Reviews

The Agony Column by Earl Derr Biggers

traphag's review against another edition

5.0

Perfect old school mystery with fun twists and turns and a bit o' romance, too. Yay!

glyptodonsneeze's review

4.0

The Daily Mail is gross and pervily misogynistic, from what I understand, and it was just as wretchedly scandalous in the hot summer weeks leading up to World War I in Earl Derr Biggers' The Agony Column, but instead of nip slips, the Daily Mail had a Missed Connections (or "agony column" in British): "I saw you, in white with a scarlet ribbon, alight from the omnibus at Piccadilly and glance playfully at me. Write if your heart went out to this gentleman in a pince-nez," and you could pay five pence a word to have this put in the newspaper and scandalize all of London with your boldness. The Agony Column is all about this shocking lack of introductions. I highly recommend it. The protagonist is a young man, an American in London on business, who is reading the agony column in the dining room at the Carleton one morning when a beautiful young woman and her father come in and sit down to breakfast. The young lady produces her Daily Mail and laughs at a puckish entry in the column of our discussion and her father wonders aloud why she reads that nonsense. Enchanted, the young man goes back to his lodgings and writes a notice to be placed in the agony column. And the woman responds! She writes, via the Mail, to say that she would not normally speak to a gentleman in this way but his note was so intriguing and she is a lover of intrigue. He has seven days to write seven letters proving his worth. He writes, from his lodgings on Adelphi Terrace with the magnificent garden, about his travel before he arrived in London, to Interlachen, where he had met an unusually gregarious young Englishman who insisted on writing a letter of introduction to his cousin, and how that cousin, a colonel in the Indian Army clomped about upstairs as our young man sits writing the letter to the mysterious young lady, when he hears voices and a struggle. He races upstairs to find the man murdered. This cousin is not what he seemed. Nothing is what it seems. Or is it? In seven days, in seven letters, he must tell the young lady about the web of suspicion, intrigue and international mischief that surrounds him as England descends into war. Stellar Librivox audio recording as well.

http://surfeitofbooks.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-miscellany.html

lnatal's review

3.0

According to Wikipedia, this book was also published as Second Floor Mystery in 1916.

Free download at Gutenberg Project