There's probably quite the crossover between the readers of the this blog, and the fans of Caroline Crampton's truly excellent Shedunnit podcast. So many of you will already know that Caroline is doing a series looking at the legendary Penguin green-and-white crime books - she's doing one episode per book, starting at the beginning. The Green Penguin Book Club - what a great idea. So when she invited me to do the next one I signed on in a heartbeat.
The book is
The Missing Moneylender
by W Stanley Sykes
first published in 1931, and the really surprising thing is that neither of us had ever even heard of it before, let alone read it. I thought that between us Caroline and I had read the entire works of the Golden Age....
The episode is live now, you can find it here
The Missing Moneylender by W. Stanley Sykes (Green Penguin Book Club 7) - Shedunnit
and you can hear us talk about medical mysteries, lost authors, and the elephant in the room: that title... and potentially wince-making moments. And I enquired of Caroline about her special interest in medical matters - see my post on her recent book on hypochondria.
The Missing Moneylender was a most interesting book, and I was delighted to have the chance to read it and then discuss it. Though, we should warn you, it is very hard to find copies...
I've never heard of Sykes nor read this book either, Moira, so this is really interesting to me. And thanks for mentioning the podcast. I've not listened to it as I ought to, but it is excellent and I'll be really interested in your take on it.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad it's not just us, Margot - with your encyclopaedic knowledge of crime books that really says something.
DeleteI don't listen to all that many podcast, but Caroline's Shedunnit is one I always enjoy.
I hadn't heard of it either. I enjoyed the podcast up to the spoiler alert. The wonderful London Library has a copy and I have requested it so will be back to hear the rest in due course. Chrissie
ReplyDeleteOh great! it is so hard to find that I had no hopes of being able to talk about it with anyone but Caroline, but now you will be in on it too.
DeleteEven OpenLibrary offers only to locate the book, there are none to borrow. I suppose it's full of good ol' GAD anti-Semitism, in which case I probably enjoy it anyway. On a lighter note, have you read Mignon Eberhart's 1930's mysteries with Nurse Sarah Keate?
ReplyDeleteI read one, While the Patient Slept, many years ago, long pre-blog, and don't remember much about it!
Delete(I had to look up in my records, where I found I had mis-spelled her last name, and put it down as 'SLEEPS', so I wasn't at my finest)
So - what would you recommend?
That was the first one in the series but I don't think they have to be read in any order. I read a favorable review by TomCat of "From This Dark Stairway" which is set in a hospital, I haven't read that one yet but it sounds like a good "medical" mystery. The actual sleuth in most of the books is one Lance O'Leary, but Sarah Keate is a valuable and interesting observer. And the few books I've read so far have had beautiful heiresses with names that would do Wentworth proud!
DeleteOh you are tempting me very much....
DeleteI went ahead and listened to the entire podcast, even the spoiler section. I did not expect to stumble on the book shortly. (Though with the publicity you gave it, maybe it will get an e-book edition. Worse books have received it.)
ReplyDeleteRegarding the antisemitism angle, I was just reading a book where there is a seriously unpleasant Jewish character. (Who also claims his vengeance is a Israelite trait.) There are several interesting overlaps with tropes in the book you mention: people pour scorn on the character for changing his name. One character calls him a renegade to a great race, so there is a similar suggestion that people who openly acknowledge their ancestry are more acceptable. He is also described as having a stereotypically Jewish appearance.
He changes his name to a Scottish one. I can think of examples in both Sayers and Carr where similarly a Jewish financier goes by a Scottish name. I don't know if this was strictly a fictional trope (based on common stereotypes of Scots and Jews) or whether it was also a real--world thing.
Thanks for interesting comments, and thanks for listening.
DeleteYes, yes I too have noticed this trope of Jewish financial people taking Scottish names (I meant to mention it on the podcast but didn't get to it) - there was a definite trope in GA books, and a lot of comment about people being called Jock MacDonald but not looking at all as though that were his name. As you say, hard to tell how much this occurred outside the books.
There is an irony in making life unbearable for other nationalities, and then being shocked if they change their name.
I have just been blogging on a book which mentions the Arthur Murray dance school - AM was born Moses Teichman.
Real-world in England, I think. A jewish friend's ancestors did the same thing and it appears in Peacock's Crotchett Castle. And there was Robert Maxwell, of course. I'd guess that asserting Britishness without claiming Englishness, perhaps.
ReplyDeleteIn The Grand Babylon Hotel Arnold Bennett features a jewish moneylender and being Bennett goes into detail about what the job entails and how it works.
And in US, all those filmstars changing their names to something glamorous, but also non-Jewish.
DeleteAnd reportedly having their names changed by officials at Ellis Island.
I suppose there were those who tried to find an English name like their own, and those who looked at the whole world out there and chose something different.
I was at university with someone who had two names - he was in the process of reclaiming the Jewish name that his parents or grandparents had rejected...
...and the people who just translated their names - Stone for Stein or King for Konig...
DeleteI think the Ellis Island name-changing may have been more accidental than anything, with English-speaking people trying to record names they could neither spell nor pronounce! Even after immigrants had lived here for a bit, their names would get spelled phonetically by "the English" and would stay that way. And of course some families deliberately Anglicized their names. Funny how in Hollywood, the studio honchos sometimes kept the Jewish names, maybe adjusting the spelling a little.
DeleteI found my own Irish relations' entries in the Ellis Island registers, and there were at least two mistakes, although all written in beautiful handwriting.
DeleteI think there was a clear division - studio owners & management versus those onscreen. I think strange, and not particularl so in any other business?
The Ellis Island registers may have been copied from ships' passenger lists, and the handwriting on those lists was not always beautiful! (I think the passenger lists were supposed to have the correct names, but that doesn't mean they were always legible.) I don't know why some studio heads changed their names and others didn't, maybe they were self-made men and wanted the world to know they were Jewish, or maybe they had so much power they just didn't care who knew? The actors of course had to have a broad appeal and names could be changed just because the honchos thought they didn't sound right (Archie Leach for example).
DeleteI don't think this was copied from a ship's manifest: there was mention of the circumstances of family in US which I think must have been taken in person.
DeleteThe namechanged that always puzzles me is Joan Crawford: she was born Lucille LeSueur which sounds like the ideal filmstar name!
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI keep screwing up my posts. There's a book "Black Beadle" by E C R Lorac which is a nice change from the usual Golden Age anti-Semitism. One of the suspects is a Jew (a financier of course) and his treatment is relatively positive. There's even mention of work he's doing to try to help Jews in Europe (publishing date was 1939) and a contrast with another suspect who's anti-Semitic. Maybe there's too much emphasis on his Jewishness (and the book on Open Library even has a Star of David on its cover), but overall Lorac does a lot better than some other writers.
ReplyDeleteThat does sound interesting, I will add it to my list...
Delete