THE MASTER OF MYSTERIES

Two dozen tales first collected in 1912 that, whatever their strengths and weaknesses, are nothing like any other detective stories you’ll read this year.

Astro the Seer is not exactly a detective; he’s an Egyptian palm reader and psychic who has a working relationship with the NYPD and a pre-amatory relationship with his blond assistant, Valeska Wynne. Whatever his credentials, he’s consulted by men whose wives have disappeared, parents whose children have been kidnapped, society ladies whose jewels have been stolen, and occasionally the police themselves. But this description doesn’t begin to do justice to the fantastic variety of his cases. Astro is called on to track down a ghost who stalks an old house, to explain a series of strange gifts sent anonymously to a young woman, and to investigate the appearance of a mysterious doppelgänger and the fate of a pair of babies switched at birth. More often than not, the florid premises of these stories are more ingenious than their conclusions, as in “The Lady in Taupe,” which presents an elaborate scheme to steal the manuscript of a playwright’s first novel, and “Mrs. Stellery’s Letters,” which asks who’s been sending love letters to a married woman. From time to time, however, humorist Burgess (1866-1951) either produces an expertly straightforward whodunit like “The Middlebury Murder,” which offers three suspects in the shooting of an architect in his office, or goes full-bore crazy, as in “Vengeance of the Pi Rho Nu,” in which a bridegroom unaccountably vanishes the day before his wedding. Editor Leslie S. Klinger supplies an introduction, a biography, and study questions and reprints Burgess’ own very strange biography of his hero.

Unapologetic exotica to fuel a stroll down Memory Lane.