Entries from Westport Public Library BOOK blog tagged with 'classic'
The long and short of it
Raymond Chandler’s Edgar Award winning 1953 novel, The Long Goodbye, was the sixth of his Philip Marlowe mysteries. It has been said that the self-pitying author Roger Wade, whom Marlowe has been hired to save from alcohol-fueled self destruction, is an autobiographical character. This is just one of the topics that the Usual Suspects Mystery Reading Group will discuss next Sunday, September 13th, at 2 pm.Playing Clue in Bollywood
Vikas Swarup, the author of Q&A, the novel that became the critically acclaimed film Slumdog Millionaire, has turned to writing crime fiction. Janet Maslin of the New York Times calls his second novel, Six Suspects, "a Bollywood version of the board game Clue with a strain of screwball comedy thrown in" and adds “the whole thing feels handily confined to the kind of isolated, air-tight setting that Agatha Christie’s readers love.” In a starred review Booklist said “If Agatha Christie wrote a mystery about modern India, it might be something like this.”Shocking news
There are any number of novels based on true crimes. Dominick Dunne has written a number of these. A Season in Purgatory, based on the murder of Martha Moxley in Greenwich comes first to mind. Edgar-winning author Megan Abbott has a new novel, Bury Me Deep, inspired by the Infamous "Trunk Murderess" Winnie Ruth Judd. Abbott’s protagonist Marion Seeley, a young woman abandoned in Phoenix by her doctor husband, finds a job at a medical clinic. She becomes fast friends with Louise, a vivacious nurse, and her roommate, Ginny. Marion is swept up in the exuberant life of the girls, who supplement their scant income by entertaining the town's most powerful men with wild parties. She becomes involved with a local rogue, Joe Lanigan, and when the other women confront Marion about her relationship with Joe, a heated argument leads to murder. Publishers Weekly promises us a “shocking ending.”The Marple Sweepstakes
St. Mary Mead’s sleuth Miss Jane Marple made her debut in a short story which appeared in The Royal Magazine in December 1927. Her first novel-length case was The Murder at the Vicarage in 1930. She is perhaps the most famous of Agatha Christie's creations, despite appearing only in assorted short stories and twelve full-length novels, and she has been portrayed by almost that many actresses on the screen. Get any group of fans together – even two will do it – and the argument begins. Hickson or McEwan? Who was the best Marple? There will be yet a third name entered into this competition when Julia McKenzie makes her first appearance as Marple on July 5th on what is now known as the Masterpiece Mystery program. Four episodes are scheduled, all based on original Christie novels, including my all-time favorite Murder is Easy.Strangeways
Cecil Day-Lewis was England’s Poet Laureate from 1968-1972. He is probably better known to cinema fans as the father of award-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis. While a student at Oxford, Day-Lewis became part of W. H. Auden’s literary circle and helped him edit Oxford Poetry 1927. In 1935 Day-Lewis needed a new roof for his house and decided to supplement his income from his poetry and teaching by writing a detective novel. Using the pseudonym Nicholas Blake he became one of the leading writers in the “Golden Age” of detective fiction. Blake wrote 20 detective novels between 1935 and 1968, 16 of which feature “private enquiry agent” Nigel Strangeways. Strangeways, an Oxford graduate, is the nephew of an Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard, and puts his services at the disposal of Inspector Blount of the Yard, the British Secret Service, and his many friends. In the first Strangeways novel, A Question of Proof, the detective is clearly modeled on his old acquaintance Auden, but Strangeways becomes a far less extravagant and more serious figure in later novels as he ages and sees the world less idealistically, especially in the post-World War II mysteries -- much like his contemporaries Albert Campion and Peter Wimsy.Life on West 35th Street
The very first Nero Wolfe novel by Rex Stout, Fer-de-Lance, was published in 1934, and the upcoming Bouchercon World Mystery Convention in Indianapolis, Indiana (October 15-18) will celebrate this auspicious seventy-fifth anniversary and will feature a Friday evening Wolfean-themed banquet. Long before cozy culinary mysteries were in vogue, Rex Stout’s readers were treated to cooking tips, food lore and gastronomical miscellanea. Besides orchids, the mainstay of his detective Nero Wolfe's leisurely existence was the enjoyment of good food. Wolfe (frequently described as weighing "a seventh of a ton") dined on three generous meals a day. Wolfe's confidential assistant Archie Goodwin recorded the detective’s cases in 33 novels and 39 short stories over a forty year period from the 1930s to the 1970s, and most of them are set in New York City where the detective resides in a brownstone on West 35th Street.I say, Holmes!
In what Publishers Weekly calls an “audacious revisionist view of one of the best-known mysteries of all time,” French literature professor and psychoanalyst Pierre Bayard explains his theory of “detective criticism" in Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong: Reopening the Case of the Hound of the Baskervilles. Applying this critical method, explains Bayard, allows him to be "more rigorous” than detectives and writers, “and thus to work out solutions that are more satisfying to the soul." Arguing that Sherlock Holmes often drew false conclusions, Bayard offers an alternative solution to that reached by Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles.The tale-telling heart, part II
In a bizarre form of tribute no author would invite, Edgar Allan Poe has been cast as the inspiration for a number of fiendish murderers. In Michael Connelly’s The Poet, a serial cop killer in Los Angeles gets his victims to write suicide notes that contain snatches of Poe’s verse. This same character returns in The Narrows. All of New York City is in the thrall of “The Poe Killings” in Heather Graham’s suspense novel The Death Dealer. There has been a string of homicides mimicking Poe’s macabre stories and all of the victims have been members of a literary society devoted to the author. Chicago is the scene of recent Poe inspired crimes in Sheldon Rusch’s For Edgar. And somewhere back in time Harry Houdini teams up with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to investigate a series of chilling murders that imitate those found in Poe’s stories in William Hjortsberg’s Nevermore.The tale-telling heart, part I
January 19, 2009 marks the 200th birthday of Edgar Allen Poe. His words continue to enthrall us and a definitive account of his life – and death – continues to elude us. Some consider Poe the first American literary critic. He was one of the first American crafters of short stories. Some identify him as a pioneer of the science fiction genre. Just about everyone agrees that he is the father of detective fiction. According to the legendary H.R.F. Keating in the Crown Crime Companion, “When you look at the immense panorama of mystery fiction today … it is extraordinary to think that it all sprang from three short stories for magazines” in which, he adds, “… Poe laid down once and forever the rules and foundation for a new sort of fiction.”Hammers and Spades
Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer is back in town after a twelve-year hiatus and caught up in his biggest – and most dangerous – case ever. The Goliath Bone pits Hammer against Al-Qaeda, Homeland Security, the FBI, Mossad, an Israeli vigilante group and a megalomaniac theatrical impresario, who are all scrabbling for a priceless artifact – a thigh bone whose owner stood over ten feet tall, recently unearthed in the Valley of Elah. And Sam Spade – “the blonde Satan” – will return in February, 2009, in Joe Gores’s Spade and Archer, the authorized prequel to Dashiell Hammett’s classic, The Maltese Falcon.Had I but known!
The "Had I But Known" school of mystery writing -- in which the principal character (frequently female) does less than sensible things when involved in a crime which have the effect of prolonging the action of the novel -- originated 100 years ago with Mary Roberts Rinehart in her 1908 book The Circular Staircase. This book will be the featured title for the Usual Suspects discussion next Sunday, April 13th, in honor of the Library’s 100th birthday.Pulp fiction
Walter Satterthwait’s new crime novel Dead Horse is based on the mysterious death of Raoul Whitfield’s second wife Emily.
Although it was ruled a suicide, the book is built around its somewhat questionable circumstances.
Hard-boiled pulp writer Whitfield was the highest paid mystery writer in America in the 1920s and is believed to be Dashiell Hammett’s model for Nick Charles.
Hard Case Crime
From World War II through the 1960s, paperback hard-boiled crime novels were one of the best-selling book publishing genres.
They were written by well-known authors such as Erle Stanley Gardner and Mickey Spillane as well as by promising young writers including Lawrence Block, Elmore Leonard, and Donald Westlake.
This literary form has been resurrected by the Hard Case Crime series, which includes lost masterpieces as well as new novels by today's hot new writers, all complete with stunning original cover art in the grand pulp style.
Conan Doyle, Detective
It should come as no surprise that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of legendary sleuth Sherlock Holmes, was something of an amateur detective himself.
The book Conan Doyle, Detective by Peter Costello explores the many actual investigations he involved himself with including Jack the Ripper, Dr. Crippen and, interestingly enough, the brief disappearance of Agatha Christie in 1916.
New material (more or less) from two notable women authors
From a pioneer of the medieval mystery:
The Trinity Cat and Other Mysteries is a collection of fifteen tales of mystery by Ellis Peters (1913-1995) most of which were written before a certain Benedictine made her rich and famous and one story of which is published here for the first time anywhere.
The cat, alas, does not belong to our beloved Brother Cadfael
Agatha's "Hallowe'en Party"
The trouble starts when a teenager is found drowned in the bucket used for bobbing for apples. Stephen King? No, Agatha Christie!
When apple bobbing goes bad, if Agatha Christie is telling the story it will go bad in a big way and the investigation will be fraught with all of the emotional complications, personality flaws and greedy motives that are her trademarks.
Agatha Christie is widely acknowledged as the Queen of Crime.
The Guinness Book of World Records proclaims her the best-selling writer of fiction of all time, and the best-selling writer of any kind second only to William Shakespeare.
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