The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont (1906) by Robert Barr

Robert Barr's unique creation Eugene Valmot, delightfully pompous French detective (remember Poirot), is more than just a spoof of Sharlock Holmes. Published in 1906, this short story collection surely makes fun of the rules of detective story genre, and moreover, his stories can stand on their own, offering fairly reasonable and imaginative mysteries presented in various styles. Oxford Popular Fiction edition gives you eight short stories featuring Valmont and his amusing adventures, plus two rare pastiches of Holmes. The first of the two pastiches is named 'The Adventure of Sherlaw Kombs' -- well, the title tells you all -- which is a fairly funny tale, while the other one deals with a case in which Conan Doyle is blackmailed by Holmes himself (oh, so Holmes was a real person after all.) I do not introduce these eight Valmont stories in detail, but I can tell that they are quite amusing in the following two ways. First, Robert Barr, born in Scotland then moving to Canada, is in a good position to write about the Englishness from outside. He (or Valmont, narrator) playfully writes satire about the way of life and thinking in England, especially the police activities, and the results are often amusing and even incisive. French police can search the house while the owner is away from there, he says (yes, that's about the story of Poe). But here in England, to his great dismay, never, making his investigation all the more difficult. The other merit is to enjoy it book's spoof on crime fiction genre, which is done with a surprisingly subtle touch. The title like 'The Absent-Minded Coterie' might sound vulgar at first -- of course, that's named with Conan Doyle's one famous short story about people with red hair in mind. Valmont's tongue-in-cheek story, however, does not rely on this one-joke idea. It is unpredictable, leading the reader from a case of forged silver coins to a very original (but improbable maybe) crime, which the great detective's 'absent-minded theory' reveals. Compared with 'The Thinking Machine' or other rivals of Holmes, Valmont has become an obscure figure, I am afraid. But his character has definite voice of his own, and those stories, not just spoof and satire of Doyle and other crime stories, are far more entertaining, imaginative, and memorable than you might expect.