It’s been a little while since I last picked up my lovely collection of vintage crime short stories, “Dead Witness”, but I had a little lull between books recently and figured it was a good time to revisit! Time is progressing in the anthology, and the stories I’m reading now are from the turn of the 20th century.

d3897683x

The Haverstock Hill Murder by George R. Sims

The informative intro to this tale gives a fascinating insight into author Sims’ life, and his detective creation, Dorcas Dene, is certainly an engaging one. Here, Dorcas is retained to investigate the case of a gentleman convicted of murdering his wife and confined to an asylum. His mother is convinced of his innocence and asks Dorcas to clear his name. An expert in disguise, she turns up unexpectedly all over the place, unrecognised by the narrator (who knows her well) and then finally explains all. Alas, experienced reader of criminal stories that I am, I got the solution almost immediately – which is no disrespect to the story, which I still found enjoyable and nicely written. Dorcas is a lovely detective and I’d like to read more of the stories, as those with a female central character were still a rarity at the time. I’ll just have to try a little less hard to work out the plot….

The Stolen Cigar-Case by Bret Harte

As soon as I started this tale, I realised that I’d read it before. It’s a very funny and very wonderful parody of Sherlock Holmes and I suspect I’ve come across it in the brilliant “Faber Book of Parodies” – I’d go and check, but the chances of finding my copy are probably very slim…

The great detective Hemlock Jones features as the investigator in this story, and the narrating doctor is so convinced of his genius that he gets down and kisses his feet at one point. But Jones’s cigar case has gone missing and the tortuous processes of his mind bring him to a very alarming conclusion!

The pastiche is brilliantly done, catching all of Holmes’s mannerisms and eccentricities to a T! Highly recommended if you love Sherlock and want a laugh!

cigar1

The Absent-Minded Coterie by Robert Barr

The next story features the detective Eugene Valmont – I read “The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont” nearly a year ago and enjoyed it very much, reviewing it here. However, oddly enough I recognised this particular tale as one I’d read previously, and so it’s obviously often anthologised. As I said at the time, “The character of Valmont himself is an engaging one – Barr manages to create a very convincing-sounding Frenchman, with the verbosity, gallantry and intolerance of British law and police that you would expect from one of our Gallic cousins of that era! He is susceptible to fine wine and beautiful women, and very occasionally you think that Barr might be hamming up the stereotype a little, but this is never so much that it distracts from the puzzle. And these puzzles are very good – from minor mysteries of stolen money to larger concerns of bombs and anarchy. Valmont’s cases stretch as far as America, and he is much more fallible that Holmes – he fails in some of his cases, and at times acts outside the law in a way that the resident of 221b would never do!”

So an enjoyable trio of tales – here’s to the next few in the book! 🙂