August 1, 2020

The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (by Bramah, Freeman, Futrelle, Hodgson, Morrison and Orczy)

In last decade of the 19th and first decades of the 20th c., the cities of Europe and America counted many detectives. They were the rivals of Sherlock Holmes - who in 1893 had been conveniently killed off by his creator, thus opening space for others. They were all famous in their time, but finally again pushed into obscurity by the overdone popularity of Conan Doyle's sleuth (who returned in 1902).

In the 1970s, Hugh Greene, the elder brother of the author Graham Greene and director of the BBC, published four volumes at Penguin Books with collections of stories about Holmes' rivals (The Rivals of Sherlock Homes, 1970; Cosmopolitan Crimes: Foreign Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, 1971; Further Rivals of Sherlock Holmes: The Crooked Counties, 1973; The American Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, 1976). In addition, Thames Television based two series of each 13 fifty-minute episodes on the books; the first aired in 1971, the second in 1973. I have long since lost my copy of these books, but thanks to Gutenberg and other websites we can now easily find the stories of those rivals online (they are usually out of copyright).

There were many copycats out on the prowl, but also some genuinely interesting new sleuths. Here are the best ones:

1. Martin Hewitt, the "Ordinary Detective," by Arthur Morrison (1894-1896)

Martin Hewitt was probably the most famous detective character born after Sherlock Holmes’s (temporary) demise in “The Final problem” (published in December 1893). The first story featuring Hewitt was released in The Strand (the same magazine in which the Holmes stories appeared) of March 1894. Hewitt was purposely shaped in contrast to Holmes as very ordinary, low-key and commonsense, with “as little of the aspect of the conventional detective as can be imagined.” He claims to have “no system beyond a judicious use of ordinary faculties.” One can also interpret this negatively: in comparison with Sherlock Holmes Martin Hewitt seems to have no personality at all (in fact his ordinariness also meant he was easily forgotten!).

He is independent and demand for his services allows him to work for a high fee, refusing cases where the reward is insufficient. He is usually called in by private individuals when the police have failed to solve a crime. His cases are written up by his good friend Mr Brett, a journalist. Typically, Hewitt doesn’t share any deductions or clues. He solves the conundrum by sleuthing off stage and then telling us what he discovered and how it solved the crime. Hewitt only explains his tricks when the job is done. So in contrast to the “Golden Age” detectives (but in line with the stories by Conan Doyle), the reader is not involved in trying to solve the puzzle.


The Author: 
Arthur George Morrison (1863-1945) was an English writer and journalist known for his realistic novels and stories about working-class life in London's East End.  He was also a major collector of Japanese art and published several works on the subject. He left a large collection of paintings and other works of art to the British Museum after his death in 1945. Beside the Hewitt stories, Morrison also created Dorrington, "a respected but deeply corrupt private detective," "a cheerfully unrepentant sociopath who is willing to stoop to theft, blackmail, fraud or cold-blooded murder to make a dishonest penny." These stories were collected into The Dorrington Deed Box (1897).

The Stories:
Martin Hewitt, Investigator (1894). Best stories: The Lenton Croft Robberies; The Loss of Sammy Crockett (included in Further Rivals of Sherlock Homes); The Case of the Dixon Torpedo; The Affair of the Tortoise (this last story unfortunately includes a racist view; it was included in the TV series).
The Chronicles of Martin Hewitt (1895). Best stories: The Ivy Cottage Mystery; The Nicobar Bullion Case; The Case of the Missing Hand; The Case of Laker, Absconded (included in the The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes and in the TV series); The Case of the Lost Foreigner.
The Adventures of Martin Hewitt (1896).

２. "The Old Man in the Corner," the "Armchair Detective," by Emma Orczy (1901-1925)

An elderly man sits in the corner of the genteel A.B.C. tea-room in London tying complicated knots in an end of string. He strikes up a conversation with Polly Burton, a journalist, and while she has her lunch, starts telling her the solutions to unsolved crimes reported in the sensation press. This is "the Old Man in the Corner," one of the most interesting and original examples of the type of the "armchair detective." He doesn't run around searching for clues, but visits inquests and studies the reports of crimes in the newspapers, and then applies his intellect to the various puzzles. It is not his intention to bring the criminal to justice: he disdains to inform the police and, anyway, the circumstances of the crime are often such that the villains can not be proven guilty and have already "gotten away." The Old Man in the Corner first appeared in 1901 in "The Fenchurch Street Mystery, and his casebook ultimately grew into three story collections.

The self-service A.B.C tearooms really existed - they originated in 1864 and were operated by the "Aerated Bread Company" (an industrial manufacturer of bread without the use of yeast), hence the name. The tearooms are interesting as they provided one of the first public places where women in the Victorian era could eat a meal, alone or with women friends, without a male escort.  

The Author:
Emma Orczy (1865-1947) was of prominent Hungarian aristocratic stock. Fearing a peasant revolution, her parents had left their estate, and via Budapest, Brussels and Paris, finally settled in London. At that time Emma was fourteen years old and she went to art school, where she eventually met and married the young illustrator Montagu Barstow. After the birth of her first child in 1899, she started writing as a means to supplement the family income.



In 1903 she struck gold when she and her husband turned a short story she had written into a play: that was The Scarlet Pimpernel, about an English aristocrat, Sir Percy Blakeney, who rescued French aristocrats from the French Revolution. This theatrical success generated huge sales for the novel she published in 1905, as well as the endless series of sequels. Also today, Emma Orczy is principally remembered as the creator of The Scarlet Pimpernel. In creating this new type of hero, Orczy laid down the template for the popular "hero with a secret identity": in daily life Sir Percy Blakeney is a slow, foppish playboy, but in his Scarlet Pimpernel disguise he is a fast-thinking hero and sword master who always outwits his adversaries, and who also always leaves a visiting card after each of his interventions.

Although in the first place interested in historical fiction and racy melodramas, Emma Orczy also created three detectives: besides the Old Man in the Corner, these were Lady Molly of Scotland Yard (1910) and the crafty lawyer Patrick Mulligan (Skin O' My Tooth, 1928). Orczy was a founding member of the Detection Club (1930). Orczy's work was so successful that she was able to buy a large house in Monte Carlo.

The Stories:
The stories about the Man in the Corner were collected in the following volumes:
- The Case of Miss Elliott (1905)
- The Old Man in the Corner (1909). Although published as second book, these stories are chronologically earlier than The Case of Ms Elliott. This collection contains "The Mysterious Death on the Underground Railway" which was included both in The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes and in the Thames TV series.

３. Prof. Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, "The Thinking Machine," by Jacques Futrelle (1905-1908)

The "Thinking Machine" is the nickname of Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, professor
in an unnamed university near a large American city strongly resembling Boston. He received this nickname because of his remorseless application of logic, first demonstrated when he won a chess match from the world champion, after he had only learned to play chess that same day. His catchphrases include "Two and two always equal four," "Nothing is impossible" and "All things that start must go somewhere." The mysteries Professor Van Dusen solves are recorded by his friend, Hutchinson Hatch, reporter of the (fictional) Daily New Yorker. Futrelle's tales of the Thinking Machine are among the best detective stories ever written. Some are rather bizarre and others have surrealistic elements. They also often deal with "impossible" crimes. Although close to scientific detective stories as those by Freedman about Dr Thorndyke, the scientific aspect is less central here and the stories are less realistic.
The Author:
Jacques Heath Futrelle (1875-1912) was an American mystery writer (despite the French-sounding name) who lived mostly in Massachusetts, working as a journalist in Boston before becoming full-time author after the success of his first Thinking Machine story, "The Problem of Cell 13." Futrelle died at age 37 on April 15, 1912, on the Titanic. He refused to board a lifeboat, insisting that his wife board instead.

The Stories: 
The Thinking Machine (1907)
The Thinking Machine on the Case (1908)
Besides these 50+ stories, there is also a novella, The Chase of the Golden Plate (1906), which is however rather weak (padded).
The original collections are not available via the internet. Gutenberg has The Problem of Cell 13 which also includes 6 other Thinking Machine stories. The largest collection is available at Gutenberg Australia. In addition, Roy Glashan's Library features 13 stories.
Besides "The Problem of Cell 13" (Futrelle's foremost claim to fame, a superb example of a locked room mystery - the Thinking Machine's attempt, as the result of a wager, to escape from from the death cell of a penitentiary), my favorite stories are: "The Silver Box," "The Man Who Was Lost," "Five Millions by Wireless," "The Problem of the Cross Mark" and "The Problem of the Deserted House."
Cosmopolitan Crimes: Foreign Rivals of Sherlock Holmes contains "The Problem of Cell 13," Further Rivals of Sherlock Holmes contains "The Mystery of Room 666," and The American Rivals of Sherlock Holmes contains "The scarlet Thread." The TV series includes both "The Problem of Cell 13" and "The Superfluous Finger."

4. Dr. John Thorndyke, the "Scientific Detective," by Austin Freeman (1907-1942)

One of the strongest Sherlockian rivals is Dr Thorndyke, a medical doctor who has turned to the bar to become one of the first modern forensic scientists in the world. He looks in the first place at hard scientific data before searching for motives. The stories are sound (more than the Holmes stories, which are often pure bluff) - Freeman seems to have conducted all experiments mentioned in the stories himself. In a Sherlock-Watson set-up, Thorndyke is assisted by his friend and foil Christopher Jervis, who acts as narrator; there is also the resourceful Polton, his lab technician. Thorndyke has a better relationship with the police than Sherlock Holmes did, despite proving them wrong on numerous occasions. Many of the Thorndyke stories are in the form of the "inverted detective story," where the criminal act is described first and the interest lies in the subsequent unraveling of it.

The Author: Richard Austin Freeman (1862-1943) was like Conan Doyle a doctor who achieved greater fame as a crime writer than as a medical practitioner. He worked as surgeon in the colonial service in Africa, but returned to England after becoming ill. He began writing fiction as a means to supplement his meager income. He established himself as an important writer of detective fiction when in 1907 he created the medico-legal forensic investigator Dr. Thorndyke, who first appeared in The Red Thumb Mark. Freeman used some of his early experiences as a colonial surgeon in his novels. 

The Stories: Between 1907 and 1942 Thorndyke appeared in around 60 novels and short stories. The first novel, The Red Thumb Mark, was published in 1907; this was followed by the Eye of Osiris in 1911. The first of five short story collections, John Thorndyke's Cases, appeared in 1909. The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes contains the story "The Moabite Cipher;" the Thames TV series also contains this story as well as "A Message from the Deep Sea" (one of the strongest stories). "The Case of Oscar Brodski", which appeared in The Singing Bone of 1912, has the distinction of being the first example of the "inverted" detective story, where the criminal is known to the reader from the start, and the interest of the story is on how the detective solved the puzzle ("howdunit" instead of "whodunit").

5. Thomas Carnacki, the "Occult Detective," by William Hope Hodgson (1910-1912)

Thomas Carnacki is an occult detective, a so-called "ghost-buster," who investigates haunted houses and similar phenomena. His technique of detection is bolstered by healthy skepticism and a good camera, allowing him in most cases to arrive at perfectly natural explanations to seemingly supernatural mysteries. Carnacki was the protagonist of a series of six short stories published between 1910 and 1912 in The Idler magazine and The New Magazine; when the American book edition was published in 1947, three more stories which had been recently discovered, were added.


The Author:
William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918) was a prolific English author, who wrote novels, short fiction and essays in such genres as horror, fantastic fiction and science fiction. Hodgson's novels such as The House on the Borderland feature cosmic themes, but several of his novels also focus on horrors associated with the sea. He also attracted notice as a photographer. He died in World War I at the age of 40.

The Stories:
Six stories were printed together as Carnacki the Ghost-Finder in 1913. A 1948 Arkham House edition edited by August Derleth added three stories: "The Haunted Jarvee", published posthumously in The Premier Magazine in 1929; "The Hog", published in Weird Tales in 1947; and "The Find", a previously unpublished story. Note that the version available at Gutenberg linked above only contains the early six stories.
The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes and the TV series both include "The Horse of the Invisible," indeed one of the strongest stories.

6. Max Carrados, the "Blind Detective," by Ernest Bramah (1914-1934)

Another excellent sleuth is Max Carrados, the blind detective - a set-up that could be compared to Zatoichi, the blind swordsman of Japanese chanbara fame. Carrados is a wealthy and cultured man, an expert numismatist and a specialist in forgeries. His other senses are so highly developed that his blindness is often not immediately apparent to others. Carrados can run his fingers along the surface of a newspaper and "feel" the text of headlines. In addition, he enjoys the assistance of his highly observant manservant Parkinson and a secretary, Mr Greatorex. The role of Watson is played by Mr Carlyle, a private investigator and friend of Carrados. The Max Carrados stories appeared alongside Sherlock Holmes in the Strand Magazine, in which they often had top billing, and frequently outsold their eminent contemporary.


The Author:
Ernest Bramah (1868-1942) was a reclusive English author who published 21 books and numerous short stories and features. His humorous works were ranked with Jerome K Jerome and W.W. Jacobs, his detective stories with Conan Doyle, his politico-science fiction with H.G. Wells and his supernatural stories with Algernon Blackwood. George Orwell acknowledged that Bramah’s book What Might Have Been (aka The Secret of the League) influenced his Nineteen Eighty-Four. Bramah created the characters Kai Lung (a Chinese storyteller whose travels and exploits serve mainly as excuses to introduce humorous substories; this type of Chinoiserie, however, is severely outdated and doesn't give a correct view of China or the Chinese) and Max Carrados. Although his output of detective stories was rather small (about 25 stories about Max Carrados plus a novel), they are all of high quality.

The Stories:
As published in book form, the series consists of:
Max Carrados (1914), containing such strong stories as "The Coin of Dionysius" and "The Knight's Cross Signal Problem." "The Coin of Dionysius" introduces Max Carrados and links up nicely with the final tale, the dramatic "The Game Played in the Dark," which sets up a classic scenario for a blind detective.
The Eyes of Max Carrados (1923). Available from Roy Glashan's Library.
The Bravo of London (a novel, 1934). Available from Roy Glashan's Library.
The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes contains "The Game Played in the Dark;" Further Rivals of Sherlock Holmes: The Crooked Counties contains "The Tragedy at Brookbend Cottage." The TV series includes "The Missing Witness Sensation."

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