Frederik Pohl’s Danger Moon (Red Moon of Danger)

Frederik Pohl’s science fiction short novel Danger Moon was published in 1951. A variant of the story with the title Red Moon of Danger appeared under the name James MacCreigh.

Frederik Pohl (1919-2013) was an American science fiction writer and one of the major figures in the genre.

Steve Templin is a kid of interplanetary explorer. He’s just been offered a job by Ellen Bishop as a troubleshooter for a company called Terralune. They’re having a lot of trouble in their uranium mine on the Moon. Maybe there’s sabotage. Maybe it’s highly organised. Templin has to eliminate the problem.

Templin had been one of the first astronauts to land on the Moon, a decade-and-a-half earlier. He knows Ellen Bishop well. She’s the daughter of another space exploration pioneer. He isn’t keen on this new job but he’ll do it out out of respect for her late father, and out of respect for Ellen.

He very quickly has a run-in with man named OIcott. Olcott is very rich and very powerful. Templin encounters hi in Hadley Dome. Templin doesn’t approve of Hadley Dome. It’s the pleasure capital of the Moon. The normal laws don’t apply on the Moon. The pleasures of the flesh are freely available. And gambling. Especially gambling. Gambling is a big thing in Hadley Dome. Templin disapproves of decadence and lawlessness.

When he gets to the mine it’s obvious that there’s something peculiar going on. Sabotage certainly, but maybe something more. Maybe something connected to the Moon’s past. It might be the distant past or the recent past. The lunar colony had rebelled a few years earlier. Earth had been attacked. Cities on Earth had been nuked.

A mine shaft collapses. Seven of the eight men working the shaft escape safely. The odd thing is, there could not have been eight men there.

There’s also the attempt to kill Templin.

This is essentially a potboiler. Its biggest problem is that it’s not pulpy enough. A more pulpy approach would have worked better. There’s not enough substance here for a serious science fiction novel. There is the basis for a fun tale of adventure and mayhem but Pohl isn’t willing to embrace that approach fully.

Pohl does display a degree of knowledge of conditions on the lunar surface that was as accurate as one could be in 1951. This is a novel in which the low gravity plays a part, as do the temperature differentials between lunar day and lunar night and the hazards of working on an airless planet.

In 1951 both nuclear power and nuclear weapons were highly topical and both play a part.

Mercifully there’s no politics. The bad guys are motivated by plain old lust for power and money rather than ideology.

Steve Templin is pretty much a stock-standard square-jawed action hero. Ellen Bishop isn’t developed enough as a character to be a memorable heroine.

It’s a short novel with a fairly straightforward plot, with just a few minor twists.

Danger Moon is by no means a bad novel but it doesn’t have anything special going for it. It’s worth a look but it’s not in the same league as Pohl’s brilliant 1953 collaboration with C.M. Kornbluth, The Space Merchants, or his slightly later and very entertaining A Plague of Pythons.

This novel is published in an Armchair Fiction two-novel paperback edition, paired with Ralph Milne Farley’s 1939 science fiction novel The Hidden Universe.

Rog Phillips’ Secret of the Flaming Ring

Rog Phillips’ novella Secret of the Flaming Ring (written under the name P.F. Costello) was published in Fantastic Adventures in March 1951. Rog Phillips (1909-1960) was a prolific American writer of mostly short fiction who enjoyed modest success during his lifetime.

In 1951 the idea that other planets in our solar system might be habitable, and might even be inhabited, still had just enough scientific plausibility to allow science fiction writers to use Mars and Venus as settings. By the mid-60s unmanned space probes had reached both planets and we knew the bad news, that both planets were hostile and uninhabitable. Science fiction writers therefore switched their attention to interstellar spaceflight.

This novella assumes that by the early 21st century we will have colonies on Venus (I miss the starry-eyed technological optimism of 1950s science fiction). That’s where this story takes place. Joe Grimm runs a casino on Venus.

Joe had suffered horrific injuries in a spacecraft accident. He now has a huge metal plate on his forehead with one artificial eye. He can see just fine but his problem is that no-one can bear to see him - he is now a partial cyborg and looks monstrous.

That’s why he doesn’t dare to tell Diana that he loves her. Diana is one of the strippers working in his joint.

Everyone on Venus knows that Venus was once inhabited. Huge hoards of coins and artifacts have been found. It is obvious that the planet was once home to an advanced technological civilisation. No trace remains of that civilisation. The artifacts are now just ruined pieces of junk. The native Venusians are extinct. At least that’s what everybody assumes.

What intrigues Joe is that some guy named Murdock has been passing Venusian coins in his casino. They are obviously genuine but there is something wrong. Joe has had them analysed and they’re just not old enough.

Venus has very little to offer its colonists but it does hold out one tantalising promise. If a person could find intact Venusian technology it would mean fame and riches for that person. And finding evidence of actual living Venusians would mean even greater fame and fortune. Joe Grimm is wondering if these coins might lead him to such a discovery.

Then Diana disappears, without any explanation. Now Joe has two things for which to search - Diana and evidence that living Venusians exist.

What we finds is not what he expected. It’s much stranger. And it has extraordinary implications for our understanding of the whole of human history and mythology. Has he discovered Venusians or gods?

And what of Diana? She fits into this picture somehow but Joe is not sure how.

Joe has a part to play in a cosmic power struggle. He doesn’t fully understand it. The risks are great. But the rewards are tempting.

The ideas in this story are crazy and far-fetched but they’re certainly intriguing. This is more science fantasy than hard science fiction. The author has zero interest in scientific plausibility. I have no problems with that. I can enjoy science fiction that aims for scientific plausibility and I can enjoy science fiction that simply ignores such things.

The plot would have benefited from a few more twists and a greater sense of urgency.

Secret of the Flaming Ring is competent pulp sci-fi and it’s moderately enjoyable. Worth a look.

Armchair Fiction have paired this novella with Jack Sharkey’s The Secret Martians in a two-novel paperback edition.

I’ve reviewed another Rog Phillips novel, World of If, which is OK with some interesting ideas but suffers from heavy-handed messaging.

Frederick Pohl’s A Plague of Pythons

Frederick Pohl’s science fiction novel A Plague of Pythons was serialised in Galaxy Magazine in 1962.

The writing career of Frederick Pohl (1919-2013) spanned, incredibly, no less than 75 years during which time he won just about every science fiction award going. And, interestingly, he was for quite a few years the editor of Galaxy Magazine.

The story begins with a man named Chandler on trial for rape. He should be able to look forward confidently to an acquittal. He was after all possessed at the time. Dozens of people in his small town have been acquitted of crimes such as murder, rape and arson on the grounds of possession. Chandler knows he was possessed and he knows that nobody has any control over his actions in those circumstances. The law recognises this.

The problem is that the crime took place in a pharmaceutical plant, and everyone knows that demons avoid such places. So he looks certain to be convicted and shot, until events take a strange turn.

Chandler lives in a very near future world in which possession is all too common. It began very suddenly, almost overnight. Since then civilisation has been brought to its knees by an extraordinary epidemic of demonic possession. The world has reverted to a state of near-barbarism. Orgies of murder and destruction are commonplace. Terror stalks the world.

Chandler, having escaped being shot, discovers a strange little community known as the Orphalese. They believe they have found two defences against possession - pain and the writings of Kahlil Gibran (whose works were quite a thing in the U.S. at that time among those with a taste for esoteric spirituality). Maybe there is hope after all.

Chandler later finds himself possessed again and ends up in Hawaii. He hasn’t gone there of his own free will. He was driven to go. For an important project. But for whom?

The possessions are real, but it’s not demons doing the possessing. Whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing that actual demons are not involved is debatable. Either way there seems to be no effective defence. Most people have given up even trying to resist.

Chandler slowly puts the pieces of the puzzle together and figures out what is going on. He just can’t see that he can do anything about it. And he has no idea how it is all likely to end.

There’s also Rosalie and she’s a disturbing factor. He’s not quite sure where Rosalie stands, or where he stands with her. Her loyalties are at best uncertain. Perhaps he should not trust her at all. Perhaps he will have to trust her. Having nothing to do with her is not an option.

There are no actual demons but there are things worse than demons. I don’t want to reveal what those things are because that is something that is revealed gradually and I have no desire to reveal spoilers.

This is a science fiction novel rather than a fantasy or horror novel, although there are worse horrors in this book than in most out-and-out horror novels.

The novel taps into one of the major obsessions of the period (the early 60s) but again I’m reluctant to be any more specific than that, other than to say that it taps into that obsession in a fascinating way and with a few original touches.

Pohl certainly knows how to create an atmosphere of paranoia and despair. Time and again Chandler thinks he’s found a reason to hope only to have that hope brutally snatched away from him.

And I do love the ending.

A Plague of Pythons is highly recommended.

This one is paired with The Bees of Death by Robert Moore Williams in an Armchair Fiction double-header paperback. In this case you get two very good very interesting novels so this paperback is a very worthwhile purchase.

Battle Mask - Mack Bolan The Executioner 3

Battle Mask, published by Pinnacle Books in 1970, is the third of the Mack Bolan (or The Executioner) series of men’s action-adventure novels. The series eventually ran to a total of 464 novels over the course of half a century.

All but one of the first 38 novels were written by Don Pendleton (1927-1995). Pendleton later sold the rights to the character and apparently the series later changed dramatically. This is my first Mack Bolan novel so I can’t comment on these later changes.

Mack Bolan is a Vietnam vet who has been conducting a private war against the Mafia, with his own small private army. We get some backstory on the character. He was a sniper in Vietnam. He has a personal grudge against the Mafia and the methods he uses against them are the ones he learnt in Vietnam.

Now, for various reasons, he has to work alone and the Mafia is closing in on him. The odds against him are impossible. There may however be one way out. He could get a new face. He happens to know a surgeon (an ex-army doctor) who could perform such an operation.

First Mack has to throw a Mafia death squad off his scent. The opening pages are non-stop action as Mack uses every trick he knows to keep one step ahead of those Mafia goons.

Mack does not intend to keep running. His war against the Mafia is far from over.

His target will be West Coast capo Julian DiGeorge. Only a crazy man would try to infiltrate himself into the upper echelons of a Mafia Family operating entirely on his own but Mack Bolan intends to do just that. He makes use of the capo’s daughter Andrea, taking advantage of her uneasy relationship with her father.

The problem he faces is that sooner or later, even with a new face, his cover is going to be blown. Mobsters check up on new recruits very very thoroughly. The other problem he has it that the cops are after him. They don’t approve of his methods. Officially at least. Unofficially he may get some help from some cops.

What follows is a great deal of mayhem and carnage and Pendleton handles the action scenes with plenty of energy and style. Some of the violence is fairly grisly. Except in the opening scenes Bolan doesn’t rely on fancy weaponry. He relies on his jungle warfare training and his wits rather than massive firepower.

Bolan’s strategy is to pit one faction of mobsters against the other.

This is a classic one-man vigilante tale. Vigilantes are not overly attractive but Pendleton makes sure our sympathies remain with Bolan. He pulls no punches in describing the brutal methods used by the Mob. However ruthless Bolan might be his enemies are much much worse. We’re also told that Bolan saved the lives of lots of children in Vietnam. He’s a merciless killer with a sensitive side.

Pendleton doesn’t get into politics. This is a straight organised crime story.

The sleaze factor is non-existent. There’s no sex at all. There’s an attraction between Bolan and Andrea but nothing happens.

There’s some decent suspense. It seems that DiGeorge and his goons must at any moment figure out out that they’ve been conned and that their new recruit is actually their most feared enemy, Mack Bolan the Executioner.

It’s a pretty dark book. Lots of innocent people, good people, get hurt very very badly. Bolan is aware that his crusade against the Mafia has put those people in danger. For Bolan it’s a war but innocent civilians get killed in wars. He’s also aware that he’s putting Andrea in danger. There’s not a huge amount of moral complexity in this tale but there is some. And there are lots of betrayals.

Overall it’s a wild action-filled ride. Recommended.

Richard S. Prather’s Bodies in Bedlam

Bodies in Bedlam, published by Gold Medal in 1951, was the second of the Shell Scott private eye mystery thrillers written by Richard S. Prather (1921-2007). He would go on to write many many more.

Private eye Sheldon “Shell” Scott is attending a swanky Hollywood party. Not his usual scene but a while back he did a big favour for the head of Magna Studios which is how he got the invite to the party. It turns out to be quite a night. Some lunkhead annoys him and Shell (who has a bit of a temper) takes a swing at him. Shell meets a doll in a hoop skirt and a silver mask (it’s a costume party). And the lunkhead (a guy named Roger Brane) winds up very very dead, with his throat cut quite spectacularly.

To the police everybody at the party is a possible suspect but obviously a private eye who took a swing at the murder victim shortly before the murder is going to be one of their favoured suspects. Shell is not very happy about that. Captain Samson at the Homicide Squad is an old buddy and he doesn’t believe for a second that Shell is guilty but the officer assigned to the case, Lieutenant Kerrigan, hates Shell’s guts and would love to pin a murder rap on him.

And then Shell finds himself with a new client - the silver-masked doll from the party. The doll, whose name is Hallie, is pretty worried and with good reason - her hoop skirt and silver mask were found next to Brane’s body. Shell is sure that Hallie is innocent because she’s really cute and really friendly and he likes her.

Roger Brane is (or was) a painter, and a pretty good one. He had plenty of money but the money din’t come from his painting. Shell figures it might have come from blackmail, and that his speciality may have been blackmailing Hollywood actresses. There are at least four actresses who were at that party who may have been victims of Brane’s blackmailing.

What Shell can’t quite figure out is where Garvey Mace fits into all this. Mace is a businessman, the sort of businessman whose business interests are not exactly strictly legal. In fact he’s a racketeer. He’s not the sort of man who would have anything to do with artists but Mace seems to be really interested in this case.

This is not quite hardboiled fiction. You could call it medium-boiled. There’s plenty of wry humour. It’s moderately violent and quite sexy.

Prather has quite a prose style and a gift for sparkling dialogue. The tone is cheeky and irreverent and generally fairly light. The emphasis is on entertainment. There’s none of the grim pessimism or misanthropy that you find in some hardboiled fiction.

Shell Scott had been a Marine during the war and he didn’t like it. He likes being a private detective. For one thing you get to meet lots of interesting women. Shell likes women a lot. And some of the women he meets are real friendly. Shell likes that.

Shell can handle himself pretty well and he can be a tough guy when it’s necessary but he doesn’t enjoy brutalising people. He’s no sadist. He has occasional outbursts of anger but he’s not a guy who likes to go looking for trouble. If trouble finds him then he deals with it. Mostly he has a cheerful outlook. He’s definitely not a psychologically tortured hero. And he likes fish. Tropical fish. He has tropical fish in his home and in his office. He’s not a Mike Hammer-style private eye. He’s also not a Philip Marlowe-style private eye. He’s not introspective. He just wants to make a living and enjoy life. He’s a very likeable hero. He also drives a canary-yellow ’41 Cadillac convertible, which he seems a bit embarrassed by. He’s not the world’s greatest detective and he doesn’t have unrealistic ideas about his own abilities.

There are some good action moments, especially the fight in the car.

It’s all wildly politically incorrect of course, which adds to the fun.

The details of the blackmail racket are very clever and original. Hollywood doesn’t just provide a glamorous background - the movie industry plays a key role in the plot.

Bodies in Bedlam is fast-paced fun with a nice mix of action and humour. Highly recommended.

H. Beam Piper’s Time Crime

H. Beam Piper’s short novel Time Crime was originally published in two parts in the February and March 1955 issues of Astounding Science Fiction.

H. Beam Piper (1904-1964) was an American writer of science fiction (and wrote in other genres as well).

The premise is definitely interesting. At some point in the distant future human society has entirely exhausted all the resources of Earth. Human civilisation would have been doomed but for a lucky discovery - the discovery of billions of parallel universes and, even more importantly, the development of technology to allow humans to move from one timeline to another. With all those worlds to exploit the future of humanity is guaranteed.

This human civilisation is essentially a parasite civilisation, exploiting the resources of other civilisations. It is however a mostly benign parasite civilisation - humans have learnt to keep their exploitation of other worlds within strict limits, and to limit their interference in those other worlds. Making sure that those limits are respected, and keeping the timeline-jumping capability a secret from those other civilisations, is the job of the Paratime Police.

Now there’s a problem. An officer from the Paratime Police has discovered a shipment of slaves in the Esaron Sector and those slaves are from a different timeline. Slavery is a local custom in that timeline so the Paratime Police aren’t worried about that issue but transposing people from one timeline to another is forbidden and is a major security problem. In fact it’s a crisis.

Verkan Vall is the timecop who has to get to the bottom of the situation. He gets valuable assistance from his wife Hadron Dalla (recruited as a temporary timecop). He soon finds that he’s uncovered a vast conspiracy and it has major political repercussions.

The crime investigation aspect of the story is handled reasonably well but it’s the central idea (and the detail with which it’s developed) that makes this novel worthwhile. Each timeline represents a different history of human civilisation on Earth, ranging from Stone Age cultures to fairly advanced civilisations.

Piper makes the exploration of alternate timelines as adventurous as other writers made the exploration of other planets. In the Paratime world human civilisation is limited to Earth, Mars and Venus with interstellar travel having apparently never been developed. But with billions of timelines to choose from humans have access to much wider frontiers than even interstellar travel could have offered and of course the advantage is that in every timeline Earth is an inhabitable planet.

Piper went on to write a number of other Paratime stories and novels.

Don’t expect any attempts at characterisation or any emotional sub-plots - this is classic ideas-driven golden age science fiction. What matters is whether the ideas are good enough, and in this case they are.

There is some action, including a full-scale planetary assault.

Apart from having several divisions of highly armed troops at their disposal the Paratime Police also have access to high-tech mind control technology - they can erase memories and create false memories. This adds an additional layer to the novel.

There’s an interesting amorality to this story - this is an unapologetically exploitative society in which cynicism, corruption, deception, manipulation and political repression are taken for granted. And these are the heroes of the story. They’re the good guys. The difference between the good guys and the bad guys is that the good guys are better at lying and cheating. If you like idealism in your science fiction you won’t find any here.

Armchair Fiction have re-issued this book as part of their wonderful series of double-header paperbacks (this one has been paired with Leigh Brackett’s Last Call from Sector 9G).

Time Crime is a bit convoluted at times and it’s hard to keep track of the many characters since none of them has even a shred of personality and they all have similar sorts of names. It’s still recommended as an interesting early exploration of the infinite parallel universes idea.

Evelyn Piper’s Bunny Lake Is Missing

Evelyn Piper’s Bunny Lake Is Missing was published in 1957. It’s a suspense novel with some domestic and psychological melodrama thrown in.

Evelyn Piper was a pseudonym used by American writer Merriam Modell (1908-1994).

Blanche Lake has only been in New York for three weeks. She previously lived in Providence but she had certain personal reasons for relocating to the Big Apple.

Blanche goes to pick up her three-year-old daughter Bunny from the nursery school in New York in which she has just enrolled her. But Bunny isn’t there. A search is made. The police are called. Maybe Blanche’s mother picked the child up? But no, that can’t be the case, her mother is out of town.

Naturally Blanche is pretty upset and she’s eventually persuaded to see a doctor. She obviously needs a sedative to calm her down. Dr Newsome is very concerned. Dr Newsome is a psychiatrist.

Blanche becomes even more upset when she becomes convinced that the police are not actually looking for her daughter.

While Blanche is looking for Bunny Mrs Negrito is looking for her son Eddie. Eddie is a bit troublesome and Mrs Negrito thinks he’s a bit too interested in Blanche Lake.

The problem for Blanche is that both the police and Dr Newsome believe that there are a lot of things in her story which just don’t add up. And she can’t present any real evidence to support her version of events. They don’t know whether to believe some of her story, or all of it. Or none of it. The reader doesn’t know either. Mostly we’re seeing things from Blanche’s point of view, but we don’t know if we can trust her point of view. We don’t even know if Blanche can trust her own point of view. Maybe she’s not entirely stable. She might not even be entirely sane. On the other hand she might be telling the truth about everything.

There’s a lot of pop psychology and social commentary to wade through. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing depends on your personal preferences. For me it’s a bad thing. I have a limited tolerance for that sort of thing, and an especially limited tolerance for pop Freudianism. Fortunately though there is definitely a suspense story here, and a mystery, and the author is fairly successful in keeping us unsure about what exactly is going on. So this is a psychological/emotional suspense thriller.

It’s also very much a woman’s story in the sense that it’s Blanche’s emotional responses as a woman that drive most of the plot, and social attitudes towards woman also play a part given that Bunny is illegitimate. Blanche’s relationship with her own mother is also important.

The ending is reasonably suspenseful as Blanche decides to bring things to a head one way or another, possibly in a rather desperate way. There’s also one nice touch right at the end - it’s not exactly a plot twist but I can’t say any more without revealing a spoiler.

Blanche is a sympathetic protagonist with more than a touch of ambiguity. There’s quite a lot of ambiguity to most of the other key characters as well - Louise Benton (the director of the nursery school), Dr Newsome and Wilson, a writer to whom Blanche turns for help. In true noir style we come to question the motivations of all the characters.

The plot has some very important parallels to a certain very famous mystery story (a story that is directly referenced in the later stages of the book) but to say any more would be to risk spoilers.

Otto Preminger’s film version, released in 1965, is in my opinion more successful than the novel but the novel certainly has its strengths. The novel mostly falls into the suspense thriller genre but there are some noir fiction elements as well in addition to the domestic melodrama elements I’ve already alluded to.

Bunny Lake Is Missing is perhaps not quite my cup of tea but if you don’t mind some social commentary and some psychological angst you’ll probably enjoy it more than I did. Which is not to say that I disliked the book. I just didn’t love it. Recommended, with a few caveats.

E.R. Punshon’s Information Received

When E.R. Punshon’s Information Received was published in 1933 it was given a rave review by Dorothy L. Sayers. Sayers say the book as exemplifying her own ideas on detective fiction - that literary qualities were vastly more important than such sordid qualities as good plotting. Detective fiction should aspire to be Literature. Sayers was of course completely wrong about this, as she was about most things. But even though it received the Sayers seal of approval I’m still prepared to give Information Received a fair chance.

E.R. Punshon (1872-1956) was an English writer of mainstream fiction who in later life turned more and more towards the writing of detective fiction, including a vast number of novels chronicling the rise of Bobby Owen from the humble police constable of Information Received to the highest ranks of Scotland Yard. Bobby Owen is a university graduate who found himself with prospects so terribly limited that his only options seemed to be to become a schoolteacher or a policeman. He chose being a policeman as being slightly the lesser of two ghastly evils. At the time of the events described in Information Received Owen’s police career has been undistinguished. One might even go so far as to say that it has been impressive in its unimpressiveness.

Now he has what might well be his big break. He is first on the scene when Sir Christopher  Clarke, a big wheel in the City, is murdered. He is even luckier than that, as the formidable Superintendent Mitchell takes a liking to him. Mitchell is favourably impressed that although Owen has made several mistakes common to inexperienced policemen the young constable offers no excuses.

Sir Christopher’s safe, containing easily negotiable bearer bonds and diamonds, was also robbed.

For the most part the possible suspects either have no alibis or alibis that any reader of detective fiction would instantly recognise as rather shaky.

The various suspects - Sir Christopher’s daughter, son-in-law, step daughter, the step daughter’s fiancé, the family lawyer, a business associate and an elderly actor - behave in a manner that almost seems to be calculated to draw further suspicion upon themselves. Some have obvious motives while others have no apparent reason for wanting to murder Sir Christopher. Th question of motives is one to which we shall return.

There are some ingenious touches and one aspect of the murder method is particularly clever. Unfortunately the clue that points most surely to the killer is a clue offered to the reader but it’s a clue that the detectives don’t notice.

The plotting is very problematical. It makes use of a device which was used on occasion by other writer but it’s a device that has always seemed to me to be an outright cheat. It makes it impossible for the reader to fit the pieces of the puzzle together.

A bigger problem is that the two chief detectives, Superintendent Mitchell and Constable Bobby Owen, do not solve the case by actual detection. The solution is presented to them on a platter. Suddenly, right at the end, a great deal of information necessary for the unraveling of the mystery is suddenly pulled from a hat. And the crucial motive, and it really is crucial, is revealed. Everything is clear, but this happens at a point at which Mitchell and Owen have admitted that they cannot solve the case. Then the solution is simply given to them.

As a work of detective fiction I have to rate this one as a failure.

As for Dorothy Sayers’ beloved literary qualities, I failed to notice them. It is competently written. There’s a lot of psychologising which will endear this book to modern critics. Personally I find that that sort of stuff bores me a little. In this particular case it’s rather overwrought and melodramatic, more what I expect in a Victorian sensation novel. I actually like Victorian sensation novels and I like melodrama but it seems a bit out of place here.

I don’t really think Information Received quite works as a detective novel and as Literature I can’t imagine anyone other than Dorothy L. Sayers being excited by it.

It’s a much-praised book. Obviously others have found virtues in it that I have failed to discover. Personally I’d give it a miss.

Rupert Penny's Sealed Room Murder

Rupert Penny was one of the pseudonyms used by Ernest Basil Charles Thornett (1909-1970), an English author who wrote a small number of mystery novels between 1936 and 1941. Sealed Room Murder was one of his last mysteries, published in 1941. It is, very obviously, a locked-room mystery.

This is a book that makes us wait a long long time for the murder. Private enquiry agent Douglas Merton is hired to find out who is harassing Mrs Harriet Steele. It’s almost certainly someone from within her own household, and what a grotesque household it is.

Harriet Steele had been an acrobat but she is now obese, crude and thoroughly unpleasant. By the terms of a very cruel and malicious will a tribe of penniless relatives lives with her, all hoping that somehow they can find a way to get their hands on the Steele fortune. The will forces Harriet to put up with them but she doesn’t have to like it and she doesn’t have to make things pleasant for them. And she certainly makes things incredibly unpleasant for them.

Now it appears that one of them has decided to strike back by launching a low-level campaign of intimidation. Clothing has been ruined, a very expensive mink coat has been slashed, Harriet’s clocks (she collects clocks) have been sabotaged, and expensive flooring has been hacked to pieces.

Harriet is a monster but the rest of the family are not much better. Merton is inclined to think that they all deserve each other. Except for Linda. Linda is different. Linda is a lovely girl. Linda could not possibly have anything to do with anything nasty or malicious. Douglas Merton is not exactly an unbiased witness on the subject of young Linda Whitehead.

Merton’s presence in Harriet Steele’s ugly and depressing house doesn’t deter the miscreant behind the harassment. In fact things start to escalate. And various members of the household report having items stolen or maliciously damaged.

The book mainly consists of a lengthy first-person account of Merton’s inconclusive investigations of the harassment of Harriet Steele. Merton tells us right from the start that he’s not much of a detective and I think most readers will agree with his self-assessment. The point of this lengthy prelude to murder is to establish the dynamics of the household and to establish that while everyone in the house had reason to hate Mrs Steele a number of people had possible motives for wanting to do away with her. We already know, because we’ve been told, that it’s going to end in murder so this is all by way of getting us to indulge in speculation on the identity of the killer even before the murder takes place.

Once the murder takes place the actual investigation of that crime (by Chief Inspector Beale of Scotland Yard) is quickly disposed of. Which is an interesting and decidedly odd choice on the part of the author because this is a detective story in which the whodunit aspect is of very little importance. It’s the how that is important - that’s the aspect of the story in which Penny has invested all his ingenuity and on which the success of the book must stand or fall.

And the how is very very complicated indeed! There are numerous floor plans and diagrams and they’re all needed. It’s the kind of murder method that no real-life murderer would even contemplate, not only on account of its complexity but also because there are so many ways in which it could have failed. On the other hand it is certainly very clever. If you’re a connoisseur of bizarre murder methods and outrageous impossible crimes then this novel should prove eminently satisfying.

It’s also reasonably fairly clued, although even with plenty of clues the fiendish complexity of the murder will probably be enough to ensure that most readers will remain mystified until Chief Inspector Beale’s final explanation.

While the long long lead-up could be seen as a weakness it’s actually quite entertaining, especially if you enjoy books with a plenitude of grotesque characters. Douglas Merton is an interesting protagonist because he’s a private detective but in fact he’s entirely useless in that capacity (although he’s a pleasant enough young chap). There’s no proper detecting done until Chief Inspector Beale’s arrival on the scene. There are plenty of detective stories in which a brilliant amateur solves a case that is beyond the powers of a baffled and incompetent professional. This is a story in which a brilliant professional solves a case that has left an incompetent amateur befuddled and bewildered.

Sealed Room Murder is a slightly odd but fairly enjoyable book with a wonderfully complicated locked-room problem. Highly recommended.

Rupert Penny’s mysteries were re-issued a few years back by Ramble House. So they’re available, but they’re just a little on the pricey side.

Stuart Palmer’s The Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla

The Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla appeared in 1937, being the seventh of Stuart Palmer’s Hildegarde Withers mysteries.

This being my first Hildegarde Withers book I’m a little vague on the backstory of the two main characters but clearly middle-aged spinster schoolteacher Hildegarde Withers is in the habit of helping out hardbitten New York cop Inspector Oscar Piper on some of his more challenging murder cases.

The Inspector has scored himself what promises to be a pleasant little junket down Mexico way. The reason he scored the junket sheds some interesting light on the way things were done back in the 30s. Piper seems to be a perfectly honest cop but he’s been happy to go along with the rather shady shenanigans of New York’s political bosses and now he’s getting his reward. It’s taken for granted that all branches of government are basically corrupt and if you want to have a career you don’t make waves. This is an intriguing bit of what would normally be considered to be hardboiled content in what is otherwise a very light-hearted tale.

The train trip to Mexico City is not overly comfortable but it’s fairly uneventful, apart from the occasional murder. This is a slightly odd murder. Why would anyone want to murder a Mexican customs officer, and why murder him in such a manner? Poison in a perfume bottle is a strange way to bump off a customs official. And what connection could there be between such a murder and the youngish wife of a New York alderman? Yet the connection is undeniable. Oscar Piper is well acquainted with the alderman in question, a notoriously corrupt city official.

Oscar is puzzled and there follows a frantic exchange of telegrams between the Inspector and Miss Hildegarde Withers, an exchange that becomes more urgent as Miss Withers quickly becomes convinced that Oscar is on the wrong track entirely. The good Inspector’s approach to crime-solving seems to be to pick the most obvious suspect and then have them arrested, the matter of finding any actual evidence being apparently of little importance. It’s just as well that Miss Withers hops aboard the first plane to Mexico City, just in time to bail Inspector Oscar Piper out of gaol. 

The murder will later strike again, in equally puzzling circumstances.

Palmer’s still is breezy and energetic. Oscar Piper is an engaging and amusing character even if he appears to have certain worrying deficiencies as a detective. Miss Withers is your classic middle-aged spinster genius amateur detective, a type of which I’m not overly fond. There’s plenty of humour but it doesn’t overwhelm the story which never threatens to descend into silliness or contrived whimsy. The humour flows naturally from the characters and the situations. It’s not laugh-out-loud funny but it is gently amusing.

The plot has a few clever touches and there’s an abundance of red herrings but the central mystery is not overly brilliant. Some of the important plot elements are all too obvious. Palmer makes up for this to some extent by keeping the action moving along at a fairly frenetic pace. Palmer had already started writing screenplays by this point and to my mind the novel is rather cinematic (and I mean that as a compliment). The complex set-piece involving the bullfight is adroitly executed and would have been the ideal centre-piece for a film adaptation.

This is perhaps not quite an impossible crime story but one of the murders is certainly superficially difficult to explain. Solving the mystery of how it was committed is a key plot point but unfortunately the explanation is quite straightforward - it certainly lacks the dazzling ingenuity that a John Dickson Carr would have put into such a puzzle.

Oscar Piper is a remarkably clueless policeman. The Mexican police are considerably more intelligent and more professional although of course even they cannot solve the mystery with Hildegarde Withers. Miss Withers herself is not as irritating as I’d expected her to be. She’s eccentric but Palmer wisely doesn’t push her eccentricities too far.

So did I enjoy this novel? Yes, it’s a good-humoured and well-told tale even if the mystery is a little on the weak side. Would I read any more Hildegarde Withers mysteries? To be honest, probably not. Would I recommend it? Probably, to those who like middle-aged spinster genius amateur detectives and lightweight comic-tinged detective stories.

The Space Merchants

The Space Merchants is a science fiction novel written by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth and published in 1953. It’s also one of the great dystopian novels of the modern era.

The future world of The Space Merchants is controlled entirely by huge corporations. Government functions merely as a rubber stamp for the decisions of the corporations. Congress is owned lock, stock and barrel by these corporations and the President is a figurehead with no power at all. By far the most powerful companies are the advertising agencies, and the most powerful agencies are Taunton Associates and Fowler Schocken.

This is a horrifically overpopulated world but population growth is still enthusiastically encouraged. More population means more cheap labour and more consumers and therefore more sales, and that means more profit. No-one questions the assumption that this is a good thing.

This is also a totalitarian society but it’s what we would today call a soft totalitarianism, enforced mostly by propaganda and social pressure. The iron fist beneath the velvet glove is only revealed when a consumer commits a really serious crime, such as questioning the value of advertising.

Competition between corporations is fierce but out-and-out murder is frowned upon unless proper notification has been given that a state of commercial feud exists. Corporations have gone beyond the stage of running the state - they now function as states themselves. There are no police forces - law enforcement has been entirely privatised.

Art and popular entertainment no longer exist apart from their role in providing opportunities for advertising.

The story is narrated by Mitch Courtenay, a star class copysmith with Fowler Schocken. Mitch has just been given a new assignment. He has been put in charge of the Venus account. An immense rocket has been constructed which will transport the first Earth colonists to Venus. The colony will of course be run by Fowler Schocken entirely for the benefit of Fowler Schocken and its associated companies. 

One minor problem is that nobody in their right mind would want to be a colonist on Venus. But this isn’t really a problem at all. By the time Fowler Schocken’s Venus advertising campaign is in full swing everyone will want to be a Venus colonist.

Mitch Courtenay’s life is going pretty well, apart from his marriage. He’d like to make the marriage permanent but Kathy won’t agree. In fact she wants to end the agreement before the end of the trial period. And there is one other minor irritant in Mitch’s life - someone is trying to kill him. This is puzzling since as far as he knows no other corporation has declared a commercial feud against Fowler Schocken.

Mitch soon finds himself on a roller coaster ride of terror and misery. Having people trying to kill you is bad enough but he finds that his identity has been stolen and he now faces the most appalling fate imaginable - having to live as a consumer.

He also gets mixed up with the consies. The consies are the Conservationists. These are dangerous fanatics who believe that overpopulation is out of control, that life has become sterile and meaningless and that deurbanisation and a return to a more traditional lifestyle are essential. They are so extreme that they even question whether increasing consumption is a good thing.

The plot has some rather wild twists and turnings as Mitch discovers that all his assumptions about the world and about the people he knows may be quite wrong.

While this novel doesn’t have the literary polish of the great dystopian novels of Huxley and Orwell it does feature a dystopian which is every bit as fully worked out and every bit as convincing. If 1984 was the great communist dystopian novel then The Space Merchants is the great capitalist dystopian novel. There is however one feature that both dystopias have in common - they are societies in which the elites have absolute power while the mass of the people have no power at all. And, interestingly enough, the capitalist elites of The Space Merchants maintain their control by much the same methods as the communist elites in 1984 - through the control of language, by rewriting the past, by encouraging people to denounce dissidents and through endless and all-pervasive propaganda. And the consies serve much the same purpose as Emmanuel Goldstein in 1984 - it seems that every totalitarianism has to have an enemy as a focus of fear and hatred.

Pohl and Kornbluth are careful not to introduce any radical new technologies into their tale.  Every technology is this novel is merely an extrapolation of technologies that existed in the early 1950s such as rocketry, radio and television. The intention was obviously to make this dystopia as plausible as possible. What makes the book truly terrifying today is not this plausibility but the fact that so much of what the authors predict has already come true.

The Space Merchants is also very amusing (in a sometimes very dark way) and highly entertaining. It’s very pulpy but in a way that’s a strength - the crassness of a world run by advertising agencies lends itself to a pulpy treatment. 

Very highly recommended.

G.K. Chesterton's The Donnington Affair

The Donnington Affair is an intriguing example of a detective story with multiple authors (a idea that would enjoy a considerable vogue during the golden age of detective fiction). The first half of The Donnington Affair was written by Sir Max Pemberton and published in October 1914. It gives us the set-up and the murder. Pemberton challenged G.K. Chesterton to provide the solution. The second half of the story, published in the same periodical a month later, was written by Chesterton and describes Father Brown’s solution to the mystery.

Pemberton’s mystery is ingenious enough. It involves bitter family quarrels, a son who has turned (although not with any great success) to crime and a country house riddled with secrets. There’s no shortage of suspects but the time and the place of the murder presents problems for any would-be detective.

Chesterton’s little priest-detective was certainly fascinated by criminal puzzles but he was always more interested in crimes as spiritual and moral puzzles rather then mere intellectual games. Chesterton in this case succeeds reasonably well in making this into an authentic Father Brown mystery.

The Donnington Affair is included (along with a couple of previously uncollected tales) in the Penguin Classics Complete Father Brown Stories.

The Donnington Affair might not be one of the best Father Brown stories but fans of the priestly sleuth will find that it’s worth checking out.

The City of the Living Dead

The City of the Living Dead, a short story by Laurence Manning and Fletcher Pratt originally published in Science Wonder Stories in 1930, has sometimes been claimed as an influence on The Matrix. In fact the story incorporates a number of concepts that would later be hailed as revolutionary when the cyberpunk writers rediscovered them half a century later.

The world of Alvrosdale is a very small world. It is a close-knit agricultural community, presumably somewhere in northern Europe. Alvrosdale is entirely cut off from the rest of the world and has been for a couple of thousand years. It was cut off suddenly and completely by a geological cataclysm that raised an impassable mountain barrier.

The people live what might seem to be a primitive life, without machines of any kind. In fact they hate and fear the very idea of the Machine. They are aware, in a vague way, of the existence of Machines and have an even vague awareness that elsewhere in the world the Machine has reached an extraordinary degree of sophistication, fueled by a demon the people of the dale fear above all else - the Demon Power.

Each year a number of young people set off in their gliders (gliders are allowed since they have no connection with the Demon Power) to cross the mountain barrier. Before they leave the wise old Hal Hallstrom tells them his story. It is an incredibly story of what he found in the lands beyond the mountain.

He found a world dominated by the Machine, but a dead world. Not quite dead though. Something worse than dead. A living death. And he discovers that the people of Alvrosdale have good reason to fear the Machines. The Machines are not evil in themselves but they lead to evil results.

One of the many ideas that Manning and Pratt anticipated in this tale is virtual reality. It is not just a vague approximation to the idea - it is the idea fully developed, in some ways perhaps even more fully developed that anything to be found in the cyberpunk writers. This is not virtual reality that mimics life - it replaces life. Cyborgs are also anticipated in this story and again the idea is impressively well thought through.

Science fiction authors are sometimes good at predicting technologies but not so good at predicting the social consequences of those technologies. Very few science fiction authors have been successfully able to imagine just how trivial and futile would be the uses to which human beings would put advanced technologies. In this instance the authors cannot be accused of this failing - the self-destructiveness of technology used purely for pleasure and amusement is vividly described. Manning and Pratt would not have been the slightest bit surprised by the tragic misuse of the internet.

This is very much ideas-based science fiction with absolutely zero interest in characterisation. I was going to say that it displays zero interest in emotion but that’s not quite true - it displays no interest in individual emotions but it does deal in at least general terms with the emotional and psychological consequences of unlimited access to unlimited power and technology.

The City of the Living Dead would have been an impressive enough achievement had it been published thirty years later, but appearing as it did in 1930 it’s breathtakingly prescient and a truly remarkable work of speculative science fiction. Highly recommended.

Bellow Bill Williams in Argosy

I don’t know anything about Ralph R. Perry other than the fact that he was a pulp writer who produced stories for magazines like Argosy. His best-known creation seems to be Bellow Bill Williams, a tough much-tattooed pearler. The Bellow Bill Williams stories belong to the South Seas adventure sub-genre and that’s a sub-genre that is rapidly becoming a favourite of mine.

Even more than most adventure stories of the past South Seas adventure tales (and the closely related Tales of the Mysterious Orient sub-genre) conjure up a vanished world, a world that was swept away by the Second World War. It was a world in which a man who chose to do so could simply vanish. Once you reached a remote Pacific island or one of the cities of the Far East you were effectively out of the reach of western civilisation. Most importantly, you no longer needed to worry about the rules of western society. There were certainly rules you had to heed if you wanted to survive but they were different rules and for a certain type of man (and perhaps to an extent for a certain type of woman) that had a lot of appeal. These were of course communities of European and American expatriates but if you really wanted to escape you could, in the colourful phrase of the day, go native.

Whether this world of adventurers and misfits really existed or whether if it did it bore any relation to the world of the adventure pulps is another matter. What is important is that people believed such a world existed. Fictional worlds sometimes seem to be more real, and are certainly a good deal more interesting, than the real world.

Which brings us back to Bellow Bill Williams. He featured in a series of stories in Argosy in the 30s. Whether Terror Island (dating from 1933) is typical or not I can’t yet say - this is the first Bellow Bill Williams story I’ve encountered. What I can say is that it’s a whole lot of fun.

Bellow Bill Williams is hired by a blind man to find his son, kidnapped by a scoundrel named Clipper Clarke. The blind man is Nick Atterson, a bit of an adventurer himself in his youth and now a wealthy trader, and also a man for whom Williams has often worked in the past. Clipper Clarke is holding Nick’s son Tom hostage on a remote volcanic island. Clipper’s domain is defended by his loyal and extremely fierce Papuans and by a series of ingenious man-traps. No sane man would venture to set foot on the island the Papuans call Terror Island but Bellow Bill Williams is not a man to worry about such risks.

The story is a non-stop action roller-coaster ride with some nicely fiendish touches. The style is exceptionally pulpy, which is exactly how such stories should be. Bellow Bill Williams is a fine square-jawed action hero, as hard as nails but with a string streak of decency and fair play. Clipper Clarke is a very serviceable villain, cowardly but treacherous and cunning. 

The Atoll of Flaming Men appeared in Argosy in 1935. Bellow Bill Williams encounters a pearling lugger, apparently abandoned. On board are five dead men, with a diver also dead at the end of his lifeline deep beneath the surface of the water.

One of the dead men in the cabin, a European, has been tortured. The oddest thing is that of the five dead men only one has a visible wound to explain his sudden demise. And three of the men in the cabin, all Melanesians, have their faces smeared with a strange greenish substance which glows in the dark!

Bill tows the lugger to the closest atoll where more surprises await him.

The Golden Oyster is a treasure hunt story, published in Argosy in 1935. A professor trying to prove an arcane point about the Basque language has somehow stumbled across a story fold by a Basque cabin boy of gold from a Spanish treasure ship lying on the bottom of the lagoon of a coral atoll. Unfortunately Professor Griswold has foolishly allowed the secret to slip out and now there are assorted cut-throats after that gold. 

Bellow Bill knows the South Seas and he’s an old hand at adventure but in this tale he makes a serious error of judgment which could have disastrous consequences. Sometimes a man can be too suspicious!

Bellow Bill Williams is a giant of a man and most of his body is covered by tattoos. To say he has led an adventurous life would be an understatement. He doesn’t necessarily go looking for adventure - it goes looking for him. He’s every inch a man of action but although he carries a gun he is, by his own admission, an incredibly lousy shot. Fortunately he knows plenty of other ways to deal with evildoers. Unlike many adventure heroes he has no regular sidekick. He is a loner. He’s not a morose or a self-pitying loner and he’s not even particularly anti-social. He has simply chosen his own path in life and it’s a path best walked alone.

The style of these stories is pulpy in the extreme but the lack of polish is more than compensated for by tight pacing, plentiful action and some nicely imaginative touches of the the weird and the gruesome. Great stuff. Highly recommended.

I discovered the Bellow Bill stories through the True Pulp Fiction blog. These stories can be found at Ron Unz's website - Terror Island, The Atoll of Flaming Men and The Golden Oyster. 

The Adventures of Jimmie Dale

Frank L. Packard (1877-1942) was a Canadian who wrote crime and adventure fiction but gained his greatest fame with his Jimmie Dale stories. Jimmie Dale, alias the Grey Seal, is a very very early example of both the masked avenger type of hero and the hero with a secret identity. 

Raffles, created by E. W. Hornung, had proved that the public loved the idea of a gentleman-thief but there was still a slight problem - even a gentleman-thief is, in the final analysis, a criminal and therefore not quite a true hero. It would be obviously very advantageous to have a protagonist who combined the gentleman-thief and the hero in a single character. This could be done easily enough by making him a Robin Hood figure - a man who commits daring robberies but also helps people and fights injustice. 

American Louis Joseph Vance, with the Lone Wolf, came up with this solution in 1914. Packard followed him into print with his own hero Jimmie Dale in his 1917 The Adventures of Jimmie Dale. It should be pointed out in passing that Raffles had not been, technically, a gentleman. He merely passed as one. Jimmie Dale is however the genuine article. So why would a gentleman become a celebrated thief? The answer is that Jimmie’s fortune came from his father’s safe-manufacturing business. Jimmie had decided to amuse himself by finding out just how difficult it would be to crack safes. Cracking safes turned out to be great fun but as a result of a mischance Jimmie finds himself having no choice in the matter. He must continue his career as a cracksman whether he wants to or not. He is no ordinary safe-cracker however - he steals only in order to right wrongs.

The first half of the book takes the form of a collection of linked short stories, or an episodic novel, the link being provided by Jimmie’s attempts to establish the identity of the person who pulls the strings to which he must dance. The second half is more of a connected narrative as Jimmie faces his biggest challenge playing for the highest stakes possible. This second half also moves the book more overtly into thriller territory complete with a gigantic diabolical criminal conspiracy worthy of Professor Moriarty.

Jimmie is a hero with three identities - Jimmie Dale the handsome rich young man-about-town, the Grey Seal the glamorous philanthropic burglar, and the seedy low-life denizen of the underworld Larry the Bat.

A hero of this type has to have a trademark. In this case he leaves behind a grey diamond-shaped paper seal at the scene of each crime, hence his nickname.

The adventures chronicled in the book all obviously follow a fairly similar formula - Jimmie has to carry out a hazardous burglary which will in some way serve the ends of justice, he will have a narrow escape from capture and will often face even greater perils from disgruntled criminals. Packard adds just enough variety to keep things interesting. On occasion Jimmie even has to deal with crooked policemen.

The stories are set in London but perhaps not surprisingly (given that Packard was Canadian) some of the underworld haunts described sound like they would not have been out of place in the wilds of the Yukon! Mind you, the London underworld in Victorian and Edwardian times could in reality be a pretty tough place. These adventures have a slightly tougher and definitely seedier edge to them than the original Raffles stories. Jimmie Dale’s adventures take him into some rather sordid places including opium dens and some very squalid hovels. 

One thing that perhaps gives away the fact that the author was a Canadian is that his burglars and petty thieves show a remarkable willingness to both carry and use guns. It has always been my impression that the professional criminal classes in England at that time were extremely reluctant even to carry a gun - carrying a gun meant the risk that a burglary would end in murder and murder meant the hangman’s rope. This is an element that seems more typical of later American hardboiled crime fiction rather than Edwardian British detective fiction.

There’s also a love story here but a rather unconventional one since Jimmie has never set eyes on the object of his devotion. In true medieval knight-errant style he is in love with an ideal of womanhood but whether this love can ever be transformed into a solid reality depends on Jimmie’s courage and daring, and of course on his decency and honour.

The Adventures of Jimmie Dale intriguingly combines a very Edwardian tone with hints of the grittiness of the not-yet-emerged American hardboiled school. The hero is conventionally brave and noble and the villains certainly owe a good deal to the melodrama tradition. It’s fine adventure fiction and provides plenty of breathless excitement as the hero struggles to stay one step ahead of both the police and the villains.  Very enjoyable and warmly recommended.

Q. Patrick's S.S. Murder

S.S. Murder is a 1933 mystery novel by Q. Patrick, an author with a complex and confusing series of identities. Q. Patrick was in fact a writing team, usually comprising Hugh Callingham Wheeler (1912-1987) and Richard Wilson Webb (1901-1966) but at times also including Mary Louise White Aswell (1902-1984) and Martha Mott Kelley (1906-2005). Some of the books were written by Wheeler alone, other by varying combinations of the other writers. And just to ensure the maximum of confusion the books were published under the names Patrick Quentin, Q. Patrick, Jonathan Stagge and even Quentin Patrick.

S.S. Murder was one of their early efforts, written by Webb and Aswell.

The entire novel consists of a series of journal entries by newspaper reporter Mary Llewellyn, intended for her husband-to-be Davy (also a reporter). Mary has taken passage on the liner S. S. Moderna, bound for Rio de Janeiro. Mary is recovering after surgery and has been ordered to take things easy. Since she cannot participate in many of the shipboard activities due to her convalescence she eases the boredom by keeping a journal for the benefit of Davy, left behind in New York.

The epistolary novel was immensely popular in Victorian times but by 1933 was somewhat out of fashion. Its chief advantage was that it allowed the author to tell a story from several different points of view using multiple narrators. In the case of S.S. Murder there is only one point of view and one narrator. The technique was presumably chosen to give a sense of immediacy and to heighten the suspense (after all if the novel consists entirely of journal entries we cannot be absolutely certain that the narrator is not going to end up being the murderer’s final victim). There was most likely another reason for using the technique. It allows the authors to mimic, in a rather witty way, the celebrated “challenge to the reader” feature of the early Ellery Queen mysteries. In this case Mary Llewellyn informs Davy, in one of her later journal entries, that she has supplied him with all the information necessary to solve the crime and that she hopes he has been successful in doing so.

The epistolary nature of the novel is yet another example of the willingness of golden age detective fiction writers to experiment with structure and technique.

Shipboard settings could be, and were, used very successfully by a number of golden age writers, most notably Rufus King who set no less than three of his mysteries on board ships. A ship offers all the advantages of an isolated country house - the murderer has to be one of the passengers or crew and having committed the murder or murders he cannot physically escape but can only hope to avoid detection.

S.S. Murder doesn’t take long to get to the murderous action. One day out from port a man keels over dead during a game of bridge. The ship’s doctor immediately suspects poison, a suspicion confirmed by an autopsy. The circumstances make it clear that the killer had to be one of a fairly small number of people although the question of alibis will later become rather complicated.

Being a reporter Mary Llewellyn naturally senses the possibility of a scoop. She and Davy had covered murder cases in the past so she fancies her chances as an amateur detective. She does not however carry out the investigation single-handed. To complicate matters the two people with whom she collaborates in her investigation are both suspects, and as far as they are concerned she might well be a suspect also.

This will not be the last murder that enlivens the voyage of the S.S. Moderna, murder being more popular than deck tennis on this particular ship.

The plotting is reasonably solid and the unbreakable alibi angle is handled well. There is a certain weakness in the plot but  I won’t risk a spoiler by hinting at what it might be.

I would not place it in the top rank of golden age mysteries but S.S. Murder is a brisk and entertaining mystery of the second rank. Recommended.

The Castle of Wolfenbach

At one point in Jane Austen’s celebrated satire on gothic fiction, Northanger Abbey, one of the characters gives her friend some recommendations for “horrid novels” that she simply must read. At one time it was thought that Austen made up the names of these seven horrid novels but in fact they were real. One of them was Eliza Parsons’ 1793 novel The Castle of Wolfenbach, which I’ve just finished reading.

Reading this novel it’s easy to see why Austen had so much fun sending up the gothic genre. While I personally love Ann Radcliffe’s novels and Matthew Lewis’s The Monk the sad truth is that the bulk of the gothic fiction written at that time was not in the same league (which of course is true of any genre). 

And The Castle of Wolfenbach has plenty of elements that just invite satire. There are the preposterous coincidences, the fairly clumsy use of supernatural trappings in what is really a non-supernatural tale, the overheated and highly improbable plot, the sentimentality, the heroines who faint at regular intervals, and worst of all the contrived ending that seeks to wrap everything up much too neatly. And added to that are a couple of ingredients that are present in most gothic fiction but are very much magnified in this one - an outrageous English chauvinism and a very annoying conventional piety. Hardly a page goes by without the reader’s being assured that the hand of Providence will ensure that virtue will be rewarded. 

Of course these flaws were fairly common in many novels of that period, not just gothic fictions. And despite its flaws The Castle of Wolfenbach is entertaining enough if you can approach it as a kind of 18th century high camp melodrama. It’s an intriguing example of late 18th century trash fiction. 

At the time of its original publication in 1793 it was a considerable commercial success. Like so much trash fiction (and trash movies) it provides a fascinating window into the prejudices and anxieties of its era. Quite often the less exalted cultural products of an era, being less concerned with universal themes, reveal more about the period in question than does high art. The Castle of Wolfenbach is absolutely overflowing with cultural, religious and class prejudices and anxieties.

It’s worth checking out as long as you don’t set your expectations too high. Also worth a look is another of Austen's horrid novels, The Necromancer.

The “J for Jennie” Murders

T. Arthur Plummer (1883-1961) was an English writer of detective stories who is now about as thoroughly forgotten as it is possible for an author to be. Between 1929 and his death  he wrote no less than seventy crime novels, including fifty featuring Detective-Inspector Frampton of Scotland Yard. That he produced so many books over such a long period suggests that he must have had some success during his lifetime.

It appears that none of his mysteries were ever published in paperback, which would partly account for the obscurity into which his work has fallen. Whether his failure to have any of his books published as paperbacks was because they were considered to have insufficient appeal to make such publication worthwhile or whether it was due to some other reason remains unknown. Perhaps he had a literary agent lacking in energy, perhaps there were obscure contractual difficulties, or perhaps his work somehow just fell through the cracks.

The “J for Jennie” Murders was his twenty-first Inspector Frampton novel, appearing in 1945. It is in many ways a typical enough example of the golden age detective novel. The plot is extremely complex with almost every character turning out to be not what they seem to be. There are secret marriages, there are characters using aliases and there are events in the present that have their roots a long way back in the past. Every character seems to have some dark secret in his or her past. There are murders in country houses and there are murders in theatrical settings.

Perhaps that was part of Plummer’s problem - a tendency to throw everything but the kitchen sink into his plotting. The book groans under the weight of so many detective story clichés. 

Blackmail and ambiguous wills were the favoured plot engines of so many mediocre crime novelists of that era. In this case Plummer has gone for the blackmail angle and he has perhaps overdone it, with too many characters being the targets for too many blackmailers. Plummer is also inclined to complicate his basic plot with myriad sub-plots. 

Over-ingenious plotting is not necessarily a fatal flaw. A writer with style and flair could keep the reader interested in endlessly multiplying plot twists. Plummer does not quite possess that elusive quality of flair. His writing style has an unfortunate tendency towards clunkiness.

An intriguing detective hero was always a major asset to a crime writer. Plummer tries too hard to make Frampton eccentric and amusing. Murder and humour could be a very successful combination but to do it successful required a light touch. Plummer’s attempts at humour seem rather laboured. Frampton never misses an opportunity for a wise-crack but the result is to make him irritating rather than amusing.

That combination of murder mystery and humour became less fashionable in the 1950s, mostly as a result of overuse. This could well be the reason for Plummer’s descent into obscurity.

Despite these flaws The “J for Jennie” Murders boasts an ambitious plot that is not entirely lacking in interest.

Finding any of Plummer’s books would have been difficult in the extreme before the days of online used book shopping. It’s still not easy. Used copies of some of his books can be found although finding an affordable copy of a particular title will present a very considerable challenge. At the moment there appears to be only one used copy of The “J for Jennie” Murders available at the most popular online used book site. Whether the effort is worthwhile is debatable but if you have a taste for obscure crime novels by forgotten authors it’s possibly worth giving Plummer a chance. 

The Red Redmaynes

Eden Phillpotts (1862-1960) had a long and very prolific career as a writer. Crime fiction formed a very minor part of his work. Mainstream writers often stumble when they attempt genre novels but occasionally the results can be rather intriguing, and Phillpotts’ 1922 novel The Red Redmaynes is both fascinating and highly unusual.

Phillpotts’ greatest contribution to crime fiction was an indirect one. A young female acquaintance had expressed an interest in trying her hand at crime fiction and it was to a considerable degree as a result of Phillpotts’ advice and encouragement that her first attempt in the genre was published in 1920. That first attempt was The Mysterious Affair at Styles and the aspiring young writer’s name was Agatha Christie.

Phillpotts’ own approach to the genre in The Red Redmaynes is quite unlike anything you would normally expect from the golden age of crime fiction. While it’s not entirely successful it is unconventional enough, and structurally daring enough, to make it of considerable interest to devotees of crime fiction.

Unfortunately most of the elements that make the book so structurally interesting cannot be discussed in anything other than the vaguest terms since they’re absolutely critical to the plot and any attempt to discuss them would entail the risk of revealing spoilers, something I have no intention of doing.

What I can say safely enough is that this book is a rare example of an unusual and unconventional structure being used not as a stylistic experiment but as the very driving force of the plot.

The key events that drive the plot occur in Dartmoor, a part of England that Phillpotts passionately loved and used as a setting for most of his books and stories.

A young detective-sergeant from Scotland Yard, Mark Bredon, happens to be on the scene when a rather shocking murder takes place. A young man has been brutally done to death and the circumstances point to his wife’s uncle as the slayer. The Redmaynes are a prominent and wealthy local family. Their fortune was founded on sheep farming in Australia. The Redmayne who made the family fortune is now dead, leaving three surviving sons. One son lives in Italy while the others live in Devon. They are the only living members of the Redmayne family apart from Jenny Pendean, the extraordinarily beautiful young daughter of the deceased elder brother. Her husband was the murder victim and her uncle Robert Redmayne is not only the prime suspect; he is the only suspect.

The case seem straightforward enough to Mark Bredon but oddly enough the perpetrator proves to be remarkably difficult to catch. This puzzles him since it seems quite clear that this was a murder committed by a madman, and a madman whose identity is known should not be difficult to find. In normal circumstances the difficulty in tracking down the murderer would make this a frustrating case but Mark Bredon’s fascination with the beautiful young widow Jenny Pendean offers some compensation to the detective.

The first half of the book covers a period of about a year during which the search for the killer continues in a desultory fashion until events take an unexpected and violent turn.

Without risking any spoilers I can note at this point that while Mark Bredon is the detective assigned to the case, and he is also the novel’s central character, he is not in fact the book’s detective hero. The actual detective hero is a semi-retired American policeman named Peter Ganns who makes his first appearance in the story at an astonishingly late stage, this being one of the novel’s many unusual features. Another feature that is rather unusual is the use of an American detective hero by an English writer, and a very English writer indeed.

Serious fans of the crime fiction of the so-called golden age, the 1920s and 1930s, may have some issues with the author at times, especially in regards to the question as to whether he has played entirely fairly with the reader. They may also find the mystery rather too easy to solve. These are valid criticisms but on the other hand it has to be remembered that Phillpotts was not a writer of detective stories as such. In this novel he is more interested in the psychology of the detective protagonist than in presenting the reader with a complex puzzle to solve. And there’s no question that the author’s handling of this aspect of the book is skillful and compelling. The book is also notable for the skill with which Phillpotts entwines his unravelling of the protagonist’s psychology with the plot.

Crime fiction fans might also feel the book is somewhat too long but that may perhaps be an unfair criticism given that it is essential for the author’s intention that the reader should be drawn into the protagonist’s interior world.

The Red Redmaynes is something of an oddity but at the same time it proves to be a surprisingly rewarding oddity. Recommended for those with a taste for crime fiction that is a little out of the ordinary.