Review: Britain's Greatest Detective by Nell Darby

Synopsis: From his offices at Basinghall Street in the City of London, Henry Slater presided over Britain's best-known private detective agency, king of all he surveyed. In the late Victorian era, and into the twentieth century, his name was synonymous with the Golden Age of private detection; he was a truly modern operator, utilising the press and technology, and creating innovative publicity campaigns to keep his agency in the public eye.

One of the key skills of the private detective was the ability to make friends - to infiltrate the lives of individuals, and to get them to trust them with their secrets. Slater, however, would make one mistake: to befriend the wrong person and to entrust them with his secrets. When that friendship ended, competition in the private detective world would lead to a trial so infamous that Winston Churchill himself came to watch proceedings play out at the Old Bailey. The trial would destroy Henry Slater's career, and expose his real identity.

This is the first in-depth study of private detective work in nineteenth and early twentieth century Britain, looking at the 'Golden Age' of private detectives and the work they did. It provides a fascinating look at the type of person who became a private detective, the people who wanted to be their clients - and the crimes that could be committed along the way. This book sheds new light on this profession, building on the author's previous work on female private detectives in order to enable the reader to gain a better understanding of a job that people of all classes desired to do. But it is also about the career of one man. Sherlock Holmes may have been the most famous fictional private detective, but Henry Slater was, for twenty years, the real star of the private detective world.

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This book does what is sets out to do - gives the reader an entree into the world of the early private detectives, the people drawn to this type of work, the methods used, and the cases they were typically involved in. Anchoring this tome is the character of Henry Slater - the self proclaimed "greatest detective" of his time.

Darby notes that it was with the passing of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 that gave rise to the private detective as courts required evidence of matrimonial misdeeds in order to grant a divorce. This was primarily the type of work available for the private detective, especially one with no connection to the police department.

It is against this that Darby focuses on the case that brought down Slater and his agency - the Pollard divorce case - and highlighted the underhanded dealings that went on to secure the evidence (ie: honey trap, payment of witnesses). None of this would have come to light had Slater not spurned the friendship of one of his employees - Francis Stevens - ".. a man who would do anything to get revenge ..." - including setting up a rival agency and using others to bring about Slater's downfall.

The proceeding court case against Slater and his employees is followed in detail, always referring back to the original Pollard divorce case and methodology used in gaining the required evidence.

Darby follows through to not only the conclusion of the case against Slater et al, but also what followed afterwards for the main players in this drama. Did they get off or were all incarcerated? What happened to the Pollards?

At times the construction of the narrative was a little annoying as it tended to go back and forward in the timeline, but overall it was quite easy to follow. The research that went into this tome is very evident, a times a little dry but never uninteresting.

Definitely one for those interested in the detective agencies that were the UK equivalent of Pinkertons in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Why Librarians Are Natural Born Detectives

From Crimereads:

Many a mystery novel featuring an amateur sleuth places a librarian in that role. With good reason—outside of law enforcement, no profession lends itself to the role of detective more readily.

Librarianship requires a combination of temperament and education that produces a professional with a powerful curiosity and the skill set to satisfy it, no matter how obscure the fact we seek. Though often written off as unassuming, cardigan-wearing bookworms, our jobs require traits more often associated with our hard-boiled colleagues in the investigation business.

read more from author M.E. Hilliard

Put that in your pipe: why the Maigret novels are still worth savouring

From The Guardian:

As a six-year reissue project of the series reaches completion, Scottish author Graeme Macrae Burnet explains why Simenon’s Parisian sleuth still matters, 90 years after his first case.

This project has introduced a whole new audience to Simenon’s work, and provided long-standing fans with the chance to renew their acquaintance with the world of Maigret. When Simenon was asked how the Maigret novels differed from his other books – his romans durs – he described them as “sketches”. But are they more than that? Ninety years after the series was begun, are they still worth reading? Yes, and yes.

The character of Maigret is introduced in Pietr the Latvian (1930). It’s a novel that bears some of the hallmarks of the hundreds of pulp novels Simenon had written in the previous years (a surfeit of action and exclamation marks), and this embryonic manifestation of Maigret is more of the alpha-male action hero than in the later novels: “He was a big, bony man. Iron muscles shaped his jacket sleeves. He had a way of imposing himself just by standing there.” But even at the very beginning, there was something else. Maigret has his pet theory: “Inside every wrong-doer and crook there lives a human being. What he waited and watched out for was the crack in the wall, the instant when the human being comes out from behind the opponent.”

In 1948, Simenon was to provide something of a second introduction to Maigret. Maigret’s First Case predates Pietr the Latvian by some 20 years. Maigret is the 26-year-old secretary to Superintendent Le Bret of the Saint-Georges station in Paris. Simenon was by then at the height of his powers as a novelist, and the portrayal of the detective is now more nuanced.

One does not read the Maigret novels in expectation of wild revelation or plot twists, but to inhabit the vividly realised world of Parisian streets, dives, bistros and high-class hotels. If the books are sketches, they are the sketches of an old master. But the thread that runs though all the books is Maigret’s inquiries into the psychology of his adversaries, and it is this unfailing humanity that makes the Maigret books truly worth reading.

read more @ The Guardian

I fell in love with the Maigret books many years ago and borrowed as many as I could find from local libraries. Recently, I came across a number of volumes via local bookshops and secondhand book sales, so eagerly added these to my crime shelf of my own personal library.

I also recently invested in the BBC / Rowan Atkinson series but remember fondly the Michael Gambon series from years gone by.

Me and My Detective - Authors Reveal

From The Guardian: 

Creating a long-running series featuring a much-loved character can be both a blessing and a curse. As time passes in the real world, the writer has to decide how to deal with a fictional timeline. Is it best to age a hero in real time or to let the world move on but keep your hero young? And how does the character develop as social mores change?

Then there’s the question of how, or indeed whether, to draw a series to a close. Christie kills off Poirot in Curtain, and Conan Doyle did his best to wave farewell to Holmes, sending him plummeting to his doom down the Reichenbach Falls. To avoid any such reversals, the late Andrea Camilleri wrote the final novel in his Inspector Montalbano series 14 years ago, giving it to his publisher for safekeeping to be published after his death.

How do their authors coexist with their characters over years – sometimes decades – and what lies ahead?

read more here @ The Guardian

Review: The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes

Synopsis: Enthralled by the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Victorian readers around the world developed a fascination with eccentric detectives and bizarre crimes. 

Featuring an international array of authors and characters, this compilation of 16 short stories showcases the best of the mysteries inspired by the Baker Street sleuth. Their heroes range from famous figures like G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown and Maurice Leblanc's Arsene Lupin to lesser-known but equally captivating characters. "The Problem of the Stolen Rubens," by Jacques Futrelle, centers on Professor Van Dusen, also known as The Thinking Machine, whose superior mental powers and dispassionate approach resemble Holmes'. Robert Barr's "The Absent Minded Coterie" presents French detective Eugène Valmont, a cultured and elegant gentleman . . . but a rather poor investigator. "The Murder at Troyte's Hill," by Catherine L. Pirkis, "The Ninescore Mystery," by The Scarlet Pimpernel author Baroness Orczy, and "Cinderella's Slipper," by Hugh C. Weir, feature a Victorian novelty—a detective heroine. Holmesians and other lovers of old-time mysteries will thrill to these tales of dark deeds and their discovery. 

I liked this foray into detective fiction set contemporaneously with that of Conan Doyle's "Sherlock Holmes". It is hard for some to image that there were no other writers writing detective fiction at this time, and this small tome will introduce many to possibly new authors and protagonists. For those who are more widely read on the subject, it may be a more familiar - though still welcome - well-trodden path.

The Golden Age Detective Fiction Renaissance

From CrimeReads: 

Martin Edwards celebrates a new era of Golden Age mysteries, and takes us through the challenges of bringing beloved series back into print.

Not so long ago, Golden Age detective fiction was hopelessly out of fashion. Yes, Agatha Christie continued to sell, and her books were regularly televised and filmed. But she is a literary phenomenon, an exception who breaks every rule. Fans of the other Crime Queens, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, and Margery Allingham, kept the flame burning, while several good writers came and went who worked essentially in the Golden Age tradition; examples include Patricia Moyes, Dominic Devine, and Sarah Caudwell. But hundreds of writers who made their name in the Golden Age were out of print. And so far as readers and critics were concerned, it was a case of out of sight, out of mind.

read more here @ CrimeReads

Gumshoes: A Dictionary of Fictional Detectives

The enormous explosion of crime fiction over the last decade means that more people are looking for a good mystery than ever before. Many of the most popular mystery books appear in series, and these series feature carefully developed detectives. Gumshoes: A Dictionary of Fictional Detectives by Mitzi Brunsdale includes alphabetically arranged entries on roughly 150 fictional detectives, with an emphasis on contemporary figures. 

The volume provides coverage of familiar and less familiar detectives; male and female protagonists; gay and lesbian lead characters; and figures from a wide range of historical, cultural, and geographical settings. Included are entries on: Jim Chee, Adam Dalgliesh, Gregor Demarkian, Sister Fidelma, Joe Leaphorn, Pharoah Love, Thomas Lynle,L Kate Martinelli, Sharon McCone, Kinsey Millhone, Monsieur Pamplemouse, Easy Rawlins, Ian Rutledge, Shan Tao Yun, and many more. 

Entries discuss the various novels in which the detective appears; the character's locale and time period; the detective's associates, adversaries, and significant others; and the character's investigative techniques. The entries direct the reader to similar series for further reading, and to additional sources of information. The volume closes with a selected, general bibliography; various appendices; and an extensive index.

Inspector George Gently Books by Alan Hunter

Another set of books which inspired a TV series are Alan Hunter's Inspector George Gently series, starring Martin Shaw (of TV series The Professionals fame) as the main character.

A full list of titles (nearly 50 of them) can be found on Hunter's wikipedia page. As Hunter himself prefaces:

"This is a detective story, but NOT a whodunit. Its aim is to give a picture of a police investigator slowly building up his knowledge of a crime to a point, not where he knows who did it - both you and he know that at a fairly early stage - but to a point where he can bring a charge which will convince the jury."

From the 2007 BBC Press Release for the TV Series:

Britain, 1964: a time when the line between the police and criminals has become increasingly blurred; when the proliferation of drugs is about to change the face of policing forever; when Britain's youth stand on the brink of a social and sexual revolution. Inspector George Gently is one of the few good men at Scotland Yard, his sense of public duty an increasingly rare commodity in a police force where corruption is rife and unchecked. In Northumberland, George takes on the headstrong young Detective Sergeant Bacchus.

Writer and Executive Producer – Peter Flannery on adapting the series:

About four years ago I was rummaging in a dusty old bookshop when my hand fell on a paperback book called Gently Through The Mill by Alan Hunter.  Looking through it, I realised it was one of a substantial series of books featuring George Gently of Scotland Yard – the character and the writer being completely unknown to me. I bought the book for a couple of pounds and took it home.

This was not a completely random decision, nor was it inspired by any lifelong devotion to the detective fiction genre, which has always rather eluded me. But I had decided some while earlier to be on the lookout for a series of novels that could provide the basis for potential television adaptation.

To my surprise I found I enjoyed the novel, Gently seemed attractively old-fashioned, not just in his methods and his mindset, but in his values. I found there were dozens more in the series and that they were available for option. I started reading them avidly.

Martin Shaw on playing George Gently:

George is an old-time copper. He fought with General Montgomery in the Second World War; he's a very tough, seasoned fighter. He knows about hardship and has seen tough times, and that's a bonus.  I think he carries a lot of baggage around, what with the grief of the murder of his wife as well. He faces the seemingly impossible task of trying to change a corrupt police force – a one-man mission.