Foreign Affairs - Hugh Fleetwood

Paolo Levin, concert pianist living in Rome, is being followed by an emaciated and crippled young man.  He stands outside Paolo's apartment and watches the pianist. For weeks the young man shadows Paolo. He starts to show up dressed exactly like Paolo. After several failed attempts to get the stalker to explain himself the young man speaks: "I wish you would speak in English. I don't understand a damn word of Italian." Everything changes when Paolo tracks the young man to an apartment building in the Via Francesco Crispi. Shortly after the young man enters Paolo knocks on the door. He is taken aback when a young woman answers. Paolo soon discovers this is the young man's sister. From then on the terror truly begins.

What begins as an early stalker novel (before such things dominated crime fiction) soon turns into a devilish tale of control, obsessive love, bizarre torture, and mind games. Paolo is hardly a protagonist we want to root for.  On page one of the novel we discover he is vain man, the first paragraph is devoted to the decor of his apartment which is mostly made up of framed photographs of himself, both clothed and nude. The first pages continue to reveal a deluded and above average musician who while technically proficient is a slouch at artistic expression according to the classical music reviews in Italian newspapers. Nevertheless, Paolo sees himself as a great artist. It's difficult to care about Paolo until he falls under the spell of his stalker and then his sister. But are their intentions truly in Paolo's best interests?  

Though the story is primarily about Paolo he is hardly the most interesting character. Ralph, the 21 year old disabled man, is the more magnetic and fascinating of this doomed duo. Ralph confesses he fell in love with Paolo after watching him play his last concert. Ralph seems to have some kind of psychic connection with Paolo; he knows entirely too much about his private life. Also he cannot help but tell Paolo that he is not a great musician, not quite yet. If Paolo would only give himself over to Ralph and his sister he could make him what he wants to become. What is Paolo willing to give up in order to become that truly great artist?  

While this all plays out the sudden death by suicide of Paolo's friend Christopher haunts the pianist. As Paolo develops a friendship with Maggie, Ralph's sister, and comes to recognize both brother and sister as friends interested in his career Fleetwood drops hints that Christopher's death will connect all three people in a strange pact. In a truly shocking scene Paolo, after a night of carousing, finds himself waking handcuffed to his bed. What follows is one of Fleetwood's signature bizarre scenes of incomprehensible violence and cruelty ending with Paolo making a promise to his captor that will transform his life forever.

Fleetwood successfully subverts all expectations, eschews formula each time the story seems to be fumbling into routine and mundane events. He reverses the reader's sympathies on nearly every other page.  Paolo, at first an arrogant deluded wannabe, becomes a victim one feels empathy for. Ralph is sinister and sociopathic in one section, tender in loving in another. Paolo shifts into a vengeful would-be murderer while both Maggie and Ralph seem to become victims. Maggie at first a kind and sweet girlfriend morphs into a harridan that Paolo ought to abandon all while Ralph once again takes the upper hand. It is never clear whose side we should be on. Are they all at each other's throats plotting and exploiting one another without ever letting on what each of the three truly wants? Each time I thought I had figured out where the story was headed I literally gasped at the reversals and jarring plot pivots.

The blurb on the paperback edition I own quotes a Library Journal review describing this book as "insidiously hypnotizing." That's not hyperbole. When I reviewed Fleetwood's The Girl Who Passed for Normal last year in November I mentioned that the writer had technique in plotting and psychological suspense comparable to the best of Patricia Highsmith. Once again I will raise that worthy comparison. Though at times Foreign Affairs (1974) meanders into repetitive character monologues with obvious revelations Fleetwood will subvert expectations and twist the story around on itself. The climax involving a foot race along a cliffside pathway is truly a spine-tingling sequence that includes such reversals three times in a matter of four paragraphs culminating in a final gasp inducing sentence. It's beyond clever for a crime writer, it's a master stroke of ingenuity. 

There are some bothersome intrusions that threaten to undermine the entire plot like Paolo's antipathy towards marriage rendered in the cliched metaphor that it is a trap that will rob him of his freedom. Paolo's friendship with a superficial American ex-pat, Elaine, who thankfully disappears well before the midpoint is intended as either comic relief or an indication that Paolo can develop close relationships and yet adds little to the real story of the intertwined trio of Paolo, Ralph and Maggie. And the tendency for Ralph and Maggie to deliver lengthy monologues bogged down in reiteration could've been more powerfully conveyed with the help of an editor's blue pencil. 

Fleetwood continually surprises with paradoxical moments in this highly unusual tale of emotional blackmail that ultimately leads to self-discovery. Violence explodes out of tenderness. Lust gives way to devotion which gives way to mutual respect. And if in the end it seems that some form of contentment has been achieved, that love can be a learned behavior, it all comes at a terrible price. Secrets and sacrifices lead to an oddly fulfilled happiness for only two of these three characters who all seemed doomed from the start.

QUOTES:  And suddenly he felt that what was happening no longer concerned him. As if it wasn't he who was threatened, but someone called Paolo who had been invented by the brother and sister. A mere image of Paolo.

Ralph:  "She thinks that if you really got to love the music you played, instead of just yourself playing it --if you really understood what you were playing--then you would start to love her." 

He wanted to laugh. The world was marvelous when greed was the only proof of sincerity.

Maggie:  "[Ralph's] been the whole of my life. In a way he's almost me, and I'm almost him.  But in spite of it -- or because of that" --she hesitated-- "I'd love to be free of him."

He walked along with the cripple on his arm, and felt almost proud of the boy; as if he were leading an obscene bride to a sacrificial pyre.

EASY TO FIND?  Foreign Affairs was reprinted by Valancourt Books several years ago. Used and new copies of this trade paperback reprint are easily obtainable on various bookselling sites. Copies of both hardcover (mostly US editions) and paperback editions (a mix of UK and US) also turn up at the usual used book websites. Happy hunting! 

FIRST BOOKS: A Man Died Here - Gina Dessart

THE STORY:  Liz & Bob Macklin purchase an old home in Marshall, Massachusetts and begin an extensive rehab project transforming the gloomy, dark paneled, house into a bright, livable home. Liz is curious about the former owner, Seton Williams, who died in the house several years ago. Cancer she's told was the cause. A lonely old man dying alone, she thinks. But who was he? One day at the post office the gossipy Postmistress Mrs. Moore asks Liz, "Why did you buy the Williams house?  A house where that man killed himself?" Liz is shocked by this news. Why did the estate aent lie to her about Mr. Williams' death? She begins a subverted investigation making her way through the neighborhood ostensibly getting to know her neighbors when in fact she is slyly inserting questions about the house and the man who died there. Some townspeople offer up tidbits but clam up when Liz presses on with specific questions. Why is it no one wants to talk about Seton Williams, his death, or his family? Fighting common sense Liz and Bob keep digging and soon learn that perhaps the past is better left untouched.

THE CHARACTERS: A Man Died Here (1947) has an abundant cast of characters apart from the husband and wife amateur sleuths.  The novel is also written in the author omniscient voice allowing the reader to know the private thoughts of every character including the most minor characters like Jacob Kingman whose wife Harriet died by suicide years ago. As the novel progresses Dessart focuses on the Williams family and a handful of Marshall's residents including:

Miss Greeley - The high school principal who is beginning to lose her grip on reality as she spends much time dwelling on the lives of two of her favorite pupils, now grown adults.  Her daydreaming and nostalgia lead to her spend too much time thinking about Seton Williams' death when Liz keeps visiting her and asking prying questions.

Mrs. Moore - an inveterate gossip the local postmistress is responsible for re-opening the past with her causal but intrusive question to Liz about why she moved into the Williams house. Each time Liz runs into Mrs. Moore she gets more unusual info about the Williams family.

Prentiss Williams - the only member of the Williams family who left town fro a successful life. Now a general practitioner with several families as his patients in neighboring Colby, Prentiss is still troubled by what happened to his father. He and his brother seem to have a secret between them. Late in the novel when Liz uncovers a trove of letters hidden away in books left in the Williqm's library we learn that Prentiss had a violent argument with his father a few months before he died.

Henry Williams - youngest member of the Williams family and a rather sad man. He took over the family hardware store begrudgingly and never really seemed to get along with anyone let alone his father.  Luckily, he and his brother are close, but Henry can't understand why Prentiss was so antagonist to the old man. He is sure Prentiss had something to do with their father's death.

Dr. Kilander - was at he Williams house to pronounce the old man dead.  One of the few witnesses to see exactly how the body was found he relates some crucial info to Bob & Liz when they hound him for details about the night Seton died. 

Mrs. Chmielewski, the Williams housekeeper; her daughter Agnes; and Blanche Milliman, a girl who died in a drowning accident also feature prominently in the plot.  Liz and Bob begin to wonder why so many young women who crossed paths with Seton Williams die violently. The more they uncover about this supposedly lonely old man they more they learn he was a malevolent, licentious, cruel and cared little for anyone but himself.

INNOVATIONS: Dessart starts off her novel in a dreary outline of Liz and Bob house hunting, some pedestrian small town interactions almost as if the book will be a soap opera-like litany of mundane observations.  But it's a sly move because this seemingly prosaic beginning slowly gives way to the timeworn exploration of a town's populace haunted by violent death. The narrative voice Dessart adopts allows her to leak into the story, in a mixture of extremely subtle clues and some rather overt ones and from a variety of character viewpoints, just exactly what took place the night Seton Williams died. Though the detective work is minimal and largely relegated to Q&A and the discovery of letters which are rendered in full into the narrative, there are a couple a notable scenes.

Liz decides to visit the local cemetery and almost by accident finds the gravestone of Blanche Milliman whose drowning death also seems to hold some of the townspeople under a spell. She spends much of this scene wondering if Seton Williams' grave is also in the cemetery. Eventually she finds it in a far corner of the yard in the dark shade of a hemlock tree. It's an eerily conceived scene and adds some much needed atmosphere to a novel that tends to skirt around the edges of mystery and violence.

Perhaps the highlight of the book (maybe the purpose that Dessart wrote the book) comes when Bob and Liz have a debate about whether they should continue with uncovering the truth about Williams' death which by this point they realize is a cleverly covered up murder. They have a dilemma: do they report what they've discovered? Do they leave it alone? Liz argues for a murder committed by a vigilante Good Samaritan and that perhaps the murder of Williams brought more good than bad. Let that person get away with it.  Bob tells her murder is murder no matter the motive. He cannot justify letting the culprit escape no matter if the end result was beneficial for many people.

By this penultimate chapter it becomes clear that Dessart has been exploring something resonant with our time of podcasts obsessed with true crime, the resurrection of cold cases and the desire to seek justice for unsolved crimes. Should a criminal be sought out after decades have passed? Is vengeance a moral solution? Where does forgiveness enter the picture? If a murder occurred that brought about good and happiness was the crime a just murder and was the killer a hero? All these idea float around the periphery of the story until Liz and Bob finally voice them in their at times heavy-handed conversation.

QUOTES:  Bob: "So--having detected to the extent of discovering the murder, I guess it's up to us to go on detecting until we find the murderer. Only God knows where we begin."

Liz: "But if Mr. X is a truly fine person, would you agree that it might be a special case, sort of?"

Bob: "...I thought it was all nicely set up with black is black and white is white. Damn it all, how can I tell at this stage of the game?"

THE AUTHOR: Georgine Belle Dessart (1912-1979) was born in Chicago but spent her youth in and around Long Island, Brooklyn, and Syracuse, NY as well as a brief stay in Germany. She attended Smith College but was compelled to end her studies after her second year.  She and Phillip Hildreth (soon to be her husband) borrowed $50 and went into business doing silkscreen printing and display advertising. They quit the business after about five years and moved to the Berkshires in Massachusetts. In the mid-1940s she began writing as a "retirement venture."

She credits becoming a mystery writer with the bizarre educational experience of learning French while in a German school while she was still mastering the German language. "Any child lost in three languages simultaneously is apt to be marked for life and end up as a mystery story writer," she wrote on her biographical sketch on the rear DJ panel of A Man Died Here.  

Dessart had a story published in Mike Shayne's Mystery Magazine ("Counterpoint" in the Nov. 1965 issue) as well as other stories published in several noteworthy literary journals like The Virginia Quarterly and The Literary Review. Her three crime novels were written and published between 1947 and 1959. While her first, A Man Died Here, is heavily inspired by detective fiction the later works are more geared toward domestic suspense. Her third novel, Cry for the Lost (1959), takes place in a desert town called San Paulus no doubt based on Tucson, Arizona where she and her husband settled and where she was lecturer in English and a creative writing teacher at the University of Arizona in the mid-1970s.

LEFT INSIDE: Another Bookshop Receipt

This bookshop receipt was Left Inside a copy of The Wallet of Kai Lung that I purchased many moons ago from John Chandler's long-lived but sadly now defunct bookstore Bookman's Corner on Broadway and Wellington in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago.  I've mentioned this mess of a bookstore that I dearly loved visiting a couple of times on this blog. I bought both books listed on this receipt as they were shelved one right next to each other in John's store.  Amazing that the receipt dated Dec 19, 1955 stayed inside that book for over 50 years. And that both books and the ancient receipt traveled from Seattle to San Francisco, then to a warehouse in Chicago, and finally transferred from John's warehouse to his book crammed store sometime in 2007 where a few weeks later I bought both of those books by Ernest Bramah. Click on the photo to enlarge. Those who can read cursive will be able to read the book titles Wallet of Kai Ling and Kai Lung's Golden Hours as well as the customer’s name and address. He paid a total of $5.20 for two used reprint editions that were published in 1929 and 1932. The book I found the receipt inside is shown below. 

The customer's name is Tony Marks who lived in the Geary-Taylor Apartments in San Francisco in 1955. I did a search on that building and real estate sites list the address as on Geary Street, but Google Maps has the current address as 501 Taylor St and shows the awning with a painted 501 as the entrance on that street. The Geary side has no entrance that I could discern from the Google photos. The entire building, built in 1920, is listed for sale at Zillow for a cool $15 million. Looks like it's completely vacant and intense rehabbing was going on at one time. Have no idea if it ever was completed.

But the bookstore is much more interesting.  Shorey Book Store was at one time "The Northwest's Largest" and I have feeling it was probably the oldest when it ended business in 2000. Established in 1890 it came into life first as a magazine and cigar store. Original address was 701 Third Ave near Cherry Street.  According to a brief history I found online the store moved several times in its 110 year existence. The address on the receipt states 815 Third Ave (its third location) which is now the Flamingo Terrace Apartments. The bookstore's final location in 1995 was on Fremont.  It closed five years later.

There are several photographs of the store that pop up all over the internet. The earliest, taken circa 1895, can be found at the MOHAI photo archive site.  I found one rather good one (at left) on the Seattle Public Library Digital Collections. Seems to around the same time as the date on the receipt. Not only are there many photographs at various stages in the store's life, but there are several newspaper articles and Facebook posts devoted to the store.  It was clearly a beloved store.  One article details how a customer's want list item submitted in 1971 was fulfilled in 1990. That's dedication! Such devotion to customers simply does not exist in our world anymore.

The Snare of Circumstance - Edith E. Buckley

THE STORY  Elmer Bliss, reporter, is hired by a mysterious gentleman called Philander Summerfield to look into a recent Peter Somhers murder case that he believes was never solved. Bliss has been fascinated by the case because Somhers' nephew, Harrison Milbrath, was tried twice for the murder. In the first trial he was found guilty then he and his lawyer appealed due to an abundance of circumstantial evidence that should not have led to a guilty verdict. In Milbrath's second trial he is acquitted. Summerfield offers Bliss $20,000 to find the actual murderer. With such a sizeable reward Bliss is keen to turn detective and discover the real murderer of Peter Somhers.

THE CHARACTERS  In the second chapter Buckley introduces Murray Kilbourne, "by predilection a sleuth of no mean ability."  We learn he turned to criminal detection after leaving college. He inherited a fortune from an uncle and in order to claim that money the will had a proviso that Kilbourne was instructed to give up detective work and "devote his energies to the cultivation of his literary talents."  Kilbourne pops up at various points in the early portion of the novel,  but then leaves the country. To me his inclusion is utterly superfluous. Buckley makes it seem that Bliss and Kilbourne will be a team similar to Holmes and Watson, but Kilbourne is actually the worst kind of bogey character.  He serves absolutely no purpose. It was the only irritating part of the book.

Elmer Bliss is, in fact, the real sleuth and he proves to be far superior to Kilbourne who allows his libido to intrude and cloud his judgment in the detective work.  The real sleuthing team tuns out to be Bliss and Harrison Milbrath. The two join forces at the midpoint when Bliss uncovers a secret that Milbrath was hoping no one would learn. The revelation of this secret binds them in a friendship and strengthens Bliss's resolve to repair Harrison's reputation damaged after being found both guilty and not guilty of a single crime.  Together they are sure that once the "snare of circumstance" is finally lifted the young man will be able to carry on with his life both professionally and personally without shame or ignominy.

Philander Summerfield is indeed a mystery man making his first appearance in the first chapter and then vanishing for the remainder of the book. Or has he?  An elderly bearded man matching Summerfield's description and behavior is frequently seen around the Somhers estate by several witnesses that Bliss questions during his investigation.  Is Summerfield spying on Bliss?  Or is this a Summerfield look-alike?

Dolores "Dolly" McClure is the mystery "woman in white" (an obvious nod to Wilkie Collins) that BLiss follows for several days before he discovers who she really is. This young beauty stirs the hearts of all young men who meet her and is rather obviously involved with Harrison though it takes both Bliss and Kilbourne several days to figure this out. Her scenes are some of the strongest in the first half of the book when Buckley is setting up her intricate plot and layering multiple secrets and ambiguities into the story. She is willful, forthright, witty, a bit of a tease, and on the verge of heartbreak. When she learns that Bliss is intent on clearing Harrison's name she becomes one of his closest allies.

Chauncey McClure, Dolores' grandfather, lives nearby the Somhers estate and swears he has seen the ghost of Somhers wandering the grounds late at night. There are some very eerie sequences related to this eyewitness account.  Chauncey also provides a bit of gentle humor prior to his confession of ghost sighting.

Hutton, the station master for the local train depot, is one of Elmer's best sources. Hutton is a born gossip and a fine raconteur.  Elmer Bliss learns more than he ever hoped for from the many stories Hutton cannot help but share.  The most intriguing of his tales is the past history of Somhers building a wing onto his library, a retreat from noise, servant gossip and other intrusions and distractions.  Bliss believes there is also a hidden room (possible influence of Carolyn Wells?) somewhere within this building addition. Hutton also reveals he has seen an old man with a gray beard frequently visiting in town and that he arrives and departs on the train headed fro Boston. Bliss is sure this proves that Summerfield is indeed following him and keeping tabs on his investigation.

Jim Arms and Horsford seem to be the two primary antagonists. Each man lives on the Somhers estate and while Horsford, a caretaker of sorts, has a wife and daughter, Arms is a single man. Arms is the more villainous of the two men holding a grudge against Harrison for years and responsible for testimony that led to the first trial finding Harrison guilty. Bliss suspects that Horsford has secrets and knows more than he is willing to tell. Certainly Horsford's daughter has a piece of information that she is holding close and Bliss suspects she is protecting her father. Ultimately, Bliss will gain one of these men as an ally in an unexpected turn of events around the novel's midpoint. 

INFLUENCES  The Snare of Circumstance (1910) was published at a time when Conan Doyle and all his Holmesian tricks were still the primary influence of neophyte detective novelists. Buckley's novel is one of the finest examples from this nascent period of detective fiction in America. It's all the more remarkable for being her only detective novel and having received numerous rave reviews ranging from H. L. Mencken in the May 1910 issue of The Smart Set ("...well worth the money asked for it.") to the unsigned review in The New York Times March 19, 1910 ("...one of the few [detective novels] which...carries the reader without a hitch. The plot is...most ingeniously carried out. At no point can the reader guess the surprise finally sprung upon him.")  She has clearly drawn from several of the Holmes stories (alluded to by both reviewers, BTW) and in particular borrowed one iconic scene from The Hound of the Baskervilles where Holmes tries to prove a person's identity using a portrait painting. In Buckley's case it is not a painting but a photograph that proves the identification. Bliss does exactly what Holmes did:  he covers up a beard to leave only the eyes and face.

There is another novel that has major influence on the plot, too. Buckley mentions the book outright in the final chapter, but neither the title nor the author can be named, lest I giveaway the crème de la crème surprise.  Let me only remark that this influential novel held sway over several detective fiction and thriller writers from the 1930s through the 1960s who were keen on introducing psychological terror into their plots. Prior to this novel I had thought the earliest use of this familiar motif was in a book published in 1933. Always eyebrow raising to find yet another example and one so early in the 20th century. Buckley's may be, if not the first, one of the first American detective novels to employ this particular psychological plot motif.  For contemporary audiences in Buckley's day it must certainly have been a shocking finale.

THINGS I LEARNED  I was certain that the book took place around 1908 but automobiles are rarely encountered.  Instead there is a type of vehicle I'd never heard of. Bliss employs an early form of taxi called the herdic. As more and more herdics pop up in the story, I was starting to reassess the time as the late 1890s.  At one point there is a herdic chase and Bliss actually says, "Follow that cab!"  In any case, a herdic is a horse drawn taxi with side seats and a rear entrance. The vehicle is named for its inventor Peter Herdic who designed the carriage in 1881.  I found several photographs and drawings of them and chose the best example to include in this post.  There is an excellent history of the herdic and its Pennsylvanian inventor with several illustrations and photos here.

QUOTES Bliss:  "[Horsford] implied that there is a 'real ghost,' but it was to the atmosphere of mystery and danger that he referred. I dare say this man of yours has seen the ghost!"

McClure: "It is only recently that I have indulged in speculation of [unpopular thoughts], but I have had an experience that sent my thoughts in channels quite out of their usual run. Wild as the statement may sound to you, it is a fact that I, too, this summer, nearly two years after his death, have seen the spirit of my old friend, Peter Somhers!"

McClure: "But Mr. Bliss, the figure was not an illusion. Phantom or man it was real, and individual, and if it was not a 'materialization' some one on earth has a wish to give color to the sentiment against the place." 

Dolly: "You know what Tennyson says...? 'But a lie that is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.' That was the case with the testimony of Jim Arms; only the truthful part was so exceedingly small. Now that he has convicted Harry to a living death he is not content. He dares to sneer at him..."

EASY TO FIND?  Having been out of copyright for the past 16 years The Snare of Circumstance has been snatched up by the POD People. Several affordable paperback copies are available from a couple of print-on-demand outfits like Forgotten Books. I'm sure a copy has been uploaded to one of the many internet archives as well. Those seeking out the handsomely designed hardcover from Little, Brown & Company (shown throughout this post) with four original illustrations by Arthur E. Becher can pick from six different copies offered from online sellers. Prices range from $17 - $75 in various states of condition from reading copy to very good. I also found one Canadian edition, one of the better copies, priced at only $20. Happy hunting!

LEFT INSIDE: Ancient Sherlockiana & German Post Card

These bits of ephemera are rather remarkable for both being well over 100 years old. Both post card and newspaper story were Left Inside my extremely scarce copy of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Harper & Brothers, 1894. Revised 2nd edition).  I have to brag a little about this book because my partner Joe found it at a book sale in Libertyville, Illinois many moons ago. I paid one buck for the book! I was astounded that no one had snagged it prior to us showing up. Vaguely I recall it was the last day of the sale. The book is in beautiful condition for a 19th century book with the only problems being a minor stain on the spine of the book, an offset stain on the prelims from the acidic newsprint reacting to the paper in the book, and some discoloration to the illustrated front board (photo at left). Definitely one of the treasures in the Norris Collection of Detective Fiction Rarities. Probably will never sell it until I contact an auction house about five years into the future, a plan I have been devising for a while now.

Onto the items. First is a German postcard.

 Translation of the caption on the front is "Official Post Card from the International Exhibition of Culinary Arts for the Hotel and Hospitality Trades/combined with a wine market in Frankfurt-Main." The caption is followed by the dates of the exhibition: "Sept. 30 through Oct 11, 1905." Unusual that even in the early 20th century German typesetters were still using the odd F-like letter to indicate the letter S, but in a word that ends in S the typesetter would use an actual S character. I thought that F-like letter was out of use by 1905. American typesetters used that F shape  for an S in 18th century typesetting in the USA, but it fell out of favor by the middle of the 19th century.

The postcard was mailed from the exhibition which had its own post office as can be seen on the postmark on the stamp.  Another postmark obliterates a portion of the lightly penciled message and is dated Oct 8, 1905, the date It was received by the post office in Barmen, a town in Wuppertal about 140 miles northwest of Frankfurt. I can make out the message as With hearty greetings ("aus [?] grüsst herzlich.") but I have no idea what the signature says.  The card is addressed to a man named Paul Kraft (maybe Kraus?) who lived in Barmen. But I can't read the street or whatever is on the last line of the address area that ends with the number 18. Also, it looks as if the writer wrote 19 first then corrected it to 18. 

The second bit of ephemera is a short story written by Frank Marshall White which first appeared in Life, Oct 18, 1894. Later it was picked up by syndicated news services and appeared in The Brooklyn Eagle in Oct 24, 1894. The reverse side of the first half of the story luckily shows a portion of the left hand side of the front page. Based on what I found from online resources, the newspaper is definitely an issue of The Brooklyn Eagle in the year 1894 (vol. 54).  Whether it is the actual October issue I didn't bother to further research. Both the layout of the front page of a November 1894 issue and the fonts of their masthead match exactly. This story was one of the earliest Sherlock Holmes parodies, probably also one of the shortest. You can find the full text of "The Recrudescence of Sherlock Holmes" online at the Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia.  My newspaper copy has a portion of some lines missing due to a fold that eventually broke in half. The poorly trimmed edge of the second half cuts off the final two sentences: "This contemptible trick I can never forgive. Sherlock Holmes is again dead to me. — Life."

Giveaway Results Are In

The results of the Cecil M. Wills book giveaway are in.  After a highly scientific method that I left to one of the many Random Number Generators on the internet a winner was selected at random by a machine.  How fitting for our new age of omnipresent AI and robots.

And now for the Lucky Stiff...uh, lucky winner --

Comment #5 assigned to jdf21 was selected.  Congrats to jdf21!  You are the winner of one copy of the Ramble House reprint of Author in Distress.

Got the address. Thanks, JDF!  Book is in the mail. 

 Thanks to those who participated and for the mentions of all your favorite detective novels and mystery books you thought deserved a reprint. Perhaps one or two may soon see the light of day!

 

LEFT INSIDE: "Thank you for arranging the Madrigal Singers..."

On rare occasions  I find a letter still in its envelope inside a book. This one dated January 29, 1976 and mailed on Jan 30 of that year was Left Inside my rare copy of Call Mr. Fortune (Dutton, 1921) by H. C. Bailey. I uncovered a wealth of information about the letter's writer, her husband and the photographer who took the photo on the stationery.

First, the photographer.  Sally Savage has had her work shown in galleries and museums in her native Nyack, NY.  She specialized in "documenting just about every aspect of life and change in [Rockland] county since the late 1960s" according to the New York Heritage website of the Nyack Library.  Her photo entitled "reeds on Piermont pier" was apparently sold in a set of stationery that Ruth Brawner bought sometime in the 1970s. A large collection of Savage's photographs is in the New York Heritage Digital Collections held in the Nyack Library. 

The letter itself is a quaint "thank you" written by Ruth Brawner to Mrs. Paul (Charlotte) Bardwell. I'm not including a photo of the envelope because of the street address on the return address label and the street address of Mrs. Bardwell.

  

 

For those of you who cannot decipher American cursive handwriting the letter reads:

Dear Charalate [sic], 

  Thank you for arranging the Madrigal Singers to take part in our BiCentennial [sic] dinner.

  Everyone without exception has said how much they enjoyed the singing and the fine menu.

Gratefully,
Ruth & Howard

 

I'm curious what the Bardwells were doing in southeastern New York in January 1976.  According to online obituaries for both people they lived in Texas most of their lives.  Regardless, the more interesting people are the Brawners.  For decades they were actively involved in civic life of Piermont, NY where they were lifelong residents. Ruth Brawner was a big time organizer involved in all sorts of events in her hometown and was known for "sharing her wealth of knowledge pertaining to the history of Piermont, which included her vast collection of photographs."  Howard served in the US Navy as a radio technician, was a member of the local Rotary, a village trustee, and for 66 years was part of the volunteer fire department known as Empire Hose Company #1. He was also president of the volunteer ambulance team for the fire department.  Ruth and Howard were named Outstanding Citizens of Piermont one year after this letter was written. Their photograph was published in a local newsletter in the summer of 1977.  That photo is at the right.

 

Cecil M. Wills New Reprint on Sale & Giveaway!

A couple of years ago I bought a small pile of rare hardcover editions of Cecil M. Wills mystery novels.  These included Author in Distress (his debut as a mystery writer), The Chamois Murder and Death Treads.  I read all of them in quick succession, but only reviewed Author in Distress (1934) on the blog.  Shortly after I posted that review I sent a PDF of the entire book to Gavin O'Keefe as a suggestion for a Ramble House reprint. RH has already reprinted Fatal Accident (1936), Wills' sixth detective novel, and I thought it would be a good idea to have another in their catalog. Gavin liked the idea and asked if I wanted to write a foreword.  I agreed and then promptly dropped the ball. Sad forgetful ol' codger that I am.

Flash forward to March-April 2026.  I emailed Gavin again asking if he still wanted to go ahead with the reprint and I had an intro I could offer based on the blog post I wrote.  We emailed back and forth with interesting ideas about how to assemble and present the book.  And now two and a half months later the finished product is available for sale!  You can purchase the book either by visiting the Ramble House site or accessing their small list of titles at Lulu.com (the book printer for this POD reprint). There may be a slight discount if you buy a copy via Ramble House and use the special email address on the page for Author in Distress. 

I received two copies as a standard benefit and today I'm offering one of those books in a giveaway.  Just leave a comment below mentioning any book you think deserves reprinting.  I'll offer those ideas to the "Powers That Be" at Ramble House. That reprint house which offers POD books is now under new management since Gavin and Fender Tucker (the original founder) have stepped aside from the operation.

CONTEST CLOSED

Next week --around Wednesday or Thursday-- I'll choose one of the comments at random to receive the book. You'll have to send me your physical mailing address in order to get the book. But please! DO NOT leave your address in the comments.  The sinister webcrawlers regularly haunt this blog and I'm afraid they will swallow up your personal information and slam you with unwanted spam and who knows what else. We can arrange a private email exchange to get the necessary info.  This giveaway is open to everyone across the globe.  I will pay either Media Mail rate for within the US or First Class International shipping rate to anywhere outside the USA. Good luck!

LEFT INSIDE: Sales Slip for Used Book

For those among you who were with me from the start of this blog back in 2011 you may recall I had a somewhat regular feature (at one time weekly) in which I share photos of objects, mostly paper ephemera, found in the old books I own. Well, this summer that feature has returned. Huzzah, hurrah and hallelujah! Each Sunday, for the next three or so months, I'll have some little tidbit to share with you. After finding one of these items my insatiably curious geeky side usually takes over so you will also get the results of my research when I went a-Googling to ferret additional info about the object.

Today we have a sales slip for a used book purchased at a antique shop formerly located in Montpelier, Virginia. (I thought the name of the capital of Vermont was unique to that state alone.)  The Lamp Post was apparently some sort of curio shop that was in someone's actual home. I've marked out the address and phone numbers in the stamped info because it is now a private home sold back in 2018. I found all sorts of real estate records for that property indicating its previous life over that past 26 years. Not only was it The Lamp Post but in 2002 the house itself was listed with the National Historic Registry as it is a home built in 1936 and included in the Montpelier Historic District along US 33, aka Mountain Road.

This sales slip was in my copy of Three Dead Men by Paul McGuiire.  I read and reviewed the book back in 2018 and sold it last year.  I wish I had paid the $2.00 that the previous owner paid for the book in 2000.  The profit would have been significantly higher had I only shelled out a mere two bucks. It's astonishing that someone was selling a vintage mystery in 2000 for only $2 which was the original price of the book back in 1931. Insane! But judging by the shaky handwriting I'm guessing the owner of The Lamp Post was an elderly person stuck in the past with no idea how to price antiquarian and rare books.

Interestingly, there is still an antique shop a mere stone's throw from the former location of the old The Lamp Post.  It's called Plum Pickings and appears to be an antique mall with 40+ vendors. Looks like a cafe is attached to it also. Their Facebook page (older owners I'm guessing) was advertising a Big Breakfast event today (June 7), part of the thousands of celebrations across the USA this summer in honor of the 250th anniversary of American Independence.  They also say they are the #1 rated antique shop in the Richmond area.

 

Feedback - Hugh Miller

THE STORY: Matt Galt, Scottish ex-pat and private detective with a middling business, lives and works in Stratford primarily because he is an aficionado of the Bard. At the start of this novel he is hired by antiques dealer Timothy Barton to discover who has been sneaking rats into his shop.  Galt spends the night in the shop, has a frightening encounter with the vandal and a small army of rats. The next day he delivers the news to Barton. Barton is not satisfied. He tells Galt he knows who is responsible but he needs better proof and that means literally catching the culprit. The case leads Galt into the gay subculture where he meets  a coterie of theater people, antique dealers and two shifty owners of a gay S&M leather shop.  His dogged investigations also lead to the discovery of an ugly white supremacist organization that is harassing immigrants. 

THE CHARACTERS: Galt is described as "43 years old going on 50" on the first page of Feedback (1974).  He also has "delicate long hands of an aesthete and the sallow lined face of a ruined saint." We learn Galt is a "sartorial disaster" who once paid close attention to his grooming and his clothes but "abdicated" his enthusiasm when he "came to realize that he had the kind of body to which good clothes did not take kindly."  Miller's sardonic sense of humor is pervasive as his insistence on pointing out Galt's anti-gay sentiments. Well, loathing is the real word. He uses "abomination" a couple of times in the three page rant that comes early in the book. But Galt will soon find himself confronting all his bigotry and biases when he is forced to role play in order to get information from the many gay men he meets.  Nearly all the gay men he meets are either crooks or con men. They are predatory, vain, arrogant or  patronizing -- most are a combination of several of those negative traits. No surprise, right?

Galt's old pal Bunny McQuaid is a highlight among the supporting characters and appears late in the book. Only 30 years old, blond, athletically built and much more attractive than dumpy and short Matt Galt, Bunny takes advantage of his physique and good looks in luring several of the more dangerous suspects. A scene between the sinister owners of the leather shop morphs from a faux seduction scene to an all-out brawl. There are a few action sequences in the book but this one is probably the best with the most satisfying conclusion.

Being a pop fiction book of the 1970s there of course is the requisite sex scene. Galt runs into his old flame Margaret who though married still has feelings for Galt.  The reader gets to see exactly how strong those feelings are in a two page romp that goes into great detail describing Margaret's body, her orgasm and her apparent ecstasy.  Galt's body, actions and sexual satisfaction are not described at all. No surprise there either.  These type of censored sex scenes written by straight men always made me laugh when I was a teen in the 1970s.  I still find them utterly hilarious.

The most surprising part of the book comes at the midpoint when Kadija, a 12 year-old Indian girl, is seen sitting outside of Galt's office. She reports how her father was struck down by a car and is recovering from severe injuries in a hospital. She wants Galt to get the man who drove the car arrested and put in jail.  Not so easy, he tells her. It's really a matter for the police. But her story touches him and when she pulls a wad of money out of her pocket (all of her savings for the past three months) he refuses to take it.  He promises he will take her case for free.

Galt eventually meets with Maldur Singh, a Sikh who is the community leader for the small group of Indians living in and around Stratford.  The community has been harassed for months and part of the problem is a rat infestation in their homes and businesses.  Singh cannot understand where so many came form because he knows that the people who live there are meticulously cleaning all the time.  Galt begins to see a connection between the racist organization and the rat problem at Barton's antique shop.  The same person, he figures, must be involved, possibly linked to the organization. It all smells like a conspiracy with the racists behind it all and the end result the complete eradication of the Indian immigrants.

INNOVATIONS: One of Galt's biggest clues is a photograph of three men he steals from Barton's antique shop.  He find it by accident the night of the rat battle when an antique mug falls off a table.  The photo depicts Barton on his knees in front of two naked men displaying themselves. A souvenir of some erotic night of debauchery, Galt figures. But he vaguely recalls seeing the face of one of the naked men. He pockets the photo and shows it to several men and two women over the course of the book. Both naked men will eventually be identified by name and profession, both will figure prominently later in the book especially in the violent finale. 

One of the most original bits of detective work involves Galt's highly developed sense of smell. While doing battle with the mysterious rat vandal and the army of rodents Galt smelled a strange cologne. His memory for that unique scent haunts him and he wants to identify it. He thinks it must be a custom made cologne which he describes as redolent of "dahlias, but heavy, verging on decay."  While attending a play he catches a whiff of the cologne while buying a drink at the theater's bar.  He approaches Dominic Treadworthy, a voice and diction teacher, and starts talking to him about his cologne. Through flattery and elaborate lies Galt discovers that the custom cologne, Gilead Oil, is available only in one place -- a leather shop specializing in S&M costumes and equipment.  The two men who own the store keep popping up in this case. Coincidences and chance are also a running motif in the plot.

I also liked a scene where Galt picks up a prostitute and then reveals he's not interested in sex at all.  Essentially he blackmails her into revealing information on her clients. It is during this scene that Galt learns of the names of the owners of the S&M shop and that Harry Caine, the older nastier man of the two and a pansexual of sorts who will have sex with anyone, has the bizarre hobby of breeding domesticated rats. Rose, the prostitute, begins dishing the dirt not so much out of fear of what Galt will do if she doens't talk, but because she hates the men who run the shop. Anything she can do to bring about their ruin will give her perverse pleasure.

Ultimately, despite the offbeat humor and the likeable personalities of Bunny and Matt Galt, Feedback is a bleak crime novel. For a long time I realized there was no murder. But then... the novel can end only one way. Violent fights, cruel beating and murder finally rears its ugly head. Then comes the saddest of revelations in the final pages. Yes, the villains (all of them reprehensible people and not for their sexual orientation) get their comeuppance. The consequences of all their devilry and cruelty leave lingering scars for several characters. Feedback ends with one of the most downbeat final paragraphs in any book I've read this year. 

QUOTES:  Timothy reveals he is a con artist and he fakes the age of certain ornamental items by battering them in a convoluted manner and then selling them as antiques. When confronted with his fraud he rationalizes: "I'm not the only one who does it, you know. It's a long established practice." Matt nodded. "So is child beating, but I haven't heard anyone try to pass that off as an honourable tradition. Christ."

One day he would have real office with proper heating and decent decor. And one day, he thought wryly...a couple of pigs would go flying past the window.

[Galt] knew without the benefit of a mirror to check, that his dignified, serious face was radiating absolute conviction. A gentlemen to his rubber soles, even if he did come from Glasgow.

If anybody knew that paperwork and questions were the way things got done in England it was an immigrant.

Somewhere, underneath the tendencies and perversions, was there maybe a simply, howling human soul, crying for some clean air, some ordinary decency?

THE AUTHOR:  Hugh Miller (1937 - ) was born in Wishaw, Scotland and now lives in Warwick, England. Apparently he's still alive as I could not locate an obituary. Miller began his novelist’s career in 1973 with New English Library, a British publisher of mass market paperbacks mostly originals. His first crime novel, The Drop Out, was followed quickly by five more in 1974.  Feedback, his third crime novel is his also first private eye novel. He also wrote crime fiction under the pen names John Watts and John Warwick.  

In addition to crime novels Miller wrote a romantic fiction series set in the 1920s-1930s about a nurse, nine biographies of British stage magicians, books on magic and mentalism, and several non-fiction books on forensic medicine. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s Miller made his living writing TV tie-ins based on UK TV series, including Eastenders, Ballykissangel and Touching Evil. He returned to crime fiction in1990 with a trio of crime novels about his only series character Det-Insp. Mike Fletcher.

I found an apparently self-written, tongue-in-cheek biography at Lybrary, an online website devoted to selling books on magic, mentalism, sleight of hand, and gambling. Miller had a variety of unusual jobs all of which seem to have popped up in his fiction. Here's the bio he wrote:

Born in Scotland at a time when the British still believed Chamberlain was a shrewd operator, Hugh Miller entered adolescence tainted by social lunacy. With the powerful energy generated by Gaelic despair, he hurtled through a formal education and out into a broad variety of activities. Has been a TV film cameraman and stills photographer, a civil servant, an assistant to a police pathologist, a protegee of the famous Dr. John Grierson, an investigator with an international enquiry organisation, author of several books, editor of a magazine and an active student of dishonest gambling. Took up magic to combat a tendency to bite his nails.

NEW STUFF: Strange Houses - Uketsu

Here we go again. Another puzzle laden "mystery" novel has arrived fresh from the pen of Uketsu and the English language translator Jim Rion.  It's Strange Houses (2025, original Japanese edition 2021) and this time instead of a variety of unusual picture puzzles that are supposed to reveal the hidden motives of the criminally minded characters in its pages (Strange Pictures) we have an assortment of floor plans of deviously designed homes.  But it's more of the same -- contrived story meant to nest inside some silly puzzles that are not too puzzling.  The preposterous story, once again devoid of any fundamental understanding of humanity, reminded me of a 1974 TV movie called Bad Ronald I saw when I was a teen that has stayed with me for decades. Quite a campy bit of psychological horror, wild and preposterous, but in the end utterly human. It was based on a cult crime novel by John Holbrook Vance, about a boy who commits a murder and is secreted away in a hidden room. Then his mother dies, the house is sold and.... well, you probably can guess at the rest.  Bad Ronald is way more thrilling and creepy than Strange Houses which has a similar conceit at its perverse center.

Uketsu's excessively Gothic story is informed of macabre murder novels, a family curse, revenge noir and --of course-- cruelty. An attempt to redeem the plot with a character who tries to invert the curse by not committing murder is weakly handled and seems more like a 21st century fairy tale than non-violent behavior resembling something a real human would do.  But of course these are only characters in a book, right?  It's OK to shun any guise of reality because of that. I guess.

With lines like this:  "..would anyone really sacrifice their whole future for a school sweetheart?"  I came to resent the author and the book.  That line contains the basis for hundreds of well known novels, stories, plays and movie scripts. It is a sentiment that is the foundation of timeworn storytelling where something real and human and relatable is at stake. That the author ridicules such a notion speaks volumes about who he or she is and why Uketsu writes soulless nonsense like Strange Houses. Rather than embrace humanity, a more challenging pathway, Uketsu reduces the risk and adventure by piling on excesses reminiscent of 18th century Gothic horror novel conventions: deformity, obsessive love, paranoid fear, and "brainwashed" people compelled to commit murder because they have been cursed.

I'm done with Uketsu. These are not novels. They are naive puzzle books drawing on video game notion that violent revenge is the only recourse. The narrative is skeletal, the dialogue is rendered in script format adding an off-putting dispassionate layer to the entire framework. Strange Houses seems more like an instruction manual with all the real tools of fiction writing -- human characters, metaphor, descriptive and rich language -- completely stripped away to make way for a bare bones structure of logic puzzles onto which a flimsy and outlandish plot is attached. There's pulp fiction and there's trash fiction. A third English translated book from Uketsu came out this year -- Strange Buildings.  I won't be going to the open house.

Sentence Deferred - August Derleth

THE STORY: Sentence Deferred (1939) tells of how circumstantial evidence and coincidence can complicate a murder investigation. Two men, Beckit and Alford, claim to have shot a thoroughly disliked bank whose savings and loan institution failed taking with it most of the accounts. The victim was shot twice according to each shooter's confessions, once in the head, once in the chest. But only his bones can be examined. Why? Because the banker's home was set on fire and the blaze was so intense, accelerated by addition of gasoline, that the corpse was destroyed leaving only a skeleton.

 THE CHARACTERS:  Judge Peck once again joins forces with the District Attorney and coroner Dr. Considine of the local Wisconsin jurisdiction near Baraboo to make sense of a murder case with two confessions and a mystery of committed arson. Interestingly, though both shooters confess to having fired their revolvers at the banks neither one will admit to setting the house ablaze.  Consequently, there is much discussion of forensic evidence involving arson, accelerates and what fire does to human body. Over the course of the novel the two trials are summarized with interesting testimony rendered in dialogue.  One trial ends in an acquittal, the other in a conviction. But Judge Peck is not satisfied that either men are guilty of murder or arson.

The crux of the case is the identification of the body. Anyone familiar with GAD novels should instantly be alerted a timeworn gimmick when a skeleton is found in a burned building.  Did the fire actually completely incinerate the body in a single night? The wily judge is certain that Henry Hornly, the despised and crooked banker, is still alive and was behind the arson.

Late in the book Derleth introduces Herbert Hornly, the victim's eccentric brother who, like most people in town, was not a fan of his relation. Herbert quickly became my favorite character in a complicated book solely because his appearance adds a level of oddball humor not often found in the Judge Peck mystery novels.  He has a pet St. Bernard named Vladimir who he affectionately calls "Laddie".  A dog-catcher is constantly picking up the dog that has a habit of running off Herbert's property and roaming the village streets.  Herbert thinks the dog catcher has a scheme of milking him of the $1 fine for a stray dog and is basically at war with the town and the dog catcher in particular.  This turns into a running gag -- something extremely unusual for Derleth, at least in the mystery novels I've read. When all is wrapped up Herbert Hornly appears one more time and there is a neat end to the dog catcher saga with a clever joke that made me laugh aloud.  Loved Herbert and Laddie! 

INNOVATIONS & ODDITIES:  The IDing of the corpse relies heavily on dental records that almost certainly prove that the body is Hornly due to a highly unusual dental repair in an otherwise perfect set of teeth. How could that possibly be faked, think both Dr. Considine and Dr. Asten, the expert witness in dentistry.  But Judge Peck, ever wary of certainties being doubtful, digs further into Hornly's past and uncovers a bizarre coincidence that will upset the entire case

Derleth has a habit of adding quirky narrative touches in his mystery novels.  In Sentence Deferred he goes beyond quirky and t commits what I consider a transgression in logic. The lawyers directly address the jury during testimony! Both prosecuting and defense teams editorialize and remind the jury what the testimony means to their case. Unheard of in the actual practice of trial law. Even someone who knows law only from reading novels and watching TV shows knows those remarks are solely reserved for the attorney's closing statement at trial's conclusion.  What fiction editor would allow that in any novel?  Scribner's, Derleth's publisher at the time, was known for being stickler for sophisticated grammar. I guess they spent too much time modifying Derleth's stilted prose and overlooked a glaring error in jurisprudence.

Peck learns that Hornly made friends with a dentist, Dr. Asten, who allowed Hornly to watch him treat patients.  He even allowed Hornly to clean the dentist's teeth as a trial run.  Bizarre and outlandish!  But of course this detail mentioned in passing will play a significant role in Peck finally putting allthe pieces together in a seemingly complex criminal scheme.

QUOTES: Dr. Considine: "Positive identification of the body remains unfortunately in question. And the setting of the fire so long after the killing--over an hour--is going to be a problem. This is all most unsatisfactory."

Judge Peck: "Consider, what have you? Circumstantial evidence that looks like a certainty. But is it, in fact? I think not. Admittedly it stacks up very nicely against Beckit. The question of Beckit's guilt simply does not enter in at all, as far as the legal aspect is concerned. [...] The question here, however, is whether or not the circumstantial evidence is conclusive." 

Dr. Metzger, expert witness in forensic pathology: "It is [a case of positive identity]. In a case like this it is most unwise to take anything for granted. You will have observed the entirely circumstantial nature of not only the cases against the accused, but also of all evidence. In casting about for some loophole, we must naturally attack those facets which, if disproved, will afford the loophole. The identity of the remains is one --the chief one, I think."

Judge Peck: "The nature of circumstantial evidence is such that is it fundamentally always extremely untrustworthy. I have no doubt that the cases of the State versus Beckit and the State versus Alford may well become Wisconsin's classic examples of the insufficiency of even the strongest circumstantial evidence."

EASY TO FIND? Prior to selling my copy online last month I had checked for other copies for sale.  There were several copies out there in this vast online shopping mall. Now there are only two!  No idea who bought all of them but it seems Judge Peck is suddenly of interest to many mystery readers. Could it be these reviews?  I'm not a betting man, but I'd say it's highly likely.  ;^)  Act now before those two are also gone.

NEW STUFF: The Final Problem - Arturo Pérez-Reverte

There will always be Sherlock Holmes pastiches.  It is the one type of mystery novel homage that seems to be pouring out of an eternal fountain.  I tend to avoid them these days but The Final Problem (2026),  from the pen of inventive Spanish writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte, has an intriguing originality in that this is not only a Holmes homage but also an intricately devised meta-fictional tribute to the history and development of detective fiction and also a true love letter to the Golden Age of Cinema, specifically Hollywood studio produced movies of the 1930s -1950s.

The stand-in for Holmes in this well thought out and trickily plotted detective novel is an actor who clearly is meant to be Basil Rathbone. No attempt to hide his true identity is made even if Pérez-Reverte saddles him with the awful stage name of Hopalong Basil, a name Basil despises. His real first name is no better.  It's Ormond and only one person ever calls him that.  I think it happens twice. He's referred to by his last name hammering home the source of the character each time someone addresses him as Basil. Anyone who knows old movies and the life of Basil Rathbone will see through the disguise immediately regardless of the similarity in names.  Ormond Basil's biographical information as it slowly seeps into the storyline parallels Rathbone's life matching everything from his close friendships with David Niven and Errol Flynn to his failed marriages.

And so we have a meta-fictional mystery with Holmes being played by the actor most well known at the time of the book's setting (it's 1960, BTW) who reluctantly accepts the role of detective. Basil is among a group of international tourists marooned on a Greek island when a violent death occurs. They are waiting for a severe storm to subside so that the Corfu police can arrive by boat and take over the police investigation. Edith Mander, a British tourist, is found dead from an apparent suicide in a locked room.  But of course it's not. This is a detective novel. There is a murderer among the tourists and violent deaths will occur twice more (one in another locked and bolted room) before the police arrive. Basil takes on the Holmes mantle one more time with the aid of Paco Foxá, Spanish thriller writer -- another attempt at a disguise that is easily seen through as it is obvious this is meant to be Pérez-Reverte.

This book is overloaded with Holmes allusions and quotes.  Hardcore devotees and all the Baker Street Irregulars out there may find this a real romp, but the incessant quoting of lines from the Canon and allusions to the many movie adaptations Ormond Basil has appeared in were a distraction for me. An equal amount of references to Hollywood movies, both real and imagined, dozens of real Golden Age of Cinema actors and actresses as well as insights into the life of Basil Rathbone are strewn throughout the text.  The abundance of references seemed like padding by the midpoint of the book. After each lengthy interruption I was eager for a return to the unravelling of the many mysteries surrounding the death by hanging and the two bludgeoning murders that occur later.

Basil and Foxá are a good duo and enjoy the role playing so much that there begin to refer to each other as Holmes and Watson. However, the role playing gets to be as transparent as Ormond's true life inspiration when the talk turns to plot tricks and misdirection. An exchange between Basil and Foxá hints at the rule breaking trend in GAD mystery fiction of both the detective and the Watson turning out to be the murderer.  This was, I think,a huge mistake on Pérez-Reverte's part because it led me to scrutinize one of the two detectives' actions and I easily figured out the solution to one of the locked rooms. Without that mention I don't think I would have seen through it so easily. Astute readers may see that sequence of discovering the second locked room is an allusion to a well-known detective novel, oft imitated in the genre. Even the title of that work is mentioned off-hand at least once that I noted.

What is most unique about the narrative is Pérez-Reverte's devotion to the actual construction of a mystery novel. Not only is this a meta-fictional treatment of a detective story it is the only one I can recall in which the crimes are viewed as incidents in a novel. The solution itself is arrived at only by looking at the murders as if they were created by a writer of mystery fiction. This conceit makes the reader look rather closely at the actions of Foxá, a writer himself.  But don't expect an obvious twist there.  The real motive behind the murders is hidden very cleverly and while the focus seems to be on a cat-and-mouse game between Basil and Foxá, Pérez-Reverte has several tricks up his sleeve delivered in the finale that elicited a few gasps of surprise from this veteran reader of detective fiction. Timeworn motifs and plot gimmicks show up and I was too busy out-thinking Pérez-Reverte to see the obvious.  And, of course, the ultimate Holmes allusion arrives in the finale, one that should have been obvious from the start. I overlooked that one because of the constant references to Moriarty. I should have paid closer attention to Basil and his frequently quoted line "You see, Watson, but you do not observe."

Some of the best parts of the book are in the talks of writing and concocting mystery plots, comparing "real" crime with fictional crime and the role of the detective. Here are some of my favorite exchanges:

Foxá on the art of misdirection: "You have to cover the reader's ears when you show them something and then cover their eyes when you tell them something. Also, play with their capacity for misjudgement and forgetfulness. You have to plant an idea, hide it, and confuse the reader with things that lead them to a different idea..."

"Sherlock Holmes wouldn't be on television today for being famous; he would be famous for being on television." 

 Foxá persuading Basil to be their detective: "Look at it another way. Lacking a real detective and with all those films under your belt, you have more experience than any of us. It's less about a criminal investigation that simply acting as an authority figure. Something symbolic." 

Foxá: "...[the murderer is] working like a good novelist."
Basil: "That's exactly what he does: incite ideas, but arranges everything to as to impede us from thinking things though. That's why we cannot trust the visible clues. And he could be offering up real ones as well to make it seem less suspicious."

Basil: "One of the downsides of imagination is that is suggests too many alternatives and can cause one to follow false leads."

Basil: "Remember that we're inside a novel. [...] Who said that audacity and romance seem to have passed forever from the criminal world?"
Foxá: "You said it. Well, Sherlock Holmes said it. The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge?"
Basil: "Well, Sherlock Holmes, or Conan Doyle was mistaken. There are still some romantic killers left."  

The Final Problem is a meta-fictional tour de force. Whatever your obsession -- Sherlock Holmes, old Hollywood movies, actors and actresses, or the traditional detective novel formula with all its trickery and plot motifs -- this new treasure trove of a novel will not disappoint.  Just be prepared for an overload of allusions.  Is there a preventive drug like Dramamine for allusion overkill?  Pop one of those in mouth (figuratively, of course) before diving headlong into this richly detailed and truly fun book.