NEGLECTED DETECTIVES: Prof. Peter Ponsonby - Academic, Mystery Novelist, Amateur Sleuth

When last I wrote of Jean Leslie's professor detective, Peter Ponsonby, several years ago (One Cried Murder) he was faced with the apparent suicide of a psychology professor that turned out to be nasty murder.  He also met his soon-to-be wife Mara Mallory who became his Watson of sorts in two other novels, both of which I have now read.  The second outing, Two Faced Murder (1946), with Peter & Mara is a silly story that seems completely influenced by the madcap murder movies that the "Thin Man" series made such easy targets for imitation.  It began sort of okay with the disappearance of an academic's wife who was straying from her husband into the arms and bed of a dashing British literature professor, a  colleague of Peter's. When the two go on a nighttime search for missing wife Jane, tracing her last known locations, Mara literally stumbles over Jane's dead body in a heavily wooded area near a beach. Then, sadly, the nonsense kicks in. Mara insists they bury the body, Peter complies. Then she insists they mark the burial site. Then she says No! They have to uncover the body. Then they go to the police. I threw in the towel when I got to this exchange of dialogue between Sheriff Amos Schroeder and Peter.

"...how was Jane killed?"

"She's been strangled. Her neck is broken."

"So?" Schroeder gave the information his professional attention. "Not the technique I would have expected, but then," he added modestly, "I'm no great shakes at this crime business."

Not exactly a policemen exuding confidence in his own profession. And then he tells Peter and Mara that they are allowed to conduct their own investigation. Encourages them even! He confesses: "I wouldn't get to first base with the college people. I guess my methods are too crude for them." Too bad, Amos!  That's why you're a cop. How ridiculous for a senior police officer to ask a literature teacher and an academic secretary to conduct a murder investigation simply because they know the college milieu better than he does.  I couldn't read anymore. I shut it and moved onto the third volume hoping for something that approached the noirish mood and plot of her last book (The Intimate Journal of Warren Winslow) which does not feature Peter and Mara.

 

Turns out that the third and final adventure with Professor Ponsonby is the best.  And it mixes all of Jean Leslie's strengths in a story that is for once mature and hard-edged.  Most surprisingly, Three Cornered Murder (194) is thoroughly relevant and resonant for 21st century readers with its exploration of corrupt government, corporate greed and self-interest as the guiding principle of regional government officials more interested in lining their own pockets than listening to the concerns of their citizenry.  I was very glad to read a crime novel that smacked of realism instead of screwball illogic.

 

Peter steps into the central role of detective three days prior to his wedding. Mara -- more worried about the impending rehearsal, the guest list, the catering and other wedding plans -- helps only peripherally. And it is largely due to Pete's solo action as amateur sleuth and expert in fistfights that Three Cornered Murder succeeds so well. Leslie still has fun with witty banter, a seemingly innate talent as it highlights all of her crime fiction, but the focus on a group of thoroughly corrupt council members in a unnamed California town that resembles Santa Monica gives the book a necessary gravitas given the level of crime dominating the somewhat complicated plot.

 

Peter is witness to the shooting murder of city council member "Doc" Lawson, a G.P. whose patient list consists solely of his fellow council members. Lawson was shot while crossing a street and there are multiple witnesses besides Peter. When police arrive someone claims that Peter had a gun and he ought to be searched. Police do so and find a recently fired revolved in his coat pocket. Someone is trying to frame Peter for the murder.  

 

Lawson was involved in a shady gambling operation that is a cover for local government graft. He is also named as the pay-off man for the operation making large cash payments to several of the city council members. Joan Toplitz, wife of a former student of Peter's, is an investigative journalist who has written a book on city corruption and knows the whole scheme. She educates Peter and Mara about what's been going on. As Peter delves into this deeply ingrained graft he learns of a series of accidental deaths of the last seven (!) pay-off men. Joan, her husband "Babe" Scott, Mara and Peter begin to formulate a theory that someone they call Mr. X is behind all these accidents. That for some reason known only to Mr. X the pay-off man must be eliminated. Perhaps, they surmise, they are killed to prevent talking about the gambling operation and the bribery payouts. The plot then focuses on the search for a professional criminal who has masterminded the corruption and payoffs as well orchestrating serial murder disguised as accidental deaths.

 

I thought this story was very well done compared to the other two Ponsonby books. Less lighthearted and truly gritty this third entry often lets loose with merciless violence. One murder elicited a gasp from me for its random cruelty -- an intentional hit-and-run accident, brutal, ruthless, sadistic. That the victim is one of the most lively and likable characters among the supporting cast, Looney Wills — a newsboy barely out of his teen years, adds an unexpected level of poignancy amid all the cruelty. This story seemed utterly modern and unsettling in how it echoes our troubled times plagued with rampant mistrust of government officials and the disease of unrestrained avarice.

 

THINGS I LEARNED:  Instead of referring to Tom, Dick and Harry to refer to anonymous people a character refers to John Doe, Joe Average, and Addison Simms.  That third name was new to me. Off I went a-Googling. Addison Sims (with one M, by the way) turned up all over the internet. Of course! The best info came from an Wikipedia article on Ruthrauff & Ryan, an obscure advertising company that flourished in America from 1912 through 1964.  Sims was a fictional character created in an ad campaign for a memory learning service.  I'll quote directly from the article: "Ruthrauff wrote a prominent ad campaign for the Roth Memory Course. The ads featured a businessman greeting another with, ‘Of course--I remember you: Mr. Addison Sims of Seattle.’ The ads convinced American business people that a memory for names was an essential business skill, and ‘Mr. Addison Sims’ entered the vernacular."

 

Mara and Peter make frequent visits to a luxuriously designed drugstore with a soda fountain.  That drugstore and its staff become crucial to the solution of the hit man killings. While cleverly getting Bert, the owner and pharmacist at the drugstore, to talk about what he knows about Lawson and the shooting Mara decides to buy some cosmetics. Bert says, "That'll be $5.75 plus the 20% luxury tax and sales tax."  A 20% luxury tax on make-up?  I had to check on that. Whaddya know! According to a 1951 U.S. Treasurer's Report on Excise Taxes citing the taxes collected as a result of the Revenue Act of 1940 "...fur,  jewelry, toilet preparations, and later luggage, were subjected to taxes at the retail level, eventually reaching a 20% rate." Toilet preparations, which include make-up and cosmetics of all types, were taxed from 10-20% between the years 1939-1943. I spent way too much time reading about how the USA gathered additional revenue (apart from higher income tax) during the pre- and post-WW2 years through numerous excise taxes that were colloquially known by shoppers as the luxury tax. I thrive on these minute details in vintage popular fiction. I learn so much about the past.

 

EASY TO FIND? It's a shame that this last and by far the best of the Prof. Ponsonby detective novels is such a rarity. There were three copies I found for sale and I bought the cheapest several months ago. And now there are zero copies of the book for sale.  A true shame. This book is the one to read if you're interested in the work of Jean Leslie. It's not only relevant and resonant for our time, it's often rather witty and unexpectedly poignant. Of all the books I've read so far (I still have yet to read a non-Ponsonby mystery:  Shoes for My Love (1949) AKA Blood on My Shoe) the last Ponsonby book is the best written, most tightly plotted, has the most fascinating story, and is the most grounded in real believable crime. Perhaps it may see the light of day in a reprint edition.  If only one book by Jean Leslie could be reprinted I would like it to be Three Cornered Murder.

The Seven Who Waited - August Derleth

THE STORY:  In this seventh Judge Peck detective novel August Derleth once again revisits his favorite plot motif - the family decimation murder scheme.  Former pharmacy magnate Josiah Sloan, in the last stages of a terminal illness, has summoned his relatives all of whom will inherit even shares from his vast estate located outside of Baraboo, Wisconsin. The heirs are all eager for the man to drop dead and as they wait for him to draw his last breath someone has decided to eliminate the competition, so to speak. Soon all the heirs are the target of a ruthless killer who clearly wants the $250,000 estate in its entirety. Judge Ephraim Peck is summoned to the Sloan estate along with D.A. Meyer and local coroner Dr. Enderby to help prevent a complete slaughter of the heirs.

CHARACTERS: The Seven Who Waited (1943) is populated with a coarse group of very unlikable suspects.  Not one of them is described in any way that would elicit sympathy from the reader. The first victim, Phineas Canler, is described as a piggish glutton who eats voraciously at the dinner table, belches loudly, slurps and guzzles his alcohol, and of course is immensely overweight.  Thankfully he dies within the first two chapters so we are spared further belching and slurping.  But no one among the six remaining heirs really has any redeemable qualities. There is a seemingly prissy spinster who secretly reads salacious sex stories in trashy pulp magazines and hypercritically criticizes her relatives for being hedonists, her ineffectual lazy son who barely appears in the novel, a haughty young woman who sneers at all the men, her portly 50ish brother whose only interest is making money in the stock market; a vain middle-aged man with a glass eye and a toupee who dresses like a dandy and flirts with all the women as if he were still a handsome stud in his 20s, and Carson Kerby, a professional gambler who may have the most to hide among all these six people.  Kerby was my pick for the killer due to all his furtive wanderings around the Wisconsin estate and his evasive manner of answering Peck's questions. Lorin Fenner, Peck's companion and secretary who acts as narrator, finds Kerby to be the most likeable of the relatives despite his shady "profession." That I assume is supposed to get us to also like Kerby and though he does come off as  charming at times, honestly I didn't care about any of them. When they died or were attacked it all seemed like just deserts.

For me the most interesting characters were Hester Clohr, a domineering housekeeper/cook who suffers no fools and Alexander Carswell, the often drunken gardener who can quote Lewis Carroll doggerel from memory. The notes in poetry form seem to indicate that Carswell may have something to do with the crimes. He also has a habit of lurking around the grounds late at night. Hester is also considered a suspect as she is highly protective of and devoted to Josiah Sloan and disdains all of the guests she is forced to feed and house while also caring for her dying employer.

UK edition showing a victim struck by
an arrow. Never happens. The arrow hits
no one & has a poetic note attached.

INNOVATIONS: About the only innovative aspect of the book is that the murderer is something of a failure. Of the several crimes committed only two murders succeed and three others are botched attempts that are thwarted by our detective heroes.  Prior to each crime the murderer leaves a weird p note on the bedroom door of the intended victim.  Each note parodies poetry and seems informed of the rhyme that inspired the vengeful killer in Christie's And Then There Were None (1939). One of the notes begins like this: "Seven little men sat waiting in the parlor/One was doctored and that left six..." Each notes ends with a final line warning how many days are left until the next death: "Three days are allowed."

The detective work is a combination of dogged interrogation and Derleth's usual rigid logic that often discounts tacit aspects of murder investigations like deceit and lying or coincidence. For instance, Judge Peck insists that the killer must have knowledge of medicine because one of the murder means involves taking a lethal poison in powder form and switching it out with a sleeping aid in powder form that is prescribed in capsules. The judge thinks that there isn't anyone on the planet with who might also simply have patience and manual dexterity to open a capsule, remove the safe drug and replace it with the poison. I was rolling my eyes. That's precisely how the Tylenol Killer of the 1980s performed his random slaughtering. He was neither a doctor nor a pharmacist.

THINGS I LEARNED:  In Chapter 8 Lorin hear the strains of "After Sundown" and I was curious what it sounded like.  I found multiple versions online because it was a Bing Crosby record! He first sang it in the movie Going Hollywood (1933), his screen debut thanks to his co-star Marion Davies who demanded he play the role of the radio singer she falls in love with. Both the film and the record helped launch Crosby's movie & recording career taking him away from his original profession as a radio crooner.

"Another defi" remarks Josiah Sloan when another weird poem is found slipped under the door of one of the heirs.  Because the word was not italicized I had a heck of a time finding out the context and meaning as it applies to this story.  I kept getting irrelevant results about "defi" being slang for definite and other 21st century lexicon nonsense.  If the word had been set in italic font like this défi then I would have learned the correct meaning instantly.  Because of course it's a French word!  Sloan meant that the note in poem form was another dare or another challenge.

At a key moment Meyer, the local D.A., threatens Sloan with a John Doe hearing because Sloan will not reveal the identity of an eighth heir who has been referred to as X for the majority of the novel.  This threat refers to a peculiar Wisconsin law. As stated on a Wisconsin lawyer's website the John Doe Hearing "will allow a judge to determine whether it appears probable from testimony given that a crime has been committed and whether to file a complaint."  In this case, Meyer and Judge Peck are using the statue to compel testimony from Sloan, a reluctant witness.  I think Derleth made similar use of several other Wisconsin laws throughout the series. This was the first one that was not made clear in the story's context and I needed to fully understand it by doing internet research. 

August Derleth (1909-1971)

EASY TO FIND?  Not too scarce for a change.  This title which comes late in the Judge Peck series of detective novels is currently easy to get a hold of.  Though there are no paperback reprints from the era nor any modern reissues The Seven Who Waited is offered online in both US and UK editions, thought there is only one copy of the latter which is indeed extremely uncommon. Prices are less than $100 for most of them and all come with the intriguingly illustrated DJ. Happy hunting! 

IN BRIEF: Death at Ash House - Miles Burton

When I started Death at Ash House (1942) I was ready for some kind of riff on haunted houses or shunned houses or abandoned houses with a curse. Take your pick of whatever subgenre you'd like to call this kind of mystery. Considering the original UK title is This Undesirable Residence -- the ironic opposite of the standard euphemism employed in real estate advertisements -- the house should have been more than a gloomy setting. It could have transformed into a foreboding character, but it just sort of sits there in the background. Burton in his John Rhode guise would have no doubt played up the setting a bit more as he did in the neo-Gothic detective novel The Bloody Tower.  I was disappointed. But not as disappointed with how plodding the book moves along in its first half. This humdrum mystery novel definitely earns that epithet coined by Julian Symons to describe routine, often unimaginative, detective fiction that maintains a strict adherence to detection at the expense of nearly everything else that makes a mystery novel a delightful reading experience. The police work in the first half of this book is close to drudgery with multiple solutions proposed, analyzed and re-analyzed to the point of utter aggravation. Strange all these permutations of who did what and why when the story itself seems deceptively simple.

S.H. Apperley and his secretary/companion Walter Bristow. The two men  are in the process of relocating. Bristow has been charged with checking out a few houses for purchase while Apperley sets himself up in a temporary residence. Bristow was to have visited one final house, then meet his employer at the real estate office and then make their final move into the temporary location.  But the car, laden down with five suitcases three of which contain a valuable stamp collection, and Bristow have gone missing. Apperley goes to the police to report the missing man and car. Eventually, the police find the car parked in front of Ash House. Bristow is dead, his head based in, and all of the luggage is gone. Ash House is in a forlorn neighborhood, in the shadow of a heavily forested area, and the locals tend to avoid the place because it's so lonely and abandoned. The immediate thought is that Bristow has fallen victim to a marauding thief who saw an opportunity to steal the luggage and conked Bristow on the head, probably not intending to kill. The discovery of the murder weapon, a strange metal disc that turns out to be a piece of equipment taken from a water boiler, changes that supposition to definitely intended murder. 

Somewhere around the halfway mark when I was truly ready to skip more re-analysis, jump to the end and find out the answers to three of the many unanswered questions that to me seemed utterly baffling there was a surprise second murder of a character who had never appeared in the book until her dead body was found. Inspector Arnold of Scotland Yard and local policeman Inspector Prickett do some of the best detective work in the novel in determining the identity of the dead woman. When they learn her name there is an unexpected coincidence that sends the whole plot into a new direction. I began to suspect that there would be an upheaval in the entire story. Then Arnold finds a typewritten letter in the woman's room at a boarding house for elderly people where she lived and worked and I had an "Aha!" moment. I literally gasped aloud and saw exactly what Burton had done.

For the remainder of the novel I waited for the final revelation and I was 100% correct. I was delighted and proud of my detective work. For that upheaval in the plot alone this book deserves attention. Initially the plot unravels ever so methodically (often dully, I will admit) and then suddenly is invigorated, so to speak, by the unfortunate second murder. Once the woman is identified the story picks up and some of the best characters appear. The brief interrogation of the stern woman who runs the old people's home and, immediately following, the questioning of the only friendly employee at the same place, a friend of the murdered woman, are highlights in this second half.  Also worth noting is the section where Arnold and Prickett visit and discuss the Napleys, a gypsy family who are working as migrant farmers in the neighborhood picking fruit and vegetables. The bigotry associated with "travellers" and Romany people crops up leading to the ultimate assessment that Isaac Napley, the eldest son of the family known to police for petty theft and trouble-making, most likely is behind the luggage theft and probably the murder of the two victims. However, nothing so predictably prosaic will solve these complex crimes.

THINGS I LEARNED:  Inspector Prickett tells Arnold that the Napleys are not true Romany.  He says: "They're what folks in this part of the country call diddikys".  I know The Diddakoi by Rumer Godden, a novel about gypsy folk that I read as a teenager. I thought, "Are they the same word?"  Indeed they are!  In fact, here is the full list of variants for the word in addition to the spellings already offered: didicoy, diddicoy, and didikai.  There are probably several other spellings with double Ds or single Ds in the second syllable but I'll stop with those three. However you decide to spell the word the term is used to describe people who are not "full blooded" Romany, a mixed race person of half Romany (or any other fraction) plus any other race or ethnicity.

While not one of the most stellar examples of a Miles Burton mystery novel Death at Ash House or This Undesirable Residence is definitely worth reading should you be lucky enough to come across a copy.  It's a rare one indeed. I've never seen a UK edition though the DJ is thankfully stored among the thousands of pictures at the Facsimile Dust Jackets website. I'm unsure if it was ever published either in the US or UK in a paperback edition. No paperback edition turns up when I looked for copies at bookselling sites.  Certainly, the second half of the novel is much improved over its somewhat drearily constructed first half.  The ultimate reveal is cleverly laid out in fair play style clues. Not too obvious, but with some out of the box thinking the final surprise can be arrived at well before Inspector Arnold delivers the whopper revelation to Prickett

Greymarsh - Arthur J. Rees

THE STORY:  Sir Roger Liskard and his wife Linda are having a house party. The timing couldn't have been worse. As the guests arrive at Greymarsh, the Liskard's imposing house on the Norfolk coast, a storm is brewing. With the threat of abnormally high tides and surging waves indicating an impending flood the talk turns to Gothic legends, murder and the concept of Justice. Henry Liskard, Roger's brother and a painter of some renown grows weary of the talk which morphs into a legal debate. Henry leaves and takes his art world friends to his studio located in a tower that long ago served as a lighthouse for the area. There they view Henry's strange portrait of a nun contemplating an open grave while a figure representing the Devil watches from a thorny bush in the background. The three friends display reactions ranging from impressed to repulsed. Henry's studio is filled with similar paintings of macabre subject manner.  Eventually, the men leave Henry to retire for the night in his bedroom just off of the studio. He does not escort them out alarming the men who think he ought to lock the door. Henry assures them no one ever comes out to the tower and he often leaves the only entrance unlocked at night. The next morning Henry is found shot dead.  The door to the tower is open as is the door leading to his studio-bedroom. The guests realize almost immediately that due to the raging storm and the tsunami-like waves that flooded the grounds that they are all now on an isolated island and that one of them must have shot Henry.

THE CHARACTERS: After the lengthy exposition dealing with the house party and the several guests who attend, the story focuses on only a handful of people:  Roger & Linda Liskard; Herbert Lintwell, a lawyer who attends the house party; Avis Ormond, a village girl with whom Henry was enamored; George Rumsden, a sailor in love with Avis; Avis' father, a blind fisherman and Creeke, deaf-mute companion and aide to Avis' father. Colwin Grey and his lawyer friend Richard Haldham (the narrator of Part II of the novel) are summoned by Hugh Templeton, friend to Roger Liskard and uncle to Haldham. Templeton wants someone to clear the name of Roger Liskard who is a primary suspect in the shooting of Henry.

The night of the murder Templeton was awakened by a piercing scream coming from the vicinity of the tower.  He went out into the storm and found Roger Liskard a few feet from the tower's main entrance. He had apparently fallen and severely injured himself.  But Roger was also raving and terrified of what he had seen.  He talked about expiation using that word specifically and asked Templeton to make sure Linda knew what happened.  His final words before passing out into unconsciousness was a rant:  "No, no! I will not believe it!  The dead cannot return!" Templeton is both puzzled and frightened by those seemingly insane remarks. That rant alone is reason enough to have Colwin Grey find out exactly went on in the tower the night of the shooting.

Colwin Grey wastes no time in his investigations.  He is of the intuitive school of detection but also has superhuman intelligence and a wide knowledge on a variety of arcane topics. We learn, for example, that in his boyhood he was fascinated with seaweed and made a study of it.  This, of course, comes in extremely handy when he finds a piece of "blood red" seaweed near the tower.  It turns out to be of the Rhodophyta division, seaweed that can only grow in deep ocean water and may be an indication that someone traveling from the sea brought it up on shore.  Haldham and Templeton find it hard to believe that anyone would be mad enough to set out in a boat during the storm in order to gain access to the makeshift island created by the severe weather. It would've been a suicide mission. Grey is sure that someone did visit the tower by boat and that they suffered the consequences of the rash decision by being swallowed up by he sea.

Through subtle manipulation of villagers and playing into their love of gossip Grey learns of Henry's love of women. They served as his models for his paintings and the stories include strong intimations they were more than just models. Grey is also the first to notice that the partially hidden face of the nun in the painting still on the easel the night of Henry's death resembles Linda Liskard. This fact opens a whole Pandora's box of motives ranging from jealousy to revenge. This coupled with the fact that both Linda and Roger interrupted Lintwell in his investigation of the tower the day after the murder adds another level of suspense in a tale that begins to grow ever more complex.

We know from one of the earliest chapters that Henry enjoys meeting Avis in secret out by the coast where he sketches her and they talk of life in the village. Lately Avis has withdrawn from the world and is often seen wandering the marshlands and spending time in the cemetery at Henry's grave. Grey is concerned for Avis and her morose moods. He says, "Her grief strikes me as rather excessive--in the circumstances. No; the reason lies deeper than [grief]." Eventually he will confront her and manage to get her to confide in him, thus clearing up the one or two puzzling aspects of Henry's death. Grey is convinced the murderer is dead and tells Avis this thinking it will console her. But finding proof of his theories will take time and considerable effort.

ATMOSPHERE:  Greymarsh (1927) is populated with brooding characters haunted by the coastline and the power of the unpredictable sea. Rees' writing is at its best when he is describing the fury of the ocean and the storm that was such a threat to the partygoers at the Liskard home.  The macabre and the unexplained are also fascinating subjects for Rees. The first half of the story is a Gothic novel in miniature what with the florid descriptions of the sea, the legend of a murdered monk's skull that was supposed to remain in the tower lest all descendants of Greymarsh fall under its curse, and a story of an impossible murder that took place in Africa related to the men at a key moment during the party. Rees skillfully manages to insert these vignettes into the story’s framework creating both an anxious atmosphere and setting up a clever segue into the role of policemen and lawyers in murder cases.

That African murder tale serves as the springboard for a debate about justice and truth-seeking and will come back to haunt the partygoers when Henry is found dead.  Mortimer, a caustic art critic, reminds everyone of Lintwell's challenge to find a killer among an isolated group of suspects. Lintwell said if he had been in Africa he would never have allowed the seven men to leave until he found the culprit. Likewise, Mortimer says they are all in a similar situation: it seems as though one of their isolated group is a killer. This sets off Herbert Lintwell, an arrogant self-righteous lawyer, on a path of amateur detective work that will prove extremely detrimental to Roger, Linda, Avis and Templeton.

INNOVATIONS:  The detective work -- both from Lintwell in the first half and Grey in the second half -- is engaging and modeled after the old fair play techniques. The reader sees everything each man sees, he knows their thoughts, too. Nothing is held back. However, Lintwell is a sloppy detective and makes rash judgments. A clever reader will be able to note his mistakes prior to Grey revealing them to Haldham and Templeton.

Grey, on the other hand, is the "Transcendent Detective", as Carolyn Wells liked to call the sleuths of this era in detective fiction. He knows more than the average man, sees more, and is skilled at manipulating people into telling him more than they should ever tell. The clue of the seaweed is probably the highlight of the book. It's simultaneously bizarre and amusing, especially when Grey remarks that studying seaweed was his boyhood hobby. Later, Haldham accidentally finds a revolver by stepping on it in a pile of seaweed. Seaweed is key to unravelling the mysteries!

Northeaster by Winslow Homer (1895)
via Metropolitan Museum of Art

QUOTES: "And now? The sea was wreaking fresh wickedness. [...] In its unstable heart lurked treachery, and implacable hatred of mankind."

"...the encircling sea had seemed a joke, but it wore another aspect now, relentless as fate, impassable as time. The sea held them all there captive, until it thought fit to let them go."

"There is no room for sentiment or gentlemanly feelings where murder is concerned."

"The revelation of the likeness in the studio impressed me most, though I did not see that it carried far. And yet, in that veiled and enigmatic picture, the key of the problem might be concealed"

"A murderer has one deed of violence to repent, but a fool has to atone for his whole life."

Avis has a monologue that includes these pithy exclamations:  "The sea is worse than cruel. Cruelty does not matter so much, because everything in life is cruel. The sea is not only cruel--it is wicked as well. There is nothing it loves so much as to wreck ships and drown men. It is a place of ghosts..."

THE AUTHOR:  Arthur John Rees (1872–1942) was born in Melbourne, Australia.  In his early career he wrote for Australian newspapers including Melbourne Age and New Zealand Herald.  Sometime in his 20s he traveled to England where he settled. His first two detective novels were written in collaboration with John Reay Watson. In 1919 he wrote his first solo novel The Shrieking Pit lauded by Barzun & Taylor in A Catalogue of Crime (1989, revised) as "a first rate novel...distinguished from its fellows by an absolutely steady forward march through a variety of clues and contradictions."  I've read this admirable novel and it strikes me as being heavily influenced by Trent's Last Case (1913) even to the inclusion of a similar clue involving missing shoes and a young man and young woman lying in order to protect each other. After a brief series of novels featuring Colwin Grey, Rees introduced his new policeman detective, Inspector Luckcraft, who would feature in seven more mystery novels from 1926 through 1940.

Colwin Grey Detective Books
The Threshold of Fear (1925)
Simon of Hangletree (1926) - U.S. title The Unquenchable Flame (1926)
Greymarsh (1927)
The Investigations of Colwin Grey (1932) - collection of 8 stories and 2 novellas

 

FIRST BOOKS: The Eames-Erskine Case - A. Fielding

THE STORY:  Augustus Beale is relatively calm when he reports that he has found a dead body in his wardrobe in Room 11 of the Enterprise Hotel.  In Chief Inspector Pointer turns up on the scene to rule out what the management believes to be a bizarre suicide. It's a poisoning case but it's most definitely not a suicide.  And this murder is only the start of a intensely complex case with the unraveling of multiple criminal conspiracies, unmasking false identities, explicating confusing wills, uncovering embezzlement and international fraud.

THE CHARACTERS:  The Eames-Erskine Case (1925) is the debut of Chief Inspector Pointer. We learn that he lives in Bayswater in a three room flat with an Irish bookbinder, James O'Connor, who he met in the war (World War 1, that is) when O'Connor was a Secret Service agent.  Pointer comes home to mull over his cases with O'Connor who often has insightful observations about the crimes. He's a sort of armchair Watson and offers up questions and answers that help Pointer move along in the proper direction.

The corpse is initially identified via the hotel registry as Reginald Eames, but that soon proves to be a false name.  In fact, many of the characters use multiple identities throughout the novel. Any reader would be suspicious of the book's title as it has a hyphenated name. Sure enough Eames turns out to be Erskine.  The discovery of this is done through an ingenious bit of detection involving the shape of an object in the pocket of a waistcoat.  Pointer retrieves Eames' pocket watch and finds it is too small for the impression left in the pocket. What happened to the original watch that lived in that pocket?  This leads him to various jewelry and watch repairs shops until he turns up the missing watch. In true mystery novel convenience the watch has an unusual engraving on it - a heraldry symbol indicating the family of Erskine.

Pointer also has a small army of policemen at his beck and call.  Several of these minor characters have nice moments to shine as they contribute to finding evidence, offering up ideas which Pointer considers or dismisses. The novel seems to be making its way to a humdrum police procedural until the entrance of Christine West, the fiancee of the primary suspect of the poisoning murder.  After hearing Christine's story and her adamant refusal to believe her fiance guilty of the murder Pointer enlists her as an undercover agent of sorts.  He sends her to the Erskine home posing as a friend of the family lawyer.  There she is to ferret out as much information as she can from Mrs. Erskine who Pointer believes has several secrets she is holding back.

Christine enlivens the book. Her scenes with Mrs Erksine and the three guests, Mr & Mrs Clark and Major Vaughn, are a lot more invigorating than most of Pointer's police work. And Christine is a dynamic woman who, though initially troubled by the ethics of her being inserted into the Erskine household under false pretenses, is nevertheless adept at getting Mrs. Erskine to open up and reveal herself.

INNOVATIONS:  The novel is inspired by Sherlockian style detection, both evidentiary and inductive, which is on grand display in the first five or six chapters.  There is a lot of attention paid to two types of tobacco ash found in the murder room, footprints and fingerprints and --most interestingly-- sounds. A clever "ear-witness" sequence takes place when Pointer is interviewing a hotel maid who was doing sewing work in the room adjacent to the crime scene. Pointer asks her to go into the room, sit where she was sewing, and listen through the wall to the sounds he makes. Basically, he re-enacts her testimony. Through various tricks and tests he discovers her story is 100% true and by process of elimination figures out how the body was put into the wardrobe.

Part of the story involves the unusual architectural feature of the Enterprise hotel sharing balcony space with the Marvel, a hotel next door owned by the same real estate conglomerate. Various characters slip in and out of the Enterprise hotel rooms by traveling out onto the balcony and then retreating into a room in the Marvel. I wish there had been diagrams and floor plans to show this intriguing building feature. Alas, nothing. I had to rely on my not very well-trained spatial imagination to envision how these characters managed to accomplish the "escape trick" without being noticed by anyone in the street.

The twist in the plot when Christine West becomes Pointer's spy is the highlight of the book.  Eventually her placement in the household will endanger her more than Pointer anticipated.  The climax of the book includes a boat pursuit and the rescue of Christine from a coterie of villains. It all ends rather melodramatically back at the Erskine home where one of the villains confesses only so that three other people will be implicated.  It's very high drama, operatic even, and reminded me of the finales of several Anthony Wynne detective novels which I like to call "detective operas."  Many of Wynne's mystery books all seem to end with high-strung murderers confessing to all their evil-doing and then committing suicide.

NEGLECTED DETECTIVES: Amy Brewster, Larger than Life Lawyer/Detective

The first words Amy Brewster utters in her debut mystery novel are: "Of course he didn't you quibbling corporation jackanapes!" All 300 pounds of her barges into the room chomping on a Havana cigar then demands with the cigar's cellophane wrapper still in her hand "Where do I put this?" Here is one of mysterydom's least well known but most fabulous creations. We can thank forgotten writer Sam Merwin, Jr for giving her to us.  She appears in only three full length novels and three novellas, far too few, but all worth tracking down.

In Knife in My Back (1945) Merwin gives us a colorfully detailed outrageous past for Amelia Winslow Brewster. He starts with her physical description: "a woman of indeterminate years, of vast corpulence and even greater ugliness" with an outdated hair style that he describes as "cut in the old Dutch style of the suffragettes of 1916."  We learn that she was educated at Radcliffe, graduated Phi Beta kappa and was "admitted to the Massachusetts bar before she was twenty." Coming from a wealthy family helped her no doubt, but her shrewd financial skill turned her modest bank account into eight figures then she gave most of it away. She also has a talent for "gambling prodigiously" and managed to rake in more millions in casinos all over the country. Merwin ends this financial history with this comment: " A confirmed advocate of the redistribution of wealth, she had done her best to live up to it--but couldn't seem to unload [it] as fast as she made it."

Knife in My Back combines puzzle elements of traditional detective novel with hard-boiled characterization in the person of Brewster.  A woman comes to the Dumonat mansion to deliver a message to 28 year old Chris Horton. She is waiting impatiently for him in the study and when he finally arrives at the house he finds her stabbed. Police immediately suspect Joe Horton, Chris' brother, who apart from the butler Gordon was the only person in the house at the time. Joe calls Amy Brewster to defend him and keep him out of jail.

Though the culprit may be easy to spot in this debut mystery that doesn't diminish the all around fun factor of this yarn. It's fast paced, witty, and filled with the arcane history of glass making artisans, paperweights and the origin of those objects as art collectibles. It's the only mystery I've read to deal with this arcane hobby and the tidbits of history make for were fascinating reading.

Brewster returns in Message from a Corpse (1945),  a more hardboiled mystery dealing with professional criminals, a missing biographical manuscript with secrets about a dead millionaire, and a murdered retired judge. The mysteries all culminate in the uncovering of a cache of hidden jewels. Brewster displays her knack for cryptography and codebreaking in this book.

The final book in the trio of novel length adventures is A Matter of Policy (1946).  Insurance fraud brings two strangers together as they attempt to discover who used their names as claimant and beneficiary on a $500,000 life insurance policy. Jim Leavitt, an inept investment counselor, has no knowledge of the policy in his name or the beneficiary a night club singer names Tosta Kaaren, stage name for Toots Carlisle who is actually from Carnarsie and not Sweden. We got a lot of barroom fights, face bashing and a few scenes of our protagonists being tied up.  When a bodyguard assigned to Jim ends up dead in a trap intended to kill Jim Amy Brewster is called in to ehlp put an end to the fraud and possible future attacks on Jim.

I enjoyed this last book just as much as Knife in My Back for all the sarcastic banter from Amy Brewster, her usual wisecracks and hilarious insults. It's a lot more action oriented betraying Merwin's love of pulpy thrills like the stories he wrote for magazines like Dime Detective, Thrilling Detective and Popular Detective to name just three of the dozens of magazines he was published in over his 30+ year career.

Knife in My Back (the first, but I think the best of the trio) is the most common of these books in the used book market. It was reprinted by Handi-Books and I found over 50 copies of that vintage paperback edition for sale on various bookselling sites. Matter of Policy and Message from a Corpse are also out there but fewer copies of each turned up.

For those of you who prefer digital books you're in luck because the three novellas (for decades only found in the original pulp magazines) are available from Deerstalker Mysteries in a single eBook entitled Meet Amy Brewster. This digital book includes: "The Corpse Comes Ashore," "Amy Stops the Clock" and "The Maestro's Secret." And of course -- I had to force myself to look -- the other novels turn up in digital formats as well.

NEGLECTED DETECTIVES: Rosalie LeGrange, medium turned sleuth for hire

THE STORY:  Dr. Walter Blake meets Annette Markham on a train and falls in love with her.  She tells him she is not meant for men according to her aunt and guardian, Paula Markham, a student of Eastern occult religions. Annette says her Aunt Paula told her she has "the Light" and is meant for higher things. Dr. Blake soon meets Paula and is suspicious of an ulterior motive, possibly fraud,  in tutoring her niece. The physician seeks out Rosalie LeGrange, a medium, to help him expose Paula Markham. But Rosalie cautions Dr. Blake that Mrs. Markham is not a fraud at all, but the real thing. Exposing such a powerful woman (if she is faking it) will be difficult to impossible. Dr. Blake's real concern is the possible exploitation of Annette and he admits to his love for her.  Immediately Rosalie gives in for she has soft spot for young love. Turns out Mrs. Markham is in need of a new housekeeper and through clever manipulation Rosalie gains the job. The investigation begins! Stock manipulation and con artistry abound as Rosalie and Dr. Blake make their through The House of Mystery (1910).

THE CHARACTERS:  Rosalie lets Blake know that most medium fakery grows out of the genuine thing. She should know because she is a real medium herself having from her teen years had visions and heard voices telling her things that later prove true. In charging money for consultations she confesses that it is easy to give in to fake stories when the client is eager to hear anything positive. This, she says, is the crux of the fortune telling racket no matter how it shows up - crystal balls, tarot cards or seances. It's the showmanship that is so tempting and the resulting ease of foretelling good news rather than doling out the awful news that more often make up the real truth. She likes a challenge, though, and facing off with Paula Markham will test her like no other job she's taken on.

Rosalie is sharp witted, highly observant, sometimes wise, but hardly an intellectual. All of her dialogue is rendered in a working class style peppered with period slang and folksy idioms. She makes for a refreshing detective fiction protagonist as most of these characters from the late 19th century and early 20th century are all cut from the same cloth: aloof, dispassionate, so logical as to appear ruthless and cruel. Rosalie bears little resemblance to those super sleuths. No surprise that such a likeable, warm-hearted, amateur detective proved to be popular with readers for she returned in a sequel, The Red Button (1912), this time trying her hand at solving a murder.

In Paula Markham we actually see a personality that would make the perfect fictional detective of this time. Paula's personality is the coolly aloof sophisticate and she proves adept at subterfuge and deceit.  Rosalie has met her match just as she feared. Paula Markham seems inspired by the master criminals that were so popular in serial fiction and magazine short stories in the pre-WW1 era. She meets up with Arthur Bulgar, a corrupt mining company executive fearful that his company is about to fail, who in turn seeks out Robert Norcross, Wall Street financier, haunted by the death of his lost love. Bulgar and Markham use this knowledge to cajole Norcross into helping bail out the mining company. Annette will play a part in the scheme acting as the voice -- and sometimes "body" -- of Norcross' dead lover.

THE AUTHOR:  Will Irwin (1873-1948) was a journalist and novelist. He covered the 1906 San Francisco earthquake for The New York Sun, wrote about Japanese racism in California, and had a series of newspaper articles appear in Colliers Weekly exposing fraudulent mediums and the "spirit racket".  No doubt that series led him to write The House of Mystery.  In addition to his two detective novels, Irwin was the author of numerous nonfiction books ranging from a history of San Francisco to a biography on Herbert Hoover for whom he worked from 1914-1915. Irwin was married to the writer Inez Haynes Irwin, noted feminist, novelist, and also a dabbler in detective fiction.  See my review of The Women Swore Revenge for a look at his wife's style of mystery novel

THINGS I LEARNED:   On p. 141 Rosalie says: "It all come from Mrs. Markham. It was like a sweet smell radiatin' from that room, and just makin' me drunk. It was like--maybe you've heard John B. Gough speak. Remember how he had you while you listened?"  Gough was a Temperance orator and revivalist, apparently known for his smooth and persuasive voice.  The internet is teeming with info on him.  Google away if you want to know more.

Two other personalities -- Marsh and Miss Debar -- are mentioned in passing as topical references which led me to look them up.  Marsh is Luther Marsh, a lawyer who was swindled by Ann O'Delia Diss Debar (at left), one of America's notorious crooked spiritualists. Houdini called her "one of the most extraordinary fake mediums and mystery swindlers the world has ever known."  In 1888 she was finally undone when her extravagant greed led her to tricking Marsh into signing over the deed to his townhouse on Madison Avenue in Manhattan. The police caught up with her leading to a sensational trial. She was convicted and went to prison... for a mere six months! There's a wealth of info online about Debar. She makes for fascinating reading. Look her up!

Walter hears a piano playing a tune on p. 202.  Some lyrics pop into his head "Wild roamed an Indian maid..."  Turns out these are lyrics from the first American "popular hit" written by a woman. The song  is "The Blue Juniata" by Marion Dix Sullivan with lyrics by her husband J. W. Sullivan.  In the novel the song is used as a hypnotic cue to induce Annette to play her part in the spirit fakery.  For an upbeat 1956 arrangement of the folk tune click here.  It's a pleasant recording with a quick tempo featuring the male singing group The Plainsmen.

AVAILABILITY:  Lucky you! (a rare cry around here)  The House of Mystery has been uploaded to Project Gutenberg.  You can read it for free there, may be even download it.  As a bonus you get all eight original illustrations from the first US edition which I freely used to decorate this post. My edition has only four illustrations and the plates are tinted a faint yellow which I don't like. The artwork most likely appeared in a magazine when the story was first serialized. Illustrations are by noted American artist Frederick C. Yohn.

A Year in Review (part 2)

Here is the continuation of my 2024 reading summation.  In looking over my reading log I see a predominance of newly translated Japanese detective novels, a small pile of contemporary ghost and horror novels, and sadly very few vintage mysteries. And away we go!

JULY:  I read nothing but new books this month or books that were translated into English for the first time.  The highlight this month that can be deemed vintage was surely the tour de force The Noh Mask Murder - Akimtsu Takagi (1951, new English translation 2024).  Initially I thought this tricky, rule breaking detective novel to be only run-of-the-mill. The murders were bizarre as expected but like many Japanese mystery novels is was another in a long line of decimated family murder plots.  The meta-fiction aspect (narrator is a writer and manuscripts make up much of the story) was intriguing at times, but I was underwhelmed for most of the book. Then, around the final third of the book I was literally gasping. I was utterly unprepared for the finale. Interested if anyone else has read this one.

AUGUST:  More Japanese novels!  I read two Seishi Yokomizo books featuring his eccentric detective Kosuke Kindaichi.  The Village of Eight Graves (orig 1950s, transl 2021) was less a mystery than it was a family saga novel and protracted thriller that barely passes my satisfaction rating. That it was first serialized is very apparent and I disliked that the translator hadn't the courage to remove lengthy recap passages. Overloaded with incident and extraneous characters and nothing really special.  The Little Sparrow Murders (orig 1971, transl 2024) was only slightly more of an improvement. Still another decimated family mystery plot but we get three families being attacked this time. I got a bit frustrated trying to keep them all separated in my head. Applause for Vertigo for continuing to include the vital (at least for me) cast of character list at the front of  the book.

SEPTEMBER:  Derry Down Death - Avon Curry (1960) Years ago I read and reviewed on this blog a serial killer thriller by Avon Curry (aka Jean Bowden) that while entertaining and well plotted contained an embarrassment of 1970s gay stereotypes and lots of misinformation or --more than likely-- plain ignorance. I was determined to give Bowden another chance in her "Avon  Curry" guise. If you want to try her out as a mystery writer, then Derry Down Death is definitely the book to read.  It was superior on all levels.  The plot involves the death of a musicologist who collects song lyrics and melodies of folk songs. His questions about one tune, and its lyrics in particular, seem to have led to his death. Was it murder or an accident?  And if murder, why would anyone be killed over a song? Utterly fascinating Derry Down Death is engagingly written with colorful, intelligent characters and a corker of a plot. It made my Top 10 for books I read in 2024.

OCTOBER:  The Gauntlet of Alceste - Hopkins Moorhouse (1921)  While this was the only vintage mystery I read this month it is far from the best book read in October.  But it's worth mentioning for the very forgotten detective who belongs to the Inductive Detectives of the early 20th century and for the Canadian writer also most likely forgotten. However, the book takes place in New York City rather than Canada which was a bit disappointing. The detection is minimal as our hero tries to locate a stolen antique jeweled gauntlet.  By the midpoint it devolves into a Master Criminal plot that seems inspired by French detective and sensation fiction of the late 19th/early 20th century.  The detective, Addison Kent, appears in only two books. I bought the sequel The Golden Scarab (1926) and will review that one later this year. No doubt an antique jewel theft is involved.

NOVEMBER:  Zero vintage novels read!  I was addicted to watching movies online this month and read very little. Of the three contemporary novels I read in November -- The Hitchcock Hotel, The Silver Bone (both 2024) and Rouge  (2023)  -- it was most assuredly The Silver Bone by Andrei Kurkov that stood out.  In 1919 during one of the many Ukrainian revolutions the protagonist Samson Kolechko, an engineering student, is unexpectedly recruited to the police force and finds himself engrossed in multiple mysteries involving the skeletal remains of the title and a strangely tailored suit with inhuman proportions. He solves all mysteries while doing his best to fend off corrupt soldiers who have commandeered his home. If you like offbeat detective novels with a bit of fascinating history thrown in the mix look no further.  It's a quick read and well translated by Boris Dralyuk, who makes mention of his close friendship with the writer in an afterword.

DECEMBER:  I read only one vintage mystery, The Night of Fear - Moray Dalton (1931).  Selected only because it takes place at Christmas it was a lightweight mystery of the wrongfully-accused-man-on-trial school. Didn't know the bulk of the book would be a courtroom thriller. Story concerns a stabbing during a game of hide & seek at a Christmas house party.  Loathsome mystery writer, the victim, is also a blackmailer. Meh. To be honest I remember nothing of the story and took no notes. I had to read the blurb on the back and flip through the final pages to recall anything about the story. I know Curt Evans was responsible for getting all her books reprinted, but most of these merely pass the time and don't linger in the imagination. I did, however, truly enjoy the weirdness in Death in the Forest which I read in 2023. I'd recommend that Moray Dalton novel for its creepy plot with supernatural overtones and the extremely bizarre ending.

Death Walks Softly - Neal Shepherd (Nigel Morland)

THE STORY: Inspector Michael Tandy makes his debut in Death Walks Softly (1938) an excellent example of three subgenres:  police procedural, scientific detective novel and impossible crime mystery.  Tandy using his expert knowledge in chemistry quickly disproves that a chemist supposedly committed suicide in his locked office, accessible by only one door and a private elevator that can only be summoned from the ground floor with a special key. Murder, theft and burglary are the many the crimes that arise in a complicated case involving professional jealousy and romantic entanglements. Heavy use of scientific detection makes for a dizzying yet fascinating detective novel.

THE CHARACTERS: The action is set primarily in a research facility where Robert Sherry, a reclusive anti-social chemist, was working diligently on two chemical formulas -- one for a universal solvent and another for stainless steel alloy that would be able to contain the solvent. Sherry has the use of only his left arm, his right having been amputated years ago.  He is found in his locked office with an injection mark in his usable arm and some Veronal found nearby.  Everyone in the company assumes he has committed suicide.  Tandy quickly asserts it cannot be suicide because 1. drug users addicted to Veronal do not inject the drug, it is ingested orally and 2. the injection was administered into the left arm.  Since Sherry is left handed and cannot use the artificial limb on his right arm as he would a hand with fingers he could not have injected himself.

Suspicion immediately falls on Mrs. Sherry who says her husband was more in love with chemistry than her and Daniel Lyne, the CEO of the chemical company. Lyne and Mrs. Sherry were carrying on a not very discreet affair.  Though the police know that Mrs. Sherry stopped by the office many times for visits, the CEO will not elaborate on the real reason. He is, however, quick to draw Tandy's attention to an embittered former employee Alan Talaver, who not only lost his job to Sherry but swore to kill him. When Tandy tracks down Talaver he turns out to be not only embittered but paranoid.  He volubly criticizes everyone at the chemical lab, rants about conspiracy theories and reveals a marked persecution complex. 

One of the bits of evidence found in Sherry's lab is a thumb mark with a scar running across the print.  Talaver, surprisingly, is quick to show that he has such a thumb mark and offers up no real alibi for the night of the poisoning murder. Nevertheless, he maintains his innocence. This confession of sorts will lead to one of the most remarkable aspects of the murder mystery and recalls a similar incident in one of the memorable Carter Dickson impossible crime mystery novels

Then there's Frank Donegal, Sherry's lab assistant.  Donegal gives a fuller picture of Sherry's misanthropy and utter immersion in his work. He was also the only person with an apparently iron-clad alibi having been in an enclosed study room at the research library across the street.  Reading Cabinet #5, Donegal's favorite place to study, is located at the rear of the library and is constructed similar to a telephone booth. The reading cabinets are shown to be occupied by a red light on the outside wall activated when someone sits down and the door is closed.

The impossibility of the locked room involves Sherry's office elevator that leads to a hidden doorway in the alley behind the lab building (see the plan at left). Oddly designed the elevator can only be operated with a key that summons the elevator from the ground floor to the office above.  The key must be also used to exit the elevator. Any time the elevator is used the car returns to the ground floor automatically. There is a lot of business about a load meter installed in the elevator that helps to save on the firm's electric bill. This portion sort of went over my head, but Nigel Morland in his "Neal Shepherd" guise certainly turned on his expert mode during this electrical engineering lesson. Tandy retrieves the time graphs -- basically reports of each instance the elevator went up and down -- in order to determine if the elevator was the murderer's method of escape from the locked office.   

INNOVATIONS:  Tandy studied chemistry prior to becoming a police officer.  He mentions this to many of the scientists he interviews and it helps him to get some of the suspects to talk more freely and, of course, more expertly on the scientific aspects of the murder case.  There are several lectures on chemical alloy structures, the previously mentioned mechanical and electrical design of the elevator, the creation of plastic molds, chemical nature of poisons and a lot more. After one of these long lectures that goes on for nearly four pages (!) Sgt Bill Holland, Tandy's hero worshiping colleague, is astonished: "Holland's eyes opened wide. This was the type of detection he had hitherto believed existed only in detective novels."

French edition of Death Rides Swiftly
translated less poetically as Death is Swift

Bill is right of course. But not in the ironic sense that Morland intends.  It is the kind of detection that exists only in detective novels and not ever in real life.  Rarely do real life criminals engage in the kind of guile and scientific trickery employed in this deviously constructed and often ingenious mystery novel. But this trickery is also what makes the "Napper" Tandy mystery novels so fascinating to read and mark them as stand-outs of the impossible crime and scientific detection subgenres at the tail end of the Golden Age.

I hope to get three of these novels reprinted by the middle of next year. Unfortunately, I have not been able to locate an English language copy of Death Rides Swiftly though I do have the other three.  But I have not given up my search for that elusive fourth title.

 Inspector "Napper " Tandy Detective Novels
Death Walks Softly (1938)
Death Flies Low (1938)
Death Rides Swiftly (1939)
Exit to Music (1940)

 

FIRST BOOKS: Author in Distress - Cecil M. Wills

THE STORY: Novelist Gervoise Trevellyan is an Author in Distress (1934). And first time mystery writer Cecil Wills wastes no time in getting immediately to the story.  On page one Trevellyan calls the police to report that he's shot a man who he believes is a burglar.  The first problem Sgt. Geoffrey Boscobell --and the bigger problem for the novelist-- is that there are two bullets in the body. Trevelyan swears he fired only once.  Trevellyan claims the man broke in and fired at him.  The writer then shot the burglar who was apparently breaking into the safe in the library.  Doubly puzzling is that only one bullet casing is found in the library. And where is the bullet mark from the victim's gun? Things only get more complicated as Sgt. Boscobell and the other policemen further investigate this supposed act of self-defense.

THE CHARACTERS: Geoffrey Boscobell makes for a whip smart and attentive detective.  He rides a motorcycle to get around the various villages in his investigation.  Neat touch for 1935. When the novel is focussed on detection this policeman is one of the best of the Golden Age. And when the novel turns into a thriller he's as heroic and full of derring-do as any dashing matinee idol found in the cinematic cliffhangers of 1930s movie palaces.

 Among the suspects are Myra, Trevellyan's considerably younger wife.  She has a fascinating interrogation scene where she tells the story of her past life in Monaco which reads like an E. Phillips Oppenheim novel in miniature.  Gambling, con artists, the decadent life of the rich and indulgent...and an accidental shooting that ends to death and a cover-up.  It's all there.  I'm guessing Wills read his fair share of Oppenheim.  This section is a neat homage and not altogether gratuitous.  Myra's past and the characters mentioned in her story play a large part in the later unfolding of the intricate plot. Myra has a huge secret that leads to a blackmail scheme Boscobell uncovers.  Did her husband get involved and try to protect her?

Another suspect is the antique glass collector Lawton Holmes, a shady and cruel man with secrets in his past and a roving eye for the ladies. Mrs. Thomas, the requisite gossip, offers up the dirt on Holmes and his theft of a rare glass curio -- The Ravenscroft Goblet.  And here I thought was another detective novel homage. This time to the prolific J. S. Fletcher whose books of the 1920s and early 1930s were filled with jewel and antique thieves sporting titles just like the object Holmes stole.  In fact two of  Fletcher's books are titled Ravensdene Court and The Ravenswood Mystery, not to mention all his detective novels about objets d'art like The Kang-He Vase, The Borgia Cabinet, The Malachite Jar, and The Carrismore Ruby. Definitely another tribute, in my opinion.  I thought the theft of the Ravenscroft Goblet would be the crux of the mystery, but was way off the mark.

One of the best of the supporting characters is Boscobell's girlfriend Audrey, his most trusted confidante.  She becomes his Watson and is present at the scene when they visit Mrs. Thomas.  Boscobell and Audrey spend many a chapter trading theories and bouncing ideas off each other. They discuss a variety of possible situations to explain the evidence as in the case of the missing bullet and where it might be found.  Audrey goes looking for it, in fact, with out telling her policeman paramour.  Also they talk about the footprint in tar found a outside the scene of the crime which Boscobell realizes almost immediately is utterly faked.

INNOVATIONS:  For a first time detective novel Wills shows a deft hand at incredibly intricate plotting and clever clueing making use of familiar detective novel tropes like the burned bits of paper, secret messages, missing bullets, and footprints at the scene of the crime, and even an initialed handkerchief - perhaps the hoariest of all hackneyed devices, as Carolyn Wells might put it.  I also liked the more subtle homages to detective novel conventions like Oglethorpe, Trevellyan's valet and butler, a kind of Bunter character who back in WWI was Trevellyan's batman when both were sappers, soldiers who dug and fought in the trenches.  There is a surprise witness at the very long inquest section which makes for some fairly exciting reading and allows Wills to add yet one more intriguing development in an ever increasingly complex murder case that at times seems too baffling for its own good.  Can a detective novel be complex for complexity's sake?  Author in Distress may be the template for such a mystery novel. As complicated as the story becomes I didn't care.  I was marveling, not complaining, at the labyrinthine story telling, the layering of past and present, the double identities and masquerades the deeper I got into the story.

Nifty map of crime scene combined with floor plan of house.  Click to enlarge!

Unfortunately, it all falls apart in the final third when Wills abandons his finely engineered detective novel and transforms the book in a cliche-ridden adventure thriller. Audrey is kidnapped and imprisoned in a tower accessible only by two ladders, a daring rescue involving near fatal perils, the garrulous villain confesses everything on his deathbed. My notes include this brief rant: "Loads of Edgar Wallace claptrap. Ugh!"  Blackmail and an old bank robbery turn up in the eleventh hour and serve as the outrageous motive for the various crimes and murders.  It all seemed so manufactured and random in the summing up and made fro an anticlimactic finale.

But prior to the high speed action-filled, but utterly familiar, final chapters the book is fascinating and engaging for fans of the traditional puzzle-filled detective novel.

QUOTES: I only wrote down one, but it's rather resonant for these days:

"The American, like most of his countryman, carried a gun." 

THE AUTHOR: Cecil M. Wills (1891-1966) had a fairly lengthy career as a detective novel and thriller writer from 1935 to 1961. Can't find much about his life online, but his bibliography is well documented on various crime fiction sites. This is my first reading of his books having only discovered him after seeing his name mentioned in a passing remark in the excellent mystery novel At the Sign of the Clove and Hoof.  Wills' early books of the 1930s featuring Geoffrey Boscobell and Audrey are rather scarce, sorry to report.  There are a handful copies out and (not too surprisingly) several very cheap editions of a French translated edition of The Chamois Murder.  The easier to find Wills mystery novels are his titles from the 1950s.  For several reviews of these later books featuring a completely different series detective see the Puzzle Doctor's posts at In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel.

Despite its flawed finale chapters I enjoyed Author in Distress.  It's a book I think ought to be reprinted.  In fact, the entire Boscobell series holds promise based on this sole reading experience.  Enterprising and daring publishers take note.  Cecil M Wills deserves a second life, I'd say.

Sgt. Geoffrey Boscobell Detective Novels

Author in Distress (1934)
Death at the Pelican (1934)
Death Treads (1935)
Then Came the Police (1935)
The Chamois Murder (1935)
Fatal Accident (1936)
Defeat of a Detective (1936)
On the Night in Question (1937)
A Body in the Dawn (1938)
The Case of the Calabar Bean (1939)
*The Case of the R.E. Pipe (1940)
*The Clue of the Lost Hour (1949)
*The Clue of the Golden Ear-Ring (1950)

 

*also with Roger Ellerdine who becomes the leading detective in the remaining Wills detective novels