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 Foreign Devils and Macho Men 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. Originally, rogues and villains such as Fu Manchu were included on the previous Series page, but I felt that they deserved a place of their own. -- Grobius, October 2005
You'll have to wait a while for this page to grow: will have Fu Manchu, and stuff like that as I dig things up from storage and reread (some) of it.
Bonfiglioni | Revisionist Dracula | McAuliffe | Rohmer | Revisionist Moriarty | Crooked Rivals of Holmes
Frank McAuliffe: Augustus Mandrell (Hit Man and Con Artist)|
An interlinked series of short stories about the adventures of this hired assassin and con man who commits 'Commissions' on behalf of his clients (many of whom appear throughout the series either as employers or victims). It takes place toward the end of World War II, starting in Scotland, but basically set in Iran. There is a large cast of characters and a complex interweaving of relationships between them underlying the neatly plotted individual stories, which all end with a nice twist, usually to Mandrell's advantage. The books are Of All the Bloody Cheek, Rather a Vicious Gentleman, and For Murder I Charge More (1965-68); too bad there are no more of them, for there are some gaps in the series. |
Kyril Bonfiglioni: Charlie Mortdecai ('Somewhat Crooked')|
Bonfiglioni was an Englishman of Slovenian/Italian descent who wrote three (and a half) books about one Charlie Mortdecai, who is a combination of Lovejoy and Mandrell with a touch of Bertie Wooster. The Mortdecai trilogy (Don't Point That Thing at Me, After You with the Pistol, and Something Nasty in the Woodshed, 1972-9) are classic short novels with complex but off the wall plots, very funny; the first two resemble the Mandrells with double-crossing 'funny buggers', the last involves a serial rapist on the Island of Jersey with some witchcraft involved -- very good and oddly enough similar to a P.M. Hubbard mystery. (But Charlie sometimes irritates, since he is a gourmand who takes a lot of naps.) |
John Gardner; Michael Kurland: Professor James Moriarty ('Napoleon of Crime')|
Two authors with the same idea -- to base a series on Sherlock Holmes's arch-villain Professor Moriarty. However, Nicholas Meyer started it with The Seven-percent Solution (1974), where a drug-addicted Holmes is shown to be wrongly obsessed with his old mathematics tutor. Gardner wrote The Return of Moriarty (1974) and The Revenge of Moriarty (1975), told in the first person. Kurland has at least three Moriarty books starting with The Infernal Device (1978) and continuing with Death by Gaslight and The Great Game -- all very entertaining swashbucklers. Holmes encounters several other famous villains in books not written by Conan Doyle (for example, Jack the Ripper and Mr Hyde); see the MysteryList Holmes page. |
Sax Rohmer: Fu Manchu (Archvillain)|
These are really awfully written books, and full of racist ranting and raving, but are still somewhat fun to read. (Offensive Yellow Perilism incarnate.) The first novel, The Insidious Dr Fu Manchu (1913), remains the best one, because it is the most original of them: murderous Dacoit assassins, underground lairs in Limehouse, London, incredibly stupid detective, Sir Dennis Nayland Smith, etc. Consider these books, which spanned four decades, to be curiosities rather than classics. View an exemplary web site on this fiend incarnate. |
The Revisionist Count Dracula (Vampire) by various authors|
Having Count Dracula as the hero, or at least the central character, in a novel has become a popular sub-genre in the mystery/horror field. On this page the emphasis is less on the vampiric than on the mysterious. (1) Fred Saberhagen in The Dracula Tape (1975) started a whole series with Dracula as the hero, and he confronted Sherlock Holmes in The Holmes/Dracula File (1978). (2) Kim Newman broke new ground with his incredible Anno Dracula (1992), in which Dracula defeats van Helsing and goes on to conquer England. The Bloody Red Baron carries the series on to World War I; and I think there are more in the series. See my review on this web page. They are not mysteries, but are tremendous fun. |
The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (on the Distaff Side)
Grant Allen: Colonel Cuthbert Clay R. Austin Freeman ('Clifford Ashdown'): Romney Pringle E.W. Hornung: Raffles Maurice Leblanc: Arsène Lupin
A series of short stories in which the con-man villain has only one victim, the eponymous African Millionaire from the book of that name. Late 1890s.
An opportunistic con man, rather bland.
The Amateur Cracksman (1899). One of the early examples of a Robin Hood type burglar who is accepted as a guest at country houses while he proceeds to rob them blind. The 'moralism' of heroicizing somebody like this is dubious at best, but the stories are good reading. Hornung was Arthur Conan Doyle's brother-in-law.
Both a thief and a detective, he is much more rewarding than Raffles as a hero. The many short stories and novels are typically French and often rambling, if I can be permitted a generalization of this sort. Early 1900s.
MiscellaneousNote: Comic Book villains like Catwoman and The Penguin are beyond the scope of this web site.
If I ever find the time, I will include the following of my favorite larcenous reading in this area:
There are no doubt others you can think of, the nastier 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.
Foreign Devils and Macho Men:
Visigoths, Huns, Frenchmen, Chinese, Germans, Japs, Russians, and Arabs....
Every era and every country has its representation of the 'arch-enemy' who will stop at nothing to destroy existing civilization. Only a priggish prude finds the hissing at the villain when he comes onstage offensive. Having an archetypical antagonist to everything you stand for and value is a basic human/societal instinct; if there is no Great Satan, we will invent one (which is surely happening all the time in all cultures). Lay aside your politically correct stance and consider that in the Golden Age of Detection (appx. 1900-1950), enemies of Western Civilization were Orientals and Turks and some African tribes, enemies of English-speaking nations were Germans and Russians and even sometimes the French. They would stop at nothing, baulk at no evil deed, to destroy the British Empire. OK?
In America, immigration from non-Anglo countries was inundating the culture of the Founding Fathers with all that Black-Hand stuff preventing assimilation. Given that the Prince of Evil, Lucifer, has been regarded by many as the hero of Milton's Paradise Lost, although his minions the demons are regarded as horrific scum (as Dacoits, Thugees, Haitians, Bulgarians, etc. were in our era), it is no surprise that the Insidious Doctor Fu Manchu became a popular epitome of all that and a best-selling fictional character. He was opposed by a singularly inept coterie of the British establishment (but they were all true gentlemen, thank you, and God Save the King). Americans, having been brought up in the Kit Carson/Bufallo Bill kill-the-injun mind-set, went to the other extreme and invented the extralegal superhero who 'lynched' all those mafioso scumbags without discommoding the overworked, corrupt, and incompetent justice system.
Sheer fantasy and escapism? Yes. Readable still? Some of it. Laughable now? Most of it. This does not detract from the entertainment value of these stories. The bizarre activities and amoral ingenuity of both the villains and the heroes reach high levels of imagination, if not prose style. And there is a constant, if dotty, chivalry regarding virtuous women, and a fascination with the evil adventuress type. Most of these books are designed to appeal to arrested-adolescent mentalities, including adults back then who should have known better. Such stories still do appeal when you are in the mood for them. Now, that impulsive draw to melodramatic junk has been sublimated into martial arts movies and bloody shoot-em-ups. But that's all right -- it generates revenue for second-rate actors, authors, producers, and what have you, so it's good both for the economy and for the psychic health of the populace (who need to have an outlet when they have no normal access to firearms and a legitimate Satanic enemy to shoot at -- when they DO have access to guns, then you get the Columbine High School incidents, so a solution is more restrictive gun laws and better and more bloody special effects in movies, or else bring back public hanging).
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!
This page is now up and running: Submissions
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