The cover art is out for the first five Sara Woods detective novel reissues, nos. 1 through 5 of Woods' 48 mysteries about barrister-sleuth Antony Maitland. These were originally published in the United Kingdom between 1962 and 1964. Anglo-Canadian author Sara Woods was a major figure in what I call the Silver Age of detective fiction, around 1940 to 1980, by the end of which the major figures of the Golden Age had passed away.
Among women mystery writers, inevitably called Crime Queens, Dorothy L. Sayers had died in 1957 and Josephine Tey five years earlier; yet Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Gladys Mitchell and Margery Allingham were still active in the Sixties--though Allingham, actually the youngest of the lot, would pass away in 1966. Among others who might be added to their number, Moray Dalton retired in 1951 and ECR Lorac was retired by death in 1958.
That great blood-soaked blanket Julian Symons by this time had begun prophesying the imminent end of the "detective story" (to be replaced by the crime novel, don't you know), but though he kept this theme going up until his death in 1994, the detective story to the contrary never really died. Among British women mystery writers, new blood was transfused into the crime corpus with the debuts of such durable and prolific Silver Age crime queens as Patricia Moyes (1959), PD James and Sara Woods (both 1962), Ruth Rendell (1964), Catherine Aird (1966), Anne Morice and Margaret Yorke (both 1970). A very notable American detective writer who was very popular in England might be added as well: Emma Lathen (1964). All of these women got in the murder game early enough, even Morice and Yorke, to have their books reviewed in his crime column by Golden Age stalwart Anthony Berkeley Cox, aka Anthony Berkeley and Francis Iles.
Both Woods and Morice died in the 1980s while Moyes retired from writing in 1993 and died in 2000. PD James died almost a full decade ago, after having published her last detective novel, the Jane Austen mashup Death Comes to Pemberley, in 2011. Ruth Rendell published The Girl Next Door in 2014 and died the next year, with one further mystery posthumously published. Amazingly Catherine Aird, six months older than my late father, at age 93 published, after a lapse of four years, a series detective novel in 2023, the year he died. That is 57 years after her first one!
Both Sara Woods and Anne Morice fell out-of-print after their deaths (as did Patricia Moyes), but they have since been picked up by Dean Street Press, Morice a few years ago, Woods this year. Woods' 48 series mysteries, as I discussed in an earlier blog post, concern the criminal investigations and courtroom maneuvers of barrister Anthony Maitland and his uncle Sir Nicholas Maitland. (Anthony's wife Jenny also appears in the all books.) In his day reviewers sometimes dubbed Anthony the Perry Mason of English mystery. Woods was a particular favorite of the late, great Hannibal Lecter--erm, no actually Franco-American scholar and public intellectual Jacques Barzun, who was a staunch reader and eloquent defender of classic detective fiction.
Over the last decade or so more and more oop Golden and Silver Age detective writers, female and male, have come back into print, and I am pleased to see Sara Woods reentering the lists. The Dean Street Press editions show a bewigged barrister, our friend Anthony--a tall, dark man with a thin, intelligent face--as the centerpiece on variously colored backgrounds:
Bloody Instructions: Red (blood)
Malice Domestic: Green (envy/jealousy)
The Third Encounter: Black/Grey (nazis)
Error of the Moon: Blue (luna)
Trusted like the Fox: Orange (vulpine)
This was fun, but I don't know that symbolic colors can be kept up over the course of 48 books; we shall see. At the rate of five a year it would actually take nine more years to republish all of her books (2033!); maybe it can be amped up to ten annually. Again, we shall see. Woods for Whitsun? Not this year! But this deadly lot should be here by Christmas, just like the Christies used to be.
Just curious, in your view has there been a Bronze Age, and if so what authors would you include?
ReplyDeleteBronze Age would be like 1980 to 2020? Deaths of Rendell and James. I think with the GA revival and Knives Out and the Christie films there has been kind of a neo-GA type of mystery? You still had bright lights over 1980-2000 for sure. Rendell and James starting getting more crime novelish and Yorke definitely, but you had Robert Barnard and Peter Lovesey and Reginald Hill doing some of their best work. You could probably make the case for keeping the Silver Age going to 2000, actually. After that you have realist writers like Rankin and McDermid really becoming big. Rendell and James' stuff their last decade or so mostly repetition. More I think about probably should be 2000 as the cutoff.
DeleteThanks for the answer. I think the idea of a Neo-Golden Age, which may well may well have begun within the last decade, is intriguing.
ReplyDeleteSomething positive, anyway!
DeleteI really wonder how modern audiences are going to take to Woods. I'm glad she's back in print, of course, and I enjoy her books but they do feel a bit plodding. Definitely not fast-paced. Funnily enough I'm reading one of her 1980s titles now (Call Back Yesterday), and while it's a good curl-uppable read, I do feel like bashing my head against the wall every time she writes 5 pages of action and then spends the next 10 pages recapping that action when Antony goes back home to relay the events to his wife and uncle.
ReplyDeleteI was struck by how there are people who remember reading Woods back in the 1980s and 1990s. I remember seeing the Avon pb eds still in used bookstores in the 1990s. That's always been the criticism of Woods, too talky, but then that was the criticism of Christopher Bush and ER Punshon too. Also Anne Morice too, really. So there's some built-in interest from people fifty and over I expect. She was a great favorite of Jacques Barzun, but then he was a very strong traditionalist. My biggest criticism of the books so far is that I would like to see Jenny Maitland more integrated. Of course this in the 1960s when wives in mysteries with male protagonists were often limited. It will be interesting to see how it develops. I never read the books systematically.
DeleteWhat do you think of out friends the Humdrums, btw? John Street has a lot of recapitulations of facts, but somehow I very often found him rather mesmerizing. I determined to write a book on him and other Humdrums and I did, for better or worse.
DeleteThe characters and relationships don't really develop over the 48 books (spoiler alert?): Jenny just keeps the home fires burning and stays in the background. The thing I do like about Jenny and Antony is that they very clearly adore each other and have a pretty functional marriage.
DeleteRe: the Humdrums: I'm afraid I've not been tempted to try Crofts and Stewart, but I did give several Street/Rhode novels the old college try and I found them moderately diverting but missing that certain je-ne-sais-quoi quality that would make me excited about them. Your book on them is clearly a labor of love though and I see why you like Street!
I think I must have higher tolerance for the "talky" British mystery.
DeleteJust a note, you have Morice as the author of the "48 series mysteries" featuring Maitland. I remember the books fondly, especially Uncle Nick and Vera. I agree that Jenny should have been used more, IIRC she was an ambulance driver in the war so can't have been much of a damsel in distress. I couldn't find most of the series, of course.
ReplyDeleteThere's usually a type somewhere, ugh.
DeleteTypo I mean. What's the first book that introduces Vera.
DeleteAntony met Vera in Let's Choose Executors.
DeleteAh, that will be in the second tranche of reprints.
Delete