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

FFB: The Black Stamp - Will Scott

The Black Stamp (1926) was published in England as Disher - Detective (1925) and in it we are introduced to Will Disher, a corpulent, monocle wearing, consulting detective who probably would like to belong to the school of sleuths that Carolyn Wells called the Transcendent Detective. Her term implies a grandeur that is undeserving of most of these types. Disher aspires to greatness but his ego prevents him achieving anything other than cleverness. He is alternately insufferable in his treatment of others and hilarious when spouting forth his epigrammatic dialogue that might impress even Oscar Wilde. He comes from a long line of these amateur sleuths who seemed to be the mainstay of detective novels of the mid to late 1920s. Disher has much in common with Philo Vance, Graydon McKelvie, Phineas Spinnett and Roger Sheringham all of whom are full of themselves, irreverent, intolerant, but not without a sense of humor often tinged with a patronizing tone. Disher is rescued from being thoroughly dislikeable by his occasional flashes of heartfelt camaraderie toward his much put upon assistant Henry Moon, legman extraordinaire, and a respect for Henry's often surprisingly original thinking.

Poor Henry Moon is described as a young man who might otherwise have become a non-entity had he not met Disher. He is called a follower and that is exactly what he does for about 75% of the book. He is sent out to follow and shadow a variety of suspicious characters. His very physical work uncovers vital clues and unexpected developments in this baffling case involving anonymous letters, an invisible gang of criminals, and a rash of mysterious disappearances. Disher leaves most of the work to Henry just as Nero Wolfe relied on good ol' Archie Goodwin. When Disher decides to take charge, however, he can display an unconventional outside of the box approach to interrogating his suspects like the puzzled gardener of whom he demands to know where he went to school, if he won any prizes and how often he attends church. All Disher's questions seem utterly random and immaterial to both the reader and the gardener who expects to be interrogated about his missing employer.

There is an element of Edgar Wallace in The Black Stamp. Several important politicians and business leaders throughout Europe and the United States have received letters sealed with the titular black stamp. Each letter briefly accuses the recipient of being better off dead and shortly after receiving one of these stamped letters the recipient vanishes without a trace. In one instance the letter receiver vanishes from a locked room in which the lights go out briefly while Disher is standing next to him qualifying the novel as an impossible crime book. The solution to that particular disappearance is solved fairly quickly and in an ingenious way that I believe is the first instance of such a gimmick.

Though Henry and Disher do some legitimate detecting and work well as a detective team this is mostly a pursuit thriller and less of a detective novel. There is a lot of following and tailing. Characters pursue each other on foot, by taxi, and even ocean liner. The story travels from England to the US and back again. When the story is transplanted to the USA for several chapters the tone even changes. We lose the Wallace atmosphere and meet up with characters like Spotty M'Gee, a trigger happy crook with a taste for fistfights who would be at home in a Carroll John Daly novel. The dialog becomes peppered with American gangster slang with even Disher succumbing to the speech pattern. Hamilton Harris, a wealthy businessman who receives a black stamped letter, commits burglary in order to be jailed thus ensuring he not become one of the vanished. He summons Disher via telegram and proposes he become his bodyguard once he is freed from jail and together they can join forces to outwit the Black Stamp gang. With luck they will put an end to the disappearances altogether when they find the reason for what seem to be a series of kidnappings.

The scenes between Disher and Hamilton Harris, a Scottish immigrant who made his fortune in American steel, are some of the best in the book. Harris is as irascible and intolerant as Disher. "You're mighty conceited" he says to Disher whose rejoinder is "A peacock posing as a peacock is just a peacock. It is when a sparrow struts around in the guise of a pheasant... But do have a cigar, Mr. Harris."

Disher may be supercilious and intolerant, but I find his slant on the world (and himself) pretty damn funny. Here are some of my favorite quotes:

On living outside a city:
"Suburbs are the curse of civilization. They are pure poison. In them the spirit of dullness has been captured and given a life sentence. It would not surprise me to learn some day that Hell is the suburbs of Heaven."

On conversation:
"There is no occasion on which I am unwilling to talk, except in sleep. [Talk] is an art which I have brought to a state of perfection almost unbelievable. I am its Beethoven."

On lack of observation:
"The fool never recognized me! He is the kind of idiot that would take the Angel Gabriel by the shoulder, and say: 'Give me that instrument! What are you doing here?'"

Harris is the man who disappears so miraculously from the briefly darkened but thoroughly locked and sealed room. No small problem for Disher though who solves that miracle with the ease of crossing a street. With the help of Henry, M'Gee and his American cohorts, plus an assortment of speed racing taxi cab drivers Disher manages to uncover an international plot and locate the missing men all under one roof. The Black Stamp is an above average example of these fast paced, action oriented thrillers so popular in the early 20th century. Those with a dry sense of humor and a slightly cynical worldview might find Will Disher to be worth a visit in one of his three adventures.

Occasionally the Disher books turn up dirt cheap in the used book market. I haven't checked if there are free online versions, but I suspect that since they are in the public domain at least one of them probably is out there in the digital airspace. Happy hunting!

Will Disher detective thrillers
Disher - Detective (1925) - US Title: The Black Stamp
Shadows (1928)
The Mask (1929)

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Reading Challenge update: Golden Age, space N3 - " Book published under more than one title"

IN BRIEF: The Case of the Busy Bees

Clifford Witting tries his hand at a master criminal style thriller in The Case of the Busy Bees (1952). This mystery is not a Holmesian adventure with apiaries and beekeeping as its background. The Busy Bees are members of a criminal syndicate stretching from "Land's End to John O'Goats" whose nefarious activities include "kidnapping, extortion, forgery, blackmail, smuggling, coining, fraud, dope-peddling, black market offences on a large scale." And of course murder.

What begins as an eccentric mystery with the theft of a Native American tomahawk from the odd dime museum run by Theophilus Mildwater leads to murder and gangland violence on a grand and brutal scale such as I've not encountered before in any detective novel by Witting. The introduction of a gang of criminals calling themselves the Busy Bees who resort to code names like Apple Nine Zero and Gooseberry One Six, who signal one another with coded phrases and a trademark "Zzzzz" sound effect, and whose leader dubs himself Rex Apis are all plot elements you'd expect to find in a book written twenty to thirty years earlier. But Witting cannot resist this homage to Nigel Morland and Edgar Wallace. And he spares no one as the criminal activity escalates from theft to kidnapping to murder. The body count is high and the surprises come when Witting shows no mercy for any of his often very likable characters. Your favorite is most likely going to end up dead in this book. Even Inspector Charlton, Witting's detective series hero, succumbs to a diabetic coma and is hospitalized for the last third of the book.

I did learn a few things here. Notably the existence of Potter's Museum (now defunct), one of the most bizarre collections of amateur taxidermy in the world. Started by Walter Potter in the summer house near his family owned pub in 1861 his collection eventually grew to over 10,000 pieces. The museum lived out it's nomadic existence in three different locations from the late 19th century through the late 20th century. From 1984 to 2002 much of the collection was exhibited at Jamaica Inn in Cornwall. Finally the museum was shut down in 2003 when the entire collection was sold at auction, sadly realizing in total sales less than what was anticipated. Witting mentions that Potter's Museum served as the inspiration for the Monk Jewel Museum run by Mr. Mildwater in this novel. For those ignorant of Potter's Museum I suggest you take a look at the macabre collection at this tribute website. I guarantee you've never seen groups of stuffed kittens, hamsters, squirrels and bunnies doing the things Potter had them do.

This wasn't one of my favorite Witting books; very atypical compared to his books written in the 1930s and 1940s. The setting is still Lulverton and the surrounding villages. The puzzle aspects are still there. And he planted some devilishly clever clues that show up the errors the villain makes due to his egocentrism and vanity. Most of the solution, however, combining a puzzling murder, the confusing thefts of museum articles, and the identity of Rex Apis is delivered in a lecture with lots of evidence mentioned for the first time in the final chapter. Even with the few fair play clues Witting hasn't delivered a traditional detective novel here. It is pretty much an all-out underworld thriller with a 1920s style homage to a fantasy world of criminals that never really existed.

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Reading Challenge update: Golden Age bingo card space E5 "Book set in England"

The Charing Cross Mystery - J. S. Fletcher

Next to Edgar Wallace I believe J.S. Fletcher was the most prolific writer of detective novels and adventure thrillers in the earliest portion of the Golden Age of crime fiction. His strength was always in dreaming up multi-layered plots, populating them with large casts of characters who usually spoke in fair replications of British and foreign dialects, and keeping the reader's attention engaged with an explosion of action sequences. But like most genre writers who churned out story after story he suffered from a dire case of repetition.

With the exception of only a few of his thrillers which venture into the realm of science fiction and fantasy if you read one Fletcher novel you can usually predict what the rest of them will be like. A murder or two, a theft of a valuable piece of jewelry, a villain of the Napoleon of Crime variety, blackmail, a handsome and witty amateur sleuth (usually a lawyer or reporter), and a wily policeman who teams up with the amateur. Throw it all into blender, push a high button speed, and serve in a tall frosty glass with a some biscuits or scones.

The Charing Cross Mystery (1923) is less of a detective novel (though it tries very hard to be one) than it is one of Fletcher's rapidly paced pursuit thrillers. It begins in a subway train car headed for Charing Cross station. Superintendent Hannaford (Ret.) confides with James Granett that he has located a woman who escaped arrest for fraud eight years ago. Hannaford has cut out her picture from a newspaper article as proof and shows it to Granett. Shortly after this somewhat confidential talk -- overheard by our hero, a young barrister named Hetherwick -– Hannaford drops dead, the victim of some agonizingly fatal poison. Granett goes in search of a doctor but never returns. Hetherwick is left to explain to the police and a passing doctor what happened.

Intrigued by what he overheard Hetherwick is curious to uncover the identity of the woman in the photo and would like to find Hannaford's murderer. He joins forces with Inspector Matherfield and together they uncover a complex web of multiple crimes related to the fraudulent sale of a diamond necklace.

Soon it doesn’t matter who killed Hannaford and the other victims or really why they were killed. Fletcher is not satisfied with a murder or two in this story. He tosses into his potent crime fiction cocktail every crime one can think of: blackmail, extortion, theft, check fraud, and kidnapping. The kidnapping eventually becomes the focus of the story as Hetherwick, his law office aide, and a variety of policeman led by Matherfield try to locate the kidnap victim and put an end to the reign of terror begun by a duo of master criminals. In addition to this circus juggler's act of criminal activity Fletcher dares to throw into the ring the time worn detective novel cliché of mistaken identity related to twins!

The book is fairly typical of the crime fiction of the time. Nothing very original or surprising occurs though the supporting cast of characters comprised of a lively and colorful bunch provides for some entertaining moments and amusing dialogue. What makes the book slightly notable is the sheer inventiveness of the multi-dimensional plot and the fast pace with which Fletcher manages to churn out set piece after set piece. It would have made a fabulous movie serial during the silent era as the chapters tend to end with cliffhangers or melodramatic pronouncements. The US edition apparently was originally serialized as my copy published by G.P. Putnam & Sons states it is copyright by Consolidated Magazine Corporation, who published among other periodicals The Blue Book Magazine where Tarzan debuted.

The Charing Cross Mystery is now available as the inaugural volume in a series of vintage crime reprints published by Oleander Press. The imprint, dubbed "London Bound", plans to highlight long out of print books that have been recommended by a British bookseller and former judge for the CWA Gold Dagger Award. Here is how they describe the imprint:

LONDON BOUND – A series of classic crime novels, largely from the Golden Age of detective fiction, faithfully transcribed, re-set and reprinted by Oleander under the series name London Bound - owing, unsurprisingly, to their all being set in the nation's capital.

Each title will be released in a limited hardcover edition as well as affordable paperback editions. Other authors whose work will be reprinted include Henry Holt, William LeQueux, and the exceptionally rare detective novel Fatality in Fleet Street by Christopher St. John Sprigg. I was so excited about the Sprigg book I immediately pre-ordered it. That one is not out until June 2013.

UPDATE, JAN 2015: Oleander Press suspended operations of the "London Bound" imprint series sometime in the summer 2013. Only three titles ever saw the light of day: The Charing Cross Mystery, Fatality in Fleet Street and Doctor of Pimlico by William LeQueux. The planned releases of books by Henry Holt (still mentioned on their website) were abandoned.

Greenmask! - Elizabeth Linington

"This is Number One - Greenmask!" proclaims the hastily scrawled note attached to the corpse found in Walt's Malt Shop. On top of the violently beaten body is a book neatly tied with a green ribbon. It's a copy of Thomas' Guide to Los Angeles County. Sgt. Ivor Maddox would rather devote time to unpacking his numerous books in his recently purchased new home instead of sorting out what seems to be the beginning of a lunatic killer on the rampage.

Maddox is also worried that the criminal has, like himself, an extensive knowledge of old murder mysteries and has let those stories run wild in his warped imagination. "Greenmask? Shades of Farjeon," he mutters to himself at the crime scene of the first victim. There's also a bit of Edgar Wallace and...something else. Something that rings a faint bell but he just can't hear loudly enough. That something else will eat away at Maddox until back home weary from routine police work he tries to relax by shelving his vast library. When he unpacks his numerous mystery novels (in neat alphabetical order) he finds that something else among the volumes in his personal library.

"For God's sake, you can't have that!" said Maddox in alarm. "If you get started on Carr, I won't get any useful work out of you for weeks. Here--" He scanned the shelves and gave Rodriguez And Then There Were None. "That's quite enough excitement for you until we've caught up to Greenmask."

Fans of Golden Age detective novels have more than they ever could wish for in Greenmask! (1964) in which a killer uses a fairly well known mystery novel as the template for a series of killings. I won't mention the book for fear of ruining a little surprise (and I would hope that anyone who already knows will also refrain from doing so in the comments). I enjoyed this mystery for the sheer hutzpah it took to write a copycat killer story and rely solely on a book that already exists as a model for the basic plot. I managed to see the connection early on yet Linington's characters kept me reading to the end. There was, however, rather a big letdown for me by the time I got to the final pages.

What makes the book such a fun read is the unusual stream of consciousness style of detective work Maddox engages in. This is his first appearance in a relatively short series. Linington was known in the 1960s as the "Queen of the Police Procedurals" and her series about Luis Mendoza written under the pseudonym Dell Shannon totaling over 40 books seem more like what a reader might expect in a police procedural. Here, the reader sees little of the police work; Maddox delegates routine tasks and questioning to the rookies and grunts and it all happens offstage. they later return and give reports in dialogue scenes. The majority of the detective work is done in Maddox's head and we read of his odd associational style of thinking. Linington attempts to convey Maddox's stream of conscious detective work by composing his thoughts in a telegraphic, abrupt prose style and almost perfectly captures on paper a replication of the way running thoughts crowd themselves and overlap in one's mind.

She extends this running thought fascination in her characters' speech patterns. The dialogue is rendered with many interrupted thoughts, lots of dashes and ellipses. All of the characters interviewed by the police talk this way. Only the police seem to be able to speak in full sentences without being distracted. By midway into the book you just hope for two or three pages of easy dialogue exchanges without someone going off into a non sequitar monologue. Linington reaches hyperrealism overload at the expense of a good story.

Typical of this era we also get a lot of character work focusing mostly on Maddox' personal life which involves his inexplicable sexual allure with women. Yes, you read that correctly. He basically does not understand nor does he like being a sex object. You'd think he'd enjoy all the attention, but weirdly it has placed a strain on his job and stain on his reputation. This allure has been so disruptive that Internal Affairs has called him up more than once. Maddox' magnetism knows no bounds extending even to the lowlifes. One of his biggest fans is a character who seems to have wandered in from the pages of a Jonathan Craig novel -- local lush Maggie McNeill. These scenes are the kind of thing you expect from 1930s vaudeville sketch comedy with Maggie's dialogue rendered in sibilant drunken slurring. More embarrassing than funny.

One caveat is the final solution. After discovering Maddox' library of vintage detective fiction, the multiple allusions to titles he (and presumably Linington) find to be the best of the genre, and the real fun of watching Detective Cesar Rodriguez become an avowed Golden Age detective fiction fan, we get to the denouement. It is uninspired to say the least. In addition to borrowing her plot from a well known writer Linington seems to have borrowed her killer from the pages of true crime history. While she may have thought she had pulled a neat twist circa 1960s what she did was reveal something completely different -- her prejudices and ignorance. Some unsubtle clueing mixes with melodramatic character behavior in what amounts to one of the most oft-repeated cliche villains we encounter in vintage fiction. The unveiling of the culprit is handled so distastefully, showing little compassion or insight into human nature, that it fairly ruined an otherwise enjoyable book.

FIRST BOOKS: The Moon Murders - Nigel Morland

The dedication to The Moon Murders (1935), Nigel Morland's debut as a crime fiction author, is to his mentor Edgar Wallace who he also credits with having given him the idea for Palmyra Pym. In the history of all detective fiction Palmyra Pym is the first woman police officer of high rank in command all her investigations. There have been female fictional private detectives and perhaps a few female police officer characters in the crime fiction of the late 19th century and early 20th century, but Mrs. Pym is unique with her high rank of commissioner and therefore a true pioneer for women characters in the genre.

While they display the usual elements of a traditional detective story the Mrs. Pym books are at their core police procedurals. Morland was a true crime addict and journalist and knew how Scotland Yard really worked during his lifetime. The drudgery of paperwork, the backbiting among colleagues, the sergeant trying his best to prove his skills and shine in the eyes of his superior, and the utter bureaucracy of the life of policemen -- Morland captured it all. The Moon Murders is concerned with not only the investigation and apprehension of the criminal but also the inner workings and bureaucracy of police departments and most especially the relationships of police officers with their partners and superiors. The life of police behind the scenes is really what distinguishes a true police procedural from the usual whodunit and will become the hallmark of such later crime writers as John Creasey in his books about Commander Gideon and Inspector West representing the UK and Ed McBain and Jonathan Craig in the their treatments of urban American precinct life. Morland to me seems to have nailed the formula combining detection, police work and police relationships in his first book. It's not just an entertainment it is a real novel of character.


Man from the Moon 's disguise recalls
McCulley's ex-circus performer

Like the oddball characters of Johnston McCulley's pulp magazine stories (The Crimson Clown, Black Star, and the Demon) London is plagued with a master criminal with a penchant for theatricality. Several shooting deaths have been attributed to someone calling himself "The Man from the Moon." At each crime scene police find a calling card stamped with a yellow crescent and a taunting typed message. He makes surprise appearances at Scotland Yard dressed in a billowing shapeless gown, a grisly white mask and a red fright wig and challenges Mrs. Pym to stop him before he strikes again. She is certain that "The Man from the Moon" is not acting alone and it's all a smoke screen for a crime syndicate planning something far more insidious and harmful to the city.

In one of his more daring acts the masked criminal manages to escape her office unseen by a guard on duty foreshadowing Morland's later fascination with detective novels that feature impossible crime aspects. But Mrs Pym will have nothing to do with locked rooms and impossibilities. When anything seeming to be an impossible crime surfaces she quickly dismisses and proves within minutes how the "miracle" was accomplished. One thing a criminal should never do with Mrs. Pym is toy with her unshakable respect for logic and common sense.

Morland takes the Holmesian approach to crime detection to its extreme with Mrs. Pym who tries her best to get her men to see things as they really are. She walks into a room and within minutes can tell you who has been there and she teaches her police to do the same. In her partner Inspector Shott she glimpses the potential for an excellent detective, but their first few days together are like Beatrice and Benedict trading insults. One of the best examples of her amazing detective skills comes in her examination of the rooms at Ensor Mews where a reporter has been kidnapped. Based on indentations in the carpet, an uneaten breakfast, and hand prints left in dust on a table top Mrs. Pym figures out not only precisely what happened in the room, but the height and personality of the kidnapper. Holmes could do no better, I think.

When her loyal Chinese servant and dear friend is killed in a shootout/car chase that results in a fatal car wreck Pym's irascible personality transforms into a powerfully enraged and cruel Nemesis. She vows to bring in all the criminals in the gang headed by "The Man from the Moon" even if she has to kill every last one of them herself. It's an astonishing scene and the metamorphosis is something to marvel at. Rarely do we get this kind of character arc in any detective novel of the period.

Her shift in character and motivation is marked by an ever increasing unorthodoxy and flagrant violation of police protocol. She begins to resemble a brutal American cop not the usual genteel British police officer of a traditional detective novel. We know that she has spent some time in the U.S.A. (Omaha and Nevada are both mentioned) and she confesses that she had some respect for the tactics of the "third degree" favored by American police. She even stoops to bribing witnesses to speed up the investigation and get her closer to ferreting out the killers. Her superiors are shocked and lecture her. Even Shott is appalled by her sudden changes. He is concerned that Internal Affairs might get wind of Pym's "rule bending" and repeatedly warns her to curb her methods lest her actions lead to probation for both or the end of their careers.

The Wallace influence comes into full force when in the final pages Morland creates one action sequence after another in relentless succession. There is an exciting airplane chase complete with a gunfight that could've been lifted from a war movie. Vengeance is hers. Aiming straight at the plane's gas tank Mrs. Pym fires in rapid succession crying out "Frizzle you murderer!!" her fury punctuated with not one but two exclamation marks. Her rage so overcomes her Mrs. Pym doesn't even realize she has been shot in her wrist until she's on the ground. A later shoot out in the villains' hideout is a bloodthirsty barrage of bullets and bodies falling that makes the St. Valentine's Massacre look like a tea party. Mrs. Pym orders her men to open fire and "Give 'em all you got." When she is aiming at one of the nastiest of the lot she addresses him, "Speak well of me to the dead" then empties her gun into him. Mickey Spillane night approve of Palmyra Pym's crime fighting methods, though he would hardly approve of her bulldog features, her less than shapely figure and her taste in mannish attire and ugly hats.

A bibliography of the Mrs. Pym. detective novels can be found here along with an updated and complete list of all other crime fiction Nigel Morland wrote under a variety of pseudonyms. In the coming weeks I will feature an article on all of his Sgt. Johnny Lamb novels written under the name "John Donavan."

The Moon Murders counts as one more book in my Perilous Policeman category of my three part 2012 Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge sponsored by Bev at My Reader's Block. Links to the previously reviewed books are listed below.

Part I. Perilous Policemen
The Case of the Beautiful Body - Jonathan Craig
Murder by the Clock - Rufus King
The Death of Laurence Vining - Alan Thomas

The Smiling Death - Francis D. Grierson

Edgar Wallace seemed to have a great influence on many of the crime writers in 1920s England. His thrillers were less concerned with the fair play detective puzzles and focused instead on the behavior of the criminals, particularly the special brand of master criminal (Silinski, White Face, The Twister) and criminal syndicates (The Fellowship of the Frog, The Green Ribbon, The Crimson Circle) that make up the bulk of his work. I saw a lot of Wallace in The Smiling Death (1927), a book that begins as a detective novel but quickly turns into a crime thriller with a typical Napoleon of Crime matching wits with a dogged police inspector and his expert sleuth companion.

This is the sixth book featuring series character Professor Wells, a expert in chemistry, friend and consultant of Inspector Sims who team up to solve baffling crimes over the course of twelve novels and one collection of short stories. A dead man is found in Tottenham Court Road with a strange smile-like expression on his face. Sims explains that the body may be one of many in a string of unexplained deaths originally attributed to heart failure and dismissed that date back to 1908. All the victims were wealthy, all bore the risus sardonicus on their faces. Wells is quick to mention that this "smiling death" is often associated in cases of tetanus and some strychnine poisonings. This is an intriguing start, but Grierson almost immediately dispenses with all the mystery in a matter of pages.

The 5th book in the series (1926)

The detection here is not fair play at all. It takes the form of lectures and in one single chapter Wells discusses his findings with Sims based on meeting Gregory Marle, handing him his walking stick after Marle drops it on the floor, and noticing a tiny pinprick in the neck of the corpse. He tells Sims he knows the murderer and the method based on these three things, but is not sure of the motive. Later in the book Sims will do some detection of his own that follows this pattern: he sees an object, examines it cursorily, then pockets it intending to discuss it with Wells when Grierson sees fit to reveal it to the reader.

While the story seems to be presented as a typical whodunit it is not Grierson's intention to withhold the identity of the killer until the final pages. We learn who he is well before the half way mark. He is Gregory Marle, a seemingly kindly bookseller who is watching over his pretty ward Pamela Fayne. In reality Marle is a master criminal and master of disguise, with a small army of local crooks and thugs at his command. Fooled into thinking this is a puzzle style whodunit the reader soon discovers he has instead picked up a crime thriller with the author's primary interest being the criminal's behavior and not the detective skills of the sleuthing protagonists.

One of the best sections in the book occurs when Marle confronts Wells and attempts to bargain with him. The two have an interesting exchange of ideas in which Marle discusses his life as a murderer and criminal and Wells reacts with a mixture of horror and admiration.  Marle concludes the visit with a warning: Leave him alone and he will do nothing, interfere and he promises Wells will die. Wells accepts that, but tells Marle he has no intention of letting him continue with his criminal plans to which Marle, ever the gentleman master criminal, replies: "Professor Wells, I am going to kill you. And yet, if you would allow me, I should like to shake your hand."

The 8th book (1929)

Typical of so many of these thrillers the story is drawn out and padded with incident. Marle wastes no time in trying to eliminate Wells. But the professor foils the first attempt with a ploy similar to the one Holmes whipped up in "The Empty House" to fool Colonel Moran. Scotland Yard assigns a policeman to guard and follow the professor and there is a long, nearly pointless, sequence with Wells playing "lose the tail" with his inept policeman shadow. A subplot about a stolen string of pearls and a sequence detailing a strange method of relaying secret messages embedded in crossword puzzles also figure in the action-filled plot. The book is littered with incidents like this that seem more filler than substance. They also made me think the book was originally serialized which I later learned was true. The Smiling Death first appeared in Everybody's Magazine in four installments from April through July of 1927.

13th and final book in series (1935)

The final third of the book begins with Red Joe Smith, one of Marle's cronies, turning police informer when he recognizes the man he is assigned to kill as his former commanding officer Captain Roger Kent. Kent saved Smith's life on the battlefield years ago and Smith swore he would repay Kent for that heroic deed. After Smith gives all his information on Marle to the police there is a race to arrest him before he flees the country in a boat with two women (the love interests of two minor characters) as hostages.

It's all familiar and formulaic to a modern reader and slightly disappointing after such an interesting beginning. Only the character of Gregory Marle kept me interested in reading to the end. His dialog, like all great villains, is the best part of the book like this sample taken from his tête-à-tête with Wells:

Murder? It is a word used by the ignorant with a sort of religious awe. But let us call it the taking of a life. [...] I will admit that I have taken more than one life. I have lopped off from the parent tree certain useless branches just as a surgeon lops a gangrenous limb from a human body.

This was the first and probably last Professor Wells Book I will read. I also own the very first Wells & Sims book, The Limping Man, but after sampling four chapters I find that it too suffers from quickly resolved mysteries, no fair play detection, and too much of the thriller writer's love of action over puzzle for me to continue with it.  I may try some of his other books, however,  outside of this series to see if he has anything closer to a traditional detective novel.

Grierson wrote a homage to his idol, "Edgar Wallace: The Passing of a Great Personality," in The Bookman (March, 1932, pp. 3101). However, I was unable to find a complete copy of the text online. Some further digging required when I make my next trip to the Chicago Public Library.

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Inspector Sims & Professor Wells Novels
The Limping Man (1924)
The Double Thumb (1925) - short stories
The Lost Pearl (1925)
Secret Judges (1925)
The Zoo Murder (US title: The Murder in the Garden) (1926)
The Smiling Death (1927)
The Blue Bucket Mystery (1929)
The White Camellia (1929)
The Yellow Rat (1929) (reissued in 1932 as Murder at the Wedding)
The Mysterious Mademoiselle (1930)
Murder at Lancaster Gate (1934)
Death on Deposit (1935)
Murder in Black (1935


NOTE: Francis D. Grierson should not be confused with an American non-fiction writer who shares his name. The Grierson who wrote detective and crime novels was a Irish man born in 1888 while the other Grierson was a British born, naturalized American born in 1848. The older Grierson isn't even a real Grierson. His real name is Benjamin Henry Jesse Shepherd, a concert pianist, who wrote under the pseudonym "Francis Grierson" and penned a number of books incorporating his interest in mysticism and spiritualism including The Valley of the Shadows and Abraham Lincoln, the Practical Mystic.