Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Golden Oldies

It’s been just over three years since I published a review in the Golden Oldies section of this blog.  My only reason/excuse is that I was kept busy reading so many outstanding current mysteries that I received from publicists, and novels that I read years ago somehow got lost in the shuffle.

But as I was walking in the mystery section of my local library (a shoutout to the Needham, Massachusetts Free Public Library) I saw an old familiar title:  Triple Zeck, A Nero Wolfe Omnibus by Rex Stout.  Stout has always been a favorite author of mine, so much so that I took a course on his writings at Boston College given by his biographer, Professor John J. McAleer.  I had to miss the last class of the semester as I was in the hospital giving birth to my younger son; he celebrates his 53rd birthday next week!

Triple Zeck consists of three full-length novels–And Be A Villain, The Second Confession, and In the Best Families–all of which I had read previously.  That being said, I enjoyed them as much this time.  The books were published individually from 1948 to 1950, and each one is a complete novel on its own.

In case you are not a Wolfe aficionado, a little background is necessary.  Wolfe is an oversized man whose weight varies from an eighth of a ton (250 pounds) to a quarter of a ton (500 pounds), depending on the book.  I’ll split the difference and say he weighed about 375 pounds, hefty by any standard.  That explains, at least in part, why he never (or almost never) leaves his brownstone in Manhattan to physically investigate the cases that are brought to him; Archie Goodwin, his trusted assistant, takes care of that.  Wolfe’s job is simply to sit back in his chair and be a genius.

What connects the three mysteries in this single volume is the fact that in each case Wolfe agrees to investigate a case a client brings to him and then receives a phone call ordering him to drop the case.  In the first phone call, the caller, whom Wolfe identifies as Arnold Zeck, says,”The wisest course for you will be to drop the matter,” which of course Wolfe will not do.

Zeck is the major crime boss in the New York City area and beyond, apparently untouchable, although his many illegal enterprises are known to the city police, the state police, and the FBI.  By the third volume, Wolfe realizes that it’s now a case of Wolfe vs. Zeck and that the only way it can end is with the death of one of them.  So he makes his plan and hopes he will be the survivor.

As is the case with reading the Sherlock Holmes oeuvre, part of the joy of reading Wolfe and Archie’s adventures, in addition to the crime in each novel, is spending time with the two of them.  The similarities with Doyle’s creation are there–Holmes’ pipe, Wolfe’s beer; Inspector Lestrade, Inspector Cramer; Professor Moriarty, Arnold Zeck.  And note that three letters in each protagonist’s name are the same:  Sherlock/Nero, Holmes/Wolfe.  

Coincidence?  I think not.

Rex Stout was a remarkable man.  Encouraged by his father, he had read the Bible twice by the age of four.  At age 13 he was the Kansas state spelling bee champion, and some readers of a certain age will remember a school banking system in which elementary school children brought money to school every week to be deposited in their bank account.  I was one of those children.  That system was invented by Stout.

The first Nero Wolfe novel (Fer-de-Lance) was published in 1934, the final (A Family Affair) in 1975.  Just think about that for a moment–41 years of Nero and Archie!  That is something to celebrate!

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novels.

It’s been almost two years since I’ve written a post about a Golden Oldie.  That’s probably because there have been so many outstanding newly-published mysteries that I didn’t give ones I’d read years ago a second thought.  But I started feeling guilty about all the old “masterpieces” that may not be familiar to everyone, so here is a classic.

Malice Aforethought begins with a sentence that will surely grab the reader:  “It was not until several weeks after he had decided to murder his wife that Dr. Bickleigh took any active steps in the matter.”  Honestly, if that doesn’t make you want to continue reading, I don’t know what will.

The good doctor (emphasis mine) is a general practitioner in a small town in England.  I’ve noticed before that in English society in the early/middle part of the last century, a doctor was considered more of a working man or a skilled laborer than a professional.

Dr. Bickleigh’s marriage to Miss Julia Crewstaton, spinster, was a tepid one, lacking any warmth or passion from the start.  The Crewstatons were a family of position if no longer of means, due to the profligate spending habits of Sir Charles, the twelfth baronet.  Julia, at age thirty five, had given up hope that she would ever marry.

But marry she did, although to a country practitioner.  As she frequently reminded him, her grandmother “would have no more contemplated sitting down to a meal with her doctor than with her butler.”  Marrying him was “enough to make that grandmother turn in her grave.”  But, as the English say, “needs must,” and so Miss Crewstaton and Dr. Bickleigh were wed.

Dr. Bickleigh had carried on a number of flirtations during his marriage, some more serious than others, and his wife didn’t appear too bothered about it.  After his attempt to kiss one neighboring woman is rebuffed, and a steamy relationship he has with another is ending, more on his part than hers, he is ripe for a new affair.

Thus when he meets Madeleine Cranmere, newly arrived to town and obviously very wealthy, he decides she is his soul mate, the love of his life, and he cannot go on without her.  And thus the idea of murdering his wife becomes an obsession.

In a crime novel, as opposed to a detective story or mystery, there is, in fact, no mystery.  The reader knows from the beginning who the criminal is, and the story is told from the criminal’s viewpoint.  Malice Aforethought is a perfect example.

Francis Iles (1893-1971) is one of several pen names used by the English author Anthony Berkeley Cox.  He was a journalist and short story writer as well as a novelist, and along with Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and several others he was a founder of the Detection Club.  You can read more about Francis Iles at various internet sites.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novels.

Did you know that August 18th is Serendipitous Day?  Neither did I until I was Googling the best way to use serendipitous in a sentence to describe how I came across The Bellamy Trial on the mystery shelf of my local (Needham, MA) library.

Who knows why that date was chosen by Horace Walpole, an 18th-century English author and politician?  Perhaps something unexpected and pleasant (the definition of serendipitous) had happened to him on that day?  It really doesn’t matter, but Walpole gave the world an absolutely perfect word to describe my experience after I read Frances Noyes Hart’s novel.

The book is based on the true-life Hall-Mills 1926 murder trial, called the “trial of the century,” in which an Episcopal priest and one of his parishioners were murdered.   The defendants were the Reverend Hall’s wife and her three brothers, but I won’t disclose the outcome of that trial as it might spoil the ending of this novel.

In Mrs. Hart’s book, the site of the murder (there is one victim in the book, as opposed to two in the Hall-Mills case) was moved from New Jersey to New York; the people involved were members of a small upper-class community.  The fictional murder victim was Mimi Bellamy; the defendants were her husband, Stephen Bellamy, and Sue Ives, the wife of Mrs. Bellamy’s alleged lover.  The novel is considered one of the first fictional courtroom mysteries, a sub-genre that would grow to include all of the books in the Perry Mason series, Anatomy of a Murder, To Kill a Mockingbird, and many others.

The Bellamy Trial takes place in Redfield, New York in 1926.  As in the real-life trial, the fictional case became a media circus, with reporters from newspapers and radio stations across the country filling the courtroom to capacity; the actual trial took thirty days, the fictional one took eight.

Hank Phillippi Ryan, the recipient of multiple Agatha Awards for her mysteries, has written an outstanding introduction to the book.  She notes the anachronisms in the novel – an all-male jury, the same attorney for both defendants, hearsay evidence that is sometimes forbidden and sometimes allowed – but she happily disregards these issues, as will discerning readers, to better enjoy this excellent story.

Frances Noyes Hart was primarily a short story author and wrote only a handful of mysteries.  If the others are as well-written and riveting as The Bellamy Trial, she certainly deserves a special place in the pantheon of American mystery authors.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novels.

 

And now for something completely different, as Monty Python would say.  In this book, the late Robert L. Fish created the most clever and enjoyable pastiche I’ve ever read.

The Incredible Schlock Homes deconstructs and “destroys” twelve of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s beloved stories featuring Sherlock Homes.  In the process the reader, or at least this reader, is completely captivated by Fish’s word play, his twisted logic, and his obvious devotion to the most famous detective in fiction.

Do the stories’ titles–“The Adventure of the Adam Bomb,” “The Adventure of the Spectacled Band,” and the “The Adventure of the Artist’s Mottle”–give you a clue about Fish’s style?  In “The Adventure of the Adam Bomb,” Homes arranges a fake funeral for himself because his disappearance is essential to solve a crime.  When his colleague Watney questions the amazing disguise Homes needs to wear while presumably dead and yet be able to investigate, Homes explains.  The body in the casket?  “An excellent example of Madam Tussand’s art.”  The “corpse’s” extra weight?  “One of Mrs. Essex’s pillows.”  His present stature, at least a foot shorter than Homes’ actual height?  “Special shoes,” responds the detective.  Are you beginning to get the idea?

True to the style of Sir Arthur, Fish begins each story with the year it takes place and a brief history of other cases the celebrated detective solved.  In the intro to “The Adventure of the Spectacled Band,” Watney describes the mystery of a gang of Parisian cabbies as “The Adventure of the Taxi Drivers’ Métier.”  Honestly, I was laughing and rolling my eyes at the same time.

The two men live at 221-B Bagel Street (truly) on the second floor of Mrs. Essex’s boarding house.  While trying to get to the location of the house featured in “The Adventure of the Artist’s Mottle,” Homes and Watney need to decide what train to take.  “There is a train that runs on even days that fall on odd dates,” Watney complains.  “Besides, it has the notation M-W-F listed above, which I frankly do not understand.”  “Milk, Wine, Food,” replied Homes curtly.  “It has a combination restaurant car and bar, is all.”

“But that one is annotated T-T-S,” Watney continues.  “What can that mean, Homes?”  “Most probably, Tewksbury Temperance Society, indicating that on that train the bar is closed,” is Homes’ thoughtful explanation.  Who wouldn’t come to that same conclusion?

With the brilliant introduction by Anthony Boucher, for whom the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention is named, the reader is swept away into the nineteenth-century world of telegrams, hansom cabs, and veiled women.  Boucher is quick to point out Fish’s other, more serious achievements–winning the 1962 Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America for the best first novel of the year (The Fugitive), penning police procedural short stories and novels, and his completion of Jack London’s unfinished The Assassination Bureau, Ltd., in which Boucher contends it’s impossible to detect any difference between the writings of London and Fish.

In his closing paragraph, Boucher writes, “Robert L. Fish, I am by now pretty thoroughly convinced, can do anything….but I shall never forgive him if his unpredictably assorted output does not continue to include, from time to time, a fresh triumph/fiasco of Schlock Homes.”

I will leave you with this from Robert L. Fish:  “Author’s note:  The characters in this book are all real, and any similarity to fictional characters is strictly coincidental.”  Want to have a feel-good hour or two?  Start reading The Adventures of Schlock Homes asap.

 

 

There aren’t many books that have sparked an entire genre, but Little Caesar has that distinction.  Written at the end of the 1920s by a previously unpublished author, Little Caesar became an overnight success for W. R. Burnett.  Reading this novel is a terrific way to go back to the beginnings of the original gangster story.

Little Caesar is the nickname of Rico, which in turn is the nickname of Caesar Enrico Bandello, a small-time mobster who climbs nearly to the top in the gangland of late twenties Chicago.  Physically unimposing, small and slightly built, Rico is single-minded about becoming the head of Sam Vettori’s mobsters and moving up the ladder from there. 

Rico doesn’t have the usual vices that many of his colleagues have.  He likes women but not enough to get sidetracked into a serious relationship with any one of them.  He doesn’t touch alcohol or drugs and doesn’t gamble, at least not seriously.  And because of his lack of these vices and his ruthless desire to get to the top, he almost manages to claw his way there.  Almost.

Rico’s biggest concern is that one of his men might “turn yellow.”  Squealing to the cops would be, of course, the worst thing a gang member could do, whether he did it voluntarily or was coerced or tricked into it by the police.  Regardless, there is no excuse for this in Rico’s mind, and he seems to have an uncanny knowledge of which man would turn cowardly and thus be a danger to the group.  He is without pity to those he deems to be any sort of risk.

Little Caesar was made into a film two years after the book was published and made Edward G. Robinson, in the title role, a major star.  Although the movie sticks closely to the plot of the book, there are some differences.  Rico’s best friend in the film is Joe Massara rather than Otero, his best friend in the novel, although in the book Rico never trusts Joe and has no use for him.  In the book Rico has two heterosexual relationships, but in the movie there are subtle homosexual overtones between Rico and Joe and Rico and Otero.

Also, for some Hollywood reason, Rico’s last words in the novel, “Mother of God, is this the end of Rico?,” have been changed in the film to “Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?” 

Burnett went on to write High Sierra, later made into a Humphrey Bogart film, and The Asphalt Jungle, featuring a very young Marilyn Monroe.  Burnett’s interest in and knowledge of the underworld gave his novels and screenplays a tough, gritty verisimilitude that resonated with readers.  There’s very little description and no deep thought by the characters in Little Caesar, just the chilling talk of a group of killers, led by the coldest one of all. 

You can read more about William Riley Burnett at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site.

 

 

 

What a sad, sad story about dysfunctional lives in pre-World War II London.  What a terrific read.

Hangover Square takes place in a seedy area in the down-at-the-heels Earl Court district of the city.  George Harvey Bone is a twenty-something man with mental illness, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say mental illnesses.  He suffers from schizophrenia, alcoholism, and an obsession which manifests itself only when he is in his schizophrenic state.  During his non-schizophrenic time, George is both fascinated and repelled by Netta Longdon.  During his schizophrenic episodes, his all-consuming desire is to kill her.

In his normal state, George is utterly besotted by Netta.  When he sees her the day after Christmas, he is struck again by her looks.  “Although she was not made up, untidy and not trying,” she bewitches him “with…unholy beauty….”  In his functional state, his wish is to marry Netta and have children with her; in his schizophrenic state, he plots to kill her.  In each state, he has no memory of the other one.

Netta is the leader of a small group of extremely unpleasant people.  She is a wanna-be film actress but is unwilling to put any effort into learning her craft.  Actually, it’s not so much that she wants to act, she wants the money and glory that would come with being in that profession.  But, being too lazy to improve her skills, she hasn’t gotten any further than a couple of small movie roles.

In many ways, the relationship between George and Netta is similar to that between Phillip Carey and Mildred Rogers in Of Human Bondage.  In each novel there is a sad, lonely man who falls in love with a sadistic and uncaring woman.  Both Netta and Mildred use George and Phillip, respectively, only for monetary reasons.  They show no warmth, feeling, or compassion for these men, only scorn and distain for the way the men allowed themselves to be treated.

Hangover Square is a hard read.  One goes back and forth in George’s disturbed mind, and both of his states are hard to deal with.  When he appears normal, his obsession with Netta allows her to treat him dreadfully, and although he sometimes recognizes this, he is so enthralled by her he is unable to break the cord that binds them.   When he’s in his schizophrenic state and plotting murder, it’s equally hard to read.

Hangover Square is considered Patrick Hamilton’s finest novel.  He also was a poet and the author of two successful plays:  Rope, which was made into an Alfred Hitchcock film starring Jimmy Stewart, and Gaslight, later to become a movie starring Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman.

You can read more about Patrick Hamilton at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at her web site.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The late Magdalen Nabb wrote thirteen mystery novels, and I confess I had not read any of them until this week.  I’d seen her books in my local library and various bookstores, but somehow I never got around to reading one.

Because Ms. Nabb’s books take place in Florence, Italy and I’ll be visiting that beautiful city this spring, I decided it was time to read one of her books, so I picked up Death of an Englishman, the first in her series featuring Marshal Guarnaccia.  I’m sorry and glad–sorry that it took me so long to discover Ms. Nabb’s writing and glad that I finally did.

It’s a few days before Christmas, and people whose homes are in other cities are leaving Florence to go to their families for the holiday.  Everyone except Marshal Guarnaccia, who’s confined to his bed in the police station with influenza instead of being able to head home to Syracuse.  Manning the station’s night shift is Carabiniere Bacci, a recruit with only two months on the job.

The phone jars Bacci awake, and a garbled voice asks for the marshal to report that an Englishman living a few streets away…well, what about him?  The caller can’t bring himself to tell anyone but Guarnaccia, but Guarnaccia is asleep with a fever, so Bacci leaves the station to investigate.

A few minutes later the phone wakes the marshal.  It’s Bacci, reporting that there’s been a murder at number fifty eight Via Maggio, so the marshal forces himself out of bed and walks unsteadily to the address.

It’s Gianpaolo Cippola, the building’s custodian, who has called about the Englishman.  Cippola’s wife had died the night before, and he’s a man in shock dealing with two deaths in two days.  The murder brings two Scotland Yard officers to Florence later that day; it turns out that the Englishman, a Mr. A. Langley-Smythe, is a member of a well-connected British family, and that family wants to make certain that “no unnecessary distress” is caused by the Italian authorities.

The city of Florence is brought to life through Ms. Nabb’s evocative descriptions.  Every sentence has meaning in this short novel; nothing is extraneous.  Even the Italians’ discovery that the Englishman had been living on the ground floor, a cause for much astonishment, means something.

The characters in Death of an Englishman are beautifully drawn.  Marshal Guarnaccia, sick with the flu and afraid that he won’t be able to get home for Christmas; the inexperienced Carabiniere Bacci, fluent enough in English to act as translator for the two Yard detectives but very much aware of his own lack of knowledge of police procedures; the voluble and eccentric elderly English woman, Miss White, who lives in the same building as the deceased and has made her apartment a shrine for the poet Walter Savage Landor; the frightened Cipolla, who wanted to report the death only to the marshal; all of them are real and believable.

Magdalen Nabb died at the age of sixty in 2007, but her admirers have continued to update her web site.  You can read more about her at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at this web site.

How Like an Angel was written in 1962, exactly fifty years ago. It’s a true classic.

Joe Quinn, licensed Nevada private detective/security guard, has been cleaned out at the Reno gambling tables and has grabbed a ride back to California with a friend.  The friend, in a hurry to get home, leaves him at the side of the road some forty-five miles from San Felice, Joe’s destination.  The friend tells him that there’s a religious community just up the road that will give him food and drink and shelter for the night, so without any other resource to fall back on Joe takes his advice.

The Tower is a community of twenty-seven people, including three children, that is headed by The Master. The members have renounced all worldly goods–telephones, television, regular clothes–the better to get to heaven; it is their belief that wearing wool robes, going barefoot, and bathing no more than weekly in cold water will assure them a place in Paradise.  Even their given names have been left behind–now they are known as Sister Blessing, Brother Tongue, Brother Crown, and Brother Light of the Infinite, for example.

During his overnight stay, Joe is approached by Sister Blessing, who acts as the nurse and manager of The Tower.  She appears kind and concerned about Joe’s physical and emotional well-being, and when she learns that he is a detective she asks him to do a job for her.  She emphasizes that this is against the rules of the community, and she pays him with money secreted from the others that her son sends her every Christmas.

Sister Blessing’s request is that Joe go into Chicote, a nearby town, and find a man named Patrick O’Gorman. He’s not a friend or relative, she assures Joe, and she doesn’t want Joe to contact him in any way.   Whether O’Gorman is in Chicote or not, she tells Joe to “come back here and tell me about it, me and only me.”

Joe is only slightly interested, but he’s broke and doesn’t have any other job offers.  So he gets a ride to San Felice in the community’s truck the next morning and starts asking questions.  And early on he discovers that Patrick O’Gorman has been missing and presumed dead for five years.

The novel takes a number of twists and turns, and circles back on itself again, but every detour has a reason and every red herring is perfectly contrived.  About ten pages from the end of the book I realized what had happened in the past and what was about to happen, and I was blown away.  The plot is so skillful and well thought out that it made me want to start reading How Like an Angel over again to see if I could have/should have figured out the ending sooner.

Margaret Millar lived from 1915 to 1994; she was the wife of Kenneth Millar, better known to mystery fans as Ross Macdonald.  Imagine having that couple to your house for drinks and dinner!

A deceased multi-millionaire, his unappealing family, a possible illegitimate child–these are the main ingredients in The Codicil, Tom Topor’s fascinating study of the Vietnam War and its aftermath.

Matt Marshall was a self-made man who became wealthy due to his brains, charm, and business acumen.  He had a beautiful wife, three grown children, and seats on the boards of charities, museums, and hospitals around the country.  But he also had a secret, one which he shared with no one in the over twenty-five years since the war ended.  He believed he had fathered a child with a young Vietnamese woman when he was overseas, while his wife and first-born child were in the United States.

The novel opens as the attorneys for the Marshall family hire Adam Bruno, lawyer turned private investigator, to look into the validity of the will’s codicil made by Marshall three months before his unexpected death; the will itself had been made years before. In the codicil, Matt Marshall stated that while he was in the army in Vietnam, in 1971, he was told that he was the father of a child being carried by a young Vietnamese woman.  Due to the upheavals at the end of the war, the two were separated and never reunited.

Marshall couldn’t find out for certain if the woman, whom he had nicknamed Cricket, gave birth to the child, and he was unable to find out her location or situation after the war.  In the codicil Matthew commanded his family to continue to search for Cricket and/or her child, should there be one.  If a child is found, that child is entitled to half of his estate, and should any of the will’s other recipients challenge this in any way, they would be automatically disinherited.   Quite a codicil.

The very, very wealthy Marshall family, all politeness on the surface, is definitely upset by the fact that they may have to share their father’s $105 million estate with this Asian-American child, assuming that he/she exists.  Although Adam is hired to find the mother and child, it is obvious to him that the Marshalls don’t want to believe in the child’s existence. Or, if Adam discovers there is such a child, the Marshalls don’t want that child found. And really, who can blame them?

New people are introduced throughout the book, men who were with Marshall during the war and four years after it ended when he returned to Vietnam for a final search for Cricket.  Where they are twenty-five years after the war speaks to the horrors they endured, or sometimes caused.  As we know, the men who were “in country” returned to the United States to find a public that was often hostile and/or embarrassed–those who were hostile felt the returning soldiers were “baby-killers”; those who were embarrassed were furious that we had lost the war and the country.

The Codicil is gripping up to and including its final page. But a word of warning–this is not a novel for the faint-of-heart.  There is a lot of profanity, and there are graphic descriptions of wartime atrocities committed by both sides.  It’s a book that brings the pain of the Vietnam War back again.

Tom Topor is the author of several screenplays.  You can read more about him at this web site.

A truly fascinating look into medieval life in England comes through in the series featuring Brother Cadfael of the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, at Shrewsbury.

The series begins in the twelfth century at the border between England and Wales.  Brother Cadfael, born in Wales, had traveled the world as a soldier in the first crusade and a sailor in the years following but now has found his calling as a member of the abbey. He is in charge of the abbey’s garden and herbarium, an important position at a time when home-grown medicines were almost the only ones available.

As the novel opens, a civil war between two cousins, Stephen and Maud, has been going on for three years; it eventually lasted nineteen. Henry I, Maud’s father, had named her his heir after the death of his only son, but many nobles rebelled at the thought of a woman leading the kingdom and thus supported the claims of Henry’s nephew, Stephen.  As Stephen comes to Shrewsbury with his forces, aristocrats and soldiers loyal to Maud flee the town to join her in France.

A fellow monk introduces Cadfael to Godric, a “young man” who is willing to help in the garden, but it doesn’t take Cadfael long to realize that Godric is actually a young woman, Godith Adeney by name.  Her father fled to France to support Maud, and if Godith is discovered she will be imprisoned and held for ransom in order to bring her father back to face Stephen.  Cadfael, although not taking sides in the fight for the kingdom, vows to keep Godith’s secret and protect her.

After a battle in which ninety-four of Stephen’s enemies are killed, the abbey’s abbot requests that the men be prepared for a proper Christian burial.  The abbot sends Cadfael to the castle to handle this task, but when the monk counts the dead, he discovers that there is one more body than he had been told. And this man was not killed in battle but strangled by a thin wire from behind.

In One Corpse Too Many we are introduced to Hugh Beringar, a soldier who, in later novels, becomes a close friend of Cadfael’s, and the woman who becomes Hugh’s wife, Lady Aline.  In addition, a number of Cadfael’s fellow monks whom we meet here continue to appear in other novels, while new members of the monastery join the cast of characters in later books.

The late Ellis Peters (real name Edith Mary Pargeter) created the character of Brother Cadfael when she needed “the high equivalent of a mediaeval detective, an observer and agent of justice in the center of the action.” She was a writer of some renown as a translator of Czech literature, but today she is best known for her mystery novels.  Unfortunately, Ms. Peters died shortly after the BBC television series got underway and thus did not see all the books made into television programs, but she was a strong supporter of Derek Jacobi, who played Cadfael with great wit and charm.

There is not a dedicated page for Ellis Peters, but there is a brief biography about her and a summary of all Brother Cadfael’s novels at Philip Grosset’s Clerical Detectives web page.

When I write about Golden Oldies, the books are usually a few decades old.  Maybe they were written in the fifties, sixties, or seventies and might have fallen out of favor or off the library’s shelves.  But when I say that The Moonstone was written in the sixties, it’s the 1860s I mean.

Hailed by most literary critics, including T. S. Eliot and Dorothy Sayers, as the “first and best” of the English detective novels, The Moonstone introduced a number of literary conventions that are still followed in this genre.  There’s the large, secluded country estate, the closed circle of suspects, the mysterious foreigners (less frequent now than then), the inept local police, and the least-suspected party who turns out to be the villain.

In brief, the moonstone is an incredibly valuable gem stolen from a Hindu (spelled Hindoo in the novel) statue in India by a corrupt English  army officer.  When he returns home, he is shunned by family and former friends for his ungentlemanly ways, and he determines to get his revenge.  Upon his death, the gem is bequeathed to his niece, Rachel Verinder, on her eighteenth birthday.  Although her mother, Lady Verinder, pleads with her not to accept this gift, the young woman is mesmerized by the jewel and insists that she will keep it and indeed will wear it that very night to her birthday dinner.

Although many precautions are taken by Rachel’s cousin, Franklin Blake, and the home’s butler, Gabriel Betteredge, when the morning arrives the moonstone has disappeared from the Indian chest where it was placed by Rachel just before she went to bed. Even more strange than the disappearance is the complete turnaround of emotions by Rachel.  The night of her birthday, it was obvious that she and her cousin Franklin were in love; comes the morning and the jewel’s disappearance, Rachel will no longer speak to her cousin and refuses to help the local police look for the moonstone.

The book has many voices:  Betteredge, the butler; Franklin Blake, Rachel’s cousin who is deeply in love with her; Drusilla Clack, a poor relation of the Verinders and an incorrigible Christian evangelist; and Matthew Bruff, the family’s solicitor.  And it has many unforgettable characters in addition to the narrators:  Rosana  Spearman, a former thief now employed as a second housemaid by Lady Verinder; Geoffrey Abelwhite, another cousin who wishes to marry Rachel; Dr. Candy, the family’s physician who unwittingly plays a major role in the moonstone’s disappearance; and Ezra Jennings, Dr. Candy’s mysterious and disfigured assistant.

And there’s Sergeant Cuff of the London police. Cuff was the prototype of several detectives who followed in his footsteps–Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe coming immediately to mind.  He’s rather odd looking, lean with a face as sharp as a hatchet–(Holmes and his angular profile); he would rather discuss and grow roses than do anything else (Wolfe and his orchids).

Then there’s the opium issue in the novel.  Wilkie Collins was an opium addict; he had begun using it to control back pain but it soon took over his life.  And did not Sherlock Holmes find favor in that drug?

The Moonstone is a mystery that is as fascinating today as it was when it was written. Leave the present for a time and go back to Victorian England.  You’ll enjoy the trip.

You can read more about Wilkie Collins on this web site.

“Do you believe in miracles”? That was the cry of Al Michaels, broadcasting at the final moments of the improbable, impossible win by  the U.S. hockey team in 1980.

Going for the Gold takes place at those same Olympics games. John Putnam Thatcher, senior vice president of the Sloan Guaranty Trust, the third largest bank in the world, has been dragooned by the bank’s president, a member of the International Olympics Committee, to attend the games.  There’s lot of excitement, of course, as the young athletes and their coaches swirl around the Olympic Village, and there’s a lot at stake.  Some of the athletes have been working for years for the possibility of winning a gold medal, while a few have somehow made their country’s team more by luck than by skill.  But all are excited and thrilled to be at the Games.

As Thatcher watches a practice run of alpine skiing, France’s number one skier, Yves Bisson, takes a flawless leap from the giant ski tower.  He hovers in the air, and then a shot rings out.  Bisson falls to the snow-covered ground below, dead.

What is uncovered after Bisson’s death is the discovery of fraud in European travelers’ checks, with Bisson behind it.  The resources of the Sloan are put to the test, as the bank is the official bank of the Games, and additional employees are brought to Lake Placid to try to uncover how the fraud was worked.

There’s more than simply bank fraud going on at the Games, however.  Someone is hijacking supplies meant for the athletes, a Swiss female skier is accused of taking forbidden drugs, and the blizzard of the decade is stopping all comings and goings out of upstate New York.

Emma Lathen is the pseudonym of Mary Jane Latsis, an economist, and Martha Hennisart, a lawyer. Together they wrote more than twenty novels featuring John Putnam Thatcher, a banker who could solve any crime that had a financial basis; and we all know that many of them do.  Each book focuses on a particular industry or organization with ties to the Sloan.  There are books on chocolate companies, Catholic schools, the automobile industry, and the garment business.  Each shows a detailed knowledge of that particular business or group and is written in such a way as to make all the financial dealings clear to the most financially unsophisticated reader, e.g., me.

There’s a short list of recurring characters in Lathen’s books:  Thatcher, of course; his devoted secretary, Miss Corsa; Walter Bowman and Everett Gabler, bank officials under Thatcher; and Brad Withers, the bank’s president who would rather be anywhere, doing anything but banking.

While most or all of Emma Lathen’s books are unfortunately currently out of print, they’re available at many libraries and can be bought used online. Even though no more novels were written after Mary Jane Latsis’s death in 1998, there are still enough available to keep anyone reading for a long time.  These are definitely cozies, with a minimum of murder and mayhem, but with plenty of suspense to keep the reader involved until the last page.

You can read more about Mary Jane Latsis and Martha Henissart at The New York Times.

My definition of a Golden Oldie is a mystery I’ve read at least two or three times and can’t wait to read again. By that standard The League of Frightened Men is 21 karats.

Rex Stout, one of the absolute masters of the Golden Age of mysteries, wrote more than fifty mysteries featuring Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. For the uninitiated, Wolfe was the quintessential eccentric detective–middle-aged, hugely overweight, handshake-avoiding, woman-distrusting, and agoraphobic.  Goodwin is his assistant–probably two decades younger, good-looking, a great dancer, and the “legs,” if not the “eyes,” of Wolfe.

The story opens with Wolfe telling Goodwin that while the latter was away on a job, a man named Andrew Hibbard had come to the office to ask Wolfe to protect him from assassination. However, Hibbard refused to give Wolfe the name of the man he was afraid of and insisted that he didn’t want the man arrested or punished, simply stopped.

Hibbard’s story is that there were a group of friends at Harvard more than twenty-five years before who inadvertently injured this man when he also was a student there.  As a result this man had had several operations and now, years later, still walked with a pronounced limp. The group had done whatever they could to help this man, financially and emotionally, for years, but the accident still burdened many of them.  Only recently had this man found his talent, and he was now a successful novelist and playwright.  However, in their guilty state, the men years ago had decided to call themselves The League of Atonement, a name which still stuck.

Recently, while at the Harvard graduation of the son of one of the League members, a group of these men and the injured man had been walking together along ocean cliffs late at night.  The next morning, one of the men was found at the bottom of the cliff.  And two days after that, the remaining members had received a poem which they all agreed came from the crippled man, which said he had killed the League member and was going to kill all the others.

Then, several months later, another member of the group died.  The police declared it suicide, but a follow-up poem allegedly by the injured man and saying that there would be more deaths had prompted Hibbard to come to Wolfe for protection.

Wolfe explained that he could not agree to be a bodyguard but would agree to remove the threat, but Hibbard vetoed this.  The meeting ended.  Then, when Goodwin returns to the office several days after Hibbard and Wolfe’s meeting, he casually mentions an article in the newspaper about a man who had written a book the district attorney wanted declared obscene.  This pricks Wolfe’s memory, and he sends Goodwin out to buy a copy of the book.  After he’s read it, he realizes that the injured man Hibbard was talking about is the book’s author, Paul Chapin.

Wolfe gets in touch with the remaining members of the League of Atonement and promises to remove the Chapin threat for a huge fee, payable only if he succeeds.  The majority of the men agree, although some are still hounded by their guilt and fearful of wronging Chapin again.  And then Chapin himself enters Wolfe’s office.  Talking to Wolfe, “he got into (his voice) a concentrated scorn that would have withered the love of God.”

Stout’s book is a masterful psychological study.  To those who know and love Wolfe and Goodwin, this book is absolutely one of the best in the series.  If you’ve never read Rex Stout, this novel is the perfect one with which to start.

You can read more about Rex Stout at http://www.nerowolfe.org/htm/stout/author.htm.

In 1964, Ruth Rendell’s first mystery, From Doon With Death, was published. The jacket’s blurb states that the publisher, “in keeping with its policy of attracting and encouraging the most promising new authors,” takes great pleasure in publishing this novel.  Did they truly ever suspect that the young Ms. Rendell would be the acclaimed author of more than fifty novels, nearly two dozen of which feature, as does her first, Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford?

I read From Doon with Death more than thirty years ago, but it’s always remained in my memory as an outstanding piece of legerdemain.  Although an internet piece on Ms. Rendell states that she broke from the mold of the British Golden Age mystery writers (Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers), I think that From Doon with Death is very much like Ms. Christie’s novels in its ability to fool the reader with red herrings.

The novel opens when Ronald Parsons, a neighbor of Detective Inspector Mike Burden, calls Burden to tell him that his wife Margaret is missing. She’s a woman of regular habits, her immediate family is deceased, she has made no friends since their move to Kingsmarkham six months earlier, but she’s not home when Ronald returns from work.  No clothes are missing from the meager assortment in her closet, nor is her luggage missing.

Burden tells Parsons not to worry, that she’s simply out somewhere and that she’s bound to return home shortly.  But she hasn’t returned by the next morning.  And a day later her body is found in a nearby forest.

Her life seems innocuous enough, except that when Wexford and Burden return to Parsons’ home for another search of the premises they find in the attic several volumes inscribed to Mina with much love from Doon.  Ronald Parsons says he never called his wife by that name nor heard anyone else call her that.  So were the books actually inscribed to Margaret Parsons, or did she acquire them from someone else?

As the investigation proceeds, the police discover that Margaret had lived in Kingsmarkham when she was a teenage girl in school. Her husband doesn’t see that as having any relevance to the murder, but Wexford wonders if someone or something from her past has caught up with her, perhaps the mysterious Doon.  Wexford finds a teacher and several of Mrs. Parsons’ classmates still in town, but no one seems to be able to shed light on why anyone would have killed her.  Her only relative, a cousin who moved to America following World War II, may have the answer, but the police are having trouble locating her.

The end of the novel came as a complete surprise to me on my first reading.  From Doon with Death shows the brilliance of Ruth Rendell, even in her first novel.

You can read more about Ruth Rendell at www.amazon.com/wiki/Ruth_Rendell/.

Josephine Tey is an author who is not too familiar to American readers of crime novels. She was 56 when she died in 1952 and had written only a handful of novels, but every one of them is worth reading or, in my case, re-reading.

Elizabeth Macintosh, Tey’s real name, used an “old proverb” that can’t be found anywhere, according to a review of Tey’s works in the Washington Post, for the title of this book.   “Truth is the daughter of time” is the saying, and I must admit I’m not sure exactly what it means.  Perhaps it means that “truth will tell,” which would certainly fit with the novel’s story.

Alan Grant, the British police detective who is the hero in several of Ms. Tey’s novels, is, as the English say, “in hospital” with a broken leg. Cranky and bored, he welcomes an old friend, Marta Hallard, a well-known stage actress, who brings him a pile of posters from the British Museum.   Each one is a portrait of a murderer or evil-doer.  In that pile is a portrait of a man whom Grant believes doesn’t belong there, and Grant is famous at Scotland Yard for his ability to “pick them at sight.”  The portrait is of Richard The Third, infamous king of England, best known for killing his two nephews in the Tower of London to preclude any claims they might have to be king.

The more Grant looks at the portrait, the more he is certain that the man with the sensitive face could not be the monster that English history says he is.  So obsessed does he become with this portrait that Marta brings a young American friend of hers, Brent Carradine, to do a bit of research for him to find out more about the king.  And the more deeply Grant and Carradine get into it, the more certain they both become that “history is bunk” and that Richard had no reason to kill his nephews and didn’t do it.

There’s a great deal of history in this book that apparently is known to the English but totally unknown to most Americans.  Names such as Eleanor Neville, the Cat and the Rat, and Lord Morton of “Morton’s Fork,” for example, are seemingly as well known in that country at Benjamin Franklin and Betsy Ross would be to students of American history.  But Tey explains her country’s history beautifully, and what might in other hands have become a dry treatise is instead a wonderful look into kings, queens, and court villains.

Fighting the battle at Bosworth in 1485 between the Yorks (Richard’s family) and the Lancastrians (followers of Henry Tudor, soon to become the first Tudor king), Richard was defeated and killed.  How amazing is it that Tey brings not only Richard but all of the members of his family and his court to life more than 500 years after his death?

Unfortunately, Josephine Tey doesn’t appear to have a web page, but you can read about her at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephine_Tey.