Mysterylist.Com started setting up individual web pages for classic mystery novelists, but this is impractical, especially considering that the author of this web site tried to read every novel in a series when doing such a page, and many are no longer available, so the page could not be completed in a lot of instances. Also, few of these authors fall into the 'best-of-the-Golden-Age' category or Grobius's Top 50; they are mostly modern authors who write in the tradition and who, while not having produced single masterpieces, qualify for this page by having produced a body of work that does set up their detectives as being worthy of inclusion in the pantheon of investigators. (However, some important Golden Age authors were omitted, so I will try to make up to some extent for it on the Series Pages.) There is absolutely no intention for this page to become definitive or even partially complete. E-mail is welcome. See also Too Good to Be True below.
Category Pages:
British Police | Amateurs | Professionals | Private Eyes | Cops | Historical Detectives | Superheroes | Villains
I have read lots of 'junk' series in my time, but after a brief obsession with each never went back to any of them and have only a few accidental remains of 'collections' (pity in a way because complete collections over 30 years old are now worth money). This page will just list a few, but not recommend any particular book. -- Grobius, July 2001
You'll have to wait a while for this page to grow: will have Doc Savage in more detail, among others, depending on how much retrieval from boxes and rereading I can get around to.
Biggles, an early and long-lived superhero who is NOT discussed on this page
Fleming | Grant | Rivals of Holmes
Ian Fleming: James Bond (Spy) :: See Web PageMaxwell Grant (Walter Gibson): The Shadow (Crimefighter)|
"Gun hands were slugging as fast as fingers could tug triggers."
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The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (Incidental Detectives)
Seabury Quinn: Jules de Grandin Sax Rohmer: Moris Klaw M.P. Shiel: Prince Zaleski Note: Comic Book heroes like Superman and Batman are beyond the scope of this web site.
If I ever find the time, I will include the following of my favorite junk reading in this area:
There are no doubt others you can think of, the crappier and more fun the better, hence the submission form at the bottom of the page. This is an area that is much better served by color comics (Batman, Dick Tracy, etc.) and movies (Indiana Jones, etc.) than by books, most of which were written by 'syndicate' pseudonymous hack writers. They used to be available in print in cheap pulp editions, but that medium has pretty much dried up.
Are Such Things Possible? Give Us a Break!:
Fortresses of Solitude, Comical Gang of Assistants, etc.
Well, of course. What did you expect? .........
Mail Recommendation to grobius@sprynet.com
If you would like to write your own short precis of a series detective, please send it to me by regular e-mail (click the red grobius@sprynet.com for a standard e-mail screen and include your text either as an attachment or as a block in the message area). If I approve it -- judgement is mine alone -- I will host it on this site on another web page following a similar format to this one. Once there are at least three entries, that page will become reality, with its own link on the home page, so please feel free to submit your favorite detective!
A staple for the famous pulp magazine Weird Tales, the French occult detective, with his chronicler Dr. Trowbridge, lived in Harrisonville, New Jersey, one of the most haunted towns in the country (after Lovecraft's Arkham), laden with vampires, werewolves, mummies and the like. Most of the supposedly supernatural crimes, of course, turn out to be schemes by normal human psychos, gruesome as the crimes are. De Grandin, a cross between Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot (especially with his fake Gallicisms), is an amusing hero for a pulpish series that has the virtue of being literary popcorn.
The Dream Detective who believes in 'odically' reconstructing the crime by sleeping on site. He has a beautiful daughter (shades of Fu Manchu), and periodically sprays his forehead with verbena from an aerosol he carries in his hat. He owns and lives in a squalid antique warehouse in Wapping. Absurd nonsense about Egyptian curses, secret passages, and the like. But the stories are amusing.
Very quaint stuff dating from 1895 by a pre-Nazi Nazi who believed in UberMensch. Entertaining stories in spite of very turgid and incomprehensible prose (only 4 stories about Zaleski, the recluse who detects from his shuttered-up aerie in a decrepit castle, smoking pot from a hookah), but my book also contains 3 about Cummings King Monk, a gentleman con-man who seems to have no motives for what he does, except spout off about Superman in a Socratic manner). But basically Shiel was a flake, even if he wrote "The Purple Cloud" which is an interesting story about the last human survivor of the end of the world.
Miscellaneous
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This page is now up and running: Submissions
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