I'm currently reading crime fiction from Scandinavia and was wondering
if anyone could recommend any 'Golden Age' detective fiction by a
Scandinavian author, or, for that matter, set in a Scandinavian country.

Best wishes.

Aurora Ljungstedt

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3760/is_200607/ai_n17185261/pg_1?tag=art\
Body;col1


   ----- Original Message -----
   From: Ian Gomersall
   To: GAdetection@yahoogroups.com
   Sent: Monday, September 01, 2008 8:55 PM
   Subject: [GAdetection] Scandinavian Crime Fiction


   I'm currently reading crime fiction from Scandinavia and was wondering
   if anyone could recommend any 'Golden Age' detective fiction by a
   Scandinavian author, or, for that matter, set in a Scandinavian country.

   Best wishes.





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi Ian:

You might want to read my review of "Locked Rooms and Open Spaces," a
book comprised exclusively of locked-room mysteries written my Swedish
authors, in the "Suggested Reading" page of my website,
www.halwhitebooks.com.

Hal


--- In GAdetection@yahoogroups.com, "Ian Gomersall" <ian.gomersall@...>
wrote:
>
> I'm currently reading crime fiction from Scandinavia and was
wondering
> if anyone could recommend any 'Golden Age' detective fiction by a
> Scandinavian author, or, for that matter, set in a Scandinavian
country.
>
> Best wishes.

In "The Grandest Game in The World", John Dickson Carr writes that The Man in
the Brown Suit, in which the same device is used, is «an inferior novel but a
better hoax» than The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, because in it the murderer,
unlike Dr Sheppard, «carefully warned the reader that he will write in his diary
only what he is willing to have everybody see». Criticism is also implicit in
his Golden Maxim: «The criminal shall never turn out to be [...] any character
whose thoughts we have been allowed to share» (which directly invalidates
Christie's trick while having a much larger scope).

Nevertheless, Carr acknowledges TMORA's "oblique fairness". And, about his Four
Golden Maxims, he writes: «In each one I believe. And each one you will find
shattered - shattered admirably, shattered to bits, shattered by a mighty hammer
- in the "best" detective novels, while the reader wishes to do nothing but
applaud. Because they are not really rules; they are only prejudices».

So, it seems Carr's view about TMORA's main plot device was at least ambivalent.

I've tried to check the Sayers story in Barbara Reynolds hagiography of Sayers,
but according to the analytical index Christie is not even mentioned in the book
(!!!)

Henrique


Original Message ----
From: Enrique F. Bird <enfbirdp@...>
To: GAdetection@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, August 21, 2008 2:10:54 PM
Subject: RE: [GAdetection] Re: Agatha Christie and the Detection Club


Friends,

Dorothy L. Sayers defended in print in one of her anthologies introductions
and somewhere else the fairness of “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd”. In tha
late 1970s, in an extensive interview in The Armchair Detective or in the
supplemental material to the UCSD edition of “Green for Danger”, Christianna
Brand , who had direct access to both Christie and Sayers, claimed that
while Sayers defended Christie on print, in private she was mad about TMORA
trick, saying that Christie cheated!

SS Van Dine definitely disapproved of TMORA in his introduction to “The
World’s Great Detectived Stories” – the title may be imprecise.

Best regards,

Enrique F. Bird Picó

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]






[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Enrique (my namesake!) and other friends,

The point in Carr's essay, which was to be an introduction to an anthology
of "The 10 Best Detective Novles" was that several of his predjuices were
precisely violated in his choices, like Christie's "Death on the Nile". And
that this he really appreciated when done masterfully.

In his reviews for EQMM from 1968 to 1974 (or '75), he more than once
expressed his admiration for AC, whom he considered the greatest of them
all.

Best regards,

Enrique F. Bird Picó

-----Original Message-----
From: GAdetection@yahoogroups.com [mailto:GAdetection@yahoogroups.com] On
Behalf Of Henrique Valle
Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2008 8:07 AM
To: GAdetection@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [GAdetection] Re: Agatha Christie and the Detection Club

In "The Grandest Game in The World", John Dickson Carr writes that The Man

Holiday GAD
readings and re-readings (some spoilers but no strict disclosures):

John Dickson Carr, Captain Cut-Throat (4/5). Combines historical romance, high
adventure and detection, masterful storytelling. Nice impossible murder,
unusually (for Carr) underplayed. Balloon scene superb. Found it much better
than 10 years ago. Best historical Carr along with Fear is the Same.

Fernando Pessoa, Quaresma, Decifrador [Quaresma, decipherer] (4/5). Unfinished
and until 2008 unpublished detective novels written circa 1907-1935 by major
20th Century poet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_Pessoa) whose
favourite writers included Poe, Doyle, Morrison, Crofts and Rhode. Armchair
detective, impossible crimes and strictly (sometimes glacially) logical
deduction. If finished, these novels would put Pessoa on the same level as his
British and American contemporaries. A quote from the author: «One of the few
intellectual enjoyments that are left for what's left of the intellectual in
humankind is the reading of detective stories».

Agatha Christie, The Sittaford Mystery (3/5). Plot coherent but thin, decisive
clues revealed early and narrative artificially extended from then on. Last
clue is totally unfair, its meaning is not clear and the deductions made from
it are illogical (anyway, it is superfluous and merely a device to disguise the
fact that the story has gone for too long). Some aspects uncanilly close to
Rhode, Crofts: "humdrum" detective in the beggining of the book,
"humdrum" method of detection throughout (successive and exhaustive
interrogations of all witnesses), train timetables, unbreakable alibi. Village
setting, underplayed spiritualist and supernatural elements approached in
similar way to Rhode's The House on Tollard Ridge (below). All of this with
typical early 30's Christie liveliness, high spirits and adept storytelling.
Paul Halter's murder method in Le Roi du Désordre is a variation of this in an
impossible crime context. Minor but interesting and entretaining Christie.

Christianna Brand, Heads you lose (3/5). Brand's own favourite. Good
storytelling, interesting and ambivalent characters, gruesome crimes. Multiple
solutions tend to confuse plot development. Obvious murderer (it could be no
one else). Motive is so absurd that author had to make the criminal turn out to
be insane, but in an absurd way (and epileptic is considered "mad"
and is supposed to have repeatedly become a throat-slashing maniac during
fits). Ambiguous depiction of Jewish character that turns out to be the most
intelligent character in the book. Black dog called Esmiss Esmoore likely and
somewhat reasonably to infuriate some readers.

John Rhode, The House on Tollard Ridge (2/5). Disconcerting book. Coherently
constructed fair-play plot - but culprit, motive and modus operandi too easily
guessable, and course of future events too predictable, from very early on.
Apparently supernatural background could have made a great atmosphere - but is
downplayed. Potentially interesting characters - but depicted from too great a
distance, narrator doesn't care about them. 3 great chapters (VIII - life in a
steamer; XII - adult discussion between a couple about to divorce; XIII - a
night at a supposedly haunted house) - but the rest flatlessly, if competently,
written. Hadn't read Rhode for a long time, must get back to him soon.

Pierre Véry, Le testament de Basil Crookes [Basil Crookes' will] (1/5).
Over-prized, critically inflated, irritatingly absurd, partially unfair and
illogical 1930 puzzle plot novel by French master. If a book can ever be called
"unrealistic" as an offense, this is the book.

In a stroke of good luck I've recently bought, in highly unlikely places, first
hardcover editions of books by Queen, Fielding, Wallace, Dickson, Marsh,
Gardner, Jepson, Wallace, Carolyn Wells, some of them with dust-jackets. From
the same sources, also bought more than 100 crime Penguins at 1 euro each, some
of them hard to find (at least for me and at this price): Rhode, Connington,
Crofts, Keverne, Hare, Bush, A. Gilbert, Punshon, McCloy, Bramah. I already
owned 2 or 3 copies of some of the books bought, but cannot resist a green
Penguin. Has someone mentioned borderline OC behaviour a few weeks ago...?

Henrique

Hummmm... About Death on the Nile, Carr only complains that Poirot might have
told about the bullet hole in the table. What he says and implies about The
Murder of Roger Ackroyd is much more ambivalent.
I believe Carr would never have used the Watson-murderer trick, but he was not a
normative fundamentalist: his only true rule of steel for writing detective
stories seemed to be that all clues should be clearly stated to the reader (he
writes: «Once the evidence has been fairly presented, there are very few things
which are not permissible»), which Christie did.
And his admiration for Christie is evident, of course!
Henrique


----- Original Message ----
From: Enrique F. Bird <enfbirdp@...>
To: GAdetection@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, September 2, 2008 2:39:49 PM
Subject: RE: [GAdetection] Re: Agatha Christie and the Detection Club


Enrique (my namesake!) and other friends,

The point in Carr's essay, which was to be an introduction to an anthology
of "The 10 Best Detective Novles" was that several of his predjuices were
precisely violated in his choices, like Christie's "Death on the Nile". And
that this he really appreciated when done masterfully.

In his reviews for EQMM from 1968 to 1974 (or '75), he more than once
expressed his admiration for AC, whom he considered the greatest of them
all.

Best regards,

Enrique F. Bird Picó

-----Original Message-----
From: GAdetection@ yahoogroups. com [mailto:GAdetection@ yahoogroups. com] On
Behalf Of Henrique Valle
Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2008 8:07 AM
To: GAdetection@ yahoogroups. com
Subject: Re: [GAdetection] Re: Agatha Christie and the Detection Club

In "The Grandest Game in The World", John Dickson Carr writes that The Man






[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

 




Hi Ian:You might want to read my review of "Locked Rooms and Open Spaces," a
book comprised exclusively of locked-room mysteries written my Swedish
authors, in the "Suggested Reading" page of my website,
www.halwhitebooks. com.

IS  THIS THE HANS STANTESSON BOOK? HOW GOOD IS IT?
 



Recent Activity


 3
New Members

 1
New LinksVisit Your Group


Star Wars on Y!
Discover new content
Connect with other
fans & upload video.

Yahoo! News
Odd News
You won't believe
it, but it's true

Sell Online
Start selling with
our award-winning
e-commerce tools.
.

















[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

In a message dated 09/01/2008 1:37:45 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
GAdetection@yahoogroups.com writes:
>
>
http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2008/08/book-you-have-to-read-nine-times-nine.ht\
\
> ml
>
It says "Blog not found".


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

--- In GAdetection@yahoogroups.com, luis molina <lrmolina47@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Ian:You might want to read my review of "Locked Rooms and Open
Spaces," a
> book comprised exclusively of locked-room mysteries written my
Swedish
> authors, in the "Suggested Reading" page of my website,
> www.halwhitebooks. com.
>
> IS  THIS THE HANS STANTESSON BOOK? HOW GOOD IS IT?
>  
>
Hi Luis:

This is not "The Locked Room Reader," edited by Hans S. Santesson.
(Which was later released as two paperbacks, "8 Keys to Murder" and "8
Doors to Death.") This is a more recent book, collected and translated
by Bertil Falk.  The Santesson collection isn't limited to Swedish
authors, and (as a whole) is the better collection.

The Falk book contains 16 locked-room mysteries written exclusively by
Swedish writers during the last 150 years. The gem of the collection
is "Reg. No. 94.028/72 Murder," which (according to Falk), is regarded
by some as "the best locked room murder story ever written in Swedish."
It's easily the best story in Falk's collection, and the book is worth
buying for this story alone. But, as I mentioned, Santesson's
collection is definitely better overall.

FYI, Falk's book is only available through The Battered Silicon
Dispatch Box. There's a link to that publisher in my site.

Hal
www.halwhitebooks.com

Ah but then Carr inflicted Seeing is Believing on us where he misled us by
stating that something was "the admitted fact", a poor attempt to emulate
Christie's duplicity.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Henrique Valle" <vallehenrique@...>
To: <GAdetection@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2008 1:06 PM
Subject: Re: [GAdetection] Re: Agatha Christie and the Detection Club


In "The Grandest Game in The World", John Dickson Carr writes that The Man
in the Brown Suit, in which the same device is used, is «an inferior novel
but a better hoax» than The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, because in it the
murderer, unlike Dr Sheppard, «carefully warned the reader that he will
write in his diary only what he is willing to have everybody see». Criticism
is also implicit in his Golden Maxim: «The criminal shall never turn out to
be [...] any character whose thoughts we have been allowed to share» (which
directly invalidates Christie's trick while having a much larger scope).

Nevertheless, Carr acknowledges TMORA's "oblique fairness". And, about his
Four Golden Maxims, he writes: «In each one I believe. And each one you will
find shattered - shattered admirably, shattered to bits, shattered by a
mighty hammer - in the "best" detective novels, while the reader wishes to
do nothing but applaud. Because they are not really rules; they are only
prejudices».

So, it seems Carr's view about TMORA's main plot device was at least
ambivalent.

I've tried to check the Sayers story in Barbara Reynolds hagiography of
Sayers, but according to the analytical index Christie is not even mentioned
in the book (!!!)

Henrique


Original Message ----
From: Enrique F. Bird <enfbirdp@...>
To: GAdetection@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, August 21, 2008 2:10:54 PM
Subject: RE: [GAdetection] Re: Agatha Christie and the Detection Club


Friends,

Dorothy L. Sayers defended in print in one of her anthologies introductions
and somewhere else the fairness of "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd". In tha
late 1970s, in an extensive interview in The Armchair Detective or in the
supplemental material to the UCSD edition of "Green for Danger", Christianna
Brand , who had direct access to both Christie and Sayers, claimed that
while Sayers defended Christie on print, in private she was mad about TMORA
trick, saying that Christie cheated!

SS Van Dine definitely disapproved of TMORA in his introduction to "The
World's Great Detectived Stories" - the title may be imprecise.

Best regards,

Enrique F. Bird Picó

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]






[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]


------------------------------------

Yahoo! Groups Links

This is one of the books I picked up at the library sale. Pub. 1937.  I
haven't read any Blake in quite a while and enjoyed it on the whole,
but--besides one or two other quibbles--there was what seemed to me a
fatal flaw in the events leading to the denouement. The final event
happens because a young man acts on certain instructions given him by
phone. The problem in my eyes is that the man instructing him isn't
wearing his false teeth. If you've ever spoken to someone with no teeth,
you know their speech is extremely unclear, and as this person normally
wore false ones he wouldn't even have practice in making himself
understood. Add the telephone distortion and I just can't believe he'd be
comprehensible.
Carola
www.geocities.com/CarolaDunn/
Daisy Dalrymple mysteries-England 1920s-IMBA BESTSELLERS-hc,pb,audio,LP
    BLACK SHIP--Daisy tangles with bootleggers  (#17)
   THE BLOODY TOWER-More death at the Tower of London!(#16) IMBA
bestseller
      Blog:  http://tinyurl.com/66q19u       ebooks: www.RegencyReads.com

Hi, new member, first post.
I'm trying to read Margery Allingham and so far, after 2 books, I'm not
planning to continue reading her.  Started with Fear Sign/Sweet Danger
and now I'm on More Work for the Undertaker.  The work is like satire
that I don't get because I'm not familiar with what's being satirized.
Can anybody point me to a book that will give me a desire to continue
reading her? Something that shows why she's as highly regarded as she
seems to be by mystery fans and critics.
Pro & con opinions would both be welcome.
Thanks,
Larry

You won't enjoy Allingham if you're expecting a conventional problem
puzzle-driven story in the manner of Christie or Carr.  She simply doesn't work
like that.
 
Sweet Danger is an adventure story, like The Crime at Black Dudley, Mystery Mile
and Look to the Lady.
 
More Work for the Undertaker is a baroque detective story.  If you like the
extravaganzas of Innes, Crispin, and, above all, the great Gladys Mitchell,
you'll like it.  Otherwise you won't.
 
If you're after a more conventional detective story, I'd suggest: Police at the
Funeral (family extermination mystery); Death of a Ghost (art world - murderer
revealed halfway through); Flowers for the Judge (publishing); or Dancers in
Mourning (actors & dancers).  The Fashion in Shrouds is Allingham's
masterpiece.
 
Margery Allingham’s detective stories were rightly advertised as being ‘for
the connoisseur of detective fiction’.  All the stories have, as Agatha
Christie recognised, their own unique setting and atmosphere, ranging from the
light-hearted early thrillers to the sophisticated satires on the haut monde of
the late 1930s, to the darker, more psychology-driven later books, concerned
with the question of evil.  Her plots are always ingenious, but gradually the
mystery changes from whodunit to whydunit.
 
Her detective, Albert Campion, also changes over time.  On his first
appearance, in The Crime at Black Dudley (1929), he is a silly ass in the manner
of Wimsey or Wooster.  Wisely, Allingham changes him over time, revealing that
the ingenuous flippancy is a disguise, and showing him as a tragic lover
(Dancers in Mourning, 1937), the more successful wooer of Amanda Fitton (The
Fashion in Shrouds, 1938), the universal uncle of the 1940s, and finally as an
observant, self-effacing spymaster.
 
It is as a novelist that she excels.  She had the ability to create an unusual
setting and introduce the reader to every facet of its existence so that he
feels almost as familiar with it as the publishers, dancers or modistes whose
natural habitat it is.  Her characters, too, are vivid and unforgettable,
recognisably human.  Her indomitable old women (Caroline Faraday, for instance,
in Police at the Funeral, 1931) have a vitality and hardness to them that makes
them more than comic stereotypes, her eccentrics (the Palinodes in More Work for
the Undertaker, 1948) have a pathos which makes them credible, and her villains
and criminals (Jack Havoc in The Tiger in the Smoke, 1952, or Jeremy Hawker in
Hide My Eyes, 1958) are confronting depictions of evil and deception.


She brought a novelist’s eye to the detective story, using the form to study
character and emotions.  In many ways, she is the Dickens of the detective
story.














       Win a MacBook Air or iPod touch with Yahoo!7.
http://au.docs.yahoo.com/homepageset

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Henrique:

Agree with your assessment (and criticism) of HEADS YOU LOSE, but am not aware
of Brand
ever calling it her favourite among her works.  She did refer to FOG OF DOUBT
(LONDON
PARTICULAR) as her very favourite, however,  in a forward found in reprints of
that book,
which is indeed a much finer work.

- Scott

--- In GAdetection@yahoogroups.com, Henrique Valle <vallehenrique@...> wrote:
>
> Holiday GAD
> readings and re-readings (some spoilers but no strict disclosures):
>
> John Dickson Carr, Captain Cut-Throat (4/5). Combines historical romance, high
> adventure and detection, masterful storytelling. Nice impossible murder,
> unusually (for Carr) underplayed. Balloon scene superb. Found it much better
> than 10 years ago. Best historical Carr along with Fear is the Same.
>
> Fernando Pessoa, Quaresma, Decifrador [Quaresma, decipherer] (4/5). Unfinished
> and until 2008 unpublished detective novels written circa 1907-1935 by major
> 20th Century poet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_Pessoa) whose
> favourite writers included Poe, Doyle, Morrison, Crofts and Rhode. Armchair
> detective, impossible crimes and strictly (sometimes glacially) logical
> deduction. If finished, these novels would put Pessoa on the same level as his
> British and American contemporaries. A quote from the author: «One of the few
> intellectual enjoyments that are left for what's left of the intellectual in
> humankind is the reading of detective stories».
>
> Agatha Christie, The Sittaford Mystery (3/5). Plot coherent but thin, decisive
> clues revealed early and narrative artificially extended from then on. Last
> clue is totally unfair, its meaning is not clear and the deductions made from
> it are illogical (anyway, it is superfluous and merely a device to disguise
the
> fact that the story has gone for too long). Some aspects uncanilly close to
> Rhode, Crofts: "humdrum" detective in the beggining of the book,
> "humdrum" method of detection throughout (successive and exhaustive
> interrogations of all witnesses), train timetables, unbreakable alibi. Village
> setting, underplayed spiritualist and supernatural elements approached in
> similar way to Rhode's The House on Tollard Ridge (below). All of this with
> typical early 30's Christie liveliness, high spirits and adept storytelling.
> Paul Halter's murder method in Le Roi du Désordre is a variation of this in an
> impossible crime context. Minor but interesting and entretaining Christie.
>
> Christianna Brand, Heads you lose (3/5). Brand's own favourite. Good
> storytelling, interesting and ambivalent characters, gruesome crimes. Multiple
> solutions tend to confuse plot development. Obvious murderer (it could be no
> one else). Motive is so absurd that author had to make the criminal turn out
to
> be insane, but in an absurd way (and epileptic is considered "mad"
> and is supposed to have repeatedly become a throat-slashing maniac during
> fits). Ambiguous depiction of Jewish character that turns out to be the most
> intelligent character in the book. Black dog called Esmiss Esmoore likely and
> somewhat reasonably to infuriate some readers.
>
> John Rhode, The House on Tollard Ridge (2/5). Disconcerting book. Coherently
> constructed fair-play plot - but culprit, motive and modus operandi too easily
> guessable, and course of future events too predictable, from very early on.
> Apparently supernatural background could have made a great atmosphere - but is
> downplayed. Potentially interesting characters - but depicted from too great a
> distance, narrator doesn't care about them. 3 great chapters (VIII - life in a
> steamer; XII - adult discussion between a couple about to divorce; XIII - a
> night at a supposedly haunted house) - but the rest flatlessly, if
competently,
> written. Hadn't read Rhode for a long time, must get back to him soon.
>
> Pierre Véry, Le testament de Basil Crookes [Basil Crookes' will] (1/5).
> Over-prized, critically inflated, irritatingly absurd, partially unfair and
> illogical 1930 puzzle plot novel by French master. If a book can ever be
called
> "unrealistic" as an offense, this is the book.
>
> In a stroke of good luck I've recently bought, in highly unlikely places,
first
> hardcover editions of books by Queen, Fielding, Wallace, Dickson, Marsh,
> Gardner, Jepson, Wallace, Carolyn Wells, some of them with dust-jackets. From
> the same sources, also bought more than 100 crime Penguins at 1 euro each,
some
> of them hard to find (at least for me and at this price): Rhode, Connington,
> Crofts, Keverne, Hare, Bush, A. Gilbert, Punshon, McCloy, Bramah. I already
> owned 2 or 3 copies of some of the books bought, but cannot resist a green
> Penguin. Has someone mentioned borderline OC behaviour a few weeks ago...?
>
> Henrique
>

I personally feel there is little defense for Carr's SEEING IS BELIEVING stunt.

However, though Carr admitted to approving of and admiring brilliant violations
of his
Golden Maxim,  THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD in fact *never did* violate his maxim
that: "The criminal shall never turn out to be [...] any character whose
thoughts we have
been allowed to share."

This point is made rather unequivocably by Dorothy L. Sayers herself in one of
her less
frequently quoted defenses of ACKROYD (found in her lecture ARISTOTLE  ON
DETECTIVE
FICTION-- to my mind one of the most interesting works ever written about the
genre).  In
it, she seems to simultaneously defend the ACKROYD stunt while (virtually)
discounting
any defense of anything like that which Carr employs in SEEING IS BELIEVING. 
For sake of
brevity (and my typing fingers) I will only include her vital statements, but I
assure you
that (unlike Dr. Shepphard), I am not  deceptively hiding essentials in the
ellipses:

from ARISTOTLE ON DETECTIVE FICTION (1935)

"Nothing in a detective story need be held to be true unless the author has
vouched for it
*in his own person*. Thus if the author says--

     Jones came home at 10 o'clock

then we are entitled to assume that Jones did indeed come home at that time and
no
other.  But if the author says--

    The grandfather clock was striking ten when Jones reached home

then we can feel no certainty as to the time of Jones' arrival, for nothing
compels us to
accept the testimony of the clock.  Nor need we believe the testimony of of any
character
in the story, unless the author himself vouches for that character's integrity.

... if the author himself says: "No one could possibly doubt that the butler was
speaking
the truth"-- then, I think, we must believe that the butler is a truthful
witness, for the
author has stated, on his own authority, that doubt was impossible.

Remember, however, that the person telling the story is not necessarily the
author.  Thus,
in THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD, the story is told by the detective's *fidus
Achates*
or (to use the modern term) his Watson.  Arguing from the particular to the
general, we
may be seduced into concluding that, because the original Dr. Watson was a good
man, all
Watsons are good in virtue of their Watsonity.  But this is false reasoning, for
moral worth
and Watsonity are by no means inseparable... So, despite the existence of a
first innocent
Watson, we may yet admit the possibility of a guilty one; nor, when the Watson
in ROGER
ACKROYD turns out to be the murderer, has the reader any right to feel aggrieved
against
the author-- for she has vouched only for the man's Watsonity and not for his
moral
worth."

********************

I think Sayer's statement "Remember, however, that the person telling the story
is not
necessarily the author" is sufficient to remind us that ACKROYD is actually in
no violation
of Carr's maxim.  At the same time, her claim that: " if the author himself
says: 'No one
could possibly doubt that the butler was speaking the truth'-- then, I think, we
must
believe that the butler is a truthful witness..." is pretty much an indictment
of all SEEING IS
BELIEVING-like tactics.  Still, there is admittedly some muddy ambiguity in such
assertions
as "no one could possibly doubt" [does the fact that no one could doubt it make
it true?]
and "it was an accepted fact" [just who accepted it as fact?].

However, I think that her statements in ARISTOTLE ON DETECTIVE FICTION combined
with
her more famous statements in DETECTIVE FICTION: ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT clearly
show that, whatever her private thoughts, publicly she was a strong defender of
Christie's
ACKROYD ploy.





--- In GAdetection@yahoogroups.com, "Tony Medawar" <tonymedawar@...> wrote:
>
> Ah but then Carr inflicted Seeing is Believing on us where he misled us by
> stating that something was "the admitted fact", a poor attempt to emulate
> Christie's duplicity.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Henrique Valle" <vallehenrique@...>
> To: <GAdetection@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2008 1:06 PM
> Subject: Re: [GAdetection] Re: Agatha Christie and the Detection Club
>
>
> In "The Grandest Game in The World", John Dickson Carr writes that The Man
> in the Brown Suit, in which the same device is used, is «an inferior novel
> but a better hoax» than The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, because in it the
> murderer, unlike Dr Sheppard, «carefully warned the reader that he will
> write in his diary only what he is willing to have everybody see». Criticism
> is also implicit in his Golden Maxim: «The criminal shall never turn out to
> be [...] any character whose thoughts we have been allowed to share» (which
> directly invalidates Christie's trick while having a much larger scope).
>
> Nevertheless, Carr acknowledges TMORA's "oblique fairness". And, about his
> Four Golden Maxims, he writes: «In each one I believe. And each one you will
> find shattered - shattered admirably, shattered to bits, shattered by a
> mighty hammer - in the "best" detective novels, while the reader wishes to
> do nothing but applaud. Because they are not really rules; they are only
> prejudices».
>
> So, it seems Carr's view about TMORA's main plot device was at least
> ambivalent.
>
> I've tried to check the Sayers story in Barbara Reynolds hagiography of
> Sayers, but according to the analytical index Christie is not even mentioned
> in the book (!!!)
>
> Henrique
>
>
> Original Message ----
> From: Enrique F. Bird <enfbirdp@...>
> To: GAdetection@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Thursday, August 21, 2008 2:10:54 PM
> Subject: RE: [GAdetection] Re: Agatha Christie and the Detection Club
>
>
> Friends,
>
> Dorothy L. Sayers defended in print in one of her anthologies introductions
> and somewhere else the fairness of "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd". In tha
> late 1970s, in an extensive interview in The Armchair Detective or in the
> supplemental material to the UCSD edition of "Green for Danger", Christianna
> Brand , who had direct access to both Christie and Sayers, claimed that
> while Sayers defended Christie on print, in private she was mad about TMORA
> trick, saying that Christie cheated!
>
> SS Van Dine definitely disapproved of TMORA in his introduction to "The
> World's Great Detectived Stories" - the title may be imprecise.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Enrique F. Bird Picó
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>

Jeff wrote:
> My first was The Underdog and Other Stories. My father bought
> it for me at a yard sale, thinking I might like it (I was about 12)
> Little did he know  :)

> I still have the edition in my collection.
> It's one of my most treasured possessions.

Could it have been this edition?

<http://www.antiquariaten.be/img/fotos/146561_1.jpg>

My mother and aunt had copies, which I read as a kid.
I loved those Dell covers!

--Mike Blake

Henrique Valle wrote:
> In "The Grandest Game in The World", John Dickson Carr writes that
> The Man in the Brown Suit, in which the same device is used, is «an
>  inferior novel but a better hoax» than The Murder of Roger
> Ackroyd, because in it the murderer, unlike Dr Sheppard, «carefully
> warned the reader that he will write in his diary only what he is
> willing to have everybody see».

Wait a minute...don't I remember A.B. Cox doing the same thing?
With a narrator warning us blatantly warning us not everything we
read will be true, but at the end we find it's not because of events
he didn't witness, but because *he* is the murderer, and has
been selective in what he's been telling us.

Dang, which one was that? feel free to *SPOLIER* any replies
for other folks, though.

--Mike B

The Second Shot.
 
There's also Virgil Markham's Death in the Dusk - I knew who the murderer was
twelve years ago, thanks to Sayers.  Pretty good, though, even when you do know
who did it.  Enrique also read it, knowing who the murderer was, and enjoyed
it.  It was his recommendation which made me add the book to my "must read"
list.


       Win a MacBook Air or iPod touch with Yahoo!7.
http://au.docs.yahoo.com/homepageset

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

The Second Shot.
 
There's also Virgil Markham's Death in the Dusk - I knew who the murderer was
twelve years ago, thanks to Sayers.  Pretty good, though, even when you do know
who did it.  Enrique also read it, knowing who the murderer was, and enjoyed
it.  It was his recommendation which made me add the book to my "must read"
list.


       Win a MacBook Air or iPod touch with Yahoo!7.
http://au.docs.yahoo.com/homepageset

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Then again, Carr also gives us a most admirable variation of the
ACKROYD gimmick (I won't spoil it by mentioning the title)in which
the narration is deceptive not out of deliberate untruthfullness on
the part of the narrator, but rather from the fact (that we don't
realize till later) that he was not aware of the whole truth at the
time of the writing. Clever and eminently fair.

- Scott

--- In GAdetection@yahoogroups.com, "Tony Medawar" <tonymedawar@...>
wrote:
>
> Ah but then Carr inflicted Seeing is Believing on us where he
misled us by
> stating that something was "the admitted fact", a poor attempt to
emulate
> Christie's duplicity.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Henrique Valle" <vallehenrique@...>
> To: <GAdetection@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2008 1:06 PM
> Subject: Re: [GAdetection] Re: Agatha Christie and the Detection
Club
>
>
> In "The Grandest Game in The World", John Dickson Carr writes that
The Man
> in the Brown Suit, in which the same device is used, is «an
inferior novel
> but a better hoax» than The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, because in it
the
> murderer, unlike Dr Sheppard, «carefully warned the reader that he
will
> write in his diary only what he is willing to have everybody see».
Criticism
> is also implicit in his Golden Maxim: «The criminal shall never
turn out to
> be [...] any character whose thoughts we have been allowed to
share» (which
> directly invalidates Christie's trick while having a much larger
scope).
>
> Nevertheless, Carr acknowledges TMORA's "oblique fairness". And,
about his
> Four Golden Maxims, he writes: «In each one I believe. And each
one you will
> find shattered - shattered admirably, shattered to bits, shattered
by a
> mighty hammer - in the "best" detective novels, while the reader
wishes to
> do nothing but applaud. Because they are not really rules; they
are only
> prejudices».
>
> So, it seems Carr's view about TMORA's main plot device was at
least
> ambivalent.
>
> I've tried to check the Sayers story in Barbara Reynolds
hagiography of
> Sayers, but according to the analytical index Christie is not even
mentioned
> in the book (!!!)
>
> Henrique
>
>
> Original Message ----
> From: Enrique F. Bird <enfbirdp@...>
> To: GAdetection@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Thursday, August 21, 2008 2:10:54 PM
> Subject: RE: [GAdetection] Re: Agatha Christie and the Detection
Club
>
>
> Friends,
>
> Dorothy L. Sayers defended in print in one of her anthologies
introductions
> and somewhere else the fairness of "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd".
In tha
> late 1970s, in an extensive interview in The Armchair Detective or
in the
> supplemental material to the UCSD edition of "Green for Danger",
Christianna
> Brand , who had direct access to both Christie and Sayers, claimed
that
> while Sayers defended Christie on print, in private she was mad
about TMORA
> trick, saying that Christie cheated!
>
> SS Van Dine definitely disapproved of TMORA in his introduction
to "The
> World's Great Detectived Stories" - the title may be imprecise.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Enrique F. Bird Picó
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>

Larry,

try

The Case of the Late Pig.  Or maybe Police at the Funeral or Death
of a Ghost or Dancers in Mourning.  More Work for the Undertaker is
pretty heavy going for someone not used to her style.  Her fans
usually point to the quality of her characters and writing rather
than her puzzle plots.  TCOTLP has it all though.  Plus it's short!

Curt

--- In GAdetection@yahoogroups.com, "leischen2001" <leisch5063@...>
wrote:
>
> Hi, new member, first post.
> I'm trying to read Margery Allingham and so far, after 2 books,
I'm not
> planning to continue reading her.  Started with Fear Sign/Sweet
Danger
> and now I'm on More Work for the Undertaker.  The work is like
satire
> that I don't get because I'm not familiar with what's being
satirized.
> Can anybody point me to a book that will give me a desire to
continue
> reading her? Something that shows why she's as highly regarded as
she
> seems to be by mystery fans and critics.
> Pro & con opinions would both be welcome.
> Thanks,
> Larry
>

Scott,
Heads you lose is mentioned as "her own favourite" in the back cover of the 1950
(1st) Penguin edition. I should have noticed this - by 1950 she had written only
8 books, less than half of her total. Anyway, it's at least a curious
self-assessment: Brand valued Heads higher than Death in High Heels and Green
for Danger, which seem to me to be much better books. Unfortunately I haven't
read Fog of Doubt.
Henrique


----- Original Message ----
From: monescu4 <monescu4@...>
To: GAdetection@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, September 3, 2008 4:30:55 AM
Subject: [GAdetection] Re: Holiday GAD readings


Henrique:

Agree with your assessment (and criticism) of HEADS YOU LOSE, but am not aware
of Brand
ever calling it her favourite among her works.  She did refer to FOG OF DOUBT
(LONDON
PARTICULAR) as her very favourite, however,  in a forward found in reprints of
that book,
which is indeed a much finer work.

- Scott

--- In GAdetection@ yahoogroups. com, Henrique Valle <vallehenrique@ ...> wrote:
>
> Holiday GAD
> readings and re-readings (some spoilers but no strict disclosures) :
>
> John Dickson Carr, Captain Cut-Throat (4/5). Combines historical romance, high
> adventure and detection, masterful storytelling. Nice impossible murder,
> unusually (for Carr) underplayed. Balloon scene superb. Found it much better
> than 10 years ago. Best historical Carr along with Fear is the Same.
>
> Fernando Pessoa, Quaresma, Decifrador [Quaresma, decipherer] (4/5). Unfinished
> and until 2008 unpublished detective novels written circa 1907-1935 by major
> 20th Century poet (http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ Fernando_ Pessoa) whose
> favourite writers included Poe, Doyle, Morrison, Crofts and Rhode. Armchair
> detective, impossible crimes and strictly (sometimes glacially) logical
> deduction. If finished, these novels would put Pessoa on the same level as his
> British and American contemporaries. A quote from the author: «One of the few
> intellectual enjoyments that are left for what's left of the intellectual in
> humankind is the reading of detective stories».
>
> Agatha Christie, The Sittaford Mystery (3/5). Plot coherent but thin, decisive
> clues revealed early and narrative artificially extended from then on. Last
> clue is totally unfair, its meaning is not clear and the deductions made from
> it are illogical (anyway, it is superfluous and merely a device to disguise
the
> fact that the story has gone for too long). Some aspects uncanilly close to
> Rhode, Crofts: "humdrum" detective in the beggining of the book,
> "humdrum" method of detection throughout (successive and exhaustive
> interrogations of all witnesses), train timetables, unbreakable alibi. Village
> setting, underplayed spiritualist and supernatural elements approached in
> similar way to Rhode's The House on Tollard Ridge (below). All of this with
> typical early 30's Christie liveliness, high spirits and adept storytelling.
> Paul Halter's murder method in Le Roi du Désordre is a variation of this in an
> impossible crime context. Minor but interesting and entretaining Christie.
>
> Christianna Brand, Heads you lose (3/5). Brand's own favourite. Good
> storytelling, interesting and ambivalent characters, gruesome crimes. Multiple
> solutions tend to confuse plot development. Obvious murderer (it could be no
> one else). Motive is so absurd that author had to make the criminal turn out
to
> be insane, but in an absurd way (and epileptic is considered "mad"
> and is supposed to have repeatedly become a throat-slashing maniac during
> fits). Ambiguous depiction of Jewish character that turns out to be the most
> intelligent character in the book. Black dog called Esmiss Esmoore likely and
> somewhat reasonably to infuriate some readers.
>
> John Rhode, The House on Tollard Ridge (2/5). Disconcerting book. Coherently
> constructed fair-play plot - but culprit, motive and modus operandi too easily
> guessable, and course of future events too predictable, from very early on.
> Apparently supernatural background could have made a great atmosphere - but is
> downplayed. Potentially interesting characters - but depicted from too great a
> distance, narrator doesn't care about them. 3 great chapters (VIII - life in a
> steamer; XII - adult discussion between a couple about to divorce; XIII - a
> night at a supposedly haunted house) - but the rest flatlessly, if
competently,
> written. Hadn't read Rhode for a long time, must get back to him soon.
>
> Pierre Véry, Le testament de Basil Crookes [Basil Crookes' will] (1/5).
> Over-prized, critically inflated, irritatingly absurd, partially unfair and
> illogical 1930 puzzle plot novel by French master. If a book can ever be
called
> "unrealistic" as an offense, this is the book.
>
> In a stroke of good luck I've recently bought, in highly unlikely places,
first
> hardcover editions of books by Queen, Fielding, Wallace, Dickson, Marsh,
> Gardner, Jepson, Wallace, Carolyn Wells, some of them with dust-jackets. From
> the same sources, also bought more than 100 crime Penguins at 1 euro each,
some
> of them hard to find (at least for me and at this price): Rhode, Connington,
> Crofts, Keverne, Hare, Bush, A. Gilbert, Punshon, McCloy, Bramah. I already
> owned 2 or 3 copies of some of the books bought, but cannot resist a green
> Penguin. Has someone mentioned borderline OC behaviour a few weeks ago...?
>
> Henrique
>






[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Henrique (this time I spelled it correctly!) and other friends,



Do not miss “”Fog of Doubt” – it is one of Brand’s 2 masterpieces. And try
to get one of the several editions with Brand’s own introduction.



I must confess to mixed feelings on Brand. I rate both “Green for Danger”
and “Fog of Doubt”/”London Particular” as all-time masterpieces. Yet I do
not like her short stories. I have both the Crippen & Landru and the
Southern Illinois University collections of these.



In her 2 masterpieces Brand reveals herself as a specialist at what might be
called a mini-sub-genre: the small (7 or 8!) number of characters which
include both the murderer and victims. She even playfully informs you in the
introductions! Then she yet manages to both keep her word and provide fair
play, bafflement, and surprises as only the greatest masters can do.



Best regards,



Enrique F. Bird Picó



   _____

From: GAdetection@yahoogroups.com [mailto:GAdetection@yahoogroups.com] On
Behalf Of Henrique Valle
Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2008 7:50 AM
To: GAdetection@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [GAdetection] Re: Holiday GAD readings



Scott,
Heads you lose is mentioned as "her own favourite" in the back cover of the
1950 (1st) Penguin edition. I should have noticed this - by 1950 she had
written only 8 books, less than half of her total. Anyway, it's at least a
curious self-assessment: Brand valued Heads higher than Death in High Heels
and Green for Danger, which seem to me to be much better books.
Unfortunately I haven't read Fog of Doubt.
Henrique

----- Original Message ----
From: monescu4 <monescu4@yahoo. <mailto:monescu4%40yahoo.com> com>
To: GAdetection@ <mailto:GAdetection%40yahoogroups.com> yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, September 3, 2008 4:30:55 AM
Subject: [GAdetection] Re: Holiday GAD readings

Henrique:

Agree with your assessment (and criticism) of HEADS YOU LOSE, but am not
aware of Brand
ever calling it her favourite among her works. She did refer to FOG OF DOUBT
(LONDON
PARTICULAR) as her very favourite, however, in a forward found in reprints
of that book,
which is indeed a much finer work.

- Scott

--- In GAdetection@ yahoogroups. com, Henrique Valle <vallehenrique@ ...>
wrote:
>
> Holiday GAD
> readings and re-readings (some spoilers but no strict disclosures) :
>
> John Dickson Carr, Captain Cut-Throat (4/5). Combines historical romance,
high
> adventure and detection, masterful storytelling. Nice impossible murder,
> unusually (for Carr) underplayed. Balloon scene superb. Found it much
better
> than 10 years ago. Best historical Carr along with Fear is the Same.
>
> Fernando Pessoa, Quaresma, Decifrador [Quaresma, decipherer] (4/5).
Unfinished
> and until 2008 unpublished detective novels written circa 1907-1935 by
major
> 20th Century poet (http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ Fernando_ Pessoa) whose
> favourite writers included Poe, Doyle, Morrison, Crofts and Rhode.
Armchair
> detective, impossible crimes and strictly (sometimes glacially) logical
> deduction. If finished, these novels would put Pessoa on the same level as
his
> British and American contemporaries. A quote from the author: «One of the
few
> intellectual enjoyments that are left for what's left of the intellectual
in
> humankind is the reading of detective stories».
>
> Agatha Christie, The Sittaford Mystery (3/5). Plot coherent but thin,
decisive
> clues revealed early and narrative artificially extended from then on.
Last
> clue is totally unfair, its meaning is not clear and the deductions made
from
> it are illogical (anyway, it is superfluous and merely a device to
disguise the
> fact that the story has gone for too long). Some aspects uncanilly close
to
> Rhode, Crofts: "humdrum" detective in the beggining of the book,
> "humdrum" method of detection throughout (successive and exhaustive
> interrogations of all witnesses), train timetables, unbreakable alibi.
Village
> setting, underplayed spiritualist and supernatural elements approached in
> similar way to Rhode's The House on Tollard Ridge (below). All of this
with
> typical early 30's Christie liveliness, high spirits and adept
storytelling.
> Paul Halter's murder method in Le Roi du Désordre is a variation of this
in an
> impossible crime context. Minor but interesting and entretaining Christie.
>
> Christianna Brand, Heads you lose (3/5). Brand's own favourite. Good
> storytelling, interesting and ambivalent characters, gruesome crimes.
Multiple
> solutions tend to confuse plot development. Obvious murderer (it could be
no
> one else). Motive is so absurd that author had to make the criminal turn
out to
> be insane, but in an absurd way (and epileptic is considered "mad"
> and is supposed to have repeatedly become a throat-slashing maniac during
> fits). Ambiguous depiction of Jewish character that turns out to be the
most
> intelligent character in the book. Black dog called Esmiss Esmoore likely
and
> somewhat reasonably to infuriate some readers.
>
> John Rhode, The House on Tollard Ridge (2/5). Disconcerting book.
Coherently
> constructed fair-play plot - but culprit, motive and modus operandi too
easily
> guessable, and course of future events too predictable, from very early
on.
> Apparently supernatural background could have made a great atmosphere -
but is
> downplayed. Potentially interesting characters - but depicted from too
great a
> distance, narrator doesn't care about them. 3 great chapters (VIII - life
in a
> steamer; XII - adult discussion between a couple about to divorce; XIII -
a
> night at a supposedly haunted house) - but the rest flatlessly, if
competently,
> written. Hadn't read Rhode for a long time, must get back to him soon.
>
> Pierre Véry, Le testament de Basil Crookes [Basil Crookes' will] (1/5).
> Over-prized, critically inflated, irritatingly absurd, partially unfair
and
> illogical 1930 puzzle plot novel by French master. If a book can ever be
called
> "unrealistic" as an offense, this is the book.
>
> In a stroke of good luck I've recently bought, in highly unlikely places,
first
> hardcover editions of books by Queen, Fielding, Wallace, Dickson, Marsh,
> Gardner, Jepson, Wallace, Carolyn Wells, some of them with dust-jackets.
From
> the same sources, also bought more than 100 crime Penguins at 1 euro each,
some
> of them hard to find (at least for me and at this price): Rhode,
Connington,
> Crofts, Keverne, Hare, Bush, A. Gilbert, Punshon, McCloy, Bramah. I
already
> owned 2 or 3 copies of some of the books bought, but cannot resist a green
> Penguin. Has someone mentioned borderline OC behaviour a few weeks ago...?
>
> Henrique
>

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

I'm probably going to be under fire for this, but I don't think Seeing is
Believing is unfair. An "established fact" is not necessarily a true one..
Natural science is a field of knowledge in which this is evident: the
established facts of yesterday are today known (or supposed!) to be false. The
same can be said of History. In more prosaic terms, even a fact proven in court
may, after all, turn out to be false.

In Seeing is Believing, it is not the narrator that establishes the fact. The
narrator merely states that the fact was established. Carr would have been
unfair if, for instance, any of the evidence the narrator explicitly states as
reliable in paragraphs 3-5 of Chapter I of The Hollow Man would in the end turn
out to be false.

I agree this is a borderline case. But I believe it is pure, legitimate
misdirection. A puzzle plot mystery is a battle of wits between author and
reader in which the reader must be prepared for misdirection from the narrator;
a novel is made of words, and words, being subject to multiple (and wrong)
interpretations, are therefore a legitimate means of misdirection.

This doesn't mean I hold Carr as a fair-play saint. In The Man Who Could Not
Shudder, one of the characters tells a lie that is so unmotivated the reader has
no chance of perceiving it as a lie. In And So To Murder, H.M. explicitly clears
the killer - this could have been fair-play if the reader had any element to
detect that H.M could be lying, which is not the case. There are also other
minor instances. But I stick to Seeing is Believing.

Scott writes: «However, though Carr admitted to approving of and admiring
brilliant violations of his Golden Maxim, THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD in fact
*never did* violate his maxim that: "The criminal shall never turn out to be
[...] any character whose thoughts we have been allowed to share."

I admit I'm confused by this. By definition, the reader is always allowed to
share the thougths of a homodiegetic narrator (that is, one who is a character
in the story), as the narration necessarily pressuposes the subjective
perceptions (= thoughts) of the narrator. Therefore, Carr's maxim directly
invalidates the homodiegetic narrator as criminal. But it does more: it also
invalidates the solution in which the culprit turns out to be a character whose
thoughts have been revealed by an omniscient narrator, or by a heterodiegetic
internal character focaliser (that is, a character that works as focus of
perception, a device frequently used by Carr). For instance, in Brand's Heads
you Lose, which I've recently read, the reader is allowed to share the thoughts
(and dreams) of the killer about his crimes without mentioning the fact that it
wasactually he whodunnit. by Carr's rule (and also by my standard), this is
totally unfair. In the end, Brand explains
  that the criminal was insane and, when thinking about the crimes, he wasnt't
aware he had comitted them - this would provide an explanation for the fact that
the omniscient narrator "forgot" to mention that slight detail. But it still is
unfair because the reader is not supplied with evidence to point that the
murderer might be mad (and, to make things worse, the supposed mental illness
provided by Brand is total rubbish). In Carr's The Emperor Snuff Box, a trick of
similar scope is also played, but fairly and brilliantly: we see the facts
trough the eyes of Eve Neill (the internal focalizer) and are therefore lead to
believe her perception of them, which ends up being false (as a matter of fact
this is so fair that I've spotted it).

Sayers article is interesting, but she confuses author and narrator. Only the
narrator can vouchsafe anything in a narrtive, not the author. Therefore, it
seems we must distinguish between:

a)  Position of the narrator in relation to the narrative: homodiegetic and
heterodiegetic narrator. A heterodiegetic narrator must always tell the truth.
But he/she is not obliged to tell anything, or to tell everything in the easiest
way possible for the reader. If so, there would be no puzzle-plot mystery
stories. This is why I believe Seeing is believing is fair. A Portuguese idiom
goes: "Com a verdade me enganas" -- it's difficult to translate but
Spanish-language readers will surely understand it; the point is that
"Truthfulness may deceive". This is indeed at the core of classic detective
fiction; sometimes, as in Seeing is Believing, it may be stretched, but this is
only a quantitative deviation, not a qualitative one, from the standard
narrative devices used in all puzzle-plot detective fiction. A homodiegetic
narrator may or may not tell the truth: I agree with Sayers on this, which I
believe is contrary to the Carr Maxim. An extreme, doubtful
  case would be that of the narrator-detective-criminal.

b) Point of view: omniscient narrator and internal character focaliser. Here I
am refering to heterodiegetic narrators (in fact, except in experimental
literature, omniscients narrators are by definition heterodiegetic narrators).
Following Carr, omniscient narrators shall not probe into the thoughts of the
culprit. This is because, since the omniscient narrator is supposed to
simultaneously know everything and tell the truth, there would be no excuse for
not revealing who commited the crime before the time that is considered proper
to the narrative.  In order not to incurr in a narrative assymetry (the narrator
probes the thoughts of some, but not of all characters) and in order not to
disclose the culprit's identity to the intelligent reader (the culprit must be
one of the characters whose thoughts have not been probed into), from this seems
to follow that, ideally, an omniscient narrator should not probe into the inner
thoughts of any character. This
  is extremely difficult to do, technically speaking. I believe this is why
Carr's earlier books mostly use internal character focalisers; his later books
may be weaker in many aspects but as soon as he managed to work well with an
omniscient narrator within the framework of his own maxims he practically
abandoned the internal character focalisers tecnique. I also believe this is why
reading some modern authors that try to keep within the framework of the puzzle
story while having concerns of "psychological density", like PD James, is so
uncomfortable for readers used to GAD standards. As to internal character
focalisers, and still according to Carr, since their thoughts are by definition
probed into by the narrator, they shall not be the culprits. I agree with Carr
on all of this. In fact, I believe standards of narratorial fair-play must be
more demanding in the case of a heterodiegetic narrator, because in this case
the narrative is supposed to have a
  higher degree of objectivity, than in the case of an homodiegetic narrator..
Dr. Sheppard may be permitted to lie or omit not no reveal his guilt, but an
objective narratorial instance has no such excuse.

Henrique

  Message ----
From: monescu4 <monescu4@...>
To: GAdetection@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, September 3, 2008 8:42:40 AM
Subject: [GAdetection] Re: Agatha Christie and the Detection Club


Then again, Carr also gives us a most admirable variation of the
ACKROYD gimmick (I won't spoil it by mentioning the title)in which
the narration is deceptive not out of deliberate untruthfullness on
the part of the narrator, but rather from the fact (that we don't
realize till later) that he was not aware of the whole truth at the
time of the writing. Clever and eminently fair.

- Scott

--- In GAdetection@ yahoogroups. com, "Tony Medawar" <tonymedawar@ ...>
wrote:
>
> Ah but then Carr inflicted Seeing is Believing on us where he
misled us by
> stating that something was "the admitted fact", a poor attempt to
emulate
> Christie's duplicity..
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Henrique Valle" <vallehenrique@ ...>
> To: <GAdetection@ yahoogroups. com>
> Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2008 1:06 PM
> Subject: Re: [GAdetection] Re: Agatha Christie and the Detection
Club
>
>
> In "The Grandest Game in The World", John Dickson Carr writes that
The Man
> in the Brown Suit, in which the same device is used, is «an
inferior novel
> but a better hoax» than The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, because in it
the
> murderer, unlike Dr Sheppard, «carefully warned the reader that he
will
> write in his diary only what he is willing to have everybody see».
Criticism
> is also implicit in his Golden Maxim: «The criminal shall never
turn out to
> be [...] any character whose thoughts we have been allowed to
share» (which
> directly invalidates Christie's trick while having a much larger
scope).
>
> Nevertheless, Carr acknowledges TMORA's "oblique fairness". And,
about his
> Four Golden Maxims, he writes: «In each one I believe. And each
one you will
> find shattered - shattered admirably, shattered to bits, shattered
by a
> mighty hammer - in the "best" detective novels, while the reader
wishes to
> do nothing but applaud. Because they are not really rules; they
are only
> prejudices».
>
> So, it seems Carr's view about TMORA's main plot device was at
least
> ambivalent.
>
> I've tried to check the Sayers story in Barbara Reynolds
hagiography of
> Sayers, but according to the analytical index Christie is not even
mentioned
> in the book (!!!)
>
> Henrique
>
>
> Original Message ----
> From: Enrique F. Bird <enfbirdp@.. .>
> To: GAdetection@ yahoogroups. com
> Sent: Thursday, August 21, 2008 2:10:54 PM
> Subject: RE: [GAdetection] Re: Agatha Christie and the Detection
Club
>
>
> Friends,
>
> Dorothy L. Sayers defended in print in one of her anthologies
introductions
> and somewhere else the fairness of "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd".
In tha
> late 1970s, in an extensive interview in The Armchair Detective or
in the
> supplemental material to the UCSD edition of "Green for Danger",
Christianna
> Brand , who had direct access to both Christie and Sayers, claimed
that
> while Sayers defended Christie on print, in private she was mad
about TMORA
> trick, saying that Christie cheated!
>
> SS Van Dine definitely disapproved of TMORA in his introduction
to "The
> World's Great Detectived Stories" - the title may be imprecise.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Enrique F. Bird Picó
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
> ------------ --------- --------- ------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>






[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

I'd suggest "Flowers for the Judge." It's much more of a classic mystery
story than the adventure stories cited earlier. I think it's one of her best,
quite well written, with a last sentence that is close to perfection. Very
satisfying - Campion has lost a lot of his most irritating mannerisms, the clues
are well presented and the whole book more coherent than some of the others in
  the series.

Les Blatt
_http://www.classicmysteries.net_ (http://www.classicmysteries.net)




**************It's only a deal if it's where you want to go. Find your travel
deal here.
(http://information.travel.aol.com/deals?ncid=aoltrv00050000000047)


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Thanks,
Headed to the library during my lunch hour today and I'll check out
some of your suggestions.
The responses I got also convinced me to wait a few weeks and retry
Fear Sign and Undertaker.  Perhaps going into them not expecting a
clasic puzzle story will help with the enjoyment of them.
Larry
--- In GAdetection@yahoogroups.com, "vegetableduck" <cjevans@...>
wrote:
>
> Larry,
>
> try
>
> The Case of the Late Pig.  Or maybe Police at the Funeral or Death
> of a Ghost or Dancers in Mourning.  More Work for the Undertaker is
> pretty heavy going for someone not used to her style.  Her fans
> usually point to the quality of her characters and writing rather
> than her puzzle plots.  TCOTLP has it all though.  Plus it's short!
>
> Curt
>
> --- In GAdetection@yahoogroups.com, "leischen2001" <leisch5063@>
> wrote:
> >
> > Hi, new member, first post.
> > I'm trying to read Margery Allingham and so far, after 2 books,
> I'm not
> > planning to continue reading her.  Started with Fear Sign/Sweet
> Danger
> > and now I'm on More Work for the Undertaker.  The work is like
> satire
> > that I don't get because I'm not familiar with what's being
> satirized.
> > Can anybody point me to a book that will give me a desire to
> continue
> > reading her? Something that shows why she's as highly regarded as
> she
> > seems to be by mystery fans and critics.
> > Pro & con opinions would both be welcome.
> > Thanks,
> > Larry
> >
>

I very much appreciate Henrique Valle's thoughts about narrative
reliability.  Is what he calls an internal character focalizer (more
often, I think, simply called a viewpoint character) fair game as a
possible culprit?  Carr and others would say no, since by definition
we must share their thoughts.  I must say, though, that this rule or
stricture seems arbitrary to me, despite HV's eloquent exposition.
(But no, I don't think SEEING IS BELIEVING is fair. Clear case of HV's
"heterodiegetic narrator" lying through his teeth!)

On the subject of ROGER ACKROYD -- everyone seems to have forgotten
that we *never* share the narrator's thoughts.  The entire narration
is a *manuscript,* and moreover, we're specifically told that it is
(in the "Poirot's Little Reunion" chapter).  What could be fairer?
In a sense, this is the final clue that ought to nail down the
narrator's guilt for the shrewd reader.  For, as we know, there's
often no explanation given for a 1st-person narrative.  It just kind
of arrives -- "Oh, a novel in the 1st person" -- and we readers are
free to assume that the "narrator" is talking (or thinking) to
himself.  But not in this case -- Christie plays fair, and tells us
that the narrative we're reading has been written down by Dr.
Sheppard.  And indeed, when his guilt is unmasked, we even learn the
reason for his literary project: "I meant it to be published one day
as the history of one of Poirot's failures."

So . . . we have never once been "allowed to share the thoughts" of
Dr. Sheppard.  On the contrary, we've been allowed to share a
diabolically clever manuscript which this conceited felon had
intended to publish as a final bit of crowing.

Best,

John

--- In GAdetection@yahoogroups.com, Henrique Valle
<vallehenrique@...> wrote:
>
>
> I'm probably going to be under fire for this, but I don't think
Seeing is Believing is unfair. An "established fact" is not
necessarily a true one.. Natural science is a field of knowledge in
which this is evident: the established facts of yesterday are today
known (or supposed!) to be false. The same can be said of History. In
more prosaic terms, even a fact proven in court may, after all, turn
out to be false.
>
> In Seeing is Believing, it is not the narrator that establishes the
fact. The narrator merely states that the fact was established. Carr
would have been unfair if, for instance, any of the evidence the
narrator explicitly states as reliable in paragraphs 3-5 of Chapter I
of The Hollow Man would in the end turn out to be false.
>
> I agree this is a borderline case. But I believe it is pure,
legitimate misdirection. A puzzle plot mystery is a battle of wits
between author and reader in which the reader must be prepared for
misdirection from the narrator; a novel is made of words, and words,
being subject to multiple (and wrong) interpretations, are therefore
a legitimate means of misdirection.
>
> This doesn't mean I hold Carr as a fair-play saint. In The Man Who
Could Not Shudder, one of the characters tells a lie that is so
unmotivated the reader has no chance of perceiving it as a lie. In
And So To Murder, H.M. explicitly clears the killer - this could have
been fair-play if the reader had any element to detect that H.M could
be lying, which is not the case. There are also other minor
instances. But I stick to Seeing is Believing.
>
> Scott writes: «However, though Carr admitted to approving of and
admiring brilliant violations of his Golden Maxim, THE MURDER OF
ROGER ACKROYD in fact *never did* violate his maxim that: "The
criminal shall never turn out to be [...] any character whose
thoughts we have been allowed to share."
>
> I admit I'm confused by this. By definition, the reader is always
allowed to share the thougths of a homodiegetic narrator (that is,
one who is a character in the story), as the narration necessarily
pressuposes the subjective perceptions (= thoughts) of the narrator.
Therefore, Carr's maxim directly invalidates the homodiegetic
narrator as criminal. But it does more: it also invalidates the
solution in which the culprit turns out to be a character whose
thoughts have been revealed by an omniscient narrator, or by a
heterodiegetic internal character focaliser (that is, a character
that works as focus of perception, a device frequently used by Carr).
For instance, in Brand's Heads you Lose, which I've recently read,
the reader is allowed to share the thoughts (and dreams) of the
killer about his crimes without mentioning the fact that it
wasactually he whodunnit. by Carr's rule (and also by my standard),
this is totally unfair. In the end, Brand explains
>  that the criminal was insane and, when thinking about the crimes,
he wasnt't aware he had comitted them - this would provide an
explanation for the fact that the omniscient narrator "forgot" to
mention that slight detail. But it still is unfair because the reader
is not supplied with evidence to point that the murderer might be mad
(and, to make things worse, the supposed mental illness provided by
Brand is total rubbish). In Carr's The Emperor Snuff Box, a trick of
similar scope is also played, but fairly and brilliantly: we see the
facts trough the eyes of Eve Neill (the internal focalizer) and are
therefore lead to believe her perception of them, which ends up being
false (as a matter of fact this is so fair that I've spotted it).
>
> Sayers article is interesting, but she confuses author and
narrator. Only the narrator can vouchsafe anything in a narrtive, not
the author. Therefore, it seems we must distinguish between:
>
> a)  Position of the narrator in relation to the narrative:
homodiegetic and heterodiegetic narrator. A heterodiegetic narrator
must always tell the truth. But he/she is not obliged to tell
anything, or to tell everything in the easiest way possible for the
reader. If so, there would be no puzzle-plot mystery stories. This is
why I believe Seeing is believing is fair. A Portuguese idiom
goes: "Com a verdade me enganas" -- it's difficult to translate but
Spanish-language readers will surely understand it; the point is
that "Truthfulness may deceive". This is indeed at the core of
classic detective fiction; sometimes, as in Seeing is Believing, it
may be stretched, but this is only a quantitative deviation, not a
qualitative one, from the standard narrative devices used in all
puzzle-plot detective fiction. A homodiegetic narrator may or may not
tell the truth: I agree with Sayers on this, which I believe is
contrary to the Carr Maxim. An extreme, doubtful
>  case would be that of the narrator-detective-criminal.
>
> b) Point of view: omniscient narrator and internal character
focaliser. Here I am refering to heterodiegetic narrators (in fact,
except in experimental literature, omniscients narrators are by
definition heterodiegetic narrators). Following Carr, omniscient
narrators shall not probe into the thoughts of the culprit. This is
because, since the omniscient narrator is supposed to simultaneously
know everything and tell the truth, there would be no excuse for not
revealing who commited the crime before the time that is considered
proper to the narrative.  In order not to incurr in a narrative
assymetry (the narrator probes the thoughts of some, but not of all
characters) and in order not to disclose the culprit's identity to
the intelligent reader (the culprit must be one of the characters
whose thoughts have not been probed into), from this seems to follow
that, ideally, an omniscient narrator should not probe into the inner
thoughts of any character. This
>  is extremely difficult to do, technically speaking. I believe this
is why Carr's earlier books mostly use internal character focalisers;
his later books may be weaker in many aspects but as soon as he
managed to work well with an omniscient narrator within the framework
of his own maxims he practically abandoned the internal character
focalisers tecnique. I also believe this is why reading some modern
authors that try to keep within the framework of the puzzle story
while having concerns of "psychological density", like PD James, is
so uncomfortable for readers used to GAD standards. As to internal
character focalisers, and still according to Carr, since their
thoughts are by definition probed into by the narrator, they shall
not be the culprits. I agree with Carr on all of this. In fact, I
believe standards of narratorial fair-play must be more demanding in
the case of a heterodiegetic narrator, because in this case the
narrative is supposed to have a
>  higher degree of objectivity, than in the case of an homodiegetic
narrator.. Dr. Sheppard may be permitted to lie or omit not no reveal
his guilt, but an objective narratorial instance has no such excuse.
>
> Henrique
>
>  Message ----
> From: monescu4 <monescu4@...>
> To: GAdetection@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Wednesday, September 3, 2008 8:42:40 AM
> Subject: [GAdetection] Re: Agatha Christie and the Detection Club
>
>
> Then again, Carr also gives us a most admirable variation of the
> ACKROYD gimmick (I won't spoil it by mentioning the title)in which
> the narration is deceptive not out of deliberate untruthfullness on
> the part of the narrator, but rather from the fact (that we don't
> realize till later) that he was not aware of the whole truth at the
> time of the writing. Clever and eminently fair.
>
> - Scott
>
> --- In GAdetection@ yahoogroups. com, "Tony Medawar"
<tonymedawar@ ...>
> wrote:
> >
> > Ah but then Carr inflicted Seeing is Believing on us where he
> misled us by
> > stating that something was "the admitted fact", a poor attempt to
> emulate
> > Christie's duplicity..
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Henrique Valle" <vallehenrique@ ...>
> > To: <GAdetection@ yahoogroups. com>
> > Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2008 1:06 PM
> > Subject: Re: [GAdetection] Re: Agatha Christie and the Detection
> Club
> >
> >
> > In "The Grandest Game in The World", John Dickson Carr writes
that
> The Man
> > in the Brown Suit, in which the same device is used, is «an
> inferior novel
> > but a better hoax» than The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, because in
it
> the
> > murderer, unlike Dr Sheppard, «carefully warned the reader that
he
> will
> > write in his diary only what he is willing to have everybody
see».
> Criticism
> > is also implicit in his Golden Maxim: «The criminal shall never
> turn out to
> > be [...] any character whose thoughts we have been allowed to
> share» (which
> > directly invalidates Christie's trick while having a much larger
> scope).
> >
> > Nevertheless, Carr acknowledges TMORA's "oblique fairness". And,
> about his
> > Four Golden Maxims, he writes: «In each one I believe. And each
> one you will
> > find shattered - shattered admirably, shattered to bits,
shattered
> by a
> > mighty hammer - in the "best" detective novels, while the reader
> wishes to
> > do nothing but applaud. Because they are not really rules; they
> are only
> > prejudices».
> >
> > So, it seems Carr's view about TMORA's main plot device was at
> least
> > ambivalent.
> >
> > I've tried to check the Sayers story in Barbara Reynolds
> hagiography of
> > Sayers, but according to the analytical index Christie is not
even
> mentioned
> > in the book (!!!)
> >
> > Henrique
> >
> >
> > Original Message ----
> > From: Enrique F. Bird <enfbirdp@ .>
> > To: GAdetection@ yahoogroups. com
> > Sent: Thursday, August 21, 2008 2:10:54 PM
> > Subject: RE: [GAdetection] Re: Agatha Christie and the Detection
> Club
> >
> >
> > Friends,
> >
> > Dorothy L. Sayers defended in print in one of her anthologies
> introductions
> > and somewhere else the fairness of "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd".
> In tha
> > late 1970s, in an extensive interview in The Armchair Detective
or
> in the
> > supplemental material to the UCSD edition of "Green for Danger",
> Christianna
> > Brand , who had direct access to both Christie and Sayers,
claimed
> that
> > while Sayers defended Christie on print, in private she was mad
> about TMORA
> > trick, saying that Christie cheated!
> >
> > SS Van Dine definitely disapproved of TMORA in his introduction
> to "The
> > World's Great Detectived Stories" - the title may be imprecise.
> >
> > Best regards,
> >
> > Enrique F. Bird Picó
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >
> >
> > ------------ --------- --------- ------
> >
> > Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

I very much appreciate Henrique Valle's thoughts about narrative
reliability.  Is what he calls an internal character focalizer (more
often, I think, simply called a viewpoint character) fair game as a
possible culprit?  Carr and others would say no, since by definition
we must share their thoughts.  I must say, though, that this rule or
stricture seems arbitrary to me, despite HV's eloquent exposition.
(But no, I don't think SEEING IS BELIEVING is fair. Clear case of HV's
"heterodiegetic narrator" lying through his teeth!)

On the subject of ROGER ACKROYD -- everyone seems to have forgotten
that we *never* share the narrator's thoughts.  The entire narration
is a *manuscript,* and moreover, we're specifically told that it is
(in the "Poirot's Little Reunion" chapter).  What could be fairer?
In a sense, this is the final clue that ought to nail down the
narrator's guilt for the shrewd reader.  For, as we know, there's
often no explanation given for a 1st-person narrative.  It just kind
of arrives -- "Oh, a novel in the 1st person" -- and we readers are
free to assume that the "narrator" is talking (or thinking) to
himself.  But not in this case -- Christie plays fair, and tells us
that the narrative we're reading has been written down by Dr.
Sheppard.  And indeed, when his guilt is unmasked, we even learn the
reason for his literary project: "I meant it to be published one day
as the history of one of Poirot's failures."

So . . . we have never once been "allowed to share the thoughts" of
Dr. Sheppard.  On the contrary, we've been allowed to share a
diabolically clever manuscript which this conceited felon had
intended to publish as a final bit of crowing.

Best,

John

--- In GAdetection@yahoogroups.com, Henrique Valle
<vallehenrique@...> wrote:
>
>
> I'm probably going to be under fire for this, but I don't think
Seeing is Believing is unfair. An "established fact" is not
necessarily a true one.. Natural science is a field of knowledge in
which this is evident: the established facts of yesterday are today
known (or supposed!) to be false. The same can be said of History. In
more prosaic terms, even a fact proven in court may, after all, turn
out to be false.
>
> In Seeing is Believing, it is not the narrator that establishes the
fact. The narrator merely states that the fact was established. Carr
would have been unfair if, for instance, any of the evidence the
narrator explicitly states as reliable in paragraphs 3-5 of Chapter I
of The Hollow Man would in the end turn out to be false.
>
> I agree this is a borderline case. But I believe it is pure,
legitimate misdirection. A puzzle plot mystery is a battle of wits
between author and reader in which the reader must be prepared for
misdirection from the narrator; a novel is made of words, and words,
being subject to multiple (and wrong) interpretations, are therefore
a legitimate means of misdirection.
>
> This doesn't mean I hold Carr as a fair-play saint. In The Man Who
Could Not Shudder, one of the characters tells a lie that is so
unmotivated the reader has no chance of perceiving it as a lie. In
And So To Murder, H.M. explicitly clears the killer - this could have
been fair-play if the reader had any element to detect that H.M could
be lying, which is not the case. There are also other minor
instances. But I stick to Seeing is Believing.
>
> Scott writes: «However, though Carr admitted to approving of and
admiring brilliant violations of his Golden Maxim, THE MURDER OF
ROGER ACKROYD in fact *never did* violate his maxim that: "The
criminal shall never turn out to be [...] any character whose
thoughts we have been allowed to share."
>
> I admit I'm confused by this. By definition, the reader is always
allowed to share the thougths of a homodiegetic narrator (that is,
one who is a character in the story), as the narration necessarily
pressuposes the subjective perceptions (= thoughts) of the narrator.
Therefore, Carr's maxim directly invalidates the homodiegetic
narrator as criminal. But it does more: it also invalidates the
solution in which the culprit turns out to be a character whose
thoughts have been revealed by an omniscient narrator, or by a
heterodiegetic internal character focaliser (that is, a character
that works as focus of perception, a device frequently used by Carr).
For instance, in Brand's Heads you Lose, which I've recently read,
the reader is allowed to share the thoughts (and dreams) of the
killer about his crimes without mentioning the fact that it
wasactually he whodunnit. by Carr's rule (and also by my standard),
this is totally unfair. In the end, Brand explains
>  that the criminal was insane and, when thinking about the crimes,
he wasnt't aware he had comitted them - this would provide an
explanation for the fact that the omniscient narrator "forgot" to
mention that slight detail. But it still is unfair because the reader
is not supplied with evidence to point that the murderer might be mad
(and, to make things worse, the supposed mental illness provided by
Brand is total rubbish). In Carr's The Emperor Snuff Box, a trick of
similar scope is also played, but fairly and brilliantly: we see the
facts trough the eyes of Eve Neill (the internal focalizer) and are
therefore lead to believe her perception of them, which ends up being
false (as a matter of fact this is so fair that I've spotted it).
>
> Sayers article is interesting, but she confuses author and
narrator. Only the narrator can vouchsafe anything in a narrtive, not
the author. Therefore, it seems we must distinguish between:
>
> a)  Position of the narrator in relation to the narrative:
homodiegetic and heterodiegetic narrator. A heterodiegetic narrator
must always tell the truth. But he/she is not obliged to tell
anything, or to tell everything in the easiest way possible for the
reader. If so, there would be no puzzle-plot mystery stories. This is
why I believe Seeing is believing is fair. A Portuguese idiom
goes: "Com a verdade me enganas" -- it's difficult to translate but
Spanish-language readers will surely understand it; the point is
that "Truthfulness may deceive". This is indeed at the core of
classic detective fiction; sometimes, as in Seeing is Believing, it
may be stretched, but this is only a quantitative deviation, not a
qualitative one, from the standard narrative devices used in all
puzzle-plot detective fiction. A homodiegetic narrator may or may not
tell the truth: I agree with Sayers on this, which I believe is
contrary to the Carr Maxim. An extreme, doubtful
>  case would be that of the narrator-detective-criminal.
>
> b) Point of view: omniscient narrator and internal character
focaliser. Here I am refering to heterodiegetic narrators (in fact,
except in experimental literature, omniscients narrators are by
definition heterodiegetic narrators). Following Carr, omniscient
narrators shall not probe into the thoughts of the culprit. This is
because, since the omniscient narrator is supposed to simultaneously
know everything and tell the truth, there would be no excuse for not
revealing who commited the crime before the time that is considered
proper to the narrative.  In order not to incurr in a narrative
assymetry (the narrator probes the thoughts of some, but not of all
characters) and in order not to disclose the culprit's identity to
the intelligent reader (the culprit must be one of the characters
whose thoughts have not been probed into), from this seems to follow
that, ideally, an omniscient narrator should not probe into the inner
thoughts of any character. This
>  is extremely difficult to do, technically speaking. I believe this
is why Carr's earlier books mostly use internal character focalisers;
his later books may be weaker in many aspects but as soon as he
managed to work well with an omniscient narrator within the framework
of his own maxims he practically abandoned the internal character
focalisers tecnique. I also believe this is why reading some modern
authors that try to keep within the framework of the puzzle story
while having concerns of "psychological density", like PD James, is
so uncomfortable for readers used to GAD standards. As to internal
character focalisers, and still according to Carr, since their
thoughts are by definition probed into by the narrator, they shall
not be the culprits. I agree with Carr on all of this. In fact, I
believe standards of narratorial fair-play must be more demanding in
the case of a heterodiegetic narrator, because in this case the
narrative is supposed to have a
>  higher degree of objectivity, than in the case of an homodiegetic
narrator.. Dr. Sheppard may be permitted to lie or omit not no reveal
his guilt, but an objective narratorial instance has no such excuse.
>
> Henrique
>
>  Message ----
> From: monescu4 <monescu4@...>
> To: GAdetection@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Wednesday, September 3, 2008 8:42:40 AM
> Subject: [GAdetection] Re: Agatha Christie and the Detection Club
>
>
> Then again, Carr also gives us a most admirable variation of the
> ACKROYD gimmick (I won't spoil it by mentioning the title)in which
> the narration is deceptive not out of deliberate untruthfullness on
> the part of the narrator, but rather from the fact (that we don't
> realize till later) that he was not aware of the whole truth at the
> time of the writing. Clever and eminently fair.
>
> - Scott
>
> --- In GAdetection@ yahoogroups. com, "Tony Medawar"
<tonymedawar@ ...>
> wrote:
> >
> > Ah but then Carr inflicted Seeing is Believing on us where he
> misled us by
> > stating that something was "the admitted fact", a poor attempt to
> emulate
> > Christie's duplicity..
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Henrique Valle" <vallehenrique@ ...>
> > To: <GAdetection@ yahoogroups. com>
> > Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2008 1:06 PM
> > Subject: Re: [GAdetection] Re: Agatha Christie and the Detection
> Club
> >
> >
> > In "The Grandest Game in The World", John Dickson Carr writes
that
> The Man
> > in the Brown Suit, in which the same device is used, is «an
> inferior novel
> > but a better hoax» than The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, because in
it
> the
> > murderer, unlike Dr Sheppard, «carefully warned the reader that
he
> will
> > write in his diary only what he is willing to have everybody
see».
> Criticism
> > is also implicit in his Golden Maxim: «The criminal shall never
> turn out to
> > be [...] any character whose thoughts we have been allowed to
> share» (which
> > directly invalidates Christie's trick while having a much larger
> scope).
> >
> > Nevertheless, Carr acknowledges TMORA's "oblique fairness". And,
> about his
> > Four Golden Maxims, he writes: «In each one I believe. And each
> one you will
> > find shattered - shattered admirably, shattered to bits,
shattered
> by a
> > mighty hammer - in the "best" detective novels, while the reader
> wishes to
> > do nothing but applaud. Because they are not really rules; they
> are only
> > prejudices».
> >
> > So, it seems Carr's view about TMORA's main plot device was at
> least
> > ambivalent.
> >
> > I've tried to check the Sayers story in Barbara Reynolds
> hagiography of
> > Sayers, but according to the analytical index Christie is not
even
> mentioned
> > in the book (!!!)
> >
> > Henrique
> >
> >
> > Original Message ----
> > From: Enrique F. Bird <enfbirdp@ .>
> > To: GAdetection@ yahoogroups. com
> > Sent: Thursday, August 21, 2008 2:10:54 PM
> > Subject: RE: [GAdetection] Re: Agatha Christie and the Detection
> Club
> >
> >
> > Friends,
> >
> > Dorothy L. Sayers defended in print in one of her anthologies
> introductions
> > and somewhere else the fairness of "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd".
> In tha
> > late 1970s, in an extensive interview in The Armchair Detective
or
> in the
> > supplemental material to the UCSD edition of "Green for Danger",
> Christianna
> > Brand , who had direct access to both Christie and Sayers,
claimed
> that
> > while Sayers defended Christie on print, in private she was mad
> about TMORA
> > trick, saying that Christie cheated!
> >
> > SS Van Dine definitely disapproved of TMORA in his introduction
> to "The
> > World's Great Detectived Stories" - the title may be imprecise.
> >
> > Best regards,
> >
> > Enrique F. Bird Picó
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >
> >
> > ------------ --------- --------- ------
> >
> > Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

Enrique:

I'm not too crazy about many of her short stories either.
However, "Murder Game" (also titled "The Geminy Crickets Murder
Case") is a *major* exception.  It may be my favorite detective
short story of all time... something of a cross between John Dickson
Carr and "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari"! I also like "After the
Event" (I believe that is the title of it).

- Scott

--- In GAdetection@yahoogroups.com, "Enrique F. Bird" <enfbirdp@...>
wrote:
>
> Henrique (this time I spelled it correctly!) and other friends,
>
>
>
> Do not miss ""Fog of Doubt" – it is one of Brand's 2 masterpieces.
And try
> to get one of the several editions with Brand's own introduction.
>
>
>
> I must confess to mixed feelings on Brand. I rate both "Green for
Danger"
> and "Fog of Doubt"/"London Particular" as all-time masterpieces.
Yet I do
> not like her short stories. I have both the Crippen & Landru and
the
> Southern Illinois University collections of these.
>
>
>
> In her 2 masterpieces Brand reveals herself as a specialist at
what might be
> called a mini-sub-genre: the small (7 or 8!) number of characters
which
> include both the murderer and victims. She even playfully informs
you in the
> introductions! Then she yet manages to both keep her word and
provide fair
> play, bafflement, and surprises as only the greatest masters can
do.
>
>
>
> Best regards,
>
>
>
> Enrique F. Bird Picó
>
>
>