1928: A Very Good Year for Mysteries

I was bookhunting recently with the Mom unit when we came across some neat vintage mysteries.  These were editions I hadn’t seen before.  (Mom, of course, had, being an avid mystery reader, especially of anything written before 1950.) Seems the idea of a subscription book “club” is not a very recent idea after all – Doubleday had their own version for over 60 years, starting back in the 1920s.  I just hadn’t run across them before.

So I did a little research: Daniel Longwell, a man who worked his way up through the ranks of Doubleday, Doran from night clerk at the Doubleday store to advertising manager, came up with the idea of Doubleday’s Crime Club after visiting England back in the 1920s. Across the pond, the top mystery fiction writers were members of The Detection Club where only the best stories were published, and Longwell realized that America needed something similar to help increase US mystery novel sales.

Edgar Wallace

Edgar Wallace, probably best known for his part in making KING KONG a household name, had written tons of popular books in England, but they were relatively unknown in the US.  Longwell got the bright idea that Wallace’s writing would be perfect for jumpstarting a “book of the month” type sales format, offering 1 Wallace title per month for 12 months.  Already a bestselling author, Wallace’s book sales jumped up to over 5 million in 1928 with the help of the Crime Club title sales.

In 1928, a Crime Club Jury was used to decide what books to present to the public. Members of the Jury included Ogden Nash, Grant Overton, John G. Kidd, Frances Noyes Hart, Arthur T. Vance and William Rose Benet.  The first book published specifically for the Crime Club was THE DESERT MOON MYSTERY by Kay Cleaver Strahan.  According to the blurb, it was about “Three murders and a suicide-one of a lovely girl with a secret. No clues, yet clues everywhere. Days and nights of suspense, danger, suspicion…”  It was supposed to have a “secret ending”, one which Crime Club members were not to divulge.

Novels were offered to club members 10 days before they were made available to the public and were issued in uniform black cloth editions, featuring red lettering and bright red endpapers, along with a Crime Club gunman in white logo and had priced dust jackets, designed by artists, including works by Boris Artzybasheff, one of their most prolific illustrators whose work is still very highly collectible.  The books would be subscribed to like a magazine, then shipped to the local bookstore who would then make sure the customer received the book ahead of the trade edition release.

That first year saw the publication of another 25 book club offerings besides THE DESERT MOON MYSTERY:

THE SILK STOCKING MURDERS – Anthony Berkeley
HOUSE OF TWO GREEN EYES – Stephen Chalmers
JUGGERNAUT – Alice Campbell
THAT GAY NINETIES MURDER – Foxhall Daingerfield
THE BLACK HOUSE ON HARLEY STREET – J. S. (John Smith) Fletcher
THE VELVET HAND: NEW MADAME STOREY MYSTERIES – Hulbert Footner
IN SEARCH OF A VILLIAN – Robert Gore-Browne
THE BELLAMY TRIAL – Frances Noyes Hart
THE BLACK HEART – Sydney Horler
THE FATAL KISS MYSTERY – Rufus King
THE PRISONER IN THE OPAL – A.E.W. (Alfred Edware Woodley) Mason
THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES – H.C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
SKIN O’ MY TOOTH (Short Stories) – Baroness Orczy
SHANGHAI JIM (Novelettes) – Frank L. Packard
TIGER CLAWS – Frank L. Packard
THE INNOCENT ACCOMPLICE – Mrs. Baillie Reynolds
THE MASTER MYSTERY – Austin J. Small
THE MYSTERY OF UNCLE BOLLARD – H. (Henry) deVere Stacpoole
THE MAN WHO KILLED FORTESCUE – John Stephen Strange (Dorothy Stockbridge Tillett)
WEREWOLF – Charles Lee Swern
THE CLEVER ONE – Edgar Wallace
THE DOUBLE – Edgar Wallace
THE FEATHERED SERPENT – Edgar Wallace
THE MASTER OF REVELS – Richard Howells Watkins
THE BAFFLE BOOK (Puzzles) – Lassiter Wren & Randle McKay (John T. Colter)

63 years later and hundreds of titles and authors later, including  such notables as Leslie Charteris (THE SAINT) and Sax Rohmer (FU MANCHU) who had many of their First Editions put out through the Crime Club, Doubleday closed the division in 1991.  But during those years, they gave readers the detective fiction and mystery novels they craved, at prices they could afford. (In 1929, a Crime Club hardcover could be had for $1.00!)