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Stein, Aaron Marc

Page history last edited by Jon 13 years ago

Aaron Marc Stein was an American novelist. Born in New York City and educated at Princeton, Stein worked as a journalist in the 1920s and 1930s before becoming a full-time fiction writer. During WWII he worked for the Office of War Information and did Army work in Chinese and Japanese translation. Stein wrote under the pseudonyms of George Babgy (the Inspector Schmidt series) and Hampton Stone (stories about NY Assistant DA, Jeremiah Gibson). Under his own name Stein has created the archaeologist detectives Timm Mulligan and Elsie Mae Hunt, and the hard-bitten engineer Matt Herridge.

Mike Grost on 'George Bagby'

Like Van Dine, [the Schmidt books] take place in New York City. They sometimes take place among prosperous New Yorkers, with a background in the arts or show biz. Van Dine's disciple Ellery Queen once referred to the Van Dine followers as the "Straightforward American school" of detective fiction. Bagby has a similar straightforward approach as the other Van Dineans: the murder is committed right away, and the detective investigates it throughout the rest of the book, with no elaborate digressions or detours into personal lives, or action or suspense set pieces. The investigation sets forth the crime scene, and the movements of the suspects around it at various times.

The Van Dine novels are narrated by a self-effacing man named Van Dine; a similar arrangement occurs in Anthony Abbot's books. The Babgy novels are similarly narrated by a fictitious writer named "George Bagby". In scenes where the crime is being investigated, narrator Bagby is almost as invisible as Van Dine's and Abbot's narrators. However, Inspector Schmidt and Bagby regularly have two-person scenes where they discuss the case. Bagby becomes much more of a presence in these episodes. The fictitious Bagby is a professional writer, and he narrates in a literate prose style with occasional cultural allusions. This is not as ornate as Van Dine's prose, but it does maintain a literate approach.

However, there are differences in the Bagby books from the Van Dine approach. Inspector Schmidt is not a flamboyant genius - he is a "regular guy", typical cop. And the stories maintain a certain tone of realism, in showing life in New York City. This gives the Bagby novels a "police procedural" quality. People who want to read a "realistic novel of police investigation in a big city" can enjoy the Bagby novels as falling into this paradigm. There always was a police procedural aspect to the Van Dine school: most of the writers have an official New York City Homicide investigation as part of their story, and the sleuth is an actual NYC policeman in the Anthony Abbot books. So Bagby's procedural approach can be seen as evolving from Van Dine tradition.