Mystery tropes of the Golden Age.

On the latest episode of the podcast In GAD We Trust, James Scott Byrnside and the podcast host discuss mystery tropes of the Golden Age such as "the dying message," "the false solution," and "the seance." Authors singled out for particular praise include Christianna Brand and Anthony Berkeley Cox, whereas G. K. Chesterton and Ellery Queen come in for some criticism.

Clues 38.2: Genre b(l)ending.

Volume 38, number 2 of Clues: A Journal of Detection, guest edited by Maurizio Ascari (University of Bologna), has been published on the theme "Genre B(l)ending: Crime's Hybrid Forms." Below are the abstracts for the issue. Contact McFarland to order the issue or a Clues subscription. 

Update, 9-14-20. The ebook versions are now available: Google Play, Kindle, Nook.

Introduction: Make It New, but Don’t Forget / MAURIZIO ASCARI (University of Bologna)

G. K. Chesterton’s Postmodern Anti-Detective Story: Generic Innovation and Transgression in “The White Pillars Murder” / NILS CLAUSSON (University of Regina, Canada)
G. K. Chesterton’s undervalued story “The White Pillars Murder” anticipates the postmodern anti-detective story in the way it transgresses the conventions of the Holmes-style analytic detective story and subversively introduces political critique into a genre, the Golden Age country house mystery, widely regarded as either apolitical or conservative. 

Murder, Mayhem, and Madness: John Dickson Carr’s Gothic Detective Stories / STEFANO SERAFINI (University of Toronto)
This essay investigates the contact zones between gothic and detective fiction within the early work of the significant yet largely neglected author John Dickson Carr. By revealing the transgressive and contaminated character of his narratives, this essay also provides a more nuanced picture of interwar crime-writing, the literary boundaries of which were constantly violated and renegotiated. 

The Cowboy and the Detective: The Case of Craig Johnson / ANTOINE DECHÊNE
This essay focuses on Craig Johnson’s charismatic protagonist Walt Longmire, the county sheriff of Absaroka, Wyoming. A cowboy-detective par excellence, Longmire embodies the interrelationship between the Western and detective fiction while offering a good example of “glocal literature”—that is, a form of literature that is both global and local. 

James Church’s A Corpse in the Koryo and His Inspector O Series: A Noir/Spy Thriller Hybrid Set in North Korea / DAVID C. WRIGHT JR. (Misericordia University)
Analysis of A Corpse in the Koryo, the first book in the Inspector O series by James Church, shows that this series featuring a North Korean detective constitutes a successful genre hybrid: a hard-boiled detective thriller, à la Raymond Chandler, combined with a spy novel in the style of John le Carré. 

Update: Chesterton home saved.

G. K. Chesterton. NYPL.

In the Catholic Herald, Simon Caldwell reports that G. K. Chesterton's home, Overroads, was saved from a developer's plan to replace it with apartments.

Chesterton home at risk.

G. K. Chesterton, 1904. NYPL

This article in the Christian Post notes that G. K. Chesterton's home "Overroads" in Buckinghamshire may be torn down to make way for new apartments. The Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton opposes the proposal and has been involved in a letter-writing campaign to save the home.

The life of a mystery writer.

For a few more days, you can listen to episodes from the lively Three-a-Penny read by Diana Quick on BBC 4. It is the autobiography of Lucy Malleson, aka Anthony Gilbert and Anne Meredith. Mystery fans may be most interested in the episode "The Detection Club," in which Malleson describes her induction into that august British body with leading roles played by G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers,  and John Rhode.

Haycraft on Chesterton.

Howard Haycraft.
From the 1927
Univ of Minnesota
Gopher

In April 1945, H. W. Wilson executive and mystery scholar Howard Haycraft reviewed The Father Brown Omnibus, a new collection of G. K. Chesterton's stories with the mild-mannered clerical sleuth. The review, which appeared in the 31 Aug. 1945 Palestine Post as "Chesterton Tales," discussed the genesis of Father Brown and addressed the question of whether these stories could be classified as detective stories because Father Brown's deductions are often intuitive rather than based on hard evidence. Haycraft's opinion was unequivocal: ". . .[A]t his best Chesterton is indisputably one of that small company of writers most responsible for the curious vitality and appeal of the detective story to modern readers, and Father Brown has been called the best loved of fictional sleuths after the immortal Holmes" (7).

Chesterton declines an invitation in verse.

G. K. Chesterton, 1915.
Library of Congress,
Prints and Photos Div.

The Georgetown Library online exhibition "Written Relics: Autographs from the Talbot Collection" provides a March 1921 humorous turn-down in verse handwritten by G. K. Chesterton to what is thought to be students at Saint Louis University: "That I must miss your wheels of fire / Is not my fault at all." Chesterton was on a 3-month U.S. tour at the time (see his book What I Saw in America, 1922).

The first hundred years of detective fiction.

Illustration from Lawrence L.
Lynch, Dangerous Ground (1885)

A valuable resource is the Lilly Library of Indiana University's online version of its 1973 exhibition "The First Hundred Years of Detective Fiction, 1841–1941," which provides a useful history of the genre through the works selected. Besides the expected items by Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins, and Arthur Conan Doyle, there are works by lesser known authors such as William Russell (the rare Recollections of a Detective Police Officer, 1856–59) and Lawrence L. Lynch (pseudonym of Emma Murdock Van Deventer, 1885). Other goodies include G. K. Chesterton's sketch of Holmes and Moriarty for a never published version of Conan Doyle's "The Final Problem," a manuscript page from S. S. Van Dine's The Scarab Murder Case (1930), and Georges Simenon's first two novels. Note that the statement "It was not until eleven years later, in 1878, that the first native detective novel appeared in America, Anna Katherine [sic] Green's The Leavenworth Case" is not true, as Metta Fuller Victor is now given this distinction for her novel The Dead Letter (1866).

Richard Atwater on detective novels, 1930.

Illustration of Richard Atwater, frm
21 Oct 1922 Bisbee Daily Review

Richard Atwater (1892–1948) was coauthor of the Newbery Award-nominated Mr. Popper's Penguins, a classics professor at the University of Chicago, and a frequent contributor to Chicago newspapers. In a 7 Jun 1930 article in The Chicagoan, Atwater asserted that "there are only six detective novels in existence: the rest being a rewriting of the same plots" (15). The following were his picks for the two best detective novels partly because "neither . . . has a butler in it":

• G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday (1908). Chesterton's classic tale of unlikely agent Gabriel Syme infiltrating an anarchist group

• James Branch Cabell, The Cream of the Jest (1917). It is unusual to characterize this book as a detective work, as it is a satire—a fictional work with fantasy elements within a fictional work.

Tongue planted firmly in cheek, Atwater then floated his idea for a detective novel, in which a valet named Rudy offends because of his crooning (one suspects that Atwater was no fan of Rudy Vallee), and decorators "mistaking Rudy for the new wall paper, . . .  paste him to the wall of the master's study. As the master never studies, nobody discovers the error, and the crime is never known" (15).

Frances Chesterton, wife of G. K.

Stephanie A. Mann provides some insights on poet-playwright Frances Chesterton, wife of G. K. and niece of art historian Mary Margaret Heaton, and mentions the 2015 biography by Nancy Carpentier Brown, The Woman Who Was Chesterton. Brown blogs on Frances Chesterton here. Both writers paint a touching picture of a devoted couple. According to the 13 Dec. 1938 New York Times, G. K. regarded Frances as "in all ways a kindred spirit," and longtime G. K. friend E. C. Bentley (Trent's Last Case) called her G. K.'s "right-hand in all his dealings with the world" (qtd in Brown).

Of related interest: Frances Chesterton being mistaken for The Lodger author Marie Belloc Lowndes and her response: "I am quite willing to feel honored by [the] mistake, but they [Hilaire Belloc and Marie Belloc Lowndes] might feel aggrieved." Belloc (brother of Marie Belloc Lowndes) and G. K. Chesterton were close friends.

The Armed Services editions and mysteries.

Cover of Armed Services edition
of Rex Stout's Not Quite Dead
Enough (1945)

I just finished Molly Guptill Manning's When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II, which provides a lively and often poignant discussion of the importance to service members of the Armed Services editions in World War II. They were produced to be sturdy, lightweight, and sized for a pocket, and the Council on Books in Wartime, in charge of the effort, tried to supply a book "to fit the tastes of every man" (79). (One of the council's members was Farrar & Rinehart's Stanley Rinehart, son of Mary Roberts Rinehart). The council printed more than 123 million copies of Armed Services editions.

To mention a few mystery-related elements in the book:

• One of the authors listed as banned in Germany:
  G. K. Chesterton 

• "The most popular genre was contemporary fiction . . . followed by historical novels, mysteries, books of humor, and westerns" (79–80).

•  Among the earliest Armed Services editions: Earl Derr Biggers, Seven Keys to Baldpate; W. R. Burnett, Little Caesar; Daphne du Maurier, Jamaica Inn; and Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear

• Some of the last Armed Services editions published in 1947: John Dickson Carr, The Sleeping Sphinx; Manning Coles, With Intent to Deceive; Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Fan-Dancer's Horse; Hilda Lawrence, Death of a Doll; Richard and Frances Lockridge, Think of Death; Ngaio Marsh, Final Curtain; Craig Rice, ed., Los Angeles Murders; and Kelley Roos, Ghost of a Chance.

Related:

• BookTV footage of Manning talking about the book in 2015

• Books in Action: The Armed Services Editions (ed. John Y. Cole, 1984)

• Editions for the Armed Services Inc.: A History (1948)

Religion and fictional detectives.

G.K. Chesterton

A recent article by Bill Phillips (University of Barcelona) is on "Religious Belief in Recent Detective Fiction." Some of the authors mentioned are Ken Bruen, James Lee Burke, G. K. Chesterton, Sara Paretsky, Robert B. Parker, and Ian Rankin.

Chesterton, Sayers articles of interest.

Illustration of Chesterton from
Hearst's International (Nov 1921)

Appropriate for today (the birthday of G. K. Chesterton), VII: An Anglo-American Literary Review has posted the following articles online:

• "Two Essays on George MacDonald by G. K. Chesterton" introd. Daniel Gabelman (Scottish novelist MacDonald, best known for At the Back of the North Wind [1871], was the grandfather of mystery author-screenwriter Philip MacDonald). In one essay, Chesterton calls George MacDonald "one of the most remarkable men of our time."

 • "Dorothy L. Sayers's Writings about Work, the Economy and Social Conditions: An Annotated Bibliography" by Christine M. Fletcher

Caroline Barta's "'That Precarious Balance': Harmonizing Temperance in Dorothy L. Sayers's Gaudy Night" is not yet posted from the 2012 issue.

It came from the archives: G. K. Chesterton.

G. K. Chesterton, NYPL

Displaying distinctive penmanship, G. K. Chesterton wrote this gracious letter to the Barcelona club Ateneu Barcelones in May 1926 (found in the Manuscrits de la Bibloteca de l'Ateneu Barcelones). Ian Ker's biography of Chesterton indicates that PEN's Catalan branch had invited Chesterton to Barcelona; his engagements included a speech on "England Seen from the Outside" at Barcelona University.

Happy birthday, G. K. Chesterton.

Illustration of Chesterton from
Hearst's International (Nov 1921)

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born today in London in 1874. To honor the indefatigable critic, essayist, poet, novelist, children's party entertainer, and creator of wise sleuth Father Brown, you can do the following:

• Read his "A Defense of Detective Stories" (1901).

• Read his "The Admiral Eats His Hat: How to Write Detective Stories" (1921).  ". . . the very design of a detective story is a matter not of creation but of construction. . . . let the villain [be] . . . a very viper on the hearth."

• Read his "On Detective Novels" (1922). "...the detective story is . . . a drama of masks and not of faces."

• Watch Chesterton at Worcester College (1931).

Dickens, Drood, and Holmes.

Claude Rains as John Jasper
in The Mystery of
Edwin Drood (1935)

The University of Delaware Libraries exhibition "Dickens at 200," which runs until June 8, discusses the uncompleted Mystery of Edwin Drood, including attempts by some authors to have Sherlock Holmes solve the case and the 1914 mock trial of protagonist John Jasper that featured G. K. Chesterton as judge and George Bernard Shaw as jury foreman.

Chesterton, Greene, et al: Bloomsbury auction results.

E. C. Bentley, from
The Bookman 37 (1913)

There was a mixed bag of results for the Jan 12th Bloomsbury bibliophile auction, although it seems that works by Graham Greene continue to do respectably at auction. The mystery-related items included the following:

• Strand magazine vols 1–16, 1891–98, which contain the Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (illust. Sidney Paget): £100 (approx. US$153).

• E. C. Bentley, Trent's Last Case (1913), with G. K. Chesterton's The Wisdom of Father Brown (1914) and some Agatha Christie works, £110 (approx. US$168).

• Raymond Chandler, 1st English ed. of The Big Sleep (1939), £260 (approx. US$400).

• G. K. Chesterton, 1st ed. of The Man Who Was Thursday (1908), £60 (approx. US$92).

• Graham Greene, 1st ed. of The Third Man and The Fallen Idol (1950), £240 (approx. US$368).
(Hat tip to PhiloBiblos)

BBC Radio 4 Extra: Xmas w/the Detectives.

Thomas Hardy, NYPL

This week, BBC Radio 4 Extra features four tales read by Tom Conti that take place during the Christmas season: Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Blue Carbuncle," Thomas Hardy's whodunit "The Thieves Who Couldn't Stop Sneezing," Dorothy L. Sayers's "The Necklace of Pearls," and G. K. Chesterton's "The Flying Stars." Go here for the schedule or to listen; episodes usually may be heard online up to a week after broadcast.

(And here is Anthony Gardner on the intriguing stories behind Hardy's Christmas cards)

Journal gems from JSTOR.

JSTOR announced on Sept. 6 that it would permit free access to issues of certain periodicals published before 1923 (list here). This means unfettered access to items such as the following:

• "The Modern Novel," by Amelia E. Barr, North American Review, Nov. 1894. "...[I]f people enjoy the game between criminals and detectives, the question is simply whether the exhibition is, or is not, a moral one—whether the details of crime, the telling of how it was done, how it was concealed, and how it was found out, may not be a kind of criminal school, for those whose inclinations lead them in that direction" (593–94).

William A. Pinkerton,
left, and Robert A.
Pinkerton, ca. 1855.
Library of Congress

• "Detective Surveillance of Anarchists," by Robert A. Pinkerton (son of Allan Pinkerton), North American Review Nov 1901. "The picture of the anarchist drawn by most people, a bearded, drunken, lazy creature, is not at all in line with the facts" (616).

•  "A Short-Story Reading List," by Raymond W. Pence, English Journal May 1920. Recommends the following for teaching students about effective writing:


--G. K. Chesterton.  The Innocence of Father Brown, The Wisdom of Father Brown.

--Arthur Conan Doyle. "The Adventure of the Dying Detective," "The Dancing Men,"  "The Final Problem," "The Norwood Builder," "A Scandal in Bohemia," "Silver Blaze," "The Speckled Band."

--Henry James. "The Turn of the Screw"

--Arthur Morrison. "On the Stairs"

--Edgar Allan Poe. "The Gold Bug,"  "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Purloined Letter."

--Melville Davisson Post. Stories from Uncle Abner: "The Doomdorf Mystery," "An Act of God," The Straw Man," "The Adopted Daughter."

--Robert Louis Stevenson. "Markheim," "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"

The cheery Chesterton.

In a TLS review of Ian Ker's G. K. Chesterton and William Oddie's The Holiness of G. K. Chesterton, Bernard Manzo underscores the cheerfulness of Chesterton, mentions the perception of Father Brown, and comments on the elaborate masquerade of The Man Who Was Thursday. Ker's biography indicates that Chesterton regarded Father Brown as a way to augment his bank account when funds were low and that Monsignor Ronald Knox, Chesterton's fellow Detection Club member, did not consider the Father Brown stories to be mysteries (283–84). But in Ker's description of Father Brown's "intimate knowledge of the human heart"  (284), there seem to be definite parallels with Christie's later Miss Marple, yet another sleuth who looks deceptively fluffy but is unerring in her estimation of human motivations and actions.