'Classic' Detective Stories you have enjoyed.

[amateur51]

I've gone on for far too long!

Not for me, you haven't - a very intelligent and generous post, many thanks Estelle!

I tend to limit my Sue Grafton reading to long train journeys (I try not to fly these days) & holidays - that is, just once a year. They slip down a treat taken that way

Thanks for all your recommendations - keep 'em coming, don't be shy

[amateur51]

Estelle -

The two Margery Allingham's I'd recommend are More Work for the Undertaker and Tiger in the Smoke.

They are among her latest - her earliest ones still figure Albert Campion as detective, but have a fantastic, bright young things feel to them: The Crime at Black Dudley or Look to the Lady.

I've just thought of it, but Allingham like Christie and P G Wodehouse was a classic popular writer of the 20s and 30s who went on writing after WW2, but unlike them she got better, as if the experience of living through WW2 gave her more maturity, whereas Christie kept writing the same formula (which she did brilliantly) but with a certain tiredness.

That's a fascinating insight Don Basilio

[Ferretfancy]

Don Basilio

Somebody once said that the theft of the Empress of Blandings was a defining moment in English fiction, well I'm not sure I'd quite put it like that, but there's no doubt that PGW could have written some real detective fiction if he had wanted to, with a few smiles thrown in. After all he mentions a curious dagger of oriental design on more than one occasion. Perhaps he did become a bit too formulaic later on, but reading Wodehouse is like watching Laurel and Hardy. you know when the pratfall is coming, but you still laugh.
I saw a stage production of Pigs Have Wings last year, and it was entertaining, but far to flapperish and wind up gramophone, lifting him off the page is surprisingly difficult
to get right.

Sorry! Back to the body in the library!

[aeolium]

I think Wodehouse wrote some wonderful stuff after 1945 - The Mating Season, Pigs Have Wings, and especially his autobiographical writings Performing Flea and Over Seventy. If there was a falling-off in quality at all, it was not until the 1960s, when he was in his eighties. Not bad going.

There's even a proprietor of a Detective Agency in Pigs Have Wings (just to keep this post faintly on-topic).

[amateur51]

Don Basilio

Somebody once said that the theft of the Empress of Blandings was a defining moment in English fiction, well I'm not sure I'd quite put it like that, but there's no doubt that PGW could have written some real detective fiction if he had wanted to, with a few smiles thrown in.

Wodehouse & Raymond Chandler were educated at Dulwich College at about the same time. I detect similiarities in their written style, particularly in their creative use of simile and metaphor:

"Moose Malloy looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food"

"Chimp Twist was looking like a monkey that had bitten into a bad nut, and Soapy Molloy like an American Senator who has received an anonymous telegram saying, “All is discovered. Fly at once.”"

I like to think that while at Dulwich College, they might have been 'spotted' by the same school teacher who had encouraged both these boys in their creative writing

[Don Basilio]

The Mating Season,

One of my all time favourites. He looked as though he'd been stuffed by an incompetent taxidermist in a hurry. (Of the vicar opening the wonderful village concert.)

I enjoy reading his later ones, but he rather trades on the earlier ones (particularly in Blandings: all those young lovers/nephews/nieces and the pig getting stolen AGAIN. Don't get me wrong, I love 'em, but that's because I love the earlier ones.

I'd say 1950 was the falling-off point. The Mating Season was late 40s.

And there's the profound insight in one of the later ones of Spode marrying Madelaine: facism is the flip side of sentimentality.

[aeolium]

I'd say 1950 was the falling-off point. The Mating Season was late 40s.

Hang on, DB - that's a sudden falling-off, from one of his best books (pub 1949) to decline in one year! Of course he was rehashing plots then but he was rehashing plots in the 20s and 30s as well. You should read Performing Flea and Over Seventy if you think his style - which is the important thing - was falling off.

[Chris Newman]

Thanks for all your recommendations - keep 'em coming, don't be shy

Am51,
If I may interpose. I think I know your sense of humour, which like mine is ironic and fairly filthy. Therefore I would urge you to peruse the outrageous works of Mark Gatiss, whom I have mentioned earlier. I know you would love his three Lucifer Box novels. He combines seediness, wit and dark humour to create a scoundrel whose exploits are unputdownable. Lucifer Box is so silky that Flashman seems common as muck.

Gatiss scripted some Poirot shows for ITV and some of the Dr Who series for David Tennant and Torchwood . I suppose he cut his teeth on The League of Gentlemen. He wrote and presented a series on Hammer Horrors and has acted in some HGWells adaptations on TV.

His Lucifer Box stories begin with The Vesuvius Club in which the young Lucifer works for the Royal Academy in Good Queen Victoria's reign. Lucifer is a painter and the RA is a front for the British Secret Service. Of course, that is not common knowledge. His task is to sort out why emminent vulcanologists continually disappear without trace. He seduces his way to a solution.

In The Devil in Amber he is a little older but no less attractive and infiltrates an Edwardian fascist guild in the USA.

I am just enjoying The Black Butterfly where the aged roué, Box, is called to serve the new young British Queen. Hope that does not sound a bit too much like the Head of the IMF, but don't let that put you off....

[amateur51]

Cheers for this Chris.

I saw Mark Gatiss in The League of Gentlemen at the Edinburgh fringe in 1996 before they hit the big time on BBC television. I loved the TV series and several other things that he has done since, including, I think, playing Mycroft in the 2 Sherlock episodes that have been aired so far.

However I must say that his fiction writing has unfortunately become jumbled in my 'brain' with the Wildean novels of Gyles Brandreth, to whom I have an aversion. I trust your judgement, and we have similar tastes as you say, and I shall hold back my Brandreth-o-phobia and given Gatiss' novels a go. They sounds great fun

Your other recent recommendation, of the Percy Grainger Accolade Twofer, is making its way steadily up my wants lists too.

[Nick Armstrong]

I would urge you to peruse the outrageous works of Mark Gatiss, whom I have mentioned earlier. I know you would love his three Lucifer Box novels. He combines seediness, wit and dark humour to create a scoundrel whose exploits are unputdownable.

You just got my attention! I didn't know about these! Thanks!

[Estelle]

Amateur51,
thanks for your warm words of welcome! I had a laugh over your quoted similes, though impossible to tell them apart, or which author penned them!
Don Basilio,
I will look up the Allinghams you have recommended. I too appreciate your insight into the fact that, throughout her long life, Allingham never failed her genius.

I would like to elaborate a bit on Laurali Wright (also published as L. R. Wright), 1939-2001. Her Karl Alberg is a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who works along the once remote but now touristy Sunshine Coast of B.C. (I have toured there, and those of you who have visited will agree with me that it is a beautiful coastline, less stormy than Vancouver Island to the west.) Wikipedia will give you the Karl Alberg mysteries in sequence. Again, his story is interwoven with the cases he solves and the remote area he inhabits, and it is well worth your effort to read them in sequence. I did not know of the two Edwina Henderson mysteries until I read the Wiki article, and I've now ordered them, but must say they are rather difficult to locate now. I wish you the enjoyment of these books!

[amateur51]

Amateur51,
thanks for your warm words of welcome! I had a laugh over your quoted similes, though impossible to tell them apart, or which author penned them!
Don Basilio,
I will look up the Allinghams you have recommended. I too appreciate your insight into the fact that, throughout her long life, Allingham never failed her genius.

I would like to elaborate a bit on Laurali Wright (also published as L. R. Wright), 1939-2001. Her Karl Alberg is a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who works along the once remote but now touristy Sunshine Coast of B.C. (I have toured there, and those of you who have visited will agree with me that it is a beautiful coastline, less stormy than Vancouver Island to the west.) Wikipedia will give you the Karl Alberg mysteries in sequence. Again, his story is interwoven with the cases he solves and the remote area he inhabits, and it is well worth your effort to read them in sequence. I did not know of the two Edwina Henderson mysteries until I read the Wiki article, and I've now ordered them, but must say they are rather difficult to locate now. I wish you the enjoyment of these books!

Whoa, Estelle! I've never heard of Laurali Wright nor Karl Alberg - there are some on Amazon UK but I guess a search of amazon.com may prove more productive. Thanks for the tip.

[Ferretfancy]

amateur51

I hadn't read any PG Wodehouse at the time, but I spent part of my childhood in Valley Fields, which was of course Wodehouse's name for Dulwich Village. Back in the 1940s it seemed very rural, perhaps not very different from his own time, as there was virtually no traffic ( No petrol for motorists ) and some of the walks up to Sydenham were like country lanes,with deserted mansions on the hill whose owners had moved out of London to safety. I was accepted for a place at Dulwich College, but begged to be sent to boarding school instead, I'd probably read too many school stories. If you get the chance, the Dulwich Picture Gallery is well worth a visit, and the College still has Shackleton's rowing boat the James Caird on view, in which he and his crew made their epic survival journey in the Antarctic.

[Estelle]

Amateur 51 (and everyone)
I would say that Wright's Karl Alberg mysteries have much local color, interesting characters, and an ongoing personal story which is woven masterfully through the novels. These books are easy to read, yet full of content and suspense. It could be that Wright is considered a local writer, but I believe that her books deserve greater distribution and present a true sense of the Canadian Northwest.

[Estelle]

Tony Hillerman
If you will forgive me returning to another name I've mentioned in my first posting, I would like to endorse and promote Hillerman's enormously popular and easy reading detective novels of the Navajo Nation, set on the enormous reservation in Northern Arizona and New Mexico. Again, since I have toured the area, I have a special love for the life, the people, and the country portrayed in this series. The 18 Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee mysteries would make for a wonderful read over some years. Wikipedia provides a list on its Tony Hillerman page. These are available as trade paperbacks and are wonderful, diversionary reading. Has anyone here read any of Hillerman's mysteries? I came to admire the author, a white man, not only by reading his books, but especially in the enjoyment of his natural modesty and his humor in his memoir, Seldom Disappointed. There's also a wonderful picture book, Hillerman Country (1991), which provides the visual counterpoint to Hillerman's words and rounds out my reading recommendations.
Mary