Old Criminal Things

I've been an on and off reader of mysteries for the better part of many years now, always snooping around in that category to see what new writers come up with.  For the most part, it is a crime that most of them are published, being as they are the predictable sort of drivel that is commercial (which, is not always bad but most often is), although some contemporary writers such as Henning Mankell (when writing in the crime genre) and Donna Leon (which is, admittedly, pop, but is a fun pop) do stand out amongst the sordid crowd of identical scripts.

So, in my search for new things (at least, new to myself), I came across in the dusty and musty 48 cent bins an okay copy of The Department of Dead Ends by Roy Vickers, which I had just read about on some mystery books related blog not that long ago.  Supposedly hard to come by, but much recommended for its early prescience- the knowledge of who the murderer is in advance, rather than going the other way around to deduce who is the killer, seems not so extraordinary nowadays but in fact was something quite uncommon in the beginning years of the genre.

A collection of ten of the small number of short stories that Mr Vickers wrote on this "Department" (so called because it was the last resort, where all manners of nonsense and unrelated clues were meant to be delivered, without any expectation of the crimes ever being solved), they read more as short psychological studies, and are quite breezy despite the seriousness of the murder.  Without needing coziness, they are indeed that kind of cozy sort, murder without blood, a mental game for the reader, and for some reason as I write this, the silly stories of Encylopedia Brown which I devoured when I was younger (and, also, twenty plus years later when I read some newer ones) come to mind.

At the end of the day, though, a good mystery is harder to find than (as they say) a good man.

death comes, again and again, as does a kind of justice.