Lexington Beats Britain
The Pen Mightier Than the Musket
The recent discovery of Lexington’s Edgar Allan Poe Award winner John McAleer’s first known mystery adventure, featuring London-based detective Henry von Stray, has been hailed as “One of the most fascinating and intriguing developments in the [mystery] genre’s history.” Indeed von Stray’s discovery 80 years after his creation in 1937, is like something out of a Sherlock Holmes mystery. For many of those lost years the hand-written manuscript hid in plain sight right here in Lexington. Then, 20 years after McAleer’s death, his son Paul discovered the manuscript while organizing his father’s library.
McAleer grew up in North Cambridge. After graduating from Harvard University with a Doctorate in English Literature, he moved to Lexington in 1959 with is wife Ruth where they lived until their deaths in 2003. McAleer taught at Boston College for more than half a century. An eclectic scholar, he taught various courses on Jane Austen, Patrick O’Brian, and Thoreau. He also taught crime fiction and published numerous scholarly works on the subject.
In 1978, when McAleer’s Rex Stout: A Biography won over British author Agatha Christie’s autobiography for the Edgar Award (the most prestigious award in the entire mystery genre), he defeated the best-selling author of all time. “It’s incredible when you think about it,” Paul told the Hometown Historians, “here is young John McAleer in 1937, beginning his literary career, when Christie was publishing some of her best work. He idolized her. Then, forty years later he wins the Edgar Award over her autobiography, thus defeating the ‘Queen of Crime’ and certainly one of the 20th-century’s most interesting figures.”
A fine literary legacy in its own right! However, the recent discovery also makes von Stray, in all probability, the last of the great master detectives such as Hercule Poirot, Nero Wolfe, Miss Marple, or Charlie Chan, to emerge from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction (a literary period existing predominately during the 1920s and 1930s—the height of Christie’s fame).
Paul did a little sleuthing on his own and unearthed a few clues about the elusive detective von Stray and his able collaborator in the detection of crime—affable beetle expert Professor John Dilpate. In his father’s 1937 diary, an August 4th entry reveals how the senior McAleer wrote at least three von Stray mysteries. A search for the remaining two stories of the original series remains afoot.
McAleer’s son Andrew, also a novelist, taught classic crime fiction at Boston College and is continuing the von Stray mystery series. His first von Stray story The Singular Case of the Bandaged Bobby appears in Mystery Magazine and was later selected for the Best Private Eye Stories of 2025 (Fall release, Level Best Books).
The first full-book collection of von Stray stories A Casebook of Crime was released this February. The volume also features his father’s only known surviving von Stray mystery. Andrew’s publisher noted in a recent announcement, “[Andrew] seamlessly picks up where the elder McAleer left off, brilliantly and authentically capturing—and not without a touch of light humor—von Stray’s thrilling adventures and unique methods of crime detection through 1920s England. So authentic in fact, mystery lovers will virtually travel back in time to a bygone era where they will genuinely feel as if they’re enjoying timeless, never-before-seen century-old classic puzzle whodunits.”
Hours after its release, A Casebook of Crime became an Amazon bestseller surpassing a collection of short stories written by none other than—Dame Agatha Christie!
The Hometown Historians are local historians dedicated to preserving unique historical events, monuments, and sites before they slip from the pages of history.
ABOUT THE HOMETOWN HISTORIANS
The Hometown Historians are local historians dedicated to preserving unique historical events, monuments, sites, and people before they slip from the pages of history.
Andrew McAleer served as a U.S. Army Historian and is the author of the Henry von Stray historical mysteries. Von Stray’s latest exciting exploits appear in the newly released: A Casebook of Crime: Thrilling Adventures of Suspense from the Golden Age of Mystery.
William Kyle Auterio volunteers for the Lexington Historical Society as a greeter.
Signed copies of A Casebook of Crime available at the Lexington Barbershop.