CLASSIC CORNER
CLASSIC CORNER features mysteries from the past currently in re-release.
THE GOOSEBERRY FOOL
JAMES MCCLURE
Soho Crime Trade pb 8/11
In the days of apartheid in South Africa, James McClure wrote an eight-book mystery series featuring a white Afrikaner police lieutenant and his Bantu sergeant, who create a practical collaboration to sort out crimes in a society impossibly split along racial lines. The first Kramer and Zondi book to appear won McClure the Gold Dagger Award from the Crime Writers Association in 1971. THE GOOSEBERRY FOOL is third in the series, which is now being brought out in new editions by Soho Press.
THE GOOSEBERRY FOOL begins with the murder of Hugo Swart, a pious bachelor who has just returned home from evening mass. Swart's servant, Shabalala, is assumed to be the perpetrator, mainly because he is nowhere to be found. Before Lt. Kramer can start his investigation, a newly arrived lieutenant sends Sgt. Zondi off to hunt for Shabalala in his home village; and an acting post commander orders Kramer to investigate a fatal road accident. Kramer rightly senses something fishy in the way he and Zondi have been peremptorily gotten out of the way. By the end of the book, between the two of them, they get to the bottom of what's going on, with surprises in store for nearly all concerned.
The relationship between Kramer and Zondi and their individual characters are enormously interesting and complex. Lt. Tromp Kramer is a character of his time. He plays the game. To the rest of the world he lets it be known that Zondi may be a clever fellow but in the end he's no more than any other replaceable servant. In reality, he cares about Zondi and would trust him with his life. Sgt. Mickey Zondi, for his part, recognizes the unfairness of apartheid but accepts it and is glad to have his job. His strength is that he understands his own people and sees things honestly.
In this novel and the others, McClure brings fictional Trekkersburg, South Africa, to life. He presents absorbing tales of mystery and intrigue wrapped in the everyday inequities of apartheid reality. This sometimes makes for uncomfortable reading. For instance, at Shabalala's village Zondi arrives to find houses being bulldozed as an eviction squad executes a commonplace Black Spot removal. Whites consistently treat blacks as children or worse. McClure is a journalist at heart and part of his motivation in writing these books was to expose the shame of apartheid to the public. He doesn't moralize; straightforward storytelling with factual description is all that's needed. RECOMMENDED.
- Verna Suit
THE DUEL OF SHADOWS:
THE EXTRAORDINARY CASES OF BARNABAS HILDRETH
VINCENT CORNIER
Mike Ashley, editor
Crippen & Landru Publishers July, 2011
ISBN (hc): 978-1-932009-2
ISBN (Trade pb): 978-1-932009-98-9
Some traditional mysteries are based on scientific principles and rational deduction, where diligent scientific detectives like Dr. Thorndyke or Craig Kennedy - or Sherlock Holmes, for that matter - provide rational explanations for unusual crimes. Other traditional mysteries appear to be fantastic, irrational impossibilities, stories about things that apparently couldn't have happened - but did.
You might think that those two seemingly disparate threads would never intersect. You would be wrong. It is in that sweet spot where arcane science meets the impossible mystery that you will find the short stories of Golden Age author Vincent Cornier, who wrote a series of amazing, fascinating, improbable-but-possible short mystery stories in the 1930s and 40s about a detective named Barnabas Hildreth, whose investigations of seemingly impossible crimes turned up solutions based on rational (if obscure) scientific principles. Now, eleven of the stories written about Hildreth have been gathered into one of Crippen & Landru's "Lost Classics" called THE DUEL OF SHADOWS.
Hildreth is a fascinating character - a British Secret Service agent who is frequently referred to as "The Black Monk", -- he is taciturn, passionate, and ingenious. He appears to have a remarkable knowledge of some of the more obscure sciences, a knowledge which leads him to the solution of these most unlikely and difficult criminal problems. The situation in each story is utterly fantastic - yet, in the end, the solution follows the laws of science.
Consider this opening paragraph of the title story in the collection, "The Duel of Shadows":
There's a marvelous "perfect crime" story called "The Monster," which presents a situation where everyone - police, the victims and their families - knows for certain the identity of the killer - yet all are powerless to stop him from killing at will or even to punish him for the murders. It's a fascinating and horrifying plot which, for once in this collection, doesn't rest on an obscure principle of science.
There's a story called "The Catastrophe in Clay" about a victim apparently turned into a block of stone. In "The Gilt Lily," a senior British intelligence officer has super-secret plans stolen out of his pocket while he sits in his office - and yet the victim never sees it happen or realizes he has been robbed. In "The Stone Ear," a man is holding an antique glass goblet when it suddenly turns to dust in his hand - and he dies of a poison. The complex solution involves laws of acoustics and light refraction; according to Mike Ashley's introduction, Ellery Queen (in the person of Frederick Dannay) loved this story, claiming that it was unique because it was not fully resolved until the last three words.
In general, these stories differ from the kind of "impossible crime" tales written by authors such as John Dickson Carr. Where their "impossibilities" and locked rooms are often shown to be the result of a kind of conjurer's trick, the solutions to the mysteries in THE DUEL OF SHADOWS are rooted in scientific explanations (though, to be honest, I found myself having to re-read some of the solutions several times in order to understand the principles involved).
There are eleven stories in this collection, and they are all fascinating. There is one story that crosses the line into the supernatural, but that is the exception. The stories in THE DUEL OF SHADOWS give us, in Barnabas Hildreth, one of the most unusual detectives in literature solving some of the oddest cases imaginable. RECOMMENDED.
THE DEAD WITNESS: A CONNOISSEUR'S COLLECTION OF VICTORIAN DETECTIVE STORIES
EDITED BY MICHAEL SIMS
Walker and Company, Trade pb 12/11
ISBN: 978-0802779182
Given the enormous popularity of the mystery story, it is sometimes hard to remember that the genre itself is less than two centuries old. It is worth noting that some of the best and most enduring detective stories appeared in the early years of mysteries - stories which can still move and excite today's readers.
Want proof? Then dig into a new anthology of Victorian detective stories called THE DEAD WITNESS: A CONNOISSEUR'S COLLECTION OF VICTORIAN DETECTIVE STORIES, edited by Michael Sims. Sims defines "Victorian" rather loosely, as the original publication dates of the stories range from 1837 to 1915, fifteen years after Victoria's death. But what you have in this anthology is a fine collection ranging from the earliest "detective" stories and fictionalized "casebooks" of real detectives to the very popular mysteries published in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras.
Consider the first story in the collection, "The Secret Cell," by William E. Burton, which is reprinted for the first time since its original publication in 1837. This story predates Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" by six years, and, while not truly a "detective" story in the same sense, nevertheless a mystery involving the abduction of an heiress and her rescue by a clue-following detective who uses disguises as he pursues the villains of the piece. In his introduction to this story, Sims makes a credible argument for the theory that Poe had read this story before writing his own.
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is here as well, of course, and after more than a century and a half it is still a formidable and frightening work.
There are a number of stories by authors who are more likely to be considered "literary" authors than mystery writers - Dickens, Twain and Harte, for example - but their stories are most certainly part of the early history of the mystery genre, and they're quite entertaining as well.
One of the most interesting stories is the one which gives this anthology its name. "The Dead Witness," written in 1866 by an Australian, Mary Fortune, is said to be the first known detective story to be written by a woman. It is set in the wilderness of the Australian bush country as a police detective tracks down the killer of a young man.
There are many marvelous stories about detective characters, amateur and professional - some quite well known, others largely forgotten - who attracted a lot of readers in their day: Sherlock Holmes is here, and Father Brown, along with Max Carrados, Uncle Abner, Dorcas Dene, Eugene Valmont and Loveday Brooke. It is a large collection - 22 stories, running to more than 600 pages, all quite readable, most thoroughly entertaining. The introductions to the individual stories by Sims, along with his first-rate introduction to the book, help to put the stories in some perspective and place their authors within the history of the detective story. DEAD WITNESS is a book of stories to savor. VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.