Crossover Cover: Case with 4 Clowns

 

Sergeant Beef and his biographer Townsend are called by Beef’s nephew to the circus where he works to investigate a Romany fortune teller’s prediction someone will be murdered there. The circus’ jack-of-all-trades, Len Waterman, accuses Townsend of making Beef look bad in his books, saying that other detective story writers don’t report their investigators’ failures: “You can’t tell me that that there Lord Simon Plimsoll don’t ever make a mistake.” Artist Cora Frances wonders if Beef knows her friend, Amer Picon. Beef says Picon was involved in one of his cases. He later says to Townsend that Lord Simon Plimsoll, Mr. Philo Vance, or Dr. Thorndyke couldn’t have guessed the murder victim would show up in the ring despite being ill, and rhetorically asks if Sherlock Holmes prevented the murders that he had to find out about. Dorothy L. Sayers’ detective Lord Peter Wimsey appeared in the first Sergeant Beef novel, Case for Three Detectives, under the alias “Lord Simon Plimsoll,” and Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot as “Amer Picon.” S. S. Van Dine’s detective Philo Vance and R. Austin Freeman’s sleuth Dr. Thorndyke are solidly in the CU. Sherlock Holmes needs no introduction.

This crossover is one of over a thousand covered in my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, coming this summer from Meteor House! All three volumes are AUTHORIZED companions to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!

Crossover Cover: Case for Three Detectives

 

Are you a fan of Golden Age detective fiction?

Then you'll love the first Sgt. Beef novel by Leo Bruce, which has appearances by thinly veiled versions of Lord Peter Wimsey, Hercule Poirot, and Father Brown!

For more information, be sure to pick up a copy of my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3 when Meteor House publishes it! All three volumes are AUTHORIZED companions to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!

Crossover of the Week

Spring 1909

ROULETABILLE AT THE OLD BAILEY 

French journalist Rouletabille reports on an English homicide. Another reporter, Ben Bates, points out the prosecution leader, Sir Wilfrid Robarts; his junior, T. C. Rowley; and Edward Leithen and Impey Biggs representing the defense. The judge is Mr. Justice Wargrave. The prosecution calls consulting detective Harry Dickson, who worked for Nick Carter when he was younger. Dickson has his offices in Baker Street, as do all four of London’s greatest detectives: Sherlock Holmes, Sexton Blake, Sir Seaton Begg, and Victor Drago. 

Short story by Martin Gately in Tales of the Shadowmen Volume 14: Sang Froid, Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier, eds., Black Coat Press, 2017; reprinted in French in Les Compagnons de l’Ombre (Tome 24), Jean-Marc Lofficier, ed., Rivière Blanche, 2018, and Les Nouveau Exploits de Rouletabille, Rivière Blanche, 2019; and in The New Exploits of Joseph Rouletabille, Black Coat Press, 2020. Rouletabille is from Gaston Leroux’s detective novels. Ben Bates is from the 1988 TV mini-series Jack the Ripper. Sir Wilfrid Robarts is from Agatha Christie’s “The Witness for the Prosecution.” T. C. Rowley is from John Mortimer’s Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders. Edward Leithen is from the works of John Buchan. Impey Biggs is from Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey novels. Mr. Justice Wargrave is from Christie’s And Then There Were None. Harry Dickson appeared in German, Belgian, Dutch, and French pulp novels, the latter mostly written by Jean Ray. Nick Carter is one of the most famous dime novel detectives. Sherlock Holmes needs no introduction. Sexton Blake is an iconic British penny dreadful detective. Seaton Begg is an AU version of Blake seen in Michael Moorcock’s The Metatemporal Detective, but apparently a distinct version separate from Blake exists in the CU. Victor Drago, created by Chris Lowder and Mike Dorey, appeared in the British comic Tornado. 

This post is dedicated to author Martin Gately, who sadly passed away last week. Martin was a great guy and a very talented writer with decades of experience, and I will miss him a lot.

This crossover writeup is one of hundreds included in my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, which will be published by Meteor House! All three volumes are AUTHORIZED companions to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!

Crossover Cover: The Wedding Seal

 

In Josh Reynolds' story in this anthology, Charles St. Cyprian and Ebe Gallowglass encounter selkies in the Orkney Islands. Carnacki is mentioned, and St. Cyprian’s head is described as ringing like the Nine Tailors of Fenchurch St. Paul. Carnacki is from William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder. The Nine Tailors of Fenchurch St. Paul are from Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey novel The Nine Tailors.

This crossover is one of hundreds covered in my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, which will be published by Meteor House! All three volumes are AUTHORIZED companions to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!

Crossover Cover: Away with the Fairies

 

Are you a fan of Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey novels?

Then you'll love this book in Kerry Greenwood's Phryne Fisher series, which has a nod to the Wimsey book Murder Must Advertise!

For more information, be sure to pick up a copy of my book Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3 when Meteor House publishes it! All three volumes are AUTHORIZED companions to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!

Crossover of the Week

October 1937

CASE WITH NO CONCLUSION 

Sergeant Beef is hired by Peter Ferrers to clear the name of his brother Stewart, who is in custody for the murder of the family doctor. Beef mentions his fellow detectives, Lord Simon Plimsoll, Nigel Strangeways, Anthony Gethryn, Albert Campion, and Dr. Gideon Fell, as well as his cousin Sergeant Matthew Beef, John Meredith’s assistant. Peter says Inspector Meredith, Inspector French, and Amer Picon were all too busy to take the case. Crime reporter Angus Braithwaite had been peeved by the certainty of success of various private investigators of whom he’s read, from Holmes and Blake to Thorndike and Mason. Plimsoll, Picon, and Monsignor Smith are quoted in Braithwaite’s paper, The Daily Dose, about Beef’s failure to solve the case and prevent Stewart’s hanging. 

1939 novel by Lionel Townsend, edited by Leo Bruce. Lord Simon Plimsoll, a disguised version of Dorothy L. Sayers’ detective Lord Peter Wimsey, met Beef in Bruce’s Case for Three Detectives. Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot also appeared in that novel under the pseudonym “Amer Picon,” and G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown as “Monsignor Smith.” Wimsey, Poirot, Father Brown, Philip MacDonald’s detective Anthony Gethryn, Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion, John Dickson Carr’s Dr. Gideon Fell, Freeman Wills Crofts’ Inspector French, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Sexton Blake, R. Austin Freeman’s Dr. Thorndyke (to use the correct spelling), and Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason (who is actually an attorney, not a private investigator, though he did often make use of P.I. Paul Drake’s services in his cases) have all been included in the CU. This novel brings in Nicholas Blake’s detective Nigel Strangeways and Francis Gerard’s Sir John Meredith and Sergeant Matthew Beef. One of the characters mentions going to see the Shirley Temple movie Little Miss Broadway, which came out on July 29, 1938. However, the next novel in the series, Case with 4 Clowns, takes place from April 25-May 4, 1938, and mentions the events of this book as having occurred six months ago at the beginning. Therefore, I am placing it in October 1937.

This crossover writeup is one of the hundreds included in my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, to be published by Meteor House! All three volumes are AUTHORIZED companions to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!

Crossover Cover: In the Teeth of the Evidence

 

Are you a fan of Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey books?

Then you'll love this collection, which includes two standalone stories with connections to those books!

For more information, buy a copy of my upcoming book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3 when Meteor House publishes it! All three volumes are AUTHORIZED companions to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!

Crossover Cover: Murder on the Ballarat Train

 

Are you a fan of Kerry Greenwood's Phryne Fisher mysteries?

Then you'll love this book, which has a shout-out to Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey novels!

For more information, check out my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3! As with the first two volumes, this latest magnum opus is an AUTHORIZED companion to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2 and will be published by Meteor House!

Crossover Cover: August Folly

 

Richard Tebben is spending his summer vacation from Oxford at his family home in Barsetshire. Mr. Fanshawe is the Dean of St. Paul’s College, Oxford: “As everyone knows, Paul’s is famous for the great row or disturbance which took place shortly before the Crimean War, in consequence of which row Charles Ravenshoe, a gentleman of good family in the West, was rusticated for a year.” Sparrow, the butler of the Palmer family, smokes Junior Whifflets. Angela Thirkell wrote many novels set in the fictional English county seen in Anthony Trollope’s The Chronicles of Barsetshire novels, which are in the CU through The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, among other works. Many of Thirkell’s novels feature descendants of Trollope’s characters. St. Paul’s College and Charles Ravenshoe are from Henry Kingsley’s novel Ravenshoe. St. Paul’s is mentioned in several of Thirkell’s novels. Whifflets cigarettes are from Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey novel Murder Must Advertise.

This crossover, and hundreds more (including several other Barsetshire novels by Thirkell), will be covered in my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3! As with the first two volumes, this tome is an AUTHORIZED companion to Win Scott Eckert's invaluable resources Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!

Crossover of the Week

July 1922

THE BIZARRE ADVENTURE OF THE OCTAGON HOUSE 

Sherlock Holmes meets Denis Nayland Smith at Scotland Yard. Smith has carefully studied Limehouse, particularly the Devil Doctor who permeates that region. Besides Solar Pons and Dr. Lyndon Parker, Holmes enlists the aid of the Belgian consultant at 14 Farraway Street, whose friend Captain Hastings married and moved to Argentina the previous autumn, and who is himself investigating the Doctor, whom his biographer would later disguise under the name Li Chang Yen. Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie insist on being involved. At Scotland Yard, Dr. Watson nods at Inspectors Charles Parker (a relation of Dr. Parker), Stanislaus Oates, and Jimmy Japp, who says M. Poirot has additional information about the Aberystwyth case. Holmes and Watson seek information on soils from Dr. John Thorndyke and his assistant Dr. Christopher Jervis. Another of Thorndyke’s helpers is researcher Nathaniel Polton. As they leave Thorndyke’s home, Holmes and Watson run into Superintendent Miller. Watson says that a few weeks later, he, Holmes, Pons, Parker, Thorndyke, Jervis, Nayland Smith, and Petrie visited the now-empty Colsworth estate. Lord Peter was invited to attend, but he declined, and in his place came an American, either twenty-two or twenty-three years of age, named Jones who recently completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Chicago and was soon planning to attend a graduate program in linguistics at the Sorbonne. 

Story by Dr. Watson, edited by David Marcum in The Meeting of the Minds: Cases of Sherlock Holmes & Solar Pons I, David Marcum, ed., Belanger Books, 2021. Sir Denis Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie are Dr. Fu Manchu’s archenemies in Sax Rohmer’s novels. The Devil Doctor made several unnamed appearances in August Derleth’s Solar Pons stories. The Belgian consultant is Hercule Poirot. Li Chang Yen battled Poirot in Agatha Christie’s The Big Four. Rick Lai identified Li Chang Yen with Fu Manchu in his essay “Partners in Crime: Fu Manchu and Carl Peterson.” Captain Arthur Hastings and Inspector James Japp are from the Poirot books. The Aberystwyth case is mentioned in Christie’s Murder on the Links. Chief Inspector Charles Parker is the friend and brother-in-law of Dorothy L. Sayers’ detective Lord Peter Wimsey. Inspector Stanislaus Oates is from Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion books. Drs. Thorndyke and Jervis, Nathaniel Polton, and Superintendent Miller are from R. Austin Freeman’s detective novels. Jones is Indiana Jones. Indy would in fact be twenty-three in July 1922.

This crossover write-up is one of hundreds to be found in my upcoming book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, to be published by Meteor House. All three volumes are AUTHORIZED companions to Win Scott Eckert's books Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!

Crossover Cover: The Documents in the Case

 

Are you a fan of Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries?

Then you'll love this standalone novel cowritten by Sayers that has an appearance by a character from the Wimsey books!

All the details can be found in my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, to be published ASAP by Meteor House! As with the first two volumes, this entry is an AUTHORIZED companion to Win Scott Eckert's seminal books Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes One and Two.

Crossover Cover: The Web Weaver

 

A sequel to Siciliano's Holmes vs. the Phantom of the Opera novel The Angel of the Opera, which has already been placed in an AU. The Duke of Denver, presumably Lord Peter Wimsey’s father or grandfather, is mentioned.

Crossover of the Week

February 1920

THE STRIX SOCIETY

            Two policemen are standing on the stoop of No. 427 Cheyne Walk as Charles St. Cyprian, Britain’s Royal Occultist, speaks to Lord Curzon, the country’s Foreign Minister. St. Cyprian thinks that Curzon’s future son-in-law Oswald Mosley is, “in the words of the honourable Freddie Threepwood, an absolutely perfect perisher.” St. Cyprian asks Curzon why he does not hire a detective to investigate Mosley’s involvement with the hedonistic Strix society, saying “You can find them in practically every A.B.C. teashop and Piccadilly flat. I have that fellow Blake’s number, if you’d like.” The two discuss an affair in Persia during the War, one of St. Cyprian’s last cases as Carnacki’s assistant. Going up against the Sisterhood of the Rats or the Si-Fan when, by and large, they adequately police themselves, is not something St.Cyprian looks forward to. St. Cyprian remembers how he tried to lose himself in parties and drink after the war, snatching policemen’s helmets with the Wooster crowd and swimming in the Trafalgar fountains with the Runcible set. St. Cyprian traces the sacred shape of the Voorish Sign in the air with a finger and lets his inner eye flicker open. He recalls his encounter in Seven Dials with the mummy of a pharaoh awakened by the Esoteric Order of Thoth-Ra. St. Cyprian uses the powder of Ibn Ghazi to view the members of the Strix Society, who have taken the forms of vampire-spirits. One of St. Cyprian’s predecessors’ journals has a few Greek flowers that turn people into such wraiths pressed between its pages, “plucked from the lonely mountain grave of Sir Francis Varney himself.”

            Short story by Josh Reynolds in Occult Detectives, Ron Fortier, ed., Airship 27 Productions, 2014. No. 427 Cheyne Walk and Thomas Carnacki are from William Hope Hodgson’s short story collection Carnacki the Ghost-Finder. Freddie Threepwood is from P.G. Wodehouse’s Blandings novels, while the Wooster crowd is a reference to Bertie Wooster from Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster books. The A.B.C. teashop reference is an allusion to the titular detective from Baroness Orczy’s The Old Man in the Corner. The Piccadilly flat reference is to Dorothy L. Sayers’ sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. Blake is Sexton Blake, the most famous of all British penny dreadful detectives. The Si-Fan is the criminal organization run by Sax Rohmer’s Dr. Fu Manchu. The Runcible set is a reference to Agatha Runcible from Evelyn Waugh’s novel Vile Bodies. The Voorish Sign and the powder of Ibn Ghazi are from H.P. Lovecraft’s story “The Dunwich Horror.” The pharaoh awakened by the Esoteric Order of Thoth-Ra was Nephren-Ka from Lovecraft’s “The Haunter of the Dark,” whom St. Cyprian battled in “The Unwrapping Party.” Sir Francis Varney is from James Malcolm Rymer’s serialized horror story Varney the Vampire. The year is specifically given as 1920, and Curzon refers to St. Cyprian’s handling of “that disturbance at the Voyagers Club last week.” In Reynolds’ novel The Jade Suit of Death, set in March of the same year, the Voyagers Club affair is said to have taken place “last month.” Therefore, “The Strix Society” takes place in February of 1920.

Crossover Cover: The Poisoned Chocolates Case

In the round-robin novel Ask a Policeman, four amateur detectives work on the same case independently of each other: Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey (a Wold Newton Family member according to Farmer); Gladys Mitchell's Mrs. Bradley; Clemence Dane and Helen Simpson's Sir John Saumarez; and Anthony Berkeley's Roger Sheringham. Interestingly, all the authors wrote one of the others' characters rather than their own. This novel features Sheringham competing with the other criminology enthusiasts in his Crimes Club to solve a murder first. One of the other members, the one who ultimately provides the solution, is the mild-mannered Ambrose Chitterwick. Chitterwick went on to appear in two non-series novels by Berkeley, The Piccadilly Murder and Trial and Error.

Crossover Covers: Inspector Wilkins

This series of novels is an affectionate pastiche of 1930s locked room mystery novels, with Inspector Wilkins repeatedly having to investigate murders at the home of the unlucky Earl of Burford. All three novels have references to detective fiction of that era, which treat the characters mentioned as real people. In The Affair of the Bloodstained Egg Cosy (published in 1975), Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot is referred to by Wilkins. The Affair of the Mutilated Mink (1983) has several references: Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey; Michael Innes' Sir John Appleby (along with Richard Eliot's book The Spider Bites Back from the Appleby novel Stop Press); Ngaio Marsh's Inspector Roderick Alleyn; Agatha Christie's Ariadne Oliver (from the Hercule Poirot books, as well as the non-series novel The Pale Horse) and her book Death of a Debutante (mentioned in Mrs. McGinty's Dead); and The Screaming Bone by Annette de la Tour, the pen name of Mr. Judd in Edmund Crispin's Gervase Fen novel Buried for Pleasure. The third and final Wilkins novel, The Case of the 39 Cufflinks, refers to Lord Peter Wimsey once again, along with his manservant Bunter.

Crossover Cover: A Letter of Mary

In this novel, Mary Russell Holmes, Sherlock's much-younger wife and apprentice, is helped out of a spot of trouble by a young monocled man named Peter. As the acknowledgments for the book state, this is Dorothy L. Sayers' sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, who according to Farmer is a Wold Newton Family member and a distant cousin of Sherlock Holmes himself.

Crossover of the Week

Late November 1951

COLD BLOOD

            Sergeant William Beef’s biographer, Townsend, tells him that he needs a unique quality to make him famous as a detective: “You must resemble an alligator every few pages, like Mrs. Bradley, or talk like a peer in an Edwardian farce, like Lord Peter Wimsey. Or use bits of exclamatory French, like Poirot.” Theo Gray asks Beef to look into the death of his friend, Cosmo Ducrow. Townsend thinks, “How different, I could not help reflecting, was the conversation of Holmes and Watson while they sat waiting for their clients not half a mile away.” Noting that there are better known detectives than he, with better reputations, Beef asks Gray why he did not consult Poirot, to which Gray responds that he was engaged on another case. When Beef asks the same about Albert Campion, Gray replies that Campion was not interested. Beef says that he wonders where Gray will be if he refuses the case, to which Gray responds “On the phone to Inspector French…”

            Novel by Lionel Townsend, edited by Leo Bruce. Gladys Mitchell’s Mrs. Bradley, Dorothy L. Sayer’s Lord Peter Wimsey, Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion, and Freeman Wills Crofts’ Inspector French have all been established as existing in the CU; therefore, this crossover brings in Sergeant Beef. Beef’s cottage, where he first meets with Gray, is in Lilac Crescent, and was chosen for its proximity to Baker Street. Holmes and Watson were no longer living at 221B Baker Street in 1951, so Townsend must have been referring to their conversations in years past.