Reading round-up: September 2025

image from Clipart Library

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish: Douglas Adams

Mostly Harmless: Douglas Adams

The Red Thumb Mark (a Dr Thorndyke novel -British Mysteries Collection): R. Austin Freeman

The Eye of Osiris (The Vanishing Man) (a Dr Thorndyke novel -British Mysteries Collection): R. Austin Freeman

The Mystery of 31 New Inn  (a Dr Thorndyke novel -British Mysteries Collection): R. Austin Freeman

The Silent Witness (a Dr Thorndyke novel -British Mysteries Collection): R. Austin Freeman

Helen Vardon's Confession (a Dr Thorndyke novel -British Mysteries Collection): R. Austin Freeman

The Cat's Eye (a Dr Thorndyke novel -British Mysteries Collection): R. Austin Freeman

The Mystery of Angelina Frood (a Dr Thorndyke novel -British Mysteries Collection): R. Austin Freeman

The Shadow of the Wolf (a Dr Thorndyke novel -British Mysteries Collection): R. Austin Freeman

The D'Arblay Mystery (a Dr Thorndyke novel -British Mysteries Collection): R. Austin Freeman

A Certain Dr Thorndyke (a Dr Thorndyke novel -British Mysteries Collection): R. Austin Freeman

As a Thief in the Night (a Dr Thorndyke novel -British Mysteries Collection): R. Austin Freeman

Despite my admonitions to myself back in May to do better with my reading in June, I failed to achieve any goals in June, July and August *slaps self on the wrist* 😉 I really have no excuse, especially in early August as I could have easily done some reading ~ after all, I wasn't able to do much else whilst the gout was in full progress!  Oh well, I think I made up for it during September ~ one benefit of long hours spent travelling 😏

As you can see, I pushed on through the last two books in The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Complete Trilogy in Five Parts by Douglas Adams.  I really can't say that I particularly enjoyed any of the books in said "trilogy" ~ no doubt jaws are dropping in disbelief, my lovelies 😄 ~ but it would be a sad old world if we all liked exactly the same things.  At least I can now say that I have read the books!

I confess that I have read the British Mysteries Collection before ~ I actually purchased the book, on Kindle, way back in 2016.  When I replaced my old device, I migrated all the books over to the new one but they were no longer sorted out like I had had them previously.  I decided to just leave them be and work my way through them all again, sorting into appropriate categories as I read (or re-read) each book.  The stories start with the "crime" and to quote Wikipedia:

Nowadays, the inverted detective story, where we first witness the crime and then watch the attempt to solve it, is commonplace. For example, this is the format of almost every episode of the television detective series Columbo starring Peter Falk. However, this approach was an innovation in November 1910 when Freeman's "Oscar Brodski" appeared in Pearson's Magazine.[45] and immediately attracted attention. The Northern Whig said that "Oscar Brodski" was "one of the most powerful detective stories we have ever read".[46] Bleiler said that this story "has always been considered one of the landmarks in the history of the detective story".[47]

In his essay The Art of the Detective Story Freeman wrote that in the inverted story: "The reader had seen the crime committed, knew all about the criminal, and was in possession of all the facts. It would have seemed that there was nothing left to tell, but I calculated that the reader would be so occupied with the crime that he would overlook the evidence. And so it turned out. The second part, which described the investigation of the crime, had to most readers the effect of new matter."[48] However, Binyon notes that Freeman is being too modest here, and that it was Freeman's art that kept the reader's attention in the second part.[47]

Reviewers approved of Freeman's inverted tales. The Scotsman said that Freeman had "... proved that a tale which tells the story of the crime first, leaving us to follow the sleuth as he tracks the criminal down, may be at least as absorbing as the old yarns which left us in the dark until the end".[49] Rodgers noted that "Great narrative skill is needed in order to keep the reader's interest" in a story where the crime if revealed at that start and that there have been imitators "Freeman alone stands as not only the originator, but as the most successful proponent of this form of detective fiction"

As I say, I enjoy these stories but feel I must point out that the earlier ones in particular are definitely not "politically correct", especially with regard to racial stereotyping.  I realise that for a lot of folk this aspect alone would preclude them from reading the stories, quite apart Freeman's own unsavoury political views.  Whilst I have found those traits extremely unpleasant, nevertheless I realise that he was very much a product of the times he lived in (1862 - 1943) and as such I have chosen to concentrate simply on the "detective" aspect of the stories.  And once again to quote Wikipedia:

Such offensive representations of Jews in fiction were typical of the time. Rubinstein and Jolles note that while the work of many of the leading detective story writers, such as Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Freeman, featured many gratuitously negative depictions of stereotyped Jewish characters, this ended with the rise of Hitler, and they then portrayed Jews and Jewish refugees in a sympathetic light.^[33] Thus with Freeman, the later novels no longer present such gratuitously offensive racial stereotypes, but present Jews much more positively.