My Youth of Crime.

From as  early as I can remember I have read and read; though nowadays much of my reading consists of dipping into such sites as Great Writing, at least as far as non-professional writing is concerned.  I do use the internet for reference material and even for novel reading , and when I need a break from the heavy concentration that this often requires, I still meander up to our local library.

And what books do I select for recreational reading? Much the same sort of books that I selected in my youth; ones which fall into either of two categories , the quirky or crime, or sometimes those categories combined.  There was a longish period of canvassing many kinds of science fiction, including fantasy, but the writers whom I enjoyed very much in that field seem to have ceased writing now.

My mother worked for a long time in a couple of different lending libraries so I had plenty of access to all the fictional reading material I needed, and had first call on any new books that came in. In those years, from about age eight to about eighteen I must have read every crime novel that came into the libraries, but the truly quirky became popular with me after a long period spent on novels, etc for English Literature studies at university.  Early, being a completion obsessive and wishing to read all the works of any particular author, I kept a school notebook of all those authors and their novels, and I remember that Agatha Christie's novels took up more lines per page than any others.

Most of the writers I have forgotten now, and I have certainly forgotten their plots, which I can count as a blessing should I find a re-issue in the library, or resurrect one of the old Penguin Crime series from the depths of our underground garage. Having Alzheimer's helps a lot, too.

The first crime category in which I indulged could probably more correctly be labelled as thrillers, with easily recognisable villains, and dashing heroes who had a winsome maiden tagging along as somebody frequently to be rescued  from the forces of evil, or now and then actually assisting in their demolition. I was never all that keen on Bulldog Drummond, that sort of middleman between Buchan , Nayland Smith  at one end , and Ian Fleming at the other.  Far too British a gent for me, who prefers his thriller heroes with just a dash of the villain in themselves.

One of the earliest crime novelists to whom I became attached was Peter Cheney. I have since discovered that his novels were apparently a huge success during the war years, not  just as propaganda but as great morale boosters. Whatever, they appealed to my fervent adolescent imagination, and Lemmy Caution and Slim Callaghan  occupied many an hour of my time. I too enjoyed them during those war years.

Another character of great appeal was Norman Conquest, in the novels by Berkeley Gray, one of the most prolific writers one could find. Gray published millions of words under various pseudonyms, his real name being Edwy Searles Brooks, and he was responsible for many Sexton Blake stories.  I did not care for them, nor for the novels he wrote as Victor Gunn. But Norman Conquest  and his lady friend Pixie enthralled me.  He left his tag of 1066  at the scenes of his deeds of derring-do, just as The Saint did with his haloed stick figure in the novels by Leslie Charteris , again a novelist I sought avidly, at least for the first twenty or so novels! Their relationships with their legitimate police counterparts was always a matter of absorbing interest to me.

Possibly because they had little mystery in them I outgrew the thriller style of writing and graduated to the puzzle novel. Of course I read Agatha Christie, although I found her stylistically dull and her  plotting clever but restricted.  Dorothy L. Sayers appealed for long enough for me to complete her canon, though Lord Peter Wimsey was a bit of a pain and that may be the reason that I nowadays eschew the novels of Elizabeth George featuring  Inspector Thomas Lynley .  This aversion no doubt has been reinforced by my past addiction to the Margery Allingham novels, much as I enjoyed them at the time.  At least her detective, Albert Campion, together with  his scurrilous manservant Lugg, managed to inhabit a shadowy world less fey than Lord Peter's.

Carter Dickson or John Dickson Carr is a wonderful exponent of the locked room style of detective novel, and I can recommend highly his short story The House In Goblin Wood  as one of the most remarkable in its genre, particularly in its daring give away to the solution. His  detective, Sir Henry Merrivale, was one I liked  greatly. And of course at the time I was reading  Carr, I was devouring Ellery Queen novels with  their wonderful titles, together with Ngaio Marsh's Inspector Alleyn stories.

But before I launch into an interminable list of later crime writers whom I now and then read, such as Minette Walters and Patricia Cornwell, let me go back to the quirky I mentioned before.  Nero Wolfe (together with another of Rex Stout's creations, Alphabet Hicks) was a great favourite and so was Asey Mayo, the Cape Cod detective created by  Phoebe Atwood Taylor.

Of course it is almost mandatory that crime stories have an idiosyncratic detective who approaches the quirky but I must let the reader decide for him/her/self in that area.

But  before I leave the subject of oddities, I cannot help but mention a writer whose novels fascinated my father and me  when I  was aged between fourteen and eighteen.  He  was the master of the McGuffin, and wrote what he himself called webwork novels -- works that were almost Dadaist in their approach to plotting. I understand that he is now having a cult revival .

If you ever get a chance to look over novels by Harry Stephen Keeler , then I wish you the very best of luck in comprehending them !