Hanover Browsing
I HAVJE JUST RETURNED from a Sherlock Holmes flicker and it is a crime how Hollywood has murdered the old master. For devout Sherlockians I am reminded that Ben Abramson, 3 West 46th Street, is the publisher of The BakerStreet Journal, the first number of which will appear this month. Its appeal will be to these students of the Sacred Writings who take their Holmes and Watson seriously. Edgar W. Smith, secretary of the Baker Street Irregulars, will edit the Journal.
Many of my Hanover friends, including Dr. John Murtagh, Dean Bill, Mr. Hopkins and others, are devotees of crime fiction and we swap among ourselves the 25- cent reprints which constantly appear in the book stores. Some of them are good but most of them are terrible. Several writers, however, are worthy of serious attention.
The best in this country without much question is Raymond Chandler who now writes for the Hollywood dictators. If you haven't read The Big Sleep (with two very sinister babes), The High Window,Farewell, My Lovely, and Lady in theLake, you have a treat in store for you. Get also his Five Murderers (paper bound), Pick Up On Noon Street which appeared recently in the Avon StoryMagazine, and his article, The Simple Artof Murder, in the Rex Stout Mystery Quarterly, in which he says some honest and shrewd things about the contemporary crime and detective story.
The best writer of English detective stories at the moment for my money is Peter Cheyney. According to Charles Eade, editor of the London Sunday Dispatch, he is a more colorful character than Lemmy Caution, Slim Callaghan, Michael Kells or any other of the heroes of his books. He is a born writer, has lots of ideas, and is afraid of nothing. He gets around and knows all sorts and conditions of people. On August 4, 1914, at the age of 18 he joined the Royal Warwickshire Regiment and in the thick of the Somme fighting in 1916 received severe wounds which made him unfit for further service. He has written poetry, plays, radio dramas, a series of short stories on French criminals (for which he made a deep study of police systems in various countries); he knows the American gangster and London as do few Londoners; he is a first-class amateur psychiatrist; and his life and training fit him wonderfully well for his entertaining stories. In spite of having served as Major Peter Cheyney of the Home Guard in World War 11, he still turns out two stories a year. Look him up. I would call him the Raymond Chandler of England, or if you prefer, I'll call Raymond Chandler the Peter Cheyney of America.
I have not been able to get all of Cheyney's books but I will mention those I have read and which I strongly recommend. His last, Sinister Errand, is a tale of spies and intrigue in war-torn London and is a lulu. I don't think his American publisher (Dodd, Mead) has brought out his Making Crime Pay (Collins in England) but on the other hand you can get The Stars are Dark, They Never SayWhen, The Dark Street, You Can AlwaysDuck, Dark Duet, and maybe others. Look also for Sorry You've Been Troubled,Never a Dull Moment, Mister Caution—Mister Callaghan, and any others you can get your hands on.
There are far too many poor detective stories written and published these days. One in ten may really be good. A few women such as Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham, Mignon Eberhart, Agatha Christie, Helen McCloy, and Dorothy Hughes write good stories but beware of most of them written by females. The type is familiar: a lonely farm, a houseparty, a pent-house, with everybody suspect, everybody questioned interminably in dull dialogue until the story becomes so bad that one is forced to the belief that there is such a demand that publishers accept manuscripts which wouldn't pass the editor of a high school magazine. I wish there were more good ones. Erie Stanley Gardner is prolific and quite good, and the same may be said for George Harmon Coxe, Brett Halliday, and a few others.
For Holmes the woman was always Irene Adler, but in certain contemporary stories there is always a blonde nymphomaniac in every chapter. Sex and crime! How it pays off, but I often long for the gas-lit foggy streets of London with Holmes whispering to Watson: "The game is afoot!"
