Re-posted and slightly updated:
I am a native of West Virginia and although I didn't live there for more than a few months after I was born I did return every summer while I was growing up and every now and then since. My mother's family were early settlers in that part of Virginia that became West Virginia. My identification with the place is primarily familial and nostalgic and I have many friends with a less tenuous claim to familiarity. Nevertheless, when I come across some piece of history or literature related to the state I usually pay attention. Some years ago I discovered that one of the great American mystery writers was Melville Davisson Post, a West Virginian from that part of the state where my Bond ancestors dwelt. I just downloaded several of his books from the Many Books site:
Free ebooks by Melville Davisson Post. I noted that one of the stories in
Dwellers in the Hills (1901) refers to Lost Creek, a West Virginia location familiar to me and to many of my Seventh Day Baptist friends, including a cousin who now pastors the Seventh Day Baptist church there. Many of Post's stories are set in the state. Post's most famous collection of mystery stories is
Uncle Abner (1918) — about which
I've posted before.
Joseph Bottum wrote
There is a case to be made that the Uncle Abner stories—the twenty-two tales of the Virginia hills written by Melville Davisson Post between 1911 and 1928—are among the finest mysteries ever written. .... [H]igh as Post's tales rank in general mystery fiction, they stand at the very top of the sub-genre of religious mysteries. In the deliberate tone of the stories and the matching of the writing's pitch to its subject, in the uniting of the religious element with the detective's action and the sense of good's battle against evil in the solution of a crime, only G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown belongs beside Melville Davisson Post's Uncle Abner. ....
Uncle Abner is available, free, as an e-book for Kindle and other electronic formats:
Uncle Abner, Master of Mysteries by Melville Davisson Post. The picture is of my copy, a 1919 reprint.
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