The post Numerical Rankings of the Nero Wolfe Novellas appeared first on Speedy Mystery.

The novellas were geared to magazine publication where Stout serendipitously discovered a lucrative market.  The American Magazine, which had published seven of Stout’s first nine Wolfe novel-length adventures to that date, offered to double his usual fee if he would convert his recently completed Tecumseh Fox novel into a Nero Wolfe story.

Stout, the reading public and various magazine publishers were so pleased with the result that Stout wrote forty more novella length adventures over the next twenty-three years.  That Stout could dash off a Wolfe novella in days or weeks as opposed to months for a Wolfe novel certainly must have added to the charms of the shorter format for him.  Stout was fortunate that a high-paying slick-paper magazine market lasted for so many years.  By the early 1960’s that market was beginning to dry up and, at about the same time, the quality of Stout’s novella writing was falling into a tailspin.  The few surviving slick-paper magazines still publishing mystery fiction at that time were apparently looking for something different than Stout was producing.  Additionally, Stout’s tendency to avoid revising and polishing his stories prior to initial publication did not serve him well in this changing marketplace.  Of Stout’s final eight novellas only three saw initial slick-paper magazine publication.  Three others did not see initial magazine publication at all and two appeared in a prestigious (but non-slick and presumably lower paying) digest.  Had Stout not heavily revised “Counterfeit for Murder”, each one of his final eight novellas would have to be considered weak and/or disappointing efforts.

In addition to The American Magazine, Wolfe novellas appeared either originally or as reprints in  Argosy, Look, Colliers, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Nero Wolfe Mystery Magazine.  Every few years Stout’s publishers would collect the most recent novellas and release them in hardcover, mostly as trios, twice as duos and once as a quartet.

As opposed to the typical 60,000 plus word count for the Wolfe novels, the novellas usually range between 20,000 and 25,000 words. The shortest being “Murder Is No Joke” and “Help Wanted, Male” (magazine version), each at about 15,000 to 16,000 words and the longest, “Black Orchids”, near 34,000 words.  More study has to be applied to the magazine versions of these stories.  Besides ‘Help Wanted, Male”, I suspect that many if not all the novellas were abridged to one extent or another for magazine publication.  I wonder if Stout initially wrote a short version for quick magazine publication and then further fleshed out the story for later book publication or if he self-abridged the original longer versions before he sent them off the the magazine editors.

Some critics and fans consider the novellas inferior to the novels.  I disagree.  The Wolfe novellas are, for the most part, tasty tidbits that can be gobbled up much faster and digested more readily than the novels.  The best aspect of reading the novellas is that if you come across a clunker (yes, there are several) you have not invested a lot of time in a disappointing read.  It seems to me that some of the most ardent detractors of the Wolfe novellas are, in fact, Stout’s greatest fans.  Fans in the sense of admirers of Stout in general and the Wolfe novels in particular.  Because they prefer the longer length on principle, believing that the novels allow for more character development and plot intricacy, the novellas are often classified as inferior right out of the box.  It is as if they believe that the worst of the novels is better than “Die Like a Dog”, which is the best of the Wolfe novellas.  This assumption is caused not by poor literary judgement but by an incorrect approach to the whole matter.  The Nero Wolfe novellas should not really be compared to the Nero Wolfe novels.  They should be more properly be compared to novellas written by Stout’s contemporaries such as Ellery Queen (“The Lamp of God”, “The Death of Don Juan”, “The Wrightsvill Heirs”, “The Case Against Carroll”) or John Dickson Carr (“All In a Maze”, “The Third Bullet”) or Agatha Christie (“The Mystery of the Spanish Chest”).  a more recent benchmark for comparison might be Marcia Muller’s novella, “The Broken Men”.

The novella is a unique literary form that has its own inherent merits when properly executed.  It allows for more development of plot and character than the short story length but in a more abbreviated and concise format compared to the novel length.  In fact, many detective novels written over the past one hundred years would have been better served in the novella length.  The economics of the publishing industry and perhaps the skill level of many mystery writers have made the novella an orphan literary form, much to the disadvantage of readers. Although recently I have heard that ebook readers prefer the shorter novella length over the longer novel length. Maybe Nero Wolfe could pickup additional fans if Stout’s publishers would issue the novellas in individual ebook editions?

The plotting in the Wolfe novellas is as good as can be found in the novels.  Some Stout critics believe that this is not saying much; the notion being that Stout was a weak plotter.  Here again I disagree.  About half the novella plots are strong (and fairly clued) and a dozen or so are among the best of all mid-twentieth century American detective fiction. 

Stout has often been labeled a formulaic writer.  He was.  Just as most of the novels follow a formula so do most of the novellas.  Here is the formula:

Create a cast of vaguely suspicious (usually financially well off) characters.  Kill one of them.  Give the remaining characters motive and opportunity to commit the murder but provide none with a strong alibi.  Show Archie cracking wise and Inspector Cramer getting ticked-off.  Throw in a paragraph about the orchids and Fritz’s cooking.  Bring in  Saul Panzer and company if the investigation stalls.  Have Wolfe concoct an elaborate stratagem to expose the killer.  Gather everyone in the brownstone for the dramatic solution to the case.

What elevates Stout from the typical formulaic hack genre writer is his injection of breezy narration, snappy dialogue, real detection, clever deductions, action, humor, suspense and good storytelling into his formula.  Well, maybe not all the time but often enough for his books to remain in print and for people to still be reading and discussing them.

The following is a chronologically arranged critical survey of Stout’s Nero Wolfe novellas offering a brief synopsis of each plot, a brief analysis of each story and my numerical ranking for each story.  Although the rankings surely reflect my own personal preferences, I attempted to judge the stories primarily on plot strength and fairness of clueing.  Also included are any alternate titles that Stout or others may have used over the years so identified with the symbol “AKA”.  I also provide first magazine and book appearance information.  Magazine dates refer to either the issue that contained the entire story or the first issue of the story’s serialization.

The first novella length adventure featuring Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin appeared in the November 1940 issue of The American Magazine and was titled “Bitter End” (6).  That magazine had enticed Stout to re-write and condense his recently completed Tecumseh Fox novel, Bad For Business.  Stout, in essence, replaced detectives Fox, Dol Bonner and Bonner’s youngest and least experienced op Amy Duncan with Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.  “Bitter End” is a dark, complex, fairly-clued story revolving around the complicated family, business and personal relationships of the owners and employees of Tingley’s Tidbits—a specialty food manufacturer that Wolfe finds himself compelled to investigate because of his personal experience with the adulteration of one of their products. The first book publication of “Bitter End” was in the hard to find Corsage: A Bouquet of Rex Stout and Nero Wolfe in 1977.  It is more easily found in Death Times Three, published in 1985.

“Black Orchids” (3) was published in the August 1941 issue of The American Magazine.  It showcases all of Stout’s strengths:  snappy dialogue, witty narration, clever misdirection, insightful deductions and effective humor.  Stout had not quite yet gotten the novella form down pat, so the story feels more like a stunted novel than a true novella, but as my ranking shows, it is a high quality story featuring Wolfe’s visit to a prestigious flower show, the murder of a seed company employee and a Gladys Mitchell-like dramatic stratagem exposing the murderer. AKA “Death Wears an Orchid” and “The Case of the Black Orchids”.  First book publication was in 1942’s Black Orchids.

“Cordially Invited to Meet Death” (7) first appeared in the April 1942 issue of The American Magazine.  It is a leisurely-paced tale evocative of an Agatha Christie-like country house whodunit.  Archie is dispatched to a society party planner’s estate to investigate the source of some nasty poison-pen letters.  The party planner dies and suspicion falls upon the remaining members of her household consisting of suspicious servants, sponging relatives, jealous employees and scheming heirs.  Clues are fairly placed and red herrings are plentiful.  Wolfe solves the complex puzzle with deductive reasoning.  Stout still did not quite have his novella formula down pat, yet.  He will soon get future story word counts below 30,000 and keep them there for most of the rest of the series. AKA “Invitation to Murder” which is not to be confused with the 1953 novella of that same title.  First book publication was in Black Orchids in 1942.

The next three novellas have a WWII background beginning with “Not Quite Dead Enough” (18) debuting in the December 1942 issue of TAM.  The plot is solid enough, revolving around the murder of one of Lily Rowan’s (Archie’s main, though not exclusive, squeeze throughout the series) acquaintances.  Some of the interesting working class characters are pigeon breeders.  Wolfe makes a brilliant deduction to solve the case.  My only complaint with this tale is its length.  Too much time is spent on the backstory of Wolfe and Archie’s entrance into the war effort, which though of interest to die-hard Stout fans, serves to unnecessarily pad out the word count for a typical mystery reader approaching the story today. First book publication was in 1944’s Not Quite Dead Enough.

“Booby Trap” (19) appeared in the August 1944 issue of TAM.  WWII is raging.  Major Goodwin and private citizen Wolfe are both working for Army Intelligence (Archie for military pay, Wolfe for gratis).  Industrial secrets entrusted to the government by the country’s foremost manufacturers are being stolen for future profit.  An investigation begins.  A captain commits suicide.  Or was it murder or just an accident?  Another officer dies.  Wolfe investigates, deduces, identifies the killer and administers his own brand of justice.  This is a longish, slow-paced, fairly-clued effort with some nice mis-direction but little humor.  The military characters are cardboard-like except for a nicely drawn WAC.  The explosive ending could have boomeranged on Wolfe and Archie had the murderer shown some ingenuity before his/her demise. First book publication was in 1944’s Not Quite Dead Enough.

“Help Wanted, Male” (21) is set in 1944 and can be considered a sort of sequl to “Booby Trap”.  It appeared in the August 1945 issue of TAM.  The war is still raging so Wolfe is without the services of his trusted Ops:   Cather, Durkin, Panzer and Keems.  Archie is present but aching for a transfer to the Pacific theater.  The plot is set in motion by some of the events that occurred in the “Booby Trap” case.  Wolfe’s disinclination to take on a murder threat case eventually leads him to hire a double to protect his own life.  Amusing situations follow.  The story is fairly-clued but far-fetched.  The murderer is sometimes bold and clever, other times hesitant and slow-witted.  It is interesting to note that there are at least two versions of this story.  I came across a 15,000 word short version in an anthology reprint.  A longer version at about 25,000 words is found in the currently available Bantam paperback and I presume the Viking original hardcover of Trouble in Triplicate.  The longer version’s added paragraphs bring more humor, description and characterization to the story, considerably improving it.  My rating is for the longer version.  The shorter version’s rating would be lower.  I have not seen the original magazine version so I cannot say which is Stout’s first version. First book publication was in Trouble in Triplicate in 1949.

“Instead of Evidence” (23) appeared in the May 1946 issue of TAM.  A married couple meets with Wolfe to discuss their fear that the husband’s business partner seems intent on killing him in order to grab sole control of their novelty manufacturing company.  A murder is committed. Saul Panzer does some top-notch investigating and Wolfe brings the killer to justice in a very gruesome manner.  Here we have a strong John Dickson Carr-ish plot, numerous humorous incidents and a Maltese Falcon moment for Archie.  A perceptive reader could possibly solve the mystery but it would help the fairness of the clueing if the results of Panzer’s legwork were revealed to the reader at the same time Wolfe is informed.  The murderer had to cram an awful lot of action into a 24 hour timeframe and needed some good luck to pull off everything. AKA “Murder on Tuesday”.  First published in book form in 1949 in Trouble in Triplicate.

It’s 1945.  The war, for all practical purposes, is over.  New York City and Nero Wolfe are experiencing a meat shortage.  In “Before I Die” (8), which was first published in TAM in April 1947, Wolfe’s longing for a reliable meat supply causes him to take on Dazy Perrit (a dangerous gangster who just happens to control the black market in meat) as a client.  Perrit asks Wolfe to perform various services related to his complex family problems.  Archie is nearly killed, twice.  The body count really piles up in this adventure.  Wolfe eventually makes some deductions and exposes a killer.  This story is fast-paced, funny and violent; like a combination of Runyon’s “Guys and Dolls” and Hammetts’s Red Harvest.  The underwolrld characters are chillingly charming.  Stout masterfully creates an atmosphere of tense fear punctuated by intervals of uproarious humor, all the while playing fair with the reader. First hardcover publication was in 1949’s Trouble in Triplicate.

“Man Alive” (25) debued in TAM’s December 1947 issue.  Wolfe is hired by a young woman, who is just about to inherit half ownership of a successful Seventh Avenue fashion house, to find out how and why her presumed dead uncle has returned to the land of the living.  The road to her inheritance was littered by accidents, suicides and disappearances.  Wolfe untangles the web of death and deception surrounding the fashion house.  This is a nicely paced story with compelling characters, snappy dialogue and an interesting plot until Stout carelessly gives most of the suspects unbreakable alibis in the final quarter of the story thereby deflating the ending and undermining a potentially top-notch effort.  “Man Alive” is Stout’s homage to Christie’s And Then There Were None, though it is not nearly a masterpiece like the original. First book publication was in Three Doors to Death in 1950.

“Bullet for One” (20) first appeared in the July 1948 issue of TAM. A successful industrial designer is shot to death while riding his horse in Central Park early one morning. Suspects include his cold-hearted daughter, his slick salesman who is also the daughter’s boyfriend, his hardworking ex-secretary, the ex-secretary’s boyfriend who happens to work at the local stable, a disgruntled business partner and a jealous competitor. Stout uses misdirection to fool the reader into thinking that the solution is more complicated than it really is. Clues are presented fairly. Plot is perhaps too artificial. An entertaining story that should appeal to Dick Francis fans. First book publication was in Curtains for Three, 1951.

“Omit Flowers” (16) first appeared in the November 1948 issue of TAM. Wolfe’s closest friend, restaurentor Marko Vukcic, prevails upon our heroes to free his old chef friend from a murder charge. Wolfe and Archie are drawn into the milieu of the Landy family; heirs to the Ambrosia fast food restaurant chain. The cast of characters includes a bossy widow, greedy adult children, an opportunistic lover and a jilted girlfriend. Wolfe relies upon interrogation and deduction to sort out the truth from numerous family lies and secrets in order to catch the killer. Archie not only performs his fabulous legwork but also makes a startling deduction of his own which helps solve the case. This is a strongly plotted, slowly-paced, somber tale that plays fair with the reader. First book publication was in Three Doors to Death, 1950.

As “Door to Death” (31) opens in the June 1949 issue of TAM, Theodore Horstman has temporarily abandoned Wolfe’s orchids to care for his sick mother. Wolfe thinks he has found a replacement working on the estate of a wealthy Westchester family. Wolfe’s desperate trip north to capture his man is spoiled by the discovery of the body of the orchid man’s fiancee. The exasperated Wolfe must deal with suspicious police, uncooperative suspects and unfamiliar terrain before he solves the murder of the trampy, conniving fiancee with the aid of a hackneyed stratagem. This is not a detective story. It is a humorous adventure tale starring Wolfe, Archie and in a supporting role, Saul Panzer. This is a hilarious but flawed story with plenty of pace and action but virtually no detection. First book publication was in Three Doors to Death, 1950.

In “The Gun With Wings” (11), first published in the December 1949 issue of TAM, Wolfe is asked to take on a near impossible case: discover who killed, four months earlier, a moderately successful opera singer who the police assume committed suicide.  This is an undeservedly neglected, low-keyed, fairly-clued, well-written story that could have been expanded into a full-length novel in a less talented (or more patient) author’s hands.  When EQMM reprinted this story in the early 1960’s, baseball references to Jackie Robinson were changed to Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris.  One wonder if Stout changed the names on his own to “update” the story of if Fred Dannay suggested the changes. First book publication was in Curtains for Three, 1951.

“Disguise for Murder” (12), debuted in the September 1950 issue of TAM.  Two hundred members of the Manhattan Flower Club descend on the brownstone to view Wolfe’s orchids.  Wolfe hadn’t realized that half the members would be women when he allowed a newspaper garden columnist to talk him into hosting the event.  By chance, a female confidence woman attending the event recognizes the person who killed her friend several months earlier.  She couldn’t go to the police than because of her own criminal activities.  Just as she is about to seek Wolfe’s help she is strangled in Wolfe’s office, practically under Archie’s nose.  Wolfe makes a brilliant deduction, Archie is almost killed and the case is solved, sans fee.  Stout plays fair with the clues, in fact, the key clue is ingeniously planted in plain sight, however modern readers might miss it if they forget that the story takes place in 1950.  This is a gripping and intense story with only small bits of humor to break the tension.  Had Stout eliminated a long melodramatic action sequence, cut down on some lengthy interviews and clarified some of the characters behaviors then “Disguise for Murder” would have been a near perfect short story and a favorite of anthologists. AKA “The Twisted Scarf’, “The Affair of the Twisted Scarf”.  Published in Curtains for Three, 1951. 

“The Cop Killer” (9), TAM February 1951, features a cast of vaguely suspicious working class characters, rather than Stout’s typical middle/upper class characters.  It opens with a plea by an illegal-immigrant couple for Archie’s help in dealing with a police investigation going on at the barbershop where they work.  Both Archie and Wolfe are acquainted with the couple because they patronize the shop in question.  Wolfe solves multiple mysteries with deductive reasoning.  This is a fairly-clued, strongly plotted, realistic story with some well-drawn characters.  The description of a 1950’s era Midtown Manhattan barbershop rings true.  The boys make use of Archie’s  reputation for “clowning” to avoid potential legal trouble.  Stout would re-visit the problems of illegal immigrants in The Golden Spiders, a novel-length adventure published two years later. AKA “Cop Killer”.  Published in Triple Jeopardy, 1952.  

After ending the 1940’s and beginning the 1950’s with some strong stories, Stout then produced two of his weaker efforts, the first being “The Squirt and the Monkey” (38), TAM August 1951.  Wolfe sends a reluctant  Archie on a seemingly simple case:  help a client find out which member of his household entourage swiped the unlicensed handgun he kept in his desk.  The client is the creator of a highly successful syndicated action comic strip called “Dazzle Dan”.  Most of the characters are surly or self-indulgent or both, and none are likable.  A murder occurs that Wolfe eventually solves by reviewing three years worth of “Dazzle Dan” comic strip adventures.  Uninspired writing and too many loose ends turned a potentially interesting story-line into a dull read.    I kept hoping that the pet monkey would somehow escape his cage and cause enough mayhem to enliven the story . . . no such luck.  One example of a loose end:  What happened to the surly maid?  She certainly was in the house when the murder was committed but neither the police nor Wolfe bother to question her.  It seems as though Stout just forgot about her. AKA “See No Evil”, “The Dazzle Dan Murder Case”.  First book publication was in Triple Jeopardy, 1952.  

Stout’s other weak effort of the early 1950’s was “Home to Roost” (34) published in TAM in January 1952.  Wolfe is hired by a married couple to investigate the poisoning death of the husband’s nephew.  The young man was apparently a Communist although he had professed to be a secret FBI agent to at least one person.  Wolfe expends little effort at deducing who may have put a poisoned vitamin capsule into the young man’s pillbox.  Instead, he devises a stratagem in order to expose the killer.  The plot is weak.  The typically vaguely suspicious characters are, for the most part, uninteresting.  The killer acted illogically in planning the murder and only by mere chance avoided initial suspicion.  Only Fifi Goheen, a former debutante, adds some spark to a dull story.  What saves the story from an even lower ranking is the fact that it happens to be fairly-clued. AKA “Nero Wolfe and the Communist Killer”, “Nero Wolfe Devises a Stratagem”.  First book publication was in Triple Jeopardy, 1952.

From late summer of 1952 through late summer of 1956 Stout had his last burst of semi-sustained high quality novella writing. During this period magazine readers had the opportunity to experience four of his best stories, two fairly good stories and only had to suffer three weak efforts.  Stout began his hot streak with “This Won’t Kill You” (2) in the September 1952 issue of TAM.  Wolfe and Archie attend Game 7 of the World Series at the Polo Grounds.  Archie’s beloved New York Giants are unaccountably committing error after error and trail the Boston Red Sox 11-1.  The Giants’ owner summons Wolfe to the clubhouse and hires him to investigate the drugging of four of his key players.  A missing secondbaseman and a murder further complicate the situation.  This story is chock full of humor, action, detection and great dialogue.  The only flaw in this near perfect story is an unnecessary melodramatic action sequence (similar to what happened in “Disguise for Murder” two years earlier) that takes Archie away from the ballpark.  Once he re-joins Wolfe at the Polo Grounds the case is satisfactorily concluded.  First-rate humor, top-notch storytelling, fair cluing and solid detection make this one of Stout’s best efforts. AKA “This Will Kill You”, “The World Series Murder”.  First book publication was in Three Men Out, 1954. *****Baseball Note: Mystery author Ellery Queen (Stout’s literary rival) also wrote a World Series themed short story, “Man Bites Dog” in 1939. Ellery (the character), like Archie, is a New York Giants fan. Queen has his Giants playing their cross-river rivals, New York Yankees. Queen used real players’ names (Carl Hubbell, Mel Ott, Bill Dickey, Joe DiMaggio, etc.) in describing the game action. Stout used fictional players’ names when his Giants played the Boston Red Sox in “This Won’t Kill You”. Queen’s story is clever but certainly not as good as Stout’s story. Incidentally, both Queen and Stout set their stories in the Polo Grounds (home of the Giants from 1911 to 1957) during Game 7 of the Series.*****

“Invitation to Murder” (17), published in the August 1953 issue of TAM, opens with a pathetic, aging playboy hiring Wolfe to investigate suspicious activities in his deceased father’s East Side mansion.  He had been disinherited because of his irresponsible and spendthrift behavior.  He suspects that one member of the household may have poisoned his sister who had been secretly supplying him with an unofficial allowance.  The household consists of various servants, a sponging nephew, a nurse, a secretary, housekeeper and his wheelchair bound brother-in-law who now controls the purse strings.  The nurse, secretary and housekeeper are each competing for the affections of the grieving brother-in-law.  Wolfe himself best describes the household situation as “sordid familial flimflam”.  Nevertheless, Archie goes to investigate.  A murder occurs.  Archie manages to trick Wolfe into joining him at the murder scene.  Wolfe solves the murder and, for good measure, also solves the mystery of the sister’s death.  Wolfe uses deductive reasoning, keen observation and trickery to expose the murderer.  The clues are fairly placed.  The characters are well-drawn but the pace is slow. AKA “Will to Murder’ (which happens to be a better title).  First book publication was in Three Men Out, 1954.

“The Zero Clue” (5) first saw print in the December 1953 issue of TAM.   A mathematics/probability expert attempts to consult Wolfe regarding his suspicion that one of his own clients may have committed a serious crime.  Wolfe considers him a charlatan and his methods highly suspect, so he refuses to see him.  The mathematician is subsequently murdered.  Cramer thinks he has enough evidence to implicate our heroes.  Wolfe suggests that Cramer has misinterpreted a dying message clue and offers to solve the murder himself.  This is the most atypical of all of Stout’s Nero Wolfe novellas.  The reader enters a surrealistic world where mathematics, probabilities, numbers and coincidences reign supreme.  All the clues are present (although the key clue is highly esoteric) and a perceptive reader might be able to solve the puzzle before Wolfe does.  On his website, Michael Grost maintains that this story was ahead of its time, near science fiction.  It almost seems to me that  Stout had met Issac Asimov at a tavern and, after a night of food and drink, they both decided to collaborate on a story–and “The Zero Clue” was the result.  Strong plot, humor, detection, suspense, diagrams and an Ellery Queen-like dying message clue: what more can a mystery reader ask of a story? AKA “Scared to Death”.  First book publication was in Three Men Out, 1954.

“When a Man Murders” (26) first appeared in the May 1954 issue of TAM.  In it we meet a newly married couple seeking Wolfe’s help in unraveling their complicated marital and inheritance problems.  It seems that the woman’s first husband was not killed in battle in Korea after all.  He was held as a POW and is now returning home more than two years after his reported death.  A murder occurs.  Wolfe believes that Cramer has arrested the wrong person.  Archie and Saul Panzer pursue two different angles.  Archie gets punched in the jaw.  Saul gets the goods.  Wolfe clears the suspect and fingers the real killer in a typical Stoutian effort featuring scheming heirs, manipulative and mendacious women, disagreeable playboys and complex family situations.  The “return from the dead” theme has been used many times before, and often to better effect, by other writers.  Stout himself even tried it seven years earlier in the equally mediocre “Man Alive”.  Most readers will spot the killer and motive early on.  At one point it seems as if Stout will put an unexpected twist in the plot but it turns out he doesn’t and the story ends disappointingly. First book publication was in Three Witnesses, 1956.

The best of all the Nero Wolfe novellas appeared in the December 1954 issue of TAM.  In “Die Like a Dog” (1) a visitor to a small Greenwich Village apartment house is murdered.  Each of the primary suspects occupies one of the four floors in the building.  A raincoat and a dog are the key clues.  Wolfe has no client in the story but, along with Archie and Fritz, he forms a strong attachment to an orphaned Labrador Retriever and therefore feels obligated to bring the murderer of the dog’s owner to justice.  The plot, clues and characters are reminiscent of an Ellery Queen type story.  Wolfe performs some of his best deductive magic in this complex and highly satisfying adventure which features a gradual unveiling of relationships.  The only mystery that remains unsolved from this gem of a story is why Stout never mentions the dog again after making it plain that Wolfe intended to adopt the pooch at the story’s end. AKA “A Dog in the Daytime”, “The Body in the Hall”.  First book publication was in Three Witnesses, 1956.

Stout paid homage to Earle Stanley Gardner when he wrote “The Next Witness” (24) which first appeared in TAM’s May 1955 issue. While waiting to testify during a murder trail Wolfe hears some testimony that causes him to suspect a possible miscarriage of justice. He abruptly leaves the courtroom with Archie in tow and remains AWOL for almost 24 hours while tracking down clues to support his theory.  Wolfe returns to the courtroom the next morning and pulls off a neat Perry Mason legal gambit, which leads to the downfall of the guilty party.  A telephone answering service business was an interesting backdrop for the story and certainly offered potential for criminal activity although I am not sure that Stout exploited this setting to its fullest potential.  The withholding of the content of an important conversation until late in the story compromises the “fairness” factor.  On the other hand, this is a nicely paced story populated with interesting characters.  One especially well-written scene describes Wolfe’s stealthy visit to Saul Panzer’s apartment.  An entertaining and enjoyable read but not a first-rate puzzle plot. AKA “The Last Witness”.  First book publication was in Three Witnesses, 1956.    

In  “Immune to Murder” (32), appearing in the November 1955 issue of TAM, Wolfe allows himself to be talked into traveling 300 miles north to an Adirondack fishing lodge in order to prepare fresh caught brook trout for a foreign diplomat.  Archie bumps into a corpse while fishing and Wolfe becomes extra cranky because the ensuing murder investigation delays his return home to the brownstone.  Wolfe proceeds to solve the murder almost out of spiteful revenge because the killer has unintentionally insulted him.  None of the characters were particular likable or interesting.  Once the key clue is finally revealed most readers will probably spot the killer, especially since the title of the story is itself a clue. First book publication was in Three for the Chair, 1957.

“A Window for Death” (15), May 1956 TAM, features a Ross MacDonald-like plot.  Twenty years before the story opens, a successful Hudson Valley real estate investor died under mysterious circumstances.  Bitter accusations and an inconclusive murder trial divided the remaining family members  and caused one of the deceased patriarch’s sons to go off and seek his own fortune.  That son has now returned loaded with Canadian mining riches and seeks to reconcile with the remnants of his family.  The reconciliation goes badly and he dies in a manner similar to his father.  His relatives suspect his mining venture partner.  The partner suspects the relatives.  A family doctor and his nurse also fall under suspicion.  Wolfe is called in to sort things out and he does so with clear thinking and solid deductions.  The characters are both interesting and believable.  The key clue pre-supposes some esoteric knowledge about the way a particular food product was packaged in certain New York restaurants of the era but a perceptive reader can still solve the puzzle without this knowledge.  This could have been a top-notch story had Stout rearranged some dialogue, clarified some actions and avoided some coincidences but he didn’t, so this remains a slightly flawed yet highly entertaining tale. AKA “Nero Wolfe and the Vanishing Clue”  First book publication was in Three for the Chair, 1957.

 “Too Many Detectives” (4) appeared in the 09/14/1956 issue of Colliers Magazine.  Wolfe and Archie are summoned to Albany, along with other private detectives, by high-ranking New York politicians to be questioned as part of a wide-ranging wiretapping investigation.  Our heroes mingle with several of their competitors most notably another Stout detective duo:  Dol Bonner and her assistant, Sally Colt.  Before long, a potential witness is murdered in a room down the hall from where the detectives are assembled.  All the PI’s become suspects but only Wolfe and Archie are arrested.  While out on bail, Wolfe mobilizes his fellow detectives and, with their help, unmasks the killer.  The plot is complex, fairly clued and reminiscent of an Ellery Queen-type story. First book publication was in Three for the Chair, 1957. Click HERE for more info on Dol Bonner (scroll down to her 1937 entry).

Stout’s mid-1950’s burst of quality novellas begins to peter out with the publication of “Christmas Party” (28) in the 01/04/1957 issue of Colliers Magazine.  The story opens with a wonderfully described domestic spat between Wolfe and Archie.  The MacGuffin from that point onward is a questionable marriage license.  Archie attends an office party at a small home decor company.  While Santa Claus is tending bar the head of the company drinks a poisoned beverage,  Due to his own unbelievably uncharacteristic behavior, Wolfe is forced to solve the murder without having a paying client.  Wolfe flushes the murderer out by way of a stratagem.  Much of the entertainment in this story comes from the insults exchanged and catfights engaged in by three female party attendees.  A slight yet amusing effort with little deduction/detection exhibited. AKA “The Christmas Party Murder”.  First book publication was in And Four to Go, 1958. 

“Easter Parade” (39) was published in Look Magazine’s 04/16/1957 issue accompanied by several color photos that readers were supposed to examine for clues to the solution of the mystery.  Wolfe’s lust for a unique orchid variety results in Archie hiring a street criminal to steal a corsage from the wife of a rival orchid breeder on Easter Sunday.  The woman is then promptly murdered.  Cramer suspects that Wolfe and Archie are involved but can’t pin anything on them.  The orchid breeder, ironically, hires Wolfe to investigate his wife’s murder.  Wolfe exposes the killer not by deductive reasoning but through a questionable observation.  The story is farcical without being humorous.  All the bad traits that Stout’s detractors accuse him of are on display here:  weak plot, nil characterization and little detection. AKA “The Easter Parade Murder”.  Included in And Four to Go, 1958.

“Fourth of July Picnic” (40) continued Stout’s novella-related downward quality spiral of the late 1950’s.  It was first published in the 07/09/1957 issue of Look Magazine, completing a holiday themed threesome of magazine stories for that year.  Wolfe is inveigled into giving an Independence Day speech to restaurant workers gathered in a Long Island park.  A labor union official is murdered just before the start of Wolfe’s speech.  Wolfe and Archie become suspects.  Wolfe resorts to a lame trick to trap the killer.  This story has little humor, no detection, no deductions, weak characterization and a murderer who is arbitrarily plucked from a group of suspects.  The reader cannot solve the puzzle with the clues provided,  The motive for the murder is never fully explained.  Both Wolfe and Archie provide brief autobiographical sketches of themselves which are the most interesting passages within this weak effort. AKA “The Labor Union Murder”, “Fourth of July Murder”.  Included in And Four to Go, 1958.

“Murder is No Joke” (13) apparently did not see magazine publication prior to its hardcover appearance in early 1958 in And Four to Go.  According to J. Kenneth Van Dover in his wonderful little book, At Wolfe’s Door, “Frame Up for Murder” (also 13) is an expansion of “Murder is No Joke” undertaken at the request of The Saturday Evening Post, which published the novella under the new title in June-July 1958. The sister of a prominent dress designer tries to induce Wolfe to help her brother rid himself of a mysterious woman who seems to have undue influence over his personal and business affairs.  Wolfe and Archie soon become entangled in a murder investigation in which all the suspects have airtight alibis.  Wolfe thinks his way through a thicket of red herrings, clues, lies and motives in order to finally unmask the killer.  No tricks, stratagems or charades here—just good deductive reasoning.  This is a solid, fairly-clued story despite improbable behavior by three characters.  The transformation of “Murder is No Joke” into “Frame Up for Murder” mainly involves the dress designer’s sister, Flora Gallant, whose character was both expanded and altered by Stout. Some fans prefer the longer version, which was reprinted in Death Times Three in 1985.  I favor the shorter version and apparently so did Jacques Barzun who included “Murder is No Joke” in his 1961 anthology The Delights of Detection.  This story signaled the end of Stout’s late Fifties dip in quality and began a brief renaissance lasting through 1961.

“Method Three for Murder” (14) first appeared in The Saturday Evening Post issue of 01/30/1960.  Within the first few pages Archie has quit Wolfe’s employ,  found himself a paying client and draws Wolfe into the case as a consultant.  The plot revolves around the numerous intrigues and betrayals among a group of friends and acquaintances.  This solid, well-plotted effort is somewhat evocative of a Freeman Wills Croft type story in which detailed knowledge of the movements of the various suspects during a certain time frame is key to the solution.  The characters were believable though some of their behaviors weren’t.  Wolfe does some good thinking, deducing and detecting. The motive for the murder was a bit of a stretch.  Sgt. Purley Stebbins, usually present in stories to do Inspector Cramer’s heavy lifting and to serve as an antagonistic foil to Archie’s verbal barbs, actually shows some initiative while attending Wolfe’s climactic summation in the brownstone. FIY, methods one, two and three are not ways to commit murder but instead are strategies for extracting oneself from a murder investigation. First book publication was in Three at Wolfe’s Door, 1960.

“Poison al la Carte” (22) did not see magazine publication before its first book appearance.  Wolfe and Archie are invited to attend a special dinner at a gourmet club.  Wolfe’s chef/housekeeper, Fritz, has been selected to prepare all the courses.  Twelve attractive, out of work actresses have been hired to serve the food while dressed in purple ankle-length stolas.  One of the club members (a lecherous Broadway angel) is poisoned and dies.  Wolfe makes some good deductions based on Permutation Theory to narrow twenty suspects down to five of the actresses.  He is stymied at that point and has to rely upon a stratagem to expose the killer.  This is a misogynistic story featuring snappy dialogue, breezy narration and interesting characters.  The killer was lucky in the beginning and foolish at the end.  This would have received a higher rating had the clueing been fairer and the solution determinable through deductive reasoning. First book publication was in Three at Wolfe’s Door, 1960.

“The Rodeo Murder” (29) did not see magazine publication prior to its first book appearance.  Lily Rowan’s penthouse apartment terrace becomes a murder scene when a lecherous rodeo sponsor is killed during a silly roping contest.  Ms. Rowan hires Wolfe to unmask the killer. The cast of characters consists mostly of cowboys and cowgirls.  All the suspects seem to lying about one thing or another.  The key clue is available to the perceptive reader.  I suppose Stout wanted to contrast the mostly straight-arrow Western cow-hand/rodeo performers with the typical sneaky, rude, self-absorbed New York characters who usually populate his books.  Stout does create some good mis-direction by tricking the reader into favoring one type of motive while having Wolfe pull another motive almost out of thin air, which perhaps plays unfairly with the reader.  Quite frankly, this is a dull story. AKA “The Penthouse Murder”.  First book publication was in Three at Wolfe’s Door, 1960.

The final top-notch novella that Stout wrote appeared in the Saturday Evening Post on 01/14/1961 under the title of “Counterfeit for Murder” (10).  Hattie Annis hires Wolfe to, among other things, find out wich of her tenants might be a counterfeiter.  She owns a run-down boarding house for aspiring and/or down-on-their-luck show biz types.  A murder occurs shortly after our heroes enter the case.  Miss Annis turns out to be quite a handful for Wolfe, Archie, the police and the criminal.  Stout uses some clever mis-direction to confuse the reader and he does play fair, to a certain extent, with the clues in that a perceptive reader might be able to name the murderer prior to Wolfe’s revelation.  The plot itself is slightly above average for Stout but the Hattie Annis character elevates the story to a top ten rating.  She calls Archie—Buster, she calls Wolfe—Falstaff, she treats the police with contempt and gets away with it all.  She has a heart of gold, a deep sense of honor and is simultaneously charming and exasperating.  According to the research of Stout’s biographer, John McAleer, the first version of “Counterfeit for Murder” was found wanting by the author.  Stout re-worked the plot by elevating the Hattie Annis character from victim to its proper prominence and downgrading the Tammy Baxer character from Archie’s love interest to that of victim.  McAleer rescued the inferior first version from obscurity and published it for the first time in Death Times Three in 1985, ten years after Stout’s death, under the title of “Assault on a Brownstone” (37).  Stout was correct in re-writing the first version because its plot was rather weak and the storytelling was dull compared to the second version. AKA “The Counterfeiter’s Knife”, “Counterfeit Murder”.  First book publication was in Homicide Trinity, 1962.

In “Death of a Demon” (27), first published in The Saturday Evening Post on 06/10/1961, a naive young woman hires Wolfe for half an hour to listen to her marital difficulties and to note her pronouncement regarding a certain gun.  Her husband is soon discovered shot to death, but by which gun?  This story reminds me of two different Sherlock Holmes tales:  “The Empty House” and “Charles Augustus Milverton” because Archie has some adventures in a supposedly empty house and a blackmail scheme drives the plot in Stout’s story.  This is a fast-paced, entertaining piece of writing with a good puzzle plot, interesting and believable characters, plenty of action and a good deal of suspense.  The clues were nicely laid out until near the end when Stout has Wolfe name the killer before the final (and most important) clue is revealed.  Stout relies, even more than usual, on coincidence in this story.  Two examples:  Wolfe’s client happens to make a big life decision on the same day the killer chooses to act.  The blackmailer and one of the victims both happen to posess the same type of gun.  Despite all the coincidences this story would have rated higher had Stout played fair with the reader. AKA “The Gun Puzzle”.  First book publication was in Homicide Trinity, 1963.

“Kill Now–Pay Later” (36) was first serialized in the 12/09, 12/16 & 12/23/1961 issues of The Saturday Evening Post.  Wolfe and Archie’s favorite bootblack becomes involved with a suicide, or was it murder?  The bootblack ignores Wolfe’s advice and pays a steep price.  His daughter soon seeks Wolfe’s advice and, showing more sense than her father did, follows it.  The plot revolves around the actions of a group of employees of a Manhattan bobbin (of all things) manufacturer.  Saul Panzer discovers the key clue but Stout withholds it from the reader until after Wolfe names the killer.  Stout deserves all the criticisms his most vocal critics usually heap on him for this effort.  The only defense I can offer is that Stout does provide a slim half-clue at the beginning of the story which perhaps he thought would give readers a chance to solve the puzzle.  He was wrong.  Two interesting, self-absorbed female characters and a bit of humor save this story from an even lower rating. First book publication was in Homicide Trinity, 1962. Note: this was the last Wolfe novella to appear in a slick-paper magazine. 

“Eeny Meeny Murder Mo” (33) saw first publication in the March 1962 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.  Wolfe removes his necktie (because it has a food stain on it), leaves it unattended on his desk and someone proceeds to strangle a potential client right there in the brownstone.  The plot revolves around treachery and betrayal at a Manhattan law firm during a big divorce case.  The story had possibilities but Stout did not do much with it.  He could have gone in several more promising directions than the course he wound up taking.  Some character’s behaviors are never explained.  Other character’s behaviors, although explained, still didn’t make much sense.  It just did not seem that the murderer had a good enough reason for doing the deed.  Archie does perform some detecting and Wolfe does make some good deductions.  Misdirection attempts were not overly successful.  Another instance of Stout’s careless writing sinking a potentially good story-line. First book publication was in Homicide Trinity, 1962.

“Blood Will Tell” (30) appeared in the 12/1963 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.  The story opens with Archie receiving a blood-stained silk necktie along wih a cryptic note in the mail.  Then he receives a cryptic phone call.  He investigates and eventually stumbles across a body in the house of a wealthy dilettante (who is a self-described musical genius).  The victim’s spouse then winds up hiring Wolfe.  Once again, we meet a typical Stoutian cast of vaguely suspicious characters who share complicated relationships and scandalous love lives.  Although Stout tries his hand at a bit of forensics he eventually has Wolfe unravel the puzzle by spotting a simple lie told by the murderer.  The logic he uses to spot the lie seems plausible upon initial reading but really doesn’t hold up once you think it through.  Wolfe devises a clever stratagem to acquire a piece of evidence, which he then uses to trick the murderer into self-exposure during the climatic scene at the brownstone.  The real mystery here is why did a supposedly smart killer choose a first-rate detective like Archie Goodwin to serve as a dupe in a murder scheme when a second-rate detective would be more suitable.  This is an entertaining story because of the interesting character relationships but ultimately an unsatisfying story because the plot contains too many holes.  “Blood Will Tell” along with the next entry, “Murder Is Corny” would be the final Wolfe/Goodwin novellas that Stout would write. First book appearance was in Trio for Blunt Instruments, 1964.

“Murder Is Corny” (35) did not appear in a magazine prior to its book publication.  A woman’s careless (or was it calculated) lie makes Archie the prime suspect in a murder investigation.  Archie and Wolfe proceed to grill the woman and her admirers in order to clear Archie.  Had Stout put more effort into the story maybe he could have saved it.  For example, he could have contructed a better clue out of the quality of the corn that was to be delivered to the brownstone but after making a half-hearted effort he just dropped that line.  Plot is weak, clues and deductions are not first-rate, characters are even more cardboard-like than usual.  Stout provides one slim clue early in the story and than essentially phones this one in.  Magazine editors showed good judgement in not buying this story. AKA “The Sweet Corn Murder”.  First book publication was in Trio for Blunt Instruments, 1964.

2023 Note: It has been several years since I finalized the ratings, rankings and comments listed above but even after recent re-readings of some of these stories I, more or less, still stand by my rankings. I might, for example, swap #13 with #14 or maybe swap #26 with #27 but generally speaking I believe the rankings to be fair and accurate. The top 13 or so stories are some of the best fiction that Stout ever wrote, that any mystery author ever wrote. Stories #14 through #26 are “middling”…not great, not bad, just average, something between mediocre and good. Stories #27 through #40 are generally weak or have an irredeemable flaw or are not fairly-clued or are lacking verve or are just plain dull. I would enjoy hearing from any Stout fans who disagree with my ratings on individual stories. My email is speedymystery@yahoo.com.

Some of this material has appeared, in a different form, on GAdetection:  The Golden Age of Detective Fiction” discussion group website, (groups.Yahoo.com/group/Gadetection?) and its sister wiki site.  In addition to the GAD website, the following were helpful in allowing me to complete this article:

Winifred Louis’s website “Meerly a Genius”

“The Thrilling Detective” website:  www.thrillingdetective.com

The Wolfepack website:  www.nerowolfe.org

The monthly Wolfepack book discussion meetings where I received some thought provoking insights on many of Stout’s novellas

Michael E. Grost’s treasure trove of analysis website: “Guide to Classic Mystery and Detective Fiction”:  mikegrost.com/classics.htm

Rex Stout, an Annotated Primary and Secondary Bibliography
Guy M. Townsend, John J. McAleer, Judson C. Sapp and Arriean Schemer

At Wolfe’s Door
J. Kenneth Van Dover
Which is a wonderful little reference book mostly concerned with Stout’s mystery stories.  My only quibble is Van Dover’s lack of specific literary criticism of each story. In other words, you get a general sense of what he regards as the best and worst of Stout’s work but he does not give a clear ranking/rating analysis of the stories. That small shortcoming is what spurred me on to create the above work.

The post Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe Novellas appeared first on Speedy Mystery.

His writing style, subject matter and themes are neither for the fainthearted nor for those seeking a high amount of classic detection.  Whether tackling police corruption, political corruption, union corruption or civic corruption, he zeroed in on the weaknesses of society and created compelling crime stories that are still meaningful half a century after they were written.

Various mystery reference books give incorrect information as to McGivern’s “Edgar” awarded by the Mystery Writers of America.  He is officially credited with the 1954 award for Best Motion Picture.  The movie was “The Big Heat’.  What is odd about the award is that McGivern had nothing to do with the screenplay (that credit goes to Sidney Boehm).  The novel version of The Big Heat did not win any MWA prizes when it was published in 1953.  Apparently back in those days the MWA’s policy concerning awards for films (and also TV shows) was still being formulated.  It seems that within a year or two after 1954 only the actual screenwriter(s) will win “Edgar” awards.  Authors of the books that the winning films are based on will no longer get an award for Best Motion Picture unless they actually wrote or participated in the writing of the screenplay.  This seems to be a sensible decision.  Think of how embarrassing it would be if a screenwriter adapted a terrible novel into a brilliant screenplay that was made into a great movie!  The novel’s author would win a prize that he or she certainly did not deserve.  This is not what happened with McGivern.  The Big Heat is reputed to be a very fine crime novel.  It just happened that the movie version did better against its competitors than the novel did against its competitors, at least according to the MWA voters at the time.

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Shield for Murder (1951)

There is no mystery as to who will be killed (a small time gambler/bookie for his bankroll) or who will do the killing (Barny Nolan, a thuggish and soon to become crooked cop) in this book.  The cover illustration of the Pocket Book paperback edition and the first paragraph of the story make all this very clear.  The story’s suspense hinges on whether or not Nolan will get away with his crime.  In Nolan’s favor is the unspoken police code of shielding their own unless and until that position becomes untenable.  Against Nolan stand a newspaper reporter (which McGivern once was) and a woman that Nolan misjudges on a couple of different levels.  

McGivern is still learning the craft of the crime novel in 1951.  He examines themes in Shield for Murder that he will later expand upon (crusading reporters in 1957’s Night Extra and crooked cops in several books, most notably 1954’s Rogue Cop).  McGivern’s storytelling is not as crisp as it will later become.  His characterizations are not as spot on as they will become.  His confrontation scenes are not quite as tense and menacing as in later books.  Shield for Murder would have been better served as a 20,000 to 25,000-word novella rather than a 52,000-word novel but the same could be said of many mystery stories.  This was only McGivern’s fourth novel and, in retrospect, it is clear that he was still struggling a bit to evolve from pulp short fiction writing to major crime novel writing.  As with almost all of McGivern’s work there is little detection present but this is certainly a worthwhile read for anyone interested in a hard-hitting crime story with an interesting and slightly ambiguous ending.

The book is dedicated to Howard Browne (aka John Evans & others, 1908-1999) who was apparently greatly admired by McGivern for his editing and novel writing abilities.  McGivern eventually followed Browne’s lead by also going to Hollywood to write for film and television.

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The Big Heat (1953)

Homicide Detective Sgt. Dave Bannion is an honest cop working in a corrupt town (Philadelphia).  He is respected by criminals and colleagues alike because of his abilities and fairness, though he is considered “not smart” because he doesn’t “play along”.  The city’s corrupt regime catches an unlucky break when Bannion is, almost by chance, assigned to investigate the apparent suicide of a police clerk. Small inconsistencies that pop up during his investigation would be overlooked by a lesser, or corrupt, cop but Bannion doggedly follows inconclusive and puzzling leads to dead ends, until a woman of interest turns up brutally murdered.  The corrupt police brass quickly pull Bannion off the case but he continues to investigate on his own.  Bannion is then targeted by the mob but they mistakenly kill a person close to Bannion instead of Bannion himself.  Devastated by his loss, Bannion quits the police force and begins a vengefull pursuit for justice.

As is typical of a McGivern crime novel, the odds are not totally stacked against the protagonist.  Unexpected help comes from unexpected sources as honest citizens, police and eventually politicians provide just enough blocking and tackling to enable Bannion to bring down the criminals running the city.  He also eventually comes to terms with a heartbreaking loss.

My edition of The Big Heat contains an afterword written by McGivern several years after the initial publication.  In it he reveals that the plot was derived from an incident that occurred in Philadelphing just after World War II.  McGivern was working as a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer back then and was involved, to a small extent, with the breaking of a big story concerning the scandalous revelations contained in a minor city bureaucrat’s suicide note. 

The possible existence of a similar suicide note is what drives the plot of The Big Heat.  McGivern claims to have written the novel over a three week time period while he was living in Rome some six years after the real-life incident.  The story was initially serialized in The Saturday Evening Post and McGivern implies that the ending of the serialized version was somewhat different that the book version but I have not verified this information.

The following is quoted from McGivern’s afterword:  “I don’t think that my book is a classic, but I think Fritz Lang’s filmed version is.  My story is more a modern fable, a fantasy we all enjoy reflecting on, a man hurt by the system in the most cruel way . . . He fights back and he wins, not only a physical victory, but a sort of intellectual and emotional catharsis.”  

I think that McGivern was being a little too hard on himself.  The film version of The Big Heat is a pretty good film noir (though not a great one) with a good performance by Glenn Ford, who was mis-cast because in the book Bannion is described as big, strong ex-Big Ten college football player.  Being bigger and stronger than the various criminals he has to confront is what gives him an edge in his fights with them.  While reading the book I pictured someone like Sterling Hayden playing the role.   The movie also has some good performances by Lee Marvin and Gloria Grahame, she best remembered by me as Violet Bick, Bedford Falls prettiest, sexiest and, er, friendliest girl.  In his afterword McGivern mentions that he heard years later from director Fritz Lang that Gloria gave him a lot of trouble on the set because her interpretation of a mobster’s girlfriend did not match Lang’s.  This is a good spot to clarify a point about the only “Edgar” award that McGivern won.  He is officially credited  by the MWA with winning the 1954 award for Best Motion Picture for The Big Heat.  What is odd about the award is that McGivern had nothing to do with the making of the movie or the screenplay (that credit goes to Sidney Boehm).  The novel version of The Big Heat did not win any MWA prizes when it was published in 1953.  Apparently back in those days the MWA’s policy concerning awards for films was still being formulated.  It seems that within a year or two after 1954 only the actual screenwriter(s) will win “Edgar” awards.  Authors of the books that winning films are based on will no longer get awards for Best Motion Picture unless they actually wrote or co-wrote the screenplay.  This was a good decision by the MWA.  Think of how embarrassing it would be if a screenwriter adapted a terrible novel into a brilliant screenplay that was made into a great movie!  The author of the novel would win a prize that he or she certainly did not deserve.  This did not happen with The Big Heat.  The novel is just as good, if not better than the film version.  The screenwriter made several changes to McGivern’s plot that may have made sense visually but did not necessarily improve the story.  

I would not rank The Big Heat as McGivern’s best novel.  That accolate belongs to either Rogue Cop or The Darkest Hour (aka Waterfront Cop).  McGivern’s penchant for creating fragile, beautiful blondes who only serve to advance the plot before they are brutalized (and usually murdered) would be less noticeable in the books following The Big Heat.  His female characters will become stronger and therefore more compelling as he further matured as a crime novel writer.  FYI, “the big heat” refers to the political and civic pressure that comes down on the entrenched interests once the citizens finally become outraged about the level of corruption in the city. 

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Rogue Cop (1954)

tells the story of of once honest but now corrupt Philadelphia cop Mike Carmody and his younger honest cop brother, Eddie.  Mike spends the first half of the novel trying to protect Eddie from the murderous thugs who now bankroll his affluent lifestyle.  It becomes clear early on that Mike will ultimately fail to prevent the murder of his brother.  The second half of the story follows Mike’s efforts to avenge Eddie by bringing down the guilty criminals.  Whether Mike succeeds or not, and if so, at what cost to himself and others is only revealed in the final chapters.  Rogue Cop is a gripping morality tale filled with menacing scenes and dangerous confrontations worthy of Hammett himself.  McGivern believes that we all make countless daily choices to be good or bad, to be brave or cowardly.  The decisions we make have consequences and effects far beyond ourselves and the immediate present. 

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The Darkest Hour (1955)

shows how corruption on the New York City waterfront affects the lives of those who work on and live near the docks.  Steve Retnick returns to manhattan after serving time for manslaughter.  He was a tough but honest cop who crossed the wrong people and was framed for his efforts by some union thugs.  Retnick has seemingly lost everything; his job, his wife and five years of his life so he hell bent for revenge no matter what the cost to himself or others.  Though Retnick believes that all his former friends and co-workers have abandoned him, he still does have some allies and it is those allies who provide the framework for his ultimate salvation—should he choose to use them.  As is typical in a McGivern story, there are many gritty confrontation scenes between the various characters.

A feature film was made from from this story starring Alan Ladd.  The location was changed from NYC to San Francisco and the title was changed to Waterfront Cop.

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The Seven File (1956)

describes a kidnapping from beginning to end.  Two of the central characters, as in Rogue Cop, are brothers.  Duke Farrell was once a golden boy—-strong, smart, athletic but of flawed character.  Hank Farrell, not quite as strong, smart or athletically gifted as his older brother has stayed clear of Duke for many years until the two are brought together by the meticulously planned kidnapping of a wealthy family’s child.  McGivern shows that deeply flawed people are unlikely to carry out even the most perfect of schemes because they will inevitably deviate from the plan due to their own greed, cowardice and poor judgement.  Despite numerous setbacks the kidnappers do manage to snatch the child and one must read through the final chapter to learn of the ultimate outcome of the crime.  McGivern alternates the story’s middle chapters between the kidnappers actions and the FBI’s efforts to solve the crime and save the child.  The chapters featuring the criminals are grippingly menacing and expose their gradual loss of control over events.  The FBI chapters painstakingly detail the proceedures of a mid-twentieth century kidnapping investigation.  A theme that emerges from McGivern’s storytelling is that most of us are capable of at least one act of courage or one act of mercy, no matter how costly to ourselves, which can turn around a seeming lost situation.  The action in the story takes place mostly in New York City and Maine.  The title of the story derives from a code name that the FBI gives to this kidnapping investigation.

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Night Extra (1957)

A big city reporter (which McGivern was at one time) investigates the murder of a woman whose body was found in the house of a reform mayoral candidate.  It soon becomes clear that the entrenched political machine has engineered a frame-up and appears likely to succeed in destroying a feared political opponent.  This novel is set in an unnamed East Coast city that suffers from pervasive corruption.  Anyone who fights against the corruption places their job, if not their life, jeopardy.  Crusading reporter Sam Terrell spends much of the story trying to convince witnesses to come forward and tell what they know.  He also must navigate through the city’s numerous layers of civic, political and bureaucratic corruption in order to find allies who might advance his investigation.  One of the themes that McGivern explores is how ingrained and insidious corruption can become if left unchecked and unchallenged.  Many of the enablers of corruption believe themselves to be good people and only realize their complicity after Terrell points it out to them.  Will enough citizens stand up to the machine and do the right thing?  Will Terrell succeed in his quest to save the reform-minded politician?  Pick up a copy of this book from an Internet bookseller or at your local used bookstore.  Sadly, few if any, of this once respected mid-twentieth century crime writer’s books are in print today. 

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Savage Streets(1959)

McGivern’s rich and varied writing career began in the pulps and newspapers during the 1940’s, went on to crime novels in the 1950’s and eventually drifted into film and TV scriptwriting in the 1960’s and 1970’s.  Scattered within his body of work are some caper, espionage, detective and war novels.  His best work is seen in the 1950’s crime novels.

In Savage Streets, the children of an upper-middle class suburban NYC community are being intimidated by a gang of teenagers from a poorer/older section of the town.  Adults intrude into a situation that might well have worked itself out on its own.  The intrusion, rather than resolving the problem, escalates tensions to unbearable levels resulting in beatings, rape and death.

McGivern did not write a typical 1950’s juvenile delinquent story.  Instead he wrote a morality tale dealing with right vs. wrong, class antagonisms and the harmful effects of the wrongfull exercise of privilege and power.  The narrative unfolds in such a manner that the reader almost unwillingly finds himself gradually shifting sympathies from one group of characters to the opposing group.  As is typical in a McGivern story, one or more characters must decide between self-preservation (of life, wealth or status) and doing the right thing, no matter what the cost.  The characterizations of the striving commuter fathers, the overprotective and overprotected stay-at-home mothers, the sheltered children, the angry teenagers and the well-intentioned police are, for the most part, spot on.  Although this is not a detective story, McGivern does plant clues that foreshadow upcoming plot twists.  As I have written elsewhere, McGivern’s writing style, subject matter and themes are not for the fainthearted nor for those seeking high amounts of classic detection.  He zeroed in on the weaknesses of society and created compelling crime stories that are still entertaining and meaningful half a century after they were written.   

END 

The post William P. McGivern’s (1922-1982) Crime Novels of the 1950’s appeared first on Speedy Mystery.

Burton and Poe had a stormy and complex relationship (understandable due to Burton’s often violent temper and Poe’s erratic behavior).  Poe had, perhaps unreasonable, expectations of first refusal if the magazine was ever put up for sale.  That Poe was not considered reliable enough to buy the magazine yet talented enough to be kept on as an editor and contributor speaks much to Poe’s physical and mental health at the time.

Burton had a tempestuous and colorful private life owing mostly to his violent temper and propensity to marry multiple women without bothering to divorce any of them.  At the time of his death in New York City in 1860 he had accumulated great wealth including at least two homes and an extensive library of over 20,000 volumes housed in his Glen Cove estate on Long Island.

The reason I wrote this essay on William Burton is because I believe he may possibly (and unknowingly) have written the earliest recognizable fictional detective story in 1837 thereby beating Poe by four years.  I was researching early female detectives on the Jess Nevins website called Fantastic, Mysterious and Adventurous Victoriana when I came across a reference to a story by Burton titled “The Secret Cell” published in his Gentleman’s Magazine in 1837.

Google has digitalized the 1837 issues of the magazine so I downloaded and read the story.  Burton is ostensibly narrating an event from eight years earlier when he was still living in London.  Since he offers a detailed narrative containing the extensive verbatim conversations of many people/characters, I assume the reminiscence device he employs is simply that—a device designed to lead his readers into the fictional story.  Action begins in “The Secret Cell” when Burton’s former laundress calls upon him to help find her missing 17-year old daughter.  Burton soon enlists the aid of a friend “in the police department”.  From that point forward Burton acts as the police detective’s Watson and we are off on an exciting adventure involving a disappointed heir, kidnappers, London low-lifes, a private asylum, dramatic coach rides and plenty of “fisty-cuffs”.  There is little deduction, or as Poe would say a few years in the future, ratiocination present but plenty of investigative work is done.  The detective, unfortunately named L________, is quite effective at disguises and dialects and is certainly brave and dogged but is far from infallible.  He makes several mistakes and misjudgments during the course of his investigation but overcomes them because of his unfailing determination to solve the case.  Early in the investigation he deploys his wife undercover to gain some important information.  Contrary to what Jess Nevins and others may believe, this does not make Mrs. L_______ the first female PI.  I consider her a precursor to Miss Pinkerton (Hilda Adams) the nurse/detective created by Mary Roberts Rinehart.  Hilda often went undercover to aid the police in their investigations.

The story is brought to a satisfactory conclusion, in part, due to the actions of a small dog.  Unfortunately, Burton undercut the dramatic conclusion because early in the narrative he reveals that the girl will ultimately be rescued.

In “The Secret Cell” we have detectives who investigate and, in a manner, detect.  We have various police constables giving a hand and a mystery is solved.  Is this not a detective story?  Granted, this story runs more along the lines of Vidocq rather than Dupin and the, what we now would consider Nick Carter-ish pulp fiction-like action is a bit over-the-top, yet I could not help thinking that Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson could easily have slipped into the shoes of Burton’s detective and narrator.

Burton seems not to have ever realized that he invented a new type of story since he never challenged Poe’s historic primacy in the development of the detective story.  It could be that Poe’s importance in this new genre was not well understood and recognized during Burton’s lifetime.  Since Burton went on to so much great success after he wrote “The Secret Cell” perhaps he simply forgot about a minor literary piece he created to fill some pages in a barely remembered magazine venture.

I am not fully convinced that my opinion regarding the importance of “The Secret Cell” is correct.  Michael Grost has published some of his thoughts regarding this matter on his extensive website “A Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection”.  His comments plus a link to the actual story can be found in the Casebook Fiction section of his site.

The post William E. Burton (1802 or 1804-1860) appeared first on Speedy Mystery.

This is the first English  translation of Paul Halter’s short mystery fiction.  The book consists of ten “Impossible Crime” stories written mostly in the 1990’s.  Mr. Halter has received both popular and critical acclaim in his native France for his atmospheric, plot-driven stories written in the tradition of John Dickson Carr’s best work.  Carr (1906-1977) was a prolific American mystery writer who resided in England for several years,  He is considered the greatest practitioner of the ‘Locked Room” or “Impossible Crime” murder mystery.  He specialized in stories that featured a crime (usually a murder) that occurred in a locked or watched room into which there was no apparent access.  An “Impossible Crime” story would run along the same lines in that a murder would be committed without any apparent means by any of the possible suspects.

Halter deploys at least three different detectives to solve the crimes.  Owen Burns (a sort of Sherlock Holmes/Oscar Wilde combination) for stories set at the turn of the 19th century.  Irving Farrell (an elderly man who has a knack of encountering unusual crimes in 1920’s England) and Dr. Alan Twist (a criminologist often called upon by the police to solve unusual crimes in mid to late Twentieth Century Europe).

Several of these stories take place during or just after a snowfall, which allows Halter to work his literary trickery with footprints (or the lack thereof) in the snow.  Architecture plays an important role in his stories either by setting a mood or by playing a direct part in the mysteries themselves.  Though the stories often have supernatural overtones, most of the solutions to the crimes are logically explained and a careful reader might, by correctly interpreting Halter’s clues, be able to solve the mysteries before the detectives offer their explanations.

Whether Halter is describing a murderous snowman, a dancing corpse, a modern “Lorelei”, an avenging ghost or a werewolf as seen from both the lupine and human perspectives, he often evokes the best of not only John Dickson Carr but the mastery of Agatha Christie and the artistry of G. K. Chesterton.

John Pugmire (a co-translator and great admirer of Halter) has provided this chronology of when the stories appearing in The Night of the Wolf were written:

1988     “The Dead Dance at Night”
1990     “The Night of the Wolf”
1992     “Rippermania”
1993     “The Tunnel of Death”
1998     “The Flower Girl”
1998     “The Call of the Lorelei”
1999     “Murder in Cognac”
2000     “The Cleaver”
2000     “The Golden Ghost”
2002     “The Abominable Snowman”

John has graciously provided the following information on additional Paul Halter short stories appearing in EQMM since the publication of The Night of the Wolf:

The post Paul Halter’s book of “Impossible Crime” short stories appeared first on Speedy Mystery.

Susan Isaacs’s (1947-    ) first book-length published fiction was Compromising Positions (1978), a murder mystery set in the imaginary Long Island upper-middle class community of Shorehaven, New York.  At the time of her first case Judith Singer is a 34-year old mother of a seven-year old girl and four-year old boy.  She is married to her grad-school sweetheart who is generally dismissive of her.  In the middle of something like a mid-life crisis, brought on by an unsatisfying marriage and regrets about never finishing her doctorate in History, Judith decides to involve herself in the murder investigation of a local periodontist.  Her in-depth knowledge of the inhabitants and customs of her suburban community combined with a keen intelligence enable her to solve the murder.  Along the way she receives assistance from a few of her friends and a sexy homicide detective.

Judith’s second appearance is in a short story titled “Compliments of a Friend” (2000), which serves as a bridge between her first and third cases.  While investigating the poisoning death of an acquaintance, Judith runs into her former police detective lover, their first meeting in over twenty years.  Judith solves the tricky poisoning case but the jolt of seeing the love of her life so many years after giving him up because they were both married to others at the time, throws for a loop her dull but well-ordered life of working for a local oral history project and teaching (having finally earned her Doctorate) at a small college.  Loneliness caused by her recent widowhood and a bad case of empty nest syndrome due to the absence of her now grown children make her emotional turmoil almost unbearable.  Unfortunately, Judith cannot muster the courage to confront detective Nelson Sharpe with the news of her current availability.

Judith appeared in her third recorded case in 2001.  The novel Long Time No See finds the widow Singer still working as an adjunct professor of history at a second rate college in neighboring Queens County.  The Halloween night disappearance of a Shorehaven resident eventually leads to Judith being hired (sans fee) by the vicim’s father-in-law to solve a murder.  Long Time No See, being Ms. Isaac’s ninth novel, is naturally a more polished piece of fictions compared to Compromising Positions, yet it is not quite as satisfying a reading experience as her debut book.  On the one hand, the resumption of a fondly remembered dalliance with the police detective who aided Judith’s first investigation is handled adroitly.  On the other hand, the reasons behind the crime and the circumstances of the murder and its aftermath are a bit far-fetched.  That said, Long Time No See is a well-written, enjoyable detective story that showcases the sharp satirical barbs that Isaacs aims at upper-middle class Long Islanders.

Judith’s fourth recorded case, “After Lunch” (2008) is a bit of an oddity in that this short story is a re-working of the plot of her first short story case, “Compliments of a Friend” (2000) with some character and plot changes.  About two years ago at a literary event I questioned Ms. Isaacs about the similarity of the stories.  She admitted that she had re-worked the earlier story to satisfy some obligation she was under, possibly related to her website, which is the only place “After Lunch” can be found.  Although the copyright date is 2008, the events in the story seem to be taking place several years earlier.

The greatest appeal of the Judith Singer saga, aside from the coherent plots, humor, satire and good storytelling, is the character of Judith herself.  Although she is by no means a great beauty she certainly is attractive.  Judith is described as a large-bosomed, big-boned, long-legged, dark-complexioned woman with high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes.  She does not attract the prodigious amount of male attention as does her best friend Nancy but usually at least once per story Judith is hit-on by a perceptive man who appreciates both her intelligence and looks.  Judith’s powerful intellect is what compels her to butt into murder investigations that are really none of her business and to eventually solve the crimes while managing to escape some perilous situations along the way. 

Another appeal of the Singer stories is the small but intriguing cast of continuing characters Issacs deploys to support Judith.  One example is Nelson Sharpe, the police detective who plays key roles in Judith’s investigations and love life.  He is a multi-faceted character who seems believable both as a romantic interest and as a working police detective.

Judith’s primary confidante is her best friend and Shorehaven neighbor, Nancy MacLaren Miller.  Their friendship was forged while both attended the University of Wisconsin in the early 1960’s.  Nancy became a freelance writer, married an architect and settled in Shorehaven.  Later on in the series she winds up working for Long Island’s dominant newspaper.  Nancy is a polar-opposite of Judith.  She is a slim but shapely, fair-skinned, auburn-haired, green-eyed Georgia-born beauty who attracts men by the basketful.  Much to Judith’s chagrin, Nancy drinks too much and is a serial adulterer.  Those flaws don’t prevent Nancy from being an important sounding board for Judith’s theories and occasionally opening an investigational door that Judith would normally find closed and locked.

Judith’s other Shorehaven friend is Mary Alice “Malice” Mahoney Hunzinger Schlesinger Goldfarb,  Both Judith and Nancy knew Mary Alice from their University of Wisconsin undergraduate days but neither really liked her back then.  So, when Mary Alice, by chance, moved to Shorehaven she quickly latched on to her former classmates even though Judith didn’t encourage the reunion and Nancy actively opposed it.  Mary Alice is a painfully thin, completely self-absorbed, almost empty-headed slave to the most recent trends in fashion, decorating and husbands.  She has managed to marry and divorce and marry herself into successively more affluent domestic arrangements, her current husband being a prominent urologist.  Mary Alice does not have the brainpower to actively help advance Judith’s investigations but her abnormally acute gossip radar and her in-depth knowledge of the social standings and aspirations of her fellow Shorehavenites make her an invaluable though unwitting asset to Judith.  Mary Alcie’s other claim to fame is that she served as Judith’s unlikely entree to amateur sleuthing by her reckless and, needless to say, thoughtless dive into a tawdry affair just prior to the events chronicled in Compromising Positions.

Judith’s detecting style leans heavily toward the intuitive school.  Her intimate knowledge of local inhabitants reminds me of Agatha Christie’s spinster-sleuth Jane Marple.  Her incisive interviewing technique and keen intelligence is reminiscent of Rex Stout’s rotund genius Nero Wolfe.  Her dogged investigative abilities recall those of Wolfe’s legman, Archie Goodwin.  Her sharp tongue and warm heart could be compared to Mary Roberts Rinehart’s nurse-detective Hilda Adams or Janet Evanovich’s Jersey-girl skip-tracer/bond enforcement agent/bounty hunter Stephanie Plum.  Judith’s habit of intruding into criminal investigations without invitation reminds me of Stuart Palmer’s schoolmarm sleuth, Hildegarde Withers.  Isaacs’s style also includes playing fair with the reader.  A close study of her stories will reward the careful reader with enough clues to solve the mysteries before Judith does.

Susan Isaacs’s place in the mystery genre is not easy to define.  Though her first commercial success came with the publication of Compromising Positions in 1978, more than twenty years passed before she returned to detective fiction.  Ms. Isaacs filled those twenty years with seven mainstream novels and at least one screenplay; the adaptation of CompromisingPositions into a film starring Susan Sarandon and Raul Julia in 1985.  Her 1988 novel, Shining Through, was made into a film in 1992 starring Melanie Griffith and Michael Douglas, although she was not involved with that screenplay.  After the publication of “Compliments of a Friend” and Long Time No See in 2000 and 2001 Isaacs went on to write three more mainstream novels, which like all her previous novels, were also best-sellers.

I have hopes that the next Susan Isaacs book will be a Judith Singer case.  A strong outing for Judith would cement Isaacs’s place as an important detective story writer.  In some ways Isaacs’s writing career resembles that of Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958).  Rinehart’s original success was due to the great popularity of her first two books:  The Circular Staircase (1908) and The Man in Lower 10 (1909). Staircase in particular introduced a fresh new face to he American mystery scene that had long been dominated by Anna Katherine Green’s (1846-1935) innovative but melodramatic and long-winded mysteries.  Rinehart’s somewhat satirical, modern (for its time) style combined with compelling plots and interesting characters made her a best-selling author for most of the first half of the Twentieth Century.  After her initial mystery genre success Rinehart branched out into mainstream fiction just as Isaacs would do seventy year later.  Almost none of Rinehart’s non-mystery fiction is read today.  In fact, her reputation now rests solely on her mysteries and her humorous “Tish” short stories. Rinehart was also active in other media: Broadway plays (The Bat) and screenwriting for the early film industry are two examples that link her to the versatility of Issacs.

Although Isaacs has not enjoyed the phenomenal success that Rinehart once had, she is a better writer and sharper satirist than was Rinehart.  If Isaacs set her mind to it she could easily outdo even the wonderful Janet Evanovich in cranking out comic crime fiction. Instead, Susan Isaacs went down a different  literary path and presumably is happy with her choice.  As with Rinehart’s The Circular Staircase seventy years earlier, Compromising Positions seemed fresh and original when first published in 1978.  In it we met a warm-hearted, blunt-spoken, intelligent Jewish protagonist who, instead of living in one of the great American mystery metropolises of new York City, San Francisco, Chicago or Los Angeles, resided in a leafy suburb that harbored passion, crime and evil just like those other more famous crime capitals if only one peeped below its outwardly tranquil surface,  Susan Isaacs helped us peep under the surface of our modern suburbs and, if what we saw was not always pleasant, it certainly was entertaining.

The post Judith (never Judy) Singer’s bio (all dates are approximate) appeared first on Speedy Mystery.

Brace, Timothy – Murder Goes in a Trailer (1937).  Pratt, writing as Timothy Brace, wrote four novels featuring wealthy amateur criminologist Anthony Adams. Barzun and Taylor in their COC dismiss him as a writer “without special distinction”. My reading of Murder Goes in a Trailer (the second in the series) causes me to agree with them. His writing style can best be described as workmanlike. He has no great flair for dialogue or for creating memorable characters. The murder method (administering some type of poison gas into a seemingly “locked” trailer) is clever and the final pages wherein amateur sleuth Anthony Adams gathers the suspects and uses deductive reasoning to eliminate all but one of them and solve the puzzle are the highlights of the book. Unfortunately, Pratt/Brace took a short story plot and bloated it into a tedious novel totally lacking in humor and sustainable interest. Perhaps the most glaring error he made in writing this series was the creation of his sleuth. Anthony Adams is a bored rich guy (sort of like Average Jones or Philo Vance) who likes to intrude into murder investigations that capture his interest. The local police kowtow to him in a quite unbelievable manner. The Adams character carries all the unlikable qualities of Jones, Vance, Queen and Wimsey without exhibiting any of their redeeming features. Simply put, he is a boring, pompous, conceited ass who takes himself way too seriously.

Here is a list of the Anthony Adams detective novels:

Murder Goes Fishing (1936)

Murder Goes in a Trailer (1937)

Murder Goes to the Dogs (1938)

Murder Goes to the Worlds Fair (1939)

The post Timothy Brace pseudonym of Theodore Pratt–Regional Writer & Detective Story Novelist appeared first on Speedy Mystery.

1. Merlda Mace
2. Marco Page
3. F Britten Austin
4. Lawrence L. Lynch
5. Marcus Magill

*****Continue scrolling down for additional Entries*****

1.  Merlda Mace (psd. of Madeleine McCoy)

Motto for Murder (1943) was one of a trio of murder mysteries written by Merlda Mace during the 1940’s.  The detective she deploys in this story is Timothy J. O’Neil better known as Tip to his friends.  He is a 26 year old “special investigator” for Barnes and Gleason, a New York City investment firm.  How he got this job is one of the big mysteries of this book since he readily admits that he is not much of an investigator and his performance during the story bears this out.

 This is, in essence, a country house mystery.  The house is an isolated mansion located in the mountains of northern New York State near Lake Placid.  The controlling and quite unpleasant matriarch of a wealthy family has gathered her extended family to tell them that she has screwed them out of their inheritances.  A snowstorm descends on the region and several murders occur during a long Christmas weekend.

 This seems to me like a combination of a mediocre Mignon G. Eberhart mystery and a bad Ellery Queen mystery.  The author can put words and sentences and paragraphs together in a coherent manner but the book, on the whole, is a disappointment.  The physical and character clues are not first rate and the author employs a HIBK technique that serves no valid storytelling purpose.  Since the characters insisted on wandering around in the dark, leaving their bedrooms unlocked at night and napping in vulnerable spots, the killer did not have too much trouble carrying out the murders.  The “mottos” from the title of the story refer to fortune-cookie type candies wrapped in little papers containing sayings which play a small part in the solution.

 Apparently, “Tip” O’Neil is not a series character.  Mace/McCoy’s other two mysteries seem to utilize a female sleuth called Christine Anderson although I have not been able to verify this information.

 (Posted to the GAD site 09/2009)

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2.  Marco Page (psd. of Harry Kurnitz, 1909-1968)

Page/Kurnitz wrote or co-wrote 33 screenplays for Hollywood movies between 1938 and 1966.  He wrote or adapted 4 plays for the stage between 1954 and 1963.  More importantly for the purposes of this review, he wrote 4 mystery/detective novels between 1938 and 1955. Fast Company (1938) was the first of these.  Of his screen work, Shadow of the Thin Man (1941) and The Thin Man Goes Home (1945) are the most telling of his style because Page’s detecting couple in Fast Company is obviously based upon Nick and Nora Charles from Hammett’s novel The Thin Man (1934).

The plot of Fast Company revolves around some dirty business going on in New York’s rare book trade.  A frame-up and an elaborate scheme for stealing, altering and re-selling valuable books are the main plot-drivers in this fast-paced mystery.  Rare book dealer Joel Glass (with help from his wife, Garda) discovers that working for insurance companies recovering valuable stolen books is more remunerative than depression-era book selling.  The characters make prodigious amounts of wisecracks and drink prodigious amounts of liquor before the story is concluded.  One would not think that so much gun play, knife-throwing, fist-fighting, kidnapping, head-conking, pistol-whipping, book stealing and fem-fataling was going on in the 1930’s New York rare book milieu.

The best way to describe Page’s writing recipe is as follows:  Combine one part Hammett’s Nick and Nora with one part screwball comedy with one part thriller-ish action and then add a tiny dash of fair-play clueing.

One plot point that really annoyed me was that, one day after a character is shot in the shoulder, he manages to free himself from being tied up, beats up a crook and jumps out of a second story window.  It’s almost as if Page forgot that the character had been shot.

To be fair to Page, the general consensus of COC and Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers is that Fast Company is probably the weakest of his four mystery novels.  Still, it was good enough to win Dodd Mead’s Red Badge Prize and it got him to Hollywood where three movies were made based on the lead characters of Fast Company.

A very good review of Fast Company written on 05/09/08 by “prettysinister” on the LibraryThing website indicates that it was one of the earliest American bibliomystery novels. 

Posted to the GAD site 07/2009

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3.  F(rederick) Britten Austin (1885-1941)

British writer Austin was a prolific author of various types of short fiction (adventure, military, supernatural, mystery, detective, etc.) in the early decades of the 20th Century.  He wrote a series of six stories about  PI Quentin Quayne that appeared in the Strand and the Red Book magazines in late 1924 and early 1925:
“The Vanished Duke” ss The Red Book Magazine 09/1924
“The Fourth Degree” ss 10/1924
“The One-Eyed Moor” ss 11/1924
“A Paris Frock” ss 12/1924
“The Great Mallett Case” ss 01/1925
“Diamond Cut Diamond” ss 02/1925

“The Fourth Degree” was reprinted in Thwing’s The World’s Best 100 Detective Stories (1929).  “Diamond Cut Diamond” was reprinted in Sayers Omnibus of Crime (1929). 

Quayne owns a detective agency in Piccadilly Circus (the Q. Q. Agency).  Mr. Creighton is his assistant.  Quayne is usually called “Chief” by his employees and “QQ” by his friends.  The two stories I read (Fourth Degree and Diamond) were mediocre but the series had potential.  I wonder if anyone has read all six of the Quayne stories?  Most interestingly, I found a Quentin Quayne parody published in a Canadian boys private school/college magazine sometime in the late 1920’s.  It was quite amusing and the chap who wrote it poked some good-natured fun at Austin’s characters and writing style.  I may post it here at a later date.
From St. Andrews College Review by MacRae, Form 1, Lower School:
“The Mysterious S.O.S.”
(With Apologies to the author of Quentin Quayne stories.)
Foreward.—This story has nothing to do with an S.O.S, but as it was a good title, sounded mysterious, and as I could think of none better, I used it.  Now for the story.
Quentin Quayne was sitting at his large desk in his private office when, of a sudden, calling Crayton, his secretary, to him, he said, “This man is in my outer office”, at the same time holding up a picture for Crayton to see.  “When he leaves I wish you to trail him, as I think (and my fortune teller tells me) that he is implicated in this recent murder about which the papers are getting out special editions.  Here is 20 pounds and an automatic.  Follow him to the ends of the earth if necessary.”  Crayton answered, “Yes, sir” and turned to go out (to be continued)

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4.  Lawrence L. Lynch

psd. of Emma Murdock Van Deventer (1853-1914)
​aka Emily Murdock, aka Emily Medora Murdock, aka Emma Murdock, aka Emily Lynch, aka Emily Van Deventer, aka E. M. Van Deventer

Lynch wrote 24 novels between 1879 and 1912.  They seem to range from mysteries to detective stories to adventure tales to romances…and a combination of all four types.  Her works appear to have been popular at one time both in the US and England.  Nobody reads her now but here are my thoughts on one of her books featuring an early female detective: Madeline Payne, the Detective’s Daughter (1884).

​Madeline Payne is a young woman of 17 or 18 when the story opens.  Her father was Lionel Payne, a celebrated detective nicknamed “The Expert” for his ability to unravel complicated mysteries.  Lionel was shot and killed by a criminal when Madeline was an infant. Her mother remarried a few years later, then soon after, died of heart disease.  Her mother made a poor choice for her second marriage because Madeline’s stepfather proved to be both cruel and greedy. 

Madeline, recently graduated from a convent boarding school, returns home (home being a country house in a small town a two hour train ride outside of New York City) for the first time in several years.  Her stepfather wants nothing to do with her and, in fact, has concocted a scheme to marry Madeline off to an old geezer acquaintance to satisfy a gambling debt.  In the short time Madeline has been home, her youthful good looks have captured the interest of a handsome stranger who suggests an elopement to NYC.  The naive Madeline agrees to the elopement.  Just before departing, Madeline discovers that she, not her stepfather, is the true heir to the country house and small fortune left by her mother.  Madeline vows vengeance on the man who made her mother’s last years a hardship and kept her inheritance a secret.

Madeline’s fiance turns out to be a rogue and gambler who had no intention of marrying her.  Madeline engineers an escape from the bounder but the excitement of her daring flight causes Madeline to fall ill (possibly a weak heart like her mother?).  She is rescued by two benefactors, met by chance, and is nursed back to health. Once recovered, Madeline vows vengeance on her ex-fiance for taking advantage of her innocence.

The above events take up the first quarter of this 125,000 word Victorian melodrama.  The balance of the story narrates Madeline’s successful transformation into an undercover detective (using disguises, of course) as she unravels the schemes of no less than three fortune hunters (one being her ex-fiance).  The unlikely coincidence that these three fortune hunters have separately or together harmed the lives of her benefactors or their families is quite unbelievable.  Madeline pieces together the mysterious events that have tied these seven or eight people together and winds up freeing a falsely imprisoned man, brings harsh justice to the three fortune hunters, saves a young woman from a rogue, saves a middle-aged woman from the same rogue and expels her stepfather from her mother’s house after rescuing him from a murder plot.  Madeline is, naturally, exhausted by these efforts so at the end of the book she decides to travel to Europe for rest and a change of scene.

Madeline and some other characters from this book return for a sequel seven years later in Moina; or Against the Mighty, A Detective Story (1891).  Continue reading below for more on Moina.

A publisher’s blurb in 1884 describes Madeline Payne as “One of the most fascinating of modern novels.  It combines the excitement that ever attends the intricate and hazardous schemes of  a detective, together with as cunningly elaborated a plot as the best of Willkie Collins’ or Charles Reade’s.”

Lynch/Van Deventer’s writing style is a cross between Anna Katherine Greene and Mary Elizabeth Braddon.  Lynch’s plotting and inventiveness is not as good as Greene’s and her subject matter is not quite as sordid as Braddon’s.  Like many of her Victorian contemporaries, Lynch is overly wordy and is prone to allowing her characters to make long, tedious, melodramatic, self-righteous speeches.
I eventually began looking forward to the sections featuring the criminals because those characters  exhibited a bit more complexity and depth compared to the “good/noble” characters with whom the author seems more enchanted.  The criminals tended not to make long speeches and, quite frankly, their conversations were more interesting than those of the “good” characters.

Lynch came from a prominent Chicago area family and apparently spent most of her life in the Chicago vicinity.  Because of that fact, I found it surprising that she set this novel in and around New York City and the city of Baltimore because her descriptions of the local geography, buildings, streets neighborhoods, cities and small towns were so generic that the settings could have been in almost any large or mid-size American city.  It almost seemed that Lynch had never been to the East Coast and was using maps and travel brochures to help her visualize her locations.  The Chicago publishing firm of Laird & Lee originally published all of Lynch/Deventer’s 24 novels.  She was also published in a few European markets.  William Henry Lee (1863-1913) eventually bought out his partner Frederick C. Laird in 1894 and was the sole owner of the publishing concern until his death in 1913.  Laird & Lee mainly published dime novels and dictionaries according to Wikipedia.  Laird & Lee took out a promotional ad in the 2/16/1899 edition of the literary journal The Dial and described Lynch’s novels as being “Thrilling, High-Class Detective Stories.”  It was rumored that Lee was of partial African-American heritage.  The copyright entry in Lynch/Deventer’s final book A Blind Lead (1912) lists William H. Lee (not Lynch/Deventer) as the copyright holder.

I have come across a fascinating article about Lynch/Van Deventer on an online blog by Roger Matile who is quite informed about the history of the Fox River area of Illinois (the westernmost suburbs of Chicago).  There seems to be quite a mystery concerning Murdock/Lynch/Van Deventer’s first husband, Lawrence L. Lynch.  Apparently she married him when she was 25 in 1877.  She was then either divorced or widowed around 1886 and then married Dr. Abraham Van Deventer (himself a widower) in 1887.  There may have been some scandal about her first marriage to Lynch, a theatrical agent who traveled a lot.  Click HERE to read the full article.

Lynch falls into the common trope that Kathleen Gregory Klein writes extensively about in her book The Woman Detective:Gender & Genre (1988).  Like many female PI’s of the late 19th and early 20th Century, Madeline solves the “mystery plot” but fails to solve the “marriage plot” successfully for herself.

I came across a digital version of Lynch/Deventer’s second Madeline Payne book, Moina, or Against the Mighty (1891) and finally finished this, as Mike Grost would say, brontosaurus of a novel (130k+ words, 530+ pages).  Madeline Payne was Lynch/Deventer’s 3rd published novel.  Moina was her 8th and she showed some improvement in her writing skills.  She seems to have left behind much of her Mary Elizabeth Braddon “Sensation”  effects and even partially abandoned some of her Anna Katherine Green influence.  Moina seems to have been heavily influenced by the American Realist school especially William Dean Howells’ books Annie Kilburn (1888) & A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890).  Social justice for workers, union activities both good and bad, capitalists vs. anarchists, foreign agitators, bombings, assassination of capitalists, class conflict, labor disputes, foreign intrigue, etc. dominate the book.  Lynch/Deventer’s pacing has improved from a snail’s pace in Madeline Payne to a tortoise’s pace in Moina.  She is still way too wordy and often loses track of characters for many chapters and then re-introduces them without describing what they were up to for several weeks.  Also, I count 6 characters (5 female) whose first name starts with the letter M, making difficult to keep the cast of characters straight without making a chart.  Madeline Payne takes a back seat to another detective in this book.  In fact,  she barely escapes being a secondary character whereas in her first case she was not only the title character but dominated most of the book.  Madeline is now a mature and thoughtful woman in her mid-twenties in Moina rather than a naive and impetuous teenager as she was in Madeline Payne.  Lynch/Deventer has not improved her knowledge of NYC  in the seven years since she completed  her first Madeline Payne mystery.  She only faithfully describes Central Park and Fifth Avenue.  All her other descriptions of the streets, neighborhoods, parks, and buildings of NYC are either completely fabricated or inaccurate.  Near the end of the book Lynch/Deventer finally has some of the characters travel to Chicago and partake in the real life Haymarket Square Riot/Bombing (1886).  She writes compellingly of the Chicago location and events in great contrast to her generic descriptions of NYC and the overly melodramatic events taking place there.  One senses that the lifelong Chicagoland resident was deeply affected by the bombing and these feelings managed to creep into her writing at this point of the novel.  Too bad Lynch/Deventer could not sustain this heart-felt emotion throughout the book.  Lynch/Deventer speedily winds up the story in the final thirty or so pages…all the bad guys are killed or jailed, most of the good guys/gals are saved and a near triple wedding ends the novel.  Madeline has finally solved the marriage plot which eluded her in her first case.  I wish the author had speeded-up the action of the first 500 pages as much as she did in the final 30 pages. I hope some scholar would make a deep study of this author who created the first American female detective character.  I do not have the stamina to struggle my way through Lynch/Deventer’s other 22 books in order to make a proper determination as to her place in American detective fiction.

Here is the content an ad taken out by Lynch/Deventer’s British publisher, Ward, Lock & Co. in The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art  (1 September, 1900 edition, page 284) concerning one of her later books:
Under Fate’s Wheel.   3s. 6d.
by  Lawrence L. Lynch
Author of “Shadowed by Three,” &c.
In all the world there is no writer of detective stories who has so huge a public as Lawrence L. Lynch.  Not even the creator of “Sherlock Holmes” can boast of so immense a circulation, for more than three million copies of Lawrence L. Lynch’s books have been sold.  No other writer of the mystery story can arrest the reader’s attention in the very first chapter—often in the very first paragraph—quite so quickly, and certainly no other writer can sustain the interest so well to the end.  
What hyperbole to dare compare Lynch/Deventer to A. C. Doyle but Ward, Lock paid for the ad so they could say whatever they wanted—I suppose.

Here is Lynch/Deventer’s bibliography as I can gather from various sources on the Internet (especially from Steve at Mystery*File):

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5.  Marcus Magill

Pseudonym of:
(Leonard) Brian Hill (1896-1979) & Joanna “Jay” Elder O’Halloran Giles (1893-1952)

Writing under the pseud. of Marcus Magill, these two British subjects wrote, among other works, at least six murder mysteries between 1929 and 1933. They did not seem to use a consistent series character but the one book I read, Murder Out of Tune (1931), was a fairly-clued Golden Age detective story featuring Lady “Ermie” Wassell-Jowett who is described as “a massive lady with auburn hair and a handsome profile carrying with her an air of inexhaustible energy.” Later in the story she is described, with more ill-will than accuracy, as bossy, fat, old, silly and soft in the head. Lady Wassell-Jowett (along with some younger friends) acts as an amateur sleuth in order to solve the murder of her niece. Although she does manage to gather some real clues, her questionable deductions and frenzied running about Greater London and SE England prove to be more of a hindrance than a help to the police (who eventually solve the crime with slow and steady detective work). Lady Wassell-Jowett is meant to be something of a comic figure along the lines of the characters Margaret Dumont played in the Marx Brothers films. She is a well-meaning wealthy woman with an overly inflated sense of her own intelligence and importance who is often taken advantage of by numerous relatives, friends, strangers and servants (note that the first two Marx brothers films came out prior to 1931 so it is possible that Magill saw Dumont in her dotty dowager comic foil roles). Magill’s writing style is a something of mash up of P. G. Wodehouse’s Wooster/Jeeves stories published from 1919 onward, Basil Thompson’s Mr. Pepper stories (Mr. Pepper, Investigator published in 1925)* and Agatha Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence stories (especially Partners in Crime published in 1929). It took me a while to realize that Murder Out of Tune was meant to be a humorous/satiric/comic murder mystery. Once I caught on to the fact that this was not a “straight’ mystery I was able to accept the book on its own terms and enjoy the efforts of these two forgotten authors. The surprisingly witty and ironic final chapter was the highlight of this book. This epilogue was reminiscent of “the Fliitcraft parable” from The Maltese Falcon which was published a year or so before Murder Out of Tune. I wonder if Magill had read Hammett’s work and created a kind of variation on Flitcraft?  I will now have to be on the lookout for more of Magill’s books in the hope that the author repeated his/her cleverness.

The 1989 edition of Barzun and Taylor’s A Catalogue of Crime does not credit Joanna Giles as the writing partner of Brian Hill behind the Marcus Magill pseudonym. The COC’s slightly favorable entry does mention that Magill used at least one other series detective besides Lady Wassell-Jowett.**

Brian Hill published some poetry and worked as an accountant prior to writing this series of murder mysteries. He also complied anthologies and translated works from French and Latin to English. Later In the 1930s he reviewed mysteries for The Bookman (UK) under the Marcus Magill name.

Joanna E. Giles was from a wealthy and influential South Australian family. She published two books of poetry in Australia before moving to England around 1920. Apparently Hill and Giles met in London in the 1920’s when they both belonged to a bohemian-type social circle called “The Launderers” who wrote and performed amateur theatricals and generally engaged in various artistic and scandalous behaviors. In 1930 Giles earned a pilot’s license and was one of only a few women in England at that time who owned and flew her own airplane. It is worth noting that their next to last book involves airplanes.

Books that Hill and Giles wrote as Marcus Magill (that I am aware of):

• Who Shall Hang? (1929)
• Death In the Box (1929)
• I Like a Good Murder (1930)
• Murder Out of Tune (1931)
• Murder in Full Flight (1933)
• Hide and I’ll Find You! (1933)

Although mostly forgotten today, Marcus Magill must have enjoyed some popularity back in the 1930s because the novels were published both in the US and the UK and at least one of the books went through multiple printings.

*  Regarding Basil Thompson’s Mr. Pepper stories: Magill named one of the characters Basil Goldfinch and another Ronald Pepper.
** My editions of Haycraft’s Murder for Pleasure and Reilly’s Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers has no mention of Marcus Magill or Brian Hill or Joanna E. Giles.

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*****End Of Entries For Now…please come back periodically to check for additional authors.*****

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The Circular Staircase (1908)

This is an iconic mystery novel written by an iconic mystery author who suffers both neglect (by modern mystery readers) and derision (by many mystery critics both past and present).  Although The Circular Staircase was Rinehart’s second (magazine) published novel length mystery, it by chance was published in hardcover a year before her first long mystery, The Man in Lower Ten, saw book publication.

Rinehart initially intended that her story be at least partially a satire of the murder mysteries of her time.  She supposedly toned down the satirical content of the serialized magazine version when preparing the manuscript for book publication because it soon became apparent that readers were generally ignoring the satire and instead were concentrating on the compelling plot and interesting characters.

A bare-bones plot summary of The Circular Staircase is as follows:  Spinster heiress Rachel Innes (aged about 50 or so) rents a country house for the summer to seek rest, relaxation and escape from the intrusive remodeling work being performed on her city house.  She moves into the ironically named Sunnyside country mansion along with her beloved adult niece and nephew and numerous household servants.  Mysterious events ensue which rapidly lead to a murder.  More mysterious events and several more deaths follow.  An embezzlement scheme, a hidden room and the astonishing number of secrets the cast of characters try to keep from each other are the main plot drivers.

The Circular Staircase is as readable today as it was in 1908.  Although Rinehart read and was clearly influenced by the books of Anna Katherine Green (1846-1935), she brought her own fresh approach and style to the mystery genre.  Rachel Innes is the first of several intelligent, wry, strong-willed, blunt spoken yet warmhearted female narrators created by Rinehart during her fifty-year long writing career.

In addition to employing a strong narrative voice and creating engaging characters, Rinehart also managed to inject humor into her writing:  Not, for the most part, a farce-like humor as seen in her wonderful Tish stories, but a more subtle, ironic and understated type of humor that one might expect to find in a mid rather than early Twentieth Century American novel.  Those instances where Rinehart broadens her humor mostly involve the character of Liddy Allen, Rachel’s longtime personal maid.  The scenes where Liddy reacts to mysterious noises, ghosts, uppity fellow servants and the peculiarities of country life are laugh out loud funny.  On the other hand, the warm, loving, sister-like yet prickly relationship between Liddy and Rachel displays another aspect of Rinehart’s writing talent.  Many serious novelists could learn much from the way that Rinehart smoothly and subtly reveals to her readers how complex and deep this employee/employer relationship has become over time.

Since Rinehart was the originator of the “Had I But Known” school of mystery fiction, one can certainly find several HIBK moments in TheCircular Staircase.  These instances do not unduly detract from the narrative and were most likely originally incorporated into the story because Rinehart wanted to signal her magazine readers that exciting and dangerous events were about to occur.  Rinehart should not be held accountable for all the literary abuses inflicted on readers by later, less accomplished writers who copied this questionable but effective foreshadowing device and made it central to their own writing styles.

The Circular Staircase is a mystery story.  It is not a fairly-clued Golden Age detective story for the simple reason that the Golden Age of Detective Fiction had not yet begun.  Later, during the actual Golden Age years (1918-1939 or more broadly 1913-195?), Rinehart would write detective novels that were more fairly-clued and thus more closely aligned with the traditional Golden Age style.  Two that come to mind are Miss Pinkerton (1932) and Haunted Lady (1942) both featuring her series sleuth nurse/undercover police detective Hilda Adams (nicknamed Miss Pinkerton).  Even in these two books Rinehart only grudgingly follows the “play fair with the reader” dictum.  She is much closer to Doyle, Chesterton and Post than to true Golden Age practitioners such as Christie, Sayers, Queen and Carr in that Rinehart is more interested in writing compelling stories rather than strictly adhering to a list of rules.

Rinehart liked to call her mysteries “crime stories” or “crime novels”.  Others have labeled them “women’s suspense” and “romantic suspense”.  To my knowledge, Rinehart never admitted to aiming her mysteries at a female audience.  Since she did tend to emphasize the relationships between and among her characters more than most mystery writers of her own era, it is understandable why she is often labeled as a feminine writer . . . despite all the pulp-like action, violence and scientific-medical content of her stories.

Modern readers may underestimate Rinehart’s rightful prominence in the history of the mystery genre but I believe Xavier Lechard summed up her importance best when he wrote “Rinehart pioneered suspense fiction by focusing on people involved in the problem rather than those who solve it.”

This analysis was greatly aided by the wonderful supplementary material included in the 1977 Mystery Library edition of The Circular Staircase, especially the work of Phyllis A. Whitney and Jan Cohn.  Note: A slightly different version of my article appeared on the GAD Wiki.

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Episode of the Wandering Knife (and other stories) 1950

This is an enjoyable collection of three stories consisting of two  longish novellas featuring female protagonists sandwiching a short  story describing the final case of a police inspector.  None are  masterpieces but each has its own merits.

“Episode of the Wandering Knife” (1943) leads off the collection.   Judy Shepard, the intelligent, athletic, plain-looking pampered  daughter of wealthy parents narrates the remarkable series of events  that occurred within her extended family household one October week  during WWII.  The setting is a barely disguised Pittsburgh, PA.   Within that memorable week Judy’s sister-in-law is stabbed, her  brother is jailed, her mother conceals evidence, a policeman is shot,  a woman is defenestrated, a household employee is stabbed, a family  secret is unveiled and Judy gets a marriage proposal.  Welcome to the  world of Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958).  She was once one of  America’s most popular writers.  Now she is read almost exclusively  by aficionados of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.  That is a  shame.  Rinehart has been branded with the dubious distinction of  creating the “Had I But Known” School of women’s mystery fiction.   That branding, although accurate, is not really fair.  The true  enablers of the HIBK School were her less talented imitators who  latched on to the weakest aspects of Rinehart’s writing style and  then proceeded to churn out truckloads of low-grade fiction aimed at  a female readership that deserved better.  Certainly there are  some “HIBK” moments in this story but those few instances do not  detract one bit from the narrative.  Characters do wander about in  the dark but they have plausible reasons for their excursions.  This  is a well crafted mystery featuring a likable narrator and  interesting characters.  

The second story, “The Man Who Hid His Breakfast” (1949?), is told  from the third person voice, which is not Rinehart’s strong suit.  Her fiction has greater impact on the reader when she uses a first  person narrator.  We are introduced to Inspector Tom Brent, a veteran  police detective working on his final case before retirement.  The  matriarch of a prominent family has been found strangled in her bed.   Brent must deflect pressure from his demanding commissioner, who  wants the victim’s daughter arrested, while at the same time pursue  his own line of investigation. Careless mistakes by the killer and  unlikely assistance from a dog help Brent solve the case.  Decent  plotting, interesting characters and nearly fair clueing make this  charming story well worth seeking out.

“The Secret” (1950?), although perhaps the weakest of the three  stories, is historically the most important to mystery critics.  It  is the fifth and final recorded case of undercover police  detective/nurse Hilda Adams, nicknamed Miss Pinkerton by her police  colleagues.  The events of the story seem to be taking place in 1945.  Michael Grost speculates that Rinehart wrote it then but could  not find a magazine publisher willing to buy the story.  Nurse Adams  is about 43 years old in this tale and she is showing her age.  She  has been rejected for overseas war duty partly because of a slight  heart problem (reflective of Rinehart’s own heart troubles).  Her  thwarted efforts to go overseas to aid in the war effort parallel the  experience of Rex Stout’s Archie Goodwin who, like Hilda, was more  needed on the home front. Her hair is now completely gray and she  does nothing to hide it.  Her first boss, Inspector Patton, has  apparently left the police force to join a big private detective  agency, as was foretold in Adams first recorded case “The Buckled  Bag” (1914).  Why Patton did not take her along and marry her is  puzzling since by the end of Hilda’s previous case Haunted Lady  (1943) he had clearly fallen in love with her.  Inspector Fuller, her  current boss, seems equally smitten with the blunt-spoken, sharp- tongued yet warm-hearted undercover nurse. 

It is interesting to look  at how Rinehart chose to age Adams through the series.  Hilda is 28  in the aforementioned “The Buckled Bag”.  She is 29 in her second  recorded case, “Locked Doors” (1914).  Eighteen years later she has  only aged about three years to 32 or 33 in Miss Pinkerton (1932).   Ten years later she has aged only about six years to 38 or so in  Haunted Lady (1942) and as mentioned above, Hilda manages to add on  five years in the roughly three intervening years leading up to “The  Secret”. Despite her curious aging history, Hilda Adams is a very  engaging character.  She is a coolly efficient nurse and an effective  undercover detective.  She is brave when bravery is called for and  cautious when caution is needed.  Well, maybe not always.  She does  go about alone in the dark when she feels it is necessary and  sometimes gets injured for her trouble but that is no different  behavior than Marcia Muller’s Sharon McCone often exhibits especially  in her early cases.  Another curious point concerning the Hilda Adams stories is the fact that Rinehart changed the highly effective first  person (Hilda herself) narration of the first three stories to third  person narration for the final two tales.  There appears to have been  no storytelling advantage in making this switch in point of view.  In  fact, I think it weakens Rinehart’s connection to the reader.  “The  Secret”, like all the Adams adventures, is set in an unnamed, midsize  river city located somewhere between New York and Chicago which can  only be Pittsburgh.  As is customary, she is planted in the household  of a wealthy family that appears to be experiencing mysterious  events.  Nurse Adams investigates the erratic and dangerous behavior of the 20-year-old daughter of an absent Army Colonel and his  beautiful but self indulgent wife.  Hilda deduces that daughter’s  strange behavior can only be linked to one of three causes: adultery,  espionage or disease.  The unfortunate problem with this story is that Rinehart chose the wrong cause and is forced to conclude the  storyline in a far-fetched and somewhat disappointing manner similar to the flawed ending of “Locked Doors”.  Hilda, like a great actress  working with a mediocre script, carries out her undercover duties  with grace and intelligence.  Had Rinehart been able send Hilda Adams  off into the sunset with a higher quality story or had she chosen to  write more adventures for her nurse detective, perhaps the Miss  Pinkerton saga would not have fallen into the current neglect it  certainly does not deserve.  Final point regarding the finances of Hilda Adams.  She could always get hospital nurse work and she readily could get private nurse duty if she wanted it.  When working undercover for the police, Hilda would be paid both by the police and the family into whose home she was planted.  Hilda must have built up quite a nice nest egg for herself because of this “double dipping” aspect of her employment.  One hopes that she invested wisely and enjoyed a rich and fulfilling retirement.

Here is my roundup of the Hilda Adams stories:

• “The Buckled Bag”, novella, 1914, Rating A
• “Locked Doors”, novella, 1914, Rating D
• Miss Pinkerton, novel, 1932, Rating B
• Haunted Lady, novel, 1942, Rating B-
• (All of the above stories were collected in Miss Pinkerton, Adventures of a Nurse Detective (1959?)
• “The Secret”, novella, 1950? Rating C

I posted a slightly different version of this article to the GAD Wiki in 2008.

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I’ve noticed that many Sherlock Holmes fans (and many detective story fans) consider Holmes a brilliant amateur sleuth.  I have always disagreed with this description.  I view him as fiction’s first private consulting detective.  Having recently re-read all the stories, here are my thoughts as to his professional status:

Holmes never alluded to having a private income.  If there was any family wealth I image that it was not very considerable and whatever was available via inheritance had to be split with older brother Mycroft.  Once Holmes left university his aim was to make his living by studying crime and eventually becoming so expert an investigator that he could live off his consulting fees.  Only in a few cases is it clear that Holmes charged and received a fee but in many cases a reader can infer that money did change hands.  The most fascinating example of this occurs in “The Problem of Thor Bridge” wherein Holmes actually states that he has a fixed fee schedule.  If only Doyle had reproduced this schedule; what a wonderful and enlightening document it would have been.  See the end of this article for my take on what Holmes’s fee schedule might have looked like.

Some random thoughts on Holmes, the PI:  He sometimes would investigate crimes or apparent crimes (without expecting payment) if he found the circumstances unusual or bizarre or if he thought he could learn something new from the case. He would sometimes investigate a case if he thought a serious miscarriage of justice occurred or would likely occur without his intervention.  He would sometimes investigate as a favor to his friends and acquaintances or for patriotic reasons.  

How to best classify Doyle’s stories?  Are they Detective Stories or Mystery Stories or Thrillers?  Sure they contain elements of all three types.  I choose to brand them as Adventure Stories featuring a London based Victorian/Edwardian era private consulting detective and his loyal doctor friend.  

One point to note before going deeper into the status of Holmes as an amateur sleuth or professional detective:  Several times in the 56 short stories and 4 novels/novellas someone, be it Watson, Gregson, Lestrade or Holmes himself, will describe Holmes as an amateur.  The context of that description is in regard to whether Holmes is employed by an official police force like Scotland Yard, not as to whether he charges fees and makes a living by investigating and solving crimes. 

To make my argument that Holmes was a professional detective I will quote from and refer to two main books:

Here follows some quotes (in red) supporting my opinion:

Holmes apologizing to Watson for evicting him from their shared sitting room when strangers visited 221B in A Study in Scarlet.
 “I have to use this room as a place of business,” he said, “and these people are my clients.”

TCSH page 22.  Soon, of course, Watson would be invited to stay in the sitting room and partake in Holmes’s cases.

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Holmes discussing a magazine article with Watson in A Study in Scarlet:

“As for the article, I wrote it myself.”
“You!”
“Yes; I have a turn both for observation and for deduction.  The theories which I have expressed there . . . are really extremely practical-so practical that I depend upon them for my bread and cheese.”
“And how?” (Watson asks)
“Well, I have a trade of my own.  I suppose I am the only one in the world.  I’m a consulting detective . . .Here in London we have lots of government detectives and lots of private ones.  When these fellows are at fault, they come to me, and I manage to put them on the right scent.”
(Watson then asks about the numerous strangers that visit Holmes day after day and Holmes answers)“They are mostly sent on by private inquiry agencies.  They are all people who are in trouble about something and want a little enlightening.  I listen to their story, they listen to my comments, and then I pocket my fee.”

TCSH pages 23 & 24.  Seems to me that in Holmes’s first recorded case he clearly explains that he makes his living by solving crimes and/or explaining mysterious events.

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Holmes attempting to justify his new cocaine habit to Watson in The Sign of Four:

“. . . I crave for mental exaltation.  That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world.”
“The only unofficial detective?”  I said, raising my eyebrows.
“The only unofficial consulting detective,” he answered.

TCSH page 90.

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The King of Bohemia speaking to Holmes in “A Scandal in Bohemia”:

“There are three hundred pounds in gold and seven hundred in notes,” he said.  
Holmes scribbled a receipt upon a sheet of his note-book and handed it to him.

TCSH page 165.

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Holmes speaking to a London bank executive in “The Red Headed League”:

“I have been at some small expense over this matter, which I shall expect the bank to refund, . . .”

TCSH page 189.

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Holmes speaking to his client after finding and returning three valuable gemstones in “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet”:

“You would not think £1,000 apiece an excessive sum for them?”
“I would pay ten.”
“That would be unnecessary.  Three thousand will cover the matter.  And there is a little reward I fancy.  Have you your checkbook?  Here is a pen.  Better make it out for £4000.”

TCSH page 313.  Holmes had to pay 3,000 pounds to buy back the three gemstones from a fence so 1,000 pounds for the return of, what in essence were crown jewels, seems a reasonable fee.

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Former university acquaintance Reginald Musgrave speaking to Holmes in “The Musgrave Ritual” about four years after Holmes had moved to London after leaving Oxford/Cambridge:

“. . . But I understand, Holmes, that you are turning to practical ends those powers with which you used to amaze us.”
“Yes, said I, “I have taken to living by my wits.”

TCSH page 388.

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Watson to his readers in “The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist”:

From the years 1894 to 1901 inclusive, Mr. Sherlock Holmes was a very busy man. It is safe to say that there was no public case of any difficulty in which he was not consulted during those eight years, and there were hundreds of private cases, some of them of the most intricate and extraordinary character, in which he played a prominent part.  Many startling successes and a few unavoidable failures were the outcome of this long period of continuous work.

TCSH page 526.  This seems to indicate that Holmes was averaging maybe five case per month during this period, depending how you define “hundreds”.

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​Holmes speaking to his client in “The Adventure of the Priory School”:

“. . . and now, your Grace, I’ll trouble you for that check.”
“I shall be as good as my word, Mr. Holmes.  . . I think twelve thousand pounds is the sum that I owe you, is it not?”

TCSH page 555.   This seems an extraordinarily large fee, but Holmes did catch a very wealthy man in some very bad behavior (and he did solve the case).

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Holmes to his client after viewing an antiquity which clarified one of the multiple mysteries of “The Adventure of the Priory School”:

“Thank you,” said he, as replaced the glass.  “It is the second most interesting object that I have seen in the North.”
“And the first?”
Holmes folded up his check and placed it carefully in his notebook.  “I am a poor man,” said he, as he patted it affectionately, and thrust it into the depths of his inner pocket. 

TCSH page 558.  That enormous “fee” must have certainly given Holmes a nice financial cushion to live on so he could more readily investigate crimes that interested him rather than worrying about making ends meet, for a while anyway.

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Holmes to Sir Henry Baskerville in The Hound of the Baskervilles:

“. . . I am not sure that of all the five hundred cases of capital importance which I have handled there is one which cuts so deep.”

TCSH page 693.  Baring-Gould in SHOBS places the action of this story in 1888 which would be about 1/3 the way into Holmes’s twenty-three year (roughly 1880-1903) professional career.  So, 500 important cases multiplied by 3 would lead me to guess that Holmes handled, at minimum, well over 1,500 cases throughout his career.  I work that out as an average of 5 or 6 cases per month over those 23 years.

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Holmes to Watson at the conclusion of “His Last Bow”:

“. . . Start her up Watson, for it’s time that we were on our way.  I have a check for five hundred pounds which should be cashed early, for the drawer is quite capable of stopping it if he can.”

TCSH page 980.

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Holmes to a potential client in “The Problem of Thor Bridge”:

“My professional charges are upon a fixed scale,” said Holmes coldly.  “I do not vary them, save when I remit them altogether.”

TCSH page 1058.  Holmes, I think is being disingenuous here.  When dealing with foreign rulers/governments/wealthy clients, I bet Holmes charged what ever the traffic would bear.   Imagine what his “fee schedule” might look like:

• Return of valuable jewels……….500 pounds (1,000 pounds if they are crown jewels)
• Lost/Missing racehorses, rugby players, etc………..200 pounds
• Code breaking……….50 pounds
• Locked-room mysteries……….300 pounds
• Common domestic complications……….30 pounds
• Blackmail cases……….gratis?
• Vampire cases……….50 pounds
• ​Dissapearance cases……….100 pounds
• Card scandals……….50 pounds
• Cases involving fishmongers, landladies, house servants and laundresses……….10 pounds
• Exotic snakes, hounds from hell, remarkable worms, red leeches, etc……….100 pounds
• Wandering daughter/son/spouse cases……….70 pounds
• Cases involving dissolute noblemen or crass businessmen……….12,000 pounds (and up)

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I’m not smart enough to hazard a guess as to what Holmes’s actual income from crime-solving was but this final quote from “The Adventure of the Dying Detective” gives us a clue about his financial status.  This is Watson describing Holmes the tenant:

“His incredible untidiness, his addiction to music at strange hours, his occasional revolver practice within doors, his weird and often malodorous scientific experiments, and the atmosphere of violence and danger which hung around him made him the very worst tenant in London.  On the other hand, his payments were princely.  I have no doubt that the house might have been purchased at the price which Holmes paid for his rooms during the years that I was with him.”

TCSH page 932.  And long-suffering Mrs. Hudson deserved every penny.

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