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Post by pulphack on Apr 11, 2012 10:09:56 GMT
Picked this up at the weekend - it's one of those 'dossier' boks that caused a bit of a ripple in the thirties. Den wrote the text, and it was 'planned' by the mysteriors Mr Links. This may mean he came up with the plot, but I err towards thinking (unless someone knows?) that he designed the thing.
Originally published by Hutchinson in 1936, this is a reprint from 1979, with Webb & Bower the packagers who put it together for Hutchinson. In a dustjacket, it's a manilla folder with a series of typed statements on police forms, photographs and drawings, handwritten notes and letters (one in Japanese, even!), and even little bags of hair from combs, matches, and samples of blood stained curtain.
It's a beautifully put together package, and although the idea of presenting a book in this format (Harry Steven Keeler did a couple like this arund the same time) is not new, I can't think of anyone who's actually done it in the kind of facsimilie format that isn't just presenting it in 2D on a page before or since.
All of which would be incidental if it were a rubbish tale. It's not brilliant in terms of mystery, granted, but it does present Den the storyteller in his best light, with the extraneous clunky descriptions and politics stripped away. A story of a locked room suicide come murder on a yacht, it seems that everyone has a motive and possibility, until these are all eliminated to reveal an neat identity switch.
I've wanted to see one of these for some time, and chanced upon it entirely by accident. Even these reprints seem hard to find, probably because they can fall to bits easily. Well worth picking up if you see one, even if you're not a mad keen fan of Den, as they're lovely objects in their own right.
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Post by dem bones on Apr 11, 2012 10:45:49 GMT
truly a spectacular find, mr. hack: thank you so much for sharing. "Keep this carefully
It is a First Edition of the first Crime Story ever presented in this way. Should others follow, it is possible that an undamaged copy of "Murder off Miami" may be of considerable interest one day. "[/center] Richard Humphrey's, who so generously provided us with dust-jacket scans for many a Century Book, dishes more dirt on the Wheatley-Links Crime Dossiers via (where else?), the late, great Bob Rothwell's absorbing Wheatley info site.
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Post by pulphack on Apr 11, 2012 11:22:55 GMT
Thanks for the link, Dem - that's facinating stuff and reminds me that I should check the Wheatley site whenever I find something of his.
Loved the reference to Duchamps - Den would have gone ballistic probably if he'd ever been called post-modern, but in many ways he did for a lark what serious pm writers have been trying to do for years - find a way to reinvent the novel. It's a blind alley, sure, but Will Self hasn't got that far (I like him so it's no criticism, btw).
I would love to find other facsimilies, and given that they were then republished in a slightly less fragile form I'm surprised those haven't turned up - I'd sette for them, really.
But as computer games? Blimey, a pioneer even after he snuffed it, our Den...
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