we interrupt this diary vacation for BOOKS!
July 6, 2011, 2010

Working my way through pretty much everything by Samuel Hopkins Adams that I can find online. So far I've devoured "Average Jones" (1911), "The Secret of Lonesome Cove" (1912), and "The Unspeakable Perk" (1916). Currently working on "Little Miss Grouch: A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's Maiden Transatlantic Voyage" (1915).

I love everything I've read so far. Average Jones is about a young, rich guy in New York who sets up a revolutionary new business, as a self professed expert on everything about advertisements. His talents include tracking down mysterious fraudulent ads, as well using ads himself to acquire information and solve mysteries. I really enjoyed this one.

The Secret of Lonesome Cove was actually the first one I read, and while it can totally be classified as a detective story, the detective himself is quite out of the ordinary. Adams managed to create a character that cried out for a series--but he never game him one, sadly. As a fictional detective, Chester Kent could have quite held his own with Wimsey, Poirot, Queen, etc.

I've read a lot of mysteries from the period, and I do have to say that this one didn't read like one. It had a far more contemporary feel when it came to structure, which really surprised me. Most teens and 20s "mysteries" are really more like thrillers--not much mystery, and just a lot of exciting scenes. Or else they are unfair to the reader, and present the detective as a brilliant god of the deductive arts, who figures it all out by methods unrevealed to the reader until the final pages, when he bloviates at length concerning his solution.

I guess if I had to put it into words, I'd say that instead of reading like a 1920s Ellery Queen, it read like a 1940s Ellery Queen.

The Unspeakable Perk was not the best I've read, by a long shot. To many of those moments where you just want to punch a character for their inconsistency, or their inconstancy. But it was still engaging and threaded through with a bit of mystery, even though I'd consider it mainly a romance.

I can't believe how many terrific and influential works of fiction flowed from this guy's pen, considering that he was much more well known as an investigative journalist. It seems almost impossible that someone who could blow the lid off the patent medicines racket could have also left us with the ground-breaking novel of the 1920s "Flaming Youth", as well as stories that became great films, like "Night Bus" (the basis for the film "It Happened One Night"), "The Harvey Girls", and "The Gorgeous Hussy".

Samuel Hopkins Adams at Project Gutenberg