In April 2015, B.K. Stevens debuted the blog series “The First Two Pages,” hosting craft essays by short story writers and novelists analyzing the openings of their own work. The series continued until just after her death in August 2017, and the full archive of those essays can be found at Bonnie’s website. In November 2017, the blog series relocated to my website, and the archive of this second stage of the series can be found here.
A Casebook of Crime: Thrilling Adventures of Suspense from the Golden Age of Mystery, a new collection published in late February by Level Best Books, is credited to two authors: Andrew McAleer and his father John, who’s best known for his Edgar Award-winning book Rex Stout: A Biography. Father and son collaborated on another nonfiction book: Mystery Writing in a Nutshell: The World’s Most Concise Guide to Mystery and Suspense Writing, which Kirkus praised as a “brief, well-outlined guide for budding mystery writers.” But this new collection of stories is unique in many respects, not least of which is the nature of the partnership, with Andy discovering his father’s early forays into fiction—one complete story, references to others—only after the elder McAleer’s death and then further building out the world of detective Henry von Stray and his Watson-styled sidekick, Professor John Diplate. With the story he’s discussing today, for example, Andy was mostly working from the title his father had left in a 1937 diary; in fact, much of his essay below is devoted to “The Amazing History of the Tell-Tale Title.”
I was fortunate enough to read these stories pre-publication, and in fact, I wrote the introduction to the collection—and do note that the cover reads “Volume One,” so there are more books ahead, we trust! Here’s a sample from my introduction that I hope speaks to what’s truly special about this project:
If the elder McAleer’s lost pearls were indeed lost in another way, the younger one would write a story himself around that idea—following Von Stray and Dilpate into a new adventure, channeling his father’s style, tone, and humor, diving back into 1920s England and the world of the Golden Age detective story, and building further on the world that his father had constructed in that era—a world that had nearly been lost.
Recovering that first story [“The Case of the Illustrious Banker”] was a brilliant find, but continuing the series reveals a different kind of brilliance. More than mimicry or some elevated form of pastiche, these stories—one by John McAleer, three now by Andrew—strike me as true collaborations, the father as a young boy and son as a grown man speaking with one shining voice.
With all that in mind, I’m happy to hand it over to Andy to provide us insights below about how his father’s work inspired him in this particular story (the title leading the way!) and how he went about trying to draw readers into the tale. A terrific essay here—and a fine story beyond it. Do pick up the new collection when you can.
Please use the arrows and controls at the bottom of the embedded PDF to navigate through the essay. You can also download the essay to read off-line.
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