Looking for books to read I: Mysteries

(Continued in Part II: Not mysteries)

What’s a chap to do?

I’ve read, at this stage, more than a thousand detective stories. What else out there in the genre is worth reading?

The light on the horizon at the moment seems to be the reprint of Patrick Quentin / Q. Patrick / Jonathan Stagge.

On my bookshelves / Kindle, I have:

• Herbert Adams: The Body in the Bunker; The Chief Witness; Death of a Viewer
• Max Afford: Blood on His Hands; The Dead Are Blind; Death’s Mannikins; Owl of Darkness; The Sheep and the Wolves; Sinners in Paradise
• Frederick Irving Anderson: Book of Murder; The Purple Flame
• James Anderson: The Affair of the Mutilated Mink; The Affair of the 39 Cufflinks

(I was disappointed by Blood-stained Egg-cosy – I knew whodunnit fairly early on)

• K.K. Beck: Death in a Deck Chair; Peril Under the Palms

(didn’t think much of Murder in a Mummy Case)

• Josephine Bell: The Catalyst; Pigeon Among the Cats; The Upfold Witch; The Wilberforce Legacy
• Nicholas Brady: Ebenezer Investigates; The Fair Murder; The House of Strange Guests; Week-End Murder
• Lynn Brock: The Dagwort Coombe Murder; The Kink; The Silver Sickle Case; The Slip-Carriage Mystery
• Christopher Bush: TCOT Corporal’s Leave, Fighting Soldier, Missing Men, Murdered Major
• Max Allan Collins: The London Blitz Murders; The Lusitania Murders
• J.J. Connington: No Past Is Dead; Tom Tiddler’s Island
• Freeman Wills Crofts: Antidote to Venom
• William L. DeAndrea: Killed in the Ratings
• Todd Downing: The Lazy Lawrence Murders
• J. Jefferson Farjeon: Mystery in White (started, put down); The Z Murders
• A.E. Fielding: The Charteris Mystery; The Cluny Problem; Scarecrow; The Wedding-Chest Mystery

(I’ve read three mediocre ones by her)

• Hulbert Footner: The Complete Mme Storey Mysteries
• Robin Forsythe: The Ginger Cat Mystery; Missing or Murdered; Murder on Paradise Island; The Spirit Murder Mystery

(I really enjoyed The Polo Ground Mystery, but found The Pleasure Cruise Mystery talky and obvious)

• Jacques Futrelle: The Thinking Machine

(read a dozen or so)

• Anthony Gilbert: Death at Four Corners; The Man in Button Boots; The Man Who Wasn’t There; Murder Has No Tongue; Night Encounter; An Old Lady Dies; Something Nasty in the Woodshed; Treason in My Breast

(very uneven writer)

• Elizabeth Gill: Crime de Luxe

(first two are pleasant reading, but not outstanding)

• William Gore: There’s Death in the Churchyard

(Murder Most Artistic was only so-so)

• Annie Haynes: The Abbey Court Murder; The Blue Diamond; The Bungalow Mystery; The Crime at Tattenham Corner; The Crow’s Inn Tragedy; The Crystal Beads Murder; The House in Charlton Crescent; The Man with the Dark Beard; The Master of the Priory; The Secret of Greylands; The Witness on the Roof

(are these worth reading? Who Killed Charmian Karslake was a flop)

• Anthony Horowitz: The Magpie Murders

(started, put down again – surprising, given I enjoy his Poirot episodes and Foyle’s War)

• Ianthe Jerrold: There May Be Danger
• M.M. Kaye: Death in Berlin; Death in Cyprus; Death in Kashmir; Death in Kenya; Death in Zanzibar

(exotic settings plus apparently fair-play puzzle plot mysteries?)

• Milward Kennedy: Half-Mast Murder
• Rufus King: Diagnosis: Murder; The Lesser Antilles Case; Murder on the Yacht; Secret Beyond the Door

(I’ve read half a dozen of his books – badly written, and artificially tense)

• Charles Kingston: The Highgate Mystery
• Ronald Knox: Double Cross Purposes; Still Dead

(Knox wrote some of the dullest and most anti-climactic detective stories, and is infernally talky – but “Solved by Inspection” is a little masterpiece.  Is Still Dead the one with the body on the train tracks and the engine driver with second sight?)

• Jonathan Latimer: Headed for a Hearse; The Lady in the Morgue
• Szu-Yen Lin: Death in the House of Rain
• Vernon Loder: Choose Your Weapon; Death at the Horse Show; Death at the Wheel; Death by the Gaff; Death of an Editor; The Essex Murders; The Little Man Murders; Murder from Three Angles; Red Stain; The Shop Window Murders; Two Dead; Whose Hand?

(are these more than generic mysteries? I gave up on The Mystery at Stowe)

• E.C.R. Lorac: Case in the Clinic
• A.G. Macdonell: Body Found Stabbed
• Helen McCloy: The Long Body

(McCloy always WRITES well, even when her plots are ropy)

• L.T. Meade and Robert Eustace: The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings
• Stuart Palmer: Four Lost Ladies; The Puzzle of the Pepper Tree
• Winifred Peck: Arrest the Bishop; The Warrielaw Jewel
• Melville Davisson Post: The Strange Crimes of Randolph Mason

(is it blasphemy to say that I hated Uncle Abner? Oldtime religious fundamentalism and pro-slavery)

• E.R. Punshon: The Attending Truth; Dark is the Clue; The Golden Dagger; The House of Godwinsson; Music Tells All; The Secret Search; So Many Doors; Strange Ending
• Clayton Rawson: The Great Merlini

(short stories; I enjoyed the novels)

• John Rhode, as Miles Burton: Death in the Tunnel
• Harriet Rutland: Blue Murder
• M.G. Scarsbrook: Dream of the Dead
• C. St. John Sprigg: The Corpse with the Sunburned Face; Fatality in Fleet Street
• T.S. Stribling: Dr. Poggioli: Criminologist

(supposed to be good, but I have to read the first volume)

• Phoebe Atwood Taylor: The Cape Cod Mystery; Murder at the New York World’s Fair
• Theodore Roscoe: I’ll Grind Their Bones

(Murder on the Way! started well, but turned into proto-Tarantino)

• Edgar Wallace
• Carolyn Wells: The Room with the Tassles; The Man Who Fell Through the Earth; In the Onyx Lobby; The Come Back; The Luminous Face; The Vanishing of Betty Varian; The Gold Bag; A Chain of Evidence; The Mark of Cain; The Diamond Pin; Raspberry Jam; The Mystery Girl

(am I that desperate?)

Any other suggestions?

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I have read the complete works of:

• Margery Allingham
• H.C. Bailey (bar one novel)
• Anthony Berkeley
• Nicholas Blake
• Dorothy Bowers
• John Dickson Carr
• G.K. Chesterton
• Agatha Christie
• Edmund Crispin
• Colin Dexter
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• Cyril Hare
• Georgette Heyer
• Reginald Hill
• Michael Innes
• P.D. James
• H.R.F. Keating
• Ngaio Marsh
• A.E.W. Mason
• Gladys Mitchell
• Ellery Queen
• Dorothy L. Sayers
• Josephine Tey
• S.S. Van Dine
• Henry Wade

and most of:

• Anthony Boucher
• Ernest Bramah
• Christianna Brand
• G.D.H. & M. Cole
• J.J. Connington
• Christopher Fowler (first half-dozen)
• R. Austin Freeman
• Michael Gilbert
• Paul Halter
• Ruth Rendell
• Julian Symons

And about a hundred John Rhodes.

Favourite detective writers: G.K. Chesterton, John Dickson Carr, Agatha Christie, Gladys Mitchell, Nicholas Blake, and Edmund Crispin

Apart from Christie and Carr, favourite detective stories include The Father Brown Stories, the first four Michael Innes novels, Reginald Hill’s On Beulah Height, Gladys Mitchell’s Come Away, Death, and half a dozen by Christianna Brand.  I lean strongly towards the witty, imaginative, literate detective story – but also want a really baffling mystery.

I don’t particularly like Leo Bruce (formulaic and plagiaristic), Elizabeth Daly, or Rex Stout (formulaic again; no story, atmosphere, or characterisation, plus anti-climactic solutions).

Mary Fitt and Peter Dickinson are imaginative, but too wayward to be successful detective writers. (And I say this as a committed – in more ways than one – Gladys Mitchell enthusiast.)