My name is Jerry Anderson, and I am the author of Death Before Dinner, which was published by Midnight Ink last March. When I was in college, I used to become disgusted with my dad, who insisted on reading mystery novels while I was trying to force him to read my favorite Thomas Hardy or Joseph Conrad of Dostoyevsky or some such literary gem. I gave up on this project to improve my father's literary tastes, to our mutual benefit. Then, oh, it must be about a hundred years ago now, I was doing research in London. I was living in a flat near Earl's Court Road, in a building right out of "Upstairs/Downstairs." It had once been the London home of some tof gentleman, and had now been divided into twenty-one flats. I was living in a basement flat, where once some miserable footman perhaps plied his trade.
Anyhow, so here I am with a flat that I had to pay for in advance for the summer. As a graduate student, I had very little money, and while the swinging London night scene had a great deal of appeal, I did not have the pounds and pence to make it happen. I had a little transistor radio and that was it. My research concerned the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), the British Union of Fascists (BUF) and the national government of Ramsay MacDonald and Stanley Baldwin. At issue was the whole question of civil liberties versus public order in the 1930s. That is, at what point does it seem necessary to infringe on traditional civil liberties to protect the people against civil disorder. During this painful decade, mas demonstrations were threatening the civil fabric of London. Well, weighty stuff, right? I thought I needed to know more about the lives of people in the 1930s before I could properly write about their political dynamics. There was nothing to do in that cold basement (that month of June was the coldest January of my life!!) exceptr to read. The libraries and public records offices all closed about 5:30 in those days. However, I discovered a used bookstore only a block away. I could buy a paperback book for ten pence, and if I brought it back he would give me five pence for it. Heckuvadeal!! Well, I saw a couple of Agatha Christies there and so I thought I'd give them a try. Two days later I was back for two more. I read them eating lunch, I read them while riding in the tube, and I read them at night. Then it was on to Dorthy Sayers. Then Ngaio Marsh (alright, so maybe she was more 40s and 50s, but by this time I was not concerned too much about academic things). Perhaps my favorite, thought, was an American writer. One of the reasons I am writing this is to acquaint readers with the work of John Dickson Carr. Carr wrote some books under that name, but he also wrote them under the pen name of Carter Dickson. Although born and raised in the South (I think South Carolina) he became an American expatriot in the 1930s and all of his books are set in England. He became the master of the locked door mysteries. His slueth, the unforgetable Dr. Gideon Fell, would easily solve how someone could be murdered in a roon where all the doors and windows were locked (No, no trap doors, secret passages or a large chimney) and the corpse was the only occupant of the room.
Well, one gets hooked on this stuff, as I would guess many of the readers of this blog will allow, and when I came back to America, I pretty much put in a claim for my Dad's paperback collection. Serious, academic literary pursuits have taken a hit ever since.
Death Before Dinner is the first of the Palmer Knutson novels. Murder Under the Loon will come out in March, and Death by the Prairie Chicken will follow the year after that. Palmer Knutson is a Norwegian American sheriff of Otter Tail County and is the type of character found on the Prairie Home Companion. In a future blog, I will wax on about Scandihoovian Minnesota.
Jerry Anderson
