Specialties (Antiques, Archeology, Rare Books, etc.)

There is something appealing to me about mysteries that are based on relatively recondite areas of expertise. They can be fine mysteries in themselves but most of the interest arises from a deft interweaving of an esoteric subject into the substance of the plot; the sidelights are fascinating (although having little interest in Sports, I am not going to list anything related to tennis or baseball or anything like that here -- also, doctors and lawyers are not in this grouping).

• Antiques
  • Jonathan Gash The Lovejoy books. Welcome to the wonderful sleazy Balkan underworld of the Antiques Trade. Lovejoy is a joy. These books are thrillers rather than mysteries, but what the reader picks up on the side, obscure facts regarding antiques of any kind, is very interesting. The early books are better because they are more coherent; the later ones have too many recurring characters that you'll have trouble keeping track of unless you go on a tear and read several in a row. You learn along the way how to fake a Ming Vase or an 18th C. snuffbox and other neat things. [Warning: Gash's style has become more and more eccentric. A fitting but labored metaphor for it is along the lines of: Take a child's bucket (or a Thomas Smarterton 1850s hand-wheeled stoneware bouguette de tot), fill it with stone chips, gold nuggets, rock salt, rubies, stale cheese, and coal clinker, stir up well, and throw it all in the reader's face to see if the result is any comprehension of what the book is about or what is happening.]
  • Anthony Oliver Lizzie Thomas et al. A really fun series of four books (don't know if the author died, or wasn't profitable to American publishers, or just stopped after 1987). Good reads, if not classic detective stories.
  • P. M. Hubbard: A Hive of Glass. The protagonist of this book is obsessed with ancient glassware, as are his antagonists. One of the best studies of an anal-retentive compulsion ever written. The ending is absolutely devastating.

• Rare Books
  • John Dunning The Bookman's Wake. One of the best ex-cop private-eye books in recent memory, with some really fascinating stuff about the book trade. Oddly enough, this Cliff Janeway person is a really tough guy who left the Denver police force to become a rare-book dealer. If you can buy that you'll have a great read. Plotting is incredibly complex in the Ross Macdonald mode (elements and characters behind the crime dating back 20 years or so).
  • R. T. Campbell Bodies in a Bookshop. A really nice one from the Golden Age of Detection. [Dover Books: some very fine collectibles from the old days in this line, but they don't seem to be doing that many any more. Pity.]

• Archaeology and Antiquarianism
  • Aaron Elkins Gideon Oliver series. He is an anthropologist who specializes in ancient bones (but detects, of course); good stuff. I got extremely irritated by Murder in the Queen's Armes (an early one), when he cited the Bloody Assizes of Judge Jeffreys in 1685 as a revolt against Cromwell, not Monmouth's rebellion over the succession to Charles II, and tossed the book as the work of an ignoramus -- a mystery fan persuaded me to try again: the book is full of fascinating stuff. One has to forget the lapse (and hope it gets corrected in later editions) on the excuse that Gideon Oliver is pretty much ignorant of any historical events that occurred after the end of the Stone Age. [It is a rare thing for me to do, throw out a book that pisses me off, as I did with Martha Grimes, and even rarer to change my mind later. --G.S.]
  • R. Austin Freeman Dr. Thorndyke stories. Freeman used the antiquarian approach quite often in his plots. Among of the best of these (under this category) are: The Penrose Mystery and The Eye of Osiris. When ancient bones are not involved, he has enough arcane knowledge in his other books to keep one entertained, especially when it comes to his portable crime lab and his assistant Polton's tinkerings with bizarre mechanical devices.