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. 

Best Mystery VIntage Reprint of 2022, part one

"It's that time of year
"When the world falls in love
"Every song you hear seems to say
"Merry Christmas, may your
 "New Year dreams come true"

There's some idealized seasonal wishing, right? It's also a song I keep hearing everywhere I go in December.  Those somewhat schmaltzy lyrics remind me once again we are in the midst of our end of the year tradition involving optimistic wishing and dreams coming true. At least as those dreams and wishes relate to old murder mysteries.

Our dear friend Kate Jackson who blogs at Cross Examining Crime has initiated phase one of the two part nomination process for Best Vintage Mystery Reprint of the Year, or the ROY as we who offer up our nominees have come to call it.  2022 continued the exciting Renaissance in vintage crime fiction with an avalanche of reprint editions that immersed us in all aspects of the genre from traditional detective novels to novels of suspense.  This year topped last year's list with over 160 books on the list Kate sent us.

As an annual reminder I like to tack on my personal standard in choosing these "Best of the Year" reprint candidates. The two most important rules for what I feel merit a wise choice of a vintage reprint:

1. A truly forgotten author, long out of print
2. Writing and plotting that contributes substantially to the genre

Here's Nominee #1 from your opinionated maven at Pretty Sinister Books...

Villainy at Vespers by Joan Cockin

I discovered this book through serendipity while poring over various vintage mystery listings on Ebay.  The full review was posted back in 2020 before most people even knew of Joan Cockin's existence or the three mystery novels she wrote while she was working in British foreign service. 

Cockin's second mystery in her trio of novels is a thoroughly engaging traditional detective novel that invigorates the subgenre category of the "Policeman's Holiday" with wit and verve.  The opening paragraph (a photo of which appeared in the tempting Ebay listing) was intriguing enough to get me to buy the book and I eagerly read the book tearing through it in a few days.  You will meet her series detective Inspector Cam, his wife and children, and myriad offbeat characters as he reluctantly helps the local police solve the gruesome death of an unidentified naked corpse found ritualistically slaughtered on the altar of the local church.  In addition to her satirical skewering of tourism in English seaside villages the book treats the reader to the lore and art of brass rubbing, a spurt of thefts of antiques, chicanery among antique dealers and the legends of smugglers in the Cornish town where the story takes place. We even get the bonus of a ghost story featuring a visit from Satan.

Cockin's book is literate, delightfully amusing and devilishly plotted.  The crimes are all presented with fair play clueing and I thought the finale was truly unexpected if a bit outlandish.  But then I love rule breaking writers of detective novels. The more outlandish a plot the more I'll love it. That Galileo has decided to reprint this excellent example of post WW2 mystery writing is cause for celebration for all devotees of the genre.  It is a "must read" for anyone who cares about what makes mystery novels one of the best forms of popular entertainment.

And the best news is that Cockin's other books will follow over the next two years.  Looking forward to telling you about her debut novel Curiosity Killed the Cat later this month.  Also, I am eagerly awaiting the reprint edition of her third and last novel Deadly Ernest.  I've never seen a copy of that in my lifetime.  It's a truly rare book.  One, I hope, as entertaining as Villainy at Vespers.

NEW STUFF: Bunny - Mona Awad

What if those stuck-up teens in Mean Girls and the snobby clique in Heathers made it to grad school in order to pursue a master’s degree in creative writing? And what if those girls then decided that their creative powers extended beyond the printed page. So much beyond mere typing or scribbling with a pen that they indulged in witchcraft filtered through a kind of Victor Frankenstein egomania? You’d have Bunny (2019), Mona Awad’s academic satire and utterly bonkers witchcraft novel, a book as far from cuddly and cute as that title implies.

Samantha Heather Mackey (see that wink-wink allusion to the Daniel Waters’ screenplay?) is the protagonist, an MFA candidate and the outlier in a coterie of young women all seemingly clones of each other. Her fellow writers call themselves Bunny and are the most obnoxious clique ever to have been created in either novels, TV or movies. Their saccharine sweet adoration of one another outdoes the clinginess of the Heathers. Samantha loathes them but of course secretly wants to be part of the group. And so when seemingly out of the blue Samantha is invited to a private writing workshop the Bunnys call their Smut Salon she accepts against her better judgment and the advice of her best pal Ava.

The Smut Salon is an extension, albeit a soft core porn version, of the pretentious nonsense they are subjected to in their writing seminar. In essence it's nothing more than a sharing of sex stories, but the kind of giggly girl stories you’d get from inexperienced pre-adolescents, not young adult women in graduate school. The Smut Salon is only one aspect of their life outside the classrooms. As the novel progresses, we discover their desires and obsessions with creativity manifest in sinister rituals that defy the outrageous spell work seen in TV shows like The Craft, Charmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This is the work they do in Workshop, capital W mandatory. The Bunnys are toying with a supernatural method to create life and in keeping with their Smut Salon obsessions they keep creating young men. They are not referred to as boys, however. To the Bunnys they are Hybrids or -- fittingly -- Drafts, mere works in progress as befits the work of a writing Workshop of course. And in the maddest bit of twisted imagination Awad has them create life from another form. The word "alchemy" is overused in MFA programs to discuss the supposed magical quality of writing fiction and Awad grabs a hold of that transformation metaphor and turns it into an absurdity. The Bunnys create life from their own namesakes – cute rabbits they capture from the bunny infested campus grounds.

I told you this was bonkers! It’s also deliciously creepy and madly funny and at times sorrowfully moving.

The catch to all this delving into the dark side of creation is that the Bunnys are not very good at either writing or creating life. In Samantha they see their opportunity to bring someone better at creation into their fold and test her. On the surface however, they belittle her work in the seminar and they make it appear they are going to model shape and improve her underappreciated talent outside of the classroom. We all know that the reverse is true. That just as Samantha envies the close knit friendship among these clannish clones they also envy her outsider status, her individuality and her darkly attractive fiction that actually has a plot.

Awad’s brilliant ironic touch is shown in the men the Bunnys conjure from cute rodents. On the outside they may be gorgeously handsome and resemble movie stars, athletes and rock musicians the girls fantasize having sex with but they are broken and flawed. Their hands never fully form nor do their genitalia. And so they appear to the Bunnys in handsome blue designer suits but wearing black gloves to cover their stumpy clawlike paws. They are never able to actually touch the girls with real fingers or fulfill their desires with a real sex act. It’s a brilliant touch on Awad’s part. Just as the Bunnys passive aggressively critique Samantha’s writing for lack of a character development these girls clearly haven’t mastered that skill in their attempt to create human life in their gory rituals.

When it’s Samantha’s turn to whip up a Hybrid or a Draft she not only surprises herself but shocks the Bunnys. It’s the beginning of the end of the group, a sinister revenge begins to formulate far beyond the reaches of Samantha’s own warped imagination. And the Bunnys never see that the tables have turned and they are being victimized at their own games and rituals.

Bunny seems at first to be just another academic satire. Mean Girls Go to College, might be an apt subtitle. But those rituals change the entire focus of the book. At first I was utterly bamboozled by the fantastic elements of the Hybrid Workshop and the strange literature quoting things resembling good looking young men. It’s this linking of creative writing with creating life as a wish fulfillment for desire and love that makes the book worthy of attention. In years to come I imagine that Bunny will achieve the kind of cult classic status as similar books that explore twisted creation and perverse pursuit of love like the still noteworthy, unclassifiable novel of the fantastic Geek Love by Katharine Dunn.

Bunny has been compared to Heathers, The Secret History by Donna Tartt, and the movie Jennifer’s Body. Awad’s book has so little in common with those other works. The Heathers analogy is obvious of course, but this book is not so much about individuality vs. group identity or the need to belong or popularity or anything remotely like that. It’s really about the dark force of untethered imagination, the danger of an indulgent fantasy life. Why no one has ever mentioned Frankenstein, Geek Love, or even the charming fantasy novel Miss Hargreaves is beyond me. Ultimately, Bunny is simultaneously a love letter to and a dire warning about the power of imagination. For any person who has ever heard a parent, a friend, or anyone say “Stop pretending!” or “Get your head out of the clouds” or any number of warnings to snap out of it and get back to reality Bunny has a lot to offer, a lot to teach. Real life can be so much more rewarding if we only open our eyes and see what’s right in front of us rather than imagining what we think might be better for us.

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: Golden Guilt – Francis Gerard

THE STORY: Sir John Meredith is off on another adventure involving kidnapping, revenge and another bizarre cult that hints at supernatural origins. In the prologue of Golden Guilt (1938) two men and one girl are “anointed” and banished to the Place of Fire “never to return until such a time as [they] have restored that which is lost and have avenged the sacrilege.” This outlandish thriller with a smidgen of a detective novel plot is populated with Aztec descendants, Russian gangsters, Mexican terrorists, a gang sporting tattoos of Three Clasped Hands, and a group of zealots from a lost kingdom in search of the legendary Golden Fleece.

THE CHARACTERS: Meredith does his best to prevent the kidnapping of Lord Allingham’s son Bobby with the help of his wife Juanita, Sgt Beef (who is remarkably related to Leo Bruce’s Sgt Beef!), Bradford and Col. Merryweather-Winter. Along the way two characters from previous books turn up, Sir Hector MacAllister and Clifford Craigworth, and assist our heroes in the complicated plot.

Add this title to the ever growing list of mystery novels and thrillers with a burial vault break-in. (I swear I need to do a post on this topic soon). After a funeral the Allingham family vault is discovered broken into and smashed coffins littering the interior of the chamber. Evidence points to the M.O. of “Soup” Smith, a notorious safecracker and burglar who preferred dynamite over picking locks to gain entry. Smith was recently released from prison and the search is on to track him down.

Some of the supporting characters were my favorite people in the heavily populated story and Gerard enjoys taking advantage of their eccentricity to indulge in his ever-present ribald and vulgar sense of humor. Lord Marshington, for example, is an aristocrat obsessed with growing roses. Meredith apologizes for interrupting him while in his garden and Sgt Beef is appalled when he hears his lordship mention he was planning on putting muck into Dorothy Perkins bed. Beef thinks the worst of this “supposed gentleman” who would throw horse manure into a woman’s bed chamber. The scene turns into an Abbot and Costello routine of wordplay and misunderstanding thankfully lasting only a few lines. But even in its brevity it made me laugh out loud.

INNOVATIONS: Like Secret Sceptre Gerard peppers his story with frequent allusions to Golden Age detective fiction writing and characters which supports my theory that these books are meant to be a send-up of the entire genre. See the QUOTES section for some of the better references.

This was my second favorite of the weirder entries in Francis Gerard’s series featuring Meredith, a British Foreign Office agent turned policeman. Brimming with action and eccentric characters Golden Guilt is another is Gerard’s near parodies of the ultra-heroic adventure thriller which originated with H. Rider Haggard and his books about Alan Quatermain and Leo Vincey then carried into the often self-parodying adventures of pulp magazine heroes. As for the capture and reveal of the villains of the piece all is not as obvious as it first appears. Gerard does a fine job of misdirecting the reader into believing that one character is the brains of the kidnapping then performs a nifty reversal in the final pages. In doing so he simultaneously supplies the requisite twist to the crime plot making this more than satisfying as a detective cum adventure novel.

THINGS I LEARNED: One of the women characters is wearing a “…really complicated, though apparently severe black Hartnell dress.” Ignorance of early 20th century designers led me to look up Norman Bishop Hartnell (1901-1979). Probably much better known in the UK than in the US Hartnell was a fashion designer who did most of his work for the Royal Family. He was given the honor of Royal Warrant as Dressmaker to the Queen Mother in 1940 and the same for Elizabeth II in 1957.

QUOTES: “We found everybody’s finger-prints there…!” He snorted “You’d have thought, wouldn’t you, with all this damn silly rubbishy detective-fiction stuff that’s written nowadays that everybody, down to a three-year-old, would know not to handle a thing like that.”

“I’m not really trying to behave like a detective in a book, but you know the more I read detective fiction the more I realize that the detective heroes are quite right to behave as they do and keep their mouths shut until the denouement. After all, nobody likes to look a fool…”

“And you’re equally certain that there’s no pointer anywhere?” suggested Meredith. “No nice bloody thumb-marks left on a clean piece of white paint, for instance? No scented or monogrammed handkerchiefs dropped outside the window? No uneven footprints clearly indicating the presence of a red-haired French sailor off a Dutch boat with a bad limp in his right foot, and no butts of cigarettes of a tobacco only smoked by members of the Egyptian Embassy”? . . . No, I suppose not.” John sighed. “I always think those fellows in fiction have the easier job of the two.”

There had always been an amicable feeling of rivalry between Matthew Beef and his more famous cousin Sergeant William Beef, who has so signally put the amateur detectives in their place in the case which had made his name, and which had been chronicled by Mr. Leo Bruce under the heading The Case for Three Detectives. Moreover, Beef, who rather fancied himself at darts, could never quite beat his cousin William […] who was apt to be a little superior with Matthew over his recent successes.

“A stone jar which contains vitriol contains an evil thing, but the jar isn’t responsible for its contents. Madness is an evil, there’s no getting away from that; but does that necessarily make the madman, the vessel housing this horrible ill-balance, an evil thing?”

EASY TO FIND? Much to my surprise I found several very affordable used copies of Golden Guilt. There are couple of the Thriller Book Club edition (some with dust jackets) as well as the Cherry Tree paperback offered for sale from various online sellers. But be warned – the later Cherry Tree paperback reprints tend to be considerably abridged from the original text. Even more remarkable I also found six copies of the US first edition and two of the UK edition (later printings each) all of them were under $20. One of the UK edition comes with a DJ in better condition that the one I picture here. The remaining of the hardcover copies (with and without DJs) range in prices from $30 for the UK ed in DJ to $100 for a US first edition in “about fine” condition with a “very good or better” dust jacket. As far as I know none of the Francis Gerard books have been reprinted since the 1950s. Happy hunting and reading!

FFB: The Dead Have No Friends - John Donavan

THE STORY:  Intensely disliked, but extremely popular and financially profitable, novelist Emmanuel Cortal is murdered in his unique glass enclosed writing studio.  There is only one entrance and it was locked from the inside. His death may at first seem to have been natural, but police find he has been poisoned with a highly unusual toxin. How was the administered when apparently no one went into the studio the night he died?

THE CHARACTERS: Although The Dead Have No Friends (1952) is by John Donavan Sergeant Johnny Lamb, Donavan's usual series detective is nowhere in sight.  Instead we have Chief Inspector Roger Newlyn, the son of a Marquis who is affectionately referred to as "the Dook" by the policeman on his team or as Mrs. Coker, the cook in the Cortal household, describes him " a reel haristocrat." Despite the deferential attitude of servants who address him as "my lord" and the perks he gets that come with his family name Newlyn would much prefer to be done with his inherited title and just be known as a policeman.  He's efficient,  likeable and very good at his job as are the men who serve under him. Though as prominent as his role is Newlyn surprisingly is not the one who solves the case. Figuring out the strange murder weapon, the way it was administered and the unveiling of the identity of the killer falls to someone else entirely.

That man is Benjamin Scarle, who we first get to know in a scene of outrageous bluster and pompous anger in the office of literary agent T. F. Rodder.  Scarle is a former police commissioner, now retired, and is a bit behind in turning in the manuscript of his memoir he was coaxed into writing. Contentious, opinionated, and formidable Scarle will remind detective fiction fans of similar larger the life sleuths as Sir Henry Merrivale, Professor Stubbs, and Simon Gale.

Cortal, of course, is also one of Rodder's clients and this is how Scarle becomes involved in the case.  Though he claims to be retired Benjamin Scarle is one of those policeman who will never give up his work. Often Scarle serves as a consultant in some of the more complex cases involving Scotland Yard.  Newlyn is quick to enlist his aid when he is told the coincidence of Cortal and Scarle being clients at the same literary agency.

I made a long list of characters because the first section of this novel, a scathing satire of literary workplaces, was overflowing with names and personalities.  None of the people at the Rodder agency is pertinent to the murder case other than T. F. Rodder himself.  I wasted an entire piece of paper making notes on the staff and their delightful eccentricities only to never read of many of them after the first three chapters. Nigel Morland, the writer behind the "John Donavan" pen name, clearly was having a lot of fun in poking fun at the world of agents, publishers and writers. I wouldn't be surprised if many of these characters were based on people he knew. Instead of eagerly scribbling down notes on the staff of the agency I should have just waited until the police started their murder investigation. For it is the Cortal household with its myriad servants, Cortal's soon-to-be ex-wife Vivien, his 12 year old son Tony, and actress paramour Gerda Heywood who are the real characters to pay attention to.

INNOVATIONS:  The murder scene, of course, is perhaps the most original element.  Cortal has built for himself a private sanctuary where he can be in isolation while he writes. Within the cavernous ballroom converted into a library of his Georgian mansion he has placed his transparent studio, an entirely glass-enclosed private domain where he can see anyone coming toward him on all sides. Thankfully we are given a beautifully drawn and labeled plan of Cortal's glass room-within-a-room that definitely helps the reader understand how impenetrable it appears to be.

 

But in addition to the odd murder setting Morland adds clueing about the door of the ballroom's main entry which leads to the glass encased writing studio.  One of the maids has a great scene where she mentions the clicking of the door handle. She has exceptionally acute hearing and has always been aware of the odd noise which reverberates through the nearly deserted floor where the ballroom and studio are located.  Much is made of this and Newlyn sensing the young woman's sincere attitude and resolute testimony has his team investigate the door. They determine that the clicking sound only occurs when someone leaves the room. One brilliantly observant cop even shows Newlyn exactly how it makes the noise. This bit of info is crucial to eliminating possible suspects among the list of those who visited the ballroom just prior to Cortal's death.  The whole book is filled with excellent details like the "mystery of the clicking door" in helping the police determine who could have killed Cortal.

Also notable is Cortal's weird museum of African artifacts and medieval weaponry, a hodgepodge of dangerous objects that were left in an unlocked room. I was reminded of the many similar scenes from the crime museum in Isabel Ostrander's The Twenty-Six Clues to the collection of skulls in Freeman's The Uttermost Farthing all the way up to the prominently displayed weapon collection that features in the climax of the recent movie Knives Out.

Much of The Dead Have No Friends reminded me of a classic Agatha Christie novel. The multiple Golden Age motifs and conventions continued to pile up and delighted me the deeper I got into the book. A convoluted will with a cruel legacy, an actress who does more acting in real life than on stage, a murder mystery novel ghost written by one of the suspects, minor characters who seem to be thrown in only to  entertain the reader but who prove to be most important of all -- all of these elements make The Dead Have No Friends a corker of a murder mystery. Morland was always a thriller writer first and foremost, and he cannot resist adding a hair-rising climax worthy of the cinema. It's so well done that I found myself gasping in awe but moreso for it being highly reminiscent of the finale of one of Christie's best mysteries.

QUOTES:  Wessex Street on a Sunday forenoon has a peculiar air, like an old lady in a tube subway waiting for somebody to tell her where to go.

A typical outburst from Benjamin Scarle: "Hell's bell, Malcolm, you're a nasty-minded chap! Don't stare at me like a recalcitrant bacteria, startin' revolutions on a culture plate."

"Your mental dexterity is only equaled by your appalling audacity."

The English worship old customs, colourful anachronisms, and self-opinionated old men with original ways.

Scarle was not a psychic man: he had that quality of all real thinkers, in that he could parade invisible people before him and survey them from a godlike peak, guided by understanding and insight blessed with the incisive, merciless qualities of a scalpel. As the actors in the tragedy...passed before him each was dissected neatly, as if the heart was cut open and its secrets betrayed.

"'Turns out well'?" Scarle waved. "My dear chap, I'm takin' over, aren't I? That's an assurance of success."

EDGAR WALLACE ALLUSIONS:  Morland was Edgar Wallace's protege and friend. His early books were dedicated to Wallace and are modeled on his style of thriller with policemen as protagonists and not an amateur sleuth in sight.  Morland also claimed to be his secretary. Wallace is mentioned two separate times in this book. First, in a faint allusion that only a few might catch. Cortal is described as posing with a cigarette in an extremely long holder "copied from a long dead and still unforgotten writer of detective stories who had been loved as Cortal never would be."  The second time Wallace is directly mentioned when the investigation uncovers the ghost written novel The Pliny Problem. Rodder, the literary agent says: "Don't you recall how people used to say that Edgar Wallace had hacks to write his books? I knew E.W. well and I can assure you it was fatuous nonsense."  A clear case of Morland inserting himself into the narrative.

THINGS I LEARNED:  The Yost Typewriter is mentioned in a throwaway line and of course I needed to look it up.  Named after its inventor George Washington Yost it is one of the earliest typewriters, created in the last decade of the 19th century. An early ad proclaimed its original features: "No ribbon, direct printing, permanent alignment." As for the remarkable lack of ribbon here is how that worked according to an article at Antiquetypewriters.com: "Inking is done by a felt pad positioned in a full circle around the top of the tower where the type-bars rest. The type-bars travel an intricate half-flip upwards to reach the platen and then are channeled, by an inverse pyramid shaped guide hole, to strike the platen in exactly the same spot every time, giving the accurate alignment that Yost demanded."

I learned all about Acokanthera schimperi a plant indigenous to eastern Africa. Its bark wood and roots are used to make an arrow poison as well as being used in tribal medicines.

SUMMARY:  Written in 1952 and seemingly very modern The Dead Have No Friends simultaneously seems like a retro Golden Age book.  It may have been written years before and sat around waiting for the right time for Morland to submit it. The only sign that it is a later work is his more mature approach to characterization, the moral nature of the resolution, and the focus on psychology which was one of his main interests in the last half of his writing career.  I found little in his writing to arouse my irritation like xenophobic or ethnic slurs, misogyny or any of his other sins for which he has been derided.  The locked room puzzle, the clever murder method, the clues that lead to the solution, the abundance of suspects and motives -- all of this is redolent of the good ol' days of pure detection.  In fact, of all the Morland books I've read, whether under his real name or a pseudonym, I will concede that this is perhaps the best of the lot. As seen on the final page to the left (no spoilers at all in the bittersweet final paragraphs, BTW) the publisher promised more adventures from the thoroughly enjoyable Benjamin Scarle. Sadly, nothing ever came of that. The Dead Have No Friends is his first and only appearance.

It's a shame that this fine book is so ridiculously scarce. Purchased a few months ago my copy is the first I have seen in over 45 years of collecting and reading vintage crime fiction. This is one to add to the list of Must Be Reprinted titles. Here's hope that some enterprising publisher stumbles across this post and takes up the challenge.

The Woman in the Wardrobe - Peter Shaffer

There are some books which have achieved legendary status in the Detective Fiction Hall of Fame simply because they have been largely unobtainable for decades. These are books which for one reason or another disappear from the used book marketplace and libraries yet still retain an aura of mystique, books that whisper to us throughout the ether: "Come and find me! Read me! Yes, I'm that good."  I've been lucky enough to stumble across such books several times over my lifetime and can tell you that often this prestige is dubious at best.  In many cases it would have been better to ignore those whispered temptations and saved that rather large chunk of cash which I usually doled out for one of these "legendary" murder mysteries.  The Woman in the Wardrobe (1951) is one of these elusive and legendary books, long out of print, spoken with hushed reverence and nearly impossible to get hold of a copy.  I'm happy to report -- since it is now widely available in yet another attractively packaged volume from the British Library Crime Classics imprint -- this book does still merit its prestigious label, if only for two daring stunts its authors pull off.

As with the other two books in the trilogy of mystery novels featuring the blustering and egocentric Mr. Verity we have a puzzling locked room murder and a variety of eccentric oddballs among the list of suspects. A loathsome blackmailer has been done in in his hotel room at a seaside resort located in the fictional town of Amnestie in Sussex. We learn that Mr. Verity is situated not far from Amnestie in his ostentatious "villa" Persopolis where he lives a rather solitary life surrounded by his vast collection of antiques and esoteric statuary. How else would a brilliant amateur criminologist live?

Alice Bruton, the maid
Not at all the usual minor character

Richard Tudor, the eccentric
Steals the show on every page he appears

 

It's not long before Verity has inveigled his way into the murder investigation -- well, more like barged in and commandeered the proceedings -- leading Inspector Jackson by the hand as they interrogate the residents of the Charter. Together they (and later Inspector Rambler from Scotland Yard) and uncover myriad secrets in the hotel guests' pasts that link them to the much hated Maxwell, found shot and beaten in his locked and bolted room. The telling of the story is, for about the first half, very routine with some discovery of clues and physical evidence but lots of Q&A. I was beginning to lose interest in the story despite the occasional touch of ironic humor and acerbic asides that Verity likes to toss out. Only with the entrance of the bizarrely funny Richard Tudor, a man who envisions himself as the rightful monarch of England, did the novel pick up pace in both outrageous humor, tangential history lessons and unexpected plot machinations.

Mr. Verity

Overall, this is a fine pastiche of the traditional detective novel. So well done in style and genre technique I got faint whiffs of classic authors in the plotting of Shaffer's book. Whether or not any or all of them were inspirations for The Woman in the Wardrobe I leave to your imagination.  Christianna Brand, a pioneer in multiple solutions, comes immediately to mind as Shaffer manages to fit the evidence to nearly every suspect and make it seem possible there are variations on the murderer's identity. As the plot begins to resolve itself we see a further dimension which I cannot reveal but calls to mind the work of Vernon Loder, the master of a particular gimmick that appeared repeatedly in his work. And I noted that the solution of how the victim's hotel room came to be locked was used several times in multiple variations by another neglected impossible crime writer who shares one of the Shaffers' names -- Anthony Wynne.

Peter Shaffer, we are told in the preface by his sister-in-law Elinor, wrote the book on his own but with some help on the complex plot from his brother Anthony. Only in the other two novels of the trilogy would they collaborate more officially in the writing and plotting with each getting credit in the shared pseuodonym of "Peter Antony."  In the US rather than using the pen name for the two sequels to The Woman in the Wardrobe both authors' real names are listed on the cover and title page if only by their first initial and last name. Of the three books I still consider Withered Murder, the final book of the trilogy, to be the best plotted and even more devilishly funny.  It is also long overdue for a reissue. We can only hope that The Woman in the Wardrobe will sell enough copies to make it worthwhile reprinting that far superior mystery.

Shaffer's denouement is something of an eyebrow raiser if it didn't succeed entirely in eliciting that all important gasp of surprise. Interestingly, the finale coincides with the theme explored in a very recent book I've read -- The Eighth Detective, a clever detective novel pastiche of short stories and detective novel conventions.  Tune in later this week when I dissect The Eighth Detective and its mathematical permutations of "detective novel ingredients."  Shaffer amazingly explored the very same ideas in The Woman in the Wardrobe and did so decades earlier without actually outright stating he was doing so.  Which only serves as proof that a true homage to detective fiction tends to rely first and foremost on a love of the genre combined with a shrewd attention to its conventions and plotting tricks.

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: The Devil Must - Tom Wicker

US paperback edition
Popular Library G291 (Dec. 1958)

THE STORY: The murder of a farmer appears to be the work of a disgruntled hired hand who happens to be Black. Reporter Sandy Martin and his editor Al Harris are given the privilege to review the crime scene by Sheriff Tyree Long. They are asked to handle the news story with discretion as this is an election year and Long wants to avoid unnecessary racial disputes. When the suspect is arrested and thrown in jail he begins to exhibit unusual trance-like behaviors, becomes withdrawn and nearly catatonic. Another Black man in a nearby cell tells Sandy that old Jumbo is hexed. And the murder starts to take on a sinister aspect when Sandy hears stories of witchcraft, spell casting and the power exerted over the superstitious denizens in the Black community.

THE CHARACTERS: The Devil Must (1957) contains a huge cast encompassing nearly every single person in the small North Carolina town of Marion. We follow the actions and thoughts of protagonist Sandy Martin, a cub reporter who hasn’t left his hometown since birth. He is disgruntled with his broken family: a devil-may-care brother has left the state to make a name for himself up North, his sister who he still loves dearly has fled the town, supposedly living with a man she chased. He’s not heard from her since she left town years ago. Sandy is carrying the torch for his high school sweetheart, now working as everyone’s favorite waitress in a whites joint aptly named Purity Café. Not too surprisingly given her name is Honey she has a reputation for being flirtatious and indiscreet with her affections. This family baggage and frustrated romance help to color the way Sandy views his boss, Al, and the rest of the people he comes in contact with. His many grudges, hidden prejudices and misperceptions of characters will be put to the test when he must willingly accept that the motivations of the murderer seem to be grounded in superstition and an insidious use of mind control in the form of actual witchcraft and hexes.

Marion is riddled with Southern prejudice against Negroes. The 1950s PC term and the ugly slur are used with equal frequency by all characters. Those who use Negro we know are supposedly the good guys, those who throw around the other N word are the baddies. Or so it seems.

The Sheriff wants the case of Carl Roger’s bludgeoning murder wrapped up quickly and is eager to fit evidence to the primary suspect poor, weak minded, and barely literate Jumbo James who protests his innocence until he can literally not speak a word and curls up into an immovable ball on his jail cell cot. Sandy openly listens to Nathaniel, Jumbo’s much older brother, relate horrific stories of how Mrs. Rogers, the real town tramp, has been caught having sex in public places and then threatened Nathaniel with her weird powers. He tells a bizarre tale of how she performed a frightening ritual involving fire and convinced Nathaniel that he was in her power. It is this unnervingly effective story that gives Sandy the idea that deeply held superstitious beliefs are as profound as deeply held religious faith. That the capacity for profound faith in either belief system can subvert common sense. That one human being literally can be in the hands of another who is savvy enough and perverse enough to exploit the talent of sympathetic understanding into tyranny of the mind.

Ironically, it is John the Baptist Jones, the incarcerated minister arrested on suspicion of raping one of his own parishioners, who explains to Sandy the importance of the belief in hexing and its dire effects on his community. There are many cultural lessons Sandy learns from people like Nathaniel and John the Baptist. Once he has in his hands a piece of surprise evidence in the form of a letter written by the murder victim and sent to a respected lawyer Sandy begins to formulate a plan that will redeem Jumbo, save the town of Marion from further harm, and deal with the true killer in a satisfyingly retributive manner.

INNOVATIONS: The Devil Must explores race relations in the dawn of the civil rights movement by examining superstition and its powerful effect on the Black community of the American South. Wicker has managed to use the exploitation of superstition in order to explore the prejudice and subjugation. He does so with an incisive, angry intelligent prose. The climax of the novel becomes nearly allegorical with the villain of the story serving as a symbol of all the iniquitous treatment of not just Black people, but everyone ignorant and foolish enough to give themselves over to hollow cant and vicious threats. After a story that at times seems to drown in Sandy’s romantic entanglements, his personal prejudices against all those he sees as threats to his pure love for Honey (all of this clearly meant to mirror the superstition of Jumbo and Nathaniel) the novel pays off big time with its true message of the treacherous nature of empty belief systems that have no foundation in genuine truth. And yet that truly terrifying finale is evidence to all the characters (and the reader) that witchcraft can be a real and useful tool for those immersed so deeply in its rituals and curses as to bring about healing change. The novel ends in an authentic conflagration in which fire purifies and allows for a phoenix-like rebirth for those lucky enough to survive.

QUOTES: Mrs. Rogers was not pretty; she was too dark and too hard and too worn out. But that night hate brought her close to beauty. Hate flashed in her eyes and stiffened her figure. She stood straight, seeming taller and slimmer than she was: and I was glad it wasn’t me that she hated.

…he clapped his hat on his head and, as if it were a crown, it made him the old Tyree Long, the powerful politician who shaped Jasper County with his shrewd plump hands.

US 1st edition, Harper & Row (1957)

I thought about Carl Rogers. I couldn’t place him out of all the milling half-glimpsed Saturday gallery of farmers’ faces. But he had been a human being; and where now was all that laughter and all that sorrow and all that hope that ought to have filled his life—anybody’s life? It seemed there ought to have been at least a trumpet blowing to mark the passage of so much humanity.

A Southerner – that is, a man who lives in what used to be the Confederate States of America – has to condone segregation of the races. He has no choice. It doesn’t matter what he believes; it doesn’t even matter if he is a learned man to whom people listen or pretend to listen, what he says on the radio or writes in the newspaper. Every day of his life in the South he gives tacit approval to segregation. He does this when he eats in a restaurant. He does it when he attends a motion picture or travels by public conveyance or stops at a hotel or motel or sits in a doctor’s waiting room or joins a civic club or sends his children to school.

Al Harris, the editor of the town newspaper, to Sandy: "You and Street [a lawyer] are doing just what you claim Tyree did, building up something that could have happened into something that did happen. I have always thought that it was just as bad to be blind in one eye as in the other."

Flanking the French doors was a pair of oil paintings of some earlier Kirby men, statesmen or educators or wielders of vast private influence, such as Kirbys had always been. … That room stood for order, for permanence, for security. It spoke for men of property and pride and it sheltered their affairs. It would brook no new light under its gloomy ceiling. … And, in its own way, its spell was as profound as that of any witch. It’s grip on the minds of those who lingered here would be as unshakable.

Nathaniel blinked, secretively, wisely, suddenly he seemed old and profound and powerful. Sitting there …amid his poverty, and in his ignorance, he still knew more than either of us; a party to dark deeds we feared to credit he dwarfed our rational assurance with his secrets.

courtesy of New York Times, 1976

THE AUTHOR: Tom Wicker (1926-2011) was one of the nation’s leading sociologically observant reporters for much of the later 20th century. He first made name for himself writing up his eyewitness account of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. He wrote an Edgar award-winning nonfiction book about the Attica prison riot. He was involved in a lifelong quest to speak up for the maligned and ostracized portions of American society, and was hugely involved in the civil rights and equal rights movements of the late 60s and early 70s. In addition to several non-fiction works Wicker penned a handful of pulp thrillers as equally affecting as The Devil Must. These were all published under the pseudonym Paul Connolly. I’ll be reviewing one of those books, reissued by Stark House this month, in a few days. Wicker’s fascinating and important life as journalist, novelist, analyst and activist is captured in his laudatory obituary available for all to read (without subscription!) on the New York Times website.

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)