The Dreadful Hollow (1953) by Nicholas Blake

In December, I revisited the seasonally appropriate Thou Shell of Death (1936) by "Nicholas Blake," penname of Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis, which turned out to be unexpected surprise as it's so much better than I remembered from my first read – a genuine Golden Age classic. I honestly had forgotten that Blake's skills as a mystery novelist were on par with Christianna Brand, John Dickson Carr and Agatha Christie. So started to move some of the remaining, unread Blake's nearer the top of the big pile.

Nick Fuller, of The Grandest Game in the World, graded that handful of titles in the comments and decided to go with The Dreadful Hollow (1953). A novel Nick described as "a good, well-constructed village poison pen mystery."

The Dreadful Hollow is the tenth novel to feature Blake's series detective, Nigel Strangeways, who's hired by a well-known financier to investigate a flurry of anonymous letters of the poisonous kind. Sir Archibald Blick opened machine-tool factory in Moreford, an old market town, which draws its workforce from the nearby village of Prior's Umborne, but "envy, malice and uncharitableness were at work" in the village – someone is sending "short but not sweet" letters. The vicar Mark Raynham receives one saying "get up in that pulpit, holy Joe, and tell them your wife was a whore." Daniel Durdle, son of the postmistress and religious zealot, is told "you hypocrite, I know about the strong liquors you swill privily." John Smart, foreman of the new factory, committed suicide after a letter arrived promising "I'll tell Blick about 1940." Sir Archibald wants Strangeways to go down to Prior's Umborne to discover the source of the poison pen letters.

Strangeways descending on Prior's Umborne to root out the malicious letter writer is a joy to read as the gentleman detective from London makes quite an impression on the villagers ("I saw some children imitating your walk just now. There's fame for you"). And he's a pleasantly active, energetic detective. During this first part, Strangeways meets many of the principle players of what's slowly unfolding at the village. Charles Blick is the youngest of Sir Archibald's two sons and was installed by his father as manager of the factory, which keeps him busy most of the time. Stanford Blick, eldest of the two sons, "bit of a genius in his way, but a born dabbler." Miss Celandine Chantmerle, "idolized in the village," is bound to a wheelchair and is cared for by her younger, highly strung sister, Rosebay ("the father was a botanist"). Celandine knows everything worth knowing about the village and used to be engaged to Charles, but recently, Charles and Rosebay have been seeing a lot of each other. There are the aforementioned vicar and the Durdles. And then the poison pen case takes a sinister turn.

Celandine receives a package with a pair of doctored binoculars ("...this Grand Guignol device") with a note, "read this now, Bright Eyes, if you can," which could have easily blinded her or worse – if the screw releasing the spring-trap hadn't been so stiff to move. Things don't stop there. Sir Archibald, "an apostle of eugenics," received an anonymous letter that Charles is involved with the undesirable Rosebay and comes down on Prior's Umborne to clean up the whole damn village. This ends with him being found dead at the bottom of a quarry the following day. Police quickly rule out an accident or suicide.

The Dreadful Hollow is indeed a good, well-constructed village mystery from the twilight years of the Golden Age and stands out for two reasons. The plot basically consists of three separate, but interconnected, cases sharing the same cast of characters. Blake nicely strings the poison pen letters, the deadly binoculars and the murder of Sir Archibald into an overarching, well clued and coherent narrative with a great conclusion. A conclusion coming as a direct consequence of those three cases and the actions of the people deeply involved in them on the small community of Prior's Umborne. So a very well done, slow build to a dramatic conclusion. The 1950s was a period when the genre was transitioning away from the plot-driven approach of detection and deduction to focus on character and psychology, which some tried to combine at the time and often with mixed results. Last year, I reviewed several novels by E.G. Cousins and Nigel FitzGerald who attempts were well intended and clunky at best. And, usually, it was the plot that had to give more than it received. Blake, on the other hand, beautifully harmonized the traditional, fair play approach with then emerging psychological crime novel. That alone makes The Dreadful Hollow worthy of note as it shows what perhaps could have been.

So it's therefore a shame none of the three cases poses a genuine challenge to either the reader or Strangeways, but it was nice Blake allowed Strangeways to keep pace with the reader's armchair deductions for most of the story. And one aspect of the solution is a little dubious.

Nitpicking aside, the only true flaw of The Dreadful Hollow is one that it shares with so many other so-called mid-tier titles from top-tier mystery writers. Namely being overshadowed by their authors better-known, more celebrated works. For example, Suddenly at His Residence (1946) is a superb Golden Age detective novel, but, as some have pointed out, it's not even Christianna Brand's fourth or fifth best mystery. Same can be said of The Dreadful Hollow. It's unquestionable a good village mystery, inspired in places, but Blake has penned even better, much tighter plotted detective stories. So while not the classic that's Thou Shell of Death, The Dreadful Hollow still comes recommended for what it's. Simply a very well done village mystery.

Thou Shell of Death (1936) by Nicholas Blake

Last time, I reviewed a snowy, seasonal short story, "A Problem in White" (1949), written by the British Poet Laureate, Cecil Day-Lewis, who had a second literary career as the detective novelist "Nicholas Blake" – a penname that appeared on twenty novels and a handful of short stories. "A Problem in White" proved to be a good, solid detective story that convinced me to return to Blake's novels sooner rather than later. I decided to revisit the Rue Morgue Press edition of Blake's second, Christmas-themed mystery novel.

Thou Shell of Death (1936), alternatively published as Shell of Death, is the second novel in the Nigel Strangeways series. After a brief stint at Oxford, Strangeways turned his mind to the study of crime and doing "a certain amount of work as a private inquiry agent" ("the only profession left... which gave scope for good manners and scientific curiosity"). So it certainly helps that his uncle and boyhood guardian is the Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard.

Sir John Strangeways potentially has a case for his nephew involving a very famous person, Fergus O'Brien, who appeared out of obscurity in 1915 when he joined up in London to become a legendary, World War I flying ace – a "daredevil, harum-scarum pilot" who was never shot down ("the Germans were quite convinced he had a charmed life"). A reputation that continued to grow after the war with a solo flight in an obsolete machine to Australia and an "incredible exploit" in Afghanistan "when he took a whole native fort single-handed," until it had "swelled up to make a really gigantic mythical figure of him." A true legend of his time, but O'Brien recently retired from public life and buried himself in the English countryside. Someone is targeting the bold aviator with anonymous, dramatically worded letters promising Hell won't be waiting much longer for his arrival and has penciled in his impending murder for Boxing Day ("like Good King Wenceslas, you will go out on the Feast of Stephen"). Fergus O'Brien asks Sir John to send his detective nephew down to Dower House under the guise of a house guest over Christmas.

There's an interesting gathering of guests staying at Dower House. Georgia Cavendish, a well-known explorer, who was rescued by O'Brien when her small expedition into the Libyan Desert (trying to find the site of Zerzura, "the lost oasis") ran into some serious trouble. She has been closely-linked with him ever since. Edward Cavendish is her pompous, but decent, elderly brother who's "something in the city" and "looks like a churchwarden." Lucilla Thrale is a "professional peach" and "blonde as a Nazi's dream, full-figured," who has been involved with both Edward Cavendish and Fergus O'Brien. Cyril Knott-Sloman was "quite a panjandrum in the war" who currently runs a dubious roadhouse near London. Philip Starling is a don at All Saints, authority on Homeric civilization and one of Nigel's instructors. Lastly, Arthur Bellamy, late aircraftman and heavyweight champion of the R.A.F., who's O'Brien's loyal manservant. Nigel finds that the most striking personality is that of his host and "he had come to feel for O'Brien an affection and deep respect he had never felt for anyone but his uncle before." That makes what happens next all the more tragic.

The former flying ace confides in Nigel that on Christmas night, after pretending to go to bed, he intends to crawl out of the window, jump on the veranda roof and spend the night in the garden hut – where he should be save for the night ("...I'll lock meself up..."). When the household wakes up the next day, they discover Fergus O'Brien's dead in the garden hut with a revolver lying beside his right hand and bullet wound to the chest. The garden door is unlocked, but only "a single track of footprints straight from the veranda to the hut." So this is either an unlikely suicide or an impossible murder.

Thou Shell of Death has many superb qualities as a true Golden Age detective novel and will get to them in a moment, but, as the resident pulp monger with locked rooms on the brain, I need to the touch upon the unconventionally way in which Blake tackled the impossible crimes. Yes, Thou Shell of Death has two with the second one cleverly hidden in plain sight.

First of all, the problem of the footprints is only a small part of the puzzle with a routine solution and Nigel makes short work of its, but even then the footprints continue to present a treacherous pitfalls, if you think you can put a name to that method. Not so routine is that second, cleverly hidden impossibility that's not revealed until the final chapter. A very rare, but great, example of the (SPOILER/ROT13) fbzrjung pbagragvbhf vzcbffvoyr nyvov shysvyyvat nyy zl erdhverzragf gb or pbhagrq nf bar, which doubled as the linchpin brilliantly holding this humdinger of a detective story together. So a very unconventional, but very successful, approach to the impossible crime story that deserves some more recognition than it has received over the decades. Robert Adey overlooked it in Locked Room Murders (1991) and never appeared on any of the locked room mystery best-of lists. There is, however, more to Thou Shell of Death than those two expertly handled impossible crimes.

Nigel remarks, to Superintendent Bleakley, that they "shan't get to the bottom of it all" until "we've found out a great deal more about O'Brien" as it's he “who is the real mystery man" – not the murderer. That's easier said than done when even the newspapers and tabloids were failed in digging up anything about his past before 1915. A problem not made less difficult when the pool of suspects begins to thin out a little without getting them any closer to the murderer. I don't think it's a spoiler at this point that Georgia Cavendish is the future Mrs. Nigel Strangeways and falling in love always spell trouble. Another character is carted off page following a near fatal attack and stays there for the remainder of the story, while another potential suspect is poisoned with an ingenious little trick. Just like the snowy footprints, the poisoning-trick is quickly demolished, but knowing the mechanics behind the trick only touches the truth's surface. There's something underneath that's a lot harder to spot.

I remember enjoying Blake's earlier novels and how the first two Rue Morgue Press reprints had me scurrying for the then out-of-print There's Trouble Brewing (1937), The Beast Must Die (1938), The Case of the Abominable Snowman (1941) and Head of a Traveller (1949). I didn't remember Blake being this good nor possessing the kind of qualities associated with greats like Anthony Berkeley, Christianna Brand, John Dickson Carr and Agatha Christie. Throughout the story, Blake brazenly alludes, hints and nods at the truth with more than a fair helping of psychological and physical clues. All building towards the presentation and demolishment of the false-solution, before revealing what really happened. Remembering bits and pieces of the solution, I could only sit back and admire how the whole scheme was rigged up and paraded in front of the reader, which banked with full confidence on a grand deception designed to lead the reader down the proverbial garden path. That kind of confidence in the plot, story, characters and a cavalier attitude towards sharing clues is what separated Carr, Christie and Brand from their contemporaries as masters of their craft. Apparently, Blake possessed a similar talent for crafting the classical detective story.

There is, however, one difference between Blake and a Carr or Christie. Blake described his own detective stories as a "blend of steely logic and pure moonshine," which perfectly described Thou Shell of Death, because the underlying truth and solution is pure moonshine. Some have dismissed parts of it as sheer mad hattery and the dramatic ending would not have been half as credible, despite the shrewd plotting, had it not been so well-written or the characters so well drawn. A perfectly balanced detective novel with an ingeniously-contrived plot and human touch to the characters. Even certain excesses of the plot and characterization (the pure moonshine or mad hattery) go hand-in-hand in perfect harmony. So it made it everything much more credible than it perhaps any right to be. After all, the crux of the story is something that really belonged on the pages of an old melodrama. So, everything put together, Thou Shell of Death is so much more than a mere parody, or subversion, of the British country house mystery – unlike the pure moonshine of Gladys Mitchell's The Longer Bodies (1930) and Michel Innes' What Happened at Hazelwood (1946). Thou Shell of Death is a detective story proper that I would probably place alongside or even above Hercule Poirot's Christmas (1938) as one of the best Christmas mysteries the traditional detective produced. I don't think I can praise it any higher than that.

In short, Thou Shell of Death is an overlooked masterpiece hiding in plain sight. So expect more Blake in 2024 as now need to get those unread Strangeways novel or return to A Question of Proof or Head of a Traveller.

Cold, Steely Logic: "A Problem in White" (1949) by Nicholas Blake

Cecil Day-Lewis was a former schoolteacher, full-time writer and British Poet Laureate, from 1968 until 1972, whose poetic pursuits and income were financed and supplemented by "Nicholas Blake" – a penname created to keep his literary career separate from his detective fiction. However, it was more or less an open secret that the poet Cecil Day-Lewis and the celebrated mystery novelist Nicholas Blake were one and the same person. Between 1935 and 1968, Blake wrote twenty detective novels of which sixteen featured his series-characters, Nigel Strangeways. I personally enjoyed the earlier, purer detective novels ("blend of steely logic and pure moonshine") like A Question of Proof (1935), Thou Shell of Death (1936), There's Trouble Brewing (1937) and the somewhat latish Head of a Traveller (1949), but Blake has never been discussed on this blog. So time to remedy that oversight beginning with one of his seasonal short detective stories.

"A Problem in White" originally appeared in the February, 1949, issue of The Strand Magazine under the title "The Snow Line" and reprinted as "A Study in White" in the May, 1949, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. That title change was very likely the handiwork of Fredric Dannay and it stuck as it appeared under that title in numerous anthologies ranging from Anthony Boucher's The Quintessence of Queen (1962), Eleanor Sullivan's Fifty Years of the Best from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (1991) and Peter Haining's Great Irish Detective Stories (1993). It first appeared under its current title in Jack Adrian's Crime at Christmas: A Seasonal Box of Murderous Delights (1988) and most recently in Martin Edwards' Silent Nights: Christmas Mysteries (2015). It seems this short story enjoyed most of its success in the United States and particular within the pages of the EQ magazine and assorted anthologies. And not wholly without reason.

Blake's "A Problem in White" is basically the type of "Problem in Deduction" short story that can be found in Queen's Q.B.I. (1955) and Q.E.D. (1968). A pure puzzle ending the story with a challenge to the reader, "who did the Inspector arrest for the murder," pointing out "Nicholas Blake placed eight clues to the killer's identity in the text," two major clues and six minor clues, covering the who, why and how – inviting the reader to go over the story or skip to the end of the book ("where all is revealed").

The story opens with six strangers, Henry Stansfield, Arthur J. Kilmington, Percy Dukes, Irving McDonald, Inez Blake and Mrs. Grant, sharing a railway compartment while traveling through a blizzard. While the snow swirling and growing outside, the passengers discuss a robbery that had taken place on that very train just a month ago. At the time, the train "was carrying some of the extra Christmas mail" and the "bags just disappeared, somewhere between Lancaster and Carlisle." Some of the passengers appear to know more about the robbery than they should or could know. But then the train is derailed and stranded in a snowdrift. Some of the passengers set off for the village, "whose lights twinkled like frost in the far distance," two miles to the north-east, but one of them is brutally murdered along the way ("...nostrils were caked thick with snow, which had frozen solid in them, and snow had been rammed tight into his mouth..."). The story ends with the police inspector entering to compartment "to make an arrest on the charge of wilful murder" followed by the Ellery Queen-style challenge to the reader. So it's up to the reader to put together the pieces, but is it a solvable puzzle? Absolutely!

"A Problem in White" is an unvarnished detective story. There are no narrative tricks or slippery red herrings to misdirect the genre savvy mystery reader. No obstacles and side-puzzles like locked rooms or cryptic dying messages. Just posing a simple, straightforward problem of a train robbery and subsequent murder with enough clues strewn throughout to work out the solution. You don't have to be a genre savvy mystery reader to do it. Everyone who can put two-and-two together can do it. Only thing muddling the clarity of the story is Blake referring to the characters by both their names and descriptions ("Expansive Man," "Deep Chap," "Forward Piece," "Comfortable Body," "The Flash Card" and "The Fusspot"), which made some of the characters blend together during the first few pages. Something that was not necessary for the story or plot, but other than that, a solid and recommendable piece of detective fiction. And comes particularly recommended to fans of Ellery Queen.

I might return to Nicholas Blake sometime this month. After all, two of his Nigel Strangeways novels take place around Christmastime during a white December.