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Ernest Bramah's Kai Lung is a storyteller in an imagined China, telling tales of earnest examination candidates, corrupt mandarins, beautiful maidens, alchemical potions, grasping merchants,
and assorted other stereotypes from the Western imagination of China. Bramah makes no attempt to depict any kind of historical reality, but uses the setting to allow his invention and fantasy free rein,
to free himself from the confines of the mundane. The sentiment and some aspects of the setting are clearly late-Victorian, with juxtaposition of the two worlds sometimes used for comic effect.
Much of the humour comes from Bramah's language, which is elaborate, ornate, and deliberately taken to excess, full of long sentences, circumlocutions, honorifics, euphemisms, et cetera (and no doubt for some people ad nauseam).
Here are a couple of typical sentences: "the sentiments which this person expressed with irreproachable honourableness when the sun was high in the heavens and the probability of secretly leaving an undoubtedly well-appointed home
was engagingly remote, seem to have an entirely different significance when recalled by night in a damp orchard, and on the eve of their fulfilment"
The title story is interesting as an adventure, in which a beautiful anarchist recruits Kennedy to save the life of a German financier/spy she has sworn to kill.
In this story, Kennedy's detection is of relatively minor importance and his participation is not necessary to abort both the murder and the espionage mission.
The other stories involve Kennedy in his usual role of uncovering murderers, thwarting blackmailers and disruting heroin gangs through his scientific method.
As I look back now on the sensational events of the past months since the great European War began, it seems
to me as if there had never been a period in Craig Kennedy's life more replete with thrilling adventures than
this.
In fact, scarcely had one mysterious event been straightened out from the tangled skein, when another, even
more baffling, crowded on its very heels.
In The White Moll (1920) Rhoda Gray, "The White Moll", an angel of mercy who spends her time helping the poor in the slums of New York City is drawn into the criminal world when she attempts
to help Gypsy Nan, who is not what she seems. Accused of a crime and on the run from the police, she must battle the most nefarious criminal gang in the New York underworld to prove her innocence.
Populated by such characters as Pierre Dangler, the Pug, Pinkie Bonn, Skeeny, the Sparrow and above all "the Adventurer", this story contains shoot-outs, car chases, adventure and enough suspense
and deception to satisfy the most avid mystery lover.
It was like some shadowy pantomime: The dark mouth of an alleyway thrown into murky relief by the rays of a distant street lamp...the swift, forward leap of a skulking figure...a girl's form swaying
and struggling in the man's embrace. Then, a pantomime no longer, there came a half threatening, half triumphant oath; and then the girl's voice, quiet, strangely contained, almost imperious:
"Now, give me back that purse, please. Instantly!" The man, already retreating into the alleyway, paused to fling back a jeering laugh.
Gaboriau was the first French novelist to write detective novels. His character Monsieur Lecog, private detective, first appeared in this novel, The Widow Lerouge. The story begins:
On Thursday, the 6th of March, 1862, two days after Shrove Tuesday, five women of the village of Jonchere presented themselves at the bureau of Police at Bougival. They stated that for
two days past no one had seen the Widow Lerouge, one of their neighbors, who lived by herself in an isolated cottage. The house was shut up. Several persons had knocked without receiving
an answer. The window-shutters as well as the door were closed; and it was impossible to obtain even a glimpse of the interior. This state of affairs alarmed them. Apprehensive of a crime,
or at the least an accident, they demanded the interference of justice to satisfy their doubts by forcing the door and entering the house.
The Wisdom of Father Brown (1914) By G. K. Chesterton
The Father Brown mysteries are unique, in the genre of Mystery fiction. Father Brown is an unlikely detective, excessively ordinary and stupid looking. His extraordinary abilities lie in his careful
knowledge of human nature, which his position as a priest and confessor gives him. He is also exceedingly rational in nature, but kind and humble and not at all caught up in his own abilities.
The consulting-rooms of Dr Orion Hood, the eminent criminologist and specialist in certain moral disorders, lay along the sea-front at Scarborough, in a series of very large and well-lighted french
windows, which showed the North Sea like one endless outer wall of blue-green marble. In such a place the sea had something of the monotony of a blue-green dado: for the chambers themselves were ruled
throughout by a terrible tidiness not unlike the terrible tidiness of the sea. It must not be supposed that Dr Hood's apartments excluded luxury, or even poetry. These things were there, in their place;
but one felt that they were never allowed out of their place. Luxury was there: there stood upon a special table eight or ten boxes of the best cigars; but they were built upon a plan so that the strongest
were always nearest the wall and the mildest nearest the window.
The Woman in the Alcove (1906) By: Anna Katharine Green
I was, perhaps, the plainest girl in the room that night. I was also the happiest--up to one o'clock. Then my whole world crumbled, or, at least, suffered an eclipse. Why and how, I am about to relate.
I was not made for love. This I had often said to myself; very often of late. In figure I am too diminutive, in face far too unbeautiful, for me to cherish expectations of this nature. Indeed, love had never
entered into my plan of life, as was evinced by the nurse's diploma I had just gained after three years of hard study and severe training.
I was not made for love. But if I had been; had I been gifted with height, regularity of feature, or even with that eloquence of expression which redeems all defects save those which savor of deformity,
I knew well whose eye I should have chosen to please, whose heart I should have felt proud to win.
The Woman in White is an epistolary novel.
The story is considered an early example of detective fiction with the hero, Walter Hartright, employing many of the sleuthing techniques of later private detectives. The use of multiple narratives
draws on Collins's legal training and as he points out in his Preamble: "the story here presented will be told by more than one pen, as the story of an offence against the laws is told in Court
by more than one witness".
When the writer of these introductory lines (Walter Hartright by name) happens to be more closely connected than others with the incidents to be recorded, he will describe them in his own person.
When his experience fails, he will retire from the position of narrator; and his task will be continued, from the point at which he has left it off, by other persons who can speak to the circumstances
under notice from their own knowledge, just as clearly and positively as he has spoken before them.
An illusive Chinese mastermind and his henchman have already killed one socialite and they hold a mysterious sway over many of London's elite. What is the secret of their power?
Follow the trail with Sax Rohmer's famous detectives Gaston Max and Inspector Dunbar as they chase the international gang of hoodlums and their leader, the evil Dr. King.
Henry Leroux wrote busily on. The light of the table-lamp, softened and enriched by its mosaic shade, gave an appearance of added opulence to the already handsome appointments of the room.
The little table-clock ticked merrily from half-past eleven to a quarter to twelve.
Into the cozy, bookish atmosphere of the novelist's study penetrated the muffled chime of Big Ben; it chimed the three- quarters. But, with his mind centered upon his work, Leroux wrote on ceaselessly.
The Zeppelin's Passenger (1919)
(also called Mr. Lessingham Goes Home) By E. Phillips Oppenheim
"Never heard a sound," the younger of the afternoon callers admitted, getting rid of his empty cup and leaning forward in his low chair. "No more tea, thank you, Miss Fairclough. Done splendidly, thanks.
No, I went to bed last night soon after eleven - the Colonel had been route marching us all off our legs - and I never awoke until reveille this morning. Sleep of the just, and all that sort of thing,
but a jolly sell, all the same! You hear anything of it, sir?" he asked, turning to his companion, who was seated a few feet away.
In May 1914, Europe is close to war and spies are everywhere. Richard Hannay has just returned to London from Rhodesia in order to begin a new life, when a freelance spy called Franklin P. Scudder
calls on him to ask for help. Scudder reveals to Hannay that he has uncovered a German plot to murder the Greek Premier and steal British plans for the outbreak of war. Scudder claims to be following
a ring of German spies called the Black Stone.
A few days later, Hannay returns to his flat to find Scudder murdered. If Hannay goes to the police, he will be arrested for Scudder’s murder. Hannay decides to continue Scudder’s work and his
adventure begins. He escapes from the German spies watching the house and makes his way to Scotland, pursued both by the spies and by the police.
The mysterious phrase Thirty-nine Steps first mentioned by Scudder becomes the title of the novel and the solution to its meaning is a thread that runs through the whole story.
I returned from the City about three o'clock on that May afternoon pretty well disgusted with life. I had been three months in the Old Country, and was fed up with it. If anyone had told me a year ago
that I would have been feeling like that I should have laughed at him; but there was the fact. The weather made me liverish, the talk of the ordinary Englishman made me sick, I couldn't get enough
exercise, and the amusements of London seemed as flat as soda- water that has been standing in the sun. "Richard Hannay," I kept telling myself, "you have got into the wrong ditch, my friend, and
you had better climb out".
When a Man Marries (1910) By: Mary Roberts Rinehart
A young artist, recently divorced by his wife, finds that his aunt is soon to visit. The aunt, who contributes to the family income and who has never seen the wife, knows nothing of the domestic upheaval.
How the young man meets the situation is humorously and most entertainingly told.
When the dreadful thing occurred that night, every one turned on me. The injustice of it hurt me most. They said I got up the dinner, that I asked them to give up other engagements and come,
that I promised all kinds of jollification, if they would come; and then when they did come and got in the papers and every one--but ourselves--laughed himself black in the face, they turned on ME!
I, who suffered ten times to their one! I shall never forget what Dallas Brown said to me, standing with a coal shovel in one hand and a--well, perhaps it would be better to tell it all in the order
it happened.
A mysterious lady is missing her necklace. But Private Detective Maxine Peters has bigger problems to deal with. Her hat has been stolen!!!
The night I met Alice was like any other night. I was taking the hover-subway home from a client's house. Old Gordon had tried to get out of paying me. I had to break a few of his teeth. When you are
in a line of work like mine, you have to be prepared to break a few teeth sometimes. I'm a private detective. And a woman. And it's the FUTURE.
WILDWOOD (2004)
An Age-Old Mystery Unfolds By: Alfred B. Davis
Called back from Tunoa early by his pastor, Missionary Paul Brown is plunged headlong into an ancient evil that threatens to destroy him and the Wildwood Baptist Church.
Armed with his faith in his Savior, Jesus Christ, and with the help of his family and fellow church members Paul Brown races to uncover the mystery before it is too late.
From the sudden death of Pastor Williams to the final confrontation with evil itself, this fast-paced thriller will keep you on the edge of your seat.
"I'd almost forgotten what a good cook Frieda is," began Karen as she poured herself a glass of milk. "We had a good talk while you men were talking shop. She talked with Janet
Bartlett on the phone earlier this afternoon for awhile. Janet took it pretty hard, I guess. Seems she had an awful dream a couple nights ago. She was in sitting in the parking lot behind the
church when a dark, foreboding presence seemed to almost overpower her. About the same time six men wearing black, hooded robes shuffled by caring a coffin between them while a
bluish haze seeped silently out of the woods like a malignant mist. In spite of her fear, she followed them into the woods and watched as they set the coffin down in a small clearing. The
hooded figures left and, unable to restrain her curiosity, she found herself hurrying up to and opening the coffin. Horrified she looked down and saw her father lying there."
Within an Inch of His Life (1873) By Emile Gaboriau
French Title: La corde au cou.
Emile Gaboriau (1833-1873) is an important figure in the history of detective fiction. A French journalist and novelist, he created the "roman policier" with a series of books involving private
detective Monsieur Lecoq, who works logically. Lecoq was based on a real-life thief turned policeman named Francois Vidocq (1775-1857), whose memoirs mixed fiction and fact. Gaboriau's huge following
was eclipsed by Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. Interestingly, Holmes may have been at least partly based on another of Gaboriau's characters, consulting detective Father Tabaret, whose methods
Monsieur Lecoq adopts in the first Lecoq book.
In a straight line it is only a mile from Sauveterre to Valpinson; but that mile is as long as two elsewhere. M. Seneschal, however, had a good horse, "the best perhaps in the
county," he said, as he got into his carriage. In ten minutes they had overtaken the firemen, who had left some time before them. And yet these good people, all of them
master workmen of Sauveterre, masons, carpenters, and tilers, hurried along as fast as they could. They had half a dozen smoking torches with them to light them on the way:
they walked, puffing and groaning, on the bad road, and pulling the two engines, together with the heavy cart on which they had piled up their ladders and other tools..
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