Having served eighteen months in prison for the crimes committed in The Amateur Cracksman “Bunny” Manders is scraping a living writing about his time inside. One morning he receives a telegram from a relative who had previously cast him out as a disgrace to the family advising him to read a particular advertisement in the Daily Mail. He reads this and so goes to apply for the position of “a male nurse and constant attendant wanted for an elderly gentleman in feeble health offering a liberal salary to a University of public-school man”.
He meets his putative employer, Mr Maturin who, having kicked out his doctor, asks Bunny to hand him his secret stash of cigarettes. Once has has blown a smoke ring he says:
And now take one yourself. I have smoked more poisonous cigarettes. But even these are not Sullivans.
And then Bunny realises that he is once more in the presence of Raffles who he had believed to have drowned in the Mediterranean.
Reading this scene, I saw immediate parallels to how Holmes first reappears to Watson in disguise, but when I started the review it was clear that Raffles’ return pre-dates Holmes’, so whilst Hornung may have been inspired to consign Raffles to a watery grave by Holmes “death” at the Reichenbach Falls, perhaps Conan Doyle was repaying the compliment in how he depicted the return of Holmes?
The pair of them return to a life of crime and along the way deal with the consequences of what Raffles did during his “hiatus”, meet a gentleman burglar who has taken Raffles’ place, and outwit a woman who sees through Raffles’ old man persona. Bunny even gets to be the hero not once but twice!
Eventually England becomes too hot to hold them and they embark on a patriotic adventure where Raffles is forced to choose between his country and his own future prospects.
Another good collection of short stories with a strong narrative arc.
Whilst re-reading The Duchess of Wiltshire’s Diamonds in one of the four anthologies that I have which include it, I felt that it seemed part of a bigger story and upon checking I found that it formed the first of six short stories within this collection, and so I got hold of a copy.
Simon Carne is a rogue who has travelled to London to make a fortune. As part of his well financed operations, he also appears as Klimo, a private detective. In the first story this enables him to commit the robbery and then to investigate it, following a false trail that his henchman has created.
Unfortunately, whilst the first story is very entertaining, the rest of his escapades are quite pedestrian, and don’t build on this initial foundation. The main problem is there is never any real jeopardy for the criminal, unlike in An African Millionaire and The Amateur Cracksman. There is also an unnecessary Preface and Introduction, which don’t add anything of value to the story. A wasted opportunity.
“Bunny” Manders has blown through his inheritance in three short years and has now incurred gambling debts that he can’t meet. As a last throw of the dice he returns to see A. J. Raffles, who he once fagged for at school, in the vain hope that he might be able to do something for him.
Despite living in the Albany and seeming to do well for himself, Raffles is also on his beam ends. He tells Bunny that if they pay a visit to a friend of his, he may be able to provide them with some money.
Even though Raffles tells him that what they are about to do may be criminal, the very naive Bunny is shocked when he finds himself in the middle of a burglary.
Once the job is done Raffles reveals that he recently committed two other robberies and when Bunny asks him how his life of crime began he says:
I was in much the same fix that you were in tonight, and it was my only way out. I never meant it for anything more; but I’d tasted blood, and it was all over with me. Why should I work when I could steal? Why settle down to some humdrum uncongenial billet, when excitement, romance, danger and a decent living were all going begging together? Of course it’s very wrong, but we can’t all be moralists, and the distribution of wealth is very wrong to begin with.
Bunny tries several times to break from Raffles and live an honest life again but the thief’s magnetism and the thrill of it all keeps him coming back for more.
During these eight stories, first published in Cassell’s Magazine between 1898 and 1899, the duo face off against professional criminals and the police, before Raffles attempts the biggest coup of his career.
Hornung was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s brother-in-law and the book is dedicated to him as This form of flattery. Like Holmes, Raffles is a master of disguise and in the same way that Holmes often keeps Watson in the dark, Raffles keeps secrets from Bunny. But whilst this means that Watson sometimes looks a little stupid, the consequences of Bunny’s ignorance could lead to imprisonment or worse.
Overall their friendship is very imbalanced, with the hero-worshipping Bunny always coming back when the caddish Raffles calls. But ultimately, as is fitting for the era in which it is written, we see through the story arc that crime doesn’t really pay.
Winter, 1578. Sixth year of the Tensho era. Arioka Castle is besieged by the forces of Nobunaga Oda. The defenders are lead by Araki Murashige. One of his allies surrenders to the Oda forces and rather than kill his son, who had been held hostage to keep his father onside, Murashige orders him to be held prisoner in an unused storeroom. Despite being guarded by the Five Spears, Murashige’s elite bodyguard, the next morning the young man is found dead, killed by an arrow that has disappeared.
With rumours spreading inside the castle that his mercy was a sham and that he killed the boy despite having told him that he would live, Murashige must discover how the murder was committed. Although he is a clever man he cannot solve the conundrum and so reluctantly turns to Kuroda Kanbei, a man he has imprisoned against all samurai etiquette. Kanbei speaks in riddles but Murashige takes the correct hint from them and finds the answer he seeks.
Three further parts follow, one for each season, as Murashige holds out and waits for the arrival of the Mouri clan, and in each another mystery arises that must be resolved for the good of the garrison’s morale.
As a historical mystery I think this is really good – I got a really good sense of the people and period about which I knew very little, barring having watched The Seven Samurai and Throne of Blood – and the translation was good, apart from the jarring use of ratfink and clutch moment which, especially being Americanisms, didn’t seem right.
However, purely as a mystery, it doesn’t quite hit the heights, and I can’t understand how it won six different Japanese mystery awards in 2022.
Sir Charles Vandrift enjoys exposing charlatans, so while staying in Nice he invites the Great Mexican Seer to give him a private séance. Despite all his precautions he is conned and when he reports this to the French police he is told that he has been tricked by Colonel Clay:
He is a Colonel, because he occasionally gives himself a commission; he is called Colonel Clay, because he appears to possess an india-rubber face, and can mould it like clay in the hands of the potter. Real name, unknown.
Nationality, equally French and English. Address, usually Europe. Profession, former maker of wax figures to the Musée Grévin. Age, what he chooses. Employs his knowledge to mould his own own nose and cheeks, with wax additions, to the character he wants to personate.
And so begins a dual of wits between the millionaire and his brother-in-law, Seymour, (also his secretary and the narrator) and an audacious conman which is carried out across a further eleven episodes – originally published monthly in 1896 and 1897 in The Strand Magazine.
Sir Charles and Seymour at first are easily conned, but soon see Colonel Clay everywhere, sometimes rightly but often wrongly, and do manage one drawn game with the master of disguise before eventually a surprising outcome is reached.
Allen is most interested in who the real villain of the piece and this is summed up when Clay taunts Sir Charles, whose business practices at best can be described as sharp:
We are a pair of rogues. The law protects you. It persecutes me. That’s all the difference.
James Rigby’s father was killed by the Camorra and he now finds himself dogged by the sound of mysterious footsteps but fortunately he has just met Horace Dorrington, a private inquiry agent, so all his troubles will be over, won’t they?
Unfortunately, whilst Dorrington does conduct some legitimate business, his clients often come off second best when he finds he can feather his own nest at their expense.
Rigby’s narrative is the first story in this collection, after which he presents another five episodes from Dorrington’s chequered career.
Like Sherlock Holmes, Dorrington pays keen attention to the newspapers:
He had cut out this report at the time it appeared, because he saw certain singularities about the case, and he had filed it, as he had done hundreds of other such cuttings.
Certain events remind him of what he had read and so he spends an evening watching a particular house:
For it was an important thing in Dorrington’s rascally trade to get hold of as much of people’s private business as possible, and to know exactly in what cupboard to find every man’s skeleton. For there was no knowing but it might be turned into money sooner or later.
I had already read The Case of Janissary and The Affair of the “Avalanche Bicycle and Tyre Co., Limited” in mystery anthologies and those are the best stories, although The Case of the “Mirror of Portugal” has an amusing end. The final two stories are uninspired and I feel Morrison could have done more with the character. Certainly SPOILER ROT13 jr arrqrq gb frr Qbeevatgba ba gur eha nsgre gur riragf bs gur svefg fgbel.
Overall I wouldn’t recommend buying this collection. But I will be investigating another Victorian rogue in my next post who so far is more to my liking.
Based on the little that I knew of the Mike Hammer books, I assumed at least one, if not two, had been published every year for thirty years but actually there are only thirteen books in the series across a thirty-nine year period.
There was a ten year gap between books six and seven in the series (a seven year period in his world) which Hammer spent drinking because he believed the love of his life, Velda, was dead. In book seven he learns that was not the case and book eight opens with him about to meet her again for the first time.
They are almost killed straightaway before a pair of hoodlums interrupts their would-be murderer. Which of them is the target? Or is it actually Sue, a young woman, who Velda has taken in?
With the backing of an unnamed federal agency who owe a debt to him, Hammer lustfully prowls around New York and finds there is a connection to a bank robbery gone wrong from thirty years ago. Although he won’t sleep with Velda until the time is right he is more than happy to snog (and more) any other woman who throws herself at his feet – after all, as the cover of my edition says, he is the Coolest with a Gun and the Hottest with a Girl!
Hammer is very careless – he should die three times over during this book – and it is always someone else who rescues him (SPOILER ROT 13 vapyhqvat n qrnq zna ng gur irel raq – naq V’z fher gung guvegl lrne byq evsyr jbhyqa’g tb bss yvxr vg qbrf). The plot doesn’t make sense (fbzrbar vf zrnag gb unir orra hfvat gur eboorel zbarl gb ohl onpx vagb gur haqrejbeyq ohg ng gur raq jr svaq vg vf hagbhpurq) but I was surprised that iryqn fheivirq orpnhfr V nffhzrq gung nf Unzzre xrcg chggvat guvatf bss gurve eryngvbafuvc jbhyq raq hc hapbafhzzngrq frggvat uvz hc sbe nabgure obhg bs nypbubyvfz.
A series of posts, containing full spoilers, as I make my way once more through the complete canon, picking out points of interest and reflecting on my personal experience of the stories.
The Cardboard Box
Although this story was published in The Strand in 1893 it wasn’t included in the first edition of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1893) – or in my edition – so hadn’t yet been included in my Sherlockian Shorts series. However I have just read it as part of my Chronological Journey so here we go.
The two ears found in the cardboard box full of salt, which are clearly not a pair, are one of the most memorable images from the canon. Fortunately, Holmes has written not one, but two monographs on the subject and immediately recognises the similarities between one of them and those of the recipient.
Although Holmes asks Watson to come with him on the off chance of a case for your annals he tells Lestrade I should prefer that you do not mention my name in connection with the case, as I choose to be only associated with those crimes which present some difficulty in their solution.
When Mrs Drabdump cannot wake her lodger and finds his bedroom locked and bolted she calls for help from retired policeman, George Grodman. He breaks in the door and they find Arthur Constant lying on his bed with his throat cut.
The papers immediately proclaim it as a suicide except that no weapon can be found. But with no way in or out of the room how can it be murder? The inquest returns an open verdict leaving the nation baffled. Grodman competes with his successor, Edward Wimp, to find an answer to the conundrum, but which of them will gain the upper hand?
The tone is humorous throughout: here one suspect says:
They are a queer lot of muddle-heads are the police. Their motto is, “First catch your man, then cook the evidence”. If you’re on the spot, you’re guilty because you’re there, and if you’re elsewhere you’re guilty because you’ve gone away.
Inevitably there are spoilers for The Murders in the Rue Morguewith one writer to a newspaper suggesting that ROT13:
N fznyy betna-tevaqre’f zbaxrl zvtug unir tbg qbja gur puvzarl jvgu vgf znfgre’f enmbe, naq, nsgre nggrzcgvat gb funir gur bpphcnag bs gur orq, unir erghearq gur jnl vg pnzr.
My Detective Club edition (not pictured as it is uses the film title The Perfect Crime) includes a preface that Zangwill wrote four years after the first publication in which he says:
The indispensable condition of a good mystery is that it should be able and unable to be solved by the reader, and that the writer’s solution should satisfy. Many a mystery runs on breathlessly enough until the dénouement is reached, only to leave the reader with the sense of having been robbed of his breath under false pretences. And not only must the solution be adequate, but all its data must be given in the body of the story. The author must not suddenly spring a new person or a new circumstance upon his reader at the end.
Is the first ever discussion of the notion of fair play?
During the serialisation run in the Morning Post, readers had written in with their possible solutions. After the final part had been published the editor asked Zangwill to acknowledge these contributions and so he wrote the following in jest:
Sir: Now that The Big Bow Mystery is solved to the satisfaction of at least one person, will you allow that person the use of your invaluable columns to enable him to thank the hundreds of your readers who have favoured him with their kind suggestions and solutions while his tale was running and they were reading?
I ask this more especially because great credit is due to them for enabling me to end the story in a manner so satisfactory to myself. When I started it, I had, of course, no idea who had done the murder, but I was determined no one should guess it.
Accordingly, as each correspondent sent in the name of a suspect, I determined he or she should not be the guilty party. By degrees every one of the characters got ticked off as innocent – all except one, and I had no option but to make that character the murderer. I was very sorry to do this, as I rather like that particular person, but when one has such ingenious readers, what can one do?
You can’t let anybody boast that he guessed aright, and, in spite of the trouble of altering the plot five or six times, I feel that I have chosen the course most consistent with the dignity of my profession.
After including this letter in the preface he writes:
One would have imagined that nobody could take this seriously, for it is obvious that the mystery-story is just the one species of story that cannot be told impromptu or altered at the last minute, seeing that it demands the most careful piecing together and the most elaborate dovetailing.
To which I say, absolutely! Zangwill followed his principles scrupulously and produced a classic of the genre.
SPOILERS
Zangwill plays with the reader when the correspondent One Who Looks Through His Own Spectacles suggests that Mrs Drabdump and Mr Grodman were in cahoots and that the whole locked room situation was a fiction because the reader knows that this is not true. However as Mr Grodman says when he reveals that he himself wrote that letter to the papers, everyone then overlooks the fact that Mr Grodman alone could be responsible. What is very good about the scenario is there no change involved. If Mrs Drabdump had not come to get Mr Grodman to investigate as he expected, there would simply have been no murder – at least not that day.
You’ve just created the most successful and recognisable detective in all of fiction – what’s your next move? Obviously, you write some more books featuring the character. Except because you don’t have the benefit of hindsight, you don’t know that is what you’ve done, so instead you right a historical novel about the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685 followed by a a tale of the paranormal.
By the time you get back to writing about the character who will define the rest of your life and legacy (much to your disgust) you have forgotten exactly where your
narrator was wounded (it was Watson’s shoulder rather than his leg, but a limp is more interesting – and this error in continuity was obviously pointed out to Doyle because in The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor Watson refers to the Jezail bullet which I had brought back in one of my limbs). And although this story is set six years after A Study in Scarlet it seems that is the only case that Watson has ever been taken along on.
Mary Morstan’s father returned to London from India ten years ago and immediately disappeared, never to be seen again. Six years ago she received the first of an annual series of large pearls. Now she has received an anonymous letter, inviting her to a rendezvous to which she may bring two friends, but no police.
Holmes and Watson go with her and are picked up by a servant in a four-wheeler who conveys them to the house of Thaddeus Sholto. He explains what happened to Mary’s father and where the pearls came from. He takes them to call on his brother, Bartholomew, who they find murdered in his locked laboratory.
Holmes makes his deductions and is able to get on the trail of the criminals who have identified themselves by The Sign of the Four assisted by the invaluable Toby. Although initially the trail goes cold, Holmes is able to get back on it with the aid of his Baker Street irregulars, a dozen dirty and ragged little street-Arabs, who can go everywhere, see everything, overhear everyone.
The final twenty pages are redundant, but not as long as the second half of A Study in Scarlet, so Doyle had definitely learned from his first attempt.
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