Mysteries entering the public domain.

Mysteries that have entered the public domain and are on the online Project Gutenberg:

A.E.W. Mason. NYPL

  •  As a Thief in the Night  by R. Austin Freeman (a Dr. Thorndyke mystery). "One of the most satisfactory detective stories we have read."—Walter R. Brooks, The Outlook

  • Ashenden; or the British Agent by Somerset Maugham (based on Maugham's experiences in World War I). "An urbane series of stories dealing with the diplomatic side of Secret Service work"—Saturday Review

  • Behind That Curtain by Earl Derr Biggers (a Charlie Chan mystery). "Excellent"—Gilbert Seldes, Saturday Review (pb edition here)

  • The Footsteps at the Lock by Father (later Msgr.) Ronald Knox (a Miles Bredon mystery). "breezy characterization and satirical humour"—The Spectator (pb edition here)

 • Murder in the Maze by J.J. Connington. "[T]he usual false clues are skillfully suggested, and the reading public may well be surprised and amused to the end."—The English Review (pb edition here)

 • The Prisoner in the Opal by A.E.W. Mason (an Inspector Hanaud mystery). "another intriguing story of mystery and thrilling adventure"—Wanganui Chronicle (Wellington, Australia; pb edition here)

 • The Velvet Hand: New Madame Storey Mysteries by Hulbert Footner. "thoughtfully and ingeniously constructed"—New York Times

The underappreciated Msgr. Ronald Knox.

Bust of Ronald A. Knox
by Arthur Pollen

Benjamin Welton pens an appreciation of Monsignor Ronald A. Knox (1888–1957), famed for his Detective Story Decalogue, his creation of sleuth Miles Bredon (I like his Footsteps at the Lock), and his launch of serious studies of Sherlock Holmes with this lecture. Welton calls Knox's Bredon works "charming, almost whimsical novels."

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 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.

Happy birthday, Ronald Knox.

Detection Club member and Catholic convert Monsignor Ronald A. Knox was born today in Leicestershire in 1888. His essay "Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes" (published in 1912) and his pastiche "The Adventure of the First Class Carriage" (1947) are favorites among Sherlockians. Knox published his first mystery novel, The Viaduct Murder, in 1925 and his famous Decalogue (with rules for mystery writing such as "not more than one secret room or passage is allowable") in 1929. Although his niece, novelist Penelope Fitzgerald, dubbed his sleuth Miles Bredon a "stick" in The Knox Brothers, I found his timetable mystery The Footsteps at the Lock (1928) to be diverting. Knox died in 1957.

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.

Happy birthday, Penelope Fitzgerald.

British author Penelope Fitzgerald (The Bookshop, Offshore, etc.) was born today in Lincoln in 1916. She died in 2000. Fitzgerald was the niece of Golden Age mystery writer Monsignor Ronald Knox (see Fitzgerald's book The Knox Brothers [1977] for her take on her uncle and her father, Punch editor Edmund Knox).

New biography, Msgr. Ronald Knox.

Msgr. Ronald Knox (1888-1957)—author of the famous ten commandments of detective fiction ("5. No Chinaman must figure in the story"), member of the Detection Club, Catholic apologist, and uncle of the late British novelist Penelope Fitzgerald—is the subject of a new book, The Wine of Certitude: A Literary Biography of Ronald Knox, written by David M. Rooney (Hofstra University). For Fitzgerald's take on her uncle, see The Knox Brothers (1977).