The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories (2018) edited by Martin Edwards

The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories (2018) is the third, wintry-themed anthology published in the British Library Crime Classics series, edited by Martin Edwards, collecting eleven festive stories about "unexplained disturbances in the fresh snow" and "the darkness that lurks beneath the sparkling decorations" – wrapped and presented to the reader like "a seasonal assortment box." This collection presents a wide variety of merry mayhem from the pens of some very well-known mystery writers to a few names who have only recently been rediscovered. But none of the stories have been, what you could call, anthologized to death. So let's pig on this suspicious looking, crime sprinkled Christmas pudding, shall we? Hmm, smells like bitter almonds! 

The collections opens with Baroness Orczy's "A Christmas Tragedy," originally published in the December, 1909, issue of Cassell's Magazine, which has a Christmas Eve party keeping an ear out for "the sound of a cart being driven at unusual speed." A sound that has lately become associated with a series of "dastardly outrages against innocent animals" in the neighborhood of Clevere Hall. So everyone is very keen to put a stop to these cattle-maiming outrages and the cart is heard that night, but this time it was followed by a terrible cry, "Murder! Help! Help!" Major Ceely, host of the party, is found on the garden steps with a knife wound between his shoulder blades. The local police gladly accepts the assistance of Lady Molly, of Scotland Yard, whose success or failure will decide the fate of an innocent man. Not a bad story for the time, but not one of my personal favorites. 

Selwyn Jepson's "By the Sword" first appeared in the December, 1930, issue of Cassell's Magazine and has claimed a place among my favorite seasonal mysteries. Alfred Caithness is spending Christmas with his cousin, Judge Herbert Caithness, who has an idyllic home life with a wife, Barbara, who's twenty-eight years his junior and a five-year-old son, Robert – who loves playing with his toy soldiers. So the perfect setting for an old-fashioned Christmas party, but Alfred has reasons to be more than a little envious of his cousin. He has loved Barbara ever since attending their wedding and sorely needs the kind of money Herbert has aplenty, which is why he decides his cousin has to go when he denies him another loan. So, inspired by the family legend saying that "a Caithness always dies by the sword," Alfred begins to plot the perfect murder with all the evidence pointing to an outsider. However, the entire universe, or the Ghosts of Christmas, appear to be against him as even the best-laid plans can go awry. A fantastic inverted mystery from the hoist-on-their-petards category.

John Pringle is perhaps best remembered today by his principle pseudonym, "Gerald Verner," who prolifically produced pulp-style detective and thriller novels during his lifetime. "The Christmas Card Crime," published as by “Donald Stuart,” originally appeared in the December, 1934, publication of Detective Weekly (No. 96). Trevor Lowe, a well-known dramatist and amateur detective, who you might remember from my reviews of Terror Tower (1935) and The Clue of the Green Candle (1938) is en route with his secretary Arnold White and Detective Inspector Shadgold to spend Christmas with a friend in a small Cornish village, but their train becomes stranded when the heavy snowfall blocks the line. So they have to walk back to the previous station along with seven other passengers, six men and a woman, but they have to go from the empty station to an old, gloomy inn of ill-repute. During the night, two people are murdered in short succession with the thick, undisturbed carpet of snow indicating "no one came from outside and no one has left from within." The only real clue Lowe has to work with is a torn Christmas card. A good and fun piece of Christmas pulp, but more memorable for its mise-en-scène than its plot. However, I have to give props for turning the last words of the second victim in a kind of dying message sort of pointing to the murderer.

The next two stories have been previously reviewed on this blog, here and here, but, needless to say, Carter Dickson's "Blind Man's Hood" (1937) and Ronald A. Knox's "The Motive" (1937) can be counted among the best stories in the collection. Both come highly recommended! 

Francis Durbridge's "Paul Temple's White Christmas" first appeared in Radio Times on December 20, 1946, but reads more like vignette than a proper short-short story. Paul Temple's dream of a white Christmas in Switzerland is granted when he's asked to go there to identify the main suspect in that Luxembourg counterfeit business he had help to smash. So not much to say about this one with only half a dozen pages and a razor thin plot. 

Cyril Hare's "Sister Bessie or Your Old Leech" was originally published in the Evening Standard on December 23, 1949, which is another one of my personal favorites from this collection. Timothy Trent was brought up by his step family, the Grigsons, but Timothy was the only "one of that clinging, grasping clan" who "got on in the world" and made money – someone from that family has been annually blackmailing him. Every year, around Christmas time, he receives a payment notice signed by "From your old Leech." Timothy was actually surprised by the latest demand, because he assumed he had gotten rid of Leech last February. But here he was again. Or was it a she? Timothy goes to the Grigson family party determined to smoke out the blackmailer, but, once again, even the best-laid plans can go awry and here it comes with a particular dark, poisonous sting in the tail. An excellent crime story demonstrating why Hare was admired by both his contemporary brethren and modern crime writers like P.D. James and Martin Edwards. 

E.C.R. Lorac's "A Bit of Wire-Pulling" originally appeared under the title "Death at the Bridge Table" in the Evening Standard on October 11, 1950, which is another short-short. Inspector Lang, the old C.I.D. man, tells the story of the time he had to protect an important industrialist, Sir Charles Leighton, who received threatening letters promising he will be dead before the old year's out. So he accompanies him, incognito, to a New Year's Eve bridge party where's shot to death in front of Lang's eyes and the murderer apparently managed to escape. However, the sharp-eyed detective quickly begins to pick up the bits and pieces that tell an entirely different story. More importantly, he trusts the men he has personally trained. Lorac was somewhat of a female John Rhode, as she was very keen on technical trickery, but you can't help but feel the murderer was doomed from the start by employing such a ballsy method. A pretty decent short-short. Not especially memorable, but not bad either. 

John Bude's "Pattern of Revenge," another short-short, was first published in The London Mystery Magazine (No. 21) in 1954 and surprisingly turned out to be an impossible crime story set in Norway. The story is a retrospective of a rivalry between two men, Thord Jensen and Olaf Kinck, who vy for the attention of a beautiful woman, Karen Garborg, but one morning she found dead on the doorstep of her cottage – stabbed through the heart. There was "only one set of tracks in the fresh-fallen snow," single footprints alternating with deep pock-marks, "characteristic of the imprint left by a wooden leg." Olaf has a wooden leg and his fingerprints were on the knife. So he was sentenced to life imprisonment, but a deathbed confession shed new light on the murder and attempts to right a wrong. A very well done short-short and a truly pleasant surprise to come across this unusual take on the footprints-in-the-snow impossible crime. 

John Bingham's "Crime at Lark Cottage" was originally published in the 1954 Christmas edition of The Illustrated London News and brings a slice of domestic suspense to the family Christmas table. John Bradley gets lost on a dark, snowy evening while his car is on the verge of breaking down and ends up at a lonely cottage. There he finds a woman with her small daughter and asks to use the phone, but is offered to stay the night as there's not garage around who would come out to the cottage at that time of night in foul weather. But she appears to be frightened. And it looks like someone is prowling around the cottage. A very well done piece of crime fiction that would have served perfectly as a radio-play for Suspense.

The last story to round out this seasonal anthology is Julian Symons' "'Twix the Cup and Lip," but nothing he wrote interests me and skipped it. That brings me to the end of this collection.

So, on a whole, The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories is a splendidly balanced anthology with Dickson, Hare, Jepson, Knox and Stuart delivering the standout stories of the collection with the other entries being a little too short or dated to leave an indelible impression on the reader. But not a single real dud or over anthologized story to be found. Two things that tend to be obligatory for these types of short story collections. Definitely recommended for those cold, shortening days of December.

A Question of Tempo

"I want to seize fate by the throat."

- Ludwig van Beethoven 

Alfred A.G. Clarke is primarily remembered under his chosen alias, namely "Cyril Hare," which appeared on the cover of several works of popular detective-fiction, but the often overlooked legal career of the author functioned as an obvious repository of inspiration for those stories – having served as both a barrister and a judge.

There are nine novels and a volume of short stories, published over a span of three decades, beginning with Tenant for Death (1937), which introduced Inspector Mallett.

A second series-characters is introduced in Tragedy at Law (1942): a disillusioned barrister, named Francis Pettigrew, who prefers not to clad himself in the mantle of Sherlock Holmes. Luckily for the reader, "Cabot Cove-syndrome" wasn't a diagnosable condition in Pettigrew's days. So he does not have much sway in the matter.

There is, however, an upheaval in the personal life of Pettigrew in the opening of Hare's sixth mystery novel, When the Wind Blows (1949), having transitioned from a middle-aged bachelor to a married man and settled down to "a life of domesticity in the country" – which include being the honorary treasurer to the Markshire Orchestral Society.

It had begun fairly innocently. Pettigrew was called in as a consultant, of sort, to help settle an absurd dispute, but reluctantly became fully involved as a prelude to murder began to softly play in the background.

The first quarter of the plot consists primarily of planning, compiling and squabbling over the content of a concert programme for their annual performance at City Hall, which is done in Hare's elegant, literate style and keen eye for characterization.

You're almost lulled into believing you're actually reading a "novel of character," instead of a detective story, but for an altercation between the solo violinist, Lucy Carless, and a Polish clarinetist, Tadeusz Zbartorowski, which makes the latter bow-out and leaving them to find a last-minute replacement. A substitute is found and the concert does take place, but never reaches its final crescendo. The concert is prematurely cancelled when they stumble across the strangled remains of Lucy Carless backstage!

The task of snarling the responsible party in the death of the solo violinist is basically divided between two "teams" of detectives.

The U.S. title of When the Wind Blows

First of all, there's Detective-Inspector Trimble of the City Division of the Markshire County Constabulary, a young policeman who's "well aware that he had yet to prove himself," accompanied "by an elderly, skeptical sergeant of the old dispensation" named Tate – who are officially in charge of the investigation and they perform most of the legwork. However, Francis Pettigrew is reposed in an armchair and is reluctant "to be drawn into the inquiry," despite having "stumbled on something that had helped to uncover a crime" in the past, but finds himself cattle-probed into action by Chief-Constable MacWilliam.

I really enjoyed the interaction between those two and they're reportedly reunited in That Yew Tree's Shade (1954), but back to the book at hand.

The chapters in which the investigation is being discussed between Chief-Constable MacWilliam and Pettigrew or Trimble show the simplistic complexity of the case, because there aren't any sub-plots to distract from the main problem – which includes such perplexities as an unknown substitute clarinetist taking the place of first substitute during the concert. Who was stranded in a different town by an unknown driver in a stolen car. It's obvious someone slapped together an alibi, but how it was pulled off and by who is different question altogether.

It makes for a trim, streamlined plot with barely an ounce of fat on the story. However, When the Wind Blows suffers from a particular kind of weakness that appears to be a hereditary trait in Hare's work, which is basically grossly overestimating the intelligence of his readers – as the motivation in his books usually hinge on obscure points of law, history or literature. You basically have to be a polymath to solve those aspects of the books, but it's hard not to admire a writing who can tie-together Mozart's Prague Symphony, Charles Dicksens' David Copperfield (1850), a personal specialty of Henry VIII and a question of tempo.

So, all in all, I wouldn't place When the Wind Blows in the same league as Hare classics, such as Suicide Excepted (1939) and An English Murder (1951), but there was a definite effort made to place it there and its author sure came close in doing so.

Finally, in my review of Cold Blood (1952) by Leo Bruce, I commented on the gloomy, post-War atmosphere of the book and "D for Doom" responded as follow: "They still had rationing until 1954" and "the Labor Party wanted rationing to continue forever," which would mean the "future was going to be gray and bleak and dull."

Coincidently, I came across a couple of interesting lines in When the Wind Blows pertaining to these post-war rationings, which I had to share coming so close after reading Cold Blood.

Upon visiting Pettigrew, MacWilliam remarks, "in these days of shortages and rationing, it should be considered perfectly proper for guests to bring with them morsels of tea and sugar and disgusting little packets of margarine for the benefit of their hosts." There's a report on "the fatal stockings" that "had been destined to choke the life out of Lucy Carless," but tracing their purchase proved completely impossible, because "the stocking-starved maids and matrons of Markhampton and the surrounding countryside" had "stampeded into the shop and cleared the place of the first fully-fashioned sheer, superfine nylons that had been seen in the city for many a long month."

Is it just a coincidence I came across these lines so soon after reading Cold Blood or did I always ignore this late-part of the British WWII mysteries? Anyhow, I'll probably back sooner than later with a new review and/or post.

Liquidation of a Businessman

"X. The unknown quantity, who may upset all our calculations. It's fatal to forgot him. Whenever you make a list of possible criminals, you are apt to put yourself in the blinkers and forget that anyone exists outside of your list. Always put in X, and keep a sharp look-out for him."

- Inspector Mallett (Tenant for Death, 1937)

"Cyril Hare" was the adopted pseudonym of Judge Alfred A.G. Clarke, who drew liberally from his education and professional background for his mystery novels. Clarke had studied law as well as history and was called to the Bar in 1924, where he worked as a barrister in the criminal courts, until the outbreak of World War II – during which he served as a judge's marshal. In 1950, Clarke became a judge and traveled the court circuit. A "gig" that was at the heart of what many still consider to be Hare's masterpiece, Tragedy at Law (1942), which I would recommend for the portrayal of the life of a Circuit Judge alone.

Tenant for Death (1937) was the first to appear under the Cyril Hare byline and plays on the motif of the shady financier that gained popularity in the years following the Wall Street Crash of 1929. In a way, Tenant for Death is a bit different from other Hare mysteries I have read, because the resolution wasn't a matter of law or hinged on a passage from history. There is, however, a clever piece of misdirection revealed in its conclusion and, while it's a dry read at times, the story displayed what we'd call today a social conscience – which translates in bits of social commentary and subtly showing the difference in lifestyles between the poor and rich.

Nevertheless, judging by the story's content, I doubt Hare's political sympathy was with the left. There's an amusing scene, in which a communist lorry driver picks up one of the characters (ex-jailbird), but when the driver finds out his passenger is wanted for questioning he dumps his comrade in the middle of nowhere. In the pouring rain. Leaving him with nothing more than the clothes on his back and an empty tin jug. Hare saw the social problems of his time, but a solution uttered by one of the other characters, on how it's good for young people to do Empire Building in Kenya instead of loitering in the Old Country, would be considered politically incorrect in today's world.

Anyhow, enough of the background noise in Tenant for Death and lets turn to the plot itself, which focuses on the business endeavors of Lionel Ballantine, the mystery man of financial world, who balanced his businesses between a dozen different companies – known as the "Twelve Apostles." Unfortunately, Ballantine's business model has stopped working and disappears before everything comes crashing down around him. Ballantine's escape, however, ended in a dingy, obscure place called Daylesford Gardens, South Kensington. Two estate agents checking the inventory of the house discover the strangled remains of Ballantine in the smoking room of the house. A newspaper saw the previous tenant, Mr. Collin James, enter the building with an unknown man, but left the place by himself.

Enter Inspector Mallett, whose unraveling of the case is a slow, meticulous yet satisfying process, but the downside is that it slackened the pace of the story considerably. On the other hand, Tenant of Death balances plot, detective work and characterization satisfactory and Hare allows the reader to drift on a treacherously slow tempo towards the final chapter – where he took me by surprise. And about the opening quote, I think Hare should've gone with The Unknown Quantity as book title. It fits the story better and does justice to the clever solution.

I should probably also reference Trent's Last Case (1913) by E.C. Bentley, which is an obvious comparison made before, but thought Tenant for Death shares some common ground with Nicholas Blake's There's Trouble Brewing (1937). Not just for their political tone, but also in the kind of (detective) problems they explore in different settings and explanations. And, interestingly enough, they were both published in the same year.  

Tenant for Death is a solid, but slow moving, detective story and a better-than-average debut novel in this genre, which may prove to be treacherous grounds for smug and seasoned armchair detectives.

Lastly, if you're interested in giving this fox posing as a hare a shot, I would recommend the previously mentioned Tragedy at Law, Suicide Excepted (1939) and An English Murder (1951).

The Naughty List: A Modest Selection of Lesser-Known Holiday Mysteries

"But where are the snows of yester-year?"

- F. Villon.

I have an irregular tradition of reading holiday and winter themed mysteries around this time of the year, depending on what's easily available and how far I planned this ahead of time, and this could've been one of those off-years were it not for a few new releases and a lucky purchase. Simon de Waal and Appie Baantjer's Een licht in de duisternis (A Light in the Darkness, 2012), M.P.O. Books' Dodelijke hobby (Deadly Hobby, 2012) and Mike Resnick's, Stalking the Unicorn: A Fable of Tonight (1987), taking place on New Year's Eve in an alternate Manhattan, were well written nuggets of criminal ingenuity wrapped up in the magic of the season – making this officially not an off-year. I have my wish list of Christmas mysteries not yet fully worked through, but that's something for when the New Year begins to wane.

So, what then is the purpose of this blog post? Well, the idea is to compile a list of seasonal yarns of suspense and mystery that aren't all that well known, and perhaps offer one or two alternatives to (re-reading) Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot's Christmas (1938) and Ngaio Marsh's Tied Up in Tinsel (1972).

Pierre Véry's L'Assassinat du père Noël (The Murder of Father Christmas, 1934) was ferried across the language barrier in 2008 and this entry on the GADWiki, penned by fellow blogger Xavier Lechard from At the Villa Rose, identifies Véry as a literary visitor from the mainstream – who nonetheless preferred gentle surrealism over cold, stark realism. The Murder of Father Christmas attests his opinion that "what counts for an author (and for a person) is to save what has been able to remain in us as a child that we were, of that person full of flaws, of changes of heart, of shadows and mystery" and the story unfolds like grim, but benevolent, fairytale involving stolen gems, missing relics, Cinderella’s slipper and a murdered man in a Father Christmas costume. A lawyer on hard times, Prosper Lepicq, only two months behind on his rent for an office space crammed with impressive looking filing cabinets filled with blank dossiers and old newspapers, is requested to look into the mess. The Murder of Father Christmas has a magical, fairy tale-like quality reminiscent of Gladys Mitchell's most imaginative tales, but also their weaknesses. On the other hand, this was obviously not written as an affair of cold reasoning, but an attempt at enticing the reader to participate in a delightfully childish game of Who-dun-it? in the snow. 

DeKok en het lijk in de kerstnacht (DeKok and the Corpse on Christmas Eve, 1965) is an early (and translated) entry from A.C. Baantjer's long-running DeKok series and dribs, more than usually, with influences from Georges Simenon – making it notably different in tone and structure from the rest of the series. It’s a straight up, character-driven crime story that swirls into motion when the body of a woman emerges from the cold, murky undercurrents of the Herengracht on Christmas Eve. A grumpy DeKok, wrapped in his rumpled raincoat and formless head, joins his then even younger and more inexperienced partner, Vledder, to stalk the deserted, lantern-lit streets of Amsterdam on Christmas Eve to find the killer who ended the life of a young woman and her unborn child. Baantjer advances the plot here through character sketches, police interviews and posing moral problems, which resulted in one particular Christmas scene when DeKok has a sober (and possibly illegal) Christmas diner with a prostitute, a criminal and his victim. It's a darker story than Véry's benevolent pipedream, but if you like crime novels with a human element than you might want to pick this one up. But take note, it's not representative of the series.

The next title on the list was reviewed on here this past summer, but it was nonetheless a mystery novel draped in the traditions of the Yuletide season – mixed up with rural legends, folks dancing and ghost yarns. Gladys Mitchell's Dead Men's Morris (1936) packs everything her fans have come to love about her imaginary tales and wrapped everything up more neatly than usual. Mrs. Beatrice Lestrange Bradley travels to Oxfordshire to spend the holidays at the pig farm of her nephew, Carey Lestrange, where a local country-lawyer of ill repute was apparently hounded to death by the local legend – a headless horseman known as the Sandford Ghost. It's nearly always a guarantee that you're getting something different from Mitchell, but when the plot is as clear as the writing, it becomes a rare treat indeed!

An English Murder (1951) is a standalone effort from "Cyril Hare," a penname for Judge Alfred Gordon Clarke, who drew on his knowledge and experience to pen a stack of detective novels. His series detectives were Inspector Mallett and the barrister Francis Pettigrew, but in An English Murder, also published as The Christmas Murder, it's a Hungarian historian, named Dr. Bottwink, who has to unravel what appears to be a fairly typical, British drawing room murder. The only real drawback I have found in Hare's books is that his plots tend to hinge on obscure laws or nearly forgotten passages of history, making it harder to completely solve them before the detective does.

Finally, I want to recommend Paul Halter's Night of the Wolf (2006), a collection of short stories, as it offers quite a few stories set during dead of winter. "The Flower Girl" and "The Abominable Snowman" are perhaps the best of the lot, entailing a homicidal snowman killing in front of witnesses and Santa Claus who may have used his magic to bump of an unpleasant, Scrooge-like figure, but also includes "The Golden Ghost" and the titular story – all set during those dark, snowy days of December.

I could extend this list further, but Micheal Innes' Lament for a Maker (1938) and Nicholas Blake's Thou Shell of Death (1937) and The Corpse in the Snowman (1941) are probably well-known titles among the readers of this blog – and how much can you order and read in less than two weeks. Hm. Perhaps I should've put this one up a lot sooner.