Favorite fictional early (before 1930) detective poll besides Sherlock Holmes

[sdreid]

I guess Drew sort of kicked off the flood of new fictional detectives who debuted in the 1930s.

[RavenDarkendale]

I always liked The Old Man in the Corner by Baroness Orczy , The Thinking Machine (Prof. S. F. X. Van Dusen), by Jacques Futrelle, and the Carnacki the Ghost Finder tales of William Hope Hodgson.

[sdreid]

Certainly many to chose from for Another.

[RivkahChaya]

I always liked The Old Man in the Corner by Baroness Orczy , The Thinking Machine (Prof. S. F. X. Van Dusen), by Jacques Futrelle, and the Carnacki the Ghost Finder tales of William Hope Hodgson.

Wow. I remember The Thinking Machine from a copy in my junior high library, but I haven't seen it since. I'll have to look it up on Amazon.

[sdreid]

There aren't any big surprises to me.

[Mayerling]

Dover paperbacks published many of these detectives in editions back in the 1970s and 1980s with introductions by E. F. Bleier. There were two volumes of stories of Jacques Futrelle's "Thinking Machine". There were about four or five (one of short stories) of another favorite: R. Austin Freeman's "Dr. John Evelyn Thorndike".

Jeff

[sdreid]

You're way ahead of me on those Jeff.

[Mayerling]

You're way ahead of me on those Jeff.

Hi Stan,

Not always. Sometimes I get surprised. I graduated New York Law School in 1978, so I get their alumni journals. They have a series on people who attended the Law School and became well known (among them was Associated U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan II - grandson and namesake of the first Justice Harlan who gave that classic "The Constitution is color-blind!!" dissent in the Plessy v. Fergusson (1896) decision that legalized "seperate but equal"). Well, anyway, it turned out that Arthur Reeves, the author of the "Craig Kennedy" stories about a "scientific" detective helping the New York City Police took some courses at my law school in the teens of the last century to prepare background legal material for his stories. I never knew that.

Jeff

[sdreid]

Ah yes, some interesting things to know.

[sdreid]

I see there Poirot episodes in the can up into 2014.

[sdreid]

Poirot and Marple seem to be the only ones that aren't dormant of late.

[Mayerling]

Poirot and Marple seem to be the only ones that aren't dormant of late.

Hi Stan,

It seems to run in cycles - We had the Jeremy Brett Holmes series in the 1980s and 1990s, and now there are at least two series (one British and one American) with him in the modern world (the American series giving him Lucy Liu as a female Watson). The Marple series is the first since one in the 1980s that was pretty good back then. Who eventually plays Poirot after David Suchet does it will have to be very good.

Also the series with Inspector Lewis (a spin-off of Inspector Morse with John Thaw) is either closing or being retooled for Lewis's parner Hathaway). And now they are gearing up a series "Endeavour" (Morse's first name, unfortunately), regarding his early years as a Constable.

Maybe they can do (now that Leo McKern is gone, alas) a series of the early years of Rumpole of the Bailey, and we can finally see the story of his great moment, his defense in that tantalizing case of "the Penge Bungalow Murders".

Jeff

[sdreid]

I actually prefer the private detective screen depictions that happen in the 1930s - great fashion - great cars and, unlike cases set after the mid-60s, the drama of the potential death penalty in Britain.

[Robert]

I remember watching a low budget British B movie dating from the early 60s, in which a small gang of crooks stage a robbery by breaking into a bank vault. In the process, they are disturbed by a security guard whom they club to the floor and leave in the vault. They get safely away with the money. Then one of them recalls that it's Friday, and the guard won't be discovered until Monday, by which time he might be dead. The death penalty is in existence, and if they are ever caught the charge will be murder. So, they set about breaking back into the vault....

[Magpie]

Saw a teaser for the new season of Sherlock last week.

Doesn't spill a lot, but it does look like the regular cast is all coming back.