To Speak or Not to Speak: Tell Death to Wait (1939), by Anita Boutell

Death waits for no one....
(the American edition of
Tell Death to Wait)

Anita Boutell authored four mystery novels that were published in a creative burst between 1938 and 1942: Death Brings a Storke, Tell Death to Wait, Death Has a Past and Cradled in Fear.

While Boutell's first novel took the form of a classic village mystery with an amateur detective, a Dr. Storke (hence the punning the title), her second, Tell Death to Wait, one of two novels she produced in 1939, broke with Golden Age tradition, being much more a psychological suspense story.  Significantly, the book was subtitled not a detective story but, rather, A Story about a Murder.

Putnam, Boutell's American publisher, was eager to herald that their new author had broken away from the province of mere puzzles:

With this book Mrs. Boutell should take a front seat in that select group of mystery authors who, like Dorothy Sayers, can contrive a good plot and who at the same time provide a fine literary style and living characters.

I would argue that Tell Death to Wait is more innovative than any mystery by Dorothy L. Sayers (whether it is better or not is another question). In some ways it is reminiscent of--and an improvement upon--Milward Kennedy's innovative 1937 crime novel, I'll be Judge, I'll be Jury (there's even an epigraph from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland). I was also reminded of Anthony Berkeley's brilliant Jumping Jenny (1933).

Boutell's novel takes place over one cold November night and early morning at a house party at Wraith's Point, the Cotswolds country cottage of Leo (Leonora) Thane and her much older husband, Godfrey Wellen (known as "G. W.").  The guests are a married couple,  Richard ("Rickey") Garnett, a fashionable Harley Street doctor, and his wife, Lady Una, daughter of the Earl of Danby, and four singles: Penelope ("Penny") Waring, Ross Fenton, Peter Druce and Nan Orr.

The monstrously egocentric Leo has cuckolded G. W. multiple times since their marriage, including with two of their guests this fateful night, Ross, an unwillingly discarded lover, and Rickey, the current one who is trying to break from her, much against her desire. Additionally Leo, a highly successful novelist and literary critic, is writing a novel laying bare myriad fictionalized details from the life of Penny, including her one-night stand with Peter, which Penny believes will ruin her engagement to another man (his straitlaced mama will be mortified, don't you know). Related in this brief fashion it all sounds like a soap opera, yet Boutell carries it off well.

Everyone at the house party seemingly has reason to want Leo dead, even, perhaps, her younger, starstruck former friend Nan, who has been taken up again by Leo because she has had a successful book of poetry published. And, indeed, Leo is found dead, exactly one-fifth of the way through the novel.  The rest of the story is devoted to a psychological struggle between six of the guests, who insist that Leo's death was an accident, and one guest who knows that it must have been murder--and wants to report it to the police as such.

Like Boutell's second book from 1939, Death Has a Past, Tell Death to Wait is a clever contrivance. Barely longer than a novella (I think about 45,000 words) and compulsively narrated by four different characters, it is unquestionably a page-turner that most any mystery fan would feel compelled to finish, I imagine, in one evening.  The ending should deliver a punch to most readers and, for those who like murder puzzles, there is even a legitimate problem for readers so inclined to work through to solution.  If the characters never emerge as creations as memorable as those of Sayers, they do indeed "live." To me Leo, an impressive portrait in selfishness, was the most alive--even after her death.

Anita Boutell

Anita Boutell's third novel, Death Has a Past, has been reviewed on several blogs, and today is her most available book. Her other titles, though published and praised in both the US and the UK, are rarer.

After an interval of three years--during which time both the UK and US were ensnared in worldwide war and Boutell, an American by birth, returned with her husband from England, where she had been living for some time, to the United States--her final novel, Cradled in Fear, appeared.  Set in the US and lengthier than her 1939 books, it was marketed as more of a mainstream novel, akin to Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca (1938). This was her last novel, as far as we know.

Some more on "James Quince" (James Reginald Spittal)

The mystery writer James Quince, as explained in the previous post, was in actually the clergyman James Reginald Spittal (1876-1951).  Both his father and his maternal grandfather were ministers as well. Reverend John Spittal, James's father, was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1833.  John's father was Sir James Spittal (1769-1842), a wealthy silk merchant and radical Whig politician who served as Lord Provost of Edinburgh from 1833 to 1837.  Sir James supported democratic municipal reform in Edinburgh, provoking the ire of conservative political opponents, who taunted him for his origins in trade, as can be seen in the broadside ballad The Downfall of Spittal:

Of ECONOMY now he may drivel and drawl,
But the thousand a-year we must always recall--
So under his counter he'd much better crawl,
In case he be tossed in a blanket or shawl--

Which nobody can deny, deny,
Which nobody can deny.

John Spittal received a BA and MA at Trinity Hall, Cambridge and was a member of the Speculative Society of Edinburgh, a prestigious private debating society.  Beginning in 1859 he served as a clergyman at a goodly number of locales, including a working class section of Leicester, where he was active in educational and social work, South Banbury, Oxfordshire, where his son James Reginald was born, the mill town of Heywood, Lancashire, and, finally, Ryde, Isle of Wight, where he died in 1897.

One of the interesting characters in James Quince's The Tin Tree (1930) is the village schoolmaster, a Scot, who makes sure the "clever" children in the village are "grounded," a character explains, "in the classics and philosophy and that kind of thing, and the history of thought from Plato to Kant," so that they have learned really to think before they study for higher examinations.  There's also a very interesting case of social mobility in the novel, but enough of that.  Let's hope The Tin Tree is reprinted so people can see for themselves.

Note: Check out the links above to see likenesses of James Quince's father and grandfather. (there is a discrepancy on Sir James's birth year, but I think 1769 is correct, which means that he would have been, had he lived that long, 107 when James Quince was born!)

No Man's Land: The Tin Tree (1930), by James Quince

The Tin Tree--see here for an explanation of the term--is an excellent 1930 mystery novel by James Reginald Spittal (1876-1951), who was born in Banbury, Oxfordshire and was once vicar of Holy Trinity Church, Lambeth, London. Spittal's father, John, who came from Scotland, was also a minister, and his English mother, Mary Bentley Jackson, was the daughter and sister of prominent ministers.

Evidently Spittal married in 1900 and I suspect he also witnessed martial events in France during the First World War.  The Tin Tree--Spittal's first novel, written presumably when he was in his fifties and published, like his other novels, under the pseudonym "James Quince"--has material enough about the Great War in it that one almost could classify the book as a war novel.

The 1930 Hodder & Stoughton edition of
The Tin Tree, with jacket art by Kastain,
the only edition of the novel to date
(and, yes, this toad does figure into things,
though only near the end of the story)

The Tin Tree primarily takes place in 1917-18, with an epilogue in 1929 and considerable flashback to pivotal events in 1914. (not murder at Sarajevo, but murder at the village of Pecheford Monochorum, in the English West Country)

The protagonist is Roger "Secco" Burdockshed, a lieutenant in a British artillery company serving in France ("Secco" is derived from seccotine, because Burdockshed sticks like adhesive to a problem). One day he learns that a comrade of his, Gunner Arthur Rachelson, is not the man he thought he was; and, while convalescing from a serious wound in a hospital back in England, he resolves to get to the bottom of a notorious 1914 murder case in which Rachelson had prominently figured.

Also implicated in the affair are Secco's beloved childhood friend, Lady Margaret (Peggy) Clase, and a pretty nurse with the unlikely name of Embrance Twoze, two spirited female characters limned well by this male author.

I don't want to say too much about the plot, in case you get the chance to read this novel (it's a rare book and ought to be reprinted), but I quite enjoyed it.  The war detail is interesting, giving the book an added depth, but presently we are immersed in the land of classic English village mystery, complete with country house and gentry.

There is imposture, insanity, a really gruesome murder (all this is related early on), a designing Spaniard and copious love interest, suggesting a Victorian sensation novel, yet the story is told, on the whole, with an easy charm and emotional restraint in comparison with old Victorian potboilers. There is most definitely a problem to be solved, though with all the goings-on the page-turning reader may not think to perform due diligence. Especially appealing is the double twist ending that the author contrives.

On the whole I preferred James Quince's third and final crime novel, Cassual Slaughters (1935), another village mystery, reviewed here by Martin Edwards this very same day; but that is one of my very favorite 1930s English mysteries, with fewer "thriller" elements than The Tin Tree. However, The Tin Tree too is heartily recommended to readers.  As for publishers--take note, as they say.

Anthony Boucher's Dozen Best Mystery Novels of 1950

How did the influential American crime fiction critic Anthony Boucher see the state of things in the world of mystery as the twentieth century hit its halfway mark?  Well, let's look at his choices for the best mystery novels of the year:

note at bottom Christie tribute blurbs
from  Ellery Queen and John Dickson Carr

A Murder Is Announced, by Agatha Christie (among her best)

Blues for the Prince, by Bart Spicer (rich and moving picture of the world of jazz music, in semi-tough manner)

Brat Farrar, by Josephine Tey (high straight-novel characterization combined with solid detection)

Frightened Amazon, by Aaron Marc Stein (vivid study of unusual folkways)

Mischief, by Charlotte Armstrong (psychologically valid and purely terrifying)

The Bride of Newgate, by John Dickson Carr (the familiar--and incomparable--Carr virtues in the new form of a historical romance)

The Case of the Negligent Nymph, by Erle Stanley Gardner (there were only three Gardners this year; this is the best)

before Macdonald was merely "Ross"

The Drowning Pool, by John Ross Macdonald (hard-boiled detective story vivified by compassion and literary skill)

The Motive, by Evelyn Piper (best of the "best," as novel, as puzzle, as pioneer in a new type of mystery story)

The Rim of Terror, by Hildegarde Teilhet (best of the year's spy-pursuit thrillers)

The Wind Blows Death, by Cyril Hare (When the Wind Blows) (wittily literate British import)

Through a Glass Darkly, by Helen McCloy (impeccable plotting, eerie writing)

An interesting list.  The first thing that strikes me is that seven of the novel are in print, or have been in print within the last quarter century.

Probably almost completely forgotten is the Aaron Marc Stein book. The relatively forgotten ones are the novels by Evelyn Piper, Hildegarde Teilhet and Helen McCloy, though these writers are not forgotten by collectors.  Piper does have one book in print that I know of, Bunny Lake Is Missing (1957), likely on the strength of the well-received film adaptation from the 1960s, which starred Laurence Olivier and Carol Lynley.  In the 1950s and 1960s, Piper definitely was considered a notable American psychological suspense writer.

Six of the writers are women, six men (did Boucher do that deliberately?), but only three, I believe, are English.  Classical detection at its purest is represented by Christie and Hare and, I imagine, the Gardner, which I have not read.

not on the list

Carr somewhat adulterated his detective novel, in the eyes of the puzzle purist, with period atmosphere, laid on with zest, and McCloy hers with psychology and eerie suspense. (for others this was a good trade-off!) Psychology also is prominent in the Tey and, clearly, the Piper, though I have not read the latter. The Armstrong is a psychological suspense classic.

The Stein, which I also have not read, probably is purer detection, but it sounds like the main reason Boucher liked it was local color (Boucher was a great fan of local color). Then with Teilhet we have spies and with Macdonald and Spicer hard-boiled.  Hard-boiled arguably is underrepresented--or an American list, anyway--but no way was Boucher picking a Spillane! That was not. going. to. happen. in a Boucher column in 1950.

Crying All the Way to the Morgue: Two Little Rich Girls (1971), by Mignon Eberhart

The English edition of Two Little Rich Girls
Eberhart was a Collins Crime Club staple
for over half a century
(the only thing I don't understand is how
Budweiser and Colt 45 beer cans ever got
into Diana and Doug Ward's refrigerator
--at least according to this jacket)

Suddenly Diana let go of that big, now-lifeless body and leaned back on her heels.  "Why did I ever go out with him!"

"But they have found the gun."
"Sandy!  Where--!"
"You're not going to like it.  It was in the refrigerator....way back behind some celery and carrots and stuff...."

--Two Little Rich Girls (1971)

For this month's crime fiction of the year challenge--the year 1971--I turn to one of the twentieth century's old reliables of crime fiction, Mignon Eberhart. I have reviewed a couple of Eberharts here before, Man Missing and Unidentified Woman, so this title will make a trio. Obviously I like this writer or I wouldn't keep reading her, especially with the breathless romance she was prone to employ in her books.

Despite my occasional qualms with obtrusive romance in her mysteries I think Eberhart was one of the most able mystery suspensers in the history of genre and also quite important in that she played a major role in bringing emotions back into the detective novel at a time when theorists of detective fiction were arguing that emotions had no place in what they deemed, in contrast with the "thriller" and the Victorian sensation novel, a strictly ratiocinative and austere art form. Think not feel was the motto.

By the time Two Little Rich Girls appeared in 1971. Mignon Eberhart had been producing mystery novels for over forty years.  She had already published 45 of them, and a dozen more would follow Two Little Rich Girls.

In the 1970s newspaper reviews of her books increasingly would refer to Eberhart's books, which always seemed to focus on the rich and privileged, as out-of-date and hackneyed. Some of this represented the tenor of the times, which were rather hostile to things deemed "traditional" in mystery, but it's only to be expected that a writer in her seventies who had been churning out a book of year for decades might lose some of her plotting oomph. Happily Two Little Rich Girls maintained the Eberhart brand standard and is in fact one of the better novels by her that I have read.

Two Little Rich Girls tells the story of the lovely Van Seidem sisters, Emmy and Diana, New York heiresses to a great family fortune, continuously referred to in the book as the "Van Seidem millions." On a visit to her older sister Emmy first finds a strange man in the house, recently shot rather unpleasantly dead.

But wait!  It's not a strange man, it's Gil Sangford, dilettante architect and man-about-town (there were still men-about-town in these years in Eberhart's world).  A handsome bachelor, Sangford had a habit of squiring at society functions various attractive rich women, including of late Diana, whose writer husband, Doug Ward, has been busy getting his first play produced on Broadway.

Diana insists that she didn't shoot Gil and has no idea who did, but after her initial hysteria she becomes rather jaded about the whole thing.  Diana had always been more of a Type A personality compared to her demure sister, and rather headstrong and self-centered at that (see quotation at top of blog).

Rounding out the list of major characters are Sandy Putnam, a young Van Seidem estate lawyer who has more than a passing interest in Emmy; Corrine Harris, the lead actress in Doug's play, who was engaged to Gil; Emmy's and Diana's charming, sponging stepfather, Justin; their imperious Aunt Medora; a bit player in Doug's play, a young actor named Thomas, who first appears sporting long hair and love beads, to help remind us that it's 1971 and not 1941; and Agnes, Emmy's outspoken housekeeper, a Van Seidem "family treasure" (though a peppery one).

Agnes brings to mind the other major indication that it's 1971 in Two Little Rich Girls: the servant problems rich people have. Diana complains about how hard it is to get help and even in the case of Emmy, it's pretty much a matter of anonymous cleaning ladies and old Agnes, who vexingly is always off visiting her niece.

Eberhart paints her usual evocative picture of place, in this case chic New York locales for the most part, though Emmy in the middle of the novel does take a trip to the Riviera, the whole murder thing having proven rather stressful on the nerves (naturally there's another murder while she's on the Riviera).

I found it a relief that for once the heroine was not suspected of the murder--though Emmy's sister, Diana, definitely is a prime suspect, what with the fatal gun, which shows up in her refrigerator among the carrots and celery (see illustration above), being hers and having her fingerprints on it as well.

I also liked how Eberhart allows quite a bit of humor into this story. Justin and Aunt Medora are quite funny with their eccentric ways, as is even, at times, Diana.  Additionally, I thought Two Little Rich Girls was, unlike, some of the Eberharts  I have read, fairly and even creatively clued. Eberhart, the old virtuoso, may have been at this game for many, many years in 1971, but she still pulled off a good performance here, not unlike Agatha Christie with her Miss Marple mystery Nemesis, published the same year.  I guess they didn't call Eberhart "American's Agatha Christie" for nothing!

Crime Raves: U. S. Mystery Bestsellers, 1937-1939

Who done it? Atlanta burns in the
film version of Gone with the Wind

In the U. S. the fiction market in 1937 was dominated by, not altogether surprisingly, Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, which had been published on June 30 of the previous year.  It stayed at number one until July 1937.

Also big that year were Walter D. Edmonds' Drums along the Mohawk, Somerset Maugham's Theatre, John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, James Hilton's We Are Not Alone, Vaughan Wilkins' And So--Victoria and A. J. Cronin's The Citadel. Popping up briefly were Virginia Woolf's The Years and Ernest Hemingway's To Have and Have Not.

In crime fiction, the following books made it to the bestsellers lists in 1937:

January
#8 The Dumb Gods Speak, E. Phllips Oppenheim
#9 The D. A. Calls It Murder, Erle Stanley Gardner

February
#6 Cards on the Table, Agatha Christie
#9 Black Land, White Land, by H. C. Bailey

March
#6 Busman's Honeymoon, by Dorothy L. Sayers

May
#4 Crimefile No. 2, File on Rufus Ray, Helen Reilly

June
#4 Ask Miss Mott, E. Phillips Oppenheim
#5 The Pattern, by Mignon Eberhart

December
#7 Serenade, by James M. Cain

1938 saw Sinclair Lewis briefly hit the top of the list with The Prodigal Parents, followed by Marjorie K. Rawlings with The Yearling.  By the end of the year Gone with the Wind was on top again, spurred on by film hype, no doubt.

Also big were The Mortal Storm by Phyllis Bottome, The Rains Came by Louis Bromfield, The Proud Heart by Pearl S. Buck, Hope of Heaven by John O'Hara, My Son, My Son! by Howard Spring and All This, and Heaven Too by Rachel Field.  A brief appearance was made by Evelyn Waugh's Scoop.

The mystery/thriller bestsellers of 1938 were:

January
#15 Serenade, James M. Cain

February
#11 Death on the Nile, Agatha Christie

April
#8 The Case of the Substitute Face, Erle Stanley Gardner
#11 Fast Company, Marco Page
#14 Curious Happenings to the Rooke Legatees, E. Phillips Oppenheim

May
#11 The Cairo Garter Murders, by Van Wyck Mason

June
#7 Hasty Wedding, by Mignon Eberhart

July
#6 The Wall, by Mary Roberts Rinehart

August
#3 The Wall, by Mary Roberts Rinehart
#11 Mr. Zero, by Patricia Wentworth

September
#9 The Case of the Shoplifter's Shoe, Erle Stanley Gardner
#13 Too Many Cooks, by Rex Stout
#14 Appointment with Death, by Agatha Christie

October
#1 Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier

November
#3 Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
#10 The Gracie Allen Murder Case, by S. S. Van Dine
#15 The Glass Slipper, by Mignon Eberhart

December
#2 Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier
#10 The D. A. Holds a Candle, by Erle Stanley Gardner

In 1939 Pearl S. Buck's The Patriot briefly took the #1 spot, before being swamped by John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, the biggest fiction hit in the U. S. since Gone with the Wind.

Other notable successes that year were The Web and the Rock by Thomas Wolfe, Next to Valour by John Jennings, The Brandons by Angela Thirkell, Captain Horatio Hornblower by C. S. Forester, Christmas Holiday by Somerset Maugham, Kitty Foyle by Christopher Morley, Christ in Concrete by Pietro di Donato and The Nazarene by Sholem Asch.  Also popping up were William Fauklner's The Wild Palms, Elizabeth Bowen's The Death of the Heart, and Nevil Shute's Ordeal.

In the world of crime and mystery in 1939 bestsellerdom we see:

January
#3 Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier

February
#2 Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
#15 Murder for Christmas, Agatha Christie (for some reason this was released in the US six weeks after Christmas)

March
#5 Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
#9 The Case of the Perjured Parrot, Erle Stanley Gardner

May
#11 Sir Adam Disappeared, E. Phillips Oppenheim

June
#7 The Footprints on the Ceiling, Clayton Rawson
#8 Overture to Death, Ngaio Marsh
#10 Canceled in Red, Hugh Pentecost
#11 The Singapore Exile Murders, Van Wyck Mason
#12 The Problem of the Green Capsule, John Dickson Carr
#13 The Happy Highwayman, Leslie Charteris

July
#10 All Concerned Notified, Helen Reilly

September
#6 The Case of the Rolling Bones, Erle Stanly Gardner
#7 Rogue Male, Geoffrey Household
#9 The Chiffon Scarf, Mignon Eberhart
#12 Red Gardenias, Jonathan Latimer

Transcendent?
Daphne du Maurier
(1907-1989)

Of 375 spaces listed for this three-year period, mysteries occupied 45, or 12%. Only four mysteries racked the top five: Oppenheim's Ask Miss Mott, Eberhart's The Pattern, Rinehart's The Wall and du Maurier's Rebecca.

Only the latter two novels, plus James M. Cain's Serenade, were on the bestseller lists for more than a month, The Wall and Serenade for two, Rebecca for six.

As I've mentioned before, a lot of readers in those days simply did not buy hardcover mysteries ($2 a pop!), but rather rented them for a few cents a day from lending libraries. So when a mystery made the bestseller lists, it was a particular special accomplishment.

Rebecca is the most anomalous book of the mystery bestsellers, one that, as they say, "transcended the genre."  Yet what was Rebecca but a brilliant updating of those once tremendously popular Gothic novels?

22 mystery writers are represented, below ranked in terms of number of times they appear on the lists:

Daphne du Maurier 6 (one book)
Erle Stanley Gardner 6 (six books)
Agatha Christie 4 (4 book)
Mignon Eberhart 4 (4 books)
E. Phillips Oppenheim 4 (4 books)
James M. Cain 2 (1 book)
Van Wyck Mason 2 (2 books)
Helen Reilly 2 (2 books)
Mary Roberts Rinehart 2 (1 book)
H. C. Bailey 1
John Dickson Carr 1
Leslie Charteris 1
Geoffrey Household 1
Jonathan Latimer 1
Ngaio Marsh 1
Marco Page 1
Hugh Pentecost 1
Clayton Rawson 1
Dorothy L. Sayers 1
Rex Stout 1
S. S. Van Dine 1
Patricia Wentworth 1

Fourteen men and eight women, Thirteen American and nine British (including NZ).  Five of the women are British, but only four of the men.  We see the development of the idea of the Crime Queens, with Christie, Sayers and Marsh, though there is no Allingham and Christie was yet to attain #1 bestsellerdom.

Prince of Storytellers
E. Phillips Oppenheim (1866-1946)

Du Maurier, Rinehart and Eberhart represent more of the the Gothic mystery tradition and there is some stuff more in the nature of hard-boiled (Latimer, Cain, Pentecost, Page) the modern thriller (Household) and the police procedural (Reilly, including one of the popular Crimefiles dossiers), but many are classic detection and thrillers, including, most surprisingly to me, a miracle problem mystery by Clayton Rawson, a disciple of John Dickson Carr, who also shows up once (June 1939 seems to have been a great month for crime fiction).

Fittingly, we even have a final appearance by S. S. Van Dine, the great American mystery bestseller from the 1920s--albeit with a rather bad book! I imagine the popularity of Gracie Allen and the release of the film of the same title helped.

So, who in the late 1930s were the most popular American mystery writers, the prolific producers regularly hitting the bestseller lists? We have Erle Stanley Gardner, Agatha Christie, Mignon Eberhart (often dubbed "American's Agatha Christie") and E. Phillips Oppenheim, a English thriller writer who had been churning 'em out since the Victorian era.  Not for nothing, evidently, was he dubbed the Prince of Storytellers!  "Oppy" had a long reign.

Source: Baker & Taylor Company

Fiction Bestsellers of 1939

Between August 21 and September 18, 1939 the U. S. fiction bestsellers were, according to the book wholesalers Baker & Taylor (mysteries/thrillers highlighted):

Mignon Eberhart was one of the few
mystery writers to routinely make
American bestseller lists in the 1930s

1. The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck

2. Children of God, by Valerie Fisher

3. Christ in Concrete, by Pietro di Donato

4. Watch for the Dawn. by Stuart Cloete

5. White Magic, by Faith Baldwin

6. The Case of the Rolling Bones, Erle Stanley Gardner

7. Rogue Male, by Geoffrey Household

8. Black Narcissus, by Rumer Godden

9. The Chiffon Scarf, by Mignon Eberhart

10. Charley Manning, by Elizabeth Corbett

11. She Knew Three Brothers, by Magaret Widdemer

12. Red Gardenias, by Jonathan Latimer

13. The Brandons, by Angela Thirkell

14. The Ownley Inn, by Joseph C. and Freeman Lincoln

15. Ararat, by Elgin Groseclose

source: Baker & Taylor

Among the non-genre books I have to admit I have read only #1, The Grapes of Wrath, though I've seen the wonderful film version of Black Narcissus (which is rather a psychological thriller). Quite a few I had never heard of previously. I have always meant to read something by Angela Thirkell after finding that Todd Downing was a great fan of her novels.

As for the mysteries and thrillers, I was not surprised to see Erle Gardner or Mignon Eberhart, two of the most successful American mystery writers of the 1930s, without a doubt (Gardner of course remains one of the most successful of all time). 

Concerning Jonathan Latimer's Red Gardenias, three of his novels had recently been filmed, and he could be seen as something of a then-successor to the hard-boiled crown of the abdicated Dashiell Hammett. Raymond Chandler's first Marlowe novel, The Big Sleep, was published earlier that year, but hadn't made quite the splash Chandler had wanted. Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male made the lone English genre stand on the list.

A more in-depth of analysis of American crime fiction bestsellers, 1937-1939, is coming here soon.