the carpet and starts growing mold! No names ...

>212 lyzard:

Not to put any pressure on my review writing or anything!? :D

I am hoping to catch up to the end of May today, if that helps...?

>213 rosalita:

Ahem. The closing of the casement trapped someone in a room with a gas leak...

>215 lyzard: End of May? Didn't we read Ladies Bane in June/July or have I truly lost track of time?

The closing of the casement trapped someone in a room with a gas leak...

But I bet the carpet looks like new!

>216 rosalita:

JUNE!! Of course June.

Don't mind me, I've completely lost track of time. I nearly had a fit when Madeline posted TIOLI for SEPTEMBER...

But I bet the carpet looks like new!

Only because the crime-scene clean-up people have been in... :D

I'm liking the camera shy marmoset, I know how that feels.
And I can only offer hot tea, that universal palliative, on the series issues. You may drink it or (metaphorically) throw the pot over the troublesome author. It's a virtual pot, so I don't mind if you break it. I'd be less forgiving of that behaviour with an actual teapot. And there'd be the tea stains on the carpet...

>218 Helenliz:

Me too!

Ugh, it's even worse than that: it turns out The House Of Peril (the US version) is readily available but The Park Lane Mystery (the British version) is not at all.

Gimme that teapot!!

(So...what's with you and Julia and the carpet??)

Publication date: 1887
Genre: Young adult
Series: Elsie Dinsdale #13
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (things missed)

Elsie's Friends At Woodburn - Elsie herself, or "Grandma Elsie" as she is generally known these days, puts in only a cameo appearance in this 13th entry in the series by Martha Finley, which is almost entirely given over to second daughter, Violet, her husband, Captain Raymond, and - although they now have two babies of their own - Vi's step-children, Max, Lulu and Grace. And in particular, the focus is upon the ongoing struggle between Lulu and her father---or more correctly, between Lulu and her temper and her tendency to disobedience, which bring her father's wrath down upon her. Alas, it's a battle she finally wins, becoming as big a bore as everyone else in this series; and of course it involves her finally "accepting Jesus", although this landmark moment is dealt with in an oddly casual manner. Would that everything in Elsie's Friends At Woodburn was treated with such brevity! - but the reverse is true: this series entry is almost twice as long as usual, yet with even less plot. About 90% of it consists of the same two conversations over and over and over - (i) how much Captain Raymond loves his children and vice-versa, and (ii) how disobeying a parent is about the worst crime you can commit - interspersed with appropriate - and lengthy - bible quotes, and a constant, deeply unpleasant dwelling upon punishment. Even by the not exactly action-driven standards of this series, this particular entry is a gruelling exercise in running on the spot.

    "Oh, I never thought how very wicked it was!" Lulu sobbed. "You'll have to punish me for that, too. Please do it now, papa, so I'll have it over."
    Captain Raymond did not answer her for several minutes; then he said: "I think I shall try a new plan with you. As you were pleased to refuse obedience to an order from me, I shall not give you another for some days; for the four remaining days of this week you may try self-government... I shall give you no command, direction, instruction or advice concerning your daily duties; nor must you feel at liberty to come to me for any, or to treat me with any greater familiarity than you would use toward a gentleman in whose house you were only a visitor; duties and privileges are not to be separated, and while released from the duties of a child, you can have no right to claim a child's privileges."
    "But I don't want to be released, papa," she burst out in her vehement way; " I want you to order me, and I do mean to obey the very moment you speak; always, always! "
    "So you think now," he said, " but I am not at all sure that your good resolution would last for any length of time; you may be quite as willful and rebellious to-morrow as you have been to-day. You need, and must have the lesson I hope you will gain by being left to be, for a time, a law to yourself. Understand that I do not propose to subject you to any harsh treatment; on the contrary I shall be as polite and as considerate of your comfort as if you were my guest."
    "I don't want to be company!" Lulu exclaimed. "I don't want you to be polite to me! I want you to punish me, and then let me be your very own child, just as I always have been! O, papa, please, please do!"

>220 lyzard: Did girls reading Lulu's response roll their eyes in 1887? Did they pretend to find it worthy and roll their eyes in secret?

Publication date: 1931
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Read for: 1931 reading / TIOLI (suggests a colour)

Midnight Murder - Giles Egerton, a London specialist staying with his friend, Edwin Vardon, the rector of Bullington, is called out in the middle of the night to the bedside of a Mrs Leigh, assured that the matter is one of life or death. Though he disguises his feelings, Egerton is annoyed at having is holiday interrupted, and slightly aggrieved at being treated like any old GP. However, once on the scene Egerton's feelings change altogether. It is indeed a matter of life and death---and of attempted murder... Assisted by Jacqueline Drury, Mrs Leigh's young ward, Egerton wins the desperate battle for Mrs Leigh's life, but is then faced with the question of what to do next. Cautiously, he questions Jacqueline about who had access to Mrs Leigh's room while she was confined to bed with a bad cold. She answers him readily enough, and in a way that conveys her own deep affection for the sick woman. Indeed, Egerton is assured that everyone loves and respects Mrs Leigh, and that her husband, Colonel Leigh, adores her. Egerton takes all this with a grain of salt---and rather more than that, when he recognises in Joe Leigh the man he once glimpsed during a country walk holding Jacqueline in his arms... This standalone mystery by "Ralph Rodd" (William North) is an unusual and intriguing work; and in fact that summary gives entirely the wrong impression of it. That's as it should be, though, because it is the wrong impressions of Giles Egerton that set the plot of Midnight Murder in motion, quite as much as the attempted poisoning murder of Wilma Leigh. Egerton himself is an odd protagonist, rather irascible, very full of himself, and perhaps not as knowledgeable about human beings as a doctor should be. Having taken a long, sour look at the triangle formed by the fifty-ish, plain, hard-riding Wilma Leigh, her much younger, rather simple husband, Joe Leigh, and the radiant young Jacqueline Drury, Egerton makes up his mind that Leigh has tried to dispose of his wife for love of the girl. Leigh's demeanour when confronted, his insistence that no-one - no-one else, thinks Egerton - would want to hurt Wilma, and his undisguised horror when the police are mentioned, all to serve to set his suspicions in stone; and when, the next morning, a bewildered Jacqueline brings to the rectory the news that Joe Leigh has disappeared, Egerton is positively smug. The only problem is---Egerton is wrong at every point. Eventually convinced of this, he tries desperately to make amends for having set the world in motion against Joe Leigh, and becomes part of an ongoing battle, not to solve a murder, but to prevent one; because someone did try to kill Wilma Leigh---and until that person is identified, what is to stop them from trying again...? Midnight Murder is a long-ish novel, and one full of pleasing and unexpected details---including the very real and deep love between the Leighs. However, perhaps its most interesting touch is Egerton's recruitment of professional assistance in the form of the detective duo, Peter Goring and Anthea Jubb, who go under cover - she as an old friend of Jacqueline, he as her groom - and become part of the phalanx trying to protect Wilma, expose her would-be killer, and clear Joe Leigh's name. At the outset I called Midnight Murder a "standalone", and to the best of my knowledge it is---which if true is a great shame: Peter and Andrea are characters crying out for a series; and I live in hope of discovering that they do in fact lurk in other novels by Ralph Rodd.

    "What the young person is referring to," Goring explained, "is a recent occasion when I was---pro tem---a hell of a swell and she my private secretary. I kept her busy, and just for once she had to do as she was told. It was a novel experience, and she didn't enjoy it."
    "Any more than you'll enjoy being my groom, my lad. Great possibilities in a groom's life---loafing around the stable---drinking in the snug at nights---riding second horse for me---hobnobbing with grooms and what not. Oh, yes, I think I'll be able to keep you working."
    Giles Egerton shrugged his shoulders resignedly. He glanced again from one of his companions to the other. Investigators of crime, sleuth hounds on the track of evil-doers---or irresponsible children playing a game? Perhaps both. Of one thing he was sure: they would play the game for every ounce it was worth, and, may be, all the better for enjoying it. Still, considering what was at stake---
    Andrea Jubb might really have been able to read his thoughts.
    "Oh, that's all right," she said reassuringly. "Don't you worry because we've let you have a peep behind the curtain---grease paint and all that. I shall have a ripping time in Bullington, but I shan't forget what I'm there for. Now Peevish Peter may not enjoy his part quite so much, so he won't have any temptation to forget what he's there for. Between us we ought to be able to put Bullington through a hair sieve." She leaned forward and touched Egerton's knee. She had dropped her light tone. "And that's what we've got to do. Bullington, its swells and its yokels through a hair sieve, and the sediment under a microscope. Eh, Peterkin?"

>222 NinieB:

I'd like to think so, but I don't know. I only know that the Lulu / Captain Raymond relationship has taken over from the Elsie / Horace Dinsdale relationship as the creepiest aspect of this series! :D

Hmm. I'm not having much luck tracking down the other mysteries by Ralph Rodd (>223 lyzard:), but it turns out that a dozen or more of his earlier, non-crime novels were serialised in the Australian papers from 1905 onwards.

But where to start? His most successful seems to have been Marriage By Capture - a "SPLENDID SERIAL BY A POPULAR WRITER" - though there's also The Searchlight - "A POWERFUL AND DRAMATIC STORY" - or A Velvet Knave - "EXCITING LOVE STORY OF SENSATIONAL INTEREST" - or At Bay - "SENSATIONAL STORY OF LOVE AND MYSTERY".

Decisions, decisions...

(ETA: Ooh! Turns out that by 1916, he's "A BRILLIANT WRITER".)

>225 lyzard: Sounds like you can't go wrong with any of those. Splendid, powerful, dramatic, exciting, sensational, brilliant. He's the complete package.

I have also just resolved to work the word "splendid" into my conversations more often. If only the world wasn't so decidedly non-splendid at the moment...

>226 rosalita:

Per Lisa Simpson: "Whoo-hoo! Uh, I mean, splendid!" :D

Not quite the complete package: it turns out that his serialisations stop dead at the exactly the point in his career I need them to continue. I'm guessing he changed publishers, and they put a stop to it. :(

June stats:

(...alas my poor blog...)

Works read: 11
TIOLI: 11, in 8 different challenges, with 2 shared reads

Mystery / thriller: 6
Young adult: 2
Non-fiction: 1
Classic: 1
Horror: 1

Series works: 7
Re-reads: 3
Blog reads: 1
1932: 0
1931: 1
Virago / Persephone: 0
Potential decommission: 1

Owned: 3
Library: 0
Ebooks: 8

Male authors : female authors: 6 : 5

Oldest work: Louisa Egerton; or, Castle Herbert by Mary Leman Grimstone (1829)
Newest work: Faces In The Smoke by Douchan Gersi (1991)

**********

YTD stats:

Works read: 74
TIOLI: 74, in 56 different challenges, with 11 shared reads

Mystery / thriller: 46
Classic: 13
Contemporary drama: 4
Young adult: 3
Humour: 2
Short stories: 2
Contemporary romance: 1
Historical drama: 1
Non-fiction: 1
Horror: 1

Series works: 37
Re-reads: 14
Blog reads: 5
1932: 1
1931: 11
Virago / Persephone: 1
Potential decommission: 4

Owned: 15
Library: 14
Ebooks: 45

Male authors : female authors: 42 (including 4 men using a single male pseudonym) : 46

Oldest work: Leandro: or, The Lucky Rescue by J. Smythies (1690)
Newest work: Nevertheless, She Persisted by Various (2020)

I'm quite pleased about having caught up to the end of June, so please enjoy this happy sloth:

SLOTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Such a sweet smiley fella, too. I know they all look like they are smiling but this one seems particularly happy to be having their picture taken.

It's nice that somebody does. :)

I should think so! :D

Well done, you! I've only made 10 contributions so I need to up my game.

I have an unfair advantage: I get to add a lot of obscure series in addition to tinkering with the existing ones.

>234 lyzard: Which makes your contributions more important — adding knowledge that wouldn't be in LT without you. I'm mostly just re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. :-)

>235 rosalita:

According to my OCD, that's an incredibly important contribution! :D

Nice bling!

>237 Helenliz:

Why thank you, my dear! :D

Finished The Clue Of The Rising Moon for TIOLI #14...and also FINISHED A SERIES!!

I've also finished August, which is a terrifying reflection all round.

Reading-wise, I'm also feeling a bit panicky. The only book I'm committed to this month is The Agony And The Ecstasy, for the best-seller challenge; it is on its way by ILL.

Otherwise, my ongoing library restrictions continue to play havoc with my challenge and other reading. What is particularly painful at the moment is that while my academic library remains closed to members of the public, it has just reopened the Rare Book section for staff and students. My attempts to work through my lists and figure out what is accessible at the moment has left me with a Rare Book reading-list as long as...well, some of my other lists, I guess.

So I'm not sure about September. On one hand I feel like this might be one of those months where I do series reading and not much else; though on the other my list-making left me with a different list of oddments that I could work through, including a handful of books that were serialised in the Australian papers (the Ralph Rodd novels I mentioned up-thread, plus a few others). Maybe this is a chance to make some headway there.

But first things first---

I said that the black-headed marmoset (>210 lyzard:) was camera-shy, but it has nothing on Marca's marmoset, a species so rare no live specimen was observed in the wild until 2010. It was only described in 1993---from some skins collected during Teddy Roosevelt's Amazon expedition of 1914.

A few determined individuals have since made it their business to investigate the species' status, however, and one of them took this:

>240 lyzard: "Mr. DeMille, I am NOT ready for my closeup!"

>241 rosalita:

:D

I have set up a new thread; please drop in and say hi!

Here