Sand on the Gumshoe: a century of Australian crime writing

important historical figures; Waif Wander is equally important although her contribution is only now being realised. Hornung, despite being an Englishman (like Hume) and only a brief visitor, gave the world a major series character and it was in rural Victoria that Raffles embarked on a life of genteel crime.

In selecting the remaining authors, the emphasis has been on talent and entertainment. Randolph Bedford, with his outback Sherlock Holmes, more than fits the bill. So too does A.E. Martin with a truly Australian nice twist. Vince Kelly spent most of his life writing about real crime cases and celebrating the triumphs of the police over the criminal mind. His little known fictional effort is a neat blend of the hard-boiled American school and the British police procedural, coloured by some concerned sociology. Max Afford shows the ability of fine series characters to transcend the seeming gulf between literature and radio – the most popular entertainment forms during the period he gained his most remarkable success.

One regret is that such other important players as Flower, Neville and Courtier, Geraldine Halls, Paul McGuire and Percival Rodda didn’t utilise the short story as a vehicle for their skills. As taking extracts from novels is not a good way to gauge an author’s talents it is not possible to include samples of their writing herein.

This anthology celebrates the pioneering spirit of our literary forebears. Peter Corris, Robert G. Barrett, Tom Howard, Jennifer Rowe and the many others who are now so familiar to modern readers are not the sudden result of some mysterious form of artistic spontaneous combustion. Rather they are a continuation of a grand tradition and to enjoy their works to the fullest it is necessary to glimpse that which has preceded them.

For many fans this will be a journey of discovery, a chance to meet and greet those figures that have for too long been relegated to the very edge of the genre’s crowded universe.

WAIF WANDER

It is both encouraging and disheartening to find a talent such as Waif Wander. Encouraging because she is such a fascinating talent, disheartening because so little is known of her. The author of a large number of crime stories written in the latter half of the nineteenth century for the Australian Journal, Waif Wander (together with W.W., another of her pseudonyms) was in reality a Victorian woman by the name of Mary Ellen Fortune. For her output alone, she should be at the forefront of Australian literary history. The quality of her writing also makes her work significant in the evolution of the genre.

The first full-length detective novel written by a woman was The Dead Letter: An American Romance (New York, Beadle & Co, 1867) by Seeley Regester published in 1867. This was the pen-name of Metta Victoria Victor, whose husband, Orville, is amongst the many credited with inventing, in 1867, the ‘dime’ novel or ‘yellowback’, which was the forerunner to the pulps. The next most important novel of its type was The Leavenworth Case: A Lawyer’s Story (New York, Putnam, 1878; London, Routledge, 1884) written by Anna Katherine Green, and published in 1878. Both Victor and Green were Americans.

Fortune was certainly present at the creation of crime fiction. On 2 September 1865, the inaugural issue of The Australian Journal appeared in Melbourne. Until March 1869 the magazine was a weekly at which time it changed to a monthly. The earliest issues featured such series as ‘Adventures of an Australian Mounted Trooper’ and it seems likely these were the work of Fortune although the first definite Waif Wander stories were not included until 1866. In these early years she started ‘The Detective’s Album’ as part of a prolific output which included poems and romantic fiction. ‘The Detectives’ Album’, in most cases featuring Melbourne police detective Mark Sinclair, was a regular and popular part of The Australian Journal well into the 1890s. A collected edition, under the title The Detective’s Album: Recollections of an Australian Police Officer, was published in 1871.

The public Waif Wander was well known to Australian readers. The private Mary Fortune was a mysterious figure who had to wait until the Bicentennial year, at least 70 years after her death, to gain recognition. Like much fiction, Fortune’s stories had their basis in fact. Lucy Sussex in her essay ‘Shrouded in Mystery’: Waif Wander (Mary Fortune)’ in Debra Adelaide’s collection A Bright and Fiery Troop (Melbourne, Penguin, 1988) has sifted life from fantasy to create her biography.

Fortune’s autobiographical musings, published in the Australian Journal and dotted through her long career, seem to indicate that she was born in Ireland in the early 1830s, grew up in Canada and emigrated to Victoria in time to witness the gold rush. She worked for the Australian Journal and a few small newspapers; that much is certain. The rest of her life is largely unknown.

A friendship with the wife of a Victorian composer resulted in the only extant letter written by Mrs Fortune (now in Melbourne ’s Latrobe Library). At the time of writing she was tired, ill and near penniless, living in humble surroundings in South Yarra, a fact borne out by the Victorian electoral rolls for 1908. By 1912 she had disappeared and it was with difficulty that John Finmount Moir, who attempted to follow a cold trail in the 1950s, reached an inevitable deadend. It has been said the Australian Journal provided financial assistance for Mrs Fortune in her declining years and also paid for her burial but the rest is a mystery.

Whatever the circumstances of Mrs Mary Fortune, her work remains and it is hoped that in the not too distant future she will assume her rightful prominence both within Australian literature and the international crime fiction genre.

The story which follows is an excellent Mark Sinclair story from Fortune’s early period. By this time Sinclair was fully established as a series character although he was considering, as he was to do for some time, resigning from the police department in order to go into private practice.

The Detectives Album: Hereditary

There wanted but a few days to Christmas, when one morning Archie Hopeton dashed into my office with an open letter in his hand. I say dashed, for scarcely any other word would effectually describe his abrupt and sudden entrance; and, as such a manner was rather unusual with him, I looked up at him in wondering inquiry.

‘I’ve got the invitation for you, Mark. Now, surely you won’t refuse to go with me. My aunt, Mrs Thorne, says she will be very much pleased to see you.’

‘I’m afraid you’ve been putting the screw on the old lady, Archie – threatening not to go yourself unless she invited me, or something of that sort?’

‘ ’Pon my honour, no. I simply said that I was trying hard to induce you to spend your holidays at Puntwater. You will go, won’t you, Mark, out of charity, if for no other reason?’

I looked up from my desk into the young fellow’s anxious and pleading face; it was the face of a fair, handsome youth of twenty-two or three, with a pair of fine, brown eyes lighting it up, and beautiful glossy, fair hair waving above it; but at the moment it looked really haggard and careworn.

‘I might as well go there as anywhere else, Archie,’ I returned, ‘that is to say if I get away at all. I’m so used to applying for leave, having it granted, and then cancelled again in consequence of a “very particular case,” that I quite expect to stop and work hard during holiday time.’

‘Why don’t you start at once? Your leave’s granted now. Will you come on Monday, Mark?’ he asked eagerly.

‘If I get through with this business today, I shall certainly take time by the forelock, and go on Monday, my son. But I can’t make out your great anxiety to have me go with you.’

‘That shows how little attention you’ve been paying to all my egotistical stories,’ he cried, ‘and indeed, Sinclair, it is as simple a piece of selfishness for me to wish you with me, I mean, as ever you accused me of; but I am positively afraid to go back to aunt’s, afraid is the word.’

‘Afraid of your aunt, or cousin? Which?’

‘Of both. Oh, I know I’m a soft fellow, Sinclair, but until you have seen them, and known them, you cannot understand. Aunt Thorne has set her very heart on us marrying, and now that I’ve chosen so differently, she will be wild.’