Inspirations, Innovations, and Experiments

Eric Quayle. The Collector’s Book of Detective Fiction. London: Studio Vista, 1972. 

I purchased this book sometime in the 1990s and pored over, read, and re-read it for years before I began to seriously collect detective fiction. More than any other reference book, it has shaped my collection. I never thought that one day I would have books from Quayle’s own library in my possession. 

George Bates. Murder, Catalogue the Seventh of Rare and Interesting Books Illustrating the Development of the Detective and Mystery Story. London: George Bates, [1934]. 

The purportedly first rare book catalogue devoted exclusively to detective and mystery fiction. George Bates was a well-known London bookseller. As stated in David A. Randall’s autobiography, Dukedom Large Enough, Scribner’s Rare Books Department didn’t issue their first detective fiction catalogue until 1935. It was largely based on John Carter’s essay, “Detective Fiction,” published in 1934 in New Paths in Book Collecting. Carter worked with Randall at Scribner’s at the time. 

Eric Osborne, editor, with an introduction by John Carter. Victorian Detective Fiction, A Catalogue of the Collection made by Dorothy Glover & Graham Greene. London: The Bodley Head, 1966. 

With a preface by Graham Greene and an introduction by John Carter, the catalogue lists works from 1846 to 1901 and includes a publishing history of Fergus Hume’s The Mystery of a Hansom Cab. This is copy number 333 of an edition of 500 and is signed by Glover, Greene, and Carter. 

Dennis Wheatley and J. G. Links. Murder Off Miami. Crime-Book Society by Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers) Ltd., [1936]. 

A curious experiment by the thriller writer Dennis Wheatley with the planning help of J. G. Links, Murder Off Miami was published as a “murder dossier,” an inspector’s file complete with depositions, crime scene photographs, fabric scraps, hair samples, matchsticks, etc. The reader is asked to solve the mystery before opening the sealed solution. The overall approach was a dose of reality in a typically artificial age. Over 80,000 copies were sold in Great Britain for three shillings and six pence, and the experiment was repeated three times more. 

Lawrence Treat. Pictorial Mysteries. New York: Frederick H. Beach, [1930s]. 

Lawrence Treat created five solve-them-yourself picture mysteries titled “Kentucky Feud,” “Murder in Maiden Lane,” “Triangle,” “Hang Up the Clue,” and “Filling Station.” There are ten copies of each mystery per pad, and an answer sheet. 

 

[Anonymous]. The Man Trap. Boston: The Riverton Press, 1910. 

The Man Trap was a contest book that advertised $1,500 in prize money for the best solutions to the mystery. When the publishers were advised by the federal government that the rules made the contest partially one of chance and therefore a lottery—thus illegal—they issued this second state edition with lots of “cancelled” stamps on the contest rules. The publishers also added a mea culpa statement page inserted at the end.