Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 103, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 625 & 626, March 1994

The Jury Box by Jon L. Breen

© 1994 by Jon L. Breen

Historical detective stories, once relatively rare, are now one of the field’s most prolific sub-categories. Fans of mysteries set in other times should not be without The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits (Carroll & Graf, $9.95), a generous anthology of over 500 pages edited by Mike Ashley with a foreword by Ellis Peters.

In Ashley’s introduction, he counters a belief, allegedly held by many, that Peters originated the historical detective story. This is something of a straw man discussion, since knowledgeable buffs are surely aware of the earlier contributions, often originating or reprinted in the pages of this magazine, of such authors as Melville Davisson Post, Lillian de la Torre, John Dickson Carr, Robert van Gulik, Theodore Mathieson, and Peter Lovesey, all of whom antedated the debut of Brother Cadfael in 1977.

Ashley also takes on the definition of historical fiction. Does it refer to a story taking place in any past time, or must it be set in a time other than the author’s own? I like the former, broader definition. I have trouble buying the idea that if Max Allan Collins, born 1948, writes a novel set in thirties Chicago, it’s a historical, but if Howard Browne, born 1908, does the same, it’s not. Ashley prefers the narrower definition and limits his consideration almost entirely to fiction set before the twentieth century.

Most of Ashley’s selections are reprints, including such familiar tales as Carr’s classic “The Gentleman from Paris,” Post’s “The Doomdorf Mystery,” and Joe Gores’s Elizabethan “A Sad and Bloody Hour,” along with representative cases of de la Torre’s Dr. Sam Johnson, S.S. Rafferty’s Captain Cork, and van Gulik’s Judge Dee. Following the current trend, one full-length novel is included, Raymond Butler’s Captain Nash and the Wroth Inheritance (1975), about a private detective of 1771.

There are also several originals. John Maddox Roberts’s ancient Roman Decius Metellus is in good form in “Mightier than the Sword,” while Paul Harding (P.C. Doherty) presents a remarkably vivid description of a medieval joust-turned-murder in “The Confession of Brother Athelstan.”

Ashley includes a valuable bibliography of historical detection, but among the Romans, he leaves out the best of the lot: Steven Saylor’s Gordianus the Finder. The first Gordianus short story, the Robert L. Fish Award-winning “A Will is a Way,” is one of the fourteen selections in Edward D. Hoch’s The Year’s Best Mystery and Suspense Stories 1993 (Walker, $21.95). Another entry is one of the best cases for a historical detective who also frequents the pages of EQMM: editor Hoch’s Dr. Sam Hawthorne in “The Problem of the Leather Man,” set in 1937.

Below are considered the latest book-length case for Gordianus, along with other recent examples of the historical mystery.

**** Steven Saylor: Catilina’s Riddle, St. Martin’s, $21.95. The third book-length case for Gordianus the Finder is a gem, combining a classical pure detective plot with reconstruction of real historical events. Though now pursuing the life of a gentleman farmer, Gordianus again becomes involved in Roman affairs when he is asked to play host to Catilina, political rival to his old friend Cicero. Is the headless corpse found in his well connected to the political jockeying? The relationship of Gordianus with his adopted son Meto is especially well done, and Saylor presents the historical record on Catilina, usually cast as a villain by contemporary sources, with even-handedness. The solution of the whodunit puzzle is a textbook example of the Least Suspected Person. (Since I’ve been so damning of overlong mysteries, I should emphasize this is one novel of over four hundred pages that carries its length well.)

**** Joseph Hansen: Living Upstairs, Dutton, $20. This novel of the gay community in World War II Los Angeles tests the definition of historical fiction since the author was himself a bookshop employee and aspiring novelist in that era, as is his nineteen-year-old protagonist. Nathan Reed is worried about lover Hoyt Stubblefield’s seeming involvement in radical politics. This is not a “real people” historical, as most of the characters are fictitious, but movie comic Grady Sutton plays an offstage role; Communist leader Gus Hall delivers the eulogy of a possible murder victim; and William Saroyan has a bit part. There’s enough of a whodunit angle, complete with surprise twist, to justify recommending this to Hansen’s mystery fans, but essentially it belongs with his mainstream novels. However you pigeonhole it, it’s a fine book, rich in vivid characters and observations on life and love, with a superb evocation of time and place.

*** June Thomson: The Secret Files of Sherlock Holmes, Penzler, $20. Thomson’s pastiches are among the best ever written, remarkably capturing the prose and plotting style of the Conan Doyle originals. They eschew celebrity guest appearances and other stunts and gimmicks, presenting straightforward Watsonian accounts of the vanishing James Phillimore, the amateur mendicants, the remarkable worm, the notorious canary trainer (quite different from Meyer’s in the book reviewed below), and three other of the untold cases, along with the requisite trumped up story of how the tales came to light and speculations on their authenticity. The shade of Vincent Starrett must be smiling.

** Nicholas Meyer: The Canary Trainer, Norton, $19.95. With his 1974 bestseller The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, Meyer began the unending string of book-length Sherlock Holmes pastiches, most of them with real historical personages and/or contemporary fictional characters from other authors’ works in the cast. Returning to the field for the first time since The West End Horror (1976), Meyer begins well with a tongue-in-cheek scholarly foreword and an opening chapter that suggest just how good he can be at the game. And certainly, the use of one of Watson’s untold-case tags (“the notorious canary-trainer”) to refer to Gaston Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera and his tutelage of Christine Daaé, is an inspired idea. But when the account proves a virtual rewrite of the Leroux story, with little detection by Holmes and few twists to surprise the reader, the end result is disappointing. The setting is 1880s Paris, and Holmes himself narrates most of the story.

** Tony Hays: Murder in the Latin Quarter, Iris Press, P.O. Box 486, Belt Buckle, TN 37020; $10.95. In the Paris of 1922, a dead body is found in Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company bookstore, and James Joyce, author of the controversial Ulysses, is the main suspect. Among the other expatriates in the cast are Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and Thornton Wilder. Ernest Hemingway, serving as Watson to narrator and detective Jack Barnett, sometimes seems dumber than Captain Hastings. Hays has done a good job of research and provides some interesting touches, but there are problems, including some terrible verbal anachronisms. Most jarring is Barnett’s statement on the third page of the story that Sylvia was “into books” while he was “into forgetting.” Later miscues — “no way,” “no problem,” “goofed” — pale by comparison.

Undoubtedly many readers will classify The Diary of Jack the Ripper (Hyperion, $21.95), eighty-six pages of facsimile and transcript with the balance of the book a narrative account by Shirley Harrison, with the historical fiction. The originally scheduled American publisher, Warner, dropped the book pre-publication when convinced by documents expert Kenneth W. Rendell the found manuscript was a hoax. Making no claims for the discovery’s authenticity, Hyperion includes Rendell’s persuasive report, followed by a rebuttal (also persuasive) by Robert Smith of the British publisher, Smith Gryphon. Whether the diary is really Jack’s or not, the narrative of its discovery is fascinating, and the idea of linking two classic crimes was an inspired one, even if it is a hoax. For the purported author of the diary was James Maybrick, who died in 1889, allegedly the victim of his wife Florence in one of the most notorious Victorian poisoning cases.