| Uncle Abner | |
| First: | "The Angel of the Lord" |
| Creator: | Melville Davisson Post |
| Gender: | Male |
| Family: | Martin (nephew) |
| Nationality: | American |
Uncle Abner is a fictional character and the protagonist of a series of mystery stories by mystery author Melville Davisson Post. The Abner stories are considered benchmarks of the locked room mystery, and, being set in the 1840s, are among the earlier examples of the historical mystery sub-genre.
Uncle Abner is Post's best-known literary creation, the character, one of six detectives created by Post,[1] having appeared in 22 stories that were serialized in American magazines (primarily The Saturday Evening Post) between 1911 and 1928. The first tale, "The Angel of the Lord", is perhaps the very first work in the historical mystery genre. Uncle Abner solved the mysteries that confronted him in a backwoods West Virginia community, immediately prior to the American Civil War and before the infant nation had any proper police system. He had two great attributes for his self-imposed task: a profound knowledge of and love for the Bible, and a keen observation of human actions. One example of Uncle Abner's keen deductive skills is his showing a deaf man had not written a document, because a word in it was phonetically misspelled.[2]
Physically, Abner is described as having a large, powerful build, with craggy features, and a "grizzled" beard. His clothing is described as "plain and somber". Throughout the stories he is accompanied by his young nephew Martin, who narrates the adventures, and aided by Justice of the Peace, Squire Randolph.
Ellery Queen would later call the stories "an out-of-this-world target for future detective-story writers." In his 1924 book of literary criticism Cargoes for Crusoes, Grant Overton called the publication of Post's "The Doomdorf Mystery" a "major literary event", and in Murder for Pleasure (1941), Howard Haycraft called Uncle Abner "the greatest American contribution" to the list of fictional detectives after Edgar Allan Poe's C. Auguste Dupin.[2] After Post's death, more stories about Abner were written (at the request of the Melville Davisson Post estate) by the retired American research chemist, John F. Suter (1914–1996).
In 1942, The Age of Miracles was adapted for the radio anthology series Murder Clinic. A. Winfield Hoeny played Abner.[3] In 1945, Signature, a stage adaptation by Elizabeth McFadden of an Abner short story, Naboth's Vineyard, lasted only two performances. Abner was played by Judson Laire.[4]