This is the sixth instalment in my occasional Forgotten Book series, where I review some of the less-remembered items on my TBR shelves. Unsurprisingly, my experiences of these rarer books have been mixed: I’ve read some unjustly neglected gems (e.g. Double Detection by Belton Cobb), but also some books that were forgotten for a reason (e.g. Four Past Four by Roy Vickers). Today’s item for investigation is the 1944 book The Case of the Perfumed Mouse by Theodora Du Bois. I was drawn in by the excellent title and the intriguing synopsis. But does the book deliver on this intrigue? And is it suitable for someone with musophobia?

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The mysteries of Theodora Du Bois

Theodora Du Bois was born the day before Agatha Christie in September 1890, in New York.1 Du Bois had an interest in drama from a young age, and her first published works were a series of children’s plays included in John Martin’s Book between 1916 and 1918. Her first published short story followed two years later, by which point Theodora McCormick had married a man called Delafield and become Theodora Du Bois.2 In the 1930s, she started writing novels alongside short stories and plays. This included a series of detective novels, beginning with Armed with a New Terror (1936).

In total, Du Bois published 24 mystery novels, 19 of which featured her series sleuths Anne and Jeffrey McNeill. Anne began life as Miss Holt, but the couple fell in love during their first case, when Jeffrey vindicated her character after a false accusation of murder. Jeffrey is a medical researcher and their cases often have medical or scientific themes. According to Lisa Kucharski, there are three types of McNeill investigations: in some cases, Anne takes the lead while Jeffrey is busy working, in others the spouses investigate together while travelling, and in others the plot is closely related to Jeffrey’s scientific research.3

The McNeill mysteries received mixed reviews. Anthony Boucher described Death Comes to Tea (1940) as a “small masterpiece”, but he was less enamoured with The Listener (1953), writing:4

In view of the fact that I’ve read close to three thousand mysteries as a professional re- viewer, and a large number non-professionally, this is probably a rash statement: but at this moment it seems to me that Theodora DuBois’ THE LISTENER (Doubleday, $2.75) is the most utterly foolish detective story I have ever read.

Du Bois received an even worse reception to her 1954 novel Seeing Red, bringing an end to Anne and Jeffrey’s adventures. This book was a sequel to Murder Strikes an Atomic Unit (1946), a book doubtless inspired by her husband’s involvement in the Manhattan Project, where he helped to develop the first atomic bomb.5 Controversially, Seeing Red featured a critical depiction of the House Un-American Activities Committee, a panel which investigated alleged communist subversion. Her indiscreet comments provoked a negative public response and Du Bois was dropped by her publisher. She continued writing, but her career did not enjoy the same success after this point.

The Case of the Perfumed Mouse

The Case of the Perfumed Mouse is the 10th book in the Anne and Jeffrey McNeill series, reviewed by Anthony Boucher as “highly satisfactory and somewhat off-the-beaten-track”.6 For this intriguingly-named case, the McNeills are summoned to Ivory Tower, a curious establishment overseen by Jacqueline Granville. Mrs Granville has a self-appointed mission to rehabilitate troubled individuals, rescuing each one from their own “private and particularly superheated hell”. On their arrival, the McNeills are initially puzzled by their summons, as the two main problems Granville seems to be facing are an infestation of rats and a teenager who is behaving erratically:

“I think you need a pediatrician for the child and a good rat-and-roach company for the house. My husband and I are quite plain dealers in murder cases.”

Granville, though, persuades the detective couple to help by mentioning a suspicious death and raising the sinister suggestion that someone may be using rats for murderous ends. The couple accept the case: after all, they need the money as their house “had been destroyed last winter by a bomb in the cellar.” After their arrival, the household continues to experience a spate of unusual happenings, including more rat bites, the discovery of a creepy dummy in an abandoned house, and the eponymous mouse (eponymouse?), bathed in perfume as if she “was goin’ to a mouse’s dinner party”. How are all these oddities connected? And is someone actually plotting to kill people with rats?

The characters at Ivory Tower are mostly interesting personalities, with their troubled backgrounds providing an air of ambiguity that adds to the unpredictable atmosphere. They include Corny O’Connor the one-armed doctor, Paul Barleigh the spurned vicar whose wife ran away with a cornetist, and Miss Flaherty the objectionable nurse. At the centre of the narrative is Katrinka, an erratic 13-year-old who collects skulls and whose thoughts are especially mysterious. The unexpected arrival of Mr Granville (missing, presumed dead) adds to the sense of dread. Theodora Du Bois is clearly fond of creepy mysteries.

The detectives

This case falls into the category of investigations where Anne takes the lead while Jeffrey is busy with work. Although Jeffrey accompanies Anne at the beginning, he soon has to return to the Bradney Hall of Medical Research, leaving Anne (the narrator) to probe the events at Ivory Tower mostly alone. At one point, she provides a detailed explanation of their detective methods:

“I list the people involved with a catch phrase characterizing them after each name, and next I write a fairly full small biography of each person. I list everything I consider a clue and, on one page in red ink, put any red herrings that I have traced as such. Also, I make a fever chart on graph paper of emotional crises, with each individual involved represented by a different coloured crayoned line…

When we have collected enough data, Jeffrey wants to take curves of individual behaviour from these charts and reduce the curves to equations—if he can. He says that if he is able to do that we should be able to solve any detection problem three-quarters of the way through by mathematics.

This sounds impressive, but the reality in this case is less remarkable. There are no equations or fever charts, and the compilation of clues is fairly limited. Anne undertakes very little actual detection until chapter sixteen. One lead that is mentioned at the start of chapter two is forgotten for the next 60 pages. Another lead in the final chapters is pursued successfully, but implausibly (and with a complete disregard for data protection). Jeffrey’s input is mostly related to the scientific side of the case, with Anne making an enlightening trip to his research institute.

The McNeills are an interesting example of a sleuthing couple, especially when we discover that they have a three-year-old son. Normally, if detectives have young children at home, they are just mentioned obliquely. Little Michael McNeill, however, is both seen and heard—and remarkably untroubled by his parents regularly abandoning him in the pursuit of justice. There are a few fun interactions between mother and son: “Oh, Mummy, we have a new black kitten!” There are some moments of affection between husband and wife too, leading to one of my favourite lines from Anne: “He kissed me very nicely.”

The mystery

The mystery itself is a mixed bag. Du Bois highlights a short list of key clues, which accompany the reader through the investigation, and I’m annoyed that I didn’t join up some of the dots sooner. Later on, there is one especially interesting sound-related clue. The unusual murder method, and the suggestion of deadly rodents, adds to the interest of the mystery. The book suffers, though, from the lack of actual detection through the central section of the book and an insufficient justification of the culprit’s identity.

The book is stronger on atmosphere, which I understand is true of other novels in the series. According to Lisa Kucharski, the author’s strength “is that she is really good at creeping out the reader, building tension with palpably real characters.” Based on The Case of the Scented Mouse, Du Bois is also strong at creating imaginatively quirky descriptions and dialogue, of which my favourites include:

• “She was a thin thirteen-year-old, with tightly braided hair, and had one of those faces that looks rather as if it should belong to a grasshopper.”

• “No turtle I’ve ever known has seemed unduly intense or emotional.”

• "It's the only chance I'll ever have to boil the rat."

It’s not easy to get hold of Theodora Du Bois’ books, and I’m not sure I’ll spend effort hunting out another, but the oddness of this novel was still enjoyable. My copy also ends with a helpful advert for the Pelman Institute: “People to-day are all too prone to complain they just have to worry. But once they become Pelmanists they cease this negative form of thought.” You can request an introductory book, completely free, by writing to the Pelman Institute, 244 Norfolk House, Wigmore Street, London W1.

Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐ (3/5)

Read in the 1946 T.V. Boardman paperback

Scavenger Hunt item: A mask

This week on Murder at the Manse, I’m attempting to answer the age-old question: What’s the best British novel published in 1978 that involves a case of poisoning in Victorian England?

In the blue corner, we have Waxwork by Peter Lovesey, the final novel in his eight-part Sergeant Cribb series, a book described in The Times as being “as good a crime entertainment as you could wish for.”

In the red corner, we have The Blackheath Poisonings by Julian Symons, a non-series novel reviewed in The Guardian as “a Victorian murder mystery as satisfying as one of Mrs Beeston’s cakes.”

But today, there can only be one winner. Let the duel commence…

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The year is 1888. After confessing to the murder of Josiah Perceval, an assistant in her husband’s photography studio, Miriam Jane Cromer is sentenced to be hanged by the neck until she is dead. Perceval was a blackmailer, she claims, who had been extorting money from her over some indecent photographs from her younger days. While she sits in a Newgate cell awaiting her fate, the Home Secretary is anonymously sent a photograph that raises questions about her confession. Sergeant Cribb is commissioned to discover the true explanation of events:

“Well, Sergeant, what it comes down to is whether the confession Miriam Cromer made is reliable. If it isn’t, why the devil did she perjure herself to secure a sentence of death? We have eleven days to find an answer. After that the question will be academic…”

The novel’s title proves to be a play on words. At a literal level there is a subplot involving the installation of new waxworks in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussauds. Less literally, Miriam Cromer is presented as a kind of waxwork. This begins with her demeanour in court: “There was an air of suspended animation about her, giving her the look of a figure in wax.” As the plot proceeds, this description is reinforced as Miriam hides her true thoughts behind a cold exterior. I enjoyed the enigmatic depiction of Miriam and her interesting interactions with her lower-class guards (wardresses) in Newgate.

Although I can’t offer first-person corroboration, the scenes in Newgate feel realistic, and this extends to the rest of the novel too. Lovesey brings the reader into a well-researched Victorian atmosphere. There are a few moments where Lovesey is perhaps too keen to display his knowledge (especially when it comes to fashion), but generally the historical detail is natural and serves the plot well.1 His depiction of the photographic trade is especially interesting. As an extra touch, Lovesey chose a real historical figure as Cromer’s prospective executioner: James Berry was a genuine hangman, who was involved in 131 hangings, including five women.2 Berry wrote a memoir, My Experiences as an Executioner, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Lovesey read this as part of his research.

The plot proceeds at a good pace, with each new chapter recounting the events of a new day, as indicated by the chapter titles. This gives a strong sense of progress through the investigation, as well as adding an undercurrent of urgency as the date of Cromer’s planned execution approaches. Lovesey’s writing is pleasingly efficient and uncluttered and he keeps the key questions of the case in view as new revelations emerge. I wasn’t entirely convinced by the ending, but overall it’s a strong historical mystery.

I’ve read and enjoyed a number of Lovesey novels in the past, but this is my first taste of Sergeant Cribb. I imagine it won’t be my last. I enjoyed the character dynamics within the police, and I admired Cribb’s disregard for the political implications of his investigations as he maintained his focus on truth and justice, regardless of the expectations of his superiors. I am disappointed, though, that neither Cribb nor his creator have been afforded a waxwork in Madame Tussauds.3

Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4/5)

When toy manufacturer Charles Mortimer built Albert House and Victoria Villa in Blackheath, he hoped they would provide comfortable homes for his extended family. The two households, though, were soon afflicted by tragedy, and this macabre trend continues with Mortimer’s descendants. In the 1890s, they become the focus of an affair known as the Blackheath Poisonings. Two family members die unexpectedly and there are rumours that a poisoner is to blame. When police place their suspect on trial, multiple domestic secrets are unearthed, challenging the family’s respectable veneer. And to make matters worse, one family member writes really bad poetry.

There are several points of similarity between Waxwork and The Blackheath Poisonings, but they have markedly different styles. The Blackheath Poisonings begins with a 17-page prelude introducing the family and its recent history, and continues at an unhurried pace. Julian Symons gives us specific background for every named character and introduces scenes that are tangential to the narrative but add depth to the personal interactions. As a result, I found the book to be strong on characterisation and atmosphere, but weaker on plot. Symons captures well the troubled households with their Victorian hypocrisy and concern for reputation, but the novel sometimes feels directionless, especially with the minimal amount of actual detection.

Among the characters, there are several interesting personalities, providing good opportunities for humour within the grim plot. The family physician, Dr Porterfield, is a memorable example. I especially enjoyed the description of his habits halfway through the book:

Dr. Porterfield was not an easy man to wake. Doctors do not always follow the advice they give to their patients, and it was his habit to eat cheese on toast every night before going to bed, accompanying it with a drink of rum and milk into which a few drops of laudanum had been blended.

Symons matches Lovesey’s attention to historical detail, providing a realistic backdrop to the murderous events. There are some nice specific references, such as a family theatre trip to see the new Oscar Wilde play Lady Windermere’s Fan. We are also given some insights into the late Victorian justice system, including the prohibition on the accused parties testifying in court and the lack of a court of appeal. Both of these elements prove to be significant for the plot; Symons is definitely adept at immersing us into the period.

The ending, however, is not especially satisfying. For many readers, the solution will not be much of a surprise. I think Symons also fails to sustain sufficient tension in the final section of the book, which makes the book’s conclusion less of a climax. By this point, you may suspect that I preferred Waxwork as a mystery, and you’d be correct. The Blackheath Poisonings is still enjoyable, and Symons is an engaging writer, but if you’re in the market for Victorian-era detection published in 1978, Lovesey would be my recommendation.

Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐ (3/5)

The duel is over, and Peter Lovesey emerges victorious. Unless you know of any other 1978 novels about Victorian poisonings?

Earlier this year, I completed my chronological read-through of the 23 Dr Gideon Fell novels by John Dickson Carr (full ranking here). It’s now time to move on to a new detective, and I’ve decided my regular companion over the next few years will be Inspector French, the creation of Freeman Wills Crofts. I’ve read eight of the French novels before; I will skip those I’ve read recently, but will revisit others that I have less memory of. As with Dr Fell, I’ll be following the series chronologically, from 1924 to 1957. And maybe I’ll do some short stories at the end as well.

Today’s post will feature a general introduction to the series, as well as a review of the debut novel, Inspector French’s Greatest Case.

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Introducing the author

Freeman Wills Crofts was an Irish-born writer, the son of an Army surgeon who also happened to be called Freeman Wills Crofts.1 A railway engineer by training, he wrote his first novel during a long period of illness in his late 30s, with the encouragement of his doctor.2 The result was The Cask (1920), which proved to be a very successful debut. Reviewing a reprint in the 1960s, American author Anthony Boucher offered high praise:3

Possibly the most completely competent first novel in the history of crime (and I am not forgetting Ira Levin), it is the definitive novel of alibis, timetables and all the absorbing hairsplitting of detection so beloved by Jacques Barzun and, I trust, traditional men.

With his fifth novel, Crofts introduced the character that would become his series detective, Inspector French. The Inspector appeared in all 30 of Crofts’ remaining novels, including the 1947 juvenile adventure Young Robin Brand, Detective (in which Robin Brand is mentored by the older sleuth). Crofts also included French in many short stories, eighteen original radio plays, three radio adaptations of short stories and a stage adaptation of Sudden Death.4

In 1929, when his fifth Inspector French case was published, Crofts ended his 30-year engineering career and moved to the Surrey village of Blackheath, near Guildford, to become a full-time writer. Outside of books, he had a love of music, and on Sundays, you might have found him playing the organ or directing the choir in his local Anglican church. He continued writing throughout his life; his final novel was published the year he died, aged 77. He bequeathed the copyright for his works to the Royal Society of Arts, of which Crofts had been made a fellow in 1939, directing subsequent profits to be shared with authors in need.5

Introducing the detective

In a slightly tongue-in-cheek 1935 essay, Mr Crofts gave some background to his creation of Inspector French:6

Anyone about to perpetrate a detective novel must first decide whether his detective is to be brilliant and a ‘character,’ or a mere ordinary humdrum personality. When French came into being there seemed two good reasons for making him the second of these. One was that it represented a new departure; there were already plenty of ‘character’ detectives, the lineal descendants, most of them, of the great Sherlock. The other reason was much more important. Striking characteristics, consistently depicted, are very hard to do.

French is, of course, brilliant and striking in his own way, excelling in the more prosaic characteristics of perseverance and attention to detail. Melvyn Barnes aptly summed up French as “a skilful plodder” — rather than sudden moments of brilliance, French pursues his investigations in a thorough and methodical way, inexorably persisting through setbacks to catch the culprits.7 Crofts does not make the job easy for his creation, as French often heads down dead ends, pursues false leads and encounters unobservant witnesses. As readers, we are privy to the whole investigative process and follow French’s trains of thought. There are no cryptic utterances or mysterious musings, just fairly-clued policework.

Crofts became well-known for his creation of seemingly unbreakable alibis that then get cleverly broken through the Inspector’s obsessiveness. Crofts also continued his professional interest in railways, providing realistic travel itineraries and detailed timetables. The realistic detail extended to geography too: the books use real locations, which the author sometimes visited with a camera and notebook to ensure accuracy.8 I recognise that for some readers, the investigative thoroughness is overwhelming. But for French fans, the detail is engrossing, and the author still manages to surprise readers with unexpected twists. In his 1944 essay “The Simple Art of Murder”, Raymond Chandler described Crofts as “the soundest builder of them all when he doesn’t get too fancy.”9 The fitting assessment of Crofts’ style by Melvyn Barnes is also worth quoting:10

It may well be pedantic, it may well be mechanical, it may well be too ponderous for the reader requiring faster action, but it is tremendously enjoyable to accompany French on the job.

Alongside the detail, the French novels contain some good humour, reflected in the 1935 essay I quoted above. In this essay, describing how he overcame his ignorance of CID and Scotland Yard procedure, Crofts drily comments, “I build on the great rock which sustains so many of my profession: if I knew nothing of my subject, well, few of my readers would know any more.” And on the question of French’s family, the author (surely not seriously), says: “It’s like a dream to me that in one book children were mentioned, and that in another their existence was denied. But as I can’t find either reference, I can only note the point as one to be avoided.”11

Inspector French’s Greatest Case (1924)

Inspector French’s first published case begins in Hatton Garden, where the head clerk of Duke & Peabody’s, the diamond merchants, is found dead in front of an empty safe. There are a few possible leads, including the fact that the not-so-safe should have contained a significant quantity of diamonds. When these appear in the possession of money-lenders, suspicion focusses on the loanee, a Mrs Chauncey S. Root from Pittsburg.12 Whatever her involvement in the case, she clearly has some questions to answer. The search for the truth leads Crofts on a multinational pursuit, involving impersonation, double lives and a ham omelette.13

French’s investigative approach is clear from the very beginning of this first case. Although his dark blue eyes “twinkled as if at some perennially fresh private joke”, French takes his task very seriously. He reaches the crime scene at a late hour, but insists on a meticulous three-hour inspection of the premises before returning home. And he still turns up on time at work the next day. He is definitely no armchair detective, but a trusted “man of action”, who takes his time but gets results.

Crofts gives Inspector French several opportunities for international travel in this novel. I enjoyed his dogged pursuit of potential suspects, even if the itineraries were overly detailed. Do we really need to know every station the train stopped at? (“Of course you do!” I can hear Crofts reply.) His investigations take him to no fewer than five countries on the continent, which is quite an adventure for someone described as “a comparative stay-at-home”.14 We are told on more than one occasion that this case opened up new vistas for the Inspector: “The journey from Savoy to Spain seemed endless, the distances incredible, the expanse of country between himself and home illimitable.”

Mr French is assisted in a minor way in his investigations by Mrs French. Their domestic vignettes are very enjoyable, although I don’t know how much his wife will appear in the rest of the series. We discover that Mrs French is often subjected to her husband’s recitals of evidence and theories, while she gets on with her sewing, occasionally warning him “to be careful not to knock over the small table beside the piano.” In this case, she contributes a (somewhat obvious) insight, which helps move the investigation forward. Crucially, Mrs French also ensures her husband is well-fed. At one point, when the Inspector is about to respond to an evening caller, she urges him to stay at the table: “It’s not so urgent as your supper. Just let him wait.”

It was a brave marketing decision for Freeman Wills Crofts to describe the first in a new series as Inspector French’s greatest case. The title definitely aged like milk, because this is not his greatest case, either in terms of its contents or the quality of writing. It’s still a good case, which introduces many of the key ingredients that continue through later books. But French is frustratingly slow on the uptake at points and the final chase sequences drag somewhat. I was also not a fan of the eight pages of codebreaking discussion. Looking back at previous notes, I enjoyed this more the first time I read it back in 2021. Despite a modicum of disappointment on my re-read, though, it’s still an enjoyable opener. I look forward to the rest of the series, knowing from experience that there are greater cases still to come.

Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐ (3/5)

Read in the 2016 Crime Club reprint.

Scavenger Hunt item: Dead body

The next Inspector French cases are Inspector French and the Cheyne Mystery (1926), Inspector French and the Starvel Tragedy (1927), which I’ve already reviewed here and won’t re-read, The Sea Mystery (1928) and The Box Office Murders (1929). See you again soon for more adventures with the skilful plodder!

A few years ago, I picked up an excellent anthology entitled The Evening Standard Detective Book, which contains 32 stories by British authors, all previously published in the Evening Standard newspaper. It had a top-tier selection of contributors, including Cyril Hare, Freeman Wills Crofts, Leo Bruce, Edmund Crispin and Anthony Gilbert. In the words of the Manchester Daily News, it’s “a rich feast at a knock-down price”.1 I’d highly recommend getting a copy if you can, though it may no longer be at “a knock-down price”.

Recently, I’ve been perusing the follow-up volume, The Evening Standard Detective Book: 2nd Series, as published by Gollancz in 1951. It again contains 32 stories previously published in the newspaper, and it proudly proclaims on the cover that the story writers are “all British authors”. Due to their common origin, the stories are of similar length, averaging 6-10 pages. Sequels can be a tricky business, and in The Evening Standard’s case, I would say the quality of stories is overall lower than in its predecessor, although there are some gems as well.

Alongside the familiar names, there are a few more obscure authors, three of whom are apparently unknown to the internet outside of these stories. Michael Carreck’s “Death Warrant” features a young man who has to decide how to deal with his intolerable Aunt Mabel. Michael Rogers’ “The Nine of Diamonds” involves a card game at Franchetti’s cafe. Tom Lake’s “A Most Reliable Witness” is one of the highlights of the collection, so I’ll discuss that in more details below.

As an added point of interest, this anthology contains the only short story Richard Hull ever wrote, “Mrs. Brierley Supplies the Evidence”. This was later reprinted by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in 1952. I have had mixed experiences with Hull: at his best, he is superb, but he is not always at his best. Sadly, this story is in the latter category. I still wish he had written more short stories, though. It would have been interesting to see Hull’s inventiveness deployed in short story form.

Barzun and Taylor’s Catalogue of Crime describes the anthology’s stories as “mostly short and many good”. They add a few annotations: a co-authored story by Edmund Crispin and Geoffrey Bush is “clever”, the two Michael Innes entries are “both Appleby and good”, Milward Kennedy’s contribution is “very neat” and Gladys Mitchell’s stories are “both above par for G. M.”2 They don’t, however, highlight my four favourite stories, which I’ll describe in more detail below…

Overall verdict: ⭐⭐⭐ (3/5)

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Michael Gilbert — The Indifferent Shot

Having produced hundreds of short stories across his career, Michael Gilbert is a staple author in crime fiction anthologies, including those published by the British Library. Of the BL anthologies I’ve read so far, my choice Gilbert selections would be “Old Mr. Martin” from The Long Arm of the Law (2017) and “Deep and Crisp and Even” from Crimson Snow (2017). To this list of favourites, I would now add “The Indifferent Shot”, first published in the Evening Standard and later collected in the Gilbert compendium Even Murderers Take Holidays.

Drawing on Gilbert’s wartime experience in the Royal Horse Artillery, “The Indifferent Shot” follows the exploits of Gunner Whittaker, who is serving ineffectively in north Germany with the 15th Regiment.3 Whittaker is “small, white-faced, untidy, self-pitying and perennially unsuccessful”. In other words, he is an unlikely murderer, as the striking opening lines inform us:

Gunner Whittaker did not look like a murderer, although a competent psychiatrist might have sounded a warning. He might have pointed out that murderers very rarely do look like murderers.

We soon learn that Whittaker’s enemy is Captain Graham, a demanding perfectionist who is unimpressed with Gunner’s slackness. When his hope of home leave is frustrated by a requirement to display competence in musketry, Whittaker determines to kill the Captain. And with a sense of poetic justice, he decides to use a rifle as his murder weapon.

The ensuing plot is excellent, with a delicious twist at the end and a perfect final line. Whittaker is a well-written character, and it is interesting to follow his thought processes as he determines to kill. There are also some wonderful descriptive sentences, which are doubtless informed by Gilbert’s experiences. I especially enjoyed the mention of Whittaker slouching along, “his beret at that indescribable angle at which only a thoroughly unhappy soldier can wear a beret”. A beret good story.

Cyril Hare — I Never Forget a Face

County court judge Cyril Hare was a regular contributor to the Evening Standard in the 1950s, and many of these stories were later included in the 1959 collection Best Detective Stories of Cyril Hare (edited, as it happens, by Michael Gilbert). The second Evening Standard anthology selected two of Hare’s stories, which are both excellent: “I Never Forget a Face” and “As the Inspector Said…” The latter of these is an inverted crime story involving Charles and Sonia’s ill-conceived plot to kill Sonia’s husband Robert. The former is a bit more unusual in its premise.

“I Never Forget a Face” opens with the narrator boasting that he never forgets a face, though he is very bad at names. And when he says he never forgets a face, he is insistent: “I can pass a chap in the street one day and recognise him again months after, though we’ve never so much as spoken to each other.” One evening, travelling home from the office by train, he finds himself seated in a carriage with a man he recognises from his home town. But, frustratingly, he can’t remember anything about the body attached to the face:

The annoying thing was that I couldn’t place the fellow, if you know what I mean. His face said Bardfield to me, as plain as print, but that was all it did say. I couldn’t hang it on to any particular thing in Bardfield—not the golf-course, nor the Red Lion, nor any of my usual haunts.

Perhaps this doesn’t sound like a very interesting premise for a story. But Hare’s narration makes it utterly compelling. It’s not a very meaty story but it is an entertaining one. Hare has taken a simple idea and executed it brilliantly; it’s the kind of story that I will probably remember a long time hence. I really should get a copy of his Best Detective Stories.4

Selwyn Jepson — Letter of the Law

I first encountered the Jepson family last year when I read Edgar Jepson’s novelisation of the stage play Arsène Lupin, as part of my “Century of Crime” project. Selwyn was Edgar’s son and he followed in his father’s literary footsteps, writing a number of thriller novels, short stories and screenplays. In 1984, he summed up his career with the comment: “I have never pretended to write anything more serious than fairy stories for grownups.”5 “Letter of the Law” became perhaps his best-known short story, as it was adapted for television for a 1965 episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, starring Richard Johnson, who once turned down the opportunity to be James Bond.6

The story’s title is a play on words, as the narrative is presented as the contents of a letter written to “My dear Mrs Browne” in August 1950. The opening paragraphs refer to the “dreadful death” of Mrs Browne’s sister, and allude to a difficult “moment of decision” that the letter-writer has faced. She wants reassurance from Mrs Browne on the course she has taken:

You can help me, if you will, by telling me that I did right. Please, if you are not alone, take this letter to your room and lock the door. And, of course, you will destroy it as soon as you have read it.

It is not immediately clear what part the writer has played in connection with Mary’s death, but in the following pages we discover exactly why her conscience is troubled.

Epistolary stories are difficult to write in a convincing and engaging way, but Selwyn Jepson proves himself ready for the challenge. The narration works well in a letter style, and I was drawn into the letter-writer’s predicament. We are led through a number of different developments before the concluding “yours sincerely”. Without hearing Mrs Browne’s response, the situation is left somewhat unresolved, which adds to the story’s impact. Will Mrs Browne agree that she did right? I guess we will never know.

Tom Lake — A Most Reliable Witness

Tom Lake is one of the more obscure writers in this anthology. In fact, I am unable to find out anything about him except for the fact that he wrote this story. “A Most Reliable Witness” was later reprinted in The Saint Detective Magazine in 1954, with the unenlightening blurb:

English writers are noted for their objective and analytical handling of stories about crime and criminals. This new, little story needed that sort of treatment, and Tom Lake, being British, shows just how it should be done.

The story opens with a weekly Friday night argument about detective fiction involving Simon Enterprise and Hall Radley, in the company of fellow club members. This Friday, however, the usual discussion is interrupted by a manufacturer of woollen goods called Bunthorpe, who makes an intriguing intrusion in the opening lines:

“It is quite possible to commit a perfect murder,” said Bunthorpe. “I might even say simple. The trouble is that, in addition to cleverness and craftsmanship, the murderer needs a degree of omniscience that no one possesses this side of heaven.”

Within the first two pages, we hear Bunthorpe’s confession that he is a murderer, that he has killed Henry Haylton for being “too far too friendly” with his wife, and that this was a perfectly executed murder. The gathered crowd listens as Bunthorpe outlines his plans for Henry’s murder and his attempt to create the perfect alibi. And when it comes to an alibi, Bunthorpe insists: “I think you chaps will agree I was cleverer than most.”

I enjoyed the unusual narrative perspective in this story. The account is written in the first-person by a club member who recounts Bunthorpe’s words. I’ve read many stories that begin with a detective retelling the history of a crime to a friend, but Tom Lake offers an interesting twist by making the murderer tell the story instead. This makes it harder to predict how the story will unfold, and when the ending comes, it is a clever one. This all leaves me wondering: Who was Tom Lake, and did he only write this one story?

Have you read any good anthologies recently? Let me know in the comments!

This week on Murder at the Manse, I’m continuing my long-term project of reading one crime novel from each year of the 20th century, in order, with no author repeats. You can read about my progress so far here.

We are currently in the mid-1920s, the era of the first appearance of the Shipping Forecast on British radio (1924), the opening of the world’s first motel in California (1925) and Agatha Christie’s 11-day disappearance (1926). This was also the period in which Philip MacDonald, John Rhode and Henry Wade produced their debut mysteries: The Rasp (1924), The Paddington Mystery (1925) and The Verdict of You All (1926). And one of them features a butler in pink pyjamas.

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I’ll be honest: I misunderstood the meaning of this title before I read the blurb. I assumed the titular rasp was a raspy voice, when in fact it’s a carpenter’s tool. The tool in question has been misused for the purposes of murder, claiming as its victim the Minister of Imperial Finance, John Hoode, who is found dead in his locked study. Anthony Gethryn, an ex-Secret Service agent who’s at a loose end, is sent to cover the case for weekly newspaper The Owl. The editor hopes that Gethryn can help to catch the murderer and thus improve The Owl’s distribution figures. Hoode’s private secretary Archibald Deacon becomes the prime suspect, but Gethryn is convinced he is innocent. With some careful investigation and a bit of romance, Gethryn succeeds in his mission of providing The Owl with a sensational scoop.

The Rasp is often cited as a classic of the genre, appearing on the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstones list and featured in Martin Edwards’ The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books.1 It was MacDonald’s debut as a solo author; he had previously co-written two books with his father Ronald MacDonald (no, not that one). It was also the debut case for MacDonald’s series detective Colonel Anthony Gethryn, who appeared in 12 books in total. As well as his detective novels, MacDonald became a successful Hollywood screenwriter and wrote many short stories, which earned him two Edgar Awards.2 The Rasp was later turned into a film, directed by Michael Powell, but this film is sadly lost. In their review, Kine Weekly said, “the atmosphere is refreshingly English, and there remains sufficient to entertain the unsophisticated.”3

Colonel Gethryn is a genteel amateur sleuth, reminiscent of E. C. Bentley’s Philip Trent. He has been successful in various different fields: in fact, we are told, “from his birth he proved a refutation of the adage that a Jack-of-all-Trades can be master of none.” Based on the initial outline of his CV in chapter two, I was concerned that I would find him extremely irritating, but actually he was an enjoyably energetic detective (except for his susceptibility to falling in love with suspects). He has a respectful relationship with the official investigator, Superintendent Boyd, who “showed none of the chagrin commonly attributed to police detectives when faced with the amateur who is to prove them fools at every turn.”

The plot is a classic detection puzzle, narrated with a brisker pace than some of MacDonald’s contemporaries. Or, at least, the pace is engaging until the penultimate chapter, which contains Gethryn’s letter of explanation. This covers 52 pages (!) in the edition I read, a full sixth of the novel. And then there’s a sickeningly saccharine final chapter. But the preceding mystery is enjoyable, and I appreciated the multiple self-conscious references to detective fiction. “Ever read detective stories, Boyd? They’re always killed in studies. Always! Ever notice that?” Or, my favourite exchange:

“As I asked you before, d’you ever read real detective stories? Gaboriau, for instance?”

“Lord, no, sir!” smiled the real detective.

Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4/5)

Read in the 1978 Remploy hardback edition

Scavenger Hunt item: Bird

Another entry on the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstones, The Paddington Mystery describes a mysterious death at 16 Riverside Gardens, Paddington, the home of Harold Merefield. Arriving home at 3am, Merefield discovers a very wet dead man lying in his bed. He does not recognise the man, and nor do others who view the body. Understandably, a cloud of suspicion hangs over our friend Harold, who solicits the assistance of Professor Lancelot Priestley. The Professor is intellectually the right person to help, but he happens to be the father of Merefield’s former fiancée, which is a bit awkward. Priestley, however, is unfazed by the potential awkwardness, and succeeds in clearing up the Paddington Mystery.

John Rhode was one of the pseudonyms of Cecil Street, whose pre-detective career included working as a propagandist for MI7.4 The Paddington Mystery was his first detective novel, introducing the world to Lancelot Priestley. Rhode clearly enjoyed writing novels, because he produced almost 150 of them, 72 starring Priestley.5 Among his other achievements, he created the Detection Club mascot Eric the Skull, which has been used in the initiation ceremony for new members.6 Street devised many technically ingenious murder plots, one of which involved using a hedgehog as a murder weapon.7 His writing style was denigrated by critic Julian Symons, who branded him a “master of the humdrum”, but the humdrum label has been redeemed by Curtis Evans, who credited Street (and his contemporaries F. W. Crofts and J. J. Connington) with “producing some of the finest works in the classical, puzzle-oriented style of the Golden Age of the British detective novel.”8

The Paddington Mystery, though, is not among these “finest works”, even in the view of John Rhode’s defenders. I’ll be honest, I’m not typically fond of armchair geniuses who solve cases with brute logic, and in this case the deduction unfolds in the midst of a fairly dull plot with limited action and several large dumps of information. Various aspects of the solution become obvious to the reader before the clever Professor reveals them. And, seeking to outdo Anthony Gethryn, the Professor reveals the whole truth in an extended explanation that covers almost 50 pages (out of 174 in total), with periodic interjections from his daughter. “Rather, Daddy!”

The main interest of the novel lies in Rhode’s descriptive writing. He gives us vivid depictions of poorer London districts in the 1920s. Inkerman Street, for example:

… had obviously been designed by its optimistic builder as a residential neighbourhood of the middle class. Its houses, though jerry-built, had at one time worn the stucco of respectability, and might have attracted the careful minds of conscientious clerks with inconveniently large families. But if such tenants had ever inhabited these rather featureless houses, they had departed long ago, and the neighbourhood had fallen from its early promise. Most of the stucco had peeled off, leaving ugly scars of dirty brickwork; the landlords, deriving what income they could from letting off rooms to the poorest classes, had very little to spend on paint…

There are a few interesting characters in these neighbourhoods, including Merefield’s Communist landlord. Sadly, though, the cast is tainted by antisemitic tropes. I should probably give Rhode another chance one day; recommendations welcome. At the very least, with all its weaknesses, reading The Paddington Mystery did add a new phrase to my vocabulary: “As cunning as a bagful of monkeys”.

Verdict: ⭐⭐ (2/5)

Read in the 2019 Collins Crime Club paperback reprint.

Scavenger Hunt item: Door

On patrol in St John’s Wood early one morning, PC Raffles is accosted by an elegant butler wearing a silk kimono and pink pyjamas. Gasping for breath, the butler announces that his master, Sir John Smethurst, has been murdered in his study. As Inspector Dobson takes up the case, two key suspects come to light. Dobson ends up favouring one suspect, while his superior officer Superintendent Fraser favours the other. One of these suspects is tried before an Old Bailey jury — but what will the verdict of them all be?

Henry Wade was the pen-name of Major Sir Henry Lancelot Aubrey-Fletcher, 6th Baronet KStJ CVO DSO, who served as Lord Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire from 1954 to 1961. With a name like that, one would guess he was no stranger to the types of country houses that regularly feature in mystery novels. During the First World War, while serving in the Grenadier Guards, Wade attended a talk on detective fiction given by author and war correspondent Valentine Williams in Belgium.9 Not long after the war, Wade decided to take inspiration from this talk, entering the crime fiction arena in 1926 with The Verdict of You All, which was praised in the Times Literary Supplement as “an exceptionally well constructed detective story.”10 This was the first of 21 novels that flowed from the Major Sir’s pen, seven of which featured his series detective Inspector Poole.

I enjoyed the double detection aspect in The Verdict of You All, as the two Scotland Yard figures pursue their different lines of inquiry. Inspector Dobson is described as “normal… in everything except his powers of observation”. In contrast, when it comes to Superintendent Fraser, “the word ‘normal’ could be applied neither to his brain nor to his body.” Dobson is an active and methodical investigator, while Fraser’s desk-based inactivity means “his figure had become enormous”, leading to him being labelled as “the Super-abundant”. I do think Henry Wade could have made greater use of this professional rivalry, but it was still an effective plot device, which left me guessing (incorrectly) whose conclusions would be vindicated.

The mystery moves at a brisk pace, with short, focussed chapters leading to an excellent finale. I agree with the comparisons Martin Edwards made in The Life of Crime: the plot is “engineered with the care of Freeman Wills Crofts” and the ending is “worthy of Berkeley”.11 As a bonus, Wade gives us some excellent characterisations. We encounter people like Algernon Hopladdy, Mr Deeping Waters and Herbert Wollop, the latter being “a small person, of a cheerful countenance and an odour redolent of the soil”. This is a very good debut novel and I look forward to wading through other parts of the author’s bibliography.

Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4/5)

Read in the 1947 Penguin paperbacks reprint.

Scavenger Hunt item: Scarf/Cravat/Necktie

Join me again soon for Part 10 of A Century of Crime, featuring The Murder at Crome House by GDH and Margaret Cole (1927), The Greene Murder Case by S. S. Van Dine (1928) and The Studio Crime by Ianthe Jerrold (1929). And then we’ll be on to the 1930s!

In 2020, eleven years into his tenure as co-presenter on the popular daytime TV quiz Pointless, Richard Osman made a much-hyped entry into the world of crime fiction.1 The Thursday Murder Club series has been a huge commercial success, which has made Richard Osman very rich and prompted publishers to search for other celebrities who might produce the next criminal bestseller.

Since 2020, the list of British celebrities who have turned their hand to crime-writing includes political journalist Robert Peston (2021), the 80s musician and Anglican priest Richard Coles (2022), ex-MP Alan Johnson (2022), comedian Bob Mortimer (2022), Britain’s answer to Judge Judy, Judge Rinder (2023), Countdown’s guardian of words, Susie Dent (2024), former news presenter Louise Minchin (2025), and radio stalwart Jeremy Vine (2025). I think it’s fair to say that some of these have been more successful than others.2

As someone who prefers their crime more vintage, I have not paid much attention to this publishing trend, but I have read books by two of these celebrities, both of whom have genuine merit as writers. So, this week on Murder at the Manse, we’ll make a voyage into the 21st-century to look at Richard Osman’s We Solve Murders (2024) and Bob Mortimer’s The Long Shoe (2025).

I started reading Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club books a few years ago (fashionably late), because my mum enjoyed the first book and gave me a copy. I ended up being pleasantly surprised. The writing was engaging, the characters felt very human and the plotting was better than I expected. Several times, I thought I had seen through Osman’s misdirection, only to discover that he was sneakier than I had given him credit for. It was enjoyable as a light read and I continued with the series, but I began to tire of Coopers Chase and the TMC formula by book 3. When We Solve Murders was published, I was intrigued to know what Osman would do with a new setting. And then my mum gave me a copy.

The detective team in We Solve Murders consists of Amy Wheeler, who travels the world as a bodyguard to the rich, and Steve Wheeler, her retired father-in-law who lives in an English village and investigates small local mysteries under the agency name Steve Investigates. While Amy is on an assignment to protect the world-famous author Rosie D’Antonio, she and Steve begin investigating why multiple clients of Amy’s security firm have been murdered. Their enquiries span multiple destinations, including South Carolina, Ireland and Dubai. At the heart of their investigation is a mysterious criminal mastermind using the alias François Loubet, who covers his tracks by using ChatGPT to rewrite his messages “in the style of a friendly English gentleman.” As the book’s title indicates, Amy and Steve do eventually solve the murders and unmask Loubet’s true identity, so everyone can live happily ever after. Except, of course, all the people who’ve been killed along the way.

Steve and Amy make an excellent pairing, with their contrasting perspectives on the situation they’ve been plunged into. Steve enjoys his quiet village life and hopes everything will be wrapped up before the pub quiz on Wednesday night. Amy thrives on adrenaline and hopes there will be a gunfight at some point. I especially warmed to Steve, whose response to being offered sushi on a private plane is to ask if he can have a Scotch egg instead. We Solve Murders shows Osman’s adeptness at creating well-developed and interesting characters, whose personalities are introduced organically through the narrative, without long information dumps.

Osman’s writing is entertaining, with wonderful dialogue and an ability to enrich scenes with minor amusing details. He follows the same style as the Thursday Murder Club novels, with short chapters (101 in total) that jump between different character perspectives, often bringing us into a new scene halfway through a conversation or a thought. At points, this style becomes grating and I found the shifts in perspective too rapid, but Osman compensates with a good amount of humour and periodic laugh-out-loud moments. I especially enjoyed the opening lines of chapter 28:

Bonnie Gregor’s influencer dream had started small.

And yet here she is, just a year later, on a train to Letchworth Garden City.

I have mixed feelings about the plot, largely because of Osman’s love of ridiculously overblown scenarios. For some readers, I realise the implausibility of the plot adds to its escapist quality. For me, though, the level of preposterousness diminished my interest in the mystery. In a world where anything can happen, I start to care less about what actually did happen. I almost gave up on page 245 for this very reason, although the engaging writing kept me going. The solution to Loubet’s identity will become clear to attentive readers before the end, but I did still admire Osman’s central attempt at misdirection.

If you want a non-demanding mystery book for the beach this summer, We Solve Murders could be a good choice. I’m not sure if I will keep reading Osman’s books, but I might be tempted back. If nothing else, I’ve left this book more convinced that Richard Osman is a really lovely guy: the Acknowledgements section is six pages long, and full of genuine gratitude, including a commendation of booksellers and librarians. Thank you, Richard, for your thankfulness.

Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐ (3/5)

As a long-term fan of surreal comedian Bob Mortimer, I was delighted when he published his first novel, The Satsuma Complex, in 2022.3 Sadly, my reading experience proved to be mildly disappointing: although I enjoyed the conversations about pies and the use of a talking squirrel as a narrative device, I wasn’t entirely convinced that Mortimer’s brand of comedy transferred well to a novel format. But when I was given a copy of his newest novel, The Long Shoe, I decided to give Mortimer a second chance. And I’m glad I did.

Our protagonist in The Long Shoe is unemployed bathroom salesman Matt, who is given an intriguing job offer, which comes with luxury accommodation in Satsuma Heights. Matt takes the new job and the new flat, hoping that his improved situation will succeed in tempting back his partner Harriet, who has recently left him, somewhat abruptly. Harriet does not immediately return and Matt’s new circumstances become increasingly puzzling. Matt attempts to solve the mystery of what really happened to Harriet and why he was really approached to take up residence in Satsuma Heights, with the help of (to quote the blurb) “a Yorkshire gangster, a luxury bathtub, his cat Goodmonson and a yoga guru.” And, of course, there’s a two-and-a-half-foot-long black leather shoe in play as well.

Bob Mortimer’s whimsical storytelling works well in The Long Shoe, which features consistently entertaining writing, right from the opening line:

The moment I woke up, it hit me. I really fancied a soft-boiled egg.

Throughout, the author displays his flair for interesting descriptions, like: “His fixed expression reminded me of a stoat experiencing its very first vinegar crisp.” Or: “Although suitable for light outdoor use, my slipper shoes were useless when it came to absorbing the impact of my feet on the hard paving stones.” Or my favourite: “Her words seemed far away, like she was shouting from inside a distant pudding.” There is plenty of quirky dialogue too.

As some of the above comments may suggest, this isn’t a book to be taken too seriously. After all, one of the back-cover endorsements comes from “Chance Baxter’s dentist”. And yet, this comic novel does still have real substance. The characters are not just two-dimensional figures serving a humorous storyline. There’s a human depth to the main cast, with ambiguous facets of their personality or life-story preventing the narrative from becoming predictable. Also, although no-one would primarily read this for the plot, the central mystery is genuinely interesting. Mortimer gives us a few good red herrings and one especially excellent piece of misdirection, which results in a shift of perspective later in the book. The author arguably relies too much on some convenient coincidences — but again, no-one primarily reads this for the plot.

If you want an amusing summer read that will make you smile, while also giving you an actual mystery with genuine characters, The Long Shoe might be worth adding to your to-read list. I primarily aim this recommendation at my British readers, as I’m not sure how well Bob Mortimer’s humour translates. Ultimately, as Doug Waffle says in his endorsement, “The shoe is terrifying and so incredibly long.”

Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4/5)

Have you been pleasantly surprised by any celebrity crime-writing? Let me know in the comments!

Having finished my chronological Dr Fell readthrough earlier this year, I decided to fill the Fell-shaped hole in my life by listening to some of the adaptations produced for BBC Radio in the 1990s. Thankfully, these adaptations were redistributed in audiobook form in 2021 and are now easily hearable through a selection of stores and streaming services.1 I don’t normally listen to radio dramas, but I’m glad I pressed play on these. They weren’t amazing audio adventures, but they did still provide an enjoyable antidote to my Fell-sickness.

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In total, eight Dr Fell dramatisations were broadcast on BBC Radio 4 between 1997 and 2001. These were directed by an experienced producer of radio crime, Enyd Williams, whose other credits include radio adaptations of 39 Agatha Christie novels. The scripts were written by Peter Ling, co-creator of the oft-maligned British soap Crossroads — but don’t let that put you off.

The episodes were initially broadcast in the coveted 2pm Wednesday slot, after The Archers. The first three productions in 1997 were 90-minute dramas in two parts: The Hollow Man, The House in Gallows Lane (a.k.a. Till Death Do Us Part) and To Wake the Dead. These were followed by a series of shorter dramas, under one hour long.2 Each episode was introduced with startlingly jaunty theme music, which would probably have been more suited to a 70s sitcom, as heard here:

The starring role was filled by Donald Sinden, an experienced actor in his 70s who was (in the words of his BBC obituary) “renowned for his rich, booming voice and commanding presence”.3 I think Sinden’s voice was a good choice for Fell, both in his speech and in his chuckle — although his utterance of “Archons of Athens” was not entirely convincing. Financial Times columnist Martin Hoyle praised his portrayal, writing that “Sinden’s evident relish as the sleuthing Dr Gideon Fell is infectious.”4 Sinden was accompanied by John Hartley as Inspector Hadley (later Superintendent Hadley). Among his other credits, Hartley appeared as various characters in several of Enyd Williams’s Agatha Christie dramatisations, as well as playing the part of Mycroft Holmes in the 1990s radio adaptations of the Sherlock Holmes stories.

Dr Fell and Inspector Hadley in conversation:

So far, I’ve listened to two of the dramas: The Hollow Man and The House in Gallows Lane.5 Despite the unnecessary title change for Till Death Do Us Part, Peter Ling’s adaptations are largely faithful to Carr’s original writings. The stories are re-told through a mixture of narration from Dr Fell, conversations between Fell and Hadley, and dramatic dialogue involving the wider cast. With a few small exceptions, events unfold in line with Carr’s original timeline and most of the main clues are preserved. The pacing of the dramatisations matches the novels too — for both, the end of Part 1 roughly corresponds with the midway point of the novels.

For the uninitiated, The Hollow Man begins in the Warwick Tavern on Museum Street, where Professor Grimaud is discussing Hungarian vampires with some friends. The conversation ends when Grimaud receives a sinister threat from an illusionist called Pierre Fley. A few nights later, Grimaud is found dead in his locked study, with no apparent way for the murderer to leave the room. This is the first of two impossible crimes: on the same night, another puzzling murder takes place in a snowy cul-de-sac, in front of eyewitnesses. For added measure, Dr Fell and Inspector Hadley are also confronted with a spooky story about three coffins in Transylvania.

The cast is sensibly downsized for the adaptation. Dr Fell’s American friend Ted Rampole is absent, with Inspector Hadley taking some of his dialogue. One of the potential suspects from Grimaud’s house is also missing. Among the supporting cast, Jillie Meers gives an especially memorable performance as Ernestine Dumont. Interestingly, her interpretation of the character includes an exaggerated continental accent, whereas in the novel Ernestine speaks “almost without accent”. Similarly, Sean Baker ensures that Pierre Fley’s “harsh, husky, and faintly foreign” voice is not faint in its foreignness. And Yorkshire-born Steve Hodson emphasises the Irishness of Michael O’Rourke, who in the novel “spoke like an American.”

Ernestine Dumont:

Pierre Fley:

Michael O’Rourke:

Overall, the cast works well together, and the interrogation scenes are well-adapted. I also appreciate a few added touches of humour. On entering the crime scene, for instance, Dr Fell lags behind the others, with the comment: “My figure is built for comfort rather than speed.” The mixture of Fell’s narration and dramatic dialogue works well, and the solution is efficiently explained. The atmosphere, though, is slightly lacking: the production takes a minimalist approach, with little sound outside of the dialogue and therefore a limited sense of location or ambience. I feel the radio play format could have been better exploited.

There’s a more significant weakness in the dramatisation’s handling of evidence. Peter Ling changes some of the wording of one character’s initial witness statement, inadvertently introducing an extra impossibility into the crime scene, which is left unresolved at the end. Dr Fell’s final explanation also relies on a few clues that are either excluded or unhelpfully abridged in the earlier narrative. An adaptation like this will obviously have to be selective around clues, but sadly I felt these inconsistencies detracted from the element of fair play. It’s still an enjoyable listen, but perhaps more of a car journey accompaniment than an evening’s entertainment.

Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐ (3/5)

I was more satisfied with The House in Gallows Lane (Till Death Do Us Part), which follows the travails of Dick Markham. A visit to the fortune teller at a local fête leads to the awkward discovery that Markham’s new fiancée, Lesley Grant, may in fact be a murderer. Unsurprisingly, this rumour is accompanied by a fresh local murder. Markham is lured to the crime scene by an eerie phone call, and discovers the victim in a locked room. Fortunately, Dr Fell is staying nearby in Hastings, so Markham can get expert advice on whether it’s safe to marry his beloved, or whether he should have proposed to Cynthia instead.

Peter Ling has again made a few character changes. Intriguingly, Superintendent Hadley has only just received his promotion from Inspector — in the novels, this happens between Death-Watch and The Hollow Man. I guess this change does give a modicum of character development between the first two radio dramas. In another intriguing change, the doctor’s name is changed from Middlesworth to Minster. More understandably, one of the potential suspects is again removed. This results in more lines for Bert Miller, who is wonderfully voiced by Brian Parr as a rustic village policeman. Among the supporting cast, I also enjoyed John Woodnutt’s colourful portrayal of Major Price.

Bert Miller:

Major Price:

This dramatisation better captures the atmosphere of the book, through both its dialogue and its added effects. This is especially noticeable in the opening scene at the fête and later in the climactic moments leading up to the murderer’s unmasking. Ling’s script also convincingly depicts the village setting, with its attendant risk of gossip and suspicion. Robert Portal, playing Dick Markham, makes a good contribution to the atmosphere with his reactions to various revelations, although his character does not fully reflect the tensely ambiguous situation Markham faces in the novel.

As far as I noticed, The House in Gallows Lane does not share The Hollow Man’s issues with distorted clueing. The script prepares for all of the elements of Fell’s summing-up and avoids any unhelpful rewording of evidence. Overall, if you want to explore the radio series, I would suggest starting with this instalment, rather than The Hollow Man. As a final comment, it’s worth noting that this drama includes the first instance of Donald Sinden uttering Fell’s immortal catchphrase “Archons of Athens!”

Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4/5)

I look forward to listening to the other 6 cases. Do you have any other detective radio dramas to recommend? Let me know in the comments!

This is the fifth instalment of my occasional Forgotten Book series, where I review some of the less-remembered items on my TBR shelves. Today, we’ll be exploring the 1925 Roy Vickers novel Four Past Four, which (as far as I’m aware) only has one other modern review online, on the Dead Yesterday blog.

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As an author, Roy Vickers is still well-remembered for a series of short stories he wrote featuring Scotland Yard’s fictional Department of Dead Ends. The Department houses an inventory of miscellaneous objects with potential connections to unsolved crimes. This random collection enables the indefatigable Inspector Rason to stumble across solutions to dead-end crimes. These cases have been described as “the best detective short stories of the 1940’s.”1 Whether you share that assessment or not, I’ve certainly enjoyed reading several of these stories. Roy Vickers was an entertaining and skilful short story writer.

Alongside these well-regarded short stories, Roy Vickers also produced a large number of mostly-forgotten novels across a forty-year career. Julian Symons, who commended the Department of Dead End stories, was less impressed with these books, writing in Bloody Murder: “Vickers wrote many crime novels from the twenties onwards, but these books bear no mark of being produced by the same man who wrote the short stories.”2 I’m not sure if Symons had read Four Past Four when he made that comment, but based on my experience, I don’t think it would have altered his judgement either way.

Four Past Four was the author’s third book to feature detective James Segrove, following The Vengeance of Henry Jarroman (1923) and Ishmael’s Wife (1924).3 First serialised in the London Evening News between March and May 1925, it was published in the UK by Herbert Jenkins later that year, but didn’t appear the other side of the Atlantic for another 20 years, when Jefferson House finally shared it with American readers in 1945. In October of that year, the novel was also included in a 3-in-1 omnibus edition distributed by the Detective Book Club, along with You’ll Be Sorry! by Samuel Rogers and The Lost Caesar by Ruth Fenisong. Vickers was a popular author for the Detective Book Club and his work featured in 12 of their triple omnibuses.4

The book’s title, Four Past Four, refers to a significant time in the so-called Barslade Case. At 4.04pm, partway through a cricket match at Barslade Manor, detective James Segrove receives a phone call from Clare Charters, a stage actress living nearby on Exmoor. Clare claims that her husband has been shot by a burglar, and then the phone call ends with a scream. Rushing to her house, Segrove hears another gunshot on his arrival at 4.24pm. In his inspection of the crime scene, it is clear that this 4.24pm shot is the one that killed Clare’s husband. No other bullet wound is found on the body, and no other bullet is discovered in the room. Clare herself has been knocked unconscious. But if the victim was shot dead at 4.24pm, why did Clare claim he was actually shot twenty minutes earlier?

Segrove is joined in his investigations by Dr. Birbeck, an American medical scientist who is also staying at Barslade Manor. They clash over their interpretation of the situation, especially the question of whether Clare is a guilty actress or an innocent widow. The other obvious suspects have solid alibis — Lord Leeford, the Lord of Barslade Manor, was speaking about horses on the radio, and Clare’s secretary Bode-Corbett was making a recording of the talk at a nearby cottage. The situation is complicated by a number of apparently contradictory clues, a shady jewellery deal, and an unexpected confession. On top of this, Dr. Birbeck doesn’t exactly help matters when he chooses to commit perjury at the inquest.

Although he does untangle all the messy threads by the end, I was not overly impressed with Segrove as a detective. His perceptiveness is accompanied by some serious errors of judgement — not least indulging Dr. Birbeck as his investigative sidekick. After one discovery later in the narrative, he is forced to admit: “I’ve made the most ghastly mistake.” There is, though, a depth to Segrove’s character, especially in his interactions with Clare Charters. Vickers enriches the interrogation scenes with Segrove’s thoughts as he analyses Clare’s character:

Obviously she was not sending for him for the purpose of telling him the truth. She was going to act. And unless he intended to tell her the truth, he would have to act too. Panic gripped him. He saw himself playing the part of himself—the Unsuspicious Detective talking to the Woman with a Secret.

These human interactions provide much-needed relief from the weight of physical evidence and accompanying discussion that Vickers provides us with. As the time-related title suggests, the investigation involves a lot of detailed analysis of times and alibis, as Segrove attempts to uncover what really happened at 4.04pm. The evidential inventory also includes multiple guns, some hydrangeas and an eye injury, as well as a chapter entitled “Mainly About Waistcoats”. For me, the complexity of detail overwhelmed the plot, detracting from some potentially more dramatic moments.

I did, though, enjoy some of the period details that Vickers provides as part of the investigation. One example is his description of the dictaphone that Bode-Corbett uses to record Leeford’s equine lecture on the wireless:

“When I speak through the speaking-tube, my voice is recorded on a wax cylinder… It struck Sir Robert Leeford that by holding the mouthpiece of the speaking-tube to the loud-speaker of a wireless set, a phonographic record would be made of whatever sounds proceeded from the loud-speaker… As I thought it possible that I might have some little trouble in connecting the dictaphone with the nearest electric lamp socket, I took a length of wire with me and a screwdriver…”

If you can persevere through the details of times and bullets, Roy Vickers does reward you with an interesting twist. This twist, though, involves a very lazy plot device, in which a key piece of evidence appears in a frankly ludicrous way. This definitely undermines the satisfaction ratings of the ending. In his contemporary New York Times review, Isaac Anderson was also unimpressed with the resolution: “The true explanation is rather hard to take, and it is based on evidence which most readers will find insufficient.”5

Having enjoyed several of Roy Vickers’ short stories, I was disappointed with Four Past Four. I will probably make another attempt with one of his later novels at some point, but I wouldn’t recommend this one. Other suggestions welcome. Or maybe I should just stick to the trusty Department of Dead Ends?

Verdict: ⭐⭐ (2/5)

Read in the 1945 Detective Book Club hardback omnibus.

Scavenger Hunt item: Clock/Timepiece

Who is your favourite fictional detective with a food-related surname? I know many of you will immediately think of Bleak House’s Inspector Bucket, who shares his name with the KFC Family Bucket. My preferred answer, though, is Sergeant Beef, the subject of today’s crime fiction report. I’ve recently been treated to a double helping of Beef and I’ve definitely been left with an appetite for more.

Sergeant Beef was one of the creations of Leo Bruce, a pseudonym of prolific writer Rupert Croft-Cooke. In contrast with the genteel detectives that often populate the pages of Golden Age crime, Beef is an unrefined darts-playing beer-drinking exponent of common-sense policing.1 He appeared in eight novels between 1936 and 1952, as well as 14 short stories.2 I enjoyed tasting a number of Beef appetisers last year in the excellent short story collection Murder in Miniature. This year seemed like an appropriate time to finally consume a few of the Beef novels that have been sitting unread on my shelves for a while: his debut, Case for Three Detectives (1936), and his final novel, Cold Blood (1952).

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Case for Three Detectives opens with a country house dinner scene, where the conversation has turned to murder. One of the diners, Alec Norris, is dismissively mocking the unrealistic artifice of detective novels:

“You, all of you, know these literary murders. Suddenly, in the middle of a party—like this one, perhaps—someone is found dead in the adjoining room. By the trickery of the novelist all the guests and half the staff are suspect. Then down comes the wonderful detective, who neatly proves that it was in fact the only person you never suspected at all. Curtain.”

Then, suddenly, in the middle of the party, someone is found dead (in a locked room, no less). Surpassing Alec’s expectations, though, we’re treated to not one wonderful detective, but three — each a thinly-disguised parody of a literary legend. Lord Simon Plimsoll, Monsieur Amer Picon and Monsignor Smith conduct their idiosyncratic investigations, in the styles of Wimsey, Poirot and Father Brown. Their endeavours are narrated by house guest Lionel Townsend, who stands in awe of their ingenious explanations. Meanwhile, lurking in the background is local bobby Sergeant Beef, who is fairly certain he’s solved the mystery within the first 50 pages. The identity of the culprit, he muses, is “as plain as the nose on your face.”

Leo Bruce wonderfully captures the character of Sergeant Beef on his first introduction. “He was a big red-faced man of forty-eight or fifty, with a straggling ginger moustache, and a look of rather beery benevolence.” When he proposes his ability to solve the crime without Scotland Yard’s help, he is derided, both by the narrator (“feeling somewhat irritated by the stolid self-importance of the man”) and by the doctor (“I suppose you’ve been in the Red Lion all the evening”). Later, his blunt questioning shocks Lionel Townsend and offends “the delicate wits” of Plimsoll, Picon and Smith. He also displays some unorthodox reasoning: as a keen darts player, he refuses to accept a suspect’s guilt because they can “put two darts out of three in the double eighteen as often as you like.”

Bruce’s three parody characters are also enjoyable. He was not the only writer in the 1930s to satirise Poirot or Wimsey: Larminie and Langslow reimagined them the following year in the scarce book Gory Knight, as M. Hippolyte Pommeau and Lord Robert Mooney.3 But Bruce’s parodies are especially witty and well-observed. Lord Plimsoll arrives appropriately in a motorcade of three Rolls-Royces, and his “cheerful and inquisitive nature” succeeds in lightening the morbid atmosphere.4 Picon is appropriately fastidious and pompous, with “a head so much and so often egg-shaped that I was surprised to find a nose and mouth in it at all.” Mgr Smith is introduced as “a small human pudding”, who makes cryptic utterances like: “Don’t you realize he called it a wash-basin?”

Bruce creates additional humour with the narrator’s various comments on detective fiction tropes. The three detectives are introduced as an example of “those indefatigably brilliant private investigators who seem to be always handy when a murder has been committed.” Their actions are described as typical for amateur detectives: “After a murder it is quite proper and conventional for everyone in the house to join the investigators in this entertaining game of hide-and-seek.” As an added bonus, we get one of the most fun floor plans in any novel I’ve read.

Impressively, Leo Bruce roots his satire in a genuinely excellent fair-play puzzle. Case for Three Detectives is not a predictable pastiche: it is an original and clever mystery, with a closed circle of suspects, a catalogue of intriguing clues, and a satisfying solution. As the plot progresses, the impatience of our narrator is infectious, as we join him in eagerly anticipating the de-mystifying of the case. It takes a master storyteller to effectively combine these elements of parody and puzzle, but Leo Bruce was definitely up to the challenge.

Why did I leave this unread on my TBR shelves for so long?

Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5/5)

Read in the 1947 Penguin paperback edition.

Scavenger Hunt item: Moon

For his final recorded case, Sergeant Beef is summoned to investigate the death of Cosmo Ducrow, a millionaire who has been battered with a croquet mallet. By this point in his career, Beef has left the force to set up as a private detective (“W. Beef, Investigations”), with Lionel Townsend as his recurring Watsonian chronicler. The pair travel to Kent to scrutinise the widespread assumption that Cosmo’s nephew Rudolf is guilty of the murder. Beef discovers an array of alternative suspects, although piecing together their movements on the fateful night proves to be a challenge. After another unfortunate death, Beef arranges an absurdly theatrical way of revealing the truth. Meanwhile, his wife waits at home wishing they could have “a little general shop somewhere so that he would not be called out to investigate these nasty messy murders.”

Much of the humour of Cold Blood derives from the uneasy relationship between Beef and Townsend. The beleaguered narrator laments the protagonist he has ended up with: “How many times in the past had I wished that I had devoted my talents as an investigator’s chronicler to someone less crude and homely in appearance, someone with more savoir faire, someone of the haute monde.” He often finds Beef exasperating, even idiotic, and concludes that the detective’s fame is solely due to Townsend’s excellent write-ups. In turn, Beef is unhappy at Townsend’s depictions of his cases: “You’ve made me look so silly in some of your books.” At points, Townsend is forced into a grudging respect for the Sergeant’s professional skill, but there is an entertaining friction throughout. They make a very enjoyable pairing.

Bruce’s wry references to detective fiction continue. He doesn’t give us parodies of the Great Detectives, although Poirot does make an appearance in conversation, when Beef asks Cosmo’s friend Theo why he has been called in as a detective:

“There’s some a lot better known than me,” Beef admitted.” Been written up better. Why didn’t you go to Poirot, for instance?”

For the first time Theo Gray looked a trifle uncomfortable.

“As a matter of fact, I did make enquiries,” he said, “but found that he was engaged on another case.”

Delightfully, Leo Bruce also provides us with a kind of “challenge to the reader” at the start of Chapter 20. At this point, Townsend asserts that he has “scrupulously told the reader all Beef knew” and poses six questions for the informed reader to answer, with a prize of a cigar for anyone who can provide the correct responses.

As with Case for Three Detectives, Bruce’s humour doesn’t come at the expense of plot. Cold Blood is not as strong a mystery as Beef’s debut, but we are still treated to another good puzzle, with some very clever bits of misdirection early in the novel. The investigation has some interesting variety and involves a mix of intriguing characters. I also enjoyed the dramatic moment of revelation, especially in the way it was narrated by Townsend. And there are lots of beautiful descriptions, such as the moment when “the room resounded to that curious mixture of gurgling and suction which suggests that policemen are enjoying hot tea.”

I definitely need some more helpings of Sergeant Beef.

Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5/5)

Read in the 1980 Academy Chicago paperback edition.

Scavenger Hunt item: Blunt instrument

I was recently enticed into reading two books by American author Peter Swanson, based on a Publishers Weekly promise that “classic whodunit fans will be in heaven” and a cover blurb from Peter May announcing “a clever homage to the Golden Age of mystery.” The books in question were Eight Perfect Murders (aka Rules for Perfect Murders, 2020) and Nine Lives (2022).1 Both novels have interesting premises, and contain a number of nods to classic detection. But did I enjoy the heavenly experience that Publishers Weekly promised? Keep reading to find out…

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In 2004, fictional Boston bookseller Malcolm Kershaw wrote a blogpost called “Eight Perfect Murders”, which has now become the subject of an FBI inquiry. There’s nothing nefarious in the blogpost itself: it’s merely a list of eight works of crime fiction “in which the murderer comes closes to realizing that platonic ideal of a perfect murder.” The titles include Malice Aforethought by Francis Iles, The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie and Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith.2 So why the FBI interest? Well, it seems that someone is now re-enacting each of the murders on the list, one by one. Malcolm Kershaw undertakes his own investigation to work out how the murders are connected, and whether someone is trying to send him a message.

The novel is presented as the first-person memoir of Kershaw, but we soon discover he won’t be an entirely reliable narrator. In the first chapter, he mentions that he has lost his interest in crime fiction, but “it’s not something I can talk about.” He continues being evasive about other parts of his life history too, before telling us what we had already guessed: “I have more to do with these crimes than I’ve been letting on.” Through the rest of the book, Kershaw remains an ambiguous character and we are left to discern how suspicious we should be. This was definitely one of the strengths of the book: Swanson has created an intriguing narrator whose personal history adds an extra layer of mystery to the writing.

I have mixed feelings about the plot itself. With the early mention of The ABC Murders and the Publishers Weekly promise, I was hoping for a clever twist on classic detective fiction. Sadly, my hopes were not entirely realised. Although Eight Perfect Murders draws inspiration from various vintage mysteries, it’s not packaged as a whodunnit puzzle, but as a straightforward thriller with an over-the-top ending. It’s a well-paced thriller, but the investigation elements are somewhat weak and the revelation of the murderer’s identity is unsatisfying because of the lack of meaningful clues.

Eight Perfect Murders has another characteristic that will frustrate many classic crime readers: Swanson insists on including egregious spoilers of some vintage mysteries, without advance warning.3 If you haven’t read The Red House Mystery, The ABC Murders, And Then There Were None or The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Swanson will spoil them all for you, along with lesser-known works like John D. MacDonald’s The Drowner (1963), Ira Levin’s play Deathtrap (1978) and Donna Tartt’s The Secret History (1992). For some readers, that will be reason enough to avoid this book. Thankfully, I had already read all but one of the books from Kershaw’s list that I plan to; I had to skip a few paragraphs to avoid any unwanted revelations about Strangers on a Train.

Overall, this wasn’t as engaging a read as I initially hoped. And I definitely disagree with Publishers Weekly: classic whodunit fans won’t necessarily be in heaven when reading this book. But if you want a bibliophilic thriller with some nods to classic crime and an interesting narrator, you may enjoy this more than I did.

Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐ (3/5)

Matthew Beaumont. Jay Coates. Ethan Dart. Caroline Geddes. Frank Hopkins. Alison Horne. Arthur Kruse. Jack Radebaugh. Jessica Winslow. Nine people who have at least one thing in common: They’ve all received a single sheet of paper through the post containing a list of these nine names. Some are tempted to ignore the letter as a random computer error, but the list proves to be more sinister when the nine recipients start getting murdered. The FBI desperately attempts to protect the potential victims, discover a possible connection between the nine lives, and stop the murderer before the list is 100% deceased.

As with Eight Perfect Murders, it’s an intriguing set-up and there are some very clever aspects to the plot. Swanson makes good use of dramatic irony, especially with a few of the names on the list. There is also one particularly excellent twist, where we discover a perspective-shifting fact about one of the characters. Despite the frequent shifts of narrative viewpoints, the nine main characters are distinct enough to follow their various paths without getting confused. And the final explanation of the list is satisfying, even if the last chapter is anticlimactic.

Contrary to Peter May’s blurb, though, I wouldn’t describe Nine Lives as “a clever homage to the Golden Age of mystery.” It is clearly inspired by And Then There Were None, which gets several mentions in the book. But, like Eight Perfect Murders, it’s essentially a modern thriller with some references to classic crime, and a couple of borrowed plot points. It definitely has merits as a thriller, but I suspect many Golden Age mystery fans would share my dissatisfaction. And some would be unhappy that Swanson again includes spoilers for The ABC Murders.

Arguably, the in-plot comparison to And Then There Were None highlights some of the book’s weaknesses. Like Christie’s book, Nine Lives is told through a series of short chapters shifting between different character perspectives. But Swanson’s novel lacks the strong foreboding atmosphere that Christie sustained on Soldier Island. There is one character whose storyline involves significant tension, but otherwise the letter recipients seem remarkably unbothered about being marked for death. The distance between the characters, and the lack of a closed circle of suspects, doesn’t help in terms of tension either.

At the end of Nine Lives, my conclusion is: Peter Swanson is probably not an author I’ll return to, regardless of what seductive promises his book jackets may contain. I’m not claiming these are bad books; in fact, for the right kind of reader, they would be very good books. But sadly, I don’t think “classic whodunit fans” are the right kind of reader.

Verdict: ⭐⭐ (2/5)

After 2 years, I’ve reached the end of my chronological readthrough of John Dickson Carr’s 23 novels featuring Dr Fell, the shovel-hat sleuth with the bandit’s moustache. Archons of Athens!

At his peak, Carr was a definite master of the locked-room mystery genre who thoroughly deserves his reputation. I’ve enjoyed being entertained by his combination of fiendish puzzles, grotesque atmospheres and wild humour. Later in his career, his mystery powers faded, but even his worst novels have merit and I reached the end of my readthrough without abandoning any books or even giving any a solitary star rating.

Like many bibliophiles, I enjoy making lists, so for the benefit of my lovely Substack readers, here is my official ranking of Dr Fell’s cases. I hope at least a few of my rankings are controversial.

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23. Dark of the Moon (1967)

The final Fell case also proved to be my least favourite. There are a lot of promising ingredients, including a missing scarecrow, a piratical ghost and an intriguing impossible murder, but getting through the novel is hard work.

22. The Case of the Blind Barber (1934)

Novel #4 provided the first moment of disappointment in the Dr Fell canon. Carr presents us with a chaotic adventure aboard the Queen Victoria (the ship, not the monarch). A confusing farce rather than an enjoyable mystery.

21. Below Suspicion (1949)

Poisonings, Satanic rites, marijuana and billiard room brawls. And don’t forget the insufferable Patrick Butler. Reviewer Maurice Richardson summed it up well: “Mr. Dickson Carr is entitled to an off day if ever anyone was.”

20. In Spite of Thunder (1960)

Someone who is suspected of causing a historic death attempts to clear her name, but only manages to cause another death. A promising premise that unfolds in a less promising (but highly emotional) way.

19. The House at Satan’s Elbow (1965)

Justice Wildfare’s ghost has been stalking his Hampshire home at Satan’s Elbow, with unfortunate results for the current residents. An ok mystery, with the highlight being the classic line: “Come off it, my pretty; enough of this rannygazoo.”

18. Panic in Box C (1966)

A theatrical mystery that combines a clever plot with mediocre writing. The murder is delayed by excessive trivia about crossbows and fencing and Romeo and Juliet, though it does lead to a satisfying finish in an amusement park’s ghost ride.

17. The Dead Man's Knock (1958)

Dr Fell returns after a 9-year hiatus to solve a mystery related to an unwritten novel by Wilkie Collins. The Collins lore is interesting, and the puzzle is good, but the underwhelming atmosphere and confusing characters drag the plot down.

16. The Mad Hatter Mystery (1933)

A murder at the Tower of London, a strange mystery involving hats, an Edgar Allen Poe manuscript theft and a mysterious voice. There’s a lot to keep track of here, to the point of overwhelm, but it all leads to a great solution.

15. The Arabian Nights Murder (1936)

The 7th Dr Fell case doesn’t actually involve much Dr Fell, as the mystery of the murder in the museum is recounted, Wilkie Collins style, by three different detectives. A good read, but it would have been better with more Fell.

14. The Seat of the Scornful (1941)

A Devonshire mystery, which asks the question: “Was the judge himself a killer?” Justice Ireton is a fascinating character, and the plot is enjoyable — until the last few chapters, that is.

13. Death-Watch (1935)

A man is murdered with the minute hand of a large clock, in circumstances replete with coincidences. A good read with a wonderfully chaotic first half, though the second half is less enjoyable.

12. The Sleeping Sphinx (1947)

On his return to civilian life, Donald Holden discovers he is officially dead and the love of his life is reputedly insane. The ensuing mystery may not be mind-blowing, but it has a suitably macabre atmosphere and a memorable locked-room puzzle.

11. The Man Who Could Not Shudder (1940)

Longwood House — the kind of place where the butler swings from a chandelier, a clock resumes ticking after a long silence, and a pistol jumps off the wall and fires a fatal shot. Largely forgettable characters, but an engaging investigation.

10. The Problem of the Wire Cage (1939)

Frank Dorrance’s dead body is found in the middle of a tennis court. His fiancée Brenda and a man called Hugh cause chaos for the official investigation. A fun mystery with an interesting structure, and a fairly outrageous solution.

9. The Eight of Swords (1934)

It all begins with a bishop sliding down the banisters and a poltergeist attacking someone with a bottle of ink. A good performance from Dr Fell, with some wonderful fourth-wall breaking, though the final exposition is disappointingly brief.

8. The Crooked Hinge (1937)

John Farnleigh has his identity challenged by someone claiming to be the real John Farnleigh, and then one of them is killed in impossible circumstances. Yes, the plot is a bit ridiculous and the ending isn't entirely fair, but it’s still magnificent.

7. Hag's Nook (1932)

A brilliant introduction to the old lexicographer, as he investigates a supposed family curse. An unsettling atmosphere, with a sprinkling of humour and romance, and a strong mystery.

6. To Wake the Dead (1938)

Christopher Kent tries to steal some breakfast from a hotel, and ends up discovering a dead body. Awkward. This embarrassing mistake launches a fabulously convoluted mystery, which becomes increasingly elaborate and perplexing.

5. He Who Whispers (1946)

The first post-war Fell novel, in which Miles Hammond accidentally employs a murder suspect as his librarian. An intriguing mix of cold case and present danger, with some great surprises and clever pieces of misdirection.

4. The Case of the Constant Suicides (1941)

Angus Campbell has fallen to his death from a locked room in a castle tower: Was it suicide, accident or murder? The search for an answer involves a delicious mix of mystery and humour, with a nice incorporation of the wartime setting.

3. Till Death Do Us Part (1944)

Dick Markham finds himself wrestling with the age-old question: Am I engaged to a murderous psychopath? Carr cleverly obscures the true answer to this question, giving several false moments of clarity before the satisfying solution is revealed.

2. The Problem of the Green Capsule (1939)

Marcus Chesney is murdered during a demonstration of the fallibility of eyewitness testimony. The test he has prepared leaves multiple layers of clues to untangle. A nicely plotted mystery, with a mild taste of the macabre.

1. The Hollow Man (1935)

This is Carr at his best — two impossible crimes, an increasingly baffling mystery, and an outlandish solution, carefully explained by pointing out all the clues you had no hope of piecing together. Plus, you get Dr Fell’s famous lecture as a bonus. What’s not to like?

Do you have any major disagreements with my rankings? Let me know in the comments!

I’ve finally reached the end of my chronological read-through of John Dickson Carr’s 23 Dr Fell novels. By this point in his career, Carr had moved permanently to Greenville, South Carolina, where he remained until his death in 1977. After the final Fell investigation, he wrote four further historical mysteries, the last of which was published in 1971. I approached Panic in Box C and Dark of the Moon with some trepidation, aware that the quality of Carr’s output was in decline in the 1960s. This decline is definitely evident in both books, although his mystery-writing powers have not completely waned, and my readthrough has concluded without me awarding any Dr Fell mysteries one star out of five.1

One of the features of both novels is Carr’s widespread use of nicknames for key characters, including Dr Fell, who is variously called Magister, Maestro and Gargantua. Another character, who has the biblical-sounding name Josephus, is given a bewildering array of nicknames, including The Prophet Ezekiel, Hezekiah and Judas Maccabaeus. The title of this Substack post comes from a delightful line in Dark of the Moon where Fell is described as “that blundering man-mountain.”

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Margery Vane is sitting in Box C in the recently renovated Mask Theatre in Richbell, Connecticut, observing the dress rehearsal for her company’s performance of Romeo and Juliet. During Act 3, Scene 1 (“a plague a both your houses”), the sound of a crossbow shot pierces the atmosphere. Margery Vane herself turns out to be the victim, impaled by a crossbow bolt in her locked theatre box. The theoretical suspects all seem to have alibis. Dr Fell, who is in the United States for a lecture tour, is thankfully on hand to solve the case, accompanied by his writer friend Philip Knox. As the police lieutenant remarks to Fell: “This is the battiest thing I ever came across; it’s crazy enough to suit even you.”

Carr succeeds in creating a suitably theatrical atmosphere in Panic in Box C, both in the theatre scenes and in the denouement, where the murderer is tracked down in a ghost ride at an amusement park. As the protagonist pursues the perpetrator, “a screech of metallic laughter rang through the cavern; an electrically illuminated devil-face swooped at them and then vanished.” The solution to the locked-box murder is also clever: in his Sunday Times review, Julian Symons praised it as “characteristically ingenious”.2

The plot is hindered, however, by some of Carr’s more mediocre writing. There are long sections that feel somewhat directionless and Carr insists on giving us excessive detail about the staging of Romeo and Juliet, the history of crossbows, the career of Stonewall Jackson and the rules of fencing. With all this trivia, we have to wait until page 109 until we get a murder. The ensuing investigation suffers from some juvenile banter and poor attempts at humour. Carr also excessively drags out the detective’s cryptic refusal to name the murderer. At this point in his career, Carr clearly still has a flair for plotting, but he doesn’t seem to have the same verve.

As a final note, Panic in Box C features the first mention of the elusive Mrs Fell since The Problem of the Wire Cage in 1939 (though she remains very much off-page). I wonder how different Dr Fell’s investigations would have been if Mrs Fell had been given a more prominent role. Maybe there’s a spin-off TV series there somewhere.

Verdict: ⭐⭐ (2/5)

Read in the 1970 Pan Books paperback edition.

For his final case, Dr Gideon Fell is summoned to Maynard Hall, the home of Henry Maynard, where there’s been some “funny business”, including the theft of a scarecrow. On his journey, Fell discovers that the family has been haunted by a vengeful 17th-century pirate, who (legend has it) is responsible for two mysterious deaths: two previous Maynards were beaten to death without the perpetrator leaving any footprints on the soft ground nearby. Rather predictably, history seems to repeat itself, as Henry Maynard’s bludgeoned corpse is discovered on the footprint-free sandy terrace of Maynard Hall. It seems Maynard was justified in summoning Dr Fell, though sadly he’s not alive to appreciate his vindication.

In many ways, Dark of the Moon is a very appropriate end to the Dr Fell canon, as the author has filled the narrative with a lot of signature plot elements. We have a historical legend, which looms ominously over present-day events. There are rumours of the supernatural and eerie scenes in an abandoned school. A scarecrow is stolen and mysterious messages appear on a blackboard. And there’s a marvellously impossible murder at the centre of everything.

And yet, despite all of these elements, Carr struggles to make the mystery interesting. Henry Maynard remains alive until page 88, by which point the reader has had to wade through a large amount of slow-paced exposition. Carr’s enthusiasm for trivia means the novel occasionally turns into a tourist guide to Charleston or a history lesson on the Civil War. Some of the dialogue is painfully awkward, with one character, for example, declaring: “The five of us went to the library, which is the big room to the left of the front door and down four steps, with the books behind wire gratings and early Victorian furniture padded in yellow satin.” The ingredients for a good mystery are all there, but the recipe has turned out stodgy.

The ending does provide some reward for the persistent, showing Carr still had a talent for misleading readers and surprising them with unexpected revelations. But I’m not sure I would recommend this book to anyone except Carr completists. Edmund Crispin was still a fan of Dark of the Moon, arguing in his Sunday Times review: “The old magic still works.”3 However, I’m more inclined to echo the summary from biographer Douglas Greene: “Not much happens in the book, and none of the characters are very interesting.”4

Verdict: ⭐⭐ (2/5)

Read in the 1970 Corgi Books paperback edition.

And so, we reach an emotional moment as our journeys with Dr Fell come to an end. My next detective readthrough will involve the investigations of Inspector French, the creation of Freeman Wills Crofts, who appeared in 29 novels between 1924 and 1957. But first, check back next week (or maybe the week after, I haven’t decided yet) for my full ranking of all 23 Dr Fell novels!

As Mrs Manse approaches the end of her teacher training course, it seemed appropriate to borrow a copy of the 2024 British Library anthology Lessons in Crime, featuring 15 stories set in the world of education. Surprisingly, none of the stories are set in Welsh comprehensive schools. Instead, about half take place in English private school settings, where college walls often enclose a volatile atmosphere of rivalries and tensions. There are also a handful of crimes at university, one at an adult education centre, and a story about a resident governess with an Oxford MA to her name. I had read three of the stories before, but the rest were new to me.1

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As Martin Edwards notes in his introduction, the relative profusion of private rather than state school settings in classic crime is largely explained by the fact that “authors were writing about what they knew.” Many Golden Age writers were formed in a fairly elite educational milieu. The contents of this anthology are noticeably dominated by private school graduates: H. C. Bailey (City of London School), Arthur Conan Doyle (Stonyhurst College), Henry Wade (Eton College), Dorothy L. Sayers (Godolphin School), Michael Gilbert (Blundell’s School), E. W. Hornung (Uppingham School), Michael Innes (Edinburgh Academy), Malcolm Gair (Stewart’s College), Colin Watson (Whitgift School) and Edmund Crispin (Merchant Taylors’ School). Bailey, Wade, Sayers, Innes and Crispin are also all Oxford graduates.

This anthology is, chronologically speaking, an unusual addition to the British Library Crime Classics series: most of the stories were written post-1950 and the best represented decade is the 1970s. One of the most recent tales is by Jacqueline Wilson, who I was surprised to find in a crime anthology. I only know Wilson as a children’s novelist, responsible for titles such as The Story of Tracy Beaker, The Suitcase Kid and Girls in Love. It was interesting to learn that she began her career in the 1970s with a series of psychological crime novels. In fact, Martin Edwards argues, “it’s entirely possible that, had she continued to work in the genre, she would have rivalled Ruth Rendell.”

Although I enjoyed the strong unifying theme of this collection, I found the overall quality of stories lower than average for a British Library anthology. A few are especially uninteresting, namely those by E. W. Hornung (who I often struggle with), Malcolm Gair (who gives the game away with his title) and Edmund Crispin (a controversial opinion, perhaps). There are still a number of very good stories, though — I’ll write about my three favourites below.

Michael Innes — Lesson in Anatomy (1946)

Michael Innes was well-placed to write academic mysteries, as a long-term lecturer in English in Leeds, Adelaide, Belfast and Oxford.2 Under his real name (J.I.M. Stewart) he produced scholarly works on Shakespeare, Joyce, Kipling, Conrad and Hardy. While en route to Australia to take up a professorship in 1935, he completed his first detective novel, Death at the President’s Lodging, in which Inspector Appleby investigates a murder at the fictitious St. Antony's College. Academic settings recur regularly in his work, including The Weight of the Evidence (1943), Operation Pax (1951), and Old Hall, New Hall (1956).

In “Lesson in Anatomy”, first published in 1946 in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and reprinted in Appleby Talking (1954), we find ourselves in the anatomy theatre of Nessfield University.3 Professor Finlay is presenting his highly-anticipated final lecture of the year, the one time where “he yielded his taste for the dramatic.” Each year, the lecture is accompanied by pranks from the students, on this occasion including the release of a vulture. Partway through Finlay’s anatomy lesson, the theatre is suddenly plunged into darkness. When the lights are reilluminated, the cadaver has been replaced by the Professor’s own dead body. Detective-Inspector John Appleby is called in to dissect the evidence.

From the very first page, it’s clear that we’re in for a treat, as Innes conjures up a bizarre and chaotic atmosphere in the formalin-scented theatre. The story is packed with vivid descriptions, including some appropriate gruesomeness. We are introduced to an eccentric cast of characters, including Albert the disapproving dissecting-room attendant and Sir David Evans, “Nessfield’s very Welsh Vice-Chancellor”. Innes provides us with a satisfying amount of investigation for a short story, including a dramatic reconstruction, all leading to a clever solution. I wasn’t overly enamoured with Death at the President’s Lodging, but I’ve been more impressed with Innes’ short story output, and this is a particularly enjoyable example.4

Joyce Porter — Dover Goes to School (1978)

Joyce Porter is an author who is completely new to me. Born in the Cheshire village of Marple, which gave its name to Christie’s second-best sleuth, Porter spent 14 years in the Women’s Royal Air Force before devoting herself to full-time writing.5 She specialised in comic crime, with her first three novels introducing DCI Wilfred Dover, an outrageously unprofessional detective whose CV is summed up in the first book with the words: “The fact that his career as a detective had endured, and even flourished in a mild way, was almost entirely due to the fact that most criminals, incredible as it may seem, were even more inept and stupid.” Dover appeared in 10 novels and 11 short stories, collected in 1995 under the exotic name Dover: The Collected Short Stories.

The 1978 case “Dover Goes to School”, first published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, opens in a bathroom at Skelmers Hall College, an adult education centre where a small cohort has gathered for a weekend course on iconography under the tutelage of Professor Ross. One of the students, Rupert Andrews, is now lying on the bathroom floor, murdered. Andrews was not well-liked, so there is a long list of potential motives among the weekend guests of Skelmers Hall, including Professor Ross, “who moved with the preternatural leisureliness of a giraffe”, and Miss Betsy Gallop, “a woman of strong character, loud voice, and a distinct aroma of goat”.

I’m not sure if I could cope with a novel-length case with DCI Dover, but in a short burst, his disagreeable demeanour is wonderfully entertaining. He’s described as someone who “really worked at being ungracious” and “liked seeing people squirm”, and also enjoyed a “preprandial nap but his superiors at the Yard had been hounding him a bit recently.” I also enjoyed the unique setting, which made a change from the private schools and universities elsewhere in the collection. Underneath the humour, there was still a serious and satisfying mystery, with suspicions shifting between the different guests. In fact, I enjoyed this so much I’ve added the collected short stories to my wishlist.

Miriam Sharman — Battle of Wits (1967)

Miriam Sharman is another author I had not encountered before. Interestingly, her first novel, Death in Seven Hours, was set in a girls’ school. Published in 1952 under her pseudonym Stratford Davis, it was then adapted by the author as a screenplay, released on the big screen in 1953 as Death Goes to School. Martin Edwards highlights an amusing line in the film, where a suspect comments that during the time of the murder they were busy reading a thriller called Death in Seven Hours! Her 1967 story “Battle of Wits”, first published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, was itself later adapted for television by Roger Marshall, as an episode of Orson Welles’ Great Mysteries.6

The story’s “battle of wits” is a face-off between a headmaster and a father. Richard Lumsden’s tenure at the school has come to an end and he is about to head to the airport for “a leisurely tour abroad”. A man arrives, giving the name Gregory Dean, and confronts Lumsden about a boy who had been expelled. To make matters worse, “he was hatless, an informality that brought a frown to the headmaster’s brow.” From the headmaster’s perspective, the boy was “an incorrigible thief”, but the father is distressed by the unforeseen consequences of the expulsion. He has now come to take revenge. The two men engage in a mental tug-of-war as Lumsden attempts to thwart the intruder’s plans. Will he succeed?

This is a thrillingly tense story that unfolds in just a single scene with two characters. The pacing is perfect: After an unassuming opening, Sharman gradually increases the tension by revealing the background to the father’s visit. She then cleverly maintains the suspense as the battle of wits unfolds. There is one particularly taut section where, within the space of a few pages, I changed my mind multiple times about how the battle would end. The tension then slackens for a short while before the final few paragraphs, which are masterful. Sadly, I think Miriam Sharman only wrote a handful of short stories. I’d be interested to see how her talents transferred to novel-length thrillers.

Overall verdict: ⭐⭐⭐ (3/5)

Have you read Lessons in Crime? Which were your favourite stories? Let me know in the comments!

I’m still relatively new to the world of Japanese detective fiction and its Golden Age-inspired genres of honkaku (orthodox) and shin honkaku (neo-orthodox). I’ve read enough, though, to know that I need to read more. So, on a recent holiday to Torquay, I took the opportunity to read two classic Japanese crime novels, both of which are set at New Year (or Shōgatsu) family gatherings: Murder at Mt. Fiji by Shizuko Natsuki (1982) and The Man Who Died Seven Times by Yasuhiko Nishizawa (1995).

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“I’ve just stabbed Grandpa to death.” Those are never words you want to hear at a new year family gathering, especially when you have as influential a name as the Wada dynasty. When 22-year-old Chiyo confesses that she has killed the family patriarch in an act of self-defence, the Wada clan move into damage limitation mode to protect Chiyo and preserve the family’s reputation and pharmaceutical business. Jane Prescott, an American friend who is assisting Chiyo with her graduate thesis, is also drawn into the conspiracy. The houseguests create an alibi for Chiyo and lay an elaborate trail of false clues suggesting the murder is the work of an unknown outsider. When the police arrive, the false narrative starts to unravel, and Jane begins to question if there is more to the story.

Murder at Mt. Fiji was something of an impulse buy from the Torquay branch of Waterstone’s. I had never heard of the book or its author, but Mrs Manse saw it on the special offer table and our daughter liked the pink cover. Shizuko Natsuki was actually a prolific writer, who produced more than 80 novels, and who has been dubbed (somewhat against her wishes) the “Agatha Christie of Japan”.1 Interestingly, one of the novels that first gave her an interest in mystery fiction was The Red Redmaynes by Eden Phillpotts, which I reviewed here last week.2

Originally published in 1982, Murder at Mt. Fiji was the first of Natsuki’s novels to be translated into English, back in 1984. In translation, the novel’s title was changed from The Tragedy of W (a nod to Ellery Queen) to a more marketable moniker. Chiyo’s friend was also replaced with an American character to appeal to foreign readers — a decision made by the author, not (as often assumed) by the translator.3 Robert B. Rohmer’s original translation has been reprinted by Penguin this year, introducing Natsuki to a new generation of English-speaking honkaku readers. Including me.

As with most novels that the Washington Post describes as “Christie-like”, the resemblance to Christie’s oeuvre is limited. The book does begin with a Christie-esque train journey into a snowy location, where a closed family circle is disrupted by a corpse. But after chapter 2, the plot heads in a less orthodox direction. TomCat at Beneath the Stains of Time suggests the book is more reminiscent of Anthony Berkeley, and I think that’s a fair comparison. We enter an unusual inverted mystery, where the family expend great energy trying to cover their tracks, with slightly farcical (in a good way) overtones. As their subterfuge is exposed, we are treated to further twists in the plot, with some sections narrated from the perspective of the investigators and some from the viewpoint of the coveruppers. It’s an entertaining structure.

Among the characters, I especially enjoyed the pairing of Detective Nakazato and Superintendent Aiura. Nakazato, with his “enormous head and protruding belly”, is formed in the classic detective mould, meticulously observant and perceptive. He has a habit of asking seemingly tangential questions, as a way of “amassing the fine details, so that later he could sift through them for discrepancies that might provide clues.” Aiura, in contrast, is full of self-confidence but somewhat lacking in substance. He is desperate to be in the limelight and is more concerned with his reputation than the actual truth of the case. Natsuki provides some excellent moments of humour as we see Aiura making bombastic statements that he later has to retract.

The book has a very good plot at its core, though sadly the denouement doesn’t match the expectations of the superb set-up. Natsuki rushes us through much of the investigation and leads us to a disappointing ending. We get an out-of-place thriller sequence, an artificial expositional monologue, a gratuitous kiss, and a climax that a careful detective like Nakazato would never actually allow. That said, this is still a very entertaining mystery, and worth picking up if you want to broaden your honkaku horizons. I’m very glad Mrs Manse spotted it, and I’m pleased to see that Penguin are following this up with the author’s Murder at Lake Ashinoko later this year.4

Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4/5)

Hisataro Oba is not your average 16-year-old. He has a “condition” that means he experiences random days on a loop, each day recurring a total of nine times. The final loop becomes the definitive version of that day, and only Hisataro has any memory of what happened in the previous 8 iterations. This condition is especially valuable when your grandfather is murdered and you have multiple opportunities to try to prevent his death. In The Man Who Died Seven Times, we follow Hisataro’s repeated unsuccessful attempts to interpret the clues, discover the culprit and derail the murderer. In the process, he unearths a lot of hidden truths about his family members, who have gathered for an important new year inheritance-related announcement.

The Man Who Died Seven Times is the first of Yasuhiko Nishizawa’s books to be translated into English, courtesy of Pushkin Vertigo last year. Nishizawa was a Christmas Day baby, who produced several novels that blended sci-fi and mystery, with plot devices including teleportation, mind-reading, telekinesis, time manipulation and reanimation.5 The Man Who Died Seven Times was his third book, published in 1995 and nominated for the Mystery Writers of Japan Award for Best Novel. It has now been translated for an English-speaking audience by Jesse Kirkwood, whose other translation work has included Seichō Matsumoto’s Tokyo Express and Akimitsu Takagi’s The Noh Mask Murder.6 Sadly, Nishizawa died just a few months after the translation was published.7

The Man Who Died Seven Times essentially divides into three parts. After an introductory chapter giving us a glimpse of the puzzling crime scene, the first third of the book is devoted to introducing us to Grandfather Fuchigama’s family. Fortunately, we have a family tree to help us. The narrator gradually outlines the family’s dysfunctional relationships and his grandfather’s eccentric new year convocations, where the family members are told who has been selected as heir to the Fuchigama restaurant empire. These opening chapters are effective in laying the foundations for later character dynamics and motives, although it sometimes feels like an info dump.

Most of the rest of the book follows Hisataro through the successive iterations of the fateful day, with chapter titles like “The Murder Happens”, “The Murder Happens Again” and “The Murder Keeps Happening”. Hisataro is an entertaining narrator, and we watch with a growing sense of resignation as his apparently flawless plans prove to have fatal (literally) flaws. The plot unfolds in a playful way, with humour deriving from the character interactions, Hisataro’s observations and the frustrating stubbornness of the time loop. Throughout, Nishizawa prompts us to share Hisataro’s nagging sense that something more is wrong, highlighting details that seem out of place (why isn’t Runa wearing earrings?), the significance of which is not immediately obvious. Even with the inevitable time-loop repetition, Nishizawa does a good job of avoiding repetitiveness, and the central section remains engaging. It’s definitely a fun narrative.

At the end of the narrative, we get three chapters after the time loop, which provide a surprise resolution — although, to my mind, not an entirely satisfying one. At this point, I must dissent from the high praise some of my friends have afforded the novel. I felt the resolution was seriously underwhelming. And then there’s the final chapter, which begins with the sentence, “This is where the story should end.” Sadly, Nishizawa continued for another five terrible pages. Perhaps at this point, I could also mention the disturbing amount of romance between first cousins, and the unsettling relationship situations the author places the 16-year-old protagonist in.

As you may have picked up, I have mixed feelings about this book. It is a clever concept and an entertaining read, with many delightful moments. But it ultimately didn’t provide the reading experience I was hoping for. Your mileage may vary though — if you’re intrigued by the premise and want to read something a bit different with a time-loop twist, maybe Yasuhiko Nishizawa will be exactly what you’re looking for.

Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐ (3/5)

Have you read any Japanese mysteries recently? Let me know any recommendations in the comments!

I’m continuing my long-term mission to read one crime novel from every year of the 20th-century, in order, without repeating an author. I’ve now reached the more familiar territory of the 1920s. In this instalment of A Century of Crime, we make two separate forays into the Devonshire moorland known as Dartmoor, which has a special place in my imagination as I grew up nearby. Our items for study this week are The Ponson Case by Freeman Wills Crofts (1921), The Red Redmaynes by Eden Phillpotts (1922) and The Abbey Court Murder by Annie Haynes (1923) — the last of which sadly doesn’t feature the UK’s greatest national park.1

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The body of wealthy industrialist Sir William Ponson is dragged out of the River Cranshaw, near his home at Luce Manor. Initially assumed to be either suicide or accident, the forensic evidence soon suggests murder. There are two obvious suspects, who gain financially and personally from Ponson’s death, but they both have apparently watertight alibis. Inspector Tanner of Scotland Yard is called in to probe these alibis, leading to an arrest halfway through the book. The arrestee’s fiancée is (unsurprisingly) unhappy with this state of affairs and decides to conduct her own investigations with the help of a solicitor. Tanner’s ongoing investigations take him down to Dartmoor, and then to Portugal, where all is revealed.

As I’ve been pursuing my “Century of Crime” mission, I’ve been sampling many new authors for the first time. Freeman Wills Crofts, however, is a writer I am already very familiar with and very fond of, and I imagine his name is familiar to many (most?) of my Substack readers. If not, don’t worry, because you’ll be hearing a lot more about him in the coming months: once I’ve finished my chronological Dr Fell readthrough, I’ll be conducting a similar journey through the 29 novel-length cases solved by Crofts’ series detective Inspector French. The Ponson Case is the second of the four novels Crofts wrote before creating his great detective.

Inspector Tanner is in many ways a precursor to Inspector French, sharing the latter’s thorough, painstaking approach, leaving no stone unturned in an attempt to verify or expose alibis. As with his later books, Crofts brings us into the inspector’s ratiocinations as we follow the logical course of his investigation, step-by-step — including the dead ends and cul-de-sacs. For some readers, the detail will be tiresome, but for fans of Crofts’ style, The Ponson Case is a very good mystery. I would say that Tanner is slightly less agreeable than French — he is happier to distort the truth and mislead people in his quest for answers. He also has unnecessarily derogatory views about the Portuguese, who “he had always looked on as a lazy, good-for-nothing set”, although seeing one of Lisbon’s boulevards did make him “reconsider his opinion”.

The Ponson Case has added interest as a very definite period piece, where the slower pace of life adds challenges to the investigation. Inspector Tanner cannot just pick up the telephone to make enquiries, let alone consult DetectiveGPT. Rather, he spends a lot of his working hours travelling, sometimes to resolve relatively minor queries. His world is one in which chase scenes happen at 30mph — although at one point, they do get up to 40mph (“it was, of course, breaking the law”). If you miss one train, you may be stuck until the next day, and if you’re heading in the wrong direction, it’ll be a while until you can re-route. This is escapist literature for harried times.

Crofts’ style of writing does come with a major risk — if you work through all the detail without reaching a satisfying solution, the ending can feel much more disappointing and anticlimactic. I think The Ponson Case falls somewhat short here. The ending is drawn out, and not entirely pleasing. At the same time, I very much enjoyed following Inspector Tanner’s inquiry, and I’m looking forward to exploring the rest of Crofts’ canon soon.

Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4/5)

Read in the 2001 House of Stratus reprint. Interestingly, the cover image on this edition was later used for Martin Edwards’ compendium The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books.

Scavenger Hunt item: Cigarette or pipe

“A detective must be hopeful,” answered Giuseppe. “So often hope is all that he has got.”

Mark Brendon, a successful and ambitious CID detective, has retreated to Dartmoor for a trout-fishing holiday, where he reflects on his desire “to woo and wed if the right girl should present herself.” A possible “right girl” does appear on the scene, in the form of Jenny Pendean, who has very recently become a widow following the apparent murder of her husband by her uncle. Brendon attempts to woo Jenny by investigating the crime, which draws him into the fraught history of the red-haired Redmayne family. Brendon fails in both his romantic pursuit of Jenny and his investigative pursuit of Robert Redmayne. Fortunately, retired American policeman Peter Ganns is on hand to unravel the mystery without falling in love with anyone.

The Red Redmaynes is one of a large number of novels by Eden Phillpotts, a prolific writer who worked in a wide variety of genres. Born in India, the Phillpotts family moved to Devon when Eden was just a few years old. He fell in love with the county, which provided the setting for much of his fiction, especially the landscape of Dartmoor. In the words of one biographer: “What Thomas Hardy did for Dorset, Phillpotts did for Dartmoor.”2 While living in Torquay, he was neighbour to the Miller family and gave professional encouragement to their youngest daughter Agatha, who was a budding writer. Agatha ended up becoming the best-selling novelist of all time, and dedicated Peril at End House to Eden Phillpotts, as well as mentioning him in her autobiography as “an odd-looking man”.3 Soon after the publication of Christie’s first novel, Phillpotts made his first proper foray into detective fiction, with The Grey Room. This was followed by The Red Redmaynes, and then several other novels, which—although not making him as successful as Christie—earned him significant accolades from his contemporaries. Carolyn Wells wrote: “Of all the detective stories I have ever read, I consider those by Eden Phillpotts the best and finest.”4

On the strength of The Red Redmaynes, I’m not convinced I agree with Carolyn Wells, although this is a good and fine novel. Phillpotts’ love of Dartmoor is evident, and he creates an excellent, foreboding atmosphere amid the tors. Later settings are well-drawn as well, assisted by the author’s wide vocabulary, which means a pile of rocks is a “moraine”, a small stream is a “rill” and blood-covered objects are “ensanguined”. The atmosphere is heightened when people claim mysterious sightings of the missing suspect. The weak element in Phillpotts’ atmospheric writing is the ponderous and protracted nature of some passages. I understand this was a recurring issue for Phillpotts: literary critic Richard Carpenter wryly commented on “his penchant for leisurely elaboration which could uncharitably be called padding”.5

Phillpotts gives us a strong mystery plot, with a satisfying ending, even if some of the twisty aspects are foreseeable. Mark Brendon is, quite frankly, irritating, and I have no idea how he achieved any success at the CID given his incompetence. His weakness is challenged and countered by Peter Ganns, who ensures the latter part of the investigation is engaging. Ganns has a more careful, analytical approach to crime: “It is a rule with me, when any sudden flash of intuition throws any real or false light upon a case, to submit the inspiration to a most searching and destructive analysis and bring every known fact against it.” To quote the murderer’s words of confession, he is “built on a very different mental pattern from Brendon.”

My overall assessment of the novel is doubtless biased by my own Dartmoor connection. The Duchy Hotel in Princetown, where Mark Brendon stayed for his trout-fishing holiday, became (until last year) the Dartmoor National Park visitor centre, which I visited many times. The centre also had a Sherlock Holmes exhibit in honour of the fact that Arthur Conan Doyle stayed in the Duchy Hotel when writing The Hound of the Baskervilles.6 The novel also gets bonus points for featuring one of my favourite romantic lines in all of literature, when Mark Brendon first notices Jenny and her large blue eyes: “He had only known one woman with really large eyes, and she was a criminal.”

Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4/5)

Read in the undated 4th-edition Hutchinson hardback.
Scavenger Hunt item: Body of water

Emerging from a fashionable wedding at St Peter’s Church, Lady Judith Carew is accosted by an unwanted man from her past, the sight of whom leaves her “white as death”. The Man insists on a meeting later that day, handing her a note: “42 Abbey Court, Leinster Avenue, 9.30 to-night”. Feigning illness, Lady Carew urges her husband to attend that evening’s dinner party at the Denboroughs’ alone, and takes the opportunity to secretly keep the ominous Abbey Court appointment. While at Flat 42, the room is plunged into darkness and her host is murdered. Finding herself the obvious prime suspect, Lady Carew has to confront some uncomfortable buried secrets before the real killer’s identity is revealed, thanks to perceptive detective work by Inspector Furnival.

The Abbey Court Murder was the second novel published by Annie Haynes, although it had already been serialised a decade previously. Born in the quaintly named town of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Haynes built a popular reputation with the ten mystery novels published in her lifetime.7 She was one of only two female crime writers published by The Bodley Head, the other being Agatha Christie. Haynes’ detective fiction career was short-lived, though: she spent fifteen years struggling with crippling rheumatoid arthritis before her death in 1929, just six years after her first published novel.8 After her death, the name of Annie Haynes quickly fell into literary obscurity. When writing about her life in 2013, Curtis Evans “knew of only two other living persons… who had read any of her books”.9 Now, thanks to Dean Street Press, Curtis has hundreds of living persons to talk about Annie Haynes with.

In The Abbey Court Murder, we are introduced for the first time to one of Haynes’ series detectives, Inspector Furnival.10 On his first mention, he is described as “the keenest-witted detective they have at Scotland Yard”. His keen wits lead him to employ some slightly underhanded methods. He enjoys working incognito and flirts with a maid to gather clues, seducing her with his collection of handheld fans. Furnival keeps his cards close to his chest, which gives one evening paper reason to accuse the police of “inactivity, not to say stupidity”. His astuteness, though, ultimately gets results. Furnival also has the advantage of modern technology, as noted by a colleague: “I am lost in amazement at finding a telephone at the Carew Arms, inspector… Who would have thought of anything so modern in this old-fashioned house?”

The main focus of the novel, though, is not really on the murder investigation, but on the secrets and relationships of the main characters, and the emotional distress that Lady Carew finds herself in. The author borrows heavily from the world of Victorian sensation fiction. In fact, the novel was first serialised as Lady Carew’s Secret, an obvious nod to Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s book Lady Audley’s Secret — Kate Jackson at Cross-examining Crime has discussed the parallels between the two. New plot developments are regularly accompanied by melodramatic descriptions of Lady Carew, who can experience “a sudden icy cold”, “a deadly fear”, “an odd sickly pallor”, and “horror in her eyes” all in the space of a few paragraphs, before discovering “yet unknown abysses of woe” a few pages later. Meanwhile, Furnival is forced to conduct much of his investigation off-the-page. The mystery’s solution feels secondary to the emotional journey of Lady Carew and her circle.

The Abbey Court Murder is still an enjoyable read, and I would be interested in reading more by Haynes. The narrative is compelling, as we watch Lady Carew being trapped in a cruel set of circumstances, at the mercy of other characters. Haynes is also a gifted writer, even if a reviewer in The Daily Mail lamented her use of “so much unnecessary jargon”, like “svelte” and “riante”.11 At the same time, I would have preferred a bit more Furnival and a bit less fainting.

Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐ (3/5)

Read in the 2015 Dean Street Press reprint.
Scavenger Hunt item: Tree

Join me again in a few months for the next episode of A Century of Crime, when I’ll be looking at three more classic 1920s mysteries: The Rasp by Philip MacDonald (1924), The Paddington Mystery by John Rhode (1925) and The Verdict of You All by Henry Wade (1926).

Last year, Mrs Manse treated me to a surprise birthday trip to the New Theatre in Cardiff, to see Ken Ludwig’s excellent adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express. This year, the theatrical gift-giving continued and we made a return trip to Cardiff for the touring production of The Killings at Badger’s Drift. This is now my third theatre review for Murder at the Manse, and you can expect a fourth in November, when we travel to the capital again for Agatha Christie’s The Hollow.

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If you’re not aware, The Killings at Badger’s Drift is the first book in Caroline Graham’s Chief Inspector Barnaby series, published in 1987 and included in the 1990 Crime Writers’ Association list of Top 100 novels. It was made more famous by its adaptation as the first episode of the long-running TV series Midsomer Murders, which was one of the first television crime dramas I watched and which has remained one of my favourites.1 First broadcast 29 years ago, The Killings at Badger’s Drift now been adapted for the stage by Guy Unsworth, in a production touring the UK since October last year.2

The murderous plot begins with an orchid-spotting competition between village inhabitants Lucy Bellringer and Emily Simpson. Their long-running friendly rivalry is brought to an end when Emily suddenly dies at home. Lucy refuses to believe her death was an accident, and urges the local police to investigate. The investigation is led by DCI Barnaby, with the assistance of Sergeant Troy. As they interrogate the eccentric characters of Badger’s Drift, they encounter an intriguing mix of village secrets. The death toll soon rises, accompanied by suggestions that Bella Trace’s accidental death a few years previously was not really an accident either. Eventually, Sergeant Troy formulates a theory to explain the murders, which is very clever but also completely incorrect. DCI Barnaby, thankfully, is on hand to provide the correct solution.

The stage production broadly follows Caroline Graham’s plot, restoring the author’s original method for dispatching Emily Simpson with poison, rather than the more violent death Anthony Horowitz introduced for the TV episode. Alongside some memorably familiar dialogue (“You have to tell the bees when someone dies”), there are some excellent new lines, not least the amusingly self-aware comment from Barnaby: “I’ve worked in Midsomer for 30 years, and I can’t claim it has the lowest crime rate in England.” The plot moves towards the same striking finale, although the setting of the climax has changed to make it more suitably dramatic for the stage.

Guy Unsworth’s script is laden with added humour, with the village’s already eccentric inhabitants becoming even more eccentric. There is extra delight for the audience when you realise that the large cast of characters is being played by a small cast of actors, who make multiple changes of costume and occasional changes of gender. Trevor Lessiter the doctor, for example, makes other appearances as wheelchair-bound Henry Trace and committed curtain twitcher Iris Rainbird. In one clever scene, a single actor even appears on stage as two characters at once! Some of the versatile cast members provide more engaging performances than others. As in the television adaptation, I especially enjoyed the bizarre Rainbird household and their unusual tea trolley. Unsworth has also made the character of Lucy Bellringer especially entertaining, with her sharp comments to the police and her desire to insert herself into the investigation.

Somewhat confusingly, the role of Barnaby is played by Daniel Casey, who portrayed Sergeant Troy in the TV adaptations. In interviews, Casey has described his apprehension about following in the footsteps of John Nettles, who has become the definitive Barnaby for so many people. I smiled at one interview, where he shared a comment from Nettles: “When he learned that I was taking on the role in the play, he said, ‘Well, he’s learned at the feet of the master’”.3 Casey does a good job at stepping into his superior’s shoes, although (perhaps just because of familiarity) I think he was more suited to the sidekick role rather than taking the lead. Sergeant Troy is enjoyably played by James Bradwell, who is one of the definite highlights of the cast. Bradwell gives a fresh take on the enthusiastic but often misguided character of Troy. Sadly, I must note at this point the omission of Barnaby’s wife Joyce, although there is a dancing gnome in Act 2, which provides some consolation.

The production is enhanced by David Woodhead’s set design. A cut-out section of the stage backdrop provides a view of Midsomer, and at points provides an imaginative window into flashback scenes or events elsewhere, such as the mourners paying their respects at Emily’s funeral while Barnaby and Troy discuss them as suspects. The front of the set changes skilfully between different houses and outdoor locations. Some props and characters emerge somewhat comically from the sidelines on moving platforms, adding to the script’s humour. I did feel, though, that the set changes sometimes added a bit too much levity to the plot.

If, like us, you’re a fan of Midsomer Murders, you will probably find the stage version of The Killings at Badger’s Drift a real treat. The UK tour continues until June, and there are still tickets available. And maybe soon Guy Unsworth will give us another Barnaby adaptation — if you’re reading, Guy, can I request Written in Blood, my personal favourite early Midsomer Murders story? Thanks.

Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4/5)

Richard Hull is one of the Golden Age’s most frustrating writers. With his rich inventiveness and wry humour, Hull produced some superb novels, including The Murder of My Aunt (1934), Keep It Quiet (1935) and Murder Isn’t Easy (1936). Often, though, his desire to experiment was hampered by his inability to fully develop his ideas. His intriguing premises sometimes lead to disappointing plots. One example would be Last First (1947), in which Hull takes the eccentric decision to start with the last chapter, thus tantalisingly revealing the solution while still keeping the full details hidden. An original idea, but only very tenacious readers will succeed in wading through the whole book.

I’ve now read 8 Richard Hull novels, and I’m still hoping to discover other gems among his oeuvre. I wrote about the early highlights of my Hull reading in a previous Substack post. For today’s piece, I’ll be discussing The Ghost It Was (1936), The Murderers of Monty (1937) and Excellent Intentions (1938), which all have enjoyable elements, but also illustrate Hull’s capacity to disappoint.

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Reader beware: The second paragraph below (after the family tree) contains a minor spoiler for The Ghost It Was. I don’t reveal the culprit or any details of the solution, but I do discuss another secret about one of the other characters.

The Ghost It Was (1936) is one of Richard Hull’s more conventional novels, which helpfully opens with a family tree. Rather less helpfully, the head of the family tree, Jude Warrenton, decided to name his five children Jane, John, Julia, James and Jacynth. Our first introduction to the family comes via Jane’s hapless and impertinent son Gregory Spring-Benson. Having failed in other means of employment, Gregory decides to turn his hand to journalism, driven by a need to fund his expensive claret habit. He spots the potential for a story when he discovers that his estranged uncle James has recently acquired Amberhurst Place, a purportedly haunted mansion. He manages to enter James’s household, with the combined hope of writing good copy about the mansion’s hauntings and inveigling his way into his uncle’s will. Gregory is not alone, though, in competing for James’s inheritance, and a ghostly murder soon follows.

The Ghost It Was marks the first appearance of Richard Hull’s short-lived series detective Inspector Fenby. He initially appears in disguise as a member of the Departed Spirits Association, before his true identity is revealed and he assists local inspector Perceval in untangling the case. With Fenby, Hull has created an intentionally unremarkable detective. He “was so small and insignificant, and so very anxious not to put any one to the smallest particle of trouble, that it was impossible to do anything else than just accept the fact that he was there and, if possible, avoid tripping over him.” Interestingly (perhaps due to the initial secretness of his identity), The Ghost It Was is not listed as a Fenby novel in some reference works.1

In typical Richard Hull fashion, Amberhurst Place is populated with unlikeable characters. There is a stream of dark humour in the dysfunctional family atmosphere, especially in the inheritance-related competitiveness. James is a delightfully irascible figure. Perhaps the best summary of his attitude is his list of reasons for objecting to an inquest into [Redacted]’s death:

(a) there was no such thing as death — [Redacted] had merely passed over to a slightly different form of existence;

(b) it was quite obvious what had happened;

(c) Inspector Perceval of Periton was an ass who did not even know it until he had been told so — by James, needless to say;

(d) it was… his own house and his own ghost, and he ought to be able to do what he liked.

The most unlikeable trait of James Warrenton, though, comes in the very distressing description of his library. James “cared little for books” and thinks a hundred pages per day “is more than anyone ought to read.” For pragmatic and aesthetic reasons, he still wants to fill the bookshelves of his new home, so he orders 9000 assorted books in bulk, which are “shoved regardless of sequence, coherence, or order into any shelf that came handy.” This description is enough to make any bibliophile feel physically unwell, although I was amused to read the vendor had made up the numbers by providing multiple “remainders of an unsuccessful detective story”.

The plot begins promisingly, with a John Dickson Carr feel to the atmosphere — we have a haunted tower, a ghost from the past, and impossible crimes. Sadly, though, Hull is not an entirely successful student of Carr, and the novel becomes less engaging as it progresses. The plot often moves too slowly and sometimes feels unfocussed. I wasn’t particularly invested in the solution, which was in any case quite vague. There are definitely enjoyable elements in The Ghost It Was, but overall, the disappointment it was.

Verdict: ⭐⭐ (2/5)

Read in the 1950 Penguin paperback edition.

Scavenger hunt item: Shadowy/ghostly figure

One of the scarcer Richard Hull novels, The Murderers of Monty (1937) begins at a cricket match, where a group of four friends jokingly discuss murdering their mutual acquaintance Monty Archer, who happens to be (like the author) a Chartered Accountant.2 A barmaid overhears their discussion and is so shocked that she drops a hard-boiled egg on the floor (“Pity it’s got the shell off. Otherwise it could have been dusted.”) Monty’s main offence is that he is “a mild but definite bore”, which doesn’t seem sufficient reason to kill someone, but the quartet take their fantasy very seriously, plotting an elaborate practical joke at Monty’s expense. They even go so far as forming a mock company complete with legal-sounding paperwork, to be known as The Murderers of Monty, Limited (“Why limited?” “Limited to Monty, of course”).

With their paperwork in order, The Murderers of Monty, Limited plan a day on which their fake murder of Monty will take place at his home. Each member of the company chooses a different murder method: Arthur Bethel opts for nicotine poisoning, Norman Wrangham a sword stick and P. R. Unwin-Shackleton (“Prunes”) a revolver. The final member, John Kernside, remains undecided about what part he will play. They devise a careful timetable, graciously acknowledging that “being killed three times might alarm anyone.” They also give advance warning to Monty, who is naively delighted with the attention he is receiving. But—as you can probably predict—on the day of their murderous jape, Monty ends up genuinely dead. Detective-Inspector Fenby is called in to discover who took the joke too far.

It’s an excellent premise but, like Last First, Richard Hull is unable to sustain the idea in an engaging way. The ending is easily guessable — in fact, I’d be amazed if any reader doesn’t solve it long before Fenby. As well as an anti-climactic finish, the investigation itself is not that interesting. DI Fenby’s lack of personality and presence doesn’t help. There are also several underexploited themes, such as the professional rivalry between Fenby and Dr Lovell and the relationships between the limited company’s directors when the murder is announced.

The main redeeming feature is Hull’s humour, which results in some brilliant moments of dialogue. One of the highlights is the complicated courtship of Prunes and Delia. Prunes considers that “he had virtually proposed to her and that he was as good as accepted,” although Delia is completely unaware of this fact. When Prunes decides to make things more formal, Delia is desperate for him to arrange a traditional storybook proposal, but Prunes instead hands her a sheet of paper with a list of topics for discussion on it:

Breakfast. What time and whether to get up or not.

Choice of friends.

The cook’s night out. Dine separately or alone?

Method of paying household expenses.

Clocks in bedroom. No ticking.

Needless to say, Delia is unimpressed. Which was also, sadly, my feeling at the end of The Murderers of Monty. It’s not a surprise that the novel hasn’t been reprinted. At points, it wonderfully reflects Hull’s creativity, skill and humour, but overall, I don’t think it’s worth the effort of tracking down a copy.

Verdict: ⭐⭐ (2/5)

Read in the 1937 G. P. Putnam & Sons hardback edition.

Scavenger hunt item: Bottle/glass for drinking

Excellent Intentions (1938) begins partway through the trial for the murder of Launcelot Henry Cuthbert Cargate, who died in a railway carriage on Friday 13th, allegedly the victim of poisoning. Cargate is a recent arrival in the village of Great Barwick, where he is universally disliked. At one point, the defence barrister comments to his junior:

“From what you’ve told me, it’s a damned shame that anyone should be hanged for murdering a verminous bit of work like Cargate. It was done with the most excellent intentions…”

Hull’s literary conceit for this novel is allowing us to follow the courtroom discussions while carefully concealing from us the identity of the accused. With a mixture of in-court conversations, witness reminiscences and investigative flashbacks, the possible suspects are gradually whittled down until we are finally given the murderer’s name at the 87% mark. The unremarkable Fenby is again leading the investigation, unhappy with the moments where he has to “spend a great part of his time examining some subject which proved in the end to be irrelevant.”

Excellent Intentions has an inventive structure. I enjoyed the tantalising anonymity of the person in the dock and the gradual elimination of suspects. The interweaving of interrogations and flashbacks also gives plenty of scope for Hull’s wry observational humour. As elsewhere, Hull excels in his presentation of an unpleasant victim. Other characters are also presented in a playful way, such as Mr Hardy the Baker, an eyewitness who is desperate to recount his involvement “in a great deal more detail than he was likely to be permitted to do in Court… Not that he was so foolish to regard it as the most important event in his life. On the whole, that must be reserved for the building of the new oven in which for ten years past he had supplied bread to all the village of Scotney End.”

As part of the investigation, Hull includes a significant amount of arcane details about stamp-collecting, one of Cargate’s hobbies (and one of Hull’s too).3 As the prosecution barrister warns the court: “We shall have to hear something of mixed perforations, of accents inserted by hand, of a missing fraction bar, of the phrase ‘se tenant’…” I do wonder if including these overly-detailed philatelic discussions was Hull’s way of making an extra joke at the reader’s expense. In any case, philatelists will doubtless be amused by the narrator’s comments on Cargate’s decision to have a geographically restricted collection:

It may, to those who preserve their sanity and avoid stamps carefully, sound a severe restriction, but those who have allowed themselves to be infected by the virus of a hobby which once it is allowed to get into the blood is never wholly eradicated, will know that actually it is a very extensive — and expensive — field.

With Excellent Intentions, Richard Hull added himself to the long list of Golden Age writers who found inspiration in the notorious 1922 trial of Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters.4 In Cargate’s case, Hull’s fictional judge includes a verbatim quote from the Thompson-Bywaters trial transcript in his summing up.5 The judge’s closing remarks also quote from the trial of Jean-Pierre Vaquier, who was executed in 1924 for murdering his mistress’s husband.6

The Argentinian writer Jorge Lois Borges was fond of Excellent Intentions, which he praised as an “extremely pleasant book”.7 For me, though, the end result didn’t quite live up to Hull’s excellent authorial intentions. It is definitely a more successful experiment than The Murderers of Monty or some of Hull’s other works. But the plot gets weighed down at points by the detail of alibis, and I wasn’t keen on Hull’s Berkeley-esque twist. A good read, and easy to get hold of thanks to the British Library, but not in my top 3 Hull novels.

Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐ (3/5)

Read in the 1949 Penguin paperback edition.

At the end of these three novels, I remain frustrated with Hull, and yet still hopeful. I have four more of his novels on my TBR shelves. I’ll let you know what I make of them!

‘One of us… One of us… One of us…’

Three words, endlessly repeated, dinning themselves hour after hour into receptive brains.

I’ve been making a few return visits to Soldier Island recently.

I won a lovely new hardback edition of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None (among other prizes) in Kate Jackson’s Epic 10-Year Blog Anniversary Competition last year. And then for Christmas, Mrs Manse gave me a copy of an accompanying And Then There Were None jigsaw. The time was ripe for a re-read, with intermittent puzzling alongside. As a result, here is Murder at the Manse’s first (and possibly last) combined book and jigsaw review.

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In 1939, the Crime Club newsletter announced the publication of Agatha Christie’s latest novel with the bold description: “Certainly the greatest detective story that the Crime Club has ever published and probably, we believe, the world will declare it the greatest detective story ever written.”1 Their foresight was vindicated: And Then There Were None has become the best-selling crime novel of all time, and one of the bestsellers in any genre.

If you’re not aware of the premise, ten people are invited under various pretences to Soldier Island (a location inspired by Burgh Island, on the South Devon coast). Their host is the mysterious U. N. Owen, who remains absent. On their arrival, a gramophone recording accuses each of them of murder. The accused then start dying, one by one, their deaths following the pattern of a quaint rhyme about Ten Little Soldier Boys.2 Each time, a china figure mysteriously disappears from the dining table. With the island cut off by the weather, the guests find themselves trapped in a terrifying nightmare.

My prize copy was the new “Ultimate Mystery Edition”, published by HarperCollins in 2024. “Ultimate” is a bit hyperbolic, but this is still a very nice edition to read. The main “Ultimate” feature is a sealed envelope at the back containing the final chapter with the novel’s solution. Even though this is a rare example of a book whose solution I can remember, the sealed envelope still added to the sense of climax, and I was excited to open it. Another lovely feature is the use of line-drawn figures at the top of each subchapter to indicate how many characters are still alive. The first page has one figure, and this increases as each new person is introduced, before they are slowly eliminated in line with the disappearing china figures. This was an interesting way of inviting the reader to share in the island’s ominous atmosphere.

One of the things that struck me on this re-read was Agatha Christie’s economy of words. Where other writers might attempt to create atmosphere with lengthy descriptions and slow-burn scenes, Christie gives us a tight narrative that still captures the unsettling state of affairs. The characters are all introduced efficiently, and they arrive on the island within 40 pages. The plot advances with fairly short scenes, some just a few lines long, reflecting the creeping inevitability that overshadows the house. For example, when Rogers discovers the first china figure has disappeared, we are given a subchapter with just three stark sentences:

Downstairs in the dining-room, Rogers stood puzzled.

He was staring at the china figures in the centre of the table.

He muttered to himself: “That’s a rum go! I could have sworn there were ten of them.”

I was also impressed with the way Christie manages to keep all of the characters in view, so that she can switch between suspects with each new death. With a mix of inner monologues and conversations, she raises questions about each of the characters, using some recurring descriptive motifs to keep them distinct. And, with typical Christie intuition, she knows exactly which person to kill next to unravel your suspicions. Amid the threat of danger, there are some amusing exchanges between the characters too (some intentional, some not). I think my favourite was Blore’s comment about Mrs Rogers: “I’ll bet you she had a cup of tea. That sort always does.”

This remains a masterpiece among closed circle mysteries, frequently imitated but not matched.3 If I didn’t know the ending, I would definitely have been fooled again. If you haven’t read it yet, what are you waiting for?

Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5/5)

Scavenger Hunt item: More than two people

The novel’s jigsaw accompaniment was published by Laurence King last year, as part of its The World of Agatha Christie series. I enjoyed assembling the original 2022 puzzle, and I’m now eager to complete them all. So far, the other two titles in the series are The World of Hercule Poirot (2023) and The World of Miss Marple (2024). Where all of the previous puzzles have been illustrated by Ilya Milstein, for this puzzle Agatha Christie Limited enlisted the artistic talents of Ruby Ash, a designer based in Melbourne, Australia. It was Ruby Ash’s first ever jigsaw commission, and she has done an excellent job.4

The illustration depicts the façade of the house on Soldier Island on a stormy night, with views into different lit rooms. Within the scene are depictions of the characters at different points in the narrative, including some who are unknowingly close to their deaths, as well as various significant objects. Around the outside of the house are cut-away squares with character portraits and some other images. Explaining her design choices, Ruby Ash said she opted for red and green colours that “echo the jump-scare energy” and “hazy misty tones” that “keep you questioning everything”.5 I think her design does capture the novel’s atmosphere well, and the mix of larger sections of colour and more detailed portions create an enjoyable jigsaw experience.

As with the other jigsaws in the series, the box includes a fold-out poster with a large picture of the illustration on one side and a guide to spotting clues within the image on the other side. Some of the clues are highlighted in a spoiler-free plot summary, and others are contained in a separate list. Ruby Ash’s design contains a mixture of different types of clues, encompassing people, objects and plot points. My only critique is that a few of the clues were very hard to spot because of their small size. Overall, though, it was fun to look over the picture in detail, especially after recently finishing the novel.

I was excited to see that Ruby Ash has already created another jigsaw puzzle for Laurence King, based on Death on the Nile, which I assume will be published later this year.6 In the meantime, I picked up the Hercule Poirot puzzle for a ridiculously cheap price in a charity shop, and we’ll be starting our assembly soon.

Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5/5)

Do you like books? Do you like books about books? Do you like books about books about books? If you answered “yes” to all of these questions, you would probably enjoy Murder by the Book, a 2021 anthology in the British Library Crime Classics collection, which I read recently as part of my long-term goal of reading the entire series.1

Murder by the Book is a collection of 16 bibliomysteries — a vague term encompassing mysteries with a bookish setting or a key character from a book-related profession. The oldest example of this species that Martin Edwards mentions in his introduction is the 1874 novel Scrope by Frederic Beecher Perkins, which takes readers into the world of antiquarian book dealers. The most intriguing bibliomystery he mentions is The Last of Philip Banter (1947) by John Bardin, in which Banter finds a typed manuscript on his desk, which “describes what is going to happen as though it had happened already. Then the ‘predictions’ start to come true…”

The contents page for this anthology contains names that will mostly be familiar to regular BLCC readers, although there are a few more obscure names, like Marjorie Bremner and S.C. Roberts. All of the stories were new to me, except A. A. Milne’s “A Savage Game” and Ngaio Marsh’s “Chapter and Verse”.2 Overall, the quality of stories is very strong; combined with the theme, this makes Murder by the Book one of my favourite short story collections in the series. Rather than doing a story-by-story rundown, I’ll say a bit more about my four favourite stories, in order of appearance. As is the nature of short stories, if you’ve read the collection, you’ll almost certainly have a different set of favourites — let me know in the comments!

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Philip MacDonald — Malice Domestic (1946)

A former showjumper, Philip MacDonald began publishing crime fiction in the 1920s, becoming especially known for his series detective Colonel Gethryn.3 He also produced a significant number of screenplays, most notably co-writing the Hitchcock classic Rebecca (1940). His postwar written output mostly consisted of short stories, like “Malice Domestic”, which first appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in October 1946. A decade later, it was adapted for an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Carl Boden is “a writer of some merit, mediocre sales and—at least among the wordier critics—considerable reputation.” Outwardly, he and Annette have an ideal marriage, but recently their relationship has been strained and marked by mutual suspicion. Carl experiences two serious bouts of vomiting in the space of ten days, leading to a consultation with Dr Wingate, who reveals that Carl has been poisoned by arsenic. There’s an obvious conclusion, but the reader has to wait to see whether the obvious conclusion is the correct one.

There is a lot to enjoy about this story. Philip MacDonald has expertly judged the pace of the narrative, which maintains a good level of tension leading up to the dramatic final few pages. The depiction of the Bodens’ domestic life is excellent, with great phrases like: “He looked like a Brobdingnagian and bewildered little boy who has found himself in trouble for some reason he cannot understand.” And then there’s the surprise ending, with eight shocking final lines. I definitely need to read more MacDonald shorts.

Roy Vickers — A Man and his Mother-in-Law (1953)

Roy Vickers is best remembered as the creator of the Department of Dead Ends, a fictional Scotland Yard division that houses miscellaneous objects from unsolved crimes. The stories take an inverted form, where the murderer’s identity is revealed at the start and an apparently random object from the Department’s shelves later proves their guilt. “A Man and His Mother-in-Law” was one of Vickers’ DDE stories, first published in 1953 in Eight Murders in the Suburbs. Like “Malice Domestic”, it was adapted for television, as an episode of Detective in 1968.

In the opening paragraph, we are informed that “murder eventuates, not from immediate circumstances, but from an antecedent state of mind.” In the case of Arthur Penfold, the antecedent state of mind appeared five years before the murder, when he “found a note in his wife’s handwriting on the hall table”. The story follows the trials of Penfold, a somewhat self-centred man with an interfering mother-in-law, who decides to take murderous action to restore domestic harmony. Thanks to a random tip, the case ends up in the hands of Detective Inspector Rason from the Department of Dead Ends, whose intervention leads to Penfold’s conviction.

I have enjoyed other Department of Dead Ends stories in the past, and “A Man and His Mother-in-Law” follows the usual formula, with the culprit being exposed by a mundane item. In this case, we are left in suspense until the final line to see how this particular item will prove Penfold’s guilt. The real strength of the story, though, is its characterisations. It’s the longest story in the collection, not because of plot complexity but because Roy Vickers devotes more space to developing his characters and the power dynamics between them. I have some more Vickers on my TBR shelves, and I look forward to getting to them at some point.

Victor Canning — A Question of Character (1960)

I feel an immediate connection with Victor Canning, as he was born in Plymouth, where I spent most of my childhood. During the First World War, he served in the Royal Artillery, training alongside Eric Ambler.4 Like Ambler, Canning pursued a career of thriller-writing, and many of Canning’s novels were adapted for film or television. “A Question of Character” was first published in Suspense in 1960.

“The real reason why Geoffrey Gilroy decided to murder his wife,” Victor Canning tells us in the opening paragraph, “was his vanity”. Geoffrey is jealous of his wife’s literary successes — he has been writing novels for longer, and yet Martha has overtaken him in popularity. She has also become a better golfer than him. Geoffrey carefully formulates a seemingly flawless murder plot, which will leave him free to marry his new love, Evelyn. “He examined his plan and tried to fault it. He couldn’t.” In the world of crime fiction, this obviously means the plan will somehow go wrong.

Canning is an excellent storyteller and this is a gripping story. In a short space, he gives us a convincing portrait of a man being consumed by destructive envy. Early in the story, Canning subtly reveals the weakness that will prove to be Geoffrey’s downfall, which he reintroduces towards the end as the story approaches its darkly ironic ending. Several of the authors in this anthology base their stories around marital discord, where the close relationship and limited number of characters provide good ingredients for a short story. And with this story, Canning shows he is a very good chef.

Edmund Crispin — We Know You’re Busy Writing… (1969)

The award for the longest title goes to Edmund Crispin, for “We Know You’re Busy Writing, But We Thought You Wouldn’t Mind If We Just Dropped in For a Minute”. The title illustrates something of Crispin’s writing style — he has a wonderful sense of humour, which is evident in both his short stories and his Gervase Fen series of novels. This particular story first appeared in the 1969 anthology Winter’s Crimes I, and its title was used for a recent complete collection of Crispin’s short stories.

The story is the first-person narrative of a 47-year-old unmarried crime-fiction writer called Ted, who lives in Devon. He works from home, where his ambition of productivity is often dashed on the rocks of trivial interruptions. “The telephone is for me to use in an emergency. Other people, however, regard it differently.” He also gets regular in-person visitors from the Duke of Devonshire pub. On the day of this narrative, a couple arrive at his door, boldly asserting: “We’re not interrupting anything.” Ted resists the urge to tell them that they “sodding well are”, and instead invites them in.

I won’t ruin the plot by revealing what happens next, or what criminal activity occurs. But this is a brilliant story with witty dialogue and a punchy ending. In a post-Covid era, a lot of readers will be able to sympathise with the narrator’s trials of working from home, although I hope—

Wait, that’s the doorbell. I’ll be back in a bit.

Final verdict: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4/5)

This is the fourth instalment of my occasional Forgotten Book series, where I’m opening some of the lesser-known books from my TBR shelves. Today, we’ll be looking at the Belton Cobb book Double Detection (1945), which was a random second-hand purchase because I liked the cover. I have now become the first person to give this a rating on Goodreads, although there are a couple of other online reviews by Puzzle Doctor and Neeru.

TL;DR — This is definitely a novel that deserves a reprint.

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Introducing Belton Cobb

Geoffrey Belton Cobb was born in 1892, the same year as American writer James Cain, though Cobb was a native of the less hardboiled town of Tunbridge Wells in South East England.1 Cobb’s father was a writer who published around 78 novels, including some detective fiction, as well as hundreds of short stories.2 Belton Cobb followed his father into the book trade, initially working in publishing, at one point serving as Sales Director of Longmans.3 He wrote his first novel, A Stand to Arms, during the First World War, illustrated by his sister Ruth.4 This was a semi-autobiographical account of his service in the London Irish Rifles, including his involvement in the 1915 Battle of Loos.5 It was another 20 years, though, before Cobb’s writing career properly began, with the publication of his first detective novel, No Alibi.

Having started writing crime fiction, Cobb had no intention of stopping. He wrote a total of 54 crime novels, the final two appearing in the year of his death, 1971.6 Some of these were adapted as radio plays for the BBC, and several were translated into French and Italian. He counted Anthony Berkeley among his admirers, and John Dickson Carr among his detractors.7 In the 1950s and 1960s, he also wrote a few non-fiction books about the history of policing and criminal justice. In 1967, a biographical note to one of his articles in The Police Journal said his books The First Detectives and Critical Years at the Yard “should be in every police library”.8

Cobb’s main series detective was Inspector Cheviot Burmann, who appeared in most of his novels. His other main recurring characters were Bryan Armitage and Superintendent Manning, with some novels featuring more than one of these sleuths. Double Detection was a Burmann title, although it also includes Noel Ross, who had previously appeared in Ross In Disguise (1940) and made a return in 1946 with Death in the 13th Dose.9 In the original edition of Twentieth-Century Crime and Mystery Writers, Daniel P. King summarised his output thus: “Belton Cobb’s earlier books are the better: as his output increased, his style seemed increasingly pedestrian and dreary.”10 Cobb was excised from subsequent editions, which perhaps reflects his drift into obscurity.11

Inside Double Detection

On the encouragement of his doctor and his wife June, Noel Ross has reluctantly headed to the coastal resort of Maytown-on-Sands to recover after an operation. Noel is unimpressed with what he finds on arrival at the White Cliffs Hotel:

Rather to my surprise, there were people in the lounge. Three men and a woman. They appeared to be waiting with grim hopelessness for death. And by the look of them they wouldn’t have to wait long… I swore that not even June should keep me there after I had had my tea and buns.

His seaside convalescence becomes a more attractive prospect when one of the other hotel guests is found dead in a locked room, and Noel suspects murder. Of course, for many people, a murder in your hotel is good reason to leave a bad TripAdvisor review. But for Noel it’s just what the doctor should have ordered:

That old fool of a doctor of ours didn’t suggest a murder as part of my treatment, simply because he hasn’t enough imagination to think of it. If he had thought of it, even he would have realized that it is just the thing to set me right. It gives me something besides my own inside to think about.

We later learn that Noel is a former Scotland Yard detective-sergeant, and his unofficial investigation runs in parallel with the official activities of Inspector Cheviot Burmann, who originally arrived on the south coast while pursuing a lead for another case. Burmann and Ross represent the “double detection” of the title, with the novel’s six sections alternating between Ross’s first-person narrative and a third-person account of Burmann’s actions. This interesting structure, and the relationship between the double detectives, makes Double Detection an especially great read.

Ross and Burmann both have reason to be suspicious of each other. Burmann initially thinks that Ross’s theories about the case are the musings of a lunatic, while Ross is unimpressed by the Inspector’s misguided focus on motive. Ross considers it his responsibility to educate Burmann on the best course of action: “I told him pretty frankly that he wasn’t tackling this case on the right lines.” Yet Burmann is resistant to Ross’s suggestions, at one point commenting: “It has never been my way to do Sherlock Holmes stuff with a magnifying glass, crawling about carpets.” As the case continues, there is a grudging acknowledgement of each other’s contributions to the investigation, and we are left waiting to discover whose theories will be vindicated in the end.

The sections narrated by Noel Ross are the most enjoyable parts of the book. His interactions with others, and his inner monologues, provide ongoing entertainment. He is definitely independently-minded, often lacking sympathy and self-awareness in his interactions with others. His behaviour is also a continual source of exasperation to his wife June. In real life, I would probably find him irritating, but as a narrator he’s a very good companion, balanced by the steady predictability of Burmann.

The mystery itself is engaging too. Cobb gives us a good selection of distinct suspects, in the form of the other residents of the hotel. There are a few moments where new information significantly changes the course of the investigation, shifting suspicion from one suspect to another, and raising fresh questions about motive. Both Ross and Burmann pursue some wrong avenues before the actual method is revealed. And there’s not much padding: it all happens in just 168 pages.

I also appreciated the wartime setting, which Cobb was himself in the midst of while writing the book. The realities of life on the Home Front are never far away. At the beginning, we’re told that Noel and June’s choice of the White Cliffs Hotel was partly constrained by circumstances: “Our hotel had looked the best of the five that were still open in the town—five out of about forty.” The town’s promenade is filled with barbed wire, rusted and draped with seaweed, and its boarding-houses are mostly either closed or providing accommodation to soldiers. In the evening, the hotel bar fills up with men from the RAF camp nearby. And we get introduced to the world of black market clothing coupons too.

A final wonderful part of the book is this vivid description of someone swinging back on their chair, which shows something of Cobb’s use of words:

Carmichael, a tall, heavily built man, suddenly swung his chair on to its back legs and dexterously saved himself from crashing backwards by hooking his toes under the drawers on either side of his desk. This acrobatic feat, though alarming to the spectator, was skilfully and safely performed, apparently as the result of long practice: and when the balance was nicely adjusted, Carmichael spoke in the casual tones of a man entirely at ease.

Overall, this book is an excellent piece of double detection, which definitely makes me want to read more by Belton Cobb. Maybe someone could arrange some Cobb reprints soon?

Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5/5)