Customer Reviews

The American rivals of Sherlock Holmes

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In the introduction, Greene quotes an authority on this literature who suggests that the American mystery writers of Doyle's era were rather uniformly inept. Greene should have left it at that. Instead, he collected a motley group of short stories, presumably to prove that point. The writing in these short stories was poor and plotting uninspired. The phraseology and syntax were convoluted and stilted, and the stories leaned heavily on trite Wild-West or big city political motifs, and new-fangled contraptions (such as lie-detector tests) that, I suppose, were supposed to wow the reader of that era the way ray-guns were to wow the viewers of "Flash Gordon"-type serials in the movie theaters within the next decade or so. There were 13 stories and I got through 10 of them before I decided I had better things to do with my remaining years. Stories 1 & 5 were fair to good. Stories 7,8,11,&13 were fair to poor. Stories 3,4,6 and 9 were downright poor. It is hard to believe these authors came from the same America that, within a few years, was to spawn the uniformly good short stories of people like Dashiell Hammett.

This is an enjoyable book with nicely chosen selections, albeit with some minor problems. The title is misleading, a better title would be "American Crime Stories at the Turn of the Century", rather than "American Rivals of Sherlock Holmes", as some stories, e.g., "Found Guilty", have little or no detective/detection element. Additionally, because of the time when these stories were written, the grammar differs somewhat from current usage, and there are some words, e.g., counterpane, that may be unfamiliar to modern readers.

The first of the thirteen stories in this collection, Hugh C Weir's "Cinderella's Slipper", featuring the slightly eccentric female detective Madelyn Mack, is possibly the best. It's just the type of story to motivate you to find a comfortable easy chair located, if available, in front of the fireplace in your library.

In addition to Weir's work, there are stories by Rodriguez Ottolengui (2), Josiah Flynt and Francis Walton, Jacques Futrell, William MacHarg and Edwin Balmer (2), Samuel Hopkins Adams, Francis Lynde, Charles Felton Pidgin and J.M. Taylor, Arthur B. Reeve, Frederick Irving Anderson, and Richard Harding Davis.

Although these stories are approximately 100 years old, they cover some modern topics, e.g., police and corporate corruption, lie detectors, profiling, CSI-type analysis, etc. The detection stories are the best, and they rely more heavily on detection and less on social interactions than many modern crime stories. This short story collection can be recommended both for it well-written selections, as well as its real, rather than fictional, historic ambiance.