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Overview: Born in Chicago in 1890, Keeler spent his childhood exclusively in this city, which was so beloved by the author that a large number of his works took place in and around it. In many of his novels, Keeler refers to Chicago as "the London of the west." The expression is explained in the opening of Thieves’ Nights (1929):
"Here … were seemingly the same hawkers … selling the same goods … here too was the confusion, the babble of tongues of many lands, the restless, shoving throng containing faces and features of a thousand racial castes, and last but not least, here on Halsted and Maxwell streets, Chicago, were the same dirt, flying bits of torn paper, and confusion that graced the junction of Middlesex and Whitechapel High streets far across the globe."
Other locales for Keeler novels include New Orleans and New York. In his later works, Keeler’s settings are often more generic settings such as Big River, or a city in which all buildings and streets are either nameless or fictional. Keeler is known to have visited London at least once, but his occasional depictions of British characters are consistently implausible.
Genre: Fiction > Mystery/Thriller
The Mystery of the Fiddling Cracksman (1934)
Wild, fantastic, yet overwhelmingly logical, this yarn could come only from Chicago’s own Sherlock Holmes and that favorite of American mystery fans, Harry Stephen Keeler. Here he gives us a brand-new webwork of mysteries — a cracksman who uses not dynamite, but a violin; a second-hand safe with amazing secrets inside; a volcanic island in the Pacific; a fantastic kingdom in Europe; and a pair of lovers caught in the very center of this whirlwind of danger and detection. As usual, this breathless yarn is filled with facts and incidents undreamed of in the usual mystery story. Keeler fans will find it a special treat.
The Five Silver Buddhas (1935)
From 1935 comes this thrilling novel about five odd people who happen to buy tiny jade figurines of a non-smiling Buddha. Only Harry Stephen Keeler could have come up with this plot!
The Case of the Mysterious Moll (1945)
Margaret Annister is slated to die in Nevada City’s gas chamber but she’s not too worried. She’s been given a drug by the police matron that takes away all cares and concerns. Also, she knows that her good friend Yerxa Indergaard is due to appeal directly to the Governor in her behalf. Throw in local attorney Croxson Kalver who knows she’s been set up and you have the makings of a webwork mystery only Harry Stephen Keeler could have penned.
The Affair of the Bottled Deuce (1958)
Lousy Lou Ousley, the detective, has been given another impossible case: the murder or suicide of a crackpot novelist in a locked room. Everything points to suicide but there’s the sticky point of the gun being made of wax. And what’s with the bottle on the desk with a deuce of diamonds inside it? In this novel, written in 1958 but never published anywhere until now, Harry Stephen Keeler pulls out all the stops and creates a tale that Arthur Conan Doyle might have written.
The Straw Hat Murders (1958)
It’s tough being being Chief of Homicide when there have been four murders of piano students—all in the same studio apartment! So Huntoon Cambourne knows his job is on the line as he tries to prevent a fifth murder. He’s not lacking for clues because there is a cheap straw hat found at the scene of all four murders. And then there’s the matter of the killer leaving a $20 gold piece in the alms bucket of a deaf and blind mendicant down on the street near the apartment house. But how does the murderer get into the death room when the only opening is a trapdoor that’s only reachable by a dangerous 7-foot leap?
The Man Who Changed His Skin (1959)
It’s 1855, and with a war over slavery looming on the horizon, all bachelor Clark Shellcross wants to do is get married. But when his hopes are dashed he succumbs to temptation and takes a weird drug that claims it will change his life. And it does! He wakes up the next morning with black skin! It doesn’t take long for him to realize that 1855 is not a good time to have darkly hued skin, even in the northern city of Boston.
The story of his frantic odyssey in search of his former life could only have sprung from the anarchic imagination of Harry Stephen Keeler.
NOTE: This book is not politically correct by current standards. It contains language and ideas relevant to the age in which it is set (1855) and was written in the 1930s, a less progressive time. It is dated, but remains a fascinating artifact of its era. Although it deals with race, it is decided anti-racism (which may be why it remained unpublished until discovered among Harry Stephen Keeler’s papers).
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