The Vagaries of Vintage Books

 As a confirmed bookaholic, I spend as much time in used book stores as in stores that sell new books. I collect Agatha Christie books, and I'm always looking for books with cool vintage covers. I inherited my mom's collection of John Creasey's Gideon books and Mary Roberts Rinehart books. I don't come across Erle Stanley Gardner books that often, but I usually add them to my collection when I do. Like the Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden books I used to love, the Perry Mason mysteries don't age particularly well. They are still fun to read, though, and I occasionally binge on the 1950s Perry Mason TV series, too. Some of my favorites are non-Perry Mason books. THE CASE OF THE IRATE WITNESS is a collection of stories, and I enjoyed them all. I've come across some vintage Perry Mason books recently that I also enjoyed.

I'm a big fan of short stories - especially mystery short stories - and I've been reading and collecting my favorite anthologies for most of my life. I don't collect autographed books or first editions, I just hang on to books I especially like so I can read them over and over again. 

The Golden Age of Mystery always fascinated me, and authors who were once famous and then faded from the public eye. I grew up in the Sixties, so some of my favorite "vintage" authors, are a lot more recent than the "Golden Age" but they can still be hard to find. I've read all Patricia Wentworth's books and many remain on my keeper shelf. Ngaio Marsh and Josephine Tey are favorites, as are Dorothy Eden, Josephine Bell, Phyllis A. Whitney, Anya Seton, Susan Howatch, Velda Johnston, Evelyn Anthony, Dorothy L. Sayers and, of course, Mary Stewart. My mom loved Nero Wolfe stories - I have a few, but they aren't particular favorites. I've read all the 87th Precinct novels by Ed McBain, and I'm a big fan of Donald Westlake's books, too. A note on Ngaio Marsh - I'm very happy that most of her books are back in print, and I've even found a copy of her wonderful autobiography, BLACK BEECH AND HONEYDEW. I highly recommend that, and Agatha Christie's AUTOBIOGRAPHY, too.

I like Michael Gilbert's books, also those by John Dickson Carr and Carter Dickson, Paul Gallico is a longtime favorite and I like some old books by Phillip MacDonald (like THE RASP and THE NOOSE). my favorite Phillip MacDonald book by far is THE LIST OF ADRIAN MESSENGER, which I have reread a gazillion times. It was also made into a movie - unlike the book, the movie is absolutely horrible. Don't see it on any account. (If you want to see a really good old mystery movie, check out THE WRONG BOX.)



Anyway, I like modern editions of anthologies edited by Martin Edwards and E.C.R. Lorac, and when I come across interesting covers/titles of vintage books I like to check them out. Last week I came across several books by Golden Age author Vernon Loder. I decided to give THE SHOP WINDOW MURDERS a shot. On the one hand, I liked the concept - the Store (with a capital S) in the story is on London's Oxford Street and is clearly based on Selfridges. (Like Marshall Field & Co. in Chicago, Selfridges was famous for it's beautiful store windows and exclusive stock.)

Gordon Selfridge started out working at Marshall Field's, and there were always similarities between the two:

https://www.bostonteapartyship.com/tea-blog/mr-selfridge-took-the-marshall-fields-tea-room-to-london

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Gordon_Selfridge

Loder's books have recently been reissued in hardcover, and I was looking forward to reading them all. Unfortunately, the gap between 1930 and 2022 was just too large for me. The blatantly racist and/or mysoginistic comments throughout the book were jarring. A newly invented collapsible mini-helicopter plays a big part in the complex plot, but there are far too many pages spent on the weather conditions required for a smooth landing and technical details 

I've always been impressed with the number of characters Agatha Christie can weave into a story, but Loder only succeeded in confusing me. I counted at least 21 names characters - one of which was sometimes called Webley and other times called Wembley. Two of the female characters had names which would never work in this day and age - Mrs. Hoe and Miss Tumour. At times, Loder seemed to become stuck on particular letters - Davis and Devenish, Melis, Mann and Mander, Cane, Corbet and Crayter, Green and Grindley, Gay and Hay, and the double-barrelled Peden-Hythe mother and son.

When the author described one character's "Parthian shot" I thought it was a typo. When I looked it up, it turns out Parthian shot and parting shot have both been in common use, almost interchangeably, since the mid-19th century. So I did learn something new!

Awhile back author and fellow Agatha Christie fan Jeffrey Marks introduced me to the little know Golden Age author Craig Rice in his book WHO WAS THAT LADY? (2001). I read some of her books and found them interesting but not addictive.

I'm always looking for vintage classics like these: https://crimereads.com/ten-golden-age-detective-novelists-who-deserve-to-be-better-known/

Let me know if there are other vintage (or vintage-y) authors I might have missed. Happy Reading!



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