HISTORIAN AND NOVELIST.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 70, 23 March 1935, Page 2 (Supplement)

HISTORIAN AND NOVELIST.

LATE J. S. FLETCHER. I S Fletcher, who died recently at over seventy, had a very curious dual personality as a writer. He was _ a scholar and an antiquarian, one ot Hie foremost authorities on the history of hie county, Yorkshire, and at the same time a prolilic writer of novels, including many detective stories. His tally of novels was over 200. Several ot: his detective tales have been reviewed in these columns. One of the accounts of the life of Mr. Fletcher says that "in writing his stories sometimes he did not know himself who the murderer was until nearly at the end of the book" (says the "Manchester Guardian")- If the assertion be true the method seems almost unfair to the reader; how could he be expected to "spot the winner" in advance if the author himself during most of the time of writing had not made up his mind on the matter? But the method might also be rather awkward for a thoroughly conscientious novelist. Suppose lie. came to the conclusion that he could not really fasten the crime upon anybody — in other words, had achieved a. mystery so profound that he could not fathom it himself? The only thing to do would be to scud the typescript to Scotland Yard and ask (he C.f.D. to have a go at a problem I hat was too much for its creator. This is not the only occasion on which authors' reported methods have seemed unexpectedly casual to the wider public. it has been said that George Sand used to write so rapidly and with such little effort that, some years after it was written, she could read one of her own novels with genuine interest and surprise in order to find out what happened in the course of it.