Detection by Gaslight: 14 Victorian Detective Stories

by Douglas G. Greene (Editor), Arthur Conan Doyle, Arthur Morrison

Rich, varied collection of 14 extraordinary Victorian and Edwardian crime stories, many never before published in book form: Kipling's "The Return of Imray"; "The Tragedy of the Life Raft" by Jacques Futrelle; "The Copper Beeches" by Arthur Conan Doyle; plus hard-to-find tales by G.K. Chesterton, Catherine L. Pirkis, Silas K. Hocking, others.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - The Adventure of the Copper Beeches
Arthur Morrison - The Case of the Lost Foreigner
Catherine L. Pirkis - The Ghost of Fountain Lane
Rudyard Kipling - The Return of Imray
Headon Hill - The Divination of the Zagury Capsules
Baroness Orczy - The York Mystery
George R. Sims - The Haverstock Hill Murder
R. Austin Freeman - The Dead Hand
L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace - Mr. Bovey’s Unexpected Will
Silas K. Hocking - A Perverted Genius
G. K. Chesterton - The Eye of Apollo
Robert W. Chambers - The Purple Emperor
Jacques Futrelle - The Tragedy of the Life Raft
E. and H. Heron - The Story of Baelbrow

Genres: Mystery, Short Stories, Fiction, Classics, Victorian, Suspense

258 pages, Paperback

First published July 10, 1997

About the author

Douglas G. Greene is an American historian, editor, and author. Greene is Emeritus Professor of History at Old Dominion University, specializing in Tudor and Stuart Britain.

Reviews

[Gregory Moses · Rating 4 out of 5]

Douglas G. Greene is a major name among mystery editors. He's most famous for his collections of John Dickson Carr short stories (he was that writer's biographer as well), but any anthology he puts out warrants a look.

This collection provides a reasonable survey of major Victorian UK writers, together with some obscurities. It's impossible to have all the works that every reader thinks it should have, so I won't criticize it from that angle, except to say that the inclusion of two American writers kind of muddies the water and makes some of the exclusions hard to ignore. If you want to limit yourself to the British Isles that's fine, but if you're making your anthology international, omitting Anna Katherine Green (for example) is risible; the author tries to justify himself in his introduction by saying that she “needed full novels to display her skills,” but Green certainly produced short fiction that is superior to “Mr. Bovey's Unexpected Will,” for example.

Still, you're getting a lot for the price; with the understanding that it's somewhat limited in scope, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this to either a newcomers or a genre veteran.

“The Adventure of the Copper Beeches” by Arthur Conan Doyle. The sheer number of Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes that have been published make it seem like a slightly pointless inclusion, but I understand that if this is to be a survey for general readers, you've got to have a Sherlock Holmes story, and this is a good'un. If this is going to be a survey for new readers, though, it's almost an odd choice; Holmes's client is much more active than is usual, and it's very Gothic in ways that most of the canon isn't. That's fine though, I'm glad that Greene didn't decide to become then ten thousandth anthologist to collect “The Speckled Band” or “The Red-Headed League.” Good stories, but how many times can one re-read them?

“The Case of the Lost Foreigner” by Arthur Morrison, featuring Martin Hewitt. Hewitt gets called a Holmes imitation because he was created explicitly to replace Holmes for Strand Magazine after Doyle killed his detective off, but I don't think they actually have much in common. Holmes has a personality, for example. The Hewitt stories I've read in anthologies like this have been completely bland. This story in particular starts with a minor bit of human interest that escalates to outrageously high stakes that are rendered boring by their very grandness; personal tragedies and struggles will always be more interesting than Anarchist bomb plots.

“The Ghost of Fountain Lane” by Catherine L. Pirkis, featuring Loveday Brooks. This period has few enough female detectives, and those it does have seem to be mostly written by men, so it would be nice if I could recommend these stories with a little more enthusiasm, but Brooks is boring. In this story she listens to a servant gossip for multiple pages, then reads a diary entry by the criminal that explains everything. Cool. The diary entry is kept from the reader, and the gossip carefully curated, because if they weren't we'd guess the culprit at exactly the same time as Brooks, and her credentials as brilliant detective might be called into question. And as if to make up for the fact that the Father Brown story included in this volume doesn't hector us as much as some others, we have to listen to Pirkis use Brooks as a mouthpiece to discuss religion (although her statement that “the world abounds in people who are little more than blank sheets of paper, on which a strong hand may transcribe what it will,” remains depressingly accurate). The only life this story has is in the very beginning, when Loveday's boss is trying to convince her to take an interest in the case. I'll probably get around to reading the remaining Brooks stories one of these days (there are only seven, and I've read two) but not with great enthusiasm.

“The Return of Imray” by Rudyard Kipling, featuring Strickland, a minor figure who appeared in only five stories, mostly non-mysteries. It's incredibly well-written and atmospheric. It is also inextricably racist. The general premise of Strickland, a colonial policeman who keeps the savages in line, is racist. The specifics of the story, in which the title character is murdered because Indians are stupid and superstitious is racist. You can't just grit your teeth and ignore the racist parts, because that's the entire story. And the thing is, Kipling died in 1936. Read his stories, refuse to read them, who cares? If Greene had had the integrity to say that he thinks the quality of the writing is worth putting up with the racism, that wouldn't bother me so much, but instead he bleats that “he was far more sympathetic to Indian culture than many of his contemporaries.” Well, good, it's nice that he was sympathetic, but I'm not reviewing Rudyard Kipling, I'm reviewing a story, and telling me that Kipling could have been worse doesn't change what's on the page.

“The Divination of the Zagury Capsules” by Headon Hill (actually freelance journalist Francis Edward Grainger), featuring Kala Persad and Mark Poignand. Mark Poignand is a detective with a secret weapon—a “little wizened old Hindoo [who] mostly sat cross-legged, playing with a basket of cobras, and chewing betel-nut from morning to night.” This is Kala Persad, who uses his “snake-charmer's instinct” to identify the culprits. Douglas Greene is tactfully silent on the question of whether Headon Hill was also “more sympathetic to Indian culture than many of his contemporaries.” Headon Hill has fallen into complete and genuine obscurity, although the Kala Persad stories are available from what I think might be amateur print on demand publishers.

But would you want to read the complete Kala Persad stories? Maybe! How willing are you to put up with dialogue like “One old burra Lord Sahib, big estates; two sons, one very sick. First one hakim (doctor) try to cure—no use. Then other hakim; no use too—sick man die. Other son bring physic, poison physic, give him brother. Servant man find poison after dead. Old lord angry, say his son common budmash murderer; but missee Mem Sahib, betrothed of Harry, she say no, and come buy wisdom of Kala Persad”? Because if you can stomach it, the central premise of these stories is really clever: two detectives, one who can use magic (basically) to determine the guilty party but can't produce any evidence that's usable in court, the other without the first one's gift but active and clever and able, once he's on the scent, to build up an actual case. The writing and dialogue (at least, the dialogue that isn't in hideous Pidgin English) are fine, and although I'm skeptical that the guilty party would have saved the evidence (the story itself tries to paper this over by having Poignand say that the criminal “would have been wiser to have destroyed such fatal evidence”; so why didn't they, Hill?), it's a fairly satisfying mystery on the whole. It is, however, one of a surprising number of Victorian-era mysteries where you can instantly identify the guilty party because there's basically only one candidate.

“The York Mystery,” by Baroness Orczy, featuring the Old Man In the Corner, a deeply unpleasant armchair detective who sits in a cafe corner and unravels mysteries for his own amusement. Quoting myself from the last time I read this: brisk and amusing writing style, well-drawn (admittedly stock) characters, believable solution.

“The Brown Bear Lamp” by George R. Sims, featuring Dorcas Dene. This is the first story I've read of her. Dorcas Dene is a former actress who turned professional detective to support herself and her husband after he went blind. Dorcas Dene isn't very well-drawn as a character (she … seems nice, I guess?) and the Watson analogue narrator can't hold a candle to the original, but it features some pretty clean detective-work once Dorcas goes to the scene of the crime (it rather makes you wonder why she didn't do it earlier...). Unfortunately its ending is pretty weak, with Dorcas's “detective-work” being limited to eavesdropping on someone and then showing up to interrupt a clandestine meeting. Also, although it's hard to put myself in the place of an 1898 reader who hasn't read thousands of pages of this stuff, I do have to mention that I identified the criminal in literally the first sentence they're mentioned in, and the fact that Dorcas never did—she simply crashed a secret meeting and grabbed him—diminishes her. Still, I might read the rest of these stories someday; there's only one volume, and a happily married female detective is an anomaly in this era (even a married male detective would be rare, I think).

“The Dead Hand” by R. Austin Freeman, featuring Doctor Thorndyke. Thorndyke is the first forensic detective to my knowledge or Greene's, and was doubly first because he appeared in the first “inverted mysteries” where we first witness the crime, then the solution (not all of his stories were written that way, but this one is). Although this anthology contains some frankly mediocre stories for historical reasons (hello again, Loveday Brooks), Austin Freeman is excellent. Or at least, he can be; nobody writes as many stories as he did without producing some duds.

In this case? It's OK, but as an inverted mystery it feels like it has a few issues. First, the murder is very slapdash. To me, the idea of an inverted mystery is that we see the criminal do seemingly everything right, but they're still caught in the end. Here … sure he's caught. Why wouldn't he be? I'm baffled that he apparently never came under suspicion until Thorndyke entered the scene. Making it worse is the fact that neither killer nor victim are especially interesting people, so the time spent with them drags a little.

There are other issues too. There's a bloodstain that's been almost scrubbed away, and one of the witnesses (without knowing what it is) notices it and points it out to Thorndyke. Wouldn't it have been better for Thorndyke to find it himself? He's one of the few detectives of this era that really feels on a level with Sherlock Holmes, he doesn't need his hand held. And the sheer implausibility of the central clue falling into the lap of the only person who could identify it weakens the story; it feels more like the killer is the victim of a malignant fate than clever detective-work.

Against the flaws of this story, though, we must consider to the editor's credit that this is a rarity, or was at the time; it had never been published in America until this volume. And although I've dwelt on the flaws, it has virtues, too; the climax is especially dramatic.

“Mr. Bovey's Unexpected Will” by L. T. Meade (Elizabeth Thomasina Meade Smith), featuring Florence Kusak. The detective is minor, appearing in only four stories. The author was most famous for writing novels for girls, well over a hundred of them, with names like “Girls of the True Blue: A School Story,” but was also quite popular for her mystery stories in the Strand (often co-written; she specialized in scientific mysteries but didn't have Freeman's knowledge, so she'd find collaborators, here Robert Eustace, who could fill in the gaps. It's generally assumed that the actual text is all hers). The only mystery she wrote that could make any claim to fame nowadays is the series featuring the female serial killer Madame Sara, collected as “Sorceress of the Strand,” and I'm being extremely generous with my definition of “fame” here.

The start of this thing feels like it was written by a children's writer, albeit not the type of children's writer that Meade was; rather, it feels like an Uncle Scrooge story. A miser dies, and his will names three people as potential heirs; the gold will go to the candidate whose body weight is closest to the weight of the gold. Why? Just because. But this premise is utterly squandered; the Good Heir (he's good because he's engaged to a relative of the detective) wins the money without incident, but then it's stolen, so Kusak has to find it. Fortunately, she was hanging out in a pawn shop months ago when the Bad Heir talked to its owner about his plans, so she's able to come to the rescue. Boring. The prose are the prose of an author who routinely writes more than ten novels a year, competent through practice but with no real care paid to them.

“A Perverted Genius” by Silas Hocking, featuring Latimer Field. Field appeared in one collection, and it's not clear from the introduction that most of the stories are crime stories, but I'll track it down if possible based on the strength of this story. I enjoy the writing and the character highly (the scene where the narrator stuck at a dinner table while other guests are having conversations that trigger his anxiety is the most I have ever related to a character in this volume), and while the criminal is obvious (Greene calls it a twist, but it's not like the story is overflowing with suspects), the stinger at the end is delightful.

“The Eye of Apollo” by G. K. Chesterton, featuring Father Brown. I often find Father Brown tedious, because Chesteron uses his crime fiction as a venue to preach at his audience. In this story he has a go at sun worship, which seems like a very specialized bee to have in ones bonnet. This story blew me away with the method (I read the complete works one upon a time, and the solution to this story is one of the only things that stuck with me), the cluing, and the twist by which the criminal is undone (but maybe not in the way you'd expect). As I write this, though, I admit that I strongly suspect it of not holding up (in terms of who knew what, and who was expecting who to look at the will when). Could have used just a little tweaking. Going back to my earlier comments, I would eternally respect an anthologist who fucks off Father Brown to includes an Uncle Abner story instead.

“The Purple Emperor” by Robert Chambers (an American author, although the story is set in Brittany), not featuring a series detective (the protagonist of the story appears in other stories, but they are not mysteries). The common narrative nowadays is that Chambers wrote half of a good book—people agree that the first four stories in the anthology The King In Yellow are amazing works of supernatural fiction—and nothing else that mattered. How much of this narrative comes from people reading his other works with an open mind and deciding they didn't like them, versus people reading Lovecraft's opinion of Chambers and reciting it as Gospel, is unclear.

Anyway, this story is great. The introduction says that it “may be the only (it's certainly the first) mystery surrounding butterfly collecting,” which makes it sound a little whimsical. This is not whimsical. “The Purple Emperor” is a butterfly collector, named after the prize of his collection. He is an insane monster consumed by hatred for his niece (who he is forced to take care of, and who he abuses), the narrator (who is in love with the niece, and stands up to him), and the Red Admiral, a rival entomologist; the Red Admiral, nicknamed not for a glory in his collection but for a fraud he perpetrated when he dyed a butterfly of that type yellow, has spent the last few weeks alone in his house, nurturing his hatred for his rival and plotting … something; and the Red Admiral's son, Yves Terrec who hates the Purple Empire and has sworn to murder his father; all stuck together in the same little town. This is some No Exit shit, except that they're not in Hell, technically, so when one of them is murdered, it sticks.

Certainly this story isn't perfect (there's an inane little epilogue that districts from the power of the ending, for example), but if this is the level that Chambers maintained outside of his supernatural horror, he's been sadly maligned.

“The Tragedy of the Life Raft” by American writer Jacques Futrelle, featuring the Thinking Machine, aka Professor S. F. X. Van Dusen, crotchety super-genius. This is an excellent choice, both superior in quality (the Thinking Machine stories being distinctly hit-or-miss), and likely to be new to most readers; anthologies of this type that include a Thinking Machine story almost invariably go with “The Problem of Cell 13,” so the variety is appreciated.

“The Story of Baelbrow” by “E. and H. Heron” (actually Kate and Hesketh Prichard, a mother/son team) featuring Flaxman Low. I don't mind including a ghost story, but I've never had much use for Flaxman Low in particular, and, ironically for its inclusion here, it's the detective story trimmings that drag them down. They authors want to have traditional drawing rooms scenes where Flaxman Low shows how smart he is, but the genre he's working in fight against that: “[Any supernatural investigator will meet] some perplexing element, which is not to be explained by any ordinary theories. For reasons which I need not now enter, this present case appears to be one of these.” No, absolutely not. If this were a different type of story, and Flaxman Low were chanting spells and performing strange rituals then he could discover the truth that way, and it would be fine. But the instant you try to ground your supernatural detective the way Flaxman Low is grounded, magical revelation is no longer an acceptable avenue to the solution, and the detective has to be able to explain themselves. If the best you can do is “reasons I need not now go into” then your story needs another draft.

[Leothefox · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Detection by Gaslight” edited by Douglas G. Greene

This Dover collection comes complete with an introduction by the editor in which he lays out the intention to showcase Victorian/Edwardian detective fiction, and then gushes with praise over Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes, pretty much narrowing the field. It's no surprise, then, that there's a whole lot of sameness in many of the 14 stories collected here.

We kick off with a Holmes story, “The Adventure of the Cooper Beeches”, which has a servant coming to Holmes, freaked out at employers who demand she cut her hair and dress a certain way and have a mysteriously locked wing of their house. If you've read any of the Holmes stories you probably have a pretty good handle on the format. It's not long on action, although the premise is satisfying enough. I don't consider Doyle to be the last word in detective fiction, though, not even in the 1890s.

G.K. Chesterton provides a fairly mediocre Father Brown story which involve they death of an heiress and a spooky new religion. A friend of mine warned me that the religion in the stories became insufferable as they went along, and this feels like mild proof of that. The story unfolds pretty fast too, might have been better had it taken time to stretch.

Now, if you follow my reviews, you know I frequently whine about anthologies and how most of them end with a kick in the pants, a bad story to send you on your way. Not so here! The final three stories are a Robert W. Chambers butterfly collecting murder mystery set in a small French community, a James Futrelle “Thinking Machine” story which involves an innocent man on death row for the murder of his rich employer who had a deathly fear of water, and finally E. & H. Henson with a Flaxman Low story involving a haunted house and a twist that I found delightful. Futrelle and the Hensons will receive some future attention from me, although I am probably most intrigued to read the full collection of Chambers that “The Purple Emperor” was the start of.

“The Perverted Genius” by Silas K. Hocking is a cozy mystery involving a rooming house and a thief which stars Latimer Field, a clergyman sleuth. This one actually has none of the problems of the Father Brown story, possibly helped by the first person narration and the fact that the story was story and not a smug “Dragnet” style setup.

Barness Orczy, creator of “The Scarlet Pimpernel”, doles out a “Old Man in the Corner” story “The York Mystery” which involves a trial and two juggled suspects who are later supplanted by a third. This one had a pleasant human touch to it.

“The Case of the Lost Foreigner” by Arthur Morrison involves an amnesiac, a stable, and a highly disappointing reveal which involves explosives in loaves of bread. Somehow it's less satisfying when the “genius” detective unveils a villain who is an easy target.

R. Austin Freeman's “The Dead Hand” is an example of the “Columbo” format, with the crime fully depicted to the reader before our detective has to set about solving it. This one involves boating, some real science, and a pretty sympathetic motive.

George R. Sims and Catherine L. Pirkis each provide tales with female sleuths, with hidden treasures, interlocking cases, and a nice psychological twist.

Kipling also has a story in here, naturally involving India, and a picture of the Indian mindset, or perhaps the colonial interpretation of the Indian mindset.
There were more (losing count here), but I don't have those too clearly in mind.

This was not a bad read, each story was prefaced with a blurb about the author or authors, and our editor, Greene, was careful not to ruin the story. I feel like it might have turned out slightly better had the editor drawn from some earlier stuff, but he was dead set to make it a Holmes show. Perhaps the collection should have been called “In the Shadow of Holmes”? It was not without its surprises or charm.

[Kally Sheng · Rating 3 out of 5]

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. The Adventure of the Copper Beeches by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
2. The Case of the Lost Foreigner by Arthur Morrison
3. The Ghost of Fountain Lane by Catherine L. Pirkis
4. The Return of Imray by Rudyard Kipling
5. The Divination of the Zagury Capsules by Headon Hill
6. The York Mystery by Baroness Orczy
7. The Haverstock Hill Murder by George R. Sims
8. The Dead Hand by R. Austin Freeman
9. Mr. Bovey's Unexpected Will by L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace
10. A Perverted Genius by Silas K. Hocking
11. The Eye of Apollo by G. K. Chesterton
12. The Purple Emperior by Rober W. Chambers
13. The Tragedy of the Life Raft by Jacques Futrelle
14. The Story of Baelbrow by E. and H. Heron

"Where there is a wound on the black heart of man, there is the place to look for crime." - Kala Persad, The Divination of the Zagury Capsules by Headon Hill, Pg. 92

Decent collection. A good read.

[Alaina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was surprised at how un-Victorian most of these stories were. I found them really enjoyable, clever, and refreshing.

[Bev · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always enjoy collections from the Victorian/Edwardian eras that have a large number of stories that I've not read before. This collection does the trick.

[Whistler's Mom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some old favorites and some discoveries.

I've found many great authors through reading anthologies. Everyone knows Sherlock Holmes and "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches" is a good story. Not sure why it was included here, since the action takes place in the countryside where there were no street lights, gas or otherwise.

Arthur Morrison created detective Martin Hewittt after Sherlock Holmes' creator killed him off. Some readers were underwhelmed, but he's the forerunner of later fictional detectives like Marsh's Rodney Alleyn or ECR Lorac's Inspector Macdonald or Bellairs' Inspector Littlejohn. No bursts of brilliance, just professionals achieving results with hard work and pleasant personalities. I think Morrison deserves more respect than he gets.

Sadly, this one is long and boring. The Martin Hewitt stories are available in three collections. Please don't be discouraged by this unfortunate choice because most of them are fine stories.

C L Pirkis' Loveday Brooke is a modern woman - tough and independent - and the Kindle version of "The Experiences of Loveday Brooke" is great reading. What struck me in this story was the author's strong bias in favor of the Church of England and against rival churches. "Chapels" (Methodist, etc) are shown as preying on the ignorance of the working classes.

Recently I reviewed "Dorcas Dene, Detective" by George Sims. Dene is a more traditional female than Loveday Brooke, but a clever detective.

LT Meade and her writing partners created two female criminals - Madames Sara and Koluchy, but I didn't know about their lady detectives. "The Miss Florence Cusack Mysteries" isn't available on Kindle, but there's an audio book. If all five stories are as good as "Mr Bovey's Unexpected Will" the book is worth looking for.

Check out the Kindle version of Meade's "The Mystery of the Circular Chamber" which has stories about Madame Sara and Madame Koluchy and "The Dead Hand" featuring Meade's second lady detective - Diana Marbury, The Oracle of Maddox Street. Marbury is a palm-reader and uses her psychic powers to solve crimes and I'd love to find all three stories in that series.

Baroness Orczy created Lady Molly of Scotland Yard, but I prefer her "Old Man in the Corner" mysteries, which feature the first "arm-chair detective" and the lady journalist he confides in. There are three Kindle collections in that series and I recommend them.

Kipling's contribution is set in India. It relies on the author's knowledge of the differences between Indian and English cultures.

There's a Dr Thorndyke story by R Austin Freeman. I don't like that character, but if you do you're in luck. There are numerous Dr Thorndyke stories in several Kindle collections.

Jacques Futrelle's Professor Van Dusan, "The Thinking Machine" doesn't usually resonate with me, but I enjoyed this story of an old promise catching up with a miser. The Professor Van Dusan stories are available in Kindle collections, as are G K Chesterton's Father Brown stories. Not my favorites, but they have many fans.

Four authors are new to me. I liked the story featuring Silas Hocking's crime-solving curate (Church of England official.) He's definitely NOT the stereotypical macho detective, but he's effective. I bought "The Adventures of Latimer Field" on Kindle and am looking forward to reading it.

Robert Chambers was an American who wrote mostly fantasy. "Purple Emperor" is a lovely story of two avid butterfly collectors in a small village in Brittany. Like all collectors, they're prepared to do ANYTHING to out-wit a colleague. It's a one-off, but I bought Chamber's "The Tracer of Lost Persons" and am hoping the stories in it will be as good.

The mother-son team "E and H Heron" wrote mysteries with paranormal themes. In this one, the ghost in an ancient family manor has never caused any trouble. Now the present owner's son is to be married and the ghost appears to object to the engagement.

Occult Psychologist Flaxman Low is called in for a consultation, but the skeptical young man insists on meeting the ghost alone. It's almost the last thing he does! I bought the Kindle version of "Ghosts: Being the Experiences of Flaxman Low." I'll let you know what I think.

Of the new-to-me stories, my favorite is by Headon Hill. He wrote a series about an Englishman with a successful detection agency. His clients never meet the Indian mystic who actually solves their problems . "The Divination of Kala Persad" isn't available on Kindle, but there's a free PDF download. Hope I can figure out how to access it.

So I got to read some old favorites and discovered some new authors to read. I love anthologies!

[John Peel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Every attempt to show how other Victorian-era writers created their own detectives always runs into the same problem as this book - no matter how clever they are, they always pale in comparison with Sherlock Holmes. Either they are essentially inferior copies of Holmes or they are reactions against Holmes. But they simply never come up to the level that Conan Doyle set. Here are 14 adventures (including one Holmes story) to demonstrate again Conan Doyle's mastery over the form. The other stories are interesting, but the mysteries tend to be very obvious ones, and the characters inferior (of course) to Holmes and Watson.

[Pamela Mclaren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fourteen interesting, challenging, a bit strange and a bit funny — editor Douglas G. Greene has picked up a wide selection of short stories written right around the turn of the 19th century to the 20th.

The selection includes the well-known like the "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Rudyard Kipling's "The Return of Imray." But there are many by authors less once known. Poignant to me was "The Tragedy of the Life Raft," written by Jaques Futrelle and not published before he stepped aboard the Titanic. The final tale was the most surprising as it includes a supposed haunting of a ghost.

[Barrett Hall · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Detection by Gaslight demonstrates how varied the short mystery (and especially its hero or heroine) could be. For example, Catherine
L. Pirkis, George R. Sims, and others invented women detectives.
Others introduced clerical sleuths, most notably Silas K. Hocking's Latimer Field and G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown. Writers of the highest talent-such as Rudyard Kipling-were attracted to the form, as were authors whose talents were minimal-for example Headon Hill, one of whose few notable tales is included in this book. The form could be stretched to include pure scientific detection, as with R.
Austin Freeman's Dr. Thorndyke, and to investigations into the paranormal —as with K. and H. Prichard's Flaxman Low. An examination of the monthly magazines of the Victorian and Edwardian eras leaves the reader with the feeling that almost every profession could produce a detective—“

A very hit or miss collection of 14 Victorian-era detective stories that is much more miss than hit. Some were spectacularly wild, but most were just dull.

The Adventure of the Copper Beeches by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
A fun, brief, and albeit rather forgettable adventure from the master detective. Some interesting twists as usual, but nothing unforgettable nor disappointing, either. I’d say the most interesting part of the story was the reveal of why Violet was hired and the extreme lengths the Rucastle family went to cover up their horrible secret. 2/5.

The Case of the Lost Foreigner by Arthur Morrison
This was rather ridiculous and laughable for its content, namely the whole thrilling aspect of this short revolving around baked bread. It was fine, it wasn’t good, but not infuriatingly bad, just very forgettable and not different from anything I have read. 1/5.

The Ghost of Fountain Lane by Catherine L. Pirkis
The best so far and a story that I felt was way ahead of its time, this was a delightful little story that I found engrossing and exciting from beginning to end. What I enjoyed most of this one was how every little detail had a satisfying explanation, not necessarily the easiest or most obvious like in others from this time period. 4/5.

The Return of Imray by Rudyard Kipling
I didn’t really get this one. Something just never clicked on a comprehensive level with me and for that matter, I was never really sure what was occurring and who I should be rooting for and following. I think this one had the most potential to be a great mystery with some very dark lore, but due to either its contents or prose, it just didn’t reach me like I thought it would. 2/5.

The Divination of the Zagury Capsules by Headon Hill
That was pretty well written and very intriguing of a mystery. I have never heard of detective Poignand before, but his deductive reasoning, along with his equally sharp (and horribly racially stereotyped) partner Kala Persad solved a rather engrossing case that I was invested in from beginning to end. 4/5.

The York Mystery by Baroness Orczy
A rather short mystery that wasn’t anything memorable nor horribly executed, this one was very middle of the road with a standard Ness to it that doesn’t make it stand out in any way really. It had a twist, so at least it had that going for it. 2/5.

The Haverstock Hill Murder by George R. Sims
A rather intriguing mystery that I was hooked into and anxiously awaited the twist and resolution of this story. Nothing groundbreaking, but we’ll done. 3/5.

The Dead Hand by R. Austin Freeman
This mystery was a great split of narrative between the murder and the mystery, following the murderer in the first half and the detectives solving it in the second. Very well executed. 4/5.

Mr. Bovey's Unexpected Will by L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace
A short and fun story that was exactly what it was supposed to be. Didn’t do anything out of the ordinary in a tale of Highway Robbery with 2 suspects, one obvious, the other under suspicion. Fine, not great, not bad. 2/5.

A Perverted Genius by Silas K. Hocking
A rather very predictable story, but fun nonetheless. I liked Mr. Ball, and while the overall story was much better in the first half than the second, it was still good. 2/5.

The Eye of Apollo by G. K. Chesterton
Damn. This one was messed up but pretty great. When the twist isn’t obnoxiously obvious, but rather cleverly interwoven in the story like this one, it works a lot better than a cut and dry case. Very dated, but the core mystery is solid. 3/5.

The Purple Emperor by Robert W. Chambers
A rather interesting story that I thoroughly enjoyed. The whole fascination with butterflies and the scientific aspect of the story was a nice touch to the story that without it would have made this likely forgettable. A nice twist at the end they rather perfectly tied up the story. 4/5.

The Tragedy of the Life Raft by Jacques Futrelle
Another fun one and one of the best detectives from this collection is featured in this one. Short, memorable, and rather dark, I really dug this one and all it had to offer. 4/5.

The Story of Baelbrow by E. and H. Heron
Last but not least, we arrive at king last to the conclusion of this grab bag of Victorian Era detective stories. This was an acid trip of a story and the least grounded in reality but I loved it. It had the elements of a great ghost story turned into a possible mummy story then a vampire story. And the ending was the most violent yet. 4/5.

[Earl Grey Tea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having never read any Sherlock Holmes before, I was able to receive a nice introduction to the world of Victorian Detective stories. This collection gave wonderful insight into the world of Victorian England. While the text might not compare to the enthralling pace and twists of a modern day mysteries, I still was able to learn a lot from this book.

The tastes of readers have changed greatly over the years. These short stories appeared to not contain all the facts along the way for the reader to guess who committed the crime before the end of the story. Instead of the reader taking a guess based on all of the evidence, the climax seems to be listening to the detective of the story go through how they were able to piece together the crime. Whether through lack of cultural familiarity of this time period or the lack of details within the writing, many a time I was not able to foresee the conclusion before it was revealed.

Just like modern day crime shows, there is a formula that works and is a main vein pulsing through every show. Victorian Detective stories are no exception. There is always a character of fair intelligence narrating the story (a Watson-like character) and the genius detective that solves all the crimes (a Holmes-like character).

This book is probably going to be for a person that wants to expand their horizons in the literary world. While the reading level is not particularly difficult, the setting, time and events may be a bit foreign to an average reader.

[Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very nice collection of old mystery stories, mostly taking place in Great Britain.
Here is a list of the stories contained in this volume:

The Adventure of the Copper Beaches by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Case of the Lost Foreigner by Arthur Morrison
The Ghost of Fountain Lane by Catherine L. Pirkis
The Return of Imray by Rudyard Kiplong
The Divination of the Zagury Capsules by Headon Hill
The York Mystery by Baroness Orczy
The Haverstock Hill Murder by George R. Sims
The Dead Hand by R. Austin Freeman
Mr. Bovey's Unexpected Will by L.T. Meade and Robert Eustace
A Perverted Genius by Silas K.Hocking
The Eye of Apollo by G.K. Chesterton
The Purple Emperor by Robert W. Chambers
The Tragedy of the Life Raft by Jacques Futrelle
The Story of Baelbrow by E. and H. Heron

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great anthology, featuring a mix of Victorian detective stories, most of which were characters that had their own series.

There a few obvious rip offs of Sherlock Holmes, a couple characters that you can see why they are forgotten, but most them are decent characters that I'd like to read more about. I liked the 'Thinking Machine' and the two women detectives especially.

Some good mysteries, interesting characters and a nice bit of detective fiction history.

[Lexi · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent collection of Victorian era detective stories. A fun read and quirky selections as well. In addition to the requisite Sherlock Holmes tale (The Adventure of the Copper Beeches), Rudyard Kipling, Baroness Orczy, and G.K. Chesterton are featured. The other authors were previously unfamiliar to me, but I will be looking for collections of their work at my local library soon!

[Mary Mingle · Rating 5 out of 5]

A literary collection of Victorian-era detective short stories. I had no idea how many mystery writers contributed to the genre . . . We all know about Sherlock Holmes but it appears there were many writers of the time creating clever detectives and spinning interesting tales of mystery and intrigue. An excellent overview of detective fiction of the time.

[Beth Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great collection of short detective stories from the Victorian era. Good mix of authors, plots, and concise intro of each author was helpful. Favorites included: The Haverstock Hill Murder by Sims, The Dead Hand by Freeman, The Eye of Apollo by Chesterton, and The Tragedy of the Liferaft by Futrelle. Unimpressed by Kipling's Return of Imray, and abandoned The Purple Emperor by Chambers.

[Veronica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the stories were funny, but some were plain odd. Although I read some for school, I finished the rest just because they were short, easy to read, and nothing like anything I've read in a while.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hit or miss, what are you to say? The best are very excellent, but you can see how the literary types could be so dismissive of the genre for so long.

[Patty · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good collection of late 19th century mysteries.

[Johanna · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very disappointing collection.

[David Nadolny · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent collection of Victorian short detective stories!

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection of some rather rare stories by an assorted collection of Victorian detective story writers. Especially worth reading if you've enjoyed Sherlock Holmes or want an introduction.

[Jen]

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