lyzard's list: A live thing plus animation! - Part 5

The arctic hare, as its name suggests, is native to the high-latitude tundras of Greenland and Canada, with its territory extending south only so far as Labrador and Newfoundland. Those animals found where the summer season is shortest remain white all the year round, while the others change coat colour from white to grey-brown with the changing of the seasons. The latter bear their young during the spring, so that their brownish coats provide camouflage against the rocky environment.


  

"Books are my constant inspiration and delight, and without them I should be a dead thing minus animation."
---James Corbett, The Merrivale Mystery

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Currently reading:



The Keys Of The Kingdom by A. J. Cronin (1942)



Women, Power, And Subversion by Judith Lowder Newton (1981)

2018 reading

January:

1. The Semi-Attached Couple by Emily Eden (1860)
2. The Semi-Detached House by Emily Eden (1859)
3. The Absentee by Maria Edgeworth (1812)
4. Robbery At Portage Bend by Trygve Lund (1933)
5. The Loring Mystery by Jeffery Farnol (1924)
6. The Medusa Touch by Peter Van Greenaway (1973)
7. Initials Only by Anna Katharine Green (1911)
8. The Flickering Lamp by Netta Muskett (1931)
9. The Key by Patricia Wentworth (1944)
10. Crooked House by Agatha Christie (1949)
11. Ruth Fielding Down East; or, The Hermit Of Beach Plum Point by Alice B. Emerson (1920)
12. The Exploits Of Elaine by Arthur B. Reeve (1915)
13. The Secret Trail by Anthony Armstrong (1928)
14. The Crimson Circle by Edgar Wallace (1922)
15. Gains And Losses: Novels Of Faith And Doubt In Victorian England by Robert Lee Wolff (1977)
16. Anything But The Truth by Carolyn Wells (1925)
17. Who Killed Precious? How FBI Special Agents Combine High Technology And Psychology To Identify Violent Criminals by H. Paul Jeffers (1991)

February:

18. Woman's Fiction: A Guide To Novels By And About Women In America, 1820-70 by Nina Baym (1978)
19. The Amityville Horror Part II by John G. Jones (1982)
20. Derelicts by William McFee (1938)
21. After Rain by Netta Muskett (1931)
22. The Shadow On Mockways by Marjorie Bowen (1932)
23. Mr Fortune Speaking by H. C. Bailey (1929)
24. Kai Lung Beneath The Mulberry-Tree by Ernest Bramah (1940)
25. Penelope's Progress: Being Such Extracts From The Commonplace Book Of Penelope Hamilton As Relate To Her Experiences In Scotland by Kate Douglas Wiggin (1897)
26. Women's Friendship In Literature by Janet M. Todd (1980)
27. Headlong Hall by Thomas Love Peacock (1815)
28. Dark Laughter by Sherwood Anderson (1925)
29. The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson (1978)
30. The Story Of Dr Wassell by James Hilton (1944)
31. A Murder Is Announced by Agatha Christie (1950)
32. Jack O' Lantern by George Goodchild (1929)
33. The Man With The Dark Beard by Annie Haynes (1928)

March:

34. Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen (1881)
35. The Brownstone by Ken Eulo (1980)
36. The Mystery Of The Hasty Arrow by Anna Katharine Green (1917)
37. The Penrose Mystery by R. Austin Freeman (1936)
38. Grandmother Elsie by Martha Finley (1882)
39. Kai Lung Raises His Voice by Ernest Bramah (2010)
40. Anthony Adverse by Hervey Allen (1933)
41. The Macdermots Of Ballycloran by Anthony Trollope (1847)
42. They Came To Baghdad by Agatha Christie (1951)
43. In The Teeth Of The Evidence And Other Stories by Dorothy L. Sayers (1939)

2018 reading:

April:

44. Camilla; or, A Picture Of Youth by Frances Burney (1796)
45. The Secret History Of The Reigns Of K. Charles II, And K. James II by Anonymous (1690)
46. A Defence Of Their Majesties King William And Queen Mary, Against An Infamous And Jesuitical Libel, Entituled, A True Portraicture Of William Henry Prince Of Nassau, &c by Pierre Jurieu (1689)
47. Tribe Of The Dead by Gary Brandner (1984)
48. The Blatant Beast Muzzl'd: or, Reflexions on a Late Libel, Entituled, The Secret History Of The Reigns Of K. Charles II. And K. James II by 'N. N.' (1691)
49. Kiss Kiss by Roald Dahl (1959)
50. Shock 2 by Richard Matheson (1964)
51. Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Grave Business by Alfred Hitchcock (ed.) (1977)
52. Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories They Wouldn't Let Me Do On TV by Alfred Hitchcock (ed.) (1957)
53. Light Of The Moon by Barbara Cartland (1979)
54. The Taming Of Lady Lorinda by Barbara Cartland (1977)
55. Family Pictures, A Novel: Containing Curious And Interesting Memoirs Of Several Persons Of Fashion In W---re by Margaret Minifie (1764)
56. The Black Mask by E. W. Hornung (1901)
57. The Tree And Its Fruits; or, Narratives From Real Life by Phoebe Hinsdale Brown (1836)
58. The Castle Of Fear by Barbara Cartland (1974)
59. Pack Mule by Ursula Bloom (1931)
60. The Traveller Returns by Patricia Wentworth (1945)
61. Mrs McGinty's Dead by Agatha Christie (1952)
62. A Man From The North by Arnold Bennett (1898)

May:

63. In the Onyx Lobby by Carolyn Wells (1920)
64. Find The Clock by Harry Stephen Keeler (1925)
65. Felo De Se? by R. Austin Freeman (1937)
66. Au Rendez-vous des Terre-Neuvas by Georges Simenon (1931)
67. The Ayrshire Legatees; or, The Pringle Family by John Galt (1821)
68. Green Light by Lloyd C. Douglas (1935)
69. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (1906)
70. Sarah Gay by Mary Borden (1931)
71. High Winds by Arthur Train (1927)
72. Madame Storey by Hulbert Footner (1926)
73. Martin Hewitt, Investigator by Arthur Morrison (1894)
74. The Daffodil Mystery by Edgar Wallace (1920)
75. They Do It With Mirrors by Agatha Christie (1952)
76. Patty's Pleasure Trip by Carolyn Wells (1909)

June:

77. Messenger Of Love by Barbara Cartland (1961)
78. Clubfoot The Avenger by Valentine Williams (1924)
79. Madame Storey Intervenes by Hulbert Footner (1924)
80. Putting Crime Over by Hulbert Footner (1926)
81. The Velvet Hand by Hulbert Footner (1928)
82. The Division Bell Mystery by Ellen Wilkinson (1932)
83. Pilgrim's Rest by Patricia Wentworth (1946)
84. The Doorstep Murders by Carolyn Wells (1930)
85. Cloud The Smiter by Arthur Gask (1926)
86. Awakening by John Galsworthy (1920)
87. The Mystery Of Burnleigh Manor by Walter Livingston (1930)
88. The Eye Of Dread by Payne Erskine (1913)
89. Ruth Fielding In The Great Northwest; or, The Indian Girl Star Of The Movies by Alice B. Emerson (1921)
90. The Prisoners Of Hartling by J. D. Beresford (1922)
91. The Abbey Court Murder by Annie Haynes (1923)
92. Poe: A Life Cut Short by Peter Ackroyd (2008)
93. After The Funeral by Agatha Christie (1952)
94. Mr Fortune Explains by H. C. Bailey (1930)

2018 reading

July:

95. Valerius: A Roman Story by J. G. Lockhart (1821)
96. Courrier Sud by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1929)
97. Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1936)
98. Anthony Trent, Master Criminal by Wyndham Martyn (1918)
99. One Drop Of Blood by Anne Austin (1932)
100. Lust For Blood: The Consuming Story Of Vampires by Olga Gruhzit Hoyt (1984)
101. La Danseuse Du Gai-Moulin by Georges Simenon (1931)
102. The Ear In The Wall by Arthur B. Reeve (1916)
103. A Pocket Full Of Rye by Agatha Christie (1953)
104. Kindled Flame by Margaret Pedler (1931)

August:

105. The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties by Frances Burney (1814)
106. Blue Voyage by Conrad Aiken (1927)
107. Little Vampire Women by Lynn Messina and Louisa May Alcott (2010)
108. Malefice by Leslie Wilson (1992)
109. Under Capricorn by Helen Simpson (1937)
110. The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1938)
111. Latter End by Patricia Wentworth (1947)
112. Destination Unknown by Agatha Christie (1954)
113. The Lust Of Hate by Guy Newell Boothby (1898)
114. Patty's Success by Carolyn Wells (1910)
115. Ruth Fielding On The St. Lawrence; or, The Queer Old Man Of The Thousand Islands by Alice B. Emerson (1922)
116. Spenlove In Arcady by William McFee (1941)

September:

117. The Paddington Mystery by John Rhode (1925)
118. The House In Charlton Crescent by Annie Haynes (1926)
119. Elsie's New Relations by Martha Finley (1883)
120. Penelope's Irish Experiences by Kate Douglas Wiggin (1901)
121. Vol De Nuit by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1931)
122. The Invisible Host by Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning (1930)
123. Hungry Hill by Daphne du Maurier (1943)
124. The Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939)
125. Ringu by Suzuki Koji (1991)
126. Voodoo'd by Kenneth Perkins (1931)
127. Hickory Dickory Dock by Agatha Christie (1955)
128. The Plumley Inheritance by Christopher Bush (1926)
129. Flowers For The Judge by Margery Allingham (1936)
130. The Great Bastard, Protector Of The Little One by Anonymous (1689)

October:

131. The Mysteries Of London (Volume I) by George W. M. Reynolds (1845)
132. X v. Rex by 'Martin Porlock' (Philip MacDonald) (1933)
133. The Wychford Poisoning Case by Anthony Berkeley (1926)
134. Spotlight by Patricia Wentworth (1947)
135. Dead Man's Folly by Agatha Christie (1956)
136. The Skeleton At The Feast by Carolyn Wells (1931)
137. The Crow's Inn Tragedy by Annie Haynes (1927)
138. The Picture by Margaret and Susannah Minifie (1766)
139. How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn (1939)
140. The Giant Book Of World Famous Murders by Colin, Damon and Rowan Wilson (1993)
141. Frisk by Dennis Cooper (1991)

November:

142. Satanskin by James Havoc (1992)
143. The Mysteries Of London (Volume II) by George W. M. Reynolds (1846)

Books in transit:

On interlibrary loan / branch transfer / storage / Rare Book request:

Upcoming requests:
Murder By An Aristocrat (aka "Murder Of My Patient") by Mignon Eberhart
Many Ways by Margaret Pedler {ILL / JFR}
The Tragedy At The Unicorn by John Rhode {CARM / ILL}
Murder At The Hunting Club by Mary Plum {CARM / ILL}

Purchased and shipped:

On loan:
*X v. Rex by Martin Porlock (aka Philip Macdonald) (16/11/2018)
*The Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck (06/12/2018)
Australia Felix by Henry Handel Richardson (15/12/2018)
*Hungry Hill by Daphne du Maurier (15/12/2018)
Women, Power And Subversion by Judith Lowder Newton (15/12/2018)
The Road Back by Erich Maria Remarque (17/12/2018)
**Spenlove In Arcady by William McFee (17/12/2018)
The Kellys And The O'Kellys by Anthony Trollope (28/01/2019)
The Keys Of The Kingdom by A. J. Cronin (28/01/2019)
Random Harvest by James Hilton (28/01/2019)
How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn (28/01/2019)

Reading projects 2018:

Blog reads:
Chronobibliography: Leandro; or, The Lucky Rescue by James Smythies
Authors In Depth:
- Forest Of Montalbano by Catherine Cuthbertson
- The Mother-In-Law by E. D. E. N. Southworth
- The Captain Of The Vulture by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
- The Sicilian by 'the author of The Mysterious Wife' / Ellesmere by Mrs Meeke
- The Picture by 'the Miss Minifies' / The Cottage by Margaret Minifie
- The Old Engagement by Julia Day
- The Refugee In America by Frances Trollope
Reading Roulette: Pique by Sarah Stickney Ellis
Australian fiction: Louisa Egerton by Mary Leman Grimstone
Gothic novel timeline: Reginald Du Bray by 'A Late Nobleman'
Early crime fiction: The Mysteries Of London by G. W. M. Reynolds
Related reading: Gains And Losses by Robert Lee Wollf / The Man Of Feeling by Henry Mackenzie / Le Loup Blanc by Paul Féval

Group / tutored reads:

Completed: The Semi-Attached Couple by Emily Eden (thread here)
Completed: The Semi-Detached House by Emily Eden (thread here)
Completed: Camilla by Frances Burney (thread here)
Completed: The Wanderer by Frances Burney (thread here)

Next up: Belinda by Maria Edgeworth

General reading challenges:

America's best-selling novels (1895 - ????):
Next up: The Keys Of The Kingdom by A. J. Cronin

Virago chronological reading project:
Next up: The Semi-Attached Couple; and The Semi-Detached House by Emily Eden

Agatha Christie mysteries in chronological order:
Next up: 4:50 From Paddington

The C.K. Shorter List of Best 100 Novels:
Next up: Wilhelm Meister by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Mystery League publications:
Next up: The Day Of Uniting by Edgar Wallace

Banned In Boston!:
Next up: What I Believe by Bertrand Russell

The evolution of detective fiction:
Next up: The Mysteries Of London (Volume III) by G. W. M. Reynolds

Random reading 1940 - 1969:
Next up: Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh / Random Harvest by James Hilton

Potential decommission:
Next up: Broadway Melody Of 1999 by Robert Steiner

Potential decommission (non-fiction):
The Supernatural by Douglas Hill and Pat Williams

Completed:
Georgette Heyer historical romances in chronological order

Possible future reading projects:
- Georgette Heyer's historical fiction
- Nobel Prize winners who won for fiction
- Daily Telegraph's 100 Best Novels, 1899
- James Tait Black Memorial Prize
- Berkeley "Books Of The Century"
- Collins White Circle Crime Club / Green Penguins
- Dell paperbacks
- "El Mundo" 100 best novels of the twentieth century
- 100 Best Books by American Women During the Past 100 Years, 1833-1933
- 50 Classics of Crime Fiction 1900–1950 (Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor)
- The Guardian's 100 Best Novels
- Life Magazine "The 100 Outstanding Books of 1924 - 1944" (Henry Seidel Canby)
- "40 Trashy Novels You Must Read Before You Die" (Flavorwire)
- best-novel lists in Wikipedia article on The Grapes Of Wrath

A Century (And A Bit) Of Reading:

A book a year from 1800 - 1900!

1807: Corinne; ou, l'Italie by Madame de Staël
1809: The Scottish Chiefs by Jane Porter
1812: The Absentee by Maria Edgeworth
1814: The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties by Frances Burney
1815: Headlong Hall by Thomas Love Peacock
1821: The Ayrshire Legatees; or, The Pringle Family by John Galt / Valerius: A Roman Story by J. G. Lockhart
1836: The Tree And Its Fruits; or, Narratives From Real Life by Phoebe Hinsdale Brown
1845: Zoe: The History Of Two Lives by Geraldine Jewsbury / The Mysteries Of London (Volume I) by G. W. M. Reynolds
1846: The Mysteries Of London (Volume II) by G. W. M. Reynolds
1847: Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë / The Macdermots Of Ballycloran by Anthony Trollope
1959: The Semi-Detached House by Emily Eden
1860: The Semi-Attached Couple by Emily Eden
1869: He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope
1873: Had You Been In His Place by Lizzie Bates
1877: Elsie's Children by Martha Finley
1880: The Duke's Children: First Complete Edition by Anthony Trollope / Elsie's Widowhood by Martha Finley
1881: Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen / The Beautiful Wretch by William Black
1882: Grandmother Elsie by Martha Finley
1883: Elsie's New Relations
1894: Martin Hewitt, Investigator by Arthur Morrison
1897: Penelope's Progress by Kate Douglas Wiggin
1898: A Man From The North by Arnold Bennett / The Lust Of Hate by Guy Newell Boothby
1899: Agatha Webb by Anna Katharine Green
1900: The Circular Study by Anna Katharine Green

Timeline of detective fiction:

Pre-history:
Things As They Are; or, The Adventures Of Caleb Williams by William Godwin (1794)
Mademoiselle de Scudéri by E.T.A. Hoffmann (1819)
Richmond: Scenes In The Life Of A Bow Street Officer by Anonymous (1827)
Memoirs Of Vidocq by Eugene Francois Vidocq (1828)
Le Pere Goriot by Honore de Balzac (1835)
Passages In The Secret History Of An Irish Countess by J. Sheridan Le Fanu (1838); The Purcell Papers (1880)
The Murders In The Rue Morgue: The Dupin Tales by Edgar Allan Poe (1841, 1842, 1845)

Serials:
The Mysteries Of Paris by Eugene Sue (1842 - 1843)
The Mysteries Of London - Paul Feval (1844)
The Mysteries Of London - George Reynolds (1844 - 1848)
The Mysteries Of The Court Of London - George Reynolds (1848 - 1856)
John Devil by Paul Feval (1861)

Early detective novels:
Recollections Of A Detective Police-Officer by "Waters" (William Russell) (1856)
The Widow Lerouge by Emile Gaboriau (1866)
Under Lock And Key by T. W. Speight (1869)
Checkmate by J. Sheridan LeFanu (1871)
Is He The Man? by William Clark Russell (1876)
Devlin The Barber by B. J. Farjeon (1888)
Mr Meeson's Will by H. Rider Haggard (1888)
The Mystery Of A Hansom Cab by Fergus Hume (1889)
The Queen Anne's Gate Mystery by Richard Arkwright (1889)
The Ivory Queen by Norman Hurst (1889) (Check Julius H. Hurst 1899)
The Big Bow Mystery by Israel Zangwill (1892)

Female detectives:
The Diary Of Anne Rodway by Wilkie Collins (1856)
The Female Detective by Andrew Forrester (1864)
Revelations Of A Lady Detective by William Stephens Hayward (1864)
The Law And The Lady by Wilkie Collins (1875)
Madeline Payne; or, The Detective's Daughter by Lawrence L. Lynch (Emma Murdoch Van Deventer) (1884)
Mr Bazalgette's Agent by Leonard Merrick (1888)
Moina; or, Against The Mighty by Lawrence L. Lynch (Emma Murdoch Van Deventer) (sequel to Madeline Payne?) (1891)
The Experiences Of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective by Catherine Louisa Pirkis (1893)
When The Sea Gives Up Its Dead by Elizaberth Burgoyne Corbett (Mrs George Corbett)
Dorcas Dene, Detective by George Sims (1897)
- Amelia Butterworth series by Anna Katharine Grant (1897 - 1900)
Hagar Of The Pawn-Shop by Fergus Hume (1898)
The Adventures Of A Lady Pearl-Broker by Beatrice Heron-Maxwell (1899)
Miss Cayley's Adventures by Grant Allan (1899)
Hilda Wade by Grant Allan (1900)
Dora Myrl, The Lady Detective by M. McDonnel Bodkin (1900)
The Investigators by J. S. Fletcher (1902)
Lady Molly Of Scotland Yard by Baroness Orczy (1910)
Constance Dunlap, Woman Detective by Arthur B. Reeve (1913)

Related mainstream works:
Adventures Of Susan Hopley by Catherine Crowe (1841)
Men And Women; or, Manorial Rights by Catherine Crowe (1843)
Hargrave by Frances Trollope (1843)
Clement Lorimer by Angus Reach (1849)

True crime:
Clues: or, Leaves from a Chief Constable's Note Book by Sir William Henderson (1889)
Dreadful Deeds And Awful Murders by Joan Lock

Series and sequels, 1866 - 1919:

(1866 - 1876) **Emile Gaboriau - Monsieur Lecoq - The Widow Lerouge (1/6) {ManyBooks}
(1867 - 1905) **Martha Finley - Elsie Dinsmore - Elsie At Nantucket (10/28) {Project Gutenberg}
(1867 - 1872) **George MacDonald - The Seaboard Parish - Annals Of A Quiet Neighbourhood (1/3) {ManyBooks}
(1878 - 1917) **Anna Katharine Green - Ebenezer Gryce - The Mystery Of The Hasty Arrow (13/13) {Project Gutenberg}
(1896 - 1909) **Melville Davisson Post - Randolph Mason - The Corrector Of Destinies (3/3) {Internet Archive}
(1893 - 1915) **Kate Douglas Wiggins - Penelope - Penelope's Postscripts (4/4) {Project Gutenberg}
(1894 - 1898) **Anthony Hope - Ruritania - Rupert Of Hentzau (3/3) {Project Gutenberg}
(1894 - 1903) **Arthur Morrison - Martin Hewitt - Chronicles Of Martin Hewitt (2/4) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1895 - 1901) **Guy Newell Boothby - Dr Nikola - Dr Nikola's Experiment (4/5) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1897 - 1900) **Anna Katharine Green - Amelia Butterworth - The Circular Study (3/3) {Project Gutenberg}
(1898 - 1918) **Arnold Bennett - Five Towns - Anna Of The Five Towns (2/11) {Sutherland Library}
(1899 - 1917) **Anna Katharine Green - Caleb Sweetwater - The Mystery Of The Hasty Arrow (7/7) {Project Gutenberg}
(1899 - 1909) **E. W. Hornung - Raffles - A Thief In The Night (3/4) {Project Gutenberg}
(1900 - 1974) Ernest Bramah - Kai Lung - Kai Lung: Six / Kai Lung Raises His Voice (7/7) {Kindle}

(1901 - 1919) **Carolyn Wells - Patty Fairfield - Patty's Motor Car (9/17) {Project Gutenberg}
(1901 - 1927) **George Barr McCutcheon - Graustark - Beverly Of Graustark (2/6) {Project Gutenberg}
(1903 - 1904) **Louis Tracy - Reginald Brett - The Albert Gate Mystery (2/2) {ManyBooks}
(1905 - 1925) **Baroness Orczy - The Old Man In The Corner - Unravelled Knots (3/3) {Project Gutenberg Australia}}
(1905 - 1928) **Edgar Wallace - The Just Men - Again The Three Just Men (6/6) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1906 - 1930) **John Galsworthy - The Forsyte Saga - To Let (5/11) {Project Gutenberg}
(1907 - 1912) **Carolyn Wells - Marjorie - Marjorie's Vacation (1/6) {ManyBooks}
(1907 - 1942) R. Austin Freeman - Dr John Thorndyke - The Stoneware Monkey (24/26) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1907 - 1941) *Maurice Leblanc - Arsene Lupin - The Hollow Needle (3/21) {ManyBooks}
(1908 - 1924) **Margaret Penrose - Dorothy Dale - Dorothy Dale: A Girl Of Today (1/13) {ManyBooks}
(1909 - 1942) *Carolyn Wells - Fleming Stone - The Daughter Of The House (19/49) {expensive}
(1909 - 1929) *J. S. Fletcher - Inspector Skarratt - Marchester Royal (1/3) {Kindle}
(1909 - 1912) **Emerson Hough - Western Trilogy - 54-40 Or Fight (1/3) {Project Gutenberg}
(1910 - 1936) *Arthur B. Reeve - Craig Kennedy - The Romance Of Elaine (9/24) {Project Gutenberg}
(1910 - 1946) A. E. W. Mason - Inspector Hanaud - The House In Lordship Lane (7/7) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1910 - 1917) ***Edgar Wallace - Inspector Smith - Kate Plus Ten (3/3) {Project Gutenberg Australia}
(1910 - 1930) **Edgar Wallace - Inspector Elk - The Joker (3/6?) {ManyBooks}
(1910 - 1932) *Thomas, Mary and Hazel Hanshew - Cleek - The Amber Junk (9/12) {AbeBooks}
(1910 - 1918) **John McIntyre - Ashton-Kirk - Ashton-Kirk: Criminologist (4/4) {Project Gutenberg}
(1910 - 1931) Grace S. Richmond - Red Pepper Burns - Red Pepper Returns (6/6) {Internet Archive}
(1910 - 1933) Jeffery Farnol - The Vibarts - The Way Beyond (3/3) {Fisher Library storage / fadedpage.com}

(1911 - 1935) G. K. Chesterton - Father Brown - The Scandal Of Father Brown (5/5) {branch transfer}
(1911 - 1937) Mary Roberts Rinehart - Letitia Carberry - Tish Marches On (5/5) {Kindle}
(1911 - 1919) **Alfred Bishop Mason - Tom Strong - Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout (5/5) {Project Gutenberg}
(1911 - 1940) *Bertram Atkey - Smiler Bunn - The Amazing Mr Bunn (1/10) {owned}
(1912 - 1919) **Gordon Holmes (Louis Tracy) - Steingall and Clancy - The Bartlett Mystery (3/3) {ManyBooks}
(1913 - 1928) **Louis Tracy - Winter and Furneaux - The Strange Case Of Mortimer Fenley (2/9) {ManyBooks}
(1913 - 1934) *Alice B. Emerson - Ruth Fielding - Ruth Fielding Treasure Hunting (19/30) {fadedpage.com}
(1913 - 1973) Sax Rohmer - Fu-Manchu - The Bride Of Fu-Manchu (6/14) {interlibrary loan / Kindle}
(1913 - 1952) *Jeffery Farnol - Jasper Shrig - The High Adventure (4/9) {State Library NSW, JFR / Rare Books}
(1914 - 1950) Mary Roberts Rinehart - Hilda Adams - Episode Of The Wandering Knife (5/5) Better World Books}
(1914 - 1934) Ernest Bramah - Max Carrados - The Bravo Of London (5/5) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1916 - 1941) John Buchan - Edward Leithen - Sick Heart River (5/5) {Fisher Library}
(1915 - 1936) *John Buchan - Richard Hannay - The Thirty-Nine Steps (1/5) {Fisher Library / Project Gutenberg / branch transfer / Kindle}
(1915 - 1923) **Booth Tarkington - Growth - The Magnificent Ambersons (2/3) {Project Gutenberg / Fisher Library / Kindle}
(1916 - 1917) **Carolyn Wells - Alan Ford - Faulkner's Folly (2/2) {owned}
(1916 - 1927) **Natalie Sumner Lincoln - Inspector Mitchell - The Nameless Man (2/10) {AbeBooks}
(1916 - 1917) **Nevil Monroe Hopkins - Mason Brant - The Strange Cases Of Mason Brant (1/2) {Coachwhip Books}
(1917 - 1929) **Henry Handel Richardson - Dr Richard Mahony - Australia Felix (1/3) {Fisher Library / Kindle}
(1918 - 1923) **Carolyn Wells - Pennington Wise - The Come Back (4/8) {Project Gutenberg}
(1918 - ????) *Valentine Williams - Okewood / Clubfoot - The Crouching Beast (?/?) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1918 - 1950) *Wyndham Martyn - Anthony Trent - The Secret Of The Silver Car (2/26) {Project Gutenberg}
(1919 - 1966) *Lee Thayer - Peter Clancy - The Key (6/60) {expensive / Rare Books}
(1919 - 1921) **Octavus Roy Cohen - David Carroll - The Crimson Alibi (1/3) {Rare Books / HathiTrust}

*** Incompletely available series
** Series complete pre-1931
* Present status pre-1931

Series and sequels, 1920 - 1927:

(1920 - 1939) E. F. Benson - Mapp And Lucia - Trouble For Lucia (6/6) {interlibrary loan}
(1920 - 1948) *H. C. Bailey - Reggie Fortune - Case For Mr Fortune (7/23) {State Library NSW, JFR}
(1920 - 1952) William McFee - Spenlove - Family Trouble - (6/7) {Fisher Library storage}
(1920 - 1932) *Alice B. Emerson - Betty Gordon - Betty Gordon At Bramble Farm (1/15) {ManyBooks}
(1920 - 1975) Agatha Christie - Hercule Poirot - Dead Man's Folly (30/39) {owned}
(1920 - 1921) **Natalie Sumner Lincoln - Ferguson - The Unseen Ear (2/2) {HathiTrust}
(1920 - 1937) *H. C. McNeile - Bulldog Drummond - Bull-Dog Drummond (1/10 - series continued) {Project Gutenberg / Fisher storage}

(1921 - 1929) **Charles J. Dutton - John Bartley - Streaked With Crimson (9/9) {owned}
(1921 - 1925) **Herman Landon - The Gray Phantom - Gray Terror (3/5) {Amazon}

(1922 - 1973) Agatha Christie - Tommy and Tuppence - By The Pricking Of My Thumbs (4/5) {owned}
(1922 - 1927) *Alice MacGowan and Perry Newberry - Jerry Boyne - The Seventh Passenger (4/5) {Amazon}
(1922 - 1931) *Valentine Williams - Inspector Manderton - The Eye In Attendance (3/4) {AbeBooks}
(1922 - 1961) Mark Cross ("Valentine", aka Archibald Thomas Pechey) - Daphne Wrayne and her Four Adjusters - The Adjusters (1/53) {rare, expensive}

(1923 - 1937) Dorothy L. Sayers - Lord Peter Wimsey - In The Teeth Of The Evidence (14/14) {interlibrary loan}
(1923 - 1924) **Carolyn Wells - Lorimer Lane - The Fourteenth Key (2/2) {eBay}
(1923 - 1931) *Agnes Miller - The Linger-Nots - The Linger-Nots And The Secret Maze (5/5) {unavailable}
(1923 - 1927) **Annie Haynes - Inspector Furnival - The Crow's Inn Tragedy (3/3) {Kindle, owned}

(1924 - 1959) Philip MacDonald - Colonel Anthony Gethryn - Persons Unknown (aka "The Maze") (5/24) {State Library NSW, JFR / Kindle / interlibrary loan}
(1924 - 1957) *Freeman Wills Crofts - Inspector French - Inspector French And The Starvel Tragedy (3/30) {academic loan / State Library NSW, Rare Books / Rare Books / Kindle upcoming}
(1924 - 1935) * / ***Francis D. Grierson - Inspector Sims and Professor Wells - The Smiling Death (6/13) {AbeBooks, expensive}
(1924 - 1940) *Lynn Brock - Colonel Gore - The Slip-Carriage Mystery (4/12) {Kindle}
(1924 - 1933) *Herbert Adams - Jimmie Haswell - The Crooked Lip (2/9) {Rare Books}
(1924 - 1944) *A. Fielding - Inspector Pointer - The Charteris Mystery (2/23) {AbeBooks / Rare Books / Kindle, Resurrected Press}
(1924 - 1928) **Ford Madox Ford - Parade's End - No More Parades (2/4) {ebook}
(1924 - 1936) *Hulbert Footner - Madame Storey - The Doctor Who Held Hands (4/14) {Roy Glashan's Library}

(1925 - 1961) ***John Rhode - Dr Priestley - Death In The Hopfields (25/72) {HathiTrust / State Library NSW, held}
(1925 - 1953) *G. D. H. Cole / M. Cole - Superintendent Wilson - Superintendent Wilson's Holiday (5/?) {Internet Archive}
(1925 - 1932) *Earl Derr Biggers - Charlie Chan - Behind That Curtain (3/6) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1925 - 1944) *Agatha Christie - Superintendent Battle - Towards Zero (5/5) {owned}
(1925 - 1934) *Anthony Berkeley - Roger Sheringham - The Second Shot (6/10) {academic loan / Rare Books}
(1925 - 1950) *Anthony Wynne (Robert McNair Wilson) - Dr Eustace Hailey - The Double-Thirteen Mystery (2/27) (aka "The Double Thirteen") {AbeBooks / Rare Books}
(1925 - 1939) *Charles Barry (Charles Bryson) - Inspector Lawrence Gilmartin - The Smaller Penny (1/15) {AbeBooks / Amazon}
(1925 - 1929) **Will Scott - Will Disher - Disher--Detective (aka "The Black Stamp") (1/3) {AbeBooks, expensive}
(1925 - 1927) **Francis Beeding - Professor Kreutzemark - The Seven Sleepers (1/2) {State Library NSW, interlibrary loan}

(1926 - 1968) * / ***Christopher Bush - Ludovic Travers - Murder At Fenwold (3/63) {Rare Books}
(1926 - 1939) *S. S. Van Dine - Philo Vance - The Scarab Murder Case (5/12) {fadedpage.com}
(1926 - 1952) *J. Jefferson Farjeon - Ben the Tramp - The House Opposite (2/8) {interlibrary loan / Kindle / State Library NSW, held}
(1926 - ????) *G. D. H. Cole / M. Cole - Everard Blatchington - Burglars In Bucks (aka "The Berkshire Mystery") (2/6) {Fisher Library}
(1926 - 1936) *Margery Lawrence - The Round Table - Nights Of The Round Table (1/2) {Kindle}
(1926 - ????) *Arthur Gask - Gilbert Larose - The Dark Highway (2/27) {University of Adelaide / Project Gutenberg Australia}

(1927 - 1933) *Herman Landon - The Picaroon - The Picaroon Does Justice (2/7) {Book Searchers}
(1927 - 1932) *Anthony Armstrong - Jimmie Rezaire - The Trail Of The Lotto (3/5) {AbeBooks}
(1927 - 1937) *Ronald Knox - Miles Bredon - Footsteps At The Lock (2/5) {State Library NSW, interlibrary loan / Kindle / Project Gutenberg Canada / fadedpage.com}
(1927 - 1958) *Brian Flynn - Anthony Bathurst - The Murders Near Mapleton (3/54) {HathiTrust}
(1927 - 1947) *J. J. Connington - Sir Clinton Driffield - Tragedy At Ravensthorpe (2/17) {Murder Room ebook / Kindle}
(1927 - 1935) *Anthony Gilbert (Lucy Malleson) - Scott Egerton - Mystery Of The Open Window (4/10) {expensive}
(1927 - 1932) *William Morton (aka William Blair Morton Ferguson) - Daniel "Biff" Corrigan - Masquerade (1/4) {expensive}
(1927 - 1929) **George Dilnot - Inspector Strickland - The Crooks' Game (1/2) {AbeBooks / Amazon}
(1927 - 1960) **Mazo de la Roche - Jalna - Jalna (1/16) {State Library NSW, JFR / fadedpage.com}

*** Incompletely available series
** Series complete pre-1931
* Present status pre-1931

Series and sequels, 1928 - 1930:

(1928 - 1961) Patricia Wentworth - Miss Silver - The Case Of William Smith (13/33) {fadedpage.com}
(1928 - 1936) *Gavin Holt - Luther Bastion - The Garden Of Silent Beasts (5/17) {academic loan / State Library NSW, held}
(1928 - ????) Trygve Lund - Weston of the Royal North-West Mounted Police - The Vanished Prospector (6/9) {AbeBooks}
(1928 - 1936) *Kay Cleaver Strahan - Lynn MacDonald - October House (4/7) {AbeBooks}
(1928 - 1937) *John Alexander Ferguson - Francis McNab - Murder On The Marsh (2/5) {Internet Archive / Rare Books / State Library NSW, held}
(1928 - 1960) *Cecil Freeman Gregg - Inspector Higgins - The Murdered Manservant (aka "The Body In The Safe") (1/35) {rare, expensive}
(1928 - 1959) *John Gordon Brandon - Inspector Patrick Aloysius McCarthy - The Black Joss (2/53) {State Library NSW, held}
(1928 - 1935) *Roland Daniel - Wu Fang / Inspector Saville - Wu Fang (2/6) {expensive}
(1928 - 1946) *Francis Beeding - Alistair Granby - Pretty Sinister (2/18) {academic loan}
(1928 - 1930) **Annie Haynes - Inspector Stoddart - The Crime At Tattenham Corner (2/4) {Project Gutenberg Australia / Kindle / mobilereads}
(1928 - 1930) **Elsa Barker - Dexter Drake and Paul Howard - The Cobra Candlestick (aka "The Cobra Shaped Candlestick") (1/3) {AbeBooks / Rare Books}
(1928 - ????) Adam Broome - Denzil Grigson - Crowner's Quest (2/?) {AbeBooks / eBay}

(1929 - 1947) Margery Allingham - Albert Campion - The Case Of The Late Pig (8/35) {interlibrary loan / Kindle / fadedpage.com}
(1929 - 1984) Gladys Mitchell - Mrs Bradley - The Devil At Saxon Wall (6/67) {interlibrary loan / Kindle}
(1929 - 1937) Patricia Wentworth - Benbow Smith - Down Under (4/4) {Kindle}
(1929 - ????) Mignon Eberhart - Nurse Sarah Keate - Murder By An Aristocrat (aka "Murder Of My Patient") (5/8) {Rare Books / Kindle US / academic loan}
(1929 - ????) ***Moray Dalton - Inspector Collier - ???? (3/?) - Death In The Cup {unavailable}, The Wife Of Baal {unavailable}
(1929 - ????) * / ***Charles Reed Jones - Leighton Swift - The King Murder (1/?) {AbeBooks}
(1929 - 1931) Carolyn Wells - Kenneth Carlisle - The Skeleton At The Feast (3/3) {Kindle}
(1929 - 1967) *George Goodchild - Inspector McLean - McLean Of Scotland Yard (1/65) {State Library NSW, held}
(1929 - 1979) *Leonard Gribble - Anthony Slade - The Case Of The Marsden Rubies (1/33) {AbeBooks / Rare Books / re-check Kindle}
(1929 - 1932) *E. R. Punshon - Carter and Bell - The Unexpected Legacy (1/5) {expensive, omnibus / Rare Books}
(1929 - 1971) *Ellery Queen - Ellery Queen - The Roman Hat Mystery (1/40) {interlibrary loan}
(1929 - 1966) *Arthur Upfield - Bony - The Sands Of Windee (2/29) {interlibrary loan / Rare Books}
(1929 - 1931) *Ernest Raymond - Once In England - A Family That Was (1/3) {State Library NSW, interlibrary loan}
(1929 - 1937) *Anthony Berkeley - Ambrose Chitterwick - The Piccadilly Murder (2/3) {interlibrary loan}
(1929 - 1940) *Jean Lilly - DA Bruce Perkins - The Seven Sisters (1/3) {AbeBooks / expensive shipping}
(1929 - 1935) *N. A. Temple-Ellis (Nevile Holdaway) - Montrose Arbuthnot - The Inconsistent Villains (1/4) {AbeBooks / expensive shipping}
(1929 - 1943) *Gret Lane - Kate Clare Marsh and Inspector Barrin - The Cancelled Score Mystery (1/9) {Kindle}
(1929 - 1961) *Henry Holt - Inspector Silver - The Mayfair Mystery (aka "The Mayfair Murder") (1/16) {AbeBooks}
(1929 - 1930) *J. J. Connington - Superintendent Ross - The Eye In The Museum (1/2) {Kindle}
(1929 - 1941) *H. Maynard Smith - Inspector Frost - Inspector Frost's Jigsaw (1/7) {AbeBooks, omnibus}
(1929 - ????) *Armstrong Livingston - Jimmy Traynor - The Doublecross (1/?) {AbeBooks}
(1929 - 1932) Clemence Dane and Helen Simpson - Sir John Saumarez - Re-Enter Sir John (3/3) {Fisher Library storage}
(1929 - 1940) *Rufus King - Lieutenant Valcour - Murder By The Clock (1/11) {AbeBooks, omnibus / Kindle}
(1929 - 1933) *Will Levinrew (Will Levine) - Professor Brierly - For Sale - Murder (4/5) {AbeBooks}
(1929 - 1932) *Nancy Barr Mavity - Peter Piper - The Body On The Floor (1/5) {AbeBooks / Rare Books / State Library NSW, held}
(1929 - 1934) *Charles J. Dutton - Professor Harley Manners - The Shadow Of Evil (2/6) {expensive}
(1929 - 1932) *Thomas Cobb - Inspector Bedison - Inspector Bedison And The Sunderland Case (2/4) {unavailable?}

(1930 - ????) ***Moray Dalton - Hermann Glide - ???? (3/?) {see above}
(1930 - 1932) Hugh Walpole - The Herries Chronicles - Vanessa (4/4) {Fisher Library storage}
(1930 - 1932) Faith Baldwin - The Girls Of Divine Corners - Myra: A Story Of Divine Corners (4/4) {owned}
(1930 - 1960) ***Miles Burton - Desmond Merrion - The Platinum Cat (17/57) {Rare Books}
(1930 - 1960) ***Miles Burton - Inspector Henry Arnold - The Platinum Cat (18/57) {Rare Books}
(1930 - 1933) ***Roger Scarlett - Inspector Kane - In The First Degree (5/5) {unavailable}
(1930 - 1941) *Harriette Ashbrook - Philip "Spike" Tracy - The Murder Of Sigurd Sharon (3/7) {Rare Books}
(1930 - 1943) Anthony Abbot - Thatcher Colt - About The Murder Of The Night Club Lady (3/8) {AbeBooks / serialised}
(1930 - ????) ***David Sharp - Professor Fielding - I, The Criminal (4/?) {unavailable?}
(1930 - 1950) *H. C. Bailey - Josiah Clunk - Garstons (aka The Garston Murder Case) (1/11) {HathiTrust}
(1930 - 1968) *Francis Van Wyck Mason - Hugh North - The Vesper Service Murders (2/41) {Kindle}
(1930 - 1976) *Agatha Christie - Miss Jane Marple - 4:50 From Paddington (8/12) {owned}
(1930 - ????) *Anne Austin - James "Bonnie" Dundee - Murdered But Not Dead (5/5) - {AbeBooks, expensive}
(1930 - 1950) *Leslie Ford (as David Frome) - Mr Pinkerton and Inspector Bull - The Hammersmith Murders (1/11) {AbeBooks / Rare Books}
(1930 - 1935) *"Diplomat" (John Franklin Carter) - Dennis Tyler - Murder In The State Department (1/7) {Amazon / Abebooks}
(1930 - 1962) *Helen Reilly - Inspector Christopher McKee - The Diamond Feather (1/31) {Rare Books}
(1930 - 1933) *Mary Plum - John Smith - The Killing Of Judge MacFarlane (1/4) {AbeBooks / Rare Books}
(1930 - 1945) *Hulbert Footner - Amos Lee Mappin - The Mystery Of The Folded Paper (aka The Folded Paper Mystery (1/10) {mobilereads / omnibus}
(1930 - 1940) *E. M. Delafield - The Provincial Lady - The Provincial Lady In Wartime (4/4) {Fisher Library}
(1930 - 1933) *Monte Barrett - Peter Cardigan - The Pelham Murder Case (1/3) {Amazon}
(1930 - 1931) Vernon Loder - Inspector Brews - Death Of An Editor (2/2) {Kindle}
(1930 - 1931) *Roland Daniel - John Hopkins - The Rosario Murder Case (1/2) {unavailable?}

*** Incompletely available series
** Series complete pre-1931
* Present status pre-1931

Series and sequels, 1931 - 1955:

(1931 - 1940) Bruce Graeme - Superintendent Stevens and Pierre Allain - Satan's Mistress (4/8) {expensive}
(1931 - 1951) Phoebe Atwood Taylor - Asey Mayo - Sandbar Sinister (5/24) {AbeBooks, expensive}
(1931 - 1955) Stuart Palmer - Hildegarde Withers - Murder On The Blackboard (3/18) {Kindle}
(1931 - 1951) Olive Higgins Prouty - The Vale Novels - Home Port (4/5) {State Library NSW, JFR}
(1931 - 1933) Sydney Fowler - Inspector Cleveland - Arresting Delia (4/4) {Book Depository / Rare Books / online}
(1931 - 1934) J. H. Wallis - Inspector Wilton Jacks - The Capital City Mystery (2/6) {Rare Books}
(1931 - ????) Paul McGuire - Inspector Cummings - Daylight Murder (aka "Murder At High Noon") (3/5) {academic loan / State Library NSW, held}
(1931 - 1937) Carlton Dawe - Leathermouth - The Sign Of The Glove (2/13) {academic loan / State Library NSW, held}
(1931 - 1947) R. L. Goldman - Asaph Clume and Rufus Reed - Murder Without Motive (2/6) {Wildside Press}
(1931 - 1959) E. C. R. Lorac (Edith Caroline Rivett) - Inspector Robert Macdonald - The Murder On The Burrows (1/46) {rare, expensive}
(1931 - 1935) Clifton Robbins - Clay Harrison - Methylated Murder (5/5) {Kindle}
(1931 - 1972) Georges Simenon - Inspector Maigret - La Guinguette à Deux Sous (11/75) {ILL}
(1931 - 1934) T. S. Stribling - The Vaiden Trilogy - The Store (2/3) {Internet Archive / academic loan / State Library, held}
(1931 - 1935) Pearl S. Buck - The House Of Earth - A House Divided (3/3) {Fisher Library storage}
(1931 - 1942) R. A. J. Walling - Garstang - The Stroke Of One (1/3) {Amazon}
(1931 - ????) Francis Bonnamy (Audrey Boyers Walz) - Peter Utley Shane - Death By Appointment (1/8) {AbeBooks / Rare Books}
(1931 - 1937) J. S. Fletcher - Ronald Camberwell - Murder In The Squire's Pew (3/11) {Kindle / State Library NSW, held}
(1931 - 1933) Edwin Dial Torgerson - Sergeant Pierre Montigny - The Murderer Returns (1/2) {Rare Books)
(1931 - 1933) Molly Thynne - Dr Constantine and Inspector Arkwright - The Crime At The 'Noah's Ark' (1/3) {Kindle}
(1931 - 1935) Valentine Williams - Sergeant Trevor Dene - Death Answers The Bell (1/4) {Kindle}
(1931 - 1942) Patricia Wentworth - Frank Garrett - Pursuit Of A Parcel (5/5) {Kindle}

(1932 - 1954) Sydney Fowler - Inspector Cambridge and Mr Jellipot - The Bell Street Murders (1/11) {AbeBooks / Rare Books}
(1932 - 1935) Murray Thomas - Inspector Wilkins - Buzzards Pick The Bones (1/3) {AbeBooks, expensive}
(1932 - ????) R. A. J. Walling - Philip Tolefree - Prove It, Mr Tolefree (aka The Tolliver Case) (3/22) {AbeBooks}
(1932 - 1962) T. Arthur Plummer - Detective-Inspector Andrew Frampton - Shadowed By The C. I. D. (1/50) {unavailable?}
(1932 - 1936) John Victor Turner - Amos Petrie - Death Must Have Laughed (1/7) {Rare Books}
(1932 - 1944) Nicholas Brady (John Victor Turner) - Ebenezer Buckle - The House Of Strange Guests (1/4) {Kindle}
(1932 - 1932) Lizette M. Edholm - The Merriweather Girls - The Merriweather Girls At Good Old Rockhill (4/4) {HathiTrust}
(1932 - 1933) Barnaby Ross (aka Ellery Queen) - Drury Lane - Drury Lane's Last Case (4/4) {AbeBooks}
(1932 - 1952) D. E. Stevenson - Mrs Tim - Mrs Tim Flies Home (5/5) {interlibrary loan}
(1932 - ????) Richard Essex (Richard Harry Starr) - Jack Slade - Slade Of The Yard (1/?) {AbeBooks}
(1932 - 1933) Gerard Fairlie - Mr Malcolm - Shot In The Dark (1/3) (State Library NSW, held}
(1932 - 1934) Paul McGuire - Inspector Fillinger - The Tower Mystery (aka Death Tolls The Bell) (1/5) {Rare Books / State Library, held}
(1932 - 1946) Roland Daniel - Inspector Pearson - The Crackswoman (1/6) {unavailable?}
(1932 - 1951) Sydney Horler - Tiger Standish - Tiger Standish (1/11) {Rare Books}

(1933 - 1959) John Gordon Brandon - Arthur Stukeley Pennington - West End! (1/?) {AbeBooks / State Library, held}
(1933 - 1940) Lilian Garis - Carol Duncan - The Ghost Of Melody Lane (1/9) {AbeBooks}
(1933 - 1934) Peter Hunt (George Worthing Yates and Charles Hunt Marshall) - Allan Miller - Murders At Scandal House (1/3) {AbeBooks / Amazon}
(1933 - 1968) John Dickson Carr - Gideon Fell - Hag's Nook (1/23) {Better World Books / State Library NSW, interlibrary loan}
(1933 - 1939) Gregory Dean - Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Simon - The Case Of Marie Corwin (1/3) {AbeBooks / Amazon}
(1933 - 1956) E. R. Punshon - Detective-Sergeant Bobby Owen - Information Received (1/35) {academic loan / State Library NSW, held / Rare Books}
(1933 - 1970) Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richlieu - The Forbidden Territory (1/11) {Fisher Library}
(1933 - 1934) Jackson Gregory - Paul Savoy - A Case For Mr Paul Savoy (1/3) {AbeBooks / Rare Books}
(1933 - 1957) John Creasey - Department Z - The Death Miser (1/28) {State Library NSW, held}
(1933 - 1940) Bruce Graeme - Superintendent Stevens - Body Unknown (2/2) {expensive}
(1933 - 1952) Wyndham Martyn - Christopher Bond - Christopher Bond, Adventurer (1/8) {rare}
(1934 - 1936) Storm Jameson - The Mirror In Darkness - Company Parade (1/3) {Fisher Library}
(1934 - 1949) Richard Goyne - Paul Templeton - Strange Motives (1/13) {unavailable?}
(1934 - 1941) N. A. Temple-Ellis (Nevile Holdaway) - Inspector Wren - Three Went In (1/3) {unavailable?}
(1934 - 1953) Carter Dickson (John Dickson Carr) - Sir Henry Merivale - The Plague Court Murders (1/22) {Fisher Library}
(1934 - 1968) Dennis Wheatley - Gregory Sallust - Black August (1/11) {interlibrary loan / omnibus}
(1935 - 1939) Francis Beeding - Inspector George Martin - The Norwich Victims (1/3) {AbeBooks / Book Depository / State Library NSW, held}
(1935 - 1976) Nigel Morland - Palmyra Pym - The Moon Murders (1/28) {State Library NSW, held}
(1935 - 1941) Clyde Clason - Professor Theocritus Lucius Westborough - The Fifth Tumbler (1/10) {unavailable?}
(1935 - ????) G. D. H. Cole / M. Cole - Dr Tancred - Dr Tancred Begins (1/?) (AbeBooks, expensive / State Library NSW, held / Rare Books}
(1935 - ????) George Harmon Coxe - Kent Murdock - Murder With Pictures (1/22) {AbeBooks}
(1935 - 1959) Kathleen Moore Knight - Elisha Macomber - Death Blew Out The Match (1/16) {AbeBooks / Amazon}
(1935 - 1953) Leslie Ford (Zenith Jones Brown) - Colonel John Primrose and Grace Latham - The Clock Strikes Twelve (aka "The Supreme Court Murder") (NB: novella) {owned}
(1936 - 1974) Anthony Gilbert (Lucy Malleson) - Arthur Crook - Murder By Experts (1/51) {interlibrary loan}
(1936 - 1952) Helen Dore Boylston - Sue Barton - Sue Barton, Student Nurse (1/7) {interlibrary loan}
(1936 - 1940) George Bell Dyer - The Catalyst Club - The Catalyst Club (1/3) {AbeBooks}
(1936 - 1956) Theodora Du Bois - Anne and Jeffrey McNeil - Armed With A New Terror (1/19) {unavailable?}
(1938 - 1944) Zelda Popkin - Mary Carner - Death Wears A White Gardenia (1/6) {Kindle}
(1939 - 1942) Patricia Wentworth - Inspector Lamb - Latter End (7/?) {interlibrary loan}
(1939 - 1940) Clifton Robbins - George Staveley - Six Sign-Post Murder (1/2) {Biblio / rare}
(1940 - 1943) Bruce Graeme - Pierre Allain - The Corporal Died In Bed (1/3) {unavailable?}
(1941 - 1951) Bruce Graeme - Theodore I. Terhune - Seven Clues In Search Of A Crime (1/7) {unavailable?}
(1947 - 1974) Dennis Wheatley - Roger Brook - The Launching Of Roger Brook (1/12) {Fisher Library storage}
(1948 - 1971) E. V. Timms - The Gubbys - Forever To Remain (1/12) {Fisher Library / interlibrary loan}
(1953 - 1960) Dennis Wheatley - Molly Fountain and Colonel Verney - To The Devil A Daughter (1/2) {Fisher Library storage}
(1955 - 1956) D. E. Stevenson - The Ayrton Family - Summerhills (2/2) {interlibrary loan}
(1955 - 1991) Patricia Highsmith - Tom Ripley - Ripley Under Ground (2/5) {interlibrary loan / Kindle}
(1957 - 1993) Chester B. Himes - The Harlem Cycle - For Love Of Imabelle (aka "A Rage In Harlem") (1/9) {interlibrary loan / Kindle}
(1989 - 2000) Dennis Cooper - The George Miles Cycle - Closer (1/5) {Fisher Library}

*** Incompletely available series
** Series complete pre-1931
* Present status pre-1931

Unavailable series works:

John Rhode - Dr Priestley {NB: Now becoming available on Kindle}
Tragedy At The Unicorn (#5)
The Hanging Woman (#11)
The Corpse In The Car (#20) {expensive}

Moray Dalton - Inspector Collier
>#3 onwards (to end of series)

Moray Dalton - Hermann Glide
>#3 onwards (to end of series)

Miles Burton - Desmond Merrion / Inspector Arnold
>everything from #2 - #11 inclusive

David Sharp - Professor Fielding
When No Man Pursueth (#1)

Francis D. Grierson - Inspector Sims and Professor Wells
The Double Thumb (#3) {expensive}

Roger Scarlett - Inspector Kane {NB: Now available in paperback, but expensive}
>#4 onwards (to end of series)

Tom Strong - Alfred Bishop Mason
Tom Strong, Boy-Captain (#2)
Tom Strong, Junior (#3)
Tom Strong, Third (#4)

Wu Fang - Roland Daniel
The Society Of The Spiders (#1)

The Linger-Nots - Agnes Miller
The Linger-Nots And The Secret Maze (#5)

TBR notes:

Currently 'missing' series works:

Tragedy At The Unicorn by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #5) {CARM}
The Corpse In The Car by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #20) {CARM}
The Black Death by Moray Dalton {CARM}

Mystery At Greycombe Farm by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #12) {Rare Books}
Dead Men At The Folly by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #13) {Rare Books}
The Robthorne Mystery by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #17) {Rare Books / State Library NSW, held}
Poison For One by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #18) {Rare Books / State Library NSW, held}
Shot At Dawn by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #19) {Rare Books}
Hendon's First Case by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #21) {Rare Books}
In Face Of The Verdict by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #24) {Rare Books / State Library NSW, held}
Secret Judges by Francis D. Grierson (Sims and Wells #2) {Rare Books}
The Platinum Cat by Miles Burton (Desmond Merrion #17 / Inspector Arnold #18) {Rare Books}
The Double-Thirteen Mystery by Anthony Wynne (Dr Eustace Hailey #2) {Rare Books}

Six Minutes Past Twelve by Gavin Holt (Luther Bastion #1) {State Library NSW, held}
The White-Faced Man by Gavin Holt (Luther Bastion #2) {State Library NSW, held}

Mystery At Olympia (aka "Murder At The Motor Show") (Dr Priestley #22) {Kindle / State Library NSW, held}

1931:

The Road Back by Erich Maria Remarque {Fisher / on loan}
Shadows On The Rock by Willa Cather {Fisher}

The Incredible Crime by Lois Austen-Leigh {Kindle / owned}
The Matilda Hunter Murder by Harry Stephen Keeler {Kindle}
The Crime At The 'Noah's Ark' by Molly Thynne (Dr Constantine and Inspector Arkwright #1) {Kindle / Rare Books}

Tragedy On The Line by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #10) {Rare Books}
Death By Appointment by "Francis Bonnamy" (Audrey Walz) (Peter Utley Shane #1) {Rare Books}
The Bell Street Murders by Sydney Fowler (S. Fowler Wright) (Inspector Cambridge and Mr Jellipot #1) {Rare Books}
The Murderer Returns by Edwin Dial Torgerson (Pierre Montigny #1) {Rare Books}

NB: Rest of 1931 listed on the Wiki

Random reading:

The Spectacles Of Mr Cagliostro (aka The Blue Spectacles) by Harry Stephen Keeler (#3) {CARM}
The Kellys And The O'Kellys by Anthony Trollope (#2) {Fisher storage}
XYZ by Anna Katharine Green {Project Gutenbeg}
The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart {Project Gutenberg}

Shopping list:

Gray Terror by Herman Landon
The Pelham Murder Case by Monte Barrett
Prove It, Mr Tolefree by R. A. J. Walling
The Eye In Attendance by Valentine Williams

Expensive:

The Amber Junk (aka The Riddle Of The Amber Ship) by Hazel Phillips Hanshew
The Hawkmoor Mystery by W. H. Lane Crauford
Dead Man's Hat by Hulbert Footner
October House by Kay Cleaver Strahan
The Double Thumb by Francis Grierson
The Mystery Of The Open Window by Anthony Gilbert
The Mystery Of The Creeping Man by Frances Shelley Wees
The Shadow Of Evil by Charles J. Dutton
The Seventh Passenger by Alice MacGowan and Perry Newberry
The Daughter Of The House by Carolyn Wells
Murdered But Not Dead by Anne Austin

Books currently on loan:



        

        

Reading projects:

Blog:

        

      

Other projects:

        

        

Short-list TBR:

        

        

Ruminations

Unfortunately things have gone rather off the rails lately, due to a personal issue (see below). I am not reading much and badly behind with reviews; and as for my poor blogs...

But sometimes starting a new thread helps to get things moving, so here we are!

One of the things impacted by my current paralysis is the group read of Frances Burney's The Wanderer. However, it is still ongoing - here - and I hope to be a more active presence there from this point on.

Meanwhile, hopefully the fact that I have library books due back will kickstart my review writing! - and if I can pin myself down to a minimum of one review a day, I should be able to get that aspect of things back under control, at least.

In fact, catching up my various dropped threads will be my ambition going forward, even if it means the reading itself remains at a lower pace. While I can tell myself that these side issues don't matter, the reality is my OCD makes me uncomfortable if I don't address them; so I am planning for September to be a month of housekeeping and job-finishing...and monkey-off-my-back-ing. :)

As some of you may have seen around the place, I am currently dealing with the illness of my cat, Kara. What seemed a minor if worrying issue has turned out to be masking a potentially very serious situation, in that she has an enlarged liver which may be due to a chronic condition such as cirrhosis, but may also be the result of a tumour. I am currently waiting for the results of her tests. It has all been very draining, and there may be much worse to come.

I may say that Kara is dealing with this a lot better than I am---even if her blood tests, ultrasound and needle biopsy have left her looking very much the worse for wear!


  

...and I think that's it.

Come on in!

Oh my goodness. Very sorry to hear about Kara's illness, and hoping for the least bad outcome.

Happy New thread. And gentle strokes to Kara.

Happy new thread!

I'm sorry to hear about Kara.

Happy new thread, Liz!

Sorry to hear about Kara's illness. Hoping for the best!

Sending love and hoping for the best for you and Kara.

Happy New Thread, Liz. Poor Kara. I hope the news is good, and she improves.

Happy new thread, Liz!

It is always a treat to look at your new thread. The camouflage topper (took me a while with the left one), all your projects & readings.
Sorry to hear about Kara, I hope it is something easely treatable.

Happy new thread!

Happy new thread Liz! I like playing spot the animal/creature in the opening photos you post - it took me a while to find the hare in the photo on the left.

>20 lyzard: Sending positive thoughts to you and Kara (poor bare tummy patch). And echoing >22 swynn: in hoping for the least bad outcome.

Hi, Steve, Helen, Anita, Harry, Gail, Joe, Anita, Jim and Heather!

Thank you very much for visiting, and for your kind and positive thoughts regarding Kara. We have her test results now and, though the news is not great, it's not the worst, either: she has hepatic acidosis (fatty liver disease), an abnormal accumulation of fat in the liver cells which interferes with their normal functioning. It is related to Kara's recent lack of appetite, and is a bit cart-and-horse: loss of appetite (which she has been displaying) can cause the liver to accumulate fat; but loss of liver function can also cause loss of appetite. She is on medication to try and address the situation, with ongoing monitoring and weighing. Obviously this isn't good, but at the moment I'm treating it like a reprieve.

I included the second photo mostly because the baby is so cute, but the first one is definitely more in keeping with my theme!

Oh, Kara! Please get better soon; your mama needs you!

I stared at that first photo of the Arctic hare for long minutes, convinced you had posted a photo without an actual hare in it, when suddenly its eyeball jumped out at me (figuratively) and there it was! I'm really enjoying your camouflage theme this year, Liz.

And I've begun Latter End. I have gotten right up to the point where Maudie is going to enter the picture and enjoying the setup so far. It's always a good sign when you want to slap some characters and hug others, right? :-)

Mama certainly isn't doing very well at the moment. :(

No, no cheating! Glad you're enjoying it.

As long as that's what the author intended, yes! (Psst: it is!)

Finished Ruth Fielding On The St. Lawrence for TIOLI #3.

Now reading Spenlove In Arcady by William McFee.

La Danseuse du Gai-Moulin (translation / reissue titles: The Dancer At The Gai-Moulin, At The Gai-Moulin, Maigret At The Gai-Moulin) - The tenth book in Georges Simenon's series featuring Inspector - all ten published within 1931! - is something of a in-joke for the author, in that it finds Maigret straying once more, not just into Belgium, but Simenon's home town of Liege; although, until one character begins to be referred to as "the Frenchman", it may not be evident to the reader where the story is set. Furthermore, there is no question that Maigret's behaviour in this story is very much out of character; one action in particular. However, the inspector is really only a supporting player in this story, lurking in the background as Simenon casts an amused if rather jaundiced eye over the scenes of his own youth, in his tale of two feckless young men whose desire to pose as sophisticated adults lands them in a world of trouble. For Jean Chabot, the son of rigidly proper middle-class parents, and René Delfosse, the spoiled heir of a wealthy businessman, the Gai-Moulin nightclub offers them the chance to force their way into the hidden adult world of Liege. The two have already dabbled in petty crime to fund their ambitions; and when they discover that, for a time after closing, the evening's takings at the nightclub are left essentially unguarded, they concoct a plan to hide and rob the business. But as much trouble as they are asking for, the two get even more: all evening they watched with jealous eyes as an evidently wealthy stranger, possibly a Turk, spent money on Adèle, the dancer upon whom they both have a crush; and as they venture from hiding into the darkness of the Gai-Moulin, they nearly stumble over the stranger's dead body... The main narrative of La Danseuse du Gai-Moulin divides itself between Jean and René as their friendship falls apart under the strain of their secret, and the investigation conducted by the local police after a dead body is found, not at the Gai-Moulin, but in a laundry basket at a local park. Questioning of witnesses focuses suspicion in the murder on second stranger, a Frenchman, who is taken into custody when he has the audacity to reappear at the nightclub---with the Liege police not the least amused, let alone convinced, by his assertion that he is a policeman himself, from the Police Judiciaire in Paris...

    Adèle, who was the first to see him, no doubt because she was watching the door, opened her eyes wide and looked taken aback.
    The newcomer went straight up to her and held out his plump hand. "How are you, since the other night?"
    She tried to smile. "Quite well, thank you? And you?"
    The journalists murmured among themselves as they watched him.
    "But you anything that's him."
    "But he wouldn't just walk in here tonight."
    As if in a show of bravado, the man pulled out a tobacco pouch from his pocket and began packing his pipe. "A pale ale," he called to Victor, who was passing with a tray of glasses.
    Victor nodded, and went on, making his way round by the two policemen, to whom he whispered: "That's him!"
    How did the news spread? At any rate, a minute later everyone was staring at the broad-shouldered man, who was perching with one thigh on a bar stool, the other leg dangling, and sipping his English beer...
    Chief Inspector Delvigne and his colleague exchanged glances. The reporters were watching them... And they stood up together and went casually over to the bar...

Best-selling books in the United States for 1936:

1. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
2. The Last Puritan by George Santayana
3. Sparkenbroke by Charles Langbridge Morgan
4. Drums Along the Mohawk by Walter D. Edmonds
5. It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis
6. White Banners by Lloyd C. Douglas
7. The Hurricane by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall
8. The Thinking Reed by Rebecca West
9. The Doctor by Mary Roberts Rinehart
10. Eyeless in Gaza by Aldous Huxley

In 1936, we find American reading dominated by serious, how-should-we-live? philosophical novels, but leavened by novels of adventure and drama.

In the former category are Aldous Huxley's Eyeless in Gaza, an experimental, non-chronological novel about a a man, isolated and disillusioned despite his wealth and position, searching for meaning in his life; while Rebecca West's The Thinking Reed is basically a female version of the same story. George Santayana's The Last Puritan is a semi-autobiographical novel about a young man born out of his moral time, who struggles with modern mores. Charles Morgan's Sparkenbroke is about Art with an 'A', and the artist's relationship with society. Lloyd C. Douglas's White Banners is another of his diffuse, "indirect religion" books, about putting Christian principles into action without ever calling them that.

Standing apart from this introverted crowd, but still focused upon ideas, is Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here, a speculative portrait / warning about the rise of a fascist dictatorship in America. (Apparently no-one was listening...)

Mary Roberts Rinehart's The Doctor is one of her serious melodramas, about a young doctor assuming responsibility for a destitute family after the alcoholic father dies.

Walter Edmonds' Drums Along the Mohawk is an historical drama set during the American war of Independence, with settlers in New York's Mohawk Valley caught between the displaced natives and British troops. Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall's The Hurricane is about the clash between native tradition and white law in a French island colony in the Pacific. (Both of these books were filmed by John Ford. The Hurricane was also filmed by Dino di Laurentiis, but we won't talk about that...)

Finally, however, 1936 was completely dominated by a single book: Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind.

Ahem.

Just in case anyone did want to talk about it, I have written a short review of John Ford's version of The Hurricane, and a very long one of Dino's version.

Best-selling novels in the United States for 1937:

1. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
2. Northwest Passage by Kenneth Roberts
3. The Citadel by A. J. Cronin
4. And So - Victoria by Vaughan Wilkins
5. Drums Along the Mohawk by Walter D. Edmonds
6. The Years by Virginia Woolf
7. Theatre by W. Somerset Maugham
8. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
9. The Rains Came by Louis Bromfield
10. We Are Not Alone by James Hilton

Ideas and adventure continued to dominate in 1937, with novels blending the two achieving success.

Walter Edmonds' Drums Along the Mohawk, a holdover from the 1936 list, is joined by Kenneth Roberts' Northwest Passage, an 18th historical drama about "Indian fighter" Robert Rogers. Vaughan Wilkins' And So - Victoria is also an historical novel, this one about a young English soldier and the role he eventually plays in the ascension of Queen Victoria.

Louis Bromfield's The Rains Came is overtly about the devastating effects of the monsoon in India, but also about how a group of lost, between-the-wars English people find themselves again in helping to deal with the crisis. A. J. Cronin's The Citadel is about a young doctor who loses his ideals in the face of widespread professional quackery, and decides to give up his principles for money. James Hilton's We Are Not Alone is also about an idealistic doctor, this one attacked from outside by anti-German prejudice and suspicious minds. John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men is set amongst itinerant farm workers in California during the Depression, but is more largely about the responsibilities that come with love.

Set in dramatic circles and displaying a profound understanding of the stage and its art, Somerset Maugham's Theatre is about a great actress and her useful though boring manager-husband, whose life and careers are threatened by an affair.

The Years, the last of Virginia Woolf's works to be published in her lifetime, is a fragmented work spanning three generations and some fifty years in the lives of a single family, showing in particular the struggles of the women for personal and financial autonomy.

But for the second year in a row, America's best-selling book was Margaret Mitchell's Civil War drama, Gone with the Wind.

Margaret "Peggy" Mitchell was born in 1900 into a wealthy, socially prominent Atlanta family and grew up steeped in stories of the Civil War and the Confederacy, and the attendant attitudes to slavery and race relations. A precocious reader and writer, Mitchell graduated from childhood scribblings to constructing and "publishing" her own books, complete with illustrations and binding. She continued to write through her adolescence and young adulthood, although she did not publish anything. With the encouragement of her mother and teachers, as a young woman Mitchell defied her disapproving father and brother and went to college, attending Smith in Massachusetts due to Mrs Mitchell's insistence that better educational opportunities for women were available in the north. After her first marriage failed, Mitchell supported herself by writing for The Atlanta Journal and other publications; but after remarrying, and suffering an ankle injury which kept her incapacitated for some time, she gave up journalism and returned to writing fiction.

Published in 1936, Gone With The Wind was an enormous success, topping the best-seller lists for two consecutive years, winning the 1937 Pulitzer Prize, and famously triggering a bidding war in Hollywood for the rights to the book. However, even at the time of its publication the novel was decried in some quarters for its depiction of slavery and its glorification of the Ku Klux Klan: a controversy that has only grown with the passing of time.

Gone With The Wind - Published in 1936, Margaret Mitchell's iconic novel is the story of Civil War and the Reconstruction, seen from the Southern point of view and chiefly from the perspective of its heroine, Katy Scarlett O'Hara. The product of an unlikely marriage between a French-descended aristocrat and a self-made Irishman and raised in privilege on Tara, a plantation in the north of Georgia, Scarlett is all Southern belle on the outside, but on the inside, hard, self-willed, and used to getting whatever she wants---and what she wants most is the handsome but distant Ashley Wilkes. That he is engaged to another woman, his shy, gentle cousin, Melanie Hamilton, troubles her not at all. As talk of States' Rights and secession swells around her, the oblivious Scarlett continues her dogged pursuit of Ashley, even as she herself becomes an object of interest to visiting Charlestonian Rhett Butler, a man notorious for his bad reputation. Soon, however, personal concerns are swept away by the horrors of war; and after four years of destruction, deprivation and slaughter, Scarlett O'Hara must draw upon unsuspected depths of courage and ruthlessness to hold together her family and her home... Reading Gone With The Wind decades after its writing and more than a century and a half after its setting is a very right-brain / left-brain experience. In many respects this is an eminently readable book: Mitchell writes with a clarity, deceptive in its seeming effortlessness, that makes this a page-turner in the best sense, and which allows her to carry the reader from the limited workings of Scarlett O'Hara's mind to the nightmarish realities of the Civil War to the political and social complexities of Reconstruction and back again without faltering. Furthermore, the novel's focus on the impact of war upon the civilian population gives the narrative universality regardless of the individual reader's views on the rights and wrongs of the Southern viewpoint and the causes of the war. Around this central thread, however, and particularly once the focus shifts to the post-war Reconstruction, Gone With The Wind offers a portrait of "the old South" that becomes more and more dishonest. Hand-in-glove with the romanticised vision of plantation life goes, inevitably, one of happy and contented slaves, who are never mistreated (we are not to regard slavery itself as "mistreatment"), and who want nothing better than for the white people to go on managing their lives for them, as they lack the intelligence to do it themselves. The novel's crowning insult, however, is its glorified depiction of the Ku Klux Klan, and its insistence upon the nobility and honour of the white men under the robes. That this was no mistake or misapprehension on Mitchell's part, but a conscious, and consciously false, choice seems self-evident: given to insisting upon the depth of her studies and the accuracy of her presentation of the war sections of her novel, when challenged about the Klan she avoided the issue by claiming that she "did not research that". This defending of the indefensible by Gone With The Wind was controversial even at the time of its publication, and has only become more so over time---presenting the novel's publishers with quite a quandary, when it comes to selling it in good conscience. When I first read this book, its cover proclaimed it, "A sweeping drama of the Civil War"; whereas I note with amusement that the recent edition read this time around declares it to be, "The classic love story." That, in my opinion, is almost as false as Mitchell's version of the Klan: this is, if anything, an anti-romance, without a single satisfactory romantic - or even just marital - relationship to be found in its whole 1000 pages, least of all the one at its centre. While this review has, so far, only dealt with this novel as history, there are no doubt many people more interested in the antagonistic relationship between Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler, a thread which winds throughout the overarching narrative right to its (in)famous conclusion. Personally, however, my main reaction reaction to this duo - or trio, if we add Ashley Wilkes into the exasperating mix - is a desire to knock their silly heads together. Far more interesting in my opinion is Scarlett herself, as an individual and as a heroine. One of the more successful, if less acknowledged, aspects of Gone With the Wind is Margaret Mitchell's deconstruction of the "Southern belle" cliché, with Scarlett concealing - imperfectly - a hot temper, a shrewd if narrow mind and a will of iron behind her properly fluttery exterior. (There is no question that there is a large measure of Mitchell herself in Scarlett: the author likewise concealed all sorts of inappropriate interests and behaviours behind her public façade.) Though some readers may (and, I know, do) see Scarlett exactly as David O. Selznick did while filming the book, simply as "a bitch", despite her infinite personal failings - her selfishness, her wilful blindness, her capacity for cruelty - there remains something appealing about her sheer stubbornness of spirit, her refusal ever to be "licked". In the end, it is this novel's central vision of Scarlett O'Hara dragging, bodily, not just herself but all those in her reluctant care through war and its aftermath, that finally stays with me.

    When she arose at last and saw again the black ruins of Twelve Oaks, her head was raised high and something that was youth and beauty and potential tenderness had gone out of her face forever. What was past was past. Those who were dead were dead. The lazy luxury of the old days was gone, never to return. And, as Scarlett settled the heavy basket across her arm, she had settled her own mind and her own life.
    There was no going back and she was going forward.
    Throughout the South for fifty years there would be bitter-eyed women who looked backward, to dead times, to dead men, evoking memories that hurt and were futile, bearing poverty with bitter pride because they had those memories. But Scarlett was never to look back.
    She gazed at the blackened stones and, for the last time, she saw Twelve Oaks rise before her eyes as it had once stood, rich and proud, symbol of a race and a way of living. Then she started down the road toward Tara, the heavy basket cutting into her flesh.
    Hunger gnawed at her empty stomach again and she said aloud: "As God is my witness, as God is my witness, the Yankees aren't going to lick me. I'm going to live through this, and when it's over, I'm never going to be hungry again. No, nor any of my folks. If I have to steal or kill---as God is my witness, I'm never going to be hungry again."

What an outstanding review, Liz! I came across GWTW when I was 12 or so, in one of those happy accidents that occur in a teader’s life. I read it very fast, and over the next few years, read it two or three more times, completely unconscious of its overtones—I was just bowled over by the story.
But one grows up and childhood joys grow into more complex reflections. After another reading, years ago, as an adult, I found Melanie the most heroic, if far from the most effective, character. But you have to admire Scarlett’s determination and her ability to carry a lot of responsibilities.
I actually responded aloud (Virginia Wolfe made the best-seller’s list??) when I saw The Years on the list for 1937. I’d never have dreamed that would happen.
Sending more love to you and Kara.

Thank you, Gail! Yes, I would have been thirteen when I read it, I think (high-school library), and much of it went over my head, particularly as a non-American.

Melanie is an interesting case, since she is in many ways genuinely heroic, apart from all her other positive qualities (even if they are off-set my her constitutional blindness about the people around her); yet on this reading I was struck by how completely she embraces the Confederate cause (even though Ashley doesn't), and the Klan, and everything else pernicious in the Southern system. So she comes across as 'mixed' even if Mitchell didn't intend it.

The 30s best-seller lists are very interesting. At the moment I'm noting how many books on them survived not so much as books per se, but because they were filmed. Yes, very interesting to find Virginia on an American list like this; it makes me regret again that the Brits didn't start keeping lists until much later, it would have been fascinating for comparison's sake.

Kara and I thank you! :)

The mid-thirties were certainly interesting, literarily speaking. And thanks for the review of GWTW. I read it in my teens as well, and always went back to the last few pages when in need of a good cry.

Hi, Judy! Thank you for visiting. :)

It's always really interesting to take a look at these top-ten lists and see what has lasted and what hasn't: some entire years have fallen into obscurity, and then you get others where all, or nearly all the ten have retained their status. It's amazing to think of all these books emerging at once.

Finished Spenlove In Arcady for TIOLI #17, and that is a line under August (albeit not my August reviewing, sigh).

Now reading The Paddington Mystery by John Rhode.

...and the Kindle miracles just keep coming.

I have already addressed The Paddington Mystery as one of the great "missing" Golden Age works: due to a legal standoff over the rights to John Rhodes' books, many of them have been difficult to find; while The Paddington Mystery, the first in the Dr Priestley series, has been almost literally unobtainable since its initial appearance in 1925. Now, thankfully, the legal issues have been sorted and the Dr Priestley books are starting to reappear.

And just now, while I was checking the details of the Kindle edition of The Paddington Mystery, I noticed that the other great MIA Golden Age work, Christopher Bush's The Plumley Inheritance, has suddenly made an appearance. This is also the first in a long-running series, that featuring amateur detective, Ludovic Travers, and has likewise been impossible to get hold of until now (even more literally so, in fact, than The Paddington Mystery).

Both the Rhodes and the Bush mysteries fall under the so-called "hum-drum" umbrella, that is, they are intellectual puzzles with little interest in character development; so they're not for everyone. However, if you have any interest in the Golden Age mystery, I would urge you to buy a few of these Kindle releases as a sign that yes, there is a market, and yes, we would like more, please!

OK, I've ordered The Plumley Inheritance. Fortunately there was a print edition, too. :-)

As an aside: I have been rather dismayed to discover how quickly some of these "reprints" disappear as printed books and remain available only as Kindle editions — most recently and disappointingly noticed with the middle volumes in Msgr. Ronald Knox's Miles Bredon series. There's really not much excuse for letting reissues go out of print in a day of inexpensive and high-quality print-on-demand services, which would seem ideal for fairly low-volume publications such as Golden Age mysteries. (I've gotten a number of nice hardcover POD reprints of collections of pulp stories that were as well made, as books, as much of what I've gotten from the big publishers' imprints.)

Whoo!!

I appreciate your dismay, Harry, though frequently only the Kindle edition is made available here (this turns out to be true of The Plumley Inheritance), which is why I tend to think in terms of Kindle only. It does seem strange that more effort would not be put into the print versions, when you would think it should be possible to balance cost with demand.

Anyway...I just had a pleasant moment moving The Plumley Inheritance from my 'missing series works' post to my 'TBR notes' post. :)

>40 lyzard: Agree with this. As you predicted the going did get tougher once Reconstruction started, and the going did get tough. Like you I just wanted to slap the South out of the lot of 'em.

I'm a little disappointed to hear it's an antiromance because I'd thought perhaps I'd found a romance I didn't mind so much. Although I did find a little horrifying the bit where Rhett declares by God he'd have a wife in his bed tonight and drags Scarlett upstairs and she likes it ... it felt like Gor.

That would be my term for it but Y - and anyone else's - MMV. I can't consider a relationship in which both parties are so wilfully obtuse, and upon occasion so thoroughly nasty, as a "romance".

That kind of thing was worrying prevalent in, ahem, "romances" of the 20s and 30s. (Sorry, I just can't help those inverted commas!)

>40 lyzard: Stellar review of GWTW, Liz. I'm chagrined to say I don't even remember the KKK bit. I think multiple viewings of the movie have drowned out the bits of the novel that didn't make the silver screen.

Thanks, Julia! I know the book better than the movie so I'm fuzzy on the details, but I'm pretty sure they toned it right down (though it's still obvious what's going on).

Finished The Paddington Mystery for TIOLI #4.

Now reading The House In Charlton Crescent by Annie Haynes.

Between a handful of Kindles and the access I now have via Rare Books, several more of the Dr Priestley mysteries which I was forced to skip on my first sweep through are now accessible; so I want to make catching them up an ongoing priority: yet another one-a-month scenario.

Currently I have read:

#1: The Paddington Mystery
#2: Dr Priestley's Quest
#3: The Ellerby Case
#4: The Murders In Praed Street

Next up will be Tragedy At The Unicorn, which requires a pricey academic loan and an in-library read...but it's better than nothing!

Film-blogging:

This time I take a look at the 1943 anthology film, Flesh And Fantasy.

Worth watching for its cast and its visuals, but weak in its writing. Easily the best of the three stories is the middle one, an adaptation of Oscar Wilde's Lord Arthur Savile's Crime starring Edward G. Robinson.

Finished The House In Charlton Crescent for TIOLI #11.

Now reading Elsie's New Relations by Martha Finley.

You've really summed up my reactions to Gone with the Wind. I grew up LOVING the book and the movie. Even when I was young (like 8-10), though, I remember my mom telling me that the thought that slaves wanted to be slaves or were better off was not accurate. No deep philosophical discussions, but at least the seed was planted. I never noticed the KKK parts until I was older. I've reread this book many, many times and as an adult I'm a little embarrassed that I still love it as much as I do considering the political ideas. But the characters and Mitchell's ability to create a sweeping picture of an era just keeps me coming back to the book despite my discomfort. At least I know that when I read it, she's not creating any nostalgia for a bygone slave era for me. It does trouble me that many people do believe in this book's portrayal of slavery and the "honorable south" though.

Also wondering if you've ever led a tutored read of Shirley by Charlotte Brontë. I'm really struggling to get into it in the opening chapters.

>57 japaul22:

Hi, Jennifer! - thanks for adding your thoughts to the discussion. I find it fascinating how books become different to us at different points in our life (one of the reasons I'm a fan of re-reading). Good for mother, putting the idea there but leaving you to work things out for yourself! I find this particular book too difficult for me, but given that I willingly read lots of 20s and 30s novels full of contemporary racial epithets and other objectionable touches, I understand how it can still appeal to you despite the 'discomfort'.

>58 japaul22:

Ah, no; it hasn't come up generally, and because Shirley was never a Virago, it hasn't come up in that context either. I can appreciate that you might be finding it difficult, it certainly isn't an easy book.

If you want to put in a request for a future group / tutored read, please feel free. :)

Finished Elsie's New Relations for TIOLI #14.

Now reading Penelope's Irish Experiences by Kate Douglas Wiggin.

Jack O' Lantern - London is terrorised by killer who calls himself 'Jack O' Lantern'; his latest victim, the barrister Sir Randolph Cantler, is found stabbed to death, his body bearing a familiar curved wound. Meanwhile, Judge Wallington receives a threatening note in familiar handwriting---the same writing in the one he received some seven years before, when he sentenced a criminal named Tobias Lantern to death. Wallington reveals these details to Inspector John Wrench, who has charge of the 'Jack O' Lantern' case, and also a personal interest in Wallington's safety, in that he is engaged to the judge's ward, Sonia Pelling. In trying to determine whether the two cases, and the two threats, are truly linked, Wrench discovers that, over the past seven years, three of the jurors who condemned Tobias Lantern have also been murdered; while Sir Randolph was the Crown Prosecutor on the case. However, when a distorted face is seen through a window of the judge's house, on which the letters JOL are also found scratched, the incident is investigated by Wrench's superior, Superintendent Sweeting, who nurses a jealous grudge over his younger colleague's rapid rise. Sweeting's own investigation leads him to a startling conclusion: that the threatening letter is merely a blind, and that the real danger to Wallington comes from inside his own house... This 1929 thriller by George Goodchild is a bizarre, almost comically overstuffed book that somehow manages to be over-the-top and dull at the same time. Goodchild's rather prosaic writing and characterisations create an odd framework for a plot offering serial killing, aberrant psychology, drug-taking and mind control, and in which realistic police-procedural touches such as wearying legwork and surveillance jostle with outdated thriller elements like a sinister Indian servant. The results aren't good, exactly, but you could reasonably call them unique. Inspector Wrench is at last put on the trail of Jack O' Lantern when he cracks a different case altogether and arrests a long-wanted burglar known as 'the Slasher', who is found with a note in his pocket from Jack O' Lantern himself. Though the Slasher is too afraid for his own life to reveal anything about his criminal associate, the mention in the note of a woman called 'Kate' sends Wrench on an extended undercover assignment, which finally brings him into contact with a gang headed by an elusive individual called Lefroy: a brilliant but dangerous man plagued by terrifying blackouts... Meanwhile, driven both by the discovery of a piece of evidence pointing at Sonia and a deep desire to defeat and embarrass his young colleague, Superintendent Sweeting pursues his theory that the threat to Judge Wallington is personal, not professional---and grows convinced that Sonia, who is Wallington's sole heir, is striking at her benefactor through her servant, Nali, who also acts as the judge's valet. Before Sweeting can make his case, however, Wallington is abducted in spite of all precautions---and in racing to save his life, the investigators will finally bring to light the true connection between the judge and the man who calls himself Jack O' Lantern...

    "Lantern---Lantern! The name seems strangely familiar. There was a case---years ago---" Michels exerted his prodigious memory. "Yes, Tobias Lantern---that was the name. A murderer of extraordinary cunning."
    "He was. I had the pleasure of sending him to his doom. Half a dozen crimes were proved, and I have no doubt there were as many more of which we knew nothing. Yet, strangely enough, two juries failed to agree, when the evidence was conclusive as evidence could be... He was an extraordinary personage. I sincerely believe he succeeded in hypnotising those juries... I certainly experienced strange sensations myself. I hated to go to court and face him. He wore me down as no other man ever did. I admit I had been ill, and was not in the best condition, but---I can see him: a loose-limbed horror of a creature, with pallid face and small, peering eyes that seemed to bore into one's brain. That man might have been anything---a king among men, and yet he did nothing better with his amazing mental equipment than play upon the affections of women and dispose of them brutally when he was tired of them. Thank God, the earth is rid of him."
    "Wasn't there a plea of insanity?"
    "Yes, but the doctors wouldn't certify. It was, however, proved that there was insanity in the family, but...there was nothing to substantiate such a plea in Tobias's case."
    Despite the Judge's emphatic assertion, there was something in his face which led Michels to suspect there was just a shadow of doubt in his mind, and he knew from his own experience the questioning conscience of a judge when a capital sentence has been pronounced, and the line between insanity and sanity is reduced to the fineness of a silken thread...

The exceedingly belated appearance of that review indicates the reopening of Rare Books, meaning that I likewise have the opportunity now to pick up a few stalled projects including---


The Mystery League Inc. Challenge:

#8: The Invisible Host by Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning (published 1930 in the US; cover art by Gene Thurston)



This was the first of four mystery / thrillers written by the husband-and-wife team of Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning; both wrote novels individually as well, although Bristow's main career was as a journalist, while Manning was a screenwriter. This was one of the most successful of the Mystery League releases, being dramatised by Owen Davis as The Ninth Guest before being filmed under that title in 1934. The novel was subsequently reissued as The Ninth Guest as well. However, we should note that it never achieved a release in Britain: a point which I will expand upon when I get around to reviewing it...

After Arthur Hawkins Jr provided the cover art for the previous Mystery League release, The Mystery Of Burnleigh Manor, the series' chief illustrator, Gene Thurston, was back in harness for this one.

So yeah---

Now reading The Invisible Host by Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning; still reading Penelope's Irish Experiences by Kate Douglas Wiggin.

>62 lyzard: I shan't put myself through rereading that one, but I will go ahead and watch the movie version now. :-)

>64 harrygbutler:

Yes, I'm planning on doing that when I've finished with the book too. I won't be able to get back to Rare Book until Monday, though, so it will be a few days.

>61 lyzard: Oh, dear. Both over the top AND dull? That is not good!

It's certainly an odd combination! The plot weirdness holds your attention but the writing is plodding.

Finished Penelope's Irish Experiences for TIOLI #8.

Now reading Vol de Nuit by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Under Capricorn - This 1937 historical drama by Helen Simpson has almost been forgotten in the wake of the Alfred Hitchcock film supposedly based upon it; but the reality is that the two have little in common. Hitch took the secret-of sorts that lurks within Simpson's narrative and used it as the basis of a story of mystery and persecution; Simpson herself, meanwhile, reveals that secret without drama or fanfare, in the course of a narrative that deals broadly with the building of a new country, and specifically with the tearing down of the social structures of The Old Country that occurred along the way. During its first half, Under Capricorn is told chiefly from the perspective of young Irishman, Charles Adare, one of many gentleman's sons dispatched to "the Colonies" due to unsatisfactory behaviour at home. In 1831, Adare arrives in Sydney in the retinue of his distant cousin, Sir Richard Bourke, who is to take up the challenging post of Governor of New South Wales. As Sir Richard assumes his responsibilities, Adare amuses himself by coming to grips with what passes for "society" in the raw new city: seeing both the attempts to hold onto the past, and the impossibility of this in the face of disturbing new elements such the "Emancipists", former convicts building a place for themselves as landowners and businessmen. To his astonishment, Adare encounters an old acquaintance: the former Lady Henrietta Considine, who horrified polite Ireland by eloping with her groom. That groom, Samson Flusky, is now her husband---Lady Henrietta having followed him to Sydney after he was convicted and transported for shooting dead her brother, when he came in pursuit of them... Invited into the Flusky home, Adare discovers in Lady Hattie a glorious wreck: though in many ways as beautiful and charming as ever, she is also an alcoholic gripped by self-loathing. Moved at first by pity and then by affection, Adare sets about reclaiming her; provoking in Flusky a complicated jealousy that will have far-reaching consequences... While Simpson makes the strange, unlikely yet touching relationship between Henrietta and Flusky the centrepiece of her novel, it real strength lies in her word-pictures of the new city and new country springing into existence all around them. This is fine historical writing in that Simpson never falls into the trap of telling rather than showing: her descriptions of the embryonic colony flow naturally from the experiences and observations of Charles Adare. She likewise has an eye for the countless anomalies of the new society: the proximity of the shops catering to "high society" to the flogging-post of the local barracks; the position of the gentleman-convict, an object of contempt not for his crimes but his uselessness in a world demanding manual skills ("gentlemen", we understand, were transported for transgressions that got working-class men hanged); the refusal of Flusky, notorious for his ruthless business practices and his brutality to those who cross him, to drive away from the grounds of his house a small colony of aboriginals; the relationships, personal and professional, between people who, in Britain, would never have been under the same roof. Charles Adare himself becomes a walking irony: the lazy young man who wouldn't get his hands dirty at home by working finds himself in the face of the dangers and demands of the outback, and completes his transition to "real Australian" by falling in love with a servant-girl. Under Capricorn is not a particularly complex novel, rather it is one of observation, capturing a moment in time when, oblivious to the significance of their actions, a people were making a new life and, through it, history.

    The Governor held out a hand for the letter his irresponsible cousin offered. it was an invitation to dine with Mr Flusky, signed not by but for him; per pro. William Winter, secretary. The paper was good, the writing copper-plate, the wording conventionally civil; only the astonishing address---Minyago Yugilla, Woolloomooloo---betrayed the letter's New World provenance.
    "Who is this fellow?"
    "Rich. A decent sort of an Irishman. Emancipist."
    "What was his offence?"
    "I can't find out..."
    "There seems no reason why you shouldn't go. We've got to mellow these individuals somehow before we find ourselves sitting beside them on a jury. Wait a moment. I remember something now about this man... Something about his wife---" The Governor pondered, then dismissed the puzzle. "My dear fellow, do as you please about this, so you don't involve me. What d'you suppose these extraordinary words are?"
    "It's where he lives, evidently."
    "Yes, but the meaning." He looked up as a youngish civilian entered, carrying a portfolio. "Banks, you know something of the aborigines' tongue; can you tack any meaning to this?"
    He underlined the curious address with his thumb-nail and handed the paper over. The newcomer read, and ventured: "I happen to know---this is the name of Mr Flusky's house, is it not? The meaning is, Why weepest thou?..."

Finished Vol De Nuit for TIOLI #18.

Now reading Hungry Hill by Daphne du Maurier.

Film-blogging:

I have written a post about Kobayashi Masaki's amazingly beautiful anthology of ghost stories, Kwaidan (1964).

Finished The Invisible Host for TIOLI #10; also finished Hungry Hill for TIOLI #13.

Now reading The Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck.

Latter End - Beautiful and passionate, but selfish and hard as nails, having married James Latter for his money Lois Latter sets about rearranging his comfortable, generous, family-focused life to her own ends. This includes banishing from his house Ellie Street, his step-sister, who has made her home with him since the death of her mother, and Minnie Mercer, a friend of James' first wife, who came as companion-housekeeper and has likewise stayed on; all while trying to replace servants of longstanding with her own people. Moreover, with plans of her own for the cottages on the estate, Lois is finding ways of convincing James that his tenants would be better off elsewhere; that in fact, they want to leave. Seeing disaster looming, Julia Vane, Ellie's sister, convinces James' cousin, Antony Latter, to accompany her to Latter End, in an attempt to intervene: a task she presses upon him despite knowing he was once in love with Lois. Their mission proves abortive, however, with Julia and Antony despairing in the face of James' blind devotion to his wife, and her talent for putting others in the wrong. When Lois begins to suffer periodic illness, she accuses someone in the household of trying to poison her: a statement that sends James to Miss Maud Silver, asking for her help. Having heard details of Lois' sicknesses and recovery, Miss Silver concludes that she is the victim, not of attempted murder, but a cruel prank; but when Lois dies suddenly of what is found to be an overdose of morphia, it seems that for once Miss Silver was wrong... First published in the US in 1947, and two years later in the UK, the 11th entry in Patricia Wentworth's series featuring Miss Silver is, in some respects, a more conventional mystery than is typical for Wentworth, in that it both dials back the romantic subplot usually so prominent in these novels (yay!), and focuses upon a murder victim so thoroughly hateful, the only wonder is she wasn't poisoned years earlier. Small wonder, too, that there's an entire household full of suspects... As with Wentworth's other novels published during the war years, Latter End offers to the modern reader a vivid glimpse into contemporary conditions. The war might be over, but it continues to cast a long, dark shadow---in this case over the lives of the "surplus women" of the time, left without either financial support or the skills to support themselves; with some, like Ellie Street, having to support an invalid soldier-husband whose physical and emotional injuries mean he cannot care for himself. None of this means anything to Lois Latter, however, who is determined to rid her husband's house of its other occupants, regardless of their need or of James' generous pleasure in being able to offer them a home. It really isn't altogether surprising that someone finally poisons Lois' coffee... When Inspector Ernest Lamb and Sergeant Frank Abbott arrive on the scene, they discover that since Lois' accusation against the household, James Latter had been sharing his wife's evening coffee--which put an end to her minor attacks of illness. Painstakingly tracing everyone's movements at the time of Lois' death, and the movement of the fatal cup of coffee itself, they determine that only three people could have ensured that the fatal dose would reach Lois and not James: Minnie Mercer, Ellie Street, and James himself. When Lamb learns of a shocking confrontation between James and Lois after the former overheard his wife making passionate overtures to Antony, he has no doubt of the guilty party. Miss Silver, however, is not so sure. She is unable to dismiss James desperate plea to her in the wake of Lois' death, during which - evidently oblivious to his own position as prime suspect in her murder - he begged her to prove that Lois' death was not suicide; that he did not drive her to take her own life...

    Lamb cleared his throat, a sound which commanded attention. "You say Mr Latter is your client. Are you here to prove that he didn't poison his wife?"
    Miss Silver looked very much shocked. Her tone reproved him.
    "I did not think it would be necessary to explain to you what I have put very clearly to Mr Latter. I am not here to prove anyone guilty or anyone innocent. It is my endeavour in every case I undertake to discover the truth, and to serve the ends of justice."
    Lamb's colour rose. He said, "Yes, yes," in an uneasy voice. And then, "No offence meant. But you know, your position---well, I'm within my rights in asking to have it defined."
    "Perhaps you would care to define it, Chief Inspector."
    If the words were formal, the smile which accompanied them had a surprising charm. He felt himself consulted, deferred to. His prickles lay down, his colour came back to its normal crimson. He produced an answering smile. "Well, if you were a friend of the family and Mr Latter had a great respect for you and would naturally turn to you for advice---and if you were willing to co-operate with the police---"
    Miss Silver made a gracious inclination. "I should find that perfectly satisfactory."
    Frank Abbott covered his mouth with his hand. The Chief walking on eggshells was a ponderous sight. It was accomplished, and without anything being broken, but the performance lacked grace. Maudie, of course, remained perfectly at her ease, dispensing frowns and smiles at the appropriate moment...

>72 lyzard: I *think* I read Grapes of Wrath at school, but have no recollection of the book, or what it is about that I really can't be sure any more!
I have tried Steinbeck again since, and enjoyed them, so at least I wasn't scarred for life.

>73 lyzard: Good old Maudie, catching criminals and charming cops like a boss! I liked this one a lot.

>74 Helenliz:

Hi, Helen! I've read some Steinbeck, but not this one before. I must confess that I don't altogether get along with his style of writing, but that might be just the way my brain is tuned. )

>75 rosalita:

Love this, re: Inspector Lamb:

...his colour came back to its normal crimson...

:D

So---you up for Spotlight next month?? (Which i believe has a different title in your neck of the woods...)

>76 lyzard: Yes, it's called Wicked Uncle over here, which reminds me: I recently read The Daughter of Time for the first time recently and learned that Richard III was nicknamed the Wicked Uncle. And suddenly, Georgette Heyer's subtitle for Sylvester and the plot line of Phoebe's novel made SO much more sense!

And now I remember another question I meant to ask from your review of Latter End. I was completely surprised that these quintessentially English stories (at least to me) were first published in the U.S. As was apparently the next one, if LT's Common Knowledge feature is to be believed. What gives? Was it because of the recently ended war in some way?

>77 rosalita:

Murdering his nephew(s), you mean?? Yes, certainly a joke that both Phoebe and Georgette's audiences were intended to get!

I read a couple of Josephine Tey's non-mystery novels a while back, but haven't yet ventured into her mysteries---other than The Daughter Of Time, though it's many, many years since I tackled that one.

Publishing was one of the many things that had to pick itself up and put itself back together after the war ended; the industry get back into full production for some considerable time, plus of course in "Austerity Britain" people weren't exactly buying books in large quantities. So you often do see a kind of delay at work at this time, with books taking much longer to appear at home.

>78 lyzard: Yes, but also that both Dick 3 and Sylvester were unjustly accused! Interesting about the publishing industry post-war; I wondered if that might be the case. I thought Austerity Britain was an amazing historical document. I'm eager to read the next one as soon as I can get my hands on a used copy.

>79 rosalita:

Although not necessarily Count Ugolino. :D

Finished The Grapes Of Wrath for TIOLI #3.

Now reading Ringu by Suzuki Koji.

Finished Ringu for TIOLI #9.

Now reading Voodoo'd by Kenneth Perkins.

Finished Voodoo'd for TIOLI #1.

Now reading Hickory Dickory Dock by Agatha Christie.

Finished Hickory Dickory Dock for TIOLI #2.

Now reading The Plumley Inheritance by Christopher Bush.

Finished The Plumley Inheritance for TIOLI #5.

Now reading Flowers For The Judge by Margery Allingham.

>85 lyzard: Flowers for the Judge was the last of the Campions for me so far. I liked the turn toward mystery. I should dig out The Case of the Late Pig to keep going.

Hi, Harry!

I keep letting the Campions slip off my radar, but for this one TIOLI performed its valuable service of giving me a shove. :)

And, yeah---

Finished Flowers For The Judge for TIOLI #6.

I have also finished The Great Bastard, Protector Of The Little One, a piece of anonymous scurrility from 1689; from which you may infer that I am making yet another effort to get my book-blog running again. I am, but an intervening post on a "normal" novel is proving frustratingly difficult.

While I work on that, I will be picking up another dropped blog-thread or two---which is to say, re-reading works I meant to blog about, but let too much time elapse for memory's purposes.

So---now (re-)reading Volume I of The Mysteries Of London by George W. M. Reynolds.

>88 lyzard: You finished a sweeplette! :-D

>87 lyzard: That's pretty much what happens with me with the Campions, as they sit at the back of the library waiting for me, but I get distracted by the piles of books that are closer. I might be reminded to read one more often if I were still on the hunt for them, but I have nearly all (just one late collection of short stories, The Casebook of Mr. Campion still to find), and it's easy to ignore the stack. I find the same thing with a number of other authors and series, too.

>87 lyzard: I paused just before Flower for the Judge as the Allinghams the husband has don't include the previous one. And I know all about reading out of order and have no wish to be shot at dawn for it >;-)

>89 FAMeulstee:

Hi, Anita. I did! - and have just noted the fact on the thread. :)

>90 harrygbutler:

This is where I find TIOLI so valuable: it helps me choose amongst my infinite series works (which I tend to find a bit paralysing) and gives impetus to stalled series.

>91 Helenliz:

Now, now, Helen: I assure you I go no further than a sad and reproachful shake of the head. :D

Book-blogging:

I have posted about J. D. Beresford's The Prisoners Of Hartling, a psychological drama from 1922 about a young doctor drawn away from his profession by a life of purposeless luxury:

The Prisoners Of Hartling

A blog-post! Finally!! We all know what that means, right??

Or perhaps it's been so long you can't remember...

...and that also means that I have at long last finished ALL of my, sigh, June reviews:

June stats:

Works read: 18
TIOLI: 18, in 12 different challenges, with 2 shared reads

Mystery / thriller: 12
Historical drama: 2
Contemporary drama: 1
Historical romance: 1
Young adult: 1
Non-fiction: 1

Re-reads: 2
Series works: 12
Blog reads: 0
1932: 1
1931: 0
Virago / Persephone: 0
Potential decommission: 1

Owned: 3
Library: 2
Ebooks: 13

Male authors : female authors: 11 (including 1 using a female pseudonym) : 7

Oldest work: The Eye Of Dread by Payne Erskine (1913)
Newest work: Poe: A Life Cut Short by Peter Ackroyd (2008)

************************

YTD stats:

Works read: 94
TIOLI: 94, in 70 different challenges, with 8 shared reads

Mystery / thriller: 41
Classics: 12
Contemporary drama: 10
Non-fiction: 5
Horror: 5
Historical romance: 4
Short stories: 4
Young adult: 4
Historical drama: 3
Humour: 3
Contemporary romance: 2
Play: 1

Re-reads: 21
Series works: 44
Blog reads: 5
1932: 2
1931: 5
Virago / Persephone: 2
Potential decommission: 14

Owned: 25
Library: 28
Ebook: 41

Male authors (editors) : female authors : anonymous: 52 (including 2 using a female pseudonym) : 39 : 3

Oldest work: A Defence Of Their Majesties King William And Queen Mary, Against An Infamous And Jesuitical Libel, Entituled, A True Portraicture Of William Henry Prince Of Nassau, &c by Pierre Jurieu (1689)
Newest work: Kai Lung Raises His Voice by Ernest Bramah (2010)

...and I'm quite sure you do remember what that means!---

>96 lyzard: Sloth!

Lemur!

And SLOTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Of course I knew YOU would remember... :)

>92 lyzard: On my way to congratulate you there
And I use TIOLI in the same way, for getting through my own YA books. Adding a few library books to fill them all.

>95 lyzard: And I feel a bit guilty being 3 reviews behind... ;-)

>94 lyzard: >96 lyzard: In favor of lemur and sloth pictures!

>100 FAMeulstee:

Thank you! Yes, I find TIOLI a great help.

Ohhh...hush, you! Stop bragging. :D

There should be another lemur (or something similar) along shortly...

Book-blogging:

I have - gasp! - written another post, this one briefly considering some of the politically-fuelled scandal-literature that emanated from England and France around the year 1690. Included is the recently read The Great Bastard, Protector Of The Little One.

Here

...and this time around, I seem to have startled a tarsier!---

Hi Liz, I am sure you have read The Mysteries of Udolpho have you any advice on approaching it. At the end of volume 1, I find myself wanting to abandon Emily to her fate for being to sensitive to function as a human being, and am half wishing she'd decided to run off with Valencourt, on the grounds that at least that way the book would end here and I'd not have 3/4 of it left to go!

:D

You should at least be grateful that Udolpho has a plot!

Most novels from that time are just 300 - 600 pages of melodrama, tears, fainting and high-blown emotion---"sensibility", in other words. Heroines prove their worth as women precisely by being "too sensitive to function": many of them literally die of their emotions.

Really---with the Gothic literature, as with all the sentimental fiction of the late 18th century, you just have to give yourself up to the tropes of the time. If you struggle against it, or try to mentally re-write the book to fit your ideas of how people 'should' be behaving, you'll go nuts. :)

>103 lyzard: That critter certainly looks startled, whatever it is!

>105 lyzard: I will be thankful for small mercies. Decided I'll read another book before each volume, so I don't get toooo irritated.

>106 rosalita:

Such ignorance - tsk! :D

>107 Helenliz:

Sounds like a plan - good luck!

Valerius: A Roman Story - While there is an aspect of the idiosyncratic in many of the inclusions on critic C. K. Shorter's 1898 list of The Best 100 Novels, his choice of John Gibson Lockhart's 1821 historical novel the first I really take exception to: for all that it remained popular throughout the 19th century, it really isn't very good; and in fact, it is hard not to conclude that it made its way onto the Shorter list not for its literary qualities, but just because it was the first. Valerius was the progenitor of the so-called "historical-classical" novel, and certainly offers its ur-plot: a Roman falls in love with a beautiful, mysterious woman, whom he later discovers to be a Christian. He is converted by association with her and her fellows, and together they face persecution for their beliefs. In this case, the young Patrician is the eponymous Valerius, the son of a Roman legionnaire and his Britannic wife. After he is orphaned, Valerius is summoned to Rome by the advocate, Caius Licinius, an old friend of his father, who is representing him in respect of a possible inheritance. Established in the luxurious house of Licinius, Valerius forms a friendship with his son, Sextus, and becomes involved in his courtship of the lovely Sempronia, niece to the wealthy Epicurean, Capito. The young men are invited to the home of Capito, where the Valerius to drawn to Sempronia's cousin, Athanasia. As he moves through Roman society, Valerius hears much of the Emperor Trajan's efforts to stamp out the rise of Christianity; his first direct exposure to the professors of this creed comes when Sabinus, a centurion, invites him to visit the cells beneath the Coliseum. The following day, a Christian called Tisias is to form part of the entertainment: he will be given the choice of publicly renouncing his faith, or dying in the arena. When Sabinus and Valerius arrive, they learn that two women of his faith are with him. The generous centurion allows them to slip away unhindered, as a stunned Valerius recognises one of them as Athanasia... John Gibson Lockhart was the son-in-law of Walter Scott and, in following him into the realm of historical fiction, also followed his example a little too closely, sacrificing historical verisimilitude in favour of creating links between the past and the present. Valerius is an unconvincing Roman, even allowing for his Britannic upbringing, full of ideas out of place in the 1st century AD---such as his horror at the gladiatorial contests in the arena, and his open-mindedness about other races and creeds. Moreover, his attitude to his journey to Rome is very much like that of a young 18th or 19th century gentleman undertaking "the Grand Tour", complete with his remarks on famous people and landmarks that, at the time, were not necessarily so. Lockhart's choice of first-person narration (the story supposedly told by an elderly Valerius, recounting this adventure of his youth in a letter) only exacerbates the problem. Valerius is also a Scott-ian hero in his passivity: things happen around him rather than to him; and while he is eventually forced to take drastic action to rescue Athanasia, his doing so is facilitated by a series of "secret Christians" who all play a more significant role in the escapade. There are some effective descriptions and scenes in the course of Valerius, particularly the sustained set-piece of the arena, and a secret midnight gathering of some followers of Hecate; but the novel as a whole is undercut by its determined matter-of-fact-ness, and never more so than in the matter of Valerius' acceptance of Christianity. Entrusted with delivering a certain secret document to Athanasia, Valerius does so, but reads it first. The document is a copy of the Gospel according to Luke, and upon absorbing its contents, Valerius is instantly converted---not, however, in the manner of a grand epiphany, but rather with a shrug, as he decides, in essence, that yes, that all seems to make sense...

    "Be not alarmed," said Sabinus... "I sent for you, not to find fault with what you have done, but only to ask whether this prisoner has already been told that the Emperor has announced his resolution concerning him, and that he must die to-morrow, in the Amphitheatre of Vespasian, unless he renounce his superstition."
    "He knows all," answered the same voice; "and is prepared for all."
    “By heavens! Valerius,” whispered Sabinus; “it is no mean person that speaks so---this is the accent and the gesture of a Roman lady.” Then raising his voice, "In that case there is no need for my going into the dungeon; and yet, could I hope to say any thing that might tend to make him change his purpose, I would most gladly do so. The Emperor is as humane as he is just, and unless when rebellious obstinacy shuts the gates of mercy, he is the last that would consent to the shedding of any blood. For this Tisias, of whose history I have just been hearing something, I am in a particular manner interested, and to save him, I wish only I had power equal to my inclination. Is there no chance of convincing him?"
    "He is already convinced..."
    This last sentence was spoken so distinctly, that I knew I could no longer be mistaken; and I was on the brink of speaking out, without thinking of the consequences that might occur, when she that had spoken, uttered a faint cry, and dropping on her knees before Sabinus, said, "Oh, sir! to us also be merciful, and let us go hence ere any one behold us!"
    "Go in peace, lady," answered the Centurion, "and henceforth be prudent as well as kind." They went away from us, and were soon lost to our sight in the windings of the street.
    We stood there for some moments in silence, looking towards the place where they disappeared. "Strange superstition," said Sabinus; "what heroism dwells with this madness!---you see how little these men regard their lives;---nay, even women, and Roman women too---you see how their nature is changed by it."
    "It is, indeed, a most strange spectacle,” said I; "but what is to be the end of it, if this spirit become diffused widely among the people?"

What a marvelous review, Liz.

I finished The Plumley Inheritance today, and I’m looking forward to your thoughts about it.

Hi, Gail - thank you!

I liked The Plumley Inheritance okay but it's quite different from the rest of the series, as far as I'm aware. I'm not crazy about these treasure-hunting thrillers but they must have been popular at the time because a lot of authors took a crack at one. :)

A very sad and difficult day yesterday.

As I posted here and elsewhere, some weeks ago my cat Kara was diagnosed with liver disease, which despite best efforts progressed rapidly. For a time she showed no sign of pain or any distress, and was still able to go about her normal daily routine of wandering in the garden, snoozing in the sun and cuddling at night.

However, over the past week her condition began to deteriorate, and over the weekend she suffered a serious collapse. Yesterday she and I made our last journey together.

Kara was my most beloved companion for sixteen years. The house feels very empty right now.


Kara
9th September 2002 - 1st October 2018

>112 lyzard: Aw, I'm so very sorry to hear that, Liz! She was a lovely cat and I know you gave her a wonderful 16 years. Virtual hugs to you from across the planet, my friend.

Very sorry to hear about Kara. It's only been in the last couple of years that I've been able to understand just how close a friend a nonhuman can be. Buddy and I are holding you in our thoughts.

>112 lyzard: I'm so sorry for your loss, Liz! Wishing you peace and comfort.

>112 lyzard: So sorry, Liz, may the memories of Kara live on.
(((hugs)))

I am so very sorry, Liz. My heart goes out to you.

So sorry to hear that. Thinking of you.

My condolences re Kara, Liz.

Sorry to hear this, Liz, and I hope happy memories of Kara might help to sustain you.

>113 rosalita:, >114 swynn:, >115 harrygbutler:, >116 FAMeulstee:, >117 Matke:, >118 Helenliz:, >119 jnwelch:, >120 CDVicarage:

Thank you all for your kind thoughts, they are much appreciated.

Courrier Sud (translation: Southern Mail) - Originally published in 1929, the first novel by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is typical of his subsequent work in that it is a semi-autobiographical work dealing overtly with aviation and aviators, but is more correctly classified as a philosophical rumination upon loneliness and alienation. The novel's framework deals with the increasingly nervous wait for an overdue mail-plane as its route takes it over the deserts of northern Africa, but its heart is the missing pilot's re-examination of certain aspects of his life---in particular a love affair that culminated in a failed attempt to rescue the woman from her unhappy marriage. Courrier Sud is not a work that lends itself easily to English translation, with Saint-Exupéry's lyricism becoming more overblown than this rather fragile narrative can bear. Its shifting points-of-view can also be confusing, as it is not always evident to the reader whose perspective is being represented; while a proper deciphering of its oblique plot requires an understanding of the French position in North Africa during the 1920s. Ultimately, Courrier Sud offers too much philosophy and too little aviation---although, that said, Saint-Exupéry does capture the terrifying isolation of the pilot during the early days of commercial aviation, cut off from the world below and forced to battle alone against the elements and his own fears and weaknesses.

    Dunes, rocks, saline depressions are swallowed up, whirled back through the ringer. The contours widen, open, then close. Disaster looms at wheel level. Those black rocks grouped together over there seem to be approaching slowly, then suddenly they spurt, scattering wildly beneath one.
    1,430 revolutions per minute.
    "If I crack up..." The fuselage burns his fingertips. The radiator spouts puffs of steam. The plane, like an overloaded barge, keeps sinking.
    1,400 revolutions per minute.
    A foot beneath the wheels the last sands came up to meet him, throwing out ever quicker spadefuls of flying gold. The dune ahead was jumped, revealing the fort beyond. Thank Heaven! Bernis cut the ignition. It was time.
    The speeding landscape braked. The world in dusty dissolution settled.

Ringu (translation: Ring) - When his taxi-driver tells him a story of a young man collapsing and dying for no apparent reason, it captures the attention of newspaper reporter, Kazuyuki Asakawa: his wife's seventeen-year-old niece recently died under similarly mysterious circumstances---and, as Asakawa realises, at almost the same time as the young man. He discovers a third strange case involving a young couple found dead in a car, their bodies contorted as if desperately trying to escape each other---or something else. Asakawa learns that the four young people spent a weekend together at a resort in the mountains, one week before they all died. He arranges to take the same suite, and in the guest-book discovers a note suggesting that all four watched a video together. He obtains the same unlabelled tape from the resort's video library, and finds that it contains a series of unnerving, seemingly disconnected images, and ends with a terrifying warning: that Asakawa now has one week to live, unless he follows the instructions that will allow him to break the cycle of death; instructions that have been recorded over... First published in 1991, but not translated into English until after its internationally successful filming by Hideo Nakata, Koji Suzuki's Ringu is a strange and intriguing, yet not wholly successful work. Despite its numerous supernatural elements, the narrative is shaped more as a mystery than a horror story, with Sadako Yamamura, though her tragic life and death still drives the action, a far less immediate and terrifying presence than in the filmed version(s) of the novel. The focus remains Asakawa, as he pursues the truth behind the tape as he would any other story...albeit with a literal deadline... Quite typically for a work of Japanese genre fiction, Ringu offers a blending of the paranormal with the technological, both in the explanation of the initial creation of the tape and the subsequent presentation of its deadly effects in terms of a viral infection; and indeed, there is a disturbing prescience about Suzuki's grasp of the potentiality of something "going viral". Despite its many effective elements, Ringu presents some difficulties for the reader---including the recurring use of rape within the narrative. However, the novel's most overt flaw is its total absence of sympathetic characters---least of all its protagonists. Asakawa himself is presented as completely self-absorbed, a selfish and lazy individual who shuns his responsibilities as a husband and father; while we are given reason to believe that Ryuji Takayama, the eccentric friend whom Asakawa recruits to help him solve the mystery, may be a criminal psychopath. (This point is fudged late in the novel, in a manner which in no way absolves Asakawa of guilty involvement in Ryuji's activities.) Indeed, so unlikeable are both Asakawa and Ryuji that it becomes harder and harder for the reader to care whether they solve the mystery of the tape in time to save their own lives, Ryuji having insisted on watching it too. Koji Suzuki may have realised this, because he finally raises the stakes by having Asakawa's wife, Shizu, discover and watch his copy of the tape---while holding the couple's toddler daughter in her lap...

    Asakawa thought about his wife and daughter. He couldn't afford to be a coward. He held their lives in his hands. But his body wouldn't obey him.
    "Is this really going to work, though?" But there was no purpose in his voice; he knew it was pointless to even ask the question now. Ryuji relaxed his grip on his collar.
    "Shall I tell you a little more about Professor Miura's theory? There are three conditions that have to be met for a malevolent will to remain in the world after death. An enclosed space, water, and a slow death. One, two, three. In other words, if someone dies slowly, in an enclosed space, with water present, then usually that person's angry spirit will haunt the place. Now, look at this well. It's a small, enclosed space. There's water. And remember what the old lady in the video said."
    ...How has your health been since then? If you spend all your time playing in the water, monsters are bound to get you...
    Playing in the water. That was it. Sadako was down there under that black muddy water playing. An endless, watery, underground game.
    "You see, Sadako was still alive when she was dropped into this well. And while she waited for death she coated the very walls with her hatred..."

>122 lyzard: Too bad that one loses something in the translation, Liz. The plot description sounds interesting.

>112 lyzard: So sorry to hear about Kara, Liz.

>124 rosalita:

It's a first novel, and has a first novel's flaws; but it definitely feels more clumsy than it should because of the translation.

>125 SandDune:

Thank you, Rhian.

Voodoo'd (UK title: The Horror Of The Juvenal Manse) - Basil Boyean, a leading figure in New Orleans society, undergoes an experimental gland-transplant operation in an attempt to cure a persistent illness. Afterwards, he is disturbed to learn that the donor was Anatole Bouche, a convicted murderer who was shot dead by police while attempting to escape the courtroom. An expert in crime who publishes well-respected articles on the subject, Boyean finds himself obsessing over the character of Bouche and the murder of Bertram Juvenal, who was choked---but died slowly of the virulent poison on the killer's fingernails, which penetrated the skin of his throat. The murder took place at the Juvenal Manse, years before the mansion-home of an aristocratic family, now a mere boarding-house operated by the remnants of a once-wealthy family. On impulse, Boyean decides to investigate the scene for himself, taking a room at the manse under an assumed name. He is given a room next to that of Lucien Juvenal, the younger son of the victim, and nephew to the manse's proprietor---who the next morning is found dead, murdered. When it is discovered that the doors and windows of the dead man's room are all locked, Amos Juvenal reveals to Inspector Donnelly that there is another way in---a secret passage, opening from the room occupied by Basil Boyean... Serialised in 1930 before being published in book form the following year, Kenneth Perkins' Voodoo'd is a strange but interesting book whose ideas are stronger than its writing; in fact, it reminded me somewhat of George Goodchild's Jack O' Lantern (reviewed up above), in that it likewise managed to be somewhat dull despite its bizarre and outrageous plot, which encompasses both the era's fascination with transplant operations and the possibilities of the little-understood "glands", and the destruction of a family via an apparent voodoo curse. The novel's greatest strength is its depiction of New Orleans, in which it includes all levels of society and a proper mix of people---from aristocratic Creole Boyean to Irish cop Inspector Donnelly to the black and mixed-race servants of the Juvenal Manse. Very rarely for a book of this time, Perkins makes all of his non-white characters individuals, with differing personalities and speech patterns; though, as the voodoo plot comes to the fore, there is an increasing and slightly disappointing tendency to treat its practitioners as a mysterious and dangerous "other". Meanwhile, Boyean himself is a rather exasperating protagonist, full of reported perfections we never see---frankly, I took a serious dislike to him from the moment he was introduced as "a handsome paragon of a youth"---and the way in which Donnelly cedes his investigation to the crime-dilettante is just silly. However, this does set up the novel's most interesting touch, the split-vision of its central mystery. When Lucien Juvenal is found dead under circumstances identical to those of his father's murder, the police assume that Bouche was falsely convicted, and that the real murderer is still at large. Boyean, meanwhile, who has been experiencing strange and disturbing sensations and impulses ever since discovering that Bouche was his gland-donor, finds himself in the grip of a terrifying conviction: that he himself, under compulsion from beyond the grave, is the murderer of Lucien Juvenal...

    Boyean clenched his fist. He felt that something was pressing down upon him, some inimical thing in the air, enveloping him, smothering him. He gritted his teeth, and his brow furrowed as if he were bending all the might of his brain against a malignant intangible force that was attacking him.
    For a while he heard only the deadly rhythm of the drum and the inchoate wail of voices. There were two now---the piping, cracked tenor of Oedipe and the growling contralto of some woman down there.
    Suddenly the steady beat of the drum was broken---or rather syncopated---by another beat that echoed it. It came from somewhere out there in the shacks along the levee street. It was precisely like the locusts of the levee oaks answering the shrill rasp of those within the Juvenal patio.
    The perspiration dripped into Boyean's eyes. He sank back, panting, into his chair, gripping the arms. He was like a man in the electric chair, convulsed with the first onslaught of the current.
    "I can't fight any more!" he groaned. "I've kept it secret too long. They're all against me. They're fighting me with every weapon used from the beginning of mankind. I can fight against Juvenal and his daughter and his nephew, but against this unseen horror I'm powerless..."

This one's for Harry! :)

It was the Argosy in which Voodoo'd was serialised during 1930:

>122 lyzard: My father, who inspired my own reading habits, adores St-Exupery, and Southern Mail especially. I tried to read it years ago and bounced off. But I'll always believe there's something very special there that I just didn't see.

>123 lyzard: I had no idea this was a novel. Into the swamp it goes!

>127 lyzard: Into the swamp with this one too -- sounds delightfully odd.

>128 lyzard: Thanks! I have that issue, where the novel began, but I don't yet have all six weekly issues in which it appeared. In just a month I'll be attending Pulp Adventurecon in Bordentown, New Jersey, as I've done now for several years, and I'm hopeful I can fill in some gaps and can settle down to reading some of the Argosy serials. I haven't completely figured out what I'll do for storage — 52 issues a year for decades takes up a bit of room! :-)

>129 swynn:

I have the feeling I would like it better if I could read it in French; as is, it just seems slightly "off". I think I'd still prefer Night Flight, though: more planes, less existential angst. :D

It's the first in a trilogy; I'm still investigating how much they differ from the films.

Speaking of "delightfully odd", did you ever get around to Harold Bell Wright's The Devil's Highway?? If not you really should...

>130 harrygbutler:

Uh, yeah---know all about storage issues!

Ooh, fun! Good luck with your search. :)

Finished Volume I of The Mysteries Of London for TIOLI #12.





Now reading X v. Rex by "Martin Porlock" (Philip MacDonald).

>112 lyzard: Liz, sorry I haven't been by sooner. My sincere sympathy for your loss of the beautiful Kara. She was exactly the same age as my own Zoe is. I feel for your loss.

Thanks, Roni. It's been very hard and hurtful, as you would appreciate.

Finished X v. Rex...but still pondering TIOLI.

Now reading The Wychford Poisoning Case by Anthony Berkeley.

>135 lyzard: You can put it in TIOLI #7, if #17 doesn't work out.

Oh, yes, there are plenty of options! Pretty much everything I'm reading this month will fit my own challenge, if nowhere else... :)

Anthony Trent, Master Criminal - Anthony Trent is a writer of popular crime stories featuring a brilliant master-criminal, which are celebrated for their plausibility and attention to detail. However, his long hours of research and work bring him only a restricted income, something which becomes intolerable as, all around him, he sees men less talented - and less honest - living in luxury. Increasingly, Trent finds himself toying with the idea of putting his vast knowledge of crime to a more practical use... First appearing in 1918, this initial entry in the long-running series by Wyndham Martyn offers up a central character who is an explicit cross between Sherlock Holmes and A. J. Raffles---which is to say, Anthony Trent is a gentleman-crook who goes about his business armed with all the arcane knowledge and unexpected talents of the famous consulting detective. Describing its protagonist's first ventures in his new profession, Anthony Trent, Master Criminal is an amusing collection of short stories, but one best taken in small doses. There is a peculiar tone about these stories, which is the result of the uneasy blending of their American setting, characterisations and concerns with the overt British-ness of their obvious influences. For example, we find Trent's ruminations about "playing the game decently" jostling against the crude and thuggish Inspector McGuire's employment of the third degree. However, a more serious issue is that Wyndham Martyn is rather too entranced with his own hero (we can't even say "anti-hero", as you normally would in this branch of fiction). Consequently, Trent is overloaded with perfections to an extent that finally becomes absurd and rather exasperating, with practically every story revealing him as possessed of some particular branch of knowledge, or some specific talent. This tends to mitigate against the stories' success, as there is rarely any real sense of Trent being in danger of failing or of being captured. Consequently, the most entertaining of these stories involve Trent being outsmarted by his female equivalent, a French jewel-thief known as "the Countess", whose path necessarily crosses his from time to time. In fact, its female characters is really where this collection redeems itself---most of all, in the sudden elevation of Trent's devoted housekeeper, Mrs Kenney, from a minor supporting character to leading lady, when Trent is forced to make a choice between exposure and prison, or the stealing and passing on of vital state documents. This situation likewise forces Trent to take stock of himself and his life...and leads to a closure for this first volume that is both appropriate and a dead giveaway, inasmuch as Martyn lifts it wholesale from the second entry in the Raffles series...

    It seemed to Trent that he had gloated over these glistening stones for hours before he put them away. Then he took out a roll of bills and counted them... "Well," he muttered softly, "I’ve done it and there’s no going back. Yesterday I was what people call an honest man. Now---?"
    He had never meant to take up a career of crime. Looking back he could see how little things coming together had provoked in him an insatiable desire for an easier life. In all his personal dealings heretofore, he had been scrupulously honest, and there had never been any reflection on his honor as a sportsman. He had played games for their own sake. He had won without bragging and lost with excuses. Up in Hanover there were still left those who chanted his praise. What would people think of him if he were placed in the dock as a criminal?
    His own people were dead. There were distant cousins in Cleveland, whom he hardly remembered. There was no family honor to trail in the dust, no mother or sweetheart to blame him for a broken heart.
    He stirred uneasily as he thought of the possibility of capture. Even now those might be on his trail who would arrest him. It would be ironical if, before he tasted the fruits of leisure, he were taken to prison---perhaps by Officer McGuire! It had all been so absurdly easy....

>131 lyzard: I haven't, and I ought to. So many books ....

>138 lyzard: ... for instance this, which sounds like an interesting series that I almost certainly will never get around to.

>139 swynn:

Oh, well, if you're going to use THAT excuse... :D

I think I need to read another book or two in the series before I make up my mind about it, to see if the first is really representative. (They so often aren't!)

Finished The Wychford Poisoning Case---but the wiki is playing up this morning, so I'm still pondering TIOLI for that, too.

Now reading Spotlight by Patricia Wentworth.

>140 lyzard: I think I need to read another book or two in the series before I make up my mind about it, to see if the first is really representative. (They so often aren't!)

I see you've met my friend, Miss Silver! :-p

>142 rosalita:

Yyyyyyes...I saw that you've been offering advice about skipping books and reading out of order...hmmph!

>143 lyzard: You've been creeping on my thread! At least you're reading it, so no complaints. :-)

And yes, I did kinda sorta imply to Meg that Grey Mask doesn't really add anything to the series. BUT BUT BUT, I am trying to recruit more people to our shared read! So that must count for ... something?

I was struck dumb. :D

Of course you're right about Grey Mask. It's interesting to note those series where the author has their characters nailed before putting pen to paper, and the ones where they might as well be writing about completely different people (Agatha and Dorothy vs Patricia and Marjory, as it were!)

(Sigh. Touchstones down now as well as the wiki??)

One Drop Of Blood - When Dr Carl Koenig, a highly respected psychiatrist, is found murdered in his office at the Mayfield Sanitarium, District Attorney Sanderson sends his special investigator, James Dundee, to the scene. As he approaches the hospital, Dundee must brake suddenly to avoid a young woman lying at the side of the road. To his relief, she has nothing worse than a badly sprained ankle, suffered while running away from Mayfield. She is obviously frightened, and it is not until Dundee convinces her that he, too, is a voluntary patient with a case of "nerves" that she allows him to take her back. Though he knows she will have to be questioned later, he drops the woman at her own rooms, part of a complex within the grounds, before heading to the main building. There he discovers that, at the time of the murder, most of the hospital's patients were watching a movie---or were supposed to be. Dundee is then introduced to Dr Cantrell and Mr Baldwin, the late Dr Koenig's partners in the hospital, and to Miss Lacey, the head nurse, and inspects the scene of the crime---Koenig's own office, where his was savagely beaten with the sharp edge of a sculpture. At first glance Dundee assumes that a violent patient must have been responsible for the crime, since in addition to the murder itself the office has been wrecked; but as he begins to investigate, certain signs suggest that the scene has been staged to suggest exactly that... Published in 1932, the fourth entry in Anne Austin's series featring special investigator James "Bonnie" Dundee is both a satisfactory mystery and an interesting novel. The latter is perhaps the more important aspect of the two. One Drop Of Blood is co-dedicated to a nurse, and carries an explicit thank-you to the staff of a Californian sanitarium; and, indeed, it is evident at all points that in setting her mystery within a mental-health facility, Austin did her research. Her narrative strives to de-stigmatise mental illness, with attacks made upon everything from the derogatory language used to the crude stereotyping that afflicts such patients; and if some of the language is still a little jarring, and some of the characterisations unsubtle, it is still a commendable effort and, for its time, remarkable. (That this stuff still needs doing now is pretty depressing, though.) In terms of the narrative itself, as is typical of this series there are actually two or three distinct mysteries here, which Dundee must untangle in order to identify the murderer of Dr Koenig. When he arrives at the scene, the young investigator finds the staff of the Mayfield Sanitarium not only shocked and grief-stricken, but frantic over what the murder might mean for the facility and its patients. The crude-minded Captain Strawn immediately assumes that "one of the crazies" is responsible, but Dundee lends a sympathetic ear to impassioned pleading of psychiatrist, Dr Justine Harlow, and Miss Lacey, who beg him not to assume that the murder was the work of an unstable patient and, above all, not to let such an idea reach the papers---for the sake of the hospital and its work, but above all for the sake of the patients themselves. However, the direction of the investigation is dictated by certain signs that the murder was not the result of a sudden outbreak of rage or psychosis, but carried out with care. For one thing, the killer took care to don rubber gloves; for another, in spite of the seemingly random damage done to the office, Dundee discovers that several medical records have been removed from the victim's filing cabinets in their entirety and torn into tiny fragments. There are also confusing traces of evidence on the desk over which Dr Koenig was found slumped, including a bloodstain well away from the point at which his head was resting. But it is the subsequent discovery of another bloodstain, previously overlooked - a single drop of blood on the telephone receiver - that changes Dundee's entire conception of how the murder was committed---and why...

    Dundee again concentrated on visualising the murderer's movements. The doctor had not been alarmed; had continued with his typing, with perhaps a word to his caller. The murderer had strolled to the doctor's chair, and had glanced over those bowed shoulders at the machine. What had he read there? Somewhere in that pile of fine-torn scraps was the answer---if Dundee were not guessing wildly. But if he was right, whatever the murderer had read had been so great a shock to his mind or so great a menace to his liberty that only by destruction of the writer could the doctor's caller ever feel safe again...
    Fingerprints! The statue, which he had carefully and silently laid on the rug beside the swivel chair, could be wiped clean of betraying prints, but he must touch nothing else with betraying fingers. Gloves! But it was summertime and he had no gloves with him. But through the half-open door into Dr Cantrell's office he could see the white-enamel instrument cabinet. Of course! Doctors always used rubber gloves in making examinations. And silently he had tiptoed into the medical man's office. There, as if Fate were on his side, he had found the soiled rubber gloves which the night nurse had left lying on top of the cabinet in the instrument tray.
    No use picturing all that had followed. It was quite obvious how the murderer's mind had worked. This was primarily a sanitarium for the treatment of mental diseases. There, too, Fate had been working for him. What easier than to wreck the room, so that police and hospital authorities would jump to the conclusion that one of the psychopathic patients had gone berserk and had murdered in a homicidal rage...?

>112 lyzard: {{{{{Liz}}}}} I am late in catching up but so sorry to hear about Kara - she sounds like a very sweet cat.

Thanks, Heather. Yes, she really was. :(

Finished Spotlight for TIOLI #3.

Now reading Dead Man's Folly by Agatha Christie.

That feeling when...

...you sit down to review a book...

...and then you can't find it...

Finished Spotlight, you say? *happy dance*

Hope that's not the one you can't find.

Heh! No, that's safely on my eReader. It's one of my grab-bag selections that's missing and I still can't spot it in the piles...

Finished Dead Man's Folly for TIOLI #7.

Now reading The Skeleton At The Feast by Carolyn Wells.

Yeah, okay:

Some of the attitudes expressed in this novel, although prevalent at the time of its original publication, would be considered offensive today. The publisher wishes to emphasise that the reproduction of this historical text is in no way intended as an endorsement of these attitudes.

I don't have a problem with that; but---

In a very small number of instances, the wording of the original text has been slightly revised to avoid certain terms which are likely to prove particularly offensive to modern readers.

So I'm guessing that Black Joe's nickname wasn't originally "Black Joe".

I object to this sort of tampering with the text both in its own right, and for its tendency to sweep such stuff under the carpet. I think the occasional salutary reminder of where we've come from is valuable rather than harmful.

Anyway---finished The Skeleton At The Feast...though I continue to have issues grabbing the TIOLI slot I want.

On the other hand, I HAVE FINISHED A SERIES!!

Okay, a trilogy.

Now reading The Crow's Inn Tragedy by Annie Haynes.

>155 lyzard: Well done on finishing, a trilogy still counts as a series finish.

>154 lyzard:. I'm with you. So some people might be offended, well tough. The counterpoint to freedom of speech is that you will (and should, imo) come up against ideas that are offensive to you. One without the other is not a freedom. Society seems to think that offending people is a form of high treason, it's not. The disclaimer is great, the editing of the past less great.

I'm glad you think so, because I'm just about to do it again! :)

Still---I will say this for Black Heath, at least they're up front about the changes: the Resurrection Press used to alter the text without any acknowledgement that they'd done it. I suppose these small publishers are afraid of losing sales but really, if you're reading books from that era, wouldn't you already know what the attitudes and language were?

Also, from my own reaction, I would say that it's debatable whether doing it or not doing it is more likely to cost a sale...

Lust For Blood: The Consuming Story Of Vampires - This 1984 non-fiction work by Olga Gruhzit Hoyt is a popular history of the vampire---in both the supernatural and the psychological sense. For the former, Hoyt traces belief in the vampire, and the vampire's various reported manifestations and behaviours, from ancient Greece onwards, the spread of vampire lore across Europe, and the differences and similarities between this and the lore of Asia and the Middle East. This section of the study culminates in a consideration of the emergence of vampire literature in Britain, a country curiously exempt from vampire folklore: John Polidori's The Vampyre, Sheridan LeFanu's Carmilla and, of course, Bram Stoker's Dracula. The other half of Hoyt's text considers real-life vampires, that is, people who have (or claimed to have) drunk the blood of their willing or unwilling donors. Various historical cases are examined - that of Countess Bathory at length - and also more recent serial killers, including Fritz Haarmann, "the Hanover Vampire", Peter Kuerten, "the Monster of Dusseldorf", and John George Haigh, "the Acid Bath Killer" (the latter almost certainly lying, trying to avoid execution by proving himself insane). The book concludes with a consideration of those who participate in blood drinking for sexual or other psychological reasons. A pop-cultural rather than a scholarly work, Lust For Blood offers a fair if superficial overview of its subject matter. However, its text consists significantly of quotes from other works, to an extent which finally makes this feel like a rather parasitic work---or perhaps "vampiric" would be a better choice of word. An extensive bibliography is appended, and readers with a more than passing interest in the subject would do better to access these sources.

    Each age, and each part of the world, has had a differing view of the vampire, but each of them fits more or less into one of three categories.
    First is the astral or ectoplasmic vampire---the mass that floats in the air. Perhaps it is luminescent, perhaps not. Perhaps the vampire leaves bite marks, perhaps not. But always the person who is under attack by the vampire languishes, grows pale from loss of blood, and often dies.
    Second is the "un-dead", a creature that is neither dead and decomposing in the grave where it is supposed to be, nor living on the earth as a person. This vampire is a corpse that has risen from the grave---at night---powered either by the Devil (a Christian concept) or by its own past misdeeds or even misfortunes...
    The third type of "vampire" is the human being, apparently alive and well, who seeks blood from other humans, usually on a transactional basis...
    The common thread of all three types is the need or craving for blood, either to sustain the vampire's life or, as in many modern cases, an erotic experience.

The Ear In The Wall - After the deviation represented by the novelisation of the screenplay for the serial, The Exploits Of Elaine, which gave us a very out-of-character version of Craig Kennedy indeed, things returned to normal with this 1916 work by Arthur B. Reeve. This series entry is a novel, rather than a collection of short stories (or a collection of short stories pretending to be a novel), and its framework is the ongoing struggle between incumbent District Attorney Carton and the faction of political "boss" Dorgan, with whom Carton's anti-corruption activities are somewhat less than popular. However, the matter that brings Kennedy and his roommate / sidekick / narrator, reporter Walter Jameson, into the fray is the disappearance of Betty Blackwell, who vanished without trace between the Wall Street office where she worked and the Fifth Avenue shops that were her declared destination. The case takes another turn when it is discovered that someone has acquired a dictaphone recording of the conversation at a private dinner hosted by Dorgan, which may prove embarrassing for some, ruinous for others. Carton believes that this surveillance may have been the work of the stockbroker, Langhorne, with whom Dorgan had had a falling out---and who was Betty Blackwell's employer... The Ear In The Wall is more of a conventional novel than most of Reeve's Craig Kennedy stories, with a fairly solid plot revolving around the District Attorney's efforts to break up the political machine of Dorgan, and conversely Dorgan's attempts to smear Carton's reputation for honesty. As so often in American crime writing of this era, the extent to which political corruption is simply taken for granted is hair-raising, and this time around comes accompanied by an almost shrugging acceptance that most of New York's police force is on the take and that, consequently, Carton is pretty much on his own in trying to clean up the graft. Kennedy becomes Carton's main ally, with the ensuing struggle providing the scientist-detective with numerous opportunities to trot out some of the seemingly infinite array of electronic devices he keeps in his laboratory---particularly the surveillance equipment. Indeed, to the modern reader, the activities of Carton and Kennedy, which include the planting of bugs and wire-tapping, seem every bit as outrageous as the more overt criminal activities of Dorgan, his right-hand man Murtha, and their goons; although presumably at the time they had not been formally outlawed. Conversely, there is one aspect of this novel in which, alas, things seem not to have changed at all: there is press hysteria over the disappearance of Betty Blackwell, but when Jameson researches the subject he discovers to his horror that dozens of recent disappearances have passed almost unnoticed---since they didn't involve a pretty white girl from "a good family"...

    "I want to get this thing installed before anyone else calls," Kennedy explained, setting to work immediately.
    "What is it?" I asked, regarding the affair, which included something that looked like a phonograph cylinder.
    "An invention that has just been perfected," he replied without delaying his preparations, "by which it is possible for messages to be sent over the telephone and automatically registered, even in the absence of anyone at the receiving end. Up to the present it has been practicable to take phonograph records only by the direct action of the human voice upon the diaphragm of the instrument. Not long ago there was submitted to the French Academy of Sciences an apparatus by which the receiver of the telephone can be put into communication with a phonograph and a perfect record obtained of the voice of the speaker at the other end of the wire, his message being reproduced at will by merely pressing a button."
    "Wouldn't the telegraphone do?" I asked, remembering our use of that instrument in other cases.
    "It would record," he replied, "but I want a phonograph record. Nothing else will do in this case. You'll see why, before I get through. Besides, this apparatus isn't complicated. Between the diaphragm of the telephone receiver and that of the phonographic microphone is fitted an air chamber of adjustable size, open to the outer atmosphere by a small hole to prevent compression..."
    For several minutes we waited.
    "I don't think I ever heard of such effrontery, such open, bare-faced chicanery," fumed Carton impatiently.
    "We'll catch the fellow yet," replied Kennedy confidently.

A Pocket Full Of Rye - When Rex Fortescue collapses and dies at his office, it is soon evident that he has been poisoned. Investigating at the scene, Inspector Neele makes a curious find: the dead man had grain in his pocket, who which no-one can provide an explanation. When the cup of tea made by his secretary is cleared, attention turns what Mr Fortescue had for breakfast---and who had access to it. Neele learns that the victim lived on the edge of London in a house called Yewtree Lodge, which he shared with his much-younger second wife, Adelaide, his elderly and possibly unbalanced sister-in-law, Miss Ramsbottom, his daughter, Elaine, his son and business partner, Percival, and Percival's wife, Jennifer; the estranged second son, Lancelot, is summoned home from Kenya with his new wife, Patricia. The name of the Fortescue property takes on a new significance when the poison is determined to be taxane, a derivative of yew. However, Neele cannot see how Fortsecue's death could have been an accident, nor how he alone could have been poisoned at a shared breakfast. Even as the inspector wrestles with the question of means, two more deaths occur: Adelaide is found dead following afternoon tea, also poisoned; while the maid, Gladys, is found strangled---with a clothes-peg clipped onto her nose. A newspaper report of the latter brings to the scene Miss Jane Marple, who trained Gladys for domestic service. It is she who sees the significance of the rye in Mr Fortescue's pocket---and who advises Neele to inquire about blackbirds... Published in 1953, A Pocket Full Of Rye is unusual amongst Agatha Christie's 'nursery rhyme mysteries' in that, far from being a mere allusion / joke, this time it seems that someone has taken Sing A Song Of Sixpence rather too much to heart. Indeed, there is nothing funny about the murders themselves---in fact, in keeping with the usual paradox of Christie's Miss Marple stories, the murder of poor Gladys is particularly cold-blooded and upsetting. It is the final indignity of the clothes-peg that so outrages Miss Marple, and determines her to identify the murderer. Invited to stay by Miss Ramsbottom, who speaks ominously of evil and judgement, Miss Marple sets about conducting an invitation in her own quiet way---simply by talking to everyone... It is soon evident that there was no lack of motive for Rex Fortescue's death; in fact, if anything there was a surfeit of motives. Inspector Neele learns that, over the past year, Fortescue's erratic conduct had dragged the family business into financial difficulties, much to Percival's consternation; that he had interfered to prevent Elaine's marriage to a young man he considered unsuitable; and that Adelaide was involved with another man. Meanwhile, Fortescue had several times discovered dead blackbirds in his home---a reference to a certain Blackbird Mine in Africa, which he acquired many years earlier by possibly dubious means. Such was the belief of the widow of Fortescue's then-partner, who accused him of murdering her husband to acquire the mine, and vowed to bring up her children to avenge him. Neele finds himself wrestling with the opposed questions of whether a madman is re-enacting a nursery-rhyme, or whether a long-delayed revenge had at last been taken---and is more than a little aggrieved when Miss Marple insists that, from one point of view, the case is very simple indeed...

    "I wouldn't like to make any accusation unless I was absolutely sure about it. Sure, that is, in my own mind. And I am sure, now."
    "You're sure about what, Miss Marple?"
    "Well, certainly about who killed Mr Fortescue. What you told me about the marmalade, I mean, just clinches the matter. Showing how, I mean, as well as who, and well within the mental capacity."
    Inspector Neele blinked a little.
    "I'm so sorry," said Miss Marple, perceiving this reaction on his part, "I'm afraid I find it difficult sometimes to make myself perfectly clear."
    "I'm not sure yet, Miss Marple, what we're talking about."
    "Well, perhaps," said Miss Marple, "we'd better begin all over again. I mean if you could spare the time. I would rather like to put my own point of view before you. You see, I've talked a good deal to people, to old Miss Ramsbottom and to Mrs Crump and to her husband. He, of course, is a liar, but that doesn't really matter because if you know liars are liars, it comes to the same thing. But I did want to get the telephone calls clear and the nylon stockings and all that."
    Inspector Neele blinked again and wondered what he had let himself in for and why he had ever thought that Miss Marple might be a desirable and clear-headed colleague...

We've established that, after a certain point, Agatha's publishers saw no reason to put effort into the cover-art of her books, which sold like hot-cakes regardless:





However, I have to say that in this case most publishers seem to have done better than usual---taking to heart the novel's nursery-rhyme framework involving blackbirds, a poisoned cup of tea, and even a clothes-peg. For example:


      


But of course, a few remain inexplicable:


      

...which takes us to the end of July. Yay, I guess.

July stats:

Works read: 10
TIOLI: 10, in 10 different challenges

Mystery / thriller: 5
Historical drama: 2
Contemporary drama: 1
Contemporary romance: 1
Non-fiction: 1

Re-reads: 2
Series works: 5
Blog reads: 0
1932: 1
1931: 2
Virago / Persephone: 0
Potential decommission: 0

Owned: 2
Library: 4 (including 1 ebook)
Ebooks: 4

Male authors : female authors: 5 : 5

Oldest work: Valerius: A Roman Story by J. G. Lockhart (1821)
Newest work: Lust For Blood: The Consuming Story Of Vampires by Olga Gruhzit Hoyt (1984)

**********

YTD stats:

Works read: 104
TIOLI: 104, in 80 different challenges, with 8 shared reads

Mystery / thriller: 46
Classics: 12
Contemporary drama: 11
Non-fiction: 6
Historical drama: 5
Horror: 5
Historical romance: 4
Short stories: 4
Young adult: 4
Contemporary romance: 3
Humour: 3
Play: 1

Re-reads: 23
Series works: 49
Blog reads: 5
1932: 3
1931: 7
Virago / Persephone: 2
Potential decommission: 14

Owned: 27
Library: 32 (including 1 ebook)
Ebook: 45

Male authors (editors) : female authors : anonymous: 57 (including 2 using a female pseudonym) : 44 : 3

Oldest work: A Defence Of Their Majesties King William And Queen Mary, Against An Infamous And Jesuitical Libel, Entituled, A True Portraicture Of William Henry Prince Of Nassau, &c by Pierre Jurieu (1689)
Newest work: Kai Lung Raises His Voice by Ernest Bramah (2010)

...definitely "Yay!" about this, anyway:

SLOTHS!!!!!!!!!!!

I had to look twice to make sure it wasn't one sloth and a mirror. Very fitting with your camouflage thread theme this year ...

Yep, all a case of sloth and mirrors! :D

Finished The Crow's Inn Tragedy...which means that I HAVE FINISHED ANOTHER SERIES!!

Okay, another trilogy.

I've also gotten tired of waiting for (and missing) TIOLI slots, so I've crammed this, The Skeleton At The Feast and The Wychford Poisoning Case into my own TIOLI #12; if I can move them later, okay.

Now reading The Picture by Margaret and Susannah Minifie.

>161 lyzard: I especially like the cover of the Polish(?) version, but agree that even the more puzzling images beat the original cover, which is fit for upholstering furniture but ...

>163 lyzard: Congratulations on the sloth relief!

Yes, that one is odd but clever. Most of the others are just odd. :)

Thank you!

Finished The Picture for TIOLI #11.

Now reading How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn.

Book-blogging:

In a very delayed effort to get my 'Timeline of the detective story' reading on the move again, I have begun blogging about George Reynolds' mammoth penny-dreadful, The Mysteries Of London, originally published across 1844 - 1846. There's actually no detective in this, and the only real 'mystery' is not so to the reader; but there is more crime, and sex, and violence, and social criticism, than you could even begin to poke a stick at.

The Mysteries Of London: Volume I (Part 1)

(I'm holding off on my lemur until after I finish this; and then maybe I'll have two...)

>160 lyzard: I think A Pocketful of Rye is my favorite Christie. The first British TV series of Miss Marple stories did a lovely job with it too.

>171 ffortsa:

Hi, Judy! Thanks for visiting. :)

I always find it hard to pick favourites with Christie. I think the adaptations of this one are among the better ones because they stay closer to the text than most.

The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties - Though published in 1814, Frances Burney's final novel was conceived and begun many years earlier, and so became an historical drama almost by accident. Set in England, but with the French Revolution a constant background presence, the novel concerns the 'difficulties' (to put it mildly) of a young woman known variously as the Wanderer, the Stranger, Miss Ellis (not her real name), and Juliet, whose real identity is not revealed until late in the narrative. Appearing out of the night and heavily disguised, she makes one of a small party of English people fleeing France via boat. Arriving in Portsmouth, her first action is to lose her purse (or rather, to have it stolen)---thus setting in motion a plot which allows Burney to explore the dangers and difficulties of a woman alone in Georgian England. In particular, Juliet's need to earn a living finds her consecutively employed as a music teacher, a seamstress, a paid companion and a shopkeeper, and struggling under the combined burdens of pittance wages, brutally long hours, class snobbery and bullying. Furthermore, her anomalous position prompts almost every man she encounters to assume that she is sexually available, leading to harassment and even attempted assault. Even the novel's putative hero, Albert Harleigh, though depicted as a generous and honourable man, adds to Juliet's problems by refusing to leave her alone when she asks him to, further muddying her reputation and increasing the general suspicion with which she is viewed---which in turn impacts her ability to earn a living. While she uses Juliet to illustrate the reality of financial dependence and the dangers that could beset a woman alone, Burney goes even further with the character of Elinor Joddrel, an eccentric young woman who has become imbued with "revolutionary principles"---including feminism. Burney treads an odd and not always successful line here: while on the whole Elinor's position is rejected within the narrative, she is nevertheless allowed to advance "radical" arguments about the position of women in society, female education and other such hot-button issues; and the reader is left with the sense that Burney herself secretly held certain beliefs that she did not dare embrace openly. This soft-pedalling was not enough for the critics, however: the combination of Burney's unflattering depiction of English society as venal, selfish and distinctly un-Christian, and the prominence of Elinor and her views within the narrative, saw The Wanderer savagely attacked at the time of its publication, with the result that it fell rapidly out of favour with the public and today is easily the least known of Burney's four novels. It is a work worth rediscovery, however---not least because, dismaying as it is to realise, much of it is still relevant today, in particular its treatment of such issues as endemic bullying, the attitude of the rich to the poor, the exploitation of the vulnerable, and the sexual dangers with which many women must deal on a daily basis. The Wanderer is not an easy read: like all of Burney's novels, it is very long, and crowded with an almost bewildering array of characters. It is also a work more of its time of conception than of its publication date, in that it is highly melodramatic---both in terms of its emotive language and sentiment, and with respect to the eventual revelation of the two explosive secrets in Juliet's past, and the reasons for her strange behaviour. However, the portrait offered in The Wanderer of late 18th century England, its championing of the wage-earner, and its position as a proto-feminist work, however confused and tentative that aspect of its narrative may be, make the effort worthwhile.

    Juliet was equally, also, unprepared for continual and vexatious delays of payment... Yet, vanity and false reasoning set apart, the ladies for whom she worked were neither hard of heart nor illiberal; but they had never known distress! and were too light and unreflecting to weigh the circumstances by which it might be produced, or prevented.
    To save time, and obviate innumerable mortifications, Juliet, at first, employed a commissioner to carry home her work, and to deliver her bills; but he returned always with empty messages, that if Miss Ellis would call herself, she should be paid. Yet when, with whatever reluctance, she complied, she was ordinarily condemned to wait in passages, or anti-chambers, for whole hours, and even whole mornings; which were commonly ended by an excuse, through a footman, or lady's maid, that Lady or Miss such a one was too much engaged, or too much indisposed, to see her till the next day. The next day, when, with renewed expectation, she again presented herself, the same scene was re-acted; though the passing to and fro of various comers and goers, proved that it was only to herself her fair creditor was invisible.
    Nevertheless, if she mentioned that she had some pattern, or some piece of work, finished for any other lady to exhibit, she was immediately admitted; though still, with regard to payment, she was desired to call again in the evening, or the next morning, with a new bill; her old one happening, unluckily, to be always lost or mislaid; and not seldom, while stopping in an anti-room, to arrange her packages, she heard exclamations of, "How amazingly tiresome is that Miss Ellis! pestering one so, always, for her money!"
    Is it possible, thought Juliet, that common humanity, nay, common sense, will not tell these careless triflers, that their complaint is a lampoon upon themselves? Will no reflexion, no feeling point out to them, that the time which they thus unmercifully waste in humiliating attendance, however to themselves it may be a play-thing, if not a drug, is, to those who subsist but by their use of it, shelter, clothing, and nourishment?

Finished How Green Was My Valley for TIOLI #1.

Now reading The Giant Book Of World Famous Murders by Colin, Damon and Rowan Wilson.

Blue Voyage - Published in 1927 and five years in the writing, the poet Conrad Aiken's first novel is more correctly described as a work of self-analysis that uses the form of the novel merely as a framework. Aiken's alter-ego here is William Demarest, a sort-of successful writer who, in any event, feels he earned sufficient professional status to justify his open pursuit of Cynthia, a young woman of much higher social standing than his own. He embarks upon an ocean-liner voyage from New York to London, where he believes Cynthia to be, but discovers only a day into his voyage that she is also on board---although in first class, whereas he is travelling second. When he invades the upper reaches of the ship, technically forbidden to him, Cynthia is pleased to see him---but mentions casually that she is engaged to someone else... Blue Voyage is a work that toggles between the intriguing and the exasperating: an extended piece of experimental writing that can be best summed up as 'Sigmund Freud meets James Joyce'. This is a self-absorbed and, in many ways, self-indulgent work, rescued from intolerability (is that a word?) by another "self": self-awareness. William Demarest in himself is an insufferable narcissist, yet behind him always is the sense that Conrad Aiken is consciously putting his own worst qualities down on paper as way of exorcising some of his demons. Wounded masculine pride drives the body of the novel, which consists of a largely stream-of-consciousness rendering of Demerest's processing of his rejection---if you can even call it a rejection: through the murk of Demerest's egotism we see that Cynthia has never thought of him as he did of her. Memory, imagination, past affairs, silly shipboard incidents, grand passion, petty vindictiveness, excuses and accusations all tangle strangely in this winding self-exploration; though what may be the novel's most crucial and telling interlude does not come until late in the narrative, in a series of reproachful letters from Demarest to Cynthia, written but never sent, in which what starts as lofty renunciation and forgiveness progressively crumbles away into a petulant temper-tantrum. The lurking humour in this last sequence points towards Blue Voyage's saving grace; graces. The book achieves a strange balance, unfolding almost entirely within its protagonist's consciousness, yet maintaining a sense of wryly amused detachment as Demarest goes through his dark night of the ego. Furthermore, though his own specific and narrow situation provides the catalyst, Demarest's communion with himself eventually expands to embrace a far broader consideration of the struggles and disappointments that are an inevitable component of human relationships, and connection between emotion and creativity. In the end, however, what Blue Voyage has to say is generally less remarkable than how it says it. That Conrad Aiken was a poet first is evident at every turn: this the work of a man with a profound love of words and their possibilities. However serious, or just pseudo-serious, the subject matter at hand, Aiken delivers it in a swirl of language both rich and allusive. His text is dense with word-games, obscure and archaic terms, passing references both trivial and classic, biblical and pop-cultural, onomatopoeia, and dirty jokes---much of it shaped into paragraphs that run literally for pages. This, too, is a form of self-indulgence, of course, and for the individual reader is likely to be either be the final straw or the aspect of Blue Voyage that makes its other indulgences worth wading through.

Good God... After all these dreams of ships, too! Always looking for Cynthia on ships... When I get to London, I won't dare to go and see her. No point in it. Spoiled. The whole thing spoiled. The world pulled down and wrecked. Better be like Smith and gather my rosebuds while I may... Poor old Smith! The cherub, in pink pyjamas, sleeps surrounded by Faubian's heliotrope-smelling dresses, and dreams he is dancing with chorus girls. Lottie, Flo, Hyacintha, Vyolette, Dol, Maybelle, Parthenia. They all dance frou-frouishly around him, squealing, ring around a rosy, joining hands, and Cherub Smith stands in the middle, in the grass, with his finger in his mouth, looking coy. Coo-hoo, Parthenia! I see you, Maybelle! I know it was you who slapped me, Nottie Lottie!... There's a corporal in the grass... Smith impersonating a satyr, runs with a resinous torch, and thrusts it under a translucent chlamys, igniting it. Parthenia is burned. Goes off flaming. Ha, ha!... Splendid old Smith... This is what it is to be homo sapiens, the laughing animal, the animal who remembers and foresees ... Smith and the clairvoyant---the clairvoyant corporal springs out of the deep grass, skull-faced and hideous, and grimly pursues poor old Smith, who screams among the tombstones---Flottie, Hyacintha, Partha, Flow, Boybell, Dole, Violent. He is felled like an ox. To what green altar, oh mysterious priest? And all his crispy flanks in garlic drest. The uses of assonance. Gloom and gleam. Birth and death. Love and live. Mingle and mangle. Fix and flux. Prick and puck. Pop and pap. Twit and tot. Point and punt. Dram and dream. So near and yet so far... What if it were at last possible to talk of everything with a woman? To keep no secrets, no dark recesses of the mind, no dolours and danks, which could not be shared with her? But then she would have ceased to be attractive. Is it simply because we have to pose before her...to pretend to be angels...the angel with the sword?... Ah, the awful fixed curve of determinism! MISERY... You overhear all these reflections, Cynthia?... All, maggot... Forgive me forgive me forgive me forgive me. I am horrible but I am penitent. I will crawl on my knees to the Bilbao canal and drink of its filthy waters. I will bathe in slime. I will fill my belly with ashes...

Banned in Boston!

Conrad Aiken's Blue Voyage is another book that would have been banned for its overall tone rather than any specific scene: it takes casual sex very much for granted, and there is constant speculation amongst the characters about who might be sleeping with who; the protagonist several times muses upon his own past sexual experiences, while around him play out---well, not so much shipboard romances as furtive shipboard encounters.

Some of the novel's language may also have been found objectionable---although probably not, alas, its racial epithets; while if there was any issue with its touch of homophobia, it was likely only the admission that there was something to be homophobic about:

Little Vampire Women - Lynn Messina's horror-comedy mash-up of Louisa May Alcott's classic reimagines the March family as a clan of vampires: enlightened vampires, of course, who co-exist with their mortal neighbours, feed predominantly upon the blood of animals, and consider the biting of human beings in violation of their humanitarian principles...most of the time... Little Vampire Women is at its strongest when it is giving the reader new versions of its sources most famous moments and subplots: thus, Jo's ambition is, not be be a writer, but to train as one of the defenders who protect the community from vampire-hunters; Laurie's pursuit of Jo is motivated by his desire to be 'turned'; Beth shows her gratitude to old Mr Lawrence for the gift of the piano by biting him (Laurie is most annoyed that his grandfather gets there first); Meg is led astray by her association with the Gardiners and the Moffats not because they are rich and she poor, but because they are not humanitarian; Jo's hostility towards John Brooke stems not from sisterly jealously, but her suspicion that he is secretly a vampire-hunter; and so on. It also gets a great deal of queasy humour - or tries to; this will be matter of (excuse the expression) individual taste - out of scenes of the well-behaved March sisters dining upon small animals (Beth exists almost exclusively on kittens). Ultimately, however, like most of these recent pastiches, Little Vampire Women is funnier in concept than in execution, chiefly because it drags the joke out too far by reworking the entire novel, instead, perhaps, of offering a cut-down version of it. Furthermore, the blending into the main text of a vampire "alternative history", complete with footnotes and quotes from (fictional) seminal texts upon the subject, seems mostly out of place. Still, for those familiar with Alcott's novel - but not so attached to it that this is likely to cause an affront - it has its moments.

    "Christmas won't be Christmas without any corpses," grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.
    "It's dreadful to be so poor!" sighed Meg, looking down at her old dress.
    "I don't think it's fair for some vampires to have plenty of pretty squirming things, and other vampires nothing at all," added little Amy, with an injured sniff.
    Being so poor, the Marches customarily dined on quarts of pig's blood, goat's blood, and, on very special occasions, cow's blood, but they rarely had the luxury of a living, breathing animal to feast on, and when they did, it was usually a small creature hardly more than a snack. Most of their meals had to be warmed over the fire to be brought up to proper temperature, which was particularly humiliating for the young girls. Gone were the days when they could sink their fangs into a wiggling beaver; let alone a writhing cow. A human had never been on the menu, even when the family was wealthy and lived in a large, well-appointed house, for the Marches were humanitarians who believed the consumption of humans unworthy of the modern vampire. Humans were an inferior species in many ways, but they deserved to be pitied, not consumed...

Here I am, following along with your reviews of century-old mysteries and racy novels when ... screeeeeeeech! ... up pops a vampiric pastiche on Little Women! You have a mighty range, Liz.

Appearances may be a little deceiving in that respect: both of my 'newest' reads this year date from 2010; one of them (Kai Lung Raises His Voice) is a collection of previously uncollected, century-old short stories; the other is a reworking of a novel from 1868. So I'm not really straying from my paddock as much as it seems... :D

Finished The Giant Book Of World Famous Murders for TIOLI #12.

Now reading Frisk by Dennis Cooper.

>179 lyzard: a reworking of a novel from 1868

Well yes, good point! I'm relieved you haven't completely changed personality. :-D

The Wychford Poisoning Case - Though its contemporary popularity has not been maintained, Anthony Berkeley's series featuring Roger Sheringham has nevertheless remained in print since the initial appearance of the amateur detective in the mid-1920s...mostly. After its first publication, one book in the series was subsequently omitted when the rest were reissued. This remained the case until Collins began reviving various classic mysteries under its "Detective Story Club" imprint just a few years ago---with The Wychford Poisoning Case finding its way back into print in 2017 for the first time since its US edition of 1930. It isn't hard to see why embarrassed publishers shied away from this particular series entry. Anthony Berkeley always had a tendency to reflect his generally rocky real-life relationships in his books, with the result that a number of them skirt misogynistic territory---while one or two take a running jump right into the middle of it. The Wychford Poisoning Case is one of those tiresome books from the 1920s which finds the author bemoaning "these young people today", in particular the heinous conduct of young women---guilty of such atrocities as wearing makeup, driving fast, drinking cocktails, and not treating the author's own generation with the respect the author thinks it deserves. Anthony Berkeley, however, was not content merely to bemoan: instead he took his frustrations and resentments out in a series of cringe-worthy scenes in which a representative young woman is forcibly held down and spanked by her older male cousin---these being supported by constant threats of more of the same, and self-congratulatory moments in which the young woman's "improved" attitude is smugly noted. The jocular tone of all this only makes it worse---being a version of the all-too-common situation of someone being called on making a misogynistic or racist or homophobic remark, and then insisting, "I was only joking." In addition, at one point we get a two-page-long diatribe about the "inherent" idiocy of women; and while this comes with a rather unconvincing disclaimer, there are enough other sneering generalisations scattered in the text to evaporate any suggestion of "just kidding". The final insult in all this is that it comes in context of a series in which the insufferable conduct of its lead character is pretty much the point---yet no-one threatens to hit Roger Sheringham until he changes his behaviour, let alone does it. On the contrary: he gets petted and indulged and encouraged, and is just as obnoxious at the end of the series as he was at the beginning. It can be difficult to see past all this to the actual mystery in The Wychford Poisoning Case, but there's an intriguing story in there if you can manage it; while the one tiny justification for Berkeley's revelations of his personal hang-ups is that most of the suspicion directed at Mrs Bentley following the death of her husband likewise has its basis in generalisations about women (a point which suggests that Berkeley was aware of his own issues, but unable to combat them); although the fact that she is a pretty Frenchwoman does her no favours with her prejudiced British neighbours either. Indeed, no-one has any doubt about Mrs Bentley's guilt when it is proved that her husband died of arsenic poisoning---no-one except Roger Sheringham who, having studied the case, gets the uncomfortable feeling that there is too much evidence against Mrs Bentley, just as there seems to have been too much arsenic in the Bentley household. Is it possible that Mrs Bentley has been framed? - even that more than one person was attempting John Bentley's life? The latter seems improbable, while the police case against Mrs Bentley rests upon no-one else having the opportunity to poison Bentley; but when Sheringham begins to investigate the case for himself, he learns that in fact any of half a dozen people had the opportunity to give Bentley the fatal dose---which makes it a question of motive, and temperament... The Wychford Poisoning Case is explicitly presented as a "psychological" mystery, with the accompanying suggestion that this form is superior to the "puzzle" mysteries that were popular at the time. At the same time, the narrative carries a warning against too much psychology, or rather, against privileging it over hard evidence: Roger ends up mentally apologising to several of his suspects, and chiding himself for getting carried away by "fascinating theories". The latter touch points to The Wychford Poisoning Case as possibly the accidental inspiration for Berkeley's later The Poisoned Chocolates Case; while it may likewise have influenced Dorothy Sayers' Strong Poison, a far superior mystery.

    "Mrs Allen? How does she come into it?"
    "Well, surely that's obvious. She's hating nothing more in the world than Mrs Bentley. What more satisfying revenge could she have than by causing her rival to be hanged as a murderess? It would be superb."
    "But dash it all, she couldn't go to the length of poisoning Bentley to ensure it?" Alec protested.
    "Wouldn't she?" said Roger thoughtfully. "I'm not too sure about that. A woman can be a pretty dreadful devil in circumstances like those, you know. And how do we know that she hadn't got something against Bentley as well? Oh, yes, I think we can set her down as having a motive, all right, and a strong one too. She goes down on our list of double suspects."
    "Double suspects?"
    "Yes, opportunity and motive. There are six suspects under opportunity, and four of those crop up again under motive."
    Roger leaned back in his chair and expelled a cloud of smoke from his lungs. "What's it going to turn out, Alec? Murder for gain, murder for revenge, murder for elimination, murder for jealousy, murder from lust for killing, or murder from conviction...?"

...although all that said, I'm not sure that the most bizarre thing about The Wychford Poisoning Case isn't its florid dedication to "that most delightful of writers", E. M. Delafield, whom Berkeley knew well.

I am entirely unable to imagine what Delafield must have thought about that, all things considered.

We should also note Berkeley's references to, "Those long criminological discussions of ours," and how Delafield would, "Recognise in it many of your own ideas." That last sounds to me like Berkeley may have pinched his plot from her---which, in context, would be entirely typical...

He sounds like a Grade A jerk! I don't think I'll be tackling that series when we've finished with Miss Silver.

Yeah, pretty much.

The series itself is rather perverse, in that it is at its most interesting when its detective fails most dismally. To Berkeley's credit, that's the point; but---it's like those TV series that over time become what they were supposed to be parodying. Roger was supposed to be a satire of the era's amateur detectives and their affectations, but a lot of the time he's just as obnoxious as the characters he was intended to mock.

So as individual mysteries some of these are very good; but the series overall is hard to take. If that makes sense. :)

Vol du Nuit (translation: Night Flight) - Published in 1931, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's second aviation-themed novel is another semi-autobiographical work, this time drawing upon his experiences as an air-mail pilot with a Buenos Aires-based firm. This short novel's point-of-view is, however, divided between that of the pilots as they fly their dangerous missions, and that of Rivière, the director of a South American airline company that has entered into competition with rail and sea as a mail-carrier. Air-mail is the faster and more efficient route, but only if it includes night-flying, so that the advantages of speed and direction are not then surrendered by overnight grounding. Though Rivière himself has no doubts, he must convince his Board of Directors to accept the inherent risks involved in sending planes up at night---and find pilots willing to take those risks... Vol du Nuit is a significant improvement over its predecessor, Courrier Sud: Saint-Exupéry is in better control of his material, and the split-vision of the narrative means that the author's more lyrical prose, which reflects the thoughts and emotions of the pilots as they battle the elements while alone in the night sky, is alternated with the grounded viewpoint of Rivière, as he himself is grounded. Furthermore, Vol du Nuit's attention remains upon its aviation, which makes it more conceptually satisfying than the much more diffuse Courrier Sud. The narrowing of the novel's focus to a single pilot in trouble, and the experiences of those on the ground as they wait for news, results in an ever-growing sense of tension; while the reader is constantly reminded of the terrifying fragility of the planes of this era. The one point of dissatisfaction is that, while Saint-Exupéry evidently agreed with Rivière's stance on the necessity of night-flying in mail delivery, he never really articulates why he believed it was worth risking men's lives for. Perhaps he felt that the answer was self-evident. It may not be to the lay-reader, however; while this omission leaves the novel effectively saying, not This is so important that it must be done, even if men die doing it, but rather, Men die doing this, so it must be important. It is the one significant flaw in an otherwise powerful work.

    Without moving a muscle Rivière stared out at the night.
    Each new message boded new peril for the mail. Each new town able to reply before the telephone lines were wrecked reported the advance of the cyclone, like that of an invasion. "It's coming from the interior, from the cordillera. It's sweeping everything before it towards the sea..."
    Rivière looked up at the stars. They were too bright and the air was too humid. What a strange night! It was rotting away in patches, like the flesh of a glowing peach. The stars in all their glory still shone down on Buenos Aires, but they were no more than an oasis, and a temporary one at that. A haven which in any case was beyond Fabian's reach. A night of menace, touched and tainted by an evil wind. A difficult night to overcome.
    Somewhere in its depths a plane was in peril; but here on the bank one waved one's arms in vain...

Film-blogging:

I previously wrote a short (no, really) review of the 1933 adaptation of Vol du Nuit, produced and directed by Clarence Brown under the book's English-language title, Night Flight. You may find it here (scroll down a bit).

The book was a best-seller, but it seems the film version was too much of a downer for most audiences, in spite of its remarkable cast:

Finished Frisk for TIOLI #13.

Now reading Satanskin by James Havoc.

>162 lyzard:, >163 lyzard: Yay!

>173 lyzard: And coincidentally I just wrote my thoughts up for The Wanderer too! I was wondering if it's original unpopularity is why it's currently out of print (when Oxford University Press have her other three novels in print) which seems a shame.

>177 lyzard: I was aware of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters but hadn't heard of Little Vampire Women! I'm not sure I'd want to commit to reading any of them but I watched the film of P&P&Z and it was bad in an enjoyable way which was what I'd hoped for.

>179 lyzard:, >181 rosalita: I was rather taken aback :-)

>182 lyzard:, >183 lyzard: Hmm, I have The Layton Court Mystery and The Silk Stocking Murders (thanks again for those) - I am not sure about The Wychford Poisoning. I think I may see how much I enjoy his other books.

And that dedication seems like a very back-handed compliment. I'd love to know what Delafield thought of that book.

Also to add I'm hoping to get Dead Man's Folly finished tomorrow for a shared read!

>175 lyzard:: This, too, is a form of self-indulgence, of course, and for the individual reader is likely to be either be the final straw or the aspect of Blue Voyage that makes its other indulgences worth wading through.

From someone in the latter camp: nice review. I agree about the balance between Aiken's self-indulgence and his attempts to distance himself from self-indulgence. He doesn't exactly succeed in maintaining the balance, but when he fails he does it so well.

>189 souloftherose:

Well done! I think it's a shame that Virago never tackled these other works by important but now lesser-known authors, rather than turning out more editions of Austen and the Brontes: The Wanderer is certainly no less important than Cecilia when it comes to its feminist-relevant themes.

Apropos, I had one more thought on the "important female authors before Austen" front. I will add it to the bottom of The Wanderer thread, and hope to see you there... :)

Little Vampire Women was a gift, and not something I would have acquired for myself, though I'm not sorry I read it.

It's hard to advise about the Roger Sheringham series: I do think its important, and several of the books are very good; but there's always a degree of teeth-clenching about them (not usually as much as in The Wychford Poisoning Case, though!). I think it's significant that the ones I like best are the ones in which Roger basically fails---probably those are the ones that were closest to Berkeley's original intent in writing them. A successful Roger is just another of the era's bundle-of-affectations amateur detectives.

I think Berkeley, in his self-absorbed way, was probably sincere; but I can imagine Delafield rolling her eyes... :D

I'm hoping to get Dead Man's Folly finished tomorrow for a shared read!

Whoo!!

>190 swynn:

I can understand that feeling, but while I enjoyed it to an extent, it did finally become a bit much for me.

Weirdly I'm now reading another book that made me think of Blue Voyage, though in other ways they could nor be more entirely different: Satanskin by James Havoc. It's a collection of short-short-stories about demons and devils and ghouls, and full of sex and violence and sex and horror and sex and excrement and sex...but its language is experimental / arcane in the same sort of reaching-for-the-dictionary way. It's also very self-indulgent. :)

>192 lyzard: Into the swamp with Satanskin!

:D

Know what a tulpa is? Because that's one of his favourites.

Malefice - Set during the Interregnum, Leslie Wilson's 1992 historical novel deals with the condemnation and execution of a witch, Alice Slade. Its centrepiece is the battle of wills between Alice and the minister, Richard Berkeley, through the night preceding her death; while around this the thoughts, sins and secrets of the villagers are revealed; with the story told from varying perspectives---that of Alice's family, of her beneficiares and victims, of the local squire, of the village's previous minister, who refused to change with the times and had his ears lopped for his pains. Unexpectedly, Alice actually is a witch, dealing in charms and curses according to her mood and her treatment by others; but she is also a frail old woman, being tortured and tormented through the night for the good of her soul---perhaps. Though in theory he speaks and acts with the authority of the Church, Berkeley is a weak and frightened man, painfully aware of his own failures and shortcomings---and consequently, no match for Alice... Malefice is a short but rather elegant novel, rich in irony. The confusion of the Civil War, with its enforced allegiances to a Protector rather than a King, and the splintering into sects of the Church, forms a fitting backdrop to this tale in which the villagers dutifully attend church and listen to Richard Berkeley's sermons, but invariably turn to Alice in their troubles. It is Richard Berkeley's duty to bring Alice to confession, through exhortation and torture; but what comes to light is less about Alice's dark transactions than what Berkeley has always feared about himself, and turned a blind eye to with respect to his parishioners---whose transgressions may now be conveniently laid at Alice's door. It is the ovel's overarching irony that in spite of Alice's dark dealings, in spite too of the appearance in the narrative of her frightening "familiars" and even of Satan himself, most of the "malefice" is invested in the venality of village and its inhabitants.

    "Alice," said Richard. "Is it true that you wrote the charm on a pig's skin?"
    "It was a pig's skin."
    "That must be a lie," he insisted, lusting for misery. "Alice, I can have you whipped again for your obstinacy. I will have them run you for an hour this time, Alice." She looked up blearily from the huddle of her old limbs on the filthy floor...
    "Hell gapes, Alice," he said. "Now is the time to tell the truth and shame the Devil." Shameless Satan laughed, as Richard had known he would.
    "I'm not lying," she said. "Why don't you want to believe me?" She thought: He needs to be convinced.
    "And my son, Alice, did you let him lie quiet in his grave?" Tears jarred his voice again.
    She thought: Now I have him. I can torment him, can say I dug his son up, roasted his sweetbreads for my dinner, gave the liver and lights to my dog. He wants a confession, doesn't he, isn't that why he won't let me sleep? He'd never have another night's sleep himself.
    She looked at his long thin face that stretched up into the bald scalp, at his eyebrows raised against the weight of melancholy and fear: I can't, she thought, I'm sorry for him. Why am I sorry for him, when he had me beaten?

Best-selling books in the United States for 1938:

1. The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
2. The Citadel by A. J. Cronin
3. My Son, My Son! by Howard Spring
4. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
5. Northwest Passage by Kenneth Roberts
6. All This, and Heaven Too by Rachel Field
7. The Rains Came by Louis Bromfield
8. And Tell of Time by Laura Krey
9. The Mortal Storm by Phyllis Bottome
10. Action at Aquila by Hervey Allen

The most immediately striking thing about the 1938 best-sellers list is the high proportion of them adapted into successful films

There are two exceptions---both of them books dealing with the Civil War. Perhaps they thought there was no chance of competing with Gone With The Wind? - or conversely, they might have worried that people were all Civil War-ed out. Hervey Allen's Action at Aquila is about the impact upon an honourable Northern soldier of his enforced participation in Sherman's 'scorched earth' strategy---which frankly sounds a lot more interesting than Allen's #1 best-seller of 1933, Anthony Adverse. Laura Krey's And Tell of Time occupies much of the same territory as the second half of GWTW, with white Southern landowners dealing with the Reconstruction.

The Citadel (d: King Vidor, s: Robert Donat, Rosalind Russell), Northwest Passage (d: King Vidor, Jack Conway, s: Spencer Tracy, Robert Young) and The Rains Came (d: Clarence Brown, s: Tyrone Power, Myrna Loy) are all holdovers from the 1937 list.

All This, and Heaven Too (d: Anatole Litvak, s: Bette Davis, Charles Boyer) is also an historical novel, Rachel Field's adaptation of the story of her great-aunt, who was the 'other woman' in a notorious murder case that occurred amongst the aristocracy in 19th century France. (I a couple of years ago.)

Meanwhile, Phyllis Bottome's The Mortal Storm (d: Frank Borzage, s: Margaret Sullivan, James Stewart) is absolutely contemporary, dealing with a divided German family (the second wife and youngest child are Jewish) who must choose sides with the rise of the Nazis.

Howard Spring's My Son, My Son! (d: Charles Vidor, s: Madeleine Carroll, Brian Aherne, Louis Hayward) is the story of a self-made man determined to give his son everything of which he was deprived as a boy---and sees him grow into a selfish and destructive man.

Rebecca (d: Alfred Hitchcock, s: Joan Fontaine, Laurence Olivier, Judith Anderson) is Daphne du Maurier's famous 'modern Gothic', about a young bride who finds her marriage shadowed by her husband's dead first wife.

But the year's best-selling book was another work of historical fiction, Marjorie Kinnan Rawling's The Yearling (d: Clarence Brown, s: Gregory Peck, Claude Jarman Jr), a coming-of-age story set in the Florida wilderness during the late 19th century.

Marjorie Kinnan was born in Washington DC in 1896 and began writing at a very early age, winning a prize for one of her short stories when she was 15. She attended the University of Wisconsin - Madison and took a degree in English, working subsequently for the university literary magazine. In 1919, she married Charles Rawlings; the two moved first to Louisville, then to New York, both working as journalists.

In 1928, Rawlings received an inheritance which allowed her to purchase a property in rural northern Florida. To that point her adult writing had mostly been in the romance genre but, encouraged by her editor, Rawlings began making close observations about her surroundings, the local wildlife and her neighbours. The year 1933 marked a turning point: the Rawlings' marriage fell apart when Charles decided that rural life was not for him, but Marjorie's first regional novel, South Moon Under, was a Book-Of-The-Month selection and a Pulitzer Prize nominee. She subsequently won the 1939 Pulitzer for The Yearling, a coming-of-age story set in the same territory, in the aftermath of the Civil War. She followed it with the semi-autobiographical Cross Creek, also a success.

However, Rawlings' neighbours did not take kindly to what they viewed as her appropriation of their lives: hostility and a lawsuit followed, with Rawlings abandoning her property and moving to Crescent Beach, where she married hotelier, Norton Baskin. She also bought property in New York, dividing her time between there and Florida. She continued to write, but struggled to reproduce her earlier success; although her final novel, The Secret River, won a Newbery Award. Rawlings died in 1953, of a cerebral haemorrhage.

The Yearling - I need to start this review with a disclaimer: though I'm pretty sure I would have hated this book no matter when I read it, I could not possibly have read it at a worst time; while dealing with my cat's illness, the last thing in the world I needed was a narrative dwelling in relentless detail upon animal killing and injury; and while I can't in honesty call this aspect of The Yearling gratuitous, it left me feeling emotionally battered and rather nauseated. In some detached corner of my mind, I'm aware that this is probably a novel with some literary virtues; but just at the moment, I'm entirely incapable of seeing them. Anyway--- Set during the years following the Civil War, The Yearling is the story of Ezra Ezekial Baxter, nicknamed 'Penny', his sharp-tongued wife, Ora, and their dreamy twelve-year-old son, Jody, as they struggle to make a living in the Florida scrub-land. Barely producing enough crops to support themselves, the Baxters must supplement their food and income by hunting. When Penny is bitten by a rattlesnake, he shoots a deer to use its liver as a home-remedy---leaving the animal's fawn an orphan. Painfully lonely after the death of his only friend, a crippled boy who infused him with his own love of animals, and desperate for something of his own to care for, Jody persuades his parents to let him raise the fawn... The only aspects of The Yearling that I could embrace wholeheartedly were its evocative descriptions of the Florida wilderness in which the Baxters fought to make a living, and the shrewd delineation of the family's contentious relationship with their only neighbours, a clan of adult males who represent both a danger and a resource. Otherwise---well, perhaps I'm guilty of only seeing the negative, but even allowing for the fact that this novel is predominantly about the relationship between a boy and his father, I was disturbed by the way in which Ora was made an outsider in her own home: repeatedly dismissed within the narrative, both practically and emotionally---excluded from the male bonding, depicted as incapable of understanding the things so important to her husband and son, and left to carry the weight of the family's hardscrabble existence while Penny and Jody are off on their various expeditions. Then, too, while Penny is presented as wise and sympathetic, I couldn't help being struck by his selfishness in choosing such an isolated spot to build his farm---thus condemning his wife and son to inescapable hardship. (And he does little to relieve their burden: from the time they arrived he was always going to build a well near the farmhouse; but, you know...) Inevitably, it is Penny who sees how important the fawn is to Jody, while to Ora is it simply a nuisance and a distraction---and another mouth to feed. Dubbed 'Flag' for its white tail, the fawn fills a void in Jody's existence and brings him much joy, but as the animal grows its behaviours become increasingly problematic for the farming family. A crisis is reached when the territory is hit by a storm of unprecedented violence, which floods the lands and destroys the crops---leaving the Baxters on the verge of starvation, and Jody confronted by a terrible decision...

    Jody was aroused by a piercing shriek from his mother. Flag had awakened her from a sound sleep by pushing his wet muzzle against her face. Jody slipped the fawn out by the front door before she could do a more thorough job of it.
    "Now, that ends it," she raged. "The creetur gives me no peace day or night. Now he cain't come in this house, no time, never no more."
    Penny had kept apart from the controversy. Now he spoke from his bed. "Your Ma's right, boy. He's got too big and restless to be in the house."
    Jody went back to bed and lay wakeful, wondering if Flag were cold. He thought it was unreasonable of his mother to object to the clean soft nose against her own. He could never get enough of fondling the delicate muzzle. She was a mean, hard woman and did not care if he was lonely. His resentment eased him and he went to sleep, clutching his pillow and pretending that it was Flag. The fawn snorted and stomped around the house most of the night.
    In the morning Penny felt well enough to dress and hobble around the clearing, leaning on a stick. He made the rounds. He returned to the rear of the house. His face was grave. He called Jody to him. Flag had trampled back and forth across the tobacco-seed bed...
    "I don't figger Flag done it malicious," he said. "He were jest racin' back and forth and it were somethin' to jump on, was all. Now you go set up stakes all through the bed amongst the plants and all around the bed, to keep him offen the rest of 'em. I should have done it before, I reckon, but I never studied on him rompin' in that pertickler place."
    Penny's reasonableness and kindness depressed Jody as his mother's rage had not done. He turned away disconsolately to do the job.
    Penny said, "Now it jest bein' accidental-like, we'll not say nothin' to your Ma..."

Finished Satanskin for TIOLI #1.

I'm having trouble settling on what to read next, partly because none of the books that seem tempting at this particular moment are readily available to me. Most of them require either an ILL or to be read in-library. Meanwhile, GoogleBooks holds only the second edition of the 19th century novel, Louisa Egerton, which was compressed from three (two?) volumes into one and therefore has font far too small to work on my eReader. It will have to be read online, which is a pain (not least because it's 791 pages long!).

(The State Library has an original edition of Louisa Egerton, from 1830, but of course it can only be accessed in the library...)

So I'm in that perverse condition, known to most readers, I'm sure, in which none of the squillions of books stacked on shelves and sitting in piles around me as I type this seems the least bit appealing. None of them are doing what usually happens when I pick a book---saying in a tiny, insistent voice in my head, "Me, now!"

I'll hold off for the present, hoping that one of them does finally speak to me; and failing that, I'll have to fall back on consulting TIOLI...

>197 lyzard: How interesting that Rawlings's neighbors drove her out of town. I'll bet there are a few interesting stories behind *that* ....

>198 lyzard: Yikes, the timing for that read really was awful. I confess that Ora's outsider status didn't rise above the background noise of the family's hardscrabble existence (and no doubt my own perspective), so I appreciate that insight.

I'm behind on bestsellers: I've only just started The Grapes of Wrath. It's a reread for me but my last time was about 25 years ago. Goal is to finish before your review arrives!

>200 swynn:

The situation ran the gamut from a law-suit (which she won) to threats with a shotgun, so she sensibly decided it was time to get out of Dodge. She seems to have been genuinely surprised by the reaction, which suggests a very self-absorbed personality.

It was tortuous: the whole time I was reading there was a little voice in the back of my head going, Stopitstopohpleasejuststopit...

I haven't read anything else by her, but apparently a lot of Rawlings' writing is very male-focused, which is interesting if a bit odd. But I have a history of sympathising with the parent who has to be the "bad guy", whether I'm supposed to or not. (I usually end up siding with the "wrong" point of a love-triangle, too...)

Goal is to finish before your review arrives!

Take your time. :D

I have The Keys Of The Kingdom on hold at my academic library but I won't get a chance to pick it up until next week some time...which is one reason why I was dithering over What To Read Next.

Well! - that aforementioned dithering had an unexpected outcome: I sat down and finished my blogging about the first volume of George Reynolds' penny-dreadful, The Mysteries Of London.

This finally ran to three posts, although the second and third are really one overlong post cut in halves. For something as long as this, and so absurdly overstuffed with intersecting plots, I think that's actually pretty reasonable!

The Mysteries Of London: Volume I (Part 1)
The Mysteries Of London: Volume I (Part 2)
The Mysteries Of London: Volume I (Part 3)

One volume down, only three more 1000+ page volumes to go! :D

...yes, I was surprised too!

...all of which is an extremely long-winded way of saying, now reading Volume II of The Mysteries Of London by George W. M. Reynolds.

I did not know that about Marjorie Rawlings and her feud with the neighbors, Liz! I have never read The Yearling and now I can feel okay with that. It doesn't sound like something I'd enjoy, anyway.

That is one of your best lemurs!

What, lingering descriptions of animals being gutted don't do it for you??

(Yes, yes, I know, I'm being unfair...)

I was actually looking for a trio of lemurs to go with my trio of posts, but I couldn't go past that guy! :D

Indeed not! That magnificent tail and the sticking-out tongue are giving the usual bug eyes a run for their money for top feature!

I must have read The Yearling (in Dutch: Jody en het hertejong=Jody and the fawn) in my youth, but I remember next to nothing, except for the boy, the fawn and the sad end. I probably completely missed location and time frame.

>203 lyzard: LIKE!

>208 FAMeulstee:

And that's a perfectly reasonable reaction at that age: you can only absorb a book according to your own frame of reference. As I've remarked before, I read Little Women several times when I was young without having any idea where Mr March was.

LIKE!

I'm glad. :D

Oh, fer...

Why is it always the book I'm up to reviewing that isn't in The Pile??

>210 lyzard: I think "botheration" is the word you are looking for. >;-)

That's the one! - thank you! :D

It's becoming harder and harder, though, not to feel that my review books don't deliberately run and hide when they see me coming...

>202 lyzard: I have your posts bookmarked on my blog reader to read. I was originally tempted to join in with The Mysteries of London but I think it's one I need to really, really want to read so am going to pass for now..... (especially if there are 4 volumes - why did I think there were only 2?)

Aw, thank you! :)

They're not hard to read, but time-consuming on sheer length.

Probably because Valancourt Books have only released Volumes I & II. I bought those on Kindle to encourage them, even though all four are on Gutenberg.

I'm glad to be making progress with this at last, though a bit frustrated by the realisation that my 'detective timeline' project is effectively stalled until I climb this particular Everest, as I have no other books marked down as important prior to 1849.

And in 1848 I hit The Mysteries Of The Court Of London, a mere eight volumes... :D

AAAAAAH-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!!!!

Well, no wonder I couldn't find Destination Unknown!

I'd put it back on the shelf...

Destination Unknown (US title: So Many Steps To Death) - Having lost her young daughter to meningitis and been deserted by her husband, Hilary Craven's first impulse is to flee England. However, as she travels in North Africa she realises that she cannot escape her misery and sense of hopelessness. As sits alone in a hotel room preparing an overdose of sleeping-pills, Hilary is interrupted by a young man called Jessop. He explains that he works for the English government, and then offers her a proposition: if she's so set on dying, why not do it usefully? Hilary learns that, all over the world, scientists have been disappearing---voluntarily or by kidnapping, no-one knows. Jessop and his people are sure that the wife of one of them, a young physicist called Tom Betterton, is travelling to meet her husband---or was: the victim of a plane crash, Olive Betterton now lies close to death in a hospital. She is a woman, Jessop adds, whose one distinguishing feature is her red hair; hair very like Hilary's... Published in 1954, Destination Unknown differs from most of Agatha Christie's thrillers in the seriousness of its subject matter and tone. Whereas even her previous such venture, They Came To Baghdad, though grave enough overall, maintained a thread of humour via its heroine's spunky personality and talent for telling outrageous lies, here Christie eliminates nearly all of her usual levity---fittingly enough, in a tale of Cold War politics and paranoia. As is often the case, part of the interest of Destination Unknown lies in the glimpse it offers of post-war conditions, and particularly the British view of the escalating conflict between the Superpowers. there is a natural assumption that the Communists are behind all the disappearances, the truth is not nearly so straightforward; though "the Party" makes a convenient smokescreen... Despite its pervasive politics, the focus of Destination Unknown remains Hilary and her strange journey---which is as much emotional as physical. As Jessop predicts, once given a purpose Hilary slowly regains her interest in life and her desire to live; yet always there is the awareness that her mission is, in all likelihood, a suicide mission: her job is to discover where the scientists are going and, by various devious means, lead Jessop's people to that destination; but as to her fate once she achieves her goal, there can be no guarantee... Posing as Olive Betterton, and with the trauma of the plane crash to cover any mistakes or gaps in her knowledge, Hilary is finally contacted as Jessop predicted, and becomes one of a small group heading into the unknown. She is confused by the disparate backgrounds and nature of her companions, though they are all scientists: Andrew Peters, a young American, holds socialist views, while the German Helga Needheim is clearly a fascist; the Norwegian Torquil Ericsson believes in the Superman - and that he himself is one - whereas the Frenchman, Dr Barron, has no politics, and wants only resources for his work. Hilary expects to find herself heading for the Soviet Union, and is startled when the journey doubles back into the Atlas Mountains. At length she finds herself in an extraordinary complex in the very heart of the mountains, its existence and function concealed by a genuine leper hospital. It is equipped with every luxury, both for work and relaxation---but there is no way out once the gates have closed...

    "The truth is that I didn't know where I was going," Peters said. "I thought I knew, but I was wrong. The Party has nothing to do with this place. We're not in touch with Moscow. This is a lone show of some kind---a Fascist show possibly."
    "Don't you think," said Hilary, "that you go in too much for labels?"
    He considered this. "Maybe you're right," he said. "Come to think of it, these words we throw around don't mean much. But I do know this. I want to get out of here and I mean to get out of here."
    "It won't be easy," said Hilary, in a low voice.
    They were walking together after dinner near the splashing fountains of the roof garden. With the illusion of darkness and the starlit sky they might have been in the private garden of some sultan's palace. The functional concrete buildings were veiled from the insight.
    "No," said Peters; "it won't be easy, but nothing's impossible."
    "I like to hear you say that," said Hilary. "Oh, how I like to hear you say that!"
    He looked at her sympathetically. "Been getting you down?"
    "Very much so. But that's not what I'm really afraid of."
    "No? What then?"
    "I'm afraid of getting used to it," said Hilary.

While Agatha Christie's original British publishers did an even more boring job than usual with their cover for Destination Unknown (see above), most of the others seem to have done a reasonable job for once. Amusingly, in a number of cases that takes the form of expressing the era's obsession with red-heads---legitimately enough, in this case, though I can't explain or excuse the guy with the scimitar, nor for that matter Hilary's pink slip...


      


Otherwise, and perhaps not surprisingly in the time of the tragic Comet crashes, they have mostly seized upon the novel's plane disaster(s). I have no idea who that's supposed to be in the last one, though I'd guess they were trying to hint at a more "two-fisted" (and less female-focused) kind of thriller:


    


But I like these two best, both of which capture the novel's desert setting and sense of spooky isolation:


  

The Lust Of Hate - Published in 1898, the third book in Australian-born Guy Newell Boothby's series featuring master-criminal Dr Nikola is a disappointment for a variety of reasons---the overriding one being that we don't see nearly enough of Nikola himself. Instead we follow the novel's protagonist, Gilbert Pennethorne, who presents his life story in the form of a cautionary tale. After a difficult childhood, Pennethorne is finally banished from the family home and emigrates to Australia. There his bad luck (or, frankly, his lack of intelligence) continues to dog him, the final straw being when the violent, bullying manager of the sheep-station where Pennethorne works as bookkeeper manages, by devious means, to usurp possession of a gold-strike bequeathed to him by his one friend, an elderly prospector. Consumed by hatred, Pennethorne follows the now-wealthy Bartrand back to England. He is plotting his revenge when he is approached by Dr Nikola, who informs him mysteriously that the superstitious Bartrand has named him his heir in his will, and that all Pennethorne has to do to gain both his revenge and his fortune is murder Bartrand: something he, Nikola, is willing to help with---for a price... The section of The Lust Of Hate that follows is the high-point of the novel, with Pennethorne - almost literally - selling his soul to the devil, and then discovering that Nikola is behind a recent series of bizarre deaths, in which the victims have been found lying in the street with no sign of violence upon them except one eyebrow cut away: murders-for hire committed via, of all things, a hansom-cab that has been converted into a death-trap! However, the bulk of the remaining narrative gives us a remorseful Pennethorne on the run from both Nikola and his own guilt, trying to rebuild his life but always conscious of the stain upon his soul---and never more so than when, while fleeing England for South Africa and living under a false name, he finds himself falling in love with Agnes Maybourne, the beautiful daughter of a mining magnate... A distinct lack of Dr Nikola aside, the main problem with The Lust Of Hate is that - and particularly given its title - it offers too little hate (lustful or otherwise) and too much remorse: all very right and proper, of course, but it doesn't make for very thrilling reading. Furthermore, the seeming promise of an ongoing tussle between Pennethorne and Nikola never eventuates; and when the inevitable showdown does take place, it's rather a fizzer. The predictable romance between Pennethorne and Agnes - even when enlivened by a shipwreck - hardly compensates for these failings. Boothby's knowledgeable depictions of the Australian outback, of sheep-station life and the gold-fields do, however, make this novel of more interest to some of us.

    Nikola waited for a few moments and then continued in the same low tone---"You hate the man. He has wronged you deeply. He stole your secret while you were not in a position to defend yourself, and I think he would have killed you had he dared to do so. Now he is enjoying the fortune which should be yours. He is one of the richest men in the world---with your money. He has made himself a name in England, even in this short space of time---with your money. He is already a patron of sport, of the drama, and of art of every sort---with your money. If you attempt to dispute his possession, he will crush you like a worm. Now the question for your consideration is: Do you hate him sufficiently to take advantage of an opportunity to kill him if one should come in your way?"
    He had roused my hate to such a pitch that before I could control myself I had hissed out "Yes!" He heard it, and when I was about to protest that I did not mean it, held up his hand to me to be silent.
    "Listen to me," he said. "I tell you candidly that it is in my power to help you. If you really wish to rid yourself of this man, I can arrange it for you in such a way that it will be impossible for any one to suspect you. The chance of detection is absolutely nil. You will be as safe from the law as you are at this minute. And remember this, when you have rid yourself of him, his wealth will be yours to enjoy just as you please. Think of his money---think of the power it gives, think of the delight of knowing that you have punished the man who has wronged you so shamefully. Are you prepared to risk so much?"
    My God! I can remember the horror of that moment even now. As I write these words I seem to feel again the throbbing of the pulses in my temples, the wild turmoil in my brain, the whirling mist before my eyes. In extenuation, I can only hope that I was, for the time being, insane...

Patty's Success - The eighth book in Carolyn Wells' young adult series finds Patty Fairfield, her father and her young step-mother back in New York. There is, thankfully, rather more of a plot and less of a sense of simply marking time in this entry than in the few previous, travelogue-y ones, but Patty's Success is not without its annoyances. As often with Wells, the intentions are admirable but the execution off-kilter. When Patty hears of an aspiring artist who is kept from pursuing her dream in New York through her inability to earn enough to pay for her room and board, a scornful Patty is led to make unwise boast about how easily she could do such a thing if she had to---which in turns prompts her father to make her a proposition: if she can in fact earn fifteen dollars in a week through her own labour - just once - he will pay all Miss Farley's expenses while she studies. Needless to say, Patty discovers that a young woman supporting herself isn't such a simple matter as she imagined... Typically, and thoroughly exasperatingly, from this point in Patty's Success the narrative does not, as we might expect, involve Patty learning some valuable lessons about life outside her privileged existence; not really. Instead, despite some tepid sympathy for those who have no choice, the overarching tone of this short novel is horror at someone like Patty dirtying her hands. Between the Fairfields' fastidious ideas about "acceptable" work, and her parents' constant crying out against her tiring herself, Patty's venture into reality is a very half-hearted one indeed; while, when (through what we might regard as a species of cheating) she succeeds at last in earning fifteen dollars, her return to the family fold is treated as though she had escaped from some dire danger. In fact, the only lesson that Patty really learns here is that it's much nicer to be rich than to be poor...

    “But fifteen dollars a week isn’t much,” persisted Patty. “Anybody could earn that.”
    “Look here, Puss,” said her father: “sometimes you show a bravery of assertion that ought to be put to the test. Now I’ll make a proposition to you in the presence of these two witnesses. If you’ll earn fifteen dollars in one week,---any week,---I’ll agree to pay the board of this Miss Farley in New York, for a year, while she pursues her art studies.”
    “Oh, father, will you?” cried Patty. “What a duck you are! Of course I can earn the money, easily.”
    “Wait a moment; there are conditions, or rather stipulations. You must not do anything unbecoming a quiet, refined girl,---but I know you wouldn’t do that, anyway. You must not engage in any pursuit that keeps you away from your home after five o’clock in the afternoon---”
    “Oh,” interrupted Patty, “I don’t propose to go out washing! I shall do light work of some sort at home. But never you mind what I do,---of course it will be nothing you could possibly object to,---I’ll earn fifteen dollars in less than a week.”

Ruth Fielding On The St Lawrence; or, The Queer Old Man Of The Thousand Islands - Though as brief as most of the entries in this young adult series - these "novels" are really only novellas - this, the 18th, is one of the more serious and even complex entries. Its opening gives a sense of time passing and its young characters becoming adults with the first marriage in the group, between Jennie Stone and her French fiancé, Colonel Henri Marchand. What we might call the main emotional plot, however, deals with the estrangement between Ruth Fielding and her would-be romantic interest, Tom Cameron. The latter, after his return from France, refuses to settle into any kind of work, intent instead upon simply having a good time; and though no-one understands better than Ruth what Tom went through during the war, as someone from a poor family who has had to work hard for everything, his playboy existence becomes a personal affront. Ruth herself is thriving as a screenwriter; though her growing frustration with not having control over what is done with her material has her contemplating a move into film production. As always with this series, its glimpse into film-making some hundred years ago is one of its main strengths; and this time, with Ruth having written an historical drama, the action unfolds in the picturesque Thousand Islands on the St Lawrence River, between the United States and Canada. While making the film is itself a significant challenge, two other unfolding dramas confront Ruth and her friends: an unscrupulous agent is determined to gain the services of Ruth's discovery, the Native American actress, Wonota, by fair means or foul; and the friends discover that something mysterious is taking place on one of the islands near the film-camp; something to do with a strange old man who calls himself "the King of the Pipes". Meanwhile, Ruth's new friendship with a young man called Chess Copley brings out an ugly jealous streak in Tom; but when Ruth is danger, it is as always Tom to her rescue...

    The cavern was a natural one, but man had made of it a not impossible habitation. She felt rugs under her feet as she was drawn along by the King of the Pipes, and when her eyes became accustomed to the half-gloom of the place she saw that there were several low tables and a couch or two, the latter likewise covered with rugs.
    Not only had some ingenuity been expended in fitting up the cave, but the furnishings must have occasioned the expenditure of considerable money. It was not at all the sort of place that she would have expected the queer old man to occupy on the lonely island.
    Ruth was so much interested in Copley’s state, however, that she gave small attention to these other things. When she could break away from the King of the Pipes she flung herself down upon her knees beside the recumbent young man and raised his head in her arms. Chess had received a hard blow from the Chinaman’s club. And he had not uttered a word. The latter fact caused Ruth more alarm than anything else. She feared that he was very badly injured, although he was not insensible.
    But there was no blood on his head and face. She passed her hand swiftly over his crown and found an unmistakable lump there, a lump raised by the blow. But, looking more closely into his half open eyes she saw more intelligence in their expression than she expected. Indeed, as she peered closely at him she distinctly saw him wink his left eye, and this act, with the bright look in his eyes, warned her that Copley was playing possum...

>217 lyzard: So many redheads! I do like that bottom row one from Fontana Books. Very trippy.

>221 rosalita:

And for once the character *is* a red-head; it's even a plot-point! Yes, that one shows some (in this context) rare imagination.

Goodness you have been busy. None I can see myself actively seeking out, but your reviews are always worth reading.

Hi, Helen - thank you! Well---not as busy as I'd like but at least I'm making some progress. :)

Spenlove In Arcady - This fifth entry in William McFee's semi-autobiographical series featuring the urbane Chief Engineer Spenlove represents a pivotal point in the overall narrative, as it finds Spenlove dealing with the upheavals of retirement and love. Too wise to fall into the trap of romanticised false memories of "home", that is, England, where he has spent a bare minimum of time over the past decades, Spenlove settles in Connecticut, on a dilapidated farm property across the water from the Long Island home of his wealthy American friend, Mrs Colwell. His first acquaintance in his new life is Elliot Ducroy, a successful writer with a country house in the vicinity; his first friend, young Sonia Pagett, Ducroy's step-daughter, who chases her dog onto his land one day. But it is when Sonia's mother enters his life that Spenlove finds himself facing an unexpected emotional crisis... Despite its shift in structure and focus, Spenlove In Arcady retains much of the structure of the earlier novels, being concerned with one person's personal history. Since a tragic love affair in his youth (recounted in the first Spenlove book, Captain Macedoine's Daughter), Spenlove has steered clear of serious emotional involvement, becoming instead an observer and an interpreter of other people's relationships. This time, however, instead of Spenlove recounting someone else's story to a listener, he himself is the listener, as Perdita Ducroy makes him her confidante. When she begins to speak, Perdita is contemplating leaving her husband, who is conducting an affair with another celebrity writer almost under her nose; but by the time she finishes her story, her passionate desire to regain her freedom and independence must struggle with her growing feeling for Spenlove. Meanwhile, Perdita's trust in him and the profound personal honesty which is one of her most significant qualities combine to disarm Spenlove's self-protective cynicism about women and love, and cause him to lower his emotional barriers for the first time in many years... The most significant aspect of Spenlove In Arcady is the quiet maturity with which William McFee handles what is, when all is said and done, an adulterous affair between his two central characters. The honesty that marks all the dealings of Spenlove and Perdita is, in McFee's view, its own justification; and a pointed contrast is drawn between their emotional openness and the selfishness and self-interest which marks the novel's contrasting relationships, lawful and otherwise. Perdita's past has left her with a feeling of instinctive revulsion towards marriage, and a defiant eagerness to throw convention to the winds; and for a time she and Spenlove find their "Arcady" in each other. But however willing the two of them are to defy the world together, they know matters are not so simple---and for all their desire to maintain their existing relationship, they know it is not only of themselves that they must think, but of their responsibility to the bright, confiding, innocent Sonia---whose must inevitably be touched and shaped by what they do...

    He saw a looming test of his own quality. He had, in an acute form, a sense of time. He had it even when thinking of Perdita. There was Sonia, in the background, becoming a woman. She might only be a very delightful athletic kid at an expensive camp, developing a quite unexpected passion for horseback riding and tennis, but she would be something else in no time at all now. At one time he had imagined that Perdita wanted to be rid of her child. She had talked as if it would suit her if Elliot Ducroy took Sonia off her mother's hands. It turned out that Perdita didn't quite mean that. She was matter-of-fact.
    "You lose them no matter what you do, when they grow up. I'll be an old woman then..."
    His sense of time told him that she would not be an old woman for many years yet, but she would be mature. She would not love another man if he fell down on the job. Yet she had always evaded the problem of marriage. She had been satirical about it.
    Then what was he to do? He drank his second cup of coffee, gazing out across the garden and the Sound. She was quite capable of going through purgatory again to keep her independence, which she had lost when she had married Elliot Ducroy for Sonia's sake. Starve!... She had an unknown side to her character, like the other side of the moon. He never saw it, but he knew it was there. It made her even more valuable to him, a connoisseur of character.
    So what was he to do? It was repugnant to him to make an honest woman of her against her will...

Only two-and-a-half months to go!!

August stats:

Works read: 12
TIOLI: 12, in 11 different challenges

Mystery / thriller: 3
Historical drama: 3
Contemporary drama: 2
Young adult: 2
Humour: 1
Classic: 1

Re-reads: 2
Series works: 5
Blog reads: 0
1932: 0
1931: 0
Virago / Persephone: 0
Potential decommission: 2

Owned: 3
Library: 6
Ebooks: 3

Male authors : female authors: 4 (including 1 using a female pseudonym) : 9

Oldest work: The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties by Frances Burney (1814)
Newest work: Little Vampire Women by Lynn Messina and Louisa May Alcott (2010)

********************

YTD stats:

Works read: 116
TIOLI: 116, in 91 different challenges, with 8 shared reads

Mystery / thriller: 49
Contemporary drama: 13
Classics: 13
Historical drama: 8
Young adult: 6
Non-fiction: 6
Horror: 5
Historical romance: 4
Short stories: 4
Contemporary romance: 3
Humour: 4
Play: 1

Re-reads: 25
Series works: 54
Blog reads: 5
1932: 3
1931: 7
Virago / Persephone: 2
Potential decommission: 16

Owned: 30
Library: 38 (including 1 ebook)
Ebook: 48

Male authors (editors) : female authors : anonymous: 61 (including 3 using a female pseudonym) : 53 : 3

Oldest work: A Defence Of Their Majesties King William And Queen Mary, Against An Infamous And Jesuitical Libel, Entituled, A True Portraicture Of William Henry Prince Of Nassau, &c by Pierre Jurieu (1689)
Newest work: Kai Lung Raises His Voice by Ernest Bramah (2010) / Little Vampire Women by Lynn Messina and Louisa May Alcott (2010)

I'm beginning to think I'm spoiling you with all these images...but what the heck!---

SLOTH!!!!!,!,!,!!!!,!!!

Such a sweet smile on this one.

I see you were so excited by it that you had to rest between exclamation marks. :D

Finished The Mysteries Of London (Volume II) for TIOLI #15.





And now all I have to do is get it written up...

In the meantime---now reading The Keys Of The Kingdom by A. J. Cronin.

>229 lyzard: Ha! The keyboard on my iPad won't let me CAPS LOCK for the exclamation points, so I missed a few SHIFT taps in my excitement. :-)

>230 lyzard: are you ever going to crawl out from under that giant tome? Or is that tomb?
Go on, get writing, it would be a shame to have forgotten it and have to Start Again!!!

>231 rosalita:

Just so long as excitement was involved...

>232 Helenliz:

I know! I'm already flogging myself with that whip! :D

...and while Helen's quite right about my book-blogging, what I've been doing instead is---

Film-blogging:

Snaky transformation is all the rage at the moment!

In Cult Of The Cobra (1955), American servicemen who have intruded on a secret ceremony are hunted down by the cult's Cobra Goddess, who has the ability to transform into a beautiful woman.

In The Snake Woman (1961), a girl is born with the ability to transform herself into a deadly snake due to her scientist-father conducting venom experiments on his pregnant wife.


  

Gahhhh!!

My copy of The Keys Of The Kingdom has teeny-weeny font. I may need a nighttime read to go with it...

ETA: Now also reading Women, Power And Subversion by Judith Lowder Newton.

Just realised I forgot to invite you all to my new digs!

Hope to see you there!