The Leavenworth Case Redux

It really is pretty.

It’s difficult to know how to write this, because I’ve already read and written about The Leavenworth Case, and, as you may recall, I didn’t like it very much. But last month at BookBloggerCon, when it seemed sometimes like all anyone wanted to talk about was the art of acquiring review copies, I kept thinking about it.

I’d seen on The Bunburyist that Penguin had just put out a new edition of The Leavenworth Case, and that the cover was really attractive. So I guess it was a little bit because of the cover art, and a little bit because I felt like the book was worth revisiting, and a little bit because I wanted to see if someone would really send me a review copy, when all I’ve done in the past is recommend etexts.

I Fasten a Bracelet

Brace yourselves: this is a long one.

Here is a blurb I found at the end of PG’s text of From the Car Behind:

Why should a young well-bred girl be under a vow of obedience to a man after she had broken her engagement to him? This is the mysterious situation that is presented in this big breezy out-of-doors romance. When Craig Schuyler, after several years’ absence, returns home, and without any apparent reason fastens on Nell Sutphen an iron bracelet. A sequence of thrilling events is started which grip the imagination powerfully, and seems to “get under the skin.” There is a vein of humor throughout, which relieves the story of grimness.

From the Car Behind

From the Car Behind starts off really well, and I almost wish it hadn’t, because I wouldn’t have gotten so frustrated with it if I hadn’t liked the characters so much.

Allan Gerard is an executive at a car company — it’s called Mercury, but this was written before there really was a car company of that name — and he’s the usual romance/adventure hero, circa 1910: handsome, athletic, clean-cut, good-natured, and sensible. Also rich. He’s pretty much perfect, and I’m not quite sure how Eleanor Ingram manages to make him so likable. Or how someone like Jeffery Farnol manages to make essentially the same character profoundly irritating.

Rosemary

I’m slowly making my way through The Leavenworth Case again (there are things I like better this time around, but there are also things I hate a lot more) and yesterday afternoon I decided I needed a break, so I went looking on Project Gutenberg for a book with a girl’s name in the title, as that seemed like a good way to find a light, fluffy romance.

I didn’t find what I was looking for, exactly. Rosemary, by Josephine Lawrence, (best known, I think, as a Stratemeyer Syndicate author) definitely has a girl’s name in the title, but it didn’t seem like the kind of book I was looking for. It did, however, seem like a book I wanted to read, and I didn’t want to lose track of it, so I abandoned my fluffy romance plans.

The Boy with the U.S. Census

I thought The Boy with the U.S. Census, by Francis Rolt-Wheeler, was going to be kind of boring, but there’s so much going on with it that I’m not sure where to start.

I guess we can begin with Mr. Rolt-Wheeler himself. Back when I thought the book was going to be boring, I thought this post was going to be all about him. According to French Wikipedia, he was born in England and left home at the age of twelve, earning his passage to America as a deckhand on a sailing ship. He then became an Anglican minister (although the New York Times says he was Episcopalian) and also an expert on astrology and the occult.

Sadly, French Wikipedia has nothing to offer on what seems to have been the most sensational part of Rolt-Wheeler’s history.