Crippen & Landru Publishers (C&L) produces single-author short story collections, both current crime fiction authors and uncollected stories by mystery and detective writers of the past. It’s the latter that I find most valuable, since so many authors published prolifically in weekly newspapers and magazines well before the digital age could capture them for posterity. Locating copies of these stories is a real challenge, as most of the periodicals are long extinct and were never indexed.
C&L’s latest contribution to preserving the short crime fiction of the Golden Age is a collection of short stories by Wales native Ethel Lina White. C&L says: “Ethel Lina White … was once as well known as the Crime Queens. During her short career from 1927 to her death in 1944, she wrote seventeen novels and many short stories. However, White has been forgotten over the years. Her books were not in print and her name was practically unheard of, even though they play a major role in the development of psychological suspense subgenre. Recently, the British Library’s Crime Classics released Fear Stalks the Village and The Wheel Spins, two of the best works by White.”
C&L followed up on this renewed interest by publishing Blackout and Other Tales of Suspense, the first collection of White’s short fiction. With a comprehensive introduction by crime fiction historian Tony Medawar and White authority Alex Csurko, the collection contains 19 stories published from 1928 to 1943 in a wide range of mostly U.S. periodicals: Pearson’s Magazine, The Hartford (Connecticut) Daily Courant, The Los Angeles Times, Raleigh (North Carolina) News and Observer, The (New York) Daily News, Midland Empire Farmer (Hysham, Montana), Britannia and Eve (London), Chicago Sunday Tribune, Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal, and The Province (British Columbia, Canada).
The volume includes a short story that would become the basis for The Wheel Spins. Like Agatha Christie, White had no compunction at all about recycling her plots and she did it often. “Passengers” was first published in the Raleigh News and Observer and White’s retooling of the story into a full-length novel was adapted for the screen several times; the best-known version is Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes starring Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave. The Woman in Cabin 10 (Gallery/Scout Press, 2016) by Ruth Ware is a relatively recent example of the same general plot.
The chronological organization of the stories allows the reader to watch the maturation of White’s writing. From the early sensational stories with Gothic overtones White’s style becomes more assured and subtle in its delivery of unease and trepidation. Students of Golden Age crime fiction will want to acquire this collection and followers of Celia Fremlin, Dorothy Hughes, Daphne Du Maurier, Patricia Highsmith, and Margaret Millar should definitely add it to their TBR lists.