While it has become something of a cliché for crime writers to enlist real-life historical figures as unlikely avant la lettre sleuths — everyone from Oscar Wilde to Queen Victoria — there are some such ventures which rise above the norm. And as the writer Ross Davies eloquently points out in The Johnsonian Detections of Lillian de la Torre (in Six Essays on Samuel Johnson) de la Torre was undoubtedly in the upper echelons of such ventures. As Davies puts it: ‘Fans of Samuel Johnson, James Boswell and detective fiction can thank the 20th-century American writer and academic Lillian de la Torre for clearing her desk to make way for a series of donnish yet sprightly excursions into 18th-century crime. Lillian reincarnated Samuel Johnson as a version of Sherlock Holmes in short stories that recast Boswell in the Dr Watson role.’ Davis makes a persuasive case for a fresh look at these neglected pieces and – at the same time – reminds us (or for that matter introduced us to) Lillian de la Torre. Born in New York in 1902, she was a devotee of detective stories courtesy of her father’s library before finally settling on providing her own contribution to the genre. Davies shows us Lillian de la Torre’s divertissements should clearly be on the radar of any serious student of the detective form.
Six Essays on Samuel Johnson is published by Caret Press
