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Prince Zaleski
Arguably the most decadent of all fictional sleuths, Prince Zaleski relies upon the methods of ratiocination so beloved of Sherlock Holmes. But unlike his deer-stalkered colleague, Zaleski rarely needs even to leave his divan to solve the perplexing mysteries that Shiel brings before him. Rather than give crude chase to the perpetrators of these sophisticated crimes, Zaleski reclines elegantly in his semi-ruined abbey, ‘a bizarrerie of half-weird sheen and gloom,’ smoking hashish and fashioning solutions from his encyclopedic knowledge of the esoteric. Although he is in this respect akin to Edgar Allan Poe’s detective, Auguste Dupin, Zaleski is primarily an up-to-the-minute 1890s aesthete, prompting one critic to suggest that he is based on that tragically extravagant poet of death, Count Eric Stenbock.
Prince Zaleski contains the three tales originally collected in John Lane’s Keynotes edition, (1893) along with three further stories, one unfinished, which represent later ‘collaborations’ with the poet, writer and literary researcher John Gawsworth.
Brian Stableford provides an illuminating Introduction to the twilight world of Prince Zaleski, and R.B. Russell’s Note explains the genesis of the three stories written with John Gawsworth.
Prince Zaleski contains the three tales originally collected in John Lane’s Keynotes edition, (1893) along with three further stories, one unfinished, which represent later ‘collaborations’ with the poet, writer and literary researcher John Gawsworth.
Brian Stableford provides an illuminating Introduction to the twilight world of Prince Zaleski, and R.B. Russell’s Note explains the genesis of the three stories written with John Gawsworth.
214 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1895
11 people are currently reading
144 people want to read
About the author
M.P. Shiel
163 books38 followersMatthew Phipps Shiel was a prolific British writer of West Indian descent. His legal surname remained "Shiell" though he adopted the shorter version as a de facto pen name.
He is remembered mostly for supernatural and scientific romances. His work was published as serials, novels, and as short stories. The Purple Cloud (1901; 1929) remains his most famous and often reprinted novel.
He is remembered mostly for supernatural and scientific romances. His work was published as serials, novels, and as short stories. The Purple Cloud (1901; 1929) remains his most famous and often reprinted novel.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
March 22, 2019
If Huysmans or Wilde had created a detective based on Poe's C. Auguste Dupin, he might have looked a lot like Prince Zaleski. Both the prose and the atmosphere are charmingly decadent; the plots, however,are silly and ridiculously intricate. In addition, the solutions to the crimes often involve arcane knowledge, and so really don't play fair with the reader.
I liked this book, but can't really recommend it. It is nowhere near as good as Shiel's "The Purple Cloud."
Read
March 15, 2018maybe about a 3.5 -- I'm not sure.
I read this book as part of my ongoing survey of early crime/mystery/detective fiction, and with all of the titles that are available from the 1890s, Prince Zaleski may seem to be an odd choice, but I read it for a reason: it combines mystery/detective fiction with fin-de-siècle British Decadence, something I hadn't yet encountered in British detective fiction of the period.
In a contemporary review, HG Wells said that the character of Prince Zaleski was "Sherlock -- demented," but it becomes obvious not too long into the book that he was based more on Poe's Auguste Dupin. Having read Poe's Dupin stories just last year, I can say that Shiel employs the same sort of "ratiocination" technique here as did Poe with his detective. I have very mixed feelings about Prince Zaleski, precisely because of the style in which the solutions were given (which I didn't care for in the Dupin stories either) in the first two stories, but I thoroughly enjoyed the sort of arcane and esoteric lore that comes out of Zaleski's head that helps him to solve his cases. My favorite mystery is "The S.S." which is a horrific case of either mass suicides or murders; this one continues to have relevance to our times, but in my opinion it is the best of three cases here.
While it's probably not going to grab the hearts and minds of modern crime/detective fiction readers, this book is very much worth reading for others who are more inclined toward the weird, the esoteric and the just plain strange. This is not at all an average Victorian detective book, and it takes an extremely brave and patient reader to get through it. But it is definitely a book I'm very happy to have read.
http://www.crimesegments.com/2018/03/...
I read this book as part of my ongoing survey of early crime/mystery/detective fiction, and with all of the titles that are available from the 1890s, Prince Zaleski may seem to be an odd choice, but I read it for a reason: it combines mystery/detective fiction with fin-de-siècle British Decadence, something I hadn't yet encountered in British detective fiction of the period.
In a contemporary review, HG Wells said that the character of Prince Zaleski was "Sherlock -- demented," but it becomes obvious not too long into the book that he was based more on Poe's Auguste Dupin. Having read Poe's Dupin stories just last year, I can say that Shiel employs the same sort of "ratiocination" technique here as did Poe with his detective. I have very mixed feelings about Prince Zaleski, precisely because of the style in which the solutions were given (which I didn't care for in the Dupin stories either) in the first two stories, but I thoroughly enjoyed the sort of arcane and esoteric lore that comes out of Zaleski's head that helps him to solve his cases. My favorite mystery is "The S.S." which is a horrific case of either mass suicides or murders; this one continues to have relevance to our times, but in my opinion it is the best of three cases here.
While it's probably not going to grab the hearts and minds of modern crime/detective fiction readers, this book is very much worth reading for others who are more inclined toward the weird, the esoteric and the just plain strange. This is not at all an average Victorian detective book, and it takes an extremely brave and patient reader to get through it. But it is definitely a book I'm very happy to have read.
http://www.crimesegments.com/2018/03/...
December 17, 2020
I confess to being somewhat fascinated with this trashy, campy, at times laughable piece of hack work. Sherlock Holmes gaudily smothered in glitter, cobwebs and incense. Impossible to take seriously, but of interest for those of us with a penchant for 1890s weird literature and bizarre prose. Pick up Shiel's effective apocalyptic novel The Purple Cloud if you want more fulfilling weird fiction. Pick up this if you're in the mood for some outrageous shlock in the spirit of that other strange Holmesian hack Sax Rohmer.
The exiled Prince Zaleski spends all his hours lounging around in his ruined abbey, surrounded by an array of strange artefacts, including a grinning mummy. He solves cases without even getting off his arse, making him even even more languid a detective than Holmes.
Near the end of the book's final tale he does leave his gothic abode and return to "delight" us with a long hideous pro-eugenics rant about how war is almost gone and no longer a world-threatening thing (this written in the 1890s -- great prediction there, Zaleski!) and that now the real terror is that the weak's lives are preserved to taint bloodlines with "black-blood".
The title of that final story?
"The SS."
Freaky
The exiled Prince Zaleski spends all his hours lounging around in his ruined abbey, surrounded by an array of strange artefacts, including a grinning mummy. He solves cases without even getting off his arse, making him even even more languid a detective than Holmes.
Near the end of the book's final tale he does leave his gothic abode and return to "delight" us with a long hideous pro-eugenics rant about how war is almost gone and no longer a world-threatening thing (this written in the 1890s -- great prediction there, Zaleski!) and that now the real terror is that the weak's lives are preserved to taint bloodlines with "black-blood".
The title of that final story?
"The SS."
Freaky
Read
January 1, 2016If you find Holmes and Poirot insufficiently cerebral, a little too everyday action hero, then Zaleski is the detective for you. Exiled and lovelorn, he broods alone (but for a black manservant, of whom frankly the less said the better) in a wing of a ruined abbey set among cypresses and poplars. We first see him reclining beside a partially-unwrapped mummy, "discarding his gemmed chibouque and an old vellum reprint of Anacreon". From the opulent, narcotic haze of this sanctum he declines to shift for the first two adventures, unravelling otherwise insoluble mysteries of ancestral curses and ancient gems simply from what is reported to him by the narrator Shiel, who might thus be considered a far more poetically-inclined Watson. Shiel considered himself Doyle's superior, and the solutions are exactly the sort of thing someone might come up with when they're trying to outdo Holmes but haven't twigged the very precise - if indefinable - limits of fairness in a puzzle; everything hinges on word association, dubious scholarship and the like, such that the reader's reaction is less likely to be 'Good heavens!' that 'You what?' But in Holmes the intricate solutions were only ever part of the appeal, and in Zaleski they're barely even that. It's the atmosphere that matters. And in the last of these three original stories*, that atmosphere is whipped into such a ferment that you start to wonder if Shiel (the writer) was receiving some distorted yet overwhelming vision of the future. True, there is the line at which one can only respond with a hollow laugh, where Zaleski tells his friend that war will doubtless be extinct within their lifetimes. But otherwise...an epidemic of murder and insanity which begins in Germany. Eugenic tirades. Visions of a future society in which technological advancement goes hand-in-hand with sacrificial hecatombs devoted to preserving the purity of the race. And the story is entitled 'The S.S.'. I'm quite glad the series was abandoned there; I fear what might have followed.
*A fourth followed decades later, but by all accounts it's best avoided.
*A fourth followed decades later, but by all accounts it's best avoided.
February 20, 2017
I was given the extravagantly beautiful Tartarus Press edition for my birthday which in itself deserves a five star rating. Sadly I can't say the same for Shiel's detective. After having heard about him in the context of the occult detective and decadent genres I was sure I'd love Prince Zaleski. Jad Adams mentions him in his excellent "Madder Music and Stronger Wine" and Alan Moore has referenced him once or twice.
Instead I found myself alternatively bored and occasionally horrified by the racial faux pas in the stories. As a person who loves Decadence and can usually take dated language with a grain of salt this took me by surprise. I don't know. It just didn't appeal to me. Hopefully you'll enjoy it more than I did.
Instead I found myself alternatively bored and occasionally horrified by the racial faux pas in the stories. As a person who loves Decadence and can usually take dated language with a grain of salt this took me by surprise. I don't know. It just didn't appeal to me. Hopefully you'll enjoy it more than I did.
December 16, 2016
Its not just in modern times that detective shows need a gimmick. Whether the protagonist is an anthropologist, coroner, cook, author, deception expert, hyperthymesia sufferer, vampire etc.
You always need some unique angle on the detective, well as i said, this is not a recent phenomenon.
This is a set of three detective mysteries which can only be solved by Prince Zaleski the worlds greatest historian!
Its no wonder there's only three given the problems inherent with coming up with cases only solvable by a historian.
The first two are ok but the third is REALLY good. Its on such a larger scale than the other cases. Overall this is a decent set of mysteries.
You always need some unique angle on the detective, well as i said, this is not a recent phenomenon.
This is a set of three detective mysteries which can only be solved by Prince Zaleski the worlds greatest historian!
Its no wonder there's only three given the problems inherent with coming up with cases only solvable by a historian.
The first two are ok but the third is REALLY good. Its on such a larger scale than the other cases. Overall this is a decent set of mysteries.
Want to read
February 9, 2020Synopsis: three cases with Zaleski as sleuth - he's weird. H.G. Wells called him, Sherlock Demented.
June 15, 2018
Prince Zaleski is an eccentric gentleman detective who suffers from ennui but 'might sometimes be induced to take an absorbing interest in questions that had proved themselves too profound, or too intricate, for ordinary solution'.'
Sound familiar?
That's right, what we have here are three tales featuring a decadent Sherlock Holmes who takes cannabis instead of cocaine, plays the organ instead of the violin, and lives in a dilapidated abbey surrounded by exotic arcana, such as an Egyptian mummy.
'The Race of Orven' is an ancestral mystery involving fathers and sons, a preposterous story. 'The Stone of the Edmundsbury Monks' contained the hare-brained narrative of a reclusive aristocrat holed up with his sinister oriental servant and was almost certainly inspired by but can't holds candle to The Moonstone.
'The S.S.' was more than just silly, it was also morally dubious. An epidemic of suicides occur across Europe, in each instance a honey-scented papyrus containing a cypher is found under the tongue. Zaleski breaks the ridiculous code and uncovers a murderous cult with a sickeningly Spartan philosophy, one he is sympathetic to.
Shiel is the proud author of one of the worst books I have ever read. Any fan of Sherlock Holmes can find something to like here though. Pity the prose is both verbose and insensible, as though Shiel wrote by a process of spouting drivel and then tarting it up with a thesaurus.
Fortunately my man Holmes never spoke like this:
"If you collected in a promiscuous way a few millions of modern Englishmen and slew them all simultaneously, what, think you, would be the effect from the point of view of the State? The effect, I conceive, would be indefinitely small, wonderfully transitory; there would, of course, be a momentary lacuna in the boiling surge: yet the womb of humanity is full of sap, and uberant; Ocean-tide, wooed of that Ilithyia whose breasts are many, would flow on, and the void would soon be filled."
I think Shiel was away with the fairies, not Conan Doyle.
Sound familiar?
That's right, what we have here are three tales featuring a decadent Sherlock Holmes who takes cannabis instead of cocaine, plays the organ instead of the violin, and lives in a dilapidated abbey surrounded by exotic arcana, such as an Egyptian mummy.
'The Race of Orven' is an ancestral mystery involving fathers and sons, a preposterous story. 'The Stone of the Edmundsbury Monks' contained the hare-brained narrative of a reclusive aristocrat holed up with his sinister oriental servant and was almost certainly inspired by but can't holds candle to The Moonstone.
'The S.S.' was more than just silly, it was also morally dubious. An epidemic of suicides occur across Europe, in each instance a honey-scented papyrus containing a cypher is found under the tongue. Zaleski breaks the ridiculous code and uncovers a murderous cult with a sickeningly Spartan philosophy, one he is sympathetic to.
Shiel is the proud author of one of the worst books I have ever read. Any fan of Sherlock Holmes can find something to like here though. Pity the prose is both verbose and insensible, as though Shiel wrote by a process of spouting drivel and then tarting it up with a thesaurus.
Fortunately my man Holmes never spoke like this:
"If you collected in a promiscuous way a few millions of modern Englishmen and slew them all simultaneously, what, think you, would be the effect from the point of view of the State? The effect, I conceive, would be indefinitely small, wonderfully transitory; there would, of course, be a momentary lacuna in the boiling surge: yet the womb of humanity is full of sap, and uberant; Ocean-tide, wooed of that Ilithyia whose breasts are many, would flow on, and the void would soon be filled."
I think Shiel was away with the fairies, not Conan Doyle.
June 11, 2017
Um. Well.
I initially read "The S. S." (no, not the one you're thinking of) in "101 Years of Entertainment", the Ellery Queen collection of mysteries from 1841 to 1941 sometime in the 1970's-- highly recommended, by the way -- as my introduction to Prince Zaleski. It was improbable but intriguing at the time.
A reread now, 40 years later, and Shiel's prejudices and assumptions are a lot more glaring than they were at the time. The prose is well beyond purple and ultraviolet into the long-wave gamma; it is full of obscure Greek classical references and antique words. I suppose this was meant to be erudite, but it mostly comes off as mannered now.
I did find myself skipping through the long swaths of exposition -- Shiel is not a man afraid of a multi-page paragraph -- but the setup of the stories is quite creative and definitely capable of providing a frisson. Unfortunately the logic of the solutions is either wildly speculative or contrived, and in some cases based on folklore rather than reality, which tends to ruin the impact of the stories.
As an artifact of its time, it was certainly interesting to read, but it's not a book I'll keep on my virtual bookshelf.
I initially read "The S. S." (no, not the one you're thinking of) in "101 Years of Entertainment", the Ellery Queen collection of mysteries from 1841 to 1941 sometime in the 1970's-- highly recommended, by the way -- as my introduction to Prince Zaleski. It was improbable but intriguing at the time.
A reread now, 40 years later, and Shiel's prejudices and assumptions are a lot more glaring than they were at the time. The prose is well beyond purple and ultraviolet into the long-wave gamma; it is full of obscure Greek classical references and antique words. I suppose this was meant to be erudite, but it mostly comes off as mannered now.
I did find myself skipping through the long swaths of exposition -- Shiel is not a man afraid of a multi-page paragraph -- but the setup of the stories is quite creative and definitely capable of providing a frisson. Unfortunately the logic of the solutions is either wildly speculative or contrived, and in some cases based on folklore rather than reality, which tends to ruin the impact of the stories.
As an artifact of its time, it was certainly interesting to read, but it's not a book I'll keep on my virtual bookshelf.
January 19, 2020
No one writes like Shiel: the prose is so over-saturated with figurative language and bombast that it threatens to collapse on itself, and the solutions to the proposed mysteries in these stories are delightfully preposterous. I'm not sure why Shiel was never embraced by the Oulipians, but he is certainly their unacknowledged forebear
August 28, 2022
Worst book I've read in a while. The writing is florid, the "detection" barely makes any sense, and the protagonist goes on a tirade about how awful it is that medicine heals people when nature should be allowed to kill them.
Project Gutenberg's epub edition is corrupt, but it isn't worth fixing. Worth skipping!
Project Gutenberg's epub edition is corrupt, but it isn't worth fixing. Worth skipping!
December 11, 2021
Three decadent/gothic tales of mystery explained by Prince Zaleski.
The Race of Orven ⭐⭐⭐
The Stone of the Edmundsbury Monks ⭐⭐⭐
The S.S. ⭐⭐⭐
The Race of Orven ⭐⭐⭐
The Stone of the Edmundsbury Monks ⭐⭐⭐
The S.S. ⭐⭐⭐
January 3, 2022
Algo sobre este libro y sobre la febrícula holmesiana:
https://diariosoluble.blogspot.com/20...
https://diariosoluble.blogspot.com/20...
November 6, 2015
Incredible opening paragraph, and it goes a bit downhill from there. Zaleski is wonderful as a model for a detective though – indolent, weed-smoking, surrounded by stuffed exotic animals, with the ability to solve any mystery from a reclining position on his chaise. It's just a pity Shiel decided he needed to take him outside the weird, crumbling castle in which begins the book... As soon as he steps outside he becomes much like Sherlock Holmes, albeit one who's been curled up with a bong for a few hours rather than on a frantic all-night coke & violin binge.
August 5, 2024
Zaleski è un investigatore a metà strada tra Holmes e Dupin, con straordinarie capacità deduttive, strane preveggenze (vedi terzo racconto), influenze esoteriche.
Protagonista dei tre racconti di questo volume, che dal giallo scivolano facilmente nel weird, scritti in uno stile modernissimo, solo a tratti un po' troppo prolisso.
Ah... il Watson di Zaleski è nientemeno che lo stesso autore, MP Shiel.
Da riscoprire.
Protagonista dei tre racconti di questo volume, che dal giallo scivolano facilmente nel weird, scritti in uno stile modernissimo, solo a tratti un po' troppo prolisso.
Ah... il Watson di Zaleski è nientemeno che lo stesso autore, MP Shiel.
Da riscoprire.
Read
April 19, 2022Tres cuentos sobre casos criminales enigmáticos y tres brillantes resoluciones.
Gracias a sus inmensos conocimientos y a su inteligencia deductiva, el príncipe Zaleski aborda estos misterios desde el palacio decadente en el que se halla retirado.
Una joya de la literatura detectivesca.
Gracias a sus inmensos conocimientos y a su inteligencia deductiva, el príncipe Zaleski aborda estos misterios desde el palacio decadente en el que se halla retirado.
Una joya de la literatura detectivesca.
June 5, 2022
Interesante manera de resolver misterios. El príncipe Zaleski es un detective aficionado que resuelve misterios desde la calidez de su casa, sólo por lo que le leen o le cuentan sobre los hechos ocurridos... una forma original escribir novela negra.
August 25, 2011
Decadent crime fiction, which sounds like a weird combination but it works. Superb.
December 14, 2015
Probably too generous, but I was happy to find a nice edition cheaply.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews