The Curated Crime Collection features reprints of -- and interesting combinations of -- fictional works that put a criminal character at center stage (though the spotlight there might be kept a bit dim). I call the first phase of releases "The Crime Wave Rises," and it includes three books. If everything goes to plan, the next two phases, respectively called "The Crime Wave Crests" and "The Crime Wave Crashes," will each introduce three books, too, for a total of nine.
All of the material being reprinted was originally published in the late 1800s and early 1900s. You see, in these decades, mystery fiction exploded, thanks largely to the stunning popularity of Sherlock Holmes. Many authors wanted a slice of the crime pie, and while criminal lead characters were certainly overshadowed by detective characters, I managed to compile a lengthy list of the former. It took me over a year to do so, and I'm now slowly reading and choosing the best of the best. I'm carefully curating the crime.
Criminal characters have a very long history, though. Think, for instance, of the Robin Hood legends of the Middle Ages. Still, Grant Allen's "The Curate of Churnside" (1884) and An African Millionaire (1897) seem to have been at the forefront of a new type of criminal character. Especially his short story explores the complexities of morality, the battle of good and evil waged within us all. Think, for instance, of Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886). Allen, then, seemed like a good author to feature in the first volume of the collection.
Elizabeth Phipps Train's A Social Highwayman (1895) works very nicely beside Guy Boothby's A Prince of Swindlers (1897). That's why these works are combined in the second volume. Train being an American and Boothby being an Australian (by birth) shows that the wave was wide. Also, Train's Courtice Jaffrey and Boothby's Simon Carne not only prey on the well-to-do -- they are the well-to-do! No, E.W. Hornung did not invent the gentleman thief by introducing A.J. Raffles in 1898. He was merely taking a developing literary trend to a new level of success.
Like the two before it, the third volume is a "partners in crime" book because it combines two criminal characters. Both The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings and The Sorceress of the Strand were written by collaborators L.T. Meade and Robert Eustace, and each features a woman master criminal. In a sense, they were ushering Trincomalee Liz -- the barely seen woman who finances Boothby's Simon Carne -- from the shadows of Sri Lanka to the limelight of London. I can't say this with 100% certainty, but I believe this is the first time Meade and Eustace's Madame Koluchy and Madame Sara have appeared in the same book. If that's correct, it's also unusual. After all, they are very prominent members of literature's sinister sisterhood.
As I shift to curating the next three works, I'll probably blog more about these first three. Meanwhile, you can download my introduction to this neglected trend in mystery fiction from the page detailing all three of the books.
--Tim
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