Synopsis
Frederick Irving Anderson (1877-1947) has shown perhaps the greatest mastery of the American short detective story . . . in ingenuity, command of plot, and the carefully integrated backgrounds of his work. So wrote the great mystery critic and historian, Howard Haycraft, in 1941. Ellery Queen added that his style is rich in detail and double-rich in expression. Many of his stories take place in New York City during the 1920s and the 1930s, and they feature the manhunter Deputy Parr and the extinct author, Oliver Armiston, who stopped writing ingenious crime stories because criminals were copying his gimmicks. The book is edited and introduced by the Anderson expert (and Poe scholar), Benjamin F. Fisher. This is the thirty-eighth volume in Crippen & Landrus Lost Classics series previously uncollected detective and mystery stories by great writers of the past. The cover is by Gail Cross, adapted from a 1935 photograph of New York City by Berenice Abbott for the WPA.
Review
Connoisseurs of classic crime know Anderson as the creator of two legendary con artists whose exploits were consolidated in Adventures of the Infallible Godahl (1914) and The Notorious Sophie Lang (1925). But, as editor Fisher reminds us, Anderson contributed many additional stories to the Saturday Evening Post and other magazines in the 1920s and 30s, several featuring Oliver Armiston, a former -- his word is extinct -- writer of detective stories, and Deputy Parr. In The Phantom Alibi, for example, we learn that Armiston who resembles a fat Buddha abandoned writing because one of his complicated thriller plots was copied in real life, not even eliding the murder. But now Parr asks Armiston to use his novelistic ingenuity to clear a scientist of a gruesome homicide, though all the physical evidence points to the man s guilt. After being presented with the facts, Armiston turns to his oracle the typewriter. Somehow his fingers on the keyboard stir his thought processes and -- in a Eureka moment -- he sees the true meaning of the crime and how it was committed. --Michael Dirda, Washington Post, December 21, 2016
The stories are nicely plotted traditional mysteries with a touch of humor and an appealing social commentary. --Ben Boulden, Mystery Scene, Spring 2017
Fifteen stories ranging in publication date from 1912 to a posthumous appearance in a 1951 issue of EQMM . . . . Demanding a careful reading, Anderson offers eloquent prose, inventive plots, and a rich picture of his time and place, New York in the 1920s and 1930s. The cutting-edge marvels of the day are evoked with a sense of immediacy and wonder. --Jon L. Breen, Ellery Queen;s Mystery Magazine, July/August 2017
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