A 2001 flashback with Ed McBain.

WYSO's The Book Nook recently rebroadcast Vick Mickunas's 2001 interview with Ed McBain (aka Evan Hunter, 1926–2005) that coincided with the release of McBain's 87th Precinct novel Money, Money, Money. Mickunas describes it as one of his favorite interviews. In addition to Money, Money, Money, McBain discusses The Blackboard Jungle (the first Hunter novel), Cop Hater (the first McBain novel), The Chisholms (a Western), and Candyland (the innovative novel with the double byline of McBain and Hunter). He also talks about growing up in New York City, visiting the Apollo Theater, and working for the Scott Meredith Literary Agency (including editing P.G. Wodehouse).

Winifred Holtby's "Why Herbert Killed His Mother."

 . . . among the things a Fella does, correct grammar is not necessarily included.
—Winifred Holtby, "Why Herbert Killed His Mother"

Winifred Holtby is probably best known for South Riding (recently shown on PBS) and as the subject of her best friend Vera Brittain's book Testament of Friendship, but for one more week you can listen online to her sly short story "Why Herbert Killed His Mother" (read by Anna Massey) at BBC Radio 4 Extra. Although Holtby considered it a "very poor story" (Selected Letters of Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby 293), it's been reprinted in at least four anthologies since it first appeared in Holtby's Truth Is Not Sober (1934; see, for example, Bad Behavior and P. G. Wodehouse's A Century of Humour). Sadly, Holtby died in 1935 at age 37 of Bright's disease.

The Nero Wolfe book that wasn't.

Cover of
At Wolfe's Door:
The Nero Wolfe Novels
of Rex Stout
by J. K. Van Dover

The Wolfe Pack took a July jaunt to the Rex Stout Papers at Boston College and returned with scans of some interesting items such as a fan letter from P. G. Wodehouse and Stiff Upper Lipstick, the Nero Wolfe book that never existed yet had a summary and cover art—because some at Viking did not understand that it was a joke.

Anthony Berkeley Cox's Jugged Journalism (1925).

Portrait of Anthony Berkeley Cox
by George Morrow,
from Jugged Journalism.

Golden Age mystery author Anthony Berkeley Cox (Before the Fact, Malice Aforethought, The Poisoned Chocolates Case, etc.) published Jugged Journalism in 1925, a collection of pieces that previously appeared in Punch. It is essentially a manual for writing in all sorts of forms, including articles, essays, and short stories, with tongue firmly planted in cheek. To wit, Cox on editors:

"The popular idea of an editor is a sort of literary ogre, gnashing with his fangs the manuscripts of hapless tyros and taking a fiendish delight in trampling upon the efforts of all those whose names are not sufficiently known to the public at large to restrain his savage instincts" (p. 25).

Several of Cox's points should be added to the famous "Decalogue: Ten Commandments for Mystery Fiction" of his fellow Detection Club member, Monsignor Ronald Knox:

• "Your detective is nearly always an amateur and he invariably has two surnames in place of the usual one and a Christian" (p. 36).

• "The mystery story should carry a love interest . . . . she must have slanting green eyes and behave inscrutably" (p. 43)

Cox's sample mystery story in this book is called, memorably, "The Frozen Fang." Also do not miss Cox's "Holmes and the Dasher," a Sherlock Holmes parody written in the style of P. G. Wodehouse:

"What, ho, Watson, old fruit," he said at last, tossing the letter over to me. "What does that mass of alluvial deposit you call a brain make of this, what, what?" (p. 258).

Sadly, this spritely book is out of print. Please, someone republish it.

The return of The Poisoned Chocolates Case.

Anthony Berkeley Cox's The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929) returns to print today, courtesy of Felony and Mayhem Press.

Journalist-critic and Detection Club secretary Cox (1893–1971) wrote many mystery works that feature his sleuth Roger Sheringham; other works of interest include "Holmes and the Dasher," a Sherlock Holmes parody in the style of P. G. Wodehouse (see Jugged Journalism, 1925), and the Detection Club's round-robin novels The Floating Admiral (1931) and Six Against the Yard (1936), in which Cox participated. His pseudonyms include Francis Iles (Before the Fact, Malice Aforethought).

Illustrators try their hand at mystery characters.

On Steve Gettis's Web site, various illustrators provide their interpretations of their favorite literary figures. Roger Langridge's Jeeves & Wooster are charming. Mystery-related subjects include Earl Derr Biggers's Charlie Chan, Raymond Chandler, Arthur Conan Doyle, Len Deighton, Erle Stanley Gardner, Dashiell Hammett, Chester Himes's Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, Ed McBain's Carella and Meyer, and Edgar Allan Poe.

(Hat tip to Quill & Quire)

P. G. Wodehouse, mystery fan.

The creator of Jeeves and Wooster was a mystery fan, according to Michael Dirda:

Wodehouse aimed to be an entertainer, bowed to editorial judgment as meekly as any novice, and himself admired pros of prose like Agatha Christie, Erle Stanley Gardner, and Henry Slessar (who wrote his beloved Edge of Night soap opera).—Bound to Please (New York: Norton, 2005) 218.

I'm sure Dirda actually meant the late sci-fi and mystery writer Henry Slesar; Slesar's Murder at Heartbreak Hospital is in print with Academy Chicago Publishers.