Murder in the Basement by Anthony Berkeley (1932)

Sometimes it's just as difficult to identify the victim as the murderer.

Mystery Review: Murder in the Basement again demonstrates that Anthony Berkeley (also known as Francis Iles) was one of the more clever and creative writers of Golden Age mysteries, although unknown today. In Part I a body is found and must be identified with no clues. In Part II the reader is presented with the draft of an unfinished mystery novel containing a lengthy description of various teachers at a private school and must discern how it relates (as far as victim and murderer) to what was learned in the first part. Part III brings everything together after first enduring the requisite twists. The three sections of Murder in the Basement are essentially presented out of order, including a story within a story (which wasn't necessary!), making it all that much more of a challenge for the happy reader. The eighth Roger Sheringham mystery. Sheringham is a novelist who often strays into murders, usually with friend Inspector Moresby of Scotland Yard. Murder in the Basement was addictive and the perfect distraction from waiting rooms and other annoyances. As is so often the case, the ending is a matter of taste.  [4★]

"Recitatif" by Toni Morrison (1983)

Two girls of different races meet in an orphans' shelter and meet again four more times as their lives evolve.

Story Review: "Recitatif" is Toni Morrison's only short story. She said that she wrote it "as a lark" and yet Zadie Smith wrote an introduction to the book longer than the story itself and readers bend themselves into pretzels trying to deal with it. There's that much to it: an examination of our internal prejudices, a projection of a post-racial world where race is still all-important. As an experiment or exercise designed to encourage thought and debate it reminds of "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" (1973) by Ursula K. Le Guin, and as a short story that can provoke endless discussion, Zadie Smith rightly adds "Bartleby the Scrivener" (1853) and "The Lottery" (1948). Both stories can drive people crazy with their open-ended misty murk. "Recitatif," too. Morrison intended to use class codes but not racial codes, meaning to provoke and enlighten. But in America class codes are read as racial codes, race as caste. She wrote about the characters Twyla, Roberta, and Maggie in a much more complicated way by not relying on racial identity, and made them persons. There are racial codes and signposts in society -- but which way they point is harder to say. As in the story, either a black or white parent is more likely to say that the other race smells funny, or won't shake hands, or wears large religious symbols, or will bring food to their child. And there are individuals within the races. One might say a black mother might bring food, but an Italian-American mother might be equally likely to do so, and some would think a WASPy mom might not. Once the reader realizes that Morrison has deliberately mixed the racial markers between Twyla and Roberta and there's no way to racially identify either, the reader can then accept them both as people and observe what they make of the situation, racially or otherwise. It doesn't matter which is which, they're equal in feeling racially aggrieved whatever has happened in their lives. All that disguises the central issue, which is Maggie. Maggie is their shared past and their shared victim of prejudice, who is the true "other," with a disability and of indeterminate race, immensely vulnerable and subject to torment by everyone, black and white. Even without racial markers, race still intrudes. Interesting to note there are no significant male characters, as if Morrison wanted to keep a narrow focus on race. Some might question the reduction to two races. In the eastern U.S. people often see only two races, but in the western U.S. there's more recognition of a diversity of colors, ethnicities, and national origins called "races." Having worked in a field where awareness of racial differences was a job requirement this short story hit a lot of buttons for me. That work required we turn off racial expectations (at least aloud) and see only through the eyes of those involved. Not always easy, but I think something like what Morrison is talking about. By the way, I looked it up: a "recitatif" is a musical term identifying a free vocal style imitating the natural inflections of  speech and used for dialogue in performance. In "Recitatif" Morrison wanted to alter the language, to free it, not repress or confine but to open it up. By opening up the language she unlocks our minds and allows discussion to unfold.  [4★]

The Notting Hill Mystery by Charles Felix (1862)

An insurance investigator fears that the mysterious Baron R. is a modern day (1855) Bluebeard.

Mystery Review: The Notting Hill Mystery (1862) is called "the first detective novel" and so of historical interest, even if we're unsure who wrote it. Charles Felix was a pseudonym, probably of Charles Warren Adams. It's uncertain. "Felix" also wrote Velvet Lawn (1864) and The Little House by the Railway Arch (unclear if ever published). Other candidates for the "first" are R.D. Blackmore's Clara Vaughan (1864); The Dead Letter (1866) by Seeley Regester (aka Metta Victoria Fuller); Émile Gaboriau's  L'Affaire Lerouge (1866) (The Widow Lerouge or The Lerouge Affair) featuring detective Monsieur Lecoq (based on real-life thief turned detective Eugène François Vidocq); and The Moonstone (1868) by Wilkie Collins. Curious that so many contenders showed up around the same time and only a couple of decades prior to A Study in Scarlet (1887). The "detective" here is an insurance investigator named Ralph Henderson (credited on the book's title page as R. Henderson, Esq.). Our author, Charles Felix, has built this record from the sum total of Mr. Henderson's extensive investigations, which is told in letters, interview statements, diary entries, lab results, etc. The Notting Hill Mystery is ahead of its time as a sort of widely-documented epistolary-esque novel. The ending is also modern in that it's open-ended and allows the possibility that the

criminal gets away with heinous crimes: "Are crimes thus committed susceptible of proof, or even if proved, are they of a kind for which the criminal can be brought to punishment?" My copy is a digital facsimile of the original from the British Library (with the utilitarian cover pictured, circa 2011), and as such includes 32 pages of advertisements of other 1865 publications by the publisher Saunders, Otley, and Co., which are fascinating in their own right. In 2012 another digital facsimile (sans the advertisements) was published by the British Library but with the original, distinctive illustrations by George Du Maurier (Daphne's grandfather), an invaluable, investigatory Introduction by Mike Ashley, and a much more winning vintage distressed cover in brown and gold, crediting the author as Charles Warren Adams. The Notting Hill Mystery was also republished in 2015 as part of the British Library Crime Classics series by The British Library Publishing Division and Poisoned Pen Press. This all just scrapes the surface. The story is too longwinded for modern tastes, incorporating supernatural beliefs, mesmerism, psychic twin connections, and historic prejudices (a child is kidnapped by "gipsies"). The pacing is slow and deliberate, each point well nailed down and established in a sort of "belt and suspenders" approach that one might expect from an insurance agent. For those caught up in the time machine of this contemporaneous historical novel none of that will matter, and The Notting Hill Mystery will be a beguiling journey into the archaeology of the detective story.  [4★]

The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells (1897)

Space aliens arrive!

SF Review:  The War of the Worlds revealed a weakness of mine. While reading I'm willing to give up science, logic, and rational thought. I enjoy the images of old SF stories (probably from Edgar Rice Burroughs) in which Mars was a rough, cold, and rocky planet of stern warriors and Venus a steamy, impenetrable jungle of silver-green beings, all mostly humanoid. Wells created some of these images, his ideas often being the foundation for later writings. Including, perhaps, the idea that any alien visitors ("extra-terrestrial" as Wells says) would be violent and bloodthirsty. The logic I'm so quick to ignore in my reading, however, suggests that any species that found our little planet would be so far beyond our science that hostility (and our defenses) would be irrelevant to them. The War of the Worlds is a classic, part of our shared cultural vocabulary as were other novels in his early run of significant works such as The Time Machine (1895) and The Invisible Man (1897). This novel contains an embarrassment of riches, by which I mean ideas. Wells touches on the barbarity of imperialism, the commonality of humankind, the destruction of the precious planet we've been given only to mock and destroy that gift, and the hubris with which we view the universe when we can't even lift ourselves much beyond our own neighborhood. At least The War of the Worlds doesn't express the arrogance of so much early American SF, actually demanded by John Campbell from his authors, that humanity stride fearlessly across the universe, when in fact any visitors could squash us like bugs. Accordingly, the title is something of a misnomer. Here humanity can offer so little resistance to the invaders that it was hardly a war, any more than the indigenous Tasmanians (as Wells notes) could offer the British. Among the technology Wells imagines here are poison gas, lasers, tanks, and flying machines. Survivalist attitudes rapidly spring up as in The Day of the Triffids (1951) and a host of today's post-apocalyptic dystopias. The geographical range of the "war" in Greater London and the Home Counties is described in native detail, which no doubt is immensely enjoyable for English readers, but anyone unfamiliar with London will be rapidly lost (my sense was that the hardy band was moving west when in fact they were moving east to embark for France). The black Penguin Classics edition of The War of the Worlds contains a couple of invaluable maps. This is at times a thoughtful work, embodying the futile hope that future humanity will stand together instead of being at each others throats. Unusually, it's written at an adult level. Although he writes fantasy, Wells always brings the story down to the level of the village and street, making it all seem (at least initially) genuine. He heightens the realism by emphasizing  the ordinary, much as Spielberg likes to do. The reader is left with the image of shell-shocked survivors reeling from overwhelming loss and helplessness, only to awaken to a vanished threat through no action of their own, still scarred and damaged and too aware of what might've been. The hollow victory reflects no glory on humanity. At the same time Wells can get too caught up in the big picture. The protagonist expresses sorrow at the loss of his wife, but how much more real and credible his longing would be if he'd thought to mention her name. Wells also comments cuttingly on religion. When a curate panics at the destruction, a man asks: "What good is religion if it collapses under calamity?" Another comments: "Did you think God had exempted Weybridge? He is not an insurance agent." Although effective, Wells' writing can be pedestrian and commonplace, more useful than awe-inspiring. But that's okay, in The War of the Worlds his ideas are more interesting than the transcription.  [5★]

"Popeau Intervenes" by Marie Belloc Lowndes (1926/29)

Retired cop Popeau has taken a liking to, and is concerned about, the fragile looking, "charming, over-refined" Lady Waverton who is staying in the same hotel.

Mystery Review:  In which French (not Belgian) former chief of police Hercules (not Hercule) Popeau prevents a crime. Probably written in 1926 or 1929, the short story "Popeau Intervenes" presents one of the possible antecedents of the far more famous homonymic detective. Popeau is an ex-Chief of Police in Paris and an ex-secret agent, who worked for the Criminal Investigations Branch. I have to emphasize that he's nothing like that other detective, who is a retired Belgian policeman. In this case Popeau has it easy as everything is overheard or falls into his lap; no legwork needed. There's a gentle humanity to the story that is endearing. Christie's Poirot also had a notable case in which he prevented a crime, recorded as the short story "Wasps' Nest" (1928). "Popeau Intervenes" was originally titled "The Dark Lady."  [3½★]