lyzard's list: Travelling a route obscure and lonely in 2020 - Part 7

This photo of two combative toad-headed agamas was taken in the deserts of the Eurasian Steppe by Russian photographer, Victor Tyakht. It received a 'highly commended' in the Animal Behaviour category.

This species of lizard is very territorial, but rivals don't fight: instead they hold a kind of mini-Olympics, running and jumping against one another in a display meant to prove the physical superiority of one.

My thread title this year is taken from Edgar Allan Poe's poem, Dream-Land: it seemed appropriate considering the nature of my reading plans!

    By a route obscure and lonely,
    Haunted by ill angels only,
    Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
    On a black throne reigns upright,
    I have reached these lands but newly
    From an ultimate dim Thule---
    From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,
        Out of SPACE---Out of TIME.

(The complete poem can be found here.)

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Currently reading:



The Pelham Murder Case by Monte Barrett (1930)

2020 reading:

January:

1. The Daughter Of The House by Carolyn Wells (1925)
2. Leandro: or, The Lucky Rescue by J. Smythies (1690)
3. Wilhelm Meister's Travels by Johann Goethe (1821 / 1829)
4. The Bertrams by Anthony Trollope (1859)
5. Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk (1955)
6. Ralph The Bailiff, And Other Tales by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1862)
7. Death Walks In Eastrepps by Francis Beeding (1931)
8. Nemesis by Agatha Christie (1971)
9. Ambrose Holt And Family by Susan Glaspell (1931)
10. The Eye In The Museum by J. J. Connington (1929)
11. The Clock Ticks On by Valentine Williams (1933)
12. Death In The Cup by Moray Dalton (1932)
13. A Jury Of Her Peers (short story) by Susan Glaspell (1917)

February:

14. Disordered Minds by Minette Walters (2003)
15. The Bronze Hand by Carolyn Wells (1926)
16. The Creaking Tree Mystery by Leonard A. Knight (1931)
17. The Last Of The Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper (1826)
18. Reginald du Bray: An Historic Tale by 'A late nobleman' (1779)
19. The Spectacles Of Mr Cagliostro by Harry Stephen Keeler (1926)
20. Don't Go Near The Water by William Brinkley (1956)
21. Patty's Social Season by Carolyn Wells (1913)
22. Murder From Beyond by R. Francis Foster (1930)
23. The Man Who Loved Lions by Ethel Lina White (1943)
24. The Seven Sleepers by Francis Beeding (1925)
25. Anna, Where Are You? by Patricia Wentworth (1951)
26. Elephants Can Remember by Agatha Christie (1972)
27. The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart (1908)
28. I've Got My Eyes On You by Mary Higgins Clark (2018)

March:

29. Pique by Frances Notley (1850)
30. The Collegians by Gerald Griffin (1829)
31. The Wild Irish Girl by Sydney Owenson (1806)
32. Oil! by Upton Sinclair (1927)
33. By Love Possessed by James Gould Cozzens (1957)
34. Postern Of Fate by Agatha Christie (1973)
35. Murder In The Cellar by Louise Eppley and Rebecca Gayton (1931)
36. The Back-Seat Murder by Herman Landon (1931)
37. Nevertheless, She Persisted by Various (2020)
38. The Two Tickets Puzzle by J. J. Connington (1930)

2020 reading:

April:

39. Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1862)
40. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (1957)
41. Poirot's Early Cases by Agatha Christie (1974)
42. The Watersplash by Patricia Wentworth (1951)
43. The Tolliver Case by R. A. J. Walling (1933)
44. Inspector Bedison And The Sunderland Case by Thomas Cobb (1931)
45. The Mystery Of The Creeping Man by Frances Shelley Wees (1931)
46. No Walls Of Jasper by Joanna Cannan (1930)
47. The Five Red Fingers by Brian Flynn (1929)
48. I Can Has Cheezburger? A LOLCat Colleckshun by Eric Nakagawa and Kari Unebasami (2008)
49. The Mill Of Happiness by Jean Barre (1931)
50. The Ipcress File by Len Deighton (1962)

May:

51. The Mysteries Of London: Volume III by George W. M. Reynolds (1847)
52. The Refugee In America by Frances Trollope (1832)
53. The Mayfair Mystery by Henry Holt (1929)
54. The Perfect Murder Case by Christopher Bush (1929)
55. Murder On The Marsh by John Ferguson (1930)
56. Inspector Bedison Risks It by Thomas Cobb (1931)
57. October House by Kay Cleaver Strahan (1931)
58. Curtain: Poirot's Last Case by Agatha Christie (1975)
59. Inspector Frost's Jigsaw by Herbert Maynard Smith (1929)
60. Six Seconds Of Darkness by Octavus Roy Cohen (1918)
61. The Charteris Mystery by A. Fielding (1925)
62. The Death Of A Celebrity by Hulbert Footner (1938)
63. The Black Gang by 'Sapper' (H. C. McNeile) (1922)

June:

64. Faces In The Smoke by Douchan Gersi (1991)
65. Songs Of A Dead Dreamer by Thomas Ligotti (1986)
66. Patty's Suitors by Carolyn Wells (1914)
67. Louisa Egerton; or, Castle Herbert by Mary Leman Grimstone (1829)
68. Sleeping Murder: Miss Marple's Last Case by Agatha Christie (1976)
69. Ladies' Bane by Patricia Wentworth (1952)
70. The Secret Of High Eldersham by Miles Burton (1930)
71. Chronicles Of Martin Hewitt by Arthur Morrison (1895)
72. Masks Off At Midnight by Valentine Williams (1933)
73. Elsie's Friends At Woodburn by Martha Finley (1887)
74. Midnight Murder by Ralph Rodd (1931)

July:

75. L'Ombre Chinoise by Georges Simenon (1932)
76. Castle Richmond by Anthony Trollope (1860)
77. Exodus by Leon Uris (1958)
78. Miss Marple's Final Cases by Agatha Christie (1979)
79. Easy To Kill by Hulbert Footner (1931)
80. Mischief by Charlotte Armstrong (1950)
81. The Joker by Edgar Wallace (1926)
82. The Luminous Face by Carolyn Wells (1921)
83. Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets by David Simon (1991)
84. The Belfry Murder by Moray Dalton (1933)
85. Marian Grey; or, The Heiress Of Redstone Hall by Mary Jane Holmes (1863)
86. One-Man Girl by Maysie Greig (1931)
87. Dave Darrin's First Year At Annapolis; or, Two Plebe Midshipmen At The United States Naval Academy by H. Irving Hancock (1910)

August:

88. The Postmaster's Daughter by Louis Tracy (1916)
89. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (1883)
90. Tara Road by Maeve Binchy (1998)
91. The Secret River by Kate Grenville (2005)
92. Dick Lester Of Kurrajong by Mary Grant Bruce (1920)
93. The Yellow Wallpaper (short story) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892)
94. Advise And Consent by Allen Drury (1959)
95. Out Of The Past by Patricia Wentworth (1953)
96. Poison In The Garden Suburb by G.D.H. and Margaret Cole (1929)
97. Who Closed The Casement? by Thomas Cobb (1932)
98. The Clue Of The Rising Moon by Valentine Williams (1935)

September:

99. Under False Pretences by Adeline Sergeant (1889)
100. Mystery House by J. M. Walsh (1931)
101. Tragedy At Ravensthorpe by J. J. Connington (1927)
102. The Key by Lee Thayer (1924)
103. By Force Of Circumstances by Gordon Holmes (1909)
104. Adventures Of Martin Hewitt by Arthur Morrison (1896)
105. The Agony And The Ecstasy by Irving Stone (1961)
106. Captain Kirk's Guide To Women by John "Bones" Rodriguez (2008)
107. When A Man Marries by Mary Roberts Rinehart (1909)
108. The Hidden Kingdom by Francis Beeding (1927)

2020 reading:

October:
109. The White Monkey by John Galsworthy (1924)
110. A Silent Wooing by John Galsworthy (1928)
111. The Flaming Crescent by Ottwell Binns (1931)
112. Patty's Romance by Carolyn Wells (1915)
113. The Bride Of Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer (1933)
114. Ship Of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter (1962)
115. L'Affaire Saint-Fiacre by Georges Simenon (1932)
116. In The Night Room by Peter Straub (2004)
117. Vanishing Point by Patricia Wentworth (1953)
118. The Crimson Alibi by Octavus Roy Cohen (1919)
119. The Red Triangle by Arthur Morrison (1903)
120. Gun In Cheek: A Study Of "Alternative" Crime Fiction by Bill Pronzini (1982)
121. The Idle Hill Of Summer by Julia Hamilton (1988)

November:

122. Sandbar Sinister by Phoebe Atwood Taylor (1934)
123. The Regatta Mystery And Other Stories by Agatha Christie (1939)
124. Problem At Pollensa Bay And Other Stories by Agatha Christie (1991)
125. Black Coffee by Agatha Christie (1930)
126. The Shoes Of The Fisherman by Morris L. West (1963)
127. Two Broken Hearts by Robert R. Hoes (1885)
128. The Hollow Needle by Maurice Leblanc (1909)
129. The Ends Of Power by H. R. Haldeman and Joseph DiMona (1978)
130. The Two Broken Hearts by Catherine Gore (1823)
131. Great Cat Tales by Lesley O'Mara (ed.) (1989)
132. Tell Me Your Secret by Dorothy Koomson (2019)
133. Close Quarters by Michael Gilbert (1947)
134. A Fool's Paradise: A Story Of Fashionable Life In Washington by Benjamin G. Lovejoy (1884)
135. Wings Above The Diamantina by Arthur Upfield (1936)
136. The Sign Of The Glove by W. Carlton Dawe (1932)
137. The Trail Of Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer (1934)
138. The Melancholy Death Of Oyster Boy & Other Stories by Tim Burton (1997)
139. The Hungry Moon by Ramsey Campbell (1986)

December:

140. Anna Of The Five Towns by Arnold Bennett (1902)
141. Mystery At Greycombe Farm by John Rhode (1932)
142. The Footsteps That Stopped by A. Fielding (1926)
143. Case For Mr Fortune by H. C. Bailey (1932)
144. Murderer's Trail by J. Jefferson Farjeon (1931)
145. The Midnight Mail by Henry Holt (1931)
146. The Silent Pool by Patricia Wentworth (1954)
147. The Spy Who Came In From The Cold by John le Carré (1963)
148. The Great Roxhythe by Georgette Heyer (1922)
149. Alfred Dudley; or, The Australian Settlers by Sarah Porter (1830)
150. Christmas With Grandma Elsie by Martha Finley (1888)
151. Perishable Goods by Dornford Yates (1928)
152. Cameos by Octavus Roy Cohen (1931)
153. Patty's Fortune by Carolyn Wells (1916)

Books in transit:

Upcoming requests:
Simon The Coldheart by Georgette Heyer {Blacktown Library}
Call For The Dead by John le Carré {Blacktown Library}

On interlibrary loan / branch transfer / storage / Rare Book request:
The Source by James A. Michener

On loan:
*Mystery At Greycombe Farm by John Rhode {SMSA} (11/01/2021)
**Close Quarters by Michael Gilbert {SMSA} (11/01/2021)
*Perishable Goods by Dornford Yates {SMSA} (11/01/2021)
**Wings Above The Diamantina by Arthur Upfield {SMSA} (11/01/2021)
*Case For Mr Fortune by H. C. Bailey (19/01/2021)
*Murderer's Trail by J. Jefferson Farjeon (19/01/2021)
*Anna Of The Five Towns by Arnold Bennett (19/01/2021)
*The Spy Who Came In From The Cold by John le Carré (19/01/2021)

**The Last Of The Mohicans by James Fenimoore Cooper
**Oil! by Upton Sinclair
The Recess by Sophia Lee
**The Collegians by Gerald Griffin
**The Wild Irish Girl by Sydney Morgan
**A Gothic Bibliography by Montague Summers

^^Baby Cart At The River Styx

Upcoming requests:

The Picaroon Does Justice by Herman Landon {CARM}

The Wraith by Philip MacDonald {JFR}
McLean Of Scotland Yard by George Goodchild {JFR}
The Sea Mystery by Freeman Wills Crofts {JFR}

Lost Boy Lost Girl by Peter Straub {SMSA / Sutherland ebook}

The Marquise Of O., And Other Stories by Heinrich von Kleist {Fisher storage}
Our Mr Wrenn by Sinclair Lewis {Fisher storage}
From Man To Man by Olive Schreiner {Fisher Storage - 2 volumes}

Purchased and shipped:

Ongoing reading projects:

Blog reads:
Chronobibliography: The Fugitive Reviv'd by Peter Belon
Authors In Depth:
- Forest Of Montalbano by Catherine Cuthbertson
- Shannondale (aka "The Three Beauties; or, Shannondale: A Novel") by E.D.E.N. Southworth
- Lady Audley's Secret / The White Phantom by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
- Ellesmere by Mrs Meeke
- The Cottage by Margaret Minifie
- The Old Engagement by Julia Day
- The Abbess by Frances Trollope
Reading Roulette: Pique by Frances Notley / Our Mr Wrenn by Sinclair Lewis
Australian fiction: Louisa Egerton by Mary Leman Grimstone / Alfred Dudley; or, The Australian Settlers by Sarah Porter
Gothic novel timeline: Anecdotes Of A Convent by Anonymous
Early crime fiction: The Mysteries Of London by G. W. M. Reynolds
Silver-fork novels: Sayings And Doings; or, Sketches From Life (First Series) by Theodore Hook
Related reading: Gains And Losses by Robert Lee Wollf / The Man Of Feeling by Henry Mackenzie / Le Loup Blanc by Paul Féval / Theresa Marchmont; or, The Maid Of Honour by Catherine Gore

Group / tutored reads:

Completed: The Bertrams by Anthony Trollope (thread here)
Completed: Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (thread here)
Completed: Castle Richmond by Anthony Trollope (thread here)
Completed: The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (thread here)

General reading challenges:

America's best-selling novels (1895 - ????):
Next up: The Source by James A. Michener

Georgette Heyer: straight historical fiction:
Next up: Simon The Coldheart

Patricia Wentworth's Miss Silver series:
Next up: The Benevent Treasure

Virago chronological reading project:
Next up: The Rector by Margaret Oliphant

The C.K. Shorter List of Best 100 Novels:
Next up: The Life Of Mansie Wauch by David Moir

Mystery League publications:
Next up: The Gutenberg Murders by Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning

Banned In Boston!: (here)
Next up: From Man To Man by Olive Schreiner

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 / The Foundling by Francis Spellman

Potential decommission / re-shelving:
Next up: Cause Of Death by Cyril Wecht

Completed challenges:
- Georgette Heyer historical romances in chronological order
- Agatha Christie mysteries in chronological order
- Agatha Christie uncollected short stories

Possible future reading projects:
- 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
- Pandora 'Mothers Of The Novel'
- Newark Library list (here)
- "The Story Of Classic Crime In 100 Books" (here)
- Dean's Classics series
- "Fifty Best Australian Novels" (here)

TBR notes:

Currently 'missing' series works:

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 / Internet Archive / Kindle}
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}
The Corpse In The Car by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #20) {CARM}
Hendon's First Case by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #21) {Rare Books}
Mystery At Olympia (aka "Murder At The Motor Show") (Dr Priestley #22) {Kindle / State Library NSW, held / Internet Archive}
In Face Of The Verdict by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #24) {Rare Books / State Library NSW, held / Internet Archive}

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}

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}

The Black Death by Moray Dalton {CARM}

1931:

The Wraith by Philip MacDonald {State Library NSW, JFR}
McLean Of Scotland Yard by George Goodchild {State Library NSW, JFR}

The Rum Row Murders by Charles Reed Jones {Rare Books}
The Murder Rehearsal by B. G. Quin {Rare Books}
Unsolved by Bruce Graeme {Rare Books}

The Picaroon Does Justice by Herman Landon {CARM}
The Crooked Lip by Herbert Adams {Rare Books / CARM}

The Matilda Hunter Murder by Harry Stephen Keeler {Kindle}

Death By Appointment by "Francis Bonnamy" (Audrey Walz) (Peter Utley Shane #1) {Rare Books}
The Click Of The Gate by Alice Campbell (Tommy Rostetter #1) {CARM}
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}

Storm by Charles Rodda {National Library, ILL?}

NB: Rest of 1931 listed on the Wiki

Series back-reading:

The Red-Haired Girl by Carolyn Wells {Rare Books}
Invisible Death by Brian Flynn {Kindle}
Murder At Fenwold (aka "The Murder Of Cosmo Revere") by Christopher Bush {Kindle}
The Footsteps That Stopped / The Clifford Affair by A. Fielding {Kindle / Roy Glashan's Library}
Burglars In Bucks by George and Margaret Cole {Fisher Library}
Mystery At Lynden Sands by J. J. Connington {HathiTrust / Kindle}
Poison by Lee Thayer {AbeBooks / Amazon}

Completist reading:

Sing Sing Nights by Harry Stephen Keeler (#4) {CARM / Kindle}
XYZ by Anna Katharine Green (#5) {Project Gutenberg}
The Window At The White Cat by Mary Roberts Rinehart (#4) {Project Gutenberg}
The White Cockatoo by Mignon Eberhart {Rare Books}

Unavailable / expensive:

The Amber Junk (aka The Riddle Of The Amber Ship) by Hazel Phillips Hanshew (Cleek #9)
The Hawkmoor Mystery by W. H. Lane Crauford
The Double Thumb by Francis Grierson (Sims and Wells #3)
The Shadow Of Evil by Charles J. Dutton (Harley Manners #2)
The Seventh Passenger by Alice MacGowan and Perry Newberry (Jerry Boyne #4)
The Pelham Murder Case by Monte Barrett (Peter Cardigan #1)
The Hanging Woman by John Rhode (Dr Priestley #11)

A Century (And A Bit) Of Reading:

A book a year from 1800 - 1900!

1800: Juliania; or, The Affectionate Sisters by Elizabeth Sandham
1801: Belinda by Maria Edgeworth
1802: The Infidel Father by Jane West
1803: Thaddeus Of Warsaw by Jane Porter
1804: The Lake Of Killarney by Anna Maria Porter
1805: The Impenetrable Secret, Find It Out! by Francis Lathom
1806: The Wild Irish Girl by Sydney Owenson
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
1820: The Sketch Book Of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. by Washington Irving
1821: The Ayrshire Legatees; or, The Pringle Family by John Galt / Valerius: A Roman Story by J. G. Lockhart / Kenilworth by Walter Scott
1822: Bracebridge Hall; or, The Humorists by Washington Irving
1823: The Two Broken Hearts by Catherine Gore
1824: The Adventures Of Hajji Baba Of Ispahan by James Justinian Morier
1826: Lichtenstein by Wilhelm Hauff / The Last Of The Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
1827: The Epicurean by Thomas Moore / The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni
1829: Wilhelm Meister's Travels by Johann Goethe / The Collegians by Gerald Griffin / Louisa Egerton; or, Castle Herbert by Mary Leman Grimstone
1830: Alfred Dudley; or, The Australian Settlers by Sarah Porter
1832: The Refugee In America by Frances Trollope
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 / The Mysteries Of London: Volume III by G. W. M. Reynolds
1848: The Kellys And The O'Kellys by Anthony Trollope
1850: Pique by Sarah Stickney Ellis
1851: The Mother-In-Law; or, The Isle Of Rays by E.D.E.N. Southworth
1857: The Three Clerks by Anthony Trollope
1859: The Semi-Detached House by Emily Eden / The Bertrams by Anthony Trollope
1860: The Semi-Attached Couple by Emily Eden / Castle Richmond by Anthony Trollope
1863: Marian Grey; or, The Heiress Of Redstone Hall by Mary Jane Holmes
1869: He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope
1873: Had You Been In His Place by Lizzie Bates
1874: Chaste As Ice, Pure As Snow by Charlotte Despard
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: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson / Elsie's New Relations by Martha Finley
1884: Elsie At Nantucket by Martha Finley
1885: The Two Elsies by Martha Finley / Two Broken Hearts by Robert R. Hoes
1886: Elsie's Kith And Kin by Martha Finley
1887: Elsie's Friends At Woodburn by Martha Finley
1888: Christmas With Grandma Elsie by Martha Finley
1889: Under False Pretences by Adeline Sergeant
1892: The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
1894: Martin Hewitt, Investigator by Arthur Morrison / The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen
1895: Chronicles Of Martin Hewitt by Arthur Morrison
1896: The Island Of Dr Moreau by H. G. Wells / Adventures Of Martin Hewitt 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 / Dr Nikola's Experiment by Guy Newell Boothby
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); Tales Of Hoffmann (1982)
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 London: Volume I
- The Mysteries Of London: Volume II
- The Mysteries Of London: Volume III
- The Mysteries Of London: Volume IV
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)
Ruth The Betrayer; or, The Female Spy by Edward Ellis (!862-1863)
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)
Miss Madelyn Mack, Detective by Hugh C. Weir (1914)

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}
(1878 - 1917) **Anna Katharine Green - Ebenezer Gryce - The Mystery Of The Hasty Arrow (13/13)
(1896 - 1909) **Melville Davisson Post - Randolph Mason - The Corrector Of Destinies (3/3)
(1894 - 1903) **Arthur Morrison - Martin Hewitt - The Red Triangle (4/4)
(1895 - 1901) **Guy Newell Boothby - Dr Nikola - Farewell, Nikola (5/5)
(1897 - 1900) **Anna Katharine Green - Amelia Butterworth - The Circular Study (3/3)
(1899 - 1917) **Anna Katharine Green - Caleb Sweetwater - The Mystery Of The Hasty Arrow (7/7)
(1899 - 1909) **E. W. Hornung - Raffles - Mr Justice Raffles (4/4)
(1900 - 1974) Ernest Bramah - Kai Lung - Kai Lung: Six / Kai Lung Raises His Voice (7/7)

(1903 - 1904) **Louis Tracy - Reginald Brett - The Albert Gate Mystery (2/2)
(1905 - 1925) **Baroness Orczy - The Old Man In The Corner - Unravelled Knots (3/3)}
(1905 - 1928) **Edgar Wallace - The Just Men - Again The Three Just Men (6/6)
(1907 - 1942) R. Austin Freeman - Dr John Thorndyke - The Jacob Street Mystery (26/26)
(1907 - 1941) *Maurice Leblanc - Arsene Lupin - 813 (3/21) {ManyBooks}
(1909 - 1942) *Carolyn Wells - Fleming Stone - The Red-Haired Girl (21/49) {Rare Books}
(1909 - 1929) *J. S. Fletcher - Inspector Skarratt - Marchester Royal (1/3) {Kindle}
(1910 - 1936) *Arthur B. Reeve - Craig Kennedy - The Adventuress (10/24) {Kindle / Internet Archive}
(1910 - 1946) A. E. W. Mason - Inspector Hanaud - The House In Lordship Lane (7/7)
(1910 - 1917) Edgar Wallace - Inspector Smith - Kate Plus Ten (3/3)
(1910 - 1930) **Edgar Wallace - Inspector Elk - The Twister (4/6) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(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)
(1910 - 1928) **Louis Tracy - Winter and Furneaux - The Postmaster's Daughter (5/9) {Project Gutenberg}

(1911 - 1935) G. K. Chesterton - Father Brown - The Scandal Of Father Brown (5/5)
(1911 - 1940) *Bertram Atkey - Smiler Bunn - The Smiler Bunn Brigade (2/10) {rare, expensive}
(1912 - 1919) **Gordon Holmes (Louis Tracy) - Steingall and Clancy - The Bartlett Mystery (3/3)
(1913 - 1973) Sax Rohmer - Fu-Manchu - President Fu Manchu (8/14) {fadedpage.com}
(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)
(1914 - 1934) Ernest Bramah - Max Carrados - The Bravo Of London (5/5)
(1915 - 1936) *John Buchan - Richard Hannay - The Thirty-Nine Steps (1/5) {Fisher Library / Project Gutenberg / branch transfer / 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}
(1918 - 1923) **Carolyn Wells - Pennington Wise - The Vanishing Of Betty Varian (6/8) {Project Gutenberg}
(1918 - 1939) Valentine Williams - The Okewood Brothers - The Spider's Touch (6/?) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1918 - 1944) Valentine Williams - Clubfoot - The Spider's Touch (7/8) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1918 - 1950) *Wyndham Martyn - Anthony Trent - The Mysterious Mr Garland (3/26) {CARM}
(1919 - 1966) *Lee Thayer - Peter Clancy - Poison (7/60) {AbeBooks / Amazon}
(1919 - 1922) **Octavus Roy Cohen - David Carroll - Gray Dusk (3/4) {ManyBooks}

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

Series and sequels, 1920 - 1927:

(1920 - 1948) *H. C. Bailey - Reggie Fortune - Mr Fortune Wonders (8/23) {Internet Archive / State Library NSW, JFR}
(1920 - 1975) Agatha Christie - Hercule Poirot - Curtain (38/38)
(1920 - 1921) **Natalie Sumner Lincoln - Ferguson - The Unseen Ear (2/2)
(1920 - 1937) *"Sapper" (H. C. McNeile) - Bulldog Drummond - The Third Round (3/10 - series continued) {Roy Glashan's Library}

(1921 - 1929) **Charles J. Dutton - John Bartley - Streaked With Crimson (9/9)
(1921 - 1925) **Herman Landon - The Gray Phantom - Gray Magic (5/5)

(1922 - 1973) Agatha Christie - Tommy and Tuppence - Postern Of Fate (5/5)
(1922 - 1927) *Alice MacGowan and Perry Newberry - Jerry Boyne - The Seventh Passenger (4/5) {Amazon}
(1922 - 1931) Valentine Williams - Inspector Manderton - Death Answers The Bell (4/4)

(1923 - 1937) Dorothy L. Sayers - Lord Peter Wimsey - In The Teeth Of The Evidence (14/14)
(1923 - 1924) **Carolyn Wells - Lorimer Lane - The Fourteenth Key (2/2)
(1923 - 1927) Annie Haynes - Inspector Furnival - The Crow's Inn Tragedy (3/3)

(1924 - 1959) Philip MacDonald - Colonel Anthony Gethryn - The Wraith (6/24) {ILL / JFR}
(1924 - 1957) *Freeman Wills Crofts - Inspector French - The Sea Mystery (4/30) {Rare Books / State Library NSW, JFR / ILL / Kindle}
(1924 - 1935) * / ***Francis D. Grierson - Inspector Sims and Professor Wells - The Smiling Death (6/13) {AbeBooks, expensive}
(1924 - 1940) *Lynn Brock - Colonel Gore - The Dagwort Coombe Murder (5/12) {Kindle}
(1924 - 1933) *Herbert Adams - Jimmie Haswell - The Crooked Lip (2/9) {Rare Books}
(1924 - 1944) *A. Fielding - Inspector Pointer - The Clifford Affair (4/23) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1924 - 1936) *Hulbert Footner - Madame Storey - The Casual Murderer (8/14) {Roy Glashan's Library}

(1925 - 1961) ***John Rhode - Dr Priestley - Dead Men At The Folly (13/72) {Rare Books}
(1925 - 1953) *G. D. H. Cole / M. Cole - Superintendent Wilson - Burglars In Bucks (aka "The Berkshire Mystery") (7/?) {Fisher Library}
(1925 - 1932) Earl Derr Biggers - Charlie Chan - Keeper Of The Keys (6/6)
(1925 - 1944) Agatha Christie - Superintendent Battle - Towards Zero (5/5)
(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 Hidden Kingdom (2/2)

(1926 - 1968) *Christopher Bush - Ludovic Travers - Murder At Fenwold (aka "The Murder Of Cosmo Revere") (3/63) {Kindle / Rare Books}
(1926 - 1939) S. S. Van Dine - Philo Vance - The Kennel Murder Case (6/12) {fadedpage.com}
(1926 - 1952) J. Jefferson Farjeon - Ben the Tramp - Ben Sees It Through (4/8) {interlibrary loan / Kindle}
(1926 - ????) *G. D. H. Cole / M. Cole - Everard Blatchington - Burglars In Bucks (aka "The Berkshire Mystery") (2/6) {Fisher Library}
(1926 - ????) *Arthur Gask - Gilbert Larose - The Dark Highway (2/27) {University of Adelaide / Project Gutenberg Australia / mobilereads}
(1926 - 1931) *Aidan de Brune - Dr Night - Dr Night (1/3) {Roy Glashan's Library}
(1926 - 1931) * / ***R. Francis Foster - Anthony Ravenhill - Anthony Ravenhill, Crime Merchant (1/?) {expensive}

(1927 - 1933) *Herman Landon - The Picaroon - The Picaroon Does Justice (2/7) {Book Searchers / CARM}
(1927 - 1932) *Anthony Armstrong - Jimmie Rezaire - The Trail Of The Lotto (3/5) {CARM / AbeBooks}
(1927 - 1937) *Ronald Knox - Miles Bredon - The Body In The Silo (3/5) {Kindle / Rare Books}
(1927 - 1958) *Brian Flynn - Anthony Bathurst - Invisible Death (6/54) {Kindle}
(1927 - 1947) *J. J. Connington - Sir Clinton Driffield - Mystery At Lynden Sands (3/17) {HathiTrust / Kindle}
(1927 - 1935) *Anthony Gilbert (Lucy Malleson) - Scott Egerton - Mystery Of The Open Window (4/10) {Rare Books}
(1927 - 1932) *William Morton (aka William Blair Morton Ferguson) - Kirker Cameron and Daniel "Biff" Corrigan - Masquerade (1/4) {expensive}
(1927 - 1929) **George Dilnot - Inspector Strickland - The Crooks' Game (1/2) {AbeBooks / Amazon}
(1927 - 1949) **Dornford Yates - Richard Chandos - Blood Royal (3/8) {State Library, JFR / Kindle*}

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

Series and sequels, 1928 - 1930:

(1928 - 1961) Patricia Wentworth - Miss Silver - The Benevent Treasure (26/33) {fadedpage.com}
(1928 - 1936) *Gavin Holt - Luther Bastion - The Garden Of Silent Beasts (5/17) {academic loan / State Library NSW, held}
(1928 - 1936) Kay Cleaver Strahan - Lynn MacDonald - The Meriwether Mystery (5/7) {Kindle}
(1928 - 1937) John Alexander Ferguson - Francis McNab - The Grouse Moor Murder (3/5) {HathiTrust}
(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 Crystal Beads Murder (4/4)
(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)
(1929 - ????) Mignon Eberhart - Nurse Sarah Keate - Dead Yesterday And Other Stories (6/8) (NB: multiple Eberhart characters) {expensive / limited edition} / Wolf In Man's Clothing (7/8) {Rare Books / Kindle}
(1929 - ????) Moray Dalton - Inspector Collier - The Belgrave Manor Crime (5/14) {Kindle}
(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 - Mr Jelly's Business (4/29) {Fisher Library / SMSA / Blacktown Library}
(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) {Rare Books}
(1929 - 1943) *Gret Lane - Kate Clare Marsh and Inspector Barrin - The Cancelled Score Mystery (1/9) {Kindle}
(1929 - 1961) Henry Holt - Inspector Silver - The Necklace Of Death (3/16) {Rare Books}
(1929 - 1930) **J. J. Connington - Superintendent Ross - The Two Tickets Puzzle (2/2)
(1929 - 1941) *H. Maynard Smith - Inspector Frost - Inspector Frost In The City (2/7) {Kindle}
(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)
(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 - Who Closed The Casement? (4/4)
(1929 - ????) * J. C. Lenehan - Inspector Kilby - The Tunnel Mystery (1/?) {Kindle}
(1929 - 1936) *Robin Forsythe - Anthony Algernon Vereker - Missing Or Murdered (1/5) {Kindle}
(1929 - 1931) */***David Frome (Zenith Jones Brown) - Major Gregory Lewis - The Murder Of An Old Man (1/3) {rare, expensive}

(1930 - ????) Moray Dalton - Hermann Glide - The Strange Case Of Harriet Hall (4/?) {Kindle}
(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) {expensive}
(1930 - 1941) *Harriette Ashbrook - Philip "Spike" Tracy - The Murder Of Sigurd Sharon (3/7) {Kindle / 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 - Miss Marple's Final Cases (14/14)
(1930 - 1939) Anne Austin - James "Bonnie" Dundee - Murdered But Not Dead (5/5)
(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 Nation's Missing Guest (3/10) {CARM}
(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)
(1930 - 1931) *Roland Daniel - John Hopkins - The Rosario Murder Case (1/2) {unavailable?}
(1930 - 1961) Mark Cross ("Valentine", aka Archibald Thomas Pechey) - Daphne Wrayne and her Four Adjusters - The Adjusters (1/53) {rare, expensive}
(1930 - ????) Elaine Hamilton - Inspector Reynolds - Some Unknown Hand (aka "The Westminster Mystery") (1/?) {Kindle}
(1930 - 1932) J. S. Fletcher - Sergeant Charlesworth - The Borgia Cabinet (1/2) {fadedpage.com / Kindle}

*** 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 / National Library of Australia, missing??}
(1931 - 1951) Phoebe Atwood Taylor - Asey Mayo - The Tinkling Symbol (6/24) {Rare Books / academic loan}
(1931 - 1955) Stuart Palmer - Hildegarde Withers - Murder On The Blackboard (3/18) {Kindle / Internet Archive, borrow}
(1931 - 1933) Sydney Fowler - Inspector Cleveland - Arresting Delia (4/4)
(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 - ????) Carlton Dawe - Leathermouth - Crumpled Lilies (3/??) {Trove}
(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)
(1931 - 1972) Georges Simenon - Inspector Maigret - Chez les Flamands (14/75) {ILL}
(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 - Death In The Dentist's Chair (2/3) {Kindle}
(1931 - 1935) Valentine Williams - Sergeant Trevor Dene - The Clue Of The Rising Moon (4/4)
(1931 - 1942) Patricia Wentworth - Frank Garrett - Pursuit Of A Parcel (5/5)
(1931 - 1931) Frances Shelley Wees - Michael Forrester and Tuck Torrie - The Mystery Of The Creeping Man (2/2)

(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 - VIII To IX (aka "Eight To Nine" aka "The Bachelor Flat Mystery") (4/22) {Kindle / State Library NSW, held}
(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) {Kindle / Rare Books}
(1932 - 1944) Nicholas Brady (John Victor Turner) - Ebenezer Buckle - The House Of Strange Guests (1/4) {Kindle}
(1932 - 1933) Barnaby Ross (aka Ellery Queen) - Drury Lane - Drury Lane's Last Case (4/4) {AbeBooks}
(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 - 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 - 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 - 1953) Leslie Ford (Zenith Jones Brown) - Colonel Primrose - The Strangled Witness (1/17) {Rare Books}
(1934 - 1975) Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe - Fer-de-Lance (1/?) {Rare Books / State Library NSW, JFR / Kindle}
(1934 - 1935) Vernon Loder - Inspector Chace - Murder From Three Angles (1/2) {Kindle /
(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}
(1936 - 1974) Anthony Gilbert (Lucy Malleson) - Arthur Crook - Murder By Experts (1/51) {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?}
(1936 - 1945) Charles Kingston - Chief Inspector Wake - Murder In Piccadilly (1/7) {Kindle}
(1937 - 1953) Leslie Ford (Zenith Jones Brown) - Grace Latham - Ill Met By Moonlight (1/16) {Kindle}
(1938 - 1944) Zelda Popkin - Mary Carner - Death Wears A White Gardenia (1/6) {Kindle}
(1939 - 1942) Patricia Wentworth - Inspector Lamb - The Ivory Dagger (11/?) {fadedpage.com}
(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 - 1953) Michael Gilbert - Inspector Hazelrigg - They Never Looked Inside (2/6) {State Library NSW, JFR}
(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}
(1961 - 2017) - John le Carré - George Smiley - Call For The Dead (1/9) {Fisher Library / Blacktown Library}

*** Incompletely available series

Non-crime series and sequels:

(1867 - 1905) **Martha Finley - Elsie Dinsmore - Elsie And The Raymonds (15/28) {Internet Archive}
(1867 - 1872) **George MacDonald - The Seaboard Parish - Annals Of A Quiet Neighbourhood (1/3) {ManyBooks}
(1893 - 1915) **Kate Douglas Wiggins - Penelope - Penelope's Postscripts (4/4)
(1894 - 1898) **Anthony Hope - Ruritania - Rupert Of Hentzau (3/3)
(1898 - 1918) **Arnold Bennett - Five Towns - Tales Of The Five Towns (3/11) {Fisher storage / Project Gutenberg / Internet Archive}

(1901 - 1919) **Carolyn Wells - Patty Fairfield - Patty Blossom (15/17) {Project Gutenberg}
(1901 - 1927) **George Barr McCutcheon - Graustark - Beverly Of Graustark (2/6) {Project Gutenberg}
(1906 - 1930) **John Galsworthy - The Forsyte Saga - The Silver Spoon (8/12) {Sutherland stack / fadedpage.com}
(1907 - 1912) **Carolyn Wells - Marjorie - Marjorie's Vacation (1/6) {ManyBooks}
(1908 - 1924) **Margaret Penrose - Dorothy Dale - Dorothy Dale: A Girl Of Today (1/13) {ManyBooks}
(1909 - 1912) **Emerson Hough - Western Trilogy - 54-40 Or Fight (1/3) {Project Gutenberg}
(1910 - 1931) Grace S. Richmond - Red Pepper Burns - Red Pepper Returns (6/6)
(1910 - 1933) Jeffery Farnol - The Vibarts - The Way Beyond (3/3) {Fisher Library storage / fadedpage.com}

(1911 - 1937) Mary Roberts Rinehart - Letitia Carberry - Tish Marches On (5/5)
(1911 - 1919) **Alfred Bishop Mason - Tom Strong - Tom Strong, Lincoln's Scout (5/5)
(1913 - 1934) *Alice B. Emerson - Ruth Fielding - Ruth Fielding In The Far North (20/30) {expensive}
(1916 - 1941) John Buchan - Edward Leithen - Sick Heart River (5/5)
(1915 - 1923) **Booth Tarkington - Growth - The Magnificent Ambersons (2/3) {Project Gutenberg / Fisher Library / Kindle}
(1917 - 1929) **Henry Handel Richardson - Dr Richard Mahony - Australia Felix (1/3) {Fisher Library / Kindle}

(1920 - 1939) E. F. Benson - Mapp And Lucia - Trouble For Lucia (6/6)
(1920 - 1952) William McFee - Spenlove - The Adopted - (7/7)
(1920 - 1932) *Alice B. Emerson - Betty Gordon - Betty Gordon At Bramble Farm (1/15) {ManyBooks}
(1923 - 1931) *Agnes Miller - The Linger-Nots - The Linger-Nots And The Secret Maze (5/5) {unavailable}
(1924 - 1928) **Ford Madox Ford - Parade's End - No More Parades (2/4) {ebook}
(1926 - 1936) *Margery Lawrence - The Round Table - Nights Of The Round Table (1/2) {Kindle}
(1927 - 1960) **Mazo de la Roche - Jalna - Jalna (1/16) {State Library NSW, JFR / fadedpage.com}

(1928 - ????) Trygve Lund - Weston of the Royal North-West Mounted Police - The Vanished Prospector (6/9) {AbeBooks}
(1929 - 1931) *Ernest Raymond - Once In England - A Family That Was (1/3) {State Library NSW, interlibrary loan}

(1930 - 1932) Hugh Walpole - The Herries Chronicles - Vanessa (4/4)
(1930 - 1932) Faith Baldwin - The Girls Of Divine Corners - Myra: A Story Of Divine Corners (4/4)
(1930 - 1940) E. M. Delafield - The Provincial Lady - The Provincial Lady In Wartime (4/4)

(1931 - 1951) Olive Higgins Prouty - The Vale Novels - Fabia (5/5)
(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)
(1932 - 1932) Lizette M. Edholm - The Merriweather Girls - The Merriweather Girls At Good Old Rockhill (4/4) {HathiTrust}
(1932 - 1952) D. E. Stevenson - Mrs Tim - Mrs Tim Flies Home (5/5) {interlibrary loan}

(1933 - 1970) Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richlieu - The Forbidden Territory (1/11) {Fisher Library}
(1934 - 1936) Storm Jameson - The Mirror In Darkness - Company Parade (1/3) {Fisher Library}
(1934 - 1968) Dennis Wheatley - Gregory Sallust - Black August (1/11) {interlibrary loan / omnibus}
(1936 - 1952) Helen Dore Boylston - Sue Barton - Sue Barton, Student Nurse (1/7) {interlibrary loan}

(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}

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

Unavailable series works:

John Rhode - Dr Priestley
The Hanging Woman (#11)

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

Louis Tracy - Winter and Furneaux
The Park Lane Mystery (#6)

Moray Dalton - Inspector Collier
The Harvest Of Tares (#4)

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

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

Roger Scarlett - Inspector Kane {NB: Now available in paperback, but expensive}
Murder Among The Angells (#4)
In The First Degree (#5)

Charles J. Dutton - Harley Manners
The Shadow Of Evil (#2)

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

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

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

Books currently on loan:

      


      


        

Reading projects:

Blog:

        

        

Other projects:

        

        

Group Read news:

In a nutshell, there isn't any.

There was some discussion on the last thread about tackling either Anthony Trollope's Orley Farm or making a start with Margaret Oliphant's "Carlingford Chronicles" before the end of this year, but the sad reality is that I don't feel up for it; I'm still dealing with having dropped off the discussion of The Yellow Wallpaper (which I am planning to get back to, I really am!): if I can't keep up the necessary level of focus for a short story, what hope is there?

So I guess the plan would be to pick things up again in the New Year...when everything will magically be back to normal, amiright??

My apologies to anyone who was looking forward to these, but trust me, it's for the best.

Ruminations:

I am so tired of being tired...

I've been completely without motivation lately, though as always I'm hoping a fresh thread will put me in the mood to get some reviews written. Appalling as this year has been, I'm finding the rush towards the end of it terrifying: I seem to have nothing but unfinished jobs on my hands despite all the enforced extra time; the spirit isn't particularly willing and the flesh is constantly exhausted.

Just reading-wise - we won't talk about the rest - I think a large measure of this is the ongoing frustration of not being able to settle into any rhythm due to still being cut off from access to many of the books I need; sadly, it seems as if my academic library has no plans to reopen for public access before the end of the year.

So while my reading numbers are okay, I don't feel like I'm accomplishing much; and this is contributing in turn to my reluctance to sit down and write.

On a brighter note, I will be able to move onto one small self-challenge, now that I have drawn a line under my Christie challenges: I will be reading Georgette Heyer's straight historical novels, starting next month (probably) with The Great Roxhythe. Anyone who would care to join me would be more than welcome!

...and supposing that I haven't chased you all off with my moaning and self-pity---welcome! :)

Happy new thread, Liz!

No you didn't chase me off, irrisistable lizzards keep me coming ;-)

>23 FAMeulstee: Happy new one, Liz.......the introduction of more books I haven't heard of will always pull me in!

Happy new one!

Happy new thread!

Happy new thread! So sorry you are experiencing the pain of library deprivation.

Happy new thread. And I'd send motivation if I had any much to spare. But I feel your pain. It's been a very odd year and the run in isn't looking any shinier.

I'm slightly ahead of you on the Heyer read. Well, for now I am. I decided to do all her historic and romaces together, so I've read The Great Roxhythe. An odd book, I think I would say.

Hi, Liz, and Happy New Thread!

I am with you on the tired/lack of motivation front. This year has simply had me reeling from one fiasco to the next. I won’t bore everyone on your thread with it, but this has indeed been a tough one.

The anole on the last thread was great. Here in Florida they’re a vivid green with a bright orange throat. Very amusing to watch as they bob their heads up and down, warning off others.

The Heyer is intriguing. But way up on your to-do list, Fergus Hume is a stupendously boring author, I’m sad to say. I’m stuck in one of his books and may never get unstuck.

>21 lyzard: I would be interested in joining you on your Heyer adventure but I'm not sure I can access them — nothing at the library, sadly. But I'll keep looking ...

Hi, Anita, Paul, Anita, Jim, Ninie, Helen, Gail and Julia---thank you! :)

>23 FAMeulstee:

More lizards, hey? Can do!

>24 PaulCranswick:

Well, yes: I think I can promise more of that...

>27 NinieB:

I know it's very first-world-problem-ish, but being cut off like this is incredibly frustrating. :(

>28 Helenliz:

It was the great disappointment of her career that she could never get her straight historical fiction to work the way she wanted. With The Great Roxhythe she actually left posthumous instructions that it was not to be reissued, but her son, who was her executor, overrode her on that point---hopefully for the right reasons.

>29 Matke:

I hear you, sister! :(

Ooh, I do envy you your anoles!

Ha! - noted. Just now I'd like to be progressing fast enough that being bored by him was a genuine threat!

>30 rosalita:

Heyer's historicals have been reissued here in book form and on Kindle just over the last year or so, so it's more feasible at present than ever before. It's not like us to be ahead of anyone else, but it may be a British author thing, I guess.

Hmm. And now I can add the shifting font sizes to the changing image dimensions...

>32 lyzard: You can change the font. Click "change style" at the bottom of the page.

>33 FAMeulstee:

Ooh, thank you! It was disconcerting having that shift between visits. :)

Finished The Shoes Of The Fisherman for TIOLI #5.

And may I just say---

YAYYYY!!!! for laconic Australians; BOOOO!!!! to verbose Americans. :D

(Seriously, I can easily imagine this being about 400 pages longer in the hands of an American author of the time!)

Now reading Two Broken Hearts by Robert R. Hoes, a book so obscure I cannot find a cover image for it...

To file away with my fan-throated lizards and my anole, for use with future challenges, here is another shot of the toad-headed agama: apparently this is what they do when they feel threatened, though to me it looks like he's celebrating something! :D

Oh! - and it turns out that we have something to celebrate: the best-seller challenge has finally given me a break!

It only took until 1964...! :D

>36 lyzard: He looks funny.

>37 lyzard: And which book are we talking about, the one that gives a break?

>38 FAMeulstee:

He certainly doesn't look scared!

#1 in 1964 was John le Carré's The Spy Who Came In From The Cold: it's a rare best-seller of the time that is neither a "purpose book" nor 800+ pages long. :D

Of course, technically it's a series work: I may have to consult Gail about how necessary it is to read these books in order...

>31 lyzard: Oh, good thought on the ebook. I'll have to see if Kobo has them available at a reasonable price.

>36 lyzard: He looks like he's laughing! Also, the curly tail is just *chef's kiss* perfect. :-D

>40 rosalita:

They're surprisingly inexpensive here; good luck to you too!

Apparently it's supposed to be mimicking a scorpion, but---yeah, nah. :D

>39 lyzard: It's really good, too. The previous 2 Smiley books were detective stories, not particularly memorable ones either. I don't remember them being essential for reading number 3.

>42 NinieB:

I've seen the (original) film, but I haven't read it. Thanks for the info.

>39 lyzard: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a perfect starting place for LeCarre. The others get far more dicey, especially since plot points are repeatedly given away.

But you’re safe with this one. And it’s an excellent although severely depressing work.

ETA Wait. Are you going to add yet another series to your lists? At least this set of stories will present few problems with accessibility.

>44 Matke:

Thanks, Gail! I saw your name on the 'recently added' list and thought you might be able to help me. :)

I guess I'm inquiring into the necessity of adding it. I've had a few books in the best-seller challenge that have either been the start of something or sequels themselves and so far haven't felt obliged to pursue that; but since this is part of a thriller / crime series and a middle book too, I thought it might be necessary to start at the beginning. I still might, or at least go back and fill in the gaps.

I have a couple of series glitches on my hands:

One I've mentioned before is for Louis Tracy's series featuring Winter and Furneaux of Scotland Yard. For some inexplicable reason, Tracy wrote two different books, one set in London and one set in New York, but both with essentially the same plot and both featuring Winter and Furneaux. The English version, The Park Lane Mystery, which I consider the next series entry, is nearly impossible to get hold of; while the Americanised version of the story, The House Of Peril, is available as a free ebook.

In the latter's favour, it was published first; and I am currently trying to convince myself to read it, move on, and come back to The Park Lane Mystery if that ever becomes possible.

My other issue is that my research indicates that the next entry in Moray Dalton's Inspector Collier series is The Harvest Of Tares, an incredibly rare book which is not among those recently revived on Kindle.

The very fact that so many unexpected books have suddenly been made available makes me even more inclined these days to hold off from skipping a series work, though realistically I may have to do that here. Either way, what I should do is make sure that I have secured copies of all the Moray Dalton books that have been made available on Kindle, to keep showing the Dean Street Press that there's an audience for more.

Finished Two Broken Hearts for TIOLI #11.

And now reading - sort of - The Two Broken Hearts by Catherine Gore, which I accidentally discovered when researching 'broken hearts' for Joyce's country music challenge. Imagine my surprise when I stumbled across "a novel in verse" under that title, suitable for Kerry's challenge! :D

I say I'm sort of reading it because, even more unexpectedly, I've come across a PDF version of it with an automated 'read aloud' option. It's very American and very literal and therefore occasionally inadvertently funny (you can imagine what it makes of poetic conventions like o'er), but for a 122-page-long poem, it's nevertheless a welcome option.

However, The Two Broken Hearts being what it is, I'm also now reading The Hollow Needle by Maurice Leblanc.

Publication date: 2005
Genre: Historical drama
Read for: TIOLI (award-nominated female author)

The Secret River - At the turn of the 19th century, Londoner William Thornhill makes a fair living for himself, his wife, Sarah, and their young family as a waterman on the Thames until a series of disasters including the death of Sal's father leaves them destitute. As starvation threatens, William fights to earn a living, but is finally driven to stealing from his customers. Caught, arrested and convicted, William is initially sentenced to death, but this commuted to transportation to Botany Bay: a journey which Sal and the children make with him. Upon arrival in Sydney after nearly a year at sea, William is 'assigned' to his wife; the two eke out a living via a small grog-shop, until William's skill as a waterman gains him employment with a man called Thomas Blackwood, who carries goods up and down the Hawkesbury River north of Sydney, and who has carved himself a home by the water. William becomes fascinated by the idea that a man, any man, might own land in this new world; in particular, a jagged point along the river, backed by dense bushland and steep cliffs, captures his imagination. Though Sal has no thought in her head but to return to London at the first opportunity, William persuades her to give him five years to conquer his piece of land and to make a real home there for his family. He sets to work, his vision of the future battling against the physical demands of the work, his own ignorance of the land and of farming, and the escalating confrontations between his family and the local aboriginal population, for whom "Thornhill's Point" has been a vital source of food for countless generations... Starting life as a non-fiction account of a convict-ancestor's arrival, struggles and ultimate success in the Sydney colony, Kate Grenville's award-winning novel is a heartfelt and confronting account of the early days of white settlement in Australia and of the wrenching away of the land from the indigenous population. Though she avoids editorialisation, throughout The Secret River Greville presents the rigid thinking and the sense of entitlement that inevitably brought about bloody conflict between the native population and the white settlers throughout the 19th century. Her narrative is shot through with painful irony, from the Thornhills viewing the aboriginals exactly as wealthy Londoners once viewed them, to the tacit relationship between William's small thefts in London and his great theft in Sydney. At the same time, Greville is scrupulously fair to William, whose sense of mingled shock and delight at the transition from the poverty and degradation of the London slums to a place of seemingly endless open space and light understandably engenders in him a passionate desire for a place to call his own. Moreover, though imbued with the prejudices and assumptions of his time, William is capable of better. Some of the most painful passages in The Secret River are those moments in which he begins, dimly, to grasp the fact the natives are simply people like himself; not inferior at all, but merely different. Furthermore, he fully appreciates the vast difference between his own crude efforts to make the land yield to him, and the natives' practical and self-renewing approach, and the profound understanding behind it; something which engenders both resentment and a growing respect. There even comes a wish for coexistence---but when this clashes with William's desire for the land and his love for his wife, there can only be one outcome... Though it would be incorrect to call it a flaw in the novel, the inevitability of the climax of The Secret River hangs heavy over its narrative, perhaps muting some of its impact. Yet of course, the inevitability is also the point---of the tragedy of this novel, and the much greater tragedy of Australia's history.

    With no one but blacks around him, other than his own son, Thornhill saw that their skins were not black, any more than his own was white. They were simply skins, with the same pores and hairs, the same shadings of colour as his own. If black skin was all there was to see, it was amazing how quickly it became the colour that skin was.
    You're a fine fellow, Jack, Thornhill said. Even though your arse is as black as the bottom of a kettle. He heard a noise from Dick, a blurted laugh smothered as soon as it was born. But we'll get you all in the end. The words came out of his mouth before he had thought. There's such a bleeding lot of us.
    He had a quick piercing memory of Butler's Buildings, the coughing and cursing of dozens of men and women pushed in together. He could hear the great machinery of London, the wheel of justice chewing up felons and spitting them out here, boatload after boatload, spreading out from the Government Wharf in Sydney, acre by acre, slowed but not stopped by rivers, mountains, swamps.
    The thought made him gentle. There won't be no stopping us, he said. Pretty soon there won't be nowhere left for you black buggers...

Publication date: 1920
Genre: Young adult
Read for: TIOLI (mystery challenge / nuts)

Dick Lester Of Kurrajong - Though written in 1920, this young adult novel by Mary Grant Bruce is set some years earlier, presumably to avoid dealing with WWI and its consequences. There is an earlier work featuring Dick Lester, and his adjustment after being sent to boarding-school in Melbourne after growing up on 'Kurrajong', his parents' cattle station in country Victoria. This sequel, however, is about Dick's adventures when, as his long-absent father travels back to Australia from England, his mother proposes that the two of them journey to Perth to meet him when his ship docks. The narrative breaks itself into various phases: the train journey from Melbourne to Port Adelaide; the journey on by water on a steamer, during which Dick distinguishes himself - and nearly loses his life - by diving in to save a child overboard; and a visit to the remote Western Australian property owned by the Warners, the parents of the rescued boy. All this is well enough and certainly not without interest, though the narrative's increasing tone of snobbery, white privilege and derogatory racial attitudes becomes hard to take. But even this hardly prepares us for the turns taken by the second half of the story - nor for the rather startling reminder of what used to be considered "suitable for children" - when escalating tensions between white settlers and displaced natives explode into violence that culminates in an (implied) massacre. Dick himself becomes a victim of the bloody confrontation when, while rescuing the Warners' daughter, he is speared in the shoulder and, upon falling off his horse, suffers an injury that may leave him crippled for life...

    The doctor, a young country practitioner, acknowledged his helplessness; the thing was beyond him, and until a surgeon and nurses could arrive from Perth he could only administer narcotics and opiates, that had until now been of little effect. There was injury to the head, that was certain; beyond that he feared that the spine was affected. The spear wound, once relieved of the terror that the barb might have been poisoned, was comparatively simple. But John Lester's face was old and haggard as he stared at his son.
    Out in the bush, north of the run, infuriated men were scouring the ranges for the flying blacks, dealing out swift justice without waiting for black trackers and police, whose slower methods were little satisfaction to a district that clamoured for revenge. From fifty miles around men had come to help to hunt down the slayers, until Narrung resembled a huge camp when night brought the hunters home to the head station. In another room lay Merle, ill from shock and exhaustion. She had clung to Conqueror's mane until the grey horse came to a standstill at the gate of the home paddock. Downes and old Harry had found them there, and had had to use force to unclasp her fingers. But the Lesters knew nothing of these things. The world, for them, began and ended round Dick's bed...

>48 lyzard: Oof, that excerpt was a rollercoaster ride, from the heartwarming "They were simply skins, with the same pores and hairs, the same shadings of colour as his own" to the chilling "Pretty soon there won't be nowhere left for you black buggers".

On a much lighter note, I've decided to adopt your description in >1 lyzard: as an all-purpose insult: "C'mon, you toad-headed agama!"

>48 lyzard: One for my book bullet list. I wonder how it compares to Eleanor Dark's Timeless Land trilogy?

>50 rosalita:

We'll get you all in the end, and we damn near did, if two world wars hadn't intervened. :(

I find that a completely inaccurate description but there are nearly four dozen different species called that so I must be in the minority. Great insult, though! :D

>51 NinieB:

The Timeless Land books deal with the broader picture of settlement and colonisation, and with documented history and historical figures---so a very different approach from The Secret River, which is a much smaller and more intimate account of personal experience, however large its themes might be.

Finished The Hollow Needle for TIOLI #1.

Now reading The Ends Of Power by H. R. Haldeman and Joseph DiMona; still reading / listening to The Two Broken Hearts by Catherine Gore.

Publication date: 1932
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Maigret #13
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI ('air')

L'Affaire Saint-Fiacre (translation title: The Saint-Fiacre Affair; reissues titles: Maigret Goes Home, Maigret On Home Ground, Maigret And The Countess) - An anonymous note reaches the police, stating that a crime will be committed in a church during first mass on All Souls' Day; the site of the projected incident is Saint-Fiacre, the place of Maigret's own birth, where his father was estate manager for the Count de Saint-Fiacre. The call is irresistible: Maigret returns to the village, staying at the tiny inn and rising in the freezing dawn to attend mass. He is the only man there---but one of the small gathering of women is the Countess de Saint-Fiacre, now a woman of sixty; and when the service is over, the Countess is found dead... This entry in Georges Simenon's Inspector Maigret series is something of an anomaly, in that it is barely a detective story at all; at least, Maigret isn't really the main detective. Moreover, the narrative is quite as taken up with Maigret's reactions to returning home, where he has not set foot for many years, and to the gulf between his childhood memories and current grim reality. To his dismay he discovers that the Countess is - was - a foolish old woman being preyed upon by young men---or perhaps the other way around; that the current estate manager seems to be feathering his own nest; that the Saint-Fiacre estate is sliding into debt; and that the young Count is a wastrel known for begging and threatening for money. Nevertheless, it seems that the Countess died of natural causes, of heart failure. Maigret, however, discovers that the Countess' missal has gone missing. When he locates it, he finds inside a fake newspaper clipping announcing the Count's suicide, positioned within the pages so that his mother was bound to find it during the service. Who knew that the state of the Countess' health was such, a shock might be fatal? - and who was responsible for the false note? - and, in spite of the consequences, can it truly be said that a crime has been committed...?

    To the distraught priest, Maurice de Saint-Fiacre said: "You never knew that... You only ever knew the chateau in a state of chaos... My mother after she lost her husband... My mother whose only son got up to all sorts of nonsense in Paris and only ever came home to ask for money... And the secretaries..."
    His eyes were so glistening that Maigret expected to see a tear fall from them at any moment.
    "What did she say to you?... She was afraid to see me turning up, wasn't she?... She knew there would be yet another hole to fill, something she'd have to sell to put me back on my feet once again..."
    "You should calm down!" the priest said in a flat voice.
    "Not before knowing...whether you've suspected me without knowing me from the very first moment...'
    Maigret broke in. "The priest made the missal disappear..." he said slowly.
    He had already worked it out! He was coming to the aid of Saint-Fiacre. He imagined the countess, torn between sin and remorse... Didn't she fear punishment?... Didn't she feel a little ashamed before her son?...
    She was a sick and troubled soul! Why, in the secret of the confessional, might she not one day have said, "I'm afraid of my son..."
    Because she must have been afraid of him. The money that passed to people like Jean Metayer was Saint-Fiacre money, meant for Maurice. Was he not bound to come sooner or later and ask for an explanation?

>50 rosalita:
Oh, I can think of so ma y uses for that! Thanks!

>55 Matke: You're very welcome! It really works on many levels.

Publication date: 1934
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Asey Mayo #5
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (animal on cover)

Sandbar Sinister - After a hard year of work, Penelope Colton is glad to accept an invitation from her old friend, Lizzie Richards, to the latter's summer cottage outside of East Pochet, in the area simply known as 'Sandbar'. Pen envisages a rest in the sun, but soon discovers that she is expected to pay her way by taking over the housekeeping and general management of a residence that becomes progressively filled with guests. One of these is Lizzie's self-centred daughter, Cordelia, or "Deal", who insists upon taking a boat out early one morning in spite of a threatening storm. The exasperated Pen travels into town to rout out the boatman, Zeruah Nims, only to discover that he is one of many to have participated in a drunken orgy fueled by a discovered cache of bootleg liquor. To Pen's relief, she is rescued by Asey Mayo, who offers to take the boat out iDeal insists. The two drive back to Sandbar, only to discover in the boathouse the body of a man who has been hit over the head with a bottle; a man called Richard Thorne who, supposedly, had already died some years before. Circumstances lead to the suspicion that Thorne may have been murdered by Lizzie Richards' brother, Caleb Frost---until the latter is found shot dead and buried under a sand dune... The fifth entry in Phoebe Atwood Taylor's series featuring the laconic New England amateur detective and jack-of-all-trades, Asey Mayo, follows the usual pattern of her series, with Asey acquiring as his sidekick a middle-aged woman, in this case Pen Colton, who also narrates. Sandbar Sinister is very much a novel of its time: Prohibition has just been repealed; bootleggers are scrambling to offload their last supplies of illegal liquor; and the overnight revels in East Pochet that result leave half of the participants spoiling for a fight and the other half with little memory of what went on. Meanwhile, Pen has lost all her money in the Crash, her need to work to support herself setting her apart from her more fortunate friends; though in Lizzie's case, the support of her brother Caleb comes at the high price of his bullying temperament and constant threats of cutting her and Deal off, unless they behave as he demands. The mystery itself is convoluted, and frankly relies too much upon stretches of deduction and coincidence. However, the novel also features dollops of humour, with one running joke built on the attempts of pretty much everyone to hire Asey's services at one time or another; and there is also a rather delicious meta-joke, with the plot turning significantly upon the secret identity of a fabulously successful author of detective stories, and a second such author - less successful - butting into the investigation. (This book, one of several American mysteries of the time that I have read to do so, also mocks the "transcendental detective" so beloved of writers like Carolyn Wells.) It emerges that Richard Thorne and Caleb Frost were enemies of longstanding, the former having supposedly drowned himself after a financial scandal. When the new mystery novel by "Varney Cheyne" not only presents, in effect, the Thorne-Frost scandal but exonerates the former, it suggests motive for both men's murders; but did one kill the other, then get killed himself? - or is an unsuspected third party responsible for both murders, and if so, why? It turns out that a surprising number of people, in and out of the cottage at Sandbar, have an interest in determining the true identity of Varney Cheyne; quite a number of them also had reason to want Caleb Frost dead...

    "I see," I said. "That is, that's all logical enough, but why would that compel the murderer to kill him? I mean, suppose I walked up to some one and said I was---oh, any writer you care to name. What is there in that to make them kill me?"
    "It seems to me," Asey said, "that Frost was killed not b'cause he was Frost, but b'cause he was Varney Cheyne. That's the only note that Frost and Thorne jibe on. Yup."
    "Asey," I said wearily, "I'm stupid, but I admit it without hesitation. Just elucidate."
    "Well, s'pose you'd killed Caleb Frost, thinkin' he was Varney Cheyne," Asey said with great patience. "Then s'pose a feller marches up and announces that he's Cheyne. Wouldn't you reach for the nearest bottle? I think you would. P'ticularly since, after all, you really couldn't be honest certain sure that Frost, whom you'd already killed, was Cheyne. Yup, I been thinkin' round that all day, but I hadn't maundered that far."
    "But that eliminates almost everybody," I said, "except Ford and Tom and Cora."
    "B'cause," Asey said, "you don't admit to being a Republican ain't no reason why you mightn't be."

>55 Matke:, >56 rosalita:

I must say, I'm feeling very sorry for those lizards!

As far as that goes, I like toads, too...

Publication date: 1924
Genre: Contemporary drama
Series: The Forstye Saga #6 / A Modern Comedy #1
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (3-word colour title)

The White Monkey - Now writing almost contemporaneously, John Galsworthy picks up his narrative of the Forsyte family two years after the breaking of Fleur's relationship with Jon and her marriage on the rebound to Michael Mont. The marriage, to outward appearances, is a success; and Fleur is a prominent figure in the post-war London social scene. Increasingly, however, she finds that the gatherings that she attends and organises are becoming a duty rather than a pleasure. Though he knows nothing of her reasons, Michael has come to terms with the fact that Fleur did not love him when she married him. He contents himself with knowing that he provides her with the security and care she needs---until his best friend and former best man, the poet Wilfred Desert, confesses that he is in love with her; and to Michael's dismayed gaze, it seems that Fleur, too, is tempted... In The White Monkey, the Mont marriage and its difficulties provides the framework for a wider consideration of post-war malaise in the England of the 1920s. The slaughter in Europe has shattered a way of life, and a way of thinking of the world; but though the old beliefs are being discarded in the new atmosphere of cynicism, there is widespread uncertainty and even fear, disguised but not entirely hidden by the frantic pace of modern life. The symbol for this, from which the novel takes its title, is an extraordinary painting inherited by Soames Forsyte from his cousin George, and in turn gifted to Fleur and Michael, showing a monkey gorging itself on fruit and seemingly without care or need; but its eyes tell a different story... Around the central narrative, other threads further illustrate the state of society: a young working-class couple struggle with poverty and unemployment, dreaming of emigration and a new life; events in Europe, so soon after the close of war, begin to threaten new horrors; and Soames, in spite of his reputation for financial acuity, is drawn into a venture that threatens to smear his reputation, and reveals a new world of dishonesty, manoeuvring and dog-eat-dog...

    The painter stood quite still... "Phew!" he said.
    Soames rose. He had waited for the flippant; but he recognised in the tone something reverential, if not aghast.
    "By George," said Aubrey Greene, "those eyes! Where did you pick it up, sir?"
    "It belonged to a cousin of mine---a racing man. It was his only picture."
    "Good for him! He must have had taste."
    Soames stared. The idea that George should have had taste almost appalled him.
    "No," he said, with a flash of inspiration: "What he liked about it was that it makes you feel uncomfortable."
    "Same thing! I don't know where I've seen a more pungent satire on human life."
    "I don't follow," Soames said dryly.
    "Why, it's a perfect allegory, sir! Eat the fruits of life, scatter the rinds, and get copped doing it. When they're still, a monkey's eyes are the human tragedy incarnate. Look at them! He thinks there's something beyond, and he's sad or angry because he can't get at it. That picture ought to be in the British Museum, sir, with the label: 'Civilisation, caught out.'"
    "Well, it won't be," said Fleur. "It'll be here, labelled 'The White Monkey.'"
    "Same thing."

Best-selling books in the United States for 1962:

1. Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter
2. Dearly Beloved by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
3. A Shade of Difference by Allen Drury
4. Youngblood Hawke by Herman Wouk
5. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
6. Fail-Safe by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler
7. Seven Days in May by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II
8. The Prize by Irving Wallace
9. The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone
10. The Reivers by William Faulkner

The dominant theme of the 1962 list is politics.

There are two holdovers from 1961 present: J. D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey, and the previous year's #1, Irving Stone's The Agony and the Ecstasy.

William Faulkner's The Reivers, his final novel, is an uncharacteristically lighthearted work about three rackety young men from the countryside having adventures in the big city at the turn of the 20th century.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Dearly Beloved is set entirely within a wedding ceremony, with the guests present pondering their own marriages (or lack therefof) and the significance of marriage in contemporary society.

Herman Wouk's Youngblood Hawke is about instant celebrity and the price of fame, as a young writer from the South briefly becomes the toast of New York's literary scene.

Irving Wallace's The Prize uses the framework of the Nobel Prize in a narrative of political intrigue and the lingering scars of war. A Shade of Difference, Allen Drury's follow-up to his 1960 best-seller, Advise and Consent, deals with the impact of events in Southeast Asia upon the Cold War and the death of colonialism.

Fail-Safe, by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, is a Cold War thriller about a rogue US bomber headed for Moscow carrying nuclear weapons. Seven Days in May, by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II, is about an attempted military takeover of the US government.

However, the best-selling book of 1962 was Katherine Anne Porter's allegorical novel, Ship of Fools.

Born Callie Russell Porter in Texas in 1890, the future Katherine Anne Porter was raised until the age of eleven by her grandmother, whose name she would later adopt. After her grandmother died, Porter and her father and siblings lived a difficult peripatetic life in Texas and Louisiana, which left her little opportunity for education. She tried to escape via marriage at the age of sixteen, but the relationship was abusive and ended in divorce. Her health collapsed, and she spent two years undergoing treatment before nearly dying during the flu epidemic of 1918. Her experiences resulted in what would later become her trademark: her hair turned white. For the rest of her life, Porter would struggle with health issues, including miscarriages and a stillbirth.

When first on her own, Porter supported herself by acting and singing, but her desire was always to be a writer. After working as a newspaper critic in Texas, in 1919 she moved to New York, where she wrote children's stories and did ghost writing. During this time she became politically radicalised, an experience which saw her move to Mexico where, while working for a magazine publisher, she also became involved with the local leftist movement.

During the 1920s, Porter divided her time between Mexico and New York, and also began writing in earnest, publishing short stories, novellas and essays over the next two decades. Her 1935 collection, Flowering Judas And Other Stories, became one of the most critically praised works of its time; and though Porter's literary output remained sporadic and limited, she earned a reputation as one of America's leading writers.

In 1931, Porter travelled from Mexico to Germany by ship. Her experiences and observations during the journey became the basis of her only novel. She began work on this book in 1940, and eventually published excerpts of it as short stories between 1945 and 1959; but it was not until 1962 that Ship Of Fools was published.

Critical reception was mixed, ranging from rapturous praise to disappointment; however, the novel became America's best-selling book for that year.

Publication date: 1962
Genre: Historical drama
Read for: Best-seller challenge

Ship Of Fools - In 1931, a German ship departs Veracruz in Mexico for Bremerhaven, carrying predominantly German passengers returning home, but also Europeans of other nationalities, American tourists, a Spanish dancing troupe, a group of Cuban students, a Spanish countess expelled for political reasons, and - crammed together in steerage - nearly 900 Spanish workers deported from Cuba after the collapse of the sugar industry. In the cramped conditions onboard, many strange cabin-mates must tolerate one another's company; while in first class, certain individuals fight for the prestige of a place at the captain's table, and cliques begin to form of national and racial lines. As the weary journey drags on, tensions rise, resulting in confrontation, violence, the exposure of secrets, and the destruction of self-image... Katherine Anne Porter's Ship Of Fools is a novel that finds art replicating life replicating art replicating life... It is, in other words, almost as gruelling to read as the shipboard journey is for its passengers. It is a novel that exists out of its needful time. As a work of the 1930s, as a warning, Ship Of Fools might have been meaningful; but thirty years later it is not telling us anything that we don't already know about conditions at the time; and though this aspect of the novel is depressingly accurate, there is finally a sense of futility here that goes beyond the novel's depiction of humanity sailing not just obliviously, but welcomingly, towards destruction. Chiefly what Ship Of Fools succeeds in doing is underscoring the fact that Porter was not a novelist, but excelled as a writer of short fiction. Her character sketches here are devastating, and there are any number of self-contained vignettes that leap of the page; but as a single long narrative the book becomes an exercise in endurance; while the intended allegory is often too insistent. Furthermore, though a significant purpose of the novel is to illustrate the German mindset of the time, and to show how even ordinary, well-meaning people could have become culpable in the horrors to come, there are some confusing and worrying touches in the surrounding narrative. Porter's depiction of the Spanish "dance" troupe (their performances are a cover for pimping and prostitution) is unrelentingly nasty; while more worrying still is her presentation of the novel's one Jewish character, Herr Löwenthal, who almost seems intended to excuse antisemitism. Perhaps the most horrifying aspect of the novel - its overarching destination aside, of course - is Porter's way of showing what the current generation of adults is breeding: the young twins, Ric and Rac, are a pair of budding sociopaths who have absorbed all the lessons of their elders, and who take great delight in tormenting the other passengers and in acts of animal cruelty. (Both the twins' non-human victims survive; a steerage passenger is not so lucky.) Meanwhile, the novel's most important character, with respect to its allegory, is Dr Schumann, the ship's doctor: an intelligent and cultured man who is disgusted with much of the behaviour onboard and who strives to divorce himself from the rabid nationalism and prejudice of his fellow-Germans---but who, when push comes to shove, withdraws and allows events he knows to be wrong to unfold. But no-one here escapes Porter's poison pen: even in her handling of the novel's potentially more sympathetic characters, such as the middle-aged American divorcee, Mrs Treadwell, or thin-skinned, unhappy teenager, Elsa Lutz, she gives far greater weight to their flaws---such that we are left without a single admirable or even just genuinely likable character in the whole novel. Ship Of Fools is, ultimately, 500 pages of hateful people being hateful, and it's just too much.

    At this moment Dr Schumann joined them, and they greeted him as if he were returning from a long absence. He was amiable and distant, said to the waiter, "Just a little clear soup please, and coffee." When Frau Hutten said to him, "We have missed you!" with the new tone of familiar friendship, he inclined his head towards her, but in some surprise. "Now," she went on, including the Doctor in the charmed circle, "we are just seven---seven for good luck."
    This was the kind of puerile nonsense her husband had never been able wholly to eradicate from her mind, and had long ago learned to pretend not to notice. He now addressed the Captain: "Such as They," he pronounced, nodding towards the spot where Wilhelm Freyer was seated with Herr Löwenthal, "such as They should have special quarters on ships and other public conveyances. They should not be allowed the run of things, annoying other people."
    "But yesterday you seemed to defend them. I was astonished," said Frau Rittersdorf.
    "I was defending nothing, dear lady---I spoke in the light of history and the religious superstitions of an ancient people; I find them remarkably interesting, but I must say, their descendants a good deal less so, do you agree, my Captain?"
    "Let me say at once that if I had my way in the matter," said the Captain, "I should not allow even one on board my ship at all, not even in the steerage. They pollute the air."
    He closed his eyes, opened his mouth, turned the point of his large spoon spilling over with thick pea soup and fried crusts towards him, plunged it deeply into his mouth, clamped his lips over it and drew the spoon out empty, chewed once, gulped, and instantly set about repeating the performance. The others, except Dr Schumann, who drank his broth from a cup, leaned over their plates also, and their was silence for a time except for gurgling, lapping noises while everybody waded into the soup, and stillness except for the irregular rhythm of heads dipping and rising. The ring was closed solidly against all undesirables, ally as well as enemy. All the faces were relaxed with sensual gratification, mingled with deep complacency: they were, after all, themselves and no one else: the powerful, the privileged, the right people...

Finished The Ends Of Power for TIOLI #2.

Now reading Great Cat Tales, edited by Lesley O'Mara; still reading / listening to The Two Broken Hearts by Catherine Gore.

>62 lyzard: Ugh. I remember finding a copy of this one on the family bookshelves in junior high and not getting very far into it before I abandoned it. Of course I was far too young to really grok what it was about, but I will comfort myself with knowing it's also just not very good. Certainly I read plenty of books back then when I was too young to fully understand the themes but I could at least follow the surface plot in those!

On the other hand it sounds like I would do better to seek out some of Porter's shorter work.

>62 lyzard: I have this on the kindle. Tried to read it in my early twenties and couldn’t. I’m not sure I even want to think about now. Still, it’s there when I need it.

I may say just as a general point that it sounds as if the movie version was very softened from the book. It hasn't come my way yet, unlike some other best-seller adaptations.

>64 rosalita:

Yes, I came away with that thought too, although ironically her short works (which later won her a Pulitzer) don't seem to be readily available here...just this thing.

>65 Matke:

Hmm. If "need" is the criterion... :D

Finished The Two Broken Hearts for TIOLI #13.

Still reading Great Cat Tales, edited by Lesley O'Mara.

Publication date: 1823
Genre: Poetry
Read for: TIOLI (novel in verse)

The Two Broken Hearts - I've lost this online-only poem about three different times just while reading it, so in an uncharacteristic display of sensibleness, I'm going to write it up now and get it done with. Catherine Gore would go on to become the queen of the generally cheerful Silver-Fork Novel, but her first publication was this lachrymose tale, written in verse, of people dying of broken hearts. Set in 14th century Germany, this is the story of the proud and stern Count of Eberstein. Widowed himself, he also loses his sister and her husband. Vowing to raise their daughter as his own, the count plans a marriage between his son and heir, Eberhard, and his lovely cousin, Bertha. However, when Eberhard leaves home to pursue glory in war, it also loosens the ties between himself and his family, and sets in motion a tragedy which will bring down the house of Eberstein...

Why must I trace through all its gloom, a tale
Where tears of deep and changeless grief prevail;
Where not one ray adorns the clouded sky,
Where one sole flow'ret blooms, and blooms to die—
And all is deep and hollow, like the ground
Where echoing graves beneath our tread resound?

Finished Great Cat Tales for TIOLI #3.

Now reading Tell Me Your Secret by Dorothy Koomson.

So anyway...

Tuesday was poor Chester's surgery day. Poor humans, too, since it required an 8.00 am drop-off at the specialty vet situated on the other side of the city.

But as it turned out it was just as well my vet referred this case to a specialist. Chester's condition is (in effect) an autoimmune disease in which his gums massively overreact to any bacteria or plaque on his teeth, which means that it doesn't stop while the teeth are there.

He had all his teeth except his canines extracted before I adopted him in the hope that would make his condition manageable, but the inflammation around the canines remained severe enough to warrant their removal too, though this is major surgical work to be avoided if possible.

In addition, a standard set of x-rays revealed that Chester also had the tip of the root from one of his previously extracted teeth embedded in his cheekbone. This is common, because the roots normally grow up right into the bone, and again, not usually a problem: ordinarily such a top would eventually crystalise and effectively become bone; but with Chester's condition, instead it remains a constant immune challenge.

The specialty vet did another, more comprehensive set of x-rays from unusual angles to try and see all around Chester's cheek and jawbones, and discovered that there were five more such root tips.

So his surgery required the removal of all six of those in addition to the extraction of the canines, plus the trimming away of the worst of the inflammatory tissue in his gums.

He was nevertheless able to come home on Tuesday night (requiring a second cross-city trip). He was understandably in a complete panic and spent Tuesday night and a fair chunk of Wednesday hiding in a corner and refusing to let me get anywhere near him.

The problem now is trying to get his painkillers into him. Theoretically I'm supposed to be squirting a small syringe of it into his mouth - !!!??? - but yeah, that's not really happening. I've tried mixing it into his food, but it obviously tastes foul so he's only getting a partial dose.

However---

This is the thing with cats ("the" thing, heh!): though they carry on like hysterical fragile prima donnas as their ordinary behaviour, as soon as anything is really wrong, they show they're really as tough as old boots and twice as resilient. Less than two days on, Chester is bouncing around the house and generally behaving normally (except for some ongoing wariness and a tendency to startle easily), so that you wouldn't even know anything had happened.

I'm trying to imagine a human being bouncing back like that from a equivalent surgery plus less than optimal pain relief.

Hell, I'm still completely exhausted and all I did is fret...

...fret and read, while (i) waiting for the vet's call; I'm always paralysed and unable to settle to anything else in that situation; and (ii) having shut myself away with Chester to try and calm him down (and keep Spike from bothering him).

So---finished Tell Me Your Secret for TIOLI #8.

Also finished Close Quarters by Michael Gilbert for TIOLI #15.

Now reading A Fool's Paradise: A Story Of Fashionable Life In Washington by Bejamin G. Lovejoy.

>70 lyzard: Poor Chester and poor Liz! It does sound like the specialty vet was the right call given the ongoing root problem. Wonderful that he's already showing signs of feeling better. If you don't expect painkillers, maybe the pain's not so bad?

I have squirted meds into a cat's mouth. Tons o' fun.

>70 lyzard: Oh, Chester! And Liz! What an ordeal but how fortunate that the specialty vet was able to diagnose and hopefully correct the problem. I love your description of cats: though they carry on like hysterical fragile prima donnas as their ordinary behaviour, as soon as anything is really wrong, they show they're really as tough as old boots and twice as resilient. So true!

Poor Chester, glad he recuperated so well after surgery.
Did the vet call by now?

>72 NinieB:, >73 rosalita:, >74 FAMeulstee:

Aw, thank you, ladies! :)

>72 NinieB:

Yeah, I'm down to giving him several small meals with a drop or two in each. Not sure it's best from a dosage point of view but at least it's going in.

>73 rosalita:

That's The Great Cat Secret. :D

>74 FAMeulstee:

Oh yes, I meant on Tuesday while I was waiting to hear how the surgery went. I knew it would be hours but still couldn't settle to anything else.

Anyway, here's my brave boy this morning---

Looking good, Chester! Be a good boy and let your mama give you your medicine!

I want rub his nose or give a scratch behind the ears!

>77 rosalita:

Yyyyyeahhh, that's not gunna happen...

>78 NinieB:

He likes both of those things so I've passed your message on. :)

Poor Chester! But, as you said, at least the speciality vet did a really thorough job on him. And all at once, nothing worse than repeat bad experiences.

He is a very handsome chappie.

>80 Helenliz:

Yes, she kept stressing that while it was going to be horrible in the short term, it was much better to get it all over with at once.

Finished A Fool's Paradise: A Story Of Fashionable Life In Washington for TIOLI #12.

Now reading Wings Above The Diamantina by Arthur Upfield.

How To Kill Someone's Enthusiasm In One Easy Lesson:

Many of my self-challenges have fallen apart this year for obvious reasons, but I was able to pick up one of them again when I got access to Michael Gilbert's Close Quarters via my newly discovered SMSA Library.

This was the last pick for my "Random Reading 1940- 1969" challenge wherein I pick books from my wishlist using a random number generator.

Having been stuck for months, it was exciting both to finally get hold of this book, and then to be able to spin the wheel again...

...at least for a few minutes.

The first book I landed on was one I'd already read: Robert Manson Myers' From Beowulf To Virginia Woolf.

The next was Kathlyn Rhodes' It Happened In Cairo, a "desert romance", I gather; that just isn't available.

The third was particularly frustrating, as it both brought to my attention a new series, Beryl Symons' five-book Jane Carberry series---only none of them are available either, except for the third of the five, which for some inexplicable reason was serialised locally in 1949. So I could read just that one, but, you know...

The fourth spin, however...

...gave me exactly what I did not need, yet another Catholic novel: nothing less than Francis Spellman's The Foundling.

(No offence to any Catholics: I'm just really over that branch of literature!)

And when I say it's available, it is as long as I don't mind reading a 350-page novel entirely online.

It's my own fault: I've been adding the other nine books from the yearly Top Ten List to my wishlist, which early on was giving me books I was interested in, but which lately has simply been creating a minefield...

...which just blew up...

And speaking of my Top Ten lists...

Best-selling books in the United States for 1963:

1. The Shoes of the Fisherman by Morris West
2. The Group by Mary McCarthy
3. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, and Seymour-An Introduction by J.D. Salinger
4. Caravans by James A. Michener
5. Elizabeth Appleton by John O'Hara
6. Grandmother and the Priests by Taylor Caldwell
7. City of Night by John Rechy
8. The Glass-Blowers by Daphne du Maurier
9. The Sand Pebbles by Richard McKenna
10. The Battle of the Villa Fiorita by Rumer Godden

The 1963 list goes from one extreme to another.

Historical fiction - albeit increasingly dealing with events of the 20th century - is still prominent. Richard McKenna's The Sand Pebbles is set on an American gunboat on the Yangtze River in 1926; while Jame A Michener's Caravans is set in Kabul in 1946, and is about the search for a missing American woman recently married to an Afghan engineer.

Daphne du Maurier's The Glass-Blowers, however, is set against the French Revolution and draws upon du Maurier's own family history, dealing with the enclosed glass-blowing community of the Loir-et-Cher region.

Rumer Godden's The Battle of the Villa Fiorita is about two children who, discovering after the event that their parents have divorced, set out for Italy to stop their mother's planned second marriage. John O'Hara's Elizabeth Appleton is about the wife of a college professor who struggles with the thwarting of her social ambition.

J. D. Salinger's Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, and Seymour-An Introduction are two more of his interlocking novellas dealing with the complicated Glass family, one a comedy and one a tragedy.

Mary McCarthy's The Group, tracing the lives of eight Vassar graduates during the 1930s, was widely banned for its political leanings and/or its sexual explicitness (and was much later the inspiration for Sex And The City). John Rechy's City of Night, meanwhile, is about young male "hustlers", and was one of the first mainstream works to deal frankly with homosexuality and male prostitution.

At the other end of the spectrum, Taylor Caldwell's Grandmother and the Priests is a collection of short stories, each one narrated by a different Roman Catholic priest.

The year's best-selling book was also a Catholic-themed work: Morris West's The Shoes of the Fisherman.

Morris Langlo West was born in St Kilda, a suburb of Melbourne, in 1916. Part of a large Catholic family, he was sent away from home to be raised by his grandparents. He excelled at school before entering a Christian Brothers seminary in Sydney; though he would eventually leave the order, marry and have children.

West worked first as a teacher in schools in New South Wales and Tasmania, the latter while completing higher studies at university in Hobart. In 1941 he enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force, where he served as a cipher officer. He began writing during the war years and published his first novel, Moon In My Pocket, in 1945, under the name "Julian Morris".

After the war, West worked in radio, forming his own company and spending a decade writing and producing radio dramas. A health breakdown led to the selling of the company and a new focus upon writing fiction and plays.

In the mid-1950s, West and his family relocated to Europe, where he became Vatican correspondent for the Daily Mail. His breakthrough book, the non-fiction Children Of The Sun, about the street children of Naples and the priest, Father Borelli, who worked for them, was published in 1957. From this point, though he continued to experiment with genres (sometimes under the pseudonym "Michael East"), West's novels became increasingly about the use and abuse of power, often in the realms of politics and religion.

In 1959, West published The Devil's Advocate, about a dying priest sent to investigate a candidate for sainthood; it became his first international best-seller and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He followed it with The Shoes Of The Fisherman, about the election of an unconventional Pope. This became the most successful work of West's career, selling over six million copies and reaching #1 on the American best-seller lists.

West continued to write novels and plays over the following two decades, although his work was frequently interrupted by increasing health issues. He divided his time between England, New York and Italy, before returning to Australia in 1982. He was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in the Australia Day Honours of 1985, and upgraded to Officer of the Order in the Queen's Birthday Honours of 1997. He died in 1999, with his final work, The Last Confession, published posthumously in 2000 despite being left unfinished.

Publication date: 1963
Genre: Contemporary drama
Read for: Best-seller challenge

The Shoes Of The Fisherman - When the Pope dies, the eighty-five Cardinals of the Church are summoned to the Vatican to elect his successor. As the men gather from all around the world, Valerio Rinaldi, the Cardinal Camerlengo of the Vatican, begins a subtle campaign to ensure the election of a new and different kind of Pope: a man capable of facing the challenges of a world in which the Church is struggling for relevance, and which seems to be rushing towards nuclear destruction... No-one is more surprised by the election of Ukrainian Kiril Pavlovich Lakota to the papacy than Kiril himself: the youngest of the cardinals at fifty, he is also the newest, appointed only days before the passing of the late Pope. Kiril is a man who has suffered for his faith, spending seventeen years imprisoned in Siberia being interrogated - and tortured - by the man who would rise to be Soviet Premier---but who first, accepting that Kiril would not be broken, arranged for his escape. The world at large and the smaller world of the Vatican look on in mingled surprise and disapproval as Kiril does indeed prove himself a different kind of Pope... Morris West's The Shoes Of The Fisherman is in truth less a novel than a rumination upon the duties and responsibilities of the Church to its followers and the world in general, and the position of the Catholic Church as the Cold War reached crisis point. It is an unabashedly didactic work, using lengthy excerpts from Kiril's private journals to dissect out what West clearly perceived to be the strengths and weaknesses of his Church and his own personal faith. Around this central thread are woven several subplots that illustrate its thesis via stories of Catholics (none of them exactly "ordinary", though, it must be said) struggling with the problems presented by the modern world, with greater or lesser degrees of success. The Shoes Of The Fisherman could have been intolerable, but it is rescued by several simultaneous qualities---not the least of which is its relative brevity. In particular, Kiril's experiences in Siberia, which have both scarred him and moulded him, are not presented in any detail, but left in the shadows of his past; as indeed are the actions of Kamenev, the future Premier. To be frank, I am quite unable to imagine an American author of this time being able to leave well enough alone here: on the contrary, my expectation would be about 400 pages of back-story. (I likewise doubt that an American would have found anything positive to say about Communism, which Kiril / West does regarding its theory if not its practice.) Kiril himself is both likable and well-intentioned - a real "people person", somewhat to the alarm of his bureaucracy - and a man who must battle his mental and physical scars and his inevitable feelings of inadequacy in order to satisfy his sense of his duty. Furthermore, West is clear-sighted about the shortcomings of the Church, the self-defeating nature of some of its proceedings, and the need for steady, if cautious, modernisation. He also includes a major subplot involving a character clearly based upon the French Jesuit palaeontologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, which ponders the coexistence of science and faith. The other striking feature of this novel is its prescience---anticipating, in effect, the future election of John Paul II and some of the events of Vatican II. But then, it is clearly a book that was Meant To Be: the day of its publication, the 3rd June 1963, was the day that Pope John XXIII died...

    How shall I write? As simply as I can because the deepest truth is most simply stated. I must write from the heart---cor ad cor loquitor. And I must write in my own tongue because this is the best fashion for every man to talk of God, and to him...
    To whom shall I write?... To the whole Church---to my brother bishops, to all priests and monks and nuns, to all the faithful, without whom our office is meaningless. I must show them how their mission is not merely to teach but to educate one another with love and forbearance, each lending of his own strength to the weak, of his own knowledge to the ignorant, of his charity to all...
    And when I have written, what then? I must begin to act through the administration of the Church to see that reforms are made where they are needed and that the inertia of a large and scattered organisation does not stand in the way of God's intention. I must have patience, too, and tolerance, understanding that I have no right to demand of God a visible success in all I attempt. I am the gardener. I plant the seed and water it, knowing that death may take me before I see the bud or the flower. It is late and I must begin...
    "Kiril, the servant of the Servants of God, to the Bishops and Brethren of all the Churches, peace and apostolic benediction..."

Happy Newish Thread, Liz.

I love the toad-headed agamas Olympics up top, and the threatened/celebrating one down below.

I'm glad Chester made it through okay; that sounds like a visit to the dentist we wouldn't wish on anyone. His bouncing back so quickly is impressive.

>87 lyzard: Was Morris West the first Australian to write a year's best-selling book?

>88 jnwelch:

Thanks, Joe! I'm enjoying that people are enjoying my lizards. :)

His recovery has been amazing, really (and no doubt helped by the fact that I finally figured out how to get his meds into him!).

>89 NinieB:

He was! - and in fact I think he may have been the first Australian writer to make the lists at all. For a long time Australian books were only published in "the Commonwealth" (and often just the UK) so this is a measure both of the success of this book and that publishing practices were changing.

Ran into the State Library yesterday and made a start on The Sign Of The Glove by Carlton Dawe.

In the meantime, still reading Wings Above The Diamantina by Arthur Upfield.

Publication date: 1953
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Miss Silver #23
Read for: Series reading / shared read / TIOLI (past / present / future)

Out Of The Past - When Alan Field returns unexpectedly from South America, showing up without warning at the seaside house owned by James and Carmona Hardwick, it sends shockwaves through the gathered guests. Esther Field, Alan's kindhearted stepmother, is warily glad to see him---at least until he starts pressing her for money and threatening his late father's reputation. To Carmona, Alan is the man who left her at the altar; to James, the man he paid to go away and leave Carmona alone; to Pippa Maybury, the keeper of a secret that might ruin her marriage; to Adela Castleton, once a threat to her adored young sister, Irene, whose death may or may not have been an accident... Nor is the Hardwicks' house the only place where Alan's return causes trouble. At the lodging-house kept by the Annings in the nearby village of Cliffton-on-Sea, paying guest Ethel Burkett is so shocked by what she overhears between him and Darsie Anning, she repeats it to her Aunt Maud... In fact, with so many secrets in his keeping and blackmail on his mind, perhaps it isn't altogether surprising when Alan Field is found stabbed to death in a beach hut near the Hardwicks' house... There is asking for it, and then there is ASKING for it; and it is the latter which Alan Field is guilty of in this 23rd entry in Patricia Wentworth's series featuring private investigator, Miss Maud Silver. Between his stupidity and his sheer rottenness, Alan absolutely deserves a paper-knife in the back; the difficulty is finding anyone who doesn't have motive... Out Of The Past is one of those mysteries that involves not only multiple suspects, but manages to place all of them more or less at the scene of the crime, just missing one another in the dark. All this said, the novel's main flaw is that despite all this manoeuvring, the identity of the guilty party is just a bit too obvious---at least to the reader, who knows more about the characters' secrets than the police ever do; or, for that matter, Miss Silver. However, there is some compensation here in a couple of points---the first being that after innumerable allusions in other novels, we finally get to meet Ethel Burkett, who has come to Cliffton for her health---and, fortunately, invited her aunt to accompany her. The other, far more important one, is the unexpected behaviour of Pippa Maybury, who becomes the prime suspect after it emerges that she returned to the house in the middle of the night with blood all over her hands and dress. Pippa is (if you'll forgive the expression) not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer---but she is smart enough to do what characters in stories like this hardly ever do: she tells the entire truth - tells it in what we might even call appalling detail - her frankness winning her a sorely-needed advocate in the shape of Miss Silver. Meanwhile, Frank Abbott is of course also on the scene---brought there by the movements of yet another suspect, José Cardozo, who has followed Alan down from London in the belief that he had a hand in the suspicious death of his brother, Felipe, who he knew in South America. Together, Miss Silver and Frank must pick their way through a web of secrets and lies, to discover which of Alan Field's many victims was finally pushed too far...

    Frank gave a short laugh. “I notice we both say 'he'! But I must point out that you haven’t answered what I asked you.”
    “Which was?”
    “Whether you have not taken into account the possibility that it was Miss Anning who did the stabbing.”
    “Is there any evidence to support such a theory?”
    “There is quite a strong motive.”
    “I imagine that might be the case with quite a number of people. There is, for instance, Mr Cardozo.”
    “Oh, yes. I’m not really suggesting that Miss Anning has the stronger claim. I just wondered why you are being so careful not to suggest that she had a claim at all.”
    Miss Silver watched the gradual dimming of the light upon the sea. After a little while she said, “I met Mr Field very briefly. He had great good looks and a great deal of personal charm. I received the impression that he was entirely taken up with himself and his own affairs. The charm was being rather deliberately used. When I began to hear him discussed, this impression was confirmed. He was considered to have behaved very badly both to Miss Anning and to Mrs Hardwick. From what Mrs Field said about him it was plain that he was making extravagant demands upon her for money, and that not for the first time. She was, in fact, so deeply troubled that it came into my mind to wonder whether he might not be bringing some kind of pressure to bear.”
    Frank whistled. “What do you mean by pressure?”
    She made no reply.
    “Do you mean blackmail?”
    “I think he was the type who might have had recourse to it, in which case there may be quite a number of people who had a motive for wishing him out of the way...”

Publication date: 1932
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Inspector Bedison #4
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (pre-2010)

Who Closed The Casement? - When Stephen Enderton, the mentally and physically challenged son of wealthy country magnate, Sir Jeremy Enderton, is found dead in his room as a result of leaking gas, it is assumed to be a tragic accident: Stephen has been subject all his life to epileptic fits, and it is believed that in one of these, he knocked the tap and turned it on. However, an outcry comes from Mabel Rockaway, a local woman who was almost Stephen's only friend---and who gossip insists had made up her mind to marry him. Miss Rockaway says that when she left Stephen the casement of his room was open as usual, but when he was found dead it was closed---and the only person known to have seen him between these times was his father... The four-book Inspector Bedison series by Thomas Cobb represents almost a perfect bell-curve, opening with the dismal The Crime Without A Clue, lifting considerably across Inspector Bedison And The Sunderland Case and Inspector Bedison Risks It, then dropping off again in this odd and uncomfortable series-closer. Part of the problem is that much of Who Closed The Casement? is quite if not more interested in the previously woman-avoiding Bedison's courtship of Rebecca Moore, who runs the local inn with her brother, than it is in the question of whether Stephen Enderton's death was a tragic accident or murder. Everyone except Miss Rockaway is comfortable with the former, including the coroner's jury---except for the fact that, in order for the gas-leak to occur, both taps in Stephen's room had to be on... Rather lackadaisically (and telling far more than he should to Rebecca along the way), Bedison works at understanding the dynamics of the Enderton family: Stephen, in spite of everything the entailed heir of the estate; the arrogant Sir Jeremy, who saw that his eldest son wanted for nothing but rarely went near him; Stephen's half-brother, Nigel, who is now his father's heir; his half-sister, Joan, who is engaged to Fabian Westerham, Stephen's doctor; and the beautiful Freda Norman, a second cousin who is Sir Jeremy's ward. Motive is not lacking, particularly not when the local vicar reveals to Bedison that Stephen was not, in fact, Sir Jeremy's son---and not if the rumours of a planned marriage with Mabel Rockaway are true. But did someone in this proud old family really murder the unfortunate Stephen? - or did someone do it for them...?

    Mabel Rockaway's account created a far more sympathetic impression than Major Pound's, or even than Mr Howson's. Although Stephen had been stunted, deformed and mentally defective, she at least had found him far from repulsive, and while it appeared that Sir Jeremy had been punctilious in supplying his material needs, the fact remained that he had been cut off from the rest of the family...
    Miss Rockaway might be a prejudiced witness, but it was impossible to ignore some of her assertions; what she said, for instance, about the casement had been confirmed by the old butler, and even by Sir Jeremy himself.
Unless Stephen had closed the window for no particular reason that hot afternoon, someone else must have done so, and if Sire Jeremy had left it open, someone must have entered the room after he went out at four o'clock and before a quarter to five.
    What Bedison wanted was evidence of the position of the casement at the time Stephen was left alone. Prove that it had been still open then, and there was an end to Miss Rockaway's accusations as far as Sir Jeremy Enderton was concerned. If, on the other hand, it could be shown that it was closed at four o'clock, the case would begin to look very black indeed...

Publication date: 1935
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Trevor Dene #4
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (pre-2010)

The Clue Of The Rising Moon - Though writer Peter Blakeney has isolated himself in a cabin at the Adirondacks in order to finish his play, he cannot help being drawn into the activities and conflicts of the other guests at the camp run by Charles Lumsden, particularly those involving hot-tempered Chicago millionaire, Victor Haversley and his unhappy young wife, Graziella, to whom Peter is deeply if silently attracted. Supposedly in recovery from a nervous breakdown, Haversley is drinking too much and displaying an angry hostility. It is only after Peter meets a visiting young Englishman called Trevor Dene that he is brought to see that Haversley's behaviour has its roots in fear---fear for his very life... After Haversley is found shot dead, an apparent suicide, Lumsden reveals that he had long been was the target of a revenge campaign from a mob of Chicago gangsters, some of whom he was responsible for sending to prison. It was their threats that drove him into his breakdown, then to hide out at Wolf Lake---then, it seems, to take his own life. To the surprise and indignation of all - except the sheriff, Hank Wells, who knows who he is - Trevor Dene then thrusts himself into the situation, declaring it a case of murder... As with the previous two books in this series by Valentine Williams, The Clue Of The Rising Moon finds nerdy young Scotland Yard detective, Trevor Dene, visiting America---this time holidaying by himself while his wife, Nancy, catches up with family and friends in New York. The novel is narrated by Peter Blakeney, however, who becomes Dene's sidekick as he tries to determine the true circumstances of Victor Haversley's death: whether his enemies finally caught up with him and took their threatened revenge---or whether the truth is closer to home... Like many American mysteries of the early 30s, The Clue Of The Rising Moon is an uneasy blending of Prohibition-era gangsterism, with criminals and escaped convicts and "rods" everywhere, and the more conventional Golden Age mystery, wherein quite a number of the "nice" people staying at the Wolf Lake camp have something to hide. Williams has quite a lot of fish-out-of-water fun with Dene, whose soft-spoken politeness is set against the loquaciousness of the American guests at the camp, the local accent of the sheriff, and the slang-heavy jargon of the gangsters who finally show up. Dene is no-one's idea of a detective, least of all a Scotland Yard man, and he has a lot of trouble getting people to take him seriously---until his pertinacity and logical arguments slowly convince everyone that Haversley's death was not a matter of crude revenge at all, but the result of a careful plot by someone within the camp. The problem confronting Dene in solving the mystery is time of death: it is placed at just after eleven at night on the evidence of Miss Janet Ryder, who was playing chess on the balcony at the time with local medico, Dr Bracegirdle, and swears she heard the shot. It is only when Dene begins to ponder questions of light and dark - the night, the moonrise, and the non-lighting of a lamp - that things begin to fall into place...

    Dene's glance shifted to Hank. "Old pal," he observed, "yesterday you unconsciously dropped a valuable hint. You reminded me that, on the night of the murder, there was no moon until around midnight---I remembered then that, when I left the village at about ten-fifteen to call on Blakeney, it was as black as Hades on the lake. Actually, as I worked out from a calender of the moon's phases I was able to consult at the Public Library at Springsville yesterday, the exact time of the moon's rising was 12.42 A.M., Eastern Daylight Saving Time..."
    Hank nodded. "That'd be et. When I said midnight, I wuz thinkin' of th' old time, like most of us country folks!"
    "On the evening of the crime," Dene continued in the same matter-of-fact tone he had employed throughout, "the sun set"---he consulted his memorandum---"at 7.54 P.M., summer time. My calendar shows that twilight ended at ten-twenty-one. Which means that at half-past nine it was dusk."
    "That's right," the sheriff agreed. "Nine-thirty past you won't hardly see to read the paper in my store, this time o' year..."
    "Ah!" said the Scotland Yard man, a new eagerness in his manner. "And at ten o'clock, Hank, how's it at ten?"
    "Indoors, you mean?"
    "Of course. I'm thinking of the cabin here."
    "Afore the moon come up?" As always, the sheriff was extremely deliberate.
    "Yes, man, yes! Aren't we dealing with last night?"
    As he sprawled on the couch, Hank pivoted on his elbow to eject a stream of tobacco juice through the open window behind him, then turned a leisurely glance round the cabin. "Hyar? At ten o'clock o' night an' no moon? You won't see as fer as the end of your nose!" he drawled.
    The young man drew a deep sigh---his face shone with excitement...

Just stopping by to say hello, Liz!

So relieved to hear Chester came through his huge tooth operation and is bouncing around again. Strangely the liquid pain relief is the only medicine we could persuade our kitty to take (maybe it was fast acting enough she figured out what it did) but anything else she completely refused.

>20 lyzard: 'So I guess the plan would be to pick things up again in the New Year...when everything will magically be back to normal, amiright??'

Ha ha! I keep realising that at some point I am going to have to come to terms with the fact that 2021 isn't going to magically make all the weirdness and stress of this year go away but I think I'm going to put off facing that at least a little longer....

>21 lyzard: I share your pain and frustration re the library closures. Ours are open now for pre-orders only (no browsing) but there was a 6 month period they were closed and even though I knew there was no way I would run out of books it was really discombobulating....

>95 souloftherose:

****GASP!!!!****

How lovely to see you here again! You've been very much missed. :)

He had a rampage around my room this morning at the crack of dawn today so I think we can say normality has been resumed.

It might have been different if it hadn't been mouth surgery: I was simultaneously getting warned about "pulling on his lips" or otherwise putting his mouth under tension and being told "just squirt it into his mouth". It was a real "Yeah, nah" situation! I finally figured out a serving / dose / multiple feeds regime that got the drug into him (and thankfully today is the last day) but I'm upset he didn't get as much as he needed when he needed it most.

ETA: He's now demanding second breakfast so I guess it's all good!

I had a "OMG SIX WEEKS" panic attack this morning...

I have all my libraries back now except the academic one...which is where I normally access about 75% of my books. The uni has obviously just written this year off except for trying to get its poor students over the finish line. I keep having to remind myself that the library is, after all, *for* the students...but somehow it doesn't really help... :D

Finished Wings Above The Diamantina for TIOLI #14.

Still reading The Sign Of The Glove by Carlton Dawe.

>92 lyzard: Well, you've managed to sum up all my feelings about our latest Miss Silver perfectly, Liz. The only extremely minor point is that I didn't necessarily see the reveal of the murderer coming — partially because I don't really try to but mostly I think because I didn't want anyone to be punished for killing such a rotten cad!

The intricate "dancing in the dark" of all the suspects having ended up at the murder scene either immediately before or after (and of course, in one case during) was a bit far-fetched but I'll allow it.

And yes, how refreshing to have a character with secrets actually tell the truth to the police! Astonishing.

>98 rosalita:

Fair enough! I can't say I was surprised, though, if only because she was the nastiest amongst the "nice" suspects, which with anyone but Agatha - who was never afraid to have a "nice" murderer - is a bit of a giveaway.

I know that set-up is a common mystery trope but I have a lot more trouble accepting that sort of situation than (say) people striking up conversations on trains. :D

So the dumbest character turns out to be the smartest character: excellent!

Ha! I’ve made my feelings clear about Maudie’s picking up clients on the train, so I won’t repeat it all here. Though lately she seems to be relying on her relatives to drum up business for her, which I enjoy. And of course, our man Frankie A!

I need some fanfic that “ships” Maudie and Frank — imagine that?!

>100 rosalita:

I think I'd really rather not!? :D

Relatives, but also spreading word of mouth which is believable enough.

Finished The Sign Of The Glove for TIOLI #4.

Now reading The Trail Of Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer.

Good grief. I tried reading The Duke of York’s Steps, and learned why it’s unknown. I didn’t get beyond Chapter 2, very unusual for me. When the author went into absolute raptures about the heroine’s looks, I was out.

I do admire you very much for reading some of these books to meet the challenge you’ve set for yourself.

I’m thrilled that Chester is doing so well! That’s got to relieve a lot of your stress.

>103 Matke:

Dear girl, if you're going to bail over that you won't read about 75% of the stuff written by men across the 20s and 30s!

Thrillers tend to be worse than mysteries - my own hair-tearer is when the hero falls in love at first sight in Chapter 1 with some random "extraordinarily lovely girl" as an excuse to get him involved in the plot - but they can all be pretty bad.

What's interesting is that you rarely get this with the sexes reversed. In fact handsome men tend to be treated as a bit suss... :D

>103 Matke:

Thank you! Chester and I are both doing well, though he's recovering faster than me. :)

Publication date: 1889
Genre: Classic / sensation novel
Read for: A Century Of Reading / TIOLI (synonym for 'lies')

Under False Pretences - Edward Luttrell and his wife are living in Italy when their second child, also a boy, is born. When Mrs Luttrell falls ill of fever, the baby is taken away from her to be nursed by a local woman, Vincenza Vasari. Mrs Luttrell eventually recovers from what proves a dangerous illness, but is left in a state of high nervous tension. She demands to see her baby, but when the boy is brought to her she repudiates him, insisting wildly that it is not her child; that Vincenza has substituted her own. Nothing anyone can say or do can move her from this point, though at last Mr Luttrell succeeds in carrying his wife and two sons back to Scotland. At his insistence, the story is never told; but Brian grows up fully aware that his mother does not love him... After Mr Luttrell's death, Mrs Luttrell pours all her affections onto her older son, Richard, while her coldness towards Brian becomes antipathy. When a shocking hunting accident leaves Richard dead, the hysterical Mrs Luttrell accuses Brian of murder. Then, hurling at him the story of his birth, she turns him out of the family estate. Homeless and friendless, Brian ends up travelling towards San Stefano, determined to discover the truth about himself. When he is almost killed by an avalanche while travelling through the Alps, he decides to let the world think him dead... Given its convoluted plot and the question of identity upon which it turns, this 1889 work by Adeline Sergeant has to be classified as a sensation novel; yet Sergeant's oddly matter-of-fact style and tendency to didacticism is a far cry from the frank melodrama (and frank enjoyment of same) that we usually associate with that genre. She seems, on the contrary, to be making a point - an unusual one for her time - about character being more than birth: both Brian and Dino Vasari, when he finds him, are high-principled and honourable young men---though one is by birth an Italian peasant and the other an English gentleman; though one has been raised in the Scottish countryside and the other in the bosom of the Roman Catholic church (the latter no recommendation in a British novel of this time). However, the most intriguing thing about Under False Pretences - another unusual touch for this genre - is that rather than build to a big "reveal", it maintains its ambiguity over the question of its joint heroes' birth---effectively allowing the reader to make up their own mind, or perhaps to conclude that it doesn't matter... Around the central mystery of who is really Brian Luttrell and who Dino Vasari, Sergeant builds a more familiar sensation-plot, full of improbable adventures, hair's-breadth escapes, thwarted romance, deadly enmity---and of course a desperate villain. The latter is the handsome but untrustworthy Hugo Luttrell, a penniless relation brought up with Richard and Brian, who after the "death" of the latter sees a chance of gaining the Luttrell estate and fortune for himself. There is little Hugo won't stop at, and when he discovers, first, that Brian did not die in the avalanche, and second, that Dino Vasari may actually be the legal heir to the estate, he takes drastic action to ensure than neither young man will inherit...

    Brian took a step nearer to the Prior. "What right have you had to keep this matter secret so long?" he demanded.
    "Say, rather, what right had I to disturb an honourable family with an assertion that is incapable of proof?"
    "Then why did you tell me now?"
    "Because you know it already."
    Brian seated himself and leaned back in his chair, with his eyes still fixed upon the Prior's face. "Why do you think that I know it?" he said.
    "Because," said Padre Cristoforo, raising his long forefinger, and emphasising every fresh point with a convincing jerk, "because you have come to San Stefano. You would never have come here unless you wanted to find out the truth. Because you have changed your name. You would have had no reason to abandon the name of Luttrell unless you were not sure of your right to bear it. Because you spoke of Vincenza in your delirium..."
    "You are right," said Brian, in a low voice. "But you say it is incapable of proof. She---my mother---I mean Mrs Luttrell---says so, too."
    "If it were capable of proof," said the Prior, softly, "should you contest the matter?"
    "Yes," Brian answered, with an angry flash of his eyes, "if I had been in England, and any such claimant appeared, I would have fought the ground to the last inch! Not for the sake of the estates---I have given those up easily enough---but for my father's sake. I would not lightly give up my claim to call him father; he never doubted once that I was his son."
    "He never doubted?"
    "I am sure he never did."
    "But Mrs Luttrell---"
    "God help me, yes! But she thinks also that I meant to take my brother's life..."

Publication date: 1931
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Read for: 1931 reading / TIOLI (name your school)

Mystery House - Inspector Michael Adderley of Scotland Yard is driving through a dark and foggy night on his way to his aunt's country house when he collides with a car that has been abandoned in the road. A dim light in the distance shows him that there is a single house in this isolated part of the countryside; and he is walking towards it in search of a phone when he hears a woman's voice raised in a cry of, "Murder...!" Rushing onwards, Adderley discovers a terrified young woman with blood on her hands, who tells him she has discovered a man, mortally wounded, inside the house. The two hurry on through the fog and make their way inside. There, Adderley does indeed find a man---but one who has been dead for hours, and with no sign of how he died, least of of all the injuries of which the young woman spoke. Shown the body, the young woman insists this is not the man she found dying... After an intriguing and atmospheric opening, this mystery / thriller by Australian author, J. M. Walsh, is a disappointment; in fact, it feels like the kind of book produced on the "anyone can write a mystery" assumption than was so widespread in the 20s and 30s, when pretty much every writer did have a go at it. (Walsh is much better known for his science fiction and fantasy works.) Mystery House pulls several of my least favourite genre tricks along the way, including a central couple falling in love instantaneously and for almost no reason, a professional detective behaving very unprofessionally to protect the woman he unconvincingly loves - despite the fact that she is, or should be, his prime suspect - and a heroine who spins the plot out by refusing to tell the whole truth---even to the man she unconvincingly loves. An attempt upon Adderley's life - using his own car - the disappearance of the girl, and an inspection of the crime scene in company with a local police officer, Sergeant Aldin, intervene before Adderley finally makes it to the home of his aunt, the eccentric Lady Kettering---where the girl who has introduced herself to him as Mildred Orme shows up as a guest, under the name Mary Cranford... While running interference between Mary and the local police, who are less inclined to be forgiving of her half-truths than he is himself, Adderley discovers that Mary's brother is mixed up in the activities of a dangerous criminal gang, and that much - though not all - of her erratic behaviour and half-truths can be attributed to her attempts to extricate him from his situation. However, Mary's interference results in an attempt upon her life, from which she has the narrowest of escapes; while a second, even darker family secret will prove to lie behind many of the mysteries that Adderley must unravel...

    "I wonder," said Adderley deliberately, "if you remember the reason I advanced when I asked you not to leave the house?"
    "You said it was for my own protection, and you mentioned the possible danger of a sudden and violent death."
    "Exactly."
    "But it seems you were mistaken. No harm came to me to-night. I wasn't, even for a moment, in the slightest danger."
    Adderley did not answer immediately. Instead, he turned to the mantelpuece and took up something that was wrapped carefully in paper.
    "Do you think so?" he said mildly, and began peeling the paper away from the object it concealed. "I'm inclined to differ. Do you see this?"
    'This' was a squat object, half the length of a darning needle, about twice as thick. One end tapered to a sharp point that was slightly discoloured now, and the other end had a rather thick base with a tiny tuft of some soft downy material glued to it. In whole appearance the object looked not unlike an overgrown and distorted air-gun dart, and so Mary suggested to Adderley.
    "That's just what it is," he told her. "We found this sticking in a tree almost in a line with where you had been standing. No, don't touch it. I'm doubtful about that point. It's probably poisoned..."

Finished The Trail Of Fu Manchu for TIOLI #10.

Also finished The Melancholy Death Of Oyster Boy & Other Stories by Tim Burton, for TIOLI #16.

Now reading The Hungry Moon by Ramsey Campbell.

Publication date: 1927
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Sir Clinton Driffield #2
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (numbers game)

Tragedy At Ravensthorpe - Sir Clinton Driffield pays a visit to the Ravensthorpe estate, where the three adult Chacewater children, Maurice, Cecil and Joan, make him welcome; though he is soon aware of bad blood between the brothers. While walking out with Cecil, Sir Clinton hears about the estate, which dates back to the time of Elizabeth; he learns of its priests' holes and secret passages, and is amused to note the presence within the grounds of a number of "fairy houses", which by family tradition must be maintained by the owner for the benefit of the district's "wee folk". Somewhat reluctantly, Sir Clinton becomes involved in the preparations for an elaborate masquerade party that is to mark Joan's coming-of-age. He warns Cecil that Joan's insistence upon real disguises and maintained characters might make the property vulnerable to robbery. Cecil passes on this warning but, resenting Maurice's plans to sell off their late father's collection of valuable artefacts, including three medallions supposedly fashioned by Leonardo, he, his fiancée, Una Rainhill, and his friend, Foxton Polegate, plot a fake robbery to punish him. What was intended as a joke becomes a tragedy, however, when the fake burglary of the small private museum becomes tangled up in a real one, a second attempt is made upon the medallions, and murder and a disappearance follow... Like many "sophomore" works, this second entry in J. J. Connington's series featuring new Chief Constable, Sir Clinton Driffield, is an uneven and sometimes uncomfortable work. It also - and I am beginning to suspect that this is a hallmark of the series - seems to play more fair than it actually does, with most of the discoveries made by Sir Clinton and his colleague, Inspector Armadale, presented to the reader---but a couple of key ones withheld for the big reveal at the end. (That said, part of my befuddlement was due to my misinterpretation of Cecil's hints about Maurice's "problem", though I doubt I'm the only one who ever made that mistake.) Tragedy At Ravensthorpe is a long work for this genre, and one that shifts focus several times; and while it is not strictly a police procedural, it does stress the practical details of the investigation, and the matter-of-factness of the investigators; as well as offering a few moments that look forward to the development of a more medical / scientific approach detection, including some blood spatter evidence and the implications of the lividity markings on a body. Overall, however, this is one of the "geographical" mysteries so popular at the time, with the layout of Ravensthorpe - its grounds as much as the house, ancient tower, secret passages, fairy houses and all - playing a critical part in the solution of the mystery. In this, it bears a strong resemblance to the treasure-hunting thrillers of the time, though the discovery made here is a gruesome one. The investigation of the burglary - a crime that seems to have gone peculiarly wrong, in that the thief or thieves took, not the real Leonardo medallions, but some electrotype copies - is still underway when Sir Clinton and the inspector are summoned to a murder scene. Foss, an agent for the wealthy American negotiating for the medallions, is found dead in the museum, stabbed with a Japanese sword that was another family treasure. It is Foss' valet, Marden, who finds the body: he tells Sir Clinton that, before entering the room, he heard Foss arguing with Maurice Chacewater---who has since disappeared, though Marden swears he did not leave the room by the door...

    When they reached an open space at the summit, Sir Clinton leaned on the parapet and gazed over the surrounding country with interest. As the space was restricted, Cecil remained within the turret, at the top of the stair; but the Inspector joined his Chief on the platform.
    "Splendid view, isn't it, Inspector?"
    "Yes, sir. Very fine." Armadale was evidently puzzled by this turn of affairs. He could not see why Sir Clinton should have come up to admire the view instead of getting on with the investigation. The Chief Constable did not seem to notice his perplexity.
    "There's Hincheldene," Sr Clinton pointed out. "With a decent pair of glasses one could read the time on the clock-tower on a clear day. These woods round about give a restful look to things. Soothing that greenery. Ah! Just follow my finger, Inspector. See that white thing over yonder? That's one of these Fairy Houses."
    He searched here and there in the landscape for a moment. "There's another of them, just where you see that stream running across the opening between the two spinneys---yonder. And there's a third one, not far off that ruined tower. See it? I wonder if we could pick up any more? They seem to be thick enough on the ground. Yes, see that one in the glade over there? Not see it? Look at that grey cottage with the creeper on it; two o'clock; three fingers. See it now?"
    "I can't quite make it out, sir," the Inspector confessed. He seemed bored by Sir Clinton's insistence on the matter; but he held up his hand and tried to discover the object. After a moment or two he gave up the attempt and, turning round, he noticed his Chief slipping a small compass into his pocket.
    "Quite worth seeing, that view," Sir Clinton remarked imperturbably...

Publication date: 1924
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Peter Clancy #6
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (author from a different country / continent)

The Key - Late one night in the old country house known as Tower Hall, a violent argument between brothers ends with Curtis Fane being cut off and turned out of the house... The next morning, it is discovered that Gilbert Fane did not sleep in his bed; nor is there any answer to knocking at the door of the so-called 'tower room', which he used as his study. When the door is finally forced, it reveals Gilbert Fane dead with a dagger in his back: murdered in an ancient room of solid stone walls, to which the victim held the only key... Even as the small-town machinery of the law moves uncertainly to deal with the tragedy, a man calling himself Fletcher Kenyon presents himself at Tower Hill, explaining that he was hired by Gilbert Fane to value some rare manuscripts. In reality, he is private investigator, Peter Clancy, called in from New York by Fane's eccentric but loyal cousin, Tom Matchem, to get to the bottom of the baffling crime... This sixth entry in Lee Thayer's series featuring the red-headed young Irish-American detective, Peter Clancy, has some interesting touches but is finally an unsatisfactory work---and I don't just mean with respect to the jiggery-pokery around the matter of the key to the tower room, at which its title hints. That might be acceptable, but the explanation finally offered for this "locked room" crime is very definitely not; and that's even before we grasp the implications of the "shadow of death" seen within Tower Hill by which Gilbert Fane's elderly and increasingly panicked valet. As usual with American mysteries of this time, The Key gives short shrift to the official police investigation of Gilbert Fane's death, though perhaps with more justification than usual: the locals just aren't up to dealing with a crime of this magnitude, least of all the sheriff---who doubles as the town handy-man, and in fact did carpentry work for Fane that proves to have a bearing on the case. Peter Clancy, meanwhile, conducts his investigation while maintaining his disguise as Fletcher Kenyon, chiefly to avoid distressing Fane's young and lovely widow, Denise, whose welfare everyone worries about, and who everyone wants to spare any further distress---which makes things awkward when it seems she has been lying about her movements on the night of her husband's death. Curtis Fane is likewise evasive about times; while Peter soon realises that, despite calling him in to investigate, Tom Matchem, too, has motive: he is obviously very much in love with Denise. Peter's examination of the crime scene reveals two vital points: first, that a robbery took place at some point during the night, with, rather curiously, half of the large sum of money that Gilbert had with him stolen; and second, that a paper has been removed from Gilbert's desk---a document upon which he was working at the very moment of his death, and which Peter believes to have been a new will...

    “Come on,” Peter said. “No time to waste.” He opened the door into the hall and glanced swiftly up and down the passage. “Coast clear, so far,” he added in Tom’s ear. “Come ahead.”
    As they descended the great staircase, Peter almost automatically resumed the role of Fletcher Kenyon for the benefit of several servants whom they encountered on the way, but it dropped from him as soon as they were safely within the tower.
    He had opened and relocked the door with the key he had drawn that morning from the depths of the quarry pool. It had worked quite as easily as the original key. Now he turned to Matchem, and said:
    “We’ve got to face it, old man. Somehow or other, this is the key that did the trick... You were on the spot and I’ll have to depend on you. I want you to go over again everything that happened, before and after you broke the door in. Just what each person did---where they stood---what they said. Act it over for me, if you can---and don’t, for God’s sake, leave out anything. The least thing may be important...”

Publication date: 1909
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Winter and Furneaux (Furneaux #1)
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (title starts with preposition)

By Force Of Circumstances - Despite being, as he believed, disinherited, after the death of his grandfather Arthur Leigh comes into possession of Abbey Manor. He has barely arrived when, while inspecting the grounds, he hears a woman's scream on the other side of the high wall that encloses the property. Arthur's quick intervention prevents what looks like a kidnapping; however, to his surprise, the young woman displays remarkable sang froid over the incident, as well as a definite reluctance over the pursuit of her would-be abductors. In fact, she seems more perturbed by learning Arthur's name... When Miss Hinton has departed for her father's yacht, anchored at the coastal village of Burnham, Arthur is moved to take a walk in that direction, only to stumble into another strange incident: one that begins with him being knocked down in the dark by something he neither sees nor hears, and ends with the discovery of a body on a barge---the naked body of a man, which Arthur is certain was not there when he first went on board... Arthur is still dealing with these events when he is dealt a crushing blow: from his grandfather's lawyers he learns that the vindictive Rollaston Leigh deliberately left Abbey Manor mortgaged up to the hilt, and that if he cannot raise £50,000 in the next six months, he will be turned out of his boyhood home for a second time... By Force Of Circumstances is a convoluted and not exactly credible thriller, though it certainly has its entertaining aspects---one of which is the first introduction in the works of Louis Tracy (though this was published under his "Gordon Holmes" pseudonym) of Inspector Charles Furneaux of Scotland Yard---here acting alone, rather than in tandem with his future partner, Superintendent Winter, who at this time was being put to unflattering use in quite a different series by Tracy. And fortunate it is for Arthur Leigh that matters do fall into the hands of the quicksilver, Jersey-bred detective, as he rapidly finds himself the focal point of a frightening conspiracy, one which finds him suspected of the murder of the dead man on the barge, and which seems to have as its ultimate goal his immediate surrender of the Abbey Manor estate. The narrative of By Force Of Circumstances ultimately pits Furneaux against one of genre writing's odder "master criminals", a certain Chauncey Bagot: a plump, soft-spoken, genial individual who has attached himself to wealthy American businessman, John P. Hinton, and whose strange, dominating personality is as much a threat as his scheming brain. In battling Bagot, Furneaux enters into partnership, not with Arthur, but with the beautiful and clever Elinor Hinton, whose is desperate to extricate her father from Bagot's clutches. Arthur himself, meanwhile, is rather an exasperating "hero", given to doing stupid things on impulse, and jealous of Elinor's reliance on Furneaux. He is, however, a good man in a crisis---which as it turns out is just as well. While countering his direct and indirect efforts to gain control of Abbey Manor, Furneaux, Elinor and Arthur strive to uncover the reason for Bagot's desperation to get hold of the property, while also working to solve the murder of the man on the barge: a task which requires them to discover how his body got onto the barge in the first place, so mysteriously; how it disappeared from there; and how it was transported into the mountains where it is eventually found...

    "Perhaps you know the writing, Mr Leigh?" Furneaux said at last.
    "It is like mine, I suppose," said Arthur, throwing himself back into his chair with a desperate callousness---"like mine---a little disguised---the inference being that I duly received Mr Dix’s note on the morning of the 9th, met him during the evening of the 9th, murdered him for some reason connected with the mortgage, then sent his note, addressed to myself in a slightly disguised hand, to a friend in London, asking him to post it to me last night, so that I might show that I had not received it until days after the murder... It is all quite clear!"
    He laughed a little, bending forward and covering his eyes with his hand.
    But Inspector Furneaux had started---started twice at that word "murder" twice uttered---then thrust his face nearer, the glance of his green eyes seeming to read into Arthur's very nature, one leg under his chair, one stretched far out, as if about to dart at something; and he almost shouted aloud, "'Murder', sir! What causes you to dream that Mr Dix is dead?"
    At once Arthur saw that in his fit of recklessness he had said far too much. He "dreamed" that Dix was dead, because there under the corner of the divan lay Dix’s shirt with a bullet hole in it. But then, as the shirt was in hiding, his suspicion that Dix was dead should have been kept hidden, too...
    "I see. You have noticed the paragraph of his disappearance in the papers, and merely opine that he is dead---is that it?"
    "His disappearance? No," said Arthur, too frankly, "I haven’t seen the papers for some days---I---did not know that he had disappeared; but I---in fact---" He stopped, finding himself sinking deeper and deeper into the mire of the unexplainable...

Finished The Hungry Moon for TIOLI #17, and also COMPLETED A TIOLI SWEEP!!; only my second ever!:

#1: The Hollow Needle by Maurice Leblanc
#2: The Ends Of Power by H. R. Haldeman
#3: Great Cat Tales by Lesley O'Mara (ed.)
#4: The Sign Of The Glove by Carlton Dawe
#5: The Shoes Of The Fisherman by Morris West
#6: Sandbar Sinister by Phoebe Atwood Taylor
#7: Black Coffee by Agatha Christie
#8: Tell Me Your Secret by Dorothy Koomson
#9: The Regatta Mystery And Other Stories by Agatha Christie
#10: The Trail Of Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer
#11: Two Broken Hearts by Robert R. Hoes
#12: A Fool's Paradise: A Story Of Fashionable Life In Washington - Benjamin G. Lovejoy
#13: The Two Broken Hearts by Catherine Gore
#14: Wings Above The Diamantina by Arthur Upfield
#15: Close Quarters by Michael Gilbert
#16: The Melancholy Death Of Oyster Boy & Other Stories by Tim Burton
#17: The Hungry Moon by Ramsey Campbell

Well! - I think this calls for a celebration:

>112 lyzard: Congratulations, Liz!

>113 lyzard: YAY!

>112 lyzard: well done (again).
>113 lyzard: Goodness me! Is that supposed to be attractive (to a mate) or repulsive (to an attacker)? I really can't tell but I'm not a ... .... thingy creature.

Glad to hear Chester’s doing well! I miss having a cat around the place - but we’ve decided that getting another cat would just be mean to Daisy.

>112 lyzard: And a great month of reading it was! Wings above the Diamantina always struck me as such an evocative name!

>112 lyzard: Well done on the TIOLI sweep, Liz. Your friend in >113 lyzard: is as delighted as I am. :-)

>114 FAMeulstee:, >115 Helenliz:, >117 NinieB:, >118 rosalita:

Thanks, guys! :)

>114 FAMeulstee:

I was thrilled to have an occasion so soon!

>115 Helenliz:

It's a toad-headed agama, same as up top; it's supposed to be scary but I just think it's cute. :D

>117 NinieB:

Bit of a strange month, but I suppose sweep months must be by definition.

Mmm, bit too evocative for the Americans who changed it to The Claypan Mystery: technically correct but still... :)

I do wonder how much difficulty Upfield had getting his titles accepted.

>118 rosalita:

And I thank you both. :)

>116 SandDune:

Thank you, Rhian! He's fine, though unfortunately his vet wants one more check-up before he's quite cleared. We'll both be glad when I can stop shoving him into a box.

Then again...if it was only a kitten, Daisy might like playing mama?

Anyway!---

Now reading Anna Of The Five Towns by Arnold Bennett.

Publication date: 1896
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Martin Hewitt #3
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI ("Please tell me...")

Adventures Of Martin Hewitt - When reviewing Chronicles Of Martin Hewitt, the second entry in Arthur Morrison's series, I complained about the fact that Hewitt is never wrong about anything, no matter how unlikely his deductions. Amusingly enough, it seems that I was not the only one for whom this was an issue: the first story in this 1896 collection begins with Hewitt's sidekick, reporter Brett, observing that in telling of Hewitt's adventures, "I have scarcely alluded to his failures." Alas, the tacit promise of Martin Hewitt being baffled by a case or even (as, note bene), even Hercule Poirot once did) "making an ass of himself", is not remotely fulfilled: despite a reference to a total failure, in The Affair Of Mrs Seton's Child we are given instead Hewitt being briefly led astray by poor eyewitness testimony; he is soon back on the right track, and after that becomes his usual, infuriatingly perfect self. The first story is, however, an oddly intriguing one, with a toddler being kidnapped---not, apparently, for the first time... In The Case Of Mr Geldard's Elopement, there is another brief effort to make Hewitt seem realistic, by involving him in the private detective's mainstay, a "matrimonial case": when an angry, jealous wife hires him to watch her husband and report on his movements, Hewitt discovers that Mr Geldard does indeed have a secret, but not the expected one... In The Case Of The Dead Skipper, what looks like a straightforward robbery-homicide turns out to have a far darker motive... In The Case Of The 'Flitterbat Lancers', a piece of manuscript music turns out to be the clue to the proceeds of a notorious jewel robbery... In The Case Of The Late Mr Rewse, the strange circumstances of a young man's death lead to suspicions of murder-for-profit by his doctor... In The Case Of The Ward Lane Tabernacle, an odd case involving an old snuff-box turns deadly serious when an elderly woman is abducted...

It has struck me that many of my readers may wonder that, although I have set down in detail a number of interesting cases wherein Hewitt figured with success, I have scarcely as much as alluded to his failures. For failures he had, and of a fair number. More than once he has found his search met, perhaps at the beginning, perhaps after some little while, by an impenetrable wall of darkness through which no clue led. At other times he has lost time on a false trail while his quarry escaped. At others still the stupidity or inaccuracy of some person upon whom he has depended for information has set his plans to naught. The reason why none of these cases have been embodied in the present papers is simply this; that a problem with no answer, a puzzle with no explanation, an incident with no satisfactory end, as a rule lends itself but poorly to purposes of popular narrative, and it is often difficult to make understood and appreciated any degree of skill and acumen unless it produces a clear and intelligible result. That such results attended Hewitt's efforts in an extraordinary degree those who have followed my narratives so far will need no assurance; but withal impossibilities still remain impossibilities, for Hewitt as for the dullest creature alive. On some other occasion I may perhaps set out at length a case in which Martin Hewitt achieved nothing more than unqualified failure; for the present I shall content myself with a case which, although it was completely cleared up in the end, yet for some while baffled Hewitt because of some of the reasons I have alluded to...

Publication date: 1909
Genre: Humour
Read for: Completist reading / TIOLI (pages added)

When A Man Marries - When the unlikely marriage of Jim Wilson and Bella Knowles ends in divorce, their mutual friend - and Jim's first love - Kit McNair organises a dinner party to cheer Jim up. When Jim's awful but very rich Aunt Selina arrives unexpectedly, in ignorance of the divorce, Jim persuades Kit to pose as Bella, just for the one evening. The one evening becomes a week, however, when Jim's butler collapses with what is diagnosed as smallpox, and the entire household is placed under quarantine. It is then discovered that Bella is in the house---her pretence that she is not herself infinitely complicated by Jim's too-obvious passion for her---while Kit falls in love with Tom Harbison, a stranger to New York invited on the spur of the moment, who believes her to be a married woman. And then the women's jewellery begins to disappear... Like a number of Mary Roberts Rinehart's early works, this 1909 publication has a complicated genealogy. It started life as a novella called Seven Days, which was turned into a hit play of the same name by Rinehart and Avery Hopgood, before Rinehart, in effect, novelised herself. Though some of the intended humour remains intact, When A Man Marries ultimately shows the strain of, not just adaptation, but expansion. It is easy enough to imagine how this farcial set-up would have worked on stage, but on paper - and at length - it all becomes a bit wearisome; while the narrative is further spoilt by some of its era's casual racism. However, some of the situations retain their intended bite, particularly Aunt's Selina's efforts to turn "Bella" into a better wife; while, of course, the whole quarantine situation is a little too topical for comfort---not least when various people start trying to find devious ways to get around it. But though it has its moments, in the end When A Man Marries - like Jim Wilson's guests - outstays its welcome.

    It was quite characteristic of that memorable evening (that is quite novelesque, I think) that my interview with Jimmy should have a sensational ending. He was terribly down, of course, and as I was trying to pass him to get to the door, he caught my hand.
    “You’re a girl in a thousand, Kit,” he said forlornly. “If I were not so damnably, hopelessly, idiotically in love with---somebody else, I should be crazy about you.”
    “Don’t be maudlin,” I retorted. “Would you mind letting my hand go?” I felt sure Bella could hear.
    “Oh, come now, Kit,” he implored, “we’ve always got along so well. It’s a shame to let a thing like this make us bad friends. Aren’t you ever going to forgive me?”
    “Never,” I said promptly. “When I once get away, I don’t want ever to see you again. I was never so humiliated in my life. I loathe you!”
    Then I turned around, and, of course, there was Aunt Selina with her eyes protruding until you could have knocked them off with a stick, and beside her, very red and uncomfortable, Mr Harbison!
    “Bella!” she said in a shocked voice, “is that the way you speak to your husband! It is high time I came here, I think, and took a hand in this affair.”
    “Oh, never mind, Aunt Selina,” Jim said, with a sheepish grin. “Kit---Bella is tired and nervous. This is a h---deuce of a situation. No---er---servants, and all that.”
    But Aunt Selina did mind, and showed it. She pulled the unlucky Harbison man through the door and closed it, and then stood glaring at both of us.
    “Every little quarrel is an apple knocked from the tree of love,” she announced oratorically.

>119 lyzard: I don't understand why the name was changed to "Claypan". I'm not even sure what that is. Early reviews of his works here in the US emphasized the Australian setting. The publisher even changed the name of Mr. Jelly's Business to "Murder Down Under".

>124 NinieB:

Ugh. I usually make a point on principle of avoiding anything that uses 'down under' seriously.

A claypan is a depression whose clay base has been baked and dried by heat to the point that, when it does rain, it can hold the water. So an ephemeral lake. Not as evocative as 'Diamantina', that's for sure!

>109 lyzard:
Surely one of the best character names ever: Foxton Polegate. The title isn’t bad either, but those seem to be the best things about the book.

>112 lyzard:
Oh, congratulations on a sweep! I think the most I ever accomplished was 6 in any one month.

>113 lyzard:
Now that’s just an adorable lizard.

>121 lyzard:
I’ll be interested in how you like this one, Liz. I’m pretty fond of Arnold Bennet, who is quite amusing.

Have a wonderful week, and give the cats some ear rubs for me.

>126 Matke:

Hi, Gail!

It has its moments but the characters are so unpleasant it's hard to think of it as a 'tragedy'.

Thank you! My numbers are usually in the vicinity but I'm very rarely able to fill all the gaps.

I'm glad you think so. :)

Bennett is in serious mode in this one but I know what you mean.

Done! :)

Finished Anna Of The Five Towns for TIOLI #13.

Now reading Mystery At Greycombe Farm by John Rhode.

Just wanted to let you know that I'm reading Camilla by Frances Burney and finding your virago group read from a couple years ago very helpful! Thank you!

>129 japaul22:

Brilliant! I love hearing that, thanks for letting me know. :)

Hiya, Liz! I saw this on Twitter and couldn't resist sharing it with you, even though they spelled your name wrong:

Publication date: 1927
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Professor Kreutzemark #2
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (20th century book)

The Hidden Kingdom - Tom Preston is in Madrid on business when he saves the life of a man who turns out to be his old friend and comrade, French Intelligence officer Étienne Réhmy. Tom learns that Réhmy and his partner, Gaston de Blanchegarde, are on the trail of the brilliant and dangerous Professor Kreutzemark, whose plans they foiled two years ago, but who has evaded authorities since. The three men discover that the Professor is part of a conspiracy to bring the warrior peoples of Mongolia together, and to strike at a vulnerable Europe... This 1927 thriller by "Francis Beeding" (John Palmer and Hilary St. George Saunders) reunites the cast of The Seven Sleepers, which told a sadly prescient story of attempts to, ahem, "make Germany great again". In Professor Anselm Kreutzemark we have an unusual take on the familiar "master criminal" in that, while he seeks great power over mankind, he isn't fussy about what form it takes---such that he is willing to exploit someone else's conspiracy in order to achieve his ends. The Hidden Kingdom manages to be both interesting and exasperating. The setting of this novel's main action is most unusual, and so is the degree of detail which Beeding offers about the geography of the region and the way of life of its people, all of which helps to put over the less credible aspects of its plot. Despite the unusual respect which which the people of Mongolia are treated, there is an unmistakable whiff of the Yellow Peril in the conceived threat of a vast army assembling - naturally the shade of Genghis Khan is invoked - and in the assumption that such people could simply be put to use by a small group of Europeans (at least Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu books have "the East" rising on its own behalf!). That said, this particular group of Europeans must go to extraordinary lengths to achieve their goals, including a painstakingly timed and cast attempt to exploit an ancient legend involving "the Lord of Fear", who is to be unleashed by "the Deliverer", and "the Bride from the West". And while the threat to the West is the overriding concern of the small, brave band that attempts again to thwart the Professor and his co-conspirators, the latter detail brings a painful personal dimension to their quest: the Bride is destined to be played, against her will, by the beautiful and aristocratic Suzanne de Polhac, with whom Gaston is in love... Tom, Étienne and Gaston embark upon a desperate race across Mongolia, hoping to beat the conspirators to their goal. Their success in this respect has unexpected consequences: with the people on the lookout for signs of the fulfilling of their prophecy, Tom is mistaken for the Deliverer, and finds himself playing a part that places him in terrible danger---but perhaps offers also the band's one chance of success...

    "One thing at a time," answered Réhmy. "I admit we are on pretty thin ice, but we have taken the only possible course. François has discovered that every white man has been excluded from Mongolia for months past. The country is under some kind of martial law, and everyone who tries to enter is arrested and shot. In fact, my dear Thomas, if you hadn't been mistaken for the Deliverer we should by now all have been as dead as the Jassak's mutton."
    He began to stride up and down the tent in growing excitement.
    "Do you realise what this means?" he continued. "Our wildest imaginings are sober and unquestionable fact. The legend is coming true. The whole of this vast country is waiting impatiently for its fulfillment. The Deliverer is expected to release the Lord of Fear, who will lead the Mongols to the conquest of the world. It sounds fantastic and incredible, but it is happening here, almost under our eyes. We are on the point of solving the great riddle."
    "That's all very well," I observed. "But the secret is not likely to go very much further. We have got into the thick of it. But it beats me to know how we are ever going to get out again."
    "One thing at a time," said Réhmy. "At present we have two things in our favour. We are first in the field, and that's a very important point when you are dealing with a primitive people worked up to believe exactly what we want. Secondly, there is the ring of Genghis Khan. These are our two strong cards."
    "Which will be trumped as soon as the Professor turns up with the real Deliverer," I pointed out. "Besides, there's a point you seem to have forgotten. Where is my bride from the West?"

>131 rosalita:

Hey, I'm not dangerous!

I don't think I'm dangerous...

Maybe they think I'm going to lecture people to death?

>120 lyzard: if it was only a kitten, Daisy might like playing mama? To be honest I think we’d have been better getting a kitten who was used to dogs and was happy to cuddle up with her. I think Daisy would have been quite happy with that.

>128 lyzard: I liked Anna of the Five Towns a lot when I read it (ages ago).

>134 SandDune:

These things are so difficult when you can really only find out the hard way whether something works or not.

I liked it too but it's pretty grim!

Finished Mystery At Greycombe Farm for TIOLI #10.

Now reading The Footsteps That Stopped by A. Fielding.

You know what's annoying?

When the American cover is much better than the British one...

...but they change the title. :D





(This is an odd change, too: usually the American publishers would change titles to emphasise that a murder had taken place - as if we doubted it - but here they downgrade to arson.)

Publication date: 2008
Genre: Humour
Read for: Potential decommission / TIOLI (spine printing)

Captain Kirk's Guide To Women - This is a brief and generally amusing overview of the romantic adventures and misadventures of James Tiberius Kirk, whose endless success with women of all shapes, colours and species is turned into a how-to guide for the aspiring "captain". The best thing about it is its 'Top Ten Things I Learned About Love From Star Trek', a list of quotes that emphasises the series' generally positive view of relations between the sexes (even though its horrible sexist blunders are perhaps what we remember); likewise, this book serves as a reminder that, no matter how much of a hound dog he may have been, Jim was never a user, but always respectful; consequently, his countless ex-es are always pleased to see him again. However, these positives are offset by a tacit attitude to women too much in keeping with the series' 60s roots, and a tendency to take its romantic advice a little too seriously---and to treat it like cause-and-effect, as if there is no individuality amongst the female sex ("Do this, and women will respond like that"). In fact...I'm not sure it ever occurred to John Rodriguez that a woman might actually read this...

"Caring for each other, being happy with each other, being good to each other---that's what we call 'love'."
---James T. Kirk

>138 lyzard: That sounds like fun. I remember watching TOS back in the '70s -- it was one of the after-school shows that my brother and I always watched, along with The Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island (do you know either of those?). I haven't seen it since, but I am currently doing a chronological (of course!) rewatch of ST: The Next Generation, which is on Netflix. I watched quite a bit of it when it was originally on but I missed the first few and the last few seasons. After all these years, I wonder if I'll recognize an episode I've seen before when one comes up?!

I love your opening image and the story of their behavior. Incredible!

Publication date: 2019
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Read for: TIOLI (by a woman of colour)

Tell Me Your Secret - Women's bodies are discovered in various parks across Brighton---dumped face down so as to show off the brand on their backs. The dead women have more in common than falling victim to the same serial killer: a decade earlier they survived being abducted and raped by a man who became known as 'The Blindfolder', who would keep them for a weekend, promising to let them go if they could keep their eyes closed the entire time---or to kill them if they could not... Despite being based in London, Detective-Inspector Jody Foster is appointed Senior Investigating Officer of the Brighton murders: the victims show all the same hallmarks as in several cases she is already investigating. When it is established that, in all the new cases, the women were themselves from London, the question becomes why the bodies are being dumped in Brighton...? When a surviving victim of The Blindfolder decides to go public with her story, Pieta Rawlings of the magazine BN Sussex is one of those considered for the exclusive interview. As she listens to the woman tell her story, and as she sees for herself the number - '26' - branded on her back, a nightmarish sense of familiarity overtakes Pieta: she herself is branded with '25'... Dorothy Koomson's Tell Me Your Secret is an effective standalone thriller that, despite being built upon some extremely confronting material, never dwells as it could upon the details of abuse and murder, but instead focuses upon the efforts of its joint heroines to fight back against those horrors. Furthermore, Koomson uses her brutal framework to consider wider social issues including society's attitude towards people of colour, and its treatment of women---and in the stories of Jody Foster (as the detective would say herself: yes, yes, you need to get over it) and Pieta Rawlings, the difficulties that can come with being both. In making her points, Koomson is perhaps a little over-strident - which is not to say I disagree with a single word she says - however, these moments are woven legitimately into her narrative. On the other hand, this novel's weakest point is Pieta's developing relationship with a man that she has every reason to despise and distrust: a relationship that never rings true (partly for plot purposes), but which becomes increasingly important as the story builds to its climax. Tell Me Your Secret has a double divided narrative, not only following the efforts of Jody to track down a serial killer, and of Pieta to deal with her position as potential murder victim, but also revealing the dark experiences that have shaped their lives. Both women carry an unbearable load of guilt, the sense that had they done more in the past, the murders would be happening now. For Jody, it is the memory of her estranged twin sister, who once told an incredible story of abuse---and who she didn't really believe; for Pieta, it is that she never reported her abduction and rape; even denied it to the police officers who followed up her parents' missing-person report. But Pieta has others secrets, including what she did to survive her ordeal---secrets that make her the focus of The Blindfolder's obsession...

    I close my eyes so I can better conjure up her face. Ordinary, normal, but guarded, wary. She'd been triggered, as any victim would be, but the way her eyes had stared at Callie's scar... It wasn't the shock and horror that the photographer showed, it was different...
    Am I reading something into this situation that isn't there?...
    Her face had contracted in genuine horror when Callie said The Blindfolder's other victims had been killed and he was clearly hunting down the ones who'd survived the first time around. i can see it now: she looked terrified. None of the other journalists had responded like that to the news of the other murders. It was shocking to them, news that they were going to hook their stories on, but not the panic that Pieta Rawlings showed.
    My eyes run over the report again, like fingers seeking out snags in a piece of expensive silk: '...visibly and physically relaxed once PC Jerrold had left the room...quite severely attacked...raped several times over a sustained period of time...moved as though in some considerable pain' jump out at me.
    She disappeared for a weekend, she didn't call work, her boyfriend said she hadn't shown up, she was in pain...
    She's one of them, isn't she?
    Pieta Rawlings is one of the ones who survived a weekend with The Blindfolder...

>139 rosalita:

Know them, of course, but never really watched either.

Most likely you will: with my usual sense of timing, the first episode of TNG I ever saw was the very last episode; you can imagine how discombobulating that was! :D

I've recently finish a re-watch of TOS and am now re-watching TNG (which I've seen several times) and DS9 (which I've only seen in its entirety once), AND watching the original Battlestar Gallactica (which I started to watch once before and fell off; they must have changed its timeslot or something).

In my defence, they're mostly on at my meal times... :)

>140 Whisper1:

Hi, Linda! How lovely to get a visit from you. :)

I'm glad my lizards have been so popular!

Some things never change, apparently. Certainly not cats. Or cat people. :D

From Case For Mr Fortune by H. C. Bailey (1932):

His black Persian, Darius, sat down on the lawn, gazed with large golden eyes, and announced that instant attention was required. Reggie awoke and came hastily. Darius lay on his back and stretched, exhibiting a stomach for homage. It was rubbed respectfully. Darius sang a small song, curled up on the hand and killed it, rose, walked away with tail in the air. "Darlin'," Reggie murmured to his swaggering hinder end...

>144 lyzard: Oh, Darius! great human management. And I suddenly like Reggie more!

>138 lyzard: Mr SanDune is going through a phase of putting Star Trek (original series) on when he comes on from work. It always seems to be on on one particular channel. He rarely watches for more than 10 minutes - it’s a sort of wind down ‘guess the episode’ ritual.

>144 lyzard: Fabulous!

“Exhibiting a stomach for homage” oh yes.

Now I at least have to look at this series.

Dang it, Liz.

>145 NinieB:

What I love is the word 'hastily'. :D

Like most of the post-Peter Wimsey brigade, Reggie can be pretty obnoxious, but this is certainly a redeeming moment.

>147 Helenliz:

That has to be someone writing from personal experience, yes?

>148 Matke:

Tread with caution, Gail: Reggie is very much an acquired taste, though since he's one of the earliest medical detectives I have a higher tolerance for him than most.

>146 SandDune:

I guess if you know the show well enough to play that game you're not obliged to go the distance :)

Hmm.

Like Mystery At Greycombe Farm, The Footsteps That Stopped suffers from 'Generic Publisher's Cover Syndrome', when a basic cover was reused to mark a book as part of a series and/or as issued by a particular publisher.

To illustrate (and Collins' 'Crime Club' even explains itself):

  


And also as with Mystery At Greycombe Farm, Fielding's American publisher shows a lot more imagination; though I must say I find their offering gigglesome rather than sinister, as presumably intended:

Anyhoo---

Finished The Footsteps That Stopped for TIOLI #1.

Now reading Case For Mr Fortune by H. C. Bailey (obviously).

Publication date: 1928
Genre: Short story / contemporary romance
Series: The Forsyte Saga: A Modern Comedy
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (part of a series)

A Silent Wooing - This short story is one of John Galsworthy's "interludes", usually bundled with his novel, The White Monkey, which deals with Fleur Forsyte's rebound marriage to Michael Mont. A Silent Wooing, meanwhile, catches us up with Jon Forsyte, who fled the country after the implosion of his relationship with Fleur. His restless wandering leads him finally to South Carolina, and into a friendship of sorts with the brother and sister, Francis and Anne Wilmot: a friendship that turns into something else when, while out riding, he and Anne get lost in the woods...

    Her head settled in again; and the vigil was resumed. They talked a little now, of nothing important, and he thought: "It’s queer---one could live months knowing people and not know them half so well as we shall know each other now."
    Again a long silence fell; but this time his arm was round her, it was more comfortable so, for both of them. And Jon began to have the feeling that it would be inadvisable for the moon to rise. Had she that feeling too? He wondered. But if she had, the moon in its courses paid no attention. For suddenly he became conscious that it was there, behind the trees somewhere lurking, a curious kind of stilly glimmer creeping about the air, along the ground, in and out of the tree-stems.
    "The moon!” he said. She did not stir, and his heart beat rather fast. So! She did not want the moon to rise any more than he! And slowly the creeping glimmer became light, and, between the tree-trunks, stole, invading their bodies till they were visible. And still they sat, unstirring, as if afraid to break a spell...

>149 lyzard: Reggie predates Peter, doesn't he?

Definitely an acquired taste.

Publication date: 1931
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Read for: 1931 reading / TIOLI (fiery title)

The Flaming Crescent - While travelling through the deserts of North Africa, Michael Chevrell is witness to a rare conjunction of the new moon and a star---making, in effect, the symbol of Islam. To his astonishment, a second such symbol then appears in the night sky: this one in a blazing green light... In Cairo, Michael falls in with an old friend, Peter Maguire, who is on a mission for the Foreign Office: he learns of trouble brewing across the Middle East, at its heart a beautiful woman. He catches a glimpse of her---and of the emerald crescent in her hair... After narrowly escaping with his life during an attempt to trail the woman and her co-conspirators to their lair, Michael is summoned urgently to Paris by his cousin, Hugh. When he arrives, there is no sign of Hugh, only a message asking that Michael keep an appointment for him. He does so, and is slipped a note by a girl who, he realises, has mistaken him for Hugh, who he very much resembles. The next day, he learns that Hugh is dead; murdered. Soon, Michael is contacted by a Colonel Mackinder, who tells him that Hugh was on the same mission as Maguire, and asks him to take his cousin's place... This 1931 adventure-thriller by Ottwell Binns is a fairly typical example of the author's work, carrying its two-fisted hero from exotic locale to exotic locale (though its climaxes, somewhat incongruously, on Dartmoor), serving up ambushes and chases and contriving any number of hair's-breadth escapes for him, producing a lovely young Englishwoman for him to rescue and fall in love with---and expressing a bottomless contempt for anyone who doesn't happen to be English and/or has the misfortune of not having pale skin. It is almost impossible to read The Flaming Crescent without secretly siding with the Islamic jihadists who, it seems, are threatening to rise up and drive the British out of their homelands---only, of course, being just "dirty blacks", they're not capable of planning such an uprising for themselves, but are being manipulated by a small, multi-national gang of conspirators who intend to move in and profit once the coup is achieved. Recruited by Colonel Mackinder, whose reputation for reckless daring precedes him, Michael is soon plunged into the hunt for the gang---and to his surprise finds himself working with Mary Frobisher, a niece of Mackinder, who does not scruple to turn her into an agent when necessary. Working with desperate haste, the three must find a way to prevent the conspirators from achieving their uprising: a plan which rests upon turning a frightened young boy into the puppet ruler of an empire...

    That youth with his insolent beauty? Who was he? The others---all except the podgy Jew had shown him marked deference; and that Simeon-like old man looked on him with a veneration which had come near to worship. Was he the living heart of the mystery into which he himself had plunged, and in pursuit of which Hugh had died?
    It seemed possible.
    Every fanatical flare-up in the world centred round some living person, conceived as the embodiment of the principle which was its inspiration. The venerated one might himself be a leader; or a tool of the ambitious and unscrupulous, who exploited the sacred aspirations of true believers---but it made no difference so long as the fanaticism was fanned to flame. And that youth might be either---leader or tool; prophet or dupe.
    Michael recalled the others---Dara Lodi: the darker-skinned Indian; the man with the jewelled order; the woman with her bizarre beauty, who was plainly of some consequence in the movement; and then again considered the name on the card---Prince Achmed Medineh.
    Here, he thought, was no movement of the under-dogs pinched for food and galled by labour; but one with money and brains behind it, the participants in which were prepared for desperate courses, and whose activities were far-flung. Mackinder had heard of the Green Crescent flaming across the North-West Frontier, and far up on the Tigris. He himself had seen it on the edge of the Sudan, and heaven knows where else it had burned to fire the hearts of the true believers...

>154 NinieB:

He does; but my definite impression is that his affectations and 'g'-dropping and so on got much worse after Peter's appearance on the scene.

At least he mostly appeared in short stories, so you can space him out. :)

Publication date: 1915
Genre: Young adult
Series: Patty Fairfield #13
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (10+ by same author)

Patty's Romance - This entry in Carolyn Wells' series featuring pretty, flirtatious Patty Fairfield is an odd mix of the serious and the silly, though the latter finally predominates. Devoting herself, as usual, to A Good Time, Patty is staying with her friends, the Kenerleys, and celebrating her 20th birthday when she is kidnapped from beneath her hosts' roof and held for ransom---but through a mixture of her friends' and her own ingenuity, she is rescued unharmed. As she recovers from her ordeal, Patty is invited to take a car-tour with Philip Van Reypen and his aristocratic grandmother. Though tempted, she hesitates: she knows very well that Philip is serious about her, and does not wish to encourage him; and in the end, she agrees only on condition that the two of them treat the situation with equal lightness---just a summer romance, meaning nothing... Philip obeys, though he hopes his devotion will win Patty's heart; but he is forestalled when events bring the big, bluff westerner, Bill Farnsworth, back into Patty's life...

    Still towering above her, still looking down at her, from his great height, Farnsworth went on: "Do you admit you bought that frock to wear with that pin?"
    "Marvellous, Holmes, marvellous!" said Patty, with upraised eyes.
    "Do you?"
    "Yes, sir."
    "And you meant to spring the thing on me, with dramatic effect?"
    "I did! Oh, Little Billee, I did mean to, and haven’t I made good?" Patty was convulsed with laughter at Farnsworth’s intuition, for she had had some vague idea when she ordered the gown, but she never dreamed he’d discern it.
    "Yes, you’ve come through with flying colours! Now, wait a minute. Did I understand you to say that, up to date, I’ve as good a chance as any one else?"
    "Yes, sir."
    "Don’t use that silly phrase to me, with that idiotic smile! Have I?"
    "You have, Mr Farnsworth..."

I have started a challenge this month to read a book first published in each year of Queen Victoria's reign, Liz, with no repeat authors. Two down already. Aim to finish it by end of next year.

Happy Sunday.

>158 PaulCranswick:

Oh, brilliant! Do you have a list or are you working it out as you go?

Honestly, all I want for Christmas is access to my academic library so I can pick up all my hanging challenges---including the C. K. Shorter challenge that was driving most of my 19th century reading.

Publication date: 1933
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Fu Manchu #6
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (Halloween costume)

The Bride Of Fu Manchu (US title: Fu Manchu's Bride) - While trespassing upon a privately owned island off the south of France, Alan Sterling encounters a beautiful, mysterious young woman called Fleurette. Recovering from fever, Sterling is under the care of the eminent physician, Dr Petrie, most of whose time is given to the outbreak of a strange disease, which has been striking down open-air workers in the district seemingly at random, and which manifests as a blending of sleeping sickness and plague. Petrie's own collapse from the disease coincides with the arrival of Sir Denis Nayland Smith, who tells Sterling that this virulent new plague is man-made, carried by hybrid insects created in the laboratories of Dr Fu Manchu... This sixth entry in Sax Rohmer's series featuring the master criminal, Fu Manchu, manages to be engaging and exasperating in about equal measure---which is a win for this series, which usually comes down on the 'exasperating' side. Though Fu Manchu's ongoing plot to have "the white world" overthrown by "the East" drives the action, there is nevertheless a receding of the usual racist rhetoric in this entry...replaced, alas, by that variety of sexism that thinks it's being flattering. Fu Manchu's brutal treatment of his daughter, Fah Lo Suee, is foregrounded, by way of illustrating the cruelty and depravity of "the East"; but presumably we're not supposed to be offended by the scene in which the beautiful and brilliant Fleurette apologises for her intelligence...and Sterling consoles her by telling her, in effect, that when she falls in love, her brain will stop working. However, set against these teeth-clenching moments we have the fact that Fu Manchu's marmoset makes a long-awaited reappearance! - and since we're assured that the creature has been subjected to the same treatments that have extended Fu Manchu's own life, we have the tacit promise of more. But of course the main attraction of The Bride Of Fu Manchu is its delightful mad-science plot, which finds kidnapped, mind-controlled scientists slaving away under Fu Manchu's control, and all sorts of bizarre and hideous man-made critters roaming the corridors of the underground lair in which most of the action unfolds. Alan Sterling, himself a scientist, finds himself in Fu Manchu's clutches---although thanks to the intervention of Fah Lo Suee, he is left mind-free and able to fight back against Fu Manchu from the inside, even as Nayland Smith attacks from the outside. Though the thwarting of Fu Manchu's attempt to develop new biological weapons through hybridisation is and must be the focus of the men's desperate efforts, for Sterling the situation takes on an extra, more personal dimension when he discovers that Fleurette is Fu Manchu's intended bride: that she has been raised from infancy to be the doctor's consort, and to bear his son...

    “Its nature is painfully clear,” Nayland Smith rapped. “Somewhere in this place there are thousands - perhaps millions - of those damnable flies!... I have learned that they seek shadow during the daytime, and operate at dusk and in artificial light. Directly there was presumptive evidence that the fly had bitten the selected subject, it was the duty of Fu Manchu’s servant to place a spray of this fly-catching plant - the name of which I don’t know - where it would attract the fly. To make assurance doubly sure, the seductive leaves were sprayed with human blood! Vegetable fly-papers, Sterling---nothing less!”
    “My God! It’s plain enough to me now.”
    “Such experiments have apparently been carried out all over the world. That Dr Fu Manchu - or the Si-Fan, which is the same thing - has international agents, I know for a fact. This means that collections of these flies, which have been specially bred to carry the new plague and to spread it, exist at unknown centres in various parts of Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia---also, doubtless, in the Continent of America.
    “Of all those seeking it, Petrie alone discovered a treatment which promised to be successful! Dr Fu Manchu’s allies would of course be inoculated against the plague. But do you see, Sterling, do you see what Petrie did, and why he stood in the Chinaman’s way?”
    I hesitated. I was beginning to grasp the truth, but before I could reply:
    “The formula for ‘654’ would have been broadcast to the medical authorities of the world, in the event of a general outbreak. This would have shattered Fu Manchu’s army.”
    “Fu Manchu’s army?”
    “An army, Sterling, bred and trained to depopulate the white world! An army of flies---carrying the germ of a new plague; a plague for which medical science knows no remedy!”

Publication date: 2004
Genre: Horror
Read for: Potential decommission / TIOLI (odd number in first sentence)

In The Night Room - I discovered too late that this novel functions as a sequel to Peter Straub's 2003 work, Lost Boy, Lost Girl, which likewise features emotionally damaged author, Tim Underhill. The earlier work revolves around Underhill's writing of a book about a notorious murder case, and his interpretation of the gaps in the real-life narrative; while In The Night Room deals with the consequences of his literary choices. Tim Underhill is already struggling with his new novel when he discovers that he has become the focus of a strange attack from two different sources. At a book-signing, Underhill first makes contact with a strange individual who asks him to sign multiple copies of his first edition, and who later begins to stalk him---even breaking into his apartment and trashing it. Underhill's attempt to strike back against the persecuting stranger climaxes in a bizarre and terrifying vision of transformation... Meanwhile, Underhill begins to receive a rush of emails which at first he treats as spam; but when he is finally tempted to open them, he finds that they contain odd, fragmented phrases that together seem to carry a warning. Underhill tries to track down the senders of these emails, and eventually learns that they are indeed from people he knows; people who have one thing in common; they're all dead... In The Night Room interweaves the frightening persecution of Tim Underhill with a secondary narrative involving a woman called Willy Patrick, who is still recovering from the brutal slaying of her husband and young daughter; who finds herself suffering strange blackouts, and seemingly moving instantaneously from place to place; and who begins to act without her own volition, driven by the inexplicable certainty that, in spite of everything, her daughter is not dead. When Willy and Tim finally meet, it sets in motion a race against time to set right an unintended but profound injustice... In The Night Room is a complex and clever work, one that often manages to be funny and horrifying at the same time: particularly with regard to the peculiar relationship that develops between its two main characters, the implications of which become increasingly mind-bending. That said, the earlier stretches of the novel are sometimes a bit of a struggle. Underhill himself is (intentionally) a difficult protagonist; Willy's plot is (intentionally) confusing; while despite its relative modernity, the email subplot feels weirdly dated. However, the meeting of Willy and Tim lifts In The Night Room to a whole new level. Like Stephen King's Misery, this is very much a book about authorship; and in spite of all its horrors, perhaps its most powerful touch is its concept of the perfect book: a version of an existing work that is exactly as its author conceived it, without error or shortcoming; a far cry from the flawed work that actually made it into bookstores. But this is also a story about the responsibilities of authorship. It is a choice made by Underhill in his fictionalised account of a notorious murder case that sets this story in motion: the long-dead subject of his book is so enraged by a particular accusation, he manages to strike out at Underhill, forcing him to take extraordinary measures to set things right---something that will require a heartbreaking sacrifice...

    Willy watched Underhill stare at the receding back of the peculiar book collector and wished that he would look at her instead. As if she had touched his mind with hers, Underhill turned slowly in his chair and gazed at her in a way that combined close observation with appreciation. He seemed to measure and weigh her, to calculate her age, nearly to count her teeth. His warmth and good humour turned what could have bee objectionable into a kind of affectionate, observant approval. It seemed to Willy that being looked at in exactly that way was one of the things she truly needed, and he had given it to her unasked.
    Then she saw him take in the blurry bloodstains on her shirt. He understood what they were, and that final detail seemed to lock some other understanding into place. Willy moved forward, now beyond wondering what she might say to him, and saw an amazing series of expressions flow across his face: disbelief, shock, love, fear, and total recognition. He said, This can't be happening. Is your name Willy?
    He knew her name. By extraordinary, unrepeatable means, Willy had found her way to the one person who could both make sense of her life and save it, and when she spoke, it was from the centre of her soul. "I think I need your help. Do we know each other?"

>160 lyzard: I think you found the mad-science plot more delightful than I did, but I agree that it's genuinely mad.

I think that Rohmer's ideas about women are tangled up in his ideas about race -- both women and non-Europeans must be brought under the benevolent rule of White Men. It's so hard to take this seriously that I'm tempted to think that Rohmer means the series as a secret joke on White Men -- that Fu Manchu is the real hero and the love interests are the only thing keeping the apparent heroes alive. (Arguing against this interpretation, of course, is pretty much everything.)

>161 lyzard: I've only read a couple of Straub's books: Ghost Story and If You Could See Me Now, both of which I liked a lot. I should read more.

>162 swynn:

Well, I always like a blanket assumption that SCIENCE!! is capable of literally anything. :D

I can't say I find anything here to suggest a sense of humour...with the possible exception of the marmoset, which is surely the least likely Super Villain Pet of all time! I agree that his invective has rolled back since the early days but it just feels to me that Rohmer realised he had backed the wrong Peril and toned it down a notch. That said, the shift to anti-Communism you note would suggest that he was still looking out for the dreaded Other.

Mind you, Fleurette's discomfort in The Trail Of Fu Manchu with the conventional relationship she's ended up in is interesting...

I was a steady reader of Straub's in his early days but I hadn't read anything past The Talisman before acquiring a couple of his recent works by accident. (Not his fault, my reading shifted.) I found A Dark Matter overlong and repetitive (giving in too much to his tendency to write the same thing from different angles), but once it really gets going In The Night Room is much more effective.

Of course, now I know the latter is a sequel I'm pretty much obliged to read Lost Boy, Lost Girl. :)

Hmm. Anyone else having trouble with the ticker?

Anyhoo---

Finished Case For Mr Fortune for TIOLI #7.

Now reading Murderer's Trail by J. Jefferson Farjeon.

>164 lyzard: Any ticker in particular or just the site in general? I know they re-designed recently and a lot of people in the ROOTs group have reported having problems with their already set-up tickers but so far I've been OK.

I know you enjoy a good book cover comparison, so I welcome your thoughts on this book — the version on the left is the original UK edition, and on the right is the US edition. I understand why they cropped the author out of the US one, as while he's a well-known sports commentator in the UK I doubt many Americans would know him by sight (or by name — look at the size of the author's name on each book).

But more interesting to me are the typeface choices on each: San serif main title, serif subtitle for the UK, and the reverse for the US. Does this say something profound about each country's stylistic preferences?

  

>166 rosalita:

It's settled down now but when I tried to update my ticker earlier the site was toggling back and forth between my personal 'edit data' page and their 'create a ticker' page but wouldn't actually allow either. Not sure what that was about.

Purely on an emotional level I would call the US version "friendlier", in tune with the removal of the human from the equation and the emphasis on good dogs.

The UK one seems more about conveying information, and probably offers a more accurate summary of the contents.

So the UK is more honest, while the US is looking for suckers. :D

I'd say the US image is confusing, there are 3 individuals in the title and only 2 on the image. Who or what is the third? Which one is "me"? That's creating a mismatch between image and title.

>168 Helenliz:

I think it's implying that as long as there are two confirmed dogs, no-one's going to care who 'me' is. :)

Publication date: 1953
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Miss Silver #24
Read for: Series reading / shared read / TIOLI (author read post-March)

Vanishing Point - All in all, Hazel Green is not a happy village. Hard-natured, family-obsessed Miss Lydia Crewe makes life miserable for her great-niece, Rosumund Maxwell, who puts up with her unhappy lot for the sake of her young sister, Jenny. Recovering after a car accident, Jenny is stronger than she lets on, and sometimes slips secretly out of the house at night---and sometimes sees things she shouldn't... After a near-fall down the stairs, Miss Lucy Cunningham must confront the fact that an attempt has been made on her life---and that the obvious suspects are the brother and nephew with whom she shares her house. When Maggie Bell, the forty-ish single daughter of elderly parents and a servant in the Cunningham household, disappears, it attracts little attention from the authorities; but Hazel Green is the nearest village to Dalling Grange, a classified government research facility, and when information begins to leak, there is concern that the two events may somehow be linked. Dealing with the situation falls to Chief Inspector Lamb who, after consulting his subordinate, Inspector Frank Abbott, decides to request the services of Miss Maud Silver... Vanishing Point is something of an anomaly in the series by Patricia Wentworth, in that it finds Miss Silver acting formally as an agent of the police---with the usually antagonistic CI Lamb recognising that this is a case where the lady's talent for ingratiating herself in a tight-knit community and gleaning valuable information through conversation is exactly what is needed. More importantly, and more unusually still, Vanishing Point is a rare British mystery of this period in which the victims - there is a second disappearance that turns out to be murder - are both working-class. It isn't quite clear how much social criticism Wentworth intended with this aspect of her plot, but the fact remains that Maggie Bell's disappearance is not investigated with any rigor at the time, and it is only the incident's proximity to Dalling Grange that makes the authorities - eventually - take it seriously. Otherwise, perhaps a bit too much time is given over to fleshing out the subplots in Vanishing Point, though the novel's inevitable romance is unobtrusive. (Not for the first time, there is a sense that its real point is to make sure that when she needs it, Miss Silver has some muscular back-up). Miss Silver's visit to her old schoolfriend, Marian Merridew, has her already on the scene when Miss Holiday, Lydia Crewe's nosy and ineffectual "lady housekeeper", disappears in circumstances replicating the vanishing of Maggie Bell. Having won the confidence of the prickly Florrie Hunt, Maggie's cousin and a servant in the Merridew house, Miss Silver is aware of details that the police are not, and her swift response leads to confirmation of the worst when a body is found in a well at the edge of the village. This time the police do take the matter seriously; yet in Miss Silver's opinion their investigation is biased by the shadow of espionage at Dalling Grange. She herself has been struck, during many gossipy conversations around Hazel Green, by the recurrence of stories involving jewels lost, stolen or copied...

    After a pause Frank Abbott said, “What makes you think it was Miss Cunningham who was aimed at? What about Henry wanting to get rid of Nicholas, or Nicholas wanting to get rid of Henry? That sort of thing has been known to happen.”
    “Because I am convinced that Miss Cunningham herself believes it was she who was intended to fall, and her distress is occasioned by the conviction that either her brother or her nephew is attempting her life. There is the question of how she was to be induced to run down those stairs in such a hurry as to trip over the cord without noticing it. I do not think that a summons from below would have been risked. The next possibility which presents itself is a telephone call. The fixture is in the hall. Henry Cunningham will not speak on the telephone, so Mrs Merridew informs me, and Nicholas only when the call is for him. It is, therefore, always Miss Cunningham who hastens to it in the first place...”
    He said with a faintly sardonic inflection, “You think of everything, don’t you?” And then, “Perhaps you can tell me why anyone should want to disable or kill Miss Cunningham.”
    Miss Silver said very gravely indeed, “What was the motive for the removal of Maggie Bell and of Miss Holiday? Miss Cunningham knows too much. I believe that to be the explanation in all these cases. Each of them had, or stumbled upon, a piece of knowledge which was dangerous to someone else. It is possible, perhaps even probable in the cases of Maggie Bell and Miss Holiday, that they were not aware, or at any rate not fully aware, of the implications of what they knew. In each case swift and ruthless action was taken to ensure silence. In the case of Miss Cunningham, she was one of the last people to see Miss Holiday alive...”

Just delurking and dropping in to say hi :)

Publication year: 1919
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: David Carroll #2
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (3-word colour title)

The Crimson Alibi - When the wealthy Joshua Quincy is murdered, no-one is particularly surprised: Quincy was a hard, vindictive man who almost delighted in ruining lives and making enemies. The escape from prison, a few days before the murder, of Larry Conover, a young man convicted of burglary on purely circumstantial evidence due largely to the pressure brought to bear by Quincy, opens up one line of inquiry. A second follows when private investigator David Carroll is consulted by a man called Roger Fanshawe, who tells him with startling frankness that he had motive for murder, that he was at Quincy's house at the time, that he went there to murder him---but someone beat him to it... When Carroll is asked by Police Commissioner Hall to take charge of the investigation, he agrees in spite of his concern over his obligation of silence to Fanshawe. When Carroll arrives at the scene, it is to discover that Police Chief Leveredge has arrested the dead man's nephew, Andrew, with whom he had a violent quarrel the night before; while Carroll learns from the housekeeper that in the wake of this, Quincy also quarrelled with and discharged his long-suffering manservant, Dorrington, who for some reason later returned to the house, at which time he discovered the body---or so he says... After making his debut in the novella-length story, Six Seconds Of Darkness, this 1919 work by Octavus Roy Cohen is the first full-length mystery to feature private investigator, David Carroll. Carroll himself is a slightly annoying character, with an over-emphasis in the text on his "boyishness" and his ability to charm witnesses into talking; though that said, this novel also distances itself from - and offers a very early instance of mockery of - the so-called "transcendent detective", that infallible figure found too often in American mysteries of this period (and exemplified by Carolyn Wells' Fleming Stone). As also frequently happens in American mysteries, there is an assumption here that the police aren't up to the challenge of a big case; though in this instance, Chief Leveredge frankly doubts himself, and welcomes rather than resents having Carroll placed over him: the two men proceed to work together. The Crimson Alibi is another of those mysteries that manages to place a number of suspects at the scene of a murder almost at the same time, with the investigation required to determine how the various accounts of the night fit together - or don't - and who if anyone is lying about his movements. An already complicated investigation is made even more so by Chief Leveredge's tendency to leap from details to theory to arrest in a matter of moments---and to do it for suspect after suspect, arresting each of them in turn. Carroll, meanwhile, suffers from the opposite complaint, finding himself liking and in sympathy with all four of the suspects and not wanting any of them to be guilty---yet one of them, it seems, must be...

    It was not like Carroll to show his worry. Save for the sometimes steely glint in his blue eyes, he was accustomed to wear an expression of almost beatific placidity. And so Freda worried because Carroll worried and Carroll worried because things looked very dark indeed for Larry Conover---and the whole legal system which had hounded Larry unjustly and driven him to the crime, seemed utterly at variance with the spirit of justice...
    Carroll ate abstractedly. He was grappling with a problem that would not bring the necessary equation at the end. He was swayed by his instinct, swayed violently, and swayed in favour of Conover's innocence. And yet Joshua Quincy was dead; Joshua Quincy had been killed.
    From the jail Carroll had driven to the Quincy home and had once again gone over the scene of the crime, paying particular attention to the body itself. The theory of suicide he abandoned soon. He was convinced that Quincy had been murdered. But by whom?...
    He wanted to think: to piece together the loose threads that floated to his hand during the whirlwind course of his investigation. He rose from the table and the others followed him into the study which adjoined the dining room. They lighted cigars and sat around like so many bewildered owls.
    Suddenly Carroll rose. For the first time in four hours he smiled...

>171 figsfromthistle:

Hi, Anita, thanks for visiting! :)

Publication date: 1903
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Martin Hewitt #4
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (3-word colour title)

The Red Triangle - This fourth and final work in Arthur Morrison's series featuring Martin Hewitt is, like its predecessors, a collection of short stories; but in this case, the stories are interlocking and concerned with Hewitt's efforts to track down the master criminal behind a series of violent crimes. In The Affair Of Samuel's Diamonds Hewitt is called in about a stolen consignment of diamonds, but grows suspicious as to the legitimacy of the case. Matters take a dark turn when the man Hewitt suspects is a party to the theft is found murdered, with a red triangle stamped upon his forehead... In The Case Of Mr Jacob Mason, Hewitt is consulted by a clergyman, whose parishioner, Mason, has been in a state of terror bordering on hysteria since reading of the "red triangle murder". Mason too becomes a victim before he can tell what he knows, but Hewitt identifies the killer as a man called - or using the name - "Myatt"... In The Case Of The Lever Key, a workman knocked down in the street is found in possession of a key which has a coded message on a piece of paper hidden in its barrel. The incident crosses a case of stolen bonds and, when Hewitt has cracked the cypher, puts him on the trail of the elusive Everard Myatt... In The Case Of The Burnt Barn, Hewitt is called in with regard to the apparent attempt to destroy a murdered body by burning down a barn. He succeeds in proving that the dead man is not who it was thought---and from the supposed victim learns a great deal more about Myatt - or "Mayes" - his strange powers, and his and bloody doings in Haiti... In The Case Of The Admiralty Code, the navy's communications code is stolen from the Admiralty Office---and Myatt / Mayes is glimpsed at the scene. The espionage is thwarted, but their quarry escapes again---although not without revealing his ability to bend others to his will... In The Adventure of Channel Marsh, the battle between Mayes and Hewitt reaches a climax when the latter deliberately walks into a trap; but whatever Mayes intended, he does not expect the vengeful intervention of Mr Peytral, his victim from Haiti...

    "Well, now," Peytral went on, "in Hayti, in my time, Mayes's enemies had a habit of dying suddenly in the night, by strangulation, and a tourniquet was always the instrument. And just as murder was quite a popular procedure in that accursed place, so strangulation by tourniquet became for a while the most common form of the crime. It was rapid, effective, and silent, you see. So that a murder by tourniquet, quite an unknown thing in this country, took my attention at once, and when another followed it so soon, I felt something like certainty. And the triangle was suggestive, too."
    "Were Mayes's victims marked in that way in Hayti?" asked Hewitt.
    "No, there was no mark. But"---here Mr Peytral's features assumed a curious expression---"there are things which are not believed in this country---which are laughed at, in fact, and called superstition. You know something of Hayti, and therefore you must have heard of Voodoo---the witchcraft and devil-worship of the West Indies. Well, Mayes was as deep in that as he was in every other species of wickedness. It sounds foolish, perhaps, here in civilised England, and you may laugh, but I tell you that Mayes could make men do as he wished, with their consent or against it! And he used a thing—it was generally known that he used a thing marked with a triangle---a Red Triangle---by the use of which he could bend men to his will!"

>159 lyzard: Since lists are part and parcel of my DNA, Liz, I have of course made a preliminary one for my Victorian Era Challenge. It would involve 23 1001 first ed books not yet on my list and I currently have all but 12 of the books in my library.

>174 lyzard: I have an American edition that looks like it was published in 1903, but the low LT rating has discouraged me from reading it.

>175 PaulCranswick:

Brother! :D

Ooh, nice: I love it when challenges overlap like that...

>176 NinieB:

Hewitt is historically important as the first major (British) detective after Sherlock Holmes but his stories aren't that compelling, and Hewitt (as I have complained before) is annoyingly infallible.

>177 lyzard: I may need to call on your expertise somewhat Liz. I cheated somewhat and put 1874 for Middlemarch even though it was finished and serialised fully in 1872. It seems I saw somewhere that it was first published in single volume book for in 1874. If I were to drop it back to 1872 (and take the place of In a Glass Darkly can you think of alternatives for 1874? Most of the other possibles are by authors I have selected already chosen for other years.

Se you chose Charlotte Despard who isn't on my list and I may go and try and seek her out.

>179 PaulCranswick:

The Charlotte Despard was purely for its title, for a TIOLI challenge, so you needn't take it as a recommendation. :D

I fully appreciate your baulking over the publication date of Middlemarch, as that is exactly what I would do myself!

Are you doing British authors only, or is it purely the publication date that matters? Far From The Madding Crowd is the year's big title but you've probably already got a Hardy on your list, yes? Otherwise it was a year of lesser works---Anthony Trollope (probably also taken), George Mederdith, Margaret Oliphant, Eliza Lynn Linton...or Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon if you're looking for something lighter.

If you're not held to British authors* my impulse would be to suggest Marcus Clarke's For The Term Of His Natural Life; Flaubert and Zola published that year, too, also Jules Verne.

(*Okay, he was born in London so you can argue he's technically British.)

If you have all these bases covered, let me know, and I'll dig up a few more obscurities. :)

>180 lyzard: No I am not sticking to British authors, Liz, as it was an opportunity to read some Russian, French and American books I haven't yet gotten to. I read For the Term of His Natural Life a few years ago and I have read all Hardy's major novels.

This is my list work in progress as I know you like lists as much as I do myself.

1837 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION CARLYLE
1838 THE NARRATIVE OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM POE
1839 THE VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE DARWIN
1840 THE PATHFINDER COOPER
1841 URSULE MIROUET BALZAC
1842 DEAD SOULS GOGOL
1843 WINDSOR CASTLE AINSWORTH
1844 CONINGSBY DISRAELI
1845 COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO DUMAS
1846 THE DEVIL'S POOL SAND
1847 EVANGELINE LONGFELLOW
1848 THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND MACAULAY
1849 SHIRLEY BRONTE C
1850 PENDENNIS THACKERAY
1851 FIFTEEN DECISIVE BATTLES OF THE WORLD CREASY
1852 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE HAWTHORNE
1853 CRANFORD GASKELL
1854 WALDEN THOREAU
1855 WESTWARD HO! KINGSLEY
1856 THE DEAD SECRET COLLINS
1857 TOM BROWN'S SCHOOLDAYS HUGHES
1858 DOCTOR THORNE TROLLOPE
1859 OBLOMOV GONCHAROV
1860 MAX HAVELAAR MULTATULI
1861 EAST LYNNE WOOD
1862 LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET BRADDON
1863 THE COSSACKS TOLSTOY
1864 NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND DOSTOEVSKY
1865 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND DICKENS
1866 TOILERS OF THE SEA HUGO
1867 PEER GYNT IBSEN
1868 MALDOROR LAUTREMONT
1869 LORNA DOONE BALLANTYNE
1870 LEAR OF THE STEPPES TURGENEV
1871 THE FORTUNES OF THE ROUGONS ZOLA
1872 IN A GLASS DARKLY LE FANU
1873 AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS VERNE
1874 MIDDLEMARCH ELIOT
1875 EIGHT COUSINS ALCOTT
1876 THE HAND OF ETHELBERTA HARDY
1877 THREE TALES FLAUBERT
1878 THE EUROPEANS JAMES
1879 THE EGOIST MEREDITH
1880 BEN-HUR WALLACE
1881 PRINCE AND THE PAUPER TWAIN
1882 VICE VERSA ANSTEY
1883 CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA VERGA
1884 AGAINST THE GRAIN HUYSMANS
1885 KING SOLOMON'S MINES HAGGARD
1886 THE HOUSE OF ULLOA BAZAN
1887 THE DEEMSTER CAINE
1888 PLAIN TALES FROM THE HILLS KIPLING
1889 THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE STEVENSON
1890 NEWS FROM NOWHERE MORRIS
1891 NEW GRUB STREET GISSING
1892 THE CONQUEST OF BREAD KROPOTKIN
1893 MRS WARREN'S PROFESSION SHAW
1894 ESTHER WATERS MOORE
1895 QUO VADIS SIENKIEWICZ
1896 THE COUNTRY OF THE POINTED FIRS JEWETT
1897 THE BEETLE MARSH
1898 THE BLACK CORSAIR SALGARI
1899 SOME EXPERIENCES OF AN IRISH RM SOMERVILLE & ROSS
1900 THREE SISTERS CHEKHOV

I clung to 1874 for Middlemarch from the trusty old Guardian. Penultimate sentence of this article.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/10/100-best-novels-middlemarch-george...

>182 PaulCranswick: Fully understanding that Paul has decided to stick with 1874, I went hunting for myself and came up with some oddball western hemisphere choices:

Lillie Devereux Blake Fettered for Life
Edward Eggleston The Circuit Rider
Allan Pinkerton The Expressman and the Detective
Machado de Assis The Hand and the Glove

And if the year in question were 1873 I would insist that he read Old Kensington by Anne Thackeray.

>181 PaulCranswick:, >182 PaulCranswick:

I do like lists, yes. :D

Thank you for that! That looks like an amazing project...and it's making me even more antsy about my own suspended challenges, gahhh!!

And yeah, I'd call that a legitimate interpretation. :)

>183 NinieB:

Nice!

Lucky me, for 1873 I got a temperance novel... :D

Finished Murderer's Trail for TIOLI #11.

Now reading The Midnight Mail by Henry Holt.

Hmm. No-one seems to have a cover image for the first British edition of The Midnight Mail, so I'll have to go with the rather gruesome US one (which is at least less gruesome than the Crime Club kindle reissue, ew!):





Anyway, I'm certainly not using the image from this paperback reissue. I mean, I see what they were going for but... :D

Publication date: 1982
Genre: Non-fiction / books on books
Read for: Potential decommission / TIOLI (multicoloured cover)

Gun In Cheek: A Study Of "Alternative" Crime Fiction - At a time when critics were reassessing the crime genre both in terms of its literary qualities and its take on social mores, Bill Pronzini chose to take the opposite approach, in this celebration of the best of the worst of crime and mystery writing. Devoting a chapyter to each topic, Pronzini considers the amateur detective, the private eye, the police, specialty presses and their output, the British mystery novel, spy stories, "Yellow Peril" fiction, the gentleman-criminal, the thriller, the latter-day Gothic, the paperback original, and the short story. Each section offers lengthy synopses and quotations guaranteed to make the reader blink in bewilderment and/or wince in discomfort. This is a highly idiosyncratic overview, skewed by Pronzini's own expertise and tastes: he is, clearly, more interested in the thriller than the mystery, and much better informed about American writing than British. In the latter respect, he himself offers some inadvertent humour: he doesn't get Gladys Mitchell at all, and isn't even sure whether her bizarre mysteries are meant to be funny. (She's an acquired taste I'll grant you that!) On the other hand, by singling out R. A. J. Walling - a writer no worse than second-tier - for criticism / mockery, he pays an unintentional compliment to the standard of British writing generally. But if unintentional, this seems justified: nothing the British have to offer, not even the class snobbery, racist invective and general unpleasantness of authors like Sydney Horler, can compete with the material found in the so-called "spicy detective stories" of the 50s and 60s, still less the violence-soaked epics of Mickey Spillane and his copyists. If I have one major criticism of Gun In Cheek, it's that Pronzini gives too much time to authors who are trying to be funny: it's the stuff that was meant seriously that really boggles the mind.

There is a certain civilized quality to British mysteries, particularly those published prior to 1960, that makes them a consistent pleasure to read. Murder may strike, all sorts of nefarious things may happen, but the reader knows from the outset that justice and order will prevail in the end... All of which tends to make the reader of English mysteries comfortable, if not downright complacent. Whether a particular book was written in 1900 or half a century or more later, he knows exactly what he holds in his hands. It is predictable without being predictable, which is not a paradoxical statement. If the book is a good mystery, he will sense it before he has read ten pages. If it is a bad mystery, he will also sense it before he has read ten pages, but seldom will it make a whit of difference to him... No one ever cursed a British mystery out loud and hurled it across the room in disgust. Absolutely not. It just isn't done, you know...

Publication date: 1988
Genre: Historical drama
Read for: Potential decommission / TIOLI (author born after 1945)

The Idle Hill Of Summer - Julia Hamilton's first novel is a work of historical fiction dealing with the Edwardian summer and the relentless approach of WWI. It is a fragmented work, moving from flashback to flashback, but emerging less as a study of upper-class British society at the time when the sun was just beginning to set upon the Empire, than of one man's attempt to come to terms with himself and his life before going off to face what he is certain will be his death. The narrative of The Idle Hill Of Summer divides itself around two uncomfortable house parties held at Kildour, the Scottish country estate of the Baillies, either side of Gerard Baillie's departure for war. The novel's opening finds Gerard, at home on leave after being wounded, estranged from his family---unable to communicate with his parents, certain that his wife has been unfaithful. The earlier house party, around which most most of the novel is focused, shows us why... The Idle Hill Of Summer is a frustrating, rather opaque novel. Though it eventually tips its hand as a study of religious faith, Gerard's conversion to Catholicism, which isolates him from his family, is poorly motivated, or at least explained; though we are finally to accept it as the power that allows him to meet his fate with equanimity. Probably the intent was to suggest the many roads to God - this one involving some extreme coveting of a neighbour's wife, a rebound marriage, and a desire for punishment - but the effect is unconvincing; as is the shifting between criticism of the Church's position in wartime and its gift of faith. The novel is stronger, though no less uncomfortable, in its depiction of the fraught, cross-purpose relationships amongst the Baillies, with Gerard falling in love with his own wife just at the time when, unhappy and vulnerable, she drifts into an affair with her husband's amoral cousin, Edmund, a womaniser who to his horror also finds himself falling in love with Alice. But all these human passions, whether positive or destructive, pale into insignificance beside the slaughter unfolding in Europe, to which Gerard must soon return...

    His deliberations about whether there could be such a thing as Just War seemed like a bad joke now, so much theological dust and ashes. Men liked killing each other and that was that. Men also liked to submit to death, to give themselves up to it, an army of year kings abandoning themselves to the Everlasting Arms, being ploughed into the soil. Of course, the early Church had known this, clever Augustine had known it, sitting at Hippo making up special rules about killing. When is a death not a death, but an outburst of sanctified vitality? The answer: when Augustine says so.
    But it was too late to turn back now, fifteen hundred years too late. Centuries had overlain the mistake, built gilded bridges of words over the abyss, creating the irresistible myth of the holy warrior, those upholders of Christendom, crusaders who lay in the graveyards and churches of Europe with their swords pressed to their stone bosoms. The men in the gathering mud at Flanders, the inheritors, altogether a less pretty memorial. Men like Mahoney... Too late, it was too late.
    Now the primitive urge had become double-headed, wore the meek, downcast face of Duty. A duty indissolubly linked with killing, the sanctified tradition...

>170 lyzard: Well, this is quite the turnaround — you have beaten me to a Miss Silver book! I was putting it off to try to time it closer to when you post your review so that I have a fighting chance of remembering enough details to discuss, and I ended up forgetting about it.

I will rectify this error soonest, and be back with my thoughts at the earliest possible moment. :-)

>183 NinieB: Great research Ninie. Middlemarch will stay as 1874 though!

>189 rosalita:

...and just to pile on, I got that written up because I'll shortly be starting THE NEXT ONE...

...which to be honest *I* nearly forgot! :D

>190 PaulCranswick:

Ehh, you're no fun!

Although I do notice that your Victoria challenge and my best-seller challenge overlap at 1895. :D

---and Julia accidentally reminds me that I had a quote from Vanishing Point, too:

    “All this from Florrie, who I suppose had it from Miss Holiday?”
    “Yes, Frank. I gather that Mrs Selby not only dislikes the care of the hens, but that she is extremely nervous at being alone in the bungalow, especially as Mr Selby would not hear of their having a dog.”
    “Which might mean anything, or nothing at all---except that Mr Selby doesn’t like dogs. You know, there really are people that don’t.”
    Miss Silver herself had a preference for cats, but she did not consider this the moment to say so...

Publication date: 1885
Genre: Contemporary drama
Read for: TIOLI (country music theme)

Two Broken Hearts - This 1885 novella by Robert R. Hoes is a terribly straightfaced piece of sentimental fiction about people dying of their own emotions. With much ominous retrospective and disguising of "real identities", the unnamed narrator tells the story of his brother, Frank, who we are to accept as practically perfect in every way. While travelling in Europe, Frank meets and falls in love with a lovely young American girl; they marry and are blissfully happy until she dies following the birth of their child. While Frank succumbs to his grief, almost to the point of dying himself, we hear in passing of the tragedy of his best friend's sister, Pauline, whose fiancé is killed in an accident on the eve of their wedding. Some years later, Frank and Pauline come together, and the former finds his persistent grief giving way to a new love. However, Pauline remains devoted to the memory of her lost love, and does not realise her feeling for Frank until he departs to fight in the Civil War... Unfortunately, Two Broken Hearts isn't bad enough to be funny, but it's pretty bad just the same. Like all such sentimental fiction, it piles on to the point of ludicrousness---my favourite touch being how it spends literally pages dwelling on how best college friends, Frank and Henry, "may never meet again in this life", with the two embracing and crying to underscore the bathos pathos...though in fact there's absolutely no reason why the two of them shouldn't meet up as often as they like. (Frank can travel to Europe, but not across a few states?) Hoes' obsession with carriage accidents is also amusing, though I suppose it may reflect contemporary reality. But what finally caught my imagination was the realisation that, given times and places, Hoes' parfit, gentil knyght, whose perfections he bangs on and on about, must have been a slave-owner...though I guess the fact that this point is scrupulously avoided does show that attitudes were changing.

    He pleaded long and ardently, with all the desperation and earnestness of a man who is begging for his life, and is seeking to stay the quivering arm that is upraised to slay him. She listened intently, for there was some unknown and subtle influence that held her to the spot, and commanded her silence. When he had finished, he seized her hands and kissed them passionately, and then drew her to himself in one tender embrace. He knew it to be an embrace of innocence and purity, and so did she, and she did not resist. They sat down again under the oak and she was about to speak, when Frank with tearful eyes and pleading words implored her to think twice before she said any thing that would break his heart, and send him back in despair to a cold and soulless world. She looked into his face with an expression of sorrow and pity that haunted my brother till the hour of his death, and it was several minutes before she could speak a word.
    Then she said: "I want you to know and feel that I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the grand and manly words that you have spoken. I am honored by having a love offered me such as yours, and I know I speak the truth when I say that I feel in my heart that no man ever loved me more than you---and perhaps no one quite so much. I trust you with the most implicit confidence, I esteem and respect and honor you, there is no man whose society I enjoy so much, but do forgive me, for I must speak the truth, I do not love you. I wish I did, and would if I could, but I know I cannot. Oh, do believe me, Frank, I know my heart, I loved once and can never love again!"

Publication date: 1909
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Arsène Lupin #3
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (cover with a head covering)

The Hollow Needle - Something happened to Maurice Leblanc's gentleman-thief, Arsène Lupin, between the second book in his series, Arsène Lupin Contre Herlock Sholmès, and this one; and as far as I have been able to determine, that something was the stage-play called simply Arsène Lupin, co-authored by Leblanc and Francis de Croisset, which seems to have taken the essentially comic figure of Lupin and turned him into a serious anti-hero suffering through a tragically doomed love affair. Thus, the Lupin of The Hollow Needle is a far cry from the one to whom we were originally introduced---and whose criminal exploits the reader was obviously was obviously supposed to enjoy. In The Hollow Needle, a far darker Lupin is kept off-stage for much of the time, with Leblanc foregrounding instead the detective trying to track him down. Here too The Hollow Needle falls into trouble---because that "detective" is a cherubic, seventeen-year-old schoolboy...who we are nevertheless supposed to take seriously and side with, apparently. The result is an uncomfortable work all around. The rambling plot of The Hollow Needle involves a series of battles between Lupin and his new adversary, Isidore Beautrelet, with occasional input from a certain British private investigator (sometimes called "Herlock Sholmès" but here rendered as "Holmlock Shears") that finally resolves itself into a treasure-hunt, with Lupin searching for the secret depository of jewels that was part of the inheritance of the monarchs of France, the secret misplaced during the bloody upheaval of the Revolution. The chase leads first to the Château de l'Aiguille in Creuse, built by Louis XIV in the 17th century, and from there to L'Aiguille, the Needle, a rock formation off the coast of Étretat, in Normandy, where the final confrontation takes place...

    Beautrelet adopted a listening attitude and Lupin began, in measured, but harsh and masterful tones: "Let us throw off the mask---what say you?---and have done with hypocritical compliments. We are two enemies, who know exactly what to think of each other; we act toward each other as enemies; and therefore we ought to treat with each other as enemies."
    "To treat?" echoed Beautrelet, in a voice of surprise.
    "Yes, to treat. I did not use that word at random and I repeat it, in spite of the effort, the great effort, which it costs me. This is the first time I have employed it to an adversary. But also, I may as well tell you at once, it is the last. Make the most of it. I shall not leave this flat without a promise from you. If I do, it means war."
    Beautrelet seemed more and more surprised. He said very prettily: "I was not prepared for this---you speak so funnily! It's so different from what I expected! Yes, I thought you were not a bit like that! Why this display of anger? Why use threats? Are we enemies because circumstances bring us into opposition? Enemies? Why?"
    Lupin appeared a little out of countenance, but he snarled and, leaning over the boy: "Listen to me, youngster," he said. "It's not a question of picking one's words. It's a question of a fact, a positive, indisputable fact; and that fact is this: in all the past ten years, I have not yet knocked up against an adversary of your capacity. With Ganimard and Holmlock Shears I played as if they were children. With you, I am obliged to defend myself, I will say more, to retreat. Yes, at this moment, you and I well know that I must look upon myself as worsted in the fight. Isidore Beautrelet has got the better of Arsene Lupin..."

>192 lyzard: Glad I could help! :-)

I've just started Vanishing Point after hastily wrapping up a due-soon library book, so I'll be back ...

>195 rosalita:

I've had an odd, pleasant run of cats in books lately, just had another brief encounter in The Midnight Mail.

Speaking of which, I'll be starting The Silent Pool in a tick so you'd better get your skates on. :D

>196 lyzard: The least surprising thing in literature is that Miss Silver has a preference for cats!

The timing of my Miss Silver reads is not so much when you read them, it's when I think you might post your review. I figure I've got until at least early January? :-).

>197 rosalita:

:P

Anyhoo---

Finished The Midnight Mail for TIOLI #9.

Now reading The Silent Pool by Patricia Wentworth.

Publication date: 1978
Genre: Non-fiction / politics
Read for: Potential decommission / TIOLI (about a former leader)

The Ends Of Power - Written in conjunction with author and screenwriter, Joseph DiMona, this is H. R. Haldeman's account of his time as Richard Nixon's Chief of Staff and his involvement in Watergate. This is generally a frank and convincing version of events, and a lot less self-serving than most the alternative ones, in which Haldeman attempts to place the scandal in the context of the overall Nixon presidency, and to balance the President's successes in China and Russia (and, Haldeman would argue, Vietnam, although this remains, to put it mildly, moot) against the personal flaws and darknesses that would ultimately bring him down. Haldeman is ruefully aware of how far his permitted public image as "Nixon's son of a bitch" worked against him during the investigation into Watergate: he contends that his involvement was wholly after the event; and while he cops to obstruction of justice and conspiracy, he denies he ever committed perjury. For those with an interest in the minutiae of the scandal, two of Haldeman's arguments stand out: first, that the target of the Watergate break-in was never the Democratic Headquarters as such, but specifically Democratic Chairman Larry O'Brien, against whom Nixon had nursed a vicious animus since the days of the "Checkers" affair (the seeming pointlessness of the break-in was long a stumbling block for those investigating it); and second, that James McCord had been planted amongst the Plumbers by the CIA - whose wings Nixon was attempting to clip - in order to sabotage their sabotage. Haldeman's steady contention is that previous Presidents had been guilty of just as much overreach and even law-breaking as Nixon - ironically, almost the first act of the Nixon presidency was to strip L. B. Johnson's recording equipment out of the Oval Office - only none of them had Nixon's capacity for attracting personal hatred. It is hard to argue with some of Haldeman's points, though it is clear that his belief in the Nixon presidency and his lingering sense of loyalty lead him to downplay Nixon's disregard of the law and his constant abuse of the powers of his office in pursuit of his personal agendas. The other thing that emerges, almost involuntarily, we feel, is Haldeman's profound hurt over his retrospective realisation of how often Nixon lied to him during the unfolding of Watergate, and how early he started doing it; from, indeed, the first morning that a brief newspaper article reported the break-in. However, he does not attempt to deny his feelings of betrayal over being thrown under a bus towards the end of the presidency, as Nixon scrambled desperately to save himself. In light of this, Haldeman's constant efforts to keep before the reader the President who inspired him rather than the man who lied to him, used him and abandoned him are admirable.

    I was never a social friend of Nixon's... But that doesn't mean I wasn't close to him; indeed, closer than anyone else, professionally. (As Alex Butterfield would later testify: Haldeman was "an extension of Nixon, his alter ego.") And from that proximate viewpoint I saw both greatness and meanness in Nixon in such a bewildering combination that, years later, peering out of a hotel window at the White House which I had been forced to leave, I muttered out loud: "Nixon was the weirdest man ever to live in the White House."
    Mike Wallace of CBS overheard that remark, put me on a special television show in 1975 at great cost, and then was outraged when I stonewalled him. I was still determined to discuss only the positives and to refuse to dwell on the negatives.
    But then in 1977 I watched, in growing dismay, the performance of Richard Nixon on television in the David Frost interviews in which - in a flow of emotional doubletalk - he "revealed" that his only guilt in Watergate was not firing Ehrlichman and me, the real villains, soon enough.
    I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. This part of his performance was vintage "dark" Richard Nixon, fighting for survival, now trying to rehabilitate himself over the prostrate bodies of his aides: "splendid fellows" who unfortunately ran the cover-up without telling Nixon anything.
    The fact is Watergate was too great a drama to be determined by any one man: me, Ehrlichman, or even Nixon...

...though I think we can safely say at this juncture that Richard Nixon USED TO BE "the weirdest man ever to live in the White House"...

Publication date: 1989
Genre: Short stories / animal stories
Read for: Potential decommission / TIOLI ("I am thankful for...")

Great Cat Tales - This anthology edited by Lesley O'Mara brings together short stories about written over almost a century by interesting and sometimes unexpected array of authors, and featuring both fictional and non-fictional accounts of the peculiar ways of cats. Though it is almost sad to say so, this volume deliberately sets itself apart from the vast majority of such collections: though natural causes and age play their part, and though some stories are told in retrospect, it is the declared purpose of Great Cat Tales to include not story where the death or killing of a cat is the focus. There is great mixing of styles and purposes here, and naturally not all the stories will appeal to all readers. At this distance, the rather laissez-faire attitude in a number of them to cats wandering freely and reproducing without hinder is sometimes uncomfortable. I also felt that the non-fiction contributions (from James Herriot and Doris Lessing, among others) had a bit too much "human" in them; while there is perhaps an over-preponderance of stories focused upon the dominating personalities of Siamese cats; though that said, Margaret Bonham's A Fine Place For The Cat, about a Siamese kitten that becomes the, ahem, catalyst of an unlikely relationship, was perhaps my favourite of the lot. Overall, this is a worthwhile and welcome selection of stories, with the other contributors including Emile Zola, Rudyard Kipling, Mark Twain, P. G. Wodehouse and Patricia Highsmith.

    "Why, Mrs Miller," he cried, "why, she's a beauty!" Mrs Miller turned round and saw Tulan, seeming very small, treading with her dark-legged dancer's step up the snowy path, with her dark ears pointed to the breath of fish, her dark thin tail like a question mark up from the pale thin line of her back; Mrs Miller looked at her and saw with a shock that she was a beauty indeed. Now all other cats seemed gross and without shape. But she said nothing, only stared at Tulan and tapped her fingers on the enamel dish; and Tulan trod up to the fish-man and gave her urgent howl.
    The fish-man was enchanted; he took her up in his arms and said: "Why, Mrs Miller, this is the greatest beauty of a cat I've seen in a lifetime, to be sure. God save us, Mrs Miller," he said, "were you telling me you were disappointed in a cat like this? What sort of cat is it called, now?"
    "It's a Siamese cat," said Mrs Miller, caught out in a wrong opinion and a little cross, "and a big cat I thought it would be with a great tail like feathers."
    "So help me," said the fish-man, "will you look at the blue eyes? What would you want with a lot of fur and no bones? Losing her to me you will be, Mrs Miller, if she's not the cat you wanted."
    "Well, I do want her," said Mrs Miller quickly; "it's getting used to her is a matter of time." She looked at Tulan and then at the fish-man, and in a moment she laughed; meeting the fish-man's eyes over Tulan's head like two people in a film over the head of a reconciling child, for the first time Mrs Miller impaled him with a direct stare and saw that his eyes were as blue as the cat's; and for his part the fish-man thought that the cat's eyes were not more blue than hers. Tulan breathed fish over his shoulder and howled...

>201 lyzard: That's for sure!

Publication date: 1947
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Inspector Hazelrigg #1
Read for: Random reading / series reading / TIOLI (includes visual material)

Close Quarters - The Residential Close of Melchester Cathedral begins to be plagued by anonymous letters and other such attacks, most of them targeting the elderly Head Verger, Mr Appledown. Hesitating between calling the police and the fear of a public scandal, the Dean compromises by inviting his nephew, Robert Pollock, for a visit: otherwise Sergeant Pollock of the CID. However, Pollock has only just begun looking into the matter when Appledown is found dead by the Cathedral's generator shed, clearly having been murdered. Pollock quells his first impulse and summons the local police; but no-one is more relieved than he when the decision is made to call in Scotland Yard. This brings to the scene Chief Inspector Hazelrigg---whose preliminary investigation establishes that the murder must have been an inside job... The first in the series by Michael Gilbert, Close Quarters is an unusual mystery novel marked by an extremely shifting tone. As its punning title would indicate, there is a degree of humour over much of the book, particularly in its presentation of the enclosed church circle within the Close, the rivalries and tensions that exist between these men of the cloth, and its intimations of some very ungodly attitudes and behaviours. (Much of this novel seems deliberately designed to appeal to fans of Barchester Towers...and tends to leave you wondering why no-one ever murdered Mrs Proudie...) There is also a bonne bouche for puzzle fans, with the solving of a crossword finally bearing upon the solution to the murder. However, as the plot unfolds the humour drops away, with its final act turning very dark indeed. Close Quarters is in some ways quite a complicated book, with an extensive cast and quite a lot of assumed knowledge about church hierarchy and relationships; thankfully, it comes accessorised with a full character list at the front and two maps of the Close along the way. Having determined that no-one could have gotten into the Close from the outside, and with witnesses determining the time of death almost to the minute, Hazelrigg must set to work determining the movements of everyone on the inside---and soon discovers that clergymen are no more likely to tell the whole truth to the police than anyone else. To the inspector, the overarching question is one of motive: where the letter-writing campaign fits into the case of murder; whether personal animus escalated to murderous obsession; or whether some secret in Appledown's life made him a target. It is very late in the proceedings before an indignant Hazelrigg finally learns that this is not the first violent death to occur in Melchester Close...

    "I was going to tell you," said Hazelrigg patiently, "that Parvin---"
    Again he was interrupted. They had not heard the bell, but now the sound of trampling feet in the hall announced the unceremonious arrival of Trumpington and Prynne. One glance at their faces brought all three men to their feet.
Trumpington was spokesman.
    "Something very important has happened," he said---and in a quiet voice he explained the chain of circumstances which had resulted in the discovery of Canon Whyte's last message. When he had finished the silence was broken unexpectedly by Hazelrigg.
    "Who was Canon Whyte?"
    "Why, said the Dean guiltily, "didn't I tell you about Canon Whyte? I was sure you'd heard about Canon Whyte. Such a distressing business. He fell from the roof of the cathedral---practically on the spot where Appledown---"
    His voice died away. Pollock thought Hazelrigg was going to explode. But when at last the inspector found his voice its very softness was more explosive than violence.
    "Three days," he said. "Three days; everyone under suspicion of murder, and some of you in actual danger of your lives, and you never thought it worth your while to tell me the one thing that really mattered..."

Publication date: 1884
Genre: Poetry
Read for: TIOLI (puzzling thing about 2020)

A Fool's Paradise: A Story Of Fashionable Life In Washington - Well, this is a weird one: in the first place, it isn't fiction, it's a poem; and in the second place, it isn't about Washington at all, it's set in London, or anyway, Belgravia. However, the author, Benjamin G. Lovejoy, is American, so I'm guessing it was nevertheless meant as a satire on DC society; perhaps pretending it wasn't was a safety measure? The story, such as it is, involves a mother training her daughter in the skills needed to catch a husband of the right sort. She succeeds, but disaster follows...

Her mother then this social science teaches:
"There is a world of Fashion, one of State---
In this the men, in that our sex are great.
'Tis there we rule, or, if no sceptre own,
We live and breathe and move around the throne:
It is a land of pure delight, my child."
''Heaven?" Camilla asks in accents mild.
"Not Canaan, dear, not bliss of piety.
But goal of woman's hope---Society..."

Finished The Silent Pool for TIOLI #12.

Now reading - sigh - The Spy Who Came In From The Cold by John le Carré.

Well, well...

I haven't done this for a while, but---while researching the next Miss Silver mystery, I couldn't help noticing that in its reissued editions, The Benevent Treasure fits all three of my favourite - or at least, "favourite" - Cover Categories:

#1: People Looking Vaguely Worried:





#2: Cheerful People Who Have Nothing To Do With Anything:





#3: Let's Market It As A Gothic Romance (bonus points for the heroine in the windblown nightie):





Fortunately I've found a decent reproduction of the first Hodder & Stoughton edition and don't have to worry about ANY of these! :D

Publication date: 1936
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte #3
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI (first letter in title and author)

Wings Above The Diamantina (US title: Wings Above The Claypan) - John Nettlefold, and his daughter, Elizabeth, set out to inspect some of the more distant corners of Coolibah, their cattle ranch. As they draw near to Emu Lake, a huge claypan still dry before the coming of the rains, they are astonished to find a small red monoplane sitting in the middle of the depression---and horrified to discover a young woman onboard, strapped into the pilot's seat but unconscious. Rushing the girl back to Coolibah, Nettlefold calls the nearest town, Golden Dawn, situated some 180 miles away. Sergeant Cox of the police and Dr Knowles arrive two hours later in the latter's own small plane. Nettlefold learns that the monoplane was stolen the night before from a group of stunt flyers visiting the area; while the doctor is puzzled by the condition of the girl, who seems to be in a coma. During the night, Elizabeth catches a glimpse of someone in the girl's room and becomes convinced that a bottle of brandy has been tampered with; while the next morning, when Cox and Nettleford drive out to Emu Lake, they discover that the monoplane has been destroyed by fire... After showing him chiefly from the outside during his debut appearance in The Barrakee Mystery, and spending most of The Sands Of Windee inside his protagonist's head, in Wings Above The Diamantina Arthur Upfield takes a third approach in his presentation of Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte of the Queensland police---striking a balance between the shifting reactions of his white characters to the mixed-race detective, and Bony's negotiation of the enclosed society of Coolibah, from where he conducts his investigation. As always, there is an uncomfortable tension here between Bony's serene belief in his superiority as an individual, and his acceptance of his inherent inferiority on the score of his birth. However, this particular novel comes down quite hard on the side of Bony and his people, having the detective welcomed into the household of Coolibah, Bony finding two staunch assistants in the aboriginal stockmen known as Bill Sikes and Shuteye, and a late-narrative appearance by the tribal elder, Illawalli, whose strange abilities may be the only chance of reaching the unconscious girl. The terrors and beauties of the outback and the extremities of its weather are also an essential part of the narrative, which unfolds around the Diamantina, a river consisting of numerous shallow channels that runs across the far south-west of Queensland and into South Australia. The 1930s' obsession with flight - quickly adopted in many remote parts of Australia - informs the narrative of Wings Above The Diamantina, with its startling opening appearance of the red monoplane supported by numerous allusions to flying both in peace and war, and an air-race against time and a violent storm forming a significant part of the story's climax. The self-landing of the monoplane at Emu Lake thwarts what Bony and Sergeant Cox are soon sure was the attempted framing and murder of the girl. In their haste to help her, the Nettlefolds do not bring the girl's possessions back to Coolibah; and by the time Nettlefold and Cox are able to make a second attempt, the plane has been destroyed---not accidentally, and not just by fire, but in an explosion. Elizabeth's tale of an intruder make it certain that the girl's life is still in danger; but until they can identify her, the question of who might want her dead remains unanswerable. Meanwhile, Dr Knowles warns that in any case, she may slip at any time into death...

    Bony continued to stare upwards at the puffing, swelling cloud mass. Its base was darkening to ink-black, and the serrated top of the western edge, with the vast mountain peaks spaced along it, was being frozen here, gilded there by the sun. Icebergs floating on a sea of ink...
    Sergeant Cox gripped Bony by the arm. "That lot is going to come back on us," he growled savagely.
    The detective nodded.
    The gibber plain, sunlight to its eastern horizon, appeared as though a storm of wattle blossom had rained upon it. It was a bright yellow in sharp contrast with the ink-black sky. The store, the hotel, and the houses to the north of the hotel stood out against the pall of the sky like buildings floodlit against a dark night---night ripped and scarred by lightning.
    "Yes, it will come back," Bony breathed. "And away to the north flies Captain Loveacre on a southerly course. He will now be flying southward in front of that aerial ice pack which will force him ever westward. He is too far away to land at Golden Dawn in one hour's time, unless that storm again changes direction... He will have to land many miles north or west of Golden Dawn. Then we will have to bring Illawalli many miles by car if the landing is made safely. The odds are that the landing will not be a safe one, because ground like this surrounding Golden Dawn is rare. Yes, a car will have to bring Illawalli over water-logged plains and swollen creeks. And perhaps the river will come down and stop us reaching Coolibah with him, preventing him from seeing the dying woman. And I will have failed! I'll not fail to produce her murderers, but I will have failed to save her life..."

>208 lyzard: "After showing him chiefly from the outset"--outside?

I'm going to have to start reading my Upfields to keep up with you!

>209 NinieB:

Oops, thanks!

Glad to have you along. :)

Finished The Spy Who Came In From The Cold for TIOLI #2.

Now reading The Great Roxhythe by Georgette Heyer.

...and with regard to the former, may I just say what an absolute pleasure it was to read a novel for the best-seller challenge that was just a novel? - not a thesis, not a dissertation, not an encyclopaedia!?

Which is not to say that it is in any way superficial. On the contrary, it's a lean, mean book in which le Carré says everything necessary within a brisk 200 pages.

But alas...despite the book's popularity in the US, American authors were clearly sticking to their "more is more" policy...

...as we see with respect to the next challenge entry:

Quoth the publisher: "...in his signature style of grand storytelling..."

Translation: the book is over a 1000 pages long.

Sigh...

OK, I've polished off Vanishing Point over my lunch break and am ready to grace you with my sophisticated musings. :-D

Your review in >170 lyzard:, now that I've gone back and read it, is spot on. Your observation that the romantic subplots have begun to seem like an excuse for Maudie to have some brawn to help defend her brain is a good one. I hadn't thought of it that way, but I think you're on to something. I found this particular pairing to be charming, although the usual caveats about the ridiculousness of falling in love at first sight apply as always.

One thing I'd add: In the last book there was a character who was immediately so distasteful that I (correctly) pegged them as the victim right away. This time,there was a similar odious character who I was rooting to become the victim, only to have Wentworth twist the plot by making them the villain instead! I found that even more satisfying, I think.

Publication date: 1932
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Leathermouth #2
Read for: 1932 reading / series reading / TIOLI (find 'love')

The Sign Of The Glove - Colonel Peter Gantian promises his fiancée, Julia Wallington, that while she is in America winding up her affairs, he will stay out of trouble---and accordingly, avoid George Mayfield, attached to the Special Branch of Scotland Yard. However, Mayfield finally succeeds in drawing Gantian into the matter of the suspicious death of Sir Everard Clanwell, former Governor of Bombay, which he believes is somehow connected to the activities of Leo Jask, a known Soviet agent and political agitator. Gantian is also consulted by his young friend, Hugh Tabran, who is worried that Doctor Lal, who attended Sir Everard, has gained a strange ascendancy over the late governor's daughter, Cynthia. Gantian learns that Lal is somehow mixed up with a Mrs Asterley, who was forced to leave Bombay over her political activities, and a mysterious individual called Count Solini---both of whom may be agents of Jask. In spite of himself, Gantian is drawn into the investigation of what Mayfield believes to be a dangerous conspiracy: an assignment that not only puts his own life at risk, but prompts his enemies to strike at him through Julia... This second entry in the series by the Australian-born author, Carlton Dawe, featuring Colonel Peter Gantian - known by the unflattering nickname, "Leathermouth" - has most of the faults of the first plus a plot that turns out to be a damp squib. Leathermouth itself was marked by the characters' contemptuous bigotry against anyone who didn't happen to be British (including, in a sad bit of cultural cringe, Australians); but The Sign Of The Glove does something more dishonest: pretending to see both sides of the situation in India and tut-tutting over derogatory language---and then having its various "foreigners", particularly Doctor Lal, turn out to be the worst kind of villains. Ultimately, the most interesting thing about these novels is what they say by omission: that the sun was indeed beginning to set upon "the Empire", as we judge from the recurrent plots involving desperate attempts to maintain British rule around the world in the face of increasing rebellion. Or at least, that is how The Sign Of The Glove is sold to us at the outset, with professional agitator, Leo Jask, supposedly trying to bring about a revolution in India...only for the novel to fizzle out into a story confined to a couple of locations in England, about the conspirators' efforts to raise some much needed cash. The plot does finally does give us a murder, an attempted murder and a kidnapping---but these things do not "the destruction of the Empire" make. In between tiresome verbal sparring matches with George Mayfield, Peter Gantian investigates the antecedents of the suspicious Mrs Asterley, and succeeds in rescuing Cynthia Cranwell from the clutches of Doctor Lal and his efforts to drug her into agreeing to marry him (a white girl!? an Indian!!?? GASP!!!!). By the latter, Gantian inadvertently brings a terrible retribution upon himself and the person he loves best---with Julia and her fortune becoming the conspirators' next target...

    Meanwhile I was afraid to think of Julia and her possible danger. Already I had experienced a series of horrors sufficient to turn the brain of a dozen men. I had a devastating fear of Lal. That little man had more venom in him than a legion of his native cobras. His mad brain, inflamed by blind fanaticism, was capable of the most monstrous cruelty. Like those holy inquisitors of which one reads and shudders, he would know neither pity nor mercy. That he would ultimate spare her was not to be thought of. But not knowing of my escape he might allow her to linger for a time. Or so it was I tried to think, not daring to think otherwise. There was also the possibility that the others might have a word to say. Though neither Jask nor Asterley might overvalue human life, each would realise that the life they held in their hands might still be too valuable to destroy.
    Albert and I talked and waited. Methodically he prepared a meal which we made a pretence of eating. I felt every mouthful turn to dust. My eyes followed the slow, leaden movements of the clock. How dreadfully the minute hand seemed to drag. With a grim smile Albert brought my service revolver and a box of cartridges and laid them before me, but never had I entered on an adventure with so little heart. I was shaken by a multitude of fears. If we should fail; if at the last moment...

>214 rosalita:

Yes, that's all fair comment. I was fine with the romance as such too; though while I think the brawn theory is correct, it occurs to me now that its other purpose was to remove Jenny from the scene.

There was an unusual number of unpleasant people in this one---in which I would include Jenny, who I think needed a severe dose of Governess Maud. :D

>216 lyzard: Yes, in the opening chapters I was torn as to who should be the victim, and Jenny got more than a passing thought ... :-)

And how great would it have been for her to get the Governess Maud treatment! We were left to assume that now she is out of her former situation she will straighten up and fly right, but a dose of Maudie wouldn't have hurt her any — just to make sure it "took".

>217 rosalita:

I was struck by the gap between Jenny and the kid in Anna, Where Are You?: both brats, but for very different reasons and handled very differently in the narratives, including Maud's careful treatment in the latter case.

>218 lyzard: Good point! It's odd to think that Jenny with everything she had been through might be less "damaged" if you want to call it that, but that would seem to be Wentworth's view. Perhaps the trauma of a single accident and being removed from her unpleasant situation fairly quickly means she has less to overcome than the young girl in the other book, who had a whole lifetime of difficult home life to overcome?

>219 rosalita:

Also physical trauma as opposed to emotional. One was healing, while there was no end in sight for the other kid till Maud showed up.

Publication date: 1934
Genre: Mystery / thriller
Series: Fu Manchu #7
Read for: Series reading / TIOLI ('best books' list)

The Trail Of Fu Manchu - Having barely slipped through his enemies' grasp and hard-pressed for resources, Dr Fu Manchi is forced into hiding in his old Limehouse haunts where, in his efforts to raise money, he turns to the ancient secrets of alchemy. He also deals one staggering blow to the men who pursue him: he abducts Fleurette, who was raised to be his bride but was rescued by, and is now engaged to, the young Scots-American botanist, Alan Sterling. In association with Sir Denis Nayland Smith, Sterling conducts a desperate search for Fleurette and succeeds in recovering her; however, the men find her still under the influence of the doctor's hypnotic control. Meanwhile, a strange blue flame that seems to dance in the night sky and the reappearance of one of Fu Manchu's old assistants leads Nayland Smith to the doctor's new lair, a terrifying labyrinth beneath the Thames itself... The seventh of Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu stories finds the series returning to its roots, with its central narrative unfolding within - and under - Limehouse, and the implication that most of London's Asian population are agents of the dreaded Si-Fan. That said, this entry's racial invective is definitely toned down compared to those earlier works; though in other ways its narrative leaves something to be desired. The Trail Of Fu Manchu feels like it was written for serialisation, with a cliffhanger at the end of almost every chapter; the overall effect is rather exhausting. It is also guilty of some lazy writing, with Nayland Smith "snapping" nearly every line he speaks, and most of the characters, but particularly Alan Sterling, reacting to everything by "clenching" or "unclenching" their fists. Meanwhile, the relationship between Sterling and Fleurette remains both unconvincing and uninvolving; though at the same time, the enmity between Nayland Smith and Fah Lo Suee, Fu Manchu's daughter, takes a bizarre (and also unconvincing) turn. However, all of this novel's faults are off-set by a marvellously sustained and rather horrifying suspense sequence that unfolds within Fu Manchu's new lair, an abandoned tunnel project beneath the Thames. Having dazzled us with mad science in The Bride Of Fu Manchu, here the good doctor turns to alchemy---and succeeds in turning lead into gold: the long-lost secret of this process being the need to fuel a great furnace with human bodies... Nayland Smith and Sterling succeed in penetrating Fu Manchu's new haunt, but it is a discovery that seems certain to cost them their lives. On one hand there is Fu Manchu's need for more "fuel"; on the other, the very attempt of their police colleagues to rescue them---with an explosion rupturing the walls of the underground lair, and bringing the waters of the Thames rushing in...

    There was an interval during which the furnace door was opened again, but Sterling resolutely turned his head aside. At the clang of its closing he opened his eyes again.
    “Paracelsus,” came that strange voice out of the darkness---and, now, with a note of exaltation in it, a note of fanaticism, an oddly rising cadence---“Paracelsus, although in some respects an impostor, yet was the master of many truths; of the making of gold he knew something, but few have understood his dictum ‘Vita ignis corpus lignum’ (light is the fire, the body the fuel).”
    He was silent for a moment. The roar of the furnace increased again in volume.
    “The body the fuel...” Fu Manchu repeated. “Sir Denis Nayland Smith, Mr Alan Sterling, Detective-sergeant Murphy. War is merciless, and I regret that you stand in my way. But in order that you shall realize the selflessness of my motives, I wish you, before going to join the shades of your ancestors, to be witnesses of my justice.”
    He uttered again that short, guttural command. A figure walked gracefully out of the shadows into the light.
    It was his daughter---Fah Lo Suee. She wore a green robe, cut low upon the shoulders, and of so fine a texture that every line of her slender body might be traced in its delicacy. There were jewels on her fingers and she smiled composedly. Within the ring of light she knelt, and bowed her head in the direction of the unseen speaker.
    The Burmese executioner had followed her. He stood behind her, now, looking upward.
    “Of all the spies who have penetrated to my councils,”---the voice became more and more sibilant, rising ever upon a higher key---“this woman, my daughter, has been the chief culprit. There is traitor blood in her, but she has betrayed me for the last time...”

>220 lyzard: Yes, exactly!

>212 lyzard: Pleased to see that you appreciated The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. I still think it is the best thing I read of his.

Have a lovely weekend, Liz.

>223 PaulCranswick:

Hi, Paul; thanks!

I haven't read any of his others yet, but I am now going to try and read the other Smiley books (they look a bit harder to get hold of).

>212 lyzard:
I thought you’d like The Spy. His other books are bleak but excellent.

>225 Matke:
I think 'bleak' is putting it mildly. :)

Went into the State Library today to make a start on Cameos by Octavus Roy Cohen.

Meanwhile, still reading The Great Roxhythe by Georgette Heyer.

Publication date: 1997
Genre: Humour
Read for: Potential decommission / TIOLI (birthstone cover)

The Melancholy Death Of Oyster Boy & Other Stories - This slender volume comprises a collection of nonsense poetry and short-short stories written and illustrated by Tim Burton. Though there is plenty of black humour here, liberally mixed with horror and Gothic fantasy, there is also a level of sadness and even cruelty, with many of these tiny tales dealing with children being excluded because they're different. The fate of the unfortunate title character is particularly grotesque, although it's only one grim outcome amongst many.

Brie Boy:
Brie Boy had a dream he only had twice,
that his full, round head was only a slice.
The other children never let Brie Boy play...
...but at least he went well with a nice Chardonnay.

Publication date: 1986
Genre: Horror
Read for: Potential decommission / TIOLI (chilling cover)

The Hungry Moon - Outsiders are uncommon in the small, isolated Peak District village of Moonwell. One of the few is the American Diana Kramer, who teaches the younger children at the village's only school while researching her family's roots in the district. An outsider of a very different nature arrives in the form of evangelical preacher, Godwin Mann, who holds a revival meeting on the moors above Moonwell where the occupying Roman forces once clashed violently with the Druids. According to local tradition, the Druids rid themselves of their enemies by calling down from the moon a terrifying entity---one which supposedly still lurks in the tunnels beneath the overhanging peaks. As perhaps the oldest surviving example of paganism in Britain, the villagers' yearly gathering at the opening of the pit and the leaving of floral tributes becomes the focus of Godwin Mann's campaign: he announces his intention of descending into the tunnels to confront the evil that hides there. When Mann re-emerges, apparently having triumphed, it completes his ascendancy over the villagers, who are swept away by religious fervour. It is only the outsiders, Diana in particular, who realise that instead of defeating the lurking evil, Mann has let it out... Ramsey Campbell's second novel is a thematically interesting but ultimately unsatisfying work. Part of the problem with The Hungry Moon is that it is just too long: the characters aren't interesting enough to sustain a narrative of this length, while their experiences during the successive takeovers of Moonwell - the first by Godwin Mann and his followers, the second by the force he has inadvertently released - are overly repetitive, the same sort of thing from different perspectives. The other issue here, one which will strike different readers differently, is Campbell's presentation of the ugly face of evangelicalism, with the villagers, under the influence of Mann's rhetoric, closing ranks and turning upon anyone who refuses to be won over---and escalating rapidly from criticism to ostracism to physical violence in their quest to "purify" Moonwell. Essentially what we have here is a very British version of the Westboro Baptist Church, with Campbell finding very little difference between this particular version of "Christianity" and the consequences once the evil from the pit begins taking over the town. The novel's focus upon the narrow-minded hatefulness of the converted villagers grows wearisome, and takes away from The Hungry Moon's Lovecraftian vision of an entity that is somehow both of this world and outside it; called here by ancient rites and staying to feed... It is from Moonwell's oldest resident, Nathaniel Needham, that Diana Kramer learns the story of the Druid's desperate summoning of the moon entity, of the bloody conflict that followed, and of the Romans' casting of the thing into the pit. Diana is one of those who resists Godwin Mann - and what Godwin Mann becomes after venturing into the pit - and suffers accordingly. A few others struggle with her - Nick Reid, a reporter who stumbles into Moonwell at the time of Mann's revival; Father O'Connell, who stands unavailingly against the evangelical tide; Geraldine and Jeremy Booth, whose bookstore in a converted church attracts vicious retribution; Vera and Craig Eddings, who can only look on in dismay as their daughter gives herself up to Mann's teachings; Eustace Gift, postman and failed comedian, an outsider before Mann's arrival; and young Andrew Bevan, who sees that his father is no longer human - but it is Diana, with her deep Celtic roots, who alone has the power to stand against the entity...

    Now's your chance, Nick thought fiercely at Diana, and wondered if he should speak up himself. Then a woman shouted, "And we don't want our children taught by unbelievers. We don't want them going out of the town and mixing with the faithless. Godwin brought us all the teachers we need."
    "Real teachers, not like you," an old woman yelled at Diana, to the support of a chorus of jeering. I thought you were supposed to be Christians, Nick thought angrily, and would have said so except that the soft voice came seeping down. "It looks like all you have to offer is doubts and darkness, Miss Kramer."
    "I'll tell you one thing I have my doubts about." Diana's voice rang out, clearer and calmer than ever. "Perhaps it's all that stands between me and believing in you. I'd like to hear what happened when you went down the cave---what you found there and what you did."
    Quite a few faces turned towards Mann's window. Perhaps they were curious rather than doubtful, but wasn't that preferable to blind faith? The figure in the window drew itself up. Surely it was a trick of the perspective that made the evangelist look taller than he had been at the rally, but it made Nick feel as if Mann was preparing to show them something in response to Diana. He could almost believe that as the light appeared to swell, the figure had begun to swell too.
    Then Mrs Scragg intervened. "Anyone with an ounce of godliness in them can see what happened plain enough," she cried. "Our man up there is a saint if ever I saw one. Now that's enough. We're here to pray, not listen to your godless prating, Miss Kramer. If you don't shut your lying mouth there's plenty of us here to shut it for you."

I had something of a SCORE!! this morning:

I have had difficulty proceeding with Arthur B. Reeve's Craig Kennedy series, having been thwarted in my efforts to get an ILL of The Adventuress by the South Australian library system's refusal to let their books cross boundaries (they were ahead of their time with their attitude to border closures), and myself baulking at what I consider an unreasonably overpriced Kindle edition.

But I have just discovered that some kind soul has uploaded a copy at the Internet Archive, meaning I can finally get this long-stalled series moving again.

So---SCORE!!

The last thing in the world I need is another book-list, but---

While choosing a book for Morphy's Mystery Challenge this month (one option in which is 'a book set in Australia') I stumbled across two letters to the editor of The Age newspaper from 1933. Evidently the paper called for people to send in their lists of "The Fifty Best Australian Novels", and these two individuals responded accordingly. (There were obviously other lists submitted before these, but I haven't dared look for them.)

What particularly interested me were the implications of the second letter by a Mr W. R. Cottman, who in the body of his letter criticises the "deprecatory" tone of some of the earlier submissions---which seem to have taken for granted the natural inferiority of Australian literature, and felt the need to apologise for their choices even when responding to a call for them.

Mr Cottman's tone of exasperation with this particular example of cultural cringe and his championship of his own list make me inclined to investigate further; I'm also interested to note that he seems, in some cases, to have rejected the obvious choice for an author in favour of something (now?) more obscure. For example---the previous correspondent applauds Miles Franklin's My Brilliant Career as possibly the best Australian novel; Mr Cottman suggests Franklin's Old Blastus Of Bandicoot. As with the C. K. Shorter 'Best 100 Novels' list in my current stalled challenge, the idiosyncrasy is intriguing.

I'm also very heartened by the unusual prominence of female authors---though even this brief overview illustrates how many were working under male or androgynous pseudonyms.

And so...even though the last thing in the world I need is another book-list...


  

Yes, that's a fascinating list! I have read Up the Country, which was quite fun.

>232 NinieB:

I haven't read nearly enough of those books, which is another reason this is calling so hard. Ah well, maybe when I've finished another challenge or two... :D

Finished The Great Roxhythe for TIOLI #8.

Now reading Alfred Dudley; or, The Australian Settlers by Sarah Porter.

>234 lyzard: Not often I can say I've read that, but for The Great Roxhythe I can.
Odd one.

>235 Helenliz:

An odd mix. The history, as you would expect, is dead on but the emotional content is peculiar, to say the least. (I think because she realised there was nowhere in her narrative for a woman.)

Anyhoo, I'll be reading Simon The Coldheart next, probably in February, if you'd care to join me. :)

>236 lyzard: He's another I have already read. And would not be throwing out of bed for eating crisps. >;-)

I suppose I could re-read, even if that goes against the grain when I have so many left unread. Go on then, let me know when you're about to start. And I'll finish a good week behind you.

>237 Helenliz:

:D

If the mood strikes you, but certainly don't feel obliged.

Finished Alfred Dudley; or, The Australian Settlers for TIOLI #5.

Now reading Christmas With Grandma Elsie by Martha Finley; still reading Cameos by Octavus Roy Cohen.

Or in other words, Happy Christmas! And have a great New Year as well. Here’s hoping 2021 is better than 2020.

I hope you get some of those at least, Liz, as we all look forward to a better 2021.

I hope that everyone has had (or is having) a lovely day!

>240 SandDune:, >241 PaulCranswick:

Thank you both, very best wishes to you and yours. :)

Finished Christmas With Grandma Elsie for TIOLI #16, and while it's not necessarily the work I wanted for the honour, that is also #150 for the year!---

Now reading Perishable Goods by Dornford Yates; still reading Cameos by Octavus Roy Cohen.

>243 lyzard: Congratulations on reaching 2 x 75, Liz!

>244 lyzard:

Thank you, Anita! :)

My congratulations also on reaching 150 books, Liz.

>243 lyzard: Excellent creature reward for us on your achievement. >:-)
Hope you had a satisfactory Christmas.

Wanna help me kick 202 to the curb? 2021 group is here

>247 PaulCranswick:

Thanks, Paul!

>248 Helenliz:

You know me, I like to share the joy!

It was a cutdown Christmas but just between you and me I liked it for that reason. :D

>249 drneutron:

Done and done; thanks, Jim!

Publication date: 1892
Genre: Short story
Read for: Group read / Virago reading project / TIOLI (published before 2010)

The Yellow Wallpaper - Following the birth of her baby, a woman develops depression. Her husband and brother, both doctors, insist upon her undergoing a rest cure---spending long periods alone in a room in a country house, without any form of mental stimulation. In particular, she is discouraged from the writing that gives her such comfort, and can only record her thoughts by stealth. With no other way of occupying her time and her mind, the woman begins to study the intricate patterns within the yellow wallpaper of her room---and becomes convinced that she is not alone after all... Charlotte Perkins Gilman's semi-autobiographical short story is an extraordinary piece of writing, which may be read as a horror story, a subjective study of mental illness, a consideration of the therapeutic nature of art, a commentary upon women's place in society, a work of angry feminist protest---and most remarkably of all, as all these things at once, with no one reading invalidating the others. This is a brilliantly disturbing piece of writing which builds to a climax that manages to be both chilling and triumphant.

    It is getting to be a great effort for me to think straight. Just this nervous weakness, I suppose.
    And dear John gathered me up in his arms, and just carried me upstairs and laid me on the bed, and sat by me and read to me till it tired my head.
    He said I was his darling and his comfort and all he had, and that I must take care of myself for his sake, and keep well.
    He says no one but myself can help me out of it, that I must use my will and self-control and not let any silly fancies run away with me.
    There’s one comfort, the baby is well and happy, and does not have to occupy this nursery with the horrid wallpaper...
    Of course I never mention it to them any more,---I am too wise,---but I keep watch of it all the same.
    There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will.
    Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day.
    It is always the same shape, only very numerous.
    And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern...

So!

Between library books with erratic loan periods, unfinished projects and chronic disorganisation, for months my reviewing has been all over the place and out of order; though I have now managed to get it finished to the end of November.

I briefly considered a new 2020 thread for December, but instead I'll wrap those reviews up in the first 2021 thread---as, alas, I end up doing pretty much every year!

Meanwhile, what I need to do here is tidy up my reading stats for the past few - few? - months.

Which means that we should be seeing out the year with a bit of a sloth-a-thon; stay tuned!

ETA: It turns out I haven't updated my stats since July...

August stats:

Works read: 11
TIOLI: 11, in 9 different challenges, with 1 shared read

Mystery / thriller: 5
Contemporary drama: 2
Historical drama: 1
Young adult: 1
Short story: 1
Classic: 1

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

Owned: 3
Library: 1
Ebooks: 7

Male authors : female authors: 6 : 6

Oldest work: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (1883)
Newest work: The Secret River by Kate Grenville (2005)

**********

YTD stats:

Works read: 98
TIOLI: 98, in 76 different challenges, with 14 shared reads

Mystery / thriller: 58
Classic: 16
Contemporary drama: 7
Young adult: 5
Short stories: 3
Contemporary romance: 2
Historical drama: 2
Non-fiction: 2
Humour: 2
Horror: 1

Series works: 48
Re-reads: 16
Blog reads: 5
1932: 3
1931: 13
Virago / Persephone: 2
Potential decommission: 7

Owned: 21
Library: 18
Ebooks: 59

Male authors : female authors: 55 (including 4 men using a single male pseudonym) : 58

Oldest work: Leandro: or, The Lucky Rescue by J. Smythies (1690)
Newest work: Nevertheless, She Persisted by Various (2020)

This is me rushing to get my reviewing and threads tidied up before the end of the year...

September stats:

Works read: 10
TIOLI: 10, in 10 different challenges, with 0 shared reads

Mystery / thriller: 6
Humour: 2
Historical drama: 1
Classic: 1

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

Owned: 1
Library: 1
Ebooks: 8

Male authors : female authors: 7 : 3

Oldest work: Under False Pretences by Adeline Sergeant (1889)
Newest work: Captain Kirk's Guide To Women by John "Bones" Rodriguez (2008)

**********

YTD stats:

Works read: 108
TIOLI: 108, in 86 different challenges, with 14 shared reads

Mystery / thriller: 64
Classic: 17
Contemporary drama: 7
Young adult: 5
Humour: 4
Historical drama: 3
Short stories: 3
Contemporary romance: 2
Non-fiction: 2
Horror: 1

Series works: 53
Re-reads: 17
Blog reads: 5
1932: 3
1931: 14
Virago / Persephone: 2
Potential decommission: 8

Owned: 22
Library: 19
Ebooks: 67

Male authors : female authors: 62 (including 4 men using a single male pseudonym) : 61

Oldest work: Leandro: or, The Lucky Rescue by J. Smythies (1690)
Newest work: Nevertheless, She Persisted by Various (2020)

This is me astonished at the progress I'm making...

October stats:

Works read: 13
TIOLI: 13, in 11 different challenges, with 0 shared reads

Mystery / thriller: 6
Contemporary drama: 2
Historical drama: 2
Young adult: 1
Non-fiction: 1
Horror: 1

Series works: 8
Re-reads: 1
Blog reads: 0
1932: 1
1931: 1
Virago / Persephone: 0
Potential decommission: 2

Owned: 3
Library: 4
Ebooks: 6

Male authors : female authors: 9 : 4

Oldest work: The Red Triangle by Arthur Morrison (1903)
Newest work: In The Night Room by Peter Straub (2004)

**********

YTD stats:

Works read: 121
TIOLI: 121, in 97 different challenges, with 14 shared reads

Mystery / thriller: 70
Classic: 17
Contemporary drama: 9
Young adult: 6
Historical drama: 5
Humour: 4
Short stories: 3
Non-fiction: 3
Contemporary romance: 2
Horror: 2

Series works: 61
Re-reads: 18
Blog reads: 5
1932: 4
1931: 15
Virago / Persephone: 2
Potential decommission: 10

Owned: 25
Library: 23
Ebooks: 73

Male authors : female authors: 71 (including 4 men using a single male pseudonym) : 65

Oldest work: Leandro: or, The Lucky Rescue by J. Smythies (1690)
Newest work: Nevertheless, She Persisted by Various (2020)

This is me, feeling very full of myself just now...

November stats:

Works read: 18
TIOLI: 18, in 17 different challenges, with 0 shared reads, but with A SWEEP!!

Mystery / thriller: 7
Short stories: 3
Poetry: 2
Contemporary drama: 1
Non-fiction: 1
Humour: 1
Classic: 1
Horror: 1
Play: 1

Series works: 6
Re-reads: 3
Blog reads: 0
1932: 1
1931: 0
Virago / Persephone: 0
Potential decommission: 4

Owned: 4
Library: 8
Ebooks: 6

Male authors : female authors: 13 : 6

Oldest work: The Two Broken Hearts by Catherine Gore (1823)
Newest work: Tell Me Your Secret by Dorothy Koomson (2019)

**********

YTD stats:

Works read: 139
TIOLI: 139, in 114 different challenges, with 14 shared reads, and 1 sweep

Mystery / thriller: 77
Classic: 18
Contemporary drama: 10
Short stories: 6
Young adult: 6
Historical drama: 5
Humour: 5
Non-fiction: 4
Horror: 3
Contemporary romance: 2
Poetry: 2
Play: 1

Series works: 67
Re-reads: 21
Blog reads: 5
1932: 5
1931: 15
Virago / Persephone: 2
Potential decommission: 14

Owned: 29
Library: 31
Ebooks: 79

Male authors : female authors: 84 (including 4 men using a single male pseudonym) : 71

Oldest work: Leandro: or, The Lucky Rescue by J. Smythies (1690)
Newest work: Nevertheless, She Persisted by Various (2020)

And after all that...

awww. Sloths clearly love stats.

SO.
MANY.
LOVELY.
SLOTHS!!!,!!!!!!

>252 lyzard: I read this story for the first time in college, and it knocked me out, in the best way. All those layers you describe pack a lot of punch in a small space.

Love all the sloths! You deserve a little rest after all that work compiling your numbers.

>262 Helenliz:

I'm glad somebody does! :)

>263 rosalita:

Yes, I thought that would fetch you. :D

It's ironic that in a year full of self-indulgently overlong chunksters, two of my best reads have been short stories, this and A Jury Of Her Peers.

>264 Matke:

Thank you, Gail!