traditional mystery

Peer Reviewed

Every professional desires recognition by his peers. Especially those peers who have the greatest recognition by the public and critics, and who are considered the best in the field.

Unfortunately for me, Rex Stout, Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, and Earl Stanley Gardner have passed on to the great writing desk in the sky.

However, in my little pond, I am very honored that I’ve been able to garner recognition from and support of writers who I very much respect. Writers such as Crispian Thurlborn, Richard Schwindt, Joe Congel, and Caleb Pirtle III.

And that means a lot to me. There’s a reason why scientists submit their papers to peer-reviewed journals.

Now there is a danger in peer review. The old, entrenched establishment can use peer pressure to squash new ideas, enforce political correctness, and derail change. We also see the same when the old guard is kicked out and a new group takes over.

This is what has happened in the writing world. For the most part, writing organizations have been taken over by radical elements that are enforcing extreme political correctness on what may be published. And have been extending that censorship to works of the past. Book burning has given way to book suppression and shaming.

Consequently, I find it very refreshing that there is no censoriousness amongst the writers in my corner of the world.

The other day, Joe Congel posted a fabulous review of my book, A Nest of Spies. He is the author of the Tony Razzolito, P.I. mysteries. And he is a doggone good writer.

In Tony Razzolito, Congel has given us a contemporary P.I. who is in the tradition of the hardboiled greats. Reading the Tony Razzolito mysteries reminds me of Hammett and Chandler. There’s none of the frenzied thriller in Congel’s books. Sure there’s action and excitement, but done in the classic whodunit tradition. And done quite well. Quite well, indeed.

You can find the Tony Razzolito mysteries on Amazon.

So when a mystery writer I admire takes a liking to my mystery series, it’s an honor I cherish.

Here’s Joe Congel’s review of A Nest of Spies.

Hawes has hit his stride. A worthy addition to this already fabulous series!

If you’re not reading this wonderful Private Investigator Mystery series, you should be. CW Hawes has created a cast of characters that I believe stand tall next to any traditional detective, whodunit mystery you want to put them up against.

In this, the 5th installment of the series, the reader gets a peek into private eye, Justinia Wright’s secret government past. A past that she never talks about, not even with her brother, Harry. But when government (the U.S as well as other countries) spies and contract killers start appearing on her doorstep, it becomes obvious to Harry that his baby sister may still have at least one toe dipped in a pool filled with espionage and treason.

Spies can be a funny bunch; they will put their mutual trust in one another when it’s beneficial to them, but will not hesitate to pull the trigger to save themselves. And all the while, you cannot believe a word any of them say. When a former agency partner tries to unsuccessfully hire Tina to help secure a flash drive with plans for a top-secret weapon by posing as the buyer, it is just the beginning of a fun, interesting mystery filled with lots of twists and turns.

As more and more people from Tina’s past show up wanting to talk with and hire the great detective’s services, the lies… and the body count begin to grow. And when Tina is accused of murder, she and her team of sleuths devise a scheme to recover the missing flash drive, catch a murderer, clear their names, and in the process make a little profit for their troubles.

With all that is going on in this story, you would think that the Wrights would have time for nothing else. And as interesting as the main plot of this novel is, the subplot that fleshes out the on again, off again relationship saga between Tina and police Lieutenant Cal Swenson, all the fabulous meals cooked up by Harry and his wife Bea, and the side characters like Tina’s tenant, the quirky artist wannabe, Solstice, is perhaps what really makes this series special.

Hawes has developed characters that you can’t help but care about. It’s what makes me continue to buy and read every book in this series. I really want to know what’s going on in Tina and Harry’s personal life as well as how they will solve the mystery at hand.

I highly recommend A Nest of Spies. It is my favorite Justinia Wright Mystery so far, and I can’t wait to dive into the next one to see where the mystery and mayhem takes this talented brother and sister detective duo.

That is high praise. Reviews such as that one get me through the occasional dark day.

If you haven’t read A Nest of Spies, you can find the book on Amazon, along with the entire Justinia Wright series.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

Share This!

The Detective Novel – Some Authors

I don’t know why bestsellers are touted so much. Quite honestly, I’ve read a lot of bestsellers that weren’t any better, IMO, then your average mid-lister — and a significant number that, again IMO, were just plain bad.

On the other hand, I’ve read quite a few books that are nowhere near bestseller territory and have found them to be truly superb reads. They actually deserve to be bestsellers.

Then we have the whole idea of just exactly what is a bestseller. The New York Times bestseller list is not a list of actual bestsellers. It’s a curated list compiled from specially selected outlets, with a dash of editorial tampering to make sure the “right” books are on the list.

And then we have all of these awards writers brag about receiving. The Science Fiction Writers of America called out Readers Favorites, for example, as being more or less a scam. Pay your money and get a favorable review. Not in so many words, but it’s not hard to read between the lines.

Kirkus isn’t much better. Indie writers can pay $500 and get a review. No guarantees, but who wants to disappoint a paying customer?

So what does all this have to do with detective novels? Last week I said I’d mention a few authors who are lesser lights in the mystery field. What I want to emphasize here is that being on a bestselling list or being an award winning author essentially means nothing.

Neither awards nor a “bestseller” badge is a guarantee that the book is a good read, or that the author can even tell a good story. We are in subjective territory here. It’s all opinion. Just like the popularity contest known as Homecoming King and Queen in high school. For example, scifi/fantasy writer Patty Jansen delivers a good read and she is not a “bestselling” author – by her own admission. And yet she says she makes a decent income.

In the end, the consumer more or less determines success. Although the crowd is fickle. If Shakespeare hadn’t been able to sell tickets to his plays, we wouldn’t even know he existed. And E L James is laughing all the way to the bank for a novel that is basically poorly written fan fiction.

I repeat: the public is fickle and tastes change. And often change rapidly. George Frederic Handel was knocking it out of the park writing Italian opera for London audiences. They couldn’t get enough. Then, suddenly, almost overnight, Londoners got sick of Italian opera. Handel went bankrupt, then discovered English oratorio, and the rest is history. Messiah and the “Hallelujah Chorus” are ever with us.

Dead – And Shouldn’t Be Forgotten

Jacques Futrelle

When I was a kid, I loved Jacques Futrelle’s The Thinking Machine stories. I still remember “The Problem of Cell 13”, a classic locked room study.

Sadly, Futrelle was only 37 when he went down with the Titanic, telling his wife to save herself. Several Thinking Machine manuscripts also lie at the bottom of the Atlantic.

You can get Tales of The Thinking Machine for free. Well worth reading.

Edgar Wallace

One of the most prolific authors ever, today Wallace is a virtual unknown. In his lifetime, he wrote 175 novels, 957 short stories, 18 stage plays, and reams of news reports (he was a journalist), articles, screen plays, poetry, and historical non-fiction. His works sold over 50 million copies, although few are in print today.

His prolificity was due to his dictating his work onto wax cylinders, the dictaphone of his day, and having his secretaries type the dictations. By dictating, he often produced a novel in 2 or 3 days.

Not finding anyone to publish his first novel, he self-published it in 1905; creating his own publishing company, Tallis Press.

Never heard of him? Does King Kong ring a bell?

Wallace died suddenly, while working on King Kong, in 1932 at the age of 56.

Many of Wallace’s books can be found for free online. One source is ebooks@Adelaide, and there are others. He’s worth checking out.

Patricia Wentworth

Agatha Christie is a towering figure to this day, and Patricia Wentworth had the misfortune to live and write when Christie was in her prime. It’s pretty tough living in the shadow of a towering figure.

However, Ms Wentworth was by no means a hack writer. I think she’s on par with Christie, and the Miss Silver mysteries are as good as Christie’s Miss Marple.

What’s more, Miss Silver is a working woman instead of a gossipy busybody. Miss Silver is a private investigator, the forerunner of Sharon McCone, Kinsey Milhone, VI Warshawski, and all the rest.

Faded Page has all the Miss Silver mysteries, except number 4. And best of all, they’re free!

Ngaio Marsh

Ngaio Marsh is another good mystery author who is obscured by Christie’s long shadow.

Her Inspector Roderick Alleyn was a bit unique in the day, because he’s a police detective. While Christie’s detectives are either private investigators or amateurs, we enter the world of the police procedural with Marsh.

Marsh was also heavily involved in the theater and her novels have a certain theatrical flair to them. They are very much worth reading. Check for them on the used market.

A.A. Fish

A.A. Fish is a pseudonym of Erle Stanley Gardner, another prolific author, best known for Perry Mason.

While Gardner and Perry Mason are household names, Fish, Bertha Cool, and Donald Lam, are not.

The Cool and Lam mysteries are good reads. My only complaint is that Bertha gets short shrift most of the time, which is too bad as I think she is far more interesting than Donald Lam. I think Gardner missed a bet here. He could have had something going like Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.

The books are good nonetheless. Get them on the used market.

Richard & Frances Lockridge

Popular in their day, the Lockridges produced scores of novels, all set in the same world, spread across several different series and characters.

Unfortunately time has not been kind to them, and that is a shame. They were good writers. They’re probably best known for the Mr & Mrs North mysteries.

I like Pam and Jerry a lot. New Yorkers with money (Jerry’s a publisher) and a lot of time on their hands, especially Pam, they get embroiled in some very interesting situations and murders. Pam is the one who mostly helps their friend Lieutenant Bill Weigand solve the crime.

Funny and suspenseful, the books are all around good reads. Pam is a most entertaining female sleuth.

You can find a complete list of all of the Lockridges’s works on GoodOleBooks.

Look for these on the used market. They’re very good.

Phoebe Atwood Taylor

Taylor was on one occasion referred to as the Buster Keaton of the mystery genre.

I’ve only read her Leonidas Witherall series. The man who looks like Shakespeare. Asey Mayo, the “Codfish Sherlock”, is her other and more well-known creation.

The Witherall mysteries are zany fun. Something along the lines of the Keystone Cops in book form. Long on laughs and light on the mystery, they are well worth your time if you want something light and not taxing to read.

Catch these on the used market.

Alive – And Need to be Read

There are a number of writers of the traditional detective story today, featuring either amateur or professional sleuths. I’m not acquainted with them all, but I’ll share a selection of those with which I am.

P.F. Ford

Ford’s Dave Slater and Norman Norman mystery series is dynamite. Full of humor and suspense, as well as the mis-adventures of Slater’s love life, Dave and Norman make the quintessential odd couple.

The books are something of a blend of police procedural and cozy. And while there is plenty of humor, the stories can be on the dark side.

Great books. I’ve read the entire series and am champing at the bit for the next one.

You can pick them up on Amazon.

J.P. Choquette

Tayt Waters is a contemporary private investigator who is quite a colorful character.

The mysteries are funny and suspenseful. Clean reads with a lot of grit and a splash of the dark about them.

There are currently 2 Tayt Waters mysteries, I hope more are in the works. You can get them at Amazon.

J.A. Menzies

Menzies’s Manziuk and Ryan mysteries start off with a bang in a classic country estate murder. Shaded Light: The Case of the Tactless Trophy Wife. Who would have thought there were “country” estates in suburban Toronto, but I guess the rich get it all.

Manziuk and Ryan are another odd couple team police procedural team. Much more at odds with each other than Ford’s Slater and Norman. Their goal is to try and work together as a team.

I enjoyed the Golden Age feel in a contemporary setting of Shaded Light and look forward to reading the other books in the series, which may be found on Amazon.

Ellen Seltz

Ms Seltz writes a classic English-style whodunit, complete with that droll understated British humor and memorable characters.

If that’s your cup of tea, then her Mottley and Baker series is for you. Get them on Amazon.

Summing Up

As I’ve noted before, I prefer the traditional whodunit over the thriller. And while thrillers are all the rage these days, I take comfort in the fact that we do have (myself included) writers who wish to carry on the tradition of the classic detective novel.

While the mystery audience is aging (it can be a bit disconcerting to a writer to see your audience dying off), I find hope in younger characters, such as Tayt Waters entering the fray; or mixed race teams such as Manziuk and Ryan, making their appearance; and the contemporary issues Slater and Norman deal with. This approach will help to make the traditional mystery more relevant to a younger audience.

The western died off quickly. But now with the indie revolution, I see the western making a comeback. Not dependent on the bottom lines of big corporations, indie authors can write what they love and target very specific audiences.

While the mystery isn’t dead by any means, I see hope that, like the western, indie authors will give this venerable genre a continued lease on life. And who knows? Tomorrow the thriller just might be passé.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

Share This!

The Detective Novel

Last week we looked at the mystery vs the thriller. And we all know the thriller is hot, hot, hot these days. The traditional mystery? Not so much. Although the mystery in its chick lit cozy form is doing very well. This probably has something to do with the chick lit element, more than the mystery.

In any case, I’d like to take a look today at the detective novel. That form of the mystery that started the mystery craze, and in effect defined the mystery genre.

Crime stories go all the way back to the Arabian Nights. However, the crime story as we know it today, comes from the fertile imagination of Edgar Allan Poe, with his creation of C Auguste Dupin in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, published in 1841.

Poe even invented the word “ratiocination” for the thinking process that Dupin used to solve crime.

If Poe invented the detective story, and all detective stories ever since have more or less followed Poe’s formula, it was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes that made the detective story a mainstay of the literary scene.

I find it of interest that Dupin and Holmes are not professionals. They’re amateurs. The police are at best bumblers who know when they’re licked and need to call in the brilliant amateur specialist. And this is a feature of most mysteries that have an amateur sleuth.

Of course CSI-type forensics were a long ways off and the solution of crimes often did require the exercise of those “little grey cells”, whether or not the sleuth was a professional or amateur.

The 1930s are often called The Golden Age of the mystery, by which we mean the detective story. During that time, scores of amateur and professional sleuths appeared and disappeared. A few became household names: such as Sam Spade, Hercule Poirot, Nero Wolfe, Miss Marple, and Ellery Queen.

Others have faded to near oblivion. Sleuths such as Miss Silver, Mr & Mrs North, The Thinking Machine, Dr Thorndyke, Asey Mayo, and Loveday Brooke.

These sleuths, and many others, used ratiocination to solve the crimes that frequently baffled the police.

Today, however, the amateur is, or seems to be, very much out of his depth. DNA. Advanced surveillance equipment. Hacking of phones and computers. Traffic and surveillance cameras. Highly advanced crime labs. All these things are beyond the amateur sleuth, and even small town police departments.

Which may explain the rise of the modern chick lit cozy craze, that unlikely fusion of chick lit and the cozy mystery, and the vintage mystery, which is set in the pre-CSI past.

The vintage mystery, if well done, can be a very satisfying read, taking us back to The Golden Age — our glamorized view of the ‘20s, ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s.

The chick lit cozy, focuses on a small town, or a small circle of people within a large city, crafts and small businesses, women’s issues, and at some point the crime. These reads are very popular. They’re not officially labelled “chick lit cozies”. That is a term I adopted from another writer who used it to differentiate them from traditional cozies. They’re simply called cozies and have essentially taken over that sub-genre.

Personally, I’m not fond of the chick lit cozy. Generally, there is more chick lit than cozy mystery in these books. Particularly the sweet romance element. Which probably explains why the sub-genre is dominated by women writers and readers.

However, they may end up being the mystery genre’s salvation. Mystery readers are aging. A fact brought vividly home to me recently when a Facebook ad for my Justinia Wright mystery omnibus was almost totally served to those 65 and over. And in that group, overwhelmingly to women.

The mystery is essentially a puzzle. A problem, the crime, that needs to be solved. It is a riddle, and we want to know the answer.

Which, to my mind, means that for all the sophisticated data gathering equipment available to the professionals, it still takes ratiocination, those little gray cells, to make sense of all the data and determine motive, means, and opportunity.

This fact actually makes the detective story very modern. A part of our ongoing discussion concerning the role of people and machines. The detective story clearly comes down on the people side of the equation.

The detective story is a human story. It is a story about righting wrongs. Wrongs done to people and society at large. The detective story focuses on a small group of people to find a killer and bring that killer to justice. It’s personal. It’s about bringing balance and order to the world of a group of people that has gotten out of balance and lacks order due to the violent crime.

Which is why I do think the mystery will endure. What it will take to bring it back into popularity, I don’t know. But the success of series such as Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder and Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone give me hope. Lots of hope.

We all know the big names of the mystery genre, even if some of us aren’t mystery fans. Next week, though, I’d like to focus on some of the lesser lights and their creators, and even a few of the new kids on the block.

Comments are always welcome, and until next time — happy reading!

Share This!