Wow.

OK, this is WAY off topic, folks. No mystery here; if you object, then proceed to the next post. Nothing to see here. Move along.

It's just that one of my favorite comic strips from what we'll politely call my formative years has suddenly reappeared - and what a reappearance.

The strip is "Pogo," by Walt Kelly. Pogo is perhaps best known for saying, "We have met the enemy and he is us." Pogo, as you should know (if you're old enough to remember) is a possum, living in the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia, with a whole lot of friends, like Albert Alligator, Mam'selle Hepzibah (a skunk), Churchy LaFemme (a turtle), Porkypine, Howland Owl, Deacon Mushrat (who "speaks" in Old English gothic type) and a whole lot more. It was a comic strip with attitude; Walt Kelly did political satire long before Doonesbury. His comics were pointed and yet they were also, usually, very very funny.

According to the editors' note in the recently published Pogo: The Complete Daily & Sunday Comic Strips, Vol. 1: Through the Wild Blue Wonder, Kelly wrote and drew Pogo for 24 years - six daily strips and a full-color Sunday strip each week. Fantagraphics Books plans to republish all of the Pogo strips in 12 volumes, each containing two years worth of strips. This first volume is beautifully put together, with the early strips from 1949 and 1950 (plus an earlier series drawn for the New York Star in 1948-49), There's a foreword by Jimmy Breslin and an introduction from Steve Thompson, president of the Pogo Fan Club.

The strip ended in 1975 (nearly two years after Kelly's death), so I suspect a lot of my readers simply are too young to remember Pogo. That's a pity. But you'll never see a more beautifully put-together collection of comic strips, complete with the full-color Sunday strips, than this one. I hope a new generation of Pogo readers can be created. I'm thumbing through the book and here's Pogo, having just won or maybe lost a rigged election, saying "I protests, contests and deetests every ol' thing 'bout this ee-lection." We haven't come very far, have we?

Ah well. As Porkypine says, "Don't take life so serious, son...it ain't nohow permanent."

Welcome back, everyone.

Thank you. We now return you to your regularly scheduled mysteries...

It was a meeting (a reunion, actually) that rivals, in the history of crime fiction, the first meeting between Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson:

As I came out again, I cannoned into a little man who was just entering. I drew aside and apologized, when suddenly, with a loud exclamation, he clasped me in his arms and kissed me warmly.

"Mon ami Hastings" he cried. "It is indeed mon ami Hastings!"

"Poirot" I exclaimed.

And so, for the first time, Captain Arthur Hastings introduces the reader to his "old friend," Monsieur Hercule Poirot, war refugee and retired Belgian police detective. And it proves to be a good thing that he did, for without M. Poirot's intervention (and without Captain Hastings to record the results!), the poisoning of a disagreeable old woman at the country manor known as Styles might well have gone unsolved - or pinned on the wrong person. It all happens in Agatha Christie's very first mystery novel, published in 1920, "The Mysterious Affair at Styles," which is the subject of today's review on the Classic Mysteries podcast. You can listen to the complete review by clicking here.

"The Mysterious Affair at Styles" contains a great many of what would become Christie's trademarks: it is set in a country house; the victim is a particularly unpleasant family tyrant; there are a lot of people around who might well have had sufficient motive for murder; the police are headed in the wrong direction and need help from Poirot; and the mystery is solved and explained at a confrontation in a drawing room where Poirot has gathered all the suspects.

The story of the creation of Hercule Poirot is fairly well known. He sprang, more-or-less fully formed, into Agatha Christie's head, an already-elderly retired foreign police detective who came to England as a war refugee from his native Belgium. That "already-elderly" designation would come to haunt Christie, who acknowledged in her autobiography that Poirot must have been well over a hundred years old before his career finally ended.

All the same, Poirot's first case, in "The Mysterious Affair at Styles," is a delight, made all the more astonishing by the fact that the story was written by a young woman with next to no real writing experience, dared by her sister to try her hand at writing a detective story. The book is full of Christie's marvelous tricks, as she uses misdirection artfully to throw readers off the right track. The poisoning is quite brilliantly handled; Christie used her extensive knowledge of poisons (acquired as a hospital dispenser during the Great War) to provide a novel and ingenious solution to the problem of "howdunit." If the characters are less than perfectly drawn, the plot is more than sufficient to carry the book along.

After "The Mysterious Affair at Styles," Christie went on to write novels, short stories and plays, eighty books in all; I think that no other author quite embodies the heart of the Golden Age of Detection as Agatha Christie does. If you've never read the book that started it all, what are you waiting for? There are inexpensive paperbacks available (see the link above); for that matter there are inexpensive Amazon Kindle versions including one for 99 cents which also includes Christie's second novel, the Tommy-and-Tuppence thriller "The Secret Adversary," another fun read.

"The Mysterious Affair at Styles" is my entry for the 1920s in the "Deadly Decades" division of the Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge under way at Bev's My Reader's Block blog. Check there for some of the other wonderful classic mysteries being read by other bloggers - books which you might enjoy reading.

Dorothy Gilman, the author of the popular espionage thrillers featuring Mrs. Pollifax, has died. It's been a very long time since I read her books, though I remember enjoying them a lot when I read them; perhaps it's time to dig out one of her early books, which surely qualifies by now as a classic, for a review here. Mrs. Pollifax, according to the New York Times obit, " is very likely the only spy in literature to belong simultaneously to the Central Intelligence Agency and the local garden club." Going on the theory that a kindly-looking grandmother would never be suspected of being a CIA agent, Mrs. Pollifax has quite a number of adventures in the course of 14 novels published between 1966 and 2000. The Times obit has many more details. Dorothy Gilman and Mrs. Pollifax will be missed.

Hat tip: Alice Ann Carpenter of the Grave Matters bookstore.

We are coming up in less than two weeks on Valentine's Day, one of those holidays when a lot of people buy gifts for worthy or not-so-worthy recipients:

• Significant others;
• Not-so-significant others;
• Beloved family members;
• Rich aunts who had better be remembered although disliked;
• Teachers;
• Parole officers.

That sort of thing. In any case, if you are thinking of a gift, may I put in my occasinal beg for two favors:

1. If you are buying a book, particularly a mystery, please try to patronize your local indie book store and/or mystery bookseller, if you have one;
2. Otherwise, if you want to buy something sold by Amazon - and they sell just about everything - please use the Amazon box on the upper right side of this page to search for your product and to link you to Amazon. It will cost you no more, and I get a remarkably small percentage if you buy something through that link.

Thank you. We return you now to our regularly scheduled discussion of mysteries.

Here's a question for mystery lovers: can there be such a thing as too much Sherlock Holmes? Given the recent surge of interest in things Holmesian - movies, new television series, new books featuring Holmes and Watson and others - how much is too much?

It's an interesting question. So Bill Lengeman of the Traditional Mysteries Blog invited several other mystery bloggers to discuss the question and talk about things Sherlockian in general on an inaugural roundtable podcast. Taking part, besides Bill, were Patrick (At the Scene of the Crime), Sergio (Tipping My Fedora), John (Pretty Sinister Books), Steven (In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel) and yours truly from Classic Mysteries. It turned into a fun and, I hope, informative conversation, which you can listen to by clicking here.

The name of Edgar Wallace is largely forgotten today, but in his time, roughly the first third of the 20th century, few authors enjoyed a wider readership. During the 1920s, one of Wallace's publishers once claimed that fully one quarter of all the books read in England were written by Wallace; the entry on Wallace in the Golden Age of Detection wiki notes that more than 160 movies have been made from his novels, more than any other author.

I must admit that I count Wallace's books among my own secret pleasures. It's not great literature, but I guarantee you'll have a good time when you read them - particularly his thrillers.

If you want a good example of the kind of story that was Wallace's specialty, you'll find it in a marvelous book originally published in 1917 called "The Secret House." It's the subject of this week's review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the full review by clicking here.  

"The Secret House" is pure escapism, a lovely little thriller which, like most of Wallace's works, gets off to a high-speed and energetic start and doesn't slow down for an instant. I'm not going to try for a synopsis, because it pretty well defies description, as only a Wallace thriller could. It involves an international blackmailer - whose picture, of course, is unknown to police - and a couple of quick and easy murders on a millionaire's doorstep. Among the sure-fire thriller ingredients, you'll find a damsel in distress, a young hero, a major international criminal and blackmailer, a number of thoroughly disreputable types who work for said blackmailer (including a would-be suitor for the hand of the aforementioned distressed damsel), a crafty senior policeman, some suspicious doctors, a very rich and possibly insane American millionaire...get the idea?

Oh, and there's the Secret House itself, a rather fantastic dwelling with interior rooms that can be shifted around mechanically to literally rearrange the architecture of the place. And would such a house be complete without some hidden escape tunnels? It's all quite ridiculous, but the action is so fast-paced that the reader hardly has a chance to remark on the sheer unbelievability of it all. My best advice is to hang on to your seat and enjoy it; "The Secret House" is as much fun as a good roller coaster ride and about as long-lasting. It's available in print, to be sure, but it's also available absolutely free for the Amazon Kindle (see the Amazon link above).

"The Secret House," from 1917, is my third entry in the "Deadly Decades" themed section of the Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge at Bev Hankins' excellent "My Reader's Block" blog. Follow the link to see what everyone is reading - you may find some worthwhile additions to your "to be read" pile.

The Independent Mystery Booksellers Association has announced its nominees for the Dilys Award, presented each year "to the mystery titles of the year which the member booksellers have most enjoyed selling." The nominees:

•  Faithful Place, by Tana French
• Wicked Autumn, by G. M. Malliet
•  Tag Man, by Archer Mayor
• A Trick of the Light, by Louise Penny
• Ghost Hero, by S. J. Rozan

The award is named for Dilys Wynn, who founded what was the first specialty bookstore dealing with mystery books, New York City's "Murder Ink," now, alas, long-since closed. At the link above, you'll find more information about the award and the group, along with a list of previous winners and nominees. The winner will be announced on March 31 at this year's Left Coast Crime conference in Sacramento, CA.

Hat tip: The Rap Sheet

The "she" of the headline is blogger Jen Forbus, who blogs at Jen's Book Thoughts, one of the mystery book blogs that I check daily. She reviews mysteries in virtually all genres, with particular emphasis on mysteries available as audiobooks. She also does great author interviews. And she is involved in a fair number of reading challenges, some of which she has originated herself.

For the past couple of years, Jen has also sponsored a "theme week" for other book bloggers, inviting us to post reviews and other material on our blogs, with links to her theme week (often including her own version of "March Madness" in the form of a contest). Now, as the headline says, she's at it again, inviting other book bloggers to join her for a week in mid-April to talk about "Heroes and Villains." The idea is for participants to post a review of a mystery featuring a particular hero - or villain - along with an additional post with background about that hero or villain. If you're a book blogger (and I know a number of my readers are), it sounds like a great deal of fun; if not, I promise you it will be worth reading the entries and taking part in whatever contest accompanies the festivities. Full details (and a sign-up form for bloggers) may be found here.

Back in the early years of the last century, long distance travel in the United States generally meant getting on board a train. If you could afford it, you would generally get yourself a bunk in a Pullman sleeper car, where upper and lower berths extended the length of the car, affording little privacy but a certain degree of comfort on an overnight journey. Of course, things could go wrong. And did. Which brings us to "The Man in Lower Ten," by Mary Roberts Rinehart, the subject of this week's book review on the Classic Mysteries podcast. You can listen to the full review by clicking here.

"The Man in Lower Ten" follows the adventures and misadventures of a lawyer named Lawrence Blakely, who is traveling by train to take a deposition in a major forgery case. Blakely is assigned to sleep in "lower ten" - the designation for a particular lower berth in the Pullman car. For a variety of reasons, he winds up sleeping elsewhere, which turns out to be a good thing, because the unfortunate man who does go to sleep in "lower ten" is murdered during the night - and suspicion falls on Blakely. The train is then wrecked in a disastrous crash...and the story goes on from there, as Blakely and his friends try to stay one step ahead of the police while attempting to solve the murder. It's mostly a thriller, with some detective work involved as well, and it's all great fun. Rinehart was enormously popular during the first half of the 20th century, coming up with very enjoyable mysteries and thrillers.

"The Man in Lower Ten" was first published in 1909, and it is my entry for a book published during the first decade of the 20th century in the ongoing Vintage Mysteries Reading Challenge at the My Reader's Block blog. I suspect most visitors here would enjoy it. While it's still available in regular print editions, I see that Amazon is offering a free eBook version for the Kindle. At that price, what are you waiting for?