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The Valley of Fear (Hard Case Crime)

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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Valley of Fear is an inspired choice for Hard Case Crime to reprint (it first appeared in 1915). It is one of the neglected parts of The Canon. The story within the story - "Part 2 The Scowrers" - is the father of the 1920's crime thrillers, and the grandfather of the hard-boiled pulp fiction Hard Case Crime is dedicated to keeping alive.

There are four Sherlock Holmes novels. Only The Hound of the Baskervilles is a novel in and of itself. The other three are two stories tied together. TVoF Part I is, in the words of John Dickson Carr, a "...very nearly perfect piece of detective-story writing." It is one of the great locked room stories in detective literature.

The cover promises the novel was "Inspired by a True Story" and that is true. Part 2 is loosely based on the exploits of Pinkerton detective James McParlan (not to be confused with the famous West Coast detective who also lived in the 1870's, James B. Hume). McParlan went undercover to investigate the Molly Maguires in the coal fields of Pennsylvania. If you want to know more about that, I recommend the Wikipedia article. If you want to watch an excellent movie on this subject, almost as one-sided in the other direction as this book, see The Molly Maguires (1970) starring Sean Connery and Richard Harris. It will break your heart.

A.C. Doyle (as his name appears on the cover and title page of this edition) doesn't pretend to tell both sides of the Molly Maguires' story. TVoF Part 2 is a very one-sided account. Sir Arthur doesn't present the rather rough side of the Pinkerton's methods. Allen Pinkerton's detective agency was involved in numerous strike-breaking and other anti-labor activities (as well as blowing off the arm of Jesse James' mother with an incendiary device).

I think a publisher should add value to any reprint. This edition offers no introduction, foreword, after word, or any other additional material of any kind. The book is long out of copyright, yet the cover price is still $7.99. Surely Hard Case Crime could have added some useful extra matter.

The previous reviewer raved about the lurid cover art (my wife asked if Britney Spears posed for the painting - it does look like her). The triangle within a circle is branded on the forearm - but the cover clearly shows it between the bicep and triceps.

When we think of hardboiled, noir crime fiction, the mean streets of urban America of the 20th century come to mind. We do not imagine mutton chop whiskers, capes, or hansom carriages. The latter were part of Sherlock Holmes's Victorian England.

So when Hard Case Crime recently released a book by A. C. Doyle called THE VALLEY OF FEAR, eyebrows were raised, my dear Watson. Yes, it contained the trademark lurid cover with the beautiful -- if somewhat terrified --- young lady in a diaphanous gown. But who was the author? Further inspection revealed that the writer was indeed Arthur Conan Doyle, inventor of the most famous detective in the history of mystery novels. THE VALLEY OF FEAR was the last Sherlock Holmes novel that the famous writer penned in 1914, originally as a magazine serialization.

Since it launched in 2004, Hard Case Crime has performed an invaluable service for mystery fans by reprinting long-lost classics from the pulp era along with the work of the new generation of hardboiled masters. But Sir Arthur? His creation, Holmes, was synonymous with the reason and rationality of the 19th century deductive scientific method. American pulp fiction reflected an alienated world where science facilitated barbarism and mass murder. Things in noir rarely are what they seem and often don't even have to make sense. Happy endings are not necessarily a return to the status quo but just physically surviving.

Charles Ardai, founder and editor of Hard Case Crime, has an explanation. He says, "Like many mystery readers, I was a fan of Sherlock Holmes before I ever read Hammett and Woolrich and Chandler; he was one of my gateway drugs, if you will, into the world of crime fiction." Ardai is an encyclopedia of knowledge about the pulps: "Now, the Holmes stories might not seem on first glance to fit into a line that exists to celebrate the lurid, sexy pulp paperbacks of the 1940s and '50s, but actually one of the things the paperback publishers of that time did was to reprint works of classic literature behind steamy covers in an attempt to lure unwary readers into picking up a classic they might not otherwise try."

THE VALLEY OF FEAR is Ardai's attempt to do that today, hence the use of A. C. Doyle to "force readers to take a fresh look at this most pigeonholed of authors." And it works. The book is certainly one of Doyle's most fascinating Holmes cases. Unlike the recently released movie in which Robert Downey, Jr. reinvented Holmes as more of an action figure, the first half of this novel gives us the classic Holmes whom readers have come to love and expect.

So there is the murder in a Sussex manor house, complete with filled moat, scary gables and eight servants. The lord of this particular manor, a transplanted American of all things, just happened to get his head blown off in his study by a shotgun. It is an impossible case; with the drawbridge raised, the killer seems to have vanished into thin air at amazing speed. And like the dog that didn't bark, Holmes uses his powers of reason and observation to focus on the missing dumbbell.

He solves the case quickly enough, but then readers in 1914 must have gotten a jolt as the story switched to America. Watson tells us a flashback story from 20 years previous about an American Pinkerton detective sent undercover to the mining region of Pennsylvania to infiltrate a secret criminal gang suspiciously like the real-life Molly Maguires. The gang is led by one "Bodymaster" McGinty, who is a cross between a Chicago ward pol and Attila the Hun.

Now leaving aside the historical question of whether the real Mollys might have included Irish Catholic workers trying to legitimately form unions, who were then categorized and prosecuted as murderous criminals by mine owners and complicit media, Doyle's tale is fascinating for two reasons. First, his hero is a Pinkerton, which the founding father of hardboiled detective fiction, Dashiell Hammett, was in real life (the Pinkertons were also notorious strike breakers and union busters of that time). That is an amazing irony. Second, Doyle's writing here is pure hardboiled. He takes us far from the drawing rooms of Baker Street.

And while Holmes solves the case, there is a hopeless feel to the entire matter. Holmes concludes: "You heard me warn this man at Birlstone Manor House that the coming danger was greater than the past. Was I right?" He certainly was, as usual. Perhaps writing on the eve of the madness and industrial slaughter of the First World War, A. C. Doyle was anticipating the noir world about to be born.

THE VALLEY OF FEAR is a classic read that deserves to be rediscovered and enjoyed by a new generation of mystery readers. And yet once again, Hard Case Crime has proven why it is the most innovative publishing house of the last decade.

The Valley of Fear, by A. Conan Doyle

In Chapter 1 Sherlock Holmes receives a coded message from an informant and deciphers is without the cipher key. Inspector Alec MacDonald of Scotland Yard arrives to say that Mr. Douglas was horribly murdered last night, verifying that message. Holmes draws MacDonald's attention to a painting, and what it reveals. They will go to Birlstone to investigate the murder. Watson describes the location of Birlstone Manor House, which is surrounded by a moat forty feet in breadth. The drawbridge was raised in the evening, isolating the house. John Douglas and his wife were strangers but were popular in the village. Douglas was an excellent tenor, they said he found gold in California. He was democratic in manner and indifferent to danger. Douglas had one close friend, Cecil James Barker, who knew him in America. The servants were not involved. The victim had his face blown to pieces by a sawed-off shotgun, a weapon that came from America. A card beside the body said "V.V. - 341". There is a strange brand on the forearm to identify Douglas. His wedding ring was missing!

The story tells of the investigation by the police and Sherlock Holmes. Is there a clue missing? The people and servants are interviewed to get their statements (Chapter 5). [Did you catch the clues?] Holmes knows some people are lying, can he reconstruct the truth (Chapter 6)? In Chapter 7 Holmes arrives at the solution and the proof. We learn what did happen. Part 2 has the story about John Douglas and the enemies who want him dead. This story is a lesson about drawing the right conclusion from circumstantial evidence so all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place.

Part 2 is a fictionalized account of the labor wars that occurred in the anthracite region of Pennsylvania in the mid 1870s. The laborers had gone on a long strike for better conditions, it was lost by the miners. There had been violence during the strike. Afterwards the mine owners sought to ruthlessly oppress the coal miners by the use of secret agents. One infiltrated the miners' secret society and reported their doings. Some believe there were others who provoked violence and the revenge that followed. This secret society was called the "Mollie Maguires" although this phrase was never used by the miners themselves. About two dozen were hanged for their murders. In 1979 Pennsylvania declared a full pardon for Jack Kehoe, "the King of the Mollies", who was sentenced to death after a farce of a trial. The president of the Reading Railroad was the Prosecutor! Government was used as a tool of business. 1876 saw the worst depression known at that time. Another depression saw that Reading Railroad president voted out of office and later die a suicide, not a victim of murder.

Note how this story mirrors "A Study in Scarlet". Part 2 provides a historical background for the mystery in Part 1, which is about the identity of a secret agent, not a murderer.

Hard Case Crime is on a roll. "Honey in His Mouth" by Dent, "Corpse Wore Pasties", and now the classic "Valley of Fear" have turned this series into a must read.

Back to the Valley...back to the Freemen...John McMurdo finds himself in Vermissa Valley and under the thumb of the Scowrerers and the evil McGinty. Meanwhile, back in England, the death of sir Douglass of Birlston draws Holmes in. Two continents, one connected mystery, one great literary adventure.

The "Valley of Fear" is Arthur Conan Doyle at his narrative best, in a long awaitied reprinting. Even as an avid Holmes fan, I had NOT read this one. My Holmes collection is complete. Glenn Orbik contributes a splendid cover. (Can Lost World be far behind?)

Superb.