Show Pew Mysteries Pound to Have HaveS S Original Plots Survey Disapproves of i Present Flood of Crime Books sy By THE NEA BOOK SURVEY What with baffle books and andOne andone one thing or another it is only a question ot of time before any small boy hoy can inform you ou where the buter but but- Jer Jeras er was as at 11 o'clock who purloined purloined pur- pur the Yon Von hilts pearls and what became ot of Charlie l Ross oss Crime not only has grown Into a Chicago racket industry but into a parlor pastime in the best ct Cf families Mystery tales now are turned out as never ne before and publishers organize to form crime clubs and what not The detective story i is In its most highly high high- ly fonn And struggling authors scratchIng scratching scratch scratch- Ing their heads in desperation turn to the detective tale talc and grow as ingenious as possible All of which seems to us just a little bit too bad sInce this Survey SUr likes a good detective story as well 3 as the next fellow but wearies just justa a little ot of suspecting the obscure housemaid and the insignificant chauffeur TWO OFFENDERS There are in this field two who are th the oldest and most persistent offenders both Englishmen Fo- Fo many a year J. J S. S Fletcher turned out so many mystery mystery mys- mys tery tal tales s that he had to have halt half halfa a dozen publishers publish publish- ers to keep him In i circulation All AIl jr the time Edgar Wallace was belag be- be lag ing translated in one or more Jan Ian and enjOying enjo en- en jo ing a S deus sale at home This is isa isa a fellow who can turn out a mys- mys tory serial before beCore t a ys n-ys- Wallace tory tery play after lunch and a newspaper criticism the dinner gong rings Ills His latest The Double is the Crime Cime Club selection and his hs pla play The Squawker is now no noon on Broadway though not particularly well welI received There is after all such a thing as having ing too good a formula REAL MYSTERY S. S Which brings us around to a m mystery mys- mys s 's tery tale of real I merit Enter Sir John Cosmopolitan This was done by a duo or of writers who have been known heretofore by fiction that has been better than ordinary Clemence Dane and Helen Simp- Simp son I if it stands far above the herd of tales it is due to the fact that there are in it ingredients other than those supplied b by the run of writers One doesn't have to deI depend de- de pend upon a mysterious criminal I Here appears some excellent drawing draw draw- lag ing room conversation the characters characters char char- are not the mere puppets of the usual mystery tale they converse and pass wit and seem to have some purpose in life other than that ot of being suspected and suspecting I I TOO MUCH NOISE There is such a thIng as too much shooting and too many ot off stage noises as the Broadway mystery plays have proved When Poe gave the world some of the finest of eerie tales he did did not intend that the hour or of day and the absence of the nurse maid maid should constitute the Important factors factors fac- fac tors In his goose flesh provokers The human mind entered vitally into his tales and there was an element ele- ele meat ment ot of the ps psychological sadly missing fro froth 1 the quiCk and h sties st- st les ies of the moment That the detective story passed into the hands ot of literary hacks and offspring ot of Old ICing Brady is largely the thc fault of oC readers who preferred a bad puzzle to an involved involved in- in I human riddle The detective detective detec- detec tive himself has gone through a aI number of metamorphoses most ot of I I them more or less patterned after I the analytical design ot of Sherlock I Holmes Craig Kennedy was after all little more than a rewriter of encyclopedic information wIth a detective detective de- de thrown in for good measure Recently the Idea has hns been to fasten fastena a crime on the least suspected ot of characters an Idea very popular with the drama But in the end it seems to us that the crime tales must wear out thEir welcome unless they employ methods such as are to tobe be found lii In Milnes Milne's and Clemence Danes Dane's stories 1 For or after all what hat fun lun there be when such volumes as The Bat Bat- fIe Book and Murder teach the young oung the idea how to pick the solution solution so- so lution out ot of thin air |