Taking Three Roads Less Travelled

 

Carr, Queen and Sayers, three of the Golden Age giants:  After reading many, many, tickle me they did not, so on the rest I'm passin'  

Happily, my mystery reading year was transformed by the Puzzle Doctor and Dean Street Press.

  Steven Barge, aka The Puzzle Doctor , is an historian of crime fiction. His outstanding blog is a dangerously appealing treasure trove of reviews and articles about mystery and crime fiction, especially of the early-middle  decades of the 20th century. It  also prominently highlights the author whom he has almost single-handedly brought back to public attention, Brian Flynn with his Anthony Bathurst series. I say "almost" single-handedly because he has a partner in crime, Dean Street Press. This publishing house focuses on finding, tidying up, and reissuing books from the 1920s to the 1950s. Many of these are mysteries, and the Anthony Bathurst series is a testament to the hard work and dedication of both Steven Barge, for his detective work in finding them and his insightful introductions,  and Dean Street Press for making them available widely. On that note, as someone who reads only ebooks and does not own a Kindle, I am especially grateful to DSP for making their books available on my platform of choice, Kobo (casts stink eye at British Library Crime Classics).  

Here are my summary judgments as of the time of writing,

 

1         Brian Flynn. 

            4 finished, 0 DNF. Average score at The StoryGraph 4.06    Current TBR count - 5

After four books, Bathurst still feels a bit like Wimsey lite, but that "lite" is very important. Without Sayers’ fixation on dumping huge chunks of extraneous erudition and fancy foreign phrasing into the story just to show off, the Bathurst mysteries are much more enjoyable. There’s also less (not none) of the casual racism and xenophobia of the Wimsey stories.  As the series progresses,  the construction of the mysteries themselves improves, and thanks to the reading pleasure he has already given me, I’m looking forward to reading several more.

 

2         Francis Vivian. 

            4 finished, 0 DNF.  Average score at The StoryGraph 4.12    Current TBR count - 7

I had never heard of this author before reading a guest blog post at Dean Street Press. Vivian's inspector Knollis resonated with me instantly for being an ordinary character who happens to be a very good detective. He leads an unremarkable life, but is very good at his job, knows it,  and enjoys what he does. The lack of overt "drama" I find appealing. I was also pleased to note that this 1950s policeman has quite strong and pronounced views against capital punishment. Another thing I like about the Knollis series is that it's short - only 11 books versus the 50+ of the other two authors featured in this post.

 

3         Christopher Bush

           2 finished, 0 DNF. Average score at The StoryGraph 4.25    Current TBR count - 6  

Another author I'd never heard of, and another nascent addiction pushed on me by The Puzzle Doctor's blog and enabled by Dean Street Press.  Only two books in to  his Ludovic Travers series might be a bit early to make a judgment, but I've really enjoyed both. Possibly the highest praise I can give Bush so far is that his writing at times reminds me of Wodehouse. I really dislike Wimsey, but I really enjoy whimsy, and there have been several flashes of it in the two books I've read so far. Passages where it seems like the author simply had fun constructing the sentences, as in this example

     He even chuckled aloud at the thought of how he had salved Ludo’s conscience. He certainly wouldn’t know where he was going to be at any particular moment from now on.
     As a matter of fact, at the precise moment when Ludo was making that identical statement in answer to Burrows’ question, it was extraordinarily true. Not only was Ludo completely ignorant of the whereabouts of his fellow-conspirator, but Wrentham had not the faintest idea of them himself. 

 After the tedious and largely joyless hard work of reading three authors that mystery orthodoxy says MUST be read, passages like that one are a delight. 

 

I am not a huge fan of the modern 'cosy' genre, which often features a butcher, baker or candlestick maker discovering a latent talent for out-detecting the local plod while peddling their wares, but  all three of these authors might be described as 'cosy' in a non-pejorative sense. They are relaxing and fun, and many of their works are 'fair play' so if the reader wants to take the sleuths on, they can. If, on the other hand, the reader simply wants to travel back to a time when reading was a primary way of passing leisure time, and when Elmore Leonard's  "cut to the chase" rules of writing hadn't been written and elevated to Canon (despite his very reasonable preface), then any or all of these three will do very nicely indeed. Profound thanks to both The Puzzle Doctor and Dean Street Press for these forgotten treats! Also, apologies and belated thanks to Curtis Evans, who has been the driving force behind reviving both Bush and Vivian, and whose introductions to both add much to the reading experience.

 

I have more to say about Dean Street Press, though.