The Social Secretary

The Social Secretary,  a novel of Washington, D.C. society, is kind of adorable, but surprisingly fluffy to have been written by a muckraking journalist. David Graham Phillips was known for exposing all sorts of corruption in the senate, and I suppose, as far as subject matter is concerned, that senators taking bribes aren’t all that far removed from senators’ wives trying to dominate local society.  I think there must be a pretty big difference in tone, though.

The Lone Wolf

I was predisposed to like Louis Joseph Vance because he was found dead in his apartment in December 1933, burnt to a crisp from the waist up. Apparently there were suspicions that he’d just…gone up in flames one day, and spontaneous human combustion is, like, my favorite thing. Or, at least, I find the idea of it pretty entertaining.

But I think I would like Louis Vance even if he hadn’t spontaneously combusted. The Lone Wolf is the first book in a series about a gentleman burglar type, and while it wasn’t quite what I’d expected, I very much liked what it turned out to be instead.

Janice Meredith

Usually I do a little bit of research on a book before I write about it — not much beyond googling the title and author to make sure I haven’t missed anything important. So I took a look at Wikipedia this morning, and while I didn’t learn anything about Janice Meredith that I didn’t already know (bestseller in 1900, made into a silent movie), when I looked up Paul Leicester Ford, I discovered to following: he was murdered in 1902 by his brother Malcolm, a famous athlete, who then shot himself. Nothing to do with the book, I guess, but any chance that I was going to forget who Paul Leicester Ford was is now gone.

Not that I really thought I would forget, because Janice Meredith is pretty good. It’s sort of like Under Two Flags, only set during the American Revolution, and about one fifth as ridiculous.