MR.
BAILEY'S TRIUMPHS:
The
Detective Fiction of H.C. Bailey
“Mr. Fortune’s position among
readers of detective
stories is unique. Some cannot read
about him at any price; many regard him as merely one of several
first-class
practitioners; but many more still, the other and my side idolatry,
mark time between
Mr. Bailey’s chronicles. To us any case of
“Reggie sighed” is criminologically royal…” –
Torquemada,
Observer, 31st March 1935
<>
“Mr. Bailey is, indeed, one of those rare
writers who are masters alike of the short form and the long, and his
colleagues
can only wonder with awe at the fertility of invention which allows him
magnificently to bestow upon one book half a dozen admirable plots,
almost always
with an exciting and totally unexpected conclusion.” –
E.R.
Punshon, Manchester Guardian, 18th
September 1936.
<>
“…He constructs a plot that twists and turns
like an electric eel: it gives you shock upon shock and you cannot let
go.” –
Times Literary Supplement, 19th
October 1940.
An author with the imagination of Gladys
Mitchell, the allusiveness and poetic style of G.K. Chesterton,
and the plotting ability of Agatha Christie? H(enry)
C(hristopher) Bailey (1878--1961) is one of the true masters of the
genre, and, like all the best writers, shamefully neglected
today: although his short stories are widely anthologised, none
of the novels are in print at the moment--a sad state of affairs.
Bailey's appeal lies in his ability to create memorable
murderers: the sadistic philanthropist Lady Chantry in "The
Unknown Murderer", the mother who poisons her family and
herself to leave the inheritance to her beloved son in "The
Broken Toad", and the doctor who murders the unwanted
children of wealthy parents in order to cure the children of the
poor in "The Long Dinner"; his ability to
create atmosphere through setting and landscape: the
desolation of coast and mud in The Sullen Sky Mystery, the
terrible grandeur of the cliffs of Black Land, White Land;
and the use of allegory: like the short stories of
Chesterton, Bailey's works function on two levels: as detective
stories, and as fables. Taken as a whole, he is, with Chesterton
and Mitchell, by far the most rewarding writer of detective
stories.
What's New:
These pages copyright Nicholas Lester Fuller,
2000--2010. Created Monday, 24 December 2001, updated 3rd
December 2004.
