The Oxford Book of American Detective Stories

T. S. STRIBLING (1881-1965)

Although some of the work of southern author T(homas) S(igismund) Stribling might be called local-colour writing, the mainstream novels of this Pulitzer Prize winner are given substance by the author's stance against racism and his talent for satire. Stribling was the product of Clifton, Tennessee, a small town where he lived for much of his life, and later another small town, Florence, Alabama. Typical of welleducated Southerners of his era, he became a teacher and a lawyer, and still found time to write. In his writing, he experimented with various forms, from a trilogy about life in the South to adventure stories set in exotic climes, such as Venezuela. Despite his 1933 Pulitzer for «The Store,» today he is best remembered for the detective stories in which he introduced the psychological sleuth Dr. Henry Poggioli.

Stribling's stories of detection focus on the workings of the human mind as explained by Poggioli, an Ohio State University professor who specialises in psychology and criminology. The professor's solutions of crimes depend less on interpreting physical clues and more on understanding human behaviour.

Stribling published the first series of Poggioli stories in the pulp magazine «Adventure» in 1925 and 1926. Like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who became so weary of Sherlock Holmes that he killed him off, only to bring him back again, Stribling tired of his character and used Poggioli's spectacular death as the climax of the 'final' tale. But Stribling bowed to popular demand, revived the character, and began a second series in 1929 that took him through the early 1930's. A third, and final, series featured the professor's activities from the end of World War II until 1957.

«A Daylight Adventure» is a good example of Stribling's important contribution to the detective form. In it, psychology is at the centre of the 'ratiocination' with which the sleuth solves crimes. Stribling's contribution was broader than that, however. He develops the mildly adversarial relationship between the sleuth and the narrator. And the sardonic wit that Stribling uses to illuminate rural southern society makes him an early exemplar of the detective novelist as regional writer and humorist.