"We will now knock our heads together": MARGARET RIVERS LARMINIE & JANE LANGSLOW, Gory Knight (1937)

M. Pommeau lifted a protesting hand. "Say no more, madame, I beg. It is that your hospitality would be ill-paid if Hippolyte Pommeau could sit warming the hands while a young female remains so curiously absent. And since your friend the Professor is so good as to offer his help also, we will now knock our heads together, as your English idiom goes, and see what happens."

Oh, what fun it is to write this post! If you're the type of reader, as I am, who happens across a random mention of a book, adds it to your immense TBR list, and then can't stop thinking about it until you manage to get your grubby hands on it, you will know that for every instance in which this sort of determination pays off, there are a fair number of times when the result is a mere "ho-hum" or even an unfortunate "ugh". So when it turns out to be an "by jove, yes!" instance, there is much to celebrate.

I don't have a record of when I first came across Gory Knight, though I know I mentioned it in an update post as early as 2016. I found an early reference to it as a parody of the "round robin" mystery stories that were popular at the time (though in retrospect this seems inaccurate, according to my understanding of a "round robin" as one of those books—i.e. The Floating Admiral—in which well-known writers each contribute a chapter to a novel and hope for the best). It sounded mildly intriguing, as I do love a humorous mystery. But it wasn't until I came across an article by the estimable Martin Edwards—who in addition to numerous other achievements is also a consultant on the marvelous British Library Crime Classics series—describing his research into the authorship of Gory Knight with the assistance of acclaimed crime writer Margaret Yorke, herself a relation of one of the book's authors, Margaret Rivers Larminie, that I became truly fixated on it. His article (see here) is largely about their research into the identity of the second author, Jane Langslow, who might well, they conclude, have been novelist Maud Diver, a half-sister of Larminie's. But he does report on his and Yorke's conclusions about the book as highly entertaining, if imperfect, which was enough to fuel my fire.

But of course, since then, the book has had to languish on my Hopeless Wish List. As of this writing, two copies of the book are actually available on Abe Books, the cheapest (??) at the bargain price of just under $500, and it's in exactly one North American library, non-circulating, and as I haven't made it to Tucson recently it might as well have been Timbuktu. It was a lost cause.

Until, of course, our recent excursion to the paradise of the British Library and the Bodleian… Thank heavens I remembered to add it to my list of requests!

And how delightful it is to report that once I started reading it, a stampeding herd of buffalo couldn't have got it away from me. It's ludicrous and over the top, and as a mystery per se it's undoubtedly no great shakes, but what it is is wonderfully entertaining and giggle-inducing.

Margaret Rivers Larminie in 1923

I wouldn't call the book a "round robin", as I mentioned above, though of course it does have two authors. Rather, it's the tale of the unlikely congregation of parody versions of four of the world's most famous detectives (cameo by a fifth near the end) at a classic country house weekend. As such, it's reminiscent of (or, more accurately, anticipates) Neil Simon's gloriously silly, star-studded 1976 film Murder by Death, an old favorite of mine, however silly it may be (and despite some glaring racial insensitivity in the fictional version of Charlie Chan).

It comes about like this: During a discussion on detection, poor Miss Pyke, a classic elderly spinster, carelessly asserts to her gathered nieces and nephews how wonderful it would be to meet and pick the brain of a great detective. Later that evening, she is sworn to secrecy, in turn, by no fewer than three of said family members, each determined to surprise the rest by bringing just such a detective for a weekend visit the following week. After which, Miss Pyke herself, worried that her remaining nephew will be the only guest without a detective to show off, suggests that he invite one too. Of course, as we all do, they already have the world's great detectives in their contacts list, and all are successful in snagging their detective for the following weekend. (Improbable, yes, but to be fair, how could a meeting of these masterminds come about in a probable way, and if they didn't get together what fun we would miss!)

Naturally, the night of the detectives' arrival just happens to be the night when Miss Pyke's cook, the eponymous Miss Knight, disappears from the kitchen just when her services are most crucial, and the ongoing lack of any trace of her begins to seem ominous. The rather pompous French detective Hippolute Pomeau, the elite Lord Robert Mooney and his formidable manservant Bunyan, the strictly fact-based Dr. Vicary, and the comically sluggish Archie Hazard must, obviously, offer their services. (Pomeau and Mooney are instantly recognizable, of course, as thinly-veiled versions of Poirot and Peter Wimsey. Depending on your knowledge of classic mysteries, you may—or may not, as I did not—recognize John Rhode's Dr. Priestly and E. C. Bentley's Reggie Fortune in the other two sleuths. And if you're a Freeman Wills Croft fan, the arrival, just at the end of the novel, of Inspector Quench will be an added pleasure.)

I can't say very much about the plot without risk of spoilers, but I can give a couple of examples of the dialogue, exaggerated but hilarious as it is. Certainly, I found Pomeau and Mooney the most entertaining, perhaps because I'm familiar enough with the characters to get the jokes, but the others have their moments as well. On the detectives working together, the unforgettable Poirot, er, I mean Pommeau:

"It is not that I must deprive my English colleagues of the spectacle of Hippolyte Pommeau in the midst of his element. Indeed, it is conceivable that one of them shall discern some little discrepancy of evidence that I overlook." He glanced about with a smile which betrayed his incredulity of such an occurrence.

And second, a highly giggle-inducing quip from Lord Robert about their efforts to uncover information about the missing cook:

At which point Dr. Vicary modestly implied that if he himself had had the private and uninterrupted handling of the said witnesses, the withheld portion would long ago have come to light.

"Too many cooks, in fact," said Lord Robert lightly. "Net result—by an amazin' paradox—one cook too few."

It's almost unfathomable that this book remains out of print after all the flurry of rediscoveries of worthy Golden Age mysteries in the past few years. It has its flaws, to be sure, and hardcore puzzlers will find the solution here tame at best. But with the massive followings that Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, in particular, have, and the popularity of humorous crime stories, surely lots of readers would enjoy these daft caricatures of favorite characters. I wonder if the lingering uncertainty about the identity of Langslow is the culprit, or if something else is to blame, but if someone doesn't get it in print soon, the British Library (and perhaps Tucson, Arizona) is likely to be overrun with eager readers.

Perhaps we should look into it more closely…

AGATHA CHRISTIE, Passenger to Frankfurt (1970)

I really need to come up with more excuses for blogging about Agatha Christie. She is anything but "lesser-known," but it's a fun change of pace to write about an author that many of you have actually read (and some of you probably know more about than I do) rather than the ones I usually write about, which most people have never heard of. It's also fun because, officially, as of a few days ago, I have now read every single novel by dear Dame Agatha, making her probably my most-read author. I started reading her when I was about 10 or 11 and have been reading and re-reading ever since.

So why, you might ask, has it taken me so long to get through all of her novels? Apart from the fact that there are 60+ of them, of course, but that's not the real reason. I had read all but two or three of them at least 10 years ago. The real reason is twofold. First, for several years I delayed reading Hercule Poirot's Christmas (aka Murder for Christmas, aka A Holiday for Murder) because it was my last remaining Poirot and I couldn't bear the thought of being absolutely positively finished with them.

And then there was Passenger to Frankfurt. Ugh. (And by the way, the other reason it's fun to write about Dame Agatha is that I can be as snarky and harsh as I need to be without ever losing sight of the fact that she's permanently a part of who I am and one of my most loved authors.)

So, cue snarkiness…

I've attempted to read Passenger to Frankfurt several times over the years and have never been able to finish. But last week, I picked up my snazzy new hardcover copy from the book sale, with its reader-friendly type and nice thick high-quality paper, and I made one final attempt. This time I persevered, and I'm happy to report that I finally finished it. True, my happiness stems mainly from the fact that I shall never again feel obligated to pick it up again for any reason other than to admire its appearance. But it's happiness nevertheless.

What challenges book designers must have had in deciding what to portray
on the cover of a book with no discernible (or at least comprehensible) plot!

Because I have to say, in my own opinion, this is truly not only the worst of Dame Agatha's novels; it's probably one of the worst novels ever published. It's the tale of a global conspiracy—of some sort—and the people who are trying to combat it—in some way—and save it from the bad guys—sort of. Oh, and by the way, apropos of nothing, it emerges that Hitler snuck out of Germany at the end of the war and has been living in South America. It's unclear what connection, if any, this has to do with the main plot here (whatever that might be), but hey, Hitler is scary, is he not? So why not toss him in?

There's a silly but funny line from Neil Simon's movie The Cheap Detective, a parody of classic movies like Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon. In one scene, the Ingrid Bergman-ish leading lady is pontificating at length about freedom and various other noble sentiments, and when she walks away, Peter Falk's character says, "There, gentlemen, goes a brave, beautiful, and extremely boring woman." This is relevant only because it occurs to me to say that the conspiracy Christie portrays in Passenger to Frankfurt is terrifying, diabolical, and extremely silly. There are people, and they are organizing, and causing unrest, and—basically—thereby causing distress to elderly British people reading the newspaper every day, who find it all a bit bewildering and wonder what the world is coming to.

Here's one of the clearer explanations of what's going on:

"Youth is what you might call the spearhead of it all. But that's not really what's so worrying. They—whoever they are—work through youth. Youth in every country. Youth urged on. Youth chanting slogans—slogans that sound exciting, though they don't always know what they mean. So easy to start a revolution. That's natural to youth. All youth has always rebelled. You rebel, you pull down, you want  the world to be different from what it is. But you're blind, too. There are bandages over the eyes of youth. They can't see where things are taking them. What's going to come next? What's in front of them? And who it is behind them, urging them on? That's what's frightening about it. You know, someone holding out the carrot to get the donkey to come along and at the same time there is someone behind the donkey urging it on with a stick."

There. Now we know where we stand, don't we? What? You're still not clear on the plot? Well, perhaps this will help:

"It's quite simple," said Mr. Robinson. "There are big movements afoot. There has to be money behind them. We've got to find out where that money's coming from. Who's operating with it? Where do they get it from? Where are they sending it to? Why? It's quite true what James says: I know a lot about money! As much as any man alive knows today. Then there are what you might call trends. It's a word we use a good deal nowadays! Trends or tendencies—there are innumerable words one uses. They mean not quite the same thing, but they're in relationship with each other. A tendency, shall we say, to rebellion shows up. Look back through history. You'll find it coming again and again, repeating itself like a periodic table, repeating a pattern. A desire for rebellion. A feeling for rebellion, the means of rebellion, the form the rebellion takes. It's not a thing particular to any particular country. If it arises in one country, it will arise in other countries in less or more degrees.

Um. Sure. Quite simple.

According to the novel's Wikipedia page, Robert Barnard, a well-known mystery writer in his own right, wrote of Passenger:

The last of the thrillers, and one that slides from the unlikely to the inconceivable and finally lands up in incomprehensible muddle. Prizes should be offered to readers who can explain the ending. Concerns the youth uproar of the 'sixties, drugs, a new Aryan superman and so on, subjects of which Christie's grasp was, to say the least, uncertain (she seems to have the oddest idea of what the term 'Third World' means, for example). Collins insisted she subtitle the book 'An Extravaganza.' One can think of other descriptions."

(The "third world" thing is rather funny. Christie seems to have believed it was something akin to the Third Reich.)

This artist apparently thought the book's
cover needed some spicing up with an
utterly irrelevant spider

Inexplicably, though, Maurice Richardson in the Observer said that although Passenger wasn't Christie's best work it was "very far from her worst." Seriously? Even allowing for the fact that different readers seek different things from a mystery or thriller, I defy anyone to tell me which Christie novels could possibly be worse.

Certainly, there are daft plots in some of her other books. For example, the method of killing in Death in the Clouds would have worked (without being seen, at least) in about 1 out of 2,000 attempts. And the one in Murder in Mesopotamia isn't even as viable as that. Then, there are one or two mysteries dealing with teenage delinquency that I personally find a bit tedious. And there are a couple that, like Passenger, feature large criminal organizations, and even in earlier years it's clear that Christie didn't possess a clear understanding of how such an organization might logically work. But none of these approach, to my mind, the level of repetitive meaninglessness of Passenger to Frankfurt.

That said, however, I momentarily felt less snarky after I also learned from Wikipedia that there have apparently been scientific studies of the vocabulary and repetition in Christie's late novels as compared to her earlier work, which have concluded that Christie was likely suffering from Alzheimer's or some variant form of disability. Which seems a viable explanation (I recall being bewildered by Iris Murdoch's final novel even before the announcement was made about her Alzheimer's) and also makes me feel sad for the wonderful Dame Agatha and her family in those final years.

Dame Agatha in 1972, two years after publication of Passenger to Frankfurt

What's odd, however, is that Passenger was not, in fact, the last novel Christie completed. Two more followed: Elephants Can Remember, the last Poirot—along with a final guest appearance from Ariadne Oliver—that Christie wrote (Curtain is the last case, but was written much earlier), and Postern of Fate, the final Tommy & Tuppence novel. Now, I'm willing to bet that neither of these are on very many Christie readers' Top 10 lists, but I would place both well up the list from Passenger.

They are both similarly meandering and repetitive (perhaps not unlike this post), but in Postern of Fate particularly (it's been a while since I read Elephants, so I don't recall it so well), this aimless rambling actually fits rather nicely the story being told. I might even go so far as to claim that Postern, which involves T&T stumbling across a long-forgotten crime as a result of Tuppence's absent-minded perusals of old books, has the effect (if undoubtedly not the intent) of a rather humorous postmodern meditation on old age and decreasing faculties. T&T have repetitive conversations, wander aimlessly about the house and village, and even, at one rather embarrassing point, mention their adopted daughter in an explanatory way—as in, Tuppence says to Tommy, "So-and-so, our adopted daughter, wrote in her letter…" Would he be likely to need that sort of clarification, one wonders? Had he forgotten they adopted a child? Well, who knows?

This wise designer played it safe with one of the
few absolutely certain things about the novel's
plot--the characters do indeed travel from point
to point, though for what purpose is unknown...

But even so, if I were looking for a purely cozy, comforting, and enjoyable Christie to read on a cold rainy day, and I didn't care much about having a clever puzzle to disentangle, Postern of Fate might well be my choice. I've read it two or three times, and even thinking of it is making me want to read it again (an impulse that will surely never arise in regard to Passenger). T&T in later years are just so charming and loving and happy together that they are irresistible, doddering and dithering as they might be.

Which suggests that my problem with Passenger to Frankfurt is not so much to be explained by the fact that Christie might have been in poor health when she was writing it, as it is by the fact that she was attempting to write a spy novel that she was completely unequipped to write. It wasn't Alzheimer's or general old age that made Passenger a train wreck. It was bad authorial judgment.

Ahhhh, snarkiness is fun. And just for some icing on the cake, one more inspiringly brilliant quotation from Passenger:

"Where are we going? Can I ask?"

"You can ask, yes."

"But you do not reply."

"I could reply. I could tell you things, but would they mean anything?"

In the context of this novel, it's difficult to imagine that they would.

Recent Reading: Mysteriously yours (AGATHA CHRISTIE, PATRICIA MOYES)

By now, many of you lovely readers will know what it means when I start reading a lot of mysteries.  Stress.  Mystery reading = Scott x stress, as it were.

No, it's nothing major.  Only that our office is relocating this weekend, and guess who's in charge of coordinating it?  It's actually kind of fun (emphasis on the "kind of"), but it is rather all-consuming—sudden recollections in the shower of forgotten things to do, nebulous dreams about labyrinths of packing boxes, etc., etc.  So, not a great deal of time for reading, and not a lot of focus or concentration for tackling anything very profound.

AGATHA CHRISTIE, Cat Among the Pigeons (1959)

My ultimate standby for stressful times is dear Dame Agatha, and I know that she is anything but "lesser-known" (what with being the bestselling novelist of all time and all) but on this one occasion I can't resist.  When Lyn at I Prefer Reading recently discussed Josephine Tey's Miss Pym Disposes, memorably set in a girls' school, she also mentioned that Agatha's Cat Among the Pigeons had a similar setting, which I had completely forgotten and which triggered my urge for a re-read.  I'm glad it did, because I had always remembered Cat—read only once many years ago—as a rather weak example of Christie's craft.  Which might be true, judged as a whodunit and weighed against Murder on the Orient Express or And Then There Were None.  The puzzle here is nothing by comparison to those, is perhaps even a bit obvious.

But what I found on this re-read is that, if you judge instead on the basis of character, humor, and entertainment value, Cat Among the Pigeons might actually be one of Christie's best novels.  The girls' school setting makes for a fun cast of women and schoolgirls, many provided with a bit more complex character development than Dame Agatha sometimes bothers herself with, and for this reason, the fact that Poirot doesn't appear until quite late is (as it was in Gladys Mitchell's similarly structured Convent on Styx, which I discussed a while back) more of a strength than the weakness it might usually be.

The story opens on the first day of a new term, with the headmistress greeting students and parents, and staff members discussing their holidays and settling in to work again.  We meet the indomitable headmistress, Miss Bulstrode, who is looking toward retirement and thinking of a successor; several of the possible successors, including Miss Chadwick, co-founder of the school and devoted to her work but lacking the charisma and personality required of a headmistress; spunky student Julia Upjohn and her charming and energetic mother, formerly of British Intelligence; Jennifer Sutcliffe, Julia's slightly dim friend, around whose tennis racket much of the action of the novel revolves, and her slightly gaga mother; and an obnoxious and nosy games mistress who is practically wearing a "murder me" sign on her back for the first few chapters until…well, you know.

This is certainly the funniest Christie novel I recall—at least apart from the late, underrated Tommy & Tuppence novels which are a little on the daft side—and the school setting was irresistible to me, seduced as I have been by my first few experience with girls' school stories.  For instance, Miss Bulstrode's perhaps somewhat jaded attitude toward a fretting mother:

"Henrietta, you see, is very highly strung. Very highly strung indeed. Our doctor says…"

Miss Bulstrode nodded, with gentle reassurance, refraining from the caustic phrase she sometimes was tempted to utter.

"Don't you know, you idiot, that that is what every fool of a woman says about her child?"

She spoke with firm sympathy.

"You need have no anxiety, Mrs. Hope. Miss Rowan, a member of our staff, is a fully trained psychologist. You'll be surprised, I'm sure, at the change you'll find in Henrietta (who's a nice intelligent child and far too good for you) after a term or two here."

And here, a bit later, is Mrs. Sutcliffe making the novel's requisite comment on the servant situation, after reading an account in the newspaper of the recent break-in at her house:

She added wistfully, as she glanced again at the local paper:

"How beautifully grand 'kitchen staff' sounds. So different from what it really is, old Mrs. Ellis who is quite deaf and can hardly stand up and that half-witted daughter of the Bardwells who comes in to help on weekday mornings."

As the events of the novel escalate, it is fifteen-year-old Julia Upjohn, as fearless as her mother, who seeks out Hercule Poirot and calls him in to investigate.  And her mother, the ex-spy, might have valuable information, if only she could be traced:

"When the child said a bus, I thought she meant a proper coach tour, running to schedule, and a party all booked together. But that's not it at all. Seems she's just taking local buses to any place she happens to fancy! She's not done it through Cook's or a recognized travel agency. She's all on her own, wandering about. What can you do with a woman like that? She might be anywhere. There's a lot of Anatolia!"

One might imagine that Mrs. Upjohn is just a sort of idealized adventurer figure, a la Mrs. Pollifax, but perhaps there is actually just a trace of Christie herself in her, since Christie in middle age spent much time jetting to and from exotic locales with her archaeologist second husband?  At any rate, I found Mrs. Upjohn fairly irresistible.

My own bedraggled copy

As I did, honestly, the entire novel.  If Cat Among the Pigeons is not Christie at her best as a puzzler, it's certainly one of her best as a creator of likeable characters and interesting situations.  That it's also as good as a snifter of brandy at relieving stress is a bonus.

PATRICIA MOYES, Down Among the Dead Men (1961)

After paying my beloved Dame Agatha a return visit, I picked up my first Patricia Moyes, which had been gathering dust on my bookcase for at least two years since coming across it at an SF Library book sale. 

Down Among the Dead Men is actually Moyes' second novel, and I now have her first, Dead Men Don't Ski, in my hot little hands, since I felt compelled to order a copy from Paperback Swap as soon as I finished Down Among the Dead Men. 

Just a short note on this one, I'm afraid, because I haven't had time to make very significant notes.  But I do recommend Moyes to fans of mysteries, especially those who like their mysteries on the cozy side.  Inexplicably, it seems that Moyes is totally out of print, in the U.S. at least, which is really a shame.

In both of these novels, Inspector Henry Tibbett and his wife Emmy are attempting to take vacations but instead get caught up in murder.  Down Among the Dead Men is set during their boating holiday with friends, and contains lots of details of schooners and frigates and sterns and keels and other such terms which might as well be Sanskrit as far as I'm concerned.  But since Henry and Emmy are only just learning the ropes as well, it all felt quite interesting and almost as enjoyable as being on holiday myself (I wish!).  They encounter charming and funny characters in the village of Berrybridge (except for the murderer, who is somewhat less charming), and it's all quite and irresistible.

As a teaser, here is the opening, which immediately drew me in and displays Moyes' understated humor to good effect:

It is often interesting, in retrospect, to consider the trifling causes that lead to great events. A chance encounter, a thoughtless remark—and the tortuous chain reaction of coincidence is set in motion, leading with devious inevitability to some resounding climax.

For instance, it is virtually certain that if Emmy Tibbett had not broken her shoulder strap in a small, smoky restaurant just off King's Road, Chelsea, one spring evening, the Berrybridge murderer would have got clean away. For if Emmy had not snapped that slender pink ribbon, she would never have spoken to Rosemary Benson in the ladies' room, and accepted the loan of a safety pin; the friendship between the Bensons and the Tibbetts would never have sprung up; and Henry and Emmy Tibbett would never have found themselves, some months later, crammed first into new, tight, unyielding blue jeans and subsequently into an overloaded station wagon, en route for a fortnight's sailing holiday at Berrybridge Haven with the Bensons.