Jason Hall Writes

It's spring quarter of graduate school, a season of academic and creative busyness that rivals the tasks of any bird or bee in nature. I will be continuing to work this month on rewriting a draft of my current full-length play, The Tulip Brothers. Set in 17th century Holland and using the events of the Dutch tulipomania as inspiration, the story of three brothers ultimately tests the theory that you don't need love to get by in this world. Middle son Pieter crafts a shell of emotional armor, refusing to be vulnerable to or reliant on others for his happiness or success. Pieter watches his older brother Nils try repeatedly to win their mother's approval, and makes a dangerous final bid to buy her love. Meanwhile Caspar the dreamer has married his childhood girlfriend, but contentment proves elusive for this pair too, despite a seemingly perfect match.

The Tulip Brothers is a meditation on the value of family and the price of happiness, with love denied at a cost. The play will have a reading at Ohio University's Seabury Quinn, Jr., Playwrights' Festival on Saturday, June 29. Admission is two tulip bulbs or three stuiver.

At an early age I fell in love with the classic mystery story, and whenever possible I supplemented my reading with Agatha Christie, Rex Stout, G.K. Chesterton and the works of other writers of detective fiction from the genre's Golden Age, roughly the 1920s through the 1950s. As I grew older I started to look for strong mystery writers who haven't withstood the test of time and are now relatively unknown to readers. The plots and puzzles of writers like John Rhode, E.R. Punshon, and Nicholas Blake offer an enjoyable contrast to today's grim psychological thrillers, and their imagined narrative worlds often carry an escapist charm and fascination akin to the landscapes conjured by Austen or Dickens. 

A decade ago I stumbled across a book from one of these forgotten mystery writers, an atmospheric tale of serial murders in a sleepy English village. Called The Rising of the Moon and written by a prolific teacher-turned-novelist named Gladys Mitchell, the story is narrated by 13-year old Simon Innes, who has the burden of watching his younger brother Keith and their toddler sibling as his fascination grows over the summer killings. A teen boy makes a brilliant set of eyes to view events, and when a strange, terrifying elderly lady comes to town to investigate the murders, she presses Simon into service. Assured in tone, brilliant in detail, and with a narrative sweep that kept me turning pages, I had never read a mystery story that was so vibrant and alive.

That surprising author, Gladys Mitchell, wrote 66 books in the Mrs. Beatrice Lestrange Bradley series alone (along with historical adventure and children's novels). Mrs. Bradley, her yellow-skinned, reptilian psychoanalyst detective, is an amazing figure and the titles of the author's first two decades (1929-1950) are amazingly diverse in approach, from the broad Wodehousian comedy of The Saltmarsh Murders to the Wilkie Collins-inspired When Last I Died to the somber and nostalgic The Rising of the Moon.  Unlike Christie, she is concerned foremost with tone and style and not the puzzle. But it is the tone and style which I cherish, and which is why I can read many of her books again and again.

Because there was so very little information about Miss Mitchell--and especially about the individual titles--I created a tribute website in 1999 to provide prospective readers with more information. Of those 66 Mrs. Bradley books, I have now written plot synopses and reviews of all but two, and posted them (and dustjacket scans) on the site. Yesterday I added a review of 1944's My Father Sleeps, a particularly rare title. But there has been a bit of a renaissance in reprints: the Random House UK imprint Vintage Press, Minnow Press, and Rue Morgue Press (based in the US) have all published recent editions, with more on the way.

Which is a great thing. Gladys Mitchell deserves to be read. Check out my tribute website or, better yet, pick up a Mrs. Bradley mystery!
 

After six weeks of teaching for Johns Hopkins University's Center for Talented Youth summer program, I finally found a pocket of time to begin working on this website. When I'm not doing that I'm working on my next play, a full-length drama about tulip bulb sellers in 17th century Holland. The flower to the left is a Semper Augustus, one bulb of which--at the height of the tulip mania--would be worth three times Rembrandt's commission for his masterpiece, The Night Watch.

The story of traders caught up in a capitalist market that ultimately collapses is fascinating against today's still-stinging Wall Street follies. I'm planning to have a first draft ready sometime in September.