Crossover Cover: Case for Sergeant Beef

 

Are you a fan of Margery Allingham's detective Albert Campion?

Then you'll love this novel, which has a shout-out to Campion, among other crossovers!

For more information, be sure to purchase 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 with Ropes and Rings

 

Are you a Sherlock Holmes fan?

Then you'll love this novel in Leo Bruce's Sergeant Beef series, which has a reference to Doctor Watson, among others!

For more information, be sure to purchase 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 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 Covers: Neck and Neck

 

Sergeant Beef investigates two murders, those of his biographer Lionel Townsend’s aunt and a publisher. Beef tells Townsend he’d like to know what’s happening between his (Townsend’s) brother Vincent and their relative Edith Payne. Townsend says that there’s nothing going on between them, to which Beef replies, “That’s what I mean...It’s like the old Sherlock Holmes gag of the behavior of the dog in the night.” The publisher’s secretary compares Townsend to Dr. Watson and Captain Hastings. Beef complains, “As I’ve said before, hardly anybody seems to have heard the name Beef. Now take Hercule Poirot..." The publisher’s stepson is a Major in the 10th Loamshires. Sherlock Holmes’ famous quote about the curious incident of the dog in the night-time appears in Doyle and Watson’s “The Adventure of Silver Blaze.” Captain Arthur Hastings is Hercule Poirot’s friend and sometime biographer, whose accounts were edited for publication by Agatha Christie. The Loamshire Regiment appears in several works of fiction, including H. C. “Sapper” McNeile’s Bulldog Drummond novels, Evelyn Waugh’s Put Out More Flags and Men at Arms, and the movie The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. The English county of Loamshire is originally from George Eliot’s novels. 

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 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!