What’s a mind-blower? You might think it’s a surprise ending, but not necessarily. With your typical surprise ending, if you know in advance it’s going to be a surprise, then you can usually figure out what the surprise is going to be. Although some of the 5 short stories below do have surprises, knowing that won’t help you. And a couple of them don’t exactly have a surprise ending so much as an upsetting of all your expectations, leaving you flailing your arms with nothing to hold on to at the end.

Here are five of the best mind-blowers ever written.

“A Passage to Benares”, by T.S. Stribling, from Clues of the Caribbees, Dover 1977

For the most part, Stribling’s stories about Dr. Henry Poggioli, a psychologist and world traveler, were pretty good: a little wordy perhaps, and notable more for the exotic settings and Poggioli’s opinions then anything else. But in A Passage to Benares he excelled himself, and most other writers too. It’s a tour de force in the true sense of the term, and available in a long-lasting and inexpensive Dover edition.

 

“The Garden of Forking Paths”, by Jorge Luis Borges in Borges: Collected Fictions, Penguin, 1999

This is one of those seminal stories that influenced so much of popular culture that anyone reading it today may not understand how innovative it was at the time. It has two wonderfully clever ideas, anticipated a major quantum physics hypothesis which became a standard science fiction trope, and inspired a generation of writers like Umberto Eco.

 

“Witness for the Prosecution”, by Agatha Christie, Witness For The Prosecution and other stories, St. Martin’s , 2001

This was a short story, a play, and a fantastic movie starring Charles Laughton, Marlene Dietrich, and Tyrone Power. But all of these are over 60 years old now, and a lot of people haven’t read or viewed any of the versions, perhaps thinking that what was amazing in the 1940’s couldn’t still be amazing today.

Be amazed.

 

“The Secret Garden”, by G.K. Chesteron, from The Complete Father Brown, many, many editions

Chesterton’s Father Brown stories are unquestionably the finest single author achievement in the short story length outside of the work done by a man named Doyle. In this story a man is beheaded, apparently alone in a garden. It had a profound influence on John Dickson Carr, who re-used the situation for his first novel, albeit with a different solution. The paragraph right after Father Brown has first stunned you with what has actually happened is one of the best in all detective fiction, and Carr vainly tried to duplicate its effect throughout his career.

It helps to have read the first Father Brown story, The Blue Cross, before you read this one.

 

“The Oblong Room”, by Edward D. Hoch, from Leopold’s Way, Southern Illinois University Press, 1985

What was the friend of the victim doing, locked in a room with the body for three days after the death? This story serves as a reminder that, just like Erle Stanley Gardner, Edward D. Hoch was not just a fiction factory, but a brilliant, brilliant writer.

Something Old: Banacek (1972-74)

Something New: Jonathan Creek (1998-2008)

Banacek was an early 1970’s American television show about a slightly annoying man who investigated impossible crimes.

Actually, I’ve found that men and women who saw the show when they were young now have one of two different memories of it.

Men: “Banacek had the ultimate male lifestyle fantasy, with a mansion in old-town Boston, exotic cars, a high-paying, freelance job, and pretty girls at his beck and call.”

Women: “Banacek was a smarmy, smirking pig, and if he’d been a real person no self-respecting woman would have touched him with a ten-foot pole.”

Having recently watched all the episodes, I’ve got to side with the ladies.

Banacek was actually based on the movie The Thomas Crown Affair. In the movie, of course, the investigator is Faye Dunaway and McQueen plays the crook, but apparently the network didn’t like the idea of a criminal as the main character. So in the show, Banacek plays the freelance insurance investigator who in return for recovering stolen money, valuable art, or high tech machinery, charges 10% of the value of the item recovered. He’s only called in as a last resort when the insurance company can’t recover the item themselves, and don’t want to pay off on the policy.

His main rival is one of the insurance companies’ employees, Carly, and like just about every other continuing character on the show, she was even more annoying than Banacek. The producers of the show apparently couldn’t decide what to do with this character, since she was variously sleeping with Banacek, not sleeping with him but jealous, engaged to his most acrimonious rival, and, in one episode, his assistant!

There were other competing insurance investigators, and they all exhibited a small-minded dog-in-the-manger meanness that by comparison made Banacek look like a saint. And even his driver Jay, who was used mainly for comic relief, was introduced in an episode in which he tried to undercut Banacek’s work and take his commission for himself.

So why would anyone watch this show? Well, beyond the trappings, the main point of Banacek was that in his role of freelance insurance investigator, he was faced with what seemed to be an impossible theft each week. While there were a couple of complete clunkers, in general the quality of the impossible crimes was very high indeed. Some of these were re-used from earlier books and short stories, but not particularly well-known ones, so they should stymie most viewers, and others were brand new. In one example, we witness a guard get on an elevator carrying a briefcase full of cash. It’s a special elevator designed to go to only one other floor. But when it arrives, the guard is gone, and the briefcase is empty. In addition to the original and clever idea, this episode was one of the few that developed the plot and added important clues throughout the show. For most of them, you can watch the first five minutes and the last five minutes and still get all the value out of them.

In the end Banacek lasted only 17 episodes, and that was probably a few too many.

Jonathan Creek was a late 1990’s British televison show about a slightly annoying man who investigated impossible crimes. Jonathan works as an illusion designer for a famous stage magician, and therefore has exactly the kind of tricky mind needed to help reporter Maddy Magellan figure out the strange crimes she likes to investigate.

Unlike Banacek, this show thrived on the relationship between two adult characters, although that relationship cannot be said to be healthy. Maddy is driven, talkative, frank, and impulsive, while Jonathan is unambitious, introspective, and geeky. Each is ready with a snappy insult at any moment to keep other people at a distance, and these insults keep flying even after they grudgingly acknowledge that they like each other.

Every episode has Maddy trying to whip up Jonathan’s analytical interest in a crime that’s been committed, which with rare exception turns out to have been impossible. Again unlike Banacek, the show is gripping from start to finish, with excellent and fair clueing both to the criminal’s identity and the impossible method. Like Banacek, the impossibilities are the real star of the show, and series writer David Renwick put together a doozy for nearly ever show.

A few of them were, I believe, original problems and solutions on Renwick’s part. We have a woman who dreams real-life events that she could have had no knowledge of, a killer who walks into a garage and disappears, and, in one of the best, a woman is seen to enter a room via a window and disappear. The window and only door to the room remain under observation constantly, but the woman can’t be found in the quite literally empty room.

Here again many of the impossible gimmicks are old wine in new bottles. One of the most baffling episodes is Mother Redcap, which combines an ancient locked room murder method with an ingenious idea contained in a little known story by Peter and Anthony Shaffer from the London Mystery Magazine. Another episode is a clever variation on an idea from Herman Landon. But whenever Renwick does this he adds enough twists and turns that the origins are unrecognizable until you see the final solution.

And, anyway, who am I to complain about a wonderful detective show that has a mix of something old, and something new?

Bonus Bookfling: A new Jonathan Creek is filming now! This new Christmas special will be shown in the UK in December 2008. Watch for it in the US on BBC America. Canada, I don’t know what you’re going to do.

I like to support writers and publishers by buying books new. And if I’m buying a book for collectible reasons they I hunt around for the best copy. But sometimes I just need a reading copy of an old book, or maybe I don’t even need to own it—I just want to read it once.

Here’s what I do when I’m shopping for older or out-of-print books that aren’t at my local bookstore to get them as cheaply as possible.

Looking for a book? Hate to spend money? Read on!

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1. The Library (Part 1)

Well, sure. Everybody knows you can borrow a book from the library for nothing, so long as you bring it back on time. But don’t forget that a lot of mysteries are published in large print editions, which are often shelved in a different location from the regular mysteries. So if you don’t see what you’re looking for on the shelf, check the card catalogue or ask the librarian where the large print books are.

2. Garage Sales

Even though you can get books really cheap at garage sales (or tag sales, or yard sales, or whatever your local term is), you could spend a lifetime looking for a particular book this way.

So here’s a tip. If you’re looking for a particular book and haven’t been able to find it, find out the author’s hometown, and if you’re ever nearby, check out the local garage sales. There are often more books near where an author lived due to local interest, and you might get lucky.

3. Friends

Borrow a book from a friend. You probably won’t even have to give it back. What’s that? You say you would never do that? Liar.

4. ABE

Is it possible that you’re a booklover with an internet connection and you don’t use ABE? I doubt it. But just in case, here’s the scoop. ABE is the Advanced Book Exchange, and it’s the top place online to buy used books. They have a tremendous selection, a great range of prices, and accurate book condition descriptions. It’s surprising how often you can find a real bargain here.

http://www.abebooks.com

5. Biblion

Looking for a book originally published in the

UK? You might do better using Biblion, which started as an antique book store in

London, where many book dealers shared space. They’ve now partnered with biblio.com to provide a searchable service online. Many of these dealers are also on ABE, but not all of them.

http://www.biblion.co.uk

6. Amazon

If you want a popular title, check out amazon.com, or your local amazon, for the best deal. You won’t find any scarce titles here, but let’s say you were looking for copies of Charlotte Armstrong’s The Balloon Man and Raymond Chandler’s The High Window. As I write this you can get The Balloon Man for 31 cents, and The High Window is going for as little as $2.14.

Another tip, especially for high-priced books. Check out amazon in other countries. Sometimes there are cheaper copies floating around at amazon.fr or amazon.de, for example.

7. The Library (Part 2)

So you checked, and the book wasn’t in your local library. Did you give up? Don’t forget about interlibrary loans. Use the computers in your library, or ask your librarian to search for the book throughout the local library system. They will be happy to acquire the book from another library for you. In the US and Canada, you can get a book from any other public library in the country. In the UK, in the London area, you can get a book from any book in the
London system, at least. I haven’t tried a broader search than that.

8. Ebay

Ebay has books, too. But something to remember is that a lot of Ebay sellers don’t take care to get the details right. So you should try simple spelling mistakes and typos in your search if you don’t find what you’re looking for right away.

Let’s say you wanted a copy of a Nero Wolfe book, In the Best Families. Searching on “Nero Wolfe” turns up several copies. But if you also search on “Nero Wolf” you’ll find another copy at $2.50 that you would have missed otherwise.

9. Powell’s

Powell’s is one of the world’s largest independent sellers of books, and their strong bricks and mortar heritage comes through on the site. More than any other site, Powell’s makes it easy to browse as if you’re in a bookstore. You can easily see New Arrivals, sale books, and books in categories (as though on table display in a store) such as “Agatha Award Winners” “Doyle Pastiches”, or “Endcap” (for featured books). Check out the “$7 or Less” category for bargains. .And of course they have an outstanding search service so you can find what you’re looking for, with as many publication details about the books as Amazon has.

http://www.powells.com

10. The Library (Part 3)

You really can’t beat the library, and why would you try? If it’s not at your local branch, or in your local system, you can probably still get the book you’re looking for. Ask your librarian to help you search your countries national library archive for the book. In the US, it’s the Library of Congress in Washington. In Canada it’s Collections Canada in Toronto, and in England, it’s the British Library. The book that’s not in one of those three places is rare indeed.

Depending on the book, it can either be shipped to your library for you to pick up, or you might have to actually travel to London, Washington, or Toronto to read it. When I lived in England, I spent many a pleasant afternoon at the British Library reading rare books that I would never have been able to buy.

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There are only two books I haven’t been able to find in the past twenty years either at a bargain price, or at the library for free. And I’m not even sure that one of those books actually exists… but that’s a story for another time.Happy Hunting!

Something Old: The Baffle Book (1928), Lassiter Wren and Randle McKay

Something New: The Baffle Book (2006), Lassiter Wren and Randle McKay

Sometimes something old is something new. If you noticed The Baffle Book (“Fifteen Fiendishly Challenging Detective Puzzles”) in bookstores or on Amazon in the last year or so, you might not have known that it’s a reprint of an 80-year-old book.

In 1928, two minor New York detective story writers, Lassiter Wren and Randle McKay, published a book of 30 short mysteries to be solved, with answers in the back. They’d invented a game, played “in New York studio parties last winter” that they variously called “Clues”, “Baffles”, or “Baffling Mysteries”, and in which they set mystery problems for party guests to play. The stories were also printed up in magazines, and then collected in The Baffle Book. Readers were encouraged to score themselves on how well they did using a points-per-question system, or to buy two copies and play competitively with friends at Baffle Parties.

These were the first mini-mysteries, but they’re a bit more fleshed out than the more recent incarnations, with a fair amount of descriptive detail. And you need to pay a little closer attention to solve these, especially those in the first book, which don’t always depend on one single trick, but actually require some analysis.

The book was popular. Vanity Fair said that the game was “sweeping the country like new brooms”, and 1929 and 1930 saw The 2^nd Baffle Book and The 3^rd Baffle Book. The first book was translated into German, Hungarian, Spanish, and Swedish.

Some of the Baffles came with diagrams or charts, showing samples of evidence or clues found at the crime scene, and readers or players needed to interpret fingerprints, perform handwriting analysis, and decode secret messages in order to solve the mysteries. (The idea behind the Baffle Books was later extended by Dennis Wheatley, who sold actual crime dossiers, collections of hair samples, bloodstains, police reports, and so on, which could be used to solve fictional felonies.)

In 2006, the fine independent Boston publisher David R. Godine issued a trade paperback version of The Baffle Book, consisting of the first 15 puzzles from the original book, which held 30 in all. Interestingly, although the puzzles are referred to as “old-fashioned” on the back cover description, no mention is made of the fact that this is an excerpt of an older book. In fact the original introduction is retained exactly as it was written in 1928, including the line about the puzzles being used in “studio parties last winter.”

No selection or editing has been done on the puzzles themselves, and so, as the back cover proclaims, they remain gloriously old-fashioned. The first 15 mysteries from the original Baffle Book are reprinted exactly as they were, and since each puzzle really is a very short story, the flavor of the late-20’s period comes across, although the wisdom of retaining phrases such as “his Negro servant” is debatable. New York still had an elevated train, the rich people have servants galore, “gangsters” are everywhere, and all the cops in Chicago are Irish.

As far as I can tell the only thing added to the original text is a note about the typeface used to produce this new edition. Presumably Godine saw an opportunity to put out a puzzle book at low cost, since the original Baffle Books have fallen out of copyright.

If you enjoy mini-mysteries, five-minute mysteries, ten-minute mysteries, or even the Encyclopedia Brown stories, then you might have fun working out these slightly more challenging puzzles. Or perhaps you’ll just want to settle down in an armchair with a hot mug of tea, read about old-time New York and Chicago and London between the wars, and revel in how everything old is new again.

Bonus Bookfling: At least one writer of mysteries found inspiration in the Baffle Books. According to Doug Greene, John Dickson Carr worked out the plot to his book The White Priory Murders after reading The Sandy Peninsula Footprint Mystery in the original Baffle Book.

Something Old: Stronghold, by Stanley Ellin

Something New: The Husband, by Dean Koontz

 

Stanley Ellin (1916-1986) was surely one of the best writers in the history of the mystery short story. Beginning with his first published story, the classic “The Specialty of the House,” Ellin wrote stories outside the usual run of detective fiction being published by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in the 1940’s and 1950’s, and Fred Dannay, editor of EQMM, published many of his stories and promoted him heartily.

Ellin won two Edgar awards for his short stories, and although his novels may be slightly lesser known in the genre, he won another Edgar for his 1972 book Mirror Mirror on the Wall. At the time on the cutting edge with respect to the use of sex in crime fiction, it has dated a bit now, although the plot is dazzlingly pyrotechnic. Meanwhile, several of his other books have not dated at all, like House of Cards, The Dark Fantastic… or Stronghold.

Written in 1975, Stronghold is an unusual tale of a hostage-taking and a ransom demand, with a non-violent protagonist you would think little prepared to take on the kidnappers. Marcus Hayworth, along with the other leaders of a Quaker community in upstate New York, had at one time tried to help a young troublemaker named James Flood. Despite their efforts, Flood came to no good, and now has returned to the community to seek revenge by taking several members of Hayworth’s household hostage and demanding a four million dollar ransom. Hayworth himself is not one of the hostages, and instead of calling in the authorities he decides on a bold plan: he will devises a strategy intended to free the hostages without paying the ransom–and without violence in keeping with Quaker philosophy.

Don’t imagine for a minute that you can’t be ruthless without being violent. Hayworth’s first move in the stand-off is breathtakingly audacious. Before the tense standoff is over both Hayworth and the reader have had to examine their own convictions several times over.

Dean Koontz has been writing since 1968, and his first of many bestsellers came in 1980 with Whispers. Most of the time he writes either straight thrillers or thrillers with a bit of the paranormal mixed in. Until recently I would have said that my favorite Koontz was either The Servants of Twilight or Watchers, both of the paranormal variety. But in 2006 he wrote The Husband.

The Husband is an unusual tale of a hostage-taking and a ransom demand with a non-violent protagonist you would think little prepared to take on the kidnapers. Mitchell Rafferty is a professional gardener, and one day on the job his cell phone rings. It’s his wife:

“Mitch, I love you,” Holly said.

“Hey, sweetie.”

“Whatever happens, I love you.”

She cried out in pain. A clatter and crash suggested a struggle. Alarmed, Mitch rose to his feet. “Holly?”

Some guy said something, some guy who now had the phone. Mitch didn’t hear the words because he was focused on the background noise.

Holly squealed. He’d never heard such a sound from her, such fear.

She was silenced by a sharp crack, as though she’d been slapped.

The stranger on the phone said, “You hear me, Rafferty?”

The stranger goes on to demand two million dollars in ransom money, money that Mitch doesn’t have, money that the stranger knows Mitch doesn’t have. The kidnappers prove via a violent demonstration that they are serious, and Mitch finds out that, gardener or no gardener, he will do just about anything to get his wife back. You’ll believe it too. There are a couple of mind-blowing plot twists along the way, and a very satisfying ending. Don’t miss it.

Some people can’t, or choose not to, get published through traditional channels. The conventional wisdom is that most of these stories could not, and should not, be published simply because they’re bad. While finding a publisher can be hard, if you have a good story, well-written, then you’ll eventually be published. Anyone stooping to self-publishing is either too impatient or too egotistical to go through the process, and they don’t do themselves any favors, because they’re putting out unedited work that will never be distributed to readers.

Well, is it really that bad? I’ve dipped my toe into the pool of self-publishing. For the best possible results, I’ve selected stories in one of the sub-genres I love: the locked-room mystery.

First up is “The Cruise Ship Murder” by Jean Marie Stine, a short story in audiobook form. It’s described as follows:

Classic Locked-Room Mystery and Romance! In this widely reprinted romantic mystery short story by Jean Marie Stine, Dr. Devlin Blake thinks the life of a doctor on a cruise ship will be exciting and romantic. But at first he finds his duties aboard the Pacific Princess dull and monotonous. Then he is called on to solve an “impossible” locked-room murder!

This downloadable audio file contains both the short story and “the author’s homage to John Dickson Carr, the legendary mystery novelist who helped define the “locked room” mystery and the Golden Age of detection.

The homage to Carr actually comes in three ways: the locked room plot, the cabin number, and a post-story summary of Carr’s career.

First: the locked room. A man is found dead on a ship in Cabin A-13, locked from the inside, a knife in his back. His wife is in the cabin with him, but the reader knows she is innocent. So how was the man killed?

It’s a version of the situation in Carr’s (writing as Carter Dickson) The Judas Window, certainly one of the top 5 locked rooms ever. But nothing new is brought to it here, so I’m not sure Carr is getting a tribute so much as Stine is getting a free plot. And the clue that theoretically “proves” who the murderer is has a hole you could navigate a cruise ship through.

Second: the Cabin number. Carr became well-known for his novels, but during World War II embarked on a second career writing radio plays. One of his most famous was The Mystery of Cabin B-13, a brilliant and practical variation on the Paris Exposition story. Here Stine has the action take place in Cabin A-13, but otherwise there is no connection.

Third: the summary of Carr’s career at the end. This is a by-the-numbers overview of Carr which could be useful to readers (listeners) who’ve never heard of him. Sadly, the narrator reads the wrong title for The Judas Window, the novel on which this short story is based.

All in all, this story gave me little faith in self-published works.

My second expedition took me to the book Alias: Simon Hawkes: The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in New York, by Phillip Carraher. These are stories supposedly taken from Watson’s notes about what Holmes did after the struggle with Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls and before his reappearance in The Empty House. Apparently he took the alias Simon Hawkes and lived in Manhattan.

Holmes later told Watson of these adventures, but Watson never wrote stories based on them. So Carraher is free to write about Holmes (Hawkes) without trying to duplicate Doyle’s writing style.

The plots are terrific! Carraher has two locked room mysteries here, and both are clever. In “The Adventure of the Magic Alibi” the killer is locked in a room at the time the murder occurs outside the room, and in “The Adventure of the Glass Room” two victims are found dead inside a glass room, which is inside a second locked room! Both are well worth reading.

The problems? Well, I believe this is a case where the author would have been better served by traditional publishing. The text is riddled with typos, including the misspelling of the detective’s name, which really leaps out at you. “Magic Alibi” is actually a novella, but should have been a short story. An editor would likely have removed the tedious middle section which is so long that you figure out the solution to the mystery before it’s over. And if we hadn’t been told that these were Holmes stories, we would have no idea, since there is no indication of it from the detective’s methods or manner. 

Of course traditional publishing is no guarantee of quality either, and I’ve read many stories published in national magazines and major anthologies that are worse than Carraher’s—minus the typos. I have no idea if he’s submitting his stories to traditional publishers, but he should be.

So that’s a look at two self-published works. Hardly a comprehensive or fair overview, so I’ll do some more in the future.

Something Old: The Spherical Ghoul, by Fredric Brown

Something New: White Corridor, by Christopher Fowler

“The Spherical Ghoul,” by Fredric Brown, centers on the unusual events that befall a mortician inside a locked morgue. A ventilation shaft plays a key but unpredictable role in this locked room mystery.

Brown was a professional writer, which means he wrote a lot, and he wrote across genres, writing just about anything he could for money. He never hit the big time. Some of what he turned out was workmanlike, and some of it was just below masterpiece level.

In his best mystery novels, including The Screaming Mimi and Night of the Jabberwock, Brown excelled at introducing an ordinary character with a simple desire, and slowly immersing him in a plot of ruthless complexity. In The Screaming Mimi, our hero sees a beautiful woman, and knows she’s out of his league, but he wishes that he could spend just one night with her. In Night of the Jabberwock, the protagonist is a small-time newspaper editor, good at his job and happy with the role he plays in town, but he wishes he could break just one real news story in his life. Both of them are in for the night of their lives.

“The Spherical Ghoul” is a short story without the scope of his full-length work, but it has a nice mundane-turned-macabre touch that will give you an idea what he can do. It’s in the collection Homicide Sanitarium, and in Bill Pronzini’s anthology Tales of the Dead. If you want to try one of his books, I suggest Night of the Jabberwock for you Golden Age/puzzle types, The Fabulous Clipjoint for those looking for a more straightforward crime novel, and The Screaming Mimi for you noir types. Brown had something for everybody.

Christopher Fowler does not have something for everybody, but he does have a lot. He also writes across genres, but is now focusing on mystery. His series, about London’s Peculiar Crimes Unit (PCU), is a heady mix of the puzzle and the procedural, the old and the new, the natural and the supernatural. It features the aging, eccentric, and occasionally brilliant Arthur Bryant and the slightly-younger-but-still-aging John May, who together founded the PCU to focus on unusual crimes that might not get the focused attention needed to solve them. As a unit not in the mainstream of the department, the PCU is continuously fighting for its budget and survival, and Bryant in particular knows that he’s unlikely to work at anything useful again if the PCU is shut down.

The latest, White Corridor, centers on the unusual events that befall a coroner inside a locked mortuary. A ventilation shaft plays a key but unpredictable role in this locked room mystery.

Most of his earlier Bryant and May books have been billed as locked room mysteries, but none of them was. I’m delighted to say that this is not only a locked room mystery, it’s a locked room mystery with an extremely clever new solution.

The locked room isn’t the only thing going on here. There are three plot strands: Byant and May are trapped on the road in a snowstorm, a killer is stalking two people across the English countryside, and the PCU is faced with an impending royal visit.

I found the pace at the beginning a bit frustrating—as often happens with multiple viewpoint books there isn’t the same amount of incident in the different strands so some are more interesting than others–and was particulary impatient with the killer’s back story, but after the first few chapters everything starts to tick along quite nicely, and the plots all mesh beautifully at the end. The real charm of the series is the long (60 years!) and loyal relationship of Bryant and May. His previous books are worth reading too. Start with the first in the series: Full Dark House.

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Bonus Bookfling: Just because it’s the first in the series doesn’t mean Full Dark House was the first book about Bryant and May. They also feature in a horror novel, Rune, that was published in the early 90’s.

Something Old: The Problem of Cell 13, by Jacques Futrelle

Something New: The Book of the Dead, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

This year marks the 100^th anniversary of the publication of one of the greatest stories ever written. “The Problem of Cell 13″, by Jacques Futrelle, was published as a serial in The Boston American newspaper in 1907, and it has been published and re-published many times since. I would imagine that aside from a half-dozen stories by a guy named Doyle it is the most anthologized mystery story ever.

Brains and ingenuity are the stock-in-trade of Futrelle’s character, Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen. After quickly learning the rules of chess he defeated a world champion in an exhibition, and the newspapers have dubbed him The Thinking Machine as a result. The Problem of Cell 13 features the consequences of a bet that Van Dusen makes in the course of a friendly dinner discussion. He bets that he can “think himself out” of a jail cell, that is, that he can “so apply his brain and ingenuity that he can leave a cell”. He has to cleverly make use of the limited resources available to him to accomplish what he wants to do.

Arrangements are made with the warden to have Van Dusen admitted to a cell, and treated like any other prisoner. And then the fun starts.

If you know how to read, then you should read this story. Early on it was recognized as a classic, and when Queen conducted his informal poll of writers and critics to select the best detective story ever in 1950, The Problem of Cell 13 came in sixth. (Doyle had a story higher on the list, as did five other very worthy writers. More on those another time.) I don’t think it has slipped very far down the list since.

Futrelle wrote more than 40 stories about Van Dusen. As you might guess, the stories have puzzles to be solved at their heart, and Futrelle was also a born storyteller who had a way with narrative drive. You can read them all here:

http://www.futrelle.com/

Start with Cell 13, and then try a lesser known but no less brilliant story called “The Problem of the Crystal Gazer.”

In 1995, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s thriller Relic was published. It was a mind-blower. These guys took the high concept of a thriller and added the ingenuity of an old-fashioned detective story to come up with the best mystery/crime/suspense/thriller/horror novel since The Silence of the Lambs.

Since then they’ve written 10 more books, some standalone, some in a series. The Book of the Dead, out in paperback several weeks ago, again takes place against the setting they have exploited so successfully, the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, and again stars FBI agent Aloysius Pendergast and his evil brother Diogenes. The Preston/Child books wander wonderfully across the line separating the supernatural from the natural, and often you don’t know which kind of book you’re in until the end.

In Book of the Dead, Pendergast finds himself in solitary confinement in a jail cell. He has to cleverly make use of the limited resources available to him to accomplish what he wants to do. Interestingly enough, he does exactly what The Thinking Machine did over 100 years ago! In this particular case they really are using the ingenuity of an old-fashioned detective story.

That’s terrible, you might say. Well, maybe. I admit I would have enjoyed the story more if the writers had tipped their hats by having Pendergast say something along the lines of “Just a trick I learned from my old friend Futrelle.” Certainly Preston and Child have demonstrated that they can come up with great ideas on their own, and these particular items are not at the core of the story.

But sometimes it’s hard to resist borrowing, especially when an idea is so good, and so little known to the public at large. While you’re reading Futrelle’s Thinking Machine stories on that web site I provided above, why don’t you pay close attention to one called, “Kidnapped Baby Blake, Millionaire,” and compare it to a certain story written by a man named Poe 60 years earlier.

Always steal from the best.

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Bonus Bookfling: Jacques Futrelle was only 37 years old when he went down on the Titanic after making sure his wife got into a lifeboat. Read more about Futrelle’s life and the Titanic tragedy in this Mystery Scene article by Jeff Marks.

The game is afoot! There are few phrases in the mystery genre that are so recognizable and so quoted. But what does it really mean?

First, the sources. In perhaps the most exciting start to any Holmes story, Watson is awakened by Holmes in the middle of the night at the beginning of “The Adventure of the Abbey Grange”:

“Come, Watson, come!” he cried. “The game is afoot. Not a word! Into your clothes and come!”

The phrase was first popularized by Shakespeare, most notably as used in the famously rousing St. Crispin’s Day exhortation to the troops in Henry V:

I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips.
Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry ‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George!’

Clearly this is a hunting metaphor, derived from the fox hunt. The “game” is in fact the fox, that is, the quarry or the prey. This can also be seen in Shakespeare’s other use of the term, in Henry IV Part 1; Act 1, Scene 3. Hotspur and Worcester are trying to convince Northumberland of the brilliance of their plan, but Northumberland points out to Hotspur:

“Before the game is afoot, thou still let’st slip.”

In other words: “But you’ve let the hounds off the leash before the fox is even loose, as you always do, you rash doofus!”

It’s almost certain that Doyle knew of the term from Shakespeare. As a staunch traditionalist, he defended Shakespeare against Johnny-come-lately’s like Shaw, and firmly believed in the beneficence of the British Empire. It’s pure speculation on my part, but it seems likely that the St. Crispin’s Day speech would have been one of his fondest passages.

Did Doyle use the phrase anywhere else? The newest and best canonical reference is Leslie Klinger’s New Annotated Sherlock Holmes. Klinger says that Doyle used the phrase in only one other place, in The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge:

“I could tell by numerous subtle signs, which might have been lost
upon anyone but myself, that Holmes was on a hot scent. As
impassive as ever to the casual observer, there were none the
less a subdued eagerness and suggestion of tension in his
brightened eyes and brisker manner which assured me that the game was afoot.“

This is a direct comparison Holmes to a hound on the hunt, and certainly Doyle did this kind of thing all the time. If we take a further look at Abbey Grange, we see that the hunting references are used throughout, such as this one:

“We will draw the larger cover first.”

Klinger calls this “a shooting metaphor, meaning to draw the fox from his covert or temporary lair. When the animal ‘breaks cover,’ the hunt begins.” (pp 1179). But Klinger doesn’t comment on the meaning of “The game is afoot.”

I think it’s clear that Doyle was also using “The game is afoot” as a hunting metaphor. Nowadays the phrase is often used more generally to invoke excitement and the sense that something thrilling is about to start, and that what is about to start is some sort of game or challenge. Klinger even uses it as his sign-off in his introduction to The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, indicating that the reader can turn the page for the fun to start.

The new meaning has come about largely because of the word ‘game’ and its connotations in the mystery field. For many years when there was more emphasis on the puzzle mystery then there is now, the mystery was described as a game between the writer and the reader. Over time through the process of folk etymology the new meaning has begun to outshine the old.

I don’t imagine I’m the first person to consider the origin and meaning of this phrase. There’s got to be some article in the Baker Street Journal about it, or some essay somewhere by a Holmesian scholar. Does anyone know of one?

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Bonus Bookfling: The Klinger book is a wonderful resource. The annotations are knowledgeable and not intrusive. It’s easy to read the text without tripping over footnote references, and equally easy to find the annotations if you want them. See here for Jon L. Breen’s review in Mystery Scene.

A few years ago I noticed something mildly unusual about the titles of the Matt Scudder books by Lawrence Block. See if you notice the same thing. Here are the titles of the first four:

The Sins of the Fathers
Time to Murder and Create
In the Midst of Death
A Stab in the Dark

Block wrote these books about Scudder from 1976-1981. They were good, but didn’t appear to be leading to bestseller status. But then he wrote Eight Million Ways to Die, a seminal book in the field. Even at this point he thought he was done with the character, but he went on to write another classic, the prequel When the Sacred Ginmill Closes, and it was off to the races. Here are the next four titles:

Eight Million Ways to Die
When the Sacred Ginmill Closes
Out on the Cutting Edge
A Ticket to the Boneyard

Notice anything yet? No? Then take a look at the next three:

A Dance at the Slaughterhouse
A Walk Among the Tombstones
The Devil Knows You’re Dead

That’s 11 books in a row with five words in the title! I noticed the pattern after book 7, and thought it was an interesting marketing choice. I can only think of one other writer who has gone for a series with the same number of words in the title. Robert Ludlum started with The Scarlatti Inheritance and followed up with The Osterman Weekend, The Matlock Paper, The Gemini Contenders… 17 three word titles in all during his lifetime, with more still continuing to appear after his death. S.S. Van Dine did it too, but his pattern involved more than just the number of words.

Here’s Scudder book number 12, which doesn’t conform:

A Long Line of Dead Men

When this book came out I wondered why they changed the pattern. I said to myself, “Why would they do that? 11 in a row, and then they changed it!” It would have been easy enough to call the book, for example, Long Line of Dead Men, or This is the 12^th Scudder, or even This Title Has Five Words. I mentioned it to a buddy of mine who also liked the Scudders, and he just looked at me like I was crazy.

But he was unfamiliar with the mystery world in general and unaware of the long tradition of using patterned or sequenced titles. Sue Grafton with her alphabet series, and Janet Evanovich with her One For the Money, Two For the Dough, etc., are the most direct examples, but other writers such as Van Dine, Ellery Queen, John D. MacDonald, and C.W. Grafton (yes, her father) were doing this kind of thing long ago.

So I decided to ask an editor I know, who can usually answer these kinds of questions. I said to her, “Why would they do that? 11 books in a row, and then they changed it!”

She looked at me like I was crazy.

She assured me it was a coincidence, and that no one else in the world would ever notice such a thing, and by the way, did I know I was crazy?

I was unruffled by this obviously uninspired opinion.

At the next Bouchercon (the World Mystery Convention) I saw Larry Block himself waiting for an elevator in the hotel lobby. I saw my chance to settle the matter and satisfy my curiosity. Knowing that the titles may have been chosen by his publishers I asked him, “Why would they do that? 11 books in a row, and then they changed it!”

He looked at me like I was crazy.

What do you think? What are the odds of 11 books in a row being published with five word titles? Has this ever happened before in the history of publishing? It had to be done on purpose, right?

Or am I just crazy?