I am attempting to solve a mystery before a world-famous detective, once again, solves it. The task is not an easy one, but I feel I am up to it given my years of experience; reading experience, that is. I have for more years than I care to remember been a reader of mysteries but have limited myself to a handful of authors whose who-done-its most captured me with both storyline and wordsmithing, with Conan Doyle’s “Sherlock Holmes” stories among the very first due to the curriculum of my elementary and high school years.
Holmes is a character known universally, though I am sure far less read by today’s generation who, as far as I can see, are not big on hold-in-your-hand-and-turn-the-pages books, but prefer the here-now-gone-in-15-seconds type digital reading. That is a comment based on watching my grandkids skip from one 15-20-second video to another midway through, a mere seven or eight seconds, and decide yea or nay, then click on to the next never-ending offering.
I remember when television had three full minutes of advertisements in the middle of a 30-minute program; today’s generation, and I suppose the one before, would never see the second half of an episode of “I Love Lucy” or “Dragnet” if forced to wait three minutes before Desi or Joe Friday came back on the screen. But I digress.
I have no idea what the reading requirements are for schools these days, but I know I read about Sherlock Holmes, just as I read about Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher, and that was in English classes of 65-plus years ago. Now, it is entirely possible that as a generation of Saturday morning cartoon fanatics, we first observed Daffy Duck as Sherlock and Elmer Fudd as Dr. Watson or saw a black-and-white Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce movie on Sunday’s “Dialing for Dollars,” maybe both, before any of us read a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes story. The Sherlock Holmes books have been translated into dozens of languages and sold billions of copies.
There is another sleuth I am fond of, Nero Wolfe. Written by Rex Stout, Nero Wolfe is an eccentric detective/gourmand born in Montenegro. He lives in New York City with cook Fritz Brenner and his always-ready-man-of-action Archie Goodwin; a favorite character of mine in all of literature. Though cited differently in some stories, Wolfe weighs anywhere from 280-320 pounds and rarely leaves his three-story brownstone in Lower Manhattan. Wolfe is not as popular as other detectives, but he is well worth knowing if you enjoy the genre.
But what I am doing with the next mystery writer is attempting to unmask the culprit before he or she are revealed. And this writer is the biggest of them all. This is from the About the Author page in the novel I am reading:
“Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in England and another billion in a hundred foreign languages. She is the author of eighty crime novels and short story collections, nineteen plays, two memoires, and six novels written under the name Mary Westmacott.” She was good. I have read all of Doyle’s Holmes stories, and a large portion of Christie’s Belgian detective genius Hercule Poirot and small village snoop extraordinaire Miss Jane Marple; but never with intent of trying to beat the revealing last page to the punch.
This time I am attempting just that with a novel new to me, “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd,” first published in 1926. Knowing the genius of M. Poirot I nonetheless will try, this time, to get to the end of the line before him. I’ll let ya know how I do.
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A couple weeks ago during the festivities down at the park, I had the good fortune to take a little stroll down a long-ago trodden path when I ran into Juan, a KCHS classmate, who told me a story I had never heard before, and it involved a member of my family. As I listened, I realized this is a man who remembers the Valley of old, the vacant lots in towns, buildings when they were only half their present age, which for some is around 120 years. The only school in Greenfield was on that same street, most of the shops and grocers, gas stations and auto repair were on that street. Juan and I knew a different Valley; just as did the oldsters before us.
I did mention to him that of the five people in his story, three have been gone for many years and the fourth not doing so well, while Juan is looking well and going strong. A day or two later, I saw Arlene in Safeway, got a compliment and a bit of a scold about some of my columns; the political ones. It can be tough to publicly voice opinion you know long-time friends and fellow townspeople are gonna object to; but this comment did not sting because I remember Romie. Romie and his people, comprised of Arlene’s boys, and his neighbor Stephen and I with others played football in the barren field across from his Maple Street house. When Romie, who was a large, black Labrador, got hit by a car that mangled a front leg, Romie did not go to the vet and not come back; Romie lived out his life a three-legged dog because Arlene has a good heart.
Found these words, they work for the above. “It’s a part of adulthood no one warns you about, the part where you feel homesick, not for a house, but for a moment in time. A version of life that doesn’t exist anymore. A place you can’t return to and a feeling you didn’t know you’d miss until it was gone.”
Take care. Peace.
