Mystery

=__**MYSTERY**__= A mystery is a novel or a short story in which the character investigates and usually solves a mystery. Although normally associated with the crime genre, the term "mystery fiction" may in certain situations refer to a completely different genre, where the focus is on supernatural mystery (even if no crime is involved). This usage was common in the pulp magazines of the 1930s and 1940s, where titles such as Dime Mystery, Thrilling Mystery and Spicy Mystery offered what at the time were described as "weird menace" stories – supernatural horror in the vein of Grand Guignol. This contrasted with parallel titles of the same names which contained conventional hard boiled crime fiction. The first use of "mystery" in this sense was by Dime Mystery, which started out as an ordinary crime fiction magazine but switched to "weird menace" during the latter part of 1933. References:

**About the author:**
Sir **Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle**, (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the [|detective] [|Sherlock Holmes], which are generally considered a major innovation in the field of [|crime fiction], and for the adventures of [|Professor Challenger]. He was a prolific writer whose other works include [|science fiction] stories, [|historical novel], plays and romances, poetry, and non-fiction.

1. The Hound of the Baskerville's
An epilogue between Holmes and Watson tells that Stapleton is a son of Roger Baskerville, the younger brother of Sir Charles and with the same name as his father. Although everyone had believed that Roger had died unmarried, the fact was that he was married and had a son. The son John Roger Baskerville, after embezzling public money in South America, took the name Jack Stapleton and fled to England where he used the money to fund a Yorkshire school. Unfortunately for Stapleton the tutor he had hired died of consumption, and after an epidemic killed three students the School went from being reputable to infamous and had to be closed down. He fled with his wife to Dartmoor. He apparently supported himself by burglary, engaging in four large robberies and pistol-ling a page that had surprised him.

Having found out the story of the hound, he resolved to kill off the remaining Baskervilles so that he could come into the inheritance as the last of the Baskervilles, even though had no interest in the estate and simply wanted the inheritance money. He purchased the hound and hid it in the mire.

On the night of his death, Sir Charles had been waiting for Laura Lyons. The cigar ash at the scene ("the ash had twice dropped from his cigar") showed he had waited for some time. Instead he met the hound, that had been trained by Stapleton and covered with phosphorous to set it on Sir Charles. Sir Charles ran for his life, but then had the fatal heart attack which killed him. Since dogs do not eat or bite dead bodies, it left him there untouched.

Stapleton followed Sir Henry in London, and also stole his new boot but later returned it, since it did not have the scent and stole an old boot of Henry's instead. The hound killed Selden because he was wearing Sir Henry's old clothes.

On the night the hound attacked Sir Henry, Stapleton's wife had no intention of going along with the plot any further, but her abusive husband beat and tied her to a pole to prevent her from warning him.

In Holmes' words: "..he has for years been a desperate and dangerous man.." His one trait he cannot control is a taste for entomology; in fact he turns the second floor of his house into an insect museum.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle the author of __The Hound of the Baskervilles__

[|Reference:Hound of Baskervilles]

2. Study in Scarlet
In this novel Holmes and Watson meet for the first time. Watson first case with Holmes. This is the novella in which Doyle introduced the characters of Watson and Holmes. Our hero solves the mystery after only a quarter of the narrative, following which we travel back in time to learn the prehistory of the crime, set in the Mormon community of 1840s-1860s Utah.

Reference: [|All Readers]

In this story, Sherlock Holmes, in disguise, returns from his supposed death at the hands of Moriarty, much to the astonishment of his friend, Dr. Watson. After explaining where he's been for three years, Holmes leads Watson to an empty house where they find Moriarty's second in command, Sebastian Moran, firing his air rifle across the street at a moving silhouette of Holmes in the study of 221B. Moran is captured and revealed as the murderer of an innocent man who was about to expose his cheating at cards! Great evocative atmosphere, puzzling explanation of Holmes' absence, satisfying conclusion, though raising question of why Moran is never punished for the murder.

About the author:
Christie has been referred to by the //[|Guinness Book of World Records]// as the best-selling writer of books of all time and the best-selling writer of any kind, along with [|William Shakespeare]. Only the [|Bible] is known to have outsold her collected sales of roughly four [|billion] copies of novels. [|UNESCO] states that she is currently the most translated individual author in the world with only the collective corporate works of [|Walt Disney Productions] surpassing her. Christie's books have been translated into at least 56 languages. Her stage play //[|The Mousetrap]// holds the record for the longest initial run in the world: it opened at the [|Ambassadors Theatre] in [|London] on 25 November 1952 and as of 2010 is still running after more than 23,000 performances. In 1955, Christie was the first recipient of the [|Mystery Writers of America]'s highest honour, the [|Grand Master Award], and in the same year, //[|Witness for the Prosecution]// was given an [|Edgar Award] by the MWA, for Best Play. Most of her books and [|short stories] have been filmed, some many times over (//[|Murder on the Orient Express]//, //[|Death on the Nile]// and //[|4.50 From Paddington]// for instance), and many have been adapted for television, radio, video games and comics. In 1968, Booker Books, a subsidiary of the agri-industrial conglomerate [|Booker-McConnell], bought a 51 percent stake in [|Agatha Christie Limited], the private company that Christie had set up for tax purposes. Booker later increased its stake to 64 percent. In 1998, Booker sold its shares to [|Chorion], a company whose portfolio also includes the literary estates of [|Enid Blyton] and [|Dennis Wheatley]. In 2004, a 5,000-word story entitled "The Incident of the Dog's Ball" was found in the attic of the author's daughter. It was published in Britain in September 2009. On November 10, 2009, [|Reuters] announced that the story will be published by //The [|Strand Magazine]//.
 * Dame Agatha Christie** [|DBE] (15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976), was an English [|crime writer] of [|novels], [|short stories] and [|plays]. She also wrote [|romances] under the name **Mary Westmacott**, but is best remembered for her 80 detective novels and her successful [|West End theatre] plays. Her works, particularly those featuring detectives [|Hercule Poirot] and [|Miss Jane Marple], have given her the title the 'Queen of Crime' and made her one of the most important and innovative writers in the development of the genre.

**1. The Mysterious Affair at Styles**
The novel is set in [|England] during [|World War I] at Styles Court, an [|Essex] country manor (also the setting of //[|Curtain]//, Poirot's last case). Upon her husband's death, the wealthy widow, Emily Cavendish, inherited a [|life estate] in Styles as well as the outright inheritance of the larger part of the late Mr. Cavendish's income. Mrs. Cavendish became Mrs. Inglethorp upon her recent remarriage to a much younger man, Alfred Inglethorp. Emily's two stepsons, John and Lawrence Cavendish, as well as John's wife Mary and several other people, also live at Styles. John Cavendish is the [|vested] [|remainderman] of Styles; that is, the property will pass to him automatically upon his stepmother's decease, as per his late father's will. The income left to Mrs Inglethorp by her late husband would be distributed as per Mrs. Inglethorp's own will.[|[2]] Late one night, the residents of Styles wake to find Emily Inglethorp dying of what proves to be [|strychnine poisoning]. Lieutenant Hastings, a house guest, enlists the help of his friend Hercule Poirot, who is staying in the nearby village, Styles St. Mary. Poirot pieces together events surrounding the murder. On the day she was killed, Emily Inglethorp was overheard arguing with someone, most likely her husband, Alfred, or her stepson, John. Afterward, she seemed quite distressed and, apparently, made a new will — which no one can find. She ate little at dinner and retired early to her room with her document case. The case was later forced open by someone and a document removed. Alfred Inglethorp left Styles earlier in the evening and stayed overnight in the nearby village, so was not present when the poisoning occurred. Nobody can explain how or when the strychnine was administered to Mrs. Inglethorp. At first, Alfred is the prime suspect. He has the most to gain financially from his wife's death, and, since he is so much younger than was Emily, the Cavendishes already suspect him as a fortune hunter. Evelyn Howard, Emily's companion, seems to hate him most of all. His behavior, too, is suspicious; he openly purchased strychnine in the village before Emily was poisoned, and although he denies it, he refuses to provide an [|alibi]. The police are keen to arrest him, but Poirot intervenes by proving he could not have purchased the poison. [|Scotland Yard] police later arrest Emily Inglethorp’s oldest stepson, John Cavendish. He inherits under the terms of her will, and there is evidence to suggest he also had obtained poison. Poirot clears Cavendish by proving it was, after all, Alfred Inglethorp who committed the crime, assisted by Evelyn Howard, who turns out to be his [|kissing cousin],[|[3]] not his enemy. The guilty pair poisoned Emily by adding a precipitating agent, [|bromide] (obtained from Mrs Inglethorp's sleeping powder), to her regular evening medicine, causing its normally innocuous [|strychnine] constituents to sink to the bottom of the bottle where they were finally consumed in a single, lethal dose. Their plan had been for Alfred Inglethorp to incriminate himself with false evidence, which could then be refuted at his trial. Once acquitted, due to [|double jeopardy], he could not be tried for the crime a second time should any genuine evidence against him be subsequently discovered.

Reference: [|The Mysterious Affair at Styles]

The book is set in the fictional village of King's Abbott in [|England]. It is narrated by Dr. James Sheppard, who becomes Poirot's assistant (a role filled by [|Captain Hastings] in several other Poirot novels). The story begins with the death of Mrs. Ferrars, a wealthy widow who is rumored to have murdered her husband. Her death is initially believed to be suicide until Roger Ackroyd, a widower who had been expected to marry Mrs. Ferrars, is found murdered. The suspects include Mrs. Cecil Ackroyd, Roger's neurotic hypochondriac sister-in-law who has accumulated personal debts through extravagant spending; her daughter Flora; Major Blunt, a [|big-game hunter]; Geoffrey Raymond, Ackroyd's personal secretary; Ralph Paton, Ackroyd's stepson and another person with heavy debts; Parker, a snooping butler; and Ursula Bourne, a parlormaid with an uncertain history who resigned her post the afternoon of the murder. The initial suspect is Ralph, who is engaged to Flora and stands to inherit his stepfather's fortune. Several critical pieces of evidence seem to point to Ralph. Poirot, who has just moved to the town, begins to investigate at Flora's behest. The book ends with a then-unprecedented [|plot twist]: Poirot, having exonerated all of the original suspects, lays out a completely reasoned case that the murderer is in fact Dr. Sheppard, who has not only been Poirot's assistant, but the story's narrator. In Sheppard's final edit of the story, he reveals in a sort of [|epilogue] that he had hoped to be the one to write the account of Poirot's great failure, solving the murder of Roger Ackroyd. Thus, the last chapter acts as both Sheppard's confession and suicide note.

Reference: [|The Murder of Roger Ackroyd]

3. The Murder at the Vicarage
In [|St. Mary Mead], no one is more despised than Colonel Protheroe. Even the local vicar has said that killing him would be doing a service to the townsfolk. So when Protheroe is found murdered in the same vicar's study, and two different people confess to the crime, it is time for the elderly spinster Jane Marple to exercise her detective abilities. The vicar and his wife, [|Leonard and Griselda Clement] respectively, who made their first appearance in this novel, continue to show up in Miss Marple stories: notably, in //[|The Body in the Library]// (1942) and //[|4.50 from Paddington]// (1957).

Reference: [|The Murder at the Vicarage]

__Donald J. Sobol__
Donald J. Sobol was born on October 4, 1924, in New York City. He is an award-winning writer and lives[|[update]] in [|Miami], [|Florida]. He is best known for his [|children's books], especially the [|Encyclopedia Brown] [|mystery] series. Mr. Sobol served with the [|Army Corps of Engineers] during [|World War II] and served in the [|Pacific Theater]. Following the war, he attended [|Oberlin College], where he earned a [|bachelor's degree]. He also attended the [|New School of Social Research]. He started his professional career as a copy boy for the //[|New York Sun]//, eventually working his way up to reporter. In 1949, he took a job at the //[|New York Daily News]//, and worked there for two years. After a brief stint as a buyer at [|Macy's] in New York, he moved to Florida and started writing full time. He started writing the syndicated series //[|Two-Minute Mysteries]// in 1959, starring criminologist [|Dr. Haledjian]. It proved very popular and ran for more than ten years. In 1963, he started writing the //[|Encyclopedia Brown]// series, featuring amateur sleuth Leroy "Encyclopedia" Brown. Compared to //Two-Minute Mysteries// which features crimes as serious as [|murder], the //Encyclopedia Brown// books are more juvenile-oriented, often deal with matters such as pranks or [|petty theft]. Mr. Sobol's //Encyclopedia Brown// books have always been in print and have been translated into twelve languages. In 1975, the [|Mystery Writers of America] honored Sobol and his Encyclopedia Brown series with a Special [|Edgar Award]. In 2007, Sobol released a new Encyclopedia Brown book, //Encyclopedia Brown Cracks The Case//. Mr Sobol has written many books through the years and continues.