Another fan

Today John Mark Reynolds posted about several authors, "They were almost great...Five Remarkable Writers." One of those falling just short of his five was R. Austin Freeman.

R. Austin Freeman

I don’t know many people who read the Dr. Thorndyke stories outside of detective book junkies. They are odd in that they start with the “whodunit” and then reveal the how he done it. ....

I love the Freeman books and as I thin out my library they will not be among those that go. From previous posts on this site:

Many of Freeman's stories are "inverted" detective tales where you are told the story of the crime from the perpetrator's point of view including, of course, all the steps taken to conceal what he has done, and then observe the detective's inexorable discovery of the guilty. Evans says that Freeman was one of T.S. Eliot's favorite detective novelists, better than Christie. Evans on Freeman:

Although Freeman’s first detective novel, The Red Thumb Mark, appeared in 1907, well before the beginning of the Golden Age, Freeman, a contemporary of Arthur Conan Doyle, continued writing mystery fiction until the year before his death in 1943. Between 1922 and 1938, Freeman published fifteen detective novels and three collections of detective short stories, all but one detailing exploits of his then-famous detective (and the greatest rival of Sherlock Holmes), medical jurist Dr. John Thorndyke. Two more Thorndyke novels appeared in 1940 and 1942, outside the proper span of the Golden Age.

Freeman’s Thorndyke tales brought science and forensic medicine into the detective fiction genre in a masterful way. Compared to Thorndyke, Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes is far less credible on scientific matters. ....

Though some of Freeman’s best works, such as The Eye of Osiris (1911) and the short-story collections John Thorndyke’s Cases (1909) and The Singing Bone (1912), were published before the Golden Age began, Freeman produced many superb Golden Age works, including the three later short story collections Dr. Thorndyke’s Casebook (1923), The Puzzle Lock (1925), and The Magic Casket (1927) and novels such as The Cat’s Eye (1923), The Shadow of the Wolf (1925), As a Thief in the Night (1928), Mr. Pottermack's Oversight (1930), The Penrose Mystery (1936), and The Stoneware Monkey (1938).

Freeman’s story collection The Singing Bone has been credited with creating the inverted mystery, and the later novels Wolf and Oversight are fine examples of that form. (more)

I don't possess all of those books, but of those I do own Mr. Pottermack's Oversight is a favorite, as are a couple he doesn't mention, A Silent Witness (1929) and For the Defense: Dr. Thorndyke (1934).

And...

Most of these books, by R. Austin Freeman, were what was known as an "inverted" detective story: the book started with the crime, from the criminal's point of view, and then you observed Dr. Thorndyke, as he inexorably moved toward discovering the criminal (although not always exposing him). I'm reading Mr. Pottermack's Oversight, first published in 1930, and came across the following in the text, reminding me that plot is not the only reason I find Freeman so enjoyable:

Temperamentally, Dr. John Thorndyke presented a peculiarity which, at the first glance, seemed to involve a contradiction. He was an eminently friendly man; courteous, kindly and even genial in his intercourse with his fellow creatures. Nor was his suave, amicable manner in any way artificial or consciously assumed. To every man his attitude of mind was instinctively friendly; and if he did not suffer fools gladly, he could, on occasion endure them with almost inexhaustible patience.

And yet, with all his pleasant exterior and his really kindly nature, he was at heart a confirmed solitary. Of all company, his own thoughts were to him the most acceptable. After all, his case was not singular. To every intellectual man, solitude is not only a necessity, it is the condition to which his mental qualities are subject, and the man who cannot endure his own sole society has usually excellent reasons for his objection to it. (p. 105)

Many of the Freeman books are now in the public domain and available for download free as ebooks. One source.

R. Austin Freeman

That which is referred to as the "Golden Age" of detective fiction is, roughly, the period between the World Wars, and the writers who continue to be most celebrated from that era are all women: Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh. At The American Culture Curt Evans writes about "The British Golden Age of Detection’s Deposed Crime Kings" in two parts (Part 1 and Part 2) regretting the neglect of some very good male crime writers from that period. One of those is R. Austin Freeman, also one of my favorites about whom I've posted before. Many of Freeman's stories are "inverted" detective tales, where you are told the story of the crime from the perpetrator's point of view including, of course, all the steps taken to conceal what he has done, and then observe the detective's inexorable discovery of the guilty. Evans says that Freeman was one of T.S. Eliot's favorite detective novelists, better than Christie. Evans on Freeman:

Although Freeman’s first detective novel, The Red Thumb Mark, appeared in 1907, well before the beginning of the Golden Age, Freeman, a contemporary of Arthur Conan Doyle, continued writing mystery fiction until the year before his death in 1943. Between 1922 and 1938, Freeman published fifteen detective novels and three collections of detective short stories, all but one detailing exploits of his then-famous detective (and the greatest rival of Sherlock Holmes), medical jurist Dr. John Thorndyke. Two more Thorndyke novels appeared in 1940 and 1942, outside the proper span of the Golden Age.

Freeman’s Thorndyke tales brought science and forensic medicine into the detective fiction genre in a masterful way. Compared to Thorndyke, Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes is far less credible on scientific matters. P.D. James claims that the Golden Age detective novelists “had very little knowledge and even less apparent interest in forensic medicine”—a far too sweeping statement, evidently based mostly on her assessments of the Crime Queens, which does a grave injustice to Freeman, perhaps the single most important progenitor of the use of forensic medicine in detective fiction. ....

Though some of Freeman’s best works, such as The Eye of Osiris (1911) and the short-story collections John Thorndyke’s Cases (1909) and The Singing Bone (1912), were published before the Golden Age began, Freeman produced many superb Golden Age works, including the three later short story collections Dr. Thorndyke’s Casebook (1923), The Puzzle Lock (1925), and The Magic Casket (1927) and novels such as The Cat’s Eye (1923), The Shadow of the Wolf (1925), As a Thief in the Night (1928), Mr. Pottermack's Oversight (1930), The Penrose Mystery (1936), and The Stoneware Monkey (1938).

Freeman’s story collection The Singing Bone has been credited with creating the inverted mystery, and the later novels Wolf and Oversight are fine examples of that form. (more)

I don't possess all of those books, but of those I do own Mr. Pottermack's Oversight is a favorite, as are a couple he doesn't mention, A Silent Witness (1929) and For the Defense: Dr. Thorndyke (1934).

Curt Evans, "The British Golden Age of Detection’s Deposed Crime Kings (Part 2 of 2)", The American Culture

Dr. John Thorndyke

Having been reminded of The Hardy Boys and of other books I enjoyed when young, I decided to re-visit an author I discovered a little later. Dr. John Thorndyke was the CSI of the first half of the 20^th century — solving crimes using science. Most of these books, by R. Austin Freeman, were what was known as an "inverted" detective story: the book started with the crime, from the criminal's point of view, and then you observed Dr. Thorndyke, as he inexorably moved toward discovering the criminal (although not always exposing him). I'm reading Mr. Pottermack's Oversight, first published in 1930, and came across the following, reminding me that plot is not the only reason I find Freeman so enjoyable:

Temperamentally, Dr. John Thorndyke presented a peculiarity which, at the first glance, seemed to involve a contradiction. He was an eminently friendly man; courteous, kindly and even genial in his intercourse with his fellow creatures. Nor was his suave, amicable manner in any way artificial or consciously assumed. To every man his attitude of mind was instinctively friendly; and if he did not suffer fools gladly, he could, on occasion endure them with almost inexhaustible patience.

And yet, with all his pleasant exterior and his really kindly nature, he was at heart a confirmed solitary. Of all company, his own thoughts were to him the most acceptable. After all, his case was not singular. To every intellectual man, solitude is not only a necessity, it is the condition to which his mental qualities are subject; and the man who cannot endure his own sole society has usually excellent reasons for his objection to it. (p. 105)

Apart from the reference to the "intellectual man" — which I would not claim — that seems to me a pretty good description of me, or, no doubt more accurately, how I would like to be.

"Plots about poisonings and wills and survivorship"

I think I first encountered R. Austin Freeman's Dr. Thorndyke on the fiction shelves of the old Milton College Library. He became a favorite and I find the books can be re-read with pleasure. The Eye of Osiris (1911) was only the second in the series to be published. Many of the Freeman books are out of copyright and can be found in downloadable form at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere. The Eye of Osiris can also be read online there, although I liked this site more as a reading experience. About the author and the book:

Richard Austin Freeman (1862-1943) is without question one of the most important and influential authors of the Golden Age of detection, having begun his career in the genre at the beginning of the century and continuing to produce notable mysteries up until the middle of the second world war. Freeman had qualified as a doctor in 1886 but had been unsuccessful in maintaining a career in general practice which would enable him to support his family. ....

In 1907 Freeman made the first step which was to lead to his becoming one of the most celebrated mystery writers of the day when he created Dr. John Evelyn Thorndyke, an expert in medical jurisprudence, and published the first book to feature him, The Red Thumb Mark. One of the first mysteries to deal with fingerprint evidence, it was selected as a Haycraft Queen cornerstone, as was his next published novel, The Eye Of Osiris. ....

In The Unpleasantness At The Bellona Club Dorothy L. Sayers’ series-regular Charles Parker makes the following observation to Lord Peter Wimsey when the two come across their chief suspects detective fiction collection – ‘That fellow Freeman is full of plots about poisonings and wills and survivorship, isn’t he?’ In this book, we are given all of that and more. The scope of scientific and legal themes addressed is extensive and includes such diverse subjects as adipocere and the action of submersion in water on dead bodies, the laws on survivorship when a dead person’s body is missing, the art of embalming, dismemberment of bodies and the emerging innovation of x-ray photography. Thorndyke is knowledgeable on all these subjects and more, using his vast expertise to navigate through the issues which cloud the case. When it appears that there is someone manipulating the events from behind the scenes he is able to see their stratagems and the motive behind them, enabling him to deduce what has actually happened....

In many ways this is a mystery that is ahead of its time, incorporating all the elements which would be familiar to devotees of the Golden Age, though written a decade before the date usually regarded as when that era began. However, it also contains elements that echo back to the Victorian age, which is not surprising given Freeman’s love of Charles Dickens, a writer who was a notable influence on him. .... [T]his is a first-class mystery, fully deserving its status as one of the greatest and most influential detective novels of the Edwardian era.

"R. Austin Freeman – The Eye Of Osiris (1911)," May 6, 2023.

R. Austin Freeman

My enthusiasm for ManyBooks.net continues as I discover many titles by R. Austin Freeman, all of them earlier than the one I quote from below—no doubt because later ones still have copyright issues. From an earlier post on this site about Freeman's books:

.... Most of these books, by R. Austin Freeman, were what was known as an "inverted" detective story: the book starts with the crime from the criminal's point of view, and then you observe Dr. Thorndyke, as he inexorably moves toward discovering the criminal (although not always exposing him).

I'm reading Mr. Pottermack's Oversight, first published in 1930, and came across the following, reminding me that plot is not the only reason I find Freeman so enjoyable:

Temperamentally, Dr. John Thorndyke presented a peculiarity which, at the first glance, seemed to involve a contradiction. He was an eminently friendly man; courteous, kindly, and even genial in his intercourse with his fellow creatures. Nor was his suave, amicable manner in any way artificial or consciously assumed. To every man his attitude of mind was instinctively friendly; and if he did not suffer fools gladly, he could, on occasion endure them with almost inexhaustible patience.

And yet, with all his pleasant exterior and his really kindly nature, he was at heart a confirmed solitary. Of all company, his own thoughts were to him the most acceptable. After all, his case was not singular. To every intellectual man, solitude is not only a necessity, it is the condition to which his mental qualities are subject, and the man who cannot endure his own sole society has usually excellent reasons for his objection to it. (p. 105)

He is an introvert!

Free ebooks by R. Austin Freeman

Some good reading

Standard EBooks continues to add to its library of beautifully formatted, downloadable, out-of-copyright, and thus free eBooks. This month, I noticed R. Austin Freeman's The D’Arblay Mystery, the ninth in their Doctor Thorndyke series. I've posted about the Dr. Thorndyke books several times before. Another is a book I haven't read since childhood, The Swiss Family Robinson.

Johann David Wyss was inspired by Robinson Crusoe but wanted a story his own children could learn from. Thus the novel’s various adventures are really lessons on topics as varied as farming, cooperation, animal husbandry, and frugality. The novel became a favorite of the castaway genre....

But my favorite discovery this month is the first book in which Albert Campion appears, Margery Allingham's The Crime at Black Dudley (1929).

George Abbershaw has been invited to a party at the gloomy old English mansion of a friend, along with a few people he knows, a few he doesn’t, and one he is sweet on. A suspicious death means George has to determine who can be trusted and who can’t, including a bespectacled young man named Albert Campion who seems to have shown up at the party uninvited. When things take a decided turn for the worse, George and the rest of the guests have to band together in an effort to extricate themselves from an increasingly perilous situation.

Although only a supporting player here, Albert Campion would be the protagonist of another sixteen novels and over twenty short stories, contributing to Margery Allingham being considered one of the four “Queens of Crime,” along with Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and Ngaio Marsh.

Standard EBooks seems to intend to publish more of the Campion books as they become available.

Standard EBooks

Standard Ebooks

I've posted before about an excellent source of free E-books:

Standard Ebooks is a volunteer-driven project that produces new editions of public domain ebooks that are lovingly formatted, open source, free of U.S. copyright restrictions, and free of cost.

I support the site, and as one of the benefits, I get an email every month listing the newest books there. Three of this month's notable additions:

• George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons (1867-1889)
• G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong With the World (1910)
• R. Austin Freeman, The Eye of Osiris (1911)

C.S. Lewis often mentioned MacDonald and Chesterton as important influences. Freeman was the author of the Thorndyke mysteries. They are among my favorites, and I've posted about them before.

Remembered pleasure

Upon reading this review I immediately bought the book. The experiences of both the author and the reviewer seemed to so closely parallel my own as a youthful reader, including the reluctance to re-visit some authors out of fear that they wouldn't stand up to the remembered pleasure. From "The Sheer Joy of Genre Reading: Dirda’s ‘On Conan Doyle, or, The Whole Art of Storytelling’," by Curtis Evans:

I was fascinated by Dirda’s account of his own experiences with fiction, which date back to the 1950s, the great era of pulp paperbacks and E.C. Comics. Dirda’s seminal childhood reading material was somewhat loftier than, say, Vault of Horror, but he still got from it that same delicious frisson of fright:

The Hound of the Baskervilles...was the first ‘grown-up’ book I ever read—and it changed my life…Romantic poets regularly sigh over their childhood memories of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower. But what are daisies and rainbows compared to…sleek and shiny paperbacks? …. With a dollar clutched in my fist, I pedaled my red Roadmaster bike to Whalen’s drugstore, where I quickly picked out two or three candy bars, a box of Cracker Jack, and a cold bottle of Orange Crush. After my family had driven off in our new 1958 Ford, I dragged a blanket from my bed, spread it on the reclining chair next to the living room’s brass floor lamp, carefully arranged my provisions near to hand, and crawled expectantly under the covers with my paperback of The Hound—just as the heavens began to boom with thunder and the rain to thump against the curtained windows…. The Hound of the Baskervilles left its teeth marks in me and seriously aroused my then still slumbering passion for reading. I was no longer the same ten-year-old when I reached its final pages.

Dirda goes on to discuss other amazing genre discoveries he made after Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle showed him the way:

• G.K. Chesterton’s clerical Father Brown (“each story chronicled a crime utterly beyond human ken”)
• Sax Rohmer’s diabolical Dr. Fu Manchu (Dirda writes that he dare not go back and reread the Fu Manchu tales, “lest I be seriously appalled by my youthful taste”)
• Howard Haycraft’s Boys’ Book of Great Detective Stories (where Dirda “first read the stunning Thinking Machine classic, ‘The Problem of Cell 13′ “)
• Ernest Bramah’s blind detective, Max Carrados (see http://thepassingtramp.blogspot.com/2012/01/all-hail-max-12-cases-for-max-carrados.html)
• “The highly scientific Dr. Thorndyke of R. Austin Freeman”

If you’re a longtime fan of this amazingly rich period of mystery genre fiction, from the 1890s to World War One and beyond, to the “Golden Age” of the 1920s and 1930s, Dirda’s book makes entrancing reading.

I read all of those including, of course, Conan Doyle, except for the Haycraft — but I read "The Problem of Cell 13" in some other collection and then went on to read more of Futrelle's "Thinking Machine" stories. I've posted about many of these authors here and most, having fallen into the public domain, are available online. Curtis Evans writes about a few of these authors and others here and here. One of the most enjoyable accounts of the "Golden Age" mystery writers was by the above-mentioned Howard Haycraft, Murder for Pleasure: The Life and Times of the Detective Story.

The Sheer Joy of Genre Reading: Dirda’s ‘On Conan Doyle, or, The Whole Art of Storytelling’ | The American Culture

T.S. Eliot and crime

At CrimeReads, "T.S. Eliot, Crime Fiction Critic," from which:

.... Like many a mystery reader in the Golden Age, T.S. Eliot had catholic taste in crime fiction and enjoyed both character-driven mysteries like The Moonstone and those which have been dismissed as “mere puzzles:” detective stories depending primarily on the mechanical cleverness of their plots to grab readers. ....

In The Criterion, the prestigious literary journal he founded and edited, Eliot had a forum where he could share his fascination with detective fiction and its aesthetics. Between 1927 and 1929 Eliot in its pages reviewed thirty-four mystery novels and short story collections, as well as two works on true crime. Like a kind of highbrow pope he lent detective fiction, at a crucial time in its development as an art form, the considerable cachet of his intellectual benediction. ....

...Eliot advocates a prohibition on outré devices: incredible disguises; insanity; occult phenomena and fantastic science; and elaborate and bizarre machinery, such as cyphers and codes, runes and rituals. Testing the nine mystery works in his review essay against these rules, Eliot concluded that of them R. Austin Freeman’s detective novel The D’Arblay Mystery was “the most perfect in form” (despite one violation). ....

Eliot had a half-dozen favorite authors of modern detective fiction, whom he “recommended to the small, fastidious public which really discriminates between good and bad detective stories.” These authors were R. Austin Freeman, Freeman Wills Crofts, S.S. Van Dine, J.J. Connington, Agatha Christie and Lynn Brock. Eliot had comparatively little to say about Agatha Christie and Lynn Brock, but he went into more detail on the four other authors. As early as June 1927, Eliot speculated that “Mr. Freeman and Mr. Croft [sic]…seem to be our two most accomplished detective writers.” On two other occasions in The Criterion, Eliot bracketed Freeman and Crofts as the finest modern mystery novelists. Austin Freeman, a contemporary of Arthur Conan Doyle who had created Sherlock Holmes’ greatest rival in the form of the brilliant medical jurist Dr. John Thorndyke, had produced his first detective novel as far back as 1907; yet, unlike Doyle, he was an extremely prolific producer of mystery novels and short stories during the Golden Age. Besides singling out Freeman’s The D’Arblay Mystery in his January 1927 review article as the “most perfect in form” of the nine books reviewed, Eliot commented in his June 1927 review essay that he regretted having no Freeman novel on hand to assess, as the author “has more of the Wilkie Collins abundance than any contemporary writer of detective fiction.”

In Freeman Wills Crofts, a railway engineer turned detective novelist who was a meticulous plotter (the acknowledged king of the “unbreakable alibi” story) but rather an indifferent literary stylist, Eliot could glimpse little of that “Wilkie Collins abundance.” In the critic’s view, however, Crofts did not stand in need of that abundance, for he had other gifts valuable to a spinner of mystery tales. ...Eliot noted...: “Mr. Crofts, at his best, as in The Cask [his celebrated 1920 debut mystery novel], succeeds by his thorough devotion to the detective interest; his characters are just real enough to make the story work; had he tried to make them more human and humorous he might have ruined his story. ....

T.S. Eliot’s mystery criticism in The Criterion reveals the great writer as a representative twenties detective fiction fan, one still amused with and mentally stimulated by the ingenuity of the puzzles crime authors were devising. .... (more, including a list of Eliot's favorite mysteries)

I haven't enjoyed Crofts or S.S. Vane Dine as much as did Eliot but I very much enjoy R. Austin Freeman. Most of these authors are now in the public domain and many of their books can be read online or downloaded free of cost.

T.S. Eliot, Crime Fiction Critic | CrimeReads