FSU mystery exhibition curated by 12-year-old.

Joseph, a 12-year-old mystery enthusiast and scholar-in-residence, has curated the exhibition "A Century of Mystery and Intrigue" at Florida State University Library's Special Collections and Archives, which involves trains and includes such works as Freeman Wills Crofts's Inspector French and the Starvel Hollow Tragedy (1927). Joseph writes here about the exhibition, which will remain on view until December 20, 2019 (see also FSU story). Questions about the exhibition (and perhaps Joseph's work at the library) can be directed to preservation librarian Hannah Wiatt Davis.

Mystery reading by Justice Holmes and friends.

He had just discovered [E. Phillips] Oppenheim and had been revelling in the world of international intrigue into which Oppenheim had transplanted him.

—1932 research material on Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. by Mark DeWolfe Howe

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.,
ca. 1924. Library of Congress,
Prints and Photographs Div.

Justice Sonia Sotomayer and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's fondness for Nancy Drew has precedence on the Supreme Court. Harvard Law School Library's impressive digital project on Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. sheds further light on his mystery reading (Holmes once confessed his "ignoble liking" for detective stories to British jurist Sir Frederick Pollock). In one letter, he states, "I like what I have read of John Dickson Carr—(author of The Lost Gallows)" [1931]. An inventory of Holmes's library after his death in 1935 lists John Buchan's Greenmantle (1916) and The Three Hostages (1924), Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest (1929), Oppenheim's A Prince of Sinners (1903) and Prodigals of Monte Carlo (1926), Dorothy L. Sayers's Have His Carcase (1932), and Edgar Wallace's The Man at the Carlton (1931). He also had a copy of Anna Katharine Green's The Leavenworth Case (1878, part of the Haycraft-Queen list of essential mysteries) with the following inscription by the author: "To Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes with birthday congratulations from Anna Katharine Green Rohlfs. Buffalo, March, 1926."

Some of Holmes's friends were equally enthusiastic about mysteries. In one letter, his British Marxist-socialist friend Harold Laski notes Freeman Wills Crofts's Inspector French's Greatest Case (1925), "which I commend warmly to you if it comes your way" and later urges Holmes to read Crofts's The Cask (1920; both books are on the Haycraft-Queen list). In another letter, Laski expresses appreciation for Mary Davies and the Manor of Ebury by Charles T. Gatty; in yet another letter, he recommends Philip MacDonald's The White Crow (1928) and The Rasp (1924; the latter is on the Haycraft-Queen list).

Pollock sent Holmes a list of his recommended detective stories, with a note by the names of Sayers and Agatha Christie that stated, "anything by either of these writers may be presumed to be good." Pollock's list included Margery Allingham, G. D. H. Cole, R. Austin Freeman, Ronald A. Knox, Anthony Rolls, Henry Wade, and Victor L. Whitechurch. It appears that Holmes did not need Pollock's prompting regarding Christie, as evidenced by the following passage from Some Table Talk of Mr. Justice Holmes and the Mrs. (1935): "Mrs. Agatha Christie may be pleased some day to know that at this moment [May 1933] she was sharing his attention and his praise with Aristotle."

The Times' recommended mysteries, 1936.

Eden Phillpotts, NYPL

"So prolific are our masters of mystery and detection," wrote the Times of London on July 24, 1936, "that it is only possible to make a brief selection from their latest contributions" (9). Here is what was recommended:

• Margery Allingham, Flowers for the Judge

• E. C. Bentley and H. Warner Allen, Trent's Own Case

• Thomas Burke, Murder at Elstree. "makes our flesh creep."

• Agatha Christie, The A.B.C. Murders; Murder in Mesopotamia

• G. Belton Cobb, No Alibi

• Freeman Wills Crofts, The Loss of the "Jane Vosper"

• [Margaret] Leonora Eyles, They Wanted Him Dead. Eyles was married to D. M. Murray, editor of the Times Literary Supplement.

• R. Austin Freeman, The Penrose Mystery 

• Georgette Heyer, Behold, Here's Poison

• Charles J. Kenny [Erle Stanley Gardner], This Is Murder

• L[eonard]. A[rthur]. Pavey, Forward from Youth. Summary from the London Mercury, 34 (1936): "Brian Ferrands, a victim of shell-shock, is found lying dead of exposure. His friend, Denis Wantage, is induced to search into the dead man's past to find the true reason for his suicide." Pavey was a World War I veteran.

• Eden Phillpotts, A Close Call

• Edward Shanks, Old King Cole. "an unusual 'thriller.'" Mystery author Martin Edwards is distantly connected to Shanks by marriage.

Rex Stout's picks, best detective tales.

Here are the choices of Nero Wolfe creator Rex Stout for the ten best detective stories (qtd. in Vincent Starrett, Books and Bipeds [New York: Argus, 1947] 82):

The Moonstone (Wilkie Collins, 1868)

The Maltese Falcon (Dashiell Hammett, 1930)

The Benson Murder Case (S. S. Van Dine [Willard Huntington Wright], 1926)

The Documents in the Case (Dorothy L. Sayers and Robert Eustace [Eustace Robert Barton], 1930)

The Innocence of Father Brown (G. K. Chesterton, 1911)

Call Mr. Fortune (H. C. Bailey, 1920)

The Bellamy Trial (Frances [Newbold] Noyes Hart, 1927)

The Cask (Freeman Wills Crofts, 1920)

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (Agatha Christie, 1926)

Lament for a Maker (Michael Innes [J. I. M. Stewart], 1938)