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Hanshew, Thomas W

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Thomas W Hanshew (1857-1914), who also wrote as Charlotte Mary Kingsley, was an American author and actor best known for his stories of Hamilton Cleek, the man of the forty faces, who through his talents for disguise solves crime and mystery in London. He wrote some books in collaboration with his wife, Mary E Hanshew. Hazel Phillips Hanshew has been credited with writing several of the collaborations between Mary and Thomas.  Using her own name Hazel also wrote two final story collections featuring Hamilton Cleek ending a long saga that spanned over three decades.

 

Two Cleek books are available from Project Gutenberg.

 


Mike Grost on the Hanshews

 

The Hamilton Cleek mysteries by the Hanshews, which often feature impossible crimes, were favorite childhood reading of John Dickson Carr. Ellery Queen's somewhat satiric comments on the tales focused on the campier aspects of the Cleek saga, with the detective Hamilton Cleek being a Balkan Prince caught up in Ruritanian romance. I have just read one for the first time, "The Riddle of the 5:28", and find it far more of a straightforward mystery tale than I had imagined. It is not at all campy in tone, the Prince works closely and normally with Scotland Yard, and a fair play impossible crime story is spun out, entertainingly if somewhat implausibly in solution. There are signs of trying to appeal to a (male) juvenile audience in the stories: the Prince employs a Cockney lad as an assistant, he being a character with whom boys might identify; the prose tries to create a thrilling tone, complete with dramatic climaxes; and there is a great deal of attention paid to trains, automobiles and other machinery, something that boys of all ages love. By contrast there is a great deal of grown up romance, including a villainous character who engages in adulterous affairs. The tone of the story over all matches that of Arthur B. Reeve's Craig Kennedy stories, with its stalwart, highly intelligent hero; a cast of characters involved in the corrupter aspects of the era's high life and all under suspicion, with the characters all assembled at the end for the revelation of the guilty party by the detective; the emphasis on dramatic writing; the focus on technology and machinery; and a setting more of public life than of pure domesticity.

 

"Murder in an Empty House", from Cleek's Government Cases (1916), is far fuller of Graustarkian fantasies of honor and chivalry. It is at once nostalgically appealing, and absurd. A young Count in the story is described as "the handsomest, bravest chap ever to don the Emperor's uniform". The aristocratic Cleek's use of slang to address his friend Superintendent Narkom of Scotland Yard - "you old fidget" - anticipates similar slang slinging aristocrats as Philo Vance and Lord Peter Wimsey. Cleek disguises himself in the uniform of a British Lieutenant as well. Cleek's constant use of disguises and different identities reminds one of the Rogue school. The solution of the impossible crime disappoints, being based on 1916 high tech gizmos. The affinity to Reeve does persist here, however, in the high technology nature of the crime. The Hanshews' use of Hampstead Heath, the setting of Meade and Eustace's "The Man Who Disappeared" (1901) and Freeman's A Silent Witness (1914), makes one wonder if the Heath were somehow the locale of every high tech crime in British history. Cleek finds a body on the Heath, just as in Freeman's novel.

 

Before creating Cleek, Thomas Hanshew wrote numerous mystery novels. The World's Finger (1901) is something of a hack job. Douglas G. Greene, who has written the best article on Hanshew's work (in the Critical Survey of Mystery and Detective Fiction, edited by Frank N. Magill), points out that the rivalry between detectives in this book derives from Fergus W. Hume. In fact, much of the book is recognizably in the style of Fergus Hume and his The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886), not so much in its detectival technique as in its subject matter: its nocturnal killing on an urban street, its cast of young lovers doubling as suspects, good looking personable young society men hiding discreditable secrets, parent child relationships, hidden liaisons between rich older men and women of the lower classes, shrewd working class police officers and private detectives, boarding houses and upper middle class homes, romantic triangles, and illegitimate births. Into this Humian stew Hanshew introduces a few original elements. The book's stalwart heroine does some good detection, in her attempt to clear her fiancé's name (in Chapters 1-2 of Part Second). Another amateur detective, a doctor, does a creditable job directing a murder investigation in the opening chapters, before Scotland Yard has a chance to show up. These opening chapters (Chapters 1-3 of Part First) contain a mildly interesting impossible crime, and its solution. The OK solution contains both elements that are ingenious, and something of a let down. Perhaps someday someone will reprint this opening section. The World's Finger is a good title. It would make a good trilogy with Cornell Woolrich's Night Has a Thousand Eyes and Ursula K. LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness.


Hanshew exemplifies the writer whose bad style and ludicrous plotting becomes comic genius (albeit unconscious).  The novels are very difficult to read, but the short stories are ingenious -- and delightfully dotty. -- Doug Greene

 

Bibliography

 

Beautiful But Dangerous: Or, the Heir of Shadowdene (1891)

The World’s Finger (1901) aka the Horton Mystery

The Malison Mystery (1903)

The Great Ruby (1905)

The Shadow of A Dead Man (1906)

Fate and the Man (1910)

The Man of the Forty Faces (1910) aka Cleek, the Master Detective

Cleek of Scotland Yard (1914)

Cleek’s Greatest Riddles (1916) aka Cleek’s Government Cases

The Riddle of the Night (1916)

The Riddle of the Purple Emperor (1918)

 

By Mary E. Hanshew & Thomas Hanshew

The Frozen Flame (1920) aka The Riddle of the Frozen Flame

The Riddle of the Mysterious Light (1921)

The House of Discord (1922) aka The Riddle of the Spinning Wheel

The Amber Junk (1924) aka The Riddle of the Amber Ship

The House of Seven Keys (1925)

 

By Hazel Phillips Hanshew

The Riddle of the Winged Death (1931)

Murder in the Hotel (1932)

 

 

 

 

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