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MITCHELL MYSTERY READING GROUP - Come Away, Death - Post #3

4/21/2019

This week our group surveys the relatively short Chapters Eleven through Fifteen of 1937's Come Away, Death. I am happy to report that we have picked up a fellow traveller and Gladys Mitchell fan: Joyka joins us as Sir Rudri Hopkinson's ensemble returns to Athens. She confided that this title is her least favorite of the Mrs. Bradley stories. For one thing, Mitchell's impressive detective "is definitely more subdued in this book. To me, it is almost apathy or the impersonal view point of the psychiatrist rather than the psychiatrist/friend/avenger/companion I like in her other books."

That said, Joyka is a true fan who feels that Gladys Mitchell's writing is usually among the best to be found in Golden Age Detective fiction. I would agree.

Catherine Dilts is experiencing the story as an audiobook, and has found it greatly entertaining. She calls the book "a hoot" and adds, "I laughed so hard listening to it on my way to work, I nearly had to pull over. Despite the peculiarities, I am enjoying this novel more than The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop."

Of the journey thus far, Martyn Hobbs has found much to like: "Even in Chapters Six to Ten when the journey felt a little desultory, I have never been frustrated or bored. The whole trip has been a pleasure and the company, if fractious, always entertaining."

APPRECIATING THE TEXT

It is always difficult for me to limit (due to space) the observations I get from Martyn, as he consistently illuminates Gladys Mitchell's style, prose, and techniques in fascinating ways. The best writing rewards close analysis, and "best" isn't always a guarantee in the prose of classic mystery stories. But a closer look – as Martyn offers here – shows Mitchell's carefully deliberate use of imagery, scansion, and characterization. Martyn's summary and examples from the text:

"[Sir Rudri's manservant] Dish, in Chapter Thirteen, the shortest chapter of them all and my personal favourite so far, is shown to be a Man of Mystery and some kind of laconic lowlife Jeeves. In just over two pages, we learn of his free-time habits, observing the ships in the harbour through his telescope; then chartering a small boat to be rowed about by ‘two sweating Greeks’, to be followed up by a possible cinema visit, a drink or two, and a smoke. On this occasion, however, he comes across a boastful bragging Armstrong in a bar, who flings the content of Dish’s glass into his face. There follows a fabulous paragraph almost entirely made up of monosyllabic Anglo-Saxon words and brief, repetitive sentences in which Dish methodically destroys his insulter:"

The ex-A.B. put down the half-empty glass and wiped his face. Then he spat on his hands. Then he hit Armstrong in the belly. When Armstrong got up – and it took him some time to do that – he hit him on the nose and among the teeth. Then he slogged him in the ribs. Then, with his great horned palm, he struck him across the face. To conclude he put his hand across Armstrong’s nostrils and literally pushed him over. Then he sat down and began to drink again, etc. (My bolded italics)

"Wonderfully, he finishes his evening by watching Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan, vomiting in the theatre (seen by Dick), getting drunk again, and returning apparently sober in the small hours (witnessed once more by the ubiquitous Dick). Dish has no love for Armstrong and is clearly able to do some harm.

"Jumping ahead to the sea-voyage to Ephesus in Chapter Fifteen, Gladys Mitchell displays her mastery of style, again employing short words and repetition, but in contrast to Dish dishing out the punches, this time her prose is all soft and languid and musical:"

The sea was calm, the islands, like banks of green morning, rose high out of the sea as the ship approached where they lay, and dropped astern in faint and lovely haze as the ship passed gently onwards. (…) They spent all of the second morning leaning over the rail and gazing at the islands, rising in greenness, declining in purple and grey, fading in faint blue far away, beautiful as a former life remembered in this life, or the recollection of an old story once told, and ever afterwards groped for in the golden clouds of the mind.

MRS BRADLEY AND THE BOYS

Once more, readers noted the connection between the aged detective and the young boys who view her as a respected elder and, when needed, reliable protector. Joyka writes that "Mrs Bradley loves small boys. They almost always provide vital clues and important information that other adults might disregard. Stewart’s list of Armstrong’s photographs is a good case in point. Although she doesn’t elaborate, one gets the idea that list is very important to Mrs Bradley."

Painting by Peter Paul Rubens, 17th century.

Martyn notes that "Mrs Bradley has continued to act more as a moral guide and relationship counselor than a detective. That work, we discover, has been undertaken by the kids. Like Emil’s detective mates, we discover that Stewart, Kenneth and Ivor have been doing some serious spying on Armstrong and his photographs."

And Catherine suggests that the drinking game she mentioned regarding the opening chapters – taking a shot each time one of the boys says "You ass" – be amended to include the sleuth's use of the word child, "which Mrs. Bradley uses to refer to everyone from the boys to the middle-aged men."

Speaking of children and child-like adults, Joyka sees a parallel between Come Away, Death and a future narrative. "This whole book reminds me of an early Lord of the Flies. You take a group of fairly normal people and put them in a situation where they are severely tested. We saw a lot of individual flareups in earlier chapters. We see some disintegration of everyone but Mrs Bradley."

Two more intriguing observations from Joyka: she has traveled Greece and reports that she "was in Ephesus 2008 and it was still possible to crawl over everything. It was a totally deserted site. I have no trouble imagining Sir Rudri’s troupe lounging among the ruins." She also mentions that she has chaperoned high school students when visiting the sites, "so I do feel some affinity with Mrs. Bradley. I would say they are an intrepid bunch to sleep on the ground in these areas. So, hats off to Mrs B for being a good sport!"

Next week, the story concludes. Ironically, we will get the murder victim (definitively), investigation, and solution all in the span of five chapters. It is a structural choice that might frustrate some readers and delight others. Until then, I leave you with this quotation from Plutarch on the Mysteries of Eleusis, courtesy of Nick Fuller: "Because of those sacred and faithful promises given in the mysteries... we hold it firmly for an undoubted truth that our soul is incorruptible and immortal. Let us behave ourselves accordingly."

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MITCHELL MYSTERY READING GROUP - Come Away, Death - Post #2

4/14/2019

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As we explore Chapters Six through Ten of Gladys Mitchell's 1937 crime story Come Away, Death, our contemporary travelers in the reading group have lots of ground to cover. The dark clouds of Greek tragedy, simmering tensions between the characters, and Mrs. Bradley's relationship to reptiles are all points of interest…

ON GREEK TRAGEDY (AND WELSH MARTYRDOM)

Nick Fuller, who provided so much great information to me last time about the Mysteries of Eleusis and the Demeter/Persephone myth, calls our attention to the doomed figures in the House of Atreus:

"The gods ordered Agamemnon to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to summon a wind to bring the Greek fleet to Troy. (In some versions, Artemis rescues the girl at the last moment, and brings her to her temple in Tauris.) When Agamemnon returned from the Trojan Wars 10 years later, his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus murdered Agamemnon in his bathtub. To avenge his father, their son Orestes then killed his mother and her lover, with the help of his sister Elektra and his friend Pylades... Mitchell refers to Aeschylus's Oresteia - Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers (Choephori), and The Eumenides; Mrs Bradley mistakes Megan on the battlements for Clytemnestra watching for the beacons at the start of Agamemnon."

Martyn Hobbs noticed Gladys Mitchell's winking juxtaposition of the tragedies found in the ancient and current worlds. He observes: "While the threat of murder hangs over Sir Rudri’s motley crew, there is a contrast between the rather petty enmities of the moderns and the tragic passions of the ancients, whose ruins they tread among:

"The legends of the Atrides hung brooding over the heavy, broken walls of the Lion Gate, and round the unguarded graves. The dark passion of Clytemnestra, the anguish of young Orestes, made heavy the lowering atmosphere, soaked beyond bearing already, with the heat of the dead air before a storm.

Sir Rudri was not [Mrs Bradley's] only source of anxiety. The little boys, bored, and tired… had been by turns listless and tiresome. Alexander Currie had been severely attacked by flies… Armstrong, too, was a perpetual menace… and Gelert had given up any attempt at cheerfulness…"

And, while far removed from the time and setting of Hellenic mythology, JF Norris of Pretty Sinister Books informs us of the Welsh inspiration for one of Mitchell's more intriguing character names. JF says that the following is "taken verbatim from the English inscription (it's also in Welsh) on a monument in Beddgelert in Wales":

"In the 13th century, Llywelyn, prince of North Wales, had a palace at Beddgelert. One day he went hunting without Gelert "the faithful hound" who was unaccountably absent. On Llywelyn's return, the truant, stained and smeared with blood, joyfully sprang to meet his master. The prince, alarmed, hastened to find his son, and saw the infant's cot empty, the bedclothes and floor covered with blood. The frantic father plunged the sword into the hound's side thinking it had killed his heir. The dog's dying yell was answered by a child's cry. Llywelyn searched and discovered his boy unharmed but nearby lay the body of a mighty wolf which Gelert had slain. The prince, filled with remorse, is said never to have smiled again. He buried Gelert here. The spot is called Beddgelert."

JF concludes that "Mitchell's hotheaded Gelert is aptly named – quick to throw a punch, but always as a means to defend and protect just like his namesake." I add that knowing this background also makes clearer the author's descriptive choice of Gelert as like a lean and angular greyhound!

ON STORY SATISFACTION

Having delved into some historical background, what do readers make of this section? We approach the novel's midway point but, despite Cathleen's premonitions of death, some bitter professional rivalry, and occasional knife fights, we have yet to claim a murder victim. Examining the initial chapters, this delayed approach to a detective story was frustrating to some. I was heartened, then, to see JF's opening remark for the current section: "It’s picking up in intrigue and gaining my interest. There is actual crime in this crime novel!"

Tellingly, Gladys Mitchell's choice to focus on character friction and conjure an uncomfortable, even hostile setting in this 1937 Mrs. Bradley story is exactly in keeping with her historical and contemporary fiction novels she wrote in this decade under the pseudonym Stephen Hockaby. In my opinion, the Hockaby books are some of her most accomplished works, and they share many of the elements found in Come Away, Death. In the Hockaby stories, death, violence, and character conflict are treated as everyday and natural occurrences. There is something similar at work here: the characters are at the mercy of the land and the fates; animals such as vipers (and, later, hyenas and savage dogs) are mere extensions of the arid and inhospitable landscape; and murder, when it does occur, is a necessity of the world order rather than an obscene sacrilege against it, as most moral Golden Age mysteries present the act.

From Nick: "The Mycenae section is stifling and oppressive. The attempted sacrifice is one of my favourite scenes in Mitchell; Mrs Bradley, "like some ancient prophetess", menaces Sir Rudri "with her hideous, leering lips". Mitchell often hints that Mrs Bradley is more than mortal. She's compared here to the Pythoness of Delphi; in other books, she's a witch (Tom Brown's Body), or the crone aspect of the Triple Goddess (The Whispering Knights)."

Our previous group of chapters ended with an act of violence against Armstrong, the photographer with blackmailing tendencies, and now, at the end of Chapter 10, there is another moment of impromptu violence, this one involving a knife fight between Gelert and an angry Greek man. Given that pattern, one can reasonably expect Chapter 15 not to end happily…

Speaking of which, JF is tracking the foreground villain's misfortunes: "I was delighted to watch Armstrong the vile sadist, way too vain and handsome for his own good, get beaten up by both Ian and Gelert. Nothing more I like than to see bullies get a taste of their own medicine." He adds, "I peg Armstrong to be the murder victim. He certainly seems destined for a cruel Fate if not a cruel murder."

Another interesting detail is that Gladys Mitchell has purposely varied the size of her chapters here. (In most of her mysteries they are fairly uniform.) Martyn observes that "a formal pattern is suggested by the lengths of the chapters. Up to now, they have been long and leisurely, subdivided into numbered sections. Now, suddenly, in this tenth chapter, it is all over after just four pages. The preceding chapter also stretched to only six. Glancing ahead (without reading!), Chapter 11 reaches up to nine, Chapter 12 makes it to five at a pinch, Chapter 13 hardly gets to page 3, while Chapter 14 recovers to achieve a more familiar extent. Does this compression portend an acceleration of action, of significant events, of that long-awaited crime?"

More from Martyn: "The symmetry of the groups of five chapters and the succession of brief chapters suggest GM is playing with the structure of her tale. It reminded me (vaguely, because I read it long ago in the last century) of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones where the central chapters of his huge novel cover the shortest periods of time in his narrative – the opening and closing chapters extend over years but at the heart of the book they cover only hours. I may be wrong on the precise timings, but the pattern is definitely there."

ON THE SNAKES AND THE SLEUTH

JF gives us a thoughtful text analysis and ties the book's slippery snake imagery into a neat bow. "I’m very taken with the snake motif running throughout," writes JF, "and it started on Page One: the ship that brings Mrs. Bradley to the shores of Greece is the Medusa. There is a section back in Chapter 4 where she talks about her affinity with the reptile world and how she is often likened to a lizard. When she shows concern for the snakes Sir Rudri brought for his odd rituals, noting that they should be exercised, he asks if she is afraid of snakes and she replies: 'I am almost the incarnation of one' and goes on to describe herself as 'definitely reptilian', 'sometimes saurian', but at least 'one or the other'. First time I’ve ever read the words from Mrs. Bradley's own mouth rather than being described as such by others."

He continues, "Later, when Mrs. Bradley is talking to Alexander Currie, Mitchell writes that 'she grinned disarmingly at him, as a cobra might possibly grin before it struck.' The section where all the snakes decide to curl up in bed with many members of the group as they try to seek warmth is one of the more surreal moments. Mrs. Bradley even puts her hand on the snake in her bed as if it’s her companion! I wish there was more of this in the book. This is what I read Gladys Mitchell for – the eerie touches, the bizarre moments, the nearly supernatural events that defy logic."

Martyn adds on: "The short early morning scene with the boys and the snakes makes me feel that GM could have written some great adventure stories for children. Incidentally, Mrs Bradley displays perfect (and fitting) sangfroid in her dealings with the serpents, entering with one coiled about her skinny arm – they even share a similar grin."

My note to Martyn's children story mention: she did write some entertaining, if not too remarkable, adventure stories with young readers in mind. The closest in spirit with the boys of this book may be 1940's The Three Fingerprints, where a trio of curious lads finds themselves investigating Nazi spies and avoiding an alligator in the course of their travels!

Next week we look at Chapters 11 through 15. Fewer pages but closer to that inevitable murder...

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MITCHELL MYSTERY READING GROUP - Come Away, Death - Post #1

4/4/2019

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Our traveling troupe is considerably smaller this time around, compared with the number who toured The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop. That works out fine; April is a rather busy month, and the choice for this Mitchell Mystery Reading Group event, 1937's Come Away, Death, may have less interest for casual readers and mystery fans than other titles. New members are welcome to join in the coming weeks – we will be discussing Chapters Six through Ten next, with observations corralled and sent to me on or about Monday, April 8 for a midweek post – and there's still a lot to discuss and expectations to be surpassed or dashed.

Come Away, Death finds Mrs. Bradley on a tour through the temple ruins of ancient Greece, where guide Sir Rudri Hopkinson is eager to recreate the Mysteries of Eleusis, rituals designed to appease and invoke the Hellenic gods.

Mitchell scholar and academic archaeologist Nick Fuller provided me with a lot of great information on the Mysteries and their actions. This is what the dogmatic Sir Rudri attempts to recreate, and I offer up Nick's research here (with more to come in future installments):

THE ELEUSIAN MYSTERIES

There are two sets: the Lesser Mysteries (an annual ceremony, involving purification) and the Greater Mysteries (held every four years). The participants are referred to as mystae and are initiated into the cult of Demeter and Persephone.
Greater Mysteries – Sequence of events (based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Way)

Day one: Initiates gather in Agora (Athenian marketplace); fast; parade to the Eleusinion (sacred precinct of Demeter)
Day two: Ritual cleansing in Bay of Phaleron
Day three: Initiates sacrifice a suckling pig
Day four: Cults of Asklepios (Latin, Aesculapius, god of medicine) and Hygieia (goddess of health) join celebrations in Athens; god visits initiates in dreams. (Mitchell's tour group visits Asklepios' centre at Epidaurus, one of the great hospitals of ancient Greece.)
Day five: Procession along Sacred Way from Athens to Eleusis; visit temple precinct at Daphni
Day six: Pannychis - women with torches dance by night
Day seven and eight: Visit Demeter's temple at Eleusis; myth of Demeter and Persephone enacted; initiates receive sacred vision; priest holds up a grain of seed reaped in silence
Day nine: Initiates return home

Nick adds, "Mitchell assumes that her readers have a general idea of the Mysteries; she wrote in an age when educated people still took Latin and Greek as a matter of course… There was much esoteric interest in the Mysteries in the late 19th / early 20th century (Theosophy et al). In 1910, Aleister ("I am the Anti-Christ, the Great Beast ... lend me a fiver") Crowley performed the seven Rites of Eleusis on seven consecutive Friday evenings at Westminster's Caxton Hall. He suggested that all gods were dead but the great god Pan." (See E.F. Benson and Arthur Machen.)

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

I had not read Come Away, Death in more than 15 years, and it was quite interesting to find how much of the tone and atmosphere of this book that I recalled, if not necessarily the details of plot. What struck me then strikes me now: Mitchell delivers this Mrs. Bradley tale in a very subdued and sober reporting style, and it is a world quite removed from the mannered farce found in Mystery of a Butcher's Shop. Gone, too, are those pesky adverbs littering her earliest stories, and most notably perhaps is the change in approach to her reptilian detective. Mrs. Bradley is not out to shock or cackle and feels at ease as an observer; the constant reminders of her more grotesque attributes are not here. But she seems, also, quite one with the sun-baked, dry, and dusty landscape that the group explores.

And that evocation of place is perhaps my favorite aspect of this book. In no way is this Greece a welcoming, attractive tourist spot. The land is hostile, and Mitchell constantly draws the reader's attention to just how uncomfortable it is to inhabit. Sleeping occurs on rocky ground, on hard museum floors, or in cramped cars, and shade and water are at a premium. This world is remarkably, consistently inhospitable throughout, and it quite brilliantly helps define the flared tempers, strained relationships, and feelings of isolation felt by the characters. I'm familiar with cosy mystery stories set in welcoming, bygone English villages and others that use storms and moors to tap into Gothic dread. But here, Gladys Mitchell delivers a setting that feels both authentic and stifling, and connects it to the psychology of her characters.

Rock Shop Mysteries author Catherine Dilts was also back for a second Mrs. Bradley outing, after being introduced to GM and her detective in the last group reading event. She writes, "I love the story so far. Unlike the previous read, Mystery of a Butcher's Shop, we don't yet have a body by the end of Chapter Five. There are strong hints that amateur archaeologist Sir Rudri Hopkinson and his rival Alexander Currie are angry enough to - possibly - kill one another. And some deserve to die, like the photographer Armstrong, who is prone to kicking children. I am happy to ride along with the tour for now, as I try to follow the hints and clues dropped along the way for what I assume will happen soon."

JF Norris of Pretty Sinister Books is not enjoying the pageant thus far. I will present his chief complaint soon, but this is his reaction to the opening chapters: "I'm not intrigued by any of this. I don't know which characters to side with, everyone seems arrogant, stupid, flighty or selfish. This better improve and become something resembling a detective novel instead of an odd fantastical travelogue with mythological allusions."

JF continues, "I don't know what to make of this one frankly. It's clearly meant to be a send-up of something. I thought maybe she was sticking it to her fellow Detection Club member Agatha Christie, who had just published Murder in Mesopotamia in 1936. Mitchell's book comes so close on the heels of Christie's detective novel that I'll have to admit that it is probably not a response to the Grand Dame's archeological murder mystery. But the two books have a quite a lot in common."

Martyn Hobbs was impressed by the evocative brevity of the prose and the allusion in the title: “There’s something rotten in the isles of Greece. In three well-wrought paragraphs made up of only four sentences (eat your heart out, Henry James), Gladys Mitchell gives us a whiff of the modern human-engendered pollution that has come to the Greece of Homer, Sappho and Aristophanes; and pollution, whether physical or moral, was no laughing matter for the Ancient Greeks.

“And then there’s the title, which comes from a song in Twelfth Night:
Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid.
Fly away, fly away, breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.

“There are plenty of cypresses in Greece under which corpses can be laid. It doesn’t augur well.”

THE SIGHTS AND SOUNDS AND LACK OF A CORPSE

I have always enjoyed the travel mystery, and Gladys Mitchell provided her fair share of variations on this type of story throughout the decades. Mitchell imbued her detective with the same physical energy and interest in exploring new landscapes that she herself shared, and it appears to be curiosity (both for the Greek rituals and for the eccentricities of those in the assembled party) that attracts her to the trip.

From Martyn: "The most striking thing for me in this story, so far, is the quality of her writing. It’s quite wonderful. There is her usual highly-sprung, witty prose, full of humour, social comedy and sharp observation but, at least for me, there’s a different tone to Come Away, Death. She composes lovely sculpted sentences and paragraphs, chiselled, shaped, and many-layered, with an architecture to them, where information is carefully positioned and balanced. At the risk of getting too high-flown for my own good, it’s as if the forms of Ancient Greece have insinuated themselves into her prose like the serpents of Aesculapius were said to do in dreams. It has a music, too. I found I often had to read passages a second time to both get what she had said, but also to appreciate the shape of sentences. Here’s one example among many. It needs to be quoted at length:"

‘She stood before the Stele of Aristion, contemplating, not only the greaved and kilted warrior with his curled locks and long, straight feet, but the imaginary spectacles of Sir Rudri walking with torches in the dusk of the Greek evening, chanting strange hymns and sorrowful litanies to the Eleusinian gods Iacchus and Dionysus, and to the god-king Triptolemus. She could see him, dogged idealist and romancer, proceeding ploddingly the while along the petrol-haunted, dusty Sacred Way which now led, in the age of progress, the world no longer young, from one Greek slum to another.’

Catherine underscores something that definitely draws me to Golden Age Detective fiction: its depiction of another era with, often, very different perspectives than we currently carry. “I enjoy the historical aspects of the story - the 1930s, not ancient Greece. This was a time when amateur archaeologists could go on digs. It's a little alarming to watch this troop of mostly untrained people rampage through historical sites. Yet that was the reality of the time. Another reality is the political incorrectness of Mrs. Bradley and crew's views of modern Greeks and "red Indians." Mrs. Bradley, and author Mitchell, seem like enlightened women for this era. These comments are racist by our modern sensibilities, yet in other ways Mrs. Bradley seems remarkably comfortable operating in harmony with other cultures and among varieties of people.”

But it’s also true that, certainly in the first five chapters of Come Away, Death, Gladys Mitchell breaks the unwritten genre rule that a murder has to occur early to get the plotline started. Sacrilege or mere playing with form? It depends what experience you’re looking for. While I remembered the dry and dusty atmosphere of this book from my long-ago prior reading, I was surprised that the sacrificial victim (for story’s sake) had not yet arrived by the end of this section. What I tracked instead – to my enjoyment – was the mounting acrimony and incident between the travellers, and how secrets and grudges are revealed one at a time.

JF was frustrated with this breach of convention as he continues to ask: “Where’s the murder?” The characters also fall short here for him, and he writes that “the two squabbling antiquarians seem more like children than the trio of boys who want nothing more than to play pranks. Mrs. Bradley is relegated to a sort of nanny/babysitter/pal to the boys. At least they all get decent lodging when she insists they get decent beds at a hotel in Athens. When Cathleen is forced to reveal her secret marriage, Mrs. Bradley becomes an advice giver even if that advice amounts to absolutely nothing. This is like an anti-action set of chapters.”

THE BOYS

I found many of the characters intriguing, with tour guide Sir Rudri not as unhinged as I recalled him to be (although a later chapter does find him eyeing the youngest in his party with thoughts of human sacrifice). Those youths, a trio of precocious boys consisting of Kenneth, Stewart, and Ivor, scramble about and plot mischief, and I enjoyed how Mitchell allows them to share a communal energy and mindset, not unlike Donald Duck's nephews. True, they are constantly squabbling with one another, but no one child rises above the collective and they are generally agreed on their goal when there is trouble or adventure to find.

JF finds them less engaging: "The boys are fine and amusing when they aren't talking like miniature versions of Bertie Wooster. I can't believe any 12-year old would say "Most unsporting of him" after teasing a lizard that decides to escape sadistic pokes of a stick and run away under a rock. And there's too much of that 'I say...' nonsense."

Catherine had a different view, and suggested a way to cope with the vernacular: "I have decided a new drinking game can be based on Come Away, Death. Every time one of the boys says the word 'ass' [as in 'you ass'], one is required to take a shot. That being said, I love how Mitchell captures the boys' personalities."

FINAL THOUGHTS ON CHAPTERS 1-5

Catherine Dilts: "I like Mrs. Bradley better in this novel. Looking forward to hearing more of her adventures." (Catherine is listening to the audiobook during a month with much commuting.)

JF Norris: "Four chapters of exposition, three pranks to mystify and antagonize Sir Rudri, a quasi-mystery of who is pretending to be a living statue... Sigh... But where's the murder?"

Martyn Hobbs: "Gladys Mitchell must have been a glorious teacher. Mrs. Bradley demonstrates great sympathy and understanding for the boys in her charge, not least when she entertains them with her tales of the ex-convent executioner!"

I will let the book reviewer for the Sydney Morning Herald from 11 February, 1938 have the last word. Thank you, Nick Fuller, for sharing! "Gladys Mitchell’s new detective story is far removed from the type of work one usually expects in this field of fiction. She tells a good tale and her characterisation is excellent. There is, however, very little violence and still less detection. True, a murder is ultimately committed. But it does not strike one as being either particularly well handled or absolutely essential to the successful culmination of the plot."

Back next week for Chapters Six through Ten! Send observations to Jason@jasonhalf.com and I will incorporate them into the post.

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Book Review: THERE'S TROUBLE BREWING (1937) by Nicholas Blake

3/19/2019

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My recent revisiting of the Nigel Strangeways detective series has brought great enjoyment and a new appreciation of Nicholas Blake's work. As I (vaguely) remembered from my first exposure more than a decade and a half ago, the earliest books offer a playful, humorous spirit whose plots are full of incident and striking demises: a body in a haystack at a boys' school in A Question of Proof (1935); death by poison-injected walnut in Thou Shell of Death (1936). And now, in 1937's There's Trouble Brewing, a particularly disagreeable brewery owner appears to meet a particularly disagreeable fate: being boiled in a sealed copper vat.

One aspect I find especially admirable is how thoroughly Blake – the pseudonym for writer and future Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom Cecil Day-Lewis – commits to the fair-play mystery format, a path he traveled to augment his income while he crafted poetry. While these GAD books are filled with good humor and a fair dose of literary asides and allusions, the author never shorts the elements expected for a rousing fair-play puzzle. There are alibis to be shaken and confirmed or broken, odd clues (bits of a signet ring, a missing report) to be pondered, and a healthy variety of suspects, many whose prospects would improve with the victim handily out of the way. The reader is given access to the thoughts and tabulations of Blake's amateur detective protagonist Nigel Strangeways, and we see what Nigel sees... until the pieces rearrange to form a clear picture for him, and then we might have to wait a bit longer before Strangeways provides a final-chapter dénouement explaining it all.

In other words, Blake's 1930s titles deliver exactly what a classic mystery fan has come to comfortably expect from the genre. There is also the benefit that Blake/Day-Lewis writes very enjoyable, sometimes wry prose, and he does not shy away from extending a metaphor or making literary references. (Thou Shell of Death, especially with its title, turns partly on Strangeways' knowledge of Jacobean Revenge stage drama.) These (for me) are always amusing rather than obstructive, as when Nigel muses that being a Classics scholar was fine preparation for his current role as an investigator of murder:

"If ever, in your salad days – as one of my comic uncles calls them – you were compelled to do a Latin unseen, you'll know that it presents an accurate parallel with criminal detection. You have a long sentence, full of inversions; just a jumble of words it looks at first. That is what a crime looks like at first sight, too. The subject is a murdered man; the verb is the modus operandi, the way the crime was committed; the object is the motive. Those are the three essentials of every sentence and every crime. First you find the subject, then you look for the verb, and the two of them lead you to the object. But you have not discovered the criminal – the meaning of the whole sentence yet. There are a number of subordinate clauses, which may be clues or red-herrings, and you've got to separate them from each other in your own mind and to reconstruct them to fit and to amplify the meaning of the whole. It's an exercise in analysis and synthesis – the very best training for detectives."

In There's Trouble Brewing, Blake also adroitly handles a murder-mystery archetype, and one for whom I have a particular (masochistic?) affinity: the gleefully malevolent patriarch. Here, Eustace Bunnett is a hated town scion, an unscrupulous and lecherous old man who, as owner of the brewery, uses his power to make his workers submissive and quell complaints about dangerous work conditions and outdated equipment. It might have been out of revenge that Bunnett's innocent (and victimized) dog Truffles disappears, and his remains are found later in an open vat. The poor pet's demise could have inspired a second pressure-cooker killing, as human bones and rags are found, with all signs pointing to Eustace as the victim... while his brother Joe is nowhere to be found.

The inspector believes it's a straightforward case: Joe killed Eustace and escaped on his boat. It's possible, but Nigel wonders why the murderer subjected the victim to boiling when it wasn't necessary. He also worries about town resident and old school friend Herbert Cammison, who, with his wife, seems to be concealing a secret about Bunnett that might lead the police to their door.

And that leads me to sound one more note of admiration regarding the author's handling of genre elements. Blake assumes the puzzle-pursuing reader is smart enough to make connections and draw conclusions, so certain inferences of details that other writers might have tagged for a late-chapter reveal are offered up at the start. Through his protagonist, Blake makes no bones (!) of the fact that boiling obscures a body's fleshly identity – which may or may not be a red herring here -- and, likewise, he lets Nigel become suspicious of his amiable school friend right away. If either of those details had gone unremarked, the veteran mystery reader would be instantly on guard, but because the detective comments early on these points, we are left (rightly) wondering what Strangeways may have deduced that the armchair enthusiast has not.

A very good entry in the series, There's Trouble Brewing is worth sampling for Golden Age Detection imbibers. My fellow pub crawlers Kate at Crossexaminingcrime and Nick at The Grandest Game in the World offered their reviews too; just follow the links!

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Book Review: THERE'S TROUBLE BREWING (1937) by Nicholas Blake

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