The Hands of Mr Ottermole - Thomas Burke

I know I read this only a few days ago, but I remember little about it. So, not one that is memorable.

The Little House - H. C. Bailey

Interesting, but more of a crime story than a mystery. Not entirely my cup as it did include crime involving children.

The Silver Mask - Hugh Walpole

Well, this was unnerving. It's a crime story, but it's more of a horror story in my book. 

Next up:

Wind in the East - Henry Wade

The  Avenging Chance - Anthony Berkley

They Don't Wear Labels - E. M. Delafield

The Unseen Door - Margery Allingham

Cheese - Ethel Lina White

You Can't Hang Twice - Anthony Gilbert

Previous Reading Updates:

Reading progress update: I've read 171 out of 320 pages.

Reading progress update: I've read 67 out of 320 pages.

Reading progress update: I've read 21 out of 320 pages.

So far, I like the variety of authors that Martin Edwards has picked, but few of the stories have been fun reads:

The Magic Casket - R. Austin Freeman

An interesting concept. I liked the local colour of mentioning exhibits at the museum in South Kensington (now the V&A), but other than that the depiction of the Japanese gangsters makes this one another one that won't be all that memorable.

The Holloway Flat Tragedy - Ernest Bramah

This is not my first Bramah, but it is the first that I have DNF's even tho it is a short story. There is something about Bramah's writing and his Max Carrados stories that just bores me stiff. 

It's a pity, the setting around Holloway sounded promising.

The Magician Of Cannon Street - J. S. Fletcher

Interesting up to a point, but it's another story that features the "evil foreigner" trope. That's not unusual for a GA mystery but it does lessen my reading enjoyment. Meh.

The Stealer of Marble - Edgar Wallace

This was delightful. True to form Wallace with the smart, yet totally bonkers, solution. 

The Tea Leaf - Robert Eustace and Edgar Jepson

Fantastic. I loved this locked room mystery. Not dissimilar to the Wallace story that precedes it (The Stealer of Marble) but I loved that this one combines several elements I liked with good mystery that kept me guessing. 

To be fair, I did not expect anything less from Robert Eustace. :D

I'll probably finish the rest of the stories tomorrow or Monday. 

Reading on:

A Mystery of the Underground - John Oxenham:

I have no idea what I just read. I may have missed the point ... and plot of this story in its entirety. This is not one that will be memorable at all.

The Finchley Puzzle - Richard Marsh:

Erm, this story evidently emulates one by ACD, and one of my favourite Holmes stories at that. While the original required some suspension of disbelief, Marsh's story was absolutely preposterous, and not in a good way.

Onwards!

This week has been slumpish. I haven't felt like diving into any heavy reads or even full length novels or really anything that required a lot of focus. So, poetry and short stories and Paul Temple, and even this only a few minutes at a time, were the only reads I engaged in this week. Not that poetry doesn't require some focus etc. ... but poems are short and you don't generally need to remember a plot or characters from one poem to the next.

Anyway, I did manage to start Capital Crimes, which is a collection of short stories with London as a theme. 

The first story in the book was The Case of Lady Sannox by Arthur Conan Doyle. 

I have read this story before in a superb collection of ACD's (non-Holmes) short stories called Gothic Tales, and I found it stomach-turning then. On the re-read, it's still makes me wince, but then I am not a fan of horror ... and this falls into the horror genre for me.

However, I think I also appreciated the story a little more on the re-read for its pointing out issues regarding xenophobia and domestic violence. It's one of ACD's stories that I thought was quite modern, ahead if its time even, for story first published in 1893.

Btw, all of ACD's stories are available online for free.  

I am not sure I will write an update for all of the other stories in Capital Crimes, but for reference the stories included in the collection are:

The Case of Lady Sannox - Arthur Conan Doyle

A Mystery of the Underground - John Oxenham

The Finchley Puzzle - Richard Marsh

The Magic Casket - R. Austin Freeman

The Holloway Flat Tragedy - Ernest Bramah

The Magician Of Cannon Street - J. S. Fletcher

The Stealer of Marble - Edgar Wallace

The Tea Leaf - Robert Eustace and Edgar Jepson

The Hands of Mr Ottermole - Thomas Burke

The Little House - H. C. Bailey

The Silver Mask - Hugh Walpole

Wind in the East - Henry Wade

The  Avenging Chance - Anthony Berkley

They Don't Wear Labels - E. M. Delafield

The Unseen Door - Margery Allingham

Cheese - Ethel Lina White

You Can't Hang Twice - Anthony Gilbert

Ah, this was such a nice surprise...there are two stories in this book The Terror and White Face. 

I seriously should maybe think about reading book descriptions rather than just be seduced by the pretty covers of books.

Anyway, The Terror was your typical Edgar Wallace thriller focused on madness, crime, and darkest London. To me Wallace didn't write noir as much as a special kind of Gothic crime, including damsels in distress, castles, secret passages, ... oh, and a mad monk.

Yes, the plot is silly, the characters are two-dimensional, and many of the other aspect are utterly ridiculous, but this is just the sort of crime caper one sometimes needs. So, what if it made me laugh out loud that one of the characters suffers from insanity for only exactly 2 hours every day? (Or was it 2 hours of sanity? Does it matter?)

I really liked this one. It reminded me a lot of the German screen adaptations of Wallace's work - they are hilariously, charmingly.....dated but they are great guilty pleasures.

White Face took a different approach to the "typical" Wallace story. Yes, this story is also based on organised crime at it's heart, but this one here seemed to be a lot close some of the stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle. There is a great twist, but there are also elements that seems to portray some of the crimes as the characters only choice, so almost ask for sympathy from the reader. 

It was an interesting change from other works by Wallace that I am familiar with and I love that the story was included in this book (edited by Martin Edwards) but the story was also quite long and drawn out, which didn't work well for me.

(Scene from the German screen adaptation of The Terror. Unfortunately, there are not many similarities between the film and the book.)