The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Reprints from Dean Street Press

If you're a casual mystery reader who looked at our little niche corner on the internet, you might get the impression that the prevailing belief is that locked room mysteries and impossible crime fiction is the pinnacle of the genre – a final form if you will. That's not true. It's only a small faction of the fandom riding their favorite hobby horse into the ground. I'm perhaps more guilty of riding that hobby horse to pieces than most, but I love a good, old-fashioned or classically-styled detective story and a body in a hermetically sealed room is not a necessity. Even though you don't always get impression from this blog. So let's put the spot light on some classic, non-impossible Golden Age mysteries.

In 2015, Dean Street Press began what seemed, at the time, to be the Herculean task of filling the immense, gaping hole that the still sorely missed Rue Morgue Press left behind. But they have tackled that task head on in an almost industrial way. Not content with simply reprinting one or two titles from a specific writer, DSP turned them out in badges of five or ten at a time. Sometimes even more than that. So in less than a decade, DSP has republished nearly five-hundred Golden Age mystery novels that include the complete works of once obscure or long out-of-print writers like Christopher Bush, E.R. Punshon and Patricia Wentworth. They're currently working on the doing the same for Brian Flynn with Glyn Carr possibly being next in line to go through a round of reprints. But what are some of the best titles DSP brought back from obscurity?

I wanted to do one of these publisher-themed five-to-tries or top 10 lists and initially planned doing a top 10 favorite translations from Locked Room International, but the intention of this post is to take a break from those damned locked room puzzles. So that left me only with Dean Street Press as enough of their reprints have been discussed on this blog to compile a top 10 best favorite reprints. That was easier said than done and had to give my favorite writers a handicap by limiting the list to one entry per author. So no desperate attempts to convince you Christopher Bush's Cut Throat (1932) is not shit, if only you tried to make it through to the end without getting despondent. It appears to have worked. 

 

Top 10 Favorite Reprints from Dean Street Press (in chronological order):

 

The Mystery of the Peacock's Eye (1928) by Brian Flynn 

The ongoing run of Brian Flynn reprints has left me spoiled for choice, but decided to go with the obvious suspect and the 2019 Reprint of the Year Award winner. A case with Flynn's typical Doylean touches as Bathurst investigates a murder involving Royal blackmail and a magnificent, blue-shaded titular emerald. While that might sound like a typical, dated 1920s mystery novel, Flynn provided a solution shining with all the brilliance of the coming decade that makes The Mystery of the Peacock's Eye a classic of the '20s. 

 

The Night of Fear (1931) by Moray Dalton 

This pick is perhaps a little out of season to bring up now, on the tail-end of March, but The Night of Fear is one of the earliest and best country house mysteries at Christmas from this era – in addition to being Dalton's most accomplished detective novel. A well-spun drama that begins during a Christmas party concluding with a game of hide-and-seek in the dark and the discovery of a body, which the police try to pin on the blind Hugh Darrow. But how to prove his innocence? A must read for the December holidays.

 

Murder at Monk's Barn (1931) by Cecil Waye 

“Cecil Waye” was the third, previously unsuspected penname of John Street, better known as “John Rhode” and “Miles Burton,” who wrote four once extremely obscure novels under that name. Three of the four are so-called metropolitan thrillers, but Murder at Monk's Barn is, plot-wise, in the traditional style of his Rhode and Burton mysteries. Where the book differs is the tone and characters. The detectives are a brother-and-sister team, Christopher and Vivienne Perrin, who were a hold over of the 1920s Young Adventures like Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. So while the mysterious shooting of an electrical engineer comes with all plot-technical expertise and ingenuity expected from Street, Murder at Monk's Barn is no humdrum affair as the two Bright Young Things livened up the whole story. 

 

The Case of Naomi Clynes (1934) by Basil Thomson 

A predecessor of the contemporary police procedural and ultimately a very simple, uncomplicated and straightforwardly told story of a crime, which nonetheless succeeded in creating complex and intricate plot-patterns. A plot that excelled with simplistic beauty. More importantly, I remember The Case of Naomi Clynes as a surprisingly warm, human crime story with some decidedly original touches to the ending.

 

The Case of the Missing Minutes (1937) by Christopher Bush 

It has been observed that Christopher Bush was to the unbreakable alibi what John Dickson Carr was to the impossible crime, which makes The Case of the Missing Minutes his version of The Three Coffins (1935). Regardless of what the book title suggests, The Case of the Missing Minutes is not some dry time table or math puzzle. It can actually be counted among Bush's best written, most well-rounded and certainly bleakest of his earlier detective novels with a meticulously put together plot that runs like a Swiss timepiece. 

 

Murder on Paradise Island (1937) by Robin Forsythe 

Some of you probably expected a title from Forsythe's short-lived Algernon Vereker series, like The Pleasure Cruise Mystery (1933) or The Spirit Murder Mystery (1936), which took an interesting approach to plotting a detective story – spinning a great deal of complexity out the circumstances in which the bodies were found. Murder on Paradise Island is a standalone mystery and has a much lighter touch to the plot, but the backdrop and circumstances the characters find themselves makes it his most memorable contribution to the genre. A cross between Anthony Berkeley's Mr. Pidgeon's Island (1934) and a Robinsonade as a group of survivors of a ship disaster get washed up on the pearly beaches of a desert island in the middle of the Pacific. 

 

Bleeding Hooks (1940) by Harriet Rutland 

Arguably, the best and most deserving title to have been reprinted by DSP as well as my personal favorite of the lot. A pure, Golden Age whodunit set in a Welsh fishing village with an inn catering to fly fishing holidaymakers, but the Fisherman's Rest becomes the scene of murder when the vulgar Mrs. Mumby is found dead with a salmon fly deeply embedded in her hand. The doctor concludes she died of combination of poor health and shock from the wound, but the detective-on-holiday, Mr. Winkley, suspects foul play. There's a neat little twist in the tail. John Norris called the book “something of a little masterpiece.” I agree! 

 

There's a Reason for Everything (1945) by E.R. Punshon 

The return of E.R. Punshon's Bobby Owen series to print also posed a difficulty in picking a favorite, because Punshon allowed his Bobby Owen to age and evolve as a character. And tended to try something different every now and then. So there are differing periods in the series that feel distinct from one another, but decided to go with strongest, most intricately-plotted detective novels. A complex detective story concerning a murdered paranormal investigator in a haunted house, vanishing bloodstains and a long-lost masterpiece by Vermeer. A great demonstration of Punshon's ability to erect and navigate labyrinthine-like plot without getting tied-up in all the numerous, intertwined plot-threads. 

 

The Threefold Cord (1947) by Francis Vivian 

So far, The Threefold Cord still stands as the best written, most ingeniously plotted of Francis Vivian's detective novels I've read to date. Inspector Knollis is dispatched to the village of Bowland to investigate wholesale pet murder at the home of a local and unpopular furniture magnate, Fred Manchester. Someone twisted the necks of the two family pets, a budgerigar and cat, before placing a silken cord loosely around their broken necks – which proved to be a prelude to a gruesome ax murder. Vivian expertly tied the present-day murder to the story of a public hangman who died under mysterious circumstances before the war. Every piece of the puzzle fitted beautifully together to form an inevitable conclusion.

 

The Heel of Achilles (1950) by E. and M.A. Radford 

Edwin and Mona Radford, a mystery writing husband-and-wife team, who specialized in forensic detective stories in the tradition of R. Austin Freeman's Dr. John Thorndyke series occasionally peppered with challenges to the reader (e.g. Murder Isn't Cricket, 1946). Their often tightly-plotted detective stories somehow were all but forgotten until DSP reprinted half a dozen of them in 2019 and 2020. The Heel of Achilles is an inverted mystery with the first-half following the murderer as he executes, what he thinks, is the perfect crime. The second-half brings their detective, Dr. Manson, to the scene who begins to laboriously poke holes into the killer's supposedly watertight plot. A cold, impersonal examination of a crime that meshed very well with the intimate and personal opening half depicting the murderer and his crime. A genuine classic of the inverted mystery.

Sable Messenger (1947) by Francis Vivian

Back in 2018, Dean Street Press resurrected another, long out-of-print and forgotten mystery novelist, Arthur E. Ashley, who produced eighteen crime-and detective novels from 1937 to 1959 under his penname of "Francis Vivian" – half of them starring his series-detective, Inspector Gordon Knollis. Vivian's work often straddles the line between the traditional detective story and the then slowly, more character-oriented crime novel with various degrees of success. I wasn't too impressed with The Sleeping Island (1951), a drab, gloomy affair, but The Threefold Cord (1947), The Laughing Dog (1949) and The Singing Masons (1950) were more than deserving of being lifted from obscurity. The Elusive Bowman (1951) distinguished by being one of those very rare, archery-themed mysteries. 

I wanted to continue rooting around in the series, but Vivian and Knollis were buried under an avalanche of Christopher Bush and Brian Flynn reprints rolling of the DSP printing press. A return to Vivian has been long overdue and there has been one title, in particular, that caught my attention. 

Sable Messenger (1947) is the second entry in the Inspector Knollis series and synopsis promised a detective story along the lines of Bush "a crime with no apparent motive" and "a host of alibis," which has to be broken down, one by one, before the situation can be resolved – except that the story played out very differently than expected. The final chapter is almost a story by itself, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

The story begins with the statement that "if Lesley Dexter had not been a snob her husband might have lived out his three-score-and-ten years." Robert Dexter "wanted to flow easily through life" and enjoy his hobby, collecting Elizabethan poetry and plays, but Lesley had "ideas of advancement by rush methods." She pushed him to study all the subjects that would help him get promoted and began climbing the ladder to become the manager of the Packing Department of the Groots Chemicals Limited. A remarkable accomplish considering his age and size of the company. So they moved from their humble lodgings in Denby Street to Himalaya Villa in River Close. One of the better suburbs where Lesley could play the socialite and get her name in the local paper as being 'among those present' at various functions.

So nothing out of the ordinary, for the English, but, one night, Lesley is keeping Robert awake with her modern poetry and she hears someone knocking on the door of their next door neighbors, the Rawleys. She overhears Margot Rawley directing the midnight visitor to their house and this person gently begins to tap on their front door. Robert goes down stairs to answer the door, but Lesley heard him swear, "oh hell," followed by a thud. And then silence. When Lesley went down to see what happened to her husband, she finds Robert lying on a blood soaked doormat with a knife wound in his chest. The man-in-black with the black velour trilby hat is nowhere to be found.

Inspector Russett, chief of the Burnham Criminal Investigation Department, is immediately sidetracked by the Chief Constable, Sir Wilfrid Burrows, who asks the Yard to immediately dispatch Inspector Gordon Knollis to River Close. Knollis used to hold Russett's position until he solved The Death of Mr. Lomas (1941) and was requisitioned by the Yard, because "the war had justified many unconventional happenings." Now he returns to his old stomping ground with his good natured, intelligent assistant, Sergeant Ellis.

Knollis and Ellis have to cover a lot of ground and collect a ton of puzzle pieces as they attempt to make sense out of a coldblooded murder without the slightest trace of a motive. All though one part of the solution kind of stands out, "it looked all too complicated" and "there were loose ends sticking out at all angles." So, to the reader, Sable Messenger is more of a what-happened and why than a whodunit and you can't help but think the murderer is a complete idiot. As the story progressed, I kept being reminded of that quote from R. Austin Freeman's Dr. John Thorndyke how "the cautious murderer, in his anxiety to make himself secure, does too much" and "it this excess of precaution that leads to detection" – of which Sable Messenger is a textbook example. Such as the cleverly contrived, but insanely risky, alibi-trick. One that never stood a chance when closely scrutinized by the police. If the murderer had simply killed him on his way to work or home and took his wallet, Knollis would have had a very difficult job delivering the murderer to the hangman ("the sable messenger, whose errand knows no mercy").

So, while the bulk of the plot is uneven, the second-half and the last chapter elevated Sable Messenger to a slightly above average mystery novel. Firstly, there's the solution to the presence of the man-in-black and you'll probably crack a smile when you learn what it is. Something you either spot or completely miss. Secondly, the last chapter has a plot (of sorts) of its own when a second crime occurs in River Close. A mysterious man knocking on a front door, but was not seen by the policemen guarding the area and swore no one had entered the close. Yes, an impossible crime that comes with an apparently cast-iron alibi for the culprit. Knollis demolishes the problem almost as quickly as it was presented, but it served its purpose as it made the story, as a whole, suddenly appear much stronger than it actually was. 

Sable Messenger is perhaps not the best entry in the series, but the plot has some clever, if sometimes impractical, touches and the last chapter acted as forceful punctuation mark that helped raise up the weaker aspects of the plot. So not the best place to be begin, but, if you already like Vivian and Knollis, you shouldn't ignore it either.

Well, that about wraps it up for 2021. I wish you all a Happy New Year and hope to see back here in 2022!

The Laughing Dog (1949) by Francis Vivian

Arthur E. Ashley was an English circuit lecturer, novelist and a founding member of the Nottingham Writers' Club, who penned eighteen detective novels, published between 1937 and 1959 under the name of "Francis Vivian," many of which are helmed by his cunning, orderly-minded policeman – Inspector Gordon Knollis of New Scotland Yard. One year ago, this month, Dean Street Press reissued the entire Inspector Knollis series and two titles made it onto my best-of list of 2018, The Threefold Cord (1947) and The Singing Masons (1950).

So another one of Vivian's detective novels was lined up for the beginning of this year, enticed by John Norris' twofer review "Two Cases for Inspector Knollis," but hey, my planning rarely pans out. And towards the end of the year is still within the same year as my original plan.

The Laughing Dog (1949) is the fifth entry in the series and I seriously begin to suspect Vivian modeled his detective novels on the "crime of quiet domestic life" Hercule Poirot imagined in The ABC Murders (1936) and worked out by Agatha Christie in Cards on the Table (1936). A murder with a very small, often closely-knit cast of no more than three or four suspects, which tends to complicate matters more than they clarify in an old-fashioned, deftly plotted detective story – one that asks the reader which of the four was it? The Laughing Dog easily stands as one of Vivian's tightest and tidiest plotted mystery novels to date. A novel strong on detection!

The Laughing Dog begins with a prologue, set in Algiers, where a holidaying Dr. Hugh Challoner meets a sketch artist, Aubrey Highton, who discover that each have "a string that vibrates to the same note." A mutual affinity prompting Challoner to offer Highton assistance with landing "a steady job" as a commercial artist when he returns to England. There is, however, a hint that not everything is as it seems on the surface.

Highton sees people "as birds, or animals, or even flowers" and this artistic quirk developed into a revealing, but cruel, style of caricature and depicted Dr. Challoner as a bemused English fox-terrier with its head cocked – "a laughing dog." Highton claimed the image came from "the realm of the subconscious," but the caricature clearly upset Dr. Challoner. And the laughing dog would haunt him all way back to England.

One day, not long after his return home, Dr. Challoner is found dead with a cord around his neck in his surgery and a doodle was found in his desk diary of a dog that "was laughing in human fashion." Highton was one of the last people to see him, but Inspector Gordon Knollis has three other suspects to consider. Mrs. Madeleine Burke was the last patient on the day of the murder and she came to arrange an operation for her teenage son, but Knollis quickly discovers they had more than merely a doctor/patient relationship, which, in turn, provides Dr. Challoner's daughter and future son-in-law with a motive – because Joan and Eric Lincoln would have lost a good chunk of money if they got married. So, there you have it, the entangled intimacy of a quiet, domestic murder with only four suspects that Poirot imagined in The ABC Murders.

John Norris noted in his previously mentioned review that the plot of The Laughing Dog has "a taint of an impossible crime about it," which is sort of true, but not because of any locked doors or windows. There were a number of witnesses, not all of them reliable, who had those exists under observation and there statements often acted as a counter weights to the possible guilt, or innocence, of the suspects. Sometimes these witnesses and suspects were one and the same person. So hardly a genuine locked room mystery.

I think The Laughing Dog is best described as a particular well-done, textbook example of the closed-circle of suspects detective story, which kept the circle as tight as possible, with only a handful of candidates for an early morning appointment with the hangman – each with a motive, the means and (more or less) an opportunity to commit the murder. A deceptively simple approach to the traditional detective story, but, when handled with skill, you'll be constantly second-guessing yourself. When you finally think you have figured it all out, you'll find that you have either overlooked or outright rejected the obvious. And this is exactly the kind of trick Vivian managed to pull off here.

Admittedly, there are some (minor) caveats that mainly have to do with the movements of the characters, relaying a little bit on coincidences, but other than that, it was a well-executed plot!

I have already made a comparison between The Laughing Dog and Christie's Cards on the Table, but, after a while, the story began to remind me of one of those closed-circle of suspect stories you often find in mystery anime-and manga series (e.g. Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed/Detective Conan). A short, tightly-plotted detective story set in a house with only a handful of suspects, good, old-fashioned detective work and (visual) clues. A visual clue, of some sort, here are the drawings and doodles of the laughing dog that hound Knollis throughout the story and is what keeps "the outer circle of the problem" shrouded in mysteries. Several months ago, I came across a very similar kind of clue, a drawing of a dog, in Motohiro Katou's "The Fading of Star Map," from the third volume of Q.E.D. Coincidentally, those two stories have more in common than just a visual, dog-themed clue, but let's not tread into spoiler territory.

Obviously, I liked the pure, undiluted detection-oriented and fairly clued of The Laughing Dog, but I would be selling the story short, if I didn't mention Vivian provided some background details about Knollis.

Early in the story, Knollis mentions he has "a wife and two boys." We got a bit more of a backstory in chapter XI, "The Thread of Thought," in which Knollis revealed he had studied mechanical engineering, but "the engineering trade wasn't in a healthy state at that time" and joined the police as an experiment – because he liked taking things to pieces and finding out how they worked. During this time, Knollis learned first hand that people can be "as interesting as machines" and "began to take them to pieces to see how they ticked." You can certainly see this back in the way Knollis grappled with the people and problems that faced him in this story. Knollis also voiced his disapproval of capital punishment on two occasions, but that could have been Vivian bleeding through the character. In any case, a surprising bit of characterization in this plot-focused detective story.

So what more can I add? The Laughing Dog is a solidly plotted, thoroughbred detective novel with a tricky plot, dogged police work, cleverly planted clues and well-drawn characters, which makes it one of my favorite entries in the series. Highly recommended!

The Threefold Cord (1947) by Francis Vivian

Early last month, the invaluable Dean Street Press republished the entire Inspector Gordon Knollis series by Arthur Ernest Ashley, who wrote as "Francis Vivian," comprising of ten novels and these new editions are introduced by our resident genre-historian, Curt Evans – one of the leading lights of the traditional detective story's Renaissance period. I previously reviewed the terrific The Singing Masons (1950) and the solid The Elusive Bowman (1951). Only The Sleeping Island (1951) came up short in the end, but this was hardly enough to deter me exploring the series further.

John Norris of Pretty Sinister Books left a comment on my review of The Singing Masons with a delectable recommendation for The Threefold Cord (1947). A detective story with a complicated plot, a Christie-like motive and "a last minute trick" that duped Norris with the finish-line in sight.

I wanted to make The Laughing Dog (1949) my next stop in the series, but his description of The Threefold Cord was too good to ignore. And the story definitely lived up to the promise.

Inspector Knollis is sent down to the town of Trentingham and is instructed to report to the local Chief Constable, Colonel Mowbray, who has requested the assistance of Scotland Yard on an embarrassing problem that concerns an important figure from the nearby village of Bowland, Fred Manchester – an unscrupulous and unpopular furniture magnate. Colonel Mowbray reluctantly explains to Knollis he has been called down to investigate the deaths of Mrs. Mildred Manchester's pets.

Mrs. Manchester had found her pet budgerigar, Sweetums, in the boudoir with its neck broken and "a silken cord tied loosely round its neck." The family cat, Boofuls, was found in the cactus house in similar circumstances. I could practically hear the theme of The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries playing in my head when the situation was explained, which is why Manchester wanted "a tec from the Yard," because he thinks the local police lacks impartiality on account of him being an outsider and names Sir Giles Tanroy as a potential suspect. Manchester had worked Sir Giles in a tight over a business and he had to sell his ancient family home to the magnate.

Colonel Mowbray thinks Manchester's accusations are nonsense, but Knollis sees a sinister prelude to murder in the manual killing of the pets followed by the looping a blue, silken cord around the broken necks – advises him to stay indoors and keep quiet until they can come around to the house. But an hour later, Knollis is called to the house earlier than he anticipated. Someone had taken an ax to Manchester and nearly "fetched his head from his shoulders."

On a brief aside, I compared Francis Vivian's writing, plotting and series-character with Francis Duncan's detective fiction in my previous reviews, but now they also appear to have been the only mystery writers who referred to "the murder bag."

Duncan's In at the Death (1952) described this murder bag as being filled with "the first-aid equipment of detection," but they forgot about the bag as soon as it was brought up. So I thought it was interesting to see this usually ignored item being mentioned by these two very similar, equally obscure mystery writers.

But even without the use of the murder bag, Knollis is in great form here as he cuts through a tangles skein of clues, lies, long-held secrets and a plethora of questions. Such as the symbolic meaning of the blue cords and why the third cord was found crushes in Manchester's outside breast-pocket or the problem of the wandering ax, which went from the woodshed to the scene of the crime and dumped in the gardener's dustbin – wrapped inside a newspaper that had been taken from the sitting-room of the house. And why had this gardener been drugged?

Knollis also has to confront a whole cast of potential suspects at the house. A house, as he observes, full of undercurrents and devoid of love except for "the chauffeur-maid affair," Smithy and Freeman, who are deeply in love with each other. Knollis suspects one of them is shielding the other about something.

Finally, the cast is rounded out by two peculiar guests staying at the house at the time of the murder. Miss Dana Vaughan is a well-known actress who's staying with her close friend, Mrs. Manchester, to mentally recover from an emotionally draining in The Hempen Rope. Desmond Brailsford is Manchester's best friend and had been helping the magnate with finding a ghostwriter to help him write a book on his beloved cacti. Hopefully, this would induce his late friend to sink a couple of thousand pounds in his small publishing firm. But, as always, nothing is as it appears.

So here you have all the ingredients for a fascinating detective story, but then Vivian elevated the whole plot to the next level by introducing a plot-thread about a public hangman who died under questionable circumstances before the war – a local police even believes he was deliberately pushed down a flight of stairs. The chapter detailing this back-story, entitled "Death of a Hangman," is one of the highlights of the book. More importantly, this chapter makes me suspect Vivian was aware of my favorite mystery writer, John Dickson Carr. There's even a character in this back-story, named Sir James Fell, who was the former Chief Constable and covered up this possible murder!

Vivian expertly linked the tale of the dead hangman to all of the suspects and the explanation revealed an intricate web of fear, deceit and treachery, which inevitably lead to the gruesome murder of Fred Manchester. I think inevitable is the key word when it comes to the solution. Every piece of the puzzle fitted together so beautifully, you just want to kick yourself for not seeing the whole picture until it was too late!

The Threefold Cord is a truly excellent and imaginative piece of detective fiction, worthy of being compared to Agatha Christie, and arguably even better than the much touted The Singing Masons. Recommended without reservations!

The Sleeping Island (1951) by Francis Vivian

This month, Dean Street Press reissued the entire Detective-Inspector Gordon Knollis series by Arthur Ernest Ashley, who wrote as "Francis Vivian," which were originally published from 1941 to 1956 and reviewed two of these titles in September – namely The Singing Masons (1950) and The Elusive Bowman (1951). I liked them enough to delay my return to Christopher Bush and read another one of these once rare, long-overlooked mystery novels.

The Sleeping Island (1951) is the eighth title in the series and is a slightly darker, more somber story than the previous two books I read. A gloomy, old-fashionably told detective story with some of the trappings of a modern-day, character-orientated crime novel.

During the Second World War, Paul Murray was stationed on Lampedusa Island, in the Mediterranean Sea, together with Peter Fairfax and the Palmer brothers, Dennis and Roy. One of them, Dennis Palmer, was in enviable position: he was engaged to Brenda Morley and had a good job waiting for him back home, but Palmer was also the trustee of the family fortune – a then princely sum of eight thousand pounds. Palmer's grandfather hated lawyers and objected to paying death duties. So he had handed Dennis a cheque for the whole eight thousand pounds. But when he enlisted, Dennis became worried what would happen to the money if he was killed in action. So he handed over the cheque to Brenda to hold on to until he returns.

Tragically, Dennis is killed in an unfortunate drowning accident. Or so it appears. Only a short time later, Paul Murray began courting Brenda and they married within six weeks. Oh, they kept the money. The Palmer's never saw a dime back of their own money back.

However, everyone believes there was something fishy about Dennis Palmer's drowning on Lampedusa. Some are even convinced Murray has cleverly engineered a perfect murder to get his hands on the money, but everyone is flummoxed about how he was able to murder Palmer, because, when he met his death at the bottom of a cliff at Point Ailaimo, Murray was bathing in Creta Bay – in the presence of several witnesses. So nobody could "prove it was anything else but death by misadventure." But the marriage between Paul and Brenda Murray was not a happy one.

Brenda has been unable to forget Dennis and, when the story opens, has "established a half-yearly wake" during which she wallows in "a bath of self-pity and sentimentality." Something that has begun to irk Murray. He has had enough that a ghost from their past is constantly haunting the dinning-room, the lounge and even the bedroom. So an argument ensues between the two and Murray leaves the house, but after he left, Brenda receives a visitor. Roy Palmer demands money to treat his terminally ill mother, because it was their money. He also tells her that Murray has never stopped seeing his first fiance, Gloria Dickinson, who was put up in a nice flat from "Den's money" and has lived off it ever since – everyone apparently knew it. She ends up giving Roy three-hundred pounds and tells him her lawyer is drafting a new will that gives everything back to his family. Only she never got to sign it.

 

When Murray returned home later in the evening, he finds the home empty and when venturing out into the darkened garden he finds Brenda's lifeless body. Drowned in the lily pond! A gruesome detail is that her cat has also been brutally killed by having its neck pulled and throat squashed.

The local police telephone Scotland Yard and Detective-Inspector Gordon Knollis is sent to the scene of the crime, but this time he not only has to untie a complicated, closely-knit web of linked motives, suspects and their movements – he has to contend with a pesky, stubborn suspect who openly sabotages his investigation. Peter Fairfax was slinking around the house at the time of the murder and he intends "to flummox up the evidence so thoroughly" that Paul "hasn't anything to stand on but a trapdoor in an execution-cell." Fairfax is convinced Paul had murdered Dennis and Roy had killed Brenda, which another motivation to temper with evidence and obstructing the course of justice. He simply believes Paul deserved to be hanged for one murder or another.

I think this is easily the best part of The Sleeping Island. Fairfax found a great place to hide a pair of shoes and he thought he was very clever with the kippers, but Knollis exposes his meddling with skill and experience. Something that really complimented the efforts of the police-characters. I also think this almost has a Anthony Berkeley-like quality to it (c.f. Trial and Error, 1934). Unfortunately, the ending has two problems that drags it down my previous two reads in this series.

Francis Vivian evidently preferred to work with a small, close-knit cast of characters with only three or four suspects. Here he told an engaging story of domestic murder with a dark, potentially second murder hidden in the past and, as a reader, you want the resolution to come out of this back-story that has dominated the entire story up till the ending – only to end with a disappointing anti-climax. This murderer could have worked, but not in this story. Secondly, I believe the alibi-trick on Lampedusa Island remained unexplained.

It could have been my fractured reading of the book, but a solution was only alluded to or hinted at, but never actually explained. Knollis talked about the death of Dennis Palmer as a perfect murder that looked like an accident and "can never be proved." So perhaps this was done to contrast a perfect murder with a not so perfect murder? Either way, it didn't work out for me. So a well-written and characterized story of crime, but not all that impressive as a  detective story.

Regrettably, The Sleeping Island was not as good a detective story as either The Elusive Bowman or The Singing Masons, but better luck with the next one. One disappointment is not going to deter me from the promising, intriguing sounding Sable Messenger (1947), The Threefold Cord (1947) and The Laughing Dog (1949). To be continued.

The Singing Masons (1950) by Francis Vivian

Last week, I reviewed at The Elusive Bowman (1951) by Francis Vivian, an obscure, long-lost mystery novelist, who has been resuscitated from literary oblivion with the imminent republication of his entire Inspector Gordon Knollis series on October 1, 2018 – courtesy of Dean Street Press. The Elusive Bowman was a well-written, richly plotted detective novel and promised to return to Vivian before too long. And then our in-house genre-historian, Curt Evans, wrote an enticing blog-post on The Singing Masons (1950). So I decided to make that one my next read.

The Singing Masons is the sixth title in the series and has a pleasantly involved plot as intricately complex as the diurnal flight patterns of honey bees.

Samuel Heatherington is a retired carpenter and "a bee-master of the old school," who has worked with bees since he was twelve and what he didn't know about them wasn't worth knowing, which brought even the most reputed bee-experts to his cottage garden in the village of Newbourne – to "sit and sip the nectar of experience." One day, a new queen had emerged in one of his twelve hives to take over the duties of the old queen and a hum of bees began to swarm to look for a new hive. Old Heatherington tracks the swarm back to the orchard garden of an unoccupied cottage.

The cottage used to belong to the late Mrs. Roxana Doughty, a writer of romantic novels, who disliked bees and stuck to the opinion that they were "nasty stinging insects." So the old bee-keeper is surprised to find an empty hive standing on two flagstones at the far end of the cottage and his swarm had began to occupy it.

However, the spot is too damp for the bees and he decides to give this swarm to two of his young friends, Philip and Georgie Maynard, who had a spell of bad luck recently when they lost of all their fruit trees, bees, a honey house and even their unborn baby – all of which play a vital part in the plot. The Maynards arrive at the cottage to take the swarm back home when the possibility of a well below the flagstones is mentioned, which would explain the dampness of the spot. Georgie is curious to learn whether or not the hive is standing on the covered mouth of an abandoned, long-since forgotten well.

So they decide to humor her, but, when they move the flagstones, they notice "a queer smell." When a torch-light is shone down the depths of the well, they can discern a dark, misshapen form "huddled against the brickwork." The form turns out to be the decomposed body of Georgie's missing cousin, Gerald "Jerry" Batley. A water-damaged canister of cyanide is found in his pocket.

Detective-Inspector Gordon Knollis, of Scotland Yard, is placed in charge of the investigation and together with a local policeman, Inspector Wilson, has to find his way out of a case that closely resembles a maze-like honeycomb.

Batley was a good looking, charming and ambitious young man who had been engaged to the daughter of "the town's star lawyer," Daphne Moreland, but only wanted to marry her in order to get access to her family coffers – or, as he called it, "stinging Daph and the Moreland old oak chest." On top of that, Batley had been an incorrigible philanderer who has had an extramarital with Philip Maynard's married sister, Bernice Lanson. Even his own cousin had not been exempt from his advances. However, Georgie had rejected him with violence and this humiliation had severely wounded his "emotionally adolescent" pride. And this rejection probably prompted him to part Philip and Georgie by ruining them.

Knollis not only suspects that he had a hand in their recent misfortunes, but also had murder in his heart and the only thing that had stopped him was getting murdered. But who had put him in the well?

I've only read two of Vivian's detective novels, The Singing Masons and The Elusive Bowman, but he appears to have been fond of the detective story format Agatha Christie employed in Cards on the Table (1936). There are only a couple of suspects with closely-linked motives, but everything is complicated by their movements, false or incomplete statements and their alibis. One alibi, in particular, deserves to be spotlighted: a suspect claims to have been at the cinema to attend a screening of Robert Montgomery's film adaption of Raymond Chandler's The Lady in the Lake (1943), but Knollis destroys this alibi with the help of a movie review from a magazine. I believe Christopher Bush, an alibi artisan who tried to emulate the hardboiled style (e.g. The Case of the Amateur Actor, 1955), would certainly have appreciated this little alibi-trick.

Then there are the bee-themed clues and red herrings, such as a dead bee in victim's apartment or where the hive in the orchard came from and who took it away after the murder, but, most fascinatingly, are the long-abandoned queen-rearing apiaries hidden in the woods – which used to belong to Batley's father. And these deserted hives have their own role to play in the tragedy.

A seasoned mystery reader will probably instinctively glance at the murderer, but this will only give you an incomplete solution. Even with the tight circle of suspects, Vivian forces the reader to hesitate between suspects and consider alternative explanations or combinations. So this makes The Singing Masons a more successful detective story than The Elusive Bowman, which is helped by the fact that Knollis came across here as far more rounded-character and has, as Curt aptly described it, "an unexpectedly hard-hitting conclusion." A genuinely sad ending punctuated by Knollis grimly telling Wilson, "I'm not God."

The Singing Masons is an absolute honey of a detective story and precisely what I needed after my previous disappointing reads. A highly recommendable mystery that should be your first stop in the series.

The Elusive Bowman (1951) by Francis Vivian

Athur Ernest Ashley was a British novelist, who started out as a painter and decorator, but turned to writing popular fiction in the 1930s and balanced his literary career with being a circuit lecturer on a variety of topics "ranging from crime to bee-keeping" – two subjects he would later integrate into a detective novel (The Singing Masons, 1950). Ashley had furthermore worked as an assistant editor at The Nottinghamshire Free Press and was one of the founding member of the Nottingham Writers' Club. But what we are interested in here is his two-decade long stint as a now long-forgotten mystery novelist.

Ashley wrote under the name of "Francis Vivian" and produced nearly twenty detective novels in as many years.

One of his recurring series-detectives was Inspector Gordon Knollis, of Scotland Yard, who purportedly "never picked up an undisclosed clue" and appeared in ten mystery novels that were published between 1941 and 1956, which have never been reissued since their original publication – until now. Dean Street Press has the entire series scheduled for republication on October 1, 2018, and they kindly send me a sample of some of these upcoming releases.

The Elusive Bowman (1951) is the seventh entry in the series and has a plot, as the book-title suggests, which draws on the noble, time-honored sport of archery. I would call the book a better and stronger archery-themed detective story than either John Bude's The Cheltenham Square Murder (1937) or Leo Bruce's Death at St. Asprey's School (1967).

Michael Maddison is a robust, healthy man of thirty-five who, unaccountably, had buried himself in a small, unassuming place called Teverby-on-the-Hill. There he acquired the tenancy of the village pub, Fox Inn, which he turned into something more than a watering-hole for villagers and commercial travelers, because Maddison believed pubs should be "centres of communal life" and "homes-from-home for travellers." Something he succeeded in admirably. The remodeled place provides a club-home to the Teverby Bowmen. An archery club boasting twenty-six shooting members under the leadership of a passionate archer, Captain Saunders.

So everything appears to be quiet, peaceful and even prosperous in Teverby-on-the-Hill, but the reader soon learns there's a dark side residing behind the genial facade of Maddison.

Maddison has moved to Teverby-on-the-Hill together with his unmarried sister, Rhoda, and his young niece and ward, Gillian, who had been orphaned in the London blitz, but Maddison reveals he has a very private reason for preventing them to get married – even saying he would go as far to commit murder to prevent it. Or undoing it. He even hits Rhoda with his fist "clean on the side of the jaw" when he caught her eavesdropping. Nevertheless, Rhoda and Gillian intend to marry Captain Saunders. So they begin to think about murdering Maddison. And they're not the only one.

One evening, Captain Saunders brought two hunting arrows to the Fox, a bodkin-pointed one and a broadhead, capable of "piercing armour-steel from a respectable distance." Major Oliver had seen hunting bows in Mongolia that could "kill a yak at forty yards" and did believe there were modern, Western bows and arrows that could do that. So Captain Saunders brought two arrows to show him, but they go missing by the end of the evening and turn up again the following day when Maddison is found in the recently remodeled and enlarged cellar of the Fox – a green and white fletched arrow sticking from his rib. A second arrow, similarly fletched, was deeply embedded in the door of a cupboard.

The Chief Constable decides to ask Scotland Yard for assistance and they immediately dispatch Inspector Gordon Knollis to the village.

A map of Teverby-on-the-Hill

Inspector Knollis is assisted by Inspector Lancaster, of the Maunsby police, who'll probably endear himself to a lot of long-time mystery readers, because he constantly forces Knollis to explain his deductions. A fun, little rib-poke at the detectives who love to mutter cryptic remarks and keep their thoughts to themselves. However, you should not assume Lancaster is simply a plot-device that lays bare the detective's thought process to reader. One of the chapters, entitled "The Deductions of Lancaster," has him deducing the hiding place of "seven prettily feathered arrows" and Knollis had completely overlooked this place.

So they make a pretty good investigative team and are exactly the kind of policemen needed to disentangle this complicated mesh of deception and contradictions.

There are only four suspects, Rhoda, Gillian, Capt. Saunders and Maj. Oliver, who have closely-linked motives and suspiciously moved around the Fox at the time of the murder, which effectively muddled the water – keeping the reader moving between (combinations of) suspects. A problem further complicated by a hidden blackmail plot and the all-important questions why Maddison had converted the cellar for private archery practice and whom he had been plotting to kill. My only complaint is that the red herrings are so thick that they obscured the genuine clues and this somewhat diminished the fair play aspect of the plot.

On a whole, The Elusive Bowman is a well-written, straightforward detective novel with a good, but relatively simple, plot stuffed with clues and red herrings complicated by the cross-actions of the small cast of characters. So a good and solid introduction to the work of a long overlooked mystery writer, who reminded me of Francis Duncan, but without frills and tighter plots. I'll definitely be coming back to Francis Vivian for a second serving.