while the plot itself does not have time to become remarkable, the characters are animated enough to compensate. the whole thing seemed to be a cartoonish farce; i could not help thinking of old beatles movies and episodes of scooby doo (?)

this appears to have been written from an altered perspective (or was intended to convey one) as characters shift in and out of the story's focus in a stalled, haphazard way such that each one is grooving to his own inner music. the individuality and breadth of creativity displayed here by thomas and his unique assembly of characters is amazing considering the book's platry 60 pages.

highly recommeded.

Leslie Norris's collected stories are a sort of bittersweet beauty very much in the Joycean tradition (think especially of "Dubliners"). They begin with some sort of pivotal moment at which confusion either enters into or peaks in the protagonist's young life, and they end with an epiphany that seems sweetly to keep the bitter at bay, but knows that the respite is at best only temporary.

Also a poet (see his "Collected Poems" as well), like fellow Welshman Thomas, Norris's language is simple but fresh, and sumptuous when necessary, a prose tone perfectly in step with the state of his protagonists. Often (if not always), they are young boys on the brink of a knowledge that will disillusion them and send them closer to the concerns of adulthood.

In "Sliding," an accident during an afternoon of sliding across a frozen pond upsets a group of boys, their first initiation into the idea of impermanence. In "Kingfisher," a boy, who has just been with his father to visit his dying grandmother, sees in the garden the dead body of a bird that he and his father had only that morning watched together; in a moment of suddenly adult consciousness, he takes it upon himself to conceal the bad news of mortality from his father. In "Shaving," one of my faves from the collection, an athlete in the full strength of youth returns triumphant from the rugby field to shave his ailing father, who, in the full fading of disease, is too weak to shave himself.

This volume collects Norris's previous two (unfortunately long out-of-print) books, "Sliding" and "The Girl from Cardigan," putting them together with a few new stories in book form for the first time.

Norris excels at awakening emotion, but is subtle enough and careful enough not to hit you over the head with the hammer of sentimentality. If you appreciate and enjoy fiction that looks at those moments that we all know, where we begin to feel ourselves a part of the knowledge that life ends up teaching everyone sooner or later, then this book is a terrific buy.

Read this book (or SIXTY STORIES or SNOW WHITE) and you will not be able to look at the world in the same way again. DB knew better than most what petty, unexamined, selfish lives we live (but this is not to say that DB was mean spirited). Does he give solutions? Sort of, but not solutions that I am capable of paraphrasing. There may be readers for whom DB's teachings will seem pointless and not worth the trouble. (To them I say, "Back to your Grisham and Steele!") But for most of the rest of us--as bombarded as we are with insulting campaign pitches, thisandthat.com (!) ads, news of how the market is making us all wealthy, endless blockbuster film versions of mediocre TV shows, more tripe about what a great president Reagan was and on and on--DB can function as a sort of philosophical ophtalmologist with a rare antidote that will both make us laugh at and feel a bit grim about our consumer society.

The conundrum one encounters when approaching DOWN TO A SOUNDLESS SEA is approaching it on its own terms without using John Steinbeck as a reference and comparison point. Steinbeck could have avoided at least a portion of the dilemma by writing in a specialized genre, such as science fiction or horror and thus rendered intergenerational comparisons moot. He instead meets the problem head on; the short fiction collected in DOWN TO A SOUNDLESS SEA are Steinbeck's literary transcriptions of tales he grew up hearing from his father and from others who dropped by his household. Steinbeck wisely avoids disclosing to his readers who some of these "others" were, but anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of John Steinbeck's friends and contemporaries can easily guess. The settings for these stories --- Big Sur and the California coast --- were also frequently used by Steinbeck the Father. Thomas Steinbeck, however, has found his own voice, and his own words. He passes, and surpasses the "John Smith" test: if DOWN TO A SOUNDLESS SEA was written by John Smith, it would be worth picking up, and reading.

DOWN TO A SOUNDLESS SEA consists of seven stories; if there is a common thread it is one of men following dreams and remaining true to their internal vision, though not always wisely, not always successfully. Thus, in "The Wool Gatherer," a young John Steinbeck, retained by a rancher as a wrangler for summer work, finds his attention from the job distracted by his sighting of a giant bear, supposedly extinct. His efforts to find the bear, again, result in his wages being docked and his summer effectively wasted. Yet, there is a nobility found in the story that rings true for its time. The ending to this little tale resounds quietly but is writ large, so that it is not so much an entertainment but more a tacit lesson, not sugarcoated but nonetheless easy to swallow.

"Blind Luck," one of the two longer stories in the book, encapsulates the life of Chapel Lodge, whose childhood was so devoid of love and caring that he at one point believed his name to be "Hey you! Boy!" Possessing an innate, canny intelligence, Lodge comes to believe that his luck --- if it is to be had and utilized --- is to be found not on land, but on the sea.

"The Night Guide" is, perhaps, a tale of the supernatural, but more so it is the story of a quiet, but indestructible bond between mother and child, a fable and a history. It does not seem like much, at first, but it echoes with the reader even as the other stories herein are read and digested. The same is true of "An Unbecoming Grace," a deceptively simple little tale involving a traveling physician who plays inadvertently a most important role in the lives of three people, and in the happiness of two of them.

In "The Dark Watcher," meanwhile, an unassuming, untenured college professor sets out to make his academic mark and succeeds in a way that he did not anticipate. "The Blighted Cargo," one of the shortest tales in the book, is also the weakness, though, it is a fine enough entertainment, being a story of an ill-fated venture in the slave trade where the individual involved is, as is said in some parts, caught in his own juices.

The undisputed gem of DOWN TO A SOUNDLESS SEA is, however, "Sing Fat and the Imperial Duchess of Woo," the final story in the book. Almost one hundred pages long, this tale of romance and traditional Chinese engagement between a young widow and a student apothecary is practically worth the price of admission in and of itself. A quick reading of Steinbeck might leave the reader with the feeling that he takes two long to get the point of his stories and then dispenses with it far too quickly. Such an impression misses the point; every building, no matter how beautiful or utilitarian, is no stronger than the foundation upon which it rests. So too, with Steinbeck's short stories, and particularly with this last one, in which we come to know young Sing Fat, and to a lesser extent his erstwhile bride and the Imperial Duchess. It is unfortunate that stories like this or so rarely written in these politically correct, supposedly liberated days; it makes the beauty of this one resonate all the more strongly.

Steinbeck is reportedly working on his first novel. It will be interesting to see what he is able to do when given the room, and the inclination, to stretch his stories out to cover a larger canvas. He will certainly, on the basis of DOWN TO A SOUNDLESS SEA, have an audience ready, and waiting, to greet him on his own terms. Highly recommended.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

I wish T. Steinbeck had several voulmes like this, looking forward to his 1st novel-

Don

This collection gets 5 stars, but only because it would be churlish to award less to a book of 22 stories at such a giveaway price.

As an example of the anthologer's art it rates only 2 stars, or 3 stars at most. Which is kind of strange, given that that when he compiled this collection (and at least 2 others) Godfrey was listed as:

"... former editor-in-chief of *Mystery* magazine and a regular columnist for *The Armchair Detective*."

Despite these apparently substantial credentials (I've actually never heard of either of these magazines, but then I don't read many magazines), Mr Godfrey's selection of tidbits from the vast canon of English (note "English") Country House Murders is truly eccentric.

In the first place, his introduction goes at great length into the necessary qualifications for "the English Country House Mystery" - rather than *murders*.
If he'd stopped right there I'd have been beating the drum on his behalf. But he doesn't. On the contrary, he seems to fancy himself as the new Haycraft, because he starts in on a list of 14 qualities needed to justify a story as belonging in this category. The fourteenth quality, by the way, (how to identify "a proper English Country House") is subdivided into no less than a further 11 conditions!

Wow, this guy must really know his stuff.
Right?
Actually, that seems to be in some doubt.

The very first point Mr Godfrey makes is that "Authentic English Country House Mysteries are written by authentic English writers. Americans, even Canadians, may study the form and give it a go, but they invariably give themselves away as pretenders to the tradition."

Well - it's 'Godfrey's rule' - so why on earth does he insist on breaking it?
There's a story by Baroness Orczy (Hungarian), one by Dame Ngaio Marsh (New Zealander), and one by John Dickson Carr (born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania!). To be honest the first two don't accord with Godfrey's rule anyway, but Dickson Carr's story could just as easily be set in Palm Springs, California and all you'd have to do would be change the place names to give it the note of authenticity.
It's a great story, but typical English Country House it is NOT.

There are several other criticisms - some stories don't feature murders, some don't take place in a English Country House - as defined by Godfrey's rules - but my main beef is that all of these criticisms could have been easily avoided by a more judicious selection of stories.

For example, why do we get nearly 70 pages of a tedious Wilkie Collins story (no murder and precious little country house) - yet not a whiff of Ernest Bramah's blind detective, Max Carrados, nor H.C. Bailey's Mr Fortune?
Why Gideon Fell, but no hint of Edgar Wallace's epitome of understated Englishness - Mr J.G. Reeder?
Why the hysteria-ridden offering from Ethel Lina White (with little or no hint of the brilliance of her full-length works) but not a glimpse of a true 'gem' such as an item featuring Max Pemberton's Bernard Sutton (jeweller) as featured in "Jewel Mysteries I have Known"?

All too often anthologies abound in stories that are actually still available from other sources (in this case those by Conan Doyle, Christie, Allingham, Marsh, Rendell, James, etc. all fall into that category), yet fail to feature stories that truly deserve to be anthologised because, though famous in their day, they are now relatively unknown and hard to come by?

Of course there must be some big names in there to help sell the book, but Godfrey, IMO, shows far too little instinct for digging out true gems by less well-known authors.
And just in case anyone thinks it can't be done - check back to the greatest series of them all, in this particular context - the mould-breaking 'Rivals of Sherlock Holmes', 'More Rivels...', etc., all neatly topped off by Michele Slingsby's 'Murder on Her Mind'.

Ah, now those were the days when anthologisers REALLY knew their business!

So yes, you WILL get value for money. But it could have been so, so much better.

This is an anthology of twenty-two English Country House Mysteries. Godfrey begins his book by defining what constitutes an English Country House Mystery. There are rules for everything, you know! He then proceeds to entertain us with the twenty-two selected examples which are, if not the cream of the crop, right up there with the best of them.

As for his rules, some of them are delightful. To wit:

An English Country House Mystery must take place in an English Country House.

To be self respecting, an English Country House Mystery must include a crime.

The nature of the crime must be puzzling. The identity of the perpetrator must be kept unknown for a long time.

The deduction of the identity must involve genuine reasoning ability.

These are but a few of the rules that Godfrey sets forth. These mysteries, to qualify, must truly be British, preferably upper class British.

Having defined the rules of the genre, he goes on to the works of several of the pioneers in the field and of some next generation disciples. It seems that many of Agatha Christie's stories and novels meet the requirements. In this book, we are treated to her "The Shadow on the Glass." Works by such diverse authors as G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, and P. G. Wodehouse are also included. Wodehouse and his Jeeves remind me of another rule. There should generally be live-in staff, such as a butler, in these mysteries.

I don't think that any anthology on this subject would be complete without one of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes adventures. "The Adventure of the Abbey Grange" is the Holmes selection for this anthology.

They're all good, and it's almost unrealistic to pick a favorite story. That said, I particularly enjoyed Robert Barr's "Lord Chizelrigg's Missing Fortune," which did violate one of the rules. It was a puzzle without a crime. Barr's detective, Valmont, was the prototype of the early British fictional detective, and he had a sense of humor. Many people believe that Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot was modeled on Valmont. Barr was one of the first writers to mix fictional characters with real life people in his stories. In this case, it was Thomas Alva Edison. A piece of advice Valmont had once received from Edison had become a centerpiece of Valmont's approach to solving crimes.

One of the beauties of ENGLISH COUNTRY HOUSE MURDERS, or any good anthology for that matter, is that it serves as a sort of a tour. On a tour, you get a little sampling of a lot of places. The intelligent traveler than uses this information to choose places that he wants to revisit, seeing much more of what the place has to offer. This anthology serves exactly the same purpose. The reader is likely to discover new (to him, at least) authors, whose fiction he likes and whose greater body of works seem worth exploring. It's also fun to revisit authors with whom one is already familiar.

ENGLISH COUNTRY HOUSE MURDERS did both for me. I found a few previously unknown authors who interested me, and I was able to revisit some old friends such as Sherlock Holmes. Other readers will probably have similar experiences.