Academy Chicago reissues Leo Bruce's Case with 4 Clowns (1939)

Just out from Academy Chicago Publishers is Leo Bruce's Case with 4 Clowns, which features his determined investigator Sergeant Beef. This is the first time this novel has been published in the United States in 70 years; it joins other Sergeant Beef reissues such as Case for Three Detectives.

Leo Bruce was the pseudonym of British poet, playwright, writer, and critic Rupert Croft-Cooke (1903–79), who was prosecuted for homosexuality in the 1950s; he recounts his experiences in The Verdict of You All (1955). His short story and play "Banquo's Chair" were adapted for the film The Fatal Witness (1945) and an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1959).

Erle Stanley Gardner's correspondence with Nathan Leopold.

On the blog American Fiction Notes, Mark Athitakis discusses the correspondence of author-lawyer Erle Stanley Gardner with convicted murderer Nathan Leopold (of Leopold and Loeb infamy). A few more details can be gleaned here from UT-Austin's Ransom Center; other mystery writers mentioned on this page include Rupert Croft-Cooke (aka Leo Bruce) and Beverley Nichols.

(Hat tip to the Guardian books blog)

Quote for the day.

"The crematorium was an ugly red brick building with vague suggestions of ecclesiasticism about it. The ground near it was taken up with a large car park, and there were many shrubs of the least interesting varieties. Here, if anywhere . . . there should be cypresses, the funeral trees that the Romans dedicated to Pluto because once they are cut they never grow again. Yews would take too long to grow, perhaps, for one could not imagine this public library sort of building becoming an ancient monument that would one day inspire some twenty-fifth century Gray to compose an 'Elegy written in a Country Crematorium.'"

—Leo Bruce [Rupert Croft-Cooke], Death at Hallows End 37

Happy belated birthday, Rupert Croft-Cooke.

I missed on Friday the birthday of British poet-playwright-writer-critic Rupert Croft-Cooke (1903-79), the creator (under the name Leo Bruce) of placid and unerring detective Sergeant Beef and history teacher-sleuth Carolus Deene. Academy Chicago Publishers has reprinted some of the Beef and Deene works, including the classic The Case for Three Detectives (1936), in which Beef squares off against investigators clearly modeled on Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey, Christie's Poirot, and Chesterton's Father Brown in a locked-room mystery.

Here is an earlier discussion I posted on Croft-Cooke's work.

Where's the Beef?

"I was just thinking," [Sergeant Beef] continued. "How useful it is to be the kind of detective I am. Ex-policeman. Ordinary sort of chap. None of your ritzy types with titles and private incomes." (Murder in Miniature 40)

Over the years, Academy Chicago Publishers has showcased gems of mystery literature in inexpensive editions (e.g., Celia Fremlin's Edgar-winning The Hours Before Dawn). That's certainly the case with Leo Bruce's Murder in Miniature and Other Stories, introduced by Margery Allingham Society chairman B. A. Pike. Bruce, aka Rupert Croft-Cooke, created the stalwart Sergeant Beef as the deliberate antithesis of aristocratic sleuths such as Lord Peter Wimsey. This collection of tales—which largely appeared in the Evening Standard in the early 1950s—feature him, the equally shrewd Sergeant Grebe, or others in delightful puzzle mysteries. In "Murder in Miniature," the title story, Beef confronts the body of a dwarf that literally tumbles into his lap on a train. I particularly enjoyed "On the Spot," in which a detective inspector believes he can commit the perfect crime.

Sergeant Beef also can be seen in Academy Chicago's The Case for Three Detectives, where he is pitted against parodies of Wimsey, Poirot, and Father Brown.

In addition to producing his substantial fiction and nonfiction work, Croft-Cooke served as book critic for The Sketch. His play Banquo's Chair was adapted for Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1959).