Notice to Quit - James Quince

THE STORY: William Yolland gets some news from a physician who has given him a mandatory exam for an insurance policy Yolland is hoping will help out his dire financial position. And it's not good news. The doctor informs William that he has a cardiac condition and may experience a fatal heart attack in a matter of months. William now finds it necessary to find alternative method to save his beloved home and estate which will be subject to death taxes that he will not be able to afford. He comes up with a bizarre plan -- switch identities with his look-alike son and give the illusion that he is still alive should he die suddenly. His son John can make sure that finances are in order and the house can be saved even though William Yolland will be gone. But the masquerade comes with several unexpected complications not the least of which is hoping that no one will see through the elaborate scheme.

THE CHARACTERS: Quince spends a lot of time setting up the switcheroo by having several characters mention that William, age 48, and John, age 24, are often mistaken for one another. It's only when William whose hair has gone prematurely white is seen up close that anyone realizes the error.  The disguises seem ridiculously simple: William dyes his hair blond and wears more youthful clothes while John is fitted for an expensive white wig and adds a few crow's feet to his face using theatrical make-up. It's a bit hard to swallow, but I went along for the ride. Luckily, Quince recognizes the outlandishness of the role playing. Though on the surface everyone seems to accept William for his son and son for father not everyone falls for the charade. By the midpoint William Yolland's first person narrative gives way to another first person narrative in the person of Molly Montauben, John's very close friend, who lets us know that she saw through his disguise almost immediately. Later another character catches on to the switch due to John's lack of fluency in Spanish. Thank heaven for these clever and observant characters!

William and John are immensely likable and Quince's witty style of writing in William's voice allows for the reader to further accept the disguises and scheming. On the first day of the switch William in the person of his son attends a tennis party where he meets John's friends and associates from a not-for-proft organization called the Youth Movement which is devoted to social work and health equity 1930s style.  Later, William learns from his son that the Youth Movement is actually a front for a revolutionary political party intent on shaking up the current British parliamentary troubles . John confesses he was roped into a kidnapping plot but never followed though. Now Dad must carry out the plan in a hastily restructured scheme that becomes even more complicated when it overlaps with his past life as diplomat in the fictional South American country called Bochilia (apparently meant to be a stand-in for Argentina).

William lived in Bochilia over twenty years ago where he worked for Pablo Poolo, a dignitary close to the Bochilian President. William got to know Poolo's daughter Amatista, they eventually married, she bore him his son, but died days later from a complicated delivery.  Some of the Bochilian wheelers and dealers have now come to the UK and are target of the Youth Movement plot that John has been involved with. But due to the switch John - now the fake William - finds himself facing people he should know and recognize and being utterly ignorant of his relationship to them. And so the farce begins!

But is it really a farce?  Quince tries to mix a kind of low comedy that dates back to Roman and Elizabethan theater with sophisticated satire pointing out generational differences in the advance of parliamentarian government, post World War One. The farcical elements seem utterly out of place with the almost lofty satire he is trying to insert about international trade laws and the end of the Victorian monarchy, two decades after the queen's death. The contrast made for a schizoid identity in itself for the book as a whole. Despite great character work from the supporting players -- a mix of Bochilian baddies, notably Felix Barzon, aka "the Ferret" who knew William two decades ago, and the Youth Movement idealists especially Estelle, their imposing intellectual leader, and Molly, the second narrator pining for John Yolland (the real one!) from afar -- the constant wavering between political satire and low comedy was a distraction.  Personally, I do not like suspense thrillers that deal with government policies and foreign powers looking to upset global economics. I avoid them as I would hearts-and-flowers romance novels.  Unfortunately, my mind drifted away when the plot focused on the politics.

INNOVATIONS: Surprisingly, I found that this crime novel (for there are indeed aspects of crime, and even detective novel on display) succeeded more when it stuck to the farce. Quince parodies abduction action sequences and sinister villain masterminds so familiar to readers of Edgar Wallace and other thriller writers of the 1920s and 1930s. At times this felt like a "thriller comedy of manners" a la The Secret of Chimneys or The Seven Dials Mystery. Perhaps the biggest surprise in Notice to Quit (1932) is the element of masquerade and role playing because ultimately that is what the novel is really about. As the story resolves its various plot threads and conflicts -- including among other things a dispute over the Falkland Islands to an apparently worthless mine in Bochilia -- Quince turns his attention to contemplation on generational frictions and disparities. Basically, he is always commenting on the timeworn dichotomy of youth vs. age. William regrets his foolishness, his retreat into boyish attractions and indulgences while playing the part of his son.  Some of the writing occasionally reveals pithy insights on this topic:

I cursed Youth and its silly movements and its way of managing the middle-aged by falling back on the appeal to courtesy when its bullying failed.

"Youth is led by fear. Did you know that? All the great leaders have been feared. If love goes with the fear so much more the comfortable for all concerned, but it does not greatly matter. In the eyes of the young there are no half-tints; you must be black or white, right or wrong, feared or despised."

Ultimately, the plot comes full circle with a wonderfully delightful twist in the penultimate chapter.  I found myself marveling at how much Notice to Quit resembles not so much a satirical crime novel as it does a Shakespearean comedy with its fascination with masquerade, the farcical elements arising out of the identity switch, role playing of all types, and the uplifting finale with two weddings. A happy ending indeed arrives despite all the political skulduggery.

THINGS I LEARNED:  The frequent mention of the Falkland Islands and Barzon's interest in purchasing them for Bochilia (hence my thought that it is supposed to be Argentina) led me to look at early 20th century skirmishes and conflicts located in that part of South America. I discovered that it was British military stronghold for decades dating back to the late 19th century. There was also an early battle there during World War 1. Argentina's struggle for sovereignty of the islands is as age-old as the military forts constructed there. 

EASY TO FIND?  This one is a true rarity. I found my copy back in 2014 and I've never seen one since.  Currently there are zero copies offered for sale from the triumvirate of online antiquarian booksellers. I successfully sold my copy -- sorry for no early announcement -- shortly after I finished reading it for this post. Who knows when another will ever turn up again? Your only resort seems to be academic libraries: three copies are in libraries in the UK, one in Dublin, and one in Canada at the University of Alberta. 

FIRST BOOKS: Wheels in the Forest - John Newton Chance

"Cars, Siddons, cars! The place bristles with 'em. A Morris Oxford, an M.G., and two Rolls-Royces. The solution to this problem is in those cars."

 Emblazoned across the DJ front panel of the first edition of Wheels in the Forest (1935) is a laudatory quote from the pseudonymous crime fiction reviewer of The Observer, Torquemada, praising the debut of its author John Newton Chance. Torquemada (aka Edward Powys Mathers) was notoriously scathing in his reviews, nothing else would be expected from someone who chose as his pen name the identity of the cruel torturer of the Spanish Inquisition. To find a positive review from him, let alone a rave, was a rarity and I was tantalized. I came across a copy of Wheels in the Fortune in my book hunting and saw several positive quotes attributed to Torquemada related to Chance's first few mystery novels and I succumbed to the spell of Gollancz's marketing scheme. Could these books really be so good that the toughest detective novel critic of the Golden Age thought them exceptional?  For once the hype proved correct.  Wheels in the Forest is a corker. It delivers the goods on so many levels. And I'm already eager to try more of Chance's books from the 1930s and 1940s.

I'm especially surprised that this first novel turned out so well because the first Chance mystery novel I read (decades ago) was Death Stalks the Cobbled Square (1944), aka The Screaming Fog, which has the distinction of being one of Chance's few known locked room mysteries.  I remember nothing about the book other than that it was one of the few in which the author himself appears as narrator and acts as a character in the story. Nothing really new there -- Willard Huntington Wright was doing that back in the late 1920s as "S. S. Van Dine" in all of the Philo Vance novels. Then sometime in February of this year I read one of Chance's much later books called The Traditional Murders (1983) which based on the title I thought would be a fun retro-homage to the Golden Age. Frankly, it was one of the worst mystery novels I've read in a long time. Utterly forgettable, often stupid, filled with stock characters of the worst stereotypes, and peppered with inane gratuitous sex scenes.  I had to find out what happened to this writer who was so lauded when he first appeared to the world of mystery readers. 

He must've just gotten lazy and money-grubbing easily succumbing to all that publishers felt necessary to sell books because his first novel is nothing like that drecky book from 1983 when Chance was 72 years old. Wheels in the Forest is not only better written, it often feels more like a mainstream novel satirizing village life along the lines of Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm.  As I got deeper into Chance's first mystery the Golden Age writer I kept thinking of was George Bellairs who at one time I liked, but quickly grew tired of when his books all seemed to be utterly formulaic and repetitive.  Like Bellairs Chance employs an author omniscient point of view and allows the reader to know every single character's thoughts.  Chance does a much better job at this than Bellairs and it is one of the book's best strengths and innovative touches.  Every character introduced gets at least one noteworthy scene that not only fully fleshes out that character but advances the story adding layers of suspicion and motivation to the puzzling murder. A pregnant girl's body is found alongside a road in the village of Isle nestled in the New Forest and surrounded by a circuit of roads that attract motor car enthusiasts eager to test out their driving skills and the speed of their cars.

As the epigraph to this review suggests cars play an important part in the solution of the crime. Similar to Freeman Wills Crofts' fascination with train schedules and timetables Chance is a bit obsessed with speeding cars, their mechanics, and the timing of the many cars that were known to be driving on the roads leading to and from the crime scene. In fact, one character - Dennis Lambert - crashes his car into a streetlamp the very night of the murder. That car wreck adds an intriguing mystery to the puzzling nature of where the murdered girl's body was discovered.

 Our detective team consists of belligerent impatient Superintendent "Smutty" Black, his fathead of a sergeant named Siddons, a crew of lower level coppers, and the delightfully eccentric Evelyn DeHavilland who prefers to go by the simple moniker of D. Black enlists D as his unofficial spy in the village and orders him to get the locals talking and to listen carefully, but to never directly ask any questions about the murder. Black tells D: "You're a stranger, starting at an advantage, because you're not used to them. You might notice something that I wouldn't through being used to it."  But later we learn through Black's personal thoughts that he knows D very well from their years spent in the war together and he thinks D to be a fool:

Fools find out things. You can be off your guard with intel-lectual people because they're so wrapped up in themselves that they don't notice anything outside; but with a fool you risk being off your guard and the fool notices the small faults; proving that a fool is not such a fool as he looks.

That talk of fools is also an indicator that Chance was clearly a fan of slapstick comedy. He shows off his love of farce with several scenes of people falling down or otherwise embarrassing themselves in comic bits and gags. In the person of Evelyn DeHavilland alone, a Wodehouse-like fop who embraces eccentricity for its own sake, the comedy is witty and lighthearted. But when the dramatic moments come they are often as shocking as the intrinsic surprises and twists in any mystery plot.

Because we are privy to everyone's thoughts not just those of Black and D, the primary detectives, there are exceptionally well done dramatic vignettes.  In particular, a scene involving a dim-witted motor car garage worker (who through much of the book seems like a stock in trade village idiot) is heartbreaking.  Bill Jupe, the teen aged brother of the murder victim, breaks down in grief late in the story. In his emotional pleas stated in simple language he asks someone why was his sister killed so brutally, that it was so unfair and that he misses her terribly. It's simply written, direct and powerfully affecting. What makes the scene even more affecting is also the most innovative moment of the novel. That open display of grief in turn drastically affects another character in the novel and the book transforms from a whodunnit to an inverted detective novel. Shortly after that scene with Bill, Chance turns his attention on the murderer's thoughts and allows the culprit to basically confess to the reader!

Wheels in the Forest has turned out to be one of the richest, most surprising, and unexpectedly moving detective novels I've read this year. Copies are hard to come by unfortunately. There were three affordable copies for sale (a mix of first editions and later reprints) a few days ago, but after this post was published they all sold within a few days! There’s one left but it’s priced at an exorbitant amount. Good luck finding any other copies!

FFB: At the Sign of the Clove & Hoof - Zoë Johnson

THE STORY: The Clove and Hoof is the hot spot in Larcombe for a pint of bitter, a good story and some laughs. It's also the focal point of a bizarre series of murders for the only connection the victims have seems to be that they all frequented the local pub. Strange pranks, a spate of anonymous letters all painted in blue watercolor, and a decapitated head found floating in the stream near Starehole Gap all lead to the police uncovering unusual criminality dating back 20 years.

THE CHARACTERS: The story of At the Sign of the Clove and Hoof (1937) is memorable for its offbeat sense of humor and the colorful characters who inhabit the village of Larcombe. This is a world of kooks, oddballs and eccentrics galore. Only an oddball would create anonymous letters with a child’s watercolor paint kit, right? And what kind of person would think that playing pranks by leaving a fish in someone’s bed, placing a ticking metronome outside a bedroom door or using a airgun to blast pepper shot at windows would be viewed as terrorism and result in hysteria? A nut job for sure, right? At first the novel seems to be no more than a Wodehousian satire of folksy villagers with a smattering of farcical scenes but the pranks and the oddness turn sinister and deadly as the story progresses.

Two policemen of decidedly differing approaches to crime solving head up the professional side of the investigation. We begin by meeting the officious Inspector Percy Blutton aided by local cops Jack Marsden and P.C. Jipps. Blutton questions the various habitués of the Clove and Hoof with vigorous impatience and makes up his mind fairly quickly who killed Vicar Ernest Pratt, the first victim of the mad killer, who was found shot in the head at the base of a cliff not far from his car. Footprints indicating a hobnail boot and a pegleg are found around the vehicle suggesting that Captain John Thomas Ridd, the only one legged man in the village, was near the car wreck recently. But Ridd has a solid alibi having been on his boat returning home to Larcombe the night Pratt was killed. Blutton disbelieves him and hounds Ridd for the rest of the novel. That is, until Ridd suddenly vanishes without a trace.

Our other policeman is Det. Sgt. Plumper from Scotland Yard. Considerably younger than Blutton he has a more subtle style of interrogation allowing the men of the village and the few women (nearly all of whom are servants) to chatter away and gossip while he nonchalantly inserts pertinent questions to catch them off guard and almost always getting a quick and truthful answer. Blutton finds this tactic strange and pointless but is ironically envious that it works for Plumper as often as it does. Plumper also exhibits impatience with the locals but manages to get the truth quicker than Blutton. Unfortunately, Plumper’s ego gets in the way and he allows himself to be hoodwinked by a clever ruse in the highly interesting final chapter.

Of the various suspects we have Bert Yeo, the pub owner who seems the most reticent of the lot; Sebastian Hannabus, aging antiquarian and jack-of-all-trades who counts among his various professions taxidermist, antique dealer, and barber; Lionel Gedling, ancient recluse who lives in the crumbling mansion known as Old Barton who is the victim of the various odd pranks; his mysterious manservant Costigan a man with a closed lip and a secret he’s hiding; Jeremy Scoutey, the local grocer, and his daughter Alice who is one of the several people in town who owns one of the paint sets that might be the source of the anonymous letters; Rosa, the barmaid with a fickle heart; and the star of the book Christian Peascod, dilettante of the arts and amateur detective.

Peascod is the best thing about At the Sign of the Clove and Hoof. He dominates the action whenever he appears with his larger than life personality, his arch humor and grandiose manner of speaking. Fancying himself both a poet and painter but good at neither he is also well versed in detective fiction having read the works of “Bailey, Doyle, Van Dine, Roger East, Freeman, Wills, and Crofts and the Misses Sayers and Christie.” I love that bit "Freeman, Wills and Crofts." A real in-joke for hardcore devotees of mystery novels. I take it that Freeman is R. Austin Freeman and Wills refers to the now ultra obscure Cecil M. Wills whose books are as scarce as Johnson’s are now.

Plumper listens to Peascod’s fascinating ideas about how and why the various crimes were committed -- all of it inspired by his favorite writers. Much to the would-be poet’s delight the Scotland Yard officer allows him to continue his investigations as a sort of unofficial deputy. But all the time Plumper has Peascod in mind as suspect number one. It was Peascod’s metronome found at Gedling’s home. Peascod was present at Starehole Gap the day the head came floating up out of the water. That Peascod is also fond of watercolor as his preferred medium for his laughable artwork is also a huge mark against him.

By the time the police have sorted the red herrings from the facts, discarded all the surreal nonsense obfuscating the murderer’s motive, six people will have died, Plumper and Jack Marsden will be attacked and nearly killed, and Christian Peascod will have a last laugh on the police who scoffed at his ideas.

INNOVATIONS: Though there is a protracted denouement which consists mostly of a cliché of traditional detective fiction I am beginning to detest – the villain who performs a monologue of his life while outlining the reasons for his actions—ultimately the book ends with some stunning surprises. Johnson has dared to flout the tacit and written rules of detective fiction and come up with a solution that defies all those conventions. I loved it and it made me grin in admiration. This finale reminded me how rare it is to encounter an unconventional rule breaker who thumbs his or her nose at the supposed rules and how much I mentally applaud them when they do show up.

THINGS I LEARNED: Johnson loves language and words and sprinkles her novel with unusual vocabulary. The adjective corybantic cropped up to describe the men in the pub when they get rowdy and it led me to find out its origin. It comes from Corybant, the name given to a priest who worshipped Cybele in ancient times. Their ecstatic celebrations to the goddess included fervent dancing that came to be described as corybantic.

QUOTES: Starehole Gap was beauty spot. Not a commercial and official Beauty Spot with Tea Rooms run by languid, rapacious genteelwomen and with Period Car Parks for char-a-bancs. No; it was just a pretty, unnoticed place, the private property of Lionel Gedling and part of his small estate on Larcombe Head. The Gap itself was a steep little glade sloping down to the sea, whose chief attractions were a delicate waterfall and a deep green pool. People said that had Lionel Gedling not been so thick-skulled and simple and crazy, he could have made money out of it simply by changing its name to the Faery Grotto, hanging lanterns in the trees and opening it to the holiday public at a shilling or more per head.

Christian was only too pleased to go. He had already got the first two couplets of Ode to the Bloodiness of Man, and he knew he would forget them if he tarried much longer.

“Our man’s certainly a colorful humorist,” [Plumper said.] “Like Peascod, he’s read his detective novels. The Clue of the Wooden Leg. The Clue of the Headless Body. The Clue of the Painted Letter, and now the Clue of the Bloody Handkerchief. Rich – very rich. Too rich.”

But Plumper was scowling. He was angry and he was worried because he had a strong feeling now that he was up against a maniac of some sort; one who was treating crime as a game, taking fantastic risks because he was too crazy to care about personal danger, playing mysterious tricks because it amused him to do so, acting from inconsistently abnormal motives. The whole business was too theatrical, too Grand Guignol.

“Merciful heaven! The man asks has it anything to do with this business?” Peascod was almost prancing with excitement. “This [letter] has come straight from the murderer, don’t you realize that? Hot from his bloody hand. Don’t just stand there dithering, man. Don’t you realize you hold the key to everything? All unwitting, you’ve stumbled on the villain’s secret! Quick, quick what is it you’ve seen, heard, felt, smelled, dreamed?”

THE AUTHOR: Finding biographical information about Zoë Johnson was next to impossible. Other than the very few listings for this book, one of two that were for sale in the past six months, I found nothing online about her. With such a dearth of info I was convinced that Zoë Johnson is a pseudonym for some well-known mystery writer. The book itself – with its primarily male cast of characters, a hard-edged satirical sense of humor, knowledge about the life of a fisherman, and the emphasis on men gathering in a local pub for camaraderie and entertainment – seemed to be the work of a man rather than a woman. But this could be a combination of sheer bias and utter ignorance. I thought of other writers published by Gregory Bles who shared the same sense of offbeat humor and dreamed up similar bizarre plots like Reginald Davis, John Haslette Vahey under his “Henrietta Clandon” guise and John V. Turner writing as “Nicholas Brady.” I guess only copyright information on Johnson’s two books published with Bles would reveal the truth, that and the actual contracts. William Collins & Company (creator of the Collins Crime Club imprint) purchased the publishing house of Gregory Bles in 1953 and most likely still holds the copyright for Johnson’s novels. My feeble attempts at uncovering the copyright info turned up nothing. Then after a few days of compulsive searching of the multiple online updates at Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV I found this:

JOHNSON, ZOË (GREY?). 1913(?)-1992(?). (Adding somewhat more likely
middle/maiden name and dates for the author of two 1930s novels in CFIV.)

Good heavens, I thought. She’s a real person! If I had the patience to carry on with this data digging I might be able to verify her birth date and death date with records from Ancestry.com or some other similar genealogy website. But I really can’t spend any more time trying to figure out who she is or where she lived. I’m hoping someone who has some knowledge about Zoë Johnson will read this post and leave a comment below. It’s a real shame she only wrote two books and that the other one, Mourning After (1938), is so rare that no copies are offered for sale at all. This is yet another book I’d love to reprint in a heartbeat.

FFB: Inspector Rusby's Finale - Virgil Markham

As usual I have discovered a delightful book that others found “nightmarish” and “disturbing.” I am beginning to think that many critics out there in the blogosphere have no sense of humor, fail to see the obvious, and cannot see a parody when it’s right in front of them. I can only view Virgil Markham’s fifth crime novel, one that plays with mystery motifs, as a parody of the detective novel. Like many of his other books it is a mix of absurdity, head scratching incidents, eccentric characters, and a soupçon of Gothic horror. But even with a single scene that truly is disturbing I found the book to be a frothy adventure, with a dash of detective novel plotting, that culminates in a romantic ending.

Inspector Rusby’s Finale (1933) as the title tells you right away is the story of a policeman’s last case. It is a lesson in jumping to conclusions, not seeing the forest for the trees, and allowing one’s prejudices to cloud one’s judgment. The book is also a very funny and lighthearted send-up of everything English found in the Golden Age of Detection. Markham, people seem to forget was an American, not a Brit. in this unusual mix of detection, romance and Gothicism he has mastered replicating the highbrow prose style that is the hallmark of most Golden Age detective novels of his contemporaries while simultaneously satirizing aristocrats, detective novel clichés like jewels that go missing at social events, the war of classes between wealthy homeowners and servants, even the very idea of a house party. His books all seem to be playing with the form of the detective novel in one way or another, exaggerating the conventions and motifs to the point of absurdity. In The Devil Drives (1932) we have a prison tale that gives way to a bizarre murder – how did a man drown in a locked house? Inspector Rusby’s Finale treats us to yet another miracle problem – an entire houseful of people vanish overnight with not a trace of them to be found in the world outside. Sound nightmarish? Perhaps. But the story does not begin there. The opening chapter of the novel is a huge clue to what follows.

With chapter headings that allude to the world of theater -- "second act", "scene shifting", "command performance", etc. -- we are given subtle hints to the overarching theme of make believe and illusion. Markham starts off with a prologue entitled "curtain raiser" (no capital letters in any of these chapter headings, BTW) set in the sunny Italian Riviera town of Rapallo. There a group of unnamed women are having a going away party, sending off one of their friends before she heads to England. This seemingly nonsensical sequence filled with catty gossip and gift giving should hint to any reader that the book is going to be a lighthearted story of love and getting even with misbehaving boyfriends. Given this ostensibly strange and out of place prologue it is not hard to figure out what is going on in the first section of the book. Some readers may attempt to match the named women in the first half of the book with the unnamed women from the party who sport only nicknames like Picture Hat, Shy Mouse, and Departing One. They would do better to home in on the gifts bestowed on the Departing One and the snippy remarks related to her paramour.

Markham overloads the night of the house party with unusual incidents and some mysterious goings-on. They are bound to lead most readers away from what they should be paying attention to. These incidents certainly give Inspector Rusby a very troubling time. Why anyone would find the story disturbing is beyond me. Oh! There is that dead body. The one with the bare feet, scarred and bloody, and a bullet it its head. The one found shoved in a closet with not a trace of ID on it. The appearance of the corpse diminishes the frothiness to something more resembling gravitas. Still, the novel as a whole doesn’t seem too concerned with who the corpse is or who was responsible or even why he was killed. In fact, when another body turns up in the story and you think the book will actually start to resemble a genuine whodunit Markham refuses to treat that dead body with any importance either. By the end of the book both murders will be solved (in a way), the culprit unmasked and dealt with by the police (in a way) but neither dead body will have been given a name or personality. The corpses in the mystery novel are merely props for a story that means to deliver more than just a pat and just solution of criminal acts.

When Judy Merle, Rusby’s flighty and willful niece shows up, the story shifts into yet another mode. Suddenly the characters Rusby is interviewing become more lively and increasingly odd. The humor intensifies into near farce. And – thankfully, for most readers – the plot actually exhibits some genuine detection with Judy playing Watson to her uncle’s Holmes.

Judy insists accompanying her uncle to Stoke New Place, the mysterious house of vanished occupants, and offers up a few clever ideas to explain the various mysteries that baffled her uncle that very strange night. Like where did the voices saying, "Damn!" and "Oh the Romans" come from? Why did a woman with a Dutch accented voice scream at a barking dog? Where did the dog come from? And, of course, how did the dog disappear along with the house guests and servants in the morning? Why does Rusby keep finding pairs of women’s gloves, ornately decorated, all identical, wherever he goes?

Markham is clearly having fun with this book. The characters are unusual and eccentric. He delights in mimicking regional voices and dialects spoken by his myriad characters. One of my favorites is Daniel Churd, a crossword puzzle addicted gardener who gets into trouble with his shrewish daughter Mrs. Taylor.  She is such a castigating intolerant woman that even while Churd is being interrogated by Rusby she unapologetically hurls venomous verbal abuse on her poor father.  Later, there is an excellent scene with another servant of sorts -- Trivett, an ancient sexton at St. Egbert's Church. Rusby questions Trivett while he is digging graves in the St. Egbert churchyard and learns of some inside dope on the two Sir William Rockleys in the story (senior and junior).  The policeman also is handed a surprising revelation in the past of Amos Laxton, a real state agent who Ruby has talked with on numerous occasions and who Rusby suspects of withholding vital information. And of course Judy Merle is the greatest highlight of the book with her rebellious nature, her fathomless optimism and good spirits, and her insatiable curiosity.

Markham's typical hyperbolic wit
found in an inscription in my copy.
(Note: he was living in Missouri at the time!)

No one is really sinister. Only when Markham cannot resist his penchant for Gothic excess does the story become slightly disturbing. When Rusby demands that Dr. Dunbar, the head of a metal institution, cooperate with him and let him see every one of the seventeen patients in the asylum we get a sense of uneasiness. There is a frightening episode involving an experiment with asphyxiation in order to arouse a catatonic patient from his withdrawn state that not only made me raise my eyebrows but mystified me. I wondered if it was an actual “therapy” used in mental institutions in the 1930s. I found nothing remotely resembling the experiment. Electroconvulsive therapy and use of drugs like thyroxine were common in treating catatonia and dementia praecox, but not restricting the patient's breathing. Markham seems to have made it up completely. The way it is described I thought that patient was being anesthetized with some form of gas, but the physicians involved were actually suffocating him! Bizarre seems an understatement. The scene is like a cruel torture sequence you’d find in the pages of Dime Detective or Weird Tales.

Of the handful of mystery novels I've read by Virgil Markham, this one is the most readable, the most entertaining, and the most intriguingly constructed. His mixing of several subgenres, his play with detective novel motifs and his talent for creating lively and fascinating characters make it one of his finest works. If the ultimate reveal in the denouement is not too surprising, and perhaps a bit of a letdown, this is no real fault of the book as whole. I think it's one of the finest parody pastiches of the Golden Age. The prose style alone is something to marvel at for a writer so thoroughly American. Somehow Markham manages to both thumb his nose at the detective novel and a write a modest love letter to the genre.

FFB: Power on the Scent - Henrietta Clandon

THE STORY: William Power, lawyer, confides with his married novelist friends, Vincie and Penny Mercer, on an unusual murder involving what appears to be a poisoning by inhalation. Evidence suggests that a boutonniere found on the victim's lapel was dusted with cocaine.  The two writers are enlisted as unofficial detectives and together the three solve the murder with a very strange method of killing and even more odd motive.

THE CHARACTERS: William Power along with the Mercers appear in a brief series of detective novels by John Hazlette Vahey writing under the pseudonym Henrietta Clandon. Vahey is better known to readers of this blog as Vernon Loder whose mystery novels incorporate bizarre plots, strange murder methods and his trademark sense of offbeat humor.  Power on the Scent (1937) is the fourth book in the series of five, but only the third in which the three series characters appear together.  Powell appears alone in Good by Stealth (1937) while the Mercers go it alone in the final Clandon novel Fog over Weymouth (1938).

Penny and Vincie are novelists who specialize in crime fiction and detective stories. Penny's last work was released as This Delicate Murder, the previous novel in the Clandon series, and we find out that Penny writes as "Henrietta Clandon" adding an element of metafiction to this series. The previous case is alluded to several times and even footnoted in the text.

Penny comes up with a handful of good ideas as to how the cocaine was administered when an elaborate re-creation of a flower delivery fails to show that the rose used as a boutonniere could have held onto the powdered drug over the rough road the bicyclist travelled. When she learns that the victim had a fondness for the candy Turkish Delight she offers up the traditional coating of confectioner's powered sugar could easily have been doctored and not been noticed. That the victim is also a "snuffer" (translation for US readers: drug snorter) suggests that he may not have sensed the difference to an added sprinkling of coke on his candy. The detective work here is filled with interesting ideas and action like the flower delivery by bicycle re-enactment that Vincie performs for Power and the police.

The title of novel comes into play at various places. We get discussions of the scent of flowers, perfumes, and the apparently fading habit of people smelling flowers. When Power passes by a garden at night and smells the pungent odor of tobacco plants which he tells us release their scent at night he once again gets to thinking of botanical scents.  It turns out to be the detection climax of the book.

Overall, I would call Power on the Scent a didactic detective novel. The bulk of the detection is done via conversations at afternoon tea, restaurant meals and dinner parties. It's detection as a social gathering.  Almost all of it exclusively through dialogue as well. Late in the book is one excellent scene where Powell invites Dr. Terpis, forensic pathologist, to dinner at the Mercer home.  Dr. Terpis is perhaps the liveliest character in the entire book. He was certainly my favorite.

Terpis is described as "no more than thirty, fat, red-faced, with a perpetual smile and a hoarse laugh which broke out on the least provocation."  He is amateur puppeteer and entertains Penny's interest in the art form with tales of his puppet making and his work on writing plays for his gallery of puppets. He enjoys every course of the meal prepared for him ("It was as good as eating yourself to watch his gastronomic pleasure") and is a pleasant raconteur as well as an informative forensics expert.  When Terpis comes to discuss the case he presents fascinating details about the skull of a Great Dane that went over a cliff with one of the suspects, both perished. His findings, both macabre and pertinent to the case, will help clear up some ambiguities, decide the actual method of murder, and lead to the surprising solution to the various mysteries uncovered in the death of Montague Morgan, stockbroker and developer of a unique variety of Rennavy Rose.

INNOVATIONS: As "Henrietta Clandon" Vahey indulges in a self-consciously witty style, overflowing with puns, epigrams and arch humor.  It's a humor reminiscent of Restoration comedies of Wycherley and Etherege and seems utterly out of place in this detective story plot with its grave consequences involving murderous rage and drug abuse.  Other writers use this arch humor to great effect like Christianna Brand and Colin Watson without characters willfully drawing attention to their own cleverness.  I was bothered by how delighted Penny and Vince were with each other when they came up with yet another ridiculous pun.  Even Powell joins in on the game. The dialogue is loaded with the kind of epigrammatic sentences you find too often in the plays of Oscar Wilde. People don't talk this anywhere except in books, on stage and in cocktail comedies of 1930s American cinema. In a detective novel that does not start out as a farce the self-conscious humor sticks out like a sore thumb. This is not to say I didn't find some of it clever or amusing; some of it is (see QUOTES section). However, when the characters comment on their cleverness and practically pat each other on the back when some witticism is delivered I was rolling my eyes.

THINGS I LEARNED:  The victim's nephew Charles Sibbins has hired Powell to look into his uncle's suspicious death. He's a playboy and spendthrift who at the start of the book is hunting bongos in Afirca.  I always though a bongo was a type of drum. Guess again! Bongos are a type of striped antelope with distinctive curved horns indigenous to to Western Africa. (see photo)  Currently there are only 150 still living in the wild.  Luckily, their home is a preserve in the Kenyan mountains where hopefully they are safe from marauding poachers who seem to be solely responsible for the decimation of hundreds of animals species in that continent.

Penny refuses to use the hateful term macrocarpa to describe a hedge behind which Morgan was found. She says why say that when its easier and smarter to use cypress. A macrocarpa is, after all, a form of cypress -- the Monterey cypress, in fact. The very type of cypress clinging for life on the cliffs of Carmel, CA that has been photographed innumerable times and appears all over the internet.

On page 158 there is this sentence: "Noses, 'narks' as they used to be called, are very useful but rarely men with any moral sense." This is most likely the origin of the crime world slang term spelled as 'narc' in the US. I always thought narc was derived from the word narcotic. Nark and nose here are meant as slang for police informer. Nark first appeared in print in 1859 as the Merriam-Webster wizards of lexicography and etymology informed me. They suggest it derives from nak, Romani (the Gypsy language) for nose.

Another odd word on page 175 "Morgan...might be tempted to risk his money on a stumer..." sent me to the internet dictionaries once more. I learned that this is British slang for fraud or failure, especially a horse race that was rigged or fixed. It can also refer to the person who was victimized from such a rigged horse race.

And -- of course-- dog in the manger cropped up again! ("There was no suggestion of tender passages between them. He was either a dog-in-the-manger, or she was a superlative typist. They are, I hear, rare in the City.") For those who are counting that makes the third appearance of the phrase in two months for the books reviewed here. How have I never heard or read it until this year?

QUOTES: Summing up Charles Sibbins, an avid hunter, as a loudmouth coward Power says:
"You take it from me that if bongos went about with sub-machine guns Sibbins wouldn't collect many."

"You're spoiling the whole thing! You people full of commonsense are the death of all imagination!"

Impartiality is a gift of the gods and they are more sparing of it than anything else.

"The fact is that Withers has got the wind up, and I always find it pays to let the wind do its work," [Penny said]
"Very right," Vincie agreed, "practical and alliterative."

Vagueness is a virtue in a practicing policeman. He can always say that he didn't mean what you mean.

"I warned him against that dog several times. In fact, I hated the beast. It may seem unkind to say so, but over-kind and friendly people, and over-affectionate dogs are definitely dislikeable."

"Does it not occur to you that a man or woman tells the truth more often when he is rude, then when he is civil and polite?"
"Politeness is as much an enemy of the truth as oil is of friction."

EASY TO FIND? But of course! How's that for a welcome surprise. Four of the books written by Vahey using the Clandon pen name have been reissued by the prolific vintage crime novel reprint publisher Dean Street Press. In addition to Power on the Scent you can purchase a copy of Good By Stealth (already favorably reviewed here and here), Inquest and This Delicate Murder. All four were officially released on March 2 and are now available for sale in paperback and digital formats. The original UK editions of the Henrietta Clandon mystery novels are extremely scarce. None of them were published in the US during Vahey's lifetime. Some like Fog over Weymouth have not been available in the used book market in decades. There are a handful out there, but I suggest that you purchase the new editions as they include informative introductory material by Curt Evans who offers up his usual biographical tidbits and insights into the writer's work.

FFB: Secret Sceptre - Francis Gerard

THE STORY: The preposterous plot of Secret Sceptre (1937) reads like a matinee cliffhanger serial overloaded with harrowing incidents, gruesome murders, hairsbreadth escapes and eleventh hour rescues. Sir John Meredith investigates a murder by decapitation carried out by men in armor and eventually uncovers an ancient secret society made up of men entrusted with protecting the Holy Grail.

THE CHARACTERS: Our hero is the inscrutable Sir John Meredith, a Foreign Office agent who becomes a policeman almost by accident. In this seventh book in sixteen book series he is aided by Sergeant Beef (who is nothing like his namesake created by Leo Bruce) and some other associates from both Scotland Yard and both Foreign and Home Offices. Meredith is not at all a likable man in this book. He comes off as arrogant, classist, and racist. Surprised? I'm not. He has little patience for anyone, insults people to their faces passing it off as wry wit, is constantly telling his colleagues to shut up and is generally one of the worst examples of the ubermacho self-styled aristocrats found in pre-WW2 era fiction written by British men. Took a while for me to warm up to him, but even then I didn't' think him the ideal candidate for the protagonist of a sixteen book series. Maybe he becomes less haughty and sarcastic as the series progresses.

Thankfully the book is filled with interesting and colorful characters along the way like Dermot O'Derg an Irish mercenary "born several centuries too late" whose "out of time persona" makes him the stand out in the very large cast. O'Derg is a powerful red haired man who might have been descended from Vikings despite his obvious Irish speech and heritage. He falls hard for the requisite "pale beauty" of the novel -- Daphne Birrell, sister of sculptor Nicholas Birrell, of one the many handsome young men who met a grisly end over the course of the book.  (For some reason Gerard likes to kill off "handsome young men" with an almost gleeful sadism.  No sooner has an HYM appeared within the story he is almost immediately dispatched with callous cruelty. Wonder what that's about!)

Apart from O'Derg it's the villains who steal the show. There is the sadistic American who speaks with an indeterminate foreign accent Al Cartell-Ardew, the master criminal of the novel who is constantly slapping the face of his Asian-Jewish servant Li-Fu Isaacs. There is a Russian secret agent who join forces with Cartell-Ardew. And let me not forget the motley crew of oddball criminals Cartell-Ardew hires in order to free a prisoner who he needs for his master plan. In one of the more hilarious portions of this very odd book Cartell-Ardew engineers a prison break that seems like a Mission: Impossible episode as written by John Cleese and Graham Chapman. The group of crooks masquerade as French prison experts and demand a tour of Broadhurst prison then manage to ferret out their targeted inmate all without once resorting to violence.

INNOVATIONS:  Secret Sceptre is a strange mix of straightforward adventure with hard edged violence and loopy farce. I'm convinced that Gerard was in fact parodying all of the superhero protagonists of British pulp fiction. The prison break sequence alone is evidence enough. Gerard's irreverent humor mixes groaning puns, Abbott & Costello wordplay, a couple of dirty jokes (one about "Lord Hereford's Knob" amazingly escaped the blue pencil of McDonald's 1937 editor), and low farce clearly are all signs of high spirited fun. Nothing is meant to be taken too seriously here. Witness this pointless and ridiculous exchange between Daphne and Nicholas as they snack on pieces of melon while lounging in their pajamas and dressing gowns:

"Why must you make those disgusting sucking noises, Nick?"
"Can't help it," he replied, "the damn thing drips so and I haven't got a bib."

En route to the Welsh coast in order to get to Fishguard where Slim Shardoc, an American crook is being held for questioning Meredith has a car accident. While speeding down the foggy road a boy on a bicycle appears seemingly out of nowhere and he swerves and skids to avoid hitting the boy. He gets of out of the wrecked car and swears up a storm in Hindustani which Gerard graciously translates for us: "Now may Shaitan gather thee to his bosom in the nethermost pit which is seven times heated."  And then -- "John put his head back, raised his fists to the sky, opened his mouth and howled like a wolf, at which the small boy, hastily remounting his bicycle, peddled frantically into the darkness."

As the outrageous story progresses, the bodies pile up, the offbeat sense of humor becomes increasingly ludicrous and the climax seems like something out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail four decades before that comedy troupe ever thought up their King Arthur saga parody. Even if Gerard's description of the Knights of the Holy Grail is presented as deadly serious, the mix of nationalism and sanctimonious dogma in which the secret society members espouse their mission "to keep England English and Christian," the scene and group ultimately come off as absurdly risible while simultaneously being scarily resonant in our isolationist narrow-minded age. The Knights exploit the local superstition about a haunted abbey where they are headquartered by dressing as white robed monks thereby hoping to be seen as ghosts if anyone might accidentally encounter them in their nightly vigils. Typical of Gerard's eccentric humor the Grand Master of the Knights of the Holy Grail is an ornithologist whose keen observational skills aided by his high powered binoculars prove very helpful at a key moment.

I'll leave it at that. You must read the book to discover the rest on your own.

THINGS I LEARNED: Arabic lessons! Meredith suspects that Al Cartell-Ardew is not American at all. Using his knowledge of Arabic and Muslim culture Meredith tells his police colleagues that the man's name is an Anglicization of al kātil adū which translates as "deadly enemy." The actual 21st century transliteration of the Arabic for deadly enemy is alqatil aleaduu.

QUOTES:  John Meredith had the reputation of a complete lack of scruple, but this applied only to his methods, not to the end in view. He was one of those men who believe that if you have to fight at all, every weapon is justifiable.

THE AUTHOR: The most complete and interesting biographical information written about Francis Gerard appears on the rear flap of the Tom Stacey reissue of Secret Sceptre, the edition I own. Most of the bio blurb is quoted verbatim below with some additional trivia in brackets added by me:

"Francis Gerard was born in London in 1905. His father was French and much of his childhood was spent in France. He began to write while working in London as a dealer in precious stones. His first stories appeared in The Thriller [a weekly magazine that published the work of several well-known and prolific crime fiction writers like Gerald Verner, Berkeley Gray, Leslie Charteris and James Ronald].

"During the war he served as Major in the Essex Regiment, while his wife worked at the foreign Office. In 1946 he moved, with his family and aging parents, to Natal where he became a South African citizen. Gradually he wrote less and less, devoting much of his time to politics instead. Springbok Rampant, a semi-autobiographical account of his reasons for leaving Britain, was published in 1951. [The title is a heraldic reference pointing out Gerard’s lifelong interest in heraldry and coats of arms, an interest which featured prominently in Secret Sceptre and frequently turns up in his other fiction.]

"He married twice and had three children by his second wife. He died in 1966."

Sir John Meredith Adventure & Crime Novels
Number 1-2-3 (1936) (US title: The 1-2-3 Murders)
Concrete Castle (1936) (US title: The Concrete Castle Murders)
The Black Emperor (1936)
The Dictatorship of the Dove (1936)
Fatal Friday (1937)
Red Rope (1937)
Secret Sceptre (1937)
The Prince of Paradise (1938)
Golden Guilt (1938)
Emerald Embassy (1939)
The Mind of John Meredith (1946)
Sorcerer's Shaft (1947) - only in a minor role
Flight into Fear (1948)
The Prisoner of the Pyramid (1948)
The Promise of the Phoenix (1950)
Transparent Traitor (1950)
Bare Bodkin (1951)

FFB: Nine Days' Panic - Reginald Davis

THE STORY: Nine Days’ Panic (1937) is an absurdist black comedy that is also a send-up of all manner of detective novel conventions. The madcap plot incorporates mysterious disappearances, vanishing corpses, the impossible substitution of people for skeletons, disguises and impersonation, Celtic legends and cult rituals, and ribald and farcical humor.

THE CHARACTERS: Littleford in the Vale is at the mercy of a madman with a bizarre sense of humor. We begin with the theft of a prize winning vegetable marrow and village idiot “Mazed Thomas” playing detective and accusing the Mr. Stiggins, mayor of the village, as the culprit. Shortly thereafter, Thomas' body is found bludgeoned and surrounded by the smashed remnants of the formerly impressive giant squash. On the same day Bessie Luscombe, daughter of the owner of the local pub The Prodigal Son, disappears from her bedroom and a red skeleton is found in her place. Also, a man dressed in obnoxious mustard yellow plus-fours is found hanging from a tree. However, when the police go to look for the body they find only the rope freshly cut and no corpse in sight. Are the events of the night over yet? No! 95 year-old Rowland Pye has also disappeared from his home and yet no one saw him leave through the front door.

What to make of all this madness? Despite the talk of ominous death rattles and the presence of a legendary fetch the police will have none of the local's superstitious nonsense. They know a real human is behind all these shenanigans and they are determined to ferret out the miscreants, pranksters and kidnappers – and a possible murderer.

Over the course of nine days more young women will disappear and more skeletons will pop up in the strangest places. Local P.C. Wilks is relieved when Major Tinmouth, the Chief Constable of Littleford on the Vale, decides to call in Scotland Yard. Inspector Ipswich and his resourceful cohort Sgt. Pike (with a very unusual talent) take over the investigation and soon turn up the corpse of the hanged man, but are baffled by the near daily vanishings of young women. They still haven’t a clue where the women have gone.

Amateur sleuths only complicate matters. After receiving an anonymous note informing him of his impending death Rev. Timity joins forces with Dr. Appleby and Dr. Smyth-Crowcombe, the director of Barrow House, a nearby sanitarium and mental institution. Together the three men examine the clues and try to learn the whereabouts of the missing girls. A note left at the scene of one of the disappearances takes the form of a cryptic rhyme: “I do go with my sisters to search for the way./We go to seek in the valley./Light in the dark. Life in the grave./Karedwan—Karedwan—Karedwan!” Eventually this will lead the physicians to research village folklore and ancient Celtic rituals meant to summon the goddess mentioned in the rhyme’s final line. Davis once again finds ample opportunity to explore his fascination with superstition, this time delving into arcane Celtic legends and the forgotten works of the 6th century poet Taliesin.

The village is thrown into chaos with crimes bordering on the absurd. At one point Dr. Smyth-Crowcombe exclaims, “This is becoming ridiculous!” And of course it is. Yet on reflection it is also terrifying. Fear is exactly what the mysterious force behind all the confusion is after. He (or is it they?) needs the village to be so frightened that they won’t set foot outside their homes. For there is of course an ulterior motive to all the insanity of skeletons in beds, missing girls, and corpses that suddenly turn out to be very much alive. All will be discovered in the intricate underground labyrinth of tunnels that lead to a cavern of secrets and untold horror.

INNOVATIONS: The book is replete with all sorts of amusing literary allusions and folkloric discussions. There is a lengthy section on the existence of ghosts led by Dr. Appleby talking about the “cutting short of a normal span of life by violence” and expanding on the concept of the restless spirit and hauntings so common in ghost stories. Rev. Timity then takes up the discussion adding his opinions on the metaphysical and spiritual sides of the argument.

Daniel Biggs (aka Happy Dandy) is an eccentric young man who as far as the villagers are concerned is the new “Mazed Thomas”, and even battier than the former village idiot. He has a remarkable way of talking leading the reader to suspect Dandy may not at all be as “mazed” or stupid as he seems to be. In one amusing scene he spars humorously with the police by quoting Lewis Carroll. He talks about galumphing back from Moping Copse, the aptly named Gothic scene of the hanging. Inspector Denman then asks, “What’s all this beamish boy stuff?” Dandy tells him he found a bit of rope. “You were going to say you found it on a Tumtum tree, weren’t you? But if you tell me that you’ve been snaring Jubjub birds or slaying Jabberwocks—I’ll slay you!

THINGS I LEARNED: I learned all about Taliesin who is credited with writing a poem called “The Spoils of Annwn” which serves as the inspiration for one of the villain’s bizarre plans. Annwn is the name of the Otherworld in Celtic mythology. In that poem I also learned all about Karedwan – or Cerridwen – an enchantress found in Welsh mythology sometimes referred to as a patron goddess of witches and wizards (according to a mythology website I uncovered). The spelling variations of her name -- from Davis’ Anglo phonetic rendering to Cereduin – made it a bit difficult to find out exactly what Davis meant by Karedwan. Only when Taliesin and his poem were mentioned late in the novel did all my Googling pay off.

QUOTES: The amateur sleuths pore over a hand delivered letter and Rev. Timity says: “Very neatly printed. That eliminates about seventy –five percent of my parishioners, I think.”
“Seventy-five percent? Why Good Lord, Timity, it eliminates ninety-nine point nine percent of the population of Littleford in the Vale!”

One day, a man shuts and locks the door on an empty room in his house and pockets the key. The next, he produces the key, unlocks and opens the door. And what does he see? White rabbits? Pigeons fluttering out of top hats? A magician’s nymph still smiling happily after being tied up in a box and spitted through and through by many swords before your very eyes? No, ladies and gentlemen. This trick has been performed before none of the crowned heads left in Europe. Now – on with the light. Off with the sheet. Hey presto!

One dead man, ladies and gentlemen, with puffy swollen face, and the end of a rope knotted round his throat. No deception whatever.

EASY TO FIND? Of the three mystery novels Reginald Davis wrote this one is the easiest to find. However, very few copies are currently for sale and most of them are in the Doubleday Crime Club US edition. The UK edition is not too surprisingly rather scarce. Finding one in a DJ as I did last month was a rather coup. My copy is a later edition based on its cheaper price 4/6 (rather than the standard 7/6 for a first edition) as well as a complete listing of all three books mentioned on the front flap of the DJ.

FFB: The Weird World of Wes Beattie - John Norman Harris

THE STORY: Wes Beattie, chronic liar and hapless young banker, is on trial in Toronto for a capital crime. No one seems to believe his fervent and outrageous tale of a conspiracy to frame him. He claims total innocence and is doing his best to tell the truth about a man and woman who have not only framed him for the theft of a handbag but the murder of his uncle. So bizarre is his story that a psychiatrist has turned him into a unique case history and hits the lecture circuit presenting Wes and his grandiose delusions and pathological lying as a treasure trove of psychosis. However, Sidney Grant a lawyer who attends one of those lectures hears something in Dr. Heber's talk that bothers him. Intrigued and fascinated by a kernel of truth in what appears to be nothing but fanciful possible paranoid ramblings, Sidney starts to look into The Weird World of Wes Beattie (1963) intent on proving Wes' story of conspiracy to be truth and to uncover the motive for the frame-up. What he finds is a preposterous labyrinth of interconnected coincidences and random bizarreness that proves more and more that Wes is indeed telling the truth. And when the full story is revealed hardly anyone can believe it including Sidney.

THE CHARACTERS: Though the title seems to indicate that this is Wes' story, the real protagonist is our hero lawyer/sleuth Sidney Grant and his small band of cohorts in truth-seeking. Sidney is dubbed "the Gargoyle" for his menacing and imposing attitude described by his colleagues "like some evil figure leering down from a Gothic cathedral" and "frowning down on his guests like some Mephistophelian judge. Really though Sidney is an attractive and likable young man "called to the bar only a few months before" who respects the law and abhors the abuse and incompetence of his lessers, sometimes even his betters. Sharp as a tack and more than clever Sidney manages to coax his friends and colleagues, along with the daffy June, Wes' sister, as a junior league of con artists and co-detectives as he manages to trick a motel voyeur into revealing the truth about what happened when Wes supposedly stole the woman's handbag from her parked car in the motel lot. This scene is a highlight in a comic novel that satirizes everything from Canadian law to Canadian banks, from the 60s phenomenon of wife swapping and drunken swinger parties to hockey and ice fishing.

June Beattie is one of the best characters of the books. She's the antithesis of her uptight and haughty wealthy family members, entirely devoted to her brother for whom she feels ample amount of sisterly love. Moreso than anyone she understands why Wes has retreated into his fanciful world and why he cannot help but embellish the truth with his overly active imagination. In some respects this satirical mystery novel is a retelling of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" taken to utterly absurd extremes. You can't help but join in June's caring for her brother when she relates in her amusing narrative voice just why Wes is the way he is.

There are also some fantastically rendered minor characters who come into the story for such brief moments but leave long lasting impressions. Sidney recruits a "second story" man who he had previously helped acquit of burglary charge due to lack of physical evidence. This thief along with the reliable June travels with Sidney to the Ontario backwoods where he assists Sidney in breaking into a cabin in a remote forest to find incriminating evidence that will help prove the guilt of one of the conspirators. What they find in the cabin only further complicates the already mind-boggling plot.

INNOVATIONS: The modern reprint of The Weird World of Wes Beattie touts the novel as "the first truly Canadian mystery". This is a gross exaggeration that publishers like to plaster on their books to help sales, but after completing the novel I can see why the original writer of that phrase felt it necessary to label the book as such. It certainly is filled with every Canadian cultural tidbit that you can think of -- hockey, ice fishing, officious banking to name only a few. Harris works very hard to tie the book to his native Toronto and its environs and the book really feels like it could not have taken place anywhere other than Canada. But as far as the first Canadian mystery that is far from the truth. The prolific writers Grant Allen and Frank Packard were publishing well before Harris was born and Douglas Sanderson (aka "Martin Brett") was writing thoroughly Canadian private eye novels set in Montreal a full decade before Harris' novel was published.

Notably the entire structure of the book recalls the intricately plotted and coincidence-laden novels of Harry Stephen Keeler who practically invented the "webwork" crime novel. The Weird World of Wes Beattie is one of the finest examples of this kind of maze-like storytelling where everyone and everything is tied to a seemingly simple crime like the theft of a handbag. The conspiracy to frame poor Wes Beattie is an ingenious and awe-inspiring work of finely tuned plotting and a brilliant use of apparently innocuous events -- the way an old school chum is snubbed in a mechanic's garage, for example -- that all fall into place like a skilled magician shuffling a pack of cards. As in real life it's the oddities the characters tend to remember and these odd incidents, no matter how trifling or insignificant, have great importance and are compounded tenfold within Harris' truly awesome plot.

The climax takes place in a Canadian courtroom and Sidney's expert cross examination of one of the key witnesses is on par with -- perhaps even surpasses -- the legal fireworks and melodramatic courtroom pronouncements of Perry Mason at his ruthless best. So astounding is the preponderance of incredible evidence that Sidney in essence gets a confession from the witness stand without the testifier actually verbally admitting his guilt. A real coup in crime writing, I'd say.

John Norman Harris (age 23)
in his RAF uniform, 1938

THE AUTHOR: John Norman Harris (1915-1964) was a former RAF pilot with an astonishing wartime life that included being shot down in Germany, taken as prisoner of war, and planning "one of the greatest prison breaks of all time" which he used to form his award-winning short story "Mail" (Maclean's, 1950). He worked in public relations for Bell Canada as well as advertising for Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, two careers which obviously provided him with ample fodder to lampoon in his first novel. In addition to the two comic crime novels featuring lawyer Sidney Grant, Harris wrote about military life and the Canadian air force in Knights of the Air: Canadian Aces of World War I (Macmillan, 1958).

EASY TO FIND? Those interested in a first edition may not be too lucky. I found my US edition with the rare DJ a few months ago on eBay for a pittance and it was in very good condition. But a search of used book markets show very few US or UK hardcover editions from the 1960s when it was originally published. There are numerous paperback reprints (Corgi in the UK, Popular Library in the US) offered at very affordable prices. But the best news is saved for last. Happily, ...Wes Beattie was reprinted by Felony & Mayhem several years ago. (Such good news for a change, eh?) Harris' last novel published after his death -- Hair of the Dog (1989), a sequel of sorts featuring Sidney and his new bride June -- was also reprinted by Felony & Mayhem this year and with it came a new edition of The Weird World of Wes Beattie. Both books are available in either paperback or digital format. If you prefer eBooks you need to buy it directly from Felony & Mayhem. Click here and you'll be taken to the page for the book with Kindle already selected for you. They also sell the book in EPub format. Use the pull down menu to find the other digital version.

NEW STUFF: Ten Dead Comedians - Fred Van Lente

Ten Dead Comedians
by Fred Van Lente
Quirk Publications
Hardcover ISBN: 9781594749742
e-Book ISBN: 9781594749759
288 pages
Release Date: July 11, 2017

The blurb on the back cover of Ten Dead Comedians tells it all. One deserted island, two nights of terror, three secret rooms... (see photo below) Actually one of those is a red herring, but it’s number five you ought to pay attention to. Yes, there really are five critical clues. In fact I think there are more than that. And yes those five clues can lead you to the solution of the mystery. This is not only an often laugh out loud funny satire about Hollywood self-involvement and unmanageable egos, or a dead on evisceration of the world of stand-up and improv comedy, it’s also one of the best plotted, fairly clued modern mysteries I’ve read this year. It takes a lot to impress me and Fred Van Lente did it.

The sometimes clunky opening chapter takes some concentration. It’s that kind of necessary evil in any send-up of the And Then There Were None style mystery novel overloaded with exposition and character introductions. Yes, as the back cover might have sounded all too familiar to a seasoned mystery reader, this is another clone of And Then There Were None. No, not a clone. An evil twin. A cackling, jibing, nasty spirited evil twin. And I mean all of that in a good way.

As the title clearly spells out for us instead of murderers we have jokesters and comics as the intended victims. Once the introductions are out of the way and we head to the thoroughly booby-trapped island the book settles in for a macabre and creepy weekend of horror and laughs. It becomes a real page turner, the characters are fleshed out more, the plot becomes ever more intriguing and the murder methods become ever more baroque. It’s a gruesome story, my friends. At times it seems that Van Lente may have decided to write a mash-up of Christie with the Saw franchise. Imagine such a monster genre-blender with laughs! Difficult I know, but dang it all it works. Just as Christie’s book becomes increasingly serious fueled by fear and paranoia so does Ten Dead Comedians. The book can be downright somber when it needs to be. Yet another facet that impressed me.

Each of the ten chapters is divided into ten sections and separated by ten transcripts. As the book progresses those transcripts, eight of which are actual stand-up routines, display Van Lente’s versatility as a comic writer perfectly capturing a different tone and style for each of his uniquely different comedians. My favorite and the funniest of those sections is Janet Kahn’s relentless and merciless tearing down of a heckler who dared to interrupt her set. The diatribe was recorded on a YouTube video and we read the transcript of that video. The comic highlight of the novel those three pages alone are well worth the cover charge.

In addition to the mystery of who is knocking off all the comedians and why the reader may find himself engaged in a match of wits with the writer in trying to pair up the fictional comics with their real world inspirations. The most obvious to me is Van Lente’s scurrilous parody of the Blue Man Group empire in the person of Oliver Rees and his absurdly infantile Orange Baby Man act which has become an international phenomenon. He’s about to open yet another Orange Baby Man theater at a Sandals resort in the US Virgin islands as the story opens. There is a sardonic female insult comic who is clearly an amalgam of Joan Rivers, Sarah Silverman, Kathy Griffin and maybe a few others. The rest are a mix of men and women representing all races and every type you can think of from smug late night talk show host to the tirelessly touring washed up comic seeking solace from the bottle and longing for a clean motel room that isn’t near a loud and busy highway or airport. From the quasi feminist woman comic who enjoys talking about her pet dog more than anything to a subversive podcaster who seems to hate everything about stand up and tries (unsuccessfully) to be funny in pointing out their hypocrisies. Van Lente has some original touches to this motley group like the redneck comic who in reality is an ultra snob with a refined taste in modern art, gourmet food, expensive wine and a multisyllabic vocabulary. In fact, the absolute antithesis of his onstage persona, Billy the Contractor. The audience during his act, a self-deprecating celebration of everything working class and mundane, are unaware of their being cruelly mocked and belittled.

The real draw here and the most pleasant surprise of all is that the book is a tightly plotted, well constructed, genuine traditional murder mystery. The average reader may catch on early to the scheme and motivation of the unseen killer as will the veteran whodunit reader, but I guarantee that even the most polished of fans will miss some of Van Lente’s subtle clues that are revealed by an unexpected detective in the triple twist filled final pages. One of the best jokes cannot be revealed here either because it gives away something about that character and how that person acquired such finely honed detective skills. Apart from Janet’s lacerating tongue lashing of her crass heckler it was the one joke that cracked me up the most.

Be warned, however, that Ten Dead Comedians is just like the title of Steve Martin’s third 1970s album Comedy Is Not Pretty! This is a very American, very vulgar, four letter word (and then some) littered story. Those easily offended or put off by Technicolor swearing and cursing might just as well keep on strolling past this title to something tamer and less colorful. That’s not a joke on the rear cover where it brags of "Seven words you can’t say on TV!", that’s Van Lente’s true homage to one of his many comedy heroes – George Carlin – listed on his Acknowledgments page. And yes, each of those seven words appear in the text. Some of them several times.

If your tastes in humor lean toward the tasteless, then step right in. The book is not a laugh riot on every page, but there are moments of comedy gold here. It's the bloody well done murder mystery you're after anyway. Mystery aficionados will eat up the plot looking for the similarities to Christie and others of this ilk as well as thoroughly enjoying having the rug pulled out from under them in the final pages. You’ll get some laughs, some chuckles and some well-earned gasps. Just like comics’ slang for doing well in a set you might say that Fred Van Lente really killed with his debut mystery. Slaughtered them even.