lyzard's list: A live thing plus animation! - Part 6

Den här diskussionen är en fortsättning på: lyzard's list: A live thing plus animation! - Part 5

Diskutera75 Books Challenge for 2018

Bara medlemmar i LibraryThing kan skriva.

lyzard's list: A live thing plus animation! - Part 6

Denna diskussion är för närvarande "vilande"—det sista inlägget är mer än 90 dagar gammalt. Du kan återstarta det genom att svara på inlägget.

1lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:11 pm

Many frogs have the ability to change colour to match their environment. Tree frogs are particularly adept at mimicking their arboreal surroundings, making themselves look like bark, or taking on the colour and patterning of the moss or lichen growing on a tree:


  

2lyzard
Redigerat: dec 30, 2018, 3:58 pm

"Books are my constant inspiration and delight, and without them I should be a dead thing minus animation."
---James Corbett, The Merrivale Mystery

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Currently reading:



The Road Back by Erich Maria Remarque (1931)

3lyzard
Redigerat: nov 13, 2018, 3:40 pm

2018 reading

January:

1. The Semi-Attached Couple by Emily Eden (1860)
2. The Semi-Detached House by Emily Eden (1859)
3. The Absentee by Maria Edgeworth (1812)
4. Robbery At Portage Bend by Trygve Lund (1933)
5. The Loring Mystery by Jeffery Farnol (1924)
6. The Medusa Touch by Peter Van Greenaway (1973)
7. Initials Only by Anna Katharine Green (1911)
8. The Flickering Lamp by Netta Muskett (1931)
9. The Key by Patricia Wentworth (1944)
10. Crooked House by Agatha Christie (1949)
11. Ruth Fielding Down East; or, The Hermit Of Beach Plum Point by Alice B. Emerson (1920)
12. The Exploits Of Elaine by Arthur B. Reeve (1915)
13. The Secret Trail by Anthony Armstrong (1928)
14. The Crimson Circle by Edgar Wallace (1922)
15. Gains And Losses: Novels Of Faith And Doubt In Victorian England by Robert Lee Wolff (1977)
16. Anything But The Truth by Carolyn Wells (1925)
17. Who Killed Precious? How FBI Special Agents Combine High Technology And Psychology To Identify Violent Criminals by H. Paul Jeffers (1991)

February:

18. Woman's Fiction: A Guide To Novels By And About Women In America, 1820-70 by Nina Baym (1978)
19. The Amityville Horror Part II by John G. Jones (1982)
20. Derelicts by William McFee (1938)
21. After Rain by Netta Muskett (1931)
22. The Shadow On Mockways by Marjorie Bowen (1932)
23. Mr Fortune Speaking by H. C. Bailey (1929)
24. Kai Lung Beneath The Mulberry-Tree by Ernest Bramah (1940)
25. Penelope's Progress: Being Such Extracts From The Commonplace Book Of Penelope Hamilton As Relate To Her Experiences In Scotland by Kate Douglas Wiggin (1897)
26. Women's Friendship In Literature by Janet M. Todd (1980)
27. Headlong Hall by Thomas Love Peacock (1815)
28. Dark Laughter by Sherwood Anderson (1925)
29. The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson (1978)
30. The Story Of Dr Wassell by James Hilton (1944)
31. A Murder Is Announced by Agatha Christie (1950)
32. Jack O' Lantern by George Goodchild (1929)
33. The Man With The Dark Beard by Annie Haynes (1928)

March:

34. Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen (1881)
35. The Brownstone by Ken Eulo (1980)
36. The Mystery Of The Hasty Arrow by Anna Katharine Green (1917)
37. The Penrose Mystery by R. Austin Freeman (1936)
38. Grandmother Elsie by Martha Finley (1882)
39. Kai Lung Raises His Voice by Ernest Bramah (2010)
40. Anthony Adverse by Hervey Allen (1933)
41. The Macdermots Of Ballycloran by Anthony Trollope (1847)
42. They Came To Baghdad by Agatha Christie (1951)
43. In The Teeth Of The Evidence And Other Stories by Dorothy L. Sayers (1939)

4lyzard
Redigerat: nov 13, 2018, 3:46 pm

2018 reading:

April:

44. Camilla; or, A Picture Of Youth by Frances Burney (1796)
45. The Secret History Of The Reigns Of K. Charles II, And K. James II by Anonymous (1690)
46. A Defence Of Their Majesties King William And Queen Mary, Against An Infamous And Jesuitical Libel, Entituled, A True Portraicture Of William Henry Prince Of Nassau, &c by Pierre Jurieu (1689)
47. Tribe Of The Dead by Gary Brandner (1984)
48. The Blatant Beast Muzzl'd: or, Reflexions on a Late Libel, Entituled, The Secret History Of The Reigns Of K. Charles II. And K. James II by 'N. N.' (1691)
49. Kiss Kiss by Roald Dahl (1959)
50. Shock 2 by Richard Matheson (1964)
51. Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Grave Business by Alfred Hitchcock (ed.) (1977)
52. Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories They Wouldn't Let Me Do On TV by Alfred Hitchcock (ed.) (1957)
53. Light Of The Moon by Barbara Cartland (1979)
54. The Taming Of Lady Lorinda by Barbara Cartland (1977)
55. Family Pictures, A Novel: Containing Curious And Interesting Memoirs Of Several Persons Of Fashion In W---re by Margaret Minifie (1764)
56. The Black Mask by E. W. Hornung (1901)
57. The Tree And Its Fruits; or, Narratives From Real Life by Phoebe Hinsdale Brown (1836)
58. The Castle Of Fear by Barbara Cartland (1974)
59. Pack Mule by Ursula Bloom (1931)
60. The Traveller Returns by Patricia Wentworth (1945)
61. Mrs McGinty's Dead by Agatha Christie (1952)
62. A Man From The North by Arnold Bennett (1898)

May:

63. In the Onyx Lobby by Carolyn Wells (1920)
64. Find The Clock by Harry Stephen Keeler (1925)
65. Felo De Se? by R. Austin Freeman (1937)
66. Au Rendez-vous des Terre-Neuvas by Georges Simenon (1931)
67. The Ayrshire Legatees; or, The Pringle Family by John Galt (1821)
68. Green Light by Lloyd C. Douglas (1935)
69. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (1906)
70. Sarah Gay by Mary Borden (1931)
71. High Winds by Arthur Train (1927)
72. Madame Storey by Hulbert Footner (1926)
73. Martin Hewitt, Investigator by Arthur Morrison (1894)
74. The Daffodil Mystery by Edgar Wallace (1920)
75. They Do It With Mirrors by Agatha Christie (1952)
76. Patty's Pleasure Trip by Carolyn Wells (1909)

June:

77. Messenger Of Love by Barbara Cartland (1961)
78. Clubfoot The Avenger by Valentine Williams (1924)
79. Madame Storey Intervenes by Hulbert Footner (1924)
80. Putting Crime Over by Hulbert Footner (1926)
81. The Velvet Hand by Hulbert Footner (1928)
82. The Division Bell Mystery by Ellen Wilkinson (1932)
83. Pilgrim's Rest by Patricia Wentworth (1946)
84. The Doorstep Murders by Carolyn Wells (1930)
85. Cloud The Smiter by Arthur Gask (1926)
86. Awakening by John Galsworthy (1920)
87. The Mystery Of Burnleigh Manor by Walter Livingston (1930)
88. The Eye Of Dread by Payne Erskine (1913)
89. Ruth Fielding In The Great Northwest; or, The Indian Girl Star Of The Movies by Alice B. Emerson (1921)
90. The Prisoners Of Hartling by J. D. Beresford (1922)
91. The Abbey Court Murder by Annie Haynes (1923)
92. Poe: A Life Cut Short by Peter Ackroyd (2008)
93. After The Funeral by Agatha Christie (1952)
94. Mr Fortune Explains by H. C. Bailey (1930)

5lyzard
Redigerat: nov 13, 2018, 3:50 pm

2018 reading

July:

95. Valerius: A Roman Story by J. G. Lockhart (1821)
96. Courrier Sud by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1929)
97. Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1936)
98. Anthony Trent, Master Criminal by Wyndham Martyn (1918)
99. One Drop Of Blood by Anne Austin (1932)
100. Lust For Blood: The Consuming Story Of Vampires by Olga Gruhzit Hoyt (1984)
101. La Danseuse Du Gai-Moulin by Georges Simenon (1931)
102. The Ear In The Wall by Arthur B. Reeve (1916)
103. A Pocket Full Of Rye by Agatha Christie (1953)
104. Kindled Flame by Margaret Pedler (1931)

August:

105. The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties by Frances Burney (1814)
106. Blue Voyage by Conrad Aiken (1927)
107. Little Vampire Women by Lynn Messina and Louisa May Alcott (2010)
108. Malefice by Leslie Wilson (1992)
109. Under Capricorn by Helen Simpson (1937)
110. The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1938)
111. Latter End by Patricia Wentworth (1947)
112. Destination Unknown by Agatha Christie (1954)
113. The Lust Of Hate by Guy Newell Boothby (1898)
114. Patty's Success by Carolyn Wells (1910)
115. Ruth Fielding On The St. Lawrence; or, The Queer Old Man Of The Thousand Islands by Alice B. Emerson (1922)
116. Spenlove In Arcady by William McFee (1941)

September:

117. The Paddington Mystery by John Rhode (1925)
118. The House In Charlton Crescent by Annie Haynes (1926)
119. Elsie's New Relations by Martha Finley (1883)
120. Penelope's Irish Experiences by Kate Douglas Wiggin (1901)
121. Vol De Nuit by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1931)
122. The Invisible Host by Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning (1930)
123. Hungry Hill by Daphne du Maurier (1943)
124. The Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939)
125. Ringu by Suzuki Koji (1991)
126. Voodoo'd by Kenneth Perkins (1931)
127. Hickory Dickory Dock by Agatha Christie (1955)
128. The Plumley Inheritance by Christopher Bush (1926)
129. Flowers For The Judge by Margery Allingham (1936)
130. The Great Bastard, Protector Of The Little One by Anonymous (1689)

6lyzard
Redigerat: dec 30, 2018, 12:19 am

2018 reading:

October:


131. The Mysteries Of London (Volume I) by George W. M. Reynolds (1845)
132. X v. Rex by 'Martin Porlock' (Philip MacDonald) (1933)
133. The Wychford Poisoning Case by Anthony Berkeley (1926)
134. Spotlight by Patricia Wentworth (1947)
135. Dead Man's Folly by Agatha Christie (1956)
136. The Skeleton At The Feast by Carolyn Wells (1931)
137. The Crow's Inn Tragedy by Annie Haynes (1927)
138. The Picture by Margaret and Susannah Minifie (1766)
139. How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn (1939)
140. The Giant Book Of World Famous Murders by Colin, Damon and Rowan Wilson (1993)
141. Frisk by Dennis Cooper (1991)

November:

142. Satanskin by James Havoc (1992)
143. The Mysteries Of London (Volume II) by George W. M. Reynolds (1846)
144. Women, Power, And Subversion: Social Strategies In British Fiction, 1778-1860 by Judith Lowder Newton (1981)
145. The Keys Of The Kingdom by A. J. Cronin (1941)
146. Random Harvest by James Hilton (1941)
147. The Day Of Uniting by Edgar Wallace (1926)
148. Penelope's Postscripts: Switzerland, Venice, Wales, Devon, Home by Kate Douglas Wiggin (1915)
149. The Scarab Murder Case by S. S. Van Dine (1929)
150. 4:50 From Paddington by Agatha Christie (1957)
151. Behind That Curtain by Earl Derr Biggers (1928)
152. The Doctor Who Held Hands by Hulbert Footner (1929)
153. A Thief In The Night by E. W. Hornung (1905)
154. Elsie At Nantucket by Martha Finley (1884)

December:

155. Ruth Fielding Treasure Hunting; or, A Moving Picture That Became Real by Alice B. Emerson (1923)
156. The Footsteps At The Lock by Ronald Knox (1928)
157. The Case Of William Smith by Patricia Wentworth (1948)
158. Mr Justice Raffles by E. W. Hornung (1909)
159. Ordeal By Innocence by Agatha Christie (1958)
160. Superintendent Wilson's Holiday by George and Margaret Cole (1928)
161. The Secret Of The Silver Car by Wyndham Martyn (1920)
162. The Murders Near Mapleton by Brian Flynn (1929)
163. The Black Camel by Earl Derr Biggers (1929)
164. The Incredible Crime by Lois Austen-Leigh (1931)
165. Inspector French And The Starvel Tragedy by Freeman Wills Crofts (1927)
166. The Song Of Bernadette by Franz Werfel (1941)
167. What I Believe by Bertrand Russell (1925)
168. The Case Of Mortimer Fenley by Louis Tracy (1915)
169. The Romance Of Elaine by Arthur B. Reeve (1916)
170. Gray Terror by Herman Landon (1923)

7lyzard
Redigerat: dec 27, 2018, 5:20 pm

Books in transit:

On interlibrary loan / branch transfer / storage / Rare Book request:
The Tragedy At The Unicorn by John Rhode {CARM / ILL}

Upcoming requests:
Murder By An Aristocrat (aka "Murder Of My Patient") by Mignon Eberhart {Rare Books}
The Monster Of Grammont by George Goodchild {Rare Books}
Home Port by Olive Higgins Prouty {JFR / ILL}
Circus Parade by Jim Tully {JFR / ILL}
Many Ways by Margaret Pedler {JFR / ILL}
The Mystery Of The Peacock's Eye by Brian Flynn {JFR / ILL}
Murder At The Hunting Club by Mary Plum {CARM / ILL}

Purchased and shipped:
Sandbar Sinister by Phoebe Atwood Taylor

On loan:
The Kellys And The O'Kellys by Anthony Trollope (28/01/2019)
**Random Harvest by James Hilton (28/01/2019)
The Road Back by Erich Maria Remarque (07/03/2019)
*The Song Of Bernadette by Franz Werfel (07/03/2019)
Family Trouble by William McFee (07/03/2019)
Belinda by Maria Edgeworth (07/03/2019)
Shadows On The Rock by Willa Cather (07/03/2019)
The Fallen Angel: Chastity, Class And Women's Reading, 1835-1880 by Sally Mitchell (07/03/2019)
*What I Believe by Bertrand Russell (15/03/2019)
Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (Volume I) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (15/03/2019)

8lyzard
Redigerat: dec 26, 2018, 3:33 pm

TBR notes:

Currently 'missing' series works:

Tragedy At The Unicorn by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #5) {CARM}
Mystery At Greycombe Farm by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #12) {Rare Books}
Dead Men At The Folly by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #13) {Rare Books}
The Robthorne Mystery by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #17) {Rare Books / State Library NSW, held}
Poison For One by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #18) {Rare Books / State Library NSW, held}
Shot At Dawn by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #19) {Rare Books}
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}
In Face Of The Verdict by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #24) {Rare Books / State Library NSW, held}

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:

The Road Back by Erich Maria Remarque {Fisher / on loan}
Shadows On The Rock by Willa Cather {Fisher}

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

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

NB: Rest of 1931 listed on the Wiki

Random reading:

The Spectacles Of Mr Cagliostro (aka The Blue Spectacles) by Harry Stephen Keeler (#3) {CARM}
The Kellys And The O'Kellys by Anthony Trollope (#2) {Fisher storage}
XYZ by Anna Katharine Green {Project Gutenberg}
The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart {Project Gutenberg}

Shopping list:

The Eye In Attendance by Valentine Williams

Expensive:

The Amber Junk (aka The Riddle Of The Amber Ship) by Hazel Phillips Hanshew
The Hawkmoor Mystery by W. H. Lane Crauford
Dead Man's Hat by Hulbert Footner
October House by Kay Cleaver Strahan
The Double Thumb by Francis Grierson
The Mystery Of The Open Window by Anthony Gilbert
The Mystery Of The Creeping Man by Frances Shelley Wees
The Shadow Of Evil by Charles J. Dutton
The Seventh Passenger by Alice MacGowan and Perry Newberry
The Daughter Of The House by Carolyn Wells
Murdered But Not Dead by Anne Austin
The Pelham Murder Case by Monte Barrett (Peter Cardigan #1)
Prove It, Mr Tolefree (aka "The Tolliver Case") by R. A. J. Walling (Philip Tolefree #3)

9lyzard
Redigerat: dec 24, 2018, 6:44 pm

Reading projects 2018:

Blog reads:
Chronobibliography: Leandro; or, The Lucky Rescue by James Smythies
Authors In Depth:
- Forest Of Montalbano by Catherine Cuthbertson
- The Mother-In-Law by E. D. E. N. Southworth
- The Captain Of The Vulture by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
- The Sicilian by 'the author of The Mysterious Wife' / Ellesmere by Mrs Meeke
- The Cottage by Margaret Minifie
- The Old Engagement by Julia Day
- The Refugee In America by Frances Trollope
Reading Roulette: Pique by Sarah Stickney Ellis
Australian fiction: Louisa Egerton by Mary Leman Grimstone
Gothic novel timeline: Reginald Du Bray by 'A Late Nobleman'
Early crime fiction: The Mysteries Of London by G. W. M. Reynolds
Related reading: Gains And Losses by Robert Lee Wollf / The Man Of Feeling by Henry Mackenzie / Le Loup Blanc by Paul Féval

Group / tutored reads:

Completed: The Semi-Attached Couple by Emily Eden (thread here)
Completed: The Semi-Detached House by Emily Eden (thread here)
Completed: Camilla by Frances Burney (thread here)
Completed: The Wanderer by Frances Burney (thread here)

Next up: Belinda by Maria Edgeworth

General reading challenges:

America's best-selling novels (1895 - ????):
Next up: The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas

Virago chronological reading project:
Next up: The Semi-Attached Couple; and The Semi-Detached House by Emily Eden

Agatha Christie mysteries in chronological order:
Next up: Cat Among The Pigeons

The C.K. Shorter List of Best 100 Novels:
Next up: Wilhelm Meister by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Mystery League publications:
Next up: The Monster Of Grammont by George Goodchild

Banned In Boston!:
Next up: Circus Parade by Jim Tully

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 / Blind Corner by Dornford Yates

Potential decommission:
Next up: Broadway Melody Of 1999 by Robert Steiner

Potential decommission (non-fiction):
The Supernatural by Douglas Hill and Pat Williams

Completed:
Georgette Heyer historical romances in chronological order

Possible future reading projects:
- 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

10lyzard
Redigerat: nov 30, 2018, 3:26 pm

A Century (And A Bit) Of Reading:

A book a year from 1800 - 1900!

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
1821: The Ayrshire Legatees; or, The Pringle Family by John Galt / Valerius: A Roman Story by J. G. Lockhart
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
1959: The Semi-Detached House by Emily Eden
1860: The Semi-Attached Couple by Emily Eden
1869: He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope
1873: Had You Been In His Place by Lizzie Bates
1877: Elsie's Children by Martha Finley
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: Elsie's New Relations by Martha Finley
1884: Elsie At Nantucket by Martha Finley
1894: Martin Hewitt, Investigator by Arthur Morrison
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
1900: The Circular Study by Anna Katharine Green

11lyzard
Redigerat: nov 13, 2018, 4:30 pm

Timeline of detective fiction:

Pre-history:
Things As They Are; or, The Adventures Of Caleb Williams by William Godwin (1794)
Mademoiselle de Scudéri by E.T.A. Hoffmann (1819)
Richmond: Scenes In The Life Of A Bow Street Officer by Anonymous (1827)
Memoirs Of Vidocq by Eugene Francois Vidocq (1828)
Le Pere Goriot by Honore de Balzac (1835)
Passages In The Secret History Of An Irish Countess by J. Sheridan Le Fanu (1838); The Purcell Papers (1880)
The Murders In The Rue Morgue: The Dupin Tales by Edgar Allan Poe (1841, 1842, 1845)

Serials:
The Mysteries Of Paris by Eugene Sue (1842 - 1843)
The Mysteries Of London - Paul Feval (1844)
The Mysteries Of London - George Reynolds (1844 - 1848)
The Mysteries Of The Court Of London - George Reynolds (1848 - 1856)
John Devil by Paul Feval (1861)

Early detective novels:
Recollections Of A Detective Police-Officer by "Waters" (William Russell) (1856)
The Widow Lerouge by Emile Gaboriau (1866)
Under Lock And Key by T. W. Speight (1869)
Checkmate by J. Sheridan LeFanu (1871)
Is He The Man? by William Clark Russell (1876)
Devlin The Barber by B. J. Farjeon (1888)
Mr Meeson's Will by H. Rider Haggard (1888)
The Mystery Of A Hansom Cab by Fergus Hume (1889)
The Queen Anne's Gate Mystery by Richard Arkwright (1889)
The Ivory Queen by Norman Hurst (1889) (Check Julius H. Hurst 1899)
The Big Bow Mystery by Israel Zangwill (1892)

Female detectives:
The Diary Of Anne Rodway by Wilkie Collins (1856)
The Female Detective by Andrew Forrester (1864)
Revelations Of A Lady Detective by William Stephens Hayward (1864)
The Law And The Lady by Wilkie Collins (1875)
Madeline Payne; or, The Detective's Daughter by Lawrence L. Lynch (Emma Murdoch Van Deventer) (1884)
Mr Bazalgette's Agent by Leonard Merrick (1888)
Moina; or, Against The Mighty by Lawrence L. Lynch (Emma Murdoch Van Deventer) (sequel to Madeline Payne?) (1891)
The Experiences Of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective by Catherine Louisa Pirkis (1893)
When The Sea Gives Up Its Dead by Elizaberth Burgoyne Corbett (Mrs George Corbett)
Dorcas Dene, Detective by George Sims (1897)
- Amelia Butterworth series by Anna Katharine Grant (1897 - 1900)
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)

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

12lyzard
Redigerat: dec 29, 2018, 7:02 pm

Series and sequels, 1866 - 1919:

(1866 - 1876) **Emile Gaboriau - Monsieur Lecoq - The Widow Lerouge (1/6) {ManyBooks}
(1867 - 1905) **Martha Finley - Elsie Dinsmore - The Two Elsies (11/28) {Project Gutenberg}
(1867 - 1872) **George MacDonald - The Seaboard Parish - Annals Of A Quiet Neighbourhood (1/3) {ManyBooks}
(1878 - 1917) **Anna Katharine Green - Ebenezer Gryce - The Mystery Of The Hasty Arrow (13/13) {Project Gutenberg}
(1896 - 1909) **Melville Davisson Post - Randolph Mason - The Corrector Of Destinies (3/3) {Internet Archive}
(1893 - 1915) **Kate Douglas Wiggins - Penelope - Penelope's Postscripts (4/4) {Project Gutenberg}
(1894 - 1898) **Anthony Hope - Ruritania - Rupert Of Hentzau (3/3) {Project Gutenberg}
(1894 - 1903) **Arthur Morrison - Martin Hewitt - Chronicles Of Martin Hewitt (2/4) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1895 - 1901) **Guy Newell Boothby - Dr Nikola - Dr Nikola's Experiment (4/5) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1897 - 1900) **Anna Katharine Green - Amelia Butterworth - The Circular Study (3/3) {Project Gutenberg}
(1898 - 1918) **Arnold Bennett - Five Towns - Anna Of The Five Towns (2/11) {Sutherland Library}
(1899 - 1917) **Anna Katharine Green - Caleb Sweetwater - The Mystery Of The Hasty Arrow (7/7) {Project Gutenberg}
(1899 - 1909) **E. W. Hornung - Raffles - Mr Justice Raffles (4/4) {Project Gutenberg}
(1900 - 1974) Ernest Bramah - Kai Lung - Kai Lung: Six / Kai Lung Raises His Voice (7/7) {Kindle}

(1901 - 1919) **Carolyn Wells - Patty Fairfield - Patty's Motor Car (9/17) {Project Gutenberg}
(1901 - 1927) **George Barr McCutcheon - Graustark - Beverly Of Graustark (2/6) {Project Gutenberg}
(1903 - 1904) **Louis Tracy - Reginald Brett - The Albert Gate Mystery (2/2) {ManyBooks}
(1905 - 1925) **Baroness Orczy - The Old Man In The Corner - Unravelled Knots (3/3) {Project Gutenberg Australia}}
(1905 - 1928) **Edgar Wallace - The Just Men - Again The Three Just Men (6/6) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1906 - 1930) **John Galsworthy - The Forsyte Saga - To Let (5/11) {Project Gutenberg}
(1907 - 1912) **Carolyn Wells - Marjorie - Marjorie's Vacation (1/6) {ManyBooks}
(1907 - 1942) R. Austin Freeman - Dr John Thorndyke - The Stoneware Monkey (24/26) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1907 - 1941) *Maurice Leblanc - Arsene Lupin - The Hollow Needle (3/21) {ManyBooks}
(1908 - 1924) **Margaret Penrose - Dorothy Dale - Dorothy Dale: A Girl Of Today (1/13) {ManyBooks}
(1909 - 1942) *Carolyn Wells - Fleming Stone - The Daughter Of The House (19/49) {expensive}
(1909 - 1929) *J. S. Fletcher - Inspector Skarratt - Marchester Royal (1/3) {Kindle}
(1909 - 1912) **Emerson Hough - Western Trilogy - 54-40 Or Fight (1/3) {Project Gutenberg}
(1910 - 1936) *Arthur B. Reeve - Craig Kennedy - The Adventuress (10/24) {ILL}
(1910 - 1946) A. E. W. Mason - Inspector Hanaud - The House In Lordship Lane (7/7) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1910 - 1917) ***Edgar Wallace - Inspector Smith - Kate Plus Ten (3/3) {Project Gutenberg Australia}
(1910 - 1930) **Edgar Wallace - Inspector Elk - The Joker (3/6?) {ManyBooks}
(1910 - 1932) *Thomas, Mary and Hazel Hanshew - Cleek - The Amber Junk (9/12) {AbeBooks}
(1910 - 1918) **John McIntyre - Ashton-Kirk - Ashton-Kirk: Criminologist (4/4) {Project Gutenberg}
(1910 - 1931) Grace S. Richmond - Red Pepper Burns - Red Pepper Returns (6/6) {Internet Archive}
(1910 - 1933) Jeffery Farnol - The Vibarts - The Way Beyond (3/3) {Fisher Library storage / fadedpage.com}

(1911 - 1935) G. K. Chesterton - Father Brown - The Scandal Of Father Brown (5/5) {branch transfer}
(1911 - 1937) Mary Roberts Rinehart - Letitia Carberry - Tish Marches On (5/5) {Kindle}
(1911 - 1919) **Alfred Bishop Mason - Tom Strong - Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout (5/5) {Project Gutenberg}
(1911 - 1940) *Bertram Atkey - Smiler Bunn - The Amazing Mr Bunn (1/10) {owned}
(1912 - 1919) **Gordon Holmes (Louis Tracy) - Steingall and Clancy - The Bartlett Mystery (3/3) {ManyBooks}
(1913 - 1928) **Louis Tracy - Winter and Furneaux - Number Seventeen (3/9) {Project Gutenberg}
(1913 - 1934) *Alice B. Emerson - Ruth Fielding - Ruth Fielding In The Far North (20/30) {expensive}
(1913 - 1973) Sax Rohmer - Fu-Manchu - The Bride Of Fu-Manchu (6/14) {interlibrary loan / Kindle}
(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) Better World Books}
(1914 - 1934) Ernest Bramah - Max Carrados - The Bravo Of London (5/5) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1916 - 1941) John Buchan - Edward Leithen - Sick Heart River (5/5) {Fisher Library}
(1915 - 1936) *John Buchan - Richard Hannay - The Thirty-Nine Steps (1/5) {Fisher Library / Project Gutenberg / branch transfer / Kindle}
(1915 - 1923) **Booth Tarkington - Growth - The Magnificent Ambersons (2/3) {Project Gutenberg / Fisher Library / Kindle}
(1916 - 1917) **Carolyn Wells - Alan Ford - Faulkner's Folly (2/2) {owned}
(1916 - 1927) **Natalie Sumner Lincoln - Inspector Mitchell - The Nameless Man (2/10) {AbeBooks}
(1916 - 1917) **Nevil Monroe Hopkins - Mason Brant - The Strange Cases Of Mason Brant (1/2) {Coachwhip Books}
(1917 - 1929) **Henry Handel Richardson - Dr Richard Mahony - Australia Felix (1/3) {Fisher Library / Kindle}
(1918 - 1923) **Carolyn Wells - Pennington Wise - The Come Back (4/8) {Project Gutenberg}
(1918 - ????) *Valentine Williams - Okewood / Clubfoot - The Crouching Beast (?/?) {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 - 1921) **Octavus Roy Cohen - David Carroll - The Crimson Alibi (1/3) {Rare Books / HathiTrust}

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

13lyzard
Redigerat: dec 30, 2018, 1:54 am

Series and sequels, 1920 - 1927:

(1920 - 1939) E. F. Benson - Mapp And Lucia - Trouble For Lucia (6/6) {interlibrary loan}
(1920 - 1948) *H. C. Bailey - Reggie Fortune - Case For Mr Fortune (7/23) {State Library NSW, JFR}
(1920 - 1952) William McFee - Spenlove - Family Trouble - (6/7) {Fisher Library storage}
(1920 - 1932) *Alice B. Emerson - Betty Gordon - Betty Gordon At Bramble Farm (1/15) {ManyBooks}
(1920 - 1975) Agatha Christie - Hercule Poirot - Cat Among The Pigeons (31/39) {owned}
(1920 - 1921) **Natalie Sumner Lincoln - Ferguson - The Unseen Ear (2/2) {HathiTrust}
(1920 - 1937) *H. C. McNeile - Bulldog Drummond - Bull-Dog Drummond (1/10 - series continued) {Project Gutenberg / Fisher storage}

(1921 - 1929) **Charles J. Dutton - John Bartley - Streaked With Crimson (9/9) {owned}
(1921 - 1925) **Herman Landon - The Gray Phantom - Hands Unseen (4/5) {online}

(1922 - 1973) Agatha Christie - Tommy and Tuppence - By The Pricking Of My Thumbs (4/5) {owned}
(1922 - 1927) *Alice MacGowan and Perry Newberry - Jerry Boyne - The Seventh Passenger (4/5) {Amazon}
(1922 - 1931) *Valentine Williams - Inspector Manderton - The Eye In Attendance (3/4) {AbeBooks}
(1922 - 1961) Mark Cross ("Valentine", aka Archibald Thomas Pechey) - Daphne Wrayne and her Four Adjusters - The Adjusters (1/53) {rare, expensive}

(1923 - 1937) Dorothy L. Sayers - Lord Peter Wimsey - In The Teeth Of The Evidence (14/14) {interlibrary loan}
(1923 - 1924) **Carolyn Wells - Lorimer Lane - The Fourteenth Key (2/2) {eBay}
(1923 - 1931) *Agnes Miller - The Linger-Nots - The Linger-Nots And The Secret Maze (5/5) {unavailable}
(1923 - 1927) **Annie Haynes - Inspector Furnival - The Crow's Inn Tragedy (3/3) {Kindle, owned}

(1924 - 1959) Philip MacDonald - Colonel Anthony Gethryn - Persons Unknown (aka "The Maze") (5/24) {State Library NSW, JFR / Kindle / interlibrary loan}
(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 Slip-Carriage Mystery (4/12) {Kindle}
(1924 - 1933) *Herbert Adams - Jimmie Haswell - The Crooked Lip (2/9) {Rare Books}
(1924 - 1944) *A. Fielding - Inspector Pointer - The Charteris Mystery (2/23) {AbeBooks / Rare Books / Kindle, Resurrected Press}
(1924 - 1928) **Ford Madox Ford - Parade's End - No More Parades (2/4) {ebook}
(1924 - 1936) *Hulbert Footner - Madame Storey - The Handsome Young Men (5.5/14) {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 - Poison In A Garden Suburb (6/?) {State Library NSW, JFR}
(1925 - 1932) *Earl Derr Biggers - Charlie Chan - Charlie Chan Carries On (5/6) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1925 - 1944) *Agatha Christie - Superintendent Battle - Towards Zero (5/5) {owned}
(1925 - 1934) *Anthony Berkeley - Roger Sheringham - The Second Shot (6/10) {academic loan / Rare Books}
(1925 - 1950) *Anthony Wynne (Robert McNair Wilson) - Dr Eustace Hailey - The Double-Thirteen Mystery (2/27) (aka "The Double Thirteen") {AbeBooks / Rare Books}
(1925 - 1939) *Charles Barry (Charles Bryson) - Inspector Lawrence Gilmartin - The Smaller Penny (1/15) {AbeBooks / Amazon}
(1925 - 1929) **Will Scott - Will Disher - Disher--Detective (aka "The Black Stamp") (1/3) {AbeBooks, expensive}
(1925 - 1927) **Francis Beeding - Professor Kreutzemark - The Seven Sleepers (1/2) {State Library NSW, interlibrary loan}

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

(1927 - 1933) *Herman Landon - The Picaroon - The Picaroon Does Justice (2/7) {Book Searchers}
(1927 - 1932) *Anthony Armstrong - Jimmie Rezaire - The Trail Of The Lotto (3/5) {AbeBooks}
(1927 - 1937) *Ronald Knox - Miles Bredon - The Body In The Silo (3/5) {Kindle / Rare Books}
(1927 - 1958) *Brian Flynn - Anthony Bathurst - The Mystery Of The Peacock's Eye (3/54) {State Library NSW, JFR}
(1927 - 1947) *J. J. Connington - Sir Clinton Driffield - Tragedy At Ravensthorpe (2/17) {Murder Room ebook / Kindle}
(1927 - 1935) *Anthony Gilbert (Lucy Malleson) - Scott Egerton - Mystery Of The Open Window (4/10) {expensive}
(1927 - 1932) *William Morton (aka William Blair Morton Ferguson) - Daniel "Biff" Corrigan - Masquerade (1/4) {expensive}
(1927 - 1929) **George Dilnot - Inspector Strickland - The Crooks' Game (1/2) {AbeBooks / Amazon}
(1927 - 1960) **Mazo de la Roche - Jalna - Jalna (1/16) {State Library NSW, JFR / fadedpage.com}
(1927 - 1949) **Dornford Yates - Richard Chandos - Blind Corner (1/8) {Rare Books / JFR / ILL / Kindle}

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

14lyzard
Redigerat: dec 3, 2018, 5:43 pm

Series and sequels, 1928 - 1930:

(1928 - 1961) Patricia Wentworth - Miss Silver - Eternity Ring (14/33) {fadedpage.com}
(1928 - 1936) *Gavin Holt - Luther Bastion - The Garden Of Silent Beasts (5/17) {academic loan / State Library NSW, held}
(1928 - ????) Trygve Lund - Weston of the Royal North-West Mounted Police - The Vanished Prospector (6/9) {AbeBooks}
(1928 - 1936) *Kay Cleaver Strahan - Lynn MacDonald - October House (4/7) {AbeBooks}
(1928 - 1937) *John Alexander Ferguson - Francis McNab - Murder On The Marsh (2/5) {Internet Archive / Rare Books / State Library NSW, held}
(1928 - 1960) *Cecil Freeman Gregg - Inspector Higgins - The Murdered Manservant (aka "The Body In The Safe") (1/35) {rare, expensive}
(1928 - 1959) *John Gordon Brandon - Inspector Patrick Aloysius McCarthy - The Black Joss (2/53) {State Library NSW, held}
(1928 - 1935) *Roland Daniel - Wu Fang / Inspector Saville - Wu Fang (2/6) {expensive}
(1928 - 1946) *Francis Beeding - Alistair Granby - Pretty Sinister (2/18) {academic loan}
(1928 - 1930) **Annie Haynes - Inspector Stoddart - The Crime At Tattenham Corner (2/4) {Project Gutenberg Australia / Kindle / mobilereads}
(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) {Kindle}
(1929 - ????) Mignon Eberhart - Nurse Sarah Keate - Murder By An Aristocrat (aka "Murder Of My Patient") (5/8) {Rare Books / Kindle US / academic loan}
(1929 - ????) ***Moray Dalton - Inspector Collier - ???? (3/?) - Death In The Cup {unavailable}, The Wife Of Baal {unavailable}
(1929 - ????) * / ***Charles Reed Jones - Leighton Swift - The King Murder (1/?) {AbeBooks}
(1929 - 1931) Carolyn Wells - Kenneth Carlisle - 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 - The Sands Of Windee (2/29) {interlibrary loan / Rare Books}
(1929 - 1931) *Ernest Raymond - Once In England - A Family That Was (1/3) {State Library NSW, interlibrary loan}
(1929 - 1937) *Anthony Berkeley - Ambrose Chitterwick - The Piccadilly Murder (2/3) {interlibrary loan}
(1929 - 1940) *Jean Lilly - DA Bruce Perkins - The Seven Sisters (1/3) {AbeBooks / expensive shipping}
(1929 - 1935) *N. A. Temple-Ellis (Nevile Holdaway) - Montrose Arbuthnot - The Inconsistent Villains (1/4) {AbeBooks / expensive shipping}
(1929 - 1943) *Gret Lane - Kate Clare Marsh and Inspector Barrin - The Cancelled Score Mystery (1/9) {Kindle}
(1929 - 1961) *Henry Holt - Inspector Silver - The Mayfair Mystery (aka "The Mayfair Murder") (1/16) {AbeBooks}
(1929 - 1930) *J. J. Connington - Superintendent Ross - The Eye In The Museum (1/2) {Kindle}
(1929 - 1941) *H. Maynard Smith - Inspector Frost - Inspector Frost's Jigsaw (1/7) {AbeBooks, omnibus}
(1929 - ????) *Armstrong Livingston - Jimmy Traynor - The Doublecross (1/?) {AbeBooks}
(1929 - 1932) Clemence Dane and Helen Simpson - Sir John Saumarez - Re-Enter Sir John (3/3) {Fisher Library storage}
(1929 - 1940) *Rufus King - Lieutenant Valcour - Murder By The Clock (1/11) {AbeBooks, omnibus / Kindle}
(1929 - 1933) *Will Levinrew (Will Levine) - Professor Brierly - 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 - Inspector Bedison And The Sunderland Case (2/4) {unavailable?}

(1930 - ????) ***Moray Dalton - Hermann Glide - ???? (3/?) {see above}
(1930 - 1932) Hugh Walpole - The Herries Chronicles - Vanessa (4/4) {Fisher Library storage}
(1930 - 1932) Faith Baldwin - The Girls Of Divine Corners - Myra: A Story Of Divine Corners (4/4) {owned}
(1930 - 1960) ***Miles Burton - Desmond Merrion - The Platinum Cat (17/57) {Rare Books}
(1930 - 1960) ***Miles Burton - Inspector Henry Arnold - The Platinum Cat (18/57) {Rare Books}
(1930 - 1933) ***Roger Scarlett - Inspector Kane - In The First Degree (5/5) {unavailable}
(1930 - 1941) *Harriette Ashbrook - Philip "Spike" Tracy - The Murder Of Sigurd Sharon (3/7) {Rare Books}
(1930 - 1943) Anthony Abbot - Thatcher Colt - About The Murder Of The Night Club Lady (3/8) {AbeBooks / serialised}
(1930 - ????) ***David Sharp - Professor Fielding - I, The Criminal (4/?) {unavailable?}
(1930 - 1950) *H. C. Bailey - Josiah Clunk - Garstons (aka The Garston Murder Case) (1/11) {HathiTrust}
(1930 - 1968) *Francis Van Wyck Mason - Hugh North - The Vesper Service Murders (2/41) {Kindle}
(1930 - 1976) *Agatha Christie - Miss Jane Marple - 4:50 From Paddington (8/12) {owned}
(1930 - ????) *Anne Austin - James "Bonnie" Dundee - Murdered But Not Dead (5/5) - {AbeBooks, expensive}
(1930 - 1950) *Leslie Ford (as David Frome) - Mr Pinkerton and Inspector Bull - The Hammersmith Murders (1/11) {AbeBooks / Rare Books}
(1930 - 1935) *"Diplomat" (John Franklin Carter) - Dennis Tyler - Murder In The State Department (1/7) {Amazon / Abebooks}
(1930 - 1962) *Helen Reilly - Inspector Christopher McKee - The Diamond Feather (1/31) {Rare Books}
(1930 - 1933) *Mary Plum - John Smith - The Killing Of Judge MacFarlane (1/4) {AbeBooks / Rare Books}
(1930 - 1945) *Hulbert Footner - Amos Lee Mappin - The Mystery Of The Folded Paper (aka The Folded Paper Mystery (1/10) {mobilereads / omnibus}
(1930 - 1940) *E. M. Delafield - The Provincial Lady - The Provincial Lady In Wartime (4/4) {Fisher Library}
(1930 - 1933) *Monte Barrett - Peter Cardigan - The Pelham Murder Case (1/3) {Amazon}
(1930 - 1931) Vernon Loder - Inspector Brews - Death Of An Editor (2/2) {Kindle}
(1930 - 1931) *Roland Daniel - John Hopkins - The Rosario Murder Case (1/2) {unavailable?}

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

15lyzard
Redigerat: nov 19, 2018, 3:31 pm

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 - 1951) Olive Higgins Prouty - The Vale Novels - Home Port (4/5) {State Library NSW, JFR}
(1931 - 1933) Sydney Fowler - Inspector Cleveland - Arresting Delia (4/4) {Book Depository / Rare Books / online}
(1931 - 1934) J. H. Wallis - Inspector Wilton Jacks - The Capital City Mystery (2/6) {Rare Books}
(1931 - ????) Paul McGuire - Inspector Cummings - Daylight Murder (aka "Murder At High Noon") (3/5) {academic loan / State Library NSW, held}
(1931 - 1937) Carlton Dawe - Leathermouth - The Sign Of The Glove (2/13) {academic loan / State Library NSW, held}
(1931 - 1947) R. L. Goldman - Asaph Clume and Rufus Reed - Murder Without Motive (2/6) {Wildside Press}
(1931 - 1959) E. C. R. Lorac (Edith Caroline Rivett) - Inspector Robert Macdonald - The Murder On The Burrows (1/46) {rare, expensive}
(1931 - 1935) Clifton Robbins - Clay Harrison - Methylated Murder (5/5) {Kindle}
(1931 - 1972) Georges Simenon - Inspector Maigret - La Guinguette à Deux Sous (11/75) {ILL}
(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) {Fisher Library storage}
(1931 - 1942) R. A. J. Walling - Garstang - The Stroke Of One (1/3) {Amazon}
(1931 - ????) Francis Bonnamy (Audrey Boyers Walz) - Peter Utley Shane - Death By Appointment (1/8) {AbeBooks / Rare Books}
(1931 - 1937) J. S. Fletcher - Ronald Camberwell - Murder In The Squire's Pew (3/11) {Kindle / State Library NSW, held}
(1931 - 1933) Edwin Dial Torgerson - Sergeant Pierre Montigny - The Murderer Returns (1/2) {Rare Books)
(1931 - 1933) Molly Thynne - Dr Constantine and Inspector Arkwright - The Crime At The 'Noah's Ark' (1/3) {Kindle}
(1931 - 1935) Valentine Williams - Sergeant Trevor Dene - Death Answers The Bell (1/4) {Kindle}
(1931 - 1942) Patricia Wentworth - Frank Garrett - Pursuit Of A Parcel (5/5) {Kindle}

(1932 - 1954) Sydney Fowler - Inspector Cambridge and Mr Jellipot - The Bell Street Murders (1/11) {AbeBooks / Rare Books}
(1932 - 1935) Murray Thomas - Inspector Wilkins - Buzzards Pick The Bones (1/3) {AbeBooks, expensive}
(1932 - ????) R. A. J. Walling - Philip Tolefree - Prove It, Mr Tolefree (aka The Tolliver Case) (3/22) {AbeBooks}
(1932 - 1962) T. Arthur Plummer - Detective-Inspector Andrew Frampton - Shadowed By The C. I. D. (1/50) {unavailable?}
(1932 - 1936) John Victor Turner - Amos Petrie - Death Must Have Laughed (1/7) {Rare Books}
(1932 - 1944) Nicholas Brady (John Victor Turner) - Ebenezer Buckle - The House Of Strange Guests (1/4) {Kindle}
(1932 - 1932) Lizette M. Edholm - The Merriweather Girls - The Merriweather Girls At Good Old Rockhill (4/4) {HathiTrust}
(1932 - 1933) Barnaby Ross (aka Ellery Queen) - Drury Lane - Drury Lane's Last Case (4/4) {AbeBooks}
(1932 - 1952) D. E. Stevenson - Mrs Tim - Mrs Tim Flies Home (5/5) {interlibrary loan}
(1932 - ????) Richard Essex (Richard Harry Starr) - Jack Slade - Slade Of The Yard (1/?) {AbeBooks}
(1932 - 1933) Gerard Fairlie - Mr Malcolm - Shot In The Dark (1/3) (State Library NSW, held}
(1932 - 1934) Paul McGuire - Inspector Fillinger - The Tower Mystery (aka Death Tolls The Bell) (1/5) {Rare Books / State Library, held}
(1932 - 1946) Roland Daniel - Inspector Pearson - The Crackswoman (1/6) {unavailable?}
(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 - 1970) Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richlieu - The Forbidden Territory (1/11) {Fisher Library}
(1933 - 1934) Jackson Gregory - Paul Savoy - A Case For Mr Paul Savoy (1/3) {AbeBooks / Rare Books}
(1933 - 1957) John Creasey - Department Z - The Death Miser (1/28) {State Library NSW, held}
(1933 - 1940) Bruce Graeme - Superintendent Stevens - Body Unknown (2/2) {expensive}
(1933 - 1952) Wyndham Martyn - Christopher Bond - Christopher Bond, Adventurer (1/8) {rare}
(1934 - 1936) Storm Jameson - The Mirror In Darkness - Company Parade (1/3) {Fisher Library}
(1934 - 1949) Richard Goyne - Paul Templeton - Strange Motives (1/13) {unavailable?}
(1934 - 1941) N. A. Temple-Ellis (Nevile Holdaway) - Inspector Wren - Three Went In (1/3) {unavailable?}
(1934 - 1953) Carter Dickson (John Dickson Carr) - Sir Henry Merivale - The Plague Court Murders (1/22) {Fisher Library}
(1934 - 1968) Dennis Wheatley - Gregory Sallust - Black August (1/11) {interlibrary loan / omnibus}
(1935 - 1939) Francis Beeding - Inspector George Martin - The Norwich Victims (1/3) {AbeBooks / Book Depository / State Library NSW, held}
(1935 - 1976) Nigel Morland - Palmyra Pym - The Moon Murders (1/28) {State Library NSW, held}
(1935 - 1941) Clyde Clason - Professor Theocritus Lucius Westborough - The Fifth Tumbler (1/10) {unavailable?}
(1935 - ????) G. D. H. Cole / M. Cole - Dr Tancred - Dr Tancred Begins (1/?) (AbeBooks, expensive / State Library NSW, held / Rare Books}
(1935 - ????) George Harmon Coxe - Kent Murdock - Murder With Pictures (1/22) {AbeBooks}
(1935 - 1959) Kathleen Moore Knight - Elisha Macomber - Death Blew Out The Match (1/16) {AbeBooks / Amazon}
(1935 - 1953) Leslie Ford (Zenith Jones Brown) - Colonel John Primrose and Grace Latham - The Clock Strikes Twelve (aka "The Supreme Court Murder") (NB: novella) {owned}
(1936 - 1974) Anthony Gilbert (Lucy Malleson) - Arthur Crook - Murder By Experts (1/51) {interlibrary loan}
(1936 - 1952) Helen Dore Boylston - Sue Barton - Sue Barton, Student Nurse (1/7) {interlibrary loan}
(1936 - 1940) George Bell Dyer - The Catalyst Club - The Catalyst Club (1/3) {AbeBooks}
(1936 - 1956) Theodora Du Bois - Anne and Jeffrey McNeil - Armed With A New Terror (1/19) {unavailable?}
(1938 - 1944) Zelda Popkin - Mary Carner - Death Wears A White Gardenia (1/6) {Kindle}
(1939 - 1942) Patricia Wentworth - Inspector Lamb - Latter End (7/?) {interlibrary loan}
(1939 - 1940) Clifton Robbins - George Staveley - Six Sign-Post Murder (1/2) {Biblio / rare}
(1940 - 1943) Bruce Graeme - Pierre Allain - The Corporal Died In Bed (1/3) {unavailable?}
(1941 - 1951) Bruce Graeme - Theodore I. Terhune - Seven Clues In Search Of A Crime (1/7) {unavailable?}
(1947 - 1974) Dennis Wheatley - Roger Brook - The Launching Of Roger Brook (1/12) {Fisher Library storage}
(1948 - 1971) E. V. Timms - The Gubbys - Forever To Remain (1/12) {Fisher Library / interlibrary loan}
(1953 - 1960) Dennis Wheatley - Molly Fountain and Colonel Verney - To The Devil A Daughter (1/2) {Fisher Library storage}
(1955 - 1956) D. E. Stevenson - The Ayrton Family - Summerhills (2/2) {interlibrary loan}
(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
** Series complete pre-1931
* Present status pre-1931

16lyzard
Redigerat: dec 5, 2018, 4:20 pm

Unavailable series works:

John Rhode - Dr Priestley {NB: Now becoming available on Kindle}
Tragedy At The Unicorn (#5)
The Hanging Woman (#11)
The Corpse In The Car (#20) {expensive}

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Inspector Bedison - Thomas Cobb
Inspector Bedison And The Sunderland Case (#2)
Inspector Bedison Risks It (#3)
Who Closed The Casement? (#4)

17lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:22 pm

Books currently on loan:

        

        

18lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:26 pm

Reading projects:

Blog:

        

      

Other projects:

        

        

19lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:28 pm

Short-list TBR:

        

        

20lyzard
Redigerat: nov 13, 2018, 5:01 pm

Ruminations etc.

I suppose it's a typical end-of-year feeling, but it really seems like my reading has gone off the rails recently. (Conversely, I'm hugging the idea that, "January will fix EVERYTHING!")

Certainly I've slowed down, partly because of outside circumstances, partly because of a preponderance of chunksters. However, my goal was to hit 150 for the year, and I will certainly achieve that; so I'm trying not to worry too much about the rest.

Various dropped challenge-threads are bugging me, though; and I will probably devote what's left of the year to picking those up again, and to polishing off my unread library books (there's a downside to long loan periods with automatic renewals!).

And of course I need to catch up my reviews...and hopefully get a blog-post or two written as well.

I'm not doing much forward planning, for once. The only thing definitely agreed upon so far is a group read of Maria Edgeworth's Belinda, which will be happening early next year, as part of what has accidentally evolved into a "Important female authors before Jane Austen" project.

21lyzard
Redigerat: nov 13, 2018, 5:02 pm

...ahh, that's better; much tidier!

So please come on in...

ETA: Oh, I see some of you already have; pushy! :D

22rosalita
nov 13, 2018, 4:28 pm

>1 lyzard: Those are some stealth frogs! I had to blow up the picture to find the first one.

>2 lyzard: Now you're just taunting me with these quotes from The Merrivale Mystery, aren't you?

23lyzard
Redigerat: nov 13, 2018, 6:12 pm

>22 rosalita:

Those are some of the more spottable ones!

Oh, dear girl, that's been there all year; I've been taunting you since January! :D

BTW, we on for The Case Of William Smith next month?

24FAMeulstee
nov 13, 2018, 6:52 pm

Happy new thread, Liz!

You found some nice search pictures again, if there is one frog on both I found them :-)

25harrygbutler
nov 13, 2018, 8:36 pm

Happy new thread, Liz!

I'm ready to tackle The Day of Uniting. Will that be this month or next?

26rosalita
Redigerat: nov 14, 2018, 3:49 pm

>23 lyzard: As with most things relating to that book, I've completely blocked it from my memory. :-)

And yes, we are on for William Smith and Miss Silver!

27figsfromthistle
nov 13, 2018, 11:16 pm

Happy new thread :)

28Helenliz
nov 14, 2018, 1:20 am

Happy New thread, Liz. I fear for you in post 20, I'm not sure you need another new project - even if femail authors pre Austen does sound very interesting...

29jnwelch
nov 14, 2018, 8:39 am

Happy New Thread, Liz. Those frog photos are remarkable - or maybe I should say, those frogs are. I had to look closely for a good while to find them.

I've had How Green Was My Valley on my tbr shelf for a long time. Maybe your experience with will inspire me. I look forward to seeing your thoughts on it.

30lyzard
nov 14, 2018, 3:34 pm

>24 FAMeulstee:

Thank you! Yes, well done, one in each. :)

>25 harrygbutler:

Thanks, Harry. It should be this month (though I would like to get The Invisible Host written up first).

>26 rosalita:

Wimp. :D

Excellent! And for once I'm ready to go.

>27 figsfromthistle:

Thanks for visiting, Anita!

>28 Helenliz:

Well...it's not so much another project as a side-excursion from the existing Virago one...which I will get back to one day...probably in January... :)

I actually don't think Virago have revived enough 18th and early 19th century female authors. The only one of these books that actually is a Virago is Frances Burney's Cecilia, which we prepared for by reading her earlier novel, Evelina. That led to reading Burney's other two novels as well, and now we're taking a look at one of the 'social' novels of Maria Edgeworth, who was also name-checked by Austen in Northanger Abbey.

>29 jnwelch:

Thanks, Joe! Yup, they're very cool.

Yes, I had too, so I was glad of the push to get it read. And of course I always look forward to getting anything written up. :D

31Helenliz
nov 14, 2018, 3:38 pm

>30 lyzard: Give me a shout when you start the read. I have The Absentee on loan and can see that Belinda is in the library catalogue.

32lyzard
nov 14, 2018, 3:43 pm

Will do! It will probably be (when else?) January. :)

33harrygbutler
nov 14, 2018, 7:17 pm

>30 lyzard: OK. I actually have it fairly ready to hand, so I'll start it next.

34lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:28 pm



X v. Rex (US title: Mystery Of The Dead Police; reissue title: The Mystery Of Mr X) - London is shocked when racing-driver and society man, Sir Christopher Vayle, is arrested for the strangulation murder of a police constable. In her stunned misery, Jane Frensham, the baronet's on-again, off-again fiancée, is unable to prevent a stranger called Nicholas Revel forcing his company and luncheon upon her; she hardly knows what to make of his insistence that he can fix everything for her. However, Revel is as good as his word, testifying that the police officer was alive after Sir Christopher's drunken assault upon him; Revel's statement is backed up by that of his taxi-driver. Though cleared of the murder, Sir Christopher is jailed for a fortnight and fined for the assault. During this time, two things happen: Revel continues to pursue Jane---although his motivation seems to be to scrape an acquaintance with her father, Sir Hector Frensham, the Chief Commissioner of Police; and the singular police murder turns into a series, all committed as part of a campaign by a mysterious killer calling himself simply 'X'... Written under his 'Martin Porlock' pseudonym, Philip MacDonald's 1933 thriller has its moments but is ultimately a disappointment. Part of this is contextual: two years earlier, MacDonald published Murder Gone Mad, a powerful and confronting serial-killer mystery. X v. Rex, meanwhile, though it also deals with a serial killer, is a far less effective crime thriller---chiefly because, despite the inserts from the killer's manifesto, the police murders are kept more or less in the background while the main narrative instead follows the relationship that develops between Revel and Jane, Jane's battle with her divided feelings over Revel and Sir Christopher, and the increasing suspicion of Revel on the part of Superintendent Connor, who has charge of the investigation. The problem for the reader with this is the distinct lack of likeable characters. Sir Christopher is an obnoxious bully with a drinking problem, making Jane's persistent feeling for him perplexing and his position as de facto hero hard to swallow; while Jane herself, despite her supposed attractions, is almost devoid of personality, and spends most of the novel unable to say anything but, "Oh!" Revel himself is presented in an ambiguous fashion that allows for a cat-and-mouse game to develop between himself and Connor, who becomes quite certain that Revel is protecting a dangerous secret---but is he really the mysterious X? X. v. Rex is on former ground with its political framework, with the brutal murders occurring at a time of social upheaval and with the government already under threat. Furthermore, though this is a fairly grim work overall, MacDonald does allow himself a little sarcastic humour with respect to the Press and its various agendas. The novel's most interesting aspect, however - as was also the case with Murder Gone Mad - is the startling modernity of its psychology with respect to serial killers and their ways---this, some forty years before the term 'serial killer' was even coined. In a way this makes the book work better for the modern crime buff, who is likely to have profound suspicions of Revel from the moment he uses Jane to infiltrate the police investigation. It is another piece of serial-killer lore that finally sets the investigators on the right track, however: the idea that the first kill is the most revealing---which in this case, though all the subsequent murders occurred in London, was the death of a police sergeant in a small town in Surrey...

    On the morning of the 11th of June Superintendent Connor of the C. I. D., surveying a colleague over a pile of newspapers, remarked gloomily that the lid of hell had undoubtedly come off, for like one hound the Press, baulked of a continuance of the Vayle sensation, flung itself upon the bones of the two dead policemen. What had been done about Sergeant Guilfoil? What was going to be done about Constable Beecham? Where was the important clue? What had it led to? What was the country coming to? If the Guardians of the Peace were not safe themselves, Peace was a hollow word. How could the Law remain majestic when the police could not even apprehend the authors of deadly crimes against themselves? What was wrong with Scotland Yard?
    And so on and so on. And so on.
    But this, which the Police and public took in their blissful ignorance as a storm, was to prove itself within two hours of a middle morning to be a mere breeze. For the noon editions of the papers on the 11th of June contained the news, reluctantly given by the authorities, that upon the preceding night there had been found, in Fortescue Street - where he was on the special duty of guarding the propertyand person of a foreign ambassador - the dead and lacerated body of Police Constable Thomas Franklin...

35rosalita
nov 15, 2018, 4:51 pm

>34 lyzard: That book cover is giving me a headache.

36lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:28 pm

All the others (under the book's correct title) are boring, so not much of a choice.

ETA: Here is the reissue cover, released after the book was filmed as The Mystery Of Mr X; I gather that's supposed to be Robert Montgomery in the bobby's outfit:


37lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:29 pm

...and speaking of which:

X v. Rex has been filmed twice, in 1934 as The Mystery Of Mr X, and then in 1952 as The Hour Of 13; in both cases the plot has been twisted to turn the story into a romantic drama rather than a crime thriller.

I watched both after I read the book, and wrote them up in my last short-review update:


  

38lyzard
nov 17, 2018, 3:06 pm

Finished Women, Power, And Subversion for TIOLI #8.

Still reading The Keys Of The Kingdom by A. J. Cronin.

39lyzard
nov 17, 2018, 4:39 pm

Finished The Keys Of The Kingdom for TIOLI #2.

Now reading Random Harvest by James Hilton.

40lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:29 pm



The Paddington Mystery - Staggering home in the middle of the night to his meagre flat in Paddington, Harold Merefield sobers up instantaneously when he discovers the dead body of a man, a complete stranger, in his bedroom. Although the subsequent police investigation clears him of guilt, and at his inquest the man is ruled to have died of natural causes, a cloud of suspicion still hangs over Harold---most people assuming that he must know something of the man and how he died, in spite of his denials. Accepting that he can only remove the stain on his character by discovering the truth, Harold for help turns to Dr Priestley---once his prospective father-in-law... First published in 1925 and out of print since until very recently, this first entry in John Rhode's series featuring the irascible scientist and mathematician, Dr Lancelot Priestley, differs in some significant ways - as first books tend to do - from much of what follows; and though, like its immediate successors, it is told from the point of view of Harold Merefield, he too is significantly different from his later incarnation. When we first meet him, Harold has run off the rails, pursuing a life of idleness and dissipation that has wrecked his relationship with his fiancée, April Priestley. This aspect of the novel is not particularly convincing---and is even less so, for anyone who has read the later books featuring a much more proper - and much duller - version of Harold. (It is impossible to imagine that Harold authoring a scandalous novel, which is the rock upon which his relationship with April finally founders.) However, with the unravelling of the mystery and Dr Priestley's methods, Rhode is on more familiar ground. The influence of Sherlock Holmes upon Dr Priestley, whom Rhode envisaged as a modern updating of the logical scientist-detective, is undisguised: April at one point calls her father, "Professor Sherlock Priestley", while Priestley himself uses the line, "You know my methods." But perhaps the most interesting aspects of The Paddington Mystery is that it is unclear for most of its length whether in fact it is a murder mystery at all: whether, perhaps, the dead man died while attempting to burgle Harold's flat; whether he died where he was found or was brought there afterwards; or even whether Harold is the victim of some kind of macabre practical joke. The circumstances are strange enough: the dead man was soaking wet, with footprints leading from a nearby canal suggesting that as the source of water; a needle mark was found on his arm, though no drugs or poisons were found in his system; and all forms of identification had been removed from his clothing---by himself or another. The explanation painstakingly constructed by Dr Priestley is ingenious, if not entirely credible; while the mystery suffers somewhat as a mystery from a dearth of suspects, which makes the identity of the individual behind Harold's dilemma rather too obvious. However, this is still an interesting piece of crime fiction, and all the more so for setting in motion one of the longest-running of all the Golden Age series---not concluding until 1961!

    "The police...are solely concerned with the detection of crime. They may well argue that no crime was committed, since the result of the inquest was a verdict of 'Death from natural causes.' In other words, my boy, if you want to clear yourself in the eyes of the world, you will have to unravel the mystery yourself."
    "That's very much the conclusion I came to myself," replied Harold disconsolately. "But I haven't the least idea how to set about it."
    The Professor rose from his chair and stood with his back to the fire, looking down at the young man. "The trained mind," he began oracularly, "that is to say, the brain accustomed to logical reasoning processes, can often construct an edifice of unshakable truth from the loose bricks of fact which to others seem merely a profitless rubbish heap. I have studied the various incidents surrounding this case with particular care, firstly because I hoped you would come to me for advice, and secondly, because of the many points of interest they contain. As a result I may say that, if you will accept my assistance, there is a reasonable hope that together we may arrive at the solution of what is at present a mystery."
    Harold looked up sharply, with a look of incredulous wonder in his eyes. He had scarcely dared hope for even sympathy, and now here was this precise old mathematician not only sympathising, but actually offering his assistance to disperse the cloud that hung over him!

41souloftherose
nov 18, 2018, 9:08 am

Happy new thread Liz!

>1 lyzard: I've found the frog in the left hand picture but I'm still struggling with the second picture.....

42lyzard
nov 18, 2018, 3:02 pm

Thanks, Heather!

It's sitting in the crook of the branch. :)

BTW it's looking increasingly like I won't get to The Kellys And The O'Kellys before next month, if that suits you better...? (Possibly even - yes, you guessed it! - JANUARY!!)

43lyzard
Redigerat: dec 7, 2018, 4:15 pm

Finished The Day Of Uniting, for TIOLI #6 at the moment, but for #9 if I can grab the right slot.

Now reading Penelope's Postscripts by Kate Douglas Wiggin.

44lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:30 pm



The House In Charlton Crescent - The elderly Lady Anne Daventry tells private investigator Bruce Cardyn that she believes someone in her household is trying to kill her. While retaining his services, both to forestall the crime and expose the guilty party, Lady Anne nevertheless stresses that the entire proceeding must be kept private, with no police involvement. She goes on to describe the incidents that raised her suspicions, and her confirming discovery that one of her regular pills had been replaced with one of deadly hyoscine. Cardyn soon sees that his client fears her assailant is one of her young relatives: her nieces, Dorothy and Maureen Fyvert, aged twenty and twelve, respectively; Miss Margaret Balmaine, her late husband's granddaughter, recently arrived from Australia; or John Daventry, his nephew who, though not living in the house, is a frequent visitor and benefits most under Lady Anne's will. Cardyn also learns that a secretary, David Branksome, was a resident until a few days previously, when he was dismissed for his inappropriate attentions to Miss Balmaine. Cardyn proposes that he take Branksome's place, to which Lay Anne agrees; he also gives her a set of instructions addressing her meals and medicine. A new crisis soon arises when Lady Anne discovers that a valuable rope of pearls has been stolen from its hiding-place; and, in the wake of this, and in spite of Cardyn's precautions, Lady Anne is murdered... While the second of three works by Annie Haynes to feature Inspector Furnival is an improvement over the first, The Abbey Court Murder, it shares that book's air of old-fashionedness, for want of a better term. Like a number of the mysteries of Carolyn Wells, Haynes' books give the impression of having been written a generation earlier---in their upper-class setting, their class consciousness and snobbery, and in particular their attitude to the profession of "detective", which is treated as a very ungentlemanly pursuit indeed. (It's odd reading a detective story that so thoroughly disapproves of detectives! Policemen, meanwhile, are distasteful but necessary...) The second touch which makes these books seem old-fashioned is their melodramatic tone, which links them to the sensation novels of the late 19th century and to the work of writers such as Anna Katharine Green, in their melodramatic tone and the complicated back-stories that are eventually revealed. However, these qualities are toned down at least a bit in The House In Charlton Crescent, and the book is better for it. It is the theft of the pearls which changes Lady Anne's mind about police involvement; it also narrows the list of suspects to those who could have known about its hiding-place. It is narrowed even more when Furnival discovers that the pearls have been sold by an anonymous "young lady"... The family is at tea when a startling incident occurs: a distorted face is seen at the window. There is a rush in that direction---and when the party turns away it is to discover that Lady Anne, confined to her chair on the far side of the room, has been stabbed to death. The circumstances make it almost certain that one of those already present - John Daventry, Dorothy Fyvert, Margaret Balmaine, Soames the butler and Cardyn himself - must be the killer; but was the person outside an accomplice, or was this a crime of opportunity? Cardyn and Inspector Furnival undertake the investigation together, trying to determine whether the murder was a final, successful attempt upon Lady Anne's life; and whether the thief and the killer are one and the same: whether, in fact, they are investigating one crime or two. Cardyn already has reason to suspect that Margaret Balmaine is not who she claims to be; but the case takes a startling new turn when Furnival discovers that Cardyn, too, may not be who he appears...

    "I came here, engaged by Lady Anne Daventry herself, to make her life safe and to discover her would-be assassin. How lamentably I failed you know as well as I do. But acknowledging my failure I see now that I ought to have retired from the case, not stayed on as your assistant or factotum, whichever you like to call it."
    "So now you want to leave me to finish the case, I suppose."
    "Yes. I mean to leave the case in the hands of the regular police. My partner is already grumbling at my long absence."
    "Just so!" The inspector came a step nearer. "Suppose I say that you shall not go---that you shall stay and help us just as long as I choose, Mr Bruce Cardyn!"
    Cardyn flushed hotly.
    "I cannot imagine anything so absurdly inconceivable."
    "Can you not?" A change came into the inspector's voice. It suddenly grew stern and harsh. "And yet I say it now. I tell you that if you attempt to give up this case, I will have you instantly arrested for the murder of Lady Anne Daventry."


45lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:30 pm



Elsie's New Relations - Though this ninth book in Martha Finley's religious / didactic series certainly features the aggravatingly perfect Elsie Dinsmore Travilla and her disturbingly obsessed father, Horace, its focus (as is true of the series as a whole) is increasingly upon the younger generations. This is actually one of the more interesting and plot-heavy series entries, but fear not! - we still get interludes of the usual ickiness, including a reminder that when Creepy Mr Travilla first fell in love with Elsie, she was eight:

    "Years afterward he told me he had it in his mind even then; had already resolved to wait till I grew up and win me for his wife if he could."
    "Yes, he told me after you were grown and he had offered himself, that it had been love at first sight with him, little child that you were when he first made your acquaintance. That surprised me, though less than the discovery that you fancied one so many years your senior."
    "But so good, so noble, so lovable!" she said. "Surely, it was not half so strange, papa, as that he should fancy a foolish young thing such as I was then..."


---as well as the inference that Edward Travilla Jr is his father's son, following his impulsive marriage to the orphaned Zoe Love at the end of Grandmother Elsie: we gather that she is about fifteen, and even younger emotionally; and Elsie's New Relations is significantly concerned with Edward's efforts to deal with (as Finley insists upon putting it) his "child-bride", who resents being asked to grow up and take on adult responsibilities, and goes into hysterics at any criticism. Even so, and not surprisingly given this novel's original 1883 publication date, much of the marriage itself is conveyed only through implication---including the fact that it hasn't been consummated; or so we judge from the fact that after a year as a wife, Zoe still doesn't know where babies come from. The rest of Elsie's New Relations chiefly concerns the two eldest step-children of second daughter, Violet, now married to naval officer, Captain Raymond. (The youngest, invalid Gracie, might have been a born Dinsmore.) Raised by strangers during their widowed father's many necessary absences, Max and Lulu have acquired some bad habits that just won't do in their new surroundings: Max is easily led and given to profanity; Lulu is stubborn and headstrong, and inclined to feel persecuted. Both have a lot to learn---but now they have "Grandmother Elsie" and "Mamma Violet" to teach them, so we know how the story will turn out. Still---the fact that these two are so imperfect, and that their self-improvement is admitted to be no simple matter, makes this short novel easier to take than many of the entries in this series. I do wish the adults could refrain from quoting the Bible for literally pages on end, though...

    "Why are you going back, Lulu? did you not hear the supper bell?" asked Mr Dinsmore.
    "Yes, sir," she answered, facing him again with flashing eyes, "but if my brother is not to go to the table neither will I."
    "Oh, very well," he said; "you certainly do not deserve a seat there after such a speech as that. Go to your own room and stay there until you find yourself in a more amiable and respectful mood."
    It was exactly what she had intended to do, but because he ordered it, it instantly became the thing she did not want to do.
    However, she went into her room, and closing the door after her, not too gently, said aloud with a stamp of her foot, "Hateful old tyrant!" then walked on into Violet's dressing-room, where her sister still was.
    Gracie had lain down upon a sofa and wept herself to sleep, but the supper bell had waked her, and she was crying again. Catching sight of Lulu's flushed, angry face, she asked what was the matter.
    "I wish we could go away from these people and never, never come back again!" cried Lulu in her vehement way.
    "I don't," said Gracie. "I love mamma and Grandma Elsie, and Grandma Rose, and Grandpa Dinsmore, too, and---"
    "I hate him! I'd like to beat him! the old tyrant!" interrupted Lulu, in a burst of passion.


46lyzard
Redigerat: nov 19, 2018, 8:00 pm

Just how imperfect *are* Max and Lulu?---


    Lulu was reading, so absorbed in the story that she did not perceive her father's approach, and as he accosted her with, "It is late for you to be here alone, my child, you should have come in an hour ago," she gave a great start, and involuntarily tried to hide her book.
    "What have you there? Evidently something you do not wish your father to see," he said, bending down and taking it from her unwilling hand.
    "Ah, I don't wonder!" as he hurriedly turned over a few pages. "A dime novel! Where did you get this, Lulu?"
    "It's Max's, papa, he lent it to me. O papa, what made you do that?" as with an energetic fling the captain suddenly sent it far out into the sea. "Max made me promise to take care of it and give it back to him, and besides I wanted to finish the story."

47rosalita
nov 19, 2018, 8:04 pm

>46 lyzard: I say, anyone who tossed the book I was reading into the ocean would soon find himself following it!

48lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:31 pm



Penelope's Irish Experiences - The third entry in the series by Kate Douglas Wiggin begins well enough, with varius astonished observations about the sheer improbability of the three American friends being able to reunite and resume their British adventures, given their now very disparate personal circumstances: 20-ish Francesca is engaged to a Scottish Minister, 30-ish Penelope, our narrator, is newly married to William Beresford, and 40-ish Salemina has resumed the duties of a spinster-daughter. Yet this short narrative finds them together again and touring Ireland. Unfortunately the wry tone of the book's opening is not maintained, with most of its subsequent humour, or "humour", found in the Irish-isms of the people they encounter, which are transcribed at length - at length - and in the antics of their accidentally acquired maid, Benella Dusenberry. Wiggins' descriptions of the Irish countryside are, however, heartfelt and worth reading. The plot of Penelope's Irish Experiences, such as it is, involves Salemina's reunion with Gerald La Touche, with whom she had a romance in her early youth. At that time Salemina rejected his proposal, as her family was in difficult circumstances and she felt her first duty was to her parents. Now, however, La Touche is a widower with two children who are much in need of a mother's guidance...

“Salemina,” I said, extending my slipper toe to the glowing peat, which by extraordinary effort had been brought up from the hotel kitchen, as a bit of local colour, “it is ridiculous that we three women should be in Ireland together; it's the sort of thing that happens in a book, and of which we say that it could never occur in real life. Three persons do not spend successive seasons in England, Scotland and Ireland unless they are writing an Itinerary of the British Isles. The situation is possible, certainly, but it isn't simple, or natural, or probable. We are behaving precisely like characters in fiction, who, having been popular in the first volume, are exploited again and again until their popularity wanes. We are like the Trotty books or the Elsie Dinmore series. England was our first volume, Scotland our second, and here we are, if you please, about to live a third volume in Ireland. We fall in love, we marry and are given in marriage, we promote and take part in international alliances, but when the curtain goes up again, our accumulations, acquisitions---whatever you choose to call them---have disappeared..."

49lyzard
nov 19, 2018, 8:21 pm

>46 lyzard:

At an earlier point in her story Lulu probably would have tried!

50Helenliz
nov 20, 2018, 1:09 am

>49 lyzard: good! He'd have deserved it.
Implies that the author thinks their efforts are better than a dime store novel - which, based on the review above, I sincerely doubt!

51lyzard
Redigerat: nov 20, 2018, 2:30 pm

You see, it's like this---


    "How much of this trash have you read, Max?" he asked.
    "The paper and most of one book, papa. I'll not read any more such, since you've forbidden me; but they're very interesting, papa."
    "I dare say, to a boy of your age. But you don't think I would want to deprive you of any innocent pleasure, Max?"
    "No, sir; oh, no! But may I know why you won't let me read such stories?"
    "Yes; it is because they give false views of life, and thus lead to wrong and foolish actions. Why, Max, some boys have been made burglars and highwaymen by such stories. I want you to be a reader, but of good and wholesome literature; books that will give you useful information and good moral teachings."



I don't think Miss Finley realised that she was drawing a distinction between "good and wholesome" and "interesting". :D

52lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:31 pm



The Invisible Host (reissue title: The Ninth Guest) - This 1930 thriller by the wife-and-husband team of Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning, though deservedly obscure in its own right, has acquired a measure of fame a posteriori through the resemblance of its premise to that of one of the most famous thrillers of the same era, that novel by Agatha Christie now known as And Then There Were None. It seems improbable, however, that this is anything more than a coincidence, as The Invisible Host was never published in Britain, nor was its dramatisation staged there; though presumably the film version, 1934's The Ninth Guest, did screen there. But in the unlikely event that Agatha was familiar with this story, it may well have been less a case of pinching an idea and more one of being provoked by the realisation that someone had put so clever a concept to such petty use. Set in New Orleans, The Invisible Host finds eight people being invited to a party held in the penthouse of a new and lavish apartment building. The invitations are unsigned, though each one speaks to a particular accomplishment of the individual in question; such that each of the eight assumes that one of the others is the host. It is only when all eight are gathered that they realise that something peculiar is going on... The guests are Margaret Chisholm, a domineering society hostess; Tim Slamon, a politician of questionable methods; Sylvia Inglesby, his amoral lawyer; Julian Osgood, a financier and head of an endowment fund of enormous influence; Dr Murray Chambers Reid, a conservative university dean; Henry Abbott, a painter whose academic career ended over supposedly subversive activities; Peter Daly, a former journalist and art critic turned author and playwright; and Jean Trent, a failed stage actress who has found success in Hollywood. Though "friends" in the purely social sense, in fact each of the eight has reason to hate and despise at least one of the others. At the outset the gathering seems like any other---except for the absence of their host, who speaks to them via hidden speakers. The night takes a sinister turn when that invisible host tells the eight exactly what sort of party they have been invited to: that they are all to play a game, pitting their wits against his, with the price of failure being death. It is his intention, the host informs the others, that all of them will be dead by dawn... The Invisible Host is not particularly well-written, lacking any real style and with its characterisations perfunctory at best---which is particularly damaging considering the guests are supposed to represent society's "wit" and "intellect". The reader is given no reason to care whether these people live or die; and though most of them unpleasant the latter seems disproportionate to their venial professional, personal and social sins. Nevertheless, the novel's premise should have been sufficient to surmount these shortcomings; but instead of focusing upon the psychological aspects of the situation, and keeping the promise of a genuine battle of wits, Bristow and Manning proceed to trot out all of the most absurd machinery of this era's worst thrillers, including electrified doors to prevent anyone leaving, a line of coffins on the balcony to receive those who play and lose, various death-traps scattered around the apartment for the unwary, and a dead body in the closet. (I suppose we should be grateful that the host didn't find a way to seal the apartment and have water pour in.) The novel somewhat redeems itself over its final phase, wherein two of the - remaining - guests pull themselves together sufficiently to attempt to deduce from the evening's events whether the host is a mysterious "ninth" or one of the original eight, and if the latter, who; but this is insufficient to compensate for the outright silliness of most of what precedes it.

    "To-night, my guests," went on the voice, "we are to play an amusing game, a game in which your eight intellects will find delightful stimulus. You, my guests, represent to my mind the cream of the city's wit. You are successful, you are sophisticated, you are highly cultured. To-night, my friends, you will find those mental capacities of yours challenged as they never have been before. You are at the beginning of the most invigorating evening of your lives."
    "This is gorgeous!" cried Jean.
    "At least," said Hank, "I find somebody who really appreciates me."
    "Sh-h!" said Osgood.
    "Ladies and gentlemen, who must be tired of gatherings at which you hear only the soft bubbling of elegant effervescence. The ideal entertainment would be at once a diversion and a creative challenge. It is absurd that one should have to assume the mental attitude of a grocery clerk before he can be entertained. One has a right to look with critical curiosity at the entertainment offered him. So to-night, my friends, I invite you to play a game with me, to pit your combined abilities against mine for suitable stakes. I warn you, however, that it has long been my conviction that I should be able to outplay the most powerful intellects in our city, and to-night I shall work hard to prove myself---and you. For to-night, ladies and gentlemen, you are commanded to play an absorbing game---a game with death."

53lyzard
Redigerat: nov 20, 2018, 4:25 pm

And next up---

The Mystery League Inc. Challenge:

#9: The Day Of Uniting by Edgar Wallace (published in the UK in 1926, and in the US in 1930; cover art by Gene Thurston)



Edgar Wallace was an enduringly popular writer, so the erratic publishing history of The Day Of Uniting perhaps tells us everything about it that we need to know. It actually first appeared in The Popular Magazine, an American publication, in 1921, but no book release followed. A British edition was eventually released in 1926, but no American firm showed any interest until the Mystery League picked up the rights in 1930.

The book did achieve a second British edition in 1950, and it has reappeared at intervals in other territories, particularly in Europe.

The simple but striking cover art is by our old friend, Gene Thurston.

54lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:31 pm



Hungry Hill - Published in 1943, Daphne du Maurier's historical novel follows the fortunes of the Anglo-Protestant Brodrick family over the course of a century, from the founding of the copper mine on which the family's fortune will be built in 1820, to the collapse of the mine and its associated income in the early 20th century. The land which proves so rich in copper was confiscated from the Irish-Catholic Donovan family two generations back and they have since fallen into poverty and sloth, even as the Brodricks have established themselves as the local masters. A feud between the two families has existed since that time; but on the day that the mine is opened, Marty Donovan pronounces a curse upon the Brodricks, promising them nothing but misery in the possession of their mine... Hungry Hill is an interesting novel and a well-written one, of course, but a book that is hard to warm up to, since it falls into that depressing category of historical fiction that shows us unhappiness over generations: you don't want to get too attached to any of the characters. (Not that there are too many characters you can get attached to.) The novel's odd, piecemeal narrative is also somewhat disconcerting, with months and even years passed over and various plot-threads allowed to dwindle or abruptly terminated. However, the main issue with Hungry Hill is the skewed, class-conscious manner of its telling. For a novel about Ireland, this book is not much interested in the Irish---or the poor Irish, at least. For all the sins and blunders of the Brodricks, there is never a moment when the narrative isn't at least tacitly on the family's side; while it likewise supports the Brodricks' own view of the local people as either a nuisance or a threat, accepting the stereotypical view of the Irish as lazy and untrustworthy without much consideration of the deprivation of their lives. This class bias shows itself most clearly in the way that historical events are treated in the book: we are given a close look at those which affect the Brodricks directly, such as WWI and the Irish uprising; but those which impact the Irish people - including the potato famine! - are essentially ignored. However, Hungry Hill is still an intriguing portrait of 19th century Ireland: of changing conditons over time, and of the rise and fall of a Victorian family. The Brodrick family throws out several misfits, and some of its most affecting passages deal with the relationship of these outsiders with the land itself, and in particular the craggy yet beautiful peak known as Hungry Hill, which looms over the Brodricks and Donovans alike, and into whose very heart and roots the Brodrick mine is sunk.

    The man named Donovan said nothing. He stared a moment at John Brodrick, and then turned his blue eyes away from him, upward, to the hill.
    "You'll be having no great advantage from it," he said at length.
    "That we propose to find out," said Brodrick shortly.
    "Ah, I'm not talking about the fortune you'll make," said the other, waving his hand in contempt. "The copper will do that for you, aye, and for your sons and grandsons too, while me and mine grow poorer on the bit of land left to us. I'm thinking of the trouble it will bring you."
    "I think we can take care of that."
    "You should have asked permission of the hill first, Mr Brodrick." The old man pointed with his stick to the great mass of hill that towered above them. "Ah, you can laugh," he said, "you with your Trinity education and your reading and your grand progressive ways, and your sons and your daughters that walk through Doonhaven as though the place was built for their convenience, but I tell you your mine will be in ruins, and your house destroyed, and your children forgotten and fallen maybe into disgrace, but this hill will be stading still to confound you."
    John Brodrick ignored this flow of rhetoric, and climbed into the chaise.
    "Perhaps," he said, "Mr Morty Donovan would like to take shares in the copper mine, and then perhaps he would not show his dislike quite so plainly?"

55lyzard
Redigerat: nov 21, 2018, 6:11 pm

Best-selling books in the United States for 1939:

1. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
2. All This, and Heaven Too by Rachel Field
3. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
4. Wickford Point by John P. Marquand
5. Escape by Ethel Vance
6. Disputed Passage by Lloyd C. Douglas
7. The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
8. The Tree of Liberty by Elizabeth Page
9. The Nazarene by Sholem Asch
10. Kitty Foyle by Christopher Morley

Again we find the best-seller list dominated by books that have retained their reputation as much because of their film versions as because of their inherent merit.

This includes three holdovers from the 1938 list: Rachel Field's All This, and Heaven Too, Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' The Yearling (boo!).

Escape by "Ethel Vance", aka Grace Zaring Stone (filmed under that title in 1940), is a thriller about a young man's efforts to smuggle his German-American mother out of Nazi Germany. The China-set Disputed Passage (filmed in 1939) is another of Lloyd C. Douglas's "disguised Christianity" novels, this one about a young medical student caught between two mentors with opposing views of life. Elizabeth Page's The Tree of Liberty (filmed in 1940 as The Howards Of Virginia) is an historical novel about the political and social struggles of America in the second half of the 18th century. Christopher Morley's Kitty Foyle is the story of an across-class-lines relationship that was highly controversial for its (at the time) sexual frankness. The 1940 film version, though much toned down from the book, brought Ginger Rogers an Academy Award for Best Actress.

Our outliers here could hardly be more different. The Nazarene by the Polish writer, Sholem Asch, the first in a trilogy of New Testament-focused works, is a retelling of the life of Christ which caused controversy for the Jewish author, but which was certainly written in response to the rise of the Nazis. On a much lighter note, John P. Marquand's Wickford Point is a satirical novel about the difference between being a writer and being "literary".

The year's #1 best-seller, meanwhile, is a book famous both for its film version and in its own right: John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, which won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, and was significantly responsible for Steinbeck's subsequent Nobel Prize.

56lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:32 pm



John Ernst Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California, in 1902. He was descended from farmers, and grew up in rural surroundings amongst farmers and immigrant farm workers; working on ranches himself as a teenager. He had ambitions as a writer from an early age and, after graduating high school, began a degree in English Literature at Stanford, although he left before completing his degree. After marrying for the first time and trying (and failing) at a variety of work, Steinbeck was enabled to take up writing seriously thanks to the support of his father, who provided him with a rent-free cottage outside Monterey.

Although he began with historical fiction, the topics and settings that would subsequently become the hallmark of Steinbeck's work soon emerged. His breakthrough work was 1935's Tortilla Flat, about a group of footloose and unsettled young men in Monterey following WWI. Though the book contained plenty of wry humour, its underlying themes were serious; and this note became dominant in his so-called "Dustbowl Trilogy": In Dubious Battle, about a fruit pickers' strike; Of Mice And Men, about itinerant farm workers; and The Grapes Of Wrath, about the mass migration from Oklahoma to California of displaced sharecroppers.

Published in 1939, The Grapes Of Wrath was that year's best-selling book, winning the Pultizer Prize and the National Book Award. However, it was also highly controversial for its anti-capitalist views and its attacks upon government, the banks and the police, to the point that it was publicly condemned and even banned in some territories. It is now generally considered the author's best book (although Steinbeck himself preferred 1952's East Of Eden).

John Steinbeck continued to write and to achieve literary success over the following twenty years, though his career was significantly impacted by WWII. Ironically, the negative critical response to his 1961 novel, The Winter Of Our Discontent, which caused Steinbeck to give up writing fiction, coincided with his winning of the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was a controversial choice at the time, particularly in Sweden, and documents later released indicated that he was considered a compromise candidate, "the best of a bad bunch". (The other nominees were Robert Graves, Lawrence Durrell, Jean Anouilh and Karen Blixen.) However, it has been recognised since that a significant proportion of the attacks upon Steinbeck's award was in response to his politics rather than his writing.

Steinbeck spent the last years of his life writing autobiographical works and non-fiction, and travelling. He died of heart failure in 1968.

57lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:32 pm



The Grapes Of Wrath - Released from prison after serving a term for manslaughter, Tom Joad returns home to discover that his family has abandoned their house. From a neighbour, stubbornly clinging to his own, Tom learns that all of the district's sharecroppers have been turned off their land after the failure of their crops left them unable to pay their rent; and that all the small lots are to be consolidated into a single tractor-farm. Tom walks on to his Uncle John's where, after being reunited with his parents, he discovers that the Joads are on the verge of departure: they have worked at cotton-chopping and sold all their their inessentials in order to buy a truck which will transport them and their remaining goods to California. By the time they are ready to leave, all their remaining property and twelve people must be fitted into the truck: Grampa and Granma Joad; Ma and Pa Joad; Tom and his adult brothers, Al and Noah, and his young siblings, Ruthie and Winfield; his pregnant sister, Rose of Sharon, and her young husband, Connie Rivers; and the Joads' friend, John Casy, a former preacher who has lost his faith. Driven equally by fear and hope, they set out for California and the promise of a better life... Published, deliberately, on the fourth anniversary of the "Black Sunday" dust storms which devastated the Great Plains from Canada down to Texas, John Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath is a brutally detailed depiction of the enforced migration of the "Okies" during the Great Depression, and the devastating disappointment which awaited them at the end of their road. It is also an excoriating denunciation of those who exploited their desperation and need, an aspect of the novel which caused controversy and resulted in the novel being attacked and even banned in some territories---particularly in California, where local business practices are the focus of much of Steinbeck's rage. The author alternates chapters detailing the immediate struggles of the Joads with others describing the broader forces at work in America that have brought them and so many like them to this crisis. He supports these passages with powerful, disturbing scenes illustrating those forces at work at the local level---perhaps most memorably, the deliberate destruction of the excess crops, undertaken to keep market prices high, but also the pitting of worker against worker for literal starvation wages. Again and again, we witness the callous exploitation of the have-nots by the haves, the latter knowing that sooner or later, the poor must pay their prices or work for their pittance. There is certainly nothing subtle about the political aspect of The Grapes Of Wrath (inevitably condemned at the time as "communistic"), and the constant soapboxing by Steinbeck may be too blatant and insistent for some; yet it is hard not to sympathise with his evident feeling that since no-one seemed to be listening, there was nothing to do but shout. But it was not the politics alone which provoked the ire of some critics but, on one hand, the novel's often strange use of religious allusion and imagery, and on the other its casually frank attitude to verboten topics such as sex and bodily functions, and its equally casual profanity. (Some of us, meanwhile, have an issue with the casual animal killing.) However, Steinbeck's burning sympathy for the displaced shines through and finally dominates the narrative. In particular, the author emphasises the simplicity, the reasonableness, of the people's needs: a roof; a living wage; clean water. The Joads become the face of the emigrants, a microcosm of courage, endurance and dogged dignity in the face of almost unimaginable deprivation. The grueling misery of the narrative is studded with tiny scenes depicting kindness and generosity on the part of the poor, who give and share amongst themselves even to their own disadvantage, and the community that develops whenever it is given an opportunity to do so. Yet no matter how indomitable the human spirit, and despite of the implications of the novel's strange and controversial ending, the reader is finally left with a sense of the remorseless gathering of outside forces into a Juggernaut powerful and cruel enough to crush anyone in its way.

    The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit---and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.
    And the smell of rot fills the country.
    Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
    There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolise. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificates---died of malnutrition---because the food must rot, must be forced to rot.
    The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage...

58ronincats
nov 21, 2018, 11:26 pm

The Christmas sweaters around here seem to have a great variety of creatures this year. Had to share this one from Sears with you. Just imagine that that package is full of books and it's perfect. ;-)

59lyzard
Redigerat: nov 22, 2018, 5:34 pm

Good grief! Thanks, Roni. :)

60lyzard
nov 22, 2018, 5:41 pm

Finished Penelope's Postscripts for TIOLI #7...and that means I have FINISHED A SERIES!!

Now reading The Scarab Murder Case by S. S. Van Dine.

61Helenliz
nov 23, 2018, 2:47 am

>60 lyzard: hurrah!
>58 ronincats: crikey! I don't own a christmas jumper, fortunately.

62lyzard
nov 23, 2018, 5:49 pm

>61 Helenliz:

Thanks, Helen!

Christmas here isn't really the weather for sweaters (or jumpers), of course. :)

63lyzard
nov 23, 2018, 5:50 pm

Finished The Scarab Murder Case for TIOLI #11.

Now reading 4:50 From Paddington by Agatha Christie.

64swynn
nov 24, 2018, 2:13 am

>57 lyzard: Nice review. I was pleased at how well The Grapes of Wrath held up on rereading. The politics as such are less appealing to me than they were thirty years ago; but the way they're presented, grounded in real grievances and in such effective prose, still packs a punch.

65lyzard
Redigerat: nov 24, 2018, 3:10 pm

>64 swynn:

Thanks! I hadn't read it before so I was pleased to be prompted. You can't really argue with most of Steinbeck's politicking, it's just that the insistence - and the LOUDNESS - gets a bit wearing.

66lyzard
nov 24, 2018, 3:11 pm

Finished 4:50 From Paddington for TIOLI #9...which is #150 for the year!

I was hopeful of reaching that goal and pleased to have done so, particularly given how erratic my reading has been over the last few months.

Now reading Behind That Curtain by Earl Derr Biggers.

67FAMeulstee
nov 24, 2018, 6:24 pm

>66 lyzard: Congratulations on reaching 2 x 75, Liz!

68kac522
nov 24, 2018, 7:10 pm

>66 lyzard: Amazing, Liz! Congrats!

69rosalita
nov 24, 2018, 7:14 pm

Well done, you!

70ronincats
nov 24, 2018, 10:21 pm

Congrats on reaching the 150 book goal, Liz!

71Helenliz
nov 25, 2018, 7:05 am

>66 lyzard: well done on reaching 150!

72lyzard
Redigerat: nov 25, 2018, 2:21 pm

>67 FAMeulstee:, >68 kac522:, >69 rosalita:, >70 ronincats:, >71 Helenliz:

Thank you, ladies! - much appreciated. :)

73souloftherose
nov 25, 2018, 3:10 pm

>42 lyzard: 'It's sitting in the crook of the branch. :)'

Nope, still eluding me....

Realistically, it will probably be January before I could pick up The Kellys and the O'Kellys.

>57 lyzard: I'm ashamed to admit I still haven't read any Steinbeck. I have my Mum's copy of The Grapes of Wrath (I think she studied it at school) waiting patiently on my shelves and a copy of Of Mice and Men.

>63 lyzard: Also hoping to squeeze in the 4.50 from Paddington this month (although I have to confess to being a bit disappointed we couldn't fit it in to the Underground TIOLI challenge....)

Congratulations on reading 150 books!

74lyzard
nov 25, 2018, 3:26 pm

>73 souloftherose:

It's sitting on the little crooked branch that's lying across the trunk. :)

Actually, I'm currently thinking Belinda in February, so January would suit me if it would suit you? I want to use next month for wrapping up some loose ends.

I'm not nearly as well-versed in American classics as I am in their British counterparts, which is one of the things the best-seller challenge is helpful with. I hadn't read The Grapes Of Wrath before, though I have read East Of Eden and, many years back, Of Mice And Men.

I have to confess to being a bit disappointed we couldn't fit it in to the Underground TIOLI challenge

Me too!! - I've been waiting for someone to get us off the Northern line for the last fortnight!

Thanks, Heather!

75lyzard
nov 25, 2018, 3:29 pm

Finished Behind That Curtain for TIOLI #18.

Now reading The Doctor Who Held Hands by Hulbert Footner.

76lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:33 pm

Film-blogging:

I have completed the slithery triumverate by taking a look at Hammer's 1966 were-snake film, The Reptile (1966):


77lyzard
nov 27, 2018, 5:52 pm

Finished The Doctor Who Held Hands for TIOLI #5.

Now reading A Thief In The Night by E. W. Hornung.

78lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:33 pm



Hickory Dickory Dock (US title: Hickory Dickory Death) - When the supremely efficient Miss Lemon begins making mistakes, Hercule Poirot learns that she is distracted by the situation of her sister, Mrs Hubbard, the manager of a boarding-house for students which has become afflicted by an outbreak of thefts. Summoned to tea, Mrs Hubbard explains that she is worried precisely because the thefts are so petty, even senseless; the only valuable item taken, a diamond ring, was returned by being slipped into a student's bowl of soup. Appreciating Mrs Hubbard's sense that there is something behind the thefts, Poirot agrees to deliver a guest-lecture at the hostel; he finds the students interested but wary, rightly suspicious of his real reason for being there. He shocks everyone by suggesting gravely that the police should be called at once. This brings a confession from a shy young woman, Celia Austin; it emerges that the thefts were a scheme intended to attract the attention of Colin McNabb, a medical student with an interest in criminal psychology. The matter seems resolved, yet Poirot is worried that Celia denies several of the more malicious incidents which have occurred. His instinct is proved tragically correct when Celia is found dead, an apparent suicide... One of the numerous points of interest in reading Agatha Christie's novels chronologically is watching Great Britain change over the middle decades of the 20th century. This 1955 mystery takes a quantum leap in that respect, leaving behind country villages and the landed gentry for a London hostel occupied by students of both sexes and various races. Christie's own attitude to the foreign students is, if occasionally jarring, so evidently well-intentioned that we can forgive her lapses---particularly in light of her own guilt in the matter of casual racism in her earlier books. Though tensions of various kinds exist amongst the students, very little of it is a matter of prejudice; and those who do bear such attitudes are overtly or tacitly criticised via the novel's more positive characters, including Mrs Hubbard. (This is also the earliest fictional work I've encountered in which someone is called out for using the expression, "Free, white, and twenty-one"; very refreshing.) Despite this extremely altered framework, Hickory Dickory Dock nevertheless presents us with a classic Poirot case, in which accidental distractions and deliberate misdirections are progressively cleared away to expose a series of serious crimes---crimes which themselves reflect a certain modernity... Sure that Celia Austin did not commit suicide, Poirot takes Inspector Sharpe into his confidence about the situation at the hostel. He stresses his own belief, one supported by several of the students, that Celia was not intelligent enough to think of the kleptomania plan for herself. The implication is that the thefts were suggested to Celia to create a smokescreen for something more significant---and that Celia had to be removed to prevent her revealing what she knew. Working with Mrs Hubbard, Poirot tries to trace the history of the various incidents, to determine where all the trouble started---and learns that, some months before, three things happened on the same day: someone removed the light bulbs from the hostel's common rooms; the backpack belonging to medical student, Len Bateson, was found slashed to pieces, and a policeman called at the hostel to make inquiries about a former resident...

    "You're talking about the Celia Austin case. Did the girl know something?"
    "She knew something," said Poirot," but if I may so put it, I do not think she knew what it was she knew!"
    "You mean she knew something but didn't appreciate the implications of it?"
    "Yes. Just that. She was not a clever girl. She would be quite likely to fail to grasp the inference. But having seen something, or heard something, she may have mentioned the fact quite unsuspiciously."
    "You've no idea what she saw or heard, M. Poirot?"
    "I make guesses," said Poirot. "I cannot do more. There has been a mention of a passport. Did someone in the house have a false passport allowing them to go to and fro to the Continent under another name? Would the revelation of that fact be a serious danger to that person? Did she see the rucksack being tampered with or did she, perhaps, one day see someone removing the false bottom from the rucksack without realising what it was that that person was doing? Did she perhaps see the person who removed the light bulbs? And mention the fact to him or her, not realising that it was of any importance? Ah, mon dieu!" said Hercule Poirot with irritation. "Guesses! guesses! guesses! One must know...!"

79lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:34 pm

It is true enough that the title of Hickory Dickory Dock is tangential at best to the narrative: the boarding-house is located in Hickory Rd. Perhaps to this we can ascribe the fact that a remarkable number of the cover artists seem to have been forced to read the book:


      


Even the pulp artists seem to have at least cracked the cover:


  


But of course, not everyone took the trouble...


    

80rosalita
nov 27, 2018, 7:47 pm

A billiards ball inside an apple?!?

81lyzard
nov 28, 2018, 4:02 pm

No.

Idea.

82lyzard
nov 28, 2018, 4:03 pm

Finished A Thief In The Night for TIOLI #16.

Now reading Elsie At Nantucket by Martha Finley.

83lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:35 pm



The Plumley Inheritance - Miracle upon miracle: following the unearthing of the first book in John Rhode's Dr Priestley series, The Paddington Mystery, comes the only work of its era to rival it for rarity---and for the length of the series it kicked off. I commented with respect to the former work about how it differs from much of what followed, but The Paddington Mystery has nothing on The Plumley Inheritance in that respect, which (as far as my knowledge extends) has almost nothing in common with the rest of the series. Most obviously, Ludovic Travers, who would become author Christopher Bush's recurrent detective, plays second fiddle here to his friend, Geoffrey Wrentham, from whose point of view the story is predominantly told. Published in 1926, the events of The Plumley Inheritance unfold during the summer of 1919, shortly after Wrentham's demobilisation. Encountering Colonel Travers in London, Geoffrey learns that his old friend, Ludovic, is employed as private secretary to the flamboyant financier, Henry Plumley. With much of his own income drawn from shares in Plumley's City Corporations company, Geoffrey decides to attend a speech being given by the financier, and so is witness to the strange, seemingly random end to that speech, and to Plumley's sudden death on stage. When it is discovered that City Corporations is in collapse, it is suspected that Plumley's death might have been suicide. Exchanging thoughts with Ludovic, who was also present, Geoffrey is startled by his interpretation of events: that the end of Plumley's speech was a cryptic message aimed at his estranged son, George, and intended as a hint as to the whereabouts of the fortune that investigation determines has been embezzled out of Plumley's company... While most of the later Ludovic Travers' novels are mysteries of a more conventional sort, The Plumley Inheritance is, rather, one of the 1920s' "treasure hunt" thrillers. This is not a form of writing that particularly appeals to me, but it must have been popular at the time, as quite a number of 'Golden Age' authors took a crack at a story in which detectives usually found solving murders instead put their minds to cracking arcane clues in the hop of finding long-hidden treasure of one form or another. In this case, a certain unexpected interest is added to the narrative by what we might call the amorality of the central pursuit: though Geoffrey is badly affected financially by the collapse of City Corporations, he is only one of many in that position. He certainly has no right to the embezzled money---yet as he and Ludovic make up their minds to search for the hidden money, there is always at the back of Geoffrey's mind, at least, the consideration of how pleasant life could be should they find it. This thought holds him silent even when the treasure-hunt becomes mixed up with murder... As it happens, Geoffrey and Ludovic share specialised knowledge which puts them on the trail of the hidden money. Ludovic reveals that, in the weeks leading up to Plumley's death, he was given a list of bizarre and seemingly unconnected tasks to perform, at the same time being instructed to speak of them to no-one else, except in the event of his, Plumley's, death. The point of these tasks seems somehow connected to Hainton Hall, a country property near to the vicarage where Geoffrey grew up, and where his clergyman father still lives, which Geoffrey knows intimately. The two young men agree to pool their knowledge in a hunt for the money---but their secret task becomes fraught with danger when, after one of Geoffrey's moonlight expedition into the grounds of the Hall, the dead body of another of Plumley's secretaries is discovered...

    "Seriously Ludo, we don't want at this particular moment, the country flooded with headings like: 'Ex-Officer Seeks Treasure Finds Tragedy Instead' and all that sort of tripe. All the newspapers in the world can't bring Moulines to life, and if treasure-seekers grub Hainton up by the roots it won't mend matters. I know it's everybody's duty to help the police, but---"
    "Specious, my dear chap. Specious. And yet in a way I'm inclined to agree with you. At least, there's no harm in waiting for the inquest."
    There fell one of those unaccountable silences that come to all conversations. Each felt perhaps that mere adventure had receded from the presence of that pitiful shell lying but fifty yards away. The influence was vague yet disturbing.
    Wrenthan roused himself. "Look here, Ludo, let's get down to brass tacks. Put all speculation on one side. All this business is serious enough for me and it's likely to become more so before I'm through. Do you believe Plumley concealed anything at Hainton?"
    The other answered without hesitation. "Yes, and at Hindhead too."
    "Of course, you don't believe that, as far as I'm concerned, findings are keepings, at least to the extent of any loss the pater and I may suffer through Plumley?"
    "Geoffrey, don't ask me that." It was Ludo who smiled now. "Let all that take care of itself until the necessity arises. But if you ask me if I'm with you to find what there is to find, I'll say I'm with you every time."

84lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:35 pm



Flowers For The Judge - Albert Campion is consulted by Gina Brande about her husband, Paul, from whom she has not heard for several days. Also in the discussion are Michael Wedgwood, Paul Brande's cousin, and Miss Florence Curley, executive secretary for the family publishing business, Barnabas Limited, in which all of them are concerned. Gina admits to Campion that hers was not a happy marriage, and that she and Paul led essentially separate lives; however, it is not like him not to contact her for so long a period. At the discussion progresses, Campion discovers something for himself: that Mike Wedgwood is very much in love with his cousin's wife... The enclave is interrupted by John Widdowson, the stern, repressed, rather pompous head of the business; he asks Mike to retrieve a folder of papers from the stronghold-basement of the publishing house, which is situated in the same building as the Brandes' flat. This trivial episode assumes a new and far graver importance the following morning when Paul Brande's body is discovered in the basement. Though the doctor cannot give a cause of death, it is evident that Brande has been dead at least three days. The body is found sprawled almost directly in front of the door---and yet Mike swears he did not see it the evening before... This seventh entry in Margery Allingham's series featuring the mysterious and deceptive Albert Campion weaves a conventional whodunnit through a more complex, character-based mystery involving the extended family who together comprise 'Barnabas Limited'. It is also a novel that is almost as much a courtroom drama as a straight mystery, giving significant weight to the reality of legal proceedings and presenting in detail the inquest into Paul Brande's death and the trial of Michael Wedgwood---in the process highlighting the dangerous role that may be played in such proceedings by innuendo, assumption, and evidence given either carelessly or with malice. It is determined that Paul Brande died of carbon monoxide poisoning after being locked in the basement, the source being a car in an adjacent garage: a car belonging to Mike. As the investigation continues, the case against Mike builds to damning proportions; he is arrested, charged and brought to trial for the murder of his cousin. Nevertheless, Campion continues to investigate on his own and turns up various pieces of exculpatory evidence---enough to confirm his belief in Mike's innocence, though not enough to tip the legal scales in his favour. The peculiar circumstances of the crime are, in Campion's opinion, the most vital piece of evidence: who could have been on the premises? - who had a key to the basement? - who had reason, besides Paul, to be there? In his pursuit of this line of inquiry, Campion makes several startling discoveries---including, almost inadvertently, solving a much earlier mystery that impacted the Barnabas family, the disappearance of Tom Barnabas, uncle to the present generation, who vanished one morning off a London street. Far more urgently, however, Camion is finally able to conclude that, far from being a crime of passion as the police have assumed from the beginning, the murder of Paul Brande was instead intimately connected with a valuable but scandalous manuscript held by the publishing firm...

    "Someone murdered Paul very neatly indeed.” Campion sounded apologetic when he spoke again. “And in spite of that the method has been detected already. That’s another point I don’t think we should miss. Our astute friends Tanner and Pillow aren’t so very inefficient. They’ve dogged that much out all right, although they didn’t get on the scene until the body had been moved and the most appalling mess made of the strong room. They’re not fools and they’re not dishonest. They don’t want to arrest an innocent man, believe me. That’s every policeman’s nightmare. But on the other hand, they do want to do their job decently. Someone has murdered Paul and they’re employed to catch him and stop him doing it to anybody else.”
    John sat up slowly and turned the full force of his famous disapproving eye upon Campion. “You seem to be a very outspoken young man,” he observed.
    Mr Campion appeared to be embarrassed. “It’s a very outspoken business,” he said. “Do you still want me to have a look round?”
    “Albert, you must.” Gina had risen. The pallor of her face was accentuated and her mouth quivered uncontrollably. “I do see the danger. I’ve seen it all the time. It’s been haunting me ever since that dreadful Monday morning. You must find out that Mike couldn’t have locked the strong-room door and put the key away. You must find out why he didn’t say he’d seen Paul when he went down there on Sunday---because he must have been there---and you must find out what he was really doing before I phoned him on Thursday night.”
    Her voice ceased abruptly and she stood holding out her hand to him, an involuntary gesture oddly appealing. He looked at her gravely. “I’ll do all I can,” he promised.
    John rose. “I know it was an accident,” he said, and there was conviction in his tone. “If you want to oblige me, Campion, you’ll prove it. Get to the bottom of the mystery and you’ll find I’m right. Now, Gina, you’re to come back with me. I want you in the house when Cousin Alexander arrives.”
    The girl rose obediently. A lifetime of authority had endowed John with a gift for it.
    “An accident,” he repeated firmly as he shook hands with Campion in the hall, adding naïvely: “Terrible publicity."

85lyzard
nov 28, 2018, 7:39 pm

September stats:

Works read: 14
TIOLI: 14, in 14 different challenges, with 1 shared read

Mystery / thriller: 7
Contemporary drama: 2
Historical drama: 1
Young adult: 1
Humour: 1
Classic: 1
Horror: 1

Re-reads: 1
Series works: 7
Blog reads: 1
1932: 0
1931: 2
Virago / Persephone: 1
Potential decommission: 0

Owned: 1
Library: 6
Ebooks: 7

Male authors : female authors : anonymous authors: 7 : 7 : 1

Oldest work: The Great Bastard, Protector Of The Little One by Anonymous (1689)
Newest work: Ringu by Suzuki Koji (1991)

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

YTD stats:

Works read: 130
TIOLI: 130, in 105 different challenges, with 9 shared reads

Mystery / thriller: 56
Contemporary drama: 15
Classics: 14
Historical drama: 9
Young adult: 7
Non-fiction: 6
Horror: 6
Humour: 5
Historical romance: 4
Short stories: 4
Contemporary romance: 3
Play: 1

Re-reads: 26
Series works: 61
Blog reads: 6
1932: 3
1931: 9
Virago / Persephone: 3
Potential decommission: 16

Owned: 31
Library: 44 (including 1 ebook)
Ebook: 55

Male authors (editors) : female authors : anonymous: 68 (including 3 using a female pseudonym) : 60 : 4

Oldest work: A Defence Of Their Majesties King William And Queen Mary, Against An Infamous And Jesuitical Libel, Entituled, A True Portraicture Of William Henry Prince Of Nassau, &c by Pierre Jurieu (1689) / The Great Bastard, Protector Of The Little One by Anonymous (1689)
Newest work: Kai Lung Raises His Voice by Ernest Bramah (2010) / Little Vampire Women by Lynn Messina and Louisa May Alcott (2010)

86lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:35 pm

Q: What's more fun than a barrelful of monkeys?
A:


87rosalita
nov 28, 2018, 8:09 pm

>86 lyzard: I know! I know! A bucketful of SLOTHS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

88kac522
Redigerat: nov 28, 2018, 11:57 pm

89jnwelch
nov 29, 2018, 9:58 am

Hi, Liz.

I grew up reading Agatha Christie in my house, and I'm enjoying your chronological journey. Hickory Dickory Dock was a fun one, with all the seemingly unconnected events making it difficult to solve the puzzle.

90lyzard
nov 29, 2018, 4:21 pm

>87 rosalita:

Smarty-pants! :D

>88 kac522:

Awwww... Thank you, Kathy!

>89 jnwelch:

Hi, Joe! It's been a fun ride, and we're nearly into the home stretch now.

91Helenliz
nov 29, 2018, 4:22 pm

Not sure "bucketful" is the accepted collective noun for sloths. Not sure what is, now I come to think of it.

92lyzard
nov 29, 2018, 4:26 pm

A snooze? :)

I believe that since sloths are naturally fairly solitary, they have no collective noun.

93lyzard
Redigerat: nov 29, 2018, 5:23 pm



Spotlight (US title: Wicked Uncle) - Gregory Porlock sets about organising a weekend party at his country place: a strange sort of party, as none of the guests seem eager to attend. However, after some persuasion by Porlock - some vague references to events in his potential guests' pasts - they all agree. Martin Oakley and his wife, who are neighbours of Porlock in the country, are only invited to dinner---but even this requires some pressure to be brought to bear. However, their acceptance causes an unexpected difficulty for Porlock, as Mrs Oakley's new secretary, who is included in the invitation is Dorinda Brown---who knows that "Gregory Porlock" is in fact Glen Porteous, who was once married to her late Aunt Mary, and who stole her money, broke her heart, and abandoned her... Dorinda is doing some errands for her employer when she is suddenly accused of shoplifting. However, a witness intervenes - a certain Miss Silver - testifying that she saw another woman slip items into Dorinda's pocket---the same woman, it turns out, who alerted staff in the first place. Dorinda is therefore in attendance at Porlock's very awkward party. The general discomfort is somewhat eased when one guest, the actor Leonard Carroll, arranges a series of charades, with each transformed guest appearing in a single shaft of light in the otherwise darkened hall. This interlude is a great success---until the lights go up, and it is discovered that Gregory Porlock has been stabbed to death... This twelfth book in Patricia Wentworth's series featuring Miss Maud Silver is perhaps her most conventional mystery to date---which is not a criticism. Wentworth's tendency to leaven, and in some cases overwhelm, her mystery with a romantic subplot can sometimes make her novels less than satisfying; but in this case a perfunctory romance is kept firmly in the background while the murder of Gregory Porlock, aka Glen Porteous, occupies centre-stage. The murder even takes place in that most cherished of settings for a British murder mystery, a country-house party! Inspector Lamb and Sergeant Abbott are assigned to the case, so it is really only a matter of time before Miss Silver shows up too---though her official summons comes from Dorinda, who is horrified to discover that she is "Uncle Glen"'s residual legatee... When it is revealed that Porlock's house-party was nothing less than a gathering of potential of blackmail victims, no-one is particularly surprised that the event ended with the host getting stabbed in the back. The difficulty for the investigators is that everyone is a suspect---but who took advantage of the darkness to end Porlock's life? Through careful reconstruction, Lamb and Abbott try to determine where everyone was at the moment of murder, in order to narrow the list of people with motive down to those with opportunity. Miss Silver, meanwhile, though her practical deductions are of great assistance to her colleagues, is more intent upon the behaviour and demeanour of the remaining house-guests...

    "The woman you and Miss Brown have described would be far more likely to weep upon her husband’s shoulder and leave the matter in his hands. Of course I have not seen Mrs Oakley, and the Chief Inspector has. I have a great respect for his opinion and can agree with his conclusions, but human nature can be very unexpected.”
    Frank Abbott laughed. “He loves it when you agree with him. It doesn’t happen very often, does it? Well, that’s the field. Pearson wasn’t on the spot, and, as he took pains to explain, devotion to a client’s interests would hardly take him as far as murder. As for the others, Miss Masterman is a possible, and so, I suppose, is Mrs Tote, but the Chief doesn’t think either of them likely. Justin Leigh had no motive, and Dorinda Brown---well, she’s sole legatee, but it’s practically certain that she couldn’t possibly have known the terms of the will. So there we are---Carroll, Tote, Masterman, Oakley and Mrs Oakley, Moira Lane---”
    There was a brief silence. The infant’s vest revolved. The colour really was extremely pretty. Miss Silver appeared to be concentrating her attention upon the clicking needles. Presently, whilst continuing to knit, she raised her eyes and said briskly, “Was there a fire in the hall?”
    “Yes, I believe so.”
    “Then how much light did it give? As I passed just now I observed that there was a good wood fire. Such a fire would throw out a considerable amount of light. It would affect the question of whether Mr Tote could have made his way across the hall without being observed and---”
    Frank Abbott interrupted. “Yes, I know---you think of everything, don’t you? I ought to have told you that the fire had been dowsed.”
    “By whom?”
    “By Masterman, under Carroll’s orders. Carroll couldn’t do with the firelight for his charade. He wanted the hall to be dark, with the single lamp on the mantelpiece arranged to be as much like a spotlight as possible..."


94rosalita
nov 29, 2018, 5:42 pm

Well done! As you know, I agree and applaud Wentworth's keeping the romance on the back burner here. It will be interesting as we tackle the next one in December to see if that's a one-off or a new trend. It's a nice tidy mystery overall. I am just a little disappointed you didn't mention that odious child whose name escapes me, though. Such a brat! Too bad he didn't end up as a secondary victim ...

95lyzard
Redigerat: nov 29, 2018, 6:59 pm



Dead Man's Folly - Though delighted to be reunited with his old friend, the mystery novelist Ariadne Oliver, Hercule Poirot is indignant when he thinks she has summoned him to Nasse House in Devon merely to distribute prizes at the end of the "murder hunt" she has designed as part of the charity garden-party being hosted by Sir George and Lady Stubbs. However, Mrs Oliver assures him that, while she has no real proof, she is certain something is wrong at Nasse. The novelist's instincts are proved tragically correct when a local girl, Marlene Tucker, who was chosen to play the body in the murder-game, is found strangled in the Stubbs' boathouse. A second mystery follows, when it is discovered that Lady Stubbs has vanished without trace... Dead Man's Folly makes an interesting companion-piece for its predecessor, Hickory Dickory Dock: if the latter is about the radical changes occurring in post-war London, the former is about the death-throes of the life of the landed gentry---and consequently of the country-house setting previously so prominent in British mysteries. For centuries Nasse House was the home of the Folliat family; but after the deaths of the last two males of the family in the war, their bereaved mother was forced to sell the property to the uncultured but wealthy Sir George Stubbs. Old habits die hard, however; and though Sir George is now "lord of the manor", it is the dignified Mrs Folliat to whom the neighbourhood still defers. Meanwhile, though Nasse House holds its ground and to an extent its tradition, the district is flooded with young European back-packers---whose habitual trespass is a constant thorn in Sir George's side. It is, indeed, a desire to keep up the old country traditions that led Sir George to stage the charity party in the first place. Mrs Oliver explains to Poirot that the murder-hunt was just one of many money-raising events that had been organised. When Poirot presses her about her sense that something was wrong at Nasse, she can only reply in terms of her sense that her design for the murder-hunt was being subtly manipulated---for example, where the body should be discovered---that she was being pushed one way so that she would compromise in another. Initially no motive can be conceived for the murder of fourteen-year-old Marlene, but when it is discovered that Lady Stubbs has vanished, possibly abducted, it is assumed that Marlene saw something which made her a threat. As he investigates, and attempts to determine whether Lady Stubbs could have disappeared voluntarily, Poirot finds himself puzzled by the conflicting accounts he receives of her. Though young and undoubtedly very beautiful, most people consider Lady Stubbs "wanting" mentally; although Sir George's secretary, Miss Brewis, tells Poirot darkly that in her opinion this was merely a clever girl's pose to get her own way and avoid doing what she did not care to. The attention of the police becomes focused upon Etienne de Sousa, a cousin of Lady Stubbs, who turned up at Nasse House at almost the moment of her disappearance. Poirot, however, is more interested in the apparently accidental drowning death of Merdell, the garrulous old ferry-man, who after many decades at Nasse knew all the district's secrets and who liked to hint at his knowledge...

    "If the facts are put to him---"
    "But what facts, M. Poirot?" The chief constable spoke with some irritation. "What are these facts you talk about so glibly?"
    "The fact that Etienne de Sousa came here in a lavishly appointed luxury yacht showing that his family is rich, the fact that old Merdell was Marlene Tucker's grandfather (which I did not know until today), the fact that Lady Stubbs was fond of wearing the coolie type of hat, the fact that Mrs Oliver, in spite of an unbridled and unreliable imagination, is, unrealised by herself, a shrewd judge of character, the fact that Marlene Tucker had lipsticks and bottles of perfume hidden at the back of her bureau drawer, the fact that Miss Brewis maintains that it was Lady Stubbs who asked her to take a refreshment tray down to Marlene at the boathouse."
    "Facts?" The chief constable stared. "You call those facts? But there's nothing new there."
    "You prefer evidence---definite evidence---such as---Lady Stubbs' body?"
    Now it was Bland who stared. "You have found Lady Stubbs' body?"
    "Not actually found it---but I know where it is hidden. You shall go to the spot, and when you have found it, then---then you will have evidence---all the evidence you need. For only one person could have hidden it there..."

96lyzard
nov 29, 2018, 7:02 pm

>94 rosalita:

Thank you! Yes, perhaps it will depend upon how Spotlight was received at the time.

Marty. After his father Martin. :)

I think that was just Patricia amusing herself (with a touch of establishing Dorinda's personality and place in the household, too).

97rosalita
nov 29, 2018, 7:14 pm

>96 lyzard: Marty! Every babysitter and preschool teacher's nightmare. Maybe he'll pop up in another book later in the series as a surly teenager pulling the wings off flies ...

As far as establishing Dorinda's personality, it kind of made me dislike her, because she was such a wimp about losing her grandmother's brooch. I recognize that is my 21st century middle-class privilege speaking, but still.

I'm so judgy tonight!

98lyzard
Redigerat: nov 29, 2018, 7:19 pm

I have been keeping up with my Agatha covers, but neglecting Patricia. This must be addressed! - particularly because Spotlight is one of the Miss Silver novels to be included in my least favourite (or perversely, my most favourite) reissue series, which I like to call "People Looking Vaguely Worried":





In this case, it turns out that Wentworth's American publishers have come up with their own entry in the "Completely Uninteresting Stakes":





Otherwise, no-one has done particularly well or particularly terribly (lots of knifed corpses, I see); but I am amused by the fact that Wentworth's original British publishers guessed wrong about the prominence of the romance subplot in this particular book:


99lyzard
nov 29, 2018, 7:20 pm

>97 rosalita:

Now, be fair: she's just snabbled a well-paying job after experience of being really broke; she's not going to risk it even for that. (I think the incident says more about Mrs Oakley than Dorinda!)

100lyzard
nov 29, 2018, 7:32 pm

...meanwhile, as was the case with Hickory Dickory Dock, a surprising number of the cover artists for Dead Man's Folly seem actually to have read the book! - with most of them resorting to use of either the boathouse where the first murder occurs, or to the folly in the woods that plays both a literal and figurative role in the story; although a few have used Mrs Oliver's murder-hunt clues instead:


      


On the other hand, if this is supposed to be fourteen-year-old Girl Guide, Marlene, I really have to register a protest:





...and may I just say that of all the non-English retitlings, this is my favourite (yes, about time Ariadne turned up again!):




101rosalita
nov 29, 2018, 7:32 pm

Yep, that Wicked Uncle cover is the one I have.

I agree about Mrs. Oakley — the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!

102lyzard
nov 29, 2018, 10:24 pm

Amazing to think someone got paid for that, isn't it??

103rosalita
nov 29, 2018, 11:25 pm

It really is!

104lyzard
nov 30, 2018, 3:24 pm

Finished Elsie At Nantucket for TIOLI #13, which is a line under November.

Now reading Ruth Fielding Treasure Hunting by Alice B. Emerson.

105lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:36 pm



The Skeleton At The Feast - Kenneth Carlisle passes New Year's Eve at a dinner-party given by the wealthy Manning Carleton in his New York home, and so is witness to what is at first viewed as a bizarre practical joke: the delivery of a human skeleton in a coffin-like box, a card attached accusing Carleton of murder... The shock of this is almost too much for Carleton, who has a heart complaint, but he recovers as the others make light of the incident. However, his young second wife, Pauline, sends for their doctor. The party is further broken up by the departure of Carleton's grown son, Claude, who is heading west. When the question of what is to be done with the skeleton arises, the elderly Professor Scott begs it as a specimen. He cannot receive it immediately, however, so Carlisle good-naturedly offers to take it home with him for the night. The detective soon hears from the Carletons again, however, when he learns that Manning Carleton has been found dead in his library---shot, though no such sound was heard; the room is locked, but no weapon is present... Carolyn Wells made several attempts to initiate mystery series besides her long-running one featuring Fleming Stone, but none of them were successful. The Skeleton At The Feast represents one of her failures, being the third and final novel to feature screen actor turned detective, Kenneth Carlisle, and like the other two it offers a good idea poorly worked out---along with most of Well's other weaknesses as a writer, including superficial characterisations and a mystery that only remains a mystery for as long as it does because the police on the case don't bother to conduct even the most basic of investigations, beyond questioning the others present. Trying to make an amateur detective look brilliant by making the police completely moronic and incompetent is unfortunately a standard feature of American mysteries of this era, and one that gets very tiresome. However, The Skeleton At The Feast offsets this somewhat with an amusingly obvious attempt at meta-fiction, with the characters discussing detective fiction and comparing it to real-life at the slightest excuse (and in fact, this novel gets rather spoileriffic about some others). I have elsewhere called Carolyn Wells an old-fashioned writer, and I'm sure I'm not the only one to do so: I would interpret this as Wells trying to show how up-to-date she is, how au fait with modern (circa. 1930) detective fiction; but since the work she quotes most frequently is Israel Zangwill's The Big Bow Mystery, from 1891, well, it's a bit of a giveaway. The investigation into Manning Carleton's death has two main points: how the killer got in - and out - of the locked room; and the significance of the skeleton---whether it was a joke, a warning, or a genuine attempt to induce a heart attack. Almost everyone present at the dinner had a motive of sorts---either financial or, in the case of guest Don Randall and Claude Carleton, an infatuation with the beautiful young Pauline. And what of the anonymous accusation that, in the past, Manning Carleton committed murder? First suspicions fall upon Professor Scott, whose research Carleton had, until recently, been funding; who was seen trying to get into the library before the murder; and who would have lost his legacy, had Carleton lived---but Scott is the killer's second victim...

    "You're a real connoisseur of detective novels, Mr Mortlake," said Carlisle, looking at him in slight surprise.
    "Well, I read a lot of them. They're my favourite recreation."
    "I can't go 'em," admitted Randall. "Oh, I read some books, but mostly I go in for the short stories, the detective magazines, you know."
    "Why not murder trials as reported in the tabloid newspapers?" asked Carleton, in a tone of withering sarcasm.
    "I like those too," Randall said frankly. "Only you never get anywhere with them. They set the problem and then go off and leave it, usually forgetting to come back. Now in fiction you're sure to get your solution."
    "I've heard it said that every human being is a potential murderer," stated Zélie, with the air of saying something astounding. "Do you believe that, Mr Carlisle?"
    Kenneth smiled. "Like most of these shocking assumptions, it means nothing," he returned. If murder is merely the act of killing, then anyone who can use a gun, or a dirk, or his two fists is a potential murderer. If murder is a state of mind---to put it in Scriptural phrase, if 'as a man thinketh in his heart, so he is,' then many, if not all, of the dwellers on this earth are certainly potential murderers..."
    Carlisle spoke very gravely at the last, for his work had brought home to him the conviction that what he was saying was entirely true.
    And then, with his intuitive, almost clairvoyant insight, he glanced quickly from one to another, round the table. So amazed was he at what he saw, he dropped his eyes instantly, only to raise them again, fascinated by the occasion.
    For it seemed to him that everyone, or nearly everyone at the table was busy with his or her own thoughts. And it seemed to him that everyone was concentrating on murder, not in the abstract, but concretely...


106lyzard
dec 1, 2018, 4:43 pm

Finished Ruth Fielding Treasure Hunting for TIOLI #11.

Now reasing The Footsteps At The Lock by Ronald Knox.

107lyzard
dec 1, 2018, 4:52 pm

Oh dagnabbit.

Until now I have breezed through the Ruth Fielding series for free, mostly via Project Gutenberg; but with the next work, the 20th in this series of 30, the series apparently disappears from the public domain.

Possibly this is a copyright matter, but perhaps it is not a coincidence that at this point, the series changed authors. "Alice B. Emerson" was a Stratemeyer house name, and for the first 19 books in the Ruth Fielding series was a pseudonym for Bert W. Foster. However, the 20th - 22nd books in the series were written by Elizabeth M. Duffield Ward---and it is with the first of these, Ruth Fielding In The Far North, that problems begin. In particular this series entry seems comparatively rare, and available copies are quite expensive.

At two-thirds of the way through this series, I don't want to give it up; but I will have to think seriously about how to proceed from here, and whether I will, at least, have to skip a few entries. :(

108lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:37 pm



The Crow's Inn Tragedy - The law offices of Bechcombe and Turner in the Crow's Inn, in London, are thrown into turmoil when staff return from lunch to find the head of the firm, Mr Bechcombe, dead in his private office; he has been murdered. Suspicion falls upon Anthony Collyer, Mr Bechcombe's nephew, who was the last person known to be with him; uncle and nephew had often clashed over the latter's erratic ways. Cecily Hoyle, Bechcombe's secretary, testifies that she heard him moving around his office when she returned from lunch. However, the medical evidence shows that Bechcombe died around midday. At first it is assumed that Cecily, who is engaged to Tony, is lying to protect him; but when it is discovered that the jewellery left with the firm by a new client has disappeared, a new theory develops: that the murderer impersonated Bechcombe, to gain possession of the jewels. The question then becomes, who knew the client was coming? - and when Bechcombe's chief clerk, Amos Thompson, fails to return to the office at all, the police think they know the answer... Published in 1927, The Crow's Inn Tragedy is the third and final novel by Annie Haynes to feature Inspector Furnival of Scotland Yard. As is typical of Haynes' work, however, the novel does not stick with a straight line of narrative, but goes off on several tangents---finally expanding to include the activities of a dangerous gang of thieves led by a mysterious figure known only as "the Yellow Dog", and finally leaving its whodunnit plot behind to indulge in an extended thriller sequence very like something out of Edgar Wallace, as Furnival sets his sights upon the destruction of the "Yellow Gang" and the unmasking of its leader. The Crow's Inn Tragedy also spends quite as much or more time with the people impacted by the murder of Luke Bechcombe as with Furnival as he investigates the crime. Tony Collyer, since his return from the war, has led a reckless, wasteful, debt-ridden existence; yet the narrative tacitly compares him favourably with his cousin, the saintly Aubrey Todmarsh, who devotes himself to good works, including a mission run for the benefit of released prisoners. Most people, in fact, find Aubrey rather hard to swallow. This even includes his clergyman uncle, James Collyer, upon whom the murder of his brother-in-law sits most heavily. For one thing, his wife, Mr Bechcombe's sister, becomes obsessed with the idea of avenging the murder until she is almost unbalanced; for another, he carries the secret knowledge that at some time in the past, someone had extracted the emeralds from a family heirloom, the Collyer Cross, and replaced them with paste ones: a substitution that seemingly could only have been carried out by someone close to - or in - the family...

    "The cross was exhibited at the Great Exhibition in '51, so I think we shall be able, with the description then given and the expert evidence of to-day, to reconstruct the cross and make sure of the emeralds. But what can be wrong with the rector?"
    "Is anything wrong with him?" Steadman questioned in his turn as he lighted a match.
    "He looks like a man who has had some sort of a shock," the inspector pursued. "I wonder if it means that Mr Tony---"
    "Tony had nothing to do with the loss of the emeralds," John Steadman said in his most decided tones. "You can put that out of your mind."
    The inspector paced the narrow confines of his office in Scotland Yard two or three times before he made any rejoinder. Then he cast a lightning glance at Steadman. "I have sometimes wondered what Mrs Collyer is like."
    "Not the sort of woman to substitute paste for her own emeralds," Steadman said ironically. "No use. You will have to look further afield, inspector."
    "I'm half inclined to put it down to the Yellow Gang," the inspector said doubtfully. "But it differs in several particulars from the work of the Yellow Dog, notably the substitution of the paste. But---well, there might have been reasons..."

109rosalita
dec 2, 2018, 6:12 pm

>107 lyzard: I'm sorry you've run into a snag with the Ruth Fielding series, Liz. In my version of utopia, all books are always available everywhere. I stand ready to offer whatever assistance I can, as you know!

110lyzard
Redigerat: dec 2, 2018, 6:41 pm

Thanks, Julia! It may come to that (shipping is, as almost always, prohibitive); but at the moment I can't even find a copy of the book alone at a price that I'm willing to pay. :(

111rosalita
dec 2, 2018, 6:39 pm

>110 lyzard: Well, boo for that!

112lyzard
dec 3, 2018, 3:36 pm

Finished The Footsteps At The Lock for TIOLI #1.

Now reading The Case Of William Smith by Patricia Wentworth.

113lyzard
dec 3, 2018, 5:50 pm

Finished The Case Of William Smith for TIOLI #12.

Now reading Mr Justice Raffles by E. W. Hornung.

114rosalita
Redigerat: dec 3, 2018, 5:54 pm

>113 lyzard: Is that Raffles as in the gentleman cat burglar? I had never heard of him until I read Lawrence Block's Bernie Rhodenbarr series. Bernie is a cat burglar/bookseller who acquires a bookstore cat that he names Raffles. I always thought I should look for one of the books, but never remember. Are they any good?

115lyzard
Redigerat: dec 3, 2018, 7:56 pm

>114 rosalita:

It is: the series ran to four books, but really only the first one, The Amateur Cracksman*, is worth your while...unless of course you're a completeness obsessive... :)

It is obvious beyond the first one that Hornung was writing for his publisher, not himself. Some of the later stories are quite good in themselves but they lack the spark and the deliberate transgression of the first book.

(*There may be variant titles in your neck of the woods.)

116rosalita
dec 3, 2018, 8:41 pm

>115 lyzard: Good to know! I will make a note of that title and see if it turns up at a used bookstore somewhere.

117lyzard
dec 3, 2018, 10:02 pm

>116 rosalita:

They're all at Project Gutenberg, if you're into that sort of thing. :)

118rosalita
dec 4, 2018, 2:06 am

>117 lyzard: Oh! Why didn't I think of that?! I always forget PG is there.

119souloftherose
dec 4, 2018, 1:09 pm

>74 lyzard: January for The Kellys and the O'Kellys and February for Belinda works for me.

>107 lyzard: And boo re the Ruth Fielding books become harder to find (if only that happened with the Elsie books...?)

120lyzard
dec 5, 2018, 4:07 pm

>119 souloftherose:

Sounds like a plan!

Aw, c'mon: it's only the things people actually want that they're going to try to make you pay for! :D

121lyzard
Redigerat: dec 5, 2018, 4:21 pm

Sad but not altogether surprising:

The good people at Black Heath Editions resurrected The Crime Without A Clue, the first in Thomas Cobb's short series featuring Inspector Bedison: a serviceable but rather weak mystery. It now seems that this is the only one of the four books extant in any format: I can't find a hint of the existence of the rest.

So I am reluctantly adding these to my "unavailable series works" list:

- Inspector Bedison And The Sunderland Case
- Inspector Bedison Risks It
- Who Closed The Casement?

122lyzard
dec 5, 2018, 4:51 pm

Finished Mr Justice Raffles for TIOLI #15, and so have FINISHED ANOTHER SERIES!!

I'm a bit stuck on where to go next, though: I have a whole clutch of books I'd like to read, but which are available either online only, or have to be read within a library.

I have a couple of storage requests at my academic library to collect when I can take a run into the city, and I will probably tie that in with a Rare Books reading session. I could make a start on The Monster Of Grammont, next up in my Mystery League challenge, although I'd prefer to get the last entry, Edgar Wallace's The Day Of Uniting written up first. Alternatively I may request Mignon Eberhart's Murder By An Aristocrat, to re-start the long-stalled Sarah Keate series.

Of course none of this answers my immediate dilemma...but after the usual phase of mental paralysis brought on by TOO MANY CHOICES I am---

Now reading Superintendent Wilson's Holiday by George and Margaret Cole (online), and Ordeal By Innocence by Agatha Christie (hard copy).

123rosalita
dec 5, 2018, 5:07 pm

I was going to point out that are apparently two more Raffles books, but I see from the series page here on LT (http://www.librarything.com/series/Raffles) that those were written by another author.

124lyzard
dec 5, 2018, 5:41 pm

Yes, Raffles was a popular 'continuation' character. I'm not big on those as you know, though I may read Mrs Raffles just to see how a lady (as opposed to gentleman) crook was handled. :)

It can get confusing, as there was lots of retitling of the original four books, plus various collections of the short stories with similar titles. Definitely only four books in the proper series, though!

125lyzard
dec 5, 2018, 5:42 pm

Okayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy...

So who's my Secret Santa, hmm??


126rosalita
dec 5, 2018, 5:48 pm

>124 lyzard: I am very much not into series continuations by other authors, either!

>125 lyzard: Who could it be, who could it be? I just don't know ...

127lyzard
dec 5, 2018, 5:53 pm

Me neither, and I couldn't POSSIBLY guess!!

128rosalita
dec 5, 2018, 5:58 pm

:D

It's pretty cute.

129lyzard
Redigerat: dec 5, 2018, 6:18 pm

It's adorable! How did Santa know...?? :D

130rosalita
dec 5, 2018, 6:56 pm

Santa knows EVERYTHING. ;-)

131Helenliz
dec 6, 2018, 12:57 am

>122 lyzard: yay for a series finish!
>125 lyzard: Santa clearly knows you very well...
>130 rosalita: wot she said. >:-D

132lyzard
dec 7, 2018, 2:21 pm

I'm just relieved Santa thought I'd been nice not naughty! :D

133rosalita
dec 7, 2018, 2:31 pm

>132 lyzard: I think Santa grades on a curve. ;-)

134lyzard
dec 7, 2018, 3:13 pm

Best-selling books in the United States for 1940:

1. How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn
2. Kitty Foyle by Christopher Morley
3. Mrs Miniver by Jan Struther
4. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
5. The Nazarene by Sholem Asch
6. Stars on the Sea by F. van Wyck Mason
7. Oliver Wiswell by Kenneth Roberts
8. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
9. Night in Bombay by Louis Bromfield
10. The Family by Nina Fedorova

Perhaps reflecting a growing consciousness of the worldwide situation, the 1940 best-seller list offers only two works dealing with contemporary America: John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, the previous year's best-seller, and Christopher Morley's Kitty Foyle---both of these holdovers from the 1939 list.

The Nazarene, Sholem Asch's life of Christ, is also a holdover.

Frederick van Wyck Mason's Stars on the Sea is an historical novel about the founding of the American navy; while Kenneth Roberts' Oliver Wiswell is also an historical drama, about the War of Independence from the point of view of an American anti-revolutionary.

For Whom the Bell Tolls is Ernest Hemingway's novel about the Spanish Civil War. Nina Fedorova's The Family is about the remaining members of a once-prominent Russian family, who are living in China at the time of the Japanese invasion. Louis Bromfield's Night in Bombay offers a detailed portrait of India in the 1930s, though from the point of view of a handful of American characters.

Jan Struther's Mrs Miniver, a collection of short newspaper pieces dealing, in a wryly humorous way, with the new realities of British life in 1939, is (along with its film version) often credited with changing American attitudes towards the war.

The year's best-selling novel, however, is another work of historical fiction: How Green Was My Valley, Richard Llewellyn's account of life in a Welsh mining town during the late 19th century.

135lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:37 pm



The story of Richard Llewellyn is one of controversy. He was born Richard Dafydd Vivian Llewellyn Lloyd in 1906---but not in Wales, as he always insisted. Rather, he was born to Welsh parents, but in Hendon, in Middlesex. So determined was he to hide his origins, Llewellyn used to tell people that he had no birth certificate: that his birth had not been registered, as a protest against "English customs". This wasn't true either, though it was not until after his death that a copy was unearthed---ironically enough, as part of an attempted celebration of the life of this "son of Wales".

It now appears that Llewellyn grew up in London. As a young man he joined the army, the first step in a rather peripatetic life. He began writing in the mid-1930s, and first found success with a mystery play called Poison Pen. His first attempt at a novel, How Green Was My Valley, was written while he was stationed in India. After the war, Llewellyn resigned from the army and worked as a journalist, in which capacity he covered the Nuremberg Trials. He also spent time in Hollywood as a screenwriter. In his later years, he lived first in Israel, then in Ireland, where he died in 1983.

Significantly, a recurring theme in Llewellyn's writing is the assumption of a false identity. Research now indicates that at the time he wrote How Green Was My Valley, Llewellyn had never set foot in Wales; and that most of his knowledge of the country and, in particular, its mining communities came to him second-hand from a Welsh family of his acquaintance, who owned a London bookshop.

Published in 1939, How Green Was My Valley was a massive best-seller all over the world---except in Wales, where its false notes were recognised (but no-one listened to the Welsh, of course). Though he continued to write for another forty years, Llewellyn never managed to duplicate the success of his first novel---which perhaps helps to explain why he held so doggedly to his early deception.

136lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:38 pm



How Green Was My Valley - Set during the late 19th century, Richard Llewellyn's 1939 novel is the story of a mining community in south Wales, told from the perspective of Huw Morgan, the youngest son of a large mining family. It is a tale told in retrospect, from much later in Huw's life, when he alone remains of all the Morgans, and with the deserted family home in imminent danger of being crushed beneath a collapsing slag-heap. This opening gives an elegiac tone to what follows, a split-visioned narrative which manages to suggest rose-coloured glasses even while it tells of the destruction of a way of life---with the progressive shattering of the Morgan family itself mirroring the greater shattering of their isolated valley as a result of the ever-greater striving for profit from the mines. As a result of a childhood accident, Huw undergoes an extended period of invalidism that leaves him with a restricted view of the events unfolding around him; consequently, during the first half of the novel, the reader must interpret various situations through the twin hindrances of Huw's youth and his imperfect understanding of the adult world. How Green Was My Valley is, however, ultimately a coming-of-age story, following Huw into an adulthood shaped by his rejection of the wider opportunities offered by his scholastic brilliance, and his choice to follow his father and brothers down the mines. This latter highlights the deep underlying conservatism of the novel, with its ongoing celebration of family life and community embedded in a narrative that sees only danger and threats in new ways and the outside world---an "outside world" that, in this case, encompasses anything beyond the immediate enclosed environment of the valley and the village. Yet in this, too, there is something of a split-vision: on one hand there is no doubt that we are meant to sympathise with family patriarch, Gwilym Morgan, and his belief in the honourable partnership of "master" and "man", and further to see, as he does, only the seeds of ongoing trouble in the burgeoning union movement embraced by his older sons; yet the narrative shows how the masters themselves have created the necessity for the unions through the constant cutting of wages and the pitting of worker against worker. Similarly, though many passages in the novel are built around the warmly binding rituals of the family and the village, the narrative is also punctuated with scenes of brutality and injustice dictated by the stiflingly rigid moral and social code operating within the valley; even as Huw's inner feeling of oneness with his people gained by his decision to enter the mines is counterbalanced by horrors he encounters in their depths. And for all the novel's foregrounding of what is best in the Morgans and their way of life, How Green Was My Valley is finally the story of a family torn apart, as death, marriage, emigration and philosophical and generational differences finally scatter them, leaving only Huw to remember and mourn.

    "There is an agreement," my father said. "There is a minimum."
    "The minimum," Owen said, "will be the minimum when these men are working. Four hundred extra men in this Valley, and others to join them in the other valleys. When all those men are back at work, there will be a new minimum."
    "We shall see," said my father.
    And a new minimum there was, too, for when a man complained, or spoke too loudly near the manager, he was put from work, and another taken in his place from the idle crowd at the pit-head.
    For less wages, always.
    Some of the men went to work in other valleys, some went to Sheffield, to Birmingham, or Manchester, some went even to the United States of America. And some stayed in the village. And so we knew, for the first time, men without work...
    But even so, other men and their families were coming into the Valley and starting in the collieries for less money, or helping builders, or setting up little businesses in grocery, and tobacco, and newspaper, and cook-shopsd, until the village had houses on both sides of the road round the mountain, on one side, and climbing up the mountain on the other. Two new streets of small houses were built behind the Square, and two more chapels, one for the Methodists and one for the Calvinists, and the Roman Catholics put a church for the Irish over on the other side of the river.
    Even with the trouble coming flying to meet us, we grew, and we were happy...


137lyzard
dec 8, 2018, 5:10 pm

>133 rosalita:

Unkind! :D

138lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:38 pm



The Giant Book Of World Famous Murders - Rather than a single work, this is an omnibus presentation of four shorter true-crime books previously compiled by the English writer, Colin Wilson, with the assistance of his sons, Damon and Rowan: Gaslight Murders, Crimes Of Passion, Unsolved Crimes and Serial Killers. As the collected titles indicate, this is an overview of famous murder cases, predominantly of the 19th and 20th centuries, and predominantly of Britain, Europe and the United States. (Australia, that land of convicts, gets comparatively little mention, amusingly enough.) The nature of the presentation precludes any particularly in-depth analysis of any given case; it also leads to a certain amount of repetition, as there are references to particular cases in more than one of the original works, which were not edited for this omnibus. Consequently, this is a book best taken in small doses, rather than read cover to cover. The cases are well if a bit superficially presented, and there is a section on the early development of investigative techniques now taken for granted. However, there isn't much here that anyone with an interest in the topic won't already know. The Wilsons have a tendency to stereotype and use sweeping generalisations when discussing the motives for murder ("hot-blooded Latins", etc.), while their willingness to accept that the police always got the right perpetrator is a little unnerving, too. (As 19th century crime buffs would know, there was a great deal of public concern over rushes to judgement and execution on evidence that today seems frighteningly flimsy.) The lack of any index, either comprehensive or book by book, relegates this to the status of "bathroom book", rather than a work of reference.

The details of the Ratcliffe Highway murders are rather less interesting than the effect they produced upon the public. It was the first time in English history - probably in European history - that a crime had created a widespread panic. Why? Because it was generally accepted that they were committed by one man. In fact, it is rather more probable that they were committed by two, or even by a gang: one witness who lived near the Marrs said he heard several men running away. If that had been believed, there would almost certainly have been no panic: gangs of thieves were still a familiar hazard in 1811. It was the notion of a lone monster, a man who stalked the streets on his own, lusting for blood, that terrified everybody...

139lyzard
dec 9, 2018, 3:34 pm

Finished Ordeal By Innocence for TIOLI #9.

Still reading Superintendent Wilson's Holiday by George and Margaret Cole.

140lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:38 pm



Frisk - First published in 1991, this novel is part of Dennis Cooper's so-called "George Miles cycle", a series of semi-autobiographical works via which Cooper tried to make sense of his obsessive relationship with a younger man, with whom he had an affair and who later committed suicide. The fractured narrative follows protagonist Julian from his early recognition of his sexuality through his hedonistic partying phase and then through the emergence of a dark obsession. The key moment in Julian's development is when he is exposed, as an adolescent, to what he then believes are set of real "snuff" photographs showing a young man naked, bound and dead. Though he later discovers that the photographs were faked - and, indeed, meets and has an affair with the model - the incident plants a dangerous seed, as Julian begins to indulge fantasies that mingle sex and death. After he suddenly disappears from his usual haunts, Julian's friends receive letters from Amsterdam which hint that he has turned his fantasies into a terrible reality... Though it is easy to appreciate the landmark in gay fiction represented by the George Miles cycle, Frisk is a novel impossible to like...though that said, it is highly doubtful that Dennis Cooper was looking for limited reactions such as "like" and "dislike" when he wrote it. This is a book that goes out of its way to rub the reader's nose in its own excesses, blending sex and body horror in a series of increasingly lurid tableaux. This striving for offensiveness suggests that, in the wake of the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, Cooper was thumbing his nose at a certain section of society by offering a deliberately provocative depiction of the gay community and same-sex relationships that did not merely confirm its worst fears, but in which all the prevailing stereotypes were ramped up to the n-th degree. However, when the focus shifts to Julian and his increasing desire to "possess" his sexual partners via murder and dismemberment, it is hard not feel that Cooper was trying too hard. Julian is aptly described at one point by a friend and former lover as, "A weird, amoral explorer of bodies"; but though the detailed descriptions of his increasingly extreme and violent activities, and all the dwelling upon blood and internal organs and genitalia and excrement, are shocking at first, as is often the case with this sort of intentionally transgressive writing the effect is eventually blunted, until it all becomes a bit wearisome. The individual reader may consider the closing stages of Frisk either a disappointing cop-out or a realistic piece of boundary-drawing---though at this distance, perhaps the most interesting thing about it is the comparison it invites with American Psycho, coincidentally published the same year, which likewise blurs fantasy and reality as it blends sex and death.

    It takes a lot longer to strangle someone than you'd think. At some point his eyes changed. They got kind of empty, fake. I noticed that diarrhea had squirted out of his ass, trickling all down his back. It smelled gruesome. When he was definitely a corpse, I ran over and leaned out a window. occasionally I'd check to see if he'd moved. He hadn't. He looked so beautiful with his eyes empty, I don't know why. I walked back to the futon, sat down, and gazed into their glassiness a long, long time, day-dreaming and numb. I didn't know what to do next, with his body I mean, so I kept it around for a few days pushed up against one of the walls. His skin got a weird dusky color. It was a very rough winter. Maybe that's why he didn't smell the whole time. I had a million ideas how I wanted to carve up and study the kid. I couldn't do it, I don't know why. Eventually I dragged him outside and threw him into the canal...
    I just realised that if you're still reading you must be the person I want you to be. God, I hope so...


141swynn
dec 9, 2018, 11:47 pm

>136 lyzard: I was also struck by what you call the "split-vision" narrative. There are so many points on which Llewellyn wants us to see both sides -- Huw's inclination to agnosticism paired with a sympathetic portrayal of the church; the deacons' overzealous sexual policing paired with their judgment against a child murderer; and of course, the dilemma of the coal industry paired with the fact that the same industry makes the whole story possible. I think that ambiguity is Llewellyn's point, but he misjudges how well the pairs are balanced and ends up sugarcoating things he oughtn't.

I enjoyed the book more than I expected to, and am disappointed to see in your post #135 that the whole thing is fake nostalgia.

142lyzard
dec 9, 2018, 11:54 pm

>141 swynn:

Yes, it's interesting that the balance was clearly unintentional. By assuming more sympathy with his own point of view than he should have, he allowed himself to put more weight on the other side of the argument than, probably, he would have done had he been less convinced about his own standpoint.

Well, not the whole thing: what he wrote wasn't exactly wrong, but he was writing from the outside not the inside, which evidently was obvious to those who did live the life he was trying to describe. But yeah, it was a pretty big shock for a lot of people when the truth came out.

143lyzard
dec 10, 2018, 4:26 pm

Finished Superintendent Wilson's Holiday for TIOLI #14.

Now reading The Secret Of The Silver Car by Wyndham Martyn.

144lyzard
dec 12, 2018, 4:28 pm

Finished The Secret Of The Silver Car for TIOLI #5.

Now reading The Murders Near Mapleton by Brian Flynn. I will also be going in to my academic library's Rare Books section today, to make a start on Inspector French And The Starvel Tragedy by Freeman Wills Crofts.

145lyzard
Redigerat: dec 12, 2018, 4:58 pm

Researching the Anthony Trent series by Wyndham Martyn to see what's next, I discovered that, evidently, two more entries appeared in 1923: The Mysterious Mr Garland and The Return Of Anthony Trent. After a three-year hiatus, logically The Return Of Anthony Trent should be next, but I've fallen into that sort of trap before.

Chasing up the copyright dates (usually the safest source of information in this sort of situation), I made the strange discovery that a film based upon The Mysterious Mr Garland, The Star Reporter, was released in 1921; the same listing indicated that The Mysterious Mr Garland was first published in 1922.

The inference would seem to be that The Mysterious Mr Garland is a novelised screenplay---as we've already seen occur with the Craig Kennedy series by Arthur B. Reeves. This makes sense in context---and also, clearly, had a very significant impact upon the Anthony Trent series as a whole.

As with the Elsie Dinsmore series by Martha Finley, this is a case where it is evident that the author never intended his "series" to run for more than a book or two---yet ended up writing it for decades*.

In Finley's case we know that pressure from her publisher and, perhaps, financial issues made her start writing again; in Martyn's, it seems as if he was offered the chance to write an original Anthony Trent story as a screenplay, and that this led, effectively, to a series reboot. I'm curious to see how this was handled, as at the end of The Secret Of The Silver Car Martyn drew a very firm line under the story of Anthony Trent...

...which is to say, he packed him off to Australia...

(*Originally intended to conclude in only two books, the Elsie Dinsmore series finally encompassed a total of 28 books written over 33 years; while the Anthony Trent series encompasses 26 books written over 32 years.)

146lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:39 pm

Well, yes: among other people---





On the whole I like the American cover better...except of course for the unnecessary retitling. Honestly, how is The Starvel Hollow Tragedy: A Inspector French Story better than Inspector French And The Starvel Tragedy??


147rosalita
dec 12, 2018, 5:26 pm

>146 lyzard: The American cover on that one is better (the less said about the stupid title change the better), but you have to admit the blurb line on the UK edition is aces: "A heap of smouldering ruins – three corpses — another problem for French!" I don't know how accurate it is, but it certainly is zingy.

148lyzard
dec 13, 2018, 3:39 pm

I've read enough now to know that it's entirely accurate! :)

149lyzard
dec 13, 2018, 5:12 pm

Book-blogging:

I have written a post about The Picture, a rather insubstantial sentimental novel from 1766, by Susannah and Margaret Minifie.

Here

150lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:40 pm

"A blog-post!?"


151rosalita
dec 13, 2018, 5:16 pm

>150 lyzard: He/she looks like they just got some really juicy gossip: "OMG, she said WHAT?! And then what did she say?!"

152lyzard
dec 13, 2018, 5:25 pm

October stats:

Works read: 11
TIOLI: 11, in 8 different challenges, with 1 shared read

Mystery / thriller: 6
Classic: 2
Contemporary drama: 1
Historical drama: 1
Non-fiction: 1

Re-reads: 2
Series works: 5
Blog reads: 2
1932: 0
1931: 1
Virago / Persephone: 0
Potential decommission: 2

Owned: 3
Library: 3
Ebooks: 5

Male authors : female authors : anonymous authors: 8 : 6

Oldest work: The Picture by Susannah and Margaret Minifie (1766)
Newest work: The Giant Book Of World Famous Murders by Colin, Damon and Rowan Wilson (1993)

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

YTD stats:

Works read: 141
TIOLI: 141, in 113 different challenges, with 10 shared reads

Mystery / thriller: 62
Contemporary drama: 16
Classics: 16
Historical drama: 10
Young adult: 7
Non-fiction: 7
Horror: 6
Humour: 5
Historical romance: 4
Short stories: 4
Contemporary romance: 3
Play: 1

Re-reads: 28
Series works: 66
Blog reads: 8
1932: 3
1931: 10
Virago / Persephone: 3
Potential decommission: 18

Owned: 34
Library: 47 (including 1 ebook)
Ebook: 60

Male authors (editors) : female authors : anonymous: 76 (including 3 using a female pseudonym) : 66 : 4

Oldest work: A Defence Of Their Majesties King William And Queen Mary, Against An Infamous And Jesuitical Libel, Entituled, A True Portraicture Of William Henry Prince Of Nassau, &c by Pierre Jurieu (1689) / The Great Bastard, Protector Of The Little One by Anonymous (1689)
Newest work: Kai Lung Raises His Voice by Ernest Bramah (2010) / Little Vampire Women by Lynn Messina and Louisa May Alcott (2010)

153lyzard
Redigerat: dec 13, 2018, 5:30 pm

An appropriate symbol of the speed with which I am getting through my reviews---


154lyzard
dec 13, 2018, 5:31 pm

>151 rosalita:

"Shut UP!!" :D

155rosalita
dec 13, 2018, 8:23 pm

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

Whenever you start to feel frustrated that you are a couple of months behind in writing reviews, I want you to remember this: I am just now listening to podcast episodes that came out in AUGUST. And all I have to do is listen! Not write a single word! Listen! And I am four months behind!

Now, doesn't that make you feel better?

156lyzard
Redigerat: dec 14, 2018, 2:46 pm

Um...not really...?

:D

157lyzard
dec 13, 2018, 8:52 pm

Finished The Murders Near Mapleton for TIOLI #2.

Now reading The Black Camel by Earl Derr Biggers; still reading Inspector French And The Starvel Tragedy by Freeman Wills Crofts.

158lyzard
dec 13, 2018, 8:54 pm

Dag-NABBIT!!

Ah, well. That's what you get for listening to the experts instead of doing your own research.

Throughout The Murders Near Mapleton, there are references to another case of Anthony Bathurst's, which began to make me fear the worst...and as I have just confirmed, I've been reading out of order.

...*shudder*...

159Helenliz
dec 14, 2018, 2:39 am

>158 lyzard: oh no! Is that enough to get you thrown out of the union?

I will not shout, as it may disturb the sloth, but hurrah for >153 lyzard:.

160lyzard
dec 14, 2018, 2:48 pm

>159 Helenliz:

Well, inasmuch as I run the union, probably not. :D

Not a good feeling, though...

Thanks, Helen!

161rosalita
Redigerat: dec 14, 2018, 3:11 pm

>158 lyzard: What is this world coming to? Susan just told me that for our shared read of Dick Francis' horsy mysteries she is willing to read IN RANDOM ORDER. Now you tell me you're reading series out of order. Oh, the humanity!

162lyzard
dec 14, 2018, 3:01 pm

RUN EVERYONE IT'S THE APOCALYPSE!!!!

163rosalita
dec 14, 2018, 3:13 pm



This is what you get when you do an image search for "sloth apocalypse".

164lyzard
dec 14, 2018, 3:14 pm

I agree entirely with that slogan, sigh...

165rosalita
Redigerat: dec 14, 2018, 3:24 pm

So true. I want to apologize to the sloth and all the other creatures on this planet. But I also feel like the sloths are not going to be the ones pointing fingers and seeking vengeance. They're going to be all, "I wish you hadn't done that, mate."

166lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:42 pm



Satanskin - This 1992 volume by "James Havoc" (British writer / musician, James Williamson) is a collection of short stories dealing predominantly with demonology and black magic---mostly from the point of view of the demons, with mere humans faring poorly indeed. It is simultaneously an exercise in transgression, and an experiment with language, to the point that Havoc's delight in arcane words and phrases not infrequently obscures his meaning. Reading Satanskin back-to-back with Dennis Cooper's Frisk was a peculiar experience---both works being awash with sex and violence and genitalia and excrement and bodily fluids, though for very different purposes, and both self-consciously striving for offensiveness to the point of being tiresome. Satanskin, however, is somewhat rescued by its grotesque sense of humour---though, as should already be evident, it is humour that won't appeal to everyone. In that respect, some of you may wish to skip the quote below, which is entirely typical of the book's tone and content. A few of the stories stand out: The Venus Eye, about an angel's revenge upon the man who defiles her daughter; Dogstar Pact, which finds supernatural vengeance being visited upon a man's wife and unborn child; White Meat Fever, about a vagina-thief getting his comeuppance; and the book's brief coda, Zodiac Breath, which is more a mission statement than a story. In addition to its short stories, Satanskin contains a much abridged version of Havoc's earlier "anti-novel", Raism, prepared (I gather) as part of the process of converting his tale of the infamous Gilles de Rais into a graphic novel. The abridgement is rendered entirely in upper-case lettering---and if what comes before in this book hasn't already done your head in, I guarantee that will.

    Turner teeters, poised on the cusp of a side-winding venus. Ditch cancer. In the absolute, atrocious darkness, he sees his own soul mirrored. Hollow, menopausal. His vaginas are growing parched and shrivelled, as arid as his dreams. Then comes a lightning bolt, and artificial sunspots flare cruelly on his retinas. Ululations and tendrils taunt his blindness; cuntless vegetable girls drop from the boughs above, dancing on ghostly nooses as they join in the invocation of the night for its sister moon.
    The moon responds.
    From a tarn she looses sway, inducing a final, mass menstruation in the body of the imposter. With a sigh Turner falls, lifesblood gushing from a hundred vulvas...

167lyzard
Redigerat: dec 14, 2018, 4:54 pm

>165 rosalita:

"I'd be angry if it didn't need so much energy..."

168lyzard
dec 14, 2018, 8:24 pm

Librarians. :D

From The Black Camel: a Honolulu librarian discovers that a volume of bound newspapers has been damaged by someone cutting photographs out of it:

    "Mr Van Horn left the volume in original state. He is certain of that. Was it noted that any one else examined it this morning?"
    "I don't know," the young woman replied. "The librarian in charge of that room is out to lunch. Look here, Mr Chan, you've got to find who did this."
    "Plenty busy with murder just now," Charlie explained.
    "Never mind your murder," she answered grimly. "This is serious."

169rosalita
dec 14, 2018, 9:36 pm

>168 lyzard: I know some librarians and that sounds absolutely true!

170Helenliz
dec 15, 2018, 3:42 am

>168 lyzard: *snort*
>161 rosalita: ... no words ... the world must be about to end ... maybe not quite like >163 rosalita: though! Not sure a sloth would summon the enthusiasm to run amok. They might amble amok, maybe.

171jnwelch
dec 15, 2018, 10:14 am

Ha! I love the idea of sloths ambling amok. :-)

172lyzard
dec 15, 2018, 4:26 pm

>168 lyzard:, >169 rosalita:, >170 Helenliz:

Charlie does find out who cut up the newspapers!...and solves the murder, but really, who cares about that??

>170 Helenliz:, >171 jnwelch:

Gives a whole new meaning to 'Amok Time': "Ehhh, take my girl, it's all too much trouble..." :)

173lyzard
dec 15, 2018, 4:40 pm

Finished The Black Camel for TIOLI #13.

Now reading The Incredible Crime by Lois Austen-Leigh; still reading Inspector French And The Starvel Tragedy by Freeman Wills Crofts.

174lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:44 pm



Women, Power, And Subversion: Social Strategies In British Fiction, 1778-1860 - Judith Lowder Newton's 1981 study is an attempt to move away from the traditional view of 18th and 19th century women as the victims of an oppressive social system, and to discover instead via examination of the era's literature the means by which women exercised power and agency, albeit in a personal and private manner. Despite this manifesto, this study highlights, rather, where individual literary rebellions necessarily failed or fell short; as wells as showing the ways in which the pressures acting upon women as a whole set the mass against the individual. Rather than 'literature' per se, Newton focuses upon four books by female authors spanning the years indicated: Evelina by Frances Burney; Pride And Prejudice by Jane Austen; Vilette by Charlotte Bronte; and The Mill On The Floss by George Eliot. Fascinatingly, this study had its basis in a class conducted by Newton, in which some of her female studies refused to see Evelina as anything more than a comedy of manners, and actively resisted attempts to unearth the novel's darker themes. Newton's thesis here is that in spite of the smokescreen provided by social ideologies involving "the natural spheres" of men and women, and which demanded that women's lives be bounded by "love and self-sacrifice", the dominant power in society was economic: the four books examined cover a period in which women were increasingly deprived of financial independence and opportunities for self-determination; a progressive enslavement disguised by insistence upon women's moral superiority and "influence" within the home. Newton argues that what these four books have in common is their sense of resistance to this systematic reduction of women to the position of handmaidens to male power; she uses the texts to illustrate the strategies by which women were able to forge their own way despite the restrictions of their lives, as well as showing where these strategies necessarily failed or proved inadequate. Thus, both Evelina and Pride And Prejudice, despite their disparate illustrations of the injustices of female existence - including, in particular, financial injustice - and the often brutal power imbalance between the sexes, can only end in marriage; Newton argues that the "fairy-tale" quality of each ending draws attention to its own falseness, in order to highlight the contrasting reality. By the time of Vilette, meanwhile, there was at least the possibility of independence for women; though, as with most of the author's works, the message is muddied by the irreconcilable tension between Charlotte Bronte's rebellious impulses and her underlying desire to love and submit, as society dictated. Ironically, Vilette is a powerful indictment of the abject submission to male demands demanded by Victorian society, illustrating the necessarily toxic nature of a relationship based upon such self-abrogation. The latest of the four books is in many ways the bleakest of the four - because the most realistic - with gruelling contrasts drawn between the lives of Tom and Maggie Tulliver, the former's unhesitating assumption of power and agency by virtue of his maleness set against Maggie's frustrations, disappointments and blunders. In Newton's view, The Mill On The Floss also provides evidence that one of the most significant forces confronting any woman inclined to rebel against the power structure was other women: in each of these four books, the heroine is shown as someone apart from the mass, lonely against the power of dependency and the status quo; reflecting, in all likelihood, the author's similar sense of isolation.

    If in Bronte and Eliot, in contrast, we feel continuing difficulty, ambivalence, and tension, if it is resistance---the desire for real power rather than ideological reconstruction of past powerlessness---which produces disjunctions of form in these novels, it is resistance which lends them their essential energy. And it is this energy, I would suggest, which makes them arresting, which make them live with us.
    Indeed it is resistance, a resistance shared covertly with the female reader, which constitutes the real sisterhood in these novels, for sisterhood as a source of emotional support is otherwise underdeveloped. Females in Evelina are reliable only in failing to protect or even to console each other in the face of male violation. Elizabeth's affection for Jane is outweighed by her disaffection from her mother, from Mary, Kitty and Lydia, and by her sense of being betrayed by the marriage of her best friend. In Vilette Lucy's subtle identification with Ginevra and Madame Beck is offset by a formal repudiation of their influence, and her admiration for Mrs Bretton and Paulina Home must strike us as more wishful than real. In The Mill On The Floss Maggie is more oppressed than sustained by the female community, and even Lucy's loving gesture is followed by silence and isolation. In these novels we fail to see women united by their self-sacrificing influence, by their valorisation of the heart, their freedom from carnal passion, their membership in associations, or even their consciousness of belonging to a separate sphere. Indeed sisterhood in these novels would seem to be confined to a relation between author and reader...


175lyzard
Redigerat: dec 16, 2018, 2:59 pm

Best-selling books in the United States for 1941:

1. The Keys of the Kingdom by A. J. Cronin
2. Random Harvest by James Hilton
3. This Above All by Eric Knight
4. The Sun Is My Undoing by Marguerite Steen
5. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
6. Oliver Wiswell by Kenneth Roberts
7. H. M. Pulham, Esquire by John P. Marquand
8. Mr and Mrs Cugat by Isabel Scott Rorick
9. Saratoga Trunk by Edna Ferber
10. Windswept by Mary Ellen Chase

War themes are prominent in the best-sellers of 1941, including two holdovers from the 1940 list: Kenneth Roberts' historical novel about the War of Independence, Oliver Wiswell, and Ernest Hemingway's tale of the Spanish Civil War, For Whom the Bell Tolls.

In addition, James Hilton's Random Harvest is the story of a man trying to reconstuct his life following physical and mental injuries suffered during WWI; while Eric Knight's This Above All, set between Dunkirk and the Blitz, is a rumination upon patriotism and disillusionment.

Isabel Scott Rorick's Mr and Mrs Cugat, conversely, is rather like Mrs Miniver without the shadow of war, a series of comic vignettes about a married socialite couple. John P. Marquand's H. M. Pulham, Esquire has a similar setting, but is a more serious story of a somewhat naive man discovering the inadequacy of his personal code.

Historical fiction rounds out the list. Set in the second half of the 18th century, Marguerite Steen's The Sun Is My Undoing is the story of the decline and fall of a young man who goes into the family business of slave-trading. (This sounds like Anthony Adverse done right; it's apparently about the same length, too.) Edna Ferber's Saratoga Trunk is set against Saratoga society of the 1870s, and deals with the corruption of principles amongst America's wealthiest industrialists. Mary Ellen Chase's Windswept is about three generations of a Maine family.

The year's best-selling novel was A. J. Cronin's The Keys of the Kingdom, which manages to combine the year's main themes in its story of a misfit Catholic priest sent as a missionary to China during the late 19th century.

176lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:44 pm



Archibald Joseph Cronin was born in Cardross, a village in the Scottish lowlands, in 1896, to a Presbyterian mother and a Catholic father. His father died of tuberculosis when Cronin was only seven; he and his mother moved in with her parents in the town of Dumbarton, and she supported him by becoming a public health inspector.

Cronin excelled from an early age both academically and at sports; he won prizes in various writing competitions while still at school. When he was a young man, Cronin's family pressured him to choose either the church or medicine as his career. Having chosen the latter ("It was the lesser of the two evils," he later commented), he attended the University of Glasgow. His studies were interrupted by WWI, during which he served as surgeon sub-lieutenant in the naval reserve, but he graduated with honours in 1919.

Cronin' began his medical practice as a ship's surgeon, before practising in villages first in Wales, then Scotland. He undertook post-graduate study and won several further medical qualifications. In 1924 he was appointed Inspector of Mines, and undertook vital research into the relationship between coal dust and pulmonary disease. Later, Cronin established a practice in Harley Street, London.

Ironically, health issues were significantly responsible for Cronin resuming his writing career: he was diagnosed with an ulcer in 1930, and ordered six months' complete rest. Settling in a Scottish village, he wrote his first novel, Hatter's Castle, a work of historical fiction about an egotistical merchant whose shop is threatened by the modernisation of business practices in the late 19th century. It was published in 1931, becoming the first in a series of best-selling novels that drew heavily upon Cronin's own social, medical and religious background.

Though he continued to write into the 1970s, Cronin's two most significant works are generally considered to be The Stars Look Down, his 1935 novel about conditions in the Welsh mines, and The Citadel, about a young doctor's struggle for personal and professional integrity. The latter was highly controversial for its exposure of incompetence and corrupt business practices within the medical profession, and is often credited with influencing the establishment of Britain's National Health Service.

The Citadel was also a great success in the US, winning the National Book Award in 1937. However, it was when Cronin exchanged medicine for religion that he reached the top of the American best-seller lists, with 1941's The Keys Of the Kingdom.

177lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:45 pm



The Keys Of The Kingdom - Published in 1941, A. J. Cronin's historical fiction is the story of a Catholic priest, Father Francis Chisholm. It opens with the elderly priest settled - as he thinks - in a small cottage overlooking the Scottish town of Tweedside and the River Tweed. But even in his old age, Father Chisholm finds himself out of step with the church authorities; a companion of his childhood and seminary days, Anselm Sleeth, now Monsignor Sleeth, calls upon him with the aim of telling him that once again, he must move on... The Keys Of The Kingdom is a story told in flashback, opening with Francis Chisholm's difficult, often deprived childhood spent on the banks of the Tweed. Religious violence robs him of his parents, leaving him to be raised by indifferent, resentful relatives. Exposure to hatred and bigotry has the effect of developing in Francis a generous tolerance; while in spite of his call to the Catholic church, the two greatest influences in his early life are his friend, Willie Tulloch, the son of the town doctor and, like him, an atheist; and his uncle Daniel Glennie, a Protestant evangelical whose doctrine of peace and humility wins him only scorn and abuse. Francis' own guileless humanity and refusal to participate in church politics make him a nuisance and a burden to those in authority over him; until, after failure in two curacies - one involving the exposure of a fake miracle - he is dispatched to China as a missionary. Francis is promised that his job will be to build up an already thriving Catholic community; but when he lands in on the banks of the Ta-Hwang River in Chek-kow Province in the year 1902, he finds a ruined, deserted building and an indifferent population. At first devastated and depressed, having absorbed the cruel poverty of his surroundings Francis takes two practical steps; he establishes first a free medical clinic, and then an orphanage: the mission, as such, can wait... The Keys Of The Kingdom is, finally, a story of Christianity in practice; finding endless ironies in the distance between Francis Chisholm's own conduct and that of the church he represents. Typically, those with whom Francis has the most in common are not his fellow priests who occasionally visit, or the three nuns sent - eventually - to assist him, but the American Methodist missionaries who set up in the nearest town, and who share his warm embrace of life and humanity. As usual in the novels of A. J. Cronin, authority breeds corruption and selfishness: it is left to the individual, not the organisation, to make a difference; and ultimately, it is the man as much as the priest who becomes an example and an inspiration to those who come in contact with him, and who wins the converts to his faith he was sent to China to make. Taking The Keys Of The Kingdom in a broad view, we might be inclined to criticise its refusal to engage with the missionary impulse per se - it avoids the issue by making its missionaries humanitarians first - but as this is intended first and foremost as the story of one man doing his best by his faith and his lights in the face of enormous challenges and escalating danger, including plague, flood and war, perhaps that isn't a significant failing. But whatever else it is, this is a British novel written during the darkest days of WWII: the conflict between Chinese warlords, which catches Francis and his mission in its crossfire (and which, historically, occurs simultaneously with WWI), serves as a microcosm of the horrors unfolding in Europe, and forms a backdrop to the novel's call for people to unite and struggle for the right, regardless of nationality and doctrine.

    Father Chisholm stood rigid, consumed by the torment of his mind. This was war. this toylike pantomime of destruction, magnified a million times, was what was happening now on the fertile plains of France. He shuddered, and prayed passionately: O Lord, let me live and die for peace.
    Suddenly his haggard eye picked up a movement on the hill. One of the Naian soldiers was not dead. Slowly and painfully, he was dragging himself down the slope in the direction of the mission. It was possible to observe the ebbing of his strength iin the gradual slowing of his progress. Finally he came to rest, utterly spent, lying on his side, some sixty yards from the upper gate.
    Francis thought, He is dead...this is no time for mock-heroics. If I go out there I will get a bullet in my head...I must not do it. But he found himself leaving the dispensary and moving towards the upper gate. He had a shamed consciousness as he opened the gate: fortunately no one was watching from the mission. He walked out into the bright sunshine upon the hillside.
    His short black figure and his long black shadow were shockingly obvious. If the mission windows were blank he felt many eyes upon him from the cypress grove. He dared not hurry.
    The wounded soldier was breathing in sobbing gasps. Both hands were pressed against his lacerated belly. His human eyes gazed back at Francis with an agonised interrogation...

178swynn
dec 17, 2018, 12:26 pm

>177 lyzard: Averting my eyes. I'm behind on bestsellers, but expect to get to this one next weekend. No guess on how soon I'll get comments posted, but I'm telling myself that I'll get caught up by the end of the year ...

179lyzard
Redigerat: dec 17, 2018, 3:43 pm

>178 swynn:

Terrible the lies we tell ourselves, ain't it?? :D

Speaking of this sort of thing, I had intended to get to Bertrand Russell's What I Believe this month for Banned In Boston. However, it turns out that the copy at the Internet Archive has pages missing, grr! - and since the only other copy available is via a storage request, I may or may not get my hands on it before my academic library closes for Christmas at the end of Friday.

ETA: Hmm... I hadn't realised that The Song Of Bernadette was THAT much of a chunkster...

180lyzard
dec 17, 2018, 4:04 pm

Finished The Incredible Crime for TIOLI #6.

Now reading The Song Of Bernadette by Franz Werfel; still reading Inspector French And The Starvel Tragedy by Freeman Wills Crofts.

181swynn
dec 17, 2018, 6:09 pm

>179 lyzard: It's a short piece, and you might be able to find it in a volume of selected or collected works. My library has a first edition in our Special Collections, so I predict that's how I'll spend a lunch hour soon ...

182lyzard
dec 17, 2018, 6:45 pm

Yes, I'm having much more trouble accessing it than I was anticipating, which is why I left it so late.

183lyzard
dec 21, 2018, 2:33 am

Finished Inspector French And The Starvel Tragedy for TIOLI #7.

Still reading The Song Of Bernadette by Franz Werfel.

184lyzard
dec 21, 2018, 4:44 pm

Oh dang.

That feeling when you go to the library to borrow a book, and that book isn't among the books you bring back... :D

185rosalita
dec 21, 2018, 4:48 pm

Did you drop it in the parking lot? :-p

186lyzard
Redigerat: dec 21, 2018, 5:15 pm

I got distracted. :)

I meant to pick up a copy of Lloyd Douglas's The Robe, which is next month's best-seller; but in the morning I started researching the various English-language editions of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, and when I found out my academic library holds a copy of the H. M. Waidson translation I forgot all about what I was actually going there for...

It's frustrating because the library is now on its Christmas / New Year shutdown, so I won't be able to rectify my brain-melt for a few weeks.

187rosalita
dec 21, 2018, 5:17 pm

Grrr! That is vexing. I hope it's worth the wait once you get it ...

188lyzard
dec 21, 2018, 5:27 pm

Other than logistically, I don't mind the break: America got all religious in its reading at the start of WWII, first The Keys Of The Kingdom, then The Song Of Bernadette, then The Robe...

189lyzard
dec 22, 2018, 3:34 am

Finished The Song Of Bernadette for TIOLI #12.

Now reading - in one of my all-time great accidental instances of going from one extreme to the other - What I Believe by Bertrand Russell.

190Helenliz
dec 22, 2018, 7:55 am

>184 lyzard:, oh botheration. I can't imagone you'll run out of books any time soon, but that is annoying.

191lyzard
Redigerat: dec 22, 2018, 2:28 pm

Not exactly. :)

No, it's the loss of time and knowing I'll have to make another trip in that has me kicking myself.

192SandDune
dec 22, 2018, 4:00 pm



(Or in other words, Happy Christmas, to you and yours!)

193lyzard
dec 24, 2018, 2:21 am

Thanks, Rhian! - you, too. :)

194lyzard
dec 24, 2018, 2:22 am

Finished What I Believe for TIOLI #16.

Now reading The Case Of Mortimer Fenley by Louis Tracy.

195souloftherose
dec 24, 2018, 1:46 pm

>174 lyzard: Women, Power and Subversion sounds really interesting. I'll see if the library has it but if not it looks like it's not too expensive to get secondhand.

'Fascinatingly, this study had its basis in a class conducted by Newton, in which some of her female studies refused to see Evelina as anything more than a comedy of manners, and actively resisted attempts to unearth the novel's darker themes.'

Oh, that is fascinating. I could understand a casual reader not picking up on underlying themes (I'm sure I miss that sort of thing all the time) but an actual refusal to acknowledge it when they're pointed out to you seems more striking.

On a slightly related note how many 19th century novels or books about 19th century novels has that painting been used for? I'm sure I've seen it used as the cover for several other books (the titles of which, of course, completely escape me).

And adding my wishes for a happy Christmas for you.

196Helenliz
dec 24, 2018, 1:53 pm

Merry Christmas Liz.

197Matke
dec 24, 2018, 2:42 pm

Merry Christmas, Liz!

198lyzard
dec 24, 2018, 3:53 pm

>195 souloftherose:

Yes, I'm holding myself to library books for my non-fiction reading, though there are others out there I really want to read.

Bizarrely, not only refused to acknowledge it but got angry when Newton tried to make them: it was thinking about that reaction that led to the study.

Oh, yes, you're right! I suppose it's a question of what images are available and affordable but it does get confusing when you're trying to keep different books straight in your memory.

Thanks, Heather, you too! :)

>196 Helenliz:, >197 Matke:

Thank you both, much appreciated!

199harrygbutler
Redigerat: dec 24, 2018, 10:56 pm



Merry Christmas, Liz!

There are several Christmas covers for Detective Fiction Weekly, a situation that is rarer for magazines published only monthly. As you may know, DFW remained "Formerly Flynn's" on the cover throughout its lifespan; it had started out in 1924 named for its initial editor, William J. Flynn, former head of the U.S Secret Service.

200PaulCranswick
dec 25, 2018, 3:56 am



Happy holidays, Liz

201lyzard
dec 25, 2018, 3:20 pm

>199 harrygbutler:

That's brilliant, Harry, thanks!

>200 PaulCranswick:

Thank you Paul, you too! :)

202lyzard
dec 25, 2018, 5:19 pm

Finished The Case Of Mortimer Fenley for TIOLI #4.

Now reading The Romance Of Elaine by Arthur B. Reeve.

203lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:47 pm

The Joys Of Being A Woman, #27,963 in a series.

From The Boston Globe, 17th September 1926:

204lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:47 pm

That distraction notwithstanding---

Whoo-hoo! - I have just discovered that one of my long-MIA books, Gray Terror by Herman Landon, was serialised and is available online:




Actually it's a bit strange: Gray Terror was published in 1923, yet we find it being promoted and serialised like a new book during 1926.

But who am I to quibble...?

205Helenliz
dec 26, 2018, 3:44 am

206lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:47 pm

So, this is what I ordered:





...and this is what I received:





Sigh.

Now for the joys of straightening this out between continents and currencies...

207Helenliz
dec 27, 2018, 3:55 pm

>206 lyzard: um, even I know they're not the same.
Good luck with that one.

208harrygbutler
Redigerat: dec 27, 2018, 4:06 pm

>206 lyzard: Those are rather different books. I don't envy you the difficulties of getting it made right. Best of luck!

209rosalita
dec 27, 2018, 4:18 pm

If ever there were two books you'd think would not get confused with each other ...

210lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:48 pm



Random Harvest - By most standards, Charles Rainier is a success: a businessman at the head of a manufacturing empire and a politician on the rise, at whose country house the elite of all walks of life gather. But a perpetual shadow hangs over Rainier's life... Wounded almost to death during WWI, Rainer can remember nothing of his life and experiences between that moment and the one, years later, when he woke up in a hospital in Liverpool, having been hit by a car. At that time Rainier discovered not only his own identity, but that he had been missing, presumed dead. Once through a difficult reunion with his family, Rainier found himself obliged to take up the reins of his previous existence. Yet as he goes through the motions of his life, Rainier is haunted by those missing years, and by the sense that he is not really living his own life: that at one time, he was another person altogether... It is difficult to discuss James Hilton's Random Harvest without reference to the film based upon it, now much better known than its source novel; nor to have reaction to the book influenced by the film. In fact, the two are quite different in both structure and intent. The film adaptation is a romantic melodrama, expertly executed if more than a little absurd with respect to its plot; while the novel's predominant tone is one of frustration. Published in 1941, but set several years earlier, Random Harvest is an often bitter book about the mistaken path taken after WWI, and the forces, large and small, that shape an individual's life even against that individual's will. In both respects, Charles Rainier is a victim: the character's experiences become a metaphor for the direction of world events in general, and England in particular, between the wars, with Rainier's actual loss of memory standing in for the mismanagement and wilful blindness that would ultimately allow a second catastrophic war in spite of the appalling lesson of the first. Similarly, there is a growing tension between the path that Rainier is forced to walk, one which he feels is false and hollow in spite of its worldly markers of success, and his constant, almost unconscious search for the life that should have been his, and which he somehow knows has slipped through his fingers... Random Harvest has a non-linear structure. It begins on Armistice Day, 1937, with Charles Rainier confiding something of his personal tragedy to a young stranger; subsequently, it recounts Rainier's life both before and after the gap of years: his assumption of control of the family business and finances; his political career; and his marriage of convenience to his secretary, who becomes the driving force of his public achievements. It is late in the narrative before we hear of another Armistice Day, the very first, when, during the confusion that reigned on the 11th of November, 1918, a man fractured in both body and mind slipped away from the asylum which had held him since his release from a German hospital into the fog-drenched streets of a country town---where, in his evident confusion and fear, he attracted the sympathetic attention of a young actress called Paula Ridgeway...

    "I can't help comparing what I found with what I lost!"
    "You didn't lose permanently. You've got it all back now."
    "But too late." Rainier waved his arm with sudden comprehensive emphasis. "Isn't it too late? I'm down to ask a question in the House shortly, but not that question, yet it's the only one worth asking or answering...isn't everything too late? I should have stayed in that London attic. There were things to do in those days if one had the vision to do them, but now there's neither time nor vision, but only this whiff of putrefying too-lateness. It was almost too late even then, except that by a sort of miracle there came a gap in long-gathering clouds---an incredibly last chance---a golden shaft along which England might have climbed back to glory."
    "Less lyrically, you mean you'd like to set the clock back?"
    "Yes, set it back, and set it right, and then wind it up, because it's been running down ever since Englishmen were more interested in the price of things on the market than in what they could grow in their own gardens."
    "I see. A back-to-the-land movement?"
    "Back anywhere away from the unrealness of counting able-bodied men as a national burden just because they're listed as unemployed, and figures in bank ledgers as assets just because they're supposed to represent riches. Back anywhere from the mood in which poor men beg me for jobs in Rainier factories and rich men for tips about Rainier shares..."


211lyzard
dec 27, 2018, 5:20 pm

>207 Helenliz:, >208 harrygbutler:, >209 rosalita:

I can only assume that somewhere, a high fantasy fan is scratching their head over "the codfish Sherlock"... :)

212lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:48 pm



The Day Of Uniting - Though sharing the family country house, Blake's Priory, the cousins Jimmy Blake and Gerald Van Roon could hardly be more different: Jimmy has been footloose and idle since the end of the war; whereas Gerald is a brilliant up-and-coming scientist, in touch with and respected by some of the world's great minds. Jimmy hardly knows how to respond when Gerald, meaning a kindness, arranges for him to lunch with a gathering of scientists and mathematicians, a group which includes the current Prime Minister, Mr Chapelle. However, the event is shockingly disrupted when a mathematician called Maggerson not only arrives late, but bursts into the room in a state of hysteria, crying out about something he calls "The Terror". In the wake of this incident, Gerald begins behaving in a secretive manner; Jimmy learns only that he has been consulted on a confidential matter. One night Gerald goes out to meet someone---only to be shot and fatally wounded. He lives just long enough to urge Jimmy to reveal the contents of a certain letter, a letter which proves to have been burnt and destroyed, all but a reference to Mr Maggerson... Although his ability to tell an improbable story in a credible manner was Edgar Wallace's main strengths, he overreached himself in The Day Of Uniting. Unexpectedly, this turns out to be a work of science fiction, a literally apocalyptic thriller about the possible end of the world. However, Wallace tells his story as he would any other crime thriller - right down to the paint-by-numbers love-plot - with the threat posed to the world treated like the identity of the murderer in a whodunnit, a late revelation rather than what the book is "about"---which ultimately has the effect of trivialising its premise. In addition, the potential aversion of the impending disaster turns on something so prosaic, it can only result in an anticlimax. However, if The Day Of Uniting fails to hold together overall, for some of it its subplots engage the attention perhaps even more than Wallace intended, with both abstruse mathematics and the technicalities of specialised printing playing important roles in the story. There is also a measure of philosophical interest, as what begins as a theoretical consideration of "the public's right to know" becomes a matter of the most urgent practicality when the government must decide whether to inform the people or not of the fate hanging over them, and Jimmy Blake becomes one of a select handful entrusted with the truth. But perhaps the most intriguing thing about The Day Of Uniting is Wallace's cynical view of how people might react in the face of total catastrophe: not just, but particularly, among those with the responsibility of providing leadership during the crisis, we find, not stiff upper lips, but hysteria, violence, and incapacitating terror...

    They stopped at Guildford for breakfast, and Guildford was en fête. "The Day of Uniting" coincided with the unveiling of the new War Memorial, and the streets were alive with holiday folk. Here, apparently, the instructions in the Proclamation were not being observed. Servants were on duty at the hotel where they breakfasted, though one of them told him that they were being released at twelve o'clock, to spend the day with their families.
    The newspapers had been published that morning, since their publication did not involve working very far into "The Day." Jimmy bought a copy on the street and gazed at it with interest. In billions of years' time, perhaps, a new civilisation would reach its zenith. Would there be brains that could understand, supposing their owners discovered a newspaper which had escaped the world's destruction and the passage of ages, just what all these little figures in black upon white signified to a bygone age?
    He turned to the principal news page. There was a story of a crime which had been committed a week before and which had excited attention. There was a statement concerning a new measure for the adjustment of Income Tax which was to be introduced at the next session of Parliament; there were one or two speeches; and the record of a meeting of the Royal Society, where a Professor had lectured upon the peculiar properties which had been discovered in radio-active clay.
    Jimmy folded the paper with a sigh and put it into his pocket. "A very uninteresting newspaper," he said; "and thank God for it!"

213lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:48 pm

And next up---

The Mystery League Inc. Challenge:

#10: The Monster Of Grammont by George Goodchild (published in the UK in 1927, and in the US in 1930; cover art by Gene Thurston)



This represents the second appearance in this challenge of a book by George Goodchild: the first, the bizarre Jack O' Lantern, makes me both interested and apprehensive about this one. I suspect, however, that as with many of the Mystery League books, it will be a matter of liking the cover better than the book---another simple but striking effort by Gene Thurston.

The Monster Of Grammont was first published in the UK in 1927, but did not achieve an American release until the Mystery League picked it up in 1930. There was no second US edition, but the book was re-released in Britain in 1937.

214lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:49 pm



Penelope's Postscripts: Switzerland, Venice, Wales, Devon, Home - As its extended title indicates, this final entry in Kate Douglas Wiggin's series featuring the peripatetic Penelope Hamilton and her friends is a collection of short stories describing the group's travel adventures outside of the touring of England, Scotland and Ireland which occupies the three main narratives. The stories were, self-evidently, published at different times over a course of years, with this collection appearing in 1915. The tone of the earliest ones, which find Penelope and Salemina in Italy and Switzerland, is more travelogue-y and less humorous than would later be the case. However, their abbreviated length keeps them from palling; and the glimpses offered of the places described some hundred years on remain interesting. The final story is a ten-years-later effort describing (for the first and only time) Penelope's life at home in America, with "Himself" (aka William Beresford) and their three children. After the early works' enthusiastic embrace of travel, and the inserts dealing with Penelope's efforts as an artist, its "domesticity is best" attitude seems out of place and a bit hypocritical.

    Salemina is a philanthropist and educator of the first rank, and is collecting all sorts of valuable material to put at the service of her own country when she returns to it, which will not be a moment before her letter of credit is exhausted.
    I, too, am quasi-educational, for I had a few years of experience in mothering and teaching little waifs and strays of the streets before I began to paint pictures. Never shall I regret those nerve-racking, back-breaking, heart-warming, weary, and beautiful years, when, all unconsciously, I was learning to paint children by living with them...
    We had not been especially high-minded or educational in Switzerland, Salemina and I. The worm will turn; and there is a point where the improvement of one’s mind seems a farce, and the service of humanity, for the moment, a duty only born of a diseased imagination.
    How can one sit on a vine-embowered balcony facing lovely Lake Geneva and think about modern problems,---Improved Tenements, Child Labour, Single Tax, Sweat Shops, and the Right Training of the Rising Civilisation? Blue Lake Geneva!---blue as a woman’s eye, blue as the vault of heaven, dropped into the lap of the green earth like a great sparkling sapphire! Mont Blanc you know to be just behind the clouds on the other side, and that presently, after hours or days of patient waiting, he may condescend to unveil himself to your worshipful gaze...


215harrygbutler
dec 27, 2018, 7:41 pm

>213 lyzard: I don't know that I can bear to start the new year with a Mystery League book, so I probably won't plunge into it until the second week of January — unless it's something we're to try to read before the end of the year.

216lyzard
dec 28, 2018, 3:50 pm

Well. THAT was horrifying. :(

Would it be paranoid to suggest that it all happened because I was actually getting some reviews written...??

217lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 3:52 pm

>215 harrygbutler:

I'll be reading The Monster Of Grammont in the Rare Books section, so I won't be able to access it for a week or two, when my academic library reopens after its Christmas / New Year break.

Still pondering what gets the honour of 'First Book Of The New Year'. :)

218rosalita
dec 28, 2018, 4:06 pm

Yay! You're back! That'll teach ya to try to post reviews.

219lyzard
dec 28, 2018, 4:17 pm

I won't make that mistake again... :)

220lyzard
dec 28, 2018, 5:40 pm



The Scarab Murder Case - Donald Scarlett arrives at the penthouse apartment of Philo Vance in a highly agitated state, and abruptly announces the murder of philanthropist, Benjamin Kyle. The young man explains that when he arrived at the home of famous Egyptologist, Dr Mindrum Bliss, where he was due to work in the private museum, he found the front door open; subsequently, he discovered Mr Kyle lying dead in the museum. Pressed by Vance, Scarlett describes the household, which in addition to Dr Bliss himself consists of his much younger, half-Egyptian wife, Meryt; Mrs Bliss' long-time servant, Hani; and the butler, Brush; while Kyle's nephew, a Mr Salvater, who works with Bliss, is a permanent house-guest. Apart from the shock of his discovery, Scarlett is in despair over Kyle's death as, persuaded by his nephew, the philanthropist had been financing the expeditions headed by Dr Bliss. At the scene, Vance and District Attorney, John Markham, learn that Brush admitted Kyle at ten o'clock, for a meeting with Dr Bliss; it was ten-thirty when Scarlett found the body. The two men find the scene as described: Kyle lies dead in the far corner of the museum at the foot of a statue of Anubis, his skull crushed by a second, smaller statue---one of Sakhmet, the Egyptian goddess of vengeance. Near the body, Vance discovers a tie-pin, its jewel consisting of a lapis-lazuli scarab... The fifth book in the series by "S. S. Van Dine" (Willard Huntington Wright) featuring dilettante detective, Philo Vance, is something of an endurance test, with all of the series' most aggravating features ramped up to the n-th degree. Wright's habit of using Vance as a mouthpiece via which to show off the depth and breadth of his own knowledge is completely out of control here, with the reader subjected to lectures on obscure (and irrelevant) points of Egyptian to an eyes-glazing-over degree. This is of course in addition to all the series' other, ongoing annoyances: Wright's tendency to tell, not show; Vance's endless affectations and posturing; and, perhaps most exasperating of all, the fact that the reader is apparently supposed to like and/or be amused by the brutish Sergeant Heath, whose only joy in life is beating confessions out of suspects. Even so---we could forgive all this if the mystery almost obscured by all this persiflage was of a high enough standard, but in The Scarab Murder Case that just isn't so. For all that Wright, via his own stand-in, Vance's secretary / narrator, "S. S. Van Dine", positively drowns the Kyle murder in adjectives meant to convey its impenetrable nature (check out the quote below to see what I mean), there's nothing here that any moderately experienced mystery reader won't be able to figure out a lot faster than the brilliant Philo Vance does. Be that as it may---it is of course Vance who identifies all of the important evidence at the scene, which all points to Dr Bliss: the scarab tie-pin is his; an expenditure report compiled by him is found underneath the body; and bloody footprints are found on the spiral staircase leading from the museum up into Dr Bliss' private study. This is enough for Sergeant Heath, to whom these signs mean Bliss's obvious guilt. To Vance, however, these signs are a little too obvious---so that the question becomes, who wanted to get rid of both Kyle and Bliss? - or, perhaps, who hated Bliss enough to use Kyle's death as a weapon against him? Expanding the investigation, Vance finds no shortage of motive: both Mrs Bliss and Mr Salveter benefit under Kyle's will; while Salveter is only too obviously in love with Mrs Bliss---as, for that matter, is Donald Scarlett; while Hani, for all his devotion to the Egyptologist's wife, bitterly resents her husband's removal of artefacts from their country of origins...which, Vance discovers, he did both legally and illegally...

    Philo Vance was drawn into the Scarab murder case by sheer coincidence, although there is little doubt that John F.-X. Markham---New York’s District Attorney---would sooner or later have enlisted his services. But it is problematic if even Vance, with his fine analytic mind and his remarkable flair for the subtleties of human psychology, could have solved that bizarre and astounding murder if he had not been the first observer on the scene; for, in the end, he was able to put his finger on the guilty person only because of the topsy-turvy clews that had met his eye during his initial inspection.
    Those clews---highly misleading from the materialistic point of view---eventually gave him the key to the murderer’s mentality and thus enabled him to elucidate one of the most complicated and incredible criminal problems in modern police history.
    The brutal and fantastic murder of that old philanthropist and art patron, Benjamin H. Kyle, became known as the Scarab murder case almost immediately, as a result of the fact that it had taken place in a famous Egyptologist’s private museum and had centred about a rare blue scarabæus that had been found beside the mutilated body of the victim...

221lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 7:36 pm



4.50 From Paddington (US title: What Mrs McGillicuddy Saw!) - Travelling from London to the village of St Mary Mead, Elspeth McGillicuddy has a shocking experience: for a few moments her train runs parallel with another and, through the windows, she catches a glimpse of a tall, dark-haired man choking a woman to death... Mrs McGillicuddy does her best to report the matter, alerting both the police and railway officials; but no-one takes her very seriously until she tells her story to her friend, Jane Marple. With Mrs McGillycuddy due to depart the country, Miss Marple takes the matter over. Both through her own exertions, and via the assistance of friends, she determines in her own mind on which train the murder must have occurred, and that the body was in all likelihood thrown out on a long curving embankment at the edge of the property owned by the Crackenthorpe family; as it has not been found, Miss Marple concludes that the murderer recovered and hid it, which suggests premeditation. Further than this Miss Marple cannot go on her own. Instead, she enlists the services of a terrifyingly efficient young woman called Lucy Eylesbarrow... This 1957 mystery by Agatha Christie is perhaps most interesting for its amusing subtext of female solidarity, with Miss Marple, Mrs McGillicuddy and Lucy Eylesbarrow - and Miss Marple's former maid, "the faithful Florence" - uniting against the rather derisive disbelief of the official (read: male) world in the face of the reported murder: "silly old women", is the unspoken verdict. Less amusingly, it is a book that further confirms my observation that many of Agatha's most cold-blooded murders can be found within the so-called "cosy" world of Miss Marple, with motives of a particularly nasty and self-serving nature eventually being brought to light. 4.50 From Paddington also offers another fascinating glimpse into conditions in post-war England, this time "the servant crisis" that hit when the people who actually fought the war decided they didn't want to be servants any more. This situation has allowed the practical and intelligent Lucy Eylesbarrow to build a profitable business for herself, offering total housekeeping services in exchange for exorbitant fees; it is also this that allows her to infiltrate the Crackenthorpe household. Emma Crackenthorpe, the put-upon only daughter, is only too glad to accept when Lucy offers her services at a reduced rate, in exchange for working in a house near to where (ahem) her elderly "aunt" is living---Miss Marple having taken up temporary residence with Florence. Thereafter, Lucy divides her time between housekeeping, detective work, and fending off the advances of the males of the household: irascible, miserly old Mr Crackenthorpe; his very proper son, Harold, a businessman; the far less proper Alfred and Cedric, minor criminal and artist, respectively; and Bryan Eastley, the widowed son-in-law. Working on Miss Marple's deductions, Lucy does indeed find the body of the woman from the train, concealed in a sarcophagus in an old barn, among many other artefacts collected by Luther Crackenthorpe in his younger days: a disposal site which argues intimate knowledge of the property. By the time Inspector Dermot Craddock is officially assigned to the case, he has already heard from Miss Marple, and is only too grateful for her input---and that of Lucy, who he finds himself both attracted to and intimated by. But the official investigation goes nowhere until, against her family's wishes, Emma reveals that the victim may be the widow of another son, Edmund, who was killed in the war. The woman, known only as Martine, wrote a short time before to inform the family of the marriage, and of the existence of a son---but having made an appointment to visit, she never showed up...

    "I know, dear," said Miss Marple. "The wrong murder, that's what you mean."
    "Yes. Martine's death wouldn't do Harold---or any of the others---any good. Not until---"
    "Not until Luther Crackenthorpe died," said Craddock. "Exactly. That occurred to me. And Mr Crackenthorpe, senior, I gather from his doctor, is a much better life than any outsider would imagine."
    "He'll last for years," said Lucy. Then she frowned.
    "Yes?" Craddock spoke encouragingly.
    "He was rather ill at Christmas-time. He said the doctor made a lot of fuss about it--- 'Anyone would have thought I'd been poisoned by the fuss he made.' That's what he said." She looked inquiringly at Craddock.
    "Yes, that's really what I want to ask Dr Quimper about."
    "Well, I must go," said Lucy. "Heavens, it's late."
    Miss Marple put down her knitting and picked up The Times with a half-done crossword puzzle. "I wish I had a dictionary here," she murmured. "Tontine and Tokay---I always mix those two words up. One, I believe, is a Hungarian wine."
    "That's Tokay," said Lucy, looking back from the door. "But one's a five-letter word and one's a seven. What's the clue?"
    "Oh, it wasn't in the crossword," said Miss Marple vaguely. "It was in my head."


222lyzard
Redigerat: dec 28, 2018, 7:11 pm

Despite what you would think was plenty to work with, for most editions of 4.50 From Paddington a depressing number of people seem to have been content to slap a train on the cover and leave it at that---or conversely, a watch or clock. Fortunately, a few others got better into the (nasty) spirit of things---mostly, I note, the Americans:


    


A few others - mostly European - got a bit arty:


    


And as always, there's a subset that just makes you go, "Huh?":


    

223rosalita
dec 28, 2018, 7:28 pm

Well, I like the top ones best, particularly that Uber-pulpy one on the right. We need to bring back that cover style!

And the first one in the second row: Are those ... Venus flytraps? It's been a while since I read this one but that seems rather random!

Oh, and most important: Very nice review — or report, rather, since you weren't critical. :-p This is one of my favorite Marples and you mentioned all the reasons why.

224lyzard
dec 28, 2018, 7:38 pm

The middle one of the arty set makes me laugh. And yes, definitely Venus fly-traps, though I'm sure I couldn't tell you why.

Thanks! I guess I got my criticisms out of my system with The Scarab Murder Case... :D

225rosalita
dec 28, 2018, 7:47 pm

Yes, that face in the window of the center arty one is actually a really clever design concept.

Ah, yes. That Scarab Murder Case — now that was a proper review! (I wish that guy could know how much enjoyment we are getting from his mansplaining.)

226lyzard
dec 28, 2018, 7:49 pm

Ya gotta laugh, as they say...

227lyzard
dec 28, 2018, 10:29 pm



Behind That Curtain - A small luncheon is held to honour Sir Frederic Bruce of Scotland Yard. Also present are Barry Kirk, at whose apartment Sir Frederic is staying; Sergeant Charlie Chan of the Honolulu police, who is passing through San Francisco on his way home; reporter Bill Rankin, whose idea it was to bring together the detectives; and J. V. Morrow of the District Attorney's office, a lawyer with an interest in criminology---who turns out to be an attractive young woman, to the surprise and dismay of the smitten Barry. Sir Frederic is brought to describe two unsolved cases which haunt him, though occurring many years before: the murder of a solicitor, Hilary Galt, who was found with his boots sitting by him and a pair of Chinese slippers on his feet; and the disappearance of Eve Durand, a young woman living in Peshawar with her soldier-husband, who during an evening picnic simply vanished. The same group meets again at a dinner-party hosted by Barry, where they are joined by his grandmother, Mrs Kirk, and her secretary, Mrs Tupper-Brock; a society couple, the Enderbys; stage-actress Gloria Garland; and John Beetham, a famous explorer, who after dinner gives a lecture and slide-show about his adventures in India and the Middle East. His talk is lengthy and during it some of the guests come and go, including Sir Frederic---who is later found shot dead, and in his stockinged feet: the Chinese slippers he was wearing have gone... Published in 1928, Behind That Curtain follows on almost immediately from the previous book in the series, the Californian desert-set The Chinese Parrot, and finds poor Charlie Chan still trying - and failing - to return home to Honolulu, where his wife is awaiting the birth of their 11th (!) child. (Spoiler: he doesn't make it in time.) And just as well, too, in the interests of justice, if not of Mrs Chan: while June Morrow is instructed to work on the murder of Sir Frederic Bruce with local police detective, Captain Flannery - who roundly disapproves of her, and resents taking orders from a woman; he's not too crazy about "Chinamen", either - it is of course Charlie who succeeds in revealing the connection between the murder of Sir Frederic and the two unsolved cases from his past, neither of which he ever gave up on. In fact---the cover artists for Behind That Curtain were a little over-literal: the "curtain" in question is the sixteen years that have passed since Hilary Galt was murdered, and Eve Durand disappeared. The removal of the Chinese slippers from the scene of Sir Frederic's murder - the same slippers found on Hilary Galt's body - suggests that the latter case may bear most upon the detective's death; yet it becomes clear to the investigators that most of Sir Frederic's efforts had been focused upon tracking down Eve Durand, who he had succeeded in tracing through a series of assumed identities. Indeed, it seems that not only did he successfully trace her to San Francisco, but that she may have been among the female guests at the party; although Bill Rankin identifies two other women of the approximate age with whom Sir Frederic was in contact: Lila Barr, employed by a company with offices in the same building as Barry Kirk's apartment; and Grace Lane, the building's elevator operator. When it is discovered that John Beerham was not only in Peshawar fifteen years before, but at the party from which Eve vanished, Captain Flannery leaps to various conclusions; but in the absence of sufficient evidence, the adventurer coolly defies him. When Sir Frederic's colleague, Inspector Duff, arrives in company with Major Eric Durand, who has never stopped searching for his missing wife, it is assumed that light will at last be cast upon the confusing case---but Durand denies that any of the women involved is the elusive Eve...

    "I feel humble and contrite," said Chan. "In spite of which, suggestions keep crowding to my tongue. Have you heard old Chinese saying, Captain--- 'It is always darkest underneath the lamp'?"
    "I'm fed up on Chinese sayings," replied the Captain.
    "The one I have named means what? That just above our heads the light is blazing. Such is the fact, Captain Flannery. Take my advice, and worry no more about Eve Durand."
    "Why not?" asked Flannery, in spite of himself.
    "Because you are poised on extreme verge of the great triumph of your life. In a few hours at the most your head will be ringing with your own praises."
    "How's that?"
    "In a few hours you will arrest the murderer of Sir Frederic Bruce," Chan told him calmly.
    "Say---how do you get that way?" queried Flannery.
    "There is one condition. It may be hard one for you," Chan continued. "For your own sake, I beseech you to comply with same."
    "One condition? What's that?"
    "You must listen once more---and for the last time---to what you call a Chinaman."

228lyzard
dec 28, 2018, 11:48 pm

The Joys Of Being A Woman, #27,964 in a series: it's all about the charm, and of course being "better-class"...

Also from The Boston Globe, 15th October, 1926:


229rosalita
dec 29, 2018, 11:22 am

"No embarrassment" in asking for Kotex? Well yes, but only until they become better known and everyone knows what they are! Perhaps I'm simply not part of the "better class" of woman.

230lyzard
dec 29, 2018, 2:19 pm

Still, you have to admire the verbal dexterity involved in advertising something without saying what it is.

I must say I was surprised to find an ad like this in a mainstream newspaper at this relatively early date, though of course it was in "the women's section" (i.e. the same page as the cooking tips and Dorothy Dix).

231lyzard
Redigerat: dec 29, 2018, 4:22 pm



The Doctor Who Held Hands (serialised as: The Black Ace)- Madame Storey receives, anonymously, a large commission to expose and ruin Doctor Jacmer Touchon, who practises what he calls "psycho-synthesis". While Touchon explains his technique as a form of purification, the banishing of evil thoughts, in fact the secrets revealed to him become the basis for blackmail. As it happens, Touchon was once a Professor of Psychology, and a young Rosika Storey one of his students; she knows him for a brilliant and charismatic man. Madame Storey sets several of her operatives to watch Touchon and his contacts, with the aim of identifying those involved in his blackmail scheme. It is soon established that while Touchon is at the head of an extensive criminal organisation, very few of those involved know who they are working for. Meanwhile, Madame Storey herself makes seemingly casual contact with Touchon, who leaps at the renewed acquaintance. A dangerous game of cat-and-mouse develops between the two, with a surface flirtation concealing far darker motives on both parts... After a run of short stories and novellas, Hulbert Footner published this full-length novel in 1929. The Doctor Who Held Hands is an odd mixture of psychological drama and crime thriller, dividing its narrative between a series of set-piece showdowns between Madame Storey and Dr Touchon as the two manoeuvre for an advantage, and Madame Storey's plunge into the criminal underworld, intended to undermine Touchon's operation from the inside. Though dominated by his overweening ego, Touchon is in fact a brilliant psychologist, whose expert manipulation of others tests Madame Storey's powers to the utmost. The level at which the game is played is established at the outset, when one of the operatives succeeds in corrupting one of Touchon's agents: when he comes to Madame Storey to tell what he knows, he is shot and killed by a second agent---who is in turn shot and killed by Touchon, who thus not only removes two potentially dangerous loose ends, but establishes himself in the public perception as Madame Storey's "protector" and the dominant one of the two famous personalities. The crowning insult is Touchon's subsequent management of the police investigation, as he effortlessly makes a puppet out of the officer in charge. However, it is this wholly calculated act of double violence that provides Madame Storey with her opportunity: the second gunman, a young man called Arthur Sims, had a devoted friend, Jack Coler, who swears vengeance against Touchon---for whom, all unknowing, he is working. Seeing in Coler a way into Touchon's organisation, Madame Storey begins an elaborate masquerade, disguising herself and adopting the persona of a society girl with a taste for dangerous living. In this guise she soon attracts the attention of the handsome, reckless Coler---but her subsequent efforts to make him a weapon in her battle with Touchon become dangerously complicated when, in pretending to be attracted to him, she begins to fall for him in reality...

    It was a very strange situation because of course Touchon knew that we knew the official version of the crime was a tissue of fabrications. He knew, notwithstanding what Mme. Storey might say in the newspapers, that we were working hard on the case and hoped to bring the murder home to him. Yet it suited his sardonic humour to pose as Mme. Storey's saviour and her ardent admirer who hoped to become something closer. All the shifts, evasions, and posings that were entailed exercised his ingenuity to the full, and he enjoyed himself...
    For me it was a continual ordeal. I was terrified of them both. Seeing them smiling in each other's faces with such apparent frankness, indulging in good-natured banter, playing the old, old game of elegant philandering, and knowing as I did that each determined nature was bent upon the destruction of the other, the strain was fearful. Touchon was ceaselessly seeking to charm my mistress with his basilisk eyes, while hers skated lightly away, but always conveying an intimation that they might yet succumb. She did it so well that sometimes I thought it was real and became sick with anxiety on her account. Touchon was undoubtedly, in a manner of speaking, "in love" with my mistress, but woe betide the woman on whom his fancy rested!
    Still his effrontery puzzled me. I remember saying to Mme. Storey: "I don't see what he can expect to gain by his love-making. How can he ever hope to prevail over you when he knows that you know what a black-hearted wretch he is?"
    She shrugged. "That's the kind of man he is. He believes in the power of evil. In his philosophy what he calls love has nothing to do with decency. He looks forward to the day when he shall say to me: 'I am a thief and a blackmailer and a murderer, but you cannot resist me. I am your master. Come!' To him that would be the supreme triumph."
    I shivered...

232lyzard
dec 29, 2018, 4:20 pm

Another one for Harry:


233rosalita
dec 29, 2018, 4:41 pm

>230 lyzard: I remember being a little girl and totally puzzled by TV commercials for "feminine napkins". I thought maybe they were softer so as not to rub off ladies' lipstick. (!)

I was rather slow as a child ...

234lyzard
dec 29, 2018, 4:47 pm

Yes, from memory I was a little late to that party too. :D

235lyzard
dec 29, 2018, 4:47 pm

Finished The Romance Of Elaine for TIOLI #12.

Still reading Gray Terror by Harman Landon.

236rosalita
dec 29, 2018, 4:48 pm

And we both turned out fine!

We did, didn't we? ;-)

237lyzard
Redigerat: dec 29, 2018, 4:48 pm

Umm...

238lyzard
Redigerat: dec 29, 2018, 5:04 pm

Note to self:

My previous lengthy working out of the correct order of the Craig Kennedy series is here.

At that time I was trying to figure out where Arthur Reeve's novelisations of his screenplays for the silent serials, The Exploits Of Elaine, The New Exploits Of Elaine, and The Romance Of Elaine fitted into his Craig Kennedy series: these female-focused stories feature an all-but-unrecognisable version of Reeve's "scientific detective", who spends less time being scientific than he does mooning over Elaine like a lovesick puppy---ugh!

Of The Romance Of Elaine I previously said:

#9: The Romance Of Elaine (novelisation adapted from the screenplays of The New Exploits Of Elaine (1915) and The Romance Of Elaine (1916); UK variant: The Triumph Of Elaine, which is The Romance Of Elaine plus five further chapters)

If it turns out there is a readily available copy of The Triumph Of Elaine, I might just read those final chapters. At first glance, however, there isn't; and not even my OCD is demanding I go out of my way to track one down. Unfortunately, however, it is demanding that I access the series page and remove The Triumph Of Elaine from the list, or at least turn it into #9.5...and then renumber the subsequent sixteen series entries...

Anyway---that brings me back to the Kennedy series proper, and IN ORDER. Phew!

239harrygbutler
dec 29, 2018, 6:19 pm

>232 lyzard: I don't have that issue yet, and I'm also lacking the Feb. 16 issue, which contains the concluding part. There's a good chance I'll get them sooner rather than later, however, as right now I'm concentrating my new pulp purchases on filling in gaps in the 1929–1931 range — though I grab bargains from other years whenever possible, :-)

240lyzard
Redigerat: dec 29, 2018, 7:04 pm

>239 harrygbutler:

So novels were usually serialised over about six issues?

241lyzard
Redigerat: dec 29, 2018, 7:07 pm

So the first time I try to catch up reviews, we get the weird URL issue; the second time, the touchstones and search function go hinky.

Don't try telling me it's not a conspiracy, because I wouldn't believe you...

242lyzard
Redigerat: dec 29, 2018, 8:26 pm



A Thief In The Night - This third entry in E. W. Hornung's series featuring professional thief and amateur cricketer, A. J. Raffles, is a collection of short stories recounting the gentleman-crook's adventures at various points in his career. Its overall tone suggests that the critics finally got to Hornung, as the volume opens with an admission that Raffles is a scoundrel, and many of his activities thoroughly disreputable: something previously glossed over on the score of his charm and courage. Likewise, the questionable relationship between Raffles and his narrator / sidekick, Harry "Bunny" Manders, is offset by the opening story of Bunny and his lost love, to which we get allusions in the rest. If we can forgive this cowardly retreat on Hornung's part, the stories themselves are sufficiently entertaining. In Out Of Paradise, Bunny is horrified to realise that he and Raffles are burglarising the house of his former fiancée; but worse is to follow... In The Chest Of Silver, Bunny is forced to take drastic action when Raffles' collection of silver - every bit of it stolen - comes under threat by a rival thief while Raffles is out of town. In The Rest Cure, Raffles retreats for a time from the eye of the law by staying wholly within the doors of a furnished house in another part of London; that the house belongs to someone else is neither here nor there... In The Criminologists' Club, when Raffles is drawn into a trap by a group of amateur criminologists, he must exercise all his ingenuity to extricate himself. In The Field Of Philippi, Raffles' return to his school for an Old Boys' match puts him back at the scene of his first nocturnal adventures. In A Trap To Catch A Cracksman, Raffles' ego gets the better of him when someone brags about having developed the perfect thief-trap. In The Spoils Of Sacrilege, a desperate Bunny sinks to the expedient of robbing his old family home. In The Raffles Relics, when Raffles discovers that an exhibition dedicated to him has been added to Scotland Yard's 'Black Museum', he is unable to resist the temptation of burglarising it. In The Last Word, Raffles tries to make up for a great wrong he once did Bunny...

If I must tell more tales of Raffles, I can but back to our earliest days together, and fill in the blanks left by discretion in existing annals. In so doing I may indeed fill some small part of an infinitely greater blank, across which you may conceive me to have stretched my canvas for the first frank portrait of my friend. The whole truth cannot harm him now. I shall paint in every wart. Raffles was a villain, when all is written; it is no service to his memory to glaze the fact; yet I have done so myself before to-day. I have omitted whole heinous episodes. I have dwelt unduly on the redeeming side. And this I may do again, blinded even as I write by the gallant glamour that made my villain more to me than any hero. But at least there shall be no more reservations, and as an earnest I shall make no further secret of the greatest wrong that even Raffles ever did me...

243lyzard
Redigerat: dec 29, 2018, 8:52 pm



Elsie At Nantucket - Well. I praised Elsie's New Relations, the previous entry in the Elsie Dinsmore series, on the grounds that it actually had a plot: a rarity in this neck of the woods, believe you me. Alas, Martha Finley clearly recognised that she had made a misstep, as her follow-up, Elsie At Nantucket, has NO PLOT WHATSOEVER. This entry is 75% travelogue, 10% Bible quotes (which all come in a rush towards the end, as if Finley realised she'd slackened off in that department), and 15% scenes of the Bible-sanctioned beating of a child. It makes for a peculiar mix. Finley is quite up-front about her inspiration here (for the 75%, that is): she admits that she once had a very nice holiday in Nantucket, and thought she would spread its gospel to her readers (my choice of words, not hers). When Captain Raymond receives a month's leave from his naval service, he proposes a summer holiday in Nantucket, which sees Dinsmores, Travillas, Raymonds and Johnsons packing up and heading north. Once they settle on the island, every single thing of possible interest is visited by them, and described in detail to the reader---and sometimes more than once. The only thing more tiresome than this welter of tourist-speak is Finley's carelessness over repetitive language: whenever she wants to convey that someone in the group is making a joke, or even just being pleasant, the only word she can think to use is "sportive"; she sometimes mixes it up with other descriptions ("I shall see that she obeys, mother," the captain said, in a tenderly sportive tone...), but the word is always there...which I guess has the upside of helping readers through this book via drinking-game. Meanwhile, poor Lulu Raymond, still struggling with her temper and obedience issues, drives her father to extremes---thus adding to the narrative the squick strangely absent this time in the scenes between Elsie and her creepy father. Equally uncomfortable in its own way is that, at one point, the novel suffers a sudden outbreak of rabid anti-Catholicism, something not present in the series since the original Elsie Dinsmore, when her father's threat to send her to convent-school prompted the then-eight-year-old Elsie to throw a literal fit. Elsie At Nantucket is only about 150 pages long, but even so, Finley was clearly struggling to fill her quota: towards the end she scoops up her characters and deposits them in Ohio, for a celebration of the 100th birthday of family connection, Miss Stanhope, aka "Aunt Wealthy": a coda which allows the novel to close on an appropriately discomforting note, with everyone parting from Aunt Wealthy with the thought that they'll never see her alive again...

    What with bathing, driving, and wandering about on foot over the lovely moors, time flew fast to our 'Sconseters.
    It was their purpose to visit every point of interest on the island, and to try all its typical amusements. They made frequent visits to Nantucket Town, particularly that the children might take their swimming lessons in the quiet water of its harbor; also repeated such drives and rambles as they found exceptionably enjoyable.
    Max wanted to try camping out for a few weeks in company with Harold and Herbert Travilla and Bob Johnson, but preferred to wait until his father should leave them, not feeling willing to miss the rare pleasure of his society. And the other lads, quite fond of the captain themselves, did not object to waiting.
    In the mean time they went blue-fishing (trying it by both accepted modes---the "heave and haul" from a rowboat or at anchor, and trolling from a yacht under full sail), hunting, eel-bobbing, and perch-fishing.
    The ladies sometimes went with them on their fishing excursions; Zoe and Betty oftener than any of the others. Lulu went, too, whenever she was permitted, which was usually when her father made one of the party.
    "We haven't been on a 'squantum' yet," remarked Betty, one evening, addressing the company in general; "suppose we try that to-morrow."
    "Suppose you first tell us what a 'squantum' is," said Mrs Dinsmore.
    "Oh, Aunt Rose, don't you know that that is the Nantucket name for a picnic?"


244harrygbutler
dec 29, 2018, 9:07 pm

>240 lyzard: I think it depended on the overall length of the novel, with some in four or five parts, and short novels, or those with more space available in each issue, divided into just three. I'm fairly sure it varied from magazine to magazine as well. Edgar Rice Burroughs' Under the Moons of Mars was serialized in six consecutive issues of The All-Story in 1912, but Thuvia, Maid of Mars got just three issues in All-Story Weekly in 1916. Christie's Who Killed Ackroyd? was serialized in four parts in Flynn's Weekly simultaneously with the publication of the book in the U.S., and the novelization of Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood's The Bat likewise was done as a four-part serial beginning in the issue immediately after the conclusion of the Christie novel (and in the same issue, July 17, 1926, appeared one of Christie's Harley Quin stories).

245lyzard
dec 29, 2018, 9:08 pm

November stats:

Works read: 13
TIOLI: 13, in 13 different challenges

Mystery / thriller: 6
Contemporary drama: 1
Historical drama: 1
Young adult: 1
Non-fiction: 1
Humour: 1
Classic: 1
Horror: 1

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

Owned: 2
Library: 3
Ebooks: 8

Male authors : female authors : anonymous authors: 9 : 4 : 0

Oldest work: The Mysteries Of London (Volume II) by George W. M. Reynolds (1846)
Newest work: Satanskin by James Havoc (1992)

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

YTD stats:

Works read: 154
TIOLI: 154, in 126 different challenges, with 10 shared reads

Mystery / thriller: 68
Contemporary drama: 17
Classics: 17
Historical drama: 11
Young adult: 8
Non-fiction: 8
Horror: 7
Humour: 6
Historical romance: 4
Short stories: 4
Contemporary romance: 3
Play: 1

Re-reads: 29
Series works: 72
Blog reads: 9
1932: 3
1931: 10
Virago / Persephone: 3
Potential decommission: 19

Owned: 36
Library: 50 (including 1 ebook)
Ebook: 68

Male authors (editors) : female authors : anonymous: 85 (including 3 using a female pseudonym) : 70 : 4

Oldest work: A Defence Of Their Majesties King William And Queen Mary, Against An Infamous And Jesuitical Libel, Entituled, A True Portraicture Of William Henry Prince Of Nassau, &c by Pierre Jurieu (1689) / The Great Bastard, Protector Of The Little One by Anonymous (1689)
Newest work: Kai Lung Raises His Voice by Ernest Bramah (2010) / Little Vampire Women by Lynn Messina and Louisa May Alcott (2010)

246lyzard
Redigerat: dec 29, 2018, 9:09 pm

Me dashing through my reviews as the end of the year draws near:


247rosalita
dec 29, 2018, 10:37 pm

Aw! That’s one tuckered out SLOTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

248lyzard
dec 30, 2018, 12:20 am

>244 harrygbutler:

More about the length of the novel than stringing out popular authors, then? Interesting, thanks!

>247 rosalita:

He's a ball of energy compared to me...

249lyzard
Redigerat: dec 30, 2018, 12:22 am

Finished Gray Terror for TIOLI #2.

That is #170 for the year, and will be the last of the year---eep!

I haven't decided yet what will be #1 for 2019, though of course I have A List...

250lyzard
Redigerat: dec 30, 2018, 1:22 am

...and in the meantime - having successfully sorted out Craig Kennedy - I may have stumbled into anther series conundrum, in Herman Landon's Gray Phantom books. Hunting around to find out what comes next, I have come across some contradictory information---including a suggestion that "Gray Terror" was the name of a Gray Phantom short story, rather than a novel.

I remarked up above about the delay between the apparent, initial publication of Gray Terror (1923, I thought) and its newspaper serialisation in 1926; is it possible the same title was appended to a different book?

Some of the Gray Phantom novels were serialised in Detective Story Magazine prior to book publication, often (sigh) with a change of title in between. From checking the dates, I think there's some misinformation out there about which serial title applies to which book.

The Gray Phantom's Defense, which was printed in 6 parts between June 1 - July 6, 1920, would logically be the first Gray Phantom novel, simply titled The Gray Phantom. The Gray Phantom's Romance, printed in 5 parts between Jan 15 - Feb 12, 1921, would be The Gray Phantom's Return.

After that it gets tricky. Another serial called The Gray Phantom's Madness appeared in 6 parts from May 26 - June 30, 1923---and while that title suits the book I just read as Gray Terror (also published in 1923), in Yesterday's Faces: From The Dark Side by Robert Sampson, it is suggested rather that this serial was reissued as Hands Unseen---

---which would mean I've been reading OUT OF ORDER; or then again, maybe not: not all sources list it, but there is reference to another serial called Human Pawn, which would also suit what I just read (the Phantom nearly goes mad being used as a pawn), and which appeared in 7 parts between September 30 - November 11, 1922. In all likelihood this is what I just read as Gray Terror, but there is confusion regarding its book publication date: WorldCat lists a first edition in 1923, but Sampson has it as first published in 1925. Perhaps it was reissued by a different publisher in 1925---which might also explain what I have to call its re-serialisation in 1926.

Anyhoo--- This was followed by The Speaking Fog, printed in 6 parts from August 30 - October 4, 1924, and reissued as Gray Magic.

So my best guess at an accurate series order is:

#1: The Gray Phantom (aka The Gray Phantom's Defense) (1921)
#2: The Gray Phantom's Return (aka The Gray Phantom's Romance) (1922)
#3: Gray Terror (aka Human Pawn) (1923)
#4: Hands Unseen (aka The Gray Phantom's Madness) (1924)
#5: Gray Magic (aka The Speaking Fog) (1925)

Plus the uncollected short stories and novellas:

Seven Signs (1917)
Gray Terror (1919)
The Gray Phantom Goes It Alone (1919)
The Gray Phantom’s Guests (1921)
The Gray Phantom’s Surrender (1921)

251lyzard
Redigerat: dec 30, 2018, 1:21 am

...and whoo-hoo! - Hands Unseen was also re-serialised. Thank you, Edmonton Journal of Alberta! (P.S. Please get help for your blurb writer, who is clearly delusional):




252souloftherose
dec 30, 2018, 5:48 am

>198 lyzard: Yes, I try to do that with non-fiction too. In this case though there were no library copies but I did find a used copy online for less than £5 so clickety-clicked!

>206 lyzard: ?!? I actually have that very edition of The Worm Ouroboros (unread of course).

>216 lyzard:, >241 lyzard: :-P

>221 lyzard: I've missed the last few Christie rereads but I think I would like to reread that one anyway.

>246 lyzard: I have the same end of year feeling as that sloth!

253Helenliz
dec 30, 2018, 6:33 am

>246 lyzard: awww, poor sloth. Looks like a fish out of water, being out of his tree.
Nice work on trying to upload reviews and reading 170 books in 2018.
See you in 2019, when you're ready for visitors.

254rosalita
dec 30, 2018, 10:50 am

>251 lyzard: As world-famous as Sherlock Holmes, eh? I also love the distinction drawn between a sequel that continues the same storyline in a new book, and a new book featuring the same characters in a new story. I don't think that is a distinction we make much today.

255lyzard
dec 30, 2018, 3:49 pm

>253 Helenliz:

Yes, I don't know how we manage to keep fooling ourselves that everything is going to be magically different tomorrow morning...

>253 Helenliz:

Thanks, Helen!

>254 rosalita:

I wasn't aware anyone ever made that distinction! Maybe a Canadian thing?? :)

256lyzard
dec 30, 2018, 3:52 pm

So anyway---

I think I will be setting up my new thread tomorrow, and completing my December reviews over there: certainly not the first time I've done that.

In the meantime, as usual I am starting a New Year with something of substance. (It won't last, of course, but I like to make the gesture.)

Now reading The Road Back by Erich Maria Remarque.

257lyzard
Redigerat: dec 30, 2018, 8:41 pm

Sigh.

While I complain a lot about American retitlings, during the 19th century there was something that American publishers did that is EVEN MORE ANNOYING:

They reissued three-volume novels in a single volume.

I've been putting off reading E. D. E. N. Southworth's The Mother-In-Law; or, The Isle Of Rays forever because the only available copy looks like this:





It's only downloadable as a PDF, with non-adjustable font. Reading online is almost as bad, because to fit the whole image onscreen you have to reduce it to about 60% full size: any bigger, and you're forced to toggle the image up and down. The column format just makes things worse.

I feel a long, slow, aggravating, daytime-only read coming on...

258drneutron
dec 30, 2018, 7:43 pm

Wow, that looks... horrible on the eyes.

259lyzard
dec 30, 2018, 8:04 pm

Yup. Headaches ahoy, I'm afraid!

260thornton37814
dec 31, 2018, 12:35 pm

261lyzard
dec 31, 2018, 5:02 pm

Thank you, Lori, you too!

262lyzard
jan 1, 2019, 2:29 pm

So, yes---

The final call was to draw a line here and write up my December books on my 2019 thread.

Thank you so much to everyone who dropped by for a chat, or maybe just a sloth-swoon. See you next year!

ETA: My new thread is here.