BITS & PIECES OF A MISLAID LIFE: MYSTERIES, MYSTERY WRITERS,CRIME & PUNISHMENT

MAX CARRADOS, THE BLIND DETECTIVE

“When  (ERNEST) Bramah introduced the blind Carrados, 
he created the first physically handicapped detective 
in mystery fiction. Having become blind as an adult, 
Carrados is able to adjust and maintain his life, 
including his abilities to detect. His blindness 
does not weaken his zest for life. He works side by 
side with his friend Louis Carlyle, a private investigator 
who is a disbarred lawyer. The key to the books is 
the way a sighted man is blind to the clues that 
Carrados can detect.”

Gary Warren Niebuhr. Make Mine A Mystery:
A Reader’s Guide to Mystery and Detection Fiction
(Libraries Unlimited, 2003).

**
LIVE MYSTERY BROADCAST

THE PANAMA HAT, a radio mystery by Raymond Chandler 
will be presented by The Viking Theater Company as
 a live reading over Zoom on Tuesday, October 25, 
2022, 6:00PM at the Mystery and Video Book Club 
of the Salmagundi Club, 47 5th Avenue at 12th Street,
 NYC. This reading is for a live  audience of members of
the Salmagundi but non-members are also invited to attend.
A $10.00 admission fee for non-memb




Mystery book & video club : The Panama hat



For further information 212-255-7740.
Presented by special permission of the author c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd London.
**

LIGHT HORSEMEN
" Those who live by plunder by night. 
 Those that live by plunder in the daytime are Heavy
 Horsemen. These horsemen take what they can aboard ship, 
such as coffee beans, which they call pease; sugar, 
which they call sand, rum which they call vinegar, and 
so on. The broker who buys these stolen goods and 
asks no questions  is called a fence. (See Captain
 Maryat: Poor Jack, chap. Xviii.)” 
**

E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. The Dictionary of Phrase and 
Fable (New York. Avenel Books, MCMLXXVIII) **

**

"Maigret has appeared numerous times on the screen, 
with at least thirty-four actors assuming the role at
 different times. The long list of film adaptations 
began in 1932, only two years after Maigret was created,
 with the release of two films. Le Chien jaune starred
 the actor Abel Tarride, but Pierre Renoir, the son of 
the great impressionist painter, has the honor of being 
the first Maigret in La Nuit carrefour, directed by 
his brother, Jean Renoir, who became one of the world’s
 greatest filmmakers. Notable French actor Jean Gabin,
 most famous for his role in Jean Renoir’s La Grande 
illusion, took three turns as Maigret in 1958, 1959, 
and 1963, but television actors Jean Richard and Bruno 
Cremer are probably the most well-known French Maigrets.
 Richard had a long run on French television from 1967 
to 1990, doing nearly ninety episodes. Cremer began in 
1991. He died in 2010 after fifty-four episodes of the 
series"

from: "The Faces of Maigret"
by J. Madison Davis in  World Literature Today 
(January 2017)

**


Did Perry Mason ever defend a black person?
Mason never defends a black client; on the one occasion 
when a black actor guest-starred—the Jamaican-born 
mixed-race actor Frank Silvera—he played a white character.

Jun 19, 2020. 
**

BURKE & HARE

The Burke and Hare murders were a series of sixteen 
killings committed over a period of about ten months 
in 1828 in Edinburgh, Scotland. They were undertaken
 by William Burke and William Hare, who sold the 
corpses to Robert Knox for dissection at his anatomy 
lectures."
WIKIPEDIA

 
 They are immortalized in a famous verse:
'          
            Up the close and down the stair
            But and ben with Burke and Hare.
            Burke's the butcher, Hare's the thief,
            And Knox the boy that buys the beef.

Dylan Thomas wrote about Burke and Hare in a screenplay published under the title The Doctor and the
Devils. Made into a film in 1983. Thomas and Ron Harwood
shared the screenplay credit.

Burke is also immortalized in the English language: To
Burke somebody is to kill them by smothering them.
**

In the  1930s (1934, to be exact)  FrederickA. Stokes published CHEAPJACK by Philip Allingham. The title page tells the reader that book 

        BEING THE TRUE HISTORY OF A YOUNG MAN’S 
           ADVENTUREDS AS A FORTUNE-TELLER
              GRAFTER, KNOCKER-WORKER, AND
                  MOUNTED PITCHER ON THE
                     MARKET-PLACES AND FAIR-
                        GROUNDS OF A MODERN
                           BUT STILL ROMAN-
                              TIC ENGLAND



Allingham  dedicates his adventures as a confidence man

The book opens with a glossary of Grafters’ slang. Here are a few examples :from the five page list:

CARPET –Three months imprisonment
CFOCUS – A doctor, A quack doctor. A herbslist. A
                miracle worker.
DROPSY – Bribery
GEZUMPH –To swindle (Yiddish)
KETTLE _- A watch
PETER –Suitcase, grip
SPLITS – Police
TAB – Cigarette
TICK-OFF – Fortune Teller
WIDE – Intelligent, informed, sophisticated
WHIZZ MOB – A gang of pickpockets
**

**
REMEMBERING JOHN DICKSON CARR

Dr. Gideon Fell
Was a most clever fell-
ow, created by John Dickson Carr.
(Are you with me so far?)

**

ROSS MACDONALD & PERSONAL CLUES

“We writers, as we work our way deeper into our
 craft, learn to drop more personal clues…like 
burglars who secretly wish to be caught, we 
leave our fingerprints in the wet concrete.”

R.M.

**

 POLITICAL SATIRE IN A CONTEMPORARY THRILLER

Sarah Lyall, reviewing, State of Terror by 
Hillary Rodman Clinton and Louise Penny,  
points out that there is a character named 
Eric Dunn, a former one term president “who 
shredded the country’s reputation and 
retreated to Florida to sulk, to play golf 
and plot his return.  Sure, Dunn is charismatic, 
with an uncanny ability to exploit people’s 
weaknesses, but he is also an idiot. Even 
his closest associates called him “Eric the Dumb.”

Sarah Lyell. “Penning a Different Kind of 
Page-Turner” in The New York Times 
(October 12, 2021)
**
JOHN DICKINSON CARR

John Dickson Carr—
I doubt that it will occur
To young people to read him;
The future of locked room mysteries sounds grim.

LJP