"Are You a Detective?"

HERE'S one of those reader participation articles that show up in magazines from time to time. The answers are below the article, but you're on your honor not to cheat:

Source: "Are You a Detective?" by Larry Roberts, Coronet Magazine, June 1949, starting (HERE) and finishing (HERE).

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While we're in June 1949, let's look at the state of detective fiction in England at the time:

Source: "Hi-De-Homicide" by R. G. G. Price in Punch, June 29, 1949 (HERE).

References:

- "Mr. Cyril Hare's" (HERE) "When the Wind Blows" (HERE)

- "Mr. Michael Innes" (HERE) and The Journeying Boy" (HERE)

- "the new Ellery Queen" (HERE) "anthology To the Queen's Taste" (HERE)

- "David Lockwood's" (HERE) "Death Has Scarlet Candles" (HERE)

- "Miss Nancy Spain's" (HERE) "Death Goes on Skis" (HERE).

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"She Has Succeeded in Producing One of the Few Notable for Originality"

THE SATURDAY REVIEW OF LITERATURE issue for July 24, 1926, happened to contain a couple of reviews of detective fiction books that are still being read ninety-nine years later:

The Incredulity of Father Brown is available in a deluxe Standard Ebooks edition (HERE).

Related articles (HERE) and (HERE).

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THE author of this review was William Rose Benét (1886-1950; HERE), the older brother of Stephen Vincent Benét (1898-1943; HERE). We previously discussed the younger Benét's involvement with detection fiction (HERE) and (HERE).

References:

- The Murder on the Links (HERE)

- The Secret Adversary (HERE)

- The Secret of Chimneys (HERE)

- Poirot Investigates (HERE)

- J. S. Fletcher (HERE)

- R. Austin Freeman (HERE)

- The House of the Arrow (HERE)

- The Red Lamp (HERE)

- Isabel Ostrander (HERE)

- "one is always an Oliver Twist" (HERE)

- Hercule Poirot (HERE)

  (Not a "Frenchman.")

There's also a deluxe Standard Ebooks version of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (HERE).

Related articles (HERE), (HERE), (HERE), and (HERE).

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"His Massive Brow Furrowed in Thought, As He Gazed at the Cryptic Letters"

"The Button Extractograph."

By Rex Hummerston (?-?).

Illustrations by Laurie [Lawrence B.] Tayler (1873-?; Design & Art Australia Online HERE).

First appearance: Pearson's Magazine, May 1919.

Short short story (5 pages; 6 illos).

Online at Hathi Trust (HERE).

(Note: Some text faded.)

   "My duty, then, is to demonstrate my method of deducing incontrovertible facts from each and every one of them."

SHERLOCK HOLMES had his methods, and they worked. Professor Bosca has his, and . . . well . . .

Principal characters:

~ Mrs. Mooney ("Oh, Professor, I have come to enlist your services in assisting me to thwart the machinations of a perfidious traitor"), Professor Eeza Bosca ("Scientific deduction," he resumed, "plus intelligent elimination—"), and the "perfidious traitor" ("What the devil do you mean by demanding my presence—").

References:

- "Port Said" (HERE)

- "determined to help win the war" (HERE)

- "the Sphinx" (HERE)

- "the left ear of Charles Peace" (HERE)

- "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" (HERE)

- "The Exploits of Craig Kennedy, Scientific Detective" (HERE)

  (There was no such title featuring the formidable Kennedy.)

- "the Anzac" (HERE and especially HERE).

Sources: Wikipedia and Standard EBooks.

Resources:

- "The Button Extractograph" is Rex Hummerston's only FictionMags list item.

- Professor Bosca reminds us very much of Ellis Parker Butler's Philo Gubb (HERE).

Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.

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"Poisoned!"

"The Soup That Talked."

By Don Mark Lemon (1877-1961; ISFDb HERE).

First appearance: The Black Cat, June 1907.

Short short short story (2 pages).

Online at SFFAudio (HERE).

   "It was right here in this restaurant that it happened."

SOMETIMES someone's in danger and is completely, blissfully unaware of it; when that's the case, in certain situations it just might be necessary to spell it out . . .

Principal characters:

~ The narrator ("You blamed idiot!"), "a man with a big, ugly scar on his forehead and only one eye" ("accidentally brushed his fork off the table"), and "a meek, smiling little man, in a gray tweed suit" ("I guess I'll take a little soup").

Extra:

  Here's Don Mark Lemon's "The Dunsmuir Will Mystery" in the September 1905 Munsey's Magazine:

Resources:

- Our author, Don Mark Lemon, was a regular contributor to The Black Cat, starting in 1900 and then off and on until 1914, with occasional side trips into Munsey's, All-Story, Argosy, The Scrap Book, The Blue Mule, 10 Story Book, The Bohemian Magazine, The Gray Goose, Short Stories, The Thrill Book, and finishing up in Weird Tales (1923; story online HERE) and Wonder Stories Quarterly (1931; story online HERE). Evidently Lemon didn't use any series characters; from what we've seen so far, he wrote some of his stories in the O. Henry mode, saving a punchy resolution for the end. (FictionMags data.)

Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.

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"I Have Found It Necessary To Discriminate Between Books Which Are Detective Fiction Proper and Those Which May Better Be Termed Mystery Stories"

WE HAVE already made note of the enthusiasm which T. S. Eliot, the composer of some of the brainiest literature of the 20th century, had for detective fiction (HERE). Like many fans, he chafed at how impure the product of so-called detective fiction writers could be, at how they would come so close to what he considered a pure detective story to be only to miss the mark. Consequently, on occasion he would make use his literary magazine, The Monthly Criterion, to review and criticize them:

Source: The Monthly Criterion, June 1927.

Typos: "Mr. Croft"; "Dr. Thorndike".

References and resources:

 Titles and authors from the article that we were able to locate (indicated by HERE):

  (1) The Benson Murder Case (HERE); S. S. Van Dine (HERE)

  (2) The Crime at Diana's Pool; Victor L. Whitechurch (HERE)

  (3) The Three Taps (HERE); Ronald A. Knox (HERE)

  (4) The Verdict of You All; Henry Wade (HERE)

  (5) The Venetian Key; Allen Upward (HERE); The Domino Club (HERE); The House 

  of Sin (HERE)

  (6) Mr. Fortune, Please; H. C. Bailey (HERE)

  (7) The Colfax Bookplate (HERE; newspaper version); Agnes Miller

  (8) The Clue in the Glass; W. B. M. Ferguson

  (9) The Mortover Grange Mystery; J. S. Fletcher (HERE)

  (10) The Green Rope (HERE); J. S. Fletcher (HERE)

  (11) The Mellbridge Mystery; Arthur O. Cooke

  (12) The Cathra Mystery; Adam Gordon Macleod

  (13) The Devil's Tower; Oliver Ainsworth

  (14) The Spider's Den; Harrington Strong (HERE)

  (15) Four Knocks on the Door; John Paul Seabrooke

  (16) Murder for Profit (HERE); William Bolitho (HERE)

  (17) Problems of Modern American Crime (HERE); Veronica and Paul King

  (18) and the art critic and collector Mr. Bernard Berenson (HERE).

Eliot, or one of his editors, liked this book ("a really first-rate detective story"):

Source: The Monthly Criterion, July 1927.

S. S. Van Dine's (spelled "van Dyne" here) second novel also pleased:

Source: The Monthly Criterion, October 1927.

Typo: "Mr. Croft".

References and resources:

  (1) J. J. Connington (HERE)

  (2) The Dangerfield Talisman (HERE)

  (3) Murder in the Maze (HERE) and (HERE).

Also see Curtis Evans's "T. S. Eliot, Crime Fiction Critic," CrimeReads, April 29, 2019 (HERE).

"I Made Up My Mind the Only Way Was To Murder Him"

MANY OF YOU have probably seen, or at least heard of, one of the movie versions of Spartacus (1960; remade in 2004); but you might not  know that the original novel (1951) was written by a busy pulpster who, for instance, turned out seven crime novels featuring the series detective character Masao Masuto, speculative fiction (SFF) for the likes of Fantastic Universe and F&SF, and the occasional mood piece, one of which is . . .

"For Always."

By Howard Fast (1914-2003; Wikipedia HERE; the ISFDb HERE; the SFE HERE; the IMDb HERE; Goodreads HERE; and the Fan Page HERE and HERE).

Illustrator unnamed.

First appearance: Liberty, July 15, 1939.

Reprinted in The Grand Magazine, April 1940.

Short short short story (1 page).

Online at Archive.org (HERE).

   "What does a man think of when he waits with premeditated murder in his mind?"

INDEED. It seems that with the best of intentions people can be moved to do heinous things, and even love won't stop at murder. In fact, it's been known to encourage it . . .

Principal characters:

~ Tom Norris ("Loyalty is only a word"), Gerry ("Don't make it worse, Tom"), Miss Green ("Is something wrong, Mr. Norris?"), and Phil ("He stood there swaying, groping for the light switch, and I felt contempt, disgust . . .").

Resources:

- The Luminist Archives presently has eight Howard Fast titles (HERE), three of them SFFnal.

- For samples of Fast's SFF see SFFAudio (HERE) and (HERE).

Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.

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"A Talent That Borders on Genius"

"Whodunit?"

By Vincent Starrett (1886-1974; Wikipedia HERE; the ISFDb HERE; the IMDb HERE; A Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection HERE; and Studies in Starrett HERE).

First appearance: The Rotarian, October 1943.

Article (2 pages).

Online at Google Books (HERE).

   "Everything is there, you see, except the red herring; and we can put those in for ourselves."

AVID SHERLOCKIAN (or, if you prefer, Holmesian) Vincent Starrett offers detective fiction readers of the mid-1940s a charmingly written survey of contemporary books by authors not named Conan Doyle. The old reliables are here, but there could be someone you might never have heard of.

 

Prose moments:

  "Yet a majority of Shakespeare's plays hinge on crime: Hamlet may almost be called the first long detective story, and Macbeth is even more suggestive of Scotland Yard than of Scotland."

   ". . . they are the first detective stories in the world to be written in a completely American style."

  "The imitation article is seldom the equal of the thing it apes."

  "Although it is possible that he writes his mystery tales with his left hand . . ."

  "Mrs. Christie's extraordinary ingenuity in contriving situations that baffle the reader is a talent that borders on genius."

References:

- "a certain Mrs. Paschal":

  "The Victorian era (1837–1901) witnessed the appearance of an overwhelming number of female literary detectives. The rush began in the 1860s with the publication of Revelations of a Female Detective, which featured the debut of Mrs. Paschal, a detective of 'vigorous and subtle' brain who works for an all-women branch of the police department." (Olivia Rutigliano, "The Lady Is a Detective," Lapham's Quarterly HERE).

- Starrett mentions Alexander Woollcott, whose association with real life crime we once documented (HERE).

- "the murder of Isadore Fink, the Bronx laundryman, in 1933":

  Ben Hecht wrote about the case (HERE).

- "the disappearance and dismemberment of Dr. Parkman":

  "The Parkman murder has been called the O. J. Simpson trial of the nineteenth century. It had everything a good murder story needs: a rich, well-known victim; a well-respected suspect; gruesome evidence; and a possible underdog hero." ("The Murder of Dr. Parkman," American Experience HERE).

  Addendum: We recently came across this article, "The Parkman Murder," in The Galaxy from August 1873 (HERE) (7 pages; the text is faded but readable).

- Starrett seems willing to cut Eden Phillpots some slack for his writing, but others weren't so kind:

  "Yet Phillpotts' novels tend to be slow-moving and talky, with characters speaking in highly formal, stylized speech that fell out of fashion over time. By the late-1930s, Phillpotts' mysteries were becoming lengthier and slower; and while he still had his admirers, the influential critic Anthony Boucher was openly contemptuous of the grand old man in the 1940s, writing of his novel Flower of the Gods, for example, 'infinite talk and no action. A doctor's prescription should be required for this powerful soporific'." (Curtis Evans, The Passing Tramp HERE).

- "To Meet Miss Madeleine Smith":

  "Madeleine Hamilton Smith (1835–1928) was a 19th-century Glasgow socialite who was the accused in a sensational murder trial in Scotland in 1857." (Wikipedia HERE).

- "Marie F. Rodell":

  "Rodell wrote Mystery Fiction: Theory and Technique; in his column of November 7, 1943, Chicago Tribune book columnist Vincent Starrett called this 'one of the most entertaining textbooks ever written.' She was the editor of the Regional Murder Series. She also wrote and published books under the pen name Marion Randolph." (Wikipedia HERE).

Resources:

- We did a superficial survey of Vincent Starrett's works (HERE).

- Other Starrett encounters:

  ~ "The Mid-Watch Tragedy" (HERE)

  ~ "Dupin and Another" (HERE)

  ~ and "The Adventure of the Cat and the Fiddle - A Sherlockian Sonnet" and "Man in Hiding" (HERE).

Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.

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