A year ago, Coachwhip
republished the entire Inspector Norton Kane series by "Roger
Scarlett," a shared penname of Dorothy Blair and Evelyn Page,
who had the misfortune of being the victim of "the most glaring
piece of plagiarism ever to exist" when the pseudonymous "Don
Basil" copied The
Back Bay Murders (1930) almost word for word – shamelessly
published it as his own under the title Cat and Feather
(1931). Our resident genre historian, Curt
Evans, wrote a great piece on this remarkable
case of plagiarism.
Evans opened his blog-post
with the statement that "plagiarism can be subtle or it can be
blatant." Sometimes it can be "jaw-droppingly,
eye-poppingly blatant." Well, I came across a recent example
that's almost as brazen and shameless as Basil's Cat and Feather.
In my never-ending quest
to satisfy my crippling impossible crime addiction, I stumbled across
the promisingly titled The
Locked Study Murder (2017), a self-published novel, written
(or so I thought) by Stephen M. Arleaux – which immediately had my
interest. My fellow locked room fanboy, "JJ" of The
Invisible Event, has showed us in his ongoing series "Adventures
in Self-Publishing" that this corner of the publishing industry
has some hidden gems. So I began looking into this particular title
and writer when a feeling of deja-vu came over me.
The plot-description of
The Locked Study Murder sounded awfully familiar and it took
me a couple of minutes to realize the premise of the book was very
similar to the setup of A.A. Milne's The
Red House Mystery (1922).
However, this similarity
could have just been a coincidence or Arleaux had read The Red House
Mystery and thought he could wring a better detective story from
Milne's premise. I didn't immediately assume the worst, but the
feeling of deju-vu didn't subside when I started reading an
excerpt of the first chapter. So I opened a second tab and went to
Project Gutenberg to compare
the two chapters, which showed that this was not merely a coincidence
or an homage to Milne – because the chapters were nearly identical! Only some
of the names were changed!
Here's a brief sample from
the first chapter of The Locked Study Murder:
Now compare that excerpt with the opening lines from The Red House Mystery:"In the drowsy heat of the summer afternoon the Townsend House was taking its siesta. There was a lazy murmur of bees in the flowerborders, a gentle cooing of pigeons in the tops of the elms. From distant lawns came the whir of a mowingmachine, that most restful of all country sounds; making ease the sweeter in that it is taken while others are working."
"In the drowsy heat of the summer afternoon the Red House was taking its siesta. There was a lazy murmur of bees in the flower-borders, a gentle cooing of pigeons in the tops of the elms. From distant lawns came the whir of a mowing-machine, that most restful of all country sounds; making ease the sweeter in that it is taken while others are working."
The Red House Mystery
is in the public domain and this is not, strictly speaking, illegal,
but it isn't fair nor is it very honest and just a cheap way to make a buck under false
pretenses. Even more
annoyingly, Arleaux wrote on the copy-right page that the story is "As
Suggested by A.A. Milne," which really rubbed me the wrong way.
This is nothing more than copy-paste job with a name change. A story
suggested by Milne would have been an originally written detective novel
based on the unrecorded case he had hinted at at the end of The Red
House Mystery.
This is not the only time
Arleaux has passed off a book in the public domain as his own work.
The
Locked Room Murders (2017) is a word for word copy of
Wadsworth Camp's The
Abandoned Room (1917) and he didn't even change the names of
the characters in that one! Obviously, he does this to make a quick,
easy buck, because Arleaux's copies are only available as paperback
editions that are sold for close to sixteen bucks a copy when you can read the originals for free. So let the
reader be warned!
I hastily slapped together this unplanned blog-post on the spot, because I simply had to share this with all of you, but normal programming will resume tomorrow with a regular review of a short story collection by Edward D. Hoch. So stay tuned!
How dreadful. Many thanks for the warning.
ReplyDeleteSome self-published gems that I discovered are the books by "Clara Benson", a modern author writing as if she were a Golden Age author. For the first 10 books she maintained the cover story, then she came clean. I have enjoyed her books, both the Angela Marchmont and Freddy series.
So she successfully pawned herself off as a Golden Age mystery writer? I'll have to look into her then. Thanks for the recommendation, Anon!
DeleteHoly hell, this is ridiculous -- to try it once might be considered ill-informed, but twice is lazy, stupid, ignorant, disrespectful, stupid, ignorant, and disrespectful. And lazy.
ReplyDeleteGood spot on your part, TC, and thanks for bringing this to our attention.
Twice? I looked around a bit and he did the same with a J.S. Fletcher and Phantomas novel. There's more! All public domain work. So he does nothing illegal, but it's not exactly honest.
DeleteI mean, you've not read The Abandoned Room and could have been suckered into buying The Locked Room Murders. And, overlooking the copy-right page, could potentially have given it a positive review. Which could have resulted in others buying the book. A book, let me remind you, you can only get as a 16 buck paperback edition that you can get the original, unaltered text of on the internet from free. Or as a dirt cheap ebook edition.
At least, he didn't also sell them in an expensive, hardback edition.
That is amazingly scummy, especially considering that price! Can you report him? Or at least leave an Amazon review warning people about it?
ReplyDelete---The Dark One
I don't know if Amazon would do anything about it, because, as said before, he does it with public domain works. You probably can't do much about it, legally, but feel free to leave a warning in the review section. You can link to this blog-post, if you want to.
DeleteI have checked and find that all his books (about 80) are plagiarisms! There is even an Agatha Christie novel plagiarised: The Cape Arundel Murder (plagiarism of The Mysterious Affair At Styles).
ReplyDeleteI didn't check every single title, but not surprised you were unable to find as much as an original short story by him.
DeleteIncidentally, in The Cape Arundel Murder, the names have all been changed. Hastings(narrator) has been changed to Smyth and Poirot to Arleaux !
ReplyDeleteYes, I saw The Cape Arundel Murder and he actually did some editing work on that one. Not only did he change the names, but relocated the story to post-WWII Maine. And why not? The difference between England and New England is only one word, right? ;)
DeleteChanging Poirot into Arleaux is just cringy.
I think this Arleaux chap should be prosecuted. He shouldn't profit by the works of other writers, by copying their texts and (with a little editing) release them as if they are his own. It's blatant thievery! Writing is hard work.
ReplyDeleteArchons of Athens! This even lured Books from the shadows to comment!
DeleteI can imagine why this would piss you off to no end, because I know the work you have put into your books and the hurdles you had to overcome. I'm going to repeat myself here again, but public domain work is pretty much fair game and even Amazon might not be able to do anything about it.
You might have a small change with Agatha Christie's estate, because most of her books/series/characters are still copyrighted, but his edits of The Mysterious Affair at Styles probably gives him an out because it's transformative. This would have been a different story had he not changed Poirot's name into Arleaux.
According to Dutch law what he's doing is illegal, as books are copyright protected when the author hasn't been dead for at least seventy years. In Agatha Christie's case, she died 42 years ago. As his books are also available through Dutch webstores (Bol.com), Stephan M. Arleaux is definitely in violation of Dutch law. Still, what he does is still morally rejectable.
DeleteDoesn't Dutch law only apply to books published in this country? Like the Dutch translations. The Mysterious Affair at Styles is only in the public domain in the US. So he's off the hook there, but the UK might be a different story. Someone who knows more about copy-right law should look into this.
DeleteI checked and every single one of his books all of then are plagiarized. I found a copy of Mr Polton Explains by R Austin Freeman renamed "The Doppelganger". The preview pages are 100% word for word. He didn't even bother changing the character names in that one. Though he tries to change the setting to 1990 and adds a cut and pasted entry from Wikipedia on the use of DNA in police work.
ReplyDeleteI noticed also that he started adding "disclaimers" on the Copyright page (ho, ho, ho) that say, for example, "as suggested by a story by Emma Orczy" for the numerous Scarlet Pimpernel novels he ripped off and called The Adventures of Bleue Flamme or some such nonsense. He does the same for his version of Quo Vadis and two novels by William LeQueux.
You are utterly mistaken in thinking that books in the public domain are free from the crime of plagiarism. Stealing someone else's words and passing them off as your own is a crime and has nothing to do with copyright. It's an ethical crime first and foremost, and no publisher would or should condone it. And no retailer should carry such books allowing someone to profit from them. That you keep mentioning that it's not illegal really bothers me. The ethics surrounding plagiarism takes precedence here. The sociopathic nature of the plagiarist who has no conscience and is pretending that someone else's work is his own is, as MPO says above, morally objectionable. In the case of plagiarism the ethics of stealing ideas and written work are tantamount to the written laws concerning copyright.
Sorry for the late response, but I honestly believed works in the public domain were fair game, because famous characters in the public domain (Sherlock Holmes and Dracula) can be freely used by everyone. It goes without saying I agree plagiarism is morally objectionable and completely indefensible, but had no idea copyright laws still applied to public domain work.
Delete