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| Alfred Walter Stewart (J. J. Connington) |
Having written Masters of the "Humdrum" Mystery, about British Golden Age mystery writers Cecil John Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts and Alfred Walter Stewart, I am pleased that Orion Books' Murder Room imprint have fifteen of Stewart's J. J. Connington detective novels out now.
The newer eBook editions have a 4600 word introduction on the Connington novels written by me especially for this series. Of course there's much more on Connington in Masters of the "Humdrum" Mystery, but these Murder Room reprints are a good place to start!
Three of the Connington titles, Murder in the Maze, The Castleford Conundrum and The Tau Cross Mystery (In Whose Dim Shadow) have been published in paperback editions from Coachwhip as well). Both the Coachwhip and Murder Room editions are available from Amazon.
I think you've convinced me of the delicate depths available from the Humdrum. (I'm becoming a Humdrummer? Humdrumite? Humdrummy?) I re-read Connington's "Case with Nine Solutions" a while back for my blog and in retrospect, I think I enjoyed it even more than I admitted; I recall it with pleasure 18 months later. I think I'll try to afford all of these and see if I can space them out over a couple of months, rather than gobbling them all at once LOL. How can I get on Orion's review list, I wonder?
ReplyDeleteNoah, I will have to find out how that works! I am glad Orion has taken up the Connington cause. Now I just wish they would head down Street.
ReplyDeleteThey keep postponing the publication date of Minor Operation, one of the three titles that I haven't got yet! The other two have been published since Nov last year. I prefer they publish Burton titles. The majority of the Burton titles are very difficult to get in affordable prices, at least to me.
ReplyDeleteThe GAD writers that I couldn't read their books:
1) James Corbett- sheer stupidity. He could not remember what he had written 3 pages before!
2) Gladys Mitchell- can't believe Nick and Jason love her books so much! Although I admit I enjoyed reading some of her titles.
3) Harry Stephen Keeler- Read one title(can't remember) for the first 20 pages and so( ebook given free by Fender) and stopped. Can't believe Patrick gave him a good review!
4) Novels by Bailey. Plain boring! Something to do with his prose. But I enjoyed reading his 64 short stories. Only 20 short stories left.
5) Some titles in Allingham canon. We can see plainly that her strength was WORDs not plot. She used detective genre as a platform to show her real talent i.e constructing beautiful prose. I prefer Marsh( though I know you and Patrick are not fond of her books) who at least put efforts to produce brilliant to decent plots. I suggest you read Singing In Shrouds. Very good denouement and character development.
P/s: Hope your second book about the other humdrum writers will be published soon. Can't wait to read your opinion on Wade and Cole. In my opinion Lorac aka Carol Carnac and Punshon were qualified to be called humdrum writers but sadly, their books have been ignored for so long even from GAD fanatics! Thanks to Ramble publishers for publishing their titles!
Keep the GAD books revival coming!
I like Punshon and could have written a chapter on him for the book but didn't feel the association of him as a "Humdrum" was strong enough. Took tons of notes on his books.
DeleteH. C. Bailey's Reggie Fortune is easier to take in short stories! Some of those are rather brilliant, I think.
I wouldn't say I don't like Marsh, I have read all her books and I like a number of them--guess I should review one I like!
I do wish the Street books, the Rhodes, Burtons and Wayes, all could be made available as eBooks at least, with an outfit like The Murder Room.